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Researchers Track Online Sales of Invasive Plants - thehoff
https://www.ethz.ch/en/news-and-events/eth-news/news/2015/10/trade-in-invasive-plants-is-blossoming.html
======
Chefkoochooloo
This ecosystem worldwide is already being mixed up through different channels.
I would think the US regulations not to bring foreign living systems, fruits
or seeds applies also to eBay. It seems eBay or the users are breaking the
law.
------
dang
Url changed from [http://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2015/10/ebay-
inva...](http://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2015/10/ebay-invasive-
plants/408892/?single_page=true), which points to
[http://phys.org/news/2015-10-invasive-
blossoming.html](http://phys.org/news/2015-10-invasive-blossoming.html) which
points to this.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
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Calculating the Distance Between Points in Wrap Around (Toroidal) Space - Atrix256
https://blog.demofox.org/2017/10/01/calculating-the-distance-between-points-in-wrap-around-toroidal-space/
======
ealloc
A trick for dealing with periodic coordinates, not discussed in the article,
is to convert each periodic coordinate (eg, an angle theta) into a pair of
cartesian coordinates (x,y) on the circle, and then compute the distance in
cartesian space. Ie, convert to x = cos(theta), y = sin(theta).
In the 2d example in the post, you would rescale the coordinates so the unit
cell is from (-pi,pi) in both dimensions, and then the distance formula would
be
sqrt(((cos(x1) - cos(x2))**2 + ((sin(x1) - sin(x1))**2 + ((cos(y1) - cos(y2))**2 + ((sin(y1) - sin(y1))**2)
This works well for doing things like determining the "nearest" point to
another point, and similar operations, and has some other nice properties.
(I forget the name of this system, but it is commonly used for calculations
involving dihedral angles in MD simulations)
~~~
coherentpony
It depends on how you define "distance". My initial thought when reading your
comment was that you couldn't possibly use the Euclidean distance because
you'd be drawing a path between two points on the circle that involves points
_not_ on the circle.
~~~
taneq
Using the Euclidean distance (Cartesian distance? I dunno) works because it's
a monotonic underestimate of the distance along the circle. So you know if
cartesian_dist(A, B) > cartesian_dist(A, C) then circle_dist(A, B) >
circle_dist(A, C).
~~~
Sniffnoy
The original problem, though, is about computing distance, not about comparing
distances. Comparing distances is just used as an intermediate step in the
initial method given.
------
herbstein
I really enjoy this kind of post. It's short, simple and something most people
could figure out by looking at the problem. Even then, it's still something
that makes you go 'huh, how _would_ you do that?'. Until the intuition about
toroidal space kicks in, that is.
------
phkahler
The may be a simpler way yet. If the coordinates are normalized from [0..1)
and represented as 16bit integers with all bits fractional, you can simply
take the difference x1-x2 and treat the result as signed. The result will be
in the range [-0.5 .. 0.5). If you then square that number to get a 32bit
result it will be correct for that component of the distance formula with no
conditional code at all. Representation can be everything.
~~~
hexane360
x1 = 0.9
x2 = 0
x1-x2 = 0.9 => -0.4
I don't see how this works.
~~~
pdkl95
Add 0.5 to the result to convert the result in [-0.5 .. 0.5) back to [0..1)
-0.4 + 0.5 => 0.1
------
yosyp
Isn't the topological manifold of the "wrap around" space described in the
post spherical? A toroidal manifold would more complicated since the two
generalized coordinates do not commute (order matters).
~~~
SomeStupidPoint
I'm not sure what you mean, could you elaborate?
The post says that for a torus, which is a product space of two (or more?)
circles, we can analyze the the distance "along each circle" from a shared
origin for a chosen basis. One circle is our "x" and the other is our "y".
(Contrast with a plane and two lines.)
This seems reasonable if the objects we're looking to measure our distance to
are expressed in terms of those circles as well, since this allows us to
simply put a measure on each circle and get a distance formula for any two
points that behaves the way we would like.
~~~
Atrix256
I'm out of my depth but I believe it's a torus because it's 2 cylinders, not
circles?
~~~
SomeStupidPoint
A cylinder is a circle and a line. The circle goes around and the line is the
height.
A torus is a circle and a circle. One circle goes from the outside to the
inside and back around, and the other goes around the outside, if we're
talking about a donut. We can see that any point on the surface of the donut
is some combination of "go around the outside" and "walk around towards the
center". You can also imagine taking a cylinder and bending it around to make
a torus -- this changes the 'height' line into a second circle.
We're talking about the product space, so what that means is you can describe
the space by (two) coordinates, one drawn from each "shape" (actually,
manifold). A "torus" then differs from a "plane" in that you can wrap around
in the x-direction and wrap around in the y-direction, independently, since
the x-direction on a torus is a circle instead of a line and the y-direction
on a torus is a circle instead of a line. By contrast, a cylinder you can only
wrap around one way, because you can only wrap in the direction that has a
circle for its coordinate space.
------
vog
This article essentially describes a modulo (%) operator for floats, which is
well-defined and completely analogous to the integer modulo operation. I
always wondered why these aren't part of the FPU command set, or at least part
of modern programming languages, e.g.:
1.0 % 5.0 = 1.0
6.0 % 5.0 = 1.0
7.0 % 5.0 = 2.0
7.4 % 5.0 = 2.4
7.4 % 1.0 = 0.4
With that in place, the torodial distance becomes a one-liner without any case
distinctions (i.e. without ifs).
~~~
sp332
I couldn't even find an integer modulus operation when I was porting my
fractal code to WebGL.
[https://www.shadertoy.com/view/MdSXWc](https://www.shadertoy.com/view/MdSXWc)
~~~
TrinaryWorksToo
Did the % operator not work? I just tested 1 % 10 and it seemed to compile. I
used the % operator in other shaders. Remember that WebGL is ultimately a sub
and superset of C.
~~~
sp332
It does work! I wonder why I didn't think of it while transliterating from my
older Python codebase.
~~~
FreeFull
It's possible it used to not work with an older version of WebGL/GLSL, and now
it does.
------
hellofunk
This is one of my favorite things to do on the train while on the way to work.
I select two random passing objects out the window, and use a general
assumption about the train's speed. Then I visualize these objects on a
toroidal space, and after a few minutes, I draw the rest of the owl.
------
tomahunt
This type of calculation is used on a very regular basis in molecular dynamics
simulation. The wrap-around space is implemented using periodic boundary
conditions. Calculating the distance between points is most often done using
what is called the minimum image convention. In one dimension for a "box" of
length L the minimum image distance between particles i and j: xij = xj - xi
can be calculated through xij <\- xij - L*nint(xij/L). This avoids any if
statements.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Hoover Dam may stop producing power by end of 2015 - davidbarker
http://clockworkchaos.com/project7/?q=dam_water_wasters
======
therobot24
Interesting analysis; I would like to think that there are smart people
working at/with the dam over the years that have already put some effort into
mitigating any effects in the event of low water levels, but who knows.
Minor gripes:
>> To see this, you can zoom in the chart using the widgets in the bottom left
Please don't make the user zoom, adjust, or work to understand your
visual..the whole point of the visual is to make complex things simple.
>> I did a quick projection analysis based upon historicals
Would love to have a link here to the data for the water levels as well as the
documentation that shows the max and min levels for power generation.
>> What's worse is that once the dam ceases operations the plan is for Vegas
to receive the remaining water via an underwater aqueduct. Like a blood
sucking mosquito, Las Vegas is ready to suck the reservoir dry leaving nothing
for the rest of the South West.
Seems a bit biased when it was previously mentioned that "the increase in
population levels in Las Vegas and other dessert cities is not the sole
contributing factor to the decline to in water levels".
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Show HN: Chat with WebSockets - dlubarov
http://jabberings.net/
======
slosh
add embed widgets
~~~
dlubarov
Hm, do you mean something like this (but without the header and footer)?
<iframe src="http://jabberings.net/mysite" style="width: 800; height: 300px; border: none;"></iframe>
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Vim – Should You Still Use Vim? - koalakinger
https://matthewmullin.io/should-i-use-vim/
======
syrrim
>it’s surprisingly rare that I find myself editing only one file at a time.
Vim can edit multiple files at once.
>Most of my time is spent flipping between multiple files, ctrl clicking into
function calls, cutting code out of one file and pasting it into a new one
Also, look into ctags
~~~
sloum
Right? You'd think two weeks in Vim would have gotten at least `:vsplit
/file/path` worked out... or at least `:buffers`. That said, he does not seem
to be a terminal oriented guy so there are likely compounding effects here
rather than just needing to learn Vim.
------
themew
Nano all the way... Always liked Nano better than Vim, but nice to have a
choice.
~~~
sloum
I would argue that the two editors are completely and totally different in
focus, ability, and approach. Nano works for editing a quick file or writing
an e-mail in Alpine... but is not really functional for full time code editing
at all, in my opinion. That said, I'd love to be shown how I am wrong about
nano. It seems pretty ubiquitous around my workplace where most of the
developers did not grow up at the command line...
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Bill Gates: Books I Read this Summer - clbrook
http://www.thegatesnotes.com/GatesNotesV2/Personal/Books-I-Read-This-Summer
======
jacques_chester
I'm finding that writing reviews, even very surface-level reviews, of books I
am reading is helping me to derive a lot more value from them.
Firstly, while reading, I find myself reflecting more on the book. After all
-- I will be writing a review, I need to be an active participant.
Secondly, I find that books will often spark some thinking on a topic and the
review will essentially morph into an essay. I wrote a 3000-word review of one
book[1] that diverged into fuzzy logic, theories of jurisprudence and a few
other areas in order to properly explain my reaction. Right now I'm writing a
review of _Waltzing with Bears_ that will diverge into financial accounting
and a pet theory of mine about how tools create paradigms that shape entire
bodies of knowledge.
Third, books can often be connected to one another. I find that my reviews
tend to link to each other. Not because I am trying to drive internal link
traffic (I'm basically a nobody in internet terms, it's not worth the bother).
But book A will have tangentially touched on the topic of book B; or perhaps
book C illuminates something only poorly discussed in book D. To the point
where I refer to books from before I started reviewing with an "unreviewed"
annotation.
Finally, some people find my reviews useful. My hobby is Olympic-style
weightlifting and I do a lot of reading both on it directly and on allied
subjects (eg, anatomy). Fellow strength nerds have found my reviews useful in
helping them select books for their own libraries. It's nice when people give
you positive feedback on something like that.
[1] <http://chester.id.au/2012/04/09/review-drift-into-failure/>
------
BadassFractal
Any thoughts on that Moonwalking With Einstein book? I'd love to improve
information retention in my day to day life, especially in software. I'm not
so much interested in remembering the to-do list as retaining broader concepts
for long periods of time. I'm lucky enough to get to learn a ton of things
every day, but my long term retention of them is terrible unless I spend
considerable time applying these ideas in practice, which is often not
practically possible. This leads to a lot of wasted time, it's as if I never
even read the darn thing.
Often, and this is the sad part, I won't even bother reading something because
I know I'll forget it almost immediately, unless I have a block of time
available to dedicate to trying it out in practice.
For example, I'm really fond of the underpinnings of programming language
design and compilers, and it's thousands over thousands of pages of
information (most of it very interesting and useful to me), but I fail to
retain the vast majority of the great info and need to continuously go back to
the texts whenever I'm in doubt about something. There were a couple of
valuable techniques recommended in Pragmatic Bookshelf's Pragmatic Thinking
and Learning, such as "now pretend you have to teach this concept to your
former self who knows nothing about this", which supposedly helps with
retention and internalization into the brain's "web of known facts".
Is there anything like that in the book? Would it be of any help?
~~~
charlieflowers
You should look into Anki and "Spaced Repetition."
The gist is that you submit a bunch of facts you want to remember to a
computer program, and that program applies an algorithm to figure out when you
are likely to be about to forget something. The program quizzes you just as
you were about to forget (but before you do), and the act of responding to
that quiz renews and strengthens the memory.
Powerful. I've been using it for myself and my 9 year old daughter, and it has
been very effective. Many use it to build foreign language vocabulary, or
memory of Chinese pictographs.
(Note: This is not the subject of the "Moonwalk with Einstein" book -- I
mention it as an additional tool for helping with the memory goals you
stated).
Some Links:
Anki: <http://ankisrs.net/>
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spaced_repetition>
Article on Piotr Wozniak and Spaced Repetition:
[http://www.wired.com/medtech/health/magazine/16-05/ff_woznia...](http://www.wired.com/medtech/health/magazine/16-05/ff_wozniak?currentPage=all)
~~~
dsrguru
I'm really glad you brought up spaced repetition since spaced repetition and
the techniques described in Moonwalking with Einstein happen to be two of the
items on my relatively small list of the most amazing things humans are
capable of that they neglected to teach me in kindergarten. I'm sure most
people on HN are unfamiliar with both, so I'd like to give a brief overview of
what they are and how they work.
The techniques described in Moonwalking with Einstein require serious time
investment up front, but allow you to cultivate a memory that rivals that of
people with savantism (who incidentally tend to use the same general
techniques but do so naturally). Spaced repetition doesn't produce _as_
amazing results but doesn't require initial time investment and is a far more
efficient method of memorizing data than conventional approaches. The only
downside to spaced repetition is that most software implementations of it
require daily review and don't work optimally if you miss a day (recent
versions of the proprietary SuperMemo, Piotr Wozniak's own software, are
supposed to be much more forgiving), but you don't need to invest much time
each day.
So how exactly do these two memory techniques work? Spaced repetition is
predicated on the notion that the longer you wait before reviewing data, the
longer that information will stick in your head. That is, as long as you are
able to recall the data when you review it. If you wait too long, you'll
completely forget the data. So there exists an optimal length of time to wait
before reviewing a piece of data, and as with the American game show The Price
is Right, you can approach that optimal value by increasing your estimate, but
the moment your estimate exceeds that optimal value, it becomes less useful
than all possible underestimates. The goal of spaced repetition systems (SRS),
such as the software programs SuperMemo, Mnemosyne, and Anki, is to adapt to
the user's mind and figure out this optimal interval to wait before showing a
flash card again, as opposed to conventional flash card systems that review
each card every day. Not only does spaced repetition greatly increase the
value of each time you review a card by committing it further into your long
term memory, but it also greatly decreases the number of flash cards you need
to review each day.
The art of memory (aka method of loci), which is the technique described in
Moonwalking with Einstein, works by taking advantage of the fact that our
visual and spacial memory is far better than our memory for arbitrary facts.
The gist of the technique is to convert data that you want to memorize into
vivid images (the funnier or cruder the better) and arrange those images at
discrete points in a predefined order along a spacial layout you know well
(the layout is called a "memory palace", but it can be your home, school,
office, neighborhood, favorite video game map, etc.). To recall the data, all
you have to do is retrace your steps and remind yourself what each image
means. Combining this technique with spaced repetition, you can commit
thousands of pieces of data to a memory palace, wait a few hours to retrace
your steps to recall the information, retrace your steps again the next day,
then again a few days later, then again a week later, then a month later, etc.
In this way, about two or three hours distributed over 5 or so weeks (maybe
with one more review the next year) will let you memorize thousands of pieces
of data permanently. The stuff you can do with your mind once you know more
efficient memory techniques is truly amazing.
~~~
tayl0r
I'm having trouble figuring out what kinds of "vivid images" you would use for
memorizing foreign language vocabulary words.
For example, I'm trying to learn German right now. It seems obvious that you
would use images of the English translation in your memory palace, but then
you would just have the problem of remembering the German word that each image
signifies.
Or going the other way, from German to English, what images would you use in
your memory palace to represent German words? How would you tie them back to
English?
help?
~~~
dsrguru
Figuring out how to encode various classes of data into images is one of the
more challenging aspects of the method of loci. Also, memorizing an
associative array of data is less natural in the method of loci than
memorizing ordered data since the way you recall the data is by tracing your
steps through the memory palace in your mind. I guess you could place two
images at each location, functioning sort of like a LISP alist (list of pairs
where the first element in each pair represents a key and the second a value),
but that still doesn't answer your question about how to create the images.
Maybe go syllable by syllable? For example, if you wanted to remember that
kochen is kitchen, you could visualize a macaw perched on the shoulder of
Barbie's boyfriend while the latter flipped burgers on a toy grill. The "caw"
sound in my dialect of English is identical to the "ko" in kochen, and
Barbie's boyfriend Ken would be enough to trigger my memory of "-chen", so I'd
be like "Right! This was illustrating that the German word kochen means to
cook."
Spaced repetition lends itself a lot more naturally to memorizing foreign
language vocabulary words than the method of loci, so you might want to use
that approach instead. Within spaced repetition, you can also use vivid images
as a sort of scaffolding to increase the odds you'll remember the word before
the next review, and you can eventually let that image go once you start
recalling it easily. The more connections you form to other thoughts, the more
firmly a fact will be anchored in your mind, so you might as well use mental
images if you can come up withthem, even in spaced repetition. James Heisig
uses visual mnemonics to teach several thousand Chinese characters in
Remembering the Kanji[1] (Chinese characters for use in Japanese) and
Remembering the Hanzi[2] (Chinese characters for use in Chinese), and
communities like AJATT[3] and Reviewing the Kanji[4] advocate combining
Heisig's approach with spaced repetition.
[1]
[http://nirc.nanzan-u.ac.jp/publications/miscPublications/Rem...](http://nirc.nanzan-u.ac.jp/publications/miscPublications/Remembering_the_Kanji_1.htm)
[2]
[http://nirc.nanzan-u.ac.jp/publications/miscPublications/Rem...](http://nirc.nanzan-u.ac.jp/publications/miscPublications/Remembering%20Hanzi%201.htm)
[3] <http://www.alljapaneseallthetime.com>
[4] <http://kanji.koohii.com/>
~~~
tayl0r
Thanks. So I was understanding it correctly then, it is difficult to use this
type of memory method with foreign languages.
I will stick with spaced repetition =)
------
sixQuarks
It's kind of funny that he recommends: "Awakening Joy: 10 Steps That Will Put
You on the Road to Real Happiness"
Step 1: Be worth billions of dollars
On a serious note, I realize that money doesn't buy happiness. Proven
scientifically over and over again, people get used to their situations
usually within 6 months, good or bad, and get back to their "normal" happiness
levels regardless.
~~~
AVTizzle
If I remember correctly though - there is a "happiness-threshold" of income,
below which life-satisfaction and income are positively correlated.
I think that number for most of the US was around $70k or something. So below
that number, income is correlated to happiness. Above that threshold, and the
two are unrelated.
It makes sense. Different things start to matter once you have your basic
physiological needs in place. But you have to secure that base.
~~~
doktrin
The study you're thinking of noted that $75k was the level above which
additional income would not significantly impact "happiness".
While there are a multitude of caveats needed for any such claim, the most
obvious is the fact that $75k means very different things depending on where
you live.
The WSJ adjusted the number for cost of living, below :
[http://blogs.wsj.com/economics/2010/09/07/what-salary-
buys-h...](http://blogs.wsj.com/economics/2010/09/07/what-salary-buys-
happiness-in-your-city/)
All of the above should be taken with a grain of salt, but the basic TL;DR is
that the figure is actually ~$100k+ in most major US cities.
~~~
nazgulnarsil
The flip side of this is that you can also achieve many of the same objectives
(i.e. things that impact happiness) on a smaller budget by paying attention to
the relevant research on what really makes us happy. The value of happiness
research is where it shows us how bad we are at predicting our own
preferences. Incorrect predictions are expensive.
------
gbog
I find it very disturbing and revealing that such a high level and respected
guy did read no real book, I mean real books that will be read in 50 years,
literature or philosophy, or classics like Seneque, Proust, Montaigne,
Austeen.
It maybe he read them all already? Probably not, because if you read Austeen
you probably can't spend all your holidays reading self motivation books.
~~~
irahul
> I find it very disturbing and revealing that such a high level and respected
> guy did read no real book, I mean real books that will be read in 50 years,
> literature or philosophy, or classics like Seneque, Proust, Montaigne,
> Austeen.
Bill Gates is reading about how much college students learn in college instead
of reading Kant and sipping wine by his fireplace and being a pretentious
douche-bag.
Oh, the horror. What has the world come to.
EDIT: If it didn't occur to you, the definitions of _real_ , _classic_ and
_important_ are different for a random punk on an internet forum and Bill
Gates. Also, Bill Gates doesn't seem like a guy who would read classics so
that he can make blog posts about it.
~~~
bitwize
gbog sounds a bit like the main character from Verne's _Paris au XXe siècle_ ,
a classics scholar who is shunned for searching for timeless truth in a
modernist, materialist world that focuses only on technology and business.
The classics are classics for a reason: they are universal and timeless, and
contain deep truths about the human condition that resonate forever. If Gates
had read them early in life, maybe he would not have developed the predatory
personality that characterized his business career and Microsoft in general?
~~~
gbog
Yes, that's my point, and the anti-culture trend I can feel on HN, while
somewhat justified, because there are culture douche in some places, is
missing the bigger picture: culture, classic books, and so on, are the only
way to build a better world.
~~~
irahul
> and the anti-culture trend I can feel on HN
What do you mean by anti-culture trend?
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Culture>
Of all the definitions listed here, what on earth would anti-culture mean?
This is the 20th century definition:
_In the 20th century, "culture" emerged as a central concept in anthropology,
encompassing the range of human phenomena that cannot be attributed to genetic
inheritance. Specifically, the term "culture" in American anthropology had two
meanings: (1) the evolved human capacity to classify and represent experiences
with symbols, and to act imaginatively and creatively; and (2) the distinct
ways that people living in different parts of the world classified and
represented their experiences, and acted creatively._
If by culture, you mean the practices which have been followed for some
time(won't that be tradition?), count me in as anti culture and tradition.
"Something exists for a long time, hence it is useful" is bullshit. Culture
and traditions are mostly dynamic, and people who think of a them as a static
rather than ever changing snapshot of current human behavior are some of the
biggest, bigoted assholes I have ever seen.
> culture, classic books, and so on, are the only way to build a better world.
Do you have anything other than your personal opinion to back up
culture(whatever that means) or classic books building better world?
~~~
gbog
There is another meaning: culture is what a cultivated man has. I think this
meaning is continental, French and German. It is something one person gains
with time by broadening his familiarity with the best products of the human
mind, like classic books, paintings, etc.
~~~
irahul
> There is another meaning: culture is what a cultivated man has.
Cultivated as in "educated and refined"? And somehow who doesn't give a shit
about Kant isn't educated or refined?
> It is something one person gains with time by broadening his familiarity
> with the best products of the human mind, like classic books, paintings,
> etc.
Expanding your horizons is good. Claiming reading obscure books is the way
towards a better world is douchebaggery.
------
metatation
Surprising to me is that Amazon is charging _more_ for the Kindle version than
the hard cover of "Awakening Joy" ($19.34 vs $17.16):
[http://www.amazon.com/Awakening-Joy-Steps-That-
Happiness/dp/...](http://www.amazon.com/Awakening-Joy-Steps-That-
Happiness/dp/055380703X/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1347758067&sr=8-1&keywords=Awakening+joy)
~~~
corkeh
Weird, it's showing up as $15.99 for me.
~~~
metatation
Seems like there a general trend toward lower pricing transparency in online
retail. Airlines have been doing this for years...sucks that it's spreading
everywhere.
------
ahquresh
I find it amazing that Bill Gates seems to still have the time and passion to
read books that will help him grow as an individual with everything that he
probably has going on in his life and everything he has accomplished. Over the
past couple of years, I have personally have had a hard time keeping up with
reading habits due to school and job demands. I still read, but look to
reading as a relaxing activity as in picking up Game of Thrones for an hour
when I have it. I guess that's what makes Bill Gates who he is.
~~~
jlarocco
What? He's a retired multi-billionaire.
If he doesn't have all the time he wants to read whatever he wants, then he's
doing something very, very wrong.
------
alid
Thanks for posting this! I look forward to reading Bill's full review of
Academically Adrift - higher education is ripe for the disrupt.
------
additive
It's amusing to see Bill Gates upset about college students not learning much
and many not finishing. He's a billionaire. But he's also a dropout. And now
he's reading self-help books.
I'd like to see Bill Gates go back to school and earn a degree or two. Is that
a bad thing to do? Why? He obviously has the time and money. But how dare I
even suggest the idea? Who am I compared to Bill Gates? A mere plebian. So why
would I suggest it? Beause it would be a great example to set. In my opinion.
Not sure if he is a believer in setting examples and the tendency of young
people to emulate "role models". Like, e.g., billionaire dropouts.
~~~
tayl0r
That would also be a good way for him to see what college is really like,
since he is so intent on fixing it.
(I'm a dropout too)
------
at-fates-hands
The academically adrift book was quite interesting, although I disagree with
the conclusion. For the most part, I find the first two years of college are
really more about filtering out those who are there to party and those who are
there to learn and get a degree. If the same results were achieved on third or
fourth year students (assuming most students are in for 5 years these days),
then I would be concerned.
------
marcamillion
What's curious is that none of the links to the books are on Amazon. I wonder
if he did that intentionally.
All of them go to the publisher - which seems a bit odd.
~~~
manaskarekar
Other than the fact that the Publisher's link is 'more right' to link to, it
may just be the fact that Amazon's a competitor in the tablet space.
~~~
marcamillion
I know it may be 'more right'...but if some random 'tech famous person' were
writing this post, which links would they use? More likely than not, they
would use Amazon's links.
This seems like it took extra effort to look for these titles on each of their
publisher's sites.
~~~
manaskarekar
_"I know it may be 'more right'...but if some random 'tech famous person' were
writing this post, which links would they use? More likely than not, they
would use Amazon's links."_
I don't think Bill Gates needs the referral link revenue from Amazon ;)
~~~
marcamillion
I wasn't alluding to affiliate revenue. Rather just an easier experience for
users.
------
chrismealy
Is there a HN filter to weed out "rich man has opinions" type stories?
~~~
irahul
> Is there a HN filter to weed out "rich man has opinions" type stories?
Yes. The title says "rich man has opinions". Don't click the link, don't read
the comments and don't post comments about how you didn't want to see this.
------
fts89
On Kindle Store:
A Nation of Wusses:
[http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B007OWRBEK/ref=as_li_ss_tl?...](http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B007OWRBEK/ref=as_li_ss_tl?ie=UTF8&camp=1789&tag=asdfdsa-20&creative=390957&creativeASIN=B007OWRBEK&linkCode=as2)
Moonwalking with Einstein:
[http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B004H4XI5O/ref=as_li_ss_tl?...](http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B004H4XI5O/ref=as_li_ss_tl?ie=UTF8&camp=1789&tag=asdfdsa-20&creative=390957&creativeASIN=B004H4XI5O&linkCode=as2)
The Art of being Unreasonable:
[http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B007WLU96A/ref=as_li_ss_tl?...](http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B007WLU96A/ref=as_li_ss_tl?ie=UTF8&camp=1789&tag=asdfdsa-20&creative=390957&creativeASIN=B007WLU96A&linkCode=as2)
Academically Adrift:
[http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B004LE9ILS/ref=as_li_ss_tl?...](http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B004LE9ILS/ref=as_li_ss_tl?ie=UTF8&camp=1789&tag=asdfdsa-20&creative=390957&creativeASIN=B004LE9ILS&linkCode=as2)
Awakening Joy:
[http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0030DHPDO/ref=as_li_ss_tl?...](http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0030DHPDO/ref=as_li_ss_tl?ie=UTF8&camp=1789&tag=asdfdsa-20&creative=390957&creativeASIN=B0030DHPDO&linkCode=as2)
------
sproketboy
The Road Ahead first edition? You know the one where you forgot to mention the
world wide web and had to recall it?
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Ask HN: Anyone want to help build an open source Zaarly like app in node.js? - thenbrent
I want to use Zaarly. But I know it won’t come to Australia any time soon.<p>I want to learn node.js. But to really learn it, I have to build something in it.<p>Anyone else in a similar position want to build it with me?
======
o6uoq
..maybe you should advertise this on Zaarly? ;)
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Ask YC: How good is my privacy policy? - curtis
Pretty much every website has a privacy policy these days, but as far as I can tell, actually crafting one is a black art. For Golimojo, the need for a good privacy policy was even more serious than your run-of-the-mill website -- the Firefox extension in particular is in a position not just to gather information about hits to golimojo.com but to many other websites as well. In fact, communicating information about other websites is fundamental to its whole purpose (Golimojo automatically adds Wikipedia links to arbitrary web pages). I had a two-part strategy for my privacy policy. The first part was to make design decisions in the implementation of Golimojo to limit the kind of information it actually gathered and to make it clear through the UI when it was active. The second part was to explain clearly to the user about what information was gathered and how I might use it. As a user of a service like Golimojo, I think my privacy policy is pretty reasonable, but of course I'm neither representative nor objective.<p>My privacy policy can be found at http://www.golimojo.com/privacy.html. Take a look if you have the time and tell me what you think.
======
okeumeni
Looks pretty good to me too, I just think part of it seems to be a lot more of
‘How golimojo works’ in section <How do you know when Golimojo is collecting
information?>. It seems to me that if the service grows in features you may
have to change the privacy policy even if the same information is collected
from user.
------
brlewis
Looks good to me.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Atlassian sold $320M worth of software with no sales staff - frostmatthew
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-05-18/this-5-billion-software-company-has-no-sales-staff
======
seizethecheese
From Peter Thiel's CS183 class notes:
"People say it all the time: this product is so good that it sells itself.
This is almost never true. These people are lying, either to themselves, to
others, or both. But why do they lie? The straightforward answer is that they
are trying to convince other people that their product is, in fact, good. They
do not want to say “our product is so bad that it takes the best salespeople
in the world to convince people to buy it.” So one should always evaluate such
claims carefully. Is it an empirical fact that product x sells itself? Or is
that a sales pitch?"
[http://blakemasters.com/post/22405055017/peter-thiels-
cs183-...](http://blakemasters.com/post/22405055017/peter-thiels-
cs183-startup-class-9-notes-essay)
------
stevebmark
Atlassian has a sales staff.
Atlassian has a sales staff.
Atlassian has a sales staff.
Atlassian employs many people whose job it is to be on the phone all day with
potential customers.
This is just marketing. Take it with a grain of salt.
~~~
t0
[https://www.glassdoor.com/job-listing/head-of-sales-
operatio...](https://www.glassdoor.com/job-listing/head-of-sales-operations-
atlassian-JV_IC1147401_KO0,24_KE25,34.htm?jl=1835372015)
------
aresant
This is one of Atlassian's go to PR pieces - here's one example a year, you
can find multiple:
\- April 2014 "Australian tech company Atlassian valued at $3.5 billion
despite having no sales staff" (1)
\- August 2015 "Atlassian ignored bad advice, avoided sales staff and grew
fast" (2)
\- February 2016 "How Atlassian built a $4.4 billion business without sales
staff" (3)
And while it's true that they have a different sales "culture" I wonder if the
people they interviewing for Head of Sales Ops, Loyalty Advocacy, and Field
Enablement may consider themselves salespeople?
"Head of Sales Ops" \-
[https://www.linkedin.com/jobs/view/131036087](https://www.linkedin.com/jobs/view/131036087)
"Loyalty Advocate" AKA "Sales Retention" \-
[https://www.linkedin.com/jobs/view/136717830](https://www.linkedin.com/jobs/view/136717830)
"Head of Field Enablement" \-
[https://www.smartrecruiters.com/Atlassian/92170329](https://www.smartrecruiters.com/Atlassian/92170329)
(1) Australian tech company Atlassian valued at $3.5 billion despite having no
sales staff
(2) [http://www.afr.com/technology/startup-war-story-atlassian-
ig...](http://www.afr.com/technology/startup-war-story-atlassian-ignored-bad-
advice-avoided-sales-staff-and-grew-fast-20150809-giv9s0#ixzz49RqGV1Xg)
(3) [http://www.sugarux.co/blog/how-atlassian-
built-a-44-billion-...](http://www.sugarux.co/blog/how-atlassian-
built-a-44-billion-business-without-sales-staff)
------
dantiberian
When you want to buy 50k licenses of JIRA, there is a "Contact Us" button. The
person who is responding to that email is a salesperson.
------
desdiv
>Tesla doesn't have sales people, You go into an apple store, [and] they don't
have sales people.
God, I love these word games. Tesla doesn't have sales people; they have
_Product Specialists_ [0]. Tesla doesn't have sales people; they have
_Specialists_ [1] and _Experts_ [2].
[0] [https://www.teslamotors.com/en_GB/careers/job/product-
specia...](https://www.teslamotors.com/en_GB/careers/job/product-specialist-
fulltime-37953)
[1]
[https://jobs.apple.com/us/search?job=USASP#&openJobId=USASP](https://jobs.apple.com/us/search?job=USASP#&openJobId=USASP)
[2]
[https://jobs.apple.com/us/search?job=USAEX#&openJobId=USAEX](https://jobs.apple.com/us/search?job=USAEX#&openJobId=USAEX)
~~~
hkmurakami
Palantir doesn't have salespeople. They have forward deployed engineers.
~~~
Grue3
I fully expected the punchline to be "hobbits" or something.
------
twoarray
Analogously, The title could have been changed to
>"Atlassian sold $320M worth of software with no engineering staff"
They just have to change job titles from _software engineer_ to _software
expert_
------
trjordan
They don't have a sales team, but don't think for a minute they don't have
humans helping out.
They invest heavily in their customers success, and they do this by hiring
people to talk to the customers. Yes, on the phone, and sometimes even in
person. They're closely in touch with how to sell to developers, and one of
the best ways to drop the idea of big-up-front sales. If you can get one small
zero-friction sale, the rest of the sales with people become "support upsells"
and "customer success", and you can tell the world you don't have a sales
team.
They might not be called sales, but there are people at Atlassian who's
primary job it is to talk to people and sell them software.
~~~
maroonblazer
>They might not be called sales, but there are people at Atlassian who's
primary job it is to talk to people and sell them software.
And we're through the looking glass...
------
cialowicz
Atlassian does have a sales team, but it's an external one, their
"Experts"[1]. These companies get a cut of each Atlassian license sold, and
also charge for setup, configuration, and custom add-on development.
Personally, I think it's a brilliant strategy... external, technical
salespeople!
[1]:
[https://www.atlassian.com/resources/partnerList](https://www.atlassian.com/resources/partnerList)
~~~
dublinben
This has been Microsoft's model for many years. It's not clear whether it
works very well for anyone in the relationship other than Microsoft.
------
smaili
Awesome graph comparison -
[https://assets.bwbx.io/images/users/iqjWHBFdfxIU/i6bkJnp_y46...](https://assets.bwbx.io/images/users/iqjWHBFdfxIU/i6bkJnp_y46c/v1/-1x-1.png)
------
marak830
If I were to say my priduct has no sales staff, it would be technically
true(it's only me and word of mouth), but it really wouldn't at the end of the
day as I try and push it every chance I get.
In the same way, Atlasan doesn't have sales staff, they just go under a
different name(reference the comments in this thread).
I couldn't sum it up better than madeofpalk or aresant(from this thread).
It is an interesting view of attempted virul marketing going wrong though :-)
------
forgottenacc56
There are at least two kinds of sales but in this case there's "Order taking"
versus "product pushing"....
Is the boasting about"no salespeople" suggesting that they do not do outbound
sales I.e actively working to drive sales?
Either way, wearing "no salespeople" as a badge of honor seems misguided, only
technical people would value that. A well run sales operation is a key
component of a healthy company.
~~~
nickpsecurity
I learned that from Lawhorn's books on selling. Always curious if it was his
or some long-time categorization in sales.
------
nickpsecurity
Idk about Atlassian but this is part of the Costco model. They're at $100+bil
a year without direct advertising. They pay the ad budget to staff instead
with results getting word of mouth sales.
[http://m.huffpost.com/us/entry/reasons-love-
costco_n_4275774...](http://m.huffpost.com/us/entry/reasons-love-
costco_n_4275774.html)
------
onurozkan
OFC they have, but;
Sales team means, people who try to sell product aggressively or try to
convince you with calls, emails etc.
They dont need that kind of team. As they said, product already speaks for
itself. They dont need to focus sales.
How many JIRA owners get a mail/call from Atlassian? For sale?
~~~
nedwin
Sales team means different things to different companies. To you it means an
aggressive person hunting you down, to me it means a consultative person to
follow up a lead.
How many JIRA owners get a direct contact from Atlassian? Every one which is
likely to turn into an enterprise client.
------
blazespin
To be fair, other companies are taking notice. Oracle is now allowing people
to pay for cloud computing with a credit card and no contact with sales staff.
------
chengiz
So the guy who sent me free swag was what a developer? I mean I have got some
irate bug reports but I never sent no one a tshirt!
------
curryhowardiso
Jesus christ the "Sydney tech scene" got absolutely reamed by Bloomberg in
this. Was that really necessary? Do we even hold ourselves out to have a tech
sector worth mentioning as such (as opposed to a few lucky breaks that would
be successful independently of location).
Does this reveal something about how venture capital interacts with software
and software business models in general?
------
kukabynd
This page is the case where HN comments provide better value then the provided
article.
------
zenlikethat
It could've been more if they had one ;)
------
dontscale
That was then. This is now.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Recurly releases API V2, client libraries and multi-subscription - raerae7133
http://blog.recurly.com/2011/10/api-v2-and-multi-subscriptions/
======
zemo
I wrote my own Python client for Recurly API v1 that I released a few days ago
(<http://pypi.python.org/pypi/recurlib>) and asked them, last week, if I had
their permission to release it publicly, not because I technically needed it
but as a courtesy. I also asked them if they had any requests on what I should
or should not name it; I thought it would only be polite to give them first
dibs on the PyPi name. I also asked them if they had any requests on what
license I should use. In the process, I reported a large number of bugs on the
v1 API. They never answered any of my questions straight, they just said
"we're releasing our own Python client". They never mentioned that releasing
their own Python client was going to coincide with an updated API and that I
was actively coding against a soon-to-be deprecated interface.
So thanks, Recurly. I spent a week writing a library to add value to your
product without so much as a "good job" or a "that's cool", and when I
extended every courtesy I could you basically said "fuck you" to me in every
way possible.
~~~
raerae7133
We certainly appreciated the efforts you contributed to the v1 version of our
API Python library. As we had mentioned to you in our support exchanges, we
realized our old Python library was not up to our standards, and that we had
been working on a new client library - because this is such a large project
with many working pieces, we were keeping it slightly under wraps to allow for
flexibility in the release cycle.
That being said, we know many merchants will opt to stay in v1 of our API for
some time, and your client library will be very much appreciated.
~~~
zemo
well to be honest that client library was written to address the shortcomings
of the previous Python library, which didn't support Recurly.js (arguably the
best part of Recurly), but the new Python client library does and my library
wasn't completely finished yet. Even though I have to move some code on my
project over, it frees me from having to finish writing that client library,
which is honestly about as interesting as waiting for paint to dry so you can
watch it chip. It's don't exactly wake up in the morning and think "I wonder
what kind of XML I'll get to parse today".
I'm annoyed that I did a bunch of throwaway work that could have been easily
avoided, but the API updates are a significant improvement and they solve a
bunch of problems for me that I was previously forced to solve myself
(especially the new support for multiple subscriptions), so it all comes out
in the wash.
------
goodweeds
But still no metered billing or check-receiving. These two features would
really be a killer feature for Recurly/Cheddargetter/Chargify, as opposed to
Zuora's $10k/month minimum fees.
~~~
raerae7133
Metered billing can be accomplished through the Recurly API:
<http://docs.recurly.com/subscription-plans/metered-billing>
------
create_account
How is recurly relevant any more, given Stripe and Samurai?
~~~
ScotterC
well first off they have many customers, I'm one of them, that use and love
their product.
Second, anyone with an established merchant account that would like to add a
recurring payments front to it is in the market for recurly and not as much
stripe.
Not sure about Samurai, but Stripe is an aggregator of payments which can lead
to problems down the line because credit card companies don't like to deal
with aggregators because when issues arise with customers, the onus is on the
credit card companies. Example: a Amex customer tells amex 'I never paid
company X money'. Amex looks and doesn't see any payment to company X but a
payment from Stripe which aggregated payments from Company X. This creates
problems which typically yield in Amex refunding the customer but taking the
hit because they can't prove it to the aggregator. It makes it very hard to
resolve the issue and as a result credit card companies start playing hard
ball with aggregators. Note: I'm a huge fan of Stripe and what they're doing.
All the power to them.
~~~
create_account
Established merchant accounts are expensive.
Why pay those merchant account fees, and on top of that, pay another set of
fees to be able to do recurring billing?
~~~
ScotterC
To be absolutely sure it will work.
Recurring billing is a whole separate issue. I've rolled my own before and
realized how much of a pain it can become. Using recurly allows all non devs
on my team to handle all the subscription and recurring problems without me
having to build anything.
~~~
create_account
Stripe and Samurai don't work?
Recurring is built-in to both of those platforms, and the fee structure is far
less.
I don't know why you're willing to put up with the credit card processing
status-quo.
------
robbiehudson
What do recurly use to generate their docs?
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Computer Files Stored Accurately on DNA - bellajara
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/science/science-news/9821895/Computer-files-stored-accurately-on-DNA-in-new-breakthrough.html
======
sonabinu
Links to articles that talk of storing data on DNA, bacteria and diamonds
[http://miningbigdata.blogspot.com/2012/08/storing-data-on-
dn...](http://miningbigdata.blogspot.com/2012/08/storing-data-on-dna.html?m=1)
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
DEC's No Output Division Memo (1982) [pdf] - zhte415
http://archive.computerhistory.org/resources/text/DEC/dec.bell.no_output_division_C-I_TF;productivity_review.1982.102630376.pdf
======
OliverJones
Late 1980s joke: "How many people work at DEC?" "About a quarter of them."
Pay increases were a percentage of each group's payroll. Several groups had
CTs (corporate turkeys). These were highly compensated people with a dotted
line relationship to Dr. Bell's No Output Division. The deal was, they could
work on NOD projects to their hearts' content, but they should not expect
raises. That allowed the raise budget to be spent on the other folks.
For a while they had a policy that poor performers had their performance
reviews delayed. This meant that you couldn't tell if it was you yourself who
was incompetent, or your manager. (Incompetent managers often were late doing
performance reviews for their people.)
Now all that's left is the Digital Credit Union. It's sad; they had many great
people and some great products.
------
A_Beer_Clinked
Nice find. Relatedly I found this brief history of DEC: From:
[http://www.encyclopedia.com/topic/Digital_Equipment_Corp.asp...](http://www.encyclopedia.com/topic/Digital_Equipment_Corp.aspx)
>There was virtually no organizational structure during Digital’s early years
because Olsen was committed to creating an environment much like the research
labs at MIT. A temporary position as liaison between MIT and IBM in 1959
convinced Olsen that the hierarchy at companies like IBM did not allow for
creativity and the flow of ideas.
Sound familiar to anyone here?
------
13of40
I used to work at a fairly big software company that was on about version 6 of
a product with a 2 or 3 year ship cycle. They'd spent years trying to get away
from the waterfall model, but there were still gaps on the order of maybe 8
months between ship cycles where the teams had nothing to actually work on.
(To clarify, what does your QA team do while all of the PMs and architects are
off designing stuff and devs are barely scratching out prototypes in the
dirt?)
As a result, they would have these planning drives where everyone would get
mobilized to work out details for the next release's engineering system.
Dozens of committees would be formed, meetings held, PowerPoint decks
produced, the Director and his staff would hold tense weekly meetings and
curse and growl at each other over graphs and spreadsheets of "progress".
Then finally, the big day would come, day one of the new engineering system,
and ----- crickets. A week later everyone would have forgotten the buzzwords
and names of the initiatives and would be back to waterfall.
------
TravelTechGuy
That reminds me of a discussion we had when I was working for ____* (one of
the large tech companies in Silicon Valley): The conclusion arrived at was
that if a freak meteor would hit our campus and take out just middle
management, the rest of the company could come in tomorrow - hold a mandatory
memorial service - and go on with their work, with higher productivity.
------
cafard
Interesting and amusing, but pointless task forces aren't what ruined DEC.
~~~
sqldba
What did?
~~~
Jedd
This is a profoundly complex question. Or, rather, answer. : )
Everyone knows one Ken Olsen quote, though few people know it's taken hugely
out of context[1] - it was quite prescient at the time (and the next few
decades) though with a bunch of RPi / IoT / HUE gear in my home now, perhaps
he was wrong after all.
Mind, his anti-TCP position is almost as naive / famous -- but aligned with
several other CEOs of large organisations that are still with us.
Is there ever a single sound-byte-able response to the question 'what killed
company X?'? Probably not. Perhaps they backed the wrong architecture. Or they
naively went up against Microsoft (a very different beast to the cuddly MS of
today). Or they disrespected their customers just a wee bit too blatantly. Or
their QA dropped unforgivably (or at least uncompetitively) low.
[1]
[http://www.snopes.com/quotes/kenolsen.asp](http://www.snopes.com/quotes/kenolsen.asp)
~~~
scholia
DEC was in the minicomputer and workstation businesses. It got squeezed to
death between IBM at the high end and the upward expansion of the PC business
at the low end.
A $25,000 MicroVAX was cheap and wonderful when it could replace a $250,000
mini, but not very attractive once a $2,500 PC-based server could do the same
job.
DEC also had a bit of a NIH problem. For example, it did its own (expensive)
PC, which wasn't IBM PC-compatible. Later, it launched Windows NT machines
based on its own 64-bit microprocessor, the DEC Alpha. Then it did its own
version of the ARM chip, the StrongARM (which later reappeared as the Intel
XScale before being sold on again).
DEC also lost its star software designer, Dave Cutler, the man behind DEC's
biggest success -- VAX VMS -- by cancelling his project. Bill Gates promptly
hired him, and said he could bring whoever he wanted to Microsoft.
Cutler wrote Windows NT, which ultimately freed Microsoft from its huge
problems with IBM and OS/2, and provided a transition path from DOS-based
Windows to a real OS.
For younger readers, the top workstation companies were DEC, Sun, HP, Apollo,
Silicon Graphics etc. The top minicomputer companies were IBM, DEC, HP, Wang,
Data General, Prime, Nixdorf, NCR etc. Not many survivors from that lot, but
they were big and powerful at the time.
~~~
TheOtherHobbes
Alternatively, DEC was built on a 1950s business model where customers (not
necessarily final users) were skilled and educated scientists, developers,
academics, engineers, and bizops people - basically hands-on hackers of one
kind or another.
Its R&D and marketing machine was created to match this market. As long as
most of the computer buyers in the world shared that culture, DEC did very
well.
DEC had no experience designing and selling commodity/appliance computers to
the general public, and not much interest in same. This may have been Olsen's
fault. I suspect he just couldn't imagine his wonderful computer engineering
machine selling crappy microcomputers direct to ordinary Joes through retail
and mail order.
At the high end there was always an interest in taking on and beating IBM, who
had a monopoly on the very high end of business and scientific computing, but
for whom the PC was just a flukey minor side project. (IBM didn't understand
commodity computing either, which is why it was pushed out the market by the
clone makers.) DEC made some headway but never quite understood that the
business high end is not the same market.
So the reason there was no DEC PC and we're not all using DEC clones is
cultural. Gordon Bell was - as usual - ten years ahead of everyone else, and
worrying about this at the start of the 1980s when VAX was well on its way to
making DEC a giant. There are DEC memos about this period at bitsavers.org,
and they provide some insights into how DEC failed.
DEC engineering, especially in VLSI, was easily the best in the world. Alpha
was a thing of beauty, and an affordable Alpha PC would have killed Intel, MS,
and maybe even Apple, and advanced the PC market and perhaps the Internet by
five to ten years, and created a completely different culture around commodity
computing.
~~~
scholia
_> DEC engineering, especially in VLSI, was easily the best in the world.
Alpha was a thing of beauty, and an affordable Alpha PC would have killed
Intel, MS, and maybe even Apple, and advanced the PC market and perhaps the
Internet by five to ten years, and created a completely different culture
around commodity computing._
DEC's Alpha PCs were actually quite reasonably priced, but all the software
was written for x86. There was zero chance of Alpha killing Intel or Microsoft
without broad software support, and even with it, there's no guarantee it
would have won.
------
radoslawc
NOD should be by default in every big company
~~~
paulajohnson
For a while in the 90s Japanese companies had NODs for exactly the same reason
Olsen gives: they didn't want to admit that they were firing people. The form
varied, but typical examples would be an assignment to guard a tree or wait in
a specified room for someone to give you work. The idea was to enforce
isolation, boredom and loss of status to the point where the unfortunate
employees would voluntarily quit; a kind of 9-5 solitary imprisonment.
Its actually a really brutal method of downsizing without paying redundancy
money. Be careful what you wish for.
~~~
Jedd
In Japan I think the phrase is called Window Gazing -- the employee / victim
is provided an office with a nice view (presumably of things they could be
doing instead of draining resources from the company) and left to draw their
own conclusion.
In Australia many years ago -- early to mid 1990's -- we had a spate of large
public organisations being privatised, with a predictably large number of HR
casualties. There was typically a brief queueing system, as some token effort
at redeployment was considered ... but in reality once you'd been side-moted
to a Window Gazer role, you know precisely where you stood.
The phrase used locally was 'being led into / sitting around in Flight Deck'
\-- that being the name of the frequent flyer awards club of one of our two
major airlines at the time. (That airline's completely gone now -- make of
that what you will.)
~~~
KineticLensman
One of my places of work had a department known as 'the Departure Lounge'
because of its high exit rate
------
spacecowboy_lon
Its not excessively hard to make people redundant especially in the USA I
don't see the issue that DEC management have here.
~~~
dded
It was part of DEC culture, not US culture.
------
versteegen
Judging by the complete lack of information on Google beyond copies of this
memo, I would guess that the idea was never taken up.
------
shiftoutbox
DEC Sounds a lot like ConEddison, NYC's utility company . To bad they don't
have a Gordon Bell .
------
DonHopkins
At Sun they would promote those people to Vice President in Charge of Looking
for a New Job.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Think Complexity - free book on complexity science, data structures & algorithms - jonbaer
http://www.greenteapress.com/compmod/
======
a_bonobo
Here's a version optimized for 6" e-readers:
[https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/23436680/Think%20Complex...](https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/23436680/Think%20Complexity%20-%20Allen%20B.%20Downey.pdf)
(from this Reddit thread:
[http://www.reddit.com/r/learnpython/comments/18hdv6/ereader_...](http://www.reddit.com/r/learnpython/comments/18hdv6/ereader_optimized_versions_of_think_python_and/)
)
------
cunninghamd
Looks a little more digestible than CLRS [http://www.amazon.ca/Introduction-
Algorithms-Thomas-H-Cormen...](http://www.amazon.ca/Introduction-Algorithms-
Thomas-H-Cormen/dp/0262033844). :)
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Hundreds of luxury Vancouver mansions being rented for cheap - mji
https://www.ctvnews.ca/canada/why-are-hundreds-of-luxury-vancouver-mansions-being-rented-for-cheap-1.4329800#_gus&_gucid=&_gup=twitter&_gsc=av92XSY
======
jandrese
Seems like the housing tax is working as intended.
The most interesting part is how this is one of the few serious sources of
backpressure on rent. Normally landlords are so loathe to reduce rents that
they'll let a property sit vacant for months, but this tax makes that
extremely painful so they're forced to instead meet the market on rent prices.
~~~
electricslpnsld
> Normally landlords are so loathe to reduce rents
What's the reasoning here? I've tried to talk landlords down by less than a
month's rent when taken over the course of a typical year lease, been told to
shove off, only to watch the unit go unrented for months until they finally
drop the price.
~~~
tinco
Something I've heard a landlord argue was that if he lowered his rent that
would mean his property value would go down which would mean his
loans/mortgages would not be covered. He would rather take a couple months of
losses than devalueing his property.
I have no idea if the math works out for that, and he was negotiating, but he
didn't budge a cent and we took our business elsewhere so it did seem like his
hands were tied the same as your example.
~~~
anitil
I have heard similar arguments from developers in Sydney. They will give you a
car, or guaranteed rental income for x months, rather than dropping the price
of the property.
------
WestCoastJustin
I have been following
[https://twitter.com/mortimer_1](https://twitter.com/mortimer_1) for a bit. He
paints a pretty crazy picture with data of what is happening in the Vancouver
housing market. People asking millions over assessed value, people selling at
massive losses, and mansions renting for pretty cheap.
An example: Bought 2013 $2,275,000 now asking $6,888,000, Bought 2016
$5,200,000 now asking $4,888,888, Bought 2016 $3,590,000 and sold for
$3,250,000, etc.
~~~
goatsi
[https://twitter.com/vanreflipflops](https://twitter.com/vanreflipflops) is
also great for this.
------
ddebernardy
Related: "What can/do governments do to address house prices being driven up
by foreign investors?" on the Politics StackExchange:
[https://politics.stackexchange.com/q/24073/15531](https://politics.stackexchange.com/q/24073/15531)
------
baybal2
I once rented a $1.6m mansion apartment in Shenzhen for $500 a month. I guess,
Chinese influence...
For some locals, the math behind earning money from property in other ways
than resale don't tell them anything. They got too used to the idea of
flipping properties at six digit gain every few years.
Naturally, the "measly income" from rent doesn't look much in comparison to
that to simply bother thinking about.
~~~
lainga
Do you mean "Chinese influence" like you got the apartment because of guanxi?
Or like the situation in Vancouver now is influenced by what you saw in
Shenzhen?
~~~
baybal2
The second one, and not only Shenzhen, but all of big cities in China.
I often went into long discourses with recent immigrants about that. Their
idea of how market work is long pass the level of sane, and rational.
I keep telling them about "investing into a bubble is dumb thing to do" only
to be greeted back by some bizarre "economic conspiracy theory."
Most do that on advises of some "esteemed economic gurus" from China.
That looks silly, but only until you you begin to think just how many
thousands of multimillion buck properties were bought thanks to such "gurus"
~~~
charlesdm
Investing in a bubble can be great, as long as you're early enough and not the
one holding the bag a† the end.
It's one of the quickest and easiest ways to make money, actually. I wouldn't
always call investing into a bubble foolish.
~~~
echlebek
If you do well investing into a bubble, it just means you were a lesser fool,
rather than the greater one that holds the investment when the bubble pops.
------
refurb
I’m sure the fact the Vancouver housing market is rolling over helps in
addition to the occupancy tax.
Vancouver sfh prices are down 20% from peak and even more at the top end
homes.
In the past you could take the hit from leaving it empty when you were seeing
$100-200k appreciation per year.
Not any more!
------
msie
I have a question though. The pictures with the article list the rentals as
$1000/room not $1000 for the entire house and the article says that many
owners do not want to rent to groups. So this is useless to the single renter.
I don't know how the housing activist got his 800 results.
~~~
mattnewport
I believe what they're saying is that they don't want to rent to you and a
bunch of your friends as a group but as an individual you can rent a room and
you will be sharing the house with other individuals to whom they rent
individual rooms. I'd guess this is because they don't want a big group of
students renting the place together and turning it into a frat house.
------
aufumy
There was a ton of anti-Chinese bashing because they were seen as being the
cause of empty homes, and this issue was linked to the housing crisis in
Vancouver. But looking at the examples of empty homes, I doubt that the South
Surrey place for example was owned by a Chinese owner. It would be interesting
to see statistics.
Also, a few hundred or even thousand homes rented to non-groups is hardly
going to ease the tight vacancy rate in Vancouver. The housing issue has more
to do to poor urban planning.
------
paddy_m
This sounds close to a land value tax. If you look around most US cities you
will see a lot of land not being used for housing as compared to European
cities. Land used for parking, lawns, roads, and vertical space not filled
with bedrooms all contribute to higher rents. True, there are zoning laws that
restrict these housing uses, but there is also no encouragement from the tax
code. Land value taxes encourage more efficient use of valuable space.
------
crushcrashcrush
We need to tax foreign-owned, non-owner-occupied properties in the San
Francisco Bay Area. Some sort of scale:
Foreign Owned, Non-Owner Occupied - 10% Per Year of Assessed Value
Foreign Owned, Non-Occupied - 25% Per Year
Foreign Owned, Owner Occupied - 0% Per year
~~~
paxys
Or, you know, start taxing all properties based on fair market value.
~~~
ericd
True, phasing out prop 13 would help a lot.
~~~
crushcrashcrush
Agreed! Prop 13 needs to die.
------
StreamBright
Title should be anti-speculator legistlation has intended side effects.
------
Deimorz
It's extremely common for "too good to be true" listings like this on
Craigslist to be scams, where if you inquire they'll try to get you to wire
money for the rental. The person behind the listing doesn't have any
connection to the property, they take the photos/info from legitimate listings
on other sites (often real estate listings, not rentals at all).
I'm sure it's possible that some of these listings are legitimate, but finding
a bunch of listings on Craigslist isn't proof of anything and I think it's
strange to base a story on it.
~~~
giarc
They have an interview with a person that actually moved into a unit, so that
helps. Scams can easily be thwarted by asking to see the place in person.
------
forkLding
Anyone have a list of these mansions that are being rented, google searching
isn't showing anything?
Sounds like a place to go for the summer now.
------
BadassFractal
> The city of Vancouver is facing a crisis in housing affordability, with one
> bedroom units averaging about $1,730 per month.
I'll take that any day over SF. That's a crisis I can sign up for.
~~~
Mikeb85
Yeah but salaries are far lower than SF.
~~~
phil248
Who cares about a bigger salary if most of the difference gets directly
deposited in your landlord's bank account?
~~~
derefr
Having 1/3rd of $100k is more spending money than having 1/3rd of $50k. Prices
for things that _aren 't_ rent, don't change by market. You can buy more
smartphones, donate more money to charity, whatever you want.
------
lostmsu
> a single room in a multi-bedroom house for anywhere between $700 and $1,500
And that's called cheap?
This article is a clickbait ad, IMHO.
~~~
nullterminator
For Vancouver? Yes, that's cheap. You may only get one bedroom, but you also
have shared access to the rest of the luxury mansion. It's not $1500 for one
room.
------
grawprog
I wonder if it has to do.with the new speculator tax in BC for empty homes?
Tax season's here. Seems like they're trying to avoid the fairly hefty new tax
that would be levied on them for having an empty mansion.
~~~
codingdave
The end of the article confirms exactly that point.
~~~
grawprog
Yeah...it's pointless though. As soon as they're able to they'll raise the
rent or kick them out. That's how shit works here.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Ask HN: How to get funding when I'm over 2000 miles from SV? - bennyg
Well I finally feel like I have an idea that, if done beautifully and right, actually would require some funding to make happen. How should I go about doing this from lonely Alabama? I've looked into some Angel networks but nothing seems to have high enough funds for what I have in mind. I'm working on a prototype, but I can already tell that having enough money for a badass and full-scale launch/sustaining business is really the way this needs to go for the idea to be executed the best. How would you guys/gals go about doing something like this?
======
SurfScore
Well from the start I think you've got the process wrong. Your "idea" is
worthless to an investor. They want some kind of execution. Narrow your
"badass and full-scale launch" down to the absolute least amount of work you
have to do to address a specific need for a few people.
Look into the Lean Startup methodology (don't just blindly follow, seek to
understand). Then, talk to people that seem to know what they're talking about
in the industry. Do some customer discovery, validate the idea.
The good thing is that the internet doesn't know anything about mileage. You
can just as easily email someone in SV as you can someone next door. If this
is your first-time starting a business, the chances of getting "blow your
socks off" money from an investor is about the same as winning the lottery.
Contrary to what TechCrunch would lead you to believe, it doesn't really work
like that in the Valley either. You've gotta make something worthwhile first.
~~~
bennyg
Yeah I know what you mean about the idea, that's why I'm working on said
prototype - but I can see that now, even with a bootstrapped launch, it's
gonna' need more money to get to where I want it to be and where it needs to
be. My buddy and I have already built a proof-of-concept in Objective-C but
now we're working on a port into JS cause the browser is where the magic is
going to need to happen.
I guess I didn't phrase my question correctly - I'm thinking along the lines
of this:
A) I have a prototype to show.
B) I have a business plan.
C) I don't have plane tickets, the time, or the money to spend a month raising
funds in SV.
\-- How do I go about acquiring the funds?
~~~
SurfScore
One of the most important qualities of an entrepreneur is resourcefulness. I'm
not sure what your idea is or why it needs so much money, but thats a hurdle
you'll have to jump yourself. Traction is most important, so find a way to get
that. Start networking, and find a way to do this stuff cheap.
Sorry I couldn't be more help.
------
ig1
Move. Forget investment, if you're aiming for a large scale business you need
to ask if you're in the right place to hire talent. Could you hire a 100 good
engineers, product managers, biz dev, etc. people where you are ?
You might be able to raise the money from where you are, but if you can't grow
the company there then at some point sooner or later you'll have to move.
------
mythriel
Unless you want to build the next Facebook and want to have all the 1000000
features from day 1 you do not need a lot of money to build your prototype.
You should stick to the lean methodology and build a MVP. You do not need
fancy design build it with bootstrap or just use some templates. The idea is
important, the product is important, the quality and the value of the product
is important for any investor.
My advice is build your MVP and release it and see the feedback. Send emails
to people in SV and show them your product, show developers your product
because maybe some of them are from SV and will show your product to other
people there. I am really not sure what your idea is about but do your really
need a lot of money to make it happen ? If you are already working on a
prototype that is great, it means that you will have something to show and if
you have something to show than you can validate your idea into a product
based on consumer feedback and if you can reach the validation step than you
will find investment.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Ask HN Researchers: What do you use for organizing your notes? - kunjaan
Right now I use simple latex and text files and let OS and Dropbox help me organize these scattered Notes ; but is there a good layer that would let me organize them?<p>Features that I would like:<p>1. Tag Notes and not deal with categories (folders and subfolder).<p>2. Search Notes and within the notes.<p>3. Back up the entire library of notes that I have taken.<p>4. Batch Rename notes.<p>5. Sort the notes of certain tags in preferred order. I hate renaming files starting with numbers(1.File 2. File) to force order in the file system.<p>5. If there were an abstraction of Workspace that would be awesome. So that I could save my session or revert to a previous state of notes. Or I could share a particular snapshot of my research notes. But not really necessary.<p>Almost like the Lightroom for my research documents. I wouldn't mind using an inbuilt text editor.
======
inetsee
A lot of people swear by Org-Mode (<http://orgmode.org>) under Emacs.
Everything is contained in a text file. Org-Mode adds tags, lets you
collapse/expand sections like a folding editor, lets you search on tags, etc.
As you might expect from an Emacs addon, it's exceptionally powerful.
------
jokull
I've been using Notational Velocity which is an OSX only app. I like that it's
UI is keyboard driven and that it encrypts and syncs your notes to the cloud.
------
thefahim
I just recently got hooked onto Evernote. Definitely lives up to the hype.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Linux Tip: Don't use kill -9 - chankey_pathak
No no no. Don't use kill -9.<p>It doesn't give the process a chance to cleanly:<p>1) shut down socket connections<p>2) clean up temp files<p>3) inform its children that it is going away<p>4) reset its terminal characteristics<p>and so on and so on and so on.<p>Generally, send 15, and wait a second or two, and if that doesn't work, send 2, and if that doesn't work, send 1. If that doesn't, REMOVE THE BINARY because the program is badly behaved!<p>Don't use kill -9. Don't bring out the combine harvester just to tidy up the flower pot.<p>Credit: Randal L. Schwartz<p>Source: http://partmaps.org/era/unix/award.html#uuk9letter
======
jlgaddis
As mentioned, SIGTERM can be caught and gives the process a chance to clean
up. SIGKILL, the nuclear option, cannot be blocked.
Related: Solaris tip for Linux admins: _killall_ does exactly what it says and
not what you think.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Ask HN: European online payment preferences? - gyardley
We're implementing online payments for a subscription service used about equally by American and European clients.<p>We've already decided, for this first iteration, that we'd prefer not to get a merchant account, and that it's acceptable to bill in USD. (I know this isn't an ideal solution for Europeans.)<p>I would prefer to use a service like Stripe, where we don't have to store credit card data but the payment itself feels 'native' - it seems to take place entirely on our own site.<p>However, the European developers I work with tell me something like PayPal would be preferable, because the payment forms are <i>not</i> on our site - instead, the user is redirected to a third-party service they're more likely to trust. They tell me that apart from a few large services, this is the way it's done in Europe.<p>This fascinates me, because in my head, redirecting to a third-party site for payment feels amateurish. But this may just be my preferences as a Canadian who's only worked in the United States, and lacks extensive experience dealing with Europeans.<p>So, my question, primarily for the Europeans: taking both European attitudes towards security and European attitudes towards aesthetics into account, do you think European small businesses would prefer to pay for a service on that service's website or on the website of a third-party service like PayPal?
======
canatan01
Our company is based in The Netherlands and in our country there is indeed a
preference for established 3rd party websites. Everyone knows and trust those
payment providers; they already have proven their credibility. So when you are
company that no one knows yet (e.g. when you are not a household name), you
still can earn trust by implementing these 3rd party in your payment system.
Besides: consumers are used to seeing a 3rd party payment provider, so for
them this feels not amateuristic at all. iDeal, which is the most used payment
gateway on B2C sites, is also such an example (created by big banks, paying is
like logging into your ebanking account to transfer money).
But if you feel this is amateurish, try your best that it does not look that
way. Integrate as much as possible or do an iframe or whatever (I don't know
if this is possible security wise). But like I said, people in the Netherlands
(and by the way this also counts for the Belgiums who live in the Dutch
speaking part of Belgium called Vlaanderen) are used to redirects to 3rd party
site. I do not know how the other European countries do this.
Also don't forget to offer pages in all different European languages, because
not everyone speaks business English that well.
------
dirkdeman
I don't think it's a matter of aesthetics vs safety, or onsite vs third party
(I'm Dutch). Yes, I agree that third-party redirects don't appeal to many
users, but the same goes for a payment form hosted on your site. You have to
understand that the credit card is a relatively new form of payment, where in
the US almost everybody has one. If we order something online, we usually pay
afterr we've received the shipment, or through a system called Ideal (in The
Netherlands, that is. Can't vouch for other countries), which is basically
some sort of API between the website and your own bank. Paypal isn't used much
by European websites, other than the ones targetting the whole world and some
shifty websites. fYI: most webshop CMS like Magento come with a built in Ideal
shopping cart.
The problem is that, while one economic region, Europe is still a collection
of separate countries. We all have our own banks, so the chances of one
European payment provider coming are slim to say the least. What I would like
to see is a universal payment provider with the same reputation as a regular,
trustworthy bank.
So to answer your question: it doesn't really matter if the solution is onsite
or third party, as long as it's trustworthy.
~~~
itsprofitbaron
Regarding:
Paypal isn't used much by European websites, other than the ones targetting the whole world
I completely disagree, in England _most_ websites allow the ability to Pay Via
PayPal even specifically stores which only sell to those in the United
Kingdom.
Referring to the economic region of Europe, and the fact that we all have our
own banks and...
What I would like to see is a universal payment provider with the same reputation as a regular, trustworthy bank
Well PayPal actually is a _universal payment provider_ [1] as it has a
European Union banking license and is regulated as a _bank_ by the CSSF where
it was previously a Electronic Money Issuer which was approved by the FSA from
2004 until 2007 when it moved to Luxembourg. Actually because of that, UK
customers aren't able to obtain legal redress from the company in UK Courts.
[1] [http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/markets/2808982/PayPal-
be...](http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/markets/2808982/PayPal-becomes-a-
bank-to-fight-off-Google.html)
~~~
dirkdeman
Thanks for clearing that up, I was not aware that PayPal had such a big
presence in the UK.
What I meant with the second quote though is that, although I know PayPal is a
universal payment provider, it lacks the reputation that brick ´n mortar banks
have. Maybe this is different in the UK, but here on the mainland there are
some major trust issues with PayPal.
------
traxtech
From my experience, in France, having someone savvy to enter it's credit card
data on a website that is not Paypal or a known bank is hard. Trust issues.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
New TinCan eLearning Communication Spec Released - tseabrooks
http://tincanapi.com/2013/04/26/the-world-just-changed/
======
brogers
This is awesome!
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
What Product Managers can learn from the World's most famous Sushi Chef - tosh
https://medium.com/what-product-managers-can-learn-from/cbf273488f2
======
tosh
Anyone who hasn't seen Jiro Deams of Sushi yet, I can highly recommend it:
[Netflix]
[https://movies.netflix.com/WiMovie/Jiro_Dreams_of_Sushi/7018...](https://movies.netflix.com/WiMovie/Jiro_Dreams_of_Sushi/70181716?locale=en-
US)
[Amazon Prime] [http://www.amazon.com/Jiro-Dreams-Sushi-
Ono/dp/B007UW9WOQ/re...](http://www.amazon.com/Jiro-Dreams-Sushi-
Ono/dp/B007UW9WOQ/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1378252912&sr=8-2&keywords=jiro+dream+of+sushi)
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Build this HN: paper "subscription" to Facebook photos - kadavy
This idea has been eating at me for awhile, but since I'm busy with another project, and really would like to have this service, I figured I'd share it with the community.<p>Do you ever miss having paper photos? I do. Every once in awhile, I'll motivate myself enough to actually collect a few family and friend photos and print them out through Walgreens.com<p>I want a service that automatically sends me a bunch of photos every month.<p>You could select which people you want photos of, select a photo package, and every month, the service would grab the photos from your Facebook friends - of your friends - print them out, and send them to you in the mail. You can then keep your photo frames, refrigerator, etc. up-to-date.<p>If you build it, I'll be your first customer.
======
timmaah
Isn't there a YC funded company that does this? (but not with FB photos)
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Scientists create crystal which would allow us to breathe underwater - albanlv
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/science/scientists-create-crystal-which-could-allow-us-to-breathe-underwater-9772871.html
======
tomtoise
Update: A representative for Syddansk University has issued a revised estimate
of the compound's efficiency. They told Vice in a statement: "I am just
updating our story on our website, because it turns out that Prf McKenzie made
a calculation error. Pls note that it is not a SPOONFUL of this stuff, that we
need to rid a room of oxygen. It is a bucket (10 litres). We apologize."
Well at least they admitted it was all hype.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
20 000 free high-resolution photos from 40 sources - artnosenko
http://zoommyapp.com/
======
slindz
I feel weird about an app charging (admittedly, a negligible one time fee)
solely for access to images where all of the various creators intent was for
them to be free.
Am I overlooking the value of curation?
~~~
sharpfuryz
There are bunch of 'free image finders', some of them may mix commercial
stocks into results - why others couldn't be more fair and take one time
payment?
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Technical cofounder lost motivation - what now? - purpleclock
My CTO lost motivation to complete the product we originally decided to make. I can't code what he's coding. The product is probably about 90 % done already, the last 10 % should take no more than two weeks, but he is dragging his feet and has even admitted that he has lost all enthusiasm for the product.<p>I do not want to find a new CTO, I just want suggestions on how to finish this product - should I try motivate him? How? If I can't manage to motivate him, should I pay someone else to finish the product? Should I just do nothing and wait? He said he will eventually finish it and to please not bother him, so I stopped asking so as not to annoy him. I just said to let me know if he needs anything. However, I am really concerned - that was a week ago and no updates at all from him on how the product is doing.<p>We have a second product we want to make after this one and he is still enthusiastic about that. I suspect he just wants to scrap this one and move on to the next product, but I still believe in this product and in any case, it's so close to done we should just finish and launch it.<p>What are your suggestions? Thanks in advance.
======
crawfordcomeaux
This is a problem of faith/belief. You believe in the business and he doesn't.
The most compelling way to convert from one faith to another (without
resorting to coercion) is through a religious experience. So in the spirit of
"Show, don't tell," provide him with an experience that will alter his
beliefs.
In religion, this is usually via miracles. Luckily, you're just dealing with a
product, so your job is a little easier. If the product is at a point where
play-testing it with potential users is possible, then that would be my
immediate course of action. Try to get several individuals or small groups
from your target market to attend play-testing events (free food/booze =
attendance incentive). For the first event, I'd ask the CTO to facilitate
while I observed and alternate for each consecutive session.
The two of you need to examine the possible outcomes beforehand and agree on
ways to identify whether it's the product or the facilitator that's producing
the results. For instance, should each session he facilitate result in low
interest, but each session you facilitate result in positive results, either
you're a good salesman or his negativity is infecting others (or both).
It's important to discuss and agree upon how to interpret the results of the
play-testing ahead of time so that you are both on the same page. On that same
line, you'll want to confirm with him that this is a plan that could
potentially change his mind about the product. If so, then ask him what he
needs to see in order for that to happen. If not, then find out what, if
anything, will alter his perspective.
If he's not open to having a change of heart, then you may want to find a new
CTO or move on to the next project.
------
tronicron
Been there. Had a similar situation on a one-project company I started with a
friend.
In my case I was the developer and I had worked two months past our decision
to transfer the company to him, the non-technical founder. When I asked him
(probably somewhat aggressively) to give me a few days off to get started
after New Year's day he hired another developer. He went silent and hid this
from me for three weeks until I found out from the client why nothing was a
priority any more.
Eventually that new developer contacted me to ask about the details of my past
business relationship with the guy. He was having the same problems with him
that I had.
How do I describe the guy in retrospect?
I think he drank a lot and shot his mouth off about being a CEO kickin' back
collecting the cheques too much. I did all the fucking work and he collected.
Even though we had been communicating about the issue in my case he took this
as a sign to move on. I'm actually pretty glad he did. I was ashamed to let
the client be stuck with him and all of his failures but sometimes that's the
price you have to pay to keep your sanity when things go bad.
In the time since this has happened I have done a lot of awesome technical
projects and he still has a broken webpage with nothing but errors on the
front page.
It is hard to find a new developer. I strongly advise you to get introspective
for awhile and figure out what you did to piss him off. After you've given him
a bit of time to cool down.
Meeting in person or on the phone certainly helps too. Emotional data is lost
in emails - best to avoid until you've patched things up.
~~~
purpleclock
just to clarify...I'm pretty sure I'm different from your ex-CEO.
My CTO is not angry at me, but he gets very annoyed if I ask him about the
product. We can talk about anything else and he acts normal/friendly. He told
me to back off on asking about the product, so I did. However, I'm concerned
and I don't know how to broach the topic of this product without setting him
off. I want to be considerate to his feelings and needs, but how do I do this
and also ensure work gets done in a timely manner? There is no real deadline
to our product launch, so that makes things more difficult.
I don't think our roles are uneven either...I did all the research and design
work for this project and raised our angel money.
------
AznHisoka
A week is very short time.. give him a month or so. Maybe you might want to
consider taking a short mini-break as well. Even when I work on my own
projects, I feel like giving up midway. It's not a motivation thing.. it's
just that things are more interesting in the beginning, then when as you do
more work, it requires digging into dirty, tedious stuff.
------
bartonfink
Have you had a conversation with him about it? The co-founder relationship's
not the same as an employee/er relationship. Maybe he feels like you're
bossing him around and he's unhappy about that. Maybe something is going on in
his private life that's distracting. Maybe he's just bored - after all,
finishing a project is paradoxically more difficult from starting one.
In the absence of information from him, do you think that it's worth finishing
the product? You could almost certainly find a freelancer to finish it, but
that's going to take cash that could be invested elsewhere.
I'd talk with him before contacting a freelancer, though. Unless you're
planning on butting him out completely, he could see this as you going behind
his back.
~~~
purpleclock
I have had a conversation. He thinks the product will 100 % be a failure and
therefore finishing it is a waste of time, but I think that conclusion is far
from certain and am actually very excited to launch it. Unfortunately, I have
failed to convince him otherwise.
~~~
chris_gogreen
How many hours of work does he estimate it will take?
~~~
purpleclock
He refuses to give me an estimate...this is worrying me as well.
~~~
chris_gogreen
Cut him off. You need someone who will do what they have committed to do, not
someone who lets their feelings and emotions control them.
------
mjs00
Is there a middle ground where you can hire someone to help polish/finish, but
under his direction? Otherwise you will lose a lot of time onboarding someone
as they figure out his code/approach w/o his full complicity. Also perhaps
prune back things that aren't absolutely critical. The person you hire should
be able to help on maintenance as well, hopefully.
You might want to make completion of this required before starting project
two, as well review from both sides what will be different to help get project
two across the goal line to see if there really will be a project two
together.
------
chris_gogreen
After a week, it is definitely time for another conversation. A week with no
update is unacceptable, he is disrespecting you. It's rude and unprofessional
to leave you hanging with "...eventually, don't bother me..." When someone who
is supposed to be your business partner does this, it's a clue that: 1.) they
are a joker, 2.) they can't be trusted.
If something was going on in his personal like etc. he should be adult and
professional enough to inform the people he goes into business with.
Although, he could be working diligently, you could tell if your project is on
git, they should be making regular commits to dev branches if they are
working.
My advice, follow up with him on status, get a final answer on whether or not
he will finish it, and when. If he is adult and reasonable, you guys are good.
If he admits he doesn't want to do the work... Sever ties with them, they can
not be trusted, how do you know he will not lose interest in the second
product? And put you in the same position again.
I understand What AznHisoka is saying about losing interest, this is very
true, but when someone commits to doing something, they need to do it,
otherwise they are not worth your time. Fucking Jokers, there is an
interesting post on HN about this: [http://www.sebastianmarshall.com/if-you-
want-to-get-rich-sto...](http://www.sebastianmarshall.com/if-you-want-to-get-
rich-stop-being-a-fucking-joker?1)
Seriously, if someone working with/for me and they; first stop working on the
agreed priorities, then give me some wishy washy non existent time frame to
finish it, then tell me to not bother them. I would have my network
administrator cut their access off, ask them to step away from the
computer(assuming the company owns it), then escort them out of the building.
I would find a freelancer to finish.
Chris
------
staunch
Procrastination is often your gut telling you something is wrong. It very well
may be that his unconscious mind knows it's not worth the effort to complete
the project.
Move on to product 2. If it happens again, maybe it's a different problem, but
it could easily be that he's right about product 1.
This is the most important reason why you need to work on things that you
_deeply_ believe in. Unfortunately you only find out late in the game how much
you _really_ care about a problem.
~~~
dholowiski
I agree- he has a deep understanding of the product and even if he can't
express it, he probably understands on some level why it _just wont work_. He
could be having personal issues or, and this may sound crazy but depending on
how far north of the equator you live he just might not be getting enough
sunshine (seasonal affective disorder).
------
rmalenko
You and CTO can rest for week or more and then have a heart-to-heart talk.
However, by my own experience you should look for a new CTO.
------
joncooper
Do you have a corporate entity set up and the IP locked down?
------
AnonAdvice
Suggest that he take try taking modafinil (200mg/day in the morning) and have
some on hand. There is a significant chance that this will produce dramatic
results.
------
davidhansen
_The product is probably about 90 % done already, the last 10 % should take no
more than two weeks_
Spoken like a true non-technical cofounder :)
Sorry to be the bearer of bad news, but the the pareto principle applies
heavily to software development projects. It's quite likely that the "last
10%" will take much longer than you think.
That said, I've seen this happen quite often from inexperienced developers,
and it sounds like you have one on your hands. It's easy for passion and ego
to carry a project from a blank slate to a state of mostly-functioning.
Hackers usually get a great rush from this stage of the project. It's their
code, their architecture, their baby. Sure it's got some rough edges, but the
important stuff is done. Their genius has been imbued into it, now comes the
drudgery of polishing the edges - oh wait, this sucks. The process of turning
something that works into something that's usable or salable is boring. What a
letdown. They just solved this intractable problem in O(log n) time, and now
you want them to make the interface's corners rounded or add some copy? Bah.
They'd rather stare at the wall.
This is a total shot in the dark here, but I've seen it often enough that I'm
fairly sure it's the mentality you're dealing with. And I can't say there's an
easy solution. It's nearly impossible to motivate hackers who think creating
software is all fun, all the time. You either chose a bad cofounder, or just a
young one who needs some exposure to real software development projects.
either way, I'd recommend a confrontation, followed up by hiring out if things
don't change.
~~~
jayzalowitz
I have to agree with this.... Depending on how long he's been at it, it may be
one of those "I need a second" my best suggestion is to get a deadline and
show you are working your ass off as well. Basically, you need to do
everything else you can and be there to get him pizza...
Consider bringing in a 3rd that you can give ~5% equity who can focus on
problems he needs help with... ask for his help in this conversation...
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
A new edition of Burke's writings, speeches, and essays - drjohnson
http://standpointmag.co.uk/node/6429/full
======
hyperion2010
This is one of the best book reviews I have ever read. Thank you for sharing
it.
*edit: I should say, that the review alone succeeds in casting Burke in an entirely new light for me. Traditionally he speaks as the voice of the conservative, but here the author reveals that he is in fact speaking not to keep the old ways, but to preserve the new against the chaos of the Wars of Religion, his fear is that the French Revolution (and company) would plunge Europe back into the intolerance and hatred of the previous century (which is still by many counts the bloodiest in all of western history). It would be easy to read his works as anti-progress, if it weren't for the fact that (by this author's interpretation) Burke had to respond to those who saw 'progress' as a reversion to the death and destruction of the 30 years war.
------
eternalban
~aside: A bit unfair to put a Revolutionary Tyranny caption under the pic of
Lafayette. In fact, in that day at Champ de Mars, General Lafayette swore a
loyalty oat that included the King. Wouldn't a pic of (imo rabid) Marat [1] be
more appropriate? Or possibly David's Tennis Court or just the handsome mug of
Maximilian or Danton?
Lafayette did not betray his stated ideals. RIP.
[1]: [https://rosswolfe.files.wordpress.com/2015/07/jacques-
louis-...](https://rosswolfe.files.wordpress.com/2015/07/jacques-louis-david-
mort-de-marat-17931.jpg)
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Allocation Efficiency in High-Performance Go Services - mrbbk
https://segment.com/blog/allocation-efficiency-in-high-performance-go-services/
======
kenhwang
When you need to start worrying about memory allocation control, garbage
collection latency, pointers, byte padding, and CPU instructions per
operation, Go might be not be the best tool for the job anymore. Seems like
Rust might be a better choice here? Instead of reverse engineering what the
compiler might do, then structuring the code in subtle ways to get the
compiler to actually do what you intend to do, why not pick a language that
lets you command the compiler do to what you want?
~~~
blaisio
Garbage collection simplifies but does not eliminate memory management. That's
okay, because even though it does not eliminate the need for memory management
completely, it does still save the programmer from an awful lot of work.
Anyway, the choice of Rust vs Go should not be based on a single factor like
"Rust is not garbage collected". Especially since many common coding patterns
require some form of garbage collection, even in Rust!
~~~
pjmlp
I love the work they are doing in regards to low level systems coding and
safety, but in general a GC + ability to statically allocate feels more
productive, specially as former Oberon user and Modula-3 fan.
------
krakensden
The interface problem seems like something the compiler team should fix or
mitigate. I worry this post is going to cause a lot of premature
restrictionism.
~~~
achille-roussel
I agree, there's area for improvement for the compiler here and hopefully in
the future we won't have to worry about those issues. For now those are
constraints we have to deal with to make our software more efficient
unfortunately.
------
robbles
I noticed there's a go:noescape compiler directive that seems to provide an
escape hatch for a lot of this unexpected compiler behaviour:
[https://golang.org/cmd/compile/#hdr-
Compiler_Directives](https://golang.org/cmd/compile/#hdr-Compiler_Directives)
Does that actually work?
~~~
achille-roussel
go:noescape is meant to be used on functions that are implemented in assembly
because escape analysis only works on Go code. As far as I know a etting this
tag on a function that is implemented in Go has no effect.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
A former Googler has declared war on ad blockers with a new startup - thescrewdriver
http://www.businessinsider.com/former-google-exec-launches-sourcepoint-with-10-million-series-a-funding-2015-6/
======
bediger4000
I don't see how ad blockers are "bad" \- I'm running it on my computer, after
all. Don't I get to control what my computer does?
In a larger sense, calling ad blockers "bad" is the kind of thinking that
leads to DRM, or government mandated blacklist software. If you can't make
interesting ads, go home.
------
lsiunsuex
I only recently (last month or so) started using an ad blocker. IMO, if the
content is free, ads on a page are completely reasonable. I installed the ad
blocker because some websites take it way to far. Don't show a modal box to
get me to sign up for your notifications or newsletter - if i want to, i'll
find the link. Don't be excessive - I counted 7 ads on Wired's homepage.
Seriously? And at least, try to target ads. If i'm reading an article about
Apple, I don't want to see an ad for bath tubs from Home Depot because your
using tracking cookies and I'm remodeling my bathroom. Show me ads for Apple
accessories or software related to Apple.
~~~
tzgur8
This is just a race between adTech companies and adBlockers, like the
information security race - more attacks, more protection. Both tend to
balance the other over time.
------
marssaxman
It's my computer. You don't get to decide what I run on it. If I don't want to
run your stuff, you can step off.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
How would you rebuild software from the ground up? - regan
I often see people saying things like:
"If you want a secure OS, you'd need to be thinking about security from the beginning."
"The HTML/CSS/JS stack is a mess, we need to rebuild it from the ground up."<p>And Alan Kay certainly seems to want to start everything over.<p>Are there visions for an entirely reimagined OS, web, programming, etc, that are interesting to you?<p>If you had infinite time and manpower, how would you do it?<p>What's intractable today that could be easy, if software were fundamentally redesigned?<p>However unlikely, do you think there's a plausible path to success for any floor-to-ceiling change like this?
======
rl3
Visions which completely reimagine things from the ground up tend to presume a
much more spatial experience. Lots of VR, lots of AR. I'd tend to agree,
except I think that we're going to see things like brain implants a lot sooner
than we think. Certainly before our entire stack can be rebuilt from the
ground up. So in a way, I almost view it as futile.
That said, I do have some vague notions on some features a ground-up rebuild
should have. Namely:
1\. Provably secure systems. I'm talking ironclad. Doing for security at all
layers of the stack what Rust did for memory safety, and then some. I want to
live in a future where physical access becomes a thing again, so we have more
cyperpunk intrigue.
2\. Simplicity. Composing software should be like gluing LEGOs together. We
have some slick stuff now, but it's not there yet.
3\. Visual augments to code. Pure visual programming exists, and it kind of
sucks. Whether that's just because we're doing it wrong, I'm not sure.
Rust for example would be a hell of a lot easier to learn if I didn't have to
maintain a mental model of what everything is doing at all times, and
reconciling that against its vast syntax—half of which is inferred by the
compiler—which saves work, but makes the learning curve even harder in the
process.
Staring at text is just so banal. I'd love to code in something that has a
visual representation for every line of code I write, and see that visual
representation come alive. Event architectures in particular would benefit
from this.
I think if we're reinventing the entire stack from the ground up, having to
not tab out and Google things every other minute would also be nice. Somehow
in-context documentation hinting has become shittier over time, not better (in
my opinion).
-
I've a separate vision for a completely reimagined web which I won't be
sharing (doesn't everyone?), but it's worth noting that it builds atop the
existing stack quite heavily. It's simply not worth it to try and rebuild the
entire stack, even in that case.
I think the only thing that could possibly justify rebuilding software from
the ground up is if we first rebuilt hardware from the ground up. A radically
different kind of hardware that demanded a radically different kind of
software.
~~~
scroot
In order to completely reimagine everything, you have to start at hardware,
environments, and operating systems. For the past couple of decades we've been
trapped in a more or less "one size fits all" when it comes to all of these.
Computer architecture got more homogenized, as did operating systems.
But the web becoming a dominant, near universal platform gives us the ability
to experiment with all of these. Just not in the way you'd imagine.
We have the ability to create unique, experimental personal computing models
now that will be immediately useful if they fulfill one requirement: they have
a functioning, standards compliant web browser (with TCP/IP and all that's
needed). If you only have this requirement, then there's a lot of freedom.
Imagine a computer designed specifically for the "operating system" that hosts
it (kind of like we used to have back in the days of diversity). I put that in
quotes because it could be something LISP or Smalltalk-like, where the
language is itself the "operating system." So long as such a thing came with a
web browser (and I know it's a big task), it would be immediately useful and
usable for most people. That means potential for wide adoption.
A platform like this could then give rise to the "after-web". If the system
was an object/actor one, people who had these platforms would inevitably
decompose the objects/actors that comprise the built in web browser, pulling
them out and giving them additional functionality within the confines of their
own systems. Eventually, people would network only these objects with each
other. Some standard might emerge from this, and we could have a true network
of interacting objects.
Of course, these computers don't have to have text-based languages or anything
else. They just have to have a web browser somewhere inside of them. That's
what I see as the real promise of the web: it's now universal presence and
adoption is the gateway towards the thing that can replace it. But in order to
do so we need to re-think personal computing in total.
------
PaulHoule
Models, Rules, and Schemes all the way down.
Rules are applied to a Model to make more rules, rules are again transformed
by rules in stages to compile to targets. Declarative schemes arbitrate
between rules, select execution modes such as forward or backwards chaining,
hybrid execution, memorization, etc.
Much like the vision in
[https://www.amazon.com/Software-Factories-Assembling-
Applica...](https://www.amazon.com/Software-Factories-Assembling-Applications-
Frameworks/dp/0471202843)
but more aimed at "getting non-professional programmers to be able to do more
easily" and less aimed at "helping a team create software product lines".
Roughly this is the direction that OMG is going in.
------
BjoernKW
> How would you rebuild software from the ground up?
> [ ... ]
> However unlikely, do you think there's a plausible path to success for any
> floor-to-ceiling change like this?
I wouldn't and no, I don't think there is. Rewrites from scratch most of the
time fail miserably, a prominent example being Netscape, who arguably
bankrupted the whole company by wanting to start from scratch.
The only reasonable path in my opinion in most cases is the incremental one.
This can mean to occasionally extract and rewrite modules but never the whole
application or - perish the thought - an entire end-user-facing OS.
Want a secure OS? Linux, particularly with SELinux is reasonably secure. macOS
is, too (for most purposes). Both are increments of UNIX. If you want even
more security virtualisation could be a useful approach.
HTML / CSS / JS is a mess? Only to people who expect complex, distributed web
apps in the year 2017 to behave like single-user, non-networked Win95
applications. There have been massive incremental improvements on the web
platform in recent years.
------
KGIII
I know this is going to sound more trite than I want, but I can think of no
better way to say it.
I'd start by hiring the best of the best. I'd start with paying for quality
research. I'd start by giving incentive.
Why? First, while I have opinions, they are unqualified. Second, I am biased
because I've seen this work but in smaller portions.
I know, that's pretty generic but it's really where I'd start. I'd like to see
security and privacy more easily prioritized. I'd like to see more open
standards. And, to be fair, those are pretty generic. I'm pretty sure you
don't want a novella with barely literate opinions.
------
oblib
I think the current state of the creating software can certainly be complex
but it is so mostly out of necessity and not necessarily bad design. It can
also be very simple for simple things and that shouldn't be overlooked or
dismissed when we look at the state of the art.
I also think that to conclude "The HTML/CSS/JS stack is a mess" one is really
complaining that they want to do something it's not designed to do or doesn't
have some specific functionalities they want or need, which is not at all the
same as being a "mess".
"Are there visions for an entirely reimagined OS, web, programming, etc, that
are interesting to you?"
Well, for me, yes. But we have to look at it with a long term perspective to
see it. My first web app (an invoicing app) was made with perl using CGI.pm
and HTML. Later I added CSS, then a bit of Javascript to manipulate the UI
with Prototype.js and it's fair to say that for me, Prototype.js allowed me to
reimagine how to build the app. It allowed me to take multiple forms and
"hide/show" them instead of sending user data to the server, saving it, and
sending another form for them to continue on with the process of making an
invoice. That process was reimagined again when I saw how AJAX worked. And
again when I first learned about "Document Databases".
I didn't like the way SQL stored data for creating invoices so I never used it
on my app. I used CGI.pm's "Save" feature to store data in a "name=value"
format. When "NoSQL" databases, or "Document Databases", came out that were
designed specifically for web apps I was pretty amazed because I thought I was
the only one who thought SQL was a really crappy way to store document data
and the few times I'd mentioned that on the perl mailing lists I got torched
by most who responded.
Currently, I think it's probably fair to say that React.js "reimagines" how we
approach building web apps.
Finally, when it comes down to the bit level processing going on in an OS I
don't have a frigging clue and I know that, so no, I don't know of any better
way. I am still in awe and constantly amazed and don't expect to ever not be.
------
AnimalMuppet
A couple of people have mentioned (or hinted at) formal verification. The
problem is, formal verification produces working software much more slowly
than other techniques. That plus "start over from scratch" is a bad
combination - we wouldn't have the software functionality that we take for
granted for a _long_ time.
The original question asks as if we had infinite time and manpower, but we
never do...
------
thistlehair
Have you seen Squeak? [http://squeak.org/](http://squeak.org/) You can inspect
and modify any code running the system. Wondering what the compiler is really
doing? It's right there for you to play with.
Most web devs don't know how a browser works and it makes the web painful and
janky. Nobody knows what's going on under the hood, so nobody really knows
what their code does, either.
------
tjalfi
The presentation Building a Better Web Browser[0] by James Mickens is worth
watching.
[0]
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1uflg7LDmzI](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1uflg7LDmzI)
------
k__
Isn't the HTML/CSS/JS stack the only one that is
truly cross platform
with a sandbox baked in
that has a runtime on every tablet/phone/PC on earth?
------
miguelrochefort
Software is a means to an end. We can't discuss software without understanding
what we need it for.
The ultimate goal is omniscience and omnipotence. If you had that, you
wouldn't need software. Software should serve to eliminate the delta between
"I want pizza" and "I have pizza".
Humans have physical limitations. They can't be everywhere at once. There's a
limit to amount of information they can learn and process. They can't focus on
multiple things at once. They need to offload most of these responsibilities
to others (whether humans or machines).
Omniscience is the first thing we should tackle. We must capture, process,
organize and store the world's knowledge. We can't continue having each
company/service/app store knowledge in their own format on their own servers.
We need to distribute knowledge in a standard format, that can be consumed and
created by anyone. I believe the semantic web was on the right track, and we
should push these ideas forward.
Once there's only one knowledge repository, it's trivial to program IoT
devices to broadcast all their sensor data in that format.
Omnipotence starts with the formulation of intent. First, we observe the world
for problems. Once we identify a problem, we pick an alternative reality that
doesn't have that problem. Ultimately, intent is the communication of a future
state of reality (ideality), and is represented and stored exactly like the
knowledge mentioned previously.
At this point, we have a knowledge base full of data about the real and the
ideal. The last step is to bridge that gap, and make the real become the
ideal. For that, we need smart contracts, the union of multiple ideals. These
contracts can involve other humans, or be automated by involving robots.
Resources, whether humans or machines, are defined by the set of all futures
they can make happen. For example, a Uber driver is defined by its ability to
take you from a continuous set of location A to a continuous set of location
B.
Before we rebuild the entire software stack from the ground up, we need to
figure out how knowledge will be represented, how smart contracts will work,
and what the interface will be like.
The solution will likely implement ideas from:
\- AI
\- ML
\- AR
\- VR
\- Semantic web
\- Datalog/Prolog/Mercury
\- Idris/Agda/Coq
\- Eve
\- lojban
\- GTD
\- Akinator
\- Tinder
\- Google Wave
\- Google Lens
\- Google Inbox
\- Google Freebase
\- webOS "Just type"
\- Apple Watch Time Travel
\- Pebble Timeline OS
\- Amazon Firefly
\- Mechanical turk
\- Smart contracts
\- Google/Siri/Alexa/Cortana/Bixby
\- Messaging bots
\- IPFS
\- Ethereum
\- Bitcoin
\- Blockchain
\- Edge computing
\- WeChat
\- Urbit
\- Naked Objects
\- Squeak/Smalltalk
\- 5th generation computing
\- Cycorp Cyc
\- Homotopy Type Theory
\- Xanadu
\- React/Redux/Relay/GraphQL
\- OpenID
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Best Machine Learning Books for Developers - majikarp
https://www.zeroequalsfalse.press/2019/02/13/machine-learning-books/
======
masonic
All book links are Amazon affiliate links (zeroequalsfals-20).
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
USB drive, OSX thinks its a keyboard? - quantumpotato_
I plugged in a borrowed USB drive to transfer jquery.js to students in my class (internet wasn't working).<p>The USB drive didn't work - it popped up for keyboard verification, and I pulled it out.<p>You don't need to tell me it's stupid to plug in USB devices, I'm not worried about that.<p>I'm wondering how you would make a USB drive that the computer thinks is a keyboard?<p>Is this malicious?
======
sp332
It's possible to make a USB device with a malicious HID (keyboard/mouse)
payload, check out Hak.5's USB Rubby Duckie project for example.
------
mschuster91
I guess so. Which brand/model is the stick?
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Two Bitcoin services "hacked" in the last two days. The common denominator? OVH - ZeroCoin
https://twitter.com/bitcoin_central/status/327131323342942209
I made a post about slush's bitcoin pool being hacked here last night to no avail: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5599329
======
ZeroCoin
I made a post about slush's bitcoin pool being hacked here last night to no
avail: <https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5599329>
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
The first modern-day marine fish has officially gone extinct - ab8
https://news.mongabay.com/2020/06/the-first-modern-day-marine-fish-has-officially-gone-extinct-more-may-follow/
======
ab8
The loss of this species may seem insignificant, especially since it hasn’t
been seen for about 200 years, but it’s a noteworthy event: the smooth
handfish is actually the first marine, bony fish to go extinct in modern
times.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Debugging in Python (2009) - mattyb
http://pythonconquerstheuniverse.wordpress.com/2009/09/10/debugging-in-python/
======
mrshoe
The lack of discussion about pdb on the internet speaks to Python's simplicity
and transparency. There just aren't many subtle traps to fall into from which
you need a debugger to free yourself.
At my current job I write C++ and I use a debugger practically every day. My
previous job was all Python and I reached for pdb maybe 3 times in 4 years.
~~~
hartror
I do find I use it reasonably often but have never reached for the
documentation once. Which speaks to the intuitiveness of pdb as much as my
experience with living in gdb when coding in C++.
I love using pdb when debugging django test cases find it faster than using
prints all over the place.
------
rarrrrrr
I prefer <http://winpdb.org/> (Not windows only.)
The debugger runs as a full screen GUI app, which you attach via sockets to a
running process, so you can easily debug stuff like FCGIs on other machines,
etc.
~~~
devinj
Worst named debugger of all time. I love how everyone always has to clarify
with "Not windows only" :)
~~~
jayliew
agreed! I've been using pdb to debug and I didn't know there was a pdb gui!
------
mclin
Or if you use PyDev for Eclipse:
import pydevd; pydevd.settrace('192.168.xxx.xxx')
Same kind of thing, but with full debug UI, and you can debug remote
processes, eg behind apache!
------
MOdMac
ipdb lets you use pdb in a ipython shell which makes it much more powerful.
<http://pypi.python.org/pypi/ipdb>
~~~
nailer
I hate 'me too' comments but IPDB IS A GODSEND. Once you use it you will:
* Wonder how you ever did without it
* Wonder why on earth it's not a standard part of Python
* Free your code of crappy conditional debug prints forever
* Take ipdb to bed and cuddle it at night
Just:
import ipdb
Then where you'd like to start debugging:
ipdb.set_trace()
Type 'help' for help.
------
bcl
There is also a fairly useful debug module named epdb from the guys at rpath.
It opens up a port and lets you netcat to it and debug remotely. This is great
for running things in a virt and being able to actually cut and paste to the
debug session.
<http://bitbucket.org/rpathsync/epdb>
------
simplegeek
Has anyone had any success with any Python debugger to debug multi-threaded
programs? Just asking out of curiosity.
------
kqueue
I still prefer prints
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Workers, don't fear the robot revolution - dctoedt
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/workers-dont-fear-the-robot-revolution/2016/08/16/28c1606e-631f-11e6-96c0-37533479f3f5_story.html
======
adamwi
I think that this point of slow down in productivity is often completely
forgotten when when discussing the AI/robot revolution/etc.
Latest official US productivity growth numbers show a clear decline [1]. We
should not be afraid and fight the new technology opportunities, the truth is
that it is needed for the economy.
[1] [http://www.wsj.com/articles/u-s-productivity-fell-1-in-
first...](http://www.wsj.com/articles/u-s-productivity-fell-1-in-first-
quarter-1462365346)
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Macron Wants to Rein in Silicon Valley, from Brussels - awiesenhofer
https://www.politico.eu/article/macron-mounir-mahjoubi-tech-regulation-eu-vestager-wants-to-rein-in-silicon-valley-from-brussels/
======
peteretep
This article is a bizarre set of weird talking points, trying to tie together
a conspiratorial narrative through such breathless facts as:
> To lock down his influence in Brussels, Macron needs to make sure he has
> sufficient clout to weigh on commissioners’ nominations, an objective he can
> only achieve via a broad voting bloc in European Parliament. His centrist La
> République en Marche (LRM) party is at work forging alliances with like-
> minded groups in other EU countries, notably in Spain with the Ciudadanos
> party.
Yes. He's going to "lock down his influence" by ... finding like minded
partners?
> To press his influence with other governments, Macron relies on Finance
> Minister Bruno Le Maire to conduct high-level diplomacy.
European Finance Ministers in "they talk to each other!" shocker
> Mahjoubi, who was hoisted to his current role after running the president-
> to-be’s digital campaign, has been more active lobbying the European
> Commission, frequently making the hour-and-twenty-minute train trip to
> Brussels to meet with top EU officials and stress French views on everything
> from the bloc’s artificial intelligence strategy to investment for startups.
The fuck is this crap? This article is really odd.
~~~
cjohansson
This was my feeling as well, the article tries really hard to incite some
weird aggression based on a blurry case
------
realusername
> France, which is the only EU country to have a law against fake news on its
> statute books
Nope, the law has not been voted yet and has been rejected by the Senate.
~~~
baud147258
I didn't know that. But the other house, the National Assembly, can have the
last word and bypass the decision of the Senate (I think, I'm not a
specialist)
~~~
realusername
Kind of, the Assembly has the last word (for the modifications) but they can't
bypass the decision of the Senate.
------
agorabinary
One of the major concerns of EU skeptics has always been the ability (and the
gall) to push ambitious acts of centralized control by like-minded European
leaders. And more likely that big players like Google/FB will just buy off
protections from mega-regulators than actually be "reigned in" as it always
happens
~~~
tobylane
That doesn't match up with history. Two of the more notable fines by the EU
have been on Microsoft and Google. The UK recently fined Facebook the maximum
that agency could - 500k [1]. The politicians are on record speaking out
against data abusers in ways that sound like they are users. Nearly all of
what the EU does centralised is still policed locally. There's barely any of
the control that skeptics say there is, even if you include the control the
countries willingly handed over.
[https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-44785151](https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-44785151)
------
secfirstmd
Highly likely Ireland is going to be against this but its going to be a lot
harder to restrain many of the French governments more outlandish proposals
when the Brits leave.
~~~
reacweb
In France, we have the CNIL that has very few powers, but always gives very
insightful advices and that is inspiring CNILs in other countries. We also
have some politicians who are very well informed but are actively fighting
against our freedom (like Kosciusko-Morizet who wanted madatory backdoors or
Bernard Cazeneuve with his decrypt law). The problem is that the difference
between a well balanced law and an insane nightmare is often a question of
details.
------
MrBuddyCasino
Disappointed that Macron is following the old french playbook here. Was under
the impression that he was a more of a liberal guy.
Unfortunately german conservatives are useless when it comes to internet
regulation (see "Mitstörerhaftung", making platforms and operators of wifi
access points liable if their users commit crimes), not sure how much
resistance can be expected.
~~~
delecti
> Mitstörerhaftung
Without knowing anything about what that is, I'm having a lot of trouble
looking up anything about what that is. Most of the links about that seem to
be in German, and the ones in English are talking about it too tangentially to
get any meaning from context clues.
~~~
zaarn
Mitstörerhaftung ("co-disturber liability") in German law means that if you
enable someone being a disturbance then you might get slapped too.
In relation to Wifi, this so far meant that if someone torrented a movie or
uploaded music without license over your wifi, you'll get a free court visit
too and possibly a fine. That made operating an open and free wifi hotspot a
legally fairly risky problem (lots of free wifi here still has very aggressive
content filtering). The law responsible was discontinued in october last year.
This has been recently confirmed by the BGH (some high court in germany, the
case was from before the law was ended but the changed law was taken into
consideration), though you're not entirely off; the court can rule that you
need to install a site filter and prevent torrenting or even put up a password
on your wifi if there is too much disturbance caused by activity on your
hotspot.
------
mkirklions
And this is how FAANG ends up destroying democracy in Europe like our
lobbyists destroyed our democracy in the US.
These words are dangerous to the life of these companies. I can easily see
(trillion dollar) companies starting various forms of political donations in
EVERY country.
Google cannot afford to lose its euro market, but google can afford to buy
policies.
EDIT: Whats the criticism? For the first time in human history, money wont be
able to buy politics?
~~~
markus92
Too bad campaign contributions are heavily regulated in Europe. It's a bit
harder to buy politicians here.
~~~
agorabinary
You can't regulate corruption, by definition
~~~
genericid
Making it illegal still reduces it.
------
afsina
I think this is all about money really. EU lost the tech war so they try to
make winners life so hard so that they could either squeeze more money from
them or enforce some government supported - controlled inferior products to
replace them. These may be the excuse key words: "protecting civil rights,
hate speech, terrorism, privacy"
~~~
simion314
Similar with rules to traffic, the rules are there for the cops to make some
pocket money not not for our safety /s
I think is easy to see that you need to always had some new rules when someone
finds a way to do harm to the society, I am sorry that the rules makes some
billionaires have a few less billions.
~~~
growlist
I think it's naïve to believe these decisions are completely free of political
considerations, and that the Commissioners responsible are merely the purest
of heart rule implementers - on the contrary, I'd suggest that those at the
upper echelons of EU decision making are by definition extremely sophisticated
political operators; if not, how could they end up in a position of such
power?
~~~
simion314
I do not understand how some people want free/fair market and at the same time
you accept unfair practices like monopoly abuses or special deals or tricks to
avoid taxes that only big companies can do, where is the fairness in the big
players having advantage over smaller ones?
~~~
growlist
That's not what I said. I'm saying it's naïve to think there is no political
aspect to a decision to impose a fine of e.g. billions of euro. It's possible
to both make this observation and to support the fine itself.
~~~
simion314
So, what is your point ? Is it correct to punish bad actors but not if it
could have a possible political aspect to it?
I mean party leaders/ministers are put in jail when they do illegal
things(though all of them complain it is a political attack), the point should
be the facts, who was harmed and how to punish and prevent it to happen again
if possible.
~~~
growlist
Why does there have to be a point beyond what I've already made? Your post I
responded to satirised the idea that there is anything but a legal component
to the decision, then went on to assert that the decision was purely legal. If
I have that wrong please correct me. Otherwise, I stick to my point - to
portray the decision making behind these fines as purely legal is similarly
one-dimensional as portraying them as being purely driven by European envy of
the US.
Apart from that I am quite happy to be free of supposed tech giants'
'innovation' when that involves them selling my personal information to
whoever they choose and so support the EU from that aspect, but at the same
time I have a sneaking suspicion that the rules would be less zealously
applied if the tech giants were European. VAG seem to have got off pretty
easily for the emissions scandal. Do you seriously believe that if a European
company is threatened with EU fines that that country's leaders will not be on
the phone to Brussels, and that these calls will not have an impact, moreso
than a similar call from outside the EU?
~~~
simion314
I mean what politicians are behind this? Do you think that some party has to
gain by this? Or is just anti american and big European companies enjoy
preferential treatment?
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
SSH client in Google Chrome - Garbage
https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/secure-shell/pnhechapfaindjhompbnflcldabbghjo?
======
jwr
This is exactly what I've been waiting for!
The ability to take my critical secret information into a huge, buggy,
extensible, unaudited, complex and constantly changing browser environment!
Who could resist?
This will also inspire innovators world-wide. Look at it this way: we can now
find novel ways to steal passwords, secret keys, log sessions, access servers,
sneak in trojans.
Count me in.
~~~
eliben
I'm saddened by the recent shift of HN discussions to Reddit-isms. For Reddit,
we have Reddit. Please, stop wasting others' time.
~~~
hosay123
It is unfair to label this poor quality, the author clearly describes a
problem with moving a security tool like SSH into the browser.
Despite Chrome being speedily updated when _known_ security problems are
discovered, the attack surface compared to a dedicated client is huge: the
2-decade-old /usr/bin/ssh + /usr/bin/xterm combo has no concept of a DOM, does
not share computing interfaces available to untrusted users (e.g. shared web
workers), cannot receive messages from untrusted frames (postMessage()),
cannot even be addressed by untrusted content
(chrome://path/to/trusted/script), does not almost transparently expose ring0
drivers (OpenGL), does not have thousands of LOC on subsystems with little
battle testing (WebRTC) and so on.
Of course these features are thought to be secure, until they are discovered
in the midst of a Stuxnet type scenario and suddenly everyone is patching like
crazy. Wasn't Java considered invulnerable only 2 weeks ago? Look at what
changed - somebody noticed it wasn't long after tens of thousands of
infections already occurred, and today it is on every browser's plug-in
blacklist. I can't recall the last I read about xterm in the Pwn2Own contest,
or any 0-day in the past decade, nor can Google accidentally DoS my xterm
because their sync service is down (happened last month).
Following from the truism that the fastest, most bug-free code is code that
doesn't exist, the easiest way to reduce exposure to unknown attacks is to
_minimize the amount of code running_. Security design 101. Using something
with the complexity of a web browser to render an 80x25 vector used to
administer potentially hundreds of thousands of machines is almost the
antithesis of good protocol.
~~~
VikingCoder
Do most people run ssh and xterm on a bare-bones OS, or are they running on a
full OS stack?
An OS that they may or may not update frequently.
An OS that they may or may not be logged into as an admin.
An OS that may have a keylogger running on it.
I think running SSH (or Chrome Remote Desktop) from a Chromebox is a pretty
good way to have that minimal OS that is updated frequently, without admin
privileges, with a lower risk of a keylogger. That I have to use two-factor to
log into, even if my device is stolen.
~~~
ramayac
What do you think about using a js-keylogger via a malicious Chrome extension,
could that be a plausible scenario?
~~~
VikingCoder
Sure, absolutely.
If you don't want the risk, don't install extensions you don't fully trust.
Just like any applications or services on your desktop.
------
fatbird
What a fantastic way to get people to give you the private key and tell you
what host it's for.
~~~
Firehed
I'm not about to install that extension and find out myself as that could
cause some... serious problems... but that was my first thought as well.
What's to stop this from doing something nefarious? Its sandboxing privileges
are not remotely clear from what's in the app store, and I don't see of any
reasonable way to contain what it can and cannot do.
Granted this is equally a problem with any terminal emulator that you didn't
compile yourself after examining the source code, but I have quite a bit more
faith in Apple and the various Linux repo maintainers than some random guy
publishing to the chrome app store. I don't know if Google even _claims_ to
vet its contents, but if they do I know they do a terrible job because I've
ripped open some extensions to confirm they're doing some sketchy stuff
(nothing insecure or worrying, more like adding affiliate links to your entire
browsing experience)
~~~
kwn11
This is not some random guy publishing on chrome app store. This app is
officially developed by Google.
~~~
GauntletWizard
Not only that, it's an official part of our Oncall toolkit. I've got coworkers
for whom a chromebook is now the primary (and only) laptop, even when oncall.
~~~
riffraff
what else is there? I don't remember hearing about this "oncall toolkit"
before and I'm fairly curious.
~~~
GauntletWizard
Nothing that matters; Everyone needs to carry around their corporate laptop,
one-time-password token, and have configured VPN and ssh clients. The rest
varies by team and job role.
------
christiangenco
THIS IS AWESOME
I can now officially be productive on any computer running Chrome. Preferably
one with caps lock remapped to escape.
~~~
meaty
Yes: just like before with PuTTY or OpenSSH...
~~~
esteth
Except now you don't need to go install programs on someone else's computer if
they have chrome installed.
~~~
meaty
No you don't for PuTTY at least. You can download the exe and stick it on the
desktop or in the user profile directory.
------
martinp
Previous discussion: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3910649>
------
millstone
Gave it a try. I find the interface to be very confusing. For example, the
opening screen has a button with text "[Del] Delete", but hitting the Delete
key instead takes me back to the previous page instead of deleting anything,
and clicking it doesn't do anything.
It took me a while to figure out how to get it to try to make a connection -
even though it says "Enter" you actually have to press Enter twice.
It then took me to a page with a link to the FAQ, which I tried to click on,
but the link was not clickable. Also, the clipboard behavior is incredibly
irritating: selecting any text automatically copies it to the clipboard with a
giant SELECTION COPIED popup. It's also inconsistent: double clicking anywhere
flashes the same SELECTION COPIED, which turns out to be a lie. It doesn't
actually modify my clipboard in this latter case. And when I actually hit
Cmd-C, it unselects my selection (WHY?)
(The FAQ claims I can "disable this by setting the copy-on-select preference
to false, but I wasn't easily able to find a place for preferences. After some
hunting, I found that I have to control click on the app from Chrome's "Apps"
page to disable this.)
Anyways it's been hung at "Loading NaCl plugin..." for the last ten minutes.
Either it takes a long time to load, or I don't have the NaCl plugin
installed, and so it just decided to hang instead of tell me. I tried to
install it by googling "NaCl", and found the link
<https://developers.google.com/native-client/>. Clicking "Get Started" tells
me to download an SDK and work through the "Getting Started Tutorials." All
this for an SSH connection?
Anyways, it was overall a frustrating and confusing experience. I've now got
four identical connection entries, none of which I can figure out how to
delete, and none of which ever successfully connected to anything. Argh.
~~~
oakwhiz
That's odd, it loaded up almost immediately for me, with little effort on my
part.
------
RRRA
So uhm, how does it handle sockets?
I'm thinking of writing some kind of p2p as a webapp that would be universal
but right now it seems my best option is webRTC that, if I understand what
I've read correctly, will require a complete handling of the streams on a
server...
EDIT: Or how does NaCl differ from FirefoxOS goals and why?
~~~
est
By using this
<http://developer.chrome.com/apps/socket.html>
I played with this API for a few days and here are my conclusions:
1\. the socket.listen can not handle much concurrency. It's very easily DoS'd
2\. javascript String and ArrayBuffer is PITA to mess with. I tried to write a
partially working HTTP/1.1 server, all the encodings and string parsing made
me give up.
3\. calback style programming is the new GOTO
~~~
jrockway
You can use Dart instead of Javascript.
------
elktea
Can't even _look_ at the extension using Firefox. Nice work Google.
~~~
jrockway
The description page loads fine for me in Iceweasel 10.0.0.2 on Debian
unstable. (Iceweasel is Debian's fork of Firefox.)
Perhaps you have Javascript blocked or something like that?
~~~
LukeShu
Confirming that it also works in Iceweasel-libre 18.0.1-3 on Parabola.
(Iceweasel-libre is Parabola's fork of Debian's fork of Firefox)
------
arb99
Ideal for use on chromebooks. Looks like it has been around for quite a long
time too (91k users)
~~~
piinbinary
I'm curious: Is there any use case for this beyond Chromebooks?
~~~
andrewguenther
It is a nice alternative to Putty on Windows
~~~
christiangenco
Yeah, I've yet to find a good terminal on Windows.
------
Garbage
Secure Shell FAQ -
[http://git.chromium.org/gitweb/?p=chromiumos/platform/assets...](http://git.chromium.org/gitweb/?p=chromiumos/platform/assets.git;a=blob;f=chromeapps/hterm/doc/faq.txt)
------
brasic
I wish this app could register itself as a handler for the ssh:// uri scheme
[1].
[1] <https://www.iana.org/assignments/uri-schemes/prov/ssh>
------
zyc
Is this news? I have been using this for 6 months.
~~~
schappim
Ditto. It's a great alternative to iTerm when not at my Mac.
------
etherealG
how different is the actual security here from running chrome on a machine
with the same private keys? is the sandboxing any less secure protecting
extensions from each other as from the native os underneath chrome?
------
jjcm
Seems like it doesn't override the browser's basic keyboard shortcuts, some of
which are heavily used in a terminal (ctrl+w for instance). I'd probably give
it a run in place of putty if it werent for this.
~~~
meaty
That's because it's simply the wrong tool for the job. Stuff like this is a
deal breaker either for the terminal or the browser model.
Keep using PuTTY
~~~
BitMastro
It's just another tool.. If you're comfortable with PuTTY keep using it,
nobody is stopping you.
I believe having another option could be handy.
------
pjmlp
Browser plugins?
No thanks, the browser is for documents. No need to install security holes.
~~~
recursive
1997 called.
~~~
pjmlp
And it feels like sunshine.
------
of
I usually have multiple PuTTY windows open to a couple different servers. I
wish it was easier to have multiple SSH sessions going with this extension.
------
guilloche
If it is native-client, then it doesnot need to install. Why not just give us
an url? I do not want this extension to pollute my chromium.
------
niels_olson
How does this compare to anyterm? I understand one's client-side and one's
server-side, but aren't they both rather exposed?
------
jlgreco
From the reviews: _"Aside from the odd quirks with using Ctrl+W on bash,
emacs, or vim..."_
Sounds like fun. ;)
~~~
tonfa
Right-click, "Open as window". And voilà all your shortcuts.
~~~
JesseObrien
Thank you, this was bothering me as well but I guess I never thought to right
click. :)
------
shazam
I've been using this for some time already
------
pla3rhat3r
Hell to the yes!
------
martinced
I realize this is convenient for people running Chrome on OS X but...
The way I surf is simple: Chrome is installed from the _.tgz_ and certainly
_not_ from the _rpm_ or _deb_ files (simply put: I don't need to be root to
install Chrome and Chrome is confined to a single user account).
The account I use for surfing is _separated_ from the account from which I use
SSH to access SSH servers.
Should someone "root" Chrome while I surf the Web, he'd still need to find
what is called a "local root exploit" to access what's in the other user
accounts (for example, but not limited to, SSH keys).
I think there's no way that, for me, moving SSH _inside_ the browser would
provide me more security than having Chrome _not_ doing SSH and being in a
separate (throwaway) user account. It seems to be, once again, trading
conveniency in the name of security. I don't doubt it fits Google's plan to
make Chrome the OS that said and so they'll of course tell you: "Nothing to
see here, move along".
Another concerning thing, depending on how it's done, it's that the potential
to mount a "mocking bird" attack may be strong on this one. Mocking birds
attack tend to not work well when you use MagicSysRQ to emit a keypress
bypassing X, sending you to a text console, and doing your SSH magic.
I realize security is a pain, but it would be great if people could still
criticize quite critical security issues on HN without having everyone
downplaying the ones criticizing as "redditers" (is that an insult?),
contrarians, etc.
I love HN. I love entrepreneurship. But I do love Bruce Schneier too and I
consider security to be something very important.
Yet here everytime an app that does "one master online password to store all
your passwords" gets upvoted like mad just because it's a "startup" and just
because it "runs on a smartphone".
I understand that some of you may not like the "tone" of people using sarcasm
to make a point but... They're still making a point and, very often, it's a
valid point.
So it would be great if people could come up with better arguments than simply
name-calling the ones pointing out the security implications of apps / plugins
/ etc.
~~~
arcatek
I don't see how installing from an archive is safer than using a package, can
you develop ?
From my understanding, Chrome is obviously not chrooted, so a local root
exploit will be required in either case to access to the other accounts (since
it will run with your current privileges).
And actually it seems easier to corrupt a chrome extracted in the home
directory, since an intruder would not require root credentials to inject some
code into your chrome (and replacing every bank front page with fishing pages,
for example).
~~~
throwaway54-762
RPMs / dpkgs require root to install to the machine-global database. Both
package formats have mechanisms called "triggers" which allow the package to
run arbitrary shell script at install or uninstall time. Since
install/uninstall are run as root, this means arbitrary root code execution on
install.
Vs: a non-root user extracting a tgz and then running some file, root is never
involved.
I'm not in agreement with OP about this being a concern worth his or her
mitigation strategy, but the logic is sound.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
15 Slides, Three Writers, Three Ways -- One Hour - shawndumas
http://schedule.sxsw.com/events/event_IAP7472
======
davidjhall
Am I missing a link -- there's not a way to view the presentation and the
author's link goes to his website (no presentation).
~~~
shawndumas
<http://audio.sxsw.com/2011/podcasts/15Slides.mp3>
<http://daringfireball.net/misc/2011/04/12-Slides.pdf>
------
lesterbuck
Does anyone know why SXSW decided to kill their podcast feed this year? In
years past, <http://feeds2.feedburner.com/SXSWpodcasts> delivered the majority
of the panels as audio, spread out over the next six months or so. This year
it is only a few text posts.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Half of All False Convictions in US Involved Police or Prosecutor Misconduct - pseudolus
https://reason.com/2020/09/15/half-of-all-false-convictions-in-the-u-s-involved-police-or-prosecutor-misconduct-finds-new-report/
======
Joking_Phantom
The original report only analyzes successful exonerations. There are many
times more cases out there of false convictions, victims who have not seen the
light of day. Those without exculpatory evidence have basically no hope. Some
of them have actual exculpatory evidence, but their appeals do not succeed.
Exculpatory evidence (evidence that proves innocence) brought up after a
criminal trial was concluded often does not lead to exoneration. The burden of
proof that is required to sustain the validity of said evidence is high, in
order to disincentivize hiding evidence until after a trial is over in order
to overturn the result. Exculpatory evidence is often thrown out on procedural
grounds, even when the evidence itself is valid. Moreover, the criminal
justice system as it operates today has little to no incentive to reopen
cases, for a multitude of reasons.
Most successful exonerations require immense amounts of legal leg work on the
part of lawyers, witnesses, and LEOs. Evidence loses value as time goes on.
Most falsely convicted criminals have no resources to pursue their innocence.
Even cases that seem like simple slam ducks, where a DNA test is all that is
logically necessary to overturn the original conviction, take years or decades
to complete.
"It is better that ten guilty persons escape than that one innocent suffer."
\- William Blackstone
~~~
RickJWagner
I wonder how many of the exonerations are 'not guilty' rather than 'innocent'.
That is, they were convicted wrongly, but still did the crime. I don't suppose
we could ever find that out.
------
web-cowboy
This is just an anecdote, but when I was called up as first-time juror, I was
surprised how much the police and the prosecuting attorney were pushing for
something that just wasn't there.
Incentives are everything, and these groups of people get paid to put people
in jail. And it shows.
~~~
danceparty
I had a similar experience on a grand jury in new york (where you decide
whether or not a felony case should go to trial at all) and was shocked to see
a prosecutor come back 4 times on the same case, each time with a slightly
less serious charge (ie, starting with level 1 felony assault and ending with
some lesser assualt charge). So even after we the grand jury decided there was
not enough evidence for the felony assault case to go to trial, they attempt
it over and over again, with the same evidence, though requesting a slightly
lesser charge, desperate for a different result.
~~~
cordite
This sounds like debugging with printfs.
------
edoceo
I work closely with a government agency. It's nearly impossible to sue
(expensive, no punitive recovery) and yet still it's impossible to get them to
admit any possibility of mistakes. They'll double down on the BS and circle
wagons to protect individual actors and move folks around to ensure they still
get pension. And this isn't even some front of line law enforcement stuff,
it's boring small department stuff. Legislators and Governor are too busy to
give any attention. (Even after I spending many thousands on campaigns and
lobbying)
------
vmception
One overlooked area are the incentives for fixing it: the state requires
legitimacy and respect. They need it to feel odd that they could do any wrong.
They need it to be an absurd debate that they could be wrong, that they can
arbitrarily ruin your life, and that there is no real or likely capability of
appeal or review that results in your freedom.
This misaligned incentives need to be addressed as well.
Judges, district attorneys, mayors, governors, and prosecutors all hem and haw
at the idea of revisiting a case.
It isn't possible for there to be enough podcasts and documentaries that gain
the public interest in a case.
~~~
bmitc
This and many other things lead me to believe the U.S. is much less free than
people would like to admit it to be. It’s just a different flavor of such
unfreedom.
~~~
vmception
> lead me to believe
well, that's a start. it has the largest amount of people in prison in both
per capita and in absolute numbers.
many of those people are taking plea deals simply because they cannot afford
their rights.
the primary difference between the US and other systems is that we are
apologists for the US system and simply don't respect other systems and thats
the only distinction.
people are conditioned to retort by comparing the US with the worst countries
in the world, to rationalize why we're the best in a race nobody is even in.
this is a mental disease.
they're conditioned to dismiss flaws by saying "but at least we can _talk_
about it", deflecting further discussion about the state of the system to a
comfortable imagined assurance of consequence free speech, ignoring the
exceptions to that part of the Bill of Rights and the _other_ 9 amendments in
it, amongst every other article and procedural gaff
------
tzs
I'm confused by the example at the end:
> On Monday, after 37 years in prison, Robert DuBoise was formally exonerated
> in Florida for a rape and murder from 1983 that DNA evidence now proves he
> did not commit. He was convicted partly due to testimony from unreliable
> jailhouse informants and controversial, discredited bite mark analysis. His
> case is a perfect example of how much our justice system is plagued by bad
> behavior.
But reading the story they link to for more detail, I didn't see any obvious
description of misconduct or bad behavior.
Yes, bite mark analysis is considered mostly bogus _now_ , but that is a
fairly recent development. In 1983 it was widely accepted.
And yes, jailhouse informants can be unreliable. They can also be reliable.
Just like any other kind of informant. Or any other person who testifies.
That's why the defense gets to cross examine them, and it is left up to the
jury to decide if a given one is reliable or unreliable.
BTW, don't infer from the apparent weakness of the article's example that the
underlying report the article is based on, from the National Registry of
Exonerations, is weak. The example from the article is _not_ from the report.
The report does contain a few examples, so I find it odd that the article did
not use one of them.
------
austincheney
Part of the motivation for the bad behavior, and the subsequent lack of
reprimand, is pressure for results in a system with case overload. The
pressure to close cases quickly drives an improper need for convenience and
expediency in violation of ethical norms. The unpopular solution is to
increase available manpower to drive more thoroughly examined results and peer
oversight.
~~~
dantheman
I'd say the better solution is to reduce the number of crimes there are -
perhaps legalize drugs. If there is a victim, it's not a crime.
~~~
austincheney
The idea of elimination of victimless crimes is problematic. That doesn’t
account for second and third order consequences such as trafficking in persons
or stolen goods. It also eliminates most traffic crimes which is very bad for
personal safety.
Ultimately, yes, the number of criminals would decrease dramatically if people
are no longer prosecuted for crimes but does not mean crimes would decrease.
~~~
woodruffw
> That doesn’t account for second and third order consequences such as
> trafficking in persons or stolen goods.
Maybe I’m misunderstanding what you mean, but wouldn’t the trafficked person
and person stolen from be the victims in those scenarios?
I don’t believe “victimless crime” typically refers to things like trafficking
and theft — I’ve heard it more commonly used to refer to so-called “social
ills” like petty drug dealing, public intoxication, and graffiti.
~~~
austincheney
Trafficking in illicit goods and persons are more acts of criminal
facilitation, than end goals, fueled by criminal enterprises, such as
prostitution and resell of illicit goods that appear victimless.
Petty crimes and public intoxication contribute to the broken windows social
theory.
------
hashtagmarkup
*more than half
------
srtjstjsj
Seems obvious. What are the other options? Elaborate frame jobs? Unlikely.
Biased jurors and judges? Sometimes.
~~~
klyrs
One would hope that honest mistakes would be responsible for the vast
majority.
~~~
jeremyjh
You could have 10 times as many people in prison due to honest mistakes - if
they were still in prison their numbers would not be included in the survey.
My hypothesis is that its very hard to get a verdict reviewed by a court
unless you have evidence of police or prosecutor misconduct.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Crab crisis: Maryland seafood industry loses 40% of workforce in visa lottery - petethomas
https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/crab-crisis-md-seafood-industry-loses-40-percent-of-workforce-in-visa-lottery/2018/05/03/bf397874-4ef0-11e8-af46-b1d6dc0d9bfe_story.html
======
CoolAndComposed
Crabbing companies cannot reliably exploit cheap labor this year, whereas
other companies will be able to for the first time, in a lottery system (for
cheap labor). Seems ok to me.
------
URSpider94
Crab picking is hard work, and requires a lot of skill to do quickly and
without getting bits of shell in the meat. Not just anyone off the street can
walk in and do the job. These businesses are built around a decades-long, 100%
legal, guest worker program that suddenly failed them. In addition, the lack
of pickers harms not just the picking businesses, but also all the watermen
who fish for crabs.
To compound the issue, these businesses are located in rural areas where there
just aren’t very many people around to do the work.
And, this is seasonal work - anyone local who takes the job will be laid off
in the Fall, and then won’t come back next year (because they will have found
another job, ideally), so their training is lost.
------
godzillabrennus
Costs will go up for consumers to provide enough margin for employers to pay a
living wage to a local. The pain of the change will bankrupt small businesses
and get the gop some bad pr.
------
EliRivers
So what happens? I would hypothesize that one possible result is that the
price of crabmeat goes up until it becomes economical to ship the crabs
overseas for picking, and then shipped back for selling (maybe it already is,
and there was just no reason to change the system until now). That's happened
in other cases and it's effectively a way to move a factory abroad, with a
larger chunk of the money involved also moving abroad. A worse outcome for the
local citizen.
Alternatively, I suppose the wages demanded by local citizens could go down
enough to be able to compete. I wonder how low that would be.
~~~
gowld
That may adversely impact quality and desirability of the meat. The costs of
transportation will also pay transportation workers.
Also, it depends on the prior competitiveness of the crabmeat market -- was it
a sellers' market (prices are already at a maximum) or a buyers' market
(prices at a minimum)
------
angmarsbane
Is there a process for the Division of Unemployment or for temp companies to
get matched to local companies that don't get the visas they're seeking?
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Node.js Is Chaotic and Insecure - jsaintcool
https://medium.com/@caspervonb/73fac4bc5068
======
_o_
is-odd? IS-ODD? This is having 500000 downloads?! Omg, some people should
never be allowed to code.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Tulsa Race Riot of 1921 - georgecmu
https://www.britannica.com/event/Tulsa-race-riot-of-1921
======
wpietri
Those interested should also read up on the Wilmington Insurrection:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wilmington_insurrection_of_189...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wilmington_insurrection_of_1898)
It's the only successful coup to take place on American soil. Wilmington, then
a majority-black city, was starting to see black elected officials and
prosperous black merchants. The white people wouldn't stand for that, and so
planned a coup. A coup that was successful: ~60 deaths; prominent black people
and integration-minded whites were ridden out of town on a rail. State and
national politicians just let it happened, and over time white people covered
it up. It was only leading up to the 100th anniversary that it was even
properly acknowledged.
Fresh Air did an excellent interview with the author of a new book on it:
[https://www.npr.org/2020/01/13/795892582/wilmington-s-lie-
au...](https://www.npr.org/2020/01/13/795892582/wilmington-s-lie-author-
traces-the-rise-of-white-supremacy-in-a-southern-city)
I have it on order and am looking forward to reading it.
~~~
wpietri
And I should add that both these incidents were part of The Nadir:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nadir_of_American_race_relatio...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nadir_of_American_race_relations)
For decades in the late 1800s and early 1900s, this sort of ethnic cleansing
was common across the US, and it was part of the Nadir's broader pattern of
rising white supremacy. Having never heard a peep about this in school, I was
skeptical. But Loewen's "Sundown Towns" convinced me with its mix of document-
driven, narrative, and data-driven history: [https://www.amazon.com/Sundown-
Towns-Hidden-Dimension-Americ...](https://www.amazon.com/Sundown-Towns-Hidden-
Dimension-American/dp/0743294483)
It's been a valuable reminder to me lately that progress in civil rights is
less robust than it seems, and can go into retreat for decades if we let it.
~~~
claudeganon
I too learned almost nothing of this history in public school. Only because I
took an elective course on the civil rights movement as an undergrad did I
ever learn about Tulsa, lynching postcards, Emmett Till, the Birmingham
bombings, and countless other acts of horror that were part of the normal
fabric of American life.
It was a profound and radicalizing experience. Even moreso when you think how
few outside of the affected communities ever have that opportunity and indeed
are often intentionally driven away from or are indoctrinated against ever
experiencing the same.
~~~
wpietri
Totally agreed. And I think it's no accident that white-run schools don't end
up teaching the history of white violence. Between the organized propaganda
campaigns of groups like the Daughters of the Confederacy [1], the desire
everywhere for history to instill pride and obedience in children, and the
natural tendency not to want to think about thinks that are personally
unpleasant, I'm not shocked that I had to find out about this stuff entirely
by accident and on my own. Pure POSIWID, of course. [2]
[1] For example, the Confederate Catechism:
[https://www.detroitnews.com/story/news/nation/2017/05/29/con...](https://www.detroitnews.com/story/news/nation/2017/05/29/confederate-
catechism/102300030/)
[2]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_purpose_of_a_system_is_wha...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_purpose_of_a_system_is_what_it_does)
------
faintrain
At one point in US history from 1863-1930, the lynching of black men was a
regular occurrence throughout the Midwest and South.
Another fun fact is that most slaveholding families recovered their wealth
less than one generation later through their connections and the white
terrorism that let them reclaim their power.
I’d recommend checking out the museum dedicated to these lynching victims in
Birmingham, Alabama, the Legacy Museum and National Memorial to Peace and
Justice.
Sources: [https://www.economist.com/united-states/2019/04/04/the-
sons-...](https://www.economist.com/united-states/2019/04/04/the-sons-of-
slaveholders-quickly-recovered-their-fathers-wealth)
[https://museumandmemorial.eji.org/memorial](https://museumandmemorial.eji.org/memorial)
[https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/map-shows-over-
a-c...](https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/map-shows-over-a-century-of-
documented-lynchings-in-united-states-180961877/)
------
NullInvictus
It feels like there is never enough time to get the kind of history lessons
out there that are needed, and the time we do have is spent so inefficiently.
I'm not a student of these incidents, but its important just to get a sense of
the scale in number of incidents of these race riots. Just two years
previously, a particularly bad year in 1919 saw over two dozen(in part known
as 'The Red Summer') recorded riots.
And they were everywhere. Just google '<major city> race riot', and you'll
probably hit at least one, even for what are now liberal and metropolitan
cities.
Then bear in mind, like Tulsa, many of these pogroms and lynchings were the
victim of a cover up. The 'law' enforcing whites were often participants.
Documents conveniently disappeared, survivors were terrified into silence, and
witnessing whites told investigating officials that they just saw nothing that
day. Any hard number you find out there is probably conservative because we
just don't know.
Not everyone was sending around post cards of the dead and destroyed like in
Tulsa, although many certainly did. If you're curious, there is an entire
Wikipedia article on "Lynching Postcards". The imagery is disturbing, so you
can find it yourself.
Even outside of understanding race relations, this and labor rights
suppression (another incredibly undertaught topic) show how 'recent' and
fragile the Rule of Law is in this country.
------
wyldfire
This is the one depicted in the new "Watchmen" series on HBO btw. A great
watch for fans of the original comic or film.
Probably not interesting to history or civil rights buffs though.
~~~
lolptdr
I have to thank Watchmen series for educating me in something I knew nothing
about before.
------
papito
Even the bombing from planes was not made up. I suggest one of the last
episodes of Stuff You Should Know podcast on it - they did a lot of legwork
researching the event.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Show HN: Audio Message directly to your inbox - natzar
https://gumroad.com/l/oaTOX
======
firatcan
Pretty great but pitty that it is a plug-in for wordpress.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Solaris vs. Linux: In-depth comparison for large systems - e1ven
http://www.softpanorama.org/Articles/solaris_vs_linux.shtml
======
patrickgzill
This is an interesting (if poorly formatted) set of articles.
1\. Not mentioned is Solaris's (IMHO) superior virtual memory (VM) subsystem.
It can have just a few MB of free RAM left and still perform very well,
whereas Linux will start to bog down.
2\. I have seen on Opteron, superior performance on multi-threaded programs
under Solaris; this may have changed recently as I understand Linux has
improved greatly in this area.
Solaris on "decent" hardware is STABLE, it will run and run.
And yes, ZFS is amazing, especially with the new features being added such as
built in compression, and deduplication, along with the zfs clone feature.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
FeeFighters Loses BBB Accreditation Over Investigative Blog Post - LiveTheDream
http://feefighters.com/blog/bbb-accreditation/
======
tptacek
So tone deaf. A PR coup for FeeFighters. A total PR debacle for BBB.
FeeFighters could in fact give a fuck about their actual accreditation, so
they had nothing to lose. BBB meanwhile looks petty, out of touch, and
defensive.
You didn't need to be a chess grandmaster to see how this will play out. You
barely even need to see one move ahead. What moron at BBB OK'd this? How
incompetent is the rest of their organization?
~~~
cbs
_You didn't need to be a chess grandmaster to see how this will play out._
Yeah, it will all blow over in a week or two because Fee Fighters is
relatively small. A few more people will find out how sleazy the BBB is, but
not enough to actually impact the BBB.
~~~
patio11
I think Thomas and I are thinking less "Probability that this will kill the
BBB" and more "How many tens of thousands of dollars of PR firm time would
produce demonstrably less press hits than this event will."
~~~
tptacek
It's that and the "let's punch ourselves in the face" aspect of taking a story
that you want to minimize, and deciding months later when it has completely
blown over to send it aloft in a gigantic fusillade of skyrockets and roman
candles. "PLEASE, ENTIRE MAINSTREAM MEDIA, PLEASE REVIVE THIS ABSOLUTELY TOXIC
STORY. And if you could, could you maybe mix in a David vs. Goliath element to
it this time?"
Having been in the room with PR people during (supposed) crises in the past:
every single one of them would tell you _not to do_ what BBB just did here.
------
rkalla
For anyone on the fence about the claims, 20/20 did an investigation[1] of the
BBB and found exactly the same thing. They worked with companies with
complaints against them and low ratings that were called by BBB
representatives asking them to re-up their registrations.
Without much coaxing the BBB agents clarified that the ratings could be
"reinstated" or "take care of" if the signup process was completed. Once the
businesses did that, in every case, the scores were re-adjusted to A or A+ for
those companies.
Conversely, companies that didn't re-up would have all their past complaints
re-instated on their review page and scores drop to C/D/F levels.
Not unlike the Yelp stuff we saw going on last week or the week before here on
HN.
[1] <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yo8kfV9kONw>
------
aresant
In extensive conversion testing we've found that the BBB symbol is the MOST
beneficial trust-symbol to incorporate into your website.
This data is across multiple markets / products and joining the BBB is one of
the things that we recommend early on to conversion clients.
Consumers trust the brand immensely which is sad given the BBB's "protection
money" business model.
~~~
pitdesi
You are totally correct, although it depends wildly on who your customer is
(IE older people grew up trusting the BBB, younger folks don't care). We had
an internal argument about whether doing this was the right thing or not for
our business. I did it against the wishes of some other FeeFighters because I
believe it's the right thing to do (I HATE scams like these so much), but it
did mean that we had to take their symbol off our site and suffer whatever
consequences come with that.
When we do focus groups or usability tests with small businesses, they always
look at the BBB ratings of the credit card processors on our site. However, I
think with our new product Samurai (for online payments -
<http://samurai.feefighters.com>) we'll have a more savvy crowd who doesn't
care too much about the BBB.
For those of you who aren't too familiar with FeeFighters - our original
product is comparison shopping for credit card processing. A good chunk of our
customers are e-commerce businesses, startups, and other "sophisticated"
merchants, but we also have a bunch of mom and pop shops (of every sort) who
care about stuff like the BBB.
As it turns out, in the couple of months since we had to take the BBB logo
off, we have seen no difference whatsoever in our conversion stats.
~~~
alsocasey
You should now use a (not)BBB Accredited! logo of your own design and see how
it performs...
~~~
ShabbyDoo
The Made to Stick (<http://www.heathbrothers.com/madetostick/>) authors might
say that the surprise of seeing an explicit claim about NOT being accredited
would make the FeeFighers site more memorable. When's the last time you saw
such a claim?
------
jarrett
Just a friendly question to anyone at BBB who may be reading this thread:
Suppose someone on here happens to own a business with BBB accreditation, and
that person posts a comment to this thread critical of BBB's handling of the
FeeFighters situation. Would you consider that a violation of your terms?
For the record, I'm not criticizing or endorsing what happened with
FeeFighters, since I don't necessarily know all the facts.
------
taylorbuley
This sounds pretty scammy to me. The good news is that I found a company on
the Internet that lets you report scams: <https://www.bbb.org/scam/report-a-
scam/>
~~~
ceejayoz
"We have received your scam report and will only be back in touch if our
investigation team needs further information."
I'd love it if they followed up.
------
lpolovets
I think this will lead to a Streisand effect for the BBB.
(<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Streisand_effect>). By taking away a company's
accreditation for a reason that has nothing to do with the company's business
practices, the BBB is showing exactly how objective it is.
------
mkopinsky
While I am totally on the side of FF here, it's hard to call a blog post
titled "The BBB is a F _& #ing Scam" an investigative blog post. The BBB may
indeed be a F_&#ing Scam (I have gotten horribly burned in the past for
reporting something to the BBB), you gotta admit that the language in the blog
post is pretty incendiary.
~~~
lsc
I'd be interested to know how you got horribly burned by /reporting/ something
to the BBB.
(as a side note, is it the 'scam' word that you find incendiary? or the
cussing? If it's the cussing, how old are you? To me, calling someone a scam
is dramatic, while cursing doesn't really register.)
~~~
mkopinsky
The story is one which I do not feel is appropriate to post publicly at this
point. If you really feel like hearing it, email me at [email protected]
and I _might_ oblige.
It is both the cussing and the use of the word scam. While I don't generally
cuss myself, I have no problem with people speaking or writing like that, but
I feel that it does frame the post as "I'm angry and have an anti-BBB agenda"
rather than "I am a blogger trying to investigate a potential issue."
~~~
lsc
ah. If you don't feel comfortable talking about it, that's fine.
I dono I find the subject of the cultural acceptability of cussing to be kind
of interesting. I'm considering adding appropriate asterisks to my own
writing, more as a humerus affectation than anything else, as I personally
can't imagine how the asterisks would make it less offensive, but eh, it's
interesting to hear what people think about the subject. I sometimes wonder if
I'm being way more offensive than I intend.
------
innerphaze
BBB is totally useless and corrupt. Used them before with a complaint and
accomplished nothing but a waste of time and effort. Great job FeeFighters!
------
spoiledtechie
I find it wild at times that old fashioned companies like the BBB are so out
of touch with the world today that they think a new company can not last long
enough without their support.
It just goes to show that FeeFighters are shaking things up in both their
technical field along with other business sectors. If you ask me, that is
exactly what a start up should be doing!
Congrats FeeFighters for shaking things up.
------
keltex
If you do lose your BBB accreditation and want it back again, all you have to
do is re-register (and pay the $600 or so) under a new name and you'll be back
to square one. It sounds like a joke, but completely true.
One of my clients has a competitor who had an F rating due to numerous
consumer complaints. They simply did the above and presto they were back to A-
again.
------
orblivion
"If you're not paying, you're not the customer, you're the product that's
being sold." comes to mind. Perhaps we need more Angie's List and Consumer
Reports, and less Yelp and BBB.
------
jasonwatkinspdx
The BBB is a racket. That should be clear to anyone who thinks about it even
briefly.
------
davidmurphy
The LA Business Journal had an article on the Los Angeles Chapter of the BBB.
Unfortunately, it's behind a paywall:
[http://labusinessjournal.com/news/2011/jul/25/scandal-may-
sh...](http://labusinessjournal.com/news/2011/jul/25/scandal-may-shut-
business-bureau/)
Scandal May Shut Business Bureau L.A. chapter hurt by pay-for-play
revelations. // By ALFRED LEE // Monday, July 25, 2011
Here's a LA Times article:
[http://articles.latimes.com/2011/feb/08/business/la-fi-
bbb-p...](http://articles.latimes.com/2011/feb/08/business/la-fi-bbb-
president-20110209)
------
eli
Is the BBB even relevant?
My assumption was that its influence is quite low since the advent of the
Internet. If I were looking to see for a plumber or a moving company, I'd
check Yelp or Angie's List not BBB.
~~~
cbs
BTW, Angie's list runs the same kind of scam.
~~~
kenjackson
This is why Consumer Reports is so trusted. They take no money from companies.
They don't do ads or have sponsored listings of any sort. They buy the
products retail and review them.
If you have sponsored listings you'll always be succeptible to this. There's
rumors of the same happening on Yelp (reviews being filtered and such).
------
genieyclo
Is that drop down in-your-face share menu a Wordpress plugin or something?
Fantastic way to get your attention. I think I've seen it before, not sure
where though.
~~~
wnight
It's a way to get attention all right. When I saw it drop-down I closed the
site.
I can cut and paste a URL, thanks. This 'Like' spam is something I dislike.
------
AlexC04
Sounds a lot like the Yelp.com criticisms I've read.
------
Bud
In a just world, there would be some sort of humorous regulatory body that
would force the "Better" Business Bureau to rename themselves something more
suitable in response to this story.
Lamer Business Bureau? Sycophantic Business Bureau? I leave the actual name as
an exercise for the reader.
~~~
mkopinsky
Bustin' Balls Bureau is more accurate. They can keep their acronym, and their
logo shouldn't be too hard to adjust.
------
jrockway
This has caused them to gain the "jrockway certified excellence"
accreditation, which is, in my opinion, infinitely more valuable than the
BBB's accreditation. So, I think, it's a net win.
(What's that you say? The limit of 0 * x as x goes to infinity is still zero?
Hmm...)
------
noonespecial
Someone should make some sort of organization that objectively tracks sleazy
businesses like this so consumers have a place to go to find out about it
before committing to use them...
------
greengarstudios
An organization that had goals similar to the BBB's would be very valuable for
many consumers. What are some of the BBB's competitors? What's currently the
best alternative?
~~~
bphogan
For the consumers, there's the various state agencies. In Wisconsin, you don't
contact the BBB, you contact the department of Agriculture and Consumer
Protection. Those guys shut down a regional cellphone provider because of some
complaints I and a few others filed about billing practices, etc. They
responded to my web form submission with a half-hour very interested phone
call.
I've heard similar stories in other states. I've always been told, as a
consumer, to avoid the BBB and go through the state agencies.
------
Drakeman
Honestly, I don't know anyone who really seeks out BBB accreditation as a
means of judging a business's credibility (I'm talking at the consumer level).
In fact, the only times I've ever caught myself viewing any of their web
content was for businesses I already knew sucked.
------
vsl2
Maybe there's a market opportunity for a new business accreditation site.
Though you have to wonder if anything short of a government entity or
extremely well-funded nonprofit would be able to maintain its integrity.
Do I smell a Y Combinator success story in the future?
~~~
felipemnoa
It has to be something like wikipedia.
------
waivej
I declined to pay BBB when I started my business, but recently worked with a
business that made me rethink the decision. This article reminds me of the
vibe I got from the salesperson years ago.
------
rorrr
The original report is extremely interesting too, I don't see how it's even
legal what BBB does
<http://feefighters.com/blog/the-bbb-is-a-scam/>
Xpay asked the BBB what they could do to fix the problem.
It turned out that all they needed to do was grease the
wheels. The BBB noted that Xpay wasn’t a member
organization, and by becoming a member organization the
BBB would “look into” those 11 complaints to see if they
were worthy of being wiped clean. Xpay paid the BBB a
fee of $760 (see fee schedule). Within a couple of days
the rating had changed from an F to a C. A few days later
and another phonecall, and the rating was changed to an A-.
That's extortion.
~~~
powertower
Racketeering.
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Racket_(crime)>
------
suking
They are in bed with the FTC so nothing will happen to the BBB. Total bunch of
scammers.
------
andjones
On the one hand Fee Fighters is fighting the "noble" fight, but they lose
points for being so ideological.
BBB is a business and their terms are well known. Fee Fighters knew them and
was required to abide by them and chose not to.
I do like that Fee Fighters is bringing this issue to bear. I'm personally not
a fan of BBB. Pay to play doesn't seem like the incentives are aligned
correctly. That and I can't afford their accreditation process for my
business.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
PandaPy has the speed of NumPy and the usability of Pandas - firedup
https://github.com/firmai/pandapy
https://github.com/firmai/pandapy<p>PandaPy has the speed of NumPy and the usability of Pandas (10x to 50x faster)
======
shoyer
It's a lovely idea to build pandas like functionality on top of NumPy's
structured dtypes, but these benchmarks comparing PandaPy to Pandas are
extremely misleading. The largest input dataset has 1258 rows and 9 columns,
so basically all these tests shows is that PandaPy has less Python overhead.
For a more representative comparison, let's make everything 1000x larger,
e.g., closing = np.concatenate(1000 * [closing])
Here's how a few representative benchmark change:
\- describe: PandasPy was 5x faster, now 5x slower
\- add: PandasPy was 2-3x faster than pandas, now ~15x slower
\- concat: PandasPy was 25-70x faster, now 1-2x slower
\- drop/rename: PandasPy is now ~1000x faster (NumPy can clearly do these
operations without any data copies)
I couldn't test merge because it needs a sorted dataset, but hopefully you get
the idea -- these benchmarks are meaningless, unless for some reason you only
care about manipulating small datasets very quickly.
At large scale, pandas has two major advantages over NumPy/PandasPy:
\- Pandas (often) uses a columnar data format, which makes it much faster to
manipulate large datasets.
\- Pandas has hash tables which it can rely upon for fast look-ups instead
sorting.
~~~
meowface
This is why you can never accept benchmarks provided solely by the software
creators. Same for accepting studies about a company's product when the
company's commissioned and funded the studies.
It'd be cool if there were neutral third-parties, kind of like Jepsen, that
any project could defer rigorous benchmarking to, perhaps in exchange for a
flat fee (everyone pays the same fee, no matter how big or small they are).
~~~
munmaek
And then they learn how to game the benchmarks.
You just can’t win.
~~~
skrebbel
No, because the trick is that you're paying a knowledgeable person to run the
benchmark. That person would presumably actively iterate on the benchmarks and
try to detect / avoid cheating.
~~~
kmbriedis
People would probably find out what hardware they use for benchmarks and
optimize for that, leading to performance decrease for many othes
------
smabie
Pandas is usable? I had no idea..
Pandas is really badly designed, in the same way that most Python libraries
are: each function has so many parameters. And a parameter can often be a
bunch of different types. Pandas is useful, especially for time-series data,
but no one particularly loves it. And, it’s embarrassingly slow. Maybe PandaPy
is better, but I doubt it. When you start trying to use Python implemented
functions (vs C ones) things are going to get bad no matter what you do.
Speaking of which, I decided to port over a statistical model for betting from
Python to Julia week ago. I’m not done yet, and this is my first major
experience with Julia, but it’s been _so_ much nicer than using Python. The
performance can easily be 10x-50x faster without really doing any extra work.
Also the language feels explicitly designed for scientific computing and
really meshes well with the domain. Python the language never really was good
for this, but the libraries were pretty compelling. Julia libraries have
almost caught up (or in some domains, like linear algebra) have actually
exceeded what’s available dor Python. Moreover, if you need to, PyCall is
really easy to use.
I’m going to go out on a limb and say that people shouldn’t be using Python
for new scientific computing projects. Julia has arrived, and is better in
everyway (I’m still unsure about the 1-based indexing, but I’m sure I’ll get
over it. 0-based waa never that great in the first place).
~~~
woah
How’s the package management story on Julia ? Python package management is a
fractal of badness
~~~
ddragon
Usually pretty good. The package management is completely centered around
Pkg.jl, which is integrated in the REPL and you can also import it to your
program for more advanced scripting. If you don't create an environment,
everything is added to the global user library, and if you do create it, it
will automatically manage your projects dependency files, and each
environment/package can have it's own independent versions of each library (so
you don't really have dependency hell issues, but you might end up with more
disk space due to multiple versions of the same library, although it will
respect semver when keeping multiple libraries).
Pkg.jl is based on git/github with a central registry that can I believe it's
automatically updated with new packages using bots. The current version also
has native supports for automatically deploying binaries and other stuff like
datasets, that can be optionally loaded on demand.
Most troubles I hear is with more strict enterprise firewall scenarios and
perhaps Julia JIT making it compile the libraries every time (though that's
not an issue with the package manager).
------
fjp
Some Python devs seem to pull in Pandas whenever any math is required.
IMO Pandas documentation somehow manages to document every parameter of every
method and somehow it’s almost as helpful as no documentation at all. Combined
with the fact that it’s a huge package, I avoid it unless I really really need
it.
A version with human-understandable docs could convince me otherwise
~~~
powowowow
I've found Pandas extremely easy to learn and to use; to the point where I
find it confusing to see somebody say that it's not human-understandable.
If you're reading this thread and wondering if it's easy to hard to use, I
suggest taking a look at the docs ([https://pandas.pydata.org/pandas-
docs/stable/index.html](https://pandas.pydata.org/pandas-
docs/stable/index.html)) and making your own decision.
I find the combination of basic intros, user guides, and the API reference to
be extremely usable and understandable; and I am reasonably sure I am human.
But opinions may vary.
~~~
jfim
Pandas has enough gotchas that it looks friendly until you hit one of them.
Examples of gotchas:
Want to join two dataframes together like you'd join two database tables?
df.join(other=df2, on='some_column') does the wrong thing, silently, what you
really wanted was df.merge(right=df2, on='some_column')
Got a list of integers that you want to put into a dataframe?
pd.DataFrame({'foo': [1,2,3]}) will do what you want. What if they're
optional? pd.DataFrame({'foo': [1,2,3,None]}) will silently change your
integers to floating point values. Enjoy debugging your joins (sorry, merges)
with large integer values.
Want to check if a dataframe is empty? Unlike lists or dicts, trying to turn a
dataframe into a truth value will throw ValueError.
~~~
qwhelan
>Want to join two dataframes together like you'd join two database tables?
df.join(other=df2, on='some_column') does the wrong thing, silently, what you
really wanted was df.merge(right=df2, on='some_column')
Simply a matter of default type of join - join defaults to left while merge
defaults to inner. They use the exact same internal join logic.
>What if they're optional? pd.DataFrame({'foo': [1,2,3,None]}) will silently
change your integers to floating point values.
This was a long standing issue but is no longer true.
>Want to check if a dataframe is empty? Unlike lists or dicts, trying to turn
a dataframe into a truth value will throw ValueError.
Those are 1D types where that's simple to reason about. It's not as
straightforward in higher dimensions (what's the truth value of a (0, N)
array?), which is why .empty exists
~~~
jfim
> Simply a matter of default type of join - join defaults to left while merge
> defaults to inner.
No, join does an index merge. For example, if you try to join with string
keys, it'll throw an error (because strings and numeric indexes aren't
compatible).
left = pd.DataFrame({"abcd": ["a", "b", "c", "d"], "something": [1,2,3,4]})
right = pd.DataFrame({"abcd": ["d", "c", "a", "b"], "something_else": [4,3,1,2]})
left.join(other=right, on="abcd")
ValueError: You are trying to merge on object and int64 columns. If you wish to proceed you should use pd.concat
If you try to join with numeric keys:
left = pd.DataFrame({"abcd": ["a", "b", "c", "d"], "something": [10,20,30,40]})
right = pd.DataFrame({"abcd": ["d", "c", "a", "b"], "something": [40,30,10,20]})
left.join(other=right, on="something", rsuffix="_r")
abcd something abcd_r something_r
0 a 10 NaN NaN
1 b 20 NaN NaN
2 c 30 NaN NaN
3 d 40 NaN NaN
Or even worse if your numeric values are within the range for indexes, which
kind of looks right if you're not paying attention:
left = pd.DataFrame({"abcd": ["a", "b", "c", "d"], "something": [1,2,3,4]})
right = pd.DataFrame({"abcd": ["d", "c", "a", "b"], "something": [4,3,1,2]})
left.join(other=right, on="something", rsuffix="_r")
abcd something abcd_r something_r
0 a 1 c 3.0
1 b 2 a 1.0
2 c 3 b 2.0
3 d 4 NaN NaN
Whereas merge does what one would expect:
left.merge(right=right, on="something", suffixes=['', '_r'])
abcd something abcd_r
0 a 10 a
1 b 20 b
2 c 30 c
3 d 40 d
>> What if they're optional? pd.DataFrame({'foo': [1,2,3,None]}) will silently
change your integers to floating point values.
> This was a long standing issue but is no longer true.
Occurs in pandas 0.25.1 (and the release notes for 0.25.2 and 0.25.3 don't
mention such a change), so that would likely be still the case in the latest
stable release.
pd.DataFrame({"foo": [1,2,3,4,None,9223372036854775807]})
foo
0 1.000000e+00
1 2.000000e+00
2 3.000000e+00
3 4.000000e+00
4 NaN
5 9.223372e+18
It's also a lossy conversion if the integer values are large enough:
df = pd.DataFrame({"foo": [1,2,3,4,None,9223372036854775807,9223372036854775806]})
foo
0 1.000000e+00
1 2.000000e+00
2 3.000000e+00
3 4.000000e+00
4 NaN
5 9.223372e+18
6 9.223372e+18
df["foo"].unique()
array([1.00000000e+00, 2.00000000e+00, 3.00000000e+00, 4.00000000e+00, nan, 9.22337204e+18])
>> Want to check if a dataframe is empty? Unlike lists or dicts, trying to
turn a dataframe into a truth value will throw ValueError.
> Those are 1D types where that's simple to reason about. It's not as
> straightforward in higher dimensions (what's the truth value of a (0, N)
> array?), which is why .empty exists
It's not very pythonic, though. A definition of "all dimensions greater than
0" would've been much less surprising.
~~~
qwhelan
> Occurs in pandas 0.25.1 (and the release notes for 0.25.2 and 0.25.3 don't
> mention such a change), so that would likely be still the case in the latest
> stable release.
It was released in 0.24.0: [https://pandas.pydata.org/pandas-
docs/stable/user_guide/inte...](https://pandas.pydata.org/pandas-
docs/stable/user_guide/integer_na.html)
For example:
pd.DataFrame({"foo": [1,2,3,4,None]}, dtype=pd.Int64Dtype())
foo
0 1
1 2
2 3
3 4
4 <NA>
pd.DataFrame({"foo": [1,2,3,4,None,9223372036854775807,9223372036854775806]}, dtype=pd.Int64Dtype())
foo
0 1
1 2
2 3
3 4
4 <NA>
5 9223372036854775807
6 9223372036854775806
~~~
jfim
Sure, if you specify the type. It's still a gotcha because the default
behavior is to upcast to floating point unless the type is defined for every
integer column of every data frame, which isn't very pythonic.
The example with the (incorrect) join above shows how even other operations
can cause this type conversion.
~~~
qwhelan
Yes, there's a lot of existing code written assuming the old behavior. But
most code has only a few ingestion points, so it's pretty simple to turn on.
------
gewa
I worked with Pandas and numpy for different projects, and I really like the
low level component way how numpy works. In most cases where I used Pandas I
regretted it at some point. OOP and numpy in the first place would’ve been a
better solution, especially because of the ease of Numba integration.
------
sriku
Nice to see .. but I think Julia is pretty much targeted at not having to do
these kinds of jugglery.
(Don't get me wrong. I actually appreciate the work, but also use julia)
------
anakaine
The one reference I didn't see was to chunking. Currently using Dask because
of its graceful chunking of large and medium data - but pandaspy doesn't make
reference to this capability.
------
beefield
Slightly off-topic, I have been occasionally trying to learn to use pandas,
but having worked quite a lot with SQL, there is one thing that I can't get
over. Is there a way to force pandas to have same data type for each element
in a column? (Especially pandas seems to think that NaN is a valid
replacelemnt of None, and after that you really can't trust anything to run on
a column because the data types may chnage.
Or then, more likely, I have missed some idiomatic way to work with pandas.
~~~
TheGallopedHigh
Off the top of my head there is an as_type method to set a column to a type.
You can also choose how to fill None values, namely what value you want
instead. See fill_na function
------
gww
There's an cool python library called anndata ([https://icb-
anndata.readthedocs-hosted.com/en/stable/anndata...](https://icb-
anndata.readthedocs-hosted.com/en/stable/anndata.AnnData.html)). It's designed
for single cell RNA-seq experiments where datasets have multiple 2d matrices
of data along with row/column annotation data. It's use of NumPy structured
arrays is interesting.
------
enriquto
My whole work consists in manipulating arrays of numbers, mostly in python,
and I never found any use for pandas. Whenever I receive some code that uses
pandas, it is easy to remove this dependency without much ado (it was not
really necessary for anything).
Can anybody point me to a reasonable use case of pandas? I mean, besides
printing a matrix with lines of alternating colors.
~~~
cerved
Lots of built in statistical stuff and powerful visualization makes exploring
datasets easy
~~~
enriquto
> Lots of built in statistical stuff and powerful visualization makes
> exploring datasets easy
I see. For linear algebra stuff it does not offer anything essential. You
rarely see a matrix as a "dataset".
------
ben509
If you've mucked with numpy dtypes, they're shockingly powerful, but this
seems like a much nicer way to do it. Great idea!
------
kristianp
Has anyone here compared Turi Create with pandas and numpy recently? It was
open-sourced by apple:
[https://github.com/apple/turicreate](https://github.com/apple/turicreate)
Seems like it's good for creating ml models and deploying them to apple
devices.
------
hsaliak
nice to see more libraries in python that embrace optional static typing
------
throwlaplace
isn't pandas already built on top of numpy? so what does this mean and owing
to what is it faster?
~~~
skyyler
Did you read the README.md? The author discusses the motivations of the
project there.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Google shows amazing quarter-century Earth timelapse - amima
http://earthengine.google.org/#intro/LasVegas
======
xtraclass
very interesting, thank you
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Ask HN: Do you care about your digital footprint? Why/why not? - lionhearted
It strikes me that a lot of us have niche interests. If you browse Hacker News, a couple other small technology sites, and then mix in a hobby or two, you've got a pretty recognizable digital footprint that people can follow around.<p>That's before even getting into Facebook, Twitter, and Google following you around the internet.<p>I've never thought this over very much - I think I don't particularly care, but has anyone thought through all the implications and made any behavior changes because of it?
======
tokenadult
I'm long over worrying about that. For public policy discussion posts I made
on an old commercial online service, back before I had a true Internet
account, I got harassing phone calls. Just in the last year I've received
harassing phone calls for my Wikipedia editing. (This, by the way, is one
reason I don't trust Wikipedia as an information source on some controversial
subjects. Some ideologues fight dirty to control the content there, and
Wikipedia management does nothing about that.) I just go on being myself, and
cherish time in the real world with my real-life friends.
------
michaelperalta
The digital footprint does not worry me as much as I believe it worries
others. What this new exposure to social media and to internet tracking itself
has made us basically minor celebrities. With that in mind you can learn a lot
from the way current celebrities and powerful people in business have carried
out their own lives. People who have had their situations ruined by social
media or the internet were, for the most part, doing things that if they were
found doing offline would get them in trouble too. The thing people have to
realize is that the internet can only harm you to a certain extent but the way
it harms you is only by bringing to light the actions you've already
committed. If you take a look at the way certain scandals through social media
and internet break down, anything that you have the ability to whole heartedly
apologize for and is for the most part understandable to the public will not
affect you that greatly. You will go through a small period of judgement and
that is it. Then there are the Weiner's of the world, no pun intended, that do
things beyond the scope of apology and they are punished. If you can learn
anything from social media its content control. You can control what you do on
facebook through your privacy settings and you can control what you do in your
life through your own actions. If you really want to stay off the radar then
disconnect from technology. Besides that the fear of the internet is pretty
much overhyped.
------
vln
I've basically locked down my Facebook to where no one can see any tagged
photos of me. I don't fill out any of my interests/hobbies and I limit who I
add as a friend.
Google has me by the balls though. I'm sure they know me better than any other
person alive through my searches, email, and google reader subscriptions.
I don't like it, but I'm also not overly concerned since I'm not doing
anything to get me into any sort of trouble.
------
radioactive21
Yea. You can't completely avoid it but I try to minimize it as much as I can.
I have separate emails for a ton of things. I create fake personas for
anything I think that does not need to know my true identity.
I do not fill out profiles of anything. When I sign up it's just my name and
everything else is as minimal as possible.
------
jparicka
I'm long working on that, the interest graphs, the expertise fields
<http://beepl.com> Currently in stealth.
------
shii
Yep, several separate identities concurrently online. Each with their own
emails, separate IPs via different VPNs (usually), and narratives to run..
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Ask HN: What do you call this style of front-end design? - kiyanforoughi
Hi everyone,<p>What do you call this kind of front-end designing?<p>http://www.polygon.com/a/xbox-one-review#
https://www.apple.com/30-years/<p>(where scrolling unveils the content/photos/text)<p>Thanks!<p>- K.
======
uptown
I've seen it called a couple things, but many people refer to it as a
"curtain" effect.
~~~
kiyanforoughi
Thanks! Very helpful.
~~~
uptown
Quick and dirty, and the image-sizing could be improved, but here's a proof-of
concept on one way to accomplish it.
[http://jsfiddle.net/4EYh4/](http://jsfiddle.net/4EYh4/)
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Ask HN: Will there ever be a resurgence of interest in symbolic AI? - snazz
Symbolic AI fell by the wayside at the beginning of the AI winter. More recently, with powerful GPUs making ML and other statistical AI approaches feasible, symbolic AI has not seen anywhere near as much investment.<p>There are still companies I know of that do symbolic AI (such as https://www.cyc.com), but I very rarely hear of new research in the field.
======
brundolf
Employee of Cycorp here. Aside from the current ML hype-train (and the
complementary unfashionability of symbolic AI), I think the reason symbolic AI
doesn't get as much attention is that it's much more "manual" in a lot of
ways. You get more intelligent results, but that's because more conscious
human thought went into building the system. As opposed to ML, where you can
pretty much just throw data at it (and today's internet companies have _a lot_
of data). Scaling such a system is obviously a major challenge. Currently we
support loading "flat data" from DBs into Cyc - the general concepts are hand-
crafted and then specific instances are drawn from large databases - and we
hope that one day our natural language efforts will enable Cyc to assimilate
new, more multifaceted information from the web on its own, but that's still a
ways off.
I (and my company) believe in a hybrid approach; it will never be a good idea
to use symbolic AI for getting structured data from speech audio or raw
images, for example. But once you have those sentences, or those lists of
objects, symbolic AI can do a better job of reasoning about them. Pairing ML
and symbolics, they can cover each other's weaknesses.
~~~
voldacar
What kind of experiments have you guys done that combine symbolic and
statistical/ML methods? It sounds like an area ripe for research
~~~
brundolf
I know we use ML to "grease the wheels" of inference; i.e., Cyc gains an
intuition about what kinds of paths of reasoning to follow when searching for
conclusions. I don't know of any higher-level hybridization experiments; I
think we only have one ML person on staff and mostly our commercial efforts
focus on accentuating what we can do that ML can't, so we haven't had the
chance to do many projects where we combine the two as equals.
~~~
brundolf
To clarify the above:
"Cyc gains an intuition about what kinds of paths of reasoning to follow when
searching for conclusions"
The _possible_ paths come purely from symbolics. But that creates a massive
tree of possibilities to explore, so ML is used simply to _prioritize_ among
those subtrees.
~~~
Iv
Basically you are learning the heuristic? Do you have any public information
on that? That something I have always wanted to work on and really think it
could be a shortcut to AGI...
------
ssivark
I'm not an expert on this, but here's my current understanding:
Symbolic reasoning/AI is fantastic when you have the right concepts/words to
describe a domain. Often, the hard ("intelligent") work of understanding a
domain and distilling its concepts need to be done by humans. Once this is
done, it should in principle be feasible to load this "DSL" into a symbolic
reasoning system, to automate the process of deduction.
The challenge is, what happens when you don't have an appropriate distillation
of a complex situation? In the late eighties and early nineties, Rodney Brooks
and others [1] wrote a series of papers [2] pointing out how symbols (and the
definiteness they entail) struggle with modeling the real world. There are
some claimed relations to Heideggerian philosophy, but I don't grok that yet.
The essential claim is that intelligence needs to be situated (in the
particular domain) rather than symbolic (in an abstract domain). The "behavior
driven" approach to robotics is stems from that cauldron.
[1]: Authors I'm aware of include Philip Agre, David Chapman, Pattie Maes, and
Lucy Suchman.
[2]: For a sampling, see the following papers and related references:
"Intelligence without reason", "Intelligence without representation",
"Elephants don't play chess".
~~~
mindcrime
_The essential claim is that intelligence needs to be situated (in the
particular domain) rather than symbolic (in an abstract domain)._
I think there is something (a lot) to this. Consider how much of our learning
is experiential, and would be hard to put into a purely abstract symbol
manipulating system. Taking "falling down" for example. We (past a certain
age) _know_ what it means to "fall", because we _have_ fallen. We understand
the idea of slipping, losing your balance, stumbling, and falling due to the
pull of gravity. We know it hurts (at least potentially), we know that skinned
elbows, knees, palms, etc. are a likely consequence, etc. And that
experiential learning informs our use of the term "fall" in metaphors and
analogies we use in other domains ("the market fell 200 points today, on news
from China...") and so on.
This is one reason I like to make a distinction between "human level"
intelligence and "human like" intelligence. Human level intelligence is, to my
way of thinking, easier to achieve, and has arguably already been achieved
depending on how you define intelligence. But human like intelligence, that
features that understanding of the natural world, some of what we call "common
sense", etc., seems like it would be very hard to achieve without an
intelligence that experiences the world like we do.
Anyway, I'm probably way off on a tangent here, since I'm really talking about
embodiment, which is related to, but not exact the same as, situated-ness. But
that quote reminded me of this line of thinking for whatever reason.
~~~
maxirater
I think the opposite is true. Humans think in terms of symbols to model the
world around him. A child is born knowing nothing, a completely blank slate,
and slowly he learns about his surroundings. He discovers he needs food, he
needs to be protected and cared for. He discovers he doesnt like pain. If you
talk to a 3 year old child you can have a fairly intelligent conversation
about his parents, about his sense of security because this child has built a
mental model of the world as a result of being trained by his parents. This
kind of training requires context and crossreferencing of information which
can only be done by inferencing. You cant train a child by flashing 10,000
pictures at him because pictures are not experience, even adults can be fooled
by pictures which are only a 2D representation of 3D concepts of 3D space. So
all these experiences that a small child has of knowing about the world come
to him symbolically, these symbols model the world and give even a small child
the ability to reason about external things and classify them. This is human
level intelligence.
Human like intelligence is training a computer to recognize pixel patterns in
images so it can make rules and inferences about what these images mean. This
is human like intelligence as the resulting program can accomplish human like
tasks of recognition without the need for context on what these images might
mean. But there is no context involved about any kind of world, this is pure
statistical training.
~~~
woodandsteel
> Humans think in terms of symbols to model the world around him. A child is
> born knowing nothing, a completely blank slate, and slowly he learns about
> his surroundings.
Actually, the research has found that new born infants can perceive all sorts
of things, like human faces and emotional communication. There is also a lot
of inborn knowledge about social interactions and causality. The embodied
cognition idea is looking at how we experience all that.
By the way, Kant demonstrated a couple of centuries ago that the blank slate
idea was unworkable.
~~~
maxirater
>Actually, the research has found that new born infants can perceive all sorts
of things, like human faces and emotional communication.
yes, thats called sensory input.... a child deprived of sensory input when
newborn can die because there is nothing there to show the baby of its
existence, this the cause of crib death (notice that crib death is not called
arm death because a baby doesnt die in the mothers arms)
>There is also a lot of inborn knowledge about social interactions and
causality.
no, babies are not born with any knowledge at all of even the existence of
society or beings. causality is learned from the result of human experience,
causality is not known at birth
~~~
Retra
There's no reason to think the human brain learns things using purely
statistical methods, and then turn around and try to argue that evolution
cannot encode the same information into the structure of a baby using those
exact same methods. Humans have lots of instinctual knowledge; geometry,
facial recognition; kinesthetics, emotional processing; affinity for symbolic
language and culture, just to name a few. What we don't have is knowledge of
the specific details needed for socialization and survival.
------
webmaven
Hybrid approaches have been getting some interesting results lately[0], and
will probably continue to do so, but the approaches between statistical and
symbolic AI are so different that these are essentially cross-disciplinary
collaborations (and each hybrid system I've seen is essentially a one-off that
occupies a unique local maxima).
I suspect that eventually there will be an "ImageNet Moment" of sorts starring
a statistical/symbolic hybrid system and we'll see an explosion of interest in
a family of architectures (but it hasn't happened yet).
[0] [http://news.mit.edu/2019/teaching-machines-to-reason-
about-w...](http://news.mit.edu/2019/teaching-machines-to-reason-about-what-
they-see-0402)
------
xvilka
Well, symbolic AI people also work on probabilistic reasoning. The production
level example is ProbLog[1][2], used in genetics. There is even
DeepProbLog[3], adding deep learning in the mix. The only problem both
implemented in Python. I hope there will be alternatives in native languages.
Scryer Prolog[4] might become this implementation one day (it is written in
Rust). Another approach is to extend vanilla Prolog, like cplint[5] does.
[1]
[https://dtai.cs.kuleuven.be/problog/](https://dtai.cs.kuleuven.be/problog/)
[2]
[https://bitbucket.org/problog/problog](https://bitbucket.org/problog/problog)
[3]
[https://bitbucket.org/problog/deepproblog](https://bitbucket.org/problog/deepproblog)
[4] [https://github.com/mthom/scryer-prolog](https://github.com/mthom/scryer-
prolog)
[5] [https://github.com/friguzzi/cplint](https://github.com/friguzzi/cplint)
------
maxander
Symbolic AI and ML/DL AI are two entirely different technologies with
different capabilities and applications, that both happen to be called "AI"
for mostly cultural reasons. The success of one is probably unrelated to the
success or failure of another. In most ways, symbolic AI has "faded" simply in
that we now take most of its capabilities for granted; e.g., it never strikes
you as odd that Google Maps can use your phone CPU to instantly plot a course
for a cross-country roadtrip if you so desire, but that sort of thing was a
major research project way back when.
In contrast, ML/DL AI is still shiny and new and we have a much less clear
grasp of what its ultimate capabilities are, which makes it a ripe target for
research.
~~~
hadsed
Very much agree. To expand on this, check out Stuart Russell and Peter Norvigs
intro book on AI. It supports your comment as there's an entire section
(chapter?) on path planning and the like.
------
mark_l_watson
I expect hybrid deep learning and symbolic AI systems to be highly relevant.
My background which is what I base the following opinions on: I spent the
1980s mostly doing symbolic AI except for 2 years of neural networks (wrote
first version of SAIC Ansim neural network library, supplied the code for a
bomb detector we did for the FAA, on DARPA neural net advisory panel for a
year). For the last 6 years, just about 100% all-in working with deep
learning.
My strong hunch is that deep learning results will continue to be very
impressive and that with improved tooling basic applications of deep learning
will become fairly much automated, so the millions of people training to be
deep learning practitioners may have short careers; there will always be room
for the top researchers but I expect model architecture search, even faster
hardware, and AIs to build models (AdaNet, etc.) will replace what is now a
lot of manual effort.
For hybrid systems, I have implemented enough code in Racket Scheme to run
pre-trained Keras dense models (code in my public github repos) and for a new
side project I am using BERT, etc. pre-trained models wrapped with a REST
interface, and my application code in Common Lisp has wrappers to make the
REST calls so I am treating each deep learning model as a callable function.
~~~
p1esk
_millions of people training to be deep learning practitioners may have short
careers_
Have database admins disappeared? How about front end devs?
~~~
ElFitz
I don't know if database admins have disappeared. But we have never needed one
to take care of our DynamoDB tables and our "serverless" Aurora databases.
Even though I'm pretty sure AWS needs a lot of them; although not one (or
more) for each and every single one of their customers.
~~~
oneplane
I sure your queries are horrible :p DBA's are generally not just scoped to
keeping the RDBMS alive.
~~~
ElFitz
Haha ^^ My SQL skills are indeed quite limited. But most of my stuff relies on
DynamoDB, mostly in a strictly key-value fashion.
Still; queries are a lot less to learn and much easier to fix when I do them
wrong then also queries + taking care of (maintaining, scaling, fixing,
backing up,...) the database itself.
------
Darmani
A lot of what's been going on in the PL community would have been called
"symbolic AI" in the 80's. Program synthesis, symbolic execution, test
generation, many forms of verification --- all involving some kind of SAT or
constraint-solving.
~~~
zoba
What is the PL community?
~~~
gjstein
Programming Languages
------
wittedhaddock
Please check out the Genesis Group at MIT's CSAIL. Or Patrick Winston's Strong
Story Hypothesis. Or Bob Berwick. Many at MIT are still working through the
80's winter, without the confirmation bias of Minsky and Papert's Perceptrons
with all the computation power and none of the theory (now called neural
nets). Or any of the papers here:
[https://courses.csail.mit.edu/6.803/schedule.html](https://courses.csail.mit.edu/6.803/schedule.html)
Or the work of Paul Werbos, the inventor of backpropagation, was heavily
influenced by -- though itself perhaps outside the cannon of -- strictly
symbolic approaches
------
PaulHoule
Let's see.
Databases. (Isn't Terry Winograd's SHDRLU conversation that kind of
conversation that you have with the SQL monitor?) Compilers. (e.g. programming
languages use theories developed to understnad human languages) Business Rules
Engines. SAT/SMT Solvers. Theorem proving.
There is sorta this unfair thing that once something becomes possible and
practical it isn't called A.I. anymore.
~~~
Iv
Well when we apply materials developed for space flight to kitchen equipment,
it stops being called space tech.
Space tech is when you try to go to space. AI is when you aim at AGI.
------
Animats
The big win in symbolic AI has been in theorem proving. In spaces which do
have a formal structure underneath, that works well. In the real world, not so
much.
------
YeGoblynQueenne
>> There are still companies I know of that do symbolic AI (such as
[https://www.cyc.com](https://www.cyc.com)), but I very rarely hear of new
research in the field.
I can't answer your main question but, as a practical matter, if you don't
hear of new research in the field it probably means you're not tuned in to the
right channels, which is to say, the proceedings of the main AI conferences
that cover a broad range of subjects: AAAI, IJCAI, IROS, ICRA, plus the more
specialised ones, like AAMAS, ICAPS, UAI, KR, JELIA, etc. Any interestting
research in symbolic AI is going to be there.
If you get your news from the tech press and the internet, you won't hear of
any of that stuff and won't even know it's going on, because, let's face it-
the large tech companies are championing a very specific kind of AI
(statistical machine learning with deep neural nets) and, well, they have the
airwaves, they have the hype engines and their noise is drowning out all other
information on the same channels.
For the record, work on symbolic AI is still going on. For instance, the
subject area of my PhD research is in Inductive Logic Programming, a branch of
symbolic, logic-based machine learning. This is not just active, but going
strong with a recent explosion on research in learning Answer Set Programs and
the work of my group, on a new ILP technique, Meta-Interpreterive Learning. If
we're inventing new stuff, we're still alive and well.
------
nostrademons
I think the biggest problem with symbolic AI systems is that you can only
program them with "facts" that have bubbled up into consciousness. Most of
human behavior is unconscious. Statistical AI tends to observe what people
_do_ instead, which is a better representation of how they will actually
behave in the real world. Statistical AI trained on self-reported data (i.e.
asking people what they think instead of observing what they do) has many of
the same problems as symbolic AI.
This is also the biggest weakness of statistical AI, and why so many people
are mad at companies that employ it. If you train on what people do, you also
capture all the behavior that people wish they didn't do. Thus you get all the
racism, sexual fetishes, discord, unpopular views, irrational views,
tribalism, and general stupidity that folks would prefer to pretend doesn't
exist, but shows up all the time to an objective observer of humanity.
------
acapybara
Neural networks have been around for a much longer time than they have been
popular/practical/commercially-viable. It just so happens that they can be
accelerated using dedicated floating point computing hardware --something GPUs
are very good at.
I often think about symbolic AI, and how it relates to Boolean satisfiability.
This is an integer problem. We don't seem to have a similar technology to GPUs
that would be transferable to the problem domain. If we had that, maybe things
would be different. I looked into this a bit, and Microsoft seems to have put
some resources into a SAT computing ASIC.
To get the same kind of progress in symbolic AI, perhaps we need massively
parallel/scalable SAT solving hardware. The gaming industry gave us the
initial floating point hardware; maybe the cryptocurrency industry will gift
us with analogous integer hardware that could push symbolic AI further.
------
wwarner
I keep waiting for symbolic AI to really get traction in the area of software
verification. Either a great language/ compiler that can really prove it has
no bugs, or a testing approach that takes a binary and proves that it has no
bugs of a certain kind. What we've been getting, though, is evidence that the
space of possibilities quickly outpaces our capacity to search it, and so
logical methods don't compare well to statistical approaches. I would never
close the door on it though, since programming is basically thinking
symbolically. It's possible that as the industry gets more concerned with
privacy and security that the class of applications that _need_ this kind of
provability will drive adoption at the current state of the art.
~~~
psoy
Ever heard of the halting problem?
~~~
rileymat2
The halting problem only says that a program cannot decide every possible
program, it does not say much about the programs you are likely to write day
to day for the vast majority of programmers.
------
throwawaysymbAI
What do you guys think of the conceptual spaces approach of Peter Gärdenfors?
See eg here:
[https://mitpress.mit.edu/contributors/peter-
gardenfors](https://mitpress.mit.edu/contributors/peter-gardenfors)
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y3_zlm9DrYk](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y3_zlm9DrYk)
From reading some papers, it seems his approach is a third way beyond symbolic
and connectionist.
Indeed the title of that lecture is "The Geometry of Thinking: Comparing
Conceptual Spaces to Symbolic and Connectionist Representations of
Information"
Would you say conceptual spaces is a third way and how does it apply to the
topic discussed in this thread?
~~~
TuringTest
I'd say it's symbolic, but not combinatorial. Tldr: it looks a lot closer to
symbolic than to connectionist, but it seems a promising new approach within
symbolic methods.
What we call symbolic AI usually makes inference by exploring the space of
possibilities generated by recombining the basic symbols of a (fixed) domain
language.
Gärdenfors approach has a lot of this, in that it has a symbolic
representation of data, a well-defined set of symbols that stand for objects
in the observed domain (animals, in the example given); additionally, each
symbol has a numerical value which represents how much of each property the
object possesses.
This is somewhat similar to the knowledge systems of the 70s and 80s for
incomplete, approximate rule-bad reasoning. But those were problematic because
it was very difficult to do reasoning with their numerical values. When
combining facts within the database, the respective combinations of their
numerical values often had nonsensical meanings. The algebras used in those
systems were not a good fit.
If Gärdenfors is right and concepts can be treated as mathematical spaces with
convex regions, his approach could solve some major problems of those systems
that made them impractical, and maybe bring them to prominence again.
------
snrji
People tend to do a hard distinction between symbolic AI and machine learning,
but actually some machine learning algorithms are based on symbols (eg.
decision trees and association rules build logical rules). I recommend Pedro
Domingos book, The master algorithm, in which he describes the "5 machine
learning tribes" (one of them is referred as "the symbolists") and advocates
for a unification of different machine learning algorithms. He even proposes a
particular instance of algorithm that would fulfill these criteria: Markov
logic networks. He has developed an implementation, called Alchemy
([https://alchemy.cs.washington.edu/](https://alchemy.cs.washington.edu/)).
If by symbolic AI we mean GOFAI, expert systems etc, I don't think that there
will be ever a resurgence. But if by symbolic AI we mean machine learning
algorithms that are somehow based on symbolic reasoning, I do think that there
will be a resurgence. In particular, this resurgence will start when: a) Deep
learning arrives to its limit (ie. research gets stuck) and/or b) Someone
finds a scalable and SOTA-ish way to integrate symbols into gradient based
algorithms.
------
sorryforthethro
Random forests produce the same kind of decision trees that used to be hand-
crafted, but admittedly, the ones they generate look distinctly "non-human"
------
iandanforth
Neural representations are messy, this is both a strength and a weakness. It
is a strength because it allows you to easily interpolate in the latent space
of the representations in ways that might not be reflected by the training
data or any rule-set that a human could come up with. This underlies the power
of neural networks to generalize.
Symbolic representations are clean, this is both a strength and a weakness.
You might have perfectly separated categories but the real world frequently
presents inputs that break taxonomies.
We invented symbols like letters and numbers to reduce the complexity of the
real world. Language and mathematics are lossy representations but also
incredibly useful models.
Given the value that symbols and symbolic methods have for us I have little
doubt that they will be an integral part of efficient AI systems in the
future. You could train a neural world model on the ballistic properties of a
rocket, but if it's orders of magnitude more efficient why not learn to
calculate instead?
------
mindcrime
It's really hard to make predictions... especially about the future.[1] But to
the extent that I have anything to say about this, I'll offer this:
1\. For all the accomplishments made with Deep Learning and other "more
modern" techniques (scare quotes because deep learning is ultimately rooted in
ideas that date back to the 1950's), one thing they don't really do (much of)
is what we would call "reasoning". I think it's an open question whether or
not "reasoning" (for the sake of argument, let's say that I really mean
"logical reasoning" here) can be an emergent aspect of the kinds of processes
that happen in artificial neural networks. Perhaps if the network is
sufficiently wide and deep? After all, it appears that the human brain is
"just neurons, synapses, etc." and we manage to figure out logic. But so far
our simulated neural networks are orders of magnitude smaller than a real
brain.
2\. To my mind, it makes sense to try and "shortcut" the development of
aspects of intelligence that _might_ emerge from a sufficiently broad/deep
ANN, by "wiring in" modules that know how to do, for example, first order
logic or $OTHER_THING. But we should be able to combine those modules with
other techniques, like those based on Deep Learning, Reinforcement Learning,
etc. to make hybrid systems that use the best of both worlds.
3\. The position stated in (2) above is neither baseless speculation /
crankery, nor is it universally accepted. In a recent interview with Lex
Fridman, researcher Ian Goodfellow seemed to express some support for the idea
of that kind of "hybrid" approach. Conversely, in an interview in Martin
Ford's book _Architects of Intelligence_ , Geoffrey Hinton seemed pretty
dismissive of the idea. So even some of the leading researchers in the world
today are divided on this point.
4\. My take is that neither "old skool" symbolic AI (GOFAI) nor Deep Learning
is sufficient to achieve "real AI" (whatever that means), at least in the
short-term. I think there will be a place for a resurgence of interest in
symbolic AI, in the context of hybrid systems. See what Goodfellow says in the
linked interview, about how linking a "knowledge base" with a neural network
could possibly yield interesting results.
5\. As to whether or not "all of intelligence" including reasoning/logic could
simply emerge from a sufficiently broad/deep ANN... we only just have the
computing power available to train/run ANN's that are many orders of magnitude
smaller than actual brains. Given that, I think looking for some kind of
"shortcut" makes sense. And if we want a "brain" with the number of neurons
and synapses of a human brain, that takes forever to train, we already know
how to do that. We just need a man, a woman, and 9 months.
[1]: [https://quoteinvestigator.com/2013/10/20/no-
predict/](https://quoteinvestigator.com/2013/10/20/no-predict/)
[2]:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z6rxFNMGdn0&feature=youtu.be...](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z6rxFNMGdn0&feature=youtu.be&t=1457)
[3]: [http://book.mfordfuture.com/](http://book.mfordfuture.com/)
~~~
jodrellblank
_if we want a "brain" with the number of neurons and synapses of a human
brain, that takes forever to train, we already know how to do that. We just
need a man, a woman, and 9 months._
Geoff Hinton comments on a Reddit AMA that "The brain has about 10^14 synapses
and we only live for about 10^9 seconds. So we have a lot more parameters than
data. This motivates the idea that we must do a lot of unsupervised learning
since the perceptual input (including proprioception) is the only place we can
get 10^5 dimensions of constraint per second."
That sounds to me like humans don't take "forever to train" and definitely
don't learn from "big data" compared to the size of data we feed into a small
machine neural network. Brains must already have a lot of shortcuts built-in.
(comment is from
[https://www.reddit.com/r/MachineLearning/comments/2lmo0l/ama...](https://www.reddit.com/r/MachineLearning/comments/2lmo0l/ama_geoffrey_hinton/clyjogf/)
)
~~~
mindcrime
_humans don 't take "forever to train"_
I was just being glib about that. "Forever" is just hyperbole, but the 10+
some odd years it takes to go from birth to useful for most intellectual tasks
is a pretty long-time in relative terms.
_Brains must already have a lot of shortcuts built-in._
Oh absolutely. My point is just that there's no reason for us to _not_ pursue
"shortcuts" \- as opposed to trying to build an ANN that's big enough to
essentially replicate the actual mechanics of a real brain.
To extend this overall point though... it may be that as we learn newer/better
algorithms and techniques we find out that you can actually make an ANN that
would, for example, learn to do logical reasoning. And it might do so without
need to use anywhere near the number of neurons and synapses that a real brain
uses. But until such a time as it becomes apparent that this is likely, I
think it's a good idea to continue researching "hybrid" systems that hard-wire
in elements like various forms of symbolic/logical reasoning and anything else
that we at least sorta/kinda understand.
~~~
sgt101
We are often deceived by the fact that Human infants are optimised for
plasticity (I know this is arguable - but it's a reasonable theory) and for
their brain to get through a bipeds birth canal (and subsequently grow). Look
at lambs in contrast (I've been on a sheep farm in Scotland for a couple of
weeks so I've had the opportunity!) Lambs stand up about 3 to 10 minutes after
birth (or there is a problem). They walk virtually immediately after that,
they find the sheep's udder and take autonomous action to suckle within an
hour (normally) and follow their mothers across a field, stream, up a hill
over bridges as soon as they can walk. Within a week they are building social
relations with other sheep and lambs and within three weeks they are charging
round fields playing games that appear pretty complex in terms of different
defined places to run up to and back and so on.
This kind of rapid cognitive development argues strongly (IMO) against the
kind of experimental/experiential training that a tabula-rasa nn approach
would indicate.
Human plasticity and logical reasoning are the apex of other processes and
approaches, I think that because we have so much access (personally through
introspection and socially via children) to models of theses processes, and
the results are so spectacular and intrinsically impressive.
I used to go to the SAB conferences in the 90's, they're still going, but
somewhat diminished I think. This was where the "Sussex School" of AI had it's
largest expression - Phil Husbands, Maggie Boden and John Maynard Smith all
spoke about the bridges between animal cognition and self organising systems.
I am pretty sure that they were all barking up the wrong tree (he he he) but
there was and is a lot of mileage in the approach.
------
mietek
AlphaGo is a hybrid system, using deep reinforcement learning and Monte Carlo
tree search. Tree search dates back to Shannon, before neural networks.
AlphaGo is a triumph of symbolic as well as statistical AI.
------
_delirium
One thing I haven't seen mentioned here yet: symbolic planning is still a
pretty large area. It's not really visible if you look at what people are
starting AI startups around, but there are a bunch of large companies that use
symbolic planning systems, and it's also an active research area, even if not
the most in-vogue one at the moment.
I have no inside information on why they're interested, but it's also
intriguing that DARPA continues to pour money into planning system R&D.
------
eesmith
"fell by the wayside at the beginning of the AI winter"
I believe the various aspects of the Semantic Web are a continuation of
symbolic AI. My two cents as a complete outsider on the topic.
~~~
0815test
They are, but the successful part of the Semantic Web is almost entirely
limited to open-source datasets (grouped under the "Linked Data", or "Linked
Open Data" initiative). That's pretty much the only part of the web that
actually has an incentive to release their info in machine-readable format -
everyone else would rather control the UX end-to-end and keep users dependent
on their proprietary websites or apps.
------
sal9000
A resurgence in interest might be already underway - check for example this
very recent work from Joshua Tenenbaum's lab (MIT):
Neural-Symbolic VQA: Disentangling Reasoning from Vision and Language
Understanding
[https://arxiv.org/abs/1810.02338](https://arxiv.org/abs/1810.02338)
It actually brews on ideas that prof.Tenenbaum has been presenting and
discussing over the past few years.
------
_0ffh
I wonder about the potential of fusing subsymbolic with symbolic systems,
continually learning and updating a set of feature vectors to serve as a
dictionary, translating between the subsymbolic and symbolic parts of an
integrated learning framework. I think of that as analoguous to how the older,
more intuitive parts of the brain and the language-based, reflective, linear,
reasoning parts work together.
------
crististm
I feel that AI in the form of machine learning has the higher ground because,
as an engineer, you have an attack on the problem that gets you moving instead
of contemplating whatifs of symbolic sci-fi.
There is also the question if ML is not simply moving us into a ditch of
optimum locality. I think it does.
I'd love to see symbolic AI take a foothold only to have it explain back its
rationalizations (which ML can't).
~~~
TuringTest
I have this hypothesis that, once the field of ML stabilizes around a mature
industry, we'll start seeing people using symbolic tools to generate
explanations of the concepts learnt by the deep learning networks.
------
wslh
Aren't Mathematica and automated proving systems succesful cases where
symbolic AI happen?
------
daly
I have a long background in Ai (robotics, PDP, expert systems, symbolic math,
vision, planning).
There appear to be two classes of knowledge. Pattern knowledge, such as riding
a bicycle, which we tend to learn in ways similar to the current machine
learning trend. In some ways, this is "deductive knowledge". On the other
hand, Explicit knowledge, such a learning to reason about proofs, which we
tend to learn by teaching is symbolic. In some ways, this is "inductive
knowledge.
The current machine learning trend leans heavily on Pattern knowledge. I don't
believe it will extend into the Explicit knowledge domain. I fear that once
this distinction becomes important it will be seen as a "limit of AI", leading
to yet another AI winter. I tried to bring this up in the Open AI Gym
([https://gym.openai.com/](https://gym.openai.com/)) but it went nowhere.
My experience leads me to hold the very unpopular opinion that AI requires a
self-modifying system. Computers differ from calculators because they can
modify their own behavior. I'm of the opinion that there is an even deeper
kind of self-modification that is important for general AI. The physical
realization of this in animals is due to the ability to grow new brain
connections based on experience. One side-effect is that two identical self-
modifying systems placed in different contexts will evolve differently. (A
trivial example would be the notion of a "table" which is a wood structure to
one system and a spreadsheet to the other system). Since they evolve different
symbolic meanings they can't "copy their knowledge" but have to transfer it by
"teaching".
Self-modification allows for adaptation based on internal feedback rather than
external patterns (e.g. imagination). It allows a kind of hardware
implementation of "genetic algorithms"
([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genetic_algorithm](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genetic_algorithm)).
It allows "Explicit knowledge" to be "compiled" into "Pattern knowledge". This
effect can be seen when you learn a skill like music or knitting. After being
taught a manual skill you eventually "get it into your fingers", likely by
self-modification, growing neural pathways.
Of all of the approches I've seen I think Jeff Hawkins of Numenta
([https://www.amazon.com/Intelligence-Understanding-
Creation-I...](https://www.amazon.com/Intelligence-Understanding-Creation-
Intelligent-Machines-ebook/dp/B003J4VE5Y)) is on the right track. However, he
needs to extend his theories to handle self-modification in order to get past
the "pattern knowledge" behavior.
~~~
amy12xx
>> "Pattern knowledge, such as riding a bicycle, which we tend to learn in
ways similar to the current machine learning trend. In some ways, this is
"deductive knowledge". "
Deduction is given a rule and cause, find (deduce) the effect, whereas
Induction is given cause and effect, induce the rule. Isn't machine learning
more inductive (given observations and outcome, induce the decision function)?
------
lquist
We aren’t planning on serious research in the space but it is becoming
increasingly obvious that an expert system is the right approach for our
business going forward fwiw
------
bluejay2387
There already has been, though it's nascent. Check the proceedings of AAAI
2019 or any of the more recent non-NIPS conferences for details.
------
tanilama
Depends whether it could be used to improve performance on existing tasks.
------
laser
Like neural nets managing symbolic systems managing neural nets, or something?
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Programming Language Checklist - kibwen
http://colinm.org/language_checklist.html
======
zeteo
>[ ] The name of your language makes it impossible to find on Google
Unless you work for Google, in which case your language's name (maybe shared
with a common verb or a popular board game) will quickly become the top search
result!
~~~
djur
For me, in an incognito window (so Google is less likely to tweak search
results for my preferences), the Wikipedia page for the game Go is the first
result, and five out of the top 10 are also about the game. The other results
are Disney's "go.com" domain, golang.org, and the movie Go on IMDB.
Doesn't really suggest unfair weighting to me.
~~~
GuiA
This is what I see in an incognito window:
[http://i.imgur.com/BI4zvXB.png](http://i.imgur.com/BI4zvXB.png)
~~~
alecdbrooks
Given that incognito doesn't obscure your IP address (not to mention the
myriad other ways your identity could be leaked to Google), I wonder if
incognito's enough to get a "clean" page of Google results. On this search, I
get different results from you but ones similar to djur:
[http://imgur.com/7KTqZFV](http://imgur.com/7KTqZFV) (on Firefox in private
mode: [http://imgur.com/Jn400wX](http://imgur.com/Jn400wX)). For reference, I
probably would only visit a page on Go if it were linked to on a blog; I don't
use it or (normally) search for it.
------
zellyn
It's surprising to me that people view this as primarily negative. I think
it's (a) funny, and (b) actually serves - as does the best humor - to make
people think about things more deeply: by enumerating all the knee-jerk
reactions in one place, discussion can focus on more interesting aspects.
~~~
mhurron
People want to be offended, it makes them feel superior.
It is clearly a joke, anyone taking it seriously shouldn't really have any
attention paid to them.
------
jmduke
This is such a bummer of a file that incorrectly assumes that the only valid
goal of a new language is to achieve widespread adoption.
I know its en vogue to turn up our noses at "X at Y lines of Javascript", but
programming is actually a pretty fun and neat thing to do, and its okay to
create something even if its not particularly groundbreaking or commercially
viable.
_This is a bad language, and you should feel bad for inventing it._
I can't help but imagine the person who penned this sentence also routinely
tells children that their macaroni artwork could use more symmetry.
~~~
edvinbesic
I cannot agree more, especially reading the history of T by P. Graham, a
language I have never heard of before or written a line in, but whose history
I find extremely interesting from a developers perspective.
The whole "X at Y lines" argument is the same as saying "I created an OS in
language X in two lines of code" by writing:
Import OS.*;
OS.Run();
~~~
Aldo_MX
Checkmate, one line.
Import OS.*; OS.Run();
~~~
chavesn
Compile error: only the full sequence ";\n" ends a statement.
~~~
Aldo_MX
for(;
;
)
{
print "I don't like your compiler.";
}
------
tptacek
This is like lowbrow-dismissal bingo. Someone (cough) should turn this into
actual bingo cards.
------
jredwards
> You have reinvented PHP better, but that's still no justification
Preach.
------
ret
"You have reinvented Brainfuck but non-ironically" \- brilliant. :)
~~~
gwern
Ah, so _that_ is what this checklist yields for Urbit!
------
russell
With a little cleanup, this could have been the original government
procurement checklist for Ada.
------
ori_b
As the developer of Myrddin
([http://eigenstate.org/myrddin.html](http://eigenstate.org/myrddin.html)), I
felt the need to fill it in for my pet language:
You appear to be advocating a new:
[ ] functional [ ] imperative [ ] object-oriented [x] procedural
[ ] stack-based [x] "multi-paradigm" [ ] lazy [x] eager
[x] statically-typed [ ] dynamically-typed [ ] pure [x] impure
[ ] non-hygienic [ ] visual [ ] beginner-friendly
[ ] non-programmer-friendly [ ] completely incomprehensible
programming language. Your language will not work. Here is why it
will not work.
You appear to believe that:
[ ] Syntax is what makes programming difficult
[ ] Garbage collection is free
[ ] Computers have infinite memory
[x] Nobody really needs:
[x] concurrency [x] a REPL [x] debugger support [x] IDE support [ ] I/O
[x] to interact with code not written in your language
[ ] The entire world speaks 7-bit ASCII
[x] Scaling up to large software projects will be easy
[x] Convincing programmers to adopt a new language will be easy
[ ] Convincing programmers to adopt a language-specific IDE
will be easy
[ ] Programmers love writing lots of boilerplate
[ ] Specifying behaviors as "undefined" means that programmers
won't rely on them
[ ] "Spooky action at a distance" makes programming more fun
Unfortunately, your language (has/lacks): [Lacks => L, Has => H]
[L] comprehensible syntax [L] semicolons
[L] significant whitespace [L] macros
[L] implicit type conversion [H] explicit casting
[H] type inference [H] goto [ ] exceptions [x] closures
[L] tail recursion [L] coroutines [L(planned)] reflection
[L] subtyping [L] multiple inheritance
[L(planned)] operator overloading [H] algebraic datatypes
[H] recursive types [L] polymorphic types [L] covariant array typing
[L] monads [L] dependent types [H] infix operators
[H] nested comments [L] multi-line strings [library] regexes
[H] call-by-value [L] call-by-name [L] call-by-reference
[L] call-cc
The following philosophical objections apply:
[ ] Programmers should not need to understand category theory
to write "Hello, World!"
[ ] Programmers should not develop RSI from writing "Hello, World!"
[ ] The most significant program written in your language is
its own compiler
[X] The most significant program written in your language isn't
even its own compiler
[ ] No language spec
[X] Incomplete language spec
[ ] "The implementation is the spec"
[ ] The implementation is closed-source
[ ] covered by patents
[ ] not owned by you
[X] Your type system is unsound
[ ] Your language cannot be unambiguously parsed
[ ] a proof of same is attached
[ ] invoking this proof crashes the compiler
[ ] The name of your language makes it impossible to find on Google
[ ] Interpreted languages will never be as fast as C
[X] Compiled languages will never be "extensible"
[ ] Writing a compiler that understands English is AI-complete
[ ] Your language relies on an optimization which has
never been shown possible
[ ] There are less than 100 programmers on Earth smart
enough to use your language
[ ] ____________________________ takes exponential time
[ ] ____________________________ is known to be undecidable
Your implementation has the following flaws:
[ ] CPUs do not work that way
[ ] RAM does not work that way
[ ] VMs do not work that way
[ ] Compilers do not work that way
[ ] Compilers cannot work that way
[ ] Shift-reduce conflicts in parsing seem to be resolved using rand()
[ ] You require the compiler to be present at runtime
[ ] You require the language runtime to be present at compile-time
[X] Your compiler errors are completely inscrutable
[ ] Dangerous behavior is only a warning
[X] The compiler crashes if you look at it funny
[ ] The VM crashes if you look at it funny
[X] You don't seem to understand basic optimization techniques
[ ] You don't seem to understand basic systems programming
[ ] You don't seem to understand pointers
[ ] You don't seem to understand functions
Additionally, your marketing has the following problems:
[X] Unsupported claims of increased productivity
[X] Unsupported claims of greater "ease of use"
[ ] Obviously rigged benchmarks (Benchmarks? What are those)
[ ] Graphics, simulation, or crypto benchmarks where your code just calls
handwritten assembly through your FFI
[ ] String-processing benchmarks where you just call PCRE
[ ] Matrix-math benchmarks where you just call BLAS
[X] Noone really believes that your language is faster than:
[x] assembly [x] C [x] FORTRAN [x] Java [ ] Ruby [ ] Prolog
[x] Rejection of orthodox programming-language theory without
justification
[x] Rejection of orthodox systems programming without
justification
[ ] Rejection of orthodox algorithmic theory without
justification
[ ] Rejection of basic computer science without
justification
Taking the wider ecosystem into account, I would like to note that:
[x] Your complex sample code would be one line in: _______________________
[x] We already have an unsafe imperative language
[ ] We already have a safe imperative OO language
[ ] We already have a safe statically-typed eager functional language
[ ] You have reinvented Lisp but worse
[ ] You have reinvented Javascript but worse
[ ] You have reinvented Java but worse
[x] You have reinvented C++ but worse
[ ] You have reinvented PHP but worse
[ ] You have reinvented PHP better, but that's still no justification
[ ] You have reinvented Brainfuck but non-ironically
In conclusion, this is what I think of you:
[x] You have some interesting ideas, but this won't fly.
[x] This is a bad language, and you should feel bad for inventing it.
[x] Programming in this language is an adequate punishment for inventing it.
Side note, this isn't something serious. It's a tongue in cheek parody of this
old usenet spam-fighting idea checklist meme:
[http://craphound.com/spamsolutions.txt](http://craphound.com/spamsolutions.txt)
------
joshguthrie
Can it output me a list of programming languages based on what I check?
------
evincarofautumn
As the author of Kitten
([http://github.com/evincarofautumn/kitten](http://github.com/evincarofautumn/kitten)):
You appear to be advocating a new functional, imperative, procedural, stack-
based, eager, statically typed, pure programming language. Your language will
not work. Here is why it will not work. Unfortunately, your language has
comprehensible syntax, significant whitespace, type inference, closures, tail
recursion, algebraic datatypes, polymorphic types, nested comments, multi-line
strings, and call-by-value. (It lacks almost everything else.) The most
significant program written in your language isn’t even its own compiler.
There is no language spec; the implementation is the spec. Compiled languages
will never be “extensible”. Your compiler errors are completely inscrutable.
No one really believes that your language is faster than assembly, C, or
FORTRAN. We already have a safe statically typed eager functional language.
You have reinvented Forth but non-ironically. In conclusion, you have some
interesting ideas, but this won’t fly.
And the runtime isn’t even done yet. :P
------
timmclean
This checklist discourages people from writing their own programming
languages. Why not rewrite the checklist as positive, constructive advice
around common pitfalls, instead of complaints like "You don't seem to
understand X"? There are new programming languages waiting to be invented --
providing a template for knee-jerk negative reactions does not seem like a
productive endeavour.
~~~
dragonwriter
> This checklist discourages people from writing their own programming
> languages.
Rather, this checklists mocks common discussion-board dismissals that
discourage people from writing their own programming languages.
------
lignuist
Perfect.
To me it looks like a few new languages are introduced every week and I just
cannot understand why. I can understand that a programmer who reaches a
certain level wants to build his own language, but do they really think that
the world is waiting for yet another programming language? It is just not
getting easier with a new language.
This article is a must read for everyone who considers writing a new language.
If all the arguments do not apply for your language, then the world is
probably really waiting for your new language. :)
~~~
derekp7
I believe that it is good for any programmer to at some point in their
development create a simple language and write an interpreter for it. First,
you learn parsing, then you learn what actually makes a language tick. Then
you learn what goes into the design process, when you realize you've designed
yourself into a corner. Then you start reading up on language design, stumble
across sites like Lambda-the-Ultimate.org, and find out that there is a lot
more than imperative / OO programming. Then you start getting into the Lisp
literature, and reach a zen-like state. Then you snap back to reality, and
become a slightly better programmer, who is a bit more humble.
~~~
alcari
Repeat several times to become a much better programmer, but possibly lose the
humbleness.
~~~
rfnslyr
Final step: Co-exist as one with John Carmack and all other ascended souls.
------
fat0wl
> You appear to believe that:
> [ ] Syntax is what makes programming difficult
Lol I went from RoR to Java (IBM Websphere stuff) & all my Python dev friends
started trying to explain to me how its a career killer because Java's syntax
is archaic.
Turns out the company I'm at is using very advanced builder tools and then
just integrate a bit with linked Java objects. Pretty neat! And has given me
time to shift study toward Play framework / Node / Dart / Clojure.
------
shenoybr
I believe programmers should rather focus their attention to understanding the
internals of existing languages, this will do wonders to the way they program.
------
rayiner
Re: "[ ] The most significant program written in your language isn't even its
own compiler"
There's a great quote by someone which Googling can't find, that goes along
the lines of: "a language whose own compiler isn't written in itself is
beneath contempt."
------
imslavko
As a non-expert in programming languages I find this list a good starting
point for learning: reading about each bullet point in Wikipedia might already
be useful. And arguing on HN is not the single application of this knowledge.
------
seanmcdirmid
As a researcher working on experimental PLs [1]...why not
[1] [http://research.microsoft.com/en-
us/people/smcdirm/liveprogr...](http://research.microsoft.com/en-
us/people/smcdirm/liveprogramming.aspx)
You appear to be advocating a new:
[ ] functional [X] imperative [X] object-oriented [X] procedural [ ] stack-based
[ ] "multi-paradigm" [ ] lazy [ ] eager [X] statically-typed [ ] dynamically-typed
[ ] pure [X] impure [ ] non-hygienic [ ] visual [ ] beginner-friendly
You appear to believe that:
[X] Garbage collection is free [X] Computers have infinite memory
[ ] Nobody really needs:
[ ] concurrency [X] a REPL [ ] debugger support [ ] IDE support [ ] I/O
[ ] to interact with code not written in your language
[X] Convincing programmers to adopt a new language will be easy
[X] Convincing programmers to adopt a language-specific IDE will be easy
[X] "Spooky action at a distance" makes programming more fun
Unfortunately, your language (H -> has/ L -> lacks) :
[H] comprehensible syntax [L] semicolons [H] significant whitespace [L] macros
[L] implicit type conversion [L] explicit casting [H] type inference
[L] goto [L] exceptions [L] closures [L] tail recursion [L] coroutines
[L] reflection [H] subtyping [H] multiple inheritance [L] operator overloading
[L] algebraic datatypes [L] recursive types [H] polymorphic types
[H] covariant array typing [L] monads [L] dependent types
[H] infix operators [L] nested comments [L] multi-line strings [L] regexes
[H] call-by-value [L] call-by-name [L] call-by-reference [L] call-cc
The following philosophical objections apply:
[X] The most significant program written in your language isn't even its own compiler
[X] No language spec
[X] "The implementation is the spec"
[X] The implementation is closed-source [X] covered by patents [X] not owned by you
[?] Your type system is unsound
[X] ____________________________ takes exponential time
[X] ____________________________ is known to be undecidable
Your implementation has the following flaws:
[X] CPUs do not work that way
[X] RAM does not work that way
[X] VMs do not work that way
[X] Compilers do not work that way
[X] Compilers cannot work that way
[X] You require the compiler to be present at runtime
[X] You require the language runtime to be present at compile-time
[X] Dangerous behavior is only a warning
[X] You don't seem to understand basic optimization techniques
[X] You don't seem to understand basic systems programming
Additionally, your marketing has the following problems:
[X] Unsupported claims of increased productivity
[X] Unsupported claims of greater "ease of use"
[ ] Noone really believes that your language is faster than:
[X] assembly [X] C [X] FORTRAN [X] Java [X] Ruby [ ] Prolog
[X] Rejection of orthodox programming-language theory without justification
[X] Rejection of orthodox systems programming without justification
[ ] Rejection of orthodox algorithmic theory without justification
[X] Rejection of basic computer science without justification
Taking the wider ecosystem into account, I would like to note that:
[X] We already have an unsafe imperative language
[X] We already have a safe imperative OO language
In conclusion, this is what I think of you:
[ ] You have some interesting ideas, but this won't fly.
[ ] This is a bad language, and you should feel bad for inventing it.
[ ] Programming in this language is an adequate punishment for inventing it.
------
KerrickStaley
I only upvoted this because McMillen wrote it.
------
ahomescu1
Hilariously, C checks a lot of these boxes.
------
jdpage
I once built a stupid language for fun. Think a bastard child of FORTH and
brainfuck, but in two dimensions. To give an idea of how stupid it was, I will
fill this in.
You appear to be advocating a new:
[ ] functional [X] imperative [ ] object-oriented [X] procedural [X] stack-based
[ ] "multi-paradigm" [ ] lazy [X] eager [ ] statically-typed [X] dynamically-typed
[ ] pure [ ] impure [ ] non-hygienic [X] visual [ ] beginner-friendly
[X] non-programmer-friendly [X] completely incomprehensible
programming language. Your language will not work. Here is why it will not work.
You appear to believe that:
[ ] Syntax is what makes programming difficult
[ ] Garbage collection is free [ ] Computers have infinite memory
[ ] Nobody really needs:
[X] concurrency [X] a REPL [X] debugger support [X] IDE support [ ] I/O
[X] to interact with code not written in your language
[ ] The entire world speaks 7-bit ASCII
[ ] Scaling up to large software projects will be easy
[ ] Convincing programmers to adopt a new language will be easy
[ ] Convincing programmers to adopt a language-specific IDE will be easy
[ ] Programmers love writing lots of boilerplate
[ ] Specifying behaviors as "undefined" means that programmers won't rely on them
[X] "Spooky action at a distance" makes programming more fun
Unfortunately, your language (has/lacks):
[-] comprehensible syntax [-] semicolons [+] significant whitespace [-] macros
[+] implicit type conversion [-] explicit casting [-] type inference
[+] goto [-] exceptions [-] closures [-] tail recursion [-] coroutines
[-] reflection [-] subtyping [-] multiple inheritance [-] operator overloading
[-] algebraic datatypes [-] recursive types [-] polymorphic types
[-] covariant array typing [-] monads [-] dependent types
[-] infix operators [+] nested comments [+] multi-line strings [-] regexes
[-] call-by-value [-] call-by-name [+] call-by-reference [-] call-cc
The following philosophical objections apply:
[ ] Programmers should not need to understand category theory to write "Hello, World!"
[ ] Programmers should not develop RSI from writing "Hello, World!"
[ ] The most significant program written in your language is its own compiler
[X] The most significant program written in your language isn't even its own compiler
[ ] No language spec
[ ] "The implementation is the spec"
[ ] The implementation is closed-source [ ] covered by patents [ ] not owned by you
[ ] Your type system is unsound [ ] Your language cannot be unambiguously parsed
[ ] a proof of same is attached
[ ] invoking this proof crashes the compiler
[X] The name of your language makes it impossible to find on Google
[X] Interpreted languages will never be as fast as C
[ ] Compiled languages will never be "extensible"
[ ] Writing a compiler that understands English is AI-complete
[ ] Your language relies on an optimization which has never been shown possible
[ ] There are less than 100 programmers on Earth smart enough to use your language
[ ] ____________________________ takes exponential time
[ ] ____________________________ is known to be undecidable
Your implementation has the following flaws:
[ ] CPUs do not work that way
[ ] RAM does not work that way
[ ] VMs do not work that way
[ ] Compilers do not work that way
[ ] Compilers cannot work that way
[ ] Shift-reduce conflicts in parsing seem to be resolved using rand()
[X] You require the compiler to be present at runtime
[ ] You require the language runtime to be present at compile-time
[X] Your compiler errors are completely inscrutable
[X] Dangerous behavior is only a warning
[X] The compiler crashes if you look at it funny
[X] The VM crashes if you look at it funny
[X] You don't seem to understand basic optimization techniques
[ ] You don't seem to understand basic systems programming
[ ] You don't seem to understand pointers
[ ] You don't seem to understand functions
Additionally, your marketing has the following problems:
[ ] Unsupported claims of increased productivity
[ ] Unsupported claims of greater "ease of use"
[ ] Obviously rigged benchmarks
[ ] Graphics, simulation, or crypto benchmarks where your code just calls
handwritten assembly through your FFI
[ ] String-processing benchmarks where you just call PCRE
[ ] Matrix-math benchmarks where you just call BLAS
[X] Noone really believes that your language is faster than:
[X] assembly [X] C [X] FORTRAN [X] Java [X] Ruby [X] Prolog
[X] Rejection of orthodox programming-language theory without justification
[ ] Rejection of orthodox systems programming without justification
[ ] Rejection of orthodox algorithmic theory without justification
[ ] Rejection of basic computer science without justification
Taking the wider ecosystem into account, I would like to note that:
[X] Your complex sample code would be one line in: almost anything, actually
[ ] We already have an unsafe imperative language
[ ] We already have a safe imperative OO language
[ ] We already have a safe statically-typed eager functional language
[ ] You have reinvented Lisp but worse
[ ] You have reinvented Javascript but worse
[ ] You have reinvented Java but worse
[ ] You have reinvented C++ but worse
[ ] You have reinvented PHP but worse
[ ] You have reinvented PHP better, but that's still no justification
[ ] You have reinvented Brainfuck but non-ironically
In conclusion, this is what I think of you:
[ ] You have some interesting ideas, but this won't fly.
[X] This is a bad language, and you should feel bad for inventing it.
[X] Programming in this language is an adequate punishment for inventing it.
In fact, it was so magnificently stupid that when I described it on a forum I
frequent, one of the administrator considered banning me because I obviously
deserved it if I would invent something that deranged.
~~~
trafficlight
Now you have to tell us what it is.
~~~
S4M
Totally agree. GP, please post a link. We won't make fun of you.
~~~
jdpage
On thy own heads be it. Here is the code, as written when I was 16. You'll
need Tcl 8.5 to run it (8.3 is probably fine, but you'll have to change the
line at the beginning), because all the cool kids implement interpreted
languages in other interpreted languages. (Actually, wasn't Arc implemented
that way originally?)
[https://www.dropbox.com/s/zqahavw2yoeca5p/stringsh.zip](https://www.dropbox.com/s/zqahavw2yoeca5p/stringsh.zip)
~~~
trafficlight
That's pretty awesome.
------
munificent
I'm working on a little object-oriented scripting language:
You appear to be advocating a new:
[X] functional [X] imperative [X] object-oriented [ ] procedural [ ] stack-based
[ ] "multi-paradigm" [ ] lazy [X] eager [ ] statically-typed [X] dynamically-typed
[ ] pure [X] impure [ ] non-hygienic [ ] visual [ ] beginner-friendly
[ ] non-programmer-friendly [ ] completely incomprehensible
programming language. Your language will not work. Here is why it will not work.
You appear to believe that:
[ ] Syntax is what makes programming difficult
[X] Garbage collection is free [X] Computers have infinite memory
[ ] Nobody really needs:
[ ] concurrency [ ] a REPL [X] debugger support [X] IDE support [ ] I/O
[ ] to interact with code not written in your language
[ ] The entire world speaks 7-bit ASCII
[X] Scaling up to large software projects will be easy
[ ] Convincing programmers to adopt a new language will be easy
[ ] Convincing programmers to adopt a language-specific IDE will be easy
[ ] Programmers love writing lots of boilerplate
[ ] Specifying behaviors as "undefined" means that programmers won't rely on them
[ ] "Spooky action at a distance" makes programming more fun
Unfortunately, your language (has/lacks):
[+] comprehensible syntax [-] semicolons [-] significant whitespace [-] macros
[-] implicit type conversion [+] explicit casting [-] type inference
[-] goto [-] exceptions [+] closures [ ] tail recursion [+] coroutines
[+] reflection [+] subtyping [-] multiple inheritance [+] operator overloading
[ ] algebraic datatypes [ ] recursive types [ ] polymorphic types
[ ] covariant array typing [ ] monads [ ] dependent types
[+] infix operators [+] nested comments [ ] multi-line strings [ ] regexes
[ ] call-by-value [ ] call-by-name [+] call-by-reference [ ] call-cc
The following philosophical objections apply:
[ ] Programmers should not need to understand category theory to write "Hello, World!"
[ ] Programmers should not develop RSI from writing "Hello, World!"
[ ] The most significant program written in your language is its own compiler
[X] The most significant program written in your language isn't even its own compiler
[X] No language spec
[X] "The implementation is the spec"
[ ] The implementation is closed-source [ ] covered by patents [ ] not owned by you
[ ] Your type system is unsound [ ] Your language cannot be unambiguously parsed
[ ] a proof of same is attached
[ ] invoking this proof crashes the compiler
[ ] The name of your language makes it impossible to find on Google
[X] Interpreted languages will never be as fast as C
[X] Compiled languages will never be "extensible"
[ ] Writing a compiler that understands English is AI-complete
[ ] Your language relies on an optimization which has never been shown possible
[ ] There are less than 100 programmers on Earth smart enough to use your language
[ ] ____________________________ takes exponential time
[ ] ____________________________ is known to be undecidable
Your implementation has the following flaws:
[ ] CPUs do not work that way
[ ] RAM does not work that way
[ ] VMs do not work that way
[ ] Compilers do not work that way
[ ] Compilers cannot work that way
[ ] Shift-reduce conflicts in parsing seem to be resolved using rand()
[X] You require the compiler to be present at runtime
[ ] You require the language runtime to be present at compile-time
[ ] Your compiler errors are completely inscrutable
[ ] Dangerous behavior is only a warning
[ ] The compiler crashes if you look at it funny
[ ] The VM crashes if you look at it funny
[X] You don't seem to understand basic optimization techniques
[ ] You don't seem to understand basic systems programming
[ ] You don't seem to understand pointers
[ ] You don't seem to understand functions
Additionally, your marketing has the following problems:
[ ] Unsupported claims of increased productivity
[ ] Unsupported claims of greater "ease of use"
[ ] Obviously rigged benchmarks
[ ] Graphics, simulation, or crypto benchmarks where your code just calls
handwritten assembly through your FFI
[ ] String-processing benchmarks where you just call PCRE
[ ] Matrix-math benchmarks where you just call BLAS
[ ] Noone really believes that your language is faster than:
[X] assembly [X] C [X] FORTRAN [X] Java [ ] Ruby [ ] Prolog
[ ] Rejection of orthodox programming-language theory without justification
[ ] Rejection of orthodox systems programming without justification
[ ] Rejection of orthodox algorithmic theory without justification
[ ] Rejection of basic computer science without justification
Taking the wider ecosystem into account, I would like to note that:
[ ] Your complex sample code would be one line in: _______________________
[ ] We already have an unsafe imperative language
[X] We already have a safe imperative OO language
[ ] We already have a safe statically-typed eager functional language
[ ] You have reinvented Lisp but worse
[ ] You have reinvented Javascript but worse
[ ] You have reinvented Java but worse
[ ] You have reinvented C++ but worse
[ ] You have reinvented PHP but worse
[ ] You have reinvented PHP better, but that's still no justification
[ ] You have reinvented Brainfuck but non-ironically
In conclusion, this is what I think of you:
[ ] You have some interesting ideas, but this won't fly.
[X] This is a bad language, and you should feel bad for inventing it.
[ ] Programming in this language is an adequate punishment for inventing it.
------
picomancer
Here is the checklist for my programming language, foil -- demo available
(requires Java plugin) at [http://picomancer.com/blog/foil-compiler-tech-
preview/](http://picomancer.com/blog/foil-compiler-tech-preview/)
You appear to be advocating a new:
[ ] functional [x] imperative [x] object-oriented [ ] procedural [ ] stack-based
[ ] "multi-paradigm" [ ] lazy [ ] eager [x] statically-typed [x] dynamically-typed
[ ] pure [ ] impure [ ] non-hygienic [ ] visual [x] beginner-friendly
[ ] non-programmer-friendly [ ] completely incomprehensible
programming language. Your language will not work. Here is why it will not work.
You appear to believe that:
[x] Syntax is what makes programming difficult
[ ] Garbage collection is free [ ] Computers have infinite memory
[ ] Nobody really needs:
[ ] concurrency [ ] a REPL [ ] debugger support [ ] IDE support [ ] I/O
[ ] to interact with code not written in your language
[x] The entire world speaks 7-bit ASCII
[ ] Scaling up to large software projects will be easy
[x] Convincing programmers to adopt a new language will be easy
[ ] Convincing programmers to adopt a language-specific IDE will be easy
[ ] Programmers love writing lots of boilerplate
[x] Specifying behaviors as "undefined" means that programmers won't rely on them
[ ] "Spooky action at a distance" makes programming more fun
Unfortunately, your language (has/lacks):
[Y] comprehensible syntax [N] semicolons [Y] significant whitespace [N] macros
[N] implicit type conversion [N] explicit casting [Y] type inference
[Y] goto [Y] exceptions [Y] closures [N] tail recursion [Y] coroutines
[N] reflection [Y] subtyping [ ] multiple inheritance [Y] operator overloading
[ ] algebraic datatypes [ ] recursive types [ ] polymorphic types
[ ] covariant array typing [ ] monads [ ] dependent types
[ ] infix operators [ ] nested comments [Y] multi-line strings [ ] regexes
[Y] call-by-value [ ] call-by-name [Y] call-by-reference [ ] call-cc
The following philosophical objections apply:
[ ] Programmers should not need to understand category theory to write "Hello, World!"
[ ] Programmers should not develop RSI from writing "Hello, World!"
[ ] The most significant program written in your language is its own compiler
[x] The most significant program written in your language isn't even its own compiler
[x] No language spec
[x] "The implementation is the spec"
[ ] The implementation is closed-source [ ] covered by patents [ ] not owned by you
[ ] Your type system is unsound [ ] Your language cannot be unambiguously parsed
[ ] a proof of same is attached
[ ] invoking this proof crashes the compiler
[ ] The name of your language makes it impossible to find on Google
[ ] Interpreted languages will never be as fast as C
[ ] Compiled languages will never be "extensible"
[ ] Writing a compiler that understands English is AI-complete
[ ] Your language relies on an optimization which has never been shown possible
[ ] There are less than 100 programmers on Earth smart enough to use your language
[ ] ____________________________ takes exponential time
[ ] ____________________________ is known to be undecidable
Your implementation has the following flaws:
[ ] CPUs do not work that way
[ ] RAM does not work that way
[ ] VMs do not work that way
[ ] Compilers do not work that way
[ ] Compilers cannot work that way
[ ] Shift-reduce conflicts in parsing seem to be resolved using rand()
[ ] You require the compiler to be present at runtime
[ ] You require the language runtime to be present at compile-time
[x] Your compiler errors are completely inscrutable
[x] Dangerous behavior is only a warning
[ ] The compiler crashes if you look at it funny
[ ] The VM crashes if you look at it funny
[ ] You don't seem to understand basic optimization techniques
[ ] You don't seem to understand basic systems programming
[ ] You don't seem to understand pointers
[ ] You don't seem to understand functions
Additionally, your marketing has the following problems:
[ ] Unsupported claims of increased productivity
[ ] Unsupported claims of greater "ease of use"
[ ] Obviously rigged benchmarks
[ ] Graphics, simulation, or crypto benchmarks where your code just calls
handwritten assembly through your FFI
[ ] String-processing benchmarks where you just call PCRE
[ ] Matrix-math benchmarks where you just call BLAS
[ ] Noone really believes that your language is faster than:
[ ] assembly [ ] C [ ] FORTRAN [ ] Java [ ] Ruby [ ] Prolog
[ ] Rejection of orthodox programming-language theory without justification
[ ] Rejection of orthodox systems programming without justification
[ ] Rejection of orthodox algorithmic theory without justification
[ ] Rejection of basic computer science without justification
Taking the wider ecosystem into account, I would like to note that:
[ ] Your complex sample code would be one line in: _______________________
[ ] We already have an unsafe imperative language
[ ] We already have a safe imperative OO language
[ ] We already have a safe statically-typed eager functional language
[ ] You have reinvented Lisp but worse
[ ] You have reinvented Javascript but worse
[ ] You have reinvented Java but worse
[ ] You have reinvented C++ but worse
[ ] You have reinvented PHP but worse
[ ] You have reinvented PHP better, but that's still no justification
[ ] You have reinvented Brainfuck but non-ironically
In conclusion, this is what I think of you:
[ ] You have some interesting ideas, but this won't fly.
[ ] This is a bad language, and you should feel bad for inventing it.
[ ] Programming in this language is an adequate punishment for inventing it.
------
dbpokorny
[x] Code can be shared without compromising security
This is made possible with...
* compile-time memory protection
* automatic memory management
* compile-time data access restrictions (mark struct members as read-only)
* divide programs into small, mutually-distrusting components
* add features by adding components, not by changing existing components
The last two points are things the programmer has to do, but keep in mind that
programming languages today don't even give you the opportunity to design this
way. The last paradigm that did was C / Unix, and that was back when it was
reasonable to send program state over a pipe.
Java tried to do this in the 90s, but a quick web search for "Java security"
will turn up the historical record. In my opinion, VMs are inherently
insecure, so I think the flaw in Java's approach was the decision to make Java
run on a VM. VMs are inherently monolithic, and thus violate the "network of
mutually-distrusting components" point above.
For more semi-coherent rambling on this topic, see my latest blog post...
[http://dbpokorny.blogspot.com/2013/11/prisoner-of-
paradigm.h...](http://dbpokorny.blogspot.com/2013/11/prisoner-of-
paradigm.html)
------
lhgaghl
...and brendan eich checked all the boxes
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Inside Pinterest's Plans to Fix Its Diversity Problem - lightcatcher
http://www.fastcompany.com/3051659/inside-pinterests-plans-to-fix-its-diversity-problem
======
746F7475
I can never understand these "diversity problems", like unless they are
discriminating based on gender and/or race there shouldn't be a problem. It's
in company's best interest to hire best talent they can obtain for their
allotted budget, they shouldn't have to think about gender of the candidate,
but rather their qualifications.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
UberCab Ordered to Cease And Desist - tswicegood
http://techcrunch.com/2010/10/24/ubercab-ordered-to-cease-and-desist/
======
sriramk
I think there is a pattern across both UberCan and AirBnb where both are
facing opposition from existing, regulated industries (taxi services and
hotels respectively).
Among all the posturing essentially meant to protect their existing
businesses, I do think they have one valid point - that they both skirt around
laws and regs in place. Though a lot of these laws and regulations are
outdated/driven by special interests, some of them are in place for a reason.
For example, not having hotels in residential areas so that neighbors aren't
disturbed. Or having safety training for drivers of cabs.
I do worry about the risk that UberCab/AirBnb could cause to its users (or
others indirectly impacted).
In both cases, the existing industries aren't doing themselves any favors. The
argument around existing dispatchers maybe not making a living anymore - if
someone else provides a better service than I do, it isn't their fault if I
can't make money anymore. Reading the comments on the cab drivers' blog [1] is
a bit sad. One of the commenters recognizes how good Ubercab is but uses that
as an argument on why they should be shut down, instead of going "Hey, what if
we started doing some of the things they do and improve?"
[http://phantomcabdriverphites.blogspot.com/2010/09/tac-
iii-p...](http://phantomcabdriverphites.blogspot.com/2010/09/tac-iii-
part-2.html)
~~~
cubix
_Or having safety training for drivers of cabs._
If only that were true. Taxi drivers are among the most reckless drivers in my
city, and pretty well every other major city in North America that I've
visited. If there is any training, it is not taken too seriously.
~~~
pierrefar
_every other major city in North America_ Why stop at North America? It's
worldwide.
BUT: The only good thing about taxis in London is that they need to pass a
test called The Knowledge (refs below) which means they are able to figure out
the best route to anywhere in London on the fly. And if you think this is
easy, it's not: the structure of the brains of taxi drivers is actually bigger
in the part responsible for spacial memory, the discovery of which led the
researchers winning the Ig Nobel prize.
Refs:
[http://www.tfl.gov.uk/businessandpartners/taxisandprivatehir...](http://www.tfl.gov.uk/businessandpartners/taxisandprivatehire/1412.aspx)
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taxicabs_of_the_United_Kingdom#...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taxicabs_of_the_United_Kingdom#The_Knowledge)
<http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/677048.stm>
<http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/7613621.stm>
<http://improbable.com/ig/winners/#ig2003>
~~~
Murkin
Can you elaborate on why this is a good thing ?
Instead of using a 200$ GPS, they are required to spend a long time studying a
body of knowledge superseded by technology.
And this translates to higher costs for the casual cab-rider.
~~~
ramchip
I suppose there are cases where people want to go to certain places, eg. "the
shopping center", without having specific enough information to look it up
with a GPS. Also, the driver knows ways that may be faster than what a GPS
will suggest, since he knows about traffic, construction, etc.
Then there's the social aspect: by being more strict and maintaining an image
of quality, you can attract better, nicer drivers.
~~~
Murkin
Obviously a driver shouldn't be someone who is in the city for the first time.
They know all the major points (like shopping centers).
The other points just shows that GPS have a bit to go yet, and they are going
there. There are quite a lot of GPS solutions who get real-time traffic
updates, construction, etc (look at waze.com)
The second point is true, wonder if there is a better way to solve it tho
------
corin_
Maybe I'm just misinformed but... basically they're running a taxi service
without a license to do that, then acting surprised when the city calls them
on it?
There's a taxi company I use whenever I'm in London called Addison Lee, and
they've done the same as UberCab - using nice technology to know where you
are, where the nearest available cars are, how long it will take for a car to
get to you... In actual fact, at least based on
<http://www.ubercab.com/learn>, AdLee is better: it has all the benefits of
UberCab, plus they tell you the price of the journey before you book the car
(it won't become more expensive if you get stuck in traffic, or if the driver
takes a longer route), which always works out cheaper than a black cab, in my
experience. Oh, and in adition to letting you pay with the credit card on your
account, you can chose to pay by cash if you so wish.
Anyway, my point? Seems that Addison Lee have been (albeit in a different
city/country) doing what UberCab is doing, slightly better, and for quite a
bit longer: and they actually bothered to pay to be a licensed taxi provider,
meaning that the London officials don't have a problem with them.
~~~
tkalanick
Ubercab is not a taxi service and does not own or operate limo vehicles. We
simply connect consumers with existing Limo Drivers. We do make sure that all
limo drivers that connect are properly licensed and have the appropriate
insurance.
~~~
corin_
"Its cars don’t have insurance equivalent to taxis’ insurance" is taken
directly from the TC article.
As to the logic of "we are not a taxi service, we just make money putting
customers into taxis", I really can't comment on how the law views this.
If the SF Metro Transit Authority withdraws the cease and desist order then
please accept my apologies for making bad assumptions, but given the law
enforcers say what you are doing is not allowed, I can only assume that it is,
indeed, not allowed, regardless of how you word what exactly you do.
Either way, I hope you get it resolved (whether that means them backing down,
or you agreeing to whatever they're wanting of you), other than this current
situation your service looks pretty great, and I'm sure I'll use you some day
when I'm on your side of the pond.
~~~
mustpax
_If the SF Metro Transit Authority withdraws the cease and desist order then
please accept my apologies for making bad assumptions, but given the law
enforcers say what you are doing is not allowed, I can only assume that it is,
indeed, not allowed, regardless of how you word what exactly you do._
I'm sorry but you're arguing that SF MTA is infallible and you are wrong.
~~~
corin_
My views have been based on the facts I've been given. I'm not from SF, until
I'm given a reason to believe that the MTA isn't actually following the law,
I'll keep assuming they are.
Maybe I should have been more specific before: I'll also apologise if the MTA
don't withdraw, but are instead shown to be in the wrong.
------
zachware
The conflict was inevitable but as we often see in business, old players use
regulation, unions and back room deals to protect their markets. Look at the
RIAA, TV and movie industries. The technology is available to bring content to
any device, anytime but they use regulation to stop it.
It's bullshit. SF taxis are inefficient and difficult to use. Ubercab solves a
problem and calls out just how ridiculous the SF Taxi system is. Instead of
fighting to make their business more relevant, the taxi unions fight with
regulation.
I use Ubercab a lot. Why? * Because a car comes to me in a few minutes. * I
don't have to stand in the rain and wonder if the illuminated taxi light means
the taxi will stop or not. * I don't have to wonder if the cab takes cards or
if the driver will simply refuse to take them even if his company does. * Most
importantly, I don't have to hold on for dear life wondering if I'm going to
die before i get where I'm going.
Let's all stand up and say screw you unions. Ubercab is an innovator. SF
taxis, be more efficient and you'll win. Otherwise, get out of the way.
------
tlrobinson
This sounds familiar:
"Ubercab threatens dispatchers’ way of earning a living"
Oh, yeah:
"[TECHNOLOGY] threatens [PROFESSION]s' way of earning a living"
Not a valid argument.
~~~
eli
Yeah, but neither is ignoring the law because you disagree with it.
~~~
AngryParsley
I think "ignoring the law because you disagree with it" is called civil
disobedience. Although the term usually means individuals breaking laws for
moral reasons, not companies doing it for efficiency and profit.
Edit: I just wanted to point out that it is sometimes valid to ignore a law
because you disagree with it. I'm not saying Ubercab is in the right.
~~~
gloob
Perhaps I'm just old-fashioned, but the argument "Companies have the right to
ignore the law if doing so increases profits" seems rather...unconventional.
~~~
AngryParsley
That is twisting my words beyond even the most uncharitable reading.
~~~
gloob
The charitable reading of your words, if I didn't misunderstand, is "many
people think that people are sometimes justified in ignoring the law,
depending on the situation." That's more or less a truism.
Edit: Upvoted you back to 1.
------
jrockway
This seems like the perfect business to run from outside of the US. To run a
traditional taxi company, you need to have a presence in the area where the
taxicabs are. To run a website that connects two people together, you can be
anywhere. And you are outside of the legal reach of the City of San Francisco.
Sure, the _users_ will be violating some city regulation, but that, like file
sharing, is unprofitable to follow up on. (AirBnB is in a similar situation.
No need to give the irritated local governments a legal target.)
~~~
corin_
Unless they relocate all drivers to live outside the US they're going to have
a slight problem, I think...
~~~
jrockway
The drivers are already licensed. They can drive wherever they want to, and
pick up whomever they want to.
The specific legal problem that the article mentions is that operating the
dispatching company is illegal.
~~~
corin_
Presumably these two issues would still exist:
- Its cars don’t have insurance equivalent to taxis’ insurance.
- Limos in U.S. cities usually have to prebook an hour in advance, by law
~~~
uvdiv
The overriding issue is that there is a taxi cartel and the city enforces its
quotas:
<http://www.medallionholders.com/medallions.html>
You can't just pay for insurance and be legal. You're not allowed to compete,
period.
------
enki
i've given up on trying to get a cab in sf.
there's only 1381 highly regulated taxi medallions and a constant shortage.
most potential customers have, just like me, given up on ever getting a cab
when they need one, so there's not only artificially decreased supply, but
also artificially decreased demand.
there's been extensive comparative research into taxi regulation for decades.
the reason SF is so much worse even than other cities that restrict the amount
of cabs, is that SF doesn't only regulate street pick-up but also dispatch.
google scholar is full of papers on taxi regulation research, and there's
<http://www.schallerconsult.com/taxi/> and other pages.
unsurprisingly deregulation is in the interest of the drivers because a
competitive market increases customer demand. would you sometimes pay double
the fare if you could get a cab _right now_, instead of waiting 25 minutes and
praying? hell yeah, if only they let you!
let's hope uber can make on-demand transportation in SF usable again.
~~~
seldo
This is funny, because having lived in London it's SO much easier to catch
cabs here, I assumed SF was pretty good about taxi regulation.
You have not experienced unavailable taxis until you have lived in London,
where outside of the city center they literally do not operate.
~~~
enki
in vienna, which usually is the worst regulation hell, i could get a cab
anywhere in the city within 4 minutes, any hour of any day. and that's a city
with 1.75 times the population of SF (not including all the people who commute
to SF to work there.
this has been extensively studied. taxi service quality is essentially
dependent only on regulation quality (with some delay as customers get used to
the fact that they can actually get a cab)
------
risotto
Who actually uses UberCab?
Taxi Magic is a fantastic app that's totally legit. Open the app, use your
location to book a cab and within 5 minutes it's there. It's Luxor Cabs who
are fully licensed and use computerized dispatch.
I tried UberCab once and it was a nicer car but the experience was no better
than Taxi Magic, and significantly more expensive to get around town.
I hate non-metered cabs. Taxis are one place where regulation is good. We all
know what it's like to deal with a shady taxi driver. The tendency is to gouge
vulnerable travelers, not to set lower prices. The consistency that regulation
offers is the most important.
I also can't believe the complaints about the taxis in SF. The cab companies
are downright excellent when you actually call, and plentiful on the streets.
~~~
daveman692
I used to be a huge fan of Taxi Magic but the past few months have found it
less and less reliable. Basically if the cab is over .2 miles away it will
pick up a fare on the street instead. When UberCab tells me that a car is
coming, I can trust that it will actually come.
------
rubinelli
Am I the only one who finds it naive to name a startup UberCAB and then act as
if it had nothing to do with taxi dispatching services? It's as if the PayPal
founders decided to call it "UberBank."
~~~
jambo
It might not be seen this way in general, which goes to the PR problem another
poster mentioned, but my perception is that when someone markets something as
über-, they mean it transcends or supersedes what they're prefixing. So not
"cabs" but "better than cabs".
------
whakojacko
"Taxi dispatchers make money on tips. Ubercab threatens dispatchers’ way of
earning a living. Limos have to prebook an hour in advance, only licensed
taxis can pick someone up right away by San Francisco law, yet Ubercab picks
people up right away, yet doesn’t have a taxi license." Not like you can get a
taxi in under an hour in SF anyways ;)
Seriously, this just validates their model and I hope they can figure this
out.
------
johnglasgow
Three points:
1\. Sounds like UberCab should look into licensing out their platform to
existing cab companies. It would mean lower margins, but they can quickly
scale throughout the US and beyond much faster.
2\. UberCab's blog post is arrogant. Did they really think they can avoid
paying expensive licensing fees because they are using black cars instead of
yellow cabs? Taxi licenses are very expensive and a lucrative revenue source
for every major city. A taxi seat can cost as much as 1 million to purchase in
NYC, and I know other cities such as SF and LV are not much cheaper due to the
fixed number of licenses. I can only imagine the outrage of other cab drivers
losing work to cheaper services (i.e. UberCab) because they are not paying
licensing fees.
3\. UberCab can easily recover albeit at lower margins. They need aggressive
biz dev to quickly secure licenses. I hope they can continue to disrupt city
transportation.
------
tswicegood
I'm putting money on UberCab becoming a members-only service/co-op type system
where you have to be a member in order to request a car. I'm not intimately
familiar with the taxi laws, but I bet they don't specify what private
organizations can do.
~~~
llimllib
> I'm not intimately familiar with the taxi laws, but I bet they don't specify
> what private organizations can do.
Huh? They have to. They don't let private limo organizations pick you up
without a 1-hour reservation, for example, as stated in the article.
Furthermore, Ubercab already is a private organization.
I'm sure I'm missing something, can you explain why it would somehow become
legal if it was a members-only organization?
~~~
gravesryan
The regulations read that a livery services ride must be "pre-arranged".
We've not seen the hour prior requirement in any law. If it does exist please
send it our way, ([email protected]) but we believe that this is opinion not
fact.
~~~
anigbrowl
I think you should post the C&D order, actually, so as to put the focus on the
MTA rather than wasting your time fending off uninformed speculation.
It looks to me as if the $5,000/day fine they're speaking of refers to a
modification of the Transportation code creating (among other things) a new
offense of 'running a dispatch service without a permit,' which was passed by
the SFMTA baord just last Tuesday - although it's still questionable whether
or not it would apply to your firm.
Regardless, it has not yet been made law by the Board of Supervisors, nor is
it on their legislative agenda for next week's meeting. From what I can see,
it can takes months for something to work its way up the Supervisors'
calendar. Of course, a lot depends on what sort of lobbying power the Taxi
establishment has at City Hall, but it's fair to assume they have years of
experience in working the system.
[http://www.sfmta.com/cms/cmta/documents/10-19-10calendaritem...](http://www.sfmta.com/cms/cmta/documents/10-19-10calendaritemsredline.pdf)
IANAL, mind; just my personal views. I've developed an unhealthy interest in
the (dys)function of my local government.
------
makmanalp
>> Ubercab operates much like a cab company but does not have a taxi license.
^ Why is the taxi license process so difficult to go through? Why does it take
10 years or so?
>> Limos in U.S. cities usually have to prebook an hour in advance, by law,
while only licensed taxis can pick someone up right away but Ubercab picks
people up right away (again without a taxi license).
^What is this but protecting special interests? Viva creative destruction.
------
rdl
I think UberCab will end up needing to change their name (UberCar?) to
distance themselves from the "cab" or "taxi" connotation, and position
themselves as an alternative to cabs, vs. a kind of cab, more forcefully.
Other than that, I think they now have the moral justification to trash the
taxi industry and cartel in their marketing. This can probably end up being a
net win for them.
------
callmeed
So is ubercab connecting people with "car services" that aren't licensed taxi
companies?
Are these the drivers you see often in NYC when arriving at the airport? My
understanding is that there are risks to using such services (like if you
leave something in the vehicle you're unlikely to recover it whereas a taxi
co. can usually track it down). True?
~~~
jon_dahl
I think it's four or five steps up from the rogue drivers at NYC airports. The
drivers are licensed limo drivers, and everything is official/on-the-books.
------
forensic
ubercab could relocate their business to russia.
SF customers and drivers could still pay for the app.
let's see them regulate that
I want to make a taxi dispatcher that is outsourced to an Indian call centre.
These dispatchers don't realize how deeply obsolete they are.
~~~
ceejayoz
> let's see them regulate that
Regulating the dispatchers would be difficult, but they could easily go after
the owner/operators of the cars involved in actually transporting folks.
~~~
forensic
What if they decentralize it even more?
I'm imagining regular drivers (like me) being txt'd when there is a nearby
person who wants a ride.
Like hitchhiking but using GPS and money.
The hitchhiker would specify his destination and how much he is willing to
pay. The software would know my location as well as destination (optional) and
notify me when I'm near him.
Make everyone into a taxi driver.
For added value you could also give individuals special badges and such that
certify their driving credentials, and let the buyers decide how much their
driving credentials are worth.
Credentials could be on a graded scale: \- Confirmed driver's license \-
Confirmed professional driving certification
Naturally you'd have a reputation system where passengers can rate the quality
of the drivers, and drivers could respond to the criticisms.
Decentralized taxi service. The biggest hurdle is reaching critical mass of
users, which UberCab has achieved. I want to see them destroy the conventional
taxi industry (disruptive technology makes me tingle)
~~~
evgen
Imagine you get a text from a person who wants a ride. You pick them up,
arrange a fee, deliver them to the destination, accept the money, and then get
arrested for being an unlicensed cab operator. How many arrests would it take
before your services is a dim memory? How long would it take if the law was
modified slightly so that the car used in the "criminal enterprise" was
impounded as evidence until the case was dealt with by the court?
The risk is entirely upon the driver, who, by the way the service is
structured, must risk a large chunk of capital (their car) just to
participate.
~~~
forensic
The point is that there are so many legal grey areas.
Is car pooling now a taxi service, because I pay the driver?
At which point is it illegal for me to give someone a ride?
What if they give me services instead of cash, like an hour of web design?
What if they give me virtual tokens/karma instead?
What if the transportation didn't take place strictly in the city but was half
in the city and half outside?
Are you really running a taxi service by giving ONE PERSON a lift, or does it
have to be several? Does it have to be publicly advertised?
------
joshstrike
I actually had this idea when I had dropped out of web design and became a
taxi driver for a few years in 2001. It's a natural. However: "Taxi
dispatchers make money on tips..." is an incorrect statement. Taxi dispatchers
make money on BRIBES. Drivers do not tip out dispatchers. Nor do drivers' tips
go to the company. What dispatchers euphemistically refer to as "tips" are
actually bribes paid to them by some cab drivers to refer the best fares to
those drivers - usually at the expense of the passenger, who has to wait
outside longer for their cab because a closer driver was not dispatched. The
exact reason why UberCab or similar services ARE such a good idea is that they
can improve the customer experience by cutting out dispatcher corruption.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Collaborative live coding in VR with three.js - gfodor
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RAJgLQyvpc0&t=30s
======
acous
Interesting interview with the same guy (audio).
[http://voicesofvr.com/214-using-three-js-to-create-social-
vr...](http://voicesofvr.com/214-using-three-js-to-create-social-vr-
applications-with-altspacevrs-javascript-sdk/)
------
billconan
interesting concept, but I can't really read any text with oculus rift. not
enough pixels, the resolution is simply not enough.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Google to enforce SSL encryption on developer APIs - taylorbuley
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2011/03/18/google_apis_require_ssl/
======
forwardslash
This is good, now if they could enforce SSL for adsense.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Show HN: Fun little weekend project, my ode to Star Trek - vnglst
http://startrek.koenvangilst.nl/
======
vnglst
Features:
* stars follow your cursor
* click in starfield adds 100 more stars (3D Touch, i.e. 'press really hard' on iPhone)
* click on STAR TREK toggles true color stars
* turn up your speaker volume and listen to those beautiful Enterprise engines
On Github here:
[https://github.com/vnglst/startrek](https://github.com/vnglst/startrek)
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Brazil's controversial plan to extricate the Internet from US control - lemming
http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/sep/20/brazil-dilma-rousseff-internet-us-control
======
PeterisP
It's not that controversial - as we have detected that there's hostile
wiretapping happening, a rational mitigation strategy requires (in the long-
term) infrastructure that would route data between, say, Brazil and EU in a
way that doesn't involve USA.
In a sense, not trying to isolate Brazil, but making it technically possible
to avoid USA if the rest of the world needs to. A few years earlier it could
be argued that it can work something like 'benevolent dicatorship', but now
it's clear that letting USA hold full control of the Internet is nearly as
dangerous as letting, say, Russia or China do so. Currently Internet is not
really independent, too much of core infrastructure goes through USA - and it
obviously needs to change.
~~~
rockyleal
It is presented as a "distributed network" but it is highly centralised, and
therefore (as has been shown) controlled by one player, and yet when someone
(Brazil in this case) moves to making it more distributed a it should be, it
is painted as "controversial".
------
a3n
Eric Schmidt: "[Balkanization] would be a very bad thing, it would really
break the way the internet works, and I think that's what I worry about."
Er, balkanization would really break the way Google et al. make money from the
internet, and that's what he worries about.
Yeah, I prefer a free and open internet, but the US and NSA's fiddling with
the internet shows why we can't have nice things.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Spend Bitcoin where ever MasterCard is accepted - iamchmod
http://beta.prepaidcustservice.com/
======
noenzyme
Sweet, I need something like this.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
How to write efficient matrix multiplication - Mtz1974
https://gist.github.com/nadavrot/5b35d44e8ba3dd718e595e40184d03f0
======
vmarsy
Writing the fastest matrix multiplication you can is pretty fun. It probably
won't be as fast a BLAS or MKL, but if you get close to it, it's a rewarding
experience.
> see what else can be done I recommend reading this paper by Kazushige Goto
After doing the easiest change of loop reordering for already significant perf
improvements, the paper linked ("Anatomy on a high performance matrix
multiplication") is really excellent.
It will walk you through all the optimizations like tiling for reducing L1,
L2, L3, and TLB cache misses, and leverage vectorization.
Then for squeezing out even more perf I remember there's the things like loop
prefetching, loop unrolling, which you would expect the compiler with the best
optimizations flags even targeted for the native architecture to take care of
automatically. But you realize that it's not necessarily true.
~~~
comicjk
If your particular matrix problem has special properties that aren't covered
by blas, you can wring out an apparently impossible improvement. I once found
a matrix problem (periodic cubic splines) which turned out to have a solution
in O(N) - the matrix columns were related such that it could be replaced by a
vector.
~~~
yonkshi
I can attest this too, I was recently working with some massive and sparse
binary matrix, with only 0.1% elements have values, it was magnitudes faster
to index and sum the elements than to do a dot product. Not even a Tesla GPU
was close to the performance of a custom matrix operation we wrote.
~~~
greglindahl
Did you beat one of the sparse matrix packages? Or were you comparing with a
library for dense matrices?
~~~
yonkshi
We tested it against Tensorflow and scipy sparse matrices, we beat those as
well, mostly because those general purpose sparse matrices do not optimize for
binary matrix (eliminates the need for multiplication)
------
gtycomb
Somewhere in the conversation Les Valiant's paper "General Context-free
recognition in less than Cubic time" is worth mentioning. This has informative
and clear discussion on the complexity of matrix-multiplication in programming
areas such as grammar and parsing.
------
vecplane
Somewhat related: check out gl-matrix for some fast matrix math in JavaScript
- [https://github.com/toji/gl-matrix](https://github.com/toji/gl-matrix)
~~~
svantana
This looks like it's only for 3x3 and 4x4 matrices, e.g. what you usually use
in 3d graphics. Or is it possible to do arbitrary matrix multiplication with
this lib?
~~~
Lerc
It does not appear to be the case.
On the other hand, optimal speed and JavaScript are often different ball
parks.
I threw together this thing for when I need some matrix stuff in a little
script. Not fast, but flexible.
var vop = op=>( (a,b)=>( a.map((v,i)=>op(v,b[i])) ) );
var vdiff = vop((a,b)=>a-b);
var vadd = vop((a,b)=>a+b);
var vdot= (a,b)=>a.reduce( (ac,av,i)=>ac+=av*b[i],0);
var vlength = a=>Math.sqrt(vdot(a,a));
var vscale = (a,b)=>a.map(v=>v*b);
var vdistance = (a,b)=>vlength(vdiff(a,b));
var vnormalised = (a,b=1)=>vscale(a,b/vlength(a));
var project = (point, matrix) => matrix.map( p=>vdot(p,[...point,1]));
var transpose = matrix=> ( matrix.reduce(($, row) => row.map((_, i) => [...($[i] || []), row[i]]), []) );
var multiply = (a,b,...rest)=>(!b)?a:multiply(a.map( (p=>transpose(b).map(q=>vdot(p,q)))),...rest);
I look forward to the day when the sufficiently-smart JIT implements the
optimal Matrix Multiplication from that. :-)
~~~
svantana
Thanks! I find it weird that performance-focused javascript projects don't
have live benchmarks up so you can judge for yourself. Personally I've found
that a semi-clever matrix multiplier in c++ compiled with emscripten can give
about 1.5 gflops (singlethreaded on a 2.5GHz i7 macbook pro), and existing js
libs like sushi are a lot slower.
------
nautilus12
How would this change if you were dealing with more sparse matrices? Im used
to using spark mllib distributed to do matrix multiplication on large sparse
coordinate matrices and it works fine for me but i dont think i need the level
of optimality this approach would demand.
~~~
yvdriess
Dense matrix algebra has the benefit that besides the matrix dimensions, the
data itself has no impact on performance: the access pattern is entirely
predictable and known as soon as you know the matrix sizes (side note: which
is why just-in-time libraries such as libxsmm exist). For most cases, you can
rely on MKL or Eigen to produce near-optimal performance for your dense linear
algebra operations.
Sparse matrices do not have that luxury. Sparse matrix ops have access
patterns that entirely depend on your data. You simply cannot make a library
that covers every possible distribution of non-zeroes in an optimal way. At
best you have a toolbox of a large number of representations and algorithms
that you choose for each different use-case. Engineering simulations and
solvers can have block or cluster patterns of non-zeroes, which can be
exploited by doing dense operations for the dense blocks. Large real-world
graphs often have an exponential non-zero distribution and are often extremely
sparse, which might need an hash-based join algorithm for an axpy-kernel. Are
you running a tight CG-solver loop? Then you might want to bundle multiple
spmv-kernels to operate multiple vectors on the same matrix (for similar
reasons as states in the original article). You are distributing with Spark?
Unless your non-zero distribution is uniform, your matrix is really hard to
partition evenly. If your matrix never changes, you may consider preprocessing
using a partitioner (METIS, Mondriaan).
In short, it is highly unlikely that the library you are using is anywhere
near optimal for your use case. Do explore alternatives based on your domain-
insights, it is not uncommon to net double digit performance improvements.
~~~
imurray
_Dense matrix algebra has the benefit that besides the matrix dimensions, the
data itself has no impact on performance_
I was very surprised when I first learned that's not strictly true, because of
denormal numbers[1]. Here's a session in ipython --pylab (with MKL),
demonstrating a 200x slow-down for matrix multiplication with tiny numbers.
Crazy!
In [1]: A = randn(1000, 1000)
In [2]: %timeit A @ A
25.9 ms ± 199 µs per loop (mean ± std. dev. of 7 runs, 10 loops each)
In [3]: A *= 1e-160
In [4]: %timeit A @ A
5.52 s ± 21.2 ms per loop (mean ± std. dev. of 7 runs, 1 loop each)
You hit denormal numbers more quickly with single-precision floats. I have
been bitten by this issue in the wild a couple of times now, and seen a couple
of other people with it too. Sometimes denormals are created internally in
algorithms, when you didn't think your input matrices were that small.
[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Denormal_number#Performance_is...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Denormal_number#Performance_issues)
~~~
CamperBob2
It's just incredible that there's still no way to force denormals to be
rounded silently to zero on x86. You have to go out of your way to check for
them, or face horrific performance penalties for a feature you didn't even
want or need.
~~~
stephencanon
Huh? Set bits 6 (DAZ) and 15 (FZ) in MXCSR. Done.
The only instructions you can’t set to flush are the legacy x87 opcodes, which
you shouldn’t be using in a performance-sensitive context anyway.
~~~
CamperBob2
Sadly, some of us are stuck maintaining code that still needs to run on pre-
SSE2 hardware.
------
nickodell
>The first thing that we need to do to accelerate our program is to improve
the memory utilization of matrix B.
Why not put matrix B in column-major order?
~~~
costrouc
Matrix multiplication involves moving across one matrix in column order and
the other matrix in row order. So it turns out that both row or column
ordering make no difference. I think that matrix multiplication is one of the
best examples of a deceptivly simple problem. It shows how far ALL code is
from peak performance. We can only strive to be within an order or two from
peak performance.
~~~
fdej
This trick does work. If the matrices are in row-major order, you transpose B
in memory and then compute A * (B^T)^T. This multiplication reads both
matrices in row order.
However, while this does improve performance over the naive algorithm, it's
still not as good as a tiling algorithm.
~~~
shaklee3
I've found where that causes problems is when on of the matrix dimensions is
not a multiple of the cache line size. It's common on gpus to use more
elements then there are in the dimension. Nvidia calls this the leading
dimension, and it must be greater than or equal to the Matrix dimension. If
this is the case, the transpose trick doesn't quite work anymore.
------
taeric
I was really expecting this to just be "import library".
That said, very well done article. Would be interesting to see this style
expand to the more ambitious methods in
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Matrix_multiplication_algorith...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Matrix_multiplication_algorithm#Sub-
cubic_algorithms)
------
gnufx
This thread is old, but for the sake of archives:
BLIS actually tells you how to write a fast production large-matrix GEMM, and
the papers linked from
[https://github.com/flame/blis](https://github.com/flame/blis) would be a
better reference than the Goto and van de Geijn.
For small matrices see the references from
[https://github.com/hfp/libxsmm](https://github.com/hfp/libxsmm) but you're
not likely to be re-implementing that unless you're serious about a version on
non-x86_64.
See also
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17061947](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17061947)
~~~
gnufx
I could also have referenced the original(?) take on this:
[https://github.com/flame/how-to-optimize-gemm](https://github.com/flame/how-
to-optimize-gemm)
------
phlip9
A similar article on how to optimize SGEMM on GPUs using OpenCL -
[https://cnugteren.github.io/tutorial/pages/page1.html](https://cnugteren.github.io/tutorial/pages/page1.html)
------
aqme28
I'm surprised to see no discussion of faster-than-naive algorithms like
Strassen[1] or Coppersmith-Winograd[2], which very counterintuitively run
faster than N^3.
Note: Only helpful for specific or very large matrices.
[1]:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strassen_algorithm](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strassen_algorithm)
[2]:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coppersmith%E2%80%93Winograd_a...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coppersmith%E2%80%93Winograd_algorithm)
~~~
nwallin
The problem with those algorithms is that they define "work" as "how many
multiplications do I have to do?" Addition and memory accesses are defined by
the analysis to be free. And you end up doing 4-5 times as many floating point
additions as the naive algorithm, and the memory accesses are decidedly non-
cache friendly. And modern CPUs have two multipcation units but only one
addition unit, so multiplications are actually faster than addition. Plus,
there are ergonomic issues with requiring square powers-of-two matrices.
Matrices have to be truly spectacularly large to benefit from Strassens, and
applications of the asymptotically faster algorithms don't really exist. The
matrices have to be so large that they're computationally too expensive
regardless of the asymptotic speedup. You're talking about dispatching work
units to a cluster at that point.
Most importantly though, the discussion is... boring. It's just "yup, we do
Strassens, then we quickly reach the point where we go back to the naive
algorithm, and things are interesting again."
~~~
repsilat
> Matrices have to be truly spectacularly large to benefit from Strassens
I don't have personal experience with other mmult methods, but Wikipedia says
Strassen's algorithm is at least beneficial at matrix sizes that fit in cache.
I _have_ had occasion to deal with matrices of large dimension (though usually
sparse, and usually not square) and those numbers don't seem crazy at all. Are
they that far off-base? (Wikipedia _does_ say that Coppersmith-Winograd tends
to never be a useful improvement.)
In any case, perhaps a more friendly response might be to point out that
Strassen's algorithm tends to "bail out" into regular old matrix
multiplication for small `n` anyway, so this still helps provide a speedup.
------
fibo
I wrote a JavaScript implementation with the naive method, but it also checks
that matrix are compatibile and generalize the underlying ring operation (mul
and add) so you could use it to multiply complex matrices, or bigint matrices,
or every other ring you define.
[http://g14n.info/matrix-multiplication/](http://g14n.info/matrix-
multiplication/)
------
tehsauce
A really nice video with animations of various scheduling approaches for these
types of linear algebra algorithms:
[https://youtu.be/3uiEyEKji0M](https://youtu.be/3uiEyEKji0M)
------
fabrice_d
Related:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17058189](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17058189)
------
svantana
I'm a big fan of writing simple, portable code that is structured enough to
let the compiler optimize it to perfection. If you do it right, a naive A' * B
multiplier can be within 20% of BLAS performance, at least for non-huge
matrices. Now, when you need that code on some embedded platform or for
emscripten or whatever, it'll just work and be really tiny too.
~~~
EpicEng
In my experience, the people who leave comments like yours are the ones who
don't often have to solve real performance problems. The compiler can't do it
all (and, specifically, won't help you in the case the article discusses), and
those who write code used in performance sensitive applications and/or libs
used by literally millions of people have to know this stuff. Where do those
people learn when they're starting out if everyone tells them to "stop
thinking stupid, your compiler is smarter than you"?
I for one am glad they spend a lot of time thinking about it so that you don't
have to and can instead spend your time opining on forums about premature
optimization.
~~~
svantana
Speculative ad hominem aside, the point in this case was to learn to write
code so that good compilers can output performant SIMD-heavy code. It's not
trivial and can include a lot of trial and error and looking at assembly. But
once you learn these tricks, code can be clean, portable _and_ performant, I
would say that's a win.
~~~
EpicEng
> Speculative ad hominem aside
I can only judge you by what you say here. Obviously I don't know you, but
what other choice do I have? In my experience, those who rely on their tools
to do everything for them are useless when things go sideways.
> the point in this case was to learn to write code so that good compilers can
> output performant SIMD-heavy code
No, the point is that comments like yours serve little purpose. No one is
suggesting that you should roll your own lib for matrix math in every
situation. However, if you _understand_ what happens behind the scenes you
write better code and can more easily diagnose performance issues.
The problem with "don't worry about it" type responses is that sometimes you
_do_ end up having to worry about it, and now you're not equipped to solve the
problem. Hell, you may not even know that there is a problem to begin with
because you have no idea what the runtime characteristics of your algorithm
_should_ be.
Maybe you'll have to write some code like this someday. How would you know if
your algorithm is performing well? Perhaps you think your 10 hour run is
totally acceptible... until someone who read this article and has some
experience comes by. They laugh at the absurd performance and spend a bit of
time making it 60% faster _because they know how this stuff works_.
There's a lot of value in learning how things work, and "premature
optimization" responses like you see all over SO are worthless.
------
matachuan
tiling and vectorizing are well known.
------
whos3424
please look at [http://halide-lang.org/](http://halide-lang.org/) and
especially
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3uiEyEKji0M](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3uiEyEKji0M)
they seem to open new ground in the area you are prusuing edit: if you know
any other groups/ppl who practice a similar approach send them my way
anyhow, it seems like the hand written assembly vs compiled code goes in to a
new skirmish
the age where the whole spectrum from generalcpu > asic becomes available to
programmers all around
bottle necks of parallelism, locality and redundancy seems to be the guiding
lights
hand written we'll be probably lead by the magnificent
[http://www.greenarraychips.com/home/documents/pub/AP001-MD5....](http://www.greenarraychips.com/home/documents/pub/AP001-MD5.html)
compiler generated by halide and the like
and once we got the ball rolling and more public knowledge is available
probably the locked down techniques of the major supercomputers will start to
emerge ( i just assume pps from the supercomputers area have been dealing with
this stuff for the last couple of decades )
can i spit some more, dear hacker news? focus, you gotta focus, forget about
the compiler generating good code, it's all about the ability for us humans to
explore the domain
even in halide, they mention the point that you still need to sit down and
code different approaches, but their tool makes it a breeze compared to
exploring those different approaches using hand written assembly
------
romwell
Sorry, but this is not at all how to write efficient matrix multiplication.
The correct answer is: don't. Use BLAS (yes, written in Fortran) + OpenMP (if
needed), and let the smart people handle this. (Unless you are one of those
smart people - in which case, you should improve BLAS, which the rest of us
mortals will use).
The longer answer is: matrix multiplication is a highly non-trivial
algorithmic problem[1], which is, in fact, still open.
The asymptotically fast algorithms (such as Strassen's[2]) outperform the
naive algorithm (i.e. by definition, such is in the article) when matrices get
large.
After skimming the article it is still unclear to me how the optimized naive
algorithm fares against Strassen's, for example.
The final bit of advice this article is offers is reading the paper on...
implementation of BLAS (that's what Goto describes there).
And so that's basically _the_ case where _avoiding_ Goto is considered
harmful.
[1][https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Matrix_multiplication_algorith...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Matrix_multiplication_algorithm#Sub-
cubic_algorithms)
[2][https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strassen_algorithm](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strassen_algorithm)
[3][https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Donald_Knuth](https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Donald_Knuth)
~~~
syllogism
Oh, interesting point! Yes let's just use OpenBLAS, no need for anyone but one
or two people to understand these things. Sure.
Okay so let's have a look at OpenBLAS's Skylake kernel. Maybe we can learn
some deep wisdom this author hasn't considered! Go and have a look for it,
I'll wait here.
Ah, what's that? THERE IS STILL NO SKYLAKE KERNEL IN OPENBLAS? Interesting.
In fact if you do "sudo apt-get install libopenblas" on Ubuntu 16.04 (the one
_every_ deep learning tutorial will be recommending), you'll find you get
version 2.18 of OpenBLAS. You'll find that this version of the software is
quite old now, and it has a bug that causes it to fail to detect your CPU
correctly. You'll find that instead of using _any_ AVX instructions, it'll
fall-back to the Prescott kernel. You'll also find this is really fucking
slow.
In summary:
a) You have no idea what you're talking about;
b) Even if you were right on these points of detail, your point of view is
still terrible
c) Please avoid being so beligerantly wrong in future
~~~
madez
Let me add that there exists a similar echo chamber when it comes to questions
regarding cryptography. Way too often questions about how to do this or that
in cryptography are put down by a "you don't" or the generic "don't roll your
own crypto", which is hostile against curiosity, learning, and knowledge and
on top of that unfriendly towards the one asking. Often when I read it, I feel
the hacker ethos is being insulted.
While I think there are reasonable arguments _for_ the security of (certain)
self-made crypto, taking that security aspect completely aside, we need new
people in every field, and cryptography is no exception from that. We should
embrace newcomers, not tell me to not do what would teach them so much.
Admittingly, one can easily mess up, but then tell how and what to take care
of instead of just telling them not to try anything at all.
~~~
throwawaymath
I feel like the admonition, "don't roll your own crypto" refers to production
code. If you want to develop your own crypto for "curiosity, learning and
knowledge" I don't think many people in the security community will really
bother you about it. Just don't use it for securing anything in production
unless it's been thoroughly audited and you have a reason not to use something
that already exists.
It seems pretty obvious why you shouldn't design or implement novel
cryptography in production without good reason and significant expertise. It
also doesn't seem like the people saying this need to spell out that this
doesn't preclude learning exercises or legitimate research which won't
endanger any real world information. So what's the controversy?
~~~
tptacek
If you want to indulge curiosity, learn, and obtain knowledge, concentrate on
_breaking_ cryptography. Even relatively basic crypto attacks will teach you
far more about how cryptography works than implementing well-known
constructions for the nth time will.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Blasphemy Multiple microservices, shared database - danielovichdk
https://medium.com/@oprearocks/blasphemy-multiple-microservices-shared-database-f525025a8a81
======
GrumpyNl
I would like to hear some more opinions from the HN audience on this subject.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
What Mark Cuban Really Thinks About Facebook - inshane
http://blogmaverick.com/2012/11/19/what-i-really-think-about-facebook/
======
hayksaakian
Facebook is fully entitled to enforce edgerank. People consume content
differently on FB than say twitter. Since twitter is more of a firehouse, its
OK to simply sort by date since newness has much more value in that ecosystem.
This is socially acknowledged given that tweets are firstly public. In
contrast Facebook presents itself as a local social network. As such, your
relationships on FB carry more weight. Social pressure nudges us to 'friend'
mere acquaintances and 'like' things that are mildly amusing. You're expected
to acknowledge important news in your social circles. Edgerank reinforces this
behavior. If something is deemed 'like'able by your 'friends' you're
encouraged to also like it, both by the algorithm and social influences, thus
perpetuating the cycle to your own network.
Brands don't fit into this picture. You don't 'like' a picture of coca cola
from a crazy party at mcdonalds' house. Your interactions on the comments of
posts by a brand are probably one way, and with predominantly strangers. The
rest of your personal network is unrelated.
Thus, sponsored posts work against edge rank. There are two big examples of
sponsored posts. First is say, promoting a personal story or life event (it's
a boy!). Second is corporate to consumer say, Best Buy is having a huge sale
on something. In the first case if a story is truly important it would have
been picked up by the algorithm and social forces alike. In the second, most
people don't believe corporations are people, and their social interactions
with them are typically unwelcome to their personal network. There's no social
pressure to like a picture of Jones soda's new flavor as opposed to Jenny's
new baby.
All in all, I think mark is right for the wrong reasons. FB's business model
runs counter to its primary product offering. They're still experimenting and
I hope they end up with something that makes sense to a social network.
~~~
Swizec
The situation changes when a lot of your friends are from the startup
ecosystem.
Suddenly that new product launch is as important as a new baby. And that new
feature is something you're expected to like etc. etc.
How does that fit? They usually still advertise these things through a
"corporate" page ...
~~~
hayksaakian
I'd say at that point you're an outlier. Of the FB population who is really
involved in the 'scene'.
------
jjb123
>Doesn’t FB realize that is far easier for a user to opt-out of a feed by
unliking a brand/person/page that has done a poor job of communication than it
is to mess with all the account settings or for them to try to tweak their
algorithm all the time to try to guess what people want?
Cuban's doubts of the efficacy of edgerank (or perhaps his doubts stemming
from not knowing the purpose of edgerank) comes from him not really knowing
facebook from the perspective of a consumer/user and only knowing it primarily
as a broadcast tool (I've seen his posts - he's only there to broadcast). But
before, I defend edgerank/facebook on this, it should be acknowledged that
this guy and many like him (broadcaster for their brands) are the ones that
pay the bills - and it will be interesting to see who Facebook begins to cater
more to over the next few years... because advertisers' and users' interests,
despite what facebook wants us to believe, will likely always be at odds with
each other.
~~~
cbs
>him not really knowing facebook from the perspective of a consumer/user and
only knowing it primarily as a broadcast tool
That's funny, because as a "regular user" he perfectly voiced my opinion of
(what I now know to be called) edgerank. I see and feel the facebook
filterbubble quite frequently, its much easier to notice and more annoying
than google's. I just don't voice my distaste for it very much because people
just write off my opinion as being a "hater".
------
guelo
Its been several years since FB changed the default sort order from 'Recent'
to 'Top'. They made the change gently, first letting angry users change the
default back to 'Recent'. In typical FB fashion the setting would randomly
switch back to 'Top' if you weren't vigilant, and then after a while after
angry users got tired of fighting it and others forgot how it used to be they
took the setting away.
My point being that this has been in the works for a long time and is part of
their long term strategy. They will continue to tweak their algorithm causing
the occasional outrage, backing off, then coming back even more forcefully.
Remember, Zuck has stated that his mission is to train people how to share
their info publicly. Expect that "training" to continue, including for
advertisers.
~~~
fnayr
My FB still lets me change the sort order but randomly changes it back to top.
~~~
brudgers
As does mine. When it changes to "Top" it's glaringly obvious, too.
Perhaps the option persists because I use Facebook in a limited way, always
through a dedicated device - primarily, through its own virtual machine,
occasionally on an old smartphone with no SIM over WiFi, never via my primary
browser or active cellphone.
In my case, Facebook's data mining only sees a reflection of my Facebook
related activities. It is tempting to share more, but I have better places to
subject people to what's on my mind.
------
joelrunyon
I don't see why facebook absolutely refuses to make it simple to unfriend or
unlike something or something.
Let me rephrase that, I know _why_ they make it difficult (more connection =
more data), but it really detracts from the experience. I don't want to spend
3 hours clicking on individuals profiles and clicking 4 different times to do
one action (the "friends link", individual profile page, the "unlike" and the
confirm button).
I know, speaking for myself, I use facebook drastically different than I did a
few years ago, and I would love to clean up some of the friend list I've
accumulated over the years.
------
digitalengineer
Make sure you read comment #3 by former Facebook (now twitter) employee
"derrick503" [http://blogmaverick.com/2012/11/19/what-i-really-think-
about...](http://blogmaverick.com/2012/11/19/what-i-really-think-about-
facebook/#comment-78985)
~~~
gfosco
It's this comment, by Amar Anand, that is from a former Facebook (now twitter)
employee. [http://blogmaverick.com/2012/11/19/what-i-really-think-
about...](http://blogmaverick.com/2012/11/19/what-i-really-think-about-
facebook/#comment-78986)
Seeing all of the word choice and grammar mistakes by derrick503 made me
cringe.
------
gfodor
One has to assume Facebook (the company) has thought of these questions, and
as usual, decided to see what Facebook (the site) thought about it. While
Facebook has a history of trying to force things onto new users, they're also
a data-driven company, so if things are not working, they are going to back
out. I don't think Facebook risks hurting itself, since it can see itself
doing so by measuring the effects of the changes they make. What Facebook
risks is someone else replacing them or popular culture moving on to the next
thing, which is outside of their control.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Release of open source Android anti-censorship library - greatfire
We are very excited to share with you the release of Envoy - our open source C and Java Library derived from Chromium Cronet which can be used to make Android apps resistant to censorship. We have uploaded the library to our GitHub page:<p>https://github.com/greatfire/envoy<p>This library can be integrated into existing Android apps. Android is by far the most popular mobile operating system in China. Even though Google Play is blocked in China, there are many other ways to get Android apps onto your phone. We hope that this library is used by a wide variety of developers, but in particular we hope that larger organizations, whose websites are blocked in China, consider incorporating this library into their exisiting apps.<p>We have created demo versions of how this code can be integrated into existing apps, so that you can see the library in action and can see that it works. Demo versions have been created for Wikipedia (“the world’s largest source of information”) and DuckDuckGo, the world’s leading privacy-based search engine.<p>All of the world's largest internet companies, from Facebook, to Google, to Twitter, could theoretically incporate this code into their existing Android apps and be able to reach their audiences in China free of censorship controls.<p>If you are a developer, we hope that you and your peers can take the time to try out the code. If you know of someone who might find this code useful, please do direct them to this post. We stand ready to answer any questions which you may have and to provide assistance in any way we can.
======
yorwba
I'm a fan of GreatFire Analyzer, so I'm intrigued. But it's not clear to me
what this library actually does. What kinds of censorship can it defeat? DNS
poisoning, deep packet inspection, IP-based blocks? Do you direct traffic
through your own servers or do you sneak past the Great Firewall in some other
way? So many questions. All of that information should probably be somewhere
in the readme.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Nile: decentralized, commission-free, local-economy focused Amazon alternative - marcocastignoli
https://github.com/open-source-ideas/open-source-ideas/issues/78
======
hardwaresofton
OpenBazaar[0] already _is_ this idea.
I just checked the github post and one of the committers to openbazaar-go has
left a nice lengthy comment explaining why/how[1].
Hopefully the people interested in Nile just put their support behind
OpenBazaar instead.
[0]: [https://openbazaar.org/](https://openbazaar.org/)
[1] [https://github.com/open-source-ideas/open-source-
ideas/issue...](https://github.com/open-source-ideas/open-source-
ideas/issues/78#issuecomment-410764389)
~~~
SamPatt
I work on OpenBazaar and want to add that we've built it to support people
creating custom front end clients for their own particular use case and are
not compelled at all to use the reference client.
So they can use the OpenBazaar backend but still have the local focus they
want by making a new front end.
We've been working on decentralized ecommerce for a long time and I would love
for a fresh group of developers to take a look at it and give us their
thoughts. It's all MIT licensed open source.
~~~
jaxtellerSoA
How does a distributed market (like OpenBazaar) deal with trust? Is every
transaction put into escrow?
The idea of a open, distributed market, is great. But the reality of scammers,
cheaters, etc. is a big hurdle to over come. One of the great things about
Amazon is the customer service, I don't really worry about not getting a
product, or if I need to return an item to Amazon I am also confident that it
won't be an issue. This seems really hard to accomplish in a distributed
system with lots of small "shops".
~~~
SamPatt
There are two types of payments in OpenBazaar: direct and moderated.
Direct is when buyers completely trust vendors. There's no escrow and no
safety net at all.
Moderated is when both parties agree to a third party moderator and the funds
go into a two of three multisig account. Two parties need to agree to release
the funds. Normally it's the buyer and seller but if they can't agree then
they open a dispute with the moderator, who resolves the dispute and sends the
funds to rhe winning party (or slipts them).
Moderators get a small percentage payout when disputes are settled. It's an
open marketplace for offering moderator services.
The moderator doesn't have complete control of the funds (two parties are
needed) and they aren't even aware of the transaction until a dispute was
opened, so it has some advantages over traditional centralized escrow
services.
~~~
antidesitter
What’s the current status of proof-of-burn for reputation?
~~~
SamPatt
Not used. I was in the very early versions of OpenBazaar.
------
bovermyer
The software piece of this is not the hard part. The social piece is.
Admirable goal, but good luck getting wide enough adoption to achieve
viability.
~~~
wild_preference
This explains just about everything. Can’t remember all the times I’ve read
some pompous HN comment “pah, I could build it” and then thought, “well, you’d
be just 0.01% of the way there.”
Nothing kills this delusion more than spending a year building something that
you can’t seem to successfully market... multiple times. Then you realize
there’s almost zero value in the technical part, and you can only chuckle at
HN comments arguing about Python vs Node as if that’s the crux of a new
business.
~~~
weberc2
> you can only chuckle at HN comments arguing about Python vs Node as if
> that’s the crux of a new business
I definitely relate to this. I use Go a fair amount, and any conversation
about Go on /r/programming invites a whole bunch of "every product built on a
language without generics is doomed to fail". While generics would be a nice
feature to my mind, I like Go for the tooling and the ecosystem, which are
still an insignificant contribution to the success of a commercial product,
but still many times more significant than the type system (and I'm a fan of
type systems too).
~~~
chosenbreed
Interesting...the simplicity of the language appeals to me. If the tooling and
ecosysstem is as great as you say it is I'm in ;-)
------
dodyg
Nice name :) Greetings from Cairo.
My team is working on an hyperlocal e-commerce system that connects small
stores with people in their neighborhoods. Delivery is limited to walking or
bike distance performed by the vendors themselves.
Cairo is full of small vendors in every street. Most of people living in high
rises. You can get everything delivered already.
At the first stage we will just save vendors from taking orders via the phone
by hand by allowing them to receive orders on their phone. The next step is to
create credit system that eliminate the wastes of vendors or customers when
they don't have exact change.
~~~
ohiovr
Hi! I posted a desire for something like this on the thread already! I just
want to say I'm interested. I think it would be cool if people could share
their stuff or sell their stuff to maybe a select group of people like family
or extended family. The deal is it needs fulltext search and the ability to
have privacy. This sort of thing would be great for situations like "I want to
make ice cream. Should I buy an icecream maker for $99? Lets look at what my
family has.. Oh great, Beth still has hers I'll message her to see if I can
borrow it"
~~~
dodyg
Yeah. Right now I think people rely on WhatsApp groups for things like these.
------
goda90
Would this gave the option for one organization in a city to do the work for
small stores? I can imagine stores might not have the resources to host a part
of this, but maybe the municipality, a co-op, or a large company that wants to
support the local economy could host it. This comes to mind because my
employer wouldn't have a need for this since we make enterprise software, but
we profess to support the local economy via hosting a farmer's market, using
local food when possible in our cafeteria, encouraging local bookstores for
reimbursable education materials, and even sponsoring the local public radio.
We would have way more resources to host an instance than a corner shop that
sells yarn.
~~~
wukerplank
There are businesses built on top of local economies, e.g. Atalanda in
Germany: [https://atalanda.com/](https://atalanda.com/) (I'm not affiliated,
but I know people who work there.)
They partner up with local businesses for the goods and bike courier services
for the delivery.
------
nudpiedo
I am not sure whether the name "Nile" was picked because of the "Amazon" river
or because Nile is a symbol of being the only major river flowing from south
to north.
The former would be mundane, the later a great metaphor.
~~~
_Codemonkeyism
Found your claim astonishing, so googled it.
Looks like this is not true, at least the Ob river (3,650 km) and the Yenisei
river (3,438 km) are major rivers flowing from South to North (Both top 10
rivers).
So not sure where you did get that piece about the Nile from.
~~~
macintux
When I was in grade school, my _science_ teacher told the class rivers
couldn't flow north because, on a globe, north is up.
Somehow pointing out the Nile wasn't conclusive evidence against it.
Public education in America!
~~~
komali2
Ooooh is this a subthread for ranting about public education in a America?
Cause I come from a family of teachers and I have WORDS!
In a little school district in Texas, we can't use the word "adaptation" in
our cellular biology section.
Recent history textbooks use strange language around black slaves that seems
to imply they were "workers," rather than, you know, _slaves._
Eh. I'll stop. I gave up on teaching ages ago, but my mom still gets drummed
up in front of the principal at least monthly for some bullshit. Most recently
because the students have a shared box of basic supplies at their little desk
pods (scissors and markers), and some mom demanded her son be allowed to use
his own supplies because she didn't want him using the "Communist supplies."
Verbatim quote. She thought it would teach him the values of communism.
Obviously my mom told her to fuck off in no uncertain terms, so stern meeting
with the principal for July...
~~~
WorldMaker
I still remember that in Elementary school in Kentucky the teachers
"accidentally" showed an Elementary-focused science series that included a
video on plate tectonics and they had to apologize to the class and parents
for showing such an "advanced and controversial topic". That left a lasting
impression to this curious kid about how such simple science topics could even
be so controversial, when the teachers looked pained at every follow up
question I had days later. (As someone with a terrible anti-authoritarian
streak at that age, this show of weakness in the teachers didn't help.)
~~~
komali2
In middle school in South Carolina, a public, accredited, full-time teacher
saw me reading Harry Potter, walked up, and said "You know that book was
written by Satan, right?"
Written by Satan. Not, like, "that book has satanic values" or "was written by
a satanist" or "has evil themes," it was literally written by satan.
It's no wonder I was such a shithead little anarcho-atheist growing up.
------
krmmalik
Hi. What you're describing is a public market much like those that were in
Andalus and also in use by the Greeks and for the reasons mentioned on the
GitHub page this is what led to the prosperity of those societies. I have a
unique set of skills when it comes to Strategy, process and narrative. Soft
skills basically. I would love to get involved or at least have a chat with
the founders of how I may be able to help. If the founders are reading this,
please tell me how I can get on touch.
------
kbumsik
Does this need to be decentralized? Decentralized does not necessary mean
fair. How a decentralized platform could sove the problems OP mentioned;
paying taxes (by using a decentralized platform, really??) and profitable for
economics?
It is too naive to think decentralization simply can solve any social
problems.
~~~
8bitsrule
'Democracy' does not necessary mean fair either. (Even in places where it
isn't just a label.)
Decentralization solves problems created by centralization. It replaces them
with the problems created by decentralization. We're fairly certain now that
centralization creates social problems. Decentralization eliminates big
dictators in favor of petty dictators.
------
foxhop
Hey there, I have the same vision. I drafted a blog post on Friday (just
published it) discussing the first phase that I plan set in motion.
I would like to partner up with you on this.
Reference: [https://russell.ballestrini.net/all-local-heros-need-a-
gig-s...](https://russell.ballestrini.net/all-local-heros-need-a-gig-side-
kick/)
------
TheCapeGreek
I don't particularly agree with the delivery suggestion. Basically a volunteer
UberEATS style delivery with bicycles? To say this is ambitious is an
understatement. Bicycles are not nearly as used as you'd think, and
decentralized delivery with volunteers will probably raise the cost of
delivery (effort/petrol/time) as well as no one would actually trust this. So,
suggesting a local delivery service would be more ideal, but that again is a
pretty lofty goal with the amount of local options. So I suspect this will end
up querying a few well known delivery services if they are available in the
customer's country, and give a rough estimate of that cost.
Next, expecting the stores to bear the brunt of the store power also brings
into question the technical knowledge of the store management. You'd need
dedicated personnel for this since most people wouldn't know any of this. And
granted, people who have the relevant knowledge to host and maintain the
instance wouldn't be working in a store most likely anyway.
All that being said I don't want to complain too much. I like the idea but as
it has been submitted there are a lot of practical holes in it considering the
"market" it would best serve (areas not already touched by long ecommerce
giant fingers) not having the necessary knowledge and infrastructure.
Personally I'd suggest taking a look at how other popular decentralized
systems work and seeing how ecommerce would fit into that (mainly, Mastodon).
------
s73v3r_
The biggest issue with Amazon currently is counterfeit products. How is this
planning on addressing that?
------
kire2345
What is the incentive for the shops to scan and upload all products with
correct description picture etc. this is a huge work, and just the access to a
bigger market doesn't seem to be enough. Locafox in Berlin is pretty much
trying to build a similar aggregator of local shops
[https://www.locafox.de/](https://www.locafox.de/) It doesn't seem to work too
well which is why they diversified into selling digital cashier machines to
local businesses instead.
------
mittermayr
I feel like people don't know the difference between "doesn't pay taxes" and
"pays no tax" —– one is illegal, the other one is typically a success metric
of accounting.
(Disclaimer: I'm not advocating things like the double Irish w/dutch sandwich,
or similar methods — while more or less legal — I personally agree of course
how morally questionable tax-tricks can be to society, this is just to make
sure we're clear that technically, most companies are a for profit and profit-
maximizing operation)
------
ohiovr
I would be interested in a kind of federated marketplace, similar in structure
to Nextcloud's federation. I would be responsible for my users, but other site
owners can link to mine and we can expand our search for the goods we are
interested in. We can just transact in cash just like a garage sale. It might
be cool to have a private version of this so a family or extended family could
share their stuff to save money and get more facetime.
------
debatem1
Amazon is successful because it brings nearly everything a consumer wants
within two days' easy reach. They are able to do so because they have an
excellent logistical ground game, maybe a peerless one. Without challenging
them on this you are not truly competing with Amazon.
This is more like competing with instacart or similar. That's a reasonable
market, but operationally is a very hard nut to crack. I don't think having
volunteers on bikes is going to manage it.
------
chosenbreed
Mmm...interesting idea...a bit Utopian...I'm not sure the world works that
way...good luck to anyone investing their time, effort or other resources to
get this going.
~~~
tonyedgecombe
Much of what we take for granted in the modern world looked utopian before it
was available.
~~~
_Codemonkeyism
Not sure in which way e.g. the telephone or lightbulb looked utopian at the
time. Most inventions had similar predecessors.
Perhaps you're thinking of social inventions like the social security nets in
western Europe - I'm not as good in their history.
------
syntaxing
I see a lot of people mentioning OpenBazaar here. I remember trying it out a
year or two back when they had an early release. Has the OpenBazaar community
grown? I haven't found anything I was interested in buying through it. I feel
like the weakest link with stuff like Nile or OpenBazaar is that there is no
good search engine out there for consumers to discover new products easily.
~~~
SamPatt
I work on OpenBazaar. It has grown significantly over the past couple years.
I'm mobile and don't have the stats in front of me but I do know that the
network has been used by more than 55k people since last November when the 2.0
version launched.
It's now built on IPFS so nodes are still accessible even when the store is
offline.
OpenBazaar.com launched as a read-only way to browse the network.
A mobile version is nearing completion now.
Check out OpenBazaar.org and download the new version, we're proud of how far
it has come.
------
simple10
Digital Town is working on a similar idea with a notable team and funding.
Each city/town gets it's own domain or can use an existing one. It's a bit of
a resurrection of 90's style search portals for the blockchain era.
[https://digitaltown.com/](https://digitaltown.com/)
------
X6S1x6Okd1st
Openbazzar?
~~~
k1ns
When I went to Google that, the first autocomplete was "openbazaar drugs".
~~~
ofrzeta
That must be based on your search history :) I get completions in the
following order: search, token, tor, github, 2.0, shops, blockhain
------
usermac
Amazon pays no taxes? Got this from the introduction.
~~~
jamroom
Looks like they paid no US income taxes in 2017:
[https://www.seattlepi.com/business/tech/article/Amazon-
paid-...](https://www.seattlepi.com/business/tech/article/Amazon-paid-no-US-
income-taxes-for-2017-12713961.php)
~~~
chosenbreed
I couldn't access that the article...are they saying that people who work for
Amazon paid no income tax?
~~~
metamicah
No, it's corporate income tax, a direct tax imposed by the federal government
on corporations. The rate can be 15% to 35% but there are so many deductions
available that large companies like Amazon are often able to dodge it
completely. For instance, the article mentions a $917 million deduction on
stock options exercised by employees, which was probably the bulk of the
deductions.
------
tanilama
The description feels like a recipe for disaster.
------
nickdandakis
I love how oblivious (blissfully ignorant?) the "How will you earn money?"
section is.
_> The application is decentralized so we just need money for the developers,
the lawyers and the advertisers, we don’t have to build and maintain a huge
and expansive network infrastructure. So we’ll just earn money from
advertisement, but it will not be specific for you, because we want your data
to be yours, and we will accept to advertise only local products._
_Just_ need money for developers, lawyers, and advertisers huh? _Just_ earn
money from advertisement!
A utopian marketplace that runs on ad revenue makes little sense to me. I
would've liked to see the "decentralized system" part replaced with a boring
"centralized system", and the boring "advertising revenue" replaced with
something else.
~~~
ozim
IMO everything that is wrong about internet now is because people don't have
better idea for monetizing than slapping ads on a page. Big players like goog
and other ad networks made it even worse making it easy to enter, just slap
adwords on your page and earn. The more users you have the more you earn,
which breeds clickbait.
Someone will have to run centralized node for city, so _we don’t have to build
and maintain a huge and expansive network infrastructure_ goes out of the
window also, bitcoin miners are not running nodes for free and not for
advertising money from their servers. How would they make sure that ad revenue
for running server is higher than cost of running server?
It is also oblivious to fact that amazon has full fleet for delivery,
warehouses. Where they propose everything _commision-free_ but then magically
_the money for the delivery goes directly to the cyclists involved_. _An
algorithm calculates the best and cheapest route to deliver your goods._ , I
also expect that running bike delivery service is much more complicated that
calculating best and cheapest routes.
So I went full rage mode on this one, it is ignorant, visionary, buzzword
ridden, writeup. But maybe I should judge it as just fiction writing not
actual business idea.
~~~
nickdandakis
I think you should judge it as what it is. A tiny write up of an idea where
each answer needs a lot of work to be implemented fully.
I don't know if advertising is the culprit for the bad aspects of the
internet, but I agree that creators/companies don't put any effort into
alternative revenue streams. Not only that, but consumers have been trained to
expect free content at the expense of ads. Yes, consumers are becoming more
and more aware of the privacy-for-service trade they've implicitly agreed to.
But I think it'll take years (if not decades) to reverse the "free
content/service" mentality but also to have any other revenue stream rival
"slapping on ads and calling it a day".
Subscriptions aren't the solution either, with more and more people experience
subscription fatigue.
Maybe there isn't some Ultimate Monetization Method™ for internet services and
content, but at the very least I'd like to see less defaulting to advertising.
~~~
ozim
Ultimate maybe not but I believe there should be just fair method for each
type of content or service or business. Unfortunately users are not fair as
well (sharing, multi accounts, freeloading) so yes it is in some part users
fault as well.
------
arisAlexis
thse projects are nice but there needs to be incentives
------
Arzh
This is / can be filled by craigslist or facebook marketplace.
~~~
waffle_ss
No, this is for combining a local area's retail stores' inventory into a
unified shopping interface, and a courier service for seamless delivery (e.g.
so you don't have to visit stores x, y, z to complete pickup of a single order
with items from disparate stores). Not individuals hawking their used junk.
~~~
Arzh
Stores are already doing that on craigslist and facebook, this would just be
hooking up a delivery service to it and you have it. Still seems like a pretty
weak idea.
~~~
waffle_ss
I'd love to know how stores are synchronizing their entire shelf+backstock
inventory to Craiglist or FB Marketplace given neither service even has an API
(Craiglist allows bulk posting but that's useless if you can't bulk
delete/update for availability) or even basic metadata like product quantity,
UPC/EAN, etc.
Ignoring that, the services you're talking about don't even do any kind of
canonicalization or grouping of products like Amazon, so if you search for
"Xbox" you're going to have to click through many pages of individual listings
rather than having a unified product page displaying product details and specs
from the manufacturer, consumer reviews, related product variants (e.g.
color), etc.
It's fine if you think the idea's weak but at least give the idea a fair shake
before dismissing it.
------
benlorenzetti
An ironic name.
------
gwbas1c
"Amazon alternative"
To what? AWS? S3?
~~~
dolessdrugs
to the river
------
asimpletune
Where are you based?
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Why a lot more startups are going to get acquired this year - vinnyglennon
http://founderware.co/silicon-valley/2012-is-for-buying-startups/
======
bdunn
Better yet: Build a company that makes you a comfortable living, acquire
customers who pay you (sort of needed for that "comfortable living" bit), and
when people try to acquire you, politely decline.
You'll make a good or great income, you will be making your customers happy
and delivering value, and no one is going to be pissed because there's no one
aborting your product.
~~~
3pt14159
Say you're making 50k as a solo founder and someone offers you $1M with a two
year earn out clause. Wouldn't you be stupid not to take it?
------
jedberg
As someone who is trying to do hiring right now, I can agree with this. With
all the money flowing into startups right now, it's getting more and more
difficult to hire talented people, because they are all (rightfully) working
on their own thing.
It's definitely better to be an investor right now than someone trying to
hire.
~~~
zackzackzack
Have you looked in places outside of the traditional NYC/SV/Seattle area? Not
sure where you are located, but it might be worthwhile to look around for
talent where nobody is looking.
~~~
jedberg
We look all over the country, but Netflix (where I work and hire for) doesn't
really do remote employees, so we ask them to move to Los Gatos. Unfortunately
this means we are looking at people who are already willing to move.
~~~
hartez
"doesn't really do remote employees"
That might be the crux of your problem (and the problems a lot of other
companies are having with hiring). This is just my totally biased outside
perspective, but it's easy to get remote work right now. Why in the world
would I ever want to move to California?
I'm seeing this become an issue a lot with companies that _need_ good
development talent but just don't understand that it might not be something
they can find locally. Good developers can (at least right now) live wherever
they want in the country and make plenty of money. Apologies to anyone living
in, say, Wichita, but why would I move there* if I didn't have to? By forcing
your development teams to be local, you're limiting your talent pool or you're
picking up C-grade developers from other places who are desperate for a job.
* The barbecue -is- pretty darn good
------
AznHisoka
It's not just hiring. It's also market. After the 3rd photo sharing app, or
the 3rd chat app, or the 5th Angry-Birds look-alike, noone really cares. Too
many options, too many products, and consumers can't adopt them all.
------
conductr
insightful extrapolation of the previous year
------
verra
Or a lot of startups are going to shutdown this year.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Please consider Mailbox before adding attachments - scottmcdot
Where I work, the standard attachment size is becoming around 3MB and we are only allocated 512MB of Outlook storage space. Rather than my email signature reading "Please consider the environment before printing this email", would it be unprofessional to change it to something like "Please consider Mailbox before adding attachments"? What's a better way of phrasing this if I were to use it in my email signature?
======
dangrossman
Don't try to change how others use their email, talk to IT about getting a
reasonable quota.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Stop telling your engineers what to do - tylerwince
https://productsolving.substack.com/p/problem-space-solution-space
======
gamell
"As a product manager, your job is to live in the problem space. You should
spend nearly all of your time focusing on your target customer, what needs
they have, and what value you are going to provide to them. Nobody else in
your organization is set up to spend time in the problem space like you are."
Couldn't agree more. I would add it's the PM's responsibility to bridge the
gap between the Solution and Problem spaces, especially when compromises need
to be made at implementation time.
~~~
tylerwince
Author here.
I would agree with you. Being able to understand what activities go on
downstream (solution space) of your work makes you even more effective. Glad
you enjoyed the article.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Eating Leafy Greens Each Day Tied to Sharper Memory, Slower Decline - dpflan
https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2018/02/05/582715067/eating-leafy-greens-daily-may-help-keep-minds-sharp
======
conwy
Nothing like chopped & steamed spring greens topped with west indian hot
sauce, a little mayo and some pepper. Mmmmmmm
------
jimrandomh
This is an observational study. Observational studies in the field of
nutrition have a _horrendous_ track record; this research is almost no
evidence at all for its finding.
~~~
thatcat
I agree, the article did a poor job of elucidating leafy greens role in
enhancing memory. Allow me to suggest a more plausible mechanism of action for
this effect:
Leafy greens contain more magnesium than other sources due to its presens in
the cholorphyll structure. The glycolytic cycle also requires magnesium for
enzymes [0], so one might expect the memory enhancement effect to be more
likely the result of additional glucose avalibility [1]. Additionally, alcohol
consumption can cause a magnesium deficiency by diuretic effect - disrupting
the glycolytic cycle and resulting in poor memory retention when deficiency
occurs.
Although soluable magnesium supplements work in the same way, I'm currently
testing agricultural methods of increasing Mg2+ levels in leafy greens.
[0]
[https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/2931560](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/2931560)
[1]
[https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S014976341...](https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S014976341000148X)
[2]
[https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/7836619](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/7836619)
~~~
52-6F-62
This subject seems to come up on this forum periodically. I'm really surprised
how many people so frequently decide to treat the subject with such
skepticism.
[https://www.ars.usda.gov/plains-
area/gfnd/gfhnrc/docs/news-2...](https://www.ars.usda.gov/plains-
area/gfnd/gfhnrc/docs/news-2013/dark-green-leafy-vegetables/)
[https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1633749/](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1633749/)
[https://www.nhs.uk/news/food-and-diet/eating-leafy-greens-
ma...](https://www.nhs.uk/news/food-and-diet/eating-leafy-greens-may-help-
prevent-memory-loss/)
[https://www.health.harvard.edu/vision/harvard-researchers-
fi...](https://www.health.harvard.edu/vision/harvard-researchers-fight-
glaucoma-with-leafy-green-vegetables)
[http://pubmedcentralcanada.ca/pmcc/articles/PMC5642804/](http://pubmedcentralcanada.ca/pmcc/articles/PMC5642804/)
[https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2017/07/170725122004.h...](https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2017/07/170725122004.htm)
Wash your greens well and make sure you eat them!
------
afinlayson
Good thing they put some pesticide on it that makes me unable to eat these in
USA....
~~~
colordrops
So eat organic.
~~~
prepend
Or just wash your food.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Dark Patterns, the Ratchet - l1n
https://jacquesmattheij.com/dark-patterns-the-ratchet
======
jerf
I was discussing some work on some opt-out we're going to be offering
customers so they can either accept or decline certain automated patches to
their systems, and I found myself describing the opt-out as "real opt-out",
because you can flip the switch to "no" and all that happens is exactly what
you want; you stop getting those changes automatically. You can still apply
them manually later, or selectively, etc. We don't terminate your service or
charge you more or do anything else. You just choose whether you want the
convenience along with the bit of risk of changes, or if you want the control
and the responsibility.
And I realized I had been subconsciously calling this "real" opt-out precisely
because what I encounter in life as "opt-out" does not match that
description.. "Real opt-out" is distressingly rare. Almost everything I
encounter in real life is the style of ratchet described in this article, to
the point where my brain without consulting me decided I needed a new
word/phrase for what we were doing.
------
ocdtrekkie
A new Cortana popup's been showing up on the Windows 10 machines this week,
where you can enable it, or have it "remind you later". >.<
I feel like every mode dialog needs a "f--- off" response. When YouTube asks
me every fifteen minutes if I'd like to try YouTube TV, my answer isn't "no
thanks", a polite declination of this generous offer. It's "f--- off", you
incessant greedy tools.
~~~
asfgjadfgionoin
That's everywhere on Windows. They did the same thing to try to railroad
people into installing Windows 10. They do the same thing for every software
upgrade.
OS X isn't much better.
~~~
ocdtrekkie
Actually, Microsoft's current strategy for pushing updates is to
"accidentally" break the options that let you withhold updates for a period of
time. They've broken them like three times in the last six months, arbitrarily
forcing large groups of Pro users to later versions of Windows than they
should've gotten.
~~~
realusername
I found a way to get rid of windows updates. You just need to not have enough
disk space... Every time I boot, I have a modal asking me to free more than
8GB to start the update.
~~~
ocdtrekkie
The goal isn't to "get rid of Windows updates". Windows Updates are
_important_. Of course, we do need to control those updates better. And
Microsoft needs to be better about keeping those updates stable.
~~~
realusername
I only meant it as a joke, I'm just wishing Windows Updates would be less
bloated than they are now, it would help speed up the process and keep
customer complaints down. Also I don't need to wait 20 minutes in front of a
blue screen when I do updates in Ubuntu.
------
mindslight
The longstanding root of the problem is that we're relying on software that is
under the control of an adversarial party, especially for creating a UI. This
necessarily means that incentives are misaligned, and we are left as an
unaccompanied homo sapien to be outwitted by the machine in front of us that
we may have paid for, but that does not work for us.
It will be interesting to see where the GDPR goes, especially with regards to
surveillance companies we don't directly interact with. But as long as we
continue to do things like utilize a specific retailer's software for
researching and planning purchases, the incentives are for that retailer to
design that software to push us into funneling as much business (and
extraneous personal data!) as possible to themselves.
~~~
xg15
> _The longstanding root of the problem is that we 're relying on software
> that is under the control of an adversarial party, especially for creating a
> UI._
One of the original ideas of the "semantic web" was that the entities that
provide data and the entities that _display_ the data should be decoupled and
freely combinable by the user.
That idea didn't gain particularly large support with website developers.
I wonder why... /s
~~~
always_good
Because there isn't much incentive to do something that makes it easier to not
get paid for your content?
It already rubs me the wrong way when Google scrapes content from sites. I'm
not surprised the dream failed if that's what it was.
~~~
kilburn
"/s" at the end of a comment means the author was being sarcastic ;)
------
scottmf
It’s funny how they only want to repeatedly confirm your decision when you
give the answer they don’t want.
Every time my Facebook messenger app updates it asks me to confirm my phone
number (which it already has through some other method). It employs multiple
dark patterns to trick me into confirming, and because of this I’ve very
nearly done so by accident.
This stuff might be profitable in the short term but many of us see through it
— especially the younger generations — and it’s eroding any trust you may
still have with people.
Companies need to cut this shit out ASAP if they want to be trusted in the
future.
~~~
mistermann
Cutting this out puts a company at a disadvantage to competitors. This is a
case where the government "of the people and for the people" should step in
and write some _real_ legislation, _and enforce it_. Unfortunately, "of the
people and for the people" is effectively ancient history now, they're far too
busy bickering over Russian trolls and fulfilling their donors wishes. What a
sad state of affairs.
~~~
icebraining
I'm not against regulation on principle, but how specifically would you write
something against these patterns? I have a hard time seeing how to describe
them in a general way - and "I know them when I see them" doesn't make good
law.
~~~
mistermann
Write the law vaguely and make punishments potentially scarily harsh, the
general idea that if companies would like to continue to play dumb farmer,
they better hope they don't run into someone with a strict personality. In
law, there is the notion of both the latter and the spirit of the law, so this
notion isn't unprecedented.
You might think this is a bit crazy, and you'd be correct, but it's nowhere
near as crazy as _thousands_ of things in the actual reality of our current
legal system (banks crashing the global financial system, yet no one was
guilty of anything, black men being executed at point blank range and the cop
walking away, etc etc etc etc etc).
------
mightybyte
This strikes me as an area where legislation could have a significant impact.
It's an area where there is absolutely no economic incentive to do the right
thing. It seems similar to the way email lists and spam were back in the early
days of the internet. Based on my observations, the CAN-SPAM act requiring
automated mailings to have an unsubscribe link actually seems to have been
fairly effective at improving that situation. Granted, there is still spam,
but the legit mailing lists are a lot easier to opt out of than they used to
be. Perhaps some legislation relating to terms of service agreements could
help with this problem?
------
bayonetz
Not privacy related but how about that damn “Ratchet” that iPhones have to get
you to upgrade the OS? You are literally presented with two choices: upgrade
now or remind me later. The remind me later choice means getting a daily nag
with the same two choices. I inevitably lose this little cat’n’mouse game and
accidentally click the upgrade now option. Yes, you can delete the update file
to postpone the prompt for a bit but that is a hassle and only temporary
anyway. APPLE, I DON’T WANT TO UPGRADE!!! Every time I inevitably accidentally
upgrade, the UX responsiveness degrades another step. For the third phone in a
row I’m at the point where I feel like I need to upgrade to new hardware to
get back to the responsiveness level I want. I think we all know this is no
coincidence.
~~~
jachee
You might be overly sensitive. My wife still runs an iPhone 6 (not 6s), on the
latest OS. I can only _just_ tell the difference between it and my 8 (also on
the latest OS.) in app load times for giant apps. Otherwise (scrolling,
network, etc.) there is no functional difference unless you're sitting there
with a stopwatch.
Don't propagate the false "planned obsolescence" meme. It's tired and counter-
productive, especially from a security standpoint.
~~~
lambda_lover
Maybe you're just not that sensitive to it? App load times aren't what keeps
me from updating, it's stability -- iOS 11 is _still_ ridden with bugs, which
is ridiculous for a 6 month old OS used by millions of people worldwide. Of
course, CPU throttling is another valid reason to hold off, or, if you use a
phone with a smaller screen like my SE, you might not want to update to an OS
that doesn't scale well for your screen size..
------
some_random
You know, if a country ran an election over and over until they got the
"right" answer it would obvious that said country wasn't a democracy. I would
have no problems if every time I opened an app or logged into a website it
asked if it could have the set of permissions it needed (or wanted). Or, it
could ask me once, then make me go into the settings to change my answer if I
changed my mind.
But asking over and over until I say yes, then never asking again is just as
nefarious my aforementioned election strategy.
~~~
vanderZwan
I don't think it's much of a stretch to call it abuse.
Imagine this was a person-to-person thing. Person A wants person B to consent
to something person B does not want to consent to. And let's not beat around
the bush here: we're all thinking of something sexual right now. A repeatedly
asks B, and no matter how many times B says no, A claims that B said "maybe
later". B does not get to say "fuck off" unless B somehow quits A altogether.
Now that is messed up enough already, but what these forms do is _give you no
other option than answer "maybe later"_. That's a level above putting words in
someone's mouth that I am sure would be considered a form of violation if
someone in a position of power could do that to someone else.
And that very much applies here: I don't get to create the pop-ups in an app
or on a website, so the app-makers are abusing a position of power here.
~~~
opportune
I had just thought of this exact analogy too. Another one that came to mind is
a forced/coerced confession. Usually it's combined with something more extreme
like sleep deprivation/psychological abuse but the way it often works is just
asking someone over and over for hours whether they committed the crime / how
they did it. Eventually people confess just to make it stop. I see this as the
same thing on a smaller scale: eventually you just accept the
terms/update/whatever to make the annoying notifications go away. But you were
still coerced into that decision out of annoyance and frustration
------
opportune
Excellent post. I recently dealt with "The Ratchet" for several months on my
old iPhone, because I didn't want to upgrade to the new OS at the time for
battery/performance reasons. Every single day I'd get a full screen popup
telling me to enter my passcode to update, or I could click on a smaller box
at the bottom to remind me later. It was my own phone and I couldn't even make
it stop asking me to update.
The other place I noticed it recently was Reddit's mobile website, which asks
me to download the app TWICE every time I reopen it on my phone. The first
prompt is a bottom banner taking up about 40% of the screen on my phone with
the small link to the mobile site situated uncomfortably close to the much
larger button which takes you to the app store. The second is a popup from
clicking on a link, which takes up about 60% of the screen and is centered.
It's workable, but it's almost as annoying, persistent, and anti-user as
Facebook messenger on mobile web browsers.
It's infuriating seeing some of your favorite products try to pull this on
you. I wish I could tell the developers to stop being assholes to their faces.
~~~
marzell
The Reddit example extends to Android as a whole - I can't speak to Apple iOS
due to inexperience.
Browsing websites with a companion app always prompts you to view in the app
or install the app, and the presentation is always biased toward doing so
instead of declining. I wish there was an option to indicate that you don't
want to be prompted in this fashion in the future - either all around, or to
have it remember specific apps that you don't want to install.
It really is a persistent annoyance. The Reddit website in full desktop mode
has also recently been pestering users about logging in, and it does so every
time you navigate to the site if you aren't already logged in to an existing
account.
It is really quite annoying, and has actively caused me to use the site less.
I'm much less likely to use a timesink or unfocused browsing activity if I'm
being pestered while doing so. I imagine that this type of activity is a
significant portion of the whole for such websites, so it really seems
disingenuous, unless their long-term plan is to pull a Facebook and focus on
revenue through selling user data to third parties (which I imagine is most
likely the case).
------
noir_lord
Google are buggers for this one.
Not now should be "Not now and Never".
They don't stop doing the thing you told their UI to stop doing they 'pause'
it.
GDPR is going to be great.
~~~
stronglikedan
> GDPR is going to be great.
Does GDPR explicitly prohibit the use of these patterns? Or will it spawn more
of them to trick you into accidentally opting in?
~~~
anvandare
Maybe. Per Article 7(3) (in particular the last sentence)[0]:
>The data subject shall have the right to withdraw his or her consent at any
time. The withdrawal of consent shall not affect the lawfulness of processing
based on consent before its withdrawal. Prior to giving consent, the data
subject shall be informed thereof. It shall be as easy to withdraw as to give
consent.
As I read it, if you're going to annoy your no-consent-given-(yet)-users with
a "convenient" popup every time asking whether they consent... Then you also
have to annoy your consent-already-given-users with an equally "convenient"
popup every time asking whether they _still_ consent. Break the anti-pattern
by forcing the developers to pull it all the way through.
At any rate, it gets rid of the "Aha! given at last! now you can never revoke
it!"-part of the ratchet.
[0] [https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-
content/EN/TXT/PDF/?uri=CELE...](https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-
content/EN/TXT/PDF/?uri=CELEX:32016R0679&qid=1490179745294&from=en) (page 37)
------
21
To pick on a different company, every once in a while when I start Revolut
(fintech mobile bank acount like thingy), I get asked if I want to upload my
contact list so that I can easily send/receive money from my contacts. There
is no option to "Never".
~~~
JimDabell
If you're using iOS, then they only get one shot at asking for permission with
the system prompt, and if you say no, they can't do it again. So what most
applications do is show a custom prompt (which they can show an unlimited
number of times), and if you agree to that, then they show the system prompt,
which users are unlikely to refuse at that point.
This means that it's pointless for them to show their custom prompt if you've
already refused access, because even if you agree, they can't get the system
prompt to show up again. So you can _probably_ make the repeated prompts
disappear by either a) agreeing to their custom prompt then refusing access
when the system prompt appears, or b) going to Settings > Revolut and refusing
access to your contacts there. The latter is probably the best way of doing
it.
~~~
jstarfish
> This means that it's pointless for them to show their custom prompt if
> you've already refused access, because even if you agree, they can't get the
> system prompt to show up again. So you can probably make the repeated
> prompts disappear
No. I have seen this defeated on a few apps-- they harass you with the custom
messages, and when it realizes it can't trigger the system prompt, it just
tells you to go into settings and approve it manually. Failure to follow
through means the custom messages will continue harassing you as long as the
permission has not been granted.
------
sireat
LinkedIn is particularly adept at repeatedly asking you to share your e-mail
contact list.
Don't think there is an option: Never share my contacts and stop bugging me
about this option.
~~~
yjftsjthsd-h
Solution: single use email account. For bonus points, and address book where
each entry it a complaint about LinkedIn.
------
steve_gh
I'm wondering whether GDPR is going to make this worse.
It used to be that the GWR train Wifi would automatically log me in. But now
that has changed, and it takes me to a pre-populated log-in screen, which
requires me to untick the "Add me to the mailing list" button, and tick the
"T&Cs" and "Privacy statement" buttons.
I suspect that this is a GDPR hoop to show they have consent for every bit of
data they use. But all I have to do is forget to untick the "Add me to your
mailing list" button once...
~~~
Someone
The GDPR doesn’t allow default-checked opt-in checkboxes. They aren’t “clear
affirmative actions”.
Article 4.11: _” 'consent' of the data subject means any freely given,
specific, informed and unambiguous indication of the data subject's wishes by
which he or she, by a statement or by a clear affirmative action, signifies
agreement to the processing of personal data relating to him or her”_
~~~
Silhouette
So now we have to go back to every site/service/app including unchecked but
mandatory tick boxes about agreeing to their terms and privacy policy in the
checkout process, thus both annoying just about everyone and potentially
reducing conversion rates while making no practical difference to anything
whatsoever? I guess we can file that with the "cookie" law and the consumer
protection rules that say if you want to download any digital content you just
bought immediately instead of waiting 14 days first then <insert scary
legalese about losing a right to cancel under some law you never heard of
here>. I think they're under "well intentioned but utterly lacking in
practical understanding".
~~~
icebraining
Those tick boxes can only be mandatory if the data is actually needed to
provide the service - the user can't be forced to allow his data to be used
for marketing purposes, for example. Also, if it's obvious for what purpose
the data will be used (e.g. filling in your address for delivering a package),
you don't need a tick box.
So there should be little need for mandatory boxes.
~~~
Silhouette
As ever with the GDPR, things are going to get subjective and you take your
chances until the picture is clearer. A strict interpretation appears to be
that, for example, a business that uses a customer's email address as an
account ID on its web site and sends only essential messages to that email
address doesn't need consent, because the legal basis for the processing is
performance of a contract, but if the email address is also used for other
form of communication (even if the message is genuinely relevant and something
the customer would almost certainly want to receive) then that may require
active consent. That could lead to a lot of places adding those checkboxes
back in just to make sure they're covered, even if they aren't strictly
necessary.
~~~
icebraining
Actually, they can't add those checkmarks, because consent must be specific
(use this data for this purpose), so a generic tick box about agreeing to
their terms and privacy policy won't fly.
~~~
Silhouette
Well, at that point, all semblance of reality would have been lost anyway. It
seems highly unlikely that any businesses, even huge ones that have data-
hoarding business models, are going to start itemising opt-in consents in
their sign-up process rather than just having a compliant privacy policy and a
single active consent to processing under it.
~~~
icebraining
If they don't, I'm sure my national data protection commission will be happy
to remind them.
~~~
Silhouette
Unless they really want to play chicken over something that is clearly an
unreasonable interpretation of the rules, I doubt it.
Using the GDPR to go after one big player that seriously screwed up is one
thing. I certainly wouldn't be comfortable if I held Facebook stock right now.
But going after _all_ the big players, just for not complying with something
that is probably impractical for any of them to comply with, is something else
entirely. How long do you think public sentiment is going to support
government regulators and the GDPR if the likes of Facebook, Google Mail,
WhatsApp, Instagram and SnapChat all go dark across the EU for an hour, or a
day, or a week?
~~~
icebraining
_unreasonable interpretation of the rules_
There's nothing unreasonable about it, it's the plain reading of Article 7
(2).
Regarding the big sites, I don't see how is that relevant to your initial
point about whether "every site" will have mandatory checkboxes, and so I'll
let someone else read the magic 8 ball.
------
wccrawford
I completely agreed until this point:
>Of course it would be trivial to have a log of recently given permissions and
an ‘undo’ option for each of those.
No, that's not trivial. It's not _hard_ , but it's pretty far from _trivial_.
Trivial would be removing the "not now" functionality from this question.
Maintaining a list of permissions and implementing the ability to undo them
from a common area doesn't sound trivial at all to me, even if that only meant
"no permission _in the future_ ".
If you were designing the app from the ground up to support that, it'd be a
lot easier. But it still wouldn't be "trivial".
I went to go find the definition of "trivial", but I didn't get what I
expected, and I'm sure it isn't what the author meant, either. "of little
value or importance."
I was looking for something along the lines of "taking a negligible amount of
effort". And I don't think implementing an entire interface and storing a list
of data for it is trivial, let alone the part where you can take actions from
that interface that potentially have system-wide ramifications.
~~~
Thrymr
The computer science sense of "trivial" comes from the mathematical sense,
"Related to or being the mathematically most simple case. More generally, the
word "trivial" is used to describe any result which requires little or no
effort to derive or prove." [0]
And of course "trivial" is related to "obvious" when used in a math lecture.
[0]
[http://mathworld.wolfram.com/Trivial.html](http://mathworld.wolfram.com/Trivial.html)
------
87812487
In browser, I can use this plugin ([https://addons.mozilla.org/en-
GB/firefox/addon/nuke-anything...](https://addons.mozilla.org/en-
GB/firefox/addon/nuke-anything-enhanced/)) to destroy those annoying popup.
In mobile, no such luxury, so instead always use the web app version unless
unavoidable, like whatsapp.
------
solidist
Yes. More on this in context to A/B/C/D.
[https://hackernoon.com/deception-degenerate-a-b-testing-
ecce...](https://hackernoon.com/deception-degenerate-a-b-testing-ecce6635000e)
Note: I am the author.
------
sfilargi
Textbook example was LinkedIn’s “Upload your Gmail contacts” prompt.
It would keep asking the user every time they visited their page.
------
bluetwo
If only there was a government agency who was:
_Working to protect consumers by preventing anticompetitive, deceptive, and
unfair business practices, enhancing informed consumer choice and public
understanding of the competitive process, and accomplishing this without
unduly burdening legitimate business activity._
------
bencollier49
Aaaaand.. that's why we have GDPR.
~~~
wccrawford
GDPR only applies when the user doesn't give consent. This dark pattern is
about obtaining that consent, not about using the user's data without consent.
~~~
bencollier49
GDPR also governs the way in which consent can be obtained, and the withdrawal
of consent.
------
maksimum
Is the ratchet a good design strategy for software updates (e.g. Chrome, Mac
OS)?
~~~
chopin
It worked for Windows.
------
gesman
Opt-out means “we can’t directly use your information but wait! We’ll find a
sneaky hard to trace way to sell your information to others”
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
This USB Drive Is Just Thicker than a Penny and Holds 2TB - mccooscoos
http://www.netbooknews.com/33811/2tb-usb-the-size-of-your-finger-nail/
======
MaysonL
And is almost certainly vaporware, at least as far as a 2TB version available
any time soon is concerned.
------
tobylane
SDXC cards can also go up to 2TB, you can only buy a 128GB now. These
headlines don't count.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Collect Your Favorite Quotes Online with Quotica - erin_bury
http://sprouter.com/blog/collect-your-favorite-quotes-online-with-quotica/
======
mikeleeorg
I love quotes and have considered keeping a text file in my Dropbox account.
Quotica sounds like a natural evolution from such an approach.
Years ago, I kept such a text file on my laptop and it grew to several hundred
quotes. To say it was unwieldy would be an understatement. I started
organizing them by topics, but what I really wanted was tags. Being the
organizational freak that I am, I really hope Quotica will have that.
I use these quotes in personal essays and tweets (especially the shorter
quotes). Being able to tweet a quote from Quotica would be cool too.
Neat idea. Wish I had thought of it.
------
jh3
It's always funny to see an idea you had become a reality... because someone
else made it. It's funny because it seems there is always someone else
thinking about the same (almost exact) thing you are.
Nevertheless, kudos. It looks good. I probably wouldn't use it, but I know
other people would.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
7 reasons the tech sector should be scared - jrowley
http://www.sfchronicle.com/technology/article/Has-the-tech-bubble-popped-and-we-just-haven-t-6775865.php?t=92cf4da2ae
======
eganist
Every bullet missed the important detail where a ton of companies seem to be
basing their business models on datamining and advertising... and if they have
a slightly more viable business model (regulatory disruption a la AirBnB and
Uber), they're still relying on this data for revenue to some extent.
My hunch (and it is just a hunch): there's going to be a watershed moment
where company marketing efforts realize that a lot of the data they're using
to make marketing decisions, be it directly via their own analytics or through
targeted ad services, is worth a lot less than they think it is. Given how
many bay area startups depend on selling data, that's bound to cause a crunch.
~~~
jp555
That assumes by "Marketing" you mean only advertising and not "Marketing" as
advertising, pricing, distribution, and most importantly product development.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Robber barons bought dozens of medieval European buildings – where are they now? - samclemens
http://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/in-the-early-1900s-dozens-of-centuriesold-european-buildings-came-to-america-where-is-medieval-america-now
======
nemo
Hearst's papers were one of the chief propaganda outlets deceiving the
American public into the Spanish American War. After he got his war he turned
to pillaging Spanish cultural treasures and justified it as a jobs program.
Wow.
~~~
nostrademons
It's funny - in a historical context - to see Travis Kalanick called "One of
the most ethically challenged men in Silicon Valley", read about Vinod Khosla
getting roasted for closing his private beach, or watch Paul Graham get
skewered for arguing that unionized industries ought to be disrupted by
startups on Twitter. Compared to Gilded Age magnates, pretty much everyone in
the tech industry is a saint.
Other choice deeds of Gilded Age personalities: Jay Gould would manipulate the
stock market at will, tried to corner the market in Gold, and installed his
cronies in the New York government in exchange for directorships in his
railroads [1]. Leland Stanford supported immigration restrictions on Chinese
in his role as governor, and simultaneously employed thousands of them working
in near-slave conditions on the railroad [2]. Henry Clay Frick hired an armed
militia to disperse striking workers, which led to an actual firefight between
them and the picket line [3].
[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jay_Gould](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jay_Gould)
[2]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leland_Stanford](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leland_Stanford)
[3]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homestead_Strike](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homestead_Strike)
~~~
gozo
So? That seems more like a reason to question the people that wields power
more than anything. What's dangerous with "startup royalty" is that they have
a following while they are almost never challenged on what they really know.
Rarely do we see them answer tough questions, respond in debates or anything
else that would rapidly demonstrate the limits of their knowledge. Of course
Paul Graham can complain about unions because he will never have to explain or
stand for what he means in any meaningful sense of the words. Not even
politicians can get away with that. It's like the worst form of meritocracy,
the one that coined the phrase, when your merit is unrelated to your power.
Our world is being formed by hunches.
~~~
nostrademons
That's the nature of power. Decisions always flow _down_ a power hierarchy,
but accurate information rarely flows _upwards_ , as everyone providing
information to the decision-maker wants to make sure that it'll influence the
decision in a way favorable to themselves. As a result, the leader of any
large organization is usually the least informed person in the organization.
There's not actually a way to fix this - you aren't going to get rid of the
concept of power itself. If you try to "educate" decision-makers, you're just
contributing to the problem: all you do is replace the slice of reality that
was contributed by someone else wanting to influence them with the slice of
reality that _you_ want to influence them with, and then someone else can get
mad. It's up to the decision-maker herself to seek out accurate, independent,
non-biased information, because most information volunteered to them will be
biased. I think many of the "tech elite" actually do this - it's to their
advantage, after all, since what they don't know will lead to them being
replaced by a new elite. Indeed, the problem is somewhat self-correcting: as
old elites become progressively more powerful and less informed, smart &
hungry technocrats start looking at them as rubes to take advantage of, and
they end up being replaced by people with a more accurate conception of
reality.
My point is just that objectively speaking, power hierarchies seem a lot
flatter now than they did in the late 19th centuries. Nobody has died yet
because a tech startup founder hired an armed militia. Investors today
_complain_ about how they influence the market and buy software to minimize
that influence, they don't actively try to corner or manipulate it (well,
outside of Bitcoin and Porsche). The Vinod Khosla flap would barely have made
the news 100 years ago, he would've hired armed guards to keep the surfers out
and that would've been the end of it. We've made progress, as a society, in
the last 150 years: it's slow progress, but progress nonetheless.
------
simonw
This was absolutely fascinating. If you haven't been, I thoroughly recommend
taking a trip to Hearst Castle (a lovely drive down the pacific coast highway)
which is a monument to bought/stolen European antiquities.
------
iamthepieman
For the not quite so insanely wealthy there was always the option to construct
a building that only looked like it had been imported from europe[1] See just
below the first picture of the actual castle in that link.
I visited the Hammond castle two summers ago and it's exactly what you would
expect from a millionaire playboy inventor. Parts of it look like something
from a steampunk convention.
[1][http://www.travelswithnathaniel.com/2012/07/tour-hammond-
cas...](http://www.travelswithnathaniel.com/2012/07/tour-hammond-castle-
museum-in.html)
~~~
myNXTact
Ha ha Tonka state park in southern Missouri is an example of rich man building
his own
castle.[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ha_Ha_Tonka_State_Park](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ha_Ha_Tonka_State_Park)
------
strictnein
Off topic, but in the book Snow Crash, weren't the Japanese doing this with
prestigious colleges and the like? Moving them brick by brick to Japan? Or was
that a completely different book?
~~~
dredmorbius
That doesn't ring any bells to me as a plot element from _Snow Crash_.
There was Reverend Bob Rife's aircraft carrier, but that's the only re-
appropriated artifact I recall.
~~~
fit2rule
I seem to remember a few bridges being cyberpunked.
------
zach
And here I thought this only happened in _Gargoyles_. Cultural appropriation
has never since been this visceral.
I was fascinated by the description of 10,000+ pieces of a monastery in a
warehouse. It seems like such a perfect problem for modern technology. If
anyone has any such stories of ruins being reconstructed in computers, please
share.
~~~
Qworg
After spending some time in Turkey, I'm fascinated by this problem as well.
I've not seen anything though.
My thought is scan all of the rubble and have the computer attempt a best fit.
~~~
Someone
That has been attempted for a Roman world map. See
[http://formaurbis.stanford.edu/docs/FURdb.html](http://formaurbis.stanford.edu/docs/FURdb.html),
[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Forma_Urbis_Romae](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Forma_Urbis_Romae)
(unfortunately, most of that map likely is lost forever, so it's
reconstruction will remain fragmentary)
"computer reconstruction of pottery" also gives several papers on the subject.
------
PeterWhittaker
Odd article, would benefit from the word "American" at the beginning of the
headline: It concerns buildings moved from Europe to the US in the 19thC and
early 20thC by fantastically wealthy Americans.
~~~
ogreveins
Honest question, were there robber barons besides the famous ones in the US?
~~~
danielvf
Oh yes. The term came from the late Middle Ages when some people with a castle
and soldiers were essentially thieves with open power and quasi legal cover.
Their primary income was what they took, not taxes from lands they ruled.
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robber_baron](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robber_baron)
The Rhine river hills are covered with the castles of robber barons who took
protection money from ships. I had ancestors who lived in Central Europe who
lived near enough to a robber baron. From time to time, the baron's men would
ride out from their castle and steal everything they could carry from
neighboring villages.
~~~
thaumasiotes
> Their primary income was what they took, not taxes from lands they ruled.
> The Rhine river hills are covered with the castles of robber barons who took
> protection money from ships.
How exactly does this differ from "taxing"?
~~~
TheOtherHobbes
You get something back from taxes - things like health care (in Europe at
least), infrastructure, R&D investment, education, and so on.
Political systems that don't have proper checks and balances always devolve to
caste banditry - which is not quite the same thing as getting something useful
for your money.
~~~
thaumasiotes
This does not reflect any understanding of taxes before, say, the 19th or 20th
century.
Hammurabi certainly didn't devote his funds to public health care or public
education. Infrastructure, yes. R&D... probably not. Monuments, public
religion, and the military would have figured in his budget.
What you get back from taxes is stability. If robber barons kept ships from
being attacked (other than by themselves) along their stretch of the river,
they were fulfilling the necessary function of a taxing agent.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Oculus Touch - bkmn
https://www.oculus.com/rift/
======
cocktailpeanuts
How is this "touch"? More like "Oculus Hold"
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Sir Tim Berners-Lee: Semantic Web Is Open for Business - paul_reiners
http://blogs.zdnet.com/semantic-web/
======
bayareaguy
A direct link to the podcast transcript: [http://talis-
podcasts.s3.amazonaws.com/twt20080207_TimBL.htm...](http://talis-
podcasts.s3.amazonaws.com/twt20080207_TimBL.html)
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
GitHub Public Roadmap - nicolas_
https://github.com/github/roadmap
======
danicgross
It’s one thing for a startup to do this while small.
A whole other level of evolution to do it while you’re large. Imagine Apple
suddenly publishing their roadmap. This type of organizational neurogenesis
done as an adult is impressive.
EDIT: I am in admiration of the change, regardless of opinion on the value of
public roadmaps. It’s just rare to see big companies make big changes. Sign of
youthful vitality and health, in my opinion.
~~~
ryanSrich
Can you explain why? I really don’t see the draw of public roadmaps. I buy a
product because it works for me now. If there are improvements I need in the
future the company either implements them or they don’t. A public roadmap
doesn’t improve my experience at all. In fact, I might be less likely to buy
the product.
This feels like it opens github up to the vocal minority to scream and yell
publicly about features they want. Some of which could negatively impact other
users. And github will have to succumb to the pressure of that minority.
~~~
Solstinox
The only vocal minority that counts in business is the minority writing the
biggest checks. They probably get access to roadmaps anyway.
~~~
ryanSrich
With Github I’m not so sure. The online mob usually gets what they want.
Having said that, the overlap between those paying the most for Github and
those demanding the most might be 100%.
------
jiripospisil
> Discussions live in your project repository, so they’re accessible where
> your community is already working together. Their threaded format makes it
> easy to start, respond to, and organize unstructured conversations.
> Questions can be marked as answered, so over time a community’s knowledge
> base grows naturally.
I can imagine "GitHub Discussions" [0] cutting off a significant number of
Stack Overflow questions.
[0]
[https://github.com/github/roadmap/issues/104](https://github.com/github/roadmap/issues/104)
~~~
rikroots
I really like the idea behind this feature. Being able to add a discussions
'forum' to my main project could be an excellent way to start building a
community around the project.
Looking at the Discussions issue page -
[https://github.com/github/roadmap/issues/104](https://github.com/github/roadmap/issues/104)
\- it looks like this will be delivered to projects not in the Beta testing
group sometime before Christmas?
Out of interest, are there any project admins around who can comment on how
easy it is to moderate the Discussions threads? My one concern would be
managing flame wars, and minimising inaccurate answers participants may offer
each other.
~~~
GordonS
I'm looking forward to GitHub Discussions too. As well as helping foster
community and contributers, it's also a clear separation from Issues, where I
often see non-dev and peripheral questions being asked.
------
oefrha
This is welcome, but anyone else feeling that GitHub is moving in the more-
stuff-lower-quality direction? In particular I've wasted quite a bit of time
over the past year on scarcely documented features and misfeatures around
GitHub Actions. (To be clear I like GitHub Actions a lot.)
One example: just yesterday I found out that public images on GitHub Packages
Docker registry can't be used in GitHub Actions' jobs.<job_id>.container,
since the former is gated by auth for whatever goddamn reason and the latter
can only pull from public registries. Think about it, their (probably #1)
container-related feature can't use their own registry. Apparently people have
been complaining for almost a year now, yet nothing has changed.
~~~
ianwalter
I think more-stuff-lower-quality is kind of inevitable, but I am happy with
that general direction. I have run into a lot of annoying things like and
including your example. This roadmap would be better if it had a simple way to
submit and vote for feature requests like other public roadmaps.
~~~
shankun
(From GitHub product team)
Thanks, @ianwalter. We plan on having a public feedback repo soon - but in the
meantime, if you want to submit ideas, please check out
[https://support.github.com/contact/feedback](https://support.github.com/contact/feedback).
------
codeviking
I love how well organized and executed this is.
I love that the issues each share a common format and provide concise yet
clear documentation. The concise bit here is key -- I've had trouble perusing
similar, open product roadmaps from other products because of the verbosity /
level of detail.
Kudos to GitHub's team for doing such an excellent job in communicating and
managing the roadmap. Particularly given the size or the organization -- this
is no small feat.
------
kd913
It's 2020, the cost of an ipv4 address is more than $20 an address. Can there
be some focus to include ipv6 support so that perhaps those people in the
developing world who can't afford an ip address can access github and
contribute?
Such a mechanism would be an actual meaningful step for enabling access to
poorer communities.
~~~
slim
btw, Afrinic has probably the largest pool of unused addresses.
~~~
rasz
has or had?
[https://www.theregister.com/2019/12/17/another_afrinic_scand...](https://www.theregister.com/2019/12/17/another_afrinic_scandal/)
------
suyash
Actual Roadmap with KanBan Board :
[https://github.com/github/roadmap/projects/1](https://github.com/github/roadmap/projects/1)
~~~
fermienrico
Are we so sensitive to racism that the word "master" is offensive? There is a
task to change the default branch to "main".
Note: there is no "slave" branch.
Intent matters, not the literal meaning of the word taken a specific
orthogonal context. Not a single person in the millions of developers ever had
a perverse notion of what master branch means.
~~~
fooey
Are we so stubbornly "anti-sensitivity" that we have to have a fight over
changing a word?
The word is not necessary, so why does anyone have to be offended if it's
changed?
~~~
fermienrico
Not offended. The status quo = 'master'. You need to make a good reason to
change it. The onus is on _you_ to make a solid case to change the status quo.
I am fine with it, it is just so far fetched that it seems unnecessary and
pedantic. It would be hypocritical to target one thing but not the rest. How
about also removing the word "Master" from the dictionary? We should go the
full 9 yards you know.
What's next? We wanna lobby MasterCard to rebrand themselves? Because everyone
thinks that it is a card for the "Masters", right?
Absolutely ridiculous. I also heard some noise about the Chess game and colors
of the pieces.
~~~
bromuro
Take it easy - it is about time for a MasterCard rebranding :)
~~~
fermienrico
Lol, you never know.
If even I agree with cancel culture, I intentionally want to push back on it
because there is no nuance, there is no counter point being heard, there is
absolutely no check and balance. It is just mob rule and that's dangerous to
free thought and free speech. Immediately, after you read the previous
sentence, I bet some of you had an image of me pop up in your mind - "Stupid
Trump supporter, MAGA hat, gun loonie and a racist at heart". If it did, you
are a danger to the society just like those people that I described.
Soon, you'll have lawyers being cancelled because they're defending the racist
criminal who have the right to an attorney. Whatever is going on today is
extremely worrying.
------
bob1029
I really don't need a lot of fancy stuff in order for GitHub to be valuable to
me or my organization. Honestly, I did not find much of the roadmap to be
compelling.
For me, the core features that comprise my GH user story are:
\- Code
\- Pull Requests
\- Issues & Labels
We also have limited use of Actions (for check builds) and heavy use of the
API/Webhooks for integration with our own custom CI/CD tooling.
In my opinion, the biggest place where value should be added is in these 3
areas above. Some of the simplest ideas are the most powerful. We get an
incredible amount of mileage out of basics like issues & labels. If there were
additional aspects to issues similar to labels that could further enhance this
experience, I would be very interested. Our entire development process
revolves around issues to track tasks.
One of the things I've had in mind would be a way to build a markdown-defined
webform template that can be used for populating highly-structured issues
without requiring the user to edit a complex document each time.
For example, you could have CustomerTroubleTicketTemplate.md in a
.github/issue_templates/ path, and then when you go to click New Issue, a down
arrow could be provided that pops a list of all defined issue templates.
Selecting one would present the user with a webform (as defined in the
template markdown) that collects all required fields to create that issue. The
issue could be created with labels/assignments/etc as defined in the markdown
document. This would likely require enhancements to GFM.
Bonus points if there is some way to expose specific issue templates through
public GH pages so that your customers can submit tickets against your private
repositories even though they don't have direct access to your issue buckets.
I think a very small step in this direction could obviate a lot of use cases
people find with products like Zendesk (it would for us, anyways - we just
funnel ZD tickets back into GH issues).
------
gokhan
It's a longtime practice of Azure DevOps (former TFS) team [1][2] and many
from that team are now working under GitHub. Maybe that's a culture transfer
from MS.
[1] [https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/devops/release-
notes/...](https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/devops/release-
notes/features-timeline)
[2]
[https://dev.azure.com/mseng/AzureDevOpsRoadmap/_workitems/re...](https://dev.azure.com/mseng/AzureDevOpsRoadmap/_workitems/recentlyupdated)
------
staysaasy
Kudos to Github for trying this. I'm excited to see more SaaS companies "call
their shots" and provide insight into their roadmap plans. It seems like a
natural evolution of the industry.
For any enterprise SaaS businesses trying this at home – keep in mind that any
product information that you publish publicly can and likely will be used
against you by a competitor in a sales cycle at some point, fairly or
unfairly. This might still be worth it overall, but is a real risk that isn't
obvious until it happens to you (or you observe your team doing it to someone
else).
------
flixic
In case you are interested in Dark Mode, it's not on this roadmap.
~~~
prepend
Am I the only one who does not care about Dark Mode? I find it neat that
someone cares about it enough to mention it is missing, over lots of other
features that are missing.
I see it in lots of products and kind of ignored it, but is this a priority
for users?
~~~
notafraudster
I don't make dark mode part of my choice of whether to use something or not,
but given I am using something, I always choose dark mode.
On OLED screens like my phones, black reduces energy use. On regular screens,
dark mode subjectively seems to make things easier on my eyes. I also use
f.lux and related technologies. I also sometimes use yellow-tinting screen
glasses. I have no idea if any of this is scientifically valid, but at this
point I can feel my eyes decline significantly as I age. My particular vision
is 20/20 but one of my eyes is much worse and this contributes to a lot of eye
strain. I also have pretty chronic headaches.
Since my entire ability to make money hinges on computer screens, I will take
whatever nonsense option seems, subjectively, to make things easier on myself
or preserve my longevity.
GitHub and HN are probably the two things I use most that do not support dark
mode natively. My sense is that as far as feature requests go, dark mode
typically does not tie up resources that otherwise would be allocated to more
functionality-based features. GitHub doesn't need to provision more servers,
for instance, in order to implement dark mode. HN already has colour
customization, we need only to be able to customize a few other colours to
allow dark mode natively.
------
jeffnappi
How about basic feature parity with GitLab?
GitHub - if you're listening, _PLEASE_ implement protected tags :)
[https://github.community/t/feature-request-protected-
tags/17...](https://github.community/t/feature-request-protected-tags/1742)
------
catchmeifyoucan
Super excited about auto-merge for PRs. "Today, the workflow for these users
entails submitting pull requests and then coming back to the site to merge and
delete the branch."
[https://github.com/github/roadmap/issues/107](https://github.com/github/roadmap/issues/107)
~~~
silviogutierrez
Just FYI, I've been using this for a while and it works very well:
[https://kodiakhq.com](https://kodiakhq.com)
You can self host if you want, easy on Heroku.
Plug and play.
------
cltsang
Interesting that there's no mention of agile tools like Project cards, issue
dependencies, etc..
I wonder if the plan to incorporate features from Azure DevOps is still on-
going.
~~~
aupright
If you're looking for agile power-ups to GitHub Issues, there's a few great
options in the ecosystem. Check out ZenHub if you're looking for things like
issue dependencies, epics, multi-repo boards, etc. and want to stay in GitHub.
GitKraken Boards are also a great option and integrate with their Git GUI.
~~~
spankalee
My team uses ZenHub extensively, but it's not that great for OSS projects IMO.
The extra metadata and organization that ZenHub allows isn't visible via
GitHub issues, so it's basically just for the core team.
Issue dependencies should be part of the core issue tracker. And GitHub has
multi-repo boards, but only for repose in the same org.
------
gigatexal
whoever or whatever team came up with the personal README's for ones github
profile needs to be given the keys to all of Github because no feature in all
of my years of using github has had such a profound "cool" factor than this.
It will also go a long way to solidify the site as a social network. I see it
replacing my resume, I will just send people that link, much like I used to
with a personal website.
The roadmap is nice and it's nice that we might get to see what is going on or
coming up and maybe have a say in it. This seems a lot like what Gitlab is
doing though, so perhaps they're trying to get some of Gitlab's goodwill?
------
rasz
I recently learned Github is internally using AWS, and not Azure, for file
storage !?!?! :o
for example [https://github.com/CnCNet/cnc-
ddraw/files/4974882/ddraw.zip](https://github.com/CnCNet/cnc-
ddraw/files/4974882/ddraw.zip) redirects to [https://github-production-
repository-file-5c1aeb.s3.amazonaw...](https://github-production-repository-
file-5c1aeb.s3.amazonaws.com/110366814/4974882?X-Amz-Algorithm=AWS4-HMAC-
SHA256&X-Amz-Credential=AKIAIWNJYAX4CSVEH53A%2F20200728%2Fus-
east-1%2Fs3%2Faws4_request&X-Amz-Date=20200728T195408Z&X-Amz-
Expires=300&X-Amz-
Signature=4cee8b39040095c810769cf56f2ac509b26d14cd09ae3d04b00d007b6d637492&X-Amz-
SignedHeaders=host&actor_id=2623127&repo_id=110366814&response-content-
disposition=attachment%3Bfilename%3Dddraw.zip&response-content-
type=application%2Fx-zip-compressed)
~~~
hankchinaski
they will probably migrate at some point supposedly?
------
willow9886
Would be great to be able to "upvote" features.
~~~
mdaniel
From a certain perspective, this is what the :+1: and :-1: reaction emojis are
for, although I haven't checked to see if those are accessible via the issue
API
~~~
wonderlg
Of course they are. The problem here is that every issue is locked so no one
can react either.
------
open-paren
More direct link to the roadmap:
[https://github.com/github/roadmap/projects/1](https://github.com/github/roadmap/projects/1)
------
factorialboy
In comparison, the GitLab Roadmap:
[https://about.gitlab.com/direction/](https://about.gitlab.com/direction/)
~~~
willow9886
I tend to prefer the style GitHub has gone with. Easier to quickly identify
new features of interest.
~~~
sytse
If you prefer that style maybe [https://about.gitlab.com/upcoming-
releases/](https://about.gitlab.com/upcoming-releases/) is helpful.
------
jborichevskiy
Kudos to them, I want to see more of this.
Another great roadmap I enjoyed reading through was the one of IPFS. Formatted
somewhat differently (one long document) but still just gets me excited
reading through it while communicating key objectives and milestones.
[https://github.com/ipfs/roadmap](https://github.com/ipfs/roadmap)
------
LockAndLol
Nothing on ForgeFed and accepting pull/merge requests from other code
versioning hosts. Can't say I'm surprised.
------
dochtman
There was disappointingly little on the code review UX, or making the
(Android, in my case) apps better.
------
ChrisMarshallNY
That's a really nice presentation.
I hope that they are able to pull it off. It's ambitious, but they now have a
sweet sugar daddy, and can afford it.
I use GH for all my work, and look forward to seeing some of this come to be.
------
mderazon
This is very good and interesting to see.
Also, now that it's public, it's interesting to see as a non-enterprise user,
that many new planned features are going enterprise first
For example, private GitHub pages:
[https://github.com/github/roadmap/issues/77](https://github.com/github/roadmap/issues/77)
A long requested feature for private repos is going enterprise first. Not sure
why, I don't know if this is purely business decision or if it has a technical
reason
------
GordonS
Great to see a roadmap so we have an idea what's coming.
A little OT, but what I'd love to see on the roadmap is rolling back the
recent UI changes! Rounding every corner in sight just looks _wrong_ ; it
doesn't "suit" GitHub. The accompanying layout changes also don't help.
I reacted the same way during preview, and after living with it for a few
weeks I still feel the same - the recent UI changes still look and feel odd,
like it was little more than busywork.
------
The_rationalist
Sad to see that the biggest missing feature of github.com (and actually a
simple one) is _not_ on their roadmap, not even considered in the "future"
section...
[https://github.com/isaacs/github/issues/1125](https://github.com/isaacs/github/issues/1125)
~~~
bastardoperator
To be fair this looks really simple to wire up using the API and a single
webhook.
~~~
The_rationalist
Yet nobody has done a great implementation of it. There is an unofficial
github.com action but e.g it doesn't allow to choose the branch name
~~~
bastardoperator
I would assume the branch name would just match the issue id?
------
jeremy_k
Interesting to see people opening issues for things they want when nothing in
the README suggests that Github was seeking community input. I realize that
this is possible due to the fact that it is an open source repository, but its
possible the issues could get flooded and this repository becomes less useful?
~~~
abalaji
If you click on the roadmap link in the main README, you can see the issues
selected for development on a GH Project Kanban board. [1]
[1]
[https://github.com/github/roadmap/projects/1](https://github.com/github/roadmap/projects/1)
------
llamataboot
Was actually hoping there would be more community features on the road map. I
know I'm in the minority, but the promise of social coding is still out there
waiting to be realized and more ability for open source projects to
collaborate in diverse ways would be welcome.
But Github discussions seems interesting!
------
zeckalpha
> Existing issues are currently read-only, and we are locking conversations,
> as we get started. Interaction limits are also in place to ensure issues
> originate from GitHub.
In other words: “our issue and community management functionality does not
scale.”
------
a13n
It looks so bad... there are great tools out there that are built specifically
for sharing your public roadmap with your users. Using GitHub for this is very
rough on the eyes, and just bad for usability.
~~~
hn_throwaway_99
Honestly, do not care, at all. The fact that they're doing it I think is
awesome. So many large cloud providers (cough, GCP, cough) are so loath to
give any visibility into their upcoming roadmaps, and it's extremely
frustrating. I totally understand priorities may change, but having a general
roadmap lets me plan much more easily.
------
voodootrucker
It would be nice if they would prioritize reliability over features. Their
uptime has been terrible lately.
------
jrochkind1
I see a LOT of planned continuing investment in "Actions". Makes sense.
------
adav
Look under the "Projects" tab to see it laid out more visually.
------
julius_set
So are we finally getting dark mode for Github on web?...
------
eyeball
When is this going to absorb / replace azure devops?
------
dabbit
Yay! Codespaces soon! Discussions too.
------
verroq
Glad to know they are working on this idiotic stuff:
[https://github.com/github/roadmap/issues/63](https://github.com/github/roadmap/issues/63)
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Ada 2012: A New Language for Safe and Secure Software (2012) - shepardrtc
http://cotsjournalonline.com/articles/view/102810
======
jmilkbal
These articles give the worst impression of Ada possible. It's not the it's a
specialized language for the military, but a language created to cleanup the
DoD's software nightmare of the 70s, which is not unlike the software
nightmares of today. It just happens that they had a pretty good grasp, even
at that time, of what helps make good software easier to write, large software
projects easier to manage and maintain, and strong ideas about how much a
language should intervene if the programmer is doing things that look pretty
dumb.
Ada has a neat OO system (not like the Javas or C++s), built-in state-of-the-
art tasking (since 1983!), ranged types (one of the things I can hardly bare
to live without), but also simple things like switches that aren't useless and
just a general appreciation for what a discrete type can allow you to do. It
has generics, too, though I know they've been proven irrelevant by newer
languages. Have you seen that new Java 8 date time stuff? It's playing catch
up to Ada. Ada's numerics are, hands down, the best facilities of any
mainstream language.
Most importantly, it's probably already available for your Linux distribution
because it's a part of the GNU Compiler Collection, which means that it's on
the commercial OS you've settled for, as well.
An out of print book that I always recommend to those who are interested in
playing with Ada is John English's "The Craft of Object-Oriented Programming".
Enjoy.
[http://www.adaic.org/resources/add_content/docs/craft/html/c...](http://www.adaic.org/resources/add_content/docs/craft/html/contents.htm)
~~~
stickfigure
I did the first couple years of my undergrad (starting 1990) in Ada. I liked
the generics, although the lack of inheritance was peculiar for an OO
language. As a Pascal programmer in high school, Ada was pleasant and
familiar, but I quickly lost interest when I discovered Eiffel. Eiffel felt
like what Ada should have been from the beginning.
I've not written a single line of either post-graduation.
~~~
pjmlp
Sadly both suffered from enterprise prices by the compiler vendors.
Although Ada seems to be quite well in high integrity systems. At least that
is my perception from the, now regular presence, at FOSDEM and European safety
conferences.
------
jcadam
I was an Ada programmer for about 4 years in the aerospace industry.
I remember my last Ada project. It was run as a traditional 'waterfall'
project (In the early 2010s). I sat in my hole (cubicle, in the very center of
a massive cube farm) coding away on a simulation model for a satellite's
attitude control system, while the other devs worked on their own modules in
silence and isolation. Integration and testing was pushed all the way to the
end of the project.
I was a scumbag contractor, hence I was not allowed to see the complete code
base like the regular employees were, so I couldn't, say, do a complete build
to verify my stuff worked (because some of the libraries I needed to build my
module I wasn't allowed access to). So I was armed with the Ada compiler as
one of my only tools (I just had to ignore the link errors. Though, I _was_
able to code up a few tests for some of the algorithms I was able to isolate,
even though unit testing was neither expected nor encouraged, as it did
nothing to increase my SLOC numbers -- i.e., "wasting time").
I worked slowly and deliberately (getting constant flak for my SLOC numbers
not going up fast enough -- and apparently if you ever reduce your SLOC,
you've made _negative_ progress), and at the end when I passed my code off to
the 'build master' to my amazement my module built and largely _just worked_.
I have to give credit to the language -- it caught a __ton __of stuff at
compile time.
Suddenly I was no longer a slacker (Gee, thanks). At the end of that project I
left and never touched Ada again. I now (probably unfairly) associate Ada with
old-school waterfall-driven software development and dank, dark offices with
flickering, soul-sucking fluorescent lights.
~~~
monocasa
You'll like this:
[http://www.folklore.org/StoryView.py?story=Negative_2000_Lin...](http://www.folklore.org/StoryView.py?story=Negative_2000_Lines_Of_Code.txt)
~~~
jcadam
Been a while since I read that :)
I do remember entering a negative number one week on the manager's "status
spreadsheet (an excel spreadsheet on a network share that he asked everyone to
edit)" next to my name. Of course he came by asking for an explanation, and if
memory serves had me enter the number of lines deleted as a positive number,
so that the 'metrics' he reported up the chain didn't look bad.
------
copx
American programmers like to think they are engineers. German ones cannot
because "engineer" is a legally protected title here and programming is not
recognized as an engineering discipline.
I think that is justified by the way. Programming is a fad / fashion driven
industry more than anything.
This is relevant here because whenever I look at Ada source code I hear synth
pop. It is _so 1980s_. Sorry, maybe if Google or some other hip company took
Ada, and simply changed the superficial appearance (i.e. syntax, identifier
names) to look more 2010ish, gave it a cool name, and marketed it as the hot
new thing it might go somewhere.
Sad fact is, whatever merits Ada has or does not have is completely irrelevant
until that happens.
~~~
mauricemir
Probably explains why Germany is such a powerhouse in software development
NOT.
I do wonder about the effect of all the bright kids who would do CS/Computing
in the USA/Uk instead want to work for Audi.
Rigid hierarchies do have down sides until recently get put on the vocational
track in the German school system that was it you where on it for life and it
was almost impossible to go from Aprentice-> Technician to Engineer.
~~~
kriro
It might not be a powerhouse but it's fairly stable/good. There's at least one
major player (SAP) there's plenty of companies in future fields (Metaio for AR
for example) and there's a lot of in house stuff. There's also sort of an
"alternative OS" tradition (Suse, yellowTAB). There's also more of a focus on
business software (SAP influence might shine through) imo (the difference
between Wirtschaftsinformatik and Information Systems has been discussed at
length in journals)
Berlin is one of the better non-SV startup locations from what I hear.
~~~
mcguire
" _There 's at least one major player (SAP)..._"
I'm not very familiar with any of the other examples you mention, but, uh,....
Have you ever gone anywhere near SAP?
~~~
kriro
I've worked for a competitor. Independent of the quality of their products SAP
is still a big software company and the German software marked makes up
roughly 50% of the entire European market. At least that was the case around
2012 haven't checked since (SAP alone is responsible for most of it). My point
is merely that Germany is hardly a software wasteland and the assertion that
"the talented people flock to traditional engineering" is somewhat dubious
(imo).
There's some cultural indicators that programming is a topic of interest as
well (the existence and size of the CCC for example).
------
kriro
The only thing I remember about Ada is that it introduced exceptions (or maybe
was one of the languages that spread it). Useful little tidbit since I like to
keep a mental picture of what languages roughly influenced other languages.
+it has a military/secure programming background (and thus is inherently
friendly towards proving/verification) It was fairly widespread in Austria for
a while (90s).
Never really used it and kind of expected it to be dead or only used in
specific old systems. Interesting to see that there's a new version (I have to
admit I'm still stuck on 95 and missed 2007 completely).
Edit: I think SAP generates roughly 1/3 of all European software revenue so
that's already pretty major. Germany has always hovered around 50% of the
European software market (last time I checked was a couple of years ago)
~~~
pjmlp
Exceptions were already in CLU and Mesa (70's), among others.
------
jeff_carr
"Ada: A New Language"
Haha. Did I just take some acid and end up back in 1973. That would be cool if
this is true. Now I can really see Pink Floyd live.
~~~
snom320
No, you just missed the "2012" part of the headline. :)
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
SleepBus – nightly non-stop trips between LA and SF - smaili
http://www.sleepbus.co/
======
joezydeco
Given how many accidents we see with drowsy Megabus, Greyhound, and semi-
trailer drivers swerving around in traffic and plowing into other vehicles we
really should ask: _is this a good idea_?
Do we have a guarantee that SleepBus drivers are fully rested for an overnight
shift?
------
api_or_ipa
The obvious status quo is purchasing a redeye flight. The Bay Area is
remarkably well served by 3 international airports and LAX is enormous. Seems
to me that there will be lots of overnight flights at competitive rates to
compete against.
The other issue is cost. Each bus you purchase is a huge investment and
presumably unusable during the day for other operations.
The economics seem slim at a high startup cost. I'd be interested in seeing
how VCs react to this idea.
~~~
david-given
The UK has a few sleeper trains, where you get a proper (if small) cabin with
a proper bed etc. They run from London to some of the major cities; I'm
particularly fond of the London-to-Inverness sleeper (the buffet car does a
killer haggis).
Cost wise, it's considerably more expensive than an Easyjet cattle-car class
flight.
But the big benefit is that it takes no working-day wall clock time. I can
leave the office in London after work, comfortably reach Euston where I board
the train and settle down in the buffer car with a drink and wifi; then I
arrive at Inverness at about 0700 the next morning, refreshed having slept
well. All the travel happens while I'm asleep.
Conversely, flying Easyjet takes waking time. I have to leave the office in
the middle of the day, get to the airport, wait, check in, wait, board, fly,
and arrive at my destination still during waking hours --- it eats most of an
entire day.
I can't tell how this bus would compare against an overnight red-eye flight,
because we don't have those (the UK's not big enough!). But I imagine that
having a bunk would mean that I could actually sleep on one of these buses,
unlike the fake sleep you get on planes. I'd definitely consider this, even if
it was more expensive than the plane.
~~~
doug1001
very well said--"no wall clock time" as you put it. I've done the Euston/Kings
Cross -> Inverness and E/KC -> Ft William many times and i loved it. Inverness
has an airport and it's only an up-and-down flight, but what an ass ache to
travel to gatwick to catch this flight rather than a 15-minute tube ride to
the train station.
------
nikolay
Great idea... but its success depends on the cost. The homepage points to
Wix's Facebook, Twitter, Google+.
------
aoiwelle
My wife has tried many times to book, is there any transparency around when
trips are actually made/one's ability to book?
------
JBReefer
This is a great idea, isn't this fairly common in Mexico?
~~~
yincrash
It's common in a lot of countries. I took one in Vietnam and it looks like
this (a bit denser than these buses, I believe)
[http://www.sapavietnam-tours.com/image/sleeper-bus-sapa-
viet...](http://www.sapavietnam-tours.com/image/sleeper-bus-sapa-vietnam8.JPG)
------
mey
[http://www.mercurynews.com/bay-area-
news/ci_24429126/homeles...](http://www.mercurynews.com/bay-area-
news/ci_24429126/homeless-turn-overnight-bus-route-into-hotel-22)
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Bowing to pressure, PepsiCo withdraws its lawsuit against Indian potato farmers - rustoo
https://www.businessinsider.in/pepsico-withdraws-its-lawsuit-against-four-indian-potato-farmers/articleshow/69156061.cms
======
gingabriska
But I think it's so bad. What if same farmers come up with a new type of
potato then PepsiCo will be able to grow it too using the same logic
If you don't respect others property rights, others will not respect yours
either.
Ofc, big companies can always give exclusive contracts to small farmers who is
willing to grow the protected type of potatoes their competitors use.
That said I don't believe it will hurt PepsiCo a lot since the brand moat
they've doesn't rest on a specific type of potatoes, not like after this event
local chips producers will be neck to neck with PepsiCo.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
TTIP: A locked room, no internet access, two hours, 300 pages and lots of typos - bloke_zero
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2016/02/10/surreal_world_of_the_ttip/
======
roddux
It's been suggested that the typos are unique to each viewer as a form of
anti-copying mechanism, allowing anybody who sees the pirated excerpt to link
it back to the leaker.
Clever, but surely easily thwarted?
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Show HN: one day project, get better bug reports from customers / clients - bobbywilson0
http://goodbugreport.com/
======
bobbywilson0
This idea was inspired by Jeff Casimir's talk at Rocky Mountain Ruby
Conference, he basically said it is hard to get a good bug report from a
client, then outlined a framework for them to follow. I put this framework
into a simple form for people to use.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Even Tetris is hard to test - shalmanese
http://blog.jwhitham.org/2014/10/its-hard-to-test-software-even-simple.html
======
thu
The interesting bit that isn't mentioned is that all the given examples are
actually part of the game specification, i.e. those behaviours are there on
purpose. It means that if you have an accurate list of the desired features,
you could probably also achieve 100% coverage. It is also possible that
testing some features would not increase the code coverage.
"Hard to test" in the submission title didn't mean what I thought: I though it
meant it was hard to write tests for Tetris, not that it was hard to recover a
complete specification of the game while playing it.
~~~
Joeri
The corrolary is that you must have a specification in order to test
comprehensively. Either you use some form of TDD and your tests are your
specification (and any behavior not under test is undefined), or you have
exact and complete specifications that the as-built software can be compared
to, and any hehavior not in the specficiation is undefined.
------
fidotron
This is amusingly naive. I've seen the spec for Tetris, and it's surprisingly
big - much larger than the smallest known fully conforming code, which is
still surprisingly large. There are also a non tiny number of people knocking
around for whom it's their entire job to test it. "Even" Tetris? No, sorry -
that's nonsense.
The big problem here is that code coverage tests don't help you cover what you
should have explicitly defined or tested but didn't. As a result a lot of
things end up still defined by implementation and not specification, as all
sorts of important details only got defined during implementation.
------
mgraczyk
Nitpick: As an avid Tetris player, I have to say that the examples given for
"extremely rare" events actually happen quite often during normal play. In
particular, clearing 4 lines at once, two times in row will generally happen
within the first few minutes of game play and is sort of the whole goal (if
you're trying to maximize points). Wall kicks are less common but certainly
not rare enough that their processing code would be left uncovered after
playing a few games.
~~~
clebio
Are there more rare scenarios that you can think of?
~~~
shalmanese
There's a lot of special conditions around having almost the entire playing
field filled in.
------
userbinator
One way to reduce the number of possible paths is to reduce the number of
distinct cases, often via refactoring or a simpler yet more general algorithm;
to use an extremely contrived example, it's like the difference between
int addOne(int x) {
if(x == 0)
return 1;
else if(x == 1)
return 2;
...
}
and
int addOne(int x) {
return x + 1;
}
I always keep in mind the famous Dijkstra quotes about testing and program
complexity:
"Program testing can be used to show the presence of bugs, but never to show
their absence!"
"Simplicity is prerequisite for reliability."
~~~
Too
This is a perfect example of why line/function coverage is a silly
measurement. It doesn't take into account global state and function input.
Take the second function above, you could get 100% line coverage in just one
run. But the function does _exactly_ the same thing as the one where you only
got 50% coverage, already things smell fishy. You can also test the function
with millions of different inputs, all of them giving the same 100% coverage,
and it will work perfectly fine, until suddenly you try addOne(int.max) and it
will fail.
What you want to be really sure is state coverage, or input range coverage
assuming your functions are pure. Now testing every function from int.min-
int.max might seem unrealistic but what you have to do then is constrain the
possible range of input or divide into ranges with special cases that you can
somehow group together. Say for example int.min, negative numbers, zero,
positive numbers and int.max.
Also, just because you covered a line doesn't mean it's correct, the only
thing you've really tested is that the program doesn't crash. For the test to
be really useful you also need a correct result of the output, added by a
human. You can't just randomize input to increase the coverage.
~~~
asveikau
I came to this thread hoping somebody would say pretty much exactly your first
paragraph. The author appears to be selling a code coverage tool so of course
he falls into the trap. In real life you have to remember that hitting a line
once is not the same as showing it to be correct. People who buy into code
coverage tools make this mistake a lot.
------
singingfish
Bah one line of BBC basic. One line of _incomprehensible_ BBC basic more like.
When I was at school I implemented a game in three lines of spectrum basic. 5
if you wanted scoring. And it was readable. And it was the most popular
computer game in the school by virtue of it being quicker to type than loading
a tape, and being moderately entertaining. Just bound the cursor keys to the
values in the line() function. The game crashed if the line went out of bounds
:).
------
zach
This is a great example of the value of test plans. This is basically
technology to reconstruct missing test plans via the code. But of course
someone already knew about the subtle "wall kick" feature since she or he
wrote that code. It shouldn't be this hard, with some effective communication.
And actually, especially in games, test plans are still poorly communicated.
In the old days, it was awful -- you would have the publisher doing all the
QA, and barely speaking to the development team apart from bug reports. QA
still often doesn't get involved until the last half of the project, before
which time nobody has been thinking much about testing.
As studios improve their production, this is getting better. As a programmer,
I've had more collaboration with QA as I work, at its best including having
our QA liaison talk out a test plan with me while I'm working the feature.
With enough communication, hopefully this kind of detective work to figure out
what to test can be avoided.
~~~
nanomage
Agreed. Dev's see the specs, and QA sees the holes. I get to participate from
the initial planning into release. As a QA person I feel very lucky.
In regards to the article, i would wager the better scores will be found by QA
than developers :-P
------
forrestthewoods
Interesting. I do wonder what the actual value of 100% coverage. I'm not
saying it's not substantial, I'm just curious how many cases that still
misses. There are a lot of permutations of data that can be used by code, how
many are possible and how many cause issues?
~~~
lucaspiller
One of the things I've found as a side effect of people using code coverage
tools is that instead of testing the behaviour of a method they end up testing
the implementation. I think this is because they initially test the behaviour,
but then see that one path is missing, so add a test to ensure that path is
ran - instead of just testing the behaviour that calls that path and checking
the code coverage tool. This ends up causing trouble if you ever want to
change the implementation as you end up having to throw away half the tests,
which means a lot of effort you spent to get 100% code coverage is now gone.
~~~
canadev
I've faced this problem in my own tests. I want to achieve total coverage so
that I know that I've got all the cases covered, but then I end up testing the
implementation rather than the contract. I'm not sure what to do about it.
~~~
aikah
You cant have it both ways in my opinion. High test coverage == testing every
possible paths == looking at implementation details. If you are testing an
algorithm(and games are full of these)you want it to be a 100% accurate
therefore you dont have much choice.
~~~
alkonaut
Tests should be based on the specification. If I want to change some internal
implementation detail I should only have to verify that the current tests
pass.
If a e.g game contains a sorting in some place in the renderer, I can replace
the quicksort with a mergesort as long as the renderer interface is still
testing ok. The new sort algorithm may have new special case paths (even
number of items vs odd for example) but it's not a concern of the renderer
public interface. I may however have introduced a bug with an odd number of
items here and the old code was 100% covered and now it isn't. So there is a
potential problem and the 99% has actually helped spot it.
If the sorting is a private implementation detail of the renderer then there
is no other place to test it than to add a new test to the renderer component
only because the sorting algo requires it for a code path. This is BAD.
The proper action here is NOT to add tests to the renderer component to test
the sorting code path, but instead to make the sorting visible and testable in
isolation via its own public interface.
So one of the positive things about requiring coverage is that if you do it
right, it will lead to smaller and more decoupled modules of code.
The bad thing is that if you do it wrong you will have your God classes and a
bunch of tests coupled tightly to them.
------
clebio
Nice to see a context and link to code specifications in a high-risk and
highly-regulated industry. 'Work slowly and don't break anything' would make a
good poster.
([http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DO-178B](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DO-178B))
------
ajuc
Meanwhile BBC Basic one-line version has 100% code coverage the moment you
start it :)
~~~
davidrusu
well, if your code coverage scope is one line that's true, but it would make
more sense to scope on statements.
------
nathancahill
TL;DR: Use a coverage tool for tests.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Your Company Is Screwing Itself by Not Supporting Open Source Software - jmadsen
https://medium.com/@codebyjeff/your-company-is-screwing-itself-by-not-supporting-open-source-software-c0e58ff04629
======
carlmr
The title should be changed to "OSS developers are being screwed over by
companies". It's a fundamental clash of OSS principles and capitalism. At my
company we don't use that much OSS, because we're in embedded, but I'm not
aware of a slush fund, there's no way for a normal employee to make this
happen. It's fundamental to capitalism that companies maximize profits.
Individually it's always better to use OSS, but not pay for it. They'll pay
only if they get something in return, which they wouldn't get otherwise.
OSS developers need to have split licenses between corporate and private use.
Corporate use has licensing costs. Otherwise they don't get paid.
BTW the pre-fab wall makers also don't hand out the walls for free and ask for
donations later. Because they'd get 0. Business is business.
~~~
nailer
No it shouldn't. The article is about businesses who waste time reinventing
the wheel and writing their own string handling software. It's from a PoV os
company self-interest, not OSS developer interest (which is fine).
~~~
carlmr
Most of the article is about asking companies to donate to OSS because they
profit from it.
~~~
jmadsen
Thank you. Yes, that's what it's about.
However, it's not so important to get _companies_ to directly donate if the
developers who _use_ it push for the donations.
Contrary to Supreme Court rulings, _companies_ aren't decision makers, people
are.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
UI is the Killer Feature - puns
http://www.usabilitypost.com/post/10-ui-is-the-killer-feature
======
JeremyChase
UI is extremely important, but this article is wrong to say that without it
your product is doomed to fail.
The most obvious example that comes to mind is an xterm window. Even on OSX
any programmer will spend 2/3 of their time looking at text.
Jer
~~~
zenspider
"The most obvious example that comes to mind is an xterm window. Even on OSX
any programmer will spend 2/3 of their time looking at text."
Isn't that an example of _good_ UI? Much like Pages does a good job of giving
you a blank sheet of paper and not much else (initially), Terminal.app does a
good job of giving you a command line and not much else (ever).
~~~
JeremyChase
Ok, my example isn't the best.
The reason it came to mind is that an xterm window is a perfect example of
horrid "UI" that functions beautifully. The interface is often unfriendly with
unexpected results, but you can get a lot done in a short amount of time.
Jer
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Google’s fires four organizers after hiring union-busting firm - callil
https://medium.com/@GoogleWalkout/googles-next-moonshot-union-busting-7bd2784dc690
======
throwawaylolx
This article is ranked 16th on HN first page right now, and it has 80 points,
was posted 4 hours ago, and has 16 comments. A different article [1] is ranked
8th on HN right now, and it has 31 points, was also posted 4 hours ago and it
has 18 comments. They were both posted about the same time, they have the same
number of comments, but the article that has significantly more points is
ranked significantly lower.
If I understand the HN ranking algorithm, this means this submission is
heavily reported. This is not the first time I observe this behavior for anti-
Google submissions. Is there a different explanation for this phenomenon other
than heavy reporting?
[1]
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21636093](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21636093)
~~~
9HZZRfNlpR
Well before going full conspiracy, I believe a lot of tech people are anti
union themselves compared to some other fields. I'm not one of them but as
long as there is demand like right now for programmers, the conditions and pay
is good.
~~~
flir
> for programmers, the conditions and pay is good.
Whatever happened with that anti-poaching agreement the big SV companies had?
Because it seems to me the pay and conditions would be a lot better in a truly
free market.
~~~
otras
Do you mean the High-Tech Employee Antitrust Litigation?
[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-
Tech_Employee_Antitrust...](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-
Tech_Employee_Antitrust_Litigation)
------
dataduck
There has been quite a lot of noise on HN about this, and many of the other
posts have disappeared, perhaps in an attempt to stop the whole front page
getting swamped by this story.
You can find the other links here:
[https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=pastWeek&page=0&prefix=fal...](https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=pastWeek&page=0&prefix=false&query=Google%20four&sort=byPopularity&type=story)
I wouldn't normally bother, but the medium article is about the least balanced
of the lot. As far as I can tell, the protesters weren't fired for unionizing,
in fact they never attempted to push for better pay or conditions; they were
fired for harassing other employees in order to further private political
agendas. This changes the story somewhat.
~~~
HelloNurse
Private political agendas? Who are they, the oxymoron party?
~~~
koheripbal
That's funny. ...but I believe the notion is that it was a political agenda
not shared by the company or the employee's peers.
------
sunstone
So Google really has hit the nadir of the wall that Microsoft hit when Gates
testified before the Justice department. It's a tough day for all of us Google
fan boys but it's time to look in the mirror and carefully consider the
current reality.
~~~
me_me_me
What always baffles me is the term fanboy, how in this day and age do we still
have people believing/having faith in a company.
They all did something abhorrent or yet to be caught doing it. And yet we have
people who would seemingly jump into fire for a brand (even in face of damning
facts).
Is this a form of ancient tribalism still at play?
~~~
pjmlp
Indeed, I don't get how people can get into "don't be evil" and other kind of
corporate propaganda.
~~~
michaelcampbell
How many years now has that NOT been a thing?
~~~
pjmlp
It was never a thing to begin with.
Anyone that believed it was only deluding themselves.
~~~
me_me_me
Ah, I wouldn't be so cynical.
Most people start with good intention. Then they get power and power corrupts.
~~~
pjmlp
That is the thing, companies aren't people.
They are composed by a group of people, each with their own set of goals and
morals, which isn't the same thing.
------
mc32
You don’t get to organize and sabotage billions of dollars of revenues and get
to keep your job.
Google set up this attitude they fostered that worked in attracting talent and
productivity. It worked for a time to improve internal issues. But as it
creeps and threatens the corporation itself, it cannot continue for
management.
But as history has borne out, you have to know when to regain control. It’s
the struggle of the Bolsheviks and Mensheviks, PLA and red guards.
------
rocqua
What has made google look at the facts and think this is the right way to
proceed? Do they think this won't blow up? Do they fear unions so much that
this is worth the bad PR?
Or is this just a corporate process that no-one took a big picture view on?
Because from where I am standing, this just seems like a dumb move.
~~~
otalp
People will forget about this in a few weeks
~~~
Fordec
"People will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people
will never forget how you made them feel"
------
netcan
Currently, with the way labour organising works... it seems to either go
nowhere, or go into a (belligerent) dichotomy. Professional organizers
themselves often see it as an entirely dichotomous, zero-sum game, an
inevitable conflict between opposite interests.
Overall I'm curious about unions. I haven't had much/any direct experience for
>20 years. Most of the Union examples we have today are either public-ish
sector or some old status quo union inherited from an old generation.
It's just hard for me to picture an old-school unionised version of Google or
(more to the point) Amazon.
What is the end game or success case, for a Google union?
~~~
pas
Labor should try to change regulation/policy to better help people live while
trying to find a new job and/or simply unemployed. Forcing companies to employ
someone they don't want is not a winning strategy on the long term. (Though
worrying about poor poor companies is a bit premature considering how abysmal
worker protections are in the US.)
~~~
netcan
Ultimately unions are representing an interest group, somewhat separate from
the company and itself.
...it arguably make sense to go for job security. Security is valuable... to
their members. If it's also popular with members, why not put it on the table?
Even if it does hurt long term profits/success, profits are the primary
interest of the other party to the negotiation... the
firm/employer/shareholder interest. If the firm value (to take the other
extreme) employment with n demand then they can negotiate for that, and
compromise elsewhere.
The real reason (imo) that infirable employees, unsustainable pensions and
other "union problems" happen is specifically _because_ short term takes
precedent in a negotiation. Looking 15 years ahead is the privelage of someone
who isn't making hard compromises today.
Pension and job security promises are cheap now, expensive later.
~~~
koheripbal
Programmers need job security? That does not seem to correlate with reality.
------
PunchTornado
> One of the workers set up notifications to receive emails detailing the work
> and whereabouts of other employees without their knowledge or consent.
This is shady/creepy. There is no need to know when and where a colleague is
every hour, every day. You shouldn’t be allowed to do this.
I’m glad an employee who does this is getting fired because I wouldn’t feel
safe around them.
My calendar is public, but that doesn’t mean you should be alerted every time
I go somewhere.
~~~
thundergolfer
Where are you quoting that from? I just string searched it in the article and
got nothing.
~~~
cowsandmilk
The Bloomberg article doesn’t have that exact quote, but has the google memo
with the allegations
[https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-11-25/google-
fi...](https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-11-25/google-fires-four-
employees-citing-data-security-violations)
~~~
Fiadliel
HN link for that article:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21636583](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21636583)
------
blankety445566
Xoogler. Several people who were involved in organizing protests have also
quit over the past year or so, after posting stories of the retaliation they
faced, including being reassigned, getting bad performance reviews and such.
I jumped ship for these kinds of reasons, but looking ahead a couple years.
You simply cannot scale culture, especially when culture that prevents it from
going full balls-to-the-wall profit. Google is growing at such a rate that it
surpassed organic trajectory; it's discarding and digesting its own culture as
it swallows up the tech industry and doubles down on surveillance. The
technical capabilities of the panopticon it has already built should be the
subject of (world) government oversight. Sadly, tech giants have outpaced
democracy's ability to recognize and rein in threats to human freedom.
Google's play to be everyone's digital assistant should be recognized for what
it nakedly is: a play to absolutely dominate every single person's life and
sell those lives to the highest bidder.
------
close04
> Around the same time Google redrafted its policies, making it a fireable
> offense to even look at certain documents. And let’s be clear, looking at
> such documents is a big part of Google culture; the company describes it as
> a benefit in recruiting, and even encourages new hires to read docs from
> projects all across the company. Which documents were off limits after this
> policy change? The policy was unclear, even explicitly stating the documents
> didn’t have to be labeled to be off limits.
Is such a policy legally enforceable or is it relying on the fact that Google
can outspend them in a litigation?
~~~
brown9-2
With at-will employment, almost any reason is justifiable.
------
imvetri
Tech - Past - Leaders were science lovers, humanity saviours, Going past
limits of intelligence. Tech - Present - Contaminated with Human management
science, economics and anything that gets touched by money. Science based on
top of money, is it a real science at all?
Nope.
------
mikojan
Expropriate Google.
------
erlag
Seems there is still hope for Google. Few more actions like that and maybe
they will start behaving like a company and not like an ideological echo
chamber.
~~~
dabbernaught420
Did you ever really think that they'd let ideology get in the way of profit?
~~~
erlag
I hoped not, but could based on what I've seen in the past it seemed like they
can somehow utilise the crazies for their benefit. Now it seems things start
to balance out a bit. I hope this will get more intensive in the next months
and Google will be forced to really act.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
The Low Latency Live Streaming Landscape in 2019 - mmcclure
https://mux.com/blog/the-low-latency-live-streaming-landscape-in-2019/
======
jdietrich
Interesting example: there's currently a major squabble in the British
gambling industry over the use of drones to provide low-latency streams of
horse racing. Off-track betting is legal here, as is in-play betting - you can
place a bet right until the winning horse crosses the line.
The latency for a typical satellite broadcast is about 10 seconds, so several
gambling syndicates operate their own drones to provide a private low-latency
stream, thereby gaining a huge advantage on in-play betting. The drones are
being flown legally in uncontrolled airspace, so there racetracks are at a
loss as to how to respond.
[https://www.theguardian.com/sport/blog/2019/jan/16/talking-h...](https://www.theguardian.com/sport/blog/2019/jan/16/talking-
horses-racecourses-vow-to-ban-drone-giving-punters-an-edge-horse-racing-tips)
[https://www.racingpost.com/news/open-skies-authority-says-
no...](https://www.racingpost.com/news/open-skies-authority-says-nothing-to-
stop-drones-being-flown-near-racecourses/364002)
~~~
throw_away2
How do they prevent the people at the actual races from sending out
information and skipping the whole drone complication?
~~~
jdietrich
They can't. Having someone in the grandstands with a mobile phone used to be
the norm, but a drone provides more information with less latency. As in
financial trading, there's a huge financial advantage to knowing more than
your rivals or knowing it faster. The time it takes to say "two and five have
fallen" might be the difference between profit and loss on a race.
~~~
fireattack
I knew nothing about horse racing so bear with me:
You can still bet when the game has already started or what? Because
otherwise, I don't quite understand why lattery would matter in this case.
~~~
philtar
You can bet until the last second of the race
------
mgamache
Chunked video over Websockets (or chunked transfer) and scaled out WebRTC are
just hacks. Browsers need to support proper low latency video streaming.
There's a reason Skype and Zoom use desktop clients. If you are wondering,
WSAM is not the answer, you need proper access to the hardware decoders,
especially on mobile devices.
We had pretty good low latency video a decade ago with Flash but of course
with HTML5 you don't need Flash </sarcasm>
~~~
pier25
Hangouts or Google Meet are notoriously crappy compared to Skype.
Appear.in is also WebRTC based and seems to work better, but screen sharing is
not as good as Skype either.
------
GeneticGenesis
Author here, there's lots of interesting innovations happening in this space.
If anyone knows of anything interesting I've missed, please let me know!
~~~
cagenut
Is there anything more you can talk, write, or link to about "cdn" support for
sub-200ms streaming. Like is there a "varnish for WebRTC" or something like it
(really more of an ircd for video)? Such that someone could build out a live
streaming platform that can be conversationally interactive and yet not
require a 1:1 back to origin or mesh connection setup.
~~~
GeneticGenesis
As far as I'm aware there aren't any public CDNs that support the sub-200ms
approaches which don't involve buying a full solution from that vendor.
* Limelight's solution is only really accessible through their low latency streaming products provided by Red5.
* Fastly and Akamai are both chasing Ultra low latency through chunked CMAF delivery.
On a slightly smaller scale, Cloudflare supports websockets, so you could use
a protocol like the one Wowza are using (WOWZ).
[https://blog.cloudflare.com/cloudflare-now-supports-
websocke...](https://blog.cloudflare.com/cloudflare-now-supports-websockets/)
If you're interested in a toolkit to build out a webRTC style CDN edge, I
think the best place to start would probably be with Gstreamer's new WebRTC
tooling
[https://opensource.com/article/19/1/gstreamer](https://opensource.com/article/19/1/gstreamer)
~~~
newman314
IIRC BitGravity had a focus on the streaming video CDN space when I looked a
few years ago. Not clear if they have any special sauce in this area.
------
lowestlatency
Would any of the experts from this thread be able to help out with on a fun
project with low-latency video?
I'm trying to get video from a raspi + webcam attached to a drone car that's
controlled from a web app. Eventually, I'd like to use it to enable visitors
from around the world drive around in my apartment and maybe play treasure
hunt/escape room kind of games.
In order for internet-folk to operate the drone without frustration I need the
lowest latency video streaming I can get. Currently using an mJPEG stream but
it has no audio and doesn't take advantage of the on-board h.264 encoding of
the webcam (logitech c920). Car operation and the web app is already done.
[email protected]
~~~
yodon
You probably need to change the problem. Instead of doing real time control of
the steering wheel and speed you probably need to let people click where they
want to go, and then let them watch the car drive there before the make their
next click. Switch to a turn-based game feel and use the driving time and the
decision making time to hide the latency.
------
vanwalj
Not really the subject here, but I don't understand why video CDN providers
don't provide peer to peer solutions yet, such as Streamroot or Peer5
~~~
monocasa
I know the ISPs are against it. To the point that Netflix essientially
threatened to switch to a p2p model if the Comcast peering fiasco wasn't
solved amicably.
[https://arstechnica.com/information-
technology/2014/04/netfl...](https://arstechnica.com/information-
technology/2014/04/netflix-researching-large-scale-peer-to-peer-technology-
for-streaming/)
~~~
jakecopp
Why are the ISPs against this?
------
devwastaken
Udp websockets would solve this problem pretty quick, but we're stuck with
webrtc which has few open source servers and none that perform as well as they
should. It's effectively proprietary, services like discord build their own
server software to handle webrtc at scale, and good luck building that
yourself.
------
jcrawfordor
Last night I was watching the State of the Union via C-SPAN's YouTube stream.
My husband walked into the living room, having just driven back from an
errand, and jokingly recited the next several sentences along with Trump.
He had been listening to the local public radio station in the car, and by
comparing the TV to the stereo's FM receiver I was surprised to find that the
youtube stream was about a full minute behind the radio. I had expected that
YouTube would lag behind traditional media that tend to be using things like
dedicated satellite relay capacity to spread live events to broadcasters, but
I was very surprised at how large the difference was - one that seems to
notice in today's world of people commenting on public events on real-time
media like Twitter.
Indeed, watching Twitter I could see responses to parts of the speech that I
hadn't seen yet. Must really be interesting for sporting events where a social
media post about play could "spoil" the game.
~~~
puzzle
That's interesting. For the London 2012 Olympic Games, YT had the rights to
live stream in tens of countries in Asia and Africa, basically everywhere
where the Internet rights hadn't been bought by broadcasters. For latency and
reliability, they ran new fiber from 30 Rock (NBC) to a Google POP. Unrelated,
Google Fiber also got a license for antennas in the Iowa datacenter:
[https://www.google.com/about/datacenters/gallery/#/places/1](https://www.google.com/about/datacenters/gallery/#/places/1)
In this case, though, it's not YouTube pulling streams from the source, it's
C-SPAN pushing them. I wonder what kind of setup is in place there.
~~~
jcrawfordor
It would have been interesting to compare the different live streams for
latency since at least a half dozen news organizations were putting SOTU on
YouTube - an experiment for next time.
------
baybal2
ProTIP: multicast
Been working like magic since the dawn of times. One downside, if you are not
an ISP - bad luck...
~~~
GeneticGenesis
Great point!
The BBC actually did some really interesting work last year on using MPEG-DASH
with Multicast with a demo at IBC, the research can be found here:
[https://www.bbc.co.uk/rd/projects/dynamic-adaptive-
streaming...](https://www.bbc.co.uk/rd/projects/dynamic-adaptive-streaming-ip-
multicast-dasm)
~~~
bitbang
Nice! I had been wondering if the move to HTTP-3 over UDP would open up
possibilities for media over a multicast HTTP transport. Looks like somebody's
already doing just that.
Only downside is that multicast sucks over wifi when many devices (like in a
corporate env) are all trying to view a multicast stream. The time slice
allotted to multicast is way too small to handle it. I really wish there was a
spec created for wifi simplex connections where a channel could be reserved
for broadcast with one signal to be consumed by many receiver devices.
------
oconnore
For real time communication— I’m not sure why people find high latency to be
so difficult. You just pretend everybody is taking a moment to think. Virtual
“talking sticks”, or radio etiquette is not hard to add either.
What is difficult is audio quality issues. I wish voice and video software had
a way to prioritize quality at the expense of latency (i.e. never compromise
on delivering quality voice, but pause input or fast forward through quiet
segments as needed to stay roughly in synch)
~~~
Obi_Juan_Kenobi
For what audience?
A HAM radio operator is very aware of the technical process going on, the
proper etiquette, etc. It's pretty easy to adapt in that situation.
A random Twitch viewer has likely never thought about broadcast latency
before, and has no real reason to. It's just an unintuitive experience when
chat reacts to things that happened many seconds ago.
Voice chat is probably the worst because the network and software is
notoriously unreliable. Is it latency, is something broken, did they just not
hear me? Are we talking over each other, something that can easily happen in
casual conversation vs. a radio transmission? That mental overhead is
constantly there. Imagine trying to explain to your mother that she should end
all her statements with "over" and confirm whenever she hears something. Are
you really not sure why people find this difficult, or are you just so proud
of your own technical knowledge that you've lost any kind of reasonable
perspective on the issue?
Lower latency is an unambiguous improvement in every regard; of course people
care about it.
~~~
oconnore
How on earth did this turn into an ad hominem about my technical pride?
Because I’m ok with slowing down the pace of a conversation?
~~~
FooHentai
No, but because you chose to open with:
>I’m not sure why people find high latency to be so difficult.
Phrasing it that way makes it likely you will be interpreted as believing
you're effortlessly better than everyone else at the subject at hand.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Ask HN: How would you describe Bloomberg Terminal to a complete layman? - Brazilian-Sigma
Just saw a Bloomberg Terminal post, I have been ignorant of finance in my CS career so far. Any resources to learn computer finance, Bloomberg, and all the hype around it in finance scene?
======
verdverm
The Bloomberg Terminal is an ultrafast dumb machine connected to the best
financial information and news system. When I worked there many many years
ago, they did not send data to the terminal (think frontend client). Instead,
they sent draw commands so that the actual data could not be snooped on.
If you are into hype, check out blockchain
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
I Built a Stable Planetary System with 416 Planets in the Habitable Zone - happy-go-lucky
http://m.nautil.us/blog/i-built-a-stable-planetary-system-with-416-planets-in-the-habitable-zone
======
Quequau
I picked up universe sandbox recently and I struggle to construct simple
binary star systems with a few planets.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
A Simulation in Emoji - callumlocke
http://ncase.me/emoji-prototype/
======
Roedou
A Start Up Game: [http://ncase.me/emoji-
prototype/?remote=-K4BeA6ciFnVG_fD9wXP](http://ncase.me/emoji-
prototype/?remote=-K4BeA6ciFnVG_fD9wXP)
People appear, and have ideas. Ideas need customers (or money) to become
startups. Startups need customers (or MORE money) to become businesses. Too
much money creates rocketships - which need even more consumers to land.
Real businesses create angels, and subsequently investors.
Feel free to tinker with the weightings, depending on how many successes you'd
like to have!
~~~
Kortaggio
"Real business"es have to have the probability of being obsoleted by new
startups, or else you end up with a cash factory that spits out investors that
cover half the world: [http://imgur.com/Bg1SV3g](http://imgur.com/Bg1SV3g)
~~~
personjerry
They have a chance to become a dead pool in this simulation model, more or
less approximating that. EDIT: I was wrong, see below.
~~~
Kortaggio
Currently the rule set says only "startup" and "rocketship" can turn into dead
pool, not "real business". Adding the "dead pool" rule to "real business"
would indeed approximate that. (Or make it conditional to > a certain number
of neighboring "startup"s if you like)
~~~
personjerry
Right you are. My bad.
------
cjhveal
I was also wondering why the domain was familiar. Nicky Case creates some
awesome interactive stories and demos of concepts like anxiety & Hebbian
learning[0], Self-categorization theory[1], and the effects of very mild
systemic bias on segregation[2]. Plus most of it is licensed under CC0 and
available on Github[3]!
[0]: [http://ncase.me/neurons/](http://ncase.me/neurons/)
[1]: [http://ncase.me/group-prototype/](http://ncase.me/group-prototype/)
[2]: [http://ncase.me/polygons/](http://ncase.me/polygons/)
[3]: [https://github.com/ncase/](https://github.com/ncase/)
------
patio11
Zombie apocalypse: [http://ncase.me/emoji-
prototype/?remote=-K4BxmGwlnBjJ96ipVsg](http://ncase.me/emoji-
prototype/?remote=-K4BxmGwlnBjJ96ipVsg) or with zombie decay:
[http://ncase.me/emoji-prototype/?remote=-K4C-rlmldj1NYKXa-
jf](http://ncase.me/emoji-prototype/?remote=-K4C-rlmldj1NYKXa-jf)
(p.s. If the subject of "Programming zombie apocalypse simulators" appeals to
you at all: [http://confreaks.tv/videos/keeprubyweird2015-prepare-
yoursel...](http://confreaks.tv/videos/keeprubyweird2015-prepare-yourself-
against-the-zombie-epidemic) )
~~~
jessedhillon
I added some guns into the mix, to give the survivors a chance:
[http://ncase.me/emoji-
prototype/?remote=-K4CpUfuwB2mRqRWRiz4](http://ncase.me/emoji-
prototype/?remote=-K4CpUfuwB2mRqRWRiz4)
Turns out that the NRA was right!
------
jay-anderson
I think this is conway's game of life: [http://ncase.me/emoji-
prototype/?remote=-K4BTa7XdRIC-QuRVsIo](http://ncase.me/emoji-
prototype/?remote=-K4BTa7XdRIC-QuRVsIo)
~~~
delinka
And another: [http://ncase.me/emoji-
prototype/?remote=-K4Ec7kRoLhqwIp87dBH](http://ncase.me/emoji-
prototype/?remote=-K4Ec7kRoLhqwIp87dBH)
------
cjhveal
A story of a bamboo forest, marauding dragons, and gentle panda bears. Gosh,
these are fun.
[http://ncase.me/emoji-
prototype/?remote=-K4CpBTSuA4-zO0owfzp](http://ncase.me/emoji-
prototype/?remote=-K4CpBTSuA4-zO0owfzp)
------
cjhveal
This is really cool! I made a fairly simple system with plants, herbivores,
and carnivores... Plants can reproduce to any open square on the board.
Herbivores and carnivores reproduce when they eat, and can die from
overcrowding or randomly from disease/old age. Corpses provide fertilizer for
nearby plants. Certainly not the most realistic model, but a lot of fun to
mess around with!
[http://ncase.me/emoji-
prototype/?remote=-K4BOya31RZ3XEK5PTgy](http://ncase.me/emoji-
prototype/?remote=-K4BOya31RZ3XEK5PTgy)
~~~
bodecker
Yeah this is really cool! I tweaked the settings a bit - think this is a bit
more stable of an ecosystem (also not the most realistic)
[http://ncase.me/emoji-
prototype/?remote=-K4Bsn4mc4p0CJkH43cB](http://ncase.me/emoji-
prototype/?remote=-K4Bsn4mc4p0CJkH43cB)
~~~
cjhveal
Awesome! I tried coming up with justifications for all of the rules, and
decided that having animals popping into existence didn't make sense, but if
you consider the whole thing an open system with an influx of predators, then
yours still makes perfect sense. Much more interesting to watch :)
------
jarcane
Since it was mentioned in the description and I hadn't seen anyone else do it,
here's the Game of Life with poop emoji: [http://ncase.me/emoji-
prototype/?remote=-K4CKcP-uNe-iuB9brbL](http://ncase.me/emoji-
prototype/?remote=-K4CKcP-uNe-iuB9brbL)
------
andrei512
It's alive!!! [http://ncase.me/emoji-
prototype/?remote=-K4C_mgR4aELeGrmPAsI](http://ncase.me/emoji-
prototype/?remote=-K4C_mgR4aELeGrmPAsI)
------
userbinator
This use of characters for graphics reminds me of how graphics in old game
consoles like the NES worked - effectively a text-mode display with a user-
definable colour font.
------
HappyTypist
I made an advanced zombie simulator, with medics, cops, hordes, and more!
Inspired by patio11.
[http://ncase.me/emoji-
prototype/?remote=-K4CAvIr6PQhPlQ44ahe](http://ncase.me/emoji-
prototype/?remote=-K4CAvIr6PQhPlQ44ahe)
------
Tinyyy
[http://ncase.me/emoji-
prototype/?remote=-K4Cp8L90KH6xGEJxhZW](http://ncase.me/emoji-
prototype/?remote=-K4Cp8L90KH6xGEJxhZW) I made a simple maze generator!
------
dested
[http://ncase.me/emoji-
prototype/?remote=-K4C8dO98eRuDkYqjLqj](http://ncase.me/emoji-
prototype/?remote=-K4C8dO98eRuDkYqjLqj)
Im not sure what I've done here, but it sure is pretty to watch
------
ehnto
[http://ncase.me/emoji-
prototype/?remote=-K4C-x5QN9AmdeUR8x5L](http://ncase.me/emoji-
prototype/?remote=-K4C-x5QN9AmdeUR8x5L)
Forest simulation. Seedlings sometimes appear, and they sometimes turn into
trees.
Fires can start within a tree, and when they do they will wipe out adjacent
trees and seedlings, with a chance of turning them into fertile ash. When a
seedling grows next to fertile ash, that ash turns into a tree. Hopefully
simulating the benefits of fire to regrowth of a forest system, although not
to any degree of real world accuracy!
------
ishi
In case anyone else isn't seeing the emoji characters on Ubuntu - "apt-get
install ttf-ancient-fonts" and a browser restart solved the problem for me.
~~~
henriquemaia
Thanks for the suggestion. It also works on Arch Linux.
yaourt -S ttf-ancient-fonts
------
KuhlMensch
Nothing lives for long in this acursed land [http://ncase.me/emoji-
prototype/?remote=-K4D_6Swzvpxt6eAfFGa](http://ncase.me/emoji-
prototype/?remote=-K4D_6Swzvpxt6eAfFGa)
------
fineIllregister
Extremely interesting. My first thought was to step through the simulation and
try to see lightning strike, but I guess it doesn't display.
I think this would be a very interesting use case for Elm with its "time
traveling" mechanic.
------
lexy0202
It would be great if you could have simulation objects inherit from one
another - e.g. if you're making a weather system to have a generic cloud, and
then have thunder cloud and rain cloud inherit from cloud.
------
anewhnaccount
This is great fun. Does anyone else remember StarLogo?
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/StarLogo](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/StarLogo)
------
detaro
Am I the only one for whom most of the example symbols aren't displayed
properly? (firefox, win7, so a relatively "normal" configuration)
------
exizt88
Amazing. Can you change the speed of the simulation?
~~~
oneeyedpigeon
You could if the javascript didn't throw away the return value from
setInterval(). If:
setInterval(Model.tick,1000/30);
were:
Model.id = setInterval(Model.tick,1000/30);
I think you could then clearInterval() and inject your own ‘tick’ method with
whatever frequency you wanted. It's a shame there's no actual direct way to
vary the frequency, given how brilliantly put-together the rest of the UI is.
------
gtardini
This is just awesome!
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
The Smartest Unknown Indian Entrepreneur - muriithi
http://www.forbes.com/technology/2008/02/22/mitra-zoho-india-tech-inter-cx_sm_0222mitra.html?feed=rss_technology
======
mtts
Web 2.0 blah aside, if this guy is really hiring high school graduates from
poor backgrounds instead of elite (by Indian standards) college graduates,
that in itself is worthy of praise.
------
inovica
Competition is good for consumers and I think its about time that Silicon
Valley had a run for it's money. I'm pleased also that he turned down the
offer (though of course we don't know what the offer was!) as he is obviously
wanting to build his business. Too many people build to sell these days
instead of building to last
~~~
xirium
> Too many people build to sell these days instead of building to last
Establishing ongoing relationships is a core Indian value which can grate with
more transient methods of doing business.
------
nextmoveone
Zoho is well-positioned, with a great strategy, but I believe their flaw is
they build products that are good, not _great_.
------
caveman82
basecamp you are now on the hotseat...
------
alaskamiller
[http://www.uncov.com/2007/12/13/zoho-show-is-why-you-
need-a-...](http://www.uncov.com/2007/12/13/zoho-show-is-why-you-need-a-dual-
core-cpu)
[http://www.uncov.com/2007/10/17/zoho-db-software-as-a-
disser...](http://www.uncov.com/2007/10/17/zoho-db-software-as-a-disservice)
[http://www.uncov.com/2007/10/16/zoho-s-ajax-spreadsheet-
is-a...](http://www.uncov.com/2007/10/16/zoho-s-ajax-spreadsheet-is-a-cruel-
joke)
~~~
ashu
Uncov as a reference. Boy, what has the world come to! Regardless, the
arguments Uncov has against Zoho's spreadsheets are equally applicable for
Google's spreadsheets too!
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Startups Wiki: Ask YC Archive - epi0Bauqu
http://www.gabrielweinberg.com/startupswiki/Ask_YC_Archive
======
epi0Bauqu
I was keeping a list of these, and I just decided to make it public and build
it out a bit. If you have additions/deletions/organization ideas, you can edit
it, or just put them on the comment page:
[http://www.gabrielweinberg.com/startupswiki/Comments_on_Ask_...](http://www.gabrielweinberg.com/startupswiki/Comments_on_Ask_YC_Archive)
------
iamdave
Great work, this should really help out newer members, especially if we can
get a link up in the navigation bar.
~~~
epi0Bauqu
I agree that something like that (a link or a page of links) would be useful
to new users (and old). There are other services like HackrTrackr and searchyc
that would be useful to link to as well. I can't speak for the others, but I,
for one, plan to maintain this page.
------
edw519
Wow, great work!
I even found some posts I made over 180 days ago.
Amazing how much smarter I got in 6 months.
------
SwellJoe
I admire the "no style" style. A touch of good typography, and it turns out
very pleasant to read.
------
ericb
So weird... I was thinking of this very idea about an hour ago, but decided I
didn't have time to implement it. Very nice implementation! The conversation
here is valuable enough to save and annotate...
~~~
epi0Bauqu
Yeah, I had been thinking of doing it since first using the site and noticing
the repetition in questions and lack of great search. Search has improved, but
I still was finding it difficult to quickly find the quality discussions on a
given topic. So I finally decided to just do it (and finish it today). I have
grander plans for the Startups Wiki in general, but those will have to wait
for another day...
------
dangoldin
+1. Thanks for the effort. For newer members like myself this definitely helps
- which also helps the older members since I am not reposting.
------
prakash
Wow! How long did it take to do this manually?
~~~
epi0Bauqu
Well, I've been saving posts for a while, so that part I'm unclear on. The
organization/building out part: ~8 hours. <http://ask.searchyc.com> helped a
lot.
~~~
chengmi
Great resource! Hope you don't mind, we added a link to your wiki on
<http://ask.searchyc.com>
~~~
epi0Bauqu
Np. I put a link to <http://ask.searchyc.com> where it said "Ask YC".
------
ROFISH
Why is there are Rails and a RoR section, they're the same thing. (Are there
not any pure Ruby questions on YC too?)
~~~
epi0Bauqu
My bad. Fixed. I must have switched the name mid way through, and didn't
realize when cleaning it up. (Yes, I know they are the same thing.)
There is a Ruby vs Lisp q under X vs Y
(<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=98227>). Otherwise, I didn't see any
pure Ruby questions. But if you have some saved, I'd be happy to add them. Or
you can.
------
fallentimes
Gabriel, this is a gold mine - thank you.
------
omfut
Thats awesome. You have done a great service to all the hackers here in YC.
Great work. Thanks.
------
spencerfry
Everyone has already said this, but I want to give you my own thanks. Cheers
to you, sir!
------
wumi
you know, what good will this do if new users don't see this when coming to
the site?
------
tjweir
+1 Awesome. Thanks for your effort, this is an excellent resource.
------
lux
Wow, thanks! That's a great list!
------
t0pj
Simply awesome. Great job!
------
Frocer
This is awesome, thanks!
------
raju
Great job sir. Thanks!
------
thomasswift
Cheers!!!
------
agentbleu
great idea
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Samba 3.6.0 released - kbd
http://samba.org/samba/history/samba-3.6.0.html
======
kbd
I linked to the release notes, here's their announcement:
<http://www.samba.org/samba/news/releases/3.6.0.html>
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Goodbye Jody - kirillzubovsky
http://www.bothsidesofthetable.com/2013/01/29/goodbye-jody
======
iusable
I never had a chance to meet Jody, but had connected with him online a couple
of times. He couldn't have been more gracious with his time and knowledge.
Great loss to #startupville & the LA Scene.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Show HN: Dizzlike Dislike everything you want and share it with your friends - XillerGmbH
https://apps.facebook.com/dizzlikeprofile/
======
XillerGmbH
Hi Guys, has someone tried it out so far? Can you provide any ideas, bugs or
critique? Greetings Xiller
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Show HN: Martin Luther King Jr. quote search engine - ashbhat
It just so happens that we had a Martin Luther King Jr. project at my high school. The options were an essay, poem, multimedia, or web project. Me being a person who hates writing, decided to do something more web based.<p>Check it out and give me feedback. It's due tomorrow LOL.<p>(It's supposed to be a search engine that indexes most if not all of Martin Luther King Jr's famous quotes from all around the internet. It works. Sorta. Best part is that the entire search engine's data is local, and all the indexing is done by my server. Does not use google and is not affiliated in any way, shape or form. :D)<p>here's the site!
http://freedom.ashbhat.com/
======
cup
I have my computer screen tilted which causes the image to be stretched at the
bottom in a very unflattering manner.
Apart from that it looks pretty simple and clean.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
“A tale of lies and deceit” – GrabGas CTO let go by founders - visakanv
http://julianee.com/a-tale-of-lies-and-deceit-my-experience-on-how-grabgas-screwed-me-over/
======
yllow
It's just that you are unlucky to bump into pyshopaths. They suck up your
energy slowly until you are too late to realize. It's a lesson that everyone
should be aware of. I'm glad that you jumped the boat quickly.
------
bsbechtel
If the author's reading this, it sounds like you're fairly early in your
career and learned a tough business lesson the hard way. Not to downplay what
went down, but take solace in the fact that you have a set of hard skills that
will earn you lots of money over the course of your career; the others in the
story obviously don't have this. The best way to get revenge when you're
screwed over by someone is to keep pushing forward and accomplish greater
things than what you lost. If you want to be a successful entrepreneur, this
attitude is almost a requirement considering the endless setbacks you'll face.
Best of luck going forward!
------
caretStick
People talking about getting ink need to focus a little more on the underlying
issue, the gas-lighting of greedy "founders". My employment contract & bonus
contract had to all be walked out on as it was all predicated on my CEO being
trustworthy. I recently met up with several other employees who didn't get
paid for the end of their contracts either. The thing we liked most about
talking was figuring out it definitely wasn't our problem.
> If the author's reading this, it sounds like you're fairly early in your
> career and learned a tough business lesson the hard way
Yeah. Second that. Experience is good. Knowing what it all actually looks
like, the phrases, the mannerisms, is very valuable. You can take bigger risks
when you know how the terrain rolls.
As an example of my senses getting more developed, recently I talked to a
"CEO" of some startup I was interviewing and asked about someone else I liked
who I knew at the company from earlier. Check this out:
"Oh, yeah [person] is really great...blah blah blah."
"So how is [person] doing?"
"Oh, well, they decided they wanted to do something else...blah blah blah."
Complete total waste of time was brewing if I didn't probe into the non-
specific answer that artfully implied that [person] hadn't left the company
and was soon part of my awesome team. I would have at the least researched
them more. When you have to waste time on things like this, it makes getting
where you want to be way harder and makes it harder to justify risks.
~~~
MrDresden
"My employment contract & bonus contract had to all be walked out on as it was
all predicated on my CEO being trustworthy." In what way was it predicated on
your CEO? A CEO can't simply decide to not honour a written and signed legal
document, without risking a court case (the onus is on you to go after what is
rightfully yours).
Learning to navigate human interaction in business (and make no mistake, a
employee/employer relationship is a business transaction) is a skill needed in
any industry. These kinds of things are not new, in this industry or any
other.
~~~
lazyconfab
Unless you have a large pot of money to spend on litigation (or the amount of
the contract falls inside the limit for small claims), all contracts amount to
trust. The cost of fighting a legal battle is enormous, and mid-sized to large
businesses can fight battles of attrition in court.
~~~
hga
Indeed, unless substantial amounts of money from a client who can pay are
involved (think Brian Reid (!) who was let go from Google 9 days before their
IPO because he was too old:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brian_Reid_(computer_scientist...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brian_Reid_\(computer_scientist\)#Google)
), contracts only serve to memorialize decision and promises, they help avoid
"but I thought you meant X" retrospective flaky human memory.
~~~
Hydraulix989
Settled out of court for undisclosed terms? Sounds like Reid really made out
well then?
~~~
hga
That's my impression.
The optics were _horrible_ , it sounds like he had a fairly strong case, and
for those of us who knew of him starting from his works like Scribe way way
back when, well, we're inclined to believe his story.
All we _know_ is that Google made an offer he and his lawyer chose not to
refuse, but as long as they thought they were going to win in court before a
jury and all that, it had to have been generous, although I'd imagine it
wasn't as generous as his original ability to to participate in the IPO and
beyond.
------
gtlondon
Rule #1 of freelancing: If there's anything you definitely want (i.e. money)
then always get it in writing beforehand.
Some people will make it deliberately hard for you to get things in writing -
these people are looking to screw you over.
If you are a nice guy it's sometimes hard to understand that other (usually
more wealthy) people would exploit you. However, the sad fact is some people's
default position is to try and exploit others.
On the plus side, sounds like you have some real skills, just needs to be more
formal when selling them.
------
TheMagicHorsey
Never ever trust non technical founders. They usually don't have as highly
marketable skills as you do. They live by fleecing programmers for the most
part. The few that are worth something will be honest because they have
marketable skills. The rest are hucksters and snake oil salesmen. They are
good at seducing naive people into working for free. Then they steal your
labor.
Always get your deals in paper, up front.
These guys will not succeed in the long run.
By the way, if you did not sign an employment agreement, you as the author own
all the software. They don't. You can sue them for using your software. That's
the case in the US.
------
runako
TL;DR: Always have a written employment agreement before beginning work.
~~~
samfisher83
Not under US law. I am guessing this wasn't the US. Oral contract is still
binding. Given there is evidence he did the work for no money a judge could
reasonably determine that he did agree to equity compensation.
~~~
runako
What rayiner said, plus I will point out that the other major point of written
contracts is to force a "meeting of the minds." Basically, when someone offers
you "significant equity" did they mean 1% or 10%? Is there vesting? On what
schedule?
Without this and other critical information in writing, there is a huge chance
you have totally different understandings of what the other party had in mind.
This isn't to say they are trying to screw you, simply that there are ranges
of "normal" for all of the important bits usually governed by an employment
contract. If you don't have it in writing, your best hope is that yet another
party (a judge) will impose her understanding of the terms. Not what you want.
------
scient
Sooo he did not talk terms, he did not sign anything, and now he is
complaining? Sad to break it to you buddy, but the real world is not fair
game, and you got played.
~~~
UK-AL
I think a lot of the small startups, if you start talking legal, signing
things, creating contracts etc will get scared or annoyed that your taking
control.
Maybe that's a sign not to join though.
~~~
balabaster
A lot of them _do_ get this way, and it _is_ a sign not to join.
Unfortunately, when enough people wriggle, the founders get their act together
and stop behaving that way when they really know they need someone and can't
do it alone... by which time, they get someone else that didn't have to fight
to get things done right and you missed out because the timing was wrong. So
it's a bit of a double edged sword in that respect.
------
robertcorey
If someone burned me for 4 months of my life I would definitely publicly out
them. First off it's important to warn other developers to be cautious when
working with them in the future, and second because I'd be upset and want to
hurt them .
------
throwanem
The world is often not kind to people who readily trust others. It's a tough
lesson to have to learn. I'm glad to see that this author seems to be dealing
with it fairly well.
I understand why he chose to take his side public, too, and I think he's right
to have done so. Maybe it'll help someone else avoid getting owned the same
way. Maybe, too, it'll encourage the guys who dealt with him in bad faith to
behave somewhat more circumspectly next time, lest they further impair their
already blemished reputations.
------
mangeletti
I would like to digress for a moment.
When I read things like the TL;DR of that article I get the feeling the tech
industry is full of entitled children who are playing imaginary. No product,
no orders, no revenue, no resources... isn't that usually just called no
company?
Why do tech "startups" delude themselves into thinking that a group of guys
and/or gals is something other than a group of guys and/or gals?
Can you imagine going down to your local shopping plaza, and there is this guy
standing outside of an empty building, holding a big cardboard sign that
reads:
This behind me is supposed to
be my store. It's supposed to
have groceries and other stuff.
But, we don't have any money
or customers, or a store, or
any groceries. We have a name
though... and a logo :)
You probably can't imagine seeing that, because that person would be entirely
delusional.
~~~
harryh
All companies, even modest shops in plazas, start as just an idea on someone's
head. Some people who have these ideas are delusional and go on to create
nothing. But some of them go on to create successful businesses. A few go on
to create giant corporations.
There's little harm in indulging people's fantasies a bit. Especially when
some of those fantasies will turn into reality. One of the magical things
about Silicon Valley is how open people are to this idea. In most other places
in the world people's dreams get crushed by cynicism before they ever have a
chance to take root.
------
z3t4
Only comfort might be that assholes like this never gets anywhere in life
because noone wants to work with them. Sure they got $25k from a acceleration
program and $15k from an early investor. But they will burn through that in
less then a month. And now they have no product, just an idea, so they own
100% of nothing.
------
forgottenacc56
Tech guy sounds naive plus responsible for the outcomes and maybe should just
accept lesson learned.
~~~
RodericDay
I'll never understand the callousness some techies have for the less business-
savvy of their own kind.
Any time a head-to-desk, business-null developer gets exploited, they say
"just desserts", not realizing it weakens the bargaining position of
developers as a whole.
Really sad imo.
~~~
balabaster
> Any time a head-to-desk, business-null developer gets exploited, they say
> "just desserts"
This behaviour from anyone is just a really big black stain on humanity. It's
one thing to leverage someone else's work for the gain of all, it's entirely
another to totally exploit their good nature and hang them out to dry while
you take all the benefit. Business is supposed to be a win-win-win situation
not a win-but-screw-everyone-else-over-in-the-process situation.
While I can see that the author was incredibly naive, I can totally understand
his naivete, having been burned like this myself in my earlier years. Being
burned like this obliterates any trust you have for working with founders on
future startups and makes for a potentially toxic working relationship in any
similar situation.
Also, I think people's opinions of situations like this really lets their true
colors shine through. Those who are victim blaming and shaming the author by
pointing out the lack of apparent contract or that he should have known better
are really just justifying the abhorrent behavior of the founders who have
totally exploited someone else for their own material gain. The personality
trait that lets you treat other people like that is sociopathic. Shame on
them.
~~~
JoeAltmaier
Sure. But naieve? Worked for weeks on the project, but only talked about
ownership for what, 3 seconds? That was galactically bad due diligence. Had
they asked anybody for advice, that advice would have universally been "You're
being played; get something on paper!"
~~~
caminante
Also, this is HIS side of the story. At that, it doesn't come off favorably.
------
dboreham
I've seen similar scenarios play out for a few of my friends early in their
careers. Those experiences made me wonder why there isn't a class in college
(or even High School) where students are taught the basics of business deals.
I think many people are given a false sense of security due to employment law
which does give some fairly strong guarantees about things like being paid for
work. In a B2B deal none of this exists -- there is no "payment police" and no
default law giving you rights you might reasonably expect. Employment law
covers most of the friends/family a young person comes into contact with
leading to an implicit assumption that the same kind of rules apply to
business. Someone, at some point in their education, should stand up and yell
that it ain't so.
I was lucky to have several mentors who had started their own businesses and I
also got to learn from my friends' mistakes.
------
valdiorn
Never work without a written contract. Doesn't matter if it's tech or flipping
burgers. Do not assume you will get paid without a contract, ever. Definitely
don't assume a group of people will you a large chunk of their company if they
don't legally have to.
------
Hydraulix989
Another perspective:
"CTO quits startup, takes tech with him after team ‘screwed him over"
[https://www.techinasia.com/cto-quits-startup-takes-tech-
team...](https://www.techinasia.com/cto-quits-startup-takes-tech-team-screwed)
I saw the TechInAsia article with quite a contrasting headline (I'm pretty
sure the TIA article was even posted here, but now I'm not seeing it appear in
the search results anymore -- was it removed?).
What do you think? Was he "let go" or did he "quit" himself? Did others leave
at the same time? Were they engineers? Any ideas?
------
desireco42
First sorry you got screwed.
You are not first tech guy who got screwed over. While you should have
something more concrete before you worked for them, this doesn't excuse them.
They scammed you.
For some reason, and we can discuss why this might be, tech work is treated as
something we need to give away for free and after it, often we don't get a
respect that we deserve. This happens in situations where tech guy is key to
success, happens in companies where you are one of the employees and part of
the team.
The more you charge or ask for your services, the better you will be treated.
Let that be lesson to all.
------
smoyer
You rarely here both sides of a story like this but I've had a few occasions
where I was a passive observer. Everyone always writes about "getting screwed"
but nobody ever writes about "doing the screwing". Carnegie, Rochefeller and
Pullman weren't bashful about parading their successful plundering - and where
are the universities and museums?
But from what I've observed, the other side will usually tell you how they
"got screwed" too. I'll bet the other perspective puts the blame on this
article's writer.
------
dudul
Sorry for the author. I think we've all been burnt like that to various
degrees, and hopefully, we all learn the lesson: if it's not written down and
signed, it doesn't exist.
------
steaminghacker
it's easy to say that anyone should have had a written agreement in such
circumstances, but the first 4 months of any start up are likely to be hectic
and there's no time to take out for this kind of thing. Especially when you
think you're working with your "friends".
Nevertheless, a very clear verbal agreement should have been made. I know this
cant be enforced without proof, but it does mean than those involved know the
counter-parties also know what they agreed to. it makes things harder to deny.
The reason being that, it would be madness to betray each other, just as
things start to work. A thing started is far from finished, and they will need
everyone and more.
Most important of all, it would seem the tech guy legally owns what he has
built, in the absence of a proper agreement. Even with a backup copy of this
tech, the remaining people aren't likely to be able to extend it easily.
The tech guy should consider forming his own startup with the tech he has
made.
------
ebarock
I understand his frustration. I'm not saying that I agree with the whole
misleading or misunderstanding that may have happened.
Unfortunately we don't live more in a society that keeps their promise, word
and honor. So, having everything written is a great way to protect yourself
and others.
But this is a good lesson to learn: what is not written, does not exist.
------
nicolas_t
Was the author naive? Yes, we all go through there but the rule always
applies, always have a contract.
That said, I don't really understand people here that criticize him. Per the
screenshot they called him a shareholder. That word has a clear meaning and
they clearly screwed him over. I think he was right to walk away with his
tech.
~~~
JoeAltmaier
The next sentence after "You want to be a shareholder?" is "What percentage
are we talking about here?" followed by "When will the paperwork arrive?
That's when I can start contributing." That conversation failed to happen (for
weeks). There's some responsibility for the meltdown shared by both parties
here.
~~~
nicolas_t
Oh, I completely agree. He was naive and he has some responsibility for the
issue but they were clearly dishonest while he was only naive.
Even if there's responsibility to be shared and good lessons to be learned by
new developers reading this, it doesn't stop the fact that he was not the
dishonest party in this.
~~~
JoeAltmaier
That's a supposition made on very small evidence. They offered him employment
with shares - one interpretation of the ambiguous offer. To suppose they meant
anything more is pure conjecture.
~~~
nicolas_t
We do have the screenshot he provided of the facebook conversation which is
pretty damning and very clear. Employment with equity != shareholder in any
well used definition of the word shareholder.
So, as long as we assume that the OP didn't falsify the Facebook screenshot,
it's not small evidence.
~~~
JoeAltmaier
Still nothing concrete - to be called a 'shareholder' is not terribly
meaningful, is it? Terms like "honorary co-founder" are meaningless.
I don't hold them harmless - it was not right to let the ambiguity go on so
long. But s/he was complicit in that.
------
MrDresden
As many others have pointed out in the comments; Never, EVER, do work without
a written contract listing everything. Does nit matter if the people you
perform that work for are friends or family. If money is, or might become,
involved you need a contract.
Live and learn.
------
yitchelle
One thing I don't get. I have only read the TLDR so the answer may be in the
full text. Even in this summary, there are many instances where lies were
pandered to the public and to the press. Shouldn't ths have raise some serious
alarms bells?
~~~
UK-AL
Fairly standard occurrence in the startup world tbh. Desperate startups
wanting to get press attention will exaggerate or make up stories.
Media doesn't care, because they get a nice story to print.
~~~
yitchelle
That woudl really suck if this ever becomes the normal behaviour. How could
you ever have any trust in your co-workers/boss/team? Sometimes, these
relationships need to be tighter than marriage.
------
troels
It sounds like he could reasonably dispute any company assets, at least up
until the formation date. Ownership of the code would seem to be either shared
or fully belong to the tech guy. How about he have a lawyer write up a formal
claim against the company and then do nothing else until they raise money.
Then sue.
~~~
BrandonM
He already took the code. It was definitely his since there was no formal
agreement in place for assignment of IP. The company's domain
([http://grabgas.com](http://grabgas.com)) just points to their Facebook page
now.
------
grayhamster
I think accusing the tech guy of naivete is like blaming a rape victim for
dressing sexily.
~~~
JoeAltmaier
Except this is business. With its own rules. Let the Buyer Beware
~~~
croon
Bull. Just because you CAN exploit someone doesn't mean you have to. At least
it backfired on them by losing their tech.
------
alabamamike
Sounds like these founders were playing GrabAss ...
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Ether Camp Launches the Virtual Accelerator and Hacker Gold Token - cryptobubble
https://www.deepdotweb.com/2016/10/12/ether-camp-launches-virtual-accelerator-hacker-gold-token/
======
cryptobubble
As featured by DeepDotWeb: ether.camp, the organization behind the biggest
blockchain hackathon out there, has recently announced the launch of
<hack.ether.camp>, an Ethereum-based Virtual Accelerator and a crowd funding
platform designed to turn ideas into successful startups by leveraging the
wisdom of the crowd in a tokenized enviroment. Check it out.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Don't write too much code before you have a customer - sajid
http://venturebeat.com/2012/05/15/startup-clinic-dont-write-too-much-code-before-you-have-a-customer/
======
serverascode
I have a few concerns about the author generally speaking, but this particular
article I like because I think it's good advice to find customers sooner
rather than later. :)
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Pseudonymisation is helping firms comply with GDPR - tormeh
https://www.economist.com/news/science-and-technology/21740165-stripping-our-identifying-information-they-are-still-able-do
======
jypepin
is pseudonymisation really a new thing? We do this with prod data for our dev
and staging database. a subset of a dump is processed and names, emails and
other PIIs are replaced with random strings, etc.
Not only it makes the data handling safe and anonymised, you also avoid crazy
stuff like mistakenly sending a batch email to prod users while you are
testing stuff in dev/prod (been there, done that).
I found that clever when I first saw we were doing that, but it seemed simple
enough that I just assumed every company did it.
~~~
roel_v
It's not as simple as that. What's the k-anonymity on your datasets? I'd be
mightily impressed if anyone at your company had ever calculated it, yet
'pseudonymisation' is meaningless without quantitative assessments of its
results.
From what I've seen in research, when you get an 'anonymized' dataset from
e.g. a government institute, hospital or school, someone will have replaced
the names in the 'Name' column with 'Subject 1', 'Subject 2' and so on, and if
you're lucky they'll have removed the DoB column. How many people are there in
the average organization who are even qualified to have an opinion on whether
a dataset is sufficiently anonymous for a certain purpose?
The first few years of GDPR lawsuits are going to be about obvious things,
hopefully we'll get to see a few more interesting ones about stuff like this
once that basic stuff is settled :)
~~~
saltcured
And, if you are interested in ethics rather than loopholes, things like
k-anonymity are not properties of datasets but of datasets with respect to an
assumed corpus of other information. You have to consider how this new data
could be integrated with other previous or future data releases and what level
of anonymity remains after that integration.
Eventually, if you work this analysis through sincerely enough, you will
probably abandon all hope of maintaining k-anonymity in real data management
practices. Then, you face your real ethical decision as you either drastically
restrict the data or turn to lawyers and loopholes to assuage your guilt as
you continue with the naive levels of protection demanded by your application
and organization...
------
tephra
I think it is worth noting that pseudonymization is not just this big loophole
in the GDPR and pseudonomyzed data can still be considered personal data and
fall under GDPRs jurisdiction.
Pseudonymisation != Anonymization. And as the article 29 working party has
concluded [0] might sometimes not be sufficient to protect users privacy.
[0]
[http://ec.europa.eu/justice/article-29/documentation/opinion...](http://ec.europa.eu/justice/article-29/documentation/opinion-
recommendation/files/2014/wp216_en.pdf)
------
neonate
[http://archive.is/e40uP](http://archive.is/e40uP)
------
pcunite
_The result is a new set of data that contains no personal information, but
retains the format and statistics of the original. The only way that each
field in the new data set can be returned to its old state is by applying the
key used to generate the hash_
_these keys are held by the accounts teams. The development teams working on
the pseudonymous data never see them_
Right ... but I would feel better if _I supply_ this hash/key back to them. I
understand I can request erasure, but I would like the option to request
"hashed" (or a user friendlier term) when I want to keep my data on their
server, but I control it.
~~~
jypepin
You supply this key? So you are implying that you store the key and the
company doesn't have access to it, hence doesn't have access to your data?
Then is there any reason for the company to store your data?
What if you loose the key? You can't restore your account? I'd be interested
to know the % of users loosing their password and needing to use "forgot
password" feature. How would that work with a key you own?
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
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Sunlight on laser-etched metal purifies contaminated H2O w over 100% efficiency - bookofjoe
https://scitechdaily.com/laser-etched-metal-purifies-contaminated-water-using-sunlight-with-greater-than-100-efficiency/
======
taxicabjesus
Pretty cool use of lasers:
> Prior to creating the water attracting and repellent metals, Guo and his
> assistant, Anatoliy Vorobyev, demonstrated the use of femto-second laser
> pulses to turn almost any metal pitch black. The surface structures created
> on the metal were incredibly effective at capturing incoming radiation, such
> as light. But they also captured light over a broad range of wavelengths.
> Subsequently, his team used a similar process to change the color of a range
> of metals to various colors, such as blue, gold, and gray. The applications
> could include making color filters and optical spectral devices, using a
> single laser in a car factory to produce cars of different colors; or
> proposing with a gold engagement ring that matches the color of your
> fiancee’s blue eyes.
> The lab also used the initial black and colored metal technique to create a
> unique array of nano- and micro-scale structures on the surface of a regular
> tungsten filament, enabling a light bulb to glow more brightly at the same
> energy usage.
------
bookofjoe
>Solar-trackable super-wicking black metal panel for photothermal water
sanitation
[https://www.nature.com/articles/s41893-020-0566-x](https://www.nature.com/articles/s41893-020-0566-x)
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Three effective tips to get started with conversion rate optimization - paraschopra
http://www.wingify.com/conversion-blog/three-effective-tips-to-get-started-with-conversion-rate-optimization/
======
dmix
>For example, commonly used examples of less effective call to action are
“click here”, “submit”, “read more,” etc.
>Instead, you should use more descriptive and persuasive text that tells your
visitors where they are going and why they should go there.
Interesting how on their homepage the most noticeable buttons say "Learn More"
and "Get Started Now", both generic and not very descriptive.
~~~
paraschopra
Homepage is a very bad example of conversion optimization, there are so many
possible _next_ things to explore for a visitor. If it were a landing page, I
would have been very concerned. On homepage, having descriptive buttons can be
suboptimal in some cases.
------
JoeAltmaier
Great advice! DropBox could use some of this. I was initially confused and
rejected DropBox because I misinterpreted their download links. I only dwelt
2.7 seconds before hitting Back, but I suppose I'm somewhere in the middle of
the bell curve on that.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
The Engineer Crunch - clarkm
http://blog.samaltman.com/the-engineer-crunch
======
GuiA
I'm starting to be a bit disillusioned with this whole "we can't find great
people" spiel that a lot of startups put up.
I have friends who are extremely good engineers (i.e., a mix of: contributors
to major open source projects used by a lot of SV startups, have given talks
at large conferences, published papers at ACM conferences, great portfolio of
side/student projects, have worked at great companies previously, frequently
write high quality tech articles on their blog, have high reputations on sites
like Stack Overflow, etc.) and who have been rejected at interviews from those
same companies who say that they can't find talent. (it also certainly doesn't
help that the standard answer is "we're sorry, we feel like there isn't a
match right now" rather than something constructive. "No match" can mean
anything on the spectrum that starts at "you're a terrible engineer and we
don't want you" and ends at "one of our interviewers felt threatened by you
because you're more knowledgeable so he veto'd you").
Seriously, if you're really desperate for engineering talent, I can give you
contact info for a dozen or so of friends who are ready to work for you RIGHT
NOW (provided your startup isn't an awful place with awful people, of course)
and probably another dozen or two who would work for you given enough
convincing.
I'm honestly starting to believe that it isn't hard to hire, but that there's
some psychological effect at play that leads companies to make it harder on
themselves out of misplaced pride or sense of elitism.
Unless everyone wants to hire Guido Van Rossum or Donald Knuth, but then a)
statistically speaking, you're just setting yourself up for failure and b) you
need to realize that those kind of people wouldn't want to do the glorified
web dev/sys admin'ing that a lot of SV jobs are.
~~~
nqureshi
"I'm honestly starting to believe that it isn't hard to hire"
If this were true, then engineer salaries would not be rising so much. The
demand for good engineers vastly outstrips supply.
Also, any explanation that requires you to posit mass irrationality is usually
a bad one.
~~~
djb_hackernews
Do you have any data to back up the engineering salaries rising "so much"?
From where I am standing engineering salaries have stagnated for the last 5
years, possibly even 10.
~~~
j_baker
You're correct. Source: [http://www.epi.org/publication/pm195-stem-labor-
shortages-mi...](http://www.epi.org/publication/pm195-stem-labor-shortages-
microsoft-report-distorts/)
~~~
russell_h
My observation has been that while average compensation isn't trending upward
that much, variance is increasing a lot. I've seen market research which bears
this out. Especially among top candidates straight out of school, salaries
have gone up a lot in the last few years.
------
pg
"I have never seen a startup regret being generous with equity for their early
employees."
Same here. I always advise startups to err on the side of generosity with
equity.
~~~
tomsaffell
Can you put a number (or range) on what is generous for the first engineering
hire? 2%? 3%? 5%?
~~~
balls187
This is a great post by Fred Wilson about this subject.
[http://www.avc.com/a_vc/2011/04/how-to-allocate-founder-
and-...](http://www.avc.com/a_vc/2011/04/how-to-allocate-founder-and-employee-
equity.html)
Essentially, figure out what market rate is for their salary. Since you'll
likely pay a discount rate, the equity should bring them at or above market.
So if Market is 105k, and I'm going to pay 55k, I will give you 50k in equity
(based on a reasonable valuation--assuming you don't have an actual
valuation).
Using a flat rate percent can get tricky, and you can easily end up
unnecessarily diluting yourself.
I also think it's important to think of your first 1-3 hires as Key hires, the
same way a new CEO or VP of Sales would be a key hire post Series-B. You want
them to get a big chunk of money if there is a positive liquidation event.
~~~
jbail
A bird in the hand is worth two in the bush.
If market rate is $105k and you're paying me $55k in cash, then I'd want $100k
in equity, not $50k. This is something many startups get wrong. It isn't a
one-to-one swap.
Even if you have some sort of reasonable valuation, equity is worthless until
there's someone to sell it to. There needs to be an uncertainty/illiquidity
multiple applied. Otherwise, I'll take the cash. That has literally always
worked out to my benefit throughout my 15 year career in software development
(even working for companies that got acquired for 9 digits).
~~~
balls187
Fair enough. I was paraphrasing the actual formula.
That said, if you think equity is worthless, why are you considering being
employee 1 at a startup?
~~~
jbail
I never said I thought equity is worthless. I said I would choose cash over
equity if the equity is not weighted heavier than cash to account for the risk
and illiquidity inherent in startup equity.
I am engineer #1 at a startup right now. The equity was very generous and
weighted appropriately vs cash.
~~~
balls187
Sorry, I mistook your earlier statement to believe that you thought equity is
worthless, when you were just saying there is no cash value for equity.
And yes, you're correct, the equity should be setup in a way that offers early
hires significant upside.
Curious, did your founders use a flat %, or did they figure out some weighted
amount?
------
jfasi
> if people are going to turn down the certainty of a huge salary at Google,
> they should get a reward for taking that risk.
I often see a disconnect between perceptions of expected success of founders
and engineers. I've observed this is particularly pointed for non-technical
founders. To generalize, a young entrepreneur with some success under his belt
is starting a company. As far as he's concerned his company is all but
guaranteed to succeed: he's got the experience and sophistication necessary to
make this happen, the team he's hired to his point is top-notch, he's got the
attention of some investors, the product is well thought out, etc. He
approaches an exceptional engineer and extends an impassioned invitation
and... the engineer balks.
What happened? Is he delusional about the company's prospects, thinking he's
got a sure fire hit when he's actually in for a nasty surprise once his hubris
collides with reality? Is the engineer a square who would rather work a boring
job at a big company than live his life, and wouldn't be a good fit for the
team anyway?
I propose a different resolution: our confident businessman is certain about
the success of _the company_ , not the success of the _engineer as part of the
company_. He knows the company's success is going to rocket him into an elite
circle of Startup Entrepreneurs. The engineer, on the other hand, doesn't see
the correlation between the company's success and his own: even if the company
takes off to the tune of eight to nine digits, his little dribble of equity is
just barely breaking even over the comfortable stable position he's in now.
------
x0x0
This post, I think, makes 2 mistakes.
First, sf and the valley simply don't pay engineers well enough. This is the
second, striving to become the first, most expensive housing market in the
united states. $150k sounds great here until you look at that as a fraction of
your housing cost and compare to _anywhere_ else in the country, including
manhattan (because unlike here, nyc isn't run by morons so they have
functioning transportation systems). I don't want to just quote myself, but
all this still applies:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7195118](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7195118)
Second, immigration is a crutch to get around paying domestic employees
enough. I see net emigration from the valley amongst experienced engineers in
their 30s who start having families and can find better financial lives
elsewhere. If companies paid well enough that moving to the bay area wasn't
horrid financially, they'd find plenty of software engineering talent already
in the united states. But consider my friend above: $165 total income in the
midwest is (compared solely to housing cost) equivalent to approx $450k here,
when holding (housing costs / post tax income) constant.
edit: not to mention, companies _still_ don't want flexible employment
arrangements or remote work. I'm a data scientist and I'm good at my job
(proof: employment history, employers haven't wanted me to leave, track record
of accomplishments.) I'd rather live elsewhere. 66 data scientist posts on
craigslist (obv w/ some duplication, but just a quick count) [1]; jobs that
mention machine learning fill search results with > 100 answers [2]. Now check
either of the above for telecommute or part time. Zero responses for remote or
part time workers. So again, employers want their perfect employee -- skilled
at his or her job, wants to move to the valley enough to take a big hit to net
life living standards, doesn't have kids, and doesn't want them (cause daycare
or a nanny or an SO who doesn't work is all very expensive.)
[1]
[http://sfbay.craigslist.org/search/jjj?zoomToPosting=&catAbb...](http://sfbay.craigslist.org/search/jjj?zoomToPosting=&catAbb=jjj&query=data+scientist&excats=)
[2]
[http://sfbay.craigslist.org/search/jjj?zoomToPosting=&catAbb...](http://sfbay.craigslist.org/search/jjj?zoomToPosting=&catAbb=jjj&query=machine+learning&excats=)
~~~
Consultant32452
Living in a high cost of living area is a FANTASTIC way to get your retirement
plans going. Putting 10% of your SF income into your 401k is way better than
putting 10% of your Austin, TX salary into your 401k. So while you're young
and single you bank away lots of cash. Then you move and start a family
elsewhere and retire comfortably. The problem is that I don't think enough
people life-hack in this way.
~~~
RogerL
This is true, but 401K contributions are capped at around $17K. You can do
that with the Austin salary just as well, usually. In Austin you have no state
income tax, and the price of everything else is much lower (in general).
The absolute cheapest home near my work with 2 bedrooms is a condo at $700K
(source: realtor.com). (edit: that is an outlier, most are considerably more
expensive, and these days the 'ask' is the lowball figure - people will bid
several hundred thousand over the ask to buy, because they are competing
against other twitter millionaires buying for cash and nonchalant about the
housing bubble because they can't be really hurt if it crashes)
To get a home equal to the home I moved from in CO (which I bought for $425K)
would be, I don't know, nothing is listed to compare. Over $3M I would think.
My friend recently sold his house north of that, and his yard was tiny and the
house was smaller. My CO house is comparable to a $4-5M Tahoe mountain home -
a few acres, awesome views, wooden beam interior, huge open space interior
plan, full basement, multiple decks, and so on. (edit: okay, cabinets are Home
Depot, not custom built, etc, but it's still a close comp otherwise)
So, yes, if you want to live in a cramped condo, see your money evaporate to
taxes, driving to work, private schools, and so on, you can 'life hack' here.
Or, you can live elsewhere, own a few acres, have a big garage, a rec room,
work normal hours, have half the commute, and still save plenty of money.
~~~
usaar333
> So, yes, if you want to live in a cramped condo, see your money evaporate to
> taxes, driving to work, private schools, and so on, you can 'life hack'
> here. Or, you can live elsewhere, own a few acres, have a big garage, a rec
> room, work normal hours, have half the commute, and still save plenty of
> money.
While you aren't going to be living on a few acres working at a tech job in
the Bay Ara (barring long commutes), you are exaggerating a bit here.
\- If you live in SF, you generally don't need to drive to work. Your commute
will be short (<25 minutes). You can get quite livable single-family homes (3
bedrooms, 1400 square feet) for $750k. You may want to consider private
schools.
\- If you live in areas where you want to get good public schools, prices may
surge to $900k for homes that size.
tl;dr If you want a huge home with huge lots, yes, very difficult in the Bay
Area. But if you just want a typical suburban lfiestyle, it is pretty easy to
do on a tech salary.
~~~
vonmoltke
> \- If you live in SF, you generally don't need to drive to work. Your
> commute will be short (<25 minutes). You can get quite livable single-family
> homes (3 bedrooms, 1400 square feet) for $750k. You may want to consider
> private schools.
I live in Dallas, have a driving commute well under 25 minutes, and have a 3
bedroom, 2300 sqft house I paid $175k for with the same stipulation on the
schools. Your scenario would be a major cost increase for me. In fact, I could
probably max out my 401k here with just the housing cost delta. Austin is more
expensive than Dallas[1], but I wouldn't expect to pay more than about $250k -
$300k for my house there (for reference, my house is worth about $190k now). I
could downsize to your SF-sized house here for under $100k. Since I would
realistically only get about a 70% pay raise max over my Dallas salary for
moving to SF, it doesn't make any sense.
[1] And my house was a good deal even for Dallas.
------
OmarIsmail
“The only thing you need to do is fix immigration for founders and engineers.
This will likely have far more of an impact than all of the government
innovation programs put together.” - this is so darn true it's not even funny.
Conversely, and I know this is pretty out there, this is what I think will be
the killer app of virtual reality. If I can ship a $5K "pod" to a developer
somewhere in the world which allows us to work together 90% as well as we can
in person, then you're damn right I'm going to do that.
I believe VR tech will get good enough (3-5 years) before immigration issues
will be sorted out (10-20).
~~~
Filligree
Taxing that is going to be _fun_.
~~~
eru
Why? It's no more complicated from a tax perspective that remote work is
today.
------
tptacek
Broken record: startups are also probably rejecting a _lot_ of engineering
candidates that would perform as well or better than anyone on their existing
team, because tech industry hiring processes are folkloric and irrational.
I co-manage a consultancy. We operate in the valley. We're in a very
specialized niche that is especially demanding of software development skills.
Our skills needs also track the market, because we have to play on our clients
turf. Consultancies running in steady state have an especially direct
relationship between recruiting and revenue.
A few years ago, we found ourselves crunched. We turned a lot of different
knobs to try to solve the problem. For a while, Hacker News was our #1
recruiting vehicle. We ran ads. We went to events at schools. We shook down
our networks and those of our team (by offering larger and larger recruiting
bonuses, among other things).
We have since resolved this problem. My current perspective is that we have
little trouble filling slots as we add them, in _any_ market --- we operate in
Chicago (where it is trivially easy to recruit), SFBA (harder), and NYC
(hardest). We've been in a comfortable place with recruiting for almost a year
now (ie, about half the lifetime of a typical startup).
I attribute our success to just a few things:
* We created long-running outreach events (the Watsi-pledging crypto challenges, the joint Square MSP CTF) that are graded so that large numbers of people can engage and get value from them, but people who are especially interested in them can self-select their way to talking to us about a job. Worth mentioning: the crypto challenges, which are currently by far our most successful recruiting vehicle (followed by Stripe's CTF #2) are just a series of emails we send; they're essentially a blog post that we weaponized instead of wasting on a blog.
* We totally overhauled our interview process, with three main goals: (1) we over-communicate and sell our roles before we ever get selective with candidates, (2) we use quantifiable work-sample tests as the most important weighted component in selecting candidates, and (3) we standardize interviews so we can track what is and isn't predictive of success.
Both of these approaches have paid off, but improving interviews has been the
more important of the two. Compare the first 2/3rds of Matasano's lifetime to
the last 1/3rd. The typical candidate we've hired lately would never have
gotten hired at early Matasano, because (a) they wouldn't have had the resume
for it, and (b) we over-weighted intangibles like how convincing candidates
were in face-to-face interviews. But the candidates we've hired lately compare
extremely well to our earlier teams! It's actually kind of magical: we
interview people whose only prior work experience is "Line of Business .NET
Developer", and they end up showing us how to write exploits for elliptic
curve partial nonce bias attacks that involve Fourier transforms and BKZ
lattice reduction steps that take 6 hours to run.
How? By running an outreach program that attracts people who are interested in
crypto, and building an interview process that doesn't care what your resume
says or how slick you are in an interview.
Call it the "Moneyball" strategy.
_Later: if I 've hijacked the thread here, let me know; I've said all this
before and am happy to delete the comment._
~~~
dmunoz
> we use quantifiable work-sample tests as the most important weighted
> component in selecting candidates
Can you speak to that a little? I'm reading it as either programming
challenges in a real environment, or analysis of previous code snippets
submitted. In either case, I'm happy to see more companies doing this.
I'm always looking for ways to improve my interview skills, but I want to do
it honestly. Studying to the test isn't fun for me, I would rather hack on
something.
~~~
tptacek
Most programming puzzles aren't real work-sample tests. A work-sample test has
to be representative of the actual stuff you'd do on the job.
The trick is, to work in a recruiting context, you also want those tests to be
standardized and repeatable. A lot of companies fall down on this. They have
candidates do "real work", often in a pair-programming context. There a bunch
of problems with this:
(1) "Real work" usually isn't standardizable, so you can't compare candidates
(2) Signal quality from the test is intensely dependent on who is doing the
work with the candidate
(3) Two different candidates might end up getting "tests" that are wildly
different in terms of predictive power
I have a bunch of ideas for pure software development work-sample tests, but
I'm not ready to share them. The idea is simple, though:
* It's a realistic exercise that approximates actual day-to-day work as much as possible
* Every candidate gets the same exercises
* The exercises have objective (preferably gradable) outcomes
~~~
theboss
So accurate. I'm a grad student who studied security deeply during my time in
school.
I want to keep my hands on a keyboard and I don't like airplanes (which rules
out consulting) so I've applied at a lot of companies to be a ``security
engineer''.
I can't tell you how many well-respected companies ask me to write min-heaps,
depth-first searches, etc. I don't understand what they are asking me this
for...It isn't even close to a realistic representation of what my day-to-day
responsibilities would be. It is also an immediate turn-off....
~~~
foobarian
I don't understand how there can be a good hacker that does not, at least on
some intuitive level, get such basic data structures or algorithms. I don't
mind if someone doesn't know what depth-first search is, but I should be able
to explain it quickly and they should be able to come up with at least pseudo
code. The relevance of this to software engineering roles just seems too
great.
Cramming these questions online does not work. I don't know what
Facebook/Google et al are doing but I can spot a candidate who studied
interview questions from a mile away. They may bang out a DFS by rote but
that's just warmup; they should be able to talk about details, deal with
changing requirements, discuss the algorithm/efficiency/design of their
solution, be able to talk about underlying data structure primitives, etc.
To be fair the grandparent was talking about a specialized position in
security engineering for which the generic coding interviews could be a bad
match.
~~~
theboss
You're right it isn't well suited for security people.... But is it well
suited for software engineering types? Most code people write is not a search
sort insert etc. Most of the details of using these data structures are
invisible in oop and the difference is only what class was instantiated.
I'm not saying it isn't important to know, but I think there are better
indicators for someone who will perform well on the job
------
jamesaguilar
Given the offers I've heard people getting from early stage startups (engineer
2-5), I don't really get why someone _would_ join them. Below market rate
salary? 0.1% of a company that's going to exit at $80M with a 10% chance and
$0 with a 90% chance? That comes out to $80k over four years of work, before
taxes, in the typical _successful_ case, which is itself atypical. And for
what amounts to a relatively small bonus, I'd be expected to work 50-70 hour
weeks? Sign me up!
~~~
ryandrake
You forgot to include the probability of success in your calculation, for
Expected Value:
EV = $80M exit x 0.1% equity x 10% success rate / 4 years = $2K
That awesome 0.1% equity is worth $2,000 a year. Less, because of time value
of money, and the fact that you won't be cashing out yearly.
~~~
jamesaguilar
Thanks for the correction, but I did not forget it. I explicitly called out
that the $80k total was only in the successful case, which is atypical, and
had not been divided by time yet. That could have been worded better, I admit,
but you and I are in violent agreement.
------
grandalf
This is the most insightful thing I've read about the engineer crunch in a
while. The market needs to realize that good engineers have lots of options
and that 0.1% is just not a meaningful amount. I'd like to see 5-8% for key
engineering hires, even as companies approach Series A.
Does the founder really want to get greedy and keep that extra few percent
when so much depends upon solid engineering execution? Also, don't forget that
4 year vesting with a 1 year cliff is standard, so it's not as if the worth of
a meaningful equity offer isn't fully obvious before the shares are "spent" on
a key hire (also, before vesting, the risk is totally borne by the employee).
I think the ideal situation for engineers would be to earn a solid equity
offer and then have a secondary market to use to trade some of it (once it's
vested) for fractional ISOs of other promising startups.
~~~
dfraser992
> Does the founder really want to get greedy and keep that extra few percent
> when so much depends upon solid engineering execution?
Yes, some of them do. I got forced out of a startup here in London - I was the
_only_ full time engineer in the IT dept. (basically was acting CTO) and one
part time guy in Russia for some period of time. The company had two sales
guys as well, not sure of their compensation but they were making more than
me... We all quit within a period of two months due to A) the CEO flat out
lying to a customer about the nature of the data they were being sold, in
order to secure the sale - the customer later made threats to sue after their
patience had been exhausted due to one founder trying for a month to gaslight
their board about the technical nature of the data B) lies about the "cash
flow problem" which I was told was preventing another person to be hired to
help me (the founders were skimming profit before paying everyone, months
late) The CEO's wife, who liked to play lawyer, then dragged out paying us for
what they owed, trying to arbitrarily reinterpret the language of the
contracts, claiming utter nonsense as logic and being over the top abusive in
contract negotiations. It was all too much for everyone.
Later I found out a $5 mil offer had been made to buy the company from a 3rd
party - not much but enough to show the company was certainly going to be
viable. So it made perfect economic sense to these sociopaths to drive out
everyone who might have some moral claim to profiting from the company's
success (i.e. promises were made early about "equity"). The founders deemed I
was completely unnecessary at this point due to having built something that
could be maintained well enough by cheap labor from India and eLance - to heck
with looking into the future and seeing how an experienced engineer might open
up new markets, etc. This company lost every bit of technical knowledge they
had when I left.
But that's sociopaths for you and how business is done anymore. I'm sure SF is
full of amateur sociopaths these days.
------
djb_hackernews
Wait, I thought we all agreed that there isn't an engineering crunch?
I am not sure what immigration has to do with this, we make plenty of STEM
graduates each year, and we'd make more if the professions didn't look like
they were under attack by every employer and politician. The smart kids you
want to hire are smart enough to go into more protected professions, if they
knew their jobs wouldn't be shipped over seas or their market flooded with
foreign competition, then maybe we'd be able to attract them and keep them.
I worry that focusing on equity will just exacerbate the problem, because I
think that a lot of people are becoming wise to the equity lottery and just
don't see a difference between 0.1% and 5% of nothing. The problem will most
certainly be solved by $$, but no doubt it is tough pill to swallow for a
business to pay 150k now what was 100k a few years ago...
Keep in mind I am a software developer and self interested.
~~~
rwissmann
If you think your equity is worth zero you either work for the wrong company
or do not understand how to use mathematics/probability theory.
~~~
thedufer
One person can only play that particular lottery maybe half a dozen times
(more likely 2-3). That isn't nearly enough for the law of averages to even
things out, so if you don't have a lot of room for risk, the rational thing is
to value the equity at 0 (in terms of long-term planning) and be pleasantly
surprised if things turn out better than that.
------
trustfundbaby
The other thing that is interesting to me is the ludicrously highbar, and
"weed out" interview techniques that some these companies have for recruiting
engineers.
They're looking for someone to work on a rails app but they won't hire them
unless they have demonstrated Linus-Torvalds like ability and knowledge. But
the question is, why would someone with that kind of skill level want to work
for you?
What if you were able to grab smart engineers on their way to becoming
engineering stars? Why not aim for getting a solid lead/architect and adding
midlevel guys who you know are going to turn into superstars? Why not develop
talent instead of competing all the way at the top of the market for the most
expensive ones? Why not figure out an interview technique that can let you
identify exactly these kinds of people?
Its all about being resourceful and nimble enough to adjust, after all, isn't
that what a startup is all about?
------
bgentry
_I have never seen a startup regret being generous with equity for their early
employees._
A few years ago, Zynga told some early employees with lots of shares that they
had to give back some of their stock or they'd be fired:
[http://news.cnet.com/8301-13506_3-57322150-17/zynga-to-
emplo...](http://news.cnet.com/8301-13506_3-57322150-17/zynga-to-employees-
give-back-our-stock-or-youll-be-fired/)
[http://finance.fortune.cnn.com/2011/11/10/zynga-stock-
scanda...](http://finance.fortune.cnn.com/2011/11/10/zynga-stock-scandal/)
I'm not sure if that qualifies as "regret", or if it's just greed, but it's
one very public example of a company deciding they've given too many options
to early employees.
~~~
prostoalex
Everybody else fires, they were nice enough to say "if you like it here, you
can stay".
Most of people involved came through acquisitions, not early hiring.
------
Xdes
>There are great hackers all over the country, and many of them can be talked
into moving to the valley.
For all this "we work remote" stuff that is flying around this seems to be a
direct contradiction. Is moving to the valley really necessary? I can
postulate coming for a face-to-face interview, but I would never want to move
to California.
~~~
AnimalMuppet
It's all about communication bandwidth. How well can I communicate with you
face-to-face, via voice, or via text? Standard numbers are that 7% of the
communication is in the words, 38% is in the tone of voice, and 55% is in the
body language. If you're not face-to-face, your communication bandwidth drops
dramatically.
But if you're both online at the same time, and you have videoconferencing or
some equivalent, you can talk "face-to-face" without being on the same
continent. I don't know how efficient that is compared to being in the same
room, but I suspect it's somewhat less (you have to activate the app before
you can have the conversation, and you never have a useful but accidental
conversation because you ran into each other in the lunchroom).
~~~
nawitus
>Standard numbers are that 7% of the communication is in the words, 38% is in
the tone of voice, and 55% is in the body language.
Source? I'm pretty skeptical of these kinds of numbers. If you say 100 bits
worth of words face-to-face, what is exactly the content of the remaining 1428
bits?
~~~
gjm11
The claim (ascribed to Albert Mehrabian) is much more limited than that. Those
are the alleged percentage influences on _how much we like a person_ on the
basis of a conversation with them. See, e.g.,
[http://www.kaaj.com/psych/smorder.html](http://www.kaaj.com/psych/smorder.html)
(which I think is Mehrabian's own site) which says "Total Liking = 7% Verbal
Liking + 38% Vocal Liking + 55% Facial Liking" and adds: "Unless a
communicator is talking about their feelings or attitudes, these equations are
not applicable".
I'm frankly doubtful even about that much, but Mehrabian certainly never
claimed that any such equation holds for more "contentful" communication.
------
cia_plant
What's up with the cliff anyway? You're already asking me to take a much
higher level of risk and a much lower level of liquidity than I'd like in my
compensation, by giving me stock options. In addition to that you want me to
take on 100% of the risk of our working arrangement not working out, and in
fact you insist on giving yourself a strong incentive to fire me before the
first year is out? It seems ridiculously exploitative.
~~~
spacehome
I'm not sure of the details, but I think it's rooted in tax law -- that the
options are classified differently if they're exercised within a year of their
creation.
~~~
cbr
If that's the issue the options could vest monthly but just prohibit you from
exercising them for a year.
(not a lawyer)
The standard reason for the cliff is that at first an employee slows everyone
else down as they come up to speed, and then they start to help.
------
jfasi
This implies a somewhat one-way relationship between companies and their
engineers: engineers give their time and talents, and in return companies give
their money and equity. Under this system, why not be selective about who you
hire? If you want great work, you need to hire a great engineer.
In actuality, the truth is great people aren't found, they're made. The role
of a good leader isn't to squeeze great work out of his employees, but rather
to develop within them the capability to do great work. Applied to hiring,
this means having an understanding of the support and growth capabilities
within your organization, and finding candidates who have the most potential
to gain from it, rather than hiring those who are already well-developed.
Applied to hiring rockstars, this makes them even _more_ valuable: not only
would they be producing outstanding work on their own, they would actually be
improving the quality of the work their peers produce.
------
fidotron
There isn't so much a shortage of engineers as a shortage of people willing to
relocate to a stupidly expensive area and gamble what they have in the
process. From the outside, but as a reasonably regular visitor, the Bay Area
has lost the plot completely.
------
sheetjs
The one part of the problem that the author missed is salary. Offering a small
amount of equity is fine if you are offering an above-market salary, but it's
the combination of below-market salary and minimal equity that causes the
perceived crunch.
"You get what you pay for"
~~~
Rami114
Agreed, unless you have some extremely appealing concept going you're not
going to get interest with below-market salary offers even with average equity
offering. I'd put it more brusquely: "You pay peanuts, you get monkeys".
When we have jobs - infrequently mind you - at slightly below-market salary we
always offered a phased increase to slightly-above market salary over the 6
month trial period.
That being said, I'm seeing a lot of mentions of single week or single month
trials. Is this a US trend? Across the pond here, in the UK, I've certainly
not seen them.
~~~
TheCoelacanth
The norm in the US is no trial period. You start with the assumption that it's
going to be permanent and if it doesn't work out you get fired.
~~~
Rami114
Crazy, we're used to probation periods here with a short notice time, that
protects both sides. I assume you have to negotiate any notice period for
being fired, or do you simply get no statutory notice period?
~~~
TheCoelacanth
Usually, there is no notice required from either side except in the case of
mass layoffs (two weeks are expected out of politeness, but aren't legally
required). That can be changed by a contract, but that usually doesn't happen
for anyone but high-level executives.
------
jjoe
_What_ protects an equity-holder employee from being viciously or prematurely
fired prior to the exit or cash out event?
~~~
potatolicious
Nothing. See: Mark Pincus & Zynga.
~~~
gphil
There are clauses in some agreements to prevent this from happening.
Presumably, Zynga employees just didn't get these kind of rights.
------
coffeemug
In my experience non-engineering roles are just as difficult to fill.
You can easily find a non-technical hire if you don't know what you want or
don't care about quality. If you care about quality, you'll be stuck in the
same crunch. For example, the skill of being able to write without run-on
sentences eliminates 99.9% of the candidates in the pool, for _any_ role. Want
candidates who can write reasonably well? Hiring just got 100x more difficult.
In a modern environment, if you're non-technical and can't write well, what
_can_ you do?
~~~
UK-AL
Founder =P
------
Pxtl
I'm surprised that "get out of the valley" isn't an option for that. I mean,
there are a lot of cities that produce lots of talented developers that cost a
lot less than Silicon Valley rates.
~~~
compuguy
Honestly I don't get why there isn't more push to have startups in areas such
as the Washington DC metro area (for example).
~~~
danielweber
And if you really need to have "an office," then build a remote office in a
second-tier city and grab up all the candidates there. Fly people back and
forth occasionally.
------
mathattack
" _Finally, most founders are not willing to spend the time it takes to source
engineering candidates and convince them to come interview. You can 't
outsource this to a recruiter until the company is fairly well-established--
you have to do it yourself._"
This is very important. It needs to percolate into their immediate reports
too. I've seen high tech companies lose great candidates because the first
line managers were too busy to interview them right away. If the right talent
is available, you have to maket he time.
------
rqebmm
The interview process is still something that hasn't been solved. A lot of
companies make hiring decisions based almost entirely on how well someone does
non-coding work under extreme social pressure, which is about the worst
possible way to measure the prospects of a developer!
Personally I really like the interview process a previous empoyer used:
shortly before the interview starts we had them look over a roughly CS
102-level programming project, then we ask them to design the architecture on
a whiteboard while the interviewers ask questions/give guidance. What we're
really looking for here is:
a.) how do they handle the social aspect of working with a superior who will
often (gently) criticize your work and/or ask you to thoroughly explain why
you're doing what. b.) that they have enough chops to architect a simple
program.
If they can pass those test I'm confident they'll be an effective team member,
because at the end of the day all you really want is someone who is competent
enough to be useful, and fits into your culture/team. Everything else will
shake itself out. You don't need some "superstar/rockstar/ninja" (unless
you're solving a particularly hard domain-specific problem) so stop looking
for them and excluding everyone else.
Instead start building an effective team.
------
prathammittal
Talent crunch debate is an elusive one. No credible data is available and we
interpret to make ourselves feel good- sour grapes. One thing I would say (in
my capacity as having gone to high school in India) is that there are
thousands of great engineers (I'm talking about my friends from IIT and IIT)
who would die to work for a Dropbox or an Airbnb. I'm guessing its a similar
situation in S.America, Europe, China (?) etc.
Now, as far as I know, these companies don't hire in most of these countries.
But why don't they? I don't understand. Visa stuff is less of a concern
actually.. its been thrashed more than it deserves. Indian consulting
companies got like 30K H1Bs last year. 30,000 engineers moved from India to
the US. Surely, Dropbox can get 20 good ones. And your startup could probably
get a handful too.
These engineers grew up on hacker news - so culture is not the problem. They
are moving seven seas - so they work hard and aren't dicks. Their options in
India are limited - so the salary negotiation is less of a nightmare.
Not sure if there are any republicans here, so I'll not defend the "Indian
developer taking away American job" phenomenon. Hopefully, HNers get why
immigration makes sense.
We are trying at VenturePact.com to build a vetted international talent
marketplace. We launched a couple of weeks ago in Delhi and a few tech hubs in
India and got hundreds of apps from developers wanting to work in the valley
or NY. Well, many applications were not suitable BUT many were.
Would love to read what people think of hiring internationally. And what would
the preference be between getting them to work remotely vs relocate.
------
cratermoon
tl;dr:
There's no engineering crunch, just companies that don't want to pay market
rates.
The Free Market from startup/VC perspective: It works when we profit, but when
we want to hire cheap labor it's because there's not enough people.
~~~
CmonDev
Even so called "market rates" are actually unrealistically low.
[http://pando.com/2014/01/23/the-techtopus-how-silicon-
valley...](http://pando.com/2014/01/23/the-techtopus-how-silicon-valleys-most-
celebrated-ceos-conspired-to-drive-down-100000-tech-engineers-wages)
------
wpietri
My approach to equity was to offer a range. We'd offer base equity and salary
numbers, and then give them an ability to trade salary for equity. If I recall
rightly, they got a modestly better deal than investors did.
In doing that, it became clear that not everybody even wants more equity. That
was a little hard for us as founders to take, because we of course thought the
equity was awesome, and wanted engineers to feel a real sense of ownership.
But from the numbers, it was clear that some people would rather we sold more
equity to investors and just gave them the cash.
I get that. If you've been around the industry for a while, you can accumulate
quite a collection of expired startup lottery tickets. Landlords, mortgage-
holders, and kids' orthodontists don't take options; they take cash.
~~~
silverlake
Wouldn't it make more sense if I chose 0 equity and all salary, but then
bought equity with my excess salary? Now there's no vesting period. I get it
all now just like an investor.
~~~
wpietri
You'd be paying with post-tax dollars rather than pre-tax dollars, and you
have to be an accredited investor [1] for it to be legal.
If somebody really had said, "I want to bet my whole salary on the company,"
I'm sure we would have be happy to accommodate them with a deal that was fair.
There'd still be a vesting period, of course, for the same reason you don't
get your annual salary up front on the first day. The tricky question would be
the cliff, but I'm sure something could be worked out.
[1]
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Accredited_investor#U.S._criter...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Accredited_investor#U.S._criteria)
~~~
randomdata
According to your link, you only need a $200K income to qualify, which you
could reasonably expect in the midst of a real engineer crunch.
------
frodopwns
There is no engineer crunch. Only wannabe founders who can't do anything but
talk big.
"Hey do you want to join my startup? We are reinventing analytics....again."
------
erichocean
As a teenager, I came to the conclusion that I would never get a job as a
result of an interview. I'd be even less likely to get past HR and get an
interview.
So I haven't interviewed for a single job for the last 18 years. Sometimes
people ask me for my resume; I don't have one.
What I did instead is take a problem I was interested in, solve it on paper,
and then approach a company to pay me to implement that solution for them
(along with an estimate of the cost). That has worked out really, really well
for me.
If you find that interviewers or HR aren't sizing you up correctly, this
approach might be an option. Businesses, when it comes to tech, mostly just
want problems solved. If you can do that, you'll get hired. Nothing shows you
can do something like bringing them the (on paper) solution, and offering to
built it.
------
ronaldx
Also, a cliff is very unattractive because we know you're motivated to fire us
before the cliff - probably even if we do a good job. Indeed, you openly admit
it.
~~~
danielweber
Does ERISA protect employees from that?
------
michaelt
I frequently hear startups say [...] can't find
a single great candidate for an engineering role
no matter how hard they look.
While I agree that offering better compensation is a wise move for individual
companies, if the market has 10 job openings and 9 engineers, regardless of
how much pay they offer one of the companies won't be able to fill the
opening.
Offering more money might fix hiring problems for one company, stopping one
person complaining, but to stop _all_ people complaining the only solution is
to increase the supply or reduce the demand.
(Increasing the supply doesn't have to mean immigration reform - it could mean
training or lowering hiring standards or a bunch of other things)
~~~
Phlarp
If the market has 10 openings and 9 engineers the companies should fight over
the 9 by increasing overall compensation, soon another intelligent hard
working individual will be sufficiently incentivised to join the industry
workforce.
~~~
michaelt
Sure, but if you want to hire someone with nonzero industry experience, your
options are more limited :) this is what I mean when I say companies will have
to lower their standards - inexperienced people into experienced-person
positions, people who've been coding since they were 18 instead of people
who've been coding since they were 10, people without university degrees
instead of with them, and so on.
No amount of demand can create people with two years of experience in less
than two years, or people with four-year degrees in less than four years.
~~~
danielweber
You can also stop engineers from leaving for finance.
------
kreek
"For most startups in the bay area"... time to move or be open to remote
developers.
------
j_baker
> In fact, probably less than 5% of the best hackers are even in the United
> States.
Startups clearly need to be basing more of their decisions on unfounded
conjectures. I have to say that startups seem to have unreasonable
expectations of what kinds of programmers they can hire. We have plenty of
viable hackers in the US, but startups don't want to hire them because they're
not the next Knuth or they're "not a good cultural fit".
[http://www.businessinsider.com/the-real-truth-about-the-
stem...](http://www.businessinsider.com/the-real-truth-about-the-stem-
shortage-that-americans-dont-want-to-hear-2013-5)
~~~
fredgrott
I would state that MAster with no time limit is not the same as those who cod
under time limits..not knocking Knuth contributions but the requirements are
somewhat different.
~~~
GFK_of_xmaspast
I'd rather have one Don Knuth than a hundred ninja rock stars.
~~~
jfb
BURNS
This is a thousand monkeys working at a thousand typewriters. Soon, they'll
have written the greatest novel known to mankind. (reads one of the
typewriters) "It was the best of times, it was the blurst of times"?! you
stupid monkey! (monkey screeches)
------
Matt_Mickiewicz
"Third, if you’re going to recruit outside of your network (usually a mistake,
but sometimes there are truly no other options), focus on recruiting outside
of the valley. There are great hackers all over the country, and many of them
can be talked into moving to the valley."
UPVOTE!! I'm shocked at how many companies are unwilling to pay for a $500
Southwest ticket to fly someone in for a day to interview from Texas or
Georgia... relocation costs are easily offset by a slightly lower salary, and
the person you're interviewing is unlikely to have 4 or 5 paper offers in
hand.
------
puppetmaster3
It's bogus. There is no shortage of engineers. But there are many badly
managed corps that only H1 would work at.
------
chris_mahan
"Great hackers also want the opportunity to work with really smart people and
the opportunity to work on interesting problems, and the nature of mission-
oriented companies is such that they usually end up offering these as well."
Uh, I don't care if it's "saving the world and the whales" or "enhancing legal
resolution outcomes through analytics". I care that I am granted enough
latitude to design and implement a good solution, instead of being handed a
software toolbox and told to "bang on nails" all day.
------
timedoctor
We find it moderately difficult, but definitely possible to find great people.
The secret is NOT looking in Silicon valley and the bay area where thousands
of extremely well funded companies are looking for talented developers.
Totally agree with the last sentiments that if you're in the bay area why
should you ONLY considering hiring in the same area? It shocks me that
technology companies can be so parochial.
You can hire across the entire US, Canada is just nearby and then there is ...
the rest of the planet!
------
lkrubner
Regarding this:
"Sometimes this difficulty is self-inflicted."
I want to emphasize how strong this point is. In most ways, the computer
programming industry is a shrinking industry in the USA. There are less
computer programming jobs in the USA than there were 20 years ago.
Stats from the Bureau of Labor Statistics (USA):
[http://www.bls.gov/ooh/computer-and-information-
technology/c...](http://www.bls.gov/ooh/computer-and-information-
technology/computer-programmers.htm)
1990 Number of Jobs 565,000
2010 Number of Jobs 363,100
2012 Number of Jobs 343,700
There is a tiny subset of the industry that is growing, and we associate these
with the startups in San Francisco and New York. But so far these startups
have not created enough jobs to offset the jobs lost due to other factors.
This suggests that there must be a vast reservoir or programmers who would
like programming jobs, but they can't work as programmers because the jobs
have disappeared.
If the numbers were smaller, you could argue that the loss of jobs was due to
inaccuracies in the way Bureau of Labor gathers statistics. But the drop from
565,000 jobs to 343,700 is too large to be a spurious blip.
This is a shrinking industry. Computer programming jobs are tied to
manufacturing so as manufacturing leaves the USA, so to do the computer
programming jobs. Don't get caught up in the hype about startups: look at the
actual numbers. The government tracks these jobs. The numbers are shrinking.
Especially worth a look:
[http://americawhatwentwrong.org/story/programming-jobs-
fall/](http://americawhatwentwrong.org/story/programming-jobs-fall/)
"In its 1990 Occupational Outlook Handbook, the U.S. Department of Labor was
especially bullish: “The need for programmers will increase as businesses,
government, schools and scientific organizations seek new applications for
computers and improvements to the software already in use [and] further
automation . . . will drive the growth of programmer employment.” The report
predicted that the greatest demand would be for programmers with four years of
college who would earn above-average salaries.
When Labor made these projections in 1990, there were 565,000 computer
programmers. With computer usage expanding, the department predicted that
“employment of programmers is expected to grow much faster than the average
for all occupations through the year 2005 . . .”
It didn’t. Employment fluctuated in the years following the report, then
settled into a slow downward pattern after 2000. By 2002, the number of
programmers had slipped to 499,000. That was down 12 percent–not up–from 1990.
Nonetheless, the Labor Department was still optimistic that the field would
create jobs–not at the robust rate the agency had predicted, but at least at
the same rate as the economy as a whole.
Wrong again. By 2006, with the actual number of programming jobs continuing to
decline, even that illusion couldn’t be maintained. With the number of jobs
falling to 435,000, or 130,000 fewer than in 1990, Labor finally acknowledged
that jobs in computer programming were “expected to decline slowly.” "
~~~
patio11
You and/or your sources are not successfully interpreting the BLS data. You
have overlooked the reorganization of the SOC.
Take a look at the computer occupations major grouping (which, n.b., does not
include many people who you and I think of as programmers).
Here it is in 2000:
[http://www.bls.gov/soc/2000/soc_c0a0.htm](http://www.bls.gov/soc/2000/soc_c0a0.htm)
Here it is in 2010:
[http://www.bls.gov/soc/2010/soc150000.htm](http://www.bls.gov/soc/2010/soc150000.htm)
Note the addition of the Software Developers (Applications), Software
Developers (Systems), and Web Programmers. This resulted from a
recategorization of programmers and Computer System Engineers. Also, web
programmers was simply disaggregated from Programmers generally.
I'll save you looking up the numbers: from memory, there are about 2 million
of them. You can treat some portion of them as being "poached" from the
computer programming category. Most are new to the field since 1990. Net
employment across the previous and successor categories is up, by several
hundred thousand jobs.
Your contention that the US has lost programming jobs flies in the face of
material reality.
------
_random_
There is a gold crunch as well - I can't find 999% gold at 1$ per kg.
~~~
whatthefox
Well said! If this doesn't convey the message I don't know what will.
Most of the "Founders" are nothing but facades that just want to make money in
the Tech world. They don't give a damn about technology or improving the
world.
------
arbuge
Recruiting good web developers is tough, no question, but I remember trying to
recruit good analog IC design engineers at my previous startup. That made
hiring developers look like a cakewalk in comparison. There were maybe 100-200
worldwide who fit the bill, all of whom were already happily employed at very
comfortable jobs.
~~~
vonmoltke
> I remember trying to recruit good analog IC design engineers at my previous
> startup ... There were maybe 100-200 worldwide who fit the bill
You have atrociously high standards for "good" if that is the size of your
pool.
~~~
arbuge
Nope.
------
w_t_payne
Or, y'know, maybe locate outside of the Valley?
------
pistle
>"Don't hire outside your network."
If nobody in your network has a track record of results, become a sycophant?
What if all the hackers in your network are US as well? You got less than a 5%
chance of a hope to do anything according to Altman.
~~~
ben336
...Thats not how percentages work :)
------
randunel
As a non-us engineer, I've had 2 visa applications denied. I guess Europe wins
:D
------
RogerL
I would like to share how inhuman a lot of the interview processes are. Some
examples: * recruiter says a startup is interested, introduces me to the HR
person via email. I get a 2 sentence email from HR, telling me that I have to
schedule a phone technical interview in the next day or two, they need to
onboard FAST.
Okay, I don't know what the job is, who the client is, and the last thing I
want to do is be grilled over the phone. I'm certainly uninterested in your
time crunch and am not going to rearrange my life to meet your schedule
requirements (there were narrow stipulations on acceptable times).
* Talk with a company, and explain that I don't do whiteboard interviewing. Oh, a session is no problem, but the interview has to be as much letting me interview and question you. 'No problem, we just want to talk and see where you'll fit in'.
Come the day, and I barely get a 'hi', just nonstop whiteboard coding in an
intense environment. Took the whole day off for that time waste. Two of the
sessions had me solve essentially the identical problem - I waste my day, they
don't take 5 minutes to plan out what I'll be asked. Then they call me back,
and tell me I have to come in for another series a day later, which was
entirely unexpected, and not communicated to me prior to agreeing to
interview. And if my requests for how the interview is conducted can't be
honored, fine, tell me, and either I'll change my mind or decide not to waste
a day taken from work. The cap to all of that was the 'shoot the messenger'
emails when I said I was not accepting due to how this all went down (and oh,
I didn't respond quickly enough to that email, meaning it took me a few hours,
so more grief for that).
* Just general, insistent demands as if I have nothing to do but interview with your company. If you have your resume out there, all you do is field phone calls and emails. I'm not going to pursue anything without knowing quite a bit about the job because I don't have to. There is always going to be better, low hanging fruit - cold emails with very accurate, detailed descriptions of a wickedly cool start up, recruiters that actually get to know your skill sets and desires, and so on.
* No exposure to what the work will be like. It's so secret they can't tell you, or there is a 'variety of work', or whatever. No work environment tour. No discussion of compensation, work hours, and so on until you've wasted a day or more in interviews.
* 'Go and study this book for a month, and then apply'. Um, I'm 47 and have a very successful career of inventions and products. Surely you don't have to quiz me on red-black tree implementation to access my abilities. If I need to know that, I'll open the book and learn it.
It was, by and large, very unpleasant. Perhaps it is not the best proxy, but I
go in assuming the interview process is the time you are trying to impress and
woo me the most, and judge you on that.
------
rgarcia
"If someone performs and earns their grant over four years, they are likely to
increase the value of the company far more than the 1% or whatever you give
them."
This argument seems flawed. If I think someone is going to double the value of
my company, should I be comfortable giving them up to 100% equity? Put another
way: percentage growth of your company from an early stage to some point in
the future most often exceeds 100%.
~~~
chime
You need to add a factor for risk in there. If there is a 10% chance that they
will double the value of your company, you can give them 5%. If there is a
100% chance that they will double the value of your company, you can give them
50% and make them a co-founder. Think in terms of marginal utility. Keep
giving equity until it no longer raises your expected value.
------
strlen
There are two unmentioned issues in regards to stock grants and hiring:
1) Information asymmetry or just plain symmetric lack of information in
regards to stock grants.
2) The price of a home in a decent school district within a "reasonable" (< 1
hour each way, i.e., no more than 2 hours a day total) commute to any cluster
of software companies in Bay Area (whether SOMA, Peninsula, or South Bay).
The two are closely related. When startups are competing for people against
Google or any of the young public (or pre-IPO) technology companies, the issue
at stake isn't salary (post series-A, startups may pay a slightly below market
salary, but not an egregiously low one) but RSUs ("restricted stock units" or
essentially outright stock grants: while these are treated as income for the
purpose of taxation, there's also no strike price and AMT trap to worry
about).
The reasons why these grants (which are generally very far from the "retire on
a yacht category") matter is that their ball-park value is known, they're
often refreshed as part of the performance review cycle (as opposed to fixed
during offer negotiation time), and if you plan on staying in Bay Area and
having kids, you're relying upon them to either afford a house in a decent
school district and with a reasonable commute, or to afford private school
tuition.
Changing grant tactics can help with information asymmetry problem
(transparency about finances and valuation is nowadays the rule rather than
exception in early stage companies), but they can't help with mutual lack of
information: neither the founders nor the investors know with certainty a
general ballpark figure of what the value of the company price will be at a
liquidity event, or if there will be a liquidity event in the first place.
What this means is that unless housing problems in Bay Area are addressed, in
addition to the already well discussed negative externalities, startups will
have an increasingly harder time hiring engineers that haven't yet experienced
a liquidity event or spent four or more years at bigger companies. They would
love to join a start-up, but not at the cost of their (future or existing)
children's education.
\---
Unrelated to the above points, this paragraph is also as important as it
should be obvious:
"Finally, most founders are not willing to spend the time it takes to source
engineering candidates and convince them to come interview. You can't
outsource this to a recruiter until the company is fairly well-established--
you have to do it yourself."
If I receive a message from an external recruiter, it's hard to tell whether
they really reasonably believe there's a good match between my skills and
interest and the company, or if they're just employing a shotgun approach. I
usually disregard these messages, even when I may be open to a new
opportunity. On the other hand, if I receive a message from a founder or a
tech lead, I try to reply even if (as, e.g., now) I'm not interested in
interviewing: at the very least, it's likely they did actually mean to
approach me specifically (not just anyone who has "Hadoop" in their profile),
and I've an obligation to let them know that I'm not available at the moment
as not to string them along.
\---
Finally, to underscore something else said in the article, in general, best
way to hire good people, is to work on something good people enjoy working on,
whether it's a greater mission or a good technical challenge. If neither of
the two is there, the most straight forward startup recruiting pitch -- "come
work on something cool with other smart people" \-- fails.
------
zallarak
Excellent essay. This really nails what I'd want in a dream job; knowing my
effort influences my payout (via legitimately sized equity grants) and working
on a mission I empathize with. Best article I've read in a while on hiring.
------
EGreg
Why not use oDesk and overseas developers? Today's teams communicate using
remote tools even when in cubicles next door. Why severely limit yourself
geographically in your search?
------
puppetmaster3
Would you say there's not a shortage of lawyers, and why is that?
~~~
PeterisP
There's an overproduction of lawyers in USA, as evidenced by falling entry-
level wages in that area and growing rate of law school graduates who are
unpaid interns, unemployed or work less-than-their-education jobs.
~~~
puppetmaster3
That sounds like propaganda.
I am paying a lawyer in SV $600 /hr. Show me a link where I can get one for
$65?
I'll also argue that software engineers train harder and maintain more than
lawyers. If the market worked, the wages would raise till the supply catches
up. But the market appears to be manipulated.
------
pastProlog
The beautiful girl crunch
For most guys in the bay area, the beautiful girl crunch is a bigger problem
than the Series A crunch (this somewhat applies to designers as well). The
difference in difficulty between dating a beautiful girl and an unattractive
one is remarkable--I frequently hear guys say that for unattractive girls they
can find multiple great candidates without really looking but can't find a
single beautiful girl for a dating role no matter how hard they look.
First, of all the canonical terrible advice advisors give, being cheap is
among the worst. I have never seen a hardup guy regret being generous.
For most beautiful girls, this is as much about fairness and feeling valued as
it is about the money. And of course, if girls are going to turn down the
certainty of dating a handsome, confident sales guy, they should get a reward
for taking that risk.
If you’re going to look outside of your network of friends from your Defense
of the Ancients guild (usually a mistake, but sometimes there are truly no
other options), focus on recruiting girls outside of the valley.
Finally, most engineers are not willing to spend the time it takes to develop
a normal social life with regular non-technical people whereas they might
develop normal personality traits and meet someone nice. You can't outsource
this though--you have to do it yourself.
Footnote: * Every time someone from the government asks me what they can do to
help hard-up engineers, I always say a version of "The only thing you need to
do is fix immigration for beautiful girls." We need more beautiful,
financially desperate girls from third world countries whose standards are not
as high as American ones.
~~~
YokoZar
I once (sarcastically) argued in a student newspaper that attractive people
should be favored in college admissions, since students would much rather
share a campus with more attractive people. To me it made more sense in terms
of promoting the desirability of attending the school than a whole lot of
existing practices, such as favoring athletes or the children of alumni.
------
joesmo
Pay 20% or more above the so called market rate and you'll sew there is no
crunch. It's that easy.
------
crassus
Double the equity. 9 month vesting cliff. Market salary.
| {
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