Why Are Some Countries Rich and Others Poor? - <AUTHOR> https://research.stlouisfed.org/publications/page1-econ/2017/09/01/why-are-some-countries-rich-and-others-poor/ <comment><USER2> As someone who migrated from a developing country(India) to a developed country(Australia) and observing the difference in quality of life of average citizens among the two countries, I always wonder why politicians/dictators from developing countries who can also observe these differences ever wonder that the average people in a developed country are living a good life so why not just copy what the developed country is doing and apply the similar policies back home to improve the lives of their own citizens.

<comment><USER3> Because controlling people, who are struggling in their life, are much easier by dictators. Even with religious activities, dictators can make citizens pray for him. if politicians allow you to have lots of chances, then you'll start criticizing and want more. More improvement on life conditions gives you less control on citizens.

I'm Turkish living in Switzerland, I can say that it is the same shit in every developing country and i can ensure you they won't be developed due to the facts that i mentioned above. We need really high numbers of citizens to break the borders.

<comment><USER4> Also, corruption. This is anectotal, but in the countries I've visisted, which include a hand full of ex Soviet republics, the median quality of life seemed to be negatively correlated with the amount of corruption.

<comment><USER5> I'm also Turkish, and believe me, when you have a dictator with his troll army, sucking the life out of the whole country, you'll wish you had the typical corrupt but manageable government from the 90s. The types we have these times would stand next to a kilometer-long list documenting their illegal business and say "we did what needs to be done for our great country" and everyone would cheer while you make escape plans. Hi from Germany(the risk of being falsely labeled as a teenager won't stop me: I<3🇩🇪).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> No mention of colonialism or imperialism here. Not the whole answer, but part.

<comment><USER7> Japan and Germany were completely devastated after WWII, on a scale we have never witnessed in our lifetimes, yet they rose out of the Ashes.

So no, it's not colonialism.

It has to be something less visible. Something that a country like Afghanistan for example severely lacks.

You might point to dictatorships, but I would point to South and North Koreas.

South Korea was ruled by a brutal dictatorship _for decades_ , in a way not so different from Egypt today. Yet that did not stop it from developing.

Even North Korea fares a lot better than many third world countries that have little to no enmities with their neighbors. I suspect the only reason North Korea sucks is because of the pressures/blockades imposed on it by the US (mostly for historical reasons).

<comment><USER8> After WWII, the US invested /massively/ in Germany. Also, many people were trained in some profession, so even though everthing was destroyed, they knew how to rebuild it.

<comment><USER9> Same with South Korea, which actually made a lot of money during the Vietnam war, as did Japan. Japan trade with Zeus boomed at that time, and Korea supplied 300 000 mercenaries. Before that North Korea was faring better economically than the south.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I'll save you all a click:

The article answers the question with the following two points:

\- lack of strong institutions

\- trade barriers

It provides an example of North vs south Korea in defense of the theory.

It's a ridiculously simplistic synthesis in my opinion.

<comment><USER11> This criticism is always so weird. What should the article - not thesis note, ARTICLE - have been: 10 times longer?

It is almost like people expect comprehensive, bulletproof writing in under 1000 words.

<comment><USER12> The criticism is not that the article should be more comprehensive, but that the title implies that it is.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Economists can sometimes be the equivalent to the priests of the past-- basically making justifications for the ruling class.

I was once passionate about economics and public policy... If we are to be honest about it, at some point you just realize that the world is much less nice than I imagined, and it's that way because of people's greed.

That's not to say there aren't a fair good number of decent people out there, but those people are rarely found in powerful positions; and if they are, they are still susceptible to being corrupted.

<comment><USER14> The beauty about free market economics is, it doesn't depend on people's niceness to maximize productivity, capital utilization and consequently the aggregate standard of living of a country. Supply and demand, and pursueing self interest will achieve all of this in the aggregate despite any localized exceptions.

<comment><USER15> All those good things like maximizing productivity, capital utilization etc are theory based on markets with perfect competition. How many "free markets" satisfy all the assumptions made about perfect competition?

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

<comment><USER13> Yea, exactly. But with effective regulation, we can get closer to perfect competition, or at least remedy the market failures that are inevitable.

To go on a bit of a rant--ufortunately it appears the trend is going the other way with Big Gov allied with Big Business, out of control banking empires and MIC, made possible by never-ending low interest rates and easy money policies from the Fed that mask it all.

Don't belive me? Real cost of living has increased to where 2 incomes are required for many to just keep their heads above water to afford what their parents had, despite more education and working longer hours. We have never ending wars, 26,000 bombs dropped last year, and the longest war in history and it was never even approved by congress. Our most popular media outlets tell us we need this so we have jobs[1].

1-[https://theintercept.com/2016/09/09/wolf-blitzer-is- worried-...](https://theintercept.com/2016/09/09/wolf-blitzer-is-worried- defense-contractors-will-lose-jobs-if-u-s-stops-arming-saudi-arabia/)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> I "like" the use of North Korea as example of bad institutions and not of effect of embargoes. Likewise South Korea definitely did not receive (and properly used) foreign aid. /s

The article clearly contradicts itself on the point by showing how ineffective Qing dynasty policy reforms were in China while later even bigger changes in communist China worked.

And definitely does not address anything related to USSR or rise of the USA. Or further back, British empire. (Each employed very different policies was successful for a time.)

And then you have to look even further back...

Conclusions are therefore a joke toy model.

<comment><USER17> > Likewise South Korea definitely did not receive (and properly used) foreign > aid.

South Korea did receive quite a lot of foreign aid from US, UN.

South Korea is the only nation to transition from receiver to giver in international aid. [https://poldev.revues.org/1535](https://poldev.revues.org/1535)

<comment><USER18> The '/s' at the end of that line denotes sarcasm.

<comment><USER17> Learning something new lol. No seriously. I missed it.

South Korea really did have the Greatest Generation. Those who were were adults during the war and those born around that time. Really.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> I recommend everyone interested in this subject to read "Why Nations Fail: The Origins of Power, Prosperity, and Poverty" by Daron Acemoglu

It's a great book that tries to explain why.

<comment><USER20> I came across this 36 page lecture[0] with the same title in by another person with the author, for those who want some insight without buying the book.

Interesting to read, and it seems like it comes down to:

      - Because they have extractive political and economic institutions.

      - These are difficult to change though they can be successfully challenged and altered during critical junctures.

      - The roots of modern world inequality lie in the emergence of inclusive institutions in Britain and the fruits of this - the industrial revolution - spread to those parts of the world that had similar institutions (settler colonies) or quickly developed them (Western Europe).

      - Other parts of the world languished with extractive institutions which have persisted over time and thus remain poor today.

With caveats of:

      - History is not destiny.

      - Effective reforms towards inclusive institutions possible.

      - But it often necessitates a minor or major political revolution.

        Two examples:

          1 End of Southern equilibrium in the United States

          2 Botswana

I think I was drawn to this part in the lecture and started thinking about what modern day analogous of this could look like (Jamie Dimon's position on crypto-currencies as of late [specifically bitcoin] as modern day Sultan wrt firing employees trading such [and other well politically entrenched financial institutions around the world], DPI on internet networks by various nation states from blocking easy access to information, etc) :

      - In 1445 in the German city of Mainz, Johannes Gutenberg invented the printing press based on movable type. Spread rapidly throughout Western Europe.

      - In 1485, the Ottoman Sultan Bayezid II issued an edict to the effect that Muslims were expressly forbidden from printing in Arabic.

[0] [http://www.lse.ac.uk/assets/richmedia/channels/publicLecture...](http://www.lse.ac.uk/assets/richmedia/channels/publicLecturesAndEvents/slides/20110608_1830_whyNationsFail_sl.pdf)

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> As a citizen of a developing country (Nepal) which has been haunted by its unstable politics, I'd still like to (partially)advocate that even less- developed nations(at least some) have invaluable resources (mostly natural) that the urbane nations can't renew for themselves. For instance, here in Nepal, there's a massive open market for tourism due to the remarkable landscapes(mountain ranges, "Everest", geographically blessed I'd say) & ancient cultural heritages(sacred Hinduism & Origin of Buddhism). Had there been a proper salutation of foreign indulgence in exploiting the resources over here, Nepal would have done much better. Hence, the political mayhem has led our country nowhere productive. :(

</comment><comment><USER22> One important factor could be differences in intelligence. [https://infogalactic.com/info/IQ_and_Global_Inequality](https://infogalactic.com/info/IQ_and_Global_Inequality)

<comment><USER23> For the past century raw scores on IQ tests have been rising; this score increase is known as the "Flynn effect," named after Jim Flynn. In the United States, the increase was continuous and approximately linear from the earliest years of testing to about 1998 when the gains stopped and some tests even showed decreasing test scores. For example, in the United States the average scores of blacks on some IQ tests in 1995 were the same as the scores of whites in 1945.[61] As one pair of academics phrased it, "the typical African American today probably has a slightly higher IQ than the grandparents of today's average white American."[62]

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

IQ is a culture thing not a brain thing

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> I like to think that countries that are rich have figured out things about themselves that they have and are really needed by the rest of the world, and so they provide those services to the rest of the world for a price and use the proceeds from those services to develop the infrastructure and well-being of their country; for instance a very important well-being improving task is diversifying their economy, this they do to protect against unforeseen shifts in the global market.

The summary of this is that rich country figured out low hanging and easy fruits of services(for them that is, as if it was easy for others they could not hope to sell such services.) they could provide for a fortune and use those proceeds from those services to chase after high hanging fruits of services they could deliver to the world as those one's usually require intense capital.

Poor countries therefore either have not figured out services they could provide for the world or they have figured it out but are not investing the proceeds from it in the infrastructure and well-being of their country, being a Nigerian I would say most poor African countries are poor not because of the former but the later due to corruption,tribalism,e.t.c.

</comment><comment><USER25> Wasn't there a significant divergence in fortunes as economies transformed from resource based to value added economies?

Around the turn of the XX century, many struggling economies today were on par with middling countries in Europe.

Think Czech, Finland, Hungary, Polen, Japan. Brazil, Mexico, etc., were competitive with them back then, but now, the latter are seen as basket cases of mismanagement. And empire and colonialism didn't give even Japan aby advantage till the 30s, arguably one could say that sapped their vigor. On the other hand LatAm had become independent from Iberian powers while inheriting a system of government (not the best but arguably better than monarchies), yet with the exceptions of Chile and Uruguay, the rest have underperformed.

<comment><USER26> Strange that you name Finland in a "basket cases of mismanagement". It is in world top20 by GDP/capita and often cited as having the best school system in whole world[0].

0\. [http://www.businessinsider.com/wef-ranking-of-best-school- sy...](http://www.businessinsider.com/wef-ranking-of-best-school-systems-in- the-world-2016-2016-11/#9-japan-56-1)

<comment><USER27> > Strange that you name Finland in a "basket cases of mismanagement"

You misread the comment, that's not what they claimed.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> economics as a field seems to be poisoned with fuzzy thinking. this guy says that the division of korea is an experiment that shows the results of communism vs capitalism, essentially, and then concludes that the lack of a free market in NK is the reason that it is very poor. is it not relevant that north korea is currently and has been for quite some time the target of heavy sanctions by the united states and its allies? a centralized economy is perfectly capable of performing as well as a decentralized one, provided that it is centralized well. pointing to this implementation of a centralized economy does nothing to advance the argument against the viability of centralized economies.

this guy says that the output of people is what determines the wealth of a country. this confuses me a little because isnt it true that if all the countries in the world were filled with productive people, there might not be enough demand for all of their services? would a large chunk of people not be left behind? and, according to my introductory economics textbook, if such demand exists that every person on this earth can be employed at a high salary, would that demand not have already been naturally met in this global free market of nations that has existed for some time now? and lastly, here in the united states, a very rich country, most people have relatively meaningless jobs. people are wildly overpaid for the work that they do here in many cases. there are professors of womens studies and social network or engagement experts who are paid a lot of money to essentially do nothing. i would be happy to be corrected.

<comment><USER29> I gather you're of the belief that the economy is like a pie of fixed proportions to be divided rather than an ever changing pie which can grow bigger every year with productivity ?

I once read a wonderful thought experiment on the Mises page about a Dorothy sized storm. Imagine a tornado swept by and grabbed a large number of hard working and smart people randomly and placed them in a random town.

While people are temporarily shuffled, the brain surgeon(or some highly skilled technical person) is forced to pick up another trade like carpentry or any other less technical job in the meantime to provide and be productive in this new economy/town. The storm swept up and carried him elsewhere and so is temporarily stopping his highly skilled activity to become productive in some other one.

The same is to be said of the economy at large. People are shuffled due to many events and will never be at "full" productivity due to unforeseaable events, for example, a bad weather event. Jobs come and go. Same goes for industries. Even more so for trends.

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> Not just that nobody's helping and their system may be outdated, more powerful players are playing to keep them weak and use them as pieces in their competition with each other. The more powerful countries also don't really have an alternative, since stopping to compete means becoming weaker oneself, and helping others become stronger doesn't guarantee that they wouldn't become a new competiitor at the "big table".

</comment><comment><USER31> Most rich countries are rich because they build their wealth on free labor (slavery), and this countries include USA, UK, France, Germany, Belgium, etc. Some are really poor because they've been exploited by the countries mentioned above (Africa and former German, British, Belgian, French colonies). Some are poorer because they've been destroyed by war multiple times (Poland).

<comment><USER32> This is an absurd generalisation. The only nation in your list that benefitted greatly from slave labour is the USA, and even that period is over a hundred and fifty years ago. Furthermore, the civil war that was waged to end slavery ultimately brought economic ruin to the southern States that had relied on slave labour.

In the post-WWII era, the countries that have prospered have done so because they have enjoyed stable government and long periods of peaceful relations with their neighbours. This allows for an educated populace, fruitful use of their natural resources and human ingenuity, and remunerative trade with other nations.

<comment><USER33> You write: "The only nation in your list that benefitted greatly from slave labour is the USA".

Quoting [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slavery_in_Britain#Triangular_...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slavery_in_Britain#Triangular_trade) :

> By the 18th century, the slave trade became a major economic mainstay for > such cities as Bristol, Liverpool and Glasgow, engaged in the so-called > "Triangular trade".

Further details from [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atlantic_slave_trade](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atlantic_slave_trade) :

> Bristol and Liverpool merchants became increasingly involved in the > trade.[92] By the late 17th century, one out of every four ships that left > Liverpool harbour was a slave trading ship.[93] Much of the wealth on which > the city of Manchester, and surrounding towns, was built in the late 18th > century, and for much of the 19th century, was based on the processing of > slave-picked cotton and manufacture of cloth.[94] Other British cities also > profited from the slave trade. Birmingham, the largest gun-producing town in > Britain at the time, supplied guns to be traded for slaves.[95] 75% of all > sugar produced in the plantations was sent to London, and much of it was > consumed in the highly lucrative coffee houses there. ...

> By far the most financially profitable West Indian colonies in 1800 belonged > to the United Kingdom. ...

> It has been estimated that the profits of the slave trade and of West Indian > plantations created up to one-in-twenty of every pound circulating in the > British economy at the time of the Industrial Revolution in the latter half > of the 18th century

<comment><USER32> Thank you for your excellent reply. I stand corrected that regard.

However, the fact that the period to which your refer is some 250 years in the past supports my wider point that it is specious to claim that the the wealth of current-day first world nations derives from the historic use of slave labour.

<comment><USER33> Do you still consider it an "absurd generalization"?

How many years does it take for the benefits of slavery to disappear? I think it's far longer than you do.

British slavery meant more income to the government, which lead to a better navy, which lead to the ability to defend the triangle trade. A better navy helped advance British imperialism. How might Trafalgar have turned out with a weaker British navy?

British control of sugar production was built on slavery. But even once the slaves were free in a legal sense, the black population of ex-slaves was still at the bottom of the social ladder. The white landowners kept political and economic control for generations, and the profits went to Britain.

In the US, institutionalized racism, not just in localized Jim Crow laws and sundown towns, but also in federal policies like redlining, prevented generations of blacks from getting the same economic benefits as whites. (See Richard Rothstein's "The Color of Law"; interview at [http://www.npr.org/2017/05/03/526655831/a-forgotten- history-...](http://www.npr.org/2017/05/03/526655831/a-forgotten-history-of- how-the-u-s-government-segregated-america) .) I know less about British history, but I do know how many thought the "Anglo-Saxon race" was above all others.

You earlier wrote: "Furthermore, the civil war that was waged to end slavery ultimately brought economic ruin to the southern States that had relied on slave labour."

I don't think you appreciate the full impact of slavery on the US or British economies. Quoting [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slavery_in_the_United_States#A...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slavery_in_the_United_States#Agitation_against_slavery) :

> slavery was entwined with the national economy; for instance, the banking, > shipping and manufacturing industries of New York City all had strong > economic interests in slavery, as did similar industries in other major port > cities in the North. The northern textile mills in New York and New England > processed Southern cotton and manufactured clothes to outfit slaves. By 1822 > half of New York City's exports were related to cotton

and from [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/King_Cotton#History](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/King_Cotton#History)

> By 1860, on the eve of the American Civil War, cotton accounted for almost > 60% of American exports, representing a total value of nearly $200 million a > year.

Even though slavery was banned in the British Empire, Britain still profited from slave labor carried out elsewhere. The cotton mills of Lancashire produced a huge fraction of the world's processed cotton. You know where that cotton came from? The forced labor of American slaves.

Quoting now from [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lancashire_Cotton_Famine](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lancashire_Cotton_Famine) :

> When the slave-owning Southern States of America demanded secession from the > United States of America and declared war in 1861, the cotton supply was > interrupted at first by a Southern imposed boycott and then a Union > blockade. The South's thinking was that it could force British support > through an economic boycott. ... Of the 1,390,938,752 lb of raw cotton > 1,115,890,608 lb came from America.(80 %) ... Confederate flags were flown > in many cotton towns.

Britain's economy profited from American slavery even until the 1860s, and they knew it.

<comment><USER32> > Do you still consider it an "absurd generalization"?

Yes, I do. I concede that you have demonstrated that economic benefits from slave labour continued to accrue to the UK economy until the 19th century. However, it is simply not true to flatly claim, as did the OP, that "Most rich countries are rich because they build their wealth on free labor (slavery)".

<comment><USER33> And the French economy. Quoting from [http://discoveringbristol.org.uk/slavery/routes/places- invol...](http://discoveringbristol.org.uk/slavery/routes/places- involved/europe/france/) :

> French traders were heavily involved in the slave trade. From 1721-30, > French ships took 85,000 enslaved Africans to the plantations in the > Americas and the Caribbean. In the 1730s, they carried more than 100,000. > Altogether, about 1,250,000 enslaved Africans were taken by French ships. > Even after France abolished the trade, 500 French ships continued slave > trading illegally between 1818 and 1831.

Quoting now from [https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/europe/france- confronts...](https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/europe/france-confronts- slavery-a-demon-of-its- past/2016/05/28/0bf61b3e-2128-11e6-b944-52f7b1793dae_story.html?utm_term=.febc40e755e0) :

> In the 18th and 19th centuries, France was among the major European slave- > trading nations, capturing and selling an estimated 1.4 million people > before leaders outlawed slavery in 1848.

> The country's coffers grew rich from colonial conquests in Africa, Southeast > Asia and the Caribbean, where slave labor generated the commodities that > French merchants then sold in Europe.

> When metropolitan France finally outlawed slavery — a generation before the > United States — liberation brought freedom only in theory for many blacks in > French territories overseas.

> "Slavery was abolished, and the old slaves became citizens," said the > historian Frédéric Regent, a renowned expert on the French slave trade. > "They even elected deputies. But the plantation economy continued with the > same masters, who then became 'employers.' "

> "What was different between that and slavery?" Tin asked. "Nothing."

> This form of economic subjugation overseas persisted well into the 1960s, > when France, crippled by two world wars, lost its former empire. Many argue > that the injustice persists today in the form of socioeconomic disparity > between young whites and blacks, increasingly confined to peripheral suburbs > and low-paying jobs.

> "It's from slavery that we have the discrimination we have today and the > racism we see in France today," said Myriam Cottias, a historian and member > of the government-sponsored foundation, in a telephone interview from > Martinique.

> "It's not yet totally done in France. France has many, many institutional > links to slavery."

Yet again, even though slavery was officially abolished, the "economic benefits from slave labour continued to accrue". Even to the present.

<comment><USER32> I note that the examples that you cite above are all nations that were relatively wealthy to begin with. They did not suddenly lift themselves out of poverty in the 17th century by enslaving Africans. Rather, their advanced technology and capital resources enabled them to dominate and exploit other populations, either through slave trading or colonisation. In doing this, they did further enrich themselves, true, but to state that this shameful period is actually the wellspring from which these nations' wealth derives in the 21st century is dramatic overreach.

<comment><USER33> My objection is to your statement that it's absurd.

I agree that it's an exaggeration, and even that it's wrong, but it's not absurd.

The further back in time you go, the more the framework changes. How did those nations become relatively wealthy in the first place?

How much was due to serfdom? Combined, of course, with the new political philosophy which centralized absolute power for the sovereign.

(As [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Supplementary_Convention_on_th...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Supplementary_Convention_on_the_Abolition_of_Slavery) helpfully points out, the United Nations 1956 Supplementary Convention on the Abolition of Slavery also prohibits serfdom.)

But by doing that, the problem is that most areas in Europe had serfs. I think in Europe only some of the Nordic countries did not. (On the original topic, Sweden's era as a great power was funded by its copper export, and not from slaves or serfs.) And many cultures had slaves or participated in the slave trade, including those that weren't great powers, so slavery, serfdom, and other forms of forced labor are not really diagnostic.

Do you have an idea of how much of the those nations' wealth derives from slavery? I don't think it's an easy thing to answer. It's clearly not "zero".

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> Why don't countries just merge or join each other? Doesn't all the division simply create more fear and us VS them.

<comment><USER35> To put it a bit colorful: Because in the Game of Nations many people want to be King. To have many Kings you need many Kingdoms. Also Unity makes you strong and usually your enemies will do whatever they can to divide and conquer.

<comment><USER36> More like people don't like when people from far away try to enforce seemingly stupid laws. Having a vote that actually matters is awesome.

The other question is how those tiny kingdoms organise into bigger structures to have economy-of-scale, while still retaining their sovereignty on internal matters.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER37> I think it just happens randomly, and here is the answer about the mechanism: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iyHVwUe66qw](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iyHVwUe66qw)

</comment><comment><USER38> Why are there bigger numbers and smaller numbers?

</comment><comment><USER39> Ahh, productivity. You'll be highly productive deforesting your lands, I'll be highly productive in selling pop-culture to the entire world. I get wood and you get obese. Deal?

</comment><comment><USER40> There must be a definition of rich and poor. It should not be devised by looking at the wealth. It should be devised by looking at the living standards, education system, environment, law and order, equality, zero racism. And where people can live an anxiety/depression free life. Where there is welfare, care, love grows everyday for each other.

<comment><USER11> Sadly, that defines one race countries. No racism possible when there are no races but one.

Personally, I think this definition is bad because it progress free. Anxiety free is has no scale. If you are massively anxious I. Country A, and mildly anxious in B, both fail.

Need to rethink this.

<comment><USER41> There still seems a fair bit of racism in mostly one race countries, say Japan for example. There seems less in widely mixed places, say London or Singapore.

<comment><USER42> Yeah, London, where not being of the "correct" religion can get you killed in some areas! (I know, religion is not a race, etc....my point is that mixed places are not necessarily more tolerant)</comment></comment></comment></comment>


A Fully Concurrent Garbage Collector for Functional Programs on Multicore CPUs - <AUTHOR> http://www.pllab.riec.tohoku.ac.jp/papers/icfp2016UenoOhori-preprint.pdf <comment><AUTHOR> Edited title to fit into character limit (Processors -> CPUs).

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Implemented for SML# and the max pause times look great.</comment>


Why are unions weak in the USA, but so powerful in France, India etc. even though they are bad for the economy? - <AUTHOR>

<comment><AUTHOR> Reforms often fail in India and France because unions can shut the country down through paralysing strikes. Why aren't they able to do so in America?

(e.g. Calcutta is a dying city because of this - a Bengali once told me).

<comment><USER2> Worker's unions are so powerful in France partly because the five biggest ones were given a special status after the occupation in WWII (because they fought in the resistance).

But they aren't so representative of the workers (and aren't so popular either).</comment></comment>


BSA supports SOPA: "House Bill Shines Light on Growing Problem of Online Piracy" - <AUTHOR> http://www.bsa.org/country/News%20and%20Events/News%20Archives/en/2011/en-10262011-smithbill.aspx <comment><AUTHOR> BTW, these are BSA's members: [http://www.bsa.org/country/BSA%20and%20Members/Our%20Members...](http://www.bsa.org/country/BSA%20and%20Members/Our%20Members.aspx)</comment>


Maersk and IBM aim to get 10M shipping containers onto blockchain - <AUTHOR> http://www.ibtimes.co.uk/maersk-ibm-aim-get-10-million-shipping-containers-onto-global-supply-blockchain-by-year-end-1609778 <comment><USER2> Crazy, the paperwork around the shipping often is more costly than the shipping itself:

> Maersk had found that a single container could require stamps and approvals > from as many as 30 people, including customs, tax officials and health > authorities.

> While the containers themselves can be loaded on a ship in a matter of > minutes, a container can be held up in port for days because a piece of > paper goes missing, while the goods inside spoil. The cost of moving and > keeping track of all this paperwork often equals the cost of physically > moving the container around the world.

<comment><USER3> I'm no expert, but I have friends who work in docks in the UK. I'm aware that when paperwork goes missing, it's often not an accident.

<comment><USER4> Would you mind sharing some of the various reasons why the paper work goes missing?

<comment><USER3> Two typical scenarios - unions are holding things up until they get a bribe, or there is contraband on board and the holdup enables people to get it off.

<comment><USER5> So that sounds like at least two parties who would be opposed to an unrevokable ledger. Govt officials awaiting their bribes to let a container pass would be a third party opposed.

Friction as usual.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> They are using a private Blockchain.

This means a blockchain where to participate you need to be approved by a single party or a consortium.

In my opinion if your blockchain is private then you might be better off using an existing database technology centrally controlled and allowing people to participate via an API. Expecting people to install Blockchain nodes locally to participate in this scheme might be expecting too much.

The problem is that when software updates are required, which they will be, you have the job of coordinating updates across a node infrastructure installed in many companies and locations. If it goes wrong you have a chain split.

Another problem is that the people who recommend or buy into the Blockchain hype might not have the skills to properly asses it's appropriateness to certain business cases.

<comment><USER7> Are you saying that the very use of a block chain is too complex to be deployed by one IT-operational department at a large scale without issues? Just trying to clarify what you mean.

<comment><USER8> I'm under the impression that he was saying that it's harder to manage and has little benefit. I'm sure they could but it seems kinda silly

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> What is the advantage of using a block chain for storing the information rather than just having a database? Is there some intrinsic benefit or is it just marketing hype?

<comment><USER10> I'm not in shipping - but wild speculation could be once you sign the blockchain it's now your legal responsibility - no dickering over timestamps, is that really our guy's signature, forged paperwork, whatever. You signed it now it's yours until someone else does.

Implementing that may be somewhat more difficult though, and I have no idea if this is really that large of a problem or not.

<comment><USER11> It is incredibly tough. The manual steps in trade, down to scribbling a note on the back of a single original piece of A4 paper, are tedious and tediously documented, UCP for example [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uniform_Customs_and_Practice_f...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uniform_Customs_and_Practice_for_Documentary_Credits).

Maersk will be implementing a new standard of implementation here, replacing a standard that's been bootstrapped over centries. Expect an ISO or similar to be created to define it, with a lot of reach into the workflow of insurance companies and banking (LCs, etc).

This would be an interesting area to 'disrupt' if you could catch early wind of the emerging standards and ride on the back of a new standard coming into implementation.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> As usual, I like Matt Levine's take on this : [https://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2017-03-06/cargo- blo...](https://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2017-03-06/cargo-blockchains- and-deutsche-bank).

 _The problem to be solved here is not chiefly technological: It 's getting all of those agencies to agree to a single messaging protocol. That's hard! They have long experience of using their own protocols (e.g., paper), and little incentive to switch to Maersk's. Calling the new protocol a "blockchain" makes it sound sexier, and so more likely to be adopted._

<comment><USER13> I'm inclined to agree with the premise, that "blockchain" is just what the cool kids are using, and adoption is piggybacking on that. Unfortunately the article fails to go into any detail as to why that is or is not the case, it merely quotes from the press release and then Matt points out that central banking exists.

Shipping, especially on Maersk's level, has all sorts of challenges that I'm sure I've never even contemplated, but Matt Levin's piece doesn't mention any details that leads me to think he's working off any more details than I.

Large shipping container docks are horrible environments for electronics and wireless technology. Long distances, lots of big metal things, lots of water present - large bodies of water block and bounces radio waves and salt water is corrosive to electronics, concrete everywhere, so laying cables is expensive, and there may not even be power in a lot of places. Add multiple layers of IT contracting on top of that and I'd be surprised if there's anything Internet except at the main office, miles away from everything else.

While blockchain doesn't address problems with networking technology, I can easily imagine the blockchain, as a solution for the Byzantine Generals Problem, addresses practical issues when you need to give write access to the database, to multiple parties, some of which cannot be trusted.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> I think it's very interesting/strange/scary to see what started out as a Cypherpunk dream come true is now being experimented with / used by the industry it was meant to replace.

While I think Bitcoin (et al.) is extremely interesting and definitely has it's use on the internet, it is becoming clear that it is a lot harder to replace money than it is to replace media supply chains (torrents): Everywhere from the political situation (blocksize discussion) to current usage cases (a lot has to do with circumventing either capital controls or AML/KYC for a number of reasons).

disclaimer: I do a lot of work in Bitcoin but am currently employed by a bank for a project very similar to this one.

</comment><comment><USER15> I have become a bit of an IBM skeptic, what with excessive IBM Watson hype, but this seems like a really good idea. A distributed and secure blackboard type system seems like the way to go, rather than using a database that one of many parties is trusted to maintain.

I just looked at the Java SimpleExample code in the repo and it did not look too difficult to use.

</comment><comment><USER16> Is there some more technical description somewhere? They probably do not use the Bitcoin Proof of Work technique?

<comment><USER17> The first paragraph mentions it's using Hyperledger's Fabric[1] blockchain implementation. I assume they're building their own smart contracts on top of that.

[1] [https://github.com/hyperledger/fabric](https://github.com/hyperledger/fabric)

<comment><USER18> The hyperledger equivalent of ethereum's smart contracts is called chaincode. I'm playing around with it now - so far enjoying it much more than smart contracts.

[https://github.com/IBM-Blockchain/learn-chaincode](https://github.com/IBM- Blockchain/learn-chaincode)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> bad news for customs brokers

</comment><comment><USER20> Stories like this make me think of Season 2 of the Wire

<comment><USER21> Because it was set in a location with shipping containers?

<comment><USER20> they use the software as part of the wire to determine which containers went missing - a block chain would ruin that</comment></comment></comment>


Exclusive Video of XerXeS DoS Attack - <AUTHOR> https://www.infosecisland.com/blogview/2990-Exclusive-Video-of-XerXeS-DoS-Attack.html

<comment><USER2> Their Latest News doesn't seem to show "We suffered a DoS from The Jester", so one might say "ineffective".

03 03 10 Two Americans shot dead in Garmsir, 7 coalition soldiers sustain loss of life and injuries

02 03 10 Italian officer, seven soldiers killed in Badghis battle

02 03 10 At least 25 Americans killed as 8 U.S. tanks destroyed in Marjah

02 03 10 Mujahideen fight British troops near Lashkar Gah

02 03 10 Dozens die as three American military tanks eliminated in bombings in Marjah

02 03 10 Blast in Helmand kills three U.S soldiers, injures another three</comment>


What's an idea or creation that you've had success with locally that I can copy? - <AUTHOR> What's an an idea that you have implemented successfully in your local area that I can bring to my local area? <comment><USER2> Had a hard time getting to a government office or other facility that lots of people have to get/go to on an irregular basis?

Write a blog article about it, but don't just provide the address and phone number, provide VERY specific instructions that one actually needs and doesn't get anywhere else, almost like turn-by-turn GPS. For example: "park by the X retail location, go inside the doors of the building under the Y sign, walk 50m just past the elevators, go up the stairs 1 level (the elevator takes forever), and you're there. You can park for free 1 block East on Y street."

I've done this for a few government offices. The earnings aren't high per month, but they have been consistent for 7 years, pretty good for an hour's work. It's doubtful the Yellow Pages, navigation providers or government website will provide such useful and detailed instructions.

<comment><USER3> Can you share some numbers? e.g. approximate unique visitors and revenues per month per page.

<comment><USER2> I'm usually reluctant to share any numbers, but it's a few dollars per month per article (on average). It adds up over the years and has been very consistent, which is why I like the segment a lot. Unique views is not a useful number in my opinion, it's all about total revenue. I suppose it's the hyper-local aspect that drives up the ad bid prices on Adsense. The content is also a great example of "Evergreen Content", unlike, say, a review of a World Cup game from yesterday.

I really see it as publishing my thoughts and notes, and things I would have liked to have known in advance. Typical entrepreneurial thinking, "Solve a problem that I actually had", but at a micro scale. Sometimes I end up reading one of my own articles in a few years time because I've forgotten the precise details of the process when I have to go back again.

(This has been one of my highest-upvoted posts on HN so far)

<comment><USER4> > _but it 's a few dollars per month per article (on average)_ //

Earning being from GoogleAds attached to the article? Or ...

<comment><USER2> GoogleAds attached to the article

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> We did make a free beer mobile application in 1999, when cell phones had been still big, called Happy Hopper. The idea of the service was: You send an SMS to our server, we send you an SMS back to a pub in town, together with a riddle to solve in that pub. Solve that riddle and you get a free beer and the address of the next pub. The SMS also served as a ticket for the bus.

Success of this service was based on working with our local brewery, and local radio station to advertise it, and of course public transport. Happy Hopper did run two times during the Freimarkt and Osterwiese fair. So you also need a date, where you can expect lots of people who enjoy to get drunk.

<comment><AUTHOR> That sounds great haha. I live in Ireland so it's bound to be popular!

<comment><USER6> As a fellow Irishman I agree, it could work very well with tourists too, a drinking tour of Dublin where you have to solve the leprechaun's riddles markets itself!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Send local goods to foreign subscribers in monthly surprise shipments.

<comment><USER2> Just a thought to represent how creative one could be and probably still make a viable business:

I've also been looking online for various toothpastes I bought in Croatia. They have these nice herbal flavours that make me feel like I brushed my teeth with a Ricola cough candy. Everything in North America is mint or cinnamon, and many of the interesting esoteric flavours are fluoride-free :(

edit: removed joke offer of ketchup chips from Canada.

<comment><USER8> I'm on holiday in southern Europe and we got caught off-guard by ketchup chips. :-\

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I haven't created one personally, but if you're in a maker desert (where there isn't great access to spaces/people/tools to build and hack things), consider starting a maker space.

I used to live a few blocks away from one in Seattle and it was awesome. Just a couple workbenches, a 3D printer, hand tools, wifi, and some electronic components can go a long way and get people in the community stoked. :)

<comment><USER4> > _consider starting a maker space._ //

I've thought of this many times - mainly cause I'm too poor to buy all the tools I want and even the tools I have I wish it were easier to lend them so they don't die of rust before their otherwise useful hours have been used up ...

But, I've always thought that this would need to be a government supported social enterprise, never that it could make enough money to pay for rent+wage(s) and equipment, upkeep, insurance, etc..

Anyone actually done this and willing to share some figures (privately if needs be)?

Thanks.

<comment><USER10> Our college has a "maker space" and it's been a tremendous success, to the point that engineering "recruits" cite it as a reason for choosing the school. Obviously this was school-funded, but my point is that the administration saw a direct value add from it, and continues to pour funding into the program. You may be able to pull data about municipal maker spaces in other cities, and use it to convince your own city to fund a project to build one.

<comment><USER11> What school was that?

<comment><USER10> Yale. So take the funding issue with a grain of salt..

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Fetish based dieting advice. I'm serious.

In brief you need a market of "kinky people", and you need a market of people who wish to lose weight, stop smoking, or similar.

You agree on challenges, you "punish" them if they fail, or succeed, on a case-by-case basis.

Very hands on. But there are a subset of people who will be in your target audience who are extremely wealthy..

<comment><USER13> There's already an exercise equivalent. Google "Slavercise". Appears to have lasted a few years at least...

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> An o-shibori (hot towel) service. They're common in Japanese restaurants, and when I visited Tokyo in the middle of summer, I looked forward to the hot towel almost as much as the meal. You could resell or lease the equipment and provide daily laundry / sterilization service.

</comment><comment><USER15> Web crawler that collects comments on social and media websites and lets users analyse and visualise them. It's not very hard to build and provides a great service to businesses releasing PR articles and seeking feedback on them.

<comment><USER16> Couldn't you use something like Google Alerts, but don't tell your customers that, just show the results in a more prettified and "tailored" way to them. ;-)

<comment><USER17> Or, use mention.com and export beautiful analytical reports directly.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Self-storage is getting big and can be done anywhere: [https://angel.co/self- storage](https://angel.co/self-storage)

</comment><comment><USER19> Christmas tree delivery service by bikes: [http://kantaa.hu/karacsony](http://kantaa.hu/karacsony)

<comment><USER20> I thought about doing something like this last year. It was in more of a suburban area, so we'd use cars / trucks, but the idea was to allow people to order trees online, and then deliver them a few times a week at set times (between 9-12am on Saturday, etc).

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> Middleman for a service that would connect men with women who would be intimate for an exchange of money

<comment><USER22> I've heard that this isn't easy.

<comment><USER23> Do you know of any obstacles/challenges to doing this? Something like Backpage escort listings where you just offer craigslist-like functionality for the occasional listing fee. Seems like it'd be pretty straightforward, but I may be overlooking something.

<comment><USER24> It's reference to an 80s rap song. First post suggesting selling women's bodies (pimping). Second reply is reference to:

www.youtube.com/watch?v=KGRoEfRJSGs

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> A local arts group with a big 'open studios' event once a year, an artists directory with mini portfolios, gigs, poetry readings, workshops and other events. With a bit of help from whatever groups are already there plus the council it should come together. A newsletter is what makes it all work plus a half decent CMS. Local artists cannot do these things by themselves much like how cats can't herd themselves.

As well as money from ticket sales there is also money as per the directory model. A side benefit is that you will have a wonderful social life with all of those gallery private views to go to.

</comment><comment><USER26> This site ([http://www.worldstartupwiki.org/](http://www.worldstartupwiki.org/)) is tracking startup ideas that haven't been implemented in certain locations yet.

</comment><comment><USER27> Taxi/bus company rate comparisons. Most transit companies provide fare information on their website, as well as a search function which rarely includes a CAPTCHA, so getting updates is easy.

<comment><AUTHOR> There's not many bus services in my city and the taxi situation is:

\- Flag the taxi down - all the same price

\- Hailo which loads of people use all the time now

\- 20% discount taxis

\- 25% discount taxis

So I don't think we really have a taxi problem

<comment><USER28> Lucky you. Our taxis prices are all over the place, some charge a callout fee and others don't, and some hide the meter and charge whatever the hell they want - I'd use a price comparison service for this for sure

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> A database management system for any structure who stores a lot of data. What I did was basically transferring a lot of repetitive tasks they handle with Excel to a PHP/MySql application.

<comment><USER30> Inventory management softwares handle those kind of tasks. Is it your product/service ?

<comment><USER31> Most inventory management software is fairly generalized. If you're doing anything outside the box, it can be very difficult to rely on off the shelf solutions and, at best, companies may require additional software to interact with the inventory management programs.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> Bog standard printing at your local store.

Seems it is easier and cheaper nowadays to buy a printer than replace an ink cartridge. Looking at £50 a time. I just don't print enough to warrant it.

None of the supermarkets / high street stores do bog standard A4 printing for a few pence.

I've found a print shop that will do it, at a cost, but the quality is far too good for simple stuff, hence the price.

My 'right this moment' problem.

<comment><USER33> There is a place that does this opposite where a friend lives in the UAE. They are focused on business printing, but you can just walk in and do this for about 10p / colour page. They are always busy and open 24 hours so it must be profitable :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER34> Gossip forum in a hacker school that became so popular that the administration demanded it get taken down yesterday. Now comments have to be approved, and only the most recent 5 rather than 40 comments are displayed. Seems like making these changes has already killed everything that was great about this little online community, so if you do something like it, don't shut it down ;)

<comment><USER35> What was the rationale for neutering it?

</comment></comment><comment><USER36> Really really good coffee.

<comment><USER3> With all the international travel and global trade of this day and age, it amazes me how difficult it is to get a decent espresso in the US, even in major cities.

Beer OTOH has been completely revolutionised in recent years.

</comment></comment><comment><USER37> [https://medium.com/@nikkidurkin99/my-startup-failed-and- this...](https://medium.com/@nikkidurkin99/my-startup-failed-and-this-is-what- it-feels-like-c5d64b3ae96b)

From what I read, the idea was very sound and validated by some great initial success.

</comment><comment><USER38> go through all the small local shops and offer them SEO services. most of them have terrible sites so "on-site" seo will work great. You'll make a couple thousand. Good way to make some money when you really need it after moving in

<comment><AUTHOR> What do you mean "after moving in"?

That's a good idea. I always wonder: what if the site is already set up correctly or what if you can't make any movement in search rankings (due to competition, industry, anything)

<comment><USER39> You sleep in their shops of course! "Oh, don't mind that woman sleeping beside the cans of soup, she is our SEO expert!"

By rotating where you sleep among your clients, you build stronger relationships and have better insight into their business.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER40> I've not done it, but I always toyed with the idea of doing a tampon- equivalent of the Dollar Shave Club - i.e. get sanitary products emailed out every month automatically.

<comment><USER41> i had this idea and found that there are lot of these.. its a tough one to get successful in because amazon etc are already big time in it, unless you can reduce the product cost itself.

<comment><USER40> Yeah. I had the idea of basing outside of the UK/EU to make use of the Vat exemption for small packages:

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/VAT- free_imports_from_the_Chann...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/VAT- free_imports_from_the_Channel_Islands)

<comment><USER42> The standard rate of VAT in the UK is 20%. Tampons are subject to a reduced rate of only 5%. Being based outside of the UK wouldn't save you much VAT.

Visit this page and scroll down to the 'Health' section: [https://www.gov.uk/rates-of-vat-on-different-goods-and- servi...](https://www.gov.uk/rates-of-vat-on-different-goods-and- services#health-education-welfare-and-charities)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER43> Print kiosks where customers can print out a customized "newspaper" with a customized subset of news articles scraped from the web

<comment><USER44> I can't tell if you are serious or joking. How can you simply scrape someone's content and sell it? It would be copyright violation.

<comment><USER45> Who's talking about selling it?

<comment><USER46> It'd be a copyright violation even if you gave them away, at least in many countries.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER47> A lemonade stand!

<comment><AUTHOR> Some university students did this in my city recently. I was disappointed that they overpriced it (1 euro for a cup of lemonade)

<comment><USER48> Charging 1 euro is practical (so they don't have to be giving out a ton of change during the day...), but it sounds like they should have made sure they were offering something that didn't look too cheap -- e.g., get decent quality plastic cups that aren't tiny, do some actual work for each customer (instead of just pouring from a massive pre-filled jug), include a lemon wedge in each cup, etc..

I can easily imagine a lemonade-stand lemonade that would seem underpriced at 1 euro; but obviously they didn't take that approach!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> I'm thinking things like pizza price comparison apps etc

<comment><USER49> I almost thought you said Pizza compression, but I think that was actually done in back to the future part II.

</comment></comment><comment><USER50> well, none of these are really implemented (yet) but here you go

SW Only

1) An all-in-one transport app. You'd have a single credit wallet you could re-charge on a monthly/weekly/as-needed basis. You set in your profile for how long you are willing to wait for a ride(lets say +/\- 15min), and how far are you willing to walk from your current location(lets say r500m) + other criteria if you please(like ferraries-only:). Rates could be something like few cents/km for "civilian" drivers(standard car-sharing - could be problematic depending on the legislature/generated profit for the driver), few bucks/km for cabs, pub transport based on routes/times and - dynamic pub transport routes per km as well. Lets say there is a after-work beer with colleagues planned so you can't drive to work by your self. During breakfast you just choose a destination(predefined for freq. places), desired time and a "hitchhiker sign". All drivers doing the same/similar route(with criteria compatible with yours) would be notified .. a few "accept" clicks away/maybe a quick look at the drivers profile(badges/km driven/reviews etc) and your off to work. No drivers available? Your app would show you all public transport possibilities(color coded based on compatibility with your criteria) + cabs in your area - few clicks away and you're set(either buying a ticket or ordering a cab). Double-validation for payments based on transport type - no more waiting on a bus stop for 2 hours watching 100's of driver-only empty cars going your direction + a public API would mean that bus companies could also use small 6-8 passenger buses and dynamically create new/amend existing routes based on the demand(200 people heading to a business park across town(C) from destination A, 100 from B to D(which is near C) between 0800 - 0900 > change route via B .. if time intervals are met(like 1h from A - C) ) ++ all the data flowing your direction could also be used as a waze alternative for even better routing +++ you could profit by selling api data/on % from commercial transport partners) + have awards for car-share folks like free oil/filter changes after 10k km/free coffee after 20km between 2200 - 0600 etc..). If you are in EU, these projects are highly welcomed..

2) We need a distributed decentralized(p2p), no-authority write once read many storage solution for "our civilizations data" like news/general knowledge. It has to support versioning, encryption, deduplication, store synapses between relevant data, be self-healing, layered, nodes monitoring/promoting(demoting)/caranteening each other if needed, role-based - build on premise that all* of the nodes are/can become malicious actors(..). Everyone should be able to run a node on his nas @home/mobile device, assign roles to his devices etc .. general storage for all things public.. + it should support anonymous document uploads(lets say an indenpended journalist from syria wants to get his/her story published / someone working in a big-co comes across some very interesting public-interest documents he;d like to publish and doesn't trust honey-pot assange/media) - all big problems on their own .. regardless of the client app using the data(if you are running a auto- moto/pro-(enter political party) website, you may apply as much filtering as you wish), the user should still be able to get/contribute to the "publicly- generated" synaptic nw of a news story as stored on the backend + this is the bare minimum for other systems we desperately need to reform(the "no-trust" premise of it) so a good way to dive into this problematic

3) services on top of 2) .. and there are many ..

4) DNS, routing, ssl/alternative, smtp replacement! .. + ton of things you could do to make this world a better place.. please just don;t waste it on another twitter app

5) Clouds are here to stay, what has to change is the way we look at and work with data + connected with 2) + a few old concepts ms thought about pioneering a few years back, maybe its time for - yet another - linux distribution, combining best of today's storage array internals, embedded systems, containers/vm technology and security(..). In combination with some dedicated (hopefully usb-sized) hw .. could be a interesting time-waster

SW + HW

1) Easy-to-use/build RF-net kits for low-bandwidth applications(irc/messaging fe) - pick a protocol/design your own, design a hierarchical topology of clients, ap's, retransmitters, keep an eye on per-country rf encryption restrictions and hope you'll never have to use it as your primary means of communication(eg no "accidents" on our main optic backbone)

2) HW keys to your cloud data/apps - turning your PC into an accessory/treating it the same like a cloud service provider with computing/storage services available based on the pc-os setup .. maybe the x-server architecture could finally become applauded ..

"HW" Only

1) The idea of public work-places is great! soldering sets, measuring gear, 3d printers, tools for lease, benches for alu/wood work etc - would probably be a hit anywhere(+ that equipment costs too much/takes years to gather at home.. ) - there is a hobbyist in most of us + in combination with a caffee/"fun" area/library and city funding, you may even get into some green numbers

2) In combination with 1) - electronics tuning shop - if you like to get your hands dirty(building hw slider switches into phones/nbs, custom cases/hw customization - router fw's etc) - you could get some traction if you;d presented your self as something underground/anti-establishment .. these days..

3) bio and localized farming - huge opportunities, really bad business models(we;re talking about real bio producers struggling with the rising regulatory pressure lobbied by the big guys, not the so-called bio farmers selling out to those big-co's) - monthly payments with 2x/4x a month "basket" deliveries of seasonal food to your doorstep with some it tech in the mixture + insurance coverage for the farmer +++ .. ok I'm hungry - sry for this half- baked not thought through / naive / unfeasible list and good luck ..

<comment><USER51> Re SW 2 and 4: You might want to base this on [http://named- data.net/](http://named-data.net/) that builds an information-based alternative to the host-based IP protocol. AFAIK this work was started by Van Jacobson at PARC who is a central figure in the TCP/IP stack.

</comment></comment><comment><USER52> Jacking off

</comment><comment><USER53> Da Pimp business</comment>


Coronavirus protein treatment trial 'a breakthrough' - <AUTHOR> https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-53467022 <comment><USER2> > The results have not been published in a peer-reviewed journal, nor has the > full data been made available; so the BBC cannot confirm the claims made for > the treatment.

How are these claims any different than the few other ones heard over the last few weeks? They always sound incredibly promising..... and then nothing!

Is this different?

edit: typos

<comment><USER3> What is worse this is a public traded company:

[https://markets.ft.com/data/equities/tearsheet/summary?s=OMY...](https://markets.ft.com/data/equities/tearsheet/summary?s=OMY:FRA)

Up more than 200% today!!!

<comment><USER4> To be fair the stock wasn't worth much before today... It's far easier to get big sounding percentages with small numbers.

<comment><USER5> Still, if you put 100k, you get 200k back.

<comment><USER6> If you use leverage and take options you can put in 1k and get 200k back.

<comment> im3w1l-alt A large company is guaranteed to have been analyzed very carefully by skilled analysts. If you have a small sum to invest, a big risk appetite and you are willing to do your homework then you are better off trying your luck with understudied companies in inefficient markets.

It follows from the theory of comparative advantage. The big players can extract a lot more than you can from big companies but only a little more from the small ones.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Readers may find this brief statistical review useful:

[https://zenodo.org/record/3952241](https://zenodo.org/record/3952241)

</comment><comment><USER8> This is a big effect size at least, so less likely to be a fluke. Also many previous results indicate interferons (whatever they are, I don't actually know!) are useful. I believe differences in interferon production between sexes also explain why men get worse Covid. So there is existing background information that makes it more likely to be true.

Could still be a flop of course...

</comment><comment><USER9> Quote: "Interferon beta is commonly used in the treatment of multiple sclerosis."

Now here is my million dollar question. Is there any statistics/data available to view about COVID infections on those people who already receive Interferon beta for their sclerosis? Because that right there it would be the telling sign for this extraordinary claim.

<comment><USER10> Its use in MS involves injecting it into the muscle, whereas this trial was using nebulisers to deliver it directly to the lungs so I don't think looking at MS patients would tell us anything useful.

But, as a general point, this is exactly the sort of question people should be asking about proposed treatments, as we've done recently for inhaled corticosteroids: [https://twitter.com/OpenSafely/status/1277989037446438912](https://twitter.com/OpenSafely/status/1277989037446438912)

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> For a quick synopsis of other treatments, NYTimes has a helpful page:

[https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/science/coronavirus...](https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/science/coronavirus- drugs-treatments.html)

</comment><comment><USER12> I was curious about how administering a cytokine could improve survival, especially since there's evidence of cytokine storm in severe cases.

A cursory look on wikipedia[1]:

> Since there is evidence that insufficient production of interferon beta-1a > in lung cells in older people can lead to their increased susceptibility to > respiratory viral infections such as SARS-CoV-2 and MERS-CoV, replenishing > the deficiency of this interferon can protect against the dire effects of > these diseases. Company Synairgen began clinical tests of SNG001, a special > inhalation formulation of interferon beta-1a in patients with COVID-19

So it sounds like this treatment (assuming it is effective) would only be especially effective in older people (or younger people with some kind of Interferon beta-1-a deficiency I guess), and only if administered relatively early in the course of the disease - i.e. before development of pneumonia.

1: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interferon_beta-1a#Clinical_tr...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interferon_beta-1a#Clinical_trials)

<comment><USER13> _Cytokine_ just means 'cell signalling molecule'.

The word doesn't tell us anything, or anything much at all, about what those cell signalling molecules do, where they came from, nor what their target / recipients are.

Source: studied a bit of anatomy and physiology & pathophysiology along the way.

From Wikipedia: _The word comes from Greek: cyto, from Greek "κύτος" kytos "cavity, cell" \+ kines, from Greek "κίνησις" kinēsis "movement"._

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

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> Link to company announcement: [https://www.synairgen.com/wp- content/uploads/2020/07/200720-...](https://www.synairgen.com/wp- content/uploads/2020/07/200720-Synairgen-announces-positive-results-from- trial-of-SNG001-in-hospitalised-COVID-19-patients.pdf)

</comment><comment><USER15> I don't really understand the requirement for public-traded companies to make the results of such preliminary tests "public" _before_ publishing them in peer-reviewed journals.

Doesn't that sound a bit backward ? As in, the company is incentivized to disclose very optimistic preliminary results, so that it appears in the BBC newssite, and make it's share price go up ; and then, much later, to submit an article in much more obscure academic journal where all the buzz will be toned down, hopping that Joe-The-Trader does not notice ?

(Honestly curious, I'm not familiar with the legislation here.)

<comment><USER16> If you submit something for peer review, by definition it has to go to a wider audience, it has to go to people who may share it with others, it has to leave the companies control etc. You generally don't even get to know who it goes to, let alone force NDAs on them. At that point you cannot hope to keep it private. So what you're doing is releasing price-sensitive information, but only to a select few (reviewers, their teams, journal admin staff, printers etc). That's unfair as they may well trade on the information defrauding others.

So you have to release it to everyone to be fair.

But you put a disclaimer on it to say its "not peer reviewed, preliminary etc".

Then if an expert wants to trade on it, they can and they're not left out just for not being part of the peer review circuit. And if an idiot doesn't read the disclaimer, that's his problem.

I agree that we get 1000s of dumb articles from hacks based on a non-peer- reviewed, "we're only releasing this statement because we're required to" data. But the issue there is journalists being lazy, editors refusing to do their jobs and readers rewarding them IMHO, not too much transparency. At least that's what I thought before people started drinking pool cleaner...

<comment><USER15> Oh, thanks, of course, I forgot about the insider's knowledge fraud. That makes sense.

<comment><USER16> No worries, it is a bit obscure...

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> There was another RCT about six weeks ago released that showed that a combination of Lopinavir/Ritonavir, Ribavirin, and Interferon Beta 1a beat just Lopinavir/Ritonavir in time to PCR negative (7 days vs. 12 days). Presumably this was either due to the Interferon or the Ribavirin.

[https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6...](https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736\(20\)31042-4/fulltext)

</comment><comment><USER18> Original press release:

[https://www.londonstockexchange.com/news- article/tidm/headli...](https://www.londonstockexchange.com/news- article/tidm/headline/14620519)

(Has more details/statistics etc)

<comment><USER5> It is so strange to see covid19 news coming from stock exchange websites.

<comment><USER19> Da, welcome to kapitalism, komrade. :/ There is a not-insignificant number of people who view such developments primarily or exclusively through the prism of financial returns.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Stats sound promising. Let's hope they hold up to scrutiny

</comment><comment><USER21> I learned last night that the US has been buying up all the worlds supply of various promising medicines in an historic effort to fast track a cure for the US population, at the expense of everyone else.

It now looks like there's a decent chance a vaccine could be available to Americans before the election. Very surprised I haven't heard more about that as the lack of coverage could help make it into a real silver bullet for Trump's re-election if it happens.

Edit: this effort is called "OWS"

<comment><USER22> That is Operation Warp Speed[1] and it is a very large investment by the US Government to find a vaccine. You should be thankful that the United States has the money to invest in this global research, instead of spreading FUD that the USA is blocking others from getting treatment. In fact, the Oxford trial that was announced today was heavily funded by this program, with the NHS being some of the first to be vaccinated if the treatment is approved. How dare the USA help the NHS, amirite?

Seriously, would you rather the USA didn't make this investment? What is your optimal outcome here?

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

<comment><USER21> I assume you're responding to "at the expense of". My understanding is that the US bought almost the whole global supply of remdesivir, among other things, which will make it harder for other entities searching for a vaccine/treatment to operate. OWS is targeting producing 300 million vaccines as quickly as possible, which seems very "America first".

I don't really place a value judgement on it, but I stand by the statement. I find it strange I haven't heard more about this, only that trump is "ignoring" COVID. I was pointing out that this narrative will really backfire if OWS produces a viable vaccine before the election.

<comment><USER22> To be fair, Remdesivir is an under-patent medicine designed by an American company, it isn't all that outlandish that the USA would procure as much as possible. The "among other things" is doing a _lot_ of heavy lifting in your statement. I do not see any evidence that the USA bought anything that would limit the ability for other countries to develop a vaccine. Only to use Remdesivir as a treatment. Which, I can see both sides of that really.

I also don't have a problem with the USA targeting 300 mil doses through OWS. They simply mean they will buy that many, not that other countries can't buy more etc. As I said, the leading vaccine right now is from a British university and a Swedish/British company funded by the USA (in part). I think it is totally fair for the USA to make a large investment and "pre-order" 300 million doses. If they were ordering 600 million doses and demanding that the patent be transferred to a US company, that would be shady.

But yeah, OWS is certainly part of Trump's re-election campaign. I despise Trump, and I hope OWS is successful well before November. If it gets him re- elected so be it. People are dying.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: What was the best project management style you have been a part of? - <AUTHOR> What tools did you use? Any particular methodology? Why did it work for your team or company? <comment><USER2> Throw away time.

I work for a company in slow decline. We've been churning like 5-10% of our customers for a few years now. Old VP in tech was pushed out and a new one was brought in.

This guy (1) fires all the project managers (2) flattens the tech org such that he has over 50 direct reports and (3) institutes a mandate that all developers are now accountable directly to their business stakeholders. Anyone who doesn't like this plan was told to GTFO.

We have never been more productive. However he alienated many people who's skills I respected and they left the company. Also there's a fine line between accountability and leading via fear, especially during times like these. Sometimes he crosses that line I feel.

That said, flattening the organization and pushing accountability directly to developers did improve output. You can't hide any more as a dev. Everyone has visibility into what you're delivering. I don't meet with project managers any more, instead I meet directly with people in business units. He also does a good job of recognizing individuals when they step up and deliver.

<comment><USER3> Agreed. Best projects I worked on were led by the business stakeholder. No project managers. No scrum master. No QA folks. The tech leads translated business speak into tech requirements and educated the business on the art of the possible. Because the business drove it they learned very quickly and took ownership. The entire project was managed by word documents stored on a file share.

<comment><USER4> as a test person I can see an organization without a dedicated QA organization or even dedicated people, this is even somewhat of a recent trend, but someone still needs to test and take care of the test infrastructure and this is not a small nor easy task for someone who is also in charge of developing the feature.

<comment><USER5> The problem with this approach is similar to the problem of having a dedicated org for ops: the qa/testing org is disjointed from any sense of delivering business value and its goals are somewhat arbitrary. This team usually does not have a good understanding of what devs workflow looks like and instead it mandates some things that look good on paper but end up being quite useless in practice. Eg "have functional tests for every application" becomes a mandate that devs pay lip service to. It becomes another annoying box that devs need to check rather than something that actually improves the reliability of their applications.

A better approach is to discuss the reliability goals with the dev team and let them employ/buy any testing tools they need and hold the team responsible for the result. Developers want to build reliable apps. They know how their applications work. They want what they build to not break.

<comment><USER6> Or to have the infra team learn how to do UX design.

No I do not mean Photoshop/InDesign/Balsamiq/Dribble etc. I mean user experience design. Like [https://fishshell.com/](https://fishshell.com/) or [https://www.digitalocean.com/docs/databases/postgresql/quick...](https://www.digitalocean.com/docs/databases/postgresql/quickstart/)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I work in a predominantly Scrum division with rigidly set iteration lengths (technically not scrum as this should be decided by each team, I know). It is horrible, so much wasted time trying to play by the book on this.

Every once and a while we have to break out special teams for a cross group project, a special POC, or something super important with a tight deadline. In those cases the team becomes much more engineer led than management led and in most cases we revert immediately to Kanban style. Not surprisingly for me, we always get more done in a faster manner with Kanban.

Things get done when they're done, not when an arbitrary sprint end day has occurred. Kanban allows you to move work along as needed and instead of focusing on meeting that arbitrary end day, we all get to focus on continuously getting stories closed out. All we needed for this was a kanban board in whatever tracking system we were using at that time along with a reliable form of communication between team members.

</comment><comment><USER8> In 2012 I was an infrastructure engineer at Facebook. Up to that point I had the typical IC's view of project managers as worthless, typical bureaucracy, etc. All the stereotypes. In fact we were proud of working without PMs in our group at that point.

Word came of a significant new feature for the site, one which would require a lot of extra data to be backed up, and at such quantities we couldn't use our existing system. So it required significant changes to our backup architecture as well as coordination with several product teams to ensure we got it right and that it was ready for launch—as you can imagine, not having functional, tested backups was a blocker. To ensure a timely finish, management brought in a recently acqui-hired project manager. There were literal groans when it was announced (I was probably one of them).

What a revelation! It turns out all those stereotypes were actually true, and the PMs I'd worked with in the past were actually as indecisive, unnecessary, and hobbled as I thought. Here, by contrast, was somebody who brought competence and execution to the table. Among the delightful things she did:

\- First things first, she _managed the project._ (So many project managers don't actually do this!) By this I mean she talked to all the teams involved, got a sense of what everybody thought had to happen, summarized it, collated all the teams' takes, and presented it back to us, and got buy-in or objection. Repeatedly.

\- All meeting organization was handled by her. Not as a secretary—excuse me, _administrative assistant_ —but in the sense of cajoling insular and disparate teams to agree that they should talk, and what the topic would be; as well as scoping the topics ahead of time so we had some common ground to start talking.

\- While she wasn't an engineer, she had some technical experience, enough to understand the shape and implications of architecture decisions. And the price tag.

\- A perfectly blasé attitude (cheerful and uncaring). Why is this good? Many of the team leads involved were that toxic combination of sexist and dismissive of "non-techies." (This was 2012, so "bro culture" was in full swing.) I personally witnessed her get smacked in the face with this attitude day after day. Rather than withdrawing or complaining, her response was a shrug and, "Your funeral." She was able to do this both because of her amazing personal attitude and because she actually did have the confidence of higher- ups, and knew if she reported "We're blocked because team X won't cooperate" it would be taken seriously and wrath directed appropriately. I think this attitude would serve anybody well in the same role, be they man, woman, or anything between or aside.

What didn't she do? She didn't use named business school techniques. Agile was a weird and mostly-forgotten nerd rant published eight years before and not yet rediscovered. No Waterfall, no points, no scheduling, no Cycle Analysis, no JIRA, none of that. What made her so effective was that every day, she asked, "What can I do as a coordinator to make this project successful?" And then she did it.

The project launched on time with functional backups.

<comment><USER9> _This was 2012, so "bro culture" was in full swing._

Thank you very much for revealing this tidbit about what it meant in 2012 -- and presumably still means, to this very day to some extent -- to be a "culture fit" at Facebook.

<comment><USER8> This culture was absolutely pervasive throughout Silicon Valley, likely since the first ground was broken for the first office park. I remember being taken to a strip club lunch by a field team, years before Zuckerberg graduated high school. In this regard, in 2012, Facebook was nothing special. In fact, there was probably less of that kind of bullshit than elsewhere.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Please excuse my "You're asking the wrong question." answer. That said I do want you to succeed. Of course, a grain of salt is reccommended.

I wouldn't point towards relying solely on methodologies. People are weird and complex, crazy even, especially the talented ones. Maybe eccentric is a more politic term. Be that as it may, I don't think that trying to use recipes for this landscape is going to help, at least in the day to day problem solving way. Instead I think you'll want a particular person.

Excellent soft skills like you need require high trait contentiousness and high trait extroversion, someone that loves to talk with people all day and that has all their ducks in a row. Test for those two things.

They're going to be expensive. But, with a established track record they're going to be worth it.

</comment><comment><USER6> I used to work for a company that used a process mostly like the following:

1\. Hit 'copy' on a Dropbox Paper template of usually-important questions.

2 Write the name of the project at the top.

3\. Collaboratively write whom (we think) it matters to, what systems (we think) it touches, and why (we think) it matters.

4\. Go talk to the people in ops/support/api support/sales/legal/etc, whom it mattered to and ask them. Collaboratively edit the Dropbox Paper document with the updated understanding.

5\. Think some more about the systems it touched. Read code. Maybe write a 1-day spike. Maybe write psuedocode. Maybe draw diagrams. Ask questions. Update the Dropbox Paper document. Delete irrelevant questions or sections.

6\. Come up with a few design options, starting with some crappy ideas. Maybe talk with other teams. Maybe go back and talk with stakeholders. Eavaluate trade-offs. Pick the option[s] that made the most sense. Put the others at the end underneath an <hr>.

7\. Meet with the stakeholders again to double-check that everyone's on the same page and they'll have capacity for us to ask Qs when we run into the unexpected. Send out a concise project-kickoff email so people know what we're doing.

8\. Break work into trello cards. Sequence them to try to deliver incremental wins along the way.

9\. Write tests. Write code. Ask Questions. Write queries. Get stuck. Get clarity. Make changes easy, then make the easy change. Do hallway usability tests. Update the Dropbox Paper document as you learn important things, so it stays an organized source of project truth.

10\. Succeed.

11\. Have a project retro among engineers and stakeholders to collect learnings, usually scheduled by the PM.

12\. Send around project complete email with a link to the Dropbox Paper document, which now becomes a historical reference.

Projects were generally 2-4ish weeks. Longer effort would be broken up into conceptually-coherent phases of that size.

\</comment><comment>--

Causes of success:

1\. Insist on written clarity -- We put a lot of thought into the Dropbox Paper document because it was actually our means of communicating with each other (and our post-vacation selves) about the results of our a conversations. It is _astounding_ how much faster you can work when you're on the same page and know what you're doing.

2\. Start With Why -- We strove to always keep in mind the actual impact we were trying to have

Sometimes we would get to step 4.5ish and realize that the project had insufficient "why". This observation enabled us to deliver (earlier than expected!) the most high-performance snippet of code that any company can deploy:

       ```

       ```

3\. "Take what is useful, discard what is useless, add what is specifically your own." \-- either Bruce Lee or a weird guy from Mostar

The template was a useful reminder, but we cut any section that didn't serve to create clarity.

4\. Being able to talk to stakeholders, to know what their goals are, and talk through what UX matters to them....sure that probably helps the business... but the real reason it is great is that it is just so damn personally rewarding.

5\. Technical Investment -- Our PM wanted us to keep the codebase clean and well-tested so that we'd be able to deliver with more speed and sureness.

6\. Do not 'be Agile'. Move _with agility_ -- [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a-BOSpxYJ9M](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a-BOSpxYJ9M)

(Looking back on that company, their normal development process was full of accidental Reasonable Accommodations for my ADHD)</comment>


Ask HN: Great design without designer on-board? - <AUTHOR>

Hey All,
Well, the odds of having a good designer that speaks with people through colors and shapes on a startup team aren't all that great. Of course, you can always outsource design but here are several problems that I see:
1. Price. Bootstrapped startup often can't afford professional design and cheap design often is crappy.
2. Misunderstanding. A much bigger problem. As I see it, design isn't just pretty decorations on your website or nice drawings in your app. It's a direct projection of your idea through a media similar to text. If you have a tight 1-4 person team that understands the idea very well, a foreign person might fuck it up.
What do you do without a designer? The only possible solution I see is just do what you can and pray to %deity your idea and algorithms carry your through.
Is there another solution? <comment><USER2> Here are some tips from what I have learned as a coder that has been forced to design:

1 - find another product that you like the design for, look for something simple and with an appropriate colour scheme for your market. Use this as a starting design.

2 - Read smashing magazine for typography and layout tips.... actually just read it all the time. It's a great resource.

3 - As with code design, keep your interface simple. Initially avoid gimmicks through JS, just make something that is clean and works.

4 - Release the best interface you can to your users and ask for feedback. Some users offer great feed back others don't. Don't be afraid to ignore some feedback but most feedback has a kernel of truth to it.

5 - As with code, iterate quickly and ask for more feedback.

6 - Don't ever think you can't design, everyone starts somewhere, everyone makes mistakes. Stop procrastinating and get on with it.

7 - Sometimes there is necessary complexity. Apple are famous for simplicity but if you've ever used Final Cut Pro you will know that complex things are actually complex.

Good luck.

<comment><USER2> As a postscript to this I'd just like to add that I do all my 'design' in Inkscape which is free so there is no need to spend a _lot_ of money.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> I would advise any aspiring software developer to get their hands dirty with design as early as possible in their career. Hardcore programmers might deny it but interface design is as important to most software as the database structure, code architecture and algorithms. You can hardly call yourself a software developer if you are unable to develop a key part of software.

I am a programmer first and foremost (well, strictly speaking, a journalist first and foremost, but I won't go into that) and used to be terrible at design. But I worked at it, completing tutorials at sites like psdtuts.com and trying to keep up with the latest design trends at showcase sites such as webcreme.com. It was a couple of years before I could create anything I was happy with, but now I design all my software, and I have to say that it is so much more fun turning your own interface ideas into code, than doing it for someone else's ideas.

<comment><USER4> I completely agree with the comment above.

I never worked on UI all my life and when I started learning the infamous 3 - html/css/js - it opened up a whole new world.

I think I actually like it now, though it was tough initially. I know I am not stellar at good looking UI, but I can whip out "passable" designs which you wouldn't puke at.

More tips for an all dev team:

\- I found the typography defaults that blueprint css has, to be sane and easy to tweak.

\- Use good icon sets (psptuts, smashing magazine) - dont reinvent the wheel there.

\- Read. Read. Read. - ALA, smashing mag, psdtuts.

\- Practise. Practise. Practise. whatever you have read.

\- Enjoy doing it. Once you add passion to the mix, life gets easy.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> pg has frequently suggested "simple" as a substitute for "good", using Google as an example. I think this is the best you can do, in the short term, if you don't have a designer that shares your vision. Tweaking simple designs is much easier than tweaking complex ones, so if you do simple now, when you have a few thousand dollars to spend on a good designer, you won't have to undo what you've done in the meantime.

I've actually found that easier said than done, in a very large, very mature, codebase. The more functionality your software offers, the harder it becomes to make the UI simple. I've spent some time learning about design and UX in the past couple of years, diverting some of my mental resources over to the task (the only new programming language I've learned in that time is JavaScript, but I've also learned a lot about UI, user testing, making gradients and buttons, grid systems, CSS, browser bugs, etc.). There is enough programming to keep it challenging, and enough new tools involved to give me (a lifetime nerd with an affinity for how computers and software work) a relative advantage over creative folks just starting out with design for the web. I've been avoiding admitting to myself that one of my primary roles in the company is design...but it's become that by necessity. I finally broke down and bought the Adobe CS4 Web Design Premium bundle, so I have the same tools all the real designers are using.

</comment><comment><USER6> I could use help with design too and it's not so much that I can't design but that I'm too close to my app and need outside opinions about how to lay stuff out and how to phrase things. I wonder if startups could moonlight a little and help one another out on design, doing mockups and copyrighting with the expectation that the effort contributed will be reciprocated.

<comment><USER7> I think such an idea would be very useful, but with any such idea it is open to be abused. However, with an appropriate community behind it (this being a good example) and good implementation, I can see it working.

What concerns me is startups which wish to run in Stealth, how could someone give advice if they need to be in the "inner circle" to provide help and guidance? (Presuming a VC isn't used).

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> 1) solve a problem burning enough for early adopters that they'll be willing to invest time to figure out how to use the poorly designed product

2) try to offer users just 1 action per page

3) watch logs and talk to customers to see what is/isn't being done as desired. adjust size/color to get results.

4) invest in UI pro when ready to move beyond early adopters to a mainstream audience. design does matter.

</comment><comment><USER9> true, ui != photoshop. one can have pixel-perfect but unusable site

i like ui.jquery; adapt the API & bundled example source-code to simple projects, then after practicing, apply to larger projects.

for ornaments, i like inkscape (pkg_add inkscape or apt-get install inkscape). it's parametric, svg->png. the bundled tutorials are extremely good.

gimp and imagemagick sometimes are useful, but not necessary.

i focus on ui.jquery and inkscape (both free, open source) which don't have very steep learning curve.</comment>


Being amazed by software development - <AUTHOR> http://www.robg3d.com/?p=1276

<comment><USER2> This is the most confusing thing I've seen all week. I don't actually understand what problem this is solving. Is this not equivalent to taking your html files, putting them in /var/www and then starting up apache ?

<comment><USER3> I understood exactly the same as you.

This doesn't exist as a service because it's the default thing that apache does.

<comment><USER4> Yes, this is mod_autoindex, right?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> This feels like a product plug that's being upvoted. The article doesn't really make sense as a whole...

<comment><USER6> It's enough to mention that you like Linux and HTML5 to get all the upvotes...

<comment><USER7> I like Linux and HTML5.</comment></comment></comment>