YC's Winter Reading List - <AUTHOR> http://blog.ycombinator.com/ycs-winter-reading-list/?re=true <comment><USER3> This is my favorite passage from Titan:

With a talent for seeing things anew, Rockefeller could study an operation, break it down into component parts, and devise ways to improve it. In many ways, he anticipated the efficiency studies of engineer Frederick Winslow Taylor. Regarding each plant as infinitely perfectible, he created an atmosphere of ceaseless improvement. Paradoxically, the mammoth scale of operations encouraged close attention to minute detail, for a penny saved in one place might then be multiplied a thousandfold throughout the empire. In the early 1870s, Rockefeller inspected a Standard plant in New York City that filled and sealed five-gallon tin cans of kerosene for export. After watching a machine solder caps to the cans, he asked the resident expert: "How many drops of solder do you use on each can?" "Forty," the man replied. "Have you ever tried thirty-eight?" Rockefeller asked. "No? Would you mind having some sealed with thirty-eight and let me know?"34 When thirty-eight drops were applied, a small percentage of cans leaked—but none at thirty-nine. Hence, thirty-nine drops of solder became the new standard instituted at all Standard Oil refineries. "That one drop of solder," said Rockefeller, still smiling in retirement, "saved $2,500 the first year; but the export business kept on increasing after that and doubled, quadrupled—became immensely greater than it was then; and the saving has gone steadily along, one drop on each can, and has amounted since to many hundreds of thousands of dollars."

Rockefeller performed many similar feats, fractionally reducing the length of staves or the width of iron hoops without weakening a barrel's strength[...]

<comment><USER4> Interesting story; thanks. I have a few reactions to it:

First, it seems like a marketing photo-op for the CEO. In your opinion, is the author trying to make Rockefeller relatable? You can see how it works with HN readers.

These days his success is attributed to business acumen and notorious practices, not engineering, but I haven't read much about him. What impression does the book give?

Also, I would argue that the time he spent on solder drops was a waste of company resources much more valuable than solder: his time. What would he say if he saw the machine operator similarly wasting company time or resources? Rockefeller would have helped his company much more by improving his own efficiency.

Finally, in most companies when Rockefeller asks if you can reduce the number solder drops and you are the lowly solder machine operator, you reduce the solder drops no matter what. There is no way that story could have ended differently, and nobody would reveal that the boss's idea had bad consequences: The barrels had to be handled more carefully, they leaked at a higher rate, they had to increase some other sealing process to compensate, etc.

All my cynicism may be unfair, however.

EDIT: A bunch of edits

<comment><USER5> I would argue that you can combine two parts of your cynicism to create something very wholesome!

1) "It seems like a marketing photo-op for the CEO."

2) "Rockefeller would have helped his company much more by improving his own efficiency."

Surely the photo-op helped create a culture of efficiency and optimization throughout Standard Oil?

<comment><USER4> Agreed, and very well put. Who knew you could combine cynicisms like that? The mind boggles at the possibilities ...

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Comments on a couple of the selections:

\- _Grit_ \- I can see why it's caught on, it's pretty well-written and informative, but it's not one of the stronger books in the genre and I don't think it will stand the test of time. I recommend _The Willpower Instinct_ \- by Kelly McGonigal and _Peak: Secrets from the New Science of Expertise_ \- by Anders Ericsson in its place.

\- _The Rent Is Too Damn High_ \- Matt Yglesias is an intellectually dishonest pundit and I recommend staying away from anything he publishes. He's a leading representative of what Nassim Taleb calls the Intellectual Yet Idiot[1]. He deleted 3000 tweets praising Obamacare that look bad in retrospect[2][3]. He's also mentioned directly in the Podesta emails as a pundit to be "cultivated."[4] This article from 2011 [5] points out numerous examples of his sloppy reporting and intellectual dishonesty where he doesn't own his mistakes, deletes critical comments, etc.

1\. [https://medium.com/@nntaleb/the-intellectual-yet- idiot-13211...](https://medium.com/@nntaleb/the-intellectual-yet- idiot-13211e2d0577#.yl36fsi5i)

2\. [https://twitter.com/BuffaloBlueBear/status/79120869059868262...](https://twitter.com/BuffaloBlueBear/status/791208690598682624)

3\. [https://twitter.com/JimmyPrinceton/status/791127776388583424](https://twitter.com/JimmyPrinceton/status/791127776388583424) (check the whole thread)

4\. [https://wikileaks.org/podesta- emails/emailid/31954](https://wikileaks.org/podesta-emails/emailid/31954)

5\. [http://www.chequerboard.org/2011/02/matt-yglesias-the-one- ma...](http://www.chequerboard.org/2011/02/matt-yglesias-the-one-man-mistake- factory-or-i-laugh-at-the-inferior-intellect/)

<comment><USER7> Can you provide a more clear link to evidence of your claim that Yglesias deleted 3000 tweets about Obamacare? I see images of a few tweets deleted. Perhaps Twitter is showing us different messages below the message you directly linked.

<comment><USER8> I don't have a link, but he deleted his whole tweet history a couple months ago. I never saw an explanation, but I doubt it had to do with his attitude towards Obamacare, which is well documented elsewhere, and which hasn't changed that much.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I imagine many people here saw Don Quixote on the list and kept scrolling. Sounds like YC is trying to make you go back to a book you probably gave up on in high school.

The edition pictured, translated by Edith Grossman, is extremely approachable. It uses mostly modern language which makes the original humor of the book really stand out. It's incredible that a book written over 500 years ago can still be funny and engaging. I'd recommend it to everyone, after reading this translation it moved from 'boring book I couldn't finish' to 'one of my favorite novels ever'.

<comment><USER10> They didn't help matters by giving it such a glib description.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Creativity INC is one of the best books I have ever read on creativity and I have read a lot to know how much most of them really suck.

It has the added bonus of providing an alternative biography of Steve Jobs which in itself is interesting.

It's much more than a story about Pixar. It's a great insight into some of the very problems you deal with as you build and try to maintain a culture.

I can't recommend it enough.

If you want a peek into the books content Ed Catmul did a great talk at Standford.

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

<comment><USER12> Creativity, Inc. is also one of the best books on management.

I say this with reverence for the work of Peter Drucker and W. Edwards Deming.

<comment><USER13> How does it compare to "pixar and beyond"?

<comment><USER12> I haven't read that one yet. Have you?

<comment><USER13> Yes, it's an amazing book. But it looks very similar, hence my question ;-)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Pleasantly surprised to see Lee Child mentioned there.

The Enemy (mentioned in the list) is a prequel, though. But it is special in the sense that it is narrated in first person. Special because (no, not a spoiler): Reacher, the protagonist, doesn't say much, but the internal thinking is described in a very attractive way through out (so readers naturally long to hear in first person). The most common thing you read in the books is: "Reacher said nothing". Heck, it's so common that there's even a _book_ written with that phrase as the title; it shadows the author, Lee Child, to investigate what it takes to make the popular character -- [http://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/529959/reacher- said-...](http://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/529959/reacher-said-nothing- by-andy-martin/9781101965450/)

FWIW, other books from the author I enjoyed and recommend: Echo Burning, Die Trying, Tripwire, Persuader. (/me fondly recalls reading 17+ books (even saving money as a student 10 years ago to pre-order) until a few years of years ago; will resist making a comment on the Reacher movies; but makes a sincere please to read the books first, and ignore, as best as you can, the movies).

\---

Related author: Robert Crais (characters: Elvis Cole and Joe Pike).

<comment><USER15> I'd also recommend the Sniper series of books by Stephen Hunter.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> My personal picks as I continue to try to understand global economic trends since the 1980's through the prism of the 2008-crash:

The Global Minotaur: America, Europe and the Future of the Global Economy by Yanis Varoufakis [1]

The Price of Inequality: How Today's Divided Society Endangers Our Future By Stiglitz, Joseph E. [2]

The Rise and Fall of American Growth: The U.S. Standard of Living since the Civil War by Robert J. Gordon [3]

1\. [https://www.amazon.com/Global-Minotaur-America-Economic- Cont...](https://www.amazon.com/Global-Minotaur-America-Economic- Controversies/dp/178360610X/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1481577856&sr=8-1&keywords=yanis+minotaur)

2\. [https://www.amazon.com/Price-Inequality-Divided-Society- Enda...](https://www.amazon.com/Price-Inequality-Divided-Society- Endangers/dp/0393345068/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1481578034&sr=8-1&keywords=price+of+inequality)

3\. [https://www.amazon.com/Rise-Fall-American-Growth- Princeton/d...](https://www.amazon.com/Rise-Fall-American-Growth- Princeton/dp/0691147728/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1481577993&sr=8-1&keywords=rise+and+fall+growth)

<comment><USER17> Yanis gave a good endorsement of "How Will Capitalism End?: Essays on a Failing System" [https://www.amazon.com/How-Will-Capitalism-End- Failing/dp/17...](https://www.amazon.com/How-Will-Capitalism-End- Failing/dp/178478401X)

Also you might like Dean Baker's latest book. You can get it free from his website in all formats, or via Amazon

"Rigged: How Globalization and the Rules of the Modern Economy Were Structured to Make the Rich Richer"

[http://deanbaker.net/books/rigged.htm](http://deanbaker.net/books/rigged.htm)

<comment><USER16> Thanks, yeah, already in the middle of Streeck's essay collection. Jarring.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> For those interested, C. S. Forester's Hornblower book(s) became a pretty good TV series[0] starring Battlestar Galactica's own Jamie Bamber!

[0] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hornblower_(TV_series)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hornblower_\(TV_series\))

<comment><USER19> The author has some really clever ideas for set-pieces in that book. I've only read the first (chronologically) one, but it caught my attention. At one point, he is captaining a captured merchant ship back to England and is checking it for damage from the skirmish. There's no water in the hold, so the ship must be undamaged, though it's a little strange because every ship has _some_ water in it. Later we find it's actually severely damaged but the ship is transporting rice, which has absorbed all the water.

<comment><USER18> This also features in the show!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Both _The Idea Factory_ and _Titan_ were excellent. Haven't read any of the others yet. I'd recommend reading _The First Tycoon_ [0] before _Titan_ , as chronologically it sets the stage very well for the world Rockefeller rose to power in.

[0] [http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/4839382-the-first- tycoon](http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/4839382-the-first-tycoon)

</comment><comment><USER21> My disagreement with the placement of "Strangers in Their Own Land" is basically that it really is well loved by Mother Jones[1], NYT[2], etc. but not at all liked by the people it claims to report on[3]. I guess if you hold liberal beliefs and want some reinforcement, then its a good book, but I would think you probably want to read books by people who actually are the people being talked about.

1) [http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2016/08/trump-white- blue...](http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2016/08/trump-white-blue-collar- supporters)

2) [http://www.nytimes.com/2016/09/25/books/review/strangers- in-...](http://www.nytimes.com/2016/09/25/books/review/strangers-in-their-own- land-arlie-russell-hochschild.html)

3) [https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/book- party/wp/2016/09/01...](https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/book- party/wp/2016/09/01/a-berkeley-sociologist-made-some-tea-party-friends-and- wrote-a-condescending-book-about-them/)

<comment><USER22> Can you recommend an alternative?

<comment><USER23> Hillbilly Elegy is excellent and touches on some of the points, but really just read conservatives. We're not exactly shy about what we don't like about modern liberalism. Go peruse the pages of National Review or Commentary Magazine.

<comment><USER24> Didn't both of those publications vigorously oppose Trump?

The "conservative intellectual" niche may be the most politically irrelevant group in the country.

<comment><USER23> >Didn't both of those publications vigorously oppose Trump?

Yes.

>The "conservative intellectual" niche may be the most politically irrelevant group in the country.

Trump won the Presidency, not the Movement. The rest of the GOP, though shell- shocked, has not suddenly ditched conservatism and embraced Trumpism. The vast majority of the GOP members of the House and Senate, and those in state governments, are conservative, not Trumpist.

Conservatives, not just Republicans, have far more power in the US right now than at any point in recent memory.

And thankfully, the Founding Fathers, sharp blokes that they were, crafted a system of checks and balances. I suspect we'll hear fewer cries of "obstruction!" when Congress blocks President Trump's policies than we did for Obama's.

<comment><USER25> The problem I have with the GOP's obstructionism was not that it was checking power, but that it was purely political. They obstructed policies that had been supporting by conservatives in the past, just because they didn't want Obama to be seen as having succeeded with anything. That is not what the checks and balances were designed for.

<comment><USER23> A lot of conservatives saw it as their duty to stand athwart Obama's agenda and yell, "Stop!"

And quite frankly, they succeeded. I think you're unfairly discounting how much of that was ideologically driven, rather than the result of simple partisanship.

<comment><USER25> You can say that a strategy to regain power is an ideological action in the long run, but then what is the difference between ideology and partisanship?

<comment><USER23> It wasn't a strategy to regain power, it was a mission to prevent the President from inflicting further harm upon the country (according to conservative thought). There were plenty of Republicans who thought it would cost them in the elections. But they saw it as worthwhile to prevent the expansion of the welfare state and the enshrinement of Obama's progressive agenda in law.

The notion that they wanted to make government work worse in order to bolster their claim that government doesn't work is what progressives tell each other, not what motivates conservatives. Ditto working class voters "voting against their interests", etc.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> I cannot recommend Manna enough (I assume it's similar to the online version [1]). It portrays a version of the future that I believe is achievable by continuing open-source software development and extending it to (more and more powerful) AI.

[1] [http://www.marshallbrain.com/manna1.htm](http://www.marshallbrain.com/manna1.htm)

<comment><USER27> Manna is an interesting story, but its incredibly poorly written. It starts out great, but the last few chapters feel like they were written by a high school student realizing their deadline is approaching and is still 5 pages short of the minimum requirement.

<comment><USER28> Classic idea-driven scifi, in that aspect.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> This is interesting, I just went to one of the book's Amazon page and this is what I see: [http://i.imgur.com/O6x8eNQ.jpg](http://i.imgur.com/O6x8eNQ.jpg)

It's almost like a horizontal scroll version of this blog post. I guess it's the small sample size.

<comment><USER30> Actually it is the large sample size. Book lists tend to do this when read by a lot of people, especially if they pull their cover art from Amazon. There was a hack whereby a person used AWS resources to generate this sort of effect on demand. The result was, as expected of such a prank, books on conservative theology having "also viewed" lists which were primarily erotica. Amazon "fixed" this by ignoring item views from addresses within it's own IP space but apparently it still works for lookups from a bunch of IPs.

</comment></comment><comment><USER31> Cannot recommend "City of Gold" enough. Great writing and a page-turner. Full disclosure: I knew Jim Krane in the 80s when he played guitar in hardcore punk bands like Starvartion Army.

</comment><comment><USER16> Regarding Hillbilly Elegy: I read it after another post-election book list recommended it, and found it to be a very mixed bag and generally a disappointment. The valuable part was the depiction of his home life and the disintegration of the social fabric of his community over a few generations driven by unseen but acutely felt economic trends. Very touching and powerful accounts.

The latter half of the book, however, was by far the weakest. There he attempts to recommend fixes for the issue from a libertarian perspective. His beliefs are not surprising given his current employment in a Thiel hedge fund. This part of the book had little insight and seemed to be an ideologically driven argument by, ironically, a newly minted financial elite that his own community distrusts.

</comment><comment><USER32> _> Creativity, Inc.

"Ed Catmull, the co-founder of Pixar with Steve Jobs and John Lasseter, on how they built a culture of openness, honesty, self-reflection, and risk-taking that protects new ideas and creativity instead of squashing them." –Aaron Epstein_

I wonder if it comes with any helpful pointers on how to execute long-term, systematic wage-fixing[0] schemes.

The top one-star review[1] on Amazon sums it up nicely.

[0] [http://www.cartoonbrew.com/artist-rights/ed-catmull-on- wage-...](http://www.cartoonbrew.com/artist-rights/ed-catmull-on-wage-fixing- i-dont-apologize-for-this-105855.html)

[1] [https://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/review/0812993012/R1CW8GBYEH3UQ...](https://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/review/0812993012/R1CW8GBYEH3UQW)

</comment><comment><USER33> One i'd recommend is The illusion of life - the history of animation in disney, it covers some of the business, the people and the techniques and of course the movies, and it's one of the most beautiful books I own. [https://www.amazon.com/Illusion-Life-Disney- Animation/dp/078...](https://www.amazon.com/Illusion-Life-Disney- Animation/dp/0786860707/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1481582720&sr=1-1&keywords=the+illusion+of+life)

</comment><comment><USER34> I spot checked several of these books on Pirate Bay and they were all well seeded and many uploaded today, touche Hackernews! Not that I would be interested in downloading them or anything.

</comment><comment><USER35> The Grossman translation of DQ is a fine read. I read it in a seminar which is the academic equivalent of a book club. That was awesome. If you get into it, it's a great discussion book.

I'd recommend Marryat's _Mister Midshipman Easy_ over Forester's _Mister Midshipman Hornblower_. Marryat speaks from authority when he speaks of the sea and of naval warfare. Neither Forester nor Patrick O'Brian sailed.

<comment><USER36> Perhaps Marryat is more authentic than O'Brian or Forester, but he is not as good a writer. Easy lacks the coherent storytelling, character building and -- at least compared to Aubrey/Maturin -- the excellent sense of humor.

Worth a read? Absolutely. Better? I enjoy both better than Marryat, but especially O'Brian.

</comment></comment><comment><USER37> thanks for including some fiction! so many "data" people miss out on so much because they mistakenly assume something that "didn't happen" can't help or enrich their understanding of what is.

</comment><comment><USER38> I've read shoe dog. Entertaining fast read but I don't think you should prioritize it unless you're really into sneakers or Nike.

<comment><USER39> While Shoe Dog has a lot of content about Nike, sneakers and running I would definitely recommend it if you aren't in to that stuff. It's a great story of perseverance and grit, and the characters who helped shaped Nike are quite entertaining. I would recommend it to any entrepreneur.

</comment></comment><comment><USER40> Someone added all this into a goodreads list, so that you can mark them 'read later'.

[https://www.goodreads.com/list/show/106375.YC_s_Winter_Readi...](https://www.goodreads.com/list/show/106375.YC_s_Winter_Reading_List)

</comment><comment><USER41> Also consider Robert Harris' historical fiction trilogy "Imperium," "Lustrum," and "Dictator" about the life of Cicero and the fall of the Roman Republic under Julius Caesar (assuming it's okay to recommend additions).

The ideas explored in these books are fascinating and could not be more timely. The historical notes are interesting. The reading is fun! "Dictator" is the third book in the trilogy & its Wikipedia page links to the rest: [https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dictator_(Harris_novel)](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dictator_\(Harris_novel\)) The narration on the Audible editions is fantastic.

</comment><comment><USER17> A few new books the YC crowd might like:

"Whiplash: How to Survive Our Faster Future" [https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1455544590](https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1455544590)

"What the Luck?: The Surprising Role of Chance in Our Everyday Lives" [https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1468313754](https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1468313754)

"Shrinking the Earth: The Rise and Decline of American Abundance" [https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/019984495X](https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/019984495X)

</comment><comment><USER42> Glad to see Shoe Dog on this list, that was one of the most memorable books I listened to this year (the audiobook narration was awesome). It's always interesting hearing the origin story and struggles of a company that was the underdog in the industry for so long, and ended up on top. I thought Phil Knight's account of his journey with Nike was really honest and thoughtful, I had no idea how long it took them to get momentum, or how many times they were on the brink of bankruptcy. Can't recommend this enough, I'm looking forward to reading it a second time next year.

</comment><comment><USER43> Of course tastes differ but I didn't see much that immediately grabbed my attention (a bit of a letdown because it was the first thing I clicked on this morning). I guess ultimately that's a good thing because my backlog is still fairly long. Titan and the Nike book look interesting but I'm currently not in the mood for a "this amazing person/company" type of book.

I might pick up "City of Gold". "Make it so" could also be interesting those are the only two that immediately grabbed my interest.

</comment><comment><USER44> Not a book, but definitely check out The Economist's Christmas edition. A lot of in depth articles on a wide array of subjects ranging from historical artifacts to road journeys to contemporary life.

</comment><comment><USER45> I just finished The Attention Merchants by Tim Wu and I cannot recommend it enough.

It traces the history of advertising and attention capture from billboards through Facebook.

</comment><comment><USER46> Highly recommend Manna. Its short but still worth it.

<comment><USER47> I've really come to value sorry non fiction books. Too many non fiction books seem to repeat the same point over and over. Less danger of that on a short book. My favorite non fiction author is Ian Buruma. All his books that I've read are short but loaded with information and are highly diligent about giving references.

</comment></comment><comment><USER48> I picked up Red Notice from the "library" at a resort in Chile last September for the flight home. What an awesome story. I learned a ton reading it and the book reads like fiction even though it is factual. Highly recommended.

</comment><comment><USER49> There should be a list like this but more technical

</comment><comment><USER50> I actually pre-ordered Grit based on the excerpt I had read with Pete Carroll. It sounds fascinating but I have yet to read it.

</comment><comment><USER51> think this book is a particularly interesting read, especially considering the U.S. election opera of 2016:

"Infomocracy" -by Malka Order.

+++ some other favorites:

When Breath Becomes Air. -by Paul Kalanithi.

Arkwright. -by Allen Steele.

The God's Eye View. -by Barry Eisler.

Chaos Monkeys: Obscene Fortune and Random Failure in Silicon Valley. -by Antonio Garcia Martinez.

Ego Is the Enemy. -by Ryan Holiday.

</comment><comment><USER52> I ordered the first book on the list about a week ago form my son and I over winter. Great minds think alike.

</comment><comment><USER53> This list took a credibility plunge when Thomas Friedman was spotted on it.

<comment><USER54> It's a list made up of individuals' recommendations. This is like saying "The credibility of the United States took a plunge when your nutty aunt went on another one of her rants."

<comment><USER55> ok, but I think it's a valid opinion to express extreme aversion for Thomas Friedman.

<comment><USER56> Arguing that the whole list is less credible because Friedman's on it? I mean, it's fine if you want to maintain your own epistemic closure, but expecting everyone else to agree?

And even you should read him, if for no other reason to be sure you understand what you're disagreeing with. Then, once you can actually state his position in a way that he would recognize as accurate, then disagree as much as you please.

<comment><USER35> Saying the list took a dive when it came to Friedman is colorful writing and not _epistemic closure_. It did take a dive. This is 2016 and Friedman has been around for ever. He's been insistently wrong over and over again. The Iraq War. He was so wrong about that he even has a measurement unit named after him:

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

He's on TV, he's in the NYTimes, he's on NPR, he has a book. Am I being closed minded if I say enough already? What has he ever been right about? What continued claim does he have on the national discourse?

<comment><USER56> I could just as easily say the same about stoicism or Carl Rogers being on the list.

I mean, no, I'm not going to read Friedman's book. No, I'm not a fan. No, I'm not defending his positions. It's fine that you don't agree with Friedman. I don't agree with stoicism, either. But deciding that the list "took a dive" just because he has a book on it? Yes, you're being closed minded.

<comment><USER35> It's really not so much that I don't agree with him and to be sure, I don't agree with him. It's more like, really, do I have to listen/read/hear about Friedman one more time? Aren't there any new voices? Dunno where you live but they still play Car Talk on KQED on Saturday mornings and one of the guys is dead. MoDo has been awesome but she should move on as well. David Brooks same.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER57> Nice to see Weapons of Math Destruction included.

</comment><comment><USER58> One genre that is always missing from HNer's and YC's recommendations is Fantasy.

It feels like most people here read books to acquire knowledge and philosophy to apply to real life.

Most fantasy books are read for entertainment and imagination. There's no hidden message to parse and put toward your next start-up project. That doesn't mean Fantasy books are a waste of time though if they're engrossing and entertaining. That's why I read them.

Some fantasy recommendations:

The Name of the Wind, by Patrick Rothfuss

The Lies of Locke Lamora, by Scott Lynch

The First Law series, by Joe Abercrombie (especially the standalone books #4, #5 and #6)

The Way of Kings, by Brandon Sanderson

<comment><USER59> A lot of people get their fantasy fix from science fiction.

(this is my favorite place to apply the Arthur C. Clarke quote "Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.", whether he meant it that way or not)

<comment><USER60> And not just the technology; I mean, what's Arrakis if not a fantasy world?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER61> Previous discussion: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13117521](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13117521)

<comment><USER62> The majority of discussion on the previous post was about how many/most of the books conflicted with the 1-week ban on highly charged topics.

Since that's over (right?) - perhaps people can now share their opinions on the book list itself...

<comment><USER63> It was "politics" not "highly charged topics" \- eg a post about javascript frameworks was fine. And I have no idea how to tell if it's over or not.

<comment><USER64> The week-long experiment was terminated early. See [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13131251](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13131251)

It would have been over by now regardless.

<comment><USER21> I wish they had put that on the front page since I was still flagging political articles per the request in the original message.

<comment><USER64> Yeah, I think that would have been a good idea, too, especially as they kicked it off with a "Tell HN". I think they chose to address it as it came up in the comments. That said, this is getting off-topic :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER65> Rescinded comment

Link to original post: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13117521](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13117521)

<comment><USER64> Read further down in the comments. This is already being discussed:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13161516](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13161516)

</comment></comment><comment><USER66> I guess no book list can ever escape the mediocrity of Neal Stephenson. At least it wasn't Snow Crash this time.

<comment><USER22> Do you think he's eternally mediocre, or is his recent stuff worse? Is all scifi mediocre? Is the problem that Stephenson "crossed over" and got more mainstream credibility?

Is Gibson also mediocre?

<comment><USER55> My opinion on Stephenson:

Cryptonomicon is fun, Baroque Cycle is great, Anathem is his best work (from a literary perspective), and Seveneves is 2/3rds awesome 1/3rd bad scifi pulp.

Snow Crash is how most people first encounter him. It's a warmed over cyberpunk book that repeats a lot of what Gibson did, but is also good.

The Diamond Age is one of the best pieces of speculative fiction written in the last 20 years except that it fails badly to have a coherent story with an ending that makes sense. Which is a shame considering the ideas in the book are so good.

REamde is shit and should never have been published. Dude was playing too much World of Warcraft at the time and decided to write a novel about playing too much World of Warcraft. Bad book. Avoid.

<comment><USER67> Weird, I loved part 1 and 2 but part 3 stands out as the best bit to me - <USER2> really enjoyed the envisioning of rebuilding a world from scratch and getting lost in that new world. I think the third part could make a nice series of books but I think I am in the minority about part 3

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER68> It's 36 degree C here today so guess I'll have to wait a bit to read these.

</comment><comment><USER69> Excellent list! I've added all the books for people to save books to their reading list here on ShelfJoy [http://shelfjoy.com/shelfjoy/wrap-up- your-2016-with-ycs-wint...](http://shelfjoy.com/shelfjoy/wrap-up- your-2016-with-ycs-winter-reading-list)

The summer reading list is also available here: [http://shelfjoy.com/shelfjoy/ycombinators-summer-list- of-201...](http://shelfjoy.com/shelfjoy/ycombinators-summer-list-of-2016)

Thanks for the wonderful recommendations to everyone at YC!</comment>


To Entrap an Innocent - <AUTHOR> http://www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2015/01/to-entrap-an-innocent/384273/?single_page=true

<comment><USER2> >One incentive was the availability of federal funds >earmarked for sex predator stings. Another factor: >asset forfeiture, which allows police to seize >the property of people who are arrested even if they aren't convicted.

Whenever arresting people becomes a big earning opportunity, problems are sure to follow. Profit-oriented policing (mainly from traffic enforcement) was one of the grievances that fueled the Ferguson protests/riots.</comment>


DD-WRT, I Know Where You Live - <AUTHOR> http://www.devttys0.com/2010/12/dd-wrt-i-know-where-you-live/ <comment><USER3> DD-WRT seemed decidedly "bloated" after I found out about Tomato. Maybe that is unfair or ignorant on my part, but do check out Tomato if you are considering DD-WRT.

<http://www.polarcloud.com/tomato>

<comment><USER4> Why are the only routers supported using 802.11G? I got one of the Buffalo 300N routers and was looking forward to trying this instead of DD-WRT.

<comment><USER5> I assume it's because the developers of Tomato don't have any of the newer routers to attempt supporting them. There are a few other options for the G300NH, including OpenWRT, but I've just decided to stick with DD-WRT because it seems to have the best overall feature set.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> So by visiting his blog we are essentially letting him use rebind on our connections? ;)

</comment><comment><USER7> Some background here would be really nice (for us non device hackers). Who exactly would have DD-WRT on their routers? Is it something you have to install manually?

edit: i should have googled before asking :-). Apparently it's a custom firmware for linksys routers. Looks like you have to go through a lot of trouble to get it installed, so I'm sure the overall userbase is pretty small.

<comment><USER8> There was enough demand that Linksys created models just for this purpose (the WRT54GL and friends).

It's an easy upgrade for a technical person. Download custom firmware, upload to router, reboot. The same people who would upgrade their own firmware from Linksys can install dd-wrt, Tomato, hyperwrt, etc. Admittedly, that's a small slice of the population but a large number of people.

<comment><USER9> For what purpose exactly would you want to put custom firmware on it? Why isn't the stock firmware good enough? I've a WRT54G router -- do I have any good reason to use any custom firmware?

I'm guessing it's just for hobbyists -- "just for the fun of it" kind of thing?

<comment><USER10> Older WRT54G's handled BitTorrent traffic terribly. The router will go and kill itself once every 15 minutes or so, necessitating a power cycle. In fact, power cycling the router became a normal part of its use.

DD-WRT (and Tomato) were very, very good solutions to this. Still are - <USER2> are still a number of popular routers out there where the stock firmware will choke on BT.

<comment><USER11> Once the number of connections through the router reaches a certain point (in relation to BitTorrent traffic usually), the total d/l bandwidth (on any protocol) through the router dropped to ~30kB/s, in my experience. This is how I knew that it was time to power-cycle the router. Then all of the sudden all of my connections were flying again.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> For those not familiar with the whole router firmware hacking thing, here is the backstory

[http://www.wi- fiplanet.com/tutorials/article.php/3562391/The...](http://www.wi- fiplanet.com/tutorials/article.php/3562391/The-Open-Source-WRT54G-Story.htm)

Also in addition to DD-wrt there is openwrt which I've got running on my router, and probably a number of others.

</comment><comment><USER13> "Info Page" setting he talks about is:

Administration tab > Management sub-tab > Web Access section > "Enable Info Site"

</comment><comment><USER14> My SVN build of DD-WRT has a "No DNS Rebind" setting defaulting to true. Not sure if this prevents the attack - couldn't find easy steps to reproduce in order to verify.

</comment><comment><USER4> Is there a solution to this yet? He says it affects you whether or not you have the info page enabled.

<comment><USER15> The solution is to password protect the info page. I also checked if there is new firmware. Also, on my Buffalo I just set up SSH and stopped httpd. Didn't know how to do it, so I read here [http://www.dd- wrt.com/wiki/index.php/Telnet/SSH_and_the_comm...](http://www.dd- wrt.com/wiki/index.php/Telnet/SSH_and_the_command_line) and here <http://www.howtoforge.com/ssh_key_based_logins_putty>

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> I wonder if Tomato is affected.

I randomize the two mac addresses weekly anyway.

<comment><USER17> > I randomize the two mac addresses weekly anyway.

Why?

<comment><USER16> Paranoia.

It's also a guaranteed way to get a new external IP assigned, even when renewing your DHCP lease fails to.

<comment><USER18> Do you have a script to do this or do you do it manually?

<comment><USER16> Manually.

I wish I could tell it to randomize when I shutdown but that would be pretty difficult to accomplish.

I wonder if I could make Tomato randomize them on startup (I power the router down nightly).</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


All women conferences vs. Other conferences - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/eventzio-blog/all-women-conferences-vs-other-conferences-8e2b88be1e00

<comment><AUTHOR> This piece is a woman attendee's viewpoint about how woman only startup events are different from other startup events.</comment>


Show HN: Rando – Anonymous SMS chatting - <AUTHOR> http://severn.me/projects/twilio/

<comment><USER2> Nice concept. submit to [http://betapage.co](http://betapage.co) and get early users.</comment>


DeepPrivacy – A Generative Adversarial Network for Face Anonymization - <AUTHOR> https://arxiv.org/abs/1909.04538 <comment><AUTHOR> And here is the code repo:

[https://github.com/hukkelas/DeepPrivacy](https://github.com/hukkelas/DeepPrivacy)</comment>


Color film was built for white people. Here's what it did to dark skin - <AUTHOR> http://www.vox.com/2015/9/18/9348821/photography-race-bias <comment><USER2> Yeah, it was optimized for the market segment that was expected to have money for film and cameras at the time.

There are far worse things to complain about that happened to black people at the time (from Jim Crow to the KKK and seggregation) to make film optimizations anything else than an aside to the whole story.

<comment><USER3> Yeah, there are Syrian refugees dying trying to get to safety, so complaints about a story on vox are little more than aside to the real suffering in the world.

Snarky sarcasm aside, I believe the point was exactly what you just said - white people have a privileged position in US and therefore world culture. As it comments at the end, the built-in assumption that "users" == "white" _still_ exists. The examples of face tracking systems that doesn't work for black faces, or images of black people getting miscategorized as "gorillas", imply it's not a distant historical artifact.

In order to prevent issues this in the future, developers need to either be aware of either implicit cultural biases, or be able to recognize explicitly racially-motivated discriminatory practices. This includes secondary effects; black people are more likely poor, in part because of historical explicit social and government policies that made it harder for black people to acquire wealth.

One way to spread that awareness is with video content, drawing examples from history and the present. Which is what this does.

And after all, HN readers complain daily about things which are far more trivial. To revive an old meme, "Leave Brittany alone."

<comment><USER2> > _Yeah, there are Syrian refugees dying trying to get to safety, so > complaints about a story on vox are little more than aside to the real > suffering in the world._

Only my argument was quite different, and applies to the Syrian refugees too: if one is to focus on suffering (to provoke outrage, affect change etc), they better focus on its really bad characterstics.

The equivalent to the film story would be someone writing that the free sandwitches on rescue ships weren't up to par.

<comment><USER3> Yes, your argument was like my parents saying I shouldn't complain about something because there are starving children in Africa.

It's like saying that we shouldn't complain about smog in the air in LA because the smog in Beijing is even worse. Or to not complain about the quality of dinner because my Scandinavian ancestors left Sweden to avoid poverty and starvation.

Your statement is that it's to "better focus on its really bad characterstics".

That's not correct. The focus is on how to improve things. If the video were all about what the KKK did in 1965 then what am I supposed to do about that? Sit here and feel guilty about things that happened before I was born?

The difference is that _we are developers_. There is a positive action I can do in response to this information. Should I work in face tracking, or image recognition, or other similar software for the future, then I can actually make a difference by including a more balanced training set. Should management say that we use our target audience, I can remind them of the implicit racism in that statement.

So things may change with this information, while focusing only on more severe information will likely do diddly-squat to make things better.

I have no idea how your 'free sandwiches' comment is relevant. Surely a better example is an article like [http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/apr/29/syrian- refugees...](http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/apr/29/syrian-refugees- sweden-new-life) where a refugee from Syria now in Sweden says "I feel like shit ... The only good thing is that I am safe."

Do you want him to shut up because things were worse? Do you want the Guardian to not publish articles like this and only focus on the people dying in transit, or those being bombed and shot back at home?

Because that's what your argument sounds like they should be doing.

While my argument is while people might not be able to help the drowning refugees, they may still be able to help others in less of a direct plight.

<comment><USER2> > _Yes, your argument was like my parents saying I shouldn 't complain about > something because there are starving children in Africa. It's like saying > that we shouldn't complain about smog in the air in LA because the smog in > Beijing is even worse._

Nope, you misread the argument. What you're missing is that the harm in both cases described in my argument are to the SAME people (blacks), at the same era.

So, to adjust your examples, it's like your parents saying "you shouldn't complain about something" because there was something far more serious going on at your househould (e.g. you shouldn't complaint about not getting an iPhone for Xmas, because your father was just fired from his job".

Or that we shouldn't complain about smog in the air in LA when there's a tsunami of radioactive waste coming down Santa Monica. We should focus on solving THAT first.

> _Your statement is that it 's to "better focus on its really bad > characterstics" That's not correct. The focus is on how to improve things. > If the video were all about what the KKK did in 1965 then what am I supposed > to do about that? Sit here and feel guilty about things that happened before > I was born?_

If the focus is on how to improve things (to which I agree) then we should try to improve things that really make a difference. As developers we know that from profiling and Amdahl's law.

Fixing (or fixating on) the film issue wouldn't make an iota of a difference for blacks. Exposing (no pun intended) the problems with seggregation and Jim Crow laws at the same era, would make much more difference.

And its the same when we're talking about history. At best the article is a curiosity: "back when they routinely lynched blacks and they couldn't even get a room at a hotel or eat in a restaurant with whites, film wasn't really tailored to their skin tone either".

That's nice to know when you have exhausted the other historical issues with racism. If not, it's mostly useless trivia, compared to what people should know about the era.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I can't believe anyone takes vox.com seriously.</comment>


Minimalist JavaScript Audio Equalizer - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/NoahBuscher/eq

<comment><AUTHOR> It's pretty crappy and is not responsive AT ALL, but the main thing there is the interface with the audio API. Potentially a starting point for better applications.</comment>


Don't Blame a 'Skills Gap' for Lack of Hiring in Manufacturing - <AUTHOR> http://fivethirtyeight.com/features/dont-blame-a-skills-gap-for-lack-of-hiring-in-manufacturing/ <comment><USER2> > The manufacturing industry has become so specialized that companies are > looking for hyperspecific skills that few outside workers could be expected > to have.

I've seen this in action. A company hires someone, that person bounces around the company picking up various skills, roles and responsibilities.

Time passes, that person leaves the company, and the company looks for a replacement, completely ignoring the fact that the role and the employee who filled it grew organically together over the years, making it impossible to find a drop-in replacement.

They then complain that there's a skills shortage because none of the electrical engineers applying for the position are proficient with both graphic design in Corel Draw, and operating the shop's CNC lathe.

<comment><USER3> ITT closing down doesn't help. There definitely seems like a need to fill technical certifications.

<comment><USER4> The article talks about this, and claims that most of these jobs don't require certifications.

They basically require plant specific on the job training, which for whatever reason companies aren't providing.

It's similar to the tech industry where jobs ask for 10 years of node.js experience, 15 years of Coffeescript and advanced linux kernel knowledge....If you need that person, your going to have to train him.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> The biggest "gap" in manufacturing is the wages gap. Most new jobs in manufacturing require less skills than a Walmart greeter. They either stand around and press a button or stand around and pull a piece of plastic off a part. Manufacturers aren't willing to pay much more than $MinimumWage per hour for this job. The people who apply for these jobs are just a revolving door that cycle through all the local manufacturers once they get bored. And then manufacturers complain because they can't find someone who wants minimum wage and wants to press a button for the next 30 years and is dependable. They cite "work ethic". Technology and capitalism are the only one's we can blame in this situation.

<comment><USER6> "Blame technology and capitalism"? Are you advocating that a higher minimum wage would fix this? How exactly would pricing labor above it's actual value cause MORE of it?

<comment><USER7> If these manufactured products can't be brought to market without the button pushers, the value of the button pushing is almost certainly higher than minimum wage.

<comment><USER8> In which case the minimum wage is unnecessary. I had one of these button pushing jobs (well it was more complicated than that, but still not demanding), and was paid well above minimum wage.

<comment><USER6> Exactly where I was going to go. Economies are about allocation of finite resources (labor being one of those). If a company is so poorly ran that it can't determine the correct price it's willing to pay for labor through cost- benefit analysis, I'd rather it not exist. Politically, we have a thing for making it harder for bad companies to fail.

<comment><USER8> Agreed! There are bad businesses making bad decisions all the time. Just waiting for someone to come eat their lunch. But we sort of shelter them from those consequences.

My only disagreement with you is that I'm happy for a bad business to exist as long as it can manage it. I just don't think we should save them from being destroyed by their dysfunction.

<comment><USER6> I guess I just mean I don't think we (government) should keep bad business afloat. If they can manage on their own, who am I to say it's bad ;D

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> > Companies, the authors write, "are unwilling or unable to solve their skill > challenges through internal training, even for skills that are highly > specific to a particular plant."

That's true for all companies. They don't want to spend the money to train, since employees can (and often do) leave after just a few years (if not months), but are also unwilling to make the workplace a more desirable one.

<comment><USER10> It's pretty sad, as the solution is staring at them in the face. These are the companies who refuse to adapt.

<comment><USER11> It's not that simple. The economic situation on the ground is that anybody making less than $70k a year is better off on welfare. Factory workers make less than half that. Who would willingly train to do a hard, monotonous job when they could sit on the couch doing nothing and get paid more?

<comment><USER12> Reality check (no idea where you live... but your blithe statement reveals some serious lack of understanding of the situation of most people in the US):

The U.S. Census Bureau reported in September 2014 that U.S. real (inflation adjusted) median household income was $51,939.

Making $50k a year is WAAAAAAAAAAAAAY better than being on welfare.

<comment><USER13> " _...median household income..._ "

That's also very likely two paychecks.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> It seems like what they really want is someone with twice the skills for half the pay.

My friend's dad always told me it was hard to find people to hire, but he also said to hire someone he'd need to be able to make 3x what they cost to keep around.

<comment><USER15> 3x is the low end. I try to keep my factory at 6x . When you try to run at 3x, then you may drift down to 2x or less. If you aim for 6x, then you survive fine when it drifts down to 4x, and you are doing great when it goes up to 10x.

I think that people who aren't employers can lose sight of the fact that some people are actually worth negative money per hour. Some people, even at $8.05 per hour, are not worth even that. Others, like the mythical 10x programmer, are worth 10x the high wage you pay them (or more). A huge variation.

Example. Joe makes $8.05 sweeping the floor. Joe is not very diligent with his work, and sweeps some aluminum dust and debris into a pile of iron dust and debris, accidentally creates thermite and sets the corner of the factory on fire. This now costs in one day what Joe would have made in a year (this actually happened to me, last month. Thanks Bryan for putting it out).

Example 2 (another true story! a good friend's company) Roy is drilling holes in a hydraulic press, actually in a dozen hydraulic presses that are all sold and need to ship. He breaks the 1" drill bit he is using, and undaunted and unwilling to tell anyone, he replaces the 1" bit with a smaller 15/16" bit and continues drilling. The presses ship out, all 12 of them, very heavy and with high shipping costs ($800 for the press and $200 for the shipping), and they get delivered to the customers. Yay! A hard busy week, but it all went out! Yay! bonuses for everyone! Then next week the phone starts ringing and it is discovered that all 12 presses are not unusable - the hole is too small to fit the piece that goes into it. All 12 presses come back, shipping borne both ways by manufacturer, and the presses are scrapped and replaced. Roy caused over $10,000 in losses for a very small company in exchange for the $300 dollars in pay. Roy was worth -$250 per hour that week. Negative $250 per hour.

Of course we want twice the skills for half the pay. I would settle for twice the skills for twice the pay though. It is just so hard to find the "twice the skills" part. I would be delighted to find 1x the skills, even that is hard. When you find the person with 10x the skills, I recommend making it so they never want to leave. Equity in the company (or a cage of some kind in the basement, LOL)

<comment><USER16> > all 12 presses are not unusable

You shipped out $10,000 worth of deliverables without even so much as testing that they were usable? You have a manufacturing process that doesn't do basic acceptance testing of each unit as it comes off the line? And you really think this is a personnel problem?

<comment><USER17> A) wasn't the grandparent's company

B) isn't really relevant to the topic of discussion, which the possibility of someone being worth negative money/hr

C) could have been kinder :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> If this article is correct, if firms aren't flexible enough to train workers with specific skills if they can't find anyone with that skill set that suggests that the firm _is not filling jobs it needs_ and thus not as productive as it should be increasing shareholder value.

That means that there is bad management and the board which represents shareholders should dump the current management and find management that is focused on doing what it takes legally to improve shareholder value.

<comment><USER19> Take the cynical view and recognize that this isn't a totally free market. Everyone has an incentive to kick back and let someone else solve the problem.

Paying for training is usually a crappy deal, because someone else can use the same money to raise wages and steal your trained workers. You can address this with things like repayment-required contracts, but that's ugly and difficult for most jobs. Plus, you've got a better option: get it for free!

So yes, you operate at slightly lower efficiency, but it's not because you're dumb. Instead, you're hoping that someone else (a competitor or ideally the government) will train up some employees you can then hire. Ideally, you get the government to push a career-training program in your desired field, producing a glut of specialized workers who not only don't need training, but keep wages down because they're only skilled in one specialized field.

In which case, the management is perfectly sensible and 'sticky' wages in the face of a hiring gap make total sense.

<comment><USER18> Well, it makes the appearance that they are not employing and training people that are working to maximize shareholder value. The explanation that you present seems interesting but too complicated. If they lack employees and need to train them in order to improve productivity and thus shareholder value they should do this.

I think there is a lack of transparency to shareholders that understand their management is lazy/incompetent.

Also, in the article, it would be helpful to have the journalist interview some firms and ask them why they don't train people if they can't find them. Make it explicit.

<comment><USER19> That would have been a really good addition to the article. We could probably tell a dozen different stories ranging from "surprising industry-specific complications" to "basic incompetence", and it's a shame the piece doesn't try to get an actual answer on which one holds.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> We have more than a few factories in our area offering barely $40k for incredibly specific skillsets involving various types of machines, totally unwilling to train.

This is actually a really good explanation for how so much of the technology in the Warhammer 40k universe is unknown and worshipped; nobody was willing to train anyone on how it worked.

<comment><USER8> On topic: $40k seems pretty decent for an operator, though with training.

Off topic: I'm still new to WH40k (started running a Rogue Trader game), but my impression is that the tech ignorance was a mixture of a psuedo-religious cult seizing control, information lost in the many wars, and the intentional intellectual poverty of the populace that keeps them docile.

<comment><USER21> > On topic: $40k seems pretty decent for an operator, though with training.

Depends. Any mention of a dollar figure must include the region in the US, or it's totally meaningless. A 40K salary could easily be really good, really bad or normal.

<comment><USER20> That's true and even I don't have a point of reference as it's not my industry, it's just a regular feature of our local papers to have the local businessmen complaining about the lack of workers. I checked out the job listings out of curiosity.

Whatever the case, apparently it's not enough since they can't attract people who are willing to work for that wage.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> > Weaver and Osterman offer a more industry-specific explanation: The > manufacturing industry has become so specialized that companies are looking > for hyperspecific skills that few outside workers could be expected to have. > But companies have also become less likely to offer training for new hires.

I would argue that it's not specific to manufacturing. This sounds pretty similar to a phenomenon found in software development. Sometimes the principal developer on a project leaves the company and no one can read their code. Even if you match the laundry list of technology buzzwords perfectly, their code could just be unreadable.

Going deeper, maybe the problem is even more general than that. If you have manufacturing equipment that no one in your company knows how to use, is that still considered capital? If so, what is that capital worth?

What about code no one in the company understands? Patents? Excel spreadsheets? Is it still intellectual property? Interesting times are ahead.

</comment><comment><USER13> " _Another possibility is that what companies mean by an "opening" has changed — that in an age of online job listings, automated résumé screenings and increasing temporary and contract work, companies are posting more jobs than they ever expect to fill. There's some evidence for this: Recruiting intensity — a measure of how hard companies are trying to fill open positions — remains below prerecession levels in both the manufacturing sector and the economy overall._ "

That is an interesting theory. Unfortunately, the abstract of the referenced paper doesn't seem like the paper mentions much evidence. Also, my limited experience makes me doubt manufacturing companies are throwing out job openings willy-nilly, trolling for applicants. (In non-blue-collar jobs, sure.)

On the other hand, the current environment would seem to make it easy to overestimate the number of openings.

<comment><USER19> My experience suggests that this theory is dead on. Less because companies are putting up more openings, and more because the meaning of "posting an opening" has changed in a way that causes overcounting.

When Verizon wants a floor-sales clerk, they're likely putting the opening up on Monster, Indeed, and several other sites besides. That's 5-6 "openings posted" for one actual job, and it's made even worse if they aren't quick to take down the postings (why bother? you just route the resumes to spam). 30 years ago, you were posting a single job in specific places, and job boards or newspaper ads would turn over 'naturally' if you didn't keep the posting active.

So I don't know how important it is, but I'm definitely assuming that postings are being multiply counted these days.

<comment><USER23> And what you mention is just a multiplication of posting of the same job post.

But there is also the case that more and more work is subcontracted. So you can find posts that are slightly different but all refer to the same job position: 1 by the company where the job will take place, 4 by different subcontractors, and 3 more because 2 of the subcontractors have themselves subcontracted the job.

<comment><USER19> This is a great point I had overlooked.

I did once realize that I was interviewing for the same job twice, once as a contractor and once as a direct employee. Everyone had been sufficiently close-mouthed about the exact role that I got several phone interviews in before things came to a head.

And I realize this is multiplicative, so it probably means every contractor and the original company are _each_ putting up 2-5 postings for the same job.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> Programming machines. Recently a factory robot crushed a woman against a wall when she entered its work space. A closed casket funeral. If there is a need to program a machine, who is responsible if there is a safety issue involved? or even identifying there is one? The factory worker only trained to program? The supervisor, with infamous pressure to get and keep production running?... BTW, according to CBS, State regulators suggested a $7000 fine(!!!), and said a lockout device could have stopped it.

<comment><USER15> I own a factory robot welding cell. It has triple redundant safety systems. To make it operate while human accessible, you have to activate the safety interlocks on both doors, pull the triggers halfway (but not all the way) on the teach pendant, and then the machine will only move at 10% speed. Even at 10% speed, if the robot turns and the cabling on it swings around, it can give you a good hit (from the welding cable on top). Would not be fatal, but it does give you a good whack on the head (I have experienced this!! haha).

Also, machine operating and machine programming are totally separate jobs. Programming is very high skill level, and operating is fairly low - my 9 year old son and his scout troop spent one night operating it to get their robot badge.

Why did the woman enter the work space, and how did she turn off all the safety devices? That would take a fair amount of effort on my machine, to get inside it while it runs. It could be done if you really tried, but it would take some effort.

As for training - nobody, and I mean NOBODY, has had the skill or training to operate that robot in the 9 years I have owned it. The operators were all trained by me, the factory owner. And while I have lots of pressure on me for production, an industrial accident will destroy that. Better safe than shut down by OSHA.

<comment><USER24> I understand the separation of programming and operating, as I am a programmer as well as having studied automated automotive valve welding and grinding at a leading supplier (friction stem and seat welding, among others). The point I was making, though probably not clear I admit, was that a factory operator could be seen as a "machine programmer" simply because they were given that title by the production owners, and trained on the job as such. For example, technicians regularly do electrician functions in large factories, and all safety and liability issues that arise with that. And, not all factory robots are contained in an enclosure, they are in free 3D space; what interlock would you suggest to keep a human out? Visual, ultrasonic? I simply ask who takes responsibility for general machine programming Safety if there is not a simple enclosure interlock situation? BTW, she didn't get by an interlock; apparently there was not one there - which is my point exactly. BTW, a previous fatal incident the proposed fine was <$100k, not a shut down - that doesn't seem much of a disincentive to me.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> You would think it would be the manufacturing plant that's off by itself in the middle of nowhere that doesn't have access to a pool of skilled labor — but it didn't turn out that way.</comment>


Show HN: Beamsplitter – Hash function that uses only S-boxes - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/dosyago/beamsplitter <comment><USER2> Let's ignore for a second the question of security (is it collision/pre-image resistant? Dieharder says nothing about this).

As a developer, is the fact that it only uses S-boxes supposed to be beneficial to me somehow? Does this mean it runs faster? Uses less memory? Is it an academic exercise? Why would I use this over a different hash function?

<comment><USER3> I'm reasonably sure it's in jest:

""" I went to random.org and generated 32 sets of 256 no-repeat numbers between 0 and 255 inclusive. """

We have someone with the practical cryptographic knowledge to design their own cryptographic code, but they grab their random numbers from a website... ;)

<comment><USER4> Also posting dieharder results as validation (and the only kind of validation!) smells like a joke.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> > I went to random.org and generated 32 sets of 256 no-repeat numbers between > 0 and 255 inclusive.

One suggestion I'd have here would be using "nothing-up-my-sleeve" numbers like pi/e/log2 in hex. [1]

[1] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nothing-up-my- sleeve_number](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nothing-up-my-sleeve_number)

</comment><comment><USER6> Saving a Google search for those (like me) who don't know what S-boxes are: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/S-box](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/S-box)

</comment><comment><USER7> I sincerely hope the author will urgently and clearly mark the repo as a toy/demo/do not use for anything important in the readme.</comment>


Unlimited private git repos for Python Developers - <AUTHOR> https://blog.pythonanywhere.com/43/

<comment><USER2> In fact, non-Python developers are welcome too. You can just use the site for hosting your repos, be they full of ruby, node.js, haskell, or whichever Lovecraftian horror of a language you prefer... Just make sure to click on "Bash console", and not on any of those terrible Python ones...</comment>


Thousands of Swedes Are Inserting Microchips Under Their Skin - <AUTHOR> https://www.npr.org/2018/10/22/658808705/thousands-of-swedes-are-inserting-microchips-under-their-skin <comment><USER2> My main concern would be how you'd get robbed with one of these. If they take your hand or thumb they can then use your chip to pay for things. Sure you could cancel it but I don't want to give any motive for someone to cut my hand off.

<comment><USER3> _Swedes are very pragmatic..._

Wear a fucking wristband. Mind-bogglingly pointless.

<comment><USER3> On a second read, I realize this comment is almost disrespectful to Swedes, not my intention at all. Just a little shade at the people - from anywhere - that would put a chip in their thumb.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I am against digital implants for a variety of reasons, including privacy, but… The only valid case that I could agree to would be my complete health record, ESPECIALLY when my health record would no longer be stored in a data retrieval system. Can't steal or spy on what's not in the system.

</comment><comment><USER5> why not use a phone, or watch or a ring or other removable device for the same purpose

body inserted devices are intrusive

</comment><comment><USER6> RFID implants are identical to RFID credit cards whose data is cloned and stolen on a daily basis. Likely the reason tech info on the implant's operation were omitted.

</comment><comment><USER7> Article seemed a little light on technical details, are these RFID chips given they seem to work well with all these other services like the door locks and train ticketing?

</comment><comment><USER8> Hope it's not mifare classic :/</comment>


Forget the Higgs, neutrinos may be the key to breaking the Standard Model - <AUTHOR> http://arstechnica.com/science/2014/04/forget-the-higgs-neutrinos-may-be-the-key-to-breaking-the-standard-model/

<comment><USER2> I fail to see how this is related to hacker news?

<comment><USER3> You need to read the guidelines again.

When I see people saying what you've said I always ask what they think should be on HN? What is relevant to HN? Why is this not relevant?</comment></comment>


Clojure and Complexity (2011) - <AUTHOR> http://lisp-univ-etc.blogspot.kr/2011/11/clojure-complexity.html

<comment><USER2> "We were not out to win over the Lisp programmers; we were after the C++ programmers. We managed to drag a lot of them about halfway to Lisp."

\- Guy Steele, Java spec co-author

Steele seemed to be trying to encourage those who saw the glass as half empty to see it as being half full. The article makes some valid points but surely, from a high level, clojure can only be seen as a glass that's very nearly full.

<comment><USER3> But then if Lisp is the goal, why stop at halfway to it?

<comment><USER4> Because selling C++ programmers on Java was hard enough ;)

The full discussion that quote is from is a very interesting read: [http://people.csail.mit.edu/gregs/ll1-discuss-archive- html/m...](http://people.csail.mit.edu/gregs/ll1-discuss-archive- html/msg04045.html)

Guy Steele suggests that even though some of the people working on Java at the time might have been ok with closures, it was a hard sell when programmers used to manual memory management in C++ were worried about whether things were allocated on the stack or the heap and how much control they had over them. Thus you get the awkwardness that is anonymous inner classes in Java, which are effectively closures, but by another name and papered over with boilerplate.

        "Actually, the prototype implementation *did* allow non-final
        variables to be referenced from within inner classes.  There was
        an outcry from *users*, complaining that they did not want this!
        The reason was interesting: in order to support such variables,
        it was necessary to heap-allocate them, and (at that time, at least)
        the average Java programmer was still pretty skittish about heap
        allocation and garbage collection and all that.  They disapproved
        of the language performing heap allocation "under the table" when
        there was no occurrence of the "new" keyword in sight."

[http://people.csail.mit.edu/gregs/ll1-discuss-archive- html/m...](http://people.csail.mit.edu/gregs/ll1-discuss-archive- html/msg04056.html)

Reading through this thread is delightful, I developed quite a lot of respect for Mr Steele.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> A quick analysis of the article from the point of view of an ordinary Clojure programmer: 1) Yes, it's tied to the JVM (or JS). This is a huge trade-off and not without its costs, but it's one Clojure programmers are happy to make. 2) You can't do reader macros: true, Rich Hickey dislikes them because of the nasty effects they have on re-use. However, Clojure now has reader literals which fill in _some_ of this gap. Again, a trade-off. 3) He doesn't like [] and {}. I don't really understand why: paredit copes perfectly well with them. I never actually need to parse ))]))}) in my head. 4) Over-reliance on recursion. Possibly true, but a decent generator macro would probably address his issue. (And we're quite close to having one.) Bear in mind you _can_ have mutable private state in Clojure, it's just rarely used. 5) Lazy sequences complect sequences and streams: true. Lazy sequences are not, in fact, perfect for all use cases. That's why reducers and async got introduced. 6) It doesn't feel like a LISP: if that means it doesn't feel like elisp, you're not going to catch me crying. 7) It didn't have a killer app: now it has several.

Overall, many of the criticisms are valid, but a) some are design decisions with practical trade-offs* b) some have been addressed since the article was written

*I mean seriously, using the JVM is a huge negative in certain ways, but does anyone believe Clojure could have got off the ground if it didn't? Rich Hickey tried other approaches for years before this one worked.

</comment><comment><USER5> Of course, since the article was written, we've had Storm, Riemann and Cascalog. That's 3 killer apps on the platform. I don't think Clojure is going away anytime soon.

<comment><USER6> Two of those (Storm and Cascalog) created by the incredibly talented Nathan Marz. Just shows how much a few talented early adopters can push a programming language forward.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> "Rich argues, that defining both lists and vectors with parens (in Lisp list is '() and vector is #()) is complecting."

Really? That strikes me as, well, kind of absurd.

The author of the linked post complains about the use of exceptions over conditions, but you can define conditions using dynamic scope anyway: [https://github.com/bwo/conditions](https://github.com/bwo/conditions)

</comment><comment><USER8> I wonder, where does Scheme fall in on this whole, uhm, scheme? Especially w.r.t. this part:

"[Clojure] doesn't have facilities to control the reader in the same way CL does: actually, in this regard Clojure is very different from Lisp — it hardly provides facilities for controlling any aspect of the language — and this control is a critical part of Lisp's DNA"

Or, is Scheme as good for stratified design as CL?</comment>


The most realistic video game simulator ever built - <AUTHOR> http://singularityhub.com/2011/10/30/the-most-incredible-video-game-simulator-ever-built-brings-battlefield-3-to-life-with-pain/

<comment><USER2> Absolutely brilliant. It's this sort of stuff that might bring back the old arcade as this system is too expensive for home owners.

<comment><USER3> At an investment of $650k just for the simulator, and assuming you'd like to make that back in a year -- which is kind of a long cycle for video game content that gets stale quickly -- the operator would have to charge about $300/hr for access. This assumes they could sell 6 hours a day for 365 days, which is so overly optimistic it's laughable. At $600/hr, you might see the light at the end of the tunnel at a year, but who is going to pay that kind of rate outside of the DoD?

<comment><AUTHOR> I suspect there are some whopping economies of scale to be had here, though. This was a one-off and prototypes do tend to be expensive.

BTW, I'll bet 2/3 the cost was that military-grade omnidirectional treadmill. Mass-produce that and you're back into the realm of possibility.</comment></comment></comment>


Eat less, remember more - <AUTHOR> http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn16482-eat-a-little-less-remember-more.html?DCMP=OTC-rss&nsref=online-news <comment><AUTHOR> I was watching a documentary today titled 'How To Live To 101 Without Trying'. It explores the towns where people live the longest: <http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/magazine/7250675.stm>

_In Okinawa (Japan), the residents actually age more slowly than almost anyone else on earth.

It's what they don't eat that may be at the heart of their exceptionally long lives. The Okinawan's most significant cultural tradition is known as hara hachi bu, which translated means eat until you're only 80% full.

Scientists call it caloric restriction, but don't entirely understand why it works. They think it sends a signal to the body that there is going to be a impending famine, sending it into a protective, self-preservation mode._

Eating less (and healthy) does have its merits.

<comment><USER2> Dunno if "most significant cultural tradition" is an appropriate appelative when the Okinawans invented Karate, and hara hachi bu was independently developed in Western civilization ("Eat not to satiety," Benjamin Franklin).

<comment><USER3> I don't think "Eat not to satiety" became a cultural tradition in Benjamin Franklin's homeland.

<comment><USER4> .. or even for Ben himself ;)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I seem to find the Zone better when I haven't eaten all day. I wonder if the principles are the same. The studies in rats would seem to be very straightforward - combining a restricted calories diet with maze tests. I'm surprised they haven't been done yet.

<comment><USER6> _I seem to find the Zone better when I haven't eaten all day. I wonder if the principles are the same._

This works fine for me, but I've seen counter-examples too - I've had colleagues that are absolutely braindead/grumpy/etc unless they eat.

<comment><USER7> To add another anecdote, one of my most productive programming periods was when I was eating a single (small) meal per day at 6pm.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> _"Two words may not seem like much, but it's more than the difference between people under 30 and above 50."_

So you lose less than 16% of your memory capacity in 20+ years. Interesting. I was afraid it was worse.

Though I don't think it was really "short term memory" they tested [1]. Even normal adults can recall just 7±2 chunks stored in the short term memory, so 10.5/12.5 for elderly would be extraordinary.

[1] <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Short_term_memory>

</comment><comment><USER9> I'm going to give this a shot. Not radically like the CR people I will just randomly skip meals and not eat after 6pm(good practice anyways).

Maybe it will break my procrastination cause my body begins to work harder to find food. Just gotta make sure my stomach doesn't grumble during the wrong times though.

<comment><USER4> Buddhist monks don't eat after midday. They also likely wake up earlier than programers, though ;)

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Dostoevsky Hunger

</comment><comment><USER11> Since the experiment started with overweight people, I can't see it distinguished between losing weight to improve memory and reducing calories to improve memory.</comment>


China must act, but Africa needs to take the lead to stop ivory trade - <AUTHOR> http://www.theguardian.com/environment/africa-wild/2014/dec/09/china-must-act-but-africa-take-the-lead-in-stopping-ivory-trade

<comment><AUTHOR> I should also mention that currently, over at /r/babyelephantgifs [1] (btw you should totally subscribe for a daily dose of elephant gifs) there is the second wildlife conservation fundraiser going on during which we encourage users to donate to wildlife conservation charities.

You should read more about it here [https://www.reddit.com/r/babyelephantgifs/comments/2nxqdw/he...](https://www.reddit.com/r/babyelephantgifs/comments/2nxqdw/hey_baby_elephant_fans_here_we_go_again/). If you donate and then report your donation to the mods, you will be awarded a golden elephant flair! During the first fundraiser, subscribers have reported to have donated over $8000 so we are trying to beat that.

I realize that there are many worthy causes but this one is getting somewhat serious. At the current rate of poaching, elephant will be gone in 20 years[2]. That's assuming constant rate, but the rate is increasing.

[1] [https://www.reddit.com/r/babyelephantgifs/](https://www.reddit.com/r/babyelephantgifs/)

[2] [http://www.independent.co.uk/environment/elephants-and- rhino...](http://www.independent.co.uk/environment/elephants-and-rhinos-could- be-extinct-within-two-decades-because-of-ivory-poaching-9772736.html)

</comment><comment><USER2> I'm in no way advocating this trade should continue, but I never knew about the art carved out of ivory. I've always seen on tv/movies just the tusk. The pieces in the picture are so beautiful.

That being said, ivory it's self doesn't look much different from a concrete mix or a nicely painted piece of wood. I wonder why so many people are obsessed with it.

<comment><USER3> China has a long fascination with ivory, and Chinese have traditionally valued many exotic goods derived from animals. China also doesn't care much about the environment or natural resources, especially those that are not the natural heritage of China. The rising price of ivory will not deter people in China, on the contrary, the prestige of many items in china (eg Chateau Lafite Rothschild) is connected primarily to the price of the items.

<comment><USER4> Those types of goods are known as Veblen Goods:

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

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> If I had the wealth some people have in the Bay Area, I wouldn't be throwing money away at just making more money; the money would be funding legitimate wildlife preserves in Africa, and elsewhere. I know the world has many problems, but this is a problem that should be fixed--now.

<comment><USER6> I don't think this is a problem with supply, this is a problem with demand.

The solution is to (somehow) eliminate the demand for ivory with strict laws/punishments.

<comment><USER7> I'm all for using what amounts to military tactics against poachers, but that alone is probably not going to solve the problem - there is simply too much money to be made. It reminds me of the drug trade, really, and while with drugs we can mostly solve the problem through legalization, that's not really an option here.

Which is why I think this article is somewhat misguided. There is only so much Africa can do, and that's even assuming plentiful resources and political will to do it, which might be a mistaken assumption.

The demand problem needs to be solved, and only China can accomplish that. This article seems to be giving them a pass, and that's wrong. For example, I would like to know more about this "ivory spending spree" in Tanzania. Regardless of whether it was lower-level officials getting "out of control", what was the official response? Unless it was a harsh one, I'm afraid the question of whether they were following the orders of their superiors is not very relevant - the result will be the same either way, which is that ivory consumption by Chinese will be seen as socially, legally, and politically acceptable.</comment></comment></comment>


FreeType 2.6.4 released with new and better bytecode interpreter - <AUTHOR> http://lists.nongnu.org/archive/html/freetype-announce/2016-07/msg00000.html <comment><AUTHOR> The new interpreter has absolutely improved rendering of fonts, at least subjectively for me.

        CHANGES BETWEEN 2.6.3 and 2.6.4

        I. IMPORTANT CHANGES

            - A new  subpixel hinting  mode has  been contributed  by Nikolaus
            Waxweiler, which is now the  default rendering mode for TrueType
            fonts.  It implements  (almost everything of) version  40 of the
            bytecode engine.

            The existing code  base in FreeType (the  `Infinality code') was
            stripped to the bare minimum  and all configurability removed in
            the  name  of speed  and  simplicity.   The configurability  was
            mainly aimed  at legacy  fonts like Arial,  Times New  Roman, or
            Courier.  [Legacy fonts are fonts  that modify vertical stems to
            achieve clean black-and-white bitmaps.]  The new mode focuses on
            applying a minimal set of rules to all fonts indiscriminately so
            that modern and web fonts  render well while legacy fonts render
            okay.

            Activation  of the  subpixel hinting  support can  be controlled
            with   the   `TT_CONFIG_OPTION_SUBPIXEL_HINTING'   configuration
            option  at compile  time: If  set to  value 1,  you get  the old
            Infinality  mode  (which  was  never  the  default  due  to  its
            slowness).  Value 2 activates the new subpixel hinting mode, and
            value 3 activates both.  The default is value 2.

            At run time,  you can select the subpixel hinting  mode with the
            `interpreter-version'  property (provided  you have  compiled in
            the corresponding hinting mode); see `ftttdrv.h' for more.</comment>


SEND UP TO A TERABYTE, FOR FREE. - <AUTHOR> https://soshareit.com

<comment><USER2> Site doesn't really explain too much. So it's just another one click hoster that allows really large files? Why is the title all caps?

This is just advertisment. I don't see any real value in this link.

<comment><AUTHOR> it's not an advertisement. I'm not associated with them. the title is all caps because i copy pasted from their title. sorry...

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> "Unlimited - Send bundles up to a terabyte in size, totally free."

That's not really "unlimited" then.

</comment><comment><USER4> <http://gigaom.com/2013/02/15/bittorrent-soshare-app/>

</comment><comment><USER5> Is this p2p software? If it is why are they talking about data transfer limits at all?</comment>


6-year-old made $11M in one year reviewing toys on YouTube - <AUTHOR> https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/morning-mix/wp/2017/12/11/6-year-old-made-11-million-in-one-year-reviewing-toys-on-you-tube/ <comment><USER2> I think this is a really weird situation.

This 6year old did not make $11M. His parents did. His parents edit the videos, maintain high production value, market the channel, make a constant stream of videos starring Ryan.

It's a pretty weird situation. It is kind of insane how much money his parents are raking in because of this

<comment><USER3> I mean, if the headline was "6 year old's Parents Made $11m in One Year", I feel like you could post the comment:

"The parents did not make $11m. The kid did. The kid is on the screen, the kid plays with the toys, and is willing to continue appearing on camera."

<comment><USER4> Kids will play with toys all day long, whether or not anyone is paying attention.

The effort, and thus the payoff, was on the parts of the parents, no?

<comment><USER3> I don't mean to over-intellectualize, but here's an interesting question:

Which is more of a commodity, a specific child that other kids would enjoy watching play, or someone to edit videos and plan content?

I would say that you can hire out editing in a lot of cases or even video planning, but some people are just more magnetic than others.

It's a somewhat uncomfortable truth but some kids are more... endearing than others? That is to say, there are some channels with kids that other kids would quickly bore with.

<comment><USER5> Maybe both are right: Both the kid AND the parents deserve the money.

<comment><USER4> I didn't mean to suggest anyone did or did not deserve anything. It was a question of who was making or is the product. Clearly they all deserve the benefit from their success.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I so completely don't understand the mindless things people watch on YouTube. My kid loves watching videos of people providing excited (cartoon-like) commentary over some third party playing a video game.

It is like getting high on the suspense of something that is going to happen, but there is never a disappointment because its so stupid and mindless it doesn't matter if that thing never actually happens. Personally, it just seems like mindless crap to me, and yet people get absolutely fixated on it.

<comment><USER7> So, a bit like watching sports? :)

<comment><USER6> Somewhat, I guess. Sports are generally exciting when live though. None of this stuff making money on YouTube is live. I don't really watch sports either, unless I am attending a sporting event in person.

<comment><USER8> I think you're heavily projecting your own value system onto the content.

The reality is that for people who enjoy that content, it _is_ exciting, and they really do _enjoy_ watching other people play the game and talk about it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I'm generally pro-giving kids technology. My five year old has figured out how to text me respond to my texts using Siri, so we got her an iPhone. These toy- opening videos, however, are manipulative and without social value. (I think marketing directed at children and teenagers is categorically without social value, but that's a fight we lost long ago.)

I don't want to start blocking content, but I'm curious whether there is any way to purchase an advertising-free experience on Youtube that would deprioritize such videos. Curating rather than censorship, I guess.

<comment><USER10> Do you restrict usage per time? Like, no more than 1 hour a day?

Do you find that she wants to use the phone ALL the time? Does she take it to school? (one more question: are you the guy who sends his kiddo to montessori school?)

<comment><USER9> She doesn't take it to school. She's high-energy so usually she wants to play outside or play make-believe, so we haven't had problems with it crowding out other activities, though we keep an eye on it. She used to go to Montessori school. Her new school has a more traditional curriculum, though it still emphasizes self-directed learning. (Unlike myself as a kid, she actually wants to learn and do worksheets and whatnot.)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I wonder how much of that money comes from YouTube and how much comes from the toy companies.

</comment><comment><USER12> Why are videos / channels clearly target at children allowed to be monetized and show advertisements?

Further, why would any parents allow their children to watch them?

<comment><USER10> > Further, why would any parents allow their children to watch them?

Do you have children?

This is one of those things where when you're talking about it or thinking about it, it's common sense. Of course you're not going to let them watch TV! Or Youtube!

But then when you have a kid who is _just_ not stopping to cry, and you happen to be working from home this one day, and can't afford a babysitter or daycare, and you're tired and terribly sleep-deprived, you ... just resign to it, you give them your smartphone and off they merrily go and you're a little bit of a headache free, for now.

<comment><USER13> My mother solved the TV problem easily: don't have a TV in the house. Of course cellphones are now TVs, so that's a bit harder. But -- and I know I'll get down votes for writing this -- you as a parent are supposed to be in control. If I cried over something dumb like this, I'd absolutely be having a painfully intimate moment with a ruler, belt or hand. I say this as a 27 year old: these days parents are afraid to physically discipline their kids, and then wonder what's wrong with their kids.

<comment><USER14> This is absolutely right, but we live in a neutered society. Parents are absolutely worried about having the cops called on them if they strike their children, even in a an appropriate disciplinary manner. Also we've had years of experts telling us not to discipline our children. Result, unruly children who become unruly adults.

<comment><USER15> You can discipline without resorting to violence. People do it everyday in school, workplace, and all manners of life. I'm not sure why violent discipline is ok when it comes to children.

<comment><USER9> I'm not up to date on the research on corporal punishment, but isn't the obvious distinction that adults can respond to rational incentives, and children cannot?

<comment><USER10> Scientists seem to take a strong stand against corporal punishment, but I do have to say, as an Asian dude I know _lots_ of Asian people (well really everyone from Asia) who are brilliant (engineers, surgeons, businessmen) and seem mentally fine and well and they were disciplined physically both at home and school.

My pet theory is that since in school environments physical punishment was distributed "equally", that's not as bad.

I really wonder how far back corporal punishment dates in the west, and whether brilliant people like Einstein ever received physical punishment.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> I knew it had to be Ryan. We live in China and I put youtube kids along with a vpn on my ipad. I don't feel so bad letting my kids watch it more than I would if we were living in USA, due to the English exposure. Anyhow, within a few weeks and my five-year old hit on his channel. Now she asks to watch him by name and pretty much want's to start out there every time.

<comment><USER17> Same here, in China even, but we moved on (disallowed) it, as we saw bad behaviour developing from Ryan's acts. Especially related to wasting things.BTW, the English spoken by the father and Ryan are very unclear and mostly mumbled. My wife is a teacher of English, and she disliked it for this additional reason.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> All I see is child labor. The reason they make so much money is because they are able to skirt legal limits on advertising to children.

</comment><comment><USER19> I have a bad feeling about exposing a young child to internet fame.

<comment><USER20> Why? What's different than normal fame where you can still be talked about on the Internet?

<comment><USER19> Simply that internet fame is relatively new, and the effects on young children aren't well understood.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Can't stand this kid. My son watches it, but we forbid it... I rather want him to watch Axel (although not anymore as the parents talk too much and nonsense according to him). Ryan is doing wasteful stuff, especially with food and candy. I really rather see my kid enjoy Tom & Jerry.

</comment><comment><USER21> It's all downhill from 1st grade. Poor kid already reached his professional peak.

</comment><comment><USER22> The parents made money, they set up the bank account under their name for YouTube to pay to. Why would they set it up under the 4 yr old child's name at the beginning

</comment><comment><USER23> Can someone please provide a non-paywall version? I remember there is a site for this...

<comment><USER11> [https://outline.com/W9FDsZ](https://outline.com/W9FDsZ)

<comment><USER23> Thank you. I will bookmark this site. But can the mods consider automatically rewrite the url to outline please?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> The article never offers a proof of the claim that the child earned "$11M in one year". Did I miss something? I don't consider Forbes a reputable source.

<comment><USER25> Source is right there in the article, linked where the claim is made.</comment></comment>


Why googlepages sucks - <AUTHOR>

I believed its a service from a giant - google, so I would never have any problems keeping some images for my blog on it, I thought it would be atleast better than keeping images on imageshack and tinypic etc... and this is what I get now -
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The bandwidth or page view limit for this site has been exceeded and the page cannot be viewed at this time. Once the site is below the limit, it will once again begin serving as normal. @ http://ideamonk.googlepages.com/widelogo.gif
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Now since I'm at a remote location, not near my desktop, I can't even see that banner I had put, neither does googlepages give any option to download the content I uploaded back, as I try to get back the picture from google pages, it gives bandwidth problem again.
I guess my 9 mb presentation on natural vegetation of India went too popular as the google analytics shows. Maybe thats the cause. But now what !?
1. What are the good places to host images to be used on a blog reliably?
2. Where can I upload a 9 mb zip file so that end users of my blog can download them without any hassles ?
3. Is googlepages reliable ? Eversince I put header banner etc on googlepages, my blog started taking too much time to show up... is googlepages really worth something ? </comment><comment><USER2> How about Picasa for image hosting.. I upload files for my blog at freewebs (though download from this site is slow).. i haven't used googlepages yet.. i am still a beginner.. let me know your views..</comment>


An ounce of loyalty is better than a pound of cleverness - <AUTHOR> http://fridayreflections.typepad.com/weblog/2007/11/an-ounce-of-loy.html

<comment><USER2> Sure, it was all well and good for Genghis Khan, but when we discuss the modern employer/employee, the loyalty expected is a bit one-sided. The employee is supposed to work as much overtime as the company wants, yet the company can fire/lay off the employee with nary a warning. Where's the loyalty in that?

<comment><USER3> I agree completely, but I don't think that that loyalty can or should come from legislation. It's got to come from the culture of the company, perhaps with contracts to back it up.

I think these days, most people of my generation don't really think much of the idea of loyalty from or too a company, which, for some people, careers, and companies, is probably damaging in the long run.

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> In the context of starting a company, this is pretty wise advice.

Do you hire people who are brilliant but ethically questionable (and might stab you in the back one day for an advantage), or do you hire people who are merely great ... but will stay and struggle with you when the inevitable hard times come?</comment>