Talent is everywhere, opportunity is not - <AUTHOR> https://ourworldindata.org/talent-is-everywhere-opportunity-is-not <comment><USER2> How many talented people , in advanced economies, with good technical degrees , do take part in inventing important stuff ?

Very few.

Educating more kids and having more "ideas" won't change that.

We're not lacking ideas. We're lacking the right incentives to make ideas happen.

<comment><USER3> Everything is a hassle. Building permits, operating licenses, legal compliance, etc.

All those things arguably exist for good reasons, but it's a huge hurdle to doing anything useful.

I can't have a 20 foot radio tower in town, I can't subdivide smaller than 10 acres outside of town, I can't build any facility out there to operate the experimental tower without building permits, radio licenses, compliance with tracking (for the police) any radio customer I might get if I qualify as a "communication service provider", etc.

There are (major) hurdles in just about every conceivable industry, and hardly any provision for "hey I'm a guy who wants to experiment, perhaps even noncommercially".

You can overcome the hurdles, but how many people will just stay at their 9 to 5 and not bother because its a huge pain in the ass with no guaranteed benefit?

I wonder how much this holds us back, it's hard to say.

<comment><USER4> I'm a fan of the chemistry analogy here: you can catalyze (reduce barriers) and you can incentivize (increase rewards). If the incentives point the wrong way, catalyzing won't help. If the barriers are too high, incentivizing won't help.

I strongly suspect we're in a "barriers too high" regime rather than an "incentives are too low" regime, and that our money would be better spent reducing barriers than increasing incentives.

<comment><USER5> I think I agree but the question seems to be how do we lower the barriers smartly while still keeping the intent of the rules and regulations? Add to it our own bias to put more emphasis on the regulations that concretely prevent us from doing what we want now, rather than those that abstractly benefit us and its easy to point to them being the problem.

It's like the "one mans trash is another mans treasure" cliche, something that you see as an impediment I see as a social good. Finding the right balance is tricky and unfortunately in a polarized political environment it's easy for people to fall into the far sides of the argument.

<comment><USER6> The real question is: why did we install the protections(barriers) in the first place? I assume that a major component of that was as a reaction to the increasing complexity of modern life. Self sufficiency is fine, but it is difficult to take the consequences for many things knowingly. As such, we created, one at a time, experientially driven barriers designed to protect people from new, novel issues.

I don't think we need to offer more incentives or reduce barriers per se, but I think we really ought to be talking about refactoring our laws. The amount of legislative "technical debt" is intense and problematic.

<comment><USER7> For the many regulations in American society, there is usually a dead body buried underneath, possibly many dead bodies, including those of women and children, etc.

For each and every one, someone suffered terribly or died.

<comment><USER8> Unfortunately, many times, the dead body belonged to an idiot, whose foolishness won them a Darwin Award, and the legacy of inconveniencing millions of people.

We place too high a value on human life, and it's no wonder that we can't accomplish anything when a non-zero level of risk is unacceptable.

<comment><USER9> > _We place too high a value on human life, and it 's no wonder that we can't > accomplish anything when a non-zero level of risk is unacceptable._

This is too close to another formulation of the same thought: "we should allow corporations to kill people for profit, with impunity" for comfort.

<comment><USER8> No, it's really, really not. It would be nice if we could have a discussion of acceptable levels of risk versus inefficiency without immediately taking a left turn into "Soylent Green is People!" territory.

<comment><USER9> The "lefty" epithet, how handy.

You could start by telling us why the statements aren't the same, using examples and facts.

You seem to want to have an abstract, bloodless, clinical discussion of when it is acceptable to kill people in the name of "efficiency" (I will interpret this as "profit").

I can tell you that is a dishonest discussion, if that's what is intended. If you want to have it honestly you will have to first indicate an understanding of exactly, in detail, the most evil things that will happen as a result. Also the most devastating things that will happen and be protected from proportionate legal recourse under your proposed or imagined regime.

It won't be a bloodless conversation.

<comment><USER6> Evil and blame free do not necessarily follow from acknowledging that some level of risk is acceptable.

<comment><USER9> This is a non-statement intended to deflect into the abstract and away from actual consequences.

Policies and regulations aren't made in some Platonic ideal universe, they are made in specific, factual circumstances.

Come back to us when you can talk about how a specific "acceptable" level of risk does not involve enabling evil actors, and indemnified doers for a specific policy area.

Then we'll talk about the specific things you find acceptable, and just whose death and suffering you will trade for profit.

<comment><USER5> I don't read their statements the same way you do. The way they come across to me is that there needs to be a discussion of risk grounded in the understanding that in many (most?) domains, zero risk is unattainable.

It's like the idea of the FDA setting limits to the amount of insect contaminates allowed in food. At first, it seems disturbing until you realize that if they put a zero tolerance policy in place, there would be near-endless grounds to sue every food manufacturer out of business.

<comment><USER10> > in many (most?) domains, zero risk is unattainable.

Not only is it unattainable, it's actively counterproductive to try and achieve because of unexamined and unintended consequences.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I was talking to someone the other day that boiled it down to "everyone's trying to solve their Red Queen problem." I was unfamiliar, and the Wikipedia page doesn't seem to support this reading, but the idea is that everyone's running as fast as they can just to stay in place, and the way out is different for every person so no general approach can work for everyone. Any solution will put people right back in the realm of running as fast as they can to stay in place.

You pull out a bottleneck, only to reach another bottleneck. Puts the problem squarely in the realm of myth. Sisyphus rolling a boulder up a hill. Someone blew my mind one day when they suggested that Sisyphus didn't keep rolling the boulder up the hill because of compulsion, he does it because he finds exquisite meaning in it. He knows every crack, every crevice, how to move most efficiently up that hill. This idea moves the problem from mythological to religious. What is heaven and what is hell?

Some wind up burning out, and reverting to a simpler, more primitive form of life. Yours truly has a hard time seeing that as anything more than a rest stop. As humanity connects and we learn more about ourselves, our minds, and our bodies, we'll start unlocking dizzying heights of human achievement. These things will look like self-inflicted torture.

But at the end of the day, humans yearn for one thing, greatness, elevation, perfection. So they'll keep pushing themselves to that next level.

<comment><USER12> Albert Camus - The Myth of Sisyphus [https://web.archive.org/web/20190808163312/https://www2.hawa...](https://web.archive.org/web/20190808163312/https://www2.hawaii.edu/~freeman/courses/phil360/16.%20Myth%20of%20Sisyphus.pdf)

<comment><USER11> Aha, thanks! I'd always sided with Kierkegaard, maybe I should give Camus his fair shake.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> I feel like this is stating the obvious and putting the emphasis on the exact wrong end of it.

"Oh no! Think about all the potential geniuses we are missing out on! We must be doing something wrong!"

Ok, thought about it.

My conclusion is:

"Wow, the rate of genius production has never been higher, we must really be doing something right."

Could it be better? Sure. Is it getting better? According to Factfulness: sure.

I just don't understand the ridiculous in-built assumption that we are somehow wronging society and the potential geniuses themselves by them not being in a time and a place that makes use of the quality of the substrate of those particular individuals.

Well, sorry but nature doesn't optimize for the individual, it optimizes for the whole.

You may as well get equally mad at something silly like "why doesn't everyone always roll a 6?"

<comment><USER14> I think you missed the point that the opportunity is not equal, as a person if you grew up in rural Georgia and not knowing what to do with your life because you didn't get the memo kinda screws your future. It's about giving the opportunity for the smart minds to work on impactful things and frankly, if I would have that chance of a privileged kid, I would take it. Basically there are ways how to fix it, the question is what is the most effective way... Think about cheating on dropping the dice based on a pattern that always grants you two threes.

<comment><USER13> Yeah, I didn't miss that point. Not at all.

I think you missed my point. Because you state:

>Basically there are ways how to fix it

My point is it's not actually broken. It's working. It's working very well.

Although it doesn't tend to, opportunity _could_ arise anywhere. So, potential geniuses are peppered everywhere such that if opportunity were to arise there there are people who can take advantage of it.

The assumption that it should work the other way around is ridiculous.

Opportunity isn't for geniuses. Geniuses are for opportunity.

<comment><USER14> The point of the article is that majority of people are not given opportunity to become geniuses and frankly you don't even have to be one to make an impact. You don't just get born a genius its a process with lots of puzzle pieces (parents, education, environment). If your primary goal when you grow up is to not starve to death, you can hardly allocate time to study physics and make discoveries. However, tell it to the millions in Africa without food and education that the opportunity is everywhere and you will get skinned alive.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> The opportunity is there. It's always there. It may not be an opportunity to immediately become the president of an international corporation, but it's an opportunity to improve your life and life of your future generations.

Give your children education. Make sure they grow up in a full family. Move to a better place. All these small things add up. You won't become a millionaire this way, but your grandkids may.

</comment><comment><USER16> The lack of exposure to role models for girls is a load of carefully crafted dishonesty. It gives the impression that role models are the reason for gender differences in inventing without actually saying that. Instead, it uses the same weasel word "can" as cosmetics advertising telling you that some chemical "can" reduce wrinkles. It also doesn't quantify the effect because that would probably be embarrassing. Of course role models will have some effect but it's not the only one - sexual dimorphism is there too and all the role models in the world won't change that. I wish people would stop lying to themselves and others about gender differences. Men and women are not cognitively equal on average. We have different strengths and weaknesses. There's nothing wrong with that. You don't have to pretend that women would be just as good as men if only society would stop misunderstanding them. It's trying to pull girls under a spell of delusion to fool them into behaving like boys, perhaps so that more of those who can do so will fulfill their potential. Why not be honest and help people understand that their own individual qualities are not the same as their group average?

</comment><comment><USER17> One place talent is not is in the screening process of VC. Attempting to raise money for a new venture is like returning to high school and being confronted by the popular kids demanding to know why you should be allowed into their club. I expected professionalism, and primarily saw immature 1%'ers so transparent in their shallowness, it turned raising funding into a surreal experience leaving bile in my throat.

</comment><comment><USER18> The worst part isn't lacking opportunity. It's knowing that you lack the ability and are forced to live your life that way without any ability to do anything about it.

Opportunity is at least, largely changeable. Ability isn't.

Being average is the worst thing imaginable in today's society because nobody cares about average people.

I would give up anything to have the brain of an inventor. But it's something that has constantly haunted my mind knowing that I will always be sub-par.

It's even worse when you go through school and you're a top performer in your school work. You're given a false sense of being one of the best, only to be exposed in the real world as a complete fraud.

</comment><comment><USER19> We shouldn't worry about finding the talent who can work as researchers, first we should worry about finding the talent who can reliably work as modern farmers or in factories. That is what Africa is missing before it can take the next step towards becoming a modern society.

</comment><comment><USER20> Capital is so trapped up that people don't even have the capital to take care of basic needs.

<comment><USER21> Seems to me capital is not just ordinary resources.

More like when preservation or a positive return is intended in a businesslike situation, even though negative returns are often encountered.

Other people's money can be used to leverage some amazing outcomes.

When capitalism is dominated by greedy capitalists, basic needs are not intended to be taken care of, since no return on that type investment can be recognized.

When capitalism is dominated by benevolent capitalists, basic needs are intended to be taken care of, since huge return on that type investment can be recognized.

<comment><USER21> pizzazzaro wrote: >So... How are we to ensure that we have these "benevolent Capitalists"?

Good point, that's a tough one. Sometimes there will obviously be a devastating shortage, or none available at all.

Maybe the only benevolence some cultures will be able to muster is an incomplete removal of opportunity.

I would estimate real benevolence should be obvious to the widest of consensus, and easily distinguishable almost universally from situations where there is some doubt.

Not saying it's easy or possible to ensure anything, especially an anti-greed approach during a greed-power consolidation trend lasting longer than a lifetime.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> Imo

Education is overvalued, Capital is under appreciated,

And, Because Capital is trapped into networks, that Capital is squandered among an infinite array of companies employing the talent and producing products that don't make you, or the planet, better, healthier, smarter or happier. (Apple's SJ era, Google until 2014~ and Tesla fit the useful smarter happier paradigma, and not many other)

My solution is: take a piece of the federal budget and give $1-3MM to anyone with a far fetched idea that has a prototype to back it up. No long processes. If 30K -mostly students- a year get a mill to develop their thing, I suspect we would find ourselves way into the future in just a decade. And that's just $30-90B/y

<comment><USER23> If I had been given $1 million when I was 22 to build something, the world would have a pretty awesome Honda Civic with a flamethrower on the front, a 40" subwoofer in the hatch, and a dial to change the camber angle of the wheels on the fly.

<comment><USER24> Just like Casey Neistad spent budget for Nike commercial on doing stupid shit around the world. There was also a band of musicians that got loads of cash from music company and they wasted it on drugs in Berlin instead of production of an album (someone on Joe Rogan, don't remember name).

So those things happen in some people reality.

<comment><USER25> Instantly made me think of this: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z7hhDINyBP0](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z7hhDINyBP0)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> > list of innovations we need is long

but subsequent included nothing vis-a-vis the expensive, industrial lifestyle we have these days. It is unfortunate that cultural innovation doesn't make the list, since it would go a long way toward address some pertinent problems

<comment><USER27> I'd go farther and suggest that culture is the central problem.

Only better culture can deliver peace and a modicum of justice. In particular, a social culture in which neighbors do not seek to rob or enslave each other.

Self-driving cars, or even a cure for cancer, will not advance this central goal. Better schools on the other hand, just might.

<comment><USER26> Spot on. In this vein, I think culture can be seen as a form of 'wetware' technology. Crime, inequality and so on are technical debts of early decisions by a few, it is a sector ripe for disruption but with very strong encumbents.

Unfortunately said encumbents know how important schools are in this.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> If I hadn't had to work jobs just to keep food on the table, I'd have invented the things I did A LOT earlier. I'd probably be finished rewriting the internet's protocols by now, instead of only being 30% of the way there.

But that's not how this world works. Most of the early discoveries were by affluent people or had benefactors and didn't need jobs and thus actually had time.

</comment><comment><USER29> > "The list of innovations we need is long: clean and cheap energy, better > crops, interventions to help against the diseases that shorten and impair > our lives. This, and much more besides, is needed to make progress against > the big problems we face. But while the demand for innovation is large, its > supply is limited."

Yes and no. What we need is better problem identification and more appropriate priorities.

For example, we don't need "better crops." We need to stop wasting so much of that we do have. Less waste means less wasted resources.

For example, less wasted food also means less chemicals and pesticides, which likely means less disease and medical issues.

If we solved for root problem (i.e., apply The Five Whys) we'd waste less time and resources solving for symptoms.

As for the supply of innovation being limit. IDK, I've heard that scarcity breeds innovation. So perhaps we are innovating, but in the wrong places, at the wrong time, for the wrong reasons.

<comment><USER16> Reducing waste can only go so far - zero waste - and worse, it has diminishing returns. Improving technology, on the other hand, has no upper bound and builds on itself to enable even more improvements.

Imagine if people had just reduced food waste instead of inventing fertilizer? We probably wouldn't have western civilization.

<comment><USER29> Perhaps. But that's not the point. The waste isn't limited to food itself, but the resources to grow it, transport it, and even dispose of it.

The solution of "make more" doesn't actaully address the problems

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> Immigration isn't mentioned at all; that's shocking.

Assuming talent seeks opportunity to express itself, places looking for success (=talent*opportunity) should to make it easy for talent to move there.

For the US, let students who earn masters/doctorates at American schools stay.

<comment><USER31> As an immigrant in the US, I'm not surprised. The word immigration/immigrant has been subverted by the popular media in the US to refer mostly to "illegal immigrants escaping violent regimes" or some such fantasy. You'll rarely see a discussion of H1B visas or the length of the legal immigration queues discussed in the popular media.

The popular media in the US also violently opposes opportunity or skills-based immigration even though that's what the majority of the world does. The liberal fantasy of immigration is a variation of the white man's burden ([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_White_Man%27s_Burden](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_White_Man%27s_Burden)) where it is the US's role to save the oppressed and the downtrodden by welcoming them to the US. Allowing immigration to be determined by talent or education is "racist".

<comment><USER32> As an immigrant in the US, I think your perception of the issue is driven more by your (probably pre-existing) existing attitudes on "liberals" than by the media in the US.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> Very few societies promote Self-actualization in [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maslow's_hierarchy_of_needs](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maslow's_hierarchy_of_needs)

</comment><comment><USER34> One problem I see in education today is that we give lots of extra resources to kids with learning problems, behavior problems, and physical handicaps, but not many resources go to gifted kids because "they'll do okay on their own". Yes, they might do "okay", but they might turn into brilliant innovators if they were given the same extra attention that the kids below the median get.

This article is specifically about kids who score above average in math in 3rd grade. As a society, we have chosen (or someone has) to provide extra teaching staff to help kids that are below the median, not the ones who are exceptional.

</comment><comment><USER35> "Talent is everywhere, opportunity is not". I keep seeing this quote, but not attribution. Oldest I can find of it, -[http://www.talkleft.com/story/2009/9/26/144122/317/hillarycl...](http://www.talkleft.com/story/2009/9/26/144122/317/hillaryclinton/Hillary- Talent-Is-Universal-Opportunity-Is-Not-)

</comment><comment><USER36> I think the better question would have been, how would Steve Jobs have ended up if he were born in Syria

<comment><USER37> Not identical example. But Elon Musk was born in South Africa. Far from Syria, but still not a major world economic Center.

<comment><USER38> You may want to refreshen your knowledge regarding South Africa in its apartheid days. I would confidently posit that Elon was more privileged than your average American at that time. Of course he may want/ has created a different picture of his young days.

<comment><USER39> Certain individuals may be have been more privileged, in South Africa, during Apartheid, presuming skin colour.

South Africa has not produced a thriving industrial or technological sector, though there have been individual advances in certain areas, notably medicine (heart transplants, yellow fever vaccine), and Mark Shuttleworth's Thawte, which left the country.

Musk would have been 23 at the time of the election of Nelson Mandella. Musk's youth certainly was under an Apartheid regime and would reflect the benefits of being a white male under that system. He'd already left for Canada some five years earlier, which might itself speak to your parent's observations.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER40> I have tech talents that maybe a few thousand people in the world have, and research ability to move the needle (maybe even novel ideas in the field, if you ask me).

I can't work in academia (no Ph.D), find capital (no connections), and the software job market is a crazy stupid PITA (no thanks).

I know it's me, that I can have what I want if I really go for it, and that is what I do by living simply and continuing my work.

But it would be swell if it was easier to be seen, at such a high level. I would gladly teach, if offered the role.

Basically, it should made way-too-easy for obviously talented, experienced, people to find some kind of work in teaching or civic developments.

<comment><USER41> > obviously talented

The only "obvious" proof of talent that will convince anyone is having impressive accomplishments in a given field. Do you have any?

<comment><USER21> Exactly.

A naturally unfair advantage at the type of research that involves experimentation and/or discovery is a characteristic that most PhD's do not actually have. Plenty still do, but most do not.

But without a PhD you will need to work your way up to outperforming those with credentials by a factor of 10x to 20x.

Forget working in academia, but you will be expected to hang with them and make progress that they can obviously recognize, without intimidation difficulties either way.

It's doable, and can be quite rewarding in itself.

If nothing else you could end up like it says in the article. You could have a thousand wonderful ideas just like everyone else, but you've got breakthroughs that could grow phenomenally where 99 percent of them would require capital. This doesn't make capital any more accessible to you than the average person on the street. If your breakthroughs are really good you should be able to make opportunity from the 1 percent that can be pursued without other people's money anyway, while using the resources already at hand.

Like it says, you could be the best innovator in the world but without undue good fortune it is extemely unlikely that ANY of your efforts will ever be leveraged towards the masses regardless of how beneficial or not.

In the hypothetical 99 to 1 scenario, IF you can implement the full 1 percent of your technical ability, then your odds are excellent by comparison since only 99 percent of your life's work will be lost.

PhD's don't have as much opportunity as there was in the past either, everybody's got to work around it.

And it's probably even more important to be careful against bad fortune, which is a LOT worse than a simple lack of good fortune.

<comment><USER41> In most cases, successful inventors of the past didn't have access to capital either. It often took decades of relentless dedication for their ideas to come to life. Sometimes, they even straight up risked their lives (like doctors trying out new therapies on themselves). You could say that's unfair, but it kind of makes sense - this way, only people with a singular focus and huge drive make it to the other end - and it's precisely the kind of people who are most fit to be leading the progress anyway (i.e. it's better for everyone when people who get to do cancer research are obsessed about curing cancer and not just very smart, normal people).

<comment><USER21> Another advantage of strong individual focus is you can end up owning your own inventions rather than having them assigned away to some extent.

Living off your own technology is not for everyone. Most innovation is not ground-breaking or is so marginal that it actually needs to be highly leveraged to achieve the benefits of scale. Without a large research group to support it is possible to get by on the lesser advances, and if momentum can be built from that it can allow the time and space to gravitate to more potentially impactful approaches compared to modern or established institutional trends.

In many situations it can be a lot easier and less costly & time-consuming to invent another sure-fire energy-saving device for instance, than it would be to risk the resources seeking eminence. You can end up with an unfair advantage at the inventing itself compared to those who divert any effort away from the task, simply because you can not afford to take that kind of risk.

You also have the unfair disadvantage relative to those who basically just toot their own horn, but everybody has that.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER42> Invention is overvalued as well as the idea of "creativity."

The biggest proof is the current China-USA standoff.

USA is on the paper the biggest nation on earth by manufacturing output, but what was the last time you saw made in USA household goods in supermarket without having to specifically look for them?

Why China has industrial base and USA doesn't?

Wages difference? No, not by a chance. In some places in China, the cost of trained blue collar labour begins to exceed that of US.

An hourly rate for an experienced pick and place machine operator in South China certainly exceeds $15 per hour, and may be closing on $20. This is what I can tell from my own experience.

On an another hand, it is $16 in USA. [https://www.indeed.com/salaries/SMT- Operator-Salaries](https://www.indeed.com/salaries/SMT-Operator-Salaries)

Even plain assembly line workers now get close to $15, and trained ones above that. For any manufacturing automation specialist in China, wages are better than in USA...

You don't see Chinese industrialists racing to setup factories in USA. Think why now?

I was telling my own story on HN few times already. I was trying to setup an electric scooter factory in Vancouver, Canada, and then in US northwest on behalf of my employer.

I had to hire university grads to do plain assembly, as anybody else had hard time to just wire a battery, throttle, BMS board, and a motor. And that with colour coded wire harness with mechanical keys to prevent miswiring... We spent 6 months looking for an operator for our model of pick and place machine.

In China, those are the jobs I can hire a highschooler for.

America wastes its talent not any much less than, say, most countries Americans call "the third world."

A very good story about that [https://www.nytimes.com/2019/01/28/technology/iphones- apple-...](https://www.nytimes.com/2019/01/28/technology/iphones-apple-china- made.html)

<comment><USER43> Even if wages are comparable, are other costs of employment, such as unemployment insurance, healthcare, pay roll tax comparable?

And even if they are comparable now, its true that it no longer matters. The work moved to China because of low wages, and its going to stay there now because all of the labor force and supply chain infrastructure are much better developed. You are quite right those things no longer exist in the US, they have atrophied.

<comment><USER42> > Even if wages are comparable, are other costs of employment, such as > unemployment insurance, healthcare, pay roll tax comparable?

At ~23.5% Chinese social insurance (medical, trauma and serious illness, pension, housing fund, maternity, unemployment) costs more to employer than in US, at least in Guangdong province.

This is why I was saying that guessing purely on numbers, lower cost of capital, external risks, taxes, social payments, and somewhat lower wages, USA should be a better place for manufacturing than China

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER44> What's that? UBI?

</comment><comment><USER45> Opportunity is created, not found

</comment><comment><USER46> The talent, was originally a unity of mass and money of Antiquity, so people who have talent, means people who have money.

<comment><USER47> > talent (n.)

> late 13c., "inclination, disposition, will, desire," from Old French talent > (12c.), from Medieval Latin talenta, plural of talentum "inclination, > leaning, will, desire" (11c.), in classical Latin "balance, weight; sum of > money," from Greek talanton "a balance, pair of scales," hence "weight, > definite weight, anything weighed," and in later times sum of money," from > PIE *tele- "to lift, support, weigh," "with derivatives referring to > measured weights and thence money and payment" [Watkins]; see extol.

So, no. But it's a neat folk etymology even if it isn't quite true.

<comment><USER48> Maybe I am missing some subtleties, but why is talent not money?

>The Homeric talent "as money" was probably the gold equivalent of the value of an ox or a cow.[2] Based on a statement from a later Greek source that "the talent of Homer was equal in amount to the later Daric [... i.e.] two Attic drachmas" and analysis of finds from a Mycenaean grave-shaft, a weight of about 8.4 gm can be established for this money talent.[2] The talent of gold was known to Homer, who described how Achilles gave a half-talent of gold to Antilochus as a prize.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talent_(measurement)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talent_\(measurement\))

<comment><USER47> It was a (rather heavy) weight, and only a unit "of money" by extension.

A Homeric talent was a unit of weight, hence the half-talent " _of gold_ " as a prize. A talent of silver would weigh the same but have less value.

The Hebrew "talent" (kikar) was also a unit of weight.

The later Latin talentum borrowed the existing weight measure and the Greek word τάλαντον and by the time of the parable of the talents, this word already carried the rather heavy meaning of "58.9 kg." (from your link above).

So a talent in the modern metaphorical sense of "talented person" means a person carrying a heavy weight, and a heavy responsibility. If a single talent is almost 60 kg, imagine the unlucky person with five talents placed on them! Perhaps it would be better to have a genius than to be talented, though neither one makes you rich.

> For the kingdom of heaven is as a man travelling into a far country, who > called his own servants, and delivered unto them his goods. And unto one he > gave five talents, to another two, and to another one; to every man > according to his several ability; and straightway took his journey.

The only thing we can say with confidence about these "goods" is that they were heavy, and not necessarily something you want... especially if they are to be repaid "with usury" at some future undisclosed time of reckoning, as in the story!

<comment><USER48> >The only thing we can say with confidence about these "goods" is that they were heavy, and not necessarily something you want... especially if they are to be repaid "with usury" at some future undisclosed time of reckoning, as in the story!

But having talents, isn't that essence of being human? Having talents and using them? Who are we if we fear having talents?

<comment><USER47> Sure! But just because we don't fear something doesn't mean we necessarily _want_ it. It's courageous to not be afraid of something you don't want.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER49> Once again, an article related to utilitarian altruism that doesn't seem to draw a defensible conclusion from the arguments given. This particular type of article, and the works of the effective altruism movement more broadly, always creep up to the edge of demanding meaningful change but, in their conclusions, shrink away from it.

They make the case that the world has a lot of issues, that a lot of people have bad lives and that those people should have better lives, and that "we need to do what is possible to allow everyone to live a life free of poverty, free of hunger, and free of premature death".

But from there, the path they lay out, and advocate for, is one of continued oligarchy. After saying that we need to eliminate poverty, hunger, and premature death, they advocate for "[continuing] the positive developments of the last decades with more children surviving, more children growing up free of the worst poverty, and more children being better educated than ever before. If I am optimistic about the future of the world and progress against the world's problems it is because of this."

But what if you don't agree? And how could you? While some thing seem to be getting better (by some indicators only) global inequality continues to increase, and the inequality in developed economies is obscene. The climate and environment are destroyed more rapidly than ever in a continual quest for infinite growth. The solution proposed to the horrors of our present world, of improvement by creating more capitalism, is absurd. Capitalism is functioning as it must. It's not capitalism's fault as an ideology - it was designed to be this way.

The world being advocated by these altruistic technocrats is no better than our own: if we lived in their utopia, we'd be at the mercy of our 'betters' who would still form a separate class above the rest of society. The suggestions for how to give back are also laughable. Donating your time or money individually while doing nothing to challenge the system won't change anything. It is through radical societal change, radical democracy, that a new and better world can be achieved.

Neoliberals like this often feel the need to impress upon everyone that at least the floor is being raised - the amount of people in extreme poverty has gone down (by some metric) or the amount of people dying of disease has been reduced. But the real path to liberation isn't the gradual improvement of the bottom while the top gets fatter and richer and more powerful. The real solution is revolution. Take the table, take the world, break free from this failed system.

What can you do, then, if you're not going to nobly work at a hedge-fund and selflessly donate some of your salary to cure malaria? Advocate for the real change you want to see in the world. If you want to end climate change, start going to the climate strikes. If you want a better life you workers at low incomes, show them solidarity when they strike. If your boss uses your open source library for an ICE contract, delete the code. When the world begins to shift, and everyone looks around and wonders why everything is so wrong, don't use data to insist that everything is good, actually. Embrace the knowledge that something is wrong! Something is wrong! And the world is fucked if it doesn't change. Don't let incrementalists like Max fool you into thinking otherwise.

<comment><USER50> > The real solution is revolution. Take the table, take the world, break free > from this failed system.

Ah yes, violent revolution, where the lower class gets killed en masse (a "noble sacrifice") and autocracy takes even greater hold as a result. The wheels of the revolution larpers are always greased with the blood of the downtrodden.

<comment><USER49> I didn't advocate violence once. I did advocate democracy. I did advocate solidarity. I did advocate protest.

Revolution is not always violent and in fact is often not violent. Your reading of my comment as advocating violence is just your own projection.

<comment><USER51> There is no way to switch off oil dependency right now without many people dying as a consequence. Climate change protest encouraging regulatory and subsidy movements towards renewables doesn't _sound_ like revolution and tearing down anything.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER52> Opportunity is often missed because it looks like work.

<comment><USER53> The availability of opportunity itself has diminished. Fewer and fewer opportunities are made available by those who hold the keys to the gates. Often, when one of the now fewer gates to opportunity open, much less is offered inside than was historically there and the risks to benefits to open those doors is increasing across the board.

I'd say it's too simplistic to imply people don't seek opportunity because it requires work, it's more to do with the fact the success rates are so low and the magnitude of work is so high now compared historically that most would rather seek other ways to add enjoyment to their lives and abandon the system.

That's not sustainable for our society to continue to be successful and it has to change back to more sane thresholds. Implying people are lazy is a copout to the real problem.

<comment><USER16> Older opportunities only looked easy because they'd be easy for us in our more powerful position of knowledge and resources. It wasn't easy for an uneducated medieval peasant to discover the laws of electromagnetism. Even the most advantaged people didn't know what to look for. Plenty of failures happened in alchemy/witchcraft/religion/etc. that people dedicated their lives to for nothing because they didn't have our advantage of knowledge.

<comment><USER54> Most of the people making those discoveries were people of means, though (or at least adjacent to, but not competing with, them).</comment></comment></comment></comment>


We Need a New Google. - <AUTHOR> http://blog.meeps.com/post/16473744371/organizing-the-worlds-people

<comment><USER2> i think we're going to see search engines become more specialized. If I am looking for something in my area, Yelp is great. I reach yelp through duckduckgo (!yelp)

<comment><USER3> We recently integrated Yelp into Zero-Click. You can check it out here: <http://duckduckgo.com/?q=black+lab+bistro>. Also get's handled on mobile.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> if someone followed these rules it might actually work - <http://www.google.com/about/corporate/company/tenthings.html>

</comment><comment><USER5> The answer is right under our nose. Duck Duck Go and Blekko are both excellent and constantly improving. They just need more time (and a lot more users).</comment>


Twitter acquires anti-abuse technology provider Smyte - <AUTHOR> https://techcrunch.com/2018/06/21/twitter-acquires-anti-abuse-technology-provider-smyte/ <comment><AUTHOR> Ok, good for them I guess? But what's the deal with shutting down services immediately?

<comment><AUTHOR> "Twitter tells us that Smyte will wind down its operations with those customers – it didn't acquire Smyte for its revenue-generation potential, but rather for its talent and IP."

By winding down operations did they mean sending an email less than an hour before shutting off services?</comment></comment>


Doodle on Google.pl - <AUTHOR> http://www.google.pl

<comment><USER2> For those not patient enough to sit through everything (shame on you, its a lot of fun), it searches for Stanisław Lem at the end

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stanis%C5%82aw_Lem>

</comment><comment><USER3> ha, reminded me of machinarium

</comment><comment><USER4> expected a Perl script</comment>


Wolfenstein 1D - <AUTHOR> http://wonder-tonic.com/wolf1d/ <comment><USER2> Making the figures and line bigger than 1 pixel would have still preserved 1D affect. Also the line does not need to be straight either - it could have been curved. The only requirement is the degree of freedom to move (back and forth).

<comment><USER3> Curved line means 2D.

<comment><USER4> Incorrect; a curved line is a 1-dimensional space embedded in a higher dimensional space. There's still only one dimension of freedom on that line.

<comment><USER3> Please, describe me a curved line with one coordinate only.

<comment><USER5> You're missing the point. Within the set of points along the curved line, I can define any point by a single coordinate: how far along the line that point is. That makes the space defined by that set of points one-dimensional. The fact that the line itself is defined by multiple coordinates within the larger space it is embedded in, is irrelevant.

<comment><USER6> I understand what you are trying to say, but I don't think it is entirely accurate to say that being able to define any point by a single coordinate is what makes it "one-dimensional."

The reason is that R^n has the same cardinality as R. You could create a bijection between the set of 2-dimensional real coordinates to the set of 1-dimensional reals by using every even positioned digit to represent the X value and odd positioned digits for the Y.

The issue with this is that the intuitive metric you were using in the space breaks down and you need a totally unintuitive one to treat this 1-dimensional version as a metric space. It wouldn't be fun to play a game in.

<comment><USER7> > I understand what you are trying to say, but I don't think it is entirely > accurate to say that being able to define any point by a single coordinate > is what makes it "one-dimensional."

You're missing the fact that several different definitions of dimension exist. If we're talking about topological dimension, then yes, the fact that you need exactly one parameter to define a point is what makes it one-dimensional.

<comment><USER8> Anyone ever tried playing chess in one dimension? I bet that would melt your brain. Ok, that actually sounds like it might be fun to mock-up.

<comment><USER8> I played around with this idea. First transforming the visual representation of the chess board and then seeing how I would describe the moves of the pieces and whether it was more / less intuitive.

It is easy to view the board as 64 consecutive spaces (left-to-right through the ranks, then snaking through the ranks, and then a circular representation. The circle was cool because the moves became rotations (a rook can stay in its octant or move an exact multiple of 45 degrees...). I did some 2D transformations with a one space skew on each rank (this made the bishop act simultaneously like a rook and knight which was interesting).

So it is easy to preserve the rules of chess and create a different visual representation of the board. Of course, every one I tried just made the game more difficult to understand. I wonder if there is a transform that could aid in understanding chess.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> The sad thing is that most FPS are now 1D as well : one big long corridor...

<comment><USER10> I know exactly what you mean. I have stopped classifying many of the new ones as games. Instead I refer to most of them as Interactive experiences which is more suited to them for what they do.

<comment><USER11> I know it was made in 2008, but I'm really enjoying Far Cry 2 at the moment, which is about as far removed from an on-rails shooter as you can get.

<comment><USER12> Far Cry 2 is by a fair distance the best most recent game I've played in some time - it's the only one I keep coming back to. A lot of people found it repetitive (shooting up guardposts etc.), but I don't approach it like that. I like to get around the map stirring up as little heat as possible, and get more fun out of the tension of sneaking past. Before I start any mission, I pull out my map and plan my route - which bits by bus, which by river, which gaps between guardposts, etc. And for the missions themselves, I like to tactically dominate them - take out snipers from distance, find high ground (often ex-sniper posts), burn the place out if suitable, then mop up. If I get hit even once, or seen when I didn't mean to be, I consider it almost a failure. Crysis was remarkably poor by comparison - the suit completely ruins gameplay for people who like to sneak, because it removes the stress.

<comment><USER13> Far Cry 2 really was a glorious experiment in immersion—for some it seemed to fail spectacularly, and for others (like you and I) it seemed to hit some nerve in just the right way.

I play the game very similarly to you. Have you tried the self—imposed permadeath route? I did one play that way—didn't end up beating it, of course—and it was a hell of an experience.

<comment><USER12> I try to play most FPS games as if death is permanent, though I don't make such a rule. Rather, I simply don't enjoy the kamikaze rush that pays off maybe 80-95% of the time but looks like something out of a Hollywood action movie (this seems more the style where Crysis was targeted), but rather the reasoned, considered approach that works out 99.5% or higher (and might be a realistic approach if one were actually living in the game universe). Immersion just doesn't work for me if I can't do that.

So I don't like CoD and other linear shooters which present you with a series of scripted shooting galleries and a quota of targets to hit before allowing progress (it's utterly mindless); nor do I like (any more) the Quake / Doom style of horror "surprises", where long straight corridors and shadowy alcoves are near certain to contain unpleasant ambushes (it almost punishes foresight); and nor do I like Half-Life 2 and its episodes, which do not reward exploration or observation - every possible "bad outcome" is blatantly and repeatedly telegraphed, and almost every interesting alcove turns out to actually be the way forward because the obvious way forward turns out to be blocked: HL2+ are over-designed.

With more and more games focused towards consoles, lacking first person (I would have enjoyed GTA4 more if it were first person outside vehicles), and with "crouch in cover mode" features activated by dedicated controls (I thought ducking in and out of cover was part of the challenge?), I sometimes fear the depth I seek is getting harder to find. But I'm not sure. Games like the Thief series, Deus Ex, Far Cry 1 & 2, and modern RPGs like Oblivion and Fallout, are probably actually coming out with roughly the same regularity as always, just that memory compresses them.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> The "Send $35 to Apogee Software Productions" bought back fond memories of playing these 'demos' as a kid and wishing I were in the US so I could actually buy these things.

<comment><USER15> Call Apogee and quote "Aardwolf".

<comment><USER14> So they can tell me 'you are stuck, restart!'? :D

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> 1.5D would have added that half-realistic quality which is sadly lacking in this unrealistic shadow game.

</comment><comment><USER17> First thought: people living in parallel 5D universes must find 3D games boring to hell :)

<comment><USER18> _First thought: people living in parallel 5D universes must find 3D games boring to hell_

Just for the sake of argument, don't 3D games also include the 4th dimension? Surely a marketing guy from a games must have tried "NEW 4D ACTION YEAH!"-sloganed advertising by now?

<comment><USER19> You mean time? Not really. Few games allow _any_ movement backwards in time, and practically none have free interaction with this "fourth" dimension as they have with the other three.

<comment><USER20> Lots of games allow _some_ movement backwards in time. They're called save points :)

<comment><USER19> Agreed, that's why I wrote free interaction, meaning the same kind of freedom you have in the other dimensions. Achron is the only concept I know of that has fairly free interaction with time. However, there are a number of games that have deeper interaction with time than just save games, consider the variety of games that now offer some sort of "rewind" feature of the kind pioneered (afaik) by Prince of Persia: Sands of Time.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> I love the idea, I just wish there were more of a game there! I think this might be do-able with timing puzzles, perhaps, or having to open doors on the right, then double-back, and open a door behind you, etc.

It's a great concept for a joke, but It'd be even cooler if it were playable, more than just move-right, shoot stuff ;)

<comment><USER22> I kind of like it as commentary on the state of modern shooters ;)

<comment><USER23> Would that make this a post-modern shooter?

edit: if so, I wonder what the Jackson Pollock FPS of our current era would be. Or Mondrian Tournament?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> Very cool. I've been working on a 1d roguelike for a while, similar approach. Although a bit easier to know what's going on there because you get symbols rather than shadows.

</comment><comment><USER25> I wish I didn't have daltonism.

<comment><USER26> daltonism: red-green color blindness

<comment><USER25> I see you are not Daltonic at all... good to know

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> Did the original Wolfenstein also feature the Horst Wessel Lied?

BTW, Castle Wolfenstein's scenery is based on Wewelsburg [1] which housed a SS 'school' before WW2.

[1] [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wewelsburg#The_Wewelsburg_SS_Sc...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wewelsburg#The_Wewelsburg_SS_School)

<comment><USER28> I believe all the sounds and music are direct rips from the original game.

<comment><USER29> Wolfenstein 3D != Castle Wolfenstein

The latter was a game almost 30 years ago on Apple ][ (and other 8 bit machines?).

<comment><USER28> Ah yes.

By "original wolfenstein" I understood "wolf3d" (as opposed to the new wolf1d).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> I'm much better at this advanced 1D version. :D

</comment><comment><USER31> First 1D game that I actually enjoyed playing :).

<comment><USER32> And probably the last one too :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER33> Even just listening to the audio was great.

</comment><comment><USER34> Freekin' Genius! I think this can be used as a relaxation exercise. Low input, low stress gaming. Only wish the whole screen didn't go read when you died. What's even more interesting is that I started imagining the bad guys after a little while.... hmm, are you sure it's 1-D, I'd argue it was 1Di.

</comment><comment><USER35> Very cool

A buddy in college updated the old Trek73 game with a 3d version. It was colossally confusing to play. In response I wrote Trek1D which was played very like this game. My universe had stars, which had to be gotten around by firing up the warp engines and entering the 2nd dimension!

</comment><comment><USER36> I've just finished reading _Flatland_ by Edwin Abbott, a really good read in which a Square from Flatland (a 2-D land) gets pulled up into Spaceland (3-D land) and then down into Lineland (1-D land). This is Wolfenstein in Lineland.

</comment><comment><USER37> Why CTRL for shoot? It doesn't work in my browser for who knows what number of reasons, rendering the game unplayable. Games running on unknown hardware should stick to common keys which can be expected to work/exist.

<comment><USER38> I imagine CTRL was chosen for historical reasons; it was the fire key on the original game.

</comment></comment><comment><USER39> Isn't this some weird sort of Turing machine?

EDIT: also isn't it 2d, seeing as it has to include the dimension of time?

<comment><USER40> Well then Wolfenstein3D should be Wolfenstein4D

EDIT : I would say the number of dimensions is roughly the number of coordinates you need to store the position of a sprit in the game. (In this sens, Wolf3D is not real 3D since the third dimension (up-down) is just "emulated".)

</comment></comment><comment><USER41> Waiting for Wolfenstein 4d.

</comment><comment><USER42> Is it still two dimensional if one of the dimensions is only observed in a single of its smallest divisibly sized unit?

<comment><USER43> To be fair, if it were first-person, it would be 1d. You'd just have the one pixel of what was in front of you.

<comment><USER40> No coordinate system required, that would be Wolf0D.

<comment><USER43> Sure you would, to determine how far into the level you were. I wasn't talking about changing the level, just putting it in a first person view.

<comment><USER42> "How far" implies length, something which implicitly requires another dimension, at least "another" when considered from the perspective of a "viewer" in 1D space.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER44> I look forward to playing this on my 800XL.

</comment><comment><USER45> MEMORIEZ!

</comment><comment><USER46> The game is actually two dimensional in the sense that videos are considered three dimensional. The independent variables involved are the 1-D line _and_ time.

(Sorry just got up from studying signal processing, couldn't help but point that out).

<comment><USER47> Nobody calls Quake a 4D game.

<comment><USER46> Well they should, because with just 3 co-ordinates you would be able to define the point in space and that is not enough. Dimension refers to the minimum number of independent variables that must be used to define a given point.

Anyho, a little sense of humor would not have killed you you know.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER48> this is not 1d it is obviously 2d because it has a x and a y coordinate (1px * 300px), why call it 1d ?...i dont get it! maybe someone can explane that.

<comment><USER49> The Y coordinate is constant, thus giving a 1D feel. But yes, technically speaking, it's still a 2D game, with 1D movement.

<comment><USER48> ok, got it!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER50> Some people have too much time on their hands. :-)</comment>


Modular Moto Z Android phone supports DIY and RPi HAT add-ons - <AUTHOR> http://hackerboards.com/modular-moto-z-android-phone-supports-diy-and-rpi-hat-add-ons/ <comment><USER2> I looked into adding GPIO to an Android/Ubuntu phone a while ago.. Something like this should work with many phones for about $20 - [http://www.ebay.com/itm/Geeetech-IOIO-OTG-development- board-...](http://www.ebay.com/itm/Geeetech-IOIO-OTG-development-board-with- USB-OTG-cable-for-Android-device-PC-/222215803989)

I think mobile phones could be really nice for robotics - they have 4G/wifi/bt connectivity, large battery, touch screen, sensors, IMU, camera, gps, fast CPUs - and they are cheap and often surplus. Especially once mobile GPUs get better and start getting support from machine learning frameworks

</comment><comment><USER3> Read this instead if you are interested: [https://www.element14.com/community/docs/DOC-82850](https://www.element14.com/community/docs/DOC-82850)

<comment><USER4> Ah, so there are actual contact points between the mod and the phone.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> That's neat- I was in the phone store the other day and saw the "moto mods" and thought to myself how it would be neat to hook into it- looks like this would make it quite a lot easier.

Some of those moto mods are pretty cool too- big giant speakers, pico projector, etc.

</comment><comment><USER6> I've been waiting for the smartphone to become expandable for a while. This is very interesting and might be that middle step between a portable pocket computer and a low cost computing environment (Rpi).

<comment><USER7> Why wait, check out PocketCHIP for a neat handheld low cost computing environment.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> This isn't exactly the expansion port on the bottom of an NES... it's a mainstream (albeit new) line of accessories for a flagship product--a $700 dollar phone!

Since it's 2016, we can presume that this phone will ship with something like a secure enclave, right? ...AND hardware attachments? How's this going to work?? :)

<comment><USER8> Er, I mean.. the NES expansion port gave you a direct electrical connection to the pins on the CPU.

According to the "system architecture" document[0], looks like the only way to access the cool stuff will be through a microcontroller.

0: [https://developer.motorola.com/explore/system- architecture](https://developer.motorola.com/explore/system-architecture)

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> I was semi-interested in this until I saw the $125 price for the Mods Development Kit.

I'll stick with IOIO because who has the time and money to invest in another proprietary system that only works with a single phone from a single manufacturer, and will probably end up abandoned?

</comment><comment><USER10> The one thing Lenovo needs to do to make Moto Mods the killer hardware ecosystem is license the mod _hosting_ side of the equation to other hardware manufactures. I want to be able to use mods with other devices, even if I need to use an adapter plate to do it.

</comment><comment><USER4> The last time Motorola tried something similar (webtop), they could never stick to a single device design across releases.

</comment><comment><USER11> Much better source (linked as "via" on hackaday) and a much less clickbaity title: [http://hackerboards.com/modular-moto-z-android-phone- support...](http://hackerboards.com/modular-moto-z-android-phone-supports-diy- and-rpi-hat-add-ons/)

<comment><USER12> Thanks, we updated the link from [http://hackaday.com/2016/08/15/turn-your- motorola-android-ph...](http://hackaday.com/2016/08/15/turn-your-motorola- android-phone-into-a-raspberry-pi/).</comment></comment>


Ask HN: What decision has made the largest impact on your life? - <AUTHOR> I want to soak up some life lessons today! <comment><USER2> In 2012, somebody stole half of my life savings.

I was halfway through college (I was an econ major) and had hired somebody to build a website for me. Immediately upon paying them half of the invoice, they fell off the face of the earth and never shipped a line of code.

I was left cash-less and code-less.

I _decided_ to teach myself how to program so that I'd never need to be that dependent on somebody.

I watched hours upon hours of YouTube, audited a handful of CS courses at my university (UVA), and, after about a year, I had become a decent iOS developer.

As school neared an end, a mutual friend pitched me on a startup idea he was working on. I agreed to build the MVP, joined him as CTO, and our startup went on to have a $50M+ exit a few years after I graduated.

Hugely impactful decision.

I'd probably working some finance job I hate if I hadn't made that decision.

</comment><comment><USER3> Three come to mind rather than one. Deciding at 13 I had to learn how to make video games. Having the guts to ask out my future wife at 19. Deciding in my 20s I would no longer allow myself to be tormented by bullies/events of the past. I'm 36 now. I'm happy I made these decisions, huge impact.

</comment><comment><USER4> I'm 19 so the bar for "impact on my life" is relatively low, but probably choosing to cold-email a bunch of startup CEOs whose emails I guessed at the start of 2019. It got me my first SWE internship, which helped me get full- time positions afterwards.

<comment><USER5> Nice one!

How many email addresses did you try for each CEO ? I'm guessing the most common one is firstname.lastname@example.com ?

<comment><USER4> I sent only one each since I put in my guesses in some free email validation site beforehand. I also sent out emails to other C-level people.

The formats were usually firstname.lastname@example.com for most of them, but firstname.lastname came up a few times.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Writing a blog post about something I built in my spare time and then sneaked- in to share with co-workers.

Then boss reprimanded me, but another company read my blog post and hired me.

Turned to be the best job of my life.</comment>


Show HN: A beautiful photo gallery for your Dropbox photos - <AUTHOR>

[Demo]
https://dl.dropbox.com/s/l71aiopn8ua6gv5/magicphotoshow-photobox.html
[Features]
- Uses the Photobox plugin: http://dropthebit.com/500/photobox-css3-image-gallery-jquery-plugin/
- Easy to create and manage
- Beautiful
- Responsive
- Supports a soundtrack
- Supports a background cover image
[Download]
https://www.dropbox.com/s/w07ly2tftxvhtoe/magicphotoshow-photobox.html
[Version]
MagicPhotoShow-0.1
[Requires]
- Dropbox
[Install]
1.  Copy the file into any Dropbox folder with photos
2.  Open the file (either via the Dropbox website or
locally) and authorize the app to scan your Dropbox folder  for photos
3.  MagicPhotoShow will automatically generate a gallery from the photos in the folder
[Bugs]
- Audio doesn't work in the Facebook in-app browser
- Breaks when using music files with non ASCII file names
- More to come... =( <comment><USER2> Very cool!</comment>


Solo founders - <AUTHOR> http://jmillerinc.com/2010/07/06/solo-founders/ <comment><USER2> One major point missed by this article is motivation — with a team of founders, drive to work is very high. You have someone else to interact with, work with, and keep you on task. I've found that working on projects solo, it's a lot easier to "fall off the wagon", so to speak — get distracted working on the wrong things, working without feedback, or stop working at all. This obviously differs from person to person, but it's one of the reasons why I believe more in a team rather than a single founder.

<comment><USER3> On the flip side - if your partners are demotivated you will lose motivation too. It's just an echo chamber.

It's much better to draw inspiration from your users and solid metrics about your business.

<comment><USER2> Not always. When one partner is demotivated, he/she has the other partner to turn to, discuss the problem, and pivot/change the project if necessary. The motivated partner can also start this conversation as well. Compare that to a solo founder who wouldn't have this support.

I'm not saying drawing inspiration from the users isn't important (ideally, all founders should be doing this anyways), but having another person on the team significantly helps to start.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> One of the biggest reasons solo founder projects fail more than multiple founder companies is that a multi-founder company has already passed some tests of market, product, and team.

If an idea is incredibly stupid, but it's your idea, you can easily become deluded into thinking it's actually a great idea. Being able to convince another person that the idea is good is definitely a sign that the idea is good.

It's also a good check on the quality of the team -- if someone is obviously such a screw up that you'd never want to work with him, you wouldn't work with him. Even fairly defective people can notice flaws in others. Therefore, a group of 2+ people probably means the members are at least tolerable.

<comment><USER5> Pre-launch marketing or blogging can give you a lot of feedback about your idea.

I wouldn't consider a cofounder unless they could add serious value beyond feedback.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> The link at the bottom has better content on the "why be a solo founder" question

<http://www.somestartup.com/?p=36>

<comment> daniel-cussen Thanks for the article, I just posted it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> There are a number of disadvantages to being a solo-founder; however, as long as you are cognizant about it, you can take steps to compensate.

The real question you want to ask yourself is why you're going the solo-route. As a solo founder myself, I'm fine with the tradeoffs because it affords me certain other liberties. Do some soul searching and get in synch with yourself.

One of the compensating measures I have is a Braintrust with other solo founders. It's a pretty good place to bounce ideas off of other people in similar situations. Let me know if you are interested in joining.

</comment><comment><USER8> Isn't a solo founder just a team waiting to happen?

<comment><USER9> I don't think so. If by team you mean co-founders, then no; as a single founder I spend 0 time and effort on recruiting co-founders. If by team you mean other employees, then optimistically, sure, but again, it's not something I'm spending any time on now.</comment></comment>


Compilers 101 - <AUTHOR> https://class.coursera.org/compilers

<comment><AUTHOR> I've just begun writing my own compiler and this course provided a great overview of existing technologies. Highly recommended for anyone interested in building a language!</comment>


2016's election data hero isn't Nate Silver, it's Sam Wang - <AUTHOR> https://www.wired.com/2016/11/2016s-election-data-hero-isnt-nate-silver-sam-wang/ <comment><USER2> _[Wang] promised to eat more than just his hat if Clinton loses: "It is totally over. If Trump wins more than 240 electoral votes, I will eat a bug,"_

</comment><comment><USER3> I don't understand the title of this article; his prediction was even worse (99% Clinton win) than Nate Silver's (60% Clinton win).

<comment><USER4> It was written the day before the election, because the author liked the fake certainty offered by Wang (who seems to have just discovered correlated errors). Both Wang and the Wired author seem to be unaware of [http://psych.colorado.edu/~vanboven/teaching/p7536_heurbias/...](http://psych.colorado.edu/~vanboven/teaching/p7536_heurbias/p7536_readings/kruger_dunning.pdf)</comment></comment>


JetBrains newsreader - <AUTHOR> http://www.jetbrains.com/labs/reader/

<comment><USER2> JetBrains does have an (abandoned) rss reader. I tried it before deciding Thunderbird was better since I already use it for mail.

<http://www.jetbrains.com/omea/>

</comment><comment><USER3> Is this supposed to be a joke? I thought JetBrains was going to make a newsreader, but at the end of the page it says:

"Sounds great, doesn't it? We'd sure use a newsreader like this. If you think so too, share this page to add your vote! Hopefully _someone_ listens and makes a proper newsreader for all of us soon!"

<comment><USER4> Under the 'Eye-free Reading' header, the clipart image contains a speaker saying '...new reader by JetBrains...' I imagine this is a teaser for an eventual product.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> If JetBrains actually made this, I'd use it.

</comment><comment><USER6> Well, that was a colossal waste of my time.

</comment><comment><USER7> 4/1/2013

</comment><comment><USER8> Challenge accepted.</comment>


In Defense of Software Patents - <AUTHOR> http://www.patentlyo.com/patent/2009/11/in-defense-of-software-patents-1.html

<comment><USER2> A bit convoluted and hard to follow, not really a convincing argument one way or the other. pg already wrote about software patents, with significantly more clarity.</comment>


Show HN: StaffMapper – Broadcast Your Availability - <AUTHOR> https://staffmapper.com/ <comment><USER2> I see this is a resource manager, but looking closer - just human resource, correct?

I click on "see how it works" and the information I get is very brief. Did I understand right that the staff will have an app and they will either interactively click or put it into calendar when exactly they are available?

Usually I'm free when my calendar is free (and my colleagues can see that). If I want to block some time for my work or for a meeting that I'm about to attend, then I put it to the calendar. It looks like you do the same, just in a inverted way. Could you please shed some light if there's any added value compared to the traditional outlook/google calendar approach?

Any chance to see some screenshots or a video?

If you want feedback from more people, you can try [https://usability.testing.exchange](https://usability.testing.exchange) (disclaimer: I am associated with it).

Thank you and good luck!</comment>


My Catch 22: Dating Given Cancer - <AUTHOR> http://pathdependent.com/2010/04/03/mortality-and-dating/

<comment><USER2> I don't mean to sound trite, but "tis better to have loved then lost, than never to have loved at all".

Living life with someone you love causes them pain. It also causes them joy. This is true whether you expect to die soon or live to be a hundred. So go out and live joyfully, and take what comes. If you fall in love, embrace that!

"Protecting" her from loss comes at the great cost of all of the joy the two of you would otherwise share. I've had a few friends who've lost a spouse to cancer or other tragedies when they were young, and they all seemed to view the time they were married as a net positive, even accounting for the loss at the end. YMMV.

</comment><comment><USER3> Here's another catch-22: the depth of grief that someone experiences when losing a loved one is equal to the height of joy that they experienced when the lover was alive.

The solution is not to avoid deep love, it's to love deeply and be okay with grieving deeply.

<comment><USER4> Funny, I see the solution as being avoiding the attachment to begin with. His argument applies whether or not you have cancer. Relying on another person for happiness is a foolish move. It is a much better idea to learn to enjoy solitude.

<comment><USER5> _Funny, I see the solution as being avoiding the attachment to begin with. His argument applies whether or not you have cancer. Relying on another person for happiness is a foolish move. It is a much better idea to learn to enjoy solitude._

Very Zen.

On the other hand:

 _Ten no atauru o torazareba, kaette sono toga o uku ;_

 _Toki itatte okonawazareba, kaette sono wazawai o uku._

Not to take what Heaven gives is to incur Heaven's calamity; not to act when the moment comes is to incur Heaven's misfortune.

(Miura, Isshū and Ruth Fuller Sasaki, _The Zen Koan_. San Diego: Harvest/HBJ, 1965. 119. Print.)

<comment><USER4> Attachment to what is impermanent is not heaven, it is a cause of suffering. When what one is attached to ceases to exists, pain fills it's place. By minimizing the amount of attachment one has to the world (in all ways, not just attachment to a person) one lessens the amount of suffering one can experience.

From the Dhammapada:

 _From what's loved is born grief, from what's loved is born fear. For one freed from what's loved there's no grief — so how fear?_

[http://www.accesstoinsight.org/tipitaka/kn/dhp/dhp.16.than.h...](http://www.accesstoinsight.org/tipitaka/kn/dhp/dhp.16.than.html)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I've spoken with two people who fell completely in love with someone who died relatively shortly afterwards. Neither of them regretted the affair at all.

(Though the scenarios are different in one aspect; both died of accidents, not known illnesses.)

</comment><comment><USER7> I think you have to get to a place where you realize that it is their decision to make. If you're honest about your condition, it's her choice to pursue a relationship with you, knowing the real possibilities.

That being said, such an impossible situation. I wish you the best my friend.

<comment><USER8> I agree. It's your responsibility to let her know, probably a few months into the relationship, and she can choose to stay or leave you. It's her choice. She might ask you why you didn't tell her earlier so that she wouldn't have been with you from the beginning... Just answer it honestly, you were being selfish and wanted the intimacy of a relationship; She might be angry, but that's okay. (IMO)

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> If you were a police officer or a fireman, would you not date because you might get injured on the job and you'd want to spare them the grief? See how ridiculous that sounds?

I enjoy relationships not for the length of time I'm with someone, but because they give me a zest for life, make me smile all day, and make me really look forward to exploring the world with someone I love.

I have friends with HIV/AIDS -- now THEY have a very hard time in the dating world. Consider yourself lucky :P

</comment><comment><USER10> Date a MILF.

Seriously, date an older woman who is mature enough to assess your situation and deal with it.

Check out this analysis: [http://blog.okcupid.com/index.php/2010/02/16/the- case-for-an...](http://blog.okcupid.com/index.php/2010/02/16/the-case-for-an- older-woman/)

</comment><comment><USER11> You know, even though it isn't HN, it feels strangely on-topic here...

Anyway, I commented on your blog, and I wish you all the best.

<comment><USER12> I don't see why it "isn't HN". I know I do, but I'm sure many of us obsess over our goals and our companies at the expense of relationships and often find ourselves in similar, albeit temporary situations, where we know any potential relationship is doomed to end (on less tragic terms) yet still desire a relationship anyway.

Back on topic, I would reconsider whether limiting a person's exposure to premature grief actually protects anyone. That may be the flaw you're looking for.

<comment><USER3> "limiting a person's exposure to premature grief"

This reminds me of the story of the Buddha and how his father tried to protect him from all suffering while he was raised.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> I expected that a few people would read and maybe I would get comment or two. This was a bit overwhelming. Thanks for all the replies -- lots of good points.

</comment><comment><USER13> The perspective is selfish: nowhere does he ask "if I were to reveal my state of health, would the girl I'm dating care?"

Assuming the author falls in love, and the feeling is reciprocated, there are not one but two individuals that'll be involved in the decision to take it further. The author's trepidations aside, he /cannot/ know the willingness of the second party to pursue a relationship further, despite the high probability of cancer. After all, as of the status quo, that person does not yet "exist" in terms of the relationship.

As such, the level of suffering versus the level of emotional welfare that may or may not be elicited by the relationship is /entirely guesswork/. There is but the barest of frameworks to make an educated guess of it, and even that is open to many questions.

Overall, it is, in fact, in the author's benefit to pursue a happy, health, and - importantly - honest relationship. The potential drawbacks are impossible to know until such relationship is established, but the potential health benefits of being in a stable relationship /is/ known.

</comment><comment><USER14> Be yourself, be honest, and put yourself out there. Let people make their own decisions, you never know what will happen.

</comment><comment><USER15> The way to think about this is that anyone can die unexpectedly at any time - even people who appear to be completely healthy. If you have an illness which is likely to end your life prematurely, this just gives you a degree of forewarning about your own mortality which most other people don't have access to.

</comment><comment><USER16> I really think you're trying to be too rational about this. Romance rarely is. You're also prematurely making a decision for this hypothetical girl. Shouldn't she have a say too? As long as you're honest up-front about your condition, it's her choice as to whether or not she wants to pursue a relationship with you. Sure, your possible death would end up causing her a lot of pain, but she may judge that to be worth the potential for joy.

Regardless, best of luck to you. I hope treatment is found quickly. In the meantime, don't wait for that treatment: do what you think will make you happy. As long as you are honest and don't try to misrepresent your health, I don't see a moral issue.

</comment><comment><USER17> There's a web comic I read that has tolkienian elves who are virtually immortal. Some of them prefer to date humans, because their (relatively) short lifespans mean the elves don't have enough time to fall out of love.

</comment><comment><USER18> You've thought about this a lifetime, me, 20 seconds. That means my opinion is of little value to you.

But let me give you a 3rd option. A middle ground between never dating and putting Ms. X through the pain of your illness.

That middle ground is this. Go date. Go have that relationship. It will probably end on it's own in a few months, as most relationships do. In case it doesn't end on it's own, you have the fallback plan of ending it if you get sick. Just slip into asshole mode, when you get sick, and if she doesn't end it, then you end it. Tell her you want to see other people, etc. That will hurt her, of course, but so what? If she wasn't dating you, she'd be dating somebody else, who, statistically speaking, would also end the relationship, and would also cause her that breakup pain that we all feel more times than we would like to. So she's not getting more pain, just the same pain everybody else gets.

Once you make up your mind that you will proceed on that course of action, you can go ahead and enter a relationship with no worries. Nine times out of ten, all this soul searching will have been for not, because most relationships end, and they all end painfully. On that 10th time, you have a plan to avoid inflicting any extra pain, by making it look just like the other nine times.

If they almost all end painfully, why get into relationships at all? Because it's worth it. In almost all cases, the area under the joy curve is greater than the area under the pain curve.

<comment><USER6> I'd advise against "going into asshole mode". She'll notice the illogical change in behaviour and very likely put two and two together when she finds out you died of a known illness a short time later. She'll know you weren't _really_ an asshole and just feel guilty because she couldn't be there to give comfort in the end, and a lifetime of "I should have seen the signs" et al.

<comment><USER18> How very PC of you. Meanwhile, you have somebody who is afraid to date, without laying out a whole big drama scene on his perspective girlfriend.

You would rather make every relationship this guy has (yes, there will be more than one) be an 'After School Special'. You get 15 karma points for validating his current viewpoint, which he's obviously not happy with and which is keeping him single. Cool. That seems worth it to me.

I disagree that this woman will "somehow find out and be scarred for life". I reject that it's better he stay single on the hypothetical theory that she might be scarred. I have a problem with PC bullshit, but that's just me.

<comment><USER19> I think Deestan was more suggesting that turning into an Asshole would not be the best way to handle such a situation (breaking up).

Im not certain but I am guessing that recurrence of the disease would not be something to happen over night. You could detach from a relationship perfectly well in a few weeks if you wanted without being an asshole :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Man, all the best. I hope a miracle can save you. I admire your courage.

</comment><comment><USER21> Not really HN, but OK.

 _P.S. I have previously discussed my dating catch-22 with other people who had/have Chordoma; it was not pleasant. Most are deeply offended so I no longer bring it up with them. If someone from that world happens to read this post and is offended or saddened, I'm sorry. It's not my intention._

What is there to be offended about? It's not the author's fault you're going to die.

<comment><AUTHOR> Most people do not restrain themselves; they consider it harsh judgement.

I debated whether or not it was HN material. In the end, I thought is was an interesting moral question, therefore it would be interesting to HN.

<comment><USER21> It was a good article. When I think about it from an outsider's perspective, I totally agree with your argument. What you say is definitely the most rational possibility.

If I think about it from the perspective, "If I could have the girl of my dreams right now, would I turn her down because she's going to die in a year?", the answer is no. That's because it's irrational; I have never seen anyone close to me die, so I don't know what to expect. Might as well be blissfully ignorant, then be sad for a few days/weeks, then move on.

Maybe.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> Maybe a possible option is trying to find someone who faces a similar catch-22 situation to date too?

(But this could end up being doubly difficult for both the people too... don't really have a good perspective on this.)

<comment><AUTHOR> When I mentioned this to a particularly entrepreneurial friend a while back, that was his first instinct. However, I think it just exacerbates problems. For one, it severely restricts the pool of people so that the probability of finding someone I genuinely am interested in is far less likely. Secondly, for me part of this whole paradigm is having a family -- kids. (I'm 26, btw.) Having two parents who got disease at a young age is not great for a variety of reasons.

If the Chordoma Foundation or someone else could yield a breakthrough in treatment -- a real possibility -- my whole situation changes. For me, possibly more than for most people, this makes my argument stronger. They've been in operation for three years and already a lot has been learned. (More than in the past 20 years!) Consequently, I think the equation reduces to me getting to the bad point in sickness within three-to-five years, or them getting successful before then.

(Ignoring the very high probability of recurrence, I am perfectly healthy and have been since my surgery five years ago. Considering the median time to recurrence is 9-12 months and median survival time is 6 years, I am in a favorable and lucky bracket.)

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Every beginning is an ending and every ending is a beginning. Every time you gain something, you set yourself up for pain when you lose it. Every time you lose something, you've made more room in your life for a new blessing to come. Life is an ebb and flow of pain, pleasure, suffering, ease, gain and loss. Fighting necessary suffering of life only amplifies the suffering. My advice is that if you want companionship, then pursue it. As long as you are open and honest with your would-be lover it should work.

</comment><comment><USER23> Marriage: For better or worse, in sickness and in health, 'til death do us part. We all live under a sentence of death and, in truth, none of knows how long we have. Modern society gives us more ability to categorize, label, "predict" (based on aggregate statistics, which may mean nothing for one individual life) and so on. But the relationship deal really hasn't changed, even though our excuses can be more elaborated upon.

After spending about 3 1/2 months bedridden, I was diagnosed in June 2001 with "atypical cystic fibrosis" and promptly informed "people like you don't get well". I have spent the last almost nine years defying doctors orders and getting well. I agree that "a cure" is the most logical pursuit -- but you will still be living under a sentence of death because none of us gets out of here alive. And it doesn't mean you can't also pursue a relationship. For me, I am currently alone and was fine with that for a time. I grow tired of it and I think my reasons for being alone will soon be resolved. In my case, a big part of it was that working a full time job, rebuilding my life after getting divorced in the midst of a serious health crisis, and getting well has taken all my time -- which isn't a very different story from some of the complaints on HN that launching a start-up leaves too little time to seriously pursue a relationship as well. For me, the time issue has been lack of hours in the day, not lack of (perceived) years left on my personal calendar.

And I can so identify with your conundrum that other people who have the same diagnosis are offended. I get that a lot, for a variety of reasons.

Peace and good luck.

</comment><comment><USER24> It is apparent that you are not afraid of rejection and know how to put yourself out there to women... so you have gotten farther than my healthy ass. I would advise that, whatever you decide, teach other people how to find love and how to "play the games". I would love to learn some of that.

</comment><comment><USER25> Can't really comment on the moral side of things, but from a practical perspective: surely there must be women out there in the same (tragic) situation? Have you looked for a "dating for the terminally ill" website or local group?

</comment><comment><USER26> Better to have loved and lost than never having loved at all.

</comment><comment><USER27> How do you feel about cryonics? Is it something you would consider?

<comment><USER28> At the very least, selecting from people who accepts cryonics would give chasingsparks a dating pool likely to be rationally more accepting of the inevitable.</comment></comment>


The Thanksgiving Recipes Googled in Every State - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2014/11/25/upshot/thanksgiving-recipes-googled-in-every-state.html

<comment><USER2> "None of Idaho's most-searched dishes are built around its most famous crop, the potato. We choose to assume that Idahoans know their potato preparation techniques and don't need online refreshers."

Damn right we do. :-)

</comment><comment><USER3> I live in Minnesota, and I was glad to see that they didn't list grape salad as our top recipe again.

<comment><USER4> Dat lutefisk tho

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> I wonder why canned pineapple is an ingredient in so many of the Midwestern dessert dishes (cookie salad, frog eye salad, even the Snicker salad). Wikipedia tells me many of these recipes are dishes you'd be accustomed to seeing at a church picnic. Pineapple doesn't seem to be significantly midwestern or rooted in religion yet it's in almost half of these desserts.

<comment><USER6> Probably because it's scarce, so it would only be for special occasions?

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> As for the North Dakota entry, I have no clue and have never heard of "Cookie Salad" until this article. This sounds like something you tell the new folks about after you warn them about wild jackalopes.

<comment><USER8> Did you notice the snickers salad belt across the upper midwest?

If it's a salad. it must be healthy is a way of life.</comment></comment>