How to Get Rich (without Getting Lucky) - <AUTHOR> https://twitter.com/naval/status/1002103360646823936 <comment><USER2> Discussed at the time:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17203304](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17203304) (647 points/85 days ago/515 comments)

</comment><comment><USER3> Why is this on hacker news? It's just full of vague, unactionable statements.

>Seek wealth, not money or status. Wealth is having assets that earn while you sleep. Money is how we transfer time and wealth. Status is your place in the social hierarchy.

Who doesn't want assets that earn while you sleep? No one needs to be told they want that. What they need to be told is how they GET that from an entry level software engineering position in GoogBook.

>If you can't code, write books and blogs, record videos and podcasts.

This comes across very transparently as someone who CAN code, can't write books, blog or record videos but doesn't respect any of those activities.

Do you want my sage advice? Don't denigrate the things you can't do.

<comment><USER4> > Why is this on hacker news?

Because 55+ people upvoted it here. (And tens of thousands liked/retweeted on Twitter.)

> Who doesn't want assets that earn while you sleep? No one needs to be told > they want that.

Many are happy with 'safe' jobs at comfortable wages! And even many who ostensibly want to be 'rich' need to be reminded that a wealth other-than-by- selling-your-waking-hours is even possible! There are so many social defaults that encourage a wage-work-only path, and obscure other practices.

> What they need to be told is how they GET that from an entry level software > engineering position in GoogBook.

If people "need to be told" some paint-by-numbers idiot-proof checklist of exact actions to wealth, they're going to be disappointed. These sort of impressionistic hints are about the best they'll find – at least in a short format.

> This comes across very transparently as someone who CAN code, can't write > books, blog or record videos but doesn't respect any of those activities.

I believe it's been a while since the author coded; on the other hand, he's written & recorded videos a bunch recently. So your ability to interpret his meaning – and whether he is "denigrating" any of these activities – is highly suspect.

> Do you want my sage advice?

Maybe, I don't know. What have you written or accomplished that implies sagely wisdom? Do you have any positive advice for becoming wealthy that's not just criticizing someone else's recommendations?

> Don't denigrate the things you can't do.

Compared to this "don't", the full extent of your "sagely advice", the most explicit "don't" in the author's recommendations is: "Don't partner with cynics and pessimists. Their beliefs are self-fulfilling."

Is the author wrong to disparage such people, and would you instead recommend partnering with cynics and pessimists, in order to become wealthy?

(I suppose that could work for certain kinds of snarky tabloid-journalism projects. If that's your jam, go for it! I look forward to the 'Launch HN' post when it has a site.)

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Bullshit with a lot of retweets and likes. You need basic education and context to even follow this guide. It must include some premises.

<comment><USER6> trader philosophy in a tweet

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> I agree with everything in the Twitter post, except the "without getting lucky" part. You must already have wealth in order to practice any of his suggestions.

<comment><USER8> And also you need luck for the birth lottery.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Better readability [https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1002103360646823936.html](https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1002103360646823936.html)

</comment><comment><USER10> I like a lot of his stuff, but this is some preachy swill. A whole lot of opinions with very little support.

</comment><comment><USER11> As a rule of thumb, most people who get rich after starting from not being rich do it in real estate. How does this list explain or relate to this empirical fact?

</comment><comment><USER12> This should be titled "how not to write". It's terribly vague.

<comment><USER4> Aphoristic tweets are aphoristic. If you don't like this style of writing, don't visit Twitter/tweetstorms.

<comment><USER12> Sure, but I mean, "Everyone is trying to lead, but someone has to follow you"? I'm not sure how that helps at all.

<comment><USER13> In context, he means that leadership is difficult because you have to bring people along, whereas automation doesn't require you to establish alignment with anyone else. I'm skeptical that it ever works that way, but it's not quite as woo as it sounds art first.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> > _Play iterated games. All the returns in life, whether in wealth, > relationships, or knowledge, come from compound interest._

Compound interest and iterated games aren't particularly related. One example of an "Iterated game" is playing prisoner's dillemma repeatedly with the same person.

</comment><comment><USER15> There are many good resources you can find. But most people don't really think "I want to get rich" and optimise their lives around it. Spreadsheet or a piece of paper with a cashflow and some long term plan would be a good start. How many people do that? I think at least on some subconscious level many people know that's not what they are aiming for. They want to be around interesting people doing something meaningful and in general have fun. Acquiring wealth takes time and you can have much more fun in your 30s than in your 70s. That's regarding HN types. For people with the lowest wage striving to make the ends mee the problem is of course lack of knowledge, time to acquire it, and time to get out of this local minima.

Theoretically, money is a wonderful thing, you give people what they want they give you money. If you have a lot of money then the society owes you a lot. But we have fiat. Money is getting created out of thin air and it's not just bankers who get to be lucky, it leaks through out the society. Those with money influence gov, gov gets unlimited spending, banks happily cooperate with wealthy, and wealthy can afford actual storage of value like real estate or gold apart from their investments.

I don't believe we can fix crazily widening gap without giving people access to some real money. Gold is not very practical. Bitcoin is a great potential candidate and I think people still underestimate how great positive impact it can have on society (but big part of HN seems still butthurt about BTC, so feel free to ignore the last sentence or suggest some other solution)

<comment><USER12> > For people with the lowest wage striving to make the ends mee the problem is > of course lack of knowledge, time to acquire it, and time to get out of this > local minima.

Also lack of opportunities for many.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> Lot of very interesting advice, but I think it fails at its stated goal of "How to get rich without getting lucky". Much of the advise is extremely hard to follow and implement. For example, how can someone reliably _" arm yourself with specific knowledge"_ if _" specific knowledge is knowledge you cannot be trained for"_? This is very hard to pull off, and most people will not succeed at this, even if they work very hard at it.

Here's a much more reliable recipe for getting rich: Study your ass off in school. Do whatever it takes to graduate with a stellar GPA, and letters of recommendation. Attend the best University you can get into, with above credentials. Pick a major with a proven track record of financial success, such as Medicine/Software-Eng/Accounting etc. Get a job at a brand name company. Continue working your ass off to impress your manager and colleagues. Switch companies every 3-5 years, to maximize your compensation.

You're not going to be featured in any newspaper if you follow the above strategy. But you can certainly become a multi-millionaire, even in your late 30s.

<comment><USER17> Are you going to be a multi-millionaire by working as Medicine/Software- Eng/Accounting employee?

<comment><USER16> Yes

<comment><USER17> Can you elaborate, please?

<comment><USER16> If you're working at a FAANG company or equivalent in SF/NYC/SEA, you can get to $250-350k in total-compensation before you turn 30. If you save and invest a big chunk of this money in your 20s and 30s, you can plan on being a multi- millionaire by your 40s.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Especially the HN cloud should be able to understand that we can create long lasting value out of essentially just time and electricity. It's not only immobilia a well done content website can be a good long term investment as well.

</comment><comment><USER19> I have the feeling that If you understand these tweets, then you don't need this guide, because you already know what they're about. People who actually need this guide also need a more in depth explanation of each point or at least examples.

<comment><USER20> They're very useful as reminders. I understand the tweets but it helps to view your personal career with them in mind, and having the list does help.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> The only real take away here is understanding differece between wealth and money. Naval should have stayed away from making "snake oil" assertions that accumulating wealth can be done by anyone without regards to luck by simply following idioms in his tweets.

The idea of passively generating money from wealth (aka capitalism) implicitly requires that _someone else_ is working to generate money for you while you sleep. You cannot have a society where everyone is wealthy and everyone is passively generating all the income they need. So most of the wealth necessarily must be in hands of few and path to wealth is necessarily hard enough and probilistic (hence luck). There is only one scenario I can think of where this won't be true and that's when we figure out if we can replace robots as provider for all of our labor needs.

</comment><comment><USER22> > The most accountable people have singular, public, and risky brands: Oprah, > Trump, Kanye, Elon.

Some of those names seems out of place on a list of "the most accountable people."

</comment><comment><USER23> what is this stupid shit: "The most accountable people have singular, public, and risky brands: Oprah, Trump, Kanye, Elon." you guys are a big cult of worshipping rich people. its so obvious.</comment>


Machine learning – automated personal psychiatrist - <AUTHOR> http://psych.nfshost.com/

<comment><USER2> here's a similar thing i wrote while learning the rc shell on plan 9, inspired by the 'confessionals' in THX-1138. [http://sprunge.us/QfPG](http://sprunge.us/QfPG)</comment>


Who Controls Diners' Data? OpenTable Moves to Assert Control - <AUTHOR> https://www.wsj.com/articles/who-controls-diners-data-opentable-moves-to-assert-control-11552644121 <comment><USER2> non-paywalled: [https://outline.com/fMSNSn](https://outline.com/fMSNSn)</comment>


Show HN: Phoenix – a macOS window and app manager scriptable with JavaScript - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/kasper/phoenix <comment><USER2> The window api makes me think one could pretty easily create an i3 like window manager. But my past experience with OSX window managers like amethyst has been subpar. Often the sizing/positioning is taken more as a "suggestion" by the window than a command. I also found eventually windows would get into a bad state. Has window management on OSX improved in the past couple years? On Linux with X11, window managers truly have control and thus provide a more reliable experience.

<comment><USER3> I have had a pretty stable setup using yabai[0] for my wm and skhd[1] for my hotkey daemon. Both are by the same dev and I have nothing but good things to say about them. Occasionally windows will get in a wonky state, but I have a hot key to reset them. It is usually stable for a week+

[0][https://github.com/koekeishiya/yabai](https://github.com/koekeishiya/yabai) [1][https://github.com/koekeishiya/skhd](https://github.com/koekeishiya/skhd)

<comment><USER4> I've been using yabai and skhd for about a week, I was wondering what you are using for your menu bar? I'm not really sure about a suitable replacement for something like i3bar coming from Linux.

<comment><USER3> I have been using ubersicht[0]. The same developer of skhd/yabai has a dotfiles repo that I mostly copied his config from.

[0][https://github.com/felixhageloh/uebersicht](https://github.com/felixhageloh/uebersicht)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> The API [1] is an interesting read, as well as this thread from two years ago [2].

I have used Spectacle [3] for years and recently switched to Rectangle [4].

These two are quite simple in comparison but I barely use all their features.

I have seen people using HammerSpoon [5] as well for these type of things.

Out of curiosity, what kind of things do people script in a window manager?

[1] [https://github.com/kasper/phoenix/blob/bfcb684/docs/API.md](https://github.com/kasper/phoenix/blob/bfcb684/docs/API.md)

[2] [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16787836](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16787836)

[3] [https://www.spectacleapp.com/](https://www.spectacleapp.com/)

[4] [https://rectangleapp.com/](https://rectangleapp.com/)

[5] [https://www.hammerspoon.org/](https://www.hammerspoon.org/)

<comment><USER6> > _Out of curiosity, what kind of things do people script in a window > manager?_

KWin is scriptable, and I use it to change window shading behavior and to do some tiling. At one point I had it send SIGSTOP to processes that I minimized, and SIGCONT when they were raised, to save battery life.

<comment><USER7> Oh man that is a nice little life hack!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Here's my configuration for Phoenix (with gifs): [https://github.com/fabiospampinato/phoenix](https://github.com/fabiospampinato/phoenix)

You might find it useful as a starting point or as a source of inspiration.

<comment><USER9> I got your link from an older post about Phoenix on HN. It's really well done (as some replies to you on the older thread said)!

Have you, by any chance, tried Hammerspoon (hammerspoon.org)? That seems to be tool with a broader feature set compared to Phoenix. I was looking for some kind of well analyzed and written comparison.

<comment><USER8> I have not tried Hammerspoon but I've skimmed through their docs, I'd say ultimately it boils down to: do you want to write JS or Lua? And do you need any of the Hammerspoon-specific features? I personally don't know any Lua and actually quite like writing JS, I don't think I need any of extra features HS provides, and with Phoenix you can still run a shell script and still achieve many things HS provides explicitly.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I grew up in the 80s during the era of MacroMaker and QuickKeys, when you could just hit the record button and make macros to play back sequences of mouse and keyboard events. It was especially useful in programs like Photoshop before they added their own macro systems. I'm having trouble finding links about it:

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/System_6#MacroMaker](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/System_6#MacroMaker)

[http://basalgangster.macgui.com/RetroMacComputing/The_Long_V...](http://basalgangster.macgui.com/RetroMacComputing/The_Long_View/Entries/2010/11/21_AppleScript.html)

The frontier was to eventually make everything scriptable and deterministic by getting more apps to have hooks that could be controlled directly (so like a specific command to click the close box of a window for example, rather than sending a click event right and down from the top left corner).

Anyway, this whole concept of how to use computers seems to be all but dead today and I can't help but feel that something of tremendous value has been lost. Please, if you ever write macro tools like Phoenix, add a record feature.

<comment><USER11> It does seem like we've realized that GUIs are not really the most automation- friendly way to interact with programs. But there are a lot of nice macro tools out there still.

For Windows, there is a macro scripting language Autohotkey [0], which has powerful recording GUIs built on it [1]. Although it doesn't support application-specific hooks that I'm aware of, it does allow introspection into the rendered GUI of the application, so you can "click a button" instead of "click a pixel".

OS X has Keyboard Maestro [2], which I've heard is good.

Also, many keyboards have macro recording built in. My Ducky keyboard can record and save macros with no custom software/driver needed. (the macros can even include mouse clicks, but that's a little janky.)

As a final note, I think the place I've seen macro recording still used the most is in gaming. In most other areas of computing, it's seen as preferable to make a special-purpose utility to solve a problem instead of building layers of automation on top of a more general-purpose tool.

(btw, this is just based on my personal experience -- I love automation so I've never been far from the macro-space. I'm not trying to argue against your point.)

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

[1]: [https://www.macrocreator.com/](https://www.macrocreator.com/)

[2]: [https://www.keyboardmaestro.com/main/](https://www.keyboardmaestro.com/main/)

<comment><USER12> > It does seem like we've realized that GUIs are not really the most > automation-friendly way to interact with programs. But there are a lot of > nice macro tools out there still.

Yeah, in general the opinion seems to be "you want to manually do stuff, use a GUI. If you want automation, use the API of either a server-side backend or CLI tool", but there is a huge segment of users that are between that. Imagine power users that don't know how to program. For them to be able to quickly record > playback some common thing they do, would save a lot of time and be valuable

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Sloppy mouse focus? It's the one feature I can never seem to find in macOS window managers.

That and "highlight-to-copy" "middle-click-to-paste" are two things I really miss from an X11 environment.

<comment><USER14> Focus-follows-mouse, even sloppy, is problematic on macOS due to the menu bar. Moving the mouse up to the menu bar means covering space which can belong to a different window, which would change the meaning of the menu item when you got there.

<comment><USER15> "Focus-follows-mouse, even sloppy, is problematic on macOS due to the menu bar. Moving the mouse up to the menu bar means covering space which can belong to a different window, which would change the meaning of the menu item when you got there."

This is true, but easily surmountable.

Mondomouse, which is the last bona-fide focus-follows-mouse add-on that existed for OSX (circa snow leopard) had a switch timer that was user- definable.

So you could set the switch timer to .5 seconds or 1 second or something which would allow you to run the mouse across other windows without changing focus. That solved the menu bar problem that you are, correctly, pointing out.

I think it's also worth mentioning that if you're at the point where you're demanding FFM, you're probably _already doing everything with hotkeys anyway_ so it's not like you're running up to the menu bar often ...

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Based on other links listed [1] in this comment right here and a little bit of reading up, it seems like Phoenix focuses on window and app management whereas Hammerspoon supports many more types of events and hooks to develop actions/plugins on. Does anyone have a better comparison of these two?

[1]: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22143917](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22143917)

</comment><comment><USER16> Interesting, I need to check this out. I currently use Amethyst[1], and while I like it, it's definitely got some bugs/performance issues. I've also heard people use chunkwm with good results, but haven't tried it myself.

[1]ianyh.com/amethyst

<comment><USER17> Yabai is the tool that replaced chunkWM, made by the same guy. You'd probably want that one.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> What can this do that Spectacle can't? Long time Spectacle user and JavaScript developer here.

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

<comment><USER19> I have been using Spectacle for ages (with a custom javascript config, another post...). The problem is, Spectacle uses a 32bit API that is scheduled to go away and I am afraid that at some point (or 10.15 already?) it will stop working.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> Spectacle is another alternative on macOS [1]. There's also Amethyst. I'm not sure which one's best. It is a matter of getting used to the default keybinds IMO.

With Spectacle, the default keybinds are using Alt and Cmd as super key. I like that one; I rather keep Caps Lock as Esc (else I'd use it as Ctrl).

As for i3, there's a backwards compatible Wayland successor called Sway [2].

[1] [https://github.com/eczarny/spectacle](https://github.com/eczarny/spectacle)

[2] [https://github.com/swaywm/sway](https://github.com/swaywm/sway)

<comment><USER21> > _I rather keep Caps Lock as Esc (else I 'd use it as Ctrl)._

Why not both? My caps is esc when pressed alone, but it's ctrl when pressed in combination with other keys. :)

<comment><USER20> Yeah, I'm using that, but I find it does not work well under high load.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> You can do a lot of this stuff without a full app, you just need a way to trigger an AppleScript with a keyboard shortcut. This is my framework for this approach. [https://github.com/robenkleene/windowpane](https://github.com/robenkleene/windowpane)

</comment><comment><USER19> I have two links related to tiled window management:

The links are for WM configurations that let you move or resize windows keeping the corners on a configurable grid:

[1] [https://github.com/luigirizzo/lrtile- chrome](https://github.com/luigirizzo/lrtile-chrome) (chrome extension) Ctrl+Shift+Arrow move the current window, Ctrl+Search+Arrows resize it

         This works for all Chrome windows so it platform independent.

[2] [https://github.com/luigirizzo/lrtile- cinnamon](https://github.com/luigirizzo/lrtile-cinnamon) (cinnamon extension, linux) Alt+Arrows move the current window, Shift+Arrows resize it

(I have a similar Javascript configuration for Spectacle, I can post it if there is interest. I believe the javascript is easily portable to other scriptable window managers.)

My rationale for developing lrtile is the following:

I like having window corners on a grid because it helps locating information.

However, in many tiled WMs, resizing one window causes resizing of nearby ones (very distracting) _and_ windows generally do not overlap (a severe limitation especially on small screen). Finally, shortcuts to place windows on half or a quarter of the screen are often built-in (in chrome, windows, spectacle default...) but very few WMs have larger, configurable grids suitable for large monitors (I use a 40" 4K screen).

lrtile addresses the above problems as follows:

\- the grid is configurable; \- movement/resize only affect the current window, allowing overlap if user wants; \- commands are arrows + 1/2 modifiers, and try to be intuitive \- screen borders act as hard stops, also making behavior more intuitive.

In detail, I typically use a 6x6 grid on small screens (so I can have halves or thirds) and 12x10 or even bigger on large screens. Each window side must be at least two units, and resize extends or reduces one dimension at a time and by one unit.

My typical workflow is to make windows visible with a comfortable size and no overlap, and occasionally expand the window I care about (e.g. make the browser wider when a page does not render well; or expand the editor window vertically when I want to see a larger chunk of code), reverting back when done. The fact that move and resize commands are very similar to other cursor movements makes the operation very quick.

</comment><comment><USER23> Is there something similar for Linux? I was just reviewing Guile and thought it would be something like that, but it isn't, and is Lisp. I would love something similar on Linux.

<comment><USER24> Gnome Shell is scriptable in JavaScript.

<comment><USER23> This just worked, I like it. Thanks!

[https://developer.gnome.org/gnome-devel- demos/stable/dialog....](https://developer.gnome.org/gnome-devel- demos/stable/dialog.js.html.en)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> So many good options nowadays! I think a few years ago, you would only find a handful of projects focusing on similar matters.

</comment><comment><USER25> > JavaScript

Dear god, why? Don't I have to suffer enough in my day job?

For real though this is a cool project despite my own personal JavaScript fatigue.

<comment><USER26> It could be worse, it could have been AppleScript.

<comment><USER14> Wouldn't that be better? Anything you can script with AppleScript (OSA) you can also script with JavaScript, but not the other way around.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> which takes more memory (and is slower)? LISP interpreter or v8/node?

</comment><comment><USER28> Not to be confused with Phoenix[0], the Rails-like web framework for Elixir/Erlang.

[0]: [https://www.phoenixframework.org](https://www.phoenixframework.org)

<comment><USER29> I don't think anyone will be confused... seeing as it's also the name of about a billion other things (Pre-Firefox, I still remember you!). I feel like "Pheonix" is the second most common project name behind "Matrix".

And on a less nit-pick-y note if the author is reading this - the project looks really fun and is certainly going to take up a chunk of my weekend!

<comment><AUTHOR> Cool! Let me know what you come up with. :)</comment></comment></comment>


Grad School and Public Health - <AUTHOR> https://www.benkuhn.net/grad <comment><USER2> I wonder if there's a good way to think about the relevant counterfactual: how happy would PhD students if they did not pursue a PhD? The post assumes that depression and anxiety rates would be very different absent the PhD, but I'm not so sure.

It would be interesting to see response data for the same people during both their undergraduate and PhD programs. But even this is compounded by the quarter-life-crisis issues that are common at PhD ages anyway. Plus, the pool of PhD students consists entirely of people who said "yes, working in relative isolation, for years, with little pay, on a topic most people don't care about, sign me up!". As one of the people in that pool, I'm not so sure we'd be way happier in the other pool. There is a consumption value to doing a PhD and taking the path that interested you. And there is consumption value to not having a normal office job.

To be clear: I think we (professors and current graduate students) should make sure applicants understand what a PhD is like and best practices for minimizing the probability of a bad PhD. Even after controlling for intelligence and ability to work hard, it is definitely not for everybody. But likening it to a public health crisis on par with HIV, acknowledged clickbait or not, is a bit much.

<comment><USER3> >I wonder if there's a good way to think about the relevant counterfactual: how happy would PhD students if they did not pursue a PhD?

I would be damned miserable.

>Plus, the pool of PhD students consists entirely of people who said "yes, working in relative isolation, for years, with little pay, on a topic most people don't care about, sign me up!".

Look. I've done both industry and academia. Money is great. I would be happy to get more money in academia. However, working in tech _in a crowded cubical farm in a massive company, for years, on a topic most people don 't care about_, is not _so_ different from academia as we typically believe.

<comment><USER4> > However, working in tech in a crowded cubical farm in a massive company, for > years, on a topic most people don't care about

That's not the only way to have a tech career, though. Maybe that's the highest-paying option for most people, but you can also do remote work, work for a small company, work less than full time (if you're good enough) etc. Basically there are ways for regular people to have not-super-stressful tech careers. It doesn't sound like there's a way to do that for PhD's unless you're already independently wealthy.

<comment><USER3> I dunno. Most people I know who've tried to have more laid-back tech careers eventually got laid off and had to hit the interview circuit pitching themselves as more ambitious.

And I really don't think they were underperformers. I think the industry is just structured so if you stay in one job long enough, trying to avoid stressing yourself out over "moving up", your company goes under.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I think the structure of school in general is pretty bad for mental health. I finished my CS BS degree earlier this year, and the quality of life improvement from not being in school anymore has been huge. Instead of constantly worrying about homework, not being able to predict my schedule (due to different homework assignments taking different amounts of time, etc.), and sacrificing sleep on a regular basis, I go to work for 8 hours and then then don't have to worry about it for the rest of the day. It's not a job I want to have forever, or one that I find particularly interesting, but it's still way better than being in school. I stopped taking antidepressants after relying on them to live for about six years, and I'm doing fine.

School sucks. I don't know what the solution to that is. Maybe there isn't one. But I didn't truly realize just how bad it was until I was done with it. I can only assume it's worse when you're in a graduate program, particularly in a field like philosophy where your post-graduation prospects are so low.

<comment><USER6> I didn't have the same experience at all.

<comment><USER7> This depends on how hard your BS program was / how much time and effort you put in.

<comment><USER6> Not so much, it mostly depends on how much organization you did of the time and effort. I worked two jobs and double majored with honors. I knew exactly what my schedule was going to be.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> As someone currently contemplating pursuing a PhD and working in the Public Health space, I don't like this author's take.

Sure, many PhD students report a high burden of stress, but comparing this to the general population is a poor assumption.

The prerequisites for getting into a PhD program (the least of which is an undergrad degree) already says something about the difference in the population.

I think you could very easily reverse the causation. High stress people tend to seek PhDs rather than PhDs produce high stress people.

And making the comparison to STDs as a health burden is naive. In the populations I've studied, the burden of STDs as a health issue falls almost exclusively on those with less education and lower opportunity.

A PhD is a choice made by educated persons, STDs arise out of something that isn't a choice made by educated persons.

The stresses of grad school exist because the environment is deathly competitive. More people want to think for a living than there are positions to do so.

I'm resolved to the fact that I would never pursue a PhD for the sole fact of getting a tenure track position, but rather because I want to challenge myself. If I do pursue a PhD, I'll probably be another member of the population reporting elevated stress, but not because I didn't choose that path. At the same time, I wonder if I won't be just as stressed to pass on the opportunity.

<comment><USER9> You need to talk to a lot more PhD students before you pursue this. I dropped out of a PhD in public health because my advisor was terrible and didn't care about my progress, lied to me about how long it'd take, and eventually dropped me like a fried laptop when she needed more time. Every one of her students dreaded the hour meetings with her more than any other activity. I got a massive rush of relief and happiness every time I left her office. Furthermore, after all of this, she handed my research to a post doc for him to be first author.

If you want a challenge, climb a mountain. If you want a terrible time, join a PhD program.

<comment><USER2> Sounds like a bad advisor. One question though, did you get a sense of this from current students before accepting the offer?

I'm not suggesting the situation is your fault for not knowing. But part of my advice to potential grad students is to talk to several current students of the advisor you're considering. Reasonable advisors will not be offended by this, and if done in an informal off-the-record way (e.g. in person), I think most grad students will be honest about a bad advisor. Or at least impart some feeling for how their experience has been. For example, I personally know of cases where current students explicitly warned against working with an advisor during the admitted phd student visit day.

Not trying to argue that you should have avoided the situation, but I am curious about cases where the talk-to-current-students advice breaks down.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> As a grad student, I feel compelled to repeat my usual spiel: it's just supply and demand.

All problems of grad school are caused by a massive oversupply of potential grad students, tens to hundreds of times more than necessary to fill all permanent faculty positions, and the fact that we willingly participate despite long hours, low wages, or, as the author complains, depressing architecture.

As long as this holds, it cannot be stopped by any economic reform or social pressure. It's part of the deal when you sign up.

<comment><USER11> Completely agreed with the fundamental point that it's all about the _" funnel"_ from ~100 (arbitrary number) grad school hopefuls to ~1 tenured role. Unless the number of hopefuls changes, the only design choices correspond to a bunch of "selection events" where the group could be winnowed: grad school admission, qualifiers, granting degree, offer postdoc1 after degree, offer postdoc2 after postdoc1, offer tenure track after postdoc2, offer tenure after tenure review.

The "shape" of the funnel will reflect the design choices we make, based on which groups to be "kind" towards, and which groups to be "brutal" towards. I think prevalent mindset is that it's acceptable to be most brutal in grad school admissions, or after granting PhDs -- because then people have a degree to take away and get to leave with a sense of closure, without much sunk cost worry.

The system of each faculty member graduating significantly more than one student is fundamentally unsustainable, and will lead to all kinds of problems. They can only be shuffled around and partially hidden, but never fully solved. It's amazing how many otherwise smart people _don 't want to understand this_.

<comment><USER10> Absolutely. I helped to write a series of tests that _had_ to create a 200:1 funnel. There was some debate over whether it was less brutal to cut, say, 20:1 and then 10:1, or 10:1 and then 20:1, or perhaps add another stage and cut 10:1, 5:1, 4:1. For every argument for early cuts there was an equal and opposite argument for late cuts. But I think every cut was still equally cruel, since multiplication is commutative.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> >they've been convinced to tie up their entire identity in being one of the lucky 10%3 that lands a tenure-track research job,

For context, this is a philosophy program!

STEM PhDs have a good enough job outlook that I don't need to explain it. Humanities like sociology and history can often be parleyed into a career in social work, politics or law. This isn't always the best career path, but it's still a good bet for being the most interesting.

But philosophy is unique. It's supposed to be central; philosophy is that field which justifies _itself_ while work in other fields is demanded by some external force. Philosophy is humanity's attempt to say things which are not contingent on other things, assuming that's even possible.

So who could possibly tell a philosophy PhD that they're on the wrong track? Shouldn't philosophy, itself, provide that argument? And shouldn't dealing with the questions of life itself, at the highest level, be at least a little stressful? Wouldn't it be a little strange if becoming a _philosopher_ follows a generally unremarkable educational trajectory?

<comment><USER13> Unfortunately that is not true, and I speak from experience.

4 years doing a physics PhD in the UK, almost all my experiments failed (in the building managers cranked up the heating/air con so the temperature was fluctuating +-5 degrees throughout the day and all carefully aligned optical components couldn't be kept aligned, etc way rather than the expected effect is weak), 30 mins with a supervisor once every other month, only person in group other than supervisor, etc.

Physics is definitely STEM, and I found it horrendous to find a job after graduating. It took in excess to 500 tailored applications and 6 months to get anything at all. I was only a few weeks away from depending on welfare to avoid homelessness when I finally got an interview.

STEM skills shortage is an outright lie, all I see is an entire order of magnitude oversupply for STEM educated people.

Overall Grad School is an absolutely horrible experience, and I would completely defund public purse support of any university that engages in PhD "research" or "teaching" if it were in my power to do so.

<comment><USER12> > I found it horrendous to find a job after graduating. It took in excess to > 500 tailored applications and 6 months to get anything at all.

Honestly, six months isn't that long. I've spent that long looking for a job. But I found one. And furthermore, _getting a job in physics at all_ is the whole point of grad school. If that isn't a success condition for you, of course you shouldn't go to grad school. If you want money, be a chemical engineer or write software.

And this doesn't make _you_ look good:

>4 years doing a physics PhD in the UK, almost all my experiments failed (in the building managers cranked up the heating/air con so the temperature was fluctuating +-5 degrees throughout the day and all carefully aligned optical components couldn't be kept aligned, etc way rather than the expected effect is weak), 30 mins with a supervisor once every other month, only person in group other than supervisor, etc.

I've been in two grad programs and had close experience with another three. Grad school is supposed to be self-directed. Unfortunately a lot of students show up with no communication skills and aren't helped in building them. But you can't self-direct without communicating. Especially not in science.

And everything about this paragraph points to a lack of effective and timely communication from your end. No contact with advisor? Advisor is busier than you are. You email first. Building manager stupid? Tell them off. No others in group? Email someone at another university. No response? Try someone else. You sit in a room and work alone, you lose.

Those are all things _I_ wish _I_ had done when I was in a PhD program, of course.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> > Instead, they're riddled with anxiety and depression because they've been > convinced to tie up their entire identity in being one of the lucky 10% that > lands a tenure-track research job, then hung out to dry by the gatekeepers > they probably thought would help them.

I'd be interested in seeing a survey on how many people currently working on a PhD believe it will lead to a tenure-track job. I'm a PhD student now and I'd be skeptical if it were more than 25% of people in my department, for example. (I myself have no interest in tenure-track jobs.) There does seem to be more demand for the jobs than there are jobs, but I think in the STEM fields I am familiar with, people are more realistic about what types of jobs they are qualified for. It helps that STEM fields have more options than the humanities, for example, too.

Also, my guess would be that many PhD students realize that they won't ever get a research job, and they treat this as their opportunity to do research.

<comment><USER15> CS is incredibly unique here since the "backup" plan is incredible and many people prefer it. Go speak to people in fields like history and although most people say "well at least I got to have fun in grad school for a while" the truth is that they all want faculty positions and the number of applicants per position is growing past 500:1.

<comment><USER16> As a Physics PhD, I certainly went into grad school wanting to get a faculty position; is suspect most people did in my cohort.

Of course we're mostly data scientists now, because only 5% win the faculty lottery.

Data science wasn't a path that existed when we started. I wonder if its existence changes what people going into a Physics PhD expect.

<comment><USER17> > Of course we're mostly data scientists now, because only 5% win the faculty > lottery.

This seems like a sad waste of physicists, even if the faculty pyramid scheme is obviously unsustainable. I for one would like to see more actual advances in physics.

<comment><USER10> What can you do?

Suppose you magically double the number of faculty positions. Within one year all of the new positions could be filled a hundred times over. Now you've back to the exact same scenario, except that now you also have twice as many slots for grad students, too.

<comment><USER18> Create more national labs, research institutes etc. that widen out the end of the funnel without widening the start.

/fellow physicist who went into DS

<comment><USER10> Perhaps, but many of these labs are extensions of universities. I do research at SLAC, a national lab which shares grad students with Stanford.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Grad school is difficult and stressful, but doing novel things normally is. Comfortable boring things make for not-so-good research topics.

Also a median time of 7.5 years for a PhD sounds unlikely... in my field (physics) that's probably more like 90th percentile. Perhaps that length is right for humanities, which do tend to be longer than the sciences, but there are an order of magnitude more STEM PhDs than humanities PhDs and many STEM PhDs are likely shorter than physics.

<comment><USER20> I agree. I couldn't find any statistics, but my impression is that in math, 4-5 years would be typical. At the school I went to, if you started without a Master's degree, 8 years would be roughly (give or take a semester or 2) the _maximum_ amount of time one could spend on a math PhD, so there's no way it can be close to the median time.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> I thought this was saying "public health grad programs are worse than STIs" and I was so confused...</comment>


Ask HN: Do I have to have a CS degree to be a software developer? - <AUTHOR> Hi. I want to be a software developer, I'm currently a college student (I'm from the UK, so I'm technically a senior in highschool I think?), I'm 17 if that makes it easier. Anyway, I got a C in Maths, I wanted to go to Sussex University to study Computer Science but they need a B in maths. I can apply to Brighton University, but the modules at Sussex University look a lot better.
I'm really interested in compiler development, and I wanted to take compilers at university but I don't think they do it at Brighton. Anyway, a few questions... is there are a chance I can still get into Sussex University if I show them my portfolio or something? I'd say I'm a somewhat competent programmer, and I contribute to a lot of open source projects.
My next question is that, do I even have to go to university to get a job in the field of software development? Or should I just apply for Brighton University? I kind of feel that school is boring, and I usually spend my time playing games or programming. Mostly the latter, is it weird that I find not programming an unproductive use of my time? <comment><USER2> No you won't need a degree to get started in software development. However, for computer science don't think of the degree as just a piece of paper some employers look at, there are some key courses that help build a foundational understanding of how computers work at the lowest levels, like assembly.

This might be important if your interest is in compiler development since that deals directly with how to optimize things with the CPU, stack, etc.

Maybe you should go get a meeting setup with the person in charge of CompSci department and see if they can persuade admissions or give you advice.

The vast majority of coders are working on Information Systems and you don't need a CompSci degree for that or any special math skills. It is just what some people call "CRUD apps" but the fun part with these is really helping non-technical folks do things and be efficient. Sciency based CompSci jobs are the minority.

Side topic: why is Mathematics called "maths"? across the pond its always been "math"

</comment><comment><USER3> The objective answer is no. I'm a software developer and didn't finish college.

The bigger question is what you think you'll get out of it. A bachelors in CS might give you an easier time applying with a large company. I've never had trouble finding work, but feel like I would have trouble if I wanted to work at Google/Amazon/Microsoft and many other household names.

I've spoken to many coworkers about what they got out of their education, and haven't spoken to anyone that found their education to be useless. Some say the interactions they had with others while learning were irreplaceable. Others seem indifferent about the need for it, but not regretful about their choice.

I'm leaning toward indifference. It took 15 years of self-education to get where I am today, and I feel like it might have been easier if I had sought more help. Can't really complain, though. The industry is treating me well.

</comment><comment><USER4> The end result of college is to get a job. Software development, if you develop software that people are willing to pay and use for, is a job.

If you can skip a college step and go directly to Go and collect your $200...

Programming is a rare field where this can be a viable option. A degree can offer a faster understanding (having a teacher is often faster than being an autodidact) as well as job security (a degree has weight on a job resume).

There is a lot that can be said for work merit alone. If you have a portfolio full of successful projects that many people use - you're going to look better on a resume than someone with a degree and the only projects in their portfolio are school projects with limited or no real world success.

</comment><comment><USER5> A college degree is worth one year of experience at most companies. If you are new to programming and have no experience someone with a college degree will have an advantage. However, if you are able to get some experience and work at a job for 2 to 3 years, you will be ahead of the college grad. Pay is the same with our without a degree. The only thing you will need a degree for is if you want to get into management. If someone is paying for school go ahead and go just for the experience.

</comment><comment><USER6> Yes. You don't need a degree to get a development job, experience and skillset is what counts for most. I am self-taught without a degree and I feel like it has not been a disadvantage for me. I might lack some of the theory learnings, but for the most part I pick most things up on the job.

</comment><comment><USER7> Not only don't you need a CS degree to get a job as a developer, but you'll probably make more money as a developer if you don't have one -- as long as you use your time in college developing a complementary skillset.</comment>


Merging Maps - <AUTHOR> https://maxbittker.github.io/merging-maps/ <comment><USER2> Regarding Python, there _is_ a solution for the 3.x, <3.5 world. I would suggest the itertools.chain approach as noted in the "Chain items" section here: [http://treyhunner.com/2016/02/how-to-merge-dictionaries- in-p...](http://treyhunner.com/2016/02/how-to-merge-dictionaries-in-python/)</comment>


Introduction to the European Union Public License - <AUTHOR> https://joinup.ec.europa.eu/collection/eupl/introduction-eupl-licence <comment> core-questions Looks like it's from '09 - any immediate relevance in light of GDPR?</comment>


Ask HN: Advertising Books - <AUTHOR>

I'd like to learn more about the fundamentals of advertising and am not sure where to start. I'm looking for something that has both theory and examples, kind of like you'd see in an introductory college text.<p>Amazon lists a meager 249,349 books on the subject--any particular recommendations? <comment><USER2> Ogilvy on Advertising. It's the Kernighan and Ritchie / TAOCP of advertising.

[http://www.amazon.com/Ogilvy-Advertising- David/dp/039472903X...](http://www.amazon.com/Ogilvy-Advertising- David/dp/039472903X/ref=pd_bbs_sr_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1230418320&sr=8-1)

David Ogilvy came up with a lot of the ideas, terminology and concepts of modern ad compaigns. He's also the one who said "The consumer is not a moron, she is your wife." - a truth that technical people are often slower to pick up than the rest of the population.

And this gem: "Always hold your sales meetings in rooms too small for the audience, even if it means holding them in the WC. 'Standing room only' creates an atmosphere of success, as in theatres and restaurants, while a half-empty auditorium smells of failure."

Ogilvy also coined a hundred slogans you know - 'only Dove is one quarter moisturizing cream'. His surname's already in your spell checker.

If you're interested in examples of inspiring communication created by advertising experts, check our Paul Arden's works, such as 'It's not how good you are , it's how good you want to be'. <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Ogilvy>

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you for the thoughtful response; I will definitely check it out. Ironically (or probably not), that's also the first book that pops up when you do an Amazon search for "advertising".

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> I got a lot out of Claude Hopkins' writings. He was one of the earliest pioneers of modern ads (turn of the 20th century), but when you read about how he meticulously tested his campaigns, it's as if he had the internet in mind. It's not the contemporary textbook you're asking for, but sometimes I think the classics have more valuable information in them. His stuff is also highly readable because it's full of good stories.

[http://www.amazon.com/Life-Advertising-Scientific- Classics-L...](http://www.amazon.com/Life-Advertising-Scientific-Classics- Library/dp/0844231010/ref=pd_sim_b_njs_5)

<comment><AUTHOR> Appreciate it. The recent HN submission of Gladwell's 96 article on the scientific study of consumer shopping patterns is what prompted this post. It sounds like this guy used similarly meticulous methods.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion is a classic. So is Scientific Advertising.

</comment><comment><USER5> What kind of advertising? Traditional media or web-based?

<comment><AUTHOR> I had in mind traditional as I think there is a lot that can also be applied to the web. That being said, the end goal is to apply what I learn to the web.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> i like trout for older products / media and godin for newer</comment>


The Drama Of Being A Venture Capitalist Isn't Really For Me - <AUTHOR> http://techcrunch.com/2011/04/26/gideon-yu-drama-venture-capitalist/

<comment><USER2> What is the TL;DR regarding his reputation, I haven't particularly followed his career...

Would it be safe to assume that he tried to overly apply his CFO mentality to tech/eng?

I have had way too many CFOs like that in my past...</comment>


The Unreasonable Effectiveness of IT - brown-dragon http://highscalability.com/blog/2015/7/6/how-do-we-explain-the-unreasonable-effectiveness-of-it.html <comment><AUTHOR> I attributed a lot of this 'effectiveness' to developers who are lazy.

There have been times when I automated things and that was because I wanted to avoid repetitive work. I have never been able to automate something I had not manually done 2-3+ times, but once I did I knew what I needed to do to avoid manual work and make the process error free for next time same operation was needed. If someone else was dictating what they needed, I would not have been able to build my tools as effectively.

To me, a good developer is a "maker", who builds tools. For us the raw material is a computer and some free time, which makes experimentation and evolution of our tools easier compared to other professions.

<comment><USER2> That's quite a good point. If I have to write code for someone else that I don't really understand I first do the steps manually to understand what is happening. Then it's much easier to write code for it.

It's hard to apply often though, because there are scenarios where you can do nearly nothing manually, like optimizing a logfile parser that handles hundreds of servers every day.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> He neatly explains why traditional, say, "reasonable" management does not work in IT:

\- Objectives are a way of saying prove to me first that you know where you are going before you go.

\- We've come to believe too much in metrics and accountability.

\- There's no systematic way known how solve ambitious problems. (Otherwise they would have been solved already.)

For example, the original Google Search project succeeded, exactly because none of this was around. Traditional management only works for repetitive processes. Organizations that revolve around traditional management are incapable of innovating.

<comment><USER4> > _There's no systematic way known how solve ambitious problems._

I think engineers and scientists who worked on the Apollo program or the Manhattan project might disagree.

<comment><USER5> I think that when the Manhattan Project was started, physicists knew that it was possible, in theory, to build a nuclear bomb. It's just that no one knew how to manufacture it. Going from "we know it's possible" to "built" is more amenable to a systematic process than going from "is this even possible?" to "built". I think the article is talking about the latter. iPhones were firmly in the realm of science fiction fifteen years ago. It would have been very different to systematically try to create one. Whereas in 2007, it was apparently possible, just no one knew it yet.

<comment><USER4> Are you arguing that the iPhone required a larger leap in science and engineering than the first atomic bombs?

I can't say that I agree.

<comment><USER5> No, I'm not arguing that. I'm arguing that they knew an atomic bomb was possible before they started. From what I've read, no one in the phone industry thought something like an iPhone was even possible. I read a story that said that when Microsoft's phone engineers heard the iPhone announcement, they said, "that's impossible! It would have to be practically all battery." They disassembled one when it came out, and sure enough...

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> "As Schopenhauer says, when you look back on your life, it looks as though it were a plot, but when you are into it, it's a mess: just one surprise after another. Then, later, you see it was perfect."

Weird. When I look back on my life, I see blunders, randomness and missed opportunities. There's a great deal that I would change if I could do it over. I'd have thought that was the same for most people.

<comment><USER7> No action is truly perfect, or without blunders. Every choice one makes is a unique expression of one's being in this universe, and all actions have consequences. You alone are the actor of that fantastically unique path. So the "perfection" is to be seen, later, in retrospect, how no one else but you traveled that path that led you to this moment.

I hope I did justice to it. I myself am retraining my thinking to be more aligned with the Buddhist and absurdist philosophy. 30 years of an Abrahamic religion can have some serious and long-lasting hang overs.

<comment><USER6> So a long series of blunders and mistakes results in perfection, because that was the only way that the final state could have been achieved? Regardless of how imperfect and undesirable the final state may be? I think this is a use of the word "perfect" that I'm not familiar with.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I certainly disagree with this bit, _" There's no systematic way to know how solve ambitious problems. We just don't know what will lead to what. The future is a fog. An ambitious problem is not deciding what to have for lunch, it's more like curing cancer or creating an AI."_

I have always started on the solution to an ambitious problem by asking "what would have to be true for this to be solvable?" and from each of those things working backward until you get to things that are all true now. Then you can start solving the "almost" true things and work forward to the ambitious solution at the end.

<comment><USER9> > I have always started on the solution to an ambitious problem by asking > "what would have to be true for this to be solvable?" and from each of those > things working backward until you get to things

Can you give an example of an ambitious problem you solved backward this way.

<comment><USER10> You could see a (perhaps incorrect or ultimately misleading) example of it:

1\. What would have to be true for us to have reliable transmission of messages over an inherently lossy network? 1a. some kind of method to ensure that a message got to its intended destination

2\. what would have to be true to ensure that a message got to its intended destination?

2a. some kind of method of ensuring that failures don't occur, or if that is impossible, some kind of method of making intermittent failures not prevent the system from eventually functioning.

3\. what would need to be true to make intermittent failures not prevent the system from functioning

... etc...

Slightly misleading because I'm obviously working back from a familiar example, but I think the technique is applicable in some cases. At the very least your solution is born out of trying to make the impossible just barely possible rather than seeking to build layer by layer to achieve something possible.

However, with TCP/IP you can also see how using traditional methods also work.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I'm currently listening to an account of the de-centralized command structure Gen Stanley Mcchrystal put in place to combat Al Quaeda in Iraq and the taliban in Afghanistan. One thing that is clear is that in a fast paced environment (be that the theater of war or a start up) top down rigid command doesn't work. All this is really saying that the the organization that gets through a feedback loop as fast as possible wins. You can call that the OODA loop, lean, holocracy or whatever you want.

I'm strongly in favor of giving up centralized control in the interests of allowing emergent behavior to tackle opportunities as fast as possible. Leadership to me should be:

* Set the direction

* Gather smart, motivated people

* Create an environment that gets everyone on the same page

* Get the fuck out of their way.

<comment><USER12> Germans figured this out a long time ago with their "Auftragstaktik". In a scenario of asymmetrical warfare, you don't wanna be rigid and stringent with command control, you have to allow capable and independent teams to carry out specific missions and then review their performance afterwards and I don't see any prob extending or porting this to the business domain and to startups in particular.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> I guess I'm more amazed at how much energy goes into relatively minor advances or even in going backwards. Like the proliferation of frameworks, the difficulty in cross-platform development, how hard scaling remains, etc.

<comment><USER14> I'm not sure if you picked the best examples to validate your opinion. in fact, I'm not sure how your examples relate. care to expand?

<comment><USER15> Proliferation of frameworks is a great example.

Think of what EJB, EJB2 and Spring did to Java. Think of Struts. Instead of fixing the real problems of the language, we went in a lot of side paths that barely got us ahead of where we started and, if nothing else, slowed progress down. Java in 2002 vs Java in 2012: Not really that much better. Working in Java before was like working with a broken bone, and instead of fixing it, the frameworks were painkillers. So we still had a broken bone, and then we were addicted to Vicodin.

We have been in a similar boat for a while in Javascript land. A few specific calls make web development to be a worse experience than using Delphi to build native apps back in 1998. This problem of repetitive code + css + a dom has led to lots and lots of libraries and frameworks, moving constantly. But it feels like they are not really moving, as far as productivity is concerned. FP inspired tools, like Elm, or React, might finally get us out of this mess, but the jury is still out.

And let's not get started about the state of build systems in javascript land. Lots of things are being written, but it's really hard to figure out why. The rate of actual progress is pretty slow.

We are also in a similar boat in cloud and virtualization. Lots of little tools that are supposed to make our life easier, but most are extremely fragile, because we build the infrastructure and sell it to the world before we understand the problem. The entire ecosystem around docker and coreos is the wild west. And then there's the distributed databases. Dozens of options, less than a handful that handle a network split in a sensible way. Just read some of the posts in the Jepsen series.

Sometimes we solve a problem well, quickly, and it's solved for good. Other times it feels that all this effort from the community is the same as being stuck in the mud. In those cases, the tools don't feel like stepping stones, or foundations to build upon. It's a bunch of different people making infrastructure that fail to learn any lessons from their competitors.

If anything, what is amazing is that we manage to get systems that work in some fashion, given that we are using so many broken tools.

<comment><USER14> Well, I don't really agree with any of this, frankly. Every single thing you cite as slowing progress WAS progress, just not the progress you feel "should" have been. I think you hold your opinions based on a fallacy that with your hindsight now, you could solve the problems of 20 years ago.

And I certainly don't agree with your assessment that any problem has been solved "for good."

What I see happening is a natural evolutionary process informed by the independent actions of millions of people, and some hindsight-fueled speculation of what the value of central planning would be if it could be done with perfect knowledge. Basically, one works, has worked, is working, and will continue to work (and not just in software), and the other is a fantasy brought about by the human brain's biases, which has led to things like the USSR and China's current gov't, amongst other travesties.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Isn't a big part of information technology's rapid pace the fact that much of it happens in a virtual space instead of the real world? I wonder if civil engineering would move as fast if buildings could be built and torn down as fast (and as cheaply) as computer programs, and if building materials' efficiency could be improved at the same pace transistors can be miniaturized?

</comment><comment><USER17> "Information technology" is over a century old. IBM has been in business for more than a century. FORTRAN is over 60 years old. C and Unix are over 40. So is the Intel 8080 microprocessor. It's not like this happened overnight.

Both electric power and railroads were deployed faster.

<comment><USER18> I think of anyone identifying with "IT" and _particularly_ the "IT Industry" as a snake oil salesman.

Technology stocks are staying hot, but _nobody_ thinks of IT as effective. In anything that isn't a technology company, the IT department has rapidly become the slowest moving part of the company. Why hold on to the moniker like it means something?

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> Nice essay. Love the premise of how working around a problem can lead to a direct solution instead of working directly on a solution. It's a very important point.

But there is an exception to his argument that he should have acknowledged for the essay to really take hold: there is one area where we can work towards clear objectives that actually help solve problems we don't understand. That area is making existing solutions more efficient.

Moore's Law has carried a huge load in the advancement of IT. Ideas that were simply speculations become easy-to-accomplish when technology gets commoditized. Things that used to take months can happen in seconds. That opens up all kinds of new possibilities.

IT is full of folks making stuff more efficient. That stuff can be hardware, software, or just "things people do", like hail a taxi. The more efficient we make everything, the easier it is to create and combine stepping stones. That takes a good idea and makes it even better.

</comment><comment><USER20> Great, now I also have a justification for not living an objective-driven life

</comment><comment><USER21> title naming in hackernews is so copy-cat. this is the 3rd time I see a title "the unreasonable effectiveness" of X. After the first very successful post.

<comment><USER22> It goes beyond posts. In case you are not aware: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Unreasonable_Effectiveness...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Unreasonable_Effectiveness_of_Mathematics_in_the_Natural_Sciences)

It happens a lot. "X for fun and profit" and "Y, and so should you" are other examples.

<comment><USER23> [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Snowclone](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Snowclone)

<comment><USER22> It has a name! Neat. Thank you</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: Linux use for VFX – which distributions, machines, drivers - <AUTHOR> I always read on Hacker News people talking about using Linux on notebooks, specially for developers, and there always seems to be some problems, usually related to drivers and things like that.
However, it is my impression that most of the ultra high-end visual effects companies run on linux (maybe I'm wrong here but I remember seeing at least 3d stuff running on Linux).
So I'm curious, what about these users? Do they get special drivers for theirs graphic cards, use only desktops, is there anything different in how they use Linux? I think maybe there's people with knowledge in this field. <comment><USER2> Some *nix distros use open source drivers for graphics some use proprietary drivers. Most distros give you the option to choose.

From what I gather apart from performance differences between drivers users may opt for one or the other (proprietary or not) depending on the licensing outcomes they seek for their project.

Blender is pretty popular for 3d work, not sure what other software tools are used.</comment>


Ask HN: Why are Bitcoin and Ethereum suddenly so expensive? - <AUTHOR> In January Ethereum was about $7 USD and now it's $200. What happened? <comment><USER2> Bitcoin has a bubble, and all cryptos get dragged along with it.

The present bubble started in early April, when it became impossible to get USD out of Bitfinex. Being unable to get money for bitcoins on Bitfinex then caused the bitcoin price to go _up_ – from $900 at the start of April to $1900 in mid-May to $2800 on 26 May, by which the bubble was bubbling on its own. The mechanism is:

1\. Users have a USD account and a BTC account. They can't sell their bitcoins and withdraw their cash, but they can buy more bitcoins using their USD account – which contains trapped "dollars" which can't be used for anything else. Think of it as a Bitfinex "USD" token, not as actual US dollars – Disneyland fun-money which can only be spent inside the theme park. The price goes up.

2\. With the higher price on Bitfinex, traders arbitrage by buying coins on an exchange with a lower price and selling them on Bitfinex. (Note that the USD from the sale is stuck on Bitfinex.) This raises the price on the other exchanges.

3\. Expectations raise, the price gets mainstream press and more people get into Bitcoin. The bubble inflates.

This works precisely _because_ you can't get your money out (and other exchanges were also having problems with US dollar withdrawals). Users were reluctant to remove their BTC from Bitfinex because the "price" was highest there (even if unrealisable) and because they loved it as a trading platform.

The trapped "USD" also gets used to buy other cryptocurrencies – the price of altcoins tends to rise and fall with the price of bitcoins – and this has fueled new Initial Crowdfunding Offerings, as people desperately look for somewhere to put their unspendable "dollars."

Even better: on Bitfinex, you can use BTC as collateral to margin-trade on USD, which you can then use to buy more BTC. Which also drives the price up. And, of course, you can't get the USD out, so you might as well buy more cryptos with them.

<comment><USER3> So, basically, users believe in the platform Bitfinex (which I haven't heard of), because they want to believe because the price is high and they could take their BTC to a different platform and trade for USD?

Then why is it a bubble, ie. how would it burst? Are you alleging Bitfinex was a Ponzi-Scheme?

Why is the price higher, which incentives does the platform have to simulate a higher price that it can't back?

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> 1) I've heard rumors that "the banks" are behind ETH, so that can be a huge artificial push to get it popular and mainstream, which in turn can make it more valuable.

2) JavaScript creator Brendan Eich-backed Basic Attention Token [https://basicattentiontoken.org/](https://basicattentiontoken.org/) will launch on May 31 with ETH being the purchasing currency. Its goal is to make online advertising less super completely shitty like it is now.

3) Although not directly related to ETH, follow news about Lightning Network [https://lightning.network/](https://lightning.network/) , Segregated Witness [https://bitcoincore.org/en/segwit_adoption/](https://bitcoincore.org/en/segwit_adoption/) , and the vast world of alt coins [https://coinmarketcap.com/](https://coinmarketcap.com/) which can all affect each other when people like or don't like something (for example, if ETH starts using Segwit, maybe people will flock to it or away from it).

4) ¯\\_(ツ)_/¯

5) BTC, ETH, LiteCoin and alt coins in general are all way way up, so it's not just an ETH thing.

</comment><comment><USER3> Related: A huge spike in activity in japan [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14407589](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14407589)

</comment><comment><USER5> Speculation</comment>


Microsoft breaks IE8 interoperability promise - <AUTHOR> http://www.theregister.co.uk/2008/08/29/hakon_lie_ie8_interoperability/ <comment><USER2> This is nonsense. Yes, Microsoft is acknowledging that most intranet sites aren't properly configured to work with all browsers/standard compliant. But that hardly means they're breaking the promise to make IE render web pages in standards mode. This is probably the best solution to the broken intranet sites issue anyone could have come up with.

And the whining about the icon is truly ridiculous. The logic for Microsoft's choice is obvious: "Does the site look broken to you? Click on the broken page button."

</comment><comment><USER3> The "show intranet sites in compatibility mode" thing is really just an acknowledgement that IE is both a web browser and a general frontend for internal business apps. Should anyone actually give a shit what kind of markup companies use for their internal apps?

<comment><USER4> If internal sites are written for a buggy platform instead of a standard, it makes it harder to change browsers inside the company. Marketshare! Lock-in! Innovation!

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Shouldn't the headline be "Competitor claims Microsoft breaks interoperability promise"? The author is not exactly a neutral observer...

<comment><USER6> Do you think he is wrong? His description of the issue is consistent with Microsofts own: [http://blogs.msdn.com/ie/archive/2008/08/27/introducing- comp...](http://blogs.msdn.com/ie/archive/2008/08/27/introducing- compatibility-view.aspx)

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> <sarcasm> Geez... I couldn't see that coming... </sarcasm>

</comment><comment><USER8> _Dammned if you do, dammned if you don't_</comment>


Is This Any Way to Run a University? - <AUTHOR> http://web.mit.edu/fnl/volume/305/perry_katz.html <comment><USER2> The article is hitting the nail on the head: "For one, the mainstream conversation is now waking up to the perils of a world governed by Silicon Valley and the ensuing damages of "surveillance capitalism."7 Is it realistic to expect academics to scrutinize these techno-political systems, much less to help build alternatives, when their institutions share so much with the owners of these systems?"</comment>


Pentagon-funded Atlas robot refuses to be knocked over - <AUTHOR> http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-24427821

<comment><USER2> What I find fascinating about the video is how "human" it looks when trying to stay upright. I doubt they've tried to emulate human behavior as such, it just emerges when trying to redistribute weight.

<comment><AUTHOR> It kind of makes me think about skynet :-)</comment></comment>


Impact of Facebook platform on CS enrollment - <AUTHOR> http://weblog.fortnow.com/2007/08/impact-of-facebook-platform-on-cs.html

<comment><USER2> The sad part is most CS programs have antiquated curriculum which does not involve much web development-type work. I think if courses like "numerical methods" and similar were replaced with cool web development classes which taught stuff like how to create a facebook platform app, it could increase enrollment. But in my experiences this is like trying to teach an old dog new tricks. Many (but NOT all) of the academic types do not understand startups because they themselves are not interested in them (hence the reason they are teaching rather than founding companies). Again, this is a generalization which doesn't apply to all people, but I'd say this is more often the case than not.

But generally speaking I agree that CS enrollment could increase if the curriculum incorporated more involving program assignments like facebook platform apps.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> BTW, if you think that entrepreneurs would benefit from a specialized CS degree, maybe leave a comment there to that effect?</comment>


The Last Time I Saw Basquiat - <AUTHOR> http://www.nybooks.com/daily/2016/09/03/last-time-i-saw-jean-michel-basquiat/ <comment><USER2> Luc Sante is a great author. Best known for "Low Life: Lures and Snares of Old New York" about the gangs of New York era.

<comment><USER3> I read this book close to 20 years ago, loaned it to my brother, vaguely remember having seen it sometime later, yet can't find my copy anymore. And yet I think of it often.

I hadn't heard that Luc had a blog but now I'm devouring it swiftly: [http://lucsante.com/blog/](http://lucsante.com/blog/)</comment></comment>


Ask HN: How much longer will we say ecommerce? - <AUTHOR>

It seems that as more and more commerce takes place over the internet we will eventually just drop the 'e' no? <comment><USER2> Why does this matter?

<comment><AUTHOR> it really doesn't.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: What's an example of a successful "problem to a solution"? - <AUTHOR> It's common to criticize a startup idea by saying that it's a solution in search of a problem. Are there examples of startups that started out that way and succeeded? <comment><USER2> I'm sure there are lots. The one that comes to mind now is Dropbox.

It solved this problem: [https://xkcd.com/949/](https://xkcd.com/949/)

The interesting thing about it is that it's one of those problems that people wouldn't really recognise as a problem until a new solution was presented.

Before Dropbox if you came to HN and complained about file transfer, or suggested that you wanted to make something like Dropbox the average response would be "we have FTP and there's nothing wrong with it duh ..".</comment>


Brokering Bricks: The World of Lego Investing - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/wisecrack/brokering-bricks-the-world-of-lego-investing-66d1a59fc206 <comment><USER2> As a kid I adored Lego. I think fondly of all the time I spent playing with my collection and all the creations I made.

As I entered my early teen years my collection had grown considerably and it was taking up a lot of space, and I was spending less and less time with Lego. I knew a younger kid down the block who was in the peak of his Lego phase and I donated my entire collection -- around five or so 30 gallon trash bags.

A couple of years after that, when I was just shy of 17 years old, I was diagnosed with Hodgkin's Lymphoma and had to take some time off of school to go through chemotherapy. Naturally I had a lot of time on my hands. For some reason I _really_ wanted to play with my old Lego, but I didn't have any around anymore.

I found some of my favorite sets on eBay and was able to purchase them albeit for quite the markup. It was great to get to experience those older sets and fulfill that spat of nostalgia. On the other hand, it was a huge bummer. I was obviously on a limited budget and every set was 2-4x what they were originally.

I understand Lego can't possibly keep producing every set forever, but this kind of speculation described in the article seriously ruins the experience for a lot of people. It's not a simple supply and demand situation if people are hoarding sets and creating artificial scarcity.

Lego is big enough as a company to put these people out of business, they would just have to occasionally re-release older sets that are ludicrously overpriced in the second-hand market.

Lego holds a really special place in my heart as I'm sure it does for a lot of the people mentioned in the article, I'm just not sure if they are aware of the consequences of their behavior on some of the less fortunate that want to experience Lego for what it is meant for -- playing.

<comment><USER3> Or they can have a website where one can order a set and have a robot setup the kits from standard bricks.

This should work for the majority of sets and would require a relatively small set of custom bricks.

<comment><USER4> I'm an industrial engineer and geek out about manufacturing stuff.

Lego used to make custom pieces _all_ the time. That, along with other missteps, nearly killed the company.

Product variety means changeovers (switching molds in the plastic injection molding machines). More quality problems will occur. Low volume parts for one set may use a tiny fraction of the mold's useful life, making the unit cost much higher than a 2x4 brick. You need more inventory to successfully fulfill any bulk order you receive. You also need to store the molds in an environment where they won't degrade over time.

Single Minute Exchange of Dies (SMED) and Economic Order Quantity (EOQ) work hand in hand dictating how to economically run a facility like this. EOQ considers storage costs, the fixed cost to setup the tool, demand per unit time, and time value of money to minimize the per-unit cost.

SMED reduces the fixed costs which are spread across a batch of pieces. This is the lever you can pull to reduce batch sizes, reduce inventory levels, reduce working capital, and help maximize profits.

To your specific comment, the difficulty lies in fulfillment. Making sure the robot picks up the right number of pieces which are unceremoniously ejected from the injection molder in no particular order. Having inventory of all the pieces people want - or having a relatively long lead time hoping you get enough demand to run batches on a make-to-order basis. SMED would make this a much more viable business model.

This article goes into more depth on the turnaround they went through.

[https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2017/jun/04/how- leg...](https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2017/jun/04/how-lego-clicked- the-super-brand-that-reinvented-itself)

[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Single- minute_exchange_of_di...](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Single- minute_exchange_of_die)

[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economic_order_quantity](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economic_order_quantity)

<comment><USER5> The upside of custom pieces is that I was able to identify all my LEGO sets from a single pile of bricks. By grabbing the custom pieces and looking them up in online databases, I could see which sets they were used in. It was usually two or three sets and based on my memory I would pick the one I most likely owned. Going by the database I was able to grab all other bricks belonging to that set and build the item. I would mark the missing bricks online, tear everything down and put it in a ziplock bag labeled with the number of set. After a couple of days of going through the pile I was able to find all my LEGO sets and have them separated in labelled ziplock bags. I can now browse through my personal database of LEGO sets, pick one, find the ziplock bag and build it. It's also nicely preserved for future generations.

<comment><USER6> It's weird, I never cared for the sets the bricks came in, I just wanted bricks. I _might_ build the set once, and then tear it up and never again. I usually ended up tossing or segregating the really special pieces somewhere else so they wouldn't pollute my buckets of normal pieces. I never really understood that other people actually really were into the sets and as I grew up, and as Lego got more and more into the ultra specialized sets, the magic went away and I stopped enjoying them as much.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Lego has brought back into production a couple of extremely popular sets, but as new and improved better models. One was the Millennium Falcon UCS set, another is the Imperial Star Destroyer UCS which is the first example the article gives. The article notes the Star Destroyer sold for $280 and is now going for $1500. But it's not selling for $1500 if you look carefully at the listings. Since the new version was released the bottom has fallen out of the market for the older version. Also, the high prices tend to be for unopened sealed boxes, stored somewhere for many years. Obviously there is a very small number of those brand new old stock and with each sale and opening the number decreases. Obviously unopened sealed new sets of long out of print and highly desirable models are going to be expensive. For someone that just wants the set, desirable used sets sell for considerably less than new sealed ones. Also most sets don't really appreciate that much. The ones that do tend to be the very large sets that cost a lot, in particular modular buildings and certain Star Wars sets.

The people that speculate on these stockpile them when Lego is still selling them. Lego makes more of each set until sales slow down enough, then they discontinue the set. Most sets are sold for at least 2 years before retiring. No one is deprived of any sets because the speculators are buying new sets. There's not a limited supply of sets during the time the sets are in production. The speculation mostly goes to Lego's bottom line and profitability. Most speculators don't make money because it's hard to guess what rare set will be one of the few that becomes worth a lot more than you paid for it. For the others, you might be able to sell for what you paid, but then you may have to cover the cost of shipping a big heavy box far away, and if it arrives damaged or bent yet was advertised new, they'll file a return.

In short, this is not really a great way to get rich and these sets are not really investments.

</comment><comment><USER8> I used to conduct arbitrage of individual Lego bricks on bricklink.com when I was in high school. Was a great way to make a couple extra bucks and amass the Legos I needed for some really big builds. Surprisingly the most lucrative investment was not sets, but rather the minifigures - discontinued minifigs, especially the Star Wars ones, could 10x in value within a year.

</comment><comment><USER9> The risk reward profile of the S&P 500 is way better. Buy Legos if you like them, sell them opportunistically, but don't get into it as an asset class.

</comment><comment><USER10> I've recently gotten back into wanting some Pirate Lego sets from when I was young, but to play with not as an investment. Purchasing used-but-complete sets are actually cheaper when adjusted for inflation than when new, at least if you put a little effort into shopping (eBay price alerts for example)

</comment><comment><USER11> Sorry if I'm starting an off-topic discussion here, but I can't read the article due to Medium's reading quota. [https://i.imgur.com/uWY1kaw.png](https://i.imgur.com/uWY1kaw.png)

I don't think I have spent that much time on their site, didn't try to. Maybe the fact that many of HackerNews' link go to medium and I started following HN actively recently?

Have people here just accepted to pay Medium 5$/month?

<comment><USER12> Nah just open in incognito.

Also only some articles are premium(those with a star) that means that the people who write them actually make money from the subscription.

<comment><USER11> Got it, thanks!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> I've begun gradually giving my ~30-year-old childhood Legos to my son, and am impressed with how well they've held up. I haven't noticed any yellowing or fading.

I wonder if the new plant-based plastics will have the same longevity.

</comment><comment><USER14> Looking for the kraggle...</comment>


The douchiest thing(s) a VC has ever done to an enterpreneur - <AUTHOR> Curious if people have stories they are willing to share. I've worked in startups for 15 years and have founded 2 companies. Here's what I have seen:<p>- Backing out of a handshake deal at the last min<p>- Forcing founder to sell so they can realize gains because they are going to be raising a new fund.<p>- An investor telling his new portfolio co. he just invested in that it was ok to poach from us. <comment><USER2> These are all fairly standard VC behaviors frankly. If you didn't do enough diligence on him/her before, then it's your fault. Sorry to be blunt. The best advice I have heard is "VCs are like your Colombian drug suppliers in Scarface. Act accordingly". I have heard worst behaviors where it's more along the side of self-dealing, where if other investors wanted to sue, they have ground to.

This is why if people are wrong to celebrate raising VC money. Celebrate when you actually bootstrap the startup.

</comment><comment><USER3> \- An investor telling his new portfolio co. he just invested in that it was ok to poach from us.

Really? Don't you remember the big lawsuit a short time ago when apple/adobe and others had a no poach agreement? Collusion at any level is bad.

If you can't pay your employees enough, or they don't believe in your product and want to work somewhere else, thats something YOU can fix, and if you can't then you need to re-assess what your doing.</comment>


Would you like to save data on Android - <AUTHOR> Datamore is a streaming data saver, available on Android 5.1 and up. It is a groundbreaking app, as it is the only data saver that saves streaming data, where large data savings can be made. Streaming data players try and stream at the highest bit rates, in order to ensure maximum video quality. Increasingly though, with advances in screen technology, a
significant proportion of streamed mobile video is becoming redundant, due to limitations in human vision. On such small screen devices as mobile phones, there is a limit to what our eyes can distinguish, and hence benefit from in terms of clarity and sharpness. Pushing beyond those limits is simply wasted data. Datamore allows users to control the data rate a streaming player can use and hence maximises the users return on investment in their monthly data plan. <comment><USER2> I live in a third world country. I pay about $7/month. I download shows on Netflix, stream Spotify about 3 hours/day in my car, log in to an idle MMO about 10 times a day. I still have far more data than I know what to do with. Also we're likely getting 5G in the next 10 years.

Sorry buddy, but it looks like the timing isn't great for an app like this. If anything, you'd probably want to sell to enterprise instead.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> [https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.ivernix.ba...](https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.ivernix.bandwitch)</comment>


Show HN: passtext.in – stop storing passwords in email archives - <AUTHOR> https://passtext.in/

<comment><AUTHOR> I wrote this tool after a hacker broke into my email account... and found a bunch of passwords for other accounts that I've shared with trusted employees in the past.

I thought HN might appreciate the security features of this site's particular implementation (click [about] for details).

<comment><USER2> Is it open source?

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> I liked it, but only after I read the [about] section, maybe you should leave it open automatically.

</comment><comment><USER3> Suggestion: maybe hosting an alternative HTML client in a GitHub page, so people can easily browse the source, link to it (you will also be able to link to it from your [about] text) track when it has changed, and be sure you're not cheating then.

</comment><comment><USER4> So pretty much the same thing as cryptobin.org or 0bin.net or defuse.ca/pastebin.htm which I found by googling "crypto pastebin"?</comment>