A Redditor about the problem with today's Silicon Valley startup community - <AUTHOR> http://www.reddit.com/r/startups/comments/x7wah/dae_just_totally_ignore_the_startup_community_and/c5k7534 <comment><USER2> Three thoughts:

First, this comment on Reddit isn't fundamentally better or more informed than any of dozens of comments that have expressed the exact same thing on HN. I'm not complaining, so much as again remarking about how "A Reddit's comment about $X" has become such a powerful signal of quality.

Second: there's a grain of truth† to the "bad decisions by VCs" or "working for VCs", but he's overplaying it in this comment. There's two countervailing forces here: (a) VCs don't care as much about which "flavor" their portfolio companies are producing than they do about the economics: there are indeed plenty of solid businesses you can grow that aren't VC-compatible. But you can't fault the VCs for that: when you took their money, you promised not to go down the slow path. And (b) when companies are doing well, VCs tend to get out of the way. It's when you're not doing well that the board's opinion starts to matter.

Third: The numbers he's using here set off alarm bells for me. He calls 1-10MM/yr companies "lifestyle" companies and "100MM+/yr" companies VC-style companies, and implies 10-100MM/yr businesses are in a no-mans-land. Uh, no? Companies doing 20-30-40MM/yr in revenue will probably have investors beating down their doors. I don't believe anyone is shunning companies doing 8 figure revenues.

† _The first VC-funded company I worked at/cofounded was derailed by a crazy, VC-instigated decision to build out a CDN to go head-to-head with Akamai. But even then, our lack of traction is what set the scene for that dumb decision._

<comment><USER3> "But even then, our lack of traction is what set the scene for that dumb decision."

But that's exactly what may be the problem with VCs. Sometimes you'd have to go through a dozen of ideas before you find one works. If you're frugal enough and can keep the company afloat for a few years, you're likely to succeed in the end.

But VCs may push the company to burn all cash in the next 4 months pursuing the idea #2. And if it doesn't work - you're down and out.

Very few businesses have the very first idea paying off handsomely. This may make VC's capital a very high-risk proposition: you either hit the jackpot with your first idea or you end up with nothing.

<comment><USER2> No, you're mixing up a chicken/egg thing here. It's not the problem with VCs that, if you're frugal, you can make an early round last until you find the right idea. You can't have that early round money without promising a certain kind of return to the VCs. It's your fault (or, mine, in this case) that VC money has been put at risk.

You can't moralize about VC's "pushing the company to burn all cash". It's the VC's money you're talking about The VCs invest with the expectation that you're going to go for broke. That's the model. Most startups fail, even the carefully run ones. The 1-2 successes need to pay back the failures and then some.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I have similar feelings to this guy. I've lived in the bay area my entire life, although I'm only 25 so I was young during the dot com bubble.

My feelings are that Zuckerberg made it "cool" to start a company again. People had such a bad taste after the dot com bust and starting a company was viewed as very risky from around 2000 to 2005. Then Zuckerberg came in with this amazing success story and now everyone wants to start a company again.

Sometimes it bothers me that people throw around the word "startup" so casually now. There's kids that are "doing a startup" but the only thing they're building is a gmail plugin or "a better to-do list that will change the world". We don't need any more of this crap. It seems like some people just want the founder title so they can broadcast to their LinkedIn network and impress people.

<comment><USER5> >It seems like some people just want the founder title so they can broadcast to their LinkedIn network and impress people.

Reminds me of this quote from Ronnie Coleman: "Everybody wants to be a bodybuilder, but nobody wants to lift no heavy-ass weights."

<comment><USER6> And a quote from Peter De Vries - "I love being a writer, but I hate the paperwork."

<comment><USER7> There are so many variants to this quote I think it's impossible to tell where it originated.

"Everybody wants to go to heaven, but nobody wants to die." - Unkown (at least to me)

"Everybody wants to be Seinfeld, but nobody wants to be Jerry Seinfeld" - Chris Rock

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I'm surprised. Not everyone here is blindly worshiping the big startup god. I see so many posts here about new websites that do mildly useful things, but where's the revenue stream?

I'm the maker of an art community (ArtGrounds) and a multi-user painting program (Sketcher), and I know how hard it is to make money on ads. Even when I had thousands of daily visitors (the site is seeing a slow decline), I was still making pocket change. And even then, it was nigh impossible to get people interested in renting their own private Sketcher rooms.

Part of it is probably that I don't understand marketing, but the thing is that, in most cases, you must have a _very_ compelling product that's available nowhere else (at least at that quality level) in order to sell it. And there must be demand.

Contrary to popular belief, you can't really create demand artificially. All you can do is tap into people's itches, and scratch them. "I wish I could stay in touch with all my friends" becomes Facebook. "It's so impractical to have to tell everyone where I'm going in case they need to call me" becomes the cellphone.

There's more to it than that of course, but looking at all these trendy startups, it seems that they don't even care about the basics much of the time. The products just seem awfully superficial and simple.

</comment><comment><USER9> It's pretty disappointing to see this at the top of HN. Some of the comments here do have some merit but I feel there's a disproportionate amount of hating and anger. There was a comment made by pg a couple days ago that I think definitely belongs here so I'm going to paste it:

 _I think they're not so much dense as bitter. There's a subset of HN readers who regard startups as a whole as a sort of con game, and are angry that the participants get so much attention. There may not be that many of them, but their anger makes them disproportionately active as commenters and voters._ [1]

[1] <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4293786>

<comment><USER10> I clicked the link hoping to read something substantive about an actual problem in SV. Instead, so far it's looking a lot like a group of people at a party getting together and complaining, "this party is lame."

I kinda hope this submission gets killed, honestly.

<comment><USER11> These posts are good once in a while to keep sycophancy and group-think in check.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I'm in Chicago and I see this trend here as well.

What's worse is that VCs and Angels in Chicago are perhaps, to an extent, more clueless about building technology businesses. Sure, money here is not as plentiful but I still see frivolous 'apps' being touted as businesses and getting accepted into incubators.

Perhaps it is the whole VC model that is to blame. By definition, VCs require companies to 'exit' through either acquisitions or IPOs. Their incentives are not aligned with building strong businesses that can thrive for years on end, but rather businesses that might 'seem' attractive in the next 3-5 years so as to attract potential acquirers. Only if a business shows unprecedented levels of growth do they let it do it's thing and thrive (Facebook, Google etc.).

Since 'social', 'mobile' and 'big data' are the buzz words these days, VCs are pouring money into these ridiculous and frivolous ideas in hopes of an acquisition. It's only fun while it lasts and I see a world of hurt coming their way.

</comment><comment><USER13> This article seems mixed to me.

If you're building a start-up now, you have two options the way I see it. 1) Build a sustainable business that charges some form of money. 2) Build a killer feature that attracts users and allows you to get bought by a larger company.

Right now, the larger companies are flush with money. Corporate revenues are outrageously high, particularly in the tech sector. So, the second option is just winning out right now because that's where the money is.

If this were to change and there was less investment from the existing players in tech, you'd see more sustainable businesses.

The complaint that the tech industry is not making any good tech is akin to people's gripes that the movie industry doesn't make good movies. For tech, the money right now is in features. For movies, the money right now is in mindless blockbusters. They're both businesses and like any good business, the players on the field optimize their strategy according to where the money is.

</comment><comment><USER14> To understand why swing-for-the-fences mentality prevails, you have to understand the VC model.

People raise funds and generally shoot for +10x exits. So, for a particular vintage, a VC fund of 10M aims to grow to 100M. They are squeezed for time (many funds are for 10-14 years, some shorter, some longer) and can't necessarily sit there and let companies bubble.

If you are presented with such a large hurdle, the easiest way to do it is swing for the fences and see if one gains traction. Generally, the one that gains traction will multiply your money far enough to cover for the other mistakes you made.

</comment><comment><USER15> i'm far away from it all, but from what I see the "build a feature for Facebook" business plan is now passe in the valley.

Look at how Pintrest comes from Iowa. I can think of more than one company in L.A. that wants to be the "next facebook" The exciting area in social networking is getting new groups of people involved in new activities and also bringing social media closer to other media. The tech skills in SV matter less than they used to and it's really an issue of marketing now... The unique perspectives that people bring from other parts of the world will be key.

People in the valley and SF seem to be more interested in infrastructure and SAAS plays, as well as transaction-oriented communities like AirBnB and stuff where you pay $X a month for a subscription. You can certainly find outrageous examples, but the better angels and VCs are (for the most part) making good decisions.

</comment><comment><USER16> This is now banned from HN front page, after being nº 1 for a while.

I might not agree with OP but this is more censorship of dissent. Very poor community management.

<comment><USER17> Lame. 166 points, third in rank on the front page, and shoved off. I guess the truth hurts?

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> What ever happen to building a legitimate business. Everyone is so worried about getting published in TechCrunch, Pando and Alley Insider. They pump and dump startups everyday. Most unethical thing around

</comment><comment><USER19> I wonder if he miscontrues the motive. Sure every VC wants to fund the next Google, Facebook, or even Instagram because like anyone rational they would like to get an insane return on their money.

And some of them will listen until you clearly aren't such a business and then tune you out.

But how is that any different from a developer who wants to be a kernel engineer and won't listen to any job offers for doing database development or network programming Etc? Sure it could be just as rewarding, and they could learn just as much. But at the end of the day, somewhere in their brain, they have this bit set that their self image is tied up with being a "kernel developer" not "the guy who built a mySQL killer."

The cautionary tale is to try to look at things that you internally value rather than things you think you _should_ value.

A short anecdote; When I got my first stock in Sun Microsystems as part of the employee purchase program it just sat there. My advisor suggested, as most do, that I diversify a bit (We were talking something like 150 shares so it wasn't a big position :-). Anyway, they explained that investing in stocks that suddenly doubled, tripled, or quintupled in price was thrilling and sexy, but ultimately unpredictable. Whereas investing in stocks that moved up 5 - 15% and then selling them and investing in something else that moved up a few percent. Was like a ratchet. You took $1,000 and each month you tried to add 3 - 5% to it. That grew your investment slowly but surely. Not as sexy but a better long term strategy.

EDIT: To be more clear, the strategy my advisor uses is to make a number of small investments shooting for growth in each of them. That doesn't always pan out but having a number of bets in the pool gives a better over all return than a single big bet (which is what I was trying to communicate), getting 80% return on something is great, but 80% return on 1% of the total portfolio means it contributes .8% to the overall gain.

<comment><USER20> Hmm, at 3%/mo, your opinions of what count as "slow but sure" are a good deal less slow than mine!

So... um... what did you say your adviser's name was again?

<comment><USER19> This is what all money managers do, and it isn't that every position ratchets up that month, or does so as much as you would like. Depending on the size of your portfolio you might have hundreds or thousands of different positions which are each their own little bet that this stock at this time is going to make this move. When you combine all of those various moves over time you can plot your rate of return on a global scale. Money markets or other mutual funds to the same thing only its not as visible, it rounds out to a number that appears once a month on your balance statement.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> This post completely ignores VC-startup fit, fund size, investment strategy and other factors.

There are many different kinds of (institutional) VCs. A firm with a $100MM active fund invest very differently than A16Z with a > $1 B available for investment. The ideal ownership stake within the portfolio company, comfort level with higher valuations, investment allocated across multiple rounds for a portfolio company all are a function of fund-size and investment strategy.

As the active fund size increases (e.g. $500MM or $1B), the fund is biased towards making big investments and hugs wins are needed for LP returns. When fundraising for your startup, its critical to understand if these dynamics are going to be a cause of conflict between your investors and you. Just because a VC firm invested in Facebook, doesn't mean their dynamics make sense for your startup.

</comment><comment><USER12> On an unrelated point, this is one of the reasons why it bothers me when someone suggests that everyone should learn how to code.

Not that there is inherently anything wrong about learning to think like a programmer and problem-solve; the problem is that people equate learning to code to learning use the RoR/Django or some iOS framework. This is a direct result of all the dumb money being poured into stupid ideas - it leads everyone to believe that their time is best spent learning the tools to give shape to their photo-sharing app.

</comment><comment><USER22> This reminds me of something Paul Budnitz (kidrobot founder and former SF resident) wrote after visiting SF recently:

 _Internet millionaires driving around on cell phones drain the city's sparkle. In the old days people who made tools built factory towns on the Ohio. It was honest work but not glamorous. Today the toolmakers work in software and they have been elevated in the culture, especially here. But there is a distinction between making an app and making art. A city of toolmakers imagining themselves as artists is barbaric, heartless, empty. You feel it in the crowd eating dinner at the many expensive restaurants. People speak in sound bites and are both assertive and lost._

[http://paulbudnitz.com/post/26436899116/san-francisco-is- odd...](http://paulbudnitz.com/post/26436899116/san-francisco-is-odd-it-feels- like-it-doesnt)

<comment><USER23> He seems like one of these folks every generation produces who are wistful for things gone by. Plus the sentiment isn't without its plugs, albeit subtle. "The new bike lanes are half-built then they disappear. Cars choke the city and cover buildings with soot." Nice self-serving platitudes from a bicycle seller.

<comment><USER24> Maybe he's selling bikes because that's what he believes, instead of the other way around.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> I think the reason the word "startup" is thrown around so much isn't only because its fashionable. "Startup" has come to encompass a whole bunch of different notions (project, feature, app etc), and the only thing that is consistent with everyone's own definition of the word is user-facing.

User-facing is not a business.

</comment><comment><USER26> There are as many kinds of VCs as there are entrepreneurs. Some VCs are untrustworthy and some are even dumb (as stated here). Just like some entrepreneurs are ignorant and some are event dumb (as illustrated here). But there are fantastic VCs out there as well. I'm on my fifth startup and I've been lucky enough to have worked with a number of truly fantastic VCs. FWIW... the clear give away that someone is talking shit when they talk about how VCs suck is when they say things like "maybe VC Fund X is an exception." A knowledgable entrepreneur knows that what matters is NOT the fund - but rather the partner. And there are some smart partners out there.

</comment><comment><USER27> I think the major complaint this guy has is that there is no funding for small businesses, and he is correct. VCs are interested in high growth businesses where one success makes their fund. Given that banks aren't giving out loans to internet startups and VCs/angels are the only source of capital, this can affect the kinds of businesses that are started.

</comment><comment><USER28> I like this part: "And so you have a whole generation of people building startups who have been taught to make bullshit."

</comment><comment><USER29> Good companies still stand out. And the founders of good companies don't usually intend to start cargo-cults.

</comment><comment><USER30> There's more: [http://www.reddit.com/r/startups/comments/x7wah/dae_just_tot...](http://www.reddit.com/r/startups/comments/x7wah/dae_just_totally_ignore_the_startup_community_and/c5kf806) [http://www.reddit.com/r/startups/comments/x7wah/dae_just_tot...](http://www.reddit.com/r/startups/comments/x7wah/dae_just_totally_ignore_the_startup_community_and/c5kflmf)

</comment><comment><USER31> Looks like this article is censored?

</comment><comment><USER32> Eyeballs != $$$

</comment><comment><USER33> This is nonsense. Hard to read all the way through and get any point out of. Reads like an angry chatterbot

<comment><USER34> And yet quite a few people (including me) here agree with it. Perhaps your perspective is from within the cargo cult.</comment></comment>


Inside the Shadowy World of High-Speed Tennis Betting - <AUTHOR> http://fivethirtyeight.com/features/inside-the-shadowy-world-of-high-speed-tennis-betting/

<comment><USER2> "Tennis bans courtsiders to protect the sport's integrity, U.S. Open tournament director David Brewer said."

"In 2011, the men's and women's tours made a deal to sell their scores through a company called Enetpulse, majority owned by IMG. Many of the buyers are sports-gambling websites that provide the scores for in-play betting — wagering on the match after play has begun."

So when someone goes to a match and transmits the points, it ruins the integrity of the game, and when the tournament operators do it, it's totally fine. I wish there were a law against blatant hypocrisy.

<comment><USER3> Counterpoint: allowing those watching the game to place bets on an event after it happened (or to pass information to others that enables those others to do so) is dishonest towards those who do not have access to that information. In some jurisdictions it also is against the law.

If the tournament organizer is the only channel through which information flow as towards the betting office, by definition, it is impossible for the better to know the outcome of something he bets on at the time of the bet.

Of course, there are other ways to prevent this. For example, one can forbid bets on events that are expected to happen within five or ten minutes. I guess that isn't done because it decreases revenue.

<comment><USER4> 5-10 minutes isn't what they're betting on. They're betting on matches. You predict outcome of the match based on current information. If you have more of the match behind you, you can make more accurate bets, even if the outcome is still an hour away. The information asymmetry means you can find winning bets even if the market is otherwise efficient.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Interesting parallels between this story and the prologue of the excellent book Fortune's Formula. In the early 1900's a former Western Union employee became rich by setting up a wire service for bookies. He hired men to watch the horse races and flash the winner in code to a nearby building using a mirror . Someone in that building would wire the results to bookies who paid for the service. This prevented bookies from taking bets on completed races. Of course if someone tried to bet on a losing horse, the bookies would take that bet anyway.

</comment><comment><USER6> Funny how similar it is to high frequency trading. They both invest a bunch of capital to get better/earlier information, then leverage it to make profitable bets and trades. Atleast in the professional gambling world they don't deny it's a zero sum game.

<comment><USER7> Aren't they both obviously a zero sum game? There's a winner and a loser to a bet. If you buy a stock and it then rises, you profit and the seller has missed out. There's really no magical insight gained by the phrase 'zero sum game'.

<comment><USER8> No. The stock market isn't a closed system. The movements of capital and prices in the stock market impact capital allocation overall. Hence the arguments that HFTs that provide liquidity benefit the market because liquidity enables a larger pool of firms to seek listings or issue equity or debt.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Even the basketball league in New Zealand is introducing courtsiding policy. It strikes me as completely ridiculous in all sports.

If you want to offer real-time betting on sporting minutiae and for some reason you can't do it such that some able to bet or gain information in real- time could screw you over, tough luck.

What do we ultimately lose without the policy? An inability to bet on the next point right up to it happening? Big deal.

</comment><comment><USER10> At the center of this is a Markov model that gives the courtsider's employer a small betting edge with each additional point.

[http://summerofjeff.wordpress.com/2011/01/13/python-code- for...](http://summerofjeff.wordpress.com/2011/01/13/python-code-for-tennis- markov/)

<comment><USER11> Much better statistical models are probably possible. That is basically the simplest possible model of a match.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> There are services you can subscribe to for live (in-play) statistical information for football. This is exactly the same thing. You position yourself on betfair, pay a bundle of money for a "courtside" feed, because all media broadcasts are delayed, and you have a slight advantage again the average punter who doesn't have access to the feed, oh and the data feeds aren't cheap either.

Usually it's the large internet based bookies who subscribe to these feeds so as not to over-expose themselves to the public

</comment><comment><USER13> This is a hugely interesting article. I used to prosecute corrupt betting practices in horseracing - before I decided to join the startup ecosystem - and this is a huge problem. A combination of human refereeing delay and TV transmission, combined with the betting public's desire to have in-running better on all points/outcomes, ensures that the race is on to get the result of any point up to the exchanges before the market settles. Some say that the advent of Betfair caused this problem, this is of course not true, it simply gave the normal punter easier access to a greater range of options (i.e. lay betting).

</comment><comment><USER12> Also back in the olden days of ring side bookies at the race tracks, it was illegal to transmit information "off-track".

It didn't stop people inventing systems to do it though.

Clever use of very old mobile phones which used acoustics to transmit bookies markets off-track, and then used for wagering purposes. It's been around for a while.

These day's it's just not necessary. You have the William Hills, the Ladbrokes, the Tom Waterhouses, the various on-line bookies, all providing easily scrape-able data sources.

</comment><comment><USER14> Sorry there's something I'm missing. Are talking about games with no coverage at all?

When plays Djokovic vs Murray at US open, how many seconds before the TV/iPhone/Android applications transmits the signal/point/data?

I don't get why do they need a courtsider. Can someone explain what I'm obviously missing here???

<comment><USER15> The television delay for "live" sports seems to be surprisingly high (and has got worse since the advent of digital TV); we're talking 5-10 seconds here. Probably even more for streaming video.

<comment><USER16> Would be interested to see a breakdown of how all the additional latency is added. I'm sure part of it is from the increased of overlaid graphics. The recently-posted article about the virtual American football firstdown line mentioned that they added a 2/3 seconds delay to accommodate the technology (at least, in the original implementation).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Having dabbled in sports betting this sounds like a business with terrible ROC and no scalability.

<comment><USER18> These aren't guys dabbling in sports betting, they are betting $50k+ per game and often time it's multiple games a day. Having dealt with many of such people I can tell you that the ROC can be ridiculous. Not only that, it doesn't have to scale well because there are only so many sporting matches each day. Universities already do this with recruiters (sending individuals all over to get info on every kid in some assigned area)

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> I'm surprised they don't have custom hand-held score clickers that would allow them to send out scores more discreetly (e.g. by forwarding over a phone hidden in their pocket).

<comment><USER20> In the article it says that he does it with his phone in his pocket.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> While I have some ideas, a bit surprised so little explanation on how info used to improve bets. The article took forever to not say very much.

</comment><comment><USER22> _" The FFT bans courtsiding because it "owns the right to the data."_

Wat. Especially given that courtsiders are usually making their point determinations _before_ the official results. Has this argument ever been tested in court?

<comment><USER23> It never will be. Tennis tournaments take place on private property and you agree to certain terms that ban you from "transmitting match data" by purchasing a ticket and attending. The tournament can throw anyone out that they please at their discretion.

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> Is this real and not just intended to make a point about high frequency trading?</comment>


Chronic Boredom May Be a Sign of Poor Health - <AUTHOR> http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=chronic-boredom-may-be-sign-poor-health

<comment><USER2> Most of this article is not accessible without a subscription.</comment>


Russell Kirsch, inventor of the pixel, has died - <AUTHOR> https://petapixel.com/2020/08/13/russell-kirsch-inventor-of-the-pixel-passed-away-this-week/ <comment><USER2> Kirsch co-authored - with an undergraduate intern! - one of the foundational papers of my field of cheminformatics. Then never touched the topic again, as he was more interested in computers and art.

He worked on the SEAC computer at the National Bureau of Standards. Quoting the Wikipedia page (which in turn cites Kirsch), SEAC "is claimed to be the first fully operational stored-program electronic computer in the US".

The NBS had this great little machine - the first computer available to the US government, at least for general use - and it got applied to all sorts of projects.

Marvin Minsky, for example, learned to program on it, [https://www.webofstories.com/play/marvin.minsky/29](https://www.webofstories.com/play/marvin.minsky/29) , where they tried to get the computer to recognize letters. (Minsky commented "my friend Russell Kirsch ... was the kind of person who could say well, everybody's having their machines crunching numbers, can we have one that can recognize patterns.")

The SEAC team talked with the US Patent office, which had a thorny problem of how to handle chemical patents. They needed some way to search chemical structures by substructure. Ray (the intern) and Kirsch implemented subgraph isomorphism search on the SEAC, in 1956, published the following year, and still often cited (though less often read).

Kirsch humorously points out in the video at [http://www.computerhistory.org/revolution/birth-of-the- compu...](http://www.computerhistory.org/revolution/birth-of-the- computer/4/97/2392) ,

> 21:09: This solved the immediate problem for the Patent Office, although in > a very ponderous way. An amusing incident is this: The program that we wrote > demonstrated this possibility, but it was so ponderous - so slow - that we > decided 'gee, I hope we don't have to use our program in the Patent Office'.

> 21:29: Well in those days, a tool that you hoped you wouldn't have to use > was the hydrogen bomb. So we decided to call our program the H-BOMB code. > When the coding sheets got misplaced, the FBI came in, and it took an awful > lot of explanation to explain this was just a name; it had nothing to do > with the hydrogen bomb.

As another example of the humor they had, see [http://www.ams.org/journals/notices/200711/tx071101502p.pdf](http://www.ams.org/journals/notices/200711/tx071101502p.pdf) where:

> The staff of the NBS computing lab declared us "Heroes of the SEAC", a title > awarded in those days to programmers whose programs ran on the first try—a > rare event—and for some while we had to go around wearing our "medals," > which were drawn freehand in crayon on the back of used teletype paper. (The > word "hero" was in parody of the practice in the Soviet Union of declaring > persons "Heroes of the Soviet Union" for this and that accomplishment.)

For more about the machine, see [https://www.nist.gov/news- events/news/2010/06/pioneer-nist-c...](https://www.nist.gov/news- events/news/2010/06/pioneer-nist-computer-remembered-60th-anniversary) .

I wrote a letter to him a few years ago, to ask questions about his chemical substructure work. His wife, Joan Kirsch, kindly replied and said his dementia was too far progressed. My heart goes out to her and her family.

</comment><comment><USER3> This got me curious when I saw the news item on national Swedish news (!) a few hours ago, so I did some wikipedia reading.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pixel#Etymology](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pixel#Etymology)

> The word pixel is a portmanteau of pix (from "pictures", shortened to > "pics") and el (for "element"); similar formations with 'el' include the > words voxel and texel. The word pix appeared in Variety magazine headlines > in 1932, as an abbreviation for the word pictures, in reference to movies. > By 1938, "pix" was being used in reference to still pictures by > photojournalists.

> The word "pixel" was first published in 1965 by Frederic C. Billingsley of > JPL, to describe the picture elements of scanned images from space probes to > the Moon and Mars. Billingsley had learned the word from Keith E. McFarland, > at the Link Division of General Precision in Palo Alto, who in turn said he > did not know where it originated. McFarland said simply it was "in use at > the time" (circa 1963).

<comment><USER3> [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digital_imaging#History](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digital_imaging#History)

> The first digital image was produced in 1920, by the Bartlane cable picture > transmission system. British inventors, Harry G. Bartholomew and Maynard D. > McFarlane, developed this method. The process consisted of "a series of > negatives on zinc plates that were exposed for varying lengths of time, thus > producing varying densities,". The Bartlane cable picture transmission > system generated at both its transmitter and its receiver end a punched data > card or tape that was recreated as an image.

> In 1957, Russell A. Kirsch produced a device that generated digital data > that could be stored in a computer; this used a drum scanner and > photomultiplier tube.

So Kirsch was a pioneer in creating a device that could store images in a computer. That is something he should be remembered for.

This "inventor of the pixel" thing is just weird, though. Pixels can clearly exist outside of computers, and did so before 1957. Not to mention [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mosaic#History](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mosaic#History) .

<comment><USER4> "Inventor of the pixel" is a feel good story title.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I remember reading a fun story about Russell (a fellow Portland resident) a few years back. Worth a quick read.

[https://impossiblehq.com/an-unexpected-ass- kicking/](https://impossiblehq.com/an-unexpected-ass-kicking/)

Rest in peace, Mr. Kirsch.

</comment><comment><USER6> One of the amazing things about Russell Kirsch is that he got excited about the possibility of digital imagery when he was 21. Kirsch created the very first digital image in his late twenties and it was a black and white image of his three month old son. He continued to work on digital imaging for a total of 70 years!

</comment><comment><USER7> He and I frequented the same bakery several years ago. The poor fellow's brain wasn't coping with age well, but he was always cheerey, and one time made a pretty fun comment about how my pocket computer's (phone's) camera had him to thank. Sad to hear of his passing.

</comment><comment><USER8> Why aren't we using variable shaped pixel?

The image quality seems so much higher than the square pixel used today.

See the short but interesting video in the linked article.

<comment><USER9> The image quality is higher because it has a lot more information in it; it's not accurate to compare the pixel count in a rectilinear array to the count of custom-cut tiles in a mosaic.

We use rectilinear images because that's the most convenient form for addressing the picture elements in memory. Not only from the point of view of getting to a particular pixel in a frame buffer as in y * scanline_width + x. Image processing algorithms of all kinds depend on the data being a rectilinear grid of samples: that the sample rate is constant across the scan line, and vertically.

We can recover image quality with higher resolution and anti-aliasing techniques.

We can also use vector techniques to represent a mosaic's tiles accurately (yet compactly, for file storage and network transfer), and render them at any resolution using square pixels. If there are enough of those pixels that the human eye is well beyond giving a darn, then the issue is pretty much settled.

We can prove with information theory that if the pixels are small enough, their shape does not matter. After a certain resolution level, we no longer add detail: we only improve the smoothness of anti-aliasing, and there is only so smooth it has to be relative to the frequency response of the eye's optics and retina.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Makes me think of an old tee-shirt I had: [https://idata.over- blog.com/1/72/23/10/images-2/pixel_mort.j...](https://idata.over- blog.com/1/72/23/10/images-2/pixel_mort.jpg) ("yet another dead pixel"). RIP Russell Kirsch.

</comment><comment><USER11> Has anyone done any work on variable shaped pixels? I can see the currently strong counter arguments against it, but it seems like one of those weird ideas that might find a home someday.

</comment><comment><USER12> Interesting. I am a bit disappointed though about the caption of that 172x172px image. It goes into details about superimposing two scans to achieve a 172x172 b/w image. But obviously the image shown is an interpolated and post-processed version of a photograph. It is neither b/w nor 172x172. Probably because the original data wasn't archived, only a printout (1957!). Still, a slightly misleading caption.

<comment><USER13> Ceci n'est pas une pipe.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> Can we do this with all "has died" posts? You know, a brief summary what the person is known for.

90% of the time I have no idea who the person is. So sometimes I look the person up and realize there's no way I would have known who they were. Maybe that's the goal with the "${person-most-people-have-never-heard-of} has died" titles though.

<comment><USER15> Part of the HN philosophy is that it's good for readers to have to work a little. Not too often nor too much, but enough to engage the slower circuits a bit.

[https://hn.algolia.com/?query=%22work%20a%20little%22%20by:d...](https://hn.algolia.com/?query=%22work%20a%20little%22%20by:dang&dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&&sort=byDate&type=comment)

[https://hn.algolia.com/?query=reflective%20reflex%20by:dang&...](https://hn.algolia.com/?query=reflective%20reflex%20by:dang&dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&sort=byDate&type=comment)

<comment><USER14> Interesting. It's always nice when a made up theory is validated.</comment></comment></comment>


FaceApp, TikTok and the rise of 'data nationalism' - <AUTHOR> https://www.thedrum.com/opinion/2019/07/23/look-faceapp-tiktok-and-the-rise-data-nationalism <comment><USER2> They're just mimicking what the US-based social media platforms have been doing for years now. And who can blame them? It's a very profitable business model.

I suppose at least now the "bad" countries are doing this there may finally be some meaningful public debate about it.

</comment><comment><USER3> Impressively annoying paywall once you read it a bit

<comment><USER4> "freewall". "Paywall that sucks data in lieu of money"

<comment><USER5> The Irony of this about FaceApp's user policy when they require an email address and name to read the article.</comment></comment></comment>


Understanding map, filter, and fold - <AUTHOR> http://www.dev.gd/20121224-understanding-map-filter-and-fold.html <comment><USER2> I liked this post, and find the use of map/filter/reduce one of the most fundamental changes to the way you can manipulate data. Truly eye opening.

Even though I have relatively little front-end experience, and use primarily python/ruby- I only started to use these with Javascript (via the underscore library).

The only thing I didn't quite agree with is _" ... the syntax is obvious enough for most people to understand even if they don't quite grok Haskell"_.

Whilst the early examples were manageable, I was struggling with the syntax later on. The syntax looks clean, so it seems like Haskell is a neat language, but it wasn't enough to make it easy for me to fully 'get it'. Perhaps I'm too locked in a ruby/python mindset.

<comment><AUTHOR> Point taken. I might redo this with Ruby at some point in the future -- the functions are all available and it might be interesting to see the differences between the two.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> MDN also has pretty good documentation for map/filter/reduce:

[https://developer.mozilla.org/en- US/docs/JavaScript/Referenc...](https://developer.mozilla.org/en- US/docs/JavaScript/Reference/Global_Objects/Array/map)

[https://developer.mozilla.org/en- US/docs/JavaScript/Referenc...](https://developer.mozilla.org/en- US/docs/JavaScript/Reference/Global_Objects/Array/filter)

[https://developer.mozilla.org/en- US/docs/JavaScript/Referenc...](https://developer.mozilla.org/en- US/docs/JavaScript/Reference/Global_Objects/Array/reduce)

What's with the space shuttle / F22 hovering beneath the text _right in the middle of the screen_? :/

<comment><AUTHOR> Haha, I've been playing with different background images... maybe that one isn't optimum for reading :-|

<comment><USER4> I liked the article. Just to let you know, when you zoom on an iPhone the background covers the text for a ~ second: [https://www.dropbox.com/s/95f8ivqxodh2qnc/Photo%20Dec%2023%2...](https://www.dropbox.com/s/95f8ivqxodh2qnc/Photo%20Dec%2023%2C%2011%2046%2015%20PM.png)

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the head's up. I'm beginning to think the background image is more trouble than it's worth :(

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> If you are working with C# these functions are available in linq: map is Select, filter is Where, and reduce/inject/fold is Aggregate in Microsoft speak.

I use those methods all the time when I have to do C# code.

I do wonder why these operations lack a standard name. Still, I think map- reduce sounds a lot better than map-inject or Select-Aggregate or map-fold.

<comment><USER6> If you're already familiar with SQL (which your average C# programmer likely is), select/where/aggregate look familiar to you, so less of a mental leap to understand them. And being able to say 'it's like in-line SQL!' makes Linq more acceptable to pointy-haired-bosses at the same time.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Going from java to ruby these functions were the most obvious improvement for my day to day coding.

<comment><USER8> I agree. These functions have completely changed how I approach algorithms and data manipulation.

I was super-excited to learn Go, but it was a showstopper to discover that Go's lack of support for generics effectively made this pattern of programming impossible. Major disappointment.

<comment><USER9> Genuinely curious, what do generics have to do with this?

<comment><USER10> The type of map is `(a -> b) -> [a] -> [b]`, which means that map takes a function from any type `a` to any type `b` and a list of `a`s, and returns a list of `b`s. Generics, aka parametric polymorphism, are required for this because the definition of map makes no assumptions on what types `a` and `b` will be instantiated to.

<comment><USER11> What does "from any type 'a' to any type 'b'" mean? That sounds like a range of types, but I don't see how that makes sense. Did you just mean that the map converts from 'a' to 'b'?

<comment><USER12> a and b are placeholders (type variables). They can be any type, for example Integer, or a Float. It doesn't matter.

[a] is a list of a, [b] is a list of b. Map takes a function that takes an a and returns a b, and applies it to every element of [a] in order to produce the [b]. An example usage is

      map lessThanThree [1,2,3,4]

In this case, map takes a function where a is an integer, and b is a boolean, then takes a list of integers and produces a list of booleans.

The result is [True,True,False,False]

<comment><USER13> It's also illuminating to note that haskell curries function application. This allows us to think of map as a function of one argument.

map :: (a -> b) -> ([a] -> [b])

so instead of thinking that map takes a function and a list and applies that function to the list, we can think that map takes a function and "lifts" that functions argument and result types to the list type.

This thinking leads us directly to Functors and fmap

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> This is such a key insight core to many of the benefits of FP. Other resources on the matter that I like include

Meijer, E., Fokkinga, M., & Paterson, R. (1991). Functional programming with bananas, lenses, envelopes and barbed wire, 124–144.

Hutton, G. (1999). A tutorial on the universality and expressiveness of fold. Journal of Functional Programming, 9(4), 355–372.

Gibbons, J., Hutton, G., & Altenkirch, T. (2001). When is a function a fold or an unfold? Electronic Notes in Theoretical Computer Science, 44(1), 146–160.

(The third one is for theoretical interest mostly)

</comment><comment><USER15> Good article but he makes the same mistake I did at first with foldl and foldr by saying they fold from the left and right respectively. Which leads to the mistaken thinking that foldr can't operate on infinite lists (it absolutely can, foldl can't).

It's better to think of them as left- and right-associative.

<comment><USER16> This was my one complaint as well, and it happens with the example given of any'

Defining any' as

any' f xs = foldl (\acc x -> f x || acc) False xs

Then trying to evaluate any' even [1..] runs forever, but if we modify it slightly to use foldr instead as

any' f xs = foldr (\x acc -> f x || acc) False xs

Then evaluating any' even [1..] terminates basically immediately with True.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks much for the feedback. I clearly didn't understand them as well as I thought I did, though after reading <http://stackoverflow.com/a/3085516/337184> I think I understand a bit more.

I'll update the post with a correction, and eventually write a "how I learned to stop worrying and love the difference between foldl and foldr" post. :-)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Nice to see you on HN, John!

I had previously learned these as map and reduce/inject (thank you, ruby). It's only this past few months when I took an algorithms course on Coursera that I realized how much of a pain it was to do some of this stuff in other langauges (like Java). To me it was just natural to write functions that operated on an array of "stuff", rather than arrays of ints or strings, etc... The course literally had us building identical functions for handling different data types and then finally solving the problem via generics and the use of an ugly typecast.

</comment><comment><USER18> Doesn't building map with a fold hide its inherent parallelizability?

The nice thing about map, as opposed to fold, is that you don't need to know the result of the ith step to do the i+1th.

<comment><USER19> Not really. There's a really nice paper by Graham Hutton, "A tutorial on the universality and expressiveness of fold" which goes into a bit more depth than OP does. Your question is answered directly in section 3.2, "The fusion property of fold". Basically, a sequence of multiple folds can be fused to a single fold.

See <http://www.cs.nott.ac.uk/~gmh/fold.pdf>

<comment><USER18> The article you linked proves the universality of fold, that I never doubted for one second.

What I was trying to say is that map is not universal, in that all function evaluations can be performed in parallel, because you can't use the result of the ith to compute the i+1th. In this respect map is in fact a restriction of fold.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> A small mistake: "In Ruby, these functions are map, filter" — is incorrect; _filter_ in Ruby is called _select_.

<comment><AUTHOR> Cheers, fixed (as soon as the cache updates)

<comment><USER21> Also Ruby has 'reduce' as a synonym for 'inject'

<comment><USER2> ...and thank god for that. I find inject a really confusing name.

<comment><USER22> The Ruby names are copied from Smalltalk, as is much of Ruby.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> Before people go off writing this `foldx foo initial bars` pattern:

[http://www.haskell.org/ghc/docs/latest/html/libraries/base/D...](http://www.haskell.org/ghc/docs/latest/html/libraries/base/Data- List.html#v:foldl1)

<comment><AUTHOR> I ignored the existence of foldl1 and foldr1 because though they're available in Haskell and make a lot of things easier, they're not available in every language and not fundamental to understanding the concepts themselves.

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> > In Ruby, these functions are map, filter, and (confusingly!) inject

The ruby I'm using right now (1.8.7) does not understand "filter", but it does have the equivalent called "select".

<comment><USER25> Also, if you use map and you want to easily filter out values, and 'nil' is an ok sentinel for this, then just use compact after the map.</comment></comment>


Lyft Stock Falls Below IPO Price as Optimism Cools - <AUTHOR> https://www.barrons.com/articles/lyft-stock-falls-below-ipo-price-51554128133 <comment><USER2> Well, They are a loss making venture as on today, and expect this to come down a lot before its starts sharing its quarterly results!</comment>


South London NHS Trust put into administration (First in UK) - <AUTHOR> http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-london-18812193

<comment><USER2> I was struck by two seemingly contradictory statements.

One was that wait times for operations were extremely long. That was in the main article.

The other point was that there were too many hospitals, leading (in part) to the financial difficulties. This was in the sidebar analysis.

Too much capacity should result in shorter wait times for treatment, not longer.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> I know it seems a little off topic but this is the tip of a big iceberg in the UK - a large % of this Trusts problems are down to how the hospitals were financed - basically off balance sheet borrowing by the govt. And they built a lot of schools and hospitals that way.

All the drchrono style apps will not save a hospital that owes 15% or more turnover in interest.</comment>


If e-mail had a baby: notification messages - <AUTHOR> http://wiseheartdesign.com/articles/2009/12/04/if-email-had-a-baby-notification-messages/

<comment><USER2> I've been working on a little notification app idea. You create an account with a web service. That account gives you a unique email address to forward all your notification emails to (presumably with automated rules) or to just set as your email address on systems that send you notifications. You'd also be able to add RSS feeds.

Between these sources, you build a list of notifications. Then there's a little iPhone app that let's you do six things with each notification:

\- Read the full article or email

\- Create a new todo

\- Add something to your schedule

\- Send a copy of the notification to someone else

\- Bookmark the notification

\- Ask for a reminder (Reshow the notification after a certain amount of time)

This is just something I've been playing with as my fun-hack project. It came about because a friend was complaining that she wished her inbox could be about correspondence, not notification.

<comment><USER3> That's a cool idea.

The problem with it, though. Is that you'll have to change all your accounts and profiles to this e-mail, then the password reminders etc, come to this address. This address would then become, probably, the most important e-mail you have (so security vaulnerabilities are a extra-big no-no)

Then there's also the added overhead of having to deal with an extra service, simply for notifications that you usually just throw in the trash.

But maybe if it wasn't it's own e-mail address, but that you'd rather have your app connect to the user's e-mail inbox and download, and even delete, the notification e-mails.

Then it could be pretty cool (in my opinion)

Good luck with it :)

<comment><USER2> I figured that I trust forwarding certain emails a lot more than I would trust handing out my email password to some random web service.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I've never understood what was wrong with using SMTP+IMAP/POP/Exchange as an abstract protocol for developing applications that _aren't email-related_ , similar to how things that aren't web browsers today communicate via HTTP requests with things that aren't [generally thought of as] web servers.

Instead of reinventing the wheel with things like PUbSubHubbub, iPhone notifications, Twitter, Google Wave and so on, why not just make each API message-send an email, send it to the addresses of its subscribers, and have those subscribers check their inboxes and deal with each received message programmatically? You could give each communicating client/server program a separate email address, or you could give them a uniquely-identifying key as a MIME header and stick as many clients or servers as you wish into a single global inbox (that is, a message queue) that applications would pull messages out of—including, to polish off the abstraction, messages representing emails!

If the identifying key was unique to the thread/conversation/channel/wave instead of unique to the application, it would instantly nullify spam: to email someone, you'd push an "I want to start a conversation with you" notification to their publicly-known key under their address/identity, which they would then acknowledge (or not) by replying with a conversation key (sort of like a Facebook friend request, but temporary.) Of course, each person could have whitelists where any requests to start conversations were automatically accepted from given addresses.

Underneath, if you actually poked your head in with a "real" email client, there would be thousands of very trivial messages flying back and forth. However, we already have the infrastructure set up for exactly that; why not use it? Also, there would be many messages that would be sent (likely as spam) and silently discarded because the receiver didn't have anything corresponding to the conversation key; this would probably kill email spam down to Twitter levels, for those within the bubble of the email-in-message-in-email abstraction.

To optimize this, you'd likely have a global mail queue on each computer acting a bit like an SMTP server (but more likely speaking Exchange so as to keep your mobiles and other computers all reading the same messages at the same time), and an messaging library (or perhaps even a full-blown IPC kernel subsystem) that hides the fact that everything is really doing SMTP.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yup, the possibilities are endless. It should be built in.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> John, great article. I met you at the first Rails conference in Chicago, I've used your well written CMS, so, I'm expecting addendum's to the related RFC's and an implementation into the major MUA's with all due haste :)

Seriously though, you make a great point. There is a definite distinction between "mail" and "notifications". When I went to go get my mail today, there were a bunch of actual letters, and, a bunch of postcard like notifications. Most were SPAM of course ("use our maid service!", "you need new gutters, ours are the best!", etc)... but some were legitimate reminders ("your XXX runs out in a week", "remember, we're coming by your house tomorrow").

I'm all for it, seeing that the amount of online notification-like emails are getting more and more frequent (at least in my case).

</comment><comment><USER3> Wow, wonderful idea. I wholeheartedly support this and I hope at least some sites will implement this.

</comment><comment><USER6> What problem does this solve that RSS doesn't already?

<comment><AUTHOR> Well for one, RSS is pull. This is push. RSS also requires that you subscribe. This wouldn't necessarily require that.

<comment><USER7> It's replacing a subset of email, and email is often pull.

Needing to subscribe is arguably a feature. In fact, if subscription was required on the protocol level like RSS spam would be impossible (for some values of "impossible").

<comment><USER8> > _email is often pull_

So... when is it that I _pull_ an email sent to me from the SMTP server of the person sending it? Pulling it from the server to the client to read it doesn't count as email being 'pull.'

The difference is that with RSS you are pulling from the source not pulling from your personal 'cache' (unless you use a web reader like Google Reader, but even then Google is pulling from the source; RSS updates aren't being pushed to Google). The email equivalent would be querying all SMTP servers out there (or a subset) to see if they have mail for you rather than hitting up your IMAP/POP server to see if anyone has _sent something to you._</comment></comment></comment></comment>


The legend of John von Neumann (1973) - <AUTHOR> http://stepanov.lk.net/mnemo/legende.html?hn <comment><USER3> I wonder if a person like this came along today, whether they would be allowed to have the same type of impact in the variety of different ways that John von Neumann did. Whether he was advancing economic theory or telling the military the most efficient altitude to detonate a bomb, it was all the same basic skill set. He was just a crazy smart and logical guy and he applied that to every field that he could. I can't think of any modern equivalent person who has had a similar impact in the number of disciplines that von Neumann did. Does this type of opportunity still exist or do we now put too much focus on having people concentrate on a single area of expertise?

<comment><USER4> I think in many ways, in terms of exploring scientific and engineering realms, we're more conservative now. Personally, I'm doing a PhD in computer science, and I find it incredibly frustrating. Publishing papers is all about minute incremental improvements, and you absolutely must have numerical results to prove that you beat the competition. You can't publish negative results either, your work is considered worthless.

I'm in compilers and programming languages. I really wanted to create my own language as part of my PhD thesis, but I was basically told that this would be unpublishable. I mean, how can you hope to numerically show that your language is better than everything else around? Plus it's all been done already, nothing else new can possibly be invented in that realm.

Things weren't always like this. In the 1970s, we created things like Smalltalk, ML and LISP, which had a tremendous impact on the programming world. People also had bold ideas about artificial intelligence and nuclear- powered spaceships. In the 70s, people were allowed to just explore ideas, in the hopes that these ideas would lead to something good (and some did). Now, it's much harder, you bring up an idea and people immediately try to shoot it down, ask you for proof that it definitely will work, and bring up the most asinine suggestions as to why your idea will definitely fail.

Today, the exploration has been scaled down. It's not because the exploration failed, we invented many great things as a result of it, it's largely IMO because we live in different economic times. The USA is no longer in an economic boom, things are no longer in expansion. There are cuts to scientific funding, cuts to education. People are being told not to be "wasteful". We live in a much more nearsighted world, in a sense. Being a dreamer isn't considered a virtue.

<comment><USER5> Not disagreeing with you necessarily, but the 70s were hardly an economic boom time in the USA either.

<comment><USER6> And von Neumann lived mostly though war and 30's financial crisis. I honestly think it's more a question of (lack of) will/confidence from part of academia. I bet if had really good ideas about new languages and really wanted to dig deep on that he would be able to do so without starving.

Maryam Mirzakhani (this year's female fields Medalist) commented that she's quite a slow thinker, and left a clear impression that it's more a matter of asking important questions and actually trying to solve them with perseverence. It's just far more secure to chase the low-hanging fruits.

[http://www.simonsfoundation.org/quanta/20140812-a-tenacious-...](http://www.simonsfoundation.org/quanta/20140812-a-tenacious- explorer-of-abstract-surfaces/)

" Another notable and enviable trait of von Neumann's was his mathematical courage. If, in the middle of a search for a counterexample, an infinite series came up, with a lot of exponentials that had quadratic exponents, many mathematicians would start with a clean sheet of paper and look for another counterexample. Not Johnny! When that happened to him, he cheerfully said: "Oh, yes, a thetafunction...", and plowed ahead with the mountainous computations. He wasn't afraid of anything."

That's an inspiration!

<comment><USER4> My understanding is that during the war, the american government was throwing money around liberally. Trying to do everything it could to outwit and outdo the enemy. This is part of what caused the post-war economic boom, money being distributed and more people getting a chance to prosper.

<comment><USER7> Makes one wonder what the NSA have been doing since the 80s. They're supposed to be the biggest employer of mathematicians, and since the 90s they've had their very own "war budget". Maybe in 2050 we'll say -- oh wow, look at all the great stuff that came out of the islamophobic-fuelled war on the middle east that the US spearheaded. Shame about the future ruined for half a billion people, but boy did they come up with some crazy stuff at the NSA!

<comment><USER8> > Makes one wonder what the NSA have been doing since the 80s. They're > supposed to be the biggest employer of mathematicians, and since the 90s > they've had their very own "war budget".

I wonder. Does anyone have _recent_ sources indicating the NSA really might be the biggest employer of mathematicians? I'd also point to the Snowden and other leaks and attacks like Stuxnet - so far, everything revealed has been fairly humdrum in the sense that they are more or less what you'd expect if you threw a few billion dollars at known vulnerabilities in the Internet and current OSes. Portmapping entire countries' computers may be impressive in some respects, but not in the sense of beyond-cutting-edge cryptography/mathematics.

<comment><USER7> I'd say the recent revelation/allegation that NSA accidentally took down Syria's Internet connection in the recent Wired interview with Snowden and the general "vibe" of mismanagement that I get from Snowden's and Binney's accounts -- doesn't have to imply that NSA doesn't _also_ do interesting work _other_ than their practical attacks on global infrastructure. But it does seem clear that _if_ they actually do interesting stuff (say, working on using multiple satellites to photograph the same area in order to extrapolate to higher resolution images than what is possible from a single lens due to atmospheric effects -- or perhaps quantum or DNA/RNA computing etc). It _is_ clear that whatever they might be doing, it does seem to be ridiculously highly classified, just like the sibling comment's example with RSA and GCHQ.

<comment><USER8> While the NSA has a huge budget, it's not infinite, and what gets one promoted and what analysts are boasting about in their slides gives you a definite idea for what the organization values. Do any of the leaks _sound_ like there might be huge contingents of mathematicians off in side-corridor making breakthroughs? Not really.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I'm surprised this article doesn't mention his language abilities.

Since the age of six, von Neumann was fluent in Latin and ancient Greek. He also read (and remembered completely) all the major works of antiquity.

As someone who's been struggling with Latin and Greek for over 10 years it completely breaks my spirit to know that for someone else it was so effortless.

</comment><comment><USER10> What I find truly remarkable about polymaths is that they don't seem to be crippled in other regards. There is no trade-off. Actually, abilities seem to positivly correlate rather than displace each other.

It seems like there's a free lunch somewhere. Which is unusual for living beings, for evolution to miss it.

<comment><USER11> Well, he only had one kid. That makes him a pretty lousy performer from evolution's point of view.

<comment><USER12> He did improve the evolutionary odds of most people on HN, so that counts for something.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> The section on "work habits" is especially amazing. I know people who are very smart but also very lazy. They end up falling behind in the long run; may be a corollary to the Curse of the Gifted.

</comment><comment><USER14> John von Neumann was an absolutely amazing human and scientist. truly a genius, a polymath, and evidently quite an interesting party guest. the book Prisoner's Dilemma is ostensibly about game theory but it's set within the context of von Neumann's life. really quite fascinating, one of my favorite people to study.

[http://www.amazon.com/Prisoners-Dilemma-William- Poundstone/d...](http://www.amazon.com/Prisoners-Dilemma-William- Poundstone/dp/038541580X/)

<comment><USER15> Not to rain on the parade, but such glorification of "heroes" is... just awkward. Wasn't there an article on Herbert's _Dune_ on the HN front page, just yesterday?

In particular, von Neumann was an "amazing human" as long as you don't mind him advising the military to bomb Russia out of the map, preemptively. What a wonderfully humane move.

 _" If you say why not bomb them tomorrow, I say why not today? If you say today at 5 o'clock, I say why not one o'clock?"_

(and this is not just some cranky scientist rambling -- he was very high up in the military circles, an advisor/policy maker).

Another common target of cringeworthy worship: Feynman. All fun stories (and I'm aware saying this is probably not going to go down well on HN) until you read about the abuse of women, paid abortions, broken marriages of his colleagues...

They're all human.

<comment><USER16> Can you please add some sources for the claim about Feynman? A quick search on the web "feynman abuse" didn't gave me relevant results.

<comment><USER17> The famous quote is "His ex-wife reportedly testified that on several occasions when she unwittingly disturbed either his calculus or his drums he flew into a violent rage, during which time he attacked her, threw pieces of bric-a-brac about and smashed the furniture." That was from an FBI file ([https://www.muckrock.com/foi/united-states-of- america-10/fbi...](https://www.muckrock.com/foi/united-states-of- america-10/fbi-files-on-richard-feynman-1165/#366875-responsive-documents)) on Feynman.

I don't know anything about the "paid abortion" thing.

It's tricky stuff... Feynman was (is?) a hero of mine, and I struggle to put this stuff in context.

<comment><USER18> "It's tricky stuff... Feynman was (is?) a hero of mine, and I struggle to put this stuff in context."

Heros have feet of clay. The correct move is to adjust your concept of "hero" to include this.

The alternative, that you will only declare someone a "hero" if they are perfect in every way yields a definition of "hero" with 0 instances, which is a useless definition.

If Feynmann was abusive to his wife to some degree, well, plenty of people are abusive to their wifes without also creating physics breakthroughs. It's OK to honor his ability to do that without having to think of him as perfect.

<comment><USER17> I half-agree with you, but isn't there an ethical line past which it's wrong to call someone a hero?

<comment><USER19> Isn't that something you should decide for yourself? Also, why do you assume there's a duality between hero and non-hero? The person did what they did. Simplifying it to the point of 'hero' or 'not hero' is overgeneralizing, I think. Acknowledge their achievements. Acknowledge their faults. Labels aren't a requirement.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> I think it's sad that at the end of his life, he was really fearful of death. So fearful, in fact, that he sought refuge in religion, but supposedly, it didn't bring much comfort.

I always think of that when I ponder about my own struggles with life, the human condition, and mortality. I really don't want to be that fearful of my own impending death if I get something like cancer.

</comment><comment><USER21> "Hungarian is not exactly a lingua franca" Hard to argue with that part. :)

Anyhow, a colleague of mine at PaineWebber sadly came down with schizophrenic delusions, and concluded that he and I were illegitimate children of Norbert Weiner, while Jack Grubman and Andy Kessler had been sired by John von Neumann. I objected strenuously; as somebody whose PhD these was a special case of the min-max theorem for zero-sum games, I thought it only fitting that I be on the von Neumann side of the ledger.

</comment><comment><USER22> Gödel did not prove that mathematics could not 'be proved consistent'. He proved that particular axiomatic systems cannot be _both_ complete _and_ consistent.

<comment><USER23> Presumably, the reference is to Goedel's second incompleteness theorem, rather than the first incompleteness theorem. (One might still quibble with phrasing it in this way, of course)

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> More than once I was studying something in completely unrelated fields (eg: quantum mechanics, biology, game theory), when suddenly von Neumann (who I first knew for his contributions to computer science) is mentioned and I'm like "What? This guy again?". After the third time I went to read his biography because it couldn't be the same person. But yeah, it was.

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

<comment><USER25> Yeah, the same happened to me. I believe it was the thermonuclear bomb and the Von Neumann architecture. I thought that it couldn't be the same guy - <USER2> entirely unrelated fields - but it was. The guy was, in my opinion at least, the last true polymath.

<comment><USER26> Except they're not unrelated. Von Neumann needed more computing power than he had available, for studying bomb blasts. Not only did he and colleagues largely create digital computers, but he marshaled the resources of the US government and academia to get it done.

Dyson's _Turing 's Cathedral_ is a fascinating account of the development of digital computers. The early ones were amazingly physical, using wave propagation delays in liquid mercury, and repeatedly painting rows of oscilloscope screens, as _storage_.

[https://duckduckgo.com/?q=turing%27s%20cathedral](https://duckduckgo.com/?q=turing%27s%20cathedral)

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

EDIT: s/Turning/Turing/

<comment><USER25> Wow. Really cool stuff. I'll be sure to check out the book then.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Can you manage without having to borrow? - <AUTHOR> http://www.nichea.info/2008/10/can-you-manage-without-having-to-borrow.html <comment><USER2> Why not start with looking to reduce montly spending, then cutting incidental spending and then see if you can earn more? If you are unwilling to look at your spending, more income will not save you.</comment>


Augmented reality shopping app provides better information on 'free range' eggs - <AUTHOR> https://www.choice.com.au/food-and-drink/meat-fish-and-eggs/eggs/articles/choice-free-range-egg-app <comment><USER2> As I read this, all I could picture was the skit from Portlandia where the characters went to the farm where the chicken on the menu was raised.</comment>


Back to PC after 14 years on a MacBook - <AUTHOR> https://www.jitbit.com/alexblog/277-back-to-pc-after-14-years-on-a-macbook/ <comment><USER2> Counterpoint: I actually tried modern Windows - it sucks. I'm fact it sucked so much that it convinced a happy Windows 7 user like me to buy a Mac.

</comment><comment><USER3> bottom line: it's all still very subjective. Some people will get along better with windows, some won't. I'm more annoyed that there are pretty much only three options out there (Linux,Win,Mac) :/

<comment><AUTHOR> I'd say there are a handful of Windowses and macOSes but thousands of Linuxes. What's wrong with that variety of choice?

<comment><USER4> Also can't go wrong with the various BSD variants</comment></comment></comment>


Betaworks has acquired the core assets of Digg - <AUTHOR> http://blog.betaworks.com/post/27070595530/digg <comment><USER2> Reddit won the game, slow and steady. Reddit now literally powers the _generation_ of news cycles across the blogerverse. BuzzFeed? HuffPo? Gawker? TheDaily? Reddit, yesterday.

First thing first is rescue the culture. Digg engineering already fled, the peanut gallery in the valley keeps squawking with delight about your failure, and all you have left is some nicely designed pages showing double digit gains on stale links that's a shade away from being as if they were spun up by a Russian spam squad. Save yourself, redo the logo, redo the color scheme, don't let legacy drag you down.

Second thing is do some soul searching, figuring out what layer Digg wants to play in. Links aggregation? Community building and content creation? Traffic? Attention? Engagement? That elusive ad sharing model for content creators?

After that figure out for who. Reddit's core is dying, and eventually it'll be fully crowded out by the mainstreaming of rage comics, aww pics, and counter- Tumblr-pseudo-nerdy programming. Do you target those people, the walking wounded much like Slashdot?

Or do you go after the youths, the ones addicted to Instagrams, 9gag, imgur, but bored of their Facebook feeds? Then play the waiting game. New is everything old, after all.

The game's so different now from 2005. All the majors have feeds now. All the majors have figured out sharing, commenting, and extracting action on a story item. On top of that you're competing against mobile guys like Flipboard.

This is one of those situations where execution is easier than creating an idea. What is Digg's $1MM idea? Good luck with that because Digg needs to be futuristic but also _really_ lucky twice being at the right place, the right time, with the right idea. Once you're lucky, twice you're good, right?

I bet this kind of flame out, this one thing keeps Mark Zuckerberg from sleeping.

<comment><USER3> No it doesn't.

Go to the front page of reddit right now and try to find me a piece of news.

I see 2 items out of 25 links.

One of them is a [linkbait title] story about wikileaks winning a case against VISA (in iceland).

The other is about a Canadian supreme court ruling.

<comment><USER4> The replies you'll get are "you make your own reddit, just remove the popular subreddits!" but you're right. reddit is usable for _hardcore_ users that want to invest real time into their experience, it's atrocious for casual users (that don't care for the meme spam). There is a large hole that (new) Digg could fill.

<comment><USER5> I agree, but I think that Reddit is only usable for a specific subset of hardcore users.

Unfortunately, Reddit's admins chose to take a hands-off approach to policing bad behavior in the community. As a result, Reddit regulars have to guard themselves against providing enough information in their comments to attract the attention of a diligent troll.

I had a 5-year-old account on Reddit, and had been active on there from just about the beginning. I had hand-picked subreddits and the like. But, ultimately, it was better just to delete my account entirely and become a casual reader.

Now Reddit is basically the daily equivalent of reading the comics section in the newspaper.

I think Digg has a huge opportunity here. I doubt that they will take advantage of it though.

<comment><USER6> _I had a 5-year-old account on Reddit, and had been active on there from just about the beginning. I had hand-picked subreddits and the like. But, ultimately, it was better just to delete my account entirely and become a casual reader._

Wow, could you fill us in on exactly what happened?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> > The News.me team will take Digg back to its essence: the best place to find, > read and share the stories the internet is talking about. Right now.

With my cynicism hat on nice and tight, it seems a bit late for that. Digg WAS, in its heyday, the best place to find and share online content. But as the management undertook on iffy decision after another, and as imitators sprung up left right and centre, it lost its place in the online world. Sad.

We have plenty of content aggregators now. The kind of people Digg 5.0 (?!) will target are probably more than happy finding their entertainment through Twitter, Facebook, and dare I say it, Reddit.

Having said that, I for one wish the new team all the luck in the world in trying to get the site back to its former glory, and I look forward to trying it out.

<comment><USER8> I liked Reddit back when it was less well known. Now, it just appears that the content appeals to the lowest common denominator. Some of the content is still great (i.e. r/dwarffortress), but a lot of the site has degraded into junk. If anyone has some good subreddits that are still decent, I'd love to know what they are.

<comment><USER9> I don't use reddit so have a fairly basic understanding of how it works but looking at all these replies about subreddits, it struck me that basically reddit is a web2.0 version of usenet. So I guess that means good content is there, you just need to know where to look :)

P.S. for the redditors: I have nothing against reddit, it's just that I'm already drowning in information and never found the time to get in to it.

<comment><USER10> That's actually a pretty decent analogy. Obviously the focus on posting links and ranking and such is different, but the user experience of someone totally new is similar. As is the searching for tiny pockets of awesome in a sea of idiocy.

<comment><USER9> Heh heh I love your phrase "searching for tiny pockets of awesome in a sea of idiocy" - that pretty much sums up my entire relationship with the internet :D

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> This is a case of a company having delusions of grandeur. Instead of humming along with 10 or so employees raking in cash hand-over fist, they tried to grow as fast and as large as possible to try to revolutionize news. Instead, Reddit did the former and is stable and profitable; it never pretends to be something it's not.

Not all companies are going to change the world, nor should they. I see Facebook and Twitter making the same mistakes. Perhaps Facebook is a great place to keep in touch with friends but nothing more. Perhaps Twitter is simply a great replacement for blogging, nothing more. Instead of filling their niches and quietly making a small number of employees very wealthy, they try to become these massive institutions that are reliant on very fickle user bases. It's a house of cards.

<comment><USER12> As someone who used Digg and Reddit from their infancy I have been able to observe when and how Digg fell from #1. I don't think they failed because they were having delusions of grandeur.

The 1st mistake that Digg made was the introduction of power users. As a power user your stories were artificially boosted to the front page. After this happened, I noticed a huge decline in quality where the front page became mostly populated by articles from cracked and huffingtonpost. This quote from another user summed up the situation.

In version 3 around 100 diggers ran 80% of the front page – to get on the front page you had to cover Kevin getting a blow job from Stallman, or get a power user to submit your story. At that point Digg was not a democracy at all, but a curated list by paid Digg pros who shilled for hire. If you were a nice guy, or a tech publisher, you had power digger friends who would submit your stuff for you for free.

Then there is the 2nd mistake that everyone knows about. Digg 4.0, the last mistake that finally made Reddit bigger than Digg. Large domains Engadget and Mashable flooded the front page with their auto-submitted stories. It was then that Kevin Rose betrayed the power users for large publishers, just as he had betrayed the regular users for power users many years ago.

If Digg had not done any of this, there would have been a very good chance that they would still have been the largest aggregator today.

<comment><USER11> Please; power users were controlling the content on the site _long_ before they turned 3.0 on. It was a well known fact that a small minority of users controlled the vast majority of the front page content (mrbabyman, for instance).

<comment><USER12> I know this. I was just quoting someone else.

I remember when power users came out far before v3. That was when I started browsing Reddit more often.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> From WSJ: "The price was just $500,000, three people familiar with the matter said—a pittance for a company that raised $45 million from prominent investors including LinkedIn founder Reid Hoffman and Marc Andreessen."

[http://online.wsj.com/article/SB1000142405270230437380457752...](http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052702304373804577523181002565776.html?mod=wsj_share_tweet)

<comment><USER14> "None of Digg's remaining employees will join Betaworks as part of the acquisition."

what did they acually buy? The know how? The technology? None of that is revolutionary today. And there is no community on digg right now whatsoever (unlike /. which still lives its own life).

Maybe the name is worth something, but I don't really think that it matters that much.

<comment><USER15> The domain name and brand recognition. For $500K, cheap.

<comment><USER16> yeah, something shady must be going on.

My guess is that you'll find similar people on Digg's and News.me boards. And this was just a way to a) write off Digg as a permanent loss off the books and b) transfer those assets cheaply to the other company, which might boost them from being a loser to being a winner

Noone sells Digg for $500K...not unless they are millions and millions in debt

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Sorry for my ignorance. I've been searching for exactly what went wrong with the Digg redesign, but I can't find anything that really spells it out. Something with side-by-side comparisons or a deeper analysis than "Users leave in drove after Digg redesign that alienates user base." How did it alienate those users? Of course I was aware that it happened, but because I wasn't part of the community, I never understood what it was, exactly.

Also, is this an example that illustrates why craigslist refuses to redesign their site? A redesign really could spell the end of craiglist like digg.

<comment><USER18> The Digg redesign had any number of problems, most of them inherent in any project to completely reimplement a complex piece of software that already has a large user base. Bugs, missing features, etc.

IMO, the larger problem was one of philosophy. Was the site primarily designed for people generating the traffic or those receiving it? How do you deal with people gaming the system? Digg chose to side with the people gaming the system, presumably because it was a more obvious path to profitability. (Digg had a large staff and ridiculously high burn rate) Prior to the v4 redesign, however, there was at least the illusion that regular users' submissions and voting mattered. Digg v4 simply eliminated the roundabout of gaming the system by making votes almost irrelevant; publishers and marketeers could simply pipe all of their content directly to the top of the frontpage by gathering a sufficiently large number of followers. It made the site little more than a pseudo-RSS frontend for content farms.

Reddit has been successful by fighting a vigorous, if behind-the-scenes, war against spamming and gaming. It may be regressing toward the mean, but at least it's a mean defined by the users rather than a spammer.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> Why? Reddit is like Digg 2 now. Back in the day Digg was for dudebros who wanted to swap girls gone wild links while Reddit was the "isn't Haskell grand?" place. But since about 2008 or so when Reddit rubbed up against Digg and 4chan and a big chunk of their user base rubbed off and clung to it, Digg has been made wholly redundant.

</comment><comment><USER20> I used to love digg in the early days. People point to the v4 revision as being the final nail, but they started wavering and losing the magic literal years before that.

FWIW, Pligg (the digg clone CMS) looks like it's getting a twitter bootstrap upgrade. I've been wanting to roll my own "digg/reddit/HN" for ages. Maybe now's the time. <http://www.pligg.com/demo/>

<comment><USER21> FYI: Reddit is open source. You don't have to roll your own, just go git it: <https://github.com/reddit/>

<comment><USER22> FWIW, I found Pligg a lot easier to configure and set up when I needed to create a quick intranet news portal last year.

<comment><USER21> Fair enough - I've played with Pligg too, and found it really easy. I've never tried to deploy reddit, though. I imagine it to be much more robust & therefore complicated...

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> I am incredibly skeptical about the plausibility of resurrecting Digg, but for 500k I sure hope they do. It was my first social media home and it would be nice to be able to go back to what it was; not a marketing front end for corporate prostitution.

Fingers crossed, but betaworks seems to want to take Digg in the direction it should have gone during the v2->v3 upgrade.

<comment><USER24> Not a hope.

And the fact that they are going to fold it into news.me to send links of articles that others are reading sounds retarded.

<comment><USER23> Oh damn, if they integrate that into news.me, they've shot themselves with a $500,000 proverbial bullet in the proverbial foot.

At this point Reddit can probably not be killed. The only hope that betaworks could have at success is a vanilla relaunch of Digg, minus the gaming problems and "advertising for hire" functionality. Remember Digg when Dragon Age: Origins came out?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> Digg is a shadow of an online community, but its fall gave us War, a three- part social media epic by ncomment: [https://secure.flickr.com/photos/25036088@N06/3424896427/siz...](https://secure.flickr.com/photos/25036088@N06/3424896427/sizes/o/in/set-72157615924666317/)

</comment><comment><USER26> I don't doubt that something can be done with it, but I'm dubious of Digg as a brand these days. Similar to MySpace, it's lost all the credibility it once had.

</comment><comment><USER27> The first iteration of digg looks awfully like reddit.

<http://web.archive.org/web/20041230012732/http://digg.com/>

</comment><comment><USER28> From techcrunch: "Betaworks, says Digg, will soon unveil a new "cloud-based version of Digg" that will complement News.me's iPhone and iPad apps" Not sure what this means, Digg was never a desktop client. It's betaworks using lingo that will grab the attention of non tech readers to suggest something interesting is going on. But it isn't. Just like with a lot of their other stuff. Bitly is a simple concept which has been done many times. News.me is nothing interesting at all, just an attempt to rip off Flipboard. Chartbeat is just another way to visualize data that's available by so many other means. Nothing original with betaworks.

</comment><comment><USER29> the german Digg clone Yigg.de also sold today. Funny how that timing works out. (<http://yigg.de/nachrichten/2012/07/12/ekaabo-uebernimmt-yigg>)

</comment><comment><USER30> This should be a film, the story has everything: business press coverage, the BluRay code event, death threats to the founder, a near-deal with Google, the exit of the CEO, the 4.0 debacle, the company downsizes, the founder leaves, the company struggles, then the company sells it's shell.

I hope BusinessWeek does a piece on this.

</comment><comment><USER21> $500k: hard to tell if they've over- or under- paid. What's the Digg Balance Sheet look like? How about the last year of cash flow statements? Without those, its impossible to evaluate the worthiness of the deal.

<comment><USER31> Note it's 'acquiring the assets' rather than 'acquiring the company'.

In general this means the steaming wreck of a company will be left behind, asset stripped. In other words, if Digg owes you money, you're not going to be able to ask the new owners for it.

It also means it's up to them which employees (if any) they take on.

This is a sale of brand name, domain name, IP and probably very little else.

</comment></comment><comment><USER32> the trouble is that fixing Digg means getting rid of the existing user base

<comment><USER33> Ya, Kevin & Jay tried that back in 2006 - worked out real well for them.

<comment><USER32> they gotta get them to sign a statement that they'll click on ads

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> I wonder what they consider the "core assets" to be; some specific items I'm curious about: domain name, codebase, hosting contracts, Aeron chairs, employees.

<comment><USER35> For example:

[http://www.domainnamenews.com/domain-sales/diggcom- acquires-...](http://www.domainnamenews.com/domain-sales/diggcom-acquires- wefollowcom-domain-side-story/6351)

</comment></comment><comment><USER36> I imagine it'll end up costing them quite a bit more than $500k when the dust settles... Digg probably has quite a bit of debt racked up by now.

</comment><comment><USER37> news.me + digg could be good

</comment><comment><USER38> The only reason it's $500k and not $0 is to save a small amount of face. Digg is losing money, and has never made money in its entire history, so it's going to cost Betaworks a lot more than $500k to take it over.

<comment><USER39> Digg bleeds money because they're overstaffed for what they do. Reddit ate their lunch with _five_ paid people, while Digg was employing dozens. I think they had over 100 people on staff at their peak. Even now, when reddit has an order of magnitude more traffic than Digg ever had (1 billion+ pageviews a month), reddit runs with a staff of about 10 people. Digg probably still has a whole lot of dead weight, even at this point when the whole thing is only worth two and a half good developers salaries.

<comment><USER40> Yeah, but reddit appears to have been staffed with employees who worked all hours of the night and day for a salary; see blog posts from before reddit gold. That's not sustainable and unless you have a line on a set of really smart suckers who want to work way too much for the same money then can get elsewhere working half the hours or on call... you need more employees.

<comment><USER39> Two points:

1\. I don't think that people, working all hours, are actually significantly more productive than those working regular hours. In fact, in knowledge work, there's good evidence that you only get two or three hours of real productivity per day, no matter how long you keep banging your head on the keyboard. 2\. Even if reddit developers and staff were _twice_ as productive as Digg folks, that only indicates that Digg had _five_ times too many people (instead of ten times too many).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER41> How the mighty have fallen...

</comment><comment><USER42> How much do you think it would cost to buy reddit?

<comment><USER43> Problem with buying Reddit is that you would still never really own reddit.

If digg's fall has taught us anything, it's that heavily community-driven sites are owned by the community. Try to make any major/unpopular changes in direction or business, and the entire site may come crumbling down.</comment></comment>


Sacred Economics (2012) [pdf] - <AUTHOR> http://sacred-economics.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/01/sacred-economics-book-text.pdf <comment><AUTHOR> Context:

Sacred Economics traces the history of money from ancient gift economies to modern capitalism, revealing how the money system has contributed to alienation, competition, and scarcity, destroyed community, and necessitated endless growth. Today, these trends have reached their extreme—but in the wake of their collapse, we may find great opportunity to transition to a more connected, ecological, and sustainable way of being.

This book is about how the money system will have to change—and is already changing—to embody this transition. A broadly integrated synthesis of theory, policy, and practice, Sacred Economics explores avant-garde concepts of the New Economics, including negative-interest currencies, local currencies, resource-based economics, gift economies, and the restoration of the commons. Author Charles Eisenstein also considers the personal dimensions of this transition, speaking to those concerned with "right livelihood" and how to live according to their ideals in a world seemingly ruled by money. Tapping into a rich lineage of conventional and unconventional economic thought, Sacred Economics presents a vision that is original yet commonsense, radical yet gentle, and increasingly relevant as the crises of our civilization deepen.

Sacred Economics official website: [http://sacred- economics.com](http://sacred-economics.com)

</comment><comment> barry-cotter [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8056597](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8056597)

"Skimming three chapters reveals no sign that the author of the above book knows first-year undergraduate economics, why the current economy is arranged the way it is, or what policy tradeoffs would be involved in their hopeful ideas. May I recommend to you the standard introductory text Intermediate Microeconomics by Hal Varian, which I recently gave to a friend of mine?"

<comment><USER2> Whilst reading up on the evolution of our current economy may be worthwhile to get a fuller understanding of human behaviour, I do not see what relevance it has in understanding how a fundamentally different economy would work. We don't expect chemists to study alchemy, we expect them to work with current day ideas of best practices. Its clear our current economic practices are fundamentally broken, they're almost a lesson in what not to do.

<comment><USER3> Your personal alternate realities are not historical precedent.

<comment><USER2> History is not always an accurate means of predicting the future.

If you have questions about my 'personal alternate realities' please feel free to ask them.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Compare with Binding Chaos[0], which rejects the Eisensteinian gift economy in favor of a "network-first" approach of stigmergic principles and epistemic communities(a wavelength similar to Telecomix[1]):

[0] [http://georgiebc.files.wordpress.com/2013/05/bindingchaos85x...](http://georgiebc.files.wordpress.com/2013/05/bindingchaos85x11.pdf) [1] [http://telecomix.org/](http://telecomix.org/)

<comment><USER2> Skimming through that led me to stigmergy as a way to organise social action, it's an interesting concept, thanks chipsy. [http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stigmergy](http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stigmergy)

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Inspired by Sacred Economics, Kindista is an open-source social network designed to help people share with other people who live near them. Check it out at [https://kindista.org/](https://kindista.org/) and/or the Common Lisp source code at [https://github.com/kindista/kindista](https://github.com/kindista/kindista)

<comment><USER3> Upvoted for CL.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> I'm working on building a sharing/exchange network with built-in reputation and points given to people who work for the good of the community. In other words, the bank generates currency only for those that create value in the local economy. It's called the Jack of all trades Universe or JoatU for short and you can read more at [http://joatu.com](http://joatu.com) and check our github (it is open source of course): [http://github.com/joatuapp](http://github.com/joatuapp)

Ask me anything.

</comment><comment><USER7> Possibly the only thing dumber than 'sacred' geometry. At least he should be able to shuck a few thousand from the new age crowd to sign up for a course based on this book.</comment>