The Sprawling, Booming LA Tech Scene Is Having a Moment - <AUTHOR> http://recode.net/2014/06/09/the-sprawling-booming-la-tech-scene-is-having-a-moment/ <comment><USER2> I've lived in Los Angeles in 2004, and I liked this article a lot. But I think there's another aspect that I think the OP overlooked:

The dominant industry here will always be Hollywood, where the price of failure can be literally devastating. If your startup fails in the Bay Area, it's not too hard to become a line engineer at another company. If your hedge fund fails in NYC, it's not too hard to get another job at another fund, PE firm, or commercial bank. In some cases, these "failures" are looked at as badges of honor, and likely gave you a lot of hands-on experience you can directly apply to your next job.

But if you fail in Hollywood, you're looking at however many years lost of your life, when you were making no appreciable money as a bartender or barista, with likely no applicable skills to any other industry. I found it amusing the OP described LA rent as affordable -- which by NYC or SF prices, it definitely is! -- yet LA also has the worst income/rent ratio of any city in the US, by far[0]. This is not due to rent being too high, but due to income being too low, because everyone here is broke while they're trying to write screenplays and go on auditions.

It's really hard to live here without having friends involved in the entertainment industry, so in other words, it's really hard not to see this up close. And even if your friends work on the production or post-production side, it's not much better. At least you have a steady salary, but you're probably also working for a huge megacorp studio that literally embodies every single Office Space cliche. Or you're working for a production or post- production vendor that has to jump through ridiculous hoops and work ridiculous hours to get business from said studios. And while that steady salary is nice, it's still not nearly enough if you want to ever actually do own property some day.

So, I wonder how much of that also tempers the goals and dreams for LA startup entrepreneurs. I know it's something I think about often.

[0] [http://www.zillow.com/research/rent- affordability-2013q4-668...](http://www.zillow.com/research/rent- affordability-2013q4-6681/)

<comment><USER3> > The dominant industry here will always be Hollywood

Hollywood is the #6 industry in LA by output. #1 is real estate.

In terms of employment, the government is the largest employer, followed by universities (UCLA/USC), medical (Cedars-Sinai/Kaiser) and then Fox (the #7 employer).

<comment><USER4> > In terms of employment, the government is the largest employer

Really ? Is that the only state like that, and why is it so in California?

<comment><USER5> Pretty normal for government to be the largest single employer, outside smaller towns or cities with one huge employer.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Cute PR piece.

I've lived in LA for the past six years and I can't wait to get out.

Pollution. Traffic. Crowds. Urban sprawl. Celebrity culture. Crazy property prices. Earthquakes. You name it, we got it.

I'd normally be happy that the tech scene is booming, except for the fact that they are turning Santa Monica and its surrounding neighborhoods into another Silicon Valley, with all the problems associated with the latter. Hence the name "Silicon Beach," which was actually invented in the 80s to describe the San Diego area but is now used to describe Westside LA.

<comment><USER7> I'm on the Westside and add some more anecdotes:

 _A friend 's wife is a master seamstress. She did all the costumes Ender's Game with 3 other people (I bellieve). Being in the union means you get at least 1 gig a year. Another poster here talked about Hollywood being the dominant driver, and that is completely true. Many of the small engineering firms here (not Boeing, etc) are focused on cameras and other movie tech. Heck, most of the investment community here is in movies. Part of that driver means that the culture comes along with it. That means failure is not tolerated here.

_My buddy just graduated UCLA dentistry. Its a 4 year program. He likes to study in coffee shops. He said when he first got to LA, the shop were half full of people trying to pitch a script or movie idea. Now? He said half the people here are CEOs of some sort.

 _Last year they had a mixer for Silicon Beach people at a bar in Santa Monica. I went, as I can at least code my way out of a paper bag, though not much more. Ok, chit chat, free beer, appetizers, etc. Then you realize that you and 2 other guys are the only engineers there. The other 50 people are all CEOs of some baby start-up or another, half with NDAs in the pockets. I talked to about 15 and not one of them knew to code, wanted me to work, and were looking to give out ~10% of the company for the work. No thanks.

_ Went to a thing for UCLA grads centered on start-ups. It was a panel discussion with UCLA alumni and then a meet and greet. Good cookies though. I asked the question: What is your work-life balance like. All laughed. One of the guys said his boss was a good example: 5-7am workout, 7-8am kids to school, 8-5pm work, 5-9pm play with kids, dinner, HW, 9-1am email, repeat. I pointed out that meant he slept 4 hours at that rate and, though he may be able to sustain this, it's statistically impossible other people can.

 _Buddy got an interview for a coding job around the corner from Snapchat. Nice loft, great looking secretaries, good free lunch, etc. Problem was, he couldn 't figure out what they actually did as a business. He figured they were just looking for acqui-hire, something he was not interested in due to the stink of failure Hollywood fears.

_Traffic sucks. I grow plants on the balcony. About every week I need to spritz them down from the exhaust ash that accumulates on the leaves. Not really about tech, I know, but still, I can see just how much of a car culture LA is on my carrots.

* We pay 12 for a nice little 2 bedroom. It's a steal. The westside is really going up in costs now. I talked to the apartment manager and she says when we move they'll rent for 17. The 2 new buildings going in cat-corner to us are 3k for their 1 bedrooms. LA may be cheap now, but the westside is going to SF levels soon. My lawyer friend in Los Feliz is going long on Compton. Rents are cheap there and it's 3 miles from the beach, just like the westside used to be and Venice is now. Hes got 3 units already.

<comment><USER8> Is it normal to carve out two whole hours for exercise every morning? Seems excessive. And the email. The email! A whole four hour block at the end of the day? I'm no CEO, so someone else has to tell me if this is standard operating procedure, or if this boss is just inefficient.

<comment><USER9> Two hours could include driving to the gym and back, which could mean a 40-minute workout depending on traffic. Or it could be a trip to the beach to surf. If you haven't driven around LA, it's really hard to imagine how long it takes to get places. I remember being in stop-and-go traffic for 40 minutes at 11pm on a Thursday, for no obvious reason.

People who drive in LA don't talk about distance to their destination, they talk about time.

<comment><USER10> Reminds me of Chicago. :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> This will probably make me unpopular. But: coding and designing (most) mobile apps* no longer is "tech". As they quoted in the article:

 _"Silicon Valley has created the platforms. The maturation of the space is what you put on those platforms."_

When a space has matured, and some group of people are deploying content to that space, then those people are not technologists any more than those deploying content to radio, TV, or cinema are. There was a time when radio and TV were tech, too. Now they're just radio and TV. Similarly, mobile apps will soon just be mobile apps, and firms that work in this space will no longer be thought of as being involved in "tech".

*By definition, apps that involve considerable development of some fancy new technology still count as tech.

<comment><USER6> >>When a space has matured, and some group of people are deploying content to that space, then those people are not technologists any more than those deploying content to radio, TV, or cinema are.

There is a big difference between people who create content for the mass media and those who design and develop mobile apps. Suggesting that what the latter do is not "tech" is condescension and snobbery, the same kind that machine code developers have had towards assembly developers, and C developers have had towards C++ developers, and Java developers have had towards web developers.

We're all standing on the shoulders of giants. Remember this, and it will keep you humble.

edit: drive-by downvoting is the best kind. :)

<comment><USER11> FTA:

 _"LA is and always has been a city that creates mass-market products. We're closer to culture than Silicon Valley, so we're crushing it in social mobile. Web 2.0 might have been there. Web 3.0 is here." -Mike Jones, CEO of Science_

<comment><USER12> You miss the point. Making a better product that is not solely a technological feat is not anti-technologist.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Santa Monica is getting a lot better for startups. LA is not. My brother and I just moved to downtown Santa Monica from (from LA and San Diego) to work on our company. It's been awesome so far. We just got back from a really great event where Mark Suster interviewed Amit Kapur. Amit just sold his Santa Monica-based company Gravity to AOL. There's definitely a buzz here that didn't exist two years two.

Our product is real and traditional technology innovation. It is not media/advertising/ecommerce. We have decided that if the support here is just too weak we're headed to SV. So far it looks like it might work to stay.

<comment><USER14> I work for Whisper. We just moved from Santa Monica to Venice. Our new office is right next door to Snapchat and not far from Google. But unfortunately, so far, I've had zero interaction with the tech scene in LA outside of my company. Part of that is because I just moved to the US and I am just getting settled.

What kind of events do you go to. How do find them? Meetup.com?

<comment><USER15> Yea, LA definitely isn't SF where every person you meet is involved in a startup. I find it very inspiring to visit SF and get hyped up about my startup and startups in general, but I love living in LA even though I don't really meet random startup people outside of my group of friends. We don't really have an ecosystem down here.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> There is a large and vital medical device corridor in the suburbs east of Los Angeles. It stretches from the Anaheim/Yorba Linda area south through Irvine and down toward San Diego. For instance, some of the best work in the world on ventilators goes on in this area. Two of the globally dominant medical device companies that specialize in this discipline are headquartered here. I was involved in a medical device startup in this area, and later switched to software R&D at a larger company. By contrast with the media glitz and general buzz described in the article, this industry is a bit straight-laced or "square". However, personally I have found that nothing compares to spending a few months on a project that will improve outcomes of premature babies in neonatal ICU's. This LA-based concentration of medical device expertise is a low-key hidden gem in this area.

<comment><USER17> Do you have any contacts on up and coming medical device start-ups in the SoCal area? I was at a medical device start-up down in south OC but has since moved to a big corporate one in SFV. I agree with you, its not as glitzy or sexy as the web startups but I love having the feeling whatever you made helps improve people's lives

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> New York, LA, probably others all have very fast growing tech scenes. And the worse things get in SF, the less of a lead the Bay Area has over these other cities. It is more expensive to live in San Francisco than in a nice part of New York, and way more than a nice part of LA. On top of that, San Francisco is a super lame mono-culture, increasingly comprised of mostly white and asian dudes between about 25 and 40.

More and more I hear of prominent engineers moving out of the Bay Area (Steve Klabnik is the most recent that comes to mind). I think that in ~5 years, the perfect storm of municipal disfunction (aging and already shitty public transit, insane rent and minimal new construction, strong lack of diversity) will cause San Francisco to quickly become much less attractive for companies and employees.

</comment><comment><USER19> > "The broader mindset here is not just code," said Bill Gross, the well-known > serial entrepreneur and founder of an incubator called Idealab. "We have > engineers with taste."

Shots fired.

</comment><comment><USER20> LA is awesome and I'm so happy to see this happening. There is a public school quality issue but if you're single or without kids, it's a great place to be. The tradeoff is good schools are either private or long commutes away from the Silicon Beach areas (west SF valley, Chatsworth, Calabasas, Thousand Oaks, Pallos Verdes etc).

In LA, they call Hollywood simply "The Industry". A lot of people I met did get burned out by 30 because of pecking order that is the industry. You can work your butt off and never grow in your career, then you realize you're still renting with roommates at 30+. It can get tough. I saw a lot of friends just leave for cheaper housing and more conventional jobs.

Hollywood does abuse it's tech employees (and most of it's other employees). But even non actors have stars in their eyes and take the abuse to say they worked on XYZ movie. And so the cycle continues, lots of ambitious young people enter the Industry while the burnouts throw in the towel. And the employers get away with it.

</comment><comment><USER21> Here is a secret I will tell only to my HN buddies: for the right person, the studios have the money to beat most Silicon Valley giants and can definitely wipe the floor with whatever the Santa Monica startups will offer. The key is you have to love "the biz". This is LA, after all =)

Source: I'm a senior software architect at a very major Hollywood studio. Microsoft once offered me a nice salary, but the studio beat them by $20,000.

I love LA.

</comment><comment><USER12> I'd love to see a similar little in-depth profile of all the various emerging tech hubs around the country and world. Boston in particular, followed by NYC. I see many parallels.

</comment><comment><USER22> > Americans watch 5.3 hours of television a day, and they read for less than a > half hour,"

[citation needed]

Honestly this probably isn't terribly far off, but I have a very hard time believing Americans read less than half an hour a day (unless you're strictly counting non-digitized reading, which is a useless figure anyway because many people read all of their non-web content on e-readers now)

I googled around and couldn't find a source either.

</comment><comment><USER23> Ah, LA. How I miss you.

I don't miss the scalding desert summers when I had a job way behind the Orange Curtain. But oh, to live near the beach and have beautiful sunny days in the middle of December.

</comment><comment><USER24> I have yet to find good tech job listings in the LA area. Anyone have leads?</comment>


Nokia Closes Out 2013 With 92% Of The Windows Phone Market - <AUTHOR> http://techcrunch.com/2013/12/30/nokia-closes-out-2013-with-92-of-the-windows-phone-market/

<comment><USER2> I understand most other smartphone makers refuse to use the Windows Phone operating system. That is why Nokia has 92% of the market. That is also why Microsoft bought Nokia, as Windows Phones don't sell very well and had damaged Nokia's income to the point that Microsoft bought out their stock in a 'fire sale'.

I think in 2014 you will see more hardware companies rejecting Microsoft operating systems and software and defecting to alternatives.

This is the Post-Microsoft world now, and many companies are trying to replace Microsoft as the top dog.

Apple has done well in the smartphone and tablet market. Android too has done well in the smartphone and tablet market. We got GNU/Linux in the form of Ubuntu Touch and Tizen. We got ChromeOS laptops costing $199 verses the same hardware with Windows costing $299. Microsoft charges an OEM Tax that increase the price $100 and of course if most of the industry rejects Microsoft and uses a free or open source operating system instead, they can save $100 on their price and undersell Windows Powered phones and Windows based PCs and Laptops.

Windows Powered phones can be converted into Android phones or Ubuntu Touch or Tizen really easily. Never iOS because Apple has a lock on that.

I think we might even see Haiku, AROS, and others ported to smartphones running on ARM chips and the like.

Right now Microsoft has no leader, no vision, no goals. They are viciously attacking Google and failing to gain marketshare, as Google just laughs at Microsoft and rakes in the money with Chromebook and Android based device sales. Microsoft, you see, is giving Google free publicity in their attack ads, people are learning Google's tech is always $100 cheaper than Microsoft tech. In this bad economy, that just might be what it takes to defeat Microsoft.</comment>


HTML5 Games 0.1: Speedy Sprites (and interesting browser performance analysis) - <AUTHOR> http://www.facebook.com/notes/facebook-engineering/html5-games-01-speedy-sprites/491691753919

<comment><USER3> The benchmark results in this article (as well as the benchmark itself) are not very representative. There are just too many use cases to consider and the benchmark seems to only deal with a tiny subset - one that IE9 happens to handle nicely.

I believe that some browsers struggle with this benchmark, because it uses 2 canvases on top of each other (one for the background, one for the sprites).

Here's a benchmark I just put together, that only uses one canvas:

<http://www.phoboslab.org/crap/notjsgamebench/>

Chrome 10, Firefox4 beta 7, IE9 and Opera 11 are quite on par in this one. They all draw about 1000 - 1400 sprites at 30fps on Windows 7.

And here's an example where IE9 performs very poorly (press F during gameplay to see the fps):

<http://playbiolab.com/hqx.php?s=4>

I just have about 20fps in IE9, whereas all other browsers draw at a steady 60fps. This happens because IE9 seems to only accelerate the drawing of IMGs into a canvas - drawing canvases into a canvas is still extremely slow.

</comment><comment><USER4> A couple odd things about this benchmark: IE9 runs different tests than the rest of the browsers. I'm not sure why, and there's no mention of this anywhere in the documentation. You can confirm this by running the benchmark - IE9 completes it much quicker than the other browsers, and if you click to see the results, you'll see it only ran 4 tests (while the other browsers run way more tests). There's a chance this artificially skews IE9's test scores up.

It's hard to reproduce the other scores from the benchmark (IE9 is certainly fast, though)... Chrome 8, 9 and 10 all put out a miserable 350 sprites by default on my machine, so I suspect he had to change some settings to get it to perform well. If only he had provided those settings along with his results, I could reproduce them.

Likewise, I cannot reproduce his Firefox results either - Firefox 4 manages around 1800 sprites on my machine. This is probably because he ran it under a VM - VMWare does a pretty good job of pretending to be a 3D accelerator, but it's not a real video card. I wouldn't be shocked if this negatively affected the performance of other browsers on the benchmark as well.

The difficulty of reproducing his results, along with how utterly bizarre the benchmark is - I need to compile node.js to run a canvas benchmark??? - <USER2> me wonder whether it's of any value for actually measuring real-world performance.

Ultimately, though, an even more important factor is that this benchmark does nothing to measure the consistency of framerates - modern browsers can suffer from some pretty severe garbage collection pauses while running games and applications written in javascript. Even if your game is running at 60fps, if it pauses for 50ms every 5 seconds to collect garbage, it's going to be a pretty terrible experience. At present, both Firefox and Chrome suffer badly from garbage collection pauses in many browser-based applications, but this is not represented in most modern benchmarks.

<comment><USER5> I made two articles about optimizing my game Crajsh (<http://www.crajsh.com>). Avoiding GC pauses is possible right now but you have to put some effort into it.

[http://blog.gamesfrommars.fr/2011/01/25/optimizing-crajsh- pa...](http://blog.gamesfrommars.fr/2011/01/25/optimizing-crajsh-part-1/) [http://blog.gamesfrommars.fr/2011/01/25/optimizing-crajsh- pa...](http://blog.gamesfrommars.fr/2011/01/25/optimizing-crajsh-part-2-2/)

About the benchmarks: the maximum number of displayable sprites is not that a good measure. Performance of blitting would be better.

<comment><USER6> The GC issue deserves more light shed on it. Its a critical failure of most modern application environments. There may be hoops to jump through to ameliorate its effects, different on each platform.

Why not explicit language features? Animation is a niche but pretty important to many of us.</comment></comment></comment>


The UX Secret That Will Ruin Apps for You - <AUTHOR> http://www.fastcodesign.com/3061519/evidence/the-ux-secret-that-will-ruin-apps-for-you <comment><USER2> Baity headline, but good content. Links to, and covers the observations discussed in this Harvard paper [1].

Essentially, people tend to be skeptical when what they perceive as an 'important' computation happens too quickly. By introducing an artifical delay, you're successfully fooling users into believing the results are more trustworthy.

[1] [http://www.hbs.edu/faculty/Pages/item.aspx?num=40158](http://www.hbs.edu/faculty/Pages/item.aspx?num=40158)

</comment><comment><USER3> Is the UX secret to repeatedly load ads as I'm scrolling on my phone to jump me about while I'm trying to read? Because yes, that is rather ruining things for me.</comment>


Treatments that cause the immune system to attack cancer earn a Nobel - <AUTHOR> https://arstechnica.com/science/2018/10/treatments-that-cause-the-immune-system-to-attack-cancer-earn-a-nobel/ <comment><USER2> When will all doctors be able to utilize these techniques and about how much will it cost?</comment>


Intro to Multicriteria Optimization - <AUTHOR> http://blog.sigopt.com/post/149041563563/sigopt-in-depth-intro-to-multicriteria <comment><USER3> I wrote this post and am also happy to comment. Hopefully we'll be following this up soon with a post on treating robustness and cost simultaneously in a multicriteria setting. Also, special thanks again to Devon Sigler at the University of Colorado Denver for his help editing this post.

</comment><comment><USER4> For anyone looking for a free optimization tool in python, sypy.opimize is easy to use.

Eg if I have a complicated function revenue([A,B,C,D])

I can define obj([A,B,C,D]) = -1* revenue([A,B,C,D])

and use:

      >>>import numpy as np

      >>>from scipy.optimize import minimize

      >>>X0 = np.array([1.5, 0.7, 1.2, 100])

      >>>options={'xtol': 1e-4, 'disp': True})

      >>>X* = minimize(obj, x0, method='nelder-mead', options)

[http://docs.scipy.org/doc/scipy/reference/tutorial/optimize....](http://docs.scipy.org/doc/scipy/reference/tutorial/optimize.html)

<comment><USER5> scipy.optimize can only do single-criterion optimization (scalar-valued objective function instead of vector-valued objective functions).

<comment><USER6> > The tradeoffs between these two criteria can either be managed by some > supervisory decision maker (the driver of the car in this example) or by > merging the multiple criteria into some single criteria and phrasing the > problem as a standard optimization problem.

You always have to reduce the problem to a scalar if you want a single answer.

<comment><USER5> You might want to discover the full Pareto frontier to gain some insights on the structure of the trade-off.

I think the best methods to explore the Pareto frontier are based on the concepts of evolutionary computation like NSGA-II and SPEA-2:

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Multi- objective_optimization#A...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Multi- objective_optimization#A_posteriori_methods)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I guess the novelty here is that constraint based optimization with no guarantees on convexity or biconvexity is a PITA?

<comment><USER3> First off, I am very hesitant to say anything about biconvex problems - I only see them in passing and they are definitely not in my wheelhouse. If anyone out there is an expert, or even just has a solid (basic) reference on biconvex problems, please feel free to drop some knowledge on me.

For this particular problem, which has only one input variable, yes the answer can be resolved with a good-old fashioned Plug-In-The-Answer strategy. For problems with more than one input variable, that will almost certainly not be the case.

Really, all I was trying to say there at the end is that converting the multicriteria problem to a constraint based problem has potential benefits over scalarization. Speaking only for myself, I always default to treating multicriteria problems in some sort of norm-scalarized sense: minimize ||g|| for some vector norm. I thought it was valuable to remind myself, and maybe others, that there are other ways to naturally rephrase multicriteria problems as scalar optimization problems. I'm definitely not saying anything about how easy it is to solve, as in general these constrained problems are going to be harder than the non-constrained linear (or norm) scalarization.

<comment><USER8> The usual reference is this[1] paper which outlines most well-known results on biconvexity and optimiality thereof.

[1] [http://www2.math.uni- wuppertal.de/~klamroth/publications/gop...](http://www2.math.uni- wuppertal.de/~klamroth/publications/gopfkl07.pdf)

<comment><USER3> That's very helpful. Thanks a lot!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> I'm one of the co-founders of SigOpt (YC W15) and am happy to answer any questions about SigOpt or the methods we apply.

More info on our research (and examples) can be found at [https://sigopt.com/research](https://sigopt.com/research)

<comment><USER9> I do research in combinatorial optimization. Does your company solve any problems with a combinatorial flavor? (say, things can be optimized using combinatorial algorithms instead of going for gradient descent.

<comment><USER10> What are the bread and butter of combinatorial optimization? In other words, the concepts you would first come across, at an undergrad level if possible?

<comment><USER11> Doing research in mixed-integer linear optimization (but wrote diploma thesis about some topic in combinatorial optimization):

> What are the bread and butter of combinatorial optimization? In other words, > the concepts you would first come across, at an undergrad level if possible?

\- Polyhedral combinatorics (Books: "Alexander Schrijver - <USER2> Optimization: Polyhedra and Efficiency" (more focus on polyhedral combinatorics; IMHO the best book, but not the most approachable), "Bernhard Korte, Jens Vygen - Combinatorial Optimization: Theory and Algorithms" (more focus on algorithms; easier to read). This of course includes (mixed-)integer linear programming ((M)ILP).

\- Of course learning about (M)ILPs means understanding linear programming (LP). Here I personally prefer "Alexander Schrijver - Theory of Linear and Integer Programming" (this books also covers ILP aspects, but not MILPs).

\- Other books for learning about ILPs are "Dimitris Bertsimas, Robert Weismantel - Optimization Over Integers" (main focus is ILP, nevertheless a good book) and "Conforti, Cornuejols, Zambelli - Integer Programming". There are no really good books about MILPs that I know of, but these two books at least will cover some aspects of it.

\- Sometimes semidefinite relaxations will occur (most famous example: Goemans-Williamson Algorithm; less famous, but also important: Lovasz- Schrijver hierarchy, Sherali-Adams hierarchy, Lasserre hierarchy)

<comment><USER3> I'd also like to throw in some work by a former colleague of mine at Argonne, Sven Leyffer on nonlinear programming: \- A compendium he co-edited named (appropriately enough) Mixed Integer Nonlinear Programming \- A review paper he co-authored for Acta Numerica: [http://www.mcs.anl.gov/papers/P3060-1112.pdf](http://www.mcs.anl.gov/papers/P3060-1112.pdf)

Also, yeah, the "Alexander Schrijver - Theory of Linear and Integer Programming" reference is solid.

<comment><USER11> The survey article by Sven Leyffer is a good paper, but comes from a completely different direction:

It comes from people from convex optimization trying to additionally apply some integrality conditions (a little bit as second-class citizen). On the other hand classical combinatorial optimization is integrality conditions as first-class citizen. I, coming from (M)ILP, would argue that the MINLP people coming from convex optimization tend to sidestep all the problems that make ILP so hard (and interesting). On the other hand MINLP people would equally vocally argue that the (M)ILP people tend to prefer "academic" problems and don't grasp how many important research questions they miss.

It's up to the reader to decide which side is right. :-)

My personal opinion in this "flamewar" is that if you come from a computer science background (in particular theoretical computer science) you will probably prefer classic MILP culture. On the other hand if you come from engineering you will probably prefer MINLP theory as outlined in Sven Leyffer's survey paper.

<comment><USER3> Yeah, I think that's probably the split - folks from computer science/discrete math on one side and folks from engineering on the other. I grew up in math, but I was on the numerical analysis side so I definitely ended up on the MINLP side, which is why that's what I generally reference. There is certainly something elegant about ILP problems which gets lost when treating them with the sledgehammer that is gradient-based convex optimization.

<comment><USER11> > There is certainly something elegant about ILP problems which gets lost when > treating them with the sledgehammer that is gradient-based convex > optimization.

It is funny that you call gradient-based convex optimization a "sledgehammer" since people working in combinatorial optimization (opposed to ILP) tend to denote ILP methods (e.g. cutting plane algorithms, branch & bound, branch & cut, relaxation hierarchies, ...) also as a "sledgehammer". :-D They are just jealous. :-)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> > The reason this is a more complicated situation is that an ordering of > vectors in RkRk does not exist... how would one order the vectors u = > (1,2,3), v = (2,1,3), w = (3,2,1)?

It seems straightforward to order those vectors by first comparing the first component, then the second, then the third. The result is u,v,w. It's as if you wanted to sort a multi-column report in Excel. What am I missing?

<comment><USER13> Consider a simpler case of two dimensional real vectors. Lets consider the vector space of R^2, since all finite dimensional vector spaces of same dimensionality are isomorphic, R^2 is isomorphic to the complex numbers.

How would you order the complex numbers?

<comment><USER11> > How would you order the complex numbers?

You can use any order that can be defined on R^2. It's just that you can show that this order cannot satisfy the axioms of an ordered field.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Here is a much simpler approach that works for many problems: minimize the distance to a desired multi-variate state.

[https://medium.com/@justchap/using-the-pythagorean- theorem-t...](https://medium.com/@justchap/using-the-pythagorean-theorem-to- model-complicated-goals-in-machine-learning-b85f04b34ad4#.9tajh1t0l)

<comment><USER3> That strategy can be viable; it's discussed in the Wikipedia article: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Multi- objective_optimization#N...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Multi- objective_optimization#No-preference_methods)

As is suggested there, though, implementing this no-preference strategy requires some clean rescaling of the component functions in order to yield equal significance for all of them. If you have such a rescaling, that's outstanding; however, as I suggested in the section of the article dealing with the impact of the choice of currency, rescaling a problem may be a difficult proposition. This is especially true for problems that aren't as simple as the toy problem I've proposed here.</comment></comment>


Ever been accused of sounding too technical? Maybe people just don't care - <AUTHOR> http://www.workingsoftware.com.au/page/Maybe_people_just_don%27t_care

<comment><USER2> "If you work in a technical field, there is an automatic stigma about you: You are incapable of communicating technical concepts to the lay person."

Wait what?

I've always defined my level of expertise in an area in relation to how easily I can explain it to someone who knows absolutely nothing about it. The more easily I can explain it, the more likely it is that I understand it really well.

Explaining is all about knowing what parts are relevant to my listener and what parts are either irrelevant... or go into too much detail for me to actually explain in context.

You don't have as good a sense of relevance/irrelevance unless you are an expert. A completely tangential problem is technical jargon, which you have to remember to avoid (and use synonyms for) if your audience isn't versed in it. Knowing the technical jargon well enough to pick accurate layman's terms is another part of being an expert.

Blowing this off as saying that 'its too technical' is the same as 'I'm bored,' seems completely ass backwards. More likely, I'm bored because I don't understand WTF you are talking about, because I didn't even take undergraduate biology.

<comment><USER3> It's really about the perception that you don't know how to communicate. You also have no dress sense, don't date, have poor personal hygiene, talk gracelessly and have weird hobbies. This allows people to return to their default view that they are vastly superior to you, even though you are demonstrably smarter than many of them.

I wrote a one-line email last week to tell people: "Double-click the _Connect Network Drives_ icon on your desktop or you won't be able to get to your files." I'm still getting phone calls about inaccessible shares, over a week later. People tell me "it's too technical" or "I don't have time to read emails like that!" So OP is quite correct: they've decided it's not worth their time and effort to understand.

<comment><USER2> That is too technical for a lot of users. What is an 'icon'? Where is the 'desktop'? How do I 'double click'?

I usually include screen shots with red-circles for where to click when trying to communicate stuff like that.

I'd do something like, 'With the left mouse button double click the connect network drives icon on your desktop. (screenshot of desktop with icon circled).'

A lot of people don't think about what they are doing when they use a computer. It is more like speaking your first language. I can write to you in English fairly effortlessly, but if we were having a discussion about grammar, I might not know all of the terms.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Two of my roommates are in the medical field. Hearing them talk about hospital business really gives me a perspective on how I myself can sound when I talk about technology in the presence of "normal" people. In those cases I comfort myself, with the thought, "Hey, at least when I talk about technology, I don't cause other people's stomachs to turn and make them run to the nearest bathroom."

Honestly, medicine is much worse than technology with sounding "technical" (technology usually doesn't have the "gory" or hypochondria-inducing aspect to it like medicine often does). The only thing that medical people have going for them is the higher percentage of women in the field, who tend to be more sensitive as to how they come across to others.

</comment><comment><USER5> Two quick points on this.

1\. Some technical people deliberately explain things in an overly technical way as it boosts their ego. "You don't understand this => I am superior."

2\. All communication must be __for __the recipient. You must bend over backwards to help them understand. This is what good communication is. If it's hard work for the recipient it's poor communication.

<comment><USER6> I wish I could up vote your second point independent of your first. It stands apart at a higher elevation, so to speak.

<comment><USER5> That idea was from a concept I came across somewhere on the web; "No one wants to read your s--t" . I think it's something of a mantra in the advertising world.

It struck me at the time as I was working with a CEO who thought length == quality in communication, both writing and discussions. I think that he wrote things for his own gratification, it probably gave him a feeling of productivity. Sadly a lot of what he wrote wasn't read, or not a carefully as it should have been. It takes effort and generosity to write for the reader.

<comment><AUTHOR> Generosity! There's something to meditate upon ...

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> The TED talk linked to from this talk is a must see.

People don't buy what you do, they buy why you do it. <http://www.ted.com/talks/view/lang/eng//id/848>

<comment><USER8> why should every talk about innovation start with a mention of Apple.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> All this, including the TED talk, falls in to the category of "how to sell". I agree with my friend Tom that sales skill is more important than most folks realize:

<http://www.rationalfuturist.com/writings/startupsales.html>

</comment><comment><USER10> "...and it's kind of the "slowest" part of the speech where he starts talking about biology and the lymbic system and blah blah blah science whatever (that's literally how I remember that section of the talk in my head)..."

This was the most interesting part of the article for me-- where you switched roles and became the listener that was deciding not to take the time or effort to understand.

Is deciding not to make the effort there really what you felt like you were doing? Or could the speaker have communicated in a different way to make the "blah blah blah science whatever" more accessible or interesting to you?

I'd be interested to read about your experiences putting yourself in your listeners' shoes rather than speculating about what it's like for them.

<comment><AUTHOR> Haha I definitely decided not to make the effort to understand that part of it :) I could have gone back over that bit but I felt as though the conclusion was really the most important bit and the precursor to it was really only there to give credence to the conclusion as being something he hadn't just plucked out of thin air.

I guess it's the equivalent of blinding me with science - but see by that point in the speech I was already "sold".

He'd whipped me into a frenzy so when I didn't get something and the speech slowed down (from my perspective) I didn't close the window and stop altogether, I just tuned out a little until he came to the conclusion.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> This is true for any time you're explaining something--technical or not. You begin by engaging the listener/reader--giving them context, piquing interest, making them care. Often times you can do this in one sentence: are you X? Do you use X? Or are you tired of having to do X? Etc.

For detailed info, you'll need to break up the message into parts and reengage them at the start of each part.

</comment><comment><USER12> I've always felt that it's socially ok to say that you don't understand technical subjects. Might be this is the trace of the nerd thing : people don't really want to be seen understanding technical things because that would require showing interest into it.

It's interesting that we always hear business types (in a very general meaning ) say that technical people are unable to explain things clearly, but never hear them asking how they could understand technical subjects better. Should we really be expert at communication, business, marketing to explain to everyone in it's own jargon ?

</comment><comment><USER13> "I don't know. When people think you're dying then they really really listen to you instead of just..."

"... Instead of just waiting for their turn to speak?"

"Yeah. Yeah."

\- Fight Club

</comment><comment><USER14> "Any intelligent fool can make things bigger, more complex, and more violent. It takes a touch of genius -- and a lot of courage -- to move in the opposite direction." --Einstein

</comment><comment><USER15> This post assumes that people on the other end are dealing with you fairly.This is not always the case.

Some times people want to label you as technical and refuse to accept that you can do everything they can do because you can actually go and implement what you are talking.

Their interest is best served when you are implementing and they are doing the talking so they deliberately wants to keep you out of the loop by labeling you too technical.

</comment><comment><USER16> The problem is that not every true, important concept is an item of common experience, nor necessarily relatable to common experience. And, even in the case where it can be explained using common terms, the explanation can often be too long for most people's limited attention span.

Not that I'm pointing any fingers other than at myself. I can probably count on one hand the number of meetings I haven't fallen asleep in.

</comment><comment><USER17> The part that seems still-to-come: how did you change your marketing & product communication after adopting Sinek's theory? Did it work out better for you?

I'd be very interested to see that post if/when you make it - comparing the before & after videos & pages, and some stats on how well the change worked.

<comment><AUTHOR> That'll certainly be on the agenda. I've only just started this journey myself really so still doing lots of learning and figuring out the best ways to gather data and store it for later comparison.

When I have more info I'll definitely be following up (so _ahem_ <http://workingsoftware.com.au/rss/> ;)

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> I got part way through the article and started to turn off. I forced my way to the end, and I've decided - he still hasn't learned the lesson.

That is really badly written from the point of view of trying to engage and retain the reader about something he thinks is important, but the reader might not.

Ironic.

<comment><AUTHOR> I'd place this post more in the category of "shambolic musing" that "carefully crafted marketing communication" but I would be interested to know which parts of the writing you found turned you off - it will certainly help hone my craft.

<comment><USER18> Valid question - I'll try to put together a coherent answer and I'll post a link to it here on HN.

It won't be soon, though - currently too busy.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> I think economists grapple with some of these problems under the heading of "rational ignorance".

The idea being that bothering to understand your pitch, product, technology or problem has a cost. It can be a quite high cost. Most folks will take a short taste and then decide quickly that it's too expensive: they have chosen to be ignorant.

Your job, as a pitcher, is to a) simplify the pitch and b) find out the connection between you and their interests and emotions.

Rhetoric: It's not just for ancient greeks!

</comment><comment><USER20> Hmm. I don't think this is exclusive to IT workers. Finance workers are as bad, or worse.

Having read and listened to a lot of finance training classes/materials recently, I can say that much of this is not just a lack of effort put into explaining things, it's shockingly sloppy standards of epistemology. Concepts are blurred constantly, terms are reused for different things, procedures are introduced with little attempt to ground them in related ideas. Much of the time I suspect people have learnt in a very ad hoc manner, and don't really know what they're doing, just enough to get things working.

I get that sort of lazy vibe from a lot of Unix culture too, although it's a bit more superficial.

</comment><comment><USER21> The times that you are accused of 'talking too technical' (let alone _sounding_ too technical) aren't the important ones. Then at least you have a pointer to go on, whether rightfully or not.

What's important are the times when _don't_ hear that, but you catch the eyes of the other glaze over (though _he_ may still be unaware of it and trying to follow as best as he can). That's when you need to backpeddle for a bit and explain things in a different way. I notice this with clients a lot: they are technical, but use different terminology and have different backgrounds. 'Different' is not necessarily 'less technical': sometimes you just need to substitute some terminology and presto, understanding dawns.

<comment><AUTHOR> Right - yeah the "not hearing" can be bad - especially if the "conversation" isn't actually a conversation so much as marketing exercise.

I guess I haven't made a clear enough distinction in this particular post between those two types of "conversations" and how they correlate.

 _I notice this with clients a lot: they are technical, but use different terminology and have different backgrounds_

This is key I think - when someone tells you you're being too technical and they don't understand what the product "really does" but they're not a layman in the sense that they are technical people themselves, it's easy to get confused about what "really does", really means!

My thinking after seeing this TED talk is that "what does this really do?" can be translated as "why did you build this?" and thusly "why should I care?".

This may seem obvious but to me there is a subtlety there that I feel as though I've been missing all along. When people say "what does this really do?" my instinct is to say things like the list of TiVo features he talks about - not "sell with a vision" of how much better it's going to make their life - a vision based on my belief in the product and on why I built it in the first place.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> If the submitter is the same as the poster, I'm curious about something, do you experience this same degree of generalised apathy and intellectual laziness with audiences outside of Australia? And if so, is the extent smaller, greater, or exactly the same?

<comment><AUTHOR> Hello, yes it's me. Firstly I'm not saying it's anything anti-intellectual or lazy on the part of those I'm attempting to explain things to, it's just that the decision is being made by a part of their brain that's not charged with doing the understanding.

Also I've not found any significant difference between folks outside of AU and within it - although I couldn't claim to have any sort of statistically signficant sampling of either. It's mostly one-to-one personal communications I'm referring to (not necessarily face-to-face but also limited to the maybe 20 people or so that I've had discussions with recently).

<comment><USER22> I understood you weren't actually saying that, merely that I've personally found it to be far more pronounced in Australia than elsewhere. But yeah, if your experiences are limited to mostly Australians not a very valid question. Thanks for the feedback.</comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: Why is Twitter blocking users if they have no Referer header? - <AUTHOR> While changing some settings (in this case network.http.sendRefererHeader), I got locked out of Twitter. This seems to be an intended feature. You get an infinite redirect loop stating: "If you're not redirected soon, please use this link.".<p>I don't think it would be an effective way to fight bots so why are they doing it? Thanks in advance! <comment><USER2> It protects against the 'Silhouette attack"

Original research paper: [http://www.ntt.co.jp/news2018/1807e/180718a.html](http://www.ntt.co.jp/news2018/1807e/180718a.html)

Twitter Blog: [https://blog.twitter.com/engineering/en_us/topics/insights/2...](https://blog.twitter.com/engineering/en_us/topics/insights/2018/twitter_silhouette.html)

"A website can request a page from Twitter in the background with JavaScript using standard browser APIs. That request will be made using login credentials (stored in cookies), so if you're logged into Twitter, that request will be made as you.

Our site implements common CSRF protections on POST requests to prevent actions being made on your behalf (for example, being able to send a Tweet). The browser also enforces a number of limitations on cross-origin requests for security reasons. For example, another origin cannot read the response content. However, the requesting page is able to determine how long the request took to load.

This timing data will only reveal information if the response times can be manipulated into result based on a specific user. Generally, your page load time will depend on the Tweets you're viewing, and these aren't easy to predict.

However, when you are blocked by another user, we prevent you from being able to load their profile page, and just show a basic empty page. That page is much faster to load than a profile full of Tweets.

In our tests, profile page load times reliably dropped from around 500ms to about 200ms. In this way, one user can affect the page load time of another user viewing a specific url."

<comment><AUTHOR> That was an interesting read, now I'm surprised there are so few websites mitigating this kind of timing attack. Seems like SameSite is still not implemented everywhere: [https://caniuse.com/#feat=same-site-cookie- attribute](https://caniuse.com/#feat=same-site-cookie-attribute)</comment></comment>


Slack Is Down Again - <AUTHOR> No status page update as yet... <comment><USER2> Monday July 29, 2019: [https://status.slack.com/2019-07/b31a6510b8caabcc](https://status.slack.com/2019-07/b31a6510b8caabcc)

<comment><USER3> > Some workspaces might be experiencing issues with messages sending and > loading.

Problem is not known as of yet (Jul 29, 10:59 AM EDT)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> It does say that there is an incident here: [https://status.slack.com/](https://status.slack.com/)

</comment><comment><USER5> Not saying that I know this is the case but when you struggle for years to reach a liquidity event and with the direct offering everyone reached that event at the same time, likely there's a bit of a collective sigh of relief there and people are taking easier leading to higher SLAs on incidents etc.

<comment><USER6> Think about how infuriating it would be if the engineers -- elbow deep in stress trying to fix this issue -- were to read this statement.</comment></comment>


Dr. Don Gurnett, U. Iowa Space Physicist Retires - <AUTHOR> https://now.uiowa.edu/2019/05/gurnett-retirement-story <comment><AUTHOR> Dr. Gurnett is one of the principal investigators on the Voyager I & II projects; his group was the one to discover the heliopause boundary.</comment>


How Coca-Cola won the war  - <AUTHOR> http://www.damninteresting.com/the-american-gustation-crisis-of-1985 <comment><USER2> The following is from a blog that no longer exists, except in my Google Reader archive. Its author worked in a flavor factory that produced Coke:

"I'll explain why Pepsi sucks so bad, yet somehow manages to win taste tests. If you take Coke and Pepsi side by side in a blind test, Pepsi will win. This is because the bad taste of Pepsi cumulates from several sips (it is an aftertaste effect). So even though I hate Pepsi, I can take a sip or two and enjoy it. After half a can, I'm grossed out. Coke on the other hand tastes good no matter how much you drink, because its aftertaste is the same as its, uh… during taste. Thus, Coke is also better for mixing (who likes rum and Pepsi? Anyone?) because its taste is a constant. People who are expert tasters can tell Pepsi is garbage from sip one. But mortals like you and I fall for the trick, allowing Pepsi to claim that it wins taste tests."

<comment><USER3> Coke has a horrible aftertaste IMHO. I can't drink much of it at all. Pepsi is far sweeter. Pepsi Max is the best though.

<comment><USER4> Taste is hilariously subjective. Pepsi Max tastes, to me, how cat piss smells. That said, Diet Coke is even worse.. perhaps I'm overly sensitive to artificial sweeteners in some way.

</comment></comment></comment><comment> old-gregg This doesn't explain why Coke tastes much, much better in Europe: when I'm traveling I always enjoy Coke. But when I'm back to US I tend to avoid soft drinks entirely - they all taste like gasoline here.

I lived in Texas for a while and I remember people were always looking for Mexican Coke: some gas stations would stock it. It was significantly more expensive, about $2 per bottle, and indeed, it had the taste of the real thing.

Could this dramatic degradation in quality be explained by HFCS alone?

<comment><USER5> There's also much more awareness about flavors on the continent than in the US. The greater relative persistence of traditional food processing methods in Europe and the greater preponderance of industrialized food production in the US mean that industrial food manufacturers can simply _get away with more_ in the US. The population here has been more conditioned to accept it.

I find that much the same is true with sensitivity to micro-pulse within rhythm. A large portion of the North American public hasn't a clue such a thing exists. Heck, a lot of North Americans don't understand how to clap in time on the downbeat! (Unfortunately, you can also find the same cluelessnes in Europe pretty easily as well. The counterpart cluefulness is much easier to find there, though.)

<comment><USER3> This is also why all cheese in the US tastes to Europeans like plastic. It's extremely surprising that people actually buy cheese in the US, and they seem to have it with everything as well :/

To anyone who has tasted real cheese, it's just bizarre.

The other oddity is chocolate. In the US it seems to come universally without any milk or sugar added. Hersheys is bitter. Even the "Cadburys" (made under license) is quite hard to eat, and not anything like real chocolate.

And agreed. HFCS tastes pretty gross compared to the same drink with real sugar.

<comment><USER6> Where do you guys shop in the US? If you explore stores beyond 7/11, you'll see that there is plenty of "normal food" in the US.

Some people choose to eat artificially-produced cheese substitute, but despite the ads you see on TV, not everyone does.

The same goes for coffee and beer, mentioned in comments below. I always buy coffee within a day or two of roasting, and even if I buy it at the grocery store, it's still within two weeks. Sure, you _can_ buy old coffee and save money, but you don't have to. (As for pre-ground coffee, many people value the convenience of not having to buy a $200 coffee grinder and grind their own coffee over having the best coffee possible. In America, you get to decide!)

Finally, we have a lot of good beer over here. In Chicago we have Two Brothers and Goose Island (who sometimes produce a good beer; Green Line Pale Ale -- tasty), and New Belgium and Dogfish Head are good American beers that are widely distributed throughout the country.

I think you Europeans need to watch a little less TV before you judge.

<comment><USER7> As an American who has spent significant time in Europe, I'll agree with you that it's quite _possible_ to get good food in the US. However, the average quality of what the average person eats is indubitably lower and includes more processed crap.

I do think that things are changing for the better, however. On my most recent trip back home, I went to a supermarket that had large areas dedicated to speciality/high quality/non-cheezit-whiz stuff, something that you wouldn't have seen 20 years ago.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> My absolute favorite coke vs. pepsi taste test story is near the end of this blog post (search for "About 10 years ago I did a year long part-time course in quality assurance"): [http://davesmechanicalpencils.blogspot.com/2006/11/pentel- ai...](http://davesmechanicalpencils.blogspot.com/2006/11/pentel-ain- lead.html)

<comment><USER9> I don't know what's better... the Coke vs Pepsi story in the article, or the fact that this entire website is dedicated to mechanical pencils.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Coca-Cola outsells Pepsi in most parts of the U.S., notable exceptions being central Appalachia, North Dakota, and Utah. In the city of Buffalo, New York, Pepsi outsells Coca-Cola by a two-to-one margin.

Overall, Coca-Cola continues to outsell Pepsi in almost all areas of the world. However, exceptions include India; Saudi Arabia; Pakistan, the Dominican Republic; Guatemala the Canadian provinces of Quebec, Newfoundland and Labrador, Nova Scotia, and Prince Edward Island; and Northern Ontario

<comment><USER11> Well, of course. There's a Pepsi bottling plant in Buffalo. I'm sure Coke outsells Pepsi by an obscene margin in Atlanta.

<comment><USER12> It does. Also as far as the Georgia Tech campus goes you won't find a Pepsi vending machine anywhere. Even the on-campus Pizza Hut sells Coke.

<comment><USER11> My understanding is that it's common for college campuses to sign exclusive contracts with one vendor or another.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Mirror: [http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:8Owe47L...](http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:8Owe47LK_EkJ:www.damninteresting.com/the- american-gustation-crisis- of-1985+damninteresting+coca+cola&cd=1&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=us)

</comment><comment><USER14> In the future, could you please remove the #more-... anchor from the links? They jump you into the middle of the article, which is somewhat annoying.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yeah sorry realised that after I posted when I tested the link but unfortunately you can not edit links apparently.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> It's an interesting read from a marketing point of view, but as for our health, coke (oversweetened dilluted acid), chips (carcinogenic fried potato dough with monosodium glutamate) and sweet chocolate are the most unhealthy things one can inflict upon oneself. I have never understood some of my friends, gulping litres of coke everyday, basically drinking nothing else.

I for myself prefer tap water (capital city, central Europe).

</comment><comment><USER9> I've always preferred the taste of Coke out of a can to any other cola. Pepsi is too sweet, and it has a slightly different aftertaste; Coke on the otherhand, tastes pretty consistent throughout, making it an excellent choice as a mixer. I don't know how people can like Coke out of a glass bottle though... it has always tasted too flat for me.

Anyone ever notice how Subway (chain restaurant) always has a different tasting Coke than what you're used to? I could never figure out why they consistently screw up the mix.

</comment><comment><USER16> Coke always tastes better out of a glass bottle than a can, as well.

<comment><USER17> Is this really true? If so, why would it be? Ive had friends say that, but Ive only had Coke from glass that was from Mexico/Europe and hence had real sugar, which is obviously better for a completely different reason.

<comment><USER18> This is true for most things. There is a reason specific wines have specific glasses, as does beer and whisky.

Taste is overwhelmingly defendant on smell, so drinking it out of a bottle where your nose is not in much contact with the aroma, and drinking it out of a glass where your nose is almost next to the drink, are two entirely different sensation.

For example budweiser in a bottle/can, is very bad; almost gasoline-y like bud light, natty ice. Out of a proper glass though its much smoother and lighter tasting, not bad at all.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> In my stats class in school, I volunteered for the coke vs. pepsi blind taste test. I had to guess which was which, and I was right 9/10 trials. Teacher was a bit shocked at that, calling me an outlier.

<comment><USER20> Pepsi is sweeter. It tastes better for one mouthful, but Coke wins in the market because most people find an entire can of Pepsi too sweet.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> 'Although the foods were identical aside from their wrappings, the children said they preferred the taste of the McDonald's-branded burgers, carrots, and apple juice in the vast majority of tests.'

interesting</comment>


Lego Is the Perfect Toy - <AUTHOR> http://nymag.com/scienceofus/2016/12/lego-is-the-perfect-toy.html <comment><USER2> I especially love the algebraic nature of LEGOs. Something the designers took care to respect over the years. Many things combine mathematically with so many other parts[1]. Sometimes in twisted ways, sometimes in absurd ways.

\- [http://www.htxt.co.za/2016/08/08/local-master-builder- shows-...](http://www.htxt.co.za/2016/08/08/local-master-builder-shows-off- the-beautiful-geometry-of-lego/)

\- [http://www.themarysue.com/bendable-lego- geometry/](http://www.themarysue.com/bendable-lego-geometry/) (tolerance based curvature?)

\- [http://brickset.com/article/23288/the-geometry-of-the- new-11...](http://brickset.com/article/23288/the-geometry-of-the- new-11x11-circle-gear-rack)

There are a few pdfs listing the linear and angular ratios, can't find them right now. Enjoy your google fu.

ps: for the sheer epicness of it [https://www.reddit.com/r/lego/comments/4gmsfp/finished_my_gi...](https://www.reddit.com/r/lego/comments/4gmsfp/finished_my_giant_imperial_star_destroyer_moc/)

[1] and as programmers I'm sure you enjoy that ;)

<comment><USER3> I loved that Lego was even units so you could end up having two things half way across your universe pretty much line up perfectly, or require just a few adjustments.

But the fact that THREE flat pieces equaled a standard height piece drove me nuts as a kid. WHY NOT TWO OR FOUR?

<comment><USER4> > I loved that Lego was even units so you could end up having two things half > way across your universe pretty much line up perfectly, or require just a > few adjustments.

This fact is extremely under-appreciated: the Lego system works the way it does because they have attained truly astounding tolerance control in a cheap injection-molding process. I remember a couple of years ago when a small startup promised a Lego-like replacement, but themed for girls. The hype got them plenty of sales, but the poor fit of the pieces meant lots of disappointed customers.

<comment><USER2> Build quality was part of the thing. As a kid you felt it a little bit. As an adult it makes them a value item. It's not just toy to pretend, it's deeper.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Nice long-form overview and, from what I can tell, well-balanced trying to deal with legacy / reputation as a "smart toy" and somewhat inconclusive research on the whole. Intuition is a good "out" in this case, because not every toy works for every learning style for every child, etc. One thing I did see:

> _Marvin Minsky, the MIT scientist who helped pioneer artificial > intelligence, has even said that "the decline of American inventiveness" can > be traced to the rise of Lego, arguing that by becoming the most common > construction toy, it's pushed out construction toys like Tinker Toys and > Erector sets that can get kids building simple machines._

Whoa, those are some names I haven't seen in a while but did grow up playing with. Tinker Toys in particular. To me, the criticism isn't fair - those were toys and learning tools from a prior generation. I'm pretty sure the only reason I grew up with Tinker Toys was because I had a Grandmother who grew up during the Great Depression and was of the generation that enjoyed them. My Parents much more embraced Legos, and, quite simply, getting bags or bins full of used, miscellaneous bricks at garage sales was a huge creativity boost. Then, later, turn around and sell or donate them. Rarely did I see Tinker Toys or Erector sets around. Technics seemed to bridge the gap between Legos and higher-level engineering / complexity / use of motors.

What does feel important about Legos & playtime, to me, is the manipulation of 3D space, coordination, and dexterity training. There is no such replacement via a 2D screen, and 3D / VR or AR aren't even close. The ROI on play time, age appropriate, with Lego-type hands-on exploration is worth keeping in mind. No batteries. Easy to clean. Hard to break. An Occam's Razor of developmental toys.

<comment><USER6> Observing my 7yo son's open-ended play with modern-era LEGOs, I must disagree with Minsky. Perhaps the LEGO sets have changed since this this comment was made. I find the current LEGO Technic pieces to be the perfect tool for open- ended exploration, and for building of simple machines. While the sets do come with prescriptive instructions to build something specific out of that set - you aren't forced to follow them. Those instructions are more of a demo of what you can do with the pieces.

The pieces are almost all generic, and closely model their real-world mechanical equivalents -- beams, pins, gears, axels, motors, linear actuators, switches, battery power supplies. There a great book exploring all the technic fundamentals: "Unofficial LEGO Technic Builder's Guide" [1]. It covers concepts like leverage, torque, gears, gear ratios, differentials, suspensions, transmissions, etc.

Throw in the fact that technic electronic components (motors, lights, sensors) can be driven by code (eg. scratch on a rapsberry pi), and I can't imagine a better learning toy which is initially so approachable, and yet has such a high ceiling for advanced learning.

If you want to see what incredible creations are possible in the hands of the masters, check out "Incredible LEGO Technic" [2].

[1] [https://www.nostarch.com/technicbuilder2](https://www.nostarch.com/technicbuilder2)

[2] [https://www.nostarch.com/incredibletechnic](https://www.nostarch.com/incredibletechnic)

<comment><USER2> The generic was part of the appeal. It seems to have peaked in the 90s, now LEGO is milking dedicated shapes. Expected, that's how "progress" evolve. Even my father complains.

<comment><USER7> > now LEGO is milking dedicated shapes. Expected, that's how "progress" > evolve. Even my father complains

I think most of the people who make these complaints simply haven't shopped for Lego in a while and so are operating on a lot of feeling but not much data. Stroll down the Lego aisle(s) at Target, you'll see plenty of free-form sets and traditional pieces like these entire product lines: [https://www.lego.com/en- us/classic?icmp=COUSFRClassic](https://www.lego.com/en- us/classic?icmp=COUSFRClassic) and [https://www.lego.com/en- us/creator?icmp=COUSFRCreator](https://www.lego.com/en- us/creator?icmp=COUSFRCreator)

<comment><USER2> It's indeed a reflex based on the new sets I saw since a few years (lots of franchise). I still feel something missing from how sets were designed in the 80s-00s era. Something of that period I miss, half nostalgia, but not only. A balance between surface and simplicity. Kinda like pixel art.

<comment><USER7> > A balance between surface and simplicity. Kinda like pixel art.

Check out the architecture series: [https://www.lego.com/en- us/architecture](https://www.lego.com/en-us/architecture)

They use mostly basic shapes, and not many colors, but I think have found a nice balance between representation & abstraction for the buildings they model.

Another thing going on is, I think their model designers have gotten a lot more skilled at using pieces in novel ways in their models. They've gotten better at representing details, so more details show up.

<comment><USER2> Good point, they have part of what I mentionned, but these are restricted less playful sets.

<comment><USER7> They're not playful, I agree, but they're not restricted. They're made up of primarily generic pieces.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8>
      there was value to the building experience, the sense of accomplishment, the spatial reading

Toys like this are always so much more memorable--and meaningful.

I made a list of gifts that help people build, hack, create, explore etc [1], would love feedback from HN.

[1] [http://wanderkind.org/](http://wanderkind.org/)

</comment><comment><USER9> My son has a ridiculous bucket of Legos - more than I ever could have dreamed of as a child. I used to spend obscene amounts of money on branded Lego sets when a birthday approached. I soon realized that, while a Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle van was really cool (seriously, it was), it only lasted about a day or two before it was reduced to pile of brick rubble and scooped back into the mega-bin. At that stage, the possibility of it ever being reassembled was virtually impossible for a 1st grader to figure out.

The generic pieces were the way to go.

Then, after what seemed like about a year, he started playing with them again. He showed me his long, snake-like sumbaraine with parts of dragon bits here and there which he'd found somewhere in that bin. It was awesome. It was unscripted and creative. It came from his mind, not some 30-paged instruction booklet.

I was more excited to see that kind of creativity than I was the original dragon (which I was made to assemble eons ago). I recently felt a bit jaded about Legos. But my son brought me back.

</comment><comment><USER10> I still look at most of the modern, themed Lego sets with a sense of sadness. They seem to inspire the "you have to follow the instructions" mentality so apply demonstrated in the father in the Lego movie. The older sets did include instructions, but the older blocks seemed more generic to building a wide variety of things, versus the "this is a piece for the Batmobile engine."

<comment><USER11> How modern is 'modern'?

When I was a child, the sets I received usually had some sort of theme, even if it wasn't a branded theme. Pirates, space, race cars, whatever. Also, as other articles have pointed out, the majority of the specialized-looking pieces in modern, branded models, are actually creative re-uses of pre- existing pieces. Re-contextualization.

One thing I remember distinctly is that my sets always came with two sets of instructions - one would build the model featured on the box, the other would use a subset of the same parts to build something related but different. Personally, I would usually build the intended model, play with it a bit, then disassemble it for the alternate model. Eventually that would get disassembled as well, added to the big box of unsorted Lego, and would be fodder for modeling some other random idea.

That said, I think I did more experimentation with the Technic line of Lego, which is more like a plastic erector set, than I did with the regular bricks. At least, I remember more of the experimentation with those, probably because it was at a later point in my childhood.

<comment><USER12> I'd do roughly the same. I would build and play with the main model, perhaps the secondary designs if they looked like fun. Then I'd break it down and use the pieces for whatever I felt like at the time.

But then roughly once a year I would break down everything I'd built and sort every piece. Then I'd rebuild all the original models.

Funnily I have trouble swallowing medication, but I once put a flat 1x4 piece in my mouth for storage, but accidentally swallowed it. After that I'd always be bummed out when building my fire truck because it would be missing a piece. Back then in the 80's you couldn't get replacement pieces (at least where I lived).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Perfect toy indeed, and I'm glad to see how they've captured the girl's market with the Friends and related series. Lego had attempted to market to girls several times before 2012 but failed. I appreciate how this interview spoke to the specific outcome of their market research, i.e. the larger, more detailed figures. It must have been crazy to suggest to Lego that they abandon the "minifig" format for a major new product line, but it turns out that's exactly what they needed to do.

My own family experience is reflective: my daughter enjoyed building Lego sets (and got quite good at it) but didn't really engage with _playing_ with them until the Friends sets came out. With Friends she can spend hours creating a huge narrative about their adventures. Now you can't find a coffee table in our house that doesn't have a couple Lego sets on it. And when other girls come over to play, they're drawn like magnets straight to the Legos.

<comment><USER5> Very interesting to get your perspective, re: what they studied, deployed, and you observed. Nice to hear success stories. Habits and 'tradition' can be tough to adjust or break, but when it works, quite cool. The "creating a narrative" is awesome, as in a lot of development research I reviewed for some studies, because that's how 'play' and development seem to grow naturally. Acting out. Imagining stories. Not the end-all be-all of things - but a noteworthy component.

<comment><USER14> Yep, Friends is an example of the success of research, product development, and commitment over status quo. LEGO's research showed them that many girls wanted characters with names (Sophia, Emily, Sherrie, etc.) not mini-figures with roles (firefighter, policewoman, robber). Friends gives them that.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Just some x y work but i think some here might enjoy the nostalgia

400k+ 2x2 Lego bricks pixel wall [http://imgur.com/a/X5fHS](http://imgur.com/a/X5fHS)

<comment><USER16> Wow, where is that?

<comment><USER15> In a 36m x 2,75m hallway [http://www.alr.lu/](http://www.alr.lu/)

</comment></comment></comment><comment> gene-h One thing that really annoys me about lego, is that lego mindstorms kits are still relatively expensive despite tech improving. It is hard for most parents to justify this costs on a toy. In fact, the price has gone up with time rather than decreasing as would be expect. The newer kits are more expensive than the older kits by about $40 when adjusted for inflation.[0][1] Sure, the new kits feature an arm processor that runs linux and has bluetooth, but these things have gotten cheap.

I am somewhat surprised the chinese haven't started making counterfeit smart bricks with the same capability.

[0][http://lego.wikia.com/wiki/9747_Robotics_Invention_System](http://lego.wikia.com/wiki/9747_Robotics_Invention_System) [1][http://lego.wikia.com/wiki/31313_Mindstorms_EV3](http://lego.wikia.com/wiki/31313_Mindstorms_EV3)

</comment><comment><USER17> The lament over price and overly specialized parts is misplaced. Price per piece has not changed much, and there have always been specialized pieces in sets.

While I've seen the trend of more kids just following the instructions (vs free-building from their imagination), the pieces still provide a lot of opportunity for creativity.

Even better, Lego released their free Lego Digital Designer (LDD) software, which is a CAD-like program where you can build in 3d using the entire catalog of Lego pieces. It opens up many more creative possibilities.

For example, using LDD, I was able to design my own take on the A-Team van.

[https://ideas.lego.com/projects/160590](https://ideas.lego.com/projects/160590)

On the Lego Ideas website, customers can submit designs, and the Lego company will consider making them into official sets... Yet another way to stimulate creativity.

</comment><comment><USER18> My parents like to tell the story of when I got my first Lego set--the first thing I did was pull out the instruction booklet (with all the diagrams of 'models you can make') and put it in the trash, with the explanation "I don't need instructions." Most of what I wound up building with them was 'world of the Future' models, which demonstrated some vision of an ideal society. For example, I had a model street with some storefronts, and overhead wiring to support small single-person electric scooters which would run on the sidewalk alongside the pedestrians, and would be docked at special stations for the next person who needed them. (I struggled with designing an automated system to automatically redistribute them as necessary, using only relay logic which is what I understood at the time.) Another model was what I now recognize as a 'smart home', which featured occupancy detection, a (wired) telephone remarkably similar to Apple's 1983 concept phone[1] based on the Macs we had in our house at the time and an Apple Newton I had seen, and various other concepts (again, all based on relay logic and desktop computers!)

Bear in mind that I was doing all of this when I was 10. Clearly this was not normal play amongst my peers, and I would not expect Lego to provoke this sort of thing in most people. However, it was for me a valuable tool in building a worldview which I still strive for today.

My point in mentioning all this is that the great virtue of Lego is that it can be used for pretty much anything. Even if you get a set which is intended for "conflict play," it can be repurposed by the recipient to match whatever it is they're most interested in. (It's sort of like an inverse of the short story _The Toys of Peace_ [2] in that regard.)

[1]: [http://www.mactrast.com/2011/12/apples-was-working-on-a- touc...](http://www.mactrast.com/2011/12/apples-was-working-on-a-touchscreen- phone-prototype-25-years-before-the-iphone/)

[2]: [http://www.eastoftheweb.com/short- stories/UBooks/ToysPeac.sh...](http://www.eastoftheweb.com/short- stories/UBooks/ToysPeac.shtml)

</comment><comment><USER19> Perfect timing, I've just ordered the three big Technics sets from 2016.

Technics is brilliant, even if my enjoyment with it is currently limited to following the instructions. I hope that it'll teach my kids a lot about engineering. The gear boxes in the big sets for example are genius.

<comment><USER20> For xmas I asked my mom to mail me my old Mindstorms sets (original yellow brick version). I want to share them with my 2 year old, who is already into Legos. I absolutely loved those things.

<comment><USER11> I have a fun memory of the yellow Mindstorms set.

Apparently, the visual programming environment was just a thin wrapper on top of C, and people quickly came out with simple IDEs that let you program the brick in C.

I tried to program a musical sequence, and was mystified when programs involving simple decimals didn't work. I didn't understand at the time, but the Yellow Brick didn't have any floating-point support! I eventually just faked it with a good-enough approximation of using integers to emulate fixed- point arithmetic.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> Tell that to my feet when my kids leave them in the middle of the family room at night!

Legos are amazing and are definitely the focal point of my kids (age 5 and 9) creative play.

</comment><comment><USER22> During my childhood (80s) I only cared about 3 toys: lego, playmobil and zx spectrum. All the rest was crap.

</comment><comment><USER23> I often try to explain the appeal of programming to the uninitiated by saying it's a bit like building Lego models but you have an almost infinite supply of blocks.

</comment><comment><USER24> From the article: "What he noticed was that they now play with physical Legos as if they were the video game, reenacting their races with the plastic pieces. This isn't to say that Legos aren't still good toys, or that there's anything necessarily wrong with imaginary play mimicking the experience of a video game, but it's certainly different from what most parents imagine they're buying in a box of Legos. The question is whether that difference matters."

Not only does the difference not matter, I'm not sure I believe that there _is_ a difference. When kids play, they're acting out variations on stories they've encountered. I don't see a real difference between performing scenes from a video game and performing scenes from a book, movie, TV show, or real life.

</comment><comment><USER25> Worth mentioning the CEO credited with the turnaround announced his retirement (to the board) this week.

<comment><USER26> As far as I understand, a Lego parent company is getting set up (Lego Brand Group) and Knudstorp will be head of that company, while Lego itself will switch focus on just the brick themselves (a bit like the recent Google->Alphabet restructuring).

Source: [http://www.brothers-brick.com/2016/12/06/lego-names-new- ceo-...](http://www.brothers-brick.com/2016/12/06/lego-names-new-ceo-and- creates-lego-brand-group-news/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> Try stepping on it and you'll quickly discover its flaw.

</comment><comment><USER28> I remember playing with a really old version of Technic as a kid. This was probably one of my favorite toys. I would build all sorts of interesting machines with the gears.

I saw another mention of a raspberry pi driving Technic on here. Has any tried this?

<comment><USER6> Yes. Raspbian comes with a version of Scratch which has out-of-box support for LEGO WeDo/PowerFunctions.

If you get the Lego USB hub part (9581), you can attach Power Functions v1.0 components to your raspberry pi via the hub. Works right away. The USB hub has two channels, so you can use it to control 2 motors, 1 motor + 1 sensor, or 2 sensors.

The LEGO extension to Scratch has controls like:

\- Set Motor (A or B or both) to speed 0-100

\- Turn Motor (A or B or both) on for x seconds

\- Stop Motor ...

\- Reverse Motor Direction

\- Read tilt/distance sensor value

I've also worked out the IR codes (with the help of others' work) so if you hookup an infrared led to your pi and install LIRC you can imitate the Power Functions remote controls.

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> One of the best toys I've seen are "snap circuits", which are basically one of those simple electronic lab kit "toys" only that they do not use cables. Instead you snap blocks together like legos.

<comment><USER6> Lego power functions is exactly this (but for very limited circuits). There are battery boxes for power, switches (both mechanical, and remote- controlled), lights, motors, etc.

The power functions pieces have special bricks which embed electrical endpoints which click together when the bricks are connected. The system is basically 4 wires - 2 which propagate the power rails to downstream pieces, and 2 more wires which are for PWM controlling of motor spin rate.

I would love it if they added more electronic components to this set (eg. timers, sounds, more sensors, etc). If you like to tinker, you can cut apart these wires and hook up the control wires to an raspberrypi-controlled circuit.

There's probably even more circuits possible with Mindstorms components, but I'm not familiar enough w/ Mindstorms to comment.

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> Lego is a near-perfect toy. Anyone who claims it is perfect has not stepped on one barefoot in the dark.

After a few times you consider crawling across the floor probing the floor before you as if you were Rambo in a minefield.

</comment><comment><USER31> Agreed, Lego is fantastic, and timeless.

</comment><comment><USER32> I have 6yo and 1yo daughters and one thing that strikes me with the current Lego range Vs the sets I had as a kid is the amount of rubbish decorative tiny parts that the most recent sets include.

(I know you can still buy the basic box full of bricks, but these are sometimes hard to find)

</comment><comment><USER33> The only thing that is sad is superhero themes. There are much better stories out there.

</comment><comment><USER34> Yup, perfect toy: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cXgB3lIvPHI](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cXgB3lIvPHI)

</comment><comment><USER35> We have a few LEGO books that make people think.

<comment><USER36> [https://www.nostarch.com/lego](https://www.nostarch.com/lego)

</comment></comment><comment><USER37> Legos are dope as fuck.

</comment><comment><USER38> Isn't this just an ad?

</comment><comment><USER39> I wish they would bring back some of the classic themes. There is kind of a hole right now, as there isn't a real Castle theme, a real Pirate theme, and Space has been subsumed into the Star Wars licensing for almost two decades.

One thing I've always really wanted was a modular castle line, akin to the modular town building series, e.g. [https://shop.lego.com/en-US/Pet- Shop-10218](https://shop.lego.com/en-US/Pet-Shop-10218)

<comment><USER40> Holy crap "modular castles" would be ideal for the Lego Ideas website.

<comment><USER39> It's nuts that they haven't done it already. The late 80s, early 90s crusaders/falcon knights/black knights sets _could_ be put together in something approaching what I'm envisioning, but it was underdeveloped. The Medieval Market Village and Kingdoms Joust sets were natural jumping-off points for a modular castle system.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER41> Yes</comment>


Specialty retailer creates secures cloud foundation - <AUTHOR> https://www.flux7.com/blog/specialty-retailer-begins-cloud-journey-with-flux7-secure-start/ <comment><USER2> Please don't editorialize the article titles for the submission.</comment>


Why Indians don't give back to society? - <AUTHOR> http://www.muraleethummarukudy.com/blog/?p=89

<comment><USER2> The title is not of TFA, but of a post TFA is responding to.

TFA is a rambling, defensive piece that lurches to a "don't be judgmental based on a small sample" conclusion even as the writer throws out anti-Western snipes, perhaps forgetting that the original piece's writer is Indian as well.

I wish I could have my time back for looking at either post.</comment>


Ask HN: What are founders doing about the corona virus? (Survey) - <AUTHOR> http://anthonydavidadams.com/virus <comment><AUTHOR> We coach a number of founders who have asked us what others are doing with their teams.

We'll be compiling a collection of response plans and sharing with the community.

We'd love your answers on the survey or in the comments here.

We won't be making recommendations, rather will just present what others are doing as examples to help make informed decisions.</comment>


Reminder: You Can't Be Both a Service Member and an Extremist - <AUTHOR> http://taskandpurpose.com/reminder-cant-service-member-extremist/ <comment><USER2> Um, pretty sure that's why they have masks.</comment>