Exploring students' understanding of Iteration and Recursion - <AUTHOR> http://www.academia.edu/1815632/Exploring_students_understanding_of_the_relationship_between_Iteration_and_Recursion

<comment><USER2> PDF without signup here:

[http://www.bsrlm.org.uk/IPs/ip25-2/BSRLM- IP-25-2-1.pdf](http://www.bsrlm.org.uk/IPs/ip25-2/BSRLM-IP-25-2-1.pdf)</comment>


Why Internet Services Aren't Achieving Ma Bell's Reliability  - <AUTHOR> https://www.nytimes.com/2011/01/09/business/09digi.html?_r=1

<comment><USER2> They could, if that is what their customers demanded and paid for.

They don't, and they don't wish to pay for it... Mainly because they don't need it.

Free market at work, people, nothing to see.

</comment><comment><USER3> As a former AT&T customer, even AT&T doesn't achieve Ma Bell's reliability.</comment>


Facebook Busted in Clumsy Smear Attempt on Google - <AUTHOR> http://www.thedailybeast.com/blogs-and-stories/2011-05-12/facebook-busted-in-clumsy-smear-attempt-on-google

<comment><USER2> I wonder how they can say this with a straight face:

 _a Facebook spokesman last night confirmed that Facebook hired Burson, citing two reasons: First, because it believes Google is doing some things in social networking that raise privacy concerns_

</comment><comment><USER3> Thanks - this is a more informative article than the TechCrunch post which was on the front page.

<comment><USER4> Yeah really. Great counterexample to the people here who claim that HN voting is primarily about the content of the article. The TechCrunch article had a better headline, broader readership in the HN crowd, and a more techy URL ... so it pulled in the votes.

<comment><USER5> Agreed, another example of a larger tech blog picking up on reporting done by somebody else and garnering most of the attention/upvotes. The TC article had no real value-add on top of the reporting that Dan Lyons did, but it has more name-recognition on HN so apparently gets to lead the story. Frustrating!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> This came across HN just yesterday: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2532759>

<comment><USER5> Yes, but this article unmasked Facebook as the 'undisclosed client'

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Is it a smear if the allegations are true?</comment>


Ask HN: What are your favorite programming questions   - <AUTHOR>

we are running a coding contest on our website. What is the cleverest programming related question you have ever come across? <comment><USER2> What does this return:

      try {
        return true;
      } finally {
        return false;
      }

What Neil Fraser has to say about this is too good to leave out here:

        The result is consistent in Java, JavaScript and
        Python. I wrote this snippet on a whiteboard here
        at Google. For the next couple of weeks engineers
        passing by would abruptly stop, transfixed by the
        paradox. Nerd sniping. I now use it during hiring
        interviews, if the candidate suffers a similar
        breakdown, I know we've got a keeper.

<comment><AUTHOR> Brilliant. Thanks.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Why is C++'s "this" a pointer and not a reference?

<comment><AUTHOR> thanks</comment></comment>


Circle of Competence: Avoid Ambiguity Traps - <AUTHOR> https://models.substack.com/p/circle-of-competence-avoid-ambiguity <comment><USER3> A piano teacher my junior year of high school had me do exercises I didn't understand. A teacher in my college audition heard the result of those lessons and started me down another path of exercises. Essentially, the one teacher had communicated certain skills _through me_ to the next teacher without my knowledge.

During one particular lesson my junior year of college, everything clicked and I began to play a melody with more control and direction. It was only at that moment that I could hear and feel the result of those exercises.

Furthermore, that teacher later speculated about the lessons my previous teacher had taught me. That speculation lined up pretty well with what I remembered of the exercises she gave me. And it was only then that I understood the efficacy of those lessons toward connecting a melodic line on the piano.

That's about 4 1/2 years and two mentors setting me toward developing a skill (in addition to others, granted), the process of which I didn't really understand for another half year after that.

And that's the best case of someone willing to do what seems like arbitrary work, and lacking the skills at the time to rationalize persuasive reasons to avoid doing that work. In my experience adult students are experts at talking themselves into the skills they _think_ they already have, and talking themselves out of the will to learn new ones.

So without a decent mentor I'd speculate most people are hopelessly incompetent at assessing their circle of competence. Or at least they are if we widen the circle from "getting ahead in business" to "life."

<comment><USER4> There's a lot of this in mathematics education. Unfortunately, a lot of math _teachers_ don't realize themselves the importance of the things that they're setting up in students' education. Having been through the educational process for getting a secondary math education certification, it felt like too much of this was left implicit. Worse still, there were cases like in abstract algebra where students would do exercises on the group a+b\sqrt(-2) without any indication of the significance that this would play later in the algebra course. Heck, high school algebra, I think students learning that being able to solve for x in ax+b=c equations turns into a goal or transforming more complex problems into that simpler problem.

<comment><USER5> My advisor for my math degree told me straight-up "You don't _really_ understand a math course until you take the next class in the series." I'm really glad he told me that, because it sharpened my perception of how well I understood different subjects. It also shaped which classes I took for the rest of college, tending towards depth over breadth.

Too many students think that math is just an arbitrary collection of arbitrary steps. It all _makes sense_ , but you have to have at least one teacher contextualize it for you in order for all of it to click.

<comment><USER6> Hell, I don't think anyone really understands fractions until they've taken Elementary Set Theory and constructed the reals, and I don't think anyone really understands high-school trig until they've taken real analysis, etc.

It's a great feeling to come back to the "simple" topics from early in school, and to realize how much rich knowledge they communicate, and the level of detail that really sits underneath them.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I have to say I find the way of thinking presented in this article to be wrong in a fundamental way.

I realize that this is (more or less) how we're all brought up to think about our place in the world, but I have come to see it as a very destructive way of self-development.

> The idea behind this model is to focus on your strengths that you are either > born with or something you have developed over the years instead of > investing time and resources on trying to do anything and everything for the > sake of it.

Why should my life be centered on the 'thing I'm good at'? What does that even mean? Is it the thing I like to do and that makes me happy, or the thing that can bring me money? Since the common understanding (I think) points more towards the latter interpretation, is this a desirable way to live your life, or to expect others to live their lives? Should we all be efficient production machines where our efficiency is dictated by whatever the economic needs of the moment are?

> Focussing [sic] on your strengths does not imply that you need to avoid > exploring other areas, but it is rather about not letting those other areas > take away too much time and resources that could be better utilised on your > strengths.

How does such self-optimization relate to the aspiration of living a free life?

> Focussing [sic] will help you accumulate experience and knowledge in a > particular domain giving you an almost unfair advantage over others who are > much more scattered in their approach in the field.

Why should you aim to have an unfair advantage over anybody? More so, what happens if industry trends shift and it turns out you specialized on the 'wrong' thing (e.g. you're the best mainframe programmer, but the PC revolution has come)?

<comment><USER8> The article to me seems to be saying that if you pour your heart and soul into a skill, let's say playing guitar, and after several years despite your best efforts you are still not very good, you probably should not depend on it to support yourself financially. This doesn't preclude you doing it for fun on your own terms.

> Why should you aim to have an unfair advantage over anybody?

Cynical: This makes life easier. Exploiting an unfair advantage over others ensures you don't have to spend a large percentage of your life fighting for the basic elements of survival. It's selfish, but the number of people you are is 1 and not more or less, which also matches the number of people who truly care about your quality of life.

Your mainframe example is bad because those people are still making a lot of money maintaining legacy systems somewhere.

<comment><USER9> I would oppose even stronger against "unfair advantage", author in the article wrote "almost unfair". If you worked harder than others to achieve some level of understanding or mastery it is not something I would ever call "unfair advantage".

<comment><USER10> The "unfair" part is that people have different personality traits and thus enjoy different things. Working hard to become great at something you enjoy is relatively easier than working hard to become great at something you hate.

For example, my programming skills are a result of time and effort I spent learning programming, and the fact that even in my free time I learned new things and worked on my personal projects. Thus I "deserve" to be better than someone who doesn't care, doesn't learn, and doesn't practice.

But the "undeserved" part is that enjoy exploring technical details and working alone; those are traits I was born with. If a person without these traits would try to spend the same time and effort doing the same things, it would be much harder for them, because they would suffer along the way, and they wouldn't get the emotional rewards along the way that I did. In that sense I have an advantage, because the same amount of hard work is less of a sacrifice for me.

The opposite situation for me is social skills. I also spent a lot of work here, read various books, and practiced various techniques. First, the results are mediocre, simply because unless I force myself, I ignore many opportunities to practice. (Because, unlike with programming, this practice is not intrinsically pleasant to me.) Second, sometimes I focus and do a good job, but from inside it feels like hard work, even if from outside it seems "natural". I can seem like I enjoy it, but it actually makes me very tired and I need a break afterwards. This whole coronavirus situation feels like a wonderful vacation to me. The only way to excel in this area would be to torture myself (just like other people need to torture themselves to solve a simple math problem).

So it makes sense, when you choose your career, to consider not just how well it pays and how much work is needed, but also how much suffering that work brings to you. If you are lucky, there is a profitable career where you have the unfair advantage that the same amount of work causes you less suffering than to your potential competitors. So you can work harder than them and still have more enjoyable life.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> There are several diverse viewpoints on this.

One aspect is that being excellent at one thing is hard. Be really good at two things. And thats how you will stand out because it is the fusion of two skils that makes you unique.

First: Some advice on this by Scott Adams. [https://dilbertblog.typepad.com/the_dilbert_blog/2007/07/car...](https://dilbertblog.typepad.com/the_dilbert_blog/2007/07/career- advice.html) I love this one.

Also a book that pretty much centers around the same point. I think the book itself is a great read. And I recommend it. [https://www.amazon.com/Medici- Effect-Elephants-Epidemics-Inn...](https://www.amazon.com/Medici-Effect- Elephants-Epidemics-Innovation/dp/1515959341)

And then there is a quote by Robert Anson Heinlein, if you want to take it to heart and live on other extreme. By no means it is a career advice but surely an interesting take.

A human being should be able to change a diaper, plan an invasion, butcher a hog, conn a ship, design a building, write a sonnet, balance accounts, build a wall, set a bone, comfort the dying, take orders, give orders, cooperate, act alone, solve equations, analyze a new problem, pitch manure, program a computer, cook a tasty meal, fight efficiently, die gallantly. Specialization is for insects."

<comment><USER12> > One aspect is that being excellent at one thing is hard. Be really good at > two things. And thats how you will stand out because it is the fusion of two > skils that makes you unique.

This is a difference of semantics. "Do a thing you are especially good at" vs. "Do two things you're really good at ... to create a unique result" is another way of saying "find a thing you're uniquely good at."

<comment><USER13> Well if you assume the basis set of things you can be good at is arbitrarily chosen. But I think the point was to define things" based on how skills are broken up in society. It's certainly much easier to learn them this way. You probably can't find many books or college classes in "public speaking in Mathematics", to help you become the best at this specialized focus, but it's easy to independently study these two specializations.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> For a book-length exposition on this theme, read [https://www.amazon.com/First-Break-All-Rules- Differently/dp/...](https://www.amazon.com/First-Break-All-Rules- Differently/dp/1531865208).

The book didn't intend to be a book-length exposition. But the common insight that they found among good managers is that people come lop-sided. They have strengths and weaknesses that they aren't going to change. When you try to make people work on their weaknesses, you're virtually guaranteed to fail and make them miserable in the process. But instead figure out how to tailor their jobs to their talents and they will outperform. If you can pair up people with complementary talents, the combination will do much better than either person could on their own.

The book then includes example after example from industry after industry. For everything from housekeeping in a hotel to being a bartender to data entry. For each of these jobs, there are people whose talents will make them ridiculously better at it.

(Side note. That is the only management book that I recommend to non- managers.)

</comment><comment><USER15> When I first started running outdoors for exercise, I couldn't run a mile. I was in really poor physical condition. 5 days a week, I'd go outside and do whatever I could, stopping as my heart rate demanded. I was really bad at running. My form was poor. I was overweight. Yet, I persisted. I learned how to celebrate small victories. Successes slowly compounded. I persevered. I kept training and improving. A few years passed and I successfully finished my first marathon. I was slow as molasses and stopped a lot after mile 20. I was one of the heavier finishers that day, too. I also raised 3 grand for the Leukemia Lymphoma Society in the process (Team in Training). My colleagues were shocked to find out what I did, and it inspired at least one to sign up and give it a try. What I learned about myself from running is that I had the capacity to go far beyond limits that my _mind_ sets for me. The more familiar I became with physical and mental pain, the more I learned how to manage the urge to quit -- stopping before injury most of the time. I've experienced this process of development in other aspects of my life and career. It never feels easier to do something that I'm not good at, but I know how to deal with a strong urge to quit and do something else.

For a long while, I haven't improved as a runner, running only 3-4 miles a session. Instead, I keep my perseverance reserve for my work, where I've spent years doing work that has been very outside of my comfort zone, compounding one small success at a time. I have been far from the best at what I've done, but boy do I have a long line of accomplishments that I am proud of.

If you want to grow as a person, try moving outside of your circle of competence and grow the circle. It's not about achieving more than everyone else. It's about doing what your former self _wouldn 't_. Do it enough times and you may one day find that moving beyond your comfort zone is a strength.

</comment><comment><USER16> I'm not seeing his this relates to ambiguity traps. What is the trap?

In general, I think doubling down in success makes sense versus starting over. Even if it is small success. But, most people making drastic changes probably aren't doing so by choice alone. Are they?

</comment><comment><USER17> It all depends on what you want out of life. If you want to stay in one area and go as far as possible, yes I would follow this advice. You'll probably be more "successful" overall. But I was never that type of person; I've always been pulled in several directions. So I've sequentially focused on each of those, and made shorter careers out of each. Of course I haven't gotten as far in each, because there just isn't time. And I've struggled harder, stepping into new areas and being a beginner over and over. But it can't help but make you stronger and more of a person overall, or at least I like to tell myself that. Every minute Willard sits in that room he gets weaker, while every minute Charlie squats in the bush he gets stronger! And there still end up being weird little synergies sometimes, where something unrelated nonetheless applies in an unexpected way, usually on more of a metaphorical or symbolic level, that gives some insight.

I should say I've basically still been honoring my 3 or 4 main circles, plural, of competency, i.e. I still pursued things for which I had aptitude and interest, and not totally random ones!

</comment><comment><USER18> What if your core competence is fucking around and trying out stuff? I'm uh... asking for a friend.

<comment><USER19> The article assumes a serious emphasis on specialization is the only way to "succeed", which is also left undefined.

Both of those tell you more about the author than provide any objective advice.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> I believe this way of thinking is an (ocidental?) cultural bias \- "god gave you talent", "you're the chosen one", "your fate is sealed".

In other cultures (Korea/Japan, at least?) it seems it's more common to attribute success to hard work and mentoring and less on innate abilities. You can't walk into a dojo and just tell the sensei "Mom said I'm very talented - please give me a black belt", you have to put in the work like everybody else.

I wonder how much that shapes people's perception of what they can do, motivation, etc.

<comment><USER21> This article promotes fixed mindset, if you follow it and you think you have no natural abilities, you're set as a failure for the rest of your life.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> Is it me, or is this a rather depressing way to view oneself?

> Focussing on your strengths does not imply that you need to avoid exploring > other areas, but it is rather about not letting those other areas take away > too much time and resources that could be better utilised on your strengths.

I think that there is something especially rewarding in pursuing an activity at which you lack natural talent. It teaches very important lessons about hard work, makes you question yourself, and can help you be less arrogant. I think sometimes, it can actually be far less of a waste of time than pouring more hours into something you already very well.

The best thing I ever did was take classes outside of CS in college - <USER2> quickly realized I could not skate by in linguistics or writing classes. My proudest academic achievement is probably a B- in a grad linguistics class I took.

A nice article that explains this better than I can: [https://www.nytimes.com/2018/05/10/smarter-living/the- case-f...](https://www.nytimes.com/2018/05/10/smarter-living/the-case-for- hobbies-ideas.html)

Of course, these feelings could just be a rationalization for a 'dabbler' complex, it's hard to tell.

</comment><comment><USER23> Book - Range by David Epstein - covers this topic really well. The book shows how expanding into neighboring areas increases your performance in your chosen field itself.

[1] [https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07PHLNR28/ref=dp-kindle- redirect?...](https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07PHLNR28/ref=dp-kindle- redirect?_encoding=UTF8&btkr=1)

</comment><comment><USER24> What's the Ambiguity Trap here?

That aside I find this more useful when it comes to organizations where momentum is pretty hard to change. I can't tell you how many initiatives I've seen with "We're going to do this now!" and really that group doesn't do that well, is busy not doing that, and just as an organization isn't built to do ... the new thing. The result is inevitable.

</comment><comment><USER25> You know, it's a hard pattern to break out of.

For me, I've always worked the hardest on the things I've failed the hardest at. Failing motivates me to try more - even if I only achieve supbar results after not failing.

In my later years, I've become better at being selective about these things. I try not to spend too much resources on things I know will not mater, or bring me any more happiness.

</comment><comment><USER26> I also read yesterday's post from the same author, but neither article is really a mental model (despite that being the subject of the entire blog), and they aren't particularly informative enough to be on the frontpage for the blog's first two posts?

If you upvoted this one, what am I missing that you liked about it?

<comment><USER27> I didn't upvote this, as this is just some guys heuristic.

But, I find the exploration vs exploitation mental model useful. There is theory behind it (which is used in reinforcement learning):

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Multi- armed_bandit](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Multi-armed_bandit)

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> > Another example could be switching to a career at 30 years old when you do > not have the required social skills. You are better off focussing your > efforts on a career that you will thrive in as an introvert while at the > same time giving some room to improve on your social skills without making > it your focus. Trying to put all your chips on a career based on a skill > that you have not mastered or you struggle with is not the smartest bet to > make.

This could have been written about me. I'm a software engineer who switched careers (from filmmaking) at 30. One of the best decisions I ever made. I love my job. I'm good at it. I have more (hard-earned) people skills than your average developer, but I'm fundamentally an introvert, and love my distraction-free IC time.

</comment><comment><USER29> One interesting about being in the technology field, is that it can make you better in any sphere, as you can pick up the software quicker or write code to make things better, or simply can technically analyze things as a strength. Also, project planning and dealing with abstract ideas.

Tech is crazy in that it enhances you in a lot of areas that apply in numerous ways in the modern world.

</comment><comment><USER30> Interesting article. Then I cam across the term "man management" in the article. Is that a real thing, or a typo?

<comment><USER31> Yeah, that knocked me off balance, too. But it's a thing, if antiquated: [https://www.collinsdictionary.com/us/dictionary/english/man-...](https://www.collinsdictionary.com/us/dictionary/english/man- management)

</comment></comment><comment><USER32> Some skills are facilitating skills, and they come back to bite you if you don't sufficiently master them. For me, writing was always massive source of frustration. Not knowing how to write persuasively has limited me in my career. I've hired a writing tutor, which I hope helps me.

</comment><comment><USER33> This way of thinking presupposes that not being (highly) competent at whatever it is you're doing is losing (or will lead to losing) in some form. Maybe this is true in some environments, but I don't think it's generally true, or particularly valuable life advice.

</comment><comment><USER27> Reinforcement Learning takes a principled approach to analyzing the exploration/exploitation trade-off.

If you're interested in using this knowledge to manipulate your behavior, I recommend learning a little theory before letting internet wisdom dissuade you from exploring.

</comment><comment> non-entity And what if said strengths are deemed worthless by the market?

<comment><USER34> That can change at any moment. Being good at video games was worthless until Twitch and eSports.

</comment></comment><comment><USER35> interesting - runs contrary (to the most part) - of The Range which I read recently ([https://amzn.to/3dCTqcE](https://amzn.to/3dCTqcE)). There is something to be said on focussing though, to easy to get distracted.

</comment><comment><USER36> Is Ambiguity Trap defined somewhere?

<comment> awinter-py author left it ambiguous for effect

</comment></comment><comment><USER37> This assumes your objective of learning different skills is to be financially successful, no?

</comment><comment><USER38> Work on what you can't stop thinking about. You'll get good at that.

</comment><comment><USER39> Sounds about right, also is to notice earlier the better</comment>


Jawbone's demise a case of 'death by overfunding' - <AUTHOR> http://www.reuters.com/article/us-jawbone-failure-idUSKBN19V0BS <comment><USER2> I don't know if I buy this "explanation" of why they failed, but then I don't have a good explanation.

See, even if a company is "over funded", as long as they have operating margins, they can survive forever by cutting overhead and just keep selling the product. This company had inventory.

Unless you have debt. The interest payments could sink you. So it wasn't the "overfunding" that was the problem, it was the form of the funding that was the problem. $900 million in equity would have been fine. $400 million in debt was not fine.

You see, I am one of the people who think this is the best tracker on the market by far because of its sleep tracking. It was an early, accurate, detailed sleep tracker. It tells you your REM sleep, and I suspect it is dead on.

I stock up on the old products on clearance because they don't make them anymore.

<comment><USER3> > I stock up on the old products on clearance because they don't make them > anymore.

I often think about this when a company goes under, especially hardware focused ones. I assume it's only a matter of time that their servers will no longer accepting requests, APIs will no longer function and your device will suddenly become useless. Personally, I feel that this is a perfect use case where open source can shine by liberating locked down devices.

<comment><USER2> That is a great point.

One I had buried in my subconscious. I wonder what my options are.

<comment><USER4> For sleep tracking specifically, Apple bought Beddit. It's a strip that you lie on which may be better or worse depending upon your situation than something you wear. I have a review copy I got. It seems to work OK although I don't really get any insights from the data.

Fitbit is, of course, another option.

<comment><USER5> Based on a sample size of 2, I was pretty sure that among FitBit, Jawbone, Misfit and Health mate (remember them?), Jawbone UPs provided the most accurate sleep tracking.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> So, what exactly is the mechanism that makes overfunding lead to a company's failure? I didn't actually find a clear answer to this. The article mentions that less funding would've implied a lower valuation, letting the company get acquired...but then wouldn't the acquiring entity have gotten left with a failing Jawbone anyway?

<comment><USER7> To make a bad baseball analogy: VC is like trying to step up to bat, swinging at every pitch and only considering it a success if you hit a grand slam homerun.

If they'd taken less money, maybe they could have gone after a smaller (but more profitable) niche. Maybe they wouldn't have aggressively hired sales teams in as many countries across the globe.

Look at something like the VR/AR space - right now there's a firm upper limit to the number of potential buyers in that space. So, you have this whole sector where things got overfunded and _weird_.

Like what do you do when you've got $100mil in funding. VCs are expecting a Billion dollar exit. You've made a great product, but the timing is still too soon? That the whole industry needs 5 more years to mature?

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> There's something funny about the line "Startup failures are not uncommon, but a billion-dollar company that has raised huge pools of money going belly up remains a rarity."

Jawbone raised ~$900 million. It's a bit strange to talk about companies as unicorns when their post valuation is so heavily dependent on other people's money. Like GroupOn and a few others, actually running a business seems to have gone worse than just sitting on the stack of cash would have.

</comment><comment><USER9> A relatively similar story to Pebble too, no? Interesting to see two well- known 'successful' startups implode like this in the same space.

<comment><USER10> unless you're apple or tesla, hardware is a really tough business

<comment><USER11> Tesla is really great at losing money and blowing deadlines, hardware is a tough business no matter who you are.

<comment><USER10> but they are great at raising money and their car business is cashflow positive. Tesla certainly did a lot better than other attempts at electric cars

<comment><USER12> Better than Leaf or Prius?

<comment><USER13> Would you rather own a Tesla, Leaf or Prius?

Would you rather have bought stock in Tesla, Nissan or Toyota ten years ago?

<comment><USER14> Silly comparison? So a Camry is not a successful car because people would rather own BMWs? Do you not realize Tesla has been intentionally making high- end, luxury vehicles, which are more desirable by nature?

Leafs and Priuses are only part of Nissan and Toyota, their stock obviously cannot fully reflect the success of those vehicles. And Tesla's stock is notoriously overvalued.

<comment><USER13> You are misreading my comment. I didn't claim anything negative about Leaf or Prius. The Tesla S is an absolutely better car than Leaf or Prius. And since it costs much more, it should be. If we weight for price, that depends on your price sensitivity.

<comment><USER11> You are missing the point, all things equal of course people will want the vastly more expensive luxury product. That has nothing to do with how good Tesla is at making things. Regardless of the appeal of the Model S, Toyota is much better at making cars in volume than Tesla.

Similarly, I'd rather have a McLaren than Tesla (or Toyota), but that doesn't speak anything about the talents of either firm at mass producing cars.

<comment><USER13> This thread is a response to:

> Tesla certainly did a lot better than other attempts at electric cars

You have decided that that claim hinges on their ability to mass produce cars.

I think Tesla has done more for the electric car market than any of the other companies. I can't justify that with data, but I think it's a reasonable position. We have different points. I'm not missing yours.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> OK, so I wasn't paying attention. But back in the day, I recall loving the Jawbone cellphone headset. Especially for noisy and windy environments. Did it just get too greedy?

<comment><USER16> IMO it seems like they just lacked focus and abandoned their core competency to follow trends in markets where they couldn't compete. They started out as a military contractor and pivoted that tech into fantastic bluetooth headsets. From there they went on to make great bluetooth speakers.

At some point they acquired a medical devices company and hopped on the fitness tracker bandwagon, it's that point they seemed to have lost their way. After a string of crappy fitness trackers, and completely ignoring their headsets and speakers, they failed.

<comment><USER15> Sad. So does anyone sell a bone-conduction microphone now? I see bone- conduction headphones, but they seem to come with regular microphones.

<comment><USER17> The Apple AirPods

<comment><USER15> Do they have bone-conduction mics?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Love this quote:

"They can also be a false signal to investors, who often look at how much money a company has raised as a signal of its success, when "in fact, it's the opposite,"...

I think this is definitely true of a physical product company... without a subscription model of some other way to generate MRR.

</comment><comment><USER19> I still question why Jawbone felt the need to go beyond their core products. The Bluetooth earpiece worked very, very well, and I loved it so much I've lost four of them. Did Jawbone really need to expand into other products?

</comment><comment><USER20> Are there any examples of companies that have taken hundreds of millions in investment that eventually became profitable businesses?

<comment><USER10> It depends how you define profitable. Many unicorns and tech companies have a lot of debt and funding but are cashflow positive.

<comment><USER20> With profitable I mean a company that can sustain itself through its own operations and doesn't need more money to keep going.

<comment><USER10> very few companies can do that. external capital is an essential part of entrepreneurship

<comment><USER21> External capital(the current VC kind) is not essential to entrepreneurship, it is a tool for defining/researching market capacity more quickly. The catch is that market capacity is something that both investors and entrepreneurs are pretty poor at predicting, especially at scale.

That detail can be seen in the difference between lenders and investors, amount wise. In that lenders are more risk averse, generally, with regards to market capacity.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> sounds like a pretty lame excuse. It failed because the market is saturated, the growth slowed, and the margins are low . It was badly managed company, a poor product, and a bad marketplace. There are many major successful web 2.0 companies are over-funded but didn't fail.

<comment><USER22> These aren't contradictory: all of those problems are harder to notice when you're overfunded.

<comment><USER10> the business would have likely failed anyway, the only difference being it would not have taken so much money with it

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> I believe their failure was that nobody was buying their stuff

<comment><USER24> Is anyone buying any smartwatch stuff?

Wasn't Apple even lumping their Watch sales figures into the "Other" category along with the Apple TV out of embarrassment.

<comment><USER21> I had a calculator watch when I was 12-13. It was amazing tech, mind blowingly cool. I wore it for like a month. The utility and usability research for the smartwatch type niche was done in the 80s as far as I am concerned, and it was pretty conclusive.

Although trackers are an inherently different tool.

<comment><USER12> Looks like people are smart enough to ask the question, "why PAY to be tracked?".

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> How about death of the Earth by overfunding? How many social network apps does the world need? This whole structure of VCs is ridiculous. It's just a cover for the ones that are gov sponsored and will win out in the end, anyway.

All these VC millions (and billions) could be invested in schools, farming, roads, hospitals, parks, free sauce.

</comment><comment> bcit-cst more like death by snu snu. Am I right.</comment>


BBC Special - Start-Up Stories - <AUTHOR> http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/in_depth/business/start_up_stories/default.stm

<comment><AUTHOR> Looks like the start of an interesting series.</comment>


Reverse Engineering Malware 101 - <AUTHOR> https://securedorg.github.io/RE101/ <comment><USER2> Looks good, one comment on tooling though:

Don't screw around with other .NET decompilers, use dnSpy.

[https://github.com/0xd4d/dnSpy](https://github.com/0xd4d/dnSpy)

It's fully open source, integrates with deobfuscators and includes a binary- level debugger which doesn't require VS separately. Plus it lets you patch assemblies and export debugged data easily which is how I extract most .NET- based packers these days.

<comment><USER3> What do you think of dotPeek by JetBrains?

[https://www.jetbrains.com/decompiler/](https://www.jetbrains.com/decompiler/)

<comment><USER4> It's free-of-charge but not open-source.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> When does running malware in a virtual machine (VM) not make sense, is it commonly not possible, etc.?

<comment><USER2> VMs are extremely useful for malware RE, but there are a few potential concerns:

\- VM breakouts are a security concern. While fairly uncommon this is a risk. Most of that risk exists in drivers and VM acceleration tools and can be mitigated.

\- Some malware packers will detect virtual machines and refuse to run. You can bypass this by cracking the VM check of course - but that can sometimes be harder than dumping it on real hardware, depending on the protection and specifics of the situation.

These are much bigger concerns if you're working with 0 day high level stuff and not just typical skiddie malware you pulled off usenet or a fake crack in a youtube video. Most of that stuff is just iStealer or a shitty DDoS-focused RAT and whatever "FUD" RunPE packer was on sale for the cheapest price on HackForums or similar that day. Some people will play this up to be a bigger concern than it realistically is - but a VM will protect you from the malware in almost every case I've seen. Just remember to keep your VM software up to date and avoid using unnecessary pieces.

My paranoid setup is a dedicated machine with 2 VMs, one victim VM and one router VM, quite similar to their setup there. The difference is, my router VM goes over Tor and doesn't allow traffic from the second interface out in any other way. I also use libvirt with kvm with as few extensions and drivers as possible to prevent most VM-based attacks.

<comment><AUTHOR> If you want to get into VM setup:

[https://www.blindseeker.com/AVATAR/AVATAR-3-18-17.pdf](https://www.blindseeker.com/AVATAR/AVATAR-3-18-17.pdf)

[https://blindseeker.com/blahg/](https://blindseeker.com/blahg/)

Also:

[https://cloudplatform.googleblog.com/2017/01/7-ways-we- harde...](https://cloudplatform.googleblog.com/2017/01/7-ways-we-harden-our- KVM-hypervisor-at-Google-Cloud-security-in-plaintext.html) | [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13483603](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13483603)

<comment><AUTHOR> Also [https://twitter.com/Carlos_Perez/status/848698806187307008](https://twitter.com/Carlos_Perez/status/848698806187307008)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Does the PE standard differ for x86 and ARM? Windows runs on ARM now right, but in ARM I believe the stack grows up (to higher memory addresses) and in x86, as most people know, it grows down. Does anyone know if PE accounts for this? Or is it just abstracted away in PE?

<comment><USER7> ARM supports the stack growing in either direction, but on Windows ARM it grows down.

PE/COFF does have some architectural differences though; for example, the relocation types differ across architectures.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> This looks really cool, can't wait to dig in. Is it legit to redistribute that victim VM Windows 7 image?</comment>


Founder of Yii PHP Framework Qiang Xue Now Writing Golang Packages - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/go-ozzo <comment><AUTHOR> The ozzo-routing package uses a neat way of grouping routes to implement middleware chaining.

I'd be interested to see performance comparisons to gorilla/mux and other third party golang http routers.

</comment><comment><USER2> I'd love to understand what happened on June, 18th 2015. The guy just noped out of Yii.

[https://github.com/qiangxue](https://github.com/qiangxue)

<comment><USER3> Maybe he went to work for these guys:

[https://github.com/capitalone/capitalone.github.io/pull/4](https://github.com/capitalone/capitalone.github.io/pull/4)</comment></comment>


HTC's delays in releasing Linux source code are unacceptable - <AUTHOR> http://laforge.gnumonks.org/weblog/2011/12/24/#20111224-htc-delays-gpl <comment><USER3> What's especially interesting about the HTC case is that they'll habitually trot out the 120 days claim (up from 90 days a year ago) right up until the point where you actually start threatening legal action, at which point the source will usually suddenly appear on their website. The impression I get is that their delaying is nothing to do with any technical requirements on their end - it's purely to keep the source private for longer out of some kind of desire for competitive advantage.

</comment><comment><USER4> This would be a perfect opportunity to get some lawyers in a room and try to use the DMCA, son-of-SOPA (whatever passes), etc and try to bludgeon copyleft infringers with the new IP-is-our-god-now laws. Especially if they're using a website to distribute binaries without source - start sending takedown notices

<comment><USER3> I've used the DMCA against GPL infringers (including the MPAA) - it generally does work in terms of stopping further distribution, but it rarely results in you getting the source code. The MPAA, for instance, never came into compliance. They just stopped distributing.

<comment><USER5> Or, at least, stopped distributing publicly. For all you know, they continue to distribute the toolkit in question privately, to people who don't bother asking for source.

That said, I did find the DMCA application in question highly satisfying. Thanks for that. :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> This is sort of an aside but what of anything of real value is in these source code releases other than things that would only apply to HTC phones? Just curious if there is anything in these patches that would apply to linux in general.

<comment><USER7> Not really no, most of it is Android's + Qualcomm's modifications (which are usually public and easily available).

However, there are some HTC hardware-specific parts that are used mostly and needed by any serious third party android distribution (like CyanogenMod).

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> This is the problem with any license, contract, or other formal agreement. It can say whatever, and one party or the other can simply ignore it. You have to take them to court to force compliance, and since it's a civil matter you have to pay your lawyers to do that.

It's the same technique insurance companies use to deny claims: they know you will have to sue them to get them to pay, and this is so expensive and takes so long that a lot of people will just give up.

</comment><comment><USER9> 2-3 years ago I've been an huge HTC fan buying every 6 months a new HTC handset until I realized that they want you to buy new handsets all the time with their business model, Sense and reluctant update policy. The rest of the crowd (Sony, Motorola, etc.) isn't better but the case HTC feels shady—these guys shotgun tons of new phones per quarter to the market with many many variations of Sense, their drivers, witholding sources, etc. to make it impossible to update their crappy phones.

<comment><USER10> As a data point, I can add that I bought an HTC HD2 back in December 2009. It had come out a couple of months before, and the hardware was very nice - <USER2> stayed at the top until this year. However the software was Win Mobile 6.5; it was occasionally updated, but the updates page went away (in a 404 way) back in October 2011 or so.

So, about two years, and gone. Not quite fly-by-night, but not too satisfactory.

(Workaround: using the original OS as bootloader to an Android from XDA- developers ...)

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> This is a perfect example of the Free Software movement's lack of teeth. Even if they do manage to get the money together to sue HTC, the company will have no problem demonstrating the type of bureaucratic structure that would make source code take four months to be released.

<comment><USER12> GPL enforcement is a lot of work with expensive lawyers and made harder when you are not the copyright holder.

 _hint_ : this is why the FSF require copyright assignment for their project. But they have barely any on the Linux kernel, the principal matter in the Android source code.

<comment><USER13> Harald owns the copyright for significant part of netfilter/iptables. So if they distribute this part of the kernel, he won't have much trouble.

<comment><USER12> But he is mostly alone on it, so he can't deal with every case. Everything would be better if there was no need to do that :-(

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> While I sympathize with the writer of this post, I don't really see what recourse he has? If the license allows for 120 days before they have to release the source code, what could he possibly do?

<comment><USER12> 120 days is HTC made up number. The GPL does not set such a delay. Therefor HTC delaying the release, HTC violate the GPL license which several components, like the kernel are licensed under.

<comment><USER15> The GPL (v2) sets no specific delay but it also sets no specific deadline by which the code must be released after a request has been made.

While the delays these companies are making are pretty lame and obviously go against the spirit of the GPLv2, releasing code 120 days after product release (or more importantly, from the first specific request for code from a customer who bought the product) is not clearly in violation, from a legal standpoint.

<comment><USER3> Are you a lawyer? Because in the past the advice I've been given is that the absence of a deadline on a requirement does not imply the ability to impose your own choice of deadline. 120 days is clearly far more than would be reasonably required to provide the code.

<comment><USER16> No but it is short enough that you wont have actually gone to court yet.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


The Korean War Prisoner Who Never Came Home (2013) - <AUTHOR> https://www.newyorker.com/news/news-desk/the-korean-war-prisoner-who-never-came-home <comment><USER2> Good for Dunn, who found a way to live a peaceful life with his wife and not have to grow old in Baltimore.

<comment><USER3> It was indeed peaceful since he was monitored by secret police 24/7 for the rest of his life.</comment></comment>


Gen X is sick of your bullshit - <AUTHOR> http://m.gizmodo.com/5851062/generation-x-is-sick-of-your-bullshit

<comment><USER2> As a Gen-X'r (even though we don't call ourselves that- you should know), I say that is an awesome post. I'm pretty much sick of everything from politics to war to our economy to "Occupy" to "Bush" to "Obama" to "Jobs" (both kinds). What an economic downturn and world failure is good for is good music written about hard times. Where the fuck is our good music?</comment>


Rita Levi-Montalcini - first Nobel prize winner to reach 100 years - <AUTHOR> http://www.nature.com/news/2009/090401/full/458564a.html <comment><USER2> What a fascinating woman. I especially enjoyed the fact that she is a scientist who got involved in politics.

This is what a role model looks like.</comment>


Map of scientific collaboration between researchers | Stuff I made - <AUTHOR> http://olihb.com/2011/01/23/map-of-scientific-collaboration-between-researchers/ <comment><USER2> Facebook map is interesting because the people are geolocated, and friendship is usually personal - interesting to see how the digital revolution has affected that.

Scientific papers are about ideas not people. Unless you're looking for a job, or a coffee shop likely to be high in PhDs, not sure this is the right projection.

How about an idea-centric map of some kind? Or place researchers in an imaginary spherical idea-space, let us see who are the stars, who are peripheral.

Anyway I think forcing the map to geography is disguising more interesting patterns.

<comment><USER3> Hi, I'm the one that did this map. We do semantic and field centric maps all the time and they get no attention. This map got worldwide press for some simple reasons:

-you can see historic connections (links between Europe and Africa)

-it underlines the fact that some part of the world have more research (obvious, but all cool to know)

-and it's pretty nice looking</comment></comment>


Drupal Maintainer Makes $530 a week on GitTip - <AUTHOR> https://www.gittip.com/alexpott/

<comment><USER2> $27778.92 per annum before taxes and expenses. There are an awful lot of people getting paid an awful lot more to paste bad themes into their employer's Drupal config. So it goes.

<comment><USER3> But does this guy do this fulltime?</comment></comment>


Leave Wall Street and Join A Startup - <AUTHOR> http://www.leavewallstreetjoinastartup.com/ <comment><USER2> Duplicate?

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=305371>

</comment><comment><USER3> or sign up on CrossLoop and be your own startup, if you are an IT Admin, helpdesk guy :)</comment>


SaaS for Running a SaaS Business - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@narenst/saas-for-running-a-saas-business-7e7b20ba196c <comment><USER2> You forgot security of the data and nodes.

</comment><comment><USER3> Isn't that what most saas is?</comment>


HBO cracks down on paying VPN "pirates" - <AUTHOR> http://torrentfreak.com/hbo-cracks-down-on-paying-vpn-pirates-150420/ <comment><USER3> This is like the lawyer version of my old summer job in high school. We had to fix any computer problems, but if there weren't any computer problems we might get asked to do anything -- rake leaves, pick up trash, whatever.

As a consequence, there were _always_ computer problems.

This is like the same thing. All popular HBO content is ubiquitously available, from thousands of places, for free. I live in Japan, so I could never pay HBO for it until recently.

Then they came out with their new HBO Now thing, and I figured, "Fine, John Oliver is the most important newsman in the world, I will give them a shot (even though I suspect it will end up not working out)."

So I signed up through iTunes, confirmed that HBO Now was, as expected, a broken piece of shit that didn't work outside of the US, and then signed up for one of these VPN services. This makes their service $5/mo. more expensive for me, but they are now getting $180 a year as opposed to nothing.

And yet, they just seem hellbent on going back to nothing.

Literally _ANYBODY_ who is willing and capable of signing up for a VPN service to access the content is also capable of just getting the same content for free on the interweb tubes. The vanishingly tiny minority of people who still have ethical qualms about doing so -- despite HBO essentially telling them, _Fuck off, you don 't get to watch!_ \-- can't possibly amount to any significant business.

The behavior doesn't make any sense at all, unless you think about a bunch of lawyers acting like high school kids sneakily disconnecting cables to avoid raking leaves.

<comment><USER4> You know that developer who wants to refractor the entire code base, upgrade to a new database, and otherwise move the entire code base to this side of 2010 even though the savings don't have a chance of nearing the costs.

I'm envisioning that same type of person working as a lawyer instead.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> I'd love to pay for BBC as well, but they will not let me do it, so we pirate. Years ago we got a response about "overseas partners" being the stewards of their BBC brand and programs outside the UK, so they won't just let us buy BBC streaming or downloadable shows (even with DRM). The 'overseas partners' were/are primarily "BBC America" and various PBS channels.

These partners must be paying a HUGE amount for a handful of old programs, because to pass up streaming fees direct from consumers ... I'd just imagine the income would be much larger than selling to PBS stations. And hey, btw, I'd like Eastenders to be current, not _9 years_ behind what's happening now. My PBS station is 9 years behind, and apparently paying top dollar for that privilege. And 70+ hours a week of "changing rooms" reruns (which was happening in 2005 on BBC America) is insane.

Country-specific content deals will eventually die, but these last death throes are just painful to sit through.

</comment><comment><USER6> Why doesn't the HBO letter provide information about acceptable-to-them methods of paying for their content?

I understand that geo-blocking is normal (although I loathe it) but if you're a company that wants to "protect publishing deals in my country" part of that is telling me how to buy your content in my country. After all, if I'm paying for a VPN and paying for your service I've shown some commitment - <USER2> and technical - to being your customer.

<comment><USER7> While I agree with you completely the truth is they don't care if you are their customer (individually or as a group).

They deal with such large numbers that you in particular are less than a rounding error. While they could provide streaming to you as a group that opens a whole case of worm cans regarding potential taxes, law suits, contract disputes, etc.

While we often think of how simple it is to do because we approach it from the tech side and we sometimes think of it from the business side we (self included) rarely think of it from the HUGE CORPORATE side, which is, they have better things to do.

Sadly, things are setup in a way that is not beneficial to us, the consumer.

<comment><USER6> Sure, but I'm not asking them to do that.

They sent out an email. Why didn't they include an url? That url would list countries and the providers in that country who provide HBO content; or it would list shows and then who provides those shows in what countries.

HBO still gets to block people outside the US, but also pushes those people to HBO content via official channels.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> _The legality of circumventing of geo-blocking is something of a grey area in Australia, although Communications Malcolm Turnbull has previously argued that using a VPN to access overseas content is not illegal under the Copyright Act.........The 2013 report of the parliamentary inquiry into IT pricing in Australia, which examined price discrimination, recommended that the Copyright Act be amended to explicitly support the right of consumers to employ anti- geo-blocking measures._

[http://www.computerworld.com.au/article/573005/it-legal- use-...](http://www.computerworld.com.au/article/573005/it-legal-use-vpn- evade-geo-blocking/)

According to the Australian government, employing anti-geo-blocking measures is implicitly legal.

I recommend staying off mass-market geo-blocking services and VPN's and use ones that rely some programming to achieve. Have not received the HBO email about cancelling my service due to proxying to US.

</comment><comment><USER9> Living in Ireland and managed to get my hands on a 30 day trial using a VPN and iTunes account... wont be paying them if they don't want it though... They could have had my money... they wont now...

</comment><comment><USER10> HBO continues to be stupid about business - if you take pains to cut of people that will pay you money, you are going to end up bankrupt.

</comment><comment><USER11> They're just going to drive paying customers to torrent sites.

IANAL but this doesn't make much sense to me.

</comment><comment><USER12> If you've already set up up a VPN client, why wouldn't you simply download torrents rather than directly funding hostile businesses that wish to destroy the Internet?</comment>


Ask HN: How should I handle an equity dispute? - <AUTHOR> I worked for a company that offered 5000 shares upon signing the employment agreement that vest at 20% a year.  After I was employed for a year and 25 days the company decided to relocate and lay off some employees.  There was no equity forfeiture clause in the contract in the event of termination.  Furthermore the contract stated that in the event of a liquidity event all shares vest immediately. The company was purchased a few weeks ago.  The CEO maintains that I am not entitled to any shares because although the signed employment agreement was executed by both parties I didn't relocate and and get on payroll until a few days after the employment agreement was executed.  I had code written and meetings that occurred during the time he claims I was not an employee.
Two things --
First, does the date on the employment contract mean that I was an effective employee on that date?
Secondly, does the fact that the 5000 shares were assigned to me with no details as to what happens upon termination mean that I still own those 5000 shares?
The liquidity event (acquisition) occurred and other employees were paid for their shares.  I reached out to the CEO and he stated that I owned nothing.
My thoughts -- I definitely am entitled to 1000 shares.  Also due to the ambiguous (non-existent) details of what happens to the 5000 shares upon termination I think I may be entitled to be paid for those as well.
What are HN's thoughts on this situation? <comment><USER2> Find a lawyer -- basically any will do. He'll send them a sternly written letter, which is going to say a variant of "You can make this go away cheaply or you can fight it in court if you have a lot of confidence in how airtight your paper is. Your call."

 _I had code written and meetings that occurred during the time he claims I was not an employee._

Your lawyer will have a _lot_ of fun with a newly rich entity which desires to commit to the position on paper that it has stolen your IP. The acquirer's legal team are also going to raise holy hell about representations made during due diligence, because "WHAT?!"

Relevantly to the entrepreneurs in the room: this is why you pay somebody to make sure your paper says what you think it does prior to e.g. issuing equity grants.

<comment><USER3> > Your lawyer will have a lot of fun with a newly rich entity which desires to > commit to the position on paper that it has stolen your IP. The acquirer's > legal team are also going to raise holy hell about representations made > during due diligence, because "WHAT?!"

The OP should absolutely consult with qualified legal counsel, but I'm always amused at how quick folks are to make assumptions when it comes to legal disputes. Just about everything beyond the first three words you wrote ("find a lawyer") requires one to make significant assumptions, including:

1\. The OP's description of what occurred is accurate.

2\. The OP actually understands the legal documents he signed.

3\. The OP's former employer made mistakes or attempted to defraud the OP.

4\. The acquiring company didn't perform adequate due diligence.

5\. The value of the shares in dispute makes them worth fighting for.

All of these (save the second, clearly) are absolutely possible, but generally, Occam's razor applies to legal disputes.

<comment><USER4> I'm not sure what any of those 5 points have to do with whether he should talk to a lawyer.

<comment><USER3> Per my comment, they don't. But the rest of the comment I was responding to ("he'll send them a sternly written letter", "your lawyer will have a lot of fun with a newly rich entity which desires to commit to the position on paper that it has stolen your IP") is pure speculation based on assumption.

Folks should stick to "find a lawyer" and leave it at that.

<comment><USER4> Disagree. Some of us have actually done the "find a lawyer thing" in various circumstances and seen what happened. Where it's possible to share details, it's helpful, and so we do.

<comment><USER3> My SO is a litigator. Based on the stories I hear all the time, I can state with absolute confidence that the sharing you refer to here, which consists primarily of non-attorneys making assumptions and engaging in speculation, is not only unlikely to help the OP but could be detrimental to him if he acts based on the information he received from a non-attorney (or even an attorney who has not agreed to represent him).

Your own past experiences with attorneys are irrelevant here and do not eliminate the fact that nobody can use HN to provide the OP with the legal counsel he clearly needs. The simple truth of the matter is that the OP is unlikely to find a satisfactory resolution to this matter without the help of a competent attorney.

<comment><USER4> That was a very forceful argument for something Patrick had already said.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Did you exercise the shares when you left the company? Do you have emails or dated letters which can be used to support this?

Usually you have 90 days from your last day to do this (in writing, with the onus totally being on the employee), otherwise the options transition back to the company.

</comment><comment><USER6> You seem to be contradicting yourself here:

"After I was employed for a year and 25 days the company decided to relocate..."

"I didn't relocate and 100% work with the company until 2 days after my one year anniversary."

But regardless, you should probably get yourself a lawyer.

<comment><AUTHOR> sorry for the confusion, company was located in a different location and I worked remote for 3 weeks until I could move. should have cleared that up.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> You never know, and IANAL, but the acceleration clause in your agreement probably does not automatically vest the shares of people not currently employed by the company at the time of the sale.

Do you have options or shares? If options: did you execute? If you didn't, you may have problems.

<comment><AUTHOR> Just shares, no mention of options. Yeah if it were options i'd see an issue with not exercising before the liquidity event.

<comment><USER4> Issuing shares directly to employees is kind of uncommon. Do your shares have a buyback on them?

I'm not clear why you think you might have a claim on all 5000 shares. Can you be a little clearer about this? You didn't really share a timeline of your employment, so it's hard to reason this out from first principles.

Assume you get all 5000 shares. How much is that going to be worth? Low/mid/hi-how-many-figures?

<comment><AUTHOR> Because the contract stated that upon employment there would be a grant of 5000 shares that would vest annually or in a liquidity event would vest immediately, with no mention of forfeiture. Valuation is hard to determine since the former CEO is non-responsive, all I know is others with the same equity position received significant payouts.

<comment><USER4> You never know, you could have the world's most poorly written stock vesting contract, but it seems very unlikely that their vesting scheme was designed so that vesting didn't matter in the one case where vesting actually does matter. You don't need a "forfeiture" clause for vesting to have teeth. You'd probably need to share more of the details for us to noodle around any further with this.

(If you've got any kind of confidentiality agreement with your former employer, don't share details.)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> The strength of your claim will likely depend on the specific wording of the contract and circumstances of employment. For example, are they shares, or options that required extra exercise steps/payments at certain times? Exactly what language is used to describe the vesting? (It seems a long shot that you'd be due the full 5000 shares if your employment clearly ended before the liquidity/vesting event: the whole point of vesting is to curtail the equity in the hands of those who have quit or been fired. But conversely, a true year of vesting means something was due you.)

But, semi-anonymous commenters on the internet are not the help you need. You need competent legal advice.

You could get this from a lawyer in private practice, but also perhaps a legal clinic (often associated with law schools) or perhaps any employee-protection government agency in your or the company's jurisdiction.

Note that while you're shopping for a lawyer, you'll often get 30+ minutes of their help for free, as they find out if the case interests them, and they discuss what steps are possible, at what costs, and to what benefit. It is very beneficial to talk to multiple lawyers at this stage: you may be amazed how wildly different their recommendations are, from the same documents and core facts, based on their varying styles and expertise. (As a non-expert yourself, engaging the first one with a good story is a big mistake. Picking one from among 5+ that you've talked to, because in comparison he had the most insight, is better.)

Get together your paperwork – especially the contract and any other key documents demonstrating your employment relationship (such as key dates where it began/changed/ended). Also, type up a more detailed timeline of relevant events with exact dates, involved people, and agreements/document-excerpts. (Perhaps that's just a page or two.)

Then, use that to shop around. Even if your first few inquiries are to the wrong kind of firms – by specialty or size – they'll then suggest more appropriate alternatives.

Offer to email the contract & timeline to any professional who wants details before they confer with you. You'll learn a lot from these discussions even before you're paying anyone on the clock – if it ever comes to that. You'll probably even want to improve the timeline once your first few conversations help focus your attention on the key aspects.

And if the case is really strong – the plain language of the contract and typical understanding of your tenure means you're due shares – it may just take a strong letter from a credible attorney to receive a settlement.

<comment><USER4> Even if the case isn't really strong, if it's at all colorable, the threat of legal drama will probably be productive. The time period immediately around a sale is delicate. Even if the deal has already closed, some chunk of the money is probably held back in escrow to deal with exactly this kind of stuff.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> usual legalese: I am a lawyer, but I am not your lawyer. I'm no longer practicing. You need to get yourself a lawyer ASAP. Where are you located?

<comment><AUTHOR> i'm located in north carolina, company is in VA, the company that acquired them has several international offices, not sure where they're based out of yet.

<comment><USER8> I've never used these guys, but they are a big firm and if your equity is worth a lot you may want to consider them:

[http://www.kattenlaw.com/employmentlaw](http://www.kattenlaw.com/employmentlaw)

I can't recommend them other than to say that it is a fairly large firm and if I needed a first call, I'd probably call them.

If you want a smaller shop most bar associations have special practice groups. They have referall practices that are basically free or very cheap and can get you a basic lay of the land way better than anyone on here. Here is the one that I think is closest to you: [http://www.meckbar.org/lawyerreferral/lawyerreferral.cfm](http://www.meckbar.org/lawyerreferral/lawyerreferral.cfm)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> This is all to common. I am currently in a not an entirely dissimilar situation.

What I have learned from it I would tell anyone working at a Startup. When your grant comes due make them give it to you. Get a lawyer then if need be.

Now to the "I'm not a lawyer advice."

In most states you have 1 year to claim things not given to you under an employment agreement. As long as your year is not up you may have a case. If you are past a year your options may be limited.

Now a list of questions you need the answer to.

Were you granted Shares or Options? An Option would have to be executed with in a given amount of time. A share is actual equity in the company, but an option is the ability to buy a share for a set price. Often you are given an options grant based on the "strike price" on the day you were hired. If the company had raised money at $5m Valuation, and sold for $25M and you had 1% of the company, you'd get 1% of $20M. Because your Buy price would be based on the valuation of the company when you were hired.

If you didn't exercise an option after termination you don't own any shares.

Did you sign anything on termination?

Most of the time the exit agreement which often includes a severance becomes the document that says, "We don't owe you nothing" and is very hard to fight.

Two questions may not be a "list" but I think those two will suffice for now.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> If anyone has a recommendation on a law firm I could retain i'd be grateful for the guidance.

<comment><USER10> You want a Labor and Employment lawyer - If you don't get any recommendations you can always start here - [http://www.lawyers.com/labor-and- employment/raleigh/north-ca...](http://www.lawyers.com/labor-and- employment/raleigh/north-carolina/law-firms/)

<comment><AUTHOR> I wasn't sure about the jurisdiction so I was focusing on VA based attorneys but it wouldn't hurt to speak with an NC based one as well, thank you.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Thanks everyone -- I knew engaging a lawyer was the next step after the CEO was non-responsive but having other tech professionals and entrepreneurs chime in with some insight was very valuable. Thank you all for your interest and advice.

</comment><comment><USER11> OP should find an attorney. Also, OP is presumably now on the market? :) Willing to relocate to SFBA?

CEO should not screw people over (presumably) tens of thousands of dollars in a much larger deal. And should have been more competent w.r.t. contracts.

<comment><AUTHOR> i'm a senior js engineer and angular fanatic / mentor. pretty sure SFBA is over-crowded with us :)

<comment><USER12> And yet, there are probably still jobs there...

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Find an employment attorney ASAP.

<comment><AUTHOR> Any thoughts on what kind of attorney handles these kinds of disputes? labor law? contract law? having trouble finding the right kind of lawyer.

<comment><USER14> I am not an attorney but have done a lot of legal work in various companies I have been involved with and have a lot of experience with employment contracts. You definitely need an attorney that specializes in employment law and I might be able to recommend several but I would some additional info about your situation. Your profile doesn't list an email or phone so if you want to provide a way to contact you I can get in touch to see if I can help further.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> The options agreement was included in the employment contract?

In my experience they've been two separate documents. If you do have both (or if they were combined) signed then you should absolutely contact a lawyer.

They'll contact the company and then the company will contact their lawyer, who will most likely tell them to just give you what you're entitled to.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> I'm happy to post excerpts of my employment contract if it would help the community gauge the situation.

</comment><comment><USER16> how much is this 1000 shares worth (roughly)? is it worth hiring a lawyer?

<comment><AUTHOR> based on what my former co-workers got paid it is definitely worth the cost of a lawyer.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> Please update later to show how this turned out.</comment>


Share your ideas - <AUTHOR>

I've just been through my ideas file and realised there are several that have been in there for a while. I doubt I'll implement them but I'd be interested in others' opinions. Here are a few in no particular order.
anyone else care to share?
ev <comment><USER2> A version of social discussion site optimized for continuous discussion around a topic. One of my biggest complaints about HN is that it is very reactionary and every discussion ends in 24-48 hours. One of the reasons we have less "Hacker News" is that we've exhausted superficial discussions of a lot of topics and don't have a way to go more in-depth.

I have some ideas about how to implement this but I don't want to spam the comments with a long essay.

<comment><USER3> I've thought about this one too. I think I can write less than an essay, though: the solution is basically tagging in reverse. Comment threads aren't attached to individual links, but rather to tags (thus there is a 1:1 correspondence between "tag" and "discussion"; the words can be used interchangeably.) Discussions keep a list at the top of all the articles that go into them. The score of a link isn't an independent variable, but rather the sum of the "relevance" scores for each link-tag pair (that is, the weights of the graph edges.)

<comment><USER4> so, an IRC channel?

<comment><USER3> Not quite—it's about half-way in between a Reddit-like model and an IRC server. Unlike an IRC server, everything someone "says" (links to) must be cross-posted to all the threads/channels they think it's applicable to, instead of hidden within the context of the conversation being had at the moment. Unlike an IRC server, people can vote on the articles' relevances to each conversation. And unlike an IRC server, the articles with the highest aggregate relevances show up on a "front page." It would take about the same amount of work to make an IRC service daemon that managed voting and gave a "front page" listing as it would to extend a social-news/bookmarking service with tag-link-pair voting and move discussions to tags. Plus, I think the IRC culture would be less willing to accept the resulting "conversation bleed" than the social-news/bookmarking culture.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> \- Twitter digest. A Web tool that makes it easy for me to select a bunch of tweets (such as those in response to a question I raised, or just some I find on a search) and then have them repackaged into images or nice HTML I can put on my blog. Sorta like <http://twictur.es> but on speed.

\- Better niche content aggregator. Like a "Planet" site but not pulling everything from the sources.. I don't wanna see non-Ruby related stuff on PlanetRubyonRails, for example.

\- A site that lets you put in a URL and then a day/hour/whatever later e-mails you a link to a ZIP archive of that site for you to download for safe keeping. (I think I saw something like this a few days ago, but it's been on my list a while.)

\- A blog like LifeHacker but just for coders/developers.

\- A blog called something like "Lifeform A Day" that has a basic post about a different type of life/animal each day.

\- A Web app dedicated to helping you make headlines or titles for blog posts, pages, etc. Has a giant swipe file of headlines from throughout the ages and will switch in and out terms of your selection automatically and let you scroll through until you find something that works for you.

<comment><USER6> The last one: isn't that google?

<comment><USER5> You can find swipe files with Google, though there's nothing really dedicated to the task, and it'd be useful to have it switch nouns and verbs for you to get a better immediate view when scanning ;-)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> \- a "proof of posting" service for email. You send emails via the service which keeps hold of a copy for x years, accessible by the sender or recipient. Useful for mailing assignments and other important documents

<comment><USER7> Add to that a proof of receipt mechanism using a webbug.

(Edit: a webbug is a small image with a unique identifier that is downloaded by the client when the document is shown, assuming that image loading is enabled)

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Okay, there's been enough threads about sharing ideas on HN, but let me post the one I thought about tonight.

I was thinking about eBook readers. About how convenient they could be for reading not only books, but blogs, rss feeds, mail. How nice would it be if they could also work as gps navigators, if they could play some video and post to twitter. Now I know some of these devices already have these features, but how about having a platform (like iPhone) and an application store for it? Wouldn't it be great to open these devices for developers? Because, to think about it, I spend about 1-1,5 reading rss headers and blogs a day and it's really not that fun to sit in front of my desktop or notebook for that. I'd like something more mobile, but not as small as a cellphone. And, I assume, this could be one of the trends of the industry: we don't need to have these large shiny screens anymore for something as trivial as reading.

<comment><USER8> Might you be looking for the Crunchpad [[http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/06/03/crunchpad-the-launch- pr...](http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/06/03/crunchpad-the-launch- prototype/)]???

<comment><USER6> Close. But I bet the price for that is higher and it uses more energy. I would like the device to have a screen exactly like ebook readers.

They also say CrunchPad uses browser as a platform, which makes it a bit inconvenient to read pdf-s and do some other things. Not talking about writing device-specific applications.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> \- chat rooms based on TV channels. Users can chat live via IM/sms/tweet about the show currently being viewed.

<comment><USER9> The big problem I see in the implementation of this idea: How does _one_ forum handle the mass of users? I'm not talking about technical issues, more of the user experience. How can all users engage in the discussion without being overwhelmed?

<comment><USER10> Each user could pick how many other users they want in the forum. They would get a random sample of all the users. Not happy with the selection? Kick that person out of your forum and get another one from the pool automatically.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> something to reduce the waiting time while making customer service calls. may be an iphone app. I specify the service (PSEG), time I would be available (4 pm to 9pm), expiry date (3 days). It would call the damn service on my behalf, and connect me once a human is on the other side, without disrupting any of the other phone tasks. no clue how it is technically possible, or if something like this already exists.

<comment><USER8> Since the iphone is not advanced enough to support background processes, the only way it would be possible would be through a server side process. Interesting idea, and definitely worth a try I guess.

<comment><USER12> > Since the iphone is not advanced enough to support background processes

To be pedantic, the OS fully supports this. Apple simply doesn't allow third- party processes to do so (yet). Might be doable using push notifications, though.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> \- an online log/journal for numeric information. You IM, tweet or email the info to the service where it gets logged for later review and analysis. Useful for keeping track of calories, exercise, mileage e.t.c

<comment><USER13> <http://www.daytum.com> sorta does this

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> I love this thread.

While considering what I could add - all I could think of was an old Neighborhood comic that pictured a guy in a suit and tie slumped against a building holding a tin cup in his hand. Around his neck is a sign that reads "My mind is a hodge-podge of half-baked ideas."

My biorhythm must be off today. Yeah, that must be it.

</comment><comment><USER15> 1\. An URL shortening service for online stores. Online stores embed some JS into their store templates. Every page that displays a product now has an option to "share this product" (sort of like the UserVoice/GetSatisfaction "Feedback" tab). Clicking the tab/button gives the visitor a short URL for the product and options to share on Twitter/Facebook. Charge based on number of products. I actually think this could work (1 big customer and you're ramen profitable). If anyone is interested in teaming up on it, let me know.

2\. A small .5-2TB hard drive or SSD array with a small cable. At the end of the cable is a memory-card shaped connector. The drive attaches to your digital camera's via the tripod screw. The cable goes into your memory card slot. Device acts like a high-capacity memory card. Perhaps even works as a RAID to prevent corruption.

<comment><USER16> Number 2 would be awesome.

I've been wishing there was a CompactFlash to hard drive adapter for a while now.

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> \- an online noticeboard. When I was at uni, notices relevant to my group of students were either emailed out to everyone or uploaded as a word document to a shared drive. The former flooded my inbox with irrelevant notices, the latter was a pain to have to keep checking. Instead, I can imagine an online noticeboard with tags/directories and expiration dates set by the authors. Users would get a ping when a new notice went up for the tags/directories they had subscribed to.

<comment><USER17> You COULD use the Twitter hammer for this nail

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> A small device embedded in a car's dashboard that monitors events such as: \- Anti-lock brakes or traction control kicking in (slippery road conditions) \- Drastic changes in temperature/humidity (potential for ice, fog, or whatever) \- Current speed (traffic flow)

and uploads this data, along with GPS coordinates, to a central server via cell phone data link or WiMax or something. Aggregate data about traffic speed and weather conditions nearby could be sent out to subscribers for display on an in-dash device:

"Hey, I see that 1.3 miles ahead on Hwy 494 three cars reported traction control kicking in within the last 20 minutes. Be careful!"

Getting manufacturers' cooperation for hooking into the cars' computers would be really tough. But the technology is perfectly feasible.

<comment><USER16> This is a cool idea.

Along the same car lines: I'd like a small computer in my car that would record all of it's vital information. Fuel trims, coolant temperature, air flow, plus things like speed and rpms. The computer would track trends to let you know of any problems that may come up or to make sure you are getting the best performance. The computer would also sync up wirelessly, either Wifi or a 3G network.

It might also be interesting to have a website that compared your stats to others of the same make/model.

I'm not sure the technical requirements for such a thing, but obviously the car companies would have to be in on it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> A realistic yet inexpensive robot hand that can curl its fingers in response to a remote wearer (wearing a glove). Would enable physical handshakes over the internet. And probably other things as well, people being as creative as they are...

<comment><USER20> That would be perfect for when somebody contacts you by email about millions of dollars to share. Once there's a real physical handshake, they would have no way to back out of that deal! Too much honor at stake!

<comment><USER16> Or if they do back out, you can stab them in the face across the internet. Provided you can get them to put a knife the robot hand first.

<http://www.bash.org/?4281>

</comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> \- a site making it easy for people to share their photo essays. There are plenty of photo sharing sites and plenty of photo essay sites from the big boys but I've yet to find a site that makes it easy for people to share their photo essays.

<comment><USER21> <http://tabblo.com>

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> Single sender email addresses -- The idea is that a subscriber to the service gives out a separate email address to each friend or associate that he's willing to hear from (maybe from serialized business cards or whatever). The mail server accepts and records the first sender to any previously unused address, and subsequently performs a policy dependent action (e.g., blocking) when mail to that address is received from any other sender. Return addresses on outoging mail also have to be handled consistently. Not sure if there's a market but I know I'd use it myself.

Any non-obvious flaws?

<comment><USER23> What if the friend you gave the card to has several email addresses? Or changes his address and tries to email you from the new one?

<comment><USER22> Bayesean filtering? If it's trained on a corpus of mail from the same person, it could be more effective than in the general case.

<comment><USER24> Until they forward you a mail.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> I think there's some good new communication tools around at the moment but it's an area I think that's difficult to monetize. (Facebook and Twitter IMO will have to look at something in addition to advertising.)

I would say there's plenty of opportunities for online marketplaces.

Internet growth in Asia right now, and potentially Africa in the future, will open up tonnes and the need to exchange goods and services.

Developing economies will want the same consumer goods as we do, and offcourse the enterprise will need the tools in order to provide these.

</comment><comment><USER2> A microfinance or charity site (ala Kiva.com) that lets you skype with the recipient of the charity at the moment of giving.

Translation and synchronicity would be major obstacles to this.

</comment><comment><USER12> A tablet-like touchscreen computer designed specifically for use in the kitchen, designed to mount on a fridge or cabinet. Inventories fridge and pantry, possibly with the aid of a barcode reader or camera to read UPCs. Connects via Wi-Fi to a recipe database, and attempts to find recipes based on fridge inventory, with full health statistics for each meal. (Oh, and a media player wouldn't hurt either.)

If the UI/UX was polished right, I think it could go very mainstream.

</comment><comment><USER19> A portable camera/audio system transmits what the wearer is seeing and hearing to an online audience in real-time. The wearer would be a "remote virtual tourist" and would respond to directions from the online viewers and would walk around allowing the online viewers to travel to places virtually.

</comment><comment><USER26> Yet another:

\- Online business cards: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=725195>

I have a few more, but I don't want to spam. I guess I should setup a blog for this.

<comment><USER27> <http://card.ly>

<comment><USER26> Looks like a good start! Thanks for the link.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER2> A discussion site with a page for every wikipedia article. The discussion would be focused on general consideration of the subject, not the content of the article. You could discuss anything from your favorite band to Bernoulli's principle.

</comment><comment><USER26> I have a few ideas I commented on an old post in HN. Here's the first one:

\- Payments management system: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=725232>

</comment><comment><USER26> Second idea:

\- Customer help crowdsourced by customers: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=725217>

</comment><comment><USER28> Someday I want to make websites to run experiments on subliminal perception.

</comment><comment><USER24> Better health care.

</comment><comment><USER29> A python console in the web. maybe this exist</comment>


Dan Porter (omgpop CEO) responds to Shay Pierce leaving - <AUTHOR> http://i.imgur.com/Dob8n.jpg

<comment><USER2> Bitterness and negativity are bad for any brand, but especially one presented directly to consumers.

Representing the company is one of a CEO's job, and it is certainly the point of the CEO's twitter feed.

There's a good chance that what he's saying is true, it does not matter.

</comment><comment><USER3> There has to be more to the story...

<comment><USER4> I agree - I know neither of these ppl or the company - but even from that distance I could see a chip on Dan's shoulder. He may need to get that looked at.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: Third-Party Security Audits - <AUTHOR> I'm a (young) sysadmin who is responsible for a relatively small (~ 30 employees, ~ 30 Desktops, ~5 notebooks, 2 Offices) company. We mostly live in Windows land (Windows 10 machines, most people use Office 365 for their jobs).
I'm quite happy with what we've built so far, but I also know I probably have a personal bias towards my work.
Hence I'd like to hear opinions and recommendations regarding companies that do security audits. What are the most famous companies that perform this sort of work? Is it useful? Is there any standard seal / certificate regarding IT office security? I've searched a bit and asked around, but couldn't find anything beyond "That stuff is expensive!".
Any help is appreciated! <comment><USER2> >What are the most famous companies that perform this sort of work?

[https://www.nccgroup.trust/uk/](https://www.nccgroup.trust/uk/)

[https://cure53.de/](https://cure53.de/)

>Is it useful?

Yes</comment>


Code, Picasso, and Simplicity - <AUTHOR> http://blog.nahurst.com/effort-to-simplicity-code-design-art

<comment><USER2> What I find interesting about The Bull is how Picasso's initial breakthrough is to reduce the prominent head to a small insignificant shape. Only with that done can he go on to reduce the rest of the body to such a degree. To me that demonstrates how attacking a problem from an unusual angle can yield an unexpected development, when trying to reduce the more obvious components first would probably result in something more like a bull and less like a work of art.

cf. <http://synthcode.com/blog/2009/06/Small_is_Beautiful>

<comment><USER3> A lot of creativity comes from the most unexpected of sources. When you are not thinking about a problem or thinking about something unrelated, some neuron fires and makes connections with some subconscious notion of your original problem. Looking at things from new and unexpected angles also seems to trigger creative neurosis. You just have to turn off that filter and start to look at things where you normally would not.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Fred Brooks says to plan to throw one away. It won't directly help you keep your final product simple, but if you don't worry about making your first pass beautiful, you can get through it faster and learn all the details about your solution sooner. From there you can simplify. (I'm talking at the level of writing a function or two at a time, then simplifying)

I like to throw together my first try however feels easiest. Special cases, multiple loops, wrong data abstractions, whatever. Once it works, I look at the big picture: where are my data abstractions hurting me? Where can loops be combined? what macro-scale blocks of code could be re-shuffled to be clearer. Then I recursively look at subsections until I've gone as far as removing the superfluous variables and ensured everything is named sensibly. _Then_ I push the commit (not earlier, or it's too likely to be interpreted as 'done')

As far as anti-patterns that lead to unnecessary complexity:

* Is anything un-idiomatic (Python especially)?

* Is the same information stored/handled in more than one place?

* Is any variable being asked to do double-duty?

* Are errors being detected/signaled/handled too early? Too late?

* Can the data be re-organized to provide a more natural problem?

* Are there un-necessary branches? (Where applicable, develop an algorithm that works for all inputs, instead of seperate algorithms for different classes of input)

* Has anything been added because it's "basically free"?

</comment><comment><USER5> I think the impulse to simplicity and the ability to recognize complexity comes from experience.

I'm sure Picasso wasn't "just" Picasso from day one. He probably spent most of his early days absorbing as much as he could as we all do when we are young and without experience. When we cannot absorb any more some of us, like Picasso, begin to find ways to simplify our understanding of the structures that beget such complexity so that we can find the intellectual room required to reflect and absorb more.

As with code and mathematics -- we may come to understand our problems and meet them with complex solutions. Yet only experience will reveal the underlying structures. After you've written the same kinds of programs a hundred different ways will you begin to see commonalities and short-cuts.

And personally I find that experience outside of programming also helps to find that elusive simple elegance we all desire our code to have. I study mathematics, fine art, literature, music all because I've found that ideas in one often reveal through lateral thinking -- solutions to problems in the other. That's why I love programming so much.

</comment><comment><USER6> I find that both when writing code and when writing papers I usually just try to get my ideas typed out first. Then I start over (often from scratch) and refine the ideas. I keep doing this, but re-using more and more of the ideas until I come to my final solution.</comment>


Tsarnaev and Miranda Rights - <AUTHOR> http://www.volokh.com/2013/04/20/tsarnaev-and-miranda-rights/ <comment><USER3> The ironic thing is that Tsarnaev became a naturalized U.S. citizen on Sept. 11, 2012. Anyone that decides to kill and hurt innocent people through bombs and guns deserves no rights.

<comment><USER4> So, all criminals who have shot anyone have less rights than rapists and child molesters?

What about the military? They hurt innocent people all the time.

Regardless of all that, how do you determine "anyone that decides..." - <USER2> like you need a trial to determine guilt & intent. At which point if guilty they are punished, and if not they're set free.

So if he's guilty by trial, are the existing possible sentences not harsh enough?

You fucking Americans don't need to worry about "evil" presidents and senators taking away your rights, you can't wait to fucking hand them off at a moments notice all on your own.</comment></comment>


What's Simple about the Simple Mail Transfer Protocol (SMTP) - <AUTHOR> <comment><USER2> It's simple enough you can easily send e-mails manually with telnet (assuming TLS is not required)</comment>


Amdahl's Law Is Misleading - <AUTHOR> https://www.embeddedrelated.com/showarticle/1033.php <comment><USER2> This scatter-brained exposé really says nothing about Amdahl's Law except that there are still benefits to optimizing pieces that are not necessarily the main "bottleneck" of a task, which I think is obvious in relevant contexts.

</comment><comment><USER3> Amdahl's law is not misleading. Amdahl's law shows the speed up under a fixed problem size. Gustafson simple showed that since we parallelized an aspect of a problem, we can solve larger problems with the time saved. Amdahl's law is the max for fixed problem sizes.

<comment><USER3> Reevaluating Amdahl's Law.

[http://www.johngustafson.net/pubs/pub13/amdahl.pdf](http://www.johngustafson.net/pubs/pub13/amdahl.pdf)

<comment><USER4> wow even this is a bit hard to parse (and I work with John!)

Basically, Gustafson's law says, "yeah but really what you're going to do with massively parallel computing is you're going to run more copies of the same program, which has a linear scaling factor".

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Lol, seeing the comments so far I might be the minority, but I loved reading this. Made my mind feel like it came up from under water to see the sun. Happy

</comment><comment><USER6> How does amdahls law apply to articles that take two hours to read?

<comment><USER7> It says that you don't parallelize well.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> The title is really awesome!

</comment><comment><USER9> Wow, this was really not worth the time it took to read it.</comment>