WeWork Backs Down on Employee Noncompete Requirements - <AUTHOR> https://www.npr.org/2018/09/18/648881004/wework-backs-down-on-employee-noncompete-requirements <comment><USER2> So in the last little while, we've learned that WeWork has/had oppressive non- compete clauses, and will no longer allow anyone to expense anything involving the consumption of meat.

This is odd to me, because the people I know who work for them love their job and employer, but it seems like they're moving down a dark path...

<comment><USER3> (regular HNer here, posting anonymously for obvious reasons). I work for WeWork, and you don't know the half of it. In mid-August WeWork had their "Summer Camp" event, which was a three day all-hands company meeting in England. About 5500 of 7000 WeWork employees were flown into Heathrow and shipped out to a campground in Tunbridge Wells. Everyone was required to sleep in a tent, generally with four or five other tent mates, on air mattresses on the ground with thin mattresses.

Because of the vegetarianism thing, everyone was forced to eat WeWork-provided food, sans meat (though fish is okay!). This totally broke my ketogenic diet, which made me quite mad. See other comments about this being a form of group control.

For the first day and a half, we were subjected to a number of corporate "talks" which largely revolved around the cult of personalities of Adam Neumann and Miguel McKelvey. Adam Neumann particularly styles himself a televangelis or Jesus-wannabe and walks out into the audience, asking people about their deepest fears, delivering some ersatz corprorate sermon on the mount. There is no "me", only "we".

See also the time when Rebecca Neumann commands the gathered WeWorkers to hold hands, close their eyes, and pray.

Or the time that Deepak Chopra comes out and shows a disturbing video about childbirth (people were like, "is this an anti-abortion video?) and talks about how evolution and child development are intimately related, and how we should take our shoes off to let the ions flow, and leads a meditation session.

A fish rots from the head down, and this is one crazy fish.

<comment><USER4> > Everyone was required to sleep in a tent, generally with four or five other > tent mates, on air mattresses on the ground with thin mattresses.

I prefer keto diets too, but I think this would piss me off way more. I have really bad OCD. I wash my hands a lot; coworkers notice. I'm already self conscious about it. I can go camping but it takes a lot of mental prep (and I typically throw everything in the wash or away when I get home).

If a company forced me to camp like that .. da fuck?!

Not to mention everything else about that sounds pretty insane too.

<comment> village-idiot I love camping, away from everyone else. If you made me camp with my coworkers I would not be happy either.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> This is really good to hear. WeWork has multiple office spaces in my city and I was not aware their full time staff had to sign non-competes. This seems insane considering their entire business is to provide space for freelancers and startups.

I've refused to sign non-competes myself, and have written about it previously[1]. In the past it really hasn't been a problem. People have typically changed their contracts when I bring it up. But in the past year, I had to walk away from two different jobs because of their refusal to remove non-compete language from their contracts.

Are there any groups working on getting national/federal regulations changed to invalidate or ban non-compete agreements? I'd want to contribute to such causes.

[1]: [https://penguindreams.org/blog/why-i-dont-sign-non- competes/](https://penguindreams.org/blog/why-i-dont-sign-non-competes/)

<comment><USER5> > Are there any groups working on getting national/federal regulations changed > to invalidate or ban non-compete agreements?

I don't know if there are, but the idea seems like a complete non-starter in the USA. I don't see any reason to forbid two willing parties from entering into an agreement that includes a non-compete provision.

I can _maybe_ see some rationale for restrictions in standard employment situations. But for contract work? If you don't like the terms, don't accept.

<comment><USER6> _two willing parties_

Please, this is a very old topic.

The way society is currently configured, at some point, for all practical purposes, you are effectively forced to take _some_ kind of job. Or see your life turn into living hell in a whole bunch of ways. Which means that the idea that both parties are truly "willing" parties (let alone have more or less equal leverage in) the negotiation, at the very least -- needs to be radically revisited.

 _But for contract work? If you don 't like the terms, don't accept._

"And don't pay the rent, and don't feed your kids" you mean.

<comment><USER4> The Mic Dicta podcast has a great commentary about this in one of their recent episodes about a labour dispute; they referred to a judge (can't remember if it was SCOTUS or a Federal court) and said, "He's never had a real job in his life."

Work contracts are not a negotiation. There is no back and fourth to an agreement. I've gotten non-competes removed from some contracts, but I'm an exception because 1) I'm in IT and highly skilled and 2) I actually read my contracts.

And even then, in two cases they wouldn't change anything about the contracts and I had to walk from those jobs. Anyone who doesn't work in tech or another high income job does NOT have that option.

Work contracts in western countries are rarely ever between equal parities.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> The article says the noncompetes will stay for 100 executive level employees. Executive level and they have 100 of them? My experience tells me they probably have the devs listed as fake executives like at a lot of companies so they don't have to pay them overtime. Is that what is really going on here?

Noncompetes are terrible and places without them do very well, California being the best example. Everyone should work to get rid of them.

<comment><USER8> Devs as fake executives? I've never heard of that specifically. Devs are often FLSA exempt employees due to their professional status, but that's usually accurate. The effect of being FLSA exempt is that they aren't paid overtime, but that's just the law operating as intended.

<comment><USER7> I've personally known a couple of people that worked in NYC for big financial companies, and this was a known dodge. They even had a separate washroom and cafeteria for the real executives. I don't know the precise details, but I noticed that a software engineer colleague at a company had something on his resume about "vice president" on his resume at 'big finance co' and asked for the details.

<comment><USER9> That's just the way banks work. VPs are managers everywhere else.

My dad knew a good old boy type guy who had an epic VP of X title. His job duties consisted of buying a dozen different newspapers at the airport and matching obituaries and reports of deaths with safe deposit box holders before 9:30AM.

<comment><USER10> Sounds like a great subscription business right there. Charge $X per month to aggregate obituaries and make them searchable or matchable to a list every day. You just replaced a $60k/year employee.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> We need a new labor movement. The control corporations have over the average worker is getting troublesome for society. Between non compete clauses, cartel-like salary caps and anti-union stances, no wonder real wages haven't risen in decades. While great for the capital classes, it is long term detrimental to the stability of society.

<comment><USER12> I'm not sure whey you're getting down voted. Everything you said contributes to wage problems.

<comment><USER13> Many people have been convinced that the labour movement is evil. Including those that would benefit from being unionized.

Actually, especially those who would benefit.

<comment><USER14> You'll always get a handful of downvotes here by mentioning anything positive about organized labor or use the U-word. It's as reliable as the sun. Best not to sweat it.

<comment><USER15> It's time based. If I say anything about it it will be upvoted in European hours and downvoted as soon as the West Coast comes online.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Seriously? Non Competes for Janitors and Baristas?

At what point do we call this what it is: bullying.

<comment><USER2> I'm betting the janitors don't actually work for them, but for a contractor.

<comment><USER17> While that would seem likely to me, too, that would make non-compete agreements _from WeWork_ enforced against such contractors seem even more ridiculous. Of course, white collar contractors get stuck with such clauses frequently (which also seems bogus, particularly in "right to work" states).

<comment><USER2> I think the non-compete only applies to employees. They have a large staff of full time people that do things like plan events, manage social media, real estate transactions, and so on.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Non-competes should not be allowed unless the employer is willing the pay the former employee to enforce it.

<comment><USER19> This is referred to as gardening leave in the UK:

> Garden leave describes the practice whereby an employee leaving a job – > having resigned or otherwise had their employment terminated – is instructed > to stay away from work during the notice period, while still remaining on > the payroll. [...] Employees continue to receive their normal pay during > garden leave and must adhere to their conditions of employment, such as > confidentiality, at least until their notice period expires.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Garden_leave](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Garden_leave)

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> Aren't most non-compete clauses just HR stunts? Every time I hear about some company trying to get employees to sign them, that's almost always followed up by a statement saying it would fall apart if it were taken to court.

TIL: Non-compete clauses are the devil and actively screw people over.

<comment><USER21> Perhaps you are thinking of California? This is certainly true in California, but I've seen non-competes enforced in the tech sector elsewhere in the US (Seattle, Utah, etc).

<comment><USER4> California law goes as far as to state you can't have a non-compete agreement in the work contract at all. When I worked in Seattle, my contract had a non- compete that specifically said it didn't apply in California, and then the fucking staffing agency tried to tell me it wasn't a non-compete.

I called Bullshit! It explicitly excludes your California office! Don't try to lie to me!

<comment><USER7> I am in exactly this situation working in Seattle for a Cali company.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> Noncompetes need to die in a fire. They are defacto parasitic to the economy. The government should be promoting competition not limiting it by wasting resources enforcing leonine contracts to actively make the economy worse.

</comment><comment><USER23> They should write about companies applying non-compete clauses to doctors. It's actually causing problems with public health.

It requires doctors to relocate to another state entirely to practice especially if what they do is specialized.

</comment><comment><USER24> "right to work", "impossibility to renounce the right to work" should be written down somewhere in the basic rights or even in the constitutions. In the reality of visas, protectionism, various barriers, employability is one the highest values one can have to offer on the job market.

</comment><comment><USER25> This is what I've heard (at least in Pennsylvania where I work, and from a number of family members and friends working in different HR departments.) IANAL.

Non-competes are unenforceable because you cannot take away someone's right to work. I'm talking even about switching to your previous employer's competitor. Say you're a software engineer with a lot of domain knowledge on heavy construction. And that employer lets you go (for whatever reason). If there's one other heavy construction company within driving distance hiring software engineers, neither the state nor your previous employer can keep you from using your talents to make a living for yourself.

The only exception is in NDA's. You can't take proprietary information with you, whether it's source code or sales leads.

<comment><USER26> Different states have different laws. Generally, non-competes are enforceable as long as they have reasonable geographic limits and reasonable time limits. There is usually no "right to work" exceptions -- I have never heard of one anyway.

And the definition of reasonable duration or reasonable geographic limits depends on the job and the industry.

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> Non-competes offer no benefits whatsoever to employees, and should be banned outright. There is zero legitimate reason that an employer should have any say whatsoever on what someone does after that employer stops paying them.

<comment><USER28> >should be banned outright

almost but not quite.

> there is zero legitimate reason that an employer should have any say > whatsoever on what someone does after that employer stops paying them.

Agreed.

However, non-competes make prefect sense when a company is bought/sold. If I own a Marketing firm, and sell it to you, it would be perfectly reasonable, as part of that sale, for you to require me to sign a non-compete. Otherwise I could rent an office across town, call up all my old customers (the ones you just payed a lot of money to get) and convince them to switch to my new company and leave you high and dry.

<comment><USER29> But that's not a condition of employment, that's a deal you make as a business owner. As a condition of employment, it has no reason to exist other than as a tool for businesses to abuse workers.

<comment><USER28> 100% agree that as a condition of employment it makes zero sense.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Serious inequities remain for black Americans - <AUTHOR> https://www.brookings.edu/blog/social-mobility-memos/2017/01/13/trump-won-white-voters-but-serious-inequities-remain-for-black-americans/?utm_medium=social&utm_source=twitter&utm_campaign=es <comment><USER2> You can thank the welfare state for this. Thomas Sowell, a black economist attributes the problems of the black community today to the breakdown of the black family which is a direct result of welfare subsidizing the breakup of families and birth out of wedlock.

60% of people in prison grew up without a father. you want to help the black community get out of prison? Support strong families. But if your a family hating feminist, you are in large part responsible for the imprisonment of blacks today, because you support policies that take away from young black men the thing any boy needs most - a father.</comment>


Tell HN: I ripped off Dustin Curtis' snail and got slightly different results - <AUTHOR>

First off, Dustin -- sorry! Second, I'm still relatively new to RoR and design stuff -- so, yes, I ripped off stuff that I liked from common sites I visit. :)
Anyways, I saw Dustin's post the other day about Snail, his new webapp and thought it was a pretty sweet idea. A couple days later, I saw that he tweeted about it not being too profitable at all. Bummer.
Then, last weekend, my dad happened to complain about having to find "damn stamps" every time he needed to mail a customer a invoice or receipt. (He's in construction, an industry that really doesn't use email for anything...)
Anyways, I threw this together and launched it on Monday and now mail off 20-30 letters a day. It's barely profitable but most of that is because I haven't automated some of the key steps... stuff I'll be doing over the next few days.
Today I threw some ghetto code together for another guy that wanted to be able to email stuff to me that gets automagically mailed off to his clients. I think I just doubled the amount of letters I send every day...
Anyways, I'd love some feedback: http://www.snailpad.com <comment><USER2> Here is a variation on an application that involves mailing physical letters. It reconciles two salient facts:

1) people love to complain and be activists, but are also lazy and would rather click a button on the web than lick an envelope

2) most businesses respond better to a printed complaint than a digital one.

Anyone can start a petition. e.g. "You, the cafe at the corner of Fifth and Main, charge too much for their coffee and we would probably come their more if it cost $.25 less." You provide the address of the recipient: Expensive Coffeeshop, Fifth and Main, Smallville, NY

The application is integrated to facebook, so each time someone signs the petition it is posted to their wall for people to see. Once a critical mass of signatures has been reached, and the numbers of signees starts to level off, the petition is printed and automatically mailed.

(I have copied this idea onto idea-ne.ws: <http://idea-ne.ws/item?id=155>)

<comment><USER3> Companies respond to _lots_ of printed letters. One letter with a thousand [forged] names on it is no different than one letter: the return address gets a coupon for a free coffee.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Change:

      Just address your envelope, write your letter, verify
      its appearance, then pay using your Paypal account.

Add the words "electronically", or "via this website" or something like that.

You have a bunch of '2' showing up all over the place.

Mention that you don't retain the contents of the letter once printed (if you don't, and I hope you don't).

Include a photo of a sample letter so people can see if the paper really looks greenish (joke). But really, people want to see if the printout will look professional. And a photo of the envelope too - with stamp.

Mention where you are physically located, so people have an idea of how long delivery will take.

What happens if the letter is so long it takes many sheets of paper (i.e. more stamps) - is there an additional charge? Can I download a book, paste it in and you'll print and mail it to me? Just mention "up to 5 sheets of paper" or something like that, in the pricing page, but don't bother programming it, handle it manually.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the feedback, I'll try to nail these down soon.

As for the sheets of paper, for now I'm betting that the average letter won't be more than 4 pages (since that's when the postage costs rise).

<comment><USER5> That's not very sound basis for your bet. Though you'll be able to study this with the more letters you send. I just wanted to point out that you need to test this rather than assume.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> the problem with this is scale.

Just look at what you need to do: print out the letter, print out the envelope, stuff the letter, apply stamp, seal the envelope. Double check the data.

That's 3-5 minutes per letter.

       @3 minutes that's 20 letters per hour.
       @4 minutes that's 15 letters per hour,
       @5 minutes that's 12 letters per hour.

So your potential income is $12-20 an hour.

Let's add up all your variable costs: stamp: 44 cents ink: 22 cents (sample laser cartridge is $35 for 470 pages, count 3 to print envelope+2 pages)

So based on this, you are making 33 cents off each letter. That means your current profit margin per hour is:

       @3 minutes: $6.66 per hour
       @4 minutes: $4.95 per hour
       @5 minutes: $3.96 per hour

At those rates, you can't even legally hire anyone, since the minimum wage is $7.25 per hour.

Even if you get super efficient and cut that down to 1 letter every 2 minutes. (simply can't do it faster than that on consistent basis), that's only 30 letters mailed. Or $9.90 an hour.

At $1 a letter you simply aren't making enough money. You need to pretty much double your rates, to make this workable.

<comment><USER7> At scale, all of these things can be automated. The challenge is getting to scale but not getting destroyed by someone who already has the infrastructure to do this at far lower cost. (Vistaprint, for example, could probably offer this service with just a little bit of programming work.)

To avoid that, you'll want to offer users whatever you can to make your service a more efficient option: address book integration, built-in letterhead, quickbooks integration, who knows.

You might also expand to adjacent markets. I once heard of an online greeting card company that lets you enter in the addresses and birthdays of everyone you want to send cards to. Then a couple weeks before each birthday, they mail you an envelope containing a pre-addressed, stamped envelope with your choice of card. You just write a note and drop it in the mail.

You could do the same sort of thing, maybe even including the handwritten part!

<comment><AUTHOR> +1 for "At scale, all of these things can be automated."

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I like this a lot. Nice job taking an idea and running with it. At $1/letter this doesn't work, at $3/letter its an enviable opportunity.

I find most of the comments here to be quite pessimistic, so here's a few things to consider:

There are proven economies of scale here. With any volume, a bulk postage rate will start saving you money. There's no reason to think Paul will continue to pay 44 cents a letter. Furthermore, the cost of printing is being grossly exaggerated: I picked up a laser printer from Dell that included a 1500 page toner cartridge. That's .08 cents a page, with a free printer. Its easy to do get cheaper than that per page with a more expensive printer.

Also, all of this can be automated. I share an office with an attorney who sends out hundreds of letters per day, and it takes about 2 hours of his assistant's time to setup the Mail Merge in Word and start the machines. All stuffing, labeling, stamping, etc. is done by the machines.

Here's a tip I picked up from them: if you can mail every few days instead of every day, you can get a nice break on your rate. I know you gaurantee a 24 hour turnaround now, but something to consider.

Paul's found customers and profitability from day 1, and he can just work hard until he generates enough cash to buy machines to handle it for him. It wouldn't be hard to completely automate the entire thing. I like it.

Feedback on your website: you knocked it out of the park. The domain is obvious and makes sense, the website is to the point and immediately conveys the benefit. There's no loose ends, from the privacy policy to the API. I'm seriously impressed.

<comment><USER9> _Here's a tip I picked up from them: if you can mail every few days instead of every day, you can get a nice break on your rate. I know you gaurantee a 24 hour turnaround now, but something to consider._

That should be considered into the business model, example: 24-hour guaranteed: $3, 2-3 day delivery: $2, 3-5 days delivery: $1. Then you could have different queues/printers for each option.

If you start growing, you could set up different locations to print closer to the destination and you could have a really cool service like: 2-3 hrs delivery guaranteed!

Also, you could outsource the printing and delivery, say high school/college kids who want to make some extra money, they sign up at your website and start receiving correspondence to print and deliver close to where they live. For each delivery they accumulate a certain amount of money and you send them a check at the end of the month if they have achieved a certain threshold.

Btw, congrats and keep at it, try your best and you'll do great!

<comment><AUTHOR> I like this idea of "tiered" mailing times... I'm going to try to A/B test this sometime this week and see how it affects account signups.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> You should add a 'skypeout' like option to this where it works internationally.

People in the country of destination would print out the items and mail them for the cost of a local stamp and get some compensation for their efforts.

That way you can offer international 'real' snailmail for a tiny bit over the price of a local stamp.

<comment><USER11> You could do that domestically also. This could be a way to scale it. Allow people to sign up for "mailer" accounts, where they can print out the letters and mail them for a small compensation.

You'll have to work out the privacy issue though.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> If you're interested in how the pros do it, about 5 years ago I temped at a bulk mailer--mostly medicare checks to doctors--using pitney bowes(IIRC) equipment. The machine I was running was organized in an L shape 20'x20'. One side would strip the letter off the continuous paper stack, collate it, fold it, and seal it in an envelope. The second side would stamp it and stack it in postal bins. A bad day I would do about 20,000 but if I had everything calibrated and the guy on the shift before didn't muck things up too bad I could get close to 50000 in an 8 hour shift. The system I was using rather old and temperamental, so I wouldn't be surprised if modern equipment is an order of magnitude faster.

Once the machine was running I didn't have to do much besides put envelopes in the hopper, but the noise, paper cuts, and opportunity to lose a finger while clearing a jam made it a horrible job.

</comment><comment><USER13> You know, I came up with this idea ages ago, and did exactly nothing about it. I think it came about because I needed to mail a single letter and had no printer, no envelopes and no stamps ... surely there must be many more like me!

Would I pay £1 ($1.60) to send a letter - probably - beats needing to buy a printer (ok, I can use the printer in work) find a stamp, take it to the post box etc.

What about recorded delivery letters? I would need to queue up in the post office for those - maybe there is some why that could be handled in batches.

Also, I think companies who send lots of letters get a discount on the standard stamp price.

You could also have 'printing centers' in various countries around the world for cheaper and faster 'air mail'.

I think this idea has a lot of potential, but it would probably require TV commercials to get it to the masses!

<comment><AUTHOR> Question: If I let you pay $1.60/letter, how many would you _actually_ send? :)

<comment><USER13> I don't need to send many letters ... I haven't sent one for about a year now. So for my annual letter sending needs I'd easily pay above the odds, being that I still don't own a printer or stamps! I bet there are many people like me, but I've no real data on that!

<comment><AUTHOR> I don't have any hard data either though, anecdotally, it seems that people _are_ willing to pay $3 for their one-off letters.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Sometimes it's all about finding a market.

</comment><comment><USER15> Here's how you can lower your overhead on postage:

Flip the sender and recipient addresses around and don't place a stamp on it. The mailman has to send it back to the sender, who, in this case is actually the recipient, because of the missing postage. HA!

<comment><USER6> probably a good way to end up in jail

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> 1\. Do you do international? I see a lot of need for letters to Mexico, China and India.

2\. You could charge a lot of money for handwritten notes. In fact, I would pay $20 for someone to hand write a letter to my grandma, once a year, or so.

3\. CC from email. It would be great if I could simply cc email@example.com which you would print and physically mail out.

4\. It would also be useful if you could print and snail mail some documents I email you (receipts, hotel reservations, maps, etc).

Edit ... oops I see you have a lot of these features already. Maybe you can work on #2. Cheers!

<comment><USER17> On #2: you have missed the point of why a hand written letter to a loved one is special.

<comment><USER16> I certainly understand the value of a hand written letters. I am only suggesting a market opportunity.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> I like this.

A bit of feedback:

\- Sometimes, registration makes sense. In this case, it does. if I'm going to be a regular customer, why should I need to enter my address every time? (Not sure if you have an option - I looked around but couldn't find any).

\- Letter templates would be nice. Just basic business letters, personal letters, even 2 or 3 options would be great.

\- You can offer a selection of greeting cards. Season's around the corner - you could make a lot of money.

<comment><AUTHOR> RE: Easier Registration... Definitely, I'm thinking the same thing actually (especially after watching how some of my repeat users have been using the system this week).

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> Where do your customers come from?

<comment><AUTHOR> For now, they're coming from word of mouth within my dad's circle of friends.

Probably not enough word of mouth for this thing to scale dramatically (yet) but enough to help me cover my costs and then have some serious beer money on top.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> If you can validate the addresses and generate Zip+4s, you may want to look into this if your volume reaches the minimum: [http://www.usps.com/send/waystosendmail/senditwithintheus/pr...](http://www.usps.com/send/waystosendmail/senditwithintheus/presortedfirstclassmail.htm)

<comment><AUTHOR> Definitely, I actually spoke to the USPS folks today. This shouldn't be too hard at all, though I may defer this for a little bit -- you actually don't save all that much so I may not spend the time setting this up until I've got a little more volume.

EDIT: Also, when you send via bulk mail, you have to take it to specialized bulk mail facilities... unfortunately, I'm ~50 miles from the nearest one. So, unless I can fill a truck full of mail, I'm not sure how I'd make the numbers work.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> Just curious, who is hosting this?

Also, lots if good feedback given by others but I especially liked using your service to send invoices, etc. So here's my suggestion, create a developer API and other web applications can use your service to send out snail mail.

<comment><AUTHOR> It's on Heroku at the moment.

Yes, definitely. I actually have one customer that's beta testing an "email to snail mail" system that I've built. I need to clean up a few things but should have that available to everyone sometime next week.

If you're serious about using the service to send invoices (or anything else), feel free to ping me -- my contact info is in my profile. I'll trade you a reduced rate for solid feedback. :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> I actually think it looks really good! I'm assuming that you're not new to web-development, just to RoR, because if this was a first (or even second, or third) app I would decry it as impossible :-p

Good work!

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the complement, I appreciate it! This is my second semi-serious app with RoR.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> Wait, so what are you doing differently than Dustin on your end?

<comment><AUTHOR> Technically, probably nothing. Fundamentally, I'm trying to go after solo entrepreneurs and SMBs that need to send stuff out to clients, prospects, etc.

Unless I'm mistaken, Dustin's service is better for people that have a "one- off" need to mail stuff. I'm setup for that use case too, but am trying to build stuff to cater to a group of people that have already budgeted money for this expense.

<comment><USER23> Ok, so nothing. Just leveraging your contacts better. Cool.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> Perhaps you should allow people to upload a company logo? If your dad is mailing customers for his business, how much better would it be if you did the letterhead for him?

<comment><AUTHOR> Definitely worth looking into... for now, I've just asked them to send me a PDF with the letter content so that the letter looks exactly like they expect it to.

The letter input screen you see on the site today is pretty new and intended for new users that just want to send a one-off letter or something.

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> I'd add a way to upload pdf's or docs so people could send things like invoices/contracts etc.

But well done.

<comment><AUTHOR> Definitely, I'm working on that as we speak. I'm planning to offer the PDF upload capability on the letter input form that you see on the site.

Additionally, I'm thinking about creating the ability for people to just email something like "letters [at] snailpad.com" with the recipient's address in the subject line and either (1) the letter's content in the email body or (2) a PDF attachment of the letter content.

If they're a recognized user and have available credits in their balance, I'd shoot off a confirmation and queue it for physical mailing on the next day. Otherwise, I'd reply with an email containing a PDF preview of the letter and some text encouraging them to signup or reload their account.

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> You also ripped off github's desgin ;-)

<comment><USER27> github should take that as a compliment. :) github's design is okay, but it's too cluttered for my tastes. It feels like a messy desk.

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> To quote your blog :" Good ideas are a dime-a-dozen. Good execution is rare." Nicely done.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks dude. :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> very nice: simple but has enough features to be valuable to people.</comment>


Ask HN: How would you make PadMapper Better? - <AUTHOR>

PadMapper (http://www.padmapper.com) is a site that tries to make apartment hunting suck less. It includes a variety of sources, including Craigslist, Apartments.com, ForRent.com, Move.com, and a bunch of other, smaller sources. It puts all the ones it can find locations for on the map, and ignores the others.
It's got an interesting interface. At the same time, much of what makes the interface interesting makes it difficult to add to. (there's limited space available to add things to, since one of the central tenets is to give the map as much space as possible).
I would love to get your feedback on what improvements you think should be made.
Thanks! Eric <comment><USER3> I actually used this a few months ago when I was looking for an apartment. Great site!

One thing I needed to do was keep track of which places I had visited (whether I liked or disliked them), which places I had scheduled appointments for (and when those appointments were), and which places I still needed to visit.

I ended up using a spreadsheet to keep track of it all, but I think there is room for improvement there.

Also, I found myself wanting an iPad version of the app (the website didn't work in mobile Safari, presumably cause of the drag controls).

<comment><AUTHOR> Great feedback, thanks!

I actually added notes more recently (as well as accounts to make those notes durable), which should help you stay a bit more organized from within the app without needing a spreadsheet. The iPhone app has seen another revision as well, which includes synching of favorites and notes.

You can also hide the ones you didn't like, while favoriting the ones you did like.

I have heard that the iPad version of the site doesn't work well - <USER2> into remedying this (will probably need an iPad first...), but I will probably come out with an iPad version of the app before too long.

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> And a link: <http://www.padmapper.com></comment>


How many people on here are non-tech founders? - <AUTHOR>

I'm a non technical founder, started my own company (Around a web based app) a couple of months ago. I am just wondering if there were any other non technical founders on here..and if so what kind of challenges you are facing? <comment><USER2> I'm semi-technical, in that I can't code anything functional from scratch, but I can do a bunch of development related tasks, including write CSS, manage the server (SSH, virtualmin, whatever), poke around the SQL database to add/edit fields and rows, create graphics/icons/logos, etc.

I also take care of most of the business, promotional, "everything else" issues. I would say part of my job is being the coder's lackey, if my partner needs php libraries installed, I'll ticket our server admin. If he needs a feature tested and broken in 5 browsers, that'll be me. I suppose my job is to help make it easier for him to put out code at a higher productivity rate.

A challenge I would say is not having anything to do while he hacks away, which is a lot of the time for early startups. Can't really start promoting or start new initiatives, but theres always something to do, its just a matter of figuring out what.

</comment><comment><USER3> I'm largely non-technical. Written maybe a total of 50 lines of PHP and consider myself knowledgeable about but unable to personally execute 90%+ of engineering/development work.

The challenge was primarily that I had an underperforming technical/engineering team until we hired a professional, experienced VP of Engineering last year (which has made a huge difference).

My advice - get a technical co-founder or early CTO/VP Eng that is immensely technical and totally dedicated. Many on here have described the weakness of having great code and great software with no marketing channel - the other side is just as painful.

</comment><comment><USER4> I was a management accountant prior to starting my company - as non-tech as you could get.

I co-founded with an engineer, so it was always a clear cut - I did sales, marketing, finance, he did engineering, we both did product.

No huge issues, I rely on engineering, but I now rely on sales and marketing, and all the other functions.

I considered learning to code at the start, but really you need divide the tasks and stick with what you are good at.

</comment><comment><USER5> Thought you meant founders with a non-tech product/service/field, which might also be an interesting survey.

</comment><comment><USER6> There are plenty of successful non-technical founders but almost all of them have a technical co-founder or partner. If you don't have one today, the sooner you can find a good technical partner with a vested interest in your company the better off you will be.

</comment><comment><USER7> I'm a non technical founder and its a huge challenge. I think the biggest issue was finding a programmer as dedicated as I was. The internet doesn't close on weekends, if issues come up, we need to respond asap!

For my latest startup, I teamed up with a programmer. It is super-tough to have a software app without a technical co-founder.

</comment><comment><USER8> I was computer science major in college, but now I can hack but not code. My main role is product development, so a coding background is helpful. I know enough to attract good tech talent -- which is critical. Good luck!

</comment><comment><USER9> I'm non technical, but I am a designer, so I can definitely hold my own. I am finding it pretty difficult to find a technical cofounder.</comment>


Artificial intelligence has race, age, gender biases - <AUTHOR> https://www.axios.com/algorithms-discriminate-and-big-tech-doesnt-care-2458083425.html?utm_medium=linkshare&utm_campaign=organic <comment><USER2> This is really a misleading headline, if for no other reason than that there is no such "thing" as Artificial Intelligence. That is, there is a _field_ called Artificial Intelligence, but as a technology, it isn't one discrete, unified "thing" that you can talk about. There are many, many systems which can claim to employ varying degrees of "artificial intelligence" or "machine learning" to various degrees. But there's little or no reason to think they have much, or anything, in common in this specific regard.</comment>


Jupiter Networks invests $2.5M in enterprise tech accelerator Alchemist - <AUTHOR> https://techcrunch.com/2019/01/22/alchemist-accelerator-raises-2-5m/ <comment> valiant-comma Note: Juniper Networks led the round[0][1], the TechCrunch article and its title incorrectly reference "Jupiter Networks".

[0] See photo in article. [1] [https://www.juniper.net/us/en/company/investments/](https://www.juniper.net/us/en/company/investments/)</comment>


Ask HN: do I want to work at a trading firm? - <AUTHOR> I've worked as an early stage engineer at a string of startups since 1998. They were fun (for the first 18 months), but poor choices financially. As such, I'm a 34 year old guy without much savings (but hundreds of thousands of worthless stock & options.)
I feel the need to save up some money for at least few years and want to maximize my salary. I have a nascent interest in financial markets and an undergraduate degree in applied mathematics. My C++ is pretty good, although I haven't really had to use it in the past five years. I have the typical startup skills in Java, Python, Ruby, unix admin, staying up until 5 in the morning debugging network or database issues, and all that sort of thing.
I am located in NYC and there are a couple trading firms that look more interesting to me than most of the local startups. Namely Two Sigma investments and Jane Street Capital. I have a friend who thinks he could get me an interview at Jane Street and a recruiter acquaintance who claims to be able to get me an interview anywhere. I'm not totally convinced about the 2nd guy's connections, but we'll see.
I was wondering if anyone on HN works in this sector (proprietary trading) and if they actually like it, or if it's just a drudge. And also, I'm wondering if it really pays that well. I'm doing ok now salary-wise, but no bonus potential and am very bored.
Note that I'm usually someone else on HN but wanted to remain anonymous for this. <comment><USER3> I highly recommend Jane Street Capital, have a friend who worked there and absolutely loved it. Not only that, but that experience really gave him a leg up in terms of experience/applied knowledge for when he went on to work at a trading desk elsewhere.

</comment><comment><USER4> You've probably got the technical skills to work for one of these firms - <USER2> have you thought about in what capacity? When you interview you'll need to be pretty clued-up about what you want to do. Trading? Quant? Research? Strategy? And in what asset class(es)? To be a successful applicant you'll need to demonstrate a genuine enthusiasm and knowledge for trading/markets/pricing/modelling/risk (delete as appropriate).

Getting in to these places is not easy, and working for them is harder. You can do well, but those that do spectacularly well really make a lot of money for their employer. You don't get paid a million bucks just for putting in your 60 hours a week. You need to make 10 or 20 times this for your employee - and it's not easy. In fact it's very, very hard.

<comment><AUTHOR> To be honest, I don't think I have the right background to do any of the things you mentioned. I have a math degree, but it's just undergrad and I have barely used it for the past decade. However, both Jane Street and Two Sigma (moreso) advertise a number of purely development related positions. This is the sort of thing I think I'd be applying for.

Sadly, this is probably classified as "IT work", as derided by Wilmott.com forum users. I don't really care, it's the same sort of thing I do now. I just wonder if I could get paid more doing it for a prop firm vs. an "internet" company. I'd love to learn more and move into another role, but I would have to start with what I know.

<comment><USER4> yeah you'll probably get paid better as a developer for hedge fund or bank than for an internet firm. But make sure you know what kind of developer position you'll be signing up for. Front Office is where you want to be, as you'll work closely with the "business" and it's generally a lot more exciting - plus you'll get to learn a lot about the markets. Typically this could involve building automated or algorithmic trading platforms (e.g HFT). Back Office could involve a lot of drudgerly and generally thankless toil - e.g accounting or settlements systems.

P.S Fuck what Wilmott.com users say. Needless to say, there are a lot of wankers and over-sized egos on trading desks.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> My roommate works for two sigma and he actually likes it a lot. He has a CS degree from CMU and used to work for GS, and like its much more than GS.

I don't think he works in the deep level programming group but rather product development, but he says he finds it stimulating and interesting - and is paid very decently for the level he is at. In fact, he won't leave the security of the job and pay for any startup no matter how I try to convince him ;).

He has also stated that the people who work there come from a diverse range of backgrounds and it's just a very chill and laid back environment unlike most finance shops.

</comment><comment><USER6> Those two firms are ok, from people I have spoken to there. There are a bunch of small prop shops around, throwing spaghetti at the wall, hoping something sticks. Like many other fields, if you can get in with a quality crew it can be a good experience. Otherwise not.

</comment><comment><USER7> working in certain areas of finance can be very fun interesting and excellent money wise. its a very rare combination where technology collides with money in such a direct and measurable way. think of how sales guys performance is quantifiably measured but replace sales with coding. you wont find such a directly quantifiable measure in any other field... yes the quality of your code/product isnt that important for startups.

so if you think your code/models/you are top shit... then its really easy to get a reality check on your percived abilities. its what makes it fun. all the bullshit and hand waving in the world is FUD against _your_ PnL

</comment><comment><USER8> Firstly a huge number of developers are employed in a wide variety of roles in financial firms. Pretty much any development job possible from language engineering to ajax can be found in banking.

At smaller firms you'll have a smaller number of roles, typically they'll be back-office stuff (settlement, position reconciliation etc.), front-office stuff (stuff that directly makes money, algo trading, risk management, etc.) and a few bit and pieces in between (exchange connectivity, etc).

In general the money you get in banking is more than you'll get doing the same role outside of banking. The most money is in front-office and the least in back-office, although the difference in base salary isn't generally huge, the bonus can be depending on the firm.

Not everyone is suited to front-office though, for a front-office role you'll need the social skills to deal with the traders, quants, etc and the work can be more stresful. When you have a bad deadline in back-office it's typically "we need to get this work done by the end of the week for compliance reasons otherwise the regulator might give us a slap", for front office it can well be "we need to fix this right now as we're pissing money down the drain". Life in the back-office is generally more laid back with shorter hours (depends on firm though). Front-office is where the fun is generally though and tends to have lots of smart people.

In either case you're also generally expected to do a certain amount of out- of-hours support (if you're code is being used out-of-hours), but how much varies a lot. You should ask about this in the interview. Also you probably want to avoid any role that involves a large amount of legacy code (this is probably true in any sector).

Salarywise for an experienced senior dev in a front office role at a small hedge fund/prop shop I'd expect a total package (base+bonus) in the region of $200-$300k. Remember that small hedge funds do have a high failure rate, but that should be taken into account by the higher salary.

If you're solidly competent C++ or Java programmer you shouldn't have a problem getting a job in the financial sector, especially if you're good at things like multi-threading, etc.

There's a couple of books I'd recommend "So You Want To Be a Wall Street Programmer?" by Andrey Butov (a good overview but pretty light, you should be able to read it in a couple of hours) and "capital markets for quantitative professionals" by Alex Kuznetsov (a much heftier book but the first half is an introduction to financial markets and the second half is an introduction to the various bits of technology that you'd find in a bank).

</comment><comment><USER9> any jobs in the proprietary trading will definitely make $$$ sense, just look at the bonus they payout each year. look at it this way, it is a good time to build up your savings once again. while you are building up enough savings, you can always work on any ideas which you might have... think twitter, it's started as a side project too.

<comment><USER4> Sure - you get $$$ - if you make money :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> What about some of the current crop of procedural languages - I've heard alot of trading firms use them.

</comment><comment><USER11> email me, i'd be happy to provide some insight.</comment>


The Breathless Hours - <AUTHOR> http://indianquarterly.com/the-breathless-hours/ <comment><USER2> Wow, that was incredibly well-written. It reads like good horror. I wasn't planning on reading any longer articles but couldn't help myself.

</comment><comment><USER3>
      > What makes krait bite a horror story is that although a
      > victim appears lifeless, he or she is fully conscious.

Stephen King's short story "Autopsy Room Four" is a story about similar condition, although caused by a fictional snake.

</comment><comment><USER4> So the only defense is to sleep under mosquito netting... even sleeping on a bed (with legs) on a higher floor doesn't help you...

Well, shit.

</comment><comment><USER5> This turned out to be delicious read - despite not being something I would have ever expected to be on Hacker News.

<comment><USER6> "Delicious" is one term for it. "Terrifying" is another.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> This made me thankful I live in a place with nothing more dangerous than tiny garden snakes.

</comment><comment><USER8> > The real problem with kraits is that they enter homes in the dead of night > and bite people in their sleep.

A krait in the bed is the premise for the excellent short story "Poison" by Roald Dahl.

</comment><comment><USER9> So, er, are mongeese an effective deterrent against these things?

</comment><comment><USER10> Amazing ending - "Their time has come" !

</comment><comment><USER11> Good god.</comment>


Michael Moore's 5-Point Plan Post Is Being Shared by 30,000 People an Hour - <AUTHOR> https://www.good.is/articles/moore-five-point-plan?sid=sst314956uh <comment><USER2> Sigh. Nothing demonstrates the problem with the Democratic voters than to get angry after they fail.

<comment><USER3> Frankly, this is the sort of response he's rallying about when he calls out those who immediately pivoted to only "healing the divide".

Why is this about _democratic voters_? Not only can I call out (as does the original article) how this happened but inverted during the obama years, but it seems like a natural human reaction to be pissed off when something you so abhor takes power over you, and to shut that down falls into the same "going to ignore distasteful opinions I don't find appropriate" trap that contributed to getting us into this situation in the first place.

It's perfectly fine to be angry if your candidate loses, and to take actionable steps to make sure it doesn't happen in the future. This is called learning from mistakes, and to demonize it is... I don't even know what it is. Impractical or unrealistic, to say the least.</comment></comment>


Tazers will beam video of all uses back to HQ - <AUTHOR> http://www.economist.com/businessfinance/displayStory.cfm?story_id=15179584&source=hptextfeature

<comment><USER2> If the data is available to the public this would be a huge step in the right direction.

</comment><comment><USER3> I love the acronym that Mr. Smith is giving this new technology, however I might be slightly biased.

</comment><comment> Asa-Nisse Whats wrong with the current method of just filming it with your mobile phone and laugh about it online?</comment>


Certificate for get.docker.com expired - <AUTHOR> https://get.docker.com/ <comment><USER2> Yes, it is blocking my provision.</comment>


Why Developers Never Use State Machines (2011) - <AUTHOR> http://www.skorks.com/2011/09/why-developers-never-use-state-machines/ <comment><USER2> I have used the state machine abstraction several times throughout the years. Specifically, I used them to replace regular expressions.</comment>


The Lame Kind of TDD - <AUTHOR> http://writing.chrishenn.net/2012/03/10/TDD-the-lame-kind.html

<comment><USER2> _I could also just test it by looking at it in a browser. I would see a h1 with the text 'Big heading!' and have successfully verified the same thing as the line above._

Except you _wouldn't_ repeat every single manual test every time you make a material change to the code. And that means you'll miss cascade failures, one of the biggest benefits of automated testing.

Michael is trying to instil good habits in newcomers to the Ruby and Rails worlds, rather than show off perfectly chosen situations to evangelize TDD. But, rest assured, if you go much deeper with Ruby or Rails, this habit will start to reap huge dividends.

There's certainly an argument for not testing every minor piece of rendering to occur in an app (like constantly checking for content on requested pages) but that's really a different debate than to-TDD-or-not-to-TDD.</comment>


Coding the History of Deep Learning - <AUTHOR> http://blog.floydhub.com/coding-the-history-of-deep-learning <comment><USER2> If you want a more nuanced research on the history on deep learning in neural networks, here is an excellent historical survey paper: [https://arxiv.org/abs/1404.7828](https://arxiv.org/abs/1404.7828)

<comment><USER3> I'd also recommend Andrey Kurenkov's well written multi-part series on the history of neural nets: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10910887](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10910887)

[The author of the paper mentioned on parent comment is Jürgen Schmidhuber - inventor of LSTMs and a very colorful character in neural land. The NYTimes did a nice profile on him a while back: [https://www.nytimes.com/2016/11/27/technology/artificial- int...](https://www.nytimes.com/2016/11/27/technology/artificial-intelligence- pioneer-jurgen-schmidhuber-overlooked.html?mcubz=0) HN Discussion: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13066646](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13066646)]

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Least squares, gradient descent and linear regression separately? I get that he wants to point out the profundity and universality of the ideas encompassed in those techniques (& models; least squares and gradient descent are rightly thought of as (numerical) techniques, whereas the linear regression models is a, well, model) but that is like saying that arithmetic is fundamental to deep learning. Essentially, this "history" only takes you to 1947 and Minsky.

<comment><USER5> Also why do linear regression (OLS) models need gradient descent at all? Cannot you calculate the parameters directly?

y = X β + ε ...and a few assumptions give you... (X^t X)^-1 y = β*

I might be missing something in the blog post.

<comment><USER6> Others have pointed out that matrix inversion is O(n^3) and hence computationally infeasible. It is also worth considering that the conditioning of X^t X, k(X^t X) can be as large as k(X)^2, so solving in this way can be very unstable.

<comment><USER7> While this is correct, you do not need to compute the inverse to solve this kind of least squares problem (and you do not need the inverse to solve any linear systems of equations).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I know it is popular to say that these techniques are based on how the brain works, but when I read about them, I have my doubts.

Can anyone take a real world example of human behavior and show me how it relates to how these techniques predict humans will behave?

I love the field but feel like there is a temptation to take giant leaps not supported by other observations.

<comment><USER9> We say ANNs are "based on how the brain works" because the original mathematical model was an attempt by McCulloch and Pitts to explain how complex behavior arises from networks of simple neurons.

A neuron is either activated or not and each of the many inputs can be either excitatory (encourages activation) or inhibitory (discourages activation). McCulloch and Pitts formalized this as a weighted average of the inputs that was then thresholded to 0 or 1. And they showed some basic theoretical results from that that gave it some credit as a model for how intelligence can arise from neurons. Essentially they said behavior can be described as a classifier.

AFAIK, they didn't go much into how the weights were actually learned. Different strategies were tried, but we ultimately started to soften the threshold function into the logistic function (to make the network differentiable) and solve for the weights by gradient descent.

Modern Deep Learning makes the additional assumption that neurons in the same layer are not interconnected. This assumption, along with the fact that we're just dealing with weighted averages, allows us to describe networks in matrix form, allows us to compute the gradients with backprop, and allows efficient simulation on the GPU. This assumption is more practical than biological.

> show me how it relates to how [...] humans will behave?

[This page][1] attempts to connect the dots between the McCulloch and Pitts model, the resulting classifiers, and behavior. Essentially, the theory was that neurons can be formalized into classifiers, and behavior is just the output of these classifiers. I don't know too much about modern neuroscience, but given the amazing results we are seen these days in vision, language, and planning, I'd say the central ideas of the theory are still credible.

[1]: [http://www.mind.ilstu.edu/curriculum/modOverview.php?modGUI=...](http://www.mind.ilstu.edu/curriculum/modOverview.php?modGUI=212)

<comment><USER10> First of all, neurons don't have just one activation function. Each dendrite has. So, anything from dozens to thousands. Second, that definition doesn't cover the entire issue of multiple feedback loops. Third, this doesn't cover memory effects at structural (cytoskeleton) and local levels (vesicles), much less generic levels (RNA and your genes). And then we haven't even gotten into metabolomic and epigenetic wriring in your neurons ...

Calling those chained regressions similar to the brain is about as correct as saying that a 3y old's drawing of a car is similar to a real Tesla...

<comment><USER9> I mean, doi.

McCulloch and Pitts published in the 1950s. Of course we know more about the brain now.

If I were to ask you "How does intelligence arise from a network of activations?" Would you genuinely say that it has nothing to do with the McCulloch and Pitts theory?

<comment><USER10> I would honestly say we really have no clue, and maybe add that as far as we can tell, activations play as much of a role in intelligence as a myriad of other factors.

But more generally, I am just so tied of this "brain metaphor" on deep learning. It is a funny way to wake up your students (well, at least 10 years ago it was...), but trying to stretch this metaphor much more than that is just painful. Heck, even the activating "function _s_ " (plural, as we now know) in a neutron isn't really a set (!) of (singular, independent) functions, it's just a top level name for a mind-boggling number of things happening as neurons "fire", with a mathematical formalism to _approximate_ what's going on. In fact, calling an activation a "function" is probably belittling the biological processes behind them.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Would love to see mention of several of the main contributors to deep learning, such as Geoffrey Hinton, the "father" of deep learning, Andrew Ng and Demis Hassabis in future posts.

<comment><USER12> Geoff Hinton - surely. But I think most experts will disagree on the other two. In terms of deep fundamental contributions I don't the think other two have made much. I think Andrew Ng has been a great popularizer/marketing guy - primarily with that Cats project. Likewise Demis Hassabis has been a great application creator - with amazing results of course - AlphaGo, Atari, etc.

On a side note: I lost all respect for andrew ng after the Baidu cheating scandal. [https://www.nytimes.com/2015/06/04/technology/computer- scien...](https://www.nytimes.com/2015/06/04/technology/computer-scientists- are-astir-after-baidu-team-is-barred-from-ai-competition.html)

I felt he got away too easy on that, without any apology or even a public statement - especially considering he is a former academic. (And that too he silently deleted his google+ posts.) Imagine if something like that had happened at a Google research team - I am pretty sure Jeff Dean or Peter Norvig would have stepped down.

<comment><USER13> I didn't even realize this happened. Thank you for posting. Sucks because now I have less respect for Andrew.

I don't understand why you'd want to cheat for a competition like this? I get it, people cheat all the time, but the field of machine learning is built on a foundation of open and shared research, and trust.

<comment><USER14> On skim-reading the article it seems they were banned from submitting entries to a competition server for 12 months because they made a significant number of submissions.

It's arguable that they were gaming the system somewhat, but unless a limit was explicitly defined then this just seems like they were doing a lot of exploration in the area.

Imagine if you published some research showing you'd made something that did something cool, but then people lost respect for you because you'd made a lot of previous attempts.

<comment><USER15> The specified limit was 2 submissions per week, according to the people organizing the competition:

[http://www.image-net.org/challenges/LSVRC/announcement- June-...](http://www.image-net.org/challenges/LSVRC/announcement-June-2-2015)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> The article mentions that GPUs are on average 50-200 times faster for deep learning, I'm curious on how he came to that number. It has a lot to do with the code and the frameworks used. I haven't come across a good comparison, most figures seems to be taken out of the blue.

<comment><USER17> From my experience the speedup is more around 20x-50x.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> I find this history confusing. Legendre guessing by hand? Spaghetti on the wall? No mention of the massive work of Laplace and others that led up to Legendre and Gauss, or Gauss's connection of the notion to probability? This is truly a bizarre view.

And then the idea that numerical optimization accounting for the slope was novel. How does he think that mathematicians calculated for the preceding centuries?

Linear regression springs full formed in the 1950's and '60's? What happened to Fisher and Student and Pearson and all the rest?

Where's Hopfield? Where's Potts? Where's an awareness of the history of mathematics in general?

</comment><comment><USER19> This seems like a great introduction to the history. I have a problem with it, though.

In the first example, the method compute_error_for_line_given_points is called with values 1, 2, [[3,6],[6,9],[12,18]]. Where did those values come from?

Later in that same example, there is an "Error = 4^2 + (-1)^2 + 6^2". Where did _those_ values come from?

Later, there's another form: "Error = x^5 - 2x^3 -2" What about these?

There seem to be magic formulae everywhere, with no real explanation in the article about where they came from. Without that, I have no way of actually understanding this.

Am I missing something fundamental here?

<comment><USER20> I'd also like to see more of a "teaching" post that can walk through the math incrementally.

Many of the deep learning courses assume "high school math", but my school must have skipped matrices, so I've been watching Khan Academy videos.

Are there any good posts / books on walking through the math of deep learning from a true beginner's perspective?

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> Spot on. I struggled with the mainstream deep learning/machine learning MOOCs. I felt like they were to math heavy. However, I'm struggling on how to learn deep learning. I get polarized advice on it. Some argue that you need a degree or certificates from established MOOCs, others keep recommending me to do Kaggle challenges.

Has anyone managed to land a decent deep learning job without formal CS/machine learning training? How did you approach it?

<comment><USER22> This is something I've also struggled with. I find it hard to read deep learning papers because I need to translate each math notation, thus struggling to get the bigger picture. I'm fond of the bottom-up approach, e.g. I started by mastering C and wrote my own libraries. But for deep learning I lean towards the opposite, starting with high-level libraries. When I want to understand the theory I search for simple python code that I can implement from scratch. This way I can understand the logic, without having to understand all the math behind it. I've mostly focused on doing Kaggle type of problems and used MOOCs when I get stuck. I've had little interest from larger companies, but I've managed to get a few offers from startups. Startups often have a couple of people with PhD-level knowledge but are also looking programmers that can code the models.

<comment><USER23> "Machine Learning Engineer" is a title we're going to see more and more of (and we're already seeing a lot).

Its one thing to know the math and theory to design, train, and tune the algorithm your company needs. But implementing it into production, at scale? That's not the same person.

Ideally, you have Person/Team A, who designs but knows enough about implementation to keep that in mind during their process, and Person/Team B who implements it into the software but knows enough about the design to make it work.

<comment><USER24> Truly ideally you have someone/team who actually can do both properly. However, very few people can. And if you have one, you may not be able to justify their time on all aspects.

So the compromise is usually as you describe, but you bear the cost of translation issues no matter how you do this. It's worth remembering that it is a compromise.

I think systems like tensorflow are implicitly a recognition of this, allowing lower impedance between the groups.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> "It's been used in Andrew Karpathy's deep learning course at Stanford,"

Andrew is now working at Tesla. I believe this is his course:

[http://cs231n.stanford.edu/syllabus.html](http://cs231n.stanford.edu/syllabus.html)

<comment><USER22> Yes, you can find it here: [https://youtu.be/i94OvYb6noo?t=59m6s](https://youtu.be/i94OvYb6noo?t=59m6s)

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> All of the scientists i love (even Heaviside!) in one article. I am so pleased!

</comment><comment><USER27> No mention of who invented convnets?

</comment><comment><USER10> Which is a long-winded way to show that deep learning isn't much more than a concatenation of glorified regression functions... :-)

<ducks because="had to get that one out there"/>

Edit: There we go with the downvotes, I knew it that deep learning guys can't stand this claim (but it's true, as the post itself goes to show in great length... :-))</comment>


Comedy Central censors Futurama's jab at Apple - <AUTHOR> http://www.zgeek.com/content.php/3191-Comedy-Central-censors-Futurama-s-jab-at-Apple

<comment><USER2> So, from the article, a short piece of a clip was removed when it was posted on Comedy Central's website. In the removed piece, one of the character's mentions the "eyePhone".

However, as spoken "eyePhone" isn't really any different than "iPhone", and "iPhone" is a registered trademark of Apple. Trademarks are interesting beasts. There is no "fair use" of trademarks for parody (hence, why the Looney Toons always got "Acme" brand products), and you cannot choose to _not_ enforce trademark.

So, more than likely, what happened here is that someone said "(eye|i)Phone", Apple's lawyers heard about it, trademark law says it's the job of Apple (and its lawyers) to prevent trademark dilution, so the lawyers call up Comedy central and say: "Hey, you know that part where you _say_ 'eyePhone', and you can't really tell if that's 'eyePhone' or 'iPhone'...could you just clip that out?"

...wait, I'm sorry...I forgot this was the internet. BOO! Bad Apple! Such an evil company that will censor our funnies and ruin the purity of our bodily fluids!

<comment><USER3> Your theory nicely rationalizes the removal.

Except that "eyePhone" is mentioned several times in the episode and it was not the problem. The problem was showing the zombies and the following announcement:

\- "Introducing the all new eyePhone 2.0." \- (the mob) "Yeah!"

Little bird tells me that painting "Momcorp" (with logo similar to Apple, with store similar to Apple, you get the point) users as mindless zombies ready to buy anything was the problem.

<comment><USER4> eyePhone was not a problem in the episode because of context, which is missing from the clip. In the interest of keeping the internet green, let me recycle what I wrote in the reddit discussion of this:

Spoiler alert. This post mentions elements of the episode that are not in the clip, and so could be mild spoilers for those who have not seen the episode.

There's no particular reason to believe Apple had anything to do with this. I'd guess it was initiated either by Comedy Central or by the Futurama producers, for comedic reasons.

One of the themes of the episode was to parody the iPhone, using a phone called the eyePhone. If you watch the episode, you'll note they are careful to make sure than when they introduce the eyePhone, you see the word eyePhone written, so you can tell they are saying "eyePhone", not "iPhone". Then when we see how the eyePhone is used, we see why it is called the eyePhone.

Having the viewer know that it is eyePhone, and it is installed in the eye, is important. It's what makes the difference between a funny parody and a dumb heavy handed commentary.

In the original clip, note that there is no place that the word eyePhone is written, and there's nothing that indicates the phone is installed in the eye. Someone seeing that clip who has NOT seen the episode therefore might think they are saying iPhone, and think its a dumb heavy handed clumsy commentary, and be disinclined to watch the episode.

Hence, they edit the clip to take out that element. Now the clip shows the viewer only things that are understandable and funny without needing context from earlier in the episode. The clip thus has a chance of fulfilling its intended function of getting people to watch the new Futurama episodes.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Also additional stories:

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1480111>

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1484097>

</comment><comment><USER6> Sad times for protections of parody. Maybe will get the full story on why it was censored later.</comment>


Interview with designers of Ello - <AUTHOR> http://inspiringcreative.wordpress.com/2013/03/06/new-berger-and-fohr-interview-define-principles-for-yourself/

<comment><USER2> I like this. Looking forward to it. Looks clean and simple. There's room for this sort of thing out there I think.

<comment><AUTHOR> @garimagupta95 Let me know if you need an invite.</comment></comment>


Building Out the SeatGeek Data Pipeline - <AUTHOR> http://chairnerd.seatgeek.com/building-out-the-seatgeek-data-pipeline/

<comment><USER2> We've been using Redshift + Looker a lot lately at my company and it's been great. We've also added DynamoDb to our pipeline so that we're about to move data from DynamoDb -> Redshift -> Looker for running reports and analytics on NoSQL data

</comment><comment><USER3> I've been interested in these database query frontend services/apps for ahwile (e.g., Looker, periscope, chartio) but every single one of them has only a Free Trial and no mention of pricing anywhere on their sites–-which makes me think its a multi-thousand dollar/month investment.

Is this true? If so, is there anything a little more cost-effective for running, visualizing, and saving database queries?

<comment><USER2> Yes, I believe Looker requires an annual contract at multi-thousand dollars a month. Not sure about the other products you listed and I don't know much about cheaper alternatives

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> This is similar to our[1] pipeline. We love Luigi for what it brings to the table for building ETL pipelines.

[1] Appuri (www.appuri.com)

</comment><comment><USER5> Do most people use Redshift for this sort of thing? Is that the best option out there?

<comment><USER6> By this sort of thing do you mean using it as a data warehouse? That's what Redshift is branded as and the performance gains are definitely similar to what the blog outlines.

In my opinion, Redshift is the best data warehouse solution for a team building a small to medium-sized warehouse. This covers most use cases. For those building a data warehouse above a petabyte in size, you're going to have to look at different solutions. Redshift is powerful and relatively cheap compared to its competitors.</comment></comment>


Steve Jobs: Let the post-PC era begin (live blog) | Beyond Binary - CNET News - <AUTHOR> http://news.cnet.com/8301-13860_3-20006442-56.html?tag=mncol;posts <comment><USER2> "I'll tell you a secret: I actually started on tablet first." Had idea of a multitouch display that you could type on. "About six months later they called me in and showed me this prototype display." This was in the early 2000s. Gave it to one of Apple's early UI folks who got inertia scrolling and other things working. Jobs thought "My god, we can build a phone out of this. And I put the tablet on the shelf because the phone was more important. When we got our wind back and thought we could do something else, we took the tablet back off the shelf."

Their degree of secrecy is pretty amazing. I can't help but think, when reading this passage, about how silly it is for the iPhone "dev team" (the jailbreaking community) to talk as if they planted the seed, in Apple's mind, of releasing a native SDK — as if that neuron had never fired within the walls of Apple. I think it's hard for people to imagine remaining so tight-lipped about plans of immense scope.</comment>


Show HN: Will this also show up on the Ask HN: page? - Yup - <AUTHOR>

Just curious... <comment><USER2> Hmm. Must fix that.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Yes it does</comment>


Twoplustwo forums down by hackers - <AUTHOR>

<comment><USER2> This isn't the first time either. They've been targets for years and, IIRC, it was in 2010 that their database was compromised and user/pw info stolen.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> forumserver.twoplustwo.com/

</comment><comment><USER3> For those that don't know 2+2 is a long time publisher of poker books and has ran the main poker discussion forum for probably 12-13 years.</comment>


Libraries Can Be More Than Just Books (2017) - <AUTHOR> https://www.nytimes.com/2017/09/18/opinion/libraries-affordable-housing.html <comment><USER2> Library's _should_ be more than just books.

When the idea of the public library was first conceived, information was published and disseminated using print media - books, newspapers, magazines and the like. The role of the public library wasn't to give books to the public, it was to give information to the public. But at the time the best way to give access to this information was using a room full of books, they used the same name for both a room full of books (a library) and a place where the public could get information (a library).

Now days, since the source and publication of information has changed so dramatically, the role of the public library must stay the same - to provide free and easy access to information to the public. But how they perform that role must change.

<comment><USER3> not just information, but useful information. libraries have an important curation role as well, in addition to storage. We cant let the internet archive be the only modern day library.

<comment><USER4> > not just information, but useful information.

all information is useful, as utility is dependent on the context for which the information is needed.

<comment><USER5> All information is useful, but too much can be worse than none at all. When faced with too much choice, people tend to shut down a little. Curation is important.

Edit: I've probably overstated my point. I'm not sure I believe too much is worse than none at all, but it's certainly worse than a well-curated selection.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> This is not what the article discusses but the title made me think it would: why do we only have libraries for books? Why haven't we made libraries for other useful resources? It makes sense from a perspective of evening the playing field, as libraries are supposed to, but also from a sustainability perspective too.

There are so many things that people will buy and only use once or twice a year, if even that often. We could save ourselves a lot of productive effort and resources by putting a few versions of these things in a library for hundreds of people to make use of. Things like say power tools, or any fairly specialised tool in general. I think you can take this idea really far, like even having clothes libraries - you could have all new clothes all the time and someone else could have new clothes when you're tired of the ones you've been wearing.

<comment><USER7> Stores that rent formal wear for weddings and similar events are clothing libraries of a sort, although you pay the "library" directly instead of through your taxes.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Going from the title, I was going to talk about how I can get DVDs, CDs, Blurays, and ebooks from my library; I'm a regular.

I wasn't expecting "housing," though nice that you mention it, why yes, I would like to live in the same building as a library.

<comment><USER9> My local library has a play area for kids. It's great to go in the winter to get out of the house, and the kids can read, play.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> I just joined a tool library in my neighborhood ($1/day for power tools), but thought to myself, why doesn't my library have a room (and staff member) for this?

<comment><USER11> Where I'm from, libraries borrow power tools for free. It kinda makes sense because they already have the infrastructure for storing, borrowing and getting back lost items.

Other things you can borrow or use in local libraries: cargo bikes, moving trolleys, sports equipment (tennis rackets, skis, skates...), board games (never had a single missing item in any I've borrowed), 3d printers, laser cutters, music rehearsal and recoding studios (with grand pianos), tents for camping, tablets and computers, musical instruments, etc.

I think this is great because it makes these things available to the less privileged and I don't mind paying the taxes to support this.

<comment><USER12> This begs the question--where are you from? I think your experience is likely fairly atypical.

<comment><USER11> This wonderful service is provided by the Helsinki metropolitan area libraries.

[http://www.helmet.fi/](http://www.helmet.fi/)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> I wasn't expecting housing. That was a bit surprising.

As a related example, the Helsinki Metropolitan Area Libraries offer various services including makers spaces with 3D printers: [http://www.helmet.fi/en- US/Libraries_and_services/Library_Ma...](http://www.helmet.fi/en- US/Libraries_and_services/Library_Makerspace)

One can reserve the printers online, see their status and so on.

Libraries are a wonderful existing resource to that can be leveraged to build a platform for non-profit communal activities.

<comment><USER14> They have these in Chicago. Seems to have fallen wayside recently.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> They could be augmented with datacenters for a distributed search index that is based on open source software.

<comment><USER16> Georgia already has this: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evergreen_(software)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evergreen_\(software\))

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> the purpose of a library is to indefinitely store important information for easy public access and cull the fat. They are curators and information stores.

The need for curation has only increased in the information overload stage and libraries are still desperately needed. Libraries need to operate more like the internet archive.</comment>


Tracking a Bitcoin Thief Pt. II: Disclosure of MidasCoin Collapse - <AUTHOR> https://bitcomsec.true.io/bitcomsec/tracking-a-bitcoin-thief-part-ii/

<comment><USER2> Another expose, this time it's a two for one on bitcoin thieves...

</comment><comment><USER2> This was submitted right before the DNS Crash last night</comment>


China begins operating world's largest radio telescope - <AUTHOR> http://bigstory.ap.org/article/b51775577335473b9dfa783b6e293965/china-begins-operating-worlds-largest-radio-telescope <comment><USER2> Don't use the sun as an amplification vector and attract Extraterrestrial attention!

<comment><USER3> Haha, Three Body is a great fiction story

<comment><USER4> Spoiler alert, that's still in my TOREAD list :/

<comment><USER2> Sorry :( You should still definitely read it! It's an excellent story.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Everyone remembers what Arecibo was originally built for right?

<comment><USER6> I don't, and for those who like me didn't know:

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arecibo_Observatory#Design_and...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arecibo_Observatory#Design_and_architecture)

Apparently it was initially meant to help identify re-entering warheads so that they could be shot down before hitting their targets.

<comment><USER5> Or pick up radio signals from Russia when they bounced off the moon... [https://steveblank.com/secret-history/](https://steveblank.com/secret- history/)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> The article mentions searching for gravitational waves. Anyone have info on how they might accomplish that via radio telescope?

<comment><USER8> Pulsar timing arrays: [https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pulsar_timing_array](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pulsar_timing_array)

<comment><USER7> Ah hah! I thought it might be something like that, but figured there was something I wasn't considering. Thanks for the link.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d27ZWhOM2W8](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d27ZWhOM2W8)

</comment><comment><USER10> Strange that the last news from FAST was on August 9th: [http://fast.bao.ac.cn/en/index_eng.html](http://fast.bao.ac.cn/en/index_eng.html)

Basically for month and a half pretty much no press releases from them.

</comment><comment><USER11> I didn't see it in the article, but I recently heard that NIST played a role in the design of this telescope.

</comment><comment><USER12> Sad this was promoted instead of this submission: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12574669](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12574669)

That is the original ap.org link

<comment><USER13> Sorry your submission didn't come out on top, but thanks for the link! We've updated the URL of this one from [http://phys.org/news/2016-09-china-world- largest-radio-teles...](http://phys.org/news/2016-09-china-world-largest- radio-telescope.html).

<comment><USER14> I love the light handed, thoughtful, considered moderation on HN. The contrast with Stack Overflow (as per an active thread at the moment) is stark. Well done, please keep it up.</comment></comment></comment>