Spotify acquires The Echo Nest to build a better music discovery engine - <AUTHOR> http://thenextweb.com/insider/2014/03/06/spotify-acquires-echo-nest-build-better-music-discover-engine/#!yG6lq <comment><USER7> This frightens me. I'm a big Rdio fan and they use Echo Nest as their backend. Has Spotify just found a way to secretly shut them down?

<comment><USER8> Spotify has said they'll honour all standing business arrangements, so I imagine Rdio will have time to move to another provider or try and bring it in house.

<comment><USER9> "We have a rolling one-year contract with you. It's just been renegotiated..."

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Really happy for these guys. :) I consulted with Norwest for technical due diligence during the last fundraising round[1], and was super impressed with what this team has built. Audio classification at scale is a really difficult thing to get right.

They're also one of the few companies who have successfully navigated the minefield of the music business, which takes a painstaking amount of focus and determination. But above all, they created a remarkable service to powering the next-generation of music experiences. Spotify seems like an obvious fit (especially given the Spotify Platform[2]), and I'm really excited to see where they go next.

As an aside, The Echo Nest has been a huge supporter of the start/tech scene in Boston. For 5 years now they organized "Music Hack Day"[3] which brought together musicians and engineers to build fun projects. Here's hoping they keep it up!

[1] [http://www.forbes.com/sites/tomiogeron/2012/07/12/echo- nest-...](http://www.forbes.com/sites/tomiogeron/2012/07/12/echo-nest- raises-17-million-for-big-data-analysis-of-music/)

[2] [https://developer.spotify.com/](https://developer.spotify.com/)

[3] [http://blog.echonest.com/post/66776489063/the-echo- nests-5th...](http://blog.echonest.com/post/66776489063/the-echo-nests-5th- music-hack-day-boston-was-a-roaring)

<comment><USER11> But now they're just "Nextflix data". Let's revisit in a few years and see how open they still are.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> I think this is a disaster. It's an awful, hideous, stupid (stupid for the wider industry) defensive acquisition on Spotify's part, paid for, presumably largely, by stock - I doubt they really have the cash to buy companies of the scale of The Echonest, who have taken close to $30m in investment.

It destroys value in The Echonest - and every other non-consumer-facing music service out there. The beauty of The Echonest was that they DIDN'T sell to punters. And now, they've been bought in a deal paid for (assumption on my part) with made up value, based on an exit some time soon. It's basically a huge signal that Spotify is preparing for an IPO, which will help the major labels (considerable stock holders - and stake holders) realise a return on their early 'in-faith' investment in Spotify - which has been massively rewarded by unbelievable ($100m+) catalogue advances and equity. Streaming doesn't make money. It will - one day - but right now, there is no certainty that Spotify will come out on top, or even as a player in this space in five years, ten years, whatever.

The whole streaming thing has been the biggest wholesale transfer of capital from investors to labels that the music industry has ever seen. Spotify is now "too big to fail". The advances the labels have taken, and the equity they have been given means that it is near impossible for them to let the streaming model of doing business fail. Even if it's currently cannibalistic of their other revenue, and even if there's a huge PR backlash from artists who don't understand that consumption models have changed. The Majors have been given enough _actual cash_ that they can afford to stick it out.

The Echonest is one of the most exciting companies - if not THE most exciting company - in the music space today. They've taken approaching $30m of funding, and I have no idea what Spotify had to pay for a company who are presumably fighting off acquisition on a day by day basis from people who want to become players in the music industry. There are about ten buyers I can imagine would have wanted to beat the highest bidder.

Beats bought Topspin yesterday. A completely pointless acquisition, based, presumably, on Ian Rodgers' history with that company. Today, Spotify announce their acquisition of The Echonest. Neither company has ANYTHING exciting - <USER2> a day to day basis - to report (woo! new interface! woo! more shit headphones! woo! an artist partnership! which our competitors announce tomorrow! woo!) - and apart from the lacklustre launch of Beats earlier in the year, no one in that space has had anything exciting to report in ages.

Streaming music is BORING. It's now pretty much just a commodity service, and it's becoming a very dull market, where the major players have nothing to distinguish themselves. The land grab is over, it's about who can sign what partnerships (people talked about Metcalfe's law with Whatsapp, but there's something similar at play here now - how can we partner with to bring massive numbers of consumers to our service? The landscape changes after Nokia and BOinc fucked that one up, but it won't be long before operators/ISPs try to get back in that game as partners rather than providers...)

CURATION! DISCOVERY! ACCESS! It's boring as hell. How do you announce something and get some press attention? - buy something that IS exciting!

We're looking at a race to the bottom.

Spotify have two or three options with The Echonest; leave it as it is and let it power their competitors discovery engines; take it in house, shut it down for everyone else, and steal a brief competitive march on the other guys; absorb it, keep it as it is, but charge shitloads for the API to other services, generating a real (non-consumer) revenue stream for the company. Any of these, though, it's just sad.

Music streaming is not innovation - it's reached the point that it is just another commoditised service now, and very soon we'll be at the stage that consumers just don't care where their music comes from; it will just be another bundled offering from infrastructure services (mobile, TV, ISP), or businesses like Netflix and Amazon, who are destroying conventional content payment models from the outside in. iTunes Radio, anyone? iOS carplay launched ONLY with audio partners, and iTunes want to steal that market 100%.

Absolutely and without doubt, when Amazon Prime bundles in a streaming service, I will cancel my existing streaming provider contract - because, unlike Lovefilm vs Netflix, there is absolutely no catalogue differentiation. If you're streaming music, you stream ALL the music, not a bit of it - <USER3> that is the way services have been built, not least because of the way the whole digital supply chain in music works. You can't have a BIT of the catalogue - you have all of it. The labels (hello, TV & film studios - <USER4> up!) saw this very early on (or, at least, very early on in this part of the emerging narrative) - the more people who supply their content, the better, and the more money they and the rights holders make.

There are a few really exciting companies for whom The Echonest would have been a perfect target - people with brilliantly complementary data sets that could dovetail with their business. To sell out to an uncertain-futured company like Spotify is just sad.

Sigh.

<comment><USER12> That was quite the skewering.

Please [/shamelessplug] critique the potential of [http://spawnsong.com](http://spawnsong.com) as a music streaming service.

Elon Musk instructed me to elicit bad feedback, and man, do you know how to give it.

<comment><USER13> ^^^Nice way to seize the moment. Interesting website concept. Just a suggestion for the homepage: since the top header is so tall, how about moving the play song links from the bottom of each song-artwork to be a universal play symbol (arrow) overtop the artwork, maybe increasing from translucent to full opacity upon hovering, noting contrast issues with relevant artwork. NOTE: at my 1080p pc monitor and font size settings I dont even see the song title 'above the screen's fold', so you may even want to think about that as well, maybe the same solution as the playbutton using overlay and opacity settings. It is a cool header bg though so dont mess with that, except maybe moving the search box onto it since having it below eats vertical space from the song listings as well.

Last point/question: I'm assuming the $1600 headphone giveaway is for the musicians, not listeners. Good growth tactic but maybe make it more clear OR offer something to listeners as well. I don't know much about the song development process market but maybe implement or communicate something about whats expected/gained from listeners for improving the music (assuming you actually want to help musicians rather than eat their souls lol)

EDIT: minor ui change to song pages: move everything on the separate login page as an embedded form on song pages (above the comments). No need to ask me to click and hope you've integrated with my favorite 3rd party.

EDIT2; Startup based advice: you might want to look into the business model of that site that advertised on thepiratebay using popups autoplaying (fairly decent) music videos of indie artists competing for a prize. Cant remember the name or find it on google, maybe it shutdown? Had a one wordish name derivied from video, definitely started with a V

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> The fact that so many of these online services are basically using The Echo Nest to build their "music discovery" engines (aka their radio option) is a bit unnerving. What's there to differentiate them if they all use the same methods to pick what song they send you...?

Also shameless plug, I got really tired of Spotify, Pandora, last.fm robotic stations and built ([http://www.ssradio.me](http://www.ssradio.me)). 100% NOT powered by Echo Nest.

<comment><USER15> It depends. EchoNest has a similar track feature for any given track, which could trivially be used for playlisting. But it also provides an incredible amount of data. There are countless ways you could create different playlisting algorithms with their APIs.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> One of the technical people at Echo Nest writes some pretty interesting posts about music and how they analyze it. He mentions the acquisition today:

[http://www.furia.com/page.cgi?type=log&id=399](http://www.furia.com/page.cgi?type=log&id=399)

</comment><comment><USER17> I was a QA intern at Echo Nest in Somerville over the summer and was super surprised to see this today! They're a really a fantastic and fun group of people and doing incredible work, having a fun time while they do it.

(Speaking, naturally, only my own opinions here:) I'm excited for the possibilities of growth that it'll offer the company, but also a little nervous about how it'll affect the Nest's ability to serve their other (previous?) clients. I personally signed on with Rdio because I loved the deep Echo Nest integration—I hope that's not going anywhere.

Looking hopefully, but anxiously, towards the future.

<comment><USER18> Hi, I'm curious what are the other applications of Echo Nest API besides music recommendation? Can it assist composers or performance artists in composition? (e.g., input scores of Charlie Parker, output a solo on key of X based on previous known solo's). Can it identify harmonic structures in music? (e.g., which mode is used in song X and in a composition, when a key is changed). I also live in the greater Boston area and has always viewed EchoNest with curiosity, so very curious what you can do with their API other than their "acoustic fingerprinting" (e.g., genre/bpm/key/mood/color etc.)

<comment><USER19> The API has some excellent stuff regarding audio segmentation. It represents any track as a list of ~2,000 segments. Each segment has energy in 12 chromatic bins measured, too. There's also information on beat times, and a Machine-Learning-based estimate of verse/chorus/solo and even more great stuff like that.

Full on auto-transcription like you hint at is a hard AI problem, like speech recognition, which will never by fully solved (according to me), but I, for one, would LOVE to see a musical editor enhanced by EchoNest metadata. One of these days, i'll add to to Audacity hahaha.

BTW, if you are in Boston area, come to the Music-Tech meetup. It's a "gem" and I'll be happy to intro you to the EN API (I worked there 6 years ago as a consultant).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> There's a separate thread discussing the actual Echo Nest post: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7353874](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7353874)

</comment><comment><USER21> I hope Spotify acquire last.fm at some point.

<comment><USER22> Why? How would that help last.fm users?

<comment><USER23> Last.fm has a great neighbor-based recommendation engine. Combine that with Echo Nest's user-based machine learning approach and Spotify's user base, and you have a pretty robust product

<comment><USER22> As a grooveshark user who loves last.fm, i don't like this idea.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> Oh wow! These guys are in Davis Square in Somerville not far from me...I've been working on some idea about the same thing for 4 years now...back then people would laugh at the idea because Pandora was already there. But now?

</comment><comment><USER25> I had just started to dabble with python and echo nest (the remix API if I remember correctly) and now I wonder if their system will still be available or if now it is going to be proprietary/closed.

<comment><USER11> I figure as long as Paul Lamere is around it will stay open.

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> The Echo Nest blog announcement:

[http://blog.echonest.com/post/78749300941/the-echo-nest- join...](http://blog.echonest.com/post/78749300941/the-echo-nest-joins- spotify)

</comment><comment><USER25> This is very interesting, correct me if I'm wrong, but Spotify was one of the power users of echo nest's APIs. Maybe they had to use it so much that they had to acquire it.

<comment><USER20> Correct - IIRC their entire Radio feature is powered by The Echo Nest.

<comment><USER27> I'm sad to hear this, since the Radio feature is pretty bad. I guess that means losing The Echo Nest is no big deal, though.

<comment><USER28> Rdio also uses The Echo Nest for their radio feature, and it's great. I always chalked up Spotify's radio sucking vs. Rdio's radio being so good due to Spotify having shitty integration with The Echo Nest... maybe that will change. One thing that always struck me about Spotify is that they never seemed to put a priority on anything around actual music discovery.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> I think it's crazy that echonest still doesn't have any album information in their api, for building anything to do with music when is album info not useful?

<comment><USER15> Maybe they don't want to duplicate the effort of MusicBrainz. MusicBrainz is about warehousing preexisting metadata (track listings, credits, etc.), whereas EchoNest specializes in using algorithms to extract novel features.

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> Great, this'll probably adversely affect Rdio and I'll have to leave them to go back to Spotify with its shitty mobile apps.

</comment><comment><USER31> Not surprising at all. Echo Nest does a great job solving a not-easy problem. Hope they remain accessible to the public afterwards.

</comment><comment><USER32> Congrats Brian, Tristan and Jim!

<comment><USER19> Yes, a good example of sticking with an idea and growing it slowly and steadily for years and years and years! Also, of pivoting and sticking to business-to-business solutions.

Earlier on, their projects involved creative remixing of music, but they extinguished them in favor of supporting other businesses [1]. _We should all take a cue from them!_

[1] But there is still lots of creativity which takes place at their hackathons! [http://blog.echonest.com/post/69095723329/automatic-music- ha...](http://blog.echonest.com/post/69095723329/automatic-music-hackathon- music-that-plays-itself)

</comment></comment><comment><USER33> Spotify and similar disservices mean death to a culture of music.

Like Carthage, it is my opinion that Spotify and the music /industry/ founded on copy-theft must be burned down.

<comment><USER34> I've felt the same but the syllogism path is hard to explain. Basically, many of these services are founded the same way Amazon was founded - <USER5> unsustainable and then hoping something magic happens to make it sustainable later. Amazon wouldn't have survived without the dotcom scene going crazy and they barely got through to the other side. The music services exist by seeking to convince end users that they are entitled to "mostly free" music, and they only reason they can supply that service is with debt funding. Their hopes is that the appetite they instill in the end user will give the business enough support to argue favorable licensing terms from labels and the government.

So when that happens, the party that hurts is the songwriter. You already have way too many people believing the canard that an indie songwriter should only expect to make money through touring and merchandise, and never from their recording efforts. That opinion is self-serving and pushed by those services "use your songs as a marketing expense!" when it is actually supposed to be the musician's livelihood.

So what happens when a musician gets less and less likelihood of getting any kind of financial remuneration from their actual songwriting? It's a disincentive to focusing on original craftsmanship, and an incentive to focus on churning out greater volumes of homogenous crap in an effort to capture a very tiny piece of a very large homogenous pie.

The end result from the perspective of the listener is that they never experience the counterfactual; they never know what they're missing. Sure, you might be enjoying that latest "indie" piece that is really just a max martin form with a decemberists diphthong singing tone combined with a couple of dubstep beats, but is that _really_ original?

<comment><USER19> You've got some good points, but I actually believe it's a bit bleaker :)

I believe the role of the musician is too important to be simply cast as a typical capitalist job- e.g. do it 40 hours and get a salary. Although I'll accept this until the rest of sedentary culture reforms (not likely in this life).

The problem is our celebrity culture. We turn our efforts away from the 1000s of less famous musicians around us to the handful of celebrity musicians.

Classical music culture, with its reverence and deification of a handful of sponsored artists, provides the template for rock music. Hip hop culture successfully followed the template. Jazz mainly dodged it. Recorded media (sheet music and the record) catalyzed it.

Any technological aid to music culture can be judged by whether it leads to the (imo benevolent) fractioning of music - the re-directing of attention toward our immediate musicians - or whether it leverages and bolsters the celebrity culture. Any capitalistic enterprise is blind - or farcical - <USER6> these ends and will randomly support whatever ends lead to its own survival. However, this randomness must be biased toward existing resources, e.g. if not doing well, support the thread of celebrity culture to survive. This pattern continues for the individual musician, too, as you point out.

So, from this perspective, I appreciate services which connect individuals with musicians of their choosing, but it's not like connecting people to Primary Care Physicians, a geographically-constrained problem. Instead, it facilitates people following their own flawed decision-making processes, following the crowds. So it becomes an issue of individual freedom, which I adore, even though so many people will not use it optimally for themselves.</comment></comment></comment>


No, banks do not have a magic wand that creates money out of thin air - <AUTHOR> https://www.attejuvonen.fi/money-out-of-thin-air/ <comment><USER2> I found this article to be unnecessarily complex. Can banks and lending institutions create money out of thin air? Contrary to the title of this article, in the US the answer is yes. Money is created by the "stroke of a pen" on the ledgers of accredited/regulated banks in the US banking system. In fact, that's primarily where "money" is created, and not on printing presses at Federal mint buildings.

<comment><AUTHOR> This is incorrect. The title of the article does not contradict this statement. The title does not claim that money is not created, it states that banks need no magic powers to create money. Can you see the difference? If you actually read the article, you will find that it agrees with your statement.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> This article insinuates that money is not created out of thin air under the assumption that the thing being created is an IOU and therefore not money.

Duck typing, however, begs to differ, and the "fractional" part of "fractional reserve" is in practice quite small compared to the value that banks keep up in the air. The entire system as well runs on the basis of Statistical multiplexing.

Assume for a moment $100 dollars was printed. Ever. 100 people want a loan of 1 dollar, and various banks deem these people trustworthy enough to go ahead with it. Everyone else in the world has deposited %'s of a cent, which are Federally Insured. Meaning that regardless of bank runs, the taxpayer of the United States takes on an onus to make sure any FDIC insured institution's deposits are covered and returned in the event of a bank folding. However, let's say our banks all had all 100 of their granted $1 loans withdrawn, Just before everyone else decided they wanted their money back. $200 worth of real monetary payout obligation just popped up out of nowhere, and there's only $100 of cold hard cash in existence.

Ruh ro, Raggy.

This is the Fairy Dust. If you hold the banking system upside down, and drain it of ALL the combined value of all deposits, then line that up with what everyone _should_ have, somebody is going home disappointed. Finance in general works though, because by and large, people don't want to deal with the hassle of looking after all that cash. All the accounting, and remembering safe combinations, the risk of presenting too tempting a target for N'er-do- wells, and the constant being pestered by friends and family for money! Ack! No one has time for that!

So they delegate it to banks. Banks then amongst themselves tend to be able to service everyone's immediate needs, statistically speaking, up to a point. What happens at that point is where the controversy exists because even "blessed" banks capable of printing money will find that their money they just spent so much time printing is only good in as much as people are willing to have faith in it that it is worth something and will be honored by everyone around them tomorrow. This is the Fairy Dust. The Long Con. The great lie, the Circular Reasoning at the core of Finance.

"Here, have some money. I made it today. You can probably do X with it."

"What about tomorrow? Or if you make more money? Or if you do something stupid?"

"Stop asking questions like that and go buy some bread."

Arguing that it isn't the commercial bank "creating" money when the money creation process is essentially managed via an indirection mechanism is a bit disingenuous, and just reiterating how the money creation process is still essentially arbitrary, and performed via indirection doesn't do anything to remedy

A) A growing crisis of faith with the entire edifice's seeming inability to favorably create positive results across the board.

B) the fact people see a spigot and tend to grab on to the easiest solution in their minds of just turning it on and adding more without realizing that the thing coming out of the spigot doesn't really matter, what really matters is the _trust_ between people to make good on their promises which is what Fiat currency is meant to be a symbolic representation of in the first place.

C) The very real challenge that it may just be that there is a fyndamentally structural problem with transaction activity overall that results in accumulation of capital in a handful of places due to misalignment of priorities with regard to keeping money changing hands.

Label Start No trust->no room for doing good business. No good business->nothing gets done, or gets done so poorly that the outputs cannot be sustained without a disproportionate investment of input. Nothing gets done well->people get pissy, and lose trust. Goto Start.

Finance is faith. Mammon writ large. If we try to underpin society on finance alone instead of a commitment that the outcome of us (as a society) being alive should be the creation of a better world for us all having been here, the entire house of cards falls apart.

<comment><AUTHOR> > This article insinuates that money is not created out of thin air under the > assumption that the thing being created is an IOU and therefore not money.

This is patently false. If you actually read the article, it says very clearly (multiple times) that the IOUs created by banks are money.</comment></comment>


Maxwell's equations lead to discovery of Dyakonov–Voigt surface waves - <AUTHOR> https://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/10.1098/rspa.2019.0317 <comment><USER2> 1 better, wrap lower 1/3 of crystal with the following in this order.24 carrot gold leaf .99 silver wire,pure copper wire,aluminum wire and steel wire,place the crystal in the sun with largest window facing south. Watch what happens to the skies ,seeing is believing</comment>


Core_bench: better micro-benchmarks through linear regression (2014) - <AUTHOR> https://blog.janestreet.com/core_bench-micro-benchmarking-for-ocaml/ <comment><AUTHOR> Couple of things I found interesting:

> 2: Time.now is an expensive function that takes a while to execute and > typically requires control transfer to a VDSO. (On my older laptop this > takes 800+ nanos to run. On more expensive server class machines, I have > seen numbers as low as 40 nanos.)

Then there is system noise for which you still need a large sample size, and the result has a high variation and we haven't still accounted for GC.

So they do this:

> This brings us to how Core_bench works: Core_bench runs f in increasing > batch sizes and reports the estimated time of f () by doing a linear > regression. In the simplest case, the linear regression uses execution time > as the predicted variable and batch size as the predictor. Several useful > properties follow as a consequence...

While we're on the topic of benchmarking, what is the best way to to do micro- benchmarks for Javascript code (both Node and browser)? I tried node --prof, but the report is a little difficult to parse. Chrome's performance tab would've been helpful, but it doesn't seem to profile WebWorkers.

<comment><USER2> > On more expensive server class machines, I have seen numbers as low as 40 > nanos.

That's pretty unusual. Usually larger NUMA systems take longer to retrieve time than single socket consumer ones. They need to synchronize between multiple sockets.

<comment><USER3> Unnecessary in the general case.

RDTSC is the assembly instruction needed to read the current timestamp for the current core (not necessarily synchronized to the whole system). Modern RDTSCs do NOT read the cycle-count, because frequencies change due to "Turbo Boosts" and other such optimizations. (See here for more details: [https://randomascii.wordpress.com/2011/07/29/rdtsc-in-the- ag...](https://randomascii.wordpress.com/2011/07/29/rdtsc-in-the-age-of- sandybridge/))

A modern RDTSC reads at the "base clock". If your base clock is 3.6 GHz, the RDTSC ticks at 3.6GHz (even if your processor can turbo to 4GHz or 5GHz like the i9-9900k). So RDTSC is not the same from processor-to-processor, but it is consistently the most granular micro-benchmarking clock available on x86 systems.

The main issue with RDTSC is that task-switches may cause your thread of execution to change cores or mess up your timing, especially in long runs. So Windows / Linux have higher-level performance counters that take task switches into account, but have lower granularity. For Windows, this is "QueryPerformanceCounter", which ticks on my system at roughly 3MHz. Still useful for microbenchmarks, and the guarantee for cross-thread behavior is useful more often than not.

Microsoft documents "QueryPerformanceCounter" as using rdtsc in most cases. [https://docs.microsoft.com/en- us/windows/desktop/dxtecharts/...](https://docs.microsoft.com/en- us/windows/desktop/dxtecharts/game-timing-and-multicore-processors)

The rdtsc instruction seems to take ~40 clocks or so according to Agner Fog's instruction tables. Suggesting you can get a high-speed clock in as little as 10ns on a 4GHz x86 computer should you use the raw assembly instruction.

Add a few nanoseconds for a function call, setting up the stack, and some math to "normalize" the rdtsc clock... and the CPUID to clear out pipelines... and 50ns total seems reasonable.

There are some slower clocks available from the motherboard or I/O system. But those should be avoided unless you are running a 2008-era x86 processor (Aka: Nehalem/Westmere. The only Intel processor with "Turbo" frequencies which changed RDTSC timing). Older systems don't have turbo, newer systems lock RDTSC to the base clock.

\</comment></comment></comment><comment></comment><comment>

Anyway, I'm no Javascript guru. But surely there's a way to pass the RDTSC instruction "up" from the assembly level to Javascript code? Or alternatively, maybe an OS-level timer function that's built on top of RDTSC. (QueryPerformanceCounter in windows, or CLOCK_MONOTONIC_RAW in Linux)

<comment><USER2> > Microsoft documents "QueryPerformanceCounter" as using rdtsc in most cases. > [https://docs.microsoft.com/en- > us/windows/desktop/dxtecharts/...](https://docs.microsoft.com/en- > us/windows/desktop/dxtecharts/..).

And the cases when it doesn't is when it's running on more than two CPU sockets. Then it'll fall back on other timers that can take even microseconds to query.</comment></comment>


Decentralized Autonomous Organization – the value of early contribution - <AUTHOR> I am trying to figure out the best way to reward early contributors during the development phase of a DAO. The DAO has gotten some funding already but not enough to reward people with fiat money only. The "salary" needs to comprise of mainly future pretokens. This might be a good solution when we don't know how big the "pie" will be. Pretokens will be converted to stakeholder tokens at the point of valuation of the project, during ICO or open investment stage. These tokens are for investment and will be traded on exchanges with the potential of upscale or downscale depending on the success of the project.
Now, the questions are:
1. what is the value of the contributor's time in pretokens. If a contributor would earn $100k/year in a "normal" company what would be the real value of her/his salary? For example, a 10% fiat-90% pretoken ratio taking into account the future value, risk of failure etc. The planned start date of the token trading on exchanges is 1 year from now.
2. If contributors are all around the world, should we consider the location when we set the salary or should it be universal?
3. How should we track the hours worked? <comment><USER2> 1\. Just like any other startup, you're either paid salary or equity ( shares or options ) or some combination. Salary is considered mostly risk-less, you get paid on some schedule and you're never going to lose more than a paycheck. Equity is considerably more risky ( as the value of that equity can go to zero - in fact odds say that it will MOST LIKELY go to zero ), and for taking that risk, your potential upside should CONSIDERABLE so as to make that option a worthwhile endeavor. I view the "tokens" or whatnot as equity, and I think they should be treated as such.

2\. It's not unheard of to consider location ( and therefore cost of living ) when setting salary / equity... in all fairness I personally think it should be universal instead. My argument is why should someone get paid more for CHOOSING to live somewhere more expensive? Shall I then just CHOOSE to live in a castle in Singapore and get paid exponentially more than the guy sharing a one room apartment in Nicaragua?

3\. The honor system should be your go-to solution there, I mean if you can't trust your workers then what? That fact aside, why does the hours worked even matter? Shouldn't compensation be based on total value created for the company instead?

Just my 2 cents, hope it helps you.

( edited some typos )

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for your answer, it absolutely makes sense. Would you happen to have any insights into what a considerable potential upside should be in this case i.e. what percentage salary can help cover the risk given that 90% of the contributor's salary will be in future pretokens, or any commonly used model which could be applied to the DAO system would be highly appreciated. Thanks again ConcernedCoder!

<comment><USER2> I wish I had a good answer for you but I don't. There are just too many unkowns, but I'll do my best to lay out what I consider "fair" and some of the unknowns that I think play into the calculations:

1\. Longevity - will people buy into the concept and the token or whatever? will the project even be completed? For established projects with many participating people / developers / companies - This multiplier might only be 2,3 or 5x... i.e. Ethereum has many owners of eth, miners, pools and technologies that rely on it like token coins, etc... whereas mySuperUnknownCoinThatDoesntEvenExistYet might not even have a whitepaper, in fact it might only exist on the back-of-a-napkin or the creator/inventors own mind... multipliers up to 1000x come to mind.

2\. Value - What's the value proposition and why is that valuable? Do/would people even agree that it's valuable and want it? Can people exchange real currency for it? Is there a way to cash out? - consider a well known crypto like bitcoin or ether where so many people have assigned value to it, that other companies have sprung up to participate in the idea, and even financial institutions are creating products around it... then observe that even in that case there's still so much volatility in its perceived value you couldn't be sure that getting paid 10k worth of tokens today would be worth 10k next year/month/or week. again multipliers from 2x to 2000x seem reasonable... ( possible solutions/mitigations? payments in "credits of value" or something maybe where you'd credit 10k of value to a person, and someday if the project doesn't go to hell, they can cash-out 10k worth of whatever. )

3\. Early vs late participation - this goes back to how well the thing is established and how much work is left to be done. Just like any other startup if I'm employee #2 vs. employee #200 there's a big difference in the amount of upside I should be looking at. ( anything goes here for multipliers - this is more of a negotiation point, but maybe set something up for the 1st 1-5 employees to get 500-1000x upside? 6-20 100-200x ? who knows )

Anyway you'd have to take 1,2, and 3 into consideration, add up all the multipliers then lets say you were going to pay someone like me 100k of value as your 1st coding hire ( let's say employee #2 or technical co-founder) for a person/year of work...if I worked for you for 10 years with no raises I could expect to get paid 1 million. ( realize I can take part of that cash and invest it, making perhaps at least 10% a year ) Now if you wanted to pay me like 10k in cash, and 90k in "credit" or "stock options" or equity-whatever... that 90k of value today can't be invested, and might be worth ZERO in 10 years, so I think it should have something like a potential upside of 100x-1000x or 9million-90million in 10 years on a successful exit... which could be getting bought or even going public. which is exactly like going to las vegas and "investing" in the roulette wheel of startups... you put one dollar on a number and spin... with any luck you win 36x your bet :) but mostly you just waste time and money...</comment></comment></comment>


Dear API developers, some new Mashape updates - <AUTHOR> http://blog.mashape.com/mashape-updates

<comment><USER2> Auto-generation of client APIs seems really cool.. I would like to see it implemented in other languages, like Java!</comment>


Japan Discovers Large Precious Metal Deposit in Seabed - <AUTHOR> http://www.tokyotimes.com/2012/japan-makes-amazing-discovery-in-the-pacific/

<comment><USER2> This article keeps rearing its head every 6 months/year, even on HN (<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1886895>).

It will be a very long time before mining the seabed for rare earth minerals will be anywhere near as economically viable (or even environmentally- friendly) as traditional mining.

It is just that everyone has relied on China for so long for this dirty (literal sense) industry that they are now effectively being held hostage. It is not due to the fact that "rare earth minerals" are actually rare and for a large part of the 20th century, the US, for example, was one of the primary producers and exporters.

<comment><USER3> It does seem like there has been progress made/realistic goals in mind. I submitted this Times piece earlier today: [http://www.nytimes.com/2012/07/10/science/vast-deposits- of-g...](http://www.nytimes.com/2012/07/10/science/vast-deposits-of-gold-and- other-ores-lure-seabed-miners.html?hp)

There are contracts for delivery in place: Meanwhile, Tong Ling, China's largest importer of copper concentrates and one of the world's largest copper smelters, recently signed a deal with Nautilus for more than a million tons of Pacific sulfide ores per year — an amount equal to about 5 percent of the world's copper production.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> From original post: "mud samples taken from the seabed around 5,600 metres (18,300 feet) down"

The techniques to extract these deposits would likely be similar to deep sea oil extraction. Their proposed timeline of production in five years is optimistic, especially given these are just the initial samples.

Original post: [http://news.yahoo.com/japan-finds-major-rare-earth- deposits-...](http://news.yahoo.com/japan-finds-major-rare-earth-deposits- researcher-091926573--finance.html)

</comment><comment><USER5> Fascinating, not sure if you can easily mine the stuff underwater though.

<comment><USER6> It seems reasonable to assume that we'll develop the technology to do so in the not so distant future...

<comment><USER5> Really? It was looking to me like the Mountain Pass mine would re-open and once a 'stable' supply was available again it would reduce investment in alternate supplies.

I've seen research into replacing rare-earths with other more common materials but haven't seen any serious work into underwater mining (except the fringe stuff where people are pulling gold out of seawater but that doesn't seem 'well funded' to me).

Do you know of any underwater mining projects other than the Scripps Institute and Woods Hole ones?</comment></comment></comment>


Dartboard-Driven Design - <AUTHOR> http://www.codingthewheel.com/archives/dartboard-driven-design

<comment><USER2> Though this isn't a particularly interesting blog entry, Coding the Wheel otherwise has some of the best programming posts I've read on the web. The rest of the content is worth checking out. (Especially for the Poker Bot tutorial series.)</comment>


Mumbai girl arrested for Facebook post - <AUTHOR> http://www.mumbaimirror.com/article/2/2012111920121119043152921e12f57e1/In-Palghar-cops-book-21yearold-for-FB-post.html <comment><USER3> Bal Thackeray or communal politics is not the issue here. It is the freedom of expression of individuals. The Chairman of Press Club of India had an article on The Hindu (a national daily) which painted Thackeray in a bad light ([http://www.thehindu.com/opinion/op-ed/why-i-cant-pay- tribute...](http://www.thehindu.com/opinion/op-ed/why-i-cant-pay-tribute-to- thackeray/article4108839.ece)) - but the state won't act as recklessly against him as they have against these two.

Recent events in the country that sets the alarm bells ringing:

\- Kapil Sibal (minister of communication) doesn't understand the internet. He wants active censorship of online media - <http://www.labnol.org/india/censorship-in-india/20527/>.

\- An individual was arrested from his home at 5am due to a tweet he made alleging the son of an Indian minister was corrupt. He had 16 followers. [http://www.thehindu.com/news/national/iac-volunteer- tweets-h...](http://www.thehindu.com/news/national/iac-volunteer-tweets- himself-into-trouble-faces-three-years-in-jail/article4051769.ece)

And now this - both the individual who made the post on FB and her friend who 'like'd it has been arrested. This abuse of power in a country with a lot more urgent problems to solve.

This very much seems to be a generation gap between people in positions of power (politicians, bureaucrats, police) who are not used to the internet and the way it gives voice to everyone.

I can only hope that as internet becomes ubiquitous across the country, people will realize the value of free speech and the need for an uncensored internet.

<comment><USER4> As fun as it is to think everyone thinks like americans... Does India have and promote the ideal of "Freedom of Expression"? Or is this just the US peanut gallery giving their 2 cents on other peoples' culture?

<comment><USER5> When I was in India, I found it interesting that the Indian concept of Freedom of Religion (which they've had off and on for much much longer than the US) is actually equality of religion in the eyes of the state rather than separation of church and state. So, different religions have different laws that apply to them. That's a very alien concept to Americans.

Even Britain doesn't have a guarantee of freedom of speech like the US, particularly when it comes to hate speech.

The American lens is a foggy one, even excluding the fact that the rights we guarantee our citizens aren't necessarily the rights we grant citizens of other nations. It's a good thing to keep in mind.

But yes, India DOES promote the idea of freedom of expression and it's been a fundamental part of its culture for much longer than the United States has existed. Nobel prize winning economist Amartya Sen has a great book on the history of dissent in Indian history and how it's a cornerstone of India's culture and democracy: [http://www.amazon.com/Argumentative-Indian-Writings- History-...](http://www.amazon.com/Argumentative-Indian-Writings-History- Identity/dp/031242602X)

<comment><USER6> >> _different religions have different laws that apply to them_

That's incorrect and somewhat misleading. It's rather such as - certain parts of (minor subset) some civil laws or _family laws_ come under respective _personal laws_ based upon religion/tribe &c. Like _Hindu Marriage Act, Hindi Code Bills, various succession acts_ &c.

Remaining (most) part is a uniform civil code. However, it can be noted that in case of criminal matters - AFAIK - Indian constitution doesn't discriminate, in any manner, at least on paper.

Politics - both religious and generic - is embedded to everything in India, even laws. There's a landmark _Shah Bano_ case where Supreme Court of India overruled the verdict given by Muslims' holy book which was as interpreted by clerics which is often misleading as in any religions. The interesting part here was that the court was compelled to quote from their Holy book Quran in the verdict - an _aayat_ (like some sort of support) - as it was a very sensitive matter.

<comment><USER5> If it's incorrect it's certainly misleading. But it's not incorrect. It may be misleading.

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polygamy_in_India>

There are clearly different laws that apply to different religious groups when it comes to polygamy and other, as you say, family or civil laws.

I wasn't trying to say that the entire legal system in India is bifurcated (multifurcated? =P) along religious lines. I was just pointing out that while the American legal system attempts to exclude religion from the law (to varying degrees of success), Indian tradition includes laws which take into account various religious traditions and customs.

It's just a different way of treating the issue of freedom of religion in the legal system.

<comment><USER6> Correct facts can be used to mislead. Why I said _misleading_ was not primarily because I thought or maybe assumed (as I am no legal expert myself) but because the way you made a sweeping statement which might have been either done knowingly or merely in the flow of writing that comment you included the line. Incorrect because it was actually incorrect and when I wrote the comment I didn't have Set Theory in mind.

I just wanted to clarify the scenarios where laws are intertwined with religion, tribes or caste. Regarding the last term _caste_ I have not been able to find any instance but have read in articles that there are such provisions.

I would like to add that your mention of _Polygamy in India_ needs few lines - it's not enforced in India until and unless you are someone famous where people take interest out of the celebrity nature and hence state intervenes or the case/issue has blown up. It's present even in religions other than Islam. It's 'sort of' legal in most of the tribes based on _tradition_ (this term often comes up in all sorts of legal cases in this country and is given importance) and it's common in rural areas.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I shared this story on my fb account and got a veiled threat in 30 minutes. This is what I posted: "21 old year girl arrested for opposing Mumbai bandh on her Facebook status! 2000 Shiv Sainiks vandalize her Uncle's clinic. Another girl was arrested for liking the status! This is horrible. I blame all the people on facebook and in real world who patronize such violent and undemocratic forces. So much for free speech! The youth of this country are pushed down from all directions every day. Are we supposed to just sit and take it? Today it was Shiv Sena who did this, a fringe party. A few days ago it was Congress cabinet minister's son. What happens if every Political Party starts doing this? How long are we going to sleep? I never say this : Share !!". Note that this person was a well educated guy from my convent school. The extremism in my country is appalling.

</comment><comment><USER8> Although this girl might be arrested today, this general trend (growing accessibility to information) will show more and more people that there is a world beyond their immediate experience and what they are being told by people like Bal is false. Bal Thackeray was a bigot. He sought and exploited communal tensions and it's a shame that one can't openly criticize such a reprehensible person. Furthermore, his party Shiv Sena "operates as a network of street gangs" and is holds ideology which isn't far from the Tea Party in America.

<comment><USER9> While Bal Thakare's politics might be irrelevant in todays times. Do not forget that he was the only voice common people had when Communists/Islamists ruled the streets and the Socialist Congress government ruled as helpless as ever.

When China invaded India, the communist party in India was calling nationwide protests "in support of china" and was running "fund raising drives". That was the first time Bal Thakare turned from a cartoonist to a mass leader.

The political party was truly formed when Islamists forced the central government to change Indian constitution to apply horrible Islamic Sharia law to ensure that a 60 year old lady divorced after 40 years of marriage will not get any alimony from her rich husband. Muslims across the mumbai would then celebrate their victory by blocking the traffic and holding Namaz on streets.

Bal Thakare seemed to be the only voice weaker sections of society had that time. Yes, like all other organizations even Shiv Sena was not perfect and many times local goons and mafias joined this party for their own gains but more or less this party remains much more faithful to common people than the other parties.

1\. [<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shah_Bano_case>] 2\. [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Communist_Party_of_India#Commun...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Communist_Party_of_India#Communists_after_independence)]

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> The chairman of Press Council of India and has written to the Chief Minister of the state of Mumbai (Maharashtra) to intervene and sort out this issue citing "freedom of speech" Article 19 (1)(a) of the Indian constitution [0].

[0] [http://ibnlive.in.com/news/katju-writes-to-maha-cm-on- arrest...](http://ibnlive.in.com/news/katju-writes-to-maha-cm-on-arrest-of- girl-for-thackeray-fb-update/306295-3.html)

<comment><USER11> This should be upvoted more, as the "Chairman" is "Justice Markandey Katju" whose legal opinion in this matter is credible. Not only does he say that the arrests are against freedom of speech which is "a guaranteed fundamental right", he says that the arrests are criminal according to law too.

Quoting the full paragraph here -

"" In the letter addressed to Chavan, Justice Katju has written: "It is alleged that she has been arrested for allegedly hurting religious sentiments. To my mind it is absurd to say that protesting against a bandh hurts religious sentiments. Under Article 19(1)(a) of our Constitution, freedom of speech is a guaranteed fundamental right. We are living in a democracy, not a fascist dictatorship. In fact this arrest itself appears to be a criminal act since under sections 341 and 342 it is a crime to wrongfully arrest or wrongfully confine someone who has committed no crime. ""

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> News emerging that the girls have been granted bail, an enquiry has been initiated. The local cops may also be in trouble for their action [0]. Good going!

[0] <https://twitter.com/sreenivasanjain>

       SreenivasanJain: Both girls initially sent to judicial custody, then granted bail.

       SreenivasanJain: Maharashtra police HQ has ordered enquiry into girls' arrest. Says will look into merits of charges.

       SreenivasanJain: IG Konkan will head inquiry. Prima facie police HQ says no basis for arresting the girls. Say local cops jumped the gun.

</comment><comment><USER12> A co-worker in Mumbai also made some controversial statements on Facebook. He's absolutely fine, but just about every one of his friends scolded him for being so brazen. I was out of the city for the weekend, but by all accounts it was a terrible place to be.

This news is not terribly surprising, though as many have said, likely not true. It is extremely indicative of the immense gap between India and more developed nations.

</comment><comment><USER13> The story is false [https://twitter.com/SreenivasanJain/status/27039450506319462...](https://twitter.com/SreenivasanJain/status/270394505063194624)

<comment><AUTHOR> Really ? The guy tweeting seems legit but even timesofindia has this story: [http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/india/21-year-old-girl- ar...](http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/india/21-year-old-girl-arrested-for- Facebook-post-slamming-Bal-Thackeray/articleshow/17276979.cms)

Also the vandalism of the clinic definitely happened.

<comment><USER14> the text is the same, they could just be reposting it from mumbaimirror without a lot fact checking

<comment><AUTHOR> That's quite possible, the copy paste is quite obvious though I don't know for sure which way it went. I don't know who this tweet is from or his credibility so I'll just leave it up in the air for now.

It's still alarming that they were vandalized over a facebook post and the police is looking into possible criminal liability.

Also, the news reports talk specifically of what sections of law the girls were booked under. Doesn't sound so fake because of that.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Am I the only one who finds it ironic that it was the girl who got booked under "Section 295 (a) of the IPC (for hurting religious sentiments)" - <USER2> speech laws?

<comment><USER16> Well people on HN in general wouldnt be aware of Bal Thackeray . So the irony would be lost on them .

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> No girl's arrested. They just made up the story to stop negative online trend related to Bal Thackeray. His death made a lot of people to start a worthless debate on facebook and twitter.

<comment><USER10> > _His death made a lot of people to start a worthless debate on facebook and > twitter._

First, the girl is arrested and that's confirmed. Second, it is not for you & me to decide how people use their personal Facebook and Twitter accounts. You and I get no say in it - if they want to indulge in 'worthless debates' they should be allowed to. In addition, that should not be held against them in any sort of way.

<comment><USER18> > _if they want to indulge in 'worthless debates' they should be allowed to._

Calling a debate "worthless" is not the same as disallowing such debates.

Just like one has the right to engage in debates (worthless or not), one also has the right to call out such debates when they are deemed worthless.

<comment><USER19> Tilting at windmills, don quixote?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> This just in : The girl has indeed been arrested . Saw this on NDTV journalist Sreenivasan Jains twitter feed.

</comment><comment><USER10> This story is now confirmed by a more credible source [0,1].

[0] [https://twitter.com/sreenivasanjain/status/27045889419368448...](https://twitter.com/sreenivasanjain/status/270458894193684480)

[1] [https://twitter.com/sreenivasanjain/status/27045900751119564...](https://twitter.com/sreenivasanjain/status/270459007511195648)

</comment><comment><USER20> Its sad that the freedom of speech for a individual has been erased by misuing the laws which were actually meant to provide justice. The arrest and the eventual ransacking of the victim's uncles clinic by the supporters of Balasahab Thackeray, may have very less to justify the act.

I wonder if they would even reflect upon the fact that would the supremo himself support such expressions and outbursts by his partymen and followers. No wonder the signs of the party cracking up are showing and i hope this case becomes a eye opener given that internet has got a wide reach and educates the young to chose the law makers more sensibly.

</comment><comment><USER21> Her Facebook page (Cached version): [http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:www.fac...](http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:www.facebook.com/shaheen.dhada.7)

</comment><comment><USER22> This is India, a country where rights exist only on paper. Rights materialize only where people have knowledge and power to defend them. Unfortunately India is a long way from there.

</comment><comment><USER23> _Police on Sunday arrested a 21-year-old girl_

A 21 year old _girl_..

<comment><USER24> Indian English treats 'girl' as equal to 'woman' in most contexts. Likewise 'boy' == 'man'. as seen in marital partners ads '41 year old boy seeks 35 year old girl ... '

(fwiw I don't think there's anything wrong with that. Indian newspapers should use the local flavor, rather than trying to conform to (say) US English)

<comment><USER23> That's very intriguing. I was wondering if it was diminution based on gender but if they're doing it for everyone, that makes it more interesting.

</comment></comment></comment><comment> guard-of-terra I hope this "Bal Thackeray" is happy now too: he caused two girls to be arrested. I hope he is happy too wherever he is now. What nice way to go out with the bang!

<comment><USER25> Lets not bring one particular politician into discussion here. Question is IT laws and freedom of speech. Not the greatness of certain politician!

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> There is high possibility of this being true, but still news is only as good as its source.

</comment><comment> guard-of-terra I hope that people who still think religions "make people better than they would otherwise be" are happy now.

<comment><USER27> When you generalize like that you're being narrow minded as the people you're criticizing. Instead, like Feynman, you should take what's best from religion to improve yourself, and ignore the rest. History shows the average human being is stupid, so don't be average.

<comment><USER28> Well, would you disagree with that the world would be a better place without religion in this day and age?

<comment><USER29> It depends. I would say that religions give a lot of people a meaningful life by providing values, hope and guidance on what they should aspire to. But there are always those on the extreme fringes, who make the rest look bad.

<comment><USER30> That's what they _claim_ to give. And many of those people actually believe this, to the point of assuming that anyone who is not religious has no values or morals, and is obviously driven completely by hedonism.

The question is not "what role does religion fulfil", but rather, "if religion wasn't there, would things have been better?". Because, e.g. many recreational drugs ALSO provide values, hope, and guidance (on one hand), and some religions like Mormonism and Scientology also provide them, but apparently forbid leaving them (read about excommunicating in either) to the point that I find unacceptable in a society.

Disregarding the obstacle of definition of religion vs. e.g. cult vs. value system[1], my opinion would be, based on observing mostly-religious states vs. mostly-secular states (like Sweden and Norway), would be that value provided by religion is a net negative.

[1] if you insist, I will say that beleief X is a religion iff there's a government of a country with >10M residents that accepts it as a religion for the purpose of its law. Specific definition is immaterial - they will all coincide for 99% of the population, and will have essentially no effect in the grand scheme of things.

<comment><USER31> > based on observing mostly-religious states vs. mostly-secular states

Be careful. I think the general consensus about these observations is that what's happening is that less stable and secure societies tend to make people more religious, rather than that religion tends to make societies less stable and secure.

<comment><USER30> > I think the general consensus about these observations is that what's > happening is that less stable and secure societies tend to make people more > religious

I am not aware of this consensus, but it is entirely unrelated to my claim: The supposed benefits of religion are nil, because comparable countries that essentially eschew religion fare at least as well, and usually way better than those that do not.

I did not make any claim about the relation between stability and religion. Swedes and Norwegians, as nations, are the best educated, best nourished, among the healthiest, with virtually no crime compared to e.g. the US or Italy. What exactly are the positive benefits that you get from religion that you do not get without?

<comment><USER31> It is related to your claim, because it provides an alternative explanation.

Observation: Various measures of societal health are correlated with lack of religion.

Explanation #1: Religion is bad for society.

Explanation #2: Bad society is good for religion.

Both explanations are at least somewhat plausible (religion is bad for society because believing falsehoods is morally corrosive, or because religions are full of ideas founded in old moral systems that we no longer endorse, or whatever; societal ill-health is good for religion because people in difficult situations will turn to anything that seems to offer comfort, or because when things are really hard the gods really do help, or whatever). In particular, the plausibility of explanation #2 means you can't just leap from the observation to explanation #1.

For the avoidance of doubt, I am not claiming any particular benefits for religion. I'm an uncompromising atheist myself. I just don't like plausible but unsound arguments, and "The Scandinavian countries are great places and also very irreligious, therefore religion isn't good for you" is, I think, a plausible but unsound argument: it could equally be that their irreligiousness is an effect, not a cause, of their education, good health, low crime, etc.

(On the other hand, "The Scandinavian countries are great places and also very irreligious, therefore religion isn't vital for a healthy society as some religious people claim it is" is a perfectly good argument, and one I've used myself.)

[EDITED to add, on the subject of that putative consensus: see e.g. <http://edge.org/3rd_culture/paul07/paul07_index.html>, a single article but one written by two of the biggest names in the field, Gregory Paul and Phil Zuckerman. "To put it starkly, the level of popular religion is not a spiritual matter, it is actually the result of social, political and especially economic conditions [...] Mass rejection of the gods invariably blossoms in the context of the equally distributed prosperity and education found in almost all 1st world democracies. [...] Mass faith prospers solely in the context of the comparatively primitive social, economic and educational disparities and poverty still characteristic of the 2nd and 3rd worlds and the US." I should perhaps emphasize that GP and PZ here are talking about the origins of large-scale popular religiosity; individuals' decisions are, well, more individual and it certainly isn't true that all religious people are that way because their messed-up societies make them look for supernatural aid.]

<comment><USER30> Thanks for a long and detailed response. Really appreciated.

But I want to reiterate, that I only ever claimed "sum (religion benefits) <= 0", which I believe is equivalent to your statement that "religion isn't vital" (or rather, "religion isn't helpful"). At no way did I imply any other cause and effect relation other than the one implicit in this statement.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Android Stagefright Flaws Put Estimated 950M Devices at Risk - <AUTHOR> https://threatpost.com/android-stagefright-flaws-put-950-million-devices-at-risk/113960

<comment><USER2> Comments moved to [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9954686](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9954686).</comment>


Turning a Regular Smartphone Camera into a 3-D One - <AUTHOR> http://www.technologyreview.com/news/529986/turning-a-regular-smartphone-camera-into-a-3-d-one/

<comment><USER2> Not mentioned is perhaps the machine learning already in my Nexus camera for simulating depth of field blurring effects by using an approximate 3D model.</comment>


U.S., Israel developed Flame computer virus - <AUTHOR> http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/us-israel-developed-computer-virus-to-slow-iranian-nuclear-efforts-officials-say/2012/06/19/gJQA6xBPoV_print.html <comment><USER2> The virus is pretty remarkable and impressive. It was safe to assume that we and Israel worked together, but I was leaning more to Israel operating alone. Israel has been quite rouge for the past two years.

</comment><comment><USER3> The Post is running this as basically a quasi official confirmation of something that I think everybody already assumed.</comment>


Create Ember.js applications with persistence in elasticsearch - <AUTHOR> http://www.elasticsearch.org/tutorials/2012/08/22/javascript-web-applications-and-elasticsearch.html

<comment><AUTHOR> Link to the Ember Data adapter: <https://github.com/karmi/ember-data- elasticsearch/>, link to the gist with Goliath proxy for Twitter @Anywhere authentication: <https://gist.github.com/3369662#file_proxy.rb></comment>


Unmanned U.S. Air Force space plane lands after secret, two-year mission - <AUTHOR> http://www.reuters.com/article/us-space-military-spaceplane-idUSKBN1830PF <comment><USER2> This is the X-37B. There's a contract for an X-37C, 1.8x as big and possibly capable of carrying humans.[1] That would be a nice little spacecraft. It's time to get past capsules, without building something as big and fragile as the Space Shuttle. The USAF and Boeing aren't saying much about it, though.

[1] [http://www.spacesafetymagazine.com/aerospace- engineering/spa...](http://www.spacesafetymagazine.com/aerospace- engineering/spacecraft-design/boeing-x-37c/)

<comment><USER3> Capsules aren't inferior. In fact they can land on planets and moons without atmospheres, unlike space planes. And once propulsive landing of capsules is implemented, they can land on Earth without a landing strip, and even on boats.

<comment><USER4> Capsules like Soyuz can't land without an atmosphere. They use aerobraking and parachutes.

You need a big rocket to slow down and land. At which point it's a very different machine.

<comment><USER5> SpaceX's Dragon capsules come with engines, which (in some configurations) are sufficient for powered landings. And it's still called a "capsule."

<comment><USER6> Powered landings after an intense atmospheric deceleration.

<comment><USER7> No, powered landings all the way down. At least on the Moon and Mars (from orbit). With more fuel you could do the same from Earth, but why bother?

<comment><USER8> Are you sure about the orbit? Could a Red Dragon not land directly from a Hohmann transfer?

<comment><USER7> It could land directly, yes, but it makes use of the aerobrake for slow-down. Without that aerobrake it would not have enough fuel to do a powered landing all the way down and then return to orbit (I think -- I don't actually work for SpaceX; I'm just a fan). But it is my understanding that it has enough fuel to do a full propulsive landing from orbit and back again, without an aerobrake.

<comment><USER9> >But it is my understanding that it has enough fuel to do a full propulsive landing from orbit and back again, without an aerobrake.

Not even close. Dragon has something like 450m/s of dv to use. Getting from the surface of Mars to orbit takes 3800. Orbital capture requires around 2000m/s. Without aerobraking, it couldn't enter Mars orbit, let alone land.

<comment><USER7> Are you looking at the CRS dragon specs? It is absolutely the case that future designs of Dragon are able to do a direct powered ascent from Mars. That requires a lot more that 450m/s. Current dragon can't do that, but I wasn't talking about current dragon.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER2> Whatever the X-37B does, it seems to do it very well. This is its fourth mission.

 _Missions - that don 't need people - are the luckiest missions in the world.._

<comment><USER10> I always imagine it creeping up on unsuspecting satellites like some kind of space puma. All up close and personal like, giving them a sniff and then slipping away undetected.

<comment><USER11> It's tough to be sneaky in space...

<comment><USER12> If the satellite has "local" sensing equipment, then sure there's nowhere to hide. How many satellites have that? If such sensors aren't installed, it's not like anyone down here on the ground will notice. If someone did notice, what could they do in response? Complain to the media?

<comment><USER13> Actually, it's pretty easy to keep track of the X-37. You could see where it would have been had it not landed here:

[http://www.heavens- above.com/orbit.aspx?satid=40651&lat=0&ln...](http://www.heavens- above.com/orbit.aspx?satid=40651&lat=0&lng=0&loc=Unspecified&alt=0&tz=UCT)

If it was to get close to a non-US military satellite, one could expect people to complain diplomatically, at least.

<comment><USER14> If you wanted to rendezvous with a foreign spy satellite (I have no idea why you would) you couldn't do it in a huge space plane because diplomacy. You'd have to send a tiny non-trackable interceptor thing. If you needed a vehicle to deploy such things _from_ , then perhaps the X-37 would make sense.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Surprised nobody's mentioned this possibility as it usually comes up re: the X-37B. Terrifying but I think not out of the question given the strategic potential of such a weapon.

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

<comment><USER16> Orbital kinetic bombardment is a silly concept suitable only for cheap sci-fi novels. There's no benefit in having kinetic weapons permanently positioned in orbit. The satellites would be easily tracked and vulnerable to ASAT weapons. They can't strike a target much faster than a ballistic missile launched from land or sea. And they would be much more expensive. Anything in orbit is out of reach of maintenance. It takes a lot of energy to get a satellite into a stable orbit, and then yet more energy to de-orbit a missile.

<comment><USER17> I think you're forgetting a number of advantages.

1\. Surprise. All land-based launch sites are actively monitored all the time, giving countries advance warning when a missile is launched. Submarine launches cut down this warning time, but still light up radar and thermal all over the place. A kinetic impactor falling from LEO can hit its target before the enemy even reports up the chain of command (we're talking single digit minutes).

2\. Lack of radioactive fallout while still having larger destructive force than conventional munitions. If you need to destroy an entire air base far behind enemy lines, but don't want nearby population centers to be irradiated, you're looking at pretty bad options today, compared to a kinetic bombardment.

3\. You can't really intercept a kinetic impactor. We have the technology right now to shoot small rockets right out of the sky, and at least a chance of intercepting ICBM payloads. With a kinetic rod, though, intercepting it wouldn't really do very much - it's just a big chunk of mass moving really fast. The best you could do is break it into smaller pieces that are still moving really fast.

<comment><USER16> No that's all wrong. Firing a missile from orbit has less surprise value than firing from a submarine because satellites can't hide. There's no difference in kinetic effects; a non-nuclear ballistic missile can hit just as hard at a lower cost (do the math). A kinetic projectile launched from a satellite is no harder to intercept than a ballistic missile in the terminal phase, and satellites themselves are highly vulnerable. A big chunk of mass landing _near_ a target won't have much effect. And the projectiles couldn't be just rods. Due to the variability in rockets used for de-orbit burns as well as atmospheric conditions they would need fragile and sensitive guidance packages.

<comment><USER18> Kinetic impactors are not missiles. Repeat: Kinetic impactors are not missiles.

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

These are not things that get fired. You don't launch them.

They don't follow a trajectory. They might just travel straight down from a geostationary orbit, depending on implementation. Yes, a guidance package might be necessary (depending on target discrimination, and precision, which in warfare isn't always required). They aren't gliding like smart bombs though.

At the speed of re-entry, and with possibly just 100 short miles to close, a defensive interceptor would be unwarned, have to acquire possibly many targets (one need not drop only one). Intercepting vehicles would have to close on a target in an arc representing a distance longer than the hypotenuse of the right triangle between the kinetic slug, the interceptor's launch site, and the defended target.

The slug is simply released with no indication of ingress. From a geostationary orbit, it just starts getting closer very fast. Cover it with EM absorbant, non-reflective material, and there's even less hint of activity, until the re-entry burn at approximately 60 miles altitude. Unless the target itself is equipped with interceptors, and lots of them, it will be difficult to notice and recognize in time, and even harder to catch and defeat.

<comment><USER19> > They don't follow a trajectory. They might just travel straight down from a > geostationary orbit

That's not how orbiting works. If you want your projectile to travel straight down, you need to cancel all it's orbital velocity. For geostationary orbit, that's 3km/s of delta V needed.

Obviously, you can de-orbit with less delta-V, but then guidance starts becoming necessary.

> The slug is simply released with no indication of ingress. From a > geostationary orbit, it just starts getting closer very fast. Cover it with > EM absorbant, non-reflective material, and there's even less hint of > activity, until the re-entry burn at approximately 60 miles altitude.

There is going to be some kind of burn to start de-orbit, you could simply monitor for that.

<comment><USER20> I am wondering, what kind of impact would the wind have on these projectiles? Or even on ballistic missiles?

I would imagine a nuke having such a large explosion that missing the target by a kilometre won't matter too much. But with a kinetic projectile that kind of deviation would not be acceptable (unless we are talking about seriously big projectiles, like in Tunguska etc).

<comment><USER16> Wind and other transient atmospheric conditions have a major effect. That's why individual unguided projectiles can't reliably hit a target more than about 4 miles away, and even at that range you have to be really lucky. The range from LEO to surface is a lot longer.

<comment><USER21> _If_ you were going to use this as a first or second strike kinetic weapon platform (and prepared to tap dance around the "no militarization of space" treaties by claiming it's an aircraft), then your biggest asset is orbital velocity. It's sitting up there doing 7-8 km/s.

Obviously you don't want to do a powered de-orbit for reasons mentioned (you burn fuel & lose kinetic energy). However, if you're flying low enough, couldn't you aerobrake your projectiles after release and have them de-orbit themselves?

For comparison, the X-41/51 scramjet programs appear to be aiming at the mach 5-9 region. So less than 1/2 as fast.

As complicated as the materials science and guidance has to be for any X-71-based projectiles, slowing down and terminal guidance (ablative coatings and sacrificial control surfaces) seem like easier problems than boosting up to ridiculous velocities.

As for tracking, you get the heat bloom as it aerobrakes, but if you manage to keep it coherent through re-entry then the ridiculous speed largely moots that.

At 5 km/s, with a prograde orbit, you're from Istanbul to Beijing about 24 minutes (by my sleepy calculations?). The exercise seems more of a question of "How steep can you dive (aka how much heat can you handle)?" than anything else.

PS: Well, and "How the hell do you communicate-with / sense-from a platform surrounded by air that hot?"

<comment><USER16> Orbital velocity is no asset. In fact rather the opposite. You can't just start aerobraking. There isn't enough air in orbit for parachutes or wings to have any noticable effect. The only practical way to get out of orbit using current technology is to conduct a de-orbit burn with chemical rockets.

Of course that's all pointless because a ballistic missile launched from Earth could accomplish the same mission at a far lower cost with greater reliability and survivability.

<comment><USER21> You absolutely can just start aerobraking if you have maneuverability on the launch vehicle (because it's small, packed with fuel, and limited duration).

Regardless of what orbit you start from, you dip into the atmosphere, deploy your payload from there, voila.

Now anything you dropped has to deal with a furnace of superheated air, and the question of whether it's possible to have control in those conditions, but it's definitely going to de-orbit.

And the atmosphere is going to supply most of the energy, rather than direct retro burns from the delivery vehicle.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> Why do the workers wear Hazmat suits in the image?

Maybe my interpretation is spoiled by all those sci-fi disaster movies and games and they are just wearing protective suits in case of fire etc.

<comment><USER2> Toxic propellants. Nitrogen tetroxide / hydrazine. Both components are highly toxic.

The big space shuttle used those for its maneuvering propulsion, and ground crews had to wear all the protective gear after landing until the propellant had been drained.

<comment><USER23> Is it all combusted perfectly, or do they lose some and just leave droplets of toxic liquid propellant in their paths as they fly?

<comment><USER24> There was at least one mishap during Apollo capsule reentry where astronauts were exposed to fumes from hypergolic fuel, after forgetting to purge the thrusters at the proper time: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apollo%E2%80%93Soyuz_Test_Proj...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apollo%E2%80%93Soyuz_Test_Project#Re- entry_and_aftermath)

That brief exposure, before they got their oxygen masks on, put them in the hospital for a couple of weeks. It really could have been worse.

I believe the technical procedure for unprotected ground crew dealing with a leak of this stuff is, roughly, "turn around and run for your life." Hence the guys in funny-looking suits.

<comment><USER25> Also the Titan II missile explosion at Damascus in 1980: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1980_Damascus_Titan_missile_ex...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1980_Damascus_Titan_missile_explosion)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> If you read the jobs page at SRI, there's a bunch of stuff about modeling microwave communications/in the atmosphere/for offensive cyber. I wouldn't be surprised if this guy were involved in that sort of mission.

</comment><comment><USER27> I like the semi-gibberish official explanation:

 _The orbiters "perform risk reduction, experimentation and concept-of- operations development for reusable space vehicle technologies," the Air Force has said without providing details. The cost of the program is also classified._

How, pray tell, does anything "perform risk reduction"? Does that phrase have any meaning in English, or any other terrestrial language?

"The cost of the program is also classified." \- naturally! As someone much, much smarter than me noted, there's very few real state secrets, but there's tons of career-ending blunders, accounting mistakes, ridiculous overcharging and independent validation and verification companies that just happen to be owned by a distant relative. Those categories are not mutually exclusive.

<comment><USER28> Risk reduction is a completely normal term in R&D. It just means experiment to raise confidence in a particular proposed approach, before going full scale production. It is meant to raise the TRL[1] of a technology, to gain experience with it.

In my software day job, we write throw away code to test out an idea, and we call it proof of concept. It is used to find out early if the schedule for a feature is too optimistic by demonstrating that the approach doesn't work.

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

<comment><USER29> Just to add some details to the above well-informed comment:

Sometimes people who are not used to management of large-scale projects are surprised by the development of tools and specialized vocabulary in project cost/schedule/risk assessment. The following is a pretty good summary of some common tools that integrate cost, schedule, and risk analysis: [http://www.iceaaonline.com/ready/wp- content/uploads/2015/06/...](http://www.iceaaonline.com/ready/wp- content/uploads/2015/06/INT-04-Integrated-Cost-Schedule-Risk-Analysis.pdf)

See in particular the first couple of slides on motivation, the "risk cube" on pages 19-20, the scatter plots of cost/schedule on pages ~30, and the example "risk lists" on page 57. Project management can be viewed as an assault on the remaining top items of the relevant risk list.

All these concepts are standard practice for large aerospace projects. There will be risk analysts with stats or operations research PhDs running simulations and developing tailored methods just to assess risk of large projects. (Example: [https://viterbi.usc.edu/sae/faculty/part-time- lecturers/jair...](https://viterbi.usc.edu/sae/faculty/part-time- lecturers/jairus-hihn.htm))

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> So why are they publishing this super secret mission with photo containing people wearing hazmat suit? This doesn't look like a leak, it's full blown press release!

<comment><USER31> It's a form of propaganda. Release just enough information to pip curiosity and speculation. Then call the rest of it classified. For all you know it could be having a dummy payload but call it classified and the bad guys would think that it has some advanced technology.

</comment></comment><comment><USER32> "high-flying assets"

</comment><comment><USER33> so it's a more serviceable alternative to a satellite?

</comment><comment><USER34> Oh don't let the F-35 people know about the space plane role or they're going to add another 30 years and $2 trillion onto that program.

</comment><comment><USER35> Anyone find it interesting that this thing is landing several days after a North Korean missile failed minutes into flight? Time to re-arm?

<comment><USER36> Re-arm with what? Bad advice?

<comment><USER35> Kinetic weapons? Power supply for electronic warfare sources?

<comment><USER36> > Kinetic Weapons?

 _If_ the US has kinetic weapons in space, I very much doubt they would plan to use them against North Korea. NK is _decades_ behind in military technology, and the US/SK forces would have air supremacy over NK in a matter of hours, with the capability to pummel anywhere in the country with conventional weapons with relative impunity.

 _If_ they have them, using them would almost certainly tip their hand to Russia / China etc, and lose them a significant strategic advantage in any future conflict. Trump and his cronies have been talking tough about China (Bannon literally said 'We're going to war in the South China Sea ... no doubt') and while it is a) doubtful that this will happen, given the recent warming of relations with China (mmmm... chocolate cake) and b) in the event it does happen, unlikely to escalate to the use of previously undisclosed super-weapons, it still makes sense to keep this hypothetical weapon secret from larger, more-powerful potential adversaries, just in case.

Also, if they're _re_ arming with Kinetic Weapons it suggests they've already fired a few

> Power supply for electronic warfare sources?

Since you mention a power supply, I'm going to assume you don't mean dropping EMP bombs, which, even if they exist would be more easily dropped from high altitude aircraft, and would likely be less effective against such an outdated military.

I'm going to assume instead you mean some kind of cyber-weapon. The alleged cyberwarfare campaign against NK's ICBM programme most likely takes the form of malware (like stuxnet) introduced through conventional hacking methods or even on-site deployment. Sure, you can send someone a phishing email from space, but it's not any more effective than sending it from an office somewhere.

<comment><USER35> > Also, if they're rearming with Kinetic Weapons it suggests they've already > fired a few

That was my point, yes. I'm not sure "fire" is the right word. You can just drop them.

> I'm going to assume instead you mean some kind of cyber-weapon

Cyber? What? If you know some operating frequencies of internal systems or control bands, you can use targeted energy instead of broad-spectrum EMP.

<comment><USER36> OK, you obviously know more than me about electronic warfare. But regarding the kinetic, when and where might they have "dropped" them already?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Two years would be plenty of time for a run around Mars or Venus, if it had enough propellant.

<comment><USER37> It's regularly observed by amateur astronomers.

[http://www.skyandtelescope.com/astronomy-news/observing- news...](http://www.skyandtelescope.com/astronomy-news/observing-news/how-to- spot-the-usafs-mini-shuttle-x-37b-2010201522/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER38> Secret rendezvous with Extra-terrestrials? Just kidding of course but was I the only one that had a flash for a great sci-fi plot?</comment>


Ask HN: What is the big deal with Virtualization? - <AUTHOR>

I have been hearing this term a lot in the news, mags and blogs lately. While I understand what virtualization is and I myself use Vmware occasionally, I cannot seem to understand why everyone is excited about the technology.<p>Why do you think virtualization is important in the present and coming times? <comment><USER2> Virtualization is sometimes considered important because it _may_ provide OS features that certain operating systems have failed to provide in the past, e.g., separation of code/data areas, efficient utilization of resources, security, etc.

And you _can_ run multiple OSs on one physical machine.

See [http://www.virtual-strategy.com/Features/Why- Virtualization-...](http://www.virtual-strategy.com/Features/Why- Virtualization-Matters.html)

and use Google for more.

Honestly I would be happy to find an OS/hardware combination that did everything they _should_ do (short of an IBM mainframe). As it is, virtualization is a meta-OS layer that is just waiting to be hacked/cracked.

</comment><comment><USER3> Virtualization has come to mean the running of a virtual machine in a physical one and on that virtual machine running your OS of choice. However vietualization should be thought of a much more than that. Think of storage virtualization for instance. Here we have the opportunity of creating an unending variety of storage options (Stripping, Mirroring, migration, automatic backups, etc) that can happen transparently. Imagine Never having to worry about your data stability because of virtual storage. How about virtual device access? Nothing says that USBs could not be front ended and encapsulated by an virtualization application that can then broker that information to and external host ( even a virtual one). The field is very wide, to me the promise is in creating an abstract device with transparent access to a myriad of services (both virtual an physical).

</comment><comment><USER4> I am a cynic (who has completed a few P2V projects) and I would say that many if not most people don't understand that virtualization is just _one possible technique_ for consolidation. Consolidation matters because what is constraining datacentres right now is power, cooling and floor loading. Computational power per kilowatt and per square foot are the new metrics that matter (you assume that everything is 42U tall and work in 2 dimensions). Serious datacentre operators have long been happy to pay a premium for density.</comment>


Some Tips to Improve the Civility on Hacker News - <AUTHOR> http://www.bothsidesofthetable.com/2010/06/03/some-tips-to-improve-the-civility-on-hacker-news/?awesm=bothsid.es_6YP&utm_medium=bothsid.es-twitter&utm_source=direct-bothsid.es&utm_content=backtype-tweetcount

<comment><AUTHOR> Interesting article and I agree with Mark but also think that most readers are intelligent enough to see through people who make personal attacks and judge the value of their commentary accordingly.</comment>


What Happened to Africa in 2003? - <AUTHOR> http://paul.kedrosky.com/archives/2010/05/what_happened_t.html <comment><USER2> China</comment>


Health insurance rate hikes 12% to 23% hitting California small businesses - <AUTHOR> http://articles.latimes.com/2010/may/26/business/la-fi-smallbiz-insurance-20100526

<comment><USER2> Not once does the article mention "Health Care Reform", having to cover no preexisting conditions, etc.

I'll be honest in that I'm not sure when it kicks in, but you know as any business they have to plan accordingly.</comment>


Prepare For The Geek Mafia - <AUTHOR> http://gilesbowkett.blogspot.com/2011/01/prepare-for-geek-mafia.html <comment><USER2> Finding very little to disagree with here (except that odd stance on MDMA, but I don't so much disagree as find myself cold and uninterested on the issue).

Patton Oswalt needs to spend more time doing actual research on the state of geek culture and less time watching cat videos on Youtube. Shaking your metaphorical stick at the kids on your digital lawn doesn't make for interesting or insightful dialogue on pop culture.</comment>


Three Qualities Nordic Founders Lack - <AUTHOR> https://hajak.se/three-qualities-nordic-founders-lack-f957a22a2209#.g55mwb63g <comment><USER2> Sure, he's an angel investor, so of course he, like any VC, needs companies to be big, fast. But this is very seldom what's best _for the company_. As Joel Spolsky called it in _Strategy Letter I¹_ , they want to be Ben and Jerry's, not Amazon.

① [https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2000/05/12/strategy- letter-i-...](https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2000/05/12/strategy-letter-i-ben- and-jerrys-vs-amazon/)

<comment><USER3> That seems to be the default complaint from investors about the cultures in non-valley places: "They choose risk/reward balances most beneficial to themselves instead of the investors. That makes them less attractive than the firms that structure themselves as outsourced R&D teams paid in lottery tickets".

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I'm a US Citizen who was self-employed in Sweden for about six years (1999-2006). I was very frustrated at how hard it was to get things to 1. where I was approved to do work and 2. get feedback so I could 3. get paid.

On the other hand, now that I'm back in the US I get tired of the continual rat race and wish I had as much vacation as everybody else got in Sweden. The US doesn't give decompression time, but Sweden didn't allow for as much deep focus time.

Mind you, I also had communication problems. I expected people to clearly say yes or no and then stick to that. The Swedish politeness took awhile to interpret.

<comment><USER5> These observations, though perhaps interesting, have nothing to do with the article from what I can see. They relate more to the immigration process in Sweden and how to get a work permit and consecutively a personnummer and bank account.

<comment><USER6> The 'politeness' he mentioned is very relevant to the cultural issues the article discusses.

It's a consensus culture. Finland is even worse. Disagreeing with the group is a huge taboo, something that will make a meeting room go very uncomfortably quiet very quickly.

Of course it has its advantages, like everything it is a trade-off, but in terms of being entrepreneurial I think it is a big reason why entrepreneurship is held back in the Nordics. You can't just fight it out with ideas and then shrug it off like I see in other places - for better or worse people are more sensitive and 'correct' in intrapersonal dealings.

Don't know why it's like that, I hear Canada is the same. Perhaps the cold climate means people mingle less, and so social occasions are meant to reaffirm social cohesion, to the exclusion of airing differences.

Oh yeah, it's also 'socially correct' to outwardly acknowledge and reject the Law of Jante-effect - which just leads to criticism being even less tolerated; you're just jealous, narrow-minded, etc. if you are critical of anyone.

<comment><USER7> As a counterpoint to Finland being a consensus culture, they also have "management by perkele" [1]. In particular Linus Torvalds has said his direct style is part of Finnish culture [2].

[1] [http://www.rmci.ase.ro/no11vol1/Vol11_No1_Article13.pdf](http://www.rmci.ase.ro/no11vol1/Vol11_No1_Article13.pdf)

[2] [https://arstechnica.com/information- technology/2013/07/linus...](https://arstechnica.com/information- technology/2013/07/linus-torvalds-defends-his-right-to-shame-linux-kernel- developers/)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> The implication that the Nordic region is underperforming in startups, even in swing-for-the-fences, huge-exit startups, doesn't seem to be borne out by the numbers: over the past decade, 10% of worldwide >$1 billion exits are from the Nordic region, despite it having only 0.3% of the world's population, and 2% of the world's GDP.

Stat from here, which has a decent overview: [http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/newsbysector/mediatechnol...](http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/newsbysector/mediatechnologyandtelecoms/11689464/How- Sweden-became-the-startup-capital-of-Europe.html)

<comment><AUTHOR> No, I agree. The Nordics is swinging above its weight.

But I think all cultures have their reasons to not create more amazing things. The Nordics have a lot of investors preferring safe returns, and therefore perhaps the same within the entrepreneur communinuty.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> I dealt with a fair number of founders thanks to my job & I've found that it comes down to personality more than nationality.

Trust me - you get French A-holes and you get Swedish A-holes.

What I have noticed though is that Nordic founders are really difficult to contact. I'm in a privileged position in that they don't have much of a choice - they're required to respond to me. Yet sometimes its difficult...Spanish and Nordic in particular.

<comment><USER10> Spanish? I'm not Spanish, but culturally close, so I'm surprised. What do you mean by "difficult to contact"? They won't answer your emails/take your calls?

<comment><USER9> >They won't answer your emails/take your calls?

Long list of issues. My personal favourite being "this line does not accept incoming calls". Mails being ignored. Or they pass it off to some random other person. Or they just tell you they don't have time.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I think this could be any smaller country eg Canada, Ireland, New Zealand, South Korea, Singapore. Its really difficult to build a world beating huge company from smaller centres. Perhaps dominating local markets or selling out to a global behemoth are the only successful models.

<comment><USER12> The internet is what lets companies aspire to become global quickly. Lots of countries have access to it and have fostered hugely popular products and companies because of it. Many startups in the US are busy dreaming of dominating local markets and selling out to global behemoths too. Especially in SV.

<comment><USER11> Agreed, but if you want a large world leading company you need a couple thousand people skilled & experienced in all sorts of professions. If you're in Helsinki or even Stockholm you just can't go out and hire such a large experienced teams let alone expect them to beat the world.

<comment><USER12> Rovio is from Helsinki. King.com from Stockholm. One of the Skype founders was Swedish and they HQ'd in Estonia. Unity3d from Denmark. Opera from Norway. Nokia from Finland. It's already happened and unlikely to be isolated incidences.

<comment><USER11> Nokia is the only company on that list that was large and that didn't last very long. I'm not trying to did Nordic companies, I'm just saying its difficult.

<comment><USER12> The billionaires King.com created probably disagree. Skype is still one of the most popular messaging platforms in the world, having been traded around a couple times now for $billions too.

USA had a first-mover advantage on internet access, but 20 years later many wealthy nations now have the necessary infrastructure ... a payment gateway, appstores, marketplaces, web hosting ... to flourish online.

<comment><USER11> King.com - part of an American company Skype - part of an American company Nokia - part of an American company Rovio - independent but tiny(?)

I'm not sure what we are arguing about. I think its clear that its difficult to build a world beating company in a smaller country. Yes they make great divisions and smaller branches, but I'm still not convinced its a good place to base an HQ.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> This is a very short article with very little to back up the claims that these things are actually lacking and why it's a bad thing that they are.

I mean sure, it's advise but honestly:

> So, please Nordic founders with your fantastic design and culture skills, > please have greater ambition, stronger conviction, and ship more often.

Nothing in that whole article helps you, as a (Nordic) founder, to achieve any of it. Considering this is coming from a VC, maybe a bit more "how to go about this" would be helpful instead of the blanket "you just kinda suck at this" statement.

<comment><USER13> "This is a very short article with very little to back up the claims"

He's a successful Swedish entrepreneur, his insights are built from his experience and observations.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks :)

I didn't want to write a research post. It was actually a rant turned into a post. I was really tired of asking "so, why are you actually doing this company?".

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> One of the first things I learned when going to Sweden is the history of the Vasa ship, which was a ship designed to be the most powerful in its time. The only problem is that it couldn't actually stay afloat due to its weight and design.

That offers a noble lesson about planning, setting goals, etc., and it has probably influenced the local entrepreneurial culture.

</comment><comment><USER13> Maybe this article is correct, but I would say there are tons of other systematic limitations of doing a startup in Scandinavia: language, funding, customers etc.

Given this - I would say that Scandinavian founders probably, on the whole, 'swing above their weight'.

The lack of 'AirBnB' and 'Uber' style successes has far more to do with market size, fluidity, and the 'mega centre' of the Silicon Valley than anything.</comment>


BaseEmoji is a binary-to-emoji encoding scheme - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/amoallim15/base-emoji <comment><AUTHOR> BaseEmoji is a binary-to-emoji encoding scheme that represents binary data in a subset of the Unicode Emoji symbols, designed for triggering senior programmers effortlessly. BaseEmoji is heavily influenced by my frustration towards my tech lead that always shares data (base64 encoded) with me.</comment>