Why did Dropbox succeed over Syncplicity? - <AUTHOR> http://www.quora.com/Dropbox/Why-is-Dropbox-more-popular-than-other-tools-with-similar-functionality/answer/Isaac-Hall?srid=hvc <comment><USER2> Their answer: Dropbox did less --- and it was easier for users to get started because there was less to figure out. (Also: dropbox had a Mac client; it turns out that this is critical for getting press these days, since the reporters all have Macs.)

It seems "don't make me think" also applies off the web...

</comment><comment><USER3> Dropbox is a better name.

</comment><comment><USER4> Better name?</comment>


A Python Script to Find Mutual Connections on Medium - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/better-programming/how-to-find-your-mutual-connections-on-medium-d0c586c04e6f <comment><AUTHOR> Just like Facebook lets us know friends, I wrote a few python scripts to know our mutual connections and find the relation between any two users on Medium. Explained it from the perspective of a non-programmer. Logic is as easy as Venn Diagrams</comment>


Program like a poker player - <AUTHOR> http://www.theleancoder.com/poker <comment><AUTHOR> "The Elements of Poker" (2007) is a great, well-written book with lots of good advice about improving your mental game that applies outside the realm of poker

[https://www.amazon.com/Elements-Poker-Tommy- Angelo/dp/141968...](https://www.amazon.com/Elements-Poker-Tommy- Angelo/dp/1419680897)</comment>


What I would have written - <AUTHOR> http://dcurt.is/what-i-would-have-written

<comment><USER2> 'and every fucking thing I think about, I also think, "How could I fit that into a tweet that lots of people would favorite or retweet?"'

That, as I see it, is the problem – not twitter or 140char limits or any of the other stuff Dustin raises, it's the desire for external validation (and I can't help but imagine him furiously clicking reload on his own blog post to see how fast his Kudos score is climbing…)

My takeaway/advice is - try to recognise when you're being manipulated by gamification techniques and choose to be aware of them and ignore/resist them when it's in your better interest.

Does anybody _really_ think Picasso would have painted iPad trifles for immediate social media validation, instead of starting and completeing Garçon à la pipe? I _seriously_ doubt that - from Wikipedia: "At the time of his death many of his paintings were in his possession, as he had kept off the art market what he did not need to sell. In addition, Picasso had a considerable collection of the work of other famous artists, some his contemporaries, such as Henri Matisse, with whom he had exchanged works."

Picasso _didn't_ paint for the twitterati - he painted for Picasso. Dustin should write for Dustin - not for Twitter. He's allowing himself to become distracted from achieving what he wants at achieve. That's not Twitters fault. Procrastinators gonna procrastinate (he said hypocritically while wasting time on HN…)

<comment><USER3> I liked what comedian Louis CK had to say on this subject recently:

[http://teamcoco.com/video/louis-ck-springsteen-cell- phone](http://teamcoco.com/video/louis-ck-springsteen-cell-phone)

My experience is that writing long, insightful pieces of prose is just hard, miserable work. People do it because they feel compelled to, not because it's a fun way to relax. So it's easy to procrastinate or avoid it, especially if there aren't any external demands or deadlines to meet.

<comment><USER4> I dunno, it's fun for _me_ \-- I find writing a long essay to be contemplative, meditative. It requires you to challenge your own thinking, which is both interesting and a little bit scary.

But I'm willing to believe I'm an outlier in this regard.

<comment><USER5> I dunno its fun. I find writn a long essay to be zen. It req you to challnge ur own thinkn, is both interestn and lil bit scary #ImAnOutlier

140 characters

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> There must be a group of people somewhere in the world that actually uses Twitter. I've never met any of them in real life, but occasionally I see things like this online that suggests that however far fetched the idea might be, it's nonetheless true.

Amazing that this author is so upset about what this random website has done to his life. I have no idea how he could have found enough value in it to have integrated it into his life so deeply. Nor can I understand why he would continue using it if it made him unhappy.

In short, seven years later, I still don't get what Twitter is for or why anybody would use it.

<comment><USER7> If you don't use it, it's probably hard to understand.

<comment><USER8> But most successful online services are attractive even without knowing much about them. Tweeter doesn't feel attractive at all.

The consequence is that after seven years Tweeter simply _ignored_ by half of the IT population.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Much like television, smoking, or facebook, it's pretty easy for me to look at these products, look at what the users get out of them, and make the conscious decision not to use them. That isn't to say it's easy to quit smoking, but it's been pretty easy for me to never start smoking because I know what sort of personality I have.

(When writing comments like these I always think of this article: [http://www.theonion.com/articles/area-man-constantly- mention...](http://www.theonion.com/articles/area-man-constantly-mentioning- he-doesnt-own-a-tel,429/) . Sorry if I've done that.)

</comment><comment><USER10> "And yet I see no solution to this problem."

Dustin's problem is similar in some respects to an addiction (which he alludes to), so perhaps the solution is treating it as such; forcing moderation on himself, or even complete detachment (the cold turkey approach). Of course, being involved in technology means Dustin is essentially an alcoholic working at a brewery, so disengagement may be especially difficult. But to throw up your hands and claim there's no way out strikes me as a bit defeatist. If you feel a technology is negatively impacting your thought patterns, perhaps you could find a way to use that technology less.

<comment><USER11> >*"Dustin's problem is similar in some respects to an addiction (which he alludes to), so perhaps the solution is treating it as such;"

The issue I see with this is that it takes the way we use technology for granted. It's just like saying "that stuff is here to stay, learn to deal with it".

Which it is true in practice, but doesn't have to be true necessarily.

We could have opted as a society to not tolerate those kind of addictive (and mind-crushing) applications of technology, instead of celebrating them.

(The same way we have done with smoking, not just the banning in public places, but the whole attitude towards it).

<comment><USER12> Placing the emphasis on society, I believe, dilutes the great importance of the decisions of the individual. In life you should take responsibility for your own actions first. The question is more "Is twitter a social problem?" or "Is my twitter use a problem?".

<comment><USER11> > _Placing the emphasis on society, I believe, dilutes the great importance of > the decisions of the individual. In life you should take responsibility for > your own actions first._

I guess that's also a difference between different country's philosophies.

For me, taking "responsibility for your own actions" is a bad advice when there's stuff that needs to change at the societal level. We wouldn't say that about an issue we deem important, like racism.

We understand there that it's not just what some person believes or not, but also certain general norms, distractions, laws etc that effect this, and we strive to change those.

What I say is that technological change should be seen with the same critical eyes, not just as a inevitable constant each one should put up with or shut up, but as in "do we, as a society want to progress in this or that way? What world would we rather live in?".

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> I've stopped cooking for myself because TV dinners are so easy. But most TV dinners aren't great. But because they're so convenient, they have killed my desire to cook. _And yet I see no solution to this problem._ "

Keep looking.

</comment><comment><USER14> John Mayer speaking at Berklee College of Music had this to say on the subject:

> "The tweets are getting shorter, but the songs are still 4 minutes long. > You're coming up with 140-character zingers, and the song is still 4 minutes > long…I realized about a year ago that I couldn't have a complete thought > anymore. And I was a tweetaholic. I had four million twitter followers, and > I was always writing on it. And I stopped using twitter as an outlet and I > started using twitter as the instrument to riff on, and it started to make > my mind smaller and smaller and smaller. And I couldn't write a song."

[http://www.berklee-blogs.com/2011/07/john- mayer-2011-clinic-...](http://www.berklee-blogs.com/2011/07/john- mayer-2011-clinic-manage-the-temptation-to-publish-yourself/)

</comment><comment><USER15> > _And yet I see no solution to this problem._

How hard can it be not to tweet?? I came here just to say this, and saw that many others had just said the same thing, and yet I felt the urge to say it again, myself! O, irony!

Seriously though, Twitter isn't like TV or smoking. Nicotine is one of the most addictive substance there is; TV isn't really addictive, in a medical/chemical sense, but it's so _easy_ \-- you sit on the couch and you get distracted by funny/mildly interesting things with sound and images.

But Twitter? You have to make a conscious decision to tweet, it's not a _default_ like TV... Reading tweets is boring, writing tweets is work... How can it be difficult to not do it?

I guess I just don't get it.

<comment><USER16> Since when are TVs "a default"? I don't think I've watched TV in a big while, I don't even remember TVs being generally on around me.

<comment><USER15> Well, they appear to be. I don't have a TV myself, but in many homes when there's a TV, it seems to be on all the time. Sometimes people mute it to eat lunch or dinner, without even turning it off...

<comment><USER16> Hm, I see. That's not the case where I come from, so I'm wondering if it's a US thing.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> "And yet I see no solution to this problem."

The solution is to not solely crave affirmation from others. Be comfortable with yourself, and try to live a life that enriches yourself, and those around you. If the parts of that that you share happen to enrich those you come in contact with, great ... but the internet-celebrity that Twitter and other social-platforms encourages (how many followers, how many retweets, how many favorites, how many likes, etc.) is fleeting at-best.

</comment><comment><USER18> "And yet I see no solution to this problem. I will forever be a slave to 140-characters..."

I'm having a hard time sympathizing with this.

It's not Twitter that "instantly takes complex ideas out of my brain, over- simplifies them, and ships them off to random people." It's ME. Twitter is just a medium — the solution is to care about those complex thoughts enough to see them through.

Not to say that the instant gratification of tweeting does not exist, or is easy to fight — it's a struggle, and something to be mindful of. But the battle is already lost when, as this article does, you shift all the blame to the service instead of looking inward.

</comment><comment><USER19> I just came here after reading this (highly relevant) ZenPencils of Marc Maron's "Social Media Generation".

Very impactful one-two punch seeing both of these back to back.

[http://zenpencils.com/comic/129-marc-maron-the-social- media-...](http://zenpencils.com/comic/129-marc-maron-the-social-media- generation/)

</comment><comment><USER20> I see a solution to the problem. Delete your twitter account, now. It's hard to sustain willpower indefinitely but easy to use it in a burst long enough to delete an account.

<comment><USER21> Twitter has a 30 day waiting period on account deletion to subvert this. What you need to do is set your password to something really obvious and disable two-factor.

<comment><USER22> Or randomise your password so you can't get into it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> I don't do twitter, but I have wondered what it would be to write or read a longer work composed within the limits of 140 character chunks - parceled out over time. It is not so much the size limitation on tweets as it is the disconnect between them that causes the dissolution of bigger ideas.

<comment><USER24> Jennifer Egan did a New Yorker story called "Black Box"[1] that was intentionally composed as sub-140 character chunks. It was released on Twitter tweet-by-tweet and collected in a New Yorker science fiction special last year.

She is an impressive and experimental writer (check out her "Visit from the Goon Squad") who does a great job with this form. The thought-sized chunks give the story a lot of space and cleverly invites the reader to imagine a lot of context.

[1]: [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_Box_(Jennifer_Egan_story)](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_Box_\(Jennifer_Egan_story\))

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> Woe is me...Twitter has stunted my creativity. Give me a break.

</comment><comment><USER26> Post is too long, can someone please summarize? Ideally in <140 chars. Ta.

<comment><USER22> 140 chars not enough for complex thoughts - emphasis on applause buttons over reasoned discussion. But, it's addictive - social validation.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I tend to agree with this. So much so that I made a more in-depth version of the same argument on my own blog earlier this year: [http://jasonlefkowitz.net/2013/02/i-kind-of-hate- twitter/](http://jasonlefkowitz.net/2013/02/i-kind-of-hate-twitter/)

I think the biggest contributor to the feelings Dustin is talking about is the way Twitter's design puts scorekeeping mechanisms front and center. Follower count is a scorekeeping mechanism -- if I have more followers than you, I'm "better" at Twitter than you are. Retweets are a scorekeeping mechanism -- if I get retweeted a lot, I'm better than you are. And so forth. Scorekeeping mechanisms are problematic because when you make them public, put them right up in the user's face, they turn the application into a video game. People see a connection between some actions and an increase in their "score," and that drives them to repeat the same behaviors.

Which is sort of what Dustin's getting at with the comparison to addiction, I think; Twitter is addictive in the same way that, say, Farmville is addictive. It's a Skinner box ([http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operant_conditioning_chamber](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operant_conditioning_chamber)) rather than a medium designed to facilitate discussion.

</comment><comment><USER27> Is he seriously comparing himself with Picasso? I knew Mr Curtis thinks quite highly of himself, but this surprises me.

Just get off Twitter if you really feel this way, Mr. Curtis. It's not that hard.

</comment><comment><USER28> Tweets provide a lot of efficiency. "Tweets aren't great because the compress otherwise complex ideas". A decent summary of your essay and tweet-able. Point made in 5 seconds of reading. Yes you don't get the full emersion but thats exactly why both mediums still exist. The tweet saves time and consequently gets a wider audience.

<comment><USER29> It often takes multiple restatements of an argument to get it to sink in, because different readers are affected differently by any given set of words.

It often takes an essay (or a book, or a series of books, or a body of literature) to fully map out the consequences of what initially seems simple.

It can be difficult to truly impress the emotional texture of a concept in 140 characters without relying on cheap appeals -- which obscure the actual concept.

Here's the tweetable problem with trying to convey deep concepts on twitter:

        Easy come, easy go.

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> One perfect idea, distilled to it's essence can be easy shared in less than 140 characters. No all idea's but some. It's just a matter of finding the right idea and taking the time to express it correctly.

Having said that, I'm really not a fan of twitter, but that's for completely different and unrelated reasons

</comment><comment><USER31> My experience has not been the same. I've written complete blog posts based on Twitter and Facebook status updates.

</comment><comment><USER32> Are we really still talking about 140 characters these days? Why can't we just let it go, let it be?

</comment><comment><USER33> you'll get over the addiction to twitter, and retweets, and likes, and favorites...

you'll realize it's a game, a _stupid_ one, and you'll taper off, and then quit totally, or close enough that you'll feel human again.

before that, you'll ramp up, and ramp up again, chasing dragons, hoping to get the feeling back, \-- "smoking more, but enjoying it less?" is how it was put in a classic advertising campaign -- but it won't work, and you'll get sick and tired of the whole thing, and walk away, with a mix of tremendous relief plus an overwhelming sadness.

but walk away you will, and recover you will, and you'll end up older, smarter, and wiser next time.

your first revelation -- i am telling you this so you'll recognize it -- is that addiction made you far too preoccupied with yourself, what you "would" have done, or "could" have, or "should" have, and you'll recognize first that you should just _do_, and second (and more importantly) that you need to pay some attention to the other people around you, who you love, and not dwell so much on yourself...

-bowerbird

<comment><USER34> This is spot-on.

I feel like I have emerged from a long dream, and now I'm walking around, waiting for everyone else to wake up.

</comment></comment><comment><USER35> "I sit on the couch watching whatever is on TV. It's not very entertaining but it's something to do, and after a while you get used to it. And yet I see no solution to this problem."

What are we, automatons? Farm animals?

This isn't rocket science, if you want to stop being a hack then stop being a hack. You have a brain, you have a developed intellect, if you have sufficient introspection to realize you're doing something you don't want to be doing then maybe try not doing that thing. I have a hard time believing that twitter is more addictive than alcohol or heroin or even television.

Nothing's forcing you to be a hack other than your own vanity. And there's nothing intrinsically superior to being addicted to seeking bite-sized chunks of personal validation through twitter than there is in seeking feelings of comfort, camaraderie, and friendship through television viewership. Yet if someone wrote about the perils of being a couch potato and the difficulty of stopping we'd just laugh at them and move on.

</comment><comment><USER36> I think dcurtis should not be vilified for "seeking external validation". He is building up Internet _capital_ , turning google juice into a brand. No one claims Warren Buffet is seeking external validation for building up his capital?

A while back I realised I was emailing myself ideas (for essays, just random interesting connections) with the hope I would one day go back and turn them into articles and put them up. guess what?

so I now have a wordpress app on my phone and I force myself to take an extra minute to turn a two sentence thought into a two paragraph idea. so I have actually published ideas - and I will pull actual longer, researched, articles from there.

what I think twitter does not provide, and is I think the next evolution of twitter use, is 140 characters as a pull-quote. You cannot fit a thought into 140 characters but you often can fit a headline.

someone notes on here that there are already a lifetime of insightful essays available - bit where are they? how do I find them and especially find them at the right time ?

Discovery as a search function is still in its infancy - I probably do want google to know what I am thinking so it can give me the essays that will most help expand those thoughts.

</comment><comment><USER37> tl;dr</comment>


Ask HN: Cloudflare CDN Alternatives? - <AUTHOR> Are there alternatives to cloudflare's CDN model that uses caching and ssl on DNS level? <comment><USER2> I have been using AMZN Cloudfront, mostly because I was in AMZN already. Azure has a similar "service" with the difference that you can choose one of several CDN services -- which lowers the appeal to me a lot. On one hand I can't imagine I'm not being played by a Verizon CDN, but the mental effort to choose a CDN is almost certainly more than the benefit one could get from switching.)

Alternately, I'm not convinced that CDNs are not a scam.

Basically, it bends plausibility that a system with N+1 parts is really more reliable than a system with N parts. One more part is another part to fail and you can only come out ahead if you do everything right in the system design.

If you host your site in (say) us-east-1 and somebody wants to access your site via https from somewhere in Africa, it will work, but there will be some extra latency.

With pipelining you will be able to hide many of the round trips.

A CDN is going to have to copy the content to Africa before it can serve it to the viewer and if they haven't viewed it before the cache is only going to add to the time it takes to serve the content (first it has to determine it doesn't have the content, determine which parts of the Rube Goldberg machine are going to get it for you, get the content, serve the content.)

The CDN industry has convinced people that they "need" a CDN because "everyone else" uses a CDN. They never show full-system performance results, and if they did and they didn't like the answers they could always change a few parameters (didn't work well in Uganda? look, we got down from 20s in Nigeria to 19.2 s!) or blame you for doing something wrong on your site. (Pro tip: many web sites use 90% or more bandwidth for advertising, trackers, and other bloat... remove those and viewing your web site is like being hit by a bullet!)

</comment><comment><USER3> There are a ton, ones I've used personally are:

[https://fastly.com](https://fastly.com)

[https://www.stackpath.com](https://www.stackpath.com)

[https://www.keycdn.com](https://www.keycdn.com)

along with the AWS offering

</comment><comment><USER4> "ssl on DNS level" \- What do you mean by that?

DNS and SSL (TLS) are very different things.

<comment><USER5> DNSSEC?</comment></comment>


Tell HN: English isn't your native language? Get inside. - <AUTHOR>

I've just launched iRosetta ( http://www.irosetta.com/ ), a StackExchange powered Q&A site for everything related to language. I'm struggling to get a few key early adopters and thought some hackers here might be interested as most of you are already familiar with the StackOverflow system.
In a nutshell, if you're not sure about a particular translation or have a question about grammar, just ask your question there. If you're a seasoned linguist, get involved and answer some questions!
PS: Suggestions on getting this community off the ground are welcome. <comment><AUTHOR> <http://www.irosetta.com/>

</comment><comment><USER2> I'm not a StackOverflow user but I assume the askers and responders are almost all professional developers.

Your site is bound to attract "amateurs" who are just learning languages for disparate reasons. Nothing wrong with that, but a better analog to StackOverflow would be a forum embedded in a website for professional translators and the people who hire them. IIRC <http://proz.com> does have a simple forum for that but it's not very good.

I'd volunteer to answer questions on Portuguese, but there are none right now. I might check a few more times later. But that's just because I saw it here on HN and would be glad to help you getting it off the ground. Otherwise I wouldn't bother -- unless it was part of a professional translation site and participation had a positive effect on my chance of getting translation jobs.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for your feedback. However, I'm not sure why this site would be more likely to attract "amateurs" than StackOverflow. StackOverflow is not part of a freelancer marketplace either (the career site was only added very recently) and yet manages to get quality content. Thanks for your insight nonetheless, I will consider integrating the Q&A part with a "marketplace" in a second phase.

<comment><USER2> OK, I didn't express myself well. Let me try again.

I didn't mean that StackOverflow is like it is because of the career site. I don't know why it became successful. My main point is that people ask stuff there because it actually helps them do their job. This means:

1) Vague, badly written questions and do-my-homework requests are frowned upon. 2) It's a service that people would potentially pay for.

In contrast, on places like Yahoo Answers people ask all sorts of random questions and get an accordingly wide range of answers.

It might be that regardless of the professional nature, programming provides a higher barrier of entry than language study.

That's why I thought it would be good to market it to translators.

<comment><AUTHOR> "programming provides a higher barrier of entry than language study". As a professional programmer, I never really realized this but now that you mention it, it totally makes sense. In that perspective, iRosetta is more likely to attract "amateurs". I'll try to come up with a strategy to market it to pros ;)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> Any chance to "subscribe" to a certain language? Not sure when somebody will ask something about Romanian, but I'd like to be able to answer even if it's after 6 month.

<comment><USER4> It's a StackExchange site so just like any others, you can subscribe to a tag. Since most people are kind enough to either tag their posts as the language, you can do just that. E.g: <http://www.irosetta.com/feeds/tag/polish>

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> There's a great website I use for getting my head around Polish (a neverending headache-inducing joyful task), and it seems to cater for pretty much well any language people are interested in:

<http://forum.wordreference.com/>

The forum interface sucks, and there's definitely a market for this kind of thing with a decent UI like the SE stack.

Good luck, and maybe see you on iRosetta!

<comment><AUTHOR> WordReference does have a ton of valuable content and a vibrant community but as you mentioned, the user experience isn't that great. Thanks for the encouragement ;)

<comment><USER5> The irritating thing is that it took me months to find WordReference, as it seems like Google really struggles with decently indexing some language sites. To be honest, I can only speak for Polish as it's the sole focus of my foreign language studies, but it's been a nightmare to find more than a handful of decent resources online.

If you want to bring more users to the site, I'm not sure if it'd be worth experimenting with adwords. Throw, say, a few dollars a day at adverts that target phrases like "Why does French..." or "How do I say in German" and so on. It might bring enough users to give the site critical mass.

<comment><AUTHOR> I'll run a test campaign and see if it is effective. Thanks for the keyword suggestions.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Rosetta is a trademark and they might come after you if you managed to get this off ground. Just a word of warning...

<comment><AUTHOR> That sucks but thanks for pointing out. I didn't know it was possible to trademark an Ancient Egyptian artifact :( I'll try to see if I really am infringing the trademark.

<comment><USER6> I wasn't aware that it was an Ancient Egyptian artifact. And the trademark was actually Rosatta Stone as errnatX stated.

Nonetheless, if it reminds me another, possibly direct competitor of yours, it can't be a good think, can it?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Might be better to separate by language? At first sight I was put off because I saw Spanish and whatnot. Only by chance I also discovered a question about English.

</comment><comment><USER8> You may want to consider playing with other color schemes. IMHO, the current palette makes the site look a little dated.

</comment><comment><USER9> hey there -- you've developed a really useful tool and I can see myself using this in the future all the time for helping learn languages... BUT I really think you need categorization by language for this to really take off. Otherwise great concept and implementation, hope it takes off!</comment>


Getting started with Meteor.js - <AUTHOR> http://joshowens.me/getting-started-with-meteor-js/

<comment><USER3> Meteor is by far my favorite new platform for side projects. I love how easy it is to get something up and running, the integrated build system and the simplicity of deploying your projects to a meteor host.

I wish there was an easy way to use a different database although I get it, it's part of what makes Meteor so easy get something up and running quickly.

My gut is that if Meteor weren't solely tied to MongoDB and instead had an easy way to switch to Firebase, Parse, etc this platform would really take off.

<comment><USER4> One thing I was surprised to run into is how basic CRUD operations don't have an out-of-the-box solution, like they did even with Rails many years ago.

When I read the "Discover Meteor" guide and they got to the part about handling submit buttons by writing jQuery handlers with e.preventDefault and all that, I was really surprised. Similarly I didn't see obvious, baked-in solutions to validation, or sharing templates between "edit" and "create" situations.

Then, there's the built-in Meteor accounts stuff, which does not make it easy to create an admin page for users, which again I expected to be a straightfoward task. And, not only that, but once you do start to build that you read more-and-more about how allowing the client to make certain modifications is insecure, and so you should start pushing things back to Meteor methods...

Anyway, a lot of this stuff has given me pause. I love the runtime speed, but the speed of getting something up and running (in terms of dev time) seems considerably slower than the equivalent in Rails, particularly around basic CRUD operations that you just need to get out of the way before you can build the more interesting stuff.

<comment><USER5> While not baked into the framework itself, I've found a few repositories that aim to make CRUD a bit easier: [https://github.com/aldeed/meteor- autoform/](https://github.com/aldeed/meteor-autoform/) [https://github.com/aldeed/meteor-simple- schema/](https://github.com/aldeed/meteor-simple-schema/)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I've been using Meteor for sideprojects to learn Javascript. While I like the ecosystem and meteor itself, I have found it hard (as someone new to Javascript itself) to learn "best practices" while using Meteor. I've tried several times to use different testing frameworks, but I end up getting frustrated with not knowing what I need to mock, how I should package things, etc.

<comment><USER6> meteor as a lot of "specifics" that what I don't like about it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> On first glance I thought this was a joke:

"Required

Javascript - JS first?! Yes soldier, don't question me again or I will karate chop you!

Shell (Terminal)

HTML & CSS

JSON

MongoDB

Handlebars

Git & GitHub

jQuery

LESS and/or SASS

Underscore and/or Lo-Dash

Bootstrap

NodeJS

Cordova

ElasticSearch

Ionic - Meteor Package Meteoric "

Then immediately following, "Now that you know the above you are deemed worthy to tap into the power and awesomeness of Meteor!"

Meteor's probably a good framework (I wouldn't know one way or the other since I haven't tried it), but from that summary it doesn't seem like an easy sell to someone looking for a framework to use.

<comment><USER3> The author was trying to point out how many different pieces you'd have to hack together to get to the equivalent of what Meteor gives you out of the box.

So no, you don't need to install all that other stuff to use Meteor if that's what you took the author to mean.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Thanks for this. I'm brand new to Meteor and have been looking for resources.

Does anyone have an idea of when the official Windows installation will be released? I've been struggling with trying to get this working correctly on my windows pc and signed up for their email list when it comes out. Hopefully soon?

<comment><USER9> For any kind of serverside development I recommend you get a Linux VM. I too prefer to develop on windows but one must understand that in this day and age no one will take you seriously of you host on Windows.

<comment><USER10> > one must understand that in this day and age no one will take you seriously > of you host on Windows.

Must I? We clearly don't talk to the same people, then. Not only have I never judged someone or something based on what web host they use (seriously?), I've never heard anyone say or intimate that they would, either.

<comment><USER11> Honestly I think the issue really is with the compatibility problems you run into, especially when trying out newer stuff that was written to targin linux/mac first and foremost. You don't always run into issues, but every now and then you get some node-gyp build snafu or something that causes you to go on a google-fest for potentially obscure fixes. I've had a win7 laptop as my main machine for awhile, and generally did most of my development either in a vagrant VM or using Cloud 9 (fixes build issues and allows me to work on it everywhere). I think having a mac or using linux just makes your life a lot easier as a developer as long as you aren't doing .NET. Suddenly all the tutorials, example code, and default installation instructions just work.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Meteor is cool but component based architecture is even better and Meteor doesn't really lend it's hand to that. It's a lot of dom action binding/coupling.

</comment><comment><USER13> Thanks for sharing this with HN :)

<comment><AUTHOR> My pleasure. I like this meta-introducation approach - i.e. when there is abundance of introductions its worth make an introduction to introductions.

As a side note, one of things that made me using Meteor.js is the easiness of starting (largely to great official examples and tutorials).

BTW: I highly recommend Discover Meteor by Sacha Greif & Tom Coleman ([https://www.discovermeteor.com/](https://www.discovermeteor.com/)). One of the best tutorial books I went through.

<comment><USER14> Question as an aspiring web developer with a moderate-high degree of comfort in Javascript, and low-moderate comfort in Ruby: would you recommend giving 100% to mastering Rails, or dabbling with Meteor from time to time?

The aim is to not get a job as a developer, but build my own projects.

Apologies if this kind of question is better suited for Stackoverflow

<comment><AUTHOR> For side small side projects, where you want start and move quickly - <USER2> totally recommend Meteor. Before knowing _any_ framework I started reading on Meteor - and literally in hours, I had a simple app.

(Actually, it's how I use it. I am mainly data scientist; I do some webdev, but its not my main thing.)</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Helsinki's Radical Solution to Homelessness - <AUTHOR> https://www.theguardian.com/cities/2019/jun/03/its-a-miracle-helsinkis-radical-solution-to-homelessness <comment><USER2> So fed up with these stupid clickbait headlines for good, interesting, useful articles. Here's the subtitle blurb in case you weren't sure whether to click: "Finland is the only EU country where homelessness is falling. Its secret? Giving people homes as soon as they need them – unconditionally"

As for the policy, it seems eminently sensible to me (but then I'm a UBI supporter as well). I note that the article doesn't seem to say how people pay rent if they have no income. It does mention housing benefits, so maybe those cover everything.

<comment><AUTHOR> If I could edit the submission I'd change the title to your suggestion but I thought it was good custom on HN to use the same title as the article itself uses (you'll notice I omitted the miracle-bit) which I've assumed makes it easier to detect dupes (although, of course, that could be done on a URL- basis)

<comment><USER2> To be clear, I'm not criticizing you! I'm criticizing the Guardian, which should be better than this.

The HN rules are clear, and you followed them. And the rules even made sense when they were created and the Internet was less dumb than nowadays.</comment></comment></comment>


DeVos opens investigation into Princeton after its president deems school racist - <AUTHOR> https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/opinion/exclusive-education-department-opens-investigation-into-princeton-university-after-president-deems-racism-embedded-in-the-school <comment><USER2> Racism against, and in favor, of who? Princeton vs US demographics (in %), from most to least represented:

              Princeton  US    ratio
      Asian   20.9       5.3    3.94
      Jewish   8.0       2.15   3.72
      Black    7.7      12.7    0.61
      White   34.7      59.4    0.58
      Latino   9.5      17.6    0.54

Sources:

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_the_United_Sta...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_the_United_States)

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Jews](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Jews) (using average of 2.15%)

[https://hillel.org/college-guide/list/record/princeton- unive...](https://hillel.org/college-guide/list/record/princeton-university)

[https://www.collegefactual.com/colleges/princeton- university...](https://www.collegefactual.com/colleges/princeton- university/student-life/diversity/#secEthnic)

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> tl;dr - Princeton's President says that racism is systemic at Princeton. Department of Education looks to see if they violated Title IX and request all the federal funds sent to Princeton.

It will be interesting to see how fast the virtue signaling and self- flagellation stops at each university. (at least from the administration at each school).</comment>


PJON network protocol stack specification - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/gioblu/PJON/blob/master/specification/PJON-protocol-specification-v0.3.md <comment><AUTHOR> Please feel free to contribute, argue or criticize :)

<comment><USER2> If it meets the guidelines, the project might make a good 'Show HN'. Guidelines: [https://news.ycombinator.com/showhn.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/showhn.html)

<comment><AUTHOR> Ciao, thank you for the suggestion, i now have posted it in the form you advised.</comment></comment></comment>


2000-200-20: Code Economics - <AUTHOR> http://tiny-giant-books.com/1.html?EntryId=rec39SaDeZCZjauRo <comment><USER2> The 2000-200-20 assumes that everything is factored. This is never the case. We start with one minimonolith with 2000 lines of code in it and it evolves from there. Loc is also arbitrary, how about that in cost units as described? No, but cause value - cost is the bottom line metric and artificial limits are just that.

<comment><AUTHOR> Author here.

Apologies, but I can't parse your comment.

Yes. It is arbitrary. Yes. You never start off factored.

I agree on that much. The rest I didn't understand.

<comment><USER2> Rereading what I wrote a few days ago I can only make out as much as you have. There was a thought in there and maybe it got lost in mobile autocorrect. In the end I agree with this part:

> Arbitrarily limit lines of code used to solve a problem and write the app > with the goal of never touching it again

...which is the basic jist of microservices.</comment></comment></comment>


A Practical Exercise in Web Scraping - <AUTHOR> https://www.petekeen.net/a-practical-exercise-in-web-scraping <comment><USER2> I've always thought web scraping was one of the best ways to teach the practical use of code. My first practice with Ruby was to scrape apartment listings from Craigslist and concatenate it into one page for easy browsing. Simple to do, and useful to your real life, and as a bonus, more practice time with programming.

(obviously I don't endorse scraping Craigslist because of TOS. Just confessing to a past infraction back when the NYC housing market was even more absurd than it is today)

<comment><USER3> It is also a good way to help friends because usually you give a lot of value to others very quickly.

In the same way, I also helped a birdwatcher to download thousand of bird calls. My own rant: [http://blog.databigbang.com/the-call-of-the-web- scraper/](http://blog.databigbang.com/the-call-of-the-web-scraper/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> The author very carefully avoids mentioning what web serial this was precisely, but from context I am pretty confident he is talking about Worm [1], for anyone who is interested.

[1] [https://parahumans.wordpress.com/](https://parahumans.wordpress.com/)

<comment><USER5> How'd you figure that out?

<comment><USER6> More to the point, I think, why would you post it? The author clearly didn't want fan-made ebooks out there and the blog basically gave a step-by-step converter, given the correct url.

<comment><USER4> Because I don't feel that an author should be allowed to restrict the distribution of his or her works, at all. It's exactly the concept of Death of the Author [1], just on a slightly different level.

If the author forbade, say, the translation of his work into French, or forbade the reading of it by people with brown hair, or forbade the reading of it on browsers other than Internet Explorer, I'm sure you'd agree with me that such a restriction is insane, and would refuse to cooperate with it.

This restriction he is trying to impose is a bit less crazy, but he has just as little right to make it.

[1] [http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/DeathOfTheAuthor](http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/DeathOfTheAuthor)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Web scraping is nice to learn and when you hit that wall where it starts getting really complex - i.e you need to login to a page, have cookies, etc.. there are really good tools available, lite Outwit hub that uses the whole browser as a scraper.

</comment><comment><USER8> Isn't this wildly illegal? I thought all web scraping violated CFAA... not to mention copyright...

<comment><USER9> In many cases how is it different from visiting each page and printing/saving the html? It's useful to create a backup of the site[1].

I'm not saying it's good or bad. It could be used for both. I know at my previous job we used it (a bit shady I think) to scrape and compare competitor prices to ours.

[1] Though I can't understand why you'd want to backup your own site but I am pretty sure I've heard of it being done.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Wasn't there some parser other than Nokogiri which was focused more on being lenient than correct?

<comment><USER11> Python, not Ruby.. but Beautiful Soup is a lenient parser and a really awesome library: [http://www.crummy.com/software/BeautifulSoup/](http://www.crummy.com/software/BeautifulSoup/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Isn't it more convenient to use something like Pocket for this?

<comment><AUTHOR> Does pocket follow all of the Next links and build an ebook for you?</comment></comment>


Urbanairship now lets you track where a user has been over time - <AUTHOR> http://urbanairship.com/blog/2012/04/03/think-global-message-local-introducing-urban-airship-segments/

<comment><USER2> This could get creepy fast if they're not careful with it.</comment>


PixelMap: Sleeker, Faster Bitmap Editing for .NET - <AUTHOR> http://www.ruarai.com/pixelmap.html <comment><USER2> Nice to see a straightforward stripped down image manipulation library.

It's important not to do too much HSV/HSL color manipulation with an API like this, though - unlike RGBA, which can be altered independently, the Hue/etc properties on the Color type in this library are lossy, because you can't cleanly roundtrip between integer RGBA and HSV (of any precision, really). If you use high precision floats you can roundtrip somewhat more reliably, but it's still a bad bet. So if you first change the Hue and then change the Saturation, you'll get some really nasty artifacts at some points in the color space. (For example, if you try to set the Hue of solid black, it won't do anything.)

A better approach for HSV is to just have a value that represents a point in the HSV color space, and convert it once to/from RGBA when you need to. Do as much in a given color space as you can. (Also, when dealing with HSV you simply need more precision than 24bpp rgb. I typically used 16 bits per channel to reduce the amount of error.)

For cases where you want to do HSV and you care about performance, you could probably use the new .NET SIMD types like System.Numerics.Vector4. Then you'd be getting a perf boost from native SIMD operations and you could carry your channels around as float32.

<comment><USER3> For 8 bit RGBA, using around 10 bit HSV, you can round trip if you're very careful in your code.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Love it.

I ran into the awful performance of the Get/SetPixel methods doing some work with font rendering a while back. The solution I chose ended up similar to the StackOverflow post on linked on the page but it made the code unmaintainable enough that I just abandoned it entirely[1]. I might revisit that next month.

[1] It was a weekend/side project so I was revisiting it after several days and I remember thinking "WTF was I trying to accomplish here again?"

</comment><comment><USER5> Nice! If you're interested in pixel manipulation in .NET, there's also Pinta.ImageManipulation built out of the source code for Paint.NET and Pinta.

[https://github.com/PintaProject/Pinta.ImageManipulation](https://github.com/PintaProject/Pinta.ImageManipulation)</comment>


Things They Won't Tell You About the Flint Water Tragedy. But I Will. - <AUTHOR> http://michaelmoore.com/10FactsOnFlint/ <comment><USER2> Moore's account is partisan and largely fictional.

Even Mother Jones has reported that water problems predate the system change; see comments on [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11003287](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11003287)

Previous discussion you can see both sides of the argument discussed here: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10961513#up_10963376](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10961513#up_10963376)

Here is reporting on the original decision; note that in the 7-1 vote to change, 6 of the ayes were Democrats:

[http://www.mlive.com/news/flint/index.ssf/2013/03/flint_city...](http://www.mlive.com/news/flint/index.ssf/2013/03/flint_city_council_approves_re.html)

The bottom line is, Detroit government was gouging Flint; Flint arranged a new supplier _from Lake Huron_ (Karegnondi Water Authority), choosing to drop Detroit's usury system once it was complete; Detroit cut them off ENTIRELY instead at the earliest date they could, leaving Flint dry for 3+ years and the Flint River as the only choice.

<comment><USER3> _Moore 's account is ... largely fictional._

That's a pretty strong statement to make -- but you aren't providing any specifics to contradict (or weaken) any of the claims he's making. At best you seem to be providing side arguments -- that is, counterspin. But you aren't giving us anything that would help us evaluate what the guy is actually saying, one way or the other.

Other than the fact that he's Michael Moore, and you apparently don't like him.

<comment><USER4> <you aren't providing any specifics to contradict (or weaken) any of the claims he's making.>

Since following the discussions I linked to above has proven too difficult, here they are directly:

[http://www.mlive.com/news/flint/index.ssf/2013/03/flint_city...](http://www.mlive.com/news/flint/index.ssf/2013/03/flint_city_council_approves_re.html)

[https://www.cityofflint.com/wp-content/uploads/CoF-Water- Sys...](https://www.cityofflint.com/wp-content/uploads/CoF-Water-System- QA.pdf)

[http://www.detroitnews.com/story/opinion/2015/10/26/opinion-...](http://www.detroitnews.com/story/opinion/2015/10/26/opinion- flint-water-disaster/74657458/)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10961513](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10961513)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10737915](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10737915) 320+ comments

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10747020](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10747020) 3-part documentary

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10763480](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10763480)

"The Flint River has a history of poor water quality due to industrial pollution and agricultural runoff, according to an assessment by the Michigan Department of Natural Resources. But efforts to remove pollutants and clean up the river have been successful in the past 40 years. Now, some are wondering if the problem lies in the city's treatment of the water, which differs from its treatment of its previous water source, Lake Huron."

[http://thinkprogress.org/climate/2015/06/05/3666238/flint- mi...](http://thinkprogress.org/climate/2015/06/05/3666238/flint-michigan- drinking-water-contamination/)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> This is terribly sad.

It seems quite viable that there are actual criminal actions involved in this. I'm not, unfortunately, optimistic that the responsible people will be punished.</comment>


"The Universe is a Giant Hologram" -or- "The Universe is a Metaphor" - <AUTHOR> http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg20126911.300-our-world-may-be-a-giant-hologram.html

<comment><USER2> hell of a story but its a dupe

<comment><AUTHOR> how so?</comment></comment>


Django eCommerce Solution: LFS - an Open Sourced online shop. - <AUTHOR> http://demo.getlfs.com/

<comment><USER2> If you're interested in Django e-commerce solutions you should also check out django-oscar, which is developed by Tangent Labs in the UK. I used Oscar as a base for my startup's shop (www.dolbeau.ca). It is somewhat more barebones than LFS at the moment but it is designed to be extended in every way.

<http://tangentlabs.github.com/django-oscar/>

<comment><USER3> There is also Satchless.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> how does it compare to Satchmo?</comment>


Gaussian Processes, not quite for dummies - <AUTHOR> https://yugeten.github.io/posts/2019/09/GP/ <comment><USER2> Implementing Gaussian Processes in Python is a fun way to practice your programming and mathematical abilities.

I was working on a course project that used GPs for regression, with the inputs taken from the output of a CNN. We were trying to predict crop yield from satellite imagery, and GPs helped to incorporate spatio-temporal locality: think of predictions for neighboring county, or for image from a previous year.

One issue we ran into while using the model from the original authors [1] was a memory constraint from building on top of Google Colab instead of a private AWS instance, and using a larger dataset to predict upon.

The Gaussian kernel matrix grows O(n^2) per data point, and we had up to 22,000 datapoints to use. To get around the memory constraint, we had to re- implement the GP from scratch - carefully avoiding memory spikes that came with computing the kernel and mean predictions.

It was a two-fold process. For understanding the exact equations, I would highly recommend the resource mentioned in the article [2], Gaussian Processes for Machine Learning Chapter 2. For a lecture video, I would recommend [3] which is from a ML course at Cornell.

As for implementing GPs efficiently, this is still a challenge: numpy has a bunch of matrix-vector functions that are helpful, but there isn't a way to exploit the symmetry of the kernel matrix and use half the require memory.

[1] [https://aaai.org/ocs/index.php/AAAI/AAAI17/paper/view/14435/...](https://aaai.org/ocs/index.php/AAAI/AAAI17/paper/view/14435/14067)

[2] [http://www.gaussianprocess.org/gpml/chapters/RW.pdf](http://www.gaussianprocess.org/gpml/chapters/RW.pdf)

[3] [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R-NUdqxKjos](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R-NUdqxKjos)

<comment><USER3> Another easy solution, if your kernel is appropriate (goes to 0 at infinity such as a Gaussian, Matèrn or Exponential kernel), is to set a threshold under which your covariance is set to zero and to use a sparse representation for the covariance matrix (you can even be more extreme and set a fixed number of entry to be non-zero giving you a fixed memory use).

<comment><USER4> This does not solve the issue. You still need to invert this sparse matrix for inference. The inverse of a sparse covariance matrix is dense.

<comment><USER3> The raw mathematical formula uses an inversion but what you truly need is to solve a linear system (which is why most implementations store a cholesky decomposition of the covariance matrix) which can be done without transforming the matrix into a dense matrix.

<comment><USER5> What would you use to solve the system? Iterative methods or gradient descent even?

<comment><USER6> Something like MINRES or GMRES or CGSTAB. Correct me if I'm wrong, but the covariance matrix in GPR should be diagonally dominant, so the diagonal of the matrix can be used as a somewhat effective preconditioner.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I would highly recomment David Duvenaud's PhD thesis [1] for anybody interested in Gaussian Processes. I find his chapter [2] on expressing structure with kernels super interesting and quite intuitive. It's also one of the PhD theses with the best-looking graphics I've read!

[1] [http://www.cs.toronto.edu/~duvenaud/thesis.pdf](http://www.cs.toronto.edu/~duvenaud/thesis.pdf)

[2] [https://raw.githubusercontent.com/duvenaud/phd- thesis/master...](https://raw.githubusercontent.com/duvenaud/phd- thesis/master/kernels.pdf)

</comment><comment><USER8> The OP needs some correction:

The title is "Gaussian Processes". Okay, so, we're considering "processes". A _Gaussian process_ is a special case of a _stochastic process_.

Here is the usual, first definition of a stochastic process: For the set of real numbers R and for each t in R (t usually regarded as time) we have a random variable X_t (TeX notation for subscripts) where the values of X_t are in R. That is, X_t is a _real valued_ random variable. So, the stochastic process is, say,

{X_t | t in R}

This stochastic process is a _Gaussian process_ if for each t in R X_t has Gaussian distribution.

Commonly we continue and assume that both the expectation and variance of each X_t is the same for each t in R.

In addition for any s in R we might assume that the covariance

Cov(X_t, X_{s + t})

(more TeX notation) is a constant for all t.

With these assumptions we can do a lot in power spectral estimation and extrapolation.

We can apply the central limit theorem to argue that an _independent increments_ process is Gaussian.

For more, see, e.g.,

I. A. Ibragimov and Y. A. Rozanov, _Gaussian Random Processes_ , ISBN 0-387-90302-x, Springer-Verlag, New York, 1978.

For one more, if real valued random variables X and Y are independent, then they are uncorrelated. Net, independence is a much stronger assumption than uncorrelated.

But, amazingly, if X and Y are joint Gaussian and uncorrelated, then they are independent.

For one more, for the example of curve fitting and interpolation, I'd suggest not polynomials but splines or least squares splines.

For one more, for Gaussian X_t for finitely many t, the sample mean and sample variance are _sufficient_ statistics. That means that in any work in statistics, we can keep the sample mean and variance, throw away the X_t, and in principle do as well. The foundation paper on sufficient statistics was by Halmos and Savage back in the 1940s. The concept of sufficient statistics is an application of the Radon-Nikodym theorem. E. Dynkin showed that the Gaussian assumption is critical -- with small changes the result is false.

<comment><USER9> > This stochastic process is a Gaussian process if for each t in R X_t has > Gaussian distribution.

This is not quite strong enough. You need (X_t1, X_t2, ..., X_tn) to jointly have a multivariate Gaussian distribution for every finite (t1, ..., tn).

<comment><USER8> Usually! I gave a _weak_ definition!

Also, for correlation, need to assume the expectations exist.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Great work Yuge!

This post from Distill may also be worth checking out for those interested in Gaussian Processes:

[https://distill.pub/2019/visual-exploration-gaussian- process...](https://distill.pub/2019/visual-exploration-gaussian-processes/)

</comment><comment><USER11> > if all k components are Gaussian random variables, then X must be > multivariate Gaussian

They need to be independent as well or there should be some other criteria. Otherwise I have counterexamples.

<comment><USER12> > They need to be independent as well

No, the sum of correlated Gaussians is also Gaussian. [Edit: or more precisely it can be, if they are jointly Gaussian, the point is that they they don't need to be un correlated.]

<comment><USER13> They dont need to be independent but they need to be jointly gaussian, but it is a very small edge case I guess

<comment><USER14> You can check if this holds by inspecting the covariance matrix. It can be degenerate or the variables may be correlated (thus not joint normal) and even independent uncorrelated gaussian ones need not be.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Multivariate_normal_distributi...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Multivariate_normal_distribution#Two_normally_distributed_random_variables_need_not_be_jointly_bivariate_normal)

It's best to check using the second definition from: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Multivariate_normal_distributi...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Multivariate_normal_distribution#Equivalent_definitions)

This results in the BHEP test: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Multivariate_normal_distributi...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Multivariate_normal_distribution#Multivariate_normality_tests)

<comment><USER12> > You can check if this holds by inspecting the covariance matrix.

Just a clarification: if that's somehow correct then it's not about the 2x2 covariance matrix that gives the linear relationship between two variables. Because two variables can be correlated and the joint distribution be a multivariate Gaussian. And two variables could be uncorrelated and not be independent; the covariance matrix doesn't contain much information about the joint distribution (unless joint normality is assumed).

<comment><USER14> Correct, that's only useful to check for degeneracy. The test is much more certain.

And it's bigger than 2x2, it depends on number of dimensions you're checking. 3 variables goes 3x3 etc. For fitting as shown (and GANs), it gets big really fast.

<comment><USER12> I don't understand what covariance matrix you're talking about.

Let's say we have two variables and the joint distribution is given by the probability density function p(x,y) which can have any form as long as it's always >=0 and integrates to 1.

The covariance matrix is a 2x2 matrix and contains only three real numbers (four, but the off-diagonal terms are necessarily equal).

The covariance matrix (together with the vector of means) gives a complete description of the joint distribution only when the joint distribution is completely specified by its first two moments and all its higher moments are zero (i.e. it is a multivariate normal).

The fact that the correlation between the variables is zero doesn't mean necessarily that the variables are independent when the joint distribution is not a multivariate normal.

The covariance matrix alone cannot be used to tell whether the joint distribution is a multivariate normal or not. Every possible covariance matrix defines a multivariate normal but is also compatible with an infinity of other distributions.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> The most intuitive explanation of GPs came to me from McElreath's Statistical rethinking. What was most sticky was that was explained in terms of a thing needed for a simple regression problem that becomes hairy with continuous variable. It was an example of modeling a caffe's wait time which varies more continuously with different covariates like time of the day and IIRC size of the cafe.

<comment><USER16> Is it this one?

[https://xcelab.net/rm/statistical- rethinking/](https://xcelab.net/rm/statistical-rethinking/)

<comment><USER15> Yes

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Great article, easy to understand. I also like the unpretentious tone of it.

</comment><comment><USER18> Was going through this article this morning, and absolutely loved it.

Post that, you can go through the vid lecture recommended in the article. Makes it easy to follow.

<comment><USER19> May I suggest next article to read: An intuitive, visual guide to copulas [https://twiecki.io/blog/2018/05/03/copulas/](https://twiecki.io/blog/2018/05/03/copulas/)

<comment><USER18> Thanks mate. This is awesome. The explanations + code made it very easy to understand.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> I don't get much of this kind of articles, but I love just looking at these beautiful graphs.

</comment><comment><USER21> Great read! Well done!

</comment><comment><USER22> Am I the only one who found easier and intuitive the abstract definition but much harder to follow the mathematical explanation? I immediately thought on branching conditions mapped to a function table (like a knowledge database table with pattern matching and related to a functions table).

I understand the higher value here is the Gaussian distribution and how to find or create a distribution that fits real world complex problems, which would become severely complicated to implement, analyse or visualize with classic code writing.

P.S. I am speaking form an IT Engineer point of view, the years I studied math fall more than a decade ago...

<comment><USER23> I'd like to point out that the mathematical/formal statements are the result of loooong researches. That is, the one who stated them most probably had a real life problem first. Then multiple other ones. Then he built up an understanding of those problem and some kind of intuitions. Then he gathered all of that in a nice formula.

When we learn that formula (sometimes) we go the other way around : we see the formula, the maths, the forma stuff and then we try to understand its consequences and see how it fits reality.

To me that's a much harder process...

Basically : when I see a bridge, I can't figure out how it was built, or why.</comment></comment>


Project Include ditches Y Combinator after Peter Thiel gives $1.25m to Trump - <AUTHOR> https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2016/oct/17/project-include-y-combinator-donald-trump-peter-thiel <comment><USER2> This is a massively duplicated dupe. There's a flag war right now over this, so this too will probably get flagged.</comment>


How the world came to hate Silicon Valley - <AUTHOR> http://www.theage.com.au/digital-life/digital-life-news/how-the-world-came-to-hate-silicon-valley-20140304-3417q.html <comment><USER2> The real story here is not the protests, which are _very_ small. (Compare to the Iraq War protests, which involved _ten times_ the _entire population of SF_.)

The real story is how a certain section of the media loves to blow up anything anti-Google, no matter how trivial or insignificant (a few dozen people staging a rally? two months ago?), into The Biggest Problem Ever. One imagines that they make big advertising dollars from spreading their ideology of hate, just as William Randolph Hearst did a few generations back. Or maybe Bill Gates ran over their puppy back in 1982 and now they've dedicated their lives to petty revenge.

"Look Who's Gawking: Inside Nick Denton's phony, hypocritical class war against tech workers": [http://pando.com/2013/12/26/look-whos-gawking-inside- nick-de...](http://pando.com/2013/12/26/look-whos-gawking-inside-nick-dentons- phony-hypocritical-class-war-against-tech-workers/)

<comment><USER3> I live in SF, and I can confirm that I'll walk past people and overhear the same fragments of conversation, talking about the buses and gentrification. The tone varies, but just because not everyone is protesting doesn't mean the ideas aren't out there.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Certainly Silicon Valley has their fair share of douchebags, but the media hype surrounding this is simply nonsense. The world hates Silicon Valley? You're telling me that somehow all these SV douchebags outweigh Hollywood or Wall Street douchebags? Come on, now.

<comment><USER5> The ethics of the power players in Silicon Valley are far worse than those on Wall Street. (I don't know dick about Hollywood other than its reputation.)

Wall Streeters are greedy, but they don't go out of their way to ruin peoples' careers (except in the movies). They'll do a lot of things to get that $10 million bonus, but they don't hold long-term grudges and wreck careers of people who've since flown away from them. A trader will get you fired if it suits his career goals, because he is ruthless, but once you're out of his way, he'll take an active interest in making sure you get a better job afterward. Valley people, when they separate, tend to make it really ugly: lots of gossip, negative references, long-term grudges and other nonsense that wouldn't exist among people who cared more about themselves winning than about other people losing.

Silicon Valley attracts people who want power, and those tend to be worse than those who want money. It also attracts, more than nerds, people who come on _specifically to take advantage of nerds_. The latter set tend to be horrible, and to rise fast.

Finally, there's the false poverty effect. If you make $10 million in a year, you're rich. If you're a trust-fund kid, but you're only paying yourself a $25,000 salary because that's all your investors will let you take out, you feel more entitled to fuck people over because you're "the little guy" and because, being "scrappy" (or "lean"), you "can't afford" the costs of being ethical.

<comment><USER6> Whenever I read HN and see an extremely anti-startup comment I always know it's from you. For a while I'd get angry reading your comments, but I'm actually curious- What on earth happened between you and startups to make you think they're a huge scam to take advantage of the unsuspecting?

I'm a nobody who came to Silicon Valley and has done relatively well for himself as a founder. I've seen many, many other founders with similar stories. We raised a significant amount of money and can spend it however we want. The worst I can say about my experience with investors is sometimes they can be arrogant. The ones that did invest in us have been nothing but incredibly humble and helpful. But going out of their way to screw someone over? I just haven't ever seen anything close to that happen to anyone in the 3 years I've been here.

I used to work in finance where they're much more ruthless. I have a classmate from undergrad who recently was arrested for "stealing trade secrets" from a hedge fund: [http://www.forbes.com/sites/nathanvardi/2014/02/19/analyst-c...](http://www.forbes.com/sites/nathanvardi/2014/02/19/analyst- charged-with-stealing-quant-trading-models-from-major-hedge-fund/). Who knows what actually happened but that sort of stuff would never fly in Silicon Valley.

That's not to say I have the correct perspective but I always see these generalizations coming from you that seem so far off from my reality that I wonder what's going on. What happened to you?

<comment><USER5> I've written about it at length already and don't choose to relive it in detail, but I worked for an _extremely_ unethical startup.

In 3 months, I saw... bait-and-switch hiring all over the place, multiple people hired into the same management role, and (after I left) a CEO who spent months trying to destroy my reputation.

At 3 months, I was brought into a room with HR and the CTO. Upper management wanted to get rid of early hires with "too much" equity and wanted to pull my technical credibility to justify their firing, but the documents I was asked to sign constituted perjury (blaming people for nonexistent technical shortfalls, claiming that I directly managed people I didn't even know, etc.) Some of the claims would have required revising my past and saying I'd consulted (a consulting VP/Eng, I can't make this shit up) with the company before the start date (in order to make the rest of the story check out). They fired me for refusing to do it. When I pointed out that I had grounds for a lawsuit, the CEO threatened to pull family connections and bribe judges.

I'm sorry, but I don't do "We're giving you 10 reports, and your job is to fuck over all of them over the next two months." I may or may not be a leader (that's not for me to decide) but I am surely not a henchman.

This is one of the VC darlings and although it was almost a down round (barely above flat) and dilution was heavy, they raised again in late 2013 (almost 2 years after that happened). Granted, this last VC round is essentially a severance, giving the company a couple years to run on fumes while its executives find better things to do with their lives. But I didn't get a severance, so why should they?

Now, I think companies that are _that_ shitty are pretty rare, even in the VC- funded world. That might be bottom 1% overall and bottom-10% in the VC-funded world. Even most startups and ex-startups (e.g. Google) aren't nearly as bad, but there is a certain crappiness to the tech world in terms of how regular people are treated. Companies care a lot about image (being sexy, "cool", VC darlings, whatever) but not about long-standing reputation-- at least, on the latter, not enough to seriously value doing the right thing.

The old Silicon Valley was a pay-it-forward economy. Even when you separated, you were good to other people. If you had to cut people in your startup, you introduced them to investors. People helped each other out. You didn't fuck over a talented engineer, because you might want to work with him 5 or 10 years later. That's gone now.

I do have to offer this disclaimer, though. I never worked on the West Coast. Maybe it's different out there, but the things I've heard convince me that it's not that different, and I've definitely met dodgy characters in California.

Day to day, what angers me is the general lack of respect for engineers in the "new" Silicon Valley. I'm talking about the startups offering pathetic equity slices, and about the companies that are actually very business-driven posing as "tech companies". Engineering and research talents aren't really valued, despise the mouth-honor paid to them.

<comment><USER4> "I do have to offer this disclaimer, though. I never worked on the West Coast."

LOL okay I guess that explains it. I've been in the Bay Area since the dot-com times, and the type of behavior you describe is something I've never seen, not even once. I've worked for some real assholes, and I don't deny that this probably happens here, but not often for it to be a discernible trend.

Yes, you had a bad experience, but no it's not all like that, at all. I work for a YC startup, something I never thought I would do, and the cofounders are genuine, smart and people I'm ready to put my career and financial future behind even though I'm roughly 15 years older.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> There is a clear cognitive dissonance in articles like this and the actions of protestors. They highlight on the extreme wealth of certain founders/executives, yet direct their wrath (and stones) on the entire tech industry.

Regular Facebook employees aren't Mark Zuckerberg, and certainly aren't paid like it. Most tech workers make less than twice the median family income in the Bay Area—good pay, but not obscene.

If people have a problem with income inequality, they should be siding with tech workers—we're way closer to barista wages than being in the 1%.

So why are tech workers the ones getting attacked? You can bet Larry Page isn't taking the bus, but he's the one making the money.

<comment><USER8> _They highlight on the extreme wealth of certain founders /executives, yet direct their wrath (and stones) on the entire tech industry._

Not even, the protestors manage to direct their wrath at the employees low enough level to be riding the shuttles.

It's pretty ironic seeing the ostensible radical leftists following the lead of the Valley Wag's middle brow demagoguery.

<comment><USER9> _employees low enough level to be riding the shuttles_

Yes, SF's banking-class and politicians are loving this. The middle-class is distracted fighting their middle-class peers.

<comment><USER10> Are you really unable to see the problem is not "the banking class" and a few politicians. The problem is thousands of developers making much more than normal people, and a way too big fraction of them wanting to live right smack downtown San Francisco ?

Or are you truly unable to see that you are not making anything remotely near average wages ? That you are not middle class, and certainly also not working as hard as the average middle classer ? You get sundays off, for one.

The result of these actions is people getting thrown into the streets by their landlords. Here's a tip : there does not exist an argument that will make people OK with that. Stop looking for it.

<comment><USER8> I am sad to see someone actually falling for the claim that someone else being willing to pay a higher price is to blame for the cycle of often illegal and generally unconscionable evictions that have happened in San Francisco and elsewhere.

I mean, the immediate cause is _landlords_ and the ultimate market cause is the lack of housing in Silicon Valley. Tech workers in SF are just dominoes in a chain.

And the cause for Tech workers being better paid is the failure of the average workers to defend their wages. You could defend your living standard by the left-wing means of unionization or by the right-wing means of providing more value to your employer so if you just sit on your ass and attack higher paid _workers_ , you deserve contempt from any point of view.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Uh, except for a single mention of taxes in Britain, this is an article about How San Francisco came to hate Silicon Valley. I mean, seriously, Valleywag really capturing the zeitgeist of the common man? Jesus.

(I thought the plural "bricks through the window" in the subheadline was particularly indicative, when as far as I know that was brick _singular_ )

The _world_ , meanwhile, follows a bit of news about tech companies, they have opinions about some of the bigger ones, and they like taking sides over their favorite phone brand, but they continue to steadfastly not care about Silicon Valley. Seriously. Go on vacation, get out of the bubble, talk to people. They don't even have an opinion on the place.

</comment><comment><USER12> Seriously, employees who ride buses to their 10-hour jobs who are probably scrabbling to get some work done on the commute (those buses have wi-fi for a reason) are causing "heightened anxiety about the widening income gap between tech workers and "ordinary" citizens"?

These protesters are either misinformed or being deliberately malicious if they are targeting the ordinary tech employee. At $39000 average spending per year ($3250/month according to the article), how much do they exactly think SV engineers get paid? At say, 100k, which would be considered pretty decent by an SV engineer, the 28% tax bracket, leaves 72k actual income. Minus the $39000 housing expenses mentioned, that's $33000/year, or $2750/month for food, clothing, paying for your kids' education. etc. If your spouse doesn't work, you will be living a pretty Spartan life. Hardly the kind of money you imagine rich assholes throwing around, is it?

<comment><USER13> While I don't in any way think the antagonism towards tech workers make sense, I don't think you're quite on target with your numbers.

A) income tax is progressive and continuous, you can't say $28k in taxes for the 28% bracket (however, FICA and CA income taxes mean that number is in the right ball park)

B) a couple living on one income in a 2-bedroom isn't considered a birthright in dense cities like SF

C) $100k would be an unusually low salary even for someone just out of school taking the megacorp buses, and this is before bonuses and RSUs

So I disagree with the thesis that Bay Area tech workers are by any measure living a spartan life.

<comment><USER14> Net of deductions (Federal & State income tax, FICA, SSI, healthcare, and 401k -- remember, you've got to save for retirement too), figuring taking home 60% of your salary isn't a bad ballpark. So yes, after

I'm not so sure that low six figures is considered low for someone straight out of school, remembering that not all hires are superstars, and there are a lot of less technical positions being filled as well.

And in the Bay Area, childcare and/or education expenses are likely to add up unless you've got a very good local public school.

<comment><USER15> > and 401k -- remember, you've got to save for retirement too

Oh no! I don't have any money left after I'm done saving all my money!

<comment><USER14> There's short-term accessible savings, and your retirement.

Part of those "subsistence wages" are the funds which cover your expenses when you aren't working. Whether due to disability, between gigs (part of Smith's detailed discussion of the basis of wages in Book I, Ch. VIII of _Wealth of Nations_ , I recommend it strongly), or in old age.

Your 401k funds are _not_ generally available to you to meet pre-retirement expense needs. There are some exceptions, but in almost all cases, you're very strongly advised _not_ to make use of them: you can borrow against 401k funds, but this 1) costs you the earnings on those funds (part of the basis of the whole concept) and 2) the loan must be repaid (though without interest) if you terminate a relationship with a loan sponsor. Which is to say: at the very time you're most likely to have a cash crunch (you're transitioning employment), you have to repay the loan.

Early distribution is also possible, but with very significant financial penalties.

Your comment is juvenile and specious.

<comment><USER15> Just for a little context, fewer than half of Americans even have access to a 401(k) (or 403(b) or similar) retirement plan, and its disproportionately the wealthy that can afford to take advantage of such plans: [http://www.cbsnews.com/news/study-401k-retirement-plans- fail...](http://www.cbsnews.com/news/study-401k-retirement-plans-failing-most- workers/)

Look, I get where you're coming from, in that you don't _feel_ rich, especially in the context of San Francisco, but seriously...

"The median household income in the United States today is $50,000. Half of all households make more than this. Half of all households make less. The big expenses in the Xxxxxxxxx family budget--their $60,000 a year in contributions to tax-favored retirement savings vehicles, their $25,000 a year savings building home equity, their $55,000 for housing, their $60,000 in private school costs, even their $10,000 a year for new cars--are simply out of reach for the overwhelming majority of Americans."

[http://delong.typepad.com/sdj/2010/09/in-which-mr-deling- res...](http://delong.typepad.com/sdj/2010/09/in-which-mr-deling-responds-to- someone-who-might-be-professor-todd-henderson.html)

<comment><USER14> _Just for a little context, fewer than half of Americans even have access to a 401(k)_

Yep. That's going to be a problem.

Even many of those who _do_ have a 401(k) (or equivalent) are subject to market losses, insufficient funding, interrupted employment (how many 30-40 somethings do you know with significant interruptions in the professional lives -- right in the middle of their peak earning years)? One of a number of messes we're busily creating.

I've been arguing in another thread about what a minimum living wage means, and on those terms, you've _got_ to allow for retirement. Otherwise the alternative (including state support of retirees) remains yet another net welfare support for businesses which were paying insufficient salaries in the first place.

See thread here: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7337228](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7337228)

And post here: [http://www.reddit.com/r/dredmorbius/comments/1z5vfb/thoughts...](http://www.reddit.com/r/dredmorbius/comments/1z5vfb/thoughts_on_minimum_wage_enterprise_viability/)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Why does every single one of these stories always leave out the most responsible counterparty in these matters... the landlords.

The tech workers are just showing up with buying power. The decision of whether or not to pursue ellis act evictions is not carried out by tech workers, but the San Francisco landlords who are trying to free up their rent controlled units to be able to jack up the price.

Many of these landlords are either San Franciscans who still live in the city or those that grew up here, but moved out to the supports and now just manage rentals in the city. So at the end of the day its fellow San Franciscans to whom these protestors should direct their anger.

</comment><comment><USER17> It should be noted that San Francisco isn't the only area blighted. Cho's in Palo Alto is being pushed out by the landlord.

[http://www.mercurynews.com/ci_25015784/chos-close-palo- alto](http://www.mercurynews.com/ci_25015784/chos-close-palo-alto)

</comment><comment><USER18> This reminds me of a tweet from Alexia Tsotsis saying that everyone will either work for Google or Walmart in the future. It looks like San Francisco is giving us a preview of that future.

<comment><USER19> Notably, there are no Walmarts in San Francisco.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> I was wondering if this was serving as some kind of rebuttal to the occupy wallstreet stuff. As in - "don't pay attention to the actual wealth inequality that is choking the economy in many places, these recent grads who work in the Valley but live in SF are the bad guys"

Sure conjecture and conspiracy-theoryish but why the fuck else would any part of the media be paying attention to 10 protesters and a staged, crass fake "nerd" pretending to be a Google employee?

</comment><comment><USER21> You mean installing reclaimed log cabins in your cafeteria, sorry casual dining area, isn't endearing? [1]

[1] [http://www.marinij.com/novato/ci_25251868/lib-at-large- novat...](http://www.marinij.com/novato/ci_25251868/lib-at-large-novato- contractor-supplies-century-old)

</comment><comment><USER22> Right, I read about it all the time on Facebook and Blogspot.

Many people have concerns, but a) even most of them don't all the time, and b) as a proportion of world adult population, not many.

</comment><comment><USER23> I would have thought having an extra $10 million in the local economy (from the wedding) would be a good thing. Isn't that the whole concept of a trickle down economy?

</comment><comment><USER24> Don't hate the player. Hate the game.

<comment><USER25> but the players deeply love this game, and play it ruthlessly. What then?

<comment><USER5> The people being targeted by the hate are low- and mid-level engineers at companies like Google and Twitter, who have nothing to do with San Francisco's absurd housing policy or the economic inequality in general. They might be better-paid peons, but they're still peons. They aren't responsible for "this game" and many of them detest it. (Would you want to have no savings at age 37 because, despite your relatively high salary, the landlords have taken everything?)

The First Estate of Silicon Valley (here, including San Francisco) are the highly influential angels, VCs, and corporate executives who can force acquisitions. The Second Estate are the engineers, mid-level product managers, and data scientists. The Third Estate is everyone else. Naturally, the First Estate is trying to prevent any chance of alliance between the Second and Third Estate, and actively encourages tension between the those two groups. It's also clear, however, that the First Estate screws the Second (all of the collusion/anti-poach agreements that have been uncovered). In fact, the Second and Third Estates have a common enemy in the First. They've just been prevented from realizing it, in large part, by all the obfuscation that's going on.

To people in poverty, $120,000 per year is a large amount of money, but it's not nearly enough to bribe city councils into enacting the NIMBY policies that make San Francisco unaffordable.

The real bad guys don't ride Google buses. They have private drivers, and the Google buses don't stop on Sand Hill Road.

<comment><USER26> I believe they're using the Google buses as symbols in lieu of direct knowledge of the First Estate's whereabouts or access to them.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> Australians despise the U.S. and The Age is simply airing the rank and fetid feelings of the people that read their newspaper.

Trust me, I know - I was born and raised in Australia, and because of the country's heavy Socialist/British background and identity, we were taught to hate everything about America. My wife and I lived in Melbourne from 2009-2012, and she suffered horrible discrimination for being from the US.

Silicon Valley is one of the great monuments to American individualism and entrepreneurial spirit, and it sickens most Aussies to see the success and fortune that has come of it.

The Age is ensuring that the anti-American sentiment is kept at a poisonous and noxious level.

<comment><USER28> I think this is a bit extreme.

Firstly, this Melbourne Age piece is syndicated from The Telegraph, a British newspaper from my home country. As a regular visitor to Australia, with relatives living there, I had presumed that the article was syndicated even before I reached the byline. This due to a clarity of language unusual in locally written newspaper articles.

It sounds atrocious, the treatment of your wife, and if her treatment was as widespread as I'm inclined to take on trust from what you say, then I'll need to reassess a thing or two.

Australians know virtually nothing about Americans as people, and that's a pity. Their television is acutely americanised, and their culture inculcated with American influence, but I've noticed that hardly any Australians have actually met an American. It's hardly polite or even civil to blame the rare American they meet for the perceived wrongs of the US body politic. And I can empathise with your experience somewhat.

It can be parochial. I watched Grease the movie on Australian TV recently, and it reminded me that Australians love John Travolta because he loved Olivia Newton John, who's really a Brit anyway. He's in if he can say g'day. On the other hand Mel Gibson was Aussie and became American. He's not claimed anymore.

But I haven't found hate as you appear to have. Australia is a lot bigger than the left wing inner city self styled intellectuals you apparently met too many of.

Go to country NSW and they all dress and sing like Chet Atkins.

<comment><USER29> _On the other hand Mel Gibson was Aussie and became American. He 's not claimed anymore._

According to Wikipedia, Mel Gibson was born in the US to American parents and moved to Australia when he was 12. Somehow I remembered that factoid when I read your comment :)

<comment><USER28> Thanks. I didn't fill in that detail. I thought only his mother was American, and I should always check my facts before I post anything here. So in, and then out, but oddly, out in a similar way that Rupert Murdoch is out.

Pride and Prejudice.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> _Sean Parker, the founding president of Facebook, spent a reported $US10 million on his wedding_

Wow, how unbelievably arrogant. Spending his money however the fuck he wants? Paying people to render him services of their own free will? What an asshole. He must've forgot signing that social contract with angry poor radicals that once you hit $(whatever today's immoral amount of money is) you no longer have the right to spend it... oh wait.

Whatever. Give me a break. This article is really about the worst side of SF - not the successful businessmen, but the unsuccessful, jealous, negative, unproductive "radicals" whose politics boils down to "I hate everything that I don't understand, and I'm not going to bother to try and understand it because I hate it."

 _an arrogant and often tone-deaf industry_

The only arrogant people here are these fucking losers who think they deserve to live in the one of the world's most expensive and desirable cities, and think they deserve to dictate how other people can and should behave, despite providing absolutely nothing of value to anyone.

Perkins is right. The closest parallel to the mindless, hate-drenched opprobrium of these people is Nazi Germany turning on the Jews (a similar group of successful, largely innocuous businesspeople.)

<comment><USER31> > _Perkins is right. The closest parallel to the mindless, hate-drenched > opprobrium of these people is Nazi Germany turning on the Jews_

This perverse non-analogy is an embarrassment. It reads like absurd satire. Please stop repeating it.

<comment><USER30> Sorry, no, it does have merit. In both cases, a failure of popular economic intelligence lead or is leading to self-defeating national attitudes and policies, driven in both cases by misattributed resentment.</comment></comment></comment>


Show HN: Anchor.travel – airbnb for yacht charters with integrated route planner - <AUTHOR> https://anchor.travel/

<comment><USER2> Super like, there is one yacht/option in Asia as well :)

Got a question, is there any option of changing currency from EUR to USD or local currency of country it is operating?

Thanks and all the best.

</comment><comment><USER3> Great idea, like the design, but please make it responsive!

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you! We're working on responsive version.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Nice one! I liked the huge POI database.</comment>


What I've Learned About Smart People - <AUTHOR> https://tmac721-blog-blog.tumblr.com/post/17500383225/what-ive-learned-about-smart-people <comment><USER2> There was an analyst at my old firm, a couple years older than me (he was 24 at the time). And in a period of 2 years he went from not knowing anything about finance or programming to becoming a partner at a new quant hedge fund. The one thing I noticed about him is that he was never, ever, okay with not understanding something. While other analysts wouldn't dare touch any code or just accept the equations the senior quants gave them, he _needed_ to know. The rate he got better at things was just incredible. And while he wasn't dumb, he wasn't a genius (at first) either. About the same level as all the other analysts (this isn't a compliment). But by the time he left the firm, it was like his IQ jumped 30 points. He became very good at quant finance and pretty good at programming. He also worked incredibly hard.

Another thing I noticed about him was how curious he was about other people's jobs: he learned from the devops guys, the DB admin, the developers, he went to sales meetings, chatted with accounting, everything. There was nothing that was too hard or too easy for him: he was there to learn it all. But to make it work since he spent 4 hours a day not actually doing his job, he had to work really fucking hard.

Anyways, observing this guy has changed my life. Throw your fixed mindset in the trash, it isn't helping you. Respect everyone, be generous with your time. Make friends. And most importantly, never ever accept to not understand something.

Since adopting this guy's work ethic and earnestness, my career trajectory has gone up very quickly. And while I wish I had started being like him earlier, I think it takes a lot of maturity or being a really special person to consciously dump your insecurities and feelings of superiority in the trash. The sky's the limit and I truly believe that he's going to be a billionaire one day. And the things that are gonna get him there are really not that special: anyone can do it.</comment>


No hugging: are we living through a crisis of touch? - <AUTHOR> https://www.theguardian.com/society/2018/mar/07/crisis-touch-hugging-mental-health-strokes-cuddles <comment><USER2> This article doesn't address the forcing of children to hug. I think that children should have autonomy over their own bodies, as a preamble to intimate encounters later on in life. I would speculate that reverting back to traditional expectations around bodily contact with family/otherwise for children could just further exascerbate the problem. I think instead we need more demonstration of appropriate touching and demystifying what I see to be necessary caution about the innappropriate, unwanted or otherwise abusive kind of touching. Plus if touching is good for health and wellbeing this should be taught. I can think of other reasons why bodily contact is on the decline, such as the increased accessibility of other people without having to be in their presence. Media spin possibly has us frightened, where we now obstain from a gentle arm tap for emphasis, or shying away from offering a hug to someone in distress. Perhaps having a hug offering rejected is too much for people when they could just open messenger and send an emoji instead?</comment>


H1-B Infographic -- Myths versus Facts? - <AUTHOR> http://thumbnails.visually.netdna-cdn.com/who-are-the-h1bs_51811a4ebe7e7.jpg (here's the direct link to Visual.ly: http://visual.ly/who-are-h-1bs) <comment><USER2> I think this slide show makes some important points. However, I don't really like the "myth vs fact" approach to something that I think is actually pretty complicated. I also think it _leans_ toward straw man representations of "myth" in some of these slides.

Case in point - the slide that presents a "myth" that H1B holders are paid less than their US counterparts, countered by a "fact" that they are paid about 10% more.

That's a relevant data point, to be sure, but it hardly resolves the issue. The very previous slide points out that H1B workers are more likely to have graduate degrees than Americans. The next slide shows that H1B holders earn only 10% more than their US counterparts. And in engineering, they earn slightly less. This data could be used to argue that the H1B plan is actually diminishing the premium paid for a graduate degree and perhaps suppressing the market signals that would induce more US born workers to pursue these graduate degrees. And this might very well be exactly what has caused the problem addressed two slides down, that US students aren't pursuing enough degrees in engineering (to say nothing of the differences in what counts as an "engineering" degree in the US and in China).

I'm not saying that there aren't great arguments to be made in favor of increasing skilled immigration. But it's far more complicated than a "myth vs fact" chart.

</comment><comment><USER3> "Immigrants started 28% of all new US businesses." This despite all the obstacles and issues with doing so (speaking from first-hand experience!)

<comment><AUTHOR> same here!

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Interesting!</comment>


Solution-processed transparent ferroelectric nylon thin films - <AUTHOR> https://advances.sciencemag.org/content/5/8/eaav3489/tab-article-info <comment><USER2> This appears potentially important for the development of fast nonvolatile memory to displace flash. Writing flash is always slow, because of the need to pump up a high write voltage, where ferrocapacitive writes can approach DRAM speeds, for similar cell sizes.</comment>


Show HN: Mixr – Generate an MP3 mix from the command line - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/soulprovidr/mixr <comment><AUTHOR> Author here. I wrote this script when I needed to generate a series of hour- long MP3 mixes for a project, but couldn't find a tool that made it easy to concatenate, crossfade, and normalize audio. Hope you find it useful.</comment>


Ask HN: Handling Multiple Projects - <AUTHOR> Currently at work the PM´s are "borrowing" the developers from every project and some are working on two or three projects at the same time (going into production in the same month). There are many problems. One of them is that every project needs more developers but the company doesn´t have enough people. On the other hand you as a developers  can´t be focused on one project and when it´s not finished "you aren´t working hard enough". Have someone experienced something like this and how was this situation handeld ? Is it time to leave ? <comment><USER2> This sounds like management doesn't know their jobs. Context switching is very expensive and they are effectively slowing down all projects. It would be better to just split the developers between the projects and then come up with a more realistic timeline. If that is not acceptable, then cut down on the features to the bone. If still unhappy, well...</comment>