The Echo Nest partners with EMI - <AUTHOR> http://blog.echonest.com/post/12273017511/open-emi

<comment><USER2> Interesting: EMI ends up being the publisher if you use their licensed music.

See <http://developer.echonest.com/sandbox/emi/emi_classics.html>, end of section "Approval Process for Application Development".

</comment><comment><USER3> This is fantastic, but as someone who's playing around with making a music app, I'm still not really able to use it.

The unfortunate fact is if you don't have all the labels on board you're just going to irritate users- they have no idea who is on what label, and why should they?

That said, this is huge step forwards. Hopefully other labels will see the benefits and follow suit- it could make Echo Nest a huge player.

</comment><comment><USER4> more on the sandboxes: <http://blog.echonest.com/post/12273084434/emi- announcement>

developer getting started guide: <http://developer.echonest.com/sandbox/emi/guide.html>

</comment><comment><USER5> 'Lion's share', how appropriate for a hunter turned gamekeeper... does it have a legal definition ?

<comment><USER6> 40%, according to:

<http://developer.echonest.com/sandbox/emi/faq.html>

How much will a Developer be paid?

A developer will be paid the lion's share of 40% of net revenues derived from the sale of the application. Net revenues means after any application store fees, direct technical costs (e.g. streaming and hosting) and sales tax deductions.

<comment><USER5> I don't think you will receive 40%, the way it is worded; "the lion's share of 40% of net revenues" and "Net revenues means after any application store fees, direct technical costs (e.g. streaming and hosting) and sales tax deductions.".

So you will receive an unspecified (but assumed larger) proportion of the 40% but not 40% .

<comment><USER7> Slight correction: You will receive an unspecified (but assumed larger) proportion of 40% of an unspecified total amount after unspecified deductions.

But hey, it will be the lion's share!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I imagine this is at least part of the reason why echonest got rid of the "found audio" feeds in their API - [http://blog.echonest.com/post/9371410835/deprecating- artist-...](http://blog.echonest.com/post/9371410835/deprecating-artist-audio- methods)

For now I will stick with Soundcloud - the future going forward is to support artists who put their music out there without holding a gun to anyone's head.

</comment><comment><USER9> how does this fit with the current change of ownership of emi? the company is in the process of being bought and, likely, split up. i guess this deal was done before all that - any idea how it will affect things? (my sympathies with the people behind this - must be frustrating to get a coup like this just as the company goes through such changes).

[http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2011/oct/28/emi-sold- russ...](http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2011/oct/28/emi-sold-russian- billionaire)

<comment><USER10> These deals are most often non-transferrable in the case of acquisition.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> The linked post refers to a "clear, pre-established revenue split with EMI" - but I can't find any details.

Is this information public?

<comment><USER4> <http://developer.echonest.com/sandbox/emi/faq.html></comment></comment>


The Decentralized Web Primer (2017) - <AUTHOR> https://dweb-primer.ipfs.io/ <comment><USER2> So...an outline for an unfinished IPFS primer. Nothing to do with webmentions, microformats, WebSub, or other decentralized web stuff.

<comment><USER3> I think this is the gitbook: [https://flyingzumwalt.gitbooks.io/decentralized- web-primer/](https://flyingzumwalt.gitbooks.io/decentralized-web-primer/)

<comment><USER2> right, that's the same thing? It's basically an outline since most of the TOC links don't work/have no content.

<comment><USER3> Are we talking about the same book ? I can only see two TODOs in the TOC. All the other links seems to be working.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I think I know what IPFS is, but nothing about its culture or who uses it, or why. What is the use case for ipfs? Can I make a normal website on it? What kind of stuff is on it right now? Is this one of those things that has mostly disturbing illegal content, drugs, and fringe political stuff on it? Or is it a more normal community?

<comment><USER5> > Is this one of those things that has mostly disturbing illegal content, > drugs, and fringe political stuff on it?

Disturbing, illegal content often relies on encryption (to hide what's going on) and/or anonymity (to hide who's doing it). IPFS isn't about either of those: if you serve something over IPFS, anyone can fetch it and anyone can see that you're serving it. Presumably encryption and anonymisation can be layered on top of this, by those who want it (just like TOR does for normal Web).

The main point of IPFS is content-based addressing: serving a file, like a Web page, via IPFS gives it a URL automatically, which is just the cryptographic hash of that file. This means that:

\- Multiple people serving the same file on to IPFS will be serving the same URL

\- Anyone trying to fetch a URL can get the file from anyone that's serving it

\- Serving a different file (e.g. updating the latest stories on a news page) will end up with a different URL

On the normal HTTP Web, each URL is a request which refers to a particular machine (usually via a domain name which is associated to one or more IP addresses). When we fetch a URL (e.g. example.com/cat.jpeg) on the normal Web, we're relying on that machine (e.g. example.com) to exist, we're relying on it knowing/understanding the request (e.g. cat.jpeg) and we're relying on the result to be what we expected (e.g. a particular picture of a cat). Those expectations can be violated at any point, e.g. the server may respond with some porn rather than the cute cat picture it gave us yesterday. What's worse is that, if something goes wrong (e.g. a domain expires, some URL becomes a 404 due to deletions or changing the server software, etc.), nobody else is able to fix it: we're able to serve copies of content, at different addresses (e.g. like the Internet Archive does), but users must manually seek out those copies, and have no way of knowing if they're real.

With IPFS, anyone can choose to serve files that they're interested in. Anyone can serve their own blog on IPFS, but _readers_ of the blog can _also_ serve it; that way, even if the author disappears or their server explodes, anyone fetching those URLs will still get the content they wanted (they would just so happen to be getting it from the readers rather than the author). Since URLs contain a hash of the content, it's trivial to check if the fetched content is correct: just hash it and compare against the URL (IPFS might do this automatically, I'm not sure).

I like the idea of hosting my blog and git repos on IPFS because it's more resilient than a HTTP server. I currently have a VPS dedicated to serving HTTP, even though most of that server's capabilities are wasted since it requires hardly any resources. Yet I daren't use it for anything else, since any breakages will take my Web site offline. The same single-point-of-failure applies to reverse proxies, load balancers and other such HTTP endpoints.

On the other hand, I can stick an IPFS daemon on a few different computers and have them all able to serve up those files in the background, whilst I use them for other tasks like gaming, writing, home servers, etc. If any of them falls over, my IPFS site doesn't care. I even had my laptop serving my Web site via IPFS, which was suspended when travelling to and from my office; that would be unthinkable for a HTTP site's availability.

Unfortunately the main IPFS implementation is currently too resource-intensive for me to keep this up. Running it on a RaspberryPi was difficult and it slowed my normal laptop down noticably, so for now I've stopped running the daemon. I keep an eye on new releases and bug reports about resource usage, so maybe it will become more usable soon :)

<comment><USER6> "just the cryptographic hash of that file"

Is that strictly true? I am still wrapping my head around the DAG, but as far as I can tell, if I add a "large" file and you add a large file, they may result in different ipfshashes. Is that remotely accurate? More importantly, does it matter?

Can I hand someone a 16cb96ba835448d441b02c50d783a0ea7b424df1 and expect them to be able to find the file?

[https://github.com/ipfs/go-ipfs/issues/1953](https://github.com/ipfs/go- ipfs/issues/1953)

[https://github.com/ipfs/notes/issues/126](https://github.com/ipfs/notes/issues/126)

<comment><USER5> You're right that it's slightly more complicated than e.g. `sha256sum < myfile`. I would claim it's still "just the cryptographic hash of that file", albeit via a slightly more complicated algorithm than raw SHA or MD5 or whatever.

Files get split into "blocks" of raw data of a certain size (e.g. 64k), and each of these is hashed to get its ID. Blocks don't have to store raw data, they can instead store references to block IDs, i.e. "concatenate the blocks with the following hashes: 12345 abcde vwxyz ...". Those blocks are _also_ hashed to get their ID and can be referenced by other blocks, and so on.

The first type of block (containing raw data) acts as storage. The second type of block (containing references) tells us how to reconstruct our files. The reason IPFS does this is to increase the chance that data can be deduplicated (for example, if we upload a new version of our blog, the unchanged pages can reference the same blocks as the old version) which makes storage more efficient (with a logarithmic cost for storing the blocks of references). It also makes the storage more resilient, since blocks that appear in multiple files (or multiple version of a file) are more likely to be served by more people. It also allows downloads to be performed in parallel, since we can get some blocks from one person and other blocks from someone else.

This splitting-up-and-referencing process is deterministic, so people uploading the same file _will_ get the same hash. However, there are options which we can change from the defaults, which will cause the hash to differ; for example if we pick a different block size or hashing algorithm. Files can also be added in a "streaming mode", which will also result in a different hash than adding in the default way. AFAIK streaming mode makes it easier to pick blocks from the start of a file (e.g. so we can buffer the first X% of a video file, rather than fetching X% of the blocks from all over the file in whatever order our requests happen to come back in)

> Can I hand someone a 16cb96ba835448d441b02c50d783a0ea7b424df1 and expect > them to be able to find the file?

That's not a valid IPFS hash (e.g. [https://ipfs.io/ipfs/16cb96ba835448d441b02c50d783a0ea7b424df...](https://ipfs.io/ipfs/16cb96ba835448d441b02c50d783a0ea7b424df1) doesn't work). If you send that file to `ipfs add` (or `ipfs add -n` to only get the hash and avoid actually serving it), you will get a hash that anyone can attempt to fetch. Those attempts should work, as long as someone (possibly you, possibly anyone else) is serving that file (just like with HTTP; although multiple people can serve it and no permission is required, unlike the single IP/domain of HTTP identifiers)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> IPFS is truly an exciting project. Unfortunately in practice it is much slower then the normal web. I am hoping that will change in the future.

In case anybody else missed it here is the gitbook link: [https://flyingzumwalt.gitbooks.io/decentralized-web- primer/](https://flyingzumwalt.gitbooks.io/decentralized-web-primer/)

</comment><comment><USER7> Any reason last repo updates seem to be from 3 years ago? I thought IPFS is still an active project.

<comment><USER3> Which repo ? The latest commit on this repo is 1 year old.

[https://github.com/flyingzumwalt/decentralized-web- primer](https://github.com/flyingzumwalt/decentralized-web-primer)

<comment><USER7> Oh, I was looking at the github link at the bottom[1] but I didn't notice it's a link to specific commit, latest commit is actually from 11 days ago, I'm sorry.

1\. [https://github.com/ipfs/website/tree/49b7cc4cd170138388012c7...](https://github.com/ipfs/website/tree/49b7cc4cd170138388012c70ff6087b14111c1f0/content/pages/docs)</comment></comment></comment>


Pective shows the actual size of things - <AUTHOR> http://www.pective.com

<comment><USER2> I like this, but the calibration method is a little difficult. My preferred method is to enter a good guess of the monitor size, and then compare a virtual rule with a real rule until they are equal. A nice example is [http://pective.com/pic/10-cm-ruler](http://pective.com/pic/10-cm-ruler) because it has international and imperial units.

Also, entering the monitor size is difficult because it opens a new mini- window without the old value. I'd like to have the old value and be able to edit it as text or use a up/down button to make small changes.

I used a similar method to copy the format of a document from Word to LaTeX. In my monitor, with a 141% zoom the image has the actual size, so I can compare the margins and line separations and size of the logos.

</comment><comment><USER3> Doesn't work for the Eiffel tower.

<comment><AUTHOR> indeed not, there's a limitation on the size of objects. Too bad, but come on, who honestly expected that to work right?</comment></comment>


Gains in Antarctic ice might offset losses - <AUTHOR> http://www.nature.com/news/gains-in-antarctic-ice-might-offset-losses-1.18486?WT.mc_id=TWT_NatureNews <comment><USER2> The important takeaway from this is that we don't have to worry as much about melting in Antartica. Melting everywhere else in the world, however, is proceeding at a fast pace and is more immediately concerning. Unfortunately, I imagine this report is going to get jumped on by global warming deniers as solid evidence that climate change is not real and there's nothing to worry about.

<comment><USER3> The word 'denial' does not permit of much nuance, does it? Smacks of faith and a religion, really. I wonder if & why you disagree with Judith Curry.

"The definition of 'dangerous' climate change is ambiguous, and hypothesized catastrophic tipping points are regarded as very or extremely unlikely in the 21st century. Efforts to link dangerous impacts of extreme weather events to human-caused warming are misleading and unsupported by evidence. Climate change is a 'wicked problem' and ill-suited to a 'command and control' solution. It has been estimated that the U.S. national commitments to the UN to reduce emissions by 28% will prevent three hundredths of a degree centigrade in warming by 2100..."

Evidence to the House of Representatives Committee on Science, Space and Technology

<comment><USER4> Judith Curry who wrote less than a year ago[0]:

 _Moreover, the estimates in these empirical studies are being borne out by the much-discussed "pause" or "hiatus" in global warming—the period since 1998 during which global average surface temperatures have not significantly increased._

Even though the actual data shows warming of ~0.18 deg C: [http://climate.nasa.gov/vital-signs/global- temperature/](http://climate.nasa.gov/vital-signs/global-temperature/)

0\. [http://www.wsj.com/articles/judith-curry-the-global- warming-...](http://www.wsj.com/articles/judith-curry-the-global-warming- statistical-meltdown-1412901060)

<comment><USER5> Judith Curry had something to say about the NASA data as well. I find her analysis quite level-headed.

[http://judithcurry.com/2015/01/16/warmest-year-pause-and- all...](http://judithcurry.com/2015/01/16/warmest-year-pause-and-all-that/)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Dumb question: if all the ice melts, especially in Arctics shouldn't the see level fall down as volume of water is smaller than volume of ice? And with increased temperature there is also increased vaporization and world's average humidity - another reason for sea levels to fall down.

<comment><USER7> There are no dumb questions :-), but no, this is not what will happen. For one thing, the ice that floats around in sea displaces exactly as much water as ice (uses the same 'water volume') as it will as water. (Almost, because the water volume per mass will actually increase with increasing temperatures, which is quite a significant effect). However, a large amount of ice is on land, where it doesn't contribute to ocean volume. If it were to melt that would be a major contributor to sea level rise.

Also, the average humidity is quite stable on earth, and any excess water that evaporates into the atmosphere quickly rains out again. Furthermore, the amount of water in the atmosphere is very small in comparison to the amount of water in the oceans. (See e.g. here: [http://water.usgs.gov/edu/watercycleatmosphere.html](http://water.usgs.gov/edu/watercycleatmosphere.html)). So it is very difficult to imagine that an increased humidity would have a significant effect on the sea level.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Hooray, the polar bears are saved!

<comment><USER9> Well, not really. Polar bears live in the Northern Hemisphere. (Here's a riddle: why won't a polar bear eat a penguin even if the bear is starving? Answer: they live in different hemispheres.)

<comment><AUTHOR> Except penguins lived in the Northern Hemisphere: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_auk](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_auk). Great Auks are the original "penguin". What we call penguins today are not actually in the genus Pinguinus.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Could this be related to a shifting in the tilt/orientation of the planet? Or perhaps in an upcoming polarity flip?

<comment><USER11> Ahhh, the earth's tilt/orientation changes very slowly. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Axial_tilt](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Axial_tilt) __Earth 's obliquity oscillates between 22.1 and 24.5 degrees on a 41,000-year cycle. It is currently 23.44 degrees and decreasing. __

Magnetic pole changes take 1,000 to 10,000 years to happen. So again, unlikely.[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geomagnetic_reversal](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geomagnetic_reversal) And also, what do magnets have to do with ice melting?

I'd recommend that you unfollow Spirit Science on facebook.

<comment><USER10> I have no idea what spirit science is. My question I felt was a legitimate science question for someone not familiar with geo-physics of the planet. not sure why i got downvoted.

<comment><USER11> Hey, I didn't downvote you, but your questions were just... very off. I imagine that the typical HN user was just downvoting because the questions aren't even relevant.

(And sorry for he spirit science comment, it was an unfair dig. They're a pseudo-science page on facebook that often tries to connect disparate phenomena.)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> If true, it's unlikely to persist for long. We know from paleoclimate data that both Greenland and Antarctica will significantly melt out w/ CO2 as high as it already is, much less any realistic peak level we could achieve.

<comment><USER13> Or if CO2 had never risen at all, right? End of ice age and all that?

<comment><USER12> Yeah, there's actually a reasonable case that our initial historical fossil fuel burning (say, up to 1950, 1980?) saved us from a new ice age that was about to dawn.

We unfortunately since then have pushed the dial way, way further, likely now past a tipping point towards a mostly ice-free hothouse planet.</comment></comment></comment>


An algorithm that recreates 3D objects from tiny 2D images - <AUTHOR> https://techcrunch.com/2017/08/23/this-algorithm-cleverly-recreates-3d-objects-from-tiny-2d-images <comment><USER3> This article is confusingly written. Its explanations sound silly to anyone even a little familiar with 3d, since it spends the first half of the article explaining that this "breakthrough" is "computationally clever and forehead- slappingly simple", the breakthrough being that you can represent things as surface-models instead of voxels.

Well, surface rendering is how almost all 3d work is done already, that's definitely not a breakthrough. You can probably spend an entire career never dealing with voxels.

What this article never mentions (surprisingly) is that this paper is about neural networks. I'm not an expert, but as I understand the article, voxel representations have been the standard _specifically when building neural networks_ to turn 2d images into 3d. The main idea is that you can build a network that only renders high-resolution voxels when close to the surface of the model, and renders very low-resolution voxels everywhere else (say, on the inside of the model). This means you can both represent much larger models memory-wise, but also that you're not having to run the NN computations on voxels that are not likely to change, since everything "inside" of the model you probably guessed correctly pretty quickly.

Here's the paper's abstract, much better at explaining itself than the article:

"Recently, Convolutional Neural Networks have shown promising results for 3D geometry prediction. They can make predictions from very little input data such as for example a single color image, depth map or a partial 3D volume. A major limitation of such approaches is that they only predict a coarse resolution voxel grid, which does not capture the surface of the objects well. We propose a general framework, called hierarchical surface prediction (HSP), which facilitates prediction of high resolution voxel grids. The main insight is that it is sufficient to predict high resolution voxels around the predicted surfaces. The exterior and interior of the objects can be represented with coarse resolution voxels. This allows us to predict significantly higher resolution voxel grids around the surface, from which triangle meshes can be extracted. Our approach is general and not dependent on a specific input type. In our experiments we show results for geometry prediction from color images, depth images and shape completion from partial voxel grids. Our analysis shows that the network is able to predict the surface more accurately than a low resolution prediction."

<comment><USER4> I was stumped by that as well. It spends half the text explaining the well- known parts (surface models) and then mentions the actual contribution completely in passing:

> _So first his system renders a 3D reconstruction of the 2D image in very low > resolution [...] Next, do a higher-resolution render of the area you kept._

Where apparently the author seems to think _producing a 3D reconstruction of a 2D object_ is trivial even though that's what the paper is about.

<comment><USER5> That's not what the paper is about. The abstract quoted by the GP shows that it has been done before. Probably only very recently so it's going to be a surprise to a lot of readers, but perhaps old news measured in machine learning years.

<comment><USER6> It was actually astonishing for me how old a lot of the machine learning methods and algorithms are - quite often stuff I worked with on university almost 20 years ago. The main difference being that you have more computation power and memory by orders of magnitude. You can throw datasets at the NN that would have been prohibitive in size back then. Stuff I had to reserve time for on the uni "super-"computer probably runs on your phone nowadays.

Oh my god, I sound like my father.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Well I'm sorry but I think more is going on than the article describes.

For example the red pickup truck. There is no way the algorithm could create that model from that image only (depth of the trunk).

So my guess is that they use the tiny picture to search a database for similar pictures and then create a model with all that data.

<comment><USER8> The linked paper talks about CNNs in its abstract, so those were probably trained with such samples and thus have that knowledge baked in.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> I kind of got lost on the first sentence: "With a lifetime of observing the world informing our perceptions, we're all pretty good at inferring the overall shape of something we only see from the side, or for a brief moment. Computers, however, are just plain bad at it."

I'm good at inferring the shape of something from a side view well enough that I can use it in some kludgy mental models, but down the page they're essentially asking the computer to look at something from the side and render a precise(ish) 3-D mechanical model of the object from memory. For example, I have what I think is a pretty good idea of what a Boeing 737 looks like, but if you asked me to draw it on a piece of paper it would look like a kinder gardener did it. What I'm good at is boiling down features and distinguishing a 737 from an Oscar Meyer wiener truck. Drawing a scale-accurate picture of it is a job for artists and savants.

<comment><USER10> The computer's a savant at precise drawing, but the visualization isn't the interesting part. The interesting part is having the computer look at a 2D picture and come up with a "kludgy mental model" of the 3D shape represented by the picture. From the example images, it infers information more accurately than I would've expected.

<comment><USER11> I can't help but wonder what would result from an Escher drawing.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> As lots of people already pointed out: there is more going on than just a smart upsampling technique.

See section 4 of the paper - they train on a set of 3d models from some 'ShapeNetCore' dataset, from which they generate sample inputs (renderings of the model with randomized viewpoint and lighting) and corresponding target outputs (voxelized model).

They train specialized networks for different classes of objects 'aeroplanes, chairs and car', so reconstructing on all classes at the same time probably still has some issues.

An interesting point about their use of this coarse-to-fine progression that the article omits: they do the same trick for training their net - first train to predict the coarse voxels, and when those work start predicting the next level.

</comment><comment><USER13> This paper from a while back acomplishes this too. [https://github.com/chrischoy/3D-R2N2](https://github.com/chrischoy/3D-R2N2)

<comment><USER14> Thought of that paper too but didn't remember the name, thanks for sharing! The new paper also reference 3D-R2N2 several times and seems heavily inspired/adapted from it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> Very interesting tech, though the article makes a piss poor job of explaining anything about how it works. Rendering surfaces is how literally 99.9% of 3D graphics work, not a "breakthrough" of any sorts.

<comment><USER10> 99.9% of 3D graphics: "Computer, here's a definition of some 3D surfaces and their properties. Produce a 2D projection."

This: "Computer, here's a 2D projection. Infer the likely 3D data that would produce the projection."

<comment><USER15> The comparison the article makes is against rendering a full voxel volume, as if occlusion was a great insight.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> I'm looking at the second example from the image in the article - the blue plane - and can't work out how the algorithm could possibly infer a second wing from that picture.

<comment><USER17> Presumably the neural network was trained on a dataset where all planes had two wings, so it will predict planes with two wings.

<comment><USER18> Yeah, there's definitely some previous knowledge of the kinds of objects it's inferring, which is used to deduce the parts.

Look at the chairs' legs, where it's transforming the flat base of the rotating chair into something that looks as wheels, and where it's completely missing the bars connecting the legs in the second tall chair.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> I'm very excited about the potential for extracting voxel specific or procedural generated 3D objects from a low number of 2D images - <USER2> with a combination of Semantic Segmentation and some form of MVS. The results of papers like this and other similar ones are great progress.

<comment><USER20> Seems like Google Earth is doing this yeah?

<comment><USER21> for the 3D Google Earth views? It's photogrammetry from a 5 camera rig on a low flying plane

[https://youtu.be/suo_aUTUpps?t=2m53s](https://youtu.be/suo_aUTUpps?t=2m53s)

<comment><USER20> Alright pretty old school. As an aside, one of the first things I did with my Oculus was pull up Google Earth and lay down in Yosemite valley which is feature around 5 minutes in this vid. Cheers.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> "Single Particle Reconstruction" for Cryo-EM reconstruction algorithm, anyone?

SPR is an algorithm already used to reconstruct 3d objects from a set of 2d images produced by an electron microscope, typically of a protein on a flat surface.

I haven't read the paper here, but I suspect a key part of the algorithm is that it can only reconstruct objects with symmetry planes: The airplane, chair, car are all symmetric across an axis. This greatly constrains the possibilities the algorithm has to search through. In em-reconstruction the user often specifies what they think the symmetries are beforehand.

</comment><comment><USER23> Could be interesting to see it run on old game sprites. The Starcraft Remastered team could have used this, for example.

<comment><USER24> How would copyright and licenses apply to something like this?

<comment><USER11> presumably covered under the common "derivative works" clause

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> want to see results from Necker cube</comment>


Coding boot camps and their instructors: are any experienced software devs? - <AUTHOR> Before anyone gets on me for another coding boot camp question - I am trying to ask a simple question about coding boot camps...
Is anyone aware of any coding boot camps that have really experienced instructors teaching the curriculum? Or are most coding boot camps heavily taught by beginners/ex-boot camp grads...
Here is my thought: who you learn from is as important as the curriculum. <comment><USER2> I work at CourseReport.com - a directory of coding bootcamps with reviews, blog posts etc. We often do Q&As with coding bootcamp instructors and many of them are industry professionals. We see very experienced people becoming instructors - often they want to give back to the community after some years working in the industry. Many coding bootcamps also have a policy of not hiring their grads unless they have a number of years of experience. I agree with an earlier comment that coding schools do often hire their grads as mentors, but not usually as instructors. Examples of experienced instructors: Jarryd Huntley of We Can Code IT has 10 years of industry experience: [http://bit.ly/Jarryd-WeCanCodeIT-instructor](http://bit.ly/Jarryd- WeCanCodeIT-instructor) Liz Howard of Galvanize has industry experience & teaching experience: [http://bit.ly/Galvanize-instructor- Liz](http://bit.ly/Galvanize-instructor-Liz) Austyn Hill of The Software Guild went to MIT and worked for Microsoft: [http://bit.ly/Austyn-Software-Guild- Instructor](http://bit.ly/Austyn-Software-Guild-Instructor) I totally agree that who you learn from is as important as the curriculum. An experienced instructor will not only be able to teach you the course material, and explain how you would use it on the job, but will also be able to give you industry advice and maybe help you find a job.

<comment><AUTHOR> thanks for sharing. I've referred to coursereport many times. great reference.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> I work with Grand Circus, in Detroit Mich., and it's very important who is teaching every coding bootcamp. Our instructors come from diverse backgrounds - our lead instructor has his PhD and works with Wayne State University's computer science programs. Another is a full-stack developer with 20 years experience. We have several others with extensive programming backgrounds.

It's important to do your research. Some coding bootcamps solely employ graduates of previous programs. Some train developers a new language to fill a void in their teaching schedules. You can research folks on LinkedIn and talk directly to teachers. Additionally, read reviews on the specific program you're looking at. Course Report, Facebook, Google Reviews, Skilled Up and others can provide insights on how well the programs are structured to prepare you for a career in tech.

</comment><comment><USER4> Many are taught by experienced developers. It would be hard to know for sure, but I would guess that all would be.

I have friends that have been through four different programs. All of those had serious long term developers teaching.

It is true that they have "beginners/ex-boot-camp grads" available as MENTORS not teachers. There is a HUGE difference.

Yeah they may teach a feature, but "the teacher" is still in the room.

It's super easy to tell, just read the "bio's" of the teacher. If it says 10+ years as a developer, you're fine.

<comment><AUTHOR> do you mind sharing the four programs your friends attended and whether they told you that they were recommended? Are they employed? Thank you.

<comment><USER4> Add your email address.

<comment><AUTHOR> added - thank you.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> You're 100% correct that the instructor is a huge part of the experience. At the moment, all of the instructors at DigitalCrafts (Atlanta and Houston) have over 10 years of professional development experience. While that may not be the case at every school, the top programs are similarly staffed. For bios: www.digitalcrafts.com/about.html

<comment><AUTHOR> your program looks really interesting. who's the day to day instructor in Atlanta.. is it Toby Ho? thank you.</comment></comment>


On 37signals' no free accounts policy and pushing the software industry forward - <AUTHOR> http://gist.io/3251942

<comment><USER2> A thought-provoking note. It's 37Signals' prerogative to not give out free accounts, of course - but this underlines the societal importance of open source and freemium services. Code can be freedom, after all.</comment>


Ask HN: Why has Docker so bad documentation? - <AUTHOR> I'm trying to use Docker, for things that are slightly more advanced than running bash on the latest Ubuntu image. More specifically, creating a multi-host overlay network. They tell you on the site that Docker supports overlay networking, but on top of that, you can also use Docker Swarm. After that, they give you an example of how to create a swarm, but no examples of a simple overlay network.
They claim it (overlay networking) is now production-quality, but then all the docs say is: (TODO: talk about Swarm and the overlay driver)
My experience was similar with other topics as well, and it's a bit annoying because I fully believe that containers are going to transform deployment completely... <comment><USER2> Creating a multi-host overlay network sounds like a task with a lot of knowledge dependencies. In a moderately sized organization, there is a better chance that a sizable fraction of that knowledge is institutional knowledge. For a single developer, the odds of the pre-requisite knowledge existing quickly decreases as the size of the knowledge dependency chain grows.

There are tools technologies and tutorials designed for a team of size one. Those that aren't will probably require a team of size one to invest significant time working their way up and down the knowledge dependency chain.

To put it another way, if containers are going to change the world, then learning them is a long term project.

Good luck.

</comment><comment><USER3> Documentation is hard because you have to have empathy for the user while holding most of the product's capabilities in your head while you write it. Transfer of knowledge has always been difficult, and when you start changing the rules in the middle of trying to explain how it works, you'll end up with a very large challenge.

I would assume they'll eventually figure it out and improve it. Until then, the best thing to do is dig, dig, dig.</comment>


Mapping how the United States generates its electricity - <AUTHOR> https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/national/power-plants/ <comment><USER2> An interesting set of images. What's the deal with solar in Massachusetts? The state seems to have much higher density of solar than I would anticipate.</comment>


iOS 6 Adoption Stats One Month In - <AUTHOR> http://stuartkhall.com/posts/ios-6-adoption-one-month-in

<comment><USER2> I haven't updated to iOS6. I was worried that google maps would be deleted from my iPad and replaced with apple maps. I do not want this.

I heard somethings about Safari being buggy.. I didn't really want this either as I only really use my iPad to surf the web.

I was concerned about the memory footprint. As I understand it app's now download retina resources whether you have a retina iPad or not. I have limited space on my iPad. It runs fine at the moment. I didn't see any reason to update.

<comment><USER3> > I haven't updated to iOS6. I was worried that google maps would be deleted > from my iPad and replaced with apple maps. I do not want this.

I'm also waiting for 6.1 at least to see how Apple Maps will evolve, I have no sense of direction whatsoever so I need maps to show me where I am, and Apple Maps still seems a bit too risky for now. It's possible to use the Google Maps site directly, but in my tests it's less responsive and the geolocation doesn't work as well as in the application itself.

> I heard somethings about Safari being buggy.. I didn't really want this > either as I only really use my iPad to surf the web.

I've seen developer reports, but no reports of user issues. Quite the opposite, webkit's been updated in iOS6 so Safari is apparently significantly faster.

> I was concerned about the memory footprint. As I understand it app's now > download retina resources whether you have a retina iPad or not.

It's always done that (ever since the release of the original iPad and the creation of "hybrid" iPhone/iPad applications), the version of iOS you're running is completely irrelevant to that issue: if you're running an application compatible with all iOS devices (3GS to iPad 3 at native resolutions) it may very well bundle 4 different copies of bitmapped assets (or even 5 for e.g. startup screens, since the iPhone 5 has a different resolution than the 4/4S). I don't believe iOS AppStore bundles have every been stripped. I'm not even sure they could be since they're signed (unless you jailbreak).

<comment><USER4> Just as a data point on this whole Maps thing, Apple Maps in iOS 6 has already saved me on numerous occassions in the US and Europe. In Europe, I had a dedicated Garmin Nuvi, but it was Maps that got me to the the tiny village in Alsace. In the US I had a dedicated TomTom, but it was Maps that was able to correctly locate sites of interest for Civil War fans (Eastern Theater). Both dedicated GPSes had had their maps updated in the last month or so.

Make of that what you will, but my personal experience has been that Maps is actually pretty reasonable. In major cities it maybe isn't quite as detailed as Google maps, but then, you can always use Google Maps as a web app for that...

<comment><USER5> In general, a map will always be good enough until the moment they aren't. It's extremely localized, and your experience can't be compared to another persons' 1-1.

There are now entire countries with completely useless maps. Is that fair to iPhone users in those countries? Even in Canada and the USA, thousands of small cities that formerly had detailed maps were "wiped off the map" with this update. So while millions of people think things have gotten better, millions of people can also legitimately claim Maps is not just "worse" but completely broken.

For the people who live in cities with turn-by-turn navigation and 3D flyovers, hey the new Maps is great. Apple has sacrificed a product that was good enough for most people with one that is great for some and terrible for others. It's a tough decision for them to make, and they should have still used Google Maps app for those who are affected negatively since theres still so much time left on the contract with Google.

<comment><USER6> _> It's a tough decision for them to make, and they should have still used Google Maps app for those who are affected negatively since theres still so much time left on the contract with Google._

If they had given themselves a year where they made Maps available incrementally "by region" then they could have given themselves more time to test and refine the data and enticed users waiting in expectation instead of disappointing a whole bunch of them en-masse. Everyone outside the SF Bay Area could have looked on in expectation while us poor saps would look forward to the day.

<comment><USER7> "...where they made Maps available incrementally "by region"

I can see where you're coming from but I don't know if isolating map availability by region would work. Hyper-local travel is used in the majority of cases, but there are cases of regional travel too. What happens if someone wants turn-by-turn navigation from California to, say, Oregon, to attend a conference, weekend getaway, job interview, or just simply meet at a coffee shop in the new region? I live in Seattle, and often drive to Vancouver BC or Portland for weekends, just as an example.

IMHO, the real mistake here was setting expectations so that it would be lower and not affixing the "Beta" label to it (as was done to Siri.) Apple should also have, side from collecting data logs, ensured there's a more prominent feedback loop. As to your suggestion, I think a broader approach would work better, and perhaps work in layers of information, drilling down more deeply with richer details in regional pockets, one broad layer at a time.

<comment><USER6> _> I can see where you're coming from but I don't know if isolating map availability by region would work. Hyper-local travel is used in the majority of cases, but there are cases of regional travel too._

No duh. It wouldn't "work" in the sense of excluding absolutely 100% of people. So what? From Apple's perspective, it would be fine if it worked just 85 to 90% of the time. The point is to avoid a massive amount of customer dissatisfaction.

 _> IMHO, the real mistake here was setting expectations so that it would be lower and not affixing the "Beta" label to it (as was done to Siri.)_

No disagreement there. Doing both things would have been even better.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> 1\. Graph is a bit suspicious--why does the adoption rate sometimes go down? (Some quite large drops as well.) 2\. Any equivalent graphs for other versions? 3\. Adoption rate pretty flat since about two weeks after the iOS 6 release. 4\. What percentage of devices can be upgraded to iOS 6? (Probably 95%+, since the 3GS is supported--?)

<comment><AUTHOR> Nothing to be suspicious about, that's just we are seeing, can't tell you if it's representative of what others are seeing (although the %'s seem to be in the right ballpark to what others have reported). Spikes seem to be related to when an update for one of our apps come out, e.g. around the 2nd (the big spike) is when our update to Discovr Music came out ([https://itunes.apple.com/au/app/discovr-music-find-new- music...](https://itunes.apple.com/au/app/discovr-music-find-new- music/id412768094?mt=8)) I guess people who updated to that are more likely to of updated to iOS 6. In that actual release (2.6) we are seeing more like 75% iOS 6 usage.

<comment><USER9> Yeah, that would be interesting to also show what percentage of people are on the latest version of your software. A lot of less techie people just never update anything, unless it breaks.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Could someone please describe this graph in detail? Unfortunately there are no numbers to go along with it which is challenging for those like me who are totally blind.

<comment><USER11> The graph shows percentage of users having installed iOS6, one bar per day. The bars are very close to 1-2% in early september (beta testers), then around the release 19th of September, the bars quickly rise each day: 30%, 35%, 45%, 47%, 50%, and from there on a quite steady (but jumpy) rise towards about 60% today. There's one weird peak at about 1st of October at about 65%, but that's probably just happenstance.

Edit: The difference in the numbers me and the fellow who posted just at the same time shows how coarse the percentage-axis was ;)

<comment><USER12> I think I like yours better. Much more succinct, with pretty much the same data.

<comment><USER10> Thanks to both of you for your descriptions.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Have they fixed the ridiculous "Only one connection allowed at a time to an http server" change yet? :/ As far as I'm aware, the browser is fairly unusable because of this.

<comment><USER14> This limitation doesn't exist. Safari happily opens up to 4 connections per server.

There is however a bug with long-polling connections: If you fire off the XHR for the long-polling endpoint (or Server Site Events endpoint for that matter) before window.onload has fired, then Safari will not fire onload (nor load any other external resource) until the long-polling connection closes or returns something.

What you are seeing is people not updating their scripts yet to take this bug into account.

<comment><USER15> > What you are seeing is people not updating their scripts yet to take this > bug into account.

Why? Shouldn't the expectation be that the bug gets fixed?

<comment><USER16> Because meanwhile, your users/customers experience the bug, which for you means lost page views, mindshare and probably revenue...

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Another source shows the same plateau at 65% or so: <http://david- smith.org/iosversionstats/>

I am a bit surprised from those numbers that there weren't more people left on 5.0, since 5.1 was an OTA update like 6. But maybe this is more of an "I don't want the update" thing than a "I don't know about the update" thing.

</comment><comment><USER17> My ex wife's iPhone 4 is still using ios4 since I'm not around to do it for her. I chuckle a bit every time she sends me a text message.

</comment><comment><USER18> I'd be really interested to see iOS 6 adoption stats compared against previous releases of iOS. Does anyone know if there's anything published on this?

<comment><USER19> This is a very good question. For example, I haven't upgraded because my phone is jailbroken. As of 2009, 10% of idevices were jailbroken with Cydia installed. Couldn't find any more recent stats.

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cydia>

<comment><USER20> Yes, from what I have read there is still no "untethered" jailbreak for iPhone 4 iOS6. That's what's keeping me from upgrading.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> I wonder how many of non-adopters use jailbroken devices.</comment>


Apple's Missed 'FacePod' Opportunity - <AUTHOR> https://500ish.com/apples-missed-facepod-opportunity-b21313e515cd <comment><USER2> I'm a little confused as to what this product was supposed to be.

Like some sort of conference room setup where you mount a camera on top of your TV and then do FaceTime?

I'm not sure people want to do that / share the whole room like that. And when they do make these calls I think they want to see your face, not you lounging 10' away from your massive TV...

The article notes that they cast a lot of these meetings to their TV, but that sounds like a use case where folks don't need to see your face. That's fine, but I'm not sure that's a big use case.... and they already found a solution.</comment>


I Write Letters to CEOs - <AUTHOR> https://www.johnwdefeo.com/articles/why-i-write-letters-to-ceos <comment><USER2> Years ago I wrote a letter to Paul Raines, then the CEO of Gamestop.

Mainly I complained how terrible the store experience was. Whereas Apple stores feel like an avant-garde museum Gamestops feel like the inside of a Chuck E. Cheese circa 1987 -- games everywhere, no real organization, no marketing of individual titles or genres, it's just grabbag nonsense of plastic container after plastic container.

Days after I sent the letter, his secretary called me and scheduled a phone call for the next day.

Paul could not have been nicer. He said he appreciated the criticism and offered to have his district manager tour a location with me so I could share in greater depth my concerns.

I declined (too busy) but was obviously taken aback with his generosity and patience.

Sadly, he passed away in March of this year from brain cancer at the very young age of 53.

He had no real incentive to respond to an angry letter from a random customer, but he went way out of his way to at least listen to me (even if the stores haven't improved much).

R.I.P. Paul.

<comment><USER3> I'm impressed but not surprised he responded; that sort of clear, actionable feedback can be surprisingly difficult for a CEO to get, especially in retail.

Most retail CEOs don't reserve much time for popping into stores and talking to customers, and store and district managers tend to dislike it--feels like micromanaging.

But at the same time, store managers and district managers are often not eager to feed a list of their stores' shortcomings up the chain of command. IMO it's a rare retail manager who is willing to stand up and say, "my store is bad and here is what I need to make it good." Most focus on putting the best possible face on things, internally. It's so hard to make good numbers in retail and there is so much pressure to do so... relationships between the management layers can often feel more adversarial than collaborative.

<comment><USER4> GameStop is sorely in need of some micro managIng. I was in there with my daughter the other day looking to buy a Nintendo Switch and some Pokémon cards. The place was a cramped disorganized mess. And the neck beard working the counter grunted half hearted responses to our questions for about 5 minutes before we left with nothing. About 20 minutes later I spent $350+ at Amazon using my smartphone while we ate lunch in the food court.

<comment><USER5> Food courts are the best part of the mall experience.

As malls disappear it would be nice if the multi-restaurant open and shared dining experience was preserved.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> > the compound annual return of the respondent group is 8.97% greater than the > non-respondent companies.

That's actually interesting, because I could easily explain away the opposite result: CEOs who waste their time responding to personal letters aren't focused on improving company performance. For example, there's some potential negative correlation between time spent playing golf and company performance [1].

Granted, even if this were statistically significant you can think of explanations why it makes sense: "These CEOs have thought so deeply about their business that responding to these letters is trivial", or "Being forced to answer these questions is beneficial for the CEOs business acumen".

Of course the most likely explanation is that the correlation is just spurious and the two things are unrelated.

Still, would be an interesting study!

1: [http://www.businessinsider.com/ceo-golf-rounds-indicate- poor...](http://www.businessinsider.com/ceo-golf-rounds-indicate-poor- performance-2014-11)

<comment><USER7> Here's my anecdotal-experience-driven theory of what's going on with the golfing-CEO companies underperforming the non-golfing-CEO ones: it isn't a matter of lost productive hours while golfing instead of working. It's that the golfing CEOs are, as a population, different from the non-golfing ones.

The golfing ones are a bit more extroverted and charismatic than the non- golfers; they "look like CEOs". They are more likely than the non-golfing ones to have attended a top-tier MBA program. Their average height is significantly greater than the non-golfers. And so on; you see where I'm going.

Certainly there are plenty of introverted, socially challenged golfers out there. But within any population whether CEOs or lawyers or cops or musicians or whatever else, the subset of people who golf is going to be, on average, more extroverted than the subset of people who don't.

I think this somewhat ties in to Taleb's argument that you should trust surgeons who don't look like surgeons, since their achievement of professional success despite their tendency to create a negative first impression is a robust heuristic of professional competence[0].

The population of non-golfers, averaged out as a population, were held to subtly higher standards that required better performance out of them. This means that non-golfers, as a population, tend to be more challenged at work over the course of their careers, and that it was less likely that individuals could "fail up" \-- the Peter Principle extends further for extroverts.

Anyway that's my theory.

0: [https://medium.com/incerto/surgeons-should-notlook-like- surg...](https://medium.com/incerto/surgeons-should-notlook-like- surgeons-23b0e2cf6d52)

<comment><USER8> Interesting theory. Do you apply it to men in predominantly female occupations and vice versa?

<comment><USER9> I think it's entirely plausible that the median woman in a coding job is better than the median man in a coding job because of this effect.

That's why vague claims (like in the google debacle) that women are biologically less suited to coding than men might not be relevant to your organisation _even if_ we were to believe it true in general.

A similar effect may explain some of this: [https://hbr.org/2017/09/the- comprehensive-case-for-investing...](https://hbr.org/2017/09/the- comprehensive-case-for-investing-more-vc-money-in-women-led-startups)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> My late father had great success in writing CEO's and receiving a direct reply. But I think times have changed because I've done it a few times and never had any luck.

There's a local automotive specialty repair chain in Michigan. My family has always done business with them. When they opened their first store which was in Detroit my grandfather took a picture of all the cars lined up. They were giving away two gallons of free gas which was apparently a pretty big deal in the nineteen twenties. My dad met the CEO at some business function and sent him a copy of the photo and they put copies in every one of their dozens of stores.

I've always had excellent service at our local branch. A good friend of mine asked for a recommendation so I sent him there. He received horrible service and a botched repair job which they refused to fix. I was embarrassed so I wrote the CEO. I mentioned my father so it would be clear to him who was writing. I didn't want anything for myself, I just wanted him to do right by my friend.

I never received a reply and moved my personal business to a competitor. I've also probably told two dozen people the story. The store changed managers and the new guy is driving business away. My letter should have tipped them off to problems but they ignored it.

<comment><USER11> I've had great success with e-mailing CEOs. I have engaged in (respectful) debates with them, and on more than one occasion they have come around to my point of view enough to actually implement changes at their companies.

Most CEOs are actually dying to know what their customers think of them. The hardest part of being a CEO at a major company is getting honest feedback without someone blowing smoke up your ass, so most good CEOs will make time to read direct feedback. Customers rarely have a political agenda the way a CEOs direct reports might.

That's why I think these companies perform better. A responsive CEO is more interested in hearing the unfiltered voice of the customer. That's a mindset that carries through to all parts of the business.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> I got my first job in the tech industry by writing a thank you letter.

Many years ago I met the CEO of a tech company at a networking event for recent college grads that they hosted. Like a job fair but with a twist. Having read Brian D. Krueger's excellent "College Grad Job Hunter" [1], I had business cards prepared. This was long before Moo.com so they were printed out on my Deskjet on Avery pre-perforated card stock. I went with my ill-fitting suit and mismatched shoes/belt, and I was talking to someone from a small tech company and I got a tap on the shoulder, "Our CEO would like to get a picture with you." Having miniscule networking mojo and knowledge, I actually followed the PR person _without_ excusing myself. We took the photo, and I asked if I could give him my business card. He said yes, and he gave me his.

The next day, I wrote him a letter. I honestly wrote how I liked that this networking event was not the usual deal but more like a classy cocktail event and a great opportunity to meet other companies in a less-networky, relaxed atmosphere. I thanked him and the company for hosting it.

I ended up later getting hired by his company (I was invited to apply, someone called me) and worked there for many years, as I learned the art and trade of software development, starting from nothing and someone who managed to bluff their way through the interviews.

[1] [https://www.amazon.com/College-Grad-Job-Hunter-Entry- level/d...](https://www.amazon.com/College-Grad-Job-Hunter-Entry- level/dp/1598695479) (highly recommend this, written from the perspective of the hiring manager)

<comment><USER13> Why did the CEO want a photo with you?

<comment><USER14> It wasn't the CEO who wanted the picture, it was the PR person. So s/he suggests it to the CEO and he said "sure."

But when it came time to make it happen, the way to get the person on board as quickly as possible is to say "the CEO over there wants to take a picture with you."

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Because of this post, CEOs around the world are receiving 3x emails today.

Haha, just kidding. It's actually the opposite. The reason CEOs respond is because they get _much_ fewer emails from customers than you'd imagine. They get their typical solicitations, internal meeting emails, external business discussions, but the customer emails can be interesting and more insightful than any internal letter could be. If you put time into it and write your letter which doesn't require a huge time investment to response (i.e. avoid dozens of specific questions and allow the discussions to be open-ended), you might get a response. If any human is contacted by another of our species, it's intrinsic to want to respond. Being a CEO doesn't remove that desire. Yes, you might be bothering them a bit if they sacrifice family time, but that's their own problem/choice!

<comment><USER16> How does one even discover the email addresses of CEOs (or board members)? It's not like they're searchable online and guessing common formats only gets you so far.

<comment><USER17> Rather than guessing, you can also connect to the SMTP gateway of that company using telnet then enter rcpt to:<firstname.lastname@example.com>. It'll tell you if that's a valid address or not. Rinse and repeat.

<comment><USER18> and much lulz were had

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> This looks like a lot of fantasy confidence. For instance, even if you are quite rich, it's unlikely that Colgate-Palmolive would consider you really an "investor". And of course if you write something to the CEO his 10+ PR team will respond to you, maybe even with something that is signed by the CEO. But do you really think the CEO sits down to discuss shower thoughts about product ideas with you?

If you think that would make sense at all, you don't understand how big companies work. The big company is in the later phases of a snowball effect. It's a huge thing that rolls by itself and can't really be redirected, stopped or sped up by anyone. A CEO knows that. He's mostly concerned about internal politics and external representation. He's not really doing anything like develop new products. Companies like Apple that move from one big product line to another are very, very rare.

So, what you get is a PR letter that can contain some insights into their current strategy. But nothing of real value. It's unlikely that such a response contains anything one could learn.

<comment><USER20> I think you're wrong. Powerful people are very often influenced by chance encounters, by mere happenstance.

I've seen it a hundred times: decisions (or at least discussions) driven by accidental meetings on planes or trains. Something overheard at the pool or in a bar.

It's because these guys know at some level that they're in a closed chamber, away from the reality that underlies their corporate activity and if they think they've suddenly been given an authentic glimpse of something, unmediated by their lieutenants then they find that extremely novel and exciting.

They're just human beings. Often they're very interested in people in general.

<comment><USER21> > at some level that they're in a closed chamber

I actually think it's the opposite: really successful people get there because they are _more_ vulnerable. At least in my experience, whenever I met someone like this, they always seem way more responsive and open than the usual joe.

<comment> what-the-grump Most of them exist in an echo chamber. It's rare to see them talking to or having time to think outside the current situation. Especially if they are self made (meaning they are leaning closer to the control freak side). It's rare for regular people like me get a blast of outside perspective on my day to day, let alone an evaluation of wtf I do at work or how I can do it better.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> I wrote a letter to Wal-Mart's CEO about 10+ years ago to apologize for switching the barcode from a less expensive Sony Walkman to a more expensive one because I didn't want to pay more. I was in college, about 19 years of age (mid 90's), and at the time felt that if I could get away with this, it's ok. And I did. Little did I know this act would gnaw on my conscience for many later. I asked them what could I do to make it right after so many years.

Soon after he received my letter, I got a call from the CEO's secretary to let me know he read my letter and that he forgives me and that there's nothing I need to do. Since I didn't expect the call, I was taken aback and moved to tears while I was talking to her. I expected some wrath and punishment for what I'd done. Instead, I experienced forgiveness.

Now if I could only quantify how much software, movies and music I've bootlegged while I was a student, I would probably write those CEOs a letter too, but I can't even remember it properly so I can quantify it. It wasn't a lot, and I mostly bootlegged because I thought it was "cool" to be visible on IRC #warez and what not... never really used or resold the software, just mostly did it cause I got to hang with the cool crowd.

Given I'm a software engineer for nearly 20 years now, I don't bootleg anything anymore... music, videos, apps.. and if I do, it's only because there's no trial for some of the apps. If I end up using the app, I pay for it or if I can't afford it, usually an employer will pay for it if I/we need it.

<comment><USER23> This is one of the most encouraging posts I have read for a long time. Shame there is no way I can vote it to the top.

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> When I was a teenager, I wrote to Marc Benioff, CEO of Salesforce, telling him how he's had such a huge impact on me, and how he's very inspiring to me.

He responded that I buy one of his two books.

<comment><USER25> I worked for a startup that was acquired by Salesforce. Pretty soon after it was all official, they sent over 200 signed copies of his book.

This is especially notable because they weren't signed by him - just by random other SFDC employees. It was a nice gesture, I guess.

<comment><USER26> I that's pretty weird tbh

<comment><USER27> I don't know if you sensed it, but both hajrice and Xavdidtheshadow were sarcastic in their posting :)

At least what I take from it, good CEO would answer you with "thank you" or whatever, as Benioff is know to be more of a Ellison / Jobs type of asshole CEO, rather than let's say polite Elon Musk, so hajrice made fun that instead, Benioff asked him to buy his book in order to just squeeze few extra bucks from someone that admires him :)

Xavdidtheshadow was pointing how creepy it is to get forced to receive someones book with their signature that actually is being signed by someone else.

Both their responses made me laugh, thanks guys :)

<comment><USER28> >let's say polite Elon Musk

Uh... where do you get this impression? My impression is that Musk easily fits in the same bucket as Ellison / Jobs / Bezos

<comment><USER29> I get that impression from almost everything I've read about Musk over the last 15 years. He absolutely does not fit into that bucket. Bezos is also not in the Jobs / Ellison group in regards to behavior. Bezos is a difficult boss, he's not a terror like Jobs & Ellison, he isn't known for attacking people, belitting people, throwing epic temper tantrums, threatening people, etc - much less doing the borderline criminal things that Ellison has (such as hiring PIs to dig through Bill Gates & Microsoft's garbage).

With Jobs and Ellison there are endless examples of them behaving as assholes toward normal people. What are the examples with Musk? He overwhelmingly seems to treat most people extremely well by comparison. The worst I've seen about him is that he pressurizes the work environment, that he's hard charging, although it certainly doesn't appear to be anything like Apple or Oracle under Jobs / Ellison. I don't believe you can build Tesla & SpaceX without anything less than the approach Musk has used.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> > CONSIDER INVESTING IN RESPONSIVE COMPANIES

No.

As he notes, the sample size is ridiculously small. It's simply too likely that he got lucky with 1 or 2 companies in his "respond" group.

e.g., if he wrote these letters in the the early 90s and Buffet responded, he's immediately skewed his returns up because Buffet outperformed the market SO much in the 90s. That's likely luck, not replicable skill.

Otherwise, interesting article and the 1/3 response rate is surprisingly high.

<comment><USER31> You can easily do a statistical signicance test to estimate if the effect is non-zero.

<comment><USER32> Which will still mean almost nothing, since past performance doesn't guarantee future results.

<comment><USER33> You basically just claimed that data analysis as a whole is invalid.

<comment><USER34> It's a valid point, this is post-hoc data analysis so you need to be careful of the Texas Sharpshooter Fallacy: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Texas_sharpshooter_fallacy](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Texas_sharpshooter_fallacy)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> A friend of mine in high school tweeted to Mikko Hyppönen (CRO, F-Secure) and invited him with us for a beer.

A few weeks later we met with him in Helsinki over a pizza and discussed cybersecurity, arcade games, politics, pinball and miscellaneous topics. It was fun.

Sometimes contacting high profile individuals is all about making the step of reaching out.

<comment><USER14> That's super cool, and also VERY Scandinavian (culturally).

<comment><USER36> Finland is not Scandinavian.

<comment><USER23> I wonder why you were downvoted for a simple statement of fact.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER37> One thing I would like to highlight here — writing a letter to a CEO is not just sending an e-mail message. Try writing an actual letter and printing it on real paper, and sending it through the real-world post office.

Don't just dash off an e-mail message.

<comment><USER38> I feel this could be optimised further: how about emailing the CEO's secretary a PDF, and asking them to print it (on heavy but plain paper), put it in an envelope and deliver it with the rest of CEO's mail.

</comment></comment><comment><USER39> When I was in 4th grade in the '80s, I wrote a letter to the CEO of Atari. I was a stockholder(maybe 5 shares, ha), and I was concerned that Atari could do a few things to make their games more enjoyable. I received a really nice letter in return that addressed my concerns, and a bunch of promotional material was included. In retrospect I wish I had written more letters and perhaps built up correspondence with someone high profile.

<comment><USER40> You were trading stocks in the 4th grade?

<comment><USER39> Dad was stockbroker.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER41> This is awesome. I've written Jeff Bezos dozens of emails, I should write a blog post on it. Most of them complaints that some time get directed to the right forum and a proper response, a few of them praise, and a few of them completely insane or mean that I assume are ignored or caused some secretary to ask for a vacation.

<comment><USER42> I wish I had as much spare time as you

<comment><USER41> "I annoy Jeff Bezos weekly and he still doesn't want to be friends." [https://medium.com/@megamindbrian/i-annoy-jeff-bezos- weekly-...](https://medium.com/@megamindbrian/i-annoy-jeff-bezos-weekly-and- he-still-doesnt-want-to-be-friends-ef40e6e86686)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER43> ...Well, that is until everyone tries writing them.

</comment><comment><USER44> This part is pretty amazing.

> _From the time that I mailed my letters, the compound annual return of the > respondent group is 8.97% greater than the non-respondent companies._

If anything, I would have expected the opposite. "Successful companies are more busy, and have less time to write letters to strangers. Failing companies love to spend all their time justifying themselves." Glad to see that hypothesis disproven.

If the above correlation does hold across larger sample sizes, I wonder if hedge funds will start using it to identify profitable trades. Send anonymous letters to the executives of public companies, and weight your investments in favor of those who reply. At some point, the executives will wise up and start replying to everyone. But you could make a nice pile of money before that happens.

<comment><USER45> From my vague systems experience, it makes sense. If everything works, you have time for random nonsense.

You want a sysadmin that's playing video games all day, because everything is in great shape. Not a constantly stressed , jaded, angry admin. I know nothing of being a CEO, but if the CEO is bored, the company is probably in great shape.

</comment></comment><comment><USER46> How do some of these CEOs have the time to respond so throughly to random letters?

Is it possible that someone is ghostwriting for them?

<comment><USER47> I believe that they're actually responding. Gabe Newell (the CEO of Valve) is worth billions[1], and has been known to respond to emails personally[2].

[1][https://www.pcgamer.com/gabe-newell-is-worth-55-billion- acco...](https://www.pcgamer.com/gabe-newell-is-worth-55-billion-according-to- forbes/)

[2][https://www.reddit.com/r/pcmasterrace/comments/2keaco/i_sent...](https://www.reddit.com/r/pcmasterrace/comments/2keaco/i_sent_gaben_and_email_concerning_a_friend_that/)

<comment><USER48> Story time: in college, I played a lot of the Team Fortress 2 beta. When the release came around, performance tanked. Absolutely went straight to hell. Annoyed, I fired a snippy email off to Gabe. Not impolite, but snippy, something around "I expect performance regressions like this out of companies less awesome than Valve." The next day, a senior engineer at Valve reached out to me, we hopped on Skype, played a few rounds with a bunch of Valve employees, and we monitored my system perf. A few days later, I got an email, "next patch should help you out, let me know if not"\--happy as a clam afterwards.

These days I have more than a few beefs with Steam, but that sort of reaction sticks, and generates a lot of goodwill.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER49> I once wrote letter to Decathlon, the largest sporting goods retailer.

I complained about store and lack of empathy at stores. Next day I received call from store manager. Who offered me a 100$ gift voucher if i return to the store :)

</comment><comment><USER50> I didn't write a letter but I did write emails to executives at Blackberry and Nikon. I felt I had strategies that could help them. I never got a response. So I'm wondering what it is this guy is doing that is promoting a response. Maybe it is just the fact that it's a letter and not an email, or the letters are written by someone in the PR department and not the actual CEO? I would love to reach out to CEOs and have an actual conversation with them even if my ideas are way off the mark.

<comment><USER51> I think he's made sure to put all the legal safeguards in there; normally companies will throw any idea they get from people right into the trash without paying attention to it, because (and this has happened in the past) if they then run with it, the sender will sue them for stealing their idea without compensation.

</comment></comment><comment><USER52> I once wrote a letter to Top CEO. And I got a reply from his Lawyer.

<comment><USER53> Shouldn't have "written" it with each individual letter being cut-out and pasted from random magazines/newspapers. ;)

<comment><USER52> I wrote to Carly Fiorina suggesting that all HP devices should embed Skype/Whatsapp type of software

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER54> I write letters to many different people, none really respond showing me that this is a thoughtful yet ineffective means of reaching out to people nowadays... Interesting thoughts nonetheless

<comment><USER55> Are you a nigerian prince?

</comment></comment><comment><USER56> Would be interesting with the actual letters and responses

</comment><comment><USER57> I've had similar experiences with CEOs of large tech start ups. I've learned that when an email is clear and concise, the response rate astonishingly high.

</comment><comment><USER58> I would like to know what the ideas he wrote about were.

</comment><comment><USER59> This is some real ball-fondling born-into-privilege nonsense. I could write to CEOs too, but I wouldn't be so impressed with their boilerplate social interaction, and the predictability of it is why I won't.

<comment><USER60> This breaks the HN guidelines. Please post civilly and substantively, or not at all.

[https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html)

<comment><USER59> The substantive part is that nothing they wrote back to him, and nothing he wrote in this article was substantive aside from a vague claim about how CEOs who respond (with junk) are better CEOs.</comment></comment></comment>


Alibaba's Singles' Day sales exceed predictions at $9.3B - <AUTHOR> http://www.bbc.com/news/business-29999289 <comment><USER2> That's one site doing 3x the combined total sites' 2013 Cyber Monday.

Pivotal moment as the center of gravity of the world's consumer economy shifts to China.

The fervent dive into consumerism is incredible. Anyone in China seeing a counter culture emerging against this? Or is it too early

<comment><USER3> Yes, we're in the Century of China. It's amazing how far China has come in the past 15 years. Next person on the moon will be from China? 20,000 miles of high-speed rail? Largest subway system in the world. From 0 to the biggest in 20 years. The largest everything...

<comment><USER4> Why 20 years?

A reasonable zero for modern China seems to me to be the end of the Cultural Revolution (I went and touched up my history to phrase it that way, but my notion was that the early 80s provide a better starting point than 1994 or 2000).

I'm curious what you (and others) think, not trying to have a hair splitting argument about it.

<comment><USER3> Sorry, I was referring to the Shanghai Subway. It was built over 20 years and is bigger than the NYC Subway. I checked and Beijing is actually bigger and started much earlier, however, and carries about a billion more people.

[http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beijing_Subway](http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beijing_Subway)

[http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shanghai_Metro](http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shanghai_Metro)

[http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_York_City_Subway](http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_York_City_Subway)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> _Singles ' Day sales that reveal a lot_: [http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/china/2014-11/09/content_188894...](http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/china/2014-11/09/content_18889439.htm)

<comment><USER6> sooo, not exactly related to Alibaba, but they sure do take this Singles Day thing seriously?! that is a heck of a sales promo stunt

<comment><USER7> Having seen the videos of Walmarts opening on Black Friday I wouldn't say the US is much different.

<comment><USER8> We wear a lot more clothes to the sales here, which is a good thing because we are in far worse shape.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Here's an interesting fact that a lot of people don't seem to realize about Alibaba: they're an advertising company. They generate over 50% of their revenue from ads.

<comment><USER10> Makes you think about the sheer amount of traffic. Incredible.

<comment><USER9> It's an interesting concept they put together. It's akin to the problem Google posed for Microsoft, in that there was no price to undercut as they did with Netscape (since Google's search is obviously free). That's how Alibaba was able to essentially eliminate eBay from the China market (eBay purchased a leading market / platform play, and had a meaningful position in China, prior to Alibaba's lift-off); eBay was charging fees for listings, mirroring their approach in the US, and Alibaba didn't. How do you compete against that? You pretty much have to be another Chinese juggernaut like Tencent or Baidu to even attempt it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I blogged about this the last two years - it's an incredible technical challenge as well as the huge sales side of things. Amazing

</comment><comment><USER12> I must be misunderstanding Alibaba. I thought it was related to buying wholesale goods to resell?

<comment><USER13> Alibaba.com is geared towards wholesale, aliexpress.com is geared more for single item(s) purchases. I've been buying stuff from Aliexpress for years.

Both Aliexpress.com and Alibaba.com belong to the same company; i.e. my login works on both websites.

Kinda like Myhabit.com's login is the same as your Amazon.com's login.

<comment><USER14> I'm curious, what payment method do you use? I was looking at buying something on Aliexpress but the lack of Paypal or Google Payments turned me off.

<comment><USER13> I use my debitcard. I trust them. Based on their wiki[1], they look like a huge company(e.g. Amazon) that doesn't necessarily have incentive to be randomly ripping people off via CC fraud.

That said, word of caution though

\- Unless you want to pay insane shipping, your order won't arrive in the USA for like 4 to 6 weeks.

\- Clothing sizes are tricky. I usually go one size bigger than my US/UK size. For my wife who wears S or XS, I have to get her medium - sometimes even that's too small.

\- Clothing quality varies especially for lady's clothing. Nearly always it looks fantastic, but if you dare put it in the washing machine it will disintegrate. Wash by hand or dryclean.

\- Order electronics at your own peril. That's just rolling dice. I've seen Android phones & tablets from them. When I have a few extra hundred lying around, I'm gonna try getting a laptop - and I fully expect to get junk. But I've also seen orders fulfilled surprisingly well.

\- Customer Support doesn't usually have english as first language.

\- So far, out of like 20+ orders. They've gotten maybe 2 completely wrong... or I misread the product-details _(some of those pages can be tricky)_

1\. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alibaba_Group](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alibaba_Group)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> This seems to be Alibaba's github page. [https://github.com/alibaba](https://github.com/alibaba)

Among the projects Tengine is the powerful web server (based on Nginx) used at Tmall.com and Taobao.com.

<comment><USER16> Was looking at Tengine as well, it seems pretty awesome. Anyone use it in production (that is not Alibaba?) and have comments on it?

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> I wonder if Amazon is worried.

<comment><USER18> They should be. Amazon makes no profits and operates in dollars. Those are two things you don't want to get caught doing right now.

<comment><USER19> Amazon's profits are redeployed into investments.

<comment><USER20> That's Amazon's PR, yes.

[http://www.cepr.net/index.php/blogs/beat-the- press/franklin-...](http://www.cepr.net/index.php/blogs/beat-the- press/franklin-foer-confuses-amazons-subsidies-from-the-govvernment-with- profits)

"The people who say that this is due to the fact that they are investing in building up their business are showing their ignorance. Reinvesting and profits are two separate issues. Profits reflect the difference between revenues and costs on current business operations. These can all be used for investment in expansion (as opposed to being paid out as dividends and share buybacks), but they should still show up as profits. Amazon doesn't show profits or at least not much. This means that it costs them as much to run their business as they are getting from customers in revenue. That is not viable as a long-term model even if they are always expanding."

\-----

edit:

[from a comment on that page]

Title: "Nothing Depreciates In Less Than 5 Years"

"Sorry folks, there is no way that would keep Jeff Bezos out of jail where their greater investment would explain the lack of accounting profit. There is nothing that depreciates in less than 5 years (20 percent annual rate) and most items at a considerably faster rate. This means the difference in re- investment rates could at best knock off a small share of Amazon's profits if they are not committing fraud.

"The math on this is simple. Assume Amazon's 'true' profits are rising 15 percent a year. Assume that they re-invest 100 percent of their profits, as oppose to the 30-40 percent that would be more typical. The higher depreciation over the last five years in this case would account for just 47 percent of Amazon's current year profits. The number would fall sharply if we assume the true rate of profit growth is 20 percent or higher and that some of Amazon's investments depreciate in more than 5 years."

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> You can get an authenticated Gap's Shirt (from their official tmall) for around $15-20 USD (after discount/coupons, currently $40-50 on gap.com), so the deal is not bad even you compare with the coming US holidays discounts.

</comment><comment><USER22> The aliexpress sales are really good this year. Around 40% of users on mobile [https://twitter.com/Alizila](https://twitter.com/Alizila)

</comment><comment><USER23> I wonder to which extent these predictions are willingly underestimated in order to make the headlines?

</comment><comment><USER24> Were there any good deals for Westerners?

<comment><USER25> Aliexpress has plenty of stuff today with 50-90% discount. Like an MP3 player for $1.6 - with free shipping!

<comment><USER26> that breaks on arrival</comment></comment></comment>


Should you choose NPM or yarn? - <AUTHOR> https://javascript.christmas/2019/10 <comment><USER2> Yarn wins by default because their API lets me write "yarn do-my-thing" instead of "npm run do-my-thing", and it's still quicker.

Totally agree with the author that NPM has become a much better alternative than it was though. And now, with Github releasing their own package repository, we might see even more improvements.</comment>


Wikileaks gets DNS hosting from the company wrongly accused of shutting them off - <AUTHOR> http://www.standalone-sysadmin.com/blog/2010/12/easydns-to-host-wikileaks/

<comment><USER2> Super response.

I've known Mark from long ago in Toronto and he's pretty solid.

<comment><AUTHOR> That's awesome. They provide good service. I'd like to meet him sometime.</comment></comment>