The Founder Visa (again) - <AUTHOR> http://blog.samaltman.com/the-founder-visa-again <comment><USER2> This is a great idea, can I do this too?? The government can give me 100 visas to allocate, and I'll give them to international entrepreneurs whom I consider to be deserving and who incidentally and in a _totally_ non quid-pro-quo fashion agree to sell me a 7% stake in their companies for a nominal fee.

I'll also buy them pizza once a week, if that sweetens the pot.

<comment><USER3> Airbnb and Dropbox will tell you that YC was instrumental in their success.* And, indeed, that the YC equity stake is worth it. So I think the thrust of your argument is off-base -- there's _some_ plausible justification for it.

But to your broader point -- conferring immigration status upon acceptance by an arbitrarily-designated institution makes me uncomfortable too. However, it's a ship that sailed a long time ago. (Colleges, for e.g.) Given that we effectively permit universities to pick hundreds of thousands of visa recipients every year, experimenting with 100 for entrepreneurship seems not insane.

* (So will Stripe!)

<comment><USER4> Survivor bias is the opposite of objectively rational and actionable data.

[edit]

The thrust of his argument is that YC is asking to be granted special privileges, in a circumstance in which they happen to directly benefit, in a way that only helps them unfairly cement their already privileged position.

It'd be hard for me to look at this privilege being granted as anything other than evidence of corporate/investor oligarchical corruption -- an outlook that isn't improved by your referencing their importance to success.

<comment><USER3> Well, I think survivorship bias is separate (though, agreed, it is endemic in our industry) -- the logic wouldn't change in this argument even if YC had _only_ funded Airbnb and Dropbox. It may be a case of misattribution by the founders concerned, but hey -- in the absence of RCTs, trusting them seems like the right default.

> _The thrust of his argument is that YC is asking to be granted special > privileges, in a circumstance in which they happen to directly benefit, in a > way that only helps them unfairly cement their already privileged position._

I don't think Sam's argument is quite as self-serving, though I see how it could be interpreted this way. I think he'd agree that YC should not be a gatekeeper. (As in PG's original proposal.) But _if_ the argument against the original proposal is that we somehow need more data before rolling it out everywhere, running a smaller experiment with YC would seem to be better than nothing at all.

I completely agree with you that a steady-state world of privileged visa- granters is not what we should be trying to bring about.

<comment><USER4> > _... trusting them seems like the right default._

Wouldn't objective analysis be the right default, rather than trusting those that were successful within an organization that has incentives that are, in the majority, contrary if not in outright competition, to your own?

YC isn't a charity, as I'm sure you're aware, and success is not guaranteed. They're in the business of throwing spaghetti at the wall to see what sticks.

Nobody wants to be the spaghetti that doesn't stick, but the vast majority will be, and it's in YC's interests to keep convincing new people to jump in the pot.

So no, I don't trust them, or their motives, or think that it's to the benefit of anyone other than YC to grant them special immigration privileges. I certainly don't think outlier examples justify or prove YC's value to the American people, or to foreign citizens who might wish to pursue their interests here.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> This is a terrible idea.

VCs have proposed the same solution in Canada; the government canned the old investor visa and allowed founders to get a startup when they receive investment from some of our VCs. (There were many more investor visa than VCs can even process. We'll end up with less total job creation. You have to be careful what you lobby for, and how it will be implemented!)

What was once a process over which government had visibility is now in the hands of the private sector, with firms that have historically discriminated on age, ethnicity, gender, etc.

I'm not saying I wouldn't trust Sam Altman. I just wouldn't trust most VCs with this task.

<comment><USER5> Down-voters: explain, please?

You don't think the experience from this type of policy being tried somewhere else is relevant? That it won't backfire?

<comment><USER6> The way you explained it, it seems you're blaming the VCs for something that was government's fault (it was the government's decision to cancel the old visas, instead of keeping them in parallel with the new one).

<comment><USER7> "Blame" is the wrong way to think about any major policy decision. Instead, you want to think of the _effects_ of the new policy - whether or not anyone intends to do harm (most people don't), will harm result? The grandparent poster's experience with a similar policy in Canada is very relevant there. I don't personally have a position about founder visas - I'm a U.S. citizen, so they don't affect me - but I do think that having all the arguments for and against, particularly concerning unintended consequences, is pretty important.

<comment><USER6> The way I understood the poster, the harm came from the government canceling the old investor visas. That seems pretty easy to fix: just add new visas on top of the old ones. The consequences of the way it happened were pretty clear: a bunch of people who previously would use the old investor visas (where you could put up your own money, I imagine) now can't. The effects of this decision shouldn't have been surprising to anyone.

<comment><USER7> The problem is that you and I don't control what the government does. Government stupidity is a reality that has to be factored into decision- making. And maybe there's a way around it in this case - perhaps whoever drafts & sponsors the Founder Visa law just needs to be aware of the potential pitfall and make everyone else involved aware of why there need to be separate founder & investor visas, most of the time stupid decisions are made because reasonable people don't have all the information necessary - but it's still really important to be aware of it so you don't create unintended consequences. Saying "Well, I had the right idea, it just turned out to be a disaster because of other people" doesn't stop it from being a disaster.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> The part of this that really worries me is that would-be founders, after making their pitch, are now waiting to find out if the investors have bestowed the right to live and work in the US upon them.

I understand that it is complicated. The US only takes about 1.2 million immigrants legally into the country every year, and because of our emphasis on family reunification, this means that startup founders may not get one of the spots.

If you make this about whether these folks should be allowed into the US, the answer (yes) is pretty simple, which is why some people think it is a simple question.

If you make this about whether a wealthy investor is now not only empowered not only to decide who gets money, but also who gets citizenship, it isn't nearly as obvious an answer. I would hope that people find the idea unsettling, no matter how high their regard is for the investors asking for this new power.

<comment><USER9> It shouldn't be the only way to get a (nonimmigrant in this proposal, incidentally) visa. But I really do believe it should be one way--it's hard to argue that more startups would hurt the economy.

I agree with you that there is a level of discomfort inherent in letting investors influence who gets visas, but honestly they know more about what startups have a chance at great success than government officers.

<comment><USER4> > _it 's hard to argue that more startups would hurt the economy._

It's not as clear that government subsidization of _your_ position would benefit the economy in the long-term, especially after more closely examining the beneficiaries of the majority of wealth extracted by VC startups.

It frightens that you seem to honestly believe that you -- specifically and individually -- deserve special privileges that not only will the rest of us equally hard-working, economy-growing, business-founding citizens not get, but that will make it that much harder for us to compete with your already privileged position.

<comment><USER6> I don't see any claims of "government subsidization" or "special privileges". I think this kind of visa would allow people to move to the US to start a company, on equal footing with "equally hard-working, economy-growing, business-founding citizens".

<comment><USER4> It's right there in the article. He's requesting that the government grant to YC:

1) An allotment of visas.

2) Control over the allocation of those visas

... _possibly_ to be extended to other venture capital firms (nobody else, of course, and certainly nobody self-funding a company with capital equivalent to that which YC provides). He's happy for YC to be the only beta tester for now, though.

<comment><USER6> How does this give special privileges to the recipients of those visas?

<comment><USER10> No, they're saying it gives special privilege to YC.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Yet another go-nowhere idea. Paul, et. al. apparently still haven't learned politics.

The 'startup visa' will happen when Paul, et. al. :

1\. realizes that access != power

2\. demonstrate power by having a group of people who have immigration reform as their top voting issue.

3\. stop thinking that sending mass emails is effective. Congress has good spam filters too.

4\. they need to put serious money behind it and even more serious time.

5\. they must make allies with the broader range of groups working to deal with the immigration issues.

6\. Lastly, they need to realize that the immigration issue gets solved for everyone or it doesn't get solved for anyone.

Before anyone argues with me: google "illegal immigration families broken up". Those people fighting to get their brother and sister, mother and father back. Those people have the power in the immigration fight.

Paul sitting around and arguing about 100 visas from an ROI perspective just demonstrates utter cluelessness about politics.

Hell, its not even a good pitch!

I predict the Startup Visa is DOA (again).

</comment><comment><USER12> After reading all this I guess for guys like me(Indian, staying in Bangalore) hopes of coming to US to do start up is impossible any way. The only real way is to build a start up(Which many of us already are working on) here, secure some millions of $'s in funding. But then if you have millions of $'s in a country like India, you are already a king. You can buy things and live a life no ordinary Indian can possibly imagine in their wildest dreams. 1 million dollars is 6,00,00,000 rupees- You can buy enough real estate to secure a rent income to never have you ever work again ever!

What pains me most is majority of the Indians getting Visa's are really the manager's pets kind of guys who find their way to US through sycophancy, then go and do the same there. There is tons of talent here which can generate all the jobs and taxes US needs who will never ever get a Visa. Unfortunately those guys will never touch US shores. At least not with Visa's to start companies there.

The Bangalore ecosystem is rich and overflowing with start up talent. A mixture of this and US start up ecosystem would just be unimaginable amazing.

</comment><comment><USER13> I have a counter-proposal: Paul Graham and others have described Y Combinator as large; many US-based entrepreneurs described San Francisco as far and a handful of comments here point out how concentration in one city is hurting everyone.

Why not start a Y Combinator in Europe and in Asia?

Yes, that would require flight tickets to visit from organisations, but that would also allow a better access to incredible initiatives (that keep yelling in unheard comments that Silicon Vally is neglecting them) such as London's Start-up Roundabout, Paris' The Family and certainly far more in Berlin, Copenhagen and Amsterdam. I can't imagine Singapour, Beijing and Hong-Kong and GuandDong have any less merits, certainly with hardware, or less things to learn from Y Combinator.

What both need is access to capital and access to expertise on how to make that kind of deals; what Y Combinator provides is a needed discipline about testing and scaling, and that. Both travel far better than the founders, who are best because of their network of skilled friends, understanding of local markets and more. Yes, it might require a standard contract to make European or Chinese company have a finance subsidiary in the US to reassure US investors… but dealing with that kind of complication is what YC is good at, much better than any local equivalent.

I would hate to see YC come and unify how to make start-ups. Diversity is key, certainly in something as creative as making companies happen. I was kind of relieved when I noticed no one wrote that idea. But also disappointed: it would be in YC spectacular interest to try.

</comment><comment><USER9> People seem to be trying to deliberately misunderstand my point.

1) I don't think this should just be for YC. I'm just volunteering to beta test it. I think we are very likely to show success, which would hopefully open it much more broadly. But I'd be very happy to do it together with other investors from the beginning. I feel that in general investors (YC included) are not doing enough to push this issue.

2) I do think that investors should get a say in who gets startup visas. This is no different than universities, big companies, or even the people who give out Oscars deciding who is qualified to get one.

<comment><USER4> > _1) I don 't think this should just be for YC. I'm just volunteering to beta > test it._

This gives you a massive advantage compared to those of us who aren't VCs and can't beta test it -- or founders that want to launch a company here, but lack your blessing.

> _But I 'd be very happy to do it together with other investors from the > beginning. I feel that in general investors (YC included) are not doing > enough to push this issue._

And what about those of us who don't sit in your privileged position, can't secure H1B visas, and our companies suffer as a result?

> _I do think that investors should get a say in who gets startup visas. This > is no different than universities, big companies, or even the people who > give out Oscars deciding who is qualified to get one._

In all of those cases, the type of visa is opened up to a _class_ of person who must be sponsored by a _class_ of organizations, not any one particular organization.

Additionally, the relationship between the visa sponsor and the applying individual in those circumstances is far, far, far less one-sided than it would be between potential founder and stake-holding VC.

<comment><USER14> >Additionally, the relationship between the visa sponsor and the applying individual in those circumstances is far, far, far less one-sided than it would be between potential founder and stake-holding VC.

I actually disagree with this statement - but agree with your point. There's a reason why mediocre colleges can successfully charge exorbitant amounts of money to rich international students, and it's not just the student:teacher ratio. The student visa and OPT in the US are extremely powerful tools which universities have both used and abused for many years.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> I fully appreciate the "reasonableness" of reducing the scope of what you're asking for, but (as I'm sure you're aware) the US Government is much more likely to grant 10,000 Startup Visas than to go through the process of granting 100 to 1 group. That's like, the opposite of how they work - it shows favoritism, it takes a lot of process for what seems like insignificant results (whether the USG produces significant results or not, their numbers are never in the hundreds of anything), etc.

I suggest continuing to pool resources and lobby for 10,000 - that is much more likely to yield results.

</comment><comment><USER16> If you want to write to policy makers in Washington then you should publish a well written Op-Ed in the WSJ, NYT or WaPo, not a blog post.

</comment><comment><USER17> Why only YCombinator? You're not proposing a solution to the problem here. You're proposing what YCombinator wants.

There are legitimate, promising founders and startups outside of YC too, you know. Sorry about the snark..it's just aggravating when piecemeal, self- serving solutions like this one are proposed.

</comment><comment><USER18> A little tongue-in-cheek, but to co-opt some general immigration/visa catch phrases:

1\. Why do we need to bring in immigrants to found companies? Do we have a shortage of Americans already here who also want to start companies?

2\. Or, is Start-up Founder one of those jobs, like picking cabbage, that Americans "just won't do"?

3\. Or, is it that American founders are demanding too much compensation?

<comment><USER12> I haven't ever visited US. So I can't give a answer from your perspective.

>>1\. Why do we need to bring in immigrants to found companies? Do we have a shortage of Americans already here who also want to start companies?

This is the equivalent of asking why large companies acquire start ups and don't in house innovate their way out to compete in the market.

The answer is, the existing inertia is difficult to change in big companies/countries. Plus people don't realize the importance of the opportunity they have in hand. Imagine if people are that desperate to come to US to just start a company, its obvious the thing called 'citizenship of the US' is a very prized opportunity which most US citizens don't realize.

>>2\. Or, is Start-up Founder one of those jobs, like picking cabbage, that Americans "just won't do"?

Starting up is difficult every where, but the US ecosystem is better in terms of the overall equation.

First world country, VC's, Infrastructure etc etc

<comment> lhc- Just to play devil's advocate, I'm not sure your answer to number 2 is relevant. Sure, the US probably has the best ecosystem for starting a country, but why would that lead to the idea that the US should let anyone who wants come here to use it? Norway has a great health care system, but that doesn't mean that they should allow anyone to emigrate there who is looking for good medical coverage.

Also, for number 1, I dont think thats a fair comparison. If anything, the recent startup culture in the US has proved that theres an enormous ability here for citizens to start their own companies and fight against large, slow moving corporations. Additionally, there is no shortage of US citizens trying to start companies, who are well aware of the advantages. It seems like your plea is more from the idea of "its not fair that the US is the best place for this, so they should allow everyone to try it", which just is not how US immigration policy works.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Some points on my mind:

a) Most adventurous student entrepreneurs don't really MUST need a founder visa, they can use OPT. I think founders of Stripe did that.

b) Most non-immigrants already working (mostly with H1 visa) needs a founder visa. To work on a startup you founded in H1b visa is hard, consider H1b visa needs some funding/salary requirement on your startup, and that is hard to get by on the early stage of a startup. Giving these people the visa may be important to the U.S. economy consider that group of budding founders are with the most experiences.

c) Maybe approval of founder visa won't be in the near future. Right now that is really tangled with other messes in the Immigration Act, which seems hopeless at the House in the stage.

d) Really +1 for founder visa. Can't afford to lose foreign entrepreneurs to Canada.

<comment><USER3> > _a) Most adventurous student entrepreneurs don 't really MUST need a founder > visa, they can use OPT. I think founders of Stripe did that._

Founder of Stripe here. Not disagreeing with anything you've said, but I feel I should point out that OPT is far from ideal: it doesn't last very long, it requires the job is related to the field of study, full-time work is permitted only during vacations prior to completion of a degree, etc. Still, it can be a useful stopgap in some cases, as you point out.

<comment><USER20> It's also a MASSIVE pain, and some schools (like mine) only allow OPT for internships (as opposed to CPT). As a result, I need to choose if I want to intern for my four years of college, or if I want to start a startup.

<comment><USER19> I agree with all of what you and Patrick said. Still most likely the student on OPT is in a much better position to start a startup than most people on H1b. Once you are hired by some company on H1b, you want to start your own startup? You need to prove your startup is viable (some funding constraint + providing prevailing wage for yourself I remember). But how you can have a viable startup that has not even been started? That kind of chicken-and-egg problem stuck tons of aspiring entrepreneurs on H1b.

Will really appreciate anyone here that can give some solution under current circumstances.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> It's crazy to me that countries like Chile are courting (read: begging) entrepreneurial talent and the US acts like we can throw a wall up around the country and pretend like that's still a good thing.

NOT allowing a few thousand talented, motivated, educated, english-speaking entrepreneurs seems foolish.

<comment><USER22> Many of the millions of unemployed US citizens/voters would argue that there are a few thousand talented, motivated, educated, english-speaking entrepreneurs in their ranks from which YC can choose.

<comment><USER21> Sure, I'd add that the experience of living in a place like Singapore or Accra changes the projects an entrepreneur attempts.

<comment><USER22> I am sure that is true. I was just pointing out that the goals and priorities of the US federal government and YC aren't always perfectly aligned.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> I know it's somehow all about meeting people in bars in Silicon Valley, but really, is it totally absolutely necessary to come and live in America to start a new world beating company?

I work remotely, and do a fair job with my colleagues. Other more talented people work and produce entire operating systems while on different continents, and if you are working on something more worthwhile and less fad driven than Facebook for dogs the surely surely you do not need a visa or a relocation.

And if it is better/faster/easier today, why can't that be a reality tomorrow?

<comment><USER24> The post is addressed to the US government. The US government by definition has the interests of America first and foremost in mind, not the interests of other countries. It is in America's interest to have all the world beating companies started in America.

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> I really wish there was an easier way to be allowed to work and live in the US as an entrepreneur. I completed both my Bachelor and Master degrees in the US (both as valedictorian) and work as an independent app developer. I have a vacation home and cars in the US but would love to stay there full time. Right now my best bet is looking like EB-5 unless I can get in on either EB-1 or EB-2. I wish they had some sort of VISA that let you freelance in the US/stay self employed as long as you met some sort of income or minimum tax requirements (for example your minimum taxable income must be $150k+/year).

</comment><comment><USER26> They did make it easier to get an H1B visa as an entrepreneur: [http://www.uscis.gov/eir/visa-guide/entrepreneur-visa- guide](http://www.uscis.gov/eir/visa-guide/entrepreneur-visa-guide)

I'm not sure if anyone's ever successfully received one, however.

More here: [http://www.murthy.com/2012/12/17/entrepreneur-h1b-petitions-...](http://www.murthy.com/2012/12/17/entrepreneur-h1b-petitions- a-new-option-for-start-up-companies/)

<comment><USER27> That USCIS guide is strange... it lists H1B only under "Nonimmigrant Visas" even though the H1B is dual-intent.

<comment><USER28> The H1B is a nonimmigrant visa. All dual intent means is that it doesn't violate the terms of entry if you also intend to pursue permanent residence at the same time -- but the H1B itself does not lead to permanent residence.

<comment><USER27> Thanks for the clarification.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> Here is a counter proposal: the government should approve this request, but stipulate that the immigrants relocate to somewhere other than silicon valley (so all of the created jobs don't end up in the once place where they aren't needed).

<comment><USER3> 1) You can't just allocate the startups in arbitrary locations and get the same result -- being in SV changes the outcome. (I've tried to start companies elsewhere.)

2) People benefit from Google, Facebook, Airbnb, etc., even if they're not in SV. The immediate job creation is a _tiny_ fraction of the wealth created by startups. It doesn't matter where Bell Labs was located; it just matters that they did what they did. Similarly, we should just focus on creating more Googles, not on which state's payroll taxes get the immediate boost.

<comment><USER30> If the issue really is that SV specifically needs more people to start companies, and having them do so elsewhere isn't possible or desirable, it seems like a first cut at solving the problem could be made without even changing visa regimes: just institute a program to convince more people from elsewhere in the U.S. to move to SV and start companies. With >300m people, most of whom don't yet live in the SF Bay Area, that's already a pretty large supply to draw from.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> I am pretty sure there are already mechanisms for the rich to buy US citizenship. EB-5. Secure funding for your start-up, boom you're a US citizen as soon as you invest in jobs, etc. in the US. The rich have their ways.

What if YC selected ~100 projects per year, gave each their $500k so they could buy their way in...

<comment><USER24> I doubt that is financially sustainable in any sense for YC, though.

</comment></comment><comment><USER32> As somebody who fought for a year to get an O1 visa (and an EB-1 green card, though that didn't quite work out), I can attest to the fact that the problem is not that it is an investor vs. a government official that is deciding whether one meets the criteria, but with the criteria themselves.

I had a top-notch immigration attorney, and a solid case. I was the first employee of a company that now employs north of a hundred engineers and generates tens of millions in tax revenue. By any definition of the phrase "individuals with an extraordinary ability in the sciences, education, business, or athletics," I am the kind of person that this visa was meant to attract: talent that results in a net gain for the country.

The problem isn't with the government employees who review the cases; the problem is with the criteria for the visa. It's stuck in a world where 40-year old academics were the innovators. Where instead of showing product traction, revenue, and ability to create businesses, you're expected to show published papers, academic awards, or inclusion in conference panels. Sure, these are still very valid reasons to want somebody to enter the US; but they shouldn't be considered the only reasons.

Quite a few very valuable companies were founded by mavericks, dropouts, or just people who stayed away from academia and instead worked on products. Elon Musk, Steve Jobs, Zuck, the WhatsApp guys, the Airbnb guys. None of these guys were academics. Some dropped out of college. None received nobel prizes, but many had shown previous entrepreneurial success. The visa requirements give this no consideration.

\--

The full list of requirements, of which you have to demonstrably meet at least three:

1\. Documentation of the individual's receipt of nationally or internationally recognized prizes or awards for excellence in the field of endeavor;

2\. Documentation of the individual's membership in associations in the field for which classification is sought, which require outstanding achievements of their members, as judged by recognized national or international experts in their disciplines or fields;

3\. Published material in professional or major trade publications or major media about the individual, relating to the individual's work in the field for which classification is sought, which shall include the title, date, and author of such published material, and any necessary translation;

4\. Evidence of the individual's participation on a panel, or individually, as a judge of the work of others in the same or in an allied field of specialization to that for which classification is sought;

5\. Evidence of the individual's original scientific, scholarly, or business- related contributions of major significance in the field;

6\. Evidence of the individual's authorship of scholarly articles in the field, in professional journals, or other major media;

7\. Evidence that the individual has been employed in a critical or essential capacity for organizations and establishments that have a distinguished reputation;

8\. Evidence that the individual has either commanded a high salary or will command a high salary or other remuneration for services, evidenced by contracts or other reliable evidence.

<comment><USER33> I hate to break it to you, but you clearly did not have a top-notch immigration attorney if they advised you that a O1 visa was the best visa for your circumstances.

The O1 is intended for people who are the _top_ of their fields; not just those that are good. It's for people like Yao Ming (sports) or Lupita_Nyong'o (arts) that we want to steal from other countries.

There were other visas that were more appropriate for your circumstances, (meaning easier to obtain) but generally simply being the first employee at a business doesn't amount to much, which is why you had to fight for it. (These other visa types are no longer available.) If you had been a founder or a C-suite officer, you might have been able to squeak in on a O1 [edit]without any hassle[/edit], but even that is doubtful--the EB series would have been a better path [edit] since EB review was more objective than the O1 review.[/edit]

<comment><USER34> The EB visas are basically identical to the O visas, except for two differences: 1) the requirements are slightly more stringent, and 2) they are considered immigrant visas, as opposed to non-immigrant. ie., they are green cards.

That said, I agree with you that the O1 was not a perfect fit for my situation, though I did end up receiving it, while being denied the EB-1. But I would challenge you to name another visa which would be more appropriate and give me a better shot. Consider the fact that while I was critical in creating a large business, I also did not have a completed college degree, or any capital of my own to invest in the US.

<comment><USER35> Don't go for EB-1, go for EB-2. It's a lot easier in terms of the documented requirements. Also, unless you are from China/India/Philippines there is no difference in wait time between the two.

<comment><USER36> There is also the National Interest Waiver for entrepreneurship for the EB-2 to further make the process easier: [http://www.uscis.gov/news/public- releases-topic/business-imm...](http://www.uscis.gov/news/public-releases- topic/business-immigration/employment-based-second-preference-immigrant-visa- category-frequently-asked-questions-regarding-entrepreneurs-and-employment- based-second-preference-immigrant-visa-category)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER37> I'd flip it. Rather than ask for 100 visas, ask for 100,000, then focus on the benefits. That's going to attract a lot more attention.

100,000 visas will be at least 200 Dropboxes. 100,000 visas will be at least 1 million jobs. 100,000 visa will be at least $500 billion in value. (figures completely made up, but the power of a big number is that statistics are on your side, and these can be estimated from past performance of immigrants. Bias will be there yes, but which way?)

Get a couple of tech entrepreneurs to 'guarantee' the 100,000 will deliver the goods with a $1 billion bet that at least five of that crowd will be part of a $1 billion company within 10 years.

And as others say - a visa is not enough, you need residency rights. Perhaps let the visa automatically flip to a green card after 2 years if the company that they found reached certain hurdles (value, revenue or vanity metrics).

But if you can't work or get residence in the USA, then come to New Zealand. We have a visa points system, have huge demand for ICT people and have great founder communities and companies. It's an incredible place to live, and when you cash out there are no capital gains taxes here.

</comment><comment><USER38> I wish government and big institutions in general were set up to allow testing of hypotheses like this. We'd all be better off, but I fear what would happen is one or two of those 100 visa people would do a company which fails (or succeeds somewhat), gets in some minor unrelated legal problem (bar fight, whatever), and then a politician uses it as an example of why immigration is bad to tar their opposition.

<comment><USER36> Oh, it's even worse than you think. The visa category (J-1) I investigated using for a similar proposal I pitched to 500 two years back is controlled by a small industry of academia-affiliated shops to place foreign students. DHS/USCIS farms out its selection process to these firms who have to sponsor applicants.

Under the letter of the law, I proposed using J-1 visas (Specialist or Trainee as appropriate, [http://j1visa.state.gov/programs](http://j1visa.state.gov/programs)) via 500 for at least for founders from countries exempt from the two-year mandatory return period. But the American Immigration Lawyers Association/American Immigration Council had a staffer who explained the way things really work to me in shooting down the proposal.

</comment></comment><comment><USER38> Would people feel better about this if YC donated their 7% stake in those 50 companies to a charity? That would more clearly separate out the "special privilege for a private company" part of this proposal from the "we're testing something of general applicability."

A domestic tech-industry/entrepreneurship inclusiveness effort, like 0-18yo STEM education, would be a good choice.

<comment><USER4> > _Would people feel better about this if YC donated their 7% stake in those > 50 companies to a charity?_

It would still be beneficial to YC directly and uniquely, and a special privilege, so no.

On top of which, there are _serious_ ethical concerns around a early-stage investors essentially controlling a founder's visa allocation and ongoing status.

<comment><USER36> And yes, there is also political opposition from the left centered around the extra control investors would have if they also determine the immigration status of a founder. I don't understand that opposition, but I've run into it a few times.

<comment><USER4> You don't understand the ethical concerns related to having a huge negotiating advantage granted and enforced by the US government?

You think that's a _leftist_ issue?

<comment><USER36> Ah, sorry, I wasn't clear. I've only heard that concern from political professionals on the left, not that the concern itself was associated with one side of the aisle or another.

And correct, I've never thought about the ethical concerns, so I'd be interested in your explanation. Most of the investors I've worked with in this space have already committed to invest in the startups dealing with immigration problems, and so their interest is to salvage their investment and stop it from being destroyed by the immigration system rather than negotiating the investment in the first place.

In my defense, "certified VC/angel" sponsorship is a hypothetical proposal that has very, very little traction in Congress, and that I've opposed in favor of broad capital requirements (e.g. the Moran amendment, which I supported: [http://www.moran.senate.gov/public/index.cfm/files/serve?Fil...](http://www.moran.senate.gov/public/index.cfm/files/serve?File_id=893ec36f-1426-4fcc-9bc1-cc452db54fa9) and some efforts by the US Chamber of Commerce that never made it into legislative language)

Thanks!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER39> Since everybody seems to be contributing ideas...I think immigration visas should be awarded on a point based system similar to what it is done in countries that are actively trying to attract immigrants. Education, Family ties, employment history, language, health, financial resources, etc. The current system looks at only one aspect exclusive of the rest.

</comment><comment><USER40> > _Many will fail, of course, but one could be the next Google, Facebook, > Airbnb, or Dropbox._

What makes you think the United States cares about the next Airbnb or Dropbox? The policies of the Federal government are a (non-deterministic) function of a lot of powerful interests and opinions, and many of those interests are directly opposed to anything that threatens their outdated business models. As if today's founders need any more reason to avoid doing business in the United States.

I would much rather prefer startup accelerators like YC to expand into other regions of the world. One season per year in the EU and another season in Southeast Asia would be fantastic. Granted, many of these regions don't have the advantage of the Bay Area's technical and human infrastructure, but is that really such an insurmountable problem? We're startups, goddammit, it's our job to do create things where none used to exist.

</comment><comment><USER41> YC has proven that it is capable of returning results that beat the market. Few other incubators are able to replicate the success of YC. As an incubator, it is an outlier. Is an outlier a good "control" sample to prove that this reform works?

Startup visa reform is a necessity, clearly. Founders have the opportunity to make a strong positive impact on jobs, etc. I'd love for YC to be able to work with additional talented founders. No question, I am all for giving YC access to founder visas.

Question: Would a successful beta program at YC prove that the program works? Or would it prove that YC works? If the latter, is there an alternative "beta" program that would be more representative necessary for large scale reform?

</comment><comment><USER42> The Obama administration has said that something like a founder visa will happen, but only as part of comprehensive immigration reform.

<comment><USER43> And this is why "comprehensive immigration reform" needs to be dumped. Visa and legalization are different issues and need to be considered on their own merits.

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> The system is so screwy. We have 50,000 visas a year given out in a lottery system to any high school graduate without a criminal record from any country except the 19 that send the most immigrants annually. 65,000 visas for brothers and sisters of US Citizens. No limit at all on spouse, minor children, and parents of US citizens 21 or older.

But only 41,000 professionals holding advanced degrees with job offers and labor certifications, of which no more than 2900 can be from any one country.

I'm all for more total immigration, but if we are going to have the status quo totals I'd much rather more EB-2s and fewer FB-4s, DVs, or even FB-IRs.

</comment><comment><USER44> "Startups are what the US is the best in the world at. We figure out new businesses faster than anyone else. It would be disastrous if that stopped being the case."

"Exploiting cheap labour is what <insert 3rd world country of choice here> is the best in the world at. We figure out how to exploit our economy and people faster than anyone else. It would be disastrous if that stopped being the case"

Maybe US is best about startups - but I believe that in the long run its toxic to everyone, including people involved in the process. Just because something seems like a disaster doesn't mean that it has to be one.

</comment><comment><USER45> Since August 2011 "Entrepreneurs H1B" is available. I had posted this commented just last week and I am adding this comment again. Here is my story:

I've started on this path just recently and believe me I am facing difficulties at every step, even the the ones I thought were most obvious. But again who said life was easy.

In case you are interested there are ways you can do business in the US on H-1B visa. Is it easy? Hell no! But in case you are still interested keep reading, feel free to reach out to me as I am going through this process right now.

Articles about Entrepreneur H1B:

\- [http://www.murthy.com/2012/12/17/entrepreneur-h1b-petitions-...](http://www.murthy.com/2012/12/17/entrepreneur-h1b-petitions- a-new-option-for-start-up-companies/)

\- [http://www.uscis.gov/news/public-releases-topic/business- imm...](http://www.uscis.gov/news/public-releases-topic/business- immigration/questions-answers-uscis-issues-guidance-memorandum-establishing- employee-employer-relationship-h-1b-petitions)

-[http://blog.uscis.gov/2011/08/encouraging-entrepreneurs-and-...](http://blog.uscis.gov/2011/08/encouraging-entrepreneurs-and-high.html)

\- [http://www.uscis.gov/eir/visa-guide/entrepreneur-visa- guide](http://www.uscis.gov/eir/visa-guide/entrepreneur-visa-guide)

Further reading:

\- [http://blog.fosterquan.com/2012/12/09/the-sweet-smell-of- suc...](http://blog.fosterquan.com/2012/12/09/the-sweet-smell-of- success-h-1b-visas-for-entrepreneurs/)

Success story of Vishal Shah from Traffio:

\- [http://www.nextbigwhat.com/how-to-startup-in-silicon- valley-...](http://www.nextbigwhat.com/how-to-startup-in-silicon-valley-297/)

Business Entity:

\- [http://www.dailymotion.com/video/x12qxuo_how-to-open-a- busin...](http://www.dailymotion.com/video/x12qxuo_how-to-open-a-business-in- us-types-of-business-entities_travel)

</comment><comment><USER46> My proposal would instead be a pair of visas: A proper "Entrepreneur Visa," that is similar to the existing EB-category ones that require your company to have received a certain threshold of funding. However, I think this funding should be tuned by industry, and typically, _any_ level of funding is good, so this should be low. If necessary, a clause stipulating maximum percentage of non-US hires (or additional taxes/fees if otherwise) should be ok.

More importantly, an "Entrepreneur Trial" visa should be in place. This should be a 1-year visa, which should just require a few letters of recommendation, qualification in the field (academic degree or equivalent work experience from any country), and function like an OPT. The earlier mentioned visa (the Entrepreneur visa) should be made trivially obtainable (quick filing of paperwork) by an applicant who is on the Trial visa if he fulfills the minimum funding requirement. Preferably the trial visa has a system to petition for an extension of 6-12 months.

This is still very much limiting the options for an immigrant founder, but of course, we can't assume they will ever have as much freedom as a US person when trying to bend the rules of life. It would still be nice to have _some_ options that don't involve trying to bend over backwards and lick someone else's rearside to be allowed to contribute to the economy.

</comment><comment><USER47> No. No visas. If we want these people, give them a green card.

I'm tired of watching the games around immigrant visas.

</comment><comment><USER48> Could a weird sort of setup be created where YCombinator "hired" entrepreneurs and then gave them traditional work visas? I'm not really familiar with the specifics of how visas work, but I would think it would be possible to construct a situation such that the desired founders would be eligible.

</comment><comment><USER49> As an O1 status holder, this does make sense, especially for PhD founders (PhDs are supposed to be the top of their own field). O1 approval is fast (premium processing is about two weeks). In my experience, document preparation is depending on two major factors: 1\. applicant's records such as media coverage, publications/citations, reference letters, and awards. I fortunately accumulated some evidences for each of these when doing my PhD. I only have less than half of reference letters compared to my friends who got their EB1, so I think media and awards could be equally important. 2\. experienced attorney who can put together a 2-inch-thick document in a short time (of course, it depends on the applicant to gather the materials).

</comment><comment><USER50> A founder's visa should be opened up to a class of people. In this beta testing case, it would be open to a class of people who get selected with YC or are interested in YC. That's a very limited view from a governance perspective. The only ones who should have such power are USCIS and Consulate Officers. USCIS should work with incubators for the judging criteria. There should be another criteria for start ups who want to go without a sponsoring incubator as well.

In addition, not sure what the visa status will be during the three month funding cycles. That alone limits a lot of options. A F-1 student or a H1B employee cannot create a start up and apply to YC even though they are in US because they can't leave their status for 3 months.

</comment><comment><USER51> "Maybe he was too ambitious in asking for 10,000 startup visas per year." hmm, lowering expectations a couple of orders of magnitude for a highly selective group? i'm a fan of YC and all, and agree that it'll probably end up being the cream of the crop thus a great likelihood to succeed, but i really do wish this issue was tackled properly - its so painful. I'd personally love to build something here (happily even with my own capital) but can't. I appreciate the call for action, though, but man - trying to immigrate here is rough.. when the conversation becomes 'let us just prove it with 100', while time keeps ticking on.. i wonder if anything will really happen.

</comment><comment><USER52> How about just giving them a visa if they can secure VC funding in the United States enough to support them in their efforts for a year or two.

Also reforming the h1b visa might help, since most immigrants are highly motivated to start their own businesses ... allowing h1bs more easily start businesses (currently you have to have someone, an American citizen, have some sort of controlling interest in your business for it to be a viable means of employment), have time after losing a job to find another one (currently you have to leave immediately after you're fired/laid off).

</comment><comment><USER53> This is a JOKE. Let Y Combinator? Oh yeah, bro? Wow. If the US were to give ONE company this right, that would be complete b _llsh_ t. I like YC, but think before you speak.

<comment><USER54> Definitely disagree. 'sama has clarified that he meant YC would volunteer to beta test it. Probably the fairest way would be for govt to take applications and select X at random.

</comment></comment><comment><USER55> I wonder how many of the negative commenters on this thread are either citizens or permanent residents. I don't see why a techie who is not yet a citizen or permanent resident of US, and wants to be one, would be so negative about this proposal.

At worst this can lead to a few lucky immigrant founders who get free visas, but at best, this can do a lot of good to the country in terms of creating new jobs, and to the startup ecosystem (and to YC -- so what!).

<comment><USER56> Mercifully, foreigners don't elect our legislators.

<comment><USER11> Thanks to Citizen United that allows corporations ( "corporations are people, too, my friend" \- Mitt Romney)

Yes foreigners can influence our politics

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER57> >If founders from elsewhere want to pay taxes and create jobs in the US, we should let them.

Spot on.

>This is just a start. We are also in need of broad-based immigration reform, and I believe more immigrants will help our country.

This is really what needs to happen. Shameless plug, I'm on the code squad at [http://fwd.us](http://fwd.us) and this is what we're trying to do.

I think Sam is doing great work advocating to bring more founders here to the U.S.

</comment><comment><USER58> I think this is a good idea for investor and tech entrepreneurs (building a business in US opens a ton of capital opportunities), but I think it's fundamentally at odds with immigration and popular opinion, and thus the effect on policy, in the United States.

Here's the argument:

The US is tough on immigration because supposedly immigrants will take American jobs. American people - which we'll broadly define as the "middle class" who statistically speaking don't have these tech skills - don't want this. Why would they want foreigners taking their jobs? It makes no sense. Thus they will vote, or have political influence, tending to enact policy that is tough on immigration.

Founder visas for tech companies with the intention of creating jobs does not change this, because it creates _tech_ jobs. Middle class America can't fulfill this in meaningful-enough numbers for there to be any positive political influence.

"Let us show you what we can do with 100 visas. This will be measurable, and in 5 years, we can tell you exactly how many jobs get created."

This won't matter much until jobs get created in large enough numbers for the middle class. What's important though will be (and it's hard to tell if this is the case) a "trickle-down" effect, where these relatively small number of tech jobs created lead to the creation of other jobs that have a meaningful impact. EDIT - an example that comes to mind is Homejoy, which creates more maid jobs... but boy oh boy can this sort of thing sound like inequality ("let foreign founders come in to make web services turning Americans into maids!").

Think about it - even if a new Google pops up in the next 5 years - that's 25K jobs. Drop in the ocean. 2.2M jobs were created in 2012; let's say in 5 years 10M jobs are created. 25K new tech jobs for a new Google represents a difference of 0.25%. I guess that's something - but how many of those 25K jobs will be filled by American citizens?

In short - there's absolutely no reason not to have a founder visa like proposed. That would be sweet. But from the policy makers' perspectives, it doesn't look like there's a compelling enough reason to change the status quo. If anything it's just easy to paint as "let rich investors bring in foreign engineers to build new websites and apps". Doesn't really resonate.

Feel free to point out flaws in this argument, it would probably help the OP's cause. I made my post purposely cynical, because these are the sort of opinions and spins that will need to be addressed.

</comment><comment><USER59> Btw if anyone needs complex (and which isn't) representation, Rajat Kuver is a super cool dude with offices in Palo Alto and Cupertino. Also a law prof. (Super cool, like it says on the tin.)

[http://www.advancedimmigrationsolutions.com/ourservices.php](http://www.advancedimmigrationsolutions.com/ourservices.php)

</comment><comment><USER60> Conquer a new land, send thousands of people, nearly exterminate the native population, put up walls so nobody else can get in.

Sounds legit.

</comment><comment><USER61> I am not sure why YC should get the opportunity to get 100 entrepreneurs get startup visas.

Why not open the level playing field and allow ANY entrepreneur to get such a visa? There are plenty of Dropbox / Airbnb companies that are getting built, going public or getting sold outside of YC.

</comment><comment><USER62> I recently wrote a piece about this issue: How I hacked my US startup visa [http://qz.com/151333/how-i-hacked-my-us-startup- visa/](http://qz.com/151333/how-i-hacked-my-us-startup-visa/)

</comment><comment><USER63> Did we really run out of Americans who are capable of being founders?

<comment><USER64> Do you live on this planet? It's about competitiveness. It's not just about being able to be a founder, if there is a foreigner doing the same product with more success, the American's startup will eventually die. So foreign countries can get all the best talent with their flexible visa systems, including Americans, while America only has access to local talent. That's not really pro-American...

</comment></comment><comment><USER65> What are the qualifications for such a visa? Would this be for founders who have already secured funding (and thus their own salary)?

<comment><USER66> The qualification is acceptance into YC as a founder.

> So here is a proposal for the US government: please let Y Combinator help > allocate up to 100 visas to founders per year.

</comment></comment><comment><USER67> Why would Y-Combinator deserve this special treatment by the US government? Since when does money == oversight?

</comment><comment><USER16> What visas are being mainly used now?

</comment><comment><USER53> Hey, sam, great idea... how about you ask the US to give these 100 visas to ANOTHER firm first, if you really believe it. Otherwise, you sound like a selfish douche.

<comment><USER9> I actually ran the idea by a few other firms and they didn't seem quite as interested in international founders as we are.

We're willing to do the work on this. If others are, that'd be fine with us too. We just don't want to wait 5 more years for anything to happen.

<comment><USER38> I suspect davemcclure/500 Startups would be totally on board with this; they're almost MORE international focused than YC is.

<comment><USER68> Almost more international == just a little less international

<comment><USER38> I meant almost in the sense of "possibly", as in YC is international in the range of 0.2-0.4 and 500 is in the range 0.25 - 0.45 or something. And that YC still has a greater number/quality of international startups, even if 500 has a greater percentage, partially because YC has been around longer and has had a few big successes (Team Ireland at Stripe is worth more than all of 500 combined, and possibly more than TechStars, although Digital Ocean might test that).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER69> Sam Altman's assumption is that the US government reasonable. :)

<comment><USER70> And that VCs are reasonable.

</comment></comment><comment><USER71> Visas? you are talking about bringing in people from other countries to start companies here right? Is this because there is not enough founders born in the US? Wow, I go to a coffee shop in bay area and everyone there assumes that I am some kind of startup founder. Everyone is talking about their company they started and asks their neighbors what they are founding. IT is really quite annoying. We really need more of this? I guess the more that is thrown against the wall, the more has a chance of sticking huh? What about those imports who make it, thwarting the native born competitor's company by a small margin? Now you have hurt the native for a ever so slightly better product or perhaps one that just made it to market slightly earlier. 10,000 more startups a year than now? Really? This can't be good.</comment>


In a First, Square Tops $100M in US Sales in One Day - <AUTHOR> http://www.wired.com/2014/12/square-100m-sales/

<comment><USER2> _noting that this kind of sales volume ranks it as the 13th largest U.S. retailer by annual sales_

Statements like this are very misleading. Square isn't a retailer, it is a payment processor. The real question is how Square compares against other card processors, both terminal POS based and mobile reader based?

Alternatively, how much of the market has Square actually taken, and what is their current growth rate? Without knowing pertinent numbers, Square topping $100m after 5 years of operations could be evidence of a damning failure (I'm not saying it is, but rather that we do not have nearly enough data to know).

Edit: grammar

</comment><comment><USER3> I wish I were an insider so I could see the breakdown of how longtail their business is.

What was the largest contributing business' amount for the day?

I got an email from Square because I bought chocolate at a coffee shop via square.

</comment><comment><USER4> For comparison, the market leader, First Data, processes about 50x that. $5B per day. Still, not bad.

<comment><USER5> Furthermore, First Data owns Clover, the other POS system you've been seeing at your local coffee shop.</comment></comment>


Show HN: resume.md: a Markdown resume - <AUTHOR> https://mike.place/2020/resume.md/ <comment><USER2> See also markdeep [0] which extends markdown, has various templates including resume and commands are mentioned to get pdf version from command line.

[0] [https://casual-effects.com/markdeep/](https://casual- effects.com/markdeep/)

</comment><comment><USER3> Cool, I might try that out tomorrow. The link [https://jsonresume.org/themes/](https://jsonresume.org/themes/) doesn't seem to work by the way.</comment>


YouTube downloader for macOS - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/onmyway133/YoutubeDownloader <comment><USER2> Seems just to be a GUI layer for youtube-dl.</comment>


A billing system that doesn't suck (or, Why Floating Point Numbers Are Bad) - <AUTHOR> http://blog.plover.com/prog/Moonpig.html#fp-sucks

<comment><USER2> tl;dr

</comment><comment><USER3> tl;dr

</comment><comment><USER4> tl;dr

</comment><comment><USER5> tl;dr

</comment><comment><USER6> tl;dr

</comment><comment><USER7> > In any event, the print here does not print the correct number of seconds. > Instead it prints ME CAGO EN LA LECHE, which I have discovered is Spanish > for "I shit in the milk".

Dear long-ago author... If you're going to write a programming post about potential bugs and unexpected pitfalls, _do not lie to your readers_ about the "true behavior" in order to make an extremely lame joke.

This is doubly-true when you're talking about _perl_...</comment>


TensorFlow: Machine Learning on Heterogeneous Distributed Systems (2015) [pdf] - <AUTHOR> https://static.googleusercontent.com/media/research.google.com/en//pubs/archive/45166.pdf <comment><USER2> As the primary author of Gorgonia[0], thank you for this. I've never read this. It's a fascinating read about the thought processes that go into creating TensorFlow.

One particularly interesting thing is that it looks like Tensorflow started earlier than I thought (I've always thought Gorgonia predated Tensorflow (I started a few months before giving this talk[1], but only announced it one year later[2])).

3 years later, TensorFlow is super feature packed, and I'm still trying to drive adoption for my lib. Oh well.

[0] [https://github.com/gorgonia/gorgonia](https://github.com/gorgonia/gorgonia)

[1] [https://speakerdeck.com/chewxy/deep-learning-in-go-or- shenna...](https://speakerdeck.com/chewxy/deep-learning-in-go-or-shennanigans- with-matrices)

[2] [https://speakerdeck.com/chewxy/gorgonia-primitives-for- build...](https://speakerdeck.com/chewxy/gorgonia-primitives-for-building- neural-networks-in-go)

</comment><comment><USER3> I remember this guy! I put together some notes and annotations for it when it came out. Some people found them useful back then- I'll leave them here in case other people can make use of them.

[https://github.com/samjabrahams/tensorflow-white-paper- notes](https://github.com/samjabrahams/tensorflow-white-paper-notes)

</comment><comment><USER4> One of the authors here. Working on TensorFlow has been quite a trip!

Here's a followup paper submitted to Usenix:

[https://www.usenix.org/system/files/conference/osdi16/osdi16...](https://www.usenix.org/system/files/conference/osdi16/osdi16-abadi.pdf)

And here's a very recent publication detailing just the flow control aspects (conditionals, while loops):

[https://dl.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=3190551](https://dl.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=3190551)

</comment><comment><USER5> I just had a quick glance through the paper and felt they didn't worry too much about explaining the hardware architecture.

<comment><USER6> Are you mixing this up with TPUs? Tensorflow is HW independent, as it is just a SW library.

<comment><USER5> I think you are right. Sorry, my bad! I remember the TPU paper Google had released last year (2017) circa March/ April, on performance evaluation of TPU's. Got a bit messed up.</comment></comment></comment>


Amazon lays foundation for giant video advertising business - <AUTHOR> http://www.cnbc.com/id/101393303 <comment><USER2> This article is just blogspam. The actual story is here:

[http://recode.net/2014/02/05/amazon-lays-foundation-for- gian...](http://recode.net/2014/02/05/amazon-lays-foundation-for-giant-video- advertising-business)</comment>


iOS 11's new App Store boosts downloads by 800% for featured apps - <AUTHOR> https://techcrunch.com/2018/04/20/ios-11s-new-app-store-boosts-downloads-by-800-for-featured-apps/ <comment><USER2> That's probably because it is almost impossible to even _find_ things that are _not_ on one of their (pretty arbitrary) top-5 lists, or things that use their paid-for Search Ads.

Their search lacks even basic filtering, which would have been sad after 1 year of store development, much less over a decade.

I had to add my app's _own name_ to my limited-length list of search keywords because _Apple's default search wasn't even finding it when searching by name_. Pure trash, especially considering their 30% cut and overall bank.</comment>


The people formerly known as informed - <AUTHOR> http://www.roughtype.com/archives/2007/09/the_people_form.php

<comment><AUTHOR> I think his conclusions are perhaps off - reddit/digg/etc aren't "wise crowds" in terms of how the book describes them. Rather than independently voting, it's a cascade - most people only vote on things that have already been voted up by a lot of people.

It's interesting reading the snippets of the article he quotes, though.

</comment><comment><USER2> His conclusions are off.

First, for his evidence he is using a study from the Project for Excellence in Journalism. Do you think the study might be biased? The crowd mentality threatens the entire profession of Journalism (I'm not saying it's going away, but they are less and less in control of what people read hear and see).

Second, he argument assumes the dividing line is "hard news" vs. "soft news" when it is really "I care" or "I don't." The problem is that nobody cares what's on the news. If we are to believe the study, the news is more consistent in what it shows. That means they are showing us the same thing over and over again. People care about things that are relevant to them or that provide some form of entertainment. Surprisingly, the mainstream news is just picking up on the fact that their product at the very best under-serves the needs of their market.

Third, the article paints the mainstream media as "informed" and everyone else as "uninformed." No bias there. Even if we assume they are right, it just points out that they aren't providing their customers with the information they want. If Google can target ads to me based on search, how come news can't be tailored to my desires.

Finally, the crowd based sites know the mainstream news exists. They don't have to cover the Iraq war for the 10,000,000,000th time. That's what the news is for. If you wanted to see information about Iraq you'd go to a mainstream news distribution channel. Haven't they considered that maybe there is no reason to rehash those stories already beaten to death in the mainstream media?

</comment><comment><USER3> I have to beg to differ big time here. Just because people choose other interests than the media doesn't make the news dumb. For one thing, the reports of the media of allegedly important events are usually not that informative: usually they milk a subject for as much as possible, typically by endless repetitions of hollow facts. I doubt anybody would be able to understand what is going on in Irak just by watching the news, for example. Also, arguably many allegedly important topics don't bear any relevance to the average person at all. Like if some other state has been flooded, that information is pretty useless to me, unless I was just about to travel there.

Rather than concluding that crowds are dumb, perhaps the media should take this study as an incentive to rethink their program.

</comment><comment><USER4> This article completely misses the point of social news -- it is news people WANT to read, not news you think people should read for their own good.</comment>


Check you're wearing trousers first - <AUTHOR> http://robertheaton.com/2013/04/01/check-youre-wearing-trousers-first/ <comment><USER2> Yes, 100%.

One thing I've enjoyed so far about being a contractor (but not a consultant) is that even as a relatively junior developer, I get to see the dirty internals of many different companies, and spot patterns between them. This is one of them.

I've been at companies that decided to switch to hot new NoSQL distributed fault-tolerant join-free key-value vector clock databases, when really they only needed to add a couple of indexes to a few heavily-queried fields. I've seen language switches and full re-architectures based on perceived performance problems, but the complexities of the new architecture made request latencies _worse_ (c.f. <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second- system_effect>).

The best approach I've seen so far is described as 'list, rank, iterate'. Profile your problems aggressively, rank the issues in descending order of importance, and greedily work your way down the list, fixing them.

<comment><USER3> If there's one thing that drives me potty it's people who claim that mysql is too slow for their requirements (usually low-medium traffic website), then I look at their implementation and see no indexes on non primary-key fields.

Before NoSQL was a thing, I saw people break their data out into 1000s of .txt files to get around this.

<comment><USER4> There are so many good reasons to avoid MySQL that one shouldn't even need to bring up speed.

<comment><USER5> Agreed but in this case "mySQL" meant "SQL" (vs. NoSQL).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Nice post.

Whenever I run into a fresh technical problem, I often think of this:

"Why does Grandma remove the chicken's legs when she makes soup?"

Aunt Dorothy: "It's easier to cut the chicken when it's cold that when it's hot."

Uncle Bob: "Greater surface area better infuses the broth with fat."

Aunt Sue: "To allow the dark meat and white meat develop flavor on their own."

Aunt Jean: "Smaller pieces allow the chicken to cook faster and more thorougly."

Grandma: "So that it fits in the pot."

<comment><USER7> There's an even more effective version of this story that ends with grandma saying something like "back when I was a girl, we couldn't afford a big enough pot."

<comment><USER8> It's probably apocraphyl: <http://www.snopes.com/weddings/newlywed/secret.asp>.

<comment><USER9> Perhaps the word you are thinking of is _apocryphal_. But I do like what the spelling _apocraphyl_ implies--it sounds like some kind of plant compound. May I borrow this spelling?

<comment><USER10> This should be the name of the pigment that imbues those cheap bunches of flowers at the local deli with their artificially bright neon petals.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> _It's a pleasant delusion to believe that all our problems require hard solutions._

Love this! So true.

I'll never forget my first job out of college, a Senior Developer told me something along the lines of "Nothing we do is cutting edge. You will almost never need anything more sophisticated than brute force algorithms and database I/O." And yet we managed to create some pretty cool products for our users. Good article.

</comment><comment><USER12> The "STOP SPENDING SO MUCH MONEY ON HELICOPTERS AND MANAGEMENT CONSULTANTS" line reminded me of this piece, from the excellent Armando Iannucci Shows:

[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MSJggp- mbiA&t=50s](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MSJggp-mbiA&t=50s)

<comment><USER13> This is surprisingly entertaining.

<comment><USER14> That show was great. Not as well known as it should be because it had the bad luck of premiering on 9/11/2001.

Ianucci also made The Thick of It, which you should really watch if you haven't seen it. One of the best pieces of political satire ever made.

<comment><USER15> If you haven't seen Yes Minister/Yes Prime Minister, you really should. 30 years on and still great political satire.

<comment><USER16> There's some fantastic parts like the bit about leading questions: <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G0ZZJXw4MTA>

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Excellent post.

The first question I ask myself, as an engineer approaching a new problem, is "How can I cheat? What's the 90% solution that will take 10% of the time?" (The next question is, "Is 90% enough?").

I'm always surprised by engineers who don't think this way.

<comment><USER18> I think this is the essence of the phrase "a good programmer is a lazy one."

<comment><USER19> The three qualities of any great programmer: laziness, impatience, and hubris.

(From The Camel Book (Programming Perl) in about 1990 or '91, from memory)

<http://www.hhhh.org/wiml/virtues.html>

<comment><USER20> It ain't hubris when it's objectively true. :-)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> Working on trouser-color problems is also a form of procrastination. It's much more "fun" to tackle big problems with lots of code that will get Big Results.

I always try to start my day with something really boring and basic for this reason - Things like "Add X to DB class" are tedious, but they help bootstrap my brain into a place where I can tackle the bigger problems (if I need to).

<comment><USER22> That's a great technique. It's a good application of most prolific writers' advice about writer's block: just write, dammit!

I've taken it as a sign that I am officially "old" that this article was stunningly obvious. I remember being introduced to a profiler and similar instrumentation techniques by my first software engineering mentor.

Value, including your reputation, is built on applying intellectual leverage to get results that are faster and larger than expected.

The quick fixes (low hanging fruit) buy time to gedankenversuch your big architectural solution, so you can apply your critical mind to tearing it down, rebuilding it, boiling the ocean for tea, and tearing it down again while washing your underarms in the shower[1]. With a new team, it builds trust so that "rudely" doesn't come into it when you open the topic.

[1] This is the leading cause of having to jump back into the shower because I forgot to rinse.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> Great post. It's a trap I tend fall into myself far to often. And it's the same direction as DHH's famous rant about winning in Vegas.

It's a virtue too rarely seen, that you should try to solve a problem with the minimal set of code possible.

Everything should be as simple as possible., but not simpler. (Sometimes attributed to Albert Einstein, even if he probably never uttered the exact words)

<comment><USER24> Thanks, I had to look up that article, and it's definitely a good one:

[http://37signals.com/svn/posts/3384-winning-is-the-worst- thi...](http://37signals.com/svn/posts/3384-winning-is-the-worst-thing-that- can-happen-in-vegas)

Edit: discussion on Hacker News

<https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5002454>

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> I enjoyed this article and I agree with the main point it makes. I want to quibble about a smaller point, which is that intuition is not always a reliable guide.

The author gives a few examples where they got stuck in and fixed the "obvious" problems. My experience is that what is a problem is not always obvious. Furthermore, while the big wins might be obvious, you'll miss many small wins if you're not carefully tracking stats. These are the main lessons of A/B testing.

<comment><USER26> The whole point of the article is "don't A/B test (or do anything else fancy) until you run out of obvious problems."

<comment><USER25> Sorry, let me be clearer. What I may believe to be an obvious problem may not actually be a problem for customers. What may be an obvious problem for customers may not be an obvious problem for me. Intuition is often wrong.

<comment><USER26> There's no impassible wall between you and your customers. Watch a few of them use your product. If 80% of them stumble somewhere-- _that's_ an obvious problem.

It didn't take Chi-square analysis for Microsoft to notice that nobody could figure out how to start a program in Windows 95; they just sat down and watched a few people, and it was suddenly very clear that they needed a big arrow pointing to the start button.

<comment><USER25> Agreed!

Generating hypotheses often involves qualitative techniques. Validation must be quantitative.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> One accurate measurement is worth a thousand expert opinions.

You'd be surprised how many big strategic decisions are made on top of a mountain of opinions. Try to be guided by what _is happening_ not what _should_ happen.

</comment><comment><USER28> While I get the point of the article, I have to say that nearly every time I run split-testing or multivariate testing I am surprised at the results. Honestly, at this point I'm somewhat convinced that sites that are uglier convert better.

So while I agree that a lot of things we can overcomplicate, it's not safe to say "Just go with your intuition." It doesn't have to be as cut and dry as "once users get 10 friends they keep coming back," but don't use that as an excuse to not look at your data.

<comment><USER29> Chances are that's just because your data is insufficient or non-independent, but I do agree that intuition isn't the be-all. A big problem with multivariate testing is explaining your results, which is a huge time sink for low or negative gains - see the other post about hero images, for example.

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> If you're just a dude or a small start-up then sure, avoid analysis paralysis. But if you work at a bigger company, you have to test and bring in data to make changes -- otherwise, your stuff will lose out to other priorities.

<comment><USER31> also, you need to measure and test to know whether it worked, and thus to move quickly on to the next problem. If you can't demonstrate that a problem is solved, you'll likely be told to keep working on it long after it stopped being the most pressing issue.

</comment></comment><comment><USER32> I don't think these solutions are simple. I personally consider the highly technical solutions far more simple, since there are scientific properties like falsifiability, lower bounds etc. that you can use to analyze these kinds of problems.

On the other hand for the problems written about in the article there are no such methods known. Thus they are far more complicated. The only property that enables us to apply them in our world is that our society brainwashes people into common sense (which is far, far away from good solutions; common sense only delivers solutions that barely work).

So I still believe (more than ever) that hard problems require hard solutions. But I define "hard solutions" differently than the article.

</comment><comment><USER33> My dad worked his way up (several companies) from being an engineer to a technical manager and most of his success was from repeating 'keep it simple' at key junctures, so far as I can tell.

</comment><comment><USER34> In short, identify the problem, solve it. Not, choose a technology that you like and hope it's going to solve your vaguely defined problem.

</comment><comment><USER35> "He says, there are no easy answers! I say, he's not looking hard enough!" Bart Simpson

</comment><comment><USER36> Okay, I'm gonna take a huge karma hit for this, but I had flashbacks to slashdot mentality here:

"But I wear a kilt you insensitive clod!"

</comment><comment><USER37> Want happy blog readers? Check you're not hijacking peoples back button first!

(Just kidding, it was a great read apart from that!)

</comment><comment><USER38> TLDR:

Occam Razor

TLDR2: Better simple than easy</comment>


WebM videos on the web can be done in under 300KB thanks to VP9 encoding - <AUTHOR> https://blog.kentonvizdos.com/til-2-how-to-add-a-transparent-video-to-a-web-page/ <comment><USER2> Getting a NET::ERR_CERT_DATE_INVALID error message in chrome when I try to look at the page.</comment>


Twitter: Nothing to Report Just Yet - <AUTHOR> http://blog.twitter.com/2009/02/nothing-to-report-just-yet.html

<comment><USER2> I'd really like to see what they come up with. What about taking on live-chat for support? Or, aggregating tweets to create a naturally optimized FAQ? Anybody else have ideas?

</comment><comment><USER3> Well, I shouldn't be shocked, but Twitter really gets "PR" in the new age.</comment>


Awesome CSS Image Slider that you can use for free - <AUTHOR> http://cssdeck.com/item/308/awesome-rotating-css-image-slider

<comment><USER2> At first I had no idea what I'm looking for. Some buttons that don't work, image that does something on rollover, nothing else.. when I was about to close the page, it changed. Very confusing. And this was in Chrome which I tried as a last resort. In Opera it does absolutely nothing.

<comment><USER3> Opera and IE do not support CSS3 animations.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> I did not make the item but would like to know how is it broken ? It looks fine in my latest chrome (18.0.1025.151) and FF 11.

Full View URL - [http://cssdeck.com/item/preview/308/awesome-rotating-css- ima...](http://cssdeck.com/item/preview/308/awesome-rotating-css-image-slider)

Any screenshots or videos (can make one with screenr.com) would be helpful. I would like to know whether it is a problem related to the item or to the website.

</comment><comment><USER4> Maybe I'm just old... or it's too early in the morning... but this effect played with my eyes & mind a bit, and not in a good way.

</comment><comment><USER5> Im seeing vertical and horizontal scroll bars in the slider div area, not really what I was expecting.

<comment><USER3> try full view

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> I'm using the latest chrome and this website is unusable. For a page designed to give me advice on how to make better web pages, it does about 100% less working than I would expect.

<comment><USER3> can you explain on how the website is unusable ? The website does work fine in Chrome, FF, Opera, IE9+.

Please tell me more (with screenshots if possible), will be helpful. Thanks!

<comment><USER6> <http://i.imgur.com/WBNjE.png> is an image that shows a big part of the problem. It adds vert and horiz scroll bars. That means some buttons which you may need are hidden. When you scroll down to use the buttons, they just move the page to a hash anchor it appears. This is really bad. If I made this, I would take it down and not show people.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Nifty and all, but there is a lot to be said for picking the right tool for a job. Unfortunately, ~600 lines of css seems a bit excessive to achieve this effect.

</comment><comment><USER8> I'm using Chrome 18.0.1025.152 m and it's incredibly buggy and unusable! It might just be me though, I've been having a lot of problems with Chrome recently

<comment><AUTHOR> I'm on 18.0.1025.162 and it works fine for me. Can you show me a screenshot or a video/screencast (using screenr) of how it performs in your browser?

<comment><USER9> I'm on Chrome in OSX and it's also buggy for me, but um... in another thread, you said that it only works in Opera, Safari and Firefox?

Is it supposed to work in Chrome?

<comment><AUTHOR> My bad, it only works in Chrome*, Safari and Firefox. What is buggy in it? can you show me a vid?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Using Chrome as well and I thought it was broken but then I tried it in Firefox and it looks the same. So my guess is it just looks broken to most of us.

</comment><comment><USER11> As cool as it looks, I disagree with the idea of doing the animation in the CSS doc... dont know why. Maybe I am just wrong or stuck in the past :¬)

<comment><USER12> I find the concept cleaner than doing it javascript but I had to admit that when I look to the source code, it looks a bit weird to me too.

Maybe we need some kind of CSS framework for animations, which will simplify all animations in the same way Jquery abstracts the DOM.</comment></comment>


DD9 Kaypro Edition - <AUTHOR> http://www.chrisfenton.com/dd9-kaypro-edition/ <comment><USER2> With regards to graphics, if one were to dedicate 2k of ram to a frame-buffer, you should be able to get ~5fps by just continuously rendering the frame- buffer to the graphics controller. setPixel is slow because it does 2 r/m/w per pixel, but rendering an already known 8 pixel block would do two writes per block or 1/4 write per pixel for an 8x speedup.

This could be further optimized by keeping a map of dirty/clean bits for each character; then you could just add to the game loop something that polls the ready bit on the latch and writes the next dirty character.

Your setPixel now becomes (read from frame buffer, write if different, mark- dirty if different), which is only a few cycles.

[edit]

Just noticed he mentions something similar as an idea for otimizing. I think my idea is slightly better than his because it can be done with about half as much memory.

<comment><USER3> You forgot the buffer for the attribute ram, which is needed because otherwise you can only set 7 out of every 8 pixels in a block (you have to set the 'inverse video' bit to access all 256 possible combos) =)

<comment><USER2> There are 16000 1-bit pixels. It can be stored as a bitmap rather than the format used by the graphics adapter. Adding a dirty-bit for each character adds another 2000 bits, making a total of about 2.2k

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Reminds me of writing some simple C programs to calculate and display Mandelbrot and Julia sets on my 2x.

Still, wish I'd ended up with an early Mac, for a better entre into microcomputer graphics, but "the powers that be" at that time insisted on the 2x.

I don't know whether the rubber components (e.g. for the floppy drives) in my shelved 2x have deteriorated to the point of failure, but that linked RS-232C WiFi modem is kind of tempting.

There are also various DOS emulators for running CP/M stuff. Which reminds me that I owe archive.org an image of a CD full of contemporary share- and free- ware.

</comment><comment><USER2> That brings back memories. The very first computer I used was nearly identical to that. I'm not sure how many hours I spent on zork.

The only non-text program I recall ever using was the kaypro space invaders.</comment>


Ballmer says Microsoft at work to rival iPad - <AUTHOR> http://news.cnet.com/8301-13860_3-20012123-56.html

<comment><USER2> Microsoft, bring life back to the Courier and I'll be a customer. <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_Courier></comment>


The Nobel Prize in Physics 2019 - <AUTHOR> https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/physics/2019/summary/ <comment><USER2> > "for the discovery of an exoplanet orbiting a solar-type star."

"Solar-type star" is meaningful here because first extrasolar planets we discovered orbit the pulsar.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PSR_B1257%2B12](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PSR_B1257%2B12)

<comment><USER3> This is why I love astrophysics. I assumed the supernova would obliterate any planet in the star's orbit.

<comment><USER4> It seems like rather than these sort of well defined periods of life and death ... solar systems go through a whole slew of possible life cycles where who knows what happens.

I remember learning about our own solar system and it was largely "here is how we got to here" but now it's more about these phases each planet experienced and maybe will experience. Saturn's rings being a sort of "recent" phenomenon and such. Geological activity being a sort of on and off thing depending on various events, even orotundities for life cycling on and off.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Two of the laureates are Swiss. This brings the total number of Swiss laureates to 28, making it the third country with most Nobel prizes per capita.

The first two are Saint Lucia and Luxemburg, which have 180k and 600k inhabitants respectively.

Among the bigger countries, Switzerland has the most per capita Nobel prizes.

Interestingly, UK is on number 9 on that list and has a significantly bigger population than the top 8 (I'd say 10x more people than the average top 8 country). Super impressive. Of course, Germany (14) and the US (16) are also not half bad, especially since the US has 5x the population of UK.

Source: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_Nobel_lau...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_Nobel_laureates_per_capita)

<comment><USER6> I'd be wary of any such statistics, and trying to draw any conclusion about the current status of a country from that.

For one, the total timeframe of the Nobel Prize is more than a hundred years, and even for individual prizes the time between contribution and award is usually decades. That's a lot of time for possible change in a country.

On top of that, there had been repeated criticism (that has been in part acknowledged by the Swedish Academy) that the Nobel Prize is too eurocentric, so the statistics will obviously be skewed.

<comment><USER5> I don't have deep knowledge about the Nobel Prize selection procedure, so I'm not going to go into that. But, obviously, all awards will have some kind of bias because a small group of humans make that decision.

However, the US has more per capita prizes than the EU, so not sure that that critisicm is warranted.

Anyways, I also wouldn't draw any conclusions about "the current status of a country" based on number of nobel laureates. Having said that, I do find the statistics interesting, and I'm sure there are some conclusions to be drawn from it.

There probably are papers analyzing this statistic further - if anyone has some reading recomendations, send them my way :-)

<comment><USER7> the term "eurocentric" normally isn't about NA vs EU rivalry, but rather about "european identity" in the white supremacist sense. (the caveat is that radical equality is also a distinctly european tradition, but still, this tradition doesn't seem to get included under the "eurocentric" label, for whatever reason)

<comment><USER8> Ironically, only a Eurocentric worldview could have one believing that "racial equality is a distinctly european tradition"

There were many celebrated anti-racist movement leaders across the world and in various time periods. The most well-known of these would be the Prophet Muhammad, who famously in one of his last sermons declared "Surely all of mankind – from the time of Adam until our time – are like the teeth of a comb (all equal to one another) and there is no greatness for an Arab over a non- Arab or a non-Arab over an Arab and no greatness for a red-skinned person over a black-skinned person or a black-skinned person over a red-skinned person, except due to one's consciousness of God."

<comment><USER7> i didn't say "racial equality", i meant the radical equality that flattens everything. i'm talking about the tradition that rejects prophets, rejects hierarchy, rejects teleology, etc.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Quanta has started their coverage.

[https://www.quantamagazine.org/nobel-prize-in-physics-to- jam...](https://www.quantamagazine.org/nobel-prize-in-physics-to-james- peebles-michel-mayor-and-didier-queloz-20191008/)

Here's yesterday's article for the Nobel in Medicine:

[https://www.quantamagazine.org/nobel-prize-awarded-for- cells...](https://www.quantamagazine.org/nobel-prize-awarded-for-cells- adaptations-to-oxygen-20191007/)

</comment><comment><USER10> Peebles has been a giant in cosmology over the past 50 years, when cosmology has gone from really speculation to precision measurements. There's a decent argument that he should have been included in the 1978 prize with Penzias and Wilson. He's getting old and this might be the last time the committee could sweetie him in.

</comment><comment><USER11> If Trinity College, Cambridge were an independent country, its 34 Nobel Prize winners would put it fifth in the world rankings, ahead of Russia, Sweden, Switzerland, and Japan, and behind only the US, UK, Germany, and France.

Source: [https://www.trin.cam.ac.uk/alumni/famous-trinity- alumni/nobe...](https://www.trin.cam.ac.uk/alumni/famous-trinity-alumni/nobel- laureates/)

<comment><USER12> Speaking of which, if the École normale supérieure (100M€ budget/year) was its own country, it would rank only behind the US in terms of Fields medals : 11 vs 12.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> I am not such a fan of this one, they essentially gave two separate half- prizes this year. James Peebles' contribution to science was not related to exoplanets, nor was the exoplanet discovery related to cosmology. Instead, they could have waited a year, and given them sequentially. Has this ever happened before in Nobel history? Will this lead to an era where one hundred $10,000 Nobels are handed out each year? ;)

<comment><USER14> There is a rule that you can't award a prize to more than 3 people.

I remember when the Higgs was confirmed at CERN, there was a lot of discussion over who (if anyone) should get the prize for that. CERN has something like 2500 permanent, scientific employees, plus 12000 users. So is it appropriate to give the prize to someone who is ultimately a project manager or administrator?

It's an interesting question as science moves from a few great thinkers to huge projects with 100+ contributors...

<comment><USER13> I think those accomplishments are large enough to have PR teams, or at least many people who can spread the word, and they may be outside the domain of where Nobel prizes are needed. The Nobel given for the Higgs discovery could not raise anyone's esteem for the LCH team, because the team was so large that everybody who would hear about a Nobel prize had already heard of the LHC.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Still cant believe the economics profession managed to convince people it deserves a seat at the table of the hard sciences

<comment><USER16> I don't think anyone is looking at the Nobel prizes to categorise sciences.

The 'table of hard science' according to Alfred Nobel also includes medicine (not science, but we'll let it pass), literature (really not science), and peace (really really not science).

Anyway, the Nobel Prize for economics is not actually a Nobel prize anyway.

<comment> GuB-42 Medicine is interesting.

Some of it is hard science, with peer-reviewed papers, experiments and statistics. There is even some overlap with chemistry.

Some of it is engineering. Doctors are closer to engineers than they are to scientists. They have a problem (a sick patient who needs help), constraints (time, availability, cost, ...), tools (drugs, diagnosis tools, ...), and need to turn all that into a solution.

Some of it is craftsmanship. Surgeons are like mechanics for the human body, a job requiring dexterity and practical thinking.

Some of it is care. With nurses needing as much empathy as they need practical skills.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Comics, no photos? These are real people. Come on, did they read too many Google PR campaigns? Or watched too many Marvel movies?

</comment><comment><USER18> "The curve shows how many spots there are of each size in the background radiation."

"The first peak shows that the universe is geometrically flat, i.e. two parallel lines will never meet."

Can somebody explain this, please?

</comment><comment><USER19> Is the nobel prize taxable? If you live in St. Lucia do you pay ANY tax on it?

<comment><USER20> That depends entirely on where you are and who you have to pay taxes to. In Canada, it would be a windfall (like a lottery prize), and therefore not taxable.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> Does discovering an exoplanet really qualify for Nobel Prize?

<comment><USER22> It wasn't just a matter of pointing a telescope at a lucky star. They had to invent new spectroscopic tools to find anything.

Moreover, the avalanche of exoplanets their discovery heralded has changed questions fundamental to astronomy like "Why is our Solar System this particular way" into questions about ensembles, as in "In what proportion of planetary systems do we get rocky inner planets in the habitable zone and outer gas giants".</comment></comment>


Ask HN: Good Social Engagement tools for non-techies? - <AUTHOR> My mom recently got a job where part of her duties will be managing the twitter/facebook/email communication and engagement for a nonprofit. She's 55, quite tech savvy, but not likely to be writing any code any time soon. Do any of you have recommendations for tools to help manage these things? (For instance, I recently learned about TinyLetter and it looks quite promising) <comment><USER2> If she's looking just at the posting part, she should try Buffer/SocialPilot.co/HootSuite. That should do the trick. If she's looking to monitor for replies and engage with the community overall, then she might need to use more than one tool.

<comment><USER3> I was going to mention HootSuite too.

A quick Google search will find you lots of alternatives (apparently [https://kuku.io/](https://kuku.io/) as well as Buffer & SocialPilot that tejasm mentioned)</comment></comment>


The Silicon Lining - <AUTHOR> http://www.city-journal.org/2010/20_2_silicon-valley.html

<comment><USER2> The author is getting too much "information" from "Kevin Kelly, the founder of Wired"; after these two extreme howlers I gave up:

" _David Packard built the first transistor in his garage, initiating a technical revolution in radio transmission from which all the rest followed—and he just happened to live in Palo Alto._ "

" _Home to MIT and leading high-speed computer manufacturers like Cray (which has since disappeared), Boston...._ "</comment>


How Amazon could quietly become a huge tablet player - <AUTHOR> http://www.businessinsider.com/amazon-tablet-2011-3

<comment><USER2> Multi-touch E-ink Triton display, Android, and their app store maybe? Shouldn't take much more than that.</comment>


And C, Why is it still in use, Aren't there alternatives? - <AUTHOR>

<comment><USER2> Sometimes the alternatives are worse than C. C at some degree is portable, so some code can be reused. C is ideal for the microcontrollers which have limited memory. Think about having 1k of Ram and 4k of flash memory.Since at the assembly level each family of microcontrollers is different is very hard to learn each month another set of instructions ,and here comes C.Linux kernel is written in C too. C is just a tool , and once you get used to it is fine.

</comment><comment><USER3> C is still in use because it is still the best tool for many jobs.

It is the only language available on every platform.

For many platforms, it is the only non-assembly language available at all - most microcontroller architectures, for example.

</comment><comment><USER4> No, there are not always alternatives.</comment>


GSFS18: a rejection of code of conducts - <AUTHOR> https://redbeanphp.com/index.php?p=/code_of_conduct <comment><USER2> this is pretty lame. ok, it's nice that you reject it. so what? who cares? this is the same sort of grandstanding in my eyes.</comment>


U.S. officials believe Iran is behind recent cyberattacks - <AUTHOR> http://security.blogs.cnn.com/2012/10/15/u-s-officials-believe-iran-is-behind-recent-cyberattacks/?hpt=hp_t1 <comment><USER2> Talk about burying the lede.

Here's the last sentence: _"The unit was developed in response to American and Israeli cyberattacks on the Iranian nuclear enrichment plant at Natanz."_</comment>


First YEurope Startup Soup.io launches public beta - <AUTHOR> http://www.soup.io/ First YEurope-funded startup Soup.io launches public beta
The first startup funded by YEurope (http://yeurope.net/), a YCombinator (http://ycombinator.com/) inspired (not affiliated!) hatchery based in Vienna, Austria, just launched their public beta.
Soup (http://soup.io/) is a mixture of a tumblelogging and lifestream aggregation platform. Soup simplifies publishing a stream of content by reducing mental overhead and removing barriers found in traditional blogging software.
Soup allows users to both post microcontent and aggregate their digital presence from other web services using RSS feeds or a bookmarklet.
While the lifestream aggregation arena is quickly becoming crowded with competitors (most recently with the launch of Paul Buchheit's (http://paulbuchheit.blogspot.com/) friendfeed (http://friendfeed.com/) on October 1st), Soup competes strongly with a broader scope and a refreshingly simple, Ajax-driven user interface.
You can start using Soup right now at http://soup.io/ -- no sign-up required. <comment><USER2> Now I need something to aggregate my friendfeed, tumblr, and soup.io feeds.

</comment><comment><USER3> NSFW in U.S. (disable image loading first)</comment>


Introduction to Malware-Blocking DNS Services - <AUTHOR> https://blog.cryptoaustralia.org.au/2017/12/19/introduction-malware-blocking-dns/ <comment><USER2> Been thinking about trying out Pi-hole, are there any better alternatives?</comment>