Why I Won't Sign Your NDA - <AUTHOR> http://mixergy.com/why-i-wont-sign-your-nda/ <comment><USER3> Here is a related HN thread (<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=986990>) centered around a piece entitled "Reasons to Drop NDAs."

Because the theme is the same in the post here, I repost below my response to the prior piece:

"It all depends on what one means by 'NDA.'

If it means the piece of paper people ask you to sign before giving you a pitch, the author's points are largely well taken.

On the other hand:

1\. If a company fails to have its employees sign NDAs, it potentially jeopardizes its trade secrets (to protect something as a trade secret, an employer must show that it took reasonable steps to treat the proprietary information as trade secret information and having employees sign NDAs is a key component of this).

2\. If a supposed suitor approaches you about buying your business, and you fail to sign an NDA, then the information disclosed in the buying process - which can include your most intimate and valuable business techniques and plans - can potentially be lifted by the would-be suitor and used competitively against you after the suitor abandons the deal.

3\. If you attempt to negotiate a potential strategic partnership, and you trade proprietary information relating to what would be a valuable joint venture, and do so without an NDA, then, again, the prospective partner can betray you and use your valuable information against you.

4\. If you let your sales people develop all of a company's leads in their own name and using their own resources, without confidentiality agreements (i.e., NDAs) acknowledging that the customer information is valuable proprietary and confidential information belonging to the company, you leave your company exposed to having its customers raided without any legal recourse. Are sales people prone to do this? Absolutely. They tend to think of customers as belonging to them and not to the company. Without the basic legal protections afforded by NDAs, a company runs serious risks of losing its customer base to those who might chose to raid it.

5\. Other examples could be multiplied, almost ad infinitem, depending on the particular business context, of how it is positively naive and, indeed, stupid, to proceed in various business dealings without benefit of the legal protections needed to protect confidential and proprietary information, that is, without an NDA.

While I think the author's basic points make perfect sense in the fast and loose world of 'pitches,' they are not generally applicable in the world of startups. As long as there are business dealings in which any party has valuable information that it wants to keep secret, NDAs will continue to serve valuable purposes and are necessary and, indeed, indispensable to the transactions involved. This is from the perspective of one who has specialized in business startup law in Silicon Valley for the past quarter century."

</comment><comment><USER4> I really worry that people get the wrong impression from these articles. Yes, don't ask VCs and journalists to sign NDAs. Yes, don't sign an NDA if you're unsure of whether there's an opportunity.

But in the real world, refusing to sign an NDA to move a business transaction forward will very often kill the transaction and sour the prospect on you. Most businesses that have been operating for awhile have very valid reasons to get NDA cover for everyone they work with.

A really common case where NDAs are almost unavoidable is when you're working with companies that have in-house general counsel. This, by the way, is one reason not to have in-house general counsel.

<comment><USER5> Not true. I've refused signing several NDAs and never once lost the deal because of it.

<comment><USER6> Just because it hasn't happened to you yet doesn't make it untrue. I know at least 2 people who have had deals fall through because they refused to sign NDAs.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Here is a related link and at the end of the post you can see more related links: [http://www.mark-welch- blog.com/index.php?option=com_content&...](http://www.mark-welch- blog.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=110:why-i-dont-sign- ndas&catid=36:internet-industry&Itemid=55)

<comment><USER8> Wow, NDA trolling. That hadn't even occurred to me.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> My rebuttal: <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gary_Kildall#IBM_dealings>

Short version, for those unfamiliar with the story: IBM approaches Digital Research to license CP/M, Digital Research refuses to sign a fairly standard NDA, IBM licenses DOS from Microsoft instead, Bill Gates now richest man in the world.

</comment><comment><USER10> Funny seeing this. I'm currently reviewing a NDA & contract for a consulting gig and came across this gem:

 _Recipient agrees that any violation or threatened violation of this Agreement will cause irreparable injury to COMPANY, entitling COMPANY to obtain injunctive relief in addition to all legal remedies without showing or proving any actual damage and without any bond required to be posted._

 _without showing or proving any actual damage_

yeah, whatever.

 _Consultant agrees that all right, title, and interest in and to any copyrightable material, notes, records, drawings, designs, inventions, improvements, developments, discoveries and trade secrets conceived, discovered, authored, invented, developed or reduced to practice by Consultant, solely or in collaboration with others, during the term of this Agreement and arising out of, or in connection with, performing the Services under this Agreement and any copyrights, patents, trade secrets, mask work rights or other intellectual property rights relating to the foregoing (collectively, "Inventions"), are the sole property of the Company. Consultant also agrees to promptly make full written disclosure to the Company of any Inventions and to deliver and assign (or cause to be assigned) and hereby irrevocably assigns fully to the Company all right, title and interest in and to the Inventions._

I probably won't be getting the job due to crossing off all of this crap.

<comment><USER11> I see your first point, but isn't the second paragraph you quote just standard practice? Granted the legal jargon is horrible, but it seems to be saying that the work you do as a consultant during the term of the contract belongs to the company. Every consulting contract says that. How is this one egregiously different?

<comment><USER10> The legal jargon is the first grievance, which I obviously have to just accept as part of the game, but the ambiguity of it is what I have difficulty accepting. Does this clause prevent me from pursuing my own ventures during this time? Is everything I do during this time claimable by them?

 _rising out of, or in connection with, performing the Services_

This bit seems to limit it to whatever I happen to be doing for them, but as this story, currently on the front page of HN shows, even lawyers have difficulty nailing it all down.

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1050952>

For example, if I come up with some clever little bit of javascript that does something interesting, does it mean I can never use that for any purpose ever again? It's terribly ambiguous and limiting. I don't expect to take the job because I am currently working on my own projects and have no concrete way of defending myself against them claiming all of my work.

The second problem I have is this phrase:

 _Consultant also agrees to promptly make full written disclosure to the Company of any Inventions..._

WTF does that mean? Even if it is limited to the "inventions" I "invent" for them, does that mean I'm supposed to immediately write some kind of disclosure after I "invent" something and give it to them? It's ridiculous. Let's assume this refers to my existing "inventions", not developed during the contract term, which I don't think it does. In that case, how could I possibly expect to protect myself? What if I forget to list one of my "inventions". They can claim it? I honestly don't think all of the doubt is even worth the time and effort to nail it all down.

I should pay a lawyer to go over it, but I already know I will require some lines to be removed, which will probably negate their interest in hiring me and thus make paying a lawyer a complete waste of money.

I understand the motivations for these kinds of contracts, but it puts all of the burden on the consultant and gives the overall impression that they can bend you over on a whim and screw you royally. It's basically making me not interested in the job, especially since I have my own things I want to work on. Initially, I recognized that my particular skills were exactly what they needed and it would be a pleasant job, but the "pleasant" part is quickly disappearing.

I'm probably just too uptight about this kind of stuff.

<comment><USER12> In general as a consultant you can assert certain rights for yourself. don't be afraid to request changes to the contract.

Also as a contractor you are VERY different from an employee and the resulting IP rights are quite different. While ALL an employee does during their employment usually belongs to the company (even inventions done while at home sleeping :) the situation is very different for a contractor.

For example it is a standard practice that NOT ALL of the code that you write for them is theirs, but only "business specific" parts. You should retain the rights to the generic parts of the code, all successful consultancies build a code libraries that they can reuse. We usually release such things as open source but not always, we do keep the rights to ourselves though. Customer just gets a full royalty free license to do whatever they want.

Same with inventions. If during the term of the agreement while working on their project you invent a super-duper-fast sorting algorithm and implement it in their project, it still doesn't mean the algorithm is theirs.

The implementation is (and only if its business specific) but the idea is yours and you can go as far as filing a patent for it (I'm quite against software patents, but still). Again, the client gets all the necessary rights to use it in-this-particular-implementation but that is.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> here is the thing with NDAs.

99% of the cases the person asking you to sign it, is just starting out. Because these are the only guys who think they need to protect their idea(or that an NDA will actually help them).

And the person just starting out, usually doesn't have the money to enforce the NDA anyways. Lawyers cost money, I remember I wanted to sue someone(small b.s. breach of contract clause), and the lawyer told me it'd cost 15-20K.

</comment><comment><USER14> Let's be very clear about where NDAs are appropriate and inappropriate - <USER2> NDA is very appropriate in class (A) where it concerns the protection of the content of the Intellectual property. Signing Tables, Certificates, Source Code, Research Studies, etc... Without an NDA of some form, either in the form an employment contract, or explict "NDA", an employee would be free to tarball 500 Gigabytes of intellectual property and take it to their next employer - walking away with all the hard earned IP of a company that may have spent millions of dollars, years of effort, and entrepreneurial capital in developing it.

An NDA is completely inappropriate in class (B) when it comes to protecting ideas/concepts/market sizing/future growth that will be exposed in an employee interview, investor pitch, or press interview - all of that is typically just brainstorming by a few smart people over a week or two, has no more or less value than what might results from any other smart people of the same caliber brainstorming.

Depending on whether you are in class (A) or class (B) you should, or should not sign an NDA.

</comment><comment><USER15> NDA's have a place in business, but not for VC's and journalists who deal with different businesses and ideas everyday.

I run a small application development services company. Our clients insist on NDA's and we have no problem signing them. We're getting pre-release insight to product development which should be protected.

<comment><USER16> I am in a similar position, but I very much make sure they have a VERY specific confidentiality marking requirement (including a "must send a follow up communication within 24 hours after voice communications enumerating specific confidential items disclosed within the voice communication") .

If they want super secrets and don't just trust us to show discretion, they can clearly mark what is super secret, just like the Government does with it's secret information.

<comment><USER17> this is key for me, too. _you_ do the work of figuring out what is secret or not. Not me. and if you mark every communication secret, well, maybe you're not the right client for me?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I guess there are 2 types of NDAs that I encounter.

Type 1 is the paranoid startup who thinks its a good idea to NDA everything for fear of someone "stealing" their idea. 9 times out of 10 this kind of startup is simply too naive to realize their idea isn't that original. I never sign an NDA to hear an idea, usually its a waste of my time because the NDA is typically hiding a BAD idea.

Type 2 is the legit NDA. When you're working with a large organization, or being shown very sensitive documents. Or occasionally a stealth startup that has a celebrity team or mega funding, something that would instantly get publicized should word get out. I'll sign these but usually these types of orgs are comfortable enough to give you the gist of what they're protecting and why first, and often its accompanied by a contract which seals the deal regardless.

</comment><comment><USER18> We didn't bring an NDA to a meeting with potential partners a few years back.

We found out a few months later after not hearing back from them that they were developing a competitive product.

It didn't work out for them as it turns out so everything turned out alright for us but we definitely bring NDAs to the table now.

<comment><USER19> NDA != non-compete or am I missing something?

<comment><USER18> We have basic non-compete language in our NDAs.

After some thought I guess it's all about who has more money. If you're dealing with Intel or MSFT then I'm not sure how effective one of our NDAs would be.

Still some level of protection might be better than 0.

<comment><USER4> Do established companies ever sign your noncompete NDAs? (One reason we read them carefully is because people occasionally sneak noncompete language into them).

<comment><USER18> Yes but they are smaller companies, between 5-20 million annual revenue, and none of them made competitive products. We're a software company, they were device manufacturers. I doubt we'd ever get a fortune 500 company to sign one of our NDAs though. Companies the size of Intel for example feel they have a right to everything in the tech domain even if they don't have competing product lines and they're the type to sue just to intimidate. \-----

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> But assuming at some point that you do have to sign an NDA, remember that there is no such thing as a "standard NDA". Be prepared to cross things out that you don't agree with, or add extra terms.

<comment><USER21> It might help you feel better, but unilateral modifications don't hold up in court. Of course, if the other guy agrees to your changes, it's fine. But I think this is why my company has the NDA for visitors on computer screens.</comment></comment>


Not enough women in computing? - <AUTHOR> http://www.itworld.com/tech-amp-society/89611/not-enough-women-computing <comment><USER2> Finally a halfway-intelligent article on the subject.</comment>


Rackspace Cloud Servers outperform Amazon EC2 - <AUTHOR> http://www.thebitsource.com/featured-posts/rackspace-cloud-servers-versus-amazon-ec2-performance-analysis/

<comment><USER2> I signed up for Rackspace Cloud Servers because I've been more used to traditional hosting, and switching to AWS would (I believe) have been a step too far for my abilities at the time, and I have to say, it's been nothing but great.

The knowledge that there's a really good customer service team behind you is comforting when you're bootstrapping, and the ease of getting a new instance running is great!

As for the results of the test - I'm surprised somewhat. I don't know why, but with the number of startups using AWS, I would have thought it'd have been the better choice for performance issues (maybe the number of startups using them _is_ the problem).

The cost comparison at the end is interesting for Cloud Servers vs EC2, but it does appear that S3 can be cheaper for a lot of people than Cloud Files when at scale.</comment>


YoungLispers tell how they got into lisp - <AUTHOR> http://www.cliki.net/younglispers

<comment><USER2> The recent Lisp Hackers interviews are far more interesting: <http://lisp- univ-etc.blogspot.com/search/label/lisp-hackers>

</comment><comment><USER3> You can't see a date on it, but that page is now 10 years old (I wrote my entry when I was 20 years old, 30 now). Still loving Common Lisp (and clojure and Elixir and all the many other cool things that came out since then), so no harm done; just... beware (-:

</comment><comment><USER4> The first thing you will need to get started with Lisp is a beard.

<comment><USER5> If you do not have a beard one will be provided.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> I wish they could go into more details about what they are using lisp for.

<comment><USER7> This is a must. For example, I used lisp for a computer competition and never since. I feel that there are more people who know lisp than programs that use lisp.

<comment><USER8> This issue, IMHO, is lisp's #1 problem towards greater acceptance.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I'm 15 and after trying to learn several different kind of languages(all from BASIC to C) I've finally found one that seems good for a total beginner. Even though SICP is a quite advanced text for someone who ain't native english speaking nor being very good at math, I've found it as an excellent book which I highly recommend to other beginner's.

Whenever I don't understand something I read the last parts again and finally I understand it. I've also got some great help by the CHICKEN[1] community and by reading articles at Wikipedia if there's words and math I don't understand.

[1] CHICKEN is a R5RS Scheme implementation. <http://call-cc.org/>

<comment><USER10> I'm glad to hear the community has been really supportive of you :) I'm just wondering though, wouldn't Racket be a better choice for you? It seems to have more useful libraries built in.

<comment><USER11> What worked well for me when going through SCIP: the header

        #lang planet neil/sicp

at the start of my .rkt files, after installing the corresponding package. See this link: <http://www.neilvandyke.org/racket-sicp/>

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Mihai Bazon (of uglify.js fame) is also a big time lisper. His entire blog is powered by Common LISP. Check it out. AFAIR, he developed a browser based SLIME environment too

<http://lisperator.net/>

</comment><comment><USER13> I got interested in lisp because of hn and pg, actually. Now I am writing toy one and reading through the kernel paper (because why shouldn't macros be first-class language objecs?). It's a sickness.

</comment><comment><USER14> "Write programs that write programs" can someone elaborate on this?

<comment><USER15> They probably mean something like macros and embedding DSLs.

What they probably _don't_ mean is any sort of non-trivial automatic programming--writing programs that, for example, search through possible ways to solve some particular programming problem in assembly. Which, amusingly, is the one thing I've been using lisp for lately, working on program synthesis.

Of course, I would probably be a poor addition to this page because I would much rather use Haskell or OCaml. And because I'm using Racket rather than Common Lisp, which looks to be the theme of the page.

<comment><USER16> Some time ago I put together quarter-baked genetic algorithm tool in Common Lisp. It dynamically generated functions in an attempt to create a modelling function for a sequence of (x,y) pairs.

Good functions would be recombined with other good functions to attempt to get better. It worked fairly well for the trivial stuff I was doing.

Unfortunately, due to getting interrupted and put down for months, it's a mess. I should fix it up tomorrow since I'll have some free time. :-)

<comment><USER14> Definitely interested in seeing the source code for this

<comment><USER16> <https://bitbucket.org/pnathan/z-system/overview></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


The Economics of the HDMI Cable Ripoff - <AUTHOR> http://www.marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2009/06/the-mysterious-hdmi-cable-ripoff.html

<comment><USER2> The author doesn't mention the concept of anchoring.

A $40 HDMI cable sounds expensive.

But when you're buying a $400 bluray player, another $40 for the cable doesn't sound so expensive, because you're mentally comparing the price to $400.

Anchoring is a well-known concept in pricing. Since retail stores are almost always selling HDMI cables as add-ons, they can take advantage of a much greater willingness to pay by customers who are anchored by the high-price blu ray player they're buying. The online stores that sell cheap HDMI cables (monoprice FTW!) sell ONLY cables and can't anchor.

PS I always prefer component cables to HDMI cables. You get the same quality without the copy protection bullshit. There are too many reasons the HDCP DRM crap sucks, for example, it is impossible for AV receivers to display on- screen menus or even on-screen volume sliders so you have to adjust your volume without seeing what you're doing.

<comment><USER3> HDMI is digital and component (with "RCA" connectors) is analog. Why do you prefer analog to digital for video transmission? Unfortunately, yes, HDMI has HDCP. I try to use DVI or mini-DVI where possible.

<comment><USER4> _I try to use DVI or mini-DVI where possible._

Hear hear, in fact I refuse to buy anything that won't accept proper computer inputs. Which reminds me - any TVs have DisplayPort yet?

<comment><USER5> DVI is easily connected to HDMI using a DVI-HDMI cable. I've had no problems doing this with a computer and an HDTV at 1080p resolution.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> What's the incentive for a retailer to offer the cheap HDMI sales? When deciding where to shop, people are influenced by the "sale price" on the Blu- Ray player, not the cables-- and most Blu-Ray player purchasers are not going to walk out of the store without a cable. So, might as well hook them for the over-priced one.

<comment><USER7> Yeah - likewise, if I've already spent $400 on a player, the sales pitch "you've made such a good investment in this piece of equipment, why ruin it all with cheap cabling" seems to sell itself.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> We must also consider the fact that big box stores rarely make good margins on high-end purchases. It is the small things like cables and accessories where they have high profit margins to make up for selling larger appliances at very low margins.

</comment><comment><USER9> I normally would never pimp a product or site on HN. However I'm going to take this chance to talke about RiteAV (<http://riteav.com>).

RiteAV is probably the BEST source I've ever found for cables and adapters. Everything I've purchased has been of great quality and very inexpensive. I've placed several orders and they were all shipped same day. What's better is that shipping costs are super-cheap (they'll even ship via first class mail if it makes sense). In my last order I got 2 cables and an adapter for $6 + shipping ($6.50).

Don't take my word for it: google them. They seem to have amazing reviews elsewhere: <http://www.resellerratings.com/store/RiteAV>

Note: I'm not affiliated with RiteAV outside of the purchases I've made and they're not paying me for this. The only reason I'm writing this is because they seem like good people.

</comment><comment><USER10> Let's just start with the simple fact cable quality does matter when working with HDMI. I'm not here to argue about the price of one manufacturer versus another, or their relative quality and worth. But I will point out that "cheap cables" and the expectation that for the same $9.99 you'd spend on a serial cable you could get a reliable HDMI cable is somewhat laughable.

HDMI is really bad design, and due to its DVI legacy they've pushed the up against the limits of what is possible. Right up against the limit.

1) it's twisted pair technology instead of coax 2) it's parallel instead of serial 3) it's very fast (10.2 Gbps)

If you just spent money on a new 7.1 AVR, and a Deep Color Blu-ray player then you'll be needing cables that have been manufactured and tested to a highest HDMI 1.3 standard. Resistance, skin effect, impedance, capacitance, cross talk and inductance all conspire to disrupt the data and since it's digital, you will be left staring at a black screen or hearing pops and audio dropouts. This kind of quality control is not cheap, and is much more than a simple continuity check on each line within the bundle.

I've tested some really expensive HDMI cables and seen what is possible with them. I've ignored the "Direction of Flow" arrows on some long lengths and had them fail, reversed the cables and had it work. There is real engineering that goes into these things, and that is what you are paying for.

So for short lengths (3-6') the cheapest HDMI cable might be good enough, and you will probably be happy. But I'd still be looking for the HDMI 1.3 logo on the package, at least then you can be sure it has been tested against the upper ends of the spec.

<comment><USER11> _I've ignored the "Direction of Flow" arrows on some long lengths and had them fail, reversed the cables and had it work. There is real engineering that goes into these things_

You're bullshitting us. At least, I hope you are, otherwise you are sadly misguided. There is no way in hell you can design a cable in such a way that it will pass signals in one direction, but not in the other.

 _Resistance, skin effect, impedance, capacitance, cross talk and inductance all conspire to disrupt the data_

You're just repeating electrical engineering terms without understanding them. Impedance is the combined effect of resistance, capacitance and inductance. The skin effect is an effect that adds to the resistance.

They all don't 'disrupt' the data. In the simplest terms, the resistance influences the amount of power required to transfer a signal, due to losses in the cable. The capacitance influences the amount of time required to transfer a signal, because it may be viewed as the resistance to signal _change_. Inductance is the only one that may change the signal, but it only influences AC signals, which, at most, act as the _carrier_ for a digital signal. It doesn't change the digital signal.

The fact that Infiniband cables are cheaper than these kind of HDMI cables should also be recognized as a large red neon sign screaming: you're being scammed.

<comment><USER12> _There is no way in hell you can design a cable in such a way that it will pass signals in one direction, but not in the other._

Did someone just uninvent the diode?

<comment><USER11> I was coming at the problem from a sane angle and meant that there was no way in hell that you could design a cable in such a way _if you were simply trying to design the best possible cable_.

If you are suggesting that Monster seperates each of the wires in its cables into multiple parts and connects them with electronic components emulating a diode (you couldn't just put a diode in; that would screw up the cable), then yes, it could be done. It would be an insane way to actually let the directional arrows make sense, but granted, when taken literally, my original statement was wrong.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> I just bought an upscaling DVD player for my son because I was tired of wiping down the PS3. The cheapest one came with DVD player, quick start guide, remote and batteries. Cables?? you're gonna pay extra for that. Of course the retailer had only the most expensive cables (it didn't matter, component, composite, HDMI) in stock. And since I was going to tell my son he was going to have to wait up to a week before he could watch his movies I felt compelled to buy the heavily marked up cables in the store.

Fact is cables are the new print cartridges. I won't be surprised when CE devices only come with a proprietary power cable.

<comment><USER14> Good thing they don't "run out". If you just had some extra, cheap HDMI cables or component cables lying around, you'd have been set. I'll keep that in mind as I buy some HDMI cables soon for my upcoming HDTV purchase.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> From the comments:

 _I know, from personal experience (my dad has a setup), that on sufficiently high end systems (tube amps, premium quality vinyl records, $5000 turntables), the cables make a difference. Some of the cables are hand made, and have markets of less than 1000 buyers. They really do sound different though._

Woohoo, expectation bias in action.

Back on topic, a neat trick is to go to your friendly low margin neighbourhood computer store; they tend to have every cable you could possibly imagine for $10 or less.

<comment><USER15> > a neat trick is to go to your friendly low margin neighbourhood computer > store; they tend to have every cable you could possibly imagine for $10 or > less.

Wow, I wish I had a friendly low margin computer store in my area. Other than Best Buy and the recently-defunct CompUSA, the only computer stores around are mom'n'pop stores that charge more markup on everything than NewEgg, MonoPrice, and even Walmart...

<comment><USER4> Ha, mine are mom'n'pop stores too, but they're Chinese in a fairly Chinese area, with other computer shops around .. price sensitive market + good competition = I am happy. I love that kind of shop actually; they act as these little value-added distribution branches. Order heaps of the top 100 (or so) products, add 5-10% to the wholesale price, then they walk out the door.

The bad side is that we actually don't have a big internet electronics retailer here (Australia). A Newegg would probably be cheaper - I thought they were very cheap? But they would have difficulty starting, since they'd rely on volume to beat the small operators, but the small ones do a pretty good job and can sell minus shipping .. wouldn't want to try to compete with them unless I had _very_ deep pockets.

Seems I told a lie though, just looked it up and it's actually more like AUD$15 (USD$12-13) for HDMI. Sorry : /</comment></comment></comment>


IBM Unveils Software Defined Storage Technology for Era of Big Data - <AUTHOR> http://www-03.ibm.com/press/us/en/pressrelease/43865.wss?sf26067976=1

<comment><USER2> Elastic Storage is the product formerly known as GPFS. [http://www-03.ibm.com/systems/technicalcomputing/platformcom...](http://www-03.ibm.com/systems/technicalcomputing/platformcomputing/products/gpfs/)

<comment><USER3> ...and GPFS stands for "General Parallel File System."

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Me, I prefer Lustre over GPFS; Lustre is open source as well, and used by 70% of Top100

Here's a related presso from KIT:

[https://www.scc.kit.edu/scc/docs/Lustre/pfs_scc- sem_20111005...](https://www.scc.kit.edu/scc/docs/Lustre/pfs_scc- sem_20111005.pdf)

</comment><comment><USER5> So IBM sells _UIMA_ with _Lucene_ on top of _GPFS_ and calls it _Software Defined Storage_.

* UIMA (Unstructured Information Management Architecture): [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unstructured_Information_Manage...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unstructured_Information_Management_Architecture)

* Lucene: [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lucene](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lucene)

* GPFS: [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GPFS](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GPFS)

Edit: GPFS instead of Hadoop

<comment><USER6> Nope, that's not what this product is at all. It's GPFS. You could bang all three of those together fifty ways and not reinvent a distributed filesystem, so I have no idea what you're talking about. (Seriously? Lucene?)

Speaking as (I'm sure) one of the few people in this thread who will have used GPFS: GPFS is actually quite good. You'd be surprised how good it is. It has its downfalls, but it is extraordinarily useful, performs well, and just about hits the holy grail of distributed POSIX. It's also absurdly expensive, but: IBM.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Has anybody felt that IBM is absurdly expensive? Why should I pay tons of money to use a proprietary filesystem type?</comment>


Twitter CEO: The revenue's coming soon, but I won't tell you how - <AUTHOR> http://news.cnet.com/8301-17939_109-10112037-2.html

<comment><USER2> Is it that hard to guess? There are perhaps hundreds of companies using Twitter as a rapid-response support channel ( <http://twitter.com/slicehost> ). And not just small companies, but big companies like JetBlue, Comcast, etc. Some of these companies have people actively participating, others appear to have scripts that look for the mention of a company name and auto-follow those users' streams as a good-will measure (how easy and cool -- "JetBlue is following my tweets!"). Because of the novelty, Twitter-based support generates a great deal of word-of-mouth press, which is very important in a time when products and services that used to be considered necessities are now considered luxuries.

Will companies pay to have access to that channel? Absolutely. How much? Who knows, but I do not think that $100/month is unreasonable for small-to-midsize companies and $1000/month or more for larger companies -- it can be based on the number of tweets sent perhaps. Given that, twitter could be free for personal use but corporate use could require a subscription.

There - that wasn't so hard, was it? Not that I'm claiming I'm right or anything, but that's what I'd be considering.

<comment><USER3> Do you know of any such scripts that automate that?

It might be useful marketing for a lot of start ups though I'm not sure on the ethics. Would it be ok for Utility Mill to "follow" anyone who mentions Python, or is that too broad? Would it get annoying?

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Aside from the content of the article I actually really enjoyed the honest reporting in this article. It was really nice to read some techpress that wasn't wrapped in a layer of the usual BS and just talked candidly about what happened at the conference.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> _"It's amazing anyone uses Twitter today."_ \-- Evan Williams

</comment><comment><USER5> Either from Subscription Fee or Advertisement Fee.

</comment><comment><USER6> Pay per uptime fees?</comment>


Ask HN: "Watson" hardware to cost $1M USD, know of a better deal? - <AUTHOR>

"Watson" is cool, but I thought some of the clever hackers around here might know how to get something almost as cool (or cooler?) for less than the expected price of $1M USD for the hardware alone?<p>https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Watson_(artificial_intelligence_software)#Future_uses <comment><USER2> Of course. Create a main guessing algo running on a single machine using data mining from the internet and former questions, using pattern matching and smart googleing.

If you got it, parallelise it and distribute it in a way like SETI.</comment>


How to choose a tagline for a tech startup - <AUTHOR> http://www.peterjthomson.com/2011/06/how-to-choose-tagline-for-tech-startup.html

<comment><USER2> A good tagline is like much most marketing. Lots of experiments with split testing of multiple taglines to see which one the market responds to the most.

As for the comments regarding branding, branding should be always done in- house without an agency. There's a misconception that outsourcing marketing is a good idea but often, the outsourced company doesn't know your business as well as you do. Read the Marketing Game by Eric Shulz(marketing for Coca Cola and Disney). He has some clear opinions about outside agencies. <http://www.ericschulz.com/>

<comment><USER3> Many entrepreneurs use our PickFu service to split test taglines as they iterate on variations.

<http://www.pickfu.com>

<comment><USER2> Does PickFu allow inplace split testing like Google Analytics?

It seems to be more an independent polling service. My idea of split testing is to always be inplace so the user doesn't realize they're being tested.

<comment><USER3> It's more of a polling service that gives you a kind of instant focus group. You ask a question, we'll give you the answers.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I like the design on your website, but one thing that bothers me is the big red icons on the top right. As soon as the page loaded, I couldn't help putting my eye over there, before I even saw the title.

It felt like I had 3 or 4 facebook notifications I needed to take care of. Maybe it's designed this way to encourage social media use, but I need a chance to look at the page itself before I tweet it out!

Hypothetical musing: what about if the dots appeared once I scroll down to the end of the article?

<comment><USER5> Thanks BobbyDavid, the icons are an experiment. I've been using DiggDigg (now owned by the team at Buffer) for social sharing but I needed somewhere to put the links to my profiles (not the links to tweet about the content). "Flare" (by the guys who did Tim Ferris's landing pages) is good, but not quite perfect. I'll keep iterating. Thanks!</comment></comment>


Western Digital is trying to redefine the word "RPM" - <AUTHOR> https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2020/09/western-digital-is-trying-to-redefine-the-word-rpm/ <comment><AUTHOR> The German-language forum that the article mentions has been doing some great detective work: [https://www.hardwareluxx.de/community/threads/crystaldiskinf...](https://www.hardwareluxx.de/community/threads/crystaldiskinfo- zeigt-fakewert-an-alle-wd-my-book-8tb-drehen-anscheind-mit-7-200rpm.1235655/)

The conclusion on page 4 of the above thread:

> Non-Pro RED = 5400rpm according to data sheet

> Pro Red = 7200rpm according to data sheet

> Internal both 7200rpm and 120Hz.

> Apparently _all_ WD / HGST helium plates have real 7200rpm, no matter what > it says.

Simply absurd, if true. Here, for example, is a screenshot of WD's WD100EFAX store page: [https://imgur.com/HseW9Pa](https://imgur.com/HseW9Pa)

No mention of an RPM "class". The spec sheet does refer to it as "5400 RPM Class", but with no further description of what the term means: [https://media.flixcar.com/f360cdn/Western_Digital-3805661149...](https://media.flixcar.com/f360cdn/Western_Digital-3805661149-eng_spec_data_sheet_2879-800002.pdf)

What a world when you can't even trust the spec sheet. What's next, 10 watt class drives that pull 20 watts? 3-year class warranties?

<comment><USER3> > _What a world when you can 't even trust the spec sheet. What's next, 10 > watt class drives that pull 20 watts? 3-year class warranties?_

Just like how internet speeds are advertised ("Up to 300 Mb/s").

<comment> orbital-decay There's a solid technical reason for that though, as ISPs have no control over the performance of your connection's remote part. Sure, it leaves plenty of room for abuse, but this is a necessary disclaimer, not some slippery marketing.

<comment><USER4> Does anyone in the US actually get the "up to" even plugging directly into the ISP provided modem at off peak times?

<comment><USER5> Yes, absolutely. On all 5 different sites I manage in fact, two on a local ISP ADSL, third on local ISP fiber, fourth on Comcast Business cable modem, and even the fifth on a small regional WISP. All of them are reliably within a few percent of their expected speed with about the frequency that one would reasonably expect from that connection class. "Up-to" is fuzzy but quite justified with many technologies. Proper fiber of course is rock solid and essentially never has issues short of a backhoe. But ADSL falls off hard with distance, and a lot of the in-house wiring it's forced through is ancient garbage phone line. Sometimes one can get a huge practical boost just from shortening/replacing line with cat 5. And WISPs obviously have to deal with inclement weather fade as well as any additional obstacles for subpar sites that customers can't/won't rectify. Cable is more of a shared resource though you get much better support and less bullshit with business class even though Comcast are bastards.

Now, I absolutely would love to see it mandated by law that somewhere upfront in ISP info to consumers it's required to have a standardized SLA. A consumer- level SLA for sure, but still have it formalized and cover all of the basics. So not just absolute max bandwidth, but 90%/50%/whatever bandwidth, any guaranteed floor, 90% latency, any data caps, any throttling criteria, etc. All categories the same and measured in a mandated standardized way so universally comparable. I don't expect data center level SLAs at all, but there isn't any reason there can't be that level of _clarity_.

But residential/SOHO and such service inherently has more uncertainty and more compromises and capacity multipliers to meet lower prices. I think that's ok, just that it should be laid out and not buried in some fine print or support page in the disused lavatory defended by a leopard either.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Maybe I should apply to WD and fill my resume with things like "25-years-class experience as distinguished-class engineer-class for HGST-class employer".

<comment><USER7> Do you realise in that on the context of this story that would mean you had _more_ then 25 years of experience, so they'd be happy.

<comment><USER8> Maybe salary negotiations is a better time to bring it up. "100K Class" salary request, with the actual figure being 33%~ higher.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> It seems like they want customers to compare their 7200RPM drives to competitors' 5400RPM ones, but the power consumption numbers in the datasheet show the actual differences.

For many years, the WD Green series didn't even specify the RPM.

I hate marketing...

</comment><comment><USER10> This reminds me of how, to make a whole lineup of Intel chips, they just make the highest-price model, and then disable features to create the lower-price ones. Or how shorter-range Teslas have the same battery capacity as longer- range ones--they just disable using the extra capacity in software.

In this case, the "5400 RPM" drive runs at 7200 RPM, but WD presumably makes it (either via software or hardware) perform worse in other ways to compensate, so that its performance is really only competitive with actual 5400 RPM drives.

That way, they can justify the lower price point without actually needing two separate manufacturing processes for each kind of drive (like how Intel saves on having to redesign each chip in a lineup).

<comment><USER11> They'll start with the same silicon design but manufacturing variability requires them to bin the chips based on functionality & performance, which is how you get all these different models.

<comment><USER12> Nobody would complain if Intel sold of 8core dies with 6 working cores as 6core CPUs. Disabling the ECC or AES-NI support just to create artificial market segmentation is an asshole move.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> This sort of misrepresentation should be outright illegal.

Why does it feel like big corporations are just getting more blatantly evil these days?

<comment><USER14> This is already what they did with "KB/MB/GB/TB." Evil, but not any more blatant.

<comment><USER15> > _This is already what they did with "KB/MB/GB/TB."_

The 'confusion' as to whether the "K" prefix meant a factor of 10^3 or 2^10 goes back decades.

In 1961 a book says "it is more usual to express the speed in bits or kilobits (1,000 bits) per second"; an IBM 1410 manual says ""The 40K core array requires 40,000 valid five-position addresses from 0,000 to 39,999." In 1962 an ACM paper referred to a "4K IBM 1401" which had 4000 characters of storage, but in 1964 Amdahl wrote a paper that had 1K meaning 1024. Academics went back and forth a bit it seems.

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

For hard drives specifically, a 1974 example has Mbytes in the 10^6 sense. Further examples often have drives using the base-10 sense of the prefix (including the first 5 ¼ inch floppy), while memory chips using the base-2 sense of the prefix.

The powers-of-1024 nomenclature of kibi/mebi/etc was introduced in 1995, with IEEE mandating SI prefixes only be used for powers-of-1000 in 1997. The IEC follows suit a couple of years later.

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

<comment><USER9> _In 1962 an ACM paper referred to a "4K IBM 1401" which had 4000 characters of storage, but in 1964 Amdahl wrote a paper that had 1K meaning 1024._

That's easy to explain, as a 1401 is actually a _decimal_ computer.

<comment><USER15> Further up:

> In the 1950s, "1 kilobit" meant 1000 bits:[9][10]

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Did Western Digital have some kind of management shakeup in the last few years? Back in the day my general impression was that they were a quality brand that engaged in less bullshit than the likes of Seagate and Hitachi. It seems the tables have turned.

<comment><USER17> They bought SanDisk in 2016, and that part of the business is now probably seen as having more strategic importance (their "President, Technology and Strategy" is a SanDisk guy).

They got a new CEO this year, but the previous CEO had been HGST's CEO until WDC bought HGST and put him in charge. (He was also previously HGST's CFO, and before that, WDC's CFO.)

But I don't think a management change is particularly important here. Their competitors were caught doing the same BS with SMR drives. I think we're just seeing what happens when a lucrative duopoly gets sidelined by replacement technology. The consumer hard drive market has become a market for lemons, and only the datacenter customers get treated seriously anymore.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> "By doing so, we are able to leverage our economies of scale and pass along those savings to our customers."

So it sounds like the reason behind it is that they can save money by eliminating the 5400rpm production line.

<comment><USER19> Exactly, but then they rightly realized they would also lose all those customers looking for 5400rpm disks. And, no no no, they didn't want THAT.

Easy fix though, smack a new 5400rpm label on those disks and fix the firmware to report 5400rpm, now they could get rid of the production line and retain the customers that weren't looking for 7200rpm disks.

Absolute garbage.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> After all this news of false advertisement and lower quality drives from WD, I'm glad I bought Seagate drives, even if only because Amazon had a big fat discount on Barracudas the day I was shopping for some spinning rust.

<comment><USER21> I wouldn't touch a Barracuda with a WD SMR drive duct taped to a 50' pole.

The only way to get good hard drives these days is to buy from the enterprise lines e.g. WD Gold or Seagate Exos. They're extremely expensive, but this is the only way to get the kind of quality that used to be standard a few years ago.

<comment><USER22> You fell directly in line with what they wanted.

It's reasonable to expect companies to honour their spec sheets, and to not lie in their firmware.

Once they're caught doing otherwise it's important to hold them accountable, not throw our hands up and pay up anyway.

<comment><USER23> The problem is if you don't buy from the commercial line you're asking for trouble. I just had a Seagate drive fail after 2 years of use. The WD drive it replaced had been in service for _years_. Consumer grade has apparently really degraded quite significantly the past few years, so much so I'm seriously starting to reconsider whether the "Apple tax" might be worth it - or is Apple now using low-grade components too?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> I've not touched WD drives in a long, long time, and the recent SMR fiasco made the brand seem even more untrustworthy than what was in my imagination.

In this case, it sounds (from the official response) as if WD is trying to "dumb down" the specs so that generally less informed buyers can compare them easily and make the right choices?! But this effort will fail because it hides information in scenarios where it certainly must cater to different needs — not everyone wants all the speed at a specific price just as not everyone wants the lowest power consumption at a specific price.

The discerning users who want to get the specs and then decide what trade offs are worth it for their use case must be able to get it, even if it's on page 6 of the "technical specifications" document.

<comment><USER25> "In this case, it sounds (from the official response) as if WD is trying to "dumb down" the specs so that generally less informed buyers can compare them easily and make the right choices"

Which is total bullshit, because what "less informed buyers" even read spec sheets? The spec sheet is for people that want detailed technical information. Info for the average consumer should be on the retail box and store descriptions.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> I think the TLDR is that Western Digital are selling faster drives marketed as being slower than they actually are, presumably due to lack of supply for the demand of the slower drives part of the market or something like that.

You'd think nobody would mind until you remember some people want lower power and noise.

Ideally these people would be buying based on those actual metrics, rather than the RPM as a proxy for them, if that's what they really wanted, but I don't know if that's on the data sheets.

<comment><USER26> > Ideally these people would be buying based on those actual metrics, rather > than the RPM as a proxy for them, if that's what they really wanted, but I > don't know if that's on the data sheets.

Power use and acoustics are listed in WD datasheets, but I guess they might not be well comparable to values from other manufacturers.

<comment><USER3> > _Power use and acoustics are listed in WD datasheets_

Given the fact that they lied about RPM on their datasheets, why should anyone believe other pieces of information on their datasheets are correct?

<comment><USER26> They seem to have lied elsewhere like in store pages (per other HN comments), but the datasheets specifically only mention "Performance Class" being "5400 RPM Class", which may be misleading but is not a lie IMO.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> This kind of crap is why I hate shopping for computer hardware.

<comment><USER28> In general it's an amazing time to be a computer hardware consumer. There's real competition in pretty much every primary component hardware vertical. The spinning rust data storage market has been uniquely crappy of late.

The sketchy stuff shows up in cheap components with slim margins (budget AIO watercoolers, budget hard drives, budget PSUs budget/no-name ebay video cards).

<comment><USER29> There isn't a lot of competition on GPU's, which happen to be one of the most expensive components.

That market is basically just Nvidia (80%+ market share and still dominating in performance/features).

<comment><USER27> > That market is basically just Nvidia

I'm typing this on a machine with a fairly powerfull AMD GPU. The market for Nvidia is basically just Nvidia, everyone keeps using their special APIs. Their cards are not significantly more powerful than what AMD offers and their drivers _suck_ because they're constantly using them for anti-competitive crap.

<comment><USER29> > The market for Nvidia is basically just Nvidia

It's over 80% of GPU the market.

> Their cards are not significantly more powerful than what AMD offers

AMD can't compete with Nvidia's high end. Especially with the new 30XX series, which crush the performance of Nvidia's 20XX series.

> and their drivers suck because they're constantly using them for anti- > competitive crap.

Their drivers have a lot of features that AMD doesn't, like G-Sync, DLSS, RTX and others.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> Adjacent to WD's recent scumminess, I recently purchased an Ultrastar drive (no longer HGST-branded) and it came with a slip in the box informing me that by purchasing this product (from B&H) I had somehow agreed to binding arbitration.

Companies have been abusing the ability to force consumers into binding arbitration but this is another level. I'm not a lawyer but it doesn't seem to be clear if this would hold up in court; it is however pretty clearly a scare tactic, which is almost worse.

<comment><USER21> The USSC has ruled that binding arbitration clauses in shrink-wrap consumer contracts are legal and enforceable.

For the usual reasons, congress has refused to change the law to vacate the ruling.

<comment><USER30> It's not quite so clear, the Wikipedia article on the subject has a bird's eye view of the relevant case law: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shrink_wrap_contract](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shrink_wrap_contract)

For this drive, there is no explicit acceptance of the terms given and the terms are unavailable before not just purchase, but before opening of the box.

Thank you for the comment, I've edited mine to reflect the ambiguity.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> Don't drive with higher RPMs have higher transfer rates? I find it hard to believe that people are complaining about better performance.

<comment><USER25> Higher transfer rates, but also higher noise and power consumption (and presumably higher failure rates, but I'm less certain about that) - if you don't _need_ the higher speed, 5400rpm drives are actually better.

</comment></comment><comment><USER32> Reminds me of the special Thursday night edition of Monday night football, and three-part "imaginary" Superman novellas of my youth.

</comment><comment><USER33> I was expecting to read that 2x the heads would be marketed as spinning 2x faster, but ... it seems they are selling 7200 rpm drives as 5400.

There might be more power consumption, but in this case they are selling you a faster drive.

I kind of think this should be ok.

I wonder if mustang guys ordered a 6-cylinder mustang and got the v8 - <USER2> they complain about gas mileage?

<comment><USER34> If I bought a Prius and they gave me a V8 I sure as heck would.

<comment><USER33> That's an interesting take on my analogy.

I don't know if they advertised it as a low power drive, but if they did it would be surprising in a negative sense.

<comment><USER34> That is exactly why you'd want 5400 RPM in a non-budget drive; lower power, lower noise, longer drive lifespan.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> That's what happens when you have little competition.

Right now the high capacity, non-SSD hard drive market is a duopoly between WD and Seagate. Customers have little choice.

<comment><USER36> SSD volumetric capacity already exceeds spinning disk, and we're just waiting for the price to come down. The horse's dealer's competition wasn't more stables, it was the car.

<comment><USER37> SSDs expire, large long term r/w storage where speed isn't important rust still wins

<comment><USER38> ... rust on _tape_ , that is.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER39> >That increase in noise and power is what got many users on the trail of Western Digital's fake 5,400rpm spindle speed in the first place

I'm amazed that there are people that would pick this up. I genuinely wouldn't notice a drive being a tiny bit louder/hotter

<comment><USER40> You might not notice _a_ drive being a tiny bit louder/hotter, but you might notice if you've got an entire NAS rack full of 'em. Don't shout at your JBODs: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tDacjrSCeq4](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tDacjrSCeq4)

<comment><USER41> I've always been told that drives in the same enclosure should all spin at the same RPM.

Exactly because of the issue in that video: if there are different RPMs they shake each other and cause problems.

I've never actually tested if this is true, but I've always made sure to honor it.

If in fact it is true, that this lie by Western digital is even worse.</comment></comment></comment>


Setting up a new linux server - <AUTHOR> http://www.sitekickr.com/blog/provisioning-server/

<comment><USER2> Nothing exciting here to see. He/She also forgot many many things. Updating the system and enabling automatic security updates should be the very first step. Also generating SSH host keys. But there is way to do.</comment>


The Humans Hiding Behind the Chatbots - <AUTHOR> http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-04-18/the-humans-hiding-behind-the-chatbots <comment><USER2> I am actually shocked to learn that x.ai has human beings reading the emails.

X.AI's marketing materials state it's "An AI personal assistant who schedules meetings for you."

Their default tagline in every email sent says "x.ai – artificial intelligence that schedules meetings "

You have to dig into their press kit to get any mention of human "Supervised Learning".

My typical interaction with Amy has been a 3rd party suddenly CC'ing her (it) into an existing thread.

In many of those cases those threads contain information that I would consider to be confidential.

In some cases the people on the other end work for public companies that I am POSITIVE would not allow for a non-approved human to have access to that information.

I understand the counter argument that x.ai's warehousing this info regardless, but introducing a human under the guise of a blind-AI is unsettling.

It's a disingenuous pitch and should have repercussions if they don't improve their disclosures of what the service is actually doing.

<comment><USER3> Isn't this typical of the "Fake it until you have product/market fit, then automate" ethos?

<comment><USER2> Pitch:

"x.ai – artificial intelligence that schedules meetings"

Reality:

"A group of low-paid humans (that may-or-may not have been background checked) will read your emails to help you schedule meetings. They will probably not use this information in any way other than intended."

Those feel like two different products that I would make fundamentally different decisions about.

<comment><USER4> > that may-or-may not have been background checked

thats funny, I'll pass the background check and still trade on the inside information, I'm short your house right now

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I get that they are trying to use the human responses as a training set.

But the scope of these general purpose concierge services mean that what they are going after is damn near Artificial General Intelligence. At least in terms of capability, after-all ordering a burrito and locating an antique skull is a pretty broad capability range.

And at what point of accuracy are they aiming for for the systems to run on their own?

I guess they're thinking they can get pretty good at identifying the easy requests the system can fulfill at 99.9999% accuracy and then shift the harder requests to a human.

At that point it seems like they're just building a system that can distinguish hard requests from easy requests. Sure fulfilling the easy requests with AI is a feat in itself, but how many of those easy requests does it make sense to go through a third party? Why doesn't the burrito shop just set up it's own ordering bot?

Am I missing something?

The edge cases seem so broad that to sufficiently fulfill them would require something like AGI and the more approachable tasks of ordering pizza or burritos seem unnecessary of a third party.

<comment><USER6> I've said it before[1] and I'll say it again...the surge of interest in chatbots is premature. We're not even close to solving this problem, because yeah, it has to "learn" and "understand" language, which is equivalent to full intelligence according to some theories.

My guess is, for the foreseeable future, these services will fall into one of two categories:

1\. Backed by legions of humans, and thus not that interesting.

2\. Trivial at best (ordering pizza with marginally less effort than before, a glorified collection of Slack plugins), disastrous at worst (Microsoft's Tay, the subject of my other post).

[1] [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11366351](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11366351)

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> The solution is so blindingly obvious: You are creating AI not to replace humans, but to _assist_ humans. If your humans can manage 50 emails per hour, you judge the quality of improvements to the AI on how any more emails per hour they can handle. This is from improving the tools humans use to completely eliminating the human from the equation in certain cases. Then your customers need to rate the quality of the service to see if automatically handled emails had the side-effect of reducing quality, which then needs to be weighed against the cost savings.

<comment><USER8> Agreed. I even think that we'll get closer and closer to general AI the more we use the technology that's ready now to help humans.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> No one here will be shocked at the eventual investor lawsuits, but I was a bit surprised at the "Pain -- Solution" graphic. Unless "Michael" is very senior to "John", he is a complete asshole:

 _J: I 'll be free to meet at these times...

M: Yeah whatever. I can't be arsed to look at my calendar, so talk to my secretary. Oh wait... I'm too cheap to hire a secretary so why don't you talk to this robot instead?_

I get it, Lords of the Universe can make you work out the details with their administrative assistant. But then they actually have to employ that person. Is this product pitch aimed at "temporarily embarrassed executives" who envy that sad dominance game?

<comment><USER10> You've correctly identified the problem x.ai really solves: I want a secretary but I'm not that important.

The ridiculous thing is that doodle.com already solved this problem in a much less sexy way - just click the time you want. Problem solved in 10 seconds (vs minutes with this dumb bot).

<comment><USER8> This is my beef with chatbots in general -- it is the rare conversational interface that has _any_ advantage over a GUI beyond its novelty.

<comment><USER11> Isn't it ironic that chatbots are touted as a more natural, conversational interface when they are basically CLIs? Back in the day GUI adoption over CLI was driven by conviction that desktop, drag and drop and point and click are more natural metaphors.

<comment><USER12> As usual, what's old is new again. Makes sense given that user interfaces and "styles" of software are just like styles in anything else (ie: fashion) -- they come and go and come back again.

Fast forward another 3 - 7 years and users will be wondering at the marvels of a chatbot where one can simply click on the picture of the action they'd like it to perform! Perhaps entire menus of actions will be presented, in horizontal or vertical strips inside the chat interface... these actions will of course be represented by hieroglyphs expertly designed to convey just what they do and no more, to as cross-cultural an audience as possible. Maybe we'll call them icons or something.

<comment><USER10> _Fast forward another 3 - 7 years and users will be wondering at the marvels of a chatbot where one can simply click on the picture of the action they 'd like it to perform!_

You mean like the current functionality of WeChat, Telegram, Kik and FacebookM?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Sounds like some of these companies aren't even implementing the automation part.

> But she and another former employee, Alex Gioiella, said the only automated > part of the service they saw was the occasional marketing text message.

You'd think that the human workers would at least get served up suggestions by the system if it were actually learning, to make sure the algorithm got "gold- standard" feedback on its dataset.

Especially requests like those for delivery food could be standardized pretty quickly, so that workers would only be handed situations where the "AI" (if there even was any machine learning involved) was uncertain as to what needed to be done.

> But usually, the Hero said, the requests were for pizza or Chipotle > delivery.

</comment><comment><USER8> Funny comment from a Facebook friend: "The meta-turing test: A human trying to convince another human that it is chatting with a computer program. Thankfully a human dumbing itself to chatbot level is far more doable than the opposite." [https://www.facebook.com/groups/cyberpunkculture/permalink/5...](https://www.facebook.com/groups/cyberpunkculture/permalink/531331800380538/?comment_id=531332370380481&comment_tracking=%7B%22tn%22%3A%22R%22%7D)

</comment><comment><USER14> Is there any indication that there is actually light at the end of this tunnel, and not just a lot more tunnel? How much of this is just smoke and mirrors for the sake of product development, and how much is just to bilk investors? I read the entire article, and I don't get the sense that the author is totally sure either.

<comment><USER15> The company with the $9/month price point has to reach near full automation or die. The company with the $200/month price point could be totally manual until the automated systems catch up.

Recommended viewing: "The Devil wears Prada", Andy's first day at Runway.

<comment><USER14> Hell, I've been meaning to see that movie anyway, thanks.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> One of the reasons I left x.ai was that I believed the leadership was deliberately misleading users, investors, and employees with false advertising and extremely inflated and skewed metrics. I am sure that the company is making great progress, because it is full of very intelligent people tackling an interesting problem. But the way they treated employees, customers and investors was unacceptable to me.

</comment><comment><USER17> I suppose on its face it's not a bad idea: pay some people to train an AI agent. It's a bit annoying that any information about how it's working out so far is unavailable, but on the other hand, it's also rather revealing that it is. If it was working that well we'd probably have heard a lot about their tech by now.

</comment><comment><USER18> The goal/intent/promise with these companies is always train AI to automate the process. This is good for both "buzz" and cost reasons long-term.

Companies describe the AI as two-fold: 1) actual AI responding to your requests and 2) Automation making human workers' jobs much easier, ie. a really good CRM or scheduling algo.

The reality is that high growth almost always means throwing more people at the problem under the guise of being "trainers" when in reality the technology only really caters to #2 (better automation) and the company is forced to pivot before ever really getting to #1 (AI handling the requests) either due to distractions or inability to actual deliver on the promise.

</comment><comment><USER19> SV has learned a lot from Hollywood: It's not what behind the scenes that counts.

</comment><comment><USER20> "But for now, the companies are largely powered by people, clicking behind the curtain and making it look like magic."

Does this remind anyone else of the anonymous voice actors behind the Young Lady's Illustrated Primer?

<comment><USER21> Yes. Here come the ractors.

Just one of a great many points of correspondence between the present day and cyberpunk dystopian fiction. (Technically, I think Diamond Age is post- cyberpunk.)

Over at Naked Capitalism, the daily news rundown has a section titled The Jackpot.

<comment><USER22> What was dystopian about Diamond Age? While it wasn't explicitly utopian, the world is much closer to utopia than dystopia. Certainly better than current reality.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> hi</comment>


Ask HN: What are some current moonshot projects? - <AUTHOR>

I am trying to collate a list of google-type moonshot projects that are currently ongoing.
I have:
--self driving cars
--google glass
--wireless with baloons
--colonizing mars
-- calico
Do you know of others? <comment><USER2> Have you looked into Calico? Link here:[http://www.theverge.com/2013/9/19/4748594/understanding- cali...](http://www.theverge.com/2013/9/19/4748594/understanding-calico-larry- page-google-ventures-and-the-quest-for)

an attempt to change medical field by Larry Page

</comment><comment><USER2> the idea is extremely far-fetched but nonetheless another bold endeavor for Google and their continuation of investment in innovative R&D projects

</comment><comment><USER3> Not sure it qualifies, but hyperloop comes to mind

<comment><AUTHOR> I think it qualifies, but I am not sure that it is being worked on right now.

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Ok, I added that to the list as well.</comment>


MTV has done more for the US teen birthrate than decades of policy - <AUTHOR> http://qz.com/317980/mtv-has-done-more-for-the-us-teen-birthrate-than-decades-of-policy/ <comment><USER2> Sex education in the United States is often bad. States which either don't mandate sex ed, or which promote abstinence based education tend to have high rates of teen pregnancy.

[http://thinkprogress.org/health/2012/04/10/461402/teen- pregn...](http://thinkprogress.org/health/2012/04/10/461402/teen-pregnancy- sex-education/)

But don't trust their word if you don't want to. Here is teen pregnancy rate by state. [http://www.livescience.com/27417-teen-pregnancy-rates-by- sta...](http://www.livescience.com/27417-teen-pregnancy-rates-by-state.html)

Here is data on how sex education is handled in states. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sex_education_in_the_United_St...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sex_education_in_the_United_States#By_state)

Here is median household income (to control by). [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_U.S._states_by_income](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_U.S._states_by_income)

Go ahead and see if I'm wrong.

</comment><comment><USER3> I don't understand. Girls are watching these shows, and this is raising their awareness of pregnancy?

<comment><USER4> Yes, that seems to be the essence of it. What's not to understand? Raising children is hard work. It's easy to romanticize it when you've never had to feed a screaming baby at 3am. Letting girls see the difficult side is evidently a great way to convince them they don't want to do that yet.</comment></comment>


It's Not Liberal Arts and Literature Majors Who Are Most Underemployed - <AUTHOR> https://www.forbes.com/sites/dereknewton/2018/05/31/its-not-liberal-arts-and-literature-majors-who-are-most-underemployed/ <comment><USER2> Out of interest, and having been shown the now all-too-common "Consent to use cookies or you can't view our site" I had a look at just a few of the cookies.

Under "Required Cookies" for which they say "These cookies are required to enable core site functionality" is included (among many, _many_ others) this:

Company Domain

        Google Inc.
            ad.doubleclick.net,
            ad-emea.doubleclick.net,
            doubleclick.net,
            googleads.g.doubleclick.net,
            google-analytics.com,
            www.google-analytics.com

So they are claiming that these cookies are literally essential for the operation of the site. This seems a serious abuse of language.

While it's been frustrating, it's been very enlightening to me to see how these large commercial sites are so deeply intertwungle with just _so_ many other organisations.

I'm an old fart, the internet has moved on, but I do genuinely long for simpler days. Alas, the world has moved on.</comment>


The Wacky, Wiggly, Razor-Thin World of the Flexi Disc - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/cuepoint/the-wacky-wiggly-razor-thin-world-of-the-flexi-disc-8d9463bce7a2

<comment><USER2> I remember anxiously playing Mc Donald's flexi on my sisters Fisher Price record player. And then realizing, after we lost, it was just a crummy advertisement. Cynicism in me was born.

</comment><comment><USER3> Those were fun, my parents had some "talking postcards" which were pictures of famous places you could then play on the turntable where a narrator would talk about that place.</comment>


Hackernews Down - <AUTHOR> http://sitedown.co/hacker-news

<comment><USER2> It is, is it?

<comment><USER3> No fair if you just brought it back up and then typed that comment, you know.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Interesting how these posts about something being down are mostly wrong.

Let's not post them here.</comment>


Macros in Racket and rolling your own object system - <AUTHOR> http://mebdev.blogspot.com/2011/06/brief-intro-to-writing-macros-in-racket.html

<comment><USER2> Not sure if the author is familiar with this, but I understand this to be the premiere reference to scheme macros:

[http://hipster.home.xs4all.nl/lib/scheme/gauche/define- synta...](http://hipster.home.xs4all.nl/lib/scheme/gauche/define-syntax- primer.txt)

<comment><AUTHOR> the author is not familiar with that. I've had trouble finding good material specific to scheme/racket. thanks for the tip!</comment></comment>


Ask HN: How hard is to start with iOS dev today? - <AUTHOR> Background : I am software engineer with 10+ years of experience with multiple languages/frameworks/platforms. I am competent of picking new things fast.<p>So I ask this question just from the iOS platform/ecosystem complexity side of things. How many things devs today have to tackle to make modern iOS apps with Swift and how complicated the platform is? <comment><USER2> It's not that bad... it all depends on the effort you put into it. If you already have a mac, open iBooks and download "App Development with Swift". Work through the chapters and you will be up and running in no time.</comment>


Which Flask apps in production? - <AUTHOR>

I am interested to know which Flask Application are running in production <comment><USER2> I have built flask apps used in production. It works very well, though dealing with secure sessions requires a bit more work than Im used to.

</comment><comment><USER3> [https://speakerdeck.com/rdegges/opencnam-how-and-why-we- buil...](https://speakerdeck.com/rdegges/opencnam-how-and-why-we-built-a- caller-id-name-api)

</comment><comment><USER4> I think filepicker.io use flask (based on reading some of their posts on HN).

Also, found an ad posting by Tutorspree (YC W11) which uses flask.

</comment><comment><USER5> The folks from <http://atthepool.com> are running Flask in production.

</comment><comment><USER6> lore.com uses Flask for their product.</comment>