How do I know that an idea is worth entertaining as a technical cofounder? - <AUTHOR> Last week, I was asked to cofound what's supposed to become a tech startup. The two idea guys need someone to build out their MVP and orchestrate development.
They want to build the next great communication app. I've been communicating with people on the internet since 1998, and I'm aware of the influx of communication apps hitting the market.
I was offered a third of the company in return, and they're asking for 4 to 5 hours a week of my time (to start out). I know that that's not what it's going to turn out to be, considering development challenges. Plus, I have a full-time position as a software developer.
I'm in the process of launching some of my own projects, and I'd have to put those to the side in order to dedicate my free energy and time to their project. They've pitched the idea. I fear it's not innovative enough and that it's just another chat app. How do I know it's worth the commitment? They want a solid decision (quickly). <comment><USER2> I would sit down with the two guys and ask them the following questions

\- Who is our target market? Who are we building the chat app for?

\- How do we get traction in this market?

\- Who are our competitors? What is our differentiator / unfair advantage over them?

\- What are the monetization plans?

\- What is the end goal? Being acquired by a big company, IPO, lifestyle business etc

\- What are the responsibilities for each of the three founders? How would each of them add value to the business?

\- How would we know if we are on the right path? e.g. x% per month increase in number of users/messages/revenue etc

At the end of this, you will either be sold on the idea or you will not. I'd advise you to join only if the two guys are able to convince you of the idea.

<comment><AUTHOR> I think you're so right about these questions and how it relates to potentially convincing me.

I had a meeting with them yesterday to discuss in more detail. I asked them questions like "What's supposed to separate you from all of the other chat apps out there?" I understood their idea, but I don't see it as very unique. I asked them about how they'd monetize, and they told me -- a lot of it depends on star power (big people using the app in order to entice potential users). I wouldn't consider myself business savvy by any means, but that plan doesn't seem like something solid.

They told me they can make one or two calls to get funding, but that they just need an app. In my minor experience, the funding part of the operation isn't even half the battle. So, even if it is true that they can get funding just like that, it doesn't mean that this idea is strong enough to make a sustainable, considerable profit (then again, what is?).

One of the founders brings connections, but I'm focused on the idea and how it's solving a problem. I asked if there's a problem being solved, and their answer wasn't very strong.

<comment><USER3> If they can't convince you it's a good idea do you think they could convince customers or even investors?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Forget about the idea. What matters is the people. In priority order:

1\. Do you trust them in the "If I died they would make sure that my family was taken care of" way?

2\. Are the executing right now even without technical talent?

3\. Do they have a track record in the industry they are about to try to enter?

That's it.

Now the red flags:

      Do you really want to work with *two* idea guys?

      Do you really want to work with two people who think
      4 or 5 hours a week is going to get a solid app built?

      Do you really want to work with two people who believe
      that high pressure is a good way to establish a long term
      business partnership?

Go with your gut. This won't be your last offer to work on someone else's idea. Don't get sucked into the idea of owning a company. Particularly when you don't have a controlling interest and there is an aggregate controlling interest that sees you as providing commodity value.

Good luck.

<comment><AUTHOR> So far, they showed me video mockups of what they want built (they paid a graphic designer).

One of the big yellow flags to me was that they would be idea guys. They told me that they're willing to learn how to code, but considering they don't have super technical backgrounds (one is an electrical engineer, so he'd have the best chance at learning), they probably wouldn't be of aid in the interim.

<comment><USER4> 1\. Have you verified that the graphic designer was paid?

2\. IMO, when it comes to going into business:

       Yellow = Red

3\. What did they show you in regard to market validation, funding efforts, user acquisition, business plans, etc?

4\. What does the buy-sell agreement look like?

5\. What has the electrical engineer been doing that has prohibited them from developing a technical background?

<comment><AUTHOR> I never verified that they paid the graphic designer, but they told me they did (I took their word for it).

They didn't show me anything as far as validating the idea; nothing shown towards funding efforts (just, "I have people in my phone I can call right now for funds."), nothing towards user acquisition (I asked about their plan; one involved marketing against a hit movie's release).

No buy-sell agreement.

Not exactly sure what the electrical engineer is afraid of in terms of learning how to write code on his own in order to develop at least the alpha of this. He just told me, "It's not my thing." The other guy said something similar. Both said they're willing to learn but that it'd take them a really long time and that, essentially, because I already know how to do it, they called on me.

<comment><USER4> [disclaimer: this is just my take from far away and over the internet without a lot of direct context]

1\. Calling the graphic designer yourself to find out about payment is basic due diligence. No one in business should take offense at it, in case you're worried. If someone does, that's not good.

2\. If they're bringing you in as an equal equity holder, vagueness about funding isn't really a good basis for a partnership.

3\. Tying into a movie release isn't a solid marketing plan for a startup. Sure it's nice to get a boost from lucky timing, but there needs to be a Plan A.

4\. No buy sell agreement combined with pressure to commit is absurd: commit to what?

5\. If the software is the critical bit of their business, not being into the software is not being into the critical bits of their business. Work with people who will take out the garbage and jump up and down on top of the dumpster if it won't fit when that's what needs to be done.

Questions:

Do they have a track record that you're not mentioning?

What are they doing day in and out to add value?

How will they be adding value if you come on board during the time you are working on the code?

Why no buy-sell agreement?

Why no business and marketing plan as formal documents?

What do you think will happen if you decline their offer?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Before you seek idea validation and ask business plan questions, may I suggest you spend time understanding the co-founders?

It's not that ideas don't matter, but from my own personal experience, ALL startups over-estimate the uniqueness of the idea and under-estimate the effort and capital required to go to market.

So ask yourself these questions:

#1: Can I work with these 2 idea guys for the next 2-3 years? Are they the kind of co-workers I'd enjoy working with? What do they bring to the table that I don't?

#2: what do I know about their perseverance, fortitude and willingness to work? This is hard to prove or establish objectively, so answer this question honestly.

#3: Do you trust and respect the co-founders? Do they understand marketing and finance? Do you guys "jam well" with each other?

#4: How are they painting the picture of the future? Is it all yachts, expensive cars and visions of cashing out? Pay attention to that language carefully and then see if you believe in it.

#5: Are your co-founders former entrepreneurs? If not, I'd suggest you wait it out. You want partners who have experienced the pains of managing tight cash- flows, living without paychecks for 6 months or more.

<comment><AUTHOR> So, I think they actually do suit what you're painting as ideal partners. I used to go to one's parties back in college. He's working his way up in his field and doing well -- he's a hustler, which is something I can appreciate. We all come from the same place (let's just say we're definitely not rich and we definitely always had to worry about getting robbed and/or killed going home from work/school growing up). The tenacity is there.

But they're talking 5 years of commitment. Tech experience isn't something they have, but I know that at least one has entrepreneurial experience (just hasn't exited or anything). Again, he hustles.

Definitely talk about yachts and painting the picture of there being far less in our lives than there "will" be after building this app.

<comment><USER5> > Tech experience isn't something they have

Do you mean they haven't worked in communications or technology industry? That's a big red flag. Your team will have a STEEP learning curve.

It's exceedingly rare - if not impossible - to see a startup team move into a new industry without industry experience AND capital.

My suggestion to you would be to let this opportunity pass.

<comment><AUTHOR> One works in film, the other is an electrical engineer who doesn't know how to write code.

<comment><USER5> Entrepreneurship isn't "We're going to defy ALL odds". You only pick the odds you can take on with your capital, time, effort and talent. If you win, you get to pick the next set of odds and so on.

Right now, it sounds like your team will have to learn entrepreneurship, product management (which is not the same as software development), software marketing, finance, sales, raising capital, alliances etc etc.

That's a LOT OF odds.

<comment><AUTHOR> Just thinking about all I have to learn alone causes an anxiety attack.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Sounds like a bad deal. In reality the product you're building is almost entirely technology based. They wouldn't really offer any value to you unless they were technical as well.

What would they spend their time doing while you coded?

The only caveat to this is if they've already exited and are successful entrepreneurs. My guess is they're not, and just looking for someone to do the development for free.

<comment><AUTHOR> Plainly put and well put. They sold the dream, mentioning to me that we can change our lives, buy Patek timepieces, get boats and finally meet Kanye West. At the end of the day, it'll be a major time investment for me and I don't see how 4 to 5 hours a week would be sufficient any any business situation, especially when it comes to tech (although, I would love to only have to invest that much time into anything and change mankind).

It'll really come down to me doing a lot of development between now and October, including managing another developer if they stay true to their word and get another developer to help out.

And no, they haven't already exited or anything of that nature. Not yet. Ambitious friends of mine, though.

<comment><USER7> Right now they've got an idea to jump on the trending app sector, with you doing all the work. Run, this will end badly for you. They bring nothing to the table but inconvenience.

<comment><AUTHOR> The whole "jumping on the trending app sector" thing is definitely one of the big yellow flags to me.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> I politely declined their offer based on a lot of thought and a lot of consideration of your answers -- thank you all.

They texted me, asking for a decision. I texted back, letting them know that I'll pass but that I'll meet with them once a week for a little while to help them refine their MVP so they can communicate it to a developer. I figured it was a friendly offering of my expertise. I told them to feel free to utilize me in that regard if they'd like.

Instead of identifying the friendliness, one replied telling me that I'm either fully in or I'm out, implying that my offer was too half-assed for them. I was clear in saying that I passed on their offer to be one of their founders, so I didn't really understand what he wasn't clear on -- I plainly offered to help them refine their MVP strictly so they can execute as seamlessly as they could once in contact with another developer. I told them that when I received his response.

The other still hasn't said anything. And the one who initially responded hasn't replied to my last message. I'm assuming they're mad, although, that's not a very friendly way to reply, even after being rejected.

Now, I'm really glad I decided not to take on the role.

<comment><USER8> Reading halfway through this comment I wanted to suggest you to be more wary of lending your uncompensated time and expertise to people aside from family, friends, clients. Throughout the thread, I didn't notice anything to indicate that you have any sort of close relationship with these two. The issue is not being nice per se, it's the fact that A LOT of people do not value your time and expertise, especially when it's being given/offered for free. I'm probably coming off as very cynical but I've been through similar situations countless times and it ties in directly to many studies about humans valuing things they "lose" for much more than something being handed to them. I wrote a brief blog post on my ideas about that here: [http://www.jayhuang.org/blog/giving- feedback/](http://www.jayhuang.org/blog/giving-feedback/)

After reading your whole comment, I have to agree you were incredibly lucky. I don't want to jump to any conclusions but from my experience, people whose attitudes become so fierce so quickly in this type of situation are often the same type of people that may be perfectly fine with screwing you over in the case your partnership ever finds success. Idea people are dime a dozen in this era, and many are desperate to find competent developers on the cheap to execute their idea. Some of them have a misconceived notion that their idea is pure gold and you are merely a replaceable resource (which of course, we all are to some extent, but the builder has a huge role in building a startup; arguably a larger role than any other person).

So again, congratulations on learning a good lesson at no cost. My favorite part about your comment is the fact they completely burned any chance they had of getting your advice/expertise for free (hopefully), so you can focus on the things/people that really matter.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> I would nope the hell out of there.

1) You are not convinced the idea is disruptive/feasible enough

2) They want YOU to do all the work, yet only give you 1/3rd equity. What do they have to bring to the table? Probably nothing.

3) You don't need them. Ask yourself: would I build this if I would get 100% equity? Since you also have plans of your own, the answer would most probably be no.

<comment><AUTHOR> Your second point definitely strikes a nerve, because I keep thinking about that. They came up with mockups. I'm not sure if that's where their work stops - aside from making phone calls and throwing around ideas. I have their best interest in mind as well as mine, but I don't know if they're splitting up the equity in proportion with how much work I'd have to do to make their idea a reality.

Great points.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Here's a possible solution that would hopefully indicate how serious your potential partners actually are.

They want your expertise. That alone, should be worth the 1/3 equity they are offering you. There should also be some type of ongoing compensation for your time spent. You mentioned that they have access to funding. Isn't any of this funding earmarked for developing the new product?

If they are willing to compensate you for your actual time spent, this would have some indication as to how serious they really are.

My initial gut reaction, after reading your question and statement, was your potential partners might be looking for somewhat of a free ride, without having to actually put any real skin in the game. Your "skin the game" is your knowledge.

And bottom line, you don't sound overly impressed with their proposed product concept. That in itself, would make me leery of involvement (on a pro bono basis) even with the offered equity.

<comment><AUTHOR> They don't have any money at this point, so getting compensated is definitely out of the question. Their promise of having the ability to attain funding is not solid as far as know (for certain), so I can't particularly go by that.

I'm not very impressed by the idea. It's an okay idea, but nothing super inventive.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> I'll give you the same advice I give everyone else in the same situation: don't rush to judgement. Plan on working with them casually over the next month and iterate on the mockup.

By then, you'll have a much better understanding of what value (if any) they bring. How you work and get along together. Focus on refining the mockup, brainstorming ideas, etc. This shouldn't take too much of your time.

As everyone else pointed out already, 1 dev for 2 idea people is a bad ratio. I think the equity is reasonable (you can't expect them to offer you more than 50% as a first offer...). I strongly question whether those two people are worth working with at all. But only time can tell.

Just don't promise anything long-term just yet. Commit to one month part-time. No need for a fancy deal yet. Don't write the app yet.

<comment><AUTHOR> Considering the other comments, I'm not sure it'll be worth spending the month with them, although, that's definitely a cool suggestion. I'm just going to pass and work really hard on the projects I'm going to launch this year. If their app idea happens to work and change the world, I missed out -- it happens (aggooonnnnnyyy -- hahaha).

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> What are they offering you in return? An idea? Anyone can have an idea. Can they secure funding? If they have a shitty idea, and they don't have a network of people who can fund them, forget about these chumps.

</comment><comment><USER13> Do they actually bring anything to the table? Listen to their idea, then use it yourself if its any good.</comment>


Unwinding Uber's Most Efficient Service - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@buckhx/unwinding-uber-s-most-efficient-service-406413c5871d <comment><USER2> Amazing article. The rigour is commendable! This sets a respectably high standard for criticism.

Thank you for writing this.

 _> I had to use a log scale to get the results to be visually comparable._

Owch.

</comment><comment><USER3> Several interesting comments on the reddit thread too @ [https://www.reddit.com/r/golang/comments/4cho4k/unwinding_ub...](https://www.reddit.com/r/golang/comments/4cho4k/unwinding_ubers_most_efficient_service_in_go/)</comment>


Recursive drawing - <AUTHOR> http://recursivedrawing.com/ <comment><USER2> If you are onto something like this, you should also try Context Free [1] which allows for the wide variety of recursive arts in a programmatic manner (well, it literally has its own versatile scripting language).

[1] [https://www.contextfreeart.org/](https://www.contextfreeart.org/)

<comment><USER3> The key addition of ContextFree is the multiple definitions of the same chosen by probability.

So a Blurp could be defined as a) a circle and a Blurp b) a circle c) a Blurp and a Blurp

And when rendering a Blurp it picks one of a,b, or c randomly (with weighted probabilities)

That single addition opens up a huge world of variety.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Written instructions from when this was last posted (in 2012)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3951499](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3951499)

</comment><comment><USER5> Years ago, Flash (I thinks it's "Adobe Animate" now) had a similar feature in that you could create symbols and Symbols and edit them after the fact, so this part, while cool didn't impress me much.

I'm glad I continued watching up to the point where the presenter puts symbols within themselves because that part blew my mind! I'd really love to see a feature like this incorporated into Inkscape and/or Kitra.

</comment><comment><USER6> See also: Alan's layer language, which has a blogpost referencing Toby's 'recursive drawing - [https://layerlanguage.blogspot.com/2012/05/more- computationa...](https://layerlanguage.blogspot.com/2012/05/more- computational-toys-for-artists.html)

</comment><comment><USER7> There's a bunch of examples and links to interesting work in Kate Compton's GDC talk "Practical Procedural Generation for Everyone" [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WumyfLEa6bU](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WumyfLEa6bU)

</comment><comment><USER8> I've often thought that this sort of thing would be great for user interface design. "Recursive drawing" in combination with a CAD style constraint system would be really cool to see. My preferred name for such a system would be "inductive constraint layout".

</comment><comment><USER9> A later project with excellent videos, "Shadershop", is definitely also something to marvel at: [http://tobyschachman.com/Shadershop](http://tobyschachman.com/Shadershop) and [http://www.cdglabs.org/Shadershop](http://www.cdglabs.org/Shadershop)

</comment><comment><USER10> This is so cool, I really love this! Thank you for sharing. Also what a easy and friendly way to teach recursion to those still grasping the concept, definitely a resource I'll be sharing

</comment><comment><USER11> I didn't understand the Fibonacci part. What was he counting?

<comment><USER12> I had to go back over it a few times to understand. I believe its the number of branches at each depth level.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> This is awesome!

</comment><comment><USER14> Completely unusable on mobile

<comment><USER15> It's a masters degree thesis project from 2012, what would you expect?</comment></comment>


You're not going to be an overnight success - <AUTHOR> http://startupsforupstarts.com/youre-not-going-to-be-an-overnight-success

<comment><AUTHOR> Would love thoughts on this. I'm here to learn as much as I'm here to share what (little) knowledge I have.</comment>


When should I use an ORM? - <AUTHOR> http://mikehadlow.blogspot.com/2012/06/when-should-i-use-orm.html

<comment><USER2> After you know how to write DDL by hand, can explain the normal forms and know the difference between the various types of joins.</comment>


Ask HN: Protests in Belarus and no reliable Internet. How to communicate? - <AUTHOR> Belarus is fighting against election fraud for the third day right now. It is not clear what is going on with Internet - it is not blocked outright, but most of packets are lost or something. Some believe that it is DPI infrastructure is the culprit - it simply not being able to handle increased traffic.
Unfortunately, it also means that any messenger relying on internet works intermittently at best. So far Telegram appears to be the most reliable messenger, but it also struggles to keep up.
What options are available for owners of ios/android devices to stay connected with each other? Downloading anything from app stores becomes a problem as well, btw. <comment><USER2> \- IRC+SSL

\- Gemini servers managed from SSH, these for publishing long text media, unidirectionally Or Gopher from a SSH kiosk from a computer.

\- Meshnet based talk applications for Android, FDroid has several

Also, beware with a lot of Belarus protesters, they have ties to former European neo-nazi groups and far right US think-thanks.

<comment><AUTHOR> Meshnet option sounds the most usable for not sophisticated users. Do you remember specific app names?

<comment><USER3> Wasn't really familiar with Meshnet, but it seems to me that Libremesh[0] can also be a viable alternative

0: [https://libremesh.org/](https://libremesh.org/)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Maybe [https://briarproject.org/](https://briarproject.org/)</comment>


Google+ Invitation System Shut Down Due To 'Insane Demand' - <AUTHOR> http://twitter.com/#!/mathewi/status/86281196425846784

<comment><AUTHOR> Full Quote (Off Google+ incase you don't have a Google+ account):

Vic Gundotra - 4:45 AM - <USER2>

We've shut down invite mechanism for the night. Insane demand. We need to do this carefully, and in a controlled way. Thank you all for your interest!

For any who wish to leave, please remember you can always exit and take your data with you by using Google Takeout.

It's your data, your relationships, your identity.

+Bradley Horowitz Sign in to Google Takeout</comment>


Israeli Company Lands US Patent That Could Make Internet Search Giants Pay - <AUTHOR> http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/09/08/israeli-company-lands-us-patent-that-could-make-internet-search-giants-pay/ <comment><USER2> "The technological centerpiece of the patent, referred to as 'www.addressing', basically allows internet surfers to type a site's name directly into the address bar or search box and get rerouted to a website straight away, without getting search results to choose from first. For example, if one were to type "techcrunch" in the URL field of a browser, the program would access this site right away without initiating a search query first. Furthermore, the infamous 'I'm Feeling Lucky' button on the Google homepage reportedly uses Netex technology that has now been successfully patented in the United States."

You've got to be kidding me, they got a patent on _THAT_???

<comment><USER3> _they got a patent on THAT???_

It took 10 years to get the patent so it's been rejected several times. My guess is it's become fairly specific and would be easy to sidestep if you are not already using their product.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Patently absurd, like most software patents.

<comment><USER5> Bilski v. Kappos [ <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bilski> ] was recently picked for review by the Supreme Court. An affirmation of the Federal Circuit decision (rejecting the patentability of a "business method patent" for hedge fund trading) could have a sweeping impact on software patents.

Those in the software patent industry (law firms, et al), as well some companies with extensive patent holdings, have filed amicus briefs against the Federal Circuit decision [ [http://www.patentlyo.com/patent/2009/03/bilski-v- doll-round-...](http://www.patentlyo.com/patent/2009/03/bilski-v-doll-round-i- of-amicus-briefs.html?b49634b0) ].

Obviously, there has been a lot of activity concerning this case: [ [http://www.patentlyo.com/patent/2009/08/top-patently-o- posts...](http://www.patentlyo.com/patent/2009/08/top-patently-o-posts-from- the-past-year.html) ]

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> This breaking news just in, Generalissimo Francisco Franco is still dead.

But before he died, he patented dying. So all people who plan to die at some point need to pay up.</comment>


Ask HN: Why should I care about Opera switching to WebKit? - <AUTHOR>

I understand that this saves web developers time in testing and deploying stuff, and also that there's one less "standard" to follow. Is there any aspect to this transition that I might've missed? I'd like to know what this change means, apart from the obvious few things.<p>Thanks! <comment><USER2> Off the top of my head, this move also means that most, or at least some, of the Opera developers who worked on its rendering engines, will now be contributing to WebKit and V8.

This might mean even faster development cycles for WebKit, the integration of new features that were not on top of Google's and Apple's lists, and some new complications introduced to the inner politics of the WebKit and V8 projects.

</comment><comment><USER3> It is basically heading toward what jQuery did for JavaScript on the web.

See [http://ejohn.org/blog/webkit-is-the-jquery-of-browser- engine...](http://ejohn.org/blog/webkit-is-the-jquery-of-browser-engines/)

from jQuery's creator.</comment>


NASA's new spacesuit - <AUTHOR> http://www.cnn.com/2014/03/28/tech/social-media/apparently-this-matters-nasa-z2-spacesuit/index.html?hpt=hp_c3

<comment><USER2> Terrible article. "It needs a beer holder! For your beer! Roll Tide!" Come on. Here's a better one: [http://www.space.com/25231-nasa-z2-spacesuit-tech- design-vot...](http://www.space.com/25231-nasa-z2-spacesuit-tech-design- vote.html)</comment>


Introducing MotionCAPTCHA: Stop Spam, Draw Shapes - <AUTHOR> http://www.josscrowcroft.com/2011/projects/introducing-motioncaptcha-stop-spam-draw-shapes/

<comment><USER2> As far as I can tell from the demo there is no server side validation on this captcha. Everything is handled on the client side. So really all your doing is making an annoyance for your honest target users. And allowing a spam bot to just totally ignore this 'captcha' to submit their POST regardless....

I've seen hundreds of these 'alternative' captchas. 'slide to unlock', 'sort images' ect. None yet have proven to be as effective at stopping a simple curl script.

Real captchas will store the value of the image or verification method on the first fetch in a session, and when the form is finally filled out the server will verify that the session value matches the submitted value. Without this component, the alternative captchas are pointless and just an annoyance to your real users.

Spam bots are not built on top of web browsers...

<comment><USER3> As for being client side, it's just a proof of concept at the moment.

<comment><USER4> Yeah, exactly. It's a proof of concept, with plans to turn it into a production-ready solution that relies on a typical difficult PHP Captcha, which is then replaced with the cooler MotionCAPTCHA on page load, if the user's browser supports.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Interesting concept, but I doubt it will take off. The present version would be easily breakable by image-processing and some scripting. They could obfuscate the image, but then you're in the same war-of-attrition you see with text-based captchas today.

Text captchas suck, but they're the only thing that's ever been shown to be robust over the long term.

<comment><USER4> Yeah, this is the plan - use a text-based captcha that's replaced onload.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Do this using Kanji (or other complex character sets that have standard stroke order), turn it into "stop spam, learn _x_ ", and you're on to something.

<comment><USER4> That is a remarkably good point... considered for v0.2!

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> I'm fairly certain that a computer could handle these CAPTCHAs _better_ than I could.

</comment><comment><USER8> maybe i'm missing something here but the biggest issue i see with this is it does not effectively prevent spamming/robots. the libraries which this is based on were not created with distinguishing humans and robots in mind. especially checking the $1 gesture recognizer ([https://github.com/josscrowcroft/MotionCAPTCHA/blob/master/j...](https://github.com/josscrowcroft/MotionCAPTCHA/blob/master/jquery.motionCaptcha.0.1.js#L470)) i don't see if this could be used in real life (for captchas).

</comment><comment><USER9> this reminds me of another alternative to captchas i'd seen, something like kitten captcha or something..

the premise being, you had a 3x3 grid of thumbnails of animals, and you'd have to pick out of them, which were kittens.

less invasive captchas are something that i'd really like to see on sites, but despite the alternatives (of which i'm sure there are many) they never seem to take off..

<comment><USER10> Kitten captcha is stupid, because you only have to classify kitten images once (manually, mechanical turk), and then it will be broken 100% of the time.

<comment><USER11> The "kitten CAPTCHA" could then take countermeasures:

1\. Apply transforms to the images. This would require spam bots to perform much harder processing.

2\. Use a larger pool of images -- after all, this is the Internet, a communication medium used primarily to exchange pictures of kittens.

Of course the spammers would adapt. But CAPTCHAs are not one-shot solutions. A good CAPTCHA works well enough to defeat most bots, and is updated once most bots start defeating it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> It's a completely client-side solution. It will be easily broken.

Even it it weren't, and shapes were generated and verified on the server side, computers are extremely good at recognizing simple shapes.

EDIT:

Here, to break it on this page

<http://www.josscrowcroft.com/demos/motioncaptcha>

simply enter this into the URL box:

javascript:$('input').attr({'disabled':false});

<comment><USER4> You legend. Heh</comment></comment>


Android M: Dynamic MAC Address – Feature or Bug? - <AUTHOR>

Whenever I restart my phone(Nexus 5) running Android M.
I get a new MAC address for WiFi. Google please answer, is it a Feature or a Bug? <comment><USER2> It is a feature, like:

[http://appleinsider.com/articles/14/06/09/mac-address- random...](http://appleinsider.com/articles/14/06/09/mac-address- randomization-joins-apples-heap-of-ios-8-privacy-improvements)</comment>


Apple Wins Fight over $14.9B Tax Bill in Blow to EU - <AUTHOR> https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-07-15/apple-wins-eu-court-fight-over-14-9-billion-tax-bill <comment><USER2> Interesting summary of the case in the article below.

The two key points were:

\- Arms Length principal

A big part of the Commission's case against Apple was that the agreements violated "the Arm's Length Principle", which the OECD frames as we should reject transfer-prices that would not be agreed by independent companies negotiating at arm's length. Apple and Ireland argued that this was not part of Irish Tax law, or EU legislation, rather a non-binding principal of tax reform.

\- Where should IP profits fall

Apple argued that a large proportion of the value it created was derived from IP developed in the US.

To me it does seem that European Commission was stretching State Aid beyond what it was designed for here. There is an definitely a challenge in harmonising tax of multinationals, and preventing 'races to the bottom' but this is different to State Aid legislation, designed to prevent the propping up of inefficient domestic champions with favourable treatment.

[http://competitionlawblog.kluwercompetitionlaw.com/2017/10/2...](http://competitionlawblog.kluwercompetitionlaw.com/2017/10/26/apple- state-aid-case-one-year-later-open-questions-ip-transfer-pricing-state- aid/?doing_wp_cron=1594811772.2785959243774414062500)

<comment><USER3> Profits has be taxed where it is made not where the product was made.

<comment><USER4> Are you saying that Apple doesn't pay VAT?

<comment><USER3> That's not what I meant. But technically yes, Apple doesn't pay VAT, the customer does.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I live in Ireland. This is a sad day. For years now I've been wondering what the Irish govt would do with BILLIONS of dollars.

We could have had an Irish space program! A monorail! We could have bought Greenland!

<comment><USER6> It's even sadder for other european countries losing taxe revenues which could be used to fund educational, health and anti-poverty programs.

<comment><USER7> Margrethe Vestager just wants to steal from the US. She's basically a thief of US tax dollars.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Been an Apple fanatic since ~1982.

I really wish Apple would just pay their taxes. They can afford it. In fact, they can't give away their money fast enough (stock buybacks).

Whatever's fair. Excuses like "maximal shareholder value" and "fiduciary responsibility" are just rationalizations.

Further, it could be a great competitive strategy. Akin to their virtue signaling on privacy.

Amazon's greatest competitive advantage is their lower cost of capital. If Apple paid their fair share, it gives them the moral authority to insist Amazon does too. I'm sure they'd have allies in that fight.

</comment><comment><USER9> This really is a sad day for European tax payers, for small businesses in Ireland even more so. How do politicians justify such agreements to their voters?

<comment><USER4> The agreement was made in the 80s and it single handedly brought Apple to multiple locations in Ireland instead of other European countries. I believe Apple is one of the largest employers in Cork.

<comment><USER9> It might be the largest employer in all of Ireland, while still only paying a small fraction of the taxes their workers pay

<comment><USER10> That's the deal Ireland made as a country. Favourable IP laws and low taxes for jobs.

I personally find it ethically wrong, but I have benefited from it my entire life.

It's also worth noting that this deal was originally done in 1991, when Apple were not as big as they are now.

The deal was renewed in 2007, pre iPhone. The renewal was the real mistake, to be honest.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


The Depression: If Only Things Were That Good - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/2011/10/09/sunday-review/the-depression-if-only-things-were-that-good.html

<comment><USER2> I suspect this article only applies to those with hindsight.

During the Great Depression " the United States economy was quietly making enormous strides during the 1930s. Television and nylon stockings were invented. Refrigerators and washing machines turned into mass-market products. Railroads became faster and roads smoother and wider."

But if you had asked people during the Great Depression about economic or technological progress, I suspect most would say it was almost non-existent.

Today we have significant advances in robotics, energy development/conservation, and medicine. These and other fields may be later referred to in the same light as the authors examples in the great depression.</comment>


Coreboot 4.11 - <AUTHOR> https://blogs.coreboot.org/blog/2019/11/19/announcing-coreboot-4-11/ <comment> 1-6 "Ron Minnich is a Software Engineer at Google. He has been writing firmware for 40 years, starting with the z80 and 6800. He's also a long time contributor in the Unix, BSD, Plan 9, and Linux communities. He started the LinuxBIOS project in 1999, which was renamed to coreboot in 2008 and is now used in tens of millions of Chromebooks. His most recent effort, LinuxBoot, is now part of the Linux Foundation and aims to bring the benefits of a full Linux kernel to several firmware environments, including coreboot, u-boot, and UEFI." [https://www.opencompute.org/blog/ronald-minnich-google- and-g...](https://www.opencompute.org/blog/ronald-minnich-google-and-gundrala- goud-microsoft-named-project-leads-for-the-ocp-open-system-firmware-project)

</comment><comment><USER2> As someone who doesn't know what Coreboot does, not having this information in the first paragraph of this post isn't super useful. Add to the problem that clicking on the Coreboot logo only takes me to the front page of the blog - and there are no links to the actual homepage...

<comment><USER3> "coreboot is an extended firmware platform that delivers a lightning fast and secure boot experience on modern computers and embedded systems. As an Open Source project it provides auditability and maximum control over technology." [https://coreboot.org/](https://coreboot.org/)

<comment><USER4> Which means nothing other than its open source and doesn't follow any standards.

If google put 1/2 the effort into edk2 the world would be a lot closer to a general purpose opensource firmware that actually works with things like option roms, and booting on random boards instead of some tiny subset of boards that google has beaten people into porting it onto.

<comment><USER5> Coreboot is laser focused on early initialization and leaves everything like option roms and disks and OS launching to the payload… which can be EDK2.

Coreboot is actually the easiest way to get pure EDK2 (without anything from vendor UEFI builds) running on any random Intel mainboard :)

<comment><USER4> Yes I know it can "chainload" edk, people have done similar things with uboot in the past. The point being that the low level init code could conform to the PE spec, which would be a lot cleaner implementation.

<comment><USER6> > The point being that the low level init code could conform to the PE spec

The spec that is available under "read only, but don't implement" terms[0] unless you manage to join a club that may or may not let you in[1] and can kick you out at any time with 30 days notice[2]? Not sure that's a good base for an open source project.

[0] [https://uefi.org/specifications](https://uefi.org/specifications) "By downloading any of the UEFI Specifications, you acknowledge that no license, express or implied, is granted to you to distribute, additionally reproduce, implement or otherwise use for any purpose (other than to read only) the UEFI Specifications"

[1] Section 2.1 in the "UEFI Adopter's Agreement" ([https://uefi.org/sites/default/files/resources/UEFI_Adopters...](https://uefi.org/sites/default/files/resources/UEFI_Adopters_Agreement_100907.pdf)): "This Agreement shall become effective only: (a) if executed by the Secretary (or another authorized representative of the Forum) and the Adopter"

[2] Section 2.2 of the same agreement: "shall continue until [...] terminated by either the Forum or the Adopter on 30 days' written notice."

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I was always interested in using Coreboot for "retro" machines that have buggy old vendor BIOSes, and may not even have updates available anymore (or easily found)

Is there anywhere I can find out about the actual status of things like Coreboot on Pentium III (Slot 1 or Socket 370) motherboards? I know they maintain a "compatibility list" but I'm not sure if these boards have been tested or if they'd have been lost to code churn

<comment><USER8> The lifeblood of FOSS drivers, or coreboot in this case, is developers who are using/interested in the machine. Unfortunately, I don't see many Pentium-III fans in the coreboot community. And there was a major refactor in the coreboot codebase since 4.0, the support of many old platforms have been killed.

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> I wish they had more support for consumer desktop motherboards, so I could flash my Asus board. Somehow coreboot seems to focus on laptops and server boards.

<comment><USER8> For a successful port: the hardware must attract the interest of a team of developers, so this hardware platform...

(1) must be available globally.

(2) must be valued by developers as worthwhile, i.e. for a specific propose.

(3) must be relatively easy to reverse engineer, e.g. platform is not too new.

Thinkpad laptops are already popular among developers and hackers, and used machines and motherboards can be obtained cheaply for a low price, each generation often uses a pretty standard design, only with a newer chipset. As a result, it became the "reference machine" for a lot of developers, including developers working on security and privacy projects. The server motherboard is a thing because there are hardware hackers who are interested in FOSS-friendly and secure server platforms.

On the other hand, there are huge numbers of consumer desktop motherboards with a lot of variations, every single one needs to be reverse-engineered independently. We don't see a platform to gain the critical mass yet.</comment></comment>


An Intuitive Guide to Linear Algebra (2012) - <AUTHOR> https://betterexplained.com/articles/linear-algebra-guide/ <comment><USER2> I recently finished going through MIT OCW's linear algebra class from Gilbert Strang. Without the struggle of doing the assignments, reading the text, and watching the lectures, I don't think I would have ever learned the content. While content like this and that from 3blue1brown are commendable and useful, it simply would not have lodged the ideas into my head.

Now that the ideas of things like vector spaces, norms, orthogonality, rank, basis, etc are nearly second nature, the concepts are useful as I study other branches of math which would feel impenetrable otherwise.

YMMV, and if you can learn from condensed materials go for it, but I might be too dumb for it work lol. I think the real benefit accrues to the author who had to work out how to teach these concepts to others.

<comment><USER3> > _While content like this and that from 3blue1brown are commendable and > useful, it simply would not have lodged the ideas into my head._

I'm not sure I understand your point. Are you just saying that this blog post isn't an adequate substitute for taking a course in linear algebra? (Of course it isn't. But who said it was?)

<comment><USER4> Unfortunately, for a lot of people, including undergraduates, the dopamine hit they get from watching a video or passively reading a textbook makes them believe that these are adequate substitutes for doing thousands of exercises.

In my university, undergraduates have admitted that they have done fewer than 50 questions throughout the entirety of my math course. Their grades obviously reflect that, but they will do the same next semester.

<comment><USER5> Can I press you to explain what you think dopamine is/does?

I'm curious because I'm a neuroscientist who occasionally works on dopaminergic stuff and "passively reading a textbook" is so far from the canonical examples we use for dopamine activity, but the idea of dopamine/dopamine 'hits' has taken on a life of its own that seems quite different from the neurotransmitter.

<comment><USER4> I am a physicist, so I will dare not make any technical neuroscience claims. I meant "dopamine" in the causal sense of people feeling pleasure from passively reading a book because they think it is useful work.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> While this explanation is certainly much clearer than what I remember of high school maths, I still have a pretty tough time following the formula examples.

When I see A(x) = ax, I'm not entirely sure how to read it.

Is A meant to be a function that accepts x? If so, why is the equivalent expression a * x? Is it supposed to be implied that function A also has some hidden value "a" that is going to be multiplied by the supplied value? Is this notation specific to multiplication, to this expression, or what?

Positing that something is 'intuitive' when it depends so much on additional contextual knowledge seems ever so slightly disingenuous as best, and slightly harmful at worst; it can make the reader feel as though they must be dumb for not understanding this 'intuitive' material.

I do acknowledge that this is linear algebra, and if one doesn't have a really solid grasp of notation of regular algebra it is likely to go over their heads, but the practical explanations (such as the slope rise/run example) are quite clear and relatively simple to follow; it follows that a simple explanation of the notation might be helpful too.

<comment><USER7> I agree that this was a bit confusing. Higher up in the article, it shows that a linear function is one that doesn't change when scaled:

F(a * x) = a * F(x)

This is showing the relationship between two uses of the same function.

Then, further along, we find:

"So, what types of functions are actually linear? Plain-old scaling by a constant, or functions that look like: F(x)=ax In our roof example, a=1/3"

I think in this second situation, F(x)=ax is not a relationship but rather a DEFINITION of the function F(x).

In programming terms:

function F(x: real) : real;

begin

      Result := x * (1/3);

end;

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> This is ok but nothing is as intuitive as 3B1B's series on YouTube that has been posted hundreds of times on HN [0].

Linear algebra is really about linear transformations of vector spaces, which is not captured in this blog post.

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

<comment><USER9> > Linear algebra is really about linear transformations of vector spaces, > which is not captured in this blog post.

I... disagree. Some of linear algebra is about that. And it's probably a good way to view it that way when learning.

But some of my current work (coding theory) involves linear algebra over finite fields. We use results from linear algebra, and interpret our problem using matrices, but really at no point are we viewing what we're doing as transforming a vector space, we're just solving equations with unknowns.

<comment><USER10> I think this is spot on. Depending on what you're doing, a matrix can be:

        - A linear transformation
        - A basis set of column vectors
        - A set of equations (rows) to be solved
           - (your example: parity equations for coding theory)
        - The covariance of elements in a vector space
        - The Hessian of a function for numerical optimization
        - The adjacency representation of a graph
        - Just a 2D image (compression algorithms)
        ... (I'm sure there are plenty of others)

For some of these, the matrix is really just a high dimensional number. You (rarely?) never think of covariance in a Kalman filter as a linear transform, but you still need to take its Eigen vectors if you want to draw ellipses.

<comment><USER11> The first three can reasonably be thought of as defining linear transformations. For linear systems of equations A x = b, x is an unknown vector in the input space that is mapped by A to b.

Both covariance matrices and Hessians are more naturally thought of as tensors, not matrices (and therefore not linear transformations). That is, they take in two vectors as input and produce a single real number as output.

As for graph adjacency matrix, this can actually be thought of as a linear transformation on the vector space where the basis vectors correspond to nodes in the graph. Linear combinations of these basis vectors correspond to probability distributions over the graph (if properly normalized).

2D images... Yes, these cannot really be interpreted as linear transformations. But I'd say these aren't really matrices in the mathematical sense.

<comment><USER10> If you squint hard enough, you can see all of them as linear transformations (even the 2D images :-).

I politely disagree about covariance and Hessians. I can squint and say that the Hessian provides a change in gradient when multiplied by a delta vector. Similarly for covariance... Or you could look at it as one half of the dot product for a Bhattacharyya distance, which is just a product of three matrices (row vector, square matrix, col vector). No need for tensors yet.

That is unless you decide to squint hard enough to see everything as tensors! :-)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I... I still really struggle with this. I'm a smart person, I've got a bachelors of engineering, I've been a professional software developer for around 14 years now, and I've built a house. But there is something about degree-level maths and beyond that I find deeply unintuitive in a way that software development isn't.

Through comments here I found 3blue1brown's (clearly much loved) videos. By the third video I was shouting, "why for the love of god would we be doing this"? Based on this reaction I suspect that the content neither has intrinsic appeal to me, nor does it have obvious use in my work, projects, or life.

Pre-degree maths though, I love. My A-level maths really changed how I saw the world, and I make use of it reasonably often (well, often enough to not forget it).

I think I'm writing this here because most other commenters seem to really grasp this subject, or feel that they grasp it better having seen these videos. I'm honestly happy for you. However, if anyone is reading this who doesn't feel like that, then know you're not alone :-)

<comment><USER13> This is typical for many people. You love pre-college math because you have intuitive understanding, while college-level maths offer a new level of abstraction that you may not feel familiar with from the get-go.

It's perfectly okay not to learn linear algebra, by the way, especially when you don't find any incentive to do so. Otherwise, you'll find linear algebra to be one of the most intuitive tools to model so many problems.

If you do want to learn linear algebra or any other higher math, I'd strongly recommend you focus on understanding concepts intuitively first, to the point that you find many exercises in a text book straight forward. Watching 3blue1brown is a good start, but do move forward with deeper treatment. The book I find very usual is David Lay's Linear Algebra and Its Applications: [https://www.amazon.com/Linear-Algebra-Its- Applications-5th/d...](https://www.amazon.com/Linear-Algebra-Its- Applications-5th/dp/032198238X). Lay sets up a really intuitive geometric framework to explain the intuition of linear transformation with sufficient rigor.

<comment><USER14> Got any similar recommendations for college-level probability/stats stuff?

<comment><USER13> No. I took only a few courses on probability and mathematical stats. The books are A First Course in Probability and some some textbook on Mathematical Stats. The courses were probably not advanced enough, as I found them reasonably straightforward. I struggled a bit on what exactly is a random variable, but once that was internalized, everything else followed. I heard that advanced courses like random processes were really hard, but I'm not at that level.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> If this interests you, you should check out the bivector community [https://bivector.net/](https://bivector.net/).

Join the discord [https://discord.gg/vGY6pPk](https://discord.gg/vGY6pPk).

Check out a demo [https://observablehq.com/@enkimute/animated- orbits](https://observablehq.com/@enkimute/animated-orbits)

Also at the end of February, there is geometric algebra event in Belgium. [https://bivector.net/game2020.html](https://bivector.net/game2020.html) All the big names in the field will be there.

</comment><comment><USER16> This seems to be "what are matrices and how do you work with them" and not linear algebra. I mean that can be useful sometimes but seems more like something you would teach in a numerics course instead.

Actually, I think this way of explaining and motivating things (linear map==matrix) will get really, really confusing once you try to understand changes of bases or eigenvalue decomposition. A linear map is something that takes vectors and spits out vectors while preserving the vector structure (i.e. addition and scalar multiplication on the input give you addition and scalar multiplication of the output).

</comment><comment><USER17> A thread from 2015: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8920638](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8920638)

Discussed at the time: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4633662](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4633662)

</comment><comment><USER18> Viewing Linear Algebra as the study of linear operators instead of matrices makes everything so much simpler.

Of course AB != BA

Composition makes sense

Inverse makes sense

This is the book that helped me get it [http://linear.axler.net/](http://linear.axler.net/)

<comment><USER19> I really like "matrices are the coordinate form of linear transforms." In the LA class I took the professor made a pretty big deal out of that, first by defining "lexicographic matrix basis" so he could write out matrices as vectors and then talking about mapping between the three different ideas.

There's still stuff he said that I'm unpacking today... that was a dense class.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> Goes to show how different people have different tastes. I find this type of exposition very confusing and very unenlightening. Give me a Landau-style "minimalistic"/"focused" explanation any day. Not to mention, it tries so hard to simplify things to a simple analogy (the spreadsheet thing) that it ends up being plain misleading. In other words: "Make things as simple as then can be, but no simpler."

</comment><comment><USER21> I love explainers like this, but it frankly makes me a little angry that the vast majority of the math teachers I had in highschool and college taught in the awful way described in the setup to the piece.

Why is that? Has anyone studied it, or is there even a solid anecdotal explanation? The best one I can imagine is many of these professors simply don't care much for teaching and are more focused on their research, which is still infuriating but at least an explanation.

I ended up with an undergrad in applied math, though I'm a software engineer now. I like math, but I feel like I never got to be all that great at it. I suspect I would've enjoyed it more and achieved more with explanations like these.

<comment><USER22> How much of this explainer however seems better to us precisely because of the more comprehensive knowledge and understanding we already have?

For example the author uses the word function liberally in the explanation. However, when studying functions in school in math it was super complicated for me. It was only after I started programming, learning the programming language meaning of function, and then when I was reintroduced to mathematical functions through functional programming that I truly grasped mathematical functions and all the stuff I was taught in school.

I'm not arguing that school level math does not need to be improved. I just think we should be cautious that because an explanation that seems intuitive to us now after having gained a complete introduction to all math concepts as well as programming (esp on HN) may not necessarily be as intuitive when students who are only exposed to a very small subset of mathematical concepts encounter them.

<comment><USER23> For sure there is an effect on Reddit and other places where someone will post a question such as, "I'm having trouble with my Calc class, what is a good book?" and people seriously answer _Calculus on Manifolds_.

Now, CoM is a classic, a real great book, but it is useful only to people who have reached a certain level of mathematical maturity. That, presumably, is not the questioner.

A version of this is that I also see people who write, "I didn't understand this topic when I took the course but now years later, I see it is all actually very easy."

(I call this Second Book Syndrome because I don't know of a common name for it. I understand this to be what Zen people mean by the "Gateless Gate," that after struggling with something at great length a person can come to see that there is no real difficulty. But I've never heard anyone else apply that name to this phenomenon and I'm not Zen trained so I'm not sure that is right either.)

<comment><USER24> Once you understand monads, you lose the ability to explain monads. Hence the number of monads tutorials grows at an exponential rate as every new understander tries to explain them and fails.

it's a fun problem in teaching

<comment><USER25> > _Once you understand... you lose the ability to explain_

Sorry, this does not make sense to me.

<comment><USER26> Douglas Crockford on Monads:

In addition to its being good and useful, it's also cursed and the curse of the monad is that once you get the epiphany, once you understand - "oh that's what it is" \- you lose the ability to explain it to anybody else.

[https://youtu.be/dkZFtimgAcM](https://youtu.be/dkZFtimgAcM)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> Already this is so helpful, as someone with only a partial high school math background. The visual "pouring" analogy alone made it worth the read.

</comment><comment><USER28> This is a nice resource - I wrote one myself as well which is mostly based on the series by 3Blue1Brown, as well as other resources which I found useful and which used a visual approach to introducing linear algebra.

You can find my guide here:

[https://github.com/photonlines/Intuitive-Overview-of- Linear-...](https://github.com/photonlines/Intuitive-Overview-of-Linear- Algebra- Fundamentals/blob/master/PDF/An%20Intuitive%20Overview%20of%20Linear%20Algebra%20Fundamentals.pdf)

</comment><comment><USER29> I remember taking Advanced Algebra Honors in 10th grade. It was basically Algebra II with a few (seemingly teacher-selected based on the experience of students who had a different teacher) advanced topics thrown in. One of them was matrices, and I was completely stumped by them. I now encounter them all the time, and wish I'd been able to wrap my head around them when I was younger.

<comment><USER30> 20+ years ago I combined learning JavaScript and Linear Algebra [https://mkaz.blog/math/javascript-linear-algebra- calculator/](https://mkaz.blog/math/javascript-linear-algebra-calculator/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER31> Thank you for writing this up, or reposting.

I agree that it is better to understand math, and computer science, intuitively first. Learning the basics instead of learning how to think in them forces memorization and is frankly in a time gone by.

If only I could've been taught this way when I was younger, then I'd actually be any good at any advanced math.

</comment><comment><USER32> The only way to test if you've 'understood' something is to apply it to real- world problems.

If it works - then you understood it. If it doesn't - then you didn't.

"Understanding" without way of external verification seems no different to dopamine-chasing.

Measuring on output and all that...

<comment><USER33> The only way to test is if you talk with an expert and he says you have understood. There are many things in linear algebra that you can use in practice even when you didn't really understand them. This is the reason why self-studying certain topics is very hard, you still need (good) teachers to give you constant feedback.

<comment><USER32> That seems like a verbalistic notion of 'understanding'.

How do I falsify the expert's claims about my understanding?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> OP Here:

I just wanted to give some context to how I found this page, and why I thought it would be good to post.

I may be putting myself on the spot here: I never took a linear algebra course in undergrad. It was a heavily encouraged option, of course, but I felt I understood the basic rules enough to not really need formal study. I opted to study other areas, partially motivated by a fear I wouldn't do well and would hurt my GPA (my god was I vain, I feel I could do so much more studying full- time with my current world-view).

As time has gone on, and ML and quantum computing have simply blown up since I graduated in 2014, I quickly realized the magnitude of my mistake. I have frantically self-studied for years to try to make up the gaps in my mathematical understanding, and linear algebra has come up time and time again. I can do the processes, but they never clicked, I had no intuition.

I want to help others in my position cut to the chase, and study the highest yield, most intuition giving resources.

I actually developed the mental model shared in this guide on my own, and was positively delighted to find to this while thinking over a comment I was drafting on here. This page lays things out so clearly. The component steps are intuitive and I can commit them to memory/recall what they mean without needing to dig up my notes to self!

===

I find this page gives an excellent foundation, and goes great with these resources:

* A web site which clearly shows how to do matrix multiplication in a way that's easy to recall, it makes the procedure like riding a bike:

[http://matrixmultiplication.xyz/](http://matrixmultiplication.xyz/)

 _Huge thanks to Jeremy Howard of fast.ai for mentioning this in one of his lectures, this tool is how I finally got matrix multiplication to click_

* A paper named "An Introduction to Quantum Computing" (bear with me, it's superbly well written and very approachable):

[https://arxiv.org/abs/0708.0261](https://arxiv.org/abs/0708.0261)

Page 3 of that paper lays out matrix multiplication (e.g.: applying a "transformation matrix" in the spatial parlance of 3blue1brown's videos) as a traversal of a directed graph. A very useful understanding, and shows how generalizable the tools of linear algebra really are in my opinion.

* The essence of linear algebra, by 3blue1brown (fantastic for a geometric/"transformation of space" view of linear alg):

[https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLZHQObOWTQDPD3MizzM2x...](https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLZHQObOWTQDPD3MizzM2xVFitgF8hE_ab)

</comment><comment><USER34> [http://immersivemath.com/ila/index.html](http://immersivemath.com/ila/index.html)

An interactive Linear Algebra course to complement the article.

</comment><comment><USER35> I love betterexplained.

Does this guy have a patreon?

<comment><USER36> He has a business that sells courses and books right on the homepage.

</comment></comment><comment><USER37> Are there resources like this for Calculus/Prob/Stats?

</comment><comment><USER38> Does something like this exist for differential equations?

<comment><USER34> May be this can help you:

[https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLZHQObOWTQDNPOjrT6KVl...](https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLZHQObOWTQDNPOjrT6KVlfJuKtYTftqH6)

This is 3Blue1Brown's video series on Differential Equations. Do support him on Patreon if this really helps you.

</comment></comment><comment><USER39> Speaking for Linear Algebra, I learnt more reading for a few hours the appendix of "The Design of Rijndael: AES - The Advanced Encryption Standard" than I did in 6 months of theoretical university teaching full of useless technical terms and solutions in search of problems...

<comment><USER40> > solutions in search of problems...

This sounds like it was meant to be pejorative, but it's what (applied) linear algebra, and applied mathematics more generally, _is_. Anyone can learn about a certain mathematical topic upon realising it's the one relevant to the problem they're facing—and learn it way more quickly, due to motivation and focus, than they would in a general-purpose course on the topic; the art is in recognising what mathematics is relevant, and you can't do that if you've never heard of it before. Having a library of (conceptual, not cookbook) solution hooks on which to hang your problems is how you get to be good at using mathematics.

<comment><USER39> Of course it was meant to be pejorative and that pretty much summarize my experience through university. In this particular case, the teacher wasn't giving a rat arse about his class and was merely there for the safe job, pension, sprinkles by some "research".

Anyhow, I disagree with that top-down approach, which seems to be very... European. I much prefer to follow a more logical path where the problem preclude the introduction to the solution.

<comment><USER40> > Anyhow, I disagree with that top-down approach, which seems to be very... > European. I much prefer to follow a more logical path where the problem > preclude the introduction to the solution.

I agree that it's easier to _learn_ that way, but it's not much use when solving real-world problems; you can learn the techniques relevant to the solution once you know what they are, but, if you haven't met them before, you won't recognise that they're the right ones.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Our company's remote work system failed - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/startup-grind/why-our-companys-remote-work-system-failed-c68ce8ccfc9c <comment><USER2> I ran 5 teams remotely spread out at different times in my life so far. The outcome of my success or failure seemed to hang on my due diligence. The more flaky and relaxed I became, the more my employees became less productive and eventually less confident of my ability to lead. The more I checked in with people and made sure everyone was on point and constantly provided clear thought out plans / tasks, assigning to the appropriate people, things went really well. I did learn this the very stupid way by ruining some projects by my laziness and didn't know how to weed people out either but it really comes down to the person in charge IMO, not much having to do with remote work as in either case with the office or remote, you need to hire the right people for your requirement which does include your working environment.

<comment><USER3> In my experience, most problems boil down to "management".

If management is clear, supportive, and attentive, then things are good.

As a leader, doing this is not easy.

There is often a thin line between being attentive, and being overbearing.

The same can be said for being supportive: helping employees through a rough patch is usually a wise move from a business perspective, but at the same time, you need to know when it's time to cut your losses.

That kind of decision is never easy to make.

And being clear and unambiguous requires placing some tough bets on direction and strategy: you are going to have to say "no" to a lot of tempting possibilities, because the alternative is to try and chase everything that comes your way (a pattern I like to call "Chaos Driven Development").

<comment><USER4> Main q is does a remote team need more management time - which is a limited resource If I am a manger I want to make best use of my time.

Organising the structure and location of the team to reduce overhead.

<comment><USER2> Its a trade off. You have to be more organized and use the right tools if you are remote. You have to pick the right kinds of personalities to work with you to be remote. If you don't do that, then you will have a harder time than being in the office. It completely depends on YOU.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Some points are valid, but some others show a lack of proper tools.

For example:

> Assumptions and lack of documentation became obvious. [..] people reinvent > wheel because they are unaware another team member has taken action already.

I can't see how this is related to working from home or not. If your employees aren't documenting what they do and relying on "face to face meetings" to check in on what they did, well, good luck with that, especially when teams start growing in size.

> People who didn't come to the office missed out on things like ad hoc team > lunches and dinners, discussions on the latest tech when a delivery arrives, > tastings (wine, whisky, coffee, snacks, and a lot more).

Again: lunches and dinners aren't documentation tools. Missing out on snacks, wine, whisky? Really?

> Efficiency suffers. [...] there can be lags in responses that wouldn't > happen in the office.

"Lags in responses" are productive, imho. I'd rather keep on doing what I'm focused on doing _right now_ , then answer to your question in HipChat, than be interrupted to address "whatever's on your mind".

<comment><USER6> I don't see how working remotely can ever replace the human interaction of working in one place. People forget, humans are not machines. They are biologically wired to work better in groups than alone, and our biology includes the ability to signal others using our face, body, voice, and even the way we perform an action. Voice is still a faster way of communicating than anything else despite our 60's sci-fi level technology.

Remote work will never replace face to face contact for jobs where high amounts of collaboration are needed, too many parts of the signal are lost.

Take for example a few jobs ago when our servers went down because of a local internet outage. The IT guy literally stood up from his desk and said "holy shit anyone that knows our infrastructure get in the meeting room now." We could hear the warning bleeps from the server room merging into an incomprehensible chorus, the death rattle of a company hours from implosion. The seriousness was obvious just from his actions and the sound of his voice. The response time was a few seconds.

How long would this take if we were spread across timezones with different hours and variable lag time between communication? If the internet is down is there any backup? How much would it cost to give every single employee a backup method of communicating? How does an employee separate a desperate please for help from the endless stream of BS emails and messages that aren't terribly important?

Working in one place gives you a very powerful and natural means of communication that's nearly instant and can't be stopped by any hardware or software failure, save multiple employees dying simulatanously.

<comment><USER7> _I don 't see how working remotely can ever replace the human interaction of working in one place._

For things that require physical presence, like IT, sure. Most people don't work on stuff like that. For those people, video meetings, slack, etc., can be fine for keeping in touch and having the entire team feel connected.

And, yes, having a working internet is the single point of failure for remote work. It's reasonable for the office to have redundant connections, but not for people. For the 16 years I've lived in my current place, I've probably not had a connection for no more than 24-48 hours.

<comment><USER8> And during those outages, the telephone generally works.

Everyone running to a conference room -- feels very Michael Scott to me -- and almost always just as unnecessary.

I wonder about those who claim face-to-face is best explain how Github and Basecamp seem to do just fine. Others point to how Yahoo eliminated remote as some kind of argument supporting same, yet I'd hardly consider Yahoo to be a good example of anything. If "good enough for Yahoo" is an argument, then count me out.

Unless you physically have to touch something, remote can always work (and even be better.) It's a question of establishing processes that work. The 'genre' of remote isn't the problem -- it's always the implementation.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Somehow I was expecting a longer account of things with more instances than "we hired this guy in Taipei, and he didn't like working remotely" \- did I miss something?

<comment><USER10> Yeah, he starts of saying they have over 40 people, then says one of them tried working remotely and didn't keep it up. Seems misleading.

<comment><USER11> And they also still have two people working remotely. I guess "Our company's remote work system worked for some people but not for others" doesn't make for a very good headline.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> This read like a poorly research article where the people running the company didn't even see what makes remote work feasible before allowing it. The goal seems to be to get a lot of page views via controversy so you would scroll to the bottom and see the ad for this person's company.

</comment><comment><USER13> I stopped at "Face-to-face meetings are most efficient (examples include Reddit & Yahoo banning remote work)".

If you're giving Yahoo under Marissa Mayer as an example of good management, your company was doomed from the start.

<comment><USER14> I doubt Marissa Mayer sits in on every meeting...

<comment><USER13> If you research her you'll notice that all the stuff about burnout being a myth and being able to do great work by sleeping at work under your desk somehow stopped applying to her when she got to be management :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> > _After three days at coffee shops, your neck starts to hurt._

Don't work from coffee shops. That's just a bad idea anyway, as your CSO will tell you.

> _Three days at home and you feel like a loner._

Nope. I work from home 4 days out of 5, and I'm constantly in communication with my workmates. I also have friends outside of work. Even then, I like being alone. Don't hire autophobes to work remotely!

> _Face-to-face meetings are most efficient_

I hear people say this, but rarely do I see evidence. Informal face-to-face meetings often end faster, but they often leave important issues unexamined. Face-to-face meetings also prevent everyone from working when they're happening. With email and even instant messaging, I can participate in a conversation even if I'm not available when somebody else wants to start it.

> _Technology is always iffy. In meetings, it boils down to Wi-Fi speeds, > audio quality, and lags_

Learn to use text to communicate. IRC/Slack works fine over slow connections. Plus, the minutes write themselves!

> _Remote work doesn't allow for quick adaptation or response to ad hoc > issues._

Your remote workers should have phones. Reserve them for when you actually _need_ to contact them urgently and they won't just ignore them.

> _Some PMs are understanding of time zone differences and ad hoc travel > reschedules while others prefer fixing meeting times and office hours._

This is a problem with your PMs. You can't have remote working whilst allowing PMs to run projects in a way that's not compatible with it.

> _Balls are dropped or people reinvent the wheel because they are unaware > another team member has taken action already._

Anyone who's worked in an office will know that also happens in an office. It's important to have a method of tracking what work is being done, or not being done, whether or not everyone is in the same office, unless your company is 3 people sitting around the same desk.

</comment><comment><USER16> I made a statement not too long ago to someone that "in a business transaction, it's totally fair to blame".

I think it may be the business model that is to blame here, not the policy to allow remote workers or schedule time for in person visits. Some models probably work with remote workers. Some probably don't.

I'm willing to put my money on the one's that do work with remote workers are non-viral models, enjoy a healthy holistic growth, and encourage focus on quality of life vs. access to unique skills in the workforce.

The reverse is true of highly viral models. Those models enjoy rapid growth, large cash injections, highly competitive workforce, optimizations for infra, sales approaches, etc.

This article has good information, given it's taken in context.

<comment> gm-conspiracy Shooting from the hip here, but I am starting to see that ADD style management is not compatible w/ remote work of teams greater than a handful of humans.

Does that company have documented procedures that are followed and kept up-to- date, or are new hires trained via lore?

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> "Our team members prefer just walking over to a colleague's desk to address whatever is on their mind."

Not to quibble too much, but as with everywhere, this depends on the office culture. It's depressing but there are many places where people prefer to use Hipchat and Slack to ping a nearby coworker rather than bother to take off headphones to talk to the person several feet away.

<comment><USER18> I would almost always very much rather someone asynchronously get my attention than interrupt me. There's literally no way to do the former by "walking over". Hovering doesn't count.

<comment><USER19> This. I'll message or email people _right in front of me_. It also gives me the time to collect my thoughts and think things over in a way that real time conversations simply do not.

Sometimes the message will be "Lunch?" and we'll flap our meat to make noise on the walk over to said lunch, during said lunch, and back from said lunch. Or the carpool to/from work.

Nothing depressing about it.

<comment><USER17> It's practical, sure, but there's also something alienating about disappearing into the digital space when the physical one is right there. Supplanting social interactions and all that.

<comment><USER20> I don't think it's meant to supplant interactions as much as it is to respect mental space. My coworkers are very much so about the social interaction and their breaks are sacrosanct. (Stopping Russians when they decide it's time for tea is near impossible). But sometimes people are just deep in thought during their work time and sometimes you just need to have an hour or two of uninterrupted thinking time to get stuff done. This goes doubly so for open shared offices; none of us have so much as dividers much less our own rooms, so learning to respect personal space is really important.

Everyone is still big on the social part - most people all you need to do is ping then when you want coffee or tea and you'll get a message back or have someone at your desk ready to go in a moments notice. Once in awhile though, you get nothing until hours later, which is just a "busy" signal. (no one bothers with statuses since they either forget or no one pays attention anyways).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> With respect to the OP, I think remote work is the wave of the future. We've been doing it in my large company (financial software co) in a large US city for over a decade. As communication technology has improved (video chat, SaaS apps like Slack, Github) distance has become no barrier... with some caveats.

We've found it works best when:

Near timezone- Remote people are in the same or near timezone as the home office. This makes it easy to align the work day, schedule meetings, etc.

Remote shared location- making sure a group of people who work remotely have access to a shared location where they can work together has worked far better than people working from home, coffee shop, etc.

Culture- as I write this I'm in a large open floor plan style office. All of the lead devs are chatting away with their team members located in Canada and S.America. We love the ability to pull people in easily and work as though we are all here. Frankly, we talk to the "remote" people in video chats more often than many of the people in other departments. When the day's over we head home to families, sports, etc.

It doesn't work if..

-Your culture stresses in-person interactions during and after work.

-You don't have a culture of trust.

-Your company won't pay for great communication apps & technology including lots of monitors.

-Your team works at home and is distracted by kids, spouses, etc, etc.

Frankly as tech gets better I think that one day the idea of moving to a large city like SF, Austin, NYC, etc for work purposes will be seen as ridiculous, outdated and needlessly costly. Likely there will be shared office hubs in small-to-medium sized cities around the world where people can work with other people in similar remote hubs.

</comment><comment><USER22> Remote work:

\- requires more management, not less

\- requires more documentation and communication, not less

\- can be equally as expensive (all-in) as colocating.

If you're going remote because you think you don't need to manage people, don't care about documentation or process, and want to save money, you are throwing your company away.

<comment><USER23> More documentation and more communication is a good thing.

How much management does it take to run an office? "Office Managers" are a thing. They aren't even managing projects.

I don't yet understand how remote work can be as expensive as colocating - perhaps in an extreme circumstance? Surely not in general. Perhaps if you're having your remote people travel several times a year to meet up, but that's optional and depending on the area of the world the office would be, it could still be cheaper than the travel.

Of course you still need to manage people, but in my experience it doesn't take more management, just more discipline. If your people aren't disciplined enough to care about documentation or process or communication, you are throwing your company away.

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> Skimming the article, it doesn't look like they had any system at all (or its just not mentioned).

Daily Scrum, Jira/ticket tracking, Hipchat/slack are are essential tools whether you are remote or in the same physical office.

<comment><USER25> Agreed. There didn't seem to be any processes, tool, and/or adjustments to make a non-centralized network work. I got the impression "assume" is a popular word there.

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> " _We still value giving our team members flexibility to work efficiently. Currently, two team members are remote working while traveling / living in different countries. Within the framework of self-management and flexibility, these "exceptional" situations aren't seen as unfair by colleagues, but a different lifestyle choice._"

Prediction: those working remotely will leave or stop working remotely. If everyone else is local and the major form of communication is to drop by their desk, anyone remote will be out of the loop most of the time. That sucks.

</comment><comment><USER27> They set themselves up to fail when they all lived each near other and set up an office. At that point, they were not a remote company, they were just people who worked from home a lot.

Working remotely is a totally different mindset, with different tools, different ways of communicating. When you have NO options to get together in person, you must develop the tools and techniques to make your communications work. These guys gave themselves an out, so they never had to do that.

<comment><USER28> I sometimes describe that as the difference between being "remote" and being "distributed." When you're remote, it means you are distant from _some_ central location. A distributed company has no central location.

You're totally right that being distributed forces a company to develop different skills. Electronic communication becomes primary. You have to work hard to eliminate "privileged" information channels (because they de-privilege everyone else.)

I wasn't too impressed with the level of introspection in the article. It seems to be one of those "CEO's Medium article as marketing" bits.

<comment><USER29> _> I sometimes describe that as the difference between being "remote" and being "distributed."_

I've seen it described as the difference between "remote friendly" and "remote first".

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> (Disclaimer (?): worked from home for 2 years. Don't in my current role)

It's interesting.

Many proponents of remote work point out how much more effective it makes them.

The thing is that really doesn't matter. The thing that matters is how well the team works.

I'm a big proponent of asynchronous messaging when things aren't needed immediately. BUT there are times when immediate answers are needed, and the fact that this breaks someone's concentration is less important than keeping the team working smoothly.

<comment><USER13> However, those times are _rare_ and 98% of a remote team's communication needs are best done in text only asynchronous mode.

Incidentally, this is a good way for people to actually take phone/voice calls seriously - when they're rare, it really means it's important.

<comment><USER30> _However, those times are rare and 98% of a remote team 's communication needs are best done in text only asynchronous mode._

I'm unconvinced.

I'm far from an advocate for pair-programming, but nevertheless I have seen how well it can work. It seems to me that that "shared brain" deep and rapid communication is extremely synchronous.

I wouldn't argue that it is _required_ 98% of the time, but I also think that it being unnecessary 98% of the time is a exaggeration (if we measure based on the _team 's_ overall output somehow. Measuring it is of course impossible, but as a though experiment..)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> As they say in the analytics world: "sample size".

One person's experience is not a compelling argument against remote work. Thanks for sharing though!

</comment><comment><USER31> I would love to see some research on just how much effect "water-cooler conversations" really have. In my entire career, I have never witnessed a casual conversation about ideas in the office turn into actual requirements with stakeholders and a deadline.

<comment><USER13> Water cooler conversations are for getting raises/promotions.

That's why if you want to work remotely, it's best to do it in an all remote setup that's fair to everyone.

</comment></comment><comment><USER32> You don't live the remote work system therefore it fails for you. I also think that when you mix remote and office work there is always something which some people will miss out in conversation and people will start reinventing the wheel. Look e.g. at GitLab and especially GitLab's Handbook... they work remotely and tend to write everything down. Nothing against office work but I've seen way to often that mixed remote and office workers situation fails.

</comment><comment><USER33>
      >> less than 10% annual turnover for people who pass probation

I would love to see companies willing to give this data in their post on the 'Who is Hiring' thread. That alone tells me this is probably a pretty good place to work.

<comment><USER34> "10% annual turnover" without knowing the size of the company is meaningless. If there's 3000 employees that's a pretty bad sign. If there's 5 employees, that's actually worse because someone has been cut in half.

<comment><USER35> I'd also prefer a team/department size. I don't really care if all the sales staff are happy, I do care if the developers have high turnover.

<comment><USER34> As someone whose first startup failed due to a complete lack of sales, I don't agree. It's easy to dismiss any particular business function you're not interested in, but entirely wrong too. Everyone has a role to play - even the happyiedt engineering team won't keep a business going if you're building something that needs people to sell the product.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> I think part of the answer is going into the office, just not necessarily your company's. You can still get the dedicated desk, large monitor, coffee & snacks and adult interaction but without all the distracting co-workers.

</comment><comment><USER37> There has been a flurry of remote work pros/cons posts and discussions recently. In the end, it is what works best for the team. There is no one size fits all.

A lot of people prefer the distraction free work environment, but I would argue that LOC/hour or developer velocity but not be what is best for the _entire_ team. If everything is isolated and everything has deep domain knowledge, heads down can work fine. When that is not the case, it requires a lot of active investment in over communicating between local/remote people and explicit use of lots of tools.

If the business prefers everyone local, they have to also acknowledge that along with the ad hoc sharing and other benefits, there are also downsides. I've worked at top 5 internet properties where you ended up being in 6 hours of meetings a day. A lot of developers also find it hard to concentrate in a fully open space. The business needs to recognize this and provide smaller, team based areas that are separate from everyone else. They also likely need smaller isolated rooms for people who work best in a quiet and distraction free environment.

I think the thing that I've seen missing in all of these discussions recently is that it has been very _I_ centric. "I hate open floor plan." or "I tried remote workers at my business". This narrative needs to acknowledge that a project/product team is a group of people and compromises will be needed by _everyone_ if the team is to be its most successful at adding value for the business. Well, at least I think so...

</comment><comment><USER38> Imho with a good foundation of processes remote work can be managed by anyone.

The key is that you must work in documented process flows like ITIL, change management, service requests, incidents.

If everyone does that then it's trivial for any manager to get oversight. Problem is that a lot of very smart and driven people hate being penned up like that.

</comment><comment><USER39> Remote work can be good if the managers have really strong communication (and psychology) skills and technical ability.

My experience of remote work is that a lot of managers are naturally distrustful and have a tendency to set very short (unrealistic) deadlines (to make sure that they get all of the employee's hours) - This forces remote workers to either work crazy hours or rush things and produce lower quality work.

Over time, the managers become acclimatized to the lower quality code and their expectations for development speed go up. The number of bugs in the system increase and developers spend more and more time fixing other people's bugs.

The ironic thing is that fast developers tend to get all the new features while the cautious ones are the ones who end up having to fix the bugs (produced in a large part by the fast developers).

<comment> gm-conspiracy I am not trying to be an ass, nor twist your words.

Would you say that local team dev work does not require a manager, or local team dev work can be achieved with a manager that lacks communication, psychology, and technical skills?

</comment></comment><comment><USER40> So the title of the article is technically true, but they had 4 people in their company that tried doing remote work and decided they didn't like it. Not everyone will prefer remote work, and those 4 people apparently did not.

It doesn't seem too notable to me that, for a grand total of four people, they ended up preferring not working remotely. Meanwhile the article suggests that it's at least a decent sized company that tried this and something catastrophic happened as a result of it, which is what I was expecting going in.

</comment><comment><USER29> _> Our team members prefer just walking over to a colleague's desk to address whatever is on their mind._

Of course. Nearly everyone prefers just walking up to a colleague.

However, nearly everyone _also_ prefers that colleagues _not_ just walk up to _them_.

<comment><USER41> Solution for this is twofold:

1 - Do ask questions through Slack, etc

2 - _Do make sure you 're responsive_ and if you're not don't complain people come and ask you directly

<comment><USER42> I don't think this will necessarily help. In my experience some people who use Slack consider responsiveness as getting an answer right away. This isn't that different from coming and asking directly - it still interrupts your current thinking process.

More important is to understand how async communication works. Otherwise, you have to create a physical boundary (remote work) to enforce this.

<comment><USER43> _In my experience some people who use Slack consider responsiveness as getting an answer right away._

That's why I still fundamentally prefer e-mail (with a sensible set of mailing lists and an easily browsable archive) for serious decision making. IRC or Slack are great for building a community atmosphere but best reserved for more ephemeral things.

<comment><USER8> I fundamentally prefer Slack. I don't have threads of various conversations spread across multiple emails and replies, I also don't have to remember to add someone to a email thread, for example.

Also anyone that needs to be in a conversation is in the Slack already. File sharing, code sharing -- all that is much easier than email. With Threads -- conservations are more focused and organized. In-chat images are also super simple (as opposed to sharing actual images or links to images that require clicking as in email.)

I despise email and hate phone calls even more.

I think the 'problem' with Slack is how some people use it. The 'expectation' of a quick answer isn't Slack's fault.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER44> Depends on the person, team, and company. I've yet to see a company do local offices and remote work successfully at the same time. While there are plenty of examples of remote first companies having success. Seems like a communication issue.

<comment><USER45> I work for a SaaS company that started with an office in Indianapolis. We still have that office where many of our people work. However, a large portion of us work remotely. We are spread across Europe, North America, and South America.

We've been growing like crazy and things have been going well. The important thing is to make an effort to level the playing field between remote and local workers. It also helps that parts of our leadership team are also remote.

I believe success with remote work requires having the right kind of company culture. Everyone has to be aware of the pitfalls of remote work and have the tools, knowledge, and gumption to avoid them.

Some people end up not being able to swing it and others thrive. The biggest advantage we have had is being able to hire from a much larger talent pool.

</comment></comment><comment><USER46> This is "I had a bad experience with X so here's why X is bad"

</comment><comment><USER47> lol he referred to team dinners as a good thing you miss out on.</comment>


Show HN: mono/color: Very small, responsive, dual-themed CSS framewor - <AUTHOR> https://asvvvad.github.io/mono-color <comment><USER2> Would be a nice addition to be able to toggle the dark / light themes on the linked site.

<comment><USER3> That would require some JS. Wouldn't be hard to do, but I don't think it would be feasible within a pure CSS framework.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks both! Yes that's true I agree with both of you on this I did the switching theme thing before on my site[1] by putting theme specific CSS into separate files and link those depending on the chosen theme. In case of my site that is done on the server side

I wil do the same with this. I'll look how to do it with JS for the demo page and add an extra release with separate theme files ^^

If you have any other ideas I'm glad to hear them!

1: [https://asvvvad.eu.org](https://asvvvad.eu.org) (not using mono/color)

<comment><AUTHOR> Implemented that and more improvements in the v1.1 release [https://asvvvad.github.io/mono-color/](https://asvvvad.github.io/mono-color/)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> v1.2 is out! many fixes and improvements ^^</comment>