Facebook accused of striking 'secret deals over user data' - <AUTHOR> https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-46456695 <comment><AUTHOR> One of the leaked emails threads related to Vine:

 _Justin Osofsky (Facebook vice president):_

 _" Twitter launched Vine today which lets you shoot multiple short video segments to make one single, 6-second video... Unless anyone raises objections, we will shut down their friends API access today. We've prepared reactive PR, and I will let Jana know our decision."_

 _Mark Zuckerberg (Facebook chief executive):_

 _" Yup, go for it."_

<comment><USER2> Interestingly, I remember Google's employee training[1] was written to warn against stuff this, something to the effect of:

"Hey, don't leave a papertrail about 'crushing' or 'destroying' competitors. We do not seek to monopolize markets and run afoul of antitrust laws. Instead, talk about how your product can better satisfy users and meet a demand."

(Another common theme I remember was that you shouldn't route stuff through Switzerland to get around export controls.)

[1] I contracted there via a startup.

<comment><USER3> Google's guidance for this stuff was always in the form of "don't leave a trail", not "don't do it in the first place".

Sketchy stuff comes up on a list? "Let's take it offline", not "no, stop this now".

That kind of thing. It was systemic.

<comment><USER4> What they probably don't realize is the record of saying "lets take it off line" ie requesting change in communication media is suspicious in itself and much easier for humans or algorithms to find in discovery than whatever complicated scheme they were going to discuss that wouldn't give good target keywords.

<comment><USER5> I don't know, it seems like it's probably better to take it offline than to have a whole _argument_ about something that shouldn't be talked about in the first place. If you keep talking, they are just going to put more dubious speculation on the record.

Shutting this down is just good management.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Is Hackernews being brigaded with anti-Facebook content or is it finaly Facebooks time to die? This is the 5th anti-FB post I've seen today.

I would be interested if theirs any information on a big tech company rolling out a FB replacer or if Mark did something to really anger someone. From what I can tell most posts seems to be around Britain releasing information. Not trying to start a conspiracy just trying to understand why all the posts today.

<comment><USER7> _Is Hackernews being brigaded with anti-Facebook content or is it finaly Facebooks time to die? This is the 5th anti-FB post I 've seen today._

Facebook is in the middle of a media scapegoat frenzy: [https://jakeseliger.com/2018/11/14/is-there-an-actual- facebo...](https://jakeseliger.com/2018/11/14/is-there-an-actual-facebook- crisis-or-media-narrative-about-facebook-crisis). So we're going to keep seeing anti-Facebook articles for a while; it's more attractive to blame Facebook than it is to examine the media's role in the 2016 election or to look carefully at underlying forces, a la _The Revolt of The Public and the Crisis of Authority in the New Millennium_ by Gurri.

<comment><USER8> I feel like what we're seeing is less of a focus based around the 2016 election and more just general societal scrutiny of what they are actually doing. These are powerful tools for bad actors in general - It's not Facebook vs society, it's social media/ad-driven personal information vacuuming vs society. It just so happens that Facebook is by far and away the most used.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Facebook: We can do whatever we like.

UK: No, you can't.

This totally works for me. If FB doesn't negotiate in good faith, strong-arm is exactly what's called for.

</comment><comment><USER10> Has anyone read Mark Zuckerberg's emails / his style? He is a very frustrating email writer.

You know that person who types out an 8 sentence email, but really the first 6-7 sentences are about how they are "just thinking about everything out loud" and "this could totally be wrong but I think that". It's just that, email after email.

<comment><USER11> No, that's what you have to do in his position. If Zuckerberg sends out a mail like "can you get me information on how flowers are sold in China," a SVP will delegate to a VP, a product marketing manager will fly to China, they'll prepare a 200 page slide deck because this is "for Mark." It's very hard as a CEO with absolute power to participate in a conversation without dominating it and this is his best effort to do so.

<comment><USER12> > a CEO with absolute power

Did you mean that to be such a concise description of the problem here?

<comment><USER11> No, because all Fortune 500 CEOs have the power that makes the organization respond to their slightest whim, whether they wanted that or not.

<comment><USER12> Typical of this place and our industry, not appreciating that a phrase like "absolute power" has loads upon loads of baggage.

<comment><USER11> Yes, and all Fortune 500 CEOs have it. They have more power in their organizations than the President of the United States has.

<comment><USER12> They don't all have it. They are supposed to be accountable to boards etc. Look at how Ballmer was made to leave in the current decade, to cite a tech example. Zuckerberg has broken and circumvented this by concentrating power.

Now, your original point that small indirect suggestions can be amplified greatly by the network of reports eager to execute on the boss's mandate... This is true and I have seen it in large and small scale. I am merely poking fun of "absolute power".

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Every single day it seems like a new article comes out - maybe the problem is that Facebooks business model is destined to fail if people scrutinize what it's actually doing.

<comment><USER13> > _Every single day it seems like a new article comes out_

That's because some news organizations have invested in bringing Facebook down. If you pay attention, you'll notice those same organizations have also tested the waters with Google and Amazon, and to a lesser extent, other SV companies and the SV community itself.

I barely ever use FB. I really don't care what happens to the webapp (although I do very much appreciate the open source tools they've built, such as react and pyTorch). But I am concerned that these media companies are attacking the tech community, and are basically opposed to any platform that circumvents their role as gatekeepers of information.

<comment><USER14> Uhhh, I feel like the constant stream of discoveries about Facebook's highly highly unethical behavior stands on it's own merit. Like, if you just made a list of the crap they've done, that's really enough for me to be very convincing. I don't really see why you think there's some media conspiracy (or why you seem okay with true anticompetitive behavior on FB's part but are highly concerned about companies having "opinions" on the behavior of a company in another industry entirely).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Was skimming through the report[1] and they mention "coefficient ranking" (email starting on page 49). Did some Googling and couldn't find anything. Anyone has a brief explanation of this?

[1] [https://www.parliament.uk/documents/commons- committees/cultu...](https://www.parliament.uk/documents/commons- committees/culture-media-and-sport/Note-by-Chair-and-selected-documents- ordered-from-Six4Three.pdf)

<comment><USER16> You have a coefficient with each of your friends on Facebook, that represents how close you are with them, based on how much you interact with them on Facebook. Coefficient ranking is probably sorting your friends list by coefficient to show you the ones you're closest with first.

<comment><USER17> Sounds flawed. What if I interact with someone a lot because they're a family member who shares dumb boomer memes and we argue? :)

<comment><USER18> That's actually exactly how the algorithm is supposed to work. Negative emotions are far more catchy. You see dumb boomer memes constantly, you constantly argue, but you're ENGAGED. Which means you're a juicy user for ad targeting.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> From email dated 4 February 2015

 _Michael LeBeau – 'He guys, as you know all the growth team is planning on shipping a permissions update on Android at the end of this month. They are going to include the 'read call log' permission, which will trigger the Android permissions dialog on update, requiring users to accept the update. They will then provide an in-app opt in NUX for a feature that lets you continuously upload your SMS and call log history to Facebook to be used for improving things like PYMK, coefficient calculation, feed ranking etc. This is a pretty highrisk thing to do from a PR perspective but it appears that the growth team will charge ahead and do it.'

Yul Kwon – 'Based on their initial testing, it seems this would allow us to upgrade users without subjecting them to an Android permissions dialog at all.'_

</comment><comment><USER20> Criticism of Facebook fall into the following buckets:

\- Unethical use of UI dark patterns to make users (mostly the young and the elderly) unwittingly over-share.

\- Unethical design of the news feed algorithm to bias certain kinds of consumer behavior.

\- Unethical stewardship of private data harvested from users (this article is an example)

\- Abuse of market share toward anti-competitive ends.

\- The absence of warrant canaries on individual accounts, and compliance with questionable law enforcement requests for private data.

And then the new upcoming one:

\- Unethical modification of the news feed algorithm to promote political views deemed favorable, and demote political views deemed unfavorable.

</comment><comment><USER21> This can be legally interpreted in many ways:

and I quote: "It is unlawful for a company to monopolize or attempt to monopolize trade, meaning a firm with market power cannot act to maintain or acquire a dominant position by excluding competitors or preventing new entry. It is important to note that it is not illegal for a company to have a monopoly, to charge "high prices," or to try to achieve a monopoly position by aggressive methods."

"It is illegal for businesses to act together in ways that can limit competition, lead to higher prices, or hinder other businesses from entering the market."

\- Federal Trade Commission on Anticompetitive Practices.

[https://www.ftc.gov/enforcement/anticompetitive- practices](https://www.ftc.gov/enforcement/anticompetitive-practices)

And a relevant tidbit on FTC investigation into FB for user privacy: [https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-43546100](https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-43546100)

</comment><comment><USER22> "Facebook used data provided by the Israeli analytics firm Onavo to determine which other mobile apps were being downloaded and used by the public. It then used this knowledge to decide which apps to acquire or otherwise treat as a threat"

What is wrong with this part?

<comment><USER23> They have a VPN called "Onavo Protect" that says it can "protect your personal info" and "secure your personal details" [0] but that actually sends all your usage data to Facebook. Obviously they'll have some must-agree-to-use agreement that says that's fine, but it's obviously not what people who download a VPN for those purposes actually expect.

[0] [https://www.onavo.com/](https://www.onavo.com/)

<comment><USER22> yeah but in the documents, it is just market research data, if I want to acquire one application, and let's say use appannie[0] to check how popular it is, what is different essentially?

[0] [https://www.appannie.com/](https://www.appannie.com/)

<comment><USER24> I asked the same question yesterday and it seems that FB acquired Onavo. They joined this data with the rest of their user data, and then used it to make anti-competitive decisions.

It'd be like if Apple bought Appannie, matched the behavior with their existing customer database, and then used the data to delist Spotify from their app store because it competes with iTunes.

<comment><USER25> That's messed up sure, and I am not a lawyer, but I don't think how they got the information to act in an anticompetitive way is relevant, in the US at least (as long as it was legal, which buying up smaller companies is). Am I missing something? Is it fraud because they continued to market the vpn service as being private while they used it to collect market research data for facebook?

<comment><USER24> I think that maybe it's because Onavo acquired the information with a specific agreement with it's users, which didn't cover the way Facebook used it after FB acquired the agency, but then again, I'm not sure.

SOP for these situations is to license the data from the agency, so you can say that you're using third-party data which is also available to your competition. Level playing field and all that. Acquiring the entire company is a risk because it closes it off to competition and isn't necessary to just _use_ the data.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> If anything, FB gave away too much to Developers early on, making it difficult to pivot to the Apple model of facilitating credit card payments and paying 70% to Developers.

Hence the recurring theme of "Data Reciprocity" in the U.K. acquired docs. FB needed _something_ , if not revenue, to justify the Developer's ongoing use of platform.

</comment><comment><USER27> So they took one business's confidential documents from another person travelling in their country who had them as part of discovery for another lawsuit (that a CA judge asked to remain hidden)? And then they publish them for everyone? And these are the "bombshells"? Seems like normal (albeit arguably immoral) big business and would have expected worse from an internal email cache of such size.

Obviously FB has nobody on their "side" but themselves, but I for damn sure am not on the UK government's side here. Comes off as look-what-we-can-do strong- arm tactics when you don't show up when they want you to. And the publishing appears to be just gloating. Shameful and I would hope others see it this way regardless of their feelings towards FB. Sadly, the less-principled masses care more about who it's targeted towards than the actions.

I wonder if the CA judge will formally censure the UK government or encourage others with sealed documents in hand to not travel to places like this. Cry "exceptional circumstances" all you want, but we declare non-guilt on harsher crimes for much less egregious discovery violations than this.

<comment><USER28> You may not like the process but it is completely legal for the MP to compel the third party to turn over this information and then use parliamentary privilege to publish it. If FB has sent Zuck to talk to parliament in the first place this would not have happened. Instead he told them to get lost, and what are you gonna do about it? Well, this is it.

Not sure what you mean about a formal censure. I'm not familiar with any legal mechanism for a state judge to formally object to foreign parliamentary procedure; how would that even work between a republic and a commonwealth?

<comment><USER29> I don't think anyone's alleging the UK did anything wrong.

Six4Three's CEO is possibly on iffy legal grounds taking a bunch of sealed docs overseas unnecessarily and then handing them over, though.

<comment><USER17> >Six4Three's CEO is possibly on iffy legal grounds taking a bunch of sealed docs overseas unnecessarily and then handing them over, though.

Yeah, this is weird. I've taken confidential documents overseas, but they were either on an encrypted device, or stored securely in our cloud and pulled down over a VPN after I arrived. Not printed out in my luggage. I'd expect to be fired if I did that and a government got access at customs.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> re: Android app and them working out ways to circumvent permission request dialogs for reading SMS/call logs to build user coefficient levels (who knows what else)

'The Growth team is now exploring a path where we only request Read Call Log permission, and hold off on requesting any other permissions for now. 'Based on their initial testing, it seems this would allow us to upgrade users without subjecting them to an Android permissions dialog at all. 'It would still be a breaking change, so users would have to click to upgrade, but no permissions dialog screen.'

</comment><comment><USER31> Even with the damning information in these documents, can anyone explain what possible consequences could result from them?

<comment><USER32> My 2 cents.. either threats of regulation (anticompetitive behavior) or pressure for Zuck to step down.

<comment><USER33> Can you actually force Mark out as CEO given that he's the majority voting share holder?

<comment><USER19> Replacing Mark is not going to change anything. The problem is not Mark, the problem is what the company's built upon and its business model.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> Is anyone genuinely surprised by this? I grew up with the early days of Facebook and everyone around understood the company must be doing _something_ to provide some service to people for free. I've accepted the fact long time ago that we are the product that they have to sell to make money to give us something for free. Am I the only one feeling this way?

<comment><USER35> I don't think most people are surprised and I don't think most users care. This is just the media grasping at anything it can get its hands on to attack their rival.

</comment></comment><comment><USER36> Alibaba once said it's "Data Technology" instead of IT now.

Looks like FB became the scapegoat of the entire industry.

<comment><USER37> There seem to be so many labels we could throw:

\- Intent analysis \- Sentiment influence \- Data sculpting \- Information engineering \- Data engineering \- Stream management \- Cognition coordination

blah blah blah.

Labels are now the things of the commentary artists, howver, how do we regulate and police things when they are many layers of abstraction.

For example, at what point do we have API exploitation police? Statutes against very specific cyber-crimes?

Encapsulation policy/regulation?

At what point does spoofing overlap with identity theft?

What I find really interesting - and completely neglected as a source of directional inspiration - is that Anime has been dealing with these tropes and issues for decades.

The writers of Anime series with such concepts in mind should be sought, encouraged, spoken-to to start thinking about such ripple effects of tech.

We will have a cyber 9/11 very soon.

</comment></comment><comment> mellow-lake-day Just a reminder:

Zuck: Yeah so if you ever need info about anyone at Harvard

Zuck: Just ask.

Zuck: I have over 4,000 emails, pictures, addresses, SNS

[Redacted Friend's Name]: What? How'd you manage that one?

Zuck: People just submitted it.

Zuck: I don't know why.

Zuck: They "trust me"

Zuck: Dumb fucks.

<comment><USER38> I'd like a transcript of your conversations when you were 19.

And I'd like to keep them around to bring them up over and over again out of context.

<comment><USER39> I agree that this being reposted in any Facebook-related thread is old and tired.

But I wouldn't dismiss the episode itself as irrelevant to assessing how Zuckerberg thinks. If anything, it should be a well known bit of history and already long baked into people's opinions.

And therefore it will always be "in context" when updating your opinion on Zuckerberg's (specifically) and Facebook's (broadly) trustworthiness.

<comment><USER38> You don't think Zuckerberg has updated a single opinion in the 15 years since that exchange?

Think about how different the world was 15 years ago. Think about how different of a person you are today versus just 4 years ago.

And on top of that, I'll share my opinion on the specific incident in question: the people who volunteered their personal information into a random web form distributed by a random student they didn't know...is by all measures...stupid. A 19 year old me might have even used the words "dumb fuck". So there you go.

My goal is not to defend Zuckerberg here. My goal is to defend people's right to be 19 and stupid/inexperienced. I'm also defending people's right to grow over the years.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER40> > [https://techcrunch.com/2018/12/05/seized-cache-of- > facebook-d...](https://techcrunch.com/2018/12/05/seized-cache-of-facebook- > docs-raise-competition-and-consent-questions/)

"The documents were obtained by a legal discovery process by a startup that's suing the social network in a California court in a case related to Facebook changing data access permissions back in 2014/15.

The court had sealed the documents but the DCMS committee used rarely deployed parliamentary powers to obtain them from the Six4Three founder, during a business trip to London."

Um, what? This is bullshit. I'm much more concerned about the misuse of government power to seize documents in court cases outside of the country of jurisdiction than I am of Facebook.

Whether or not these acts of populism are genuine, governments that abuse their power are just as bad as companies that skirt the law.

<comment><USER41> Well I'd be worried if there's the power with no oversight to request anything from personal nudes to the Coca Cola recipe and Area 51 secrets and then have no repercussions if made public.

</comment></comment><comment><USER42> Ok can we stop using all Facebook technology and stop this nonsense?

</comment><comment><USER43> Anyone knows the status of Facebook vs Steven Vachani case, [https://youtu.be/-W1B89wXJU8](https://youtu.be/-W1B89wXJU8)

</comment><comment><USER44> Facebook needs to be replaced.

</comment><comment><USER41> TL;DR required. I didn't quite get it from the article. Is Facebook accused of doing something illegal under the laws at the time of the action?

If I were to sue them for anything, do I have any grounds?</comment>


cloud-nuke: Cleaning up your cloud accounts by nuking (deleting) all resources - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/gruntwork-io/cloud-nuke <comment><USER2> Any one used this for non trivial use cases?</comment>


Darwin explains how killing insurgents makes them more effective (2015) - <AUTHOR> https://fabiusmaximus.com/2015/07/09/fighting-insurgencies-darwinian-ratchet-87079/ <comment><USER2> This assumes that the goal of these wars is to actually beat the insurgents.

Rather than creating an unstable environment that favors the west.</comment>


Show HN: Corrode – A batteries-included js-library for reading binary data - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/screeny05/corrode <comment><USER2> Pardon my ignorance, but what does "batteries included" mean in this context?

<comment><AUTHOR> It's a hint on corrodes built-in functionality and extensibility. It not only provides a way of parsing, but also a way of validating the parsed data via asserts.

<comment><USER2> _> It's a hint on corrodes built-in functionality and extensibility._

Well, OK, but it was completely lost on me. One thing that did occur to me is that using the words "corrode" and "batteries" together might not evoke positive feelings in the mind of potential users.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> Congrats for your code.

I found it really well documented and structure. I'll probably print it to read it later.

I really love the documentation badge. It should be more common.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you. I was afraid the documentation wouldn't be sufficient. Yet improving it is highest priority for me.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Side note: Are you familiar with Sweetscape's 010 Editor? Very cool stuff, although closed source.

</comment><comment><USER4> Links to doc are 404.

<comment><AUTHOR> Has been fixed. Thanks for the hint.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Why using it:

"As a js-library from 2016 it has all the swag you need." ... Oh well

</comment><comment><USER6> Title pun intended?</comment>


You Don't Need a Master Plan, You Just Need to Start - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/startup-grind/you-dont-need-a-master-plan-you-just-need-to-start-9a3ec0455866#.n2c6xn1hg <comment><USER2> Maybe worth explicitly mentioning that the very fact that you have a trillion dollar plan could be negative to your chances of achieving even 1K/month.

The pie in the sky is tasty, and everyone wants to sink their teeth in it. Moon shots will naturally attract a certain type of individual, and the incentives will favour big gambles. Think of it as an internal land grab or gold rush.

I was in a place where we got the gold fever. People were getting insanely unrealistic ideas about the value of the idea. We applied to YC with it, and people questioned whether we were giving away too much (one them said "who are they" which is both funny and not funny at once). This is at the stage where we had 1 competent programmer, zero customers (but lots of connections), and a barely working prototype with fantasies that people wanted added. Funnily enough, nothing came of it, except my old colleagues still think I was trying to defraud them.

Slow and steady is less glamourous. I'm not surprised the anecdote is about a small family humbly trying to put something together. And you don't get fantasists thinking they need a piece of this trillion dollars.

<comment><USER3> The easist person to con is always yourself.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> > _Startups are overdosing on ambition these days_

> _Not every billion dollar business starts with a billion dollar idea. Not > everything unfundable by VCs is unworthy of doing._

It's interesting the author is being a VC is understandably blinded by the bubble that never reports on such businesses. The vast majority of businesses created in the world, _i.e._ almost all small businesses, are exactly that. It's been done before and it's being done now, in large quantities. It's just so common that people don't feel writing medium posts about it and you don't tend to call them _startups_ per se without the VC-funding and fast growth factor[1]. If you restrict the definition of a startup to this, then almost _by definition_ you need such ambitious visions.

[1]: [http://www.paulgraham.com/growth.html](http://www.paulgraham.com/growth.html)

I remember Joel Spolsky talked at Startup School a few years back on this subject and he was spot on[2].

[2]: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pPJf8KrvJXU](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pPJf8KrvJXU)

<comment><USER5> It looks like you haven't been following Bryce close enough. He put his money (and PR) where his mouth is and started Indie.vc.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> > Startups are overdosing on ambition these days

I was turned down recently by several _EARLY STAGE_ investors on the basis that the Total Addressable Market (TAM) of our first target niche is only in the hundreds of millions while they only invest in billion dollar opportunities (ideally you should also have a proven product market fit or be profitable or both, you know, early stage). Trying to explain, that this is only the first niche we want to target and once we will have users we can experiment with ways to monetize them, didn't help either.

<comment><USER7> Exactly this. We have revenues and repeat users and yet, we got rejected everywhere. Some places want a "world domination vision", others (even supposedly great investors) are just blindly running after buzzwords ("Revenues? Profits? Pass.... AI/Machine learning based hyperlocal customer engagement platform TAKE MY MONEY PLEASE RIGHT NOW")

There was only one investor who was honest with us and said "Look, don't ask investors anything. We don't know. If it works, it's a good idea."

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> I left this blog post deeply curious about that family's business. I'd like to know how they set out to earn an extra few thousand each month and accidentally stepped into an "empire" that will gross $100M in the span of a few years, without venture capital.

<comment><USER9> > _I 'd like to know how they set out to earn an extra few thousand each month > and accidentally stepped into an "empire" that will gross $100M in the span > of a few years, without venture capital._

That happens a lot more than 1 billion exits happen, and even outside the startup space.

There are tons of 10-100M companies in all kinds of sectors, even in local fast-food chains...

<comment><USER10> No kidding- a single supermarket can gross $100m a year

<comment><USER11> Net margins are only 1.5%, though, according to the industry trade group [1]. With median sales of about $25M/year, that's under $400K profit for running a supermarket. It's a decent living, but before giving up programming to buy a supermarket, consider that you can get to $400K/year income a lot quicker with less risk than you can grow a business with 1.5% margins to $25M/year.

Business is about profit, not revenues. $100M revenue is considered a huge number in software because it's assumed that your marginal costs are close to zero, and so that's basically pure profit. $100M in many other industries gives you a decent living in exchange for a lot of work. Hell, I could easily build a billion-dollar business selling $100 bills for $99.99, but I'd lose $100K on it.

[1] [http://www.fmi.org/research-resources/supermarket- facts](http://www.fmi.org/research-resources/supermarket-facts)

<comment><USER12> > [...] $400K profit [...] a decent living [...]

You startup people always make me think I live in the third world :-)

<comment><USER13> With 700 square foot shacks being sold for >$1m $400k won't take you far.

<comment><USER14> Who says that your supermarket needs to be in the Valley? In Michigan you can live like a member of the elite on $400K a year. In Detroit you could live like a king.

<comment><USER13> No one, but this thread is talking about silicon valley so...

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> > Starting something in the hopes of making an extra $1,000 a month is every > bit as worthy as trying to colonize Mars. Start small and give your > ambitions room to grow.

This was my favorite takeaway from this blog post. Rob Walling presents a similar idea in his book "Start Small, Stay Small.

<comment><USER15> But most of us want to start small and grow big.

<comment><USER16> You're probably right, and that's the only way a VC will make any returns. But there's also a large group of us on HN who would be very content to bootstrap our own projects and retire with a relatively small amount of passive income.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> _Starting something in the hopes of making an extra $1,000 a month is every bit as worthy as trying to colonize Mars. Start small and give your ambitions room to grow._

I suppose smaller targets are just as applicable.

</comment><comment><USER18> Slight pedantic nitpick on the article title: should be "You Don't Need A Master _Goal_ ". You still need a plan, but it just needn't be to aim for Mars.

<comment><USER19> I believe the term "master plan" here is an allusion to Elon Musk's "master plans", which were ideas for billions dollar businesses.

~ [https://techcrunch.com/gallery/dr-elon/](https://techcrunch.com/gallery/dr- elon/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> I think the book 'Incredible Secret Money Machine'[1] by Don Lancaster is one of the best startup books related to this.

For example this strategy: 'strategy secret - have: 0.834 employees'.

Of course this book might be the half truth, but imho it has a lot of value for startups.

[1] [http://www.tinaja.com/ebooks/ismm.pdf](http://www.tinaja.com/ebooks/ismm.pdf) (10.4 MB)

</comment><comment><USER21> Bryce is one of my favorite Twitter follows from the VC world. He's one of the few who seem _down-to-earth_ for lack of a better phrase. He's also one of the few who has ever responded to a random email I've sent (I live 4 hours south of SF and have zero connections to that world).

</comment><comment><USER22> I agree. A person has no clue what will happen until one is in the 'game'. Sitting on the sidelines writing a plan is a futile exercise. However, once you are in the game then plans are important.

</comment><comment><USER23> actually. imho. the most important thing you need is the motivation to just keep on going with the plan even when you only have $50 left in the bank and everyone thinks you are crazy.

Pure cash isnt enough of a motivation for those kind of hurdles. And they will come.

<comment><USER24> Isn't that just survivorship bias? Almost all startups fail.

<comment><USER23> Not really survivorship bias? Although if you can be clearer what you mean.

IMHO "Almost all startups fail" \- not because they don't have a good plan, a great idea, or "fail to start"

They fail because they don't have the motivation (or capability) to push through the inevitable hard times and come out the other side strong and profitable.

It takes a very special dedication to take an idea from start to profit.

And it seems most "Master Plans" are to cobble together a good idea then sell it for millions to a greater fool.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> So, the subject of the OP is doing a successful startup.

On that, three of my thoughts are:

First, nearly all first, wild guesses for a successful startup are doomed to fail.

Why? (A) Nearly no one wants the product/service, say, the _results_ , even for free.

(B) Lots of people like the results, but nearly all of the those people regard the price as too high.

We can call getting past both (A) and (B) as finding _product-market_ fit.

(C) Okay, but, still, say, for a battery with 10 times the currently best in energy in KWh per kg of weight, we don't know how to do that. Similarly for some software that is as _intelligent_ as a human in all respects.

Second, to have some idea that a project won't fail due to (A)-(C) or anything else serious can easily think of, one should have some good plans and, of course, check the plans as carefully as possible.

Then we can formulate a

Saying: If you fail to have a good plan, then you have a good plan to fail.

Lesson One: So, to avoid problems such as (A)-(C) and to improve chances of success, IMHO good planning is important.

Third, startups that are successful enough to make money for venture capitalists (VCs) and their limited partners (LPs -- the people the VCs get the money from) are rare.

How do we know this? A VC firm may look at 1000 unique proposals from entrepreneurs for each proposal they fund, and fund 20 proposals for each one that is very successful and actually makes money for the VCs and their LPs. So, for such a success, that VC firm has looked at 20,000 unique proposals.

Yes, if in some year there are a total of 20,000 unique proposals, there are 200 VCs, each proposal is sent to all the 200 VCs, each VC funds one proposal out of each 1000 they see, then each VC funds 20 proposals and in total there are (20)(200) = 4000 proposals funded of the 20,000. But, again, only one in 20 is successful for only 200 successes out of the 20,000 or 1 in 100.

So, depending on assumptions about the data, the chance of success from a proposal is 1 in 20,000 to 1 in 200.

So, in a word, the desired success is _exceptional_.

Lesson Two: To have one of the 1 in 20,000 proposals that is successful, instead of just luck, about the best approach is to have some good planning.

Is it possible to have some effective plans? Yes, e.g., there was the first Xerox photocopying machine, the first daisy wheel printer, the first good dot matrix printer, the first good inkjet printer, the first good laser printer, the first good program to drive such printers, the first good spreadsheet program.

Now, let's look at the arguments of the OP:

"But we have done something in the ecosystem to encourage this type of outlandish promotion ... where you feel like you need to use words like trillion."

Why is the planning for a trillion necessarily "outlandish"? We know that we are planning for something exceptional, and maybe good and careful planning, which is the kind we want, says that, really, if we do well and take all the market, then we do get a company worth $1 T. An investor would prefer the planning to be for $1 B or $1 M instead? Okay, if the company really looks like it could be worth $1 T, then it is easy enough to cut down the estimate to something much lower.

"Reality is, that for every thoughtfully articulated and executed world domination master plan, most of the biggest and impactful companies started out with much more humble ambitions. Some just wanted to give students an alternative to a summer job. Others just wanted make their friends feel like pimps."

This situation is likely true but doesn't say much:

Why? The situation says that most successes are from luck. Then the suggestion is to forget about planning and count on luck?

Here is an analogy that explains the situation: Go to a famous golf course and to a par 3 hole. Get the data for the past 10 years on who made a hole in one.

See, first, what fraction of the holes in one were made by (A) professional golfers and (B) everyone else. Will likely observe that nearly all the holes in one were made by (B), not the professional golfers but by everyone else.

How can this be true? Sure, there were only a few pro golfers but many more of everyone else. So, in the end, the luck of the many got more holes in one than the skill of the few.

See, second, what the probability of a hole in one was for (A) the professional golfers and (B) everyone else. Will likely find that the chances for the pros was at least 10 times higher than for everyone else.

So, we have that (i) nearly all the hole in one shots were from luck but (ii) the chances of a hole in one were much better for players with real skills.

So, if you were betting on a hole in one shot, then you should put your money on the pros with real skills.

Similarly for picking startup projects: Go with solid planning and not just with luck.

"Most wouldn't have cleared the hurdle of the billion dollar idea."

Fine: Discovering that fact is part of evaluating projects. But when do find a project that looks like it should be worth $1 T, don't automatically throw it away as "outlandish".

Sure, maybe on average the $1 T projects take more risk capital than the $1 B or $1 M projects, but guessing here is foolish and not necessary. Instead, the amount of risk capital needed should be part of the planning, the good planning that is believable. As we know from many projects \-- long bridges, tall buildings, deep tunnels, big dams -- it is possible to plan big projects with accurate time and cost estimates.

Yes, time and cost estimates can be especially difficult for software projects, but just multiply both by a factor of about 20 to account for work not directly for the project but, say, for getting around bugs in infrastructure software, bad documentation, time to learn new APIs, computer system management Excedrin headache #228,884,454, etc. and might be closer to reality.

"Over the years I've watch as that little company has grown from a couple thousand dollars a month to a couple million dollars a month. Next year, that unfunded family run business will do over $100M in revenue."

Terrific. But without good planning, that example represents some astounding good luck, close to winning a lottery ticket. Betting on lottery tickets is foolish for nearly everyone.

"You may be surprised with how little ambition it really takes to eventually change the world."

Luck and lottery tickets are still poor bets.

Instead, we should have good planning. And if the plans point to a company worth $1 T, then check the plans numerous times and ways and then cheer.

Once a father quite successful in business told his son:

"You have a lot of good ideas to invest $1 million and make $1 billion. Why not have an idea to invest $1000 and make $1 million."

Yes, but better still, have an idea to invest $1000 and make $1 B or $1 T.

It appears that here is the main reason for regarding $1 T plans as "outlandish" and discarding them: There are so far no $1 T companies.

So, in effect, this says that we can't plan and practice to make a hole in one and instead should look like the non-pro golfers who made a hole in one with luck So, we should not plan but copy the _pattern_ of the non-pro golfers, copy their brand of cubs, shoes, hat, shirt, etc.

Instead, it really is possible to have an idea for something really new and terrific, to have good plans to achieve it, and to achieve it essentially on time and on budget, e.g., as a low risk project.

Many of the best examples are from the all-time, unique, world-class grand champion of advanced information technology projects, the US DoD. For an example? Sure, GPS.

Betting on luck instead of planning? I remain surprised that people would suggest such a thing.

Or, when the given point does not make good sense, maybe there is a hidden point that does. Or there is the advice "Always look for the hidden agenda". For VCs, one guess at a hidden agenda is publicity for more "deal flow".</comment>


Paris zoo unveils a slime mould - <AUTHOR> https://www.reuters.com/article/us-france-zoo-blob/paris-zoo-unveils-the-blob-an-organism-with-no-brain-but-720-sexes-idUSKBN1WV2AD <comment><USER2> Slime mold is an extremely interesting species that can perform computation, even without a nerve system.

> Ateam of Japanese and Hungarian researchers have shown P. polycephalum can > solve the Shortest Path Problem. When grown in a maze with oatmeal at two > spots, P. polycephalum retracts from everywhere in the maze, except the > shortest route connecting the two food sources.

> When presented with more than two food sources, P. polycephalum apparently > solves a more complicated transportation problem. With more than two > sources, the amoeba also produces efficient networks. In a 2010 paper, > oatflakes were dispersed to represent Tokyo and 36 surrounding towns. P. > polycephalum created a network similar to the existing train system, and > "with comparable efficiency, fault tolerance, and cost". Similar results > have been shown based on road networks in the United Kingdom and the Iberian > peninsula (i.e., Spain and Portugal). Some researchers claim that P. > polycephalum is even able to solve the NP-hard Steiner Minimum Tree Problem.

> As the slime mould does not have any nervous system that could explain these > intelligent behaviours, there has been considerable interdisciplinary > interest in understanding the rules that govern its behaviour. Scientists > are trying to model the slime mold using a number of simple, distributed > rules. For example, P. polycephalum has been modeled as a set of > differential equations inspired by electrical networks. This model can be > shown to be able to compute shortest paths. A very similar model can be > shown to solve the Steiner tree problem. However, currently these models do > not make sense biologically, as they for example assume energy conservation > inside the slime mould. Living organisms consume food, so energy can not be > conserved. To build more realistic models, more data about the slime mould's > network construction needs to be gathered.

[...]

> Moreover, it has been reported that plasmodia can be made to form logic > gates, enabling the construction of biological computers. In particular, > plasmodia placed at entrances to special geometrically shaped mazes would > emerge at exits of the maze that were consistent with truth tables for > certain primitive logic connectives. However, as these constructions are > based on theoretical models of the slime mould, in practice these results do > not scale to allow for actual computation. When the primitive logic gates > are connected to form more complex functions, the plasmodium ceased to > produce results consistent with the expected truth tables.

<comment><USER3> This begs the question: at what point a computation is simply an optimization

<comment><USER2> On the flip side, at what point a heuristic optimization becomes computation?

<comment><USER4> Quantum computing is all about this. Run the program a bunch, record the results and observe the interference patterns.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Please note: the "blob" is a protist, _Physarum polycephalum_ , [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Physarum_polycephalum](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Physarum_polycephalum).

<comment><USER5> The article, oddly, only states this in the photo caption. Not sure why.

<comment><USER6> Because it is not an article, it is essentially a press release for a museum exhibit.

<comment><USER7> That doesn't make it any better. We know the blob is a slime mold and slime holds are protists. They're weird and mysterious, sure, but the article makes it sound like this is a completely new and unnamed discovery. They're very careful to avoid the words 'slime mold' and 'protist', which really should be in there.

<comment><USER6> That's my point. An article would explain why the claims hold true and summarize what is actually known about the organism. What's linked is a couple of paragraphs that seems to regurgitate some copy from elsewhere. It isn't reporting, and it is isn't an article, where they present a story of interest.

It's just a press release for the museum, seemingly copied, and ought to be identified as such.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Slime mold is interesting. There's one species that, if you assemble food sources in the population densities found in Tokyo, will grow to look very similar to the Tokyo subway system:

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

<comment><USER9> There are causal paths from population density to subway layout and from subway layout to population density, but one of those paths is significantly more responsive than the other. Population density constantly adjusts to local circumstances such as transit access; subway layout adjusts in very expensive bursts. A subway tunnel once built is not going to move 30 meters to the left even if that would obviously be a better location.

So it seems pretty likely to me that the population density of Tokyo is more a result than a cause of Tokyo's subway layout. This is backwards from the slime mold experiment, where the layout is caused by the resource density.

<comment><USER10> Interesting thought that I had not considered. But I'm also not sure I share your belief that the population density is more a result than a cause. The whole fact that adjusting the subway is very expensive suggests to me that there needs to be a population worth serving prior to construction. Seems like a bit of a chicken/egg problem, would be interesting to see some population stats pre/post subway construction.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Reminds me of "Doctor Diagoras", a short story by Stanislaw Lem. Also known for the "Solaris" novel (adapted by Tarkovsky and Soderbergh)

We expect to find alien lifeforms out there, but plenty of species on Earth remain to be discovered and studied. And rediscovered: finding out we overlooked some particularly interesting/puzzling behavior in apparently boring species, whose research might lead to breakthroughs in genetics, computing, mathematics, etc.

</comment><comment><USER12> Anyone know what 720 sexes means?

<comment><USER5> [http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/d-brief/2017/11/06/fungus-...](http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/d-brief/2017/11/06/fungus- genders/)

> Fungi, by contrast, keep it casual. To mate, all a fungus has to do is bump > up against another member of its species and let their cells fuse together. > S. commune uses a special kind of structure called a clamp connection to do > this, and it allows them to exchange their cell's nuclei, along with the > genetic information inside. This keeps reproduction simple and means that a > potentially huge number of sexes is possible — other fungi species have > dozens or more, though S. commune is certainly an outlier.

> The "sexes" don't really involve physical differences either, as we might > think of when the word "sex" comes to mind. The variations are all in the > genome, at two separate loci, or locations, each of which has two alleles, > or alternate forms. The loci are called A and B and the alleles are termed > "alpha" and "beta." That makes four possible sexes, but there's another > twist. Every A-alpha/beta and B-alpha/beta can have many different variants, > called specificities. It amounts to more than 339 specificities for A and 64 > for B. Putting those two together yields thousands of possible unique sexes.

> The fungus can mate with any specificity as long as it's different somewhere > on both A and B. So, two prospective mates could both have the same A-beta > and B-alpha, but have different A-alphas and B-betas and they'd be fine to > hook up. If they shared A-alpha and A-beta, though, their pheromones > wouldn't be compatible, meaning that they couldn't carry out the > reproductive process. That leaves a ton of options for mating, though, and > essentially means that anyone a fungus meets is fair game for sexy time.

<comment><USER7> But are those real sexes? They do apparently have some sort of impact on reproduction, but the only limitation seems to be that they can't mate with someone who has the exact same structure of the these alleles.

Which makes me wonder if this might have developed not so much as a way to help reproduction, but as a guard against inbreeding.

<comment><USER13> Yes. Sexes aren't defined as being based on different chromosomes or having different physical anatomy (there are more mainstream examples of outliers for both of these). It's just a classification system for reproduction limitations.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> What does it mean that it "has the ability to learn"?

<comment><USER15> See [0]:

> Audrey Dussutour and David Vogel had already trained slime molds to move > past repellent but harmless substances (e.g. coffee, quinine, or salt) to > reach their food. They now reveal that a slime mold that has learned to > ignore salt can transmit this acquired behavior to another simply by fusing > with it.

> To achieve this, the researchers taught more than 2,000 slime molds that > salt posed no threat. In order to reach their food, these slime molds had to > cross a bridge covered with salt. This experience made them habituated slime > molds. Meanwhile, another 2,000 slime molds had to cross a bridge bare of > any substance. They made up the group of naive slime molds.

> After this training period, the scientists grouped slime molds into > habituated, naive, and mixed pairs. Paired slime molds fused together where > they came into contact.

> The new, fused slime molds then had to cross salt-covered bridges.

> To the researchers' surprise, the mixed slime molds moved just as fast as > habituated pairs, and much faster than naive ones, suggesting that knowledge > of the harmless nature of salt had been shared.

> This held true for slime molds formed from 3 or 4 individuals. No matter how > many fused, only 1 habituated slime mold was needed to transfer the > information.

> To check that transfer had indeed taken place, the scientists separated the > slime molds 1 hour and 3 hours after fusion and repeated the bridge > experiment. Only naive slime molds that had been fused with habituated slime > molds for 3 hours ignored the salt; all others were repulsed by it.

> This was proof of learning.

> When viewing the slime molds through a microscope, the scientists noticed > that, after 3 hours, a vein formed at the point of fusion. This vein is > undoubtedly the channel through which information is shared.

[0] [http://www.cnrs.fr/en/blob-can-learn-and- teach](http://www.cnrs.fr/en/blob-can-learn-and-teach)

</comment></comment><comment> rv-de If we talk about similarities to animals it should be mentioned that slime molds actively move.

"In nature, slime moulds actively move around searching for bacteria or fungi, which they subsequently engulf. Slime moulds can achieve speeds up to 5 cm/h" [1]

1: [https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3025689/](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3025689/)

</comment><comment><USER16> I'm unable to find more details. Does anyone have anything else on this creature?

How long has this been studied? What is its scientific name? Where did it come from?

<comment><USER17> Looks related to slime molds if you asked me.

<comment><USER5> It _is_ a slime mold.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Made me think of Bourne: [https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/31451186-borne](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/31451186-borne)

</comment><comment><USER19> So, how would one make this or fungi interact with a raspberry? an array of capacity sensors? camera?

</comment><comment><USER20> how the hell a organism has 720 sexes?

It probably has no sex at all, and is some king of hemaphrodite orgnanism or something that just reproduces with something more simple like parthenogenesis?

<comment><USER13> [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21277742](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21277742)

tl;dr: There are 720 variations of the animal that have different sexual reproduction limitations with each other. They have the same anatomy but differ on the DNA level.

<comment><USER20> If an organism have enouth DNA diference that dosen`t allow it to reproduce with another, that would not make it another species?

<comment><USER13> No. It's just a small part of the DNA (like male vs female in most animals). The organism that can't reproduce with another organism still came from two of the same organisms.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> When did Reuters get so sensationalistic? I remember years ago when they were the matter-of-fact news agency that other journalists got their info from and built their sensational articles around.

From TFA:

> _This newest exhibit of the Paris Zoological Park, which goes on display to > the public on Saturday, has no mouth, no stomach, no eyes, yet it can detect > food and digest it._

> _The blob also has almost 720 sexes, can move without legs or wings and > heals itself in two minutes if cut in half._

Yeah, it's a slime mo(u)ld, we get it. You don't need to get all carnie shouter about it.

Back to my original question, when did Reuters decide their strategic shift into their own souped-up content?

<comment><USER22> It's been that way for quite a while - I prefer AP for my "wire" news source. They're relatively unbiased and they have a good iOS app.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> Leaves unanswered the important question: what gender has L'Académie française assigned the French noun for this thing.

<comment><USER24> > _Leaves unanswered the important question: what gender has L 'Académie > française assigned the French noun for this thing._

I am confident to say it is _"Le Blob"_ due to the "o" in the its name, so it would be male following grammatical gender rules.

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> My horror film: _I have no brain and I must think_

<comment><USER26> Harlan Elison's autobiography? ;)

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> Relatable

</comment><comment><USER28> Sounds like an Apple perhiperal adaptor hell for reproduction.</comment>


High Intensity Training Improves Health, Physical Function in Middle Aged Adults - <AUTHOR> http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4085611/

<comment><USER2> Part of the problem with this study is the same as that seen in most studies in exercise science -- they only study untrained participants and last, say, 10 weeks (or 8, in this case) And then there are the tiny tiny sample sizes (14 individuals??). The fact is, doing almost anything is better than doing nothing. That's good news for the people who do nothing, I guess, because you can literally start parking two blocks from work every day and start seeing improvement.

But because of this novice effect, we don't really get a sense from the studies what the actual optimal ways of exercising are. It's after that initial period (say, 10 weeks) of going from doing nothing to doing something that you start to hit plateaus and have difficulty improving. This is the point where the difference between various forms of exercise would start to become clear, and yet that's when studies always stop.

Is doing 3 sets of 5 better than 5 sets of 5? Is HIIT better than long, slow distance for cardiovascular conditioning? We have lots of anecdotal evidence of how to improve physical conditioning past the initial novice period, but very little in the way of rigorous studies. So for now and the foreseeable future, if we are to decide what to do once doing literally anything is no longer enough to make improvements, we'll just have to rely on "bro science" and the experience of various coaches who see a lot of trainees to decide how best to exercise.

<comment><USER3> You seem to be missing the practical upshot: If you are middle aged, not exercising, and moderately overweight, HIT twice a week is an effective way to "significantly" improve your aerobic capacity, physical function, and reduce your blood glucose levels. Whether HIT is the optimal way to accomplish that is not the question they were investigating. It's a small sample size but was effective for all eight participants. It works in practice, whether or not you understand why it works theory. There are lots more interesting questions around the edges that can be explored now.

<comment><USER4> Everything works. HIT works. Riding your bike once a week works. Walking every day works. Taking up tennis, or soccer, or frisbee works. The point is, short- duration studies on the untrained provide little to no information. It would have been much more interesting to test and compare 3-5 different exercise modalities.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Lot of mentions of whether or not the person is sedentary/just starting off. I'm no expert in these areas, but an interesting additional bit of info on HIIT in highly trained individuals:

[http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/11772161](http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/11772161)

</comment><comment><USER5> Anyone else think it's odd that the control group had a mean BMI of 24 (i.e: high end of normal range) and the HIT group had a mean of 29 (high end of overweight, almost obese)?

<comment><USER6> BMI is a quick but very rough way of measuring health, particularly regarding 'fit' individuals - muscle is far more dense than fat.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> The "McMaster Studies" showed similar, that short sprint/rest interval training (30 second sprint, 4 minute rest, 250% of VO2 max) was equally effective as moderate long distance (90-120 minutes of 65% of VO2 max).

[http://jp.physoc.org/content/575/3/901.full#sec-19](http://jp.physoc.org/content/575/3/901.full#sec-19)

<comment><USER8> An excellent book called _Which Comes First, Cardio or Weights?_ by Alex Hutchinson discussed that research and more recent research that followed up on it. Basically the gains from those two types of training come from improving different pathways, which explains why both sprinters and distance athletes tend to get the best results from incorporating both types of training in their regimens.

<comment><USER9> He is not really an academic but from a practical point of view Alex Viada explains how he programs his weekly training around his requirements in powerlifting and long distance running (which are on the opposite ends of the spectrum in terms of energy systems): [http://www.atlargenutrition.com/blog/2012/11/hybrid- athlete-...](http://www.atlargenutrition.com/blog/2012/11/hybrid-athlete-alex- viada-so-you-want-to-run-and-be-strong/)

<comment><USER10> fucking christ

Dude claims he's going for an elite total (combined 1642 raw) at 220 while training for an ironman. That's insane.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I'm personally a die-hard fan of HIT. I've never been able to keep up cardio regiments like jogging or biking simply because it takes too much time in my schedule and I get extremely bored 20+ minutes into either of those activities.

Not to brag, but HIT has kept me in very good shape. As a software engineer who cares about efficiency, 15-20 minutes of HIT versus 60-90 minutes of jogging/biking just makes more sense to me. Throw on joint pain from jogging on concrete and the perils of high-speed biking, HIT on a machine is a no- brainer.

<comment><USER12> How do you do HIT? You mention a machine, so I'm wondering what exactly you do.

<comment><USER4> I use a rowing machine. When I'm relatively untrained, I start with rowing at a steady rate, working up to 20 minutes. Then I add in HIIT, starting at 20 seconds work/ 40 seconds recovery. When I can do 6-8 intervals, I'll change the rest/work ratio to 30/30, then 20/10\. For the work intervals, I row as hard as I can, a pace of around 1:30-1:40 per 500m. For recovery, I row as slow as I can, around 4:00/500m.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> tl;dr:

Study attempts to determine whether high intensity training (HIT) consisting of 10 6-second sprints w/ a one minute recovery between sprints performed twice weekly improves metabolic health and decreases type 2 diabetes risk in untrained middle aged (35-58 y/o) people. It appears yes.

also, a bmi of 29 (yes, yes, all you bodybuilders and powerlifters and strongman I know all about it) is tubby but not quite obese. It's kind of shocking how little effort this is. [1] is a good visual illustration of what a 29bmi looks like

[1] [http://www.fourhourfit.com/results-and- tracking/pat-p90x-res...](http://www.fourhourfit.com/results-and- tracking/pat-p90x-results-and-tracking/#!prettyPhoto)

<comment><USER13> Yeah, I was surprised by the fact that such a short duration of exercise (11 minutes of exercise twice / week) could have such a large impact on health. I wish there were more details on how much exercise each group had before the study -- my question is whether HIT on its own is good enough, or does it require normal exercise as well?

<comment><USER14> Conventional wisdom says that you're not really working out unless you spend 10-25 minutes on warm up, an hour or more on working out, and some stretching to finish off and/or a cool down. That isn't even counting the time to go to the gym or the park, or the shower afterwards. No wonder people are inactive.

<comment><USER15> What conventional wisdom is that? The standard for warm up is 5 minutes isn't it? And a standard work out is 20-25 minutes as far as I'm aware. You can do a whole work out in 30 minutes.

My runs are 5 minutes warm up, I spend those 5 minutes walking to get from my house to a park, then 20-25 minutes running around the park (c25k plan) and then 5 minutes of walking back. You can fit that into almost any part of your day.

<comment><USER16> What about dressing up for the jog and afterwards showering and dressing up again? Also most people don't have a park in a 5 minute walking distance. I would say for most people they take 10-30 minutes to get to the training place, train at least 20 minutes and then 10-30 minutes back again and then 5-10 minutes of shower. Now that is quite a large part of the day.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Can XY win the BLE Finder war by turning customers into investors? - <AUTHOR> https://www.startengine.com/startup/xy-findables <comment><USER2> what is BLE? Bluetooth LE?

<comment><AUTHOR> Bluetooth Low Energy yeah! Trying to keep the headline brief.

<comment><AUTHOR> Happy to provide more context, but for my money's worth, top three are Tile, TrackR, and these guys.</comment></comment></comment>


NVMM: A full, fast and flexible virtualization stack for NetBSD - <AUTHOR> http://blog.netbsd.org/tnf/entry/from_zero_to_nvmm <comment><USER2> I wonder why each of the three major BSDs ended up with their own hypervisor implementation instead of sharing their code. There is now bhyve on FreeBSD, vmm on OpenBSD and now also NVMM on NetBSD. Is this kind of diversity a good thing? Interestingly, the non-BSD illumos has imported FreeBSD's bhyve (and their bootloader). I assumed that these smaller OS-communities would be more inclined to share the work among each other but for some reason this did not happen with their home-grown hypervisors.

<comment><USER3> Different goals and the internals of each BSD have diverged pretty heavily.

<comment><USER4> I understand the different goals part, but it would be nice if these technologies could run on other BSDs (and Linux). bhyve and vmm are exclusive to FreeBSD and OpenBSD respectively AFAIK.

<comment><USER5> From a general generic user perspective, you're right that that would be useful. As a user, I also understand that frustration.

Basically, it comes down to having very little money, if any, to fund these tasks and most of the work is done by volunteers. It is much easier and faster to work with the local environment than manage kernel portability issues between different BSDs and even Linux.

The cool thing is that anyone is free to help with the project and port things if they choose. It is truly an issue of funding and finding folks willing to do the work (and maintain it).

It is a lot of work and specialized knowledge across different kernel domains.

<comment><USER6> Is it wrong to have different virtualization solutions out there though? It's generally nice to know that people are trying to enhance how virtualization works on multiple platforms to suit their particular itch and we can all benefit from these different ideas being tried so we can choose the best pieces of them over time. Objectively, we want these virtualization solutions to be suited to the kernel/pipeline they are running on to give the expected behaviour and performance for the guest workload.

From the end user side things like libvirt have done a lot to make the interface to these systems consistent, and so I really don't feel a ton of pain moving between virtualization solutions anymore as an end user compared to having to deal with xen/qemu/vmware/virtualbox/hyper-v incantations. If I'm just trying to run a workload I don't care about NVMM, unless it has a particular feature that I need for network emulation like say RapidIO, Fibre Channel or Infiniband as an emulated link layer.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Why not implement the actual Linux KVM ioctls instead of a something similar yet different? You could then run qemu on top and get an actual "full stack" (ie. everything up to Open Stack or Kubevirt).

<comment><USER8> They tried this with Illumos (the OpenSolaris descendant which itself is a distant BSD descendant), but found that maintaining their fork of QEMU/KVM code was more difficult than porting over Bhyve from FreeBSD.

<comment><USER9> (Open)Solaris is a SVR4 descendant; not a BSD descendant. SunOS however (until version 4, version 5 being Solaris) _is_ a BSD descendant.

<comment><USER8> Thank you for the details. Now we all know more.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Maxime Villard gives us another awesome gift :) Thanks!

</comment><comment><USER10> Sounds a bit like the hypervisor framework on MacOS. They're is xhyve (a port of bhyve) for Mac on that.

Probably could port bhyve to this too? Haven't looked.

<comment><USER11> The article says as much: "It has some similarities with WHPX on Windows and HVF on MacOS."

<comment><USER8> So, supposedly, NVMM could be to a NetBSD bhyve port what HVF is to the xhyve on MacOS?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Is this similar in purpose/function to bhyve?

<comment><USER13> From the article:

When it comes to the userland emulators, NVMM does not provide one. In other words, it does not re-implement a Qemu, a VirtualBox, a Bhyve (FreeBSD) or a VMD (OpenBSD). Rather, it provides a virtualization API via the libnvmm library, which allows to effortlessly add NVMM support in already existing emulators.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> Next step, it'd probably be userful add support for it to Libvirt.

That way the large amount of cross-platform virt software around - much of which is written to use Libvirt - could interface directly with it. :)</comment>


Gazelle is the browser that thinks like an OS - <AUTHOR> http://weblog.infoworld.com/fatalexception/archives/2009/02/gazelle_the_bro.html

<comment><USER2> Link to Gazelle at Microsoft Research [http://research.microsoft.com/apps/pubs/default.aspx?id=7965...](http://research.microsoft.com/apps/pubs/default.aspx?id=79655)</comment>


Hey Apple, how about a MacBook SE? - <AUTHOR> https://techcrunch.com/2020/08/22/hey-apple-how-about-a-macbook-se <comment><USER2> I really cannot comprehend the constant whining about USB-C/Tb3 ports Macs.

A single $25 adapter, plugged into one of the USB-C ports, will give you newer HDMI, more USB3 ports and more variety of card reader slots than pre-TB3 models had built in.

And what is the obsession with the built in card reader slot? I can't imagine any professional photographer is going to accept using a USB2 speed card reader, if they even use SD cards at all.

<comment><USER3> I can definately understand the desire to have a USB-A port, its probably still the most common connector for keyboards, mice, external drives etc. HDMI would also be nice to support most common display devices without the need for a dongle.

I understand the remval of magsafe (as much as I liked the connector), SD card reader, network port and other older connectors but USB-A and HDMI are still prevalant among a lot of devices.

Less said about the origirnal touchbar removing the "esc" key (on a developer device) the better

<comment><USER2> But here's the thing:

A USB-c/Tb3 port can run a USB-a device, and it can run a hdmi device. It can do so using either active or passive adapter devices ("hubs" or "docks" or "dongles") or it can do so via plain cables - USB-c to hdmi and USB-c to all manner of other USB port/plug types are very common and cheap.

But a USB a port can't do anything but run a USB device. Ok some things can be tunneled over USB but it's nowhere near as extensible as tb3, and doesn't support alt mode like USB-c

A hdmi port is even more restricted and can do literally one thing. I've had Mac laptops for about 13 years. I can count the number of times I've connected one to hdmi on one hand. I could still count the number of times if I stuck that hand in a wood chipper, because the number is 0.

> Less said about the origirnal touchbar removing the "esc" key (on a > developer device) the better

Agreed because the idea that all developers use a text editor that requires constant and active use of the escape key is a ridiculous assumption.</comment></comment></comment>


Someone leaked 15 years' worth of data from London's shell-company factory - <AUTHOR> https://boingboing.net/2019/07/25/formations-house.html <comment><USER2> I wish all these document hoards had an API to see if a name with an old wikipedia article was within the collection.

Seems more likely there will be a chance mention of a London actor, and a handful of corrupt plutocrats.</comment>


A new documentary on the downfall of General Magic - <AUTHOR> https://hyperallergic.com/500449/general-magic-documentary-smartphone-apple-silicon-valley/ <comment><USER2> I worked there for 5 years, and I maintain some historical artifacts from the time, including a gallery of Magic Cap handheld devices and some interesting concept art from Magic's very early days:

[http://joshcarter.com/magic_cap/](http://joshcarter.com/magic_cap/)

<comment><USER3> Always loved your site, and my DataRover thanks you too. I have a couple 840s and one of the original Sonys. There was nothing quite like these devices, and they were way ahead of their time.

I have one of the CodeWarrior dev kits with the Mac emulator around here somewhere too.

<comment><USER2> Thanks! Glad you found the site useful. Unfortunately, we were too far ahead of the time in lots of regards--processors were slow, screens were bad, battery technology iffy, no mobile data service that normal humans could afford... These days an iPhone costs just as much as a Magic Cap device did, and you can definitely see that that's what we were trying to accomplish, but there was no way for General Magic to stay in business long enough to see it realized.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> > Silicon Valley's favorite mantra goes "Fail often, fail fast."

This certainly wasn't the mantra in 1990 when the company was founded. This was a thing in the years after the dot-com boom. Definitely not in the early 1990s.

In the 1990s it was all about "first-movers advantage" which turned out to be a terrible idea: [https://hbr.org/2001/10/first-mover- disadvantage](https://hbr.org/2001/10/first-mover-disadvantage)

The first isn't always #1 but often fails before later companies enter the market, learn from the example, and mature it into a real business (see Friendster->FB; Palm->iPhone; search engines; Netscape; Atari - although these are the still-somwhat successful 'failures' which is far better than most which you've never heard of).

</comment><comment><USER5> One of their domains still serves what looks like an old site snapshot over at [http://www.datarover.com](http://www.datarover.com)

</comment><comment><USER6> > The Magic Link's slogan — "It Clears Your Desk, It Clears Your Mind" — > perfectly encapsulates the irony of hindsight.

Reminds me of that quote from Fredrick Pohl: "A good science fiction story should be able to predict not the automobile but the traffic jam."

I wonder what aspirational thing we hold dear today will in retrospect become something more the opposite in the future. Renewable energy? Universal basic income? Universal healthcare? Self-driving cars? Electric vehicles?

<comment><USER7> Most of those already have known downsides from initial early adopter programs. Dams = disrupted fisheries, solar = rare earth mining pollution, wind = dead migratory birds, UBI = lazyness, universal healthcare = long waiting times, self-driving cars = nobody to blame when they crash, electric vehicles = battery disposal.

It's like how we _knew_ that the Internet obsoletes privacy long before Facebook came out, and have known that burning fossil fuels causes global warming for at least 30-40 years, and knew that there was shit in the meat since The Jungle came out in 1906, and knew that heavy industry causes pollution for about 150 years. We didn't care because the benefits to us were greater than the future drawbacks. As time goes on, we take the benefits for granted, but the drawbacks loom ever larger.

<comment><USER8> I think the greatest danger to a UBI program is something like easy student loans made tuition more expensive. It will just make the basics more expensive and you are back to square one.

You would need to break the regulatory capture that artificially make housing & healthcare expensive before you can implement a UBI program successfully.

<comment><USER7> Yeah, I think inflation's the biggest risk. It hasn't shown up in any studies so far because they've been too small. If 1000 people have an extra $2k/month it doesn't measurably affect prices; if 100,000 people have an extra $2k/month suddenly everything becomes more expensive.

Ultimately the fix for everything is more supply. Build more houses and the price of housing comes down. Train more doctors (or nurse practitioners) and the price of health care comes down. Both of these industries have strong institutionalized cartels, though.

<comment><USER9> > Ultimately the fix for everything is more supply.

I always thought this was the biggest problem Obamacare (well intentioned though it is) left unaddressed. It looks like the ACA lacks the reforms that would allow supply to grow to meet demand.

<comment><USER10> Yes the bottleneck in producing more licensed physicians is currently the number of open residency slots in teaching hospitals. We need more funding for those. Every year some students graduate from medical school but are unable to actually practice medicine because they fail to get matched to a residency program.

<comment><USER9> yes. also, though globalization is a two-edged sword, in this case it might have really helped the consumer with something the consumer really needs.

i mean, the ACA might have additionally:

* made it mandatory for US insurers to reimburse for care given by selected medical providers operating in selected foreign countries

* allowed nurse practitioners to operate in all 50 states

* eliminated barriers that, in effect, prevent doctors from foreign medical schools from entering the US and obtain a medical license

* allowed US patients to order pharmaceuticals from Canada or other countries

* allowed more pharmaceuticals which are already approved in foreign countries to be used in the US without additional FDA approval

these sound like desperate measures, but many many US patients are actually quite desperate

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> > In 1990, Porat wrote the following note to Sculley: "A tiny computer, a > phone, a very personal object . . . It must be beautiful. It must offer the > kind of personal satisfaction that a fine piece of jewelry brings. It will > have a perceived value even when it's not being used... Once you use it you > won't be able to live without it."

That's a pretty good pitch.

</comment><comment><USER11> A 10-minute summary of the history of General Magic:

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Opcuy-8VO64](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Opcuy-8VO64)

</comment><comment><USER12> I am looking forward to seeing the movie, but this article is strange. It seems to be grasping at straw in order to throw doubt on the "fail often, fail fast" (foff) philosophy. My take on foff is that it recognizes that the fear of failure can keep us from taking the risks needed for success. This seems orthogonal to concerns of privilege or the adverse effects of technology. I do think we in technology need to think about the adverse effects our work may produce, although I don't think the General Magic folks could have foreseen the smartphone issues we are dealing with now, no matter how hard they had tried.

<comment><USER13> Yeah, I feel like SV would be much better off if there were more General Magics and fewer "sensible", but less risky startup.

But I'm a total sucker for ambitious hardware.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> General Magic is still one of my favorite logos. Its a great example of the "playfulness" that was common in (or at least commonly branded in) software business in the 90s.

<comment><USER15> It feels like it was one of the last start-ups that was fueled by the same hobbyist-computer idealism of the 70's and not fueled by a desire for money and profits.

Am I way out of line here?

<comment><USER16> I am sure there are more you just don't know about but pen computing in the 90s was super exciting and fun. Maybe 3D printing is in a similar state where the little guy still can make a dent.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> I so wanted something like Telescript to succeed even though it wasn't quite software agents like described by Dr. Yoav Shoham[1]. At this point some form of RPC over HTTP won, but I still think there is a place for mobile software agents given the way we spin up and down VMs.

1) [https://www.cs.huji.ac.il/~imas/readings/shoham93.pdf](https://www.cs.huji.ac.il/~imas/readings/shoham93.pdf)

<comment> bjelkeman-again Telescript, and their concept for agents was the reason I was looking for a job there. I went to the first dev conference they had (I think). But this side of the business didn't seem to have the required commitment by the management, compared to the handheld devices, but more of an afterthought. But I have no real insight to what actually happened.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> One thing I really admire about General Magic is how gutsy they were. In comparison most of the companies today look like cowards, cranking out nearly- identical glass sandwiches with only internal specs and the occasional odd camera design to differentiate them.

<comment><USER19> The analog of General Magic is not a smartphone company 12 years post-iPhone. It would be something more forward-looking, but hardware wise I am not sure of the next big idea that would have that same magnitude.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> It was good, if a little cursory. At times it sort of felt like a trailer for itself or for a multi-part series. Didn't have the same depth of say Triumph of the Nerds or Pirates of Silicon Valley. The ending was rather fluffy.

</comment><comment><USER21> >While the documentary is about the specific emotional journey of General Magic and the psychological impact of defeat, there's a fair bit to unpack when we think more broadly about tech culture's attitude toward failure. Who cleans up the mess? Who gets to fail and bounce back?

This strikes me as needlessly philosophical. People who take risks sometimes fail, and people with talent and money usually bounce back, especially if they don't have kids. These are choices that very few are in any position to make, and this life is only for a very very small portion of motivated and a bit crazy people.

</comment><comment><USER22> I saw it at a screening in London earlier this year. It's really terrific: it wasn't so much about the downfall of General Magic as how a sort of gleeful "yes, and" culture took hold of a group of people.

</comment><comment><USER23> Saw the movie at showing at the computer history museum. Highly recommended.

</comment><comment><USER24> What are some other good documentaries like this one?

</comment><comment><USER25> I sent them a resume in 1992. I had no applicable skills for their business, but they were so close to my house I could have crawled to work.

</comment><comment><USER26> M'lord pseudolus

</comment><comment><USER27> "Against this backdrop, the luminaries who do succeed dramatically change our lives, which could be seen to vindicate tech's mythology of itself. After all, we _feel the impact of those successes with every stroke of the keyboard, every block of a troll_."

Uhh, what!? The success of the technology industry is that we use it to segregate society? That it's as natural as typing?

Is that really the narrative, or is this journalist using their platform to push their viewpoints while they report news?

If the ultimate vindication of the technology industry is that we can use it to completely filter out people we dislike from our lives, then we should take all of this and smash it right now. We should focus our energies into building connections between people, not tearing them down.

<comment><USER28> It sounds like you are defining troll as "someone I don't agree with," but that's not how I read it.

I read trolls as bad actors; people acting in bad faith just to get a reaction / cause someone else pain.

Trolls are a subset of "people we dislike."

<comment><USER27> You're putting words in my mouth. Not only did I not say that, but your interpretation isn't any better either. Blocking is pretty much final.

I mean, why do we imprison and try to rehabilitate people instead of you know...killing them?

"Blocking trolls" (by this I specifically mean denying them access) is mob justice. In fact, there's even a supreme court ruling preventing the government from denying people access to social media. This isn't okay.

Feeling good about who gets punished doesn't make the form of punishment any better.

<comment><USER29> Blocking someone on the internet is not tantamount to capital punishment. Get help.

<comment><USER27> I am not saying that it is.

I'm comparing two forms of punishment that there is no way of coming back from. Learn to read.

<comment><USER30> With blocking, you could ask someone who knows you both to at least plead for your reinstatement.

With capital punishment, no amount of pleading by friends will help.

With blocking, you still have access to the entire rest of the world, other than the one person who blocked you. (Yes, if it's Google/Amazon, that's a big and massively inconvenient someone, but still).

With capital punishment, you have no access to anything you ever had or ever would have had in your life.

Those are massive differences.

At the very least, although there maybe a superficial sameness, it is a horribly broken analogy.

<comment><USER27> > With blocking, you could ask someone who knows you both to at least plead > for your reinstatement.

Facebook, Twitter, etc have quite publicly permabanned people. I'm sorry but what recourse from that has been demonstrated so far?

You're bringing up a person-to-person case that I have _three times now_ stated that I am not talking about.

<comment><USER30> OK, for the sake of discussion, let's say that you actually said "permanent irrevocable ban by the host of a major service" and not "block", which usually applies to users.

The lack of appeal is indeed egregious.

However, it is NOTHING like being killed / capital punishment. It is a ban from a single service, and nothing else in the world. If that service is such a large part of your life that you might as well be dead without it, you __REALLY __need to get a life.

Mostly, I'd suggest putting more thought into your arguments, and being a bit more gracious when readers notice your lack of clarity or precision. I used to make those kind of arguments too, and I found that everything got better once I figured out it was a waste of time, and I was better off saying, 'oh, I didn't make that clear enough, here's what I meant to say..."

Anyway, have a great weekend!

<comment><USER27> > However, it is NOTHING like being killed / capital punishment. It is a ban > from a single service, and nothing else in the world. If that service is > such a large part of your life that you might as well be dead without it, > you REALLY need to get a life.

So you acknowledge that I stated I wasn't making that comparison but you felt the need to state the same as everyone else anyway?

> It is a ban from a single service, and nothing else in the world. If that > service is such a large part of your life that you might as well be dead > without it, you REALLY need to get a life.

You do realize that there are certain businesses/industries that _entirely_ depend on your access to social media, right? In a great many cases, losing that access is losing your income stream with possibly no hope of recovery.

The insidious part about that is that I'm not talking about people who make video content to be shared. If you work in Infosec, Twitter is your primary industry networking tool. It's literally required. If you buy and sell car parts, you are literally dependent on access to certain Facebook groups for customers and inventory. If you play Legacy format in Magic the Gathering or you're a card dealer? A lot of that business these days happens over Facebook. Most of you may not believe me when I say this, but it's the truth. And those are just the first three cases that I can think of that I have direct awareness of.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


UEFI Programming – First Steps (2009) - <AUTHOR> http://x86asm.net/articles/uefi-programming-first-steps/ <comment><USER2> I've worked on non-trivial UEFI stuff, and the main problem I had was achieving a state outside of the UEFI. IIRC I had problems EFI malloc'ing / free'ing memory, because some UEFI bioses require a double free, or something. It's about a year ago.

UEFI is a documented minefield, where the Specs are badly-followed when you hit actual implementations.

<comment><USER3> The term used to describe it to me was "shit show" which seems to be in line with your experience. "Glorified Legacy BIOS loader" was another term used.

<comment><USER4> I don't like to be so negative but UEFI feels like a step backwards.

<comment><USER3> It would have been a huge step forward but they allowed for backward compatibility by permitting BIOS modules. So instead of using the new system, vendors just use it to load legacy BIOS modules.

Apple is the only one not doing that.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Yep, this talks about EDK1-based development. These days, you can also build Tiano Core EDK2 on Unix-like systems with GCC, and target Arm and AArch64. Like the EDK, there is still an Nt32 simulation target. Unlike EDK, EDK2 has real buildable firmware for Qemu, KVM and XEN and a simulation envo for Linux and OSX.

Probably should avoid developing under the old EDK, as the libraries and build system jave somewhat changed (yes, there is a compat package for mastodonts, but, just don't).

</comment><comment><USER6> Why do third-party BIOS vendors exist in the first place? Any reason why Intel, AMD and the motherboard vendors can't make their own BIOS, perhaps leveraging CoreBoot?

<comment><USER5> 99% of all UEFI implementations are derived from EDK2/UDK. "official" firmware from companies like Aptio build on top of this code.

Truth is, motherboard vendors don't have the skill set to deliver firmware. You are doing what amounts to new driver development, integration testing for drivers you get from silicon vendors (who are not really software guys either), and chasing weird bugs. When you toss in third-party drivers (eg for BMC), SMM/TZ, safe boot and update...you really need to have someone to own the entire firmware lifecycle. And this is regardless of the kind of firmware - uboot, uefi, coreboot or bios, it doesn't matter.

Of course I make it sound like companies like Award and AMI ship great solutions. No one does, but OEM and silicon vendor-shipped firmware is much, much worse in quality.

Oh, and UEFI and the reference inplementation Tiano Core (edk2) are exactly Intel's own firmware, no more no less. It now has more of a life of its own ever since it became UEFI (from EFI), and even supports ARM platforms, but a) majority of development is still intel b) edk2 would like to be platform agnostic, but the design of some components (of edk2, not uefi spec) like PCI support is very PC-centric and this will be painful until someone rewrites these and contributes back to Tiano.

<comment><USER7> > you really need to have someone to own the entire firmware lifecycle

Which is, in my mind, why having "internal clients" for your hardware in the form of a firmware department would make so much sense to me. Especially if the firmware team had ultimate authority over hardware edge-case behaviour: instead of hardware teams being lazy and passing the buck for "sanding off the edges" to complex firmware, the firmware team could be lazy and force the hardware teams to "sand off the edges" themselves.

This is what you see in (some) old-school videogame console companies, at the time when the ISA was the API: since the hardware company also developed the SDK, various BIOSes, and even games, the needs of these internal clients pushed the hardware teams into making the hardware itself "user-friendly" (i.e. obeying the Principle if Least Surprise.)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> This should have a 2009 tag. Several points in the article are very outdated.

<comment><USER9> Do you have a better reference, or can you indicate which portions are outdated? This is an interesting topic.

<comment><USER10> [https://github.com/tianocore/tianocore.github.io/wiki/Gettin...](https://github.com/tianocore/tianocore.github.io/wiki/Getting- Started-with-EDK-II)

Also, see the "Resources" section of this: [https://github.com/tianocore/edk2](https://github.com/tianocore/edk2)

Every computer coming out these days should be on EDKII based UEFI Firmware

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Windows devs may want to look at [https://github.com/ionescu007/VisualUefi](https://github.com/ionescu007/VisualUefi)

</comment><comment> david-cako I've done some very basic stuff in EFI before and it's pretty rough. It's one of those things where I feel like you had to have worked in that area to not have to spend a week on a simple gotcha that has certain implicit behavior.

The docs are decent, but not great, and the lack of stackoverflow answers hurts.</comment>


Email reuse from deactivated accounts - <AUTHOR>

Does anyone know of any standards or generally accepted rules for giving out someones old email address to a new customer.<p>The reason I ask is: A family member recently (3 months ago) closed their account with their ISP and lost access to their email.  Ok fine. But if I send email to that address I find that they have already given it to another customer.  I think this is a big security issue and could leave the family member open to identity theft. <comment><AUTHOR> I was trying to convince an ISP that they should not be recycling emails for prior customers. They seem to think it was not an issue but I told them they were mistaken.

I tried to express that by giving out the old customers email they were allowing the new person to perform things like password resets or even receive email that was suppose to go the orginal account owner.

In the end I got them to revoke the email they reused and make sure it is never given out again.

</comment><comment><USER2> Don't send anything via email that you wouldn't be willing to send on the back of a postcard.

<comment><USER3> Like reset password links? As it is, web app security depends mainly on the security of email; what do you have in mind as an alternative?</comment></comment>


The Academic Spinout Flywheel - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@OsageVC/the-academic-spinout-flywheel-fa61931985be#.d2llf1whf <comment><USER2> That's become Stanford's business model. Not only do faculty and students start companies, Stanford often funds them. Stanford owns a chunk of Google, a chunk of Cisco, etc. Stanford has its own "accelerator", "Start-X".[1]

[1] [http://startx.com/](http://startx.com/)

</comment><comment><USER3> Academic spinoffs in biotech, by contrast, are almost universally disappointing.

<comment><USER4> Biotech is really just _harder_ than software: [https://xkcd.com/1605/](https://xkcd.com/1605/)

Everything interacts with everything else. Not to mention the capital requirements - bio-labs cost millions, while a software startup just needs a bunch of laptops and a garage.

<comment><USER3> I wouldn't say that cost is the proximal reason. (Although it is the reason why indie.bio can't get off the rails except through spinoffs with outside funding).

Remember a spinoff vs. a startup is that a spinoff is usually a commercialized idea of an academic product (arguably google was a spinoff while apple was a startup). In academic CS so far as I can tell, there's a fairly straightforward relationship between success in academia and competence, as in: A lot of successful people don't choose the academic route, but a the people who do choose tho academic route are "legit" \- they are capable of executing projects. Moreover good projects in CS often have a fairly easy to see path to commercialization or monetization.

Whereas in biology, most people who wind up in the upper eschelons _got lucky_. They picked the right project _and_ had a PI that was willing to go to bat and play politics for them _and_ showed them to play politics. Many of these people are also, not necessarily competent, or are competent in academic science but not able to actually make something consumers want or need (often bio startups fall into the "if you have a hammer then everything is a nail" paradigm). PIs are great at writing grants - which is why so many spinoffs are basically organization that exist to burn through SBIRs - and, amazingly, VCs use SBIR awards as signals for competence (not just financial risk mitigation).

Finally, the system of promotion in bio is so toxic that a lot of very competent and intelligent people get frustrated by either having a shitty PI or just because they were chosen for a project that happened to have a faulty premise, that they drop out even though they would have done really well.

[https://www.theguardian.com/science/2016/sep/21/cut- throat-a...](https://www.theguardian.com/science/2016/sep/21/cut-throat- academia-leads-to-natural-selection-of-bad-science-claims- study?CMP=share_btn_fb)</comment></comment></comment>