I feel like a fraud and that's a good thing - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@codepo8/i-feel-like-a-fraud-and-thats-a-good-thing-cc1fa338b902 <comment><USER2> I thought this was going to be a humblebrag -- and boy, it sure started out that way -- but I was pleasantly surprised by the end.

It made me think about how some tools, libraries, or frameworks seem to prefer to use buzzwords or neologisms to make simple things seem complicated. As though by obfusticating the problem domain, they can make their solution seem that much more magnificent. As though the docs should make you feel stupid.

And the reason they do this is because in our industry, it works. Things often seem impressive to the degree that they seem complicated. People are "advertising" their stuff by making it seem like a special snowflake instead of a simple thing.

Far be it from me to blame people for doing something that works. But there is a bit of an echo chamber, especially in this forum, where developers -- _developers_ , not marketers, not "suits" \-- prefer to use buzzwords over plain language, and they would rather you think they did something complicated than something simple or something solid.

<comment><USER3> That is a natural problem in our industry. It requires far more skills to write simple code to solve complicated problems than to write complicated code to solve such problems. What makes it worse is once your head is fully immersed in the problem space, the line between simple and complicated becomes blurry, and what seems like simple solution at the time may seem overly complicated to someone who has not gone through the same thought process.

<comment><USER4> I agree but I'd also like to add that most of the time the complexity for me using some frameworks, libraries, or tools has nothing to do with code but instead in the prerequisites for using them. The authors of some tools make certain assumptions about your knowledge of the whole ecosystem around the tool or supporting tools. Here's a few examples that have caused me pain:

Some time ago, an upgrade to Foundation framework required NodeJS and Ruby 1.9+, a version not preinstalled on my Mac. OK, at the time I knew nothing about NodeJS and have never used Ruby, how hard could it be? 5-10 minutes max?

        - NodeJS installed fine, but I had to use "sudo" to install modules or I'd see errors
          - Googled... many people used "nvm". I installed nvm, had some issues, but in the end all worked fine
        - Next, Ruby. "rvm" is popular, I'll try that.
          - rvm installation failed with a cryptic error message, Googled message...
            - I need to install "command line tools" which come with Xcode
              - I don't have Xcode and apparently it's several GB, after an hour or more I finished downloading it.
                - I had to open Xcode, find some random preferences panel and click some button to install "command line tools"
            - rvm installation still did not work, Googled.... many people use Homebrew
              - installed Homebrew, ruby 2.x installed (with strange warnings) but showed 2.x in the console
                - Foundation tools did not work
              - Googled how to uninstall Homebrew, found some random "gist" script some guy made which does scary things on my system
          - Tried installing rvm again, and for a reason unknown to me, it was successful!
            - Foundation tools still did not work
            - Didn't notice, last two line of rvm installation required me to copy/paste two lines into the shell.

Great, now I can use Foundation in my Grails project that has nothing to do with Ruby or NodeJS. This whole process took ~6 hours, half of the time I spent just googling error messages.

More recently, I couldn't figure out how to properly package/bundle my React app into a single minified JS file with browserify. The docs linked to a nice simple template:

[https://github.com/petehunt/react-browserify- template](https://github.com/petehunt/react-browserify-template)

The package.json has a few useful commands in the "scripts" section:

      "scripts": {
        "start": ...
        "build": ...
      }

"npm start" works fine, so why isn't "npm build" working!?!? I posted on stackoverflow and got no answers. Ten days later I figured it out. Knowing very little about npm I had no idea "npm start" was a shortcut for "npm run- script start" and thus I needed to do "npm run-script build".

<comment><USER5> > most of the time the complexity for me using some frameworks, libraries, or > tools has nothing to do with code but instead in the prerequisites for using > them. The authors of some tools make certain assumptions about your > knowledge of the whole ecosystem around the tool or supporting tools.

Somehow I feel better knowing there's at least one another person on the planet losing 6 hours at time for `just installing X piece of tech`.

Worst thing I had to figure out was that the node package on raspbian is originally related to some radio thing and I had to symlink node-js to node to make it work.

It just goes to show the utter most importance of good documentation. Good as in `human readable` not `logically correct sentences à la man GIT`.

<comment><USER6> I'll chuck my hat in the ring here too... got a new MBA recently and it came with Yosemite which introduced one or two curveballs when setting up for web development.

<comment><USER7> You got an MBA or a Mac?

<comment><USER6> MacBook Air

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> This article really resonates with me. Most of my coworkers seem perfectly happy to simply show up, do their work and go home and have no desire to seek to improve their craft.

Sometimes I wish I could be like them. I have this thirst for knowledge and to improve my skills, which is why I'm here reading HN. But it is really overwhelming at times trying to keep up with everything here and at times I can't help but feel inferior to others at times.

I spent several years using GWT and now I'm getting compensated very nicely to work on an multiple ExtJS products. To keep from getting left behind I've toyed with Angular, React, Mithril, mercury, Redis, etc. and my queue of things to learn keeps getting larger and larger (Docker, Vagrant, Sandstorm, most of AWS stack, ...). At this point I probably have at least 200 bookmarks tagged with a generic "Programming" label.

When I'm responsible for the architecture for real systems, I sometimes feel like a fraud. Domain driven design, TDD, CQRS, anemic vs rich domain models, functional vs OO, agile... do I really know what I'm doing? Does anyone know what they're doing?

I recently looked back at some code from some senior level architects I worked with when I was still relatively junior - guys I really respected. Some of those projects had truly awful architecture and I must admit I felt a bit better about myself after seeing that code.

<comment><USER8> Not much to add, but I feel quite the same. There is a list of neverending things that one is supposed to learn ;P

<comment><USER9> The secret is to learn what you need to know when you need to know it. I recently had to use some new js framework hotness; spend a couple days reading blogs, tutorials, and the docs, learn what you need to be productive and move on. Then dump it all, and jack in the next big thing for the next project. Rinse repeat.

No one knows it all, no one expects you too. You are expected to learn, get up to speed, semi independently and with little direction. It gets easier after you've done it a few times, then it get really old.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> This article felt very validating for me. I've always done well at school (4.0 in college), on various tests and at work, but it never registered and I've always felt like a bit of an impostor. When I was an engineer at Google I particularly had this feeling because I couldn't really build anything. Well, strictly speaking that wasn't true; what I mean was that my job was so pigeon holed that I only knew how to do specific things really well. I couldn't, for example, setup a basic web business with a database backend (horror!). After I joined YC I had to go through the process of learning about all the tools that were available that would help me piece together a product without having Google's giant infrastructure behind me, and without the help of internal technical mailing lists where any question could be quickly and expertly answered. This was quite daunting, but also enormously gratifying. I finally learned that I can build entire products on my own and have a sense for a full development stack and how to e.g., inter-operate a crawler and an indexer and a frontend, and how to host the whole thing. But even after doing this, I still feel like an impostor! I think this feeling will probably never leave me, but as the author says it can be beneficial. But I think I (and others who suffer from this) need to be mindful of the downsides of this syndrome: the reluctance to ask questions for fear of seeming incompetent. The difficulty in approaching new problems for fear the new knowledge involved might be insurmountable. And of course the general sense of self doubt that afflicts those with impostor syndrome.

<comment><USER11> _I finally learned that I can build entire products on my own and have a sense for a full development stack and how to e.g., inter-operate a crawler and an indexer and a frontend, and how to host the whole thing._

I've done that. Now all the technologies I'm using are obsolete. I have Python 2.7 code using FCGI and a MySQL database running on dedicated servers, pushed to the server with Dreamweaver.

Works fine. Needs very little attention. But it's totally obsolete. I need to learn a bunch of new technologies to do the same thing. And they're boring.

<comment><USER12> Congratulations, you have a low maintenance system built on solid technology.

New isn't better, especially when it's rehashing the same problem that was solved decades ago.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> It's a lot easier to handle feeling like a fraud when you receive no negative feedback with overwhelming positive feedback, and are very confident regarding a certain domain. If someone feels like a fraud even in their "core competency", that can create a lot of unneeded stress and anxiety in their life.

But I agree that intellectual humility is very important to self-growth.

<comment><USER14> Honestly - this is part of why looking for jobs is so very hard, which is what the author mentions right at the beginning. There are lists of requirements you know you don't meet, and often times you apply, and for reasons that may have nothing to do with how skilled you are, you don't get the job. Maybe you have a few rounds of interviews that seem to go great, but there's no offer.

You start to wonder if your language/skillset is over the hill, if you really aren't so good at code, heck, maybe YOU are too old in SV years.

Something about the job search process really amplifies this feeling. You never know why they think it isn't a fit - but it's only in searching for a job that you are actually getting some external feedback.

And it's tough.

Even if your skillset is in demand and recruiters are crawling all over each other to make you offers, if the companies you really love aren't among them, it makes you wonder.

It's tough. And it's easier to play the games and engage the behavior the author talks about to get "likes", hacker news upvotes, reddit upvotes, whatever, to let you know your views, your languages, your skills are valid.

It's tough out there.

<comment><USER15> I've recently tried to get some projects. The required skills are almost always ridiculously specific. It's not unusual that the projects descriptions want you to be an expert in the whole software stack and the project domain. This is a grave problem because people who feel like impostors lose projects to intentional impostors. There are some ways to tackle this problem, but I think it hurts companies and honest developers more than it needs to.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> The article touches some of the core things I ponder when trying to keep on top of the latest and greatest in the tech world and deciding how to distribute my finite time and energy, and many issues resonated with my feelings on some of the high tech trends.

I disagree however that feeling like a fraud is a good thing (unless you are one) and strongly believe there are much better motivators for studying and being great at something than the fear of others being better than you. I think it is exactly this fear which is at the heart of what enables the emperor's new clothes syndrome to flourish.

Of course, in addition to the hype and buzz there are also a growing amount of authentic great new technologies, but you can't hope to learn them all. The best you can do is know _about_ them so that you'll be able to retrieve them and dive deeper if and when they become relevant to something you need to implement.

</comment><comment><USER17> I've been following Chris' work for years, and I think he articulates this 'trying too hard' nonsense you see everywhere on Github. Like we can make a 3D cube in HTML and make it spin, but people can't buy a ticket to fly to another country without what feels like a case study in dark patterns, usability issues, and horrific a11y issues.

All code is energy, and if it's squandered in the wrong places, you get an imbalance. The net effect of engineers getting carried away in a lab is ― you get kids learning how to make their first website thinking that code is some dark art, and some black magic. It's not.

        <b>Look ma, no GruntJS</b>

It's rather simple stuff. That said, any time I read the words "Impostor Syndrome", I think of agony aunt sections in newspapers, and open teen diaries, not learning how to style a bullet point with CSS, or improving my craft.

</comment><comment><USER18> I'm in the exact opposite spot. For me it's becoming a bad thing.

• Lack of confidence

• Lack of self-esteem

• Lack of aggressiveness

• Lack of fearlessness

I'm much too humble and too honest. Although these are great personal qualities, and can help when working in groups, in the end they do not get you very far, nor quickly, in business.

</comment><comment> FLUX-YOU >Feeling like a fraud keeps you humble, it keeps you sane, it keeps you on your toes.

Or it just erodes your self confidence until you're committing fixes that miss obvious details which then goes to production and breaks things. Now I'm just stuck in a positive feedback loop and frankly I don't think I'll be able to justify my pay in 6 months.

<comment><USER19> Sounds like you need a vacation. Pick one of the next three weekends, reserve a hotel, pack a bag (and family, if appropriate) and just drive off.

When you get back, start writing integration tests for your project's "happy path" to catch those kinds of mistakes.

<comment> FLUX-YOU Honestly, if I need a vacation after 6 months, I don't think I'm cut out for this work/this company.

<comment><USER20> Is six months a short time? Maybe it's because I'm European but six months sounds like a really long time to go without even a short vacation.

<comment><USER21> Haven't taken a vacation in about three years. It hasn't occurred to me to do so! Love my job so much.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> > What you do is compare your secret blooper reel with the post-production > highlight reel of other people. You know more about yourself than anyone > else.

What a great quote.

<comment><USER23> Variations on "bloopers vs highlights" have been around for a while, I'm not sure who (if anybody) was the original source.

<comment><USER24> Here's something in the same vein that I use to cheer myself up every now and then: [http://www.viruscomix.com/page528.html](http://www.viruscomix.com/page528.html)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> This guy literally "wrote the book" that taught me javascript. One of the best resources that I've ever used to this day. Kudos on the new job.

<comment><USER8> Which book ? :)

<comment><USER25> Beginning Javascript with DOM scripting

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> That's the human side of "meet the new technology, same as the old technology". There are a vast number of levels of cruft to master to do anything now. They're constantly changing. This used to be the issue with GUI toolkits, most of which do roughly the same thing. Now it's more server-side. Lately, it seems that the complexity is not in the code that actually does the work, but in the packaging systems. The amount of packaging seems to increase over time.

Here's a presentation comparing four build systems for Javascript: [http://jbavari.github.io/JavascriptBuildSystemShowdown](http://jbavari.github.io/JavascriptBuildSystemShowdown)

This is for a language that is deployed as source code. What's wrong with this picture?

There's lots of new, exciting stuff that actually does something, like machine learning or vision processing. That's worth learning. Having to learn another build and deployment system, or worse, being expected to know it to get a job, is just wearing.

</comment><comment><USER26> I think the sphere of technology where he's focused (frontend) is particularly fast moving right now. It is extremely humbling to read about somebody like this feeling this way. I know many developers, myself included, experience these pangs of inadequacy on a frequent basis. It would be hard not to, things move fast and everyone around us is talented and smart. But, just like anyone else, I think this article reminds us that we're all human, no matter how talented, and open to feeling inadequate. There's always more to know, more to achieve. But its good to pause and focus on the skills we have sometimes to be grateful for what we've done.

</comment><comment><USER27> I am fortunate to have already experienced the "Do I belong here?" feeling from graduate school. The thing to remember is this - there are always people who are going to be ahead of you just by virtue of having more experience. How you carry yourself is the most important thing though.

In this context, if you see someone who is better than you at the moment, do some work trying to improve yourself and your abilities. The best don't become the best instantaneously - they do it through hard work & maybe a little talent.

My own experience probably has helped me take on the correct perspective in my own career as a developer - I do things purely because I want to do it or improve myself. I don't care about being the most popular/well-known developer or anything like that - it is a job that I happen to like is all. Stars/likes/etc. on GitHub, those don't matter. I create stuff for fun, and if it becomes popular, so be it - I work on open source stuff in the hopes it helps people and to improve my own abilities.

<comment><USER2> I remember that feeling in my upper-division math classes in college -- PDEs, abstract algebra, etc. It seemed to me like I was struggling (which was a new experience for me in math class) and to make it worse, I sat next to this guy who always seemed to know it cold. I would score in the 80s on almost everything, and I would look over there and this guy would have perfect scores all the time. It definitely bothered me.

About halfway through the semester I ended up spending more time with this guy and I realized that he really lived and breathed mathematics. I mean, he did all the exercises in every chapter. (Who does that?) He would study for hours and hours before tests. Anyway, it kind of taught me a lesson. If you want to belong, you have to work for it. Nobody's just going to move over to make a space for you. You have to carve a space for yourself.

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> I missed Christians post about moving to Microsoft, so this was a nice read, especially seeing how worried he seems about it.

I did a talk back in November which included a section on "Imposter Syndrome". The video can be found here; [https://james-brooks.uk/staffs-web-meetup- video/](https://james-brooks.uk/staffs-web-meetup-video/)

</comment><comment><USER29> Very good article on some of the more _plastic_ or marketed aspects of tech, over what really building good systems and products is about.

</comment><comment> ryan-allen I'm not entirely sure that programmers should be advising us on psychological issues based on personal anecdotes.

</comment><comment><USER30> Another self promoting "evangelist". Please save us from their spam. The way to get your stuff noticed (and hence the approval of your manager) _should_ be posting stuff with actual valuable content. Not tabloid meta teasers like this one.

</comment><comment><USER31> FWIW to the author of this piece: I don't know who you are and googling did not turn up a Wikipedia page. So that makes me think you aren't really FAMOUS, no matter how many people online or in tech might know of you.

The song "Thank you" by Alanis Morissette comes to mind. She hit it big at a young age. She wisely did not want to suffer the fate that stars like Meatloaf suffered when he hit it big young and then crashed and burned. Overwhelmed by her fame and success, she took a sabbatical and stopped singing. She found her voice again while visiting India, where she was surrounded by throngs of people, none of whom knew here. It was a good antidote to the ills of fame.

It's a big wide world.

<comment><USER32> Without googling around I found this link at the end of the story that validates, in my opinion, your misplaced concerns. [http://icant.co.uk/](http://icant.co.uk/) [http://developer- evangelism.com/](http://developer-evangelism.com/)

<comment><USER31> _validates, in my opinion, your misplaced concerns_

I apologize, but I cannot parse that. Are you saying that the links validate my point of view? Or validates your opinion that I am in error? I just can't make heads nor tails of what that phrasing is supposed to convey.

thx</comment></comment></comment>


Dubai introduces new font - <AUTHOR> https://www.nytimes.com/2017/04/30/world/middleeast/dubai-introduces-its-own-font-lauding-free-expression-it-does-not-permit.html <comment><USER2> This is great to see! Amman came out with their own font back in 2010[1]. I personally prefer Amman's Arabic script over Dubai's starker strokes.

[1] [http://syntaxdesign.com/blog/syntax-al-balad-theater- present...](http://syntaxdesign.com/blog/syntax-al-balad-theater-present- yanone-and-the-new-typeface-of-amman/)</comment>


Apple Asking App Developers to Prepare for Large Screens? - <AUTHOR> http://www.macrumors.com/2009/12/23/apple-asking-app-developers-to-prepare-for-large-screen-demos-next-month/

<comment><USER2> There's a lot you can do with bigger screens. When their screens become touch screens, there's going to be so much you can do with them. Eventually all TVs are going to be computers with functional browsers, so you better start thinking about fluid design as one of your motivating factors.

Do this. Go to the Apple store and load up your website on one of those really high res iMacs and see how much real estate you have.

</comment><comment><USER3> I just got a Dell Precision M70 laptop way cheap (around $300) on eBay. It has a resolution of 1920x1200, the largest I've ever seen (in a 15.4" matte screen). What do people consider a 'large' resolution?</comment>


You don't need any HTML to add a favicon to your site - <AUTHOR> http://mathiasbynens.be/notes/rel-shortcut-icon

<comment><USER2> If you've ever checked the 404 logs on a site with no favicon you already know this.

<comment><USER3> Yeah. I always did it this way, didn't realise until fairly recently you could use <link/> tags.

Does anyone know of any other user agents that don't hit /favicon.ico regardless? Feed readers for example?

<comment><AUTHOR> The article mentions SeaMonkey, currently the only browser that doesn't fetch /favicon.ico by default.

But yeah — some web apps rely on /favicon.ico as well. All the more reason to just place it there :)

<comment><USER4> Downside: if you include it as an HTML link you can use a PNG file, whereas the version in the root has to be an icon file. Chances are, that's the only time you'll ever use the icon format, and many image apps don't support it. It's a weird throwback to another era, like the web equivalent of a vestigial tail.

<comment><USER5> I haven't done complete browser testing, but I know you can use a PNG and simply change the extension to .ico and it will still work in some browsers.

Edit: I tested on a domain that previously didn't have a favicon. Putting a PNG named favicon.ico at the root without an explicit <link> worked in Chrome 9, Firefox 3.6, and Safari 5. It didn't work in IE 9.

<comment><USER6> Maybe it'll work if you send the appropriate `Content-type`?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I found myself in a favicon pickle just the other day. I noticed one of the only non-CDN assets we had was favico.ico, which was being requested from origin servers along with every request, putting an unneeded load on Apache. Ideally we might put static assets like that on something like Nginx, but short term I was looking into how I could reduce the (albeit small) load created by favicon requests without changing the application architecture.

Ruling out Nginx, the pickle was that I should probably rewrite requests to domain.com/favico.ico to cdn.domain.com/favico.ico. But that rewrite has just as much or more httpd overhead as just serving the favico, with an extra client-side performance hit as the client has to do an extra http request to follow the 301.

I ended up with just using a <link> tag in <head>, which should at least get modern browsers off Apache's back. But I wish there was a more complete solution.

</comment><comment><USER8> _rel="shortcut icon" considered harmful_

No, it isn't.

</comment><comment><USER9> If either of these options should be considered harmful, it's the magic URL. This particular one has been responsible for countless useless requests. Another consideration is whether it's a good idea to have a standard dictate (parts of) the URL layout of a website.

<comment><AUTHOR> As the guy who wrote the article, I agree with your point on the magic URL — in an ideal world it wouldn't be like this. However, it is now too late. /favicon.ico has been the de facto standard for a long time and the HTML spec explicitly mentioning doesn't really make much of a difference — it is really just standardizing what is already generally supported.

It's time we stop complaining and start embracing this part of the URL layout as if it was robots.txt we're talking about.</comment></comment>


Ask YC: Monetization on iPhone App Ad Networks? - <AUTHOR>

Does anyone have experience with Pinch Media, AdMob, VideoEgg, etc? If so, how is it going? Can you point to your app?  I'm researching them for an upcoming iPhone App but can't find basic information like rates. <comment><USER2> Funny you ask, I integrated AdMob into our mobile site last night... it was painless. We're also integrating it into our physical iphone app but that's still a WIP. I don't have any statistics for you, we just started with AdMob.

I really like that they offer progressive loading with their .js system so your app content loads first, then the ad will load. This is pretty important to me so that Edge users don't suffer, and a quality customer experience is prioritized above ads. I believe they track this metric as "fill rate" if I'm not mistaken.

On 'story' pages, I can actually fit 3 ads pretty nicely but I credit this more to the applications design which is heavy in text-content.

<http://m.breakkup.com>

I selected AdMob because their system seems to be the most robust for our needs... I also like the empowerment campaign they are doing giving away $1m to developers. I hope some of it trickles down to the bootstrappers. :)

Feel free to reach out, be happy to keep you posted about our results and experience.

<comment><AUTHOR> Appreciate your offer, would love to have a few people to compare notes with on this. Right now working on getting our app through the door.

Like your idea - dangerous time consumer!

<comment><USER2> We're in the same boat... submission process is killing me.

I wish we could have launched with some of our other iPhone products because right now our company looks pretty riskque... we have a lot more planned completely unrelated to the website I posted above.

what do you mean by dangerous time consumer? :)

<comment><AUTHOR> I hear you, so much to do, so little time. That's why I said your app is dangerous. People can easily sit there for a while going through the rumor mill instead of coding:)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> PinchMedia is super friendly and would be more than happy to talk to you. Send them an e-mail (info@pinchmedia).

* Disclaimer: I just use their analytics package.

<comment><AUTHOR> I do like their tone so I have written them. I just find it a bit disappointing that these ad networks expect you to sign up without knowing what the advertising rates are.

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Seems like Video Egg and Pinch Media are meant for established high volume traffic players. AdMob is more for true startups.</comment>


Christopher Lee dies at the age of 93 - <AUTHOR> http://www.theguardian.com/film/2015/jun/11/christopher-lee-dies-at-the-age-of-93-dracula <comment><USER2> He was a huge Metal fan. He even worked with Rhapsody of Fire.[1] Hell, he even had his own band![2]

This voice. This voice!

[1] [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z16_mx1edG0](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z16_mx1edG0)

[2] [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cvKRbi2ovDY](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cvKRbi2ovDY)

</comment><comment><USER3> This guy was awesome. What a loss!

Besides being an awesome bad guy actor he especially gained my respect for dubbing all his roles in German himself. That means you could hear his impressive voice in both languages if you so desired (and I did).

</comment><comment><USER4> Sad to hear it. Anyone who's interested in his life should check out his autobiography -- it's a fun read.

</comment><comment><USER5> Big loss, but we were lucky to have him around this long, and sharp as ever util the end!

</comment><comment><USER6> No Count Dokku ! this is a huge loss.

</comment><comment><USER7> What a bummer. He'll always be Scaramanga first to me. Although Saruman was probably the role he was born for; apparently Sir Christopher read LoTR every year and understood Quenya.

<comment><USER8> To me he's Kato in Astrid Lindgren's "Mio in the Land of Faraway"[1] (Min min Mio) from '87\. It was also one of Christian Bale's first movies.

[1] [http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0093543/](http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0093543/)</comment></comment>


Ask PG: And we're back...What happened? - <AUTHOR>

The outage, I mean. <comment><USER2> There's a problem in the server software. When the load gets high, it fails catastrophically instead of gradually. Robert and Patrick Collison are investigating, but they're still not sure what the problem is. My guess from the external evidence is that it's related to garbage collection.

Killing the server process fixes the problem, at least for a day or two.

<comment><USER3> Interesting. Are they investigating by load testing a dev environment, or some other method?

<comment><USER2> Patrick managed to reproduce the problem by writing something to replay server logs, but he's not sure yet what's causing it.

<comment><USER4> Interesting.

I'm assuming it's traffic-related, because I've run had ASV running on my server for weeks on end without real issue (I don't get much in the way of traffic).</comment></comment></comment></comment>


HEAD SCRATCHER Mind-boggling optical illusion – internet baffled – raven/rabbit? - <AUTHOR> https://www.thesun.co.uk/news/9756643/optical-illusion-video-crow-rabbit/ <comment><AUTHOR> Oh, The Sun, your mind-boggling headlines. Had to cut it down from 118 characters.

It's a bird.</comment>


Spain will soon overtake Japan in life expectancy rankings - <AUTHOR> https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2018/10/spain-is-about-to-overtake-japan-in-life-expectancy <comment><USER2> I see lots of exotic hypothesis being tossed around, but none of them fit Singapore, which is only slightly behind Spain/Japan. The Singaporean lifestyle is one of the most stressful, competitive and insecure in the world. The cuisine isn't particularly healthy... any more so than the cuisine you would find at most Chinese/Thai/Fast-Food places.

My armchair hypothesis is that the quality and availability of medical care trumps most other factors. Singapore is known to have a great medical system, even for those not well off.

This is probably also the reason USA is doing so badly. If you're in the bottom quintile, the quality and availability of medical care is awful. If we ever instituted medicare-for-all, I expect average lifespan would shoot up by a couple years at least.

<comment><USER3> > The Singaporean lifestyle is one of the most stressful, competitive and > insecure in the world.

I'm curious about this. Can you point me to any resources to learn more about that? Or could you elaborate on why it is so, especially the "insecure" part?

<comment><USER2> I've spent many years living in Singapore. People are very hard working, competitive, materialistic and status conscious. A combination which leads to long works hours and work-stress.

The fact that there's minimal social safety net, certainly doesn't help either.

I recall reading some studies that came to the same conclusions as above, but I don't have them handy at the moment.

<comment><USER3> I didn't know the safety net was minimal there. For whatever reason, I thought it was more like Western European countries.

Does that lead to a lot of homelessness and crime?

<comment><USER2> Panhandling is literally illegal, and I'm reasonably sure that anyone who's "homeless" gets picked up by the authorities and taken away somewhere. So it's hard to assess how common either is. That said, because the police are extremely effective at keeping out drugs, I don't think it's nearly as common as in America.

Regarding crime, Singapore is one of the safest in the world. A lot of that comes down to effective policing and extremely strict sentencing that puts criminals behind bars for a very long time.

Family ties are a lot stronger, so a lot of people falling on hard times do get substantial help from their family members. But there's minimal governmental safety net of the type you find in Western Europe.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> A very interesting fact is that, even with vastly different cultures, there is a trait surprisingly common in both Spanish and Japanese cultures: family. Both cultures have parents and kids stay together until the kids mid-20s, and both take care of the parents when they become older. It feels very weird when watching USA movies for most Spanish people as there's almost a business relationship between parents and kids (and don't even get me started with the military "yes sir" style).

Now I don't know if it's related or not to life expectancy, but it's a very curious common bit in very different cultures otherwise. This probably also affect to many other parts of life/politics in more subtle ways (safety nets, depression, health culture/care, etc).

<comment><USER5> I beg to differ as if we were to judge purely based on this logic China and India would have probably also been at the top of the curve, which is not really true. Both of these countries greatly value family and it's quite typical for people to stay with their parents well into 30's and beyond.

<comment><USER4> What logic? I didn't say it's related to life expectancy, just that it'd a curious random fact about those two countries at the top. It might be related, or not, but I cannot say either way.

In fact, it would surprise me greatly if there was a single culture trait linked to life expectancy, instead I'd expect it to be a combination of vastly different things that make us get to the top.

<comment><USER6> Random fact: Did you notice that both countries' names end in the letter N? At least, their English spelling ends in N.

<comment><USER4> Oh cmon, while I think my statement is _relevant_ I cannot tell whether it's _(co)related_ or not. Those are very different topics and you are mixing them up together.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> For those commenting it's the oil or the wine, I suggest this resource: www.nutritionfacts.org

It's an excellent non-profit to get educated on evidence-based nutrition.

In short, what all blue zones have in common is 80-95% whole foods plant-based diets, moving around throughout the day, and good social support systems.

<comment><USER8> That's pretty much in line with a alter Longo's research on longevity

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> If a Mediterranean diet is responsible for Spain's long life expectancy, then why has it taken them this long to achieve this top ranking? Why didn't they achieve it earlier?

<comment><USER10> Spain, as a prosperous and modern democracy, is relatively young. Before that there was plenty of feudalism, wars, civil war, dictatorship, and hunger.

<comment><USER11> Japanese democracy is even younger than Spain or roughly the same age but Japan has been doing better than Spain.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> "The USA is the IHME index's biggest loser among high-income countries falling from 43rd in 2016 to 64th in 2040, due to an increase of just 1.1 year – from 78.7 to 78.9 years."

I would have made that the headline.

<comment><USER13> It's usually not good form to put a typo in the headline. They must mean an increase from 77.8 to 78.9. And still the journalist can tell that this is all highly scientific and worth reporting on because of the decimal precision.

A better article would also look at the predictions made by similar bodies 22 years ago and how well they have held up.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> Life expectancy is nothing. Quality of life everyone has access to is what matters. I don't want to live long, I want to live well!

<comment><USER15> It's better to burn out than to fade away.

Neil Young - My My, Hey Hey (Out Of The Blue)

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> The article mentions that the US is the worst performing developed country. I find it interesting that nobody has mentioned the US's opioid problem. Kids dying of overdoses will crush life expectancy statistics. There have been frequent articles on HN documenting this problem.

Eat your veggies and don't do drugs kids. Well, the bad ones at least...

</comment><comment><USER17> I wish we'd measure the health of a society by instances of chronic disease rather than life expectancy alone. For me there is not a lot to celebrate if I live slightly longer in a country with marginally better healthcare but in a state where I'm full of chronic illness caused by poor lifestyle and diet

</comment><comment><USER18> is there some chart comparing life expectancy at certain age like let's say 30 and live expectancy dying of natural cause (no car accidents, natural disasters, crime etc.)? because these take hit on average but most of the people will not be affected by it

</comment><comment><USER19> Looks like a mixture of the top wine consuming countries and Japan longevity.

<comment><USER20> It's probably moreso the Mediterranean diet and the Mediterranean climate (encouraging more walking). The evidence that wine or any alcohol consumption positively affects health is equivocal at best (I say as I drink an IPA).

<comment><USER21> The climate is half the battle; the built form is also very important.

It's very easy to walk in the relatively compact cities and towns of the Mediterranean; it is not as easy to do so in Mountain View, which shares the Mediterranean climate classification.

<comment><USER20> Yeah, that's probably more important than the weather. Their cities are incredibly walkable. I recall reading that in the US, folks living in suburban areas average something like 3 or 4 kilos more than those in urban areas.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> We've heard this story previously about Greece, where, it turned out to be a scam: people were not reporting deaths of their elderly relatives in order to continue receiving their monthly pension payments. Which kind of busted the myth of the great "mediterranean diet". I wonder if Spain is the same thing.

<comment><USER23> Too few cases to made any real impact on statistics probably.

The real problem is that Spain is losing population at the bottom of the plot. Less young people means more percentage of elders at a given time and this would raise the life expectancy purely as a mathematical artifact.

<comment><USER24> How could that possibly affect longevity? In the way life expectancy is defined it doesn't seem possible.

<comment><USER25> I'm not sure in this case, but it could be defined as the age expected to be achieved of the people currently alive. So if the population was entirely 80 year olds, the life expectancy would be around 90.

<comment><USER24> Please don't try to infer the definition, the point of definitions is that there is one precise meaning instead of many interpretations.

<comment><USER23> And what would be this definition? The article does not explain how they calculated it. Their link is broken.

Please don't infer that all people act the same. Some countries use gallons, other liter. What is normal for one people can be weird for other.

Real facts: Spain is losing population. We have one of the lower children by women ratio in the world and the big scam nuked any stability at work for many young couples worsening the situation heavily. The health system has suffered also in the last years. Less funds for public health system means people living less, not more. They should mention this important context in an article about life expectancy.

[https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1117826/](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1117826/) [https://elpais.com/elpais/2016/12/16/inenglish/1481895459_84...](https://elpais.com/elpais/2016/12/16/inenglish/1481895459_844168.html)

If we define life expectancy as "the mean number of years of life remaining at a given age, assuming age-specific mortality rates remain at their most recently measured levels" If you have less babies, you have less babies dying in their first years. Your mortality value changes. You have also less young spanish adults doing stupid things and dying young. What about the young spaniards forced to migrate to other countries and that become citizens of other countries? Do the index count a young migrant man from equator or Morocco dying in Spain as spanish mortality?

Statistics are just a model, not the real life. They lie, always. We can build a statistical model to say anything we want. Is the interpretation in the correct context what counts.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment> gamma-male So olive oil?

<comment><USER26> Siestas?

<comment><USER24> Except in summer holidays, nobody does that.

<comment><USER27> I have spent 4 years in Andalucia, and a lot of people slept the siesta in Winter, on the higher parts, some of it were mountains' areas, at Jaen, Sevilla and Granada, on plain January, where it was pretty cold. ok it was working in the olive's fields time, so there was a fixed time for doing things system on place. Woman would stop picking olives and go to sleep. But many old spanish man slept the siesta too. Younger spanish man and foreign labor like me would go on the fields until the end of the working day.

<comment><USER24> LOL, I omitted the other situation, the one you describe of farms workers in rural areas, thinking nobody here would care and look what happened.

<comment><USER26> Probably I should have been more explicit, I find the concept of siestas so damn nice. I've spent about 6 months functioning like that and that was the happiest part of my life so far. Start day at 6am, do some work, get a rest at noon, be productive for the rest of the day and still have time for my social life

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> If we expect Spain to overtake Japan in life expectancy, then hasn't it already overtaken it, really?

<comment><USER18> not if you calculate it based on deaths from current year

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> "The chief explanation for Spain's pronounced improvement is the country's Mediterranean diet" \-- this is scientific nonsense unless the country has only just adopted a Mediterranean diet.

<comment><USER30> Considering that Spain spent most of the twentieth century at war of under a dictatorship, it isn't nonsense.

<comment><USER29> Yes it is. The claim made is that the change in life expectancy is due to the diet. But it's well known that "you can't explain a variable with a constant". If the diet has not changed, it cannot explain a change in life expectancy.

You are suggesting that the change in life expectancy is due to a period of living without wars and dictatorships. Whether this is right or not it is certainly a much more sensible explanation, but it has nothing to do with diet.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> We need to amend [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maslow%27s_hierarchy_of_needs](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maslow%27s_hierarchy_of_needs) and include life expectancy

<comment><USER32> It could/should be argued that it already has a place in the Physiological level. It's still human survival, just extended (life expectancy) and improved upon (physiological QOL)</comment></comment>


Why Did Yahoo Buy Summly? - <AUTHOR> http://www.businessinsider.com/why-marissa-mayer-bought-a-30m-startup-2013-4 <comment><USER2> I would be interested to see the Summly summarization of this article! I think it would read something like this:

Yahoo bought Summly, a startup with an app that not many people used, made no money, and employed no technical geniuses (since it wasn't actually built by them), because Marissa Mayer believes summarization technology is "going to be huge for Yahoo".

<comment><USER3> Yeah... I guess? Doesn't really help it make sense....

<comment><USER4> I believe that is exactly the point.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> You know, I think I prefer to live in a world where giant tech companies occasionally act in strange, irrational ways that result in random people getting multi-million dollar windfalls.

Especially if said people vaguely resemble, well, me. That being, entrepreneurial software folk running companies with trivially buildable products. That's the sort of person in my mind that _should_ have as many foolish megacorporations as possible stumbling over one another to randomly dump tens of millions of dollars in cash upon them.

Given the alternative world, where all companies behave rationally at all times and nobody ever makes mistakes that could possibly make, say, me a gozillionaire overnight, I think I'll keep living in this world.

Keep up the good work, Yahoo!

 _[Disclaimer: I own a small pile Yahoo stock (that made me a bunch of money in the 90's and has been taking it steadily back ever since), so I probably lost a few hundred dollars because of this particular deal. I'm happy to pay it, much as people who buy lottery tickets are happy to pay it. Having a crazy, aquisition-happy company out there doing its thing is more than worth the price]_

<comment><USER6> >You know, I think I prefer to live in a world where giant tech companies occasionally act in strange, irrational ways that result in random people getting multi-million dollar windfalls.

You're in luck, that happens all the time with executive compensation packages.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Maybe this was edited in later (I missed it the first time), but...

>Though Summly's own Web site once said: "SRI International, with the help of the Summly team, built the summarization technology behind Summly," we are told that D'Aloisio "invented" the product's original technology.

>In a statement provided to us by a Yahoo spokesperson, an SRI spokesperson says: "Basically, Nick developed the original code for Summly."

>"After the original product was built, SRI supported development of the technology and provided artificial intelligence expertise in machine learning and natural language processing."

I don't know about you, but I need a pretty large grain of salt. <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y11ps1H6Aq4> is a youtube demo of his first app, trimit, 9 months and $300,000 in VC before summly. It seems 2 comprez ur mezages like this. Maybe that's the original code.

<comment><USER8> At the 1 minute mark he says "some other.. form.. of documentation.. which I don't know what that is". So either he misspoke, or he didn't actually even develop that original app.

<comment><USER9> The video isn't made by the Summly founder. It's just a random person reviewing the app.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I used automatic summarization to try to reduce the article to a pithy tweet and ended up with:

"Fuck, I don't know. And what's with Bezos investing in BusinessInsider? And what is Amazon's business plan anyway? And why does Apple's stock keep dropping whenever it gains market share?"

<comment><USER11> _And what's with Bezos investing in BusinessInsider?_

For peanuts they more or less buy good coverage in a widely read news site. A certain VC fund also invested in them and PandoDaily. It's a great investment, even if Business Insider goes kaput 2 years from now.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> I just read the whole article, and I still don't know why Yahoo! bought Summly.

<comment><USER13> I guess it has something to do with IP. The way I understood it was that the company Summly licenced the summarisation algorithm was selling it to Yahoo!, but they couldn't do that because Summly was using it, too. So, to get them out of the way, Yahoo! bought them and shut them down.

Disclaimer: This is just the way I understood it, I might be partially or completely wrong.

<comment><USER14> That doesn't make much sense - as far as I understand, so far as the US, you cannot patent or hold a license over an algorithm, only an implementation thereof.

<comment><USER15> Yes, but if the algorithm is a trade secret and you're licensing it out with terms of use that aren't favorable to you, you may determine that its in your best interest to buy the company rather than get sued for breach of the licensing contract depending on how much cash you're anticipating to lose through that litigation.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> It´s a strategic investment to make people invested in Summly happy. <http://summly.com/about.html>

Their will be follow ups and some of them might lean towards Yahoo on the next acquisition.

<comment><USER17> My thoughts exactly. The 17MM was a 'cheap' way to save face for big-name investors and "celebrities" who'd been duped. Circle-jerk money.

"Angel Investors and Advisors include; Ashton Kutcher, Betaworks, Brian Chesky, Hosain Rahman, Jessica Powell, Joanna Shields, Josh Kushner, Mark Pincus, Matt Mullenweg, Seb Bishop, Shakil Khan, Spencer Hyman, Stephen Fry, Troy Carter, Vivi Nevo, Yoko Ono and many more. We are also working closely with News Corporation on the summarization of their content."

Edit: actually, reading all of the comments on this page, I think my explanation is less likely than the "summly may have had a special license, and SRI couldn't be sold unless summly was acquired as well" (without resulting in lawsuits or sub-licensing deals) and/or "a nice way to pay more for SRI via the backdoor" (artificially increasing the value of the summly stock they held -> more $$ for SRI).

Do we know how much stock SRI owned of the company? Perhaps they provided services in exchange for summly shares? Wouldn't be the first time.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> Interesting but confused on the conclusion...

If the real story is that Yahoo bought the technology to summarize articles from SRI International, who partly owned Summly -> why did Summly's owners make 30 million?

<comment><USER19> Exactly. I came here looking to see if anyone else had a good idea of what theory this article was trying to express.

I think the author is trying to infer that Yahoo agreed to buy Summly, so that SRI could liquidate their equity in Summly. Maybe, SRI saw Summly as a loser and as part of their negotiations with Yahoo, they asked Yahoo to turn this loss position into a win. So, maybe, then that $30M price was really $20M as part of the SRI deal and then $10M for assets and aqui-hire talent of Summly itself.

      Acquiring Summly seems to have been an almost incidental side effect of a deal Yahoo made with SRI for a piece of "summarization technology."

      A source tells us that Yahoo has "agreements in place" with SRI for "knowledge transfer," and the acquisition of IP, code, and technology.

      Until Yahoo bought it, SRI International held equity in Summly.

<comment> UK-AL Eh, surely just paying that acquisition money directly to sri would be a better win?

<comment><USER20> Maybe that would be too overt. Maybe they needed to get a way to get a license with SRI that didn't look like a me too act and also nullify existing licenses.

If SRI actually had equity in Summly, then this is a way to pay off SRI, grab the license for Summly and potentially get SRI to make a change to its licensing agreement with other companies in Yahoo's best interest.

However, I thought that Apple wholly owned SRI, which would make my speculation BS...

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> Perhaps Yahoo saw some positive benefit in paying off Summly's coterie of celebrity investors and advisers.

<http://summly.com/about.html>

<comment><USER22> Wow... That reads like a poster for the slogan "it's not what you know, it's who you know".

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> Are there sources for the $30 million? I've only seen it mentioned in secondary sources, never in an official Yahoo press release (or similar). I suspect that was leaked, and the real price was much lower.

</comment><comment><USER24> Everyone around the world was saying 'Yahoo' a fortnight ago for the first time in a long time because of this purchase of summly and coincidentally, Yahoo also quietly became the default search in Safari for iPhones during March. I like to think this is all great marketing and survival positioning by Yahoo as the big 3 companies/partnerships (read on) rear up for an exciting next few years in technology.

Why would Apple change the default search? Well Apple and Google are the main rivals in the mobile market, it makes sense for both Apple to choose an alternative default search engine, as they don't want to strengthen their main rival. I also think Apple's recent 'interest' in robotics (Siri, hiring ex- segway engineer) v.s. Google's robotic cars & Glass, this will be another front that Apple will have to fight Google on.

"1 Billion People Will Use Mobile As Primary Internet Access Point In 2012" [http://googlemobileads.blogspot.com.au/2012/02/consumers- lov...](http://googlemobileads.blogspot.com.au/2012/02/consumers-love-their- smartphones-now.html)

That leaves them with two options, the first being Bing. No way in hell would they choose Microsoft to partner with, with MS' purchase of Skype and close ties with FB you can expect MS to push harder than ever in the Mobile space, over the next few years (assuming they can tie all of their products together neatly).

So that really only leaves Yahoo for search, which works out well for both companies; Yahoo get to survive the battle of the big 3 and still appear somewhat relevant and Apple are no longer strengthening their main rival. I really have no idea what I'm talking about but it sounds interesting.

tl;dr - purchase of summly was marketing and survival by Yahoo

<comment><USER25> Google is still the default search engine on the iPhone. They just removed the "google" button and replaced it with "Search"

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> Dear Marissa:

The next logical step for Yahoo! is to move into the enterprise. I know a great startup you could acquire that would accelerate your move into that space. I expect it could be had for somewhere around what you paid for Summly. Call me.

Mindcrime

<comment><USER27> usually helps to put a phone number if you're expecting a call.

<comment><USER26> It's in my profile. :-)

</comment></comment></comment><comment> UK-AL Why didn't they just go direct to SRI? I'm guessing summly got a good lisencing deal.

<comment><USER28> I'm confused on how summly would have gotten a better licensing deal than Yahoo! could have managed. [Honest question.]

<comment><USER29> Plain old price discrimination? I wouldn't expect SRI to try to get a Yahoo- sized license fee out of some tiny startup.

<comment><USER30> Sure, but would a tiny startup get exclusive rights?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> Tech news from the USAToday news section and TechCrunch to Anandtech and, yes, Hacker News was dominated by news of the Summly acquisition for five days.

That PR alone was well worth the purchase price.

<comment><USER18> Hmmm... but this is bad PR.

The PR read that Yahoo is acquiring a company but shutting down its product and getting only 2 of their engineers for 30 million dollars. PR like that gets Yahoo's name in the press but does nothing to improve the image that Yahoo has no idea what it's doing.

<comment><USER32> _"does nothing to improve the image that Yahoo has no idea what it's doing."_

I think that's true, but only true to those people who read (or remembered or understood) beyond "Yahoo buys hot new company, hot new technology, hot new talent". The PR implication is that Yahoo is investing in once again being hot and new.

For those of us who understand the details of the company and product being bought, Yahoo's reputation was already entrenched. For the majority of readers, however, "hot new Yahoo" was the takeaway[1].

[1] Based on my experience as a journalist / writer, and the half dozen people who raised Summly in conversation with me the week the acquisition went public.

<comment><USER4> But startup acquisition news doesn't reach the vast, VAST majority of Yahoo's current, prospective, or desired users. Even pretending news like this reached a broad audience (while also pretending that audience doesn't have the same context you're attributing to HackerNews readers), acquisitions aren't just expensive - they're expensive with a significant risk of creating longterm internal pain of varying types and degrees for what, at best, could be a shortterm positive blip in general opinion.

How does this perceived misuse of funds and focus impact Yahoo employees? Their moral, productivity, and general satisfaction/enthusiasm?

Does it make it easier to attract great new hires who meet Mayer's hiring standards? ([http://www.businessinsider.com/yahoo-employees-worry-that- ma...](http://www.businessinsider.com/yahoo-employees-worry-that-marissa- mayers-hiring-standards-are-too-high-2013-3))

Brand marketing has real value, but this has got to be the least efficient way to do it.

<comment><USER33> I don't know, who are Yahoo's prospective customers? Search advertisers, right? They need goodwill with small business owners, whether those businesspersons are technically inclined or not. I'm sure they reached many of that type with this announcement. What niche do you think Yahoo needs for a customer base but has totally failed to contact?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> To the degree Summly's license to the technology was transferable, the purchase makes a lot of sense because it prevents strategic acquisition of Summly by a potential Yahoo competitor.

Even if not transferable, the purchase prevents Summly from partnering with a Yahoo competitor, and that is very likely to have been allowed by Summly's license.

With nearly $4 billion in net income last year, the purported purchase price is less than a penny to the dollar.

</comment><comment><USER35> It's great to get some insight on a deal that, frankly, I couldn't understand.

I am of course biased, because I believe (like many others) that algorithms are bad at summarization, except for already well-structured content (news are usually like this). That includes most blogposts and videos. My startup (tldr.io) is trying to actually solve the summarization problem using crowdsourcing. For example, here is the summary of this article: [https://tldr.io/tldrs/516542c52dcbc1ab3b0000d2/heres-the- rea...](https://tldr.io/tldrs/516542c52dcbc1ab3b0000d2/heres-the-real-reason- marissa-mayer-bought-a-17-year-olds-startup-for-30-million)

</comment><comment><USER36> I actually stopped reading Gizmodo because i thought the article where they made him cry a few years back was too far. Shaming a 15 year old kid publicly no matter how annoying seemed too far. Now he successfully gets summly acquired and the support for and shade that has been thrown at this kid has been so massive. I still don't know what to think of the kid, but I do think that SRI's tech definitely meets the needs of Yahoo and would fit perfectly with their media content.

<comment> UK-AL I don't like how they treated him.

However I think it does expose the difference between media reporting(tech genius,visionary, future leader, hard working) and actual reality(Narcissistic, child like, unprofessional). And those traits have been exposed again, since he claimed to invent the tech and developed the app in the media. Media have hailed shower of praises, mainly because he uses a top PR agency.

Its kind of depressing for me, because it seems to mean being showy, and having a good PR facade is worth far more than people doing the actual work.

<comment><USER37> > Its kind of depressing for me, because it seems to mean being showy, and > having a good PR facade is worth far more than people doing the actual work.

Marketing is a huge part of the startup world. There's a reason people are told to stop building at MVP - what you build isn't really important, and you're really likely to throw away what you built and switch to something else.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER38> Very few people invent anything. Most developers with limited resources work with groundbreaking technologies(built by others) to create something meaningful.

</comment><comment><USER39> My question then, is why didn't Yahoo just try and work with SRI International directly and not deal with Summly?

</comment><comment><USER40> Flagged. This article contains zero new information and just speculation. Unless you were involved in the transaction you have no idea what was involved. Maybe they overpaid and maybe they didn't.

If you believe Yahoo are stupid you're free to go and short Yahoo shares. They are after all a publicly traded company.

Lets stop with all this stupid speculation where people rehash the small amount of public information for the purpose of linkbait.

</comment><comment><USER41> I'm getting increasingly intrigued to how much advertising they're getting for their $30m

</comment><comment><USER42> Well curated article Thanks

</comment><comment><USER43> _Further, D'Aloisio deserves credit for outsourcing technology development and app development to the right firms, and coalescing their work into a product that made him millions._

I can't tell if this is a brilliant dog-whistle dig or if it's actually being said without irony.

<comment><USER44> All of the articles I've read about Summly have a bit at the end where the author bends over backwards to not appear to be crapping on a 17yo. I read that passage the same way.

<comment><USER37> Considering how much heat gizmodo got for calling out the same kid two years ago, I'm not surprised.

<comment><USER45> What's the story there? I'm unfamiliar. Link?

<comment><USER46> The founder (then 15 yrs old) was basically dishonest, annoying, ridiculous ... etc. More here: [http://gizmodo.com/5830076/how-i-made-a-15+year+old-app- deve...](http://gizmodo.com/5830076/how-i-made-a-15+year+old-app-developer- cry)

<comment><USER47> not surprised they got heat - however annoying the guy was, that was a deeply mean-spirited article.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER48> Now about that Kid, D'Alosio ... I don't care he built it or not, he made money like a crazy chicken!! I think that's enough!! :)

Coming back to Yahoo! I believe Marissa Mayer has something in mind. She is a smart lady, smart enough to point out what we are pointing out here.

If not, we'll soon see another JC Penney episode here.

</comment><comment><USER49> The Sad Part is they could actually be out buying companies like

<http://www.algorithms.io></comment>


Who else hates Google's geotargeting of blogger addresses? - <AUTHOR> Seems like an intrusion of privacy . If someone pastes a blogger domain with .ca, you know they are in Canada. Although this is obviously not enough to locate their actual location, it does narrow it a lot. <comment><USER2> Could a Canadian blogger sign up for a .com address instead, if they wanted to share less information? My impression is that many people feel a sense of pride in their nationality and are happy (or eager) to identify with their country of citizenship.</comment>


Boeing employee: I would not put my family on a Max plane - <AUTHOR> https://mynorthwest.com/1421554/boeing-employee-max-plane/? <comment><USER2> Boeing has ~150k employees. Given that pool of people I'm pretty sure you can come up one that has any opinion you want. Just decide at first what you want your story to portray, then go find your employee.

<comment><USER3> The other thing that annoys me about the Max coverage are those polls where "X people say they would never fly on one," as if even 1% of people actually factor in the plane model when buying their ticket.

<comment><USER2> Yea, I have never looked at equipment when buying a ticket and still wouldn't. Price, departure, arrival, and duration - roughly in that order - are the only things that matter to me.

<comment><USER4> I have looked at it to choose between two puddle-jumpers, I chose the one that was the jet over the turboprop.

<comment><USER5> Interesting. Why?

<comment><USER6> Not the op, but for me the turboprops I've flown on [0] have a deeper, louder droning noise that really gives me a headache after a while. I think it's personal though, I've spoken about hating them with travelling companions and no one else shares my dislike. I've never actively tried to avoid them though, mainly because I rarely have a choice of time or route when I fly on the airlines I know use them.

[0] - [https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/De_Havilland_Canada_Dash_8](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/De_Havilland_Canada_Dash_8)

<comment><USER7> >I think it's personal though, I've spoken about hating them with travelling companions and no one else shares my dislike.

That's because most people these days have significant hearing loss.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I see people complaining about the fact that it is just employee opinion.

I agree that just one employee opinion it's not important or so relevant by itself.

But, for most people, a human face for a problem makes the problem easier to understand and to sympathize with the situation. So, it seems that the journalist decided to give voice to Stuart as an stylistic choice. HN readers may like or not this choice. But, it does not invalidate the content of the article.

An example does not invalidate the rule. It would be interesting to discuss the content more than the style, even that it's also a valid discussion.

My take out of the article is that lack of trust on upper management is part of the problem.

> "I want to think that I work for one of the best companies in the world. I > want to think that when I come home from a 10-12 hour shift that I've done > something good. But I don't know because I see the lies. They're going back > on everything that they've told us. So it's really difficult for me to feel > good about any of it."

Most people see themselves as good persons. Most people wants to do a good job. When your company leadership fails you there is a conflict between that believe and reality. That is why company leadership is so important and it should not only respond to share holders but to all stakeholders in the company including customers and employees.

<comment><USER9> It's a problem when society keeps telling people that the only job of companies is to increase shareholder value. Recently there have been more and more people pointing out what a stupid idea it really is [0], but there are still a lot of companies focusing way too much on shareholder value to the exclusion of all other values, and there are still people repeating this harmful mantra.

Companies that only care about shareholder value run the risk of becoming parasites preying on society, looking for any way to extract value from society.

A healthy company should balance the needs of their shareholders, their employees, their customers, and society at large. Only if you balance those 4 concerns can you have a healthy, sustainable business that's a boon to society rather than a bane.

[0] Example: [https://www.forbes.com/sites/stevedenning/2017/07/17/making-...](https://www.forbes.com/sites/stevedenning/2017/07/17/making- sense-of-shareholder-value-the-worlds-dumbest-idea/#ff9b1bf2a7ed)

<comment><USER10> The real probably is the focus on short-term, quarterly financial reporting and how that relates to share-price. There is nothing wrong with focusing on maximizing value for the owners of a company, but if you focus on short term measure that look good to securities analysts, you'll actually undermine longer term value. The companies that build the most value ALSO have satisfied employees, happy customers and are respected by those outside in society. Neglecting the other factors might work for a while, but at a very high cost.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> For an opposite view: I have no relationship with Boeing, but I fly about once a month and have no issues flying on 737 Max, alone or with a family.

Current aircraft and flying is very safe. Even with the recent 737 fiascos, flying those is by far safer than driving to work. If I am OK with taking a road trip on vacation I am OK with flying Max.

This is not to say that improvements, re-certification and additional pilot training are bad. But from a purely practical point of view (which I try to practice for routine decisions), if we want to improve safety, there are better areas to spend $$ and / or hours than on endless re-polishing of a system that is super safe already. Life is dangerous; estimate your micro- deaths and extract most utility and fun from each of our 1e6 microlifes. My 2c.

<comment><USER12> > Even with the recent 737 fiascos, flying those is by far safer than driving > to work

I can't find the numbers easily right now, but I'd really like to see "deaths / person-hours flown on a 737 Max" vs. "deaths / person-hours driven".

<comment><USER13> Roughly: There have been about 400 737MAXes produced over two years, average time in service 1 year, so figure 400 plane-years. Figure about 8 flight hours per day, so 365 _8_ 400=1.2 million flight hours, 600,000 flight hours per accident or 1.5 fatal accidents per million hours.

The U.S. motor vehicle accident rate is about 1.2 fatalities per 100,000,000 vehicle miles travelled. Figure a car's average speed is 30mph so 1.2 fatalities per 3.3 million hours = 0.36 fatalities per million hours. Therefore on an hourly basis, the 737MAX is very roughly 5x more dangerous than driving. OTOH the 737MAX averages about 400mph, so per mile it's probably something like 2-3x safer.

<comment><USER14> There might be other differences. On the road, a lot depends on your style of driving, whether you are careful, but in case with a plane, you cannot do anything to make the flight safer.

<comment><USER13> Yes, but on the other hand you can't do very much to make it more dangerous either. If you show up to your flight drunk, you're no more likely to crash.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> > the 737 Max plane remains grounded as the company scrambles to develop a fix > for software problems that are blamed for two deadly crashes within a year.

Great, so they've managed to convince people this was a software problem...

<comment><USER16> What kind of problem do you consider it to be?

<comment><USER17> It's not a software issue because the software was working excatly as specified. There is no bug.

And its not really an aerodynamic issue either.

Boeing have a massive procedural issue where they didn't do proper safety analysis of how the system works as a whole. The fact that they didn't identify this failure case as a major issue makes you wonder what other failure cases (on other planes too) that they missed.

The original version of MCAS only moved the stablizer by 0.6 degrees, and only in situations with high angles of attack AND abnormally high g loading. That's the version they ran the safety analysis on, it relies on two types of sensors that shouldn't fail simultaneously. Later they modified MCAS to move the stablizer by much larger amounts (2.6 degrees, 4x larger) and they removed the high g loading restriction so it would operate in more situations. This also means it was now relying on a second sensor.

And they never re-ran the safety analysis.

<comment><USER7> Exactly. The whole thing is a gigantic failure of systems engineering, and if they made this big an error there, what error similar errors are lurking in their other planes? Then, to make matters worse, their response to the problem showed that they simply cannot be trusted.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> There isn't a pilot alive that isn't now fully aware of MCAS. Is there still a risk of MCAS causing another crash?

I think the issue Boeing has now is credibility, and the idea that there may be other MCAS-type issues lurking.

> we were told certain things such as 'the companies that bought these planes, > a lot of them, their countries didn't require them to go through the test > flight process that needed to happen.' So we were told, 'Hey, that's not on > us, that's on them. We have this program, they're suppose to take it, they > don't have to take it, that teaches them how to use this thing.'"

To me (as a layperson), it seems pretty obvious that Boeing specifically didn't mention MCAS in the flight crew operations manual because it would have meant extra training/certifications to fly the MAX, and there is a pretty clear profit motive to avoid that. By attempting to weasel out of this by saying things like "a pilot should never see the operation of MCAS in normal flying conditions" and "not a separate system to be trained on" [1], as well as the above paraphrasing, it doesn't exactly inspire confidence that Boeing is really putting passenger safety above all else, which is what I as a non- stockholding potential passenger would prefer.

[1] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maneuvering_Characteristics_Au...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maneuvering_Characteristics_Augmentation_System#Training)

<comment><USER19> > Is there still a risk of MCAS causing another crash?

Yes, because it's difficult to recover when MCAS goes wrong, even when you know about it. The pilots of Ethiopian 302 turned MCAS off and still crashed[0].

[https://www.seattletimes.com/business/boeing- aerospace/boein...](https://www.seattletimes.com/business/boeing- aerospace/boeings-emergency-procedure-for-737-max-may-have-failed-on- ethiopian-flight/)

<comment><USER20> They even tried reproducing it in simulators and added 1000 feet (relative to the Ethiopian aircraft) in order for the aircrew to use the recovery procedure (nose down pitch) to be able to move the horizontal stabilizers with just the handle.

At low altitude, even with full knowledge, MCAS can make the aircraft unrecoverable. Aircraft should not fly without it being corrected. The Ethiopian crew maybe have had knowledge of MCAS.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> The 737 Max issues are complicated, real and should be the object of study for generations of engineers and business students. That said, this article is useless aside from anecdotal (and not surprising) morale issues in Boeing.

<comment><USER22> Unfortunately, I believe that more value can be extracted from grinding the lessons into future management types, government representatives, and regulators.

All the engineers in the world can't stop a bunch of executives capable of creating an environment so full of confusion, second guessing, and clouded communication capable of allowing these types of tragedies to occur.

The mechanics of the problem laid bare were simple. The problem ended up being the levels of obfuscation and lack of coordination/miscommunication surrounding the certification process that allowed the aircraft to be certified and flown with a clearly uncategorized avionics system, and insufficient communications to pilot's that in the end could have negated the technical need for a more robust system, if they'd only known to look out for it..

<comment><USER21> Honestly, I think it's crappy engineering, too. You can't throw this on the feet of generic execs or regulators. The behavior with AoA sensor disagreement (and the treatment of malfunctioning sensors) seems wrong. MCAS should have had failsafes around the number of trim adjustments it could do.

You can talk all you want about how regulators should have required recertification, how Boeing shouldn't have just strapped a couple of higher bypass ratio engines onto the bottom of a 737 in the first place, or how it information about MCAS should have been presented.... but in the end, it's possible there would not have been accidents (or maybe more of them because of unexpected stalls, we'll never know) if there had been sanity checking of response values from either of the AoA sensors and if MCAS capped how many times it could trim.

edit: it sucks to work on critical systems. In case it comes off differently, I feel badly for those involved. Nobody gives them credit thousands (more?) times a year an automatic flight control system engages and saves hundreds of lives without any passengers knowing. They ended up making MCAS because of decisions made outside of the realm of their control.

<comment><USER22> >Honestly, I think it's crappy engineering, too. You can't throw this on the feet of generic execs or regulators. The behavior with AoA sensor disagreement (and the treatment of malfunctioning sensors) seems wrong. MCAS should have had failsafes around the number of trim adjustments it could do.

Watch the Australian 60 Minutes Expose on the MAX. A whistleblower has come forward and stated that they had to pipe in only a single sensor's input to avoid costly simulator training, which management pushed as an absolute necessity to avoid.

I love Engineering. I love doing things right. I can't deny though that when you've got business breathing down your back, everyone seems more interested in getting what they _want_ instead of what _actually solves the problem in a sound way_ , that things never degenerate to the point where the engineering teams throw up their hands and say "Eff it! Take your plane and choke on it!"

This is a textbook case of toxic engineering culture yielding toxic engineered product. Richard Feynman said it best after the Challenger disaster, and his words ring as true now as they did back then.

"For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public [or customer] relations, for Nature cannot be fooled."

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> The thing is, I feel like if both of those planes had crashed on US soil, each full of Americans, then it could have very well been the end of Boeing as a corporation.

Since they happened halfway around the world, it seems like we judge it differently?

<comment><USER24> There is few American victims, though.

<comment> o-__-o A few is not a full plane of Americans on American soil.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> ""The way management kind of works is we never really know who our managers are sometimes," he said. "We get shuffled around so much that our job codes, our job titles, everything changes. Because they are trying to make progress. With the Max being down, they are bringing other people down, trying to correct the issues and trying to make it a better place.""

This is a huge management mistake. Teams need a direction, consistency, and time to execute. During that time managers often need to keep things on track and keep up team morale, but also need to know that they have to step back and be more passive while the team is executing. Constantly changing things means the teams are distracted, probably a little frightened, and not operating where they could be.

</comment><comment><USER26> >> Boeing employee: I would not put my family on a Max plane right now

Who would? Surely some people like to risk but why would you take such a risk when there are so many safer options(i.e airbus)?

<comment><USER27> IAG ( parent of British Airways, Iberia, Aer Lingus, Level and Vueling ) just ordered 200 Max at the Paris Air Show.

So plenty of executives lack such qualms.

<comment><USER26> Airbus didn't even had the chance to bid on that order so chances are the order was cooked between UK-US governments. Walsh says "I believe the aircraft is safe" though all of them are grounded and Boeing is yet to fix it...

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> Google says Boeing had 153,027 employees as of Jan 2018.

Why should we listen to Stuart? They don't list his job, so he could be just about anyone.

</comment><comment><USER29> I was in Hawaii last month and had an interesting chat with a former Boeing engineer. He was involved with ramping up the South Carolina plant which built the Dreamliner. I asked him if he would fly Boeing right now and he also said that he would not.

<comment><USER30> This is a bit sensational.

Most Boeing jets that you can book a flight on today are some of the safest the world has ever seen. For example, the 777 has been in service 25 years with only a few serious accidents we can conclusively say are related to the aircraft design or operation. The 737-NG (precursor to the MAX and also in service ~25 years) experiences one hull loss incident for every 4 million or so departures. Even their other fairly new jet, the 787, has never experienced a hull loss or fatality in almost 8 years of commercial service.

<comment><USER31> That certainly makes the max less of a safety concern.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> The structure of the plane is solid and it will fly. The issue I have and obviously the FAA has a similar one is the fact buggy software is driving it.

Its one thing when the system offers assistance but when it takes over to the degree you cannot fix it and lives are in danger it needs to be reworked

<comment><USER33> I don't even think it is a bug. It was intended to work this way. The real issue is that Boeing flat out _LIED_ and claimed it flew _exactly_ the same as any other 737 so they could avoid having to factor re-training pilots on this plane. It was all caused by greed and people should be going to jail.

<comment><USER32> The fact its all by wire and doesnt have an override stop button or something is a bug. A serious one.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> There's a great deep dive on the engineering of the plane in the IEEE magazine: [https://spectrum.ieee.org/aerospace/aviation/how-the- boeing-...](https://spectrum.ieee.org/aerospace/aviation/how-the- boeing-737-max-disaster-looks-to-a-software-developer)

</comment><comment><USER35> Soon to be ex-Boeing employee. Why not just quit at that point?

<comment><USER36> If he's union then his job will be pretty safe.</comment></comment>


Minimum Viable Channel - <AUTHOR> http://micho.biz/post/101117197086/minimum-viable-channel

<comment><USER2> In that sense I'm reading a book called "Traction" on how to target and engage different channels. It's kind of a lean approach to acquisition. Try something if it works iterate, if it does not, change. It also suggests parallel experiments on a single channel to boost quality of the test.

Great experience what you shared! Thanks</comment>


Gumroad Adds New Publishing Features, Says Some Authors Have Made $100K+ - <AUTHOR> http://techcrunch.com/2013/01/23/gumroad-publishing-update/

<comment><USER2> Congrats to the Gumroad team!</comment>


Don't Screw Your Partners Over A Marketing Promotion (TC stops loading because of Seesmic) - <AUTHOR> http://www.techcrunch.com/2008/05/17/dont-screw-your-partners-over-a-marketing-promotion/

<comment><USER2> Since when is using a widget on your page being a partner? If I embed a youtube clip in my site, does that make me a youtube partner?

I understand he is an investor, but come on.

<comment><USER3> Seesmic is still in closed alpha so those who are using it are very much partners.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> If the problem is as Michael described - a blocking call to fetch a remote file for every page request with no timeout, then it would seem the "bad judgment" has been going on for a while.

</comment><comment><USER5> maybe Mikey didn't invest enough money to be important to seesmic :)

</comment><comment><USER6> What a whiner.</comment>


Go Games, Go Information and Go Study Tools - <AUTHOR> http://gobase.org/ <comment><USER2> A couple Go resources that even people who follow Go might not have stumbled upon:

<http://www.gobooks.info/bib-difficulty.html>

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

<http://www.aygoschool.com/Ang-Yue_guide.pdf>

Also, while I don't advocate violating copyright when it's possible to legally purchase the material, Scribd has PDFs of most of the famous English-language books if you want to check them out. There is also a .torrent that is basically everything on Scribd in a single download. Of course you can also get all the books here:

<http://kiseido.com/go_books.htm>

</comment><comment><USER3> I'll toot my own horn and share my site, which started as a study tool for myself but that many people have also found useful (it's open source):

<http://eidogo.com/>

You can study joseki, search for board patterns in pro games, play GNU Go, etc. The board part is modular and can be embedded into any webpage. Like GoBase, it has a pro game archive, but does not require registration or payment to view.

</comment><comment><USER4> Also:

<http://www.goproblems.com> \-- a great site with thousands of problems to solve

<http://senseis.xmp.net> \-- a Go wiki with a lot of interesting articles especially for the intermediate player

</comment><comment><USER5> I've seen mention of KGS (kiseido go server) but not IGS (internet go server). I play on IGS because generally the players are a little bit stronger there (not that I am ;-) ).

<http://www.pandanet.co.jp/English/></comment>


8chan: Ex-users of far-right site flock to new homes across internet - <AUTHOR> https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2019/aug/08/8chan-shutdown-users-social-media <comment><USER2> It is rather disingenuous to label 8chan as a "Far-right" website.

It's a glorified bulletin board; and is in that sense an ideologically neutral tool. Leftypol/far-left is just as present as the notorious far-right the media has been harping on in the past couple weeks.

Frankly, I'm saddened that everyone seems to want to focus on the tool instead of the people once again. It's an infuriating tendency that more than anything I'd like to see stop.

If we demonized every tool that can be used to cause mischief, we wouldn't have any able to be freely owned.

<comment><USER3> No one is focusing exclusively on the tool here except for you.

When someone refers to 8chan as "far-right", they are not characterizing the software itself as having a far-right ideology, as opposed to the people using it, and the characterization remains correct in the general sense, even if not every member and not every board fits the description. Colloquial language is not required to have the precision of a legal document.

And the existence of far-left boards has no bearing on arguments regarding the nature of /pol/ or its effects.

Claiming that 8chan is ideologically neutral simply because software cannot possess an ideology is a disingenuous argument to make, as the site's deplatforming was not focused on the software per se, but the userbase of /pol./

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> 8chan will be back, and it will be hardened against DDOS and not reliant on SV good will.</comment>