YC 120 - <AUTHOR> https://blog.ycombinator.com/yc-120/ <comment><USER2> The real question is, do I want to be in a room with 99 other people who wanted to be selected for this so much that they produced a video with answers to these questions? This whole thing is self-selecting for they type of person I'd rather not be having dinner with.

YC produces a ton of great resources that are very helpful, but this is one that makes me scratch my head.

<comment><USER3> What type of person is that? I'm honestly at a loss because it asks for nothing more than a simple narrative for why _this_ opportunity fits the candidate, where the complexity of the video can be "turn on my phone's front camera and recorded for 60 seconds".

Is that a type of person? Is it a bad type of person? I don't understand the insinuation.

<comment><USER4> Many cultures/subcultures/microcultures place high value on being humble. This is the exact opposite of humble, it's blatant self-promotion. That's not necessarily a bad thing, in fact it's very much required in business, in interviews, in admissions, etc. But it does rub against those cultures who value humility and frown upon self-promotion.

As an example I grew up in a poor farming town in the Midwest. Everyone drove an older pickup. Occasionally someone's truck would break and they'd buy a new one. It was the gossip of the town, look at Mr So-and-So flaunting his wealth, his farm must be doing great, what's his secret, why is he showing off? A few years later his truck is dusty and dented and rusty but someone else's truck breaks and they get a new one, and now they're the talk of the town.

Recently I drove back into that town in my BMW... I should have known better. My grandparents called me afterwards to let me know how everyone in town is talking about _them_ , my grandparents, for raising such a braggart of a grandson that he'd drive around town in a BMW. Doesn't matter how much money you have, you don't buy a nice car because it's self promotion.

Not saying it's right or wrong, but some cultures try to avoid people who brag about their own accomplishments. This goes hand in hand with other comments saying they wish they could nominate someone because some people would never nominate themselves.

<comment><USER3> I will give that false humility is rampant, but it's incredible (and perhaps ironic) in the context because so many seem to be saying "Well _I_ wouldn't want to be with _these_ people." That is the opposite of humility.

Virtually all of life is self-promotion (however massaged and clouded we make it -- we see humility as a virtue because it's great if everyone else just gets out of the way), and sideways mechanisms to do it do little but feed into raw dishonesty. And let me say that I have pretty strong social anxiety so this contest has no draw for me, but I have no animosity for those who it fits.

As an aside, I grew up in a small, blue-collar working town, and it operates very similar to your description. But it isn't that people value humility, but rather that they impose their own limitations and hangups on others. It was the crab mentality.

Regardless, there are many paths to changing the world. Even if we accept the notion that only the bad wouldn't cow under humility, to quote Ahad Ah'Em (Asher Ginzberg) - "Men With Self-Confidence Come and See and Conquer". There is a high correlation between people who have a sometimes inflated confidence and those who actually affect real change.

<comment><USER5> _" Men With Self-Confidence Come and See and Conquer"_

Women with self confidence get put in a damned if you do, damned if you don't bind. They have substantial challenges trying to self promote. I'm convinced it's mostly systemic, not innate to women per se.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> For everyone who's being cynical about this opportunity: This seems like a great way to practice pitching what you do and why it matters. Personally, this seems like an interesting exercise, regardless of whether you get in or not.

For anyone else who is interested, it might be fun to have an organized "Show HN" where we exchange and critique pitches.

Edit: Since this is getting some upvotes, here is what I propose: I'll post a "Show HN" here at around 10am PST on February 15th. People can reply to that with links to their pitches, and then everyone else can respond/critique in the replies. (This should leave enough time for people to edit their pitches based on the feedback they get.)

<comment><USER7> the organized Show HN event - actually sounds like a better idea that the OP. hmm - maybe organized for the same April 26 - 28 weekend?

<comment><USER6> I was thinking online, but offline could work too. We could even do both. Maybe we'll wait to see how the online version goes first? If that gets traction then we can see about organizing an offline version.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> So I actually think the _idea_ sounds interesting, but this is what sticks out to me:

> We'll invite about 100 people who could use more of a network...

>What have you done so far that shows your potential for greatness, adjusted for whatever life circumstances you were born into?

To do something great that shows potential, you've probably already built a decent network, so I guess the value add is a network with much greater reach? Also, I've met people who've done astounding things "adjusted for life circumstances", but this would never reach their radar.

Can there be a nomination process? I just feel like the people for whom this idea makes sense would never know to apply or might not even find it applicable. Those people need to be sought out, not expected to show up. Regardless, I'd be curious who the final 100 are and how they fit the two criteria above.

<comment><USER9> _Can there be a nomination process_

YC/HN is for startups. You don't need to wait for permission to do something. If you want to nominate someone great, I would just email that person to encourage them to apply. Done.

<comment><USER8> I understand that, and if this was a normal application for its standard incubator, I'd understand. I read this as seeking out people doing exceptional work but aren't _already_ being noticed. A lot of this people might not be noticed because they aren't trying to be noticed, but may very well benefit from it, or they don't have the means to / maybe they were never pushed to put themselves out there. Encouraging application is certainly a good way to go.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> This reminds me of charities and other organizations that only want to bring on experts. I really would like to join something like this but I feel that I'm not an expert in that area. I know I could provide a lot of value and show them ways to look at their problems differently, but I'm not what they are looking for.

I really think people can become experts (to a certain degree) and provide a lot of value and think differently about problems without having years of experience. A great example is the 4Chan user that solved the 25 year old permutation math problem by looking at it from a different lense.

Bringing people together to build their network is great. But I really think there is power in bringing people together who have a desire to change something regardless of how much greatness they think they have achieved.

<comment><USER11> Wow, I hadn't heard of the 4chan thing and it's super interesting!

Here's the wiki article with the improved lower bound for the 25 year old permutation problem: [http://mathsci.wikia.com/wiki/The_Haruhi_Problem](http://mathsci.wikia.com/wiki/The_Haruhi_Problem)

And a news article: [https://www.theverge.com/2018/10/24/18019464/4chan-anon- anim...](https://www.theverge.com/2018/10/24/18019464/4chan-anon-anime-haruhi- math-mystery)

Here's the original thread where you can see people confused about what the actual problem is, I think it's a fun read: [http://4watch.org/superstring/](http://4watch.org/superstring/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> I think what we all want is a lot more more Elon Musks to push the world forward more quickly.

But he was only able to create Tesla and SpaceX because he gained a massive windfall from PayPal. That payout could have easily been an order of magnitude smaller, or even gone to zero. He wasn't even involved in the company so he got super lucky with that.

Even though he had a network of powerful friends, virtually all of them were too cowardly to invest in SpaceX or Tesla, especially after things got hard. They all thought he was a dumb "web startup guy" tilting at windmills and burning up his money.

His early investors totally bailed on him. The fact that he could personally bankroll his companies is the _only_ reason they exist today. Having to answer to _anyone else_ would have doomed him to failure.

So, you want more Elon Musks? Find super smart and crazily ambitious people and give them massive fortunes.

<comment><USER13> Elon Musk did not create Tesla, and it succeeded thanks to a massive low- interest government loan.

If you want more Elon Musks, start electing politicians that are willing to invest in things that private citizens can't or won't, and stop caring about whose name is on top of the org chart.

<comment><USER12> He was the primary funding for the company throughout its early life and then personally saved the company from failure. Without Elon Musk the company would not exist at all.

The DOE loan probably did save the company, but before Telsa there was no electric car company worth giving a government loan to in the first place. And they paid it back 10 years early.

Fisker, a Tesla copycat, got ~$1.4 billion in DOE loans and failed completely. Tesla got a third of that and succeeded because they had Elon Musk.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> > What are you interested in and what are you working on?

I'm working on liberating child students trapped by coercive institutions. Inmates have a reason for their incarceration, but students are trapped through no fault of their own. Unlike students, inmates in prison have the luxury of choosing what they read.

> What have you done so far that shows your potential for greatness, adjusted > for whatever life circumstances you were born into?

I have been actively working on increasing my influence so I can save those who can be saved during my lifetime. I have been tutoring, and teaching, and teacher training, and running programs in schools, constantly broadening my scope. My experiences working in public schools have convinced me that 'working from the inside' is a fool's breakfast. I am now working on founding a school in a methodical and careful manner so that it can succeed in Toronto and grow to other cities. If I'm lucky, I'll be able to liberate a few hundred students before I die, and the schools will succeed without me.

> In a best-case scenario, what do you want your obituary to say?

Loving grandson, son, brother, husband, father, grandfather, Ryan checked out at the hour of his choosing and saved 7 lives through organ donation as his final gift. His autobiography 'Not Everyone Likes The Flavour' lays out his reasoning for ending his life as 'passing the torch', exhorting young people everywhere to realize their true power to shape the world. His legacy endures in the schools he founded and the students he empowered.

I should be so lucky!

<comment><USER15> Just FYI, as someone who also considers schools to be coercive institutions, "schools are more unjust than prison" is a hugely unconvincing pitch. I'd advise you to frame it another way.

<comment><USER14> Thank you. I'm trying to come up with a good wholly-positive way of framing it in terms of benefits to leadership and innovation. I know I'm going to need a positive message to succeed.

<comment><USER15> Maybe something about allowing students to express their individuality and reach their full potential as humans through curiosity and exploration?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> I personally like these questions together:

• If you could have the resume you _want_ , what would it say?

• If you could write your eulogy, what would it say?

(As the company/manager/advisor: How can we help you to get there?)

<comment><USER17> is your framework a reference to David Brooks' Ted Talk?

[https://www.ted.com/talks/david_brooks_should_you_live_for_y...](https://www.ted.com/talks/david_brooks_should_you_live_for_your_resume_or_your_eulogy?language=en)

<comment><USER16> I had not seen this video, but it clarifies my thoughts on this topic quite a bit. Thanks for sharing!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> "Finally solving Physics?" Yikes.

<comment><USER19> [https://xkcd.com/1831/](https://xkcd.com/1831/)

<comment><USER20> While I get the underlying sentiment, it's worth noting that there have been examples of success, e.g. Deepmind with AlphaFold for protein folding with relatively little domain knowledge.

<comment><USER21> AlphaFold not only depended on a great deal of domain knowledge, it _actually used_ one of the most famous physics-based methods. The only people who think that AlphaGo was made by a bunch of noob AI guys with a neural network are the people who don't know anything about it.

<comment><USER20> I said _relatively_ , they certainly had less domain knowledge than the competing teams. I have always been a strong proponent of combining ML and NNs with traditional methods.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> I see tremendous value in these efforts to enrich networks, but have no hope of getting through :( . All I see as answers to entry questions are sure not to give a pass.

Are there comparable venues for much larger sets of people? Those who can't brag about particularly nice answers to entry questions?

<comment><USER23> Why not try your hand at organizing your own meetup / networking event locally? Rent a room in your local community center for the day, put up signs at local community colleges and coffee shops to advertise.

There are other ambitious people out there, YC only wants to find the ones that they can use for their own goals. Don't wait around for them or anyone else if you have ideas and need a network. If they wont let you through their gate, find another way in.

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> You guys should invite Sonja Trauss, known for her YIMBY activism in the bay area. Housing might not be quite as exciting as some of the things mentioned, but making it affordable makes a hell of a difference in people's lives.

And it also helps companies and just about everyone else, too, since they might not have to pay _quite_ so much due to the extreme cost of living in that area.

</comment><comment><USER25> This looks pretty interesting, so I decided to apply. Here's my application and video in case anyone's curious: [https://goo.gl/mhCCNK](https://goo.gl/mhCCNK)

</comment><comment><USER26> That obituary question is a bit morbid for my taste - but this sounds like an interesting event. Reminds me of yc startup school but more personal.

<comment><USER27> It's a ridiculous question. 99.9% of all obituaries look the same. An announcement of the death, maybe a quick mention of career, a list of close surviving relatives, and information about memorial services.

I would just submit that.

<comment><USER28> Obviously they want to know what you would like to be remembered for having accomplished. They don't literally care what you want on your obit. They are asking what you would like to be known for to future generations.

<comment><USER27> Here's a great way of rewording that question: "What accomplishments of yours would you like people to remember?"

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> This will be the new model for accelerators moving forward. Condense the most valuable interactions down to a few days and watch the magic happen. Cheaper, less time intensive, and more effective.

</comment><comment><USER30> "a return to fact-based debate"

When was this fact-based debating era?

</comment><comment><USER31> Not to be confused with Google's Area 120, an internal start up incubator.

[https://area120.google.com/](https://area120.google.com/)

It's funny the similarity in name!

</comment><comment><USER32> Networks like this are extremely powerful for releasing potential energy. As much as I'd love to see the talks, it wouldn't be 5% the value of being in the room.

<comment><USER22> To get the 95%, you need to know how to use the presence. It's definitely not enough to be in the room, although I don't know how to learn to get values in being in the room without trying to while being in the room.

<comment><USER33> How do you do that? Any article/book you recommend?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> This is frustrating and borderline cringe-inducing to read. YC clearly has their eyes on tapping introvert talent. That's a good thing. What's not is trying to use the same stale tools and programs to catch them. Hint: this is not the crowd that will be comfortable talking on camera, about themselves, answering such bombastic questions. Try again.

<comment><USER35> Technically, the rules do not prevent submitters from uploading silent slideshows that just so happen to be in video file formats. Presumably anyone whose goal was "finally solving physics," would be clever enough to think of this. ;)

</comment></comment><comment><USER36> somewhat unrelated:

This is YC's mission statement: "Y Combinator provides seed funding for startups. Seed funding is the earliest stage of venture funding. It pays your expenses while you're getting started."

</comment><comment><USER37> I applied.

I am looking for people who are interested in transforming education. If me and a group of similar minded individuals are able to make people learn twice as fast, then that would be a huge win for the world.

People say that education (idea generation and implementation) comes easy to me. And I also find it the most fun sector to work in.

If the ed tech startups of the world are reading this: I'm available [1]. If you want to be in education too, then let's meet up (IRL or online)! My email address is in my profile.

[1]: this invitation is also extended to YC.

<comment><USER25> Hi! Maybe we should talk :)

Here's my website/profile: [https://www.csdojo.io/](https://www.csdojo.io/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER38> Will the answers be kept confidential?

</comment><comment><USER39> First let me say I think this is a great idea even just the marketing and publicity angle alone. [1]

That said I always love the arbitrary numbers they assign such as '100' or similar those '30 under 30'. And so on. Heinz of course popularized 57 varieties of ketchup (not sure I have seen that duplicated).

Why not say 'roughly 100'. Give yourself the flexibility to go up or down if needed.

[1] This is what happens when money meets creative ideas.

</comment><comment><USER40> I had a conversation with colleagues literally last Friday in which I mentioned a version of question #2. I've always wanted to ask that question to candidates, but felt they would struggle to think of a way to phrase an answer in an interview setting...

YC has come up with a very concise prompt, though, so I'll have to give this a try next time I'm out recruiting...

<comment><USER22> Second question is very delicate. You definitely don't want to discuss something which may end up being unattainable. Say, you're working on a new physics, and you don't have something to show in form of math theories or experiments. Chances are you'll be labelled a nut, which from a nerd community could be counterproductive (see "ought to work on a good ides which looks like a bad one"). So you want to germinate your ideas - and perhaps throw those not good enough - until you have a sort of MVP. Which defeats the idea of the second questions substantially.

If you have something to show, it's more in venue of incremental, predictable work, and less in "out there" ideas perhaps.

</comment></comment><comment><USER41> Perhaps a better messaging here would be - if you're working on gene editing, nuclear fusion, or some such radical and ambitious project, we want to hear. Tell us the path you took to get to this point, and your ideas for the future. Then select from everyone who writes in?

<comment><USER42> _> if you're working on gene editing, nuclear fusion, or some such radical and ambitious project, we want to hear. Tell us the path you took to get to this point, and your ideas for the future. Then select from everyone who writes in?_

You are describing a scientific conference, or perhaps a grant proposal.

Unlike NSF/NIH/etc., they're not really asking for people who have dedicated their lives to a problem to write up a compelling and realistic plan of attack for a hard tech problem. That can't be done in a few minutes of a video, and certainly can't be done if in that video you also have to write your ideal obituary. What they're looking for, I think?, are charismatic and driven leaders.

</comment></comment><comment><USER43> WHEW! Sama's worldview is so technocractic it's rather disturbing.

The world is _actually_ shaped by mothers and fathers. Teachers and physical therapists. Doctors and pastors. Friends and romantic partners.

...

I hesitate to write the following because I'm not going to express everything how I actually think. But it should add to the discussion...

Here's an interesting spin on it. I'll give my "real" answers and my technocentric answers. Both could be said by accurately. But my worldview aligns much more with the former.

#Honest answers

>What are you interested in and what are you working on?

I'm interested in creating a world where everyone has a human network of mutual support and care. I'm genuinely concerned that the technocentrist worldview that seems to consume a generation of our brightest minds will miss the human element of life and lead society in a worse direction. I am building neighborhood-level community with the lower middle class and poor.

>What have you done so far that shows your potential for greatness, adjusted for whatever life circumstances you were born into?

I work with what I have, to best of my abilities, to love and serve others. I'm often selfish and mess up. I try to correct my mistakes and hope to get better.

>In a best-case scenario, what do you want your obituary to say?

Loving husband and father, caring neighbor, and example of a life of service.

#Technocentric answers:

>> What are you interested in and what are you working on?

I'm building better automation in the tech stack for life science research to accelerate the discovery and delivery of medical care for the sick and dying.

>>What have you done so far that shows your potential for greatness, adjusted for whatever life circumstances you were born into?

4.0's, valedictorian, PhD, publish in fancy journals, design and deliver millions of dollars of research systems to all the major pharmaceuticals, ya ya yah...

>> What have you done so far that shows your potential for greatness, adjusted for whatever life circumstances you were born into?

Discovered a tailored medical care approach to eliminate deaths caused by cancer. Loving husband and father, caring neighbor, and example of a life of service.

<comment><USER44> Agreed. It's easy to assume that technology is good for society when it's fun to build it, ship it, and backwards-justify what you've done. Are we sure that AGI will be good for society? If not, why should we try and push to develop it as fast as possible?

<comment><USER22> I once saw a presentation from Machine Intelligence Research Institute. The presentation listed global dangers to civilization, including AI. Then it was mentioned that, done right, AI could actually solve at least some other problems. That was justification for MIRI efforts.

<comment><USER44> Agreed that AI could have large positive or negative effects on society and I think the kind of work that MIRI does is incredibly important. I wish that this application took MIRI's outcome-driven approach rather than being tech for tech's sake.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER45> How hard is the 1 minute limit on the video? Is it a big deal if the video is 2 minutes? Some things might take a bit of time to really explain.

<comment><USER46> If you do longer, I'd make sure the most important bits are in the first minute.

</comment></comment><comment><USER47> I mean, I'd love to go...I live in Boulder too

</comment><comment><USER48> I am having trouble seeing what the deadline for this is. Am I missing something obvious?

<comment><USER49> "The application deadline is Feb 18th at 11:59 PM PST."

?

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> curious to know who the "20 people who are already at the top of their fields" are.

...wondering why they wouldn't publish that so that folks who apply have a better idea who they'll be spending time with.

</comment><comment><USER50> 100 introverts walk into a bar...

</comment><comment><USER51> Your chance to have dinner with the next Elizabeth Holmes?

</comment><comment> d--b > Aside from some basic information, all you need to do to apply is submit a > one-minute video with answers to these three questions:

> What are you interested in and what are you working on?

> What have you done so far that shows your potential for greatness, adjusted > for whatever life circumstances you were born into?

> In a best-case scenario, what do you want your obituary to say?

Ugh... what a terrible selection process...

<comment><USER52> "Please don't post shallow dismissals, especially of other people's work. A good critical comment teaches us something."

[https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html)

<comment><USER53> People eventually get tired of giving useful feedback to unhelpful people. Maybe that's a piece of advice someone should share with sama sama.

<comment><USER52> You may not owe Sam or any individual better than this, but you do owe quite a bit better to the community you're participating in here.

<comment><USER53> I hope so.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER54> is this like a tie-in with the HBO series or something?

</comment><comment><USER55> SO, are you going to share the candidates ___prior_ __to the retreat?

Can we vote on people we feel should be there?

Can we see their submission videos?</comment>


****** No Bootcamp Applicants ****** - <AUTHOR> https://code.likeagirl.io/no-bootcamp-applicants-2374dea7d7ba <comment><USER2> Not a great article. I can completely understand the rejection of bootcamp applicants. I've personally interviewed people for algorithm / math heavy positions (explicitly mentioned in the article) and bootcamp applicants just do not cut it.

The genuine knowledge in a field like this cannot be conveyed to anybody over the course of a few months. Teaching someone with a stats or physics background to code is pretty doable on-the-job. Teaching someone years of math isn't. And it's not really possible in the workplace either.

I'm not saying that a bootcamp education is completely insufficient and there surely are jobs on the market where they make for a nice fit, but in jobs that tend more towards the theory side of things the general aptitude that someone has after years of rigorous education doesn't even compare to someone out of a bootcamp.

Not to mention that the comparison to race or gender issues in the beginning is in extremely bad taste. The question here is qualification for the job, not discrimination of a protected class.

<comment><USER3> I've been curious about this issue, because I've been relatively successful in my so-far short career as a web developer. Yet I'm self-taught, and can't math my way out of a paper bag. I'm good at logic so that's gone a long way in helping me.

I always wonder, though, whether I'll eventually run into a math-critical issue and cannot just reason my way through it. It's a terrifying prospect, but luckily in my 5 years of dev experience I haven't faced that scenario.

<comment><USER4> If you don't use math, it's almost certain that you're writing inefficient code. There's no way to estimate big-O complexity of the procedures you're writing without at least some math. Unfortunately these days it's considered ok to write chat applications that consume several gigabytes of RAM, so maybe nobody cares about efficient code anymore.

<comment><USER5> I see tons of people online writing algorithms in python and ruby, that will run against a few megabytes of data, and worry about getting the "big-O" of their algorithms right.

Then I go ahead and show them that just by doing the same thing in C++ you get a 10x speedup if you know what you're doing, sometimes more.

And then they say "but I'd never get an optimal algorithm done" (that C++ is typed actually makes this easier for me then python as soon as we get past the "trivial" complexity level, but to each his own I guess).

So I say "Ok. No worries ! Let's make it inefficient !". And add an inner for loop where a hash lookup would have done it (for example). And lo and behold ! The C++ code still beats the crap out of their "optimal" python code. (this is somewhat of a cheat because the odds of making a random thing somewhat inefficient is very unlikely to be the critical point of that code, even if it's in the middle of the deepest loop). Then we replace their 100mb csv with a new 10mb memory-mappable data and they can't even measure anymore how fast the program is. As soon as we enter main, it just immediately terminates.

Algorithms start to matter when your data, optimally stored, becomes >10x all the CPU cache combined, ignoring things like strings. That means 300-400 megabytes when stored fully binary. Ie. you DO NOT HAVE ANY SUCH DATA. Your company's yearly transaction log is less than this. Before that, forget about algorithm optimization, it will bring you nothing.

TLDR: If you're not working in C++, and actually doing most of your development on data layout in memory and on disk, you don't care about performance. Math does not matter at all. Once a year I encounter a situation where math matters, and frankly I just usually find a PhD in that specific field and ask them (despite having a master degree in Math myself).

You do not need math to program.

The big secret is that for programming, there is only one thing that matters beyond basic programming skill. And that thing is domain knowledge of the problem. Exactly, I might add, what almost all programmers don't have.

<comment><USER4> No, algorithms always matter. Especially in web-development. Yes, Javascript is slow. But there's no need to make it even slower by writing O(n^2) code where O(n) suffices. You don't even need to reach large n's to feel the lag. I personally had to rewrite such code, which was causing horribly slow website performance.

The big-O thing is not about C vs Python. A slow C program will lose to a Python program with a properly written algorithm any day of the week. Just because of how the _math_ works out. The speedup of using C is linear (in practice, worse than linear). Suppose the O(n^2) C program executes each instruction 1000 times faster that the corresponding O(n) Python program. Then you only need n to start reaching thousands to blow the C program out of the water. Meanwhile, O(n^2) Python program would be _a thousand times slower than that_. And to me, that's unacceptable.

<comment><USER5> Web development is about displaying ONE PAGE of data. 20 items. 40 items. 100 items. No more. A far cry from the thousands of items you say it requires (I'd argue that it's a lot more). And just so we're clear a supposed O(n^5) algorithm with n constant (like on paginated web pages), is really O(1).

The thing about O(n) algorithms versus O(n^2) algorithms is that very often rewriting an O(n^2) algorithm into an O(n) algorithm involves splitting the loops, and using way more memory.

And that's assuming you do it correctly. Mostly people don't. Example, your basic optimization of a double for loop turns into:

      # (1)
      x = {}
      for e in lst:
        x[e.field] = e

      for e in lst:
        e2 = x[e.value]
        # do something with it

Is that x[e.field] is an allocation and takes O(n) time. So this is an O(n^2) loop, and you have saved nothing over this, even in theory

      # (2)
      for e in lst:
        for e2 in lst:
          if e2.field == e.value:
            # inner loop

So in this obvious case it takes infinite items in theory. Even that is a wrong prediction. (2) will also behave very differently depending on whether the VM is just starting up or has been running for a while. So in practice here's what's going to be faster:

      n < 10000 or so: (2) (the actual number depends on the CPU, but it'll easily be 500 even on the most pathetic atom or even mobile processor)
      n > 10000 and total size < system memory / 2.5 or so: (1)

Why, in the beginning not doing the setup is just faster by itself. This lasts a long time because when the inner loop executes in cache and the hashtable copy does not fit in cache the loop is 100 times faster (on top of that ~100 times C acceleration). This means the loop stays fast for a long time.

Needless to say, this means that for anything you should do client-side the double loop will be the faster option, even on the slowest mobile cpu any of your customers might use.

At some point the Hash table will start winning. Until it causes virtual memory activity during the lookups. At which point, it's memory usage makes it useless. I'll see about actually running this test with an actual example program.

Hence, it's good to keep Rob Pike's rules of programming into account: [http://users.ece.utexas.edu/~adnan/pike.html](http://users.ece.utexas.edu/~adnan/pike.html)

Rule 2. Measure. Don't tune for speed until you've measured, and even then don't unless one part of the code overwhelms the rest.

Rule 3. Fancy algorithms are slow when n is small, and n is usually small. Fancy algorithms have big constants. Until you know that n is frequently going to be big, don't get fancy. (Even if n does get big, use Rule 2 first.)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> > I spent twelve weeks, ten to twelve hours per day, of my boot camp working > primarily on algorithms and data structures, and was tested on that > knowledge every three weeks. So that can't be the skill I'm missing.

Wow, 3 whole _months_? I wonder why they didn't want bootcamp applicants...

But, in general, I agree. They should be filtering by ability rather than putting a blanket ban on people who have done a bootcamp. But playing devil's advocate, I can totally see why they put a blanket ban on people who have done a bootcamp.

Also, this article was flagged, and I vouched it as I don't think it's totally unsubstantive. But I would prefer it if we lost the stars from the title.

<comment><USER7> I've worked with developers who have 20 years of development on their résumé who haven't spent 3 months thinking about data yet. I've also worked with interns who are weeks in to their first professional role who have taught me things about data I haven't seen before. Time served is a terrible way of measuring knowledge and passion for a subject.

<comment><USER8> Very true. There are devs that spent years of their careers changing magic numbers in code they never understood. I believe that a lot of comes down to attitude and eagerness to learn. Because some people maybe haven't even had the opportunity yet to think about data but would love to.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> It's too bad this got flagged. I think it could have good discussions.

My problem with bootcamps is that is not how the human brain works. No one can absorb 12 hours a day of information for 12 weeks. Things get lost.

We need experience and repetition. We need to shoot ourselves in the foot by accident a few times. You don't get that in a 12 weeks.

Which is fine. I've hired plenty of people with no college but years of real world experience. I've even hired someone straight out of high school before.

The difference is when you act like the 12 weeks has taught you everything you need to know.

"wisdom is knowing you know nothing"

I've been doing this 20 years and have a computer science degree and I still marvel at what I don't know.

With that said, the company that made that job post sounds like a terrible place to work. I'd probably rather work with the bootcamp grad than whoever wrote that job listing.

Although one point... and this is right up in there with things you didn't learn in bootcamp...

It's ok to write a O(n^2) loop if n is a small number. Only optimize your algorithms if it actually has performance impact. Don't optimize just for the sake of "exponential complexity is bad." Premature optimization is a terrible thing.

<comment><USER10> Agreed with most of what you said, especially that this would be a good discussion. My problem with filtering based on bootcamp training is that you occasionally find someone who has been programming their whole life (as a kid) an d finally decided to get a certificate. If there is one thing I've learned about interviewing, it's to not limit your options. Instead, talk to people for a few minutes on the phone and ask your own questions instead of looking at what someone put on a piece of paper about themselves. If you don't have time for that, outsource it to a recruiting firm who will also be good at finding diamonds in the rough.

<comment><USER9> To be clear, I do not agree to filtering out bootcamp people.

<comment><USER10> You made that clear in your first post. I was just trying to add on to that.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Is there a job shortage for devs? I am fairly certain many companies are hungry for devs, female especially. Businesses _love_ claiming diversity, after all.

Perhaps "bootcamp" as the last thing on your resume just screams that you are a greenbean and can't rightly claim competence in much of anything. Get hooked up with a technology staffing group in your area, they'll help get you placed and the sweet, sweet lucre will begin to flow your way. (Search for "IT Staffing" or "Technology Staffing".)

I suppose there is a lot that is unfair/crummy about women's experience in the workplace these days, but I'd be shocked if landing an IT job is crummier than it is for men. I observe that sane women with any decent level of technical acumen in my division get promoted more rapidly than men. So, in some companies, it'd probably be advantageous to be female.

Let's not be complainers and wallow in our victimhood. That blog post will make you quite unattractive to some employers that care to google you by-name.

</comment><comment><USER12> Last night I had the pleasure of meeting some of the students set to graduate from the Tech Elevator Cincinnati program. I emphasized that as someone hiring developers, I'm much more interested in how the applicant approaches solutions to problems presented in the interview than clever code. I'm more interested in the potential of a new hire that can work well with the existing team instead of a know it all.

One of the questions that I was asked was "What's your go to tricky interview question"? Truth is, I don't have one. My advice for these graduates was to make sure when presented with a kobayashi maru that they do the best that they can to clarify the scope of the question before blindly falling into a trap.

I'm a bootcamp grad. I've hired bootcamp grads and will continue to hire them. If companies are that quick to eliminate potential new hires, then you likely wouldn't enjoy working for them anyway.

</comment><comment><USER8> While I agree it's definitely something that should not go on a job posting, I can see what it stemmed from. And it's probably the fact that they did indeed give bootcamp grads a test.

The author seems like a motivated person and while she speaks inclusively of all the bootcamp participants(a lot of "we"), I am willing to bet that many of them do not share her drive. It's also worth noting that just because someone taught you something and you studied, it doesn't necessarily mean that you can apply it to the real world. Which is why experience is probably still the best learning tool.

In the end, I do feel sort of the same even toward normal grads. I believe that it's not where your knowledge comes from but what do you do with that matters. The question then becomes, how do you weed out the bad ones? Well, we are back at square 0, with an interview.

To recap, I agree that you shouldn't have a job post like that but for different reasons than the author's.

<comment><USER13> >I am willing to bet that many of them do not share her drive

The flip side to this: I'm self-taught and I've worked with plenty of CS graduates from good schools who didn't strike me as particularly driven or value-adding. On the theory side, I'm not sure they could talk through a basic DS&A problem if I gave them one as well (that they hadn't seen before).

To your point, it's not where your knowledge comes from, but what you do with it that counts (and I might add, that the foundational bits exist).

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> There are a lot of universities which taught the core CS worse, and also didn't teach any of the stuff taught in bootcamps, by Professors who were more focused on research than fixing the problem.

</comment><comment><USER7> Hiring is _expensive_ , distracting and having an unfilled position can result in other staff leaving. No good company wants to leave a post unfilled. If you're capable and a good fit for the job _nothing_ is going to stop a company hiring you. No matter what the advert says, if you can do the job and you want to work at the company just apply anyway.

But think hard about whether or not you really want to work for a company that says things like this in their ads, because you probably don't.

</comment><comment><USER15> Asking with honest curiosity, why is this post flagged? I mostly see civil discussion.

</comment><comment><USER16> Unrelated to bootcamps, but one thing really jumped out at me in the article. The author's discussion of BigO time:

"The post went on to detail a need for an understanding of BigO time complexity, which is completely fair. No one wants a double loop in production code. What a bulky monstrosity that would be (imagining a giant disgusting swamp monster made of 0's and 1's, eeek!)."

"I certainly don't want to make a messy newb mistake like creating a method with a time complexity of O(n²) or worse (cringe)."

I'm not going to be critical and say that this is _wrong_ and that the author doesn't know what she is doing. But it does seem that this quote demonstrates a tendency I see among female advocates of women in tech, and that is to slightly awkwardly use technical terms in order to try to prove that they are part of the "in group" of people who understand technical concepts.

In this case, it seems that she is trying to prove that she knows what BigO is. I feel like this is a kind of meta-sexism. What she is doing by explaining to us the gist of BigO is saying "I think that you think that I'm so stupid that I don't know what BigO is, so now I'm going to prove to you that I do."

I know I suffer from the assumption that women don't know how to code. It's a hard thing to get around, since %90 of female programmers whom I meet are women from PyLadies who come to the local python meetup, and really don't know how to program yet. And now our author is suffering from the assumption that I assume that she doesn't know how to code. And in trying to prove otherwise, she trips over herself in her eagerness to prove my assumption wrong.

This meta-sexist thinking and behavior is getting so complicated and convoluted that it is acting to distract us from thinking and communicating on technical topics. I believe that it has become harmful to the cause of encouraging women and minorities to join our communities. It is harder for me as a white man to talk to a woman or a minority because I am thinking about their gender or race. And it is harder for a woman to talk about tech if she is thinking about my thinking about the fact that she is a woman.

Somehow we need to escape meta-sexism and start talking to each-other as equals, without presumption or presumption of presumption.

<comment><USER17> > I know I suffer from the assumption that women don't know how to code.

How the hell do you come to that assumption? I don't understand at all how you can make an assumption that a person knows or doesn't know something based on race or gender.

You need to check yourself because:

> It is harder for me as a white man to talk to a woman or a minority because > I am thinking about their gender or race

is not normal.

<comment><USER16> >> It is harder for me as a white man to talk to a woman or a minority because I am thinking about their gender or race

> is not normal.

Perhaps you don't do so. But how do you know it is not normal? If you don't let me share my internal battles without attacking me, then how can you know the internal psychology of others?

<comment><USER17> Because everyday millions and millions if not billions of transactions go on between humans of all genders and races, if your view was in the majority, then society would be different. You need to talk to someone about your world view and get help.

<comment><USER16> When you read my comments you have a set of assumptions that you have made about me. You cannot escape that. For one thing, you assume that I know English (which I do). Another thing you probably assume is that since I am on HN, I am a computer programmer. You assume that I know the word "transaction" since you use that word. You don't explain its meaning to me. Neither do you explain to me what a human is. You assume that I know what humans are. You assume that I am human, though you cannot see me. Assumptions are everywhere.

When we meet someone, we begin with a default set of assumptions about them and what they know. You cannot even communicate with a person without assuming something about their level of knowledge, of language, culture, and technology. The question is, whether these in-avoidable default assumptions should differ based on a person's race or gender or nationality. I believe that they should. If I come up to you, knowing that you're from the UK, and start talking to you about the post communist privatization process in the Czech Republic, without first explaining to you what it is, you are bound to be confused. I assume that you do not know about the privatization process.

That doesn't mean that I believe that citizens of the UK are fundamentally incapable of understanding the privatization process. If I ask you if you know about this process and you say you are an expert on post communist economics than my assumptions about your knowledge on the subject will quickly change. But for now, since I know nothing about you, it is safe for me to assume that you know nothing about privatization and that in order to be polite, I should not spend the next 30 minutes talking about the current value of privatization coupons without ever asking if you know what the hell I'm talking about.

But when the basis for my assumption of shared knowledge is gender, this leaves an interesting question. If I know that most women who I meet in technical contexts are not computer programmers should I immediately assume that they are computer programmers and start talking about in depth concepts or should I ask first? Is it more rude to assume that my conversation partner understands what I am talking about or to assume that they do not understand? Especially when many newbies are so eager to show that they do understand, that they find themselves unwilling to say out-loud that they do not.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Coming soon to your Dropbox: Document previews and easier sharing - <AUTHOR> https://blog.dropbox.com/2013/01/coming-soon-to-your-dropbox-document-previews-and-easier-sharing/

<comment><AUTHOR> As a Dropbox employee, both of these things have been super useful, especially being able to share sets of pictures without shuffling them around into shared folders. Glad they're shipping to everyone now :)

</comment><comment><USER2> Whilst this is another great addition to dropbox, their pricing is still not competitive. I love dropbox. It's simple, does what it says on the tin, and the recent addition of automatic camera uploads made me switch.

But compare the pricing of Dropbox to that of Google Drive: <https://www.dropbox.com/plans> [https://support.google.com/drive/bin/answer.py?hl=en&ans...](https://support.google.com/drive/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=2375123&p=mktg_pricing)

Google is half price.

</comment><comment><USER3> I wish Dropbox would come out with client-side encryption. They have had a couple of serious breaches and I frankly don't trust them with anything important.

(Edit): I am aware there are methods to do it yourself - they are all too cumbersome. I want something simple and built into the client.

</comment><comment><USER4> I feel they are late in introducing this feature...I was a DropBox user since beginning and collected 10GB more freespace by invites .

Recently slowly i have shifted my alliances to Skydrive after giving a try on Google Drive. Althgh am one of the Microsoft hating club, Skydrive is so fast and happy with its services. Only worry for me on Skydrive is Microsoft's history of scrapping the project even when its successful. Hopefully they don't do it.

<comment><USER5> I was a Microsoft Live Mesh user. After the idiotic decision to shut that down in favor of SkyDrive, I decided to just drop Microsoft completely. I had been using Dropbox and Mesh side-by-side. Mesh was unique for syncing files and folders in place, without having to move them to a new place.

Overall I always found Dropbox to be faster and more reliable.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> When are they going to create something like .gitignore for Dropbox!?

<comment><USER7> Their target audience is non-expert consumers. These new features are perfect examples of what their target audience wants. Any feature that requires editing a configuration file will probably never be implemented.

<comment><USER6> Ok, then don't make it configurable through a configuration file. This feature (the ability to ignore certain files or filetypes) could be configured similarly to how Dropbox currently handles selective sync.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> We have a document/file preview in our iOS app and web interface ( [http://www.tonido.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2012/11/iOS- Si...](http://www.tonido.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2012/11/iOS-Simulator- Screen-shot-Nov-14-2012-10.59.27-AM.png)), similar to dropbox. Our customers really love the file preview part. It will be a good feature for dropbox as well.</comment>


AI websites that design themselves - <AUTHOR> https://thegrid.io

<comment><USER3> What mechanisms are allowed for exporting to other services? Can I own my data? Can I self host this using a VPS? Why is it so expensive; I am already subscribed to a tonne of other services? What can I do to make it cheaper - <USER2> have some reach on social networks, and you could probably do with some traffic. I upvoted BTW</comment>


Petition to Support a Right to Privacy Amendment - <AUTHOR> https://petitions.whitehouse.gov/petition/support-constitutional-amendment-protecting-right-privacy/g5c3xMh5

<comment><USER2> The sentiment is good, but it's poorly written. Consider posting it on a wiki and letting interested community members edit and comment on it.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks, good suggestion.

I made the mistake of creating it before nailing the text.

Then it got booted off HN pretty quick, not sure why.</comment></comment>


Understanding LSTM networks - <AUTHOR> http://colah.github.io/posts/2015-08-Understanding-LSTMs/ <comment><USER2> Whats amazing to me is that if I understand correctly backprop still works. It is very odd that SGD on the error function for some training data is conceptually equivalent to teaching all the gates for each hidden feature when to open/close given the next input in a sequence.

<comment><USER3> > Whats amazing to me is that if I understand correctly backprop still works.

Yep! One computes the gradient with backpropagation and trains LSTMs on that.

> It is very odd that SGD on the error function for some training data is > conceptually equivalent to teaching all the gates for each hidden feature > when to open/close given the next input in a sequence.

Agreed, it's pretty remarkable the things one can learn with gradient descent. I'd like to understand this better.

<comment><USER4> I don't understand why this is remarkable, could you elaborate? You have a smooth map from inputs to outputs, you differentiate it via automated applications of the chain rule and use this to make the error function smaller. Why should this be remarkable?

<comment><USER3> If I didn't know that neural nets worked, and someone explained the idea, I'd strongly expect them to get stuck in local minima, instead of learning this elaborate behavior. (That's basically what happens with a normal RNN, I think.)

It's probably a case of my intuitions about optimization being really broken in high-dimensional spaces, but I'd like to improve that. I'd also like to understand how the cost surface we're optimizing on interacts with network architecture decisions. Both, unfortunately, are very hard demands.

<comment><USER5> >If I didn't know that neural nets worked, and someone explained the idea, I'd strongly expect them to get stuck in local minima

This has been the general consensus (based on intuition) until recently. It turns out that it's not as big problem as tought. Almost all local minima have very similar error values. The bigger issue is combinatorially large number of saddle points where gradient becomes zero with very few downward curving directions. Saddle-free Newton method is one way around that.

Open Problem: The landscape of the loss surfaces of multilayer networks, Choromanska, LeCun, Arous [http://jmlr.org/proceedings/papers/v40/Choromanska15.pdf](http://jmlr.org/proceedings/papers/v40/Choromanska15.pdf)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> colah, your posts combine a deep level of understanding and an exceptional clarity. These are both rare, especially in the cargo-cult-driven world of neural networks and deep learning.

I hope you keep writing as much as you can. Thanks!

</comment><comment><USER7> Thanks colah, that was a very readable walk-through. I've been making my way through Bishop's PRML ch 5 to get as much of a handle as possible on NNs, but your intro here to LSTM's makes me want to jump ahead and skip to the new stuff :)

</comment><comment><USER8> Michael, this post nicely completes your book about neural networks. I was a little surprised you didn't write it yourself.

</comment><comment><USER9> Anybody know what he uses for his diagrams?

<comment><USER3> All of the diagrams in this post were made in Inkscape, with the LaTeX plugin for equations.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> great explanation. many thanks! hochreiter is genius!

<comment><USER3> > hochreiter is genius!

It's really impressive to me how farsighted his work on LSTMs was.

In any case, I'm glad you liked the post.</comment></comment>


How Valuable Is a Unicorn? Maybe Not as Much as It Claims to Be - <AUTHOR> https://www.nytimes.com/2017/10/16/business/how-valuable-is-a-unicorn-maybe-not-as-much-as-it-claims-to-be.html <comment><USER2> If you're interested in learning more, I'd strongly recommend "Venture Capital and the Finance of Innovation" by Andrew Metric and Ayako Yasuda.

I used this book in a VC finance class (taught by a student of the prof in this article, incidentally) and found it very readable and helpful for understanding option valuation. Then again, when I was interviewing, companies wouldn't tell me anything about share pricing or the associated covenants, so it was kind of a wash from an employee perspective.

</comment><comment><USER3> Why do early investors agree to invest knowing that the future rounds will get preference? Tragedy of the anti-commons is a thing but you'd assume that existing investors would push back against this type of behavior.

</comment><comment><USER4> A great example of a recently triggered ratchet was in Square's IPO:

[https://blogs.wsj.com/digits/2015/11/18/square- pays-93-milli...](https://blogs.wsj.com/digits/2015/11/18/square- pays-93-million-penalty-to-some-investors-in-ipo/)</comment>


Student hackers change grades, lunch balances in Bloomfield Hills - <AUTHOR> https://www.freep.com/story/news/education/2018/05/17/bloomfield-students-hackers-lunch/620432002/ <comment><USER2> I did something like this in high school twenty years ago.

It got me kicked out of school for a year.

These days I bet they end up on a terrorist watch list.</comment>


Researchers Make BitTorrent Anonymous and Impossible to Shut Down - <AUTHOR> http://torrentfreak.com/bittorrent-anonymous-and-impossible-to-shut-down-141218/

<comment><USER2> Note that the anonymity comes from a dedicated Tor-like network that follows the Tor protocol specifications quite closely. This network requires no central (directory) servers and is based on bandwidth donations from the users themselves.

Specifications: [https://github.com/Tribler/tribler/wiki/Anonymous- Downloadin...](https://github.com/Tribler/tribler/wiki/Anonymous-Downloading- and-Streaming-specifications)

</comment><comment><USER3> Sounds good.</comment>


FotoFlexer Raises The Bar On Online Photo Editing - <AUTHOR> http://www.techcrunch.com/2007/08/27/fotoflexer-raises-the-bar-on-online-photo-editing/ <comment><USER2> "The world's most advanced online photo editor."

Not quite...

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> This sounds like a serious competitor to Snipshot, even though FotoFlexer doesn't have an API yet, AFAICT.

</comment><comment><USER3> 15 employees vs fauxto's 2

someone sense's bloat here.</comment>


HP's Omen 15 is the first gaming laptop with a 240Hz display - <AUTHOR> https://www.engadget.com/2019/01/06/hp-omen-15-240-hz-display/ <comment><USER2> 240hz!

I am amazed that fast matters. Modern gamers:

I don't currently game, due to lack of time. Which would you prefer?

Half resolution at double the rate, say 120hz, or full resolution, at the rate?

Why?

<comment><USER3> Personally I prefer 4k 144 Hz HDR for most games. The only thing 240 Hz displays have going for them are the frame rate, color and resolution are typically significantly worse. At the same time I was able to get my 1080p 240 Hz G-Sync display for $350 last month while 4k 144 Hz monitors are around 2x, ones with HDR around 5x. Add in the GPUs and CPUs needed to max these kinds of monitors out in a gaming scenario and the cost difference continues to grow.

For general day to day (web, email, coding, etc) 120/144 vs 240 isn't really noticeable beyond your mouse trail and the occasional page scroll having a few more frames.

I mostly got the 240 Hz for avoiding frameskipping in sped up emulators. Before I saw it on sale for $350 I was thinking of getting [http://www.zisworks.com/shop.html](http://www.zisworks.com/shop.html) since it can do 4k 120/1080 240 (and the bonus 540 480 for shits and giggles) for a reasonable price.

<comment><USER2> Excellent. It woukd be very interesting to program for that 480hz mode. Might just look real.

I am happy at 60 plus, and over 120 rarely matters. I can tell, but do not value it much.

Thanks for the interesting info!</comment></comment></comment>


The First Videogame GPL violation case - <AUTHOR> http://www.sdtimes.com/blog/post/2009/06/17/First-videogame-GPL-action.aspx This is the first case I've ever heard of where a GPL violation has been found in a videogame. <comment><USER2> Some more info: <http://www.scummvm.org/news/20090616/>

</comment><comment><USER3> What? What happened? Who the hell is Atari? They seem like a local variable that is never used. Plus, this sentence.

      It would seem that a European developer working with the
      shambling mess of a company now known (but with absolutely no
      relationship to the original) as Atari.</comment>


Bid for U.S. Chipmaker Blocked Over Security Risk - <AUTHOR> https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-09-13/trump-blocks-china-backed-bid-for-chipmaker-over-security-risk <comment><USER2> On this one, I guess most chip industry veterans agree with Trump. China plays hard ball on everything - block software companies (Google, FB ...) and demand IP grants from hardware companies. A little taste of their own medicine should remind them to play fair

</comment><comment><USER3> "In Beijing, Ministry of Commerce spokesman Gao Feng said a media briefing Thursday that China is concerned over the matter and that the U.S. should create a fair and transparent business environment."

HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA

What's the Mandarin word for hypocrisy?

</comment><comment><USER4> The same guy citing national security concerns for this block also proudly touted national secrets. Weird.

Smells like he just wants more of his trademarks approved, or something along those lines. It's hard to believe he genuinely cares about anything more than his own/his friend's interest.</comment>


JQuery.Screen - A jQuery Plugin For Managing Web Layers - <AUTHOR> http://wasabi001.github.com/wasabi001/

<comment><USER2> Cool.

<\-- (back) doesn't seem to work properly. It slides in from the right rather than the left.</comment>


Interesting List of Philosophy Student Malapropisms - <AUTHOR> http://www2.fiu.edu/~hauptli/malapropisms.html <comment><USER2> These are great - there was a time when I didn't know "tenets" from "tenants"!</comment>


Two New YC Partners: Kirsty Nathoo and Carolynn Levy - <AUTHOR> http://ycombinator.posterous.com/two-new-yc-partners-kirsty-nathoo-and-carolyn <comment><USER2> Based on this and the biannual stories of how many great teams there wasn't room for, I wonder: how long until the YC partners aren't advisors so much as the deans and department heads of YC University?

I realize that's a hugely loaded question, just curious what people's thoughts are.

<comment><USER3> These are SMEs not GMs, so I would suggest quite some time. Further, these are promotions of existing contributors, not 'true' staff expansions.

<comment><USER4> Agreed, no need to GTTM of IIP, which would diminish the FAB of JUT.

<comment><USER3> I couldn't follow your comment, so I tried to google what those acronyms meant. I couldn't find a reasonable answer, so in case you had a similar difficulty with my post, here are the expanded forms of SME and GM:

* Subject Matter Experts * General Managers.

<comment><USER5> Thought SME was more often Small and Medium Enterprise? Is that not true where you are? (AU here.)

<comment><USER3> When talking about businesses, not when talking about people.

<comment><USER5> Reading about people advising businesses threw me off when skim-reading. Sorry!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Can somebody please explain what it means to be a YC partner?

<comment><USER7> Traditionally, the difference between a "partner" and an "employee" is that partners share a formally-defined portion of the earnings of the business. A partnership is a business in which all the profits of the business which aren't simply invested back into the business flow to the partners.

I have no idea if that's exactly what it means at YC; partnership at YC might have as much to do with how portfolio-company-facing or visible a team member is.

<comment><USER8> "share a formally-defined portion of the earnings"

Which typically vary according to the particular partner by various items including seniority, equity invested, as only two factors.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Congrats. Carolynn had been our lawyer for almost 5 years and was excellent.

</comment><comment><USER10> Kirsty is a very nice person who always had an open ear and fast feedback for yc applicants. Thank you for that and congratulations!

</comment><comment><USER11> I didn't realize Kirsty wasn't a partner before.

<comment><USER12> Ditto; I always saw her around and accidentally assumed the same. She was always doing a lot to help.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> I don't know Carolynn but I would assume she has some significant business skills in addition to legal skills. From my experience it typically wouldn't make sense to make a partner out of a legal adviser for this type of business (as opposed to a business where you may be regularly fighting legal battles) and certainly not in the same percentage as a non-legal skills partner. Once again I don't know this particular situation. But a mistake I have often seen entrepreneurs in IRL make is becoming partners with their attorney or teaming up with an attorney in a business dealings. Attorneys tend to frame everything in legal risk which can often get in the way of certain risks you inevitably need to take in business.

One example might be the tendency that I have seen for a company to present a sales prospect with a multi page legal document to sign for even the smallest of dealings. This creates friction and isn't always necessary for small transactions and it gets in the way of closing deals. Every situation is different of course.

<comment><USER4> <http://paulgraham.com/julian.html>

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> In addition to the 7 on <http://ycombinator.com/people.html> who are the other two?

<comment><USER14> Garry and Aaron (<http://ycombinator.posterous.com/welcome-garry-and-aaron>)

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> Woo! We would be about three months behind where we are now if it weren't for Kirsty and Carolynn's help.

</comment><comment><USER16> More women (qualified) in tech. Kudos.

</comment><comment><USER17> Congrats Kirsty - she's a major force behind YCs success.

</comment><comment><USER18> Even with these new additions, Paul Graham is still the only YC partner without a set of double letters in his name :) Congrats to Kirsty and Carolynn!

</comment><comment><USER19> Congrats Kirsty! You deserve it for all the hardwork and time you put in dealing with all of our questions and accounting issues. thanks for all you do!

</comment><comment><USER20> Congratulations Kirsty, much deserved!

</comment><comment><USER21> Congratulations Kirsty!!!

</comment><comment><USER22> congrats Kirsty and Carolynn!

</comment><comment><USER23> is this partners where you just give them the title.

or is this like what you have with law firms, where they have to buy their way in as well?

</comment><comment><USER24> Congratulations, Kirsty and Carolynn!

</comment><comment><USER25> Congratulations Kirsty & Carolynn

</comment><comment><USER26> Great work you guys, keep it up

</comment><comment><USER27> Congrats Kirsty and Carolynn!

</comment><comment><USER28> Congratulations, Kirsty and Carolynn!

</comment><comment><USER29> Congrats Kirsty. Very cool news. :-)</comment>


Share your startup – October 2018 - <AUTHOR> IndieHackers (https://www.indiehackers.com/forum/what-are-you-working-on-this-month-september-2018-5beaceec93) and Reddit /r/startups (https://www.reddit.com/r/startups/comments/9c2a92/share_your_startup_september_2018/) have this ritual, and it's one post I like to read from time to time, to see people sharing their current projects, the state, and their plan.
I don't see anything like this on HN and thought it would be interesting to have one, hence this post.
Please do a succinct post, to make this clear. A list of these, "à la" Reddit, is great I believe:
* Name
* URL
* Small description (< 10/15 words)
* Current stage
* Your plan for this month
Thank you! :) <comment><USER2> * SoloKeys ([https://solokeys.com](https://solokeys.com))

* Solo is the first open source security key to support the newest FIDO2 standard.

* Finishing prototype and preparing for production

* Launching Kickstarter tomorrow, Oct 3!

All comments and questions are appreciated.

</comment><comment><USER3> HostJoy ([https://hostjoy.co](https://hostjoy.co))

Instant custom websites for rental hosts and property managers.

Early stages, pre-revenue, testing product-market fit.

Plan for this month is to soft launch to our beta customers and quickly iterate on the feedback we receive.

Please let me know if you have an questions or comments, feedback greatly welcome! Thank you

</comment><comment><USER4> Something by developers for developers: [https://newreleases.io](https://newreleases.io) sends email and Slack notifications wnenever there is a new version released on GitHub, PyPI, NPM, Docker... Current goal is to spread the word about us ower the whole www. :)

<comment><USER5> For Github release I just subscribe to the RSS feed, and post from there to Slack/Email as things become available.

Seems like you support more sources than that though, so you've got a fun project!

<comment><USER4> I've tried RSS feed, but needed more options. Our service offers filtering based on pre-releases, updated releases and regex. Currently we support 9 different platforms and we plan to support more in the future. What we discovered working on this nice project that ordering in tags and releases feeds are not chronological, but with GitHub custom version ordering which makes it very unrelailable.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> * Stackdraft

* [https://www.stackdraft.io/](https://www.stackdraft.io/)

* Create and present 2D/3D cloud architecture diagrams that look great.

* Stage: Launched over a month ago, currently at $120 MRR. Get your hands on the early adopter plan ;)!

* Plans: Offer team plans, more cloud service models.

<comment><USER7> Wow I love the idea and how the landing page suggests options on what you might like.

I appreciate good system architecture and this looks like a great way to convey that information.

This is the current way I convey architecture diagrams [https://old.benwinding.com/but-how/](https://old.benwinding.com/but-how/)?

<comment><USER6> Glad you like it :)! Thanks for sharing the link. One of the reasons I created Stackdraft was the thought "why cloud architecture diagrams can't look good as well?". It's like we're constrained to crude tools, but the technology has gone so far already :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Draftss.com - Unlimited Graphic Design Service

Founders can now hire a graphic design team and request unlimited design tasks on subscription model starting from $259/per month.

Website URL: [http://draftss.com](http://draftss.com)

</comment><comment><USER5> * DNS API

* [https://dns-api.com/](https://dns-api.com/)

* Use (git) revision-control for DNS records, served via AWS.

* Current state: Working, serving, reliable, and giving income.

* Plan for this month? Sporadic self-promotion in places like this ;)

Thank you! :)

</comment><comment><USER9> * Y-Productive

* [https://www.y-productive.com/](https://www.y-productive.com/)

* We've built Y-Productive to help you track your work, productivity, and distractions in one place.

* The app is fully functional and we're working on adding more high-demanded features to make your work more efficient with Y-Productive :)

* We've launched the partner's program, so we're looking for people who have the audience of developers, startupers and entrepreneurs to share the profits with them.

Feel free to contact me at email@example.com

</comment><comment><USER10> * UptimeBar - OS X notifications when your websites go down

* [https://uptimebar.app](https://uptimebar.app)

* State: Launched on PH last week!

* Plan: promotion & working on the next app - watch this space ;)

Support Indie Makers!

</comment><comment><USER11> * Breach Insider ([https://breachinsider.com](https://breachinsider.com))

* Data breach detection made easy, using pseudo-users with real information, unique to your business.

* Current stage: Bootstrapped and profitable. Working on (gradual) growth!

* Content marketing.. lots and lots of content marketing, to build our 'trust' within the community. There is nothing worse than a security startup that no-one has heard of.

</comment><comment><USER12> \- Recapped.io ([https://www.recapped.io](https://www.recapped.io))

\- Go from Sales Proposal to Project Management in one dynamic page

\- Launched and post-revenue (just applied to YC)

\- AppSumo featured us yesterday as the next deal ([https://appsumo.com/recapped/](https://appsumo.com/recapped/)), and it's been crazy hectic. Amazing feedback and revenue so far though.

</comment><comment><USER13> * Windly News * [http://windly.news](http://windly.news)

* Windly News is a curated selection of the best articles and longforms delivered weekly to your Kindle.

* Early stage, launched 2 months ago.

* Getting to break-even (!!!) + launching on Product Hunt

</comment><comment> 100-xyz 100-xyz

[http://www.100-xyz.com](http://www.100-xyz.com)

Lets your wifi guests land directly on your web pages Its a captive portal plus local web server. Useful for restaurants, bars, specialty stores and households in dense neighborhoods.

Marketing/User acquisition

Launch kickstarter/indiegogo Print pamphlets and distribute

</comment><comment><USER14> * Log My Hours ([https://logmyhours.com](https://logmyhours.com))

* Time Tracking, Invoicing, Expenses & Team Management

* Launched, 1k+ MRR

* Rebuild landing pages, working on a fun new feature, and hopefully start rebuilding our mobile app

</comment><comment><USER15> Name:Founder Stuff URL: [https://founderstuff.xyz](https://founderstuff.xyz) Description: A curated list of resources for founders Current stage: MVP The plan is to add more resources and verticals

</comment><comment><USER16> _Guardian Angel

_ www.guardianangel.network

 _Guardian Angel is in the process of building an end-of-life marketplace. We are based in London, UK.

_ Pre-seed (in process of closing a 350-500k GBP round with 365 commited).

*Hiring a lead Dev – email me if interested email@example.com

</comment><comment><USER17> Doqume.com

A semantic search engine for documents, which makes data and information discovery more efficient

We are currently working on improving the MVP and contacting potential customers for feedback

</comment><comment><USER18> * Manypixels

* [https://www.manypixels.co](https://www.manypixels.co)

* Unlimited premium design services for a fixed monthly fee

* Launched, $40k MRR

* Launch a new client dashboard

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Here's mine:

* Name: PDFShift

* URL: [https://pdfshift.io](https://pdfshift.io)

* Description: Convert any HTML documents to high fidelity PDF in a single POST request.

* Plans: I'm hoping to reach the 1000$ MRR (currently at around 430$). I also plan to redo the website's design and releasing a Python PDF library :)

</comment><comment><USER19> Here's ours:

* Name: PLAYBOOK * URL: [https://www.watchplaybook.com/](https://www.watchplaybook.com/) * Pitch: PLAYBOOK is a mobile video micro-learning app on a mission to empower the world to learn faster & easier from leading experts. Learn Product, Design & Entrepreneurship in 10 min video micro-learning courses, taught by leading experts from companies like Spotify, PayPal, UBER and many more. It's 100% Free! * Plan: Get to 2000 MAU</comment>


A US millionaire who buried treasure in the Rockies has offered one main clue - <AUTHOR> http://www.scmp.com/news/world/united-states-canada/article/2142371/us-millionaire-who-buried-treasure-rockies-has <comment><USER2> I was looking at Fenn's poem the other day and did a little frequency analysis. It's interesting to see three 'W's on one line, two 'Q's on another, every other letter present except 'X'. Maybe find the X, as in 'X marks the spot'?

He says he spent 15 years working on this poem.

<comment><USER3> The map is unusual. It's rare to show magnetic declination lines - I suspect there might be a clue there. Land ownership is seemingly a clue too. Nobody who grew up in the west would hide treasure on someone else's private land and then claim he did it to get people outdoors. In many of these areas, people don't appreciate trespassing. Tribal land is out of the question too, unless he's crazy.

<comment><USER3> Eh, well, the declination theory is probably nothing. There is apparently another map blessed by him w/o declination and land ownership.

[https://dalneitzel.com/wp- content/uploads/2016/04/Fennboree-...](https://dalneitzel.com/wp- content/uploads/2016/04/Fennboree-III-Map-small.jpg?x36947)

He claims all you need is the map, then leaves more offline clues in interviews than on the map, e.g. above 5000 feet, near pine, near a road from which he could make two trips in an afternoon. That is sort of annoying - seems a treasure map /poem should be self-contained.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Interesting to consider what you would do if you found it? Presumably you're in the wilderness with a 40 pound chest. Your car might be fairly near, as Fenn makes clear when he notes he was 80 when he made "two trips from my vehicle" to the site. So if you're fit or have help you can probably get it back to the car (40 pounds is a lot to carry in hiking terrain). What happens once you do? How do you claim title to it? Who owns the land it is on? If it's not Fenn's land you might have a problem with the owner, be it a private or public entity. If you were to get pulled over with that chest in the car and the police discovered it I think the chances of confiscation are high. Probably finding it would only be the first of many problems.

<comment><USER5> I for sure would not tell anyone about it.

<comment><USER6> And let the other people spend their time in fruitless search forever? Not very nice.

<comment><USER7> That's an argument you ought to bring up to Mr. Fenn - since it appears that an eternal search was more or less what he was going for:

> _He has also affirmed that hiding the treasure in the first place was > largely about encouraging families to enjoy the outdoors. "I wanted to give > the kids something to do," he said. "They spend too much time in the game > room or playing with their little hand-held texting machines. I hope parents > will take their children camping and hiking in the Rocky Mountains. I hope > they will fish, look for fossils, turn rotten logs over to see what's under > them, and look for my treasure."_

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Reminds me of Kit William's "Masquerade". I remember his coffee-table book that kicked off a treasure hunt in the '70's. I later read with fascination how the treasure hunt was planned, executed, and finally solved. The party that solved the puzzle did not in fact find the golden hare — instead an individual who had not solved it did.

[https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/1176887.Quest_for_the_Go...](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/1176887.Quest_for_the_Golden_Hare)

We need more hidden treasures, I think.

<comment><USER9> You can also read about that contest in these two pieces:

[https://www.filfre.net/2016/05/kit-williamss-golden-hare- par...](https://www.filfre.net/2016/05/kit-williamss-golden-hare-part-1-the- contest/)

[https://www.filfre.net/2016/05/kit-williamss-golden-hare- par...](https://www.filfre.net/2016/05/kit-williamss-golden-hare-part-2-the- aftermath/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> I first read about this a couple of years ago and I admit to being fascinated by it and following the story since. There's a kind of magic to the whole thing–a treasure hidden in the mountains, a poem hinting at its whereabouts–that really captivates me. I kind of wish I lived in the Rockies so my frequent hiking trips could have an added dimension of treasure hunting!

</comment><comment><USER11> Wouldn't it be ironic if it was found a few years after it was hidden, or maybe even before he announced the Hunt...

I mean, the finder would probably think "best not tell people where I got this from" a la Counte of Monte Cristo.

<comment><USER12> I believe the guy has stated recently that it remains unfound.

<comment><USER13> He also claims to be the only person to know the location, therefore for him to verify that, he would have had to visit it himself. He's now 86 and probably not able to hike into the mountains to check. So perhaps it's not far from a road?

<comment><USER14> Or he assumes people will tell him when they find it?

<comment><USER15> Or he has access to aerial surveys that indicate that there was no digging at the site.

Or the treasure is of the form "take this letter to the bank in order to get your reward".

Or maybe he is confident it is not found because it can't be found because it is a hoax.

<comment><USER16> GPS tracking? Some kind of tamper-detection with a sender? At his budget he could be communicating through satellites.

<comment><USER17> would need a permanent power source to do that. batteries slowly leak power even if unused. with a solar charger batteries would eventually wear out from the charge cycling. GPS and satellite communication is relatively power hungry. plus, the radio emissions would be a dead giveaway.

<comment><USER16> Good points.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> The most recent death happened just last year, when a guy slipped and fell down a cliff face in Yellowstone:

[http://www.ktvq.com/story/37560172/report-illinois-man- fell-...](http://www.ktvq.com/story/37560172/report-illinois-man-fell-to-his- death-in-yellowstone-national-park-while-treasure-hunting)

<comment><USER19> Falling 500 feet takes about 6 seconds. Long enough for you to realize your life is over.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> it goes to show like the netflix prize, x prize etc. Is that contests cause 10X the investment of time, energy, and money as compared to the prize. The expected value on these contests is very low.

Instead of government grants, we should have government X prizes for solving various problems. Solar for under $x/watt, fuel efficient vehicles, etc etc.

<comment><USER21> This is the approach the British and several other governments took for finding a reliable way to find the longitude of a ship at sea [1]. Dava Sobel's _Longitude_ is an interesting but quick read about the problem and John Harrison's eventual solution.

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

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> There is a whole activity called "geocaching" where people hide things and others try to find. Nothing valuable though.

<comment><USER23> If the items were valuable, maybe the activity could be called "geocashing". :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> Might be better to offer several "easter eggs" instead of one jack pot. If people have been searching for it for decades to no avail then I'm not exactly inspired to go look for it either. A string of discoveries would get me more excited, even if the value was much less.

<comment><USER25> The maze isnt meant for you

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> Buried treasure makes the world seem so magical.

</comment><comment><USER27> I've followed this treasure for a few years now and while I think a modern day treasure hunt sounds exciting, I don't think there is any physical treasure here. The treasure you find on this hunt is the emotional bond you form between your family and friends while enjoying the great outdoors

<comment><USER28> This comment was sponsored by the National Parks of America

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> So who's up for forming a Hackernews gunter clan?

</comment><comment><USER30> This guy is a scam artist of sorts. At first I thought his cause noble...to get people outdoors. But now he's responsible for people dying. Not directly of course, but still. He's not offered any proof that he ever had such a treasure. His words are vague enough that any place could fit. He claims it's not been discovered yet with certainty. The mentally ill and destitute are flocking to his tale and killing themselves...at what point do regulators step in?

</comment><comment><USER31> Anyone know of a list of open puzzles/riddles like Fenn's poem, Kryptos, etc?

<comment><USER32> [http://mysteriouswritings.com/top-ten-armchair-treasure- hunt...](http://mysteriouswritings.com/top-ten-armchair-treasure-hunts-and- their-lost-treasures-to-find/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER33> If I was connected enough I would follow this strategy. Get cell and/or car gps records from 2010 from this person. Map this information and apply the clues.

</comment><comment><USER34> Don't click that link from IOS. A site more full of bullshit I have never seen.

</comment><comment><USER35> It's likely that it will never be found publicly due to Tax implications.

</comment><comment> crooked-v I wonder how many people have died, or will die, looking for this treasure.

<comment><USER36> That's covered in the article.

> And for some, the quest has proven fatal. At least four people are believed > to have died in accidents while searching. This led some to call for Fenn to > end the hunt. He hasn't, but he has added a few additional clues on his blog > to try to help people stay safe.

> "The treasure chest is not under water, nor is it near the Rio Grande River. > It is not necessary to move large rocks or climb up or down a steep > precipice," he writes. "Please remember that I was about 80 when I made two > trips from my vehicle to where I hid the treasure."

> "The search is supposed to be fun," he added.

</comment></comment><comment><USER37> I love this story!

</comment><comment><USER38> puzzling.stackexchange.com needs to get on this.

</comment><comment><USER39> > all artefacts that Fenn, a self-taught archaeologist, amassed during his own > sometimes controversial explorations in the Southwest, reports Vox. The > millionaire was criticised in the 1990s for excavating the San Lazaro Pueblo > Indian site he bought, for example, and the FBI searched his home in 2009 in > connection with the sale of artefacts looted from the Four Corners area, > though no charges were filed.

It sounds like a lot of people in the world might consider the treasure to have been stolen. Who is searching for a treasure that doesn't seem to clearly belong to even the person who buried it?

People are dying for this treasure, which was created through "controversial" means while a 'self-taught' archeologist was digging around. It seems he clearly had no formal training in morals, may not have been accompanied by others, and very well may have stolen the entirety of the treasure from potentially rightful owners.

Seems like not a treasure worth dying for to own. Chances of becoming a millionaire by starting a business and working hard for many years? Somewhat reasonable, probably.

Chances of dying looking for stolen treasure? Not worth it.

<comment><AUTHOR> It's a shame you got downvoted. I was interested in this article because I hadn't realsied before the controversy around his aquiring of the treasure.

<comment><USER7> If there's controversy there, that definitely needs to make it into articles about this treasure. Maybe whoever finds it will be an Indiana Jones type - "It belongs in a museum!"

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER40> What's the proof that this treasure exists?

</comment><comment><USER41> Would deciphering this be a prime use for AI?

<comment><USER2> I definitely think somebody with some CS chops has an advantage. Here's an interesting paper from some students that applied some filtering based on some of Fenn's other clues. [https://dalneitzel.com/2016/05/03/arcgis/](https://dalneitzel.com/2016/05/03/arcgis/)

Contrast this with a lot of the "solves" you'll find on /r/FindingFennsGold or this poor guy who convinced himself 'Home of Brown' referred to a realtor's office. [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=URitxNODZ8w](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=URitxNODZ8w)

Maybe word2vec on the poem mashed up against a place names database and cluster?</comment></comment>


Why is no one talking about the CLOUD Act that came out last night? - <AUTHOR> I'm confused. When I read these pieces, the CLOUD Act seems like a huge deal, but it's no where on Hacker News. Can anyone share a TL;DR -- how concerned should I be?
https://actionnetwork.org/letters/congress-is-trying-to-sneak-through-a-new-bill-that-would-hand-police-in-the-us-and-around-the-world-extreme-spying-powers
https://gizmodo.com/congress-rushes-to-pass-spending-bill-packed-with-disas-1823988864
https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2018/02/cloud-act-dangerous-expansion-police-snooping-cross-border-data <comment><USER2> Previous discussion from last week: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16585430](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16585430)

<comment><USER3> Wow, as much as I dislike clickbait titles, that's an _anti_ -clickbait title! No wonder I missed it the first time.

<comment><USER4> Well, it has Cloud Act in it, so you could find it before asking here.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Because they trojan horse'd it in with the Facebook scandal.</comment>


On Corporate Ownership of Open Source - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@mikeal/on-corporate-ownership-of-open-source-786ebd15847e

<comment><USER2> > I find this scenario inevitable and have recently dedicated myself to > investing in commons that aren't owned by any particular company.

Mozilla is a company. It's a non-profit company, but still a company. So is the Python Software Foundation, the Free Software Foundation, and other copyright/trademark holders to community developed projects.

I think this means the author will not be supporting those companies.

> However, if a company owns the project in any way (trademark, website, > project governance) there is an incentive for them to extract value from the > project rather than create it.

Isn't this also true for people? Consider Firefox. If the community (I'll say 90% of the developer and user base) decides that it needs a trademark, in order to have a legal means to go after people who sell "Firefox" browsers with built-in spyware, then someone needs to control that trademark.

If it's a single person, then certainly there can also be an incentive for that person to extract value from the project.

I think the analogy to a corporate owned/publicly maintained park applies even here. Exactly the same thing could happen if the park were owned by a person instead of a company.

In practice though, we have some experience with that sort of situation. These sorts of parks are set up as "privately owned public spaces". For example, Zuccotti Park in NYC, heart of the Occupy Wall Street movement, is a POPS, which meant that the owners of the land didn't have the right to do certain actions.

There are other, old examples too, like easements. If part of privately held land has been used for, say, a road or beach access, then the owner of the land cannot simply close it off. Perhaps that might be a way to consider the topic, rather than simply ownership or control of a monopoly right.</comment>


Remote,is a book-length refutation of Yahoo's ban on telecommuting - <AUTHOR> http://qz.com/59434/remote-jason-frieds-next-book-is-a-refutation-of-everything-marissa-mayer-has-said-about-remote-workers/ <comment><USER2> This brings out a point I hadn't thought about. Most companies use "remote" vendors – that is, they have legal, advertising, travel, audit, accounting, etc. vendors who are "remote". If they get satisfactory work out of them, why can't they do the same with their own employees? Do you really need 40 hours per week, every week, to immerse your employees in the coporate culture?</comment>


Ask HN: Is there really a need for this, or are we drinking the wrong kool-aid - <AUTHOR> My question is simple: why are we robbing academics and research of PhDs? There is a thread that's actively encouraging that people should get PhDs (which is fine), but then the take-away for most commenters is that you're going to get a PhD and go into industry, not research or academics.
Maybe I am an old fool, and like to romanticize things, but I cannot believe that we encourage people to become masters in a field or subfield, and then go and write marketing algorithms for Google.
Having a PhD should not be a requirement for MOST jobs in AI or ML or whatever. Most jobs are bordering on CRUD, and those that need some kind of thinking can be done by someone who has a 'lowly' masters degree.
I see this trend happening for three reasons:
1) To reduce competition in job applications; employers are inundated with thousands of resumes for one job.
2) Most employers are copying FAANG, pretending that their business problems require PhDs to solve them.
3) We have lost our understanding of what having a PhD means, i.e. for a college student who wants to decide between two paths, industry or academics, there is no difference anymore. That seems like a very dangerous trend to me because 1) we're wasting workers who could be productive and have no intention of being academics or teachers on PhDs, and 2) we're wasting PhDs on people who have no intention of staying in academics, research or teaching. Not saying that PhDs have a limited supply, but PhD programs certainly have limited slots.
Industry cannot be like academia because most employers do not have the time or resources to indulge years and years on research, and making sure that the problems that solved are truly sound, and not just sound enough to ship it. This kind of lazy academics in industry almost seems damaging and counterproductive to any field it touches.
Maybe I am wrong about this whole deal, and so I ask. <comment><USER2> I reject the entire premise of your question. Nobody is "robbing" anything of anything. "Academia" isn't entitled to any specific individual's energy, passion, time, etc., and a PhD isn't "wasted" because the holder goes into industry. Individuals can, and will, make choices about how best to accomplish their goals, and if some of those individuals make choices that go against your idea of how things "ought" to be, then too bad.

The real world isn't a place where we get to be prescriptive in terms of dictating what other people focus on. This isn't Plato's world, where occupations are chosen for us at birth, with no opportunity for deviation. Here sovereign individuals make their own choices and the outcomes are an emergent property of the interactions of those billions of individuals.

All of that said, I also posit that it is possible (in some fields, albeit not all) to do original research outside the halls of "The Academy", with or without a PhD, both in industry or as an independent researcher who isn't affiliated with industry _or_ academia.

</comment><comment><USER3> A few thoughts:

* the economics of staying in academia are just _so amazingly awful_ , the decision to go into industry is a no-brainer for most anyone along the academic path -- grad student, postdoc, instructor, whatever -- who stops, looks around, and realizes (better late than never), that they'd like to actually make a decent income before they reach old age, maybe actually start a family, etc. Academia is effectively pushing talented people out, and industry will happily put their skills to use selling advertisements (instead of them researching cancer at a university or whatever).

* For ML/AI work, you need to have a strong quantitative skillset. Almost any graduate degree will provide a sufficient quantitative/statistical background (whether it's physics, sociology, whatever), hence employers find it a useful filter for such roles. If one only has a bachelor's the ML/AI market right now will be tougher but I wish those folks success.

Personally, as to whether someone should pursue grad school, regardless of future plans, my feeling it's usually a rip-off, but it depends on one's own situation.

</comment><comment><USER4> in a related news, they have dropped degree requirements:

[https://www.cnbc.com/2018/08/16/15-companies-that-no- longer-...](https://www.cnbc.com/2018/08/16/15-companies-that-no-longer- require-employees-to-have-a-college-degree.html)

I myself is a PhD working in the industry. My day job is unrelated to my PhD training, but I still think my PhD is worth it. I want to be an entrepreneur eventually. PhD thought me how to pick up a new field quickly and how to self- study and research. These are important skills for entrepreneurship.

</comment><comment><USER5> You're way overstating how often PhD's switch over to industry. You make it sound like it's 100% when it's definitely not. Also, it's perfectly reasonable for a tech company that wants state-of-the-art, cutting-edge AI to hire PhD's and not people with master's or less.

</comment><comment><USER6> the old adage, comes to mind... those who can, do. those who cant teach... the holding of a degree is viewed as indication of intellectual discipline... such discipline is legally required in fields such as chemistry, and administration of a chemical production facility... in practical terms a PhD holder is vetted by other PhD holders and is expected to be one of the people that creates the leading edge from wetware between the ears...The masters work at the bleeding edge, and bachelors,, well lets say "ill take mine double double please and keep the change"...</comment>


Ask HN: Authentication Service or Library - <AUTHOR> If you are building a new project from scratch, especiallymicroservice-based, what authentication service or library will you use or recommend to use? And what are their advantages and disadvantages, especially disadvantages? <comment> tony-allan Authentication for serious projects must be battle tested and supported by a great well funded team.

I prefer a service over library because it is easier to constantly upgrade a service behind the scenes without having to update your own application dependancies.

To a large extent it depends on your environment. For example, for an AWS based app, I would Cognito.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you for response. What can you say about self-hosted solutions?</comment></comment>