Will the left survive Millennials? - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/2016/09/23/opinion/will-the-left-survive-the-millennials.html?_r=0 <comment><USER2> "In Australia, where I spoke, Section 18C of the Racial Discrimination Act makes it unlawful to do or say anything likely to "offend, insult, humiliate or intimidate," providing alarming latitude in the restriction of free speech."

I really find it shocking that there are laws regarding supposed hate speech with such subjective terms as "likely to offend".

As a registered democrat, this author really captured my feelings about the left. It used to make so much sense, let everyone do what they want, that's being liberal. Now the radical minority is getting louder and more persuasive to younger generations as they dress up these ideas in comedy and media.

<comment><USER3> The author seems to be pulling things out of context in bad faith. It is unlawful, though not a criminal offense, in Australia to publicly say things likely to offend people of a different race, based on their racial group, provided the statements are not meant "(a) in the performance, exhibition or distribution of an artistic work; or (b) in the course of any statement, publication, discussion or debate made or held for any genuine academic, artistic or scientific purpose or any other genuine purpose in the public interest; or (c) in making or publishing: (i) a fair and accurate report of any event or matter of public interest; or (ii) a fair comment on any event or matter of public interest if the comment is an expression of a genuine belief held by the person making the comment." (as explained in 18D).

<comment><USER4> What does "unlawful, but not a criminal offense" mean?

<comment><USER5> > What does "unlawful, but not a criminal offense" mean?

Generally, that phrasing would describe civil wrongs. Criminal law isn't the whole of the law.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> The 18C provision of the Australian Racial Discrimination Act he mentions was brought in in 1995, a little early for the "millennials" he wants to decry. Nor does someone walking out of a speech strike me as even tangentially linked to censorship--it seems quite the opposite, yielding a space to someone else because you don't want to either be there silently or interrupt and argue. Yeah, maybe the left would be better off if the young had a more nuanced view of privilege and controversy, but we'd sure as hell be better off if the older generation could contain themselves when making any criticism and stick to reasonable, evidence-based discourse, not a condescending string of random criticisms towards them dang kids.

<comment><USER6> > a little early for the "millennials" he wants to decry.

The author is a woman.

<comment><USER7> To be fair, NYT op-ed has a long and storied history of middle-aged white dudes writing about kids these days. Easy mistake.

<comment><USER6> What's wrong with older, more experienced people expressing an opinion about the politics and behavior of younger, inexperienced people. Seems like a reversal of common sense to assert that elders have nothing to say to or about the generations that come after them.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment> dj-wonk Well said. These parts are striking to me:

> In an era of weaponized sensitivity, participation in public discourse is > growing so perilous, so fraught with the danger of being caught out for > using the wrong word or failing to uphold the latest orthodoxy in relation > to disability, sexual orientation, economic class, race or ethnicity, that > many are apt to bow out. Perhaps intimidating their elders into silence is > the intention of the identity-politics cabal — and maybe my generation > should retreat to our living rooms and let the young people tear one another > apart over who seemed to imply that Asians are good at math.

> But do we really want every intellectual conversation to be scrupulously > cleansed of any whiff of controversy?

<comment><USER8> The reactionaries on the side I lean to have mostly settled down, but the reactionaries to the reactionaries are still primed to explode.

One can't even gently suggest that a person's words, probably said with good intentions, support an -ism or -phobia without getting a tirade about censorship in response, and an accusation of being a "social justice warrior."

<comment><USER9> Such tirades are a necessary correction to the insanity that "social justice" has become. Once the influence of these so -called warriors declines then hopefully the discourse will settle down.

<comment><USER8> On my side, it calmed down because people criticized call-out culture.[1] How does one criticize reflexive fury toward social justice activism without being lumped in with the "warriors"?

[1] For example: [http://everydayfeminism.com/2016/05/call-out- accountability/](http://everydayfeminism.com/2016/05/call-out-accountability/)

<comment><USER9> We can remind people that there are "sides within sides" and that we should allow people's positions to change.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> The Millennials are not the ones rigging DNC elections. The Millennials are not the ones running the institutions passing absurd sensitivity requirements. It is unfair to make this a generation argument when in reality its much deeper. What it ultimately boils down to is to what degree an individual deems it appropriate to silence dissenting points of view. To some the answer is none and to others, legitimizing an opposing view is interpreted as a form of oppression in and of itself. Age doesn't appear to have much of a correlation with ones stance on that spectrum.

<comment><USER11> Uh... the Democrat Presidental primaries were "rigged"? Would you care to be a little more specific?

<comment><USER12> I'd guess this is what they were referring to:

[http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/wikileaks-dnc-bernie- san...](http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/wikileaks-dnc-bernie- sanders_us_579381fbe4b02d5d5ed1d157)

<comment><USER13> Also:

[http://www.salon.com/2016/03/30/10_ways_the_democratic_prima...](http://www.salon.com/2016/03/30/10_ways_the_democratic_primary_has_been_rigged_from_the_start_partner/)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Will the New York Times survive Baby Boomer hot takes?

The opinion piece is dripping with hypocrisy. If Yassmin Abdel-Magied wants to walk out of the author's speech and go blog about her discomfort, so what? That's a form of speech too, and we shouldn't be trying to discourage it.

I defend the author's right to say all this, but the shallow "Millenials should talk less and smile more" angle really doesn't speak to me.

</comment><comment><USER14> Geez. People these days don't seem to understand a simple fact.

You cannot control events that happen to you, but you can control how you react to them.

I sadly clicked through to the article where the millennial walked out of the talk. What a histrionic, self-absorbed rant that was.

<comment><USER7> You really wanted to say "kids these days", didn't you?

<comment><USER14> What a useless comment. I personally think that self absorbed, histrionic people come in all ages.

Just look at the frequency of the use of the personal pronoun in that article (the article written by the person who walked out). It's "I", "I", "me" over and over.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Well, the left sure won't survive millennials in the UK. The parties on that side of the political spectrum seem to be really bad at picking good leaders and unable to win popular support for a pretty long time...

Oh, it's about the social justice thing. In which case, it probably will. Social justice warriors are an issue, but there's still a decent part of the left who utterly hate them and their obsession with 'identity politics', and I can easily see a more libertarian left party or group getting popular in the near future.

</comment><comment><USER16> This is about the left, not about millennials. In the past it was the right condemning behaviors, but now it's the left. The left has taken on the motto of "intolerance for intolerance"; what that really means though is, if I don't agree with it it shouldn't be allowed. The left aren't advocating for free speech, but for specifically allowed speech. And that's more dangerous than the alleged bigotry they think they're stopping.

<comment><USER17> This is like saying that the right wants a white-only country. Sure, some do, but not most. Very few on the left are against free speech.

Most of the people I've seen who make this argument don't seem to differentiate between "I don't want certain speech in my living quarters" or "I don't want certain speech in this specific course" from "I don't think this speech has any place in society".

Free speech doesn't mean you get to say whatever you want wherever you want. It means you have a right to say it somewhere. And I have a right to have conversations that exclude you.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> From piece in the guardian:

>It was a monologue about the right to exploit the stories of "others", simply because it is useful for one's story.

I thought the talk was about fiction, which by definition is made-up stories, so how could they exploit the stories of others? Stories of other people would be non-fiction. I'm guessing the quotes around "others" is the key to the mystery here.

<comment><USER19> "Others" in this context refers to your out-group. For example, if I am a straight white male, then it is kosher for me to write a fictional story about fictional straight white males because they are part of my group.

But if I try writing about a fictional gay black women, then I am exploiting the groups of gays, blacks, and women.

<comment><USER18> > exploiting the groups of gays, blacks, and women

Ok, that I can follow (I don't really agree with it). But what she said was "exploit the stories" of your out-group. Since the work is fiction it's nobody's story. Not my group's nor my out-group's. I guess the claim is your "group" retains the exclusive right to produce works of art that feature a fictional representation of someone or something related to your group.

<comment><USER20> The whole "cultural appropriation" thing is, essentially, an assertion that there's some kind of implicit intellectual property like relationship that one has with one's culture and its collective experiences. So when you need to "use" a culture that's "not yours", you have to ask for permission, and conform to the rules that the other party frames their grant of such around.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> To the general question, probably. It survived the boomers, who in the 1960s succeeded the socialists and New Dealers of the 1930s.

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

Not sure what direction it will take, it would surprise me to see the Newest Left revive Basic Income and other dormant redistribution ideas.

<comment><USER22> It might be interesting that we may well see a division closer to statist vs libertarian as a divide in the future.

<comment><USER23> I'd enjoy us not trying to map the whole political spectrum onto a binary distinction.

<comment><USER9> The parent may have been suggesting a spectrum instead. Tools like that found at politicalcompass.org can take us away from the currently oversimplified left-right notion of politics, while still being easy to understand.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


67% of workers earning over $100k see themselves quitting in the next 6 months - <AUTHOR> https://www.cnbc.com/2018/10/19/67percent-of-workers-earning-over-100000-plan-to-quit-in-the-next-6-months.html <comment><USER2> The last time I made my case for a promotion, the director said "Sorry, no promotions right now, there's nothing I can do."

A couple months later, a coworker gets a job offer elsewhere and threatens to leave, and he's immediately promoted. He happens to be the least experienced engineer, and now he's leading the team.

This sends everybody scrambling for job offers, since that's what gets rewarded. Half the engineers have left already, and with any luck, I'll be next out the door.

<comment><USER3> As Dilbert said: the company policy is to reward disloyalty.

[http://dilbert.com/strip/1997-06-29](http://dilbert.com/strip/1997-06-29)

<comment><USER4> Dilbert was such a great strip before the writer went all in on politics

<comment><USER5> His strips don't seem to contain much politics, though?

<comment><USER6> I don't necessarily share the commenter's criticism, but one of the characters was made "officially gay" in response to current political events.

[http://dilbert.com/strip/2014-02-07](http://dilbert.com/strip/2014-02-07)

[http://dilbert.com/strip/2014-02-08](http://dilbert.com/strip/2014-02-08)

<comment><USER7> That second one was very weird.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I think there's also something else at play. Most of my friends also don't believe for a second that a corporation has their best interests at heart. It's not just promotions — it's work life balance, it's top-down decision making and political empire building, re-orgs every 4-6 months. The growth at all costs style of building companies chews employees up and spits them out.

<comment><USER9> If a salaried worker doesn't get overtime, then every hour they work past 40 reduces their effective pay by 2.5%.

<comment><USER10> Can you explain the logic behind this?

<comment><USER11> If you work overtime in a week and aren't paid for it then you have taken a pay cut for that week.

You worked more hours but made the same amount of money. Therefore the amount you made per hour is lower than your usual amount.

<comment><USER12> Bingo. That's what a lot of people don't get with there high salaries. On paper they sound amazing.

But if you calculate hours worked and salaries. More often then not. There promotion for example made them earn less and less per hour.

But as someone wrote on hackernews: if your company is using the emotional path they don't have anything to offer on the rational level.

tl;DR: calculate your income per hour, not monthly salary!

<comment><USER13> > if your company is using the emotional path they don't have anything to > offer on the rational level.

Stealing this for my "don't work for a startup" site!

<comment><USER12> It is not from me either :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Fixed: "67% of workers earning over $100k see themselves "changing jobs for better pay due to strong labor market" in the next 6 months."

<comment><USER15> This is totally it. Engineers, in particular understand that they have options, they are highly in demand, and they have __strong __negotiating positions when they interview.

It's not uncommon for an engineer to get a boost of 10-25% when changing companies, and other than prepping for the grueling interview process, there really isn't a downside to feeling out what's out there.

Especially when your compensation isn't keeping up with the median due to lackluster annual increases.

<comment><USER16> Does this work for your entire career or does it only work until you hit some kind of "salary cap" for your local market? I've had a few good raises in a short period of time, but I'm scared I can realistically only get one or two more in before I reach the top of the market.

<comment><USER17> I've hit that in my market - or a soft cap, at least, meaning if I want to earn more, I'm going to have to make 2-3x as much effort than I did before.

Through working my ass off, and pretty great luck, (working on lots of side projects didn't hurt either), I recently did some looking just to feel the market out and I'm making like $20k more than I "should" be.

Part of this is because my company is based out of Bethesda, MD and I live in Denver, CO - cost of living differences. My company pays really well which allows them to compete with Silicon Valley and everywhere else for the best engineers.

No complaints here. I'm making double what I thought I would be making at this point in my career.

Anyway, yes, anecdotally, it caps out, but I also like to think that if I really hustled, I could keep raising it. But I'm pretty happy where I'm at and would rather spend my free time doing stuff other than coding and hustling right now.

<comment><USER18> Were your feelers all in Denver? Denver seems to have surprisingly low salaries, especially when accounting for the housing boom of the past 5-6 years.

<comment><USER19> What would be considered surprisingly low? A level 3 software engineer making $100K? Genuinely curious.

<comment><USER20> That seems absurdly low. For reference, I work for a major ISP and we pay our new college grads between $85-110K across our regions of operations.

<comment><USER21> 110k nationwide is pretty good. In seattle we pay at least 120k for new college hires.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> One of the reasons I choose contracting over employment (I've been contracting for 4.5 years and was employed prior) is that moving from contract to contract is expected and usually comes with an income increase. If I were to change jobs as frequently as I change contracts, this would look bad on my resume.

This makes the contract market much more liquid than the job market, which has the consequence of arriving at my current valuation quicker.

<comment><USER23> Consulting is like building a castle and giving it away to someone else to rule and enjoy the fruits. I refuse to do it now. With each new contract, you start from scratch, again. After a while, you'll realize - you are just hitting a reset switch on your career, with each new contract that you pick up.

I'm glad I share my thoughts with this very smart man - [https://youtu.be/Gk-9Fd2mEnI?t=908](https://youtu.be/Gk-9Fd2mEnI?t=908)

<comment><USER24> Is there any room for income growth in contracting outside of building an agency?

A couple of years ago, my career seemed to be dead in the water, so I thought about contracting. It's not clear to me what changed, but in the course of a year, I got two huge promotions and am now making double. I'm currently interviewing for a huge step up that might bump my salary another 25% more.

I imagine if I went the contracting route, short term, I could've made much more money per hour, since I am/was pretty productive. But I /really/ doubt I'd get to where I am now on an annual basis (especially considering benefits and vacation). I also seems to have a clear path toward being a VP, CTO doesn't seem unrealstic in a few years, if I want to continue down the career path (I don't, rather start my own business, but nice to have a solid backup).

I know there's a lot of money to be made running an agency, but I don't think that's a natural skillset for the vast majority of engineers. Also it seems like a really competitive space.

I'd love to hear more from some contractors about this.

<comment><USER25> Contracting is effectively going mercenary. It's straight up 'I've got the expertise, you've got money... let's get together for a while.' There's no career path for you as far as the client is concerned but the pay is better. The understanding going in is that you will likely not be together for more than about a year. In addition to the bump in pay, since you know it's not a long-term situation, you typically get to avoid much of the office politics and organizational dysfunction and focus on what you're there to do.

It's not an ideal terminal position: either you use it as a stepping stone to something better (i.e. starting your own agency, getting into consulting, starting some other kind of business etc.) or you use it as a way to test drive companies without committing (i.e. If you like the place, convert to an employee if it's offered. If not, move on ASAP)

There are people who do contracting for the same company indefinitely. That's usually a career mistake as you're not getting valuable new experiences which will prepare you for something better and your hourly rate will get stuck in the mud. After 2-3 years it will have often been better to have converted to an employee. (i.e. more relaxed relationship, benefits/paid time off, stock/bonus programs etc.) Many larger companies _love_ it when contractors stay long term: for them it's all of the upside of having an employee with none of the downside. (it's also legally problematic but that doesn't stop most of them)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> It's simply the best way to get a pay raise if you're a programmer in today's job market. Want to make 30-50k more? Quit your job and find another.

You could ask your current manager for that kind of pay raise but if they do give you the increase, they're going to expect you to work harder to "earn" it.

Of course, all this money being thrown around attracts frauds, and that's why we have absurd technical interviews.

<comment><USER27> > Quit your job and find another.

Not necessarily in that order, though...

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> I've had 3 jobs in the past 6 years (5 in 10). So I spend about 2 years/gig on average. Reasons:

1\. Learning. I find that I learn 80-90% of what I will learn at a company in the first 12-18 months. Staying at a job for too long is risky because I will miss out on new things happening in my area. In the long term this is the most important, because this is what will get me more money, and make me competitive/valuable. Example: it's hard for people in traditional data roles to do ML/DL without switching jobs.

2\. I prefer dynamic equilibrium over static equilibrium. I very strongly prefer being able to go out and get a good job at any time over having a "cozy job". The only way to be good at getting a job is having practice at it.

3\. Impact. I find that I deliver most of my impact on the job in the first 2 years, after that it levels off and I tend to do more maintenance stuff of all the things I've built (both systems and teams).

4\. More money. This is almost a side-effect of 1-3. But also in itself: if I want to get more money in my current job, it's partially up to me, but it's also up to my manager and the company/culture. If I get unlucky with my manager/company, I'm not going to get it. Also, sometimes I hit a glass ceiling, and there's simply nowhere to go (eg. I'm already the Head/Director whatever, but the company isn't that successful and/or/but pay levels aren't that high). On the other hand, switching jobs is entirely up to me: if I am good at what I do and have a good track record to prove it, practice interviewing to be good at it, and play the numbers game (apply to lots of companies), I will succeed at finding a higher paying job.

Overall:

1\. I have to be ruthless and watch out for my own interests. Nobody else will. The world doesn't owe me anything, I have to go out, work for it, make smart decisions and then pluck the rewards myself.

2\. I don't think this is unfair towards companies. If a company/org is badly run, people leaving is valuable feedback. Assuming a company can hire good new people, those will deliver new impact, bring new knowledge, etc.

Having said that, there are companies where you can work and make more and more money (usually stock options play a big role here), and keep learn more and more (because the company is growing like crazy). These are the startups that are run well and are rocket ships (the FAANGs were like this).

<comment><USER29> Does switching jobs so often raise any red flags when you interview?

<comment><USER27> Not OP, but - I graduated in '95 and started working right away. Back then, the market and demand for developers was insane, and I ended up switching jobs - for 10-20% more every time - four times in four years. Then, right around 2000, the market crashed and I started interviewing again, and suddenly I had a really tough time finding anything: they brought up my short tenure at all my past jobs very negatively. I did finally find something, and have slowed down my job-hopping a bit (averaging 5 years per job now), but the "four jobs in four years, back in the late 90's" thing came up just last year during an interview - for a job that I didn't end up getting. In short - be careful, they're watching.

<comment><USER30> Personally I feel like an employer who is overly concerned with something like that (especially when it was so long ago) is a huge red flag.

People evaluate others based on their own experiences and ideas of success. If they feel that staying at one job for a long time is the utmost important factor above all else, what does that tell me about the kind of person they are and the kind of company they're running? It tells me it's probably a run of the mill mediocrity-factory full of people mostly just punching the clock every day. I've ignored these signs in the past and learned the hard way.

IMO places that have strong engineering cultures that are run by smart and driven people understand that your technical skill is what matters and aren't going to hold it against you if you've hopped jobs to maintain your career growth, because they've most likely done the same thing themselves. Ambition recognizes ambition, and ambitious people HATE to stagnate.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> In the past, giant stock grants could convince people to stay sans a raise/promotion, but with vesting periods increasing or being staggered and an understandable uncertainty in sustained stock growth (you could do really well or not, depending on when your shares are purchased), it's totally understandable that someone would leave for another company to get a pay raise or promotion.

Boomerang employment is super common too (you don't get your promotion/level bump so you go to competitor X who hires you at s higher level and salary. You do your 2 years and then return to company Y at a higher level/better salary, in less time than it would take to earn a promotion using the system.).

I don't know if this is sustainable — but I don't fault anyone who does this or thinks about it. And because it's so common, it's not like it looks bad on a resume, because loyalty isn't valued the same way anyway.

</comment><comment><USER32> "The reason people are quitting today is because the labor market is so competitive that the only way they can get a significant increase in income is by quitting and going to another job."

Well, no, the opposite is true. Employees have to quit because companies stubbornly refuse to be competitive on salary.

The reason for that is mismanagement - managers and HR would be personally criticized for "being soft" if they offered raises, regardless of the benefits to the company of doing so.

<comment><USER33> I've seen this so much now that I feel like I must be missing a piece of the puzzle.

You work for a company for X amount of time, and you gain domain knowledge of the company, and general industry experience. Some other company looks at your CV, and without knowing you, and probably without caring about your specific company domain knowledge, decides you are worth say 20% more than you are earning. You then go to your current company, and say 'my general skills are worth 20% more on the market, you know how well I work, and you know I have extra domain knowledge specific to this role, I would like more money' \- and the company refuses.

They then spend time and money finding someone with similar skills to what you have, but without your domain knowledge, and probably at a similar amount you asked for since that's the market rate.

How is it not in the companies best interests to just keep you on and give you a raise? How do they justify all that wasted time and money every time? Do they just not measure it?

<comment><USER34> Suppose salaries are going up, and the average person at FooCorp could get 10% more by changing jobs. You are more underpaid than most; you establish that you could get 20% more by moving, and say to your manager at FooCorp that you'd like a 20% pay rise.

Suppose they say yes. What happens next: other people hear about it and go to their managers saying "I think I'm underpaid; give me a 20% pay rise". If the answer is yes, then FooCorp is paying 20% more in salaries for the same work as before. If the answer is no, then those people have a concrete motivation to go and interview elsewhere, and probably a bunch of them will then leave even if they get counteroffers at FooCorp once they've demonstrated that they could earn more elsewhere.

Suppose they say no. What happens next: most likely you leave for that better- paid job; others at FooCorp hear about this and understand that they aren't going to get paid more at FooCorp even with a job offer in hand. Some of them will decide to move, but maybe fewer than in the first scenario (because they haven't had the specific motivating experience of asking for more money and getting turned down, and because they don't feel like they have the lower-risk option of interviewing elsewhere, getting a counteroffer, and thus _being paid more without having to move jobs_ ). And the ones who don't move can go on being paid less.

It's not obvious to me that the first of those scenarios is better for FooCorp than the second, if all they care about is maximizing their profits.

<comment><USER33> In the first case, if you think the person deserves the extra money and give it to them, you keep your best people. If other staff ask for the same, you can either give it to them if you think they deserve it, or risk losing them to elsewhere. The end result is you always keep your best staff, and potentially lose your worst staff.

The second scenario, you always keep your worst staff and you potentially lose your best staff.

<comment><USER35> Maybe from company perspective, there's no such thing as "10x engineers", but only "1.02x engineers" at most.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> My sister works in the advertising industry, where it seems few people spend more than 2-3 years [edit] in a firm before moving on. The big advertising firms tend to be in public ownership and and have apparently systemised the creation of advertising and marketing content, such that it doesn't matter who is in the job or how long they are there for. I was pretty surprised by that - managers are well paid and grind creativity out of younger employees. Maybe I shouldn't be surprised - maybe those are just well run businesses, but I'm helluva glad I don't work for one!

<comment><USER37> The average tenure of someone, particularly a junior person, at an ad or media agency is around 1.5 years.

The reality is that there's always opportunities at other agencies where they'll pay you a bit more than you're currently making (which is still less than paying someone there already more) and give you an inflated title.

Due in part to the nature of the industry, tasks are made to not be dependent on a given individual, and people float around because agency teams are never at equilibrium. They either have too few clients for the team and need to let people go, or too many/too big clients and need to staff up.

Source: worked agency side for most of my career and managed a bunch of people. I'm brand side now at a company with a significant percentage of employees at or over the 10yr mark. There's a reason I left the agency world.

</comment></comment><comment><USER38> "Quitting" -> quitting to move to another job. But this isn't clear until three paragraphs into the article.

<comment><USER39> Right.. kinda clickbaity?

One way to try to get a raise at a current job that I've done in the past is get an interview and see if you can get offers for a higher paid job and then use that as leverage for a counter offer.

I know there are already many threads about taking counter offers, but its not always a bad thing... in my experience, the manager just needed better justification for the higher ups. It was too large a company for him to just give me a bump.

</comment></comment><comment><USER40> I was working in e-commerce when my company for acquired by a larger one. Since I was 100% remote and had zero face time with anyone I was one of the people to get canned. Actually, most of our company got canned.

At first I was furious and a bit depressed and that's when I said enough is enough, I will never let anyone else in a position over me, I'm done being an employee, I will never be let go ever again.

A year later I was working insane hours as a freelancer, just learning the ropes with enough pay to get by on. Fast forward to year 3 and I am a consultant making more than I did at the ecommerce company. I am my own boss. I can fire my clients instead of the other way around. Pay is great, hours are insanely good - I work just a couple of hours per week with occasional bursts of power sessions exceeding 3-4 hours. I get to spend most of my time with my kid.

The downside is having to always have business lined up but I have been fortunate to never really have any downtime. I'm slowly building out my marketing channels and once everything is in place I can pick and choose really carefully who I work with. Oh, and if I want a raise I just increase my weekly retainer.

<comment><USER41> "Fast forward to year 3..." May I ask: are you e-commerce consulting? Your comment suggests that you repositioned yourself purposefully, rather than the outcome simply eventuated. If so, was this based on a discovery you made in the market or client demand while you were freelancing? Did this result in you "niching down" from a broader "catch all" offering as a freelancer? Are you clients higher ticket/larger SME's compared to freelancing (which is often outsourced agency work)?

<comment><USER40> I started as a freelance designer, then quickly niched down to UX designer and then again to CRO consultant. I only work with companies that will see direct ROI impact from my work. While I still design UIs, the whole process starts with discovery and an audit. It's a data based approach with no guessing involved. The process involves understanding customer pain points, their language and behavior. Clients vary in size from 10 person teams to larger e-commerce operations with maybe 30-40 employees. I do all of the work myself and expect full cooperation from the client or we don't go forward. I've definitely made every mistake in the book but I've learned a lot along the way. I'm sure there are consultants 2 tiers ahead of me though with productized services or just products. My ultimate goal is to have a product (who's isn't, right).

To answer your first question, I do consult in e-commerce, but not limited to it (though that may be a good idea). Most of my leads come through dribbble or LinkedIn. The client typically expects grunt work but after my initial email and call, they are quickly educated on my process and most see clearly that the way they thought of approaching their problems is backwards.

<comment><USER42> "The client typically expects grunt work but after my initial email and call, they are quickly educated "

That's the part that makes me hesitate jumping into consulting. How do you advertise yourself in a way that you can avoid the wrong clients, which seems you'll always gonna get.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER43> The only way to get a proper raise is changing companies.

Promotions tend to take years and are often more political than technical. I've seen often that a company prefers to hire someone techie from the outside rather than promoting internally. It is just the way it is.

When the already hired engineers see this kind of thing, it is not surprising that morale gets low and churn gets high.

</comment><comment><USER44> Most companies in my part of the world opt to hire a new employee on higher salary than given raise to existing person. Can't fathom the logic.

</comment><comment><USER45> It's so sad this is the case, but it is the case. In a job I've always gotten 1.5-3% raises, and 10% for promotions. Switching jobs I've gotten up to a 75% increase each time.

</comment><comment><USER46> So the implication is that 2/3 of workers at this pay level will turn over 2x/year? Why publish these "survey" results when that is obviously false?

<comment><USER47> The wording is workers 'who see themself quitting'. The reality is 1 or 2 in 5 (my guess) will actually do it. People always say this but fewer are willing to fight the inertia

</comment></comment><comment><USER48> So what happens when you stay at your current job because you've just stopped caring for any of the software work out there? It's easier just to stay with your current company than to have to incur the costs of changing to a new environment and having to learn a new way of doing things.

I'm not sure if at this point in my career, it really makes a difference in the big picture of my life to get a 20% raise.

</comment><comment><USER49> A cynic would assume it's just companies that produce low value, have low value (compared to cost) employees but are VC money pumped. This cycle will continue until there's an economic down turn and a large portion of those companies will go bankrupt.

<comment><USER50> Nailed it ;)

</comment></comment><comment><USER51> The big problem I have is that it's rare to find a combination of strong leadership with fast stressful work in the corporate world. Historically either my work is slow and easy or my leadership is extremely weak.

The only times I have seen strong leadership and fast work is in agency/consultancy work and military.

<comment><USER15> I throw in strong peers as my third axis. One point in my career I've had strong leadership, strong peers, and challenging fast work.

It was amazing. Then we re-org'd, and I'm still looking for that combination somewhere.

</comment></comment><comment><USER52> Having worked at a large corporation I can say that I found the reward system completely random. It's really difficult, if your not part of the team to figure out how much work and value people are adding. It makes it ripe for gaming the system.

</comment><comment><USER53> Don't accept the counter offer.

<comment><USER54> care to explain why?

<comment><USER55> I'm not the OP, but can offer two reasons:

1\. You'll be labeled as disloyal. Which is euphemism for: someone at HR is already looking into replacing you.

2\. Whatever problems prompted you to want to go away are still there.

Similarly, never offer a counter-offer as a manager. Because:

1\. You don't want to send the message to others that it's a valid way to get a raise.

2\. Whatever problems prompted them to want to go away are still there.

There reportedly are exceptions when things work out on both sides of the fence. But in almost 20 years, I've yet to see one first hand.

<comment><USER27> > someone at HR is already looking into replacing you.

Well, not that I disagree that accepting a counter offer is a bad idea, I'm pretty sure that someone at HR is always looking into replacing you, all the time.

<comment><USER21> I don't think that hr is looking to replace people, because it's way too hard to hire. At my company every new hire looks like a magical lucky serendipitous event. Hiring is just that hard. HR grudlingly matches people's other offers. They are too exhausted to look for someone to replace their existing employees.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER56> I feel like I've reached a point where I've moved jobs a little too often (avg 1.5 yrs last 3 jobs)

<comment><USER21> 2 years seems to be the minimum, and it's almost how linked in computes it that matters. In west cost tech companies, 2 years raises no red flags. so if you can get your average to that, or at a minimum your current job is at least 2 years no one will car.</comment></comment>


Ask YC: Follow users on HN? - <AUTHOR>

Dismissing the potential twitter analogies that will certainly arise, this would be an interesting feature to follow submissions, comments, and threads of one's favorite users.
I'm sure many would be (or probably are manually) following PG and others on the top 100, but it would help create quasi-groups of interest -- say a certain user is consistently submitting articles on a subject of interest --, without filtering the community at large.
Thoughts and comments? <comment><USER2> I started making a simple app that scrapes your (or any other user's) HN activity and turns it into an RSS feed, but I didn't finish it, partly because I don't post here much. Following multiple users is a cool idea that didn't occur to me, though, and RSS would make that sort of thing a cinch, so I might pick it up again.

<comment><USER3> We've built this already:

<http://searchyc.com/user/izaidi?sort=by_date>

<http://rss.searchyc.com/user/izaidi?sort=by_date>

<comment><USER4> Also see [http://www.ycombinator.search.xirium.com/cgi- bin/search.cgi?...](http://www.ycombinator.search.xirium.com/cgi- bin/search.cgi?p=0&q=-alleyinsider.com+-nytimes.com+-slashdot.org+-techcrunch.com+-valleywag.com) to exclude items before making a custom RSS feed.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> Sounds like a buddy list on a web forum/message board. A couple days ago someone wanted to add avatars. Next week maybe we should just replace this whole thing with vBulletin.

<comment><USER5> I did not want avatars per se, though they would have probably fulfilled my request. All I was asking for was _some_ pictorial cue to better associate user names with their set of comments. It could be randomly generated. It is a memory thing.

That being said, humans have evolved to remember faces at a very intricate and ingrained level, so perhaps faces would be best. In any case, I said "pictures next to user names," not avatars.

What I was looking for seemed to get lost in peoples' emotional reactions to digg and other social networking sites, as they are here.

Once you know you like submissions/comments of certain users, I think it would nice to be able to follow them more easily than going through each, one by one, manually. I think this could be done very differently than a _buddy list_ , e.g. an RSS feed or the exact same interface filtered with those users or somehow promoting them.

<comment><USER6> someone should download the periodic backups and analyze all posters contributions (setting up synonyms, word-topic groupings etc.) and thus associate a user with an image based off a google image search + grease monkey script for hn. You would obviously want to avoid using the same image twice. You could keep a record of the past images associated with that user as a way to visualize their shift in interests etc. But that would fit your needs with out turning it into a way for people to "express themselves man".

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> <http://news.ycombinator.com/threads?id=wumi> replace wumi with pg or rms or whomever.

<comment><AUTHOR> certainly, but was just considering a favorites or saved of some sort, even if it's internal like my saved subs i've upmodded.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> As a fun project, one could mirror hacker news on Twitter...</comment>


List of strange units of measurement - <AUTHOR> http://www.indopedia.org/index.php?title=List_of_strange_units_of_measurement

<comment><USER2> My favorite unit of speed is hertz per diopter.</comment>


Stanford computer diagnoses breast cancer more accurately than human doctor - <AUTHOR> http://www.extremetech.com/uncategorized/104407-computer-more-accurate-than-human-doctor-at-breast-cancer-diagnosis <comment><USER2> I'm a pathologist and an avocational programmer. This is pretty neat material and is very relevant to me, as I have been trying to bone up my math chops with Khan Academy videos so that I can tackle some computer vision related work in pathology.

With regards to the study, I will just point out that the system is not diagnosing breast carcinoma, but rather is producing a score which reflects the prognosis as relates to overall survival of the patient (so it is not as impressive as the somewhat hyperbolic HN title makes it out to be... a better title would be 'Stanford computer analyzes breast cancer more accurately than human doctor' which is not surprising at all given the well-documented interobserver variability in breast cancer scoring, particularly in moderately-differentiated tumors). That is to say that the computer already knows the tissue that it is looking at is a tumor and not benign breast tissue. Furthermore, it is really only providing a histologic (or morphologic) score, which is to say, that it is attempting to predict how aggressive the tumor will behave based upon how well or not well it is differentiated (how ugly it is). These days, this score is actually less useful in clinical practice than other information such as whether or not the tumor cells are expressing estrogen/progesterone hormone receptors, or if it is over- expressing Her2-neu protein, as these are possible paths for cancer therapy (anti-estrogen drugs vs. Herceptin) in addition to being prognostic indicators (tumors which express ER/PR generally behave better than tumors which are ER/PR negative and express Her2), as well as the stage (or how far the cancer has already spread) at the time the patient is diagnosed. There are a bunch of companies which are getting FDA approval for computer vision related algorithms for scoring immunohistochemical assays for ER/PR/Her2 [1].

So I am actually far less concerned about a computer doing my job very well, which is actually looking at a piece of tissue on a slide and making a tumor versus not-tumor distinction. This is very hard to do and I think will continue to be even harder for computers/computer-vision/AI to do for a long time to come. I am far more concerned about molecular diagnostics. That is the true-future for making cancer determinations and may even eliminate the part of my job where I tell you if something is benign vs. malignant.

[1] [http://www.aperio.com/pathology-services/analyze-slides- auto...](http://www.aperio.com/pathology-services/analyze-slides-automated- pathology.asp)

<comment><USER3> I've seen a lot of doctors chime in various threads and say their jobs couldn't possible be done by machine learning. The same thing was said about self driving cars before the darpa challenges - when some profs actually put their mind to it, it was done in a couple of years. . If the data was available, there is probably quite a few people who can actually detect cancer in slides.

<comment><USER4> That's not at all what he said. He said that this particular research involved a simpler (for CS) problem than either the title or his day to day job tackles.

Do you have a background in bio or medicine or computer vision? It's very interesting to see two informed people disagree about applied computer science, so I'd love you to contribute something more specific to the thread.

<comment><USER3> Actually, he also said that he is not concerned that machine learning could initially detect cancer anytime soon. Also, if you've been machine learning trends recently(past 5 years), you'll see that deep learning methods (hinton, lacunn, ng, bengio) have actually made a huge leap over what came before, and are believed to be that "final" in some sense algorithm that can allow to tackle any learning problem. These just haven't spread widely anough yet.

<comment><USER5> As a computer vision researcher, I'm not at all convinced that deep learning methods will be "final" in any sense. I know that in the past, neural networks were "final", and then graphical models were "final", and so on.

And while deep learning methods have indeed shown remarkable improvements recently, they're not yet state-of-the-art on the most important/relevant computer vision benchmarks.

<comment><USER3> As a computer vision researcher it must be pain you to see that all your learnings are for nought when faced with deep learning methods which can get amazing performances from raw pixels (see mnist results for example). Also see ronan collobert's natural language processing from scratch paper where handily beats the past few decades of nlp research in parsing (in terms of efficiency, and probably performances soon too). Or see the microsoft research speech recognition swork which has beaten out all previous by a significant margin using deep learning.

<comment><USER5> Not at all! I'd love for vision to be solved, no matter what the method. I'm more than happy to move onto another field if that's the case.

But I don't think it is. MNIST data is not particularly challenging. It's great that deep learning methods work there -- they must be doing something right.

Come back and taunt me when deep learning methods start getting state-of-the- art results on, e.g., Pascal VOC: <http://pascallin.ecs.soton.ac.uk/challenges/VOC/>

<comment><USER3> getting best results on the harder vision challenges is simply a matter of let the computers run long enough. Collobert's work for example took 3 months of training. I don't see why vision challenges should any different. Perhaps the vision researchers, of which there are many more people than the few deep learning groups should try it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Please: there ought to be a rule on HN that instead of linking to a popsci re- interpretation of a scientific result, you instead link directly to the paper.

<http://stm.sciencemag.org/content/3/108/108ra113.full>

If it is behind a paywall, as it probably is for this paper if you are not at a university, perhaps look around for the _least_ hyperbolic re-interpretation of the paper, and link that instead.

[http://www.genengnews.com/gen-news-highlights/image- analysis...](http://www.genengnews.com/gen-news-highlights/image-analysis- system-predicts-breast-cancer-survival-based-on-stromal-and-epithelial- features/81245934/)

Even if you do not have access to the full paper because of the paywall, you should be able to still read the abstract and pick the popsci article that is fairest to what the paper _actually says_.

Otherwise, this happens: <http://www.phdcomics.com/comics.php?f=1174> and I really don't like it when HN blindly follows the hivemind in furthering that phenomenon.

Let's examine what the authors _actually_ say.

 _To directly compare the performance of the C-Path system to pathological grading on the exact same set of images, we applied standard pathological grading criteria to the TMA images used in the C-Path analysis. [...] the pathologist grading the images was blinded from the survival data. Although the C-Path predictions on the NKI data set were strongly associated with survival, the pathologic grade derived from the same TMA images showed no significant association with survival (log-rank P = 0.4), highlighting the difficulty of obtaining accurate prognostic predictions from these small tumor samples._

That's it. They make one remark about it, and do not focus on this at all elsewhere in the paper, because it was not the point of their study and the methodology for this little result is far from robust. Note they used _one pathologist_ to run this little test. Also note that a high p-value is not evidence that the null hypothesis is true--it is quite possible that there _is_ a relationship but the study is underpowered; this is a frequent point of confusion.

Let's please keep scientific statements in context. The original paper says _nothing_ tantamount to computers diagnosing breast cancer more accurately than doctors. It is, principally, about a new morphological feature that the researchers believe is tied more strongly to survival according to their computational model.

<comment><USER7> I'm a colleague of the author, and I have talked to him quite a bit about C-Path since I work on something related. While I agree with much of what you are saying, I disagree slightly with your comment that the article is "principally, about a new morphological feature that the researchers believe is tied more strongly to survival according to their computational model."

The significance here is that he extracted 6000 low-level morphological features without any pre-conception about their usefulness. He then used GLMNET (logistic regression with L1-regularization) to _automatically pick_ which of these features was important. Then, the craziest part is that the most informative features were not even cancer cells, but rather, surrounding stromal tissue. To quote from the paper, "Pathologists currently use only epithelial features in the standard grading scheme for breast cancer and other carcinomas. Our findings suggest that evaluation of morphologic features of the tumor stroma may offer significant benefits for assessing prognosis." He essentially took a completely blinded, machine learning technique to find features that have been relatively ignored in pathology.

I think this is more indicative of a new paradigm in computer vision and machine learning in general that finely-tuned, human-crafted features can be beat with more automatic methods. Whereas before, we have tried to program features that characterize what we see, now we are finally looking at image features that can characterize what we're _missing_.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Reminds me of a comment by _delirium a few days ago, in the "AI is killing jobs" thread:

 _dermatologists are fairly worried that "upload a photo and we'll diagnose your mole", either via software or outsourcing, will cut out a significant percentage of their business._

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3204466>

<comment><USER9> Also announced today: [http://news.techeye.net/science/ai-used-to-hunt- dinosaur-bon...](http://news.techeye.net/science/ai-used-to-hunt-dinosaur- bones)

those darn robots are everywhere!

<comment><USER10> "We may never have to dig again" -Dr. Grant, Jurassic Park

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> One thing the article doesn't point out is that AI methods in the past did a poor job of detecting breast cancer. This is an important new result and big step for the field.

<comment><USER12> Unfortunately this still doesn't look like it's _detecting_ breast cancer; it's scoring the severity of tumors, given prior knowledge that it's being presented tumors to analyze (but tumors of unknown severity).

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> You can learn from some of the experts in the field:

<http://ai-class.com> \- Peter Norvig and Sebastian Thrun

<http://ml-class.com> \- Andrew Ng

I signed up 4 weeks into Andrew's class. Both of these are excellent.

Btw, the technique in the article is a classification problem, right? :-)

<comment> barry-cotter Is there any reason to watch the videos if one has AIMA? Could one do the assignments without without ever watching a video?

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> This kind of development is not that new, conceptually, at least (obviously, implementing it is another thing). One of the most consistently verified themes of study is that human experts can be very inconsistent, and in some cases, expertise can be a detriment when it leads to overconfidence. Radiologists, for example, have been found 20% of the time to render two different verdicts when looking at the same X-ray at two different times.

And of course there's the recent study showing how judges were consistently more likely to deny parole during hearings that happen in the afternoon: [http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/notrocketscience/2011/04/1...](http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/notrocketscience/2011/04/11/justice- is-served-but-more-so-after-lunch-how-food-breaks-sway-the-decisions-of- judges/)

</comment><comment><USER15> They kind of hint at it in the article, but sounds like automatic feature detection really helped here. That's really the future (or present): learning algos discovering better features automatically, significantly cutting down the labor involved in feature engineering. Pretty neat.

Here's a video talking about current research into this at Stanford: [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZmNOAtZIgIk&feature=youtu...](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZmNOAtZIgIk&feature=youtube_gdata_player)

</comment><comment><USER16> This should not be surprising for anyone who understand software. And software identifying breast and skin and other cancers is going to continue getting better.

Now the bad news is that human medicine moves super slowly due to very strict regulations, and I expect doctors to resist this.

I hate to say this, but I think health _insurance_ companies are our best hope to push this technology into greater use.

<comment><USER17> I agree. A lot of these technologies will lead to improved outcomes at lower costs (for certain sets of basic problems).

Guild professions (like doctors) are inclined to keep doing even the basic simple-minded aspects of their job because they get paid "economic rents" for doing so thanks to the regulations that insist even basic tasks must be done by someone with 10+ years of education.

Insurance companies on the other hand ultimately have to respond to employer demands for lower premiums (unfortunately this process is slow and HR departments are usually horrible at keeping costs under control). Insurers and to an extent employers are going to be the impetus for a lot of improvements in effectiveness and affordability.

Read Clayton Christensen "The Innovators Prescription" for more on how this might play out.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> Although he's not listed as an author, I find it interesting that Andrew Ng has been using "malignant or benign tumor" as an example of a machine learning classification problem at <http://www.ml-class.org>

</comment><comment><USER19> "...but imagine if you had a C-Path machine in every town or city."

How near-sighted of the author. An article about computer vision, AI, machine learning, and no thoughts of tele-pathology or remote reading?

<comment><AUTHOR> _hat tip_

My thought was that such such a machine would basically have a built-in, automated biopsy thing. Like, the machine really would do everything from taking a biopsy, looking at the sample, and then diagnosing.

Tele-pathology is cool, but you still need to get the tissue sample somehow -- which I imagine is hard in a town/village without a hospital.

You could have some kind of automated biopsy unit that then sends data back to a central C-Path server, I guess.

<comment><USER20> There's an indian company selling biopsy helper robots. it robots simplify the process and enable technicians to take the biopsy instead of doctors, and the whole process is faster.

see : <http://www.perfinthealthcare.com/Procedure_Videos.html>

Looking at the videos , it seems that the whole process can be done by robot, But maybe patients and other stakeholders feel this way is safer/more economical.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> The funny thing is, most rads physicians would probably welcome this, as mammography is often the least preferred sub-specialty (my wife is a radiologist and feels this way, and I've encountered many radiologists with the same outlook).

<comment><USER22> The system in this article is not interpreting mammograms, which is something that radiologists do. This is looking at tissue samples on slides, the domain of pathologists.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> Wow! The medicalese description (abstract of the original paper) seems completely unrelated to the computerese description.

I need to learn medicalese ...

or train some ML algos.

</comment><comment><USER24> This does not address the issue of feature detection, but it's interesting nonetheless, inasmuch as well-trained human doctors are quite bad at probability, with the specific case of breast cancer diagnoses. The first 1/8th or so of Eliezer's layman's Bayes document:

<http://yudkowsky.net/rational/bayes>

</comment><comment><USER25> Looks like weak AI is making inroads all over the medical industry. Here is predictive ai technology for heart failure that works better/faster than human diagnosis.

<http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Multifunction_cardiogram></comment>


Many scientific "truths" are, in fact, false - <AUTHOR> http://qz.com/638059/many-scientific-truths-are-in-fact-false/ <comment><USER2> Very misleading title. In fact, the last quote in the article is "Science isn't about truth or falsity, it's about reducing uncertainty".

<comment><USER3> It's not bad. It's in quotes, and it actually closely tracks the title of Ioannidis' paper, "Why Most Published Research Findings are False".

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> One of the biggest developments in science recently. I'm glad to see it getting attention.</comment>


The Execution or The Idea? Here's How the Greatest Minds in Tech Answer. - <AUTHOR> http://www.derekflanzraich.com/2010/08/idea-or-execution/

<comment><USER2> Derek Sivers has a lovely post about this topic. He says that "ideas are just a multiplier of execution".

Check it out: [http://www.oreillynet.com/onlamp/blog/2005/08/ideas_are_just...](http://www.oreillynet.com/onlamp/blog/2005/08/ideas_are_just_a_multiplier_of.html)

</comment><comment><USER3> Funny how even with great idea and execution, there is an element of luck involved as he concludes "and, who knows, maybe succeed, too".

So, awesome idea, flawless execution that preemptively outdoes competition, and being lucky.

I _LOVE_ those odds anyway :)

</comment><comment><USER4> I noted that : \- With a great idea but bad execution, someone else will probably do it better.

<comment><USER5> sometimes, but sometimes not. think twitter, foursquare and the similar: phenomenal idea but horrible execution.</comment></comment>


StarCraft 2 is going free-to-play - <AUTHOR> https://www.polygon.com/2017/11/3/16603910/starcraft-2-f2p-announced-release-date-blizzcon-2017 <comment><USER2> _yawn_ Wake me up when I no longer need an account and internet connection to play it singleplayer or multiplayer with people in the same physical room.

<comment><USER3> Please no F2P for WoW Classic! Just let me pay two bags of coffee a month to enjoy my nostalgia without being pressed to buy more.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> > If you already own that content, you will receive Heart of the Swarm at no > additional cost.

Close, but no cigar. Should have also made Legacy of the Void available to the owners of the first 2 games.

Well, at least this should spark a renewed interest in the game so I'm not really complaining.

</comment><comment><USER5> It looks like Blizzard has been looking to increase margins by leveraging its inventory of older games (ex: remastered Starcraft 1, which likely has had great returns for the relatively little dev and art costs), and the f2p'ing of the earlier, but not later, parts of a franchise that the sibling posters mention would play into this strategy as well.

Zero development cost, maybe some inconsequential server costs, and possibly upsell opportunities that could make a tangible difference on the bottom line. Also would be a funnel into introducing non blizzard IP players into their various creative universes. Strong plays with very little downside.

</comment><comment><USER6> Tangentially related: it's also the turn of WoW Classic to go f2p, which was just announced ;P

I don't know if they've mentioned pricing because I didn't watch the BlizzCon, but if they will make us pay 12€ a month like with retail I'll be very very disappointed. At least we'll get a more modern client which will be in turn used by the free servers.

<comment><USER7> Can't find any info on wow classic f2p. Any pointers?

<comment><USER6> No sorry. I meant that wow classic was just announced, and that it's its time to go f2p. Just some wishful thinking.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Wasn't base SC2 free already?</comment>


US mortally scared of China's tech advances - <AUTHOR> https://www.businesstelegraph.co.uk/us-mortally-scared-of-chinas-tech-advances-wireless-pioneer-paulraj/ <comment><USER2> If your big brother is afraid of the new bully on the street, maybe you should be too...</comment>


America for Sale - <AUTHOR> http://money.cnn.com/2008/01/30/news/economy/Colvin_recession.fortune/index.htm

<comment><USER2> Growing up in the eighties, I distinctly remember Mad Magazine assuring me that soon the Japanese would own everything in America. Is this just the same thing again?

<comment><USER3> Yup. We're selling high and we'll just make more stuff to create new value. Betting against America isn't a good long term proposition.</comment></comment>


Using Wolfram Alpha to prove 1=0 - <AUTHOR> http://www.xamuel.com/using-wolfram-alpha-to-prove-10/

<comment><USER2> Cache: [http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache%3Ahttp%...](http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache%3Ahttp%3A%2F%2Fwww.xamuel.com%2Fusing- wolfram-alpha-to-prove-10%2F)

Unfortunately the author seems uninformed. He claims that 0^0 = 1, not indeterminate which is what Wolfram Alpha claims (and as anyone knows, if you use indeterminates you can prove any number equals any other number, which the author does in uncached screenshots). The problem though is that 0^0 changes its meaning depending on the context. If you have an function f(x,y) = x^y, it's not continuous at (0,0) because the limit of x -> 0 is 0 and the limit y -> 0 is 1, making the value undefined! (Which is still different from 1, 0, or indeterminate.) I used to know of a better blog post on the issue, but here's <http://mathforum.org/dr.math/faq/faq.0.to.0.power.html>

Oh wait, I found it: <http://www.askamathematician.com/?p=4524> "Zero raised to the zero power is one. Why? Because mathematicians said so."

Sort of in the same character of dispute is the fact that 0 and 1 aren't probabilities: <http://lesswrong.com/lw/mp/0_and_1_are_not_probabilities/>

I'm also unsure what the author is entering since the screenshot isn't cached. If I try [http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=summation+x^n%2Fn!+from...](http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=summation+x^n%2Fn!+from+n%3D0+to+infinity+where+x+%3D+0) wolfram gives the correct e^0 = 1.

Edit: Ah, he's using [http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=summation+0^n%2Fn!+from...](http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=summation+0^n%2Fn!+from+n%3D0+to+infinity) (substituting 0 in explicitly instead of instructing Wolfram to substitute on x) which is quite an interesting quirk to give 0.

</comment><comment><USER3> Although slightly off-topic, it is interesting to see that some kinds of mistakes never die. As a schoolboy, I once thought that 0^0 can only take the values 0 and 1. (which is quite similar to the author's mistake to think that 0^0 is always 1)

I thought so because for x → 0,

0^x → 0

x^0 → 1

x^x → 1

and I couldn't find any other expressions of the type "0^0" that have a limit different from 0 and 1. I even wrote a "proof" for it, which of course was flawed, but it took others (and me) quite some time to find the exact mistake in my "proof".

0^0 is completely indefinite in the sense that you can find "0^0" expressions for any limit _a_ you want it to be. Here's an example for that kind of expressions:

x ^ (ln a / ln x) → a

Although I wasn't able to come up with those as a schoolboy, this is an easy exercise for any math student.

</comment><comment><USER3> Unfortunately, the site is currently down. Here's a Google Cache version of it:

[http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:nY9J5bU...](http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:nY9J5bUtcV8J:www.xamuel.com/using- wolfram-alpha-to-prove-10/+http://www.xamuel.com/using-wolfram-alpha-to- prove-10/&cd=1&hl=en&ct=clnk&client=iceweasel-a&source=www.google.com)

<comment><USER4> Still, there is no images. You may want to look at comment here from the author of this post:

[http://www.mathteacherctk.com/blog/2011/04/00-mnchausens- syn...](http://www.mathteacherctk.com/blog/2011/04/00-mnchausens- syndrome/#comment-3115)

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> _Riddle me this: what value does the power series Σn=0∞xn/n! have, in terms of x? Of course, the answer is ex_

From my (fuzzy) math memories, I thought that:

exp(x)= 1 + (x^1/1!) + (x^2/2!) + ... + (x^n/n!) + o(x^n) _near_ x=0</comment>


Ask HN: 200 companies in new YC batch? - <AUTHOR> I was surprised when I read that the new YC batch had 200 companies. Does anyone else think that's too much and it's not as unique as it should be? any thoughts? <comment><USER2> YC is obviously very successful and has funded a total of companies worth over $100B. It makes sense that, if you have something that's working, you expand it.

I see the latest offering of another new early interview round in NYC as proof of this. As a YC applicant myself, I'm glad that they want to fund more companies.

<comment><AUTHOR> I get your point. I was part of the YC startup school last year and it was a very good learning experience. but I was wondering that if they scale, would it be the same value? years ago companies had a lot of mentoring from the leaders at YC like Paul Graham etc,. but will now Michael Seibel and team be able to closely work with 200+ companies and have this close relationship? I am pretty sure they're awesome but I have a feeling it wont be the same program it used to be.

<comment><USER2> YC's total investments represent $100B in valuation today. There's no evidence that they can't scale that.</comment></comment></comment>


British Homeowners Build a 'Superhighway' for Hedgehogs - <AUTHOR> http://www.npr.org/sections/parallels/2016/01/26/464307528/british-homeowners-build-a-new-superhighway-for-hedgehogs?sc=17&f=1001 <comment><USER2> I hear "superhighway for hedgehogs" and I think of this: [http://www.serebii.net/ssbb/stages/greenhillzone.jpg](http://www.serebii.net/ssbb/stages/greenhillzone.jpg)

I know I'm a dork.

</comment><comment><USER3> Not to downplay the advancement of humans, but the squirrels on our block created a "Superhighway" between garages, fences and garbage cans. Every garbage receptacle on our block has a hole in it, created by squirrels. We regularly watch them eat lunch on top of our garbage can.

<comment><USER4> My parent's cat catches birds and mice not often but more often than not as cats will do.

But she is absolutely baffled by squirrels who seem psychotic or at the very least capable of being in multiple places at once. They seem to jump and in mid-flight change their mind and direction as if to defy the laws of physics.

Cats are predators used to patterns and predictability so I wonder if that's a squirrels defense to be absolutely unpredictable, and bonkers.

edit: And I'm disappointed the story didn't have more of a tech twist like using an Arduino or Raspberry Pi on each hole to track the movement of the hedgehogs.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> > they aren't scared of humans. The noisy little things just rolled up into a > ball, spikes out

I don't think that's how it works.

</comment><comment><USER6> Great fence hack. Wish there was something similar for humans. Keep bumping into the darn things.

<comment><USER7> I think they call the hack for that "freerunning".

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> For those who are very confused by the comments on this submission: [http://knowyourmeme.com/memes/gotta-go- fast](http://knowyourmeme.com/memes/gotta-go-fast)

</comment><comment><USER9> Is this so they can get away from the badgers faster? [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11052743](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11052743)

</comment><comment><USER10> (...And then, they came and ate the slugs from my garden, muahaha!)

Meanwhile, in Oslo...

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jdi2AXC9c9Q](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jdi2AXC9c9Q)

</comment><comment><USER11> They make a lot of noise, grunting and snuffling along.

</comment><comment><USER12> And there I thought that the hedgehog could not be bothered at all!

</comment><comment><USER13> A bit disappointed that "superhighway" means making a few small holes in you fence.

<comment><USER14> Same, I was hoping to see a picture of some kind of grade-separated hedgehog corridor with on/off ramps.

<comment><USER15> Something like this: [https://www.google.com.tr/search?tbm=isch&q=wildlife+overpas...](https://www.google.com.tr/search?tbm=isch&q=wildlife+overpass)

<comment><USER16> We've got these in the area: [http://www.azgfd.gov/w_c/research_maintain_sheep.shtml](http://www.azgfd.gov/w_c/research_maintain_sheep.shtml)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Gotta go fast!

</comment><comment><USER18> I MUST MOVE AT AN ACCELERATED PACE.</comment>


Ask HN: Do VC funds come from questionable sources? - <AUTHOR> I read somewhere that historically market has outperformed VC funds.
But lower returns have not stopped VC partners from contributing to these funds. Why? Does it come from questionable sources which can't find its way into the market? Does it offer anonymity or something? <comment><USER2> The investors in VC funds are called Limited Partners (LPs), as opposed to General Partners (GPs). LPs raise money from high-net worth individuals (HNWIs), funds of funds, etc.

Maybe what you read had some qualifier attached to it like across all VC funds "on average". With funds, the outliers are everything like with successful startups. Deal flow varies greatly by VC. A similar comment, and one that holds up, is that most startup accelerators have 0 "successful" exits.

Brad Feld's book _Venture Deals_ [1] is a great reference if you want to learn a bit more from multiple perspectives.

[1]: [https://www.amazon.com/Venture-Deals-Smarter-Lawyer- Capitali...](https://www.amazon.com/Venture-Deals-Smarter-Lawyer- Capitalist/dp/1119259754/)

</comment><comment><USER3> A lot of sovereign funds could be called "Questionable" since those are funds directly under the control of the Government.

Many High Net Worth Individuals set up investing trusts overseas to mask their real income and these funds are usually run by investment professionals who "place" these funds.

So, yes it is tough to check the provenance of a funds LPs all the way back to the source. But if you stick to tried and tested sources - ex-founders, Pension Funds, State Funds, College Endowments, Hedge Funds, and suchlike, you're more likely than not - taking funds from a responsible source.

Of course, that is not always the case with ALL VCs.

Pranay

</comment><comment><USER4> Upside. LPs are willing to invest a small portion of their portfolio into an asset class that has lower average returns, but potential for great upside.</comment>


There Is No Silicon Valley Crash Coming – For a While - <AUTHOR> http://techcrunch.com/2015/08/23/there-is-no-silicon-valley-crash-coming-at-least-for-a-while/

<comment><USER2> Last sentence.

"The sky is not falling. Instead, let's continue to focus on building sustainable companies with well-conceived strategies and high levels of execution."

I agree with this sentiment 100%, unfortunately I feel like way too many of the startups coming out of SV rely on huge amounts of VC that make them unsustainable by definition.

The goal of SV VC's isn't to build sustainable businesses with modest profit margins that value the work life balance of their employees. It is to quickly bootstrap startups that are "too funded to fail", race to a buyout or IPO, and built by the sleepless nights of 22 year old interns who are too stupid to realize they are expendable and replaceable on a 2 year cycle.

"Unicorn" (ugh) or bust.</comment>


Ask HN: Unix-based tablet - <AUTHOR> I carry my iPad during my hourly commute to work but am struggling to get any coding work done (i.e. HTML/CSS/Django/NodeJS) as I have a Windows work laptop as well. Internet connection is sparse on the train.
Wondering if someone could recommend me a Unix-based tablet that's light enough to carry but I can also code on?
I was also considering the Surface as an alternative but would prefer something low-cost and Unix-based. <comment><USER2> I have a chinese cube iwork 10 it has an atom x64 bit so I can install any x64 os, unix based or not.

It has a pc-like bios.

</comment><comment><USER3> Why doesn't an iPad work for this purpose?

<comment><USER4> I had the same thought. I'm starting to use an iPad for a sideproject using Django.

In my workflow I'm using Working Copy to manage my repositories and Pythonista to code. I'm just starting but it's been a nice surprice. It is far more pleasant than I expected.

<comment><AUTHOR> Does it need to have an Internet connection?

<comment><USER4> Working copy needs internet connection to clone the repos and commit the changes back, but meanwhile it doesn't need it.

And Pythonista doesn't need internet connection to function.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Minecraft vanilla 4KB HDD, with read/write heads - <AUTHOR> http://imgur.com/a/8ESMW

<comment><USER2> I cant wait until we have minecraft running on a computer built inside minecraft ;)

<comment><USER3> Hans Lemurson's "Minecraft in Minecraft":

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gdnO1QZJ-- M](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gdnO1QZJ--M)

:D

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> How do people find the time to make stuff like this??

<comment><USER5> Probably by being young and not having to waste it on bullshit things like earning money to buy food and shelter.

<comment><USER6> Or he spends a lot of time on a hobby after work just like plenty of other reasonable and self-supporting people do?

<comment><USER7> Or he spends a lot of time on a hobby after work just like plenty of other reasonable and self-supporting people _[without kids]_ do?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Few hours ago there was 1KB model. Moore's law in Minecraft works really fast.

</comment><comment><USER9> brace yourself, minecraft posts are coming..

<comment><USER10> Someone will get a minecraft computer playing 2048 and that's all we'll be reading about for weeks.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Was there a particular need to model the World Trade Center towers with a plane flying at them? Is that part of the functionality of the hard drive?

<comment><USER12> It's there to show scale. Like when people put a penny next to an object in a photograph.

<comment><USER13> That's like saying "Oh that cardboard cut out of Adolf Hitler? Yeah that's just for scale." Yes, indeed it is - but there's probably more to it than that. I'll go out on a limb and say due to the presence of My Little Pony that this person has a weird interpretation of what's considered appropriate.

On topic: This hard drive is incredibly impressive, and it's fascinating to see how the density changes between a 1K HDD and a 4k HDD.

<comment><USER14> > this person has a weird interpretation of what's considered appropriate.

Assuming that it's a single person? The use of "our" in the description (as well as the fact that they've got an online map in the last picture!) suggests that this is on a shared server.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> What's your plan to monetize this? There may be a few million in venture capital for this. Contact me if you want to attend our bootcamp.</comment>


Google quietly dumps Oracle MySQL for MariaDB - <AUTHOR> http://www.theregister.co.uk/2013/09/12/google_mariadb_mysql_migration

<comment><USER2> Interesting quote:

 _" Were running primarily on [MySQL] 5.1 which is a little outdated, and so we're moving to MariaDB 10.0 at the moment," Cole said..._

It makes it sound temporary. Which it _can 't_ be.</comment>


Docomo, Fujitsu, Renesas: The triangle thickens - <AUTHOR> http://www.eetimes.com/electronics-blogs/rambling--round/4233698/Docomo--Fujitsu--Renesas--The-triangle-thickens <comment><AUTHOR> Why do you think that NTT Docomo dropped Renesas Mobile from the new consortium set up to develop LTE products? I see three loosely connected but competing power plays unfolding.</comment>


Why Twitter is in Trouble - <AUTHOR> http://www.vox.com/2015/6/11/8761731/twitter-trouble-facebook-twtr

<comment><USER2> tl;dr [You know the story] Twitter is losing money and has difficulty making new users feel heard.

In reality, Twitter has what IBM wishes they had. A relational connection of group-thought for use in analytics. The #hashtag allows for similar interpretations of one general idea allowing for a more diverse understanding of concepts. AI-"Deeplearning" hasnt matured enough for Twitter to be fiscally viable.... yet.

</comment><comment><USER3> The fact that the term 'hashtag' is now a part of people's everyday vocabulary is a testament to the indication of how successful Twitter has been and still is.</comment>


Impressive Workspaces - <AUTHOR> http://i.gizmodo.com/5202200/134-of-the-most-impressive-workspaces-youll-ever-see

<comment><USER3> My humble experience is that gadgets are ultimately counter-productive, and a distraction.

In a previous life I've blown painful amounts of money on music equipment, only to realize that I might have been a decent guitar player if I had just stuck to playing guitar instead of tweaking multitrack digital audio editing equipment with virtual racks of multiband compressors and whiz-bang effects. Same goes for programming, at least in my case.

What I really want is more time.

</comment><comment><USER4> I disagree with the "Impressive" adjective. It is more like cluttered workspaces where sunlight never hit there.

For me, uncluttered workspace is really awesome and it enables me for uncluttered thinking.

I just like mine most than ever... I have a huge clean space in my desk, where my 26'' LCD screen and ergonomic keyboard and mouse are resting at the background, and I bring them forward only when it be absolutely needed (to plug my laptop and get computer work done).

Usually, I enjoy to have a lot of clean place to make my paperwork and thats why I keep everything else (2 laptops, and a lot of gadgets) inside bureau drawers unless I need them for something particular.

</comment><comment><USER5> I'm curious, what exactly is impressive about the "first place" workspace?

<comment><USER6> I kinda had that feeling looking through just about all of them.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Oh, eh, no?

There are a few very nice ones in there, but aren't we over the phase where OMG OMG OMG more than one monitor - and not much else, it seems - <USER2> impressive?

</comment><comment><USER8> [http://i.gizmodo.com/photogallery/impressiveworkspaces/10078...](http://i.gizmodo.com/photogallery/impressiveworkspaces/1007843968?viewSize=thumb1280x1280) this one is pretty sweet :D

and this one is just hilarious [http://i.gizmodo.com/photogallery/impressiveworkspaces/10078...](http://i.gizmodo.com/photogallery/impressiveworkspaces/1007843743?viewSize=thumb1280x1280)

</comment><comment><USER9> Interesting that all of these workspaces were basically decorated caves -- unless I missed one or two.

I've set up a "nest" in a lot of different places. What I'd like is a huge window overlooking something worth viewing everyday, like the mountains or the beach. Something light and open with lots of walking around room, not something that looks like the crypto shack on a nuclear submarine.

To each his own, though.

<comment><USER10> I worked in a building with huge picture windows looking out onto a beach, for a year. I can confirm subjective productivity and relaxation benefits compared to sitting in a windowless room.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Referring to this ([http://i.gizmodo.com/photogallery/impressiveworkspaces/10078...](http://i.gizmodo.com/photogallery/impressiveworkspaces/1007843893)) I've seen more of these vertical screens recently, (and not so recently: [http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:ICL_PERQ_1_workstatio...](http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:ICL_PERQ_1_workstation_Edinburgh_University.jpg)) but I was wondering if they're useful for coding? I'd assume so since you'd be able to view more lines and not white space (unless you're in an IDE) but I'm still a little unsure.

<comment><USER12> they aren't dedicated vertical screens, they rotate.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> The workspaces in that list aren't very impressive at all.

Here's a more comprehensive list of artist's, blogger's and programmer's workspaces: [http://parkablogs.com/content/creative-workspaces-and- home-o...](http://parkablogs.com/content/creative-workspaces-and-home-offices) some of the link will take you to huge flickr pools.

The artist's workspaces are way more interesting.

</comment><comment><USER14> My workspace last year: <http://www.flickr.com/photos/rend/2381390598/>

Now I prefer to head off to some wooded area with Mac Book Pro unibody + mobile wifi hotspot setup in my FJ Cruiser.

</comment><comment><USER15> The most impressive workspace is the one just near the beach, not the one with 100 monitors :)

</comment><comment><USER16> I somehow end up thinking if I ever get to see so _many_ workplaces in RL!

</comment><comment><USER17> Posers. Here's a workspace where actual work gets done: <http://www.flickr.com/photos/msisk/3444885394/sizes/l/>

;)

</comment><comment><USER18> Hmm, I don't know if I'd qualify most of these as "OCD" peoples workspaces honestly.

The majority are pretty cluttered.

</comment><comment><USER19> this one has something charming : [http://i.gizmodo.com/photogallery/impressiveworkspaces/10078...](http://i.gizmodo.com/photogallery/impressiveworkspaces/1007843968)

(no sarcasm)</comment>


Ask HN: Books on meta-learning - <AUTHOR>

I think meta-learning (i.e., learning how to learn) is a way too commonly overlooked subject. Unpopularity notwithstanding, there are some excellent books on the subject. What are some of your favorites?<p>Mine is probably Tony Buzan's "Use Your Head". <comment><USER2> Related, see "How to Solve it": <http://www.math.utah.edu/~pa/math/polya.html>

</comment><comment><USER3> There's probably considerable overlap with books on creativity and making your thinking more flexible. Roger von Oech's _A Whack on the Side of the Head_ and _ Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman!_ may be helpful.

Also, look at some of the books about home schooling, targeted to both parents and the teenagers themselves. I remember Grace Lewellyn's _ The Teenage Liberation Handbook_ having sections along the line of, "How do I go about really learning history/math/foreign languages/etc."

Many things with meta-learning advice will have it as a secondary topic, albeit an important one. Try your public library -- this is an excellent question for a librarian.

</comment><comment><USER4> overcomingbias.com

i've spent hours clicking everything the blog posts link to. these are your bibles: <http://www.logicalfallacies.info/> <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_cognitive_biases>

study those throughly and you will be better equipped than the vast majority of humanity. Disclaimer: exposing the fallacies in social sciences may not win you over with your professor.

</comment><comment><USER5> It's not a book, but understanding the methodology behind supermemo is a good place to start.

</comment><comment><USER6> I didn't fully understand meta-learning until I started reading neuroscience books. Find some introductory text book on neuroscience (Amazon). Then read a book that explains extensively on various forms of neural plasticity. Developmental neuroscience also provides crucial insights Once you understand the fundamental mechanism of how the brain learns, all the methodology behind meta-learning can be derived. (e.g. practice science) Because the brain is a complicated machine and only recently has evolve more complex types of learning, so I personally think it's more important to understand its limitations, (e.g. when you are not learning, or why you can learn physical skills faster than mental skills etc.)

</comment><comment><USER7> Kathy Sierra's blog is fantastic:

<http://headrush.typepad.com/>

Here are printout versions of her posts:

<http://enklo.com/passionate/>

/Gary

</comment><comment><USER8> [http://search.oreilly.com/?q=mind+hacks&submit.x=0&s...](http://search.oreilly.com/?q=mind+hacks&submit.x=0&submit.y=0)

i remember these 2 mind hacks from Oreilly being good, but i htink mine got borrowed forever.

<comment><USER9> I read the mind performance one. It was good but only as a introduction to things like remembering things, calculating fast or planning the day. Lifehack.org delivers also great information about this topic and for free ;)

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> I've never heard of meta-learning, but about a year ago I stumbled onto a branch of philosophy called _epistemology_ or the Theory of Knowledge. My studies there have been absolutely exhilarating and disturbing.

Next time you see someone at the coffee machine, ask them them what is meant by knowledge, reason, belief, truth, evidence, opinion, conviction, and hypocrisy.

The incoherent jumble you'll get back is indicative of the broken and sloppy process of the attempt to process data into knowledge (learning).

<comment><USER11> It is easy to describe those terms through their role in interpersonal interaction and culture, but to either 1) make any claim about the working of the mind or 2) try to bridge the gap between symbol and signified is asking for heartache and endless rhetorical squabbling.

<comment><USER10> Studying a theory of knowledge for the past year hasn't left me with a bunch of definitions, but with models for the acquisition of knowledge that have proven very useful.

I'm sure someone probably told Newton that all that math stuff looked like more trouble than it was worth.

<comment><USER11> Oh, surely. I myself have a great deal of interest in knowledge and skill acquisition (in particular, the differences between first and successive language acquisition, but i digress.) Studying processes and patterns in learning can be a fascinating and deeply enriching experience. My comment was intended to warn against delving into endless debate over terms. I see how my (1) was worded incorrectly, instead it should have said something like "to argue about the emergence of consciousness from the material world and its role on the nature of subjective experience and truth", which i do believe is not a fruitful discussion. If anyone has a particularly convincing or useful discourse about the previous I am open to change, but as it stands all I've read on the matter has been speculation and/or justification for some moral or social agenda.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> The Art of Memory by Frances Yates. Classic study of how people learned to retain vast stores of knowledge before the printed page.

</comment><comment><USER13> I've heard that Thinking And Deciding is good, but I haven't read it personally.

</comment><comment><USER14> Gödel Escher Bach

</comment><comment><USER15> "Learning How to Learn": Idries Shah</comment>


Show HN: A Node.js and electron based image viewer for Mac, Windows and Linux - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/sachinchoolur/lightgallery-desktop/tree/master <comment><USER2> Recently: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11776321](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11776321)</comment>


Humanity's best Go player says the robots have already won - <AUTHOR> https://qz.com/989694/the-future-belongs-to-ai-wrote-ke-jie-the-worlds-best-go-player-before-his-match-against-google-deepminds-alphago/ <comment><AUTHOR> Title edited for space.</comment>


Yep, We're at That Point. Gorsuch Gets the Reddit Horse/Duck Question - <AUTHOR> http://www.nbcnews.com/card/yep-were-point-gorsuch-gets-reddit-horse-duck-question-n736746 <comment><USER2> Background?

<comment><USER3> [http://knowyourmeme.com/memes/horse-sized- duck](http://knowyourmeme.com/memes/horse-sized-duck)

<comment><USER2> So you could say with a better than 50% guess Gorsuch never was in a live AMA or is not a Reddit regular. I suppose it's good to know a future supreme court justice does not use reddit.</comment></comment></comment>


Escalators changed our sense of the built environment - <AUTHOR> https://www.smithsonianmag.com/innovation/how-escalator-forever-changed-our-sense-space-180972468/ <comment><USER2> Just opening the page I got assaulted by a shitletter popup and notifications permissions popup.

Didn't expect the Smithsonian to fall so low.

<comment><USER3> Agreed. I'll accept _one_ inconvenience when going to a page, but I don't think pages that throw up both a modal popup _and_ a push notification dialog deserve to make HN front page.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> The funny thing for me is that I met for first time this scalators on last month

</comment><comment><USER5> Off topic, but why are the headline fonts squeezed together in Chrome (but not in Firefox)?

[https://i.imgur.com/m82osF6.png](https://i.imgur.com/m82osF6.png)

Edit: it seems to be a bug in Chrome 76+. Reported to [https://github.com/googlefonts/OswaldFont/issues/16](https://github.com/googlefonts/OswaldFont/issues/16)</comment>