Customers hate MVPs – Make it simple, loveable, and complete instead (2017) - <AUTHOR> https://blog.asmartbear.com/slc.html <comment><USER2> Minus the buzzwords, here's what this article is saying: when you build an MVP, you should bias towards cutting features rather than cutting polish or introducing bugs. If your MVP is filled with bugs, it isn't actually viable. You should also focus on making an MVP that people actually want. If it isn't solving a real problem ("loveable"), it's not actually a product.

In other words, increase the polish of your initial releases by making them smaller and including fewer features. That's valuable advice.

But if I can rant for just a minute:

Do you need a completely brand new concept or paradigm or acronym to say that? No, you don't. This is mostly just playing semantic games and allowing WP Engine to subtly imply that they're better at building polished products than other companies.

How do you make something simple? You make it do less stuff. That's what "minimal" means. What does "loveable" mean? It means you're solving an actual problem -- you have a real Product. How do you build an SLC? You radically cut down on the number of features you plan to ship in an initial product, to the point where you have time to polish them in your initial release. That sounds a lot like an MVP to me.

If WP Engine just put up an article saying, "our software is always very polished and very usable, even in the first release", nobody would care. The way to make people care is to pretend that you've found a completely new paradigm for building software, when all you really mean is, "we're quite good at building MVPs that people like."

The article isn't talking about new concepts, it's just debating what other people intend when they say individual words, and I couldn't care less. It's like saying, "we don't focus on making our product 'fun', we focus on making it 'delightful'." Okay, but what does that _mean_ beyond the fact that a business manager somewhere thought it tracked better with potential buyers?

<comment><USER3> What I got from Startup School was that an MVP didn't have to do anything at all. It just had to demonstrate what it "will" do. It's basically a "mockup".

<comment><USER2> Huh, that's really interesting.

I don't have anything against mockups, but that's almost the opposite of what I and engineers I know think of when we say MVP. The point of an MVP as we use it is to not plan in excessive detail about what your final feature-set will be, because you don't know what customers will and won't find valuable until you have a product in their hands. Get the smallest, most specific version of a useful product released, and then after that you can figure out what future iterations should do.

How are you going to release an MVP to customers that doesn't actually do anything? Why would anyone download or use it?

<comment><USER4> Too much software mindset. You can build a no-code solution, see how potential users interact with it, and learn from that. You can gage interest just by presenting something to a focus group in a somewhat interactive way. MVP could even just be a poll. No need for a "product" or even a demo.

If you can build a prototype fast and deliver fast, that could be valuable, but is often waay before evaluating what to build in the first place. There are success stories building something and iterating on that. If you yourself is multi-talented, have the time, clout and love your software, there might be some odds others might like/need it too. The latter is associated with most failures though.

So be a business, not a software delivery function.

<comment><USER2> Sure, you don't need to code anything. You can build a no-code solution, see how potential users interact with it, and learn from that. But your no-code solution still needs to be a minimal feature set that people can actually use.

If I'm building an MVP for a restaurant, maybe there's no code at all in that system. Maybe I'm manually taking everyone's orders and serving at most one or two dishes on a street corner. But I'm not just showing people pictures of food.

Your no-code solution still needs to be a solution, it can't just be a promise that there will be a solution at some point in the future. An MVP doesn't mean code, it means: Build the smallest possible product (whether that involves code or not) that actually solves someone's problems in the real world, and then put that product in their hands so you can see what they do with it.

A poll is not a product. No customer is going to pay you so that they can take a poll.

<comment><USER4> You may not generate much income with initial MVP, or whatever you want to call it. The point is to learn while minimizing costs, risks and time to market. To expect greatness without work, is folly..

Your example with the restaurant is a perfect example: Have someone execute the MVP manually. Map routines that works great, optimize and document outcomes. This becomes spec for initial automations.

The alternative could be someone in a corner office applying systems thinking and predicting everything required in the system. This tend to overcomplicate system designs and make them less amenable to adapt over time.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> All of this could be said without trying to coin a new acronym. MVP already covers these angles, and it feels like a bit of a strawman to claim it doesn't. The hard part and simultaneously whole point of building an MVP is to figure out the proper scope. This will vary a lot from product to product and in different markets, and there's no magic formula. I don't see how adding new abstract principles helps. Should it be simple, lovable and complete? Well duh.

<comment><USER6> The emphasis on complete is a new take. The entire idea of an MVP encapsulates the idea that it will change into something in the future.

Just changing the mental goal to something that can live on its own with no further development is an important difference. Does it need a new acronym? I don't know but I never liked MVP anyway.

<comment><USER7> The reason shooting for completeness is not ideal is because it's usually a waste of time. Very rarely can founders guess the compete solution to their customers problem out of the gate. It's the mismatch between what the company _imagines_ the complete solution should look like versus integrating customer feedback to make "complete" solution more people will pay for.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> The big problem with MVP is that it is now simply one more corporate buzzword. Many using the term may have heard the 30-second description from a colleague and now repeat it freely. Like a game of telephone, what was said and what was heard about MVP keep changing. As such, it has lost most of its meaning and has no firm definition. It's an easy target for a piece like this, given the circumstances.

At least in my organization it had no useful definition. Usually the term MVP would be thrown around by management as reasoning for any number of decisions. Taking too long to understand a core technology limitation - my lucky MVP ball says just get it sort-of working and ship it. Regressing on performance to meet an arbitrary timeline - just make it MVP (in our organization this meant ship on time, no matter the content). Reducing cost by shipping completely untested designs - that's what MVP is. Not that any of these examples couldn't or shouldn't be viewed with the MVP rubric, but it didn't seem to mean anything in particular.

</comment><comment><USER9> I don't agree with the content. The whole premise is to mischaracterize what an MVP is supposed to be.

The figure they have there where they compare a half car with no wheels (MVP) to the scooter (SLC) is quite telling.

That half car would never be considered a Minimally Viable Product, a half car with no wheels does not work at all - how is that viable? The scooter would be an MVP.

<comment><USER2> The Spotify team is explicitly saying in that chart, "example 1 is not an MVP, example 2 is."

And then WP Engine is turning around and saying, "see, example 1 shows why MVPs don't work. Instead you should build example 2 which is a totally different concept we invented."

I don't know why, but that really rubs me the wrong way. How does someone look at a two-diagram infographic and take away the exact opposite lesson that it's trying to teach?

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> I have to agree with the author. The MVP concept was new to me when I attended Startup School a couple years ago and while I understood what it gets at (not spending too much time or money on a concept that no one may want) it feels too much like selling a "promise" of what something will be, and it assumes that promise can be fulfilled.

To me, an MVP felt like showing someone a battery powered skateboard while telling them what you're really working on is an electric car. You may get investors, and that's great, but you may also spend years finding out you can't scale the tech to build the car.

<comment><USER10> It's more like the MVP is a basic electric car. You can sit in it, start it, and drive it. However, it doesn't have a radio or sunroof, and maybe not even a trunk or passenger seat.

I'm not sure the author understands what an MVP is. I parse the title as _I hate MVPs, because I hate what I don 't understand_.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Interpretation of language is the problem here.

What is "viable"? What is "minimal"? The author's complaints are that customers are upset with the MVP. Well, that's because it was so minimal that the customers don't see it as viable. There's not enough viability to make up for the minimalism. Using the product is not a good deal for the customer.

So what's the answer the author provides? Use different language that can be misinterpreted. Here's what will happen with SLCs:

"Oh, that doesn't have <feature X that 1% of users want, but VP likes>, so it's not COMPLETE yet, so it's not an SLC".

"We don't need to add <X> because that's not SIMPLE, so it's not an SLC, just ship without <critical feature that 90% of users need>".

"You know, it's good, but I just don't _love_ it yet. Can you just give it some more work so that it's an SLC?"

I've seen it happen. "Minimum LOVABLE product" made it's rounds at my company once. Yes, they called them "MLPs" having no idea about My Little Pony or the various communities who care deeply about such things. It did not bring us joy.

The true answer lies not in changing the words but in deeply defining what you mean and getting everyone to agree on them. It means working closely with your customer and asking _them_ if you're ready to launch with this minimal set of features (for now). It means earning trust and quickly iterating based on feedback.

Buzzwords gonna buzz. Ignore them. Just sit down with your customer and solve their problems.

</comment><comment><USER12> Remember how Telsa started by building skateboards before moving to scooters, bikes, then cars? No? Oh that's right, they started with cars, but outsourced the design and production of components that were not their core competency, then slowly replaced those outsourced designs until they had something entirely their own.

What product is complete when launched? I can't recall anything. Most of the products I know and love got to that point through a series of small, incremental, improvements over time. And this is exactly the foundation the MVP paradigm seeks to lay out: get something out the door that's useful, and get feedback from customers to make those incremental improvements.

<comment><USER13> > they [...] outsourced the design and production of components that were not > their core competency, then slowly replaced those outsourced designs until > they had something entirely their own.

This is interesting. Any references to read more on this ?

<comment><USER12> I'm referring to the original Roadster being built on a heavily modified Lotus chassis while the Model S was ground up design. The fact that older Roasters can get upgrades from the Model S suggests a good deal of component sharing for the drive trains.

I'm not sure if anyone has written anything extensive on it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> The premise of this article is based solely on this statement:

> The problem is that customers hate MVPs.

But I don't see much in the article to support this claim.

</comment><comment><USER15> So... "Don't try to be realistic about what can reasonably be accomplished, instead do everything completely right the first time". Well, ok, thanks for the advice, I guess.

<comment><USER16> I love that they complain that MVP is not a good approach and that SLC is better and clearer, but "simple" and "complete" can be antagonistic forces and create the same amount of ambiguity as the interaction between "minimum" and "viable." I imagine you are looking at complete and read it as saying everything must be done right the first time, while the author likely would respond with "no you are missing the point it should also be simple." But I might agree with your interpretation, as would a lot of other people, meaning its ambiguous and potentially less meaningful.

At least the ambiguity in MVP is less, it's the minimal product that is viable, which presumably does have an empirical, if perhaps unknowable, answer. It's a clear target. What is simple and complete though? I dont think theres a clear target there.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> If your customers hate MVP's then you got the V wrong. The whole point is it's the minimal things that's Viable and how much that is depends on the product and market. For some products, the minimal thing that's viable really is minimal, for others it's rather complete. IMHO the point of MVP's is to do the least work necessary to make the customer happy with the product (ie not was to big time on unnecessary or nice to have things that can come later), not to build a minimal thing.

</comment><comment><USER18> I hate these corporate brand management exercises masquerading as real technical insight. We get it, it's important to your company to be viewed as a thought leader in order to attract talent and customers. The way you do that is by _doing_ things, not half-arsing a blog post. If you have nothing meaningful to say, don't say it.

</comment><comment><USER19> What is the difference between "viable" and "complete"? Complete, as in "Simple, Lovable, Complete", is about your customer's ability to derive net utility from using your product for their job to be done. Viable, in the MVP context, I interpret as signalling a credible offering in a market. The audience for viable is investors in your business, or customers willing to invest in a relationship with your business, in the expectation that your product will get to a point later of being distinctively useful.

Viable is promising, complete is useful today. The question is which approach will best fund your company to the point of operational self sufficiency. As an engineeer, I would far rather make SLC products. However, if I am racing for mindshare in a market or with investors, I have to think MVP.

SLC is harder to acheive. As Pascal sort of said, "If I had more time, I would have written an SLC".

<comment><USER20> > What is the difference between "viable" and "complete"?

That's where a lot of people get tripped up: development may have one idea about what is viable whereas the business team has a completely different idea.

<comment><USER4> ...and customers have a third valid opinion on the same.

<comment><USER20> Which should get subsumed into that business team as an accurate VOC.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> I worked at WPE years ago when the core product was still being improved upon and enhanced and new ideas were still being shipped. I assure anyone reading that the company shipped plenty of MVPs that turned out to not be Minimum, not be viable and failed as products. That's not to be a criticism - I love that the company tried new things and the product team wasnt afraid to put new tech in the hands of customers. But there was no new paradigm or standard then as this article from 2017 (which is right around when I left) suggests.

The author is one of the smarter people I've been around, in the tech world or any other. And I've enjoyed his writing over the years. But I tend to agree that this piece doesnt really make a lot of sense aside from ascribing a new acronym to an established idea.

</comment><comment><USER22> The author spends an entire article demonstrating that he or she does not understand what an MVP is, then proceeding to tell us about a new invention that is, in fact, an MVP.

Newsflash - an MVP is not a piece of shit. It's the simplest version of the product that solves the problem.

<comment><USER23> It seems "Simple, Lovable and Complete" is the authors context specific meaning of the Viable in MVP

<comment><USER24> It also seems really dumb, to me, for incorporating "Love" into a business/engineering product/project stage-of-development naming convention.

Any good business person or engineer understands that objective, unbiased, un- emotionally attached decisions and validations are antithetical to subjective, biased emotions such as "love".

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> I'm not going to rewrite comments that have been presented in this thread (I usually use the name Main Delightful Product), but I'll make an argument for ugly MVPs :

All products and features don't have to bring joy to users. Sometimes they just are sick of their problem. The fulfillment of their pain don't translate into appreciation of the product. Examples could be safety features (security alarm, protective gear,..) or reliability enhancer (monitoring software,...)

Doing an ugly MVP will give you plenty of proofs of concept, and will provide the majority of what users want : the solution to their pain point. Taking the extra time to make it lovable will only impact marginally the perception of value from your users

</comment><comment><USER26> It seems when things like MVP, Agile or OOP are invented they are useful observations. But as soon as they become popular they get distorted to the point they don't make sense anymore or are even damaging. At this point whenever I read something about MVP it seems it's mainly discussing semantics and ideology. Time for a new buzzword cycle.

</comment><comment><USER27> In my consulting experience MVP doesn't have much to do with whether the least amount of work to make the thing possible is being done, but has mostly been used as a negotiating tactic when fighting for scope-- "We'll save that feature for V1, but we're going to focus on these features for MVP"

</comment><comment><USER28> I don't want to move to Utah, thanks.

</comment><comment><USER24> This article smells of a naive, inexperienced author.

"I hate the accepted industry abbreviation. Use my abbreviation! It's better! Woo I'm so smart and and my opinion is so important."

How about... I hate SLC. Use MVP instead. (Or POC - Proof Of Concept)

"simple loveable complete" Please. Just... please.

This author sounds like another non-technical person trying to insert themselves into an area (technology) where they lack experience.

Simple Entryism.

First they enter a domain, then they want to start making changes, whether they are merited or not, and whether the person is knowledgeable/experienced or not.

So sick of it.

1\. Stop trying to tell people what to do, sweetheart.

2\. Stop telling me what my customers want-- You don't know me, nor do you know my customers.

3\. Stop acting as if you represent anything other than your own inexperienced opinion.

"Love" does not belong in an engineer or business person's vocabulary, when it comes to validating value.

"Love" is subjective and BIASED.

Good decisions are objective, data-oriented, lack bias, and lack emotional attachment.

Please, keep gullible lovey-dovey hippies & "entryists" out of technology.

<comment><USER29> The author is Jason who is the founder and CTO of WP-Engine which started in 2010. He sold two companies before that.

From the Author bio: [https://blog.asmartbear.com/jason- cohen](https://blog.asmartbear.com/jason-cohen)</comment></comment>


Systemd to the rescue - <AUTHOR> http://blog.achernya.com/2014/10/systemd-to-rescue.html

<comment><USER2> I like systemd from the perspective that it seems to be pushing forward features like no other project. Say what you will about the Unix ethos, it's 2014 and most people are still cobbling together ugly init.d scripts and rotating our own logs instead of deferring that work to the OS.

Having done a LOT of research on init systems over the last few months, systemd was the most controversial but also the __nicest to use __. I look forward to its introduction in Ubuntu.

</comment><comment><USER3> I built a wifi repeater using a Raspberry Pi and two USB wifi adapters. The USB setup was not particularily stable and the devices would randomly reset.

Thanks you systemd, all I had to was to create two systemd units, for hostapd and the NetworkManager connnection setup, and declare a hard dependency on the USB wifi adapters. This was possible thanks to the udev integration - you can simply declare a dependency on a device just like you would do for a service. systemd would then cleanly stop the particular unit if the device disappeared, and start it once it re-appeared.

Of course, I could have done something similar using just udev and a service supervisor, but systemd made it as simple as adding a few lines to my unit description files. It was a rather unusual use case, and I was amazed at how easy it was to implement it.

</comment><comment><USER4> Congrats on getting to a situation that works for you, but I would gently suggest that having to custom-patch suexec of all things might not be the best way to approach a long-term solution. I don't know how that aspect of the solution reflects on systemd though.

</comment><comment><USER5> So he pretty much hit on what Systemd has been built towards, cloud computing.

What rankles people is not journald pr say tho, but its tight coupling with the rest of the systemd ensemble.

You can't tell systemd to not start journald and just do logging via syslog or whatever you have been using. You still have to run journald in a pass through form.

Meaning you can't introduce systemd parts piecemeal, you only get the whole glob or not at all.

</comment><comment><USER6> journald? The log where corruption bugs are considered[1] NOTABUG? That on its own is enough reason to stay away. Pretending that log parsers don't exist makes this a nasty case of "not invented here".

Use that risky mess if you want. I'm sure it will work great in _most_ cases. Just remember that some of us value stability and a proven track-record more than fast searching. Especially when log parsers give us the fast searching too.

If you could use journald as a stand-alone log parser that slurped up and indexed the syslog, it might be a very useful tool. Forcing s reversal of sane design when it is not necessary is either is either a sign of inexperience or an "embrace and extend" existing methods.

[1] [https://bugs.freedesktop.org/show_bug.cgi?id=64116](https://bugs.freedesktop.org/show_bug.cgi?id=64116)

<comment><USER7> I think you've misrepresented the bug. "when reading we try to make the best of it" \-- that sounds like they've done their best to work around files that are corrupted externally, not that journald is actually corrupting logs itself.

<comment><USER6> I'm not suggesting that systemd and/or journald is responsible for the corruption of the logs; it could be, but this bug report doesn't really suggest anything about the original source of the corruption.

The source doesn't matter, because corruption happens. Bugs happen, hardware fails, attackers try to cover their tracks. The bug I (and the original reporter in this bug report) are referring to is journald's behavior when corruption happens: shove the log aside and start from scratch. Even worse, the attitude that ignoring corruption is "not a bug" is insane.

Yes, fixing a corrupt binary database (even a simple one) is going to be _very_ hard. What they fail to mention is that the reason they are face with this difficult problem was their decision to use that kind of format in the first place. When faced with the realities of their bad design choices, pretending there isn't a problem is not the correct answer. The correct way to handle that bug report should have been either fixing the bug (make journalctl able to handle corrupt logs), changing previous bad designs (drop the format that makes this a problem), or at a bare minimum recognize that this is a serious problem for some people and leaving the report open if it cannot be fixed right now.

Given that this kind of external corruption has a very good chance of being the _very reason_ you have to search the logs, how a logger acts in that kind of situation is of key importance.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> As a n00b to init systems, who has recently started using Upstart with Ubuntu in production...should I switch to Systemd? What are the pros/cons over Upstart? Is there anything inherently flawed about the robustness of Upstart?

<comment><USER2> There's nothing wrong with Upstart and it's pretty easy to use. I've got a little wiki page with some examples here:

[https://github.com/mperham/inspeqtor/wiki/Upstart](https://github.com/mperham/inspeqtor/wiki/Upstart)

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Along the same lines couldn't per user log files be used for apached, googling reveals a number of recipes for that, or alternatively hack suexec in a same way to that end?

</comment><comment><USER10> Four words that strike fear into my heart.</comment>


Cord-cutting gets even worse - <AUTHOR> https://www.fastcompany.com/40450179/cord-cutting-gets-even-worse-as-pay-tv-sees-another-quarter-of-historic-declines?utm_content=bufferfd2aa&utm_medium=social&utm_source=facebook.com&utm_campaign=buffer <comment><USER2> I love not having a cable bill. I get the free over-the-air channels on my channel-master DVR, and I've recently started listening to audiobooks on my iPad. The number of books and diversity of books is just amazing (and great for long flights and long drives too.) I guess I'm cheap, because I usually check audible's "daily deals" to find books for less than five dollars. So for less than a single cable bill, I have months worth of entertainment.</comment>


Pinterests hype bubble has burst - <AUTHOR> http://www.businessinsider.com/pinterests-hype-bubble-has-burst-and-now-it-is-actually-losing-users-2012-4

<comment><USER2> I always dislike how quickly everybody is to rave about the next big thing one day and then bash it the next.

They still have 8 million users and it I'm sure they aren't done innovating. I have no idea what they are going to do with the site, and I don't use it, but I'd say they are in a very good position for growth. This may be the beginning for them, not the end.

Does anybody know if twitter had a similar period in it's early stages?</comment>


Ask HN: How does HN decide which news to show on the front page? - <AUTHOR>

Hello HN,
How exactly does HN decide which news are on the front page? It's obviously not just the number of votes, the algorithm seems to be using the time of the last vote as well.
Thanks.
EDIT: There is this http://amix.dk/blog/post/19574 Is it legit? <comment><USER2> Most up to date unoficial explanation: [http://www.righto.com/2013/11/how- hacker-news-ranking-really...](http://www.righto.com/2013/11/how-hacker-news- ranking-really-works.HTML)

The main part of the formula is oficial and is in the source code (perhaps with different constants). The penalties are part of the secret sauce.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> This blog post seems to be explaining how reddit's algorithm works: [http://amix.dk/blog/post/19588](http://amix.dk/blog/post/19588)</comment>


Explainable Artificial Intelligence (XAI) Darpa Funding - <AUTHOR> https://www.fbo.gov/index?s=opportunity&mode=form&id=1606a253407e8773bdd1a9e884cc5293 <comment><USER2> This is important because there exists a trade-off in statistical learning models: in general, the more flexible your models are, the less understandable they become[0]. Modern machine learning techniques are typically very flexible.

To gain intuition and reasoning of a model is to have understanding and trust --transparency. When you strike a nail with a hammer, it's pretty predictable what might happen: the nail could get hit, the hammer could miss, or very rarely, the hammer's head may fly off of the handle. When you replace the hammer with a black box that works correctly 99.999% of the time, but for 0.001%, something completely unpredictable happens, then there's a problem with volatility because that unpredictable event may have unacceptable consequences. I think explainable AI could help with intuitive and more fine- grained risk analysis, and that's certainly a good thing in high-stakes applications such as defense.

[0] ISLR, Page 25: [http://www- bcf.usc.edu/~gareth/ISL/ISLR%20First%20Printing.p...](http://www- bcf.usc.edu/~gareth/ISL/ISLR%20First%20Printing.pdf)

<comment><USER3> This is interesting because usually "human-level performance" is the benchmark by which AI is judged. If it can do the thing as well as a human can do the thing, then that's good.

Human intelligence isn't explainable, though. We can make up explanations but they're not based on our actual neural function (heck, we don't even know how that works in general, let alone how we generate specific outcomes).

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

<comment><USER4> Illusory Introspection and confabulation are fascinating but generally have more to do with _what was going on in your head when you took that action?_ than _can you explain why you think that?_. XAI is not interested in psychological state or an explanation in terms of ion concentration, voltage changes and synaptic activations. Or in the case of AI, the meaning of the contents in vectors after maps on matrix vector products.

A large part of human success is that we are able to transmit knowledge to each other and accumulate experience over generations. A human starting from scratch is not very much more than its ape cousins.

Human beings can explain efficiently because we _must_ learn concepts decomposably and can take deductive shortcuts. In its purest form we have mathematical proofs as explanations. Explanations work with core concepts and generates on that basis. E.g. We want to know A and we know B, B is applicable in condition C. We will show condition C applies. With B, A can be shown in terms of...

When you give big data to machines they work with raw correlations and output predictions. But humans have to be more creative because our scratch space is so small. Newton took Brahe's big data and compressed it to a theory of universal gravitation. Darwin made a relatively small number of observations, all things considered, and came up with On the Origin of Species.

<comment><USER5> Only a tiny fraction of human knowledge is transmitted through knowledge. Humans can't describe the wiring of their visual cortex, or the intuitions they feel. Expert chess players find it impossible to explain why they make the moves they do. Mathematicians can make proofs and explanations, but they still find it very difficult to transmit their underlying mathematical intuition. Even the purest fields of math can only really be learned through experience and practice, not just following a few proofs mechanically.

<comment><USER6> Language allows us to communicate abstractions, which are then of course subject to interpretation. This is much better than other animals, which lack language facilities as far as we can tell. The entirety of human knowledge cannot be passed, but enough information is communicated that we can rebuild much of it in every generation.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> This is fantastic. DARPA gets it. I look forward to whatever fruits come from this labor. Maybe one day I won't have to look at stack traces and reverse engineer 3rd-party dependencies to figure out why things are breaking. Maybe one day error messages will have explanatory power. Maybe one day IDEs will understand abstractions other than ASTs and types and instead will understand things that convey human intent that is not so closely tied to rigid constructs like type systems. What a wonderful world that will be.

<comment><USER8> > Maybe one day error messages will have explanatory power

I firmly believe that closely integrating the raw ML internals with the user experience will yield tremendous rewards.

The coding experience, with the stack trace debug experience loop (get stacktrace -> google -> stackoverflow.com -> try a new thing) could be vastly improved, and be made to be like an Akinator session [1].

How about having the IDE's console output be integrated in ML pipelines? You would have boxes with questions and suggestions like:

* Please select the words in the console output that are not supposed to happen.

* Is you current goal related to the following tag: a) library_upgrade, b) first_time_library_addition, c) <tag search box>

* Please describe with tags and words the context you are in.

* Go read this stackoverflow page. Did it help?

* I see you have been doing x and y, and getting these errors. Would you be interested in this tutorial?

* Last week you had this problem. It is resolved? What things (urls, boxes I presented you, etc) did it?

* Here is another context: eclipse, java, email, library_upgrade, ConcurrentModificationException. Are you having the same issues?

* Here are statistics about people being in the same context are you are in. Here is also the top remark they have said about it.

* Here is a decision tree node your context is currently in. Here are all the child nodes (lets you explore the tree without tainting your current context)

* Would you like to do some semi-supervised clustering for trying to tie your current context to other contexts?

And then have the dataset be openly accessible, with third party being able to provide boxes, and publicly emit new features, and all boxes being rateable.

With it implementing the base stackoverflow feedback loop, it would yield a user experience superior or equal to it.

[1] akinator.com

<comment><USER9> Are there any good Stack Overflow IDE integrations out there?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Direct link to detailed specification [PDF]: [https://www.fbo.gov/utils/view?id=ae0b129bca1080cc7c517e8dad...](https://www.fbo.gov/utils/view?id=ae0b129bca1080cc7c517e8dadfa3ca2)

Related FAQ [PDF]: [http://www.darpa.mil/attachments/XAIFAQ8-26.pdf](http://www.darpa.mil/attachments/XAIFAQ8-26.pdf)

<comment><USER10> Thanks for sharing. Do you know anymore about the authors / who might have been consulted to write this?

The contact listed in the document ([http://www.darpa.mil/staff/mr-david- gunning](http://www.darpa.mil/staff/mr-david-gunning)) used to work for PARC and ran the PAL (Siri) program.

<comment><AUTHOR> Great question, no idea who are the exact people behind this (just found this online), but according to [http://www.darpa.mil/tag- list?tt=73&PP=2](http://www.darpa.mil/tag-list?tt=73&PP=2) some interesting folks joined them recently (after 2013):

Mr. Wade Shen (Program Manager – interests: machine learning) [http://www.darpa.mil/staff/mr-wade-shen](http://www.darpa.mil/staff/mr-wade- shen)

Dr. William Regli (Defense Sciences Office (DSO), Deputy Director – interests: artificial intelligence, robotics) [http://www.darpa.mil/staff/dr-william- regli](http://www.darpa.mil/staff/dr-william-regli)

Dr. Reza Ghanadan (Defense Sciences Office (DSO), Program Manager – interests: data analytics, autonomy, machine learning and artificial intelligence in information and cyber-physical systems) [http://www.darpa.mil/staff/dr-reza- ghanadan](http://www.darpa.mil/staff/dr-reza-ghanadan)

Dr. Paul Cohen (Information Innovation Office (I2O), Program Manager - interests: artificial intelligence, machine learning) [http://www.darpa.mil/staff/dr-paul-cohen](http://www.darpa.mil/staff/dr-paul- cohen)

Most of them can be found on linkedin.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> This brings Lime [1] to mind. "Explaining the predictions of any machine learning classifier"

[1] [https://github.com/marcotcr/lime](https://github.com/marcotcr/lime)

<comment><USER12> That's what I was thinking of, too. If any one wants the direct link to the arXiv paper, it's here: [https://arxiv.org/abs/1602.04938](https://arxiv.org/abs/1602.04938) . One of the authors is Carlos Guestrin, one of the co-founders of Dato/Turi/Graphlabs that was recently acquired by Apple, fwiw.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> There was a machine learning system designed to produce interpretable results, called Eureqa. Eureqa is a fantastic piece of software that finds simple mathematical equations that fit your data as good as possible. Emphasis on the "simple", it searches for the smallest equations it can find that works, and gives you a choice of different equations at different levels of complexity.

But still, the results are very difficult to interpret. Yes you can verify that the equation works, that it predicts the data. But why does it work? Well who knows? No one can answer that. Understanding even simple math expressions can be quite difficult. Imagine trying to learn physics from just reading the math equations involved and nothing else.

One biologist put his data into the program, and found, to his surprise, that it found a simple expression that almost perfectly explained one of the variables he was interested in. But he couldn't publish his result, because he couldn't understand it himself. You can't just publish a random equation with no explanation. What use is that?

I think the best method of understanding our models, is not going to come from making simpler models that we can compute by hand. Instead I think we should take advantage of our own neural networks. Try to train humans to predict what inputs, particularly in images, will activate a node in a neural network. We will learn that function ourselves, and then it's purpose will make sense to us. Just looking at the gradients of the input conveys a huge amount of information of which inout features are the most and least important. And by about how much.

But mostly I think the effort towards explainability is fundamentally misguided. In the domains where they are supposedly the most desirable, like medicine, accuracy should matter above all. A less accurate model could cost lives. Accuracy is easy to verify through cross validation, but explainability is a mysterious unmeasurable goal.

<comment><USER13> Eureqa uses (used? I haven't touched it in years) symbolic regression. Symbolic regression can certainly produce weird results, especially with low quality data, but I wouldn't rate it anywhere near classic ANNs in black- boxiness.

Also, science is unfortunately full of magic numbers - but it is pretty amazing when you feed in pendulum motion data and the resulting equation ends up being Newton's second law: [http://phys.org/news/2009-12-eureqa-robot- scientist-video.ht...](http://phys.org/news/2009-12-eureqa-robot-scientist- video.html)

<comment><USER5> Yes it's amazing that it can find an equation that fits the pendulum's motion. But if you _didn 't already know_ the physics math, it would just seem weird and arbitrary.

<comment><USER13> No more weird and arbitrary than the motion of the pendulum itself. I think you're underestimating the human intelligence component of the system. Include in the dataset an additional variable for rope length, record the data for multiple lengths - there, you've just isolated a variable in the equation and it is no longer arbitrary. The scientific method still works, but now you're working on a much more tightly bounded problem.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> (Looks over shoulder)

Anyone else thinking this mirrors their own experimental work?

Anyone else thinking of putting in an abstract?

Abstract Due Date: September 1, 2016, 12:00 noon (ET)

Proposal Due Date: November 1, 2016, 12:00 noon (ET)

</comment><comment><USER15> (I am relatively excited about this research direction. It seems like the sort of thing that might lead to genuinely useful components of a safer AGI system later.)

</comment><comment><USER16> Yeah, all they want is a simple mechanism of how to jump from a mere "blind", mechanistic feature extraction to the notion that creatures of this Nature usually have two eys and make a hard-wired heuristic, a short-cut which improves pattern recognition in orders of magnitude with less computational cost.

Every child will tell you that cars have eyes, and even a crow could track the direction of your gaze.

Well, I would also give away some govt. printed money to know how to make this kind of a jump from raw pixels to high-level shapes.)

The answer, by the way, is that the code (which is data) should be evolved too, not just weights of a model. This is an old fundamental idea from the glorious times of using Lisp as AI language - everything in the brain is a structure made out of conses^W neurons.

And feature extraction and heuristics should be "guided". In the process of evolution it is guided by way too many iterations of training and _random_ selection of emerging features. Eventually a short-cut "creatures have eyes" will be found and selected as much more efficient. We need just a few millions of years or so of brute forcing.

Hey, Darpa, do you fund lone gunmen?)

</comment><comment><USER12> Integration of Neural Networks with Knowledge-Based Systems [https://www.uni- marburg.de/fb12/datenbionik/pdf/pubs/1995/ul...](https://www.uni- marburg.de/fb12/datenbionik/pdf/pubs/1995/ultsch95integration2)

</comment><comment><USER17> If there is real progress towards Explainable AI, this would also be very useful for _verifying_ machine-learning-based systems (i.e. finding the bugs in them).

I wrote about this in [1], but I am not a machine-learning expert (I am coming from the verification side), so would love to hear comments from other people.

[1] [https://blog.foretellix.com/2016/08/31/machine-learning- veri...](https://blog.foretellix.com/2016/08/31/machine-learning-verification- and-explainable-ai/)

</comment><comment><USER18> This is sorely needed for machine learning if it's to get both more complex and more accurate. Coincidentally Alan Kay brought the "expert systems" idea up in his recent AMA as well. It'd be inconceivable to write code today that couldn't be thoroughly debugged, so we should expect the same of our machine learning systems.

</comment><comment><USER12> Bringing some form of feature introspection to deep neural networks will probably involve clever ways of visualizing the feature activations of unstructured data [https://arxiv.org/abs/1603.02518](https://arxiv.org/abs/1603.02518)

</comment><comment><USER19> "If you can't explain it to a six year old, you don't understand it yourself." -Einstein

<comment><USER7> I like Feynman's version better. If you can't explain it to a college freshman then you probably don't understand it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> The goal is ambitious. I have similar ideas in my mind but do not have a team to complete the details.

</comment><comment><USER21> My Aunt worked on systems for explaining early generation networks for medical diagnoses: [http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/BF01413743](http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/BF01413743)

</comment><comment><USER22> "I know of an uncouth region whose librarians repudiate the vain and superstitious custom of finding a meaning in books and equate it with that of finding a meaning in dreams or in the chaotic lines of one's palm ... "

JL Borges, The Library of Babel

</comment><comment><USER23> Off topic: I checked other FizBizOpp listings (which is now famous thanks to the War Dogs film in theaters). There is a listing for a "Big Ass Fan" 16' long for the Air Force: [https://www.fbo.gov/index?s=opportunity&mode=form&id=8de699e...](https://www.fbo.gov/index?s=opportunity&mode=form&id=8de699e71f1dc9a084509651f2221cf3&tab=core&_cview=0)

<comment><USER24> apparently had a preferred vendor in mind: [http://www.bigassfans.com/](http://www.bigassfans.com/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> Well, if you were gonna submit an abstract, the deadline was a week ago. Good luck getting a grant proposal ready if you haven't already!</comment>


On emails, say "please" - <AUTHOR> https://writingfordevelopers.substack.com/p/on-emails-say-please <comment><USER2> Terrible ideas. Emails are not written letters. Their tone and style are quite different. Saying "Please forward your replies to my manager" comes off a bit authoritarian and bossy, not as politeness.

Worst advice - putting off-topic questions at the end. They will never, ever be answered. Folks read (scan) an email until they get to one question, hit reply and answer that. Its crazy talk to think you can make more than a single point in one email message.</comment>


Patterns of Death in the South Still Show the Outlines of Slavery - <AUTHOR> https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/mortality-black-belt/ <comment><USER3> As an engineer, I always get frustrated when it seems like a lot of our customers are more concerned with the perception of the existence of something, rather than its actual existence. I'm continuing to learn (UX not withstanding) that just because you solve a problem, it doesn't mean the user believes the problem is solved.

As a black engineer, I've often thought that if there were data, science, math, and straight forward research on the more than $300B+ the slavery system provided for the U.S. in free labor (think of the biggest costs to business) and it's effects, that maybe we could have a conversation about data-driven solutions. Think of how we've added data to sports and created a new economy on improving outcomes because the definitions of success are clear with many pathways.

Looking at this thread, which I assume to be mostly engineers, slightly disabuses me of this notion. The longest threads are about the use of the word slavery (perception) and rural, (mostly white) america (not even sure why this is relevant).

<comment><USER4> > Think of how we've added data to sports and created a new economy on > improving outcomes because the definitions of success are clear with many > pathways.

I've thought about this, too - using data to work toward solutions to problems that plague our society. I'm constantly haunted by the belief that there is a set of solutions "out there" but am bedeviled by my own inability to accumulate, homogenize, and aggregate that data that I _can_ find. Even still, sites like 1degree.org do give me hope that the data is available and that there are folks who are willing to do the work of using it (though that's an admittedly different application).

At any rate, thank you for your post. It's stirred that thought within me again.

<comment><USER5> An observation on how data gets used: someone decides what they want to do then dig out or fund getting the data that supports the plan. How do you avoid that?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I grew up in Newport News, Virginia. Its one of the towns on the map that is nearly black. I can tell you first hand that many in that city still feel the aftermath of slavery. The poor illiteracy, cognition skills, financial mobility, health, etc, within the black community is truly staggering. I now live in California, but for anybody that claims slavery had no long term effect, go to some of those towns you will be shocked.

</comment><comment><USER7> Almost the only people doing well in rural America are those with generational wealth. I know plenty of people from my small hometown that have been doing okay with their farms. One of them has a gravel business. Those without such luck are either moving to a bigger city or experiencing a declining quality of life, and they're coping with drugs, meth mostly. I can't imagine what that would be like in areas that haven't been able to build that generational wealth.

The question is, how do we get rural economic development going again?

<comment><USER8> Would remote work help? I would think encouraging or allowing more 'white- collar' workers to be more spread out throughout the country would help increase demand in places other than large cities and tech hubs.

I, for one, miss rural life (wide open space, less traffic, mom and pop stores, etc.) but unfortunately my career as a programmer doesn't cater to that lifestyle all that well.

<comment> rm_-rf_slash Let's say you have a reasonably well-paying remote job and you could live anywhere. Let's also say you're married and have children. Do you want them to go to good schools? Do you want them to receive quality healthcare that does not break the bank? Do you want to use convenient services like Uber/Lyft when the need arises? Do you want access to a network of professionals that can help you grow your career?

If you answered yes to these questions, you're not going to find many places rural America that satisfy your needs. At best you'll end up in an outer- exurbia like greater Atlanta.

I don't think remote work of a few well-paid professionals is a viable and sustainable solution for rural America.

<comment><USER9> I'd probably pick a smallish (sub-250k population) city, I think. The kind that rural folks mean when they say they're going to The City to shop. Maybe a "university town". Beats exurbs or ultra-pricey real cities. The trick is finding one small enough that you aren't stuck with shitty schools if you want to live in the city core.

<comment><USER10> That's part of it. The other part is transit. Cars are bad; I don't really want to ever own one again and I _definitely_ don't want to have to drive one every day if I do. So anywhere I'd want to move would need to either be super walkable or have transit. And small cities usually, IME, aren't the first and don't have the second.

I live in a 50K-population city adjoining Boston, so they exist, I just don't know how well they exist independent of bigger cities.

<comment><USER9> Inexpensive, 100%-no-car-required, and decent schools is... a tough set of requirements to satisfy in the US. Hell, getting any two of those is an accomplishment.

<comment><USER10> True enough. I'd pass on the third, at least for now, for the first two. But those two alone is a mess.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> It's interesting to consider how having fertile soil reliably gets you.

You would imagine it is a good thing until you realize it's a guaranteed case of Dutch disease, one that is reliant on having a lot of indentured labour around.

And _then_ it will stop being profitable and demand subsidies.

</comment><comment><USER12> Ive always taken an unpopular view about slavery.

"We never quit doing slavery."

It is true the Constitution was amended after the Civil war to include banning of slavery in most circumstances. However, slavery is explicitly still allowed as a "punishment for a crime". Instead of "Black = Slave", it's "Black = criminal , criminal = slave". After all, it only takes only 6-12 angry white men to find you guilty.

I would think one of the major points BLM should be making, is removal of slavery as a punishment. It has too many very degenerate ways it can fail - and in some ways I think were very intended. But I doubt in this political climate of this happening.

EDIT: Boy, I said it was an unpopular view. Wasn't expecting this much hatred and contention, along with this much -1's. I mean, it's not like the 13th amendment explicitly says.

<comment><USER13> Slavery has had significant long term effects on the black community. That can't be denied. Disproportionate poverty in the black community is directly tied to slavery.

However I disagree that slavery - as the term is usually meant to mean - <USER2> exists in the form of incarceration.

We as a society have decided that certain things are illegal. The black community, because of poverty (so because of slavery), disproportionately breaks those laws and so there is disproportionate incarceration.

Slavery is the root cause of this disproportionate incarceration, but we should not blame the fact that we have a system which punishes criminals, or equate the enforcement of laws with slavery.

Instead we should be trying to eliminate outdated laws - the illegality of marijuana for instance - and also reducing crime in the black community.

<comment><USER14> >The black community, because of poverty (so because of slavery), disproportionately breaks those laws

This is so simplistic that it borders on a racist falsehood. Increased police presence, inadequate legal representation, racially motivated jury-selection and expansions of prosecutorial power are huge factors.

Educate yourself.

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V66F3WU2CKk](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V66F3WU2CKk)

[http://newjimcrow.com/](http://newjimcrow.com/)

<comment><USER13> I'm not sure why you would call that statement racist.

Poverty tends to beget crime, this is very hard to deny. Because the black community - as a result of the slavery of its ancestors in this country - suffers disproportionately high rates of poverty, it also suffers from disproportionately high rates of crime.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: What external support do startups need most? - <AUTHOR>

We're working on our first vertical dubbed "Startup Superstore" at www.work.io and would love to have your input. What makes you think "Damn, it would be great to briefly have someone who's great at X at hand"?<p>Could be code reviews by a core committer of the framework you're using, lists of journalists that are into the stuff you're doing, making sense of / cleaning up metrics, coaching sessions, SEO, legal etc. <comment><USER2> Market research: someone who can interview potential users/customers, get statistics on the market, create/run/evaluate surveys. UI/UX: someone who can evaluate the user experience and design. Security +1 for code reviews +1 for press +1 for legal +1 for SEO and marketing

</comment><comment><USER3> Company formation, operating agreement (boilerplate a la thefunded.org), "submit your annual reports"/"Q3 taxes need to be filed" reminder service, social media aspects of fundraising (they write the story once, you send it to everywhere it needs to go).

</comment><comment><USER4> Taxes, accounting, banking, how to spend your funding to live off of without realizing it as income, how to quickly pay people and deal with their taxes without touching ADP or Paychex, multi-state healthcare options for remote workers, and tying it all together so you don't get audited or wrist slapped years down the line.</comment>


Ask HN: What website/app do you use to cold email potential clients? - <AUTHOR>

Taking into consideration that sending cold email from Google usually marks it as spam? <comment><USER2> I don't have data on how this works with web development or SaaS, but in many industries direct mail is still the way to go. Crafting a sales letter is like crafting a landing page on your website.

There is a reason you still get junk mail. It costs more but has a much better response rate. I can only imagine this must be even more true with development given the high value per client.

There are two tricks to it. Having a good list and having a good sales letter. Get the list first. Then write (or pay somebody to write) a sales letter based on the characteristics of the list. The list should be as focused as you can make it. Not knowing who you are targeting I can't say more than that. Then the sales letter should be written to the needs of the people on the list.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for your comment. Unfortunately, it is a SaaS application we are trying to market :) However, I do see your point in how crafting a sales letter can give a better result for other industries.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> On the same line as the previous comment, I would recommend you to capture hot leads, at least interested in the theme of your business. There are many ways to capture leads that can also become a steady stream of potential customers to convince that your business is their best choice.

If you need more information about this, ask me without problem.

As for the cold sending emails, you can use SendGrid or services like this to send.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you David! I would like more information about this so I might shoot you an email if you don't mind. I've never heard of SendGrid, but just checked it out, it looks similar to MailChimp, but then again, they might have different solutions. Will have to research this more.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> As much as it will sound as a non-answer, the best solution I could find regarding cold email was not to cold email.

Beyond the spam issue, I can tell that I had horrendeous statistics when cold emailing, and I've found that the extra work of getting introduced was worth it more often than not.

<comment><USER5> How did you get introduced?

<comment><USER4> Linkedin helps. I dig through the degrees of separation between myself and someone with an access to the budget I need to tap.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> If you're a going concern-- simply use your company/business email address, also include your digits and physical address in the signature line. As a point of communication strategy-- personalize the note, be concise and buttoned-up.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the advice. That's what I actually plan on doing from the looks of it. Only problem will be organizing the leads since current host webmail (bluehost) doesn't really have good CRM. But other than that, I think it will suffice.</comment></comment>


Bing & Google - Finding some facts - <AUTHOR> http://projectgus.com/2011/02/bing-google-finding-some-facts/

<comment><USER2> Nice presentation, thanks! Sorry it's not getting the traction it deserves. Maybe people have 'moved on'.

A couple possibly interesting followups:

1) If one was to use the Google Toolbar, would it send similar data?

2) Are links to and from https pages tracked any differently?

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks. There are honestly some much more important things going on in the world right now, so that doesn't bother me too much.

It did bother me a lot that people were happy to "put the boot" in on Microsoft based on pretty slim evidence, and without much level of criticial thinking. I'm not really a Microsoft fan, but the whole thing felt a lot like confirmation bias to me.

To answer your questions:

1) I'm guessing so. I'd wager that you might even be able to run a similar experiment to Google's Bing experiment (on a different host), and see the result turn up in Google's search index after a while.

2) I was wondering that, too. I might check it out tonight.</comment></comment>


First ever iOS remote desktop solution is released - <AUTHOR> http://www.apperian.com/remote-control-for-ios/

<comment><USER2> According to another article [1], this application won't be available through the App Store, only the iOS Developer Enterprise Program, which means that Apple doesn't need to approve the app to get it to run on the iPhones/iPads of a company.

This means it probably uses private API's, because if this was not the case, we would have seen remote control apps like this before in legitimate channels such as the App Store.

[1]: [http://www.consumerizeit.com/blogs/consumerization/archive/2...](http://www.consumerizeit.com/blogs/consumerization/archive/2012/10/11/apperian- announced-an-app-that-gives-full-remote-control-of-ios-through-a-browser-wait- seriously.aspx)

</comment><comment><USER3> Has this become possible due to some new iOS6 feature? Afaik previously there was no way you could inject events or grab the screen contents outside of your own app... I'm talking about non-JB devices of course. So how did you do it? Partnership with Apple? Private APIs? I'm really curious.

<comment><USER2> "Fully compatible with iOS5/iOS6", so not iOS6 specific.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Not really the "first" as there have been VNC servers[1] available for quite some time now.

[1] <http://gitweb.saurik.com/veency.git>

<comment><USER5> veency doesn't work out of the box over wan, requires jailbroken device, etc.

Apples and Oranges.</comment></comment>


Fear of not knowing something - <AUTHOR>

Not quite sure if this is a fit on HN. But I'll go ahead anyway. Dealing with the "fear of NOT knowing something". I have tried but failed. Many times I have started out on doing something only to find that I haven't the slightest idea what lies ahead of doing that "something" and end up quitting. Exit uncomfortable zone. I'm quite sure this is something that people commonly face.<p>So, share your experiences and how you have dealt with it with some real instances so I have something to look at and try it on my next "start" (I'm a software developer, quite relevant but not binding this question) <comment><USER2> The good thing of life is having the change to discover. If you knew all, how would you feel? Failure will be the food of your interest for living and progressing.

</comment><comment><USER3> Nihililogophobia...or nihiliscentiphobia...??</comment>


Writing math papers in pre-LaTeX era (2010) - <AUTHOR> https://mathoverflow.net/questions/19930/writing-papers-in-pre-latex-era <comment><USER2> I have a theory that ~50% of the games/graphics industry uses row-vector notation, rather than the column-vector style that is more common default in mathematics, because when RenderMan was created typesetting tools were still so difficult. So, it was much easier to typeset M*[x,y,z,w] than to typeset a vertical column vector. (Much like it still is in this textbox).

Direct3D 1.0 and several other early trendsetters in 3D graphics took a lot of inspiration from RenderMan. And so, along with coordinate system orientations, vector notation became yet another endian-war in 3D. Now that typesetting is much easier, column notation is slowly gaining ground in the name of consistency with the math community.

<comment><USER3> Did you mean [x,y,z,w]*M?

For textbox use, my workaround is to write [x,y,z,w]^T when I want to be clear that I really mean a column vector.

Incidentally, your comment inspired me to go spelunking through some old tech memos (Standard disclaimer: RenderMan dev, opinions my own, this is my speculation, yada yada). As best as I can tell, the row vector convention in RenderMan must have came from Newman and Sproull's "Principles of Interactive Computer Graphics" [1] by way of Alvy Ray Smith who referred to the convention as "computer graphics normal form" [2]. Interestingly, that book seems to have been inspired in turn by course material from Ivan Sutherland [3], who had previously built a head-mounted display using custom hardware with a row vector times matrix multiplier unit, among other things [4].

[1] [https://archive.org/details/principlesofinter00newm/page/334...](https://archive.org/details/principlesofinter00newm/page/334/mode/2up)

[2] [http://alvyray.com/Memos/CG/Pixar/Matrix64.pdf#page=6](http://alvyray.com/Memos/CG/Pixar/Matrix64.pdf#page=6)

[3] [https://www.computer.org/csdl/magazine/an/2018/04/08506443/1...](https://www.computer.org/csdl/magazine/an/2018/04/08506443/17D45Xh13tX)

[4] [http://www.medien.ifi.lmu.de/lehre/ss09/ar/p757-sutherland.p...](http://www.medien.ifi.lmu.de/lehre/ss09/ar/p757-sutherland.pdf#page=6)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Interesting to get experiences from people who lived in that era.

For those of you interested in the subject I remember enjoying reading this essay also covering the topic in a cohesive way: [http://www.practicallyefficient.com/2017/10/13/from- boiling-...](http://www.practicallyefficient.com/2017/10/13/from-boiling-lead- and-black-art.html)

</comment><comment><USER5> An example of a paper from the pre-LaTeX era (heck pre-TeX): John Nash's dissertation [https://library.princeton.edu/special- collections/sites/defa...](https://library.princeton.edu/special- collections/sites/default/files/Non-Cooperative_Games_Nash.pdf)

My points of interest:

\- Greek letters aren't even available! Or even sub/super-scripts! And I thought I had it hard in highschool, writing up on math with MS Word.

\- Parentheses are available (PDF p. 22) but it escapes me why he uses brackets for in-text annotation where today we'd use parentheses (as I am doing right now). And it seems his typewriter doesn't even have brackets available so he hand-writes it (PDF p. 26)

\- In PDF page 10, there's a couple of lines (P_{i\alpha}(s*)...) where the space left for the math expressions are too generous. I wonder how that came to be especially as for most of the document the typesetting is pretty tight.

\- I am very amused at the dedication to typewrite as much as possible. For instance, there will be short lines here and there to the effect of "Let <quantification> for <domain condition>" and the words "Let" and "for" will be typewritten! I would've handwritten that whole line by myself.

<comment><USER6> Also of note is the fact that it is only 32 pages long.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> There was a time where a program that produced output like here, much worse than TeX of course, but very fast on the PC computers of that time, and easy to learn, was very popular for scientific writing with formulas:

[https://nomdo.nl/cw.htm](https://nomdo.nl/cw.htm)

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

</comment><comment><USER8> What environment or note-taking tool have people found to be the best for latex + markdown? I've been using VSC + extensions with git for syncing.

<comment><USER9> Of late I've been modernizing ExTeX[0] for integration with my markdown editor Scrivenvar[1][2] so that the editor can include TeX. My Typesetting Markdown series[3] dives into numerous reasons why I prefer to embed plain TeX in Markdown over LaTeX (skip ahead to parts 7 and 8). The text editor's TeX integration hasn't started yet[4], but if you're keen, star the GitHub page.

[0]: [https://github.com/DaveJarvis/extex](https://github.com/DaveJarvis/extex)

[1]: [https://github.com/DaveJarvis/scrivenvar/](https://github.com/DaveJarvis/scrivenvar/)

[2]: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u_dFd6UhdV8](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u_dFd6UhdV8)

[3]: [https://dave.autonoma.ca/blog/](https://dave.autonoma.ca/blog/)

[4]: [https://github.com/DaveJarvis/scrivenvar/issues/69](https://github.com/DaveJarvis/scrivenvar/issues/69)</comment></comment>


The European startup ecosystem arrived - <AUTHOR> http://eu.techcrunch.com/2011/01/27/the-european-startup-ecosystem-arrived-but-paul-carr-wasnt-paying-attention/

<comment><USER2> The first comment is correct - this is the UK scene more than the european scene.

My real problem with the UK scene is the relative lack of talent available to startups. Where do talented graduates from the UK want to work? Banks, consultancies and accountancies. How much do they want to be paid? About £40k starting, please.

With the cost of living being so high in London, why wouldn't they?

Unless you can raise enough money to pay these people, your chances are far more limited. And London VCs are still far more risk-averse than SV VCs. To my mind that makes entrepreneurship in London a rich (and older) man's game compared with SV.

Of course there are counter-examples, but I think they've succeeded despite London. I'm sure this situation will improve (it has already been doing so), but in the meantime I plan to move to SV. I just think it will improve my odds.

<comment><USER3> I do get a fair amount of job offers from startups in London, but they are very inflexible about remote working (I'm in Scotland). Want me to move to London ? Sure, double whatever salary you're offering and I might consider it. Otherwise it would be a big drop in my standard of living - nice big apartment up here for cardboard box down there.

There is a lot of good talent in the UK, the problem is we have a massively over-centralized economy, which is bad for London (way too expensive to live for average workers, and infrastructure straining under excess population) and bad for the rest of the UK (no jobs). Contrast with Germany, which has a more distributed (and far healthier) economy - Berlin, Munich, Hamburg etc.

Remote working would help redress the imbalance but some startups for good and bad reasons are reluctant. And no, I could care less about twin monitors or aeron chairs.

<comment><USER4> I've been planning to move from Spain to London for some months. You're scaring me. Is £40.000 not enough for a decent flat and once a month flight back home?

<comment><USER5> Assume about 1000 GBP/month if you want somewhere half-decent to live. If you want accommodation to be 30% of your before-tax salary, then you need to make 40K per year.

If you're willing to compromise - live in a room in a shared house, almost like a student, or somewhere dodgy (e.g. tower block with lifts that smell like piss) or with poor transport links, you'll be able to reduce that by 50% or more.

Between myself and my GF, we make about 90K GBP, and we're fairly comfortable. But we live in Bow in the East End, don't have kids, and barely feel middle class.

<comment><USER6> You say that as if living in a shared house was some sort of social stigma.

Most single young (under say 35) professionals in London share flats, and I'm including lawyers, investment bankers, doctors, etc.

One reason is that price drops disproportionately with the number of rooms, for example for a 1-bed flat you might pay £200/week but for a similar 2-bed you'd pay only £240/week. You could pay 1000/month for a "half-decent" 1-bed flat, or alternatively you could share a great 2-bed flat for the same price. And many people chose to make the second decision. Also it makes much more sense in terms of buying household products and makes "luxuries" such as hiring a cleaner much more affordable.

If you really want to live on your own it makes more sense to live in one of london commuter belt suburbs where you can get a flat for 600/month.

<comment><USER5> Living in a shared house (assuming no relationship with co-sharers) is a massive PITA, especially if you're as misanthropic as me. Sharing bathrooms, kitchen cleaning protocols, awkwardness / potential conflicts having guests stay over, ugh; it sucks. It's like living at home with your parents; better in some ways, worse in others, but a huge step below having one's own place.

But if you have a significant other, then I agree, sharing is a whole heap better.

We live in a 3-bedroom, two-story house with a back garden that runs down to the canal, and a view directly onto Victoria Park past the canal. It's about 25 minutes from almost anywhere in central London by scooter (to my mind, the best way to get around London). The house runs to only slightly more than 1000/month.

<comment><USER7> It massively depends on who you're living with. There is a big difference between living with a bunch of people you just met on gumtree and living with your closest friends you've known for years.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> In my opinion one thing that is very different from the US compared to Europe is that labour laws here are pretty favorable to employees. This has the downside (from a start-ups perspective) of having a workforce that is mostly happy.

Happy people are in a strong position to negotiate and will also not easily go and leave their happy well paying jobs in order to be 'repeatedly punched in the face' (that's not mine).

So besides the obvious advantages that an ecosystem like Silicon Valley offers you can bet that if you see a European start-up that the people behind it are extremely well motivated and probably have some funding. As opposed to the 'throw stuff against the wall and see what sticks' strategy employed in Silicon Valley. Typically European start-ups have a higher rate of success than their American counterparts but the magnitude of the individual successes is lower.

This is all from my limited perspective so apply salt liberally.

</comment><comment><USER9> Go to Portugal. Great weather with amazing beaches and country side, low cost of living and lot's of engineers that can speak fluent English. Also the government has subsidies for tech companies, specially in the IT sector. Spain is ok as well, but I find that people there have a hard time with English and like to party a bit too much. And the comments about London are true. It is very expensive to live here and the quality of life is appalling. Many people who start out in sexy industries ( games, web, etc... ) gravitate to finance because they can't afford to live an adult life here on the wages of those industries.

<comment><USER10> Come and join us. Read our post about opening our R&D office in Portugal. <http://blog.webnographer.com/2010/10/an-rd-office-in-lisbon/>

Portugal salaries maybe lower but if you have not lived in Portugal for 10 years you can apply for non-habitual status which means you pay a flat rate of tax of just 20%!

Also you have the sun!

<comment><USER9> I left Lisbon around 7 years ago and moved to Barcelona for games programming gig. Moved to London 3 years ago and life has become less flexible so moving back to Lisbon is just a wish for now. But I do think about it a lot. The quality of life is just great. Miss the Ocean. I know some great people there if you need some references.

<comment><USER10> As you have lived out of Portugal for more than 5 years you would probably qualify for the non habitual tax status, which means you would only pay 20% income tax if you moved back here. You would definitely get a standard of living boost.

[http://www.allbusiness.com/legal/tax-law-tax-treaties- agreem...](http://www.allbusiness.com/legal/tax-law-tax-treaties- agreements/13340855-1.html)

The more contacts I have the better so yes please get in touch.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Here in Ireland we're constantly hearing about "the knowledge economy" but I think it has yet to materialise. Ever since Intel set up shop here we've managed to attract the biggest movers in technology to set up their European HQ.

So much so in fact that the bigger European countries constantly bitch about us, citing our 12.5% corporation tax rate to mask their own failure in attracting these investments. The real reason probably has to do with the fact our spoken English is the best in the world and years of "free" fees for college places have resulted in a hugely educated population.

Producing indigenous firms which don't serve niche markets is still beyond us. This is probably due to a conservative funding community with the "spend way more than you need, we'll refund it after" model, as well as university students majoring in "safe" subjects like arts, languages or business rather than mathematics and computer science.

Even for those students majoring in compsci, they gear you towards getting a job, not starting your own company.

<comment><USER12> > Producing indigenous firms which don't serve niche markets is still beyond > us.

I'm not sure about that, I've been in Havok (<http://www.havok.com/>) for several years now, very successful Irish startup in the Games/Entertainment space (hardly a niche), acquired by Intel three years ago ($100m+). Granted there's room to improve in terms of the number of indigenous startups, but there are success stories out there.

<comment><USER13> In my opinion, Havok is an outlier success story though. Sure, there are a few other Irish startups that achieved phenomenal global success, but they are relatively few and far between when compared to the more startup-focused places like SV.

<comment><USER12> True, I was mostly responding to the notion that:

> Producing indigenous firms which don't serve niche markets is still beyond > us

It certainly isn't "beyond us", but as you say it's not happening as much as one would hope.

<comment><USER13> Ah, I agree. Perhaps I misunderstood what you meant the first time around.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> The article highlight for me was "Silicon Valley has been around a lot longer than London and is more mature".

Possibly our very European sense of perspective is what's holding us back...

</comment><comment><USER15> People earn far too much in Germany to be attracted by startup salaries. Still, once I finish my part-time masters, and my wife goes back to work too, I wouldn't mind getting into the scene. Got a few ideas, but would probably rather be a technical co-founder alongside an ideas/business guy.

Still, if anything is happening in Cologne in the mean time, give us a holler.

</comment><comment><USER16> He obviously has a vested interest in lauding his backers. If the European ecosystem is actually so great then why did it take the author three years to raise $1.3m?

<comment><USER6> I believe GroupSpaces raised an angel round in 2008 and only started looking for the VC round in 2010.

<comment><USER16> seedcamp invests about $80k, which is nowhere near enough to fund a London- based startup with 3+ people for more than two years. although the official story may very well be that they "only started looking" in 2010 this does not match up with this simple fact very well.

Occam's Razor therefore suggests to me that it actually took forever to raise a round (despite nominally ideal conditions, such as a well-connected founder with a CS degree from Oxford, trip to SV, liked by startup media, simple to understand product, etc).

<comment><USER6> GroupSpaces wasn't funded by Seedcamp, are you thinking about another company ?</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Protecting Your Mails With GnuPG - <AUTHOR> http://www.furidamu.org/blog/2012/02/26/protecting-your-mails-with-gnupg/

<comment><USER2> Cool, but remember that Gmail automatically saves, to your drafts folder, everything you enter into a new email message.

<comment><USER3> Is there a workaround for this? Until then, one should stick to native email clients/Thunderbird for confidential comms.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yes. Write the text of the mail somewhere else, then use the (not yet implemented, I'll do it tonight) option "paste clipboard encrypted".

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> If you have email that warrants encryption beyond transport encryption, you're nuts to be using a web browser to generate it.

<comment><USER5> True, but the encryption does mitigate some of the problem of the email being stored on and indexed by google servers. I have personal conversations with a number of people who use gmail, and it bothers me that those conversations are indexed for marketing purposes. It's a bit of a sledgehammer for that purpose, but it looks like it might get the job done.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> GnuPG is pretty good. I've just recently started using the EasyPG package in Emacs to interface with GnuPG. Encrypting files couldn't be easier. Files are encrypted at saving and decrypted at loading automatically. Make backing up sensitive files to Dropbox much easier.

<comment><USER7> "Gnupg is pretty good"???

Wtf? Pretty good? You have complaints with gpg?

<comment><USER8> I think it's sort of ironic since PGP was pretty good privacy.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> You guys should checkout: <http://thinkst.com/tools/cr-gpg/> We do the some thing, but hook into the DOM to blend it into the interface. (we have users across win/linux/osx so its been doing pretty well considering its hacky birth)

<comment><USER10> I'd love to see a mashup of the two. I trialed cr-gpg, works fine, if a bit clunky at the moment. I suspect this is a much better way to interact with gpg though (+ --use-agent, etc.).

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Ever since I stopped using Thunderbird and Enigmail, I felt like I was missing something. So today, I finally started to develop my own solution - can't have them read our mails, now can we?

<comment><USER11> I don't suppose you're working on a Gmail/Chrome extension? Because I've been looking for one of those for years.

<comment><USER12> <http://getfiregpg.org/s/home>

There was some effort in just such a project, though it seems to have died out.

<comment><USER13> There is a fork in github <https://github.com/firegpg/firegpg>

From readme, [https://tails.boum.org/doc/encryption_and_privacy/FireGPG_su...](https://tails.boum.org/doc/encryption_and_privacy/FireGPG_susceptible_to_devastating_attacks/)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> This looks great. Could you give some build/install instructions? 'build.sh' tries to cd to the non-existent "firebreath-1.6/build" directory.

<comment><AUTHOR> Ah, sorry. The plugin is based on FireBreath, so you need to download and compile that. I'll fix up the build script so it checks for that.

edit: It should work now. If it doesn't, just email me.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> * [Gmail]

* [in Chrome/Chromium]

<comment><AUTHOR> Actually, it works on any website. However, you are right about the Chrome thing. (for the moment at least - should be possible to port it to firefox)

Sorry for the not entirely accurate title, it's my first submission.

btw, I seem to have some problems with the HackerNews button - any tips on what I could be doing wrong?

<comment><USER15> Oh nice, but then I do not understand how it works. In a mail it could check the mail addresses to see which keys to use. How does it work for any text?

i always wanted something like that.

<comment><AUTHOR> Well, you seem to overestimate the intelligence of my extension - it simply opens a JavaScript prompt to ask you ^^

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> This is pretty awesome - I only now wish Gmail would have native support for GPG signatures (I know they will never support GPG encryption). As it is, when people read emails I send in Gmail, the signature appears as a 'noname' 0B attachment, which is irritating.</comment>


Ask HN: Can US networks handle the coming increase in remote work and school? - <AUTHOR> <comment><USER2> Hm, maybe the government should require internet providers to stop artificially throttling bandwidth.

<comment><USER3> this is a great idea

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Sure. All this stuff is background noise compared to the large uses like Netflix and BitTorrent etc.

<comment><USER3> Right RDP traffic is not using more than 1.5-megabits/second.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> can't they just throttle down netflix ?

<comment><USER6> net neutrality

<comment><USER5> is not mandatory

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> am gonna go with a big fat NO!</comment>


Accountant creates an RPG game in Microsoft Excel - <AUTHOR> http://carywalkin.wordpress.com/2013/03/17/arena-xlsm-released/

<comment><AUTHOR> Screenshots:

[http://carywalkin.wordpress.com/2013/03/24/arena-xlsm- galler...](http://carywalkin.wordpress.com/2013/03/24/arena-xlsm-gallery/)

</comment><comment><USER2> Oh yes, Diablo II skill icons with a Monty Python-esque flavor.

I'm having a nostalgia crisis right now.</comment>


Selling my baby - <AUTHOR> https://flippa.com/8281398-fastvenues-com <comment><USER2> This title tripped me up for a second. How much is it costing to run it?

<comment><AUTHOR> About $30/mo. It cost approx $43,000 to build, looking to recoup at least 50% of that.</comment></comment>


So What Is It? The bump on the two-photon plots - brian-armstrong http://profmattstrassler.com/2015/12/18/so-what-is-it/ <comment><AUTHOR> The constraints on the signal are:

      decays into 2 photons, so must be a boson, integer spin, probably 0, 1 or 2
      both signals are 45Gev wide and look like the Higgs signal.
      ATLAS has a 1.6TeV bump at 2.5 Sigma, potentially a resonance.
      ATLAS has 747 GeV at 3.6 Sigma, CMS 766 GeV at 2.6 Sigma - combines to 4 Sigma although the Look Elsewhere Effect is disputed.
      ATLAS run1 at 8TeV did not see the signal.
      ATLAS has a 2.2 sigma for the 2 TeV excess that CMS saw in Run1, potentially indicating the 750GeV is a composite particle.

4 Sigma diPhoton excesses have turned out to be random fluctuations before.

[http://resonaances.blogspot.fr/2015/12/a-new-boson- at-750-ge...](http://resonaances.blogspot.fr/2015/12/a-new-boson- at-750-gev.html)

[http://motls.blogspot.co.uk/2015/12/first-batch- of-9-pheno-p...](http://motls.blogspot.co.uk/2015/12/first-batch-of-9-pheno- papers-on-new.html)

[http://www.math.columbia.edu/~woit/wordpress/?p=8174](http://www.math.columbia.edu/~woit/wordpress/?p=8174)

<comment><USER2> > _integer spin, probably 0, 1 or 2_

So really 0 or 1. If it had spin 2 that would make it a graviton, which seems... unlikely, to say the least.

<comment><USER3> This article: [http://motls.blogspot.co.uk/2015/12/first-batch- of-9-pheno-p...](http://motls.blogspot.co.uk/2015/12/first-batch-of-9-pheno- papers-on-new.html) also mentions that spin 1 is disallowed by the Landau-Yang Theorem. So it's most likely spin 0.

<comment><USER2> It seems this theorem only applies to massive spin 1 particles, though: [https://physics.stackexchange.com/questions/38427/proof- of-y...](https://physics.stackexchange.com/questions/38427/proof-of-yangs- theorem)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> tl;dr we don't know what it is, or even if its a real signal.

But glad to see more content-free coverage of this news...

<comment><USER2> I wouldn't call it "content-free," since it gives arguments for why it can't be a heavier version of the Higgs, describes multiple hypotheses that will be tested, as well as a timeframe for testing them.

<comment><USER4> Or it could be literally nothing at all because the signal isn't strong enough to conclude anything is actually there to begin with. Which at this point is pretty likely, especially for any hypothesis that doesn't fit with the standard model.

The coverage of this has been absurdly breathless given the nature of the "result". The bandwagon jumping (or as the author themselves so elegantly put it, ambulance chasing) is truly something to behold...

<comment><USER3> You should take up Luboš Motl on his bet: [http://motls.blogspot.lu/2015/12/a-new-750-gev-boson-is- very...](http://motls.blogspot.lu/2015/12/a-new-750-gev-boson-is-very-likely- there.html)</comment></comment></comment></comment>