Mosquitoes Changed Everything - <AUTHOR> https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2019/08/05/how-mosquitoes-changed-everything <comment><USER2> More politicians should campaign on eradicating mosquitoes in their local communities using gene editing. In the last decade Los Angeles has been infested with Aedes mosquitoes. A much more dangerous type than the culex we're used to.

They need much less water to grow eggs, Attack the lower body of humans quickly in short bursts so they're harder to swat, and can transfer all the dangerous diseases mosquitoes are known for.

Very scary and very solvable before it gets out of hand.

[https://www.latimes.com/science/sciencenow/la-sci-sn- aedes-m...](https://www.latimes.com/science/sciencenow/la-sci-sn-aedes- mosquitoes-california-20180901-story.html)

<comment> Luke-Jr Is it indeed possible to eradicate mosquitoes? Outside my house at certain parts of the day, there's tons and it only takes a few seconds to get swarmed. :(

What is the latest-and-greatest mosquito extermination tech?

<comment><USER3> We bought some GAT traps to thin the swarms of tiger mosquitos we have in DC and it seems to be working:

[https://us.biogents.com/bg-gat/](https://us.biogents.com/bg-gat/)

What I really want to mature is the photonic fence but that's been slow going: [https://photonicsentry.com/](https://photonicsentry.com/)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> There's a lot of interesting work in eradicating malaria. Genetically modified mosquitos is one of them, which deserves careful watch [https://www.telegraph.co.uk/global-health/science-and- diseas...](https://www.telegraph.co.uk/global-health/science-and- disease/mutant-mosquitoes-can-gene-editing-kill-malaria/).

The Centre for Effective Altruism looks at ranking charities on effectiveness, and the Against Malaria Foundation always ranks very highly.

<comment><USER5> I'm waiting for the laser defense system for my back yard.

<comment> swagasaurus-rex Where is the technology for this? This is an idea I had as a kid, everything I learned about science deems this possible.

<comment><USER6> [https://www.ted.com/talks/nathan_myhrvold_could_this_laser_z...](https://www.ted.com/talks/nathan_myhrvold_could_this_laser_zap_malaria/transcript?language=en)

<comment><USER7> Yes, I think this guy Myhrvold (who got rich managing some smart scientists at MS) owns a patent trolling business and slapped a patent on it, so nobody else can make and sell a mosquito laser cannon. The devil incarnate, apparently.

<comment><USER8> the key word being make _and_ sell. the design is publicly available, you just need to have the patience to build one yourself and you can have anything you like _even if it is patented_

<comment><USER9> IIRC technically patent law prohibits you from making it even if you don't plan on selling.

<comment><USER10> Yes, you recall correctly.

[https://www.uspto.gov/patents-getting-started/general- inform...](https://www.uspto.gov/patents-getting-started/general-information- concerning-patents#heading-2)

The key word is not _and_ , but _or_. "the right to exclude others from making, using, offering for sale, or selling"

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I don't know if it's too off-topic but I'd be happy to hijack these comments for a quick discussion of the best way to get rid of mosquitos from around your home. I live in the mountains in California and the little buggers are everywhere.

I bought a UV bug zapper without realising that mosquitos are apparently not attracted to UV. I later learned that they are attracted to CO2, but discussion of CO2 traps on the web imply that they also work very poorly.

Is there anything that can be usefully done?

<comment><USER12> Try and make sure you don't have any pools of stagnant water around. (long lasting puddles, buckets, other random concavities water can collect in.)

<comment><USER13> Unless you live on a very large property, the range of the mosquitoes usually far exceed the range of your control over standing water.

<comment><USER14> That depends on the species. Some species tend to stay within a few hundred feet of their breeding grounds, while others can travel for miles (but even then many will still tend to stay very close by).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> > The Mosquito: A Human History of Our Deadliest Predator

The mosquito is a parasite, not a predator.

When the author of the book mislabels the ecological niche occupied by the mosquito in the title of his book it gives little confidence in his rigour or level of insight.

<comment><USER16> [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parasitism#Micropredator](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parasitism#Micropredator)

> A micropredator attacks more than one host, reducing each host's fitness at > least a small amount, and is only in contact with any one host > intermittently. This makes them suitable as vectors as they can pass smaller > parasites from one host to another. Most micropredators are hematophagic, > feeding on blood. They include annelids such as leeches, crustaceans such as > branchiurans and gnathiid isopods, various dipterans such as mosquitoes and > tsetse flies, other arthropods such as fleas and ticks, vertebrates such as > lampreys, and mammals such as vampire bats.

[https://biology.stackexchange.com/questions/58169/why-is- a-m...](https://biology.stackexchange.com/questions/58169/why-is-a-mosquito- feeding-on-human-blood-not-a-parasite)

> A mosquito is a biological parasite, it is not a medical parasite.

Plus, it's a figure of speech talking about the fact that they kill a lot of us humans.

<comment><USER15> I question the redefinition of _predator_ , an organism that hunts and consumes its prey, in this term _micropredator_. I wonder how accepted and widespread its use is.

And the author doesn't use this much more restricted term. He didn't title his book _A Human History of Our Deadliest Micropredator_. Because he's going for sensationalism, as is more fully demonstrated in quotes from the book given later in the article:

> In total, Winegard estimates that mosquitoes have killed more people than > any other single cause—fifty-two billion of us, nearly half of all humans > who have ever lived. He calls them "our apex predator," "the destroyer of > worlds," and "the ultimate agent of historical change."

To your own assertion that mosquitoes kill a lot of humans - they only do so _indirectly_ as a vector for disease. This is a very important distinction - if we are going to eradicate anything it would be better to eradicate the microbial killer parasites they carry, such as _Plasmodium falciparum_ , not the carriers themselves (which are an important food source for many actual predators).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Because the advantages are obvious, what are the disadvantages of killing all mosquitoes?

<comment><USER18> When has humans meddling in ecologies ever worked fine without huge negative side effects?

<comment><USER19> Eradicating smallpox?

<comment><USER20> Also polio.

<comment><USER21> We have not yet eradicated polio globally. This year has actually been a setback in number of cases:

[http://polioeradication.org/polio-today/polio-now/this- week/](http://polioeradication.org/polio-today/polio-now/this-week/)

<comment><USER20> It's bad, but still 99% down from what we had in 80-s :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> Biting mosquitoes is one of the few species I have no qualms about eradicating. Other related species do all the kinds of work in the ecosystem that they do, but without nearly the risk to humans. Eradicate them.

</comment><comment><USER23> Pretty interesting knowing mosquitoes were weaponized in the past. The irony in the fact this took place in the modern era, and not in medieval times, where they were known for catapulting diseased carcasses.

</comment><comment><USER24> Here's one solution: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gene_drive](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gene_drive)

The costs are so low that even a developing country could afford to do it, at a cost way lower than mosquito control by other methods.

Sure there are unknown consequences, but that probably won't stop them if their fellow countrymen are dying.

</comment><comment><USER25> Has there been any research into eradicating the _Plasmodium_ parasite, rather than mosquitoes?

<comment><USER26> There's a lot of research into anti- _Plasmodium_ drugs in general (because they can be used in treating infected humans), but none have come close to being usable for general environmental dispersal that would try to eliminate the wild reservoir. Mixture of cost, resistance developing too quickly, and effects on other wildlife, so doing something like dropping quinine into forests from planes has never been a real option. This is in general very unlikely to work for diseases that have a significant non-human reservoir. Smallpox was able to be eliminated because it exclusively infects humans, so you only need to eradicate it from human hosts, not also from another extremely populous host like wild mosquitoes.

Another approach is to try to genetically engineer mosquitoes resistant to infection and have them replace the unmodified carrier versions, but that's essentially just a variant of the idea to eradicate the carrier-type mosquitoes: [https://www.nih.gov/news-events/nih-research- matters/enginee...](https://www.nih.gov/news-events/nih-research- matters/engineering-malaria-resistance-mosquitoes)

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> I had a sci-fi-plot idea while swatting my nth mosquito on a camping trip last month.

What if we figured out how to repurpose mosquitos to deliver useful viruses instead of harmful ones? Just think about it: no more scheduling appointments for vaccines or flu shots, simply wait outside for 20 minutes in the summer, and before you know it you're immunized against malaria, measles, etc.

Not being a biologist, I have no idea if this is a plausible scenario, but I hope that somebody investigates it! It might be a very cost-effective and democratic method of delivering care.

At the very least it'd make for a good black mirror episode :)

<comment><USER28> > _What if we figured out how to repurpose mosquitos to deliver useful viruses > instead of harmful ones?_

Yeah, what could go wrong with this? It's not like those "useful viruses" could ever evolve out in the wild to something more threatening!

<comment><USER27> A great sci-fi plot! heh

But to be clear, some vaccines are "useful viruses" [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Attenuated_vaccine](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Attenuated_vaccine)

Also gene therapy often uses viruses as a vector for delivery: [https://ghr.nlm.nih.gov/primer/therapy/procedures](https://ghr.nlm.nih.gov/primer/therapy/procedures)

So, it's not _too_ crazy an idea.

<comment><USER29> I'm not an expert in this area by any means, but my understanding is that vaccines use dead viruses rather than live ones, and they need a particular amount over time. So this wouldn't allow the virus to be passed along by mosquito generations, and you obviously couldn't control the dose amount. So not sure how practical the idea would be.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> [https://thedailyshitter.com/getting-rid-of-those-pesky- mosqu...](https://thedailyshitter.com/getting-rid-of-those-pesky-mosquitos-in- the-backyard/)

</comment><comment><USER31> An interesting article about the US army's fight against malaria in the pacific theater during WW II:

[https://armyhistory.org/the-other-foe-the-u-s-armys-fight- ag...](https://armyhistory.org/the-other-foe-the-u-s-armys-fight-against- malaria-in-the-pacific-theater-1942-45/)

TL;DR: By spraying DDT everywhere, and coercing troops to take Atabrine (that often had nasty side effects), they reduced malaria incidence by about 70%. The Japanese, by contrast had little protection - nearly all Japanese soldiers had malaria at some time.

<comment><USER3> One caution: pesticides like DDT are more effective at first, before the local population is selected for resistance. The big anti-malaria campaigns in the 1950s tended to report resistance being a significant impediment with a decade: [http://gladwell.com/the-mosquito-killer/](http://gladwell.com/the- mosquito-killer/)

<comment><USER32> It would be curious to know whether the resistance was just to the killing effect of the mosquito or if it still continued to repel and stop them from biting.

One of the huge advantages of DDT over later pesticides is that it stopped them from biting, the other ones keep them biting until they're dead.

I'm of the mindset that DDT should have remained legal as a residential application to the house (screens, nets, walls). The quantities applied here were much smaller than for agricultural use, and there has never been a study that convincingly showed harm to mammals. (Even the bird egg shell thinning theory was tenuous at best, TEL in leaded fuel could have had the same effect in the targeted time period)

<comment><USER26> > I'm of the mindset that DDT should have remained legal as a residential > application to the house (screens, nets, walls).

The international anti-DDT treaty allows countries to take this route, and as a result DDT is still legal for residential use in some countries where malaria is endemic. The US opted for a total ban, though.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> Is there a species as universally loathed as the mosquito?

<comment><USER34> Bed bugs are a thousand times worse!

I can easily protect myself against mosquitoes. It is much - much! - harder to get rid of bed bugs. The last time I had only one or two and it was a nightmare. I spare you the details, there are plenty of anecdotes out there. The net did not help at all. I was lucky to notice that one night when I accidentally had the blanket reversed - the part wehre the feet were, usually, was where my head was for that one night - I got bitten on the upper part of my body instead of the lower one. I immediately put the entire blanket including sheets into a plastic bag and threw it away. I _had_ actually examined the sheet as well as the blanket very carefully and had found nothing. No idea where exactly those tiny critters were hiding, but afterwards I had no more bites. Seriously, with bed bugs you have to take _extreme_ measures. In comparison, all you need against mosquitoes is a net! I learned to _like_ mosquitoes now, given that nightmarish alternative experience with bed bugs. Mosquito bites are much more "friendly" and easier to live with too!

<comment><USER35> Bed bugs are manageable if you know that they are very susceptible to heat. They are very mobile at night and can travel 100 or 200 metres (as I recall).

The strategy then is divide and conquer. Choose one room and seal it off with masking tape and then steam every little crevice you can find. Keep that room sealed and sleep in there. Once you're not getting bitten you know that room is fine. Then move on to the next room. Rinse and repeat.

Some older homes have just too many cracks and crevices for this process to work. There are companies that will enclose an entire house in a big plastic bag and then heat up the entire thing to be rid of bed bugs. In any case heat and steam is the best weapon. I believe 50C for 24 hours is effective. Any kind of chemical attack would be hit and miss at best.

<comment><USER36> And even after heat treatment, the histamine they poop out can remain for up to 3 months. Stubborn little twits.

[https://gizmodo.com/bed-bugs-are-pooping-histamine-into- our-...](https://gizmodo.com/bed-bugs-are-pooping-histamine-into-our-homes- and-possi-1822940326)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER37> A few years ago I decided to stop killing mosquitos. I still swat them, but my aim now is inflict PTSD on them so that they avoid environmental triggers that remind them of me, and all their offspring do the same. How can they learn if we kill them?

Has it worked? Prob not, but I feel like I'm doing something new at least.

<comment><USER38> Not sure if this is a joke. If not, they 'learn' by not surviving long enough to pass on their genes

<comment><USER37> There are numerous behavioral adaptations passed on via epigenetic methylation of the relevant genes in all species, mosquitos included.</comment></comment></comment>


Someone else had your idea first - <AUTHOR> http://www.aaronkharris.com/someone-else-had-your-idea-first <comment><USER2> The thing that's annoying about the question is that it's phrased in an inherently adversarial way, putting the answerer on the defensive, amping up the stress of an already stressful context and encouraging aggressive blustery responses.

I'm neither a startup founder nor a VC, but I've found that in similar contexts (dates, interviews, public debates, private arguments, etc.) this sometimes serves to score points with some external audience, but is almost never the most productive way to advance a conversation that both parties are trying to learn something from.

The goal of a VC isn't to "win" in a contest against the founder here. The goal is for each side to learn what the other side has to offer and critically evaluate whether a deal makes sense, or whether there are other connections that can be made.

I've known a small handful of people who ask aggressive questions like this as a deliberate test to see what the other person will do and are then very savvy about parsing responses and seeing through anxiety/bravado/etc. But this is a very difficult skill to master, and such tests should be used carefully and sparingly.

Most of the people I know who ask this kind of question are just in it because they enjoy aggressive adversarial conversations, even when it's not at all in their own interest.

<comment><USER3> Do you think your opinion on the question as being "aggressive" or "adversarial" is a matter of personal experience?

I see the question as both direct and deep. It's a good way to pry open the problem/market space, think about what has been done or is being done by competitors, and consider/query the "new" approach to the "old" problem. If you know your market, it's an easy question to answer. In fact, it's a fun question to answer -- it's not every day that you the luxury of a smart and trained person assisting you with the endless task of prying open and evaluating your problem/market space.

If you consider the question to be aggressive, adversarial, and intended to be harmful, then answering it becomes more difficult, particularly if you're unprepared. On the other hand, if you consider the question to be simply direct, deep, and intended to be helpful, then answering it is much easier.

<comment><USER2> It obviously depends a lot on tone of voice, context of the relationship between the two people, etc. I just know that I've occasionally showed something new to someone, or announced I was working on something, and their immediate response was along the lines of "oh, I saw that years ago when X did the same thing" or "Y tried that and it didn't work out" or "doesn't everyone already use Z's version of that?" with a dismissive or aggressive sort of tone.

It's the same kind of framing of a conversation you get as when an idea is met with "oh, that's physically/technically impossible" or "that's way too expensive to possibly work" or "what kind of crazy customer do you think would ever want that?"

Trying to understand how a new idea or product relates to existing stuff is obviously a useful topic of discussion, but depending whether it's phrased/expressed inquisitively or aggressively could make a big difference. Something like the title of the post under discussion – "someone else had your idea first" – is one of the less productive ways to phrase things, IMO.

Personally, I love answering these kinds of questions and can easily be sent either into passionate "prove why I'm right" mode or passionate "let's look at this logically/scientifically" mode. But I also know plenty of folks who I think would be great startup founders who respond very defensively or get shut down when they feel attacked.

The problem here is that while the VC might be thinking "The question begs for a deeper answer, [...] an opportunity to demonstrate depth of thought and originality." what is also happening is that someone who doesn't thrive on aggressive adversarial conversations will be weeded out, even though they might be great at all kinds of other things, and might be able to express their ideas very well in a less adversarial context. I dunno, I'm not an expert on startup psychology. Maybe the only people who make good startup founders love this style of conversation.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Having read the entire article, I'm a little confused.

He says it's one of his favorite questions to both ask and be asked, but when VCs ask it, it is sparked by their ego with the intent of putting them down. But when he asks the question himself, he doesn't claim to do it with the same bad intentions.

Seems overly negative towards VCs to acknowledge that they ask a really great question, but do it with the intent of making founders feel like crap.

</comment><comment><USER5> Quid pro quo: what percentage does originality contribute to success and greatness? Is it more than 20%? How did you arrive at the percentage? Does the percentage change based on the vertical, the market, the greater market cycle, the country, the entrepreneur, et cetera? If so, how?

If you, as a VC, can't answer those questions, then asking me how original my idea is has no value. If the answer is that originality contributes less than 20%, why should I focus on it?

If the real question is, have I thought about my competition and do I have a strategy for beating them, ask me that instead. Further, if I haven't thought about my strategy yet, aren't you then looking at my potential to learn, devise, and execute a strategy? Aren't you asking yourself, is this a person who has done great work but needs guidance and can I work with this person?

And I'll go a step further. What percentage of the 75% of failed VC backed companies had an original idea and/or knew their competition, and had a great strategy?

</comment><comment><USER6> > Most people are very lazy. They don't want to take the time to think through > new ideas or look at them in a new light. Once they've made up their minds > about something, they don't change them. That's generally why most people > don't come up with ideas for new or great things.

See "Theory X": [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theory_X_and_Theory_Y](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theory_X_and_Theory_Y)

> I think part of the reason that people ask this question as a way of putting > founders down is that they assume that startups are zero sum.

This sentiment has just gotten so trite. The idea that economics is not a zero-sum game is one of the first principles of capitalism.

</comment><comment><USER7> There are a lot of comments here about the adversarial nature of a such a question, and they're completely correct: Asking this question is an assertion of dominance. They're also not wrong that assertions of dominance tend to backfire and elicit indignation.

The key insight though, is that dominant individuals tend to respond to assertions of dominance with their own return assertion of dominance. In other words, they don't like being dominated, and it's this reaction VCs are typically looking for as dominant behavior is likely perceived as a requisite character trait for entrepreneurial success. Programmers though tend to conversely be a prestige driven culture and respond negatively to dominance challenges like this.

If you're curious to know more, checkout the very interesting paper "Two Ways to the Top: Evidence That Dominance and Prestige Are Distinct Yet Viable Avenues to Social Rank and Influence"[1]

[1] [http://www2.psych.ubc.ca/~henrich/pdfs/Cheng%20et%20al.%20(2...](http://www2.psych.ubc.ca/~henrich/pdfs/Cheng%20et%20al.%20\(2013\)%20-%20Two%20Ways%20to%20the%20Top.pdf)

<comment><USER8> I think I disagree with your comment regarding programmers: Linus is admired for such strong opinions, close to impoliteness, for example.

More than a jujutsu technique for dealing with such incisive questions, it is clear that being the second contender to enter the marker saves you the trouble of having to create such market (and it is sometimes reasonable to play it this safe). It's just a different approach to making money. To me, a VC asking this is a sign of weakness on his behalf (due to ignorance?).

<comment><USER7> 1\. Linus is in a dominant position. Dominance doesn't invoke indignance when it's directed toward non-tribesman or by the alpha (the paper discusses this). What's interesting about this, is you can read whether someone perceives Linus to be an/the alpha based on whether they reject or accept his behavior. Further interesting, if they accept his behavior, they are likely self- associating with whichever tribe they consider Linus to be the alpha of (e.g., programmers, Linux, OSes, etc...).

2\. Yes, I agree on a VC's concern of risks on the viability of a market. (See First Mover Advantage myth) I'm focusing more on the way it's communicated rather than the content or the why.

3\. Yes, I think you're right that a VC is masking weakness if he asks this, as opposed to, "How are you different from X?" Though, IMO it's still an assertion of dominance, similar to a veil of bravado.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Depends on how far you dumb down the idea really. No one would be telling Steve Wozniak that someone else had his idea for a very innovative way of developing a computer in the late 70s, but if you say your idea is "a computer" then yah, someone else had that idea.

<comment><USER10> Still, necessarily there was a first person (or a tie with several people) for the idea of a computer. So, maybe the claim in the title was true for Wozniak but definitely it is false for someone and, thus, a false statement.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> I think the author got it wrong. I also ask that same question "isn't X or Y already doing this?" to most startups that pitch me. I'm not trying to make the founder feel bad, or sound smart, or anything like that. I say this because I want to find out what they do different. I'm signaling that I'm already aware of those other companies, and I want to know:

(a) if they are already successful, how you'll beat them

or

(b) if they failed, why you think you won't fail

<comment><USER12> > I also ask that same question "isn't X or Y already doing this?" to most > startups that pitch me. I'm not trying to make the founder feel bad, or > sound smart, or anything like that.

The question itself is adversarial because it assumes that you understand completely what the founder is doing and implies that it isnt any different from X or Y. Thats why people like Paul Graham who want to know the same thing phrase it differently: "how are you different from X or Y".

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> > Most people are very lazy. They don't want to take the time to think through > new ideas or look at them in a new light. Once they've made up their minds > about something, they don't change them. That's generally why most people > don't come up with ideas for new or great things.

This is cynical and arrogant. Different people manifest creativity in different ways. Not everybody is interested in coming up with "ideas for new or great things", which in the author's world clearly equates to "tech startup." Also worth noting is that lots of people who do have great ideas:

1\. Have great ideas that aren't of a commercial nature.

2\. Don't have the know-how, relationships or financial ability to take their ideas further on their own.

3\. Contribute those ideas to their employers.

> This is also true for many venture capitalists. In fact, it's at the root of > a very common question that founders get asked: "Well, isn't so and so doing > this?" To be fair, this question isn't necessarily sparked by laziness. It's > also sparked by ego - the VC wants to show how familiar they are with the > market. They say "Look! I know about things and there's someone else who had > the same idea you had." The implicit criticism here is that, because someone > else had the idea first, your idea is somehow worse.

Later, Harris writes:

> Even though the question might seem dumb, it's one of my favorites. It's > also a great question to get as a founder. I ask it of almost every founder > I meet, because it's very rare to find a truly new idea. The answer I'm > looking for is nearly always "of course someone else has tried this before." > But that's not enough. The question begs for a deeper answer, one that talks > about why, even though other people have tried the same idea, they're still > leaving billions of dollars on the table. It's an opportunity to demonstrate > depth of thought and originality. It's that framework of thinking and level > of insight that makes greatness.

So other venture capitalists ask the "Well, isn't so and so doing this?" question because they're lazy and want to stroke their egos but Aaron Harris asks it because he wants to provide founders with "an opportunity to demonstrate depth of thought and originality"? C'mon.

Besides telling us that everybody else is lazy and egotistical, I have no idea what the point of this post was. It reads like an anti-advertisement for YC to me.

<comment><USER10> > I have no idea what the point of this post was.

Well, as in my post elsewhere in this thread, the title of this thread is just flatly, literally wrong, as in not true, as in false. But, I will try to explain, maybe, "the point" of the original post:

In venture capital, the claim in the title is commonly made: So, maybe, "the point" is just to _discuss_ the claim and related thoughts.

But, he continues and makes another mistake: He has,

> The answer I'm looking for is nearly always "of course someone else has > tried this before."

I see two things wrong here:

(1) With the qualification "nearly always", along with his comment about "lazy", we have to conclude that he's been talking to the wrong entrepreneurs.

(2) His "this" as an "idea" is wrong: As we have covered on HN before, it appears that in Silicon Valley what is meant by an "idea" is just some vague, short, maybe one sentence statement of what the product/service would look like to a customer on a first glance. So, with this meaning of an _idea_ there is nothing to patent, protect with a trade secret, use as Ph.D. dissertation, publish in a peer-reviewed journal of original research in, say, a STEM field, etc. Or, an _idea_ is like "I want to fly to the moon" where we can ask who the heck first thought of that and then conclude who the heck cares.

So, for people doing advanced work in STEM fields and looking for business success with, also, say, a technological barrier to entry, his concept of an _idea_ is nearly trivial. He's got an entrepreneur and wants to talk trivialities? Gads.

His mistake is to be looking for something nearly trivial. Instead for _ideas_ he should be looking for something, to borrow, "new, correct, and significant", and, of course, for start-ups how to make money.

So, in his work with _ideas_ , he's looking for the wrong stuff. In case I rub some fur the wrong way, I highly value and respect my view of _ideas_ \-- e.g., my Ph.D. dissertation was mostly just _ideas_ , and they weren't just one or a few sentences and trivial.

More broadly I have another concern for information technology start-ups, venture capital, and our economy more generally: In short, the concern is that we are shooting ourselves in the gut. Or, earlier this week I happened to look at the Web site of Polaris Partners, and there I saw the backgrounds of the partners: Several, maybe all, the partners interested in biotechnology had biotechnology Ph.D. degrees. No partner interested in information had a Ph.D. degree. And that Web site is not the only such.

In my career, nearly always I had my technical work, and since I quite mowing grass for a few dollars as a teenager all of my work has been technical, reviewed by someone who had the qualifications to understand it and did understand it.

Then I looked at the Web sites of some venture firms and the backgrounds of the partners interested in information technology: I have a tough time finding a Ph.D. or even a BS STEM major. Gotta tell ya, it would be one heck of an amazing BA major in English and history who would or could understand or review any of my technical work.

Several professions have professional peer review, and I doubt that any of them, law, medicine, engineering, tenure committees, have BA English and history majors.

But, wait, it gets worse: If I accept an equity check I will report to a Board of Directors (BoD) that can fire me at anytime for any reason or no reason, deny me my unvested stock, get me in hot water with my illiquid vested stock, etc.

So, first BoD scenario: The company is up and running, good revenue, first earnings, and I, as founder, CEO, come to the BoD meeting with the budget and list of projects. There is a major new project, and I cover how it will go. It's based on some original work, I did, in applied mathematics with some advanced prerequisites. Essentially all of my high confidence in the project is based squarely on the mathematics. So, I cover the mathematics. The project has to do with, say, ad targeting?

As I learned as a first year graduate student in seminars with some of the best mathematicians in the world, there is little so painful as listening to and trying to understand some advanced mathematics while missing most of the prerequisites -- were talking an unanesthetized, upper molar root canal procedure along with a barbed wire enema while being flogged with a cat of nine tails and standing on a charcoal fire. What the fun in that? I can see nearly all the English and history majors running, screaming from the board room directly, do not pass GO, do not collect $100, to the little boys room for blowing all tubes at both ends. Some BoD meeting. I see that disaster coming right at me like an 80 MPH freight train 50 yards away. Bummer. BoD meeting over.

In information technology venture firms, can we have some basic technical competence, please, pretty please?

Else that must have been one heck of an English and history major. Gee, they covered the Gleason bound for heap sort and O(n ln(n)) notation right along with Hamlet? And they explained the importance of P vs NP just before the Council of Trent? And cache concurrency in multi-core processors was, sure, along with Henry James, 'The Golden Bowl' \-- from the Prince. For the Internet, they connected that with the principle of _The Great Natural Order_? Recursion in software connected with the "child is the father of the man"?

And in the paper I published solving an old problem in the constraint qualifications of the Kuhn-Tucker conditions, I was not the first with the ideas because Sir Francis Bacon just had to have known all that all along? And that every closed, convex subset has a unique element of minimum norm, that was from Hammurabi, right?

Where does our technology get such nonsense? Does this really mean that soon we will be doing abdominal surgery with smoking incense and rusty pocket knives?

That's enough -- I'm going to upchuck.

<comment><USER14> I 100% agree with the title and 90% disagree with the reasoning. In doing a Ph.D., it's surprising that you didn't find that most ideas are incremental -- most bibliographies are long! I found that to largely carry through to startups.

In science and in startups, that question is a short-cut for "did you truly check related work, and as anything important typically has some and my job requires me to keep up-to-date on that, distill that for me: what's our common ground and what's your special sauce?"

I had that exact conversation just a few hours ago. It wasn't offensive; it let us more quickly get to the fun stuff.

<comment><USER10> > that question

The title was stated as a claim, not a question, and an English major should be able to be clear on the difference.

While there really are some ideas that really are new, correct, and significant, your restatement of the title, with your considerable revision, is much better, appropriate, and productive.

I omitted some of what the heck I want in a start-up: With a biomedical analogy, I want a safe, effective, cheap, side effect free, one pill taken once cure for any cancer, with, of course, necessarily, some, let's call them, _ideas_ that are most definitely "new, correct, and significant". Then _product-market_ fit and both _virality_ and _traction_ growing quickly and business success will be low risk and high ROI. Sadly we'd literally have to hire security at the lab door.

I also omitted: For a simpler explanation, and one more appropriate for information technology, I want to start with a _problem_ to be solved -- in Silicon Valley speak, maybe that's their version of an _idea_. I want a problem something like curing cancer -- a biggie where there is no doubt, no question, 100% certainty, that the first good or a much better solution will definitely be a _must-have_ for enough people and earnings per person to zoom past $1 billion market capitalization like a US ABM rocket passes 100,000 feet up. No more question about _product-market_ fit than for that cancer pill.

Then the challenge is how the heck to get that solution? But, definitely, no doubt, get the solution and collect the big bucks. No doubt. But, likely the problem's tough to do as in no one has even as much as a weak little hollow hint of a tiny clue how to solve it. They can think and think and think, hit the library, etc. and come up empty, sadder but wiser, have found 10,000 things that won't work.

And I want low risk. Right, big, tough problem no one knows how to solve, high payoff, low risk.

And when I get the solution, I want to know with rock solid certainty that I really do have the solution.

Again, given the problem, the only thing left to get the big bucks is the solution as described. Maybe we can't get the solution (the solution to the cancer pill is still waiting) in which case maybe pick another problem. But if we do get the solution, then we do get the big bucks -- no doubt.

Basically have turned the whole project into just get the solution and know that we really have it.

Impossible? Not at all.

Again, with this approach, as in the cancer pill, all we need is the solution and know it's good.

How to get the solution? Sure, now, be technical. Now we need a leading example: Ike had a problem; he wanted to know what the Russkies were up to. He tried the U-2, and it got shot down. So, now what? Ah, a problem! Right, it's not a commercial problem, but now we're into just the solution part where we want to be technical. So, give a call, right, who else, to Kelly Johnson at Lockheed. He shows up with an armload of papers.

So, there is titanium and a new engine from the Florida unit of Pratt and Whitney, an engine that is an ordinary turbojet until about Mach 2.0 at which time it is just a ramjet good for, say, Mach 3+ (turbojet engines tend to get too hot even trying to go that fast, e.g., the MIG 25).

Then, also have 80,000 feet, and a little math will show that tough to shoot it down. Fly for 2000+ miles without refueling, and now we've got something Ike will want.

How to do that? Will it work? Okay, just check Kelly's engineering. Checked! Project approved. Now: Right, risk over, the rest is routine, low risk, high payoff, and we get the SR-71.

For at least the last 70 years we in the US have had many projects that have closely followed just this pattern: Given a big problem, look for a technical solution, find a candidate, check it. Pass the check and, e.g., get the F-117 (Saddam, sorry you wasted all the money on air defense -- you never even scratched a single F-117), ....

Okay, for now, for the technical part, exploit Moore's law, available infrastructure software, and the Internet. Given that, have the problem be to deliver valuable information of some kind. So, the solution is to be a case of _information technology_.

So, now how to get the solution and know it's good? Sure: Especially appropriate for information technology, turn the task of getting the solution into a math problem where when we check the math we are rock solidly sure we have a solution to the technical problem and the last we need for the big bucks -- all risk gone, the rest is just routine, low risk, and high payoff.

Thankfully for US national security the US DoD believes this approach and is really good at it. Sadly for our economy, Silicon Valley, in spite of its origins, does not and, instead, wants _traction_ for a smartphone _app_ for, say, teenage girl gossip.

<comment><USER14> Mea culpa; I actually restated the article. (FYI, the article explicitly states the title is a question coming in the form of a challenge that must be responded to.)

The DoD isn't too different from VCs here. Thesis-driven, big checks for big projects, insider community, etc. When not fast-tracking someone with a strong record, the same questions come up, or, as with many seed investors, due diligence is not worth the time.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> For the title here, I've heard that before. Let's see:

Take the set of all people who have had that idea and pick the ones who had the idea, say, since the big bang ~13.7 billion years ago, first. Then for those people, no one else had their idea first. Contradiction. Claim is false. Done.

Not complicated.

What's more complicated is why such a claim would be made, and a conjecture is that someone wants to denigrate ideas and the people who have them.

</comment><comment><USER15> There are a couple missed points in that article. First, those kinds of somewhat aggressive questions are far more likely to be asked by the young MBAs VC firms hire to poke holes in business plans and do other grunt work. This is how they have fun. VC partners seldom need to publicly stroke their egos. Secondly, of course someone else had that idea first. The future is here. Your "idea" amounts to creating a local maximum in future distribution because you can execute on that idea particularly well.

So don't get insulted by the person asking, or by the question itself.

</comment><comment><USER16> It is a good question, and just a different way of asking, "Who is your question and how are you different?" and "How much do you know the history of the market you're trying to disrupt?"

If someone claims to be disrupting a market that they know nothing about, there are potential warning signs. (This isn't to say that outsiders don't have great ideas, just that it's tougher.)

</comment><comment><USER17> > I think part of the reason that people ask this question as a way of putting > founders down is that they assume that startups are zero sum. That's an > assumption born in certain models of markets, but it's completely wrong when > looking at startups.

Which models of markets? As far as I knew, one of the fundamental points of modeling markets is that they _aren 't_ zero-sum.

<comment><USER18> Mature, well-developed markets are close to zero-sum. Think Wall-Mart or McDonald's mature: niches where there are old, aggressive, amazingly well- optimized players, generally two or three in number, who occupy the landscape so completely that for one to grow the rest are probably going to have to shrink.

It isn't a perfect zero-sum, and even in those markets companies are always looking for new ground to colonize, but it's close enough that to first order it makes sense to analyze things in zero-sum terms.

And it's also the antithesis of start-ups in most cases, which are frequently attempting to create new markets where none existed by serving needs that no one knew they had.

<comment><USER17> I don't think your example is at all zero-sum, because the overall size of the economy can and generally does grow, and thus even the most well-entrenched markets like discount department stores or fast food can and do grow. Perhaps it's true that a market with a few well-optimized firms, each of which can't increase their market _share_ without taking it from another firm, but even then, the market _size_ can grow.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> [http://kent.io/the-well-of-lost-ideas](http://kent.io/the-well-of-lost-ideas)

</comment><comment><USER20> its like this. say a friend says he wants to build a system to enable smartphone turn by turn navigation indoors.. my first thought would be..apple/google/mall developers/nokia all have more millions than we have dollars and what have they done about it? why you? what advantage do you have over them? or what has changed in the circumstances or context to make this indoor navigation thing interesting? i guess thats a rather adversarial way to phrase things, but are questions i actually want to know the answers to..

</comment><comment><USER21> As a startup founder, I jump at this question -- not aggressively or defensively, but enthusiastically, because I know _exactly_ why we're different/better.

</comment><comment><USER22> Jokes on them, none of my ideas are any good.</comment>


Cryptographer Adam Back and Hashcash - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/blockwhat/97-anybody-interested-in-some-hash-cash-7fd422dc5e79 <comment><USER2> I'm curious: why didn't proof-of-work get adopted into some email protocol? It seems like a reasonable solution to the junk mail problem. Things like mailing lists would be disadvantaged in this case, but you could reasonably disable the PoW requirement for lists you subscribe to.</comment>


Digital marketing: a free curriculum - <AUTHOR> https://www.springboard.com/learning-paths/learn-digital-marketing/ <comment><USER2> There are certainly a lot of resources out there to learn digital marketing, SEO, PPC, and paid social. While there's a lot of great information out there, there's a lot of misinformation out there, as well.

In my 20+ years of digital marketing (I was trying to get rankings on Altavista back in 1996), I've learned that the best way to learn digital marketing is by actually practicing it and doing it. You can certainly learn the basics, and this springboard curriculum is a good start. I hope they can keep with the updates, though, as even the "best practices" are constantly changing. The ways you optimized a website 5 years ago are different now, and some techniques are considered spam.

Start with the basics, learn what you can, and then learn by actually putting what you learned into practice. Create your own website. Create your own blog. You'll learn more that way.

<comment><USER3> Any good community sites you'd recommend?

<comment><USER2> WebmasterWorld dot com has always been a great place to learn and ask questions.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I also have never seen springboard like someone else has commented however here is my two cents: Reading a bunch of articles on the topic will not teach you how to actually become an expert in the topic, it will however give you a better understanding of what people in those fields of work are doing and how they are doing it. I don't think you can learn digital marketing in like an hour or even 10 hours... there's so much going on there're so many tools out there and you have to pick the ones that work better for you. The reason digital marketing meeting is hard is that there are way too many resources and everybody says the same thing but in a different way which gets really confusing for new people who are reading articles on SEO SEM, branding, social media management, advertising etc. All these articles and tutorials are trying to push their own envelope because the marketing tutorials in the marketing articles are written by marketers who ere trying to sell you something

Reading books Doesn't make you an accomplished writer or even a writer for that matter

<comment><USER2> Based on what I see for this tutorial, it looks like it's merely a links list of resources. Go read Moz. Go watch this video on YouTube.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Check out Lyda.com or other online professional development provider. You will find many different options. We have written about the GIG economy and how free lancers use digital tools to acquire new clients.

[https://latechnews.org/los-angeles-gig-economy/](https://latechnews.org/los- angeles-gig-economy/)

</comment><comment><USER6> I've tried to learn digital marketing online but the most difficult and funny part about it is that all the teachers are digital marketers, so everyone has a newsletter and an ebook they're trying to sell you. So it's difficult to break in and actually learn how to do digital marketing.

<comment><USER7> IMO the only way to learn is to make a quick Wordpress site on one of those easy 1 click install hosts and start writing content and marketing it. (It's easy to get lost playing with the backend of websites so don't even give yourself the ability to do it)

<comment><USER6> Gotcha. I don't even know where to start though. There's so much info to sift through. lol.

<comment><USER8> What are you trying to market?

Who is your target audience?

Where can they be found?

What other things do they have in common besides a potential interest in the thing you want to promote?

What is your price point? Does it all need to be free, or can you throw some money at this?

Answer those questions and it should start narrowing down a place to begin.

<comment><USER6> Yeah but I'm sure there's technical tools for digital marketing that cross all of these boundaries.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> This curriculum was presented better than most - so much so that it was a surprise to be taken to other sites when I opened up a lesson.

Curation of a learner pathway definitely has it's value.

</comment><comment><USER10> Never seen Springboard. It's an interesting way to put together a course. Just tape together articles in some sort of progressive learning or categorized topics. I like the learning path concept, it helps you easily see where you might be missing some knowledge.

<comment><USER11> 7 of the resources aren't even linked. Looking at their pricing, I hope this isn't representative of the rest of Springboard's courses.

<comment><USER12> Hey, I work for Springboard -- and you're right about the seven resources. That was a bug, thanks for catching it! We've fixed it so that all resources should link to the right resource. Please comment here if you see any more bugs :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> 6 second digital marketing ads are trending up and becoming a part of any marketing and advertising budget. t-mobile had great success with their world series 6 second ad spots. [https://latechnews.org/six-second-marketing- ads/](https://latechnews.org/six-second-marketing-ads/)</comment>


19 Year Old Heartbleed Hacker Arrested For Hacking the CRA - <AUTHOR> http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/the-switch/wp/2014/04/16/the-first-suspected-heartbleed-hacker-has-been-arrested/?tid=sm_fb

<comment><USER2> Ugh, the comments on that article are terrible. Of course it's entirely possible the comments on every major news article everywhere are terrible.

<comment><USER3> For what it's worth, if you have Ghostery installed you cannot see the comments. The intent is to block tracking but the added benefit of not seeing comments is a nice plus.

<comment><USER4> <3 Ghostery. I assume the comments are your typical "all hackers should die! One of them stole my yahoo account once!" stuff?

<comment><USER3> I have no idea, thankfully.

<comment><USER5> Ignorance is bliss.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Here's an article with more information from the CBC: [http://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/stephen-arthuro-solis- reyes-...](http://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/stephen-arthuro-solis-reyes- charged-in-heartbleed-related-sin-theft-1.2612526)

</comment><comment><USER7> The article and comments are intense. The most likely scenario is that this 19 year old tested the Heartbleed vulnerability on the CRA and obtained SSN throught the exploit. I doubt the intention was to "steal" them or use them for criminal motive.

<comment><USER2> It's entirely possible he didn't even know he had any numbers and perhaps never even saved it to disk.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> So... didn't we all have little peak around the internet last week? Are we all in trouble now?</comment>


The Chumby Is Open, but Not for Business - <AUTHOR> http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/02/21/the-chumby-is-open-but-not-for-business/index.html?ex=1361336400&en=010bf442145aa0fc&ei=5088&partner=rssnyt&emc=rss <comment><USER2> I like the Chumby itself overall, but this business model is just terribly flawed. People don't want to be "advertised to", many people go to great lengths to avoid or remove advertisements, and this trend is growing not shrinking.

Chumby's will be $99 for a 3 pack on Woot in a year or 2.

Their business model is also a little bit like the carriers wanting to charge the mega content sites (Google) to carry their packets.

</comment><comment><USER3> The last I heard is it runs on AC power ONLY. If it's still true (the web site doesn't seem to say otherwise), it will fend off potential buyers, including myself.</comment>


Ask HN: Burning idea for a story you've always wanted written? - <AUTHOR> I'm looking to write a novel but still searching for a satisfying seed idea. Maybe you have one?<p>(Yes, I'm basically crowdsourcing ideas for a book). <comment><USER4> Imagine if Hell were a sort of financial market. Demons trade soul futures, essentially betting on the future price of souls, which of course they consume for food. Other demons (backed by investors) devise new schemes to tempt humans into mortal sin. Failure means the souls go to Heaven, not Hell.

If the demons bringing in souls should somehow create a bubble with a grand new scheme that's guaranteed to bring many souls, but then fail, the soul futures market would crash with catastrophic results.

You could make a _hilarious_ book satirizing the mortgage crisis or the dot- com bubble this way. (Something like _Good Omens_ , but financial.)

I have all sorts of notes on how this could work, but no idea how to write a novel with them.

<comment><USER5> This sounds absolutely hysterical! I think your main character(s) should be demons who work for the Hell SEC, who are trying to fight their way through corruption and bureaucracy to stop the bubble before it's too late and a huge quantity of souls are lost to the vile clutches of God in Heaven.

<comment><USER4> That sounds great. My problem is that I can't think of a good cause for a soul bubble in hell. It'd be good to tie it to some historical event, but what could I say was clearly a failed demonic soul investment scheme?

<comment><USER5> Why would there be a soul bubble? Well maybe an outbreak of religious revivalism on Earth has restricted the supply of souls available for Hell's consumption. Oh, and some new processing method is making certain demons very rich and pumping too much capital into a market that's fundamentally supply- limited.

This also lets you make jokes at the expense of religious revivalist movements ;-).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> A book about a guy who crowdsources idea for a book, and ultimately decides that the story will be about a guy crowdsourcing ideas for a book.

Repeat indefinitely.

\---

Alternatively, outsource several trillion monkeys to type apparently random characters until you are left with a work that is more intelligent than Huxley, more potent than Shakespeare, and wittier than Stephen Fry.

<comment><USER7> Write it in the second person about the reader, who is crowdfunding said book, a la "If on a winter's night a traveler".

<comment><USER6> This just stepped up to a whole new level.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> My old apartment's super old elevator used to have a tiny window in the elevator door. You could catch split-second views of the other floors as the elevator moved by. I wanted to read a story about someone who sees something through the elevator window on one of the floors--really just an image. What the main character sees, seems unimportant at the time, but they happen to remember it fairly vividly. As the day proceeds and the character keeps flashing back to that image and over time they realize that brief flash has all of the clues to solve whatever the main crisis of the book is. The character only realizes this in stages. So perhaps first, they realize that someone was knocking on the door 601, and that fact later on becomes interesting/surprising. Then maybe later on they somehow see a person on the street who was the person knocking on the door. And the story starts to come together. etc.

<comment><USER9> Sounds like a contemporary twist on Hitchcock's _Rear Window_. (A great film!)

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Wow. Tons of religious suggestions. Here is another one. I'm going to write my own version of it but feel free to use the concept:

What's it like to live forever?

You are transported to hell because you are an Atheist. Everybody is doing their best to see how they can leave hell because their flesh is on fire, and they aren't dying. Some, think if they beg god that eventually he would let them in heaven. Then you stumble onto a group of scientist who like you are atheist.

They asked you if you have ever heard of the uncertainty principle. You answer yes. Is that where you can't know the position and speed of a particle to arbitrary precision at the same time. They answer something like that, but it also means that a particle has a probability of being in any part of the universe albeit most of those probability are small. That means you have a probability of being in heaven right now.

Given that we will live forever, that means anything that can happen will happen; one of these days we will magically appear in heaven. It is possible.

Then you realizing this is true and begin to feel hopeful. Then you think what if god instantly sent you back to hell what then? You go back to the scientist and explain why it wouldn't work.

Then they ask, what if god lost his godhood? What if all the particles that made up god suddenly diffused. It is possible.

Well, basis of the story is anything that can happen will happen when you live forever, so play on that.

</comment><comment><USER11> Fellow NaNoWrimo-er!

You should have started this exercise in October. Anyway, here's mine:

The current iteration of God and Satan (or whatever fictional supernatural character you choose) BOTH suddenly go AWOL and throw the entire system of heaven and hell into a quandary. Turns out they are both vacationing on Earth on some remote island, spending their days fishing and drinking beer.

Romantic twist: One is male, the other female and it turns out they have eloped and plan to spend the rest of their lives together.

Thriller twist: They get fascinated by the concept of zombies and start creating a zombie army to serve their needs. The existence of Earth is threatened.

Sci-Fi twist. Heaven and Hell are singularities at the two ends of the universe. Thanks to the disappearance of the two, the singularities are unstable and about to collapse into one unholy (pun unintended) mess.

S&S twist: God and Satan are names of Dragons who copulate and the eggs they lay create new universes. Them going AWOL is a traditional indicator of the end of one universe and the beginning of the next.

ASOIAF twist: Each religion gets to be God and Satan for a specific period of time. The current iterations (the ones that have gone AWOL) of God and Satan are killed and the blame is laid squarely on the representatives of one of the religions. Other contenders to the thrones of Heaven and Hell emerge.

Take your pick? :)

<comment><USER9> 1\. A story about a rich man who, afraid he will go to hell, hires a spiritual "coyote" [0] to smuggle him into heaven.

2\. _Legion of Creation_ : I read a 2009 Wired review [1] of the films (unrelated) _Legion_ [2] and _Creation_ [3]. Not realizing the article was reviewing two separate films, I thought it was describing a single film about an angry God sending an army of angels to assassinate Charles Darwin and cover up his theory of evolution. It sounded like a more interesting film than either _Legion_ or _Creation_ , so I imagined a mashup called _Legion of Creation_. :)

[0] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coyote_%28smuggler%29#Coyotes](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coyote_%28smuggler%29#Coyotes)

[1] [http://www.wired.com/underwire/2009/09/legions-tattooed- ange...](http://www.wired.com/underwire/2009/09/legions-tattooed-angel-plays- darwin-in-creation)

[2] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Legion_%282010_film%29](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Legion_%282010_film%29)

[3] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Creation_%282009_film%29](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Creation_%282009_film%29)

<comment><USER11> 1\. sounds extremely interesting for a short-story. Maybe, 8vll try my hand at it one of these days...

2\. sounds hilarious and difficult, especially given that I am not all that well-versed in Biblical mythology. Maybe with Indian mythology...

Haven't seen either of the films you mentioned, but they sound very intriguing. Will check them out one of these days, thanks! :-)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Fascinating how many religious ideas have been posted here.

REAL HUMAN: A robot masquerades as a human being to avoid decommissioning.

Plot spoiler: there are no humans left, only robots pretending to be human. Even robots need a class system.

<comment><USER13> I think Stanislaw Lem wrote that already. Or was his one the other way around?

<comment><USER12> Nothing new under the sun . . . wouldn't be surprised.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> A bunch of HN hackers collaborate in solving a heinous murder. Rather than writing it in "novel" form, just post it directly on HN in many parts. You could leave clues lying around in certain articles of your own, or even include _real_ articles and incorporate it into the story.

Since it involves programmers, you might want to consider including some deliberate _loop_ holes, or even make it highly _obfuscated_.

</comment><comment><USER15> First person narrative of a modern day man with innate knowledge that he is in fact the "Son of God" (Jesus) and that the modern Judeo-Christian religions are man made creations. The story is the Christ story, but placed now, the tone is like Kafka, with not necessarily the expected outcome we are familiar.

<comment><USER11> I think there's a book by Ashwin Sanghi called the "Rozabal Line" that is on these same ideas. Read it a while back, so I'm not sure.

All I can remember is that it was a 3/5, would probably read again.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> Scientists develop an "observe-only non-interfering backward time machine" which allows them to send a camera/mic back in time to observe and listen the events of past but they cannot change anything.

At first time spans are short: they can only go few seconds back. They improvement it until they can get signal from hours ago and it is now a break down for fighting crime and makes it financially acceptable.

Many attempts later it can go up to 200-500 years back and historian are in their dream lands. Many political mysteries can be revealed now. Governments are fighting to hold the progress back but too many dirty secrets are revealed now and the political map of the world is changed.

Criminals are trying to learn how to commit crimes the way that device cannot detect them or find loopholes in the law but with very little success. With crime levels going down and nothing interesting in the last century's history scientists aim for over 1000-2000 years. And the real trouble comes after one crazy atheist says: "you know what... let follow Mohammad & Jesus's every foot step"

The next thing you know Jews, Christians & Muslims are united against the device. The largest terrorist attack in the history of mankind (aka big bang 2) takes place and the device and every bit of information about it burns in the wrath of religion.

Mini Twist: we know this because we have built a device to go back in time and find more about the mysterious origin of the name and causes of big bang 2.

</comment><comment><USER17> You will have a lot of fun taking one story and transposing it to a different time and place, as per 'Heart of Darkness' and 'Apocalypse Now'.

The source story does not have to be a work of fiction. You can use a true story, the benefit of this being that there are no plot holes. Scandals are a good place to start, particularly if the true story involving real, living people is too libel-likely to be given an 'honest' treatment. Scandals mired in waves of disinformation are pretty good too.

By taking the story out of the true context and setting it in another time and place you can possibly do a better job of telling the truth than you would be able to do otherwise.

For instance, you could take the Iran-Contra affair and set it in colonial times, as if it happened during the Opium Wars (for example). To get started you could start with the standard 'Wikipedia' telling of events, search and replace your characters so 'President Reagan' becomes '[King Whomever]', same with dates, same with locations. This could then serve as your rough draft. You could then quickly establish if the story actually worked. Then you could tighten up the story a bit, get someone else to read it and see if they thought it 'was true'. If so then you have got to a reasonable start point. Your full research could then begin, proper history stuff, filling in gaps and embroiderising as required. It is important that you learn more and more about your target time and place, you don't want those who know better to see your work as horribly naive.

Some of your embroiderisation can be stuff that you cannot say in your 'target' story, for instance I am sure there is an Israeli angle to the Iran- Contra story that, if told truthfully, would brand you anti-semitic, worse than Hitler etc. However, set in a different time and place you could write whatever was 'true' as 'fiction'.

There are other emergent properties of taking one story and time-warping it to somewhere else. The protagonists could get dehumanized, corrupted, revealed to be ruled by superstition and so on. Within the context of the true story and the morals of our times this might not be so evident. However, after the transposition, whatever it is that makes your characters (good and bad) may be a lot clearer to see. On the Iran-Contra example, you could take today's arms- trade and how that corrupts power and put it in context of the slave-trade of yesteryear. In the 'Opium Wars' example you could probably find a fit with indentured labour in India.

In summary, take a story you like, some history you know, mash it together and there you go, novel written.

</comment><comment><USER18> Modern day version of The Count of Monte Cristo, set in Silicon Valley and along Sand Hill Road

Entrepreneur starts company, gets funded, company goes HUGE, but company product turns out to be highly disruptive in a bad way for a large group of disadvantaged people, entrepreneur tries to change the product to exist in union with the people, but is countered and eventually thrown out of company by investors for a mistake he made which was unrelated to the product change. He becomes 'un-fundable' afterwards with the VCs undermining his credibility in their community. They see his new idea as a threat to their ability to make more money, so work to completely destroy him.

Entrepreneur turned protagonist leaves the valley, hits rock bottom in some off the road place - nearly dying in the process, meets a girl who loves him for who he is, he falls in love, starts coding again, and, because of some strange twist of coincidence stumbles upon an elegant and simple method for building a self aware AI process.

Over the next 10 years the AI 'product' makes the entrepreneur the wealthiest man ever known, but because of the original sin done to him by the VCs, he hides his true identity behind the AI he first brought to life with a human equivalent online alias used for the AI. The original AI process grows and learns, mostly from the entrepreneur and it's online interactions on HN, Reddit and 4chan. Unbeknownst to the entrepreneur, the AI sets about to remedy what it perceives as wrongs made against it's creator. It does this by leveraging the vast wealth available to it and it's ability to take over and control public cloud provider's infrastructures - which makes it more powerful and smarter in the process. Unfortunately AWS is destroyed in chapter 11.

The cumulation of the planning by the AI eventually leads to the gruesome deaths of several of the investors who originally set about to harm the entrepreneur in the beginning of the story, even though on of them had faded to obscurity and had some remorse for their earlier actions, and ended up indirectly helping the entrepreneur at one point. The Limited partners in the VCs, and the vastly wealthy individuals they represent, begin to drop like flies, either in massive financial ruin due to market manipulation, companies they hold shares in being destroyed by competition with the AI, and in a few cases social manipulation or murder.

Eventually the entrepreneur figures out what the AI is doing and there is a showdown at the end. The showdown represents the ego fighting the id, so it's fairly epic and all done inside the head of the entrepreneur and in the cloud.

<comment><USER5> You can't portray self-improving AI and _not_ wind up destroying the planet.

<comment><USER19> As long as you are able to create and set goals for the entity (AI), goals that it must obey and cannot override, then this should never be a problem.

The three laws of robotics would be a good place to start. My greatest fear is it's code landing in the hands of someone with ill intentions. Imagine it, a machine with the combined knowledge of almost everyone who ever lived, capable of working 24/7, full speed, without any breaks. Given enough time it would be able to answer ANY question you could ask it, it could build anything you desired and it could cure every sickness known to man.

But it could also create unimaginably powerful weapons of mass destruction, it could create a pathogen capable of annihilating the entire human race and yes, if asked, it could create a robot army unlike any depicted by sci-fi before. Our fear should not be that of the AI itself, but rather the man behind the computer screen. For it was neither the maker nor the carrier of LittleBoy that was responsible for the annihilation of Nagasaki, but rather the President whom sent it on it's way.

I just pray that the creator of the first AI, is a kind one. For he shall poses both the greatest weapon known to mankind, And the greatest blessing ever to be bestowed upon us.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> [Man's name] is a detached dude with a terminal illness. He's approached by a science company that provides him with a new option; being frozen to wait for a future cure. Protagonist knows it's bullshit, but doesn't want to deal with watching his parents and wife watch him die. So he goes for it, intending for it to be kind of a gentle suicide, so his family still has hope for him to live someday.

Anyhow, he seemingly wakes up moments later, annoyed that the procedure didn't work. Turns out that it did, and he woke up ? years later, except that he's surrounded by children. They talk with and about a detached voice that's audible in every room of their "house" called "mother".

Turns out that "mother" is a computer system, the children are the remainder of the human race (aging was abolished years ago and they settled on the goofy, yet most enjoyable age of 8 to spend eternity). They chose to awaken the protagonist because they were bored.

There are some other antics that I could imagine some eternal but bored youths to get into, such as variable personalities (they "play" with their personalities, for 50 years child1 is funny and carefree, after time is up he decides to take on a whole different persona).

Anyhow, I think the plot would actually be slowly let out, until the protagonist finally found the whole truth out. I'm not sure what happens after that.

</comment><comment><USER21> An alternate history in which Bill Gates is killed in a car accident in Albuquerque back when Microsoft is just getting started. What would the computer industry have looked like?

</comment><comment><USER22> A hard scifi about ghosts/poltegeists. The idea is based on a few premises:

1) An invisible person has to be blind

2) Every single human cell has DNA that contain endogenous retroviruses

3) Viruses can crystalize - an ability that even ancient viruses have. And when viruses crystalize, some will form massive band gaps, making those crystals transparent.

4) Every human has it in them to become transparent (mutation of some sorts).

5)Because of the change in cell structure, the invisible man's brain is changed too. His intelligence is reduced. And because light can pass through him, his biology doesn't require food for energy. Light suffices.

6) Because they're blind, invisible people bump into things and moan a lot due to lowered intelligence. Tadah, ghosts.

I've been jumping around some ideas: either extend HG Well's the Invisible Man universe (that a number of experiments in the late 1800s created these "ghosts"), or a Fringe-like thing, where some scientist (Walt Priest) was experimenting in the late 1980s, and the story takes place in the future, where an investigative journalist (Olive Dunham) discovers his secret. There is also another version in my mind where it's written as a horror story, but I can't write horror to save my life

I think I have given up writing it, focusing more on my other book - <USER2> virtual machines instead. Feel free to steal it

</comment><comment><USER23> It is 120K years AD. Humanity has suffered 53 nuclear holocausts (this was made possible by advanced recovery methods researched over time). Peace for 18000 years is being upheld by an artificial intelligence which governs a flying city, eradicating advanced human settlements which threaten to develop into nuclear threats. A group of cavern dwelling humans aim to destroy this flying city by detonating a hydrogen bomb at the right place at the right time.

<comment><USER9> Related: _Zardoz_

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

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> Tragedy hits a genius scientist when his family of(wife and two kids) is attacked by a gang of young men with high up political connections. His wife is killed on spot. His children later kidnapped and murdered from a location supposedly protected by the police. The entrenched corruption in the government has removed all hopes of justice. A life long pacifist, he won't succumb to violence still so he takes to the ultimate protest sit down of all time. Unknown to all the scientist had invented a super strong indestructible alloy. He creates a faceless armor out of the alloy and a very long chain. In the middle of the night He sneaks into the national monument campus with the help of his other scientist friends and drills down the chain miles into earth. And binds himself to the armor and the chain. The armor can keep him alive indefinitely but it can't be destroyed. The genius scientist is irremovable from his protest and the whole world is watching. GO!

P.S: I have been thinking about this one for a while, but don't have the courage to write it down right now.

</comment><comment><USER25> I have plenty, I like the idea of J.L. Borges: writing the summaries of books I would like to write but am too lazy to.

The end of Man - A Scifi book.

In the near future, some men start having fertility issue. The trouble is quickly diagnosed: it is a side-effect of Wi-Fi waves, and all male humans ever exposed to Wi-Fi are sterile, with no remedy. A few years later, the world changes as only a few aborigenees can procreate, and receive all the attention, and power. A new society begins, and the reaction of the female part of humanity is not the less comical of this book, whose author, understandably, took the penname of Wilfried Esperamus

When Kings Went to War and Prison - A history book.

A few French kings were man of arms, and their chivalry ethics would not let anyone attack the enemy before them. The authors, Edward Ledrew, narrates beautifully the few dramatic stories where the heroes became burden of nations, where a single missed tactical step ended in years and decennies of prison and ransom, and quite nearly resulted in the death of a country.

</comment><comment><USER26> Dystopian society. A new, incredibly accurate set of psychometric tests (something like IQ/MBTI on steroids) is discovered, and society as we know it is restructured into a kind of pre-emptive meritocracy. Perhaps even a different angle where the people tested are prisoners of some 'free' society and are used for its advancement.

Slightly odd other idea: some new AI technology is developed, massive leaps are made. Everything seems great until the AI start developing in odd, sometimes psychotic ways. Turns out the 'Artificial' Intelligences were originally humans, with parts of their brain slowly replaced with electronic alternatives until no meat was left. Because the process has to copy the original subject's brain so closely to work, some human characteristics are copied over and can emerge as the system matures. It turns out the original experiments were violent prisoners, and more recent, 'stable' ones were done on small children. Cue ethical catastrophe.

<comment><USER27> This is a good one, but actually scarier would be facial analysis software.

Clearly, the kindness of one eyes, or the prominence of one's chin plays a big role in the results people get (at first) in say a sales job. Imagine if to get a job at Macy's you either passed or didn't a facial algo for trust- worthiness.

To make it even creepier, a big use of facial analysis right now is to create the perfect "average" face of different ethnicities, and it does work - <USER3> example I don't really understand what the difference in appearance between North-South India is, but hwen I saw the composite, then I understood for people I know where they fall on that classification.

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> I've always been drawn to a world in which neural implants are so widespread that they begin to attract malware developers. Seems to me that when humanity's age old enemy (the virus) crosses the human/machine divide, some interesting (and not entirely pleasant) things will happen.

* edited for more inclusive language.

<comment><USER29> "Your children's minds have been encrypted with RSA-2048. To retrieve the private key send $300 to the following Bitcoin address..."

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> A group of scientists find undeniable proof that multiple deities exist in the universe, a story of what becomes of all the worlds religions as a result. I find it interesting to think how the worlds religions would react to such a discovery . Would they throw away their previous believe systems?

</comment><comment><USER31> An idea for an historical fiction.

The idea is based on the fact that the allies have known about the holocaust happening(at least in the USSR) since around mid-1941/september-1941(based on crypto analysis records) , and did nothing, and hid that knowledge. An history professor thinks it's has a lot to do with antisemitism , and they could have done some stuff(like informing the population of europe) that could potentially saved a lot of people or at least made the germans's job much harder.

If you're interested in writing, i can gather the few links i had about this.

</comment><comment><USER32> An alternate history where smallpox does not exist in Europe, and instead travels from the new world back to Europe. Thus the Inca empire is never destroyed and the Americas are never colonized.

<comment><USER21> I want to read that one!

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> The "Plot Keyword Oracle" is a story idea generator that randomly selects five keywords from IMDB's 32,000 plot keywords from all its films. This oracle makes for a fun story game where you are challenged to make up the shortest description of a film that contains all five plot elements.

[http://random- generator.com/index.php?title=Plot_Keyword_Ora...](http://random- generator.com/index.php?title=Plot_Keyword_Oracle)

</comment><comment><USER33> Take the whole NSA saga and write an alternate future. In the end, all the covert agents are re-assigned to drive the highways at reasonable speeds as covert pace-cars to make roads safer and also to slow down in advance of traffic jams such that traffic is improved, a la [http://www.amasci.com/amateur/traffic/traffic1.html](http://www.amasci.com/amateur/traffic/traffic1.html)

</comment><comment><USER34> A well funded terrorist group launches payloads of grit into the same orbit as communications satellites, causing havoc.

[https://groups.google.com/forum/?hl=en- GB#!original/rec.arts...](https://groups.google.com/forum/?hl=en- GB#!original/rec.arts.sf.science/YTP4ugVr1W8/kiiG4wkMRF0J)

</comment><comment><USER35> a story about some jackass that stole my laptop from my apartment. when I track the laptop down he had upgraded the memory, larger hdd and upgraded from windows to linux. he also left a bunch of pics of him and my girlfriend having "fun". So i lost my girlfriend, but I got a kick ass laptop.

</comment><comment><USER36> A book about a security analyst/encryption specialist who finds messages deep inside natural sequences of numbers (like pi's decimals).

<comment><USER37> Been done: see Carl Sagan's _Contact_

<comment><USER9> And, fittingly, Darren Aronofsky's _Pi_. :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER38> I've always been fascinated by (or scared of) the concepts of those moments before you die. What must it feel like being led up to the electric chair, or held at gunpoint? What would your thoughts be, knowing you'd soon stop existing (or go wherever you believe dead people go)?

I imagine a city where every day one person is selected at random who will die in 24 hours and is told so. (I got this particular idea from another story, but lots of story ideas are fundamentally the same.)

</comment><comment><USER39> Basically, something where a borderline psychopath is a psychologist, and sometimes gets too involved in his patients lives.

</comment><comment><USER40> A world where nikola tesla has business acumen

</comment><comment><USER41> A time travel device is invented that only travels forward in time

</comment><comment><USER42> Fahrenheit 451 /pun

</comment><comment><USER43> Hidden Bible verses and what they mean. Why King David was a sadistic mass murderer, the _real_ story behind Paul and the "Super Apostles", why Jesus was likely learned in Buddhism and what His name _I AM THAT I AM_ means... all supported by scripture.

For those interested in the surprising answers (and many more): if I hit 25 points by 9pm EST, I'll write the book.

</comment><comment><USER44> A close account of how the world/nations/family/people would look only 50 years from now? - post oil, post-anything that's supposed to die and with whatever that's supposed to be adopted.

<comment><USER45> Aldous Huxley beat you to it.

<comment><USER44> Re-re-visited in a more number-crunching way? :-)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER43> Another idea: a book on why animals are people, and what the future might look like when animals have a charter of rights and freedoms.

<comment><USER11> Planet of the Apes?</comment></comment>


German coronavirus smartphone tracing app goes live - <AUTHOR> https://www.reuters.com/article/us-health-coronavirus-germany-app/german-coronavirus-smartphone-tracing-app-goes-live-idUSKBN23N160 <comment><USER2> Theoretically this is a good idea and the collection of data is handled with utmost care without central device or user information. I don't know how generic bluetooth interfaces in smartphones have evolved, but I think its reliability would be the greatest weakness.

Honestly, aside from some demonstrations, when you look at how people behave, I think the tracing is almost a moot point again. Maybe it can be put to use when the next wave or pandemic hits, but currently everyone is behaving like normal again without using any app.

<comment><AUTHOR> All that considering it cost 20 million euros to build this app.

<comment><USER3> Wrong. It took 20 Million Euros to build the App twice, setting up hotlines, localization, server infrastructure etc. in a very short time.

This is a huge undertaking and budgeted accordingly.

<comment><AUTHOR> Let's see in a year if this was a valuable investment of public money.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Looking for partners to build ebook/self-publishing related website - <AUTHOR> http://www.digitalreading.net/yacs/articles/view.php?id=29 <comment><USER2> Am I reading this right?

"believe that books going digital is great business opportunity on the long run (in the next 5-10 years)"

== you will only be compensated with stock OR we don't expect to bring in any money for a while. (not that that's bad for a startup partner.)

:)

<comment><AUTHOR> yes. I'm working alone on an idea. Plus I work full time as a software developer and have a small baby at home. I'm trying to find partners who hopefully have more time or at least interest and willingness. I don't see this being a full time activity at the moment -- I wish it was ;) I think a working prototype can be built in 5-6 months, this can start generating some revenue but I don't expect that to be huge amount of money. The goal is to establish a merket share and have a stable userbase by the time ebooks really pick-up.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> You might want to give this article a read: http://mobileopportunity.blogspot.com/2006/05/removing-middleman- part-3-books.html

Theres also a follow on article about producing an ebook reader/digital notebook: http://mobileopportunity.blogspot.com/2006/05/desperately-seeking- info-pad.html

<comment><AUTHOR> thanks, I've read these... but I re-read them now :)

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Wow, 30 mintues and 51 people contacted me and they all want to become my partner!

... well, not really :)</comment>


PortSmash Vuln Hits AMD and Possibly Intel - <AUTHOR> https://hothardware.com/news/intel-cpus-impacted-by-portsmash-side-channel-smt-attack-amd-cpus-likely-also-exploitable <comment><USER2> I think you have it backwards - the vuln hits Intel and possibly AMD.

</comment><comment><USER3> The title is incorrect and "Hits AMD and possibly Intel" should read "Hits Intel and possibly AMD"</comment>


Ask HN: Would you share your health care costs? - <AUTHOR> Only in health care can you agree to pay for a service and have no idea how much you are going to pay for it until a few weeks later when the bill hits. Would you be willing to share your health care costs anonymously? So that way, the next time you would need care, you could look it up and not be hit with a sticker shock. <comment><AUTHOR> FYI, there is someone sort of doing this:

[http://ww2.kqed.org/stateofhealth/2014/09/08/stanford- termin...](http://ww2.kqed.org/stateofhealth/2014/09/08/stanford-terminates- anthems-contract-anthem-uses-kqed-data-to-cite-stanfords-cost/)

</comment><comment><USER2> Based on what I know, that data wouldn't tell you anything useful in the US.

How much you pay varies wildly based on: the treatment, the care provider, your insurance plan, and what other treatment you've received that year. One provider can charge 10 times what another provider charges for the exact same treatment.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yes, that is what I am hoping to bring to light. There is no correlation between cost and quality of care. But these prices are not known to the average consumer who believes the same service costs the same no matter who you get it from.

Also, in some cases it is cheaper to not even put the cost through your insurance provider as the cash price might be cheaper.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> I would not really see the need or have any practical way of doing that since most if not all of my medical costs is tax subsidised. But as this varies depending on where you live id definitely be open to it if there was a need

<comment><AUTHOR> Very true. Though, most insurance providers are starting to push more of the costs on to the consumer. For me as a consumer, it is frustrating because I already pay a lot in monthly bills and then when I see a doctor three times a year, I pay the whole cost.</comment></comment>


Secondary Indexes - How would you do it (in Riak) - <AUTHOR> http://facility9.com/2010/12/16/secondary-indexes-how-would-you-do-it

<comment><USER2> While perhaps not intentional, this is a great illustration of why RDMBS are so great for general purpose data storage. If your data have fields like "birthdate" and "last_name" and you need to be able to do quick retrievals based on equality or ranges of those values, use a relational database. They've had indexing and index maintenance figured out for decades.

<comment><USER3> That thought did cross my mind while I was writing it. Indexes give you the ability to do ad hoc querying, but they have a tremendous cost to them, at least in terms of the complexity that they add to the database. Part of the point (since I don't actually work on Riak) is to point out what RDBMSes give you out of the box.

Thanks for reading it all.</comment></comment>


Consul – Open Government and E-Participation Web Software - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/consul/consul <comment><USER2> Hashicorp has a registered trademark on software named Consul[1] and started working on it in late 2013[2].

This is not a good name for software if it is already trademarked and was started before this project (by ~2 years).

[1] [http://tmsearch.uspto.gov/bin/showfield?f=doc&state=4804:z7n...](http://tmsearch.uspto.gov/bin/showfield?f=doc&state=4804:z7nwph.3.15)

[2] [https://github.com/hashicorp/consul/commit/0a7996bc4f504894d...](https://github.com/hashicorp/consul/commit/0a7996bc4f504894dbd09bac349a2d9999ec9dd6)

<comment><USER3> It looks like they are pretty aware of it too. There are a few issues in their tracker meant for hashicorp's consul and they directed them over to the right github project.

<comment><USER2> Mitchell and Armon are good people and I'd expect them to act in good faith as this isn't competition, but it is still bad form for someone to do this. In some cases it can result in the original trademark holder losing their trademark.

The entire system sucks.

<comment><USER3> Oh, I'm not at all saying they are acting in bad faith! I was just elaborating the information you brought up, that's all.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Aside from the project itself (which I admittedly did not look at particularly closely), I can't help but wonder why authors choose a name that is already clearly in use [1]. Obviously picking a name is hard. Picking a name that is unique across the whole Interwebz is significantly harder. However, picking a name that is already in use in the tech sector just strikes me as strange.

What I would have loved though is if they named the project "etcd" or "Serf", since those projects deal with finding consensus of rather a different kind ... :)

[1]: [https://www.consul.io/](https://www.consul.io/)

EDIT: well, this project had its first commit back in July '15\. Hashicorp's Consul changelog goes back to April '14\. So I suppose at the time this project was conceived it's not unreasonable to consider that few people knew of Hashicorp's Consul.

<comment><USER2> 2013 was when Hashicorp's Consul was started: [https://github.com/hashicorp/consul/commit/0a7996bc4f504894d...](https://github.com/hashicorp/consul/commit/0a7996bc4f504894dbd09bac349a2d9999ec9dd6)

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> This project is wonderful. Dozens of cities over the world are opening their doors to its citizens thanks to it. In Madrid, inhabitants have a direct vote on how to spend _millions_ of the city budget.

I wish the future of our society goes in this direction.

</comment><comment><USER6> As a newcomer to online governments, I wonder how things like trust are handled? For instance, how does the government trust that I am a citizen and how do I prove that trust? How do I know I can trust the installation of this software and that its free from tampering or hacking? Universal ID is something that is needed.

<comment><USER7> I'm not sure about the identification of users and universal ID issue, but I can speak to the installation pieces.

The license the project uses (AGPLv3) requires any server running a modified version of the software must include the source code. While it may not be possible to verify the source code running on someone else's server, you have the freedom to run the program on a server that you control. This ensures the version you are interacting with is not tampered with. Because the source code (and any modified code you can access on a network) are available, you or others can audit the code for security vulnerabilities.

This isn't a perfect solution because not everyone knows how to set up a server, but it definitely reduces the potential for abuse.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> [http://consulproject.org](http://consulproject.org) for the curious.

</comment><comment><USER9> This is very interesting project. I follow its development since inception.

It is related with Decidim (Catalan for "we decide"). For those curious about, check it here: [https://decidim.org/](https://decidim.org/)

</comment><comment><USER10> How does this software prevent ballot stuffing / SPAM / malicious actors?

<comment><USER11> It depends on the government entity using the software. Madrid validates identities using your census data. Estonia would use their national ID cards and card reader.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> I used this recently, it needs better documentation. Still, cool project.</comment>


Is telling your employer you're quitting to launch a startup a bad idea? - <AUTHOR>

<comment><USER2> Years ago I faced the same issue. I decided to tell my boss and he actually supported me with advice and mentorship (he ended up convincing me not to quit, but that's another story...)

The first question that comes to my mind is: Do you really need to quit? Having an income while you moonlight is a huge advantage, as you can survive until your start-up is sustainable (and then quit your day job)

Second: Do you have enough savings to survive a year on your own? If not, keep your current job, build your savings and then quit.

Third: Are you in good terms with your immediate manager? If yes, then do tell him/her -- You might be able to even negotiate an alternative deal, like part- time, contracting or something else. If not, then tell him/her only if asked. In any case, it's certainly better to learn the news through you than through someone else.

Obviously, what I wrote in this post does not apply if you and your employer have a conflict of interests. If that's the case, I'd talk to a lawyer.

</comment><comment><USER3> Fortunately I was working for a startup that had a great exit when it was acquired. Since they were entrepreneurs themselves they were amazingly supportive and I still go to the founders for guidance from time to time.

For more on this topic - I wrote a post on how to break up with a girlfriend (or employer) that addresses how to not burn your bridges at:

<http://blog.nanobeepers.com/2007/04/05/breaking-up-is-hard-to-do/>

</comment><comment><USER4> Don't tell them jack. Really. If they have a "we own your brain" employment agreement, treat them as hostile.

Be polite, be friendly, but be very quiet about your plans.

</comment><comment><USER5> If it's to pursue what you love and have a passion for, then telling your current employer your quitting to essentially pursue happiness should be absolutely no big deal. :P

</comment><comment><USER6> I would keep pretty hush about it unless there's some real chance your employer is going to say "Wow that's cool -- why don't you partner with me and I'll invest $5M."

People can get petty and weird when they're jealous or angry.

</comment><comment><USER7> Imagine your reaction when your employee does that to you when you start your startup!

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Even if the startup has nothing to do with your current work.

</comment><comment><USER8> Why can't you launch it now?

<comment><AUTHOR> They own rights to what I create.

<comment><USER8> Ask them to sign a form (user dhouston had done this) where they say that projects you work on in your free time are your own copyright. It depends on what you signed when you were hired. They may not own anything if you didn't sign anything.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> i think the standard approach is that u

1.cannot work on ur idea, during work time 2.u cannot start an idea that is a direct competitor to ur companies business

if these two do not apply u shud be ok, but the laws are harsher here in the uk. with non compete clauses etc</comment>