Remote First at Quora - <AUTHOR> https://greylock.com/quora-remote-first/ <comment><USER2> Working remotely has a very high cost, but it only gets visible in the long term.

Working from home isolates you. There is no way around this. You lose the one huge opportunity in adult life for making new relationships - and that's at work, in the office.

For the company, people that work remote start drifting away from the company vision and spirit - you get an army of people working individually most of the time, not socializing, not establishing strong bonds. If personal contact wasn't important, we could raise our kids remotely.

I have some friend who have been working at a company who went remote-first and after 5 years they do not feel identified with the company anymore. It's just a job. You could work for someone else and you wouldn't even notice.

Also, working from home is only as convenient as your life situation allows it. Have kids? Bad luck. Live in the city because you enjoy city life? Sorry you have to convert you bedroom into your office during the day because you can't afford to have an additional room. You are a people's person and feel more energetic and productive when working with others face to face? Well, sorry, your team is mostly remote.

Please, let us just top playing down the importance of the office. It is important and it has tons of benefits for the _team_ , as opposed to the benefits for the individuals.

<comment><USER3> > I have some friend who have been working at a company who went remote-first > and after 5 years they do not feel identified with the company anymore. It's > just a job. You could work for someone else and you wouldn't even notice.

I think feeling "identified with your company" is kind of pathological. If remote work gets more people to realise it's just a job, it's not their company, and they shouldn't work themselves to death over it, good.

<comment><USER4> This is a feature of remote work, not a bug. I cringe to put on the company themed shirt I am required to wear at the office on special occasions. The esprit de corps at my company is used to justify unpaid overtime and working on weekends. I would rather first identify with something else, like my family or local community.

<comment><USER5> It just sounds like you have a bad job, and yes, in that case it is a feature, not a bug. Because any system that lets you stay far away from a bad job is good.

But there plenty of people who actually love the place they work and the people they work with _and_ do it with healthy work/life balance without the stupid company shirts. Hard to imagine for you, just like it's hard to me to imagine caring about my local community.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> > Prior to the Covid-19 pandemic, Quora had a strong office culture and > discouraged employees from working remotely most of the time. But once the > company had no choice, Quora CEO and co-founder Adam D'Angelo says they > discovered the benefits of working from anywhere far outweigh the drawbacks.

I'm surprise that so many people couldn't figure this out without being forced to try it against their will.

I also wonder how Quora's transition will turn out. Every remote-first organization I've seen started out as a remote-first org.

<comment><USER7> I would hesitate to take anything from the article at face value, they just align with whatever is trending, there is nothing more to it really. Do you expect them to say _I would force every single one of my peons back into the salt mines if I could, but alas I can 't for the time being_?

<comment><USER8> Which, depending on how you see it, is okay. I personally don't expect corporations to really have a consciousness. I expect them to react to outside stimulus, that's all. So if "we" make in unacceptable to say "come to the office or get lost" then they will accept that, no more, no less. That's okay with me.

<comment><USER7> Corporate hypocrisy is really not that serious issue in the grand scheme of things, but the asking for it justification is just victim blaming.

<comment><USER8> sorry if that came across as blaming you... what I mean is that it's actually a pretty good thing in a way that corporations operate that way. If a sizeable proportion of workers/customers make it clear they will not accept something, it will be gone in a heartbeat.

Of course, there are (huge) exceptions for monopoly situations where there's simply nowhere else to take your work/money.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I love working from home. I work for a big tech company, and my specific department has had the option to WFH for about 10 years. They have all the correct measuring tools to make sure we do good work, without being intrusive (no bossware!).

I don't feel isolated, to the contrary; i have more time for loved ones. I can wake up later. No fighting traffic, or cycling through rainy cold weather to be on time at the train station.

I never wanna visit an office again.

</comment><comment><USER10> It's amazing to me how many people and companies who have been forced to work remotely for the first time in their lives are suddenly the experts on it.

<comment><USER11> If you have some valuable knowledge about remote work, please post it. But I don't see any reason to demand that everyone should be an expert on remote work before we allow them to share their experiences and thoughts about this thing that we've been going through.

<comment><USER10> I've been working remotely full-time since 2014, and now I run a company and employ people (mostly programmers) around the world. We've been remote since day zero.

Any valuable knowledge I have about remote work would be eclipsed by the Remote book written by the Basecamp guys, so that's what I'd recommend people read. What I'm reacting to here is the hubris of some people (especially on my LinkedIn feed) to not just share experience but actually _give advice_ on a topic they're completely new to.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I expected to hate WFH with a passion before the pandemic. The reality turned out to be very different from my expectations. I expected to be constantly distracted by the bookshelves, large living room and gym equipment but to my surprise my personal productivity went through the roof and I've never felt better, both physically and mentally. I genuinely fear the day I have to go back to the office(won't be this year by the looks of it).

Of course that isn't the case for everybody: people with families and especially little children seem to be struggling massively.

But there is a noticeable shift it appears. Recruiters seem to be changing their model considering how many companies are becoming remote first. My mail is over-flooded with job offers from every corner of the earth, all of which contain the word "remote" in them. And I get round 20 of them each day. I would have never thought that such a day would come. The black swan strikes again.

<comment><USER13> Agree with almost all of your points as someone working remotely for 14 years. I would note the following:

>> _Of course that isn 't the case for everybody: people with families and especially little children seem to be struggling massively._

Some families with little children might be struggling massively not because of WFH, but because many schools mandated remote learning which is difficult for young children to sit through without peer and teacher interaction. The more cynical amongst us would posit that elementary school mostly serves a dual "daycare" purpose alongside the educational mission.

If anything, WFH might be a struggle but would be triply so if parents hadn't been given the option at all. Let's not conflate the WFH privilege (which implicitly assumes such people still have jobs) with the difficulties of providing a workable remote learning solution for young children.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> _Remote_ is the new cool word for _off-shoring._ Companies don't decide to radically change their work structure just because it seems like a nice idea. If you expect tech companies to keep paying SV salaries after they shift to remote-first, you're in for a rude surprise.

<comment><USER15> > If you expect tech companies to keep paying SV salaries after they shift to > remote-first, you're in for a rude surprise.

This isn't a bad thing though. The world is bigger than SV or London.

<comment><USER14> No, of course not, but I'm suggesting that "our company is going remote" will be used to functionally offshore jobs. _Offshoring to X_ is socially unpopular, while _We have an international remote team_ is cool and hip.

<comment><USER15> Yeah, it's the same as the switch from offices with actual rooms to cool and hip (in the early 2000s) open offices:

1\. Cram xx% more people in the same place under the pretext of creating a collaborative environment == save xx% on rent. 2\. Invest a small percentage of that sum on noise cancelling headphones, because (shocker) people need to be alone from time to time.

No one is arguing that the same won't happen with remote becoming more mainstream. There's value in remote, especially from a utilitarian/equality pov, so we need to be mindful and try not to fall in the same traps (i.e. don't drink the kool-aid).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> WFH with kids is great during normal non-pandemic times. Having the flexibility to spend a couple minutes at the bus stop makes my day less fragmented on the days when my wife is working.

On one hand, I think it's great that employers and employees are both seeing the benefits of being remote. Less time spent commuting, etc.

On the other hand, it's too bad it's happening to parents at the same time they are having to figure out how to both WFH and parent.

It's not always this crazy, trust me.

</comment><comment><USER17> I wonder what Quora's staff spend their time on. The site is a simple Q&A app, and appears essentially unchanged the last many years and the content is all user generated. Not a huge productivity loss to go all-remote if you're not productive in the first place ;)

<comment><USER12> > the content is all user generated

The answers - totally. The questions on the other hand, I'm not entirely convinced. The thought that Q&A has become the de-facto new generation of spam has crossed my mind many times while browsing the web.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> >I'm surprise that so many people couldn't figure this out without being forced to try it against their will.

Oh they could, but they knew they'd lose the political games that come with offices and which are a favourite of middle management.

</comment><comment><USER19> I was (and still am) averse to long term WFH but, my child was born in December so, as you expect, WFH has been a temporary godsend for me.

I guess it's also forcing me to learn how to WFH by minimizing the costs many here have pointed out.

Ps. although all other restrictions and societal impacts of strict lockdown is making this a bittersweet moment.

</comment><comment><USER20> Let's predict two things: Firstly, how long until they silently announce unemployment of a large proportion of their employees, and secondly what proportion of the staff will they lay off?

</comment><comment><USER21> > _People are very productive and a lot of them actually prefer working from > home._

But later:

> _So as we are doing this, we've run a series of surveys of employees asking > things like, 'How productive do you feel like you've been?' 'What can we do > to make you more productive?'_

So you concluded that your workers are productive, but you want to run a survey to find out how productive are they??? WTF?

</comment><comment><USER22> I am a bit weirded out by how convincingly the argument is being made in favor of remote work. It's a tough road ahead. A lot of things need to be figured out before we're able to crack the code of it.

At my startup vlokit [0], we are helping customers with async video communication. Problem is people don't want to go out of their comfort zones. They want to continue 'replicating' office environment at home. It kind of falls apart pretty soon.

Companies need to realize remote work is a significant investment in getting your culture right. You need to invest a lot in changing the ways of how you communicate.

And even then you're not guaranteed that it would be success. Because we're still unaware of what we're up against.

[0] [https://vlokit.com](https://vlokit.com)

</comment><comment><USER16> > "What's been challenging in adapting to the new environment is trying to > replicate some of the informal communication that happened around the > office. It's an area I'm particularly interested in right now."

We've been using Discord to simulate an office environment, both from the perspectives of talking to people without scheduling a meeting, and from gathering as a group for discussions as needed. Hanging out in Discord is entirely optional. We use Slack to notify people if we need to talk to them, kind of like a shoulder tap in real life if you need to ask somebody a question at their desk.

This has been working pretty well for us. I especially like Discord's Push to Talk feature using a keyboard shortcut.

</comment><comment><USER23> Zillow just hopped on a similar train: [https://www.geekwire.com/2020/zillow- allow-90-employees-work...](https://www.geekwire.com/2020/zillow- allow-90-employees-work-home-indefinitely-pandemic-debunks-old-ways/)

</comment><comment><USER24> how does on the worst pseudo-knowledge spam marketing websites on the internet make money. I avoid qoura heavily, and I feel other people do too ? or maybe quoura is a rich man's hobby ?

</comment><comment><USER25> There is only one remote job offer on their page.

<comment><USER26> It's the first remote job thus remote first

<comment><USER27> :D</comment></comment></comment>


John Carmack's Comment on Hardware Ray Tracing - <AUTHOR> http://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2013/01/shedding-some-realistic-light-on-imaginations-real-time-ray-tracing-card/?comments=1&post=23723213#comment-23723213 <comment><USER2> Excellent response by Carmack.

"Ray Tracing" has always been an overhyped or misunderstood technology, at least in my experience. Because of the impressive lighting effects it's famous for producing, people view it as some "holy grail" of superior computer graphics technology that we just need to optimize a bit for use in games.

As Carmack described, those highly realistic ray traced renders come at a price: _billions_ of ray calculations. You don't get all that pixel-perfect refraction, etc. for free (and probably never will - at least not with ray tracing.) He also explains that for most people, this (e.g. pixel perfect refraction) really doesn't matter, when rasterization techniques exist that achieve extremely high quality approximations at a fraction of the computational cost.

Conversely though, ray tracing and related concepts (ray casting) are not at all without value. Many modern video games today actually use a sort of hybrid rasterization / ray casting approach. Macrostructure objects are rasterized the normal way, while smaller high resolution detail patterns (like a brick wall, or stones in the ground) are "added" to surfaces via per-pixel displacement mapping, which is ray casting at its core. This is one of the few cases where you can take advantage of the "log2" efficiency Carmack mentioned -- in a highly specialized implementation without a huge time constant.

<comment><USER3> Pretty much agree, the only thing that we might disagree on is the 'billions' number, while I expect good ray tracing to trace billions of rays, if transistors are cheap enough this becomes more interesting. The typical HDMI 1080p display is 2 megapixels (or megatexels) if you have a rendering engine with 2,073,600 cores each of which is looking at a billion ray 'view' based on where it sits in the scene, its easier to set up the scene and light it. That presumes that you can do those cores like DRAM instead of like current processors of course. My point is that cheap transistors keep amazing me and whenever I say "Oh that will never happen" some fool goes and shows me I'm wrong.

I'm trying to imagine how complex a 'core' would be that computed the incident rays on a single pixel. Then figuring out how big that is in a 18nm process technology and then trying to see if I can fit 2M on a reasonable size die. My head exploded sadly.

<comment><USER4> Throwing more ( or finer etched) silicon at an algorithm will not help the algorithm, compared to a superior algorithm. For almost all scenes you get better results with rasterization, the two exceptions I can think of is scenes where the geometry of light rays is not flat, so for example involving lenses or black holes, or where there is a lot more optical complexity than you can reasonably use. ( A forest where each of the leafs is an object, you will never be able to notice that the advantage of this over an forest where the trees in the background are just textures.)

<comment> Tuna-Fish > Throwing more ( or finer etched) silicon at an algorithm will not help the > algorithm, compared to a superior algorithm

Actually, it will when the complexity classes of the algorithms differ. Which is true in this case -- the time taken to ray trace a scene rises as the log(n) of the size of that scene, while the time taken to rasterize rises linearly with regards to the scene.

There exists a threshold of computing power/scene complexity above which raytracing beats rasterization in speed. However, like Carmack pointed out, the constant factors are massive, so this won't be reached in the near future, if ever.

The reason the constant factors are so huge is that complexity of raytracing rises linearly with the count of pixels to be drawn, while in rasterization a lot of the work can be shared by neighbouring pixels.

Intriguingly, this means that if you can reduce the pixel counts, you can vastly improve the value of raytracing.

Notably, if you can do eye tracking and rendering in less than 15ms, you can reach the same visual quality as a full-screen, high-resolution render by rendering only the areas you are actually looking at in high resolution, and rendering the rest of the scene at a progressively lower resolution farther from the focus point. The cone of high-precision vision is surprisingly small, something like tens of pixels when looking at a screen from a normal viewing distance. If you did this, you should be able to cut the amount of rays you need to send by at least two orders of magnitude, which would bring raytracing to real-time quality on modern hardware.

<comment><USER5> Naive question:

Does your last paragraph have any implications for VR? Could something like the Oculus Rift benefit from raytracing technology? Or have I misunderstood what you are saying?

<comment><USER6> The idea is that raytracing can degrade gracefully, so there's a sliding scale between rendering time and rendering quality for every pixel. And yes, this means that, theoretically, the computer could naturally degrade pixels that you're not currently looking at.

I suspect this would look highly unnatural in practice, though, as even static scenes would flicker and change, especially with reflections and any surface or technique that uses random sampling methods (which is virtually every algorithm that is both fast and looks good).

<comment> Tuna-Fish > I suspect this would look highly unnatural in practice

In pair tests test subjects were unable to see a difference between the foveated image and the normally rendered one. The flicker can be removed by blurring the image to the point where flicker no longer exists. Because your brain is used to a very low sampling rate outside the fovea, it actually helps in hiding the artifacts, because they occur naturally in your vision.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Here's a commercial, realtime raytracing tool. Runs happily on a dual-core macbook pro. No custom card needed. Yes, it runs better on a $20,000 64-thread Tigerton, but it will run usably on a laptop.

<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yUiLBmioRI4>

Carmack is right about games (surprise!). I can't imagine "Imagination Technologies" is pushing the Caustic R2500 at games.

<comment><USER8> We use KeyShot at work and its an amazing package, its the industry standard now for rendering product design CAD. The demo video showing the Caustic card running is about equivalent to KeyShot running on a $3000 PC. They have a way to go until they convince me that they have anything better than what KeyShot is capable of.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Having no real knowledge of ray tracing (or rendering for that matter), can someone tell me why we can't be moving towards a massive cluster of gpu (in the order of 10,000) ray tracing a scene in parellel? I imagine each ray trace call is quite independent of any other. SOooner or later, cpu (and gpu) will have many cores available for such form of rendering. Is it because of the chicken/egg problem?

<comment><USER10> This is indeed ray tracing's huge advantage, of being highly amenable to parallelization. However, the same thing is more or less equivalently true for other rendering methods, such as rasterization. Modern GPUs have thousands of rendering sub-unit "cores". And with CUDA you can use those cores for almost anything, including ray tracing. But for a given scene and a given amount of finite computing power you're almost always going to be able to get superior results using a rasterization technique than ray tracing.

<comment><USER4> I think that rasterization is easier to parallelize than ray tracing, since raster engines essentially multiply each vertex with the same matrix, while for ray tracing you have to traverse an octtree for each step in each ray. ( Both are of course easy to parallelize, I just think that in general you will run into memory bandwidth problems faster with ray tracing algos.)

<comment><USER11> Yes, memory bandwidth is one of the biggest slow downs of ray tracing. Rasterization access memory very linearly which makes it very easy to cache and easy to optimize in hardware on the GPUs. But ray tracing access memory very randomly, two rays originating from pixels next to each other easily diverges and so hits objects far from each other in the scene. This means that ray tracing will spend most of its time waiting for memory.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Its so cool that someone as high up in the games industry as carmack actually knows his technical shit.

<comment><USER13> He might be high up now, but he started off as a programmer. He co-founded id software and (along with others) developed Wolfenstein 3D, Doom, etc. <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Id_Software>

<comment><USER14> He still is a programmer. He's the lead programmer at id and writes code for Armadillo Aerospace.

<comment><USER13> yeah, he can probably do whatever he wants, the fact he's still programming means he obviously enjoys it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> I think path tracing is one of the most promising methods for realtime ray tracing.

Brigade is one example: <http://igad.nhtv.nl/~bikker/> Here an in-game example: <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6_DrgiwLABk>

And a nice blog with posts about Brigade, Octane and others: <http://raytracey.blogspot.nl/>

</comment><comment><USER16> "For example, all surfaces that are shaded with interpolated normal will have an unnatural shadow discontinuity at the silhouette edges with single shadow ray traces."

For some reason I _really_ want to understand what this sentence means. I don't know why it jumped out at me, maybe because it seems both accessible and arcane, I want some path to even just tour the arcane concerns of someone so deep into a (this) particular domain.

<comment><USER17> In English: if you're only using one ray for shading, then you'll have areas that are completely in shadow directly next to areas that are completely not in shadow; what we call hard shadows. Soft shadows are a better approximation of reality, because they show the shades of grey between "covered" and "uncovered", but they require more ray intersections (unless you're using sphere tracing!).

<comment><USER18> Sphere tracing is awesome. So many effects can be so easily and cheaply approximated, apart from soft shadows also subsurface scattering, bloom/glare etc. Downside, while great for geometry describable by distance fields, it's quite useless with polygonal assets...

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> I think he is not wrong at all, but personally, I've been on both sides of the debate, and then I kind of formed the opinion that it's not worth debating about. The one thing I would strongly, strongly push for is _general purpose_ hardware (we are kind of headed in that direction with OpenCL and CUDA, but industry-wide interest in these things is really low). Don't force me to use rasterization or raytracing (or even triangles), just give me a really powerful, flexible parallel processor...even if that means sacrificing a bit of speed. I think above all Carmack would appreciate such hardware...there was a kind of beauty in his old code you don't find any more -- you can do lots of tricks with GPUs, but overall it is a much more limited, less creative programming experience.

<comment><USER6> > just give me a really powerful, flexible parallel processor

Isn't that exactly what a GPU is? They aren't terribly fantastic at traditional computation, but then again we're talking parallelism here.

<comment><USER19> Yes, GPUs are becoming increasingly flexible, but they are still limited by CPU-GPU bottleneck, GPU memory (which for the most part has been limited to 2 GB per card), really poor branching performance and limited ability to modify data in any other way than 1:1 correspondence. They are first and foremost designed to pump out polygons at high fill rates, which is fine unless you want to do some untraditional rendering or computation. :) Again, CUDA and OpenCL are paving the way for a new path, but I still think we should be using general purpose silicon underneath it instead of hardware designed to to do things like MSAA, interpolation, triangle setup, etc.

<comment><USER6> Sure, but I still believe it's far closer to the ideal parallel hardware than this n-core-shared-memory business that is really hard to program well.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> As anyone who ever wrote a raytracer would know (or find out soon): Primary rays cache. Secondary rays trash! Brazil guys wrote a decent raytracer (entirely based on Glassner's book) and are really competent devs in general (both of them). Current state of the art, performance oriented, offline renderer is Arnold by SolidAngle, with more smart guys behind it. I think we will see convergence of offline and online RT soon enough. There are already steps being made in that direction, in offline world, towards RT previews.

</comment><comment><USER21> This reminds me of <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Euclideon> ... Not trying to draw a comparison, i just find these "future of gaming" technologies interesting, vapor or not.

</comment><comment><USER22> Within his comment is a great example / reminder to consider constant factors when doing your 'big-oh' analysis of different approaches to a problem.

""" Because ray tracing involves a log2 scale of the number of primitives, while rasterization is linear, it appears that highly complex scenes will render faster with ray tracing, but it turns out that the constant factors are so different that no dataset that fits in memory actually crosses the time order threshold. """

</comment><comment><USER23> I wish I could sit down and talk with him for an hour or so.

I'm a Unix programmer but I suspect I could learn as much from him about software design as from weeks of talking with just about anyone else.

<comment><USER24> Here's a link you may enjoy: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3388290> , which goes to [http://www.altdevblogaday.com/2011/12/24/static-code- analysi...](http://www.altdevblogaday.com/2011/12/24/static-code-analysis/) .</comment></comment>


Glitch Raises $30M Series A Round from Tiger Global - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/glitch/glitch-raises-30m-series-a-round-from-tiger-global-c32e3e0403dc <comment><USER2> We actually raised the funds a few months ago, and have already put some of it to use growing the team, and building new features (like Glitch for VS Code, which we announced today - [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20392773](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20392773)).

We're looking for a VP Engineering, so check out [https://glitch.com/about/careers](https://glitch.com/about/careers) if you know someone great.

<comment><USER3> Does Joel Spolsky retain majority ownership?</comment></comment>


What is the coolest IoT product, concept, or news story you've seen recently? - <AUTHOR> Hello Reddit Fam! Every week I work to compile a list of the most interesting Internet of Things news I can find. As I finalize this week's list, wanted to know if any of you have recomendations of cool IoT related things you have seen recently? <comment><USER2> [https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/2055918540/whoa- board-d...](https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/2055918540/whoa-board-dream- with-touch-sensing-el-wire-panels) \- preorders end today.</comment>


FreeBSD 10.2 - <AUTHOR> https://www.freebsd.org/releases/10.2R/relnotes.html

<comment><USER2> What about this change from 'latest' to 'quarterly' with no good way to change that for pkg? I don't want to only get new packages 4 times a year. Is that what's going to happen?

It also feels like the documentation around doing things like pinning you could do in apt is lacking; if there are some packages I can say "retrieve these packages from latest" then I'd be more okay with everything else only updating 4x a year.

<comment><USER3> FreeBSD's packages being so up to date is literally one of the reasons I switched to it from Debian.

I don't understand this change, nor why it's the default. Actually having up- to-date packages was one of BSD's biggest selling points. Sick of distros with package systems so out-of-date they might as well not exist.

<comment><USER4> Some organizations value stability over new features, which is why you see so many places using distros like debian stable, centos, etc. It may not fit your needs, but there are plenty of use cases for preferring stability and security over new features.

<comment><USER3> There are advantages, yes, not denying that, but it seems vanishingly rare to find a packaging system that doesn't have this problem, and that's frustrating in particular for a programmer when almost every single language you use doesn't have an up-to-date package and winds up requiring an external install that then isn't even necessarily version tracked.

And I do wonder at the security implications of that. Some of the more popular languages like Python get semi-regular security updates even on stable branches like Debian's, but then I see stuff like Racket still being on 5.2 which came out in 2011 and I have to wonder how that affects the security profile if some "stable" package you've installed is depending on a scripting language package that still has a vulnerability in it because the package in "stable" hasn't been updated in half a decade.

<comment><USER5> have you tried arch? sounds like you would like it :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I'll state the obvious, but coming from Linux it's impressive and at the same time weird to look at a full OS's changelog.

<comment><USER7> You'll have to explain. Linux distros have release notes, too: [http://docs.fedoraproject.org/en- US/Fedora/22/html/Release_N...](http://docs.fedoraproject.org/en- US/Fedora/22/html/Release_Notes/) [https://wiki.ubuntu.com/VividVervet/ReleaseNotes](https://wiki.ubuntu.com/VividVervet/ReleaseNotes)

or if you really meant Linux: [http://kernelnewbies.org/LinuxChanges](http://kernelnewbies.org/LinuxChanges)

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Is there an easy way to install a FreeBSD container on a Linux system?

For example, I can do

        # debootstrap --arch=amd64 unstable ~/debian-tree/
        # systemd-nspawn -D ~/debian-tree/

And be in a debian container. Is there a simple way to get a FreeBSD container?

<comment><USER9> No, because Linux containers are still running the Linux kernel, and the Linux kernel doesn't know how to run FreeBSD binaries.

You can do the opposite however -- running Linux inside jails on FreeBSD hosts. This is how docker-on-freebsd works, and also how FreeBSD desktop systems usually cope with software like Flash plugins which are only available as Linux binaries.

<comment> bmir-alum-007 Btw, thanks for FreeBSD compat work _for running_ on AWS/Xen, even if it might've been mostly to host Tarsnap on it. ;)

It's possible to run a NetBSD Xen dom0 (host system) on bare metal, under VMware or Xen HVM: it takes a few patches, building a kernel and config tweaks to get going but it works stably. [0] (There's no XAPI (the Xen remote management API) support however, so XenServer tools and other 3rd-party XAPI integrations probably won't work. FYI: XAPI server-side is coded in OCaml; don't ask how I know that. ;) [1])

For most people w/ baremetal or rented colo that just want a turn-key supportable hypervisor, I would advise using Citrix XenServer (commercial official Xen, free download, it seems be more stable than XCP and includes XAPI) or VMware ESXi (free download, very stable, $$$ quickly). After that, you can run whatever OS/es you like. (IIRC a ton of AWS boxes run heavily- modified Xen open-source 3.3.x.)

For desktop/laptop dev: VirtualBox, VMware Fusion/Workstation or qemu.

References:

0\. [https://wiki.netbsd.org/ports/xen/howto/](https://wiki.netbsd.org/ports/xen/howto/)

1\. [https://github.com/xapi-project/xen-api](https://github.com/xapi- project/xen-api)

EDIT: pronouns

<comment><USER9> _FreeBSD compat work on AWS /Xen_

I did no such thing. My work was all to add _AWS /Xen_ compatibility to _FreeBSD_. :-)

In all serious though, while wanting to host Tarsnap on an OS I knew and trusted was my justification for spending so much time on FreeBSD/EC2, my actual _reason_ had more to do with wanting to make sure that FreeBSD didn't fall behind.

<comment> bmir-alum-007 Ah cool. Adoption is like a stochastic transfer function with a dependent variable "modern usability."

Speaking of usability, here's a patch to libfetch to ignore crusty ftp server non-RFC spurious responses [https://gist.github.com/steakknife/b4772a5deb6afc8851e0](https://gist.github.com/steakknife/b4772a5deb6afc8851e0) (I have absolute zero idea how to contribute code/patches to FreeBSD or it's not obvious/easy from docs.)

s/on/for/ That's what I meant. ;)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Does anyone know how the virtio network performance is on this release when virtualized under qemu/kvm? I know that pfsense is moving to 10.2 soon and i've been unable to use it virtualized due to its atrocious virtio net performance.

While the linux based firewall alternatives are incredibly fast they just don't have anywhere near the ease of use/feature set of pfsense!

<comment><USER11> I had that same problem when I was proofing out FreeBSD to replace Linux at $work but found an errata that fixed everything by disabling hardware checksum offloading:

        ifconfig xn0 -tso4

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Downloading the VM image to a new Linode right now!

edit: that was fast

$ uname -a FreeBSD 10.2-RELEASE FreeBSD 10.2-RELEASE #0 r286666: Wed Aug 12 15:26:37 UTC 2015 firstname.lastname@example.com:/usr/obj/usr/src/sys/GENERIC amd64

</comment><comment> bmir-alum-007 Running this on our AWS sandbox ec2 instance after snapshotting it:

            freebsd-update fetch install && freebsd-update -r 10.2-RELEASE upgrade

EDIT: Updates to 10.1-RELASE-p17 (currently) before upgrading

<comment><USER9> Quick reminder (not that you necessarily need it, but lots of people do forget this): It's usually a good idea to run

        freebsd-update fetch

and install any updates (rebooting if necessary) before you try to upgrade to a new release. On occasion there have been problems in freebsd-update which need to be fixed.

EDIT: Don't run 'freebsd-update fetch install && freebsd-update ... upgrade', since if the first command installs kernel updates you might need to reboot before downloading upgrades. (Ok, it's very unlikely. But it's _theoretically_ possible that a kernel update would affect the upgrade-downloading process.)

<comment> bmir-alum-007 Ah thanks. It happens this box was updated from 10.1 -p16 to -p17 recently. Generally, on most OSes/apps, smaller upgrade deltas = less breakage.

Afterwards, folks may want to rebuild _outdated_ ports to avoid stale shared libs from the previous release using something like:

        (cd /usr/ports && make update && portmaster -a)
        # or: -aBg saves new packages for re/installation on other boxes

Finally, check ports for any unpatched security issues (should be 0):

         pkg audit -F

EDIT: only rebuild _outdated_ ports

<comment><USER13> Only for some kernel modules because a few occasionally have an issue but generally they're not supposed to.

Otherwise FreeBSD is backwards compatible. You can run FreeBSD 2.0 binaries and libraries just fine if you want. There's some on the official FreeBSD cluster, I think.

In case you didn't know, the official FreeBSD packages for 10.1 and 10.2 will continue to be built on 10.1 -- the oldest supported release in the 10.x train.

<comment> bmir-alum-007 Sounds like userland is mostly perpetually backward-compatible. If so, that would be awesomesauce.

<comment><USER14> Pretty close. Compatibility back to FreeBSD 4 is a port package away, and there's a kernel module to support a.out binaries if you really need to run those 20+ year old programs. Some of the older syscalls don't have 32 bit wrappers, though, so you may not get full support for absolutely positively everything without emulation, but pretty damn close.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> FreeBSD 10.2 do come with some ZFS fixes which could occur under high load.

</comment><comment><USER16> Did the upgrade, and it seemed to go ok, but now the pw command is really slow (around 1 minute to complete). This might be a bit of fun figuring out.</comment>


I opened a coffee shop. It ruined my life.[2005] - <AUTHOR> http://www.slate.com/articles/life/a_fine_whine/2005/12/bitter_brew.html

<comment><USER2> This article explains precisely why I went into software, not retail.

For a commodity small business like an independent coffee shops, margins are simply too thin to pay the owner anything near what programmers make.</comment>


MyBrains – Now we are available in Firefox - <AUTHOR> https://mybrains.org <comment><AUTHOR> Now we are available in Firefox. You can easily save information from the internet in one click! Check [https://mybrains.org/apps/](https://mybrains.org/apps/) for details.</comment>


Zero Downtime upgrades of TCP servers in Go - <AUTHOR> http://blog.nella.org/?p=879 <comment><USER2> Very nice real world example of anonymous field declaration in struct types in the code[1].

[1]: [http://code.google.com/p/jra- go/source/browse/cmd/upgradable...](http://code.google.com/p/jra- go/source/browse/cmd/upgradable/upgradable.go)</comment>


The Most Officialest SkiFree Home Page (2010) - <AUTHOR> https://ski.ihoc.net/ <comment><USER2> Heh, I have a fun little side project for carpooling to ski fields (New Zealand based). I setup skifree as the default 404 page :)

[https://snowpool.org/notarealpage](https://snowpool.org/notarealpage)

<comment><USER3> Just out of curiosity, did you buy a license for this or is it public domain by now?

<comment><USER2> I just used (slightly modified and with permission) [https://github.com/basicallydan/skifree.js](https://github.com/basicallydan/skifree.js) I did not even think about licensing I admit :|

<comment><USER4> It is licensed MIT, so if you give credit for using the code, you should be good.

<comment><USER5> He said with permission, which overrides any license.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Easily missed, but at the bottom of the page they're selling a SkiFree shirt[1].

I got one for my birthday a couple of years ago and it's my unashamed favourite geeky shirt I own, even though it looks a bit silly and isn't a terribly high quality shirt.

[1]: [http://www.cafepress.com.au/mf/37735548/abominable_tshirt?sh...](http://www.cafepress.com.au/mf/37735548/abominable_tshirt?shop=Cheesehenge&productId=426226829)

</comment><comment><USER7> Took me way too long to realize that image wasn't playable...

<comment><USER8> Playable version:

[https://archive.org/details/win3_SKIFREE](https://archive.org/details/win3_SKIFREE)

<comment><USER9> Well, there went my evening...

This kind of digital crack should be labelled properly.

<comment><USER8> Even worse: [https://archive.org/details/internetarcade](https://archive.org/details/internetarcade)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Many moons ago, I was forced to use a computer. I pretty much hated them, back then. Anyhow, I had to learn BASIC. To do so, I got a bunch of books and my first program was a rehash of a skiing game. I called it Ski Downhill Faster. (Naming things is not my forté.)

It made the rounds at the university and was improved by others who were more adept than I. It was a bit of an informal open source, I guess.

I was actually talking about this recently and lamenting the lost data. It's unfortunate that so many little things weren't archived. I highly doubt that a copy exists anywhere.

<comment><USER11> Also many moons ago there was a competition for one line Apple ][ Basic games and someone wrote a terminal based downhill skiing game. All you had was left/right and played until you hit a mound.

<comment><USER10> By the time my humble program had made the rounds, early 80s at MIT, it has ASCII trees and points for going through the gates. IIRC, the trees slowed you down and took points away. The point system was, I think, based on time remaining and gates cleared. If you ran out of time, the game was over.

I kinda wish I still had access to it, but only to use it as an example. It was a fun project in an otherwise not fun time. I pretty much despised computers back then, as they were difficult to use and had limited functionality. My, how times change.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I remember those days when people uploaded mp3s of albums they owned - [https://music.ihoc.net/](https://music.ihoc.net/)

Edit: no markdown

</comment><comment><USER13> > Get SkiFree here (39409-byte ZIP containing one 118784-byte Windows 32-bit > EXE).

Remember when every download link on the web told you exactly how big it was?

<comment> iso-8859-1 I still get truncated downloads occasionally nowadays. And my file explorer still doesn't show the checksum my filesystem has done anyway. So this is probably still the best poor-man's-integrity check.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> The bear hunts me until this day.

<comment><USER15> The history article seems to confirm that it's indeed an abominable snow monster.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> How much would those msft shares be worth now?

<comment><USER17> [removed]

<comment><USER18> I don't think that actually answered the question; this looks more correct to me: [http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=100+shares+of+MSFT+from...](http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=100+shares+of+MSFT+from+1991+value+today)

<comment><USER8> Because of the stock splits that another commenter mentioned, it looks like this is actually asking a rather different question (more like "What would the price be to buy 100 then-current shares of MSFT at each moment from 1991 until today?").

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> I spent way too much time on this game as a kid. Thanks for the brilliant game. Was a lot of fun to play. Multiplayer would have been awesome...

</comment><comment><USER20> I do hate to be the jerk here, but this page keeps getting reposted just about annually - it started here almost a decade ago. I know that SkiFree was a memorable game, and it's nice that the programmer released it all those years ago. But really, while a nice diversion, this page just doesn't feel like it deserves to be on the front page of HN anymore.

So... why do HN members constantly repost it?

<comment><USER21> [https://xkcd.com/1053/](https://xkcd.com/1053/)

[https://hn.algolia.com/?query=ski.ihoc.net](https://hn.algolia.com/?query=ski.ihoc.net)

In my opinion, I don't see it being a "repost" epidemic.

> But really, while a nice diversion, this page just doesn't feel like it > deserves to be on the front page of HN anymore.

So hide it?

This is the first time I've ever seen it.

<comment><USER20> [https://news.ycombinator.com/from?site=ihoc.net](https://news.ycombinator.com/from?site=ihoc.net)

Take a look there instead.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> Can anyone hazard a guess as to what the original Atari 2600 game was?

<comment><USER23> The link in the article leads to the Activision game "Skiing"

[https://www.atariage.com/software_page.html?SoftwareLabelID=...](https://www.atariage.com/software_page.html?SoftwareLabelID=434)

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> The History page has a NSFW "This is where baby snow monsters come from" graphic.

<comment><USER24> This graphic is about equally NSFW as browsing this website while your boss walks in.</comment></comment>


Pandemic Shutdown Is Speeding Up the Collapse of Coal - <AUTHOR> https://www.npr.org/sections/coronavirus-live-updates/2020/04/23/842807177/pandemic-shutdown-is-speeding-up-the-collapse-of-coal <comment><USER2> And this was with the $4B in annual energy subsidies provided by the Federal government[0]. Seems like so many industries were teetering and over-leveraged before the pandemic hit. We have to take the loss of jobs very seriously while acknowledging these deeply antiquated entities in our economy.

0: [https://www.eesi.org/papers/view/fact-sheet-fossil-fuel- subs...](https://www.eesi.org/papers/view/fact-sheet-fossil-fuel-subsidies-a- closer-look-at-tax-breaks-and-societal-costs)</comment>


LocalBitcoins received an attack against the site infrastructure - <AUTHOR> https://localbitcoins.com/

<comment><USER3> This type of attack seems to be becoming more and more common - <USER2> engineering the server provider to gain root access. Good work by the localbitcoins guys in making everything so secure that even with root access the intruder (probably) gained nothing.

</comment><comment><USER4> I'm a bit curious as to their explanation:

> The attacker gained a root access to the server for ~40 minutes

and

> All data on the website server is encrypted. Manual actions are needed to > make this data readable, so the attacker could not gain access to the data > even when having a server console access.

Unless the "encrypted data" is simply being stored on that server, and not used, this seems like a hopeful statement to make. If a server process is accessing it, then it must have the key, at the very least, in memory (which root can access, though finding the key might be somewhat of a feat). Even if the truly valuable stuff was on another server, could the hacker not masquerade as the webserver itself, and make requests that appear to have originated from the webserver?

Granted, this assumes a lot about the ability of the attacker. I'm mostly saying it's possible, not that it's probable; the latter is harder to determine. Good see them rebuilding on fresh hardware: better to start from scratch than to try and "uncompromise" a system. Shame on the provider though; I'm curious to know who: I feel like such situations deserve a bit of name- and-shame, as they represent a very severe failure on the part of the provider. And the provider should detail very clearly what steps will be taken such that this will not happen again.

<comment><USER5> I suspect they have a base OS installation and then have a post-boot encrypted partition which requires manual passphrase entry over ssh or console to unlock, containing all the relevant data. That's a pretty normal way to set up remotely-adminned fairly secure servers.

When it's "cold" (offline, or running but in system-low mode), you have no real protection of the OS, but you essentially distrust the machine whenever it gets rebooted without your consent. If someone can get root on the server while it's in "high mode" (normal operation, after keys are entered), any protections are irrelevant anyway.

The risk is if the attacker can cause enough reboots that you stop caring about reboots so much, and just blindly enter the passphrase; the attacker then puts up something which steals the passphrase, and then uses the passphrase on an already-imaged drive, winning the game. Or if the attacker can use one of a large number of vulnerabilities to get access to your data when it's running in system-high mode; either an app-level vulnerability or either local access + local root, or remote root.

Server technology sucks for anything needing great security but adminned strictly remotely.

<comment><USER6> > I suspect they have a base OS installation and then have a post-boot > encrypted partition which requires manual passphrase entry over ssh or > console to unlock, containing all the relevant data. That's a pretty normal > way to set up remotely-adminned fairly secure servers.

Debian and Ubuntu both support this pretty painlessly.

1) Do the base install with full disk encryption.

2) Put an ssh public key into /root/.ssh/authorized_keys

3) Install dropbear.

4) Force a initramfs rebuild if it doesn't happen automatically.

You'll get an initramfs that has dropbear ssh embedded which you can log into and unlock the disk.

<comment><USER5> Right, but there's no real proof the dropbear/sh/etc. you talk to is untampered after reboot; it could easily be logging, if someone shut your system down and replaced the boot drive. ssh vs. serial console at least requires they extract some (unencrypted) key from the drive, though.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> LocalBitcoins' blog post about the attack can be found here.

[http://localbitcoins.blogspot.com/2014/05/attack-against- loc...](http://localbitcoins.blogspot.com/2014/05/attack-against- localbitcoins.html)

</comment><comment><USER8> Good use of full disk encryption (or encryption of everything but the base bootable OS) and separation of systems (bitcoind on a separate server.) That's the way to do things! Good on them.

</comment><comment><USER9> It seems that if a bitcoin site is to use a 3rd party hoster, they would be wise to at least require all email correspondence be cryptographically signed; better still , why not require encrypted email exchanges.

Is there a hosting provider which supports this level of service?

<comment><USER10> kimeralive.com offers private mail servers that are not accessible via non encrypted ports and require TLS :) (disclaimer, I'm the CTO at Kimera)

<comment><USER9> I'm not referring to just private mail services, but rather if you can implore customer service to remotely administer you servers (even just rebooting) via email they should only act on crypto signed correspondence. Seems this would reduce the success of email social engineering as an attack vector. It might not make sense in all cases but if I am storing monetary value for others it would be a nice extra level to promote.

<comment><USER10> That is certainly something worth considering. We could validate PGP signatures.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> i strongly suggest that sites concerned with their security use (1) full-on colocation services and (2) encrypt the partition they store user data on or encrypt the entire disk.

if you have proper disk encryption, it is non-trivial to game the remote physical access to the machine, e.g. attacker convinces someone to use 'remote hands' to reboot server and then gets console redirected pre-boot. if you have disk encryption in this scenario, whether it is on the user data partition or the whole disk, you will surely be notified of the unscheduled reboot and can investigate it.

it is always best to host your own machines (_not_ VPSes) and be able to provide some level of compartmentalization to your hosting setup.

<comment><USER12> Careful, disk encryption usually doesn't cover the entire disk. So an attacker can place an evil initramfs in the /boot partition that stores away your disk encryption passphrase, for example.

This is even easier if the operating system partition is plaintext and only the data partition is encrypted. Then it's trivial to modify any binary, library, or startup scripts!

Encryption just means an attacker cannot get at the data right away. But once the admin brings up the system again (not knowing something has been tampered with) it's pretty easy to get access.

<comment><USER13> This is exactly the reason why they say they are not restarting the site now but are building a new fresh server instead.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Cloudhashing has seen a large number of these attacks.

All such attacks are futile, we are hosted by professionals and employ full disk encryption.

That any data at localbitcoins was compromised is shameful.</comment>


Which Unicode characters can you depend on? - <AUTHOR> http://www.johndcook.com/blog/2013/04/11/which-unicode-characters-can-you-depend-on/

<comment><USER2> I wish there were a great monospace font with extensive Unicode symbol support. DejaVu seems to support a lot of math symbols. But it's far from being perfect.

My favourite fonts Inconsolata and Adobe Source Proc support barely anything beyond latin1. So I usually end up with some ugly font mix due to fallback.

(Of course if you want all of Unicode and hate yourself there is GNU Unifont. edit: Just checked and Unifont only supports all of BMP.)

<comment><USER3> Maybe Droid Sans Mono or Liberation Mono? They both have an extensive range of glyphs but I am not sure about math symbols.

<comment><USER3> Replying to myself... For anyone interested, here are two screenshots showing the Mathematical Operators blocks of Liberation Mono and Droid Sans Mono in the current Debian Sid:

[https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/390716/20130412-003357-d...](https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/390716/20130412-003357-debian- math-fonts-liberation-mono.png)

[https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/390716/20130412-003523-d...](https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/390716/20130412-003523-debian- math-fonts-droid-sans-mono.png)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I'm not sure the intersection is necessary. I believe that as long as a character is included in _any_ font on the system it will get shown (in web browsers at least).

It may not be the case on mobile, but it appears to work this way on Windows and Linux.

</comment><comment><USER5> Some of those characters in Cook's blog didn't render in Chrome. Perhaps Chrome should ship with a default font that renders _every_ Unicode character!

</comment><comment><USER6> Didn't Hofsteader have some tools for mapping characters into the essential aesthetic form of a font? Could we at least get approximations of all Unicode characters (from a simple base font) into all typefaces installed on a system? (Or have I just been subjected to too much Doc McStuffins this evening?)

</comment><comment><USER7> Droid Sans is a font for Android. How exactly is that a "common font"? I mean, there's a lot of Android users out there, but I would have to assume "common font" means fonts that are available on multiple different platforms.

<comment><USER8> Droid Sans not as common as the other fonts on the list. I threw it into the mix for a couple reasons. For one, the feedback from twitter suggested that Android might support fewer characters than other platforms. For another, I expected a lot of commonality between the other fonts, but Droid fonts were an independent effort so I thought there might not be as much overlap.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> ಠ_ಠ</comment>


The claim that Instagram lost a quarter of its users isn't supported by the data - <AUTHOR> http://qz.com/39568/how-a-bogus-claim-about-instagram-losing-users-made-facebooks-stock-drop-nearly-3/

<comment><USER2> You can pretty much stop reading any article once you hit 'stock dropped because', save maybe earnings announcements. Cause and effect of a 2% move in a stock as volatile as FB is just silly.

<comment><USER3> It's funny because cause and effect is one of the reasons he uses to call the claim "bogus".

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> The claim isn't supported by common sense either. I doubt 25% of users even heard about the new ToS, let alone acted on it.

<comment><USER5> I haven't even heard of Instagram before their change in ToS.

<comment><USER6> Seriously??? That's very surprising that someone who reads hn hasn't heard of something as popular as instagram. It was a big deal on hn when fb bought them. even a quick search on hn shows over four thousand results. I don't buy it unless you're new to hn or the internet.

<comment><USER5> I've only been reading HN _constantly_ in the last two months and some sub reddits like /r/linux /r/programming and /r/cpp.

To me HN is just a ripoff of Reddit.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> What is up with this website? I scrolled around a bit and all of a sudden I'm on a new article with no sign of the original. Terrible user experience.

<comment><USER8> Also I had to pause Ghostery to get the article to load at all.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> I totally agree. I would add that appData stats are very inaccurate especially when you look at a short time window and daily stats.

1 - Usage is defined by how often an app accesses user data using a token. This does not necessarily mean the user used the site, at least not in the last 60 days (user tokens need to be renewed every 60 days).

2 - Facebook often lags a few days when reporting daily user activity and is somehow inconsistent of when the data is reported. (their open graph reporting seems to be more up to date/realtime ) When that happens appData seems to sometime report the same data point for a few days. You can actually see on the graph that the traffic is totally flat for a few days which is unlikely.

</comment><comment><USER10> This website never seems to load for me in Firefox.

<comment><USER8> You probably have an add-on blocking something that the web site requires.</comment></comment>


Business School is a Joke - <AUTHOR> http://web.archive.org/web/20080402234209/insixitive.com/2006/12/03/business-school-is-a-joke/ <comment><USER2> For a different point of view.

Coming from an engineering background, I sat in on an entrepreneurship class at UChicago Booth and I was totally blown away.

The angle was completely different. The previous class the students were all given the details about hypothetical ventures with some background on the market and they were asked to say whether they would invest or not invest should such a proposal cross their desk.

Then the class I was in, the big twist was that a lot of the ventures were real, and the founders were there that day.

The experience of being there when a room full of really bright and really accomplished kids learned that the company that 9/10 had passed on became a multi-million dollar success was priceless (and vice-versa). The message was unmistakeable.

Regarding the student body: I struck up a conversation with an enrolled student next to me, and it turns out the guy was one of the first 10 employees at ICQ. Pretty cool.

Take which anecdote (mine or the author's) you will. Also consider that the author's program was an undergraduate program and try to remember how experienced or useful you were at 18-21.

<comment><USER3> UChicago teaches business differently that basically every business school in the country, so take this anecdote with a grain of salt. The have a quantitative/scientific focus that many other schools lack. Your example shows this perfectly, as the professor presented real data to you instead of fictional data.

On the whole, there is still a large problem with undergraduate degrees in business.

<comment><USER4> Actually, I'd argue that among the top 7 business schools, there are certain distinctions between them that will appeal to different people with different professional goals.

MIT, UChicago, and Stanford all seem to appeal more to engineering types and offer a more quantitative / scientific focus.

Wharton is known for their emphasis on finance and is usually ideal for people wanting to become IBankers.

Columbia has its roots in Benjamin Graham-style investing and you'll see a lot of students there go on to those types of hedge funds.

Harvard is more regarded for its emphasis on management and heavy use of case studies, and the people that go there tend to seek out consulting or rotational programs within the F500.

<comment><USER3> Fair point, but you have to consider where the distinctions come from. For example, at MIT I'd be willing to bet the quantitative focus comes from the fact that many engineers who go there pick us business as a second degree as an undergrad. At Chicago, the quantitative/scientific focus stems from the fact that the department truly believes in it as a method of investigation. Chicago is all about the raw data and real life case studies. It's my understanding that many other business departments differ in this respect.

Of course, this is all anecdotal evidence I've gathered from talking to Chicago alumni, so take it for what you will.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I have been on both sides of this feeling. In my freshman and sophomore year, I believed school was crap. Here are the feelings and attitudes I had:

1\. school can't teach me much

2\. I already know so much

3\. Gosh why am I here?

4\. Am I ever going to use this?

I was so turned off by the busi100 classes that I gave up even applying for business. Instead, I chose the easiest major on campus(communications) in hopes that I can quickly get my degree requirements and then drop in to higher level busi classes bypassing the annoying b-school prerequisites.

So after sophomore year I took a 3 semester break. During that time, I was working on my startup and living life as a non-student. It is also when I realized the holes in my "skillset"(for a lack of better word). I returned to school with a new attitude: I am going to nitpick classes to fill up the obvious holes.

My attitude upon return:

1\. I have stuff to learn

2\. I will take very specific classes fill up specific holes

3\. I don't expect the class in itself to teach me as much as for it to provoke thought in me

My experience has been a complete opposite since return. I have learned _a tonne_ from a few specific classes(sales management, market strat, market analysis). I am a startup guy. So when I say learned, I am talking about very practical shit that I am putting to use _right now_.

It's all about the attitude IMO. A subtle thing I realized: the classes in itself might not teach you but they can provoke thought in you that pushes you to learn specific stuff yourself that you wouldn't have known about.

If you think school can't teach you anything, take time off! It'll validate or invalidate your thinking.

<comment><USER6> I would say the same, a lot of the uni I've done, especially the straight computer science stuff has been basic looks which I picked up before I took the classes online.

There are though benefits in that these classes kind of force you to take a slower and more in depth look at some things and you end up learning the area better. I know with my operating systems class, I already knew a lot of the basics about how it all worked, but taking the focus to learn it well taught be quiet a bit I think.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> I feel the HN title is a touch misleading - when I hear B-school, I think MBA, maybe that's just me. The fact that this is undergrad is significant. In my opinion, thought leaders, both from the external 'business' world as well as top professors, often feel it is a waste of their time teaching undergrads, many of whom are there because it is what one is supposed to do (ie. go out and get an education) rather than because they really want to, and have paid out of their own pocket, to be there, which is most often the case with MBA's.

I know that in my Computer Science undergrad, while I was interested in learning, I was more interested in living the student life. I just recently finished an MBA and while it fell short on some fronts, the talent of the professors, many of whom were doing real work and affecting change in the real world, did not disappoint, especially in the fully elective 2nd year. Further, students have much more to contribute after they have done, and have been vetted on what they have done, in the years after finishing their undergrad, rather than on what clubs they joined in their first of year of general undergrad. Undergrad Business degree != MBA.

<comment><USER8> Long time lurker here =).

Agreed, I'm doing an M.S now (non-business) and I've always been under the impression that the MBA crowd is a little bit older - not too old, but people that have had a few years of experience in an industry. Don't quote me on this but don't most Ivy MBA programs require 3-5 years of actual work experience for acceptance?

I also have a few friends doing MBAs and most of what they do involves case studies of real companies and problems that they faced.

\-- Not advocating everyone go out there and get an MBA, but the title should mention that it's undergrad business school.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Most of the ivies do not have undergraduate business programs, probably for this very reason. In that context the MBA makes more sense; acquire a broad quality liberal arts education as an undergraduate (electrical engineering, math, Spanish, philosophy, sociology, ...) and then supplement with the best parts of management, marketing, finance, supply chain management, IT, and accounting. The undergrad major is more a supply and demand story; students irrationally demand it so it gets supplied. Good luck getting a management position with your management undergrad degree and good luck going to graduate school with the skills you've acquired. But they sign up in droves so...

That said there are definitely skills acquired in a finance or accounting or IT program. I can't say for sure with marketing but I would suspect to a lesser degree them too. His beef seems to be primarily with a management major and I'm totally sympathetic to that point.

</comment><comment><USER10> "Mandatory group work ... teaches kids how to assign tasks to people who aren't capable of doing them, how to schedule wasteful meetings to re-format and explain individuals' work, and how to make bad and inconsistent PowerPoint presentations."

So much group work I had in college started out with "keep meeting with your team". It was all just an exercise in seeing how much time we could waste in pointless meetings. Of course when I tried to delegate work, so we could actually accomplish things and waste less time in meetings, some silly girl tattle taled on me saying: "Jason doesn't want us to meet enough".

</comment><comment><USER11> Having context to put lessons in is very important for effective academic learning (or almost any learning).

For an engineer, learning electrical theory from a text book makes a lot more sense if you have toyed around with an Arduino before.

For an undergraduate business major who may never have seen a P&L statement, let alone put one together, I can see that it would be tough to find the subject useful or engaging. This is why most MBA programs won't consider applicants until they have some industry experience. Academic learning works much better when you have a foundation to build on, and for an undergraduate studying business, it seems it would be easy to become disenfranchised without this foundation.

</comment><comment><USER12> First, being _consistently ranked beside MIT's, UPenn's, and Stanford's_ is not the same thing as being at MIT, UPenn, or Stanford. Second, this kind of thing is much more valuable once you're older and have some perspective (hence the MBA). Business degrees are generally about operational aspects of running a business, not the startup aspects, so if you expect them to teach you how to build a run-away success you're in for a disappointment. That doesn't mean a business degree isn't valuable (in and of itself it doesn't mean it's valuable either, but at least you should know what you're getting into).

</comment><comment><USER13> I just recently graduated from a top undergraduate b-school program. As an entrepreneur, I don't see anything that enticing about going back to get an MBA. Even if I was accepted into a top tier program. Why you ask?

Well, I am going to provide a very subjective opinion here, but would love to get some responses...

Most top ranked MBA programs cater to those who want to do one of 4 things after they graduate:

1\. Become an Associate/VP in Private Equity 2\. Become an Associate/VP in a Hedge Fund/Trading 3\. Become an Associate in Management Consulting 4\. Become a corporate executive

Now an MBA has some real benefit for those entering these fields and there is nothing wrong there. If you're an entrepreneur, I don't really see the added benefit of getting an MBA. Most of the knowledge obtained in the coursework can be learned through experience or just by picking up some literature (see "The 10-day MBA" by Steven Silbiger). From many seasoned entrepreneurs I've spoken with, an MBA limits the time you could be spending starting your business (unless you can start while in your program like Jerry Yang or Sergey/Larry)

There is an advantage through networking with other like-minded entrepreneurs in your program and using the school's resources, but it pretty much stops there.

The one exception I would make for an MBA program really benefiting the entrepreneur is hands down...Stanford.

Stanford has the proximity to the Valley and also the roster of success stories (yahoo, google, HP, Cisco, Sun) but it's real value is that it serves as an ad-hoc incubator for start-up innovation. Just take a minute and subscribe to the free podcasts from the STVP (Stanford Technology Ventures Program) on itunes and you'll get an idea of why Stanford seems to be the only program that values entrepreneurship.

If anyone can think of other MBA programs that help entrepreneurs, I would like to hear about them.

</comment><comment><USER14> On the MBA, a few friends w/ science backgrounds said they cruised through top 10 b-schools without much effort. They did it only to transition from science to business careers quickly. Their advice was to skim an intro finance & marketing book. The rest was crap.

</comment><comment><USER15> A school like Michigan draws from kids whose high school experience may be quite varied; as a result most intro classes are extremely slow, memorization intensive, and focus on very crude sorts of assignments and testing.

When these sorts of classes are used as admissions criteria for special programs (such as the BBA) you end up with a huge amount of competitiveness even though the material is easy.

The inevitable consequence of this is a lot of busy work, etc., so that some students eventually stand out as having done a better job at learning easy material and can be awarded the prize (admission to the BBA program, etc.).

I was shocked by the phenomenon of students ganging up on the professors to make tests "open note", and other approaches that allow less able students who are willing to use brute force approaches to thrive.

Note: In life, intelligence isn't really all that important, so the students have the right idea and so the rewards they reap for that behavior probably predict future economic rewards.

</comment><comment><USER16> An undergraduate degree in this country teaches you how to become a worker bee. If you like being a worker bee, getting a decent(?) salary, taking 2 weeks and then later in life maybe 6 weeks vacation, by all means study business, marketing, etc. Otherwise, get educated.

"Self education is, I firmly believe, the only kid of education there is." -Isaac Asimov

If only we could have a few more people every year become free thinkers and creators.

<comment><USER17> Didn't Asimov do an advanced degree in chemistry?

<comment><USER16> Yes he did. Medicine, law, engineering, mathematics, etc., most people will need to go to college and graduate programs. Tough to self-educate in those areas.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> There's an interesting book called "Managers Not MBAs", written by a professor of business, which talks about why the MBA system is pretty broken.

IMO, studying business as an undergrad is pretty useless. Study something real (science or engineering), and if you want to learn about business later, go to business school (or start a company if you really want to learn about business).

<comment><USER19> LOL @ studying something "real" like science or engineering.

My friend, you wouldn't last a day in the Amazonian jungle with a native tribe. (Anthropology, but thats not real.)

Study what you love first and foremost, even if thats business. Everything else will fall into place.

<comment><USER20> _Anthropology, but thats not real._

At the undergrad level, maybe not. At higher levels, most things become a lot more real. Of course, you aren't likely to be doing that sort of field work as an undergrad anyway (or so I hear from high school friends who went on to study anthropology in college).

<comment><USER19> I have a friend who went to South America the summer after 2nd year. Also a roommate who went to Peru after 3rd year, but she had to apply and interview to go with the prof.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> I thought I would chime in, since I think my experience is slightly unique.

I enrolled in undergrad at Boston University as a Computer Systems and Physics major. After two horrible years of all-nighters and poor grades, I came to the realization that I didn't even like the jobs I would be lined up for (this was shortly after the dot com bubble burst) or the people I was going to be working with.

So I left the major and completed my degree from tiny Ithaca College as an Integrated Marketing Communications major.

Now, after a few years in the professional world as an ad exec, I'm pursuing my MBA from Boston College.

So coming from a mix engineer/marketing background, I can say that business school as a whole plays it far too safe. They dumb down the math requirements, and they don't push the "soft skills" enough either. Our "soft skills" class was treated pretty universally as a joke, and yet I didn't leave my corporate finance class feeling any more knowledgeable in that area either.

After a recent trip to Palo Alto, I have been dreaming about the opportunities that would be in front of me if I had pursued my MBA at Stanford, instead of taking the easy way out to Boston College. But in reality, I find the true value in b-school to be from your fellow classmates, network of alumni, and time you spend actually thinking about business.

Let me elaborate a little on that last point. This is the first time in my (short) career I've been able to read articles, discuss them with professors, and spend time critiquing existing business models. While this time spent won't show up on any transcripts, I think it will be invaluable to my future prospects.

I'll cut this comment short - but I encourage all to evaluate both the student body and the network of alumni before choosing a b-school. These are easily the two strongest aspects of the education you will take away afterwards.

all the best, jeff vincent

</comment><comment><USER22> Background : I started a business and managed to build it out with no formal education at all.

I often wonder whether formal education in business would have helped me, or hindered me.

I'm certain the structured information contained in a structured business course would have been useful.

At the same time, when I was starting out, I did a lot of things that no reasonable educational institution would advocate just to get through the month and make payday. During all of this, I was reading and learning as fast as I could about all of the numerous knowledge gaps I began to realise I had, as I came up against various walls.

After years of experience in running a business, when I read books about business/sales/marketing/economics, it's far easier to process and understand the theory.

I think any kind of education about business is valuable, but I also think it's 10 times more valuable if you have some kind of real-life experience to which you can map the theory.

</comment><comment><USER23> I have always thought business school would be a lot better off if people were forced to read people like Seth Godin or even Chris Anderson.

My problem with business people is that they learn buzz words and jargon, and often treat the "makers" as tools. I would have a lot more respect for b-school if business majors were forced to pick a "concentration"- engineering, CS, etc. They wouldn't be expected to be great at their concentration; they just would need to know enough about what the people they're managing do.

I love this line: "For one, it's harder to teach engineering to a marketer than it is to teach marketing to an engineer."

It's my belief that most engineers or programmers could be great marketers or business people, if they didn't have to spend all their time creating things. Business people have time on their side- they don't really have to make anything, so they can spend more time getting ahead.

<comment><USER24> I don't think anyone is going to be cured of buzzworditis by being forced to read Godin and Anderson.

Can I interest you in my biz, which is a freemium play on a purple cow concept? We just need enough money to get through The Dip.

<comment><USER25> That is true. Also any specialized profession is going to have jargon just because it makes it easier to discuss things.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> I dated a finance major (in the undergrad business school) for two years when I was at Georgetown. My impression of her classes was the same - that they were training, not education, and intellectually void.

That said, she's now a successful analyst at Merrill, so she must have gotten something out of it.

<comment><USER27> Depends what you mean by "something," I suppose. Pedigree and pathway, sure. Knowledge and real training? That's the issue being discussed here.

<comment><USER26> Pedigree and pathway would get her hired, but not make her successful. She got 5/5 ratings in her recent reviews.

<comment><USER27> This is a silly back and forth until you can point at the "something" she got from b-school aside from pathway and pedigree. Again, that's what's being discussed. It's certainly possible that the degree got her the job, yet her own natural intelligence, undergrad experience, or professional experience led to her success. And /not/ the b-school curriculum.

<comment><USER26> Yeah, I suppose that's reasonable - in fact, it's probably true.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> I would largely agree that a business education doesn't prepare you for entrepreneurship. But it isn't exactly valueless. Here's some of the courses and concepts I liked about MY business education:

\- Case studies: in accounting/biz analysis class, we learned by studying fictional and real case studies, from jewelery startups started by 2 former students to mid-sized soda manufacturing companies. You get a background about the founders, some key market factors, relevant prices and financial figures, etc. You then come up with your own conclusions and rationalize why, and present your findings under a Socratic teaching environment.

Strategy course + game simulation: The strategy game was a lot of fun, you get together with your group and try to take over the shoe business by building factories in 4 continents, setting prices, budgets, R&D, etc. It also based its currencies against real world currencies. Every week, you got your results and tried to out-compete other groups.

Operations: My ops prof worked in consulting and bragged to clients that if he couldn't find a way to save you money in 20 mins, he'd consult for free. He dives straight into the books and starts crossing out inventory. Why? Inventory takes storage space, heat, security, insurance. Ops is largely inapplicable to web startups because it deals with tangibles. But I still liked learning about it.

I would say business schools aren't really for the hacker/entrepreneur mindset. They are generally for people who want careers in management.

<comment><USER28> I hope he thinks about the implications to each business he consults before he starts crossing inventory out willy-nilly. Most of the time, it might make sense, and certainly, it's good to question whether you need it.

But just doing so to optimize solely on cost might be a local maxima. You might impact other less tangible aspects/dimensions/parameters of the business in a negative way, and usually other people have to suffer at the hands of MBA's decisions.

<comment><USER19> I'm sure he considers the impact of the decisions along with the clients he works for.

You are right that other less tangible aspects can be impacted in unforeseen ways. But that has nothing to do with the decisions of business people or MBA's. It has to do with leadership and corporate culture.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> Ha! He makes some good points but he is way wrong about math and econ classes being better than business classes. It is the same bullshit. Professors are never right for the job they are doing especially in introductory courses designed to lay the foundation. We spend 50 minutes covering definitions and examples that can be covered in less than 20 and we spend 50 minutes because professors are lazy and the curriculum is divided into 50 minutes for no apparent reason whatsoever.

</comment><comment><USER30> While I was reading this three separate things sprang in my mind and I think there is some degree of connection between them. Over the last decade busness degrees have become more and more popular, leaving engineering and science for nerds. Also I have seen more high school kids with an Idea that collage is waste of time and money, they better of trying to make it on their own. It seems that all these business schools which crunch out PHBs have given bad reputation to a collage degree.

</comment><comment><USER31> Currently a MBA student at Stanford Graduate School of Business, I'm also bootstrapping a startup with two CS graduate students and a seasoned designer. As an entrepreneur, I can definitely speak for the benefits that Stanford GSB provides: (1) The Stanford and Stanford GSB networks are both phenomenal. Alumni are very accessible and connected with the school. Classmates are highly collaborative and bring contacts from almost every industry you can think of and want to learn about. To start a business, access to relevant networks is critical and GSB provides that. (2) Entrepreneurship classes taught by experienced industry veterans. Some of my favorite classes are taught by serial entrepreneurs, famous venture capitalists, or legendary executives including Eric Schmidt, Andy Grove, Mark Leslie, Andy Rachleff, Audrey MacLean, Mike Lyons, Joe Peterson, and Harold Irving Grousbeck, among many others. (3) The roster of speakers that come to speak both at GSB and other parts of Stanford is extremely useful for entrepreneurs. Classes and clubs invite speakers including Ron Conway, Peter Thiel, Jack Dorsey (founder of Twitter), Shawn Fanning (founder of Napster), Chad Hurley (founder of Youtube), Aaron Patzer (founder of Mint.com), Mark Pincus (founder of Zynga), and many others. STVP (stvp.stanford.edu) and ETL (etl.stanford.edu) are two other great resources. As a student, you can even take the initiative as a club leader to approach some of the most successful people in the valley to come speak. (4) Stanford GSB has a Center for Entrepreneurial Studies which organizes seasoned entrepreneurs, angels and venture investors to hold 1:1 free advisory sessions with entrepreneurial students to discuss their startup ideas and help students build the network. I've personally found them very valuable. (5) Many successful alumni who are entrepreneurs, active angels, or venture investors often hold intimate networking events, such as as small group dinners, to meet with entrepreneurial students. It's another way to network and receive feedback on your startup idea! (6) The school also offers classes in which students across business school, engineering school and other schools can work in a team on a startup idea together. Some of these class projects continued as startups after the class.

Overall, the best value is the access to investor, entrepreneur and industry networks, the ability to meet other entrepreneurial students, and to receive advice from some of the best entrepreneurs in the industry.

<comment><USER32> Seriously? Did you even read TFA? The guy is saying that undergrad business majors are asinine. Probably true even at Stanford. What this has do with with a nameroll of 300 rich people you're paying $100k a year to rub shoulders with, I haven't a clue.

<comment><USER31> We all have to admit it. Network is important for one to succeed in business, in addition to raw talent and a great product. I'm not saying you can bypass the second two factors with just a network, but with a strong network, it only helps. Someone can help you introduce the product to the world and someone very smart can give you great advice, if you don't fool yourself into thinking you don't need mentoring from some of the best in the industry. I've learned a great deal by seeking advice from these leaders. I wasn't completely sold on a MBA before coming to GSB and that's why it took me longer to come than average classmates. I almost didn't come, with the same perspective you may have. However, having spent 1.5 years here, I think it's really worthwhile even though it used up all my savings prior to business school (yes, it's expensive). I did actually learn valuable lessons from many industry veterans who are sharing their many years of learning with us about sales, marketing, management, finance, entrepreneurship, VC, etc. Believe me, I'm a stronger believer in learning from doing it, as I'm currently building a business while in school. However, the learning and mentoring I receive is phenomenal to complement this and the network is extremely valuable.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> The stuff you learn in business is more supplemental material for the stuff you learn in the more hard sciences like engineering. You may have built the best product, but without marketing, accounting, and operations, the product still might not succeed in the market.

With that said, I think business school courses should be taken on the side to the primary engineering courses as that provides the most well rounded education.

<comment><USER34> I agree that it is somewhat useful to have these ancillary classes such as marketing, finance which would complement well with a degree in engineering i.e. computer science, materials science, biomedical etc.

</comment></comment><comment><USER35> Do programmers/engineers have an inferiority complex vs. Management/MBA types? I don't see many articles on HN bashing sales professions advising youngsters not to go to trade school . . .

<comment><USER28> Probably not. There have just been lots of bad MBAs in the last couple years that make clueless business decisions, and we've probably suffered under the hands of one at one time or another. Like asking to measure productivity in the number of lines of code. Sure, it might seem like it makes sense, but it'll soon be apparent it doesn't if you've tried to code at all, even just a little bit.

Having a business sense is great. But when you get MBAs that think that's all there is, it makes for bad business decisions that engineers have suffered under. Having some grasp of the actual nature of the business that you're in will go a long way.

<comment><USER36> I voted you up, but you made one mistake; it should have "MBAs in the last couple of _decades_ that made clueless business decisions". I have been reading almost identical complaints about the lack of real value in the MBA since the early 1990s.

<comment><USER28> Thanks, but I haven't lived long enough to see MBAs in the 90's. I've only started working in the 2000's.

I've heard that was the case, but I never looked into what happened in the 90's. Thanks for the heads up.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER37> Polymorphic business/management = bad idea that has aged even worse.</comment>


Pygooglechart: Python wrapper for Google charts API - <AUTHOR> http://pygooglechart.slowchop.com/

<comment><USER2> Looks cool but sample code doesn't work as marked on the page:

        Traceback (most recent call last):
          File "c:/temp/chart.py", line 6, in <module>
            chart.download('hello.png')
        AttributeError: 'SimpleLineChart' object has no attribute 'download'

Try 'download_graph' instead.

Still doesn't work for me, but that might be because we have a web proxy in place. Any suggestions? When I paste link into the browser it seems to work.

</comment><comment><USER3> Not sure why you would use Google Charts if you can include Python libraries - surely there are some that can draw charts?

<comment><USER4> Not really anything free. A few free libraries do make charts but none of them look pretty without a lot of customization.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Anyone know of a ruby version? Volunteers? :) Should be pretty simple to throw together a gem for it.

</comment><comment><USER6> I was going to write something similar over the holidays :P</comment>


How the West Got Rich - <AUTHOR> http://www.wsj.com/articles/why-the-west-and-the-rest-got-rich-1463754427?utm_source=pocket&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=pockethits <comment><USER2> That's the WSJ.

Of course, what really did it was steam, iron, and steel. Until the 1800s, economic growth in Europe was about half a percent a century. Didn't matter whether you had a king or a Parliament. A few coastal cities had figured out how to do shipping efficiently and were doing OK, but that had been happening on and off since Roman times. Those were sometimes city-states run by merchants, and were the closest thing to capitalist empires before the Industrial Revolution. That didn't scale; there wasn't much to ship yet.

Then came steam engines. It took a century to get that right. The first Newcomen steam engine, in 1712, was a dud, mostly because there was nothing to make a good boiler and cylinder with yet, so an extremely inefficient low pressure system had to be used. It took a century to get to Watt's engine. That was good enough for locomotives, and finally things started to spin.

The big moment was the opening of the Liverpool and Manchester Railway, in 1830. This was the moment when railroads got out of beta. People could, for the first time, buy a ticket and go someplace. Within a few decades, railroads were everywhere in Europe and growing in the US and India.

The Next Big Thing was steel. Steel has a long history, but until 1880, it was an expensive niche product, like titanium today. Then came the Bessemer process. Suddenly there was something strong and cheap from which you could make stuff.

None of this came out of the merchant city-states. The Hanseantic League didn't develop railroads. The Mediterranean maritime states didn't develop heavy industry. The most capitalist organizations on Earth at the time did a lot for art and architecture, but didn't start the Industrial Revolution early.

For a different view, learn how the East got rich. Read "How Asia Works".[1] This is a good study of how some of the east Asian countries went from the 18th century to the 21st in a few decades. The early stages required some degree of central planning, and specific incentives.

[1] [https://www.amazon.com/How-Asia-Works-Success-Failure- ebook/...](https://www.amazon.com/How-Asia-Works-Success-Failure- ebook/dp/B00B3M47VC)

<comment><USER3> Don't forget canals. They were the transport infrastructure beta test for England. With canals it finally made economic sense to extract more and produce more than the immediate local economy could use. Canal building also prepared the public to invest/speculate on the new infrastructure and provide capital the government was unable or unwilling to risk. Railroads poured fuel on the fire, but the first spark came from canals.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> There is a compelling argument that liberty, or at least efficient markets, inhibits technological innovation. The reason is that there is no incentive to innovate when there is robust competition, since the advantage gained by an innovation will be competed away before the investment into the innovation can be recovered. In other words, why bother to invent if you are just going to be copied anyway?

</comment><comment><USER5> A highly detailed and relevant discussion of this subject can be found in the robustly researched work Good Capitalism, Bad Capitalism and the Economics of Growth and Prosperity by William Baumol, Robert Litan, and Carl Schramm:

[http://sites.kauffman.org/capitalism/](http://sites.kauffman.org/capitalism/)

</comment><comment><USER6> So no mention of Imperialism and the vast transfer of wealth from indigenous peoples to their colonial oppressors? Not even a nod? We're rich because we're so free and liberated and gosh if these third world knuckleheads would just get it together they'd be just as rich! A+ WSJ.

<comment><USER7> No, it was some fantastical idea that capitalism is inherently productive. Nevermind that those idea sex pots (what a shitty analogy) would have fallen on their face when you tried to run a steam engine through an existing infrastructure. The wide open plains and untapped resource mining and abundant water and farmlands is the economic plunder wave the US has been riding.

This is a 0 value fluff piece about rainbows with pots of gold at the end.

<comment><AUTHOR> I admit I was conned by this article to seem legitimate. Can you recommend some posts/articles/books that are not fluff pieces on this subject? really trying to understand this subject</comment></comment></comment>