The World Needs Data Scientists - T-A http://businessintelligence.com/bi-insights/the-world-needs-data-scientists-infographic-2/

<comment><AUTHOR> I doubt it.

The rise and fall of data scientists (if they ever rise) will be swift.

Thing is, it's easy to collect a huge pile of data and then retrospectively look at the data set and see patterns in it (very often, patterns that don't actually exist but some over fitted model kind of suggests exist).

It's much much harder to get anything tangibly useful from that data.

Sometimes there _is no tangibly useful data_. It's _all just random_.*

'What have you got to show the last 2 weeks of effort?' ... 'Well, we definitely proved that there's absolutely no correlation between our manager's new initiative and online sales; that small spike we saw was within seasonal variation'. How long do you think you'll have a job?

What people need is _better tools_ to auto-classify data into data sets and perform real time analysis of their data (like Splunk, which is amazing), so everyone can look at summary information in real time, at any time, and you can respond dynamically to changes.

* - I know, I know, no data of that sort is totally random. ...but it's often so noisy that no statistically valid information is recoverable.

<comment><USER2> Nah, data science is AI-complete, like natural language understanding. Think of current state of data science as just the next iteration / rebranding of statistics, powered by newest developments in CS, machine learning and software industry. There is no shortage of statistical data exploration and modeling applications, and we are pretty far from full software automation in this space.

<comment><USER3> AI-complete, awesome terminology you coined there.

<comment><USER4> what does it mean?

<comment><USER3> Solving it would mean solving AI.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Are businesses _paying handsomely_ for data scientists?

If not, then they don't _need_ data scientists.

Will they? Maybe, maybe not.

These ten-year industry forecast things are categorically ridiculous, whether they come from the Bureau of Labor Statistics or some private forecaster.

<comment><USER6> In my experience, people will throw money at "data scientists", if they can find them. It really is hard to find someone who is experienced in Physics (or Math, but they always seem to be physicists), has computational experience, but mostly who has the right frame of mind. A lot of people I've met who would be qualified for the role think it's beneath them: they don't want to use existing libraries, they want to progress the state of the art. And once you've done a PhD, I think it's hard for us to offer them a consistent level of challenging work.

Despite the 'science' part, I think there's a significant engineering component to the job: working within resource constraints and reusing existing tools. I've heard a lot of good explanations of how to approximate an integral, but the same people aren't really keen on working on a production recommendation system.

<comment><USER7> > And once you've done a PhD, I think it's hard for us to offer them a > consistent level of challenging work.

As someone who's almost gotten their PhD in (mathematical models of) medical imaging, I think you'd be surprised at what kind of work would be consistently challenging enough to interest me.

I was at a job forum a couple weeks ago, and whenever I would bring up my incoming doctorate, company reps would be like "Oh, well our stuff must be pretty boring to you, then." I really wanted to say, "If I'm talking to you, it means what you're doing is interesting to me!"

I'm sure some PhDs are driven to improve the state of the art, but there's also a perception that a PhD won't want to go back to working on problems that are already solved in principle -- and that perception scares me, because I'm going to need a job soon....

<comment><USER8> > I was at a job forum a couple weeks ago, and whenever I would bring up my > incoming doctorate, company reps would be like "Oh, well our stuff must be > pretty boring to you, then." I really wanted to say, "If I'm talking to you, > it means what you're doing is interesting to me!"

Yes! There is an absolute myth in industry that if someone who has a PhD shows interest, then you're best looking elsewhere, because they're likely to not find the work challenging enough and jump ship easily as a result.

I'm on the verge of completing my PhD thesis, so I can easily relate to what you're saying. I've pretty much perfected the art of starting with "I'm getting my PhD, but don't assume that I'm not interested in more "mundane" things". Pretty much, I think there's a challenge to be had in any tech job, and I think the main characteristics to convey to a possible future employer is that beyond having a great tech skill set, you know how to manage a project (HUGE skill I've gained from managing my PhD), you know how to perservere in the face of adversity (any PhD candidate that hasn't faced this hasn't done their PhD the "right" way in my opinion), and you're creative right down to your core.

<comment><USER9> As a recruiter, I'd say that you really need to tell what you're thinking to people who might interview you. PhD shows that you've spent some years to get your skills Certified and thus master some of them. Bur it doesn't mean that a person with a PhD is better than the one without but with 5-10 years experience of working in some specific area. Some good programmers and scientists(like data scientist) never get a PhD and their skills are not lower compared to their certified peers. So my advice would be: lay it on the line regarding what you're looking for in terms of challenges and reward for them and show what you can. Papers don't matter much nowadays but personalities do.

<comment><USER8> A PhD might not demonstrate that you're anymore capable of a specific job, but by the same reckoning plenty of employers pigeon-hole PhDs as "academic-types" with no sense of how things work in the real world. With respect to that, it is really is about breaking unfounded stereotypes and debunking myths that if you've gone through formal training and you have the "Dr." title attached to your name, that you're not really able to be a team player and achieve what's necessary in the business world. Bottomline is that whether you have a PhD or not, as you say, you have to show what you're capable of. The fact of the matter is that having completed a PhD brings with it a lot of "real world" skills than simply becoming a domain expert: project management, creativity, passion, perserverance, to name just a few. My experience, shared by others with a research background is that the the tech industry often needs "educating" that PhDs can bring meaningful value to the table, even for problems that at first might seem to not be of interest.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Gearing myself towards a data science career, it strikes me as a particularly odd way of presenting growth in the field. A lot of these articles seem to suggest that the field has been recently "discovered", when it's more a case of the technology supporting more advanced analysis. "Data science" existed before all of this hype, and I think it's a misnomer to suggest that that wasn't the case. There's definitely a greater spotlight on data science now, but I don't think that's any real reflection of how business intelligence and data analytics were done before the mega-hype kicked in.

<comment><USER10> Speaking as someone for whom statistical software puts food on my table, one of my favorite statements about data science is (roughly speaking) "If you don't have data, are you really a scientist?"

I would completely agree with your point about technology supporting more advanced analysis: Current information processing capabilities allow us to ask new questions from higher volumes of data than was possible in the past.

<comment><USER11> "data scientist" sounds much more interesting and succinct than "scientist who transform and analyzes data which can only be transformed and analyzed by computational means".

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Unfortunately, because of all the hype, all it is going to get is douchebags instead.

<comment><USER13> Having graduated in May of 2001, and seeing my CS classes go from full of people to a ghost town from March-May, I wouldn't be surprised.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> Does the 15000% YOY increase in "data scientist" job postings reflect an actual greater demand for data scientists, or a trendy retitling of vacancies that were previously give titles like "market analyst", "data product manager", "operational research analyst" or even "actuary" and "economist"?

</comment><comment><USER15> Great! More analytics people (and that is what they are being used for) looking up our butts so as to to spy on inner behaviors, proffer the "correct" ads in front of our faces, figure out who should be hired and fired and telling artists what sort of art they have to produce.

<comment><USER16> Speaking as an artist, if you know someone with provable expertise in analysing what sort of art I should produce, I would _very much_ like to hear from them.

Making art and making stuff you think people will like are not mutually exclusive.

(I am very serious about this, by the way - if you have expertise in analytics for storytelling, or even just interesting ideas for same, please shoot me an email.)

<comment><USER15> Well, if that's what your craft is all about Slashdot did an in depth analysis on the subject here:

[http://slashdot.org/topic/bi/can-big-data-prevent- hollywoods...](http://slashdot.org/topic/bi/can-big-data-prevent-hollywoods- blockbuster-flops/)

Here is a white paper on how to roll out you movie based upon "data scientist" analysis.

[http://www.google.com/think/research-studies/quantifying- mov...](http://www.google.com/think/research-studies/quantifying-movie- magic.html)

I have no idea why you are seduced by this? Whistler likened painting portraits (which he was paid very well for) to prostitution and on his own time & dime gave us his nocturne paintings which ultimately inspiring Monet in the process.

[http://www.stargonaut.com/trialog.html](http://www.stargonaut.com/trialog.html)

Analytics tells you where you have been not where you are going. Novelty changes everything and analytics can't predict innovation. That is why Hollywood and the music industry suck.

<comment><USER16> Thanks for the links - interesting stuff!

Why I'm interested: because much like money, analytics are a terrible master but a wonderful servant.

If you're ruled by them, I agree, that's limiting - but if what they're doing is providing useful information about your audience, that's invaluable. This is particularly true if you're a recording-based artist (I am), as it partially allows you to restore the feedback that you'd get from a live audience.

As many people have said, before you can break the rules you should probably understand them. Likewise, before you go against audience expectations it's helpful to know what they expect.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> what about videogame designer or "solar panel consultant" ?

</comment><comment><USER18> Odd use of a pie chart for a web site devoted to data science, since pie chart portions usually add up to 100%. It would have made sense if they had shown the categories as highest degree earned, instead of degree(s) earned.

<comment><USER19> Reminds me of my favorite Tumblr lately, wtfviz ([http://wtfviz.net/](http://wtfviz.net/)).

<comment><USER18> Oh god, I'm glad I didn't have coffee in my mouth with some of those. However, there are a few on there that I actually think are pretty good, if unconventional (like the senate voting visualization, which does a great job of showing polarization).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Any advice on an aspiring data scientist?

I am currently finishing my bachelors in applied math, and computer science. Started to focus on machine learning this semester and hoping to do my capstone on it.

<comment><USER21> It's work in progress but this book seems interesting so far: [http://www.manning.com/zumel/](http://www.manning.com/zumel/)

(Disclosure: written by a friend.)

<comment><USER22> I skimmed through the intro and just bought the book. Thanks for the rec!

I love the idea of being able to interact with the authors as they write the book.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> You mean Statisticians.

</comment><comment><USER11> The world sure doesn't need more nerds to tell it how data scientists have been around since the scientific method and it's all a bubble any way.

</comment><comment><USER24> We need more data scientists to make more infographics!

</comment><comment><USER25> And the world needs also with good and easy education permanent and easy access to knowledges.

</comment><comment><USER26> Yeah for the spy agencies ....</comment>


Jeff Bezos' Guide to Life - <AUTHOR> https://techcrunch.com/2017/11/05/jeff-bezos-guide-to-life/ <comment><USER2> Can we add (2017) to the title? This has been posted before: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15681256](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15681256)

</comment><comment><USER3> When reading interviews like this I often fall into the mental trap of thinking: "if I do everything like this guy, I'll be just as successful!" Of course, this is not true. To become hugely successful, one must in the right place at the right time and do the right thing. A large part of it is luck (or so I like telling myself), so "advice" from very successful people is just like a lottery winner's advice on how to choose the numbers.

<comment><USER4> I disagree completely. While hitting it as big as Jeff Bezos did relies on luck, there's generally themes and qualities that lend themselves to being "lucky" as you call it. And even if you dont hit it as big as Bezos, those qualities can improve your life and other's opinion of you. For example, Jeff Bezos always gets the job done. Nearly every tech success story has some variation of that skill, the ability to complete the task, sometimes in a roundabout way, even if it seemed impossible.

This is not to say acquiring that trait gives you a billion dollar company. But it certainly doesn't hurt to have.

<comment><USER3> Actually, pretty much all of the advice Bezos gives here resonates a lot with me.

However, measurable factors like intergenerational income elasticity and social mobility appear to show that who you are (luck) is just as important in terms of financial success than what you do.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> > "Jeff and his wife let their kids use sharp knives since they were four > (...) I'd much rather have a kid with nine fingers than a resourceless kid."

Interesting. My thinking would be more along the lines of "you can still learn to be resourceful when you're 30, but the finger is gone for good". Of course I'm aware it's not easy to rewire your brain. Plus, you know, not everything is as disposable as a finger.

<comment><USER6> Reminds me of a Terry Pratchett quote from The Hogfather:

"You can't give her that!' she screamed. 'It's not safe!' IT'S A SWORD, said the Hogfather. THEY'RE NOT MEANT TO BE SAFE. 'She's a child!' shouted Crumley. IT'S EDUCATIONAL. 'What if she cuts herself?' THAT WILL BE AN IMPORTANT LESSON."

<comment><USER7> I know that Pratchett had important things to say, but also this was written for comedic effect. In reality there is is clearly a continuum between "swaddle them in cotton wool" and "give them power tools and let them learn", and nether extreme is very desirable.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I wonder what the motivations are behind public engagement like this?

I have no idea whether Mr Bezos is a nice bloke or not; but unfortunately for him being the most richest man in the world means most people have a somewhat negative disposition towards him.

for example this quote from the article "And finally, his most ridiculous quote of the talk" paints him as some sort of a disconnected member of high society (and perhap he is) but going from the previous quotes he seems quite well adjusted.

I swear this is becoming more and more common. ... and well, I am more than capable of forming opinions on my own.

<comment><USER9> "for him being the most richest man in the world means most people have a somewhat negative disposition towards him." or maybe Amazon's terrible and terrifying company culture and his behaviour adds to that a little bit too?

<comment><USER8> aye ok, perhaps it IS justified. But the interview didnt actually touch on anything of the sort, yet the author is attempting to ridicule him.

-remarkable man does unremarkable interview yet the outcome is "what is this elistist douchebro gonna do next?"

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> > "We have to go to space to save earth" Jeff says, noting "we kind of have to > hurry." Still, he believes Plan A and Plan B both need to be protecting the > environment of Earth to keep it livable. "We've sent robotic probes to every > planet in our solar system. This one is the best. It's not even close."

Anyone know more about his reasoning here. Is this asteroid/comet impact protection or something else?

</comment><comment><USER10> Nice article.</comment>


Ask HN: Is there a "right" equity compensation for #6-10 employee? - <AUTHOR>

<comment><AUTHOR> As a founder, recently, we've been hit with the "I want more equity" statement due to the fact that they know how much everyone else has. (We're trying the whole full transparency path)

However, the ask was not from the I've done my research and similar roles at such # employee has gotten x% but completely a I'm #n+1 and yet n has significantly more equity than me.

I'm in the mindset that regardless of role, since these are the first few employees, they should get a decent portion of the company due to opportunity costs, risks, etc... but at least so far, I've asked what would make you extremely happy and satisfied as an annual compensation amount (monetary + equity) over the next 5 years?

My goal is to double the sought after compensation amount with anything more = icing on the cake. - This way, the conversation goes away from straight comparing equity percentages and of course allowing employees to choose whether they want more equity or more cash.

1-800-contacts founder, "Satisfaction=Expectation-Reality"</comment>


Antifurto: home-made security camera - <AUTHOR> http://blog.mbrt.it/2017-07-07-antifurto-code-review/ <comment><USER2> Hey, excellent docs. Really loved seeing a diagram with a legend explaining what each arrow is doing, plus the finite state machine. You don't see that level of engineering so often. Thanks for sharing.

btw. Would just recommend to specify the GPL version explicitly it is just mentioned "GPL" and that could be version 1, 2 or 3 which are different in requirements, for example: GPL-3.0 or if you want to make it forward compatible with future licenses, just choose GPL-3.0+</comment>


Reading local files in JavaScript (HTML5) - <AUTHOR> http://www.html5rocks.com/en/tutorials/file/dndfiles/

<comment><USER2> The new file reading stuff in HTML5 is fantastic- I've written a little JS widget for my site that takes a local video file, reads the first 100KB of it, then sends that off to a remote video processor by cross-domain AJAX to get a thumbnail, which is then loaded onto the user's page.

It really is amazing what you can do. The only thing missing is being able to decode video metadata so that I know whether 100KB is too little or too much to send if I want to extract a single frame.

<comment><USER3> you could use broadway, which is a h.264 player written in js onto canvas to get your frame and then just send that. see: [http://badassjs.com/post/12035631618/broadway- an-h-264-decod...](http://badassjs.com/post/12035631618/broadway- an-h-264-decoder-in-javascript-running-at) <http://mbebenita.github.com/Broadway/broadway.html>

<comment><USER2> That is an extremely cool project. Unfortunately, we don't know what format users are uploading, so we have to pass it off to an ffmpeg-powered service.

<comment><USER3> oh well in that case there still is no need to just send 100k and hope it works, you could use websockets to push it to the service, pipe it directly into ffmpg and when you get back a frame have websocket tell browser to stop sending data.

you can do the same thing with 2 ajax requests too. one doing the upload and the other that opens a connection at the same time and waits for a success response. onreadystate 3 of the second request, abort() the upload request.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> My first thoughts go to security concerns, but I didn't see any mention of them in the article. Does anyone have any links that deal with this?

This is really cool stuff, so my first instinct is to consider the possible caveats.

<comment><USER5> Well, you always have to manually select the file(s). At that point, the website could always upload it, so this is no worse than the status quo.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Any way to request access to a folder to read all the local files in it?

<comment><USER7> <http://www.html5rocks.com/en/tutorials/file/filesystem/> i think you can't request, but once user selects directory, you can read files under it. you'll enjoy this.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> The spec changes quiet often and if you do the javascript file stuff alot (my startup deals with local files with javascript so i use js for files alot) you will come across something that has been changed from what it is on html5rocks. It gets ugly very quickly. When i started it, the condition was alot worse, there was practically no one writing any tutorials. Your only option was to reverse engineer the spec draft. That wasn't pretty. Now the condition is much better (but i would still love to see more people write tutorials about this). This is very powerful stuff and not many people are writing about it, maybe because some parts of filesystem interaction spec are still not stable and used my many people.

<comment><USER9> I've found the same thing. I'm holding off on implementing some of this stuff (outside of prototypes) because it seems Safari/IE support is missing and there isn't a decent polyfill that I'm aware of.

<comment><USER8> hmm there is not much to hold ground on any browser other than chrome. Filesystem api wasn't stable the last i checked in FF. Any public implementation that runs on atleast 4 major browser is still atleast 6 month away :( My app is in chrome webstore so i don't have to worry about browser support and chrome also updates automatically so if it works in latest stable, i can launch without thinking twice :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Does anyone know of a browser plugin or anything that allows you to write files, too?

<comment><USER8> well you can always use file system api. <http://www.html5rocks.com/en/tutorials/file/filesystem/> but its chrome only

<comment><USER11> For what it's worth, TiddlyWiki can save itself on the filesystem even with Firefox (user gets prompted to allow access). I don't know how it works though and when I tried it seemed to be quite buggy.

<comment><USER5> According to Wikipedia they use FileI/O, a Mozilla API for accessing the filesystem, which from what I can tell it's more directed at Addons than webpages.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I have used this for a few things. One of them that was the most interesting to code, even though very narrowly useful, was a way to compare two memory dumps from a C++ game to find the objects that don't match (after the game detects a checksum mismatch between online players, the players are asked to make these dumps, and then submit them to us; We drag'n'drop two dumps into a webpage and get a printout of objects that don't match). Admittedly a C++ app would have been a lot faster, but Chrome still managed to read the dumps and extract the relevant info in several seconds.

</comment><comment><USER13> i used this some time ago for a chrome app [https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/ednbfblokipkbkecmf...](https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/ednbfblokipkbkecmfinlfhcikhidnoc) it's open source here <https://github.com/franzenzenhofer/farbzauber></comment>


Ask HN: Are there any tools you don't use/support for ethical reasons? - <AUTHOR>

Just wondering if anyone eschews something like the recent React Native release on the grounds of opposing Facebook corporate policy (on patents, press baronage, or what have you)?
I will admit to using what I think are the best tools, even when I worry about where they're coming from. I'm split though if this is necessarily bad.
Sure I'm supporting Facebook (who does bad things) but I'm also supporting Facebook open-sourcing their code (which is a good thing).
Thoughts? <comment><USER2> There are a lot of otherwise appealing jobs that I don't apply to for ethical reasons. For example I have experience with C++ quantitative investment work, but I won't do it anymore as I came to regard it as immoral - that kind of code is used by those who understand finance, to take money from those who don't.

<comment><USER3> Careful believing whenever HN / Reddit tells you something is bad.

It's a similar group behavior to how towns can form a hate for the opposing town's soccer team. In that case, it can get so carried away as to lead to physical violence between the groups. This is the same level of backing as there is for some of the things Reddit and HN are constantly repeating that they hate. Pure emotion, basically.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Anything from Walmart Labs. I just can't bring myself to use any of their open-source projects. I know it is a separate entity, but it just makes the code.. smell bad.

<comment><USER2> I won't even set foot in a walmart store anymore, not since it won the gender- discrimination lawsuit that was pressed by its female employees.

<comment><USER5> _slow clap_

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I am dead serious when I say this: for ethical reasons, I avoid pretty much anything that's licensed under the GPL.

</comment><comment><USER7> Google updated its algorithm, but still s*cks. I'm also using [https://swisscows.com](https://swisscows.com). It provides great results, it's more secure, doesn't store tracking cookies or user queries.

</comment><comment><USER8> The opposite question would be as, if not more, interesting: are there tools that you use or support out of a sense of moral obligation?

<comment><USER6> Yes:

iojs

llvm

clang

ghc

v8

react

meteor

Mac OS X

<comment><USER8> I am curious why you feel morally obligated to use OS X, React and Meteor. Your other comment mentions avoiding the GPL but I am unaware of GPL-licensed competitors to React or Meteor, so I assume it's a different reason than with Clang vs GCC.

<comment><USER6> My reason is that I want to use the best available tool I can get my hands on, so that I can do right by the people that use my software (provide them with the new features and support they want, as quickly and cost-effectively as is possible).

GPL advocates say that doing right by my users amounts to providing them with 100% of the source code of the applications that I and any collaborators write.

Most of my users are not technical, and could not care less about the source code behind the apps they use. They just want something that's easy to use and reliable.

Some people see this very differently than I do, but my take is that being moral means doing right by and for yourself first, where "yourself" includes concern for the specific people and things that are important in your life. For people you don't know personally, the right attitude is benevolence (unless and until a particular person gives you a good reason to avoid them.)

Maybe some people say that I could live by that standard with the GPL, but my own judgement is that I (as well as the people and things that I care about) am far better off without being encumbered by it in the slightest.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> For compiled software, pretty much anything that isn't GPL is a no-go for me.

For non-compiled software (e.g. Javascript, PHP, Python, Perl, Shell), license doesn't matter to me since I can just see the damn code. Unless it's obfuscated.

</comment><comment><USER10> Google Charts. Not comfortable sending my data through them because I don't trust them.

<comment><USER11> I also stopped using any of Google's services, because their products are made so smart, that when you realize why it's free, you've already given up too much of your data into the wrong hands.

Enabling the location services on your phone in example, asks you only once to "increase" the precision by using using cellular, gps and nearby WiFi SSIDs. That's because Google lost a lawsuit for illegaly collecting a database of all SSIDs. Now they let you do it.

But think about it, how can they improve the precision of your phone's location services, when GPS + Celular already are accurate within 1-2m? I mean nearby SSID's won't magically give you military precision and more precision than what you have with GPS+celular alone is not even required.

I'm using [https://swisscows.ch](https://swisscows.ch) instead of [http://google.com](http://google.com), because it's more secure, faster, less personalized, equally strong in features and provides me with more accurate results than duckduckgo.com + it has semantic filtering tiles that I really started liking.</comment></comment>


Circle launches a Coinbase competitor with free trading - <AUTHOR> http://techcrunch.com/2018/03/14/circle-launches-a-coinbase-competitor-in-the-u-s/ <comment><USER2> "But what about spread? Yes, the price is different if you buy or sell bitcoin (for instance). Circle doesn't try to hide that and says you can expect a 1.5 to 2 percent spread between buy and sell price."

So not completely free :)</comment>


Wall Street Quietly Shelves Its Bitcoin Dreams - <AUTHOR> https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-12-23/wall-street-quietly-shelves-its-bitcoin-dreams <comment><USER2> tl;dr: "They built a bunch of shitcoins and custody service piggybacking on the Bitcoin brand and were surprised that there was no market for them."</comment>


Tesla received fraction of the subsidies the Big 3 and oil industry have received - <AUTHOR> https://electrek.co/2016/11/25/tesla-subsidies-big-three-oil-industry/ <comment><USER2> I wonder why that smear campaign is happening _now_. Is there something obvious I'm missing, like Tesla being _too_ successful or something?

<comment><USER3>
      I wonder why that smear campaign is happening now.

Criticism of TSLA's use of subsidies isn't new[0].

[0] [http://www.usnews.com/opinion/blogs/economic- intelligence/20...](http://www.usnews.com/opinion/blogs/economic- intelligence/2013/06/03/teslas-success-is-the-result-of-political-favoritism)

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> I haven't been impressed with either of the two electrek.co articles on HN recently. This one and another 15 days ago [0].

In this, the author's all over the place.

He undermines his own argument by showing XOM gets $0.4B in subsidies v. TSLA's $2.4B. But he doesn't compare XOM directly with TSLA's figures. Instead, he compares XOM to SCTY ($1.1B) -- which has MORE subsidies than XOM!!!

[0] [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12919693](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12919693)</comment>


How to turn in your tax-cheating neighbor - <AUTHOR> http://professional.wsj.com/article/SB10001424053111903352704576540840395329676.html?mod=WSJ_hp_editorsPicks_1

<comment><USER2> For those of you who don't want to go through the trouble of tracking down the unredacted full article, here're the nut grafs:

 _The U.S. has been rewarding people who turn in fellow citizens or companies defrauding government programs since Congress's passage of the False Claims Act in 1863. Whenever there has been an income tax—briefly during the Civil War, and permanently since 1913—the IRS (or its predecessor) has had its own whistleblower program, says tax historian Joseph Thorndike of Tax Analysts, a nonprofit publisher. But payments tended to be small and rare because IRS officials were uncomfortable with "bounty hunting."_

 _The landscape changed in 2006. Heartened by the success of a whistleblower program for nontax issues such as government contracts, Congress overhauled the special tax provisions on whistleblowers and set up the IRS's large-award program._

The IRS does not want your tax-cheating neighbor, but if you work for a company that is cheating the government out of _tens of millions of dollars_ , I think we _all_ want you to act.

<comment><USER3> Actually, I would hope that they would pursue those cheating for 1000's just as hard as those who cheat for 1000000's, corporation or not.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Tax laws need to be much, much simpler. The more complicated they are, the easier it will be for people to sneak by without paying and for loopholes to exist. It's the same thing that happens when a program drifts away from triviality - the probability of bugs increases greatly. Make tax laws trivial, and most of these problems - and most of the need for the IRS - would go away.

<comment><USER5> Tax laws generally start out simple, then get complex patching holes. My favorite example.

Once upon a time a long time ago, a company wanted to pay a dividend to shareholders. That would be taxed as ordinary income to the shareholders. The company's accountants had a brilliant idea.

1\. Do a stock split. Say, 105 for 100.

2\. Do a stock buyback, where the company buys back 1/21 of the outstanding shares.

Net result to shareholders: every 100 shares becomes 105, then the company buys back 5 out of every 105, leaving the shareholder with 100 and some cash. Since the cash came from the sale of stock, it's capital gains.

The tax code was fixed so this would not work, by inserting a new section that gives conditions that a stock buyback must meet to be considered a stock buyback. If it fails to meet the conditions, it is considered to be equivalent to a dividend distribution and taxed as such. The conditions have to take into account a bunch of factors, so as to not penalize legitimate buybacks but not leave holes that allow abuse.

I believe that a large part of the complexity of the tax code comes from this kind of thing.

<comment><USER6> Why should income and capital gains be taxed differently anyway?

If it's to stop Grandma getting hit with a huge marginal tax when she sells her house (despite it being a once-off kind of thing), just introduce some kind of smoothing. If your income is uneven, the tax man can give concessions (if you get a lot of money after a period of low income), and rebates (if you have a low income period _after_ making a lot of money).

Easy, right? No more need for tricky rules about how to move money between the different categories.

<comment><USER7> Because income and capital gains are two different things. Capital gains should be lower because there is a risk that you may lose money, if you add a high tax on top of that lots of investments become not worth it.

<comment><USER8> The problem with this way of thinking is that, this is not necessarily true: Regular ways of getting income also make you take part in the risk of whatever or whoever you get your income from, and as a result, more and more things that would be income get wrapped into capital gains.

The fair thing to do would be something where losing money (or unvoluntarily suffering relocation expenses or losses as a result of your source of income) gives you a tax credit, valid for the next 10 years.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> This might be the most terrifying program I have ever heard of. I am struggling to think of anything other than the potential consequences of this.

<comment><USER10> Terrifying? Even if you're anti-tax, those to fail to pay taxes are a big part of the problem. What's the motivation to fight over-taxation if those who wish to opt-out can simply do so with little chance of consequence.

I know of at least two business owners who are flat out stealing from the IRS and their employees. Both of them are more than three years behind on _federal withholding_ tax payments. It's not even their money! This is their employees' withholding tax. I know this because of public filings against them. I can only imagine their personal tax situation.

Everyone I talk to says the same thing: "Ooooooh boy, they've really got it coming." When? When do they have it coming, exactly? Because as far as I can see, they're both still driving cars that are more expensive than mine, live in houses that are bigger than mine, and spend money like it's going out of style.

I have no desire to skip on my taxes, and I'm perfectly happy with the life I live, but it flat out pisses me off to see these people cheat the system and get away with it. It makes me feel like the "big bad IRS" is just some children's fairy tale meant to scare normal people in to compliance. Meanwhile, a whole pack of miscreants run amok with other peoples' money. It's just not right. Frankly, I'd rather see these people in jail than the pot head down the street that is spending 90 days in jail for the joint he had in his pocket while walking home from work. True story.

<comment><USER11> I really don't understand why OP has his knickers in a twist. What're the potential consequences of falsely reporting someone? They get audited? The IRS already does random (but infrequent audits).

Given the fact that the IRS would indeed have to investigate and then prosecute whatever fraud may be present, they would have to have a fairly solid and material understanding of the circumstances leading to tax dodging. People who are filing false claims can and probably should be prosecuted for misleading the government officials.

The IRS isn't some inhuman soul sucking beast. It is a bureaucracy, but when you get down to the level of dealing with individuals who have discretion to make decisions, every experience I've had with them so far has been friendly and understanding. As far as i can tell they really do try to err on the side of not screwing individuals at the very least.

<comment><USER12> Obviously you have never been through an 'audit' before, and last I checked, the IRS is very inhuman

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Here's a link to the full article: [http://online.wsj.com/article/SB1000142405311190335270457654...](http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424053111903352704576540840395329676.html)

</comment><comment><USER14> Googling "tax fraud" offers links to bounty hunting with this program.

Edit: This wasn't a suggestion, but rather an observation.</comment>


Apple leaves Facebook offices in disarray after revoking app permissions - <AUTHOR> https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2019/jan/31/apple-facebook-campus-permissions-revoked-teens-access-data-iphone-app <comment><USER2> FB is a company with a completely rotten top-down culture. Nothing is going to change until a huge set of executive leadership swap, or they are forced to by mean of legislation.

After apologizing thousands of times, they internally justify each of those breaches by rejecting the fault to "users" or other external factors (source: several friends working at Facebook, and reading public tweets of Facebook leaders).

The culture there is inherently anti-privacy and whoever fundamentally disagree is about to leave or has already left.

<comment><USER3> Not just that, the top-down structure is shaped after a cult of personality.

Talking to my friends who work at Apple, FB, Google, Amazon and others, facebookers are the only ones who seem to be willing to defend their leader on a personal level, as if they had a dear friend being attacked.

My other friends couldn't care less if someone criticizes or attacks Bezos, Tim Cook, Sundar and so on.

The only other company I can think that behaves in the same way is Tesla with Musk (well, an Apple with Jobs in the old days), but the key difference is that most Muskians don't seem to work for Tesla, and the folks I know at Tesla aren't actually obsessed with Musk.

In the case of FB, it is the opposite.

<comment><USER4> This is mostly a millenials thing. I don't know why young people are fixated with the Zuckerbers and Bezos of the world. Did I miss something the past 15 years?. I'm in my 40s

<comment><USER5> Having idols is a young people thing. Young folks just didn't used to attach to business leaders as much as they do now. When I was a kid, typical idols were music stars, actors, sports stars. The Internet created a new category of success for young people, and therefore created a new category of idols for young people.

<comment><USER4> Geez, we are lucky the Koch brothers build their empire before the social media was a thing, otherwise they will be also considered "influencers and trend setters"

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I understand how FB was not using Apple's enterprise development program in good faith. Apple clearly has a right to do what they did.

I don't understand why FB is in hot water with the public for what they did. Users were informed that data collection was taking place and they were compensated for it. Now, was it wise on the users' part to join this program? Perhaps not, but last time I checked this is still a free country and people can sell their property for as much or as little as they want.

On NPR this morning I heard the argument that a lot of the detail of what is collected and how it is used is buried in the T&C. So what? Have we lost sight of personal responsibility? How naive are people? If you are getting something for free from a large corporation you're not getting it out the kindness of their heart. They are making money somehow. That is how the world works.

Panic, moral or otherwise, about this sort of stuff is going to push the tech industry into realm of regulatory capture. Well funded companies will be able to afford and absorb compliance costs where small bootstrapped startups, lifestyle businesses, and indie developers will be pushed out of the market.

<comment><USER7> I think the issues are: \- they were collecting data from users who were below legal age for responsibility and/or local laws about collecting data about minors. \- The general public know very little about everything. Companies have a moral duty to not only educate their users but also to not do wrong.

Personal responsibility is a flag many people wave but it's a farce. That argument can be used for anything, from seatbelts, to smoking, to privacy. It is impossible for everyone to know enough to make informed choices about EVERYTHING. There is a need for societal organisations (governments, NGOs, responsible journalism) to provide guidance to the public and legal limits in order to provide protection to the whole.

<comment><USER8> How interesting that you would choose as your examples "seatbelts", "smoking", and "privacy".

If you print in large letters on every pack of cigarettes, "SMOKING KILLS" and people still choose to smoke, should a benevolent government be allowed to prevent an individual's poor choice?

Right now, we allow the sale of cigarettes and prohibit the sale of raw milk.

Don't you see any room for personal responsibility? None?

<comment><USER9> Smoking is an interesting example because the negative effects aren't just confined to the individual. Smoking a cigarette is the atmospheric equivalent of peeing in the pool except it also causes cancer and other health issues. Maybe it's actually an _important_ example because it's an undeniable illustration of 2nd order effects, which are less pronounced in other cases but probably still exist.

And "any room for personal responsibility"? There are plenty of domains of behavior that aren't regulated; there's a whole _world_ of choices individuals are responsible for alone.

Various forms of regulation regarding smoking, seat belts, and yes, even raw milk are all working in areas where limited human capacity for evaluating risk meets deadly consequences. Privacy is arguably different since it's unlikely to be directly deadly, but it does meet risk evaluation limits and adds in that incentives of 3rd parties are against individual incentives, and many of those 3rd parties have incredible resources available to them in order to obscure behavior and subvert protections. A collective response is a reasonable one.

<comment><USER10> Privacy also meets your test for "second-hand" negative effects. You can be a monk, but someone snapping a picture and writing up a post can destroy your privacy as well as using the service yourself. More realistically, you can use FB for the bare minimum, but if your friends and family use it a lot, your privacy is gone again.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> It's really hard to not be brought joy by Facebook being kicked like this. But on a less emotional level, if one wants to change Facebook culture and behavior, it's hard to see causing a lot of individual employee pain (in addition to the business as a whole) as in any way a bad thing.

<comment><USER12> I agree. It was individual employees who violated the agreement - if it makes Facebook employees actually think about their actions then overall it's a good thing.

It's gotten to the point where I start to ask myself - if you work or Facebook, are you a good person? My personal opinion is that you might be, but you are likely are not.

<comment><USER13> This reminds me of the saying way back in 2016 American elections:

"If you vote for Trump, it doesn't mean that you're not a good person, but it does mean that someone being a bad person isn't a deal breaker for your support"

I think that sentence could start off with "If you work for Zuck..." just as well.

<comment><USER14> Or the person is not 15 years old, and doesn't believe there are "good persons" in politics, or that the alternatives (in GOP or Dems) were better people.

Or the person goes even further, and doesn't believe the puritan tenet that "good person == good politician". There were excellent politicians that were bad in their behavior, and vice versa.

E.g. the person might care more about not encouraging a hawkish member of the establishment, that continued to beat the drum of American supremacy and threatened even more wars and tension coming on (e.g. with Iran) -- compared to merely voting someone who is e.g. sexist (as if that matters for the kind of decisions a President takes).

<comment><USER13> Being sexist doesn't matter for the kinds of decisions a president makes? Excuse me? Supreme Court justice nominations, for instance?

In fact, the Supreme Court invalidates your entrie argument, because guess what: I want people I think are "good people" to be in charge of interpreting the constitution. I think everybody can agree with that.

<comment><USER14> > _Being sexist doesn't matter for the kinds of decisions a president makes? > Excuse me? Supreme Court justice nominations, for instance?_

Yeah, it doesn't matter. Worse case you get more male justices. What do you really expect will happen? Some justice will be unpointed which will undo women's voting rights or equality laws?

> _In fact, the Supreme Court invalidates your entrie argument, because guess > what: I want people I think are "good people" to be in charge of > interpreting the constitution. I think everybody can agree with that._

Well, I don't agree with that. I would not care less if one of my "constitutional interpreters" drinks, takes cocaine, or has extra marital affairs for example. I only care that the direction they take the law is good. There have been legendary lawmakers and politicians that had all kinds of personal vices.

Then again, I'm not American, so I don't have the puritan trait. You guys managed to have a problem with the personal life of MLK too. Nobody in Europe would even think to ask such a BS question:

[https://www.quora.com/Why-do-we-honor-Dr-Martin-Luther- King-...](https://www.quora.com/Why-do-we-honor-Dr-Martin-Luther-King-Jr-in- such-a-glorious-way-when-as-a-married-man-he-had-multiple-extramarital- affairs)

<comment><USER13> Given that's exactly what has happened, yes I do think that's what would happen. I'm sure even as a non-American you're aware of Brett Kavanaugh and his potential effect on abortion law.

And I don't care what they do in their personal life either. I care about how those things will effect they laws the pass: if someone drinks and does cocaine and has extramarital affairs, but doesn't fuck over women/minorities, I'm all for them. If someone does the opposite, I'm against them.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Google shat themselves and unpublished something similar _and_ apologized heh.

I wonder if Apple has done a tremendous favor to web applications because in hindsight letting Apple (or any of these companies) have a company-wide on/off switch for your own apps like that is a bad idea.

[https://www.zdnet.com/article/google-shuts-down-iphone- data-...](https://www.zdnet.com/article/google-shuts-down-iphone-data- gathering-app-this-was-a-mistake-and-we-apologize/)

<comment><USER16> Wow, good find. Apple should absolutely be revoking Google's certificate as well in this case.

But they use the enterprise certificate for their external "research" apps, because they are doing things on the device (using internal APIs) that an approved app is not permitted to do, and that is certainly not possible through the web browser.

Of course their internal-use apps could be WebView almost certainly.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> If only life had been as simple as dropping an .apk on their phone...

I don't expect Facebook to get a whole lot of sympathy, but really, Apple's power on device owned by customers is ridiculous.

<comment><USER18> Right. I love hating on FB as much as the next person but the stronghold Apple has over the hardware is absolutely unreal. Imagine buying $10M worth of iPhones every year for your workforce and then Apple pulling your critical software because there's no alternative way to side load apps for the market research department. Which, by the way, might be a bit scummy but as far as I can see theres no indication they have broken any laws there either.

Makes you wonder who really owns the phone?

<comment><USER19> > Which, by the way, might be a bit scummy but as far as I can see theres no > indication they have broken any laws there either.

It broke the agreement they made with Apple to get the key and as such Apple revoked the key. It seems very cut and dry to me.

<comment><USER18> My point is Apple offers no alternative.

<comment><USER19> Why should they? Facebook went out of their way to abuse the rules, but should get an exception because they buy a lot of iPhones?

<comment><USER20> You don't understand what parent comment is saying ... it complains Apple's closed environment not allowing of any apps to be installed in anyone's phone unless app is downloaded from AppStore.

<comment><USER19> > Apple's closed environment not allowing of any apps to be installed in > anyone's phone unless app is downloaded from AppStore

Except the enterprise distribution which is what Facebook fucked up by breaking the rules. You have to try really hard to get that revoked, Facebook did and now they're in a tough spot. This is fine.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> It seems the article almost wants us to feel sorry for Facebook.

Facebook are really the Oracle of the "social" tech companies. They are not even pretending to be good or follow rules. As long as cash / clicks / impressions keep coming in nothing is off the table.

Google is struggling with its positive PR image, every time they fall short they are judged by the "Don't be evil" motto and everything it entailed. Facebook doesn't have to worry about such details and it's easier for them in a way. Their shares are going up as we saw recently, CA scandal didn't do much damage, everything is great.

> "We designed our Enterprise Developer Program solely for the internal > distribution of apps within an organisation.

Watch them pivot to "these researchers are part of the Facebook family, so their network device are considered part of the internal network's edge, we did nothing wrong".

<comment><USER22> This is where regulation eventually has to come in, IMO. People like to talk about how the market will solve problems, but per today's posts about Facebook racking up thousands of dollars of credit card charges from 5 year olds and their positive earnings results, the market looks at these kind of things and says "Yep, this is great for our bottom line." Facebook isn't going to fix itself.

<comment><USER23> Yeah, corporate titans punishing each other when the government won't do anything is a clear path to dystopia.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> I would characterize it as more annoying than anything else. It's not like we couldn't work or we had productions issues because of it.

<comment><USER25> Sounds like you might work at Facebook. If so, mild inconvenience or not, I am glad it happened. Going around the terms stated in an agreement to accomplish something forbidden by the agreement is a type of fraud. Fraud is illegal.

People are really starting to hate Facebook these days, and your guys' attitude doesn't seem to be changing much because of it. I, for one, LOVE this, because it means by the time you do recognize your sliding favor among customers, it will be too late for you to do anything about it. You will become the new Myspace, which is exactly what you deserve to be.

If you don't work for Facebook, then none of the above applies to you.

[EDIT:] the parent comment was deleted. The comment stated something to the effect of "It wasn't a big deal, it didn't affect our workflows or production applications."

<comment><USER24> I didn't delete or edit my comment.

I completely understand now what my friends at Uber were saying about the Internet hivemind and especially the HN hivemind.

Journalists routinely manipulate their stories to tell the story they want to tell, and right now it's "Facebook is evil." You are entitled to your opinion but nothing I or my coworkers do is evil and we would never engage in anything unethical. In a large company there will always be bad apples but to paint an entire company as somehow being a conspiracy is frankly mind boggling.

I would love to turn the mirror on all the haters and see how their lives would be if journalists reported manipulated facts on the worst moments of their lives.

<comment><USER26> Facebook has had countless incidents of violating user privacy and trust. This is just the latest. When a company has the same problems happening over and over across different departments it's clear there's a company-wide problem.

<comment><USER27> Even without the definitely-evil incidents that have occurred, simply greedily collecting and then hoarding that much information about people is so grossly and willfully negligent as to qualify. The very basis of everything they do is hopelessly tainted.

Yes, that makes an awful lot of other companies—not just tech-first companies—pretty damn evil, too. "Everyone's doing it" and "it's not illegal and is making us money" aren't defenses I accept for this disgusting behavior.

[EDIT] that said, piling on people for working at evil companies is probably unproductive and unfair for many of the same reasons that _e.g._ boycotts are wildly ineffective, plus such a large percentage of the economy's kinda-evil that the whole thing would get confusing and nasty and kinda pointless. Piling on someone for being delusional about whether their employer is evil, though... well, that's an awful lot less unfair.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> > Apple has left Facebook's campus in disarray after the company revoked the > social network's permission to build or run employee-only applications, > according to reports. Employees were reportedly left unable to read > cafeteria menus, call for inter-office transport or use versions of the > social network's own apps.

If you just ignore all the evil things Facebook did. The moral of the story is don't relies on a non-free computer and OS.

<comment><USER29> Kind of? But this is so far off from being anywhere Apple's fault, that I can only theoretically agree.

Facebook really shot themselves in the foot.

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> Two things: first, this seems like a reasonable response to the breach Facebook committed.

Second, it illustrates the folly behind relying on the continued good will of a 3rd party offering an essentially (or very nearly) free service. If Facebook was licensing EDCs for millions a year, this ban might not have been the first reaction Apple took.

<comment><USER31> > If Facebook was licensing EDCs for millions a year, this ban might not have > been the first reaction Apple took.

Why would Facebook do this, and how?

<comment><USER30> They can't do it, that's not how Apple's EDC licensing works. I wasn't proposing they should have paid more-- My point was that customers paying for a product have more leverage than those receiving one for free, and so relying on a free product for pieces of your business operations can put you in a tenuous position.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> It seems like there's something getting lost here. A lot of comments and even articles make it sound like Apple is retaliating against fb at random, which is not true. FB had an internal app agreement with apple to distribute apps to it's employees. Probably this one: [https://developer.apple.com/programs/enterprise/](https://developer.apple.com/programs/enterprise/)

They violated the terms of the agreement, and therefore the have lost access. They also probably violated the terms of the app store as a whole, but who knows.

Whether or not one should have to be part of that program to install Enterprise apps is a different issue.

</comment><comment><USER33> Wrong title, should be "FB left their offices in disarray by using their enterprise cert to spy on kids". What utter muppets.

</comment><comment><USER34> The original report was [https://www.businessinsider.com/facebook-employees- angry-aft...](https://www.businessinsider.com/facebook-employees-angry-after- apple-blocks-its-internal-ios-apps-2019-1?r=US&IR=T), which is also here: [http://archive.is/tRiAp](http://archive.is/tRiAp)

</comment><comment><USER35> And... their stock is up.

<comment><USER36> Stock price is trailing indicator

</comment></comment><comment><USER37> Facebook has become a privacy nightmare

<comment><USER38> It's never been anything else.

</comment></comment><comment><USER39> This brings a smile to my face. I don't care anymore what excuses people come up for Facebook's behavior. Enough is enough and Facebook has crossed the line years ago. No remorse, no forgiveness.

<comment><USER2> fully agree. Even though I'm not fully onboard with Apple's huge power over their phones, in this specific case the enemy of my enemy is my friend.

<comment><USER40> I just hope they haven't awoken a sleeping giant. Facebook has enormous capital and engineering capacity. If they decided to have their own app store and/or phone ecosystem, their brand might position them as a viable competitor to Google or Apple. But would we be better off for it?

<comment><USER41> They already tried their own phone ecosystem. I'm not saying that they shouldn't/can't try again, but it seems like Facebook's hubris is their worst enemy.

<comment><USER42> "We have invented something no one else has thought of. A small personal computerised device. Now you're able to stay docked twenty-four seven. On the bus. You can dock. On the subway. Stay docked. You can be docked in at home, and at the same time, you're docking with some kids at the public pool. We went to the guys at Fruit Computers and we told them we wanted to make our hardware as compatible as possible... Now you can dock your Lifeinvader to an iFruit or any other device, and it'll take all the data off and reformat it into Lifeinvader-friendly information.

(2013)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment> who-knows95 good.

</comment><comment><USER43> I wonder how pervasive the abuse of the EDC for customer-facing apps actually is. If this got through FB / Google's legal teams, they might know of others who have done this without consequence.

</comment><comment><USER44> My co-worker put it best: "This is Uber-level scumminess"

</comment><comment><USER45> 1) WTF, FB? Don't go around violating license terms.

2) Why do developers tolerate a platform that doesn't allow developers to deploy apps wherever they want?

<comment><USER46> 2) probably because a lot of consumers buy iPhones? Can't speak for Facebooks internal use though...

</comment></comment><comment><USER47> Title is inaccurate: _Facebook_ leaves Facebook offices in disarray after Apple revoked app permissions.

</comment><comment><USER48> Facebook made their enterprise development certificate a single point of failure and then messed up by abusing it?

That's so dumb that it's actually funny.

<comment><USER49> Found the engineer :)

Let's make our internal systems depend on the good will of an outside company that is marginaly a competitor.

The worse part is there has to be someone that KNEW they where in violation.

FB seems to have a culture of is okay to be scum if we get what we need since we can always just say sorry.

<comment><USER50> > Let's make our internal systems depend on the good will of an outside > company that is marginaly a competitor.

What's the alternative for internal-only apps?

<comment><USER51> They could develop their own phone.

Apple, the maker of the hardware, is also a stakeholder in users' privacy. They are not obligated to assist Facebook in the undermining of users' privacy. If their stance on privacy does not meet Facebook's requirements, Facebook is free to develop their own phone to run their own apps.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER52> FB should have seen this coming, honestly. What did they expect?

</comment><comment><USER53> Turns out Facebook can just Facetime Apple users to get all the data they need anyway.

Also, why even offer accounts if you just shadowban everybody? It's gay. Ycombinator is gay.

<comment><USER54> There's software that filters comments based on past abuses by trolls. New accounts are subject to more of these filters.

We review the comments that get killed that way, unkill the good ones, and mark accounts legit when it's clear they're posting in good faith.

</comment></comment><comment><USER55> FB, forget vr, time to make your own phone.

<comment><USER56> Presumably FB has similar versions of internal apps for Android which has no remote kill switch since side loading is allowed.

Employees could just switch to Android if they are worried about Apple killing their apps.

<comment><USER57> I'm not sure about an Android internal app, all employees are given brand new iPhone x's.

When I worked there we all had to use the internal fb and IG apps and do all communication through them.

Switching to android would mean a huge IT change and mean replacing every employees phone.

<comment><USER58> > all employees are given brand new iPhone x's. > [...] > replacing every > employees phone

Huh? Employees are given a choice of iPhone or Android; the full infrastructure stack already exists for both, internal apps are built and deployed for both. I'm pretty sure that IT could switch the whole company to Android overnight if they had the hardware in stock...

<comment><USER57> Guess I was misktaken. I had the choice between a thinkpad and MacBook and given an iPhone, didn't realize we could get an android or just didn't pay attention...

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER59> Oh yeah, I'm loving this.

</comment><comment><USER60> ouch! it's an appropriate response.

</comment><comment><USER61> Apple would be a great company if it didn't botch 'right to repair', overprice their products, and restrict their OS and APIs. Regardless, there's not much 'American' left in American tech products, let alone all US products. Apple and Essential are the only two cell phone manufacturers left, if that, and Essential just dropped theirs :( Somebody needs to make it cost effective to print circuit boards and encasing frameworks so we can move our tech back to the US. At least Apple is pushing back against Facebook and the NSA/gov. Everybody else is selling our privacy.</comment>


Ask HN: collection of Anki decks for programming? - <AUTHOR> Hello everyone, I'm trying to experiment the technique described by Derek Sivers on his blog (http://sivers.org/srs) to see if it can help me learn faster. But I'm looking for more programming decks for Anki. Maybe C, C++, Java, Clojure, Common Lisp, Lua...<p>do you know if there are any available for download? <comment><USER2> In the short time that I managed to keep up with using Anki, I found it felt most effective to create my own cards using only the specific bits of information that I had to look up in the docs myself, or when I had a fleeting moment of insight about how something worked. The result was a very haphazard deck, but it worked much better than anything I downloaded.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> oh, nevermind here you can find a lot of decks

<https://ankiweb.net/shared/decks/></comment>


6 Principles of Persuasion – Reciprocity - Part One - <AUTHOR> http://davidshawblog.com/2013/05/24/part-one-6-principles-of-persuasion-reciprocity/ <comment><USER2> Very good post. Looking forward to the next in the series!

<comment><AUTHOR> There are now several posts online in the series!</comment></comment>


Ruling from USPTO Invalidates All Claims Used to Threaten Podcasters - <AUTHOR> https://www.eff.org/press/releases/eff-busts-podcasting-patent-invalidating-key-claims-patent-office <comment><USER2> Planet Money did a great episode on this patent, using it to talk about the state of the patent system in general: [http://www.npr.org/blogs/money/2013/05/31/187374157/episode-...](http://www.npr.org/blogs/money/2013/05/31/187374157/episode-462-when- patents-hit-the-podcast)

It has interviews with the patent holder, and it's amazing to hear his perspective. (Which I do not agree with.)

<comment><USER3> They've also done two other great episodes on patents:

412 - [http://www.npr.org/blogs/money/2012/10/23/163480928/episode-...](http://www.npr.org/blogs/money/2012/10/23/163480928/episode-412-how- to-fix-the-patent-mess)

551 - [http://www.npr.org/blogs/money/2014/07/09/329895088/episode-...](http://www.npr.org/blogs/money/2014/07/09/329895088/episode-551-the- case-against-patents)

Side topic, but I really wish Planet Money would look into medical re- patenting. Growing up I needed albuterol inhalers occasionally and I remember them costing less than $10, but recently my kid needed one and it was $60 with copay (over $100 without insurance). That's when I found this article: [http://www.nytimes.com/2013/10/13/us/the-soaring-cost-of- a-s...](http://www.nytimes.com/2013/10/13/us/the-soaring-cost-of-a-simple- breath.html?nl=todaysheadlines&emc=edit_th_20131013&_r=0)

TL;DR - Inhalers use CFC's (ozone hole making), but scientists and environmentalists recommended an exception for them when banning CFC's because the amounts were so tiny and the medical benefits so huge. The pharmaceutical industry decided to lobby against the exception so they could reformulate the inhaler and introduce a new patent - and make billions on a 30+ year old drug.

<comment><USER4> Frankly this leaves me wondering why we leave medicine to private companies when we have agreed as a society that public health is the governments concern.

Its unreasonable to expect a publicly traded company to do anything other than chase profits the best way they can.

<comment><USER5> Obviously "we" have not agreed that that is the case.

> Its unreasonable to expect a publicly traded company to do anything other > than chase profits the best way they can.

And that attitude is why we can't have nice things. That would be what's known as "enabling." How about, "It's unreasonable to expect a beer company to do anything other than sell as much alcohol as they can, however they can, to whomever they can." Or, "It's unreasonable to expect an oil company to do anything other than ship and sell as much oil as they can as cheaply as they can."

No. Companies, publicly traded or not, are not mindless automatons, inhumanly calculating the optimal methods to extract as much profit as possible, even though they do seem that way. Companies are comprised of people, people who are a part of the society in which their company does business. Therefore they have--should have--the responsibility to behave ethically to society, not merely their shareholders. And even besides that, shareholders' ultimate interests are not served if their companies behave in ways that are destructive to the societies in which they live.

I don't know where this idea that "companies are required or expected to make as much profit as legally possible" came from, but it's 1) untrue, and 2) morally and ethically wrong, regardless of #1. Please stop enabling this behavior by spreading this incorrect and just plain wrong idea.

<comment><USER6> _And even besides that, shareholders ' ultimate interests are not served if their companies behave in ways that are destructive to the societies in which they live._

Unless the destruction occurs outside of the realm (spatial _or_ temporal) of the shareholders, in which case the destruction can rightfully be modeled as an externality and ignored.

 _I don 't know where this idea that "companies are required or expected to make as much profit as legally possible" came from_

Started with _Dodge v. Ford Motor Co._ :

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dodge_v._Ford_Motor_Co](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dodge_v._Ford_Motor_Co).

This was somewhat superseded by _Shlensky v. Wrigley_ :

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shlensky_v._Wrigley](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shlensky_v._Wrigley)

This in turn is arguably superseded by _eBay v. Newmark_ :

[http://www.litigationandtrial.com/2010/09/articles/series/sp...](http://www.litigationandtrial.com/2010/09/articles/series/special- comment/ebay-v-newmark-al-franken-was-right-corporations-are-legally-required- to-maximize-profits/)

 _Please stop enabling this behavior by spreading this incorrect and just plain wrong idea._

It's more dangerous to assume that corporations can be held to task than it is to assume that they are amoral profit-seeking entities. Only in the former case are you unpleasantly surprised if you're wrong.

<comment><USER5> > Unless the destruction occurs outside of the realm (spatial or temporal) of > the shareholders, in which case the destruction can rightfully be modeled as > an externality and ignored. ... It's more dangerous to assume that > corporations can be held to task than it is to assume that they are amoral > profit-seeking entities. Only in the former case are you unpleasantly > surprised if you're wrong.

You are missing the point just as the gp did. I never said that corporations can be held to task for such things.

I'm talking about what they _should_ do, i.e. right vs. wrong, i.e. morality. And such hypothetical destruction cannot _rightfully_ be ignored, because to do so is _morally wrong._

_That_ is the point. By continuing to miss it you are further illustrating the problem. Please wake up.

<comment><USER6> What part of "morality doesn't apply to businesses" don't you understand? Do you blame a cat for catching a mouse? Do you blame a cruise missile for destroying a target? Do you blame a tornado for eviscerating a house? There are things to which the lens of morality offers very little.

What you want to claim is that corporations should view their actions morally, and what everyone is telling you is that no they shouldn't. You present (as a sibling comment) the notion that a company given a choice between the "wrong but profitable" and the "right but less profitable" should choose the "right" thing.

And we're telling you, we're all telling you, that _you cannot evaluate a corporation through such a calculus_!

Is the corporation going to Heaven or Hell because of how it's lived its "life"? No. Is the corporation going to have more friends because it's been "nice"? No. Is the corporation going to have better credit because, goshdarnit, it really tried to "help"? No. Are consumers going to change their buying habits because of what the company has done to its workers? Probably not--just look at Nike.

Look, I dig the whole rage against the machine thing you're going for--I've been there myself. "There's morality in the world, goddamnit, there's right and wrong! We can't let the corporations run amok and ruin our nation and communities! This is a democracy! This is America!" you cry.

There is no America. There is no democracy. There is only Facebook and Google and Apple and IBM, Haliburton, GE, Tata Group, Phillip Morris, Alibaba, Mitsubishi. Those are the nations of the world today--or at least as far back as _Network_!

Is it monstrous? Absolutely. Is it something we should find an alternative to? Certainly. But is it something to which it is useful to apply human morality to? No, and it never will be--you must engage the beast where it lives, on its terms.

<comment><USER5> > What part of "morality doesn't apply to businesses" don't you understand?

What part of "businesses are comprised of and run by human beings" don't you understand? What part of "businesses have legal, ethical, and moral responsibilities to government and society" don't you understand? These are not wishes, these are reality.

> Do you blame a cat for catching a mouse? Do you blame a cruise missile for > destroying a target? Do you blame a tornado for eviscerating a house? There > are things to which the lens of morality offers very little.

Cats are not human beings, they are animals. They cannot think, speak, or reason.

Cruise missles are not human beings, they are machines.

Tornadoes are hot human beings, they are weather phenomena.

What is wrong with you? Are you just trolling or do you really think like this?

> And we're telling you, we're all telling you, that you cannot evaluate a > corporation through such a calculus!

Certainly I can. And I will. And this is nothing new. This is why there are laws regulating corporations in a million ways, from financial regulations to the EPA to the FCC. For example, if morality had no bearing on corporations' actions, there would be no laws against insider trading, or price/wage fixing, monopoly abuse, etc. (And you can cry "ethics, not morality!" all you want, but ethics are ultimately based on morals. The principle of right vs. wrong remains.)

Where do you come up with this idea that corporations can do whatever they want in a mindless pursuit of profit? This is not the case, it never has been, and it continues to become less the case as more and more laws and regulations are enacted.

> There is no America. There is no democracy. There is only Facebook and > Google and Apple and IBM, Haliburton, GE, Tata Group, Phillip Morris, > Alibaba, Mitsubishi. Those are the nations of the world today--or at least > as far back as Network!

Oh please. There is _some_ truth to that idea, but it is not done, as you seem to think.

> Is it monstrous? Absolutely. Is it something we should find an alternative > to? Certainly. But is it something to which it is useful to apply human > morality to? No, and it never will be--you must engage the beast where it > lives, on its terms.

If everyone thought like this, the United States (and many other nations) wouldn't even exist. It's because of those who had the courage to stand up and fight for change that we are having this conversation today.

Your attitude is useless. It is part of the problem. We need principled leadership that stands up for what is right, regardless of the status quo (or the perceived one).

<comment><USER6> _For example, if morality had no bearing on corporations ' actions, there would be no laws against insider trading, or price/wage fixing, monopoly abuse, etc_

If you look at the history of such regulations, they're typically more about protecting the assets of the rich than they are about helping anyone else. They're still somewhat rampant--just look at Google and Apple cartel behavior re: engineer hiring, or the continual monopoly abuse of Comcast and AT&T.

It's only when the behavior becomes _so_ egregious that it causes trouble for other stakeholders will legislators finally get around to stepping in.

 _Where do you come up with this idea that corporations can do whatever they want in a mindless pursuit of profit? This is not the case, it never has been, and it continues to become less the case as more and more laws and regulations are enacted._

History. Dutch East India Company, United Fruit Company, Union Carbide, Ford Motor Company, British Petroleum, Blackwater, Walmart, Pinkteron, Standard Oil, Enron, and on and on and on.

The laws and regulations only protect the existing companies--Sarbox has hurt smaller companies and startups more than its protected anyone else.

~

Look, we're on the same side here. You just need to make arguments that don't blindly ignore reality and history. If you want to continue this discussion, hit me up on email with your best rhetoric. Let's quit taking up space on this thread.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> > EFF Staff Attorney Daniel Nazer, who also holds the Mark Cuban Chair to > Eliminate Stupid Patents

Best chair name ever.

<comment><USER8> Mark Cuban funded the title with a $250,000 donation in 2012.

"The current state of patents and patent litigation in this country is shameful," said Cuban, owner of the Dallas Mavericks. "Silly patent lawsuits force prices to go up while competition and innovation suffer. That's bad for consumers and bad for business. It's time to fix our broken system, and EFF can help. So that's why part of my donation funds a new title for EFF Staff Attorney Julie Samuels: 'The Mark Cuban Chair to Eliminate Stupid Patents'."

[https://www.eff.org/press/releases/eff-patent-project- gets-h...](https://www.eff.org/press/releases/eff-patent-project-gets-half- million-dollar-boost-mark-cuban-and-notch)

<comment><USER9> So if you donate enough money you can name the chair anything you want?

This raises so many opportunities!

<comment><USER10> Just wait until you discover endowed professorships.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Patent systems are definitely broken. I think that's the conclusion of most neutral observers starting fresh and that digging past the purely abstract or ideological level. The reason it's hard to do something about is that patents are property and the legal setup for property is foundational to an economy.

Patents are absolutely fundamental to the way medical research works today, especially the search for new treatments and medicines. That's a tricky thing to mess around with. There are obvious problems. There are speculations about what fixing them could yield on one hand. In the other hand is a massive industry producing a lot of technology, science and actual treatments for diseases.

What seems (to me) to be missing in these debates is some humility about knowing the answers. While our culture is speeding through "movements" at a higher rate than ever before, we still tend to approach these big political/philosophical/economic issues with an early modern/modernist perspective. Our most popular philosophers for these matters are old dead guys who liked to think of big organic things like society and civilization in terms of how we should set things up if we had snapped into existence today, a clean slate. That's a fairly pompous perspective.

In any case, I think the patents and intellectual property problem is a very tricky one to solve. Experiment with possible solutions is almost impossible. IP legally mimics regular property in a metaphor-like way. That metaphor is proving increasingly inaccurate. At the same time, we have huge pieces of our economy and whatnot built on it. At the same time our legal systems are showing signs that they might need a reimagining. Many of our legal constructs such as 'legal entity' or 'jurisdiction' are being pushed to extremes, and metaphors eventually break. Does the concept of a company legally approximating a person hold up when we have impenetrable layers of ownership across jurisdictions? Does the metaphor fray?

<comment><USER12> I am not an expert on the economics of pharmaceuticals, however based on work of an expert I have come to believe that patents are not essential to the way medical research works today.

Patents are essential to the current business model of pharmaceutical companies -- they are necessary to guarantee a return on investment, but the portion of the investment devoted to R&D and clinical trials is dwarfed by the marketing.

         If you look at the big companies you can divide their budget into 4 big
         categories. One is R&D, one is marketing and administration; the
         other is profits, and the other is just the cost of making the pills and
         putting them in the bottles and distributing them. The smallest of
         those is R&D. The smallest is Research and development. Profits
         usually are about the same. Marketing and Administration is
         more than twice as much.

[http://www.econtalk.org/archives/2012/11/angell_on_big_p.htm...](http://www.econtalk.org/archives/2012/11/angell_on_big_p.html)

<comment><USER13> > I have come to believe that patents are not essential to the way medical > research works today.

> Patents are essential to the current business model of pharmaceutical > companies -- they are necessary to guarantee a return on investment, but the > portion of the investment devoted to R&D and clinical trials is dwarfed by > the marketing.

Your comment contradicts itself.

If, as you say, patents are "necessary to guarantee a return on investment", then it doesn't matter if the R&D is the largest cost or not, because the company won't produce a profit (and therefore won't produce new drugs) without the patent.

In fact, it's quite reasonable to think that both massive marketing and time- limited protection from competition are necessary to ensure enough of a return to guarantee continued investment into the industry. It doesn't have to be one or the other.

<comment><USER12> You're right -- it was not carefully written. My point is that the current pharma business model is not essential to medical research in general (rather than research today).

Patent protection for drugs (and chemicals in general) was weak or non- existent in Europe until the 1970's, and despite that there was research and development of drugs.

I think the system we have today is largely driven by the patent mechanism, and while not terrible, could be made better by tweaking the patent system.

The government sponsored monopoly is supposed to guarantee a return on the R&D, not guarantee the return on Superbowl ads for _another_ erectile dysfunction drug.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> The fact this patent was granted in the first place seems completely absurd. But then again, we live in a world where Boeing has a patent on certain trajectories that use the moon's gravity ([http://www.google.co.uk/patents/US6116545](http://www.google.co.uk/patents/US6116545)), so it shouldn't really surprise me.

<comment><USER15> I recall a story a while back about a satellite that ended up in the wrong orbit after launch. The engineers knew how to correct it using various orbital maneuvers, but alas those maneuvers were patented and it was too expensive to license them. So the decision was made to splash the satellite and let the insurance companies pay out. At least that's my recollection...

Edit : Here's a description of the issue, which is a bit different than my recollection

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AMC-14#Launch_anomaly](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AMC-14#Launch_anomaly)

<comment><USER16> I thought that algorithms couldn't be patented?

<comment><USER17> Legally, they can't. But if you close your eyes, and pretend they are tangible, you could see it their way.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> > Personal Audio continues to seek patents related to podcasting.

It's unfortunate that the Patent Office can't ban trolls who have abused the system.

<comment><USER19> > It's unfortunate that the Patent Office can't ban trolls who have abused the > system.

I agree with you on one hand but on the other is it impossible for a person to reform and later want a patent to protect their new creation? I'd just like to see the whole system overhauled or maybe even removed in some ways.

<comment><USER17> I would be ok with keeping the patent system only if it becomes far more difficult to gain a monopoly on an invention. The courts+USPTO allowed an era of serious abuse via patents on abstract inventions that we won't recover from quickly.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> If you aren't yet an EFF member and you're happy about this ruling, please consider becoming a member. Membership dues help the EFF fight these battles.

Help make a difference!

</comment><comment><USER20> Nice work, EFF! Our membership dues at work :)

<comment><USER21> It is refreshing to get this direct of an effect for my money. This must be how lobbyists feel.

<comment><USER22> Or perhaps more accurately, this must be how 1 percenters who pay $$$ to lobbyists to influence/purchase politicians feel....

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> When a patent gets overturned, can those who already paid license royalties typically sue the patent holder to get their money back? (I know that the entity can file bankruptcy, so the chance of getting money is slim). Or do the license agreements typically include a clause that money is not refundable if the patent is invalidated?

Or, even worse, do license agreements typically include language that says the licensee agrees to continue to pay royalties even if the patent is later found to be invalid? I can see someone being strong armed into signing an agreement like that.

<comment><USER24> It's only tangentially related, but it's a good story:

Apparently at some point an American producer licensed the patent for a mouthwash for a percentage of sale – I think it was Listerine, but can't find this story on Wikipedia right now. A decade or two later, the patent ran out. Anybody could now copy the formula without royalties. Except: the original licensor sued his american licensee for continued royalty payments. They won, because the initial contract never specified an end to the arrangement when the patent expired.

<comment><USER25> That case, Warner-Lambert Pharmaceutical v. John J. Reynolds, actually hinged on the fact that there was no patent license involved. Listerine's formula was a secret, and Jordan Lambert offered its creator royalties if he would share it with him. Later, the formula became widely known and Warner-Lambert wanted out of the deal since they were no longer getting any advantage from it. They sued to get out of their contract and recover past payments, citing patent cases as support for the idea that they should be set free of their obligations. The judge ruled that with patents, there is an understanding from the outset that they are paying for access to a time-limited monopoly, while the contract in this case was pretty clear about not having a termination date other than "whenever they stop making Listerine".

Source: [http://law.justia.com/cases/federal/district- courts/FSupp/17...](http://law.justia.com/cases/federal/district- courts/FSupp/178/655/1642490/)

<comment><USER24> Thank you – had trade secrets and patents mixed up in memory.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> the USPTO is a laughing stock, they should consider some serious reform quickly or just being completely disbanded. they serve no valuable purpose other than to retard the whole of society for the future as far as i can tell...

<comment><USER27> The main reason it exists is to provide incentive for people to actually create things and to spend the money on R&D with a hope there will be a return. If I spend three years and $500,000 developing a new building material, I should be able to be protected from an employee of mine quitting and starting a new company doing the same thing from techniques he learned using my invention (for a certain period of time).

Software is a different beast, simply because the vagueness you can express in a software patent can be so general that it covers use cases almost retroactively.

Software patents should be extremely specific, regular patents work for the most part.

<comment><USER28> Patents are an incentive to disclose the techniques behind inventions. Plenty of incentives already exist to create things and invest in R&D.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> Thank you for updating the title, it is much clearer now. The EFF does not invalidate patents on their own, much as we would like that to be the case.

</comment><comment><USER30> This is really great news.

<comment><USER31> I had a sigh of relief and my chest relaxed a little bit. We may be on the right track finally.

</comment></comment><comment><USER32> Any figures on how much this invalid patent costed people?

<comment><AUTHOR> We'll probably never know, most people that settle with patent trolls have confidentiality agreements

<comment><USER33> Surely that would be invalidated along with the claim? Can you sue to reclaim your money?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> Excellent. Now we could use another one to get rid of all those stupid streaming patents that are abused time and again.

</comment><comment><USER35> Headline is misleading, that is only the case for one patent, not an entire class of patents.

</comment><comment><USER36> ...invalidated by USPTO though.

<comment><USER37> That's like saying "a judge acquitted him" without considering the efforts of the defence.

<comment><USER17> Does it matter if you get the right legal result?</comment></comment></comment>


word2vec in yhat: Word vector similarity - <AUTHOR> http://danielfrg.github.io/blog/2013/09/21/word2vec-yhat/ <comment><USER2> For people interested in a cleaned-up, commented and de-obfuscated word2vec, I recently ported the original C code to Python [1].

My HN submission of this endeavour received no love, but I think it's worthwhile nevertheless as the Python code is not only more concise, readable and extendable, but the training's actually faster too [2].

[1] [https://github.com/piskvorky/gensim/blob/develop/gensim/mode...](https://github.com/piskvorky/gensim/blob/develop/gensim/models/word2vec.py)

[2] [http://radimrehurek.com/2013/09/word2vec-in-python-part- two-...](http://radimrehurek.com/2013/09/word2vec-in-python-part-two- optimizing/)

<comment><AUTHOR> Your submission receives no love but my one afternoon hack does... oh the humanity... lol

That is some amazing work, thanks!

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Word2vec seemed intuitively obvious me, but I really have a hard time believing that it works in only 1000 dimensions, generating results beyond cherry picked demo examples.

Are there really only 1000 independent concepts in the English language?

<comment><USER4> I'm still impressed it only takes 26 letters, in words of average size around 5! By comparison, 1000 continuous dimensions seems positively resplendent with expressiveness.

FWIW, 2^61 > 26^5, so even the binary vector 2^1000 has an expressive space about 2^939 times larger than 26^5 (all possible words up to 5 letters).

<comment><USER3> Yes, but there are exponentially more concepts than words. The words we have are sparse set of labels for particularly relevant combinations.

But yeah, the continuous dimensions can hide many more binary dimensions.

For example, 4-D rgba can be smashed into 1 continuous (or 64-bit) dimension, but that feels a bit like cheating.

So it sort of feels like 1000 64-bit dimensions is a tricky name. 64000 1bit dimensions.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Very cool. I missed the original word2vec software discussion back in August: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6216044](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6216044)

And the paper itelf is a very worthwhile read: [http://arxiv.org/abs/1301.3781](http://arxiv.org/abs/1301.3781)

</comment><comment><USER6> The vectors learned from word2vec are pretty amazing. A few days after the tool was released I wrote a script which uses the vector representations to figure out which word in a list isn't like the others [1]. Things like:

->math shopping reading science

I think shopping doesnt belong in this list!

->rain snow sleet sun

I think sun doesnt belong in this list!

etc.

[1] [https://github.com/dhammack/Word2VecExample](https://github.com/dhammack/Word2VecExample)

</comment><comment><USER4> Eventually computers will be talking about us behind our backs in these high- dimensional vectors, only occasionally translating down to English approximations, to humor us. "Goo goo, gah gah, human?"

<comment><USER7> Have you read the [Message Contains No Recognizable Symbols] series? It's pretty great: [http://www.ssec.wisc.edu/~billh/g/mcnrs.html](http://www.ssec.wisc.edu/~billh/g/mcnrs.html)

<comment><USER4> Haven't but will check it out, thanks!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Cool web demo powered by word2vec, by Christopher Moody:

[http://thisplusthat.me/](http://thisplusthat.me/)</comment>


The phases product teams go through - <AUTHOR> https://firstround.com/review/how-to-craft-your-product-team-at-every-stage-from-pre-product-market-fit-to-hypergrowth/ <comment><USER2> I have worked with a lot of product managers, but I still find myself unable to understand what value they bring. It increases the distance between the engineers and customers. This eventually leads to making wrong short term decisions because PMs do not understand how to actually _build_ a product. I had better experiences when engineers made product decisions.

<comment><USER3> Possibly for very technical products, an engineer could be more impactful than a PM - since engineers could be their customer.

In most all other regards, I can't fathom how a proper engineer makes a better PM. I would suggest either: your personal product engineering skills might be higher than average, or the quality of PM's you have worked with is lower than average. Engineers typically are more interested in: frameworks, languages, algorithms, performance, technology of the day, etc - rather than the customer experience, messaging, ease of use, and business value brought to a customer.

Context: CompSci background, built lots of products, founder through Series C companies.

<comment><USER4> > Engineers typically are more interested in: frameworks, languages, > algorithms, performance, technology of the day, etc.

As a software engineer myself, I think I'd go mad if I had to work with fellow engineers who were that stereotypically one-dimensional. Frankly, even the nerdiest of kids whom I went to college with that chose to present themselves as such had broader interests than that. I got into this field myself because I liked solving problems and was half-decent at doing so with math and computers, which hardly excludes caring about customer experience, messaging, ease of use, and business value.

If I'm choosing to work at companies with products aligned to my interests and values, and if my day-to-day work actually matters to the success of the product, why would I not care about customer experience, etc.? The success of the product or project will ultimately reflect on me, so frankly, I'm going to have strong opinions about what work the PMs are trying to push on the team (maybe not literally push, but at least pressure) and how that work is then communicated back to the customers and stakeholders. The engineers who don't learn to give a crap about all that are setting themselves up as sheep.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Massively long article, but good enough that it kept me reading to the end.

Having a clearly rationalised summary of what a product team is for, and roughly when to introduce it, is an invaluable reference when transitioning from the "drunken walk" phase with a first time founder.

</comment><comment><USER6> Looks like Kent Becks' Explore, Expand, Extract: [https://medium.com/@kentbeck_7670/fast-slow-in-3x-explore- ex...](https://medium.com/@kentbeck_7670/fast-slow-in-3x-explore-expand- extract-6d4c94a7539)

</comment><comment><USER7> A rare read in it's usefulness to know what gear you are in and how to build and execute around it.

Helped me remember:

\- every good project/product I've worked on that has scaled began as something small and messy until.. it was less messy and less small by each iteration.

\- having a team to innovate, startup, grow, and scale are often different teams.

\- made some great points for providing opportunities to junior team members and not only experienced ones. People leave regardless but the ones who stay will be great.

</comment><comment><USER8> Good indeed! I recommend reading if you are running a team and growing.

</comment><comment><USER9> I found that page very difficult (impossible) to continue reading due to the various popups (social propagation buttons) and inserts (must read article thumbnails) that fade-in while scrolling down. The content doesn't match the delivery device.</comment>