Startups Are Bands for Hackers - <AUTHOR> http://petersobot.com/blog/startups-bands-for-hackers/ <comment><USER2> I'm not sure I agree with his final conclusion that the _best_ startups are somehow profit-agnostic. It sounds like he is romanticizing both successful startups as well as bands.

It's reasonable to assert that founders who truly _care_ about their product may, on average, fare better than those who don't. However, it feels a little presumptuous to interpret the motivations and ambitions of _all successful and admired musicians / artists / founders_ , en masse and from afar.

Would anyone argue that Amazon was not founded with profit as (at least) a prime motivator? How about Apple or Microsoft?

Moreover, even if _not_ chasing monetary fortune, people can still be motivated by a multitude externalities such as recognition or fame - both of which != passion for the product.

TLDR; The conclusion the author draws is hand-wavy at best and paints a decidedly black-and-white picture of the musical scene and startup ecosystem.

<comment><USER3> Nothing is ever black and white. I think the author was trying to imply that any venture (band or startup) should be built on passion rather than money. Profit and wealth is a serendipitous reward for hardwork and passion.

<comment><USER4> I don't fully agree with that either though. Like you say, nothing is black and white, but on balance I'll take dedication over passion.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> "Music reviewers devote their attention to those who care about their work, and it's rare to see a "classic" or universally-adored piece of music that was written for hire."

Let's not forget how european classical music came to be a form of work for hire where patrons, for variable amounts of time, sometimes decades, payed for musical art creation. Hope I am not reading that wrong but the op is lacking historical reference and concentrating on a very specific contemporary frame.

<comment><USER6> Also, most successful music today is made by songwrites hired for the job. By this I mean 'commercial' artists such as Rihanna, Lady Gaga and Beyonce-like ones songwriters.

OP sees this too black and white. With passion comes devotion, with devotion comes practice, with practice comes performance, with performance comes sucess. Kinda.

<comment><USER7> Lady Gaga is prob not a good example since she writes or has a big hand in writing pretty much all her songs. Like most pop artists she utilizes producers and songwriters, but she relies on them less than say Rihanna who essentially has had all her hit songs written for her (or picked up songs originally written for other singers).

<comment><USER8> Correct

There was once an article about a "songwriters auction" where songwriters would pitch their music to producers of famous singers. (sorry can't find it now)

For most commercial pop music it's an assembly line really. Several stages specializing in one thing. McD ideas for McD music. Tastes the same as well.

<comment><USER9> The pop-music assembly line is actually pretty fascinating -- and definitely staffed by artists. Check out this New Yorker article about Ester Dean, whose role on the assembly line is coming up with a hook for the producer's computer-generated tracks:

 _Dean has a genius for infectious hooks. Somehow she is able to absorb the beat and the sound of a track, and to come out with its melodic essence. The words are more like vocalized beats than like lyrics, and they don't communicate meaning so much as feeling and attitude—they nudge you closer to the ecstasy promised by the beat and the "rise," or the "lift," when the track builds to a climax. Among Dean's best hooks are her three Rihanna smashes—"Rude Boy" ("Come on, rude boy, boy, can you get it up / Come on, rude boy, boy, is you big enough?"), "S &M" ("Na-na-na-na COME ON"), and "What's My Name" ("Oh, na-na, what's my name?"), all with backing tracks by Stargate—and her work on two Nicki Minaj smashes, "Super Bass" ("Boom, badoom, boom / boom, badoom, boom / bass / yeah, that's that super bass") and David Guetta's "Turn Me On" ("Make me come alive, come on and turn me on")._

[http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2012/03/26/120326fa_fact_...](http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2012/03/26/120326fa_fact_seabrook)

I mean, sure it's ridiculous, but these tracks are made by people who are uniquely good at the ridiculous things they like doing. If they've found a way to get paid for that, my hat's off to them.

<comment><USER8> Very interesting!

So I guess this explains how Justin Bieber's 'Baby' has so many songwriters/composers. It's _really_ an assembly line

"I mean, sure it's ridiculous, but these tracks are made by people who are uniquely good at the ridiculous things they like doing. If they've found a way to get paid for that, my hat's off to them"

Agree wholeheartedly.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Conversely, bands are startups for musicians. There's probably some awesome business models that recognize that fact, rather than forcing musicians into sharecropper deals.

<comment><USER11> I think the lesson goes the other way; startups will get increasingly share- cropped.

<comment><USER12> I doubt it, a lot of startups could survive on a few hundred clients. Well B2B ones can anyway.

That's never the case with musicians.

<comment><USER13> VC's seem to operate on a milk-the-founders principle, like record labels of yore, and the lead singer will be fired and replaced with a better looking CEO once the songs are written.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> I was once given a somewhat peculiar reason by a biologist for not learning computer programming:

"Computer programming is overrated, it's the 'learning to play guitar' of the geek world."

This article reminded me of it.

<comment><USER15> I think that's too narrow, it should be the "learning to play a musical instrument" of the geek world. With music theory overlapping Computer Science theory, and with various technical skills (mixing, rigging, mastering) corresponding to domain knowledge in various fields.

So these skills would be a prerequisite for doing anything that has to do with computers and computation. Definitely not overrated.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> People seem to realize this once a year... [http://www.televisionsky.org/2010/04/tech-startups-vs- rock-b...](http://www.televisionsky.org/2010/04/tech-startups-vs-rock-bands/) <http://www.avc.com/a_vc/2010/04/nice-analogy.html>

<comment><USER17> True. Another take on it from an Ignite talk: <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T5UrlKl8l1M>

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> Then I'm the annoying guy who plays hits from the 90s on his guitar at small parties, amazes his drunk friends who exclaim "You should totally make an album! I have a great idea for a song!"

And I answer "No, no - I couldn't do that. Also, I'm not that kind of person", while secretly, in the evening, I spend about an hour writing short, simple, crappy songs for fun - sometimes thinking "maybe I could, if only .." and a thousand different reasons hammer my mind "if I were younger / had a clue / had the skills / had an education / had the time / didn't have a family to support" and so forth.

(Dedicated to all the scriptoldies out there - for keeping the passion alive.)

</comment><comment><USER19> Slight correction to this statement:

Startups that set out to make a great product are, on the whole, adored for their work, and often enjoy success as a side-effect.

Startups that set out to make a great product are, _when they get anywhere at all_ , adored for their work, and _rarely, but sometimes with a lot of hard work and luck_ enjoy success as a side-effect.

Just like bands, _most_ startups (esp. the "built in a weekend" kinds) will probably end up being more of a labor of love than a true money-making venture. That's fine, but don't pretend otherwise.

</comment><comment><USER20> This is written by a guy who has never been in a band. You would think that fact would be a lightbulb moment that maybe you shouldn't write this blog post. Apparently not.

</comment><comment><USER21> This analogy is a huge leap. Aside from the fact that both endeavors are largely entrepreneurial in nature, the two things are mostly distinct.

If you are actually trying to succeed as a musician, "success", you are going to make a lot of sacrifices. The opportunity costs are huge. If you're touring as a fledgling band, you are most likely giving up the formative years of your career. The time you're spending with music isn't going to be particularly helpful in other arenas. If you're hacking at a startup, you're acquiring desirable skills in the process. If your startup fails, you can still go get a really good job in SV. If your band fails, you're hitting the reset button. You could be chasing a career in the music industry for 10+ years and be no better off than you were a decade ago.

I also don't think the analogy between VCs and record companies really hold up either. Because of the low returns of signed bands, as compared to funded companies, the models work differently.

Additionally, as a musician, you're ultimately selling a piece of art. It's designed by you, and while it may be influenced by the market, the product is largely determined by your own creativity. A business operates in the exact opposite way. Business as art rarely work. I can give someone a copy of "Kid A", have them say "this sucks", reply back "give it a few listens", and the person may ultimately end up really liking the album. I'm not doing that with a company. If I think a product, say Basecamp, sucks, and I have to pay $20 a month for it, I'm not going to give it much thought after my "it sucks" reaction. We consume art differently than we use other products, because they are radically different things. Market demands are simply too important for businesses. They have to listen to the customers to succeed. The path to success is to take customer problems and figure out a creative solution to them. The customer is driving the most substantial part of the company.

<comment><USER22> "They have to listen to the customers to succeed. The path to success is to take customer problems and figure out a creative solution to them. The customer is driving the most substantial part of the company."

I think the analogy is pretty good actually. You seem to have a bit of a naive view of how music is made a produced. This is a decent description of how music is made, perhaps with the Apple-ish addition of them frequently telling the customer what they like rather than always listening. It's completely treated as a product.

<comment><USER21> I'm not sure how my view of music is naive. As a completely unsuccessful musician hobbyist myself, who's toiled with bands and production, I've never once talked to the crowd after a show and said "what would you like us to sound like?", or "what should the next song we write be about", or "what would it take for you to buy a record of ours". Sure, trends are followed, and people may steer more towards what's popular, but you're not solving people's specific problems through music, so the type of customer oriented problem solving that allows startups to succeed is not really relevant to music.

<comment><USER22> Right, but I think the analogy was not comparing that kind of band to a startup. Following the analogy that's more like open source contributors. They do it because they enjoy the craft and want to make something they will enjoy and feel proud of, they know/hope that there will be fans when they do what they feel they should.

VC funded startups are exactly like a band that says "what should I sound like? What should our next song be? How do we get more listeners really fast?". They need a hit record to even have a chance of making a return on the investment that's been put in, so they better be making a top 40 song (or a mobile social media sharing app/site).

I think I was wrong about your view of music being naive, i think we were just comparing different types of bands and startups here. Match up manufactured record label band and VC funded startup and they match quite well. I have some family and aquaintances who've worked as record execs and you better believe they look at it as a customer oriented problem solving. None of them like the music they push all that much, if they like music at all, they just know how to find/make music that sells.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> When Zappos was sold to Amazon and Mint was sold to Intuit, I had the same pathetic angst as when I started hearing Nirvana and Pearl Jam on commercial radio.

 _I liked those guys before everyone else did!_

<comment><USER24> Ahh, the hipsters dilemma: your sensibilities are offended when something you cherish sell out and go mainstream, yet you wear the hard earned "I liked them _before_ they were popular" badge with honour. It's hard growing up and having your sense of identity and place in the world challenged when you peer behind the curtain. There is something real to be mourned there, yet we are better for it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> So what's the musical analogy for a hacker leaving the startup world and going to work for Apple, Google, Twitter, etc?

<comment><USER26> Becoming a session musician. An anonymous if proficient cog in the machine.

<comment><USER8> Good analogy

There are several very competent musicians working 'as the band' for famous names or just playing in recording sessions. There's good money on that.

Of course, most of them have their own band, do their gigs at night, usually just for fun (it most certainly does not pay the bills).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> I have no idea why the guys at Planetary Resources do not redirect curious people to the KISS studies they talk about in their press conference. [http://www.kiss.caltech.edu/study/asteroid/20120307_IEEE_Pre...](http://www.kiss.caltech.edu/study/asteroid/20120307_IEEE_Presentation.pdf) [http://www.kiss.caltech.edu/study/asteroid/asteroid_final_re...](http://www.kiss.caltech.edu/study/asteroid/asteroid_final_report.pdf) [http://www.kiss.caltech.edu/study/asteroid/20120314_ESA_ESTE...](http://www.kiss.caltech.edu/study/asteroid/20120314_ESA_ESTEC.pdf)

I had to dig around for sometime and I thought these papers must be behind some pay-wall. I was surprised to find them on the KISS website. It is not that they are clueless about how to bring back an asteroid and extract resources from it. They just want their MVP to the be the act of prospecting itself. Also I was really surprised to learn that Ion Engines have been routinely used before for asteroid missions like Dawn(<http://dawn.jpl.nasa.gov/mission/ion_prop.asp>). The scaling they need to achieve for these missions is much smaller than the average non space geek would expect.

Does anyone here know if the scalability requirements of solar ion propulsion systems they need for the mission of tugging an asteroid into lunar orbit is realistically achievable by 2020?

</comment><comment><USER28> Hacker Hacker Hacker.I am sick of this word. Whats wrong with simple words like techie. There are far more people considering themselves as Hackers nowadays even though they are simply an average engineer. Please stop abusing this word. Was Einstein a Hacker ? How about Leonardo Da Vinci ?

By the way, startups are for people who are interested in business. If you are interested in business, YOU ARE NOT A HACKER. Hackers are interested in technology for the technology's sake. They don't do UI, they don't do A/B testing. Please stop.

<comment><USER14> >By the way, startups are for people who are interested in business. If you are interested in business, YOU ARE NOT A HACKER. Hackers are interested in technology for the technology's sake. They don't do UI, they don't do A/B testing. Please stop.

"Once a vague item of obscure student jargon, the word "hacker" has become a linguis-tic billiard ball, subject to political spin and ethical nuances. Perhaps this is why so many hackers and journalists enjoy using it. Where that ball bounces next, however, is anybody's guess." \- _Free as in Freedom, Richard Stallman's Crusade for Free Software_

I find this particular usage especially amusing considering that the words "hacker" and "business" were about as diametrically opposed as words could be. (In the same way that "punk" and "policeman" don't go together.) And yet now it seems that many businesses are being overrun by people who like to rip things apart just to see how they work.

Theres a delicious irony in a world where the people who rejected the likes of IBM as disgusting went on to create businesses that do things like track you across the web for ad money, or lock you into an environment of rampant ADHD web posts with side offerings of 'social games' that exist solely to convince you to waste your time playing them.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> So startups are like bands without drugs and girls?

Agree with the similarities. Another one is disruptors. Think about successful bands and how they disrupted the music scene.

<comment><USER29> It's like you haven't even seen The Social Network.

<comment><USER3> Fair comment. I was poking fun at the old image of the tech scene.

There is a fitting comic that has a geek looking character threatening a school yard bully - "if you don't give me your lunch money I will hack your Facebook account."

Times have changed.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> I guess that makes me a bit of a groupie, and HN, Rolling Stone (mag).

I read on The Verge that the boombox had the highest adoption rate for any gadget in history. Now we don't need it, we have our computers and we don't need to drive to someone's house to connect with them either. <http://i.imgur.com/d29b0.png>

</comment><comment><USER31> And just like most bands, the vast majority of startups fail.

And just like most musicians, people who found startups have delusions of grandeur.

And just like most bands, even the ones that succeed are screwed by early- round investors (record companies/VC).

</comment><comment><USER21> This would mean YCombinator ~ American Idol.

<comment><USER8> You jest, but there are a lot of similarities

Of course, YC doesn't profit from very bad contestants, so there's one difference

But if you see the progression of the candidates through the competition you can certainly draw several parallels.

YC doesn't have a 'clear cut' winner as AI, still you know that there is a slight mismatch between 'winning the competition' and be 'market successful'. One rarely matches the other.

And of course, the issues of focus, strategy, pressure are very similar among AI and YC. Some contestants start shining early on in the competition, some have perfect technique, but in the end, it only goes so far if it isn't a balance of competences.

<comment><USER21> The analogy I was going for was that American Idol gives people without outlets to a record label a path to a record deal. YC gives teams a path to become an investment-worthy company (or maybe even company successful enough to not need further investments).

However, this ends up supporting the VC = Record Label analogy that I don't think is strong.

<comment><USER8> Makes sense, but yeah, VC as a Record Label is not really a good analogy

Record Labels give much more support to their protégés, and "charge a higher fee" as well (VCs don't ask for 'creative control' of their startups as an example)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> VCs have effectively the same business model as Record Companies; i.e., cast a wide net and hope that at least one big fish is landed.

</comment><comment><USER33> Starting A Tech Company And Starting A Band Are Pretty Much The Same Thing

<http://goo.gl/hNoZK>

</comment><comment><USER34> What brand do you play in?

</comment><comment><USER35> Nice post! I wrote something similar whilst observing my brother in academia through my startup lenses.

[http://pragmaticstartup.wordpress.com/2011/02/21/similaritie...](http://pragmaticstartup.wordpress.com/2011/02/21/similarities- between-an-entrepreneur-and-an-academic/)

</comment><comment><USER36> I am not a musician, but I used to hang out occasionally with a large circle of traditional Irish fiddlers around Boston. I have never heard anyone talk about money more outside the financial sector. They talk about it they way a man dying of thirst might talk about water.

</comment><comment><USER37> I love the title! :D

<comment><USER38> It's the first title in a while I've seen and immediately gone, "whoa," based on the strength of a few words. Smart article, too, of course.

<comment><USER39> read more broadly, more often.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER40> I've played in many bands and worked for a few startups. The gist of this article is dead on.

</comment><comment><USER41> It has the ring of a deep truth.

But, Michael Arrington == Casey Kasem. There is an interesting analogy.

</comment><comment><USER42> Well, take a look at interlude, it's an Israeli startup that was formally a band (and a very successful one in Israel, vocalist is Yoni Bloch). <http://interlude.fm/team.php>

</comment><comment><USER43> Is it true that being in bands is now less popular because kids are now hacking rather than practicing their instruments? Or is it just that certain kids who didn't feel like bands were for them now have a "band" to join?

</comment><comment><USER44> There is one really important shared aspect: the point at which all the members of the band/startup decide to go for it - make a serious commitment.

</comment><comment><USER45> i was with you until you threw profitability under the bus. the best bands don't tour just to show their work off, they do it as part of building an audience for their business, which is selling tickets, selling albums, selling songs...

</comment><comment><USER46> Starting a bend is (still) better for getting laid, but things are improving there, too.

</comment><comment><USER47> This analogy can also be extended to writers and the publishing industry.

</comment><comment><USER48> i have yet to pick up members of the preferred sex at bars talking about my startup

where are the groupies, the sex, the drugs

what am i doing wrong

(

More seriously: While there are certainly some similarities between the lifecycle of a band and a startup, the author seems to put forth a very structured form of the startup lifestyle--I think that claiming there is one true trajectory does any favors to us.

Also, something to muse on: "The first Velvet Underground album only sold 10,000 copies, but everyone who bought it formed a band."

What do you think would be a reasonable mapping of this onto tech/startups/CS/engineering?

)

</comment><comment><USER49> The part about pivoting is interesting. For a musician, changing the genre of the band has to be quite difficult, because an style is likely developed and the soul to the art will have to be changed. I wonder if it's the same for entrepreneurs, who likely have an affinity to a particular field due to passion or expertise. Pivoting, by definition, shouldn't be a complete redo, but I'd imagine it's as hard of a choice for a startup to pivot drastically as it is for a band to change genre.

<comment><USER22> Bands change genres all the time in order to make it big. Most of the time to a more mainstream and marketable genre and style to get more listeners and make more money.

That fits pretty well to me. The problem everyone seems to be having, author of the piece included, is to spin this analogy so that commercial music sellouts == bad, commercial hacker sellouts == good.

Accept the fact that an investor funded startup trying to get a big exit by getting a huge number of users and pivoting as necessary isn't were people with "passion" or who would object to having to change the "soul of the[ir] art" would end up and it's a great analogy. As they are both hit based businesses where the market is heavily influenced by hype from big market makers and there's a lot of money to be made it's not surprising that similar patterns emerge.</comment></comment>


The GIMP loses its UX maintainer - <AUTHOR> https://mail.gnome.org/archives/gimp-developer-list/2015-February/msg00055.html

<comment><USER2> Can't say I'm surprised - the GIMP is great if you can avoid all of its glaring UX flaws. Using it is a gigantic pain - it is simply my 'last resort' when I am unable to do something quickly in a less powerful but easier to use piece of software.

Maybe this is a good thing.

</comment><comment><USER3> What does this bode for GIMP as a whole?

<comment><USER4> The GIMP had terrible, terrible, terrible UX, kind of based on a "fuck the end-users, I've got a horse outside" principle. Maybe philosophies will change for the better.</comment></comment>


Epigrams in Programming - <AUTHOR> http://www.cs.yale.edu/quotes.html

<comment><AUTHOR> Sorry if this is a repost, but I found it entertaining and wanted to share. :)</comment>


Ask HN: What skills do you want from your data scientist? - <AUTHOR> What should your data scientist be able to do? I want to be a data scientist and want to learn the right things! <comment><USER2> \- a can-do attitude, with the willingness to be open minded and learn new tools

\- a robust understanding of statistical methods and common pitfalls

\- the ability to communicate succinctly

\- broad is better than deep (but don't be too shallow, it's a balance)

\- excellent data vis and "munging" skills - you need to be able to pivot, slice, filter _quickly_ \- a date scientist should slice and group like a sysadmin uses the cli - in a rapid and composable way

\- a good sense of humour

</comment><comment><USER3> Not convince execs/managers that machine learning, NLP and "AI" are magic solutions for everything.

</comment><comment><USER4> You should be able to communicate clearly with a non-technical audience.</comment>


Kenya's Mobile Banking Revolution (Mobile Payments) - <AUTHOR> http://gigaom.com/2009/03/11/kenyas-mobile-banking-revolution/

<comment><USER2> I've heard a lot of stories lately about mobile payments in Africa and other places that do not have strong established banking system and there's a real and interesting innovation happening there. I just wish that same could happen in the Western world.

Btw. Nathan Eagle referred in the article above did really interesting social science work in his PhD thesis by tracking people's daily behavior with mobile phones running Jaiku Mobile's precursor ContextPhone. (Jaiku Mobile was developed by Mika Raento and me)</comment>


Complaints From a Single Doctor Caused Government to Take Down a Public Database - <AUTHOR> http://www.propublica.org/article/how-complaints-from-a-doctor-caused-the-govt-to-take-down-a-public-database

<comment><USER2> Arvind Narayanan (who is also on HN as randomwalker) has published papers and given many talks about this fundamental concept: "the level of anonymity that consumers expect—and companies claim to provide—in published or outsourced databases is fundamentally unrealizable."

It sounds like this is an example of that principle. It's not feasible for the public database to be both useful _and_ preserve complete anonymity of the doctors. You can check out much more from his two websites: <http://randomwalker.info/> and <http://33bits.org/>

<comment><USER3> Thanks for the mention.

Unfortunately, all too often regulators and Government agencies take the wrong lessons from de-anonymization -- remove data altogether, try to ban de- anonymization, etc. [1] I'm actually visiting D.C. right now with my policy hat on.

In this case, I think we should be having a conversation about whether doctors' right to privacy is more important than public interest and patient safety. Ironically, a major reason why medical practitioners are often against public data release/reviews etc is apparently because they cannot publicly refute allegations or bad reviews, which is in turn because of patient privacy. Sometimes it feels like a morass of bad laws with unintended consequences.

[1] Recent proposed changes to HIPAA do exactly that, without even an exception for research.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> The headline is technically true, but not very accurate; the database has since been brought up, but as the article states:

> Nov. 9 - HRSA restored public access to the database, but as many reports > have noted, it comes with a major caveat. According to the website, users of > the new database are no longer allowed to combine information gleaned from > the public database with any other publicly available information in a way > that would identify doctors. Or in other words, the government is now trying > to tell the public -- including the press -- what it's allowed to do with > publicly available information.

<comment><USER5> Looks like the NPDB people have added an EULA you must agree to before accessing the database.

> In order to access the [Public Use Data File], users will now be asked to > review and agree to a Data Use Agreement (DUA) that spells out specifics of > how the data provided in the PUF may be used in accordance with the law.

[http://www.npdb- hipdb.hrsa.gov/resources/publicDataStatement...](http://www.npdb- hipdb.hrsa.gov/resources/publicDataStatement.jsp)

Users may copy the data, but they can't distribute it.

> Not repost the dataset and only report, disclose or post data from the > dataset in connection with statistical reporting or analysis that does not > identify any individual or entity.

<http://www.npdb-hipdb.hrsa.gov/resources/publicData.jsp>

<comment><USER6> As a reporter, I can only say that EULA makes me want to start digging in that database.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I got a nose job and now I can't breath as well. Of course there was a risk, but if I would have known it would be this bad I never would have done it. The doctor did everything he could to reassure this wouldn't happen before the operation. Now I am having a very difficult time figuring out what if anything I can do medically and legally. My life is very different.

Doctors should not get anonymity. Their job is too crucial. I'm not dead, but my life will never be the same. Anything that could have changed that would have made a huge difference in my life.

Also, if you're wondering the doctor was in Beverly Hills and fairly famous. This was no back alley procedure. At the moment I really feel like my whole world collapsed and with the way we treat doctors I feel like no one is on my side.

</comment><comment><USER8> A can see both sides of this story. I do want to make one thing clear. I think any public information is just that—public. There shouldn't be restrictions on how it is used other than in purposely misleading ways, which is probably how this doctor viewed the release of the information related to his medical background. I think the reporter was completely justified in what he did. I don't believe he was on some kind of witch hunt, out to destroy this doctor's career. From the sounds of it, he's doing a pretty good job of that himself.

On the flip-side, just because a doctor is sued for malpractice doesn't mean he's guilty of malpractice. I'm not familiar with the database, but if it doesn't list the outcomes of malpractice suits, it should. Simply saying a doctor has been sued 16 time for malpractice doesn't tell the full story. But in this case, him settling almost half of those cases, in my mind, does admit some level of guilt.

Do I think the doctor is right in wanted the use of this information restricted? No. Do I think he deserved discipline from the Medical Board? Probably. Do I see how inaccurately presenting information can hurt innocent people? Absolutely.

I'll go back to what I started with. Public is public. Just tell the full story. (which, by the way, I think was done fairly well in the article)

<comment><USER9> Agreed. The reporter's story is well-written, tries to be fair, but definitely takes a point of view. And that's OK; I think it's a good piece of public- interest journalism.

Sadly, the malpractice thing isn't as clear cut as you'd hope. The choice to settle a claim is usually made by the insurance provider, regardless of the wishes of the physician, so a settlement doesn't mean anything per-se: the insurance provider decides whether to settle by weighing a lot of factors, including many that have nothing to do with the actual facts of the case. A court of law—particularly in a jury trial—may not be the fairest way to adjudicate these issues, but the AMA routinely attempts to block any other proposals for holding doctors accountable (see the story: they supported the removal of the database as well) so malpractice suits and the occasional newspaper story are what we're left with in policing these docs.

<comment><USER8> Thanks for the clarification. I didn't realized the role insurance companies played in malpractice settlements. I agree with knowtheory above, fight facts with facts and tell the whole story. It makes it really hard when people are actively trying to hide information that could be of interest to the public.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> As an aside: HealthGrades, a health care ratings site, seems to think a certain Dr. Robert T. Tenny, MD from Kansas is clean as a whistle: [http://www.healthgrades.com/physician/dr-robert-tenny- xt5b4/...](http://www.healthgrades.com/physician/dr-robert-tenny- xt5b4/background-check)

<comment><USER11> Has anyone ever found value in these sites? I have tried to use them to look for a doctor or the like and have invariably found them to be total junk.</comment></comment>


Inclusion over diversity - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@thephw/inclusion-over-diversity-2aadb6e0bf29#.86mfkye7h <comment><AUTHOR> Special thanks to @the_thagomizer for publishing her excellent article "Diversity is not a check box". Prompted me to finally finish this article.

[http://www.thagomizer.com/blog/2016/08/12/diversity-is- not-a...](http://www.thagomizer.com/blog/2016/08/12/diversity-is-not-a- checkbox.html)</comment>


Keys Under Doormats: Mandating insecurity by requiring government access (2015) [pdf] - <AUTHOR> https://dspace.mit.edu/bitstream/handle/1721.1/97690/MIT-CSAIL-TR-2015-026.pdf?sequence=8 <comment><USER2> Recently I listened to an episode of the Silver Bullet security podcast that had Steve Bellovin and Matt Green as guests, discussing this then recently released report. It's pretty sobering to hear how government decision makers just blow off tech warnings. Bellovin has a story from his stint as FTC CTO, and how easy it is for people to convince themselves that doing something technical isn't really that hard. They never come right out and say it, but Dunning-Kruger must be in the back of their minds.

[https://www.cigital.com/podcasts/show-112/](https://www.cigital.com/podcasts/show-112/)

<comment><AUTHOR> Note that Steve Bellovin just got appointed[0][1] to the Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board—the board that gained notoriety in 2014[2] after it condemned the NSA's bulk phone records collection program.

[0][http://www.wired.com/2016/02/the-presidents-nsa-advisory- boa...](http://www.wired.com/2016/02/the-presidents-nsa-advisory-board- finally-gets-a-tech-expert/)

[1][https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11264929](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11264929)

[2][https://www.pclob.gov/library/215-Report_on_the_Telephone_Re...](https://www.pclob.gov/library/215-Report_on_the_Telephone_Records_Program.pdf)

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Hi, I'm a co-author on this paper, awesome to see it up on Hacker News.

</comment><comment><USER4> (2015|pdf)

<comment><USER5> Thanks; added.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: Small market product vs Big market product, Which should we attack? - <AUTHOR>

We have a dilemma.
We have come up with two product ideas in the last few months. We have done research on both markets and we have had great response to both ideas. Here is where things get tricky.
On one hand we have a product idea that definitely solves a problem for a small industry. We have spoken with 10 or so players in this industry and they would all be willing to pay for our software (they are hungry for a solution). This would be a very stable income producing product / company that could go on for years innovating in this industry but its growth potential would be somewhat capped. I can see it getting to 5+ million a year in revenue with 60% profit margins but then it becomes much more difficult to grow. Getting to 10 million would be a short term ceiling (Pending some other added revenue sources).
On the other we have an idea for a consumer product that has a huge market but a lot less predictability. Obviously the market is much bigger; but there are other players, the price points are much smaller, and there will be continuous competition because of potential for growth and future payouts.
What project do you think we should pursue?
Is it possible to get funding for a smaller market product? <comment><USER2> >> On one hand we have a product idea that definitely solves a problem for a small industry. We have spoken with 10 or so players in this industry and they would all be willing to pay for our software (they are hungry for a solution). This would be a very stable income producing product / company that could go on for years innovating in this industry but its growth potential would be somewhat capped. I can see it getting to 5+ million a year in revenue with 60% profit margins but then it becomes much more difficult to grow. Getting to 10 million would be a short term ceiling (Pending some other added revenue sources).

I'd go with that one. Build the MVP(my rule of thumb is, if you cant get it out the door and into customers hands within 90days, move on) and charge them. You'll soon realize that your assumptions were right/wrong about that industry.

That being said, I'd always go for B2B rather than B2C.

<comment><AUTHOR> We have done past work for some of the players in the industry so we have good connections / a solid network within the industry so I have no doubt we can get the product in the door. The questions is are we limiting ourselves by pursuing a product that has only a small market instead of aiming higher / bigger.

Once we have an MVP and can show traction, would we be able to find investors so that we can grow rapidly and capitalize or is this market to small.

<comment><USER3> Small, niche markets are nice. You won't have the same competition and can essentially own it.

Why seek investment? You've got the knowledge, the connections - boot strap it? Unless I'm missing something that you haven't described.

Do the more sure thing and have it fund your other ideas later. Besides, it sounds like you have tremendous domain experience in the niche market and that would also increase your odds at success.

To me, seems like a no-brainer. But you may have left out some crucial details...like: It would take us 2 years and 10 engineers to build the b2b solution or we can only succeed if we are able to get funding for reasons x, y, z. Or something like that.

I would love to have a product in niche market capable of generating 5M to 10M with 60% profit margin year over year.

<comment><AUTHOR> It does require a small development cycle ~6 months and more than bootstrapping in terms of resources but I am willing to fund the development costs knowing the potential and having the inside knowledge of the industry and their hunger for a real solution.

My biggest concern is am I playing it safe, on one hand, I know we can make money with the niche product and we are already active in the industry so it might be foolish to pass up the opportunity, but I would say we are more passionate about the bigger possibilities for the consumer space.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> One possibility for funding the small market app would be customer funding from the start: talk to some of the people you know in the industry and see if they would prepay (possibly in return for some sort of discount, or free until the product leaves beta) for a year's service or so.

<comment><AUTHOR> We have approached this as a possibility (and we have interest from multiple players) I just worry that we might alienate other potential customers if they knew their competition was financially involved. Does anyone have experience dealing with those concerns?

<comment><AUTHOR> Would it be unethical to pre-sell the software, sort of like what Oracle did in the beginning.

We would be upfront about the estimated delivery date and current status.

<comment><USER3> It's not unethical at all and it's actually something that is very common. Why would you be concerned about the ethics of it? You're getting some money to build something they want and they're presumably getting some sort of discount, favorable licensing terms, etc...

To your earlier comment - I also don't think you should be worried about other possible customers being concerned about a "financial investment" from your initial customers. They ARE NOT partners - they're paying for a product just like any other customer. Instead, they're getting a discount for taking on a risk.

<comment><AUTHOR> In terms of ethics, I've just heard horror stories of people selling "vaporware" and don't want to be lumped into that category.

As for point two that makes great sense.

Thanks for all your input I appreciate it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> If you earn >$1 million per year in profit with the niche product, would you regret not going for the hypothetical millions more you might have earned with the consumer product?

(Of course, the need to part with equity for external investment and lower margins might mean a successful consumer product company ends up returning less cash to the founders than a much smaller bootstrapped b2b company anyway)

<comment><AUTHOR> The b2b product has a more defined route to revenue / profit but its market is capped. I wouldn't complain about >$1 million in profit but my personal goal is to make a bigger impact (doesn't have to be now, but if I wait will I squander my chance).

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Go with the smaller/safer one first and roll it out asap (2-6 months), then move on to the higher risk/reward venture. This approach will help you negotiate better terms with vc backers. Otherwise, if you start out with the "bigger" venture first and fail, then it might be too late to go with the smaller venture idea since the void in the niche can be filled by someone else by that time...

<comment><AUTHOR> The b2b product would really require a commitment to run and operate it to make it work out for the best. Its not really a build it, release it, and move on kind of thing. That being said I guess I could get it up and running and hire in the required people to operate it and run it while I migrate onwards and upwards.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Bootstrap the safe one, and with the profits play with risky ideas.

</comment><comment><USER8> Bag the rabbit you have the highest chance of catching.</comment>


Wealth-production mechanisms: a followup - <AUTHOR> http://rondam.blogspot.com/2009/10/wealth-production-mechanisms-followup.html

<comment><USER2> Pedant:

6\. Extract natural resources from the earth or space.

with your 1, 2, and 3 could be seen as including all there is to say about energy; there are many perils trying to classify things.</comment>


Analyse Asia 42: Lazada vs. MatahariMall in Indonesia with Rama Mamuaya - <AUTHOR> http://analyse.asia/2015/07/01/episode-42-lazada-vs-mataharimall-ecommerce-war-indonesia-with-rama-mamuaya/ <comment><AUTHOR> Synopsis: In this episode, Rama Mamuaya, founder of DailySocial.net discussed the fierce competition on ecommerce in Indonesia between two powers: Lazada (Rocket Internet) vs MatahariMall (Lippo Group). What are the implications to the whole Indonesia ecommerce market? Rama dissects how the war between both ecommerce entities will play out and how it affects the other ecommerce companies such as Tokopedia (which raised US$100M from Softbank) in Indonesia. We reviewed the Indonesia ecommerce market in general with respect to growing internet and mobile penetration, modes of payment from bank transfer to cash on delivery, and also how the second tier cities beyond Jakarta are fuelling the growth of the tech industry.</comment>


NVidia just announced a portable android game console - <AUTHOR> http://www.twitch.tv/nvidia

<comment><AUTHOR> play android games on the handheld, and steam games via local network streaming

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> awkward demo and all</comment>


This is why you hire a "good" designer. - <AUTHOR> http://peterchondesign.com/projects/curebit/curebit.jpg

<comment><USER2> (BIAS ALERT: I'm down the hall from the Curebit guys) I've heard PG's scathing email comments towards them and I've read some comments with moderate amounts of interest and frankly I think the HN crowd needs to chill out. If I was a more brazen man I might go so far as to say "chill the fuck out".

There's a lot of things that are actually important going on right now, in and outside of technology startups, the fact that Curebit is hustling the well liked designs of another company isn't that big of a deal at worst, and could even be argued as a good thing. I, like virtually all of you, "steal" Google's, Amazon's and other major companies algorithms, techniques and general literature all the time with minor tweaks that allow me to build similar systems for two orders of magnitude less cost than the original system.</comment>


Ask HN: Is there payment ecommerce gateway without VAT? - <AUTHOR> Is there a solution for gateway (Wordpress, WooCommerce) without necessity to scan my ID or provide a VAT number? <comment><USER2> No, that would be illegal according to your tax region.</comment>


Ask HN: Domain management? - <AUTHOR>

Is anyone satisfied with GoDaddy's domain management system? Does anyone have any recommendations for alternatives? By manage I'm referring to controling DNS, renewal notices, private registration, etc. GoDaddy just seems very clunky. Bonus question: do you use GoDaddy to register your domains or another provider? <comment><USER2> I use GoDaddy. And that's only because I couldn't think of anyone better. It seems like the domain registration space is filled with shady characters. GoDaddy's interface is clunky and confusing and every time I go there I wish someone would just take a giant digital red pen and cross off everything that's not needed and it would magically go away leaving a clean interface. But it doesn't happen.

So, once you get used to how it works, you can get done what you need to get done. I'm pretty clueless when it comes to domain names, but whenever I've been going through tutorials on websites, the settings I need to change have been there in GoDaddy, so that's a plus. At least they're not missing anything I need through all that clutter.

<comment><AUTHOR> Agreed. Domain management is becoming a larger part of my day to day work and GoDaddy is becoming frustrating. It's hard to get anything done without looking for specific instructions and having multiple windows open - but I still get things done. Just hoping there is an easier or better solution.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> [http://www.google.com/search?q=registrar+site%3Aycombinator....](http://www.google.com/search?q=registrar+site%3Aycombinator.com&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8&aq=t&rls=org.mozilla:en- US:official&client=firefox-a)

Based on that, I chose to use NameCheap. I've been happy with it so far.

<comment><USER4> NameCheap so far -- for personal stuff. A year ago, they had lots of good buzz, and their upstream provider was considered very solid.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> I use Godaddy. There are usually lots of coupons for domain registration on retailmenot.com which makes them the cheapest option I'm aware of.

I'm not 100% happy with them either - they are definitely clunky as all hell. Lately I've just been setting my default nameservers to Slicehost and using their domain management tools for setting up zones and records, which at least lets me avoid some of the annoyances of Godaddy.

</comment><comment><USER6> I've been switching my domains to namecheap, but this is for personal stuff, not business.

</comment><comment><USER7> I didn't like GoDaddy... switched to 1and1.com. Get a lot less spam now :)</comment>


Facebook Chef cookbooks - <AUTHOR> https://code.facebook.com/posts/1909042435988955/facebook-chef-cookbooks/ <comment><USER2> So do you encourage people to add tests to their wrapper cookbooks when they consume these? I read the philosophy and readme docs, and I kindof get what your doing with attribute precedence, and how these cookbooks are sane defaults with overrides. Why not move to custom resources? Also, what's your feelings about the chef monolithic repo?

<comment><USER3> Using custom resources, like LWRPs, doesn't provide the same flexibility. Most of the time you fall into making something which works akin to the `cron` internal resource which doesn't provide managing an entire system but instead a single entry which means you get neither automatic cleanup nor automatic fall back [to an earlier value]. It also means there's no good way to stack configs. You can (obviously) build a resource which manages the entire file/subsystem (poise does this, for example), but even then, you don't get the ability for everyone to override things later in the run... and we want the final service owner to be able to change anything anyone before them has set. It's a key part of being able to scale people... and for us to have such a small core chef team (4-5 people).

In addition, using simple hashes and arrays makes it much simpler for your average software engineer to make changes they want - they have to learn little to no Chef in the simple case... even not knowing ruby they can figure out variable assignments.

The monolithic repo works well for us given we use grocery-delivery (github.com/facebook/grocery-delivery). We have no environments (see my ChefConf keynote in 2013 for a full breakdown of how we do run things) and no cookbook versioning... we run directly off of head. We use a combination of taste-tester (github.com/facebook/taste-tester) for general testing and and sharding (see `node.in_shard?` and `node.in_flexible_shard?` in the `fb_helpers` cookbook) to control the speed of rollout of risky changes.

To be clear we use no precedences at all except `default` - using other precedences will in fact likely break our model since it causes the node-read code to merge things rather than treating it like a single hash. The model here is last-writer-wins always.

As for tests, people consuming these cookbooks are simply assigning variables, so there's not a lot to test in a wrapper cookbook. "Did the attribute get the value I assigned it" doesn't seem like a useful unittest... that should be covered by Chef's unittests itself. For our more complicated cookbooks we've unit-tested the API and where we could we released those (see fb_fstab), and we have some other unittests we haven't yet been able to release that hopefully we'll come back around to.

Hope that helps, \- Phil

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Cookbooks repository: [https://github.com/facebook/chef- cookbooks](https://github.com/facebook/chef-cookbooks)</comment>


DHH Against "Exponential Growth Ideology" - <AUTHOR> https://evonomics.com/creator-ceo-basecamp-com-exponential-growth-devours-corrupts/ <comment><AUTHOR> This was an unexpected article by that author in that medium for me, specially the tone.</comment>


Procedural Macros in Rust 2018 - <AUTHOR> https://blog.rust-lang.org/2018/12/21/Procedural-Macros-in-Rust-2018.html <comment><USER2> Good summary of what can be done with it. First I wondered why they do not work on an AST but a token list. But since Rust is not Lisp and allows new macros to define new syntax it makes sense to decouple this and rely on parsing libraries for AST construction. Overall very powerful and indeed I'm super curious what use cases people will come up with.</comment>


When Everything Is Too Safe, Add Risk - <AUTHOR> https://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2018-02-15/when-everything-is-too-safe-add-risk <comment><USER2> Funny seeing Matt Levine's column on HN. He's one of the only financial commentators who consistently has something interesting to say.

It's an interesting time to be in the markets. The steady decline of interest rates has helped keep asset prices high, but now interest rates are starting to come up again. That coupled with newly created wealth from developing countries trying to find a safe place to get a decent return has pushed future expected returns down so investors are struggling to find investments that will give the the returns they've been accustomed to.

<comment><USER3> > but now interest rates are starting to come up again

This appears to not matter at all in the "new normal". The 10y yield tapped 2.93% yesterday and still, everyone made a mad dash to bid up equities.

It should be noted that while the Fed is reducing its balance sheet this year, the BOJ, ECB, and PBOC's easing efforts are resulting in a net _increase_ in global CB-led asset purchases.

Kuroda alone will likely be enough to keep risk assets elevated, regardless of what interest rates do.

<comment><USER4> is 2.93% really such a scary rate? It's still historically very low.

<comment><USER5> Well, it's a big change in a short time from 2.4%. It's more the first derivative[1] that's scary than the actual value.

Of course, the first derivative is only scary if you're expecting it to continue for a while. That's forecasting, or guesswork, or something besides just observing the current rate.

[1] "Derivative" in the calculus sense, not in the financial instrument sense.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Thanks for introducing me to this column, it's hilarious.

"'With hashgraph every user participates in confirming transactions, so the process is faster.' I realize that I am in many ways an ignorant rube, but I am constantly confused by the notion that having every participant in a market confirm every transaction is a fast way to confirm transactions." Also:

"[...]not even bank executives seem to understand what is going on inside their banks. If that is the case then it shouldn't be surprising if sometimes the market thinks the bank is worth less than the bank thinks it's worth, or if the market turns out to be right. It's not literally that the market knew about the $1.77 billion fraud before the bank did. It's just that the whole enterprise is kind of a random-number generator, and the market did a better job of guessing the right random number than the accountants did."

I sometimes vacillate between superstition and suspicion when things like this happen. Example: a bunch of anonymous bidders converge on almost exactly the same price for a somewhat obscure item. For a second it's confusing, then I wonder if they are shill bidders, then I think: huh. lots of people saw the auction, and they basically all agree on how much a widget is worth. Anybody else here ever get a spooky feeling when observing an efficient market?

</comment><comment><USER7> I don't get it. There are 5 or 6 different, seemingly unrelated stories that don't merge into a cohesive point.

The first story segues into the second ("What is risk?" -> "Elsewhere in dumb products") but then subsequent parts go on as if the writer is rambling about completely unrelated stuff that would be fine in separate articles.

Having finished reading it, I am just confused.

<comment><USER2> They're not supposed to be related. It's a columnist's newsletter. He just writes about financial topics he finds interesting. Each topic under a different heading is separate.

<comment><USER7> But the title is "When Everything Is Too Safe, Add Risk". The stories below are completely unrelated to that, and it just seems really odd

<comment><USER2> Yeah, I agree it's confusing, but it's just the format of his column. They had to pick a title and it's better than "Money Stuff #912"

Edit: There are also lots of inside jokes in the headings (and occasionally in the articles) that only make sense if you've been reading the column for a while.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> "In the meantime they lost some money on the producty stuff." What does this mean?

<comment><USER9> He's referring to the more complicated derivative products that allowed those funds to buy risk in the form of betting on low future volatility. Since volatility has recently spiked, those types of products have lost the majority of their value.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> if you want to add some risk you know what you can buy :)</comment>


Ask HN: Where to stay in San Francisco? - <AUTHOR>

hi everyone, first post here so please be nice. just got an interview for YCS10, we're flying in from London and don't know where to stay in San Fran :( Need somewhere for 2 guys where we can spend the time working, ideally v cheap, and obv with wifi. Any and all ideas very much appreciated... (and yes, we know about Airbnb, what we don't know is where in the city to be) <comment><USER2> While it's possible to stay in San Francisco, the YC stuff is all in Mountain View, I believe, which is about an hour away from SF by car or train. It's also cheaper to stay in Mountain View or elsewhere in the Valley than in SF.

</comment><comment><USER3> There's a lot of good info in these old threads

[http://www.gabrielweinberg.com/startupswiki/Ask_YC_Archive#t...](http://www.gabrielweinberg.com/startupswiki/Ask_YC_Archive#toc22)

</comment><comment><USER4> check out YC funded Airbnb

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> thanks guys</comment>


How Porsche hacked the financial system and made a killing (2009) - <AUTHOR> http://radian.org/notebook/porsche/ <comment><USER3> It's also worth noting, though, that the fall-out of this cost Porsche dearly:

 _In its efforts to acquire a majority holding in Volkswagen AG, Porsche built up a large debt burden, aggravated by taxes due on very large paper profits from Volkswagen AG options. By July 2009, Porsche was faced with debts exceeding 10 billion euros. The supervisory board of Porsche finally agreed to a number of arrangements whereby the Qatar Investment Authority would inject a large amount of capital, and Porsche would be merged with Volkswagen Group. On 23 July 2009, Michael Macht was appointed CEO, to replace Wendelin Wiedeking, who is expected to receive a compensation package of 50 million euros._

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Porsche#Corporate_restructuring>

<comment><USER4> Everybody loses! A paragon of free-market efficiency!

<comment><USER5> Would you prefer a system where stupid decisions and bad risks are instead _rewarded_?

Free markets are about giving feedback like that. They aren't magical ways of making people never make bad decisions. And neither is your preferred $ECONOMIC_SYSTEM, whatever it may. If it's claiming to be one, it's lying.

<comment><USER6> The people who made the stupid decisions were rewarded pretty well. Weideking still sits on a few hundred million euros. This seems to be the new "free market".

<comment><USER7> Why is are these debates run only on terms of envy and retribution? The _company_ made a bad decision, and they were absolutely not rewarded, they lost big. Weideking was hugely influential, but his contract with the company was already agreed at that point. You could say it was reward for his negotiating skills and existing reputation. Misaligned incentives is the fault of the company who, as we said, suffered for it. If the next guy to hire him makes the same mistake, maybe they will lose too.

<comment><USER3> The company authorised Weideking to take the ultimately unsuccessful strategy of turning Porsche primarily into a stock trading fund investing in VW shares, yes, and paid off his contract as agreed when it failed and brought the company to its knees.

The problem is that oversight and accountability is too weak. As CEO he was authorised to take actions which should've set alarm bells ringing with others, without apparent limit, and his contract (much like many others; Fred Goodwin would be a prime UK example) was poorly drafted so as to provide him with limited personal accountability for failure. UBS 'rogue trader' Kweku Adoboli is currently in custody awaiting trial for inflicting a serious loss on his company; Wendling Weideking was paid off handsomely for far worse. Boards need to take their role of executive oversight more seriously.

<comment><USER7> And like his contract, oversight and accountability is the responsibility of the board/shareholders/owners. Not any of us. He didnt "get away with it". It is nothing like rogue trading whatsoever, let alone "far worse". One is ill- advised but sanctioned, one is unsanctioned (well, that's another argument) and illegal.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Ummmmmmm, this is a terrible article. They failed to point out that Porsche went heavily in debt in order to finance this "hack", and ended up getting bailed out and bought by VW.

It's ridiculous to say that Porsche "hacked the financial system and made a killing" when they essentially bankrupted themselves by doing so.

<comment><USER9> The financial crisis killed this project for Porsche, but the background is very difficult. In financial terms this didn't matter.

The funny thing in this whole Story was Ferdinand Piech, he has full control over VW as head of the board and was against this buyout. He also owned half of Porsche, so he was then owner of VW, but was also against it because Wideking would have gotten more power.

Both companies are bound together since the war, this whole action was about power between some industrial families.

They gained money in the bottom line, and some idiots with no insight made a bet against them.

Before this action was the Share of Porsche Holding 32.2% and now it is 50.74%. Look at the market cap and say again this was a failure.

<comment><USER10> For a moment there, I thought you said "Ferdinand Porsche"!

<comment><USER11> He's his grandson.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I'm curious, what happens if you can't return stock that you've borrowed in order to short it? either because of a situation like this or simply because you went bankrupt due to bad debts.

Wouldn't this be a common scenario given the very nature of the risk?

<comment><USER13> > I'm curious, what happens if you can't return stock that you've borrowed in > order to short it?

It's similar to what happens when you can't pay your mortgage. If you are shorting you'll have to put up some margin( cash or cash equivalents representing some percentage of the dollar amount you shorted.)

if the short starts to move against you, you'll get a margin call and be required to put up more collateral.

Eventually if you can't pay you go bankrupt and your counterparty get's what they can in bankruptcy court.

Not surprisingly this is called counterparty risk and has become a big area of focus for risk managers recently.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> [http://www.businessweek.com/globalbiz/content/jul2009/gb2009...](http://www.businessweek.com/globalbiz/content/jul2009/gb20090720_048461.htm)

[http://www.zigwheels.com/news-features/news/volkswagen- acqui...](http://www.zigwheels.com/news-features/news/volkswagen-acquires- porsche-holding-salzburg/7627/1)

<comment><USER15> Thanks for linking those, makes you realize that those brilliant financial guys at Porsche maybe aren't ALWAYS brilliant.

Pretty crazy swing there, remind me never to buy stock in either.

<comment><USER16> I'm not sure it's about being brilliant, it's about betting the house. G. Sorros bet his house and won, Porsche bet their house and lost. It's all about trying, failing and trying something else if it fails.

<comment><USER17> That only works if you don't fail so badly that you can't try again.

<comment><USER16> those guys can _always_ try again ...

<comment><USER17> Not when it costs you your independence as a company.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Judging by the other comments here, it seems that shortly after this was written, the financials went horribly awry for Porsche...

Anyone care to explain, preferably in a similarly understandable style as this article?

<comment><USER19> Very simple. Porsche financed their stock buying with loans, but then credit essentially disappeared for everybody in 2009 and so they couldn't keep it up. 0x12 posted some good links earlier.

Same sort of reason why Ford did better than GM or Chrysler in America - <USER2> had secured lines of credit back in 2006 in either a fit of brilliance or luck, so when credit dried up in 2009 they could still borrow. The others couldn't get loans and had to take drastic action.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> For those interested in this kind of story, and manipulation of markets in general, one of the best books I've read on the subject, published in 1923: Reminiscences of a Stock Operator

[http://www.amazon.com/Reminiscences-Stock-Operator-Edwin- Lef...](http://www.amazon.com/Reminiscences-Stock-Operator-Edwin- Lefevre/dp/0471059706)

<comment><USER21> It is also available on the Internet Archive: <http://www.archive.org/details/ReminiscencesOfAStockOperator>

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> Pretty ridiculous to kill yourself over losing a round of really expensive poker. Especially considering Merckle could probably command a higher monthly budget for the rest of his live than I can. And my life is pretty nice no death wishes here. He should have probably have the news sink in a little to gain some perspective on it.

<comment><USER23> Suicide and mental deceases that cause it aren't very rational. Plus he might have had many personal/personality problems and the whole loss thing was just something that was the last drop.

<comment><USER24> people commit suicide in order to protect themselves from the pain they go through on a daily basis.

that seems perfectly rational to me.

<comment><USER25> There have been a lot of interviews with people who committed suicide (and failed). Most of them said they did not plan it and it was a last minute decision.

That sounds not very rational to me.

<comment><USER26> Don't want to argue the logic of suicide too much, but isn't that a self- selecting audience of people that didn't plan well, and hence "failed"? There are plenty of people that take their own life that spend quite a lot of time thinking about it, and planning.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> Nice example about how lack of information leads to volatility in markets. If you are looking for prescriptions to fix our financial markets, increasing transparency of trading would do wonders to eliminate speculation and refocus investors on value.

<comment><USER28> I'm not sure what precisely you mean by "transparency of trading". One of the common goals of trading is minimize the revelation of information about your intentions that other traders can exploit against you. Trading is like warfare --being transparent is not a strength.

Additionally, you can't just make one law that tells people to "be transparent." The enacted laws have to be specific in order to be meaningful. Because they are specific, people will find ways around them and continue playing the game.

<comment><USER27> Trading of securities is a regulated market. The rules about what information is available to the market are a combination of tradition and regulation. But they are man-made and arbitrary. I argue that the current fashions in regulation starve the markets of information and contribute to crises.

I'll give you just one example. Large traders attempt to conceal their identity. This leads to a lot of gamesmanship, as you point out. If this information were released with every order placed then I would argue a lot of volume would dry up and volatility would decrease.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> So if the hedge fund managers lost money and Porsche lost money, so where did the money go?

To play this game both borrowed money, so both parties paid interests... So i guess the banks made money... Fits in with this article [http://money.cnn.com/2009/04/13/news/goldman.earnings.report...](http://money.cnn.com/2009/04/13/news/goldman.earnings.report.fortune/index.htm)

<comment><USER30> everyone lost money in 2009 =(

<comment><USER29> Money does not disappear... It just hides in some peoples pockets :)

<comment><USER31> Money absolutely disappears due to malinvestment.

If you spend all your time building something no one wants, the world overall is poorer than if you build something amazing and people pay high prices for it.

<comment><USER32> Makes sense, build a house nobody buys and wealth is destroyed once you demolish the house or it falls into disrepair.

<comment><USER31> Right -- all that money goes to pay people's salaries and materials, but the opportunity cost of building something useful is what is lost. That's the answer to the broken window fallacy, Keynesian ditch-filling (at least as a long-term solution; it is possible it makes sense to smooth out demand, but real public works projects are still better even then), etc.

<comment><USER29> So malinvestment is a good point but money does not disappear. For malinvestment to happen someone has to make good investment... Therefore the money does not disappear it goes to the person with better investments... Let me put it this way money transfers ( what i meant by it hides in someones pocket)

Coming back to your house... When you commissioned the house you paid for materials, salaries etc... therefore transfer of money.... Next when u bought the land u invested in a certain property for a certain value, the value was destroyed (due to whatever reason tsunami etc) so you lost money but the person who sold it to you gained (aka transfer of money)

Now if you talk about which building is worth building thats a whole new debate... Sorry I didn't explain it before... I was just talking about how banks usually have pretty good ways to make money... They invest in competitors cause no matter who wins... They get the interest...

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> This was hilarious, I was working for a company that supplied software to hedge funds at the the time. I was laughing my ass off that the hedge fund guys got taken so badly by a bunch of car makers. Looks like German financial engineering is as highly regarded as German automotive engineering.

<comment><USER34> I doubt they are merely _"a bunch of car makers"_ , I assume Porsche, with lots of money, hires lots of smart financial experts to do deals like this. You can throw money at a problem and be a money expert.

</comment></comment><comment><USER35> I am very surprised this was legal. Aren't there disclosure requirements? Certainly in the US if you acquire a stake of more than 5 or 10% you have to declare it.

</comment><comment><USER36> For hobbyist investor it's tempting to short some stocks which seem to be priced outrageously high.

In the past I've heard the term "Short Squeeze", but did not really pay attention.

This article demonstrates one of the risks of shorting.

<comment><USER14> Small time investors advice for when you consider shorting stocks: don't.

</comment></comment><comment><USER37> Am I the only one who noticed this:

"How Porsche hacked the financial system and _MADE A KILLING_ "

"Betting the wrong way, Adolf Merckle _TOOK HIS LIFE_."

I'm all for dark humor, but isn't it a little sketchy to joke about suicide in your headline? (I'm guessing the headline was intentional, but who knows).

<comment><USER38> You're all for dark humor? Forgive me, but if you don't even like _wordplay_ on a "dark" topic, what kind of dark humor is it that you find acceptable?

<comment><USER37> I think the line for me would probably be between reality and fictional circumstances. In this circumstance, a real person actually took their life, which (at least to me) is not really a joking matter. On the other hand, if there were some joke about a fictional character involving suicide, I probably would not be (greatly) disturbed. I understand that not everybody would have this reaction, but I have known people who tried to commit suicide so it is a bit different for me I guess.</comment></comment></comment>


Yahoo Transparency Report Overview - <AUTHOR> http://info.yahoo.com/transparency-report/

<comment><USER2> "The numbers reported above include all types of government data requests such as criminal law enforcement requests and those under U.S. national security authorities, including the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) and National Security Letters (NSLs), if any were received.

The U.S. Government does not permit us to disclose additional details regarding the number of requests, if any, under national security authorities at this time, or even to separate them in aggregate from other requests. Additionally, the government would not authorize us to separate NSLs from other government data requests or to express the NSLs that we have received, if any, as a range from 0 to 1,000—even though the government allowed other providers to do so in the past. We strenuously disagree with the government's position and will continue to advocate for greater transparency regarding requests made under national security authorities. If we succeed in persuading the U.S. Government to allow greater transparency, we will disclose additional details in future reports, and we will also update this report with more details related to national security requests as permitted."

 _Range from 0 to 1,000_ a hint?

<comment><AUTHOR> 100,000</comment></comment>


Don't quit your job. Just quit thinking. Start experimenting. - <AUTHOR> http://chrisguillebeau.com/3x5/moving-to-paris-without-quitting-my-day-job-a-lesson-in-becoming-a-nonconformist/

<comment><USER2> Note to web developers and bloggers: Even if I enjoy an article you wrote I still don't want a lightbox frame to popup asking me to subscribe.

I'm more than capable of adding you to my RSS reader myself without popups k thx.

<comment><USER3> He's got comments on his blog, why don't you tell him instead of us, you lazy, ineffectual lout.</comment></comment>


California Now World's 5th Largest Economy, Surpassing UK - <AUTHOR> https://www.nytimes.com/aponline/2018/05/04/us/ap-us-california-economy.html <comment><USER2> The question is what is CA going to do when its municipalities indirectly cap GDP via their terrible housing policies. The entire state is under a slow boil by NIMBYism that will eventually choke its otherwise impressive economy.

<comment><USER3> I'm not a NIMBY myself, but most of them would claim that preserving quality of life for existing residents is more important than maximizing GDP or making space for newcomers. If you want to improve housing policies then you'll have to find a way to counteract those objections.

<comment><USER4> How about existing residents who rent in CA cities? Your argument doesn't stand.

<comment><USER3> Very few of the hard-core NIMBYs are renters. My argument still stands.

<comment><USER5> Homeowners and renters are affected by these policies differently, often in opposite ways. That's the point. Obviously these NIMBYs are homeowners because their position grossly favors existing homeowners. Mortgage payments are not affected by a constant influx of new people but rent prices are. Stalling is a win for one side only. Anybody can wish for "preserving quality of life." But while they are wishing homeowners are reaping all of the benefits and renters are getting screwed.

<comment><USER6> I would be very surprised if there were more homeowners than renters in cities, and if there were---then what we have is democracy at work.

Consequently, I believe that many renters simply aren't participating in the political process or are strangely voting against their obvious interests.

The YIMBY platform _will_ work because the majority of people will benefit from it, but need organization to actually get to the polling booths and participate in lobbying.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> This is truly incredible and speaks to the amazing spirit of people and government of California. These numbers become even more incredible when you consider that UK has 66 million people. And CA is also a net donor state when it comes to Federal taxes. If you add that spending back, the economy would be even bigger. Most articles here and in the internet speak to a dislike of California. But for me, everyday I feel lucky to live here.

</comment><comment><USER8> How's wealth and welfare distribution around the state though?

<comment><USER9> This was the same question I had. According to the recent Federal Data, California had a GDP $2.747 trillion[0]. In 2016, Los Angeles' GDP was a little over 1 trillion by itself[1].

A quick search revealed this too[2] (because I was curious about the impact "Hollywood" has on the economy):

> According to a recent report by the Los Angeles County Economic Development > Corporation, motion picture and sound recording jobs accounted for just 2.4 > percent of the private sector labor force in the city of L.A. in 2015.

(Note: I couldn't quickly find total Hollywood revenue, plus there's the "creative accounting" issue[3] too)

It's certainly a _rabbit hole_ of data analysis.

[0] [http://www.businessinsider.com/california-economy- ranks-5th-...](http://www.businessinsider.com/california-economy-ranks-5th-in- the-world-beating-the-uk-2018-5)

[1] [https://www.statista.com/statistics/183822/gdp-of-the-los- an...](https://www.statista.com/statistics/183822/gdp-of-the-los-angeles- metro-area/)

[2] [http://www.laweekly.com/news/how-much-does-hollywood- contrib...](http://www.laweekly.com/news/how-much-does-hollywood-contribute- to-las-economy-not-as-much-as-you-think-8798404)

[3] [https://duckduckgo.com/?q=hollywood+creative+accounting&ia=w...](https://duckduckgo.com/?q=hollywood+creative+accounting&ia=web)

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> No reason to use a paywalled version of this AP story

[https://www.apnews.com/dfe5adff6d3640249e63f5637dfeb995](https://www.apnews.com/dfe5adff6d3640249e63f5637dfeb995)

</comment><comment><USER11> You mean once again. It has been #5 before.

</comment><comment><USER12> 5th largest in the world and yet where is all of the money going? California is in a huge deficit.

<comment><USER13> California has a high amount of debt, particularly per household, when compared to (some) other U.S. states. However, the last few years under governor Brown have led to a budget surplus for those years, which is commonly attributed to the tax hikes of Proposition 30, among better spending decisions.

We're looking at a pretty substantial surplus for this year's budget, which will be finalized in June, and lawmakers have different ideas about what to do with it. Governor Brown wants to put it in the rainy day fund, conservatives largely want to enact tax relief for some Californians, and the state's liberal politicians largely want to spend it on other things.

Personally, I'd like if California used at least the bulk of it to pay down some of our unfunded liabilities with regards to pension programs, of which we still have about $275 billion (of over $400 billion in total debt). There are plans to take care of these over the next 3 decades, but settling it a bit earlier never hurt.

<comment><USER14>
      the last few years under governor Brown have led to a budget surplus for those years

no, it wasn't a surplus. 2017 showed a $1.6 Billion _deficit_ [0].

[0] [http://www.latimes.com/politics/la-pol-sac-jerry-brown- budge...](http://www.latimes.com/politics/la-pol-sac-jerry-brown-budget-trump- risks-20170110-story.html)

<comment><USER13> You're right -- due to some (must-have-been-pretty-awful) miscalculations about the cost of a certain program that pushed it into deficit territory. My mistake! I was also considering 2017 as this year since a budget spans two years.

For completeness, CA roughly carried a deficit from '02-'03 to '12-'13, and then roughly a surplus from '13-'14 onwards, except for 2017.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Review my Webapp: Main Street - <AUTHOR>

Main Street helps businesses establish a presence online in 60 seconds. It also pulls in reviews, mentions and photos about your business from all over the social web so that you can promote it to potential customers.<p>Please provide feedback! <comment><AUTHOR> Link: <http://mainstreet.io></comment>


U.S. Invests $258M in Supercomputing Race with China - <AUTHOR> https://www.wsj.com/articles/u-s-invests-258-million-in-supercomputing-race-with-china-1497549600 <comment><USER2> USG has tons of compute. What we don't have is the tooling behind AWS or GCP (minus GovCloud which is mainly inaccessible due to infosec and budgetary insanity).

Our scientists look at what could be, look at their very interesting datasets, and then gnash their teeth for want of better tooling. People know this. Senior people from industry have screamed at senior government leadership that they are 20 years behind and falling faster. Nothing changes. Why?

Every time someone gets out from under their grad school payoff contract, they run to Google or Facebook.

Very few people are committing for the long term, and that's what's needed. Long-term commitment to steward a program. The people who remain often lack technical chops, have "certificates" in "cyber" something or other, but got through the Acquisitions school and now have authority to just pour money into blades, load Red Hat and mpi4py, and say "look, it's a supercomputer"!

They don't need to invest in iron. They need to invest in people. But they think they can just keep hiring new grads and expect magic.

<comment><USER3> AWS is a terrible match for super computing hardware. Sure, there are some embarrassingly parallel workloads that don't need fast interconnects, but mostly latency or memory becomes the issue.

<comment><USER4> Dirty little secret:

Much the computing on these machines isn't supercomputing and doesn't need fast interconnects. In fact, many (most?) workloads would be best done in the cloud. Except we already bought these machines. So there's tons of frameworks around meant to use these machines like they are AWS pizza boxes. If it's inefficient due to an architectural mismatch, that's fine. You're still using the machine that was paid for, and the only numbers that matter is utilization, and those metrics aren't even defined in terms of CPU utilization. If you reserve 10 nodes, and only run on one node, it's still reported that a 10 node job ran for 6 hours, not that a 10 node job job ran at 10% efficiency for 6 hours.

As far as why the accounting is this way, it's assumed that users will attempt to maximize their usage since allocations are defined. But even then, you can blow through your allocation and generally ask for more. But that's not necessarily what happens.

In summary: Because we bought these big computers, we have to use them, even if the workload isn't a good match.

<comment><USER3> Amdahl's law, if you spend more on interconnects you only speed up a subset of your workloads. But the reverse is also true so buying more nodes and less interconnects only speeds up a subset of your workloads. The optimum is going to seem wasteful on average.

[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amdahl%27s_law](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amdahl%27s_law)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> That's like 1/5 the cost of one F35 Flying Turkey?

<comment><USER6> And a mere 2% the cost of the USS Gerald Ford (which would probably be destroyed within 24 hours of active war with China)

<comment><USER7> I would like to see the details if your tactical analysis on that.

<comment><USER8> I'd recommend these as an interesting starting point ([2] has videos):

[1] [http://infoproc.blogspot.com/2017/02/on-military-balance- of-...](http://infoproc.blogspot.com/2017/02/on-military-balance-of-power-in- western.html)

[2] [http://infoproc.blogspot.com/2016/09/balance-of-power-in- wes...](http://infoproc.blogspot.com/2016/09/balance-of-power-in-western- pacific.html)

<comment><USER7> I read through those, including some of the referenced articles. My opinion is that the DF-21 is overhyped, as is the vulnerability of CVBGs to satellite detection. I'm on my phone right now, so I'll circle back to details later.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> top500.org, which maintains the list of the 500 fatest supercomputers in the world also has more details on this [1]

> The PathForward program [...] address the four key challenges: parallelism, > memory and storage, reliability and energy consumption

Energy consumption is becoming a very important challenge, as the article says, current petascale supercomputers consume "enough power to run a small town". Major efforts will need to be made to have Exascale supercomputers that don't consume the equivalent of 10^3 small towns.

[1] [https://www.top500.org/news/doe-shells-out-258-million-to- si...](https://www.top500.org/news/doe-shells-out-258-million-to-six-vendors- to-develop-exascale-hardware/)

</comment><comment><USER10> Competition is good. For research, The Cold War with Russia and the resulting "Space Race" was good. In Israel, they spend a much larger share of their national income on R&D, largely to develop technologies to defend themselves.

<comment><USER11> This. I'd argue one of the biggest problems facing the United States right now is that there is a (falsely) perceived lack of competition / existential threats which is making us lazy and complacent.

</comment></comment><comment> dis-sys This is just stupid. US basically sent out a signal to its competitor to demand them to invest more heavily on their own R&D capabilities- what Chinese universities, research institutions and companies are going to do with such news? They take it to the Chinese central government to ask for more R&D funding.

Think about it - what China can possibly lose in such a race? When Americans are trying to maintain its No.1 ranking in the field, Chinese are just trying to further modernize its industry which stands at less than $10k GDP per capita, you can probably beat the next generation Chinese supercomputer, but hey, you are pushing for the creation/improvement of the Chinese supercomputing community!

Think about it again - what China can possibly lose in such a race? America won't lose its overall dominance just because some other countries have faster supercomputers, America is losing its influence around the global when it stupidly using its borrowed resources to force its main competitor (also No.1/2 debt owner) for more R&D spending.

<comment><USER12> Son, you're not making too much sense. Of all things to be mad about, tech investments isn't one of them.

<comment> dis-sys If supercomputer is a race and the race is between the US & China, then such investment from the US federal government using borrowed money is _not_ doing any favour to the US - it might build a few faster supercomputer in the end, but in the long run, such a direct head on competition which fuels Chinese R&D spending in arguably one of the most cutting edge fields is damaging US interests.

Why Chinese are building supercomputers on their own? Because the US laws prohibit any US supercomputer export to China, including the export of core components that can be used to build such supercomputers.

In case you are not familiar with the matter - the above mentioned core components are not some fancy parts guarded by your NSA - we are talking about parts that can be freely purchased on ebay for $300-1000 each.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> This is chump change, we should have invested $2.58 billion or more. China isn't taking half measures in their state's science and technology investments. They realize we're in a second cold war, just one where the two combatants have more economic interdependence. They are making investments like the ones that helped us win the last war.

<comment><USER14> > They realize we're in a second cold war... For God's sake, don't start > another cold war. This is an established incumbent, who has monopolized > world power for decades, feeling threatened by a new kid in town. Any > progress China has made has been labeled as threat, cold war, or dismissed > as useless, or blamed on China's stealing US secrets. As an instance, China > bought many Intel chips to create supercomputers. Then the U.S. government > banned Intel from selling high end chips to China[1]. China had to create > homemade chips for world's fastest supercomputer[2].

[1] [http://wccftech.com/us-government-bans-intel-nvidia-amd- chip...](http://wccftech.com/us-government-bans-intel-nvidia-amd-chips-china/) [2] [http://www.pcworld.com/article/3086107/hardware/chinas- secre...](http://www.pcworld.com/article/3086107/hardware/chinas-secretive- super-fast-chip-powers-the-worlds-fastest-computer.html)

<comment><USER15> I love this very naive view. China is 100% trying to beat and surpass the US as a superpower. They are not benevolent at all. Have a look at the ridiculous claims on the South China Sea for a start. I have spent lots of time in China. They still want payback for the humiliation they believe they endured in the 1800s. That is a one of the single most important driving factors in everything they do.

<comment><USER16> I don't know much about Chinese history. What humiliation did they endure in the 1800s?

<comment><USER17> [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opium_Wars](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opium_Wars)

<comment><USER18> Adding onto this, consider that China was, for a relatively long period in its development, the dominant power in its interactions. Interactions with the colonial West in the 1800s were a dramatic departure from long term history in a number of ways. At the end of the 1800s, the Sino Japanese War was also a major defeat for the Chinese. From a certain perspective, the current state of affairs could be viewed as something of a long-term return to normal.

<comment> dis-sys "the current state of affairs could be viewed as something of a long-term return to normal"

CCP has its own "Make China Great Again" thing, officially known as "The great rejuvenation of the Chinese nation".

[https://www.amazon.com/CHINESE-DREAM-GREAT-REJUVENATION- NATI...](https://www.amazon.com/CHINESE-DREAM-GREAT-REJUVENATION- NATION/dp/7119086960)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Some non-paywalled information at Anandtech: PathForward: US Dept. of Energy Awards $258M in Research Contracts To Develop Exascale Supercomputer Technology [0]

[0] [http://www.anandtech.com/show/11547/us-dept-of-energy- awards...](http://www.anandtech.com/show/11547/us-dept-of-energy- awards-258m-to-develop-exascale-supercomputer-technology)

</comment><comment><USER20> only 200M? Am I the only one think it is a small budget for supercomputing?

</comment><comment><USER21> DOE? that cant be right

<comment><USER22> Energy, not Education.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> Here's the same content at AnandTech (w/o paywall):

[http://www.anandtech.com/show/11547/us-dept-of-energy- awards...](http://www.anandtech.com/show/11547/us-dept-of-energy- awards-258m-to-develop-exascale-supercomputer-technology)

</comment><comment><USER24> Tweeting will be so fast, it is going to be great

</comment><comment><USER25> It'll be a shame if they don't dump a chunk of that money on the Mill. However there may very well be some string attached unsuitable to Ivan Godard et al.

<comment><USER26> The Mill isn't really very well suited for supercomputing workloads. It tries to do well on poorly written C++ code (aka "general purpose code") that OoO machines have historically don well on. By contrast, VLIW machines are perfectly suitable for supercomputing, and indeed, I think that Itanium did well in the HPC world until it was discontinued.

Something like the Rex Computing Neo would be more suitable for this.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> Why is this in the DOE budget?

<comment><USER27> This is where the US' climate change budget is going [citation needed]

Guess this now needs reconfiguring [http://worrydream.com/ClimateChange](http://worrydream.com/ClimateChange)

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> Pennies.

</comment><comment><USER29> Does betteridge's law apply to conference talks? [http://sc14.supercomputing.org/schedule/event_detail- evid=pa...](http://sc14.supercomputing.org/schedule/event_detail- evid=pan105.html)

</comment><comment><USER30> They shoulda invested 256 million, woulda been more efficient.

<comment><USER31> You mean $268,435,456?

<comment><USER32> 256 mibillion

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> I've spent a lot of time in country X. They all want Y.

Okay. That's the kind of crap that was in the 1800's, that's still in the 2010's, unfortunately.

Your words sound like something from a grown up bully jealous of their victim's achievements in life.

<comment><USER15> How do you know I am not Chinese or my wife is not? Or my best friend? Or someone in my family?

I wish the best for China and the Chinese people. I hope for a peaceful and prosperous future. That however does not involve the threat to take Taiwan by force or claiming all of the South China Sea as theirs.

What I was trying to say is that my opinion is not informed based on what I have read in the press but based on the fact that I have spent time in the country and have read the local press, and spoken with the local people. The humiliation faced by the Chinese at the hand of the western powers is a common theme of books and movies and TV shows in China.

<comment><USER33> Well, for one, I am Chinese. My parents are Chinese, so are my grandparents, and their grandparents.

I've listened to my grandmother talk about her grandparents, who are from the 1800's.

Of course we're drawn to movies and books and TV shows from that era. Same reason why teenagers in Europe are interested in Medieval stuff and Roman empire stuff. It's part of their history.

Is China taking Taiwan by force? Taiwan has been developing peacefully for almost 70 years since the civil war, I don't see any violence over there.

..."claiming all of the South China Sea as theirs"

Lots of governments do lots of crap, does that mean we can say the whole country and all its people want it?

And what does U.S. has anything to do with any of this stuff, anyway. Sure I understand if China was doing things in Mexico or the Caribbean, but I don't understand why they want to meddle in Ukraine, Syria, Afghanistan, and South China Sea, and then call Russia, Iran, China as agitators.

Do I think that's what the U.S. public support? Meddle in countries half way around the world? No!

And thanks for your best wishes.

<comment><USER15> The claim of the South China Sea is a violation of International Law and the Convention of the Sea.

China has publicly acknowledged they are pointing DF-16 missiles at Taiwan.

China has publicly stated they will use force to prevent an independent Taiwan, despite the fact that Taiwan is a functioning democracy, unlike China.

China arrest and brutalized dissidents.

The rule of law in China is what ever the current leader says it is - Where is 吳小暉 (Wu Xiaohui)?

China kidnapped booksellers from Hong Kong in violation of the treaty that governs Hong Kong because of their political views.

I could make a list a mile long.

I stand by my statement that China's rise to power is scary because the motivations of the government of China are not driven by democratic principles that provides for checks on power.

The USA could have had an empire after WW2 and there was NO ONE IN THE WORLD that could have stopped them. Instead the USA paid even more of their money to re-built the world and help the countries which they fought.

The USA makes stupid mistakes sometimes, but they alway eventually sort it and sort it on the right side of history even if it takes time.

<comment><USER33> None of that has anything to do with "Pay back for humiliation in the 1800's". What you've described is actions of the Chinese government, I don't believe for one second Chinese people support all these actions - I do not, my parents do not, and my grandparents do not, therefore it's not true. Do my grandparents want "payback" on the Japanese for her suffering in world war 2? If she does I won't begrudge her for that. But you cannot claim I do.

<comment><USER34> Can you point to any links that shows the chinese people protest on streets about their Govt's stance on south china sea, Tibet and Taiwan? If they don't, does that not mean they agree 100% with their Govt?

<comment><USER35> 'The Chinese people agree their government's stance on south china sea, Tibet and Taiwan' doesn't mean 'they agree everything with their government'.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>