Silicon Valley Has an Arrogance Problem - <AUTHOR> http://online.wsj.com/news/article_email/SB10001424052702303661404579175712015473766-lMyQjAxMTAzMDAwMzEwNDMyWj <comment><USER2> A Guy Said Something That Freaked Me Out So The Wall Street Journal Would Like To Remind Silicon Valley On Behalf Of The Establishment That It Is Not The Establishment And It Should Stay Aware Of Its Place

</comment><comment><USER3> Silicon Valley may have an arrogance problem, but Wall Street, DC, Hollywood, and the mainstream media have pretty much ruined the United States of America, so pardon me for being mostly unmoved when an ancient and beholden behemoth of the Murdochian trumpet parade decides to bellow it.

<comment><USER4> I think there is an arrogance problem, and it arises when MBAs from Ivy League schools, lawyers who worked their way through the byzantine federal government legal and lobbying system, Hollywood moguls who have mostly fueled their careers on deceptive accounting, and heads of large moribund media organizations, suddenly decide that they need to get in on this whole tech thing, almost invariably at the executive level, yet lack even basic knowledge of how computers, the internet, software, or for that matter, online marketing, work.

<comment><USER5> You left engineers who think their command of technology makes them superior to all of these "recent" luddite invaders off the list. Your comment reflects the essence of what a large part of the article criticizes, an insular technologist culture that feels most of its ailments come from without. I agree that I've seen some of the folks you mention parading around, but have run into even more technology folks who think their hot new startup is far more important than anything else someone could be working on.

<comment><USER4> Actually I agree with you somewhat, but in my experience a lot of what they're doing is trying to hype their thing, because that's the game they're playing. Underneath there's a huge amount of self-doubt.

Whereas the people I'm talking about, underneath there's a huge amount of noblesse oblige.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I think this is a fifth-level recycling of progressively more sensationalistic reporting about a talk that was, I thought, quite humble and thought- provoking. I expect this kind of journalistic garbage in the tech press and in lesser (read: most) mainstream news outlets; I definitely do _not_ expect it from the WSJ. I know it was merely an opinion piece, but still very disappointing.

<comment><USER7> Can you explain to me the opinion here? I think it's very cut-and-dry telling like it is. SV needs customers and customers are in US, living US ways. Where is the opinion?

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Interestingly, I do not even think the main point of the talk is to actively seek independence for Silicon Valley, but rather, it's simply projecting a future that will happen, and in fact, is mostly a continuation of the trend that's been going on for a while. It's not a matter of if, but when and how. Technology is going to be more powerful than many laws and regulations, and "code" becomes the de facto law in many contexts. This insight suggests that you'll have leverage if you build things that will facilitate life in that future society that will inevitably happen.

What I do not see in this talk directly is arrogance. That is not to say that people in Silicon Valley are not arrogant. This talk is not.

Also, I personally think the WSJ article is pointless and whiny. Even if Silicon Valley comes out as arrogant to the outside world, it is quite justified. That's not hard to see. Just look at the appreciation rates of stocks by category in the past 5 years, for instance.

<comment><USER9> > _" Even if Silicon Valley comes out as arrogant to the outside world, it is > quite justified."_

Uhhhh... Way to prove the point, man.

> _" Technology is going to be more powerful than many laws and regulations"_

Yes and no. And this is part of Silicon Valley's arrogance: it is so utterly full of itself that it has usurped the entirety of the word "technology".

Think about it for a second, step back from your day to day writing code and think about the word "technology". We software people occupy a _tiny_ portion of tech, even though we're so loud and so good at attracting attention to ourselves that it seem to everyone else (and us) that we _are_ technology.

Forget nanotech, forget good old mechanical engineering, forget aerospace, forget biotech, forget electric, civil, geological engineering. Apparently those don't exist, and the only technology that matters is code.

What a load of shit, and I say that as someone who writes code for a living.

We are part of a much, much greater whole. We do interesting things, occasionally they are immensely impactful, 99.9% of the rest of the time it's really not.

There's a old Chinese parable: "the frog at the bottom of the well" \- about a frog stuck at the bottom of a well, who is immensely self-satisfied with his situation, because the rest of the world is just one boring little blue circle.

<comment><USER8> > Uhhhh... Way to prove the point, man.

I am not SV.

The point I am trying to make is that it is irrelevant that SV comes across as arrogance. Certainly not worthy of a WSJ article. Similarly, you can say that the article comes from an arrogant mindset the same way.

Silicon Valley might be "arrogant", but that's not necessarily a "problem". The premise of the headline is incorrect -- and hypocritical to say the least.

> Forget nanotech, forget good old mechanical engineering, forget aerospace, > forget biotech, forget electric, civil, geological engineering. Apparently > those don't exist, and the only technology that matters is code.

I put "code" is in quotes, in case you did not notice, and Silicon Valley has welcomed more industries than just cut-and-dry coding. By no means I believe code is the only important technology out there. (That said, while this is beside the point, code is an increasingly critical part of those other disciplines you mentioned.)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> There's an excellent Quora thread on this with 34 answers: [http://www.quora.com/Silicon-Valley/Why-are-so-many- people-i...](http://www.quora.com/Silicon-Valley/Why-are-so-many-people-in- Silicon-Valley-arrogant)

People cite everything from arrogance as a defense mechanism against failure, to the necessity of entrepreneurial delusion, to youth, to denying that people in SV are arrogant at all.

<comment><USER11> And I think we're starting to see all those same arguments made here in this comment thread.

<comment><USER12> I haven't even read the article, but I did just read this[1] and I agree very strongly that SV; particularly developers, are very difficult to approach. Everything & everyone is below them; not worth their time. If you lack any detail of some domain-knowledge of whatever treny new tech you're trying to ask about, you just get insulted(maybe accompanied by a vague hint at the answer). Basically, like this video[2].

1\. [http://www.businessinsider.com/google-employees-confess- the-...](http://www.businessinsider.com/google-employees-confess-the-worst- things-about-working-at- google-2013-11?pundits_only=0&get_all_comments=1&no_reply_filter=1#comment-52768b7d69bedd692a53c738)

2\. [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kGkL6eQWOAI](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kGkL6eQWOAI)

3\. ...really? [http://i.imgur.com/4aaH7GW.png](http://i.imgur.com/4aaH7GW.png)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Yeah "Silicon Valley has an Arrogance problem" not the Banks this rag is a mouthpiece for that created the worst economic collapse since the great depression and then held the American people hostage for Billions of dollars in tax payer bailouts.

</comment><comment><USER14> The problem is that the WSJ's main premise about SV needing the rest of the US is wrong. The internet is decentralizing that control faster than SV's economy of locality can produce more.

Look at Berlin, Kiev, Riga, and a dozen other places. SV's monopoly on world- changing does not have "USA" as a dependency.

Indeed, soon if not already "not US-based" will be or already is a feature.

<comment><USER15> Well Silicon Valley does need America's consumer market, legal infrastructure, security, and skilled work force. The author of the article is not wrong in that sense. How successful would your start up be if you had to waste time worrying about your clients breaching contracts (with no legal resource for you to recover the money owed to you)? Or waste time worrying about populist policies destroying your business model? Or figuring out ways to cope with extortionary behavior from local organized crime/and or government?

These are all legitimate problems businesses in other parts of the world face (though not in places like Germany or UK).

Even the markets developed countries like Germany are not as large as the US consumer market. Having close, easy access to the biggest consumer market in the world has its perks.

<comment><USER16> > skilled work force ... see H1B slavery

> legal infrastructure ... see patent trolling

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Sheesh. Balaji here. Clearly this touched a nerve, so will be writing on this at some length. But this is the bit I don't get:

      But when I asked him what harms techies faced that might
      prompt such a drastic response, he couldn't offer much
      evidence.

      He pointed to a few headlines in the national press warning
      that robots might be taking over people's jobs. These, he
      said, were evidence of the rising resentment that
      technology will foster as it alters conditions across the
      country and why Silicon Valley needs to keep an escape
      hatch open.

      But I found Mr. Srinivasan's thesis to be naive. According
      to the industry's own hype, technologies like robotics,
      artificial intelligence, data mining and ubiquitous
      networking are poised to usher in profound changes in how
      we all work and live. I believe, as Mr. Srinivasan argues,
      that many of these changes will eventually improve human
      welfare.

      But in the short run, these technologies could cause
      enormous economic and social hardships for lots of people.
      And it is bizarre to expect, as Mr. Srinivasan and other
      techies seem to, that those who are affected wouldn't
      criticize or move to stop the industry pushing them.

But that was actually exactly my point: as Farhad states, people may indeed "move to stop the industry", so we need to keep an escape hatch open. A huge chunk of the people here in the Valley are first or second generation emigrants who picked up stakes from their home countries and currently work from a laptop. They left their N home countries because those locales weren't favorable to technology. Is it impossible to think that backlash could make it necessary for us to leave an N+1st, as our ancestors (recent or distant) did?

I can only speak for myself, but the motivating emotion here isn't arrogance. It's one part apprehension, knowing what happened to the Chinese in Malaysia, the Indians in Uganda, and the Jews in Europe. And it's one part hope, thinking that we can build something better with a clean slate, without 230 years of legacy infrastructure and cruft.

</comment><comment><USER13> The talk did not "dismiss non-techies as unimportant to the nation's future".

BSS was talking about finding new places for trying new things if they aren't allowed in America. Or even within America finding new ways of trying new technologies without affecting the entire society all at once.

This article is overly sensational and reactionary.

</comment><comment><USER18> The talk "Silicon Valley's Ultimate Exit" that the article mentions was (also?) given at Startup School a few weeks ago: [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cOubCHLXT6A](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cOubCHLXT6A)

</comment><comment><USER19> Srinivasan is orchestrating a lot of great work with Bioinformatics. In the comments, it's very odd that people think the best and the brightest in SV are only building tools that help give ads more exposure.

But then again I should probably stop reading WSJ comments, and that would also probably get me called arrogant.

</comment><comment><USER20> Effectively argues, to use an analogy, that China with its explosive market- based growth needs Western debtor nations to buy its stuff, and that acknowledging its superior economic sustainability is "arrogant". And the "paper belt" isn't the arrogant one?

I view this author's attitude a lot like I view that of Fareek Zakaria, whose tripe we're all force-fed in high school: "We may be entering a post-paper- belt world, sure, but we can't be certain how this will all turn out so it's best to speak moderately and carry around a copy of the New York Times."

</comment><comment><USER21> Is there a single example of arrogance in this entire article? My guess is the headline write/editor was having a bad day. I don't think that was the intent of the writer.

<comment><AUTHOR> It does feel a bit like the whole article is trying to justify the title. I think it should fall squarely under the Editorial byline...

<comment><USER22> It's an ideological bible-thumping parade. Every ideology has people who do these from time to time; progressives, conservatives, authoritarians, libertarians, everyone. The point is not to convey information; the point is to say (1) this threat exists, and (2) transmit the author's feeling of moral indignation to people who are on the same "moral wavelength". If you're an authoritarian, seeing some post on reason.com rambling about the evils of coercion will just seem silly to you; that's the point, you're not the target.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> >The government funded the early technologies that led to the Internet, venture capitalists are financed by nontechies' retirement funds, and laws passed in Washington can determine the tech industry's legal future.

Right, and the Spanish and British founded modern America, what is your point? There is quite a bit of precedent for taking the ball from the previous players and starting your own game to their exclusion.

</comment><comment><USER24> The question I have is what are the values that you want these experimental societies to live by. Tech for tech's sake is pointless.

Sounds like Page and Thiel want to be the experimenters and someone else to be the guinea pigs. I doubt those two want to be in those societies other than as dictators. Too much to lose.

We just need a new frontier like the moon or mars.

</comment><comment><USER25> SV needs biz models that dont rely on the the assets controlled by the largest lobbying groups in the US congress.

<comment><USER26> Military industrial complex, big pharma, carbon/energy complex, insurance, big finance. what else ?

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> One thing that goes completely unsaid in the WSJ article is that people want real representation and self-determination, and the government, and maybe America itself, is too unwieldy to deliver on that.

Small democracies can be restored. Big ones... maybe not.

</comment><comment><USER28> Yes, it's SV that is arrogant. Hopefully we can one day match the humbleness and deep community-oriented spirit known as Wall Street. What a joke.

</comment><comment><USER29> Split California into North and South states, so that influence of Los Angeles Hollywood on valley will reduce.

</comment><comment><USER30> If SV has a arrogance problem then does Wall Street/Hollywood have an arrogance epidemic?

</comment><comment><USER31> A peaceful exit, on our barge. Good day sir.

</comment><comment><USER32> Here's what really makes me angry. These jackasses who are going out and using technology's success to spout insane pro-rich politics, making asses of themselves in all sorts of creative ways (cf. Sean Parker's wedding, and that "jungle party" with the caged tiger) are a bunch of old-style corporate executives who, after invading technology, have given technologists a bad reputation in the country at large. Our image is being tainted by their arrogance.

Look, it's not the nerdy engineers (the ones who love technology, who would be in it even if it weren't "hot") who are responsible for this crass, New Money horror-show. It's the carpetbaggers who failed into technology because banking, hedge funds, and consulting didn't want them. They don't really belong in the first place. They're an invasive species in tech, and they're the ones creating this arrogance problem. They capture the lion's share of the value, set themselves up as the elite (when tech is "hot") and make a whole set of unrelated people look bad.

However, I agree. The Sand Hill Road elite is utterly unfit to manage a bag of rock salt, much less run the world. Those sad wankers built a society in the Bay Area where the software engineers building the place can't even buy a house-- and they want to call government ineffective? Crackah, please.

<comment><USER33> Fuck Sand Hill Road, fuck TechCrunch, fuck YC, fuck every venture fund, accelerator, and all the hype.

They are all distractions. All of them. If I start my own company I'm going to do it without all of that frivolous shit. I'm tired of disruption. I'm tired of "changing the world", "changing the way we X", and all the blithering idiots who made Snapchat a $4b company. Think about it. Dropbox, Facebook, Twitter and all of the other successful companies would have succeeded _despite_ all of this shit. They were awesome ideas. They would have succeeded anyway.

I refuse to participate. I'm tired of it. I can't be the only one who's disillusioned with all of this nonsense.

<comment><USER34> Given your username, I can't tell if serious or jest.

<comment><USER35> Poe's law.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> Balaji Srinivasan makes a lot of sense. The paper belt used to run the show. They are now losing that power and trying to claw it back with yet more paperwork. I am entirely favourable to the idea of curtailing, thwarting, and thoroughly undermining the regulatory bullies in the filthy paper belt. They have no legitimacy.

</comment><comment><USER37> Here's the original talk for anyone that prefers original content to the "journalist telephone" game [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cOubCHLXT6A](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cOubCHLXT6A)</comment>


Ask HN: What will the world be like in 10 years? - <AUTHOR> How do you think a particular industry you're familiar with will be like in 10 years? Or other aspects of the world? <comment><USER2> In 2029? I don't mean to sound "apocalyptic", but currently we're on track with a lot of global warming projections, 2030-2052 is the 1.5deg temp projection ([https://www.c2es.org/content/ipcc-1-5-degree-c-special- repor...](https://www.c2es.org/content/ipcc-1-5-degree-c-special-report/)). So by 2029 time we might be at 1.3 or 1.4.

I don't know much about other industries, but I do know what happens when there's a long and hot summer in where I live. The water shortage was so alarming in Manila this summer, so I expect water shortages in certain parts of the world to be more exaggerated than what happened this year. Any industry that deals to contain/service water/ice during heat waves will be raking in cash.

</comment><comment><USER3> I think we will have self driving cars. A lot more fully electric cars. Much more practical home automation. Hopefully a commercial space craft will be on mars. Good chance for the first time co2 levels will either be stabilized or declining but not increasing. Smart phones will use transparent aluminum ([https://youtu.be/DduO1fNzV4w](https://youtu.be/DduO1fNzV4w)) this will pretty much end the cell phone repair industry...

We will probably have way more cameras that are doing all kinds of scary facial recognition for good and evil.

I'm hopefully we'll have made some pretty steady progress with crisper gene editing and have a far better understanding of the role of bacteria in the body for good...

I think the future is bright

<comment><USER4> I would argue here that fully self-driving cars are not so close. Not in 10 years definitely.

The problem is not so easy and we are quite far from solving it. It can work on the highway and great weather conditions. Yet, what will happen in the narrow streets of Italian cities? What will happen in a situation that is hard to predict? Would there be some service guy who would come and 'help' the car off the road? Not to mention traffic and safety regulations tec.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> People tend to overestimate the technology growth in the next 10 years. The good idea is to pause and look back for the past 10 years? Were there some huge inventions during that time, something groundbreaking that changed a lot? Yes, there were few amazing inventions that happened (spread of smartphones), but in general daily human life did not change dramatically due to technology.

<comment><USER5> I mean, I'd you asked me this question in anytime between 1995 and 2007 I would completely disagree with you. But I feel the past decade has been relatively iterative and not as revolutionary.

I think around the early 1900s people experienced rapid technological changes as the automobile and electricity spread throughout the U.S. within a decade or two. I think change happens rapidly but in spurts. I believe the 2020s will be another period of rapid change.

<comment><USER4> Why do you believe the 2020s will be a period of rapid change?

<comment><USER5> I think it will be the beginning of the age of automation and we'll see breakthroughs in robotics, VR/AR, space tech, biotech, energy, and finance.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Field observations (e.g. glacial melting, CO2 levels, methane levels) tend to be wildly underestimated by the forecasting systems of a few years ago. Resource based systems dynamics simulations tend to predict collapse about 2030. We are seeing a species die-off worldwide both in terms of flora and fauna. Fishery collapse, measured by catch-size, is predicted to occur about 2048. David Wallace-Wells's _The Uninhabitable Earth: Life after Warming_ is a frightening summary of what we can expect and is probably not too out-of-date.

In ten years everyone, even current climate change deniers, will be fighting to survive in a much changed world; in thirty, humans may be possibly have gone extinct, or be well on the way to being so.

<comment><USER5> This is absolutely ridiculous. Crop yields are up 40% since 1988, population growth has slowed, there's more energy technology than ever before, and the sea level is rising at a mere 3mm a year.

The basic needs for life are food, shelter, and water. For modern life, energy is required. But we have virtually unlimited energy vis-a-vis nuclear technology (if we have the will to use it). Solar tech has gotten only cheaper and cheaper and battery tech has gotten only more efficient. There is absolutely no reason to believe that there will be less than the current population in 10, 20, or even 50 years. Period.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> I think desktop/laptop computers that are standalone will be a niche again. Chromebooks, iPad Pros and the like will make always online a requirement not a luxury.

Facial/voice recognition along with AI that will constantly try to figure you out is definitely gonna happen.

As for the USA, the telecom, entertainment and tech industries will join forces to become Ma-Bell 2.0 (control over your social media, traditional media and telecommunications). Social security will finally end with everyone having to invest on their own. The middle class will continue to shrink or disappear.

Digital currency will be the new dollar to get paid in.

</comment><comment><USER8> Well I think we'll see at least one currently popular site/service go the way of the dodo, either through legal issues or a simple decline in popularity to the point its not profitable anymore. 10 years is a pretty long time in internet years, and it seems quite rare for a large site or service to stay popular for that amount of time (or even decades).

I still don't see the media finding a good monetisation model, and I suspect by then most of the remaining news sources run by for profit companies will have died off for good.

The games industry probably won't have changed too much by this point, since VR still seems a fair way off and streaming services are highly unpopular with current audiences. I do hold a small amount of hope that Nintendo will have realised the demand for Wario Land 6 by then, and that some sort of proper Paper Mario revival might be on the cards, but I've hoped for that for a while now. Lootboxes may be classified as gambling by then too.

Not going to predict anything web development or tech related, since those fields change a lot, and well, who knows what things will look like after 6000 different JavaScript frameworks have come and gone. All we can know there is that HTML, CSS and JavaScript will probably be used for websites and apps in some form or another.

Finally on a political note... well a schism may be on the horizon in some societies. At least, the US seems to be more and more divided between the 'left' and 'right', and the cultural values underpinning both sides seem to completely unreconcilable at this point in time. So I can see tensions building, politics becoming more divided and fraught and things getting worse until eventually, one side tries to change the law (or constitution) in a way that breaks the camel's back and things just collapse.

I also see at least one 'first world' country ending up as a dictatorship, if only because the rise of populism and authoritarianism seems to be an issue just about everywhere right now.

But those are just a few minor predictions right now.

</comment><comment><USER9> well. 10 years is too soon. lets say 20 years. computers have become some kind of wearable. natural language has replaced programming - people dictate their programs to machine learning systems.

Almost all jobs that physically allow it have become remote. Most people are co-living in nice places outside big cities. The institution of marriage is abandoned. Most jobs have not yet been automated - and in the ones that have been, workers have been able to find work of equal skill levels. Genetic engineering of children and artificial wombs become the norm. GEnetic modifications do happen, but very very carefully (after a number of initial failures).

<comment><USER10> This seems ... Ambitious. Even if it could happen, I'm not sure I would want it to. Sounds like a world where privacy, intimacy, computer literacy, community, and family ties are all severely degraded.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> The world will be hotter. Much hotter. :(</comment>


Appalanche (YC S07): A Snazzy Recommendation Engine For The App Store That Sort Of Works - <AUTHOR> http://www.techcrunch.com/2008/12/04/appalanche-a-snazzy-recommendation-engine-for-the-app-store-that-sort-of-works/

<comment><USER2> Cool stuff! How's Adpinion going btw? I had really liked your idea, and still hope for the day when I'm delivered just the (display) ads that I want/need to see. (I don't block ads.)

</comment><comment><USER3> Would be interesting to use (build) something similar for Windows/Linux/Mac apps. Anyone knows of anything like this that already exists? Maybe tied to VersionTracker or Download.com etc.

<comment><USER4> Wakoopa (my company) does this for Windows and Mac apps: <http://wakoopa.com>

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> The original Techcrunch article didn't have "(YC 07)" in the headline of their post. Add it while posting on Hacker News, and you get upvotes immediately and may be blindly! Good trick!

<comment><USER6> This is standard procedure. Remember how this site started: it was originally for YC "alumni" to exchange news. Most visit the site regularly, and they are genuinely interested in news about their peers. Considering there are on the order of 300 founders now, it's surprising articles about YC-funded cos don't get more upvotes.

<comment><USER2> Agree it's standard procedure (and that it is a useful hint to _all_ readers), but I thought the original purpose of the site was to engage potential YC applicants so you could better evaluate them.

<comment><USER6> That was one of the side benefits, but the main thing was just that we wanted a good news site.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Google Parent Alphabet and Aramco in Talks to Build Tech Hub in Saudi Arabia - <AUTHOR> https://www.wsj.com/articles/google-parent-alphabet-and-aramco-in-talks-to-build-tech-hub-in-saudi-arabia-1517495498 <comment><USER3> My last [NYC-built] startup operated in the Middle East (not Saudi Arabia) for multiple years as they had regulatory fast-track for medical devices/startups.

While it was a tough slog living in the middle east, I did it out of greed (my startup was doing ML-driven-health diagnostics...and...where else can you get years of medical records with full government buy-in).

However..having been there I can see a lot of reasons for this possible Alphabet-SA-Aramco deal:

\- there is NO cloud endpoint in the region. no AWS/GoogleCloud/Azure/SoftLayer, nothing. So if you have data locality issues, like we did, you build your own storage/GPU cluster as we did. There is a huge opportunity for AWS/GoogleCloud/Azure/SoftLayer, locality laws make doing typical stuff impossible in the middle east -- just imagine how your life would be if you couldn't use cloud services?!

\- electricity is near free due to energy abundance, we paid no electricity costs on our giant GPU grid in the region

\- there is a _lot_ of tech and ml talent in the region, most of it unable to take jobs in the US due to immigration laws and unable to take jobs in China due to cultural differences. there are also many customs like keeping your parents living in your home, which is now (post-2016) pretty must impossible with current western immigration laws. we hired locally (mostly Egypt) and got great talent for a fraction of US costs.

\- for the likes of DeepMind/DeepHealth trying to get UK NHS data, they can do it far more easily in Saudi Arabia for training models, etc.

I'm back home in the US after 3yrs overseas. DM me if you are curious.

<comment><USER4> Maybe the most important question: did you end up making (good) money, i.e. was it worth it going there looking back?

<comment><USER3> Our acquisition by a Fortune 100 got knocked over during due diligence (sad, but i'm told it is normal.) Made great money but a strategic acquisition was what we really wanted.

I cant say I didn't try. We did a product with both market opportunity and one where the marginal cost would have allowed free distribution in needy countries. Inexpensive diagnostics help find conditions earlier so they can be treated more effectively and better human health, so very proud of what we achieved product-wise (whatever the business outcome.) Having a good country to work in with a sensible medical system and well-aligned incentives to improve the system allowed this. We tried to sell the idea/services in the US but the medical industry here is just out-of-control-complex-nonsensical.

That said, whatever one might think of the governments, we had a great time with the local population. We were a bit bubbled in a western "compound" and a US embassy school for the kids, but life was very easy there.

If you want apartment life, you can live/entertain pretty inexpensively on an artificial island with all things you might want: [http://thepearlqatar.com/EN/TheIsland/Pages/The-Pearl- Qatar....](http://thepearlqatar.com/EN/TheIsland/Pages/The-Pearl-Qatar.aspx)

<comment><USER4> Awesome. That's great to hear! Venture funded, or bootstrapped / self-funded? Did you build the business in Qatar?

<comment><USER5> I'm guessing UAE. Qatar insists they are good for this stuff. But they only recently started making good on deregulation promises they have made for years. Not sure but I think the Qatari free economic zone near KSA is still only becoming an imminent reality. UAE has had them plural for years.

<comment><USER3> Qatar and UAE both have interesting free-hold business zones ideal for IP- heavy work. One of the interesting aspects of some zones is that they are chartered to do all dispute resolution via foreign law (e.g. UK law)

You are right, UAE is _way_ ahead on the freezone aspect. Qatar, however, is way ahead on the academic front with the most concentrated selection of western academic branches ([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Education_City](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Education_City)). For us, having a Cornell University Medical School branch next door, complete with tenured Cornell Med School professors was a huge sell for Qatar.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> If SV has a true moral compass, that was so outraged by Travis Kalanick sitting on Trump's tech advisory board [1] they should be truly angry and outraged by Alphabet and its leadership for this move.

Saudi Arabia, a country that has barbaric set of laws against women, and domestic workers [2] [3] which essentially the type of slavery we have not seen broadly in centuries.

A country with very negative human rights records [4] that should be sanctioned by UN [5]

It's so unthinkable that Alphabet, the "Don't be Evil" company would even consider that.

It does not even make business sense, as the country is in the midsts of internal clashes [6] and not very stable nor it has any human capital that can help google [7]

So, I'm lead to believe it's trading Saudi money for Google's brand to help create PR. So basically Google is used to promote evil!

[1][https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2017/feb/02/travis- ka...](https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2017/feb/02/travis-kalanick- delete-uber-leaves-trump-council)

[2] www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-india-34483504

[3] [https://broadly.vice.com/en_us/article/9ae4qd/where-maids- ar...](https://broadly.vice.com/en_us/article/9ae4qd/where-maids-are-treated- like-slaves)

[4][https://www.hrw.org/world-report/2017/country- chapters/saudi...](https://www.hrw.org/world-report/2017/country- chapters/saudi-arabia)

[5] [https://www.hrw.org/news/2017/12/19/its-time-un-sanction- sau...](https://www.hrw.org/news/2017/12/19/its-time-un-sanction-saudi- arabias-crown-prince)

[6] [https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-01-06/saudi- ara...](https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-01-06/saudi-arabia- arrests-11-princes-protesting-over-bills-okaz-says)

[7][https://www.researchgate.net/publication/296195348_Exploring...](https://www.researchgate.net/publication/296195348_Exploring_Recent_Saudi_Human_Capital_Development_Initiatives_An_Evaluation)

<comment><USER7> > nor it has any human capital that can help google [7]

You don't need very much skilled labor to run a data center. The data centers in South Carolina are running just fine.

If Aramco is putting any money into this, they are getting swindled.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Why would Google do this, along with their recent announcement for an AI office in China. What's with their support of authoritarian regimes from the tech side? It's an area unexplored by experience and regulation and which bad governments will certainly abuse in ways unseen.

<comment><USER7> How does a data center support an authoritarian regime, and why don't Amazon's planned data centers in Saudi Arabia also support an authoritarian regime?

<comment><USER9> Makes it harder for the us to go to war. Imagine if Afghanistan had lots of US company / investments. There'd be more backlash.

<comment> tj-teej Reminds me of the Toby Ziegler quote from The West Wing: [http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0745679/quotes/qt0993895](http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0745679/quotes/qt0993895)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I wonder how they're pitching this in Silly Valley to their existing staff there, esp. in the wake of the Damore Affair.

<comment><USER11> It is that moment you realize that stated principles are not congruent with actions and just maybe those principle were mostly political theater

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> I wonder what compromise they'll make between respecting the local culture and promoting equal outcomes for women?

</comment><comment><USER13> Selling weapons worth 100 billion dollars, using oil from said country - <USER2> problem. Google considers opening campus - they are evil.

<comment><USER14> I'm gonna go out on a limb and guess that there's a strong correlation between those denouncing Google's move and those who denounce weapon sales to and oil purchases from Saudi Arabia.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> This is consistent with Alphabet's trajectory of becoming a defense contractor.

One might ask why during peak oil on the precipice of a major decline in relevance of Saudi Arabia (partner to the US military and client state of the US Government) this would be happening.

There must be a need to have US-guided firms crowd out any other tech infrastructure investment in Saudi, to provide a substrate more friendly to surveillance and psychological operations projects in the future.

There is also the factor that because we are at peak oil, Saudi elites have an unprecedented amount of wealth and they can simply transfer some of it to Alphabet in exchange for the increased political clout that teaming up with a major defense contractor offers.

Note that for all the moralizing done by Google about not being evil, censorship, etc., Alphabet is teaming up with one of the most backward and corrupt regimes in the modern world, a regime that would have been replaced by something far more democratic long ago if it weren't for support by the US Government.

So while in general economic cooperation makes wars less likely and helps reinforce private sector independence from the public sector (which is generally a good thing) anything involving Saudi or Alphabet is clearly a government sponsored, military-focused operation at its core.

It's going to be pretty hard for Alphabet employees to explain to their grandchildren why they worked for a company that was known to cooperate with US domestic surveillance programs and team up with undemocratic monarchies.

The greatest human evils are not obvious like scary monsters in movies, they creep up around us with the support of many reasonable people.

</comment><comment><USER16> "Don't be evil"

<comment><USER17> "Don't be evil too soon."

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> Reading the comments, there seems to be a lot of misconceptions and biases. But one general rule that's been thrown out the window: Goverment is not the same as the People.

A tech hub, bringing coding, tech and entrepreneurship to a region (any region) is a good thing. It creates opportunities and helps lower and middle income individuals/family grow.

<comment><USER11> Only if a company can operate free of implementing a governments tyrannical policies.

The question is if such a company will actually be free to serve/help the people or will it be a tool of the oppressive regime

<comment><USER19> Google might be a good example of that actually - they pulled out of China because they refused to conform to the regime there.

<comment><USER10> Because the regime wouldn't let them make enough money there

FTFY

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Google should not do business in countries that commit gross human rights abuses.

<comment><USER21> Sure. And you should stop driving/riding petroleum using vehicles because fuel demand props up prices and funds these countries.

<comment><USER22> Most of the oil in the US does not come from the Middle East.

<comment><USER21> please read what I've written carefully. if the us didn't use so much oil, global oil prices would be much much lower and wouldn't enrich these countries.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> Coincidentally I'm sure, Saudi Arabia has recently awarded the first contract for their $500b city Neom: [https://www.argaam.com/en/article/articledetail/id/527290](https://www.argaam.com/en/article/articledetail/id/527290)

</comment><comment><USER24> For such a wealthy country with rich history and strong economic ties to the US, I've never heard of anyone visiting Saudi Arabia and I've never seen any promotions or advertisements to visit.

Are there travel restrictions there?

<comment><USER19> [https://wikitravel.org/en/Saudi_Arabia](https://wikitravel.org/en/Saudi_Arabia) has a nice overview:

* No entry if you're from or have been to Israel * No entry if you're from or have been from a country afflicted with ebola * No entry if you're from Quatar * Heavy punishments up to death if you don't follow their laws. That is, no pork, no alcohol, no non-islam religions, no homosexuality, porn, or unmarried sex.

Also keep the clothing things in mind; no shorts / t-shirt there, and women probably need to cover their heads.

Anyway, I did see tourism adverts on TV, advertising the sail hotel and such (forgot the name).

<comment><USER3> Certainly not defending SA, but...

Sail hotel is in Dubai (in the U.A.E.)...different country.

As for the laws, pretty much everything goes inside compounds, which is where nearly all westerners live.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> I wonder how they square this with their commitment to diversity?

<comment><USER19> Diverse countries they settle in and where they adjust to local laws and customs maybe?

Diversity also includes operating in countries that are not as liberal as e.g. the US pretends to be; it's the only way to get a diverse world view for anyone. Closing your eyes for a culture as different as e.g. Saudi Arabia is not the way to go.

<comment><USER25> Well, I'm all in favour of different cultures. I don't think that justifies illiberal or, for want of a better word, evil cultures.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> Creating a Tech Hub where women are treated worse than dogs is despicable on the part of Google. They should be ashamed of themselves.

</comment><comment><USER27> This is an odd partnership. Is this part of some new uber lobbying effort by Google to buy business in Saudi Arabia? Or is this strategic to partner with Aramco over Exxon or BP.

Or is it some sort of investment in hydrocarbon energy to make up for all their renewable data centers?

Seems like a weird direction for Google. Especially since I think this is the first "tech hub" they have started in a specific country. Would be way cooler if it was in Nigeria or some developing nation with really high potential.

<comment><USER28> They will be in Nigeria soon . They have fine-tuned YouTube so that with crappy networks they are amazingly fast in Nigeria and most of West African countries. Google is aggressively pushing heir products in this region.

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> horrendous. US based companies need to stake a moral stand against working with backwards regimes with ongoing human rights violations. google is no exception.

money chasing is, of course, amoral.

to be clear, this isn't even a case of "oh but they were forced into it" or "they'll go out of business if they don't"\-- not that either of those absolve responsibility.

they're working to make this happen. they WANT to support the saudi regime.

i guess some people will try to break out the old "not everything is black and white" chestnut wrt the saudi government. unfortunately this is in fact an issue that is black and white with no moral ambiguity; the saudis execute dissidents, oppress women, suppress free speech, are waging a war of starvation against civilians in yemen, all while supporting jihadists worldwide. the average saudi person is probably a nice person.

but that doesn't make it okay to do business with them.

<comment><USER30> It also falls on consumers to choose not to support such companies if they fail to abide by our moral code of ethics.

Plugging for duckduckgo - making the switch is easy, free, and without ethical mishaps.

<comment> maze-le Also:

\- using umatrix to block requests to googleapis, google analytics, etc.

\- dont use alphabets other products (youtube, hangouts, chrome, blogger, google earth, etc.)

\- dont use frameworks from google or google associated companies (angular, gwt, tensorflow)

\- dont use gogoles dns service if you happen to live in a opressive regime, that utilizes dns blocking

Doing this is perfectly possible, but you will isolate yourself very quickly. I use DDG since a while, and its an adequate search engine. But everything else... way too much hassle...

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> Cool. I wonder if this will lead to a rise in interest in open-source technology over there.

</comment><comment><USER32> This would really sheik things up.

<comment><USER33> I don't know if you're a dad but this is pretty much the quintessential dad joke! As a dad, I upvote.

</comment></comment><comment><USER34> For mobile users with low bandwith please post a text dump or non paywall link.

</comment><comment><USER35> How do we get around the paywall on this? Google workaround no longer works and WSJ isn't worth a subscription to me.

<comment><USER7> Bookmarklet:

javascript:(function(){window.location = window.location.href.replace('//', '//outline.com/')})()</comment></comment>


Reviewing the Bitcoin Piñata - <AUTHOR> https://mirage.io/blog/bitcoin-pinata-results

<comment><AUTHOR> This is a follow-up to a post back in February. The Piñata was originally meant to run for about a month but the team has kept it running much longer (it's still going).

HN discussion when the Pinata was released: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9027743](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9027743)

(some general background to the Pinata is at: [http://amirchaudhry.com/bitcoin-pinata/](http://amirchaudhry.com/bitcoin- pinata/))

</comment><comment><USER2> This looks encouraging for the security of Mirage unikernels.

8.2 MB is pretty small, but I wonder if it can be even smaller without losing any functionality. OpenSSL, for example, is ~3 MB. Does that unikernel include symbols and other debugging info? Is there any way to get a breakdown of the object code size for each major component?

<comment><USER3> The 8.2MB can be reduced quite significantly with some compiler improvements. Here's a breakdown:

\- Native code compilation still includes symbols. Stripping that reduces the size at the obvious cost of debugging ease.

\- When an OCaml module is touched for a single function, the entire module is included at present. OCaml 4.02.0 included module aliases to make it easier to break down module hierarchies into less monolithic chunks. They work by exposing module equivalence in the signature, and reduced the size of Unix binaries in Jane Street Core by 90% in some cases; [https://blogs.janestreet.com/better-namespaces-through- modul...](https://blogs.janestreet.com/better-namespaces-through-module- aliases/)

\- Bytecode (while less performant) can be compressed more easily than native code. We've had DNS and OpenFlow servers that are less than a megabyte in size quite easily when compiled with bytecode.

\- Dead code elimination requires some whole program optimisation, and currently only works with bytecode via the OCamlClean tool: [http://www.algo- prog.info/ocaml_for_pic/web/index.php?id=oca...](http://www.algo- prog.info/ocaml_for_pic/web/index.php?id=ocamlclean) . Porting this to native code is on the TODO list, but needs some fiddling with frame pointers in the generated binaries to do a good job.

So the overall answer is that reducing the deployed binary size is now a compiler problem, since the unikernel architecture lets us provide it with much more information (configuration files and OS libraries as well as the application logic).

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> " This includes attempts using telnet — I'm looking at you, xx.xxx.74.126 please give key (on 10th February at 16:00) and xx.xxx.166.143 hi give me teh btcs (on 11th February at 05:57)!"

<comment><AUTHOR> Yeah, we thought these were pretty cute. Almost a social engineering attack.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Pretty cool that you can make an online moneybag like this. I wonder what other creative gaming (easter egg hunts?) can occur from using this concept

<comment><USER6> There are a few bounties set up in the blockchain itself. For example, here are some that pay out if you submit a verifiable hash collision for various hashes [https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=293382.0](https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=293382.0) and an explanation [https://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/1mavh9/trustless_b...](https://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/1mavh9/trustless_bitcoin_bounty_for_sha1_sha256_etc/cc7fiqe)

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Maybe its secure, but maybe a vulnerability is simply worth more than the amount of btc in the pinata.

The amount in the pinata should probably double every X days. In this situation, if two people know the secret, it is advantageous for one of them to act immediately.

<comment><AUTHOR> We're aware that bounties can't demonstrate security (mentioned early on in the post). However, putting such items out there and inviting review helps to stress-test the stack.

Right now, unikernels aren't in major production use, so there's little to gain by holding on to an exploit (one would assume).

<comment><USER8> > there's little to gain by holding on to an exploit

Correct, but there's also very little to gain by developing it in the first place. Right now, the pinata's value is approximately $2500, or less than two straightforward XSS bugs on Google properties, which are waaaay easier to find. There's just not anywhere near the motivation required to get (mostly well-paid) security people on this. It's interesting, but that's about it.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yup, I totally agree with your points. However, I also feel there's some 'fun' factor here too -- and we hoped to appeal to it. By having the entire code base available, it also reduces the need for reverse engineering that other programs might require.

We didn't really expect the money to be the main motivator. Just a hook to draw attention.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> SNAX meant actually "snacks", does it make more sense this way? ;)</comment>


White iPhone 4 delayed until later this year - <AUTHOR> http://www.edibleapple.com/white-iphone-4-delayed-until-later-this-year/

<comment><USER2> _The tolerances they are trying to achieve with the white really is the cause of the delay_

Can someone please explain the pedantry? I appreciate the motives behind colour branding and so on but how specific can _white_ be?

Plus, how can they justify the time spent perfecting the colour against the potential sales if they were to just release it now with a white colour that is relatively similar to the ideal?

<comment><USER3> I believe the issue is not in the shade of white but in the degree of translucency of the coating. On all Apple phones up to now the black frame around the screen (or at least parts of it) lets light through for the proper functioning of the ambient light and proximity sensors. At the same time these sensors are invisible for the user - it's a flat black frame. The iPhone 4 is the first one with white front and it seem that Apple and the manufacturer of the screen glass are having hard time achieving the same effect.

<comment><USER2> Ah I see. Now that makes sense.

So effectively the blogger took what is a relatively complex delay and over- simplified the issue with a 'look, Apple are being ridiculous again' approach to appeal to his readers.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> A part of me wants to believe they are going to try to engineer in a fix for the antenna at the same time.</comment>


Too often, the government uses its information machinery to try to persuade - <AUTHOR> https://www.washingtonpost.com/posteverything/wp/2015/09/24/the-new-propaganda-how-the-american-government-is-trying-to-control-what-you-think/ <comment><USER2> They left out the practice of newspapers using terms like 'unnamed official close to':

> An official close to Secretary of State Madeleine K. Albright said .... > "This is not an easy report" for the Clinton administration, said another > senior U.S. official last night. - [http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp- > srv/inatl/longterm/eafricab...](http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp- > srv/inatl/longterm/eafricabombing/stories/security010899.htm)

> A law enforcement official close to the case said prosecutors considered > charging several Fokker employees but decided against it. - > [https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national- > security/dutch...](https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national- > security/dutch-aerospace-company-fokker-hit-with-21-million-fine-in- > sanctions-case/2014/06/05/c2890542-ecbd-11e3-b98c-72cef4a00499_story.html)

> The decision -- which was also met with wariness on Capitol Hill -- reflects > a desire to change the intelligence power structure, officials close to the > selection said yesterday. -- [http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp- > dyn/content/article/2009/01...](http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp- > dyn/content/article/2009/01/05/AR2009010503050.html)

These are often cases where the government is trying to control what you think; perhaps because the unnamed official will be retaliated against for not toeing the government line, but also because it's exchanging anonymous influence for access.

A newspaper could decline these unnamed sources a platform for their anonymous influence, but then the reporters will find they don't get the juicy interviews.

<comment><USER3> Here in the UK, an example is the Snowden 'blood on his hands' story in the _Sunday Times_ : [https://theintercept.com/2015/06/14/sunday-times-report- snow...](https://theintercept.com/2015/06/14/sunday-times-report-snowden- files-journalism-worst-also-filled-falsehoods/)

<comment><USER2> A masterful essay. Thanks for the pointer.

<comment> rm_-rf_slash Seconded. Fantastic piece.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> > But this reform would be even more helpful if it required agencies to cite > and share the sources for their "facts." Where, for example, are the > Department of Labor data that prove hot dog venders [sic] earn less than $9 > an hour?

This smells funny. Why are there scare quotes around "facts"? Why is there a demand to prove that we're not getting duped by the revolving door between the government and Big Hot Dog?

One of the authors is a "senior fellow at the R Street Institute," a conservative think tank in DC. So naturally, it's in the author's interest to write a propaganda essay discrediting the liberal executive branch and poisoning the well, and publish it in the expanded op-ed section of a DC newspaper.

This is just recursive politics, trying to pretend it's not.

<comment><USER5> "Treasury Secretary Alexander Hamilton's 1791 report on manufacturing promoted policies to grow the nation into a commercial republic. President Woodrow Wilson's Committee on Public Information recruited 75,000 members of the public to give speeches in favor of such World War I measures as Liberty Bonds and the draft, blanketed the nation with pamphlets and posters, and generally set in motion the modern publicity apparatus that exists today

A decade ago, the Government Accountability Office faulted the second Bush administration's Department of Health and Human Services for overselling the benefits of the new Medicare law."

Hardly a propaganda essay discrediting the _liberal_ executive branch.

<comment><USER4> Well, if you want to draw partisan lines on content, all of those are seemingly big-government actions (which is natural, for things that government would want to propagandize): governmental policies to influence the market to behave in certain ways, intervention in foreign wars, and centralized, taxpayer-funded healthcare that was controversial within the Republican ranks.

This is metapolitics, designed to poison the well about all government actions and support conservative/libertarian positions in general. It's fine and useful to appear to be independent of partisan politics.

<comment><USER6> Is an opinion still valid if Republicans happen to share it?

<comment><USER7> Absolutely. But a think tank is an opinions-for-hire racket, whether conservative or liberal. So it's useful to note the source.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> During the Scottish independence referendum last year, both the UK Government and the Scottish Government produced materials trying to persuade voters, BuzzFeed articles and pamphlets; and a white paper, respectively.

I probably don't need to tell you which sides the respective governments were taking.

</comment><comment><USER8> > In 2014, the government spent $760 million to hire private advertising > firms, according to USASpending.gov...That figure does not include the > salaries of the innumerable federal employees who promote their agencies' > work in print, on air and online. It does not include the anti-drug media > campaigns, or the cost of printing and publishing reports and government > journals, such as the Federal Highway Administration's Public Roads > magazine.

For comparison, each of the presidential candidate spent a much more widely discussed ~$2 billion together on the 2012 campaign.

[https://www.opensecrets.org/pres12/#out](https://www.opensecrets.org/pres12/#out)

</comment><comment><USER9> I think there's a difference between, say, NASA tweeting about its mission and other examples the article uses.

If NASA isn't promoting the mission it's been tasked to do, telling us about their progress and their challenges, then who will? NASA telling the public this stuff is part of their job, so the public knows. Also, it's not hard to deduce what NASA's slant on going to space is: of course they're for it. It's easy for us to interpret the message in light of the messenger.

</comment><comment><USER10> Core problem:

> Unfortunately, it otherwise has proven all but impossible to write a law > that absolutely differentiates information from advocacy.

<comment><USER11> Are they really different things? I inform, you advocate, he spews lies and deception.

Just sounds like different perspectives on the same action.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> _Several years before, in 1997, the GAO caught the State Department paying a consultant to write op-ed pieces in support of the Clinton administration's policy on Central America._

This is terrible. What will all the Washington Post journalists do for work if some sleazy internet spam company gets all the juicy government contracts?

</comment><comment> rm_-rf_slash If the government didn't spread its propaganda, then private institutions and individuals would be free to disseminate their own. It's not about controlling or avoiding the conversation, just being part of it. The administration in any government - democracy or otherwise - has a reasonable self-interest in persuading the public to support its goals. As long as claims can be verified as such, I don't see why it's a problem.

Exception: someone could make a bold-faced lie to a large audience for sensation and later make their honest correction in a place nobody would look.

</comment><comment><USER13> I think that there's a un-elected bureaucracy and then there're elected officials. I don't really have a problem with the elected officials trying to persuade. I don't have a huge problem with them trying to persuade using the bureaucracy as a tool.

Sometimes though it seems like the tool has a mind of it's own. That it either has it's own agenda or doesn't heel to the agenda of the elected officials. All policies aside this seems like a terrible thing - it's a direct path back to having all bureaucrats be political appointees.

</comment><comment><USER14> "Too often, corporations use information machinery to try to persuade"

</comment><comment><USER15> We changed the baity title to a representative sentence from the article, in accordance with the HN guidelines.

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


Is Twitter Killing RSS? - <AUTHOR> http://jeffnolan.com/wp/2009/04/01/is-twitter-killing-rss/

<comment><USER2> The question is better asked: how quickly am I unfollowing content providers that double-post their content to Twitter? Just to be clear: pretty quickly.

Twitter serves a different purpose than blogs, Facebook status updates, etc. If you're shoehorning all your content into all possible channels for attention, well that's just spammy.

<comment><USER3> No it's not. You want to provide your content via every channel, so your audience has the choice on how to follow you, via email-sub, rss, twitter, whatever. And of course: if you follow via rss already, you don't want to follow via twitter too. So much is clear anyway.

<comment><USER2> That's fair. I should explain myself better. I don't have a problem with twitter accounts that are exclusively clones of other feeds. Then I know what I'm signing up for, it wouldn't be fair to call it spammy.

But when I follow a regular twitter account I expect short, self-contained tidbits. When people decide to leverage their twitter followers to get traffic to other services, that's what I find annoying.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Only if I needed _instant_ notification would I follow something in Twitter instead of a RSS reader (a steady news feed probably fits twitter better). It's actually much easier to miss a particular post on Twitter as the stream quickly flows by.

</comment><comment><USER5> I suppose it's then weird if I use twitter's RSS feeds. There's some accounts that only talk about new releases and things like that, and it's easier for me to follow their twitter rss feed (and not their unavailable or spammy regular rss) than to follow them on twitter (where the one tweet gets drowned out by the rest of my following).

<comment><USER6> Exactly. I consume all my twitter followees by RSS.

It's a bit of a weird article. He's conflating notification mechanism with social network. What does it mean to kill RSS? Every blogger now uses a tweet widget instead of RSS?

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> As with others, I don't get my RSS-level news from Twitter RSS-bots. But I have stopped checking RSS as often since I became pretty active on Twitter.

One of my side reasons for reading a ton of RSS feeds was entertainment, getting a feel for what's new and exciting in the world. When I get that information through Twitter in a faster, easier-to-digest form, why would I trawl through RSS feeds? Hence why I don't.

There are still some sites worth checking on a daily or near-daily basis, and I usually just read them in a browser.

However, none of this means the format's dead, just that RSS as a means of information aggregation might be slightly ill.

</comment><comment><USER8> To be totally honest I only skimmed the article, but I just don't think Twitter as a service is a replacement for a format. Mostly the focus here is on the fickle ad/brand-dependent media sites whereas more often than not I find myself subscribing to places based on quality content. Of course given that Twitter can be viewed from a RSS Reader means one doesn't have to trump the other.

</comment><comment><USER9> Absolutely not. I use them differently. I get things I _know_ I want via RSS and get random, interesting links via Twitter. (And use twitter as a sms-to- web gateway and as an IM, but that's beside the point).

Twitter _AND_ RSS have taken over more than 50% of my browsing habits, though.

</comment><comment><USER10> As a sometimes-OCD, I'd like an unread tweets feature e.g.:

Unread (77)

Of course, this might require consumer-level eye ball tracking to see if you "read" one

<comment><USER4> You can also add twitter feeds to Google Reader (Google apparently does not have to adhere to API limits). I do this for any twitter accounts <s>I stalk</s> that I don't want to miss.

<comment><USER11> Can you only add individual accounts? Doesn't seem possible to add all of the people I follow as a single feed.

<comment><USER4> I used this <http://decafbad.com/2009/01/twitter-friend-faves-opml/> to create an OPML file, and then edited it so it contained status feeds instead of favorites.

I just stumbled up on this too, which is probably a better idea: <http://www.voiceoftech.com/swhitley/?p=408>

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Does it matter? All it's doing is providing yet another method of sydication. Roll with it.

</comment><comment><USER13> I'm hoping someone invents a new tech meme to kill the "killer" meme.

</comment><comment><USER14> Yes

</comment><comment><USER15> No, what kind of stupid question is that?

Can you follow hacker news updates on twitter?

<comment><USER16> Not by me, but <https://twitter.com/newsycombinator>

<comment><USER17> It's just like RSS! But worse!</comment></comment></comment>


Iowa: Was the fix in? (a statistical analysis of the results) - <AUTHOR> http://www.statisticsblog.com/2012/01/iowa-was-the-fix-in-a-statistical-analysis-of-the-results/

<comment><USER2> The possibility that earlier-to-report areas are not representative of Iowa as a whole should be examined properly, rather than mentioned and then discarded in favour of generating a pretty graph.</comment>


Natural Language Processing Is Fun: How Computers Understand Human Language - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@ageitgey/natural-language-processing-is-fun-9a0bff37854e <comment><USER3> Similar to Named Entity Recognition, is there list of types of relations:

1\. family - mother/son(Person/Person)

2\. relative physical - next_to, over(Object/Place) or Object/Object

3\. organizational - boss/employee

4\. relative time - <USER2>

5\. type_of - class/instance, animal/dog

6\. synonym - hot/attractive</comment>


The Riemann Hypothesis - <AUTHOR> https://golem.ph.utexas.edu/category/2019/09/the_riemann_hypothesis_part_1.html <comment><USER2> Here's a quite friendly elucidation by the inimitable Avi Wigderson, from: [https://www.ias.edu/ideas/2009/wigderson-randomness- pseudora...](https://www.ias.edu/ideas/2009/wigderson-randomness- pseudorandomness)

> Let's elaborate now on the connection (explained on the cover of this issue) > of the Riemann Hypothesis to pseudorandomness. Consider long sequences of > the letters L, R, S, such as

> S S R S L L L L L S L R R L S R R R R R S L S L S L L . . .

> Such a sequence can be thought of as a set of instructions (L for Left, R > for Right, S for Stay) for a person or robot walking in a straight line. > Each time the next instruction moves it one unit of length Left or Right or > makes it Stay. If such a sequence is chosen at random (this is sometimes > called a random walk or a drunkard's walk), then the moving object would > stay relatively close to the origin with high probability: if the sequence > was of n steps, almost surely its distance from the starting point would be > close to √n. For the Riemann Hypothesis, the explicit sequence of > instructions called the Möbius function is determined as follows for each > step t. If t is divisible by any prime more than once then the instruction > is Stay (e.g., t=18, which is divisible by 32). Otherwise, if t is divisible > by an even number of distinct primes, then the instruction is Right, and if > by an odd number of distinct primes, the instruction is Left (e.g., for > t=21=3x7 it is Right, and for t=30=2x3x5 it is Left). This explicit sequence > of instructions, which is determined by the prime numbers, causes a robot to > look drunk, if and only if the Riemann Hypothesis is true!

<comment><USER3> >monomer-dimer problem

Oh hey, I did my undergrad thesis on that! It generates neat looking graphics:

[https://imgur.com/a/Z6hySAw](https://imgur.com/a/Z6hySAw)

<comment><USER4> I did a Masters in Biophysics, the topic was diffusion of proteins in cell membranes, they usually show random walks (albeit restricted to compartments or showing distinct speeds (bound/unbound?)). That graphs does not look like a random walk, so the Riemann Hypothesis is false?

<comment><USER3> The graphic comes from certain assumptions that do not hold in the general case. Specifically, that of non-isotropic fragmentation and arbitrary fragmentation depth.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Mathematics is a uniquely beautiful field to me. The commutative property has always struck me as special in its own way. 2 x 3 = 3 x 2 feels so obvious, but multiplication is really just addition, and 2 + 2 + 2 = 3 + 3 is far less intuitive, yet states the very same claim.

Most fascinating to me is that many theories are effectively 1-way functions. Entire branches of mathematics have been developed to prove otherwise trivially stated claims. It is something to marvel at, if from a safe distance.

<comment><USER6> The notion that multiplication is ("just") repeated addition is the hardest misconception to overcome blocking progress in mathematics.

Repeated addition is an algorithm that works when you have a non-negative integer argument. Imagining that the algorithm defines the operation limits conception.

<comment><USER7> I would like to understand what multiplication is in your (and i guess advanced mathematics)

<comment><USER8> The comment to which you replied says that thinking about multiplication as "just" repeated addition is problematic, so let's look at that.

Consider 3 x 2. If we take that approach, it seems ok - we understand it to mean "add together 3 2's" \- 2 + 2 + 2, which gives the correct answer of 6.

What about -3 * -2? What does it mean to add a negative number of times?

What about pi * pi? What does it mean to add something pi times?

What about the matrix M * the matrix N?

etc. The parent's point is that this repeated addition thing is just an algorithm one can use to calculate a multiplication for some operands, specifically whole numbers, not a general definition of the operation of multiplication.

<comment><USER9> If we want to define _π_ × _π_ , the best we can do is some kind of algorithm for generating an approximation to _π_ (e.g. as a continued fraction or as a positional decimal fraction) to any desired degree, and then an algorithm for multiplying such approximations. We can prove some bounds on the error introduced by our multiplication algorithm, and that gives us a way of approximating the product to any desired precision.

For example if we want to know _π_ ^2 to about 3 decimal digits (~9.87), we can start by using an approximation of _π_ to about 4 decimal places (~3.142) and then multiplying the two decimals.

For rational numbers, multiplication algorithms are usually built on breaking a number down into constituent pieces, multiplying every pair of pieces from the two multiplicands, and then adding up all of the partial products.

Matrix multiplication has the additional complication that the elementary terms involved (entries in different places in the matrix) cannot be added to each-other. But the basic procedure is still the same: break the two multiplicands down into basic units which we already know a multiplication table for, compute all of the partial products, then sum them up.

<comment><USER8> I don't agree that a definition of multiplication that includes transcendentals such as pi must be numerical. In fact, to the extent that numerical approximations are approximations _of_ something, the thing they would be approximating is the actual value of the operation of multiplication being applied to pi and pi. The only reason we're talking about algorithms at all was to distinguish between them and definitions.

<comment><USER9> Well, that's a philosophical rather than mathematical question. I don't really believe in a concept of "actual value" outside of the context of computations (though I don't mind conceding it as a matter of convenience and social convention, since the distinction almost never matters for practical purposes). I am not an expert, but mathematicians have investigated this, [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Computable_analysis](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Computable_analysis)

We can treat _π_ purely symbolically if we like, but as soon as we want to _do anything useful_ with it we need some kind of approximation or algorithm.

<comment><USER8> I am familiar with the constructivist family of ideas. Obviously I agree this a question of philosophy, specifically the philosophy of mathematics. (So not "rather than", since foundations of mathematics is a branch of mathematics.) And because adopting a constructivist approach to mathematics means adopting different ideas about what a mathematical definition _is_ or _can be_, I have to say that it's a bit disingenuous to introduce this context only after engaging in the above discussion.

For example, if someone asks you to explain Euclid's proof of the infinitude of the primes, and you say that Euclid did not provide any such proof and nothing more, I think it's quite disingenuous. It would be more proper to say, from a constructivist view, the argument Euclid made isn't a valid proof, and then either explain the proof in the logical context in which it was made or decline to.

In this case, the point of discussion was separating the definition of multiplication from an algorithm implementing it. It's quite unfair to silently take a position that a mathematical definition without an algorithm isn't valid or meaningful and then on that basis argue that only numerical approximations to transcendentals have meaning.

So many common mathematical concepts such as "the integers" have no meaning in a constructivist approach that it's not sensible to engage in mathematical discussion without establishing that one's fundamental basis of approach varies so widely from the common one.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> 3Blue1Brow has a nice video on it [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sD0NjbwqlYw](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sD0NjbwqlYw)

</comment><comment><USER11> I really wish the Riemann-Zeta Function were more often explained in terms of a prime number sieve. It's actually not particularly difficult to follow and the connection between the function and the distribution of primes would be completely obvious.

<comment><USER6> This.

In his book on the topic, William Stein did not get around to the connection to the product of primes until page 121.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> If you've got enough math background to follow it, Harold Edwards' _Riemann 's Zeta Function_ is a gem of a book and available inexpensively from Dover. There is an English translation of Riemann's paper at the end of the book. I spent a worthwhile few weeks of spare time working my way through the paper ( and a lot of pencil & paper to work "between" the steps in the paper -- math is not a spectator sport ) with a longish diversion diving into the gamma function along the way.

<comment><USER13> Math should be a spectator sport! ;)

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> I think "don't try to prove the Riemann hypothesis" is only part of the iceberg that includes "you may want to prefer theory building over problem solving" and "we're not getting any medals here". It's interesting that this was written by one of the category theoretic schools; the category theorists that I studied under are quite wary of things like the RH. After all, Saunders Mac Lane never won a Field's medal. I am not throwing shade, but it's exceedingly difficult to try to judge (any) mathematician's "worth" in the way a prize or medal does in popular media.

</comment><comment><USER15> Every now and then I try to delve into the frightening world of math. Then I see something like this, and start to feel very tired.

Then I think, "My hair is already falling out. Do I need something like this to accelerate the process?"

<comment><USER16> As a mathematician, I have noticed that people that like to build something that, for example, can fly, start from a paper plane; they don't get discouraged because they can't yet build a 737 aircraft. However, in math, you need a lot of experience before you can even judge whether a problem is in fact a 737 and not a paper plane (and even then, you can be mistaken). I often see students discouraged because of this and that's why I suggest taking it slow from the beginning.

> Every now and then I try to delve into the frightening world of math.

To want to understand is to be human. :)

<comment><USER17> Honestly, I think the near constant exaltation of problems like the Riemann Hypothesis, P=NP, Fermat's last theorem, etc. is more damaging to the field than good. Many of these theorems have dubious application to anything practical were the theorems unquestionably proven. Subsequently, it frequently gives the impression to a lay observer that mathematics is all about number theory and tackling pointless puzzles.

Going into undergrad I was briefly discouraged from going into mathematics because this was the impression I got. They're interesting to think about, but I didn't want my future to be firmly situated in inapplicable theory.

I say this knowing there is plenty of work to be done in the applied mathematics, especially in trying to simplifying the understanding of complex problems. I'd like to see more of the glorification of moderately hard problems which take more time to explain but are well within the grasp of people who start working on it, than easy to explain problems which will likely never be in the grasp of anyone.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> If this interests you, I would strongly recommend reading [http://www.riemannhypothesis.info/2014/10/tossing-the- prime-...](http://www.riemannhypothesis.info/2014/10/tossing-the-prime-coin/) this explains the relation between random walks and the RH in a surprisingly easy to understand fashion.

</comment><comment><USER19> My absolute favorite numberphile video is how pi occurs in a peculiar way with Riemann Zeta/Mandelbrot. Maybe it only amazes me because I don't have a PhD in math, but it just seemed so strange how pi shows up in this video.

[https://youtu.be/d0vY0CKYhPY](https://youtu.be/d0vY0CKYhPY)

</comment><comment><USER20> Why does everybody think that by virtue of math ought to be nice, such a nice hypothesis ought to be true? Isn't it just a form of the survivorship bias that we observe only nice side of math? What if this hypothesis stands true for all N < 10^10^10^467+17, and then suddenly it doesn't? Perhaps to make a breakthru in math (and physics) we need to consider the possibility that the reality can be ugly and counterintuitive and beyond a certain complexity level, math and physics cannot be described by nice formulas.

<comment><USER21> I think that's a misconception. Mathematicians are keenly aware that there are plenty examples in history were many people "believed" (hoped? expected?) that some result might be true because it would be "beautiful", but it turned out to be false. Or where numerical evidence suggested something only to turn out to be wrong in the end. And where the first counterexample only exists at huge, numerically infeasible bound (see e.g. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Skewes%27s_number](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Skewes%27s_number))

And hence a well-known suggestion is that when tackling a hard problem, is to try finding a proof on even days, and a counterexample on odd days...

And indeed, lots of people tried (and still try) to find counterexamples to, or otherwise disprove, the Riemann Hypothesis. However, there are indeed many, many results and heuristics that give a strong suggestion that the RH might be true -- far more than mere numerical results computing zeroes of the Zeta function. Of course none of them constitute a proof; but this really goes far beyond a simple hope for "beauty" in the theory.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> So if RH is proven, what actually changes? As far as I know, there are tons of theorems that already presuppose RH to be true There wouldn't suddenly be an insight into how to find larger primes, for example.

<comment><USER23> The method used to solve RH would almost certainly contribute substantially to our understanding of mathematics and give new directions to tackle other questions in mathematics. For example, the resolution of the Poincare Conjecture by Perelman involved making progress with the technique of "Ricci flow" which is still an active area of research both in itself and for tackling other problems. The Poincare Conjecture per se is often not involved in these Ricci flow questions even though the proof of the conjecture is used.

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> 1\. I'm a big fan of John Baez.

2\. I'm getting the impression from this article that solving the Riemann Hypothesis is similar to solving P=NP in that a solution can be used to attack RSA encryption.

<comment><USER25> > P=NP in that a solution can be used to attack RSA encryption.

Note that 1) P=NP does not necessarily give raise to any polynomial algorithm that solves a NP problem. The proof would prove the existence of one such algorithm, but it might well never be found (which is the current status quo) 2) even if it would be polynomial, it could still run longer than the heat of the universe. O(n) = n^10000000 would still be a polynomial runtime for example. The second reason is why Donald Knuth does think that P=NP might be possible.

<comment><USER26> Isn't there some (highly impractical) algorithm which dovetails through different Turing machines, in a way that has an asymptotically optimal runtime for a given problem, just with really terrible constants?

I thought we knew an algorithm that, if P=NP, would solve NP problems in P time, (but with absurd constants), and otherwise solves the problems is worse than polytime.

But I could be remembering this totally wrong.

<comment><USER25> > (highly impractical)

Forget everything practical - we are in deep theoretic waters here! There are thousands of algorithm with even a polynomial solution where you still go for the heuristic because the polynomial version is way to slow.

> Isn't there some (highly impractical) algorithm which dovetails through > different Turing machines, in a way that has an asymptotically optimal > runtime for a given problem, just with really terrible constants?

Optimal might be, as long as optimal does not mean polynomial. Otherwise you would read about it in the newspapers ;) I don't know of such algorithm, but "trying out different turing machines" gives me a strong gut feeling of "not polynomial".

> I thought we knew an algorithm that, if P=NP, would solve NP problems in P > time, (but with absurd constants), and otherwise solves the problems is > worse than polytime.

Is that the algorithm you are refering to? Sounds like what Turing proposed once. The interesting branch is the P=NP, since then you could answer really really interesting things in P. Theoretically - and if indeed P=NP ;)

<comment><USER26> this doesn't say the exact algorithm (I haven't found it), but this stack overflow answer talks about it : [https://stackoverflow.com/questions/5107140/what-is-meant- by...](https://stackoverflow.com/questions/5107140/what-is-meant-by- dovetailing)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> I've been making a serious attempt at solving it but I'm not a mathematician. Even still I have a few good leads yet to pursue, and I learned a ton about the practice of mathematics that I never would've learned otherwise. (Wish I could share my leads, but I kinda want the money and glory... :) )

The article is spot on. I've had so many moments where the math looks so fishy that it seems like R _has_ to equal 1/2 (ie hypothesis is true), but I just don't have the facts to prove it. In particular, it's really hard to evaluate the infinite sums you find working thru the problem. I actually believe that there's a good chance the hypothesis is false but we'll see someday.

<comment><USER28> > Wish I could share my leads, but I kinda want the money and glory... :)

Well, like Prof Baez says, unless you've solved other major open problems before, it's probably unwise to believe you'll be the one to crack it. You are likely to gain more by sharing your leads and seeing what mathematicians have to say.</comment></comment>


New study investigates California's possible herd immunity to Covid-19 - <AUTHOR> https://www.ksbw.com/article/new-study-investigates-californias-possible-herd-immunity-to-covid-19/32073873 <comment><USER2> This is an interesting study, but I'm confused why Victor Davis Hanson is one of the co-leads. He's affiliated with the Hoover Institute, which has nothing to do with public health, and according to wikipedia he is "an American classicist, military historian, columnist and farmer."

Hoover Institute has people with public health expertise, so I don't understand why a classical studies professor is running an infectious disease research study.

Meanwhile, Stanford Medicine posted this article [1] yesterday that shows evidence that there weren't a large number of coronavirus cases going undetected in late 2019.

> Prior to launching the clinical test, Pinsky and his colleagues tested > samples collected from the back of the throat or lung airways of 2,888 > people who sought care at Stanford Health Care between Jan. 1 and Feb. 26 > for respiratory symptoms but who had tested negative for common respiratory > viruses. They combined the samples in groups of nine or 10, then tested the > pooled samples for the presence of SARS-CoV-2.

> Of the 292 groups of pooled samples, only two were positive. Further > analysis showed that two people, one in each positive group, were infected > with SARS-CoV-2.

[1] [http://med.stanford.edu/news/all-news/2020/04/testing- pooled...](http://med.stanford.edu/news/all-news/2020/04/testing-pooled- samples-to-track-early-spread-of-virus.html)</comment>


Fialka: the bigger, better, Russian Enigma - <AUTHOR> http://www.wondersandmarvels.com/2014/11/fialka-the-bigger-better-russian-enigma.html

<comment><USER2> One correction - fialka is not color purple but the flower Viola ([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Viola_(plant)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Viola_\(plant\))

It follows the Russian military tradition of naming weapon systems with rather incongruous names that rather befit children toys (or actually are names of characters from children's books) - such as the butterfly, apricot, the little ballerina, the squirrel, bouquet, little lamb (that's just ones starting with a and b).

Full list (in Russian): [https://ru.wikipedia.org/wiki/%D0%A1%D0%BB%D0%BE%D0%B2%D0%B5...](https://ru.wikipedia.org/wiki/%D0%A1%D0%BB%D0%BE%D0%B2%D0%B5%D1%81%D0%BD%D1%8B%D0%B5_%D0%BD%D0%B0%D0%B7%D0%B2%D0%B0%D0%BD%D0%B8%D1%8F_%D1%80%D0%BE%D1%81%D1%81%D0%B8%D0%B9%D1%81%D0%BA%D0%BE%D0%B3%D0%BE_%D0%BE%D1%80%D1%83%D0%B6%D0%B8%D1%8F)

</comment><comment><USER3> Referenced first is an impressive:

"Cryptanalysis of GOST"

[http://events.ccc.de/congress/2012/Fahrplan/attachments/2243...](http://events.ccc.de/congress/2012/Fahrplan/attachments/2243_GOST_29C3_long.pdf)</comment>