Queues Don't Fix Overload - <AUTHOR> http://ferd.ca/queues-don-t-fix-overload.html <comment><USER2> First, _Little 's Law_[1] can be mentioned as a formalized version of the "red arrow" in the blog post. It's true you cannot increase subsystem capacity (peak throughput) by adding queues.

However, queues can "fix" an overload in one sense by making an engineering tradeoff of _increased latency_ and additional complexity (e.g. SPOF[2]). Peak capacity handling didn't increase but overall server utilization can be maximized because jobs waiting in a queue will eventually soak up resources running at less than 100% capacity.

If response time (or job completion time) remains a fixed engineering constraint, queues will not magically solve that.

[1][http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Little%27s_law](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Little%27s_law)

[2][http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Single_point_of_failure](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Single_point_of_failure)

<comment><USER3> It's not even close to true in any real sense.

Queues create async operations which are often processed faster than sync operations because queues force an async design.

You should compare Little's Law to a hard drive with and without native command queueing.

<comment><USER4> NCQ works well when many writers are trying to get access to the hard drive. Of course this works well, unless you attempt to do more IOPS than your drive array supports for a continued amount of time. At that point applications that require fsync or write barriers will get terrible performance due to latency , and you should re-evaluate your storage. Which is the whole point of queues don't fix overload.

<comment><USER3> Actually they do, which is why if you run the drive sans NCQ you get lower sustained throughput, and get overloaded faster.

Having a queue of messages allows optimization in ordering the messages.

<comment><USER5> Yes, having a queue can help in optimizing the throughput, but only if it exists some economy of scale by combining some tasks (which is the case with NCQ). But the when the queued tasks are completely independent, then having a queue doesn't help in increasing throughput.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> This article in one sentence:

Using ONLY a queue to "fix" a bottleneck can serve to buffer your input, but will still fail when your sustained input is greater than your sustained output.

\--

I feel like this is pretty common-sense to most people, that the only way to fix a bottleneck is to widen the neck. If people are running into this situation in the real world, they either don't understand their core problem or are blocked from actually fixing or measuring it.

The problem stated by the author doesn't have really anything to do with queues. A queue is a tool that someone, quite sensibly, might use as part of a solution to widen a bottleneck, but obviously it can't be the entire solution.

<comment><USER7> The article is a great (literally visual) illustration of the issue, though, and is a great resource to explain it to other people; for example, managers who (fairly) ask 'we just bought new hardware what's the problem?' but don't understand systems architecture and the concept of multiple bottlenecks or the value of re-engineering existing systems.

<comment><USER8> It has a subtle physics flaw, which is that the sink, as it fills up, _will_ cause flow through the bottleneck to be greater. Ignoring this, the metaphor is indeed pretty good.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> As far as I know, queues are used for decoupling two systems so that you can scale individual components easier. In the example used in the article, adding more pipes out the wall.

A queue has a perk of smoothing out the peaks which may give the illusion of fixing overload, but really you haven't added any capacity, only latency. Also latency is sometimes a reasonable thing to add if it allows higher server utilisation rates.

<comment><USER10> I agree.

Some monitoring is needed, if spinning up additional workers doesn't help (the bottleneck isn't CPU), then profile one of your workers, and find out what the bottleneck is, and fix it. Is one job spending lots of time waiting on a DB query? Add an index.

I suppose queues aren't really the problem so much as using a queue to decouple your systems so you don't have to think about the slow parts. If you decouple things, you still need monitoring.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Queues don't fix overload if demand is not related to completion of previous tasks. But sometimes it is!

Consider Internet congestion control. When a path is overloaded, a queue builds in the bottleneck router, eventually it fills, and packets are dropped. TCP congestion control reduces its congestion window, and the rate coming into the queue is reduced. So far so good - the queue didn't fix overload - dropping packets did. But TCP is reliable; it will just retransmit, so dropping packets didn't really shed load - it just moved the queue back to the sending host. No work was really shed from the overall system.

Now what really solves the overload is that the latency of job completion has increased significantly, and for much (though not all) Internet traffic, the job submission rate is clocked off the job completion rate. Think: you can't click on a link on a web page until you've downloaded that web page.

The only reason the Internet works when congestion happens is this: increased transfer latency decreases the connection setup rate. Thus, in a very real sense, the queue (partly in the router, partly in the sending host) did fix overload. But only because there's an external closed loop feedback system in operation.

<comment><USER12> Per the post -

"A function/method call to something ends up taking longer? It's slow. Not enough people think of it as back-pressure making its way through your system. In fact, slow distributed systems are often the canary in the overload coal mine"

Your case is simply back-pressure (albeit a somewhat interesting one where having a queue implicitly applies back pressure on a per user basis). And while it helps decrease load by tying up commands, it still indicates you have a bottleneck that is going to overflow at increased load; if users start refreshing the page because it's loading slowly, or if you have an influx of users, you can still overflow, and adding queues isn't going to fix that, just make it last a little longer before it falls over again. To fix it, you need to reduce the bottleneck, or find another mechanism to impose back pressure (one that is across the entire system).

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> We don't have fully async computers. Something _somewhere_ will block, be it in the CPU, fetching blocks from a disk, kernel context switches, etc. You will hit fundamental limits. Heck, I've hit network card limits before and was none the wiser. There is actually a really good question you can ask yourself when designing a system: do you want it to go very fast at times, or do you want it to have very predictable speed? I learned to choose the latter: better fire up 16 processes and delegate work to them from a master process than to fire up one async loop that _may_ get bogged down at some point.

At the same time, having a good mental model of what your code is waiting on or is blocked by is very important. Years ago I read advice on building multi- threaded systems. It went something like "when asked what's the hardest thing about coding up multi-threaded systems, beginners say things like deadlocks, but real pros say 'avoiding doing nothing'". So if your application does some large bit of work and in the middle of it it's blocked, why not go do something else.

Here's the hitch, and what the article alludes to: a system where you have 16 worker processes and they are either handling a client request or are waiting, your max users is 16. That's it, it's a hard limit. By design you can't process 17 requests at once. If you however go with an async system, let's say based on Node.js, you don't have this control. You have a crude "how many connections can we accept" thing, but you generally can't introduce limits you can actually reason about. If you simply set your max connections wide open, and then connect it all to MongoDB, you'll quickly find that MongoDB has a global write lock that will start rearing its ugly head. You can't overcome this limit, but you also don't know where this limit is. Systems with set internal limits that propagate back pressure to the edge, on the other hand, have very predictable behavior.

<comment><USER14> I think you are ignoring a few things about web development.

First, 16 workers don't equal 16 concurrent users if you have less then 16 cores in your server, if you don't then you still have a queue, it's just the queue the OS uses to handle context switches - which is even harder to reason about.

Second, the entire idea behind event-based processing (what node.js and Java based netty or vert.x) as opposed to thread-based is that the bottleneck is rarely the cpu. Event-based processing is one of the ways to "avoid doing nothing".

<comment><USER15> Minor nitpick: concurrency is not parallelism. 16 workers does equal 16 concurrent users.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Great article, a lot of these points really hit home with me, as we've been using queues to process a lot of our data in the last few years. I think if you consider your queue being fine while having items backed up under normal conditions, you're going to have serious problems to deal with as soon as you hit 1) more input 2) you get a nasty bug in your system 3) often a combination of both.

As an aside, I really enjoy working with AWS' SQS queues, as they allow you to define a maximum number of reads + a redrive policy. So you can throw, for example, items in a "dead messages" queue if they were processed unsuccessfully 2 times. We use this to replay data, stick it almost immediately in our unit tests, and improve software incrementally this way.

</comment><comment><USER17> Nice article.

Anyone reading this may be interested in the related concept of the 'circuit breaker' technique employed by things such as Hystrix (Netflix), to avoid getting into this state.

Not a solution per se, but the simple philosophy is to set yourself up to fail fast: when back pressure reaches some threshold the 'circuit opens' and your servers immediately respond to new requests with an error, instead of ingesting huge numbers of requests which flood your internal queues or overload your infrastructure.

[https://raw.githubusercontent.com/wiki/Netflix/Hystrix/image...](https://raw.githubusercontent.com/wiki/Netflix/Hystrix/images/hystrix- flow-chart-original.png)

</comment><comment><USER18> Queues help you scale horizontally. Basically, you can put a lot of kitchen sinks on the right side of the diagrams. Of course, this is done with careful design of the application and not just adding a queue alone.

OT: The hardest part I have found with queue design is task cancellation. How does one 'cancel' tasks that are already in the queue or being processed? I haven't come across a good framework that solves this cleanly. For example, if I queue up a task X in the queue. The task now need to be 'cancelled'. How can I ensure this? Looks like I need some sort of messaging bus?

<comment><USER19> Take a look at Gearman. You get distributed background or foreground tasks with identifiers and optional queue persistence. Workers can also optionally report back their progress when working on a job. You can add and remove workers trivially at any time.

<comment><USER18> Thanks for the pointer, I will investigate. Also found this: [https://bugs.launchpad.net/gearmand/+bug/1150071](https://bugs.launchpad.net/gearmand/+bug/1150071)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> But they smooth the load graph, with the expectation of improved user experience during peak load.

</comment><comment><USER21> Queue size is not important. The time a request resides in the queue is. If you have short burst, the queue will fill quickly and drain quickly, and a request will only stay a short time in it. If your system is overloaded, the requests' 'sojourn time' will increase and stay high. Google for papers about codel/controlled delay.

In any case, backpressure and discarding requests (just another form of backpressure) only move the queue upstream towards the sender. One strategy to deal with this is only to backpressure requests of a subset of users. Only they will experience high delay.

</comment><comment><USER22> This is such an awesome article that puts into words that I've been contemplating for a while now. I've been trying to explain this exact scenario to various management folks but they just don't get it and always scream why can't you "queue" them up!

Even I was under the impression that queues are meant to solve the problem of overload; but over time I slowly realized that that's not at all what queues are meant for!

Queues are meant to solve following (not exhaustive list) problems.

1\. Tight coupling. An example is decoupling "payments" from "order processing". Here, two independently running processes need to message each other and Queue is one way of messaging. 2\. Surge handling.

What typically happens is that #2 gets conflated with "increasing the overall throughput of the system". And it does work for a while since in the initial days the real bottleneck won't be reached. And when it does reach; due to marketing campaign and what not; then you have situation described in the article.

tl;dr In a system, if requests arrive at a rate that is greater than its throughput then no queue can save you.

The fascinating thing about scaling systems is that you will end up discovering a new bottleneck every time; e.g., A bottleneck moving from NIC to a switch and to a router and so on!

</comment><comment><USER23> That's an overly complicated way of saying "use bounded queues". Your system can get into a really bad state if you don't use bounded queues, and take a long time to recover. Unfortunately, limiting your queue size is not a quick hack. The reason you use it mostly that it forces you to develop feedback mechanisms, flow control, retry logic, and fairness across your whole system.

</comment><comment><USER24> Continuing the sentence from the title, "but they allow you to deal with it better".

The question is what is the business requirement and guarantee regarding the message delivery. In my experience with logging systems is that losing a very small percentage of your data in case there is an outage in the storage layer is tolerable.

That allows us writing code that sends or receives messages using a channel (Go, Clojure) and have sane timeouts to gracefully deal with overload, saving 200 (or so) messages in a local buffer and going back to reading the queue after a read timeout.

With this concurrency model queues are very powerful tool of separating concerns in your code. Having thread safe parts that can be executed as a thread or as a gorutine lets you use 1:1 mapping to OS threads or N:M.

Back to the original point, queues don't fix overload, but I still prefer deal with overload using queues over other solutions (locking or whatever).

</comment><comment><USER25> Queues have two advantages:

\- You can plan for average utilization not peak utilization,

\- You can move lower priority work out of the latency sensitive / rapid response code path

So no, they don't magically increase total capacity, but they are a useful tool for managing system performance.

</comment><comment><USER26> The last time I checked (~4 years ago) RabbitMQ and others didn't have good contention management. I am not sure if we can blame users all the time. I remember being involved in this thread: [http://lists.rabbitmq.com/pipermail/rabbitmq- discuss/2010-Ma...](http://lists.rabbitmq.com/pipermail/rabbitmq- discuss/2010-May/007252.html) and this proposal: [http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/www-ws- arch/2002Oct/0401...](http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/www-ws- arch/2002Oct/0401.html)

<comment><USER27> RMQ deals with this fairly decently now via flow control (as of 2.8.0, I think). Basically, if it determines that the queue isn't keeping up with publishers, it'll throttle publishers (by blocking on publishes) to slow down publication to a manageable speed. It also uses this mechanism to block publishers if free memory/free disk space fall below preconfigured thresholds. When a publisher is blocked, RMQ notifies it that is has been flow controlled, so the publisher can optionally take some action to help mitigate whatever circumstances caused the flow control.

It's not perfect, but it's actually pretty good at mitigating the problem of RMQ causing an RMQ-oriented system to eat itself.

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> FTR: We use (Resque/Jesque) redis-backed queues extensively in our applications/APIs for interprocess communication, off-loading messages that don't have to be processed immediately, and for sharing load between servers.

This article could have been "X Don't Fix Overload". If you're not looking for, and fixing, the actual bottleneck, then any improperly implemented solution could be in that title.

With that being said, there is good information in there. I just didn't agree with the strong bias against queues.

<comment><USER29> Author here. I use queues all the time. I program in Erlang and there is one unbounded queue in every single process' mailbox in every node.

The problem is not queues themselves, it's when queues are used to 'optimize' an application (usually the front-end) by removing the synchronous aspect of things. In some cases it's reasonable, say long running tasks like video processing or whatever could be handled in many other ways than blocking up the front-end, for friendlier results.

I've seen queues applied in plenty of times where their use case will be to handle temporary overload (by raising latency and pushing some work to be done later, when the system slows down). The problem is that as time goes and that temporary overload becomes more and more permanent (or has such a magnitude as you can't catch up on it in your slow hours), it suddenly starts exploding very violently.

How much time the queue buys you is unknown, because the people running in these issues have likely not been able to characterize the load on their system, or the peak load they'd have (because the system dies before then). It's a challenging problem. Ideally you fix it by putting boundaries on your system (even on your queue! that's good!) and _expect to lose data eventually or block it_.

The really really dangerous thing is using a queue and never expecting you will lose data. That's when things get to be very wrong because these assumptions lead to bad system design (end-to-end principle and idempotence are often ignored).

And then people go on to blame queues as the problem, when the real issue was that they used a queue to solve overload without applying proper resource management to them.

Most of what I rant about in that blog post is stuff I've seen happen and even participated in. I don't want that anymore.

<comment><USER30> > _How much time the queue buys you is unknown, because the people running in > these issues have likely not been able to characterize the load on their > system, or the peak load they 'd have (because the system dies before then). > It's a challenging problem._

Is this a case for using queueing theory to model your system's behaviour?

Even if you don't go down that path (and there are tools for it[0]), using queues to connect components helps find bottlenecks in one very simple way: you can look for where the queues are growing. As a rule of thumb, the longest queue is going to be in front of the bottleneck.

[0] [http://www.perfdynamics.com/Tools/PDQ.html](http://www.perfdynamics.com/Tools/PDQ.html)

<comment><USER29> The longest queue is going to be in front of the tightest bottleneck, but not the central bottleneck critical to your application.

If you find you have a bottleneck halfway through the pipe and you make that bottleneck go away, your true real bottleneck down in the wall still remains there, and all your optimizations done above that one will end up just opening the floodgates wider.

Once you've protected that kind of more at-risk core, then it's easier and safer to measure everything that sits above it in the stack, and it puts an upper bound on how much you need to optimize (you stop when you hit your rate limits on the core component).

<comment><USER30> Dumb question: how does one decide which is the "true" bottleneck? There's always _a_ bottleneck, surely.

I'm reminded of Weinberg's quip that solving your most pressing problem just promotes #2 into first place.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> Absolutely agree with this.

Another nice illustration of how when arrival rate is greater than departure rate we get overflowing queues:

[http://setosa.io/blog/2014/09/02/gridlock/index.html](http://setosa.io/blog/2014/09/02/gridlock/index.html)

<comment><USER32> I sometimes use this - that was built as a call-center simulation - to get quick-and-dirty figures to have an idea of the actual queueing strategy tradeoffs. Queueus are okay, depends on what you want to do with them. [http://queuewiz.queuemetrics.com/](http://queuewiz.queuemetrics.com/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER33> The whole article is a straw man.

Yes, if things further down your stack are not capable of handling the load in decent time your queue is going to overflow (assuming a fixed capacity). No, it does not make your entire stack faster -- it just defers processing in a way you can manage and tame it. What can become faster is things like front- end requests, which are no longer held up by blocking operations or a starved CPU. Either way, it buys you some time to actually re-engineer your stack to work faster and at greater scale.

<comment><USER7> 1\. That's not what 'straw man' means.

2\. The author isn't arguing anything opposed to what you're saying; yes, it can speed up front-end requests by deferring work, but if you build an image uploading system that can't handle 10,000 image post-processing tasks per minute, then deferring image post-processing into a queue won't solve your bottleneck.

The author isn't talking about individual components of a system, he's talking about the entire system as a whole. Even when you're using it to speed up your front-end, you still need the capacity to do the post-processing on the backend.

</comment></comment><comment><USER34> Where can I learn more about back pressure? It isn't a set of terms that Google seems differentiate from spines.

</comment><comment><USER35> To fix overload swap queues for stacks, set a timeout, and clear the stack when you estimate based on throughput the the time will expire.

eg. On a webserver where people get refresh happy, I'd set the timeout at about 5 seconds. If requests are taking on average 2 seconds and the request is already 3 seconds old, return a 500, drop the connection, etc. Then clear the rest of the stack.

Answer requests in a LIFO manner as at least that way in an overload condition some requests are answered and the 'queue' is cleared quickly.

It's like when you have 3 papers due and only time to do 2, you elect to not do one so you can do the other two. You should ideally kill the one that is due first.

Sacrifice a few for the good of the many.

<comment><USER36> timeouts work well, if you can afford to drop the data on the floor. for scenarios where you can't, life sucks: make your pipes faster.

</comment></comment><comment><USER37> Nothing he says is wrong, but I'm not sure why people would be using queues on web requests. Do people really do this? I guess I can see it happening, but... it just doesn't feel right.

I use queues to, well, queue up work. Work that doesn't have to be done anywhere close to realtime. Things like background data processing, or in another case where I have up to 10 seconds to process a piece of data that comes in. Something like activemq lets me distribute the work easily, easily monitor the queues to see if any step needs more processing power, and is great for passing around the work.

<comment><USER38> In Appengine web requests often kick of tasks in queues todo the heavy lifting. This makes the response of web requests very fast. However you dont need queues when you need synchronous results, or whenever the task is small.

</comment></comment><comment><USER39> Can the problem be solved by using a fair queueing?

chunk off the overloaded queue into small groups and then have your workers chew a bit of each at a time. the LAST-IN folks won't have to wait ages for FIRST-IN folks to finish.

off topic but parisian french sounds way nicer than quebecois, the language of blue collar workers from 18th century, had to unlearn the horrible quebecois after high school.

<comment><USER12> Thank you for illustrating the reason for this blog post so perfectly.

The problem is not that the queue(s) aren't being accessed by workers fairly, but that requests are being dumped onto the queue(s) faster than the workers (or whatever your bottleneck is) can handle.

To stretch the metaphor, too often software devs respond with "Let's add more sinks (queues)!", rather than "let's add more drains, and make sure the ones we have are clean (identify the source of the bottlenecks and work to remove them/scale them)!". The first is comparatively easy, and seems to 'fix' the problem for a little bit; the latter requires measurement and careful architectural decisions, and possibly breaking changes.

</comment></comment><comment><USER40> Queues Don't Fix Overload? True. They let you control it and prevent longer operations from impacting general end-user performance.

TLDR: Don't build queues for non-queue friendly processing.

</comment><comment><USER41> One name - Warlords of Draenor. The launch could be used as case study for everything in that article.</comment>


Engineers Buzz That Internet Is Outgrowing Its Gear - <AUTHOR> http://online.wsj.com/articles/y2k-meets-512k-as-internet-limit-approaches-1407937617?mod=WSJ_article_EditorsPicks <comment><USER2> Paywalled article.</comment>


Things to know for NoSQL Django coders - <AUTHOR> http://www.allbuttonspressed.com/blog/django/2010/02/4-things-to-know-for-NoSQL-Django-coders

<comment><AUTHOR> Guys, we need help with more backends! Apart from App Engine and MongoDB we'd love to have SimpleDB, CouchDB, Redis, and many more. If you want to see native support for your backend please get involved: <http://groups.google.com/group/django-non-relational></comment>


Show HN: My unique advertising start-up - <AUTHOR>

http://theeverchangingwebsite.com<p>The other day I was thinking about web advertising, and how inefficient it is for almost all parties involved. I was particularly focused on the banner ad, and then I started to wonder what would happen if the banner ad and the site content switched roles. This is purely an experiment at this point, but I'd like to know what the HN crowd thought of an unorthodox advertising solution like this. Thanks! <comment><USER2> This is a very fragile (but interesting!) idea. I would focus hard on finding ways to line up a steady stream of interesting (hopefully viral) content... the fragility of the concept all hinges on that. You may literally want to create some pages yourself, or solicit freebies from clever folks, or even _pay_ or otherwise encourage some great content.

As a user/visitor, I'm going to need a compelling reason to visit your site everyday, and "what would happen if the banner ad and the site content switched roles" isn't very enticing. Now, a cool piece of interactive art one day, a _great_ 24-hour deal the next, followed by a free album/song download from a few artists, with a clever game the next day... these are some of the kinds of things that may give you traction. It's got to be "wow this site has cool stuff everyday" not "let's see what ad is up there today".

It's a chicken/egg horse/cart problem, but you're probably putting the cart before the horse if you're thinking monetization and advertising right away. I'd think of it more like "send in your cool stuff and we'll pick the best to display for 24 hours" and see if that works.

Again, great idea, but you _have_ to prime the pump!

</comment><comment><USER3> How is this any different than hosting content on a corresponding provider. Videos on Youtube and Vimeo,resume on LinkedIn, Portfolio on any blogging platform,or just simply using Facebook Pages?

I can understand that people have the freedom of putting anything on your site (to a point), but it still requires work to create a new site and having a knowledge of html and css at the minimum.

The cost is cheap $10 a day, but it is still more than the free providers on those mentioned.

<comment><AUTHOR> The goal is to build a consistent, and eventually large audience, and the value of the site being access to that audience. Yes, you can host your content on Youtube, LinkedIn, Wordpress, or any number of CMSs, but you still have to find a way to drive traffic to your content, and that is usually not easy. The selling point down the line will essentially be, renting the eyeballs for a day to jumpstart awareness for your content.

<comment><USER3> Like a Groupon Daily deal, but for websites? All eyes on one site, hosting one particular content. I can see how that could catch one. It would depend on the traction initially. Meaning you would need very unique and viral content to get the first viewers there. After you have a viewer base then it can become quite beneficial as a daily advertising platform.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> On local news sites I see syndicated news/advertisements. Usually it's about health and getting ripped or some such nonsense. I think this has been done before. The goal of the advertiser is to trick the user that the content is part of the magazine/website/tv show.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Clickable: <http://theeverchangingwebsite.com>

</comment><comment><USER5> Are you planning to come up with daily deals too? Like Groupon or Appsumo?</comment>


Show HN: A Multi Language T9 Keyboard for iPhone - <AUTHOR> https://typenineapp.com <comment><AUTHOR> Hey HN.

Spent the past 3 years in my spare time building / perfecting this, with a small overhaul halfway adding swiping and multi language support (you can have several languages active at the same time, not having to switch manually).

Would love to hear your thoughts on it, and also curious if your muscle memory has stayed intact ;)

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Would aliens understand lambda calculus? (2018) - <AUTHOR> http://tomasp.net/blog/2018/alien-lambda-calculus/ <comment><USER2> I think the answer is kind of obvious if you understand the foundations of mathematics. Any alien that was smart enough to manipulate written symbols according to rules would agree that our induction rules applied to our axioms would lead to our theorems, because proofs are a purely symbolic game that even a computer can do. Aliens might not agree on the axioms or induction rules except by pure coincidence, because even within our own species there is disagreement over which axioms (choice for example) or induction rules (the excluded middle in intuitive mathematics for example) are self-evident.

The law of the excluded middle might seem obvious to you, but not to these guys: [https://plus.maths.org/content/intuitionism](https://plus.maths.org/content/intuitionism)

<comment><USER3> A lambda calculus of two variables requires the law of the excluded middle, or it won't work. The alphabet of the calculus has to be distinguishable and unambiguous.

<comment><USER4> The law of the excluded middle is about the truth status of any proposition. The fact that the alphabet of the language has to have a decidable equality does not mean the law of the excluded middle is true for any theory built from the lambda calculus. (Or true in general)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> The problem with the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis as an argument against academic knowledge is it may be true for the general population, however, the entire purpose of STEM academia is to subvert the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis. Teaching a kid quantum mechanics or calculus inherently has little to do with the general population's belief in religion or astrology or virtue signalling, for example.

The average Joe_6_Pack Arrival movie heptapod might culturally have an easier or harder time learning lambda calculus; its certain that the only people (well, heptapods) who would matter, the CS academics, would be quite familiar with lambda calculus.

STEM has a dependency chain such that its hard to do quantum mechanics without something like statistical thermodynamics and basic probability theory. Thus, cultures without statistical thermodynamics, like Ancient Rome or non-European cultures in general never developed quantum mechanics, therefore no nifty MOSFET transistors therefore no electric cars or industrial VFDs therefore no solar non-petrochemical energy industry therefore they die out or are replaced with more advanced cultures before interstellar travel is reached.

We don't know the dependency chain for interstellar travel but the more complicated things are, the more fragile they are, always, so its HIGHLY likely any two interstellar cultures would have identical dependency chains to pass various gates along the path. You can play games with early steam engines burning lignite or peat and it won't matter terribly much at the time or in the long run, but it seems there's only one way, using metal catalysts, to "invent" your first organic chemistry hydrogenation process, for example. You can make steel in a low tech medieval blacksmiths shop, but transistors have tighter constraints. Most of advanced civilization is a mask over fragile, complicated, and delicate dependency chains.

We'd like to think we're on the path to interstellar travel rather than self destruction, so obviously all interstellar aliens would have lambda calculus much like ourselves, because the gates we have to pass thru only pyramid and narrow as the task gets more complicated. And interstellar travel seems likely to be complicated.

<comment><USER6> You are relying on implicit assumption that quantum mechanics is the only possible theory that could lead to an invention of MOSFET transistors. Maybe this assumption is true, but I do not know it to be proved. Of course QM is the only known to us theory that had led to MOSFETs, but it doesn't mean that one couldn't invent some completely different way to describe reality which would enable him to invent MOSFETs.

<comment><USER7> In order to build a MOSFET, you need to know how do electrons react in the presence of thin barriers, and how thick should the gate oxide be to prevent breakdown while still keeping the field strong.

Does a civilization know this? If no, they cannot make MOSFETs. If yes, than whatever branch of physics and math describes this is called "quantum mechanics"

Can it be different, can you do QM without Schrödinger Equation? Sure, but it will still be QM. One can rearrange terms on formulas, use different units, work with voltage instead of energy, introduce various metrics and so on. Physicists do it all the time, it is simply theory reformulation.

<comment><USER6> _> In order to build a MOSFET, you need to know how do electrons react in the presence of thin barriers, and how thick should the gate oxide be to prevent breakdown while still keeping the field strong._

Here you are speaking using words like "electron", "thin barrier", "oxide" and so on. So you are thinking in a framework of our culture and our variant of STEM. Doing so you are trying to prove that there is no way to invent another variant of STEM. I believe, that such an approach could achieve nothing.

I mean, to speak "electron" you need to rely implicitly on a whole mountain of theories about reality. So even if you proved that one cannot build MOSFET without QM, it would mean that he cannot do it while relying on this mountain of theories. It wouldn't prove that there are no other mountains allowing to invent MOSFET.

 _> Can it be different, can you do QM without Schrödinger Equation? Sure, but it will still be QM._

It is a trivial proposition. "QM without Schrödinger Equation" is QM by definition. The question is if it possible to build some other models of reality that allow to invent MOSFET. As I see it you are trying to remove QM from the mountain of theories and to think what could replace QM. It is completely possible that nothing but QM could replace QM in such a setup. But what would happen if you remove _all_ of the mountain of theories and start from scratch?

I do not know. To see what would happen I need to design an empirical research that would involve some millions of people and a few millennia. To be sure I would need to repeat this at least 50 times.

<comment><USER8> The fact that the electron exist is not culturally dependent. As much as the fact that stars exists.

Any alien civilization capable of studying the behavior of atoms must also be able to express concept that are compatible with ours.

Maybe the do not use numbers, calculus, or maybe they do not even use unit of measures. Yet the result of our experiments will have to be the same and since we can develop experiments that show specific operations they must also be able to express those operations.

<comment><USER9> Electrons are a perfectly adequate model for reality. I do not read the previous poster as disputing this point.

Instead, they appear to be asking, "is there another model for reality which would also work well enough to build a MOSFET?"

I do not know either.

That said, people keep telling me that both QM and GR are known to be incomplete, so perhaps electrons are no more real than phlogiston? I would certainly be surprised, but that's besides the point, and even if someone is currently rolling their eyes and preparing to explain why I am wrong and electrons can't possibly be "like phlogiston" (not a position I actually hold so don't waste your time), an alien civilisation _could_ make an analogous mistake and fill the electron-shaped gap in their physics model with something completely different _analogous to the way phlogiston filled the oxygen-shaped gap in chemistry_.

<comment><USER7> The good thing is, it does not matter. It is entirely possible the electrons are not "real" \-- so what? The electric field is not "real" either (in the sense that there is no corresponding physical object), and the magnetic field is even less "real", it is just a change in electric field.

As long as there is predictive power, we can use a theory. And once we discover there are unpredicted cases, we can update the theory.

In particular, the reason phlogiston theory was discarded was not some philosophical reasons -- it was because it made bad predictions (specifically, that things always lose mass when burned).

There is a beautiful exercise in where you take two very basic physics rules (electrostatic force between two individual charged particles and speed of light equation), and derive basically entire electromagnetic theory from it. Really drives the point that underlying physics is simple, and most of the formulas, especially introductory ones, are just shortcuts to make reasoning and computation easier.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I bet even the majority of relevant STEM graduates (CS, math, Philosophy (?), etc.) do not understand lambda calculus beyond the bits and pieces they remember from "that dreadful class about formal logic or something like that" they had in their first college semesters.

I learned to calculate/reduce (are those the right words?) lambda calculus expressions where one line would span multiple lines on wide paper for college. I don't think I ever understood much of it. Thinking back on this makes me so, so glad I will never have to study this ever again.

</comment><comment><USER3> First, the answer to whether or not an alien would understand the lambda calculus is no different than whether a dog or a dolphin can understand the lambda calculus. It depends on the wiring of their brain. The lambda calculus is recursive; perhaps then self-awareness/self-reference is a prerequisite to understanding.

Second, the claim that the lambda calculus was discovered but all programming languages are invented does not take into account LISP, which was both discovered and invented (cf. Paul Graham's "Roots of Lisp" ([https://sep.yimg.com/ty/cdn/paulgraham/jmc.ps?t=1564708198&](https://sep.yimg.com/ty/cdn/paulgraham/jmc.ps?t=1564708198&)).

</comment><comment><USER11> > The naive argument that computer scientists often make is that lambda > calculus is at the heart of the isomorphism between logic, computation and > category theory and this suggests that it refers to some eternal truth. This > is a Platonist view of mathematics which is just one of several positions. > The main problem with it is that it cannot be tested and so it is more a > religious belief than a scientific claim. However, it also ignores the > social, cognitive and cultural aspects of mathematical knowledge.

I still feel like this Platonist idea somewhat holds. Eventually you'd land on some isomorphic variant of logic, computation or category theory.

<comment><USER12> Indeed - if/when we meet aliens that we can communicate with, I suspect that they will have their own theory that we can all agree is also part of the isomorphism.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> So I think the fundamental problem with a lot of the arguments I am seeing presented here is this fascination with logic and thought as being a universal truth. We are, in fact, no different than Flatlanders.

If we walk through the evolutionary history, we can see a clear pattern of each advancing step slowly creeping into further and further dimensions. First it was single cell protobacteria being able to detect light or dark above them, and gradually growing more and more complex. A dog, while a 3 dimensional construct, is really little more than a 2 1/2 dimensional being. Humans, by extension, are really the first fully realized 3 dimensional being. And also one of the first to take steps into the perception of the 4th dimension. And as evolution continues to advance, there is no reason to suspect our ability to perceive the 4th, or even 5th dimensions won't continue to advance. Soon our ability to manipulate those dimensions will follow suite, and with it, will come a fundamental shift in how that creature conceptualizes the physical world.

To say that a 4th or 5th dimensional creation would still use a binary logic system equal to true or false, on or off, is nonsense. And as such, any mappings of our current logic systems would fall relatively flat.

Our world is still flat, confined by the limits of our own physical hardware. In a billion years what ever comes after us will be completely different. Confined by its own limited hardware.

</comment><comment><USER14> I'm not sure I follow the argument at the end. The author has given a good explanation for why our current metaphors describing the lambda calculus might not be applicable to aliens (requiring the concepts of direction and containment), but I don't see why, for example, the gas-planet aliens might not have their own metaphors relating to wind patterns or aerial acrobatics or something we wouldn't understand at all. There can be multiple metaphors for the same math.

</comment><comment><USER15> Perhaps, if our symbolic notation would appear "alien" to them, the simple graphical notation in [1] could help them understand.

[1] [http://tromp.github.io/cl/diagrams.html](http://tromp.github.io/cl/diagrams.html)

</comment><comment><USER16> Any article that congratulates hyoo-mons on their uniquely superior capacities instantly disqualifies itself from representing anything fundamentally correct.

Either (1) fundamental mathematical principles are universal, and every society that incrementally improves will converge on them, or (2) our mathematical principles are socially constructed, and other societies will evolve their own structures that may be closed to us. There is no middle ground.

There is, however, a third possibility: some of the universal fundamentals may be inaccessible to humans because of innate limitations in our savanna-evolved monkey brains, where aliens need not be so restricted. In other words, we (and everybody else) have access to the basics, but not everybody gets beyond the basics.

We can reasonably conclude that we have thus far only touched on the basics, because we have only just started looking. Whether we will progress beyond those basics has yet to be demonstrated. If civilization collapses as the natural world breaks under the strain put on it by industrial society, we might stop at this level. Or, if the number of people with mental capacity to comprehend increasing levels of sophistication declines, eventually it will reach one, and then zero.

Our only hope might be inventing machines that can progress beyond us, but they would then supplant us. The aliens might see no value in talking with us, but only with our machines, and we would never understand what they were saying to one another.

All of the above is the natural progression of the Copernican revolution: any assumption of specialness is flawed in exactly the degree by which it flatters us.

</comment><comment><USER17> I just found this week's blog posting by RJ Lipton: [https://rjlipton.wordpress.com/2019/10/21/a-polemical- overre...](https://rjlipton.wordpress.com/2019/10/21/a-polemical-overreach/)

The Mackenzie book chapter discusses both the Fetzer and DeMillo Lipton Perlis controversies.

It's really interesting that the debate got into the questions like, can one formally verify a bridge?

</comment><comment><USER18> What would happen if this question was reformalated as "If there was another civilization, would they have invented lambda calculus?"

As for the question of "is mathmatics discovered or invented", if two or more people can discover the same branch of mathmatics, wouldn't that mean that it is a universal truth that could even be discovered by aliens?

<comment><USER19> Not if they're both building on top of a shared body of mathematics (or even shared sensory organ evolution and brain structure). Aliens may be working from an entirely different foundation, resulting in entirely different mathematics.

<comment><USER18> So you are saying that there could be aliens that would percieve 1+1 as 3, how would that even make sense?

If our society is built by mathmatics that can be seen as wrong by aliens, how would they percieve our reality and how would they explain the complicated structures we have built using our mathmatics?

<comment><USER19> > So you are saying that there could be aliens that would percieve 1+1 as 3

Nope. More likely they'd skip the concept of "1" and "+" and "3", but that's also more specific than what I'm saying.

What I said was that your stated evidence doesn't support the claim you made. Multiple people didn't come up with the same branch of mathematics completely independently. They did so from the same foundations.

[EDIT: Oh yeah, also said that aliens may be using compeltely different math. See below for explanation of that.]

> how would that even make sense?

I've no idea. That's the point.

> If our society is built by mathmatics that can be seen as wrong by aliens,

There's a difference between wrong and incomprehensible.

Think about some of our foundations:

\- We think of numbers as deterministic. We've come to understand that the universe is probabilistic.

\- We think of numbers as continuous. We've come to understand that the universe is discrete.

\- We think of a table as a distinct thing. It's actually a bunch of atoms bonded together that are constantly shedding and gaining atoms. Oh, and that table over there is welded to the floor, so it's actually bonded to the floor in the same way, yet we think of the floor (and entire building) as a different distinct object.

These new ideas are comprehensible to us, but kinda weird and foreign. Suppose instead of starting with the naive view of determinism, continuous space, and distinct "platonic" objects, you start with the weird reality where those aren't true. What will your mathematics look like if your foundational mathematics is based on that?

Do you think in terms of "1" and "1" and "2", when you don't think of two tables as two items? Do you think of deterministic addition when your perception of the universe is non-deterministic?

And these are just variations I thought up using my human brain based on things that human brains have managed to understand. I'm saying "hey, completely differently structured brains could think in a way our human brains don't understand". "But that makes no sense to my human brain" is pretty clearly not a refutation, and asking for an explanation of it also misses the point.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> All the things we are discovering and inventing are only result of how we fundamentally see the Universe (which is strongly connected to how our perception organs work), not other way around.

I would say they might understand anything we understand on a basis that we do so it is possible and it is equally possible that they might not understand us at all :)

</comment><comment><USER21> This philosophical approach to mathematics is still rooted in conceptions of mathematics from the beginning of the previous century, perhaps even earlier. This may very well be because professional philosophers have not really engaged with mathematics since then and so don't have the experience required to ascertain its current philosophical undercurrents. Even more, most mathematicians _also_ understand the philosophy of mathematics from this outdated point of view, perhaps because most professional mathematicians have not engaged with philosophy since then.

For a philosophical exposition of recent mathematical activity, I don't think there's any book other than Synthetic Philosophy of Contemporary Mathematics by the mathematician Fernando Zalamea. The translation reads a little clumsy to me, but the ideas are very much worth it.

[https://www.urbanomic.com/book/synthetic-philosophy-of- conte...](https://www.urbanomic.com/book/synthetic-philosophy-of-contemporary- mathematics/)

</comment><comment><USER22> Yes, but no amount of explanation and analogy would enable them to understand what the heck a monad is.

</comment><comment><USER18> A relevant video that discusses if math is invented or discovered [https://youtu.be/AmySxYHqQCQ](https://youtu.be/AmySxYHqQCQ)

</comment><comment><USER23> TIL I may be an alien.

</comment><comment><USER24> Not if they were equally as smart as me.

</comment><comment><USER12> If a conjecture is true, but no-one has proved it yet, is it still true?

</comment><comment><USER25> of course they would.

</comment><comment><USER26> Cool</comment>


On Full-Stack Startups - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/tweet-stormed/on-full-stack-startups-c6436f445cc8 <comment><USER2> I don't know who this is, but the following isn't about them or their story but the format which I tried to and failed to follow.

1/I'm sorry I couldn't finish it,

2/let alone refresh enough times to get all the content to load without error.

3/Disseminating that much continuous information in that format is atrocious.

4/I'll post a lot of stuff, but it will be so spread out that you won't know

5/If I made any good points or not

6/But the sheer barrage of noise will convince you I know what I am talking about

7/???

8/Profit!

<comment><USER3> Couldn't finish it either. I thought that maybe there would have been commentary after a few of the tweets, but the format is bad.

I did see a few good points (Fullstack helps you understand legacy practices and why things were the way they had been..), but a lot was definitely lost in all the noise.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Trying to load this page crashes Safari on my iPhone 6+ every time. Am I the only one?

It seems like more and more bloated JavaScript is being jammed into every page load these days...

</comment><comment><USER5> Apparently I have no clue what full stack means. I thought it was being able to manage front-end, back-end, and (maybe) devops code.

After this, I think it's a reference to a new type of Medium post whereby an author stacks full the post with Tweets.

</comment><comment><USER6> I might be the only one thinking this wasn't a painful but kind of novel/artistic presentation. But onto the substance: no industry needs more of a full stack startup than US hospitals and the healthcare industry. There are some that have started, but piecemeal solutions are excruciatingly difficult to develop and sell effectively.

</comment><comment><USER7> Got about halfway through before I realized this guy is using Twitter to write what should be a blog post. While I'm sure his message is solid, I'm not sure how much I respect someone's tech advice when they don't seem to understand the technology they're using in the first place.

</comment><comment><USER8> I enjoy ideas. Here are the ones from the tweet storm:

• Full stack law firm: template all contracts, law APIs as core, hyperdeflate legal costs.

• Full stack clinic: mobile EMR/EHR, qself, genomics, telemed. Employ MDs w/ tech skills. Accept insurance, prefer cash subscriptions.

• Full stack architect: put @vannevartech APIs at core of new construction co. Start with unmanned buildings like datacenters to derisk. Ultimate goal = hit enter to build a building w/ drones + prefab.

• Full stack accounting firm: Given bank account, auto prepare it all: tax to diligence to S-1 w/ legal sign off. (@xero could do this).

• Full stack restaurant: Mobile order/pay/reserve, A/B tested dynamic menus w/ supply chain integration, robot prep.

</comment><comment><USER9> This is possibly the worst presentation format in a field crowded with worthy contenders. I particularly like the Knight Rider-like green thing that just goes back and forth across the top of the browser.

</comment><comment><USER10> This format is painful to read, so I'm copying the content here. This is a series of tweets by [https://twitter.com/balajis](https://twitter.com/balajis)

\--

If you are using software to go after a legacy physical vertical, we are most excited if you do it "full stack" [0].

With @counsyl, we found that one cannot live by bioinformatics alone. So built a full clinical lab + software + national salesforce.

Here is a video of our robotic genome factory: Also: insurance coverage, clearances, clinical integration... [1]

The reason to do full stack is that it's hard to replace just one layer of an outdated legacy stack. CAC & integration costs can kill.

For example, consider "restaurant powered by technology" vs "tech for restaurants". With code, reinvent industry and make better margins.

You cannot automate something till you've done it manually many times. You cannot abstract an API till you've seen many specific examples.

Need to build a site of the scale of [http://Amazon.com](http://Amazon.com) \- and encounter all the problems - before you could do [http://aws.amazon.com](http://aws.amazon.com) .

Reinventing agriculture? Build new kind of farm, w/ solar panels & self- driving tractors. Control all factors, show that code cuts costs.

More examples of full stack startups.. Education: [2], Autos: [3], Hospitality: [4]

By doing it end-to-end, you see things. First, sometimes a good reason beyond tradition (eg regulatory, logistical) for legacy practices.

Second, your control of adjacent layers may eliminate the initial problem you were trying to solve. Analogous to: [5]

Third, solving whole problem builds respect in your vertical. Now you can recruit best people. Their experience + your code = invincible.

Fourth, your margins improve nonlinearly once you control the full stack. Simply having all orders in DB from day one is transformative.

Remember: for many legacy cos, IT = cost center. They only adopted the code. You were born in it, moulded by it. [6]

"Muni commissioned a $3 million audit..after two years..figured out where people were getting on the bus." [7]

A full stack technology-powered bus service (like @leaptransit, soon to relaunch) can dump that from database for $0 in <1 second.

First full stack entrant into a given vertical is formidably protean. Morph your product just by hitting keys. Ex: [8]

Why not more full stack startups? Perhaps #1: recruiting difficulty. Need experts in many different areas. Must know what you don't know.

A good way to get around this: gain vocabulary. Find best cos in your vertical. Read bios of execs on LinkedIn. Google new terms. Repeat.

Now you know regulations/acronyms/terms like CPT, 510(k), KOL. Repeated mentions increase relevance; prioritize accordingly.

Email the best. Read blogs, get context. Now you know kung fu, or at least know you need to hire kung fu master. [9]

In near term, expect iconic full stack companies in areas like biomedicine (3DP/genomics/qself), finance (bitcoin), aviation (drones).

Uber/Lyft, Airbnb, Tesla just the start. Poetically: almost any vertical regulated by a TLA is ripe for an eventual full stack co IPO.

Under appreciated aspect: full stack company can manage compliance more easily once beyond early stage. Hit enter, dump DB, submit form.

An ideal full stack co has: a) git/DVCS at the core b) domain experts c) domain monetization knowledge d) a burning reason to fix things

As @justinkan wrote recently [10], unit economics dominate physical businesses. So monetization usually starts early.

In re: funding, full stack startups can be more expensive than pure code. Best candidates often 2nd time founder with domain knowledge.

But are thinking hard on alt funding models, for both open source [11] & full stack cos [12].

With that said, b/c VC = power law [13], full stack startups arguably easier to fund b/c easier to envision 1B+.

Finally, the best full stack founders have ambition to think big and the pragmatism to start as small as possible (but no smaller).

1B+ lifetime funding doesn't phase us. 1B+ up front usually a bad sign. Careful staging + thought on monetization = pragmatic ambition.

To sum up: @cdixon & I love full stack cos. If you're a founder w/ company built on git + TLA knowledge + pragmatic ambition, do ping.

By request, some specific examples of full stack startup ideas in a few verticals: law, medicine, architecture, restaurants, accounting.

Full stack law firm: template all contracts, law APIs as core [14], [15], hyperdeflate legal costs.

Full stack clinic: mobile EMR/EHR, qself, genomics, telemed. Employ MDs w/ tech skills. Accept insurance, prefer cash subscriptions.

Full stack architect: put @vannevartech APIs at core of new construction co. Start with unmanned buildings like datacenters to derisk.

Full stack architect: Ultimate goal = hit enter to build a building w/ drones [16] + prefab [17].

Full stack accounting firm: Given bank account, auto prepare it all: tax to diligence to S-1 w/ legal sign off. (@xero could do this).

Full stack restaurant: Mobile order/pay/reserve, A/B tested dynamic menus w/ supply chain integration, robot prep: [18]

If goal is full stack, always talk to execs in field early on. Few words can save years of work, identify key cost centers & hard parts.

Note: can start all of these as "just" a new clinic/restaurant/accountant/architect/law firm. Think big, start small. Prove, then scale.

[0] [http://cdixon.org/2014/03/15/full-stack- startups/](http://cdixon.org/2014/03/15/full-stack-startups/)

[1] [http://www.technologyreview.com/video/521121/innovators- unde...](http://www.technologyreview.com/video/521121/innovators- under-35-balaji-srinivasan-cofounder-counsyl/)

[2] [http://techcrunch.com/2014/03/18/former-googlers- altschool-r...](http://techcrunch.com/2014/03/18/former-googlers-altschool- raises-33m-from-founders-fund-and-a16z-to-reimagine-primary-education/)

[3] [http://www.forbes.com/sites/jimgorzelany/2014/02/27/why- tesl...](http://www.forbes.com/sites/jimgorzelany/2014/02/27/why-teslas- vertical-manufacturing-move-is-manifest-destiny/)

[4] [http://www.fastcompany.com/3027107/punk-meet-rock-airbnb- bri...](http://www.fastcompany.com/3027107/punk-meet-rock-airbnb-brian-chesky- chip-conley)

[5] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Telescoping_series](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Telescoping_series)

[6] [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F157geaXp_w](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F157geaXp_w)

[7] [http://www.sfweekly.com/2010-04-14/news/the-muni-death- spira...](http://www.sfweekly.com/2010-04-14/news/the-muni-death-spiral/)

[8] [http://www.wired.com/2014/02/teslas-air-fix-best-example- yet...](http://www.wired.com/2014/02/teslas-air-fix-best-example-yet-internet- things)

[9] [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6vMO3XmNXe4&feature=youtu.be](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6vMO3XmNXe4&feature=youtu.be)

[10] [http://justinkan.com/exec-errands-post- mortem](http://justinkan.com/exec-errands-post-mortem)

[11] [http://startupboy.com/2014/03/09/the-bitcoin-model-for- crowd...](http://startupboy.com/2014/03/09/the-bitcoin-model-for- crowdfunding/)

[12] [http://jerzygangi.com/why-silicon-valley-funds-instagrams- no...](http://jerzygangi.com/why-silicon-valley-funds-instagrams-not- hyperloops/) (404)

[13] [http://blakemasters.com/post/21869934240/peter-thiels- cs183-...](http://blakemasters.com/post/21869934240/peter-thiels- cs183-startup-class-7-notes-essay)

[14] [http://blog.csdisco.com/2013/05/01/the-future-of-legal- techn...](http://blog.csdisco.com/2013/05/01/the-future-of-legal-technology- flt-introduction/)

[15] [https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Contract](https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Contract)

[16] [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W18Z3UnnS_0](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W18Z3UnnS_0)

[17] [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hdpf- MQM9vY](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hdpf-MQM9vY)

[18] [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S0GKIQdpscg](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S0GKIQdpscg)

</comment><comment><USER11> On 497 requests for 2.1MB of data (cache disabled)...

<comment><USER12> Holy fuck....I did not realize it was _that_ bad...

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> What a terrible medium with which to convey that message. I'm sorry to see this kind of excuse for a story for the second time this week.

</comment><comment><USER14> What a ridiculous format to publish an article in. If you can't be bothered to format your stream of thoughts into proper sentences and paragraphs, I don't think there's much value in me reading it.</comment>


Quantum gas goes below absolute zero - <AUTHOR> http://www.nature.com/news/quantum-gas-goes-below-absolute-zero-1.12146 <comment><USER2> I don't really like the misleading headline, although it seems as though the actual paper does it as well (<http://arxiv.org/abs/1211.0545>). Temperature is conventionally defined as the average kinetic energy of a collection of particles.

However, in statistical mechanics, you derive thermodynamic relations from the principles of quantum mechanics. It turns out there is a term β which for most purposes seems to match up with 1/kT, where k is the Boltzmann constant and T is classical temperature. According to this article, there are some occasions where "conventional" T and quantum mechanical T do not match up.

The most famous relationship in statistical mechanics is:

S = k ln Ω

S is entropy. Ω is the partition function for the microcanonical ensemble, and it corresponds to the number of quantum states available to a system. (In English: Ω is the number of different configurations that a system of particles can possible have.)

Another relation that can be derived is:

1/kT = ∂ln(Ω)/ ∂E

Substituting the first equation into the second, we get

1/T = ∂S/∂E

So what would a negative temperature imply? That increasing energy leads to decreasing entropy. My guess is that these researchers have created some system that does exactly that.

<comment><USER2> After thinking about the article's headline some more, I've come to the conclusion that to get a lot of attention and hype you need to:

        1. Take a word that has a commonly accepted meaning
        2. Redefine the word to a more general case using advanced physics or chemistry
        3. Find an obscure property that this new definition allows
        4. Shock and amaze!

(See "mass" for similar phenomena.)

<comment><USER3> I know you're being sarcastic, but this is a wonderful thing about science! Commonly held, intuitive, time-honored ideas about temperature, space, mass, time, turn out to break down in edge cases, and those breakdowns drive the development of new mathematics, physics, and chemistry. The universe is so much deeper, stranger, and more beautiful than we ever imagined.

If you aren't compelled by ideas alone it can feel like much ado about nothing (who cares about tiny variations in spacetime curvature?), but without general relativity, we couldn't have built the GPS. Without quantum mechanics we couldn't have lasers--and without lasers, no modern internet.

Pretty cool time to be a human being, I think. :)

<comment><USER4> I think the parent was criticizing the unfortunate naming of these discoveries (designed to capture the imagination of laymen) rather than the discoveries themselves.

<comment><USER5> But in this case, it seems to be correct. So, we, laymen, should update our concepts and throw away the idea that "0° is the lowest temperature."

<comment><USER6> But 0K (notice there's no °) _is_ the lowest temperature - it's just that it's also the hottest temperature, depending on which direction you're coming from.

Temperature has a nice interpretation as average energy for classical systems, but in a sense thermodynamic β = 1/kT is the more 'natural' quantity that has a pole at T = 0, corresponding to infinite hotness or coldness respectively.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I'm not sure I understand this part:

"Normally, most particles have average or near-average energies, with only a few particles zipping around at higher energies. In theory, if the situation is reversed, with more particles having higher, rather than lower, energies, the plot would flip over and the sign of the temperature would change from a positive to a negative absolute temperature."

If more particles have higher energy, then wouldn't the average energy increase as well? And if the average energy increases, then shouldn't that still keep things in positive, rather than negative, territory?

<comment><USER8> Temperature is not really the average kinetic energy any more. The temperature of a system says something about how much the entropy increases as you add energy. Negative temperature simply means that the entropy decreases as you add energy.

This is possible if the number of high energy states is small, because then adding energy will result in the system being in one of a smaller number of high energy states, thus having lower entropy (the entropy of a system is basically the logarithm of the number of states we think the system could be in, so if the number of states is lower, then the entropy is lower). Another way of saying this is that is as follows. For positive temperatures our knowledge of the state of the system would _decrease_ if we added energy (think about a box full of neatly arranged balls and giving it a kick). For negative temperatures our knowledge of the system would _increase_ if we added energy. In the extreme case if the number of possible high energy states is 1, then adding energy can force the system into exactly that state, thus we would know all you can know about the system.

In particular in the experiment described in the article, if you removed energy from the system the particles would not be in the lattice arrangement and instead would go around randomly. Thus the entropy would increase if you removed energy.

<comment><USER9> So I understand it conceptually:

A thought experiment where a cup of some substance manages to be observed at a stable negative temperature.

This substance is a liquid at its current temperature. But it is colder than the ambient temperature of the room. As the liquid warms up from the ambient room temperature, it freezes. But taken outside on a cold day, it will melt and then evaporate?

I know you're not going to get a cup of this stuff in reality, but am I at least understanding the idea? The "temperature" of the liquid would remain negative, it's not like it could ever "warm up" to the point it was positive? It could reach an equilibrium state with its environment, but it would still be negative?

<comment><USER8> Yes, that's the right idea (assuming it has lower entropy when it's frozen than when it's liquid). In the context of the liquid you describe, and assuming it has otherwise normal properties then yes you can't warm it up (= add energy) and make it positive again. And if you took it outside, the temperature would first become more and more negative and then flip to positive. However, as long as we are talking about exotic stuff it is conceivable that as you add energy, the entropy first decreases (i.e. negative temperature) but if you add more and more energy, the entropy starts to go up again. For example lets say that if you add a lot of energy to the frozen stuff, it becomes a gas. I'm not sure if a system like that where you go from positive to negative to positive is physically possible, but I don't currently see any reason why it wouldn't be.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> The usual explanation of such things: T is not so important as 1/T. So negative abs temp is achieved by going through +infinity temp and coming back via -infinity temp.

Note that this is only allowed in systems which have states that are bounded in energy. The usual example is a laser: When in inversion, its absolute temperature (of the electron population) is negative.

<comment><USER11> If you'll allow a car analogy - isn't this like saying backing up is slower than being parked?

Yes, it's a negative number in the context of a forward velocity vector, but it's a higher energy state.

<comment><USER12> No. The problem is that for historical reasons we choose the wrong scale and it's a little late to change all the books.

We choose to measure the temperature in this way

      (infinityK) ... ->- 10K ->- 1K ->- .1K ->- ... | 0K(impossible) | ... ->-.1K ->- -1K  ->- -10K ->- ... (infinityK)

Where ->\- means hotter

In this scale 0K is impossible and impassable. But infinityK is possible (only one unsigned infinity) and some kind of systems when they get hotter they can pass from very "big" positive temperatures to very "big" negative temparatures.

And the negative values are hotter than the positive. For example: -.1 is hotter than -10K that is hotter than 10K that is hotter than .1K

It's (theoretically) better to measure beta=1/temperature (the usual notation is beta) In this way:

      (infinity/K) ... -<- 10/K -<- 1/K -<- .1/K -<- ... 0/K(possible) ... -<-.1/K -<- -1K  -<- -10K -<- ... (infinityK)

Where -<\- means hotter

In this scale infinity/K is impossible as expected. But 0/K is possible. And the order is the correct order hotter=less_than. Using beta they are ordered more intuitively. Hotter means moving to the right in the line.

<comment><USER13> Thank you; this helped clarify things quite a bit.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Ok, mind officially blown.

Still wrapping my head around the notion that you can flip the energy signature on atoms at near absolute zero and have that result in mirroring to the other side of the temperature number line.

Also intrigued by the notion that 'dark matter' is just 'regular matter' but flipped into the negative temperature side of the scale. Which really makes one wonder about the nature of heat.

<comment><USER14> From the article:

 _"Schneider and his colleagues reached such sub-absolute-zero temperatures with an ultracold quantum gas made up of potassium atoms. Using lasers and magnetic fields, they kept the individual atoms in a lattice arrangement. At positive temperatures, the atoms repel, making the configuration stable. The team then quickly adjusted the magnetic fields, causing the atoms to attract rather than repel each other. "This suddenly shifts the atoms from their most stable, lowest-energy state to the highest possible energy state, before they can react," says Schneider. "It's like walking through a valley, then instantly finding yourself on the mountain peak."

At positive temperatures, such a reversal would be unstable and the atoms would collapse inwards. But the team also adjusted the trapping laser field to make it more energetically favourable for the atoms to stick in their positions. This result, described today in Science1, marks the gas's transition from just above absolute zero to a few billionths of a Kelvin below absolute zero."_

And this:

 _"Another peculiarity of the sub-absolute-zero gas is that it mimics 'dark energy', the mysterious force that pushes the Universe to expand at an ever- faster rate against the inward pull of gravity. Schneider notes that the attractive atoms in the gas produced by the team also want to collapse inwards, but do not because the negative absolute temperature stabilises them. "It's interesting that this weird feature pops up in the Universe and also in the lab," he says. "This may be something that cosmologists should look at more closely."_

Just sayin'

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> As others pointed out, there are two definitions of temprature, usually it is related to average energy per particle and formally it is T=dS/dE (S is the entropy, E the total emergy of the system). What I do not understand, is why is this news? A negative emergy is not very uncommen, for example lasers have negative temperature.

<comment><USER16> I think the new part is that this is very close to absolute zero from the negative side instead of the positive side. It also seems the other interesting part is that the system transitions from positive to negative temperatures very suddenly.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> Assuming the second law is not violated, the system of lower (negative) temperature becomes a source of energy (as opposed to sink). If this is right, that is mighty interesting.

<comment><USER6> Not really - this has been done before and the textbook example are spin systems. The newsworthy part is that the negative temperature is realized via motional degrees of freedom.

<comment><USER17> Just checked wikipedia: "By contrast, a system with a truly negative temperature in absolute terms on the kelvin scale is hotter than any system with a positive temperature. If a negative-temperature system and a positive- temperature system come in contact, heat will flow from the negative- to the positive-temperature system."

Let's define wikipedia to be the absolute zero of information.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Once again I am reminded that half the facts I know are wrong.

</comment><comment><USER19> Maybe the Universe somehow has a natural form of this effect in the intergalactic medium (or in spacetime) that causes negative pressure and is the mechanism of dark energy?

"Negative temperatures imply negative pressures and open up new parameter regimes for cold atoms, enabling fundamentally new many-body states."

</comment><comment><USER20> Nature's article starting with completely anti-science statement like : "It may sound less likely than hell freezing over" is pretty disappointing.

<comment><USER21> To be fair, it's a news brief designed for the average layperson, not a research article. I think editorializing the content a bit is fine.

Besides, that particular phrase is commonly accepted as an idiom, not a serious reference to a Biblical Hell.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> Below absolute zero is an anti-concept.

</comment><comment><USER23> cool.</comment>


India Sues Monsanto for . . . Biopiracy? - <AUTHOR> http://www.skepticblog.org/2011/12/29/india-sues-monsanto-for-biopiracy/

<comment><USER2> I don't disagree with Dunning per se, but he misses or intentionally steps around some significant issues.

The big rise of GM corn in the US was due a gene that made feed corn resistant to the herbicide glyphosate, which they are the primary world producer of. This has actually increased herbicide use significantly in both corn and soya crop where round-up ready is being planted, because now you can over spray without worry. The gene is patented and requires an IP license for each plant grown that comes bundled with the official seed.

This changes the farm dynamic considerably, as farmers who traditionally saved seeds for next years crop are now increasingly dependent on a single company and their IP portfolio. While the production gains and reduced labor costs are substantial, this has been tempered by seed license costs that have risen much faster than inflation.

At some point having too much of your food supply under the control of one corporation is a national security issue. If trends continue to the point that little other seed is being produced Monsanto could exert extreme pricing pressure or worse as production needs to be planned in advance.

This is probably not too big an issue in the US where they could simply be nationalized if things got out of hand, but what about India? What leverage would they have if one or two foreign companies controlled a large majority of their seed stock? Once farming evolves it's very difficult to go back, you aren't planting as many hectares and you have fewer trained workers and you're no longer producing the pesticides you need. But if they ignored the patent they'd definitely face WTO sanctions and be unable to find buyers for exports.

This is where the current fight comes in and gets rather misrepresented. The case isn't that they stole an Indian eggplant but that they imported the patented gene without approval from the recently created regulatory body. Obviously some amount of regulation is required there, as a sovereign state can't just have anybody walking in and splicing anything they feel like into sustenance crops. What if some huge chinese pharmaceutical company imported a drug into the US without any FDA approval and announced their intention to start human trials. Is there any doubt the government would quickly get an injunction against them?

He paints it as greedy bureaucrats wanting a handout and that certainly could be the case. But where the fight got started was over GM cotton that at the time was unregulated. It's such a good crop that farmers were switching very quickly and the government became concerned they wouldn't have any bargaining power left soon. So there were price controls a new regulatory body a sales ban and more price controls and yet they did lose control of the cotton crop without gaining any significant concessions.

That's all this probably comes down to - using any legal strategy to delay things until Monsanto is willing to agree to some concessions. Traditional price controls or progressive tariffs can have some pretty nasty consequences, so Monsanto has good reason to not like them. I'm not sure anyone knows the best way structure some protections, but it's clearly in their national interest to make sure they're covered. Monsanto could probably end this right now without any money changing hands by offering India a royalty free license they could use as a stick to keep the pricing at sustainable levels. As usual it turns out everyone's greedy.

<comment><USER3> > What leverage would they have if one or two foreign companies controlled a > large majority of their seed stock?

India has in the past allowed infringement of patented HIV drugs. Why wouldn't India allow infringement of seed company patents in a crisis? The whole thing falls down as soon as farmers are told it is okay to break the "pledge".

<comment><USER4> Monsanto is large. They (like many other Fortune 500) can use the US Government to exert much pressure on India to pay the IP tribute for using forbidden seeds as well as accidentally cross-pollenated varieties (assuming they are viable). (why maintain a crypto-fascist empire if you're not going to use it?)

OTOH, India isn't Iraq (et al): they _might_ respond with a big, nuclear- backed, "F __* YOU!", and get away by infringing like you said.

It will be interesting to see how this plays out. Owing your seeds to a company is a bad thing, though.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Wow the bias inherent in the authors support of GMO (and Monsanto) is dripping. I mean, at least he's honest about it, but it's hard to keep reading after the first paragraph or so.

Here is a different bias.

GMO is like a magic word processor that outputs instantly DRM'd books which then can go out and make all the other books on the same shelf the property of the author too, which you now have to pay him for.

<comment><USER6> If you read the details of that particular case it's a lot more complex. GMO isn't like that because there are lots of genetically modified organisms that come with out licensing agreements.

One farmer in particular decided to see if he could use normal plants to reproduce Monsanto seed which he succeded in and then got sued because its a violation of the agreement he agreed to. The neighboring farmer bs is just a smokescreen.

All the food we eat is GMO because the genome of a plant naturally changes, now we just do GMO efficiently. Yes, there are risks, but natural GMO could produce a terminator gene as well. As much as I don't mind GMO I'm fully in support of labeling, especially the idea that those that don't use GMO can label as such.

<comment><USER7> The true issue which is ignored is that diversity in crops must be maintained. Monsanto wouldn't want this to be a topic though because that would be contrary to their goals; Diversity means hundreads if not thousands of variations in neighbouring crops, not just one or a few. If society supports the smaller farmers, in case their crop is hit that year, then they can survive financially / pay bills. This is in fact the safest way to do it.

<comment><USER8> Why is this being downvoted? Are people assuming we can out-engineer nature forever? Single-breed farming makes for a brittle food chain.

<comment><USER9> It seems about as reasonable as assuming nature can out-engineer nature forever. Classifying changes wrought by man as somehow fundamentally different than any other changes is a fallacy.

<comment><USER10> Man's changes are abrupt and discrete. We are not outside of nature but we rock the boat pretty hard.

<comment><USER9> So essentially, we're capable of making quicker adjustments than most natural forces? If anything, that should make it easier for us to out-engineer nature, not harder.

<comment><USER11> That's like saying that deregulated financial instruments made it easier for us to out-engineer the market. It _looked_ like it worked, for a while, but it turned out there were... downsides. When a worldwide monoculture crashes, it's going to be more difficult to effect a food bailout.

<comment><USER12> Regulated financial instruments are a monoculture.

Besides, what makes you think that regulators get things right? Even if you ignore regulatory capture, regulators are imperfect, have less information than market participants have, and have their own goals.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Article seems very confident that farmers will be more able to afford bt brinjal more than they can currently afford pesticides. Where is the evidence this skeptic has presented that argues that Monsanto is interested in reducing its profit streams from Indian farming? Once granted a monopoly on bt brinjal, no corporation would voluntarily reduce its revenues rather than increase the price of bt brinjal. Farmer debt incurred from Monsanto-style agriculture is causing incredible rates of suicide across India, and Monsanto has a legal obligation to its shareholders to keep it that way.

</comment><comment><USER13> _"Compared to old-school, trial-and-error cross pollination, GMO is like using a word processor instead of a manual typewriter."_

I think that one shitty analogy holds everything the author is trying to convey. And it's the same lack of reason and actual argument with a blind approval of technology that any biochem company would love to fill your ears with.

</comment><comment><USER14> Monsanto has been suing farmers for years over alleged theft of GMO--it's nice to see them sued in return. I get the impression Monsanto's legal team is as over-reaching as that of the RIAA.

<comment><USER15> I am involved in the agricultural community, and this sort of crowdsourced assertion has been bouncing around in the internet echo chamber for years. It started with Percy Schmeiser:

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monsanto_Canada_Inc._v._Schmeis...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monsanto_Canada_Inc._v._Schmeiser)

You can read that yourself and draw your own conclusions (hint: you can't seed upwards of 90% of your field by driving past it with a truck). This has since then snowballed into the story of Monsanto employing a vast legal team to oppress the poor 'simple farmers'. This is patronizing - farmers (outside of communities that explicitly shun technology) are generally a very well- informed and technologically adept crowd, well used to hacking together electronics packages to make their lives easier (a cool example <http://www.arduino.cc/cgi-bin/yabb2/YaBB.pl?num=1254445743>). The whole motherhood and apple pie callback to the days of yore definitely doesn't hurt the message though, so it stays around.

Anyway, take a look at the material on both sides of this topic.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> Monsanto as a company makes me sick. Their treatment of farmers that choose not to use their seeds is an abomination. It's like me getting sued for software piracy b/c the guy sitting next to me is using pirated software and the wind is blowing in my direction. #reform-patent-laws-please

<comment><USER17> > Their treatment of farmers that choose not to use their seeds is an > abomination.

And so's their treatment of farmers who _do_ choose to use their seeds, and their treatment of populations close to farming communities, as well as their treatment of... well pretty much everybody once you get down to it[0].

[0] example: [http://www.vanityfair.com/politics/features/2008/05/monsanto...](http://www.vanityfair.com/politics/features/2008/05/monsanto200805)

<comment><USER18> _"And so's their treatment of farmers who do choose to use their seeds"_

I grow some RR crops and am not sure what you are referring to here. For the most part, farmers weren't reusing their seeds to begin with. The people in the business of genetics do a much better job, which helps keep the farm profitable.

On my farm, in the last couple of years, we have moved to growing entirely RR- free soybeans because a market has opened for soybeans free of the gene, but it limited to few Asian markets that our local distribution network has been able to capture.

With all the complaints about Monsanto in America, I find it interesting that the North American market by and large still demands RR-present commodities. Farmers are left to fill that demand, whether they like Monsanto or not.</comment></comment></comment>


The Subtle Threat of High-Quality Distractions - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/the-understanding-project/the-subtle-threat-of-high-quality-distractions-e832434e1584 <comment><USER2> I swapped my smartphone for a $70 brick approximately a year ago and have zero regrets - I highly recommend that anyone curious give it a shot (though I'll note that I'm not 100% convinced yet that doing so is the best long-term move). I've been working to reduce the total parasitic load that I allow on my conscious mind and the impact of removing an always-on computer from my pocket has been palpable. For me, the cost / benefit analysis strongly favors eschewing a smartphone: cognitively I feel more refreshed, "present", and able to focus on tasks for longer without the phone present, financially I've transitioned from purchasing a multi-hundred dollar device every few years and paying ~$800-$1,000 a year for data to paying far less for a device that is very durable and reliable and not paying for data at all. After a year of having no on-the-go access to my email I am happy to say that the hourly mental impulse to check if I've gotten anything important has finally dissipated (it was surprisingly strong and persisted even into the sixth month mark). The price I pay for increased communications friction is negative in the final tabulation: for every new app I miss out on, every email that sits in my inbox a bit longer than it used to, and every text that I answer slowly and without emojis, I find that I am able to actually process information around me more carefully and thoroughly. It's also genuinely shocking to see the smartphone phenomenon from "outside" \- with nothing to look at or play with, my attention tends to be on other people around me, and the fact of the matter is that nearly everyone I encounter is only half-present no matter where they are due to having a chunk of their mind constantly devoted to whatever is going on (or might be going on) on their phone's screen. Strange times.</comment>


Investor to Airbnb CEO: you want liquidity, make it available to everyone (2011) - <AUTHOR> https://techcrunch.com/2011/10/01/chamath-palihapitiya-airbnb-liquidity-everyone/ <comment><USER2> Respect to Chamath! I am disappointed there hasn't been much discussion in the community around why AirBnB founders did this. Is @sama in support of this wheeling and dealing in general. I am pretty sure he is not. What is YC's official stand and ethos around cashing out by founders without providing the same kind of liquidity to employees. Since AirBnB has been successful beyond anyone's wildest imaginations this event was either forgotten or didn't really make for a bad PR. We don't need for things to fail spectacularly before we do what is right.

I see YC and YC community in general bringing more transparency and fairness to the way startups are built and run. They need to set the tone and tenor about what is right and acceptable. I am looking forward to see constructive debate around this topic in the comments (or not, if I am totally off the mark here).

<comment><USER3> Why hide behind a throwaway account? Seems like a genuine, thoughtful response.

<comment><USER2> I have built quite a bit of karma on this account and using it as my default id now. Also, what matters is the value of ideas not who it is coming from - right? :)

<comment><USER3> Haha that's hilarious!

True, but typically using throwaways has some weird connotations. Glad you're changing its meaning!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> It reminds me of an idea I've had kicking around. Basically, instead of the founders holding equity directly, they set up a trust that holds the non- investment positions and pays things out proportionally. The point is to basically have equity, but prevent individual exercise - if the founder wants to cash out, the only way to do so is to dump cash into the bonus pool. Important note would be to distribute the trust's assets when the company becomes fully liquid (acquisition, IPO + exercise window expired, etc).

It makes a lot of sense from a game-theoretic perspective, but I don't know what the tax implications would be. Like, I know that a very minor equity position will often give little-to-no negotiation power when the distribution of the company's riches gets decided. I'd much rather ride along on the founder's coattails. As it stands, I have to ask what sort of equity position the founders get and make sure it's the same, and run into complex issues when leaving the company, etc. Much easier for me to understand is "when the founder gets a million dollars, you get a thousand" or the like.

<comment><USER5> This is a very strange idea. You start a company and you're arm's length to enjoy the benefit?

<comment><USER4> Game theory is strange. Gaining an option to do something can be negative value, because it affects what other people expect you to do in future situations (and because other people now have an incentive to coerce you into exercising that option).

Given that I don't want to screw over my employees, I'd rather have legal structures set up so that I can't. Furthermore, I'd prefer this system to be extraordinarily obvious, so that it's clear to everyone that I've committed myself to a course of action. Like, how you win a game of chicken is by removing the steering wheel from your car, waving it out the window, and yelling that you _can 't_ turn away. You'd don't keep the ability to swerve just because you might think you'll need it.

<comment><USER6> Couldn't the founders just give themselves common stock with similar terms (including non-transferability) as employees' RSUs? I don't see the need for a trust.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I am generally supportive of founders taking some money off the table, but not so much that they necessarily get post economic. When a founder ends up with such a concentrated position, I think it is reasonable for them to diversify.

BUT, I think the criticism here is absolutely justified. It should not have been done as a common stock dividend using new investor money. If a founder wants money now, they should give up a proportionate right to money later.

</comment><comment><USER8> As a committed founder your entire life is wrapped up in your company, not just your career but to an extent your health, your relationships and your family all depend on this one bet paying off. ...and more frequently it's taking even the most successful startups nearly a decade to reach an IPO/liquidity. Talented employees hired at full market value have a lot less lock in/risk and a much lower switching cost than founders. Also investors place many bets and don't live and die with each of them. As the founder you have one big bet, and setting aside the wreckage that can create in a founders life... it also can encourage them to make overly cautious decisions that aren't aligned with the investor's and employee's long term interests. Taking a reasonable amount of money off the table to take care of your family and have some security is perfectly reasonable.

<comment><USER9> What number is "a reasonable amount?"

Do you think he would have thrown the red flag had it been significantly less than 21M?

Seems that it wasn't that they were taking money off the table it was how it was structured.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> The value of his stake would have increased 30x in 6 years had he invested. On a $1m investment that would have more than covered what the founders took off the table. I wonder if he regrets passing.

</comment><comment><USER11> Did they reconsider declaring a special dividend on the common stock as part of the $112M Series B funding round?

<comment><USER12> In the end they raised 1B of private equity.

<comment><USER2> Did the founders cash out and left the employees in the dark about it?

<comment><USER12> No idea - I'd like to think they have plenty of skin in the game still.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


FreeWallet.org scam – millions stolen - <AUTHOR> https://www.reddit.com/r/CryptoCurrency/comments/6gtrmd/freewalletorg_scam_millions_stolen/ <comment><USER2> What's the evidence here? You have no way of knowing if they own the wallet or not. Support seems not bothered:

[https://www.reddit.com/r/CryptoCurrency/comments/6gtrmd/free...](https://www.reddit.com/r/CryptoCurrency/comments/6gtrmd/freewalletorg_scam_millions_stolen/diteu7n/)

I think this is an attempt at inducing a panic.

</comment><comment><USER3> At least one person in the thread has claimed that part of their transaction has actually gone through, finally.

</comment><comment><USER4> Maybe ETH can hard-fork again to invalidate those transactions.

But more seriously, clearly too early to tell what's happening here. Regardless, if people had their ETH in a closed-source wallet application _at all_ , it's unsurprising that this would happen to it.

<comment><USER5> With my limited understanding, if indeed the eth does not go to the advertised own wallet address but to another one, this seems extremely fishy. Can someone from freewallet.org care to explain if yes or no such centralisation occurs, and if so: WHY?

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Someone just transferred 6000 of the stolen ETH out to an empty wallet. (~3.2 million USD).</comment>