Is the American economy too big to fail? - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/2008/07/20/weekinreview/20goodman.html?partner=rssuserland&emc=rss&pagewanted=all

<comment><USER4> Was the Titanic too big to sink?

<comment><USER5> Was the British Empire too big to fall

Was the world too big to get polluted :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> I think american are getting a bit too anxious. The trend the last hundred years have been that we talk less about depression and more about recessions. In fact, if the worst thing that could happen is that a couple of banks close down and a couple of millions have to start renting, well, that isn't really so bad. In my view, that's a picture of a pretty resillient economy.

</comment><comment><USER7> [http://goldismoney.info/forums/showthread.php?goto=newpost&#...
The documentary divided into twelve parts tells the story of how debt combined with political corruption impoverished a nation that was once so rich that the expression "Wealthy as an Argentine" was once in common use throughout the world.
When the USA took on trillions in debt starting in the early 1980s, did we enter a Dante's hell as Argentina did when it took on its debt under a military dictatorship in the 1970s? Is it only a matter of time before US debts lead inexorably to currency crisis, inflation, and political chaos? The story will strike North Americans as uncomfortably familiar.

<comment><USER8> And as predicted ( <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=245275> ) here come the "gold standard" links...

<comment><USER9> Thus illustrating the gresham's law of social news or something like it.

Blacklists, whitelists, gatekeepers, keyword vector analysis, are there any architectural approaches to delivering 'news you can use' that haven't been tried several times already?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I don't know. Have Americans forgotten how to work hard? This article is a year late, which seems to be fashionable these days in the financial world.

</comment><comment><USER11> Such incredible hubris.

</comment><comment><USER12> No.

</comment><comment><USER13> Has there been an analysis of what will happen to the 'common man' should these banks fail? In plain speak?

By which I mean:

Will the price of my food and gas go up? Will I pay more for the rent on my apartment? Will I have to pay more if I want to buy a house?

etcetera.

<comment><USER14> The most obvious impact will be to the thousands of people they employ. They will be without a job.

In more vague terms, it's really difficult to consider how wide-ranging the impacts will be. Banking is actually really important. It allows us to overcome capitalization gaps. In a metaphor that will go over well here: Say you have a great idea, but you need 10, high-quality 2-U physical servers to do it (and the room to put them in). Well, that's going to run you probably around $50,000 - before you have any money. VC steps in and you all get rich.

Likewise, without banking, it becomes hard for you to buy a home because you can't pull the money together. Who cares? You rent? Well, it becomes harder for the person who owns that building you're in to buy it and that causes rent to spike in a way that would seem unimaginable. Likewise, the farmer who needs cash to live on until harvest can't get it and so they have to charge more for their goods, etc.

The price of everything goes up because the cost to cover those capitalization gaps has risen incredibly. Worse, we'd face shortages - large ones.

Beyond that, Banks increase the velocity of money. Basically, the velocity of money is the time it is between when you get $1 in your pocket and when that $1 is spent on something else. At first, this looks like the Republican you should buy to be patriotic argument. That's where Banks come in to actually help. Banks allow you to get that money back into the economy without wasting it on useless things. For example, I inherit $50,000. I could spend it on stupid purchases that I don't want. That might boost things in a very short- term way. OR, I could put that $50,000 in the bank and the bank can then loan the company that needs servers that $50,000 and they are creating real value and growth in the economy. So, banks make the economy more efficient by keeping money circulating even when you have no use for your money. By doing this on a large enough scale (with certain safeguards), banks can guarantee you access to your money while improving economic efficiency (once your server company hits it big, you'll have lots of money you don't know what to do with when I want to remove money).

The issue we're seeing right now is that we got a little too ambitious. We wanted to open home-ownership to people that probably couldn't afford it. Now we're in a bad place where people have deposited money, but where the bank has lent it probably won't be able to pay back - the bank is facing a capitalization gap.

We should all hope that this is just a little blip - and it's unlikely that it will become worse than that. People are panicking right now because there is the potential that we're hitting a, say 10%, gap that can't be covered. When the gap is that small, banks can usually eat it in the long run (rather than go under) because it just isn't enough to kill them. Likewise, the government might help out if it's larger because if the banking system goes under, consumer prices would rise at a rate unimaginable to anyone who didn't live during the gas crisis in the 70s - but this would apply to all goods.

This could be bad, but there is enough strength in these institutions that even as pieces crumble, there is too much good in them to completely die - <USER2> hope.

<comment><USER15> This is interesting. Why do you think the prices of homes will go up and not have significant downward pressures in a credit restricted environment? Or am I reading your post wrong?

PS - I voted it up by the way because everything else strikes me as spot on.

<comment><USER14> It's not that the price of homes is going to go up - it would likely go down as we're seeing now. The difficulty of buying property is likely to increase.

So, with a good banking system, I can afford a $300,000 home. The banking system collapses and that home is now $200,000. The only problem is that without a good banking system, I can only afford a $50,000 home because without a mortgage, I can't pull together $300,000 or even $200,000. This becomes a problem for renters because the number of people who can afford to become landlords/ladies decreases. Where you had plenty of people who could buy a place with a commercial loan and pay it back over time from rental income, now you need people that can pull together cash.

Something is only expensive if it's hard for me to buy. A $10 dinner isn't expensive in absolute terms, but try selling that to the majority of Sub- Saharan Africa. Likewise, if home prices decrease, but the difficulty of getting a loan increases by more than that, it becomes more expensive to buy a home.

I'm hoping this won't get so bad so don't read this as my money is evaporating. Economics can be a delicate balance though. Very good question!

<comment><USER15> Right. That makes more sense to me. In dollar terms the prices go down. In value terms, they sky rocket. Cheaper houses that no one can afford would be my guess at what would happen as well.

<comment><USER14> I really hope that doesn't happen and I don't think it will for more than a few years. People react harshly to news - they think there is more significance than is really there.

I think the most likely result is that mortgage loans are going to see stratification in price - borrowers with high salaries and good credit histories are going to see little to no negative change with possible positive change; borrowers with low salaries and poor to mediocre credit will see loans they can't afford.

Partially, this came about because we (and by "we" I guess I mean US politicians) wanted to extend home ownership to more people - <USER3> historically disadvantaged people who didn't have access to the loan terms that those brought up as upper-middle class have access to. It's a laudable goal and one that we should try again in the future (albeit in a different way).

Since someone will probably ask what other way: One example of that would be to allow double deductability of mortgage interest to a certain mortgage value. So, let's say median home value is 300,000. If you allow a double deduction up to 150,000 in value, people with the median home see no change. People buying lower-valued homes see a positive increase in their ability to purchase that home - and that positive increase is paid for by the rich people in million dollar homes who can't deduct all their mortgage interest anymore.

Macroeconomics is complicated. My best advice is to be prudent yourself, live within your means, and not get caught up in the trends of people who think the economy is collapsing or that golden ages will never end.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Questions like this are really questions about words.

Was the Roman Empire too big to fail? Sortof, in that it so thoroughly changed how people thought and lived that even 2000 years later we are very obviously Roman in many of our laws, habits, and worldview. The key is that the ruling families of Rome are nowhere to be found as such.

So yes, the American economy will probably continue in much the same form for the next thousand years or so all over the world. Our huge amounts of natural resources, talent, and farmable land aren't going anywhere. The __real __question, the one coded into the title of this post, is "Is America influential enough to take a huge hit without the people who are currently very wealthy having to give up their money bins." and hopefully, for the rest of us who don't have money bins and can only become wealthy through our own work, and thus depend on a fair system, the answer is no.

</comment><comment><USER17> This begs the question of why in the heck did they let it get to big to fail. and what are they going to do to shrink it down so next time they can let it scum to market forces.</comment>


Bing starts serving AMP pages as Google prepares to reduce its control - <AUTHOR> https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2018/09/bing-starts-serving-amp-pages-as-google-prepares-to-reduce-its-control/ <comment><USER2> > proprietary extensions to HTML

That sounds a bit disingenious.

[https://github.com/ampproject/amphtml](https://github.com/ampproject/amphtml)</comment>


Under ten percent equity founder - <AUTHOR> Hi there,<p>Because of a part time agreement with the other two founders, I'm joining the full-time much later despite being here since the beginning. However, YC does not treat people under 10% as founders. Would this hard equity cutoff interfere with my title should we go to YC? <comment><USER2> Sounds like you're getting wayyy ahead of yourself and asking the wrong questions on multiple levels. (Yet another case of the naive technical cofounder.) A better question might be whether your cofounders consider you to be a founder if you are getting less than 10%.

<comment><USER3> Agree, have you gotten into YC? Do you have legal agreements? Does the title matter?

I'd pick up a copy of the book Founder Dilemmas

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> What's your priority with the company?

<comment><AUTHOR> I will be coming back and taking over a lot of the engineering work as well as operations. This is especially time sensitive because we are trying to figure this out for Demo Day. If I am not able to attend the events since I am under 10%, then it defeats the purpose of my moving out there immediately and continue to just work remote until after my current job vests.</comment></comment>


Elon Musk Confronts a Fateful Tweet and an 'Excruciating' Year - <AUTHOR> https://www.nytimes.com/2018/08/16/business/elon-musk-interview-tesla.html <comment><USER3> _But, he added, "if you have anyone who can do a better job, please let me know. They can have the job. Is there someone who can do the job better? They can have the reins right now."_

I think this hits at the crux of the issue around the performance/behaviour of Musk and other leaders of hugely ambitious companies.

And I think it highlights the importance of thinking about what kinds of people it will take to lead the next generation of such companies, and how we can identify and develop them.

I've never been any kind of Musk fanboy, and like most people I've looked on at his recent behaviour with some combination of bemusement and astonishment.

But when I see the hate and vitriol heaped on him, I'm compelled to wonder just what kind of alternative universe people are wishing for.

Do we actually want Tesla and SpaceX to fail?

Would we rather that Musk had just never founded Tesla and SpaceX, that the world didn't have any companies doing what those companies are trying to do, and that we were left to be content with the previous status quo in the automotive and space industries?

If not, then it would surely be better for the conversation to be less about how crazy or unstable or reckless Musk is, and more about how he and other leaders of today and of the future can pursue their ambitious goals, but to do so in a way that is responsible and balanced.

The alternative is not some as-yet-unknown-person-other-than-Musk doing the same thing but doing it better.

The number of people who are capable of building and running companies like these is vanishingly small and they will inevitably have extreme personality traits - some positive and some negative.

My concern is not for Musk's feelings, but for the way society goes about choosing, developing and critiquing the next generation of ambitious leaders, of whom we'll need plenty more if the world's increasingly complex problems are to be solved.

I should add that this applies whether we're talking about corporate leaders or political/community leaders.

<comment><USER4> There's a hidden false dichotomy there: That Tesla and Space X couldn't exist / succeed without Musk working his employees and himself into a burnout. I'm not sure that that is true. The same Musk with the same employees could've perfectly well done these companies at a sane pace - maybe even without losing speed in the grand scheme of things given that less stuff would've gone wrong.

<comment><USER3> _The same Musk with the same employees_

I think I agree with everything except that.

What I'm saying is we can't have everything that's positive about Telsa, but completely discard Musk.

What we _should_ hope for is for the current version of Musk to become a better version of Musk - say, one that can build a viable EV company and help bring about a global transition away from combustion-powered transport, but without the vile personal attacks, impulsive stock-price-affecting comments, absurd PR stunts, overworked workforce etc.

I'm well aware that the world doesn't currently have clear answers as to how people can make such profound changes to their personality, but I think it is where more discussion and research needs to be in order for the world to find and develop the leaders who can steer us through the big challenges.

<comment><USER5> Why does it have to be the current version of Musk to be a better version of Musk? Why can't we consider that Musk or his type was instrumental to launch Tesla but at this point a different person is better fit to grow it? Maybe skills needed to sustain a company might be different than the skills needed to launch it.

<comment><USER6> Completely just to play devil's advocate, here: When has a major innovative company ever done _better_ after ousting a visionary but perhaps somewhat toxic founder?

Maybe we could look at Uber, but it's too soon to tell. And The new management there seems earnest, but I'm not sure they're looking so hot from an actual business perspective.

<comment><USER7> General Motors. William durant vs Alfred Sloan.

But better is relative.

<comment><USER6> Oh shit, I like this one. Nice work.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> _" Then he got in a Tesla Model S and drove himself to the airport. En route, Mr. Musk typed his fateful message."_

Don't text while driving.

This going private thing is a strange idea. Sell Tesla to the _Saudi sovereign wealth fund?_ The one dedicated to keeping oil a viable industry? Does he want Salman bin Abdulaziz Al Saud as a boss? That makes no sense. Softbank might make sense.

Part of Musk's problem seems to be "Only I can fix it". Tesla desperately needs a chief operating officer. They have a VP of manufacturing, Gilbert Passin, who's a car guy, but he does not seem to be in charge. He's not the one living in the plant. There are people who have fixed broken production lines. Musk is not one of them.

Tesla finally produced 5,000 Model 3 units a week for two weeks running. That's encouraging. If they can sustain that rate for two months, and the quality complaints don't go up, they have the line working. Profitability is another matter. Tesla Fremont has a huge headcount for the output.

<comment><USER9> Saudi Arabia has the whole Vision 2030 plan in motion. The general thrust is they want to diversify the country away from being a petrostate. The headline numbers for state investment in renewables are nothing to scoff at: [https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-01-16/saudi- ara...](https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-01-16/saudi-arabia-plans- up-to-7-billion-of-renewables-this-year)

I can't find the link right now, but Bloomberg did a short ~30 minute documentary 4-5 years ago on Saudi efforts to build a biofuel research center.

I'd also posit that now is the ideal time to take money from the Saudis, if there ever was a time. The Aramco IPO is going nowhere fast, so a key pillar of Vision 2030 is dead in the water.

I'd humbly suggest that you read up on the Saudi youth bulge. Every Saudi receives an annual Alaska-style oil dividend. A huge portion of the youth population is unemployed. The thousands of US dollars paid out to each idle youth is not sustainable long-run, even if oil prices were to increase.

Assuming this Saudi deal is some kind of preferred stock or hybrid equity-debt structure, Tesla can probably get the most favorable terms possible from the Saudis because they are somewhat desperate at this point.

<comment><USER10> > _Saudi Arabia has the whole Vision 2030 plan in motion. The general thrust > is they want to diversify the country away from being a petrostate._

So the short-sellers are Big Oil shills, but selling out to the Saudis is okay (if you ignore human rights atrocities and all the oil)?

<comment><USER11> Ethics? Do you think Tesla is bad for selling cars to China? No country has intact ethics, your comment is ridiculous. Sa is one of the biggest and most promising investors in renewables _precisely_ because of their oil background. Oil is going to implode soon and they know it. Their economy and foreign policy rely heavily on oil, so they are carrying out a transition away from it now rather than wait. So yes, "selling out" to them is more than ok -- it's brilliant.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> This was about what I'd gathered.

He's been reckless and made some huge errors in judgement over the past year, but despite it all I hope he succeeds. I don't think he's a hero or a saint like some people do, but his endeavors are having a very real and tangible positive effect on civilization.

Most chiefly, as bad as the climate change situation looks right now, it would be so much worse without the insane amount of 1) change in the public's and the auto industry's perception of electric cars, and 2) innovation in battery technology (especially applied to solar arrays), which Tesla has accomplished. Seriously. We would have zero chance without those two hills having been crossed.

Character flaws aside, Musk is the only billionaire alive (or even in recent memory) whose business ventures are netting any actual positive effect on society whatsoever. Heck, he might be the only one _not_ having a seriously _detrimental_ effect on society right now. You don't have to like him to acknowledge that.

<comment><USER13> > _Character flaws aside, Musk is the only billionaire alive (or even in > recent memory) whose business ventures are netting any actual positive > effect on society whatsoever._

Wait, what? How can you possibly justify that?

> _Heck, he might be the only one not having a seriously detrimental effect on > society right now. You don 't have to like him to acknowledge that._

What about all those recent self-driving crashes? At best, they're poisoning the well for sensible self-driving legislation. At worst, they're killing people for no reason other than corporate hubris and greed. Then there's the matter of creepy corporate policing, such as the remote lockouts whenever somebody tries to examine the firmware, or the humiliating public accident reports whenever something goes wrong with one of the cars, or the forced corralling of all self-driving taxi business into a Tesla-exclusive service in the future.

<comment><USER14> > _What about all those recent self-driving crashes?_

What about Apollo 1? There is a difference between a civilian and military death. But they are both pursuing progress. One can't discount the costs without any concept of the potential benefits.

<comment><USER12> I wouldn't include the self-driving tech among the world-changing progress. Climate change is a pressing disaster for our whole species; self-driving cars are not urgent enough to be pursued with the same intensity, and are dangerous enough to deserve more rigour.

<comment><USER15> Automobiles cause over 1,000,000 deaths globally per year. Not to mention the number of human hours used to drive. Elimination of the need for people to drive and reducing auto deaths by, say 95%, I think would be world-changing.

What ratio of lives saved to extra deaths while creating self-driving tech would you accept?

<comment><USER16> You know the answer to that: zero. In the court of public opinion, existing risks are internalized and heavily discounted while new risks are always perceived as gargantuan no matter how small.

It's basic human psychology, it's why some people prefer to drive long distances instead of flying, and why a flu pandemic is conducive to mass hysteria, while the obesity and diabetes prevalence, orders of magnitude more deadly, barely appears on the radar.

<comment><USER17> Plus there's no way I'm trusting my life to some idiot programmer.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> The article notes allegations that the Board is concerned that Mr. Musk has been taking Ambien as a sleeping aid, but instead of sleeping, has been posting bizarre tirades on Twitter. I actually have a number of American* friends who take Ambien frequently with the intent that it be a sleeping aid. However, they all commonly do exactly what Mr. Musk may be doing: failing to sleep after taking their Ambien, and instead staying up late and acting in a crazy manner, and then failing to remember what they did in the morning.

How can it be that this drug is prescribed so often? It is pretty clearly a dangerously strong hallucinogen. Maybe it is warranted in really bad insomnia cases, but the risks seem to outweigh the benefits here. Would love to hear any perspectives from users or doctors here.

* I am in Canada, and while this may just be sampling error, I know many more Canadians than Americans, but don't know anyone here who to my knowledge has been prescribed Ambien for sleep.

<comment><USER19> The little sleep he IS getting isn't even quality. From the author of Why We Sleep:

> Unfortunately, the current set or classes of sleeping pills that we have do > not produce naturalistic sleep. So they are all a broad set of chemicals > that we call the sedative hypnotics. And sedation is not sleep. It's very > different. It doesn't give you the restorative natural benefits of sleep.

[https://www.npr.org/2018/07/20/630792401/sleep-scientist- war...](https://www.npr.org/2018/07/20/630792401/sleep-scientist-warns- against-walking-through-life-in-an-underslept-state)

<comment><USER20> It's a whole lot better than nothing, that's for sure.

<comment><USER19> It's not Ambien or nothing for most people. This is a false choice and a dangerous way of framing it. Cognitive therapy for insomnia is just as effective in short-term and, unlike sedatives, do not cause sleep to be worse in the future.

[http://www.sleepeducation.org/treatment-therapy/cognitive- be...](http://www.sleepeducation.org/treatment-therapy/cognitive-behavioral- therapy)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> >>He said he had been working up to 120 hours a week recently

>>Mr. Musk said he had not taken time off of more than a week since 2001

>>There were times when I didn't leave the factory for three or four days — days when I didn't go outside

>>This has really come at the expense of seeing my kids. And seeing friends.

>>All night — no friends, nothing

>>But from a personal pain standpoint, the worst is yet to come.

>>It is often a choice of no sleep or Ambien

These are dangerous levels of stress. The work alone even without all that big company, big expectation pressure can wear you down.

I can only imagine what he must be going through. You don't have rest or sleep, on top of it there is a perennial pressure of saving a big company, and you are also chasing your world altering plans. I guess almost any minor irritation, let alone some thing like the being reminded of short sellers of the impending doom, could trigger a uncontrollable response.

I've been there, you just look for any hint of hope, and you feel like lashing out at any thing that is interfering in the path to your cause. You are irritated all the time. Criticism, even genuine largely looks like conspiracy. And you mark any one standing in your way as a enemy.

I'm a nobody to offer advice. But it looks some one needs to sit him down, may be even family, and ask him to relax. Before some big failure happens and some more serious mental issue hits him in the face, and it forces him to hurt himself.

<comment><USER22> You're thinking about it wrong. Working 120 hours a week at a normal job is torture. Working 120 hours at something you love is just living.

The 120 hour/week estimates are likely over-inflated folk-lore, but still, when you have a passion for something and care, it's not work, you're just living your life the way you want to.

Many say Elon long work-weeks are super-human, they're not. He's just loves doing what he's doing, so why do anything else.

<comment><USER23> I used to work those kinds of hours when I was young. 16 hours a day during the week and 8 hours a day on the weekend. No days off. I enjoyed it.

It's tiring, though. As I get older (50 now), I can't do it any more. I still over work -- because I _really_ like working. A while ago I ended up in the hospital from what seems to have been a panic attack (that lasted a week...) It appears that panic attacks can _really_ feel like heart attacks...

Stress is one of those weird things. It can fuel you, but at least in my experience, there is still a cost. If you're getting to the point where you are suffering stress related illness (like not being able to sleep), then you've probably gone too far into the red zone. It's important to find activities where you don't always have to be "on".

For some people like me, that's hard, but at least now I realise I have a choice between that and death. Hard challenges are fun, and I don't really fancy the death option at the moment ;-)

<comment><USER24> What do you like about working? I'm really struggling to find something in life that I consider productive that I enjoy doing.

<comment><USER22> The first step is to figure out what you like doing, regardless of whether it's productive. The second step is to just do it all the time. Over time opportunities will pop up.

<comment><USER23> My dad was a chemistry professor. He used to say that he could have done any job, but the idea of being a "scientist" really excited him when he was young. From an early age, I think I kind of held on to the idea that you don't change who you are based on the title of a job. You can do any job, but you are still you.

I worked as a programmer all through school (working for computer services at the university, or for various labs). When I graduated, I ended up travelling a bit and worked doing odd jobs at a travel tour company in London. If you've ever seen the movie "The Secret of My Success" with Michael J Fox, then this is pretty much what happened to me.

I got stuck in the mail room one day and was appalled at the ridiculous process they had. When a fax (or more commonly in those days, teletype) came in, you had to route it to the director of the department. That person read the message and sent it back to the mail room. Then you sent it to the manager of the department. That person read it and sent it back to the mail room. After about 3-4 rounds of that, it would get to the person who actually needed to read it. One day we got a message from a hotel that there was a problem and that they couldn't accommodate the bus that was coming in -- in 3 hours. So I photocopied the teletype, sent the original to the director and the copy to the person who could actually solve the problem. Later the managing director came down from on high (literally) and thanked me for helping. It became my job to read all the incoming mail and make sure that the appropriate person got mail as soon as possible.

You should have seen the backlash in the company. People were incensed that this young kid was reading all of the mail and was making decisions about how to route important information. Someone even told me, "I've been working here 10 years and I've never even _seen_ the MD." \-- and not in a friendly way. But after that point the MD loved me and there was nothing they could do.

Another day, they asked me to wander up to the finance department to help with year end filing. Usually it took them 2 weeks to file all of the tax related papers for the year (because everyone was too lazy to file them as they came in :-P). Of course, I'd just spent 4 years learning every stupid algorithm on earth (the disadvantage of going to a school with a crap CS program) and I _knew_ sorting :-). So I sorted the files. I took over a whole room and started putting papers in seemingly random order. People came up and asked, "Why are you doing it like that?" and I replied, "I don't know -- that's just the way you do it". It was sorted in 2 hours. The finance team thought I was a freaking genius and soon I found myself moved up from the basement to the fourth floor (2 from the top!). I refused to wear a suit, but the MD loved me anyway (and mostly everyone else hated me).

So I was working in finance and also reading everybody's mail when I noticed that the computer department (such as it was) was having very interesting conversations over internal mail. Long story short, they were embezzling money and essentially forming a plan to hold the company hostage so that they could spin off a separate company to perform services for them.

So I sat down and started writing up a plan to replace their ridiculous system with something that would actually work (and include a system to email faxes and teletypes to people... I mean, come on). Just basically doodling around with it in my spare time. Eventually I had the plan ready and was about to talk to the MD when...

I decided that I'd had enough of business :-) I went back to Canada and farted around in school for another year. Never did give the MD my report or tell anybody about the computer division's plot. The company is still in business something like 30 years later (and I think doing fairly well), so I guess it was fine. But the key is that it just didn't matter what my "job" was.

As you say, "Over time opportunities will pop up". Maybe in not such a ridiculous fashion as my experience, but they do. I've worked as a programmer for decades, but I also once quit my job, moved to Japan and taught English in a high school for 5 years. That job was also fun. There are hidden depths to _anything_ you can do. Just keep in mind that there are some organisations and people who will just treat you like crap all the time, so avoid them. Other than that, you're as free as you want to be.

My favourite quote from Dr. Who was when someone asked who he was working for and he replied, "Work for? I don't work for anyone. I'm just having fun." I try to treat all of my jobs like that. I suppose I technically work for someone, but my attitude is that if I occupy myself with interesting things that benefit my boss, then nobody (important) will complain.

<comment><USER24> This is a cool story, thanks for sharing. What do you find motivates you throughout the different types of work that you do? Do you just feel intrinsically motivated to be busy and do stuff?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> I haven't been the biggest Musk fan but this profile did evoke sympathy from me, and felt far more honest than the persona he conveys via Twitter. I don't get how the board could for so long be OK knowing that Musk is as he is, and not putting a much higher priority in finding a second-in-command. What Tesla is trying to achieve is part personal genius/drive from Musk, but I would expect a huge part of it is good logistics and management. Is there something particularly hard about finding a qualified COO for Tesla?

<comment><USER26> > Is there something particularly hard about finding a qualified COO for > Tesla?

From talking to a few former execs at Tesla, yes: working directly for Elon.

<comment><USER27> Gwynne Shotwell seems to be doing that just fine. Surely she's not unique in the world - though I do agree that COOs that meet Elon's bar are probably extremely rare.

<comment><USER28> From what I've read she is not afraid to confront him on different issues. She is as passionate about SpaceX as he is.

<comment><USER29> Yeah - she was also a first-year employee, SpaceX's eleventh overall. She's got the seniority and the clear long-term established loyalty to be able to say "no", something a newly-minted Tesla COO wouldn't necessarily have.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> > Efforts are underway to find a No. 2 executive to help take some of the > pressure off Mr. Musk, people briefed on the search said.

I don't know how anyone could read this and not realise that's a direct search for a replacement CEO. With the best will in the world, Musk has a dozen people at Tesla who COULD pick up some of the slack, the issue isn't not having the right people, the issue is that he won't hand anything off. I don't see that changing.

<comment><USER31> > he won't hand anything off

Really? You have a real example of SpaceX and see how things are running there. They have a very competent COO running the things smoothly there.

</comment></comment><comment><USER32> I'm afraid his health will be impacted by several years of unimaginable stress caused too much responsibility, real and perceived attacks on his business, sometimes unrealistic promises - and trying to follow up on them, long hours and lack of sleep. Not to mention the trade offs he has made with family/friends vs work.

I think we should all be very grateful to the hugely important work he is doing to advance electric vehicles and space exploration, literally forcing two slow moving industries to move much faster, in the right direction. But I wish he was able to do it without working himself to death, or by expecting his colleagues work to death. Maybe it's not possible

</comment><comment><USER33> Really Elon Musk has struck me as honestly in need of psychiatric help - <USER2> in a derogatory way but a sincere one. Between the outbursts, shortsighted impulsive decisions, and well being CEO of so many different companies at once it sort of resembles some combination of ADHD and Bipolar.

<comment><USER34> I think, the problem is just easy access to twitter. We have seen so many downfalls on Twitter, due to irresponsible tweeting, haven't we? I think, its just that.

Before the "pedo" tweet, I never felt, any problem with his tweeting. But now, this is the second big gaffe.

A twitter _buffer_ feature, could have avoided both issues.

But at the same time, I won't like him to delete his account. Kind of enjoy his tweets - and knowing that they are his (sometimes raw) thoughts.

May be we just need to forgive more. If a person wants to _recall_ a tweet. What they tweeted should not be held too much against them, perhaps.

<comment><USER35> Not sure a buffer feature helps when he says he didn't regret his "funding secured" tweet. It may have prevented his tweet about the diver, but it's not clear he realized it was a problem until there was significant public backlash (which feedback wouldn't be present in some buffer).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> If you've read the biography by Ashlee Vance this shouldn't surprise you. Musk has always been a guy who runs at 100%, even at the sake of his personal life. On the one hand it's inspiring but also very concerning. The board should insist upon a COO.

<comment><USER22> > "even at the sake of his personal life"

This is the wrong attitude. Musk doesn't sacrifice his personal life for work, his work is his life. If anything, he sacrifices his work life for the few personal connections he is forced to make.

I definitely don't pity Musk, he found his calling and is answering it, he can deal with the consequences.

</comment></comment><comment><USER37> It feels to me like Elon is unable or not wanting to delegate. Working 120 hours a week is not productive.

<comment><USER38> >Working 120 hours a week is not productive.

My WoW character disagrees. Seriously though, if you enjoy what you're doing, doing a lot of it is fine.

<comment><USER39> If you really work 120h/weeks, it means that you are left with 48h per week for sleeping/eating/doing other things.

Unless he included those hours in the work hour, 48h in 7 days is just not sustainable, it's barely enough just for sleep.

<comment><USER38> Almost 7 hours of sleep per night is more than sustainable. There are people who can get along with 5 hours of sleep per night without any impact to their health.

<comment><USER39> That is assuming that he does just that: working and sleeping. So I guess, the time where he eats and tweet is included in its work hours then.

<comment><USER40> Thats not terribly far fetched. I eat breakfast and lunch while working. If I had my own office I'd have a treadmill desk too.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER41> Saying no to some things would probably help. He is on track to burn out or have a breakdown at the current rate, assuming it hasn't already happened.

Personally, I'd love to see him close or sell every company other than SpaceX and focus all of his efforts there.

<comment><USER30> I think when you look back at the pedo comments, and the market manipulation tweets you can easily see him as being in the middle of the breakdown. The question isn't whether he'll break down, but what his next outlandish fuck up will be and how far it'll go before someone steps in.

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> I had noticed the constantly media bias against Musk recently but didn't realize the motivation until reading this. It feels sad that we live in a world where people plant media stories to tank someone's life work after short selling to make money off their misery.

</comment><comment><USER42> This culture of startup is completely insane, what can possibly justify driving oneself to the limit of craziness? Revolutionize the world? How can you revolutionize anything when the method you are using are what created the problem in the first place (always more, always faster)?

It's ego, that's all it is, and it usually ends up very badly.

</comment><comment><USER43> Edison, Einstein, Steve Jobs, Jeff Bezos, Mark Zuckerberg, Elon Musk...

These guys have changed the World and they all have seriously strange, weird personalities - but they did change the world.

Let's learn a lesson over here -- geniuses and industry disrupters are more often than not --- just weird and strange bunch of folks. Hence, learn to respect them and do what you can to make sure they succeed as Human innovation depends on them.

The super-smart and inventors like these guys have always been weird, and somewhat not friendly bunch of folks. It is the rest of us who have started to complain and bicker too much and are becoming extremely judgemental and emotionally fragile by the day.

Call it by product of the extremely opinionated media or the capability of anonymously posting anger on the internet -- but this isn't helpful behavior from us.

<comment><USER44> There is a very good reason for this: to make such an agent of change requires intensity beyond what most humans can endure. I don't think Bezos or Musk or Jobs have/had much of a life outside of work. I think it's also clear they all are/were obsessed with their companies. Obsession and hard work, sustained over a long period of time. People capable of that are few and far between. Add in the luck factor, and it's a miniscule number of people.

</comment></comment><comment><USER45> Twitter is bad for you.

Repeat that a hundred times.

<comment><USER46> Underrated comment here.

There is little to be gained and a ton to be lost with such a casual, public forum.

If anyone in a leadership position thinks "I should tweet this!", the default should be waiting 24 hours before making a final decision and even in that case the answer should be "no".

<comment><USER24> Would you wait 24 hours before tweeting about that new car you just bought? The thing with people in Elon's position is that the gravity of their situation becomes normalized. They're regular people doing regular things from their own perspective. For Elon he doesn't put much thought into his tweets because for him, saying something that might impact the stock price is a pretty normalized. It happened recently with pedo-guy-gate. I can cut the guy some slack for potentially upsetting some people with his tweets considering the massive smear campaign against him and his life's work.

<comment><USER47> Understanding the impact of one's words is a prerequisite of leadership. Does Bill Gates or the CEO of a big oil or pharma get the same pass?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER48> At 47 Musk is likely on the back 9 of his life. I guess it's perfectly fine for him to decide that anyone can have a family and the legacy he wants is in his inventions and companies. But if Musk doesn't see it that way, and finds value in the other intangibles, now's the time to make that change. Not one more year, one more quarter, one more meeting. Now.

And this is true for all of us. Be careful how much time you convert into money. You can't convert it back.

</comment><comment><USER49> This is what burnout looks like. At some point you just hit a wall.

</comment><comment><USER50> Similar news from 2015: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10334001](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10334001)

</comment><comment><USER51> Musk says he's working 120 hours per week. That's 6 hours of sleep, the rest is work.

I don't believe that he's working 120 hours because that's the exact amount of work it's takes to make is companies succeed.

I believe he works 120 hours per week because that's simply the max amount of hours he can work.

There is no reason to assume that he can't reduce this work by 20% at least with some prioritization and delegation.

He doesn't seem to consider this a possibility.

</comment><comment><USER52> I really think the tweeting while on acid rumors are true. This is my first exposure to the pedo comment he made. I'm baffled how any non-drugged person over the age of 14 could ever think that was a good idea.

</comment><comment><USER53> Maybe a year in prison or so will save his life.

</comment><comment><USER54> His quote on those shorting Tesla stock is a gem:

> _"They're not dumb guys, but they're not supersmart. They're O.K. They're > smartish."_

<comment><USER55> Well it is the most obvious short of the past few years; doesn't take a genius.

</comment></comment><comment><USER56> I'm surprised we're not discussing what seems to be the core problem from Elon Musk's point of view : financial aggressivity.

While his tweet doesn't say why he wants to go private, this article makes it pretty clear : he's harassed by shorters (people who speculate on price going down, and thus who will contribute negative and unfounded opinions just to achieve this goal).

Whether this is really his biggest burden or not, there is certainly something to be said about people who earn money because others are in trouble. In any case, seeing that people _want_ you to have troubles certainly doesn't help.

</comment><comment><USER57> > spent his birthday holed up in Tesla's offices as the company raced to meet > elusive production targets.

How tough?!

<comment><USER58> I don't know if you've ever put your whole body and life in to a project, but we can push ourselves well past our healthy limits. It can genuinely be hard on our bodies and our minds.

<comment><USER59> Very little sympathy from me for someone suffering from the delusions of grandeur combined with self-martyrdom, especially when combined with the petty foolishness constantly on display from him. And for what? To blow off his brothers wedding as described in the article to resume pacing the tesla plant speaks volumes about this guys character.

<comment><USER60> ndespres people are different, and hope you are enjoying your life in your way. What Musk is experiencing is not extrinsic and he is not martyr for anyone. He does this because it is the most remarkable drive he has about life. It just happens to him because of his biology and it is not a calculated act. Fulfilling that intrinsic drive is the most rewarding feeling one can experience.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER61> Musk may have made the biggest mistake of his career with that single tweet. According to rumors, Tesla's internal legal team has begun to calculate damages; possible impact from potential investor lawsuits apparently surpasses $1 billion.

[https://twitter.com/CGasparino/status/1030176495631839232](https://twitter.com/CGasparino/status/1030176495631839232)

<comment><USER62> Pity that we've structured our world such that one tweet can so damage such clever companies as Tesla and maybe SpaceX.

<comment><USER63> I'm pretty sure it's always been the case that those with power can cause a lot of damage with a small amount of effort.

<comment><USER64> Yes, but those in power were able to get away with it in the past. Now they're held accountable, in public, like a public crucifixion. Pressure of 21st century is enormous.

<comment><USER65> Not just the 21st century, this story on Ratners losing billions after some ill-thought jokes at the company's expense: [https://thehustle.co/gerald- ratners-billion-dollar-speech](https://thehustle.co/gerald-ratners-billion- dollar-speech)

<comment><USER64> Ah yes, the infamous Ratner effect. I learned about it due to the Elop effect (the nail in the coffin of good ol' Nokia's demise).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER66> Musk has turned himself into a marketing machine in the same manner that the Kardashians have. He sets up dramatic situations that have villains and he plays the good guy trying to save the world from ruin.

I commend him for being able to manipulate the media. With their help he's been able to build a billion dollar company. I wish I could do the same.

But at this point, I DON'T CARE. All I want to do is read the news and keep up to date with what is happening without having to read anything about him.

I find it interesting how we celebrate the fact that we now have all the information we want at our fingertips. But I feel less informed now than when TV and newspapers were the major form of information distributors. -- mainly because of all the trashy info that's available to us. The Tesla daily drama is a great example of trashy news.

Tesla can survive or disappear, I don't care. Just get off the daily headlines.

<comment><USER67> You felt compelled to comment here though.</comment></comment>


Could Li-Fi be the new Wi-Fi? [video] - <AUTHOR> http://www.bbc.com/news/technology-34380428 <comment><USER2> How does it compare to 60GHz 802.11ad wifi? [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wireless_Gigabit_Alliance](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wireless_Gigabit_Alliance)

If only our celing lamp sockets had ethernet then you could wire up 60Ghz transmitters in every room and there would not be a lot of need for wired connection.

<comment><USER3> Could this work with powerline networking?

<comment><USER4> Not at WiGig speeds. You might as well put a single-antenna 802.11n transmitter in there, no point in 60 GHz.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> What "value" do we get from using LiFi? You will have to invest in a new Light Bulb, rewiring so that these LiFi are connected. And hoping your phone or devices actually supports it. And years, years away from possibly getting the infrastructure and devices widely available.

Compared to WiFi, we are finally seeing 802.11ac 2x2 866Mbps on phones and Tablet, 1.3Gbps on iMac. 802.11ax coming in 2017, that will offer 4x real world improvement. We are talking over 1 Gbps real world throughput on Smartphone. Line of Sight 60Ghz 10Gbps+ WiFi are in the work.

So LiFi is like a solution looking for problem.

</comment><comment><USER6> The problem that this is trying to solve (Isolation) seem possible to solve once you get away from a mismanaged wifi setup.

Too many devices supported by one router. This can be solved with more chipsets per router, each with a slightly more directional antenna (as opposed to dipoles being standard).

Turning down transmitter power on routers, if you want fewer devices (such as one 20x20 area instead of pi(150)^2 ft) you can turn down the tx power. Moreover, using 5ghz already starts limiting wall penetration more.

</comment><comment><USER7> Perhaps not quite the same bandwidth, but Apple had optical networking as their wireless connectivity solution done time before WiFi: [http://lowendmac.com/2015/irtalk-irda-and-the- mac/](http://lowendmac.com/2015/irtalk-irda-and-the-mac/)

</comment><comment><USER8> I think it doesn't make sense for it not to be. It seems like a very good way to transfer data with almost no drawback given a decent setup. I don't understand why that isn't used more often.

<comment><USER9> > almost no drawback

1\. You need to purchase a Li-Fi "router" for each room (if not several) instead of purchasing a single router

2\. Connecting the "routers" to internet: you would either need a lot of cables... or Wi-Fi.

3\. Only works in line-of-sight, while Wi-Fi works through walls... and pockets. Li-Fi probably wouldn't be useful for smartphones.

Enough drawbacks?

<comment><USER10> You don't need separated routers each LED light bulb can be used as an access point, there are already LED bulbs with WiFi because people will buy anything that looks like an Apple product.

You need WiFi still because the LiFi channel is only one way.

It can still sorta work through some pockets but rule of thumb is that if your mobile device is in your pocket you don't need the fastest speed possible and you can fallback to WiFi.

But yeah the tech is kinda silly in general.

<comment><USER9> > You don't need separated routers each LED light bulb can be used as an > access point

But you need to buy one that supports LiFi, and LiFi bulbs will probably be more expensive than normal lightbulbs (if they become a thing)

And if you still need WiFi, what's the point of buying LiFi bulbs and setting them up when you can just keep using WiFi? It just doesn't seem to be worth it unless you're in a place with hundreds of WiFi devices (and it still probably won't help a lot).

<comment><USER10> You would have to buy special light bulbs anyhow, you won't be able to use a commercial of the shelf bulb for this no matter what the BBC thinks.

The LED's need to be able to turn on and off in nano-seconds so you can't just twitch the AC power because the voltage regulator will not respond fast enough (there is enough juice in the capacitors to drive the LED's for a few seconds usually this is why cheap LED light bulbs don't turn off straight away, the more expensive ones have usually have a current shunt that will clear the capacitors to ground when you hit the light switch) and most likely simply die after a few minutes.

So you need to do in-circuit modulation which means a dedicated light bulb.

Well in theory you start building light bulbs that can be effectively turned on and off about about a billion times a second which is not going to happen and even then you'll still need some device that will modulate the light so instead of a dedicated light bulb you'll have a dedicated lamp.

Considering the engineering limitations and the cost involved having normal light bulbs that can connect to your network via either WiFi or well via basically "DSL" via sending a phase modulated signal over the AC wiring in your house similar to how those power plug Ethernet / WiFi extenders work.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Power- line_communication](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Power-line_communication)

Again this is a very kickstarter / TED talk worthy idea that sounds brilliant but it will probably go the way of the GyroJet because it's just so dumb on so many levels.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> No.

<comment><USER12> Please don't post unsubstantive comments to Hacker News.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: I own a 2M pageview/month website, am I capitalizing on this? - <AUTHOR>

I own a website that has 2M page views a month on 275k uniques. Right now my monthly revenue is ~$8000 USD, of which half comes from ads. To be honest the website looks like it came out of 1999 and I haven't investigated too much into other revenue streams.
I'm wondering whether I should invest time and money into improving the user experience, SEO, advertising deals, and other revenue streams. I know this is a very ambiguous description of my situation but I am hoping that others who manage similar sized websites can comment on their revenues.
My main question is whether I am generating a decent amount of ad revenue for that amount of traffic. The average user spends 10 minutes on the site.
Thanks! <comment><USER3> Unless your audience is in a particularly valuable demographic, you're doing better than average on ad revenue already IMO.

</comment><comment><USER4> You do have an ambiguous description - so my answer here is very general. Feel free to e-mail me (see my profile page) for a deeper discussion.

My instinct is that you are getting a decent amount of ad revenue, and that you might be able to get more - but it will likely require a whole bunch of experimentation to figure that part out.

I would instead focus on the other opportunities: driving more users, and generating other forms of revenue.

You likely will be able to 2-4x your users by experimenting with SEO and Social traffic sources. Also, 2M page views means you likely have a lot of users that you can try to get them to interact with the site more - <USER2> interaction will likely result in them coming back and getting more users (via) facebook.

With regards to revenue your simplest bet could be with thinking about different affiliate programs - you might want to approach relevant companies even though they might not have an explicit program.

If you have a specific niche of users, then you can likely drive up ad revenues more, but even if not you can try segmenting your users giving them a little more reason to stay and finally targeting them differently for higher ad rates.

</comment><comment><USER5> You can always try adding some type of affiliate plan to your page that has a product relative to your content.

When I was doing ad based revenue on my apps one thing we did was play around with different advertising providers. Play around with the audience who could view the ads. Placement, etc. Take a day or two and play with the ads to see which gives you the best result. Whichever placement, rotation, etc. gives you the better result is obviously the better long term choice revenue wise.

I'd like to know which site this is, seeing it always helps. I don't understand why most people ask questions but don't provide their website.

<comment><USER6> simple

1\. hide identity: they don't want people to find out who they are

2\. avoid competition: they don't want others to copy their business

<comment><USER7> Mostly because they don't want to be considered spammers

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I own a website that gets 15% of your pageviews but I'm having trouble finding any advertisers. The website is on BuySellAds but isn't getting any bites despite a highly educated niche audience.

Does anyone have any tips for finding advertisers? You can easily find the website by going to the domain of my email address or my submission history.

<comment><USER9> Why don't you sell the templates on your site?

<comment><USER8> I do have eventual plans to make a "Premium Templates" section but I need to find a graphics designer and LaTeX pro who are willing to work for a percentage of sales to make this a reality. The rest of the templates are not made by me so I have no right to sell them.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> How much time do you spend maintaining it per month?

</comment><comment><USER11> I think the expected rate is about $6 /1000 impressions for ad based stuff

<comment><USER12> Where in the world did you pull a $6 CPM value from?

<comment><USER5> Agreed, thats a very high CPM rate. He even states that of the 2M page views only $4000 is generated from ads.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> I'd recommend adding an email to your profile so we can contact you.

</comment><comment><USER6> calculate the NPV of (incremental revenue - required time & money to invest). If NPV > 0, go; Else, no go

<comment><AUTHOR> that is impossible to estimate. If I were able to estimate that I wouldn't be asking this question. Also, your usage of the term NPV is flawed. Thanks though.

<comment><USER14> Not quite sure why you even thanked them for that response. Wasn't worth the electrons it is printed on :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> How do we contact you?</comment>


How to develop disruptive ideas - <AUTHOR> http://swombat.com/2011/2/18/how-to-develop-disruptive-ideas <comment><USER2> _figure out the assumptions that everyone in the industry makes_ ... _Start overturning those assumptions_

The example given, of red bull disrupting soda is well placed. The author writes that the inventors inverted the norm and created an expensive poor tasting drink. Instead, I would have said that the goal of red bull was to create a drink with a huge energy boost and in the process created its own energy boost drink market.

At the time, the mainstream soda market valued the established flavours, and perhaps trending toward lesser levels of sugar. This red bull type drink in no way satisfied the mainstream. It is only later, once the market size had grown that coke enters with their own product, but by then it is too late. The startup red bull already has taken the lions share of the now larger market.

<comment><USER3> Poor tasting is subjective as well - I personally love the taste of Red Bull as do many others.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: Why is Flash so vulnerable? - <AUTHOR> <comment><USER2> It's a ginormous codebase in a non-memory-managed language which was written back before the industry got serious religion on security. It is free, has a very wide install base, and in common deployments will execute code provided by any host on the Internet. This makes it a _very_ attractive target.

Applications of similar complexity/surface area can swallow hundreds of millions of dollars of security research. Flash has not received this. (Windows/Office/etc have.)

<comment><USER3> While technically true, this diagnosis is a bit misleading.

The question is "Why is Flash so vulnerable?" and the part of Patio's answer is "codebase in a non-memory-managed language." Well, practically everything we seriously use has the codebase in a non-memory-managed language.

All the common operating system guts -- written in a non-memory-managed language. All the common browsers guts -- written in a non-memory-managed language. Even the guts of the "memory managed languages" are -- written in a non-memory-managed language.

C and variations, and not memory managed. And nobody managed to replace C and dialects with something else. The Rust language will maybe manage to be used for something serious, already implementing the experimental layout engine but at the moment it's still too hard even to replace the current Firefox engine with the one written in Rust. It's a good thing that Rust and other developments exists, but in practice, C is still everywhere.

So Flash is not an exception in being written in C or the dialect of it. That some parts of some systems can be implemented in memory-managed languages is a very old thing, and it doesn't protect them from exploits. Parts of Firefox are written in JavaScript. Even when something is written in Java (which is memory-managed) didn't mean a thing, as recently Java code was the favorite attack vector (in spite of being "virtual" and "memory managed").

Security is hard. Certainly, millions of dollars of security research and the implementation of their results help the most, more than "it's not memory managed" as it is too simple an answer to be of much use in the given context.

So why then Flash? Because of many things, but specifically Flash brought to the browsers huge functionality which is still slowly being reimplemented in the form of the standard features of the browsers. Even ignoring the fact that they brought these features without too much external reviews, the only way to bring so much functionality to the huge infrastructures that existing browsers are was for Flash to cross a lot of boundaries. And the attacks are the boundary crossings, so piggybacking on what Flash does is often the best thing for an attacker to do. Then, the second cause is certainly that Flash codebase definitely didn't receive enough attention to become safer. And the current reason is -- even Adobe doesn't expect Flash to ever become something worth of too much investment.

Disclaimer: I've implemented one memory managed language in C. Behind almost every language mentioned anywhere is some non-memory-managed C. Simple "a single island" languages can be very clean and safe. Add the features, use of the system libraries, boundary crossings etc, and "memory managed" is just a small point.

<comment><USER4> Large codebase, unsafe implementation language, _huge attack surface_ , and popular target probably covers all the reasons.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I was listening to the Security Now podcast this morning. On episode 514, _Tor 's Astoria Client_ about the first 30 minutes of the podcast is spent going into extreme detail about how a recent Flash vulnerability was exploited.

I can't link to a page for the episode.

Here is the episode list: [https://www.grc.com/securitynow.htm](https://www.grc.com/securitynow.htm)

The episode: [https://media.grc.com/sn/sn-514.mp3](https://media.grc.com/sn/sn-514.mp3)

The transcript: [https://www.grc.com/sn/sn-514.txt](https://www.grc.com/sn/sn-514.txt)

I think most of the content is sourced (and credited) to this post from FireEye: [https://www.fireeye.com/blog/threat- research/2015/06/operati...](https://www.fireeye.com/blog/threat- research/2015/06/operation-clandestine-wolf-adobe-flash-zero-day.html)

<comment><USER6> Thanks for sharing, this is fascinating.

Given the level of sophistication in this attack, I wonder to what extent the number of vulnerabilities found in Flash is a function of the effort spent disassembling it and searching for them specifically. Since browsers implement their own language runtimes, might they be vulnerable to the same types of attacks? Is there anything that makes Firefox inherently more secure than Flash?

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> To me, it seems like a combination of several factors: * None of Adobe's products are particularly stable or secure - not even the ones they charge a lot of money for. * Flash's wide install base and the fact that it's easy to invoke on a target (via the browser) machine makes it an inviting target for hackers. * Flash is a fairly complex piece of software - after all, it's a language runtime. * They don't charge for the Flash runtime, so there's no direct return on investment for making it more secure. The main losses are reputational and until there's a mass revolt (which might be coming) it's hard to quantify any financial losses.

<comment><AUTHOR> You could say all of those factors for Chrome, except for the first one.

<comment><USER7> I left off: * Adobe's implementation doesn't have a drop-in replacement that offers a near-frictionless alternative.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I might be stating the obvious - it contains language interpreter. It is hard stuff to do and from the beginning the focus was on speed not the security. Now it is a high value target and it was probably checked for bugs more than any software in history.

</comment><comment><USER9> That is how big organizations work:

1\. they feel flash is slowly dying or that it could be potentially be sold

2\. No more investment in order to get the biggest money from the already existing market of customers, a future sale, or force migration to other products of the same company.

They do not understand that the image of the technology and the community is damaged; and that is a pity when I think in the haxe project and the open source community around it.

Now even an open source alternative to the binary flash would not safe the damaged image and HTML5 canvas is predestinated to overtake it.

EDIT: I think adobe lost a big chance in the market with flash by being too much closed and not understanding modern development/online communities.

</comment><comment><USER10> I blame Adobe's culture, their culture discourages good programming and their other projects suffer the same problems. For example, bread winners like CS/CC frequently crash, I have a collection of Indesign files that will crash on demand but my concerns have yet to be remedied after 4 years. Internally, they rely on a custom widgeting kit designed to match the functionality found in their pre-OSX mac software (over 20 years!). Build times are said to be several hours.

Adobe is simply not competent at writing modern software, don't forget that if you cant get a flash zero-day you might get one for Adobe Reader!

</comment><comment><USER11> A company that employees cheap programmers.</comment>


Startup logo design - <AUTHOR> http://blog.goparti.com/build-a-startup-logo-you-can-be-proud-of/

<comment><USER2> Hitting up 99 Designs is like throwing spaghetti at a wall in hopes that something sticks, well that's an almost apt description. I guess the biggest difference is that you are hiring N-'designers' who probably aren't very skilled at their craft so they have to lock into gladiatorial combat for mere dollars to each make a noodle and throw it at the wall for you. They won't care about your identity, and the quality of what you get will largely depend on how good you happen to be at scoping an illustration project and wrangling amateurs to get results.

With this method you will have some sort of graphic to slap on a site or slather on a t-shirt, but you will be extremely lucky if it stands the test of time or even stands out in your market. A good logo is one thing that sets apart the amateurs from the professionals. Facebook knew this and that's why they went to Cuban Council (<http://www.cubancouncil.com/>).

You could just find a designer/firm who's work you admire, see if they do identity work, speak with them about your brand, and collaborate with them (they will guide you if they are any good at what they do, and they will always have your best interest at heart) to create something everyone (including your customers) will love.

Sadly, OP's description of "Startup" logo design is what is currently popular, and many people don't realize that this is not how the best logotypes/icons are made.

<comment><USER3> The quality of what you receive depends on the quality of information you provide to any designer or firm. Our suggested process for a bootstrapped startup provides a solution for how to formulate a thought out design idea and get you going in the right direction at no cost.

In reply to your comment about Facebook: Zuckerburg knew minimal about 'design' so he did what so many other startups in the Valley do. Go to the big design firms. This solution works well for startups in the position to hand over the big bucks. Different solutions work depending on startup condition, status, and/or funds available.

This process may work best for startups with limited resources and limited funding. Even if you dont like the initial work you receive from 99 designs or any other design marketplace, two important things can happen:

1\. You'll be a better judge for what works and doesn't work for your startup.

2\. You're design idea will strengthen from concepts created by these designers at a price you can afford to pay.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Slightly off-topic. If you have a startup and you have a blog like this, why not have a very big obvious link to your main website?(i.e. mystartup.com instead of blog.mystartup.com).

It seems like a no-brainer to me. It's great marketing for your product or service. I've come to your site to read your blog and I'm curious about your business now.

<comment><AUTHOR> I do some advising for the GoParti guys. I'll hassle them about that :-) Hopefully Rasheed (author of above article) will get to these comments soon and jump in.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Having just gone through the process, I would completely agree with the advice here. We are really pleased with our logo from an eLance designer (www.crowdshelf.com), but it lacks an independent graphic, which I quickly realized was something that would be really useful for stuff like favicons, Twitter and Facebook pages, etc.

<comment><USER6> Agreed. I think that is the strongest point about designing a logo. I just finished creating a new one and having an "icon" is incredibly helpful. Favicons, iphone apps, social media pages, etc.. can all be branded much easier.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> What's the difference between "startup logo design" and "logo design"? Just call it logo design.

<comment><AUTHOR> Odd enough, I had a different title than the one above when I first submitted... Can mods of HN change it?

I liked how Rasheed focused on how they approached logo design as a startup and made the process relatable to others with the same set of resources.

<comment><USER8> I'm Mohnish Soundararajan, who wrote the article haha.

For startups, the process of logo design is attacked from a totally different mindset. We were driving at the guys who are bootstrapping it, not a definitive guide to design in general. When GoParti was starting, these were the concerns.

<comment><AUTHOR> Sorry Mohnish! Great job, sorry, I thought Rasheed wrote it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Whenever I want to showcase bad logo design I always search some random location based business service.

Such as bouncy castle hire in Manchester:

<http://www.jalmacleisure.co.uk/> <http://www.castleempire.com/images/Castle%20Empire.jpg> <http://www.king-of- the-castles.com/>

I often wonder what people think when they look at a logo as bad as some of the above. Personally I think it just shows a lack of effort, you see this in the startup game also.

But clip art. Come on.

<comment><USER10> Is web design a differentiator for bounce houses? If it's not, skip it.

I'm not sure if I'm being sarcastic or not.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> does anyone really use Microsoft Word or clip art to design their logos?

<comment><USER6> unfortunately yes, probably not so many people in tech industries but I have definitely seen it done.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Tiny nitpick: when you re-size vector text, make sure the straight edges don't straddle pixels. Notice the difference between the top and bottom versions? <http://imgur.com/JlNin>

<comment><USER3> Thanks for this! Can be an even bigger help if this works with transparent pngs.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> 4\. Give credit to the author of the font you used.. [http://www.dafont.com/harabara.font?text=goparti&psize=l](http://www.dafont.com/harabara.font?text=goparti&psize=l)

<comment><USER14> The author did not specify that in their license: [http://www.dafont.com/font- comment.php?file=harabara&psi...](http://www.dafont.com/font- comment.php?file=harabara&psize=l&text=goparti) (scroll down, two people emailed the author for clarification)

So I do not see a reason why the font author should have been included in the article. The article was not about THIS logo but about logos in general. When I saw your comment I thought you might be pointing out that he was violating the license. Since he is not, I am not sure what to make of your comment.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> Please tell me that paint program UI picture is for real (as a UI) and is not just a cute photo.

<comment><USER16> Sorry -- it's just a promotional piece for a software retailer (software- asli.com); the Photoshop CS4 UI done with real-world tools and materials. The text menu is Letraset rub-down sheets, the swatches are watercolour half-pans, the visibility markers for the layers are loupes, and so on. Good concept, construction and photo, though.</comment></comment>


Finding the lost Elons feat. Michael Gibson - <AUTHOR> https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/finding-the-lost-elons-feat-michael-gibson/id1517105543?i=1000478749632 <comment><AUTHOR> In this episode, we talk to Michael Gibson, General Partner of 1517 Fund, a venture capital firm that invests in the earliest stages of a startup. Previously, he ran the Thiel Fellowship where he oversaw the selection of the world's youngest and brightest minds. Listen as he shares his thoughts on finding the lost Elons, what the alpha-gamma quality is, why he's thinking of the Counter-Enlightenment now, and the importance of inspiring future generations.</comment>


How can we find the best freelance designer? - <AUTHOR>

We are CS students & programmers who need the help of a designer to create an awesome interface for an app, but we aren't that rich. <comment><USER2> Can you describe the nature of the app. or any general description?

crowdspring.com tends to have a more 'creative' bunch than all the other outsourcing shops. post up a project! they just changed their policy that the buyer is not required to select a winning design. You can walk away if you don't like the submissions, and the cS will award the prize out of their pocket.

..and then there's always me. I don't have formal training in UI, but I've been at it for a while. @faramarzhashemi

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the suggestion. We will take a look at that

We are working on music composition software for the iPad. We currently have an iPhone app out called Symphony (which already runs on the iPad), but we need to redesign it to accomodate the larger screen size.</comment></comment>


Lattice Gas Automaton - <AUTHOR> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lattice_gas_automaton <comment><AUTHOR> Thought: A good theory of everything in Physics would include such things as: Particles, Waves, Fields, Classic Newtonian Physics, Quantum Physics, Phi, e, Pi, Prime Numbers, Fourier Transforms, Math Generalized To Higher Dimensions, Fluid Dynamics, Cymatics, Cellular Automata, a bunch of others too numerous to count, and, and... (wait for it!)...

 _Lattice Gas Automata_

Technically _Lattice Gas Automata_ is a sub-category of Cellular Automata -- but my intuitive mind says that it really shouldn't be skipped or glossed over...

(Now that I think about it, perhaps there's some kind of Automata that generalizes to N dimensions... that would be interesting too, and a worthy subject of study... Also, it occurs to me that there might be some higher mathematical unification between fluid dynamics and Automata... that would be interesting too...)</comment>


How Python became the language of choice for data science - <AUTHOR> http://blog.mikiobraun.de/2013/11/how-python-became-the-language-of-choice-for-data-science.html <comment><USER2> I started out with MATLAB, played around enough with Python to realize that it wasn't enough better than MATLAB to be worth switching. (My impression was that Python was _almost_ flexible enough as a language to make writing code that uses NumPy/SciPy feel natural, but it didn't quite achieve that.) I finally switched to Julia, which is both faster and (IMO) more enjoyable to write than either MATLAB or Python, although the current package ecosystem is pretty small. I think the main difficulty in creating a new programming language for numerical computing is that you need knowledgeable people to do it, and most of those people are more interested in analyzing their data than building a programming language (or core packages for a programming language) to do it better.

My impression on two small bits of this article:

 _Python is also somewhat restrictive with what you can say on a single line. In Matlab you would often load some data, start editing the functions and build you data analysis step by step, while in Python you tend to have files which you start from the command line (or at least that's how I tend to do it)._

I actually find that this kind of analysis is more conveniently done in IPython (or IJulia) Notebook than in MATLAB.

 _I still have dreams of a plotting library where the type of visualization is decoupled from the data (such that you can say "plot this matrix as a scatter plot, or as an image")._

This is the design goal of both R's ggplot2 and Julia's Gadfly.jl.

<comment><USER3> Do you have any recommendations wrt getting started with Julia? It's a language I've wanted to explore a bit, but I haven't been able to find any good community resources or jumping-off points.

<comment><USER4> This "Learn X in Y minutes" snippet [1] showing a bunch of examples in Julia is the best starting point. I always return to this one as it is usually much faster to find what you're looking for than searching the docs.

1: [http://learnxinyminutes.com/docs/julia/](http://learnxinyminutes.com/docs/julia/)

<comment><USER5> I wrote Learn Julia in Y minutes. Is there anything unclear or that you'd find useful to have included/changed?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I'm confused. Is python really so far ahead of the competition to be considered the "language of choice for data science?"

My impression (and I am not a statistician/data scientist in my day job, so I would very much like to hear opposing perspectives) is that the R ecosystem is far more mature and widely adopted than scikit-learn for things like regression, classification, clustering etc.

The author also cites expensive MATLAB licenses as a driving force behind python adoption, but here too I'm skeptical. As a grad student, I get MATLAB for free. But I switched to R/pandas for data analysis because R has a native data structure for working with multidimensional datasets (i.e. data.frame).

To illustrate the utility of this, let's say you asked developers all over the US for their zipcode and salary and recorded the results in salary.poll.data. Here's an interesting question: what is the mean salary in each zipcode? In R, all sorts of libraries make this computation concise and highly readable. Using the excellent data.table package, you would do `salary.poll.data[, list(mean.salary.by.zip.code=mean(salary)), by=zipcode]`.

No such libraries exist in popular usage for MATLAB. You'd have to roll your own, or more likely, write a lot of crufty loops and conditional statements. (Or use higher order functions with map/reduce/filter, which, by the way, you would have to implement yourself).

For me at least, just having the right data structures for working with data makes R/pandas a clear winner for doing statistical analysis of data.

<comment><AUTHOR> My impression is that R and MATLAB (and Julia) certainly still have their advantages. But, Python with pandas/scikit-learn/matplotlib is _almost_ as good at R at data munging and exploration, and with numpy/scipy/Cython, as good or better than MATLAB at complicated matrix calculations. Meanwhile, Python has its own unique features, like iPython notebooks. So it's at least competitive with R and MATLAB at a feature level, if maybe not for every possible use case.

The thing that draws me towards Python is that it's a well designed, _general purpose_ programming language. The syntax is sensible, the language allows real OO and FP abstractions, you have easy access to basic data structures like lists and hashmaps, and there's a huge ecosystem of third-party libraries to build on. Things that are stupidly difficult in MATLAB and R, like file/network IO, string processing, or building a GUI or web interface, are straightforward in Python. If you've ever tried to run MATLAB on a cluster, it's an absolute nightmare. You would never, ever think about building a production system in MATLAB or R. But these things are easy in Python. There's something that's just really nice about having access to first-class analytics tools in the same language that you're building your systems in.

<comment><USER7> _The syntax is sensible, the language allows real OO and FP abstractions, you have easy access to basic data structures like lists and hashmaps, and there 's a huge ecosystem of third-party libraries to build on_

Other than the last one, all of these are available in Matlab and R as well; and all three have a huge set of libraries -- the difference is about the focus of those libraries imo. Python does have more general-purpose libraries, just as R has more statistical packages.

I have certainly run a lot Matlab on a cluster, in fact, I'd say safely about 70% of code I see running on clusters around here is Matlab. I've also seen a few production systems in (mostly) R -- I actually suspect that at least on Windows, deploying an R system may be easier, since you just install R and then use internal functionality to get packages you need; python (with all necessary extensions) seems relatively tricky to get running.

All that being said, I do agree that if you are building a production system where most of the code is related to interfacing with other systems, or GUI's etc., and the data analysis is a small and non-interactive part (ie. no data exploration), Python is a very reasonable choice if you can keep the whole project in it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Given that dude indicates that even he's an exception to his supposed rule, i think i'd like to see something more comprehensive argument to buy this particular line.

Python is definitely major player in data processing (heck i'd even just be interested in how he's defining data science), but it's definitely not the only game in town by a long shot.

<comment><USER9> I recently saw this (which goes into far more depth): [http://www.talyarkoni.org/blog/2013/11/18/the- homogenization...](http://www.talyarkoni.org/blog/2013/11/18/the- homogenization-of-scientific-computing-or-why-python-is-steadily-eating-other- languages-lunch/)

Summary: "Constantly switching languages is a chore, and while Python isn't the best at everything, it's the best at some things and good enough at almost everything else."

<comment><USER10> Recently indeed, that link is the first reference in the OP's article :-)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> The first line: "Nowadays Python is probably the programming language of choice (besides R) ..."

Personally I am not ready to hand the title "langauge of choice" to Python, although it is trending that way. We should give R credit where credit is due. There is still a huge population of R users and code. Python has advantages in that the syntax is easier to understand, and so is the structure (object oriented versus scripting). What Python lacks is a simple setup. I think that once Python becomes more accessible to everyone (as far as downloading Python, setting up directories, packages, libraries, etc.), it will have huge leaps in usage.

<comment><USER12> I've heard good things about the anaconda distribution as far as setup and everything goes for scientific computation purposes. Comes with most packages you'd need: [https://store.continuum.io/cshop/anaconda/](https://store.continuum.io/cshop/anaconda/)

I don't actually have it myself, but it does seem to be trying to solve the problem you point out.

<comment><USER11> That's great! If this can match RStudio as an IDE, then Python is heading in the right direction. Thanks for showing me this.

<comment><USER13> Anaconda is a fabulous way of installing a majority of Python tools you'd need for data science. It also includes Spyder - a Matlab-like IDE. Before you go back to RStudio, you should at least check out the IPython Notebooks style workflow. It grows on you. PyCharm is anothe IDE I've been looking at - it has a free community edition too.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> People are always telling me why I should jump from Python to Node. This is basically my argument against doing so.

Python, Matlab, Fortran, Cobol, will be around for a VERY long time because so many of the smartest people THINK in these languages. The number and quality of people who think in a language is more important than the number who develop in it.

I don't yet think in Python. It is not where I learned programming. I am more a Lisp thinker, but for practical application python is a better choice.

I don't trust people who think in JavaScript. Or rather I don't like to bet on them.

<comment><USER15> Well, I for some practical application lisp/racket could be a better choice. If we categorize lisps/schemes/haskells as "not for real world use" too easily we won't enjoy nearly as much innovation.

I also believe it's undeniable that parts of these languages would be a godsend in some more "real world" languages.

There are two sides to the argument, however I'd like to caution against dismissing languages as "not for real world use" too quickly since it's a trend I've seen.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> I've been using Python for what I guess you could consider as pre-processing for data science.

One thing people might want to consider before investing time in Python is that I found it to be quite memory inefficient: data structures take up a lot of space, and the garbage collection didn't seem to be as effective as other languages (I spend some time studying/improving GC in JVMs). So if you're dealing with large amounts of data and/or complex data structures, I wonder if Matlab might be more appropriate (AFAIK R is also not very good at memory management yet).

<comment><USER17> As a rule of thumb, if you run out of memory in python, you will also run out of memory in matlab. I've done a lot of work in both and found that while python's memory performance may not be ideal, at least when you run into trouble in python you have options. With matlab I found that when I got that dreaded "Out of memory" message the prompt, there was little I could do. The internals are completely opaque, shipping my code to C is a pain in the ass, and there are very few language constructs to help you control how you use memory.

In most cases running out of memory in matlab meant either making the problem smaller or running it on a beefier machine. I think this is the reason why you see a lot of labs at universities with machines that have 96GB of memory, even though their datasets seem to be much smaller.

FWIW, as far as processing lots of data is concerned, python is not without issues. If you do it naively you will run out of memory _really_ quickly. But by picking your tools correctly you can go a long way. Use Pandas and/or Sparse arrays whenever possible. Learn how numpy broadcasting operations contribute to memory explosions. Take a gander at the source of that sklearn method you're using, since it's often quite obvious that the particular implementation will choke.

I've found that these days I try my best to avoid loading datasets into memory. This is second nature for people who work with 'big data', but it's an m.o. that takes some getting used to. That is, blocking and/or streaming your data, and appropriately subdividing your problem for distributed computation. It's worth mentioning that this problem with python is under active research and development. The guys at continuum developed IOpro to deal with the issue of memory efficiency when loading data, and to make streaming data from flat files/S3/mongodb/whatever easier and more stable. Also, their (very young) project called Blaze is meant to be a drop-in replacement for numpy, but is designed for efficiency and specifically for dealing with out-of-core computation. We'll see...

<comment><USER13> I also recently learned that Panda's can talk to a PyTable's HDF data storage on disk. This should be fairly seemless and can help reduce some memory issues with larger datasets. Yves Hilpisch did a nice talk on "Performance Python" that goes into this: [http://hilpisch.com/YH_Performance_Python_Slides.html](http://hilpisch.com/YH_Performance_Python_Slides.html)

<comment><USER17> Yes, I almost exclusively use pytables+HDF5 when I'm permitted. As I commented on some thread earlier this week, it strikes a great balance between simplicity, performance and flexibility.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> It's not.

R vs some Python alternatives in Google Trends: [http://bit.ly/1fpOR57](http://bit.ly/1fpOR57)

Pandas is looking good, but then we have Julia, Matlab and probably some people still using SAS.

edit:

Comparing statistical packages by: Kaggle.com usage, Job posts, Activity on blogs, mailing lists, Stack overflow, Google Scholar and a few more..

[http://r4stats.com/articles/popularity/](http://r4stats.com/articles/popularity/)

<comment><USER19> I must be missing something...I see the Python options having a lot more volume than R. What am I supposed to be seeing in this graph that means Python isn't a (if not _the_ ) leading language in this space?

<comment><USER18> I guess there are better ways of comparing. I like the survey data and kaggle.com data from my other link.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Octave, R, Julia, Python.. we have so many choices now.

<comment><USER21> I think that's the real benefit. In the past 5 years, there's been an explosion of available tools, which is good for everybody. I looked at Python a while back, and it wasn't there yet. Now it seems to arrived.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> Any sufficiently fast language that allow the user to focus on the problem rather than the syntax or semantics will do better than its peers. I for one am looking forward to Julia maturing.

</comment><comment><USER23> I consider myself a data scientist in bioinformatics field. I have to deal with several hundred GB scale data everyday. IMO, the best tool kit so far is the combination of Perl and R. Because these tools have the richest packages/modules, you can do almost everything with them. As for python, I don't think it can deal with the data I have as efficient as Perl.

<comment><USER24> PDL or Perl?

<comment><USER23> PDL is the Perl packages for numerical science. Unless you did a lot of mathematics computation, PDL is rarely used in my daily routine.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> Both Octave/Matlab and R are more "convenient" or elegant in certain precise cases, like linear algebra, but Python provides a much more coherent experience due to syntax and the type system.

Julia... well... has its merits, but the ecosystem isn't comparable. Julia does not have Django, Guido or PyCon.

<comment><USER26> I think it's just a matter of time until it replaces Python in data science. (And I believe it's also the best designed general purpose dynamic language out there.)

<comment><USER25> It would be a matter of quite a long time then. Considering that it took the numpy/pandas combination several years to almost overtake matlab and R, and that Python is language and interpreter with 2 decades of history and development, Julia should take about five to ten years to be a serious competitor, and the inertia of the python community will be hard to break.

<comment><USER26> Perhaps, it's hard to tell... Julia can be almost as fast as C, so it can potentionally replace many uses of C / C++ for scientific computing.

<comment><USER25> Julia can be almost be as fast as C and still not have Django, Guido or Pycon...

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> The lead developer on Elefant got poached by a high frequency trading shop in 2006. He was "discovered" showing his wares at pycon that year (vectorized operations faster than anything else out there).

Sigh.

</comment><comment><USER28> Hadoop? Java

HBase? Java

Hive? Java

RapidMiner? Java

Cassandra? Java

Neo4J? Java

Python 4 the win.

<comment><USER29> Python excels in the exploratory data analysis side of things, not so much on the computation side. Thus we get tools like Pandas, NumPy and Scikit-Learn.

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> Python, to me, is the all-around B+ language. It has good (but not great) performance, language semantics, runtime technical detail. As history showed us, being good at a lot of things enabled the growth of a large community (without corporate sponsorship) and an immense library ecosystem. So "all- around B+" isn't a knock against it. If anything, it's to be admired.

Unfortunately, this means that most data science findings, when transmuted into permanent production programs, don't stay in Python. Often Java or C++ are used instead.

Personally, that's why I think Clojure's got a real shot at being "the language of choice for data science" in 2023. It has the power of Lisp, it makes a lot of data-frame manipulations really easy, and because it sits on top of the JVM, it can be "productionized" pretty easily (you might have to write a couple functions in Java, for performance).

<comment><USER26> After spending at least 50+ hours programming in both Julia and Clojure I have to disagree. Julia is more readable, faster, great for both imperative and functional programming and generally I found it easier to get things done.

</comment></comment><comment><USER31> Partly because it became a the language of choice for teaching CS basics instead of Scheme in good schools like MIT.</comment>