Kidnapping insurance keeps a lid on ransom inflation - <AUTHOR> https://www.economist.com/finance-and-economics/2018/05/26/how-kidnapping-insurance-keeps-a-lid-on-ransom-inflation <comment><USER2> When I lived/worked in a high-risk kidnapping environment, I ever got K&R insurance. What I wanted was "retribution insurance" \-- some plan which would guarantee some people would investigate and kill everyone in any substantial way affiliated with the kidnapping -- and to loudly communicate the existence of this policy in advance. Being recovered would be great, but having kidnappings deterred entirely would be even better.

US citizenship largely serves this purpose, at least if it's a high profile kidnapping (which any kidnapping in Iraq/Afghanistan/etc. would have been.)

<comment><USER3> I'm not sure if that would be an effective way to get kidnappings deterred.

There are varied policies on kidnappings, discussed here: [https://www.npr.org/sections/money/2017/09/01/548032302/epis...](https://www.npr.org/sections/money/2017/09/01/548032302/episode-792-the- ransom-problem)

Interestingly the "no ransoms" policy seems to be quite problematic.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> One thing I don't quite get...

Say I've kidnapped someone and the ransom has been paid. I could release the hostage but then there would be someone with knowledge of my operation out there walking about.

If I killed the hostage instead, I'll have eliminated that risk and I can keep the ransom. It's not like anyone is going to sue me for not keeping my side of the contract.

Maybe I'm going to get a reputation for killing hostages and people stop paying ransoms, but then I'll just throw away that identity and give myself a new name.

Any game-theorists wish to comment?

<comment><USER5> Not a game theorist, but this is probably the same reason "ransomware" actually does unlock your data if your provide the BTC -- if it didn't, people would not pay. It's market forces at play and is what distinguishes organised criminals from garden variety criminals.

(Sorry if that is stated in the article, but there is a pay-wall.)

<comment><USER6> But that assumes the kidnappers have a long-term game to play, and need to worry about their reputation, no?

That will be the case at least some of the time, I suppose.

Also, some 'ransomware' never unlocks, even on payment. 'NotPetya' is the famous one, perhaps there are others. A sufficiently spooked victim might behave irrationally and fail to research the ransomware's track record before paying up.

<comment><USER7> It's not so much as worrying about their personal (gang, group, person) reputation, but rather the reputation of kidnappers in general.

Kidnapping is a business. I would assume people who kidnap others do it more than once. If you want your industry (kidnapping) to continue to exist/be profitable, then would-be-payers must know that they are likely going to get the person(s) back.

<comment><USER6> Then you have a prisoner's dilemma, no?

To the individual gang, wouldn't it be safer to 'defect'?

 _Edit_ or would it be more a tragedy-of-the-commons?

<comment><USER8> Don't you think that a big chunk, say a majority, of kidnappers would rather not kill _anyone_ and also hold themselves in rather high regard, like "a man of my word" and such things.

Maybe we could call "honor" a built-in game theory heuristic we humans have? After all, we are hardwired to be social.

<comment><USER6> > kidnappers would rather not kill anyone and also hold themselves in rather > high regard, like "a man of my word" and such

You're assuming a certain value-set here. If instead their highest value is to appear ruthless to their peers (think prison, or for that matter the Dothraki), then no.

<comment><USER5> Well, I think the only value-set they are disclosing here is their desire for money. Assuming nothing "goes wrong", taking the money then reneging on the deal will not get them any _more_ money, and may attract the interest of other kidnappers who have a longer term view.

<comment><USER6> > taking the money then reneging on the deal will not get them any more money

Unless they reason that killing hostages is safer than releasing them, on account of 'no loose ends'.

> may attract the interest of other kidnappers who have a longer term view

Assuming a highly chaotic environment, this seems unlikely.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Somewhat related: [http://graphics.wsj.com/hostage/](http://graphics.wsj.com/hostage/)

<comment><USER10> They shot him a dozen times in the end. Man, when they've decided they want you dead (which is what this guy wanted anyway, so no love lost here) they really make sure don't they!

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Aw great, this is only going to cause MORE kidnappings since thieves will know they can get insurance money.

<comment><USER12> Before K&R insurers got together, firms and wealthy families were paying badly negotiated sky high ransoms. Now professionals negotiators with ice running through their veins negotiate much better "deals" and also reduce the risk of death by two thirds.

Much lower ransoms should mean kidnapping is less profitable and so supply should decrease (of kidnappings).

<comment><USER13> if no one paid, there would be no more kidnappings for ransom

<comment><USER10> The kidnappers can remain irrational longer than you can stay solvent.

<comment><USER14> Maybe something like the Russian model makes more sense, if not legally. The most deterrent response is to hunt the kidnapers down and exterminate them, not pay them.

<comment><USER3> Sounds like a great way to get the hostages killed at the same time.

Maybe it would work _after_ the kidnappers have been paid.

<comment><USER15> But if the hostage takers are dead and other potential hostage taker know this, it would reduce the risk?

<comment> vertex-four Which is great and all, except now your family member is dead, which I'm sure matters more to you than some game theory.

<comment><USER16> The result of which is everyone is at more risk, including your family in the future.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> What factors are considered in the risk models to price ransom insurance?

</comment><comment><USER18> Where there is kidnapping insurance, the kidnappers are going to know this in advance, and everyone involved will be the same players over and over. It's a racket.

<comment><USER19> Given that K&R insurance actually lowers the ransom amount, wouldn't kidnappers be incentivized to go after people who _don 't_ have insurance rather than people who do?

<comment><USER20> Why go for an unknown amount of money when you can kidnap someone with a guarnteed payout.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> Most places, where kidnappings happen often, have the same result: victims end up dead regardless of a paid ransom and not notifying police. The only place where most victims end up alive and unscathed once the victims' families pay the ransoms is the Philippines. Not totally sure why. Maybe it's because most of the kidnappers are professional soldiers instead of random gangs?

<comment><USER22> the article states the opposite: 9% of those who don't have K&R insurance come to some form of grief vs. 2% of those with K&R insurance (worldwide stats, assumably?)

<comment><USER21> Maybe they also group this together with kidnappings by relatives for a financial scam? That would explain better treatment in the stats. (imo this should also be treated separately, though not sure when we don't have access to the data.) On a related note, kidnappings in the West will also probably skew the data since most of it is done by divorced parents who don't custody. Rape also has a much larger stigma outside of the West. That aspect of the kidnapping may be hidden due to culture.

I'm also very unfamiliar with kidnappings in India and the surrounding regions.

I just know that the Philippines is special place when it comes to kidnapping; victims were rarely harmed in any way as long as the ransom demands were met - after negotiation of course. The exception happens when terrorists in the southern most region are the kidnappers.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> That website is TERRIBLE to read. Please fix your UX!

[https://streamable.com/q8xu0](https://streamable.com/q8xu0)

<comment><USER24> Just be happy you weren't on mobile trying to read that abomination of a website.

<comment><USER23> I can't imagine haha - can you post a screenshot now I'm curious

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> Way back, I had an 18yo Colombian gf whom I considered visiting under the assumption of buying reasonably-priced, short-term K&R insurance. At the time, Colombia was the top kidnapping spot, more-so than anywhere in the Middle East or Africa, because the FARC was funding their operations through drugs and ransoms. Even though she lived in the safest and most protected area, there was the risk of problems in transit in Bogota or Medellín, or merely visiting anyone or traveling inland or at night. I strongly considered it given how hot she was then, but then I met someone else whom I had more in common with and no language barrier. Long-distance physical relationships might just be an oxymoron. ;]

<comment><USER2> Seems like it would have been way cheaper to just buy her a plane ticket to the US.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: How do you implement faster website changes? - <AUTHOR> <comment><USER2> Can you add more detail to the question?

</comment><comment><USER3> Faster code or faster iteration?</comment>


Ask HN: What's the best way to discover great crowdfunding campaigns? - <AUTHOR>

For those serial crowdfunders out there: I am curious 1) why you invest, and 2) how you personally find great crowdfunding campaigns that you want to look at and potentially support.  Has it usually been through a friend, a blog, an advertisement, browsing a platform, or something else? <comment><USER2> Newsletters are a good way to find them. Also most top campaigns get coverage in news sources/PR. I know Indiegogo has several different newsletters a week.

</comment><comment><USER3> IMHO Kickstarter's staff picks and magic sort are usually surprisingly good at presenting good campaigns.</comment>


There's no speed limit (2009) - <AUTHOR> http://sivers.org/kimo <comment><USER2> Surprised to see a post of mine here on Hacker News. (First time in a long time. Thanks!)

Feel free to ask me absolutely anything here.

<comment><USER3> Great post Derek! What would be your best advice for someone with no technical skills (except html/css) who is going to start to learn how to code?

Since our interview in Singapore I've decided to devote myself 100% to learning to code (Rails to start with) during the second half of the year (I applied the 80/20 principal to my documentary re-interviews and travel).

When someone asks: "I really want to learn how to code, what should I do?" the answer is always the same: It's possible + you've just got to devote the time toward learning. If you are passionate about it you will stick with it. The answer has always been pretty clear for me: you just sit down and start learning how to code.

Basically, learning technical skills for me are kind of an inevitability rather than something I'm thinking about. I'm just looking for advice in regards to learning and efficiency. I really like your ideas + philosophy about self-learning, and remember you talking about learning methods in a Mixergy interview, e.g. spaced repetition software for language learning. Any similar advice about coding?

Basically, is there a way to increase the speed limit when learning to code?

Would you also recommend working on a web application while learning to code (since you started CD Baby in a similar way)?

Thanks in advance for the reply :)

<comment><USER2> The best approaches I've found are:

<http://www.codeschool.com/>

and

<http://eloquentjavascript.net/>

But I do think it's crucial to have some little project that's actually live and launched, that people are using, that you can add things to and constantly improve.

It helps you get immediate feedback, and remember why you're doing what you're doing: to make other people's lives better!

You don't want to just be learning in a vaccuum for months or years, not being of benefit to anyone except some maybe-future-self years from now.

Even if you start with some plain HTML site, and add nothing but a dumb "The time is now " + Time.now() -- then at least you've started, and you can improve from there.

As you go through Code School, or Eloquent JavaScript, or whatever other ways you learn, try to find a way to apply what you've learned to your site.

And lastly: learning by NECESSITY is the most effective way. If you HAVE to figure out how to make your site do some kind of function because you have people complaining to you that it's not, then you'll go figure out how to do it, and remember it with an intensity that you just don't get from, "OK, now it's time for Chapter 7."

<comment><USER4> > If you HAVE to figure out how to make your site do some kind of function > because you have people complaining to you that it's not, then you'll go > figure out how to do it [...]

That's very similar to advice from Patio11 that I just read over on Askolo¹:

> Rate of learning increases by an absolutely stupid amount by launching a > product and having users [...]

1\. <http://askolo.com/patio11>

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> This is a great article. My problem is, however, that I take it to the extreme: I set unrealistic goals for myself seeing as there are about 50 different things I want to learn outside of school. I almost always never meet my goals, and I become really discouraged.

It also seems like most successful people can point to an event, person, etc, in their past that served as a great turning point in putting them on the path to success. I just can't seem to put myself in a position for that to happen.

Derek, any tips?

<comment><USER2> First: Don't be a donkey. <http://sivers.org/donkey>

Also, ask yourself of those 50 different goals, which is something you HATE NOT doing? <http://sivers.org/hatenot>

Focus on that goal, and let go of the rest.

See my other reply here about the conditions of "flow". One is that you need to be getting immediate positive feedback on your actions. Maybe your 50 different goals aren't giving you any progress feedback, because they never get enough of your time to make progress?

Imagine kind of like some people take a 10-day meditation retreat, or a 7-day fast, maybe what you need is like a 10-day "ONLY ONE GOAL" retreat.

Pick the one thing that matters most, and only work towards that one thing. It's almost physically painful to ignore the other 49 at first, but soon the rewards from that one will be worth it. Then it feeds on itself, and perhaps could be your turning point.

<comment><USER6> Is it possible to be a semi-donkey? I have, if I were to try to count, 4 major 'things' going on in my life right now. One is keeping fit, one is keeping up with free online learning resources like Udacity, one is my job, and one is learning to play guitar.

Are you suggesting that if I don't drop three of those, I won't succeed in any of them? That worries me a bit, because the job part takes up LOTS and LOTS of time, far more than the other three combined.

<comment><USER2> We all have multiple goals. (Be healthy. Be a great programmer. Be a great dad. Etc.)

You'll know if you have so many that it's holding you back, and paralyzing you.

If it's not a problem, if you're able to progress on all of them, then congrats! No need to change anything because of a silly blog post. ☺

<comment><USER6> Thanks for the quick response. I'm a bit more at ease now. And the post was anything but silly. It makes a really powerful point!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> My favorite nugget:

" I run across kids all the time who say they want to be a great musician. I tell them I can help, and tell them to show up at my studio at 9am if they're serious. Almost nobody ever does."

I've learned this after so many years. Everyone talks about wanting to be successful. No one ever means it. Having someone just show up is a miracle.

<comment><USER8> As goes the famous Woody Allen quote that a large portion of life is just showing up. If a hacker gave me an offer like that I'd feel incredibly foolish _not_ showing up. But then I guess you can discount that as talk until such a situation were to actually present itself.

But yeah, the disconnect between peoples words and their actions is laughably ridiculous.

<comment><USER9> _Actions speak louder than words._

A lot of people say a lot things, but few act. Showing up and doing something puts a person ahead of many.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Awesome thread.

I had two massively influential mentors like this in middle and high school.

Both were teachers who cleared the path for me. Instead of the curriculum other students did I was given one that challenged me. 95% if I got the new computer lab setup over the weekend. I was pushed to help integrate technology into all the schools clubs, which in turn required me to join a whack of clubs I never would have, nor made diversely interested friends.

While I was in school, much of this did happen outside the classroom. By saving my school 50 to 80,000/year in network administration costs. By creating (or saving) this much value I was supported with my own office, phone number, expense account to buy books or things for learning, attend conferences, and generally have my run of the school, including a pre-signed pad of late slips to use when I ran late from my commitments.

There was so much that got built as a byproduct of my time because I was going so fast. The difference 10 or 15 years later? I had far fewer responsibilities to other areas of my life (and others) back then.

Age inevitably eats up more time and it's a reality, if you want a balanced life with more than just work in it. This might be a kiss of death to some startup types, but it presented a new challenge to me and I ended up pursuing a consulting business to forever float me while chasing startup ideas.

</comment><comment><USER11> Hi Derek, thanks for an awesome thread and your many enlightening blog posts. (I'm surprised you're surprised to see a post of yours here :P)

What advice do you have for a generalist? I feel I can learn things quickly, but I don't get great at anything -- maybe due to a lack of motivation and a surplus of procrastination.

I'm a back-end programmer who likes front-end development, only because I'm not a great UI designer (but would love to be). I also love playing the piano and singing, but I haven't had a lesson in 12 years. (People tell me I have a nice voice.) I'm bilingual and fluent in a third language, and I could easily learn more if I had more time.

The path I'm currently on is to keep working and practicing front-end development, and possibly learn how to design. As I hone those skills I plan to start building software to one day quit corporate America. On the other hand, I love the music as a hobby thing, but feel that I'm not great. (I'm surrounded by very talented musicians from my wife's side of the family.)

I'm not even sure what my question is, but any advice would be s/kind of cool/greatly appreciated/.

Edit: I think my problem is not knowing what to focus on, and whether or not I should specialize in something or keep learning new things. (And if so, how to choose that something.)

<comment><USER2> Felipe: Sorry I didn't see your question until hours later.

See <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3761474>

It's not your exact question, but similar, and led to some other comments in that thread.

I hope that helps.

<comment><USER11> No worries, I figured you had taken off. Thanks for responding and bringing your other comment to my attention — I glossed over it too quickly to make the connection.

Cheers, best of luck on your new projects.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> It's definitely helpful to understand that there is no real speed limit.

Conversely, I think it's also useful to think that there's no rush.

I sometimes get in my head that "if I don't have X millions by the time I'm 30, I'll be a failure."

I realized it's too stressful to think that way.

It's probably more important to think there are no speed requirements at all. Move as slow or as fast as you need/want.

Great post!

<comment><USER13> I would say that maybe you should refine your metrics? What significance is x millions? Is that how success is defined? Or do you define success by doing something great? Typically when you do something great, in the world of products and business, the money follows. If you can turn out a great product in x months that gains hundreds of thousands or millions of users, would that be a better metric? I'm not saying your metric is wrong, I'm just challenging you to consider what the proper metric of success is for you.

The author didn't use $ as his measuring stick, he used a skill or status. So do you want to make $, or do you want to make awesome stuff, or do awesome things? Figure it out, then use it to define your metrics and drive your success. I can't see how, "there's no rush", can be remotely true. You only get x days, if day x is = tomorrow then you only have 1 more day. You never know when day x = tomorrow, so I would say there is always a rush.

<comment><USER12> It's more the mindset I'm concerned with. An extrinsic outcome oriented mindset leads to a lot of stress. Whenever I've set demanding performance goals for myself within a short time frame like write 10 blog posts a month or something similar, I don't enjoy the process and I usually don't end up writing all 10.

On the other hand, if I say my goal is to get in the habit of writing one sentence everyday, the end result is much better and I'm less stressed about it.

I think process oriented goals can actually end up being more productive than outcome oriented goals.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Derek, ended up reading the followup article about advice you gave to an incoming Berklee class where you mention:

 _Focus. Disconnect. Do not be distracted. This is your #1 most important challenge. If you master focus, you will be in control of your world. If you don't, it will control you._

Seems like focusing nowadays is almost impossible. There are so many time sucks, so close at hand.

<comment><USER2> Yes! I agree! This is one of our biggest current challenges!

Actually, Paul Graham has written two of the best essays about it:

<http://www.paulgraham.com/makersschedule.html>

and

<http://www.paulgraham.com/distraction.html>

"Focus" by Leo Babauta is quite good, too: <http://sivers.org/book/Focus>

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> I think there are a whole load of kids out there that could benefit from a "no speed limit" policy. I think the larger problem is that there aren't enough teachers that can set the pace. I remember, as a kid, reading an article in the paper about how two 10 year old kids had completed a computing A level course (i'm from the UK). I was 11 myself at the time and so much wanted to do that course. My parents looked in many places and couldnt find a way for me to be able to take that course any sooner than what the national curriculum had prescribed. After a few years, i got distracted and lost my enthusiasm and determination.

I'm having the same problem learning Node. js right now. I had been trying to teach myself, but my progress was going rather slowly. Then along came a mentor that help me achieve in just a few hours what i wasn't able to achieve in over a month. And then he disappeared, and im stuck at snails pace again.

Maybe that's just the story of my life, or maybe that the story, period.

<comment><USER16> Have you tried hanging out in the node.js IRC channel? Help is just a step away! The node mailing lists are also pretty helpful.

You can also feel free to email me (email in profile) - I have been working on node for more than a year now on a decent sized project.

<comment><USER15> I tried the IRC channel about a year ago, but at that time i was so new to Node that i felt a little out of place. It seems you had to be at least intermediate level with node to really start chatting to people. You have to remember that i'm new to programming itself as well as Node. That said, i should repay the place a visit.

I was always worried about IRC etiquette. What i mean to say is - is it considered poor etiquette to just dive in and start asking for help?

Anyway - i think the larger problem for me hasnt been just getting stuck with Node - it's been more about knowing what is the next step to take in terms of the project since im new to development too. That's where having a mentor was very useful.

What are your thoughts?

<comment><USER16> Yes, people just drop into the IRC channel and ask questions. The worst thing that can possibly happen is you hear no answer (mostly because no one might be around).

The node mailing list is a good place for asking questions too. Often, the more focussed your question is, the better it is. So, instead of asking something vague - ask about specific areas you are facing problems with. Also, when asking a question, explaining what you tried to do to solve the problem yourselves helps people better understand your problem and offer constructive help.

<comment><USER15> great advice - Thank you.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Derek, this thread really resonates with me. I've been at a crossroads between 2 distinct paths for several years. Path A is a road I've been on for almost 14 yrs, and I've grown weary of it. W/o going into explanation, things have slowed on that road, and won't move forward w/o considerable effort. But I know exactly what needs to be done, there's little risk, it's very practical, and I will have company in the process, which I've come to realize is very important to me. On the other hand, I've always wondered about this Path B, w/o ever having taken any significant steps towards it. So I'd be starting from scratch, and yet it seems much less complex than Path A. I wouldn't have any company for probably a few years on Path B, so it's sure to be a lonely road at first. In the end it would be quite rewarding I'm sure, but I'd be letting down a lot of people by abondoning Path A. And I'm fairly certain that there's not enough time to pursue both Paths and do either one of them justice. Your thoughts on this??? Many thanks...

<comment><USER2> ABSOLUTELY WITHOUT A DOUBT, choose Path B.

Life is f'ing short! When you're old and looking back on your life, you'll mostly remember the changes, the big events. These big changes are the hooks you hang your memories on.

You'll always remember that 2012 is the year you chose Plan B. You'll remember this big change in your life, and all the other new experiences it's going to create.

This is part of living a full life! This is crucial!

14 years is plenty of time on Path A. You got the benefits out of it. You learned your lessons. You've been there, done that. Time to go!

I can't emphasize this enough. I think it's SO important.

Every time I've made a major change in my life, it's always turned out for the better. Sometimes I even thought they were failures, in the moment - (divorce, selling my company, etc) - but they always turned out wonderful.

<comment><USER17> I was afraid you'd say that.

Opting for Path B would actually make life a lot easier than you realize. An endless list of very time-consuming tasks disappear if I finally get off Path A, and a huge weight would be lifted from my shoulders.

Of course Path B seems the obvious choice. But previous attempts on that path have several times ground to a halt, admittedly because I get in my own way. I can't help but wonder: why am I not pysched? Shouldn't my desire be enough to push me forward? If I knew I wanted it badly enough, would I even need to have this conversation with you?

Btw, you and I are acquainted - we went to Berklee together. It'll be something if this exchange ends up being the turning point. Thanks again for taking the time!

<comment><USER2> > "Why am I not psyched?"

Because it's f'ing terrifying!

See <http://sivers.org/book/WarOfArt>

He calls it "resistance". We'll make any excuse not to do the thing that we know is our highest calling.

<comment><USER17> Wow, now THAT resonates with me. Big Time.

You're right, and I know it, scary though it may be. It shall be Path B.

Thanks, Derek!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> I teach English Honors composition, and on the last day of each semester I send this as part of my "Last E-mail:"

 _Now for the small message that's really big. This is the post that could but probably won't change your life: "There's no speed limit. (The lessons that changed my life)":<http://sivers.org/kimo> . I say "could," because most of you probably won't click the link; of those of you who do, most of you won't read the whole thing; of those of you who do, most of you won't get it; of those of you who do, most of you won't implement it. On the off chance that one out of 50 of you let this change your life, however, I'm sending it. The writer of "There's no speed limit" also wrote a book called Anything You Want, and reading it is probably one of the best ways you can spend an hour._

(This is after I tell them about the not clicking the link, not reading it, etc.) in class.

<comment><USER2> Wow! Thanks Jake! I really appreciate it.

<comment><USER18> Thanks for writing _Anything You Want_. I've written about it on my blog (<http://jseliger.com>) and elsewhere; I'm actually working on an essay about how to think about science and becoming a scientist that mentions a section from "There Is No Speed Limit."

Good writing is good writing.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Honestly, I don't believe it. I know nothing about music, but at least in my field of study (computer science) I doubt this can apply.

There is a limit and it is very plain: time. You can only soak in so much knowledge at a time, and knowing in theory is very different from knowing in practice (but you definitely need both). Practice takes time, especially if you practice to understand theory. You have to make mistakes, they are the single most important thing to understand something in my experience. You need the "haha" moment when you understand why something doesn't work and how it has driven theory/research in the field.

You can go maybe go faster than the computer science program at X. Maybe twice or thrice as fast, if you're gifted. But you cannot go as fast as you want, that is just wishful thinking.

</comment><comment><USER20> I have found that this is very true. Right now, I'm studying physics at the undergraduate level. It's hard, but at the same time it doesn't feel challenging. I don't feel like I get very much out of my lessons. However, I did manage to get myself a job in one of the space science labs here on campus. I have learned so much from that work, simply because it is expected that I be as capable as the graduate students I work with. I have learned much, much more advanced physics and internalized it than I could ever do in my basic physics class. It's the challenge that educates you.

</comment><comment> apa-sl Wow, great story! I have understood similar thing just recently a year ago but I am already "old" (28 years). Nevertheless I totally agree - there is no speed limit! Funny thing that lately I have made a second approach to the piano from the scratch and... it worked! After just 4 weeks I am far better that during the first attempt few years ago and few months of learning. This time I simply have found the right teacher which is constantly challenging me.

Hope that finally I will also manage to make it happen business wise with Y-Combinator! ;-)

</comment><comment><USER21> I skipped the second part of my degree (I have an Associates) instead I went and got a job, I moved from the junior designer to the manager within less than a year (Managing people who had been there for 15+ years) and Art Director within two years where I ended up hiring an employee who had spent those two years in "The same program" that I would have been had I not ignored the "speed limit" to this day that employee is still just "a designer".

Remember, you make your own rules in life. Walls only exist in your head.

</comment><comment><USER22> I work so hard and am always just getting by. Never ahead of the game. This effects my happiness because I feel a lack of freedom when money is always such an issue. I'm looking for a way to accept what is and find happiness in other ways, than say, my dream of going to Europe. Meditation seems to calm me but I feel a sense of disgust in myself because I am not making a good living, even though I should be proud of myself for working so hard and being good at what I do. Thanks for any thoughts.

</comment><comment><USER23> It seems to me that one of the reasons CDBaby was/is so successful is because its primary customers are _musicians_ , rather than consumers of music.

Strictly speaking CDBaby sells to both categories (it sells a service to musicians, and CDs to customers).

But to me, as a professional musician, it seems that people buy less music in product form now. Therefore the real customers for music-based products are...the musicians themselves.

There are more musicians than ever before. All are competing against one another. As a result, they are willing to spend their disposable income on promotions, marketing.

Providing a service like CDBaby's was a brilliant way of tapping into that emerging market.

What made it disruptive was: the price-point, the musician-friendly ethos, the dependability and speed of the customer service.

As a musician/entrepreneur, it seems to me that very few startups realize that they may be more successful asking musicians to pay for something than finding 'customers' for their 'products' in the old fashioned (read: recording industry) mold.

Of course spinning the story to sound musician friendly is delicate...and essential.

Do you see other opportunities for charging the growing contingent of musicians for a service that is worthwhile?

</comment><comment><USER24> Where are you? What are you doing now? What is your next big project?

Love Awaken the Giant Within. I've been trying to sell online guitar courses for many years, but now I've settled on doing well-paying remote IT contracts and taking months off in between to practice jazz guitar improvisation. I love sharing what I've learned but I guess it doesn't have to be a money maker, just something we all instinctively love to do.

<comment><USER2> Living in Singapore : <http://sivers.org/singapore>

Learning Rails, JavaScript, jQuery, Backbone.js

Programming these things: <http://50pop.com/code>

That's all. :-)

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> I wonder if the most important advice from this is to believe you can succeed rather than the idea of keeping a break-neck schedule. In my experience, success in learning something new starts with a sustainable daily practice; if you _actually_ spend a half hour a day at something, you will see results in a couple of months. For instance, you could have made your way through the ml- class.org lectures and absorbed all of the material, or made your way through all the beginner lessons from justinguitar.com.

That's not to say someone couldn't spend 5 hours a day blazing through the ml- class.org lectures, but if spending 30 minutes a day means you can actually stick with it, that's a whole lot better than spending 5 hours a day for a week and then burning out. Same goes for fitness - 30 minutes a day of walking for _the rest of your life_ is sooo much better than doing 2 weeks of p90x and burning out. If you can do p90x ever day for the rest of your life, kudos to you, but I've witness at least 2 friends buy and then burn out on p90x before getting any meaningful results.

</comment><comment><USER26> Derek,

One thing I have noticed about many of your blogs/talks is that you have an innate sense of optimism. Is this a learned trait of yours or was this something you picked up as you made your way through life and found success? While I dont feel that I am a pessimist, I do wish I could improve my sense of optimism/anything is possible with work/focus. Any tips?

Thanks and I always enjoy your posts.

<comment><USER2> My optimism is a little bit innate, but mostly learned.

It was something I got from Tony Robbins : that you can choose how you want to feel about anything. (We usually act like we can't help the way we feel. But we can consciously choose and change how we feel.)

No matter what happens, you can choose to ask, "What's great about this?" Even if you're not in the mood. Even if cranky or pissed-off, you can still force yourself to ask that, out of habit. Then the pessimism slowly dissolves, and you start to get optimistic again.

Then it feeds off itself. Somehow when you're optimistic, things go your way more often. Then that encourages you further, etc.

Actually these days I'm SO optimistic that it can work against me! I optimistically over-estimate my ability to do things. I optimistically think I'll just get fit and healthy through good intentions. Etc.

Sometimes a dose of painful pessimism can achieve more. (Though I guess if you realize that's the attitude that would be more helpful for you, you can choose to be pessimistic, too. As long as you know it's an intentional choice.)

<comment><USER27> The book _Succeed_ covers the topic of what kinds of optimism and pessimism help you achieve your goals pretty thoroughly ([http://www.amazon.com/Succeed- How-Can-Reach-Goals/dp/0452297...](http://www.amazon.com/Succeed-How-Can- Reach-Goals/dp/0452297710/ref=sr_1_3?ie=UTF8&qid=1332871610&sr=8-3)). Two big takeaways:

1\. Be optimistic when setting high level, year-long goals. But be pessimistic when drawing out all the implementation details of what you'll actually have to do to achieve those goals.

2\. Be pessimistic about the difficulty of anything you want to achieve, but optimistic about your ability to conquer those difficulties.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> Darn it.. Sometimes i wish i had found a teacher like this. i.e: someone who could teach at my pace and not the class' average pace.

<comment><USER2> I think you have to go outside the school to find those kind of teachers. They've got an intrinsic motivation to prove they can teach better than the school's standard pace.

<comment><USER18> In schools as they're currently structured, there's virtually no incentive to do this kind of thing, and quite strong disincentives to: taking special interest in a particular student is often viewed with sexually-tinged suspicion.

Most students, including the smarter ones, don't really understand this, which is also part of the problem; I wrote "How to get your professors' attention, along with coaching and mentoring" ([http://jseliger.com/2010/10/02/how-to- get-your-professors%E2...](http://jseliger.com/2010/10/02/how-to-get-your- professors%E2%80%99-attention-or-how-to-get-the-coaching-and-mentorship-you- need/)) in part to remedy this knowledge deficit.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> Sivers, just wanted to thank you for sharing your wisdom and experience. I know it has had an effect on me. Everyone, I highly recommend you check out Derek's "Uncommon Sense" videos, available free here: <http://www.appsumo.com/sivers/>

<comment><USER2> Thanks Jon! I really appreciate it. That's really nice to hear.

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> Uhhhh...ok, so you learned music theory quickly. Take a shot at any algebra (ring theory, algebraic topology) and you'll quickly discover there is a very concrete speed limit. (This also holds true for all fields of pure mathematics, its just more pronounced in algebra).

</comment><comment><USER31> Great blog entry and often quoted on HN: [https://www.google.fr/search?sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8...](https://www.google.fr/search?sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8&q=site%3Anews.ycombinator.com+http%3A%2F%2Fsivers.org%2Fkimo)

</comment><comment><USER32> I'm almost jealous that you had a teacher as great as you did! We need more Kinos!!!

<comment><USER2> I'm jealous of my past self, too.

I wish I had a new Kimo in my life, that could help me deeply grok programming as intensely as he did.

<comment><USER32> I guess I'm even more pissed with myself then jealous, because the only time I actually had Kimo in my life I myself weren't ready for that. Now I think I would be, but the opportunity is gone...

So, let's hope you meet more than one Kimo in your life time!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> Hear, hear. When I tested into an advanced math class in 7th grade, I was able to learn the prerequisite semester of pre-algebra in less than an hour by sitting down with a great teacher and plowing through the material. But in my scholastic life, this experience was the exception, not the rule.

I understand the desire to teach to the slowest students; no one should ever be left behind, and faster does not inherently equal better. But we are doing both young people and society a disservice when we don't find ways for the quick learners to hit escape velocity so they can get to things that genuinely challenge them.

</comment><comment><USER34> Hi Derek, Loved your book, two quick questions, (1) Up to today, how far did you get in using RoR for your new projects and (2) what is your "Kimo's advise" on speed learning it ? (coming from the Microsoft world).

<comment><USER2> (1) I'm torn on Rails. It's so so so SO much ecosystem to learn just to make a basic web app. I find that I'm much more attracted to Sinatra. Also I prefer Sequel to ActiveRecord. Also, I really want to try playing with the architecture of a JSON REST API back-end and a JavaScript front-end (like Backbone.js). So for that, it seems Sinatra + Sequel suits me better. I'm trying this way for now, and if it doesn't work out, I'll commit a few hundred hours to learning Rails whole ecosystem. (Then I guess keeping up with it constantly.)

(2) Oooh. Good question. It wasn't advice that made the difference. It was a style of teaching. Standing above me, pushing me further than I knew, but somehow still on the edge of my abilities. Making me figure things out for myself instead of giving me the answer.

The closest I've seen someone come to systemizing it is Code School : <http://www.codeschool.com/>

I love that style of "here's a little info, now figure out this problem."

<comment><USER34> You have no idea how valuable your responses are to me, I consider it a priviledge that you took the time to answer my questions, thank you very much! I like the idea also of going Sinatra, use Rails functionality if needed but otherwise keeping it simpler, there is always the chance to go with the full- blown version (Rails). Thanks again for sharing and taking the time!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> I remembered having seen it here before (it's a classic and worth revisiting)

Previous discussion:

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=970945>

</comment><comment><USER36> I really appreciate your writing, TED talks, ideas, and the humble and positive way in which you present your work.

I think one of the problems I struggled with the most with this type of thinking is feeling like I'm being conceited or thinking that "I'm special" when I try to remove speed limits. I've always learned a lot of things fairly fast but I think I limited myself by subconsciously not wanting to feel better than other people.

<comment><USER2> Yes! Absolutely! It takes a strong ego to say, "Hell I'm better than all these other mofos. Get out of my way, slow-pokes!"

It's got a competitive edge to it. You'd need that same attitude if competing in sports.

And, like sports, it doesn't mean you're a jerk for wanting to achieve as much as you can, or more than everyone else. It's just a relative-comparison thing that gives you an extra boost.

You need to feel you're special, that the rules don't apply to you, Neo. ☺

</comment></comment><comment><USER37> Wow, what a great thread!

Just another thing that makes Hacker News so good: read something written by an expert and then engage in a discussion with that expert.

Derek, please go to www.askolo.com and register today. This is a brand new Hacker News inspired site built specifically for this purpose. These guys are trying to build and reach critical mass and your presence there would be greatly appreciated by me and many others, I'm sure.

<comment><USER38> This is the second time today that I hear about Askolo, seems more then a quincidence (heavy PR going on?). How are they different from Quora?

<comment><USER39> I can only imagine they're a YC startup, based on the people I see active there after I registered. (PG, JL, other YC partners) With Demo Day today, things are picking up PR-wise. :)

<comment><USER40> On a side note regarding askolo:

I'm not so sure if the name is perfectly chosen. You know that olo is ASCII art for a penis and balls?

<http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=olo>

This reminds me of the story when VW advertised their Golf GTI with "Turbo Cojones". Somehow, the marketing department (in Germany?) obviously didn't realize the meaning of "cojones".

edit: typo

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER41> Visit Kimo's website (<http://www.kimowilliams.com>) and listen to the music. It's really nice.

</comment><comment><USER42> In most universities there _is_ a speed limit: you can't "test out" of classes unless you've had them somewhere else, and pre-requisites, minimum optional credits and required internships prevent you from speeding through.

I really wish most courses would be 2 years long. Plenty of time to get the university experience and learn all you need, everyone's head is already far out after the 8th semester.

</comment><comment><USER43> An interesting place to compare comments at.

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=970945>

</comment><comment><USER44> Great article, loved it. I also liked the booklist (<http://sivers.org/book>).

</comment><comment><USER45> Previous discussion:

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=970945>

</comment><comment><USER46> I don't buy this, I spent the first two years of my degree working as this guy suggests and completely burnt myself out. Now I take things easy, I'm still getting good grades and I'm a lot more relaxed. The other things I want to learn (not covered in my degree) can wait.

But... maybe I'm just a chump...

</comment><comment><USER47> Is this a way of saying one should always live on the edge of incompetence? Edit: I ask this, because I have difficulties applying your ideas on fields where I don't have any good teachers around (e.g., lets say I want to become a better cook).

<comment><USER2> Sorry your question got a little lost & downvoted.

See another reply, above, about the difficulty in finding a great teacher.

</comment></comment><comment><USER48> Absolutely love this. When you're really interested, find a teacher that will teach at your own rate. Too often the answer is "Don't worry about that, you'll learn it next semester". A phrase that you should never hear from a teacher!

</comment><comment><USER49> People who think "going to college is for chumps" (and there are a lot of you on HN) should do this instead. It's not that hard to graduate college in 2-3 years.

</comment><comment><USER50> It's called the Pygmalion effect

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pygmalion_effect>

</comment><comment><USER14> Derek, wow you were a driven kid! What lead you to be in such a hurry to get through school?

<comment><USER2> I was in a hurry to get famous!

I wanted to be a rock star. Ain't no fun waiting 'round to be a millionaire! Gotta hurry.

</comment></comment><comment><USER51> I am very jealous you found someone to guide and challenge you like that.

</comment><comment><USER52> The speed of light (c) is the cosmic speed limit.

</comment><comment><USER53> Derek, What is the relationship of cell behavior to, 1. tribalism & 2\. music (answer may be rendered in form of improvisation dance/one man silent opera)

<comment><USER2> I just did an interpretive dance to explain my answer.

Man, you shoulda seen it. I'm exhausted now, but it was awesome.

<comment><USER53> I sensed something.. and channeled it into the omelet of another, a someone, somewhere..

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER54> Just a GREAT post. Thanks.</comment>


Fix your damn documentation, developers - <AUTHOR> http://www.jarrodrobins.com/posts/8

<comment><USER2> That's one of my pet peeves, which is why I'm very meticulous about my documentation. For example: [http://kstenerud.github.com/ObjectAL-for- iPhone/documentatio...](http://kstenerud.github.com/ObjectAL-for- iPhone/documentation/)</comment>


A Plan for Humanity - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@bryan_johnson/a-plan-for-humanity-2bc04088e3d4 <comment><USER2> Lots of the US thinks the things you list are irrational non-problems that only stupid liberals worry about. How does this series of things like improving ourselves deal with that? There seems to be a really large group of people in well off western democracies even who hanker for an authoritarian leader. That will lead to dictators that will be hard to dislodge. How can we reduce the desire for that?</comment>


Ask HN: What Is the Value of CockroachDB? - <AUTHOR> I dont mean this sarcastically, I just keep hearing how this technology is great and distributed but I cant really see the current use case in current enterprises.<p>Is there something I am missing? Why would someone simply switch their backed databases for something that does not even offer Data Warehousing or other data management tools? <comment><USER2> Disclaimer: I am from PingCAP, the company built TiDB

CockroachDB is well suited for applications that require reliable, available, and correct data, and millisecond response times, regardless of scale, and belongs to the category of NewSQL, which promises to combine benefits from RDBMS (strong consistency) with benefits from NoSQL (scalability); it mainly achieves this through new architecture patterns and efficient SQL storage engines. TiDB and CockroachDB are a few of the leading NewSQL databases. Each database implementation has its own take on how to ensure strong consistency with a scalable architecture.

The following situations are some hints you may consider for a switch,

1\. RDBMS is becoming the performance bottleneck of your backend service

2\. The amount of data stored in the database is overwhelming

3\. You want to do some complex queries on large amount of data that cannot fit in one machine without manual sharding

4\. Your application needs a full ACID transaction for data distributed on multiple machines.

There are multiple choices for NewSQL too, engineers are always trying to compare TiDB and CockroachDB, here's some considerations before you decide.

TiDB is compatible with the MySQL protocol while CockroachDB is compatible with PostgreSQL. You can directly connect to TiDB server using any MySQL client and benefit from the MySQL ecosystem. Plus TiDB is well adopted and trusted by 1000+ large scale Internet companies and banks.

Currently, CockroachDB is not suitable for Online Analytical Processing (OLAP) while TiDB is a Hybrid Transactional and Analytical Processing (HTAP) database that supports both OLTP (Online Transactional Processing) and OLAP workloads. So with TiDB, a typical ETL (Extract, Transform and Load) process that moves data to a different database for analysis is no longer required, enabling you to create new values for your users, easier and faster.

Hope the above can help you a bit.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks, very helpful.

I have a feeling these technologies will be much more mainstream in 2-3 years

<comment><USER2> No problem at all:)

Indeed! With the current situation going on, the digitalisation accelerated, and the dataset is moving to a large scale, we see a huge demand of services like this.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> It's relational, it scales horizontally, and it's free. That combination is surprisingly hard to find.

<comment><USER4> i'm not a database person, but does postgres not scale horizontally?

<comment><USER5> No. Read replication approaches linear horizontal scaling (though global latencies can lead to weird edge cases).

Write replication requires external products.

<comment><USER3> Specifically, Postgres extensions that add write sharding are generally either (a) non-FOSS commercial products or (b) not very well maintained.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> From my experience, CockroachDB is super simple to set up. You can pretty much follow their tutorial and get a working cluster in no time. So I would say it's a good solution for non-experts. Now if you are already running Postgres, then I don't know why you would want to switch.

</comment><comment><USER5> The locality features are huge. Being able to do database operations near where your users are is a big win for latency in global environments.

Pairing that with edge compute like fly.io is a killer combination. That you can use most of your normal Postgres libraries with it make it an easy transition.

<comment><AUTHOR> I see, thanks. The uses for locality seem a little niche though no? Are the benefits that much greater that it would be noticeable to users?

<comment><USER5> You can see hundreds of ms of latency per request based purely on distance.

Tokyo - NYC is ~175 ms and that's a good route. Compound that by all the requests you app does.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> "Shard your Postgres DB without the typical devops headaches."

</comment><comment><USER8> Keep in mind, this is the only part of that elephant I've interacted with. The key things for us were it was transnational and had cross data center replication. You could update a node in data center a, and have it replicate down to the other data center with minimal latency.

</comment><comment><USER9> NOTE: I am on the product marketing team at CockroachLabs.

Cockroach Labs has been building CockroachDB for over five years and has reached a level of maturity where many enterprise and community customers are gaining value from the database.

We consider it a cloud-native database as it was architected with the same principles as a distributed platform like Kubernetes. It is built for scale, resilience, is shared-nothing and is comprised of a single binary across all nodes with consistent API. We have also gone to great lengths to ensure it is wire-compatible with PostgreSQL and implements a large portion of standard SQL syntax. \It is used as a relational database.

The key points we typically talk about fall into four key areas, that we lovingly refer to as CRLS (an acronym for Cockroach Labs)

Consistency - the database implements serializable isolation across distributed nodes within a cluster with acceptable latencies even both local and globally dispersed deployments.

Resilience - the database replicates data across nodes in the cluster and you can configure this to survivability at the table level for optimization of a loss of a node, zone or even region. It is an active-active system that is always on and data is always available. Further, you can implement online schema changes and rolling upgrades in production without downtime,

Scale - scaling the database is accomplished by simply spinning up a node and pointing it at the cluster. The database will take care of redistributing replicas to incorporate the new node. This is basically auto-sharding and adheres to the aforementioned policy of survivability mentioned above.

Locality - Unique to CockroachDB, you can also tie data to any particular node in the cluster. You define this at the table level. The database uses KV at the storage layer to accomplish this. Each table is represented as ordered KV pairs using the PK for the table for the Key. You work the location into the key and the distribution policy will ensure data is written to explicit nodes. This is used to ensure low latency access of data and/or to tie data to a location for compliance and privacy requirements. With online schema changes, you can manipulate the PK in production and rearrange where data is physically stored in a live production cluster.

There are numerous other capabilities in the database. We have a complete UI, deliver distributed backup/restore, change data capture and have implemented a cost-based optimizer that uses locality.

It is a relational database that you can deploy the database as a service on kubernetes and or in any cloud.

There are countless more capabilities and we invite you to check out one of our features we are most proud of… our documentation!

Also, please check out customer page - yes, these are high level but there are some stories there.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the info - very helpful. Are there any specific use cases that you can point to? I dont doubt that the tech is robust, just that the use cases arent too obvious right now.

<comment><USER10> There are quite a few case studies / customer stories on the website: [https://www.cockroachlabs.com/customers/](https://www.cockroachlabs.com/customers/)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> It's an OLTP database, not a warehouse.

</comment><comment><USER12> Everytime CockcroachDB has been on HN, the conversation has been always about their name ("what a shitty name for an enterprise software" vs. "who cares if it works well"), but I have been also wondering the same question.

Are they getting adoption? And what's their unique value proposition?

<comment><USER13> I think the name is probably hurting adoption.

The creature it refers to pretty universally considered repulsive. I'm no psychologist or anything, but I would expect that to have an undue influence on even the most rational person.

<comment><USER14> I don't know anything about it, but my first impression is that it's as robust as a cockroach, able to take a lot of damage.

<comment><USER15> The main metaphor I'm familiar with is that cockroaches always come back even as you try to kill more and more of them, rather like zombies, and never in a positive way.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> what "data warehousing"/"data management" tools are missing?

<comment><USER17> In case of OLAP queries is performance[1] which is not surprising since it's an OLTP database AFAIK.

I don't know what he means by "data management"

[1][https://www.cockroachlabs.com/docs/stable/frequently- asked-q...](https://www.cockroachlabs.com/docs/stable/frequently-asked- questions.html#when-is-cockroachdb-a-good-choice)

<comment><AUTHOR> What I mean is - and I get that these are somewhat different technologies - snowflake offers a more seemingly comprehensive platform for data by aggregating it and focusing the product on that aggregation for future use.

Compared to Cockroach DB which seems like a niche SQL replacement?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> As a DBA, I would not use a database product without 5 years of reported production success. Additionally, most companies don't need yet another product to do training and support on.</comment>


Claude Shannon and Juggling - <AUTHOR> http://www.juggle.org/claude-shannon-mathematician-engineer-genius-juggler/ <comment><USER4> The mathematics of juggling definitely continues out from there, as well! [1] is a video to get a taste of some of the ideas of the mathematics of the patterns of juggling.

Then, when you figure out that a certain set of patterns are jugglable, you try to figure out state diagrams for things like "What are all the possible rhythms for juggling three objects, under some maximum number of beats in the air?" [2]

I've definitely caught myself idly drawing ladder diagrams[3] before, then plugging the mathematical results into Juggling Lab[4] to see what it would look like, e.g. [5]. :)

[1] [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X1zSlvQtKM4](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X1zSlvQtKM4)

[2] [https://plus.maths.org/issue52/features/polster/state1.jpg](https://plus.maths.org/issue52/features/polster/state1.jpg)

[3] [https://vignette4.wikia.nocookie.net/juggle/images/b/ba/0123...](https://vignette4.wikia.nocookie.net/juggle/images/b/ba/0123456_ladder.png/revision/latest?cb=20120709004920)

[4] [http://jugglinglab.sourceforge.net](http://jugglinglab.sourceforge.net)

[5] [https://vignette.wikia.nocookie.net/juggle/images/8/8f/86x4x...](https://vignette.wikia.nocookie.net/juggle/images/8/8f/86x4x6_200.gif/revision/latest?cb=20120926190101)

<comment><USER5> I once around age 12 saw a talk of the mathematics of juggling and it inspired me to go home and download some old software for playing around with juggling patterns which I then did for hours and hours on end.

I'm now wondering if it's the same software, although this would have been circa 1998. I recognise the use of "siteswap notation" though.

<comment><USER6> That may have been me.

<comment> ismail-s Off-topic a bit, but just want to say your juggling talk is very good (and IIRC got me to start juggling again). Although my friends found it odd when they saw it a second time and realised how even your off-hand jokes were all deliberate and planned.

<comment><USER7> I worked at a comedy club during university and this is totally normal.

We would usually have a set of comedians booked for the whole weekend, and in the main their performances over the three nights would be identical. There was the very occasional one who would do some ad-lib back and forth with the crowd for a few minutes, but even those you would start to notice a pattern of repeated jokes, or types of jokes if they were booked for more than a few nights.

What was interesting was seeing the same acts return months later and find their set was still 80% the same. They evolved material slowly over time.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I used to think people were "odd" for saying that a particular font was hard to read, or that there were significant differences in the typeface used, but this is nearly impossible for me to read. I copied the text out into an editor and read it there.

It's a great read, and there were quite a few snippets I didn't know - <USER2> example, I didn't know that it was Arthur Lewbel who tried to juggle upside down.

Thank you for this.

<comment><USER8> The newest Firefox version has a fantastic "Reader View"[1] that strips and normalizes the formatting for easy reading, with larger text and a relatively narrow column.

In addition to refusing to collect more data than it needs, this is a good reason to switch away from Chrome/Safari/whatever.

[1] [https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/firefox-reader-view- clu...](https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/firefox-reader-view-clutter-free- web-pages)

<comment><USER9> "... strips and normalizes the formatting for easy reading..."

While I applaud your comment, I think there is more to consider. Initially the text has no formatting. Someone had to insert the markup. And why did they add the markup? Why not just give us the text and let us add our own, if we want it?

If we have a program, e.g. a custom text-filter, that can strip html tags and other markup (formatting) from original text (content), then why do we need a browser?

As a matter of practice, I use a text-only browser in VGA textmode. All text looks the same, same VGA font, and the look of every website is much more consistent than with a graphical browser, not to mention other benefits such as text being larger, no bright white page backgrounds, less eyestrain, complete absence of web ads, no auto-loading of tracking elements, etc.

With a text-only browser and without javascript many website design choices become irrelevant. All websites more or less look the same. This makes reading much easier and faster. It allows me to focus on the content, i.e., the data, instead of potentially being distracted by web design i.e. the presentation of data.

Needless to say it would be easy to write html "targeting" a text-only browser. It is very forgiving and "normalizes" variation that might otherwise be a problem.

(Do not misinterpret this comment: I have great respect for talented web designers but there are sometimes situations where design can get in the way of consuming data, as in the case of the OP.)

"Reader View" appears to be solving a problem that graphical browsers themselves created. These browsers make web design relevant and thereby enable not only spectacular, creative web design, but also difficulties in reading for some users, among other problems.

Not knocking use of "Reader View" \- it is very useful - but just providing a different perspective on why markup is being used to begin with and other ways to achieve easier reading with larger text (and easily adjustable column width).

<comment><USER10> _If we have a program, e.g. a custom text-filter, that can strip html tags and other markup (formatting) from original text (content), then why do we need a browser?_

The very early ideology of HTML was to describe structure and content fairly minimally so that browsers could display it in whatever manner was right for the user.

But it turned out that content producers had more influence with browser makers than did content users (who after all don't pay anyone but the ISP). And they want to have control over the user's screen, speaker and (ultimately) brain. Hence pixel-perfect formatting, advanced CSS and of course JavaScript.

But that has sort-of changed for Mozilla. Their competitors have all the close relationships with content producers, so they are trying to become friends with users again. And thus their incentives have shifted to trying to recover the original virtues of the web out of the current set of technologies.

It's a tricky thing to do, and I wish them luck.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> The other day my neighbor dropped 'round. We were chatting about wireless networks. He asked if I knew anything about 5G deployments, citing the very high data rates he'd heard of. I responded that I doubted Shannon was going to allow the Marketing guys to fulfill their promises. He said "Oh that guy - <USER3> was weird, always riding a unicycle around". Turns out my neighbor attended MIT.

<comment><USER12> > He said "Oh that guy - he was weird, always riding a unicycle around". Turns > out my neighbor attended MIT.

I bet that most top science/engineering schools have some interesting eccentric characters like that. A book collecting the stories of such people could be interesting.

For example, at Caltech when I was there in the late 70s and early 80s there was a guy in his 60s people called "Renaissance Ralph" because he was usually wearing a tutu and purple pantyhose that put one in mind of some kind of jester. He'd hang around the library and sit in on lectures, and most people had no idea who he was. We just figured he was some local eccentric who enjoyed attending science lectures.

The school paper ran a story about him and told us who he was. He was Edward E. Simmons, born in 1911. He got a B.S. degree from Caltech in 1934 and an M.S. in 1936, and then continued at Caltech. In 1938 he invented the strain gauge. Caltech claimed the patent rights, but Simmons sued and won the rights.

That made him a lot of money, and he apparently retired to a life of just hanging around Pasadena and indulging his sartorial eccentricities until he died in 2004 at the age of 93 from prostate cancer.

Here's some information about him:

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

[https://www.findagrave.com/cgi- bin/fg.cgi?page=gr&GRid=79907...](https://www.findagrave.com/cgi- bin/fg.cgi?page=gr&GRid=79907149)

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> Is a Claude Shanon biopic or theme park in work? There has been a flood of articles about him in the last few weeks. This reminds me of the time a few years back when general public discovered Nikola Tesla.

<comment><USER14> This article as well as all of the others I have seen on the front page are written by the two authors of a recent biography of Shannon. Smart marketing...

<comment><USER15> Yep, pretty intense gerilla marketing on HN. Worked on me though... After the first article I thought "I want to read that at some point." After the second one, I added it to my wishlist. After they got Vincent Cerf to review it in nature I gave up and ordered it. Finished reading it a few weeks ago. A bit short, but well worth its money.

<comment><USER16> > _pretty intense gerilla marketing on HN_

It doesn't need to be targeted at HN: members of HN are members of the general population, and the publishers/marketers of the book are understandably going to be doing their jobs which includes getting articles written,w which members of HN come across in the course of their lives. It's not surprising they would then share these articles on HN.

Say an actor is making appearances on a bunch of different talk shows promoting their upcoming movie. The fact that Alice and Bob find out they happened to see the same actor on different shows while at the water cooler doesn't mean the actor was targeting this particular water cooler or Alice and Bob in particular.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> I would be interested in creating a program that makes use of deep learning to recognizes tricks and siteswap notation in a juggling video. If anyone is interested in collaborating on this, drop me a line.

</comment><comment><USER18> I haven't seen it posted yet here, but for anyone unfamiliar with mathematics in juggling (or anyone with an hour to kill watching something entertaining), there is a lecture/performance by Allen Knutson ([https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=38rf9FLhl-8](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=38rf9FLhl-8)) that I found to be a great intro (before I even knew I was looking for one!) and got me excited about the subject.

</comment><comment><USER19> If you're interested, juggling mathematics has continued to advance since Shannon's day. Google siteswap, prechac transformations, causal diagrams...

</comment><comment><USER6> Among the other resources is the lecture I gave at the series of lectures sponsored by MoMath:

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GNKFSpJIBO0#t=7m30](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GNKFSpJIBO0#t=7m30)

Intended for a general audience.

</comment><comment><USER20> His biographer was just interviewed on the latest ep of Chat with Traders if anyone wants to hear more.</comment>


Realtime Twitter / capital market analysis in Haskell.  Also, anyone hiring? - <AUTHOR> http://ego.fm Just wanted to share my hobby project with y'all - it reads Twitter and tries to classify each message as "bullish" or "bearish", then keeps track of which ticker symbols are mentioned, calculates the most mentioned each hour and creates a leaderboard.  The backend is Haskell (Snap framework) and Redis, the frontend is Raphael.js and JQuery.<p>As an aside, I recently have found myself unemployed - anyone hiring or have some contract work they need done?  Take a look at my github account at http://www.github.com/texodus for some of my code, including (soon) this site. <comment><AUTHOR> Just wanted to share my hobby project with y'all - it reads Twitter and tries to classify each message as "bullish" or "bearish", then keeps track of which ticker symbols are mentioned, calculates the most mentioned each hour and creates a leaderboard. The backend is Haskell (Snap framework) and Redis, the frontend is Raphael.js and JQuery.

As an aside, I recently have found myself unemployed - anyone hiring or have some contract work they need done? Take a look at my github account at <http://www.github.com/texodus> for some of my code, including (soon) this site.

<comment><USER2> Fantastic idea and challenging path to build it - kudos!

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Just curious, could you post an example graph with both bullish and bearish twits?

My company is looking for employee #4, we do high frequency trading:

<http://meshcapital.com/Careers.html>

<comment><AUTHOR> Here's a screenshot of Apple as they announced their quarterly earnings:

<http://ego.fm/screenshot.png>

The red & green spikes represent individual polls of Twitter, and the overall sentiment regarding the ticker - the dotted line is the cutoff for which scores are used to calculate the leaderboard.

I live in Brooklyn, so Jersey may work.

<comment><USER4> your site seems to be down.. how consistently is there this strong of a correlation? have you simulated any trading based on your system?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Beautiful. Very inspiring. Best Twitter visualization I've seen since TwitterVision and Twistori. I love that the data is beautifully visualized.

</comment><comment><USER6> stocktwits is looking for a ruby on rails + wordpress guy. Considering your site's down the same vertical, you might want to look into it.

<comment><USER7> nitpick: your _

<comment><USER6> fixed, it's because i was adding an apostrophe on the following word, a little grammar slip. My deepest apologies.

<comment><USER7> Ah! It's certainly not a problem. Forgive me if I came off harsh. I am bleeding karma these days...

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> More info would be quite helpful.

</comment><comment><USER9> I love the look of the site! And kudos for using Haskell + Raphaeljs. It's a great example use-case for data mining Twitter. There are so many interesting data-mining mashup possibilities on Twitter that I've been disappointed by the lack of creative imagination shown in the various Twitter-based web apps aggregating and interpreting trends via Twitter.

However, I do wonder if it would be easy to spam Twitter and thereby ruin its usefulness for real-time data mining. If Twitter can be used to accurately track trends, as soon as everyone knows trends are being created based on Twitter, then they can manipulate it, similar to pump-and-dump spam schemes we've seen on various financial news boards, like Yahoo, Motley Fool etc.

<comment><AUTHOR> You're absolutely right - it would be trivial to manipulate the rankings. Disclaimer: I highly recommend no one make any investments based on my site's picks! This is just a data mining demo.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: Knowing a bit about everything or everything about a bit? - <AUTHOR> When I worked in consulting, I was constantly thrown into work I had little idea how to approach; build us a PoC of a mobile app in React Native, spike out an event streaming backend running on K8s, see if you can index a few hundred unstructured Word documents to make them searchable, etc.
I found this to be terrifying yet exhilarating. The short timelines of these projects (averaged six weeks) coupled with the "tech spike" nature of the work gave me countless opportunities to experiment with different technologies and approaches to problem solving. While the architecture and code weren't often the best, they served their purpose well as demos.
What constantly nagged at me however was the outlook that I'd always only gain surface-level knowledge of the things I work with; by the time the implementation was working, it was time to move on to something else. This eventually caused me to move to an engineering role in a product company where I'd get the chance to specialise in an area I was passionate about.
Fast-forward to now, where I've spent almost a year in the same codebase working to solve problems in the same domain. I've picked up an immense about of knowledge on Go, REST APIs, and good engineering practices, but I can't kick the feeling that having such a narrow focus is detrimental to my learning.
I'm sure I'm not the only person who's felt this way, and I get there are tradeoffs with both approaches. Has anyone managed to strike a balance? Are there good reasons to favour one over the other? <comment><USER2> It's been proven long time ago that generally the approach of generalist- specialist is probably the best one universally, looking like an upside-down "T". You are a generalist, but in one specific category you're also an expert.

The above is of course purely theoretical and all depends on how you're going to compose your "T" in both: the generalist part and your specialization.

For instance and contrary to a popular believe, a model in which the base of your "T", the generalist part, is narrower but you know a little bit more about every topic than just scratching its surface like in the above paragraph, is not an optimal one. It might be even a waste of precious time.

Consider risk management of both strategies and their statistical implications. The first one is much better suited for dealing with unpredictable, real (volatile) world than the second one, although it's not intuitive at the firs glance. But it's very important to understand that risk mitigation and hunting for chances in life has exactly the same profile (they are mirrored to each other). It's called a proper (beneficial) convexity [take a look on Nassim Taleb and his works - highly recommended] when you're set up in a way that enables you catching good winds and ride a wave of opportunities (and in case of Taleb's antifragility models - even disasters).

There is no balance! There are only trade-offs between risk and chances of success. Positioning oneself in a good direction is the key, and in the world where "I have no idea what I'm doing" MUST BE a norm, being a generalist- specialist is a very, very good starting point. With time passing by one can easily fulfill spots that should be strengthened. It's much easier to do than pivoting from a bad place we've found ourselves in due to inappropriate, past decisions.

Again, read Nassim Taleb. At least The Black Swan and Antifragile. You're going to thank yourself later.

</comment><comment><USER3> Most consulting engineers are both specialists and generalists. I do mostly compliance and manufacturing consulting. Most of my contracts are for a simple gap analysis. Which oft turns into an implementation contract that entails test engineering (hardware and software), manufacturing engineering, quality engineering, and product and process approval and accreditation.

Where hardware and software meet, there is no such thing as a pure specialist. You will not get many future gigs if your skill and experience set is narrow.

</comment><comment><USER4> My uncle worked in micron scale thin films deposition, "sputtering" as he called it, for 30 years. When that research and manufacturing literally evaporated (pun intended ;) in the 90s, where was a guy in his late 50s going to go? He was too old and channelized both in terms of knowledge and management style to successfully transplant. He made an effort to reinvent himself, but it was hard work requiring flexibility and patience, both of which he possessed in very short supply. Looooong retirement ensued.</comment>


Organizing for Speed - <AUTHOR> https://blogg.bekk.no/organizing-for-speed-17462894baf4 <comment><USER2> We have this in spades here: Two types of people clash regularly. The "doers", who demand that they be working on something all the time, and the "completers", who insist that they can't start something new because they haven't finished the last task.

The "doers" tend to "win", and that causes all sorts of problems at deployment time, not least of which is the test department swamped at the end of the release cycle.</comment>


Social Security: Another Way to Look at It - <AUTHOR> http://dilbert.com/blog/entry/another_way_to_look_at_it/ <comment><USER2> on a related note, the money related crime rate (theft, fraud etc) of the 60+ in Japan have been rising for a while as the baby boomers are retiring. It doesn't solve everything and can have moral aspects difficult to juge, but helping old people keep a decent lifestyle is a very real problem.</comment>


Google, Verizon working on iPad killer - <AUTHOR> http://www.itworld.com/internet/107403/google-verizon-working-ipad-killer <comment><USER2> Always link to the original source, not the blog. The blurb reveals nothing useful, so here is the original WSJ article:

[http://online.wsj.com/article/SB1000142405274870425010457523...](http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704250104575238680540806288.html)

But of course, even _this_ doesn't reveal much. They don't have a product, a demo, a price, or even a clue, so how is this news?

The only reason to make vague statements like this now, would be to steal some of Apple's thunder and future sales. Frankly, I don't care what other companies "might" have a year from now; of _course_ competitors are working on things, that's what they are expected to do. But there is a massive chasm between "scribbled on the back of a napkin last week" and "produced a working, shipping, price-competitive embedded product", and it sure looks like these guys just finished their napkin.

</comment><comment><USER3>
       "looking at all the things Google has in its archives
       that we could put on a tablet to make it a great
       experience."

Why bother with a clear, elegant, cohesive design when we can create a device from the grab-bag school of engineering! I know I may sound glib, but these doesn't seem to be any real thought or _reason_ behind this, just more me-too- ism</comment>