What People Think You Can't Say in Silicon Valley - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@jasoncrawford/what-people-think-you-cant-say-in-silicon-valley-a6d04f632a00 <comment><USER3> My impression is that it is not only about topics, but also _perceived_ intentions (and if you step, however unintentionally, on a trigger (of a landmine)).

I wrote Dating for Nerds: Gender differences ([http://p.migdal.pl/2017/09/30/dating-for-nerds-gender- differ...](http://p.migdal.pl/2017/09/30/dating-for-nerds-gender- differences.html)) and got no backlash (much to my surprise, though).

From my experience nerds (and aspies in particular) talk mostly to exchange information (learn, share). Same questions are being understood by neurotypicals as expressing intentions, in a covert way.

Nerd: I read that X, on the average, are less interested in tech.

A non-nerd reads it as: I want to kick out all X from tech. / I consider X inferior.

A non-nerd disagrees with the perceived intention and fights back, while a nerd perceives it as immunity to facts and unwillingness for a discussion.

That said:

\- not all nerds are well-intentioned and open-minded

\- workplace is not a place for all possible talks (or other social activities); if it makes people feel bad, excluded or less productive - it may be an argument to keep such discussions outside of the workplace; in particular, workplace is not an evolutionary biology discussion club

And BTW, from "Interpersonal Traits of Aspies Placed in Context": [https://gist.github.com/stared/00ce50e95f9bcecc8965feb04650c...](https://gist.github.com/stared/00ce50e95f9bcecc8965feb04650c19d) see "Not Recognizing 'Yellow Light' Conditions" and even more: "Doesn't Apologize Readily".

<comment><USER4> "A non-nerd reads it as: I want to kick out all X from tech. / I consider X inferior."

I was out on an internet date with Scandinavian woman a few years ago. She was some type of sociological researcher, which interested me. I told her that part of the discrepancy in representation between genders in tech could be biologically oriented and she immediately said, "I don't want to hear arguments from biology!" She said it with the same tone and conviction you'd label someone a racist.

It's as if once we allow these facts into the argument, it means we can say the fight for gender equality is finished, that whenever equality exists, we can all throw our hands up in the air and say, "It's biology!" I can see the danger but at the same time, the alternative--denying reality--is far more insidious.

<comment><USER5> I can of understand her reaction (I would have had the same) and for me it's in fact not very dangerous:

\- to my knowledge it's impossible to separate biology and culture with the data we have

\- some discriminations were and are made by wrongfully attributing it to biological traits

\- since it's hard or impossible to separate things a lot of people (myself included) adopt « it's not biology it's culture » by default because we think if we are wrong it causes less harm and is less dangerous than falsely attributing something to biology, and if it's right then it helps the society progress.

I understand closing the debate is frustrating for the scientifically minded and rationale people, but my opinion is that it's not a bad heuristic for society as a whole at least until we make progress. But obviously the debate can happen in the right context, but I find it dangerous to introduce it in the actual climate of crtitical thinking we are in

<comment><USER6> This leaves me wondering:

What do you consider to be the right context for public debates about these thorny issues?

What besides communicating with each other about those issues will move us forward?

I don't think they will go away by themselves and I agree that some cannot be resolved, but then we should politely agree to disagree, after having explained our reasoning for each other's viewpoints, no?

Disclaimer: I work in this space and we get this reaction quite often, so I am happy to read your thoughts on this.

<comment><USER5> It depends of the issues we are talking of.

What I'm saying is that introducing biology at this point in the debate, by looking if the inequality is "natural" because phenotype A or chromosome B gives you some edge or not in science or other discipline, is kind of irrelevant given the weight of culture in our societies.

I find it even dangerous because I don't think a lot of people are ready to understand the subtleties of a shift in a normal distribution (if one is present), and it'll just give them a wrong/misused "scientific" evidence for reinforcing their prejudices. Because I can't teach critical thinking in minutes I now resort to "it's always cultural" and try to move the debate forward to the (IMHO) main causes.

(not a native english speaker so sorry if I missed your point)

<comment><USER4> You're saying you want to keep science out of the 'debate.' That's not a debate. That's religion. You refuse to allow scientific evidence into the discussion because you don't trust people with that knowledge. We can't discuss science is what you're saying. We're supposed to keep our heads in the sand and pretend that genetics don't exist to support your agenda. No thank you.

<comment><USER5> I'm not saying I want to keep science out of the debate, I'm saying with our current state of knowledge there is no evidence to help conclude anything and tell things apart between biology and culture in complex high level chain of decisions like choosing a career path.

We can't say "biology=true science!" and try to shoehorn it in the debate no matter what, this, is unscientific.

Yes, given that we don't know, assuming it's always culture to help society progress (and implicitly saying society needs a change) is a political and philosophical opinion, and on this we can disagree, but don't invoke religion vs science to create a false dichotomy and paint me on the irrational side.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I read through the list.

My only comment is that if you cannot discuss an idea then the idea cannot evolve, and you probably won't change your mind.

Maybe the problem is not oppression of ideas, but the lack of a discussion culture which can tolerate a wider spectrum of ideas for the sake of debunking some of them.

<comment><USER8> I think this is key.

In the south (and other places) you're more apt to spot people who have deep bias against people for intrinsic things - in the North (including CA, and Northwest) those ideas are so completely unacceptable, that those people never get called out on them.

<comment> aaron-lebo How did you write that without realizing how oxymoronic it is? Were you trying to be an example of: "people who have deep bias against people for intrinsic things"?

Besides your suggestion that prejudice doesn't exist in the north (lol), you're writing from the Pacific Northwest, one of the least diverse places in the country. Oregon is 83% white; Texas hasn't been that white since 1970, currently 45% non-Hispanic white. Washington state is 72% non-Hispanic. We deal with a diverse culture every day, most of us aren't racist and ignorant.

Why did you say that?

<comment><USER9> The assertion seems to be that racism -- perhaps even a specific manifestation of racism -- is more prevalent in the south than in other areas of the country. Not that _everyone in the south is racist_ , or that everyone in the north isn't.

Perhaps you would like it if even this more carefully worded thing was something people didn't say. If so, it'd probably be interesting to unpack why.

Also, I'm not sure that geographic location counts as an intrinsic trait. And no matter how diverse your circle of association is, beware of assuming they're representative of what you'd see in a geographic cross section. Based on my survey of my Republican acquaintances in my home state, I would have assumed that Trump wouldn't have won the primary there.

<comment> aaron-lebo I'm not averse to the discussion, but it was not carefully worded, by any means.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> It's funny, I don't see it on the list but by far the biggest taboo in SV in my experience is talking about things going badly. You're doing great, killing it even, or you should keep it to yourself.

<comment><USER11> I don't know if it's really specific to startup. In life in general no one cares about you and people tend to avoid you if it's going badly (except very close friends).

<comment><USER10> Well, I grew up in NYC where sarcasm and cynicism reign supreme. SV culture is really jarring.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> SV has championed a super toxic, toe-the-liberal-line-question-nothing atmosphere in the workplace for years now. The damage is done.

You'd have to be a total fool to bring up any of the non-left-wing, yet totally valid comments on that post in a tech workplace in 2017.

<comment><USER13> Here's how it works in London: a right-wing racist will call you a racist epithet to your face. A left-wing racist will talk a lot about diversity but work behind the scenes to ethnically cleanse your neighbourhood (aka "gentrification").

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> What I read about the current climate in the US reminds me a lot of how things were in the months after 9/11\. While I don't have unbiased data like in the link, I can share a personal anecdote:

In the months after 9/11, if you spoke up and said you didn't agree with US foreign policy (invading Afghanistan) or that you didn't approve of Bush and wanted him to resign, you got blacklisted.

I had a friend, every house in his neighborhood had an American flag except for his, because his dad was an introverted engineer and uninterested in politics. The absence of the flag was obvious, and after a few nights of things like eggs on the door, flaming dog shit, and finally a dead animal left on the door mat, he put up an American flag and all the drama went away.

<comment><USER15> Try putting up a Ted Cruz sign in Mountain View.

<comment><USER16> That'd be kinda silly since Ted Cruz is a Texas senator. But if you mean for President, probably you'd take some heat.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> As someone living far away from SV, this is fascinating reading. But I think the survey could be more precise about what "can't say" really means. Will you get literally ostracized for holding the viewpoint in private or on a blog, or will you get fired for bringing it up in the workplace?

I personally believe some viewpoints really _are_ inappropriate to bring up in a professional working environment. If I genuinely believe read-headed people have a brain structure which makes them inferior developers, I don't think I should bring this issue up during a meeting. Sure, my red-headed coworkers have the option of challenging my viewpoints and perhaps a fruitful discussion will follow - where I will convince them with rational arguments and evidence that my viewpoint is correct. But I think it is fair if said red-headed colleagues would prefer not to have the discussion at all.

I notice the top taboo subjects are diversity, racism, sexism etc - <USER2> subjects where you can indirectly question a colleagues competence.

<comment><USER18> > _Will you get literally ostracized for holding the viewpoint in private or > on a blog_

Yes, that can happen. If you argue on your blog that red-headed people are inherently inferior developers and it gets back to your colleagues, there will be people who treat you differently.

<comment><USER17> Oh certainly, but that does not necessarily mean you "can't say" such things. I would definitely treat a colleague differently if I discover they write a blog arguing in favor of Hungarian Notation. Of course people will judge your character. But if such a blog post would get you fired then it would be fair to say you "can't say" it.

As an example, Peter Thiel (if I remember correctly) criticized women having the vote. Certainly a controversial viewpoint, but not controversial enough to get him ostracized. But his support for Trump _did_ get him ostracized to some extent. I think this shows the difference between what is just controversial and what is considered unacceptable in SV.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> There's a big difference between ideas that weaken minorities, and ideas that weaken majorities, because you get blowback for different reasons. When you attack minorities the people that get upset with you, are people that are worried that weakening an already weak group is a bad thing. When you attack majorities however, you get blowback from the people that are afraid to lose their power.

I agree that there are problems with not allowing people to express all kinds of ideas, but there's a big difference in the two types above: You should be more careful when attacking the already weak, for their position is already brittle.

<comment><USER20> (I'm going to assume from context you don't mean minority as in population, but rather power dynamics as you talk about for the rest of the post.) The problem distinguishing stronger and weaker sides is that there isn't an objective metric that both sides can agree on. The reason gender issues are so prevalent on this list and are such a hot topic is exactly because it is a debate about which side is weaker, about which measures of power are valid and invalid, and so on.

<comment><USER19> That there isn't a metric is a really interesting problem. I think most debates should start with talking about metrics.

For instance, when talking about skewed power dynamics when it come to gender, you could look at the number of men vs. women in management positions. Being able to fire someone is a form of power. Or you could look at raw salaries, and say that money is a form of power. And so on. Would make many discussions a lot clearer.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> Interesting thing is about gender and technology jobs. In "evil" Iran, about 50% of students of computer science are women. Being a female software developer is common. Cousin of my wife is a programmer, another female friend of the family is a IBM mainframe programmer(now retired), my wife is an engineer with interest in computer science. So its not all about "brain structures", it is about society. When Iran can do it, how will we westeners?

<comment><USER22> [http://slatestarcodex.com/2017/08/07/contra-grant-on- exagger...](http://slatestarcodex.com/2017/08/07/contra-grant-on-exaggerated- differences/) \- in particular see Iran vs Sweden, how more egalitarian cultures show more gender difference for occupations

<comment><USER21> Thanks, very interesting.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> So basically people with opinions on both extremes feel marginalized and unheard. I guess that's maybe a message to consider a more nuanced position.

<comment><USER24> I want Silicon Valley to be a place where you can publicly hold extreme views and not be a huge social liability to anyone you associate with (employer, friends).

<comment><USER25> The thing is you are free to hold and expose extreme views - and I strongly support your right to do so and not to be subject to persecution from the state for doing so. However I also have the right to not associate with you if I think that you are a dick.

<comment><USER23> Ugh, so done with this xkcd.

Ignoring people who we don't agree with is how we got to a place where supporting your political party was more important than having an ideology you could morally justify.

I personally lean fairly far to the right but I spend a lot of time listening to NPR, reading slate, and other pretty lefty publications. When I talk to people who only consume one side of the media, whether it's right or left, I feel like I'm talking to a wall of nonsense. People have so little understanding of those they disagree with and will dismiss them with "they're a bunch of idiots" so quickly that their position has no basis in reality. I'm not saying we should give everyone a platform, I'm saying that if someone says "all the rich should be killed" or "gay men don't know love" each position despite being on diametrically opposite sides of our current political landscape need to be understood if we want to move forward.

<comment><USER25> The OP is talking about extreme views like racism (or in their case hating trans people).

You are talking about listening to Democrat opinions.

Very very different thing.

I am quite happy to be friends with people with different political opinions or who vote for another party.

I am also happy to know who is spouting racist, sexist or crazy drivel. This allows me personally to avoid them.

Others may choose to engage with the extremists I choose not to waste my time. This is a matter for individual free will.

NB once again listening to Democrat/republican media when you are voting for the other party is just normal and has nothing to do with choosing not to associate with e.g Klansman.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> The lack of self-awareness in many of these comments is really quite shocking — Id say it's probably better that they're not typically expressed.

</comment><comment><USER27> It seems regardless of one's viewpoint, there is a strong reluctance to digging deeper to examine the roots of one's beliefs.

A lot of these people might not believe what they believe if they were to attempt to justify their beliefs in a rigorous and intellectually honest way.

</comment><comment><USER28> "Silicon Valley" is a workplace, and it's generally considered rude to bring your political views into the workplace. Everyone has met the very passionate on both the left and the right, and having someone stand outside your cube or in the lunch line trying to "win" you over to their view just isn't conducive to getting your work done and making money.

<comment><USER29> >"Silicon Valley" is a workplace, and it's generally considered rude to bring your political views into the workplace.

In theory, yes, but in practice it's only considered "rude" when you bring _unpopular_ political views into the workplace. In a partisan locale such as SV people openly talk about the popular political view at work, all the time.

A Googler can go to TGIF Q&A and openly bash Trump/GOP and he'd get sympathetic responses from Larry, if not cheers from the audience (and a bunch of new memegen entries), but I highly doubt the same would be true for someone expressing opposite views.

<comment><USER30> I used to work for a start up in Boston (co-lo'd with a bunch of other startups) a couple years ago, and people would openly talk about politics of the left-wing establishment variety and go around patting each other on the back for it.

The stuff rude awakenings are made of…

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> "A lot of the ideas here will not actually get you ostracized from Silicon Valley society."

Oh dude you have just not been paying attention.

Can you show me a single example of someone in tech who publicly expresses, at any point, any of the beliefs which are "not allowed?"

I'm looking for one.

Find me one person on Twitter in tech aside from John McAfee or Peter Theil who would dare. Sam Altman was good enough to step forward, I hope he won't be the last. The complete and total castigation of the dude by every tech media outlet showed exactly what happens to anyone who isn't rich enough not to care.

While Sam Altman can take a beating, a standard employee like James Damore can't. Did we forget about him? Apparently we did!

Show me a single tech luminary staying that diversity is overrated and has numerous downsides (such as the degradation of communal trust which had swept the valley), that we don't actually need additional codes of conduct to add protections that are already covered in the US legal code at every Meetup, that all gender bathrooms are lunacy or that most of the Millenials coming into the job market have an incredibly broken and fearful view of the world that is unwarranted by the available evidence.

Show me a single tech luminary willing to say that women should realize they have advantages and disadvantages and should take responsibility for guarding themselves st off-site social events to avoid being approached by men.

One! Show me one!

I can find these opinions on conservative podcasts but I have never seen anyone express them in tech. Ever!

I see a non-stop avalanche of one set of these opinions on every social media feed, internal company meeting and industry conference.

I have NEVER seen ANYONE notable in tech aside from Peter Thiel, who has been made untouchable st this point.

Why is that? It's because they know it's not good business and they will get to join Peter Theil in the excommunicated pile.

A great example is Scott Adams. Scott used to make hundreds of thousands of dollars per year giving paid speeches.

When he began writing about Trump, he was excommunicated and all of his speaking gigs were cancelled.

Another great example is the systematic and deliberate demonetization of conservative YouTube videos. People who are very balanced and fair like Dave Rubin have had their videos defunded for having conservative speakers as interview guests.

Twitter has been notorious for slowing down or "never getting around to" giving Blue Check Marks to conservative speakers - If I remember correctly, Scott Adams had to reach a simply insane number of followers before being given the check.

The hatred of conservatives and direct, persecutory and economic attacks on them is real, ongoing and getting worse.

Seriously - if you believe most of these opinions won't harm your career if expressed publicly, you have really not been paying attention.

If you don't believe me - Try it. Go on Twitter right now and say: "all gender bathrooms are stupid."

Watch what happens.

<comment><USER32> I don't think I could convince you of anything. But can I ask: if the other side were right, and some of these views are so abhorrent that the outrage against people who express them is almost entirely justified- would you be able to tell?

There are definitely some political views that should be socially discouraged and attacked and there should be social repercussions for the people who express them. You disagree on whether some particular views fit in this category. You must admit that from your position, it can be very difficult to distinguish between unfair persecution and genuine persecution.

For the record, if a company I work for invited someone as purely evil / anti- intellectual and vapid as Scott Adams to give a speech, I would absolutely resign in protest.

<comment><USER29> > some of these views are so abhorrent that the outrage against people who > express them is almost entirely justified- would you be able to tell?

Yes, we can tell most of the time, and yes even if it gets difficult sometimes and we fail to distinguish unfair and genuine persecution, we will try our best to discuss it, study it, and get better at it. That's how we should approach the problem. That, is the intellectual way.

Your method of automatically shutting down discussion of controversial ideas just because a small percentage of them are truly evil, is in fact more anti- intellectual than anything Scott Adams has ever said/written.

<comment><USER32> I certainly never said that was "my method".

I disagree that we can tell most of the time. I think we _can 't_ tell most of the time. Most Americans couldn't tell in the 60s- about 33% of the country had a favorable view of MLK. Most Germans couldn't tell in the 30s. And so on and so on. If we were any good at tellint, then evil wouldn't be so scary!

My point is that here you are again, in a similar situation to those, saying the exact same sorts of things the people who were wrong in those circumstances said. It's possible we're _not_ in that kind of situation, but I hope that you realize that (a) some of the things that you're upset about (educated people pushing some ideas out of their institutions; radicals and communists protesting in the streets; highly charged and accusatory language) were the exact same sorts of things the people who ended up being wrong in those circumstances were upset about, and (b) historically, people sympathetic towards these bad ideas or unsympathetic to their opponents could not tell the difference in their own times.

<comment><USER29> So? That's my exact point. In all of your examples the righteous eventually prevailed due to their own merits, and history proved that they were on the right side.

You don't get claim victory by shutting down the debate at the beginning. You don't get to moral high ground by "proclaiming" it, you get there by engaging the opposition in debates and by fighting to change people's mind with positive examples.

MLK knew he was right, and he worked hard to convince the remaining 66% of the country by engaging with them, by changing one mind at a time.

>My point is that here you are again, in a similar situation to those, saying the exact same sorts of things the people who were wrong in those circumstances said.

That's some crazy logic fallacy. Just because you are pushing new agenda doesn't mean you are automatically correct and your opposition are literally the same as Nazis. You also automatically assume that your ideas are the "good ones" and anything that differs even slightly to your opinion is "bad ideas". How can you tell that you are not the one being sympathetic toward "bad ideas", it is after all, like you said, hard to tell right?

You know who used the same kind of logic? Literally Nazis and Communists. They automatically proclaimed their ideology as the "righteous ones" and brutally shut down any debates.

I'm of the opinion that if you have to forcefully shut down opposite views from even debating you, then your idea is not worth debating in the first place, and you are just some immature child putting himself on a moral pedestal.

I don't know how old you are, but I wish one day you get to learn that the world is not black and white, but different shades of gray. And yes, even your _own_ opinions will change throughout time, for different reasons.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> Age discrimination did not make the list. Maybe the survey poster's audience is not affected by it or maybe it's not controversial to admit that it is common practice.

</comment><comment><USER34> I wonder what percentage of HN users would subscribe to this sentence for some values of X and Y: "I am worse at task X than person Y for genetic reasons."

<comment><USER35> Well, add one. "I am worse at interpersonal interactions than my brother-in- law for genetic reasons."

I'd also say that this is actually very easy to say, since you can also pick out genetic anomalies: I could say the sentence about swimming and Michael Phelps, or running and Usain Bolt, without a single person being offended or disagreeing.

If you want to make the sentence controversial, you need to replace "person Y" with "genetic group Y"; i.e. men, women, caucasians, blacks, asians, mongoloids, or so on.

</comment></comment><comment><USER36> This one is interesting:

> "Most successful entrepreneurs are simply lucky."

Probably it's because "common wisdom" says it's the result of being smart and hard work. But if luck plays such a big role (and let's be honest, it does - there are also studies confirming that), it's difficult to be proud of your success. Happy - yes. Proud? No more than a lottery winner. For many successful people this would be an insult.

<comment><USER37> There's an old saying (IIRC, attributed to Seneca) that luck is what happens when preparation meets opportunity. I like that way of looking at things because it neither minimizes the work and insight that someone put into their success nor refuses to acknowledge that factors outside their control also contributed.

</comment></comment><comment><USER38> For reference, a discussion of what you genuinely can't say in China: [http://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?p=35663&utm_source=dlv...](http://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?p=35663&utm_source=dlvr.it&utm_medium=twitter)

</comment><comment><USER39> So what am I suppose to talk about if I went to US or Silicon Valley? Also wondering if this is _just_ silicon valley or US in general?

For those who have never been to US, and just reading news and watching TV on it, it surely is a place full of controversy.

As a matter of fact, I am starting to see this isn't US only at all. It is the same with UK on certain issues ( Mainly Brexit ) but in typical Brit fashion they seems to be much more sensible about it when people disagree.

What happens to the old days where we agree to disagree. Take it on the chin, put a smile on your face and walk away?

This isn't just social media's echo chamber, a lot of people seems to want to blame them. But i think the social media only amplify the problem. Not the course of it.

</comment><comment><USER40> _Both sides feel oppressed! For example, some people think you can't question diversity efforts; others think you can't speak out about racism. Some think you can't praise capitalism; others think you can't suggest socialism. It's theoretically possible that the Overton window could be in the middle and exclude both extremes, but to my mind it's more likely that people just like to think or claim that their views are an oppressed minority._

That's the real insight here. You wanted a fully networked society, well that's what comes with a fully networked society.

</comment><comment><USER41> The "taboo" list is surprisingly run-of-the-mill. All of it seems like stuff I see people discussing on the internet all the time. I thought there might be a few original thoughts, but even the things they claim they can't say are things they're kind of supposed to think. Different sides of boring issues.

Anyway rest assured there's no need to stifle heretical ideas with these people. The ones thinking anything truly original were probably either the ones left out of the 108, or never bothered answering or are already in institutions etc.

<comment><USER42> These cannot be original ideas because they must have been expressed a few times before people learned you shouldn't discuss them.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Does anyone know of good research on how our ability to confront and discuss controversial matters has changed over the last 50 years?

I am wondering whether previous generations were better able to handle intra- and intergroup differences of ideology.

</comment><comment><USER43> One quote I picked out. Early stage employees have it bad. This is true but the increase freedom can balance this out.

Stock options are generally useless and in many ways force employees not to move on to better opportunities.

</comment><comment><USER44> To echo someone else's post, saying you work at [a boring tech company] working on [boring ideas] is what is truly taboo in Silicon Valley.

</comment><comment><USER45> The survey is not very big.

</comment><comment><USER46> I can think of one taboo opinion - supporting prop 8. Results - being fired. Also it was made effective with back date. The firing of Brendan Eich was as chilling effect as possible.

In the current climate you could get a pitchfork mob after you extremely easy for even stuff perceived as homophobic - as the recent suicide of August Ames showed.

</comment><comment><USER47> This is a fantastic HN thread to scroll to the very bottom, and see which opinions have been greyed-out from heavy downvote bombardments. Highly recommended.

</comment><comment><USER48> I think the most interesting thing about the recent debate is our true rulers must be getting worried that things are getting out of control. They have not forgotten about the Reign of Terror [0] or where this sort of thing can lead. There is the real risk the masses actually might not be distracted by the usual left/right pointless bickering and actually follow the money.

0\. [https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reign_of_Terror](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reign_of_Terror)

Edit. Good to see what the real topic is you can't discuss in SV ;)</comment>


Show HN: My standalone PHP Debugger - <AUTHOR>

Hello HN community !
Finally I have a "Show HN" post. I'm bootstrapping my first Mac app, it's a standalone Xdebug PHP debugger.
It aims to help any PHP developers out there who  don't want to use IDE to debug code. My app it's slimmer, faster to load and easy to work and setup :)
Hope you guys like it
Site: http://codebugapp.com/ <comment><USER2> Will it only install on 10.7 or is it that it hasn't been tested on earlier versions of OS X?

<comment><AUTHOR> It will only work on 10.7 up due to usage of specific cocoa features

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> looks interesting. any plans to release a PC version?

<comment><AUTHOR> Currently I'm focused on stabling the current version, but definitely will try to push it to other OS, can't guarantee tho</comment></comment>


Sample Size Calculator for A/B Tests - <AUTHOR> https://splitforce.com/resources/sample_size_calculator

<comment><USER2> Awesome!</comment>


When is a cyberattack an act of war? - <AUTHOR> http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/when-is-a-cyberattack-an-act-of-war/2012/10/26/02226232-1eb8-11e2-9746-908f727990d8_story.html?hpid=z2

<comment><USER2> I don't know, but Stuxnet comes pretty damn close to that. Imagine if US did that to China disabling their nuclear facilities and putting a large portion of their population in danger. Would they consider Stuxnet an act of war? Yes, it seems very like they would.

Iran doesn't want to start a war over it simply because they know they would lose. But this also means US has the power to do it to pretty much anyone who isn't China or Russia, or isn't in NATO.

<comment><USER3> That means, the act is depends upon the country in reference and can be changed as per the circumstances.</comment></comment>


Is Facebook becoming the next MySpace? - <AUTHOR> http://www.grobmeier.de/is-facebook-becoming-the-next-myspace-31102012.html <comment><USER2> Well, people's engagement with facebook has certainly declined from its peak years ago.

However, all your "friends" are on it. Nobody wants to go back through that process on an upstart network. Nobody has the energy or motivation.

There's plenty of room for new entrants that take slices of your friends and optimize that experience. For example, another network for just your family... offering a close, intimate experience, one you feel comfortable sharing all your baby pics on, etc. Another network for professional (sorry, LinkedIn already there). Another for your classmates. All sitting under the facebook umbrella that has your entire social graph.

But one thing that's clear about facebook is they are not at all focused on improving the user experience any longer. They are not unveiling new features that improve _user_ experience. They are fully engaged with improving the _advertiser_ experience. Maximizing the value of the data they have on you. Maximizing ad revenue. These aren't bad things and are obviously necessary, but when a company seems 100% focused on the revenue rather than the _user_ , I think that signals the start of a decline.

<comment><USER3> > Nobody wants to go back through that process on an upstart network. Nobody > has the energy or motivation.

I disagree. Firstly, you make it sound as if filling out some information about yourself (don't we do that all the time anyways?), posting some pictures, and updating your status is some overwhelming endeavor. For those of us old enough to have started on myspace and switched to facebook, it really was pretty seamless.

I'm not saying anyone should rush to develop the "next facebook", but I do think that the new entrants you speak of could easily become significant later on.

I agree that facebook seems pretty much stagnant when it comes to the user experience. I'm actually eager to see the new myspace once it debuts for that reason...

<comment><USER4> > Firstly, you make it sound as if filling out some information about yourself > (don't we do that all the time anyways?), posting some pictures, and > updating your status is some overwhelming endeavor.

But that's not what makes a social network. User profiles have existed since the beginning of the internet. A social network is a place to see and be seen. But this requires people--the more the better (usually). Facebook for better or worse, has already won this game.

I don't really get this idea of facebook being "stagnant". Perhaps they've already refined the concept of general social networking to its peak. It's an odd idea in SV that a site has to constantly roll out new "user experiences" to remain relevant. Facebook is a platform for attention-whoring. They do that just fine. The users themselves create the experiences.

<comment><USER2> Actually, they don't do that [attention whoring] just fine. They've actually severely diminished that experience with the new system that limits the exposure your updates get unless you buy a $7 promotion. This scheme is a disaster ... yes, charge Pages for it, but not regular individual users.

<comment><USER4> Why is it a disaster? As long as there is no feedback on how little exposure one's posts get, I don't see a downside to facebook with this. Being flooded with bad/uninteresting content was a real problem. Filtering one's stream was an important usability addition.

<comment><USER3> when you have to fall back to charging for relevant content, I think it's fair to say that your model is broken.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> This comment caught my eye: "...I have learned that most content inside of Facebook is real crap. 'Ouch, I broke my toe' is one of the more interesting posts." This and other anecdotal evidence suggests Facebook is slowly turning into an online _public square_ \-- a place where it's in one's best interest never to do, say, or share anything private of real significance, because sooner or later the whole town will find out about it.

<comment><USER6> That stuck out to me as well. It's true. I think most are very aware of the non-privacy of Facebook, and act accordingly. There is a value in more personal communication, however, I don't think an ad-based social network can deliver it.

<comment><USER7> But we've had personal communication for ages now. That's email, IMs, Skype, etc. I wonder how many users just use Facebook for the sake of private messaging by now because the topics that fuel conversations between friends are often of private nature. Things not everyone has to know. I think that kind of defeats the purpose of a social network though.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Facebook is going to forge a new path to irrelevance, not take the same path as MySpace. People will stop using Facebook because (1) they outgrow it, (2) they get tired of it, or (3) it lost its usefulness.

I don't believe another app will take its place. Rather, I think an existing app/platform is already Facebook's biggest competitor. And it's one you've been using for 30 years. Email.

<comment><USER9> It may be different for different cohorts, but for my social circle, SMS is the de facto communication medium. I deleted my Facebook account over a year ago and still keep up with friends, plan events, etc., all via text message.

Thus, there really was no downside in terms of being "out of the loop", while I get the benefit of not feeling like shit because I'm continually inundated with self-promotion posts that make others (most of whom I barely know) look like they are doing more important things than me.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> I've simply stopped logging in to Facebook - since around last Christmas. I don't miss it at all. It was neat to catch up with childhood friends and old Army buddies however, there are other ways to keep in touch without feeding the data-dredge.

</comment><comment><USER11> No. That said, they do seem to be either making mistakes or getting their eye off the target.

The publicly admitted target is to provide social networking for people. The obvious business target is to make money. But they have to make money while not annoying their users. We know their users are not their customers, because the users do not pay to use the service. The customers are the advertisers. Thus the balance between making sure the advertisers get their wares in front of as many eyeballs as possible while annoying the minimum number of users. And it seems to me that they have this balance wrong at this point. This will happen and if they are monitoring carefully, they'll tune the balance and people will be happy.

The longer-term challenge is that nothing lasts for ever (thanks 2nd law of thermodynamics). Facebook do not need to turn into MySpace to no longer be the top dog. Google wants the top position in the social networking space and they have lots of money to spend their way into it. Or Facebook can drop the ball and get their balance of advertising to their users wrong (see above). Or a new service could come along that finds a way to survive without being beholden to advertisers. (Open-source projects to the rescue?) Or, people could just get fed-up of all the mindless banter on Facebook and decide that they have more important things to do. Or, new networks will arise that actually interoperate, so you can connect to someone on another network. My prediction is that some of all of these will take place.

I have no preference. I am a pastor, so I go where the people are (people business after all) and right now, the people are on Facebook. If MySpace successfully restarts, I'll go there as well.

<comment><USER12> You provide pastoral care over Facebook?

Nice one.

<comment><USER11> It's one of the ways that I am available to my congregation. And they love the chat feature as they can catch me without having to call.

Haven't taken on anyone outside of the congregation yet. I suppose that could happen.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> For those who scale down how they use it (make profile private, engage only w/ real-world friends, post some pictures) Facebook can be rewarding and useful. It's when you follow Facebook's own druthers to have a public profile and connect with everyone under the sun (and like every product under the sun) that Facebook suddenly becomes shit.

<comment><USER14> I've been using Facebook that way since I started with it and I've been happy, but began using it less and less. I'll probably cut a load of the 'friends' I've got on there (people I've met a few times etc) and try and clean it up a bit.

Mostly it's that old quote "Hell is other people", and other people tend to post crap, invite you to every group under the Sun and invite you to play every game they see.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> I stopped abusing Facebook about a year ago, and really haven't missed it at all.

The reason I stopped using is because I realised that quantity of posts was increasing while the quality was decreasing. My news feed just to be app activity, ads, and other chaff I am not interested in - not just my friends, but also friends of friends.

<comment><USER15> Oh fuck; I forgot the infernal nuisance that is "LIKE IF YOU ENJOY ICE CREAM IN THE SUN! :D".

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> "Facebook is the next MySpace" How many comments have said that? But it is not. While certainly more bloated than it used to be it is still relatively fast to load and find stuff unlike Friendster and then MySpace (how did they make the same mistake?)

Why it will not go they way of MySpace is because no matter if you don't use facebook...you use facebook whenever you go to a ton of other sites. Its hard NOT to use fb.

So I say this...

Facebook is the new Ticketmaster.

If you want to go to a big concert or other big event, well you have to use Ticketmaster...at least almost have to just like facebook.

</comment><comment><USER17> It's clearly the new AOL.

<comment><USER18> AKA, "the next Compuserve."

<comment><USER19> AKA, the new horse-and-buggy

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Who knows maybe the _new_ MySpace will be the death of Facebook.

</comment><comment><USER21> Until Facebook starts letting people make their profiles have white text on a yellow background with autoplaying music, I'm not too worried about it going anywhere.

If I deleted my Facebook, I would be cut off socially from so many people. My core group of friends would still be in contact with me, but the hundreds of friends and acquaintances I've made throughout the years would get lost to time.

Even with the people I see every day, the ease of collaboration with events and groups on Facebook makes it more than worth it to have it.

If you hate the newsfeed, then don't look at it. If you're upset that not all of the people that "like" your page don't see your band's post, you're part of the problem.

<comment><USER22> > the hundreds of friends and acquaintances I've made throughout the years > would get lost to time

As they should.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> > _Finally I strongly believe at one day there will be a decentralized social > network, based on Open Source tools._

How about tent.io ?

<comment><AUTHOR> This looks cool. Another guy has showed me: <https://joindiaspora.com/> which also looks pretty interesting. Thanks!

<comment><USER24> My sarcasm detector is broken, I think... :-/

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> I do know about "mess" and problems with reaching fans of the page (wich arouse from the fact that people "like" too many pages in fact) but still Facebook remains more than a site - it's rather a social phenomena. And that's why I don't see the way any competitor come on its place. Although competiton is always for good, of course.

</comment><comment><USER26> Totally bored of it, nothing really interesting, just a marketing machine...

<comment><USER21> Only if you decide that's what you want it to be by "liking" hundreds of pages.

<comment><USER27> Wrong. Regardless of your volume of "likes," it's a cluttered mess with dozens of best guess advertisements and a river of promoted crap. AOL 2.0

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> Yes. If you say otherwise, you most likely still have an account.

</comment><comment><USER19> Someone mentioned that any question asked in a headline has an answer: "no".

Thus, I propose the headline should read "Will Facebook Avoid MySpace's fate?"

</comment><comment><USER29> So it's not that MySpace lost and Facebook won. It's that MySpace won first, and Facebook won next. They'll go down in the same order.

</comment><comment><USER30> Everyone gets what they want out of Facebook

</comment><comment><USER31> It's been so for at least 5 years.

</comment><comment><USER32> Christian, you say you hate FB UI and like Google+ one. What UI aspects do you hate in FB?

</comment><comment><USER33> if facebook is myspace and google+ is dead on arrival, what tool a normal person have to share photos and stories with his close friends and family? there is still a need for this kind of tool.

<comment><USER34> email

</comment></comment><comment><USER35> It's already the next MySpace...

</comment><comment><USER30> Hope so

</comment><comment><USER36> it just misses pr0n and few animated gifs, then is the clone

</comment><comment><USER37> yes

</comment><comment><USER38> Facebook has been faking it for at least a year. By faking it I mean not growing under their own power. Now "Fakebook" either has to buy users (like the Instagram deal) or its growth is due to mostly fake users with fake likes giving fake metrics.

People are leaving Fakebook now. Not in droves (yet), but the opinion leaders within groups and families are. The ones that are informed are. And the rest will follow once there is another massive invasion of their privacy.

To those reading this who still use their Facebook account, try going without it for a month. See if you don't feel better. I know I did.

<comment><USER39> While a lot of people talk about privacy or content relevancy issues, which I agree are important, there is a good thread on Reddit discussing why Facebook can be bad for your mental health.

One user writes, "I started to compare my life to others, hating people based off of their status...All it brought me was anger and a lower self-confidence. Almost immediately after deleting it, I felt better. I'm mostly ok with how I live my life and I don't need to compare my life to that of others."

[http://www.reddit.com/r/AskReddit/comments/11wm5w/to_those_w...](http://www.reddit.com/r/AskReddit/comments/11wm5w/to_those_who_have_left_facebook_what_is_your/)

<comment><USER40> I think that's a very interesting thought. I deleted my Facebook account after I felt that it sucked up too much of my time just browsing status updates. Before, every so often, I would check Facebook to see if anything new had been posted. It got to the point where I had enough and now I feel less anxious about constantly going on the Internet. Information was overloaded for me.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER41> Well this guy clearly has questionable sense.

Myspace absolutely had a use. It just wasn't generic/clean enough for a mass audience. And as for his criticisms about Facebook. I personally have never experienced any of them.

Meanwhile the only 'mess' I see around is the Google+ feed. It's nothing but a geeky, low-brow clone of Reddit.

<comment><USER42> Maybe you should stop following geeky, low-brow people?</comment></comment>


Startups: Need a voiceover for a video? Hire this homeless guy - <AUTHOR> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uTysXITBCmk

<comment><AUTHOR> He sounds like a genuinely nice guy, and I think it's great he's trying to turn his life around. I'm seriously considering trying to find him a project. His voice is simply to great to pass up.</comment>


Ask HN: Do you have more sick time than you can use? - <AUTHOR>

I am a very healthy 30-year old who only gets legitimately sick once or twice a year. Over the time I've been working at this company, I have accumulated over 6 weeks of sick time, and it continues to grow. However, unlike with vacation, I can't cash it out.<p>Does anyone else run into the same problem? (Or maybe it's a non-problem?) If so, do you ever use your sick time on a whim? <comment><USER2> If you ever have kids, you might be glad to be able to take a day off to care for a sick kid or take them to the doctor.

If you ever catch a nasty case of the flu or are in a car accident, you could easily be out for more than a couple of days. Being healthy isn't a guarantee that something bad won't happen to you.

Sick days are also designed to protect employees who are _not_ sick by keeping sick people out of the office where they could infect others. To make this effective, the company needs to provide enough sick days to cover the illness of an average person, not just the healthiest person. So you're actually benefiting from other employees having more sick days than you yourself could use. (There also needs to be a corporate culture where people are not discouraged from using sick days because there's "too much work to do".)

</comment><comment><USER3> A company I used to work for allowed its staff 12 sick days per year. These were used as ad-hoc no-notice holiday days. That was sub-optimal for colleagues.

The company also introduced a rule that any sick days taken on a Monday; or on the day before / after a bank holiday weekend, would need a doctor's note. Legally self certification was all that should have been required. So, this required a visit to a doctor to get a note. Since, at the time, it was hard to get an appointment within that time frame the person would require extra time off to get the note. And by that time they were uealthy and just asking their GP to write a letter to say that they had been ill with some unspecified illness; which the GP would do for a £60 charge. So it didn't stop anyone abusing the sick leave system and increased costs dramatically and made people take even more time off.

That was a lousy place to work.

</comment><comment><USER4> My first question would be 'Are you sure you are accruing sick time?'

It differs around the world, of course, but having worked with many businesses in the UK and Australia I'm amazed at how many staff think Sick Leave carries over into a new year (like vacation leave usually does), even though it does not. Use it or lose it.

I've even seen staff quit after ten years in a job, point out no sick days ever and ask to be paid out for those 100 days. (10 days pa x 10 years) They then get surprised to 'learn' that's not how their contracts or the system works, and usually a little angry (especially if they had already spent those 5 months' salary!).

</comment><comment><USER5> It's like an insurance policy. You are not expected to crash your car every month, but you nevertheless have to pay the prime and it covers up to a certain amount. And if you don't crash. you can't carry the amount to the next month.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yeah, that's a good way to look at it.

Now only if my medical premium would decrease like how some car insurance companies reward customers for good driving.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> At my job we don't accrue sick time. We therefore don't feel like we are missing out if we don't get sick. We are given a set number of holiday days and just get sick pay as standard. The longer we are off pay gets gradually reduced until it becomes unpaid leave.

The upside of your company is if you ever had a larger injury you would be covered, where as after 6 weeks my pay would be a lot lower than full amount.

As long as it rolls over to the next year I think that's reasonable enough that you can't cash it out.

<comment><AUTHOR> > The upside of your company is if you ever had a larger injury you would be > covered, where as after 6 weeks my pay would be a lot lower than full > amount.

That might not be entirely true. After 5 days, I would have to declare a leave of a some kind. (Not sure how that works with sick time, if I could use that continuously even while on medical leave.)

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> At my job we can donate to others who have run out of time. Not everyone is nice, but enough are to help out each other when there are critical illnesses.

<comment><AUTHOR> That's interesting. Hopefully it doesn't get abused too much.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Just curious, how does that work _?

What happens if you use all your sick time, it dont sound like you have too much of it, happens happens if you get really unlucky?

_Where I come from you dont have a number of sick days like that (if you have more than 3 consecutive days you technically need a doctors certification) but if you have more than 120 in a year they can fire you.

</comment><comment><USER9> You know, there are countries where there's no such ridiculous thing as fixed number of sick leaves in a year. Do you really plan all your sickness in January each year?

In case of sickness, your physician signs your sick leave and you just need to inform your employer that you take a day (or several days) off because of that.

</comment><comment><USER10> i dont have sick time. i just stay home when im sick and need a doctors notice if its above 3 days. but thats pretty much german standard</comment>


Wall Street's IPO Business: The Worst in 20 Years - <AUTHOR> http://www.wsj.com/articles/wall-streets-stock-selling-business-the-worst-in-20-years-1474536602 <comment><AUTHOR> _The prime reason: cheap capital. With interest rates plumbing historic lows, companies, which are increasingly shunning public equity, have an abundance of low-cost funding options. When they do tap it, they are finding ever cheaper ways to do so._</comment>


Firefox will show sponsored content that's personalized but private - <AUTHOR> https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2018/05/firefox-will-show-sponsored-content-thats-personalized-but-private/ <comment><USER2> While on the surface this sounds like a terrible idea, their technique for working out what to show you is actually pretty clever.

> The browser will download a list of recommended links each day. Each link > will also have a list of related websites, with similar kinds of content to > that in the sponsored links. The browser will then compare these related > sites to your browsing history; if there are lots of matches, Firefox will > assume that you're interested in the recommended content and show it to you.

That said, I don't think it's a smart move from a PR perspective, and the majority of Firefox's hardcore fans are going to rage against this, because it's exactly the kind of thing these users are using Firefox to avoid.

I'll probably leave it enabled for a while and see if it recommends anything worthwile, otherwise I'll disable it.

</comment><comment><USER3> This is the opposite of why I want to use Firefox. Mozilla has really lost its way.</comment>


Math Mistakes - <AUTHOR> http://mathmistakes.org/ <comment><USER2> This concept of "teaching with keywords" absolutely terrifies me.

I distinctly remember encountering Metric Geometry* in high school. It didn't teach me geometry, it taught me how to think, and I'm forever grateful. Teaching math with keywords is the opposite of this.

[*] Probably not the correct name in English. It was geometry without algebra; proving theorems and finding loci based on some axioms about angles, parallel lines and so on. What is this called? Euclidean Geometry?

<comment><USER3> _It was geometry without algebra; proving theorems and finding loci based on some axioms about angles, parallel lines and so on. What is this called? Euclidean Geometry?_

"Euclidean geometry" would do for a name, but to specifically emphasize the point that algebra is not involved, you can say "synthetic geometry." The geometry of the plane can also be taught from an analytic geometry perspective (using ordered pairs of points on the Cartesian plane) as a first high school course, as in the book _Vectors and Transformations in Plane Geometry_ by Tondeur.[1]

[1] [http://www.mathpop.com/bookhtms/tondeur.htm](http://www.mathpop.com/bookhtms/tondeur.htm)

<comment><USER4> Interesting enough, you can also build your whole geometry on the operation of reflection and a bunch of axioms. See Calculus of Reflections at eg [http://rd.springer.com/article/10.1007%2Fs00022-012-0123-5](http://rd.springer.com/article/10.1007%2Fs00022-012-0123-5) (surprisingly for Springer, not behind a paywall).

There's algebra and calculating, but with reflection operations here, not with coordinate pairs.

<comment><USER4> > (surprisingly for Springer, not behind a paywall).

OK, that was only true at work.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> People interestd by this may also be interested in 'The Most Common Errors in Undergraduate Mathematics': [http://www.math.vanderbilt.edu/~schectex/commerrs/](http://www.math.vanderbilt.edu/~schectex/commerrs/)

</comment><comment><USER6> This particular entry is quite interesting, it gets at a distinction I'm not sure I had explicitly thought about before: [http://mathmistakes.org/recursive-and-relational-thinking- an...](http://mathmistakes.org/recursive-and-relational-thinking-and-the- feedback-each-deserves/)

<comment><USER7> I think the author of that post undervalues the strength of the recursive approach. It is, in general, much easier to apply a recursive approach, and once you have done so you can often mechanically convert your solution into a relational one. Even if you cannot, you have still converted the question into a standard notation math problem, which is normally the hardest part of the problem.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Can anyone think of a "writing mistakes" version of this blog?

Making public another's writing may be too far.... But it would be interesting to mine the data and classify non-grammatical writing mistakes, specifically to ease the stress of grading college junior research papers -- some of which are written at a middle-school writing level -- by parsing sentences and auto- applying applicable writing mistake classification, to which I can gently glide my eyes to and convert to something intelligible.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> I had a quick look and I didn't see anything on the site about whether dyslexia or dyspraxia have common errors that show up in math.

There was an interesting programme on BBC Radio Four this morning about how dyslexia and dyspraxia can show up in art. [http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b06d2fxf](http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b06d2fxf)

</comment><comment><USER9> In theory the relatively recent adoption of Common Core math teaching techniques should help with many of these sorts of mistakes. I'm not well versed enough to know whether there's any sign of that already, but certainly the intention of teaching students to actually _think_ about how math works and why a certain technique produces the right answer is laudable.

</comment><comment><USER10> Maybe Math Mistakes needs a related site "Grammar and Spelling Mistakes":

I notice that the kid didn't write them as (x,y) but wrote them as x,y. I wonder how come he did that? Or, more precisely, I wonder if he doesn't see much of a difference between (x,y) and x,y or if three is some other reason for leaving off the parentheses.

<comment> daniel-levin It is interesting to see kids invent their own perfectly adequate, if peculiar, notation. In the first example with the quadrilaterals, the answers were all right. The math is not wrong, just written differently.

<comment><USER11> That gave me mixed feelings. On the one hand, the teacher did an admirable job (for a teacher) of seeing the correct thinking behind the "wrong" notation. On the other hand, the teacher still accused the student of making a mistake.

<comment><USER12> If I were a teacher and I saw a student come up with a peculiar but correct notation, I'd be ecstatic.

<comment><USER13> Indeed, developing new notation should be not only allowed, not only encouraged, but even required as an assignment at various points during mathematical training, at every age level. Also to be encouraged is conscientious analysis and critique of existing notations, algorithms, and explanations.

Society advances in two ways: in small incremental steps, and in large leaps. When we stick to existing notations and concepts we can make incremental improvements. But the large leaps often come from creating better notations and better conceptual understandings, which can turn substantial amounts of knowledge and logical thinking into obvious consequences of an organized and intuitive system.

<comment> daniel-levin Agreed. Feynman diagrams are a great example of this phenomenon. They might be 'pictures', but they are still mathematical notation.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> It would be interesting to see a new teaching methodology develop around teaching mostly just the concepts that people get wrong with the assumption that most people don't need much help with the stuff everyone is getting wrong.

</comment><comment><USER15> haha i totally remember that "law of sines" example. nothing to do with the "law of sines" over time, i would regularly just exhaust my brain and i would just imaginarily throw random variables to give me solutions, making my homework full of errors lol.

</comment><comment><USER16> Amazing blog!</comment>


Ask HN: How to do face recognition - <AUTHOR>

If I'm building an iphoto-like app online, how can I get my server to do face recognition (recognize where a face is in a photo, and also recognize who (of your limited set of friends) this face might be)? It seems pretty simple if even cheap cameras do the first part, and most photo software does the second part quite well.<p>Is there an open source or commercial package we can get? An API? Are the algorythms easy enough to implement something like this in a month or so? <comment><USER2> You seem to be new to the topic since you are confusing face detection and face recognition. Face detection is a relatively simple affair, given an image determine a bounding box for each candidate face. OpenCV (<http://opencv.willowgarage.com/wiki/>) is an excellent library with a lot of computer vision related functions. Out of the box it has an example program for face detection which performs quite well with the default Haar model files it comes with. Detection rates of higher than 95% are not uncommon for photos with clean faces. So, you can set up a fairly good face detector in a day or so.

Face recognition, on the other hand, is a totally different beast. The bounding boxes you detect in the detection step are fed into classifiers that you should train. If you are new to this field I don't recommend you do this training or develop your own algorithms, since it's a complicated problem. You say most photo software does this, but generally these are offerings from large companies, e.g. Picasa, that have _years_ of face recognition expertise behind that product. My recommendation is (i) to abandon the recognition idea (gulp! this may be hard to stomach but the energy may be better spent somewhere else, as this is very hard to get right) or (ii) if you insist, use an online API (e.g. <http://developers.face.com/docs/>).

</comment><comment><USER3> I have some history with Polar Rose. They are currently licensing their Face Detection and Matching engine. Either as a web service or as a library that you can include and use directly on your own servers.

<http://info.polarrose.com/solutions.php>

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> <http://developers.face.com/docs/> has anyone used that? Any good?

<comment><USER4> try it, it has a sandbox where you can try detect / train / recognize API calls.

(full disclosure, I'm a co-founder @ face)</comment></comment>


Ask HN: How can a business get benefit from bots technology? - <AUTHOR> I have a software development business under which I'm planning to provide bots development services. In short, how do I convince businesses that they should invest in bots? (just like they invest in websites and apps), so that I get business... <comment><USER2> Sell cost benefits, ROI, etc. Always use the smallest number for cost and the biggest for return.....like "for 500 bucks a month this bot will make you 40 grand a year."

Personally I think it might be easier to make a bot that only does one thing common to most businesses and sell it to them cheap, getting them used to using a bot, them sell them more bots or custom bots later.</comment>


Ask HN: Good chatroom software for a website? - <AUTHOR>

I am looking for chatroom software for a website. Does anyone know of good plug-and-play software I can use? I'd rather not reinvent the wheel. Basic requirements are: custom skinnable, usernames use the same ones as on my site, and only JS/CSS integration is required (I don't want to have to manage running my own server just for this). Pay per month is expected so long as it's not too high. Thanks.
For example, Stripe has a chatroom, looks like they made it themselves with Socket.io:
https://support.stripe.com/chat
...I'd want something like that, but without anonymous users, and automatically using the same username from my authentication system, and never having to run my own server. <comment><USER2> I do not know what other platform you use for your site but check out this:

<http://frug.github.com/AJAX-Chat/>

</comment><comment><USER3> Oooh, integrated with your authentication system. What kind of stack are you working with?

And, are you open to considering some IRC-based chatroom? Implementing a chatroom with socket.io can be a pretty big pain by the way, and very possible not worth the time you'll have to invest writing something like that.

</comment><comment><USER3> <http://www.olark.com/> perhaps?

<comment><AUTHOR> Not quite. (I actually use something similar to Olark already)

What I mean is: I want all the users of my site to be able chat with each other from a single chatroom, using the same username they have for my site.</comment></comment>


Foundation for Emails 2: Making Email Suck Less - <AUTHOR> http://foundation.zurb.com/emails.html <comment><USER2> I'm testing Inky the new DSL that translates to html tables and it's quite good Writing

      <container>
        <row>
          <columns>This is a column.</columns>
        </row>
      </container>

instead of nested tables is a clear win.</comment>


Building a Raspberry Pi Cluster - <AUTHOR> http://blog.afkham.org/2013/01/raspberry-pi-control-center.html <comment><USER2> See also the University of Southampton's pi-based supercomputer at: <http://www.southampton.ac.uk/~sjc/raspberrypi/>

</comment><comment><USER3> This might seem impractical, but many companies, including Facebook, are examining "wimpy clusters" (actual term). Many ARM based devices can perform about 1/7 as fast as an i7, and this number is getting better every day.

</comment><comment><USER4> The Raspberry Pi strikes me as a particularly ill suited platform choice for a cluster. I'm not going to complain about using ARM, that's a fair enough choice. But couldn't they have at least chosen an ARM that actually has ethernet on board instead of connected by USB? There are Pogoplugs with a faster ARM processor and built in GigE for $16 or $22 on Amazon.

<comment><USER5> The Raspberry Pi has ethernet on board.

[http://www.raspberrypi.org/wp- content/uploads/2011/07/751305...](http://www.raspberrypi.org/wp- content/uploads/2011/07/7513051848_9a6ef2feb8_o.jpeg)

<comment><USER6> The Raspberry Pi onboard ethernet is connected via USB.

$ dmesg | grep -i usb | grep -i ether

[ 3.058947] smsc95xx 1-1.1:1.0: eth0: register 'smsc95xx' at usb- bcm2708_usb-1.1, smsc95xx USB 2.0 Ethernet, b8:27:eb:[ELIDED]

<comment><USER5> Ohhh. I see, thanks.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> What exactly is the point of this? Surely a recent i7 or two outperforms these by a mile for similar cash outlay?

<comment><USER8> It's hip. There's no real point to doing this. In terms of fixed costs and performance per watt, x86 is better. Even if this is for education, it'd be cheaper and easier to simply buy a single core i7 and build a virtual cluster on the machine.

The pi's real value is in the hardware decoder, the hdmi out, the gpio pins, and size of the device.

<comment><USER9> A cluster made of raspberrypi's can be used to illustrate _all_ the pitfalls and issues associated with larger clusters, but costs a fraction as much. As such they are a perfect playground. How come this workload that runs in time 'x' on one pi doesn't run in time 'x/n' on n pis? That applies to any cluster, and figuring out the answers to that and related questions (reliability, latency and so on) is a really good application of such micro clusters.

Nobody is going to do run production jobs on a cluster like this. A virtual cluster on a single i7 performs subtly different in many ways and will be unable to illustrate many real world problems. So for education it's simply not the same thing.

<comment><USER10> > _How come this workload that runs in time 'x' on one pi doesn't run in time > 'x/n' on n pis?_

When the 16-core Parallella[1] comes out, it'll be interesting to use it to answer the same sorts of questions.

[1]: <http://www.parallella.org/>

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Is it faster than single core on 3770k?

</comment><comment><USER12> rasberry pi is a mess of firmware they won't release full documentation for. enjoy your enormous binary blobs</comment>


Musk files to provide Internet service from space - <AUTHOR> http://www.washingtonpost.com/business/economy/spacex-founder-files-with-government-to-provide-internet-service-from-space/2015/06/09/db8d8d02-0eb7-11e5-a0dc-2b6f404ff5cf_story.html <comment><USER2> I was Director of Marketing with Teledesic, Craig McCaw and Bill Gates's Internet-in-the-Sky from 1995 to 2000. I'm a huge fan of what Musk is doing, with order of magnitude cheaper launch costs and satellite hardware. AMA.

<comment><USER3> How will devices on the ground communicate with the satellites? i.e. do we still need fixed dishes, or are we looking at something new so an iPhone can get signal right from the satellite?

<comment><USER2> I believe Musk is, like Teledesic, planning to use the Ka-band. That means the smallest antenna would be the size of a large laptop (and that's only if phased arrays become cheap enough). So, it would work for a car, plane, boat, or house, but would be too big to use while walking.

<comment><USER4> Will it still need gyro mechanism?

There are satellite (I think Ku band) dishes for larger (~50ft) boats nowadays. They are using gyroscope assisted motors that wouldn't suffice for compensating rolling motion of a smaller boat.

<comment><USER5> The laptop-sized antenna he mentioned doesn't need a gyro because it uses phased-array tech. Essentially you resolve signals in any direction (up to a resolution given by number of elements and array size) by carefully combining them with certain phase offsets such that signals from all but one direction cancel out. This adjustment is made on the fly to track a signal with changing direction.

<comment><USER4> I see.

Would something like pCell would be an improvement here?

<comment><USER5> pCell is just phased array technology.

Directionality and sectioning has been used since the beginning of cell technology: first with cell splitting and then with cell sectoring, and recently more aggressive splitting (smaller cells) -- it's an ongoing evolution. The kind of tracking this has required is very easy to do: once your signal is stronger in a competing sector for a significant amount of time, switch sectors. The same principle can be applied to phased arrays but the small number of sectors makes it much more tractable computationally and in terms of hardware.

A phased array in a city environment needs to track in real time the position of users, with enough feedback from them to make sure your prediction matches with their position well enough, and use this information to continuously adjust sub-nanosecond (depends on the freq/bandwidth) phase offsets to array elements. In principle it`s even possible to do _multi-tower_ coherent communication. Needless to say, this tech is expensive right now, and I imagine hard to get to work reliably.

MIMO is also closely related, the difference being traditional MIMO actually adjusts amplitudes only (non-coherent) of multiple data streams to create channels (after a linear transformation at the receiver). This means the signals are still ominidirectional for your wi-fi MIMO. Being non-coherent means it's much cheaper.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> From the article: "SpaceX would need permission from countries to operate the service, a process that could be difficult, if not impossible."

Yep. To operate in many countries an ISP has to block access to a lot of content. It differs greatly from country-to-country. Would they really get involved in that? That would mean taking orders from governments all over the world and implementing blocks per those orders. Or would they forget about providing access in those countries? That's a large number of countries.

Added: Forgot to mention one of the biggest obstacles to getting permission in many countries: surveillance. Beaming directly from a user to a satellite that relays to a ground station in another country is going to bypass local surveillance.

Another addition: Wikipedia article on internet censorship and surveillance [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_censorship_and_surveil...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_censorship_and_surveillance_by_country) Note some of the countries listed under "Pervasive censorship or surveillance": India, South Korea, UK and USA.

<comment><USER7> Note that countries have not succeeded in stopping satellite phone users within their borders... for example, the Taliban in Afghanistan use satellite phones extensively.

<comment><USER8> Are those phone companies breaking the law when they let the call on to their network?

<comment><USER7> Beats me - but I do bet that these companies don't have any business presence in Afghanistan. And despite the Taliban being involved, which most countries in the world (and the UN) don't like, it hasn't been stopped. Which gives you an idea of how difficult it would be to stop ordinary people from using such a service.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Musk claims to want to launch 4,000 or so satellites. The Goddard Space Flight Center indicates that there are 2,271 satellites in orbit now.

I'm wondering to what degree this would make it more likely to have a negative feedback loop of satellite destruction in the case of a satellite being hit by space junk.

<comment><USER7> The problem has to do with cross-section -- these satellites will each be small, a few hundred kilograms each. In comparison, cubesats are 1-3 kg, and big satellites, which are most of the existing ones, are a few tons of mass each.

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

Also, with satellites at 1,100 km, they'll be above all the crap in LEO.

<comment><USER9> and solves the other problem of Big High internet, which is latency. At 1000km you could have single-hop round-trips in <10ms.

<comment><USER10> What is the orbit for current satellite ISPs?

<comment><USER11> Iridium SATs are in LEO at 485 mi

<comment><USER7> At 2.4 kilobits, Iridium is not a major player in satellite Internet.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I'm _so_ ready for this.

At the very least, it would bring more ISP competition to underserved /sarcasm extremely remote areas /sarcasm like where I live - that would be Portola Valley, CA - where the only internet provider available to most of us is Comcast. Which all of us hate.

I live 16 light-µsec from Stanford (OK, free-space velocity for C), and my neighbors and I have _one_ ISP to choose from.

Go, Elon!! I'd light the fuses on the launch vehicles to see this done.

</comment><comment><USER13> My first thought, here, was "Well what about the speed of light? Wouldn't that cause satellite internet service to suck, just like it does now? And isn't that why news correspondents are always delayed?"

But then I did the math:

Speed of light = 186 miles per millisecond. Satellites orbit at about 380 miles above earth (Source: Hubble). So it only takes ~4 ms for a round trip to a satellite directly above?

I did not know that. Weird, wild stuff.

If someone knows specifics about why satellite communication is currently so slow (both internet and video), I'd be interested in the EL5 version.

<comment><USER14> Good question. The vast majority of satellite communications today are conducted via geostationary orbit, 35,786 km above the earth. This is the distance at which a satellite orbiting around the equator moves with the same velocity as the surface of the earth, keeping the satellite in a fixed position. This is good for communicating via the ground, since you can just set up your dish pointing in the direction of the satellite. Additionally, such a satellite can cover a wide swath of the earth since it is so far away; see, for example, the coverage of AsiaSat-8 ([http://www.spaceflightinsider.com/wp- content/uploads/2014/08...](http://www.spaceflightinsider.com/wp- content/uploads/2014/08/footprint_sat_08pop.jpg)). The disadvantage (especially for internet) is that the round-trip time of a signal at the speed of light is on the order of 250 ms.

As described in this article, the SpaceX constellation would be in a much lower orbit. The advantage is a much faster ping time (say, around 10 ms). The disadvantage is you need a large number of satellites to provide continuous coverage for the entire earth...but that's less of a disadvantage if your company also launches rockets.

<comment><USER15> Hmm, interesting. Well, I have Exede Satellite service as my ISP (best I can get) and my best latency, to any server, is 800ms. The way I figure it, 35,786 km / 300 miles per ms would be 120ms up * 4 for the round trip. So that's 480ms, plus another 20ms-100ms to a google or another large server. So that's theoretical latency of 600ms, so where are the other 200ms of latency coming from! :(

I am wondering because I maintain some linux servers for some of my projects, and any time I need to do something serious, I have to drive to a coffee shop and borrow their connection. SSH over 800ms latency is frustrating, to say the least.

<comment><USER16> Much of the remaining latency is likely coming from FEC and interleaving needed for the RF links.

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Forward_error_correction#Interl...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Forward_error_correction#Interleaving)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> If this were to ultimately succeed in cheap internet everywhere, it doesn't bode well for other projects like Google's Loon.

[https://www.google.com/loon/](https://www.google.com/loon/)

Unless they can do it cheaper I suppose.

<comment><USER18> > A key employee leading Google Inc.'s efforts to beam Internet access from > satellites has left the company and is now working closely with Space > Exploration Technologies Corp. and its founder Elon Musk, according to > people familiar with the matter.

> When he left, Mr. Wyler took with him the rights to certain radio spectrum > that could be used to provide Internet access

[http://www.wsj.com/articles/google-satellite-executive- greg-...](http://www.wsj.com/articles/google-satellite-executive-greg-wyler- leaves-company-1409708338)

<comment><USER19> I don't have access to the article so I don't know if it addresses my question but... How in hell can a single employee "Take with him" the radio-electric spectrum allocation???

<comment><USER20> If you google "greg wyler" and then click the wsj link you can visit the full article.

But as to your question, it appears that he joined google from a company he founded that owned the rights, then left and took the rights with him and formed a new company to control the rights again.

> When he left, Mr. Wyler took with him the rights to certain radio spectrum > that could be used to provide Internet access, according to a person > familiar with the matter. The person said Mr. Wyler had formed a new > venture, WorldVu Satellites Ltd., that designs satellite systems and > controls the rights to that spectrum.

> Brian Holz and David Bettinger, who joined Google with Mr. Wyler from O3b > Networks Ltd., also have left Google, according to the person familiar with > the matter. O3b is a private satellite company founded by Mr. Wyler.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Interestingly, Facebook just announces that they are giving up on a project to do just that.

[http://www.businessinsider.com/facebook-scraps-secret- plan-t...](http://www.businessinsider.com/facebook-scraps-secret-plan-to- build-satellite-to-provide-internet-in-developing- world-500-million-2015-6?op=1)

<comment><USER21> It looks like the approach was different: instead of having several thousand of small and 'cheap' satellites, they were aiming for an expensive and big one.

<comment><USER22> Presumably this is because of the cost of launching the satellites (obviously quite a bit more than racking a server in a data center).

Nonetheless, if this strategy beats the latency, then I agree that it's the right one.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> The ability to go off-grid is becoming more of a reality for me now. I'd love to be able to get a cabin in the middle of nowhere, slap some solar panels on top still have access to highspeed internet.

Even if you didn't want to go off-grid, this could open up a lot of developing countries to being more viable remote-working locations. I recently spent some time in Bali and considered moving there for awhile but ultimately couldn't solely because the internet was too slow and unreliable.

<comment><USER24> Isn't the internet by very definition a grid?

<comment><USER25> By which definition? [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Off-the- grid](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Off-the-grid)

<comment><USER24> The internet is a grid of computers to which you connect.

More than that though, conceptually "off-the-grid" means not accepting a utility serivce from a provider but rather catering for that yourself. An internet connection is arguably a utility, and you'd be accepting it from an ISP. That goes against the concept, which would suggest you should maintain your own isolated network of computers and not connect with the outside world.

<comment><USER26> You wouldn't have to be isolated. You could make connections, just not ones that depend on a centralized ISP.

But "off-the-grid" typically is talking about physical delivery over wires and pipes, not about things like wireless internet.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> Replacing terrestrial broadband is great, but what happens when your internet stops working because it is raining outside? How exactly do they plan to deal with rain fade while operating in the Ka band?

</comment><comment><USER15> I wonder how it would compare to Exede Satellite service. I have Exede, it's the only thing available here in High Desert :( The speed is very good for what it is, I am getting 16-20 mbps down and 3mbps up. But, the latency is a huge issue for me. Most servers, even once in US, ping at 800ms, this makes it such a pain to do any kind of SSH server admin!

With low orbit devices I would imagine the latency should be better, I am guessing, but how much better.

<comment><USER28> > With low orbit devices I would imagine the latency should be better, I am > guessing, but how much better.

Your satellite's 22,000 miles above the earth. If you were directly under it, round trip latency would be 236ms.

If these satellites are 684 miles up, and you were directly under one, round trip latency would be just 7ms.

The distance between satellites, and between the satellites and whatever ground stations actually connect them to the 'net, will all be smaller because of the lower orbits. Latency should be much better.

<comment><USER16> FEC and interleaving induced latency will likely become the dominant term for LEOs.

<comment><USER4> What numbers are we talking?

Shorter distance + faster signal thru air can amount up to 30-50% lower latency.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> Besides enjoying Internet globally, I see hope freeing humanity from government censorship with Internet from satellites. This will also mean we will have cheaper global roaming prices for cellular access as if its more expensive with cell phone data people will just use the satellite based system instead.

How much power can such micro satellites transmit with? How much power does the earth based transmitter need to communicate back to the satellite in space?

</comment><comment><USER30> It worries me that they are launching satellites for the NSA whilst also build something the NSA would certainly love to tap into – I mean, realistically, the NSA are going to get their hands on the data if they want to, but giving them extra leverage over the company is a shame.

It also saddens me they are launching satellites for the NSA full-stop, at least until the NSA has been reined in a bit.

</comment><comment><USER31> PLease please please, destroy, demolish, obliterate: Comcast, verizon, At&t.

</comment><comment><USER32> Interesting plot twist.

Check this subreddit dedicated to global internet: [http://www.reddit.com/r/globalinternet](http://www.reddit.com/r/globalinternet)

</comment><comment><USER33> Quite exciting. At the same time, did anyone watch Kingsman?

I worry about a big play like this in a market with ridiculously high barrier to entry. We might find ourselves in a vulnerable position if we invite monopoly.

</comment><comment><USER34> To me this is just 1 spoke of the wheel he will be providing this internet service to google loon balloons that need base stations on the ground currently.

</comment><comment><USER35> Could he call it Skynet? Please?

</comment><comment><USER10> I hope it can boost competition. My only concern is latency.

</comment><comment><USER36> Great, another pipe-dream to sell to his investor fan club.

<comment><USER37> As opposed to current pipe dreams:

* gigafactory under construction

* freemont factory producing ~50K vehicles/year

* spacex successfully, repeatedly delivering payloads to orbit (and successfully demonstrating their crew escape vehicle recently)

<comment><USER36> Just because something is being built with other people's money does not make something a success. None of the companies Elon has been involved with have ever actually generated a profit -- they have largely just taken advantage of speculative investors and their willingness to buy into his ideas.

<comment><USER38> > None of the companies Elon has been involved with have ever actually > generated a profit

Bullshit; there are companies he's been involved in that have turned a profit.

Zip2 made a good profit and a great exit - [http://news.cnet.com/Compaq+buys+Zip2/2100-1023_3-221675.htm...](http://news.cnet.com/Compaq+buys+Zip2/2100-1023_3-221675.html)

X.com / Paypal generates first profits in 2002 - [http://www.ecommercebytes.com/cab/abn/y02/m04/i18/s02](http://www.ecommercebytes.com/cab/abn/y02/m04/i18/s02)

SpaceX is profitable - [http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-03-04/spacex- pro...](http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-03-04/spacex-profitable- as-musk-pulls-in-nasa-contracts-google-cash)

Don't forget SolarCity is turning itself around and will likely turn a profit in a few years ([http://www.fool.com/investing/general/2015/02/17/what-to- loo...](http://www.fool.com/investing/general/2015/02/17/what-to-look-for- when-solarcity-reports-earnings.aspx)). The same for Tesla which is expecting to turn a profit in 2020 ([http://www.marketwatch.com/story/tesla-wont-turn- profitable-...](http://www.marketwatch.com/story/tesla-wont-turn-profitable- until-2020-musk-2015-01-14)).

<comment><USER39> zip2 would be quite viable even today without much "re-invention".</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Zen & the art of startup advice - <AUTHOR> http://daltoncaldwell.com/zen-the-art-of-startup-advice

<comment><USER2> In my role as angel investor I talk to a LOT of entrepreneurs who think that having great advisors are necessary because of all the valuable advice. Unfortunately, I'm with Dalton - advice isn't all that useful.

</comment><comment><USER3> I see the biggest problem with "startup advice" is the bias or an outright conflict of interest from most of these "advisors". They are usually trying to sell you something and anything they say has to be heavily discounted on that basis alone.

Incubators/accelerators are going to tell you that (surprise!) going through an incubator/accelerator is the best path to success (forget that most successes happen without incubators).

Angels are going to tell you they are the best source of seed capital (even though many won't do much beside writing one check).

VCs are going to tell you that you cannot scale without them (I am sure Microsoft, Oracle, Dell, etc really regret not being VC-funded).

Retired executives will tell you to do exactly what made them successful without bothering to check if that applies to your situation.

People who failed at something will try to convince you that you are going to fail at attacking the same field (never mind a totally different approach).

Engineers heavily invested in that open source project or the other will say that you are stupid not to use it.

Caveat Emptor! Beware geeks/investors bearing advice!

</comment><comment><USER4> To quote Terence McKenna, "You have to take seriously the notion that understanding the universe is your responsibility, because the only understanding of the universe that will be useful to you is your own understanding."

We're never going to learn the absolute truth from reading startup advice, but even if absolute truth did exist it wouldn't do us any good. If nothing else, embracing uncertainty at least lets us learn what we're supposed to be paying attention to.

</comment><comment><USER5> Startup advice is not meant be the ultimate guide to decision making , but to widen our knowledge and thought process.

</comment><comment><USER6> I think we all knew this already. But now now does this article count as startup advice? If so, do we not take it seriously either? In all seriousness though, we should take startup advice with a grain of salt but at the same time realize that while most of it is contradictory that doesn't mean it's all worthless. The trick is to pick out what applies to your particular situation. If there are two conflicting pieces of advice that apply then you just go with your gut. Only you know what's best for your situation. It's always useful to learn what others think or have gone through. So yeah, it's all a bunch of feel-good contradictory stuff but it still has its worth. You can compare it to self-help which is often worthless but even then at least self-help gets you moving toward bettering your situation just like startup advice. Startup advice is like a very useful worthless thing. Yeah, it's both of those things at once.

</comment><comment><USER7> The other issue I have with all this "advice" being dished out is that it often comes from people who simply aren't that successful.

And I don't mean you have to be the next Facebook but at the very least you need to be at a point where your startup is no longer a startup.

<comment><USER8> I beg to disagree -- someone's ability to transfer knowledge and wisdom doesn't have to follow any external signs of success; it's a completely separate skill. Just as your English teacher doesn't have to James Joyce or even have a single publication to their name, quality startup advice doesn't have to some from someone successful with startups. Unfortunately, just like with your English classes, the real validation of your teacher is not possible until sometimes even years after the fact.</comment></comment>


ConceptNet 5 - lots of things computers should know about the world - <AUTHOR> http://conceptnet5.media.mit.edu/

<comment><USER2> Is here a big difference to [http://www.freebase.com](http://www.freebase.com)? Has maybe anyone worked with both of them?</comment>


Should University Be Free? - <AUTHOR> https://www.economist.com/finance-and-economics/2019/07/16/should-university-be-free <comment><USER2> I did not finish college, but I was able to extract a lot of value from the internet. Thinking from a more macro-level, I think a country that sees education as the leading reason they will be able to compete well in world markets as a country that's going to do very well in the years ahead.

The ability to provide the resources needed for a person to learn has become much easier, and much can be done outside of the classroom, much more than before. This would certainly drive down the cost.

Now if we continue to see college as a place where the more you pay the more you get the very good connections so that you'll be rich ... that's a whole different story.</comment>


What grains of sand look like when magnified tremendously - <AUTHOR> http://discovermagazine.com/photos/01-each-grain-of-sand-a-tiny-work-of-art

<comment><USER2> hn get's reddited</comment>