Do I Owe My Employees a Career Path? - <AUTHOR> http://boss.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/08/12/do-i-owe-my-employees-a-career-path/

<comment><USER3> It sounds like his employees just need a raise. If I was making $500k a year cleaning toilets, I wouldn't care about a career path. Obviously this example is extreme, but if losing people is a disaster, you should be paying them enough that it would be insane for them to leave unless they were planning a complete career change.

As for more responsibility, just give people more say in how the company is run. If your employers are better at something than you ever see yourself being, they probably have insights that you would never have. Ask them. Implement their ideas.

I don't think people really want to feel overpaid or overextended any more than they want to feel underpaid or underutilized. If employees are asking for more money or more responsibility, it's probably because they feel underpaid or underutilized, not because they want excess.

<comment><USER4> I think a few years at $500k cleaning toilets and you'd have enough money in the bank to think about a career change. Even if it was

a. Running your own toilet cleaning business.

or

b. Retirement.

<comment><USER5> What if cleaning toilets is your favorite thing to do in the world? Why start a business (and, ostensibly, pay others to do the thing you love most) when you could just keep on doing it, day after day?

<comment><USER4> On a recent trip to Vegas, I was briefly in a bathroom at a casino where someone had completely missed the toilet while having a crap. I just don't see that being _anyone's_ favorite thing to do in the world.

<comment><USER5> My favorite thing in the world is designing & coding software interfaces. I'm sure there are a ton of people out there who look at me the same way you might look at a toilet cleaner :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I knew a secretary at a big telecom equipment company that had been paid in stock back when the company was just getting started. Twenty-five years later, she was worth over $10,000,000 and still working the same job. She didn't have a career path, she had two things:

-a job that made a difference at the company

-a share of the rewards

Give your employees those two things and they'll stick around.

<comment><USER7> I think you mean - she didn't have a career path, but she had two things:

\- a job that made a difference at the company

\- $10,000,000

<comment><USER8> He had it right. A share of the rewards is a gamble that there will be rewards, but the outcome is unknown when the promise of rewards are given. She only knew that if the company did well that she would also do well.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I think the more accurately stated question is: Is it better for my company if I create a career path for my employees?

Everyone's knee-jerk reaction to using the word "owe" will be no. But I think the question is an interesting one that I, at least, don't know the answer to. On the yes side, there is the possibility of long-term retention and providing more benefit to employees as a recruitment tool. On the no side, the potential for these employees to then leave for better jobs, the resource drain in creating such a program, the difficulty placing these people within a small company, etc.

So I'm curious to hear what people who've had this experience think -- _is_ it better for the company?

<comment><USER10> I used to work for a startup (employee) and I was wondering the same all the time. One of the perks of working at this company that you were allowed to speak at as many conferences as you wanted to and everybody who worked there made good use of it.

On the one hand, this was basically our primary marketing tool. We talked about our tools, other engineers saw them and convinced their companies to buy our software. On the other hand, our engineers were constantly in contact with people from big companies (Google, MS, ...) that tried to recruit them.

Curiously, only one of our engineers ever left the company voluntarily (that was me, after four years), so apparently the boss managed to create a work environment that was so great that even constant top-dollar recruitment attempts by other companies had no effect.

<comment><USER11> That's great to hear. A company that is so confident in what its doing and its hires, that it trusts and encourages them to expand their skill set and degree of influence.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I think much the same dynamic is in play in the average developer's career.

Think of all the job postings you've seen asking for 5 years experience in language X and 10 years experience in platform Y. Employers seem to want ever more specialization out of their developers, which for the most part is exactly the opposite of what is in the developer's own best interests. What developer wants to end up wedded to a single platform or language - if they're smart, or even just ambitious, they'll know that technical knowledge has a frightfully short shelf life. Not to mention that the only way to get a promotion or raise as a developer is typically to jump ship and go somewhere else. So it seems to be in their own best interests to branch out and try new things, which typically involves going elsewhere.

In the software industry, at least, employers by and large feel little if any obligation to give their developers a career path, and that's why most developers move around so much. Not that I don't understand the employer's motives as well - especially in a field as in demand as development can be, why should they feel an obligation to give us a career path when we can essentially write our own ticket if we choose to?

Don't feel any obligation to give your employees a career path, then - <USER2> don't expect them to stick around either. And no, it's not because they're lazy or spoiled or entitled or disloyal - it's a simple matter of economic incentives.

<comment><USER13> Well, whether or not specializing in one technology is good for your career depends on your career goals.

Being an expert in one obscure technology is an excellent way to become a consultant.

If you don't want to spend your career maintaining someone else's code, then it's probably a bad idea to specialize in one technology.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> Have you heard of golden handcuffs? While there are certainly anti-employee versions of that business trope, there are certainly pro-employee ways to do that. Profit sharing that goes up by year is a good one, as is benefits increases.

Even just increase pay over time past what they'll earn elsewhere. They'll keep doing their highly specialized job because no one else can hire them at a competitive rate.

Find areas they can flex their brains that don't cost you much. Say, publicity stunt woodworking (I'm sure you could make things that get you press), novelty items you can use as gifts to prospective clients, etc, completely designed and done by these skilled tradesmen.

Or hell, just give them stupid amounts of time off. It's very hard to leave a place that has 20-40 days of vacation.

Or even make a community oriented approach. Have them teach a class on X etc to the community, mentor at risk kids, etc.

<comment><USER15> If you're going to use the vacation time route then please don't go to unlimited vacation. To some employees unlimited vacation is the same thing as none.

<comment><USER14> I want to run a company someday where if you've not taken all your vacation, then at the end of the year your email, phone forwarding and door access card all turn off till Jan 1.

<comment><USER16> So... overnight on Dec. 31?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> My favorite quote from that article is "That made for an interesting job, but it wasn't efficient enough to support living wages and benefits."

It points out a real contradiction. If you want to be able to pay people a lot, you need to create an environment where they can be highly productive. The answer for that, in industrial systems, is specialization. If the people are having to think a lot about what they do, they'll spend their time thinking, doing different things, and fixing problems caused by doing things differently -- this work isn't paying work since it comes off their wages.

Another part of the problem is that there are fewer spots the higher up you go on the pyramid. The other day I was browsing the remainder rack at my local Uni's bookstore and found that there's now a "One Minute Manager" book about managing yourself.

I guess these days organizations are being hollowed out, so that few people have a chance to be promoted to management and that many of us don't get the managerial attention we need.

<comment><USER18> Sort of on the same note as providing a good environment... at probably the best company I've worked for, my boss wouldn't blink if I came to him with a request. Be it a software package, new machine, more hours/machines on EC2.

He realized that compared to what he was paying me to work, these were small costs to make sure I could work effectively and to help build the company. Consequently, I had enough respect not to abuse the privilege.

I'm always shocked when I talk to friends at other companies who bitch about working with shitty machines or generally not having the right tools. Generally my rule of thumb would be 10% of salary for upgrades/tools/software. Think about it: for a salary of $50k, what's adding another $5k/year to significantly improve an employee's productiveness?

Also important is to let them make the decision, not just arbitrary upgrades.

<comment><USER19> Those improvements aren't as fleeting either. If the employee leaves, whatever process improvements they had gotten with that 5k has a good chance of sticking around and helping for the future.

<comment><USER18> That's a good point and actually applies perfectly in my case. They still use essentially the same setup I created.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Some jobs are just jobs. Do job x for pay y. But in many employee/employer relationships, there is a tremendous opportunity for the employer to have a lasting impact on peoples lives beyond the paycheck, and its more than a career path at a company. Is it just a job, or a building block of one's career that ultimately impacts the employee, and his/her family for years to come?

Whether providing a career path at the company, or providing employees with improved skills and marketable experiences that will set them up for the next step in their "portable career path", businesses should recognize there is social responsibility in the employer/employee relationship. As an example, the career positioning and experiences gained by a 25 year old employee can have tremendous and direct impact on their life, and that of their families.

With that said, there are certainly limits to what a business can sustain. Some forethought in employee selection (right people on the bus), a little bit of coaching and mentoring, and understanding the goals of the employee can go a long way to creating a work experience that goes beyond the basic career path.

</comment><comment><USER21> Do your employees owe you to care about the good of your business?

</comment><comment><USER22> Do you "owe" your employees a career path? In a word, no.

But having a career path is something you can pitch to prospective employees as an additional reason for working at your company.

Besides that, the jump from "lead engineer" to "frontline manager" should be something that's not just "be at the right place at the right time" or "sucking up to the right upper level manager" I think corporations universally handle this transition poorly, probably due to looking at people as "human resources".

</comment><comment><USER23> No; its capitalism, you owe them money for work.

Should you provide a career path? Sure, you outlined all that in the article. You need to keep highly-skilled longtime employees somehow.

</comment><comment><USER24> As someone who worked in a lot of environment (factory manual labor, meat packaging, tech), I find that good employers are those who care for the growth of the employees as much as they do the company growth. Even a perception of "care" really goes a long way to create employees' loyalty. I think this video says a lot about this point: [http://www.thersa.org/events/vision/animate/rsa- animate-driv...](http://www.thersa.org/events/vision/animate/rsa-animate- drive).

</comment><comment><USER25> Am I just being idealistic or is this an tremendous opportunity? What is better for owner than his employees to want to take on challenges, by themselves even, assuming they have the chops to pull it off? Employees showing ambition seems like just as good a reason to expand as demand picking up, again assuming that the market is there.

I reckon that the founder/manager/owner is not the only one that deserves a career path (he went from running a one man band to actually managing people). And someone coming to you and saying - I want to do your work has to be the most awesome thing an entrepreneur could get to hear. You have a willing replacement so you can move to something even cooler - now that is some sweet burden.

What seems like a more interesting question to me is how can I get people to want to take my job consistently?

</comment><comment><USER26> No, but don't get bent out of shape when they leave. And they probably will leave, whether you have a "career path" for them or not.

So plan for it, prepare for it, and work with your employees to prepare succession plans for when they do leave.

</comment><comment><USER27> If you've had a guy spend 18 years building bases for conference tables, his brain is mush. Even adults have to be exposed to new ideas and challenges in order to continue to grow mentally. So he's not loyal -- he sticks around because he's become useless for anything else and probably doesn't even notice.

I know developers who've written basically nothing but RPG for 18+ years. Same principle. Mush.

</comment><comment><USER28> I read the article and I didn't see a word about career path. The answer to the question is still a "no", in my view.

Once I hire a person, I expect them to approach me with their career aspirations and ideas. It is primarily their responsibility to come up and discuss/suggest opportunities for growth. Failing to do that, I actually think they become one of those idle 6s the article is talking about. I should also note that at this point I start looking for a replacement.

But do I owe them a career path? No. I owe them honesty and transparency, which includes not misrepresenting what the opportunities for growth are for a particular position they are being hired into.

Of course I am talking about those roles where personal ambition is indispensable, and where proactive behavior is highly valued. Genuine desire to grow and evolve is very natural and needs to be accommodated, but it can't take the form of personal interest completely eclipsing team interests and overarching direction and goals. That's a balance every manager needs to strike.

<comment><USER29> > Once I hire a person, I expect them to approach me with their career > aspirations and ideas.

You may consider that under this strategy, your work force will self select amongst the extrovert go-getters. This may be exactly what you want, or the complete opposite. It all depends to what degree your business relies on typically introvert traits such as creativity or lateral thinking.

But if you are ok with that, I am ok with that.

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> The traditional notion of a career path is that you get promoted from job x to y — this works in large organization. However in a small biz a career path is taking on the extra work load and creating the job you want to grow a business. That atmosphere must come from the CEO, however the employee must have an intraprenurial mindset.

</comment><comment><USER31> If you were to set up a rotational program that identified leadership, it would be beneficial to both parties. Imagine a group of high potential workers who rotated around doing each other's jobs. They would have new skill sets and would be able to do their original jobs better. Productivity would go up for each individual task and they would be able to cover for each other if one were to fall sick or get laid off.

There seems to be a bias that a career path exclusively means promotions but in this case rotations can provide new challenges and benefits that will naturally cause an increase in pay.

</comment><comment><USER32> This talk by Daniel Pink seems relevant.

[http://www.thersa.org/events/vision/animate/rsa-animate- driv...](http://www.thersa.org/events/vision/animate/rsa-animate-drive)

</comment><comment><USER33> He should give his employees a raise if he can afford it, and raise his prices if he can't.

And if raising his prices isn't feasible, maybe his employees don't deserve a raise.

</comment><comment><USER34> If you don't it's basically just a dead end job and you're not going to be able to attract high-caliber employees and you won't retain most employees for long. Your employees will just look for another opportunity and as soon as it arises move on.</comment>


Ask HN: What are some interesting tech trivia questions? - <AUTHOR> I'm working on a multiple-choice quiz web app for fun (and to use for code samples). The questions are trivia about programming history and other arcana (it's intended to be fun for your coffee break, not a tech assessment of any kind).
I would love for people to post some interesting trivia questions and their answers!
Thanks in advance!
- Al <comment><USER2> Not sure of the best way to word the question but the scope resolution operator in PHP (::) is called Paamayim Nekudotayim, which means double colon in Hebrew.

[http://php.net/manual/en/language.oop5.paamayim- nekudotayim....](http://php.net/manual/en/language.oop5.paamayim- nekudotayim.php)</comment>


Ask HN: Getting a job in data science as a graduate? - <AUTHOR> I'm a recent graduate in a relevant field, but it seems like most positions require at least 3 years of experience. How did other HNers make their first move into the space? <comment><USER2> Internships, going in as a data analyst/product manager and then moving laterally into a more data science position. Having a portfolio demonstrating capability helps.

Source: I've been a PM doing data science work with the opportunity to move FT into data science. I've also interviewed people for FT data science positions.

</comment><comment><USER3> Github, a blog and Kaggle would help you stand out. If you get a new job, it will be easier to get another one</comment>


TechCrunch Goes to Boston, Join Us for MeetUp 11 - <AUTHOR> http://www.techcrunch.com/2007/10/18/techcrunch-goes-to-boston-join-us-for-meetup-11/ <comment><USER2> I will be there, it would be nice to meet other people from the ycombinator community.</comment>


Botched Microsoft update - <AUTHOR> http://www.infoworld.com/article/2858014/operating-systems/botched-kb-3004394-triggers-uacs-diagnostic-tool-error-0x8000706f7-amd-catalyst-driver-fail-defende.html

<comment><USER2> Microsoft is having a lot of these in the last 3 months. October's updates took out most of our company for a morning.

One wonders if they've stopped testing them.

<comment><USER3> Well, they did lay off half the Windows test team.</comment></comment>


Bi-Directional Plasma Thrusters for Space Debris Removal - <AUTHOR> https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-018-32697-4 <comment><USER3> Is it realistic to presume that space debris orbiting around the earth will only ever get worse, or will it effectively remain the same to some degree of consistency?

Or is it more of a thing that it only becomes more of a noticeable problem for us as humans when we are affected. Meaning that the only reason we have a problem with it now as opposed to some previous timespan is that we are sending more and more objects/satellites/etc into orbit and they are being damaged/destroyed/affected, so we therefore write about it and try and come up with ways to stop it?

<comment><USER4> Most of the debris in orbit is a result of 2 events, one of which was a purposeful action of the Chinese government. So if humanity can refrain from blowing up satellites, or at least keep from blowing them up in the stupid way the Chinese did, it should remain manageable.

Of course, some of the most difficult to track debris was put up there in the name of science- the Telford needles, pieces of tether, and shreds of solar sails. If the big net experiment from a couple of weeks ago had gone awry, we'd have another difficult to track fabric-like bit of junk shredding itself into smaller yet still dangerous pieces up there.

<comment><USER5> Was a bit sceptical at first but this seems fairly correct. There's been numerous collision events, only one stands out as intentional and of greater magnitude than all the rest. I do wonder how future generations will judge such actions given the difficulty of clean up and general world consensus to not militarise space.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_space_debris_producing...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_space_debris_producing_events)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Something I proposed and sent to the experts many years ago; back then I was thinking of opposing ion rather than plasma engines of course. Plasma wasn't a thing, then.

A point they've dropped from my proposal is that used on a spinning target you can de-spin it. (Even if it's spinning along more than one axis in fact, with intermittent thrust.) This is especially useful to capture, move, and then utilize asteriods, say. Or as a way to stabilize the target (such as an asteroid), so that both engines can be joined to the target to move it. See "jacknife" below.

Very useful for cleaning debris from orbit.

A few years ago, I realized that what you want is a "jackknife" implementation with a hinge between the two engines that allows you to use both thrusters to move to and from the objects you want to move. Since no-one had picked up the original idea (except as modified to use gravity vs one engine), I made no attempt to publicize that refinement to the idea.

<comment><USER7> Just out of curiosity, why didn't you apply for a patent?

<comment><USER6> Ill and therefore poor. Not the only famous idea I could have patented. I could take out a couple of hundred patents now, still, if I had the money.

<comment><USER8> Given the rate at which our patent offices hand them out, there's no doubt any one of us could take out a couple of hundred patents if we had the disposable money to apply for them.

<comment><USER6> True! But I did mean wholly legitimate patents of useful novel ideas.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Ooh, what about a laser on the space side of the debris that heats it, causing the release of gases that propel it towards earth? You would have to be able dynamically re-target the debris for uniform acceleration while also pulsing the laser if the debris is spinning, but it would probably work.

soure: I can't even do basic math, but maybe someone smart will think this is an interesting idea

<comment><USER10> It might be better to just shine a bright laser on it for an extended period of time and let light pressure do the job.

Side not, you would do this to the 'front' of the satellite as it orbits - <USER2> bit facing in the direction of travel. This would slow it down and make it fall into progressively lower orbits until atmospheric braking took over.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Somewhat inspired by the Japanese robots bouncing around on the Hayabusa2 mission ... I think it'd be nice to be able to 'push off' against the debris satellite, to both decelerate it whilst also gaining orbital velocity for the clean-up satellite to go hunt down another target.

<comment><USER10> If you push off against it to gain velocity, you'll fly away from it very quickly and not spend long enough pushing it to meaningfully change it's orbit.

<comment><USER12> It might be concievable to bounce lased light back and forth for a while and transfer momentum that way.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Is anyone else thinking of "the Kzinti lesson" from the Known Space books?

</comment><comment><USER14> The idea of waste or debris in space is simply wrong.

It's a bit of flatlander nonsense that should not be brought off the surface. I was shocked as hell when I found out astronauts vent trash and waste.

"Come, let us reason together."

There are not a lot of atoms in space, by definition, compared to terrestrial conditions. (Okay, technically _all_ atoms are in space. You know what I mean. ;-P ) So, if you have some atoms together in space already it's just stupid to disperse them into small bundles and then lose track of their orbit. (You _can 't_ throw things away in space, you can only lose track of them. They'll be back.)

It takes a lot of energy to get a bunch of atoms to orbit from the surface. It's wasteful to discard "waste"! (Say it with me, "No waste in space!") Literally, in space, matter is only "waste" because you let go of it and stopped paying attention to it. _It 's still useful, just not to you right now_. Even if you're sure you'll never have a use for it, it's criminally irresponsible to "throw away" matter in space. It's like firing a gun into the air: that bullet is coming down somewhere... At the very least bundle it up and tag it with a radar reflector or something.

In conclusion, space is big and empty and curved, atoms are rare, important, useful, and expensive to bring with you. _Keep them nearby and on stable orbits._ That way you don't have to waste energy collecting them again _and_ they aren't rattling around forming a collision lottery in LEO.

No waste in space.

\- - - -

Now then, as a bit of a tangent, are you familiar with the "spittlebug", _Cercopoidea_? Their nymphs form nests of bubbles that look like little blobs of spittle. I say this is the correct design for space vehicles and stations. Spittlebug nest. Not metal can. Cheap, simple, ridiculously easy construction methods, durable, self-repairing, reusable, flexible, etc... I'm sure we could make materials that permitted different kinds of bubble, for e.g. storage, blocking radiation, absorbing collision energy, etc...

So, build your space stations out of bubbles. If you do it right you can collect debris for free. (Hint: you have to intersperse threads with your bubbles and have the right kinds of glue and stick'um. It's all down to materials science at this point, the spittlebug design doesn't really have any other constraints. You could make a space vehicle that "landed" by simply crashing. Density of the atmosphere and the vehicle would determine velocity at touch down. Or, you just make the bubble nest really big. Like 10K diameter. Then when you "crash" your core ship (which actually might be a metal can) settles to the ground through ~5k of bubblewrap.

<comment><USER15> The space stations we've built have all been in LEO. The ISS would deorbit in less than two years without periodic boosts. As such, no nearby orbit can be considered stable. The fuel required for boost is proportional to its mass. So it's quite reasonable for space programs to cast of 'dead weight' that doesn't contribute to the mission of the space station.</comment></comment>


How a bunch of government space geeks at NASA won the internet - <AUTHOR> http://qz.com/420267/how-a-bunch-of-government-space-geeks-at-nasa-won-the-internet/ <comment><USER2> _" This personal voice gets at the heart of how social media function: They make people care. NASA's probes have (or rather, appear to have) wants and desires and goals, and that makes us invested in their successes."_

Great read, there is something in this statement that goes to the heart of story telling. Something that could be done in/via code.</comment>


5 really outdated things that are still popular in Japan - <AUTHOR> https://www.techinasia.com/list-outdated-things-still-popular-in-japan <comment><USER2> CDs: I haven't logged into my Japanese iTunes account in a few years, but at the time there wasn't much to choose from. I assume some draconian local licensing deals keeping most stuff out, but I don't know for sure.

Newspapers: You very rarely see anyone reading them on the trains any more, but I do see a lot of people pawing over news apps on smart phones, with some byzantine looking controls to zoom in/out of the information dense kanji layouts.

Faxes: They are slowly dying in business, but it's hard to boot them out of the homes of the older generations. It's hard to argue when you can order a taxi / takeway sushi / groceries with one. Add on the generally pathetic UI on Japanese websites and it's going to be a tough sell.

DVDs: yes, Tsutaya is the giant green monster in the room. This probably goes for CDs as well, as music rental is still huge. We recently got Netflix though, which has a decent selection of American stuff, and actually makes some effort to cater for gajins.

Flip Phones. It's true, but the only people I see on the train still using them are sad looking salarymen in cheap suits.</comment>


Django single sign-on server functionality — django-mama-cas - <AUTHOR> http://django-mama-cas.readthedocs.org/en/latest/index.html <comment><USER2> This is awesome, I was JUST about to implement this where I work. May we all be freed from SAML based implementations of SSO

one question - If this implementation uses django cookies to manage state, does this mean that it actually only works within the django ecosystem?</comment>


Ask HN: Do you have any ideas that seem impossible? - <AUTHOR> I'd like to hear ideas so impossible or half-baked that you'd be embarrassed to share them under normal circumstances <comment><USER2> Too many Kids and Pets die of heatstroke every year after being left in vehicles - [https://goo.gl/FFDbEr](https://goo.gl/FFDbEr)

How about an internet connected Amazon Echo like device that with camera and vision analysis [https://goo.gl/SoUzEi](https://goo.gl/SoUzEi) . It can basically learn to \- subtract the vehicle [https://goo.gl/x4uKVU](https://goo.gl/x4uKVU) \- sense when temperatures are at dangerous levels \- Take a picture and send it to certain pre determined phones alerting the owners that a kid or pet might be in the car.

Maybe we can even wire the car to switch on air conditioning till help arrives, alert local authorities to go check on the car etc.

Another way to have an API that would let sites like reddit, hacker news, you tube have a live feed of "potential kid in hot car" images that could crowd source a second level of human verification.

</comment><comment><USER2> I am not entirely sure but there maybe some truth to the suggestion that animals can sense earth quakes in advance \- [https://goo.gl/j4sLFw](https://goo.gl/j4sLFw) \- [https://goo.gl/YrSzJm](https://goo.gl/YrSzJm)

How about a pet owner data collective that predicts earthquakes? It would work by having some sort of Fitbit accessory for our pets which would collect and share their electrical signals via an app. Machine learning could then correlate these signals with actual earthquake activity and learn how to predict quakes (or if we would be able to predict them). Maybe just in time before the next big one hits the Bay Area :-) .

<comment><USER3> Scientists are working on testing this claim in central Italy, where a destructive earthquake struck last year and lots of minor seismic activity is still present.

The article is pretty informative, I just like to report here the closing remark from the Principal Investigator: "It's a huge claim, so we'd better have good proof for it".

[https://www.nytimes.com/2017/06/17/world/europe/italy- earthq...](https://www.nytimes.com/2017/06/17/world/europe/italy-earthquakes- animals-predicting-natural-disasters.html?mcubz=0)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Oh gosh, I have so many of these.

\- a vacuum cleaner that separates out things it shouldn't have vacuumed for collection later.

\- a tiny indoor drone that finds and takes the perfect photos at parties so you don't have to miss the action behind a camera. (I think I read about one that follows snow boarders or something)

\- a web service that tells me about cool things that are happening nearby, but by scanning newspapers and notice boards, because around here most of this stuff misses the internet

\- take a photo of a piece of furniture and find plans on-line for how to build it

</comment><comment><USER5> Underground tubes that deliver packages directly to your residence instantly.

<comment><USER2> Had the same idea :-). To revive freight tunnels. With the advancements in self driving tech and tunneling tech this would seem feasible.

Amazon could finance them and then rent capacity it out to other companies.

A pilot perhaps in Chicago by reviving the old freights tunnels - [https://goo.gl/ErJQFx](https://goo.gl/ErJQFx)

The Swiss were/are considering them too - [https://goo.gl/PNMRrE](https://goo.gl/PNMRrE)

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> I have always wanted to invent an ice-cube maker that works by being filled with water and placed in a microwave.

<comment><USER7> I had a dream where I invented this, ha! Could it be done with laser cooling?

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> I actually have ideas that work, but everyone else thinks they are impossible and "half-baked" \-- actually, it is worse than that. I get called a lunatic.

So my impossible dream is actually turning what I already do into some kind of real business with an actual income stream. Ugh.

</comment><comment><USER9> Ever see second life? theres the avatar name floating above the avs as they walk around. I would like to see a set of AR glasses that provide peoples names floating over their heads in real life.

So many issues - technical and legal..

</comment><comment><USER10>
      Well anyway, how about a walking machine that could walk on the ocean floor from one continent to another.  Like an underwater ATAT.

(Half bakery still exists right?)

<comment><USER11> Yes it does.

I think I probably have an impossible idea pretty much every day. But a week or two back, I was actually moderately proud about suggesting a human-powered ekranoplan to some coworkers. Proud enough to do a web-search... and find it had been posted on half-bakery several years ago.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> For short people: a lightweight, retractable, sturdy, claw-like device that can easily fit into a purse, yet extend up to 4-6 ft. for reaching items on high shelves.

</comment><comment><USER13> Teleportation

<comment><USER14> This is all I require.

<comment><USER13> Thanks, I have one more to round up the modern gentlemen set: the time machine - it will tremendous improve my stock market speculation...

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> I think there should be one app/website/service that replaces 80% of other apps/websites/services.

</comment><comment><USER16> Freedom (global)

</comment><comment><USER17> I am drunk, don't count on me. I will tell you tomorrow.</comment>


The Case for Filth - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/2013/12/08/opinion/sunday/the-case-for-filth.html?pagewanted=3&ref=opinion&pagewanted=all <comment><USER2> Methinks one of the NYT commenters nails it best. In practice, many couples eventually find a sweet spot where one party reluctantly performs more chores than it would naturally do, while the other party either tolerates a lot more filth than it wants to or copes with an uneven share of the household chores -- usually both.

That being said, and as a few female commenters astutely point out, the article's author would gain some additional perspective by having a few children in his household. Cleaning up baby puke and a 4-person household's mountain of laundry isn't in the same ballpark as worrying about vacuuming a two-adult household's rug the next day.

</comment><comment><USER3> I don't think people's private lives are the business of anyone else. It's not the government, or academia's job to force or convince men to do more housework (or women do less).

The argument that they would give is that actions of individual in their private lives have effects on others, in particular contributing to a common culture, and so as a society we should try to shape this culture in positive ways.

My argument against this is that our culture should reflect the beliefs and values of the people as a whole, and not the elites. The only legitimate role of the government in shaping culture is to remove the excesses that prevent people from exercising their legal rights. E.g. cultural views that certain kinds of violence are acceptable, need to be curbed because they make punishing the perpetrators of these acts extremely difficult.

<comment><USER4> What planet are you on? No one is suggesting the government force anyone to do anything with regard to housework. The antigovernment herds come out whenever anyone suggests that our government should do something. That's par for the course on HN. But I have to say, seeing someone just start ranting against government intrusion in a topic that has _nothing to do with it_ is... unusual.

<comment><USER3> >What planet are you on?

>The antigovernment herds...

Your tone is quite disrespectful. Is this really necessary?

To answer your question, the article makes constant reference to academic work, and while this work is nominally descriptive, it is clear from the nature of the studies that they are part of a program to influence people's actions. I mention government as well because there is no sharp distinction between government policy and academic research, and I wanted to address a broader point in my comment. Both academia and government policy serve a similar high level purpose of furthering certain social goals. If I claim that certain goals are outside of what the government should be interested in, then this applies equally to academic research and government policy.

<comment><USER4> _Your tone is quite disrespectful. Is this really necessary?_

Maybe not, but what you're saying still doesn't make sense. There are lots of things trying to influence our actions, and the academe is one of the least of them. What's more, it is necessary to have robust inquiry into anything and everything. It can be argued what should and should not be the purview of government, but you're trying to say that anything government shouldn't be involved with, also should be left alone by academia? That's ridiculous. Oops, sorry to be disrespectful there. But what you're saying is some kind of weird paranoid lunacy.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Married for 13 years, kids of 11 and 8. I consider Thwarted's comment

> The big trick is to respect the people you live with, to have empathy for > them, and most importantly to realize that in the long-term you are going to > be a lot better off if you adopt a policy of "I'll fix this as soon as I > find an issue"

Very insightful. I know I don't do as much housework, to the point that I hired out the lawn work. So when _I can_ , I do. I do the dishes fairly regularly and generally recruit the kids to help. We FaceTime with my parents every Sunday at 7 pm. While Grammy, PePa, and the kids read Harry Potter round-robin, my wife and I are in the background folding laundry.

My wife has total freedom to have a made service come in. I will never argue with that.

Does money buy happiness? I don't know, but it definitely buys time to pursue happiness more efficiently.

<comment><USER6> > Does money buy happiness? I don't know, but it definitely buys time to > pursue happiness more efficiently.

Money buys time. The more you are willing to spend to quickly solve some of life's problems, the more time you will have to do what matters to you, whether that be seeking happiness, money or knowledge.

Money also takes away distractions. I started using a wash and hold service in NYC. About once a week, on my way to work, I drop off my clothes, on the way home I pick them up washed and folded. Something so simple only saves me ~1 hour a week, but not having to think about and planning to allocate time is worth so much more.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> As someone with severe dust-mite allergy (that went undiagnosed until I was 18), please consider cleaning your space—regardless of who you are. Clean houses are more than status symbols.

<comment><USER8> And don't have carpets. Also, less stuff means less dust. My mom is a clean freak (also a scientist), and most of her rules have to do with the amount of stuff in the house rather than how it's kept.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Funny I should find this after mopping and scrubbing my kitchen floor (I have a Y chromo, BTW.)

I like a certain amount of cleanliness and order, not Felix Unger levels, so I handle my assigned areas to the level I like and no one seems to object.

Women who'd like men to at least appreciate housework might advocate more men joining the Armed Forces. My three-year stint was pretty much latrine duty.

</comment><comment><USER10> ok this is anecdote, and I know it doesn't apply to all women, but my roommate once told me that during PMS she gets the urge to clean. More interestingly: she has a pseudoscientific belief that that, psychologically, her urge to clean comes because her body has failed to get the egg fertilized "the primary function of her body" and so she has to do something to feel useful.

<comment><USER4> Does she have any pseudo-basis for this pseudoscientific belief?

<comment><USER10> honestly she doensn't even have many girl friends of her own besides her mother, so I would not be terribly surprised if her N on this was really low.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> There's less housework to be done, with better tools, so it takes less time, no need to iron with modern clothes, no need to file papers with computers, less dirt roads, less need to clean. Dishwashers, washing machines are cheaper and therefore more common.

</comment><comment><USER12> Keeping a clean home is about discipline and not gender. Some people take it to OCD levels and others are negligent but there is a reasonable middle ground. Cleaning up after yourself is an attribute of adulthood. If you can't do it you are still a child.

<comment><USER13> If a person is over 18 in the US they are an adult, and to base this on what actions they choose to take is the wrong metric. For instance, My wife and I work a lot and choose not to handle the major cleaning tasks, such as mopping, dusting, vacuuming, and the like ourselves. We outsource it to a cleaning company who does a weekly pass on these things. The house stays in pretty good shape in between, and the only time I have to clean much is if the kids are being rambunctious.

True, if I couldn't afford it I would have to do more myself or burden my wife to do it, but it doesn't make me less of an adult.

<comment><USER14> It doesn't take a particularly generous reading to say that hiring someone is cleaning up after yourself. That is (for the purposes of the gp comment), you make sure your house isn't a mess, the details of how aren't interesting.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Traditionally, housekeeping was taken to reflect on a man's resources but on a woman's character. A man with a dirty house is just broke, which is not _that_ humiliating (if you don't have a family to provide for) in times like 1935 or 2013. Thankfully, that attitude is peeling away and it's only taken to reflect on a woman's resources, and nothing more. It isn't right to have cleanliness (or the lack thereof) interpreted differently for the genders.

What I find screwy and wrong is that cleaning services (which are necessary if two people are going to work career jobs, since career jobs rarely come in under 50 hpw including commute) and childcare come out of _after-tax_ income. That is fucked up and probably a bit misogynistic. There are a lot of women who leave the workforce involuntarily because, after having a couple of kids, _they can 't afford to work_. This is the kind of shit we get from a predominantly conservative political class which (a) isn't fully sold on women working, largely because (b) they, unlike most of us, don't need two people working.

<comment><USER16> You'd think conservatives would support a domestic work tax credit then since they would be most likely to afford domestic employees and thus benefit the most.

<comment><USER17> No, the attitude I hear in the Deep South is: If you are successful, you can afford professional services and your spouse doesn't need to work, if not, you are a loser and not a good enough Christian. Work harder! (And send my kids to St Thomas for spring break while you enjoy your stay-cation.)

Even the executives where I work don't really comprehend the stresses of a "normal" two income family. They have evolved to live in a disconnected reality.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> The conclusion drawn at the end of the article "Fuck it, don't clean the house!" isn't really supported by the (interesting!) discourse preceding it.

~

Having lived for the past ten years in various sorts of multi-person housing situations, there is indeed almost always a mismatch of who wants what cleaned how much.

The solution that sort-of works is to make sure everyone has their own space (bedrooms, usually) and then to agree upon some bare level of cleanliness for the commons area. In turn, the commons area is kept fairly empty: the more stuff you put in a space the harder it is to get everyone to agree on what to do with that stuff, and the harder it is to both keep it clean and notice that it's dirty in the first place.

One of my roommates and I had very compatible outlooks on what "clean" means: he's very detail oriented and was brought up scrubbing floors with toothbrushes towards a standard of cleanliness you only get in the whitest and most suburban of backgrounds, and I'm very very functional in mindset--clean is good, but organized is better. Between the two of us, I kept the large stuff organized and looking neat, and he'd handle a lot of the semi-periodic drudgery of scrubbing floors and whatnot. I would of course pitch in as requested, but that's kind of how it shook out.

Other roommates I've had have not always been so good. A road to disaster is "Whoever made the mess, clean it up", and a surer road does not exist. To wit:

One of my old apartments during school was shared one summer by two other students, one of whom was (and is!) a dear friend of mine. All of us had fairly libertarian fuck-you-got-mine leanings, and so we all agreed that "whoever made the mess, clean it up" was a good policy.

Naturally, this requires that all parties both keep an accurate account of what they've made dirty, and also that they clean things up on request. Both of these things _do not happen_ in the real world.

It came to a head one day when I discovered that I could not use the sink, because both basins had become filled with dishes (no dishwasher was available, so we hand-washed our dishes). You cannot cook in a kitchen without a functioning sink, and so I crossly began processing all of the pots, pans, dishes, cups, and assorted crap that had accumulated.

While elbow deep in this, my roommates come out of their respective bedrooms and begin chatting with me. The conversation was as predictable as it was unproductive: " _I_ have no problem doing _my_ dishes, but if you can't prove that they're _mine_ , it's not fair to ask me to do them."

It wasn't until they saw the fires of hell burning in my eyes as I struggled to resist the urge to beat them both to death with the frying pan I'd been failing to clean that they stopped this absurd line of discussion.

~

My current living situation is much better, precisely because we're all on the same page: we're all going to be mildly inconvenienced from time to time, but we have better things to do than optimize the arrangement of household problems.

Whoever kills the toilet paper goes and finds more. Whoever finds the dishwasher full and cycled unloads the dishes. Whoever notices the trash is too full empties it.

Certain tasks do have an affinity--I, for example, always vacuum up after my dog's fur. Other roommate always cleans up pans after they've cooked. It all works.

The big trick is to respect the people you live with, to have empathy for them, and most importantly to realize that in the long-term you are going to be a lot better off if you adopt a policy of "I'll fix this as soon as I find an issue". That works especially because it keeps things from building to a point where they get to be an issue.

Stop-the-world garbage collection, in real-life as in systems engineering, is not the best policy for normal work.

~

Long story short, I think that anyone who wants to really get a gut-level feeling about concurrency and OS design should live in close proximity with other people for a while. It gives you a new appreciation for those issues.

<comment><USER19> _The big trick is to respect the people you live with, to have empathy for them, and most importantly to realize that in the long-term you are going to be a lot better off if you adopt a policy of "I'll fix this as soon as I find an issue". That works especially because it keeps things from building to a point where they get to be an issue._

And if an incompatibility is found/uncovered in this regard, the deal/relationship should be broken off (either the non- respecting/dysfunctional roommate is asked to leave, or the functional one chooses to leave). That's the only solution for Tragedy of the Commons, and roommates are one of the few cases where something can actually be done about Tragedy of the Commons.

While it's often considered "fair" to split everything equally, I've found it useful to, for example, have one person's name on the lease and it's their place and can kick anyone out (if the landlord/lease is agreeable to that, depends on income and the rental market, really). For the same reasons outlined elsetimes on HN about how to split stock and voting rights between founders -- it's useful to have one place where the buck stops so as not to get bogged down in not being able to break a tie. If there's only one person's name on the lease, things are a lot easier (and often faster) to deal with when the relationship goes sour, for whatever reason.

<comment><USER20> I really like that last bit, I honestly dislike the resentment that builds in these types of situations, especially because good friends can come out hating each other.

Having one person who is the tyrannical dictator for life is a good pick imo.

<comment><USER19> I won't enumerate all the details why having one person have at least 51% voting power is valuable, because the writeups about stock shares does it better justice, but I will say that I think it's naive to think "we're best friends, that will never happen to us".

At least one of the parties needs to be a big enough person to quickly recognize and change a relationship that is going downhill, because if the relationship is important, the current bad situation will lead to that resentment buildup, often times completely destroying any hope for a reconciliation.

"We can't live together, so we don't" is a more useful state to be in than "We're friends, we _should_ be able to live together."

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> "There is a slight correlation between the egalitarianism of a household and a fairer division of domestic labor"

How did they measure "fairness" of the division of domestic labor? I suspect that their evaluation is very biased.

To assume 50% division is fair is just wrong.

Edit: to explain, you have to take context into account. For example one person might care more for some things to be cleaned than another (for example some people like to clean the house to perfection EVERY DAY). One person might do more other work. And so on. Where does the assumption come from that people are forced into disadvantageous relationships? Possibly people know exactly what they sign up for, and whatever division of domestic labor they end up with is exactly what they negotiated for (consciously or subconsciously). And before you mention the children, note that painting the job of caring for children to be so horrible is just pure ideology. Maybe some people actually enjoy spending time with their children - more than spending time with Excel and Power Point.

Also, how is the division of domestic labor even measured? In time? Or awfulness of tasks? Is filling the washing machine equivalent to cleaning the toilet?</comment>


Can the EU become another AI superpower? - <AUTHOR> https://www.economist.com/business/2018/09/22/can-the-eu-become-another-ai-superpower <comment><USER2> Apologies if this rant makes no sense but I'm somewhat frustrated with this AI thing.

One thing I've noticed in large EU corporations (where I and friends of mine worked as data analysts/"scientists"): upper management decides to invest in AI because they don't want to miss on this, so they create a new department ("AI/Robotics" or something cooler) and fill it to the brim with smart PhDs in mathematics and physics. They're all data scientists and ML engineers now, which means all the data mining, cleaning/preparation and labeling is going to be beneath them, it's not cool or impressive in their LinkedIn profile. They all want to work with the latest thing and each one has a different opinion and held to it pretty strongly. Nobody pays attention to product/project managers, they don't want to spend time creating PowerPoint presentations and dashboards to communicate and align with stakeholder. Discussing ethics in AI is a hippy silly thing. Then you end with something similar to what happened in my company: you create a bot to parse through CVs and decide which ones are better for any given job description. It took 4x more time than planned, and it's racist and discriminatory because it mirrors what the company did until now: hiring only certain kinds of people that studied specific degrees in specific universities that learned which keywords are good on a CV even if it means nothing. Nobody noticed or discussed this beforehand despite being so obvious because everyone is busy troubleshooting Keras or complaining about their GPU cluster.

<comment><USER3> _They 're all data scientists and ML engineers now, which means all the data mining, cleaning/preparation and labeling is going to be beneath them_

You have absolutely hit the nail on the head there and this mirrors my observations of what's happening in the wider industry. Data science and AI are super cool viewed from the outside but the reality of the work day to day is that it is not _fun_. Getting a result and making a meaningful impact is very satisfying, but getting there requires careful, painstaking, meticulous work, getting the data and getting it into a format you can use is the vast majority of it. It is essential of course, but noone enjoys spending weeks (or months) decoding exactly what the fields are in this big weird CSV file you got from the mainframe and how exactly they marry up with the XML you got from this other system then doing that 100 times to mash up all your data sources, there's no documentation and the people who programmed it originally are long gone and get something that you can finally feed into your ML step. And then you come up with some recommendations which are immediately shot down because they are actually illegal and noone in the business can believe you even suggested it because that gets taught in Compliance 101 (I have really seen this happen).

Someone with the patience and the good attitude to do the data prep, and who has a bit of basic domain knowledge, armed with even the most rudimentary ML techniques will in any practical sense run rings around any rockstar researcher who just jumps in straight away with the AI. You would hope that PhDs who spend literally years doing research before writing up would understand this but it seems to be the first thing they forget!

<comment><USER2> >Someone with the patience and the good attitude to do the data prep, and who has a bit of basic domain knowledge, armed with even the most rudimentary ML techniques will in any practical sense run rings around any rockstar researcher who just jumps in straight away with the AI. You would hope that PhDs who spend literally years doing research before writing up would understand this but it seems to be the first thing they forget!

You articulated so well something that I've been trying to say to my managers. Thank you for your post.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Excellent article. I don't think the possibility of success is that bad, but they have to take it seriously and also seriously invest (germany doesn't...at the moment!). I think in contrast to other technologies, the EU has a few thing going for them (from a german perspective):

\- There are some important industries that are very much interested in AI (for example the automotive industry). So serious private-sector money could be raised.

\- Europe has the ability to pull of large-scale research projects and has the experience to do so. From LHC to the various institutions, like the Helmholtz- society or the DKFZ in germany (the EU also made some errors in preview large- scale research projects to learn from).

\- The brains are there. I see many (very!) talented and dedicated students and researchers here and the research infrastructure (universities, non- university research agencies) is also established and quite diverse.

\- I see that there's an understanding that entrepreneurship and non- traditional industries is an area in which the EU has been falling behind. I feel like it's improving.

I also don't think we're too late yet.

I see two main obstacles:

\- lack of serious investment from public and private (this requires realising what a significant investment looks like). This is at the moment quite obvious if you follow the bmbf (german federal research agency). It seems like they don't realise how insignificant creating a few research groups is.

\- no coherent strategy. Spreading everything thin without a thought where to reach critical mass is wasting time and energy. This is a problem especially in germany and, of course, the EU. We need a physical, European AI research hub with enough things like conferences and exchange to the other research- institute to get traction.

EDIT: What makes me really angry and frustrated (because in the end I am more or less powerless) is the complete waste of potential in germany. We have many great universities here with a lot of great faculty. But most of the universites are seriously underfunded and not really well-maintained. Some universities are so poorly maintained that their buildings are uninhabitable because of danger of collapsing. It's crazy, it's just laying waste. I think that we in germany wouldn't be in this situation if our universities could seriously compete and could enable all their potential.

<comment><USER5>
      So serious private-sector money could be raised.

Only after Elon's Tesla have a comfortable win over them again, I guess...

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> I'm a European AI researcher in the US. I've seen both sides of the pond.

The EU needs serious reforms if it wants to be competitive in AI.

Academia in Europe is far behind academia in the US on average. And will be far behind China in a decade or so. European academics generally don't adapt to new technology. They have no reason to with fairly few links to industry, a funding that's based on personal relationships and politics rather than research, and an academic environment that doesn't really emphasize novel research. The same people, do the same things, for decades on end, with little to no progress or change. European academics don't put in much effort to get industry funding since your students are funded by the university much of the time.

Faculty hiring is very local and incestuous. German universities hire Germans, and only from a few places. English universities hire the British. French universities hire the French. etc. There are exceptions but it's rare.

The European PhD needs to be fixed. 3-4 years isn't nearly enough. It's hurting everyone. The moment someone gets productive they graduate. It's a total waste of time. They need to move to an American-Canadian style 5-6 year PhD. The fact that students are generally not funded by projects and researchers, but departments, also puts a big damper on people's motivation to hustle and publish.

Funding for startups in Europe is a disaster. It's really hard compared to the US and Canada, raising multiple rounds is harder, there's little infrastructure for doing it, and universities are little to no help. Rich people just don't have an appetite for risk, better to sit on your old money. This should be fixed by tax laws.

Pay is terrible in academia in Europe. Around half of what it is in the US and Canada at many ranks. When you can't live well, why would you stay in academia?

The tenure system is a disaster in many places in Europe and drives anyone good away to the UK, Canada, or the US. You have a lot of unpleasant steps where you aren't autonomous.

European research is also very closed. Europeans cite europeans, who go to european conferences, and do research with europeans. There are a lot of communities like this that are very closed and 2nd tier compared to international ones.

I could go on. Nothing will change any time soon unless governments take action to revamp the university system, university funding, and the tax code to encourage investment/risk. The next century won't be Europe's sadly.

<comment><USER7> I just want to point out you are wrong on one point: UK universities have an extremely diverse faculty of researchers, with researchers from both various European and Asian countries common

<comment><USER6> Yup. This falls into "There are exceptions but it's rare."

The UK, Norway, to some extent Denmark, are much more open than say Italy, Germany, Spain, or France. Top-tier places in the UK are very open and international, mid-tier places aren't as diverse as mid-tier US or Canadian universities.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Related rant:

That is the third time I hear Merkel utter this disgusting sentiment:

"In the US, control over personal data is privatised to a large extent. In China the opposite is true: the state has mounted a takeover," she said, adding that it is between these two poles that Europe will have to find its place.

It might not be that clear from above statement but a similar one left no doubt that some leaders have told her: For AI we need data and for data we need tracking/surveillance. So please look at ways to abolish privacy in the EU.

It's not lack of data which hinders business in the EU, it's overtaxing small businesses, cronyism, top-down-approaches, Google or something else which is hard to grasp. Lack of ambition? Lack of youth? Foreign espionage/sabotage? Negativity?

Angela, (if you read this, which I'm sure you do), you did a fantastic job protecting us from Cheneys torture doctrine, and much else afterwards. Erosion of privacy leads to erosion of societies. Don't mess it up in your last months.

<comment><USER9> The American paradox is that you often have very good governments, but trust them very little. Where as you often have very evil companies, but trust them very much.

Europe is the opposite.

The EU is working hard to secure citizen rights though, but that doesn't mean it isn't working for ways that you can share your data. The EU just wants transparency and ownership to remain with its citizens.

<comment><USER10> > _the American paradox is that you often have very good governments, but > trust them very little_

That distrust is a reason why our government has been stable over the past 200 years, despite a series of technological, economic, geopolitical and cultural changes.

<comment><USER11> The two party system also results in dramatically greater stability, typically at a cost trade-off of dynamism. It's hard to change a two party system, so hopefully if you've got one of those, you have something worth maintaining underneath. Systems with lots of parties are far less stable over long periods of time by contrast and are prone to rapid change and takeover. Australia for example, with its 13 parties with parliamentary representation, lately can't keep a leader for more than a year or two, with six prime ministers in a decade. In that extreme case it's causing policy stagnation however, as none of them are managing to tackle big, urgent problems before they're tossed out. Europe's typical preference (excluding a few countries like Russia) toward lots of parties has also resulted in neo-Nazi groups acquiring increasing government power and representation, another downside to that approach.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I lived and worked in different places of the world (Bay area, MA, middle east, Japan). For me, Europe is simply the best environment if you have a family and you care about your freedom, privacy, and comfort. Decisions made by EU authorities have significant implications on everything, but the way it works it's really democratic process, with long term implications and with significant transparency. In some regard living in Germany is similar to Bay Area, but with much more emphasis on social well being of the whole society which in fact affects your everyday live, your safety, your comfort, your family.

</comment><comment><USER13> "Yet look beyond machine learning and consumer services, and the picture for Europe is less dire. A self-driving car cannot run on data alone but needs other AI techniques, such as machine reasoning, which is done by algorithms that are coded rather than trained—an area in which Europe has some strength. Germany has as many international patents for autonomous vehicles as America and China combined, and not only because it has a big car industry."

Important point. Not only see I more hope for deep innovation in the manufacturing sector than in selling people the most targetted ads, this also has the potential to create much more equitable outcomes for everyone in the economy.

I don't really understand the concept of a 'AI superower' at all. Superpower at what, warfare? Concentration of wealth as AI returns flow to only a handful of people? Have Americans and the Chinese pondered whether there is some higher goal to the development of AI or just competition for competition's sake?

As a European(and German) citizen, I am much less concerned about taking the slow and steady route here. I have no interest in seeing Europe destroy its privacy or using AI to malevolent ends just to stay ahead in some fictional horse race.

People told us in the 80s that if we didn't move ahead with the service economy we'd be stuck in an archaic industrial society, and Thatcher was hailed as the reformer. I see parallels here to the AI debate. Now, where has this gotten the UK outside of London? For me, AI looks more and more like the hype around finance and services around that time. I'm okay with being a somewhat slow and bureaucratic grumpy German, if we get to be the guys who put advanced technologies into boring machines without much fanfare that's fine, people seem to keep buying them.

<comment><USER14> > I don't really understand the concept of a 'AI superower' at all. Superpower > at what, warfare? Concentration of wealth as AI returns flow to only a > handful of people?

In principle, in the sense of being able to give all of your citizens the ability to complete any task which previously only experts could achieve.

Google Übersetzer ist oft schrecklich und schlechhören(?) oft meine Worte, aber es ist immer noch deutlich besser als ich auf Deutsch, obwohl ich das Äquivalent einer guten Note an der High School habe.

> Have Americans and the Chinese pondered whether there is some higher goal to > the development of AI or just competition for competition's sake?

Americans certainly have; its part of both utopian and distopian fiction. This fiction has been a guiding force with regard to what the AI looks and acts like in many cases, for example Alexa's adverts were clearly trying to sell it as the ship's computer in Star Trek.

<comment><USER13> >In principle, in the sense of being able to give all of your citizens the ability to complete any task which previously only experts could achieve.

I'm not concerned on the consumer side of things. We're all part of a global economy. If you want to buy AI services in Germany you can do that easily, just as I can use Google without a problem despite Germany not exactly being at the forefront of the tech. Having Google or Facebook physically located in your country, from a consumer standpoint, actually doesn't really matter at all.

Honestly this whole arrangement has always puzzled me from an American perspective. Americans sacrifice quite a lot in terms of equality, privacy and so forth to be at the forefront of this stuff, and we can just use it all the same because we're good customers. I'll be sad the day the US decides it doesn't want to be in charge!

<comment><USER14> Ah, I think I see the point here.

Software (including A.I.) developed outside of your culture won't reflect your culture. We already see this problem with regard to racism and sexism — A.I. which cannot detect black people at all, or hand-written healthcare software which cares more about insulin than periods — so for example, if you leave it to America and China, you won't have any education software (with or without A.I.) which can cope with the difference between a Gymnasium, a Realschule, and a Hauptschule.

USA companies are also already having a lot of trouble with the cultural difference between the "easier to seek forgiveness than ask permission" attitude they're used to in America as compared to anywhere which enforces rules because they exist for a reason. Google Street View in Germany, for example. I don't know about Chinese companies, but I assume they also have cultural assumptions that won't apply outside China.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> I see this as unlikely in the same way that having the next Facebook in the EU is unlikely. Companies in Europe tend to bet more on B2B instead of B2C, which leads to a lot of data siloing and many attempts at building ML models with tightly focused legacy data within a specific domain.

The article doesn't make a very clear distinction between academic and business AI, but I can't see any inherent advantages for the EU in an academic perspective either-there are fields of AI that are under-represented in current consumer tech, but... I'm skeptical.

(I live in the EU and work in AI and ML-there is so much low-hanging fruit in terms of just making companies aware of what they can do that I seldom have deep enough engagements to step outside prepackaged approaches)

</comment><comment><USER16> Thanks HN for all the rants and the honesty about this topic (and in general).

Contrary, whenever I open LinkedIn people seem to be naively super excited about Europe becoming an AI superpower (whatever that means). While I'm not against excitement, I can't support it because it seems so detached from any real problem that we want to solve. And ultimately, that should be the driver for AI. Of course we can still engage in basic research, but we won't become a AI superpower just because we want it.

</comment><comment><USER17> Let's say Europe against all odds succeeds in creating the seeds of some promising AI scale-ups. How will they prevent the US, Korea and China from cherry-picking and buying those out just like in all the previous IT-tech waves?

<comment><USER18> They will fix it European way.

> BERLIN (Reuters) - The German government is taking steps to counter a surge > in Chinese bids for stakes in German technology companies, including the > creation of a billion-euro fund that could rescue such firms in financial > trouble, a government source told Reuters.

<comment><USER19> Maybe they shouldn't have taxed the crap out of these companies in the first place?

Most succesful EU companies are 100+ years old due to taxes, bureaucracy and big company bullying. I find posts about the startup scene in most if not all EU countries laughable. Western Europe is too regulated and expensive (taxes) and Eastern Europe is too corrupt and politically unstable. Southern Europe is too hot and distracting. Maybe it has mafia as well. 20% VAT? Come on, that's outright theft. Hungary as 27% VAT. Portugal has 23% VAT. France has 20% but they also tax the crap out of companies and private citizens, especially if you're well off. Germany is over regulated, even the dogs barking hours is regulated. How do you expect tech startups to survive in this environment? Oh wait there's Ireland which gets lots of rain (people are cool working indoors) and has small taxes, except for VAT which is 23%. That one could work.

<comment><USER20> Taxes in USA are not meaningfully lower, except for state-local sales taxes vs. European VAT.

But the thing about VAT is that it's unimportant for most businesses. When selling B2B you just subtract all the VAT you paid from the VAT you owe. The only kind of business that is seriously affected by VAT is highly price- sensitive B2C, and technology startups usually aren't that.

<comment><USER21> I don't think you understand VAT.

If you buy some computers for $100, do some work, and manage to sell your services for $1000, you get to reclaim $20 of VAT but you have to pay $200 of VAT, so a 20% VAT rate costs this hypothetical business 18% of its revenue, which is hardly "unimportant".

And a typical tech company would be taking in far more than 10x in revenue than what they are spending on VAT-able goods.

EDIT: But see below.

<comment> cuban-frisbee He litterally just said it only matters in a B2C setting and not a B2B.

Can you name even one AI product that is sold directly to consumers? Most if not all is B2B and there VAT is not used as it is a tax on consumption levied at the consumer, not other businesses.

<comment><USER19> Amazon Alexa? Wait, the AI there is meant for vendor lock in. Roomba vacuum cleaners? Spotify? As a business you stll have to buy stuff to recover VAT and sell your product 20% inflated.

<comment> cuban-frisbee On of the most succesful EU businesses (spotify) does not seem to support the assertion that VAT is a undue burden. Also I don't know if spotify uses their own tech or if they are uses stuff from another vendor.

Do also remember that all your competitors are bound by the same rules, so from a purely economical standpoint prices in a given country with VAT will just appear x% higher accross the board, and then the real question is more of disposable income.

To be perfectly honest I am no expert in VAT, but I do know that a country like Denmark with 25 % VAT is also ranked in the top 5 countries to do business in.

Also don't know what you mean by "As a business you stll have to buy stuff to recover VAT" but oh well maybe you can clarify.

<comment><USER21> > prices in a given country with VAT will just appear x% higher across the > board, and then the real question is more of disposable income.

In other words, "if you can't make at least a 20% profit on the value you add, you're not allowed to make a profit at all". This stifles innovation at the margin.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> As a turk, migrated to EU 5 years ago, I put my bet on EU politicians. I hope they are going to find a sweet-spot in this at-least two poles world.</comment>


Putting the Fun in Functional: Applying game mechanics to software - <AUTHOR> http://shufflebrain.com/GDC2006.htm <comment><USER2> By game mechanics what they really mean is exploiting people's need for social status. Every bullet point was related to zero-sum social status, and no other aspects of gaming were mentioned.

The thing is that if you want to get into the game of exploiting people's need for social status, you have some pretty strong established competitors: school, church, the military, computer games, etc.

I saw a talk by a Microsoft guy, and I know the MS open source lab is working on discovering ways to get people to contribute more to their software. I am pretty sure that my working model of this phenomenon hits more of the salient points than theirs, but it is kind of scary nonetheless.

</comment><comment><USER3> This slide show seems to be more of an effort to distort common and well- accepted applications of motivational psychology as originating from games. Of the five game mechanics listed, probably only one (points) originated in games: I collect every time I go to the grocery store, receive feedback every time I touch a hot stove, make an exchange (almost) every time I speak, and customize every time I go to a restaurant and ask for chicken instead of turkey. You could probably absorb these lessons as applied to software a lot better by analyzing the reinforcers present in EBay and the other sites mentioned than by thinking of games.

There's probably a lot more to learn from what I expected this article to be: An in depth discussion of how game theory applies to web applications.

</comment><comment><USER4> Yeah, I always liked this one.

Are there really no other analyses like this out there?

<comment><AUTHOR> Theres a follow up from GDC 2007 but it doesn't cover anything new. I always like these cross disciplinary views. Theres a lot we can learn from game design, sound design, music industry, etc.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> interesting comparison</comment>


Samsung is imploding in China - <AUTHOR> http://uk.businessinsider.com/samsung-china-sales-q1-apple-xiaomi-idc-plummet-2015-5 <comment><USER2> Samsung smartphone/tablet hardware is fine, but their Android "support" is a joke. No Android updates after a few weeks. Samsung still sells some Android 2.3.x and 4.1.x devices and most of their devices never received the 2.3->4 and 4->5 update. Some of their flagship devices are also a bit overpriced. They used to offer a replaceable battery and an SD-card slot, but its gone in their latest flagship S6 Edge as well.

Many early Samsung smartphone/tablet customers turn away after their experiences. LG, HTC, Sony, Lenovo and many little known Chinese products are cheaper and usually better nowadays.

Samsung TVs already use Bada/Tizen OS, and Samsung announced that their S5 flagship phone would be released also with Tizen. The question is why Samsung hasn't switched to Tizen yet? [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tizen](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tizen) , [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bada](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bada)

<comment><USER3> I have bought my two Samsung phones through Verizon because they have the best coverage in the mountains where I live.

Verizon slowly but surely seems to roll out updates.

Unless you have an unlocked phone, your carrier determines if/when updates happen, right?

<comment><USER4> I think it depends on the device. I'd wager that most carrier-branded handset variants are indeed set up to only allow updates pushed by the carrier but I'm not sure that applies to everything. I believe iOS updates can still be initiated by the user. I'm not experienced with iOS on Verizon so I don't know if they managed to screw that up too but as far as I know, Apple has held firm on that front.

I don't use Verizon but friends who do tend to complain that they are often stuck waiting for updates. Even when the unbranded version of a handset has updates available, there is no easy way to install them on a Verizon phone due to locked bootloaders and such. If the VZW variant has different hardware, then even a standard factory image won't do you any good since they will be built for the "everyone else" version.

I really do feel for people whose only choice is Verizon. At least with AT&T you can usually just buy the standard hardware and pop in your SIM to avoid carrier obstructionism. With VZW, they really get you by the short hairs.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> So much for all those who said that Android is "only Samsung". In China there is an explosion of local brands which sell Android, and they're eroding Samsung in a still booming market. That's the fact.

<comment><USER6> When people said it, it was true. Even now Samsung make the majority of money in the Android world.

<comment><USER5> Yes, but the argument IIRC was that Samsung had attained an unassailable position, so Android being open wasn't really making any difference.

Instead, in the latest ads that came to my mailbox (snail mail in Italy), I was struck by the fact that most of the advertised phones were from Chinese brands I had never heard of before...

<comment><USER7> Are the brands you are referring to, by any chance Xiaomi and Huawei?

Here in India at least, these Chinese brands along with Lenovo have pretty much become household names in respect to mobile phones.

And they do make good, solid, innovative products at half the cost of their Korean counterparts. From an Indian perspective, It is no surprise that Samsung is bleeding to these (at least in the low and mid segments).

What is truly amazing to me is the pace with which the reputation of these mobile companies were built. It took years and even decades for the Koreans (Samsung and LG in electronics, and Hyundai in cars) to be taken in the same respect as the Japanese. The trust and reputation of the chinese brands (in the mobile space at least) were built almost overnight (and sooner in cases like OnePlus). There is certainly a Tom Sawyer effect in play with use of marketing tactics such as invite-only and flash sales.

<comment><USER2> The OnePlus invite-only marketing tactics was very successful, from what I heard. Even their reputation seem to be good.

Though 5.5" is very big. Most chinese built smartphones are 5" or bigger.

There are only three high end flagship smartphones that are below 5" (ca. 4.5"): Apple iPhone6, Sony Xperia Z3 Compact and Samsung Alpha.

<comment><USER8> Their reputation is good because they spam the internet as part of their marketing ploy. They've got very real, and very serious touchscreen issues that basically every phone will suffer from at some point.

And they either don't know how to fix it, or know how to fix it and aren't willing to spend the money to do so. Do a google search of "oneplus touchscreen issue" and let the light of reality shine on your head.

<comment><USER2> Good to know. A workmate owns one.

I don't get the huge screen size trend anyway. About 4.5" (iPhone, Samsung Alpha, Sony XPeria Z3 Compact, etc.) is already the physical limit to fit comfortable in many pockets and is certainly big enough. Tell that to most manufactures who produce the mass of 5.5" phones.

<comment><USER8> Z3c is by far the best phone I've ever owned. I ended up returning it, however, because Sony's version of android sucks. I want a pure android experience (or close to it), and somewhat quick updates. A Z3c with stock android is literally my dream phone. Perfect size, waterproof, great camera, just an all around awesome phone (other than Sony's poor software).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Koreans are also extremely image conscious and love parading around with prestigious international luxury brands - possibly even more so than the Chinese. They are also extremely proud of Korea as a nation and tend to favor Korean brands in everything other than luxury prestige goods. And Samsung is basically their national icon.

So I imagine the average Korean must be quite in conflict when buying a smartphone - the recognized international symbol of smartphone prestige and luxury (the iPhone) vs the nationalistic Galaxy. But given their booming economy, I guess many just buy both...

<comment><USER10> The Samsung-branded Android is horrible, though.

I really think Google's permissiveness in allowing vendors to bundle their crapware really kills any prestige the brand might have had. iOS really isn't anything special, but when compared to the literal dogshit that Samsung puts on their phones, it's hard not to make a favourable comparison in favour of Apple's operating system.

I used to think Android had bad performance until I got my first Nexus-series device, at which point I realized that "Vanilla Android" is actually a pretty good OS. It's bothersome that seemingly nobody's out there making this point.

Samsung's insistence on bundling crapware is killing Android.

<comment><USER11> Google isn't exactly setting a high standard with their buggy OS updates and crappy apps like hangouts.

<comment><USER12> > crappy apps like hangouts.

What's wrong with Hangouts? I quite like having an all-in-one text message + internet message + phone and video call app that I can use from my phone and computer web browser seamlessly...

<comment><USER13> I prefer NOT to have it take over SMS messaging because I want to know that the person will receive the message. If I wanted to get in touch with you, there is a conscious decision as to whether I instant message you, ring you, video call you, send an SMS, visit you in person or send you a letter. This shouldn't be removed or hidden - the reliability of the transport medium is important!

Half of my contacts never get messages from me in Hangouts. This makes it unreliable, and therefore useless.

Additionally, if I video call someone (eg my wife sat the other side of the room), Hangouts informs me that she is not available for a video call. But she has zero notifications or alerts or ringing or ANYTHING.

The inability to see if someone is online/offline also makes it useless. If I am having a conversation with someone sat next to me, I would like to know if they're sat next to me else I'll be talking to a wall. Chatting with people on Hangouts is like talking to a wall.

It truly is bad.

EDIT: I noticed the INSTANT downvote after writing this. Are you disagreeing with me on Hangouts or something? Or are you saying that I made all of this up or something? Hangouts does not work for me, full stop. I have used Android since 1.5 and Talk was far superior. The lack of proper UI (screen-width listview for contacts????) and behaviour on Hangouts (I am using a tablet) does not encourage decent applications. Compare the quality of Hangouts to GMail on a tablet for reference.

<comment><USER14> The problem is you don't even try to make hangouts work for you. You complain that you can't even choose between SMS and instant chat, yet hangouts offers that effortlessly. And you ca see someone online/offline, you can even see exactly the last time they opened the app.

It's fine to not like Hangouts, but your complaints are just plain false.

<comment><USER15> No. The more reasonable explanation is that the OP is experiencing issues that don't manifest in your situation. It doesn't mean his complaints are necessarily false.

You seem to act like software never has bugs.

<comment><USER14> >> You seem to act like software never has bugs.

So every piece of software ever made sucks?

The quality of hangouts shouldn't be decided on anecdotal bug findings.

<comment><USER16> you should have told him he's using it wrong

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Apple taking 93% of all the profits in the smartphone industry is terrifying.

</comment><comment><USER18> I'm intrigued by the 42%+ marked as 'Other'?

<comment><USER19> That would be Xiaomi and other local chinese brands.

<comment><USER20> Probably also HTC and other "also ran" companies.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> I slowly saw all of my Samsung-fan co-workers/partners transition to iPhones or atleast other Androids during my 2 year stay in Beijing. Ancedotal evidence at best but the quality of their phones and the software was subpar. I've had my Galaxy S2 for four years and only had to replace it last week. But their Samsung phones seemed extremely glitchy, would freeze at the most inappropriate times and have random battery issues.

</comment><comment><USER22> Interesting. When I visited China last year, Samsung was the brand of phone I saw most often (which was apparently true given the data in this article). Yet when your competitors offer phones nearly as reliable and feature-full at half the price, it's no surprise there's a shift happening. Though the increase in Apple suggests that this is not only a concern of price (the price of high-end Samsung phones were comparable to the price of iPhones).

Maybe it's a matter of Samsung products being somewhere in the middle. Apple's phones _feel_ like they have better construction, and a greater level of prestige associated with them. Xiaomi's phones, again, have a solid construction and decent features (in some instances, more features) at a vastly lower price point than Samsung's phones. Maybe Samsung's phones right now don't satisfy the wants of either camp, and are hurting now as a result?

Edit: Not to mention Apple finally competing on phone size.

<comment><USER23> _When I visited China last year, Samsung was the brand of phone I saw most often_

I bet most of those were not _real_ Samsungs, but generic clones with the Samsung name on them.

<comment><USER24> Do you have a source for this, or are you just guessing?

Samsung phones are popular in China from the mid-market to the high end, and I've never seen or heard of a fake Samsung. (Fake iPhones, yes.)

<comment><USER23> I've seen plenty of fake Samsung phones... the majority of them come out of the factory as unbranded generic Androids based on the MTK platform and look just like the Galaxy series; the vendor will ask if you want the Samsung logo on it (at no extra cost) when you buy one, and apply it then.

<comment><USER24> I wasn't aware of that, thanks.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> _In Apple 's most recent earnings call, CEO Tim Cook used the term "switchers" five times (a record!), and indicated that Apple is targeting further down the market — into traditional Android territory — than it ever has before._

Interesting, as this is something that is new to Apple. They've always been content to live at the top end of the market, selling quality (but expensive and high-margin) hardware. Are they risking their position as a status symbol of sorts? Once I'm no longer making a fashion statement by owning an iPhone, why would I pay a premium for one?

<comment><USER26> At least in the U.S. an iPhone is a "status symbol" in the same way as Olive Garden is "fine dining." It's marketed as the premium option, but still priced such that most people can afford it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> So much for the small hand of Asians making it difficult to work with bigger device argument, if we agree with this article's assumption that bigger iphone model has been appealing to Chinese market.

<comment><USER28> I also read 3.5" iPhone was the perfect size ergonomic for Asian hands but Apple gave up years of ergonomic study in favor of larger screens if earlier some people were right.

The true victim of phablets will be iPad and tablets IMHO.

<comment><USER29> > but Apple gave up years of ergonomic study in favor of larger screens if > earlier some people were right.

It turns out Apple was optimizing for the wrong ergonomics. People want it to be more comfortable to see the screen, not use one hand. Huge phone have been the norm in Asia for years before they showed up in the West. The largest models available today still aren't available in the U.S.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> Does anyone have an inside scoop as to whether there are political causes, given the rising tension between China and South Korea?

<comment><USER31> It seems like the explanation is pretty simple - Samsung's competitors are delivering an extremely similar product for half the price. As these Chinese OEMs expand into other markets, Samsung is going to see this same trend happen worldwide. Apple takes the high-end, image-conscious market segment, and huawei and xaomi take the low end, and there isn't a whole lot of room for a high-price low-prestige product.

<comment><USER30> Okay, good to know it's just normal market dynamics.

Thanks.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> > This explosive growth — at Samsung's expense — is due to the breakout > success of the iPhone 6 and 6 Plus. The larger size of the smartphone made > it far more appealing, especially in Asian markets, and helped Apple > generate the most profitable quarter of any company ever.

Uhhh... Because Samsung doesn't have any phablets or 5 inch phones???

that explanation is so lame it makes the whole article look sketchy.

<comment><USER33> I think the argument is that people were only willing to use the Android device because it had the large screen they wanted: as soon as Apple entered that corner of the market, so now, "with a large-screened iOS device available, consumers have turned away in huge numbers from high-end Android manufacturers like Samsung, with devastating results".

<comment><USER34> I observed a bit of that effect here in Thailand. Apple is considered more prestigious by many Thais who are willing to spend a month's pay to buy an iphone. But many were quick to convert to Samsung when larger screens came out - the little iphone looked like a toy next to the big screen Samsungs so they handed down their little iPhones to younger siblings. Apple seemed silly to insist that people didn't want bigger screens. Now that they finally caved to the demand they are clawing back some market share from Samsung. And the Xiaomi Mi4 is coming to Thailand soon so Samsung is going to take another hit.</comment></comment></comment>