A Dig Through Old Files Reminds Me Why I'm So Critical of Science - <AUTHOR> http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/cross-check/2013/11/02/a-dig-through-old-files-reminds-me-why-im-so-critical-of-science/ <comment><USER2> From personal experience (anecdote alert!), errors are also common in the ostensibly stone-cold-hard field of algorithms in computer science. A few years back I went on a string algorithm kick, and started dredging up old algorithm papers from the 80's on which to build Wikipedia articles.

Often, the papers would get the _general idea_ right, but if implemented as described would not work at all or fail on edge cases. The best example I have is an algorithm to find the lexicographically-minimal string rotation[0]. The simplest and fastest algorithm to do this is based on the KMP string search algo, and is tribal knowledge among ACM ICPC competitors. I thought it was pretty neat and wanted to cement this algorithm in popular knowledge, so I set about researching and writing the Wikipedia article.

I found the KMP-based algorithm in a 1980 paper[1] by Kellogg S. Booth. The paper has very detailed pseudocode which does not work. At all. The tribal knowledge version I inherited had similarities in the general idea of the algorithm (use of the KMP preprocessing step) but everything else was different. I scoured the internet for a retraction or correction, but all I found was a paper written in 1995[2] which mentioned in passing errors in the 1980 paper.

I do wonder exactly how common this is. I emailed a professor who co-wrote one of the papers, and he replied that "it seems to me that all the algorithms (including our own) turned out to have errors in them!" Has anyone done studies into errors in computer science papers?

[0] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lexicographically_minimal_stri...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lexicographically_minimal_string_rotation)

[1] [http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/00200190809...](http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/0020019080901490)

[2] [http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/summary?doi=10.1.1.55.9...](http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/summary?doi=10.1.1.55.9144)

<comment><USER3> There is a point of view that says that computer science conferences exist for the purpose of gaming the tenure system. The name of the game is plausible deniability: you're not supposed to submit papers that contain known false claims, but everything else is fair game. And this has become such an integral part of the culture that technical correctness is no longer a necessary condition for accepting a paper [1]. I think in this light it's quite clear why many scientists are happy to leave their papers hidden behind the ACM paywall.

[1] [http://agtb.wordpress.com/2013/04/14/should-technical- errors...](http://agtb.wordpress.com/2013/04/14/should-technical-errors- disqualify-conference-papers/)

<comment><USER2> Thank you, that was a fascinating read. It is understandable that technical errors are given a pass, as they aren't the meat of the paper. In the case of the Booth paper, I really should state I do not mean to attack him. The idea of using the KMP preprocess to solve the problem is a wonderful approach and works very well despite the actual implementation being technically incorrect. If I recall, the bug had to do with the termination condition; the algorithm had to run twice as long to terminate correctly. I will say my understanding of the algorithm improved as a result of debugging it!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> The author says "Petrofsky was a lavishly honored star of the IEEE", but I was unable to find any honors he got besides an award for a paper in an IEEE journal ([http://ieee-aess.org/contacts/award-recipient/jerrold-s- petr...](http://ieee-aess.org/contacts/award-recipient/jerrold-s-petrofsky) \-- there could be other awards, but they don't show up in google). I thought "lavishly honored" would be shorthand for IEEE Fellow, but Petrofsky is not on the Fellows list.

Saying his work was prematurely made into a biopic starring Judd Hirsch is not an indictment of science...

<comment><USER5> Also he seems to lay at the feet of Petrofsky the failure of any further progess in the area and even seems to insinuate Petrofsky misled people intentionally. I don't follow him on point one, it seems a non-sequitur. As for the second, I'm going to quote a section from one of the articles he linked to:

\</comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment>--

"That was just for that event," Davis, now Nan Huckeriede, said of her brief, but famous walk at graduation. "It was the computer-controlled electric stimulation, not me." Davis had met Petrofsky while she was in college. "I was attending the WSU Lake Campus, and went to a spinal cord society conference there," she says from her St. Marys home. "Jerry (Petrofsky) was a presenter, and afterwards, I introduced myself and told him I was interested in his research. "For about a month, I drove back and forth to Dayton to work with him, and then I transferred to the Dayton campus." Following her graduation walk, Davis returned to her wheelchair, stayed in Dayton a few years, married, and then returned to St. Marys. "Jerry moved to California and stopped his research — I think he felt that he had gone as far as he could," said Huckeriede. "But I still use the equipment he developed to get my exercise." Last summer she traveled to Beijing for a procedure to strengthen her back and stomach muscles. "It didn't work, but I knew it was experimental. It was worth a try."

\</comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment>--

Given all this, my take away is that John Horgan has axe to grind for almost 20 years now and it's still not sharp.

<comment><USER4> Nice find. That kind of testimonial from the subject of the work is really important.

Another relevant item. The magazine he wrote for, _The Institute_ , is a general-interest magazine of feature stories related to IEEE members. It's not a technical journal. It's more akin to the feature newsletters published by universities or engineering schools and sent to their alumni.

The general-interest _technical_ IEEE journal is _Proc. IEEE_ , which is peer- reviewed and contains research articles and research summaries written by the experts themselves.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> I remember some of the same overhyped news stories the science journalist who wrote the article submitted here remembers. I especially remember the breathless (and false) reports about a "gene for" this or that human behavioral trait. The science news cycle[1] frustrates journalists, because every new study with an incremental finding (which may not even be replicable) has to be hyped up by research organization press offices, in the interest of obtaining more funding.

The author's follow-up on a famous science story from early in his career is thought-provoking. Indeed, editors are more nervous about publishing stories, even very well reported stories, that question good news and expose hype or even fraud than editors are about publishing stories on the latest science hero.

On the whole, it's good news that more and more scientists and journalists are alert to the possibility that a preliminary research finding may be false and overhyped besides. Here on Hacker News, we can keep one another alert by remembering the signs to look for whenever we read a new research finding news story.[2]

Hacker News readers who want to learn more about how research articles become retracted may enjoy reading the group blog Retraction Watch[3] compiled by two veteran science journalists with lots of help from tipsters in the science community. I think I learned about Retraction Watch from someone else's comment here on HN.

[1] [http://www.phdcomics.com/comics/archive.php?comicid=1174](http://www.phdcomics.com/comics/archive.php?comicid=1174)

[2] [http://norvig.com/experiment-design.html](http://norvig.com/experiment- design.html)

[3] [http://retractionwatch.wordpress.com/](http://retractionwatch.wordpress.com/)

</comment><comment><USER7> There are always people who say "Science is still the best way of determining true statements" in response to these articles.

But this isn't science. It's pure politics. And politics is probably the worst way of determining true statements.

<comment><USER8> Exactly. The very nature of the tools used to advance and succeed in politics are anathema to doing good science.

Treating science like you treat politics or marketing is akin to going to war in the name of Jesus or Gandhi.

<comment><USER9> Does it not seem silly, then, to use a political apparatus to fund science?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> "media hype can usually be traced back to the researchers themselves"

Journalist investigates media hype and lays blame not on the media. Film at 11.

<comment><USER11> You might enjoy this paper:

Gonon, F., Bezard, E., & Boraud, T. (2011). Misrepresentation of Neuroscience Data Might Give Rise to Misleading Conclusions in the Media: The Case of Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder. PLoS ONE, 6(1), e14618. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0014618.t003

It's thankfully open-access:

[http://www.plosone.org/article/info%3Adoi%2F10.1371%2Fjourna...](http://www.plosone.org/article/info%3Adoi%2F10.1371%2Fjournal.pone.0014618)

They argue that a few prominent examples of misreporting in the media come from researchers misrepresenting their results in their abstracts, and journalists rarely read past abstracts.

<comment><USER12> Interesting. Seems maybe journalists should rely on researchers other than a study's authors for interpretation? I don't mean that sarcastically (well, a little), but it seems that there's a fairly simple solution to this problem.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> > I wrote a puff piece about Petrofsky–based primarily on interviews with him > and materials supplied by him and Wright State–published in the November > 1983 issue of The Institute, the monthly newspaper of the IEEE

My, could this be part of the problem?

> It never occurred to me to question Petrosky's claims.

Or this?

Maybe, just maybe, it's very hard to get good reporting on something by people unqualified in a subject?

<comment><USER14> He criticizes himself for this too. But he didn't make the guy famous; Petrofsky was already a star, the subject of laudatory movie, and so forth. He became more skeptical and challenged Petrofsky's claims in print in 1985. I think that's a pretty good turnaround time.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> >"Academic scientists readily acknowledge that they often get things wrong," The Economist states in its recent cover story "How Science Goes Wrong." "But they also hold fast to the idea that these errors get corrected over time as other scientists try to take the work further. Evidence that many more dodgy results are published than are subsequently corrected or withdrawn calls that much-vaunted capacity for self-correction into question. There are errors in a lot more of the scientific papers being published, written about and acted on than anyone would normally suppose, or like to think."

I think the fact that people rarely retract can also be more of a practical issue than anything. Some guy wrote his master's thesis 3 years ago and it's in fact wrong? The author's too busy with his real life to have been keeping track of that. Or he's working on some other domain. Or the paper was written 30 years ago.

I've also heard a lot of people say that a lot of research happens in the dark in many domains. People doing research in Haskell will gladly talk about their work on mailing lists it seems, but when it comes to chemistry, apparently it's a whole lotta silence. Pretty depressing.

</comment><comment><USER16> One of my "pet peeves" (that has actually caused me a fair amount of aggravation and "expense", personally): Absence of evidence is taken (or, _insisted upon_ ) as evidence of absence.

I've encountered this particularly in the medical community. As sort of a TL;DR: Many medical practitioners seem at best to be... "technicians" who are not much capable of more that following the "current script" that is handed down to them from blessed authority figures (including particularly if not only the pharmaceutical companies).

P.S. I'll add insurance companies to the mix of authority figures, particularly in the U.S. They categorize and dictate what they will and won't pay for. Better doctors sometimes spend a lot of time finding ways around these restrictions in order to provide the treatment they think is actually appropriate and optimal.

I would understand using statistical evaluation to help determine the best treatment approach. But when the profit motive enters, combined with a more or less fungible population of insured, the number crunching seems often to put cost ahead of outcome.

<comment><USER17> Absence of evidence _is_ evidence of absence, provided that you've actually looked.

However, it's often not very _good_ evidence, and far from proof. But it's definitely evidence.

<comment><USER16> Yes, I think "proof" is a better word for what I was trying to describe.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> I did not take this as an anti-science article, but as an article critical of how academic science/engineering has become hype driven. Perhaps it was always hype driven, but I find it to be particularly bad now. Before you could do 'regular' work i.e. work which was scholarly and did not have terms like 'first to show' and which did not appear in the tabloids 'Science' and 'Nature' and still advance your career and get funding. Not so much any more.

</comment><comment><USER19> In other words, science is hard, predictions are unreliable, scientists are humans and humans make mistakes / are motivated by emotions.

As usual with pieces critical of science they focus too much on a very small number of bad eggs and seem to implicitly assume that scientists should somehow be superhuman.

<comment><USER20> > a very small number of bad eggs

Even if there are a lot of bad eggs and hype and bullshit, you have to ask yourself what the alternative is. The non-science-based existence we suffered through for millennia? I think not. Excuse us for trying to cure cancer and failing less than 100% of the time.

Part of the reason there is so much hype and bullshit is because, if we weren't cramming it down everyones throats for the 30 seconds they'll pay attention, there would be no money funding science and we'd still be living in our own filth and praying to god that the plague stops.

<comment><USER8> _Excuse us for trying to cure cancer_

That's a total misrepresentation of the complaint. The complaint is that claiming to cure cancer or being close to curing cancer to get some funding hurts the credibility of Science as an institution.

 _Part of the reason there is so much hype and bullshit is because_

How will training the public that Scientists are money-grubbing hucksters who are full of crap help the matter any?

A lack of humility and self-criticism is a huge problem in any discipline, especially one that claims to be the best way to learn the "truth".

<comment><USER9> _How will training the public that Scientists are money-grubbing hucksters who are full of crap help the matter any?_

Also: It just might teach the public to actually take agency over who gets funded and encourage them to decide for themselves who is or isn't a huckster.

Incidentially, I _am_ trying to cure cancer, and I've set up a nonprofit to do so... And am considering writing an piece explaining why you _shouldn 't_ donate to me. (if you can't take the risk of failure, etc.) What do you think? Although I'm being genuine, is it too humblebraggey?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> I think it's really important to talk about what Science is. It gets bandied about like it's this abstract idea when, in fact, it is a real process that is taking place. A good definition of Science is humanity's current working knowledge of reality based on the process of lots of people utilizing the Scientific method to test hypotheses. I think that's fair definition. On examination of this definition you will notice it has a large human component.

Science is like the stock market. It's lots of people spit-balling about what's happening in the market (in Science's case, the market is "ideas about reality"). In the short term Science can look really ugly, just like the stock market can, in the long term, however, we'd like to think of it as an accurate weighing machine.

I generally think this is a fair assessment, but as I get older and start to see how few people there are who aren't willing to cut corners to get ahead. This worries me, because, like the stock market, Science affects real peoples lives. It's all well and good that over the course of 100 years the Dow Jones will outperform cash or, really, any other investments, but that's of little use to the real people who get left behind in periods of great economic stagnation. Science can go through similar periods of stagnation, and currently, it seems like we might have hit upon one.

It is possible to criticize the current way we have set up the Scientific endeavor without criticizing the abstract notion that human beings will generally discover new things over the long term. I think it is hardly controversial to say that our current way of doing things is not the best, but it may even be bad. Money and time are corrupting factors. Postings that used to require a PhD require a post-doc, positions that required a post-doc, now require two. The immense pressure of publish-or-perish is becoming greater and greater and room for failure, which is an essential part of the Scientific method, is being squeezed out. This is not a good thing and, I think, is a larger reason, among others, why Science is becoming noisier and noisier. When the stock market becomes noisy it benefits insiders, but hardly anybody else. I think Science is, currently, in a similar place, it's efficacy is being diminished by crap.

<comment><USER22> > I think it's really important to talk about what Science is. It gets bandied > about like it's this abstract idea when, in fact, it is a real process that > is taking place.

But science isn't defined by its process, it's defined by its philosophical axioms, its foundational rules. The first and most important rule is that a scientific theory must be potentially falsifiable in practical tests -- if there's no empirical testability, there's no basis for falsification, therefore there is no science. The second rule is that scientific ideas cannot ever be proven true, only false. The third rule is that an idea without supporting evidence is _assumed to be false_ , not true (this is known as the "null hypothesis"). The remaining rules are comparatively unimportant -- these are the big three, without which any discussion of science is pointless.

Science's process can change, and from field to field, it certainly does. But the rules stay the same.

> Science is like the stock market. It's lots of people spit-balling about > what's happening in the market ...

That is not science. To call that science is like confusing a spacecraft with a conversation in a bar about a spacecraft.

> It is possible to criticize the current way we have set up the Scientific > endeavor without criticizing the abstract notion that human beings will > generally discover new things over the long term.

Again, that is not science. Science's goal is not discoveries, its goal is to reliably refute ideas that are false, primarily by comparing them to reality. This is why science journalism articles that trumpet breakthroughs, with rare exception do a disservice to both science and journalism.

<comment><USER23> Science doesn't have such axiomatic rules; did Galileo lay out these these axioms and proclaim the scientific revolution? As I understand it, science is a human enterprise with the goal of understanding principles... with limitations and strengths.

Falsifiability in particular has serious criticisms, in terms of people taking it as a defining part of science. ([http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Falsifiability#Criticisms](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Falsifiability#Criticisms)) I suspect (and it's just pure suspicion for now which I'm mentioning for no particular reason) it tends to be emphasized in cultures interested in debunking people's claims in a competitive debating way, rather than constructive conversation where both parties aim at coming to new understandings. I don't mean in science, but cultures influenced by science's success.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> Nobody ever got a raise from their Dean or an endowed Chair because their work was celebrated for being careful, thoughtful, measured, balanced and realistic.

Plenty of science that was uber-hyped at the time has turned out to be misguided and/or even outright wrong. Plenty of those scientists have led wealthy, rewarded lifestyles as a result of the hype.

As an academic scientist one has to make a conscious decision to play the game or not play the game. There isn't a lot of room in the middle. You make your choices and you live with the consequences.

You see your colleague making double your salary, you read the press office reports hyping their work, you understand that it's no more innovative, important, or TRUE than your work or anyone else's in your cohort ... but they are playing the game.

Wouldn't you like to take your family to Hawaii for vacation? Wouldn't you like a bigger house? A nicer car? To send your kids to private school? Your University press office is practically going around begging for science stories to promote (i.e. hype). It's difficult to resist jumping in with both feet.

It's a jungle out there people.

</comment><comment><USER25> As with many things, we incentivize the wrong things. We pay for the headlines with clicks and eyeballs - we will get more headlines.

</comment><comment><USER26> Reading through this article reminds me of why I'm so critical of science journalism: it's in the attention business, not the science business, and directing undue scepticism about so-called "breakthroughs" would kill a lot of great "stories".

</comment><comment><USER27> With the reward systems currently in place, what else would you expect ?</comment>


The Design of the Connection Machine - <AUTHOR> http://www.tamikothiel.com/theory/cm_txts/index.html <comment><AUTHOR> "We didn't want to build a computer that looked just like a refrigerator or a washing machine, even if that was the most "practical" and "functional" way to package it. We wanted the design to express the excitement we felt about the machine and about its potential to revolutionize computer architecture."

:-)</comment>


Programming in a Vacuum - <AUTHOR> http://www.stanford.edu/~pgbovine/programming-vacuum.htm

<comment><USER2> From the article: "Libraries are key. Think about it: most programming tasks involve organizing and gluing together library code; most programming tasks do not involve the creation of novel algorithms that compel the use of sophisticated programming language constructs (emphasis on most --- I do admit that the benefits of a more powerful or applicable language are greater when one is trying to solve harder problems)."

The author seems to completely miss the fact that you can have semantically dense high-level languages act as the glue between libraries implemented in whatever language they happen to be written in.

"Those who don't understand UNIX are doomed to reinvent it."

The notion of using the best tool for the job is correct, and the notion of chosing the best libraries is correct, but the assumption that you must use Foo to consume libraries written in Foo to construct a program is wrong.

One of the metrics we don't see enough (IMHO) chatter about is how well languages play well with others.

There are SEVERAL ways to accomplish integration.

At the moment, I enjoy using JRuby because ruby has minimal pain and java has a cornucopia (glut?) of libraries. Things like the translation of MIPS machine code to JVM bytecode are interesting, but I need to check them out more before I recommend them.

<comment><USER3> I think higher level languages built on top of the JVM or .Net are very compelling because of the intersection of painless backwards compatibility and higher level constructs. Building bindings to higher level languages is usually a pain, and by working directly with those virtual machines you eliminate that.

Compiling from one language to another works better if you are going from a higher level language to a lower one, so machine code to JVM is probably not going to work very well but JVM to MIPS is not that hard.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> > Libraries are key

The last thing you want is to use _a_ library that segfaults now and then, relies on a bubble sort and occasionally allocates a couple of gigs of memory. Unfortunately, a vast majority of libraries are exactly of this kind.

I'll give you two real-life examples.

1\. netsnmp - de facto open-source standard library for working with SNMP. This piece of engineering marvel makes close to a one million calloc() calls when handling SNMP requests for certain kind of static data. The kind of query that technically does not require even a signle memory allocation.

2\. I used to work with a fanboy of ACE, who decided to replace two pages of trivial C code with 10 pages of ACE goodness. Which is fine with me, whatever gets the job done. However then his code, running on a production system, deadlocked deep in the guts of ACE. He spent a week troubleshooting it and in the end he still requested we'd hire "ACE consultant" to help him out.

The point is that even mature libraries have bizarre problems. With a rare exception of super widely used libraries (such as libc, openssl, etc), the library code needs to be reviewed prior to being included into a production code. Caveat emptor.

Vacuum or not, it really comes down to whether you want to debug someone else's bugs at 4 AM on a live server :-)

</comment><comment><USER5> Damn my visual memory, I actually picture somebody sitting in a Vacuum cleaner programming. Sorry, I know that adds nothing to the conversation.

<comment><USER6> Programming in Space!

<comment><USER2> reading that, i thought of <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whitespace_>(programming_language)</comment></comment></comment>


Maximally Powerful, Minimally Useful - <AUTHOR> http://blog.higher-order.com/blog/2014/12/21/maximally-powerful/ <comment><USER2> A familiar example is "goto" versus structured programming. "goto" is supremely expressive—conditional jumps are sufficient to express all of the usual structured programming constructs. But sacrificing "goto" enables much more powerful reasoning about programs because it restricts the shape of the control flow graph to common patterns: "while", "do…while", "for".

One of the core features of functional programming is "recursion schemes", that is, generalising patterns of data flow. While "goto" lets you manipulate control flow arbitrarily, it turns out that you don't usually want arbitrary control flow—and the same is true for data, so rather than "for" loops, it's often easier to think in terms of the common patterns: "map", "reduce", "filter".

<comment><USER3> > rather than "for" loops, it's often easier to think in terms of the common > patterns: "map", "reduce", "filter".

It is. My lament there is that, at least in my experience, optimizers haven't caught up in this department. So while I invariably start with the higher- order operations, all too often the profiler subsequently informs me that I need to replace that code with a for loop.

I suspect that side effects are the culprit there: In a language without referential transparency, the optimizer's very limited in what kinds of reasoning it can make about a function. I'm not quite ready to give up side effects just yet, though. I wish I could work in a language that only allows them in functions that explicitly declare that they want to use them, though.

<comment><USER4> Haskell and steam fusion will turn them into iterative loops for you automatically ;)

<comment><USER5> Just in case anyone is confused (I did a double take), I think that you mean st _r_ eam fusion ([http://google.com/search?q=Haskell%2Bstream%20fusion](http://google.com/search?q=Haskell%2Bstream%20fusion)).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> While there is some truth to the author's point, and we can see the effect in in a lot in practice, he makes the mistake of confusing "useful" with "analyzable in FP terms".

This exact point (comprehensibility vs. power) is why Smalltalk is so amazing: it adds a lot of power while at the same time being _more_ comprehensible, not less. That's no small feat, and IMHO one that is both under-appreciated and under-analyzed.

EDIT: Of course, see "The Power of Simplicity" [http://www.selflanguage.org/_static/published/self- power.pdf](http://www.selflanguage.org/_static/published/self-power.pdf)

<comment><USER7> He isn't talking about comprehensibility but instead analyzeability. For instance a type system normally improves comprehensibility but sometimes can require rewriting your algorithm in a less clear way, reducing how easy it is to understand. In contract it always improves analyzeability as you can say more about the program without going into details.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> This is really natural in mathematics and logic—it's the tension between consistency and completeness.

Essentially, you have a tension between laws a models. A larger number of laws means more reasoning power at the expense of fewer models (possibly 0 in which case you're inconsistent). A larger number of models means greater realizability but fewer laws (possibly 0 in which case you've gained nothing through this exercise).

It's always a game of comparative linguistics—does this abstraction pay its way? Well, without it we have this set of laws and with it we gain this new set. Are things in balance such that the abstraction is realizable and the laws are meaningful? That's your tradeoff.

</comment><comment><USER9> I like what the author is suggesting. It's thought-provoking and is consistent with many experiences I've had in life.

An interesting analog in the arts is the notion that a chosen or imposed constraint can provoke creativity and open up new possibilities.

<comment><USER2> I've certainly been more impressed by creative expression in restricted media, and I'm not sure that's only due to the restrictions—it seems people actually perform better when trying to circumvent limitations. Examples that come to mind include pixel art, sonnets, pointillism, and origami.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> For programming languages, a paradigm allowing to be "as expressive as necessary" is LOP[1] (Language Oriented programming).

With it you can basically choose your level of expressiveness while you develop your program (with different levels for different parts of your program). The frustrating trade-off between expressiveness and readability[2] is the main reason I love this paradigm. Unfortunately LOP has never been really trendy. Hope it will change soon.

[1] [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Language- oriented_programming](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Language- oriented_programming)

[2] For programming languages I would rather speak of readability (as opposed to analyzability) because a program is often not written in stone but "alive" (it's modified, enhanced over time...). It probably does not apply to the other fields discussed in the article though.

<comment><USER11> Could you not just use an expressive programming language and limit yourself to its more readable components?

<comment><USER10> Do you have a language in mind?

If you ban (for your whole program) some components then I guess you would loose some expressiveness.

Also I don't know if you can categorize "components" as more or less readable. For some problems a "component" might be highly readable while totally inappropriate for another problem. I see some cases where using more components makes the code more readable.

This is an art of using language features (paradigms etc...) and design patterns that will be the most readable while powerful enough to solve your problem. I love doing it with Lisp or Ruby which are languages with a very modular syntax. But it's time consuming so I'm doing it only for substantial projects I really care about. It's much more efficient to use conventional well established programming style (think RoR for example) and less bug-prone (more secure etc...) because it's well tested by many.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Using this definitions, I think we can define technological progress as the discovery of new concept that are:

\- More powerful than previous concepts but with the same useful properties.

\- Or as powerful as the previous concepts but with more useful properties.

</comment><comment><USER13> I really like this post; it's a nice look at at issue that comes up over and over again in designing systems.

One thing that occurs to me is that it relates to what part of a system I identify with. For example, I think very differently about a dictatorship if I imagine myself the benevolent dictator than if I think of myself as a citizen.

I also feel very differently about the different sorts of system depending on what I'm up to. When I'm mainly exploring a problem space, I want powerful tools, but when I'm building something to last, I want something safely constrained. In the former, I place my identity with the lone author, where the power to do the unexpected is vital. In the latter, I identify with those maintaining and debugging a system, where the power to do anything is a giant pain.

</comment><comment><USER14> "That is, the more expressive a language or system is, the less we can reason about it, and vice versa. The more capable the system, the less comprehensible it is."

What makes these assertions true? Research/data/polls etc would be helpful. It is hard to accept such wide-ranging claims without some proof.

Also, could someone please post the effective definitions of "expressiveness" and "capability" as used in the post ?

Thanks.

<comment><USER15> > What makes these assertions true? Research/data/polls etc would be helpful. > It is hard to accept such wide-ranging claims without some proof.

Well, the article gave 10 or 20 examples. That's not _proof_ , but it is _data_...

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> Seems related to the Rule of Least Power: [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rule_of_least_power](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rule_of_least_power) , [http://c2.com/cgi/wiki?PrincipleOfLeastPower](http://c2.com/cgi/wiki?PrincipleOfLeastPower)

<comment><USER17> An example (somewhat) from the business world: integrated vs modular. For example, Apple (ios) is integrated and they have complete freedom to design their hardware and software stack from the ground up. This allows them full expressiveness. In contrast, Google (android) is modular, and they integrate/source components from commodity vendors. It's less expressive, perhaps a degraded experience compared to apple, but much more modular.

The interesting bit is that the traditional wisdom in business is "in the end modular approaches to technology always defeat integrated approaches", although how this will play out in Apple's case is hard to predict, because I suppose Apple is kind of special. However if we apply the traditional business wisdom to the software domain here, I wonder the same holds: that the expressive/integrated approach is more powerful initially (where may the modular woudln't be able to get "off the ground"), but over time it looses ground to the constrained/modular approach as the modular benefits are allowed to scale to their full potential.

[http://stratechery.com/2013/clayton-christensen-got- wrong/](http://stratechery.com/2013/clayton-christensen-got-wrong/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> That link [http://www.logicmatters.net/resources/pdfs/Galois.pdf](http://www.logicmatters.net/resources/pdfs/Galois.pdf) (syntax - semantics as Galois Connections) in the comments seems pretty interesting.

<comment><USER19> When my kids and I play with Legos, I think back to then I was a kid, and all the things we could build with our big box of maybe 20 different kinds of block. They were very compositional.

Today, we have a million different pieces from various sets, and it is difficult to put them together in ways that conform to what we imagine, so they aren't as much fun.

Is this the same idea?</comment></comment>


Why Pfizer didn't report that its arthritis medication might prevent Alzheimer's - <AUTHOR> https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/economy/pfizer-had-clues-its-blockbuster-drug-could-prevent-alzheimers-why-didnt-it-tell-the-world/2019/06/04/9092e08a-7a61-11e9-8bb7-0fc796cf2ec0_story.html <comment><USER2> Not mentioned in this article, Enbrel modifies your immune system in a way that increases risk of infection. Curious why not noted, as it would also help explain trade offs decision.

<comment><USER3> Between that and Alzheimers I'd roll the dice on infection.

<comment><USER4> yeah till someone dies due to a disease acquired due to a weakened immune system and their family sues for $500 million and wins.

<comment><USER5> There are a lot of medications that have the side effect of weakening the immune system, and it seems that there has been an uptick in such medications in the last few years. There are also medications that deliberately weaken the immune system. Sure, a weak immune system is a serious issue, but if the disease being treated is worse then it's less of a decision point for most people.

<comment><USER2> This medication tends to be used in a population where one of the top three causes of death is immune failure at the care facility (hospital, subacute care, etc.)

It's not just a serious issue, it's a top killer.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> One thing mentioned in the article is the lack of patent incentives for Enbrel that don't affect the other medication with the funky Xanjy name that appears to have longer patent legs. If true the patent system is sick and twisted and needs to be turned 180 degrees to where the invention owner incurs disincentives - say loss of 1/4 of the exclusivity period - for each failure to share material research surrounding patented formulations.</comment>


Ask HN: Advice on working at a large company or startup? - <AUTHOR>

I have a job offer from two places: one's a large company (like Google/Microsoft/Amazon) and the other's a startup (about 20 people). The work is pretty similar at both (research-oriented), though there would be a little more engineering at the startup, and the pay is about the same (depending on what you think of stock options at a startup), so the decision is really boiling down to whether I want to work at a corporation or a startup.
I see a couple pros and cons of both (listed below), so I'm curious what other people think.
Pros of corporation: - More of a '9-5' job, so I have a lot of time to explore thing on my own. (I have projects with friends to play with and a bunch of random stuff I want to learn, like physics and playing the violin.) - I'd have more people I'd be working with. (Here, I'd be a member of a research-ish team, whereas at the startup, I'd kinda be a one-man research team. So while I'd interact with a lot of people, it would be more to get engineering ideas or general directions to explore, and I wouldn't really have anyone to bounce research/theory ideas off of.)
Cons of corporation: - The work itself would be the same as the startup, but the environment itself would probably be less fun. - Fewer people my age.
Pros of startup: - More fun environment. - I'd have a more important role (leading a team, rather than being a member of a team).
Cons of startup: - Probably less time to explore my own things. (Actually, what do Hacker News people think? Do people working at startups usually have a good split between working on their own projects and doing stuff for the startup?) - Like I mentioned above, I'm very interested in math and theory, and wouldn't have as much interaction with these kind of folks at the startup, as compared with the large company.
Any thoughts? <comment><USER2> Large Companies:

\-- In a labs or research group you get to follow your own interests. I had a lot of fun in my year at HP Labs.

\-- Software product development often has smart people and you can have flexibility in what you do. The key is whether you are working with a dozen or two of people or a cast of thousands where you are a pigeon in a hole. The larger the group, the more likely you are a plugin module, stuck in a role, susceptible to offshoring.

\-- IT is probably the pits and should be avoided.

If you are looking at a raw startup, you really need to understand the environment. Sure, you get to do lots of things and have a lot of flexibility, but there is a good chance that you will have to work 60 hour weeks. If you aren't prepared for high energy and high commitment, it can take a toll on you and your family. If you are, it can be a hell of a ride. Also take into account of the funding/financial side of the startup or you may find no food on the table. One thing is do NOT go in with the expectation of getting rich, particularly if you are not a founder. Most of the time you won't. Dont take this as a negative, I think startups are more fun than nearly anything else.

Another class to consider is a small fast growing company of 20 to 200 people. It's a lot like a startup, but you can have a life too.

</comment><comment><USER3> In the end it comes down to gut feel, unless you think you like both jobs the same.

In my experience working at a large engineering company, having smart people around doesn't really help you learn much more after the first six months or so. After that, you kind of just fill a role for them and it is hard to break out of that role. You will always be "the whatever" guy or gal.

Large companies offer a lot that small companies don't, but I think (hope) that working at a small company provides more job motivation. I suspect that job motivation is the key to job satisfaction.

</comment><comment><USER4> I think it depends on your goals. If your hungry, and can really manage I would start with the startup. If your goal really is to possibly move towards entrepreneurial things then .. its good to see, and start your career off with the right understanding of how you should train in the arts of being a software jedi. Long hours, rigorous reading, training. Wearing every single hat possible, and grabbing every opportunity. When your ready to move on (if you do), then the big company will still be there. And yes working at a startup with people your age that you get along with, not only makes a crappy job fun, but can make many good friendships and connections for the future as well.

</comment><comment><USER5> You will hit beaureaucracy at big companies, that's for sure. To get done simple things you have to get tons of signatures. A, don't forget those pesky meetings...

At a startups probably you will work more...but ask for options too, not just salary.

In the end it depends on your personality...boring or fun?</comment>


Thanksgiving breaks Instagram records: Over 10M photos shared - <AUTHOR> http://thenextweb.com/facebook/2012/11/23/instagram-sees-new-record-during-thanksgiving-over-10m-photos-shared-at-a-rate-of-226-per-second/

<comment><USER2> Spam, proper source is [http://blog.instagram.com/post/36359968655/thanksgiving- day-...](http://blog.instagram.com/post/36359968655/thanksgiving-day-on- instagram)

</comment><comment><USER3> How many of them were photos of food?</comment>


Seven Reasons Tech Start-Ups Are Setting Up Shop in New York - <AUTHOR> http://blogs.wsj.com/digits/2010/08/19/seven-reasons-tech-start-ups-are-setting-up-shop-in-new-york/ <comment><USER2> _"7) The anti-B.S. factor: Silicon Valley is a town where the tech industry dominates the conversation. In sharp contrast, New York is home to many industries so it's difficult for an entrepreneur to get caught up in what the investor Fred Wilson calls an "echo-chamber groupthink." Bottom line — entrepreneurs have to be creative and can't get caught up in their bubble."_

I found this interesting, as my own echo-chamber-group-think radar is sometimes set off by things I hear coming out of the Valley scene. For example, some aspects of social media remind me of the original dotcom boom.

I don't live there though, so what does the HN crowd think about that, especially Valley denizens?

As a side note there are clear exceptions, like Ycominbator's diverse portfolio and wish list (<http://ycombinator.com/ideas.html>), among others.

<comment><USER3> Firstoff, Silicon Valley isn't a "town."

Secondly, I hate how articles (this one included) talk about new NY startups and how they are so different from ones in the Bay. While there is definitely some degree of truth to that, a lot of their examples focus on companies such as Tumblr and Foursquare, which seem like complete stereotypes of the current SV bubble: Consumer-oriented social platforms that are heavy on TechCrunch posts and light on revenue. Not that the the Bay Area doesn't have lots of those too, but if you want to talk about how "different" the NY startup scene is I think 4Sq is a terrible example. Gilt is a much better example.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> <rant>

Why is it that everyone is so concerned about where to start? Location is important, but having a product out, or at least a prototype available, is more important. You can do this anywhere, and when you get seed money or funding later, you can move to somewhere glamorous. It's like moving to Hollywood because you want to be an actor or writer.

If you're the coder--especially if you're the coding founder--you can make the basic prototype first. Show people the value of your code then move after you've convinced them it's golden. If you're not bringing money in or if you don't have a product yet, moving to another place will just burn up money. You want to build your product and maximize what you can do with it instead of facing money troubles the minute you move.

</rant>

<comment><USER5> _Why is it that everyone is so concerned about where to start?_

Because where you start appears to influence -- heavily -- where you end up, or if you end up doing anything important. How many big tech companies began and stayed in in Madison, WI, or in Florida? Almost none.

There's a whole field dedicated to examining why and how this happens: economic geography. See here for a decent intro: <http://eh.net/encyclopedia/article/patton.carpet> . The carpet industry in Georgia is one such example; Internet startups in Silicon Valley are another; movies in L.A. is a third; and so on.

 _It's like moving to Hollywood because you want to be an actor or writer._

Take a look at William Goldman's _Adventures in the Screen Trade_ , where he says:

"I find Los Angeles a very difficult and potentially dangerous place to work in, and I think anyone seriously contemplating a career as a screenwriter ought to move there as soon as it's humanly or financially possible" {Goldman@74}.

Later:

Screenwriters should go to L.A. despite the problems. As Goldman says, "To begin with the practical: Simply put, they know things out there the rest of the country doesn't, and they get that information first. The movie business is a part of the fabric of life in Los Angeles, and that just isn't true anywhere else. It is, if you will, in the air" {Goldman@80}.

People who ignore this ignore it at their own peril.

<comment><USER4> I think many of you are misinterpreting what I'm writing. I'm not discounting the influence of a place like New York or San Francisco--there is much to gain and great products are built in those cities, and your likelihood of success increases. What I am warning is that I hear the stories of founders that move to SF, don't have a product out, live off cash reserves, and months in to the project still no viable product. There are some who seem to believe the _inception_ of any product must begin there.

To the contrary, I actually encourage people to move to SF and NYC because of the knowledge/experience/atmosphere. But you stand to have better chances when you move _prepared_ than when you move to a big city without a plan. Especially a city like NYC where starving, talented artists are a dime a dozen. It's the capital of capitalism.

Moving to a city is a step you make when you are firmly committed to the idea. Don't just move because you have an idea. Have your things in order. It's a lot like fishing--just make sure you have your bait before you go. If you have start worrying about lease, payroll, and so on from the very beginning, well, it'll be tough. But if you have a direction, like a minimal amount of code written already, you'll move into the big city much better prepared. Remember, cities like SF and NYC are capitals of capitalism.

Before you quit you job and move to a big city, be prepared about the gravity of such a decision. You'll need to commit to a lease. NYC leases are not cheap if you aren't already there. You'll need to spend time to setup your office/apartment (often the same). You're likely moving there to hire talent. But if you start a project without a strong beginning, you'll be burning cash --and a lot of it in a big city where wages and cost of living are higher.

There is no doubt about the economic influence of a place. But being in X won't stop you from being successful. As long as you're driven, you will move to Y as long as you have a product and a plan. Just my 2 cents.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I assume this article was submitted for the closing argument, which is pure gold:

"Not so fast…

Matt Mireles, the founder and CEO of the video transcription service SpeakerText, started his company in his Harlem apartment but recently jumped ship for the Valley. Mireles said he's making the move because of a "chokehold" he believes Wall Street has on technical talent in New York. In his experience, entrepreneurs are stuck fighting over a few start-up-minded developers.

That said, Mireles admits his long-term plan is to eventually return to New York. "If I wanted to be where there are more hot girls and nightlife I wouldn't be in Mountainview," Mireles said. "But I'm doing this [move to California] so in five years time I can live in New York in a big pimped out loft or something.""

</comment><comment><USER7> Sort of off topic question but does anyone know why the second "t" character in the last paragraph is rendering as a "†" (Dagger, U+2020)? Is this part of a digital watermark or something?

 _"Matt Mireles, the founder and CEO of †he video transcription service SpeakerText"_

edit: spelling

<comment><USER8> Hilarious. I was just looking at the same thing and thinking of the Praetorian Pi symbol in that epic film, "The Net"

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> One comment...Wall Street doesn't have a choke-hold on technical talent. For instance, most (I'm confident to say above 90%) people recruited by banking programs cannot write a single line of code. Excel macros don't count.

<comment><USER10> Yeah, i think he misunderstood my point just slightly, which is really that there's not enough serious dev talent that in NYC that actually wants to go into startups. Wall Street is not the only cause, but is a major factor.

Ironically, I intro'd that reporter to 60% of the people in the story he quoted, including Carter Cleveland and Cody Brown.

<comment><USER11> I've been keeping an eye on NYC job postings lately with the idea of switching coasts but I haven't seen that many. What are some good ones that currently need people?

<comment><USER12> There's always Google. The hiring never stops.

<comment><USER11> That's definitely an option but I'd much rather get in early on something new.

<comment><USER13> bit.ly is always looking for good people. Take a look at our jobs page, and shoot us a resume if you think you qualify.

<http://bit.ly/jobs></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Millennials Buck the Wealth Trend - <AUTHOR> https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-02-20/millennials-buck-the-wealth-trend <comment><USER2> The Baby Boomers pulled up the ladder behind them:

[https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/yes-summer-job- pai...](https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/yes-summer-job-paid-tuition- back-in-rsquo81-but-then-we-got-cheap/)

>The reason a summer at KFC could pay for a year of UW med school in 1981 isn't that we were so hardworking and industrious. It's that taxpayers back then picked up 90 percent of the tab. We weren't Horatio Algers. We were socialists.

>Today, the public picks up only 30 percent of UW tuition, and dropping.

The Boomers stole from the generations that came after them and I can only hope Millennials will wake up and steal it back.

<comment><USER3> > ...I can only hope Millennials will wake up and steal it back.

You mean perpetuating theft from future generations and being self entitled? I learned quite early on that you can't and should not expect a single thing from anyone. I hate how many people on here perpetuate the idea of forced theft to provide more money to a broken education system that has a focus on profits instead of what it turns out. I would also go further and say that many schools offer stale programs that don't prepare individuals for their field of study. Self entitlement and socialism are not the answer since there is a price for everything in life and it's not free if the cost is someone's time, energy or life.

What would help is to teach people how to learn, find useful career paths and to create useful things. Getting a useless liberal arts degree does not help if you can't reasonably get a paying job with it.

<comment><USER2> >You mean perpetuating theft from future generations and being self entitled?

No, I mean stealing what is ours back from the Boomers specifically in order to restore the natural cycle of the older generations providing for the younger ones.

"A society grows great when old men plant trees whose shade they know they shall never sit in."

The Boomers violated this age-old maxim.

Unrelated, because I don't know why you brought it up, if you think a liberal arts degree is useless you have a lot to learn about the world.</comment></comment></comment>


The Hunt For An 'Instagram For Video' Is On, & Socialcam Is Aiming For The Crown - <AUTHOR> http://techcrunch.com/2012/04/11/socialcam-instagram-for-video-michael-seibel-interview/ <comment><USER2> With all this huge valuation talk going on, I wondered what happened to color. It looks like they're kinda going for this too: <http://www.color.com/></comment>


Ask HN: How are Heroku users preparing for possible hurricane AWS east outage? - <AUTHOR>

<comment><USER2> See: <https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4715263> <https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4715266>

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Heroku offers database replication to the west coast, but in my understanding, the platform is all in the Virginia data center, so this would not mitigate.</comment>


Show HN: List of games that let you write programs and/or design hardware - <AUTHOR> https://klab.neocities.org/projects/games-that-let-you-program/list.html <comment><AUTHOR> So I've been collecting logic games pretty much since I first played MYST and RIVEN back in the day.

Lately I've started focusing on "programming" and "hardware" logic games. Since pretty much every list on the Net lists the same 4 or 5 games (at least two of which were by Zachtronic every time - not that I don't like Zachtronic!), I made my own.

Please have a look and feel free to reach out if there are games that are missing. No doubt there are several (I hope).

<comment><USER2> HUMAN RESOURCE MACHINE is pretty good, though about 1/2 through, the challenges started to seem like my actual day job. Definitely would recommend for kids interested in picking up programming.

<comment><AUTHOR> Sounds like quite the endorsement from an "industry insider".

I did finish it, though it tok me quite some time, didn't have the strength/brain to get into 7 Billion Humans though.</comment></comment></comment>


Lefsetz Letter - Apple/EMI/DRM - "Why the fuck should they cost more?" - <AUTHOR> http://lefsetz.com/wordpress/index.php/archives/2007/04/02/appleemidrm/ <comment><USER2> What an angry letter. They upped the quality of the music and charged a little more for it, there's nothing wrong with that. They charge what they think the market is willing to bear, not what it might be "truly worth." A Louis Vuitton bag costs a whole lot less to make than to sell, but prices will never go down, because that's what people are willing to pay.

If others join in to compete in the DRMless music wave, then at best we can hope it will drive the price down. That's competition at its best, an effort to capture the market by constantly producing something better OR cheaper (and not necessarily both). At the very least, you're getting something better.

</comment><comment><USER3> It would have been lame if they had just removed the DRM and upped the price - but the fact that they also _doubled_ the audio quality is probably a good- will move to give the user additional value for the cost. The new audio files will be 256kbps instead of the current 128kbps - most folks are forgetting this in their analysis of the pricing.

And seriously - I think I've been spoiled reading pg articles. It feels like this guy's yelling and spitting on you as you read it, blah.

</comment><comment><USER4> Once they start giving the artist's a bigger cut of the prices then I'll start to care. Right now 35% is going towards Apple, and I'm sure EMI is seeing about 70% of each sale. I couldn't care less if EMI and Apple make more money off of their artists and consumers. The whole DRM thing was bound to fail anyways.

<comment><USER5> What I don't understand is why we treat artists like retards. They don't need to be saved from themselves and they enter into these deals more than willingly. Artists like to pretend that they are at the mercy of the labels whilst supporting the system.

<comment><USER4> The reason is because there was no other outlet that had the ability to make them rich and famous overnight. The major labels controlled all of the media outlets until the internet came along.

Nowadays hardly any band would choose a major label over a large independent. There is no benefits anymore. Anyone can reach that critical mass of users without having to use Rolling Stone or MTV.

The people that sign to major labels, for the most part, want to be rich and famous. They aren't trying to make a career out of their music but more a career out of themselves. If not then they would be playing a local club in New Hampshire on the weekends.

So, in my opinion, it's more about the artists being retards. They see that major labels are a fast track to millions of records being sold. They don't want to spend years in clubs to gain traction. They don't want to sell CDs out of their cars. They don't want to save up to produce their own record. They want to take the easy way out and have someone else do the work. It is their own fault for signing a major label contract that takes advantage of them. If they are incapable of seeing better outlets for their music then they deserve to deal with the horrible circumstances of being on a big label.

Sorry this is so long.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> So for years people have begged for DRMless music, because they want it more than DRM'd music. If thats true then they'll pay more, competition with other DRMless sources will hopefully eventually drive down the price.

</comment><comment><USER6> Better product, higher price?

<comment><USER7> Not really considering they're finally giving users something that should have been established day 1.

<comment><USER6> So you agree with me - this is a better product :-)</comment></comment></comment>


Fox Two: The Story of the Aim-9 Sidewinder (2014) - <AUTHOR> http://www.donhollway.com/foxtwo/ <comment><USER2> There is a great book about the development of the Sidewinder[0]. Even if you're not that interested in military technology it's interesting from an engineering management perspective.

[0]: [https://www.amazon.com/Sidewinder-Creative-Missile- Developme...](https://www.amazon.com/Sidewinder-Creative-Missile-Development- China/dp/1591149819)

<comment><USER3> Read it on the basis of recommendation here (along with Skunk Works), would highly second.

The fascinating thing about successful, lean, scrappy defense projects is _there are almost no incentives for them to be such_. Consequently, if they are, it's because wilful and powerful decisions were made by engineering / management team.

Decisions we could probably all stand to learn from (and do our best to repeat!).

<comment><USER4> Skunk Works is a fascinating book. They overcame some difficult challenges building the SR-71. There are some interesting parallels to software development in the way they ran skunkworks. Insisting that the engineers that designed things had to be physically close to the people building them.

<comment><USER3> One question I always ask of my interviewers is "How often do your developers sit with end users?"

If they look flummoxed and confused as to why that should _ever_ happen, I politely start looking for the exit.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I had to lookup the 'rolleron' because I couldn't picture how it worked from the description. Here is a video demonstrating the mechanism from a guy who got his hands on Sidewinder tailfin.

[https://youtu.be/cfzj3rRIVU4?t=5](https://youtu.be/cfzj3rRIVU4?t=5)

</comment><comment><USER6> > Future astronaut Wally Schirra, then a hotshot Korea veteran with a MiG-15 > kill to his credit, remembered his first visit to the lab. The China Lake > eggheads had a "dome-shaped device, made of glass….a man-made eyeball," he > recalled. "I was a cigarette smoker in those days, and I had one in my hand. > As I crossed the room, I noticed that the eyeball was tracking me."

</comment><comment><USER7>
        "It is easy to build something complicated;
        it's hard to build it so that it's simple."
        Father of the Sidewinder:
        Dr. William B. McLean

Good thought for modern software.

</comment><comment><USER8> >The crowning touch, however, was wiring the seeker to aim not where the target was, but where it would be.

The missile knows where it is, [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_LjN3UclYzU](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_LjN3UclYzU) , a great song about missile guidance systems and knowing where you are by how much you aren't (there).

</comment><comment><USER9> Make your own sidewinder floor lamp: [https://www.popularmechanics.com/military/weapons/a23256/diy...](https://www.popularmechanics.com/military/weapons/a23256/diy- missile-lamp/)

</comment><comment><USER10> This is a great read. If I understand correctly they basically built an analog computer into the front of the missile.

<comment><USER11> Yeah. Articles like this one is why I started following HN religiously. I would understand "analog computer" as some form of a proportional controller - like PID, but with ID terms set to 0: [https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/PID_controller](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/PID_controller) The sensor must be able to somehow measure how fast the target is moving relatively to the center of the sensor area. The proportional controller then sets the fins in a slightly exaggerated fashion.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> I'm trying to print this article out to give to an older relative... man table based layout.. brutal.

</comment><comment> noir-york Great read!</comment>


Playing Hide-and-Seek, Machines Invent New Tools - <AUTHOR> https://www.quantamagazine.org/artificial-intelligence-discovers-tool-use-in-hide-and-seek-games-20191118/ <comment><AUTHOR> After millions of games, machine learning algorithms found creative solutions and unexpected new strategies that could transfer to the real world.</comment>


"We're in an economic war with China. It's futile to compromise." - <AUTHOR> https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/steve-bannon-were-in-an-economic-war-with-china-its-futile-to-compromise/2019/05/06/0055af36-7014-11e9-9eb4-0828f5389013_story.html <comment><AUTHOR> I'm posting this on HN somewhat reluctantly, a bit worried that the discussion might degrade into ideologically-driven arguments.

On the other hand, this is the first time I have come across a short list of coherent, well-written arguments that seek to defend the current US administration's antics in its trading negotiations with China.

At a minimum, I feel this opinion piece provides _insight into the thinking of people who support such antics_ , which otherwise seem arbitrary and irrational.

If the discussion degrades, I will be the first person to flag the thread.

<comment><USER2> Ideological arguments are central to understanding the issues and effective diplomacy. The problem is when people use combinations of ad hominem attacks and moral arguments (inherent or absolute rightness or wrongness of ideologies).

China does not have the same culture or philosophy as the U.S. of course they have a different ideology. Those must be explored in order to understand their consequences. If we're very good at that, we can predict the consequences and produce effective counter measures. They obviously would try to do the same.

Regardless of ideology, any abrupt changes are inherently destabilizing, reduce trust, increase stress, and historically often have lead to conflict. This can be economic conflict, or warfare. So it is very important to make ideologically driven arguments, to thoroughly understand the most important issues, many of which can be cultural and emotional, not just about money.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: What to do during "wait" time at work? - <AUTHOR> What do you usually do at work when you are waiting for example on a project to build? Or when you are in an unnecessary meeting? I'd like to find something useful besides reading articles on the internet <comment><USER2> We have a rule for attending meetings: If the meeting is useless, you can leave (after telling so).

Slack time usually is spent chatting, working on other stuff, getting coffee, browsing the internet/reading. Most of the time it's work related so it's also useful in the end.</comment>


Go Language: New Talk and Tutorials - <AUTHOR> http://blog.golang.org/2010/05/new-talk-and-tutorials.html

<comment><USER2> Rob Pike gave a talk on Go at Stanford EE380 last week.

<http://www.stanford.edu/class/ee380/Abstracts/100428.html>

[http://ee380.stanford.edu/cgi- bin/videologger.php?target=100...](http://ee380.stanford.edu/cgi- bin/videologger.php?target=100428-ee380-300.asx)</comment>


Our IT guy is an unresponsive jerk - <AUTHOR> http://www.askamanager.org/2016/07/our-it-guy-is-an-unresponsive-jerk.html <comment><USER2> "We're a small company, and our IT department consists of one individual. He often works on high pressure, involved projects that affect the entire company. However, there's no one on call for day-to-day issues like common printer problems or computer freeze-ups. He usually works with his door closed or is frequently off site, so contacting him is not always easy or direct. "

and

"He is also curt and dismissive, especially with junior staff—mostly part- timers, moms with kids—who don't have a lot of experience troubleshooting computer problems."

This is HN, so I may be stating the obvious - but if IT is under-staffed, this guy has work that needs his direct, uninterrupted attention - and people wonder why he might be a jerk or dismissive ?

People tend to forget or not know how IT works. If your a manager, you might have x employees reporting to you. So you are directly responsible for those employees and whoever you report to.

Sales? Same - you need to report to your boss and the customer. Customer Service? The customer and your boss.

But IT generally needs to report to the entire division or company. One of my last jobs, there were 2 of us in IT and the company was 500 employees. And we had our own uninterrupted work we needed to get done. And we did help desk, were off site, etc... And we had to account for any 1 of the 500 employees at any given moment needing support or a server going down or code to be written or a security camera going out, or pulling a backup cause someone clicked "delete" by accident, or etc...

I'm not saying it's acceptable to be a jerk or whatever term people what to use. I'm saying, while (random employee) might be responsible for say 10 people, IT is generally responsible for entire organizations. Slack, is to be cut, sometimes.

<comment><USER3> "but if IT is under-staffed, this guy has work that needs his direct, uninterrupted attention - and people wonder why he might be a jerk or dismissive ?"

From where we are and the evidence given in the post, we can't distinguish between "legitimately a jerk" and "overstressed by interruptions and lacking the emotional bandwidth to deal with people". And, you know, there's even the possibility that he's dealing with the IT requests completely professionally, and that's being _interpreted_ as being a jerk, because IT interactions seem to be somehow particularly prone to that sort of thing. (Probably the problems of getting an engineering, technically-focused person dealing with more people with very different social interaction protocols.)

<comment><USER4> If he lacks the emotional bandwidth to deal with people, I'd say he hasn't earned that "IT professional" title he wants people to use.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I've been in situations like this. Being a "jerk" is a defense mechanism. If you are approachable then everyone brings their technical problems (personal and professional) to you. If you are unapproachable you stand a chance of actually getting 10 minutes of uninterrupted time.

<comment><USER6> I've been there too, I get it. I'm trying to roll out a new company-wide backup platform and people come by my desk because Candy Crush isn't working on their personal iPad.

Non-technical people have a very strong tendency to treat their co-workers in I.T. as their personal tech support, and managers outside of I.T. don't understand why you can't just make the developer/sysadmin/network engineer/dba/whatever do all the BS helpdesk work at the same time.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> While the guy might well be a jerk and rude it is also very likely he is stressed and overworked. Sounds like the company needs a junior sysadmin to handle the help desk.

Also sounds like this guy is more of a technical specialist/project manager/possibly devops and not just "the IT guy".

<comment><USER8> Exactly! "overstressed" seems to me like a much more frequent reason of a misbehaviour at workplace than "a jerk".

And, as you say, one needs an suitable inclination to work with people too.

Edit: some companies have rotating days of desk-support for such personnel, but for that, one needs to have at least 2 of them.

<comment><USER7> At Xerox we had a rotating help desk system for a while. It was pretty awful for everyone (those on the rotor and those needing support) as you quickly lose your _edge_ at quickly fixing common issues. If you do it for one day a month (as we did) they it is just a pain in the ass as for one day a month you are expected to be able to fix weird MS Office errors or printer problems. It is _always_ better to pay a little more and have a single person dedicated to handling such issues. There is no shortage of people wanting to get a foot in the door at low level tech support so it isn't going to blow the budget out of the water. In my experience it is actually the opposite as you end up wasting money on getting people to cover a position and they are never as effective as a dedicated person who will come across common issues and be able to resolve them much faster.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> I'm trying to figure out which professions it is acceptable to say [JOB] Guy?

<comment><USER9> I don't think it's all derogatory – it just highlights the fact that there's exactly one person for that job in the organization. I could, for example, imagine a cook being called 'our Creme Brulee Guy' if it's his speciality.

Or that character in 'How I met your mother' who had a suit guy, a Yankees ticket guy, a flower guy and – if new needs arise – a guy guy.

<comment><AUTHOR> I think its pretty derogatory and unprofessional. See how far Brain Guy goes in an organization with one psychologist. I would imagine a "rebuke" and a remembrance of the word "Doctor" would occur.

"How I Met Your Mother" was a comedy, and that what a [JOB] Guy title makes the person.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> And, this is different from most IT support people how??? :-)

Seriously. The guy's over-worked. Get him some help.

</comment><comment><USER11> This is the same site that made the rounds with "I fired someone for going to their graduation" last week. I can't help but suspect this is going to become quite baity, quite quickly.

</comment><comment><USER12> I can't help but wonder if this isn't about the author misinterpreting the job of the "IT Guy." If he insists that the title is "Systems Administrator" or "IT Professional" rather than "IT Guy," maybe that's because help desk stuff specifically isn't his job, and the non-technical writer here doesn't understand the distinction. It would certainly explain both his overworked state and his reaction to being asked questions.

</comment><comment><USER13> The bigger issue is that this place sounds like it has insufficient or otherwise incompetent management, which will inevitably create issues like this downstream. I'd bet that if you looked in other departments at this company, you'd find similar role confusion/dysfunction.

Someone doing big IT projects cannot be expected to also do desktop support at the same time (and shouldn't become the de facto support person simply because they have technical knowledge).

</comment><comment><USER14> I made the mistake of reading the comments section. I can't fathom how people take such pride in their lack of knowing how computers work. Sure, there are things I don't know, but I don't think I'd ever take pride in that ignorance.

<comment><USER15> Well, if its any consolation, just be happy you're not a mathematician. Or an English Lit grad.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> Interdepartmental warfare is epidemic at large companies, but it happens at small ones too.

If your employees can push the power switch they become documented as responsible for pushing the power switch and if something bad happens you can always push the blame onto the IT guy for not pushing the power switch for them, and as long as the IT guy isn't one of your direct reports you just "won" that round of office politics. Learned weakness is passive aggressive and very popular and effective as a weapon. A dry cleaner would never tolerate a customer demanding they shouldn't have to know how to zip up their pants or a plumber would never tolerate a customer demanding the plumber flush the toilet for them because they don't understand these pipey things. But IT guys are not known for their social skills and now every problem is their problem because only IT guys should have to know the technical details of putting paper in the printer. Resulting in the IT guy is the only person in the company responsible for the tax documents not being filed on time, or that lost big sale, because due to bad social skills the buck stops with IT instead of passing it like all the other departments do. (and edited to add that getting rid of a scapegoat, like "that bad IT guy" isn't magically going to get the tax forms sent by the deadline, picking a new scapegoat isn't going to fix anything)

There's a side dish of LMFGTFY. Seriously, you're an adult who got themselves dressed and fed and drove to work, you goof off on facebook four hours per workday, you can handle using google. It's just a primate dominance ritual to force you to google something for me. No different than me demanding you wash my car or shine my shoes. Its even worse when its not work related.

There is a difference between responsibilities and skills. An IT guy is responsible for keeping the wifi access point operational and secure. He's got a responsibility. He's not a bucket of skills waiting to be sloshed on anyone too lazy to plug in a power cord. The company made a huge mistake of hiring unskilled employees. If you want to use a centerless grinding machine on a factory floor to earn a profit, you hire machinists who have a clue about centerless grinding machines or you fail and go out of business. You don't yell at the only guy on the floor who knows what he's doing because he's a convenient low caste individual to blame or mumble about how people should be nicer because not everyone knows how to skillfully operate centerless grinder machines so its all somehow the fault of the one guy who knows. Learn or GTFO. If you want to use computers you hire staff who know computers or you go out of business because a competitor is more competent. All activity across all lines of business is a tightrope between applying your skills (which you better have else prepare to suffer or GTFO voluntarily or otherwise) vs respecting someone else area of responsibility, this is not an IT thing or a finance thing or a shipping thing this is a universal balance problem for all business activity. Management is 100% responsible for their mistake although it MIGHT be justified if there are extenuating circumstances. In that case expect complaints about general employee IT incompetence to be blown off by mgmt. "We hired you because you're great at Y, yes we know you're completely inadequate at X despite X being required to do your job, and every time you get involved with X its frustrating for everyone involved, everyone, I assure you, and nothing is going to change as long as you keep high performing in Y and carefully avoid any training or learning about X".

</comment><comment><USER16> "I haven't considered the terrible situation this person has been put in, and I'm all out of ideas!"

<comment><USER9> Let's maybe not throw around terms like 'terrible situation' for someone being ask to fix a printer here or there. Even amongst the #firstwordproblems it just seems to lack the je-ne-sais-quoi of real tragedies.

<comment><USER14> The terrible situation is the implicit "IT Guy" having to do actual sysadmin work and being interrupted with the "hey fix this printer".

Also, being asked to fix a printer is pretty frustrating, because at best someone either is using past knowledge, or using google to diagnose, which is something pretty much any person could do.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Resource management and leveling, how does it work?

</comment><comment><USER18> Often times the accusation of jerky behavior can be one sided. To an IT person, it can be frustrating if they are dealing with the same issues from the same people over and over again.

Here is an analogy. Suppose the company had a policy of submitting your timesheet rounded to the nearest half-hour every Friday. Suppose an employee comes to HR in person unannounced on Friday with a list of hours worked every day that week, for example, 7.4, 7.6, 7.7,7.8,7.9. For each of the numbers he asks the HR person (it is a small company so they only have on HR person) what he should enter in his timesheet. The first time, the HR person might tell him the company policy and give the answers (7.5,7.5,7.5,8,8). If the person does this every week (even with slightly different numbers) is the HR person always going to be kind, smiling, and affirming? After a while, there is a high likelihood that the HR person would at least once sigh, roll their eyes, and give curt answers. Would people call the HR person a jerk for this response - after all this is part of their job?

At any company, there are people who want to do their job with the least amount of thought and effort possible. An IT person can be seen as a better Siri. Instead of thinking about a problem or even trying to look it up online, it is faster and easier for them just to dump it off to another person. These types of people can monopolize an IT person's time. Unfortunately, the IT person is often at a level where they cannot formally complain about people abusing their time. Thus, as a self-protection mechanism, they try to change the incentives. Calling the IT person with your problem will save you from having to think about it, but you will pay for it by having to undergo condescension. After a while this type of behavior can become ingrained in IT and be used against everybody, not just bad actors.

How can a company fix this? First, do not tolerate jerky behavior as that can ruin company culture. Second, have a policy in place that abuse of an IT person's time will not be tolerated. As an employee, you are required to be sufficiently knowledgeable about your tools - one of which is a computer. People abusing the IT person will have to undergo mandatory training or face disciplinary action. Have the IT person document each request and who asked for it. Review them periodically, to find people who are abusing the system. A company would not tolerate someone who always asked a coworker to write their reports because they are poor at grammar and spelling. So, they should not tolerate someone always asking IT about routine computer issues.

Doing this can remove the incentive for jerky behavior from IT as they can just quickly document the requests knowing that abuse will be dealt with by management. For your workers, they know that IT is there as a resource that is happy to help them but is not a substitute for Google. I think this would result in an overall win-win situation.</comment>


The Case Against Third Party Libraries (2014) - <AUTHOR> http://blog.gopheracademy.com/advent-2014/case-against-3pl/ <comment><USER2> The Stockholm syndrome shown by Go users in things like this is just incredible.

<comment><USER3> I think I agree. There are a _lot_ of great things about Go, but (currently) library versioning is not one of them.

This doesn't contradict much of what the author writes: it really is true that two different versions of one library are actually two different libraries; it really is true that sometimes copy-and-paste is better than generalising (when the cost of being general obscures the meaning of the code itself); it really is true that many libraries should just specify and implement an API, then _stop_.

The issue with libraries in versions in Go could probably be resolved with a more flexible import syntax. It'd be sweet to be able to write 'import foo.invalid/bar@94d0ef312881e694ded9ff38e33a2c07fb398eb8' and know that I'd always either get the exact version that I specified. It'd be even cooler to have some way to specify 'I want the latest version of library X which offers the exact API I'm using'; in principal this would be possible by calculating some deterministic ordering of the used, exposed API and hashing that, but the details would be tricky (as an example, consider a case where Foo() and Bar() still exist, with the same signatures, but in version 2.0 Bar() can only run properly if Baz() has been called previously—there's no way in Go to express that sort of contract to the compiler.

<comment><USER4> Honestly, with the release of Go 1.5, I've taken to using "go get" once to download the library, copy it over into the vendor folder, remove its .git folder, and commit the whole thing to source control. It's easier than messing with version numbers or commit hashes, and more stable than always using the latest master.

<comment><USER5> I really like this approach and it reminds me of the approach that Google takes with their versioning. Everything in one giant source repository.

It has a nice effect where every change to a library requires a commit which can trigger a build. There are no hidden updates.

<comment><USER6> It puts you in the driver's seat of dependency managing, but now you have to be a lot more careful to actually update them when the time comes. If you tend to put something into production and leave it there for months / years, coming back to do maintenance will be a real chore.

With Ruby I can 'bundle update', run the tests, and have reasonable certainty that everything's working. If I took over a Ruby project with vendored gems I'd mark them all for replacement for standard Bundler-managed gems at first opportunity. Vendored code has a bad tendency to become 'unmaintained code' otherwise.

Just because it works and is stable doesn't mean it doesn't have security vulns.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> > That's when I realized that a library with 30 versions is actually 30 > separate libraries.

Should be output to the screen in BLINKING ALL CAPS on every invocation of rubygems and npm.

<comment><USER8> As somebody who spends a lot of time on a 100,000 line of Ruby monolith with upwards of 50 dependencies...I support this.

<comment><USER9> the thing is it doesn't matter since a gem file and lock file will tell you what is the version of the library you are currently using.

What is the version of the library go get has fetched one month ago ? you don't know ? and you will never know.

The problem therefore is not 3rd party libraries that can break. The problem is the tool go use to get dependencies doesn't help you with something like that.

Therefore all this "a version of a lib is a different lib" is a straw-man masking the real issue with go get. In every other modern language ,there is no such issue.

<comment><USER8> It matters because of inter-dependencies between all those gems. I'm not saying it's "the way" but Go's popularity is almost entirely due to solving problems that people experience in other modern languages.

Dependency problems are one of those.

Two gem needing a specific version of a common gem immediately bind their upgrade paths together for the life of your application. Without including version numbers in go get, it forces those 3rd party libraries to be backwards compatible. Some people like that.

<comment><USER9> Go doesn't solve that, at all , in fact Go doesn't solve anything at all , thus the need for a proper package management solution in Go.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> StableLib [https://stablelib.com/](https://stablelib.com/) seems to be taking an interesting approach to libraries. Go guarantees backwards compatibility and it's awesome for developers. Why shouldn't libraries have the same guarantees?

The standard library is pretty nice, but one of the reasons for that is that it is a well tested well supported backwards compatible library. It would be nice if there were more of those.

<comment><USER11> It's pretty much a given that the first few libraries solving problem X will have a sub-optimal API, especially if they aim to be both general (say read and display JPEG) and full-featured (support all the optional bits of the format or work efficiently in low-memory embedded situations, etc.) at the same time.

All of that while preserving the feel and idioms of the host language. This is key since it invalidates a lot of prior experience with similar APIs.

So until the "right" API coalesces from collective experience with the problem domain and APIs for similar libraries (read and display {TIFF, GIF, PNG, etc.} in $LANGUAGE) backward compatibility is _not_ a feature you want.

Wait for the second or third wave of libraries where the problem is solved and understood in a nice idiomatic way for the language and its quirks.

<comment><USER10> Perfect is the enemy of good I guess. If I'm building a product now, I want a library that works well now and never breaks when I upgrade to the latest version. If someone gets a great idea for a better library, make it a separate library. So backwards compatibility is definitely a feature I want.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> "Ctrl-C, Ctrl-V"? This is so wrong...

<comment><USER13> Wrong as in unethical or prohibited by common licensing? Or just your opinion of the tactic?

<comment><USER12> It's just against every software engineering best practices. You find a library which implements what you want/need? You don't copy&paste 10% of it into your repository just to make sure it won't ever brake. What if it's broken already? They will fix it and your version won't be updated. This logic is not even ok with your own code, why should it be promoted with somebody else's code?</comment></comment></comment>


Lessons from starting a design-as-a-service startup - <AUTHOR> https://www.indiehackers.com/@Vinrob/15k-mo-running-a-productized-service-and-step-by-step-guide-to-start-yours-2dd421799b <comment><USER2> I see the comments here already tearing apart the article. I'm creating part of my SaaS offering that includes an optional service for new signups (importing and formatting company documents into our system). I thought the article was thoughtful, well-laid out, detailed key steps, and above all...offered much-needed value to me. The Facebook group offer at the bottom was a nice touch, as I want to learn more and share what I have going on. OP if you're reading this, well done.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks!

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Really nice to see this.

I have been doing piece work for the last few years rather than hourly work. I typically get paid by the page or by the word. I am more comfortable with that than with charging by the hour. For one thing, it gives me a clear means to improve my hourly rate without wondering if I am a con artist bilking people: just get better and faster. Their price remains the same. My de facto hourly wage goes up.

I have been asked to submit a bid to a local organization that needs help with their websites. I am thinking of charging a monthly retainer for being the admin and a per page fee for creating new content as needed.

I wasn't sure if that made sense. I haven't seen it done that way before. But that is very in line with what you are describing.

Now, I just need more customers willing to pay me X amount for a page of content for their site. And to define the scope of what constitutes a page of content.

<comment><USER4> That makes sense to me and it's in line with the web devs who advertise basic sites like "3 pages for $xxx."

I'm one of those who prefers fixed price bids to hourly/daily. I like to be able to say "I will do X and it will cost you $Y." I lose my shirt occasionally but that gives me more incentive to improve my quoting skills :-)

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Does 2 months actually count as $x/month? Not rejecting the concept, honestly curious. I'd imagine that figure would not be used if you were to sell the business or look for investment for example

<comment><USER6> You typically sell at a multiple of the last 2-3 years average revenue.

<comment><USER7> You could write a book filled the caveats you should have on such a generalized statement as this, and 2-3x _revenue_ is certainly the exception rather than the rule. Plenty of business sell for a year's gross revenue or less.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Not sure about the quality I can expect here. Most of these services use cheap laour. I've enjoyed using a more high-end service thats focussing on [1] User Interface and UX design with senior level designers.

[1] [http://fairpixels.pro](http://fairpixels.pro)

</comment><comment><USER9> I'm genuinely curious on how people find new customers or get people on your website? Is it based on referrals, advertising? I've struggled with outreach and getting first 100-1,000 on simply on the website, let alone signing up. Are there any good resources on this?

<comment><AUTHOR> We are just making what people want and mostly it goes from word of mouth. We are also limiting our services. We know that people love the type of illustrations we do (for blog posts/landing pages), love the type of landing pages we do, and also love the logos. We do not try to do 1000 things well, but rather 15-20 things really well and know our customers really well.

I only reach our customers via a few channels and mostly do content marketing but most of it is word of mouth.

We have not yet any referral or affiliate system in place but we are building one for our v3 which should come end of this month.

<comment><USER9> thanks that's helpful. How many users/customers did you before you did any content marketing? How much do you currently spend on advertising?

<comment><AUTHOR> We do not spend any money on advertising. We only do direct sales and content marketing.

We had our first 10 subscribers with direct sales.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> How can this be so cheap reasonably? If I understand correctly I can have a full time designer for $279/month. Maybe a lot of subscribers use only a small part of what they could be using but it seems to me this can easily be abused.

<comment><AUTHOR> OP here. I am in Asia and work with the best designers here (a lot of designers have worked previously with top UI teams at leading startups in Asia and even two unicorns). They handle 3 to 4 clients per month and we make only a small margin. We do not intend Manypixels to be a huge business, but rather something small and if possible allowing us to have a good lifestyle while making designers and clients happy.

<comment><USER11> Your labor costs are very low. Are your clients local, or are you bringing in a lot of business due to a price differential between where you are and more expensive places? If it's the later then it won't work for readers in the more expensive places.

<comment><AUTHOR> Most of our clients are located in the US, Europe, and Australia. Our team is based in a few different cities in Asia (and I am too, actually I am replying to all people on the chat of our website in a taxi in Yogyakarta, Indonesia). We pay our designers actually very high rates compared to what they earn as freelance designers and have set up great processes in place to ensure quality consistency and speedy ETA.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> There's a /r/startups subreddit (reddit.com) you may want to submit this to for more coverage, though a link requires mod approval there.

</comment><comment><USER13> The website (ManyPixels) seems pretty incomplete: I can't seem to enlarge the portfolio, there are repeated strings in a bunch of places, and the FAQs refer to other parts of the site without actually linking there. Currently resorting to finding your work on Dribbble.

</comment><comment><USER14> Oh man I was looking for something like this. I have a personal project I wanted to make actually look professional but as a freelancer it's tough to justify big bucks for something like that. But this might work!

<comment><AUTHOR> Feel free to try, we have a 10 days, 100% money back guarantee anyway!

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> This is amazing. I mean the service. Count me as your customer

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the love! We love you too so here is a 20% forever discount code on all subscriptions (only 10 available): 915Z6X1

<comment><USER16> @vinrob92 - This is great of you to put this discount code here. I am strongly tempted, but it is unclear on the website what the value proposition of the "premium" service is. Looking side by side, it just appears to add "logo, branding, and illustrations" to the basic plan. But wouldn't that fall under "graphic design" in the basic plan? Can you explain here what "premium" means in your service offering?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> This is helpful as I just started bootstrapping services in that exact area..very helpful guide into scaling it that way..thanks for posting it

</comment><comment><USER18> Thank you for this article Robin!

</comment><comment><USER19> > It does not matter. Just keep launching as fast as you can and see what > works. Just think of it as throwing spaghettis on the wall and see what > sticks.

I get that you can't do what you love and expect to make money. But this feels like it's gone too far. It seems like true greatness and satisfaction requires just a little bit of intent above just making easy money. I guess if easy money is your only goal this would be satisfying.

<comment><USER20> Money is freedom. You can do a lot more projects that tickle your "true greatness and satisfaction" when you're not worrying where your next check is coming in.

<comment><USER21> How upset would you be if "Money is freedom" isn't true?

I think your setting yourself up for some disappointment with that one.

<comment><USER22> When a person has a large quantity of money, they have the luxury to disregard money as a factor in their decision making.

That's how I think OP is interpreting it, not as money is a panacea for a fulling life. But money enables you pursue many things that a person with little money can.

<comment><USER23> I know people with a large quantity of money who sit at home letting their teeth rot. I know people with limited means that are out every day living life to its fullest. We all have to "disregard money as a factor in our decision making" when it comes to happiness.

<comment><USER24> The point is that a person without money doesn't have the luxury of sitting at home letting their teeth rot out while the person with money can, if they choose to, go out and live life to the fullest.

Money doesn't help you make the best life choices but it expands the spectrum of possible life choices.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Why I quit my 6 figure job to found my own startup - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@pierre_vannier/why-i-quit-my-6-figure-job-to-found-my-own-startup-94ed94cd11d?source=linkShare-4b79392e666b-1538664602 <comment><USER2> A startup gushes about how they are focused on disrupting the world by ushering in a new age of love and understanding.

Doesn't explain how they will make money.

I'm a hopelessly idealistic person…but that's also kind of how I recognize this as marketing puff.</comment>