The Ivy League, Mental Illness, and the Meaning of Life (2014) - <AUTHOR> http://www.theatlantic.com/education/archive/2014/08/qa-the-miseducation-of-our-college-elite/377524/?single_page=true <comment><USER2> > _These are kids who have no ability to measure their own worth in any > realistic way—either you are on top of the world, or you are worthless. And > that kind of all-or-nothing mentality really pervades the whole system._

Replace _kids_ with _founders_ and it's still just as true. Coincidentally, many Ivy League grads end up starting startups.

<comment><USER3> Completely agree. ivy league grad, started startup, failed ofc and felt worthless for a while.

But it passed away after I got out of the building and talked to other founders, they are in a worse situation :P

<comment><USER4> My feelings are mixed: I find it both funny and sad that what made you feel better was seeing that others are worse off. Perhaps a reflection of our culture in general?

<comment><USER5> In engineering we call that calibration. From what I understood he did not felt schadenfreude.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> The problem is that in the United States, a college is not a place to learn but rather a finishing school to define to what social class you belong. If you go to the Ivy League, you're a member of the elite. What to do to get there? Curate your entire life to be appealing to a bunch of humanities majors who couldn't get a job other than reading admissions apps. I completely agree with Mr Deresiewicz's characterization of that as "excellent sheep".

As a person from the third-world who went to the Ivy League, I am also scornful of America's culture of self-congratulation. When I went to Dartmouth, I remember one of the first things during our orientation was a senior faculty member giving a speech to us telling us all great we all were to be here, how selectively we've been chosen, and all that. I went there to learn, not to learn how cool I am. What rubbish.

<comment><USER7> And your point is? in both the USA and the UK (even more so) STEM majors are considered as greasy engineers.

Ivy's and Oxbridge are more about forming networks for later life - just as public(UK)/Private(USA) school is.

And cultures that fetishize STEM careers have just as many problems - how many kids have been destroyed by tiger parenting or pushed into careers they don't like or have aptitude for.

<comment><USER8> As a parent my wife and I saw our role with my two girls of exposing them to as much variety and diversity in the early years as I could. Arts, music, robotics, programming, puzzles and so much more. The goal was to help my kids find something to be passionate about.

My oldest just graduated with a degree in sociology which is not one of the most employable degrees for an undergraduate. She is working part time in a library and living at home. She was meant to be a librarian and all that know her, know that about her. She has to be get a Masters of Library Science to be a librarian. She will have to put in two or so years at the library she works at to go full time without the MLS. So she stays with us and puts in the time. The good news is that she knows what she wants to do the rest of her life and to be severely dyslexic and be in a library is just awesome. Her mom and I are fine with her living at home till she can be full time since she is a saver and is responsible.

And as a person that has had mostly STEM related careers that I have loved, my youngest seems to be moving towards mechanical engineering next year. I love this about her as it warms my STEM heart.

Most important is that both seem to have found their passions. If you love your work you will likely be in the flow some and who can ask for more than that out of a career. After building several businesses my current employment gives me the opportunity to do what I love (programming and systems integration) and be in the flow. I could not be happier at work and I want that for my kids. Passion alignment is a great thing.

EDIT: And my youngest has some graphic design and art talent which I am sure will help her be a better design engineer. She was in doubt in high school if she should juggle the art and design classes along with her tech speciality center IT classes. We supported the extra work simply for the benefit of her love for creating art and design.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I was hoping to goto MIT before I entered my freshman year. But none of my friends were in honors and this created one of the worst times of my life. The previous year had been one of the best.

In that dark year, at 14, I became focused on hacking and social engineering. I had lost my best friend and girlfriend, and the dynamics of it all isolated me from my other friends. Being 13 and somehow in love with the prettiest girl and then losing it all was devastating.

I barely graduated but had a fun and worked on cool side projects.

At 18, I met a hardware engineer and went on to work on various projects.

I have had a lot of interesting job offers or deals just by meeting people.

I had a major investment bank recruit me but I never even had a real job and probably couldn't get hired at Burger King. The deal I was offered was absurd. In the end, I declined it and somewhat regret it.

But my point is, had I dated that girl throughout high school, I probably would had went to a great University. And today would be some strange diminished version of myself.

</comment><comment><USER10> Yeah, I don't really know what I'm going to do if/when I'm a parent. Academia is calibrated around kids doing this "hoop-jumping" as early as possible, so do I push my theoretical children into this race or do I let them eat into precious time to figure things out?

<comment><USER11> Both my parents have PhD's from Ivy League schools. My mom ended up doing research at MIT and my dad at Harvard. I joke too bad Ivy League schools don't teach people how to be good parents.

The place I think people get crushed is when kids are the smartest person in their class in high school at the top and then arriving at an Ivy League college are of average ability in comparison. Their self esteem is propped by being the best at academic subjects while their peers excel in sports or in a social hierarchy. All of a sudden, they are not the smartest kid in the class.

My parents were so upset when I decided I didn't want to go to college out of high school. I was doing minipreps, isolating DNA, PCR chain reaction, and making gels, in my dad's genetics laboratory at an Ivy League school which is basically cooking. I liked cooking so much I decided to be a chef. That is when the yelling and screaming started. I should have stayed in the career closet.

The worst part was after 8 years and a successful career cooking with my parents accepting my choice I decided I wanted to do other stuff. Now my parents were upset at me again and refused to pay for school. Really? We are going to start this again?

<comment><USER8> As a parent of a recent college grad and a HS senior getting ready to trek off to college I would not pay for college for one of my kids if they waited 8 years. One gap year, okay so that is fine. But 8 years. My wife and I are looking forward to eventual retirement and want some control over our bank account. Eight years would put college payments solidly into my retirement years.

So from a practical standpoint cash flow is a consideration. From a dependency standpoint isn't eight years long enough for you to mature beyond financial and emotional dependency?

<comment><USER12> It amazes me how self-centered this comment is. It's your kids education you're taking about here.

<comment> chris-pb In this case the "kids" are at least 26. At that point surely we can expect them to be able to fend for themselves?

<comment><USER13> Only 26? Surely not. Why, at that age he might not even have a master's degree yet!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> I witnessed this firsthand getting a B.S. at a state school and a Masters at an Ivy. The Ivy kids were differentiated more by their sheep/robot like work ethic and dedication. Naturally the far majority of them pursued careers in investment banking and management consulting, careers that are essentially an extension of this hoop jumping.

I've decided that I'm not going to raise my kids in the U.S. This absurd hoop jumping isn't the optimum way to raise a successful kid, and it sure as hell doesn't create happy childhoods.

</comment><comment><USER15> Am I right in thinking the most sensible option (for most college-going people) in the US is to go to a state college for the first year or so, then transfer to somewhere more prestigious?

(I'm British, and I don't have any firsthand experience of the American higher education system.)

<comment><USER16> The most sensible option is community college for two years and then transferring to a state school.

<comment><USER17> Agreed, that's what I did. The best thing is that in community college you can spend as much time as you want bouncing around and figuring out what you want in life, rather than being rushed to "get in, get out" like in a 4 year university. It's also much cheaper, and the quality of education for classes taken in the first two years (basic chemistry, history, literature, etc) is frequently on par with that at any 4 year university.

<comment><USER18> I went to a CC in manhattan then to SUNY at Buffalo. At the CC I studied calculus, physics, chemistry, linear algebra, diff equations. I still think the education I got at the CC was better. The teachers were certainly better teachers.

<comment><USER17> Yeah, the teachers at my CC were better I thought too, perhaps because they were there primarily to teach and not to research. That and the classes were so much smaller which is great.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> I'm from a Chinese family. Many of my friends and I were raised with this mindset. They went off to attend elite colleges, but I couldn't stomach the endless hoop jumping and toxic achievement culture, so I just did my own thing and went off to my local state school. While I've had some ups and downs, my life experiences were unique and I prefer not to form regrets about the past.

</comment><comment><USER20> > Don't Send Your Kid to the Ivy League

I will consider this option in earnest once our own kids get acceptance letters.

</comment><comment><USER21> Reminds me of this Louis CK video on the meaning of being white:

[http://youtu.be/GPdqlROzgvg](http://youtu.be/GPdqlROzgvg)

</comment><comment><USER13> > And I think we see that in the last 50 years, the meritocracy has created a > world that's getting better and better for the meritocracy and worse and > worse for everyone else.

But weren't you saying just the opposite? That being part of the elite, which here you call "meritocracy" because you're playing a card trick, drives people crazy?

Here's what I think: You're talking to the elite (if you weren't, you wouldn't be in the Atlantic), and you know said elite are more comfortable thinking of themselves in terms of "meritocracy" (even though one of your theses is that there's no meaningful merit involved), and you also know that pretending to care about unequal distribution of social benefits is currently in fashion among your audience (hence the preference for "meritocracy", because it implies that your audience's unequal share is earned). Keeping all three of these plates spinning at once is difficult; the sentence I quoted is them all hitting the ground at once.

>Davis: Some criticize this kind of self-reflection as narcissistic[...]

>Deresiewicz: [...]the main point is to know yourself so you know what you want in the world. You can decide, what is the best work for me, what is the best career for me, what are the rewards that I really want. And maybe you'll end up saying that I do need a certain level of wealth, but you will know it because you will have come to know yourself.

Nope. Nothing narcissistic here. You know, in ages past when countries had explicit aristocracies rather than the implicit ones which deposed and replaced them, "the main point" as you put it was to serve others, rather than oneself. Can't imagine what brought that to mind just now, though. Totally unrelated to anything, no doubt.

>Gaining self-knowledge isn't a simple or predictable process. Are there certain things that can only be learned outside the classroom?

Could there possibly be any _wronger_ question to ask?

>Aside from the classes themselves, the fact that we've created a system where kids are constantly busy, and have no time for solitude or reflection, is going to take its toll. We need to create a situation where kids feel like they don't have to be "on" all the time.

Are you sure? What it sounds like you're saying is that "we" have been doing the best "we" can for decades, and the result is barely tolerable. Are you sure it wouldn't help more if you just stopped creating situations? If the problem is that you're raising your kids inside a Skinner box, why would you think the solution is to make the walls less opaque? Are these the only terms in which you can think? You don't need to answer that one.

>When I taught humanities classes, I never talked about self-reflection, and I never invited students to talk about their feelings or their backgrounds or their experiences.

Well, you got that right, at least, if only by accident. And it has to have been by accident, because you think you got it wrong. The context couches this as a failure on your part, but why would it be? Why would you think that someone _else 's_ self-reflection should have anything to do with _you_? You don't need to answer that one, either.

So how does this amazing article finish? With its subject telling us about his own college experience, in the course of which comes this marvel, which I've emphasized so you don't miss it:

>I drifted for two or three years after college until I reached _a cinematic moment in my life_ [...]

Why _cinematic_? Because we've all seen this movie. To call it "transformative" would be erroneous, because a plot twist doesn't change the shape of the plot, it's part of the story all along; to call it an "epiphany" would be the same, plus stupid, because we all know God is dead. Indeed, part of the interview describes how academia has tried to fill the former social role of religion and failed at it.

But this possibly quite significant point is glossed over entirely because it's not important to Deresiewicz's movie and therefore not important to the article or the audience, who are (presumed to be) in much the same state as the subject: their problem isn't that they've failed to live the movie plot they thought they wanted, it's that they've _succeeded_ at it and found themselves nonetheless unfulfilled. Which is fine as far as it goes, what a shame for them but who cares, right? Except they've managed to inflict the same disaster on the next generation, because they are not only narcissistic but incredibly stupid besides.

And, having recognized the existence and nature of this error, what do they feel really matters? Is it that their descendants, their students, their supposed protegees, are going to have to find their way out of this clusterfuck on their own because everyone who might be expected to help them is too self-absorbed to bother and too stupid to succeed at it anyway? Of course not. No, what matters is who gets the blame, specifically that it be anyone but they themselves:

>But the take home message is that everyone has to liberate themselves from this system. Education should be an act of liberation. We need to make a better system but ultimately everybody has to claim their freedom for themselves.

These are literally the last words in the article. Do you think that's an accident? Because it's not an accident.</comment>


Ask HN: What does a web developer typically make? - <AUTHOR>

I'm asking because annual reviews have just come up, and I'd like to know what reasonable raise to ask for.<p>For context, I'm one year out of school, doing PHP/MySql/Javscript/CakePHP framework. The last 2 or 3 people who had my job lasted a few months each, but I've been here a year and they seem happy with me. I also feel that I've learned a lot in the year since I've left school, so I'm worth more than the salary they hired me at. I'm at $20/hr for 35 hours a week in a tech town in BC. Benefits are generous and working conditions are extremely comfortable. <comment><USER2> Can't say much about that area, but one point of reference to keep in mind is: raise below the rate of inflation means you're effectively getting paid less. So basically +2% means no raise. Many people forget this.</comment>


The Science Of Consciousness - <AUTHOR> http://neuralentanglement.com/2010/11/12/the-science-of-consciousness/

<comment><USER2> Interesting Post.</comment>


Ask HN: How to get clarity of thought? - <AUTHOR> How can I think clearly? <comment><USER2> \- Exercise; running, walking

\- Taking a shower

\- Cleaning your living space

\- Cooking

The act of focusing on something simple, allows you to think about the important things... which aren't always simple

<comment><USER3> Exactly, that's what I'm trying to do ... which is not easy :).

By doing this, I'm less on my phone & less on my computer. in the same time I delete some time-consuming apps on my phone.

One thing I can add is to focus on the things your are doing and stick to them. For example : reading a book or an article completely . Sometimes I just read the title and only some of the sentences, thus I don't the get the point or the idea of the authors. (it is one among many others)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> For me, it's a matter of writing down my thoughts and revisit them by reading my notes later. I can adjust accordingly by refining my thoughts in rewriting them.

</comment><comment><USER5> More often we think there's a grand unified "catch-all" task one can do to have a clear mind, but in reality it's the reverse.

Try to form small habits throughout the day. Check out Maslow's hierarchy of needs. Try to get your daily physiological needs met. Meditation helps too.

</comment><comment><USER6> The book The Pyramid Principle has the second part of the book devoted to logical thinking.

Try to find a copy of an older edition, the material is essentially the same as the newer edition

</comment><comment><USER7> * mindmapping

* writing. tips and tools: [https://writingcenter.unc.edu/tips-and-tools/](https://writingcenter.unc.edu/tips-and-tools/)

<comment><USER7> hn discussion [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=874747](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=874747)

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Run 5 miles a day. Take a hot shower. Then meditate for 30 min. Write everything that comes to your mind.

</comment><comment><USER9> Learn to ask precise and concrete questions and then try to find precise and concrete answers. Thinking is just a loop of questions and answers.

</comment><comment><USER10> In what way is your thinking unclear?

</comment><comment><USER11> Study philosophy!</comment>


If Windows 8 Is A Disaster, This Is The Guy To Blame - <AUTHOR> http://www.businessinsider.com/windows-leader-steven-sinofsky-2012-10

<comment><AUTHOR> On the other hand ...

"If Windows 8 is a smashing success, Sinofsky will seal his position as one of the most talented, and important executives in tech. He'll also have a clearer path to become CEO of Microsoft."</comment>


Peter Thiel's Unorthodox Management Philosophy of Extreme Focus - <AUTHOR> http://blog.idonethis.com/post/37113345206/peter-thiels-unorthodox-management-philosophy-of <comment><USER2> From the article comments:

> _"Successful people become successful despite their methods, not because of > them."_

I think most of these articles mix correlation with causation.

A better article would state this: to be successful be an upper middle class white male whose parents can afford to send you to Stanford before one of the greatest bull runs in economic history happens in California. Now attribute success to personal habits which have fuck all to do with anything.

These types of articles are complete fucking jokes. Fundamental attribution at work people.

Beware breathless entrepreneurship bullshit - there is oh so much of it.

Next you'll be telling me that getting a mustache makes me Stalin.

<comment><USER3> The last 4 founders I worked for went to: -Stanford -Harvard -Harvard -Oxford

I'm always amazed how people talk about the SV startup community as if it is some sort of equal opportunity venture. These people become founders and meet VCs because of the connections their family has and the connections their school has given them. Whenever I see a specific former boss asked their key to success and they say some super high level touchey feely crap and not "well, my dad knows a bunch of VCs and basically talked them into funding us". Its basically the same as Republican's telling you how hard they worked to get where they are when really they were born on third base and think they hit a triple.

<comment><USER2> This psychological bias is called the just world fallacy and is a derivative of the aforementioned fundamental attribution error.

It is this phenomena under which the conservatives, republican party, libertarians, and the concept of meritocracy can exist and be honestly entertained and adopted by seemingly well adjusted people. To anyone aware of this bias the preceding philosophies verge on the psychopathic.

On following advice: if it's not listed as a series of facts, it's probably bullshit.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> A classic sociopathic anti-reality extremist viewpoint. I've seen this type of thinking run companies into the ground. It is myopic and will be detrimental to any real-world situation in the long run.

Thiel is chock full of this BS, and his success should be disregarded as anything other than the statistical anomaly that it was.

<comment><USER5> Rabois says "I resisted some of this approach during the PayPal years, I am now a proponent of it and have even devised a theory of why it is crucial"

Being anti-Thiel is not a shortcut to actually evaluating something on its own merits.

[http://www.quora.com/PayPal/What-strong-beliefs-on- culture-f...](http://www.quora.com/PayPal/What-strong-beliefs-on-culture-for- entrepreneurialism-did-Peter-Max-David-have-at-PayPal/answer/Keith-Rabois)

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Paul Graham goes a step further in his Startup=Growth essay, focus the entire company on a single goal: growth rate. I didn't realize the analogy till now. Thanks for bringing this up.

<comment><USER7> Growth rate of what? Revenue? Gross Profit? Profit Margin? Users? Active users? Length of user session? etc...

Focusing on growing one of those metrics can result in the minimization of others -

<comment><USER8> If you're at the stage of your company's lifecyle where you're in YC, then all metrics of users. Users, users, users.

<comment><USER9> "The first lesson of Silicon Valley, actually, is that you only think about the user, the experience. You actually don't think about the money. Ever."

Ryan Howard, The Office, S07E09

I know what you mean, but every time someone says something like this, that quote comes to mind.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> let's see more Elon Musk worship, less Peter Thiel worship.

(SpaceX + Tesla) > (losing huge amounts of investors' money on hubristic hedge fund bets + lucky VC investments).

As far as I can tell Thiel's successes are mostly based on tapping his social network. White guys already know how to do that, in theory.

<comment><USER11> > (losing huge amounts of investors' money on hubristic hedge fund bets + > lucky VC investments).

Wow, dammed if he does and damned if he doesn't in your eyes.

If he picks a winner it's luck, if he picks a loser, then no luck involved, that was all him.

As someone who sits on the side of trying to pick the winners i can assure you it's extremely hard and alot of work goes into it.

You may not like Peter, but let's try to give some credit where credit is due. He's clearly done many things right in his life.

His idea's might not be worth dismissing out of hand.

> As far as I can tell Thiel's successes are mostly based on tapping his > social network. White guys already know how to do that, in theory

Classy

<comment><USER10> No disrespect to someone I have never met. I am frustrated that you pretend there is a symmetric equivalence between macro hedge fund investing and the world of private placements. Mathematically it couldnt be farther from your silly damned if you do solipsism. It is not Thiel I mind, it is his accolytes.

<comment><USER11> > I am frustrated that you pretend there is a symmetric equivalence between > macro hedge fund investing and the world of private placements.

I never did any such thing:).

I happen to think that both men are worthy of praise.

I do feel the same as you that Elon's accomplishments are more impressive.

Back to your original plea

> let's see more Elon Musk worship, less Peter Thiel worship.

We can have both. Both men have done some pretty impressive things:)

<comment><USER10> I don't mean to be harsh in any way but as I said I get frustrated sometimes by the hero worship. I can separate that frustration from my admiration for anyone's accomplishments.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment> a-priori Followed strictly, how can two people work together in this kind of environment? If I need a bit of someone else's time to allow me to complete my objective, they can't provide it unless it also contributes to their objective, which it likely won't.

<comment><USER12> "My single objective this year is to work together with a-priori to proactively synergize a sustainable seamless profit focused massively parallel best practice for demonstrating how two HN users can work together while only having one single objective"

<comment><USER10> My single objective is to give you $15k to pursue this single-minded goal and to avail you of my social network to guarantee your success, and to blog about it.

<comment><USER13> No one wants to work for The Man!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> This actually isn't extremist or crazy, it's common sense. Multitasking is a myth and you really can only focus on one thing at a time. By adopting this philosophy, you'll probably get a lot more done, quickly. Once your one task or goal is accomplished with that hyper focus, you move onto the next one. It's really the best, and arguably the only way, to work. Again, our brains don't do more than one task at once with any efficiency.

<comment><USER15> Absolutely refusing to handle anything but that #1 priority is also its own cage. What if the #4 priority suddenly catches fire? If you change your focus to #4, isn't that just multitasking?

Multitasking is a myth on one level, but so is this hyperfocus. There must be room for task switching, for thoughts, for interrupts, and for breathing.

<comment><USER16> > What if the #4 priority suddenly catches fire?

Then it may (or may not) become your #1 priority!

> If you change your focus to #4, isn't that just multitasking?

No, because you have to question which should be the new #1 priority: the old #4 or the old #1? You can still only do one thing at a time; we only have one body and one brain[1].

[1] As of 2012, that is!

<comment><USER15> So how is this different than just doing things?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> well, what is "one thing"?

I picture my todo list as heirarchical. Like, "grow my business" might be a top level entry... but beneath that, I've got, say, "improve provisioning automation," "Improve marketing," "setup backups," "create new services," then, say, under "improve provisioning automation" then we start seeing, you know, actual programs I could work on.

But, my point is, "One thing" if you don't specify how far up or down that hierarchical list, really can mean a billion things. I mean, even once I have the hierarchical list up, many tasks help with more than one higher level task. I mean, backups, for my own stuff, could improve marketing, but the way I'm implementing backups, I can sell space to people that aren't my current customers, so it's also a new service.

<comment><USER18> I think people are reading this too literally. The 'one thing' isn't your task, it's your goal. You engage in whatever tasks are necessary to achieve your goal in a way that is good for the business. This ensures that each business function is the best it can be.

For example, suppose the next most important thing for your business to do is to reduce marketing spend. you make that someone's goal, and that person focuses on reducing CPA for several weeks. obviously, you don't want this person to divert their time to answer support emails--you want them focused on saving your company boatloads of money.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> wow, such hate in the comments. I think some people are taking the "focus" theme too far. Focusing on one thing doesn't mean you absolutely ignore everything else. If you're going to ignore co-workers, then you might as well skip taking a shower in the morning, eating breakfast, and all the other things you need to do, and just FOCUS, FOCUS, FOCUS!

<comment><USER20> I think there are legitimate questions about how this actually works in practice. The blog post provides only a little information.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> In my rather limited experience this doesn't work.

Ex: Say you are working on just one feature for your company's software.

Most people, including myself, aren't able to sit for 8-10 hours a day in front of the computer working on just one problem. Your brain turns to goo, you start getting easily distracted and your productivity drops through the floor. I'd say at most I can sit in front of a debugger for 3 hours, and that's on particularly good day.

People need to be able to switch their brains to other work when they get overwhelmed or get stuck.

More interesting is the opposite problem of having too many things to do. At some point you never get to focus on any one of feature and you end up not getting anywhere.

<comment><USER22> When I get in the flow, writing software, I get a day of work done per hour. When I do 5 hours of focused work, I do about 2 weeks worth of work. The slightest distraction throws me off, though, because the context-switching becomes enormous. My favorite (yikes) distraction: having a tool I know and use not be available because of outdated company policy. This throws off everything and loads Anger and Frustration 3.7 in the brain processing center.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> What happens when you need someone else to take an action before you can move forward? It's like blocking IO.

<comment><USER22> You do it, and if someone complains, you say you had to get this done in order to continue work. If it's something "out of your area" you treat it as a bug and you make a workaround. Remember: businesses only reward achievement.

<comment><USER15> _Remember: businesses only reward achievement._

Which is why _failing upward_ is such an unsuccessful career strategy. I'm with Dogbert on this one.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> If you recommend this then your customers wouldn't need a todo list :)

</comment><comment><USER25> I wonder how this works when you need input from a coworker whose number one focus is different than your own. If this coworker, in turn, is reliant on input from you for something that is not your number one focus then you are deadlocked...each waiting for the other to finish but unable to finish until the other has time.

<comment><USER12> Easy, escalate to a boss who's only focus is making sure you both get your work done. I'm also sure trades and bribes and a informal form of corporate currency changes hands

"I'll purposefully and intentionally reduce my focus from 100% to 99.999% this year by helping you out IF in exchange you'll do something that improves my efficiency in my remaining 99.999% of the time by around a factor of one ten- thousandth"

Its a market driven approach. Plenty of game theory behind it, too.

<comment><USER26> Congratulations, you've just invented politics. :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> It would appear Apple is managed in a way that allows employees to have "extreme focus", or a single focus.

Also, Apple as a company seems to do a good job of staying focused on what they think is key.

Thoughts?

</comment><comment><USER28> This makes sense since we are terrible at multitasking.

</comment><comment><USER29> The big problem with "one thing" is the extremely political matter of who gets to set a person's "one thing". Is it the employee? (Open allocation.) Or is it the manager? (Then it's dictatorial, and you'll have to offer 30-50% annual raises to keep people.)

I do agree that corporate multitasking often creates mediocrity-- that's painfully obvious-- but you can't actually _get_ singular focus from people unless you give them autonomy. Otherwise, they're already serving 2 masters (their boss's assignments, and their long-term career interests which include getting out from under that boss's thumb) from the gate. So, "one thing only" really only works in an open-allocation environment, in which case you are _by definition_ giving people the authority to decide for themselves if they prefer to take a one-thing-only laser-focus or a more multi-pronged approach. Which makes a hell of a lot of sense, actually, because everyone's different.

The problem with corporate multitasking is that it comes out of a lack of autonomy-- from requirements that come in from all sides and quickly leave the worker overwhelmed not necessarily with the _amount_ of work (although that can be a problem, too) but with the total lack of coherence.

<comment><USER30> _The big problem with "one thing" is the extremely political matter of who gets to set a person's "one thing". Is it the employee? (Open allocation.) Or is it the manager? (Then it's dictatorial, and you'll have to offer 30-50% annual raises to keep people.)_

Another problem is that it's a matter of framing, which is subjective. One guy, if asked to describe what one thing he did this year, might say, "One thing? Oh, god, I did zero things, because I was too busy doing a million things. I spent the first quarter putting out fires while we were scaling up the WhizBar, then I spent a few months looking over the call center's shoulder trying to figure out what they were doing to kill the DoodleBlat after we rolled out the Bilbo feature to production. At the same time we were debugging that thing that made flames shoot out of the Bilbo every Thursday night in the Central Time Zone during Daylight Savings Time. Then I was on that planning committee helping do traffic projections. And of course Q3 was when we did all the work to make the AcmeCorp deal actually work. Ask me about Q4 when it's over because frankly right now I don't even know what I'm doing this afternoon."

The same guy with a different manner of presenting himself might say, "I kept the servers alive all year, asshole. Now get out of my way or they're gonna die while I'm talking to you."

<comment><USER31> Guy #2 is probably worth 10-40% more to a business, especially as it grows larger.</comment></comment></comment>


The White Darkness: A Journey Across Antarctica - <AUTHOR> https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2018/02/12/the-white-darkness <comment><USER2> Ooooh man, I'm getting chills just reading the intro. Last week, I finished Reinhold Messner's book "Wild" which is an excellent narration of Shakleton's (and Frank Wild's) adventures in the Antarctica.

This sparked my interest in pole expeditions, and I was surprised to learn that:

1) Amundsen was not only the first person to reach the geographic south pole, but also most likely the first to reach the geographic north pole. Today, the two expeditions that claimed to have reached the north pole prior to him are both thought to have missed the pole by several hundred kilometers.

2) He reached the north pole in a rigid air ship with Umberto Nobile, my new explorer hero, who later rescued his Jewish girlfriend in fascist Italy and went on to build air ships for the Soviet Union and later teach aerodynamics in the United States.

EDIT: And I'm getting more chills just thinking about Sjaak Lucasson's planned north pole expedition with a modified Yamaha R1 motorcycle pulling a huge sled full of fuel [1]

EDIT 2: Funnily enough, the navigator on Shackleton's boat sailing to the attempted pole traversal was also called Worsley.

[1] [http://www.sjaaklucassen.nl/en/noordpool-2017-intro/](http://www.sjaaklucassen.nl/en/noordpool-2017-intro/)

<comment><USER3> I can not recommend enough the documentary about Shackleton's survival story:

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

[http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0264578/](http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0264578/)

<comment><USER4> I can highly recommend the book "Endurance: Shackleton's Incredible Voyage" by Alfred Lansing.

<comment><USER5> Also, the aforementioned Frank Worsley (Shackleton's navigator) wrote a terrific book called 'Shackleton's Boat Journey', an account of their (successful, as it were!) attempt to rescue the crew after the pole-traversal expedition ran into problems. Reads almost like a thriller.

Also, Apsley Cherry-Garrard wrote a quite harrowing account of Scott's expedition. Highly recommended.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Not many words to comment on that. Shame this isn't at the top of HN instead of 'Do you need a blockchain'.

<comment><USER7> It would be nice if each submission on HN had a tag for 'tech-related vs not tech-related'. This way you could do some nice filtering if you are sick of the standard tech-related articles.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> That was journey... Like emotional roller coaster.

</comment><comment><USER9> Not directly related to the article, but this documentary about life in Antarctica is truly amazing: [http://frozensouth.weebly.com/](http://frozensouth.weebly.com/) (it's called "Antarctica - A Year On Ice")

</comment><comment><USER10> A great article. It also is a great reminder that knowing when to give up can be the bravest and best things you can do. Knowing how far he could go and push his men seems to have been one of Shackleton's great strengths. Better a live donkey indeed.

</comment><comment><USER11> OT, but what a beautiful page.</comment>


Blue Lion, a new OS/2 distribution - <AUTHOR> https://www.arcanoae.com/blue-lion-go/ <comment><USER2> I tried OS/2 back in the day. Ordered OS/2 Warp for a DEC PClone (428?). Got the disks and found out I needed a graphic driver for the S3 card in the DEC. Called DEC and the extremely helpful service rep couldn't find anything, so he called IBM's OS/2 support with me still on the phone line. IBM said such a driver exists but I would need to sign an NDA before they sent it to me. I remember asking a lot of "why" with the DEC rep being equally confused. After hanging up on the OS/2 support person, the DEC rep (surrounded by other reps given the laughter and commentary I could overhear) comped me a free Windows NT. I'm still amazed that I got NeXTSTEP running and not OS/2.

<comment><USER3> Yeah, pretty much this

No IBM "product" can work without some 10 consultants meddling with it and/or huge amounts of red tape

<comment><USER4> I had a good out of the box install experience with OS/2\. Installed and ran with absolutely no problems. I don't remember details of the machine I was using... Used it for a few months.

It had a a lot of nice features. The network stack was very nice (compared to trumpet(?) or whatever Windows used to have back then which had gaping holes). Multitasking. Rexx as the system interpreter...

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I used OS/2 on a BBS system running Wildcat that was set up and included an internet email gateway (dial up users could send/receive internet mail) around 1991. Each 9600 or 14.4 high speed modem had it's own instance of the app running in a dos box. We grew it up to 8 56k dial-up lines running on that one PS/2 machine before usage tapered off with the rise of ISPs and full web access. I think we shut it down around 1995/6\. OS/2 was way ahead of Windows with multitasking capability and memory management, I don't think Windows caught up until Windows NT/2000.

<comment><USER6> OS/2's multi-tasking was incredible for the time. I used it for BBSing too. I didn't host one with it though. I could zmodem download files (which could take hours) in Telemate in the background while I played Doom 2. Doom played at full speed with no issues and the download would maintain the same speed. This was on a 386DX-40 with 4MB of RAM and a 14.4k modem.

OS/2 Warp holds a special place in my geek heart along side BeOS. The only OSes I've ever used that just did things that didn't seem possible in the contemporary operating systems of the time.

<comment><USER7> You ever try an Amiga? It was about 10 years ahead of anything else.

<comment><USER8> Two key features the Amiga lacked were virtual memory and memory protection. OS/2 offered both.

<comment><USER7> Yes, I first learned C programming on the Amiga, and it was a fun experience. Deference an invalid pointer and meet the Guru!

I remember installing a program on my later Amiga (a 3000 with a 68030/ MMU) that made the first page write only. This definitely improved stability...

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I worked in a college computer lab with PS/2 systems that had OS/2 1.X on them with the option of booting up PC-DOS as well.

After that I worked at a tools company that had OS/2 2.X systems on PS/2 systems and we upgraded them with Kingston Microchannel cards that added more RAM and used IDE hard drives. Using Client Access/400 for DOS/Windows ate up the 640K of DOS RAM, but in OS/2 it used the memory above 640K so more of it was free. It was the AS/400 client software that we needed to access DB2 databases and other things. We also used Token Ring and was a big IBM shop. Until management decided to switch to MS-DOS 6.X and Windows for Workgroups 3.11 with MS-Office 4.3 to get everyone on it standardized because they got a bulk discount from 800 Software. The IBM PS/2 systems got replaced with Compaq and Gateway 2000 systems that were cheaper. We also used Windows NT 3.1 and switched to Windows 95. I was downsized in 1995 before the Windows 95 roll- outs.

But I had OS/2 experience that got me a lot of job interviews, like Enterprise Rent-A-Car used OS/2 and I almost got hired there. OS/2 was phased out and in 1995 I couldn't get OS/2 3.0 Warp working with my 486DX PC clone so I got Slackware Linux instead. OS/2 3.0 Warp lacked driver support for certain hardware and that was the downfall of OS/2 from 1995 and on.

Edit:Typo

<comment><USER2> Client Access is probably the single piece of software that has caused the most alcohol to be consumed.

<comment><USER9> I used to have to manage memory in MS-DOS for CA/400 for DOS, Netware client, and MS LAN Manager.

Things got easier with MS-DOS 6.X and memmaker but MS-DOS 5.0 I had to managee upper memory by hand.

I had to configure adapter card ROM memory to fit into the same 64K C000 block so that there was 64K free D000 for an upper block to more the network drivers into to keep more conventional memory free.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I worked as a student supporter in IBM Denmark, doing support on OS/2 and working with it every day (I still drink my coffee from a OS/2 cup :)

I also ran the Danish OS/2 BBS and since it haf one of the largest collection of OS/2 drivers and OS/2 software I even helped create a redbook with CD's of drivers, all at the age of 25!

I loved the OS and had great fun working with the lavs in the US, the engineers really wanted OS/2 to succeed when management did not.

<comment><USER11> At least it is nothing compared to how MS attacked it. That OS/2 2.0 fiasco is one of my favorite topics BTW.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> When OS/2 was discontinued end 2006, I had the opportunity to migrate critical infrastructure in several financial institutions around the country to modern environments. I hope no-one hopes expanding the lifetime of non-migrated infrastructure with this.

The 'best' client called christmas eve announcing that end of the year their datacenter UPS will be replaced and last time the power went out their $(very important piece of banking infrastructure) wouldn't even boot. Well, at least jobs like that paid good money.

But for fun and entertainment I think it's a great idea.

<comment><USER13> > I hope no-one hopes expanding the lifetime of non-migrated infrastructure > with this.

LOL.. you can pretty much guarantee this is why it's happening, and why there is funding for it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> Unlike Microsoft, IBM translated OS/2 Warp with the help of a broader team of first language speakers. At that time I was a columnist at Hungary's biggest computer monthly and I was helping the Hungarian translation team. We tried to (pun intended) not to warp the language too badly. It is very very interesting to participate in changing the language directly. I still remember the debates in '95-'97 and the horrible word concoctions for the translation of "website" to Hungarian...

</comment><comment><USER15> Seems to have been formed from ex-eComStation people (see [https://www.arcanoae.com/about/](https://www.arcanoae.com/about/)). I wonder if they have to start from scratch with whatever enhancements were added to eCS, or if they are able to access the eCS source by some means.

<comment><USER9> Apparently IBM made some changes to OS/2 4.5.2 or whatever the last version was to add in support for modern hardware and that is what Serenity licensed as an OEM to make eComStation. It seems to be what Arcanae licensed as well as an OEM.

I see competition as a good thing, you got two OEMs trying to offer a modern day OS/2, of course they are going to work to make their own version better than the other one.

It is not uncommon for employees to leave one company to form another that competes with the former company. Usually they had a different vision than the managers had, and want to take OS/2 into a different direction than Serenity is currently doing.

I hope they offer open source bounties for porting open source programs to OS/2 from Linux and Windows and other operating systems. I hope they do the same for drivers to get modern hardware support.

OS/2 runs faster because it has a smaller Kernel than Windows 10 does and it was designed for earlier systems to use less system resources.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> I'm curious what sort of problems this new distribution would solve. Is it mainly for running legacy software, or are there other applications?

<comment><USER17> It's to continue providing security and hardware support to all the companies still running it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> When I worked at Netscape, my main work machine was OS/2 based. Great for OS/2 builds as well as win16. Ran OS/2 until the late 90s. The multitasking worked well and I liked the speed and WPS.

Of course, I still have an Ecom Station VM for purposes of playing Galactic Civilizations. Stardock Systems started our on OS/2.

</comment><comment><USER13> 2016 - The Year of the OS/2 Desktop!

</comment><comment><USER19> I used OS/2 for some telephony software back in the 80s. I found the OS quite quick and robust, processes/threads very lightweight. Of course, then Linux appeared and changed everything for me.

</comment><comment><USER20> Wow 8 months to write an OS. These guys must be good!

</comment><comment><USER21> Url changed from [http://www.theregister.co.uk/2015/11/03/os2_returns_arca_noa...](http://www.theregister.co.uk/2015/11/03/os2_returns_arca_noae/), which points to this.

<comment><USER22> Though one might to click the original link while waiting for the company's page to load. Seems they've been getting some press, and their servers are a bit slow dishing up the pages (though no 500s or anything when I was clicking around their site, just have to be patient).

<comment><USER23> Perhaps they are being served up by PS/2's...</comment></comment></comment>


Zynga takes more funding... from Softbank this time - <AUTHOR> http://www.insidesocialgames.com/2010/07/29/zynga-confirms-150m-investment-from-softbank/

<comment><AUTHOR> Question: why is Zynga taking in hundreds of millions of dollars from strategic partners such as Google and Softbank? Assuming Zynga is already very profitable, why would it need to raise such large amounts of funding?</comment>


Suggest to HN: D A R K M O D E - <AUTHOR> Please HN, please. This is one, if not, the first site that I visit after making my coffee. The glaring white background is absolutely horrendous. Please add a dark mode feature. <comment><USER2> Use Stylish and add it yourself - [https://userstyles.org/styles/127454/dark- hn](https://userstyles.org/styles/127454/dark-hn)

<comment><USER3> Or use the nice Dark Reader plugin for Chrome, Firefox, and Safari:

[https://darkreader.org/](https://darkreader.org/)

<comment> m-p-3 Sadly it often makes Firefox Mobile generate popups about a script being slow on larger websites.

On a different note, I can change my bar topcolor in my HN profile, would be nice to be able to change the BG and font color as well.

<comment><USER4> try this one: [https://github.com/m-khvoinitsky/dark-background-light- text-...](https://github.com/m-khvoinitsky/dark-background-light-text- extension)

<comment><AUTHOR> The crazy thing is that people are suggesting things that should simply be added on as a function of the site. It's 2019, Dark mode is here to stay, why not just add it natively instead of having to install yet another plug-in/add- in/extension?

<comment><USER4> Did you know the original proposal for CSS was meant to include "user styles"?

They where even supposed to be blended on how much they should be yours or the websites.

             User            Author
      Font   o-----x</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment></comment><comment>--o 64%
      Color  o-x</comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment>o 90%
      Margin o</comment><comment></comment><comment>-x</comment><comment>o 37%
      Volume o</comment><comment>---x</comment><comment>----o 50%

source: [https://www.wiumlie.no/2006/phd/archive/www.w3.org/People/ho...](https://www.wiumlie.no/2006/phd/archive/www.w3.org/People/howcome/p/cascade.html)

<comment><USER5> That is an unusual idea, although a lot of that stuff is good idea. Some of my ideas I wrote in a document how to make a better web browser program, some are similar to this, and some aren't, and some of the stuff in this document I can add.

Some things may be a problem when using multiple text colours in a single document (or to do reverse video when the document does not specify its own colours). But I had already thought of a way to work with that, which is to support indexed colours. (You could specify both an indexed and direct colour for the same property, so that the direct colour is normally used, but the indexed colour helps when needed.)

Of course, I would do it now with the existing CSS rather than the format there, although many things would be using "privileged" CSS codes, not available to document writers but are available to the user. There would also be additional unprivileged codes available, usable by both the user and the document author.

I also thought that many things can be done with "data-" attributes and CSS styles for availability by user stylesheets even if the document author does not use them. (I have used them in HTML documents that actually have no CSS at all, for this reason.)

<comment><USER4> Luckily userstyles have the privilege of loading last. I e.g. re-color my visited links globally.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> > The glaring white background is absolutely horrendous.

What is it that brings people to dark background teams? I'm genuinely interested. They were a necessity back when the quality of screens was worse, but today? Is it a fashion with many followers or is there some rationale behind it?

<comment><USER7> Many eye doctors will tell you that blue light is bad for your eyes. In my mind, the less blue light the better.

<comment><USER8> Exactly this - avoiding macular degeneration.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> It's so frustrating to see all the negative responses here. Users have been asking for dark modes for 8 or 10 years now, why (especially for a site as simple as hackernews) is it dismissed? As a user, I don't want to have to install plugins or change browser/os settings, especially on mobile. I want a button on the website that changes the colors. Why is that so much to ask?

</comment><comment><USER10> [https://darkreader.org/](https://darkreader.org/) [https://github.com/darkreader/darkreader](https://github.com/darkreader/darkreader) MIT

[https://davidwalsh.name/prefers-color- scheme](https://davidwalsh.name/prefers-color-scheme)

[https://developer.mozilla.org/en- US/docs/Web/CSS/@media/pref...](https://developer.mozilla.org/en- US/docs/Web/CSS/@media/prefers-color-scheme)

[https://css-tricks.com/dark-modes-with-css/](https://css-tricks.com/dark- modes-with-css/)

[https://caniuse.com/#search=prefers-color- scheme](https://caniuse.com/#search=prefers-color-scheme)

</comment><comment><USER11> I've made a simple port for Robb Owen's VSCode synthwave theme for Stylus for Hackernews. It's really not complete yet, and may break at any time, but it works ok enough for me right now. If you want to try it out. Hopping it helps :) [https://github.com/oxodao/synthwave-themed- sites/blob/master...](https://github.com/oxodao/synthwave-themed- sites/blob/master/hackernews/hn.css)

</comment><comment><USER12> I have used this application on my mobile for a long time, really what I love about it is its dark mode. The website is also available.

[http://hn.premii.com/](http://hn.premii.com/)

PD: Android link is broken Alternative: [https://m.apkshub.com/app/com.premii.hn](https://m.apkshub.com/app/com.premii.hn)

</comment><comment><USER13> Pretty sure this is all you need

[https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/hncute%C2%A0a-pret...](https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/hncute%C2%A0a-pretty- pink-hack/efcgbnccnagdhbdhnghlldlolfppcfia)

</comment><comment><USER14> There's plenty of 3rd party solutions.

What have you already tried and why don't they work for you?

<comment><USER15> On mobile?

 _hi, downvoter... it was an honest question. Sorry? :(_

<comment><USER16> I use a firefox mobile add-on called 'night mode - hacker news'

<comment><USER15> This[1] and other links tell me that there are no addons for Firefox on iOS. Sadly, that is what I use.

[1] [https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/add-ons-firefox- ios](https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/add-ons-firefox-ios)

<comment><USER17> Firefox for iOS has night mode built in.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I have gotten great mileage out of a dark mode css style sheet.</comment>


Web of Knowledge - <AUTHOR> https://dave.autonoma.ca/blog/2019/06/06/web-of-knowledge/ <comment><USER2> > If a contact does not have an email address, then there's no corresponding > row in the contact_email entity for that particular contact row. As opposed > to the account entity, which would most likely use null to represent missing > email addresses.

And then you compose a list with email and phone numbers. Have to use a left join not to miss rows and end up with - guess - NULLs for missing emails.

I agree that NULL (in DBs) is a difficult concept to grasp (you loose binary logic) but it's trying to solve a difficult problem and every solution to that problem has negative parts. Just forbidding NULL values leads to funny workarounds like the mentioned "NULL"-String.

<comment><USER3> It is nevertheless a good idea to handle NULL situations as much as possible with dedicated reusable code (such as the listed alternatives: default values, deferred creation, options), rather than representing it as a explicit state.

If you allow an explicit NULL state in a data type, every sentence using that type must include checks to handle that exception.

Whereas if you create type definitions capable of handling the exception in their operators, you can use that type and its operators with confidence that all exceptions are handled properly without additional work.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> The reads a bit... snappy and back-and-forthy, but it resonated with me a bit. I like that it connects regrets with eventual achievements.

</comment><comment><USER5> I like the "So it goes" reference -- excellent article btw :)</comment>


Ask HN: Do you try to practice both web and mobile  development? - <AUTHOR>

<comment><USER2> Yes. For a side-project of mine (perfectlearn.com), I am developing both a web application and for mobile (both iOS and Android). It's very time-consuming to say the least :-)</comment>


Open API: Real-time Nudity Detection In Images - <AUTHOR> http://www.rohandey.com/?p=40

<comment><USER2> In other words, this guy wants you to submit nude photos to his nude photo collector, so he doesn't have to go looking for porno on his own.

All under the thinly veiled guise of testing out an algorithm... Brilliant

<comment><AUTHOR> lol :P i love it when people like you express your wildest evil thoughts openly - but the fact is i couldn't find any viable solution to filter nude images in real-time for a project so i decided write this up using existing algorithms on the web. if you could suggest any better solution would be great</comment></comment>


Jane Austen to be face of the Bank of England £10 note - <AUTHOR> http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-23424289

<comment><AUTHOR> > Author Jane Austen is to feature on the next £10 note, the Bank of England > says, "avoiding a long-term absence of women represented on banknotes".

The Queen is not female?</comment>


New Neurons for the Brain - <AUTHOR> http://maxplanck.nautil.us/article/348/new-neurons-for-the-brain <comment><USER2> These are amazing news for people with brain damage conditions like Cerebral Palsy. If they can replace the "dead" areas with new cells. Not sure about the diseases since they will just make the new neurons damaged again.

I wonder what are the implications for healthy brains. If humans are born with 80 billion neurons and you can increase that number...

<comment><USER3> Without better knowledge of the structure of the brain, adding extra neurons isn't going to anything noteworthy in exactly the same way smooshing together three cow brains isn't going to make a human brain.

I'm optimistic that we _will_ learn these structures, but we _have yet to_ , is all.

<comment><USER4> From the article:

"Now researchers at the Max Planck Institute of Neurobiology in Martinsried, the Ludwig Maximilians University Munich, and the Helmholtz Zentrum München have demonstrated that, in mice, transplanted embryonic nerve cells can indeed be incorporated into an existing network and _correctly carry out the tasks of damaged cells originally found in that region_."

<comment><USER5> That's about repairing damaged brains, not augmenting healthy brains.

<comment><USER6> I think replacing very old cells with new ones, think 60-year-old's brain may prove to be pretty much the same, in the sense that they have neuroplasticity once again.

<comment><USER3> Depends on your goals. To think like a 20-year-old again? Sure, I'd buy that. Superhuman? Nah — and there's plenty we are _unable_ to think. I'm interested in both types of brain enhancement.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Ayahuasca has also been shown to generate new brain cells which could, theoretically, accomplish something similar. [http://beckleyfoundation.org/ayahuasca-stimulates-the- birth-...](http://beckleyfoundation.org/ayahuasca-stimulates-the-birth-of-new- brain-cells/)

<comment><USER8> I think that's generally true for most psychedelics.

<comment><USER7> I haven't seen any evidence to support the claim that psychedelics other than Ayahuasca catalyze neurogenesis. That being said, there is evidence that LSD increases neuroplasticity. [https://www.cell.com/cell- reports/pdf/S2211-1247(18)30755-1....](https://www.cell.com/cell- reports/pdf/S2211-1247\(18\)30755-1.pdf)

<comment><USER8> [https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/23727882](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/23727882)

[https://www.nature.com/articles/1395272](https://www.nature.com/articles/1395272)

[https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/762668](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/762668)

[https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/14557608](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/14557608)

[https://www.psymposia.com/magazine/do-psychedelics- trigger-n...](https://www.psymposia.com/magazine/do-psychedelics-trigger- neurogenesis-heres-what-we-know/)

[https://maps.org/research/other-research](https://maps.org/research/other- research)

Also highly recommend stuff by Paul Stamets.

<comment><USER7> Thanks for all of these references. I am checking them out now.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Facebook bug policy: Stick head in sand - <AUTHOR> http://bugs.developers.facebook.net/show_bug.cgi?id=11754

<comment><AUTHOR> Anyone else notice that even the clearest, most obvious bugs logged at the platform bug tracker tend to be closed out of hat, then moved to WISHLIST after you reopen them?

This feels a lot like police departments distorting crime statistics by recategorizing reports. I suspect the actual bug statistics for the Facebook platform are _far_ higher than the ones they announce each week. And the ones they announce are terrible as it is.

<comment><USER2> Developping on top of Facebook Platform is very unsettling : always moving, inconsistent, under-documented, poor libraries outside of python and PHP, at least 3 types of access to the same data (deprecated REST API, FQL queries and Graph API), etc. Yet you get their gigantic audience and unprecedented data at hand, which is thrilling. Developping for Facebook is almost a separate kind of programing, with its own set of rules.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Oh man! If this was "Step Up 3d" the entire room would have erupted into cheering and shouted stuff like "You got served yo!" and "Damnnnn"

Jeff Schnitzer was just completely awesome!

I loved that. :)</comment>


Ask HN: How HN helps you? - <AUTHOR> I have been reading HN threads for ideas related to technologies and web apps for quite long .<p>I just want to know how it helps you. <comment><USER2> It helps me know what is popular and what is happening in the industri, it doesn't really help me day-to-day, but once in a while I know I read something on HN that is useful in the situation I am in. I also really like "Ask HN" and "Shown HN" :D</comment>


How Apple fumbled a five-year lead in voice control - <AUTHOR> http://highscalability.com/blog/2018/1/22/how-apple-fumbled-the-voice-first-future.html <comment><USER3> The author makes it seem that everybody is eager to use voice assistants to replace their Android or iOS screen interactions. But I don't know anybody who would dictate their private messages on the subway, or even at home - they are called private for a reason. And just imagine requesting "tell me the current value of a bitcoin" while at work - I don't think this would go well.

There would be a lot of noise pollution everywhere, with people constantly murmuring to themselves, alternated with an unresponsive silence while listening to the device's answer. It would seem like everybody is on the phone, all the time. Also, for me, digesting information via text is way easier, because I can jump back and forth to support short term memory - <USER2> luck with that with a voice assistant.

The iPhone (and friends) disrupted the PC because they made reading and writing mobile. Voice assistants are not iterating on this paradigm, but they are rather iterating on phone calls. I'm skeptical that this is suitable to replace the iPhone I'm writing this on.

<comment><USER4> I don't think you've seen enough people using WhatsApp to send voice messages to their contacts. I do see a __lot __of people doing that on the subway, the bus, the street, and everywhere else around Barcelona. And it is the same in every other place I 've been to recently.

And I can see a very obvious reason why: it's easier. Typing is annoying and slow, and you make lots of mistakes. People don't care others are listening. When was the last time you memorized something irrelevant someone else next to you was saying on the phone?

Maybe _you_ don't want a single word of what you talk about to be heard by anyone else. But most other people don't care, and the reality is that most other people around are too bothered with their own lives to pay any attention to it.

<comment><USER5> Whenever I get a vocal message I just ignore it and write back "sorry, I'm not going to open that because I am in a delicate situation, could you please resend as text?" People being lazy doesn't mean they can expect me to disrupt my existence to receive their lazy communication,if it isn't worth their time to type it then it isn't worth my time to read it.

<comment><USER6> I bet you have lots of friends.

<comment><USER7> Could you please not post uncivil or unsubstantive comments to Hacker News? It's against the spirit and rules of the site: [https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html).

<comment><USER6> I find my comment civil, substantive, and a worthwhile contribution to the discussion. Maybe you should talk to the guy I replied to.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> > When Apple bought Siri it had a solid 5 year lead in voice control.

Ehm what? Siri was initially released in 2011, I think Google Assistant in 2016.. so yeah.. there's 5 years difference between Siri and a product called "Google assistant", but before that Google had "Google Now" which was also controlled by voice, and MANY years before that Google pioneered with Google Voice Search and other apps which could be controlled by voice.

So let's get the facts right... Apple didn't have a 5 year lead, Apple was so far behind that they were forced to buy another product in order to even have a chance to catch up!

\- [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_Voice_Search](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_Voice_Search)

</comment><comment><USER9> > In the AR and VR future we won't be typing.

Oh please god no full stop imagine how hard it would be to even write a simple hello world program example ellipsis linebreak linebreak three backticks no not that delete word delete word backtick backtick backtick c linebreak void main open bracket int argc comma char asterisk argv close bracket space open curly bracket line break tab print-EFF open bracket double-quote percent d backslash n double-quote comma argc close bracket semi-colon line break backtick backtick backtick

Chance of success? Zero. Time taken? Three minutes.

<comment><USER10> Whether you think it's a good idea or not, there are those of us who can't function without voice programming/input.

This video demonstrates full coding proficiency with my Talon project, which still needs a lot of work (e.g. no auto-spacing yet) - [https://youtu.be/ddFI63dgpaI?t=30](https://youtu.be/ddFI63dgpaI?t=30) \- this demo took me around 9min vs a 90wpm typist doing it in a little over 6min. I've also benchmarked inputting over 280 commands per minute with no false recognitions.

This is my project, with which I aim to change minds about voice input (even making it viable for real-time gaming): [https://talonvoice.com/](https://talonvoice.com/)

The Perl video is embarrassing, but that voice engine is only designed for dictating english text. voicecode.io has some major architectural limitations (no dynamic grammars so it requires a Dragon restart to change commands or word lists, adds commands by adding them to the english vocabulary instead of a strict command tree so recognition seriously suffers), aenea, caster, dragonfly are built on a 90's Python project called natlink and have their own issues. "Continuous command recognition" is pretty much a must, which Tavis Rudd's video lacks (notice the pausing between words).

<comment><USER11> That looks great! Both the speech recognition and the eye tracking look really impressive. You should make this into a commercial project or something. Is there any popular application that already does this stuff and is as good (I am not familiar with this type of software)?

I had no idea eye tracking could work this well.

<comment><USER10> As far as I'm concerned, there's nothing remotely in Talon's ballpark for voice, and these demos are just a sort of raw baseline. Every part of Talon will see significant improvements as I complete more of the upcoming features. Tech like Siri/Alexa/Google Assistant is too natural language processing focused to be reflective of the performance I've already demonstrated from a precise control scheme.

To my knowledge I am the only available high performance eye mousing project to not require a separate head tracker (I only require a $150 Tobii 4C eye tracker, and I do not use their integrated webcam head tracking system as it is not responsive enough).

I'm additionally planning to remove the ~$50-150 Dragon requirement for Mac users in the mid future.

I'm very committed to keeping the baseline software not just free, but a net negative cost over using other free solutions. As far as making it commercial, my current plan is to eventually charge a small subscription fee for extremely well integrated video game control systems, and a moderate subscription for professional input schemes like CADD, A/V products, and entire language models built around natural language programming that would ideally enable people who become injured to continue to work without much of any downtime.

These are some of the competition:

Voice:

\- [http://voicecode.io/](http://voicecode.io/)

\- [https://github.com/dictation-toolbox/aenea](https://github.com/dictation- toolbox/aenea)

\- [https://github.com/synkarius/caster](https://github.com/synkarius/caster)

\- [https://www.voicebot.net/](https://www.voicebot.net/)

Eye/Head Tracking:

\- [http://precisiongazemouse.com/](http://precisiongazemouse.com/)

\- [http://iris.xcessity.at/](http://iris.xcessity.at/)

\- [https://github.com/trishume/PolyMouse](https://github.com/trishume/PolyMouse)

\- [https://github.com/trishume/FusionMouse](https://github.com/trishume/FusionMouse)

(huge shout out to trishume, who was very helpful and a big inspiration for my tracking system)

One of my upcoming goals is to get a hands-free world-record game speedrun into the Awesome Games Done Quick stream.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> > Over 60% of text iMessages are composed using voice

This seems dubious and I'd love to see a source for this claim.

<comment><USER13> 100% of iMessages are composed by voice on the Apple Watch, which may be weighting this figure somewhat.

<comment><USER14> Err, huh? I use the scribble feature (not voice) on the Apple Watch to compose iMessages all the time.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> I disagree with the initial premise, i.e., that:

> "We think in a voice in our head. Anyone trying to type has to first put it > in a voice in their head before typing. You're transcribing your inner voice > onto the keyboard. When you speak it's quicker."

Anyone who has heard me speak probably realizes I don't think in voice. I can type as fast as I can talk because words->bits (or words->sounds) isn't the bottleneck. Thoughts->words is.

Feynman [pdf: [http://calteches.library.caltech.edu/607/2/Feynman.pdf](http://calteches.library.caltech.edu/607/2/Feynman.pdf)] noted this, too. Some thinking can't easily be done in words. Some people don't naturally think in words.

There's a TV show about an autistic young doctor which, for all its flaws, tries to show how a person can have great insight even when they can't articulate well. I hope it might help inform the public understanding of other mechanisms of thought.

Spoken language is wonderful as an art form or as a tool but I find it troubling when people with one mode of thinking can present theirs as the only kind, and then use it to push their agenda on others. I suspect this is behind the "open floor plan" office fad, too.

<comment><USER16> Yes, it seems as bad to me as the similar _"We think in a voice in our head. Anyone trying to read has to speak out what is written."_ , which was considered true until the invention of "silent reading" ([https://web.stanford.edu/class/history34q/readings/Manguel/S...](https://web.stanford.edu/class/history34q/readings/Manguel/Silent_Readers.html))

However, there may be some half truth in that statement: to type as fast as text spoken at top speed you must use stenotype.

I'm not sure that means speaking, in general, _is_ faster than typing, though, as a) it involves the extra handicap of having to process the spoken sound, and b) typing may be faster in the common/average/mean case.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> Apple didn't fumble a five-year lead in voice control, they've just not closed Google's 15 year lead in AI.

The article kind of touches on this topic but misses the point - Google _is_ using data about you to inform it's AI. One could argue that the author not realizing the extent to which it does so is more likely a sign they've become very good at it.

<comment><USER6> Right well Google is preternaturally good at that shit. I want to know Apple's excuse for failing to outperform Amazon.

<comment><USER17> Yeah fair enough. I'd be interested in knowing that myself.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> What makes me sad about Siri on the iPhone is that it would be such a boon if I was able to use it with actually good apps and if I didn't feel like a second-class citizen for having an iPhone outside the US.

I'm forced to use the buggy Reminders app, because Siri only supports creating reminders with Reminders. Apple refuses to support anything else than Apple Music, which means I can't use Siri for music. (Yet, when the 4S was released, it only took weeks until I could control Spotify with Siri using jailbreak). I can't use Siri for navigation either in any form ("Hey Siri, when does the next train leave from here?"), because Apple has never provided public transit or good navigation in Sweden, nor announced a timeline on what year that might happen – and of course, Google Maps can't use Siri. And even if it could, Siri does not gracefully support foreign words such as addresses.

I could easily love Siri if Apple would stop gimping it by tying it to other subpar products.

<comment><USER19> > I'm forced to use the buggy Reminders app, because Siri only supports > creating reminders with Reminders.

Siri has third-party reminders support now, I use it with Things.

<comment><USER18> That is good to know, and I've considered switching to Things for a while. This makes it easier. Thank you!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> i do see a lot of people believing the Alexas system is much better but int he end alaxa is just build up on regex.

that is ok-ish for simple languages like English were the words themselves dont change.

but in many other languages, the words in sentences change depending on their relationship to each other.

eg simple information in English like "the cat is sitting on the bench" is encoding with the order of the words whereas in other languages the information the `cat` is `sitting` on the bench rather than the bench `sitting on the cat` is encoded in how the word `cat` and `sitting` and `bench` (and maybe `on`) change. This change can be rather complex based on lots and lots of factors such as gender of the `cat` and `bench` the type of verb eg `sitting` and the preposition `on` (some languages don't even bother with this since it's added to the verb).

apple's approach is much more upfront work since they do all this natural language logic in every language they support. But for developers who use Sirikit is is much better.

<comment><USER21> I'm sure it's fixed now, but a few months ago right in the middle of the whole "Siri is a completely failure, Alexa is much better" I asked Alexa to "turn all my lights off" and she responds with a very daft "I'm sorry, but you don't have a device called 'All my lights' on your account".

Siri knew how to handle that just fine.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> Notably, unlike Xerox, which developed the Alto and its technologies in-house and let them rot, Apple launched Siri through acquisition of a fully functioning application which was already distributed through the App Store. It's more like Flickr.

There are some weird sweeping statements in this piece that I don't think represent reality, but I do agree that it seems Apple held Siri back from what it should have been, as a platform with a third party API, because it was afraid it would bypass Apple's control of the overall iOS platform somehow. Fatal mistake, and they lost a huge number of Siri's team by letting it rot the way they have.

<comment><USER13> _Fatal mistake, and they lost a huge number of Siri 's team by letting it rot the way they have._

It's not _fatal_ —lets not be melodramatic here.

I suspect they know they screwed up and have taken steps to correct. Remember that Siri on iOS, the watch, macOS and AppleTV were all different; they're working on a unified Siri across platforms so that the things Siri knows how to do aren't in silos.

We're already starting to see the results of this: the new "read me the news" works on iOS 11.2.5 and also on HomePod: [https://www.macrumors.com/2018/01/23/apple-releases- ios-11-2...](https://www.macrumors.com/2018/01/23/apple-releases-ios-11-2-5/)

<comment><USER22> It's not a good sign that they've lost so much of the original talent on the project.

The WSJ had a very public exposé on the topic over the summer: [https://www.wsj.com/articles/apples-siri-once-an-original- no...](https://www.wsj.com/articles/apples-siri-once-an-original-now- struggles-to-be-heard-above-the-crowd-1496849095)

I don't know of any good redemption narratives for tech products that lose their founding teams after acquisition and exist in the headless/nebulous state that Siri appears to be in now — outside of the Macintosh itself, but it had to hire back its founder and spinoff product.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> "Voice first" seems like a misguided philosophy pushed by people who think that we're due for some sort of "revolution."

Voice is important but mostly for narrow use cases (in the car, music control in the house) or for shortcuts ("Siri, open accessibility settings").

Though I can imagine some kinds of routine, tedious computer tasks that could be automated with voice and AI someday--"Computer, convert all the files in this folder to jpegs and then put today's date at the start of their filenames, then move them to Dropbox and share them with my wife"\--stuff like that. But it seems like for all that to happen we need something approaching general AI. Most voice assistants just move you along predetermined paths.

<comment><USER24> One place where voice might prove very useful is to get a generation of illiterate people onto the internet. This article by WSJ talks about uneducated porters in India who rely on voice to search, including a job ad app that can be used by voice: [https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-end-of- typing-the-internets...](https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-end-of-typing-the- internets-next-billion-users-will-use-video-and-voice-1502116070)

<comment><USER6> Exactly. "The technology isn't there yet" and "I wouldn't be comfortable using voice control" are said from a place of privilege. There are people out there benefiting from it right now, despite some people's very first-world hangups about it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> >>Apple is also fumbling the future—the Voice First future. Voice First simply means our primary mode of interacting with computers in the future will be with our voice.

Oh god please no. Interacting with computers using voice is probably the second worst way of doing it, just after using motion gestures. There are _some_ good uses for it(although I think even voice controls for lights is pushing it, it's more pain that it's worth), but having it as a primary mode of operation? No thanks.

</comment><comment><USER26> What do people actually use voice for besides playing music, smart home, transcribing and "widget" stuff like timers and weather?

Are there lots of people out there actually using it for productivity like scheduling, communicating, researching, comparing?

To me it seems like until voice AI gets smart enough to respond to a query like "Alexa, how will our Q4 projected net profits change if I switch widget vendors from AlphaCorp to BetaCorp?" an interactive screen will be needed.

<comment><USER27> Companies see the Cambrian explosions of growth (and equities appreciation) that follow successful UI shifts and want to reproduce that with voice UI.

You could do a hell of a lot by establishing a framework for third parties to use such that they don't stomp upon each other and the system-reserved words/phrases, as well as homophone rejection/discrimination, then brute- forcing lots of recognized cases. Right now, I'm seeing second-system effects in voice UI efforts by everyone (possibly excepting the dedicated voice recognition outfits like Nuance), by trying to apply a general machine learning approach to all of it and eschewing brute-force as not pure/clean enough.

<comment><USER23> Well, Alexa seems to be going the brute force route--using third-party skills is just like using a spoken command line utility. The problem is, while this approach is simple and it works, very few skills are useful.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> I'm probably living in a bubble, but I don't understand the current focus on all of these voice-operated AI things.

For one, I don't see anyone using them. I've never seen anyone use Siri on a phone, with one exception: I have a friend who uses voice transcription to write emails and text messages. (Not sure if that counts as Siri.) I don't know anyone who uses speakers such as Amazon Echo or Google Home, or mentions wanting them. I've used Siri on my phone a few times to try out silly things like asking about the weather or converting units, but it's seems so obviously bad that I've never tried going "Siri first". It's on my Apple TV, but I've not used it. Are people actually using this stuff as much as this article (and all the current focus on AI-powered speakers etc.) implies?

I'd love true AI -- a personal assistant that actually understood me, knew my tastes, remembered my choices and so on -- but that doesn't exist. So we get an uncanny valley where speaking to a device comes with uncertainty about whether the device will actually be able to service the request (see the numerous annoyed threads on Reddit about Siri not understanding incredibly basic things), requiring the user to carry around with them a mental model of the receiver's inadequacies. And we get that problem where many tasks that would be super useful to have done by an assistant is actually too difficult for a current AI. For example, booking a trip. I've never booked a flight that didn't involve pouring over pages of results, weighing the various compromises (optimizing for price vs departure time vs airport distance vs layovers vs airline crappiness etc.) and of course filling in a whole lot of information about myself. Let alone booking holidays (I spend many days on research for such a task). Bus and train tickets -- _maybe_ , if it's a simple route with few variables. Dinner reservations and movie tickets, sure. Home automation, well. Once a home is fully outfitted with all lights, doors etc. being connected to a home automation system -- maybe. None of this is automated in my apartment, and I've never seen a home that is set up like this.

There's also the inherent limited utility that comes with an AI being unintelligent. For example, my Apple TV. I rarely know what I want to watch. To only rarely would I be able to say "Siri, play The Grand Budapest Hotel". Usually it would have to be something like "Siri, list me some sci-fi movies". But then I would still have to navigate the results. If it could respond to "Siri, show me French movies with an IMDb score of 7.0 or higher, or with a four-star review from Roger Ebert, that came out after 1990", well, now I'm interested. But somehow I doubt that those sort of multi-dimensional cross- referencing mechanics are currently available.

Edit: With the comments saying how good Google Assistant is compared to Siri, I tried it out. My first queries failed ("What is the weather in Washington State like in March") because it thought I was finished speaking and cut me off at "What is the weather", and showed me today's weather in my city. After a few attempts I got results, but then it returned Fahrenheit units (my phone is set to use metric/international units), and then it continued giving me Fahrenheit after I changed it, because apparently climate information is a "web search" returning text, not data: [https://imgur.com/gallery/LI8Sc](https://imgur.com/gallery/LI8Sc). Not so impressive. Meanwhile, Siri on the phone doesn't understand the query at all, ignoring the "in March" part and giving me today's weather, no matter how I phrase the question.

I can see a future where AI voice control is incredible, but it requires an enormous advance, and it seems like even the best AI of today just comes with frustration and failure. That's surely why companies like Apple and Google are working on this, but it doesn't explain, to me, why the current voice AI is being pushed so hard.

<comment><USER29> I'm a software engineer. I code in vim and use Ubuntu on my desktop which I built myself. I say all of this to give the reader context for how I tend to interact with tech. I'm 24.

I do a lot of texting, and a lot of the time it's a mixture between plain old thumb texting and swiping for longer words. But about 30% of the time I use voice to text.

I use Google's assistant and the voice to text is excellent. It even uses context to go back and correct ambiguities (synonyms) and even cooler -- mistakes. If I say "I baked a match of cookies", it will first transcribe match, but as soon as I say cookies, it will in real-time go back and change match to what is obviously correct -- batch. Note this doesn't work with direct assistant commands ("okay Google what time is it?"),but it definitely does work with text messages you send while talking to the assistant ("okay Google, send Brandon a text message: I'm baking a match of cookies" gets corrected). This helps with stuttering or mistakes you make while speaking.

It's certainly a bit of a mental shift to get used to speaking text messages. Saying punctuation marks out loud is awkward. but it's definitely at the point where it's convenient.

<comment><USER23> Transcription is a hard problem but it's pretty closed to solved. The unsolved problem is telling an voice assistant to do something useful and having it do it. An AI assistant would be something that could act on "Book me a trip to Tokyo and inform the relevant people," not interacting with a spoken command line, invoking some API by voice, or laboriously filling out a form by talking to a computer.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> Eh, this seems to be missing one important detail. At least it's massively important to me as a potential buyer of an AI home assistant.

That detail is that HomePod doesn't spy on me. It does not upload audio recordings of my home and it even shows a visual indication when it is listening at all.

Doing speech recognision on the device is way harder, so it's not a surprise to see them being later to market than others. However this makes Apple's product the only viable one on the market for me.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> This is about much more than just voice control, if I got it right much of its added value could be realized by just typing, or more generally, by conversational text generated in any other way, of which online voice2text is one instance.

Also interesting that just like structuring everything around Windows hurt Microsoft, Apple seems to be falling into this with the iPhone.

</comment><comment><USER31> 95% trained accuracy was already there by late eighties

97% by mid-nineties

98% late nineties, and I still remember how wonderful was the voice recognition on old black and white Ericsson phones, and sony PDAs of that era.

And then, things stalled at claimed 98.5% without much improvement in marginal utility.

The fact that misrecognition is there and will be there, removes much of utility from applications without a dictionary or one with no side effects.

And yes, people talking to nobody feels and looks creepy. It almost begs other to come and point a finger at you saying "hey look, a computer creep is talking to his phone."

</comment><comment><USER32> I'd still like to see someone make a "HER" type of OS even just as a prototype/demo piece touching new functionalities. Currently Siri indeed doesn't offer much, but even Google and Alexa aren't yet at the level that I'm likely to use it for much more than set a timer or put on some music in the long run...

<comment><USER33> It's not that people aren't trying to do that, it's just insanely hard. That is the end goal for all virtual assistants, but it's still years (I would even say decades) away.

</comment></comment><comment><USER34> I'd love to see such technologies developed more, but the focus needs to be on accuracy and speed. No current systems I've tried excel in those areas when used by people with accents. I've seen others code by voice, but for me, the voice recognition systems are about fifty percent accurate most of the time, aka useless.

</comment><comment><USER35> Here's an automated transcript of the podcast referenced in the post, in case you want to skim through it.

[https://scribie.com/transcript/236de3526ba3499a9259bd9fecb9e...](https://scribie.com/transcript/236de3526ba3499a9259bd9fecb9eb13c60fbfe2)

</comment><comment><USER36> > People are listening to music and setting timers, but they are also getting > things done.

I'd like some examples of those things getting done.

</comment><comment><USER37> > Amazon has 12,000 people working in Alexa.

Is this true?</comment>


Rails is a Ghetto (Part 2) - <AUTHOR> http://www.zedshaw.com/rants/rails_is_a_ghetto.html?part2

<comment><USER2> All I can say is that if Zed gives up programming, he has a brilliant career in comedy ahead of him...

 _I feel like a dirty whore trying to get straight after a 10 year stint in a Tiajuana donkey show._

 _Oh wait, they don't write comments, because the "code should speak for itself." Right, that nasty shit doesn't say anything other than, "Keeeel me. Kill me please."_

 _Oh, did I mention ThoughtWorks compared Rails to ColdFusion as well? Awesome._

 _No, not unstable, just pissed off. But if it makes everyone feel better then fine, I'm fucking crazy as hell. boogie-boogie-boo! (Morons)._

 _When I cracked open Ruby on Rails I said, "Holy fucking shit they have nice meta-programming. Oooh, and you can do that with blocks? Oh and what's this nifty stuff over here? Damn this is pretty nice." It was like seeing the neighbors dorky daughter in a bikini one day and finding out she's built like a brick shit house._

<comment><USER3> Hear that. He is telling the truth about his 5 min speech during RailsConf 2007, btw. It really was the most entertaining presentation of the conference.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Heh. Looks like Zed was reading what people posted.

I can hardly describe how much more focused this revision comes across. Idiosyncratic but generally straightforward and (more interesting to me) much better examples on round 2.

I can't say that I disagree all that much with his talking points. For his sake, I hope his management career (resumption) goes well. Mongrel does seem like a well-written, strictly-RFC-compliant counterpoint to, say, Apache. (The latter being a fine example of _Worse Is Better_ , viz. <http://www.jwz.org/doc/worse-is-better.html> ...)

<comment><USER5> The key line in Version 2.0:

 _When I wrote this rant it was in kind of a private beta, but then it got out._

No kidding. Thank god my own diaries are handwritten!

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> I have thought about this for a few days and have concluded that it's a massive publicity stunt on Zed's part.

Think about how so many people get famous -- by creating controversy. Zed has done a great job (in terms of entertaining us)... now we just need to wait for the big announcement.

<comment><USER7> There might be something there, good observation. Notice his latest post talks about how his site survived the slashdotting, redditing, etc...and his promise of more info about his deployment environment in a future post. Pretty soon, he's going to be the deployment guru for Ruby (and probably Rails) projects.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> It was funny when you first read it... but the more I think about it - it's kind of sad. We basically witnessed a public mental break down (which isn't too suprising in our line of work - being a former east coaster, I don't think it helps that he's in NY).

From this new revision it looks like he's trying to say he's sorry to a few people.

<comment><USER7> I don't think so. He mentioned in his first post he was going to follow up with a part II where he will thank a few people.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Reads like "Lord of the Flies" for nerds

"Boys stuck on a deserted island who unsuccessfully try to govern themselves and consequently have disastrous results"

</comment><comment><USER10> When I read the first rant, I didn't really get it - but now it makes a bit more sense. Sounds like Zed tried to make a career around Mongrel and ended up meeting a bunch of hucksters and shysters. I was actually thinking of attempting to do a little rails consulting myself - will definately keep this in mind as a cautionary tale. If the writer of Mongrel has a hard time making a living doing Rails consulting, might not be too much money in it after all. Also - thinking about the kind of people who would be interested in paying for a Rails project - they probably have read about how coding in RoR is like putting together legos or something and so would expect to pay very little. In many cases you are likely to get people looking to do something on the cheap.

Not saying you would need to do "Rails consulting" - any kind of consulting could be successful - i.e. a normal project where to the client the technology was not as important. But if you wrote Mongrel and tried to make a living by getting consulting gigs on that reputation, could explain why he ended up dealing with the kinds of people he did.

</comment><comment><USER11> His updates make this a much more effective rant.

</comment><comment><USER12> Here are some videos interviews. He talks alot about the same issues, but these happen to be safe-for-work.

<http://www.infoq.com/interviews/ruby-zed-shaw> <http://www.infoq.com/interviews/rails-shaw-pelletier>

</comment><comment><USER13> Yes I think that Zed shows that the "meritioracy" is something of a lie....

The natural response has come about... And what is the natural response to fight individual expression?

It's the mob. The mafia. They are in control now... Too bad, but the world is a sewer and they are the rats.

</comment><comment><USER14> This guy really needs some therapy. His anger over trivial dealings in a tiny community of developers is astounding. The anger is really about childhood issues, obviously, and he really needs to get that shit worked out before he causes himself some real problems.

</comment><comment><USER15> Will this be a trilogy? The Lord of the Rubies? The Rail Wars? (boring)

</comment><comment><USER16> anyone who posts irc logs to prove what an asshole somebody else is usually ends up proving just the opposite.

</comment><comment> tac-tics This guy's "rants" are aptly named. He vents his frustration the way I'm sure most of us do after a bad day at work: incoherently and unconvincingly.

I've long wondered whether or not to put in the effort to learn Rails. I would be more than happy to listen to any well-reasoned praise or criticism of the Rails community. Regardless of any accuracy he may have in his arguments, his writing comes off in the same whiny tone one might expect from a 13 year old in Counter-Strike or Halo who just got sniped.

And, yeah, the IRC posts are a bit much. When you're trying to provide evidence that people in some community are a bunch of assholes, it hurts your credibility if you use an assholish tone yourself throughout your entire blog post.

Move along, nothing to see here folks.</comment>