Goldman Sachs will open-source some of its trading software - <AUTHOR> https://www.wsj.com/articles/goldmans-trading-floor-is-going-open-source-kind-of-11554285602 <comment><USER3> Of course, if this technology was able to price securities better than the market (the fundamental job of almost every market participant), it would be printing money and they would not release it.

This is not the secret sauce, but probably an implementation of a set of standard well known pricing and risk models. That's still useful, and can be expensive to develop, so thanks Goldman.

<comment><USER4> > the fundamental job of almost every market participant

Not true. You might make an argument that this is the effect of having them together in a market, but that's not their job:

\- Market maker: hang around the market offering to trade with anyone (pref retail) at a spread. Doesn't care whether TSLA is gonna be able to make all those Model 3s.

\- Pension fund: make sure they can pay the liabilities that are coming due. If that can be locked in, happy to pay a bit more than fair value to do so.

\- Hedge fund: make absolute returns. Buy before it goes up, sell before it goes down. Whatever form of voodoo (or skill) fulfills this is fine. This doesn't have to mean finding the right price (could just mean you guess which way it's going), though of course often it is part of the objective.

\- Broker: finds people on both sides of a trade. Doesn't care terribly much except to create excitement.

\- Banks: lend money/securities and offer services to all of the above. Create research to make people trade. Securitise stuff so people can trade it. Often do a bit of everything.

Source: used to run hedge funds.

<comment><USER5> Hope you dont mind me asking a slightly unrelated and possibly dumb question.

Im a programmer, but on the side have made on average 150% profit in share dealing over the passed 5 years, but more importantly, a much higher return in other assets to 2 orders of magnitude higher.

My question is - would experience / gains like this - if i had proof etc - <USER2> me an interview in a fund as some type of well paid (6 figure atleast) analyst?

<comment><USER4> Yes, go on LinkedIn, there's a bunch of recruiters hawking jobs at funds. Generally they want a Sharpe ratio above 2.5, $10M profits a year.

And you need to know what machinery you'll need too. Capital requirements, counterparty agreements, access to stock lending, cost requirements, IT requirements, everything.

Some of the newer shops say you can keep your own IP. Haven't checked whether it's true, but most people I know are sceptical.

<comment><USER6> ok while we're playing "ask a hedge fund guy"

Say I set up a fund holding a low cost s&p500 index ETF, but at the end of each year sold naked puts with a ~1/25 risk of ruin to earn ~4% return. Therefore my fund consistently makes 4% over the market index, except for 1/25 years when it explodes and loses everything. Because the volatility is low, my sharpe ratio is good (until it explodes), correct?

Assuming it can stay in business >10-15 years won't I be a billionaire hedge fund manager by then and then change to a low risk strategy that only makes 1-2% more than market index with very low risk of ruin and just let my investors lose interest and quit the fund over the next decade while I continue to earn fees from them?

<comment><USER4> Investors will ask you what you're up to, and if you're just doing that they won't invest. They also keep an eye on whether you're doing what you say.

Anything that's both simple and mechanical is gonna have problems attracting investment. The guys you're talking to are gonna have problems justifying giving you 2/20 for buying a fund and selling options.

Or should. I've met a lot of investors who didn't ask the right questions.

Regarding the Sharpe, if they know what they're doing they're not just using the textbook version either. There's a paper by Andrew Lo about it, well worth a read, not terribly complex math.

<comment><USER7> Would that be this paper?

[https://www.researchgate.net/publication/228139699_The_Stati...](https://www.researchgate.net/publication/228139699_The_Statistics_of_Sharpe_Ratios)

<comment><USER4> Yes

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> To a regular software developer who uses (and does extremely minimal contributions) open source software regularly, this seems more for marketing / branding (even from an HR perspective) than for anything else (like a contribution without returns in mind).

We're reading about how GS "will" open source some software on WSJ, it would be better to just see a blog announcement with a link to the repository.

</comment><comment><USER9> What about that dude who they put in jail for open sourcing software he developed in a personal side project while under contract with them?

Didn't they like completely throw the book at him by charging him under that completely insane law the Computer Fraud Act?

<comment><USER10> You have a citation? The only case I know about is a programmer who ftp'd a whole bunch of internal code to a site in Germany before his last day of work.

<comment><USER11> Yeah that one. Was internal code (well derived from code off stackflow) but completely harmless. The response - GS getting the FBI to go after him was wildly disproportionate.

<comment><USER12> You sound like someone who definitely has a lot of the surrounding context and some of the intimate details of this story. Can you tell us more?

<comment><USER13> Michael Lewis wrote an article about Sergey Aleynikov for Vanity Fair which led him later to write, "Flash Boys" \-- it's online and worth your time [0]. Some interesting bits include:

* Advice and information that could keep a programmer out of jail.

* There's the description of Aleynikov's jailhouse enlightenment -- there is no other word for it -- e.g. what his lawyer says:

 _"Every time I would come to visit him in jail, I would leave energized by him," she says. "He radiated so much energy and positive emotions that it was like therapy for me, to visit him. His eyes opened to how the world really is. And he started talking to people. For the first time! He would say: People in jail have the best stories. He could have considered himself a tragedy. And he didn't."_

* There's the discussion of how no one involved (except Aleynikov) actually understood anything about the case and how Aleynikov's attempts to help clarify things were used against him.

* And, then, there's the _piece de resistance_ , where Michael Lewis convenes a jury of cynical programmers -- i.e. some people who actually have a clue -- to meet Aleynikov and judge his actions (spoiler: their cynicism about the case is replaced with incredulity when they talk to him and realize he didn't care about Goldman Sach's "secret sauce" trading algorithms, etc.).

(Also, Lewis discusses his article in a Q&A in Vanity Fair [1] where he gets to talk about his own reaction to it all).

Again, well worth your time.

[0] [https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2013/09/michael-lewis- goldma...](https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2013/09/michael-lewis-goldman- sachs-programmer)

[1] [https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2013/08/michael-lewis-on- gol...](https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2013/08/michael-lewis-on-goldman- sachs-programmer)

<comment><USER14> I dunno about this one essay, but let's all remember that Flash Boys is a very bad book that gets almost everything wrong.

Read the extensive rebuttal for all the details:

[https://www.amazon.com/Flash-Boys-Insiders-Perspective- High-...](https://www.amazon.com/Flash-Boys-Insiders-Perspective-High- Frequency-ebook/dp/B00P0QI2M2)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Anyone who thinks GS is taking any action without the intent of profiting from said action is hopelessly naive.

<comment><USER16> that can be said of any corporation. or most humans

<comment><USER17> Or any life form, really.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Am I the only one who thinks they want to push the market into applying strategies that they can then trade against? This is classic Wall Street, persuading the masses to take the wrong side of bets.

<comment><USER19> That was my first thought too. And even if that's not what GS intends to do, it will still be the end result, because their non-public automated trading will quickly become adversarial to this.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> This is quite a change from when they ruined a man's life for using Github.

<comment><USER21> Not really. If someone try to do something what they consider stealing, they will still pursue the case with all legal might.

<comment><USER22> Hey, serious question but off topic from the thread:

You used the word "what" where we would normally use the word "that".

I've heard this done during speech numerous times from everyone ranging from fluent native speakers to learning nonnative speakers. Was there a specific reason you did it here?

<comment><USER23> It's a British dialect thing, but not sure if that's the case with the poster here. See: [https://english.stackexchange.com/questions/162619/usage- of-...](https://english.stackexchange.com/questions/162619/usage-of-what-for- that-or-than-in-bre)

<comment><USER24> Emphasis on _a_ British dialect. There are many and most (by geographically area) don't use what in that context. Except for emphasis e.g. The way Jeremy Clarkson says "an ..." where he shouldn't.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> [https://www.businessinsider.com/goldman-sachs-is-making- its-...](https://www.businessinsider.com/goldman-sachs-is-making-its-trading- tech-open-source-2015-8?r=US&IR=T&IR=T)

"Aug. 12, 2015, 12:33 Goldman Sachs is going the way of Google and Facebook. The investment bank is giving away some of its trading technology to clients through open-source software, according to The Wall Street Journal...."

Am I missing something?

</comment><comment><USER26> How much do we wanna bet this is just a recruiting gimmick?

<comment><USER27> Oh, you mean like them offering a VP position (without telling you maybe half of the people there are VPs)?

<comment><USER28> It may be more like saying they support open source in the same way companies rushed to say they are green, for their image. The plethora of VPs is partly a sales thing, so that every client gets to meet with a VP. Just like how every sales person is a director or similarly inflated title at other companies. Hopefully one knows this before taking such a job!

Edit: After RTFA, it seems to be 2.5 things: \- Crowdsourcing ideas while getting everyone to conform to their platforms \- Image improvement to appear innovative \- Speculating: monetization of old code that doesn't actually work anymore

<comment><USER29> just like I'm a sr engineer but still basically do a tech's work. Inflated titles at companies is a joke

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> This is an honest question, and forgive me if it's a bit naive, but if they release trading software to the masses under the assumption that the vast majority of users will make few changes, can they rely on the herd to buy enough stock in their software's predictions at a slower rate to get an uptick?

<comment><USER31> Take it with a grain of salt since I did not see the actual source and the article is paywalled. They are probably just releasing the tooling, not actual strategies.

<comment><USER32> And even if they do provide strategies, they would likely be obsolete/unprofitable ones as examples of how to use the system.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> Goldman Sachs does nothing that fails to profit Goldman Sachs.

This might be just PR, in which case the code could be useful for some. However, they may be doing this is because they found something that they can exploit if other people are using this code. It might be nothing particularly bad for a given user, but if a big block of investors begin using code Goldman Sachs knows intimately, the market may suddenly start doing stuff that just happens to fall to Goldman Sach's advantage.

<comment><USER34> No company does anything which doesn't benefit them whether via tech development, attracting programming talent, reputation etc... That is why they are companies not humans. Don't confuse the two or pile on GS just cause they are GS.

</comment></comment><comment><USER35> I spoke with some developers from Goldman several years ago. They couldn't even access Github website from work. Open source software and libraries were not regarded well either. Things may be changing, who knows. My impression was that Goldman is one of the most restrictive places to work.

</comment><comment><USER36> On Github, they only posted LICENSE, [https://github.com/gg4real/gs- quant](https://github.com/gg4real/gs-quant)

</comment><comment><USER37> Please pretty please open source plottool

</comment><comment><USER38> Probably a poison pill that Goldman has engineered countertrading schemes against.

Not unlike the magic numbers the NSA suggested for various encryption schemes.

</comment><comment><USER39> Maybe pull request trolling could be a thing? Pull requests that print "why hasn't anyone involved in the GFC gone to jail?"

</comment><comment><USER40> it will probably make money, but this is the same as sp500 et al being public list of components. they know that showing their "secret" will influence the irrational market to folow suit, hence showing sp500 components will make more people buy into those and make sp500 even more profitable.

this can be an attempt at the same for the new generation. if your algo is making money and it can benefit from a mass adoption of the same strategy (or more likely they have a secret tweaked one that takes that more into account) why wouldn't they offer it in the open?</comment>


My learnings from 500 Startups – the first month - <AUTHOR> http://www.tradebriefs.com/blog/?p=1

<comment><USER2> Curious to know people's experiences at incubators</comment>


Online course on how to give great presentations / pitches - <AUTHOR>

Hello HN
I've been to several web and startup events where I've noticed that a lot of hackers don't know how to present (an idea / a startup / anything) in an appealing way.
That's why I decided to make an online course for hackers on how to present (and pitch!) in front of smaller and bigger crowds.
You can find the content here: http://goo.gl/d2HgN
If you've suggestions about what's missing, let me know.
The course will be a collection of essays, some pictures and some videos. I'm planning on charging for it ($ 29 for the HN crowd, $ 49 for the others). There will be a free trial where you can access almost anything of the course (the cheat sheets are only available in the "full" version).
I'm sure you'll ask yourself why you should pay me money to access information that you could research yourself (or pay someone to help you). During my research I've found that there are two types of persons when it comes to presentations: presenters and non-presenters. Presenters are comfortable being on stage, talking to people, etc. Non-presenters are not. I'm a presenter. During high school and college I've done several presentations on different topics, all of which received good grades. I love talking to smaller and bigger crowds and don't have the anxiety some non-presenters have. That's why I think I could help you. Additionally I think it's a fair price, considering that everything you need to know about delivering presentations and speeches is included and can be accessed in a free trial.
If you have doubts or questions, please do let me know here or through email. I'm happy to talk to anyone (also on skype if you want to test my skills :) ).
Now if I have convinced you, I'm happy to inform you when the course is done through an email signup on this page: www.presentag.com
TL;DR
I'm preparing an online course about how to give effective presentations, you should sign up to be informed when it's done. <comment><USER2> I think the idea is good, I don't doubt that the content and research may be good, but I do have an issue with someone whose credentials are "During high school and college I've done several presentations". I consider myself comfortable and relatively good at presenting and I've presented in front of a few thousand professional peers before but I wouldn't for a moment conclude that I am qualified to run an online course on presenting. If you don't have experience trying the tips and techniques you recommend or a wealth of knowledge from observing others use them I'm going to have my doubts.

Please don't get me wrong, I think its a worthy cause and something you can make money off of but to my fellow HN reader, I'd recommend a site like <http://www.presentationzen.com/> for advice on presenting. On a side note, one of my favorite presentation guidelines is the TED commandments for anyone who's interested.

<comment><AUTHOR> I appreciate your opinion :) I just thought that subjects like an elevator pitch came to short in typical presentation books / pages.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> > During high school and college I've done several presentations on different > topics, all of which received good grades.

does not answer

> why you should pay me money to access information that you could research > yourself

I've been consistently satisfied with my researching skills. It's nice that you've collected a lot of stuff, but I don't really need you to do that for me. What I need is someone that understands why I personally have problems making presentations and what I can do to fix them. Then I need her to coach me or review my videos.

(Hypothetical customer me, that is. Real me just got home from teaching.)

You should address how you intend to teach people to present, or otherwise display that you have some understanding of where their problems are. I also second the notion that you are going to want a video in your promotional materials.

</comment><comment><USER4> At any rate, whatever people might tell you about your lack of credentials, you've already set your pitching skills apart by putting this out here in front of everyone. It's surprising just how much of presentation skill is about taking one's own ideas seriously.

So congratulations on that!

</comment><comment><USER5> This is a weird post. You are kinda posting too early IMO. You don't even have what would amount to a full blog post - just a few bullet points - and yet you are announcing that you are going to develop this full blown course and you will charge for it? It is quite difficult for me to make the jump from "bullet points in a Google document" to "course for $49".

And if you are a presenter, prove it with video rather than with text. Again - I find it difficult to make the jump from "I got good grades in high school" to "I can teach professionals".

<comment><AUTHOR> I have about 60% ready, but I just put up the content list for you to make suggestions if you think something's missing.

"Prove it with video rather than with text" - point taken, I can't come up with a stage that quickly though :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> "I'm a presenter. During high school and college I've done several presentations on different topics, all of which received good grades."

I've done the same, but I'm not sure if I'd consider myself a good presenter.

If you've studied the issue extensively and spent time collecting the best information and putting it together I understand. I'm willing to pay for your work, you don't have to explain that you told stories in high school.

I'm interested.

<comment><AUTHOR> I did, but I thought that many may ask "who are you, to tell me how to present?" that's why I put that line in.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> <http://goo.gl/d2HgN>

clickable

</comment><comment><USER8> What if I am a presenter aswell? Would you say it might be useful to me too?

<comment><AUTHOR> I'd say check out the free trial, there might be a thing or two you could use. And if not, you shouldn't have to pay for it! :)</comment></comment>


Practicing 2000 hrs (The Dan Plan: a 10,000 hr deliberate practice experiment) - <AUTHOR> http://thedanplan.com/blog/?p=910 <comment><AUTHOR> Briefly, Dan is testing the hypothesis that 10,000 hours of deliberate practice is what it takes to become an expert (in this case, at golf).

I've been following his blog with interest, and he's now crossed the 20% mark. Honestly, I'm pretty impressed with where he is, given so much time to go.

Previous discussion:

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2438300>

<comment><USER2> Golf may be a terrible example for trying to prove out this rule. There are many folks with near perfect golf swings who never make it in the sport. Golf is largely a mental battle, and if you can't hold up under pressure you are not going to be able to compete. I'm not sure how he is practicing, but I'm guessing he has no where near the pressure you get in competition, and unless you have the experience he would likely crack in a competitive situation. In a tour event a single bad judgment or mental lapse can ruin 4 days of hard work. That's if you caused the issue, golf is not a fair game and a bad bounce could also ruin your day. It is a very tough game mentally, and most recreational golfers are not prepared consistent performance required for competitive golf.

The other thing most people don't realize is how much exponentially better the different levels are. A club champ is not much compared with a mini tour player. Mini tour players are no where near the nationwide tour guys, and the PGA players who can win, or finish top 10 consistently are really really good. If you look at the difference between the #1 world ranked Luke Donald vs John Daly currently ranked #652 there is a very small difference in key stats. Lukes scoring average is 69.47, Daly's is 72. Greens in regulation has Luke at 67.04% and Daly at 61.36%.

One big event in your personal life could totally shake up your ability to compete at these highest levels. Sergio Garcia had to take a year off after being dumped by Natalie Gulbis, and look at the downward spiral of Tiger. He may never gain the confidence to compete again.

I wish him luck but I would bet he couldn't break par on a reasonably tough course from a respectable tee after his 10k hours.

<comment><USER3> > _The other thing most people don't realize is how much exponentially better > the different levels are._

I hate that people so abuse the term exponential, but putting that aside, you're looking at this wrong. The skill gap between levels is smaller as you progress. The effort to hit the next level may grow drastically, but the acquired skills diminish.

Think about someone who's never played teeing off against a casual golfer. How horribly will they lose, while they struggle with the basics? Now the casual golfer against the serious amateur. How will the casual golfer fare? Now serious amateur vs club pro. And so on. At each stage, the more advanced person has a major advantage, but that advantage decreases as the levels advance.

As someone progresses through the learning process, they go from learning the basics, through competence, and eventually to mastery. During this they initially learn gross skills and finally learn the most delicate refinements. It's this way with every skill. If you had to wager on the underdog in a casual golfer vs club pro face-off or a club pro vs a national pro face-off, who would you pick?

<comment><USER2> If his is not playing a lot, the problem with his approach is that the "mastery" component of the game has a lot to do with non mechanical aspects. It is hard to practice good course management on the range. It is hard to practice getting up and down to save par. It is hard to practice finishing, and this may be the hardest thing to practice.

I've played 14 holes of golf at even par, and once you start to approach a place you've never been before you tend to put immense pressure on yourself and make mistakes. The self awareness of achieving a new best score can prevent you from doing it. This gets harder over time as you improve. Breaking 80, breaking 75, breaking 70 are difficult not only because it is a tough game, but because it is easy to change the way you play depending on the circumstance and it is very hard to practice scoring, harder to practice not making a stupid triple bogy.

If you think i'm using exponential poorly, take a look at the USGA percentages for golfers better than scratch.

[http://www.usga.org/handicapping/articles_resources/Men-s- US...](http://www.usga.org/handicapping/articles_resources/Men-s-USGA- Handicap-Indexes/)

<comment><USER4> He is practicing on course as well, not just the range. Part of starting from the hole backwards and not bringing a driver to the course _is_ teaching him course management.

This argument doesn't make much sense to me, though. Why do you feel that the mental side of the game can't be taught or you can't practice getting better at strengthening that part of your game? Simply recognizing that there _is_ a mental side to the game (like every sport) means that you can to try and control it and thereby practice managing it. This can be learned, every athlete learns it for every sport they play. The mental component is a large part to every sport. I have played several sports competitively and I can't think of a single sport that it isn't a component. One major failure caused me to be mentally timid in one sport I competed at a very high level in - could I have progressed past it? Yes, and I did at times but it still required work. But I _could_ get passed it and perform.

For anyone with both passion and time I am sure they can achieve expert status. People are adaptable, if they really want to do it and have the time to spend they will do what it takes to succeed. That includes finding their own way to cope with the mental pressures.

He has a lot of time left and nothing I've seen seems to indicate he couldn't get it done - minus the one thing I'm still unclear on, if he truly has a passion for the game.

<comment><USER4> Just watched a few of the videos and I think I've been able to answer my own question. He doesn't have a real passion for the game as he states in one of his videos. For that reason I don't think he will, or _can_ become elite (on Tour) but I don't doubt that he can still get to expert level after a few more years of dedicated practice.

I think that passion part is key to becoming truly great. The passion drives the desire to practice, and practice _well_ with large gains. During his time Hogan was known for practicing more than any other golfer, when he began to do really well on tour the other golfers started joining him so they could keep up. When asked how he was able to work so hard and practice so much he replied that he hard a hard time getting to sleep because he couldn't wait to get to the range in the morning to practice. Hogan was and still is known as the greatest ball striker ever.

Again, I believe that Talent = Passion + Time Spent. A component of passion is dedication and perseverance which he seems to have but there's something else that really drives it. Without it I think he's limited to what he can achieve.

Perhaps it's idealistic but I don't think anyone who lacks passion can hit like Hogan no matter how much time they spend. I'm sure they can become very good, but not like Hogan.

For the uninitiated, art: <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z-Nw__K1myQ>

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Interesting experiment. But the 10,000 hours rule is a myth [1]. The variance in deliberate practice needed is huge: some top performers need 3,000 hours while others need 24,000 hours. Some never get to the top no matter how much they practice. Success is probably due to many different factors. Just focusing on the deliberate practice is neither necessary nor sufficient.

[1] [http://www.sportsscientists.com/2011/08/talent-training- and-...](http://www.sportsscientists.com/2011/08/talent-training-and- performance-secrets.html)

<comment><USER6> That is exactly what makes this interesting. He is going to be one fairly accurately measured datapoint.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> This is amazing. It's hard to believe someone is capable of being that dedicated to something they've never really done before. I could understand how an amateur golfer who is in love with the game might set this lofty goal, but it seems Dan really had no feelings toward the game either way. More or less, he's doing it just to see if he can do it. And he's willing to dedicate 5 years of his life to this!

<comment><USER8> If his experiment works out moderately well I could see a great consulting business in training and self-improvement. If it works out really well he is now a professional athlete which seems pretty cool too.

I really wonder how being an amateur golfer would change the 10,000 hours - would it be a head start or would it hold someone back?

<comment><USER9> In theory, it might be a detriment. The brain is fairly plastic (i.e., can be reshaped and rewired constantly), but reinforced behaviors get pretty firmly hardwired. This is why "old habits die hard," and "you can't teach an old dog new tricks." Quite literally, the neural pathways we use most frequently and automatically become the hardest to rewire.

Ergo, if you've learned the game up to a certain skill level -- and then coasted at that skill level for decades -- you're going to need to rewire significantly engrained neural pathways in order to relearn the game and break through your plateau.

It also helps to be able to start young. Not only do you have more time on your hands when you're younger, but you learn more quickly. Your brain is much more plastic in childhood. Interestingly, in most of the "10,000 hours" case studies I've seen, the subject started practicing as a young kid. It's entirely possible that the learning curve is steepened or elongated for people who start as adults. A child might be able to go from beginner to master in 10,000 hours, but an adult might need many times that number of hours.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Kudos to him. Only 1 year and 5 months to reach 2000 hours! I'm impressed.

I began dancing Lindy Hop on 31st August 2009 and have been counting my hours (swing classes and dancing, not just lindy but also related styles) and I am not yet at the 1000 hour (almost there). I'm one of the most active dancers in the local scene and at 2nd or 3rd tier of the local dancers, the first being really good, so I have still lots of room to improve (not counting that I also go abroad).

He does about 4 hours a day of practice, that's 28 a week. Only in the most intensive workshops I have made those hours, and that wasn't deliberate practice.

I'll have to follow him just to motivate myself a bit more :D

</comment><comment><USER11> This is a fantastic idea, and I have enjoyed following it. I just hope Dan knows that there are lots of people who put in 10,000 hours and don't make it to the highest level (sports, music, math, art, anything...), despite becoming veritable masters. Its always a suprise how many people are amazingly good at something, without being the best or among the best. In my experience, there are such things as innate gifts. But hey, maybe I'm wrong! I hope so :) Makes this project that much more interesting.

<comment><USER12> Worth to note that it's not about 10000 hours, it's about 10000 hours of deliberate practice. The amount of people who do that is far smaller.

<comment><USER13> This is why the "10,000 hours" thing is stupid. It's unfalsifiable. If this guy fails people will just make various excuses like "his practice wasn't 'deliberate'."

<comment><USER14> No, it's pretty clear (if you've been following this story) that this guy is being about as deliberate as anyone can be within reason. If he fails, the "10,000 hours" claim will indeed be in serious jeopardy. One data point, sure, but if the first data point is hard-won and correlates to "theory==wrong", few will take it seriously enough to make the second data point happen.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> I'm doing something similar with trying to learn how to program. I call it Brute Force Learning which is not exactly deliberate practice but more akin to just doing it and hoping it sticks. The reason is because I've always wanted to learn how to program, going back to wanting to build my own BBS door back in the day which gives you a reference of how long I've been around computers without learning to program. I know the reason was never an issue of mental capacity but just a question of will, which is why I'm now carefully keeping track of my learning time log.

I just started the experiment and do not have much online but if you're interested you can follow at <http://theoutliers.com>

</comment><comment><USER16> Another neat side of this is that as he gets better, the people he will be competing with will be able to dedicate more of their lives to practice. For example, I'd imagine PGA pros practice at the same level (time and dedication) as Dan is, but they've been doing it for years already and have a big head start on him. Beating his competitors will get exponentially harder as he gets better even with the amazing work ethic he seems to be putting in. That's cool.

Also, now I'm slightly inspired to work harder at getting better at things I care about by using deliberate practice. Granted, I won't stick with it even for 1000 hours. I'm very impressed with what he is doing.

</comment><comment><USER17> I should try this, I'm stuck in Platinum @ StarCraft II.

<comment><USER18> At the higher levels of play, StarCraft II is both skill and strategy. If your skill is what's holding you back, then yes, all you need is more practice. If it's your strategy, you could grind for a lifetime without improvement.

<comment><USER19> Couldn't strategic skill be improved? (Serious question. Don't know much about Starcraft. But for a game like chess, it was considered very possible to improve your skill in strategy)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Such a inspiring initiative. This could really become a seminal experiment in learning.

<comment><USER21> Unfortunately, no matter how successful he is, this is still just a single data point.

<comment><USER20> True, but the entire self help industry and large portions of the business literature is based on single or very few data points, and they are thriving.

<comment><USER21> Which should be very depressing.

That said, I'm not trying to downplay what he is doing, I think it's pretty amazing.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Independence Day - <AUTHOR> http://news.microsoft.com/stories/independence-day/

<comment><USER2> It's disappointing to see the cynicism and negativity directed to this announcement. Yes, the presentation is a bit lacking: the website is difficult to read for many and the video seems to be a big ad. But the message is so hopeful. I'm not blind/visually challenged/whatever the correct terminology is, but this announcement/description/advertisement made me happy.

It made me happy not because this is another channel to bring advertisers and consumers together (as others have pointed out) but because it seems like a way to leverage technology to really give help and hope to others.

Is there a reason why Microsoft shouldn't put their branding forward and promote their own devices if they put up money for the research? Apple does this all the time. I hope we take joy in the possibilities of freedom that this technology could provide.

<comment><USER3> What bothers me is that the most important part of this project is to get a lot of existing entities to do something for the visual impaired people (e.g. put bluetooth devices everywhere, create sevices to push the information to users), and I feel this part of the project is brushed away in a "we have great ideas, surely everyone will be conviced to make them possible" attitude.

There is already realtime tracking of the train delays where I live, and it just doesn't work (regularly a train will be displayed as arriving to a station, when clearly it's not there, and 5 min after it gets rescheduled). Telling me in nice video that we'll expand this kind of experience to vuses and a lot of other things, and it will help blind people to workaround unexpected things just feels like wild fantasy.

About the other companies, Apple's doesn't advertise feel good prototypes of "boil the ocean" types of projects. They didn't come with a "wouldn't it be great if you could pay for things with our technology ? Imagine if everyone put this beacon everywhere in the world" video telling fluffy stories in advance.

They prototyped the barcode payment system in their shop, you could actually use it with existing devices, and they're pushing their NFC payment with a nationwide partner networks with working payment terminals from the get go, doing the hard work upfront.

<comment><USER4> 'There is already realtime tracking of the train delays where I live, and it just doesn't work'

The important point is not that the data is flawed, it's accessibility to that data. Leveling the playing field.

<comment><USER3> That the data is already accessible. It has an app, it has a website. If you can use the accessibility features of any smartphone then you have access to it.

The leveling of the playing field you mention is not some moonshot, some dream to hold dear to one's heart. It certainly can still be done better, but it's already done competently.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I'm not sure what's the reason to be cynical here. I'm an iOS developer who uses an Android device personally and I'm loving this new Microsoft (Post Ballmer). This was exactly the wish of developers in 2002, that MS should become contributing OpenSource citizen.

The Roslyn project, F#, Docker integration, MS Band etc clearly show that MS has learned it's lessons and are responsible citizens of OSS world.

Kudos Microsoft.

<comment><USER6> The MS Band has an open source OS? I must've missed that.

<comment><USER4> OSS is not the same as 'Open Source Operating System. While I wouldn't say there's much OSS in the Band I think the OP's intent is that Microsoft is being more open

"Plays well with others. We've established partnerships with key service providers who embrace our vision of healthier living. And we're open to even more. Microsoft Health as a platform will be strengthened by broader collaboration from device and service partners. See how connecting to the partners we have today can make your Microsoft Band experience even more amazing."

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> The site is unreadable.

Here is the video [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BEzncMLLOxE](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BEzncMLLOxE)

<comment><USER8> I don't know, I found the audio combined with the text & images incredibly engaging, although I did wish for a visual cue from time to when I lost my place (I was reading in sync, but got distracted).

<comment><USER9> Perhaps it worked better on your browser, but the content was so delayed that many times I scrolled past it before it decided to load. So I was constantly having to scroll back and forth to try to figure out whether a blank spot was truly blank (sometimes it was). Pretty frustrating. And the irony is almost too much...

<comment><USER10> There's a big button in the upper right hand corner for an audio version, ya dingus. Ever thought that might be useful for people who can't read the website?

<comment><USER11> I can read perfectly well. But if the web site I'm looking at is so badly designed that it's unreadable, why should I expect that an audio version will be better thought out?

There are perfectly good reasons for providing audio content on a web site, but having a badly designed site isn't one of them.

<comment><USER12> I think he GP was referring to visually impaired people, per the post they were responding to (about the "irony", etc.).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> My one quibble with the article is that calling Reading a suburb of London is quite misleading. I understand (North?) Americans use the word differently to Europeans on the whole, but Reading is a Medieval town with a net commuter flow inwards - it's the local hub of economic activity, and is the largest town (it hasn't got city status) in the UK.

For context, in terms of its economy, size, distance from London etc, it's not much different to calling Oxford <edit>or Windsor</edit> a suburb of London.

<comment><USER14> We often call smaller city's suburbs of larger ones. DC 'suburbs' extend out 60+ miles and include several mid-sized city's. "Greater Metropolitan area" is often a better term. EX: Fairfax city is in a similar location relative to DC and takes 1h 20min to get their by subway, it's also inside fairfax county which has ~1Million people. However, large numbers of people commute from west of Fairfax into DC.

So IMO, it's consistant when you look at overall traffic / commuter flows.

<comment><USER13> I think the term loses a lot of meaning if used just for the same distances in the UK as in the US. Particularly because the main consensus for 'suburb' seems to be that it's a residential area, which the commuter flows suggest that Reading is not. Perhaps the best benchmark is merely whether a place is treated as a sub-district (albeit far-flung) of a city? I'd say that doesn't apply to Reading, but perhaps the same is true of Fairfax.

Your final remark is a little confusing - what is consistent looking at commuter flows? You mentioned that large numbers of people commute from west of Fairfax into DC, and I said Reading has a net influx of commuters. Those statements don't directly contradict each other, but certainly don't explicitly agree!

<comment><USER14> Suppose 100k people live in fairfax and 150k people work in fairfax. That's a net influx. But if 300k people commute though fairfax IMO that point's to it being part of a larger collective.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Terrible web design for those of us with a vision impairment.

<comment><USER16> Yeah, the irony that is for people with vision impairment and that site is hard to read and navigate is strong

<comment><USER17> My vision is fine and I still had trouble with that site, enough that I closed it early. Terrible scrolling and delayed loading ruined that experience.

<comment><USER18> They are talking about helping blind people and you are talking about terrible scrolling and closing the website?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Complaints about the website aside, this technology is great and is exactly the type of thing microsoft needs to be developing.

</comment><comment><USER20> This is great I wish more large corps were putting money into stuff like this. its a real problem and without realizing business and some awesome tech will come out of it.

</comment><comment><USER21> My sister-in-law recently became blind after many years of declining sight. It is heartbreaking to see how difficult even the most seemingly simple journeys have become for her. (And I'm quite impressed by the way that she has been pushing herself, even though it's clearly quite difficult for her.)

I think that the video is a bit too optimistic about how easy it can be for blind people to walk around. But I also think that the idea -- using a combination of smart phones, Bluetooth and Wifi markers, and headphones -- is a very clever one, and is a very good start.

It is going to take decades for such a technology to become stable and mature. But I'm impressed and pleased to see Microsoft investing in such technologies.

Oh, and are they hinting that there might be ads aimed at blind people? Yes. I don't know how that is any different from Google offering "free" e-mail and search in exchange for ads. My metric for whether this is worthwhile isn't whether Microsoft puts up ads, but rather whether blind people benefit.

</comment><comment><USER22> "a reminder you're walking by a place with great Chinese takeout"

is this just a way to target ads at people with a disability? if all I'm trying to do is get form point A to point B, the last think I want is "interesting facts about history" or targeted ads.

<comment><USER23> It could be an incentive for shop owners to install such a beacon, thus increasing their frequency and improving the system. I doubt they would be ads, but rather just the name of the store and maybe some sort of rating reference or something.

<comment><USER24> >"I doubt they would be ads, but rather just the name of the store and maybe some sort of rating reference or something." //

That sounds like an advert to me. Shop owners will consider the ROI, if they think there are enough blind people with such a device that will be attracted in to spend by use of this system they'll get it. It's an advert, like a shop window display, surely.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> Great story, and a neat device that, in my opinion, has a better consumer electronics future than Google Glass.

</comment><comment><USER26> I'm impressed with the scope and maturity of the concept they're presenting here. Small attempts at improving usability of the world for the visually impaired have always been kinda cool -- things like chirping walk-signal actuators at crosswalks -- but have always been disparate and half-baked. It'd be remarkable if Microsoft's mass and momentum behind a system like this could be implemented on a large scale in a city to demonstrate how beneficial a fully baked system can be.

And, to fuel the fire, the page design was top-notch, except for the random 2-column blocks which seem an interesting choice given the nature of variable screen sizes.

</comment><comment><USER27> IMO the biggest news about it is MS putting their clout behind it. A blind friend of mine told me a few years ago already he participated in some kind of experiment with mobile navigation. He then preferred his own ears and guide dog. But then, this was _just_ before the smartphone revolution really took off, and we got ubiquitous Internet all over the place. I think right now is a better moment than back then.

While I'm here I still do want to complain about the website :P Why? Because it stressed me out. There's no reason a webpage should go out of their way to do that. It made me nervous how much of the text+pictures only started to fade in as I already scrolled halfway _past_ it. Why does it even need to fade at all? It's already scrolled in and out of view. I guess this is an example of how, with normal pages, everybody has their own customary way of navigating the information, and as designers take more and more control of that experience, it's going to cause friction and differences. I can imagine how this could match someone's particular way of interacting with a page, but it's not mine. I stopped reading halfway through as it was stressing me out (I didn't need this before my first coffee was yet to kick in).

Regardless, as everyone is screaming, let's pay attention to this great project, helping blind people.

</comment><comment><USER28> From what I've seen, iPhone is the de facto standard of mobile phones for visually impaired for now, because its VoiceOver function is pretty well made, and more importantly, its UI experience is far less varied than its competitors, i.e. Windows Phones and Androids. It has already a strong community and support from organizations like AFB. I hope this bring them a more healthy competition among the tech companies.

</comment><comment><USER3> This could be a prototype project where three or four routes in one or two cities will be enhanced with bluetooth, a dozen of test subjects will try it on a refular basis, a few articles in the news will appear praising this visionnary concept and two months later everybody forgets about it.

Or it could be a proof of concept of a much wider plan, and from the results we would see the start of a massive undertaking involving huge swaths of cities clearing budget to put a bluetooth beacon on every street corner, public transport infrastructure is massively updated to have up to date realtime data accessible from the mobile apps In a usable format, shop owner and public facilities join the movement to enhanced their places for discoverability.

If this was an IBM project partenaring a metropolitan city council, I would be expecting the later. It's a Microsoft story centering on the technological aspect of it, I guess it's the former.

</comment><comment><USER29> A good reminder that there are novel implementations of existing technology (mobile devices, beacons) that can markedly improve the lives of those with disabilities.

</comment><comment><USER30> This has got to be the first article I've read that has incorporated ambient sound. The loop is terrible, but it's still pretty awesome! The coconuts were annoying though.. I hope more articles introduce ambient sound... I'm imagining this being integrated into novels.

Also, this is fantastic. I can totally see this being of interested to the sighted as well; maybe it would see better uptake than glass.

<comment><USER31> That's what I was thinking about - inner-ear bluetooth stereo headset that does the basics like notification pings, but perhaps also act as a 6th sense, things like navigation cues so you can use your navigation app on your bicycle without blocking your hearing or looking at your phone.

<comment><USER30> Also think self-tours. People could setup tours around places like Rome and vote them up. You load it up, then walk around the city getting tips on the hot spots and history. I believe there is a lot of potential for this sort of contextual audio cuing.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> It will take a huge amount of beacons to make this useful. But a worthy cause and an interesting solution. Let's wait and see if anything comes out of it.

</comment><comment><USER33> That website sucks.

</comment><comment><USER34> Native advertising

</comment><comment><USER35> So customized billboards for the blind.

</comment><comment><USER36> Colour me cynical, but this seems like the perfect opportunity for Microsoft to take payment from corporations to adjust a blind person's route past said corporations' branches, thereby providing a sneaky targeted advertising campaign.

<comment><USER37> Hmm, you just thought of this, Microsoft didn't.

It says more about you than it does about Microsoft.</comment></comment>


Companies that feed America brace for labor shortages and worry about restocking - <AUTHOR> https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2020/03/13/food-supply-shortage-coronavirus/ <comment><USER2> There's a lot of discussion about flattening the curve to lessen the impact on healthcare providers and hospitals. Wouldn't the same sort of thinking apply for grocery stores and food supplies? It seems like people need to stop stockpiling and hoarding food so the most vulnerable people from an economic standpoint (who likely don't have the means to stock up for weeks or months) can still have access to it.

<comment><USER3> Both of these points rely on people acting rational in the face of the unknown. I think it's safe to assume this is not going to happen.

<comment><USER4> I disagree. These are classic game theory problems where what is unilaterally rational doesn't optimize group welfare. You need rationing and market intervention. The problem is relying on capitalism for distribution based on aggregated price signals.

<comment><USER3> Did you also factor in the fact that this is America, where people own guns and believe they have a god given right to use them?

<comment><USER5> What exactly are they going to do with those guns that'll get them more food?

Looting and robbing, even were they to get away with it, will only get them a limited amount when there's virtually no food to be had.

I don't think guns are going to be the solution here.

<comment><USER3> Skip to the front of the line? Raid their neighbors' house? Again, people will not be rational and if things escalate (which I don't think they will) they will revert back to tribalism very, very quickly.

<comment><USER6> Private gun ownership does much more to reduce looting than contribute to it. This has been seen time and time again in America.

But anyhow, food supplies aren't drying up, and there is plenty of workforce available with other businesses slowing down.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Since this is going to play out over time, won't we reach a point where people are basically stocked up.. and the more avid shoppers have already filled their pantries?

We're going to keep shopping at this rate for months, are we? After all, we don't eat more than we usually do.

<comment><USER8> My concern is local disruptions in supply and food availability. Three days without food won't kill you, but it certainly will change your outlook on life.

There are a number of "pinch points" in the supply chain, vulnerable to employees getting sick, that (coupled with inventory problems from hoarding) could easily result in reduced local supply for a week or two.

<comment><USER9> There are only a few companies the control the majority of the US food supply, and seem to rely heavily on hourly workers for logistics.

I don't know the sick-leave policies of Kroger, Walmart, Publix, or Aldi, but there does not seem to be a high-availability, fault tolerant system to handle an entire workforce being unavailable for weeks at a time.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Can we talk about illegal immigrants in the vegetable farming and meat industry? They constitute a major part of the workforce but have no rights and no access to healthcare in the time of coronavirus.

<comment><USER11> >no access to healthcare in the time of coronavirus.

aren't emergency rooms required to treat patients regardless of whether they're able to pay?

<comment><USER12> ERs in the US primarily act as triage and stabilization centers for emergencies. Treatment for chronic illness or preventative care can't reliably be found in an ER.

An anecdote, the last time I had to go to an ER in the US was when I cut the flexor tendon in my pinky, I knew it was severed but since it wasn't life threatening they stopped the bleeding, put some liquid stitches in the cut, wrapped and braced it and sent me on my way.

I had to wait until the weekend was over to see my primary care doctor which I have access to because I have insurance / money.

<comment><USER11> > ERs in the US primarily act as triage and stabilization centers for > emergencies. Treatment for chronic illness or preventative care can't > reliably be found in an ER.

I get that, but how is that relevant when it comes to the coronavirus? It's not like it's a chronic condition. If you had it and were experiencing pneumonia, I doubt you'd be turned away for being undocumented.

<comment><USER13> This is my understanding, but I'd love to hear what others have to say:

My understanding is that the coronavirus is viral, not microbial, so we don't have any medicine to cure it directly (antibiotics don't work on it).

In addition, the risk is from having a respiratory problem, either from this or from something else (like pneumonia).

So if you get coronavirus then the basic treatment is to put you in a hospital to help your body live through the respiratory problem until your body can fight off the virus on it's own.

That's why there's so much emphasis on slowing the growth and flattening the curve. If (when) all the hospital beds fill up then whoever doesn't get in will have a much tougher time surviving, and there's no treatment other than having people lay in a hospital bed for a couple weeks.

tl;dr: It's not a chronic condition, but you'll need several weeks of intensive care to survive. ERs themselves just diagnose, treat what they can in the moment, and then send people home or on to the hospital.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> The coronavirus has exposed the herdmentality of most people worldwide. Especially the hoarding of toilet paper. Major hysteria for a simple flu virus. At least we got some good memes out of it.

</comment><comment><USER15> Start paying people 40 USD / hour and watch even people in wheelchair start walking.

<comment><USER16> Except California has price gouging laws that make it illegal to increase prices more than 10% in an emergency situation. Good luck doubling or tripling wages with that 10% margin.

Price gouging laws should have a very high ceiling to ensure legitimate business needs can be met, to compensate workers for increased risks and or extra shifts.

<comment><USER17> Please stop spreading misinformation. The price gouging laws allow prices to increase without limit to pay for increased wages or costs: [https://oag.ca.gov/consumers/pricegougingduringdisasters#8C](https://oag.ca.gov/consumers/pricegougingduringdisasters#8C)

<comment><USER18> "Can prove". "May not be liable". Sounds like a hassle, and uncertain. Especially given the prevailing mob mentality against raising prices in an emergency.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I do wonder how long the general public, many of whom are now sitting at home on their ass all day, are going to continue doing so and let themselves, their families and friends, and the rest of the nation starve, instead of taking a risk and volunteering to help make and deliver food.

The divisive, isolationist, "only me and my immediate friends and family matter" attitude that is so prevalent in America starkly shows its corrosive effects in crisis.

<comment><USER19> Social distancing or voluntary unnecessary exposure to help others, which is it gonna be?

<comment><USER20> Yup.

Also, would love to hear how I, as a quarantined software developer in an apartment in one of the densest metro areas in the U.S., can "help make and deliver food" in a way that doesn't kill even more people in the process.

<comment><USER5> Not all food has to be made by hand. There's a lot of machinery that can make it, and food could be run through pasteurization and other disinfection processes (such as irradiation) to kill off any pathogens.

This machinery has to be operated by somebody, and people can be trained to do it. It takes people willing and able to do it, however.

Also, once delivered the food doesn't have to be eaten right away. The virus only lasts a certain number of hours or days (I've heard estimates of up to two weeks). After that, it can be eaten safely even if it was contaminated with the virus when it was made. Of course, that means perishable food that won't last that long is out of the question, but other food that can last should be fine.

<comment><USER20> > After that, it can be eaten safely even if it was contaminated with the > virus when it was made. Of course, that means perishable food that won't > last that long is out of the question, but other food that can last should > be fine.

This makes sense, I don't disagree.

But to my limited understanding most large scale food prep & processing happens well outside of city limits. Apart from some bakeries and doughnut shops I imagine most of what I find on the shelves of common grocery stores is largely shipped in via complex distributions chains originating either a) much closer to the farms/source ingredients or b) outside the state/country entirely.

> This machinery has to be operated by somebody, and people can be trained to > do it. It takes people willing and able to do it, however.

So if things start going _really_ bad (ie, large scale interruptions in production AND delivery) then yes, your situation starts to apply where I, a software developer, might have to trek out hundreds of miles somehow and start learning and operating food production equipment. I'm not saying I would refuse to do it -- but things would have to get incredibly bad for that to be a reality. To my knowledge there is nobody seriously predicting collapse on that level.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Startup Logos from 2010 - <AUTHOR> http://blog.designcrowd.com/article/243/50-startup-logos-from-2010 <comment><USER2> Github Octocat is not a logo, it's a mascot, and a damn awesome one at that.

</comment><comment><USER3> For non-designers, telling whether something is designed well or not usually is a feeling. It would be very helpful if it could be put into words why each logo was in each category. That usually turns a feeling into substance that can be reused.

<comment><USER4> i agree. cant really tell what is great about groupon and what is terrible about the echo logo.

<comment><USER5> Also, SimpleGeo and StockTwits seem to be using about the same concept: use the company name as the logo, replace a letter with a symbol representing the business. The former is "good" while the latter is "average", and without an indication as to _why_ it looks like this list is entirely arbitrary.

<comment><USER6> I'm a designer…

StockTwits has a lot of small issues with its logotype which contributes to its 'average' label. The type is not kerned correctly, uses an awkward typeface (look at, for example, the w), and has that odd messages icon on top of the i.

SimpleGeo, on the other hand, has a beautifully kerned typeface, contains a more recognizable logo (note the compass; this is something that can eventually become instantly recognizable), and is overall simpler- by that, I mean that it can be used in a large variety of mediums (note the color in StockTwits' logo).

Overall, the main difference is in the type itself- tall, awkward, and lanky type versus medium, large, and overall more visually clear type.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Ask yourself: If she didn't have the headers, could you tell what order the list was in (good to bad or bad to good) or where the line was drawn?

I sure couldn't.

<comment><USER8> I agree. I can see that the fonts in Yinzcam and meesocial don't work, but I can't see why, for example, Crowdrise is worse than Boxee.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> I would knock off some points for the "web 2.0" style logos that incorporate elements that don't translate well to black/white print form or cannot be easily recognizable when constrained such as on embroidery.

<comment><USER10> That _seems_ obvious, but for a company that interacts with customers online...why?

<comment><USER11> You want customers to think about your brand, and to do that you want to give them every exposure you can. You might end up with magazine adds, outdoor adds, or t-shirts, all of which can be strong marketing tools.

Putting your logo offline makes your brand seem more concrete, it helps pull you out of the pure virtual realm so that customers can relate to you better.

<comment><USER10> But which of these logos are going to look bad on a full-color ad or a decent- quality t-shirt?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Aside from the subjective Good/Average/Bad this is a very nice list of how logos in 2010 looked. Most of them are simple and clean. If I remember correctly, in 2008/2009 we had a lot of shiny logos with shadows (the typical web2.0 look) which has been abandoned almost entirely. This years logos are more designed than just made, they invlove more of the product they represent.

</comment><comment><USER13> yeah why is the octocat under ugly? i mean i get 4square, that thing looks like someone colored a volleyball poster from the 60ies...</comment>


Continuous Integration and Deployment with Bazel - <AUTHOR> https://blogs.dropbox.com/tech/2019/12/continuous-integration-and-deployment-with-bazel/ <comment><USER2> > We modified our continuous integration system to extract this dependency > information from Bazel (via bazel query) and use it to compute the set of > tests affected by a particular commit. This allows us to greatly reduce the > number of tests executed on most commits while still being correct.

Why didn't they just rely on Bazel's built in test caching? It does the same thing.

<comment><USER3> Basel's built in caching requires you build the test (even with cached this takes a bit to love the bites) then you can figure out your already have the result.

You save a large amount of time if you can tell Bazel only to evaluate the part of the tree you know a change effects.

<comment><USER2> Bazel will cache already built tests as well, and only rebuild those which have changed. Are you saying that it's cheaper to evaluate Bazel's dep. graph yourself rather than have Bazel do it? Bazel caches the dep. graph too. Have you tried —-watchfs? Don't tear down the daemon needlessly, either.</comment></comment></comment>


StackOverflow is down - <AUTHOR> http://stackoverflow.com/ <comment><USER3> "We are having database or network issues on Stack Overflow - <USER2> now." \- [https://twitter.com/StackStatus/status/823948599994253313](https://twitter.com/StackStatus/status/823948599994253313)

</comment><comment><USER4> Hmmm... the page implies routine maintenance, but the twitter feed says there's trouble: [https://twitter.com/StackStatus](https://twitter.com/StackStatus)

<comment><USER5> Sometimes one thing leads to the other.</comment></comment>


Why Did Google Answers Shut Down? - <AUTHOR> http://blogoscoped.com/archive/2007-08-09-n28.html <comment><USER2> I loved Google Answers. I still miss it.

<comment><USER3> Google answers, but restricted to an established community (like ycnews) would be even more useful.</comment></comment>


Wikipedia Is Down - <AUTHOR> https://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/gadgets-and-tech/wikipedia-down-not-working-google-stopped-page-loading-encyclopedia-a9095236.html <comment><USER2> 0 edits within 10 minutes in de.wikipedia.org[1]

[1] archive: [http://archive.fo/20190906201826/http://vs.aka- online.de/cgi...](http://archive.fo/20190906201826/http://vs.aka- online.de/cgi-bin/rchiststat.pl?dur=600&lim=700&wp=DE&fl=)

<comment><USER2> even the monitoring page is mostly down:

[https://grafana.wikimedia.org/d/000000479/frontend- traffic](https://grafana.wikimedia.org/d/000000479/frontend-traffic)

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> What's going on here: [https://twitter.com/UKDrillas/status/1170074170211934208](https://twitter.com/UKDrillas/status/1170074170211934208) ?

</comment><comment><USER4> Totally down in Austin, Texas at the moment as well.

Checked twitter to see what was going on and was surprised to see this started in Europe, would be nice to have some acknowledgement from wikimedia..

<comment><AUTHOR> It's been confirmed on IRC. It's a DDoS.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> They didn't get enough donations</comment>


Overstock Files to Offer Stock That Works Like Bitcoin - <AUTHOR> http://www.wired.com/2015/04/overstock-files-offer-stock-works-like-bitcoin/

<comment><USER2> Wired is very vague and doesnt link any sources. This is the actual filing: [http://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1130713/0001047469150...](http://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1130713/000104746915003890/a2224281zs-3.htm) ( [http://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1130713/0001047469150...](http://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1130713/000104746915003890/0001047469-15-003890-index.htm) for all documents )

Edit: From what I understand they basically want to launch a proprietary crypto-currency as a mean to raise money. I don't think they even specify whether this is supposed to be debt or equity.

<comment><USER3> I interpret this filing as Overstock initiating a dialogue with the SEC about whether the SEC will authorise the issuance of securities that will be traded on an alternative trading system[1] (as opposed to a traditional stock exchange like NASDAQ) and whose ownership will be recorded on a blockchain[2] (as opposed to a traditional, centralised clearing and settlement process, such as the Depository Trust Company).

The reason they haven't specified whether it will be debt or equity is because they have opted to list all the possible types of securities (six in total), presumably to see what the SEC's reaction is.

Basically, they're asking for permission to do everything, to see what the SEC's response is. If the SEC approves the application, happy days! However, it's far more likely that there will be a lot of back-and-forth before the SEC makes a decision.

To my knowledge, this is the first time anyone has formally filed to get SEC approval for crypto-issuance of securities. IANAL but I would expect that the SEC's response will set a _de facto_ precedent (but not a _de jure_ one). In other words (and at the risk of adding a bit of hype), this could be a small but significant step towards reshaping our financial system and reducing the power of Wall Street.

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

2: Or, as Overstock describes them, "digital securities, meaning the securities will be uncertificated securities, the ownership and transfer of which are recorded on a cryptographically-secured distributed ledger system using technology similar to (or the same as) the distributed ledger technology used for trading digital currencies".

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Is there a reason the Overstock board hasn't reined Byrne in on his cryptocurrency push given that it's basically been an 18 month long failure that he keeps throwing money after?

<comment><USER5> > Overstock's free-thinking CEO, Patrick Byrne

"free thinking": business speak for "fucking nuts, but inexplicably keeps making money, just."

I believe there were recommendations that Overstock shunt all the lunacy over to a spinoff company run by Byrne and get someone not insane to run the actually profitable business.</comment></comment>


Google patents sticky layer to protect pedestrians in self-driving car accidents - <AUTHOR> https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2016/may/18/google-patents-sticky-layer-self-driving-car-accidents <comment><USER2> Actual patent: [http://patft.uspto.gov/netacgi/nph- Parser?Sect1=PTO2&Sect2=H...](http://patft.uspto.gov/netacgi/nph- Parser?Sect1=PTO2&Sect2=HITOFF&p=1&u=%2Fnetahtml%2FPTO%2Fsearch- bool.html&r=1&f=G&l=50&co1=AND&d=PTXT&s1=google.ASNM.&s2=9340178.PN.&OS=AN/google+AND+PN/9340178&RS=AN/google+AND+PN/9340178)

In short: They propose having a frangible outer layer above the adhesive layer.

</comment><comment><USER3> The idea really is to glue the pedestrian you just hit to your hood. [http://i.imgur.com/qlrbeCa.png](http://i.imgur.com/qlrbeCa.png)

I'm curious in what situations this would end up being worse. I suppose Google seems confident it's usually better, but it just sounds bizarre.</comment>


Change Sets for AWS CloudFormation - <AUTHOR> https://aws.amazon.com/blogs/aws/new-change-sets-for-aws-cloudformation/ <comment><USER2> CloudFormation is awful. I used it extensively for about a year and will never go back.

<comment><USER3> +1

1\. We can't test the templates in local environment, the only way to test a template is to create a real cluster which usually takes ~15 minutes.

2\. The error messages are not helpful enough. It usually fails with "SETUP_FAILED" error with no proper error cause.

3\. The rollback may not work if you change the configuration. You need to delete the resources manually or even need to get help from Amazon since the resources stuck at some failed status.

4\. The JSON template is hard to write and read. We have a fat single file template that has 2k lines and scared to change it since we might broke something.

5\. Not all AWS actions are supported. For example we need to add custom resources (ELB and RDS instances) to a Opsworks stack but it's not possible with Cloudformation.

<comment><USER4> Can't counter these points other than that what else is there to automate AWS infrastructure? Terraform suffers all these problems, too.

<comment><USER3> I don't have experience with Terraform but it should be possible to find a way to fix these issues except the first one.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Call me when they get rid of UPDATE_ROLLBACK_FAILED until then it's practically useless.

Whoever thought it was ever acceptable to leave your production stack in state that requires deleting it is an idiot.

Even if they fixed it I doubt I'd ever trust a service that ever acted like that with my production infrastructure.

<comment><USER6> It isn't gone, but you can at least recover from it now.

[https://blogs.aws.amazon.com/application- management/post/Tx1...](https://blogs.aws.amazon.com/application- management/post/Tx11YT4MHFDZMK6/Continue-Rolling-Back-an-Update-for-AWS- CloudFormation-stacks-in-the-UPDATE-ROLL)

<comment><USER7> Is that just a retry though? It sounds like the onus is still on you to fix the problem manually so that CloudFormation can complete its rollback, rather than e.g. being able to request a different desired CloudFormation state that might be reachable.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> This is effectively the 'dry-run' feature that has been sought for a long long time [1], and led me to switch to Terraform (which does do this amongst other key differences) . Why did it take so damn long to implement?

I do appreciate it has come about eventually. Terraform has its foibles (and stupid half-declarative language) but it would take further improvements to consider going back to CF.

[1] [https://forums.aws.amazon.com/thread.jspa?messageID=563929&#...](https://forums.aws.amazon.com/thread.jspa?messageID=563929&#563929)

<comment><USER8> Actually, this isn't quite dry-run. What this does is calculate the diff between two templates, and just provide the operations from that diff. It does not inspect the current state of resources to see if there were any out-of- band changes that would be unwound.

So it gets you closer to a dry-run, but is not as complete as terraform's.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> This is a step in the right direction but the lack of consistent error handling and having some resources created that can't be referenced are still huge pain points (e.g. the default security group and route table).

I've had the most success using CloudFormation to create an entirely new stack, test it, cut over, then delete the old one... definitely not optimal.

<comment><USER10> References to existing resources, such as the default SG, can be handled with stack parameters.

You can pass in its ID as a parameter to the stack, and refer to this parameter in your launch configs or ingress rules.

An example from one of my client's stacks:

        "Parameters": {
          "DefaultSG": {
            "Type": "AWS::EC2::SecurityGroup::Id",
            "Default": "sg-abc123"
          },

Personally I prefer to create a new SG to replace the default one as it means all of my infrastructure is part of a CF stack, but the parameter method can be used to partially manage (some) non-CF resources.</comment></comment>


Was the Soviet 1923 Male Birth Cohort Doomed by World War II? (2014) - <AUTHOR> http://blogs.warwick.ac.uk/markharrison/entry/was_the_soviet/

<comment><USER2> Shocking is also how they died. On 40 years ago on our farm worked a heavily alcoholic tank-driver from the eastern front- when drunk he would ramble about what happend there.

The sovjet officers told there hastily trained recruits that they had Anti- Tank-Guns who could penetrant german tanks. They could not. So the tank would drive along the dug emergency trench. One Tankchain in the trenches. They would fire. They would be crushed. Dont remember the length - but about one day of nightmarish driving of this.

</comment><comment><USER3> Despite having tried to google it a few times, I have never found a table of deaths by birth year over WWI or WWII for any country. You'd think it would be on Wikipedia. Even rough estimates would make for a nice blog post.

<comment><USER4> Look for actuarial tables. They are used to set life insurance rates.

<comment><USER5> They frequently exclude WWII as an extraordinary event.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Possibly more shocking, more than 60% of men who were born in 1923 and still alive in 1941 would die during the War (assuming I've understood the article correctly and my maths is sound).

<comment><USER7> No. Surviving to 1941: 1,800, wartime mortality: 700, surviving to 1946: 1,100.

700/1,800 = 38%

<comment><USER6> Oops. You're right, I took the 1946 figure as the 1941 one (700/1100 > 60%).

Still, 38% is pretty bad.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> [http://www.aircrewremembered.com/](http://www.aircrewremembered.com/)

</comment><comment><USER8> Although a classic case of Betteridge's Law, it's a fascinating article.</comment>


TIOBE Index for September 2014 - <AUTHOR> https://plus.google.com/+MarkHorsell/posts/BeeuEn6G1dA

<comment><AUTHOR> Interesting to observe:

* Swift gains momentum as expected

* Dart is on the map again next to Scala & Haskell

* Objective-c (& Swift) & F# on the rise

* PHP, C++ & Java having a hard time

* TypeScript is missing

</comment><comment><USER2> Change the link to Tiobe please, no need to link to Google plus.</comment>


Zuckerberg's Residence at Issue in Facebook Suit - <AUTHOR> http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703673604575550141190640772.html?mod=WSJ_hps_MIDDLEThirdNews

<comment><AUTHOR> This case, initially filed in state court, had been removed to federal court on the ground that the federal court had so-called "diversity jurisdiction."

Basically, federal courts are courts of limited jurisdiction and, unless a case presents a cognizable federal claim or unless some other limited ground for federal jurisdiction exists (such as diversity of citizenship among the parties), the federal court will lack jurisdiction and the case must be remanded for processing and eventual trial in the state court from which it originated.

For diversity jurisdiction to exist, there must be complete diversity of citizenship among the parties, meaning that all defendants must be citizens of some state other than that of the local jurisdiction (here, New York). Facebook is a Delaware corporation with its principal operations in California and therefore is diverse from Mr. Ceglia, who is a New York resident. Mr. Zuckerberg argues that he is a resident of California, having lived here since 2004 to drive his company's growth. In his motion to get the case remanded to state court, Mr. Ceglia argues that Mr. Zuckerberg is in fact a New York resident and that this fact defeats federal diversity jurisdiction, necessitating that the federal court grant his motion to remand.

For a bit of editorializing, I would add (as one who has been highly skeptical of this case) that this strikes me as a rather desperate attempt by the plaintiff to get the case into a forum that might offer up more hope than would a federal court for getting jackpot justice. The argument on the technical point at issue is that Mr. Zuckerberg should be considered a resident of New York even though he has lived continuously in California for the last 5 years, has voted there, pays taxes there, etc. because he was held by a different court to be a New York resident in 2004 and because he allegedly "lives out of a suitcase" and has done nothing to establish a true residence elsewhere since that time. This sort of argument, in my mind, in on par with the rest of this case - essentially a wild swing that reflects an underlying position that is fundamentally unsound.

Time will tell as to the overall case but, as to this motion, I see it as basically frivolous. Whether the overall case is meritorious or not, it will almost certainly be fought out in the federal court and not in a state forum in which Mr. Ceglia evidently hopes that looser standards might apply.

<comment><USER2> That is the thing that mystifies me about this lawsuit so much: it seems totally frivolous. Someone Facebook's size must be batting down inane lawsuits like this continuously. Why is this one getting so much attention?

<comment><USER3> Most frivolous lawsuits against Facebook do not contain prima facie evidence of an 84% ownership stake in Facebook that Zuckerberg signed. (eg. they are not claiming $25.2 billion). The issue at hand appears to now be, what does the contract really say, and what does that mean within the context of the jurisdiction it will be tried in.

Both parties must know that there is something about law in one of the jurisdictions that adversely affects Facebook/Zuckerberg.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> _Judge Arcara raised doubts on the arguments for both sides, questioning Mr. Grable's point that Mr. Zuckerberg could come back to live in his parent's home while also asking why a man running a major company doesn't own any property in California._

Since when is personally owning property a condition of running a company?

<comment><USER5> ...Or a condition of establishing state residence?

It's really a stupid argument, likely based on the myth that renting is throwing money away. Most people still believe buying is always financially better (and they're wrong).

[http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/business/buy-rent- calcula...](http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/business/buy-rent- calculator.html)

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> _Mr. Zuckerberg "is a 26-year-old man who has spent almost a quarter of his life building this company,"_

Six. They could have just said six.

<comment><USER7> Has hollywood taught you nothing of the showmanship of courtroom law?

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> I wonder how much of Zuckerberg's time all these lawsuits take up. I can just imagine him saying, "AGHHHHHHHH, ANOTHER ONE?!"

<comment><USER9> He probably sees very little of these. His lawyers probably say "YAY, ANOTHER ONE!"</comment></comment>


How to Protect a Drug Patent? Give It to a Native American Tribe - <AUTHOR> https://mobile.nytimes.com/2017/09/08/health/allergan-patent-tribe.html <comment><USER2> Dupe of [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15206796](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15206796)

There's a couple other discussions too:

[https://hn.algolia.com/?query=allergan&sort=byDate&prefix&pa...](https://hn.algolia.com/?query=allergan&sort=byDate&prefix&page=0&dateRange=pastWeek&type=story)

</comment><comment><USER3> Dry eye is an interest of mine. I saw this in the news on Friday I think, and the resulting statements from Allergan and the Native American Tribe (Saint Regis Mohawk Tribe). It's really a brilliant move by their patent lawyer. Native American tribes have sovereign immunity to IP challenges. This helps extend the monopoly on a drug that makes up a very large part of Allergan's profit (besides Botox).

</comment><comment><USER4> This is very creative! Though, the ownership of a patent shouldn't be a factor in deciding the validity.</comment>


Overlapping phrases used in Page and Zuckerberg's comments - <AUTHOR> https://docs.google.com/document/d/1mv06t60fV9YclwHzFmDOEk2wGGBj-jd5od7cS-I-d6E/preview?sle=true

<comment><USER2> There it is again, been seeing this script parroted refrain all day:

"direct access"

Anyone guess what this carefully crafted ambiguity is suppose to allow?</comment>


Google App Engine to support Java - <AUTHOR> http://www.controlenter.in/2008/10/java-support-to-appengine-to-counter-microsofts-cloud-initiatives-microsoft-strata/

<comment><USER2> Sigh, I want Ruby support...but I'm building my app in Python anyways and Python isn't as bad as I thought (you get used to the indentation style and the sprinkling of "self" in methods).

<comment><USER3> I don't see why any of the JVM languages wouldn't work...

<comment><USER4> Indeed. I plan on giving jruby a shot.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Ha, then you could run AppJet on Google.

</comment><comment><USER6> Anyone know if they are going to use some sort of existing Java MVC framework or if they're going to create their own?

<comment><USER7> Obviously they are going to base it upon a famous Java FW, but do it themselves.

<comment><USER8> Like GWT?

<comment><USER9> GWT doesn't really require anything on the server (it doesn't have to even be java/JVM), so its kinda already supported for folks that want to use it for the front end.

<comment><USER10> Therefore, if you use GWT you don't need an MVC framework for Java anymore.

<comment><USER9> correct. You could make do with servlets. Or if you want to use JSON you could use anything.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I am keen on the other question mentioned in the post. "Whereas Cpp seems to be the most popular language by Google code Jam statistics, How come Java turns out to be the supported one, based on popularity?"

<comment><USER11> In the cloud you want to share resource to drive down costs - that means hosting multiple requests in one process. To maintain security/stability in such case the language must lend itself to sandboxing either by code verification or running in a VM. Hence Python and Java.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> I hope OSGi is supported!

<comment><AUTHOR> You'd have to assume that it would have to be... otherwise it would be a god- awful mess...

<comment><USER13> Unlike eclipse of course, which isn't plagued by classpath issues and runtime errors, causing plugin authors pain, users pain (which plugin version, will this plugin break that plugin etc). Osgi couldn't be behind that could it?

Great in theory. Eye stabbing in practice. Just like spring compared to guice.</comment></comment></comment>