Paul Graham interview on Econtalk -  Start-ups, Innovation, and Creativity - <AUTHOR> http://www.econtalk.org/archives/2009/08/graham_on_start.html

<comment><USER3> The discussion of biotech was interesting. It made clear that Y Combinator is _replicating the biotech model of mass production of innovation._

Paul said (more or less) that the risk investing in Biotech was in some ways lower (because it's easier to identify the 20 leading scientists from whom the next wonder-discovery will emerge). I think this correct, but the comparison between that and what YC does is misguided.

Those leading scientists are like the companies who've _already been through YC,_ presented on a platter for the big money to get at.

So what's the YC equivalent? Paul said it himself - grad school.

For Biotech, a PhD program is the way to mass-produce seed-funded innovation. You give someone a few years, let them attack a problem and generate data. The best PhDs coming out get labs and professorships (equivalent to venture funding worth $1-$2 million), etc.

Hacking is not science. Therefore a seed-funding model that works for science does not work well for software innovation. YC is the replacement - it's your PhD in software innovation. People go in, work with mentors (I meet my PhD supervisor once a week, and regularly hear talks from the best in the field, just like YC founders). The best innovators come out and get funded for $1-$2 million and hopefully go on.

</comment><comment><USER4> EconTalk is one of my favorite podcasts. Seriously every entrepreneur would do well subscribing to it (and listening through the back catalogue).

<comment><USER5> On the other hand, I wish I could be a fly on the wall during some of these infamous YC dinner talks.

<comment><USER6> If there were flies on the wall, they wouldn't be nearly as interesting. Just corner some of the speakers elsewhere and put a few drinks in them, and you might get similar results.

<comment><USER7> Another technique I found works great is to "be wrong on front of an expert". Make uninformed but curious statements before knowledeable people and I will take the time to tell you how it _really_ is.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Two of my favorite topics, entrepreneurship and economics, being discussed by leaders in each respective field.

It's when you get crossovers such as this when you get into the field that Joseph Schumpeter and Clayton Christensen really mainstreamed: 1\. "Creative Destruction": The concept of new technologies destroying the older ones. 2\. Innovation as the driver of creative destruction.

My only real critique of Y Combinator and Graham's model in general is that it's still very tech/web-oriented. I get the cost and exit benefits, but the noise around this sector has changed people's ideas of startups: Lemonade stands, clothing lines, etc.

Most surprising takeaway is at the end, where once again immigration limitations are shown to stifle economic creativity and growth.

<comment><USER9> _My only real critique of Y Combinator and Graham's model in general is that it's still very tech/web-oriented. I get the cost and exit benefits, but the noise around this sector has changed people's ideas of startups: Lemonade stands, clothing lines, etc._

Ycombinator is web-oriented, but the model isn't (necessarily). You could have a company similar to YC in any field with low initial overhead and high scalability. Unfortuantely, I can't think of any that can match web software (maybe finance, actually: there are already hedge fund incubators, and they might scale down average funding to scale up the number of people they fund).

<comment><USER10> You could probably easily do the model for consumer products _if_ you would be able to figure out a test distribution mechanism, such as a partnership with a grocery store chain, or some such. Yeah, it would be something akin to the American Inventor show, but the key is to be able to do serious in-store or TV ad (informercial or 30 second) testing.

Here's how the Crest Spin Brush came to be: [http://www.businessweek.com/smallbiz/content/aug2002/sb20020...](http://www.businessweek.com/smallbiz/content/aug2002/sb2002081_2099.htm)

<comment><USER11> Isn't this something like how QVC works - take stuff and fail fast or explode the market for that whacky items with copycats?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> one of the things mentioned towards the end is that they "don't get" the time sink application. that is because they are producers. the internet has made visible the vast unproductive masses. paul doesn't like timesinks because his time is valuable, most people's time is not valuable.

</comment><comment><USER6> I've enjoyed Cafe Hayek, Russ Roberts' blog, for some time <http://cafehayek.com/>

</comment><comment><USER13> I simply loved listening to this. It was more like a fascinating conversation with Paul Graham that we got to listen in on than an interview and it was extremely exciting.

Thanks for the fascinating insights, essays and interviews Paul.

</comment><comment><USER14> Very much enjoyed listening to this. Graham's enthusiasm is palpable and infectious, and his knowledge of the subfield is clearly second to none.

<comment><USER15> I've read Paul Graham's essays and followed his projects ever since I stumbled upon his essay on Java (as an ambitious teenager dreaming of hacking), but I've never actually heard him talk. I was surprised, gathering from the manners of expression and enthusiasm, how well he fit my image of the hacker and nerd - although I had all the reasons to expect that. It's not the voice I've heard in text.

Anyway, it got me thinking how much being surrounded by young (be it yet intelligent and stimulating) hacker people affects the way you think and talk.

<comment><USER16> You'll like this: <http://itc.conversationsnetwork.org/shows/detail188.html>

<comment><USER15> I did. But this is a prepared speech, by PG the essayist, of prose.

I guess the novelty factor for me in the interview was more of a social quality, through communication. The part of a person that does not show in prose.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> By far, the most important statement (although it was all quite interesting) was this: "There's nothing better than to have sophistocated users. And conversely, it's dangerous to build a product for giant corporations or, god help you, for the defense department, because then the stupidity of your customer will make you stupid. You want to build a product for clever, impoverished outsiders."

Gives me hope that they'll see that in my startup's YC application.

</comment><comment><USER18> "worse than random" - great way to describe the likely result of big- corp/government investment in IT projects. The YC model (and VC model to some extent) works precisely because of the unpredictable nature of innovation - <USER2> is hard to predict 'the next big thing', 'the next google' etc. but you can increase your chances by investing thinly across many startups. The returns for those that succeed will far outweigh the cost of those that don't.

</comment><comment><USER19> The net result was interesting, but the interviewer's frequent interruptions made it more grating than it had to be.

</comment><comment><USER20> Very nice talk. Paul sounds very passionate and down to earth. One of the things we should all work on is decreasing timesinks.</comment>


Beware of Startup Sharks - <AUTHOR> http://normanconquesttech.blogspot.com/2013/01/beware-of-startup-sharks.html

<comment><USER2> _Fifth marketing, is it really that hard that you have to give away 50% of your stock to do it? You mean to tell me you don't know how Google Adwords works, or how to give a speech at user groups that have an interest in your MVP, or how to create social networking pages for your MVP, or how to make a web page and use SEO to bump it up to the top of Google? You really don't know how to set the pricing strategy, product, promotion, placement, process, and people? You don't even know how to use Vistaprint for cheap Business Cards that you pass out to people in real life and meet them at conventions, business meetings, or just bump into them at sporting events or whatever? You don't know how to contact web sites that do reviews of MVPs and can help promote it? You don't even know how to submit your blog or web site about your MVP to Hacker News?_

Interesting to mix very easy (vista print business cards) and very effing hard together and act like it is all one level.

I do, however, agree with the overall article.

<comment><USER3> You know, it's interesting. I am finally co-founding a start-up with someone I have worked with in open source for a couple years. Just got the incorporation paperwork back. Exciting times.

You know the initial stages of marketing are easy. Really taking it to the next level is quite difficult. There is a reason why there are people who run marketing firms.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yes but once you do the initial marketing and it pays off, you can afford to hire the marketing firm to take it to the next level.

<comment><USER3> Very true. Additionally, you will get more out of hiring the marking firm by getting all the little nuts and bolts done first.

Honestly if I knew the guy personally and trusted him, the initial deal wouldn't be that bad. But I agree with the article that this smells worse than a three day old mackerel.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Terrific post, right on every single count. But ...

There's a lot of people out there who think they have got the massivest bestest idea since Zuck's IPO and it will only take a good programmer a couple of days to implement this awesome idea and then they'll be rolling in it.

So your startup shark is P T Barnum's great great grandson ... and cashing in on $8000 here and $8000 there and before you know it he's got the best gig going.

<comment><AUTHOR> Figuring that 90% of startups fail in this manner, he has a 10% chance of hitting a jackpot. But then he's ruined 90% of the startups that didn't do so well in order to do it.

Let's say he funds 1000 startups that is $8M invested, he loses $7.2M in investment money due to a 90% fail. But 10% go on to earn him one million dollars in company stock each. That is a $100M earnings minus the $7.2M loss $92.8M in profits. But if he gets a Facebook Zuck IPO in billions, well he found a diamond in the rough, have won the startup lottery.

But you have to ask, why aren't more investors doing this?

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> If he can learn 37 programming languages, he can learn how to market well enough to bootstrap a company. This is just a long list of excuses not to even get started. There are so many reasons not to get started, so many reasons you will fail, and so many reasons to just go get a real job. If you're listening to any of that you're not really an.d entrepreneur and you probably should just go get a real job.

</comment><comment><USER6> I'm sorry but this is is possibly the most ignorant post on startups I have ever read. To quote Pauli it's not even wrong.

</comment><comment><USER7> What I really like is that he's illustrating that a startup is a LOT more than just writing some code!!!

<comment><AUTHOR> Many Programmers think all they can do to be a success is just to write code and nothing else. Those who think that fall victim to the startup shark. There is more to a startup than just writing code, otherwise you just have an Underpants Gnome business plan. <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tO5sxLapAts>

Phase 1: Write Code

Phase 2: ?

Phase 3: Profit!</comment></comment>


Skype server took a short break - <AUTHOR> http://www.skype.com/intl/en/

<comment><USER2> On Win7 Deleting "C:\Users\\{Your Username}\AppData\Roaming\Skype\shared.xml" solves the problem.

<comment><USER3> And on OSX it's `~/Library/Application Support/Skype/shared.xml`

<comment><USER4> Thank you, that fixed it ! Love HN :D

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Wow, ok -- I thought I was crazy for about 40 minutes this morning as I tried launching Skype on 4 of my computers (2 Windows 7 machines, 1 Ubuntu machine, and 1 MacBook Pro). It crashed within seconds on each and every one.

It's good to know it wasn't just me.

BTW, thanks to those of you who posted potential fixes.

</comment><comment><USER6> My Linux Skype client (ver 2.2) kept crashing on me since 3 hours ago, as in when I'm starting the client it stays open for about 3-4 seconds, then quits with message "Aborted".

To fix it, I first deleted ~/.Skype, then I disabled by Internet connection, then reopened Skype, then tried to login (of course it doesn't work, my net is down, but it's going in a loop mode continuously trying to connect), then re- enable my Internet connection.

Well, either that or just dumb luck, but I'm not touching it to see if the method is repeatable.

<comment><USER7> Reiterating the Windows and MacOSX fix:

[http://heartbeat.skype.com/2011/05/problems_signing_into_sky...](http://heartbeat.skype.com/2011/05/problems_signing_into_skype_an.html)

For me on Ubuntu - simply moving the .Skype directory and rerunning the program worked

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> "Some of you may have problems signing in to Skype and making calls. We're investigating and hope to have more details to share soon."

<http://twitter.com/#!/Skype/status/73718207676022784>

</comment><comment><USER3> <obligatory Microsoft joke>

<comment><USER9> Don't worry they are migrating to IIS

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Downgrading to Skype 4.2 seems to solve it. [http://blog.alertfox.com/2011/05/mysterious-skype-crash- down...](http://blog.alertfox.com/2011/05/mysterious-skype-crash-downgrade- to.html)

</comment><comment><USER11> Even <http://heartbeat.skype.com/> seems to be suffering, and when it loads it claims that everything is "working normally".

Sigh.

</comment><comment><USER12> Everything seems to be back now. I didn't delete anything and launched Skype normally without any crashes.</comment>


Thank you to dang and sctb - <AUTHOR> Dan and Scott do an incredible amount of work behind the scenes to make Hacker News what it is. I have never met two more thoughtful community stewards. They usually get more hate than thanks, which they deal with cheerfully. This community means a lot to a lot of people.<p>So today I wanted to say thanks, on behalf of the HN community. <comment><USER2> They have both chastised me for "funny" (to me) or intemperate comments. Sometimes I agree, sometimes I don't. But I have never, never felt that they had anything but the interest of the HN community as a whole.

I have never, ever seen any online community moderated better or even remotely close to as well as HN.

I am deeply thankful for HN. It is a surprisingly important part of my life, almost solely because of them.

<comment><USER3> Generally very much enjoy the moderation here (enough liberty to let side things slide when needed, enough control that it remains of good quality), but in terms of community that is made to produce quality content through efficient moderation, the benevolent dictators of askhistorians are still far ahead of anything else though. The content of that sub would be worth paying a subscription for.

<comment><USER4> /r/AskHistorians is a very particular type of community. It's super interesting and I'm glad it exists, but if no other types of communities existed I would be very sad.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> dang has to be one of the most patient and civil mods I've ever come across on an internet forum of any kind. I try and mimic his style on assets that I have mod duties on.

</comment><comment><USER6> as someone whose writing ends up on here from time to time, I really appreciate the HN mods' work to keep discussion on topic & constructive. It's obviously a tough job and every time I've emailed them with a concern they've been very helpful.

<comment><USER7> And as an aside, I absolutely love your writing.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Yes, thanks! The level of conversation here is unmatched. The set of things Dan and Scott have done to improve upon even the historical baseline are amazing (e.g., resubmit to front page for good submissions that got missed). HN is where I've turned for years for honest discussion, and thanks to our moderators I expect it will be for years to come.

</comment><comment><USER9> dang really is a great moderator. He's got a good eye for spotting problematic behavior, and a level head for dealing with it. He's set me straight in the past, and I'm glad he did. The way he remains both professional and empathetic, even when dealing with sensitive users and topics, really exudes the best of hacker news ethos. Here's to you, dang!

</comment><comment><USER10> One feature on HN that was implemented a while ago now, but often crosses my mind to give thanks for is being able to collapse and expand comment threads. The fact that the site remembers them across page reloads is also a nice and useful touch.

So thanks to those responsible.

<comment><USER11> The implementation is quite interesting :) [https://news.ycombinator.com/hn.js](https://news.ycombinator.com/hn.js)

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Their nicks don't ring a bell with me, and I've been here for ~2 years.

Which probably means that what they're doing is a good thing though, not a lot of flame wars going on! (Or alternatively, I just stay away from articles that might cause need for more moderation).

But thanks! Good mods are crucial for a place like this

<comment><USER13> You probably don't have showdead enabled. Unlike other places bans come with an explanation - so I see them fairly often following flagged posts.

<comment><USER14> Good idea, I should turn that on! Thanks for the suggestion.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> While I know how hard these people work, I really cannot support your enthusiasm. The users are often banned at slightest opportunities and they are not even informed what they did wrong or the fact that they _just_ got banned. They would just get dreaded "your are posting too fast" error and all their future posts and comments are automatically de-ranked forever with no recourse or appeal to these higher powers. I felt this was very similar to being placed on no-fly list which we as hacker community deride so much as infallible authoritarianism.

As HN community is more and more becoming group think (watch how this post will be downvoted) and laying these extra layers of super powers punishing anyone ad hock doesn't help. In few posts when I wrote non-popular opinion very respectfully these folks expressed their displeasure. Mods should NEVER do that.

The sign of such required moderators is indicator of how broken the algorithms driving HN. Instead of fixing these fundamental tech issues, the powers behind HN have doubled down on exercising heavy handed dictatorships. The least they could have done but never have bothered is to at least tell people they punish what they did wrong, how do they fix it and get back in community. The best they could have done would b ego open source HN and have honest discussions about various issues we have as community so more brain power is available to solve these issues. That's the hacker way.

Update: Great! Group thinkers are already getting busy at casting downvotes.

<comment><USER16> >They would just get dreaded "your are posting too fast" error and all their future posts and comments are automatically de-ranked forever with no recourse or appeal to these higher powers.

Hear hear. This is by far the worst part of HN. It makes me very annoyed, more than any discussion on this site has, to see that I'm posting too fast... By having a discussion or responding to multiple people. What a horrible restriction.

HN is open source and you can see how they put a flag on your account if they think you argue too much.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> Thank you Dan and Scott!

I appreciate the understanding, i once added a "post to HN" button to my RSS feed service and i posted too much..

I received a ban and only afterwards it seemed i was posting too much, but explained the situation and was met with understanding. Now, i'm much more considerate.

Thanks for the human moderation and keeping the quality on HN as good as possible.

</comment><comment><USER18> I don't always agree with their moderation decisions, but am ever grateful for their fine work in maintaining the best discussion board on the Internet. Deepest thanks to you guys!

</comment><comment><USER19> Hackernews and freenode are the best tech communities I've come across. Don't know where I'd be without the tremendous generosity of the persons in these communities. Currently interviewing with multiple companies from the who's hiring thread.

And to be on topic, I'm not as familiar with sctb, but Dan's comments have always been nothing but constructive. They're never disparaging, they seem primarily to be nudges towards decent behavior. Thank you Dan!

I'll keep an eye out for you Scott ;-).

Cheers all, and happy Thanksgiving to everyone celebrating today.

</comment><comment><USER20> Although Ive seen questionable decisions occasionally, over 99% of what Ive seen with showdead on was a tremendous volume of useless or negative comments HN is better of without. That's on top of work to stop things like vote manipulations. dang also intervened to calm my ass down in some scruffles. Agreeing or disagreeing, he always respinded to my questions or gripes in email with thoughtful points.

So, thanks Dan and Scott for all the good work you do keeping the comment sections higher quality than most of the Internet. :)

</comment><comment><USER21> Dang has done a very good job I must say -- haven't noticed sctb, which means he did a good job as well, not drawing attention to the moderation (which is what happens when it's done badly).

<comment><USER22> sctb is a bit newer (since about a year or so?).

<comment><USER23> 4+ years actually :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> And for Arc too!

[http://arclanguage.org/forum](http://arclanguage.org/forum)

Thanks Dan + Scott!

</comment><comment><USER25> As a tribute to Dang, whose name you say when you make a mistake, here are some of my favorite Far Side cartoons:

Some Weirdo: [https://i.pinimg.com/564x/f8/74/40/f8744035e15d69eb8fd4c70de...](https://i.pinimg.com/564x/f8/74/40/f8744035e15d69eb8fd4c70dea17c2e0.jpg)

Monster Jobs: [https://i.pinimg.com/564x/21/81/3e/21813e975f2aa35259246eeca...](https://i.pinimg.com/564x/21/81/3e/21813e975f2aa35259246eecad69aee6.jpg)

Vultures: [https://i.pinimg.com/564x/e4/d2/f3/e4d2f3b47c3de90e1a084d94a...](https://i.pinimg.com/564x/e4/d2/f3/e4d2f3b47c3de90e1a084d94ab24daa4.jpg)

Construction Birds at Lunch: [https://i.pinimg.com/564x/3b/c5/fd/3bc5fd323e791b6879529e6a5...](https://i.pinimg.com/564x/3b/c5/fd/3bc5fd323e791b6879529e6a5ab12dac.jpg)

Blizard's A-Comin': [https://i.pinimg.com/736x/61/f9/bb/61f9bb66cc0e79f06246876ba...](https://i.pinimg.com/736x/61/f9/bb/61f9bb66cc0e79f06246876ba2f4f512 --christmas-humor-merry-christmas.jpg)

The Creeps: [https://i.pinimg.com/originals/5a/1c/5e/5a1c5ef2e9ab19d27970...](https://i.pinimg.com/originals/5a/1c/5e/5a1c5ef2e9ab19d279704fc620b74d7f.jpg)

Superman In His Later Years: [https://i.pinimg.com/564x/86/95/a7/8695a7c1cfffb69bc3b92c980...](https://i.pinimg.com/564x/86/95/a7/8695a7c1cfffb69bc3b92c980ad7b185.jpg)

Before Paper and Scissors: [https://i.pinimg.com/564x/a4/cf/ab/a4cfabe6847546e52343d4d15...](https://i.pinimg.com/564x/a4/cf/ab/a4cfabe6847546e52343d4d1595ae69b.jpg)

Sorry, Buddy: [https://i.pinimg.com/564x/49/6b/3a/496b3a234ddeca894887b249e...](https://i.pinimg.com/564x/49/6b/3a/496b3a234ddeca894887b249e6f2cadd.jpg)

Nerd! ...: [https://i.pinimg.com/564x/c9/08/a0/c908a02a8dfa42db9973f743b...](https://i.pinimg.com/564x/c9/08/a0/c908a02a8dfa42db9973f743b761777f.jpg)

The Thanksgiving themed one that I googled and googled and googled for but couldn't find, which was taped to my mom's refrigerator, was the disappointed bird standing in front of the open refrigerator, lamenting: "Dang, somebody ate the middle out of the daddy longlegs!"

<comment><USER26> i wonder if the Monster Jobs cartoon was the impetus for Monster.com

<comment><USER25> I just hope I wasn't the inspiration for the "Some Weirdo" one.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> Thanks guys. And — despite the fact that every time I say the phrase on HN I get downvoted to hell — I'm going to say it: not all heroes wear capes ;)

<comment><USER9> Wait, you're telling me these guys don't have capes yet? I'm sensing some great gift ideas for the YC secret-santa this year.

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> Dan and Scott, thank you for thoughtful moderation, patches, and your cheerful goodwill.

</comment><comment><USER29> What we don't see is all the goodwill and interesting discussion that is suppressed by the mods.

And fwiw it's pretty disgusting that people feel the need to kiss up to them all the time on HN, but it's like supplicating before anyone with power, it's done for a reason and it's an ugly aspect of humanity.

Countless times I've seen interesting submissions buried, either by some behind-the-scenes process or via a title change that reverts to the authors boring or misleading title.

There are surely some griefers who need to be policed, but the HN mods are accountable to nobody and there is no public record of their actions which might reveal improprieties or abuse of the trust placed in them by pg and the community.

So I am thankful for any good intentions they may have, but sadly the evidence suggests that at least one of them is a bully who abuses the authoritarian power and lack of accountability.

I'm not arguing that moderation isn't necessary, just that unaccountable and non-transparent moderation decisions are a recipe for corruption and abuse of power.

Basically, HN is run like Singapore. It's very tidy but there is an authoritarian dimension that is unsettling. HN thrives when the mods are busy with other things and don't have time to taze every so called flame war and "fix" every title.

</comment><comment><USER30> This is by far my favorite pocket of the internet and much thanks goes to the team that keeps the culture alive and well!

</comment><comment><USER31> You generally only hear the complaints, but I think most of us agree that the community is much better because of them.

</comment><comment><USER32> Thank you guys! Your nicknames look like some UNIXy command line tools. :P

</comment><comment><USER33> dang has great taste in fiction. I enjoyed our brief discussion of character names in Pynchon and Peake.

Here's why I remember this: no one I know in real life reads fiction. I know plenty of people who read non-fiction (political stuff mostly), but no one in my circle takes the time to just sit back on a rainy Saturday and read something someone else made up. Even my wife is reading Bob Woodward's "Fear", and we aren't even American. So yeah, that little interaction made my day.

<comment><USER34> yay pynchon! i buy trystero coffee just for the name (you have to be in the know to find it (but it's not that hard)).

<comment><USER33> Ha, that is excellent. I once thought that Pierce Inverarity would be a great name for a beer. It would be peak hipster pretentiousness: a brewery whose beers were named for Pynchon characters. Unfortunately, they'd probably all be IPAs.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> Promoting quality discussion and letting people share their experiences in a professional manner makes me a daily reader of HN. Thank you for your work!

</comment><comment><USER36> Hear hear! Thanks to dang and sctb, and to everyone who keeps this site up and running, AND to the incredibly thoughtful and interesting commenters!

</comment><comment><USER37> Indeed, thank you! I'm always impressed how quick and precise they reply when reached out to via e-mail, too.

</comment><comment><USER38> Thanks from my side. I have added only few comments but a regular visitor of this site for years now. A friend introduced me to this forum.

I think moderators are doing an excellent job to keep this forum decent and interesting.

Of course I also thank the people who make this forum and share interesting information.

</comment><comment><USER39> Thank you dang and sctb. Your effort is instrumental in keeping HN the cool place that it is :)

</comment><comment><USER40> Hear hear. Like so many of us here, I deeply appreciate all they do to keep the hive humming.

</comment><comment><USER41> Wow, I never knew dang was named Dan. I always said it as the word dang in my head

</comment><comment><USER42> I think they're good mods, but I don't think this thread is appropriate, nor would I want to have put them in the position of deciding whether to delete it bt making it, as the OP did.

<comment><USER43> The odds of the mods deleting it seem pretty slim seeing as the author of the post is their boss man.

The thread need not be deleted anyway. Nothing wrong with thanking some of the people that keep the site running smoothly. Especially on a day dedicated to giving thanks.

</comment></comment><comment><USER44> _waits for low quality comment and dang 's response_

</comment><comment><USER45> Also thanks for being so super responsive and helpful to emails queries too. I've gotten replies from dang in matter of minutes! Amazing how well they do it.

</comment><comment><USER46> Here here, you are both doing a tough job really well.

</comment><comment><USER47> As importantly, I think they were doing a good job before and have improved. Not every successful person makes that effort. Great work guys.

</comment><comment><USER48> Thank you Dan and Scott! Your work on HN is deeply appreciated! You keep us all civil and on topic tirelessly.

</comment><comment><USER25> I can't reply to them and would't want to, but the sputtering Tourettes of accusations from disgruntled shadow banned trolls in this thread is music to my ears -- the moderators are doing a bang-up job, and the system works!

Thank you for "forcing San Fransisco liberal social justice politics down everyone's throat", you "west coast liberal elite echo chamber". Your mother was a hamster and your father smelt of elderberries!!! ;)

</comment><comment><USER49> Yep moderation is a thankless job, so today we ah, give thanks, as it were!

</comment><comment><USER50> Thanks, Dan and Scott!

</comment><comment><USER51> Yea, thanks to everyone who keeps this site rolling !

</comment><comment><USER52> I'd like to express my gratitude as well.

</comment><comment><USER53> kudos! moderation is a lot of work that you typically only notice when it isn't happening. thanks a lot!

</comment><comment><USER54> Patient, smart, consistent. Thanks.

</comment><comment><USER55> They're awesome -- thank you!

</comment><comment><USER56> fantastic job, great mods. thanks for your hard work.

</comment><comment><USER57> Thank you both.

</comment><comment><USER58> same here. thanks guys!

</comment><comment> black-tea I do not post my thoughts on certain topics any more because I know I'll get banned for it. So you can thank them for your echo chamber.

<comment><USER3> I have plenty of contrarian opinion on things, such as thinking Tesla is massively overvalued and their autopilot a scam, or my views on apple, etc... And while I may be down voted when posting them never ever have I feared a ban.

Maybe to find the issue you should pay less attention to your opinion and more to how you express it. Disagreeing with people is okay, even on the Internet there isn't always a side that's right and one that's wrong.

<comment><USER59> If you want an example, I have one at hand

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER60> I don't think dang is a good mod. They've removed my ability to downvote or make a new thread.

In fact, they remind me of Stackoverflow community.

I didn't ran into problem with sctb tho, i think he's fine. But dang, she needs tone down her impulse of over moderating everything.

I don't agree with all their methods and opinions. Most threads which hurt business are deranked and removed. Specially, the ones which discuss the dark side of the startups, after all YC has to make sure no one rocks their boat.

And the ones which discuss sexual harrasment or racism in YC Startups or Valley startups, are removed from the first page faster.

Lifestyle business threads are also removed from first page so that no entrepreneur might imagine that something is possible without VC funding.

Pretty, sure these guys get paid for their work. I don't see why should we be thankful afterall it's free market. If they don't like their job, someone else will.

The purpose of this forum is to attract talent from all around the world to silicon valley and mining the bright people who comment there for ideas for next billion dollar startup which YC guys will fund as they got those investors on their side.

Rest of us really don't benefit in material way other than probably a feeling of winning an argument on internet and raising testosterone/dopamine a bit.

</comment><comment><USER61> dang has (nicely) called me out a couple of times for making comments that were rude or not productive. I'm glad that they're trying to keep this place civil.

<comment><USER62> He called me out at least once, too. But the time he did, well, I pretty much deserved it...</comment></comment>


Array VC Allocates $1m for Underrepresented Enterprise Founders - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/array-ventures/arrayvc-allocates-1m-for-underrepresented-enterprise-founders-815a8e6efa28 <comment><USER2> >These racial discrepancies could be due to a variety of reasons, but it is likely that founders from underrepresented minorities are simply not granted the same amount of opportunities and experiences, specifically when it comes to funding.

This is effectively the assumption behind the modern day inequality movement and it is absolutely unproven. You can't just choose to believe what is convenient for your movement. When you have no hard evidence that the root cause is actually discrimination, you're just justifying your own racist power grab. I cannot believe that anti-white and anti-male discrimination has become so normalized in modern western society.

When does it stop? I've yet to see a single mention of a magical target demographic ratio where we go back to race-blind practices...and considering white men as an isolated demographic are a minority, when enough of corporate HR adopts such explicitly racist hiring practices, straight white men become marginalized. Its arguably happening already.

<comment><USER3> I'm sensing frustration.

Can you help me understand what you're advocating for?</comment></comment>


Why Continuous Deployment? - <AUTHOR> http://startuplessonslearned.blogspot.com/2009/06/why-continuous-deployment.html <comment><USER2> Continuous Deployment is a very intriguing idea. I haven't tried it, but in the the limit it makes sense. A few years ago I worked for a company that did large batch releases, scheduled every 3 months. The first month was spent negotiating with product management over product requirements and writing functional specifications. The next month was writing code. The third month was fairly rigorous QA, so much so that there was usually another month to fix the problems that QA found. The breakdown was 25% design documentation, 25% programming, and 50% fixing bugs that should have been caught in programming. The quality of the code that made it to production was very good, except for one time where a single bug brought the company to its knees for a week.

More recently, I did a consulting gig a company that released every two weeks with a one week QA cycle that allowed for a round of critical bug fixes. This was much smoother. There were rarely any show stoppers and even those were so fresh in eveyone's minds that they were quickly fixed.

Neither place practiced TDD or even rigorous unit testing. Testing was pretty much walking through manual scripts. It seems to me that continuous integration to production requires TDD or something close to it. I also question whether it is appropriate for an application with fiduciary responsibility, but I would love to be convinced otherwise.

<comment><USER3> I don't practice TDD _or_ unit testing, but I deploy code on average more than 5 times every day.

Despite not doing TDD or unit testing, I have enough confidence in my code that I spent a month in Greece on honeymoon last year with only a Blackberry, while an average of about 50,000 concurrent users were connected to the chat system I wrote for justin.tv. In that month the system didn't have a single problem.

My "secret", if I have one, is that every change I release is very small (maybe 5 or 10 lines of code - 20 lines at the very most). I read and re-read my changes thoroughly before I deploy, and test the new behavior many times. The evolution of the chat system I wrote has been a huge number of very small steps.

<comment><USER4> _and test the new behavior many times_

Manually? You can save a lot of time if automate that.

<comment><USER3> I do have _non-unit_ tests (but only for things that have actually failed more than once). Specifically, I have a bunch of chat bots that periodically log in to the production chat servers, talk to each other, ban each other, etc, etc, and make sure they get the responses they expect.

Yes, new functionality I test manually. I believe the time taken to write tests for things that have never failed is wasted.

<comment><USER5>
         I believe the time taken to write tests for things that have never failed is wasted.

Yes yes yes.

I've seen a lot of tests that, if they failed, would have meant that a thousand other tests would have also failed, and that test would have been simply more noise.

<comment><USER6> Then you're either a)not testing correctly or b)writing code with too many dependencies, or c)both. If a thousand tests break from a single code change, this should be a code smell that says your architecture needs work.

This is where testing gets its real value. Finding bugs is just a side effect of testing. The real value is that testing helps you _design_ good code.

<comment><USER7> I think he means the reverse though. It's not that a single line of code causes thousands of failures, it's that you'll never get that particular test to fail unless pretty much everything else is failing to, ergo it's a useless test.

I don't necessarily disagree with your point, just clarifying.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> A post from about 5 months ago going into some detail on IMVUs continuous deployment process which may be interesting to some: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=475017>

</comment><comment><USER9> I like continuous deployment and want to use it on a few websites I run.

However, it seems to depend on a large user set in order to "test deploy" the application to a subset of the user base.

Any thoughts on using this for projects with a small (< 1000) user base?

<comment><USER10> I think the principles apply, but the specific practice may have to change a bit. If you look at the five-part "cluster immune system" I normally use, only one part is dependent on a large user base, and that is incremental deploy. You can still use all the automated testing, sandbox, continuous integration and real-time alerting practices just as well.

I would suggest using something like Five Whys to figure out how different your situation really is, rather than assume you'll have a lot of problems due to a small user base: [http://startuplessonslearned.blogspot.com/2008/11/five- whys....](http://startuplessonslearned.blogspot.com/2008/11/five-whys.html)

You might find that the smaller customer base is actually a big advantage, since it allows you personally get to know many more customers and therefore find it easier to find and debug problems in realtime. Just a thought.

<comment><USER11> For this we thought about recording user input, then replaying it on the new build as a pre-deploy step and looking for errors in logs etc. Obviously this would only work without major ui/schema changes. Have you tried anything like this?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> The interesting idea that Eric introduces here is the concept of deploying plumbing for big new features continuously. This lets you work and small batches while making big changes.

<comment><USER13> Insightful observation.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: Is there a hacker news search function?   - <AUTHOR>

Also, does anyone remember the article talking about the website that has every single ipod application on it for free? Thanks.. <comment><USER2> <http://searchyc.com>

and

[http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=site%3Anews.ycombin...](http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=site%3Anews.ycombinator.com)

</comment><comment><USER3> Plus... there's a graphic at bottom of news.ycombinator.com to a FireFox extension: <http://www.webmynd.com/html/hackernews.html></comment>


Artificial Neural Networks – Introduction - <AUTHOR> http://www.rzagabe.com/artificial-neural-network-introduction/ <comment><USER2> This was a really nice article but I was anticipating more (an implementation example) at the end of it, hope you'll add more to it later!

</comment><comment><USER3> The following quote from the author: "Our brains behave like monkeys and it can be proven that most of our lives are about "what am I going to have for lunch?"..."

has this been proved ? would be very interested to know who proved this and how they went about doing it.

<comment><USER4> > has this been proved ?

Yes!

> would be very interested to know who proved this and how they went about > doing it.

Well. There's this thing you do. It only takes a few minutes. Then you wait about nine months. At that point you start collecting data. The first year or two are somewhat inconclusive. The data (and the subject) can be very noisy. By the time you've made observations and collected data for about eight years the conclusion is inescapable: Monkeys.

According to my observations across three of these experiments I would add that monkeys might sometimes have an edge over some of the crap we pull.

</comment></comment><comment> a-priori Take all arguments that these models resemble our brain with a huge grain of salt. At best they're a metaphor.

There's one critical difference between biological neural networks and the artificial models they're talking about here: the biological neurons produce spikes when they activate, not continuously-variable activation levels.

These artificial models whitewash these features away by modelling only the neuron's firing rate and not the inter-spike timing or spike train behaviours.

</comment><comment><USER5> _There is this interesting paper titled "A Few Useful Things to Know about Machine Learning", which basically ..._

That link leads to the Japanese toilet maker Toto, not to any ML paper. I suspect it was pranksters, not the author.

</comment><comment><USER6> The brain has no objective function it is trying to minimize

<comment><AUTHOR> > Keep in mind that ANNs aren't about duplicating human brains and that a lot > of aspects already don't correlate with our current, very short, > understanding of them (i.e. learning algorithms, backpropagation,...)

> We'll see that artificial neural networks are not that different from our > magnificent biological system "in their most basic definitions".

I've tried to make it clear enough that we should avoid analogies with biological neural systems.</comment></comment>


Five essential skills every web developer should have - <AUTHOR> https://usersnap.com/blog/skills-web-developer/ <comment><USER2> Additionally, on the list of the obvious, they should also be able to breath, drink water, and consume food on a semi-regular basis.

:/</comment>


Smart scale goes dumb as Under Armour pulls the plug on connected tech - <AUTHOR> https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2020/01/smart-scale-goes-dumb-as-under-armour-pulls-the-plug-on-connected-tech/ <comment><USER2> Only half a week ago we had a thread that _Smart homes will turn dumb overnight as Charter kills security service_. I suppose I could just copy my comment from there but you might want to look it up as some discussion followed.

"The manufacturer should never be able to either deactivate or otherwise disable the functionality of a device they sold in a form that requires a service to function. [...]"

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22083881](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22083881)</comment>


AMD: Our crypto boom is over - <AUTHOR> https://www.businessinsider.com/amd-stock-price-crypto-bitcoin-boom-over-earnings-call-2018-7 <comment><USER2> Good, finally GPUs will be affordable again. Prices were simply crazy for a while.

<comment><USER3> When DDR4 drops back to DDR3 numbers, I'll build a new PC. I'm betting we'll see 7nm by then.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I think the main problem is that both Nvidia and AMD _miss the cycles_ of bull runs. They start pumping out GPUs for the crypto market when the market is almost at its peak. Then, the market crashes and they're left with a factory full of unsold GPUs. Then another bull run happens, and they're left without any card for a couple of months.

<comment><USER5> But this is something you that they never really had to deal with before. Previously, graphics cards were not really correlated with any kind of market. And sales ramped up and down predictably. They had no reason to put money into being able to quickly ramp up production within a few weeks or a month. And now it's no surprise that they can't keep up with the fast paced crypto ups and downs.

<comment><USER6> Other than games, 3D visualization, modelling that is.

<comment><USER5> But if EA's stock goes up it doesn't mean that all of the sudden people are going to go out and buy graphics cards. Where with bitcoin, they actually do it.

<comment><USER6> No, but when something like Crysis with minimum requirements for a DX 10 class GPU, yes.

Feel free to update example to Fortnight or something similar more recent.

<comment><USER7> The interesting thing here is all the "big" games in the past few years have had fairly modest requirements(MOBA stuff, fortnite, etc). It's been a while since there was a huge blockbuster game everyone was buzzing about that was especially taxing. PUBG sort of sucks power but it runs like crap even with a ridiculously beefy machine, and not because it's graphically intense.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> > Despite a recent uptick above $8,000, bitcoin, still the world's largest > cryptocurrency by market cap, is down 39% since this year.

What a clickbait article. The Twitter cards mentions Bitcoin, it is even in the article. But nobody mines Bitcoin with GPUs since 5+ years anymore. It's ASIC or bust since 2013.

<comment><USER9> Yes, but you can mine other cryptocurrencies with GPUs. The market as a whole tends to move with Bitcoin's price, and many of those cryptocurrencies are traded for Bitcoin.

<comment><USER8> Still, it is bad journalism and fishing for clicks to mention Bitcoin as if AMD GPUs were directly related, without further clarification.

<comment><USER9> I would agree that an extra sentence or two to clarify would have been appropriate.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Paypal Return Value Question (PHP) - <AUTHOR>

Hi,
How can i manipulate the code below so that the return value is sent to my thank you page (www.website.com/thankyou.php) instead of the root homepage, while keeping everything else intact.
<input type="hidden" name="return" value="<?=$cfg->wwwroot."registration-confirmed-".base64_encode(serialize(array($user->id, 1)))?>">
Thank You <comment><USER2> Stackoverflow is that way -></comment>


Why we ditched Amazon AWS - <AUTHOR> http://blog.testingbot.com/2013/12/06/testingbot-has-moved-to-its-own-cloud <comment><USER2> This is a pet peeve of mine, but when you are running your own servers in a datacenter, that is not "your own cloud", it's just your own servers.

I realize the cloud is just a marketing term and it doesn't really mean something, but if I move my single heroku dyno app to my own dedicated server sitting in my basement, did I just move it to my own private cloud?

<comment><USER3> If you have a server farm that allocates VMs dynamically on demand, you have something much different than a dedicated server, and it is quite reasonable to call this a private cloud.

<comment><USER4> Except people were doing that long before the "cloud" marketing nonsense started,

<comment><USER3> You just don't like the word "cloud" at all, and that's fine, but that is a different complaint from the original, which was basically that the term is being misused when combined with the term "private". If we are going to use the term "cloud" and assign it a meaning, we can certainly use it to refer to private clouds. If EC2 is a cloud for me, is it not also a cloud when Amazon builds services on it?

<comment><USER5> If we're going to assign a meaning to the term 'cloud', shouldn't we assign it to something we don't already have a word for, so it actually describes something?

If I start two VMs on my desktop and we call that a 'cloud' then the word 'cloud' isn't terribly useful in describing anything.

<comment><USER3> I don't think the accepted definition of "cloud" is just "group of VMs". Your two VMs does not constitute a cloud. You can set up ten thousand VMs on a thousand servers and not have anything that would reasonably be considered a cloud if you did it manually. "Cloud" generally implies simplicity and automation. You could build a cloud with physical machines instead of VMs so long as you have automatic ways to allocate and manage the machines' lifecycles.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment> UK-AL "AWS is expensive, as soon as we start an instance, we're billed for the entire hour, even if we only need to run a 2 minute test on it."

What you really needed to do was design algorithm that keeps machines running over period in time, according to a general trend. Not shutdown, and instantly bootup for every customer deciding to run tests.

<comment><USER6> What you really needed to do was move to Google who bill by the minute.

Not a Google shill by the way - I don't have a preference yet. However, for that particular complaint, Google has the solution.

<comment><USER7> I think you get billed for at least 10min... still better than 1 hour though.

<comment><USER8> Right, 10 min upfront, then by the minute. The last minute chunk is discarded from billing if it was actually used less than 15 sec.

Or so I remember from reading the ToS yesterday.

The command-line cloud utility is so much easier than Amazon's. Everything is in one place. ssh keys are managed automatically. In less than 1 hour I was able to do everything with Google, whereas it took me a couple days to feel comfortable with AWS.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> For those unfamiliar with Amazon, Amazon AWS consists of over 25 different services. This article focuses on EC2, the virtual server service.

I use S3 and DynamoDB regularly and think the pricing is better than most. I don't use it for pricing though. I use it because I don't have to worry about load balancing, adding multiple servers, running out of disk space. Set it up and forget about it.

</comment><comment><USER10> I'm confused. Noisy neighbors and the "round up to the hour" AWS billing can both be fixed by more active instance management. It's not trivial but it's also not incredibly complex. Moving completely off of AWS has huge ramifications for your business in the long run, some positive some negative, and it seems weird to make such a bold and disruptive move based upon two issues that are both well known and fairly straightforward to address.

<comment><USER11> He has a constraint that 'instance management' doesn't fix: he wants a clean VM for every test run. By definition that precludes instance management?

<comment><USER12> It's a pretty arbitrary constraint. I wonder if he's looked into docker or other methods of containerisation?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> That's funny, I was just reading this blog post from Adrian Holovaty on some of the issues he ran into with deploying Python/Django on Heroku and how great AWS has worked out for him with Soundslice:

[http://www.holovaty.com/writing/aws- notes/](http://www.holovaty.com/writing/aws-notes/)

He just about had me sold.

Anyway, I'm definitely in the wanting to avoid sysadmin stuff if at all possible camp. Does anyone have any thoughts on AWS vs Heroku for Django? Does Adrian's solution seem reasonable?

<comment><USER14> Mi main concern is about keep well & alive the database (postgres). I can do the app server but the data server is the one that scary me ;)

<comment><USER15> RDS recently added cross region snapshot copies, and more importantly, cross region replication for at least MySQL. Those were the last two features I was waiting for to jump to RDS. In fact, I was in the process of setting up cross region backups using just the cross region snapshot copy when they released the new cross region read replicas feature.

I'm very much looking forward to moving our manually managed cross data center MySQL replication/admin to RDS. But I also don't have to scale MySQL to ridiculous levels either, I just need very high availability.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> "Noisy neighbors: sometimes instances would behave much slower than usual, because other people on the same hypervisor were using all the hypervisor's resources"

The Xen hypervisor actually has pretty good resource allocation between virtual machines, and although there are academic attacks [1], I'm interested to hear what evidence you've seen of neighbors hogging your resources.

[1] [http://pages.cs.wisc.edu/~rist/papers/rfa.pdf](http://pages.cs.wisc.edu/~rist/papers/rfa.pdf)

<comment><USER4> I think most "noisy neighbor" complaints actually come from the noisy neighbors. EC2 lets you use CPU resources of your neighbors if they aren't using them. So people hammer the machine and expect that level of performance, then when a neighbor does something and suddenly you are scaled back to only using the resources you actually pay for, you feel it is slow and complain.

But I think if EC2 didn't let you borrow CPU, nobody would use it because they would realize how absurdly underpowered EC2 offerings really are.

<comment><USER17> >But I think if EC2 didn't let you borrow CPU, nobody would use it because they would realize how absurdly underpowered EC2 offerings really are.

yeah, that's pretty much the crux of virtualization; it's a lot like buying bandwidth. Yes, your upstream is oversubscribing. Yes, if they do this right, 99% of the time, you won't notice the oversubscribe; you will get more service for less money vs. something that isn't oversubscribed. But, oversubscription needs to be managed carefully.

One thing I've noticed? If your upstream has a 1000mbps line, and sells 1000 unlimited 10Mbps ports, you are almost never going to see contention, even though it's a 10x oversubscribe.

If your upstream has a 1000Mbps port, and sells 10 1000Mbps ports? that's the same 10x oversubscribe. But I /guarantee/ that you will hit contention at least once a week. Probably more often. If people expect 1000Mbps reliable off that, they will be very unhappy. (Of course, if you setup your QoS properly, and tell the customers that it's 100Mbps CIR and up to a gigabit of best- effort burst? it can work out just fine. But nobody is going to get a reliable full gigabit out of that deal.)

90% of your users are using like 10% of your resources. But you've always got a few who are running torrents (or, in the case of CPU, mining primecoins) In the 1000 10Mbps port situation? it doesn't really matter if you've got a few bittorrent users. In the 10 users who can all completely fill the pipe situation? it matters a /lot/

That's the thing about CPU sharing, though; most of the time you don't put that many guests on one machine, and often you give each guest the ability to use the whole machine (when it's otherwise idle) - so you are in the situation of selling 10 1000Mbps links when you only have 1 1000mbps uplink, which ends in tears if anyone actually expects a reliable 1000Mbps uplink. (Now, if everyone understands that it's actually 100Mbps CIR that can burst to 1000Mbps, then sure, people can be happy. but you have to be careful with those expectations. With the 1000 10Mbps links on a 1gbps uplink, customers can treat their 10Mbps link as 10Mbps dedicated, and 99% of the time, they will get what they expect.)

<comment><USER18> "If your upstream has a 1000Mbps port, and sells 10 1000Mbps ports? that's the same 10x oversubscribe. But I /guarantee/ that you will hit contention at least once a week. Probably more often. If people expect 1000Mbps reliable off that, they will be very unhappy. "

I like that example.

Reminds me of account receivable and bad debt.

Better to have 1000 customers that owe you $30 each rather than 10 customers that owe you $3,000 each. I'm not factoring into this example the cost of billing or customer service. Strictly that if you have 1000 customers it's much less aggravating and you don't loose sleep at night worrying about a big customer that doesn't pay a bill.

<comment><USER17> Yup. And either way, you can solve the problem with capital. (Having a bunch of money laying around to cover the shortfall in the case of A/R, or having a very large burstable uplink with a small commit in the case of overselling bandwidth.)

Of course, burstable uplinks all suffer from the 'best effort' issue... if you go beyond your CIR, well, there's usually headroom, but not always.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Blog down, clearly shouldn't have ditched AWS

</comment><comment><USER20> Looks like "their cloud" couldn't handle Hacker News' traffic. Had they set up their blog in an AutoScaling group in EC2 this would not have been a problem :)

</comment><comment><USER21> Ahhhh whew. I thought this was gonna be an article about people switching back to Heroku & my blood was gonna get all angried up.

On the other hand, people wanting to set up their own server clusters... VMs... Linux container stuff... that's heartwarming :)

<comment><USER22> I was just about to launch my first app on heroku.. whats wrong with it ?

<comment><USER21> actually that may be a good use case for it!

it's real seamless and nice just ends up being expensive after a while if you are trying to do enterprise stuff & their add-on services aren't particularly cheap. The customizability of AWS & private stuff means you have to do a bit of server admin but it is generally cheaper & can give better performance.

EDIT: Oh also note that (my biggest gripe) I see big performance swings / queue-ing issues that aren't really correlated with traffic. Plus they introduce some platform/API changes intermittently that make their admin UIs kinda buggy. Or you have to change your workflow to integrate with their services (though the APIs for this are usually ok). I don't know, I feel like they make a lot of money draining people on threads since the performance of RoR overall is kinda questionable, along with the performance of their platform. I'm going to try with Play framework soon & see if there are less of these issues.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> I would encourage you to look at OpenVZ for anything Linux-based. Starts faster, uses less resources than KVM.

The gain might not be much however, given how powerful today's CPUs are.

<comment><USER24> Also, OpenVZ has faulty POSIX support in some cases. I'm particularly aware of how the lack of xattr support has bitten many GlusterFS users, but the same lack could affect anyone who wants to use SELinux, ACLs, or just xattrs for their own sake.

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> Any reason why you didn't just OpenStack instead?

<comment><AUTHOR> We didn't really try OpenStack, heard good things about it but we wanted to really keep it as fast as possible without any overhead.

Now we have a simple nodejs daemon which spawns and destroys VMs through libvirt.

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> Awesome blog post Jochen! And thanks for the Gridcentric shout-out :-)

</comment><comment><USER27> It better to say it doesn't fit your business model.

<comment><USER7> What business model doesn't want to reduce costs?

<comment><USER28> You're missing the point. EC2 specifically didn't work for them because they were constantly spinning up new instances and killing old ones, so they were repeatedly incurring the minimum one hour cost. If your business model doesn't call for that sort of a workflow, the article is irrelevant to you.

<comment><USER29> Exactly. I use EC2 by running my instances 24/7\. That article is useless.

Plus, Amazon has servers here in Brazil, so that a plus to me.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Olark (YC S09) Brings Chat to Any Website - Whether You Own the Site or Not - <AUTHOR> http://www.readwriteweb.com/readwritestart/2009/09/olark.php#more <comment><USER3> I'm not denigrating the Olark product, but does the world need another chat service? Of all the problems out there that need to be solved, I personally can't get excited about another site feature as the primary product of a startup. This is something that has been done over and over again through the years.

<comment><USER4> That's what they said about search before Google came around!

Altavista, Hotbot, Ask Jeeves, do we really need another search engine? Why do you think Google will be better than Altavista?

<comment><USER5> This example has been beaten to death. Google was at least an order of magnitude better than other search engines, and was the first that actually _worked_ , so it didn't matter how crowded the space was.

When evaluating an opportunity, "___ is a competitive/crowded space", "___ has already won this market", or "does the world need another ___" are all valid objections to raise. The rebuttal should be "but ___ is better/different because of ___" rather than a comparison to Google.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Back in '2000 or so, there were approximately 40 products in that space - <USER2> counted because I was working on one. They all required some form of download - and non of them got critical mass.

Odigo Communicator; ICQ Surf; Zadu; Hypernix Gooey; Cahoots GetWebby; and a whole lot more. Also, there was an IE addin called 3rd voice that let you annotate a site for others.

I wonder if now is a better time for this kind of products.

<comment><USER7> I especially liked hoodwink'd. :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Meebo have just branched out into embeded chat as well. I think these guys might struggle.

<comment><USER9> Meebo rooms hasn't really taken off much as far as I'm aware. I think there's plenty of room in the market.

Olark looks cool :) Might have to up my game a bit.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Reminds me of _why's Hoodwink.d

</comment><comment><USER11> I really liked their old name Hab.la

<comment><USER12> i thought they were a translation service.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> I would like to refer the community to Zawinkski's Law of Software Envelopment[1]

"Every program attempts to expand until it can read mail. Those programs which cannot so expand are replaced by ones which can."

And propose a new, modified law for the current generation:

"Every Web 2.0 website attempts to expand until it can chat. Those Web 2.0 websites which cannot so expand are replaced by ones which can."

1: <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jamie_Zawinski>

</comment><comment><USER14> Hey, this idea sounds familiar...

</comment><comment><USER15> Good one. But there is this similar service that I really like bumpin.com.

<comment><USER15> Last time I checked bumpin.com their UI was much better. But I guess they've added lots of dark color & strange fonts onto their website ;(

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> I met these guys in Michigan before they moved. Lots of promise, I think this is going to be really interesting. I really hope they will get to a place to take LivePerson on.

</comment><comment><USER17> Congrats guys, Olark rocks =)

</comment><comment><USER18> echo, disqus, olark, meebo - interesting area.......</comment>


Los Angeles hackers ? Are you out there ? - <AUTHOR>

I know I'm not the only one ...
Yet I've met precious few in the last couple years, and while they remain my close friends, none currently have the liberty to seriously contemplate doing a startup. Life always seems to intervene.
Do I really have to move back to the Bay to find people like me ? Or are there others here who are ready to fill out their YC apps, but wish they weren't alone ? <comment><AUTHOR> I wouldn't say "I know I'm not the only one" if I didn't consider myself a hacker..

<comment><USER2> What do you program in?

<comment><AUTHOR> Hmm, is this going to be a dick measuring contest or are you actually interested ?

If it's the latter, email me.

<comment><USER2> I wouldn't of asked if I wasn't interested. Can't e-mail you if you don't make your e-mail address public.

<comment><AUTHOR> Doh, didn't realize the email field wasn't public. Try now.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> 13 hours and not one response ? Sigh.

</comment><comment><USER2> Are you a hacker? Or an idea guy?</comment>


Show HN: Docsumo – Automate invoice data capture and validation - <AUTHOR> https://docsumo.com/ <comment><USER2> Your landing page looks really clean, and services like this can eliminate a lot of tedious work.

I tried it with one easy invoice. It extracted the buyer name+city, invoice amount, date, invoice number and amount. It didn't get the line items or the invoice currency.

A couple of thoughts about onboarding/conversion:

\- Pricing should reflect your target market. If you're only targeting India, then "The cost is usually a few Indian Rupees per document." is fine. But if you are targeting the whole world, USD is probably better.

\- As you don't require a credit card to try for free, adding 'no credit card needed' below the button should increase sign-ups

\- In the document list view, I expected that clicking on a row would do something, but I had to choose a specific action (view, review, delete). Maybe if I click a row you can assume I wanted to do whatever the primary action is for that item.

<comment><AUTHOR> Hi Rahim,

Thanks for liking the landing page and the excellent suggestions.

1\. Pricing - we will soon have a pricing page followed by a self-checkout option 2\. "No Credit Card Needed" \- will be incorporated in the new design. Thanks for pointing this out, had skipped my mind. 3\. Yes, we are planning to make Review the default behaviour for the row.

Cheers, Rushabh

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Hi HN,

Rushabh and Bikram here, co-founders of Docsumo ([https://docsumo.com/](https://docsumo.com/)). We are trying to help companies automate document data capture and decision making.

Docsumo is a data entry & document workflow automation software. It captures data from unstructured documents such as invoices & bank statements into structured formats such as CSV, JSON, and Excel.

Key Features:

1\. Review Tool The product comes with an inbuilt edit and review tool which makes data entry operations nearly 5 times faster and about 50% cheaper.

2\. No Templates Using AI, Docsumo eliminates the need for manual setup or templates. It is as simple as uploading or emailing your documents to Docsumo or pushing the document to our API to capture data.

3\. Easy Export of Data You can export the data as CSV, Excel or integrate using our API.

4\. Data Review Service We also provide data extraction services along with the product so that you get 100% accurate data.

The product is generalizable and can be trained to capture data from other documents as well (W2, 1099, pay stubs etc)

Looking for your feedback on the product and to explore new use cases.

<comment><USER3> Hi,

Like your clean design. When I click on "Try for free" \- the app layout shows up for a second and then comes sign-up form.

Would be useful to get a feeling of the pricing level(s).

Cheers, Alex

<comment><AUTHOR> Hi Alex,

Thanks for pointing out the bug. We will fix that soon.

Since most of our users need to capture different fields and have slightly different requirements, we will be sending prices individually.

Thanks, Rushabh

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> What is the accuracy level you are seeing for your AI? What is the Data Review Service? Does it involve manual verification at your end?

<comment><AUTHOR> Hi there,

Out of the box we are seeing accuracy between 60 and 80% but with training on 1000+ samples we can get in the 80 to 90% mark. With 5000 samples it can go beyond 95%.

Yes, Data Review Service is manual verification of the extracted data so that you get 100% accuracy and dont need to review yourself.

Cheers, Rushabh</comment></comment>


Ask HN: What public tech companies have the least internal politics? - <AUTHOR> In other words, what public tech company can engineers work at where you're not battling for visibility and preference?<p>Obviously, at large organizations, things aren't going to be uniform across all teams, and people's experiences will be limited, but I'd like to hear what people have to say all the same. <comment><USER2> > In other words, what public tech company can engineers work at where you're > not battling for visibility and preference?

There isn't one. Identifying and influencing the people who decide stuff--who does what work, business and technical strategy, your bonus--is always a valuable and necessary skill. A good manager can do some of that for you, but can't take it over entirely.

More practically, variation from group to group within a large company is usually bigger than variation between companies. I doubt a useful answer to your question exists.

If you want a job with less politics, then you're probably better off assessing specific opportunities than assessing massive companies on average. Like, ask "How did you choose the tools for your most recent project?" in the interview, and see what that tells you about their power structure.

<comment><AUTHOR> My issue isn't so much with having to influence people, but being in a situation where you're always struggling _against_ other people to do so, constantly being worried that a point you make in one channel will be repeated by someone else without attribution in another channel that's more visible to people with more power, or worrying about someone who has more 'juice' with a manager talking down your work, when that manager doesn't have the expertise to judge for themselves, etc.

I've had work experiences that were completely free of this sort of thing, but at small to medium-size startups. My current employer, not so much.

You're right, of course, that I need to be assessing specific opportunities. I guess I'm just trying to see if there are any broad difference between public tech companies.

<comment><USER3> Any group of engineers is going to put up a fight if someone comes in trying to do things the "wrong" way. You want to find the tribe with the same standards and design aesthetics as your own, and that depends on what your opinions are. Tribes like this tend to run on reputation, trust, and referral. Which prior coworkers have you tended to agree with? Chances are there's a community out there of like-minded individuals, and you can tap into it by getting referred to a company staffed by then, or by referring known members to infect your own organization.

Teams can have cultures of being more or less concerned about ladder-climbing, performance reviews, management's favor, etc. It's been my experience that the level of concern is inversely proportional to enjoyment of the work itself; the best defense against office politics is the classic triad of autonomy, mastery, and purpose. But even a low-politics-emphasis team culture is not going to save you from worrying about these things if you choose to.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> My experience with large organizations is that everyone thinks they're the best, unless they're far below average.

In a good company, engineers themselves probably deal with less politics than a startup, because there's a layer of management dedicated to filtering out the politics from the engineers.

You'll still have to deal with shit like several departments trying to push dependencies or accountability to another department. But the internal politics themselves can be milder.

The brand name companies (Google, Microsoft, etc) will also probably have much more politics as they attract competitive types. I'm sure these companies do a lot to filter, but things like this are very hard to filter.

<comment><USER5> Ha! It's precisely because of layers of politicians, engineers are constantly forced to face politics. I have been involved in doing shit mindless feature because Mr Clueless X 3 levels above wanted it. I have spent 50% of my time in dumb meetings feeling with higher ups. I have spent 2 months of do nothing in offsides by these stupid clowns. Shall I go on?

<comment><USER6> Mr Clueless X didn't want the feature because he read it off an Ouija board. He wanted it because sales told him "this feature could make us millions of dollars a year!", or a customer asked him "how could you possibly sell your product without this critical feature?".

Without a Mr. Clueless X in the way, it would be presented as _your_ fault that the company lost suchandsuch major deal by not already having the feature. That's a much harder political game to play.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I found it funny that this was posted four hours ago and not a single response. It may be difficult to get away from politics in large organizations whose efforts are focused on developing a handful of products.

</comment><comment><USER8> Why does the tech company need to be public? Is this just a proxy for "big"? Or do you actually care about the company having shares, perhaps because you like getting RSUs?

<comment><USER9> Is 'proxy' new tech jargon? I've been hearing it a lot lately.

<comment><USER10> [https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/proxy](https://www.merriam- webster.com/dictionary/proxy)

Looks like it dates from the 15th century.

Here's a guess for what you're experiencing: [https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_cognitive_biases#Fre...](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_cognitive_biases#Frequency_illusion)

<comment><USER9> Neither of those links really address my question.

<comment><USER11> Proxy is not tech specific. It has been used in law, economics, and other fields for a long time.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> You want visibility? Apple. Though, you have to work your butt off from Mon to Sun and build something solid. You also have to be your manager's dog. Follow him/her everywhere and help him/her closing bugs and building stuff.

</comment><comment><USER13> It's always team dependent. Do your work well and make your manager happy. Eventually start your own thing.

</comment><comment><USER14> Pick small companies instead because politics will always exist in if ones. There simply is no way around it.

</comment><comment><USER15> Where there are people there will be politics. Perhaps in the distant future when AI takes over it will be better.

<comment><USER16> Hm no. As much as engineers like _data-driven decisions_ , there are other considerations that go in choices which are _very_ hard if not plain impossible to mathematise.

So you introduce AI in the decisional process. You just shifting the problem from one field to another, but be sure that the extend of the problem will be of the same magnitude if not bigger due to the added complexity.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> Probably those with a strong like Tesla but I'm not sure if they are better place to work at as en amployee.

</comment><comment><USER18> Unless you're the lead dog, the view never changes.

<comment><USER19> Yup. Decisions have to be made, people will always try to influence them. You're either making the decisions, trying to influence the person that is, or you're sitting out.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> Google</comment>


Motivating Software Engineers 101 - <AUTHOR> https://www.7pace.com/blog/motivating-software-engineers-101/ <comment><USER2> On salaries: If your senior engineers are making less than the entry-level engineers at Google / Facebook / Amazon / Other large employer in your area, then make no mistake about it - they're unhappy because you're underpaying them.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yes, that is absolutely true. I think the point here is that salary isn't ENOUGH to keep people motivated; that while you need to pay well, you can't shirk all other aspects of morale.</comment></comment>


Vermeer's Secret Tool: Testing Whether The Artist Used Mirrors and Lenses - <AUTHOR> http://www.vanityfair.com/culture/2013/11/vermeer-secret-tool-mirrors-lenses <comment><USER2> There's also this recent Kickstarter, the NeoLucida, that was all about remaking similar lens / optic devices artists and painters used in the past: [http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/neolucida/neolucida-a- po...](http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/neolucida/neolucida-a-portable- camera-lucida-for-the-21st-ce)

<comment><USER3> I have an antique camera lucida, and it is startlingly effective.

<comment><USER4> You use it to draw/paint? Can you please share something you've done? I'd very curious in seeing anything you've painted with it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Interesting article (if a bit clumsily written) but I don't understand why it's so controversial. It should be pretty easy to tell if a photorealistic painting was made with mechanical or optical aids. There will be small positional errors in the image either way -- places where the perspective is almost but not quite perfect. The magnitude and direction of the errors (and how they accumulate) will be very different compared to those in a freehand painting, and shouldn't be too hard to analyze.

<comment><USER6> It's not that easy, for a few of reasons. One is the establishment (no better word for the mixture of subjectivity, entitlement, money, and fashion in the art world). Rewriting art history is frowned upon unless it makes the genius artist look like a greater genius artist. Applying a scientific method doesn't work there.

Another reason proving this is hard is that some artists do have a great ability to reproduce reality (this was really the most common way to measure an artist's ability before photography came along), but the economy of an artist's technique may reproduce some aspects of reality exactly, while other aspects are just suggested or completely ignored, so you'd need complete consistency.

One more reason is that simply seeing a camera obscura image or a similar 2d image may change an artist's technique, they may become aware of things they hadn't considered before (this was the case with linear perspective, look up Brunelleschi's experiment - though nothing as elaborate as a camera obscura). For a camera obscura projection, lighting conditions are very specific, that alone might shift an artist's (mental) focus from being 100% descriptive to being very vague about contours. Basically, you can't "unsee it".

Dutch artists from Vermeer's era are perfect candidates to have used lenses, because they had the technology. If you can find undeniable proof anywhere, it's probably there. Really the more proof adds up, the more ridiculous the naysayers appear. Some natural selection would do this field some good.

<comment><USER7> Thanks, in four paragraphs you gave me a whole new perspective on Hockney's book on this.

<comment><USER8> Hockney does not argue that every painter of realistic paintings used the techniques he describes. He in fact goes through a series of painters and discusses who probably did and didn't.

Basic clue: if the painter seems more interested in showing off his command of perspective details (e.g. the lettering on someone's desktop globe, or intricate floor patterns) than, say, people, then he's quite probably using the technique.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> > _I've got a file of counterarguments to my own theory_

Thank you for having scientific integrity. Falsifiability for the win.

</comment><comment><USER10> >" _But no one understood exactly how such a device might actually have been used to paint masterpieces._ " //

Seems a stretch.

I vaguely recall seeing a documentary - perhaps many years ago, probably on the BBC - on Vermeer's "The Music Room" and how it was understood to be created using an optical system [ _camera obscura_?]. They showed a replica being used to trace an image.

Related [http://www.math.nus.edu.sg/aslaksen/projects/MC-CL- Vermeer-a...](http://www.math.nus.edu.sg/aslaksen/projects/MC-CL-Vermeer- abstract.pdf) uses the assumption of the accuracy of the dimensions to establish two of Vermeer's painting were likely done in the same room.

<comment><USER11> Thats close, but not exact. The difference is in the technique of using partial images of the subject overlayed over the painting image, to get the colours and overall colour and lighting gradients matched exactly, at a fidelity the unaided eye wouldn't be capable of. The trick of matching the patch so closely that the edge of the mirror disappears is the real secret. A straightforward over-painting projection of the whole subject wouldn't help with that.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> > _The brightness of any surface becomes exponentially less bright the farther > it is from a light source, [...]_

Is this true? The brightness decays quadratically with the distance, so I guess that the reflections decay also quadratically not exponentially.

<comment><USER13> Visual _perception_ of luminance decays exponentially, according to the strongest distinction.

<comment><USER14> I think it may be more accurate to say perceptual description of luminance may be exponential (that humans report the difference from 1 to 1/2 as being the same as 1/2 to 1/4). But I think this is all irrelevant if you are trying to reproduce tones correctly (other than it says the error-model is relative error on tones). So I would say it takes a very labored reading to think of the article statement as correct (as light falls of 1/R^2 not exponentially). But that also makes the article's point: if you are painting what is there you are more immune to wrong assumptions.

<comment><USER15> Not necessarily. If you are making a painting, you don't have the ability to make some sections literally brighter (higher luminescence) because you don't really have control over the lighting conditions, and oil paints only give you so much ability to adjust reflectance. So what you do is subtly adjust things like tone, texture, detail or technique to 'trick' the human perceptual system into thinking the difference is there. These tricks are what imparts that life-like quality into the old master's works.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> That was fascinating. I would have preferred some more details on the evidence found during this that a camera obscura actually _was_ used. I suppose not having it makes this article a pretty good teaser for the documentary.

<comment><USER17> There's a wonderful book by David Hockney called "Secret knowledge: recovering the lost techniques of the Old masters" where he lays out some pretty compelling evidence for this idea. It's also beautifully designed, as you might expect from Hockney. I keep meaning to try out some of the techniques mentioned to see how well they work but haven't got round to it yet.

<comment><USER8> The book is great and I'd say the case he makes is pretty water tight (and I say that as someone who wasn't much of a Hockney fan going in, and was very resistant to the idea that some of my favorite artists "cheated" ... but of course artists always "cheat" \-- their goal is produce their artwork, not follow some arbitrary set of rules on how to get there).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> I have a hard time understanding the dilemma here. Could someone please break it down? What difference would it have made to use mirrors and lenses, and how would that have improved his paintings?

<comment><USER19> Artist here.

Okay. Working out perspective by hand is hard. It's a lot of work, that takes a lot of arcane knowledge.

So's doing a photorealistic painting of a thing. You have to look at the thing, consider a bunch of relationships of the particular feature you're interested in at this very moment, and transfer those relationships to your canvas. That's a pretty complicated set of habits and brain circuitry you have to build up over a period of years.

Tracing an image is immensely easier. There's all the perspective, there's all the proportion relationships. There's all the colors. Right there in front of you. You can spend an hour or two essentially doing manual edge-detection, and then start filling in areas.

There's still stuff to learn - how to mix the paint to get the colors you want, how to apply it to the canvas, stuff like that. And if you trace organic stuff _too_ closely, it starts to look stiff and dead. But compared to the amount of skill you have to learn to draw this kind of stuff out of your head? It's nothing.

I mean, hell. Take a photo, print it out. Tape it to a sunny window, tape another piece of paper over it, and trace it. Then take that same photo and try to draw a copy of it, without tracing. There will be a huge difference between the two drawings you just made. The one made without tracing will probably have taken a lot longer, and have many more bits erased and redrawn.

A lot of modern artists have this weird thing going on with respect to tracing. It's the worst thing ever, they'll say. Tracing another person's work to learn from, or tracing off of a photo, they're different kinds of art crimes, but they're still art crimes. Leaping around learning to break a scene down in your head and reconstruct it from scratch - essentially building a wetware 3D modeller in your brain, really - is considered CHEATING by some people.

So Hockney's book on Vermeer's work is essentially saying "dude Vermeer was totally a tracer". Which in many artist's eyes is like calling him Not An Artist. Artists get weird about what is Art and what is Not Art, it's this whole thing that's about as inexplicable to a layperson as a programmer's choice of text editor.

By using mirrors and lenses to project an image onto his camera to trace, Vermeer only had to learn the basic painting technique stuff. If he did, if he traced all this stuff, then some people will start saying that his work is no longer Art. It's just Illustration. Which, in the eyes of people who care about this, means that it is a lower, less respectable thing. Now it's just a filter applied to an image, albiet manually instead of via Photoshop or whatever.

The truth of the matter (IMHO) is that a lot of the people who will scream bloody murder when someone is tracing are amateurs. Real pros can and will project images and work over them, build reference models in the real world or in 3D programs, and do any damn thing they can to make the hard parts of their work easier, to get all those little details they'd never make up out of whole cloth.

I am pretty sure I've repeated myself a couple times here, thanks to the tiny window HN allows to type in. But hopefully this helps.

tl;dr: If Vermeer used these techniques then he's a dirty cheating TRACER and is thus not a REAL ARTIST in some people's eyes.

<comment><USER20> Occasional amateur painter here.

Yes, tracing images is immensely easier. Problem is it yields lousy paintings. Photographs have different perspective and lighting than what you see with your own eyes and paintings that have been made by tracing or even merely copying photographs almost always look, well, like someone smeared paint all over a photograph.

If you look at a Vermeer painting, you'll find it does not look photographic at all. The objects in the picture are almost tangible and seem to jump off the canvas. This is an effect that is only achievable by having very strong 3D skills: you basically have to be able to paint even more realistically than mere realism. So it might very well be that Vermeer used some tools to get a feel for what it was he was going to paint and maybe even to study the fleeting effects of lighting, but the final paintings themselves are without a doubt made by someone with exceptional skill.

TL;DR;Vermeer did not use these techniques because his paintings are way better than what can be achieved using only these techniques.

<comment><USER21> Another artist chiming in.

I disagree with you. I believe that Vermeer used photographic techniques to aid him. It is very obvious to me (imho) that Vermeer's works is of a wholly different character than any other Dutch masters working at the time. His paintings are incredibly flat and tonal, and very, very photographic.

I also think that his compositions are his true genius. His compositions are beyond masterful. They are brilliant. This is hard to describe to a non- artist, but the way that he uses tight negative spacing along with his use of large spacious gradations is magic. He had the eye of a master photographer. This is where the question comes in for me. Did he set up his scenes and then limit himself to what he was able to manage there, just tracing what he saw? Or did he allow himself the freedom to change and modify the spaces and proportions to what looked right to him. I personally believe the latter.

To me, Vermeer is one of the greatest photographers thats ever lived. Every 2D design class should devote long study to his compositions.

<comment><USER20> Oh, I'm not disputing Vermeer may have used photographic techniques to aid him. There is definitely a very photographic look to his work that is unlike that of most of his contemporaries. What I _am_ disputing, however, is that they were merely used as a shortcut and that the use of these aids is the be all and end all of Vermeer's talent. Even without his alleged use of photographic techniques Vermeer was a masterful painter: his handling of paint is otherworldly and that is something no photographic aid can help you with.

It's also true that his work is much flatter than that of his contemporaries, but to my eyes there's still a lot of 3D construction lurking behind those dazzling light effects that is completely missing in paintings that we know for sure have been made as copies of photographs. Like I said, to me Vermeer is a much better painter than the grandparent gives him credit for.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> The 2006 monograph by the british artist David Hockney (for anyone interested).

 _Secret Knowledge: Rediscovering the Lost Techniques of the Old Masters_ [1]

[1] ISBN-10: 0142005126> [http://www.amazon.com/Secret-Knowledge-Expanded- Edition-Redi...](http://www.amazon.com/Secret-Knowledge-Expanded-Edition- Rediscovering/dp/0142005126)

<comment><USER23> This work is referenced many times in the article.

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> On Caravaggio: [http://www.webexhibits.org/hockneyoptics/post/grundy7.html](http://www.webexhibits.org/hockneyoptics/post/grundy7.html)

</comment><comment><USER6> Hockney's book is great, but for a quick and entertaining look at the theory, there was a (BBC I think) documentary with the same title. Probably on iPlayer and YouTube by now, covers more than just Vermeer (no links since I'm not sure about the copyright status.)</comment>


How to quantify the business value of machine learning? - <AUTHOR> Dear fellow data scientists / ML experts: How do you explain the impact and value of your work to the business people in your organization? Do you have to explain your work to them, do they check it and do they understand what you're doing? <comment><USER2> That's all contextual. If you work in adtech you are probably linking your work to the targeting performance.

If you're in a research function it's probably patents trade secrets or publications

Those for me are the two examples on opposite ends of the spectrum.

And usually yes I need to explain value but it really depends on what level that discussion happens. If I'm team lead looking for budget it's gotta be measurable, if I'm a IC in a team it's more did I help the team he successful

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks! Do you track the performance over time or do you even have continuous measurements for this?

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> I gave a talk on this topic! See [https://www.infoq.com/presentations/opendoor-machine- learnin...](https://www.infoq.com/presentations/opendoor-machine-learning/)

The tl;dr is to try to incorporate the ML models into a business simulation, so instead of maybe-abstruse metrics like AUC and log loss, you have "businessy" metrics like margin and volume and can better directly tie the ML models to business value creation.</comment>