The Automation Paradox - <AUTHOR> http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2016/01/automation-paradox/424437/?single_page=true <comment><USER2> Are you kidding me? The article stopped making sense right at the beginning:

> But, perhaps surprisingly, electronic discovery software has not thrown > paralegals and lawyers into unemployment lines. In fact, employment for > paralegals and lawyers has grown robustly.

WHAT?! The statistics they chose from the US Department of Labor were cherry picked and out-of-context. Lawyers are _seriously hurting_ right now:

> The national unemployment rate for law graduates has grown for the sixth > year in a row to a whopping 15.5 percent, according to a report by the > National Association for Law Placement. This unemployment exists despite > soaring law school tuition.

Taken from:

[http://www.huffingtonpost.com/natalie-gregg/mamas-dont- let-y...](http://www.huffingtonpost.com/natalie-gregg/mamas-dont-let-your- babie_2_b_6457898.html)

More:

[http://qz.com/206705/the-us-lawyer-bubble-has- conclusively-p...](http://qz.com/206705/the-us-lawyer-bubble-has-conclusively- popped/)

Another good read (don't have to watch the video to get the gist):

[http://abovethelaw.com/2013/10/this-pretty-much-sums-up- the-...](http://abovethelaw.com/2013/10/this-pretty-much-sums-up-the-plight- of-the-unemployed-lawyer/)

<comment><USER3> You are talking about newly minted lawyers. If they have never a held paid position as someone's representative, or in some other way practiced law in exchange for money, they would not be able to get into any unemployment line as a lawyer.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Automation will be used as much as possible, up to the point where a human must be involved, either to exercise judgment or because that human's job hasn't been automated away yet.

Consider the farming industry. In a couple of centuries, it has gone from 90%+ of the population to a couple of percent, while the number of people being fed has increased several times over. That's automation at work, pretty fast in human terms. Did it cause a massive dislocation and unemployment when 90% of the human population was more or less replaced by machines?

<comment><USER5> Yes, it did cause a massive dislocation. And it isn't over yet, people are still moving to cities.

<comment><USER4> Yep. I didn't phrase that well - it caused dislocation, but not permanent unemployment. Society adapted, and new careers came into being that couldn't have existed when we were devoting all our human capital to manual labor on the farm.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Here's US employment by category: [1] Only 14.1% of the workforce makes "stuff" \- that's agriculture, mining, construction, and manufacturing combined. Those are shrinking slowly. Most of that is already automated. A century ago, that was 90% of the workforce. That's the "hollowing out of America" people talk about. The US manufactures more stuff than ever, but with far fewer people.

The big sectors remaining are retail, professional/business services, health care, and state and local government. (The Federal government is tiny - 1.8%.) Health care is growing. State and local government (which is mostly teachers and cops) is down a bit. Retail is declining slightly. There's a little growth in professional/business services.

Retail is struggling. America is littered with dead malls. (See "deadmalls.com") Online ordering hasn't crushed brick-and-mortar retail yet; it's still only 7.4% of total retail sales.[2] It's gaining another 1% or so each year. There's still a future in retail, but the jobs are low end.

"Professional/business services" is the category IT automates. It's where most of the good middle class jobs are. 12.7% of the workforce now. (This doesn't include finance, at 5.3%, down a bit, and also highly automatable.) This is the sector likely to clobbered next, as machine learning gets going.

That's what's going on. Take a good look at those numbers and evaluate your future.

[1] [http://www.bls.gov/emp/ep_table_201.htm](http://www.bls.gov/emp/ep_table_201.htm) [2] [https://ycharts.com/indicators/ecommerce_sales_as_percent_re...](https://ycharts.com/indicators/ecommerce_sales_as_percent_retail_sales)

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> According to the article, when computers start doing the work of people, the need for people often increases. I simply cannot take anymore the doom and gloom of the supposed AI revolution and how it will make us all jobless.

<comment><USER7> You should visit some manufacturing plants. Ask them how many people used to work there and how many do now.

Companies have a social responsibility to the communities they profit from.

<comment><USER8> Because fewer people are involved, they can generally make the products to a more predictable standard ("quality") and cheaper. Lets say the item the plant made with all those people used to cost $10 for consumers to buy, but the efficiency improvement from the manufacturing plant now means that it costs $5 for consumers to buy.

All over the town/country/world, people who used to part with $10 now only part with $5. They now have an additional $5 to spend in their community. The manufacturing plant has enabled many others to have their money go further - how is that a bad thing?

<comment><USER9> Hang on, why would you drop your prices when your margin just increased? Why let "the community" keep their extra $5 and not pocket it yourself instead?

Financially speaking: what's the incentive?

<comment><USER10> Say you have an idea of what the demand curve looks like. For the sake of argument, let it be (100-p), so 100 people would want it for free, and none would want it at $100.

If your marginal cost is $50, to maximise profit you'd set the price equal to $75 and make $625 net.

If your marginal cost is $40, you'd set the price at $70 to maximise profit and make $900 net.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Number of jobs is only half of the equation though- are the wages of all of those new jobs the same? If automation replaces expensive skilled labor with inexpensive labor than there is still plenty of room for concern.

</comment><comment><USER12> Most people are grossly simplifying this discussion. The worst for me still is those who yell "Luddite Fallacy" whenever this discussion comes up.

What most people are missing is that it's not so much automation but rather digitalization which allows for a completely differen kind of automation thats not just mechanical but instead has some kind of intelligence embedded in.

The point is that technology is simulating higher and higher levels of abstraction and thus are replacing not just human physical abilities but also our intellectual ones.

And if you want to understand what that means. Then ask yourself what profession did the horses enter once cars made them obsolete in transportation.

It's also interesting to notice that the last 100 years only new kind of job have emerged and that's computer scientists. Most other jobs today are really just modernized versions of older ones.

The luddite fallacy is in itself a fallacy and everyone who subscribe to that view really should explain exactly what new kind of areas humans will be going into. Surely they should already exist today.

And if you want to claim that new jobs are being replaced when technology takes some away then you really need to explain this graph.

[https://plot.ly/~BethS/8/job-growth-by-decade-in-the- united-...](https://plot.ly/~BethS/8/job-growth-by-decade-in-the-united- states/)

<comment><USER13> > It's also interesting to notice that the last 100 years only new kind of job > have emerged and that's computer scientists.

I think you're missing a couple there, the number of professions that hold a sizable number of people has absolutely exploded since the 1950's.

Ranging from all the jobs that were created by the electronics revolution, the transportation revolution, all the new media and the IT revolution is much more than just 'computer scientists'.

How do I know this? Because at some point I was responsible for maintaining a table that mirrored the Dutch bureau of statistics annual table with the names of all the professions. The number of new professions that were recognized each year was absolutely staggering, but if you went back over time you could see an inflection point somewhere just after world-war II.

<comment><USER12> Which jobs are you talking about? I am talking about fundamentally new types of jobs.

<comment><USER13> If you want to be pedantic, even computer scientists were around 100 years ago (Ada Lovelace, for one).

Really, if you want to discount all the fields I've named on principle because to you those jobs are not 'fundamentally new types' then computer programmer also doesn't qualify as a fundamentally new type of job.

Assembly line worker wasn't a profession in 1912 either, it only became one in 1913 when the assembly line was invented.

Classes of professions have not been invented since about 500 years ago, typically the classes of professions that are recognized haven't changed much at all, and yet, you'd be hard pressed to find 'tour-operator', 'social media strategist', 'geneticist', 'nuclear reactor operator' and so on in a list of jobs from the early 1900's. And by that reasoning 'computer scientist' is just a sub-class of scientist, actually one of the oldest professions we have.

'Fundamentally' is a cheat, there are no new 'types' of jobs, there are only jobs that did not exist before and there are jobs that nobody holds anymore.

<comment><USER12> I don't see how that is pedantic at all.

Bringing up Lovelace however is quite pedantic and I think you know that very well.

Assembly line worker did not require any new skills. Instead it required a subset af the previous skills people had whether welders, blacksmiths, carpenters, painters etc.

So you haven't really pointed to any new jobs and no fundamentally new type of jobs isn't a cheat.

Furthermore I am not really sure what you are trying to prove. Even if I had missed a few (which I haven't) it wouldn't change the facts.

<comment><USER13> I'll supply astronaut instead and see you argue around how that really is just another form of 'traveler'.

<comment><USER14> I'll bite. An astronaut is basically a highly trained horse carriage passenger. Most of spaceship operations are already controlled by machines anyway, and they do it better than humans. Hell, when you see discussions about manned Mars missions, the recurring question is, "why bother with people when machines can already do it better?".

<comment><USER13> If we're going to be strict then there are two basic forms of work: thinking and moving stuff around. Everything else is a variation on those two.

<comment><USER12> Thats not even true.

Crafts are neither just thinking or just moving things around.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> The example is a bit cherry-picked. You could argue that the process went like this:

* 1980s - "takes a lot of time and money to churn through old legal docs, let's hire a paralegal"

* 2010s - "it's easy to churn through old legal docs, making it much easier to manage multiple legal cases in parallel. Let's hire a paralegal to help me juggle all of these cases."

...

* 2020s - I've hired HireASuperParalegal.com to do all of my paralegal sleuthing. They help me manage the workload of four paralegals for the price of one.

Meanwhile, how about telemarketers? Have their numbers increased in droves like--apparently--paralegals? I suspect not.

Anyway, @ergest mentioned that the doom-and-gloom is tiresome, and it certainly is. Personally though, I just find it a fun thought-exercise to think through how we'll matter in the long-run. In the meantime there'll be a "new" class of workers whose jobs move from paper-pushing to being specialized software-users and from there... what? Certainly "computer-or-software fix-it guy" jobs will be universally useful from now into the foreseeable future, but will they pay well? :-)

</comment><comment><USER16> I'm still a bit mystified by the people who believe that automation can, or will, destroy jobs. It takes a very weird view of the economy to see it as fundamentally static, fixed in a given form that can't be changed other than who or what does the work that's already been done. In nearly every corner of the economy there is an infinite amount of work that needs to be done, but of course not all of it can be done so only some of the available work actually gets done. But if you automate some of that work it's not like the undone work goes away, it's not like people won't pay good money to do that undone work.

<comment><USER17> > I'm still a bit mystified by the people who believe that automation can, or > will, destroy jobs.

There are certainly huge local issues that happen when you shut, say, a steel plant or coal mine. We know that this happens. What would happen if we were to do the same thing to a whole tranche of jobs all at once?

Perhaps you're talking on much longer scales, but you shouldn't ignore the shorter term (which is still long in human scales, it's not like these things sort themselves out after a couple of weeks).

> But if you automate some of that work it's not like the undone work goes > away, it's not like people won't pay good money to do that undone work.

If they'd pay more for that undone work than the work that's being done, why don't people shift jobs?

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> Yes, it is easier to find the dead-end roads when speaking of future societal changes. It is easy to panic about massive global unemployment in the face of automation. The fact that a conclusion is easy to come to doesn't make it any less likely. The patterns we see now are based on recent, past trends. What we can't see, or extrapolate from what we've experienced already, are the effects of accelerating exponential change in the tech sector. What I get from this article is the beginnings of the political rationalizations for denying basic guaranteed income. When your spreadsheets say there isn't a problem, when your economists tell you that work for humans is actually increasing, it is much easier to ignore the needs of the people on the ground.

I have been wracking my brain about this problem for a few years now, and I still can't seem to find the essential leverage point human labor would have against automated, robotic labor. I once thought it was our ability to synthesize and generate novel solutions to problems that would keep us in a dominant position within the economy, but that is quickly turning out to be a naive delusion. I don't fully understand the direction neural networks and machine learning are moving, but it looks like they will match us in those "uniquely human" areas of cognition very soon.

<comment><USER19> that is the thing though, why should we care about human labor having a leverage point? If all labor was automated, it would be a great net positive for humankind as a whole AS LONG AS it is not a requirement to be a laborer to receive a livable wage.

The problem is that as time goes on it seems less and less labor is available that can be done by the majority of the population, while the requirement to labor in order to earn a wage is not changing.

There is an infinite amount of work that can be done by humans that cannot be done by machine, but that kind of work usually does not command livable wages: learning to play a musical instrument, and becoming moderately competent at it, learning to build furniture with hand tools, and becoming moderately skilled at it, learning to be a good spouse, and being there when your partner needs your help.

It is easy to see how a large amount of occupations still available today can be automated, it is harder to see how the large number of people displaced by this automation will be able to manage.

Once automobiles became widespread, were the horses able to "retrain" into "the new jobs that became available"? Improving the cart is not the same as making the horse replaceable.

<comment><USER18> "If all labor was automated, it would be a great net positive for humankind as a whole AS LONG AS it is not a requirement to be a laborer to receive a livable wage."

This is where I am pessimistic. The political will is not there, not too mention the glacier speeds at which governments move in comparison to technological innovation.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> _While electronic discovery software has become a billion-dollar business since the late 1990s, jobs for paralegals and legal-support workers actually grew faster than the labor force as a whole, adding over 50,000 jobs since 2000, according to data from the U.S. Census Bureau. The number of lawyers increased by a quarter of a million._

I'm not convinced by this. Maybe paralegal jobs grew more than other jobs, but what does that say? Weren't other jobs also automated? Why then, if automation was what fueled the paralegal jobs' growth did it not also fuel other jobs to grow at the same rate? Might there not have been another reason why paralegal jobs in particular grew more?

For instance- did that growth in paralegal jobs have nothing to do with the growth in lawyers' jobs? Could it just be that a quarter million more lawyers needed at least 50,000 more paralegals? Is it possible 50,000 paralegal jobs are actually too few for a quarter million lawyers?

Also- just growth over a period on its own doesn't mean anything. Was growth more than what was expected? What was the trend in the decades before and after the "late 1990s"?

Or more generally: is that amount of growth really surprising? And why is it surprising?

</comment><comment><USER20> "Commoditize your complements"</comment>


MS wants to control your Win 10 desktop. Now are you ready to try a Linux? - <AUTHOR> http://www.computerworld.com/article/3189408/linux/windows-as-a-service-now-there-s-an-argument-for-linux.html <comment><USER2> I'm ready when I have no broken packet version conflicts or old packets.

And probably I'd still miss quite a few apps:

\- Media stuff: Adobe, Ableton, Touchdesigner, Visual Studio (these are the real deal-breaker for me)

\- some casual games

Might be already supported one way or another:

\- autohotkey (though there might be even better tools, just have to convert all my scripts)

\- a global equalizer that I can feed parametrically to adjust sound to my room (for measuring my room I can still boot windows once I guess).

\- shareX replacement (select area for screenshot, annotate, upload to ftp with hashed filename, upload clipboard to markdown file online, give back custom url etc)

</comment><comment><USER3> Honestly, I do not understand the intent behind the whole "linux inside windows" trend that MS is on these days. Even visual code is turing out well these days, but I am hesitant as I am not sure of the intent behind it.</comment>


Edward Snowden and spread of encryption blamed after Paris terror attacks - <AUTHOR> http://www.dailydot.com/politics/paris-attack-encryption-snowden/?fb=dd <comment><USER2> This is expected response if you follow the American media.

There is a very interesting video [0] of Noam Chomsky, after the 9/11 attacks, where he says that any government and regime worth it's salt will use 9/11 as an excuse to push their agenda over the public.

And they will do so using their fear.

[0] <For the life of me, I couldn't locate the video. Will update the post if I do.>

<comment><USER3> Perhaps 9/11 allowed the bureaucracy to push its agenda, but it is very clear that it took Bush completely off his plan; Bush campaigned for a less activist foreign policy (which many criticized as being isolationist).

<comment><USER4> How often do you think a politicians campaign platform represents their actual intentions. You should read about the project for a new american century.

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

10 of 25 signing members of PNAC were high level bush administration workers. PNAC was explicitly neoconservative and most definitely wanted to be involved in more wars abroad.

<comment><USER3> I have come to believe that most politicians believe their platforms and campaign speeches. This may sound difficult to believe given all the doublespeak, contradictions, and fallacies they recite on the campaign trail, but it is the simplest way to explain how they can keep up all these strange ideas while encountering challenging questions, tough situations and dilemmas.

It seems to me that just as the NBA is full of (some of) the tallest people in the country, the Congress and White House are full of the people who are most capable of believing whatever they have to at any given moment.

<comment><USER5> You're attributing incompetence to what can be easily explained by malice.

When that amount of money and power is at stake, there's no room for people who are earnest.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I blame Bush for declaring war in the middle east for what happened in Paris. Not Edward Snowden.

Note how the government also uses times like these to rush through new policies around privacy.

Did phone tapping stop the US from preventing 9/11? No.

<comment><USER7> > I blame Bush for declaring war in the middle east for what happened in > Paris. Not Edward Snowden.

Wait, what? It's been almost seven years since Bush left office. 100% of the blame rests on the men who donned suicide vests and massacred innocent Parisians. It doesn't matter how horrific US foreign policy is. Responding by killing a bunch of French civilians is not even remotely reasonable. Seriously, how does someone go from "US foreign policy killed my countrymen" to "let's slaughter random French people"?

<comment><USER8> 7 year? Do you understand geopolitical consequences has time interval ? you invade a country , okay? you should expect whole generation of terrorist who want you dead not tomorrow , 20 year later . 7 year I would say is so small time in things like these.

<comment><USER9> I don't think Bush invaded France.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> It's barely been twelve hours - too soon for the results of any real investigation to have influenced the editorials coming out. What we're hearing is the positions that were prepared prior to the attacks themselves.

It's possible that the perpetrators evaded surveillance with encryption. It's also possible that the perpetrators did have their phones tapped, but investigators dropped the ball. It's possible that they avoided phones and did all their planning in person. It's even possible that someone made an executive decision to not intervene and stop them, for political reasons.

As far as I know, none of Snowden's criticisms have been addressed at French organizations. While there's some possibility US intelligence agencies could have picked up on this, it's primarily a European matter and not the NSA's responsibility. This makes Snowden's having undermined the NSA quite unlikely to have been relevant.

<comment><USER11> When the article says: > In response to the Charlie Hebdo attacks that hit Paris in January of 2015, France adopted one of the most aggressive surveillance laws in the Western world. That was not enough to stop these attacks.

That's very misleading, as the law was just voted and isn't in application yet.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> That smells pretty bad.

First we lose our friends, then we'll lose our privacy? I was horrified by the reaction of some of my acquaintances back home in France: "Let's imprison all those who went to Syria", "We should forbid Tor if this is what those terrorists used to kill our people", and the now classic "if you don't do anything wrong, you shouldn't have anything to hide".

What's next?

<comment><USER13> Why shouldn't we imprison those who went to Syria to fight? They were fighting for the enemy, so they could be charged with treason, but even if not they could be charged with war crimes.

Unless I missunderstood the question and they wanted to imprison all those who have been in Syria.

<comment><USER14> > Why shouldn't we imprison those who went to Syria to fight?

You could certainly do that on the basis of membership of a proscribed organisation, but...

> They were fighting for the enemy

Which enemy is that? The USA and UK are not currently at war with anyone in a legal sense.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Terrorists don't randomly spawn. They are made.

Much terrorism is an externality of Western foreign policy and a nation's abuse of it's citizens (domestic).

Whether Snowden or encryption enabled terrorism or not is TOTALLY missing or deflecting the real conversation that should be occurring. Do not fall into the trap of arguing. Ignore statements like OA. Instead ask "Why are people willing to kill themselves and others?" "What has France done / is doing so that people believe that is their best redress?" "Why do people become terrorists?". Most import of all (and the only way we will end terrorism). "How can we change the world so less people are compelled to such drastic action?"

<comment><USER16> I this "western foreign policy" plays a complex role, some of it has been negative. In some cases, like Iraq, it is more a failure of that policy that has had a negative effect.

However, I think this features far too prominently in a lot of people's outlooks than it should. Nothing, including terrorism is born in a vacuum but I don't think American involvement in Middle Eastern conflicts is the primary cause. Various Tsarist policies at the turn of the century are responsible for the conditions that gave rise to revolutionary communism in Russia, but communism was a greater force than Tsarist policies.

We are talking about a spectrum of religious-nationalist beliefs that are turning other wars, conflicts, slights, frustrations, rivalries and any other available fuel and putting it to use. This includes American policies in Iraq. They are fuelling it, but I really do not think they are creating it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> Yea, Snowden is responsible. Because we never knew about phone monitoring before?? Glad the terrorists never watched the wire or any other police procedural going back to the 70's.

<comment><USER18> Osama Bin Laden avoided electronic communication well before the NSA's illegal domestic spying activities were revealed. He passed notes and relied on trusted couriers. This is nothing but political opportunism.

<comment><USER19> Right, but did that rigor go down to the field? Unlikely that his rigor would percolate all the way down, however with it now being common knowledge rather than paranoia most anyone downstream would also observe the same paranoia due to the revelations.

<comment><USER20> Snowden just provided the proof. It was already common knowledge that the government had massive communications monitoring programs. They were building an enormous data center, and previous programs had been uncovered.

<comment><USER21> Lots of people talked about it and were dismissed as tin foil hat wearers. Likewise RMS has warned about a lot of stuff that slowly seems to be coming a reality, yet he is still dismissed as a bit of a nutter.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> I'll quote Kim Dotcom as a counter argument:

>Our Governments: "We spy on all of you to keep you safe". But why have your mass surveillance systems failed to prevent the Paris attacks?

<comment><USER23> If you've ever seen the spies running those programs you'll understand why it happened. They look and act much like the terrorists. Drunk on power with a feeling of invincibility (e.g. sociopaths).

<comment><USER24> They ARE the terrorists.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> "Blame Snowden and Encryption" is starting to look as coordinated as the Paris attacks.

<comment><USER26> Exactly what I was thinking. Goodie on the media, using the bad guys' tactics on their audience. This day is really not getting better.

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> A few cherry-picked tweets form the basis for an article now?

<comment><USER28> Well, a tweet from a former press secretary of a US president. I'd say it's pretty news-worthy, since this seems to be a coordinated campaign by some (albeit a disgusting one).

<comment><USER29> It's probably more germane that she makes a living on Fox News, hosting a show that more or less spends it's time pandering to a segment of the American population that is afraid of everything (I don't mean Republicans or the right wing of American politics, I mean the people who watch "The Five"...). It's not entirely clear to me if the hosts themselves are afraid of everything or simply effective in their cynicism.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> I remember an article written by Pavel Durov (founder of Telegram) which I read a few months ago.

The name of the article calls for itself:

Dragon Slayer Becomes The New Dragon

[https://medium.com/@durov/dragon-slayer-becomes-the-new- drag...](https://medium.com/@durov/dragon-slayer-becomes-the-new- dragon-1881b7f67080)

</comment><comment><USER31> So we fight for liberty and privacy but blame the ones that risk their lives bringing it. I fear these attacks will convince everyone that mass surveillance is a necessary thing.

Surprisingly, you only need a few terrorists to change international laws and double those military budgets. Snowden or not, it's the virus that comes first and the anti-virus after. I don't think any mass surveillance program can stop such actions unless you become a militia state which I highly doubt (and hope not) will ever happen.

</comment><comment><USER32> Political Interference, Religious intolerance, Social injustice - no those had nothing to do with terrorism - it's all about encryption.... /sarcasm

</comment><comment><USER33> Before Snowden came along no terrorist ever heard of electronic surveillance, right?

If anything, mass surveillance is to blame for lack of intel. Before spying was so ubiquitous, terrorists might have said something on the phone or by email.

</comment><comment><USER34> Oh f __* people who even think that way, let alone proclaim it.

France has porous borders. They spent $1 BILLION over the past year on security "enhancements".

If evil people want to be evil, they are going to find a way.

<comment><USER35> Closing borders isn't going to help if you have thousands of people who have no future and who are looking for revenge out of frustration. This is not to blame anyone, but it's more a matter of fact. Paris has seen many riots in the past years, where hundreds of cars have been destroyed by these people. It's not surprise that you can find some people in that group that are vulnerable or attracted to the tactics of IS.

<comment><USER36> Germany partially suspended registration of refugees, the head of one of the parties in government is on record saying that currently about 40-50% of them _are not even registered at all._

([http://www.focus.de/politik/deutschland/spd-chef- gabriel-40-...](http://www.focus.de/politik/deutschland/spd-chef- gabriel-40-bis-50-prozent-der-fluechtlinge-werden-derzeit-gar-nicht- registriert_id_5056930.html))

Supposedly, this is not a problem - even though it is people from the country where ISIS terrorists operate.

At the same time, we have a continuous push for and actually new surveillance laws such as the dreaded 'Vorratsdatenspeicherung'.

That doesn't really fit together at all anymore...

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER37> That's actually an amazing scapegoat!

Blame encryption and omit the violent nature of Islam.

</comment><comment><USER38> That article reminded me once again what an utter scumbag Dana Perino is. The worst press secretary for the worst President of all time.

</comment><comment><USER39> More propaganda from the american Gestapo?

</comment><comment><USER40> They forgot to blame Russia in this one.

</comment><comment><USER41> I'm only comforted by the fact that there's really nothing any government can do to stop crypto. The technology has become simple enough that anybody can encrypt their communications or files with open-source software, and that's basically impossible to stop.

<comment><USER42> They can criminalize it, so that only criminals use crypto by definition. Think about tor. As a fraction of network traffic, almost no one uses it, so if you do you have singled yourself out.

Running an exit node is already a great way to end up in jail, and I would not have a warm fuzzy feeling about using tor for innocent traffic at this point, although it's perfectly legal.

Imagine how easily flagged users could be singled out if simply using crypto were a crime, and probable cause for search: e.g. you get caught using FDE on your phone or laptop at a traffic stop or the airport. Either your info is trivially purused at will by LE, or you've committed a crime by makeing it difficult and can be compelled on that basis. Either way, they're reading your mail if they feel like it.

The real value of this would be that almost no normal person would want to risk prosecution, so the overwhelming majority of user data could be easily mined. These are just a couple of crypto tools, but the technical details don't really matter here, I think this is a legal and social strategy that will generalize well, and it I think this is where we're inevitably headed.

<comment><USER43> Your game theory is accurate, but I think your systems design understanding is lacking.

We will have an extremely difficult time making all crypto illegal. Cryptography is crucial to important pieces of infrastructure we use for trust and security.

We may reach the point where certain implementation or tools are outlawed. In which case people with stuff to hide will piggyback it inside legal tools.

I suspect we will be more likely to see a combination of these approaches:

1) Forcing entities that sell products that provide encryption capabilities to maintain access for the government.

2) Pass laws that make it illegal to avoid or materially assist others in avoiding government surveillance without authorization

<comment><USER42> I agree that this seems likely. What if said "unauthorized crypto" will be illegal?

E.g. you can use SSL for commmerce, but it's got to "approved", in other words either technically, or organizationally backdoored.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER44> Well that didn't take long ...

<comment><USER45> Many of the people orchestrating it have probably been pining for this for years. Insinuations like "When the next attack comes, maybe some people will start to think differently about these leaks" was in the talking points from the start.

Tangentially related: [https://theintercept.com/2015/09/11/today-14th- anniversary-e...](https://theintercept.com/2015/09/11/today-14th-anniversary- enormous-opportunity/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER46> An article reporting what FOX News said is not an article worth posting, let alone worth reading. FOX News is not news and other news outlets need to stop quoting them as if they were legitimate. They're not. In fact, very few American based "news" organizations are news. Other sites need to stop giving such faux news organization credibility by completely ignoring their comments or at the very least publicly ridiculing them without mercy.

</comment><comment><USER47> Blamed... by whom?

Oh, idiot talking heads on TV news. Who cares?

If I wanted to know what idiots on TV think, I'd watch TV.

</comment><comment><USER48> Fuck off already, fearmongers!

</comment><comment><USER49> I thought that security through obscurity was no security at all.

</comment><comment><USER42> That was quick.

</comment><comment><USER24> Eye-witnesses report trained soldiers in uniforms that then were allowed to escape.

This is a false flag attack that serves a number of purposes. Slowing the push for encryption and generally boosting surveillance and domestic operations is one. As the western debt grows and the military position becomes thinner, it will become increasingly difficult to maintain the fiat that demands massive resource distribution imbalances. This will lead to serious shortages in western countries. In order to maintain power, the state turns its guns and spies inward.

But in the meantime the covert operations in Syria have not been completely successful, and since they need to do Syria before Iran (as has been planned for many years) they need to move to overt operations. This requires the propaganda to motivate it which needs a real event behind it.

</comment><comment><USER50> Ok, (edit: not new. Idk why I said new.) New conspiracy theory: the attacks were allowed to happen (not intentionally caused, just allowed to happen, or perhaps just not worked quite as hard to prevent) in order to get public support for further government powers.

It's known that governments have had plans as to how to get support from a tragedy if one happens. Is it that far fetched that preventing tragedies which are more likely but have a benefit to them for the government, would be considered at a somewhat lower priority than one which is less likely, but does not have any side benefit for the government?

Now, I'm not claiming that this is the case, not really, but it is something that comes to mind, and the most likely version of it does not seem that absurd?

<comment><USER51> Is this really a new conspiracy theory? This is pretty much the same thing we hear after any major terrorist attack.

<comment><USER50> Yes, that's true. I suppose it isn't new.

I guess it's new in the sense that it was applied to a particular attack, but that's not really a great reason to call it new. Good point.

However, I do think the minimal form of it I expressed in a way that seemed more likely than most of the time I see it?</comment></comment></comment>


The Biggest Mistake I Ever Made - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@jasonwarner/the-biggest-mistake-i-ever-made-4f0e2e32ed2a#.cm8kcn6nl <comment><USER3> This sounds similar to what I've experienced at various startups. The problem is that the people who have been around the longest tend to have more knowledge of the tools and techniques which relate to a specific project - Sometimes it even seems like their overall understanding of technology is superior too - But that is an illusion.

I've changed companies a lot as a software engineer and I noticed that whenever I join a new company, I usually feel like the dumbest person in the company at the beginning - For example, other developers might mention specific features of Linux which I had never come across before or they might make references to certain technical concepts which I didn't know about. But a couple of months in, I usually feel smart again and then I get bored... (This cycle happens every time when I change company).

What I realized is that knowledge doesn't flow very well between companies - Each one tends to get specialized in very specific ways but they don't realize it. The developer who has been around the longest is the most knowledgeable when it comes to the technology surrounding the project in its current state - So it's very difficult for another regular developer to 'win' an argument against them - This is bad because the most senior developer is often too deeply set in his ways (it works best for him) but in reality, you need the whole team to take a few steps back to find something which works best for everyone.

<comment><USER4> Yes, I've seen this too. I think I've even been that person. (But that's a different story.)

The first company I worked for claimed that most new employees took 6 months to ramp up to the internal tools & processes, which sounded absurd to me until I actually started ramping up myself. Holy cow. And the people who were entrenched in this company's particular way of doing things seemed like absolute geniuses until I realized how much of their knowledge came from years and years of doing the same things over and over.

I think the best way to combat this is to recognize that tools, techniques, processes, and technologies are all an inherent part of your product and your business. Much like you take the time to refactor code and combat technical debt, I think it's pretty crucial to also devote time to combating "process- debt" and/or "tooling-debt" \-- all of that extra cruft that piles up and starts becoming "the way" to do things at your company. Because, just like with code, there is usually a simpler, more practical and/or elegant solution just waiting to be discovered.

<comment><USER5> I've noticed this, but usually consider it a feature, not a bug. The better companies are at least _aware_ that this is going on, and can use it to their advantage when it suits them or counteract it when it doesn't.

The thing is - if you zoom out, "experience" is nothing more than overspecialization in the particular environment you found yourself. That applies at the industry, society, evolutionary, and planetary levels as well. Organisms adapt to the particular circumstances that they live in. _Usually_ these adaptations are beneficial, because otherwise they get pruned out and people adopt different ways of doing things. But sometimes the environment changes in a way that makes all that accumulated knowledge irrelevant, and you end up like the dinosaurs. Extinct.

I've found that most of the time, people's knowledge is the product of hard- won experience, and if you tear it down, you will encounter the same problems that led to them coming to those conclusions in the first place. But occasionally, something changes in the environment, and you _need_ to tear things down to adapt. If you want to build off existing knowledge, become an employee, and join a company that's busy figuring out all the corollaries of the premise that founded it. If you want to challenge existing premises, become a founder, and look for areas where the environment has changed in a way that invalidates existing knowledge.

If you try to build something totally new and different by learning all the existing ways people have built stuff, you will probably fail (believe me, I've tried several times). Similarly, if you join an organization hoping to tear down all the wisdom they've accumulated and replace it with an outsider's perspective, you will probably meet significant resistance. Sometimes organisms have to die to learn.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Some financial firms have forced paid time off (atleast 5 consecutive days) to make sure they are never fully dependent on any one employee, and to fix it if they ever find themselves in that situation. (They also do it to make sure no one is covering up fraud by always working.)

<comment><USER7> In banking aren't you required to take off 5 consecutive days so they can avoid any financial misconduct? It's hard to cover up most issues after 5 days.

<comment><USER8> Someone who never takes leave is often a person you need to monitor.

<comment><USER9> Any reasons for you to say this? Like examples or scenarios in a start up environment?

<comment><USER10> One common technique is for an accountant or bookkeeper who handles accounts receivable to prematurely write off overdue customer invoices as uncollectible bad debts. Then when the customer eventually pays the crook keeps the money.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I'm the kind of developer the article mentions (at least some of my previous colleagues like to think so). But here is the deal. It is hard to work with me if you don't want to put enough energy into your own work. Because at my previous job there were people who told me that it is impossible (for them) to work with me, and all I could see that they didn't add ANY value to the project, but made me do stupid things like using Google Docs to track my tasks, instead of Basecamp which I already used with others for quite some time. And you know what? If you are this kind of person then it is super hard for me to not get pissed every time you open your mouth. I'm not the kind of guy to smile at you if you try to make my work harder than it already is.

And there were people who said that working with me was the best part of their job, but they were hard working and smart. And I really liked to work with them too. Every story has two sides.

I don't mean that Jason (OP) is not right! He probably is. But you can't generalize this as easily as the article says. Sometimes not the mean developer is at fault but the stupid management (even if there is more of them).

<comment><USER12> The thing you need to realize is that the company is bigger than you are. If you can't work out a way to get along with others in your company, then you are the problem and not the people you perceive to be doing things wrong. You should go find a place that better fits your way of doing things.

I bounced out of a big company for that and other reasons. I just could not deal with the culture. I work at a smaller company now, and am much happier, though it's still not a perfect fit.

The reality is that it's almost never a perfect fit. In these cases you have to realize that it's you that has to adapt to the company and not the other way around. I have an idiom that I use for these situations. "It's the job". It's the part of the job that they're paying you to do, that you don't like to do, but you do it anyway because that's the job. Make a rational decision to either get along with others or leave the company.

You can't have it both ways, they are paying you and not the other way around.

Now, I'm not saying you should give in to every idiot who wants you to change how you do things. You should definitely fight back against stupidity. But you have to learn to pick your battles and recognize when it's you that's being dumb and not them. And also realize that the apology is the cheapest and most effective career tool you have at your disposal. Nothing smooths over bad feelings like a well-worded apology. Try to do it even when it's not your fault.

<comment><USER11> Problem is: it was my company, my idea. I just trusted the wrong co-founder, who started hiring his lazy friends. When I confronted him about this he said that I should just work on the tech beause he knows how to run a successful company. Eventually he fired me, because they couldn't work with me. Now they spend they time on buying Twitter/Reddit followers/likes, which I'd have never agreed on, because the company itself is quite privacy sensitive. And they most likely will make a bunch of money with it.

Every story has two sides. But I really appreciate your comment.

<comment><USER13> Your story sound unfortunate, and I hope you bounce(d?) back from it.

But your story also sounds very different from what the article is about. The parable in the article is not a story with two sides. The basketball team's performance was objectively measurable thanks to the championship games, and the team performed objectively worse with the skilled but hard-to-work-with player, and performed objectively better without him.

In your story, you say the other team members "didn't add ANY value to the project" and "try to make [your] work harder than it already is". In the parable, the semi-pro player, in spite of being the best player in the league, was adding NEGATIVE value to the team.

If you were hardworking and smart and completed your tasks while your teammates were lazy and didn't accomplish anything and just complained about not being able to work with you, then they (and the person who fired you instead of them) are the problem, not you.

<comment><USER12> I see no reason why both stories can't be shared and learned from. They're somewhat different, but it's all the same lessons we need to learn.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Not really a professional career example, but this story reminds me of my time running internet forums, and how I made pretty much the exact same type of mistake a fair amount. I'd take on an active contributor as staff, but end up overlooking their hair trigger temper or hostile behaviour because they'd spent so much time contributing to the site beforehand.

What I didn't realise (and I'm sure a lot of people who keep on these individuals in paid jobs don't realise), is that it starts scaring off other qualified members/employees. By keeping on one bad individual, you drive away your other skilled users or employees.

</comment><comment><USER15> A manager I know had a term for obnoxious over-achievers: "brilliant assholes".

But there are other kinds of high achievers who should not leave because, after all, talent is talent.

You don't say, "Bob wrote 70% of our product, and he's head and shoulders above the rest of the team, so he's got to go!"

You _should_ say, "How are we best utilizing our in-house talent? Does Bob engender resentment from the lesser programmers? Maybe Bob should have the role of chief architect, and get Bill to be team lead since Bill's more of a people person."

It's complicated, and every case is different, and the size of the company is also a factor. Part of the art of management is the ability to get the most out of each person on the team. It's hard, it takes years to learn how to manage, and it's not for everyone.

Technology work isn't exactly like basketball. In team sports, you _have_ to work with a team; it's not like you can just play the game all by yourself. The whole point of participative sports is that everyone _has_ to participate.

But in technology, often it's the solo contributors that drive innovation by making a brilliant but messy system that the regular guys/gals have to clean up and maintain.

Once in a while, you see a brilliant solo contributor who makes a clean, maintainable system, and documents it nicely, and politely and sensitively hands it off to more junior staff to maintain while he/she moves on to the next big thing -- and what a joy that is! But more often they're the brilliant asshole that you have to deal with, both their professional work and personal foibles.

<comment><USER4> > How are we best utilizing our in-house talent?

This question definitely captures more of the nuance that I felt was naggingly lacking in the original post. It's easy to justify firing someone in very black and white terms, but it's a lot harder to take such an employee and turn them into a valuable member of the team again, even though that might be the best outcome. Not saying it can always be done -- I've seen managers try for too long and fail, but I've also seen managers start making cuts at the first sign of trouble.

<comment><USER16> Agreed. Being formerly in the military I find it quite interesting to note how little self examination managers in the private sector place themselves under. Sad to say poor management is the rule rather than the exception.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> If that's the biggest mistake he's ever made, he leads a charmed life.

<comment><USER18> Perhaps they meant professionally.

<comment><USER19> Worst professional mistake? Amateurs! I once did rm -rf cvs when I thought I was in my home directory wiping my local checkout. I was actually in the root dir of the repo. We had no backups.

The 90s were such fun; long live distributed source control.

<comment><USER20> Well, at least it wasn't as bad as what happened here: [https://bbs.archlinux.org/viewtopic.php?id=207549](https://bbs.archlinux.org/viewtopic.php?id=207549)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> Question: What a person that IS the exceptionally skilled person but that drags down the team, should do to not drag down the team?

<comment><USER22> Don't be imperious or brusque. Learn to story-tell. Know how to present on the subject - if they're having race conditions, be able to explain race conditions well, for example. Don't pursue argument beyond it being productive, especially not for its own sake.

Make sure you're not proposing your personal One True Way. Be trustworthy.

At some point, people have to experience failure for themselves. You did, probably. Remember how that feels.

Ask to help, but that's a learned skill as well. You can't yank the wrench away from them. Set it up to where you can come in when they're in trouble, but be humble and "in the spirit of service."

I think being self-deprecating helps. Give ideas away. Make any conflict between (the collective) you and the problem, not you and them.

If people are defensive, learn to defuse that or accept responsibility for that, even if it's not your doing. And if all else fails, excuse yourself politely.

Sadly, a lot of this is basically charming or selling people. It has Venn overlap with seduction behavior.

<comment><USER23> And ever so often, some people just don't make very good teams with other particular people.

I've had jobs where I was performing much better or much worse than other jobs simply due to fitting better or worse professionally with the personalities of other people I worked with (this is to a significant extent not dependent on me liking these people or getting along with them on a personal level).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> John Sculley followed your advice, but it didn't go well..

<comment><USER25> So did Tim Cook when he fired Scott Forstall.

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> Related (and with a little more background): [http://firstround.com/review/why-firing-brilliant- assholes-i...](http://firstround.com/review/why-firing-brilliant-assholes-is- required-to-build-a-great-engineering-culture/)

Excellent point in any case.

</comment><comment><USER8> How do you identify that you are the person who is causing problems?

</comment><comment><USER25> Instead of calling them "assholes", I wish people like the OP would just be honest and say they don't want to work with people on the spectrum. There's no shame in that, it's perfectly fine to prefer neurotypicals at your workplace; the vast majority of people do.

<comment><AUTHOR> I don't typically comment on things like this, though in this case I very, very much want to.

My son is autistic. He's 8. We had him tested when he was 5. He also has ADHD. If ever anyone cares about working with non-NT folks and those on the spectrum it's me. We moved to where we live specifically so we could get early intervention for him.

My five year old daughter might be on the spectrum, we are having her tested. She does have expressive/receptive language disorder.

Our youngest daughter, now 2, seems NT so far.

For the record on the original material. There's a chance the person was non- NT, as you suggest. However, that same percentage chance exists for at least three, maybe four, of his co-workers as well, the ones that were effected by this person.

I'm not dismissing your original statement. I do think it is harder for non-NT folks, even in tech. It's why my style is the way it is. If anything, I'm likely overly sympathetic to the non-NT folks given my situation.

I've written two other things that I often reference when talking about these topics that might be interesting. I hope you can appreciate my side knowing more about my personal situation and how that influenced and shaped my current views.

[https://medium.com/@jasonwarner/no-one-is-the-villain-in- the...](https://medium.com/@jasonwarner/no-one-is-the-villain-in-their-own- story-35fd436d2f1c#.z8u3ik3wt)

[https://medium.com/@jasonwarner/just-one-weird- trick-95fe7b5...](https://medium.com/@jasonwarner/just-one-weird- trick-95fe7b537c6a#.svf8orfgw)

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> Here's his point (I think):

"The founder and I made the most classic of mistakes: putting up with someone because we were afraid to lose their ability. I've since come to learn over and over again, it's almost never worth it."

Perhaps just me, but I don't like this style of writing. It takes pages of reading to arrive at a fairly simple point.

Authors, please make your point first. Elaborate all you like with long winded stories afterwards.

<comment><USER28> I think this is not the most important point. The most important is this:

> [...] you are actually holding back everyone else at the expense of this > person.

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> TL;DR version:

"[...]I made the most classic of mistakes: putting up with someone because we were afraid to lose their ability. [...] it's almost never worth it."

edit: shortened it.

<comment><USER30> Yeah I was frustrated that I skipped over half this article to get to the point.

</comment></comment><comment><USER31> > The Biggest Mistake I Ever Made

Using non-descriptive titles on HN?

</comment><comment><USER32> Wow! Once again I'm grateful to live in a country with sane labour laws - <USER2> glad to have the backing of a trade union.

So because the managers couldn't do a decent job of managing their employee, he loses his job and all associated benefits?

<comment><USER33> Found the guy who's difficult to work with...

Seriously though, every company has had to deal with one of these people sooner or later. The cost to team morale always outweighs the talent of the difficult developer. Let them go, let them learn, and hope they fix their act at the next company. It always hurts to throw away talent.

<comment><USER16> It's also possible that the company is decidedly mediocre but has a strong culture of having people who all think the same way on the team. Smart person sees this and is frustrated but doesn't have managerial authority to make improvements.

Different cultures have different expectations of the relationship between employer, colleagues and the employee. Guessing op is from a place where being right is more important than everyone being on the same page but being wrong.</comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: What to consider when buying a business - <AUTHOR> I'm currently looking at buying a business via FE International which I believe will synergize very well when combined with my current side business (of which I amm the sole owner/employee) and potentially multiply the value of each other. The deal would be around 50-100k.
This would be a big deal to me. I've never acquired a business before and am definitely a rookie. What are some things that I should know or ask about? How much can I know about a business to inform my buying decision? Any pitfalls or traps to watch out for? Is there a specialized person I am legally obligated to consult to help with this?
Thank you for spending your time on this, it is greatly appreciated. <comment><USER2> I'm in a similar boat and would love if you'd keep us updated

</comment><comment><USER3> There is a story by patio11 from the seller point of view. It's not exactly what you're asking for, but it may have some interesting parts. " _What I Learned Selling A Software Business_ " [https://training.kalzumeus.com/newsletters/archive/selling_s...](https://training.kalzumeus.com/newsletters/archive/selling_software_business) HN discussion [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11347006](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11347006) (439 points | Mar 23, 2016 | 84 comments)

</comment><comment><USER4> the best thing you can do is hire a good accountant and go through their books.</comment>


Better Together Dating - <AUTHOR> http://www.bettertogetherdating.eu/ <comment><USER2> I actually work with the company making this, and we'd love feedback to help this improve! Thanks for featuring it miketheman and would love feedback if anyone is willing.</comment>


Bitcoin Is (Probably) Here to Stay - <AUTHOR> https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2019-06-28/bitcoin-s-rise-shows-crypto-is-alive-and-well <comment><USER2> Bitcoin feels to me like something people want to believe in... thinking about this back in 2012 I would fantasize a future where 1 coin could be a million dollars. Outside of an investment mindset, I think there's this romantic notion of a digital currency reigning supreme. Bitcoin seems to be too inefficient to survive in the long haul, but something else is bound to reign supreme</comment>


Show HN: BuddyHack - Mess with your friends' Facebooks - <AUTHOR> http://buddyhack.com

<comment><USER2> I am an engineer working on Platform Integrity at Facebook. Just as friends can't consent to transferring friend data outside of an app, they also can't consent to an app taking actions on their friends' behalf (such as posting a story when the friend didn't consent to it). Even if it's funny.

<comment><AUTHOR> It's people taking actions on behalf of themselves.

<comment><AUTHOR> People just happen to be using it innapropriately.

<comment><USER3> Because you're inducing them to do so. I think your app is funny, but the language makes it clear that the _intent_ is at odds with FB's platform rules.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yeah...we've come to see that the language was encouraging behavior that was clearly against the spirit of the Facebook platform. We have since removed most of that language.

<comment><USER4> How does changing the language absolve you from the implications of your malicious app.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I appreciate how they were mature and stayed away from inappropriate content. The hack can still be funny without the need to be gay, racist, sexest, etc. I personally like the " _It's Your Birthday_ " one. Props guys!

<comment><AUTHOR> That was exactly our aim.

<comment><USER4> Do everyone a favor and get rid of this. There is nothing OK with making light of identity theft. And quite trying to absolve yourself of any responsibility

<comment><AUTHOR> seriously?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> If you've removed any language suggesting that this should be used to gain and exploit unauthorised access to somebody elses Facebook account (I presume that means you will be registering new domain name for the app) then what is the point of it any more? Why would I want to click a button to post a bunch of fake stuff to my wall? That would be like #poopin yourself. Utterly pointless.

<comment><AUTHOR> <http://hackmyfacebook.com>

People are hitting the site and using it. I wasn't sure if it was a real use case either; but our conversion rate for hitting the site and actually using it is even higher than before, so I guess some people think otherwise.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> And API access will be revoked in 5...4...3...2...

<comment><USER6> Facebook can't revoke the API, because the site clearly states in the footer that "Buddy Hack in no way encourages the usage of any Facebook account other than your own." That seems waterproof to me.

<comment><USER7> In the world of walled gardens like this, there is no rule of law. If they don't like it, they can revoke access.

<comment><USER6> I was making an irony.

<comment><USER7> Oh, i didn't realize. Now that you say so, it seems obvious.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> It would appear it's already been blocked by FB: "An error occurred with Buddy Hack. Please try again later."

<comment><AUTHOR> yeah....someone reported us for our defriend all button; that button is actually a joke and just gives an alert "you can't actually be that mean"

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Would anyone care to explain roughly what it does?

<comment><USER10> This is what it looks like when you give it permission: <http://i.imgur.com/nAvhx.jpg>

Pretty self-explanatory once you get to that page, but there should be an explanation on the index.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the input...will get on that ASAP.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> We just got reported by several users and got temporarily restricted on Facebook.

<comment><USER6> "temporarily"

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> How would you "quickly undo" an action that defriends everybody?

<comment><USER12> That would be a pretty bad joke but it someone doesn't sign out of their Facebook or email account on a share computer, they kind of deserve it.

<comment><USER13> Why on Earth would someone deserve to lose all their friends because they accidentally didn't log out on a shared computer?

<comment><AUTHOR> That button was actually just a joke; it brought up an alert saying "Come on, you can't really be that mean!"

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Let's say your friend just left their Facebook logged in at your house or got up from their laptop to go to the bathroom for a minute. You're tempted to mess with their Facebook, but don't know where to start or don't have enough time. Just go to <http://buddyhack.com>, sign in with Facebook, and we will help you hilariously mess with your friend in under a minute!

<comment><USER14> Oh, high-larious. Especially "defriending every single friend". How is this non-malicious again? Is this undoable?

<comment><AUTHOR> Click it....it tells you that you shouldn't be that mean.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for all the feedback...Be sure to check out <http://hackmyfacebook.com></comment>


Origin of the RNA World: The Fate of Nucleobases in Warm Little Ponds - <AUTHOR> http://www.pnas.org/content/early/2017/09/26/1710339114 <comment><USER2> An article on RNA forming in ice pockets: [http://discovermagazine.com/2008/feb/did-life-evolve-in- ice](http://discovermagazine.com/2008/feb/did-life-evolve-in-ice)</comment>


Why There Are No Skyscrapers in the Middle of Manhattan (2012) - <AUTHOR> http://observer.com/2012/01/uncanny-valley-the-real-reason-there-are-no-skyscrapers-in-the-middle-of-manhattan/ <comment><USER2> I had trouble getting past the first sentence. That NYC has the finest skyline in the world is a fact? Well, I think it's ugly and uninspiring. And that's not a fact. Also, seems extremely odd to not just ask developers why they don't build skyscrapers in the middle of the island? They would be able to tell you whether it's lack of feasibility or that no one has asked them to do it.

</comment><comment><USER3> I'm not an expert on New York's history, but in a general sense, I don't find the clustering of buildings all that surprising. After all, what's the alternative? Highrises built sporadically around the island in isolated areas? A blanket of highrises covering the entire island? Once an area becomes established as a center of business (for whatever reason), there's a real benefit of living and working in close proximity so consequently other developments take place in the area.

Apart from NYC, it seems to me that roughly every major city I have ever visited had the exact same clustering in certain areas.

<comment><USER4> Not to mention the transportation network that has built up around these areas. For instance, Midtown is fed by multiple train stations, a bus station, multiple tunnels, and an incredible nexus of subway stations. You couldn't add a new high-density area without adding it in an area that's well-served by transportation.

Reflexively, the most likely candidate for a new skyscraper patch (just weighed by transportation support) falls between the two peaks. 14th street is near Penn Station, has the usual grab-bag of uptown/downtown Manhattan subways, the PATH, is also near a tunnel, and has the L train. Not sure why this hasn't happened past zoning reasons.

<comment><USER5> So we should probably start a crowdfunding venture to purchase air rights around 14th street.

<comment><USER6> With a few exceptions, air rights can only be transferred to contiguous parcels (the two exceptions in Manhattan that I know of are the "Special West Chelsea Air Rights District" and the midtown rezoning around Grand Central).

Curious quirk of NYC real estate: as valuable as air rights are, the City has no formal process to track them other than through the building permit process. There isn't an "air rights" database for example.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Two points:

\- It's only the "middle" if you ignore everything above 59th street. Which is fair if you're considering skyscrapers but otherwise quite false.

\- The two peaks roughly correspond to the old city in lower Manhattan, where the financial district is, and to the bottom of central park, where the views are.

<comment><USER8> Heh as a long time commuter from lower Manhattan to Queens, I always considered 59th street the top of Manhattan. Everything above it doesn't matter (to me)

<comment><USER9> For all of the people that I've come across that have said this (or something similar)...I've not once come across a satisfying reason as to why people take _pride_ in their limited geographic or experiential knowledge of NYC and all/more of its neighborhoods. Sure, all of your needs might be met in X part of the city; but forgoing Y part of the city is missing out on so much more.

<comment><USER10> For the same reason people root for their local sports team, it's fun.

Which reminds me, New York City is the greatest city in the history of world civilization and the rest of the country is an endless cultural desert of strip malls and chain restaurants.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I thought this was a joke with the answer being "because there's a giant park instead of buildings"

<comment><USER12> The park's on the _other_ side of the second cluster of high-rises.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> It's all zoning. Which means it's all politics. At best you can come up with some historical explanations for how certain neighborhoods evolved, but really it is practically random.

</comment><comment><USER14> The article doesn't really answer the question. It's more like "here's some evidence that a popular myth is incorrect."

</comment><comment><USER15> (2012)

<comment><USER16> Good catch. Added.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> "Therein, he posited his belief in a correlation between bedrock and big buildings, and like the Empire State Building" \- What a weird sentence. Like a skyscraper being built successfully is some random event that can be used to indicate bedrock. Are measurements of the bedrock really that hard to come by?

p.s. How old is the quote at the end lol? "traipsing through ... Soho to get to work? That land was cheap, but the location was worthless"

[Some]([http://www.investopedia.com/articles/personal- finance/092515...](http://www.investopedia.com/articles/personal- finance/092515/most-expensive-neighborhoods-manhattan.asp)) would say soho is the most expensive neighborhood now

<comment><USER18> The full quote is _" Like cavemen following mammoth across the Bering Strait, early developers were following their prey. "Who's moving north?" Mr. Barr said. "It's the wealthy and the middle class. If you're an insurance salesman, do you really want to be traipsing through the slums of Five Points or the factories of Soho to get to work?"_

The author is talking about the historical drivers of Midtown's development.

Soho has only been an expensive neighborhood for ~15-20 years, a good century after the rise of Midtown. Back then it was a light industrial district of warehouses and factories with dirty streets, high crime, and high noise. It's important to note that this is pre-containerization, so ships from all over the world docked along the East River and Hudson River, supplying and shipping to/from the factories of Lower Manhattan. The streets were filthy and filled with heavy freight, and its main redeeming value is proximity to the ports.

After containerization and the ports moved away, Soho fell into disrepair as industry moved to be closer to supply lines. In the 60s and 70s artists took over many of the spaces because they were big but the area was undesirable enough to be affordable. It wasn't until the 90s that the area started being gentrified, and it wasn't until the 00s that the area became outrageously expensive.

Ditto Five Points, which doesn't even exist as a discernible neighborhood anymore. Nowadays it's the giant court house complex, but back then it was a poor and dangerous neighborhood.

The NYC from 2000-2016 is not at all like the NYC from the 70s and before.

<comment><USER17> Thank you. Makes sense.</comment></comment></comment>


Show HN: Hiring and training high-school girls to program in six weeks - <AUTHOR> https://twitter.com/8_bit_sheep/status/1168774440500510721 <comment><USER2> Great project! Can you resubmit it without the 'Show HN' prefix and [https://8-bit-sheep.com/summer-lambs-blog.html](https://8-bit- sheep.com/summer-lambs-blog.html) as URL?

(Blog posts can't be Show HN as they can't be tried out. [https://news.ycombinator.com/showhn.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/showhn.html)). We also ask for original sources (the direct URL), the twitter URL adds little value.)</comment>


Playable Archaeology: An Interview with the Telehack's Anonymous Creator - <AUTHOR> http://waxy.org/2011/06/playable_archaeology_an_interview_with_the_telehacks_anonymous_creator/

<comment><USER2> Hey, I wrote this! Let me know if you have any questions about it.</comment>


XCP-Ng Joins the Xen Project as an Incubation Project - <AUTHOR> https://xenproject.org/2020/01/28/xcp-ng-joins-the-xen-project-as-an-incubation-project/ <comment><AUTHOR> Note that the first HN/discussion about XCP-ng is here, back in 2018: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16139877](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16139877)

Just wanted to keep you posted on what the project become since its inception :)</comment>


Paypal and Crowdfunding: don't do it - <AUTHOR> http://garethhayes.net/paypal-warning/ <comment><USER2> It's not hard to understand.

Payment companies aren't going to give you other people's money as a free loan for selling future goods or services. From ticket sales of your first big event to crowd funding.

It violates every company's risk model. They have to hand you a huge chunk of money, allow you to cash out, and then wait for the chargebacks to come in months later. This kind of problem is spelled out in the tos.

What is the solution? Work with a company that will actually look into your financials and underwrite you. Braintree will do this. Your bank will do this. Authorize or whatever ancient CC processor will. Well, either they'll do it or tell you to move on before you've started processing with them. I think Stripe might have the same sort of instant approval, delayed rejection problem possible as paypal does here.

Don't try and use PayPal to avoid the underwriting process or prepare to have your heart broken.

<comment><USER3> The underwriting process is designed for stable businesses with a proven track record. It's not very suitable for today's crowdfunded projects, which is why those projects have to resort to PayPal. Just telling them to go through the good ol' underwriting process doesn't really help.

<comment><USER2> Doesn't help who? I say it does help them, because they need to understand no one is going to give them an unsecured loan, no matter what kind of business they're running. Thats the job of venture capital- not the job of your CC processor.

A crowd funding business especially needs to go through underwriting, which will involve proving they have the capital reserves or credit to handle problems that arise. Fostering the expectation that they should try to sneak a loan out of PayPal, or whatever payment company, is unhelpful.

Now, there is fault here in that PayPal's process isn't tight enough to catch them before they start processing. But you will find that fault to some degree with every modern payment provider.

<comment><USER4> It's disingenuous to refer to crowdfunding as to "unsecured load".

<comment><USER2> With a normal transaction, goods or services are provided in exchange for money.

With a crowd funded transaction, a promise of future goods or services are provided in exchange for money. Thats why it's treated differently in the payments industry.

Another way to think of it: If crowdfunding wasn't available to the business, a loan would serve the exact same purpose, wouldn't it? And if the business got loans from multiple providers, wouldn't that be a form of crowd funding? The only difference is that traditional loan providers have to work out their own security with the business, while crowdfunders get security from the chargeback mechanisms of their payment processor.

Do you see any of what I wrote as disingenuous?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Good point to not waste time after your complaint is not handled as you'd like to contact the ombudsman, in Australia they are really aggressive.

I've seen 8k phone bills wiped (carrier not noticing the unusual overseas data usage and letting them know), laptops replaced years out of warranty (merchantable quality). Usually just mentioning you are going to escalate it to the ombudsman is enough, they get fined just for the complaint being filed.

</comment><comment><USER6> Weird he or she blames PayPal much more than Indiegogo. PayPal is the one who carries all the risk (if you aren't legit and people demand their money back after you fled) while IG watches this play out in their front yard over and over again and says nothing. And the reference to a rifle and other sections about physical violence being the only way PayPal will learn are disturbing.

<comment><USER7> Oh, but Paypal has been doing this to a whole lot of people for a very long time. There's plenty of horror stories of this kind.

In fact, he should've known that they are _really, really biased_ against crowdfunding, pre-paying for events and processing lots of payments for non- physical goods.

The reasons technically make sense, but in reality, they should be able to do that without issues - it's not the early 00's, after all.

But it's like Paypal _wants_ to be a "small payments" processor, instead of holding large amounts of money for other people. Maybe there are legal reasons for this...

<comment><USER6> Agree wholeheartedly that PayPal's issues with crowdfunding are well known.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> So many paypal stories like that. Why do people still use it?

<comment><USER9> Because most other payment providers (say Stripe) require a credit card, which is, at least in Germany, a not very popular payment option (the prefered payment option there is SEPA direct debit).

I often have the impression that lots of vendors forget that in other countries (say, Germany) not everbody has and is willing to get a credit card and other payment options are prefered. Paypal provides them (in this case SEPA direct debit), while e.g. Stripe does not. So I use Paypal, though I don't like it.

<comment><USER7> Can you tell me if SEPA provide some kind of buyer protection? I bought a few parts on eBay and paid with SEPA, but there's no mention of any protection in case the seller is fraudulent, felt a bit uneasy unlike when paying with Paypal :-). Do you just call the bank and tell them to reverse the transaction? Thanks!

<comment><USER10> For basic SEPA, You can order the bank to reverse the transaction for up to 8 weeks afterwards. There are different kinds of SEPA transfers though, and I think its different between companies.

<comment><USER9> There are two kinds of SEPA direct debits (Lastschrift):

      - SEPA Core Direct Debit
      - SEPA Business to Business Direct Debit

(source: [https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lastschrift#Arten_der_SEPA- Las...](https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lastschrift#Arten_der_SEPA-Lastschrift))

Only the first one is used when you buy things in the internet (the second one is only important for B2B transactions). It can be reversed without giving any reasons for 8 weeks. If you have not authorized (in other words: it was fraudulent) even for 13 weeks. If you reverse it, though it was legal, it's the vendor that has the problem (and has to collect the money). That's why often only larger vendors will accept SEPA direct debit (small vendors will often insist that you use SEPA credit transfer instead that is a lot less customer-friendly in case of a fraudulent vendor). SEPA credit transfer is in my opinion not suitable for "fast, spontanous" payments, though, for reasons I won't explain here.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Paypal is absolutely not freezing accounts to earn interest, that's absurd.

Paypal, and other money transmitters have a business model that earns them ~1% profit for a non-fraudulent transaction and -100% profit for a fraudulent transaction. That's just the nature of the game when you're in payments. That means paypal cares ~100x more about preventing fraud than keeping you happy.

<comment><USER12> > Paypal is absolutely not freezing accounts to earn interest, that's absurd.

Then why else are they doing it, on cases where no investigation is pending (not for fraud or otherwise), and they have already decided to terminate your account?

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> Remember me this:

"Scottish Ruby Conference 2008-2011..."

[http://conferencesburnedbypaypal.tumblr.com/](http://conferencesburnedbypaypal.tumblr.com/)

</comment><comment><USER14> Shouldn't this just be 'Paypal: don't do it'?

</comment><comment><USER15> Poor PayPal customer service was the reason I stopped using eBay.

</comment><comment><USER16> I wish I knew what documents PayPal demanded.

I wish I didn't have to enable JavaScript to see anything other than an empty white browser.

</comment><comment><USER17> Paypal: don't do it

</comment><comment><USER18> Much of these problems can be avoided when you treat PayPal as a conduit and not as a bank. It isn't a bank. Don't trust it to hold your money.

Treat it like a dodgey money exchanger on a back street in Lima and you are much less likely to get burned.

</comment><comment><USER19> I don't mean to sound like a pitchfork-wielding maniac, but [http://letskillpaypal.com](http://letskillpaypal.com) for the win. I bet they were shaking in their shoes at the prospect of something like this going seriously viral.

</comment><comment><USER20> Everyone on HN should be crowdfunding with www.tilt.com (YC 12). Use Reward Code: HN10 and get $10 towards any tilt and 0 credit card processing fees.

<comment><USER21> Do you work for Tilt?

<comment><USER22> Either that or this is quite the coincidence: [https://clarity.fm/kentf](https://clarity.fm/kentf)

<comment><USER21> Buzzword bingo</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Intel joins forces with AMD to battle Nvidia - <AUTHOR> http://www.pcgamer.com/intel-joins-forces-with-amd-to-battle-nvidia/ <comment><USER2> The enemy of my enemy is my friend?</comment>


Statistically rigorous Java performance evaluation - <AUTHOR> https://blog.acolyer.org/2017/11/06/statistically-rigorous-java-performance-evaluation/ <comment><USER2> I prefer reporting the mean and the standard deviation - the paper advocates a confidence interval instead of standard deviation. Typically, I'm more concerned with the _spread_ of obtained performance values than I am with how likely it is that our measured mean is the within some interval. I generally don't think of that spread of obtained values as noise or random errors, but as systematic consequences of using real computing systems. The reason I don't consider that systematic _error_ is that the sources of variation in real computer systems are often the result of things like memory hierarchies and system buffers that will exist in practice. Real systems will have these things, so I want my experiments to have them as well - so long as our benchmark has them in the same way a real production system will have them.

For example, see Table 2 in a recent paper I am a co-author on (page 8 of the pdf, page 73 using the proceedings numbering): [http://www.scott- a-s.com/files/debs2017_daba.pdf](http://www.scott- a-s.com/files/debs2017_daba.pdf) In this paper, we care about latency, and we report the average latency along with the standard deviation. Here, a tighter standard deviation is more important than confidence that the mean falls within a particular range. And the variation in latencies is caused by both software and hardware realities of the memory hierarchy.

<comment><USER3> Mean and standard deviation seem downright dangerous to use, especially to understand latencies. Both mean and std are very sensitive to extreme values, and these extreme values tend to be frequent enough that shoving them under the 'outlier' carpet does not instill much confidence. Looking at multiple quantiles (if not all of them) would be more sound. But if one is compelled to reduce the data to 2 numbers, one can go with trimmed-means, and L-moments or some other robust estimate of location and scale (EDIT. for example, median and interquartile. Just that trimmed mean is more efficient, both statistically and computationally).

Deficiencies of mean and std are easy to demonstrate. Just draw multiple samples of different sizes from a Pareto distribution (some other long tailed distribution would work too) and observe how drastically the mean and std varies among those samples.

Gaussian distribution based methods, for example ANOVA, had their moment of glory in centuries past (good stats has since moved on). They are still fantastic tools when the assumptions they make are true (this is rather rare) but they break badly when those assumptions are violated a tiny wee bit. One can easily end up making a wrong decision.

At the very least one should verify that the Gaussian assumption holds before believing those statistics. There are many post-Gaussian statistics that one can use, if it turns out that the data is not Gaussian.

<comment><USER2> In my work, I have never discarded outlier values. We investigate them to make sure we're not doing something boneheaded, but once I'm confident it's legit, I always include it.

I agree that trimmed-means are L-moments are better at characterizing a distribution. But! I had to look them up just now, and I have never seen a computer systems paper which used them. I don't know if most readers would be able to intuit meaning from them. My claim is not that mean and standard deviation is the best way to characterize computer systems performance data, but that for my work, it's better than mean and a confidence interval.

<comment><USER3> > In my work, I have never discarded outlier values.

This is great to hear, hope everyone follows this.

> I have never seen a computer systems paper which used them. I don't know if > most readers would be able to intuit meaning from them.

That's rather unfortunate, is it not ? Current practice is broken. So should one not strive to fix it and introduce the community to better tools, champion better tools. I am aware I am being harsh here but, correctness be damned, lets follow the crowd does not show the community in stellar light. If trimmed mean is too exotic, even median and inter-quantile distance would be fine.

> My claim is not that mean and standard deviation is the best way to > characterize computer systems performance data, but that for my work, it's > better than mean and a confidence interval.

I have two comments to make (i) Its not the case that mean and std are mostly OK but rather suboptimal. I would be fine with that. The thing is these can be horribly wrong and unrepresentative. Seemingly innocuous looking distributions have infinite variance. Since you use a lot of Gaussian based tools, you would be familiar with a t-test and the t-distribution. The variance of a t-distribution with 2 degrees of freedom is infinite, any finite number one reports for the std would be wrong by an infinite order of magnitude.

> it's better than mean and a confidence interval.

(ii) I am having trouble with this one. Assuming that confidence intervals have been computed using the Gaussian assumption, width of the confidence interval would be a scaled up version of the standard deviation, nothing fundamentally different. Instead of std, you get, say, 3x of std. When they are bad, both are equally bad.

I am not against the use of Gaussian, sometimes it is very reasonable, but if correctness is a goal, then it needs to be demonstrated that it is not a wrong thing to use. There are standard techniques to verify that using Gaussian based stats would be fine.

I would be sympathetic if it was the case that we don't know how to handle departures from Gaussian, or it is very expensive to handle that. Neither of these are true, and haven't been true since the 80s. in fact earlier.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> More recently:

"Quantifying performance changes with effect size confidence intervals" Tomas Kalibera and Richard Jones Technical Report 4-12, University of Kent, June 2012.

[https://www.cs.kent.ac.uk/pubs/2012/3233/](https://www.cs.kent.ac.uk/pubs/2012/3233/)

Kalibera, Tomas and Jones, Richard E. (2013) "Rigorous Benchmarking in Reasonable Time"

[https://kar.kent.ac.uk/33611/](https://kar.kent.ac.uk/33611/)

</comment><comment><USER5> SPECjvm98 is an outdated measure of both system and JVM performance, the benchmark to look at is SPECjbb2015 which very aggressively taxes JVM subsystems like the GC and the JIT.

<comment><USER6> Yes, but this paper is old so they did the right thing by using SPECjvm98 at the time the paper was written.</comment></comment>


The Google Killer no one talks about - <AUTHOR> http://searchenginewatch.com/3640656

<comment><USER2> Wow, this article demonstrates sophistry: "big sounding" but ridiculous ideas in regards to the scalability challenges involved in search (has the author ever heard of latency?), no mention whatsoever of the science-intensive nature of search (page rank is a beatifull algorithm that captures the imagination, but that's like narrowing down a commercial RDBMS to a B-Tree: there is _far_ more behind the scenes that requires hundreds if not thousands of domain experts to research, implement and deploy).

This also missed the key thing Google has done: they're improved upon Overture's "pay for performance" model by incorporating click through rates into rankings which (when coupled to a scalable architecture that Overture didn't have until take over by Yahoo and Project Panama) turned them from "just another search engine" (I still remember our neighbours, both of them engineering managers in enterprise software companies reacting with utmost disgust to Google's IPO price: "they're only a search engine!") to the first company to make search hugely profitable to advertisers.

The "next Google" will take yet another commodity field that's ignored (has no clear winner at this time, not even seen as particularly technologically challenging: remember, inverted indices have existed long before Google) and make it a vastly profitable niche, while at the mean time "sucking up" Silicon Valley talent as to create a "moat" around their business. The talent could then yield secondary moats, much like Google's expertise at scaling out on commodity hardware enabled them to create the scalability moat at a time when all other players ran on mainframe hardware (with the notable exception of Inktomi, which started on clusters of bottom-to-mid Sun SPARC hardware, the kind that developers had on their desktops rather than enterprise and mainframe class gear -- quite close to commodity hardware), afraid to tackle the tough distributed systems problems.

</comment><comment><USER3> This article is a waste of time. Please do not upvote it.

<comment><USER4> I figured that by the title, which is why I checked the comments first. 'The google killer no one talks about' - my first thought - if no one talks about it it's likely not good and if no one is talking about it no one will hear of it and it'll 'kill' nothing.

Thank you gokhan, you likely saved me 10 minutes of a boring hyperbolic read. +1

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> _We can even pose a question into the ether without even knowing which friend will know the answer and respond._

And how many of them Google it for you? ;)

</comment><comment><USER6> Although I liked the historical analogies, this article is all over the place.

</comment><comment><USER7> Bah..I was expecting this to be about DuckDuckGo - the only search engine that actually returns better results than Google.

</comment><comment><USER8> Umm.... how does one organize and tap into all these people? There is going to be some type of searching/ranking going on... somewhere.

</comment><comment><USER9> Many years ago I thought gigablast was going to be the next thing to get close to the big three but now it's faded away. It really was impressive years ago, all coded by one guy and ran on like 5 machines.

Now it's turned to greenwashing which is strange to see.

</comment><comment><USER10> More interesting is the article linked about Yandex, the leading russian search engine, I had never heard of it.

<http://searchenginewatch.com/3634912>

<comment><USER11> Why haven't you heard of Yandex? they're all over httpd logs.

<comment><USER12> Ah yes, I can't imagine there is a person in the world who don't read httpd logs on the regular.

<comment><USER11> This is _Hacker_ News.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> tl;dr?</comment>


Ask HN: What to expect from life? - <AUTHOR>

Hi, I'm Tarik,
A young reader and contributor from your community. I always read you guys' technical opinions and actually am really curious about your view on life. Sometimes I ask following questions to myself and try to answer them. Now, as I believe you people are more experienced and older than me, I want to hear your answers if you are also okay to answer them publicly.
What do you expect from your life? What is your mission/goal in your life? Do you have anything in your mind? Who do you want to be when you get old? <comment><USER2> My view of what I want to be when I get old has changed over time. Both because a change in perspective at 20/30/40/50 and a changing definition of "old".

But some things are constant: I always want to be doing stuff, and leaving the world a better place than I found it. As much as I can be, be kind, help others. Some things I've done have had a huge impact, some have been small (time I spent on a telephone crisis line, or hell just picking up a piece of litter) but all made me glad I did them. Of course I am human and don't live up

Learn from your mistakes, especially ones that affect other people. You don't have to dwell on regret, but just try not to do them again.

Don't forget you are (probably) starting close to the goal. My parents and inlaws were children during terrible wars, and their respective countries (on three continents) were bombed, people put into camps, horrible things. They never dwelled on those things but it surely affected their outlooks on life. Me, I was lucky enough to have been born in a wealthy country at peace (Australia) and years ago moved to Silicon Valley. Basically by doing nothing I have _always_ been better off than 98+% of the people who have ever lived (including when I was a kid and my mum had to make all our clothes, and my parents couldn't always afford to eat at the end of the week). So I figure I shouldn't waste the opportunity that, say, some of my relatives in other countries don't have.

And remember you get good at what you do: if you spend a lot of time playing video games, you'll be good at playing video games; if you spend a lot of time programming in Java you'll be good at programming in Java. Again: decide if what you're doing is what you really want to do -- and if it is, do it without regret.

<comment><USER3> > And remember you get good at what you do: if you spend a lot of time playing > video games, you'll be good at playing video games; if you spend a lot of > time programming in Java you'll be good at programming in Java.

Just added that to my personal quote collection :-) Sort of obvious, but in an easy-to-forget kind of way...

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I expect from life the comfort and safety to contribute, and to love myself, my family and my friends. I expect to treat people kindly, and I'm delighted when I'm treated kindly. I don't want to discourage anyone, don't want to hurt anyone, don't want to kill anyone.

However, the universe hates you in a non-judgemental way (entropy) and wants you dead, so you are responsible for carving out that comfort and safety.

I've never had specific long term goals. I finished college, and I'm just about done raising a kid who has excellent potential. Those are short term goals that sort of assert themselves.

I don't know what I want to be when I'm old, other than to be. I'm probably already older than the life spans of most of humanity in recorded history. I want to remain curious about the world, contribute according to my interests and abilities, and die in modest comfort.

</comment><comment><USER5> When I was younger I wanted to do something _huge_ and earth-shattering with my life. Something noteworthy, that the history books would remember.

Now I just want to live a good life; to do _something_ that ensures that the world is a little bit better for me having existed. That's all I really hope for. Learning how to accomplish that is a journey, and that journey is what I expect life to be; or at least that's the form I hope mine will take.

</comment><comment><USER6> After graduating college and beginning to work in the real world my expectations have changed drastically.

I feel a lot more like a cog then an individual. Even if I excell at work I'm just a well oiled cog.

</comment><comment><USER7> no regrets. you young 'un.

also eat much cake as you can in the early years.</comment>


Word vectors using LSA - <AUTHOR> http://www.vikasing.com/2015/05/word-vectors-using-lsa-part-2.html

<comment><USER2> The LSA mentioned here is Latent Semantic Analysis, a form of statistical analysis of text to find groups of words that have a common meaning.

Heavy duty matrix math, but interesting none-the-less.</comment>