How Harvard Business School Has Reshaped American Capitalism - <AUTHOR> https://www.nytimes.com/2017/04/24/books/review/golden-passport-duff-mcdonald.html?smid=fb-nytimes&smtyp=cur&smvar=wknd&_r=0 <comment><USER3> Whenever I hear critiques of MBAs I think of this anecdote from a paper [1] by Yanis Varoufakis:

 _In the parlance of signaling theory these [MBA] transcripts are known as screening devices. One personnel manager (of a financial services company) explained this to me candidly: "I have no doubt that economics courses, MBAs, etc. teach nothing I need my employees to know. If anything I need to reprogram them on the job. The courses they have taken encourage bad thinking." "But then," I asked, "why do you prefer to hire college graduates?" "Because," he answered matter of factly, "if these kids were willing (and able) to pay large sums of money in fees; if they submitted boring assignment after boring assignment without fail, and did not complain vigorously in the process; then there is a good chance that they are the kind of people who will appeal to my customers and do as they are told."_

[1] [https://www.yanisvaroufakis.eu/wp- content/uploads/2017/02/ag...](https://www.yanisvaroufakis.eu/wp- content/uploads/2017/02/against-equaltiy-published-version.pdf)

<comment><USER4> This is true of college degrees in general, lots of companies in various industries require proof of a bachelor's degree, regardless of what the subject matter was, because it shows an ability to stick to a goal and get something done, despite the actual quality or enjoyment of the work.

<comment><USER5> Spend tens of thousands of dollars, go into significant debt, just to prove you can "stick to a goal."

I can't be the only one who sees a problem with this. It's either a lie or a poor reflection on our society.

<comment><USER6> "Significant debt" being on average about the price of a low end car. And "prove you can stick to a goal" being a massive increase in lifetime earnings over those without a college degree.

I can't be the only person who sees how fair and progressive this is? It's a wonderful reflection on our society.

<comment><USER5> [http://money.cnn.com/2016/10/18/pf/college/average- student-l...](http://money.cnn.com/2016/10/18/pf/college/average-student-loan- debt/)

Average debt for 2015 grads is 30k. That is not a low end car.

> And "prove you can stick to a goal" being a massive increase in lifetime > earnings over those without a college degree.

Going to college is not the only way you can prove you stick to a goal, which according to the OP, is the only purpose of college. This is an immense waste of resources, all so that a company can take a little less risk when hiring someone, if at all. And college is such a business today that academic integrity is an afterthought, the degree is continually losing its value.

> I can't be the only person who sees how fair and progressive this is? It's a > wonderful reflection on our society.

There is no need for sarcasm here. Either way, it doesn't follow from your argument that it is fair and progressive.

<comment><USER6> It took just a few moments to find out if $30K is actually fair and progressive. College grads average around $30K more per year in compensation than high school grads. These degrees are already highly subsidized. So tax payers, including those with only high school degrees, are paying for people to become educated and thus make more money, with the hope that some sort of trickle down economics will make it better for those without college degrees. I'd tongue in cheek call this highly regressive.

<comment><USER5> > It took just a few moments to find out if $30K is actually fair and > progressive.

This is a false comparison. 30k is average DEBT they have-not the total cost of college education. Add many more tens of thousands-just so a company can take a little less risk, according to OP.

The reason we have subsidies is because businesses now want a degree, for no good reason, as evidenced by the OP. Because more people, who can't afford it, need college degrees, the government stepped in to provide that, with loans, which they make money on, and grants, which they hope to be paid for by future taxes. That doesn't account for all of the growth in tuition prices, rather, the demand does. Demand has skyrocketed because college grads make more. Since demand has skyrocketed, the supply of college grads has substantially increased-commoditizing the college degree, which benefits businesses because now they can pay less for a college grad. That's the bottom line.

The problem is more nuanced than just cost and salary. The fact is to make good salary college wasn't necessary decades ago. Now it is. So before what you got for free, now costs tens of thousands of dollars. How that is "progressive" is foreign to me.

<comment><USER6> Funny, I just realized my error and came here to correct it and saw you'd already done it. Hah, thanks. And I sympathize with the point about jobs paying more in the past without a degree, but I believe that the premise of the article is also wrong - that college degree confer no benefit to the company other than proving individuals can grind through boring tasks. Although to be fair, I got a CS/Math degree in 2.5 years, and I don't know that I've held a job where I couldn't have learned most of the programming required in a few months on the job. And I've never needed a lick of the math I so painfully learned. So maybe jobs actually requiring degrees are fewer and farer between than I realized.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> The classical model of capitalism is that profits are a side effect of some socially beneficial activity. But today, "maximizing shareholder value" as a goal has been so well optimized that it often no longer requires doing anything useful. This led to such strange situations as 40% of US corporate profits coming from financial activities. (That ended in 2008.) There's still the hedge fund industry, which is a net lose for its customers but a huge win for its operators.

The Harvard Business School helped develop the theory, and the policy thinking, that made this possible. Short-term capital gains are not heavily taxed, for example. Both Bill Gates and Warren Buffett have said they should be. That policy, which favors financial maneuvering, is so well entrenched that it's not even discussed politically any more.

<comment><USER8> _The classical model of capitalism is that profits are a side effect of some socially beneficial activity_

No, the "invisible hand" as stated by Adam Smith, which is presumably what you mean, states the EXACT opposite causality order.

<comment><USER9> What is meant by the invisible hand, and what did Smith say about it? I see this a lot, but I'm not sure what it means when I see it.

There are others with different views of capitalism, such as Marxian economists, Proudhon, neo-Ricardians, post-Keynesians etc. Marxian economists in particular with interesting things to say about the origin of profit, alienation, commodity fetishism and classes within capitalism.

<comment><USER10> "The invisible hand" is a notion that Adam Smith wrote about that essentially captures the idea of social benefits being an emergent consequence of self- interested parties engaging in the markets together.

You can read more about it here, including the (exactly three) specific passages in which Smith used the term: [https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Invisible_hand#Other_uses_of...](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Invisible_hand#Other_uses_of_the_phrase_by_Smith)

The specific point of the phrase is that the individuals produce a net benefit to society through _no intention of their own_ , it just happens to be a happy side effect of their work.

EDIT: Don't shoot the messenger, people.

<comment><USER9> How is this any different to "trickle down" on a large scale? If you encourage capitalistic self-interest enough, it will create benefit? Why not just create the benefit directly instead of going the roundabout way of having people act in their own self-interest, fostering mean-spirited relationships between people, competition instead of cooperation and general wastage of resources?

But perhaps there are other laws within capitalism. The law of value, for instance, which its recognition by capitalists and relative ignorance of it by wage labourers leads to Marx's theory of surplus value - this is the side effect of this self-interested activity of labour.

<comment><USER11> > _If you encourage capitalistic self-interest enough, it will create benefit? > Why not just create the benefit directly instead of going the roundabout way > of having people act in their own self-interest, fostering mean-spirited > relationships between people, competition instead of cooperation and general > wastage of resources?_

The idea is that this "roundabout" way is in fact more _natural_ to individuals. People want to actively take care of themselves and their families first - you may say that "capitalistic self-interest" is actually rooted in our biology. Some forms of market economy seem to be the _default_ , "lowest-energy-state" form of human self-organization. It has an added benefit of being heavily self-regulating through feedback loops implicit everywhere in trade.

Now, it would be wrong to pretend it all worked out perfectly and everyone is happy. It didn't and people aren't happy. Yet capitalism has the neat quality of aligning with a lot of basic human needs[0], and that's why while seemingly "roundabout", it's still[1] much easier than top-down management of social goodness.

\--

[0] - _Perceived_ autonomy would be another one of such needs.

[1] - I do wonder if in an interconnected reality of "information age" we couldn't pull off central management driven by algorithms. Someone on HN pointed out to me though that this would still lose an important feedback channel, namely preferences of customers as expressed by purchasing decisions.

<comment><USER12> > _you may say that "capitalistic self-interest" is actually rooted in our > biology._

I hold such deep issue with this. Sure, there's an aspect to all living beings that they "self-preserve." But you seem to be implying here that it's part of _human nature_ to be primarily self-interested, and if that's a correct assumption, it's one I believe to be deeply incorrect.

We can look around and see people acting in self-interested ways all of the time, but we can also see people doing lots of benevolent, good, supportive things for other people. In addition, it's no surprise many people go around day-to-day acting this way, given that they live in a system which encourages (née requires) them to do so.

Just because people can conform and act within a system, does not mean it is part of their nature. A system that actively encouraged and promoted the common good and communal caring among individuals would likely produce more of that behavior as well. Just because we see one type of behavior or another is not enough to decide that it's human nature.

<comment><USER11> The way I see it: in general, people seem to form groups and care more about people in those groups than about those outside. What groups people form in their mind seems to be a pretty individual thing, depedent on the way one sees themselves in the world, but there are always groups and they always seem to be ordered.

That doesn't mean people don't give a shit about anything outside their closest clique! It only means that groups have different _relative_ importance to an individual; for instance, when your family member is sick, you might temporarily stop attending the soup kitchen and spend that time helping the sick kin.

My point is that such "ordering of care" is part of our firmware, and because capitalism is compatible with that, it's easy to implement by humans - in the same way the basic concept of private property seems to be also a part of our firmware, and more extreme parts of communism being incompatible with that meant people started to work against the system.

Basically, if your system aligns well with natural tendencies of humans, it's easier to make it work. Corollary to that is that you should design your systems to work with natural tendencies of humans, instead of trying to change those tendencies directly.

<comment><USER12> Points taken. And I agree that we should design systems to work with the natural tendencies of humans. But we can do better than (and I'm being reductive here) capitalism's current "eventually everything will optimize out even if poor people starve to death because they weren't born with money." In fact, I'd argue that 'modern' capitalism really is only activating a small portion of human nature (that is, the self-interested part), and shielding us from those aspects of us that are caring for others and concerned for other human beings. When we put everything from the value of private jets to food, water, and healthcare on the same value metric (money), and then tell people that whatever amount of money they have is indicative of what they are worth, it's no wonder we as a society wind up treating people as objects instead of human beings.

Anecdotally, the US is a nation with more than enough food and shelter for all its inhabitants. Yet many people live on the streets, often because they were born into poverty. This goes against most people's "firmware." Yet capitalism takes no account of that part of human nature (I'd argue those parts that make us 'better than animals.').

<comment><USER11> I agree with your points here, and I'm not endorsing more capitalism as a solution to problems of current capitalism. I was only answering the question "why such roundabout way" by pointing out that, when viewed through the lens of human nature, it's actually a pretty direct way.

Though honestly, it's also easy to forget all the benefits capitalism brought us when criticizing it, and IMO it's worth to have them in mind when discussing alternatives.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> The modern MBA is so efficient that is has optimized out research and development and many times the building part, which leads back to r&d. This is great for short-term and the upper end, bad long-term and for the core product. A big part of the equation missing today is longer term consumer strength i.e. wages, community impact, continue self-disruption/research etc.

Startups usually do most of the r&d now, and once it gets to small/mid level and "the process" comes in, the bizdevs take over after it is usually already an established product and r&d mostly completed. Depending on the balance of that takeover it either kills the product, slowly bleeds it, or if the focus is still on product then sometimes a super growth engine.

Companies that can keep a focus on r&d, building and changing markets while being very efficient are key. Usually these are engineer led (Amazon, Tesla, Google etc)

<comment><USER14> Google is an example of the failure of being engineer led in my opinion. I think it's led to Google having institutional ADD and has left them with countless failed products and others that have been neglected for years (has anyone worked on Google Finance in the past 5 years? Probably not).

A lot of successful Google products were acquired (Android, YouTube) and others were able to leverage their dominance in search. But we also saw that approach fail when the entire company was directed at trying to beat Facebook. It infiltrated all their existing properties and employees were directly incentivized with compensation linked to the success of Google+. And yet all of that wasn't able to overcome Facebook's network effect. The go-to Google strategy for creating a hit product failed (and it also explains why they seem to fail at anything that has network effects or requires consumer affinity and brand: 8 messengers and countless failed hardware products).

Google stands a good chance of being the next Xerox PARC: good at science projects and technology, but destined to see others capitalize on it.

And it makes sense if you think about it. Google's origin story was 2 PhDs coming up with better technology in a market that was already defined and a business model that was already understood. They applied that technology well, but it was only possible because of the openness of the web. It feels very much right place, right time.

<comment><USER15> My view is that Google is insanely good at products that demand performance at scale. Google search, YouTube, Google Docs, Google Maps, Gmail, and anything that supplements their usage Android, Chrome. Their failures like Google+, Google Glass indicate a product-market misfit than a result of being engineer led. An engineer (software related) is no less fit to lead a tech firm than a doctor is fit to lead a Medical service facility than a musician leading a record company than a sportsman managing a sport team than a chef leading a restaurant.

Sure it could be the next Xerox PARC, but the next Apple (following the bad metaphor) will very likely be a division of Google itself.

And finally, if anything, Google's ability to kill products that it does not think valuable, is what keeps it innovating, exploring and yet not be a dinosaur search company. (I do miss Google Reader though. Did they really have to kill it so bad ? )

<comment><USER16> Isn't Google amorphous by design? I thought Google was supposed to exist everywhere hidden in plain sight, and its many products are just the interfaces it uses to connect to us. At least that's the impression I got from listening to Schmidt all these years talk about how Google can go anywhere and be anything it wants to be.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> I have a Harvard MBA ('14, sec C), and where this whole argument falls apart for me is the idea of "The Golden Ticket". The author is confusing correlation with causation.

My MBA has had virtually no effect on my opportunities or employability. Heck, as an engineer and entrepreneur, it has probably done more harm than good. This is a consistent experience - with the exception of (perhaps) the military and overseas students folks tend to go back to their previous career track and trajectory.

Furthermore it's not really a very transformative experience. The ideals, priorities and abilities students bring to the program are generally the ones they leave with.

What HBS does well, above all else, is act as a filter. They really do a remarkable job at admissions, putting together a group of folks who are likely (by nature or nurture) to go on to have an outsized impact on the world.

<comment><USER18> > _My MBA has had virtually no effect on my opportunities or employability... > What HBD does well, above all else, is act as a filter. "_

And you don't think employers realize this? You don't think this pre-screening process impacts their judgement when looking at job candidates?

The top management consultancies, the top investment banks and private equity groups are full of HBS grads. You think they all would have got these jobs without going through the HBS process, networking with their peers and alumni who end up working for these same companies, interning, and getting the HBS seal of approval?

You refer to yourself as an engineer. That might be why HBS didn't help _your_ employability. But if you don't think it helped others, you're dreaming.

<comment><USER17> > The top management consultancies, the top investment banks and private > equity groups are full of HBS grads. You think they all would have got these > jobs without going through the HBS process, networking with their peers and > alumni who end up working for these same companies, interning, and getting > the HBS seal of approval?

Well yeah, absolutely. HBS is full of analysts and consultants from those firms and institutions taking a pit stop on their way to partner.

I find it fascinating how many people here are eager to tell me I don't know what I'm talking about when I'm the one with firsthand experience..

<comment><USER19> Let's take a specific example. For grad school, I went to a university with a generally well regarded MBA program, which drew on-campus recruiting from MBB. The recruiting process for MBA students was short recruiter interview -> case interviews. Non-MBA students interested in positions at MBB had it a bit different: in between the recruiter interview and the case interviews was an extremely difficult written exam designed to test the candidate's "reasoning" ability. A couple of my (pretty smart) classmates tried to prepare for these exams and eventually took them, failing miserably. They both reported that it was the hardest test they ever took. Both ended up at second-tier consulting firms.

Let's get more general and rigorous. Kellogg Business School professor Lauren Rivera studies the effects of educational credentials on employment opportunity. Her research confirms that educational pedigree is the single most important factor for gaining employment in elite positions in finance, consulting, and law, with the implication that your education is an indication of your social class, and your comfort in the upper echelons of society. [Link to her work] ([http://www.kellogg.northwestern.edu/faculty/directory/rivera...](http://www.kellogg.northwestern.edu/faculty/directory/rivera_lauren.aspx#research))

I would say it's bit ignorant to say that a Harvard MBA has no effect on employability or opportunity.

<comment><USER17> Comparing MBAs' & undergrads' experiences is specious, at best. And if you're comparing other graduate students against MBAs, the recruiting process for MBB is exactly the same. (source: I did my time at McKinsey, the 'M' in MBB.)

Regarding Prof. Rivera's study, I'm curious whether it attempts to separate causation & correlation. At HBS, the number of ex-MBB consultants in the program is roughly equal to the number who leave into MBB - many swap out and in, but the figures are in the same range. Does she account for that?

Also, any analysis which groups JDs & MBAs together is 100% flawed. Those two may have similar prestige, but wildly different career progressions.

<comment><USER19> > Comparing MBAs' & undergrads' experiences is specious, at best. And if > you're comparing other graduate students against MBAs, the recruiting > process for MBB is exactly the same. (source: I did my time at McKinsey, the > 'M' in MBB.)

I'm talking about other graduate students, and (at least in this example) the recruiting process is NOT the same. It didn't matter if you were getting a master's in basket weaving or a PhD in physics, you were required to take the test, again at least at this particular university. MBAs were spared the test and went straight to the normal interview process. Also, had you not done an elite MBA, what do you think your path to McKinsey would have consisted of?

> Regarding Prof. Rivera's study, I'm curious whether it attempts to separate > causation & correlation. At HBS, the number of ex-MBB consultants in the > program is roughly equal to the number who leave into MBB - many swap out > and in, but the figures are in the same range. Does she account for that?

Prof. Rivera's research consists of multiple related studies whose findings confirm that, regardless of skills and relevant experience, the most important factor in hiring for elite firms in business and law are educational pedigree, creating a discrepancy in opportunity for those that get an elite education and those that don't. She accomplishes this through ethnographic research on the recruitment practices of the firms.

> Also, any analysis which groups JDs & MBAs together is 100% flawed. Those > two may have similar prestige, but wildly different career progressions.

I disagree in this context. The point of her research is that careers which tend to lead to powerful positions in society are practically closed off to those that don't have elite educations. If you want get into high finance or MBB consulting or BigLaw, it behooves you to attend an elite university, and while you're there, do as the Romans do. Prof. Rivera's research is _really_ interesting, you should check it out.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Prof. Michael Jensen's higly-cited 1976 paper [0] identified the principal- agent problem [1] then argued that a company's sole purpose is to maximize shareholder value. This thinking is what gradually led to the now widespread obsession with stock prices and short-term results.

Short-termism is harmful.

Jack Welch said it best in a Financial Times [1] interview:

 _"On the face of it, shareholder value is the dumbest idea in the world. Shareholder value is a result, not a strategy… your main constituencies are your employees, your customers and your products. Managers and investors should not set share price increases as their overarching goal. … Short-term profits should be allied with an increase in the long-term value of a company."_

[0] Theory of the firm: Managerial behavior, agency costs and ownership structure, [http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/0304405X769...](http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/0304405X7690026X)

[1] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Principal%E2%80%93agent_proble...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Principal%E2%80%93agent_problem)

[2] [http://www.ft.com/intl/cms/s/0/294ff1f2-0f27-11de- ba10-00007...](http://www.ft.com/intl/cms/s/0/294ff1f2-0f27-11de- ba10-0000779fd2ac.html#axzz1eiLpL2PZ)

</comment><comment><USER21> > [Professor Michael Jensen] advocated an "agency" theory of management in > which management's sole duty was to maximize shareholder value. This upended > the long-held "stakeholder" model, in which management was seen as having > broader obligations to a corporation's workers, customers and communities.

It's interesting how that theory has filtered into public consciousness. My sense is that the public doesn't grasp it as one theory among many possibilities, but as a law of nature (a pattern I see for many ideas - <USER2> lack perspective that the theory is one of many possibilities, and different concepts were popular before and others will be popular later). You can read people using agency theory, thought not by that name, on HN regularly.

Consider how amazing that is: An academic comes up with a theory, and eventually tens of millions (or more) are repeating it. Is it marketed? Even if it is, many or most of the people repeating it probably have no idea of the marketing. Is it part of an intentional political propaganda campaign? I know other popular ideas successfully pushed on the public this way (one I know of in particular is the "death tax", and I've observed others where the talking points frame and effectively end the discussion).

What incredible power. Is it random? Can it be directed and controlled? Who knows how and who is doing it? I know political groups do it to an extent, as I said, but I don't know their range or accuracy, so to speak.

<comment><USER22> Nautilus had a great article a while back on how things get popular[1]: it's more a function of social networks than of the things themselves. The research detailed in the article looked at music specifically, but I think the idea generalizes to most anything including hard-to-falsify academic theories.

[http://nautil.us/issue/5/fame/homo-narrativus-and-the- troubl...](http://nautil.us/issue/5/fame/homo-narrativus-and-the-trouble-with- fame)

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> Clayton Christensen, Harvard Business School prof, has promoted a tax structure that has much lower taxes on investments that last multiple years (say 5), and higher taxes on short-term investment (less than a year) as a way to incentivize long-term R&D. I like this as a mechanism to change the way MBAs think about profit and investment. I.e., as something that I'd love to see more at Harvard get behind.

<comment><USER24> I'm not sure that would help much. I think the risks and uncertainties of long-term R&D increase much faster than any tax incentive can compensate for. My favorite story is the (real) history of Silicon Valley. I once thought that was a proof for what private enterprise can accomplish. Turns out that SV is actually based on the unrestrained spending on R&D (of borrowed money, of course) by government during WWII. [0]

Private enterprise wants a level of certainty, long-term or not. Tax incentives don't reduce the uncertainty. I doubt that money is the major constraint. Look at some major corporations basically "swimming" in money, and they also should be able to borrow easily (and cheaply) at this time.

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

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> I am admittedly out of my depth here, but I want to make a quick comment about something I've noticed from HBR publications (which claim to be primarily from HBS professors).

Typically, they strike me as the most stereotypically "academic" writings that I regularly run across. Meaning they are working hard to maintain an appearance of rigor and neutrality, but spend a great deal of time and effort squinting and straining to produce an outcome that aligns with their intended philosophy and desired conclusions. There is just so much output that is naive and tone-deaf to what's experienced on the ground in the white-collar world. While you can arrange some battery of numbers to support almost any case ("there are lies, damned lies, and statistics"), it doesn't change the efficacy or practicality of some of the things they end up endorsing/suggesting.

This is not a universal or blanket condemnation, as I do follow HBR precisely because sometimes their output is interesting or valuable. But many times it's clearly the result of a bubble.

One of the most offensive habits of academia is to elevate people to professorships almost straight out of school, despite these people having virtually zero real experience practicing the art they claim to know how to teach. This is particularly offensive when it comes to fields where the art is a crucial part of the application, like business and law -- which, afaik, are two fields where these farcical elevations happen routinely.

</comment><comment><USER26> What do people really think about business school degrees? To me there seems to be a large disconnect between what we think of the person who takes one (ambitious, hard-working) and what he is taught there (basically nothing).

I went to business school as part of my degree at a top UK institution. They have 1 year MBAs so the joint school people got a fair taste of what the MBAs did.

And let me tell you, as half engineers nobody was impressed. Is this really what they do? Read a bunch of stories about Betamax or various Japanese firms, and extract lessons from that? That's not even a rigorous history course.

As to what the overall effect is, it just appears there is a class of firms who are fearful of hiring the wrong people, so they hire a brand name. These people are more likely to get into such firms, but it's not clear at all anything from the course is used there in a way that is more than superficial.

Have they damaged society by being too focused on short term gains? Well, it's not just Harvard and MBAs that went that way in the 1980s. Society as a whole did, too.

<comment><USER27> Several friends who have done MBAs have all told me the same thing: When you do an MBA, you pay for two things. First, for the network of alumni. Second, for the badge in your resume. In both cases, obviously the more prestigious the school, the better (and more expensive). Since that's what would carry more weight as a brand name (i.e. Harvard) and also richer / more influential people will attend as alumni, thus those personal connections being more valuable. Recently I heard about some MBAs called "Executive MBA" or something like that, which were basically shorter (1 year) and more expensive. They justified this by saying they were targeted at people already on the workforce, usually in management, who wanted to move up, and would really appreciate 1 year titles instead of 2 years. But again, it's for the same reason. More expensive title => "Wealthier" alumni => Looks better on your resume. And to top it off, you just have to spend a year "studying".

<comment><USER28> This almost sounds like a finishing school for corporate courtiers.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> What underlines this, I think at least, is the fundamental failure of _representative_ democracy: if the representatives can gain larger personal wealth especially on the long run by electing rules that concentrate wealth they will do so. This will work, alas, even without any corruption -- when they leave their post they will be able to get compensated for participating in the "system" and they know this. Because a Business School can only corrupt society if regulation lets that happen.

Breaking this up is not easy. I believe liquid (or delegative) democracy is the road forward. It is very interesting that the early Soviets before the Bolsheviks took over were pretty much this. [http://www.ditext.com/voline/89.html](http://www.ditext.com/voline/89.html) But the time was not right for that -- now everyone has the means to communicate in their pocket so perhaps it's time now.

</comment><comment><USER30> It's so easy to criticize Harvard Business School (HBS). Outsiders -- and insiders -- have been doing it for decades now, this book being the latest example. The Web is littered with accounts of spoiled Harvard MBAs full of hot air who have done stupid things.

Yet the school somehow continues to churn out an impressive number of people who rise to the top in extremely competitive fields, from Michael Bloomberg to Ray Dalio to Mitt Romney to Sheryl Sandberg, to name just a few.[1]

How does _THAT_ happen?

My take is that over time HBS has evolved a process for identifying and attracting a disproportionate number of people with that kind of potential. Speaking from personal experience, I know and/or interact regularly with a good number of HBS grads. While some of them are indeed full of hot air, a surprising number are truly impressive individuals who are not only thoughtful and likable, but also capable of "running through walls" to achieve their goals.

[1] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harvard_Business_School#Notabl...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harvard_Business_School#Notable_alumni)

<comment><USER31> Or it allows you to hobnob with extremely wealthy people and make connections with them.

</comment></comment><comment><USER32> What does a university do with a $32.7 billion endowment?

<comment><USER33> Invests it, and runs the university on the returns. Assuming a 4% yearly rate of return, then that's around $1.5B a year in money available for operating expenses. As a point of comparison, Facebook spends ~10x that (~$15B), Uber spends ~2x that ($3B), etc. Harvard obviously has additional revenue streams, but there you go.

<comment><USER34> Comparing tech firm operational costs to universities is a bit ridiculous -- Facebook runs multiple private datacenters globally. Most universities get by with a dozen clustered on campus serving administrative, educational and research objectives. It also serves more or less the planet, whereas the Harvards and Berkeleys of the world exist to serve a few dozen thousand at at time.

$1.5B pays for quite a bit of research. Or, more accurately, a lot of real estate speculation for the board of trustees to play.

<comment><USER33> Of course! The point was to put the number next to a number known by the typical HN reader, not to imply the businesses were at all similar.

> Most universities get by with a dozen clustered on campus serving > administrative, educational and research objectives

... A dozen what?

<comment><USER35> > > Most universities get by with a dozen clustered on campus serving > administrative, educational and research objectives > > ... A dozen what?

Looks like GP meant "a dozen data-centers", to compare the costs.

<comment><USER33> I figured that, but I wanted to give the chance at clarification, because we were mainly discussing operational expenses, and there's no way data centers even clears 1% of the cost of running Harvard

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> On the same note, here's some research on the impact of Harvard MBAs as CEOs: [http://www.mintzberg.org/blog/mbas-as- ceos](http://www.mintzberg.org/blog/mbas-as-ceos)

> _" A decade after its publication in 1990, I looked at a book called Inside > the Harvard Business School, by David Ewing, long an insider. (The first > line was "The Harvard Business School is probably the most powerful private > institution in the world.") The book listed 19 Harvard alumni who "had made > it to the top"—the school's superstars as of 1990. My attention was drawn to > a few of them who would not have been on that list after 1990 [...] So > Joseph Lampel and I studied the post-1990 records of all 19. How did they > do? In a word, badly."_

</comment><comment><USER37> It was explained to me once that it wasn't Harvard Business School that was responsible for the decline of capitalism, but Wharton. That the two represented two very different approaches to people. Harvard supposedly taught to value employees and customers as people, and to strive for social good as a primary goal. Wharton supposedly taught to treat employees and customers as renewable resources, dehumanizing them, and to strive for profits and shareholder value as the only goals. The source was biased to old-school ivy league, but someone I trust. I've never attended either school.

<comment><USER38> Wharton is old-school Ivy League. You probably know this, but just from the way you worded it, wasn't clear.

</comment></comment><comment><USER39> I'm sympathetic to arguments that MBAs, particularly at elite institutions, mostly benefit the graduate and not the company that employs him. I read an interesting study recently that made this claim by comparing the stock-returns of companies led by Harvard MBAs vs the market as a whole. Sure, the study is no smoking gun, but it's on the right track.

In contrast, the entire book reads like a series of anecdotes. And given that Harvard-MBA recruits the best and most ambitious students who go on to occupy numerous positions of power, you can always find a harvard MBA scapegoat behind every business failure that ever occurs. I don't see how this proves anything about the quality of Harvard-MBAs, other than the fact that they aren't perfect supermen. One could use this exact same line of reasoning and "evidence" in order to claim that white men are the cause of all problems in America.

</comment><comment><USER40> HBS now has courses like Building Sustainable Cities and Reimagining Capitalism, both courses created in response to what I presume is student interest in subjects beyond the profit maximization motive.

Outside of a few courses and a few class discussions within each course that are centered in exploring social value, the overwhelming majority of the experience requires students to check their social mindsets at the door and think like stewards of shareholder value.

One of the saddest parts about the HBS classroom is its reliance on student participation and student-led learning. While this is an effective way of training students to assert their opinions, I have seen several circumstances in which groupthink and conformist pressure keeps the "social" viewpoint at the margins of the in-class discussion. HBS just isn't the place for critically thinking about anything other than profit and loss.

Edit: grammar

</comment><comment><USER41> These kinds of narratives are _so_ appealing, but they are so very difficult to justify.

Harvard has monumental cachet, and 2008 is still an interesting topic. So it makes for a super interesting argument to suggest that Harvard is somehow responsible for 2008. But _come on_. This is simplistic, to say the very least.

This kind of narrative reminds me of when people "explain" why Apple under Steve Jobs was so successful. It's safe to theorize in that case because we can't rerun history and do experiments. 2008 is the same way.

</comment><comment><USER42> It does seem like Jensen was key in evangelizing ideas that tied executive compensation to stock performance. This even led to a 1993 IRS rule [1]. Here "value" was clearly shareholder value; the dollar value of stock.

Then, in 2000, on the verge of the Enron collapse, Jensen offered an updated theory - "Value Maximization and the Corporate Objective Function" [2]. Here, he suggested that the definition of "value" perhaps needed to evolve, and consider stakeholders. However, I'm not sure this later work had the impact of changing executive compensation, or corporate decision-making, probably just created debate.

Probably feels something like not being able to fix a bug in production..

"Undeniably one of the most influential business theorists of modern times, he (Michael Jensen) advocated an "agency" theory of management in which management's sole duty was to maximize shareholder value. This upended the long-held "stakeholder" model, in which management was seen as having broader obligations to a corporation's workers, customers and communities."

Wikipedia [1]: "After Jensen and Murphy (1990), Congress passed a law, making it cost effective to pay executives in equity. As a result, executives had a financial incentive to focus their efforts on increasing stock price. In the short run, some executives even manipulated accounting numbers (e.g., Enron, Global Crossing) to achieve this goal"

HBS '00 [3]: Jensen, new theory of Enlightened Value Maximization: "We must give people enough structure to understand what maximizing value means so that they can be guided by it and therefore have a chance to actually achieve it. They must be turned on by the vision or the strategy in the sense that it taps into some human desire or passion of their own—for example, a desire to build the world's best automobile or to create a film or play that will move people for centuries. All this can be not only consistent with value seeking, but a major contributor to it.

And this brings us up against the limits of value maximization per se. Value seeking tells an organization and its participants how their success in achieving a vision or in implementing a strategy will be assessed. But value maximizing or value seeking says nothing about how to create a superior vision or strategy. Nor does it tell employees or managers how to find or establish initiatives or ventures that create value. It only tells them how we will measure success in their activity."

[1] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_C._Jensen](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_C._Jensen) [2] [http://www.hbs.edu/faculty/Publication%20Files/00-058_f2896b...](http://www.hbs.edu/faculty/Publication%20Files/00-058_f2896ba9-f272-40ca- aa8d-a7645f43a3a9.pdf) [3] [http://hbswk.hbs.edu/item/value-maximization-and- stakeholder...](http://hbswk.hbs.edu/item/value-maximization-and-stakeholder- theory)

</comment><comment><USER43> "France's prestigious "Grandes Écoles" — not H.B.S. — appear to have generated a disproportionate number of the financial engineers who unwittingly helped cause the crisis.)". Wow... just wow.

</comment><comment><USER44> Read Chomsky and weep.

<comment><USER45> I'll read Chomsky's work as a linguist. As for his economic and political writings, I'm going to pretend that they don't exist until he pulls his head out of his ass and stops excusing genocide.

</comment></comment><comment><USER46> I thoroughly enjoy John Ralston Saul -- he popped up on HN a while back[1]. A Canadian philospher with a GSOH - what's not to love?

From his Doubter's Companion (highly recommended) - an occasionally acerbic description of many things - comes this definitive entry under Chicago / Harvard School of Economics:

> A great centre of contemporary SCHOLASTICISM. The economists working there > and produced by it are as important to the stagnation of useful thought as > the Schoolmen of the University of Paris were at the height of the Middle > Ages.

> Like that of the Paris scholastics, their mastery of highly complex > rhetorical details obscures a great void at the centre of their argument. > They also share a tactical genius for exporting their conceptual definitions > to less important centres around the world. The result is a pleasing > symphony of international echoes imitating their calculations and cadences > and so confirming their correctness, even when their policies bring economic > disaster. The percussion section of Chicago's orchestra is the Nobel > committee for economics. Each golden medal is like another congratulatory > parchment presented at the end of an elaborate theological debate.

> But what of content? There isn't much. What of Friedrich Hayek and Milton > Friedman? These minor Thomists preach little more than inevitability and so > counsel passivity.

> What they call libertarian economics is a remarkable revenge of the > scholastics on the men of the Enlightenment, who had theoretically destroyed > them. Peel away the tangle of intellectual leaves from the Chicago School > and what remains is a great clockmaker god who has set the world ticking. > But the conclusion of the Enlightenment was that god's indifference left > humans free to organize the world as they wished. Chicago has so deformed > this idea as to invert it. The great clock has been turned into an absolute, > all-encompassing system. Better than an ideology, the world is its own > absolute economic truth. We must remain passive before its majesty.

> This is a denial of Western experience. It is nonsense which simply comforts > the power slipping increasingly into the corporatist structures.

> Strategic thinking can save a great deal of time wasted over tactics. A > large number of America's economic problems, and those of the West, could be > solved by shutting down the Chicago School of Economics.

> This would not prevent the academics employed there from preaching their > essentially anti-social and amoral doctrines. They would be gathered up with > delight by the hundreds of imitation Chicago Schools. The purpose of closure > would be simply to disentangle a tendentious ideology from its unassailable > position within contemporary power structures. The same sort of liberating > shock treatment was applied to European civilization in 1723 when the > Society of Jesus (Jesuits) was disbanded. The effect was to set free the > ideas of the Enlightenment.

[1] [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10139144](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10139144)

</comment><comment><USER47> one solution for the "...the Moral Failure of the MBA Elite " \- part:

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

"MBA Oath (short version)"

 _" As a manager, my purpose is to serve the greater good by bringing people and resources together to create value that no single individual can create alone. Therefore I will seek a course that enhances the value my enterprise can create for society over the long term. I recognize my decisions can have far-reaching consequences that affect the well-being of individuals inside and outside my enterprise, today and in the future. As I reconcile the interests of different constituencies, I will face choices that are not easy for me and others.

Therefore I promise:

-I will act with utmost integrity and pursue my work in an ethical manner.

-I will safeguard the interests of my shareholders, co-workers, customers and the society in which we operate.

-I will manage my enterprise in good faith, guarding against decisions and behavior that advance my own narrow ambitions but harm the enterprise and the societies it serves.

-I will understand and uphold, both in letter and in spirit, the laws and contracts governing my own conduct and that of my enterprise.

-I will take responsibility for my actions, and I will represent the performance and risks of my enterprise accurately and honestly.

-I will develop both myself and other managers under my supervision so that the profession continues to grow and contribute to the well-being of society.

-I will strive to create sustainable economic, social, and environmental prosperity worldwide.

-I will be accountable to my peers and they will be accountable to me for living by this oath.

-This oath I make freely, and upon my honor."_

more:

\- [http://mbaoath.org/](http://mbaoath.org/)

\- [https://hbr.org/2009/06/why-we-created-the-mba- oath](https://hbr.org/2009/06/why-we-created-the-mba-oath)

\- FT:"Is the MBA oath still relevant?" 2015 [https://www.ft.com/content/e853f5a2-fe41-11e4-8efb-00144feab...](https://www.ft.com/content/e853f5a2-fe41-11e4-8efb-00144feabdc0)

\- debate: "Why MBAs should not sign the Harvard Business School oath"? [http://knowledge.insead.edu/leadership-management/why- mbas-s...](http://knowledge.insead.edu/leadership-management/why-mbas-should- not-sign-the-harvard-business-school-oath-1444)

or alterative suggestions from the "debate":

 _" I pledge to maximise the wealth of the people who pay my salary, i.e. the shareholders, unless the shareholders tell me in advance that they want me to do something else. I will do my best to learn how to do this by taking the relevant courses"_

<comment><USER48> Oaths don't really mean much if there's no recourse to not following them

</comment></comment><comment><USER49> The failing New York Times failed to point out the author of the critique, James Stewart, is a Harvard grad himself. Hardly an unbiased article. No conflict-of-interest disclosure. Many half-truths and disingenuous statements in defense of Harvard.

Sad.

</comment><comment><USER50> > junk-bond-induced takeover mania and resulting scandals of the 1980s; the > corporate scandals of the 2000s; the egregious increase in the pay gap > between chief executives and ordinary employees; the real estate mortgage > bubble and ensuing financial crisis; even the election of Donald Trump

Just leave out the part about President Trump. Plenty of people like him.

> Harvard has obsessively pursued money, sending a disproportionate number of > its graduates to consulting firms

I assume the students are the ones pursuing money

> An obsession with stock prices and short-term results was the motive for > many of the accounting scandals of the 2000s

Was it ? I thought it was unscrupulous people doing accounting fraud and information asymmetry between shareholders and executives.

> McDonald insists he isn't "anti-business-school" (he attended Wharton), nor > is he "anti-wealth.

But just a few sentences above :

> McDonald notes that in 1992, the C.E.O.s of Fortune 500 firms made an > average of $2.7 million a year. By 2000, the average was $14 million.

> It's a shame that some of them didn't see the looming disaster and sound an > alarm

Some did and made a lot of money from shorting these bonds. Only when it became possible to short these bonds that the bubble finally collapsed and the money went to fund more useful ventures.

> lay a part in helping more people who think about business rediscover a > purpose other than profit

A better solution would be to ensure more information symmetry ( even through government action ) and having more ambitious people in regulatory agencies. 'Pitting ambition against ambition' ( to use a Madison quote ) is a system that has historically worked very well to curb these types of predatory behavior</comment>


Visual Studio IntelliCode - <AUTHOR> https://dirkstrauss.com/visual-studio-intellicode/ <comment><USER2> I've never seen any IDE as good as IntelliJ IDEA when it comes to Auto suggest, and it has no real AI, just deterministic understanding of the project's source tree and dependencies, an indexed AST, how the type system works, and what's in scope at the cursor. In other words, two classes both called 'List' should not show up when I start typing 'List', if only one of them can possibly be relevant in context. A lot of IDEs, especially in refactoring, for Java often appeared to use string comparison. So you'd do a system wide refactor of say interface 'Foobar', and it would match completely different interfaces called 'Foobar' that had no relation to what's under the cursor.

It's this almost 100% exact matching that develops into a rapid muscle memory where you learn to trust the IDE, and non-deterministic algorithms which have say, a 1% failure rate, tend to be annoying.

<comment><USER3> _> , and it has no real AI, just deterministic understanding of the project's source tree and dependencies, an indexed AST_

Right, but because VS Intellicode does _not_ purely work on _just the AST tree_ , that becomes its differentiated advantage. It's not a better way of autocomplete, but a _different_ way that works for some scenarios. Because Intellicode is not deterministic, it is not meant to build muscle-memory like vim, emacs, etc.

I also see some comments in this thread wondering how it compares to Resharper so here's how I'd differentiate them:

Most of the previous autocomplete, "intellisense" type of algorithms work on parsing the AST of the project's source code. The lookup database is therefore scoped to the _internal_ world of that project. Intellicode parses _others '_ source code (e.g. top Github repos) which is out there in the _external_ world.

What Intellicode does is use _crowd-sourced_ data to create a different set of autocomplete suggestions. With that strategy, when one types the dot character "." to trigger a context menu for autocompletion, it's sort of a miniature "pagerank" of the most likely methods or properties instead of a "dumb" alphabetical order.

A concrete example in C# might be the autocomplete of a DateTime type. There are 2 similar properties: _".Now"_ and _".UtcNow"_.

What people probably want in many situations to avoid DST bugs is ".UtcNow" instead of ".Now". But in a regular IDE, a dumb alphabetical order means "N" shows up _before_ "U".[0]. Therefore, newbies inadvertently end up with "DateTime.Now" in their code instead of "DateTime.UtcNow".

Something like Intellicode would use machine learning that analyzes the top Github repos and therefore reorder things so ".UtcNow" is higher than ".Now". Of course, this re-ordering could have been manually curated by C# experts into a "best practices database" but Intellicode's idea was to approximate that by using AI applied to others' source code.

[0] VS2017 screenshot example: [https://imgur.com/a/05d9Ij9](https://imgur.com/a/05d9Ij9)

<comment><USER4> > What Intellicode does is use crowd-sourced data to create a different set of > autocomplete suggestions. With that strategy, when one types the dot > character "." to trigger a context menu for autocompletion, it's sort of a > miniature "pagerank" of the most likely methods or properties instead of a > "dumb" alphabetical order.

Eh, isn't the whole point that intellicode is trained on your own project? Mine is, it suggests things based on _our_ usage.

<comment><USER3> _> , isn't the whole point that intellicode is trained on your own project? _

Intellicode may _also_ be trained on your own project but that's definitely not its whole point.

Here's an excerpt from [https://visualstudio.microsoft.com/services/intellicode/](https://visualstudio.microsoft.com/services/intellicode/):

 _> "IntelliCode recommendations are based on thousands of open source projects on GitHub each with over 100 stars."_

Perhaps you were thinking of _" IntelliSense"_ instead of _" IntelliCode"_? Yes, the older IntelliSENSE could parse _your custom classes_ and types and provide autocomplete for them. IntelliCODE is a different algorithm. (I think Microsoft's naming for them is not self-descriptive and confusing.)

<comment><USER4> Huh, weird.

I've only ever noticed the "starred" recommendations on our own methods, and it's incredible.

<comment><USER5> The biggest place I see a lot of great IntelliCode recommendations so far is React development in Typescript in VS Code.

        class ComponentName extends React.|

The top completions in order at that point are Component and PureComponent. It feels more magical than I would have expected, and it is particularly great having that constant reminder of PureComponent, which is very similar to the Now/UtcNow example above.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I read that page, watched the vid, and really don't understand what the benefits of this are. Currently use ReSharper and it seems to do a pretty awesome job of predicting what I want.

Whoever is promoting this needs to give better examples...

<comment><USER7> It's looking at github projects with more than 100 stars:

[https://visualstudio.microsoft.com/services/intellicode/](https://visualstudio.microsoft.com/services/intellicode/)

I guess _everybody_ is wondering why this even exists. Sounds like a typical "solution in search of a problem" to me, and it probably only got green-lit because it mentioned "AI" in the pitch deck ;)

<comment><USER8> Have you actually used it, or are you judging purely based on speculation?

</comment></comment></comment><comment> 076ae80a-3c97-4 This feature also exists in Visual Studio 2019 and I actually like it. The UI is unobtrusive and the suggestions are very often correct in my fairly extensive experience with it. All the negativity seems to be forgetting that this isn't removing anything, only augmenting an existing feature. Additionally I can see this being very useful to new developers who are less familiar with the language and what can or should be done.

<comment><USER9> > very useful to new developers who are less familiar with the language

Yes. It almost serves as a pop-up mini-manual, e.g. for all of the valid methods on a class instance whose name you have just have typed. Good for validation but also discovery.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> This is just an ad for dirkstrauss' website. uBlock origin blocks 34 ads.

<comment><USER11> I clicked away as soon as this site asked for permission to send notifications.

I haven nothing against content marketing, but please don't ruin the reading experience.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> It just reorders the autocomplete list. This is kind of underwhelming.

</comment><comment><USER13> I remember reading when Facebook announced Aroma to auto suggest common coding patterns to FB engineers[0]. I haven't used much for code completion before but this idea sounds really interesting. It sounds like the IntelliCode implementation sources suggestions from repos with a higher number of stars so hopefully that helps with noise. For JS I'm sure the variability in style is pretty big.

For people that have been trying IntelliCode for a while does it help much with development? Does it have the ability to suggest larger code snippets or only word by word?

[0][https://ai.facebook.com/blog/aroma-ml-for-code- recommendatio...](https://ai.facebook.com/blog/aroma-ml-for-code- recommendation)

<comment><USER14> At least up to 2017, VS autocompletion is one word at a time.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> >In Visual Studio 2019, hit Ctrl+Q

nope. Who picked this shortcut?

<comment><USER5> Because Windows has been consistent with Alt+F4 (and Alt+F,X in traditional menu apps, and Alt+Space,C for old fogeys that still use the classic "command menu" even as its icon/click-region continues to disappear from title bars) for decades and "Exit" (or "Close") generally being the Windows command word of choice over "Quit", Ctrl+Q has never meant cohesively "Quit" on Windows as it does on other platforms. I know a lot of Windows applications that use Ctrl+Q for various things having nothing to do with quitting (and Windows- focused Vim users that use/suggest Ctrl+Q for `<Leader>` for similar reasons).

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> They call it AI, it all looks cool and shiny, but I remember that Visual Studio 2010 was using usage stats already to make auto-complete more useful. Then I think either 2013 or 2015 canned that approach and reverted to a dumb auto-complete (and was a major regression in term of UX). This is merely re- introducing something that already existed.

<comment><USER5> IntelliCode does give a better UX/feature set than what was ever in previous Visual Studio versions, however. The IntelliCode suggestions have a star icon to make it clearer why they bubbled to the top. The Visual Studio version of IntelliCode supports manually training the suggestions for C# (and soon other languages, if I recall) on personal/corporate/private projects and sharing the subsequent AI/usage models with team members. That ability to get all of a team on a similar model for usage/context-aware suggestions alone will be a big deal for some projects.

(Also, it's built on "AI" techniques like convolutional neural networks rather than pure usage statistics databases, so the performance characteristics are also much better than the past Visual Studio usage databases, especially on machines where it can hardware accelerate it, which supposedly on Windows 10 is most GPUs these days.)

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> Would be interesting to understand how this works? The paragraph supposedly explaining it, says it grabs code for some of the top GitHub projects to build a model of what good code practices are (I am assuming?). Feels like this sample is way too small to me? Any real life feedback from anyone using this?

</comment><comment><USER18> Wasn't that what the nefarious Kite extension was trying to do ?

</comment><comment><USER19> I appreciate all attempts at improving this kind of auto suggesting but for me simple buffer based string completion is still vastly superior to anything VSCode offers out of the box (I work as a front end dev). Way too often VSCode suggets methods and snippets that are totally irrelevant while ignoring a string that's just a few lines await. So far no configuration settings helped with that. So bottom line vim's built-in buffer completion is more efficient at least for the work I do.

TabNine is actually the only thing that I could see myself switching to.

<comment><USER4> If you're using Intellicode in Visual Studio with C#, I'm afraid I don't really believe you. Intellicode _strongly_ prioritises nearby code elements.

Could you give an example of a situation where it's completely missing the point?

VS Code's default completion is strictly buffer based, so no sure what you mean there either.

<comment><USER19> I have a bunch of screenshots I shared in our work slack channel. First of all I am talking about Visual Studio Code rather than Visual Studio. I should have mentioned that, sorry. Intellicode is also available for VSC so I figured it would be relevant here.

The screenshot I posted a while back showed me exporting something at the of the file and I had typed `Det` at which point it suggested some random functions from random APIs. Then I had `Detail` at which point no suggestions were offered. At `Detaile` it finally gave me `DetailedProgress` from the same file about 50 lines higher up.

This is a frequently recurring theme that it takes so long to actually suggest mere names (~ strings).

<comment><USER4> My understanding is that completion in VS Code for C# is provided by Omnisharp, which yeah, I agree, seems to be slow and inconsistent.

I've written a language server extension for VS Code (not for C#), and the completion lists I provide are better than those I get in C#/F# while writing the server, it's bad :/

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Does anyone know if that could be enabled in VS Code?

<comment><USER6> Not unless there's a specific version made for Code.

<comment><USER21> The article states that it is available for Code.</comment></comment></comment>


In-app rewards gaming network (Startup Weekend product - need feedback) - <AUTHOR> http://www.gameboost.me/

<comment><USER2> I am confused by the choice to feature the number of devs you had and the abbreviated schedule as opposed to a vision for how you're going to make app developers more money.

Aren't the key details something along the lines of "You implement an in-game currency, we give you a widget which lets users select from various offers to earn currency by taking actions which have high CPA affiliate payouts, we insulate you from the metric truckload of customer support requests this will generate, and you get paid on a fairly regular schedule"? Or maybe two steps beyond this, "Yeah we know you've heard this before but a) we have higher quality offers, b) we police the feed religiously to ensure your users don't get scammed, c) our CS is really top-notch to get users instant credit for things even when the actual CPA is delayed by days, and d) we're experts at dealing with the pathologies of poor people and promise to keep you far, far away from the seedy underbelly of our business."

</comment><comment><USER3> 1\. Get an idea.

2\. Do zero work on it.

3\. Set up a landing page.

4\. Submit link to HN.

5\. Gauge the response.

This new trend really pisses me off...

If someone puts the work into it I have no problem with it, but I know that there is a 99% chance that this thing has no substance.

Note: to offset the rant, I'm upvoting your submit.

<comment><USER4> Welcome to the Startup Weekend effect.

Don't get me wrong, I love the concept of the events, and have had good experiences at some I've attended. But there is often a huge inequality between the number of devs and the number of business guys- if you're not careful you end up in a group full of business, but with little ability to execute over the space of a weekend.

So you end up with a weekend spent arguing over a domain name, setting up a LaunchRock page and sending out Google Spreadsheet surveys.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Im at startup weekend puerto rico right now (Im one of the judges) so its cool to see this on HN. Overall, I have been insanely impressed with whats happening in the startup community here. I have been to a number of these events in the US, but I think this one might take the cake in terms of quality.

</comment><comment><USER6> Good idea, if game users don't see ads and I can monetize, I want to know more about it.

<comment><USER7> The site says it's bringing back the 'arcade model', so I'm guessing the way they'll monetize users is... to make them pay for your game??

At the same time, their video looks like it's the same premium currency model as every other game microtransaction service out there.

It would really help if they could show something more, or at least write more about their service.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> I would look into this if there was any info about how its going to work, but that is the least helpful landing page I've ever seen. Not even worth giving away my email address.

</comment><comment><USER9> Sound Very Interesting, i want more info..

</comment><comment><USER10> My feedback is, please stop doing junk like this and go pursue some idea that has some kind of social value.

<comment><USER11> I'm curious what you think _has some kind of social value_. Would you mind expounding on that?

Thanks.

<comment><USER10> It's like pornography...

<comment><USER11> I'm sorry. It's a sincere question and I simply don't understand. Does pornography also lack social value in your eyes?

<comment><USER10> I guess there is a max reply depth? So I am replying here...

I am a game developer, actually, and I believe games can have great social value. So I support you in pursuing your idea.

"Rewards" systems like the one described here, though, are not about giving anything to the audience. They are purely about taking money away from people, and doing it as manipulatively and sneakily as possible. I believe the net social value for things like this is deeply negative.

<comment><USER11> There's not a max reply length. The reply button takes a bit of time to show up sometimes. I'm not clear on how long that is supposed to be or what factors influence it. When I first joined, I did the exact same thing as you are doing here: Replied higher up in the thread on occasions when I couldn't find the "reply" link/button/option.

Thanks so much for taking me seriously. Sometimes people think I'm just being snarky. What do you think _does_ work for trying to monetize a game? I'm not sure there will ever be any money in my plans to make a game (in part because the target audience has no money, only debts from large medical expenses), but my sons also want to make games. Somewhere in there, someone needs to make actual money. Any thoughts?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Kudos for working on Gameboost over Startup Weekend but the ideas is not new. Google in-app game rewards and you'll find out [http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&client=safari&biw...](http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&client=safari&biw=320&bih=356&q=in- app+game+rewards&oq=in-&aq=0p&aqi=s2g3&aql=1&gs_sm=c&gs_upl=3862l7920l0l10119l5l5l0l1l1l0l444l1237l3-1.2l3l0&mvs=0)</comment>


Brain-controlled drone racing - <AUTHOR> http://bigstory.ap.org/article/d04cc633285c468b8f31f2214cf2feac/ready-set-think-mind-controlled-drones-race-future <comment> FLUX-YOU Does anyone know what headsets were used? Are there any cheap/alternative/DIY versions for playing around?

<comment><USER2> I'm guessing its an emotiv headset (their calibration software is a floating cube). I don't think there are cheaper alternatives around, theres an openeeg mailing list which has some designs that can be built for a couple hundred bucks (not to be confused with OpenEEG which is a much more expensive, but (ostensibly?) open source product).

There was also an eeg64 project which looked like it had a lot of promise, but it hasn't been updated in a while.

Emotiv also do some machine learning to estimate the state of the brain from the changes in electric potential on the surface, I don't know if any other headsets do that, but its completely proprietary.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> When I can code by thinking in a headset, is the time to end the search of ergonomic keyboards.

</comment><comment><USER4> Same article from original source: [http://bigstory.ap.org/article/d04cc633285c468b8f31f2214cf2f...](http://bigstory.ap.org/article/d04cc633285c468b8f31f2214cf2feac/ready- set-think-mind-controlled-drones-race-future) Doesn't give support to DailyMail.

<comment><USER5> Can the link be changed? The DM is not only terrible journalism, it's a terrible business too.

<comment><USER6> We changed it (from [http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-3553277/Ready...](http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-3553277/Ready- set-think-Mind-controlled-drones-race-future.html)). But HN's policy is to go by the article, not the source. When a bad publication puts out a good article, the article wins.</comment></comment></comment>


What's new in JavaScript [video] - <AUTHOR> https://youtube.com/watch?v=c0oy0vQKEZE <comment><USER2> Disheartening to see Safari lagging so terribly behind; there are some standardized web APIs that are a decade old that Safari still hasn't implemented. Because of this my new shiny web app [0] doesn't support Safari at all (!!!) which disturbs the hell out of me (if anyone has a reliable workaround for setPointerCapture, I'd love to hear about it).

It's further disheartening to see them implementing hardly any of the features mentioned in this talk, which means these APIs are unavailable to all developers since their OS's are so ubiquitous.

It surely isn't a capital constraint issue; Apple is the most well-funded among browser vendors, so it begs the question as to why they are letting their browser fall behind. It will be interesting to see if they decide to start lending more resources towards the browser or continue to deliver a subpar experience; which seems quite contrary to their core competencies.

Cheers for Microsoft under Satya for taking the hard stance and determining they did not want to devote the resources to Edge and ceding in a way that will ultimately deliver a good experience for Windows users under a chromium based browser. Although I'm concerned about the openness of the web; as a developer my foremost concern is that I can deliver a good experience to my users and their decision allows me to deliver on that front.

[0] www.blendful.com

<comment><USER3> WebKit has pointer events in active development, so I expect setPointerCapture in safari soon.

<comment><USER2> Good to hear, and can't wait. It had been so long that I thought that they decided that they wouldn't bother.

<comment><USER3> They were against the pointer events spec when it was proposed I guess they changed their mind.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Interesting, happy about the performance gains. Some other news are critical corrections to awful JS faults (bigints calculations ...), some other items look to be helpful. But I've so far not been happy at all about the cognitive mess which is async/await and promises, just to avoid callback hell AFAICS. Maybe these changes could alleviate that.

<comment><USER5> For me async/await does nothing but alleviate cognitive load. It does require a solid understanding of Promises but once you have that it makes asynchronous code so easy.

<comment><USER6> I think async/await lets you make less performant code strangely enough because it _looks_ like good synchronous logic

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I'm bit worried about what will happen with private fields. One the really cool things about javascript was that there was always some way to monkey- patch everything.

</comment><comment><USER8> I miss pattern matching, and let...in expression, because arrow function without it doesn't make much sense.

<comment><USER7> pattern matching in dynamically typed language would be very very limited and don't forget that you also have very little time to parse and run the app (time to interactive)

it really doesnt make much sense - just compile to js if you can't live without it

<comment><USER9> Could you elaborate? Elixir is dynamically typed and makes heavy use of pattern matching (or does it?).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I think JavaScript is the most progressive language ever existed. Look how it started and how it evolved over time. Decorators will be supported too in the next month. Speaking generally, JavaScript should be categorized as OOP language

</comment><comment><USER11> hash symbol for privates is an abomination! What is really upsetting (it was discussed countless times) is that there's no way around it because JS internals are a hot mess.

(╯°□°)╯︵ ┻━┻

<comment><USER6> Why they couldn't just add the keyword in the class like typescript I'll never know.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> I don't get the point of these posts, it's to me a random person's YouTube post

there is no credibility or kudos attached and I'm not going to watch it to find out At least with a blog post which is the text equivalent. I can skim it to see

Are these videos the equivalent of ad click bait

<comment><AUTHOR> >…a random person's YouTube post

It's from Google I/O 2019.

<comment><USER12> That isn't clear till you watch it Which is my issue with these YouTube links</comment></comment></comment>


Ask YC: P = NP ? - <AUTHOR>

What's your idea? <comment><USER2> There's a huge financial incentive to solve this problem; it would significantly improve the efficiency of many business processes and it would make it trivial to crack many contemporary forms of encryption. The solution is worth billions, if not trillions. Furthermore, you've only got to find one example where P=NP and you can reduce many other problems to this case. Furthermore, there's a very large number of abstract and practical examples to work on. So why hasn't it been solved?

Has it been solved in secret? Are we not smart enough to solve the problem? Is there little incentive to prove that P!=NP? Do foolhardy attempts produce "good enough" improvements to existing practices?

<comment><USER3> _Furthermore, you've only got to find one example where P=NP and you can reduce many other problems to this case_

Except that the answer is quite likely P != NP. Rather than characterizing the rewards in financial terms, IMHO the more important thing to be gained is knowledge: the answer to a fundamental question in complexity theory (perhaps _the_ fundamental open question).

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> If you can solve Minesweeper in polynomial time, you've got it.

<http://www.claymath.org/Popular_Lectures/Minesweeper/>

</comment><comment><USER5> N=1

<comment><USER6> Or P=0

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> P≠NP

</comment><comment><USER8> Is this a serious question?

</comment><comment><USER9> nil</comment>


Ask HN: Why does my laptop audio turn on when I log into Facebook? - <AUTHOR> <comment><USER2> I recently read about ad-sources correlating smartphones with desktops via transmitting ultrasonic tones that another device can listen for. I can't find the article now but it was mentioned on HN a few days ago...perhaps in a comment.

</comment><comment><USER3> That's pretty vague. PC? Mac? Chromebook? OS version? Browser version?

Could be a browser extension; FB app you gave access to; malware; any number of reasons a website could access audio devices on your machine.

<comment><AUTHOR> Signed into FB from Chrome (version 47) from my MacBook (Mavericks).

It was 6am and I had my earbuds in and I could tell they turned on. They didn't turn off until a few minutes after I logged off.

I went to YouTube just to check. A few minutes after I closed my YouTube tab, I could hear the audio disengage.

I'm wondering if it's connected to FB autoplay videos, but those have no sound.

<comment><USER3> Just did the same test and I'd say it's auto play videos.

(same setup - current Chrome / current OS X)

I turned on auto play videos, killed the browser, waited for my headphones to turn off and went back into FB - scrolled down and when a video came into view, the headphones turned on.

Even though the video might have no sound, the html 5 video element still needs to allow sound to pass through. When videos auto play without side, it's not that the video doesn't have sound; it's just that the video has been muted until you click on it.

(speculation of course; I don't work for FB)</comment></comment></comment>


Show HN: TruckPlease – Moving sucks, so we decided to make it easier - <AUTHOR> https://www.truckplease.com

<comment><USER3> Cool idea, but two things that bothered me:

1) There's no easy way for users to browse. 2) The whole "gig" messaging and the entire call to action on the page is painfully confusing. -"Describe your gig." What? Am I in a band? Is this for a "seller" or a "buyer"? -Why do you need a description of "moving"?? "I'm moving." would be my description. What are you looking for here? Couldn't you just have a button for "I'm moving?" -There's just a general lack of context here.

I do understand and don't need it explained, but I guarantee the average user is going to be totally confused.

<comment><USER4> > 2) The whole "gig" messaging and the entire call to action on the page is > painfully confusing. -"Describe your gig." What? Am I in a band?

I think this is a difference in regional word usage. I'm accustomed to hearing "gig" used only to refer to a temporary agreement for musicians or similar artistic entertainment, like a single concert or perhaps a tour of concerts. But I have met people from the UK who use it to refer to _any_ job.

<comment><USER5> I have friends in LA/Hollywood who use the word "gig" when referring to any job of indeterminate length; especially if it pays well. ex: "Oh, man, I'd love to have that gig!"

<comment><USER6> I'm also from LA - and I'd never use it in that context. I'd never say I'm looking for a gig, I might describe my existing job as a gig.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Given the infrequency of moving, I'm not sure how you intend to displace Craigslist for this sort of thing, since that website is already a good one- stop shop for random services. The times when you actually need a truck seem infrequent enough that I think you're going to run into a discoverability problem.

Indeed, ISTM that the trouble with moving your own stuff is not so much the truck - most people rent a u-haul or similar even if they have to bribe a friend to drive it - as the difficulty of finding people who know how to manhandle furniture and appliances without damaging them or the building they're being moved into/out of, and how to pack a truck so that the contents don't move around during transit.

<comment><USER8> > finding people who know how to manhandle furniture and appliances without > damaging them or the building they're being moved into/out of, and how to > pack a truck so that the contents don't move around during transit.

This. If you just need a truck, U-Haul or similar will do that for under $100. If you want to move anything fragile and valuable, pay someone knowledgeable and insured. There just isn't much money in schlepping things around town for $40 plus gas.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> "local or national"

You really need to deal with both state and federal consumer-oriented laws relating to moving, and bills of lading and the like.

You should also learn about the laws relating to "agency". As the agent of truckers, connecting the trucker to the customer, you can find yourself to be on the hook for movers and truckers that fail to deal with state laws, which can be quite "interesting" to an entity in your position.

The reason for such state laws and federal regulation: low estimates on the job, and truckers that hold a person's goods hostage for the surprisingly high bill. Nationally: you need to know your providers are reputable and capable.

</comment><comment><USER10> I've used craigslist 4-5 times in the last 8 years (I don't drive, and I move a lot) - and two things stand out for me from my use of them:

#1 - I'm continually amazed at how flakey the drivers/moving services are - they all advertise multiple times a week that they have moving services available, but you have to call about a half dozen of them and leave messages before you eventually get one that will get back to you and commit. You would think they would at least get back to you quickly, and then refer the work to someone else.

#2 - The quality of service that you get varies quite a bit, and doesn't seem to correlate with what you pay as much as you would like - I've paid anywhere from $90 to $150 for moving and sometimes I get two, highly qualified movers, and an _enormous_ truck capable of moving an entire house ($60/hour, 2 hour minimum). Sometimes you get a yahoo with a big uncovered pickup truck ($90/hour).

If there was a service that could solve those two pain points - eliminate the hassle of trying to track down the service, and making sure the person actually showed up when they said the would, and giving me some sense of what I would be getting (Big Truck? how big? Are the movers going to help me move things outside? Do they bring blankets for things like glass desks?) - <USER2> I'd be interested in using it.

<comment><USER11> Unpakt.com is pretty good for this, though they index only professional moving companies. You enter the general stuff you're going to move and they compare prices across a bunch of providers.

<comment><USER10> My average price for moving is around $100 - though I've paid as much as $150, and the best experience ever was for $120.

The _cheapest_ price on unpakt is $517 for my type of move. They are clearly looking at a different target market.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I would create a 3rd category that is akin to delivery. It could technically fall into moving but moving brings to mind the actual idea of moving.

What I mean by delivery is more something along the lines of...

\- I have something I want to pickup (maybe off Craigslist or something) and I don't have a truck. Would be nice to have someone who has one help for a flat rate.

</comment><comment><USER13> As a truck owner, is there a way to make sure that I never end up on this website? :) Just kidding. Any truck owner knows the joys of having every non- truck-owner ask to borrow the truck.

<comment><USER14> Owning a truck can be a blessing and a curse. I was never the driver when car pooling with my friends, but I had tons of requests to help move things-- usually at the end/beginning of the academic years.

I wish this service was around when I owned a truck.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> Is this aimed at guys moving like one or two boxes?

My parents run a removals firm in the UK, British Association of Removers accredited. Are you hoping to displace the removal industry of people moving entire homes?

The actual physical handling of people's goods should never come down to price, a bidding war on moving the personal belongings of your entire personal life is never going to end well. Unlicensed, unregulated cowboys will never handle your belongings as well as someone who has had training, is fully insured and has twenty years of experience.

Moving people is hard work, it's difficult to judge a price based upon what people say, distance to the truck? Amount of packing that needs to be done? These are all things that can add huge amounts of time, and therefore money into moving home and due to the fact you're dealing with people's hard earned personal possessions something that shouldn't be ignored.

</comment><comment><USER16> I've thought about this on and off over the years as well but never had the motivation to try. Congratulations.

In all seriousness, the one question I could never answer for myself is "what happens when there's cocaine in the box?" Have you considered this and how this risk will be handled?

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks! I think that's a problem every logistics/moving company has to face!

Reminds me of the Mitch Hedberg joke: "I love my FedEx guy cause he's a drug dealer and he doesn't even know it...and he's always on time."

<comment><USER16> They face it with the corporate veil, insurance, and a bunch of lawyers. My concern is, as an ordinary guy with a truck who just bid on a job to make a little extra cash over the weekend, "Its not mine" is going to work about as well as can usually be expected.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> I met Sasan and Heidar at the hackathon where they first built TruckPlease. Neat concept that definitely solves a problem, and they're smart/friendly guys!

Super curious what their plans are to monetize (it looks like TP is currently completely free)?

<comment><AUTHOR> Hey, Matt! Great seeing you on here and thanks for the kind words :)

Right now we're completely free but we have a lot of ideas for monetization. One of them being handling payments and taking a cut and another would be to sell optional related services, like moving/rental insurance, cleaning services, and moving supplies.

<comment><USER17> Insurance on the moving is pretty interesting, though I'd worry about fraud eventually being an issue.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yeah that's definitely a great point. To start, we'd probably just sell through a 3rd party insurer and let their underwriters deal with that!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> You need to put something up on the home page which shows some of the gigs in your area or perhaps some of the drivers?

Tough to see what the product looks like without actually signing up and posting/bidding.

<comment><USER19> Hey - co-founder here :) Yeah that's a good idea, a few people have pointed this out as well. Definitely something we'll add soon.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> The real test for this site would be September 1st, Boston.

<comment><USER21> tell me about it! I rented a Uhaul last year during this time, and it was a complete nightmare. Im wondering how much extra money I have to pay on this site to make it less painful and whether it would be worth it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> <3

Should get a t-shirt that says "No I will not fix your computer and no you can't borrow my truck, but you can pay me for either if you'd like.

Thanks guys, this is a neat website.

</comment><comment><USER23> Small typo on this page:

[https://www.truckplease.com/how-it-works](https://www.truckplease.com/how-it- works)

"TruckPlease doesn't employee anyone..."

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks, man! Will definitely fix that!

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> I'm from Victoria! Cool to see local people making it on HN.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks, Kluny! Appreciate it!

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> Very cool! Are you guys going to ship an app soon (something like having to pick up a large package at a fedex location and having a streamlined UI for requesting a truck).

<comment><USER19> Thanks! :) Yeah, once the site has all the features we want we'll definitely start working on an app. Tracking is something we're really interested in doing with that.

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> Awesome - I've just posted a gig for a bit of junk removal. That's a tough market - most folks won't quote you a price without seeing the goods.

</comment><comment><USER6> It'd be useful to deal with moving moving, like city to city or region to region, this looks like something for in the city.

<comment><AUTHOR> Totally! Our goal right now is to focus on local moves but the site can definitely be used for long-haul moves as well!

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> Perfect timing, I'm moving out of the Mission to Cow Hollow...

$80 was first bid, took it. Excited to see how this goes!

<comment><AUTHOR> Awesome! Feel free to email us anytime at email@example.com to let us know how it goes!

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> As a user it is more reassuring to me if I can identify the business model or the fees involved up front. The FAQ states that the drivers don't pay anything, and the customers pay the drivers directly in cash. That makes me feel like I am missing something.

</comment><comment><USER29> So you want regular joe smoes to move people or fully licensed movers?

Local or national?

<comment><AUTHOR> We currently have both! We have people using the site in Vancouver and Victoria right now and both licensed movers and guys with trucks are bidding on gigs. We're working on adding a badge system and reviews so users can quickly see how they're dealing with before accepting a bid.

Edit: right now we're focusing on local moves within cities but there's we have no problem with the site being used for long-haul moves.

<comment><USER29> Just wondering if you are going to handel licensing, bounding, and insurance. It appears you could possibly be banging up against 3PL regulations.

<comment><AUTHOR> For the time being we're thinking of ourselves as just a platform for drivers to meet users and don't plan directly hiring drivers. Kind of like a moving dating website. We would like to eventually verify the drivers insurance/licensing and award them badges on the site so users know who they're hiring, though!

<comment><USER29> Thats right you would be the 3PL and you would be dealing with 1PL(consignee) and 2PL(carrier). So likely dealing with 3PL regulation. You probably already have to worry about licensing, and insurance.

This isn't a bad market to get into. You should educate yourself though more in it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> There is moveline.com, which I think was in TechStars out here in NYC a few years back.

Is this more for small jobs within a city? Like if I needed to pick up some furniture or something similar.

<comment><AUTHOR> Hey! moveline.com looks pretty cool. We're less focused on long-haul moves, although our site can easily accommodate them (we have a few long-haul gigs posted up right now) and more focused on short, "I need this desk moved across town" gigs.

</comment></comment><comment><USER31> How do you think you compare with established players, like uShip?

<comment><AUTHOR> Hey! Just a copy & paste from a comment I wrote earlier:

We really like uShip! But we're different. While uShip has the functionality to offer local moves, their primary focus is on larger long-haul moves. Movers generally use their service to fill empty space on their trucks so they can get the most for their time/fuel costs.

Our main focus is on local moves. We've tried using uShip for in-city moves in a few cities and getting bids for these on their site is pretty hit and miss since most of their drivers prefer a longer haul.

</comment></comment><comment><USER32> Best Idea I have read about all year.

Seriously... I love this.

<comment><USER32> As someone who likes to buy consigned furniture, or browse estate sales... but hates paying expensive moving fees...This is a prefect solution for me.

Focus on estate sales and you will grow rapidly.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks so much for the kind words! We will definitely look into marketing to estate sales :)

<comment><USER32> Think about all the retailers that sell oversized products. Pretty much any item that can't fit into a sedan is a prime target. Build a large list of items from appliances, to furniture, even trips to costco.

I think this is an excellent idea with great potential.

The moving industry is nice, but I think there is much more potential in larger retail purchases and local delivery.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> Your drop-down isn't themed correctly on Chrome for Mac, FYI!

[http://i.imgur.com/Y1BZwGP.png](http://i.imgur.com/Y1BZwGP.png)

<comment><USER19> Hey :) I'm able to reproduce this by disabling JS. I'm on Chrome on a Mac as well and with JS enabled there are no problems.

<comment><USER33> I have JS enabled... not sure what's up. Not a big deal though!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> This is going to hurt a little, but these guys are 10 years ahead of you: [http://www.uship.com](http://www.uship.com)

<comment><AUTHOR> We really like uShip! But we're different. While uShip has the functionality to offer local moves, their primary focus is on larger long-haul moves. Movers generally use their service to fill empty space on their trucks so they can get the most for their time/fuel costs.

Our main focus is on local moves. We've tried using uShip for in-city moves in a few cities and getting bids for these on their site is pretty hit and miss since most of their drivers prefer a longer haul.

</comment></comment><comment><USER35> Can't wait for this to migrate into NYC

</comment><comment><USER36> An alternative that I've used successfully in Europe in the past is anyvan.com

</comment><comment><USER37> "Find someone who gives a truck." would be a better tagline.

Other than that, really cool idea.

<comment><AUTHOR> Appreciate the kind words! We'll definitely give that tagline some thought haha.

<comment><USER38> This video with Rowan Atkinson contains all sorts of bad truck-related naming ideas: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2R5tUc1S3cc](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2R5tUc1S3cc)

<comment><AUTHOR> Haha that was great! But I do have "I like trucking" stuck in my head now so I don't know if I want to thank you for that :)</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Building a private gh-pages clone with Dexy and GitLab - <AUTHOR> http://vanderveer.be/blog/2013/01/19/building-a-private-gh-pages-clone-with-dexy-and-gitlab/ <comment><AUTHOR> At work I was looking for a way to write project documentation for several non-public projects. It was important for me to have a system that was versioncontrolled in GIT, written in easy to understand formatting for both technical and non-technical personel (markdown) and makes publishing effortless. The resulting documentation should also be easy to access for our clients, without resorting to getting them all an account.

In a presentation by Stephen Hay at the Mobilism 2012 conference I was pointed to dexy, an advanced tool for writing documentation in a lot of different languages, markdown being one of them. In this post I will describe how to setup dexy, and combine it with GitLab's webhook system to create a selfbuilding documentation system.</comment>


Loopstack - 4-track Android Looper - <AUTHOR> http://www.singlecellsoftware.com/loopstack

<comment><AUTHOR> The author also makes Caustic, probably one of the best music apps on any mobile platform.

[http://www.kvraudio.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=317623&pos...](http://www.kvraudio.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=317623&postdays=0&postorder=asc&start=0&sid=dacec0311270d7b8d5a7887d7ea56832)</comment>