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Comcast to acquire NBC - shaddi
http://money.cnn.com/2009/12/03/news/companies/comcast_nbc/index.htm
======
blahedo
The vertical integration continues. It's always seemed dicey to me that a
cable provider owns so many content stations, and this just exacerbates it.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
“Avatar” project aims for human immortality by 2045 - PhilipDaineko
http://techandle.com/2012/07/30/avatar-project-aims-for-human-immortality-by-2045/
======
AznHisoka
I'm all for this as long as only the top .1% of people can afford this. We
can't have everyone and their mom achieving immortality.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Show HN: Yarnee for iOS - pow-tac
https://itunes.apple.com/app/yarnee/id878999441?mt=8
======
pow-tac
This is an App we worked on for many months, it was released to the public
yesterday.
I was the technical project manager, what do you think about it?
BTW: You can give me simple feedback by shaking your iPhone very hard - then a
screen shot will be captured and you can add a comment for me :-)
------
devOp
Looks very well designed. Unfortunately i don't have an iphone, but i like the
idea of the "yarn".
~~~
pow-tac
Thank you for the Feedback!
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
How I Learned to Code Neural Networks in 2015 - mrborgen
https://medium.com/@oslokommuneper/how-to-learn-neural-networks-758b78f2736e#.s0p5o4cxa
======
mrborgen
It's been quite a discussion on Reddit on the article. Feel free to ask
questions here as well and I'll answer as best as I can.
[https://www.reddit.com/r/Python/comments/3z0fmv/how_i_learne...](https://www.reddit.com/r/Python/comments/3z0fmv/how_i_learned_to_code_neural_networks_in_2015_in/)
~~~
danso
I've been reading the Reddit discussion so I don't have anything to add here
except for an upvote. Your writing and production values are excellent but I
especially appreciated the links to supplementary material.
~~~
mrborgen
Thanks!
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Ask HN: Interesting Lisp/Clojure articles for experienced programmers? - rustc
HNers, are there any interesting articles (or short books, or chapters in a book) that would show me the power of Lisp/Clojure, and make me really want to learn it?<p>(Better if a free resource, but not really necessary.)
======
car54whereareu
The Joy of Clojure is fine, and maybe even exciting in parts. It's worth the
money, or you can have mine (hope that's not discouraging).
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Two Approaches to Learning Programming: Top-Down and Bottom-Up - boyakasha
http://www.programmingforbeginnersbook.com/blog/top-down-bottom-up-approaches-to-learning-programming/
======
tannerc
Most of the engineers I know learned to program via "top-down", as did I
(though I'm a designer).
Whenever anyone asks me how to get started in programming, I tell them to
forget about buying any of those "Dummies Guide" books and instead just pick a
problem they're really passionate about and Google anything they need to learn
to make the idea happen.
Such an approach certainly doesn't teach you a lot of the most important thing
about programming (garbage collection, what types of objects to use and when
to use them, etc.) but it does get the job done.
And that's the thing I think matters most for those just starting out: if you
try to learn bottom-up and get all the fundamentals, you're going to burn out.
Of course such advice goes right out the window if your goal is to actually
become a real, breathing, programmer. Because you can't afford to make
mistakes and the foundational stuff ensures you're less likely to do so.
Whereas just Googling how to put together a project will likely leave you with
a functional project, yes, but also less-than-ideal code.
~~~
lilactown
This is why I say that JavaScript is a great first language. Not because it
teaches you how to write good code, or be a good developer, but because the
barrier to entry is so low to get started; with a text editor and a web
browser that everyone has on their system, you can start making something that
has a tangible (visible) result. That's powerful.
Once a person has a handle on things like how code is structured and
interpreted, syntax, objects, etc. then you can introduce them to the terminal
and start teaching them Python if you want. But nothing comes close to driving
interest like making a button on a screen that moves stuff around.
~~~
rjbwork
Ditto. I suggest JS => python => *
And I very much dislike JS for actual professional use.
------
corysama
I find it mostly depends on your personal motivation. If you somehow are
magically motivated to slog through a huge amount of crap that seems
meaningless and pointless to everyone else, bottom up is preferable. You'll
end up in a better place in the end. But... it only works because you see the
meaning and point of investing a large effort before the tangible payoff.
Bonus points if you find the slog to be fun in and of itself.
Naturally, a lot of professors and highly talented experts tout this as the
only way to go. It worked great for them and they don't see the point of any
other path.
But, in my observation, "talent" is usually a false explanation of someone who
is highly motivated by something I'm not aware of. Most "talented" people I've
known were actually putting in a huge amount of work in the area.
On the other end... if the return on investment isn't clear. If the path to
the payoff is branchy, windy and foggy. If you are motivated by results, not
process. Top down is a good way to determine if it really is worth the effort.
In the meantime, investing some extra effort in finding the payoff and the joy
in the process would be wise when taking this approach.
~~~
AnimalMuppet
Bottom up may require a different learning ability. You read something, and
you don't have a mental hook to hang it on yet, because you don't have any
idea of the overall framework. So you have to be able to leave it hanging in
midair for a while, until you learn enough of the higher-level structure to
understand how it fits.
I used to be better at that when I was younger...
~~~
aassddffasdf
I think you have that backwards. Bottom up is about the composition of already
understood pieces into more powerful ones (the utility of which is obvious due
to solving limitations/ inconveniences inherent in the previous layer).
------
AdeptusAquinas
_Then the teacher tells you that most professionals don’t code this way
anymore. So you start learning about classes, and instances, and instance
variables, and methods, and inheritance, and a whole bunch of other object-
oriented programming concepts. Then you try to unlearn the way you originally
learned to write code, and learn to write code in the new object-oriented
way._
Missing next line: "Then you get a job and your colleague tells you that most
professionals don’t code this way anymore.
~~~
SadWebDeveloper
Missing next phrase: ", we are still using Java".
------
RubenSandwich
What about the approach of Middle Out: where you neither build anything beyond
copy and pasting code nor learn why doing comparisons on floats is a deal with
the devil?
Joking aside, it does seem that a mix of the two is nice. Bottom Up is boring
when you just want to get things done and Top Down is magic until you try to
leave the playground. The problem arises that each student will have different
tolerances of each of those approaches.
Edit: Maybe an interactive book, or app, that lets you see a problem from both
angles and let's you pick the problem you want to solve. Here is a problem:
"Given this graph data summarize and display it". Bottom Up you learn DFS and
Top Down you learn d3. With if you pick one or the other your given a library
to fill in the part you don't like. You could always return and do the other
part latter as well.
~~~
patleeman
Middle out is how I learned to program actually.
I started with basic lessons on Codecademy to learn the basic concepts and
jumped between reading books and researching concepts and building small
projects. I feel like I got the best of both worlds. When I hit a concept I
didn't understand or needed clarity on, I went and researched the underlying
fundamentals.
I've seen developers that have gone top down and they struggle with basic
programming logic because they don't have the fundamental knowledge. On the
flip side, I can't imagine studying CS and learning all the CS fundamentals
without going ahead and building stuff the whole time.
------
dangom
An then there is the SICP approach, a Bottom-up feels like Top-Down that
proves that the two approaches need not be mutually exclusive.
~~~
kmicklas
Yeah it's a false dichotomy.
------
Const-me
There’re no fundamental concepts.
If you’ll start with C, there’s assembler and machine code underneath.
Underneath there’s memory hierarchy, CPU microarchitecture, buses, and other
things like USB protocol stack.
Underneath there’re logic gates, comparators, summators.
Underneath there’s physics, quantum mechanics, electrodynamics.
Each of these abstraction levels is fundamental relative to the upper one.
The level of abstraction that you declare fundamental is arbitrary. You can
define your “fundamental level” threshold much higher, e.g. JVM or
S-Expressions, and start bottom up from that arbitrary level.
The level a median developer believes is fundamental drifts upwards over time.
70 years ago it was impossible to be a programmer without knowing about logic
gates. The majority of modern software developers can’t design stuff from
logic gates, they don’t even know much higher-level USB protocol stack, and
yet they are able to do their jobs just fine.
------
danbruc
I have thought quite a bit about how useful a course with theoretical and
practical elements from silicon atom to HTTP request would be. You start
building an AND gate from MOSFETs, an adder from 4000 series ICs, a simple
processor on a FPGA, you write Tetris for your simple processor, and then you
switch over to a real computer, operating system fundamentals, data
structures, algorithms, protocols, ...
That is certainly a lot of information to process, but if designed well it
could be like one big project where you regularly end up with a result and
then continue building the next layer on top of what you already have. There
would be a clear path to follow in order to not get lost in any layer but if
you wanted to, you could also keep exploring a layer for a while before moving
on.
Not sure if that would actually be a good idea or not, but at least
retrospectively that looks like an awesome way to really learn how to code.
~~~
khedoros1
This doesn't go quite that far, but takes a generally-similar approach:
[http://www.nand2tetris.org/](http://www.nand2tetris.org/)
------
flavio81
Better would be the DSL approach: Express the problem in an easy to
understand, natural-looking DSL and then implement the DSL. This is both top-
down (describe problem) and bottom-up (implenent DSL words) at the same time.
In common OOP languages (i.e. Java), the mechanisms of OOP can be used as an
ersatz DSL, albeit a bit limited.
------
kutkloon7
Nowadays, programming is much more complex than it used to be (unless you
consider toy programming languages). For me, visual feedback was always a key
factor in the things that I made. When I started, there was no top down or
bottom up. You just started programming, and you actually understood what was
happening because it was not that complicated.
Let me give you an example. QBasic is the first language that I learned.
Suppose you want to draw a white pixel in the left upper corner on the screen.
To do this, you can do: SCREEN 13 PSET (0, 0), 15
If you understand this and for-loops it is trivial to fill the screen with a
color. Then the next step is to make the color of the pixel dependent on the
position. I made some wonderful graphical stuff with this (rotozoomers,
plasma, fire effects...).
Now, if I want to do this in C(++), I probably can, but it will take me at
least an hour of research. Same thing for C#, Java, Haskell, and so on.
This is not a completely fair comparison since QBasic ran in DOS and there was
no need to summon a window, but that is exactly my point: things keep getting
more complex. To plot a colored pixel on the screen in QBasic, you have to
know about pixels, screens and colors. To do this in a more modern
environment, chances are you have to pick the right API and understand all
abstractions it introduces (probably including windows, graphical contexts,
buffers...). The trend seems to be to ever more abstract, complex, and
powerful frameworks.
If you are already a programmer, this is a gradual progress and it is feasible
to keep track of everything, but for new programmers it takes a looooong time
to get up to date with all the new abstractions that people have come up with
(and I think are not always that important to start programming).
Now I'm not saying that we should not introduce abstractions or frameworks or
implying that DOS graphics were better than today's system with windows. I'm
just saying that these advances come at a high cost, and I don't know if there
is a solution.
~~~
Const-me
Why don’t new programmers start with stuff like this?
[https://processing.org/overview/](https://processing.org/overview/)
------
steve_bruce
I tried the top-down method but I figured out that I was a type of person who
should learn the basics first and then develop knowledge from that.
I think that the Bottom-up method is better overall.
------
hdhzy
That's an excellent advice and it works because people are motivated and have
a tight feedback loop ("is this what I wanted?"). Arguably this is the best
way to learn if you follow it with some deeper reading on the subject once you
have a working solution to close gaps in your understanding.
------
apeacox
I usually start with Top Down to get a big picture quickly, then I do Bottom
Up to dive deeper in details.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
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Ask HN: What happens to society if we run out of oil? - taw55
======
diafygi
We won't. Over 80% of oil we pull out of the ground is burned for energy, and
we are switching to alternatives at a rate that should have us fully
transitioned before we run out.
And thank god, too. We can only pull up a quarter of our proven reserves
before hitting 2 degrees warming (the Paris agreement). We hit 3 degrees
warming (where the Pentagon says wars start over food) when we pull up a third
of proven reserves.
I work in cleantech, and people used to wonder if oil would die at a high
price (due to lack of supply) or low price (due to low demand). Nowadays
everyone knows it will die at a low price. Also, here's my favorite climate
change joke, "They say we won't act until it's too late...Luckily, it's too
late!"
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carbon_bubble](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carbon_bubble)
------
badrabbit
One thing people often forget when talking about petroleum is plastics and
many other uses that have nothing to do with converting petrol into energy.
Is there a raw material that can be used to substitute for petrol to make
plastics or is there an alternate to plastics for mass production and other
uses?
~~~
muzani
I think we've developed many plastics alternatives, but they aren't in use
because of high prices. I hear a lot about things like sugar for plastic bags
and jellyfish for tampons and diapers.
When we do start running out of oil, the prices for this should rise quite a
bit, making research into the alternative much more likely.
~~~
twobyfour
Tampons are made from cotton, not plastic. Maybe you're talking about the
applicators (which are also sometimes made of cardboard instead of plastic)?
Or maybe you're talking about menstrual pads, which - like diapers - have a
plastic lining to protect against leaks.
~~~
zhte415
To clarify, muzani mentioned jellyfish for tampons and sugar for plastics.
Not plastic for tampons.
~~~
twobyfour
Ah, I see.
Is cotton production significantly affected by oil shortages? I thought cotton
was an issue mostly because farming it is water-intensive and too much of it
is produced in dry regions.
~~~
zhte415
>Is cotton production significantly affected by oil shortages?
I have no idea. I was just correcting your incorrect comprehension of the
message you replied to.
------
twobyfour
A lot of things become much more expensive (likely gradually as supplies
dwindle).
Electricity, until petroleum-burning plants are replaced with nuclear or
renewable alternatives.
Travel and shipping, while we come up with alternative ways to fuel jets and
ocean liners, and replace our car and truck fleets with electric ones. This
cost trickles down to any goods not manufactured locally with locally-sourced
materials.
Food, until we come up with alternatives to petroleum-derived fertilizers and
retrofit our farm machinery to use electric motors.
Electric motors and batteries and the raw materials needed for the batteries,
as demand for them rises.
Plastics (made from petroleum derivatives).
Food again, as some crops are diverted into use as combustion fuel or to
produce plastics.
Some of this is already happening to a limited degree as we exhaust the least
expensive sources of petroleum.
If the process were to accelerate - and especially if it were to outpace our
capacity to substitute non-petroleum-dependent tooling and processes for
petroleum-dependent ones - rising prices (especially of food) would presumably
lead to social unrest and possibly even instability.
~~~
woodandsteel
>Electricity, until petroleum-burning plants are replaced with nuclear or
renewable alternatives.
Except for home generators and the like, no one uses oil for electricity
generation. Coal and natural gas are used, since they are much cheaper.
~~~
adventured
Saudi Arabia as an oddity gets 2/3 of its electricity from oil power plants
(the rest from natural gas and steam).
------
pjdemers
There is a quote from an OPEC meeting decades ago: The stone age didn't end
because the world ran out of stones; the oil age will end long before the
world runs out of oil.
[http://www.economist.com/node/2155717](http://www.economist.com/node/2155717)
~~~
jabl
And the implied corollary: Don't you worry your pretty little heads about
climate change, fossil fuel pollution, or your societies being dangerously
dependent on a volatile part of the world with autocratic leaders with a
medieval mindset. Mankind will always invent its way out of whatever problem
it finds itself in. In the mean time, fill up your tank, enjoy life and stop
worrying!
~~~
nostrademons
It's not really implied, at least in the article:
"The best way to curb the demand for oil and promote innovation in oil
alternatives is to tell the world's energy markets that the “externalities” of
oil consumption—security considerations and environmental issues alike—really
will influence policy from now on. And the way to do that is to impose a
gradually rising gasoline tax."
Rather, the article assumes that people _will_ worry their pretty little heads
about climate change, fossil fuel pollution, or their societies being
dangerously dependent on a volatile part of the world, and that will provide
the political incentive to enact taxes that nudge the market to renewables.
Or, if the political spark doesn't occur, the rising cost & instability of
extracting that oil will provide the market incentive needed to switch over.
We already _have_ invented our way out of this problem - solar, wind, hydro,
geothermal, batteries, and electric motors exist already, as do fuel cells &
electrolysis at a somewhat higher price point. It's just that those
technologies are only recently competitive economically with fossil fuels.
Raise the price of oil and suddenly there's no reason to use oil anymore.
------
oil7abibi
I’m an exploration engineer at Saudi Armaco. It will be a long long time
(hundreds of years) before we run out of oil; and each year we discover new
kinds of crude reservoirs.
~~~
xaedes
Most reservoirs are on land under earth, right?
Is oil from the ocean floor a big thing in the future?
~~~
adventured
Nearly 1/3 of global oil supply is from offshore.
[https://www.eia.gov/todayinenergy/detail.php?id=28492](https://www.eia.gov/todayinenergy/detail.php?id=28492)
------
sunstone
First society will quickly transition to electric transportation. Second,
society will start synthesizing the organic feedstock it needs for making
plastic products.
------
mythrwy
We'll use other hydrocarbons assuming we haven't mostly (hopefully)
transitioned off of hydrocarbons by then. Coal (which can be liquefied),
natural gas, there is a lot of energy left in the ground.
But the dirtiness of burning hydrocarbons has become well recognized so it
looks like we won't get to that point at all.
------
graycat
Oil? Can make essentially oil from coal, water, and electric power. We can get
electric power from nukes, water from the oceans, and here in the US we've got
lots of coal. E.g., last I heard, a major fraction of the state of Utah has a
layer of coal about 30 feet thick.
~~~
twobyfour
Pretty sure you need fresh water rather than salt water for that. And
desalination is an energy-expensive process.
~~~
graycat
Agree.
------
muzani
Elon Musk's group of companies are look for complete solutions to running
society without oil, mainly because they can't take oil to other planets.
Everything from transportation to power generation and storage.
So if we do run out of oil, Musk would probably achieve world domination.
~~~
rurban
Him or Bezos. Looks more like Bezos currently.
------
matt_the_bass
One less topic to argue about at holiday dinners.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
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Unito – Export GitHub issues to GitLab and Bitbucket and keep them in sync - ronjouch
https://unito.io/blog/how-to-export-github-issues-to-gitlab-and-bitbucket/
======
ronjouch
Hi HN! OP here, and developer at Unito. We've been featured/mentioned a couple
of times here (see our founder's Show HN at [1]), and this blog post felt like
an appropriate occasion to pitch again our service. Two things:
1\. We're more than the migration/trial use case of the blog post! We do one-
way and two-way sync for {GitHub, GitLab, JIRA, Bitbucket, Trello, Asana,
Basecamp, Wrike, Planner} tasks, covering scenarios from a simple one-way
GitHub -> GitHub to crazy multi-provider dispatching & merging based on
labels/assignees. Check out [https://unito.io/](https://unito.io/) .
2\. Ask us anything :)
[1]
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12858432](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12858432)
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
$stdout – Hell.js - alexgrcs
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yx6k6WR8GRs
======
FutureSpec
So good.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Using Mechanical Turk to hide a surgeon's domestic violence charge - evan_
https://twitter.com/swodinsky/status/1143583269730082816
======
sunkensheep
It's just "blackhat" SEO. Reminds me of a scheme in China where a company sold
fake medicines and astro-turfed their way into appearing as a major supplier.
So long as our view of the internet is governed by opaque algorithms with no
oversight, gaming them will be profitable.
~~~
lilbobbytables
And if they weren't opaque, gaming them would be even easier.
~~~
yellowapple
Security by obscurity ain't security, though. If they weren't opaque, at least
we as a society would be better equipped to keep up with the algorithmic
exploitation arms race.
~~~
cbsmith
I think, unfortunately, that is naive. While security through obscurity ain't
security, there is something to be said for obfuscation of a system that
people are trying to game.
~~~
yellowapple
That's the point, though: if a system is so fragile that anyone with knowledge
of its inner workings can game it or otherwise exploit it, then it is not and
was never secure (nor can it ever be while it continues to be opaque).
I say this enough to be a broken record, but transparency is a dependency of
trust.
~~~
cbsmith
This isn't a trusted system though. The data it consumes and indexes, the
people who use it, etc. are not trusted.
You are effectively saying poker would be better if everyone's cards were face
up.
~~~
yellowapple
> This isn't a trusted system though.
Well yeah, obviously, given that it ain't transparent.
> You are effectively saying poker would be better if everyone's cards were
> face up.
You are effectively saying that an ideal system is one that we'd have to treat
like a poker game.
Even assuming the premise here holds true (that a transparent system will be
more easily gamed by more people), that'd ultimately be better than the opaque
case. The more people who are able to game a system, the less one individual
can effectively game it for one's own individual benefit at the expense of
everyone else in that system.
~~~
cbsmith
I thought of a better way to express this that might make sense to you.
In security, total transparency isn't effective. You want as much transparency
as possible, but you need secrets for the system to work (usually
passwords/certs/passphrases).
Now, there isn't a password/certs/passphrase in this context, so the secrecy
is instead in the model.
------
taneem
Title is incorrect. This is not on Mechanical Turk. Tasks like this are not
allowed on MTurk as per TOS. The original tweet author says so on the thread.
~~~
reaperducer
I didn't read it as being part of MTurk. "Mechanical turk" was a thing for
hundreds of years before Amazon named it's service.
~~~
tomnipotent
> "Mechanical turk" was a thing for hundreds of years before Amazon named it's
> service.
In the context of crowdsourced labor, it absolutely implies Amazon.
------
londons_explore
That will be insanely effective.
Doing that just ~10 times (with independant users/profiles) will probably
eliminate those results when the ML model is next trained. Assuming this Dr
isn't a celebrity, he probably doesn't get more than a few searches per month,
so 10 in the same day will be a massive signal.
Note to person behind this: It will have even more impact if each turker is
instructed to click _only one_ of the desired links. Clicking "back" to a
google search result is a strong signal that the page you clicked didn't
answer your query.
------
jakestuart
Does this really work? I would assume Google would detect this repeated
pattern pretty easily.
~~~
evan_
I think so, at least to some degree. Someone's certainly bet money on the
theory that it works.
When I first saw this tweet, a search for "Dr. Paul Drago" (in an incognito
window) consistently returned a glowing blog post first and the domestic
violence article second. Hours later, those results are consistently reversed.
Could be random, could be that people who saw this tweet are intentionally
clicking the news article he's trying to bury.
~~~
brokensegue
or could be google took manual action
------
devoply
[https://www.greenvilleonline.com/story/news/crime/2018/11/26...](https://www.greenvilleonline.com/story/news/crime/2018/11/26/greenville-
physician-charged-domestic-violence/74809748/)
Should a person be banned from working because they physically assaulted
someone. Seems to be that lots of people think so, despite that fact that many
more people than are convicted commit these sorts of crimes. Didn't take much
more than to type the name into Google News and click on the link on the page.
~~~
Someone1234
If you click the second image:
\- "Accused doctor wasn't certified in plastic surgery"[0]
\- "11 women say plastic surgeon botched jobs"[1]
\- "Plastic surgeon - Paul Drago - Plastic surgery from hell"[2]
I'd say the accusations here are more than just DV.
[0] [https://www.wcnc.com/article/news/local/accused-doctor-
wasnt...](https://www.wcnc.com/article/news/local/accused-doctor-wasnt-
certified-in-plastic-surgery/374891066)
[1] [https://www.courthousenews.com/11-women-say-plastic-
surgeon-...](https://www.courthousenews.com/11-women-say-plastic-surgeon-
botched-jobs/)
[2] [https://www.lipstickalley.com/threads/plastic-surgeon-
paul-d...](https://www.lipstickalley.com/threads/plastic-surgeon-paul-drago-
plastic-surgery-from-hell.177514/)
~~~
cantrevealname
> _11 women say plastic surgeon botched jobs_
If I told you that the 3M Company had 2192 lawsuits[1] of all types filed
against them in the the last 4 years, what does that tell you? Are they a
terrible company getting sued at lot or a incredibly nice company that barely
ever gets sued for a company that large?
Plastic surgeons are among the most sued professions. To know whether 11
lawsuits are significant, you'd have to know the rate at which plastic
surgeons are sued, how many surgeries this guy did, what period those 11
surgeries represent, and possibly even weight it with the difficulty of the
surgeries (because if he's taking on high risk surgeries that other doctors
decline, he'll have more failures). _Maybe_ 11 lawsuits in a 4-year period is
an excellent track record for someone doing thousands of high-risk surgeries
in an ultra-litigious medical specialty.
[1] Completely made up that number.
~~~
Someone1234
The first link says the North Carolina Medical Board just pulled his license.
And a "nationally recognized and board certified plastic surgeon" said the
doctor had no training to perform plastic surgery (only general surgery as all
doctors receive).
So I'm not sure why you're trying to make some artificial point in isolation
about lawsuits being meaningless, other doctors clearly think badly of his
practice of medicine, to the point that they've stopped him doing so.
------
indolering
In the past, Google claimed to not use clickstream data because of how easy it
is to manipulate. Have they changed their tune or are they just targeting
Bing?
------
aussieguy1234
It's probably worth noting this guy has a very unique name, therefore negative
news stories about him are much more likely to go to the front page of
results, since few other people with the same name would get any publicity.
------
yipbub
It seems to have worked. Googling the Dr. Paul Drago doesn't show any of these
articles unless you use keywords mentioned in the Do-Not-Click titles.
I made sure to click on them.
~~~
millzlane
I did it a few times. When I google Dr. Paul Drago. I do seem some of the
articles. That may be because I've click a few of the links and have done the
search a few times. Also The [https://www.lipstickalley.com/threads/plastic-
surgeon-paul-d...](https://www.lipstickalley.com/threads/plastic-surgeon-paul-
drago-plastic-surgery-from-hell.177514/) link also appears on the second page
now.
------
dlphn___xyz
whats the point of doing this if a simple record check could reveal his court
records?(assuming these charges are real)
~~~
wnevets
Is that something you usually do when picking a new Dr.?
~~~
geezerjay
Honest question: how should someone's domestic violence charge affect your
choice of surgeon?
~~~
anigbrowl
Are you kidding? Someone who can't control their anger isn't someone you want
poking around your insides with a scalpel. If such a person makes an error
during an operation, do you really think they'll be transparent about it?
~~~
geezerjay
> Someone who can't control their anger isn't someone you want poking around
> your insides with a scalpel.
If the surgeon is prone to violence fits as you claim he might be, wouldn't it
show on his track record as a surgeon?
------
LawnDart1
am I the only one who searched for dr paul drago and clicked on the greenville
doctor article to redress the balance?
------
subsubsub
Is this astroturfing? I thought the term referred to fake grass roots
movements (Astro Turf being the brand name for that fake grass you sometimes
see).
As a previous commenter said, this is more like grey/blackhat SEO.
~~~
jjeaff
No, the term predates fake grass roots movements. It comes from using fake
grass to cover up an ugly yard.
So creating fake or useless media attention to distract or cover up something
you don't want people to see.
~~~
zamadatix
Googling around I can't find anything that agrees with this but I see an
overwhelming number of sites referring to the origin as related to the grass
roots meaning with the popular origin from Lloyd Bentsen in 1985.
Not that it couldn't have just been overrun since that time I just couldn't
find anything to support your claim.
------
not_a_cop75
I, for one, welcome our new Machine Learning Overlords.
~~~
optimuspaul
Mechanical turk is the opposite of machine learning
~~~
gojomo
Here, though, it's being used to provide fake signals to a true machine-
learning algorithm – Google's clicktrail-influenced ranking. So more of a
'complement' than an 'opposite'.
------
bsder
Um, the fact that his medical license has already been suspended by one state
is much more problematic than his domestic violence charge, thanks.
Let's be outraged about the correct problem, please ...
~~~
kennywinker
I’m not outraged about the specifics, i’m intrigued about the astroturfing. If
this worked, it could and probably is being applied to all kinds of things...
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Apple delays FaceTime bug fix until next week - harshulpandav
https://www.theverge.com/2019/2/1/18206721/facetime-bug-fix-delayed-apple-ios-group-chat-eavesdrop
======
united893
Brilliant strategy on Apple's part -- picking a fight with Facebook and Google
(banning them for a few hours) to generate global headlines while leaving
dozens of other companies off the hook for sideloading their to their non-
employees (e.g: Square) [1]
[1]
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19051609](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19051609)
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
A Beginners Introduction To Metrics and Analytics For Data-Driven Growth - liamgooding
http://blog.trak.io/a-beginners-introduction-to-metrics-analytics-for-data-driven-growth/
======
liamgooding
This is one of the introductory chapters to the book, so it's intentionally
aimed at people who are either new to modern metrics/analytics or are looking
to get into Growth Hacking, but don't yet have the foundation theory knowledge
to get started with the strategy.
Any questions, or if anyone would like to be one of the case studies for the
book, please get in touch!
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
PH Launch Who is going to share feedbacks? - DamlaYildirim
Hello Guys, MoovBuddy has launched on PH: https://www.producthunt.com/posts/moovbuddy<p>Please share your feedback and upvote if you like. Cheers
======
gus_massa
Please change the title to something like: " _MoovBuddy: An exercise app for
back & neck pain and joint health_"
It's also much better to link here to the page of the app directly, instead of
the Product Hunt launch.
The description is a bit too specific:
> _Less pain killer, less medical imaging and less chronic pain._
I think it can be a problem like the old marketing saying
> _An apple a day keeps the doctor away._
------
DamlaYildirim
Hey everyone! If you are interested and want to try premium, send me an email.
[email protected]
------
gnrbyrm
Hey Hackers, we have been working on MoovBuddy with Damla. Your comments and
feedbacks are appreciated! See our launch in PH:
[https://www.producthunt.com/posts/moovbuddy](https://www.producthunt.com/posts/moovbuddy)
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
As Clocks Get More Precise, Time Gets More Fuzzy - moh_maya
http://www.sciencealert.com/physicists-find-as-clocks-get-more-precise-time-gets-more-fuzzy
======
M_Grey
I understand some of the subject, but I didn't understand the point this
article is trying to make. There's a lot of the usual popsci about QM, and
then this...
_" In this case, the physicists hypothesised the act of measuring time in
greater detail requires the possibility of increasing amounts of energy, in
turn making measurements in the immediate neighbourhood of any time-keeping
devices less precise._
_" Our findings suggest that we need to re-examine our ideas about the nature
of time when both quantum mechanics and general relativity are taken into
account", says researcher Esteban Castro."_
joe_the_user's link to the original paper is infinitely more useful than the
article itself. The paper seems to imply something fundamental about how
anything that we can use as a lock must function, then lays the usual
assumptions from QM on top; that makes sense, although who knows if it's true?
I don't get the sense from the paper that it's something we could reasonably
probe with current or near-future tech. Worse, their conclusions about whether
or not spacetime intervals can be absolutely defined may rely on an arbitrary
level of precision.
~~~
mirimir
So is this basically saying that time is quantized?
Or did we know (whatever that means) that already?
~~~
jacquesm
Planck time?
~~~
M_Grey
This is one of my favorites discussion of the Planck scale, I'd strongly
recommend it. [https://www.physicsforums.com/insights/hand-wavy-
discussion-...](https://www.physicsforums.com/insights/hand-wavy-discussion-
planck-length/)
~~~
mirimir
Indeed, very cool. Plus, John Baez commented:
> Another way to think about the Planck length is that if you try to measure
> the position of an object to within in accuracy of the Planck length, it
> takes approximately enough energy to create a black hole whose Schwarzschild
> radius is… the Planck length!
That sounds familiar, here.
------
joe_the_user
I wonder if this could be used to test various quantum gravity models.
Apparently this could involve a lot of energy - another giant machine to
build, oh boy.
Also, direct link to PNAS article.
[http://www.pnas.org/content/early/2017/03/06/1616427114](http://www.pnas.org/content/early/2017/03/06/1616427114)
~~~
dghughes
That is true or at least it seems like the smaller any natural phenomena are
the bigger and more powerful a machine needs to be to find them.
------
CarolineW
There are a lot of comments here, some by people more knowledgeable than I.
Let me just say that, by my understanding, just as there's a quantum
uncertainty principle linking position and momentum, so there is a similar (or
equivalent) quantum uncertainty principle linking energy with time[0]. The
more accurately you know when something happens, the less certain you can be
about how much energy is involved, and _vice versa._
This is why the quantum vacuum is filled with particles, and why the Casimir
effect[1] works.
[0]
[http://math.ucr.edu/home/baez/uncertainty.html](http://math.ucr.edu/home/baez/uncertainty.html)
[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Casimir_effect](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Casimir_effect)
~~~
raattgift
> This is why the quantum vacuum is filled with particles
The quantum vacuum is defined as the no-particle state.
The particle number operator works by matching annihilation and creation
operators. Those operators are fixed on particular coordinates.
When annihilation and creation operators match up there is no particle.
For inertial observers in flat spacetime, a Lorentz transform relates the
annihilation and creation operators for any pair of observers no matter what
their relative velocities or which way they face relative to one another.
A Bogoliubov transformation can relate annihilation and creation operators for
a wider range of observers in flat spacetime, including those who are
accelerated. However, a natural choice of coordinates for extremely
accelerated observers relates poorly with a natural choice of coordinates for
inertial obervers (for example, in each case using polar coordinates with the
origin always at the respective observers), with a result that there is a
disagreement about where in a set of shared coordinates one finds frequency
modes which relate to annihilation and creation operators.
As a result, in flat spacetime, the no-particle vacuum of a(n inertial)
Minkowski observer looks to an accelerated observer as if there are particle
creations not matched by particle annihilations, and thus the particle number
goes up. However, conversely, the no-particle vacuum of a (n accelerated)
Rindler observer looks to all Minkowski observers as having particles.
Since Special Relativity does not privilege frames (even though its focus is
on relating inertial observers' observations), neither type of observer is
really "more correct".
However, since the accelerations required to have a detectable number of
particles is extreme (you need to maintain 10^20 gees of acceleration to see a
thermal bath of 1 kelvin) and since accelerations do not last indefinitely, it
is fair to pseudo-privilege the inertial observers, and conclude that (a) the
Rindler observer is counting annihiliation operators source by whatever is
locally powering the uniform acceleration and (b) the Minkowski view that the
accelerating observer is therefore emitting a thermal bath into the Minkowski
vacuum is more correct.
Additionally, in SR one can tell an extreme acceleration from mere inertial
(even ultrarelativistic) movement, using an accelerometer.
In general curved spacetime one expects observers not moving on a geodesic
(one hovering at a fixed height above the surface of a planet, for instance)
to disagree about the particle numbers in the local area compared to an
observer freely falling on a geodesic as that observer passes infinitesimally
close to the non-geodesic (accelerated) observer, when the particle numbers
are defined using annihilation and creation operators set against "natural"
coordinate choices for these observers and relating those choices through a
Bogoliubov transformation.
Two mutually accelerating observers in flat spacetime or two observers in
general curved spacetime may not be able to find a shared coordinate system,
and when that is the case, no one can really say which of the two is "more
correct" about her or his no-particle vacuum.
Consequently, the quantum vacuum may have particles in it, but only for a
peculiar choice of quantum vacuum (i.e. you look at someone else's claimed no-
particle state and see particles in it).
When looking at one's own no-particle state, one cannot determine the vacuum
energy. One can conclude that at each coordinate point there is the same
energy, but not the exact energy -- this ground state / minimum energy can be
arbitrarily high.
However, the uncertainty inequality \Delta E\Delta t \geq {h \ over 4\pi}
applies and one can treat this as momentarily separating annihiliation and
creation operators. One can treat this formally (e.g. in Feynman diagrams of
this process) as the production of virtual particle/anti-particle pairs, or
alternatively as a realization of the non-commutation of the field's energy
operator with the particle number operator, and thus the no-particle state is
a superposition of particle number eigenstates.
Trying to turn these superposed states into real particles is taken less or
more seriously depending on the writer. I'm fairly confident that many
physical cosmologists are fine with the idea when considering the possibility
that the early universe is a fluctuation of a high-energy no-particle state
into a still-high-energy many-particle state. The problem is in suppressing
these fluctuations in later regions of space that are free of particles (from
our perspective in our solar system now). Physicists in other areas like to
poke many holes in these ideas.
However, in both cases, "filled with particles" invites horror-show ideas of
larger scale structures fluctuating into existence and causing problems. This
doesn't happen as far as we can tell, so we should preserve the no-particles
idea of the vacuum conceptually.
> the Casimir effect
does not really rely on the particle count operator. One can cast it as the
(idealized) plates screening longer positive and negative frequency modes that
when combined linearly and treated as creation and annihilation operators,
simply produces more of these on the outsides of the plates. The "more
particles" outside the plates push them together through the "no particles"
vacuum between them.
Mathematically this is OK, but conceptually it has problems.
Decades ago a quantum electrodynamics approach was taken to the Casimir effect
showing that it arises due to the relativistic retarded intermolecular forces
within the plates themselves. This view fully reproduces the "vacuum
fluctuation" observables for idealized plates and generalizes to non-idealized
plates in a way that the fluctuation view does not (yet, as far as I know).
There have been updates on this view of the Casimir force since, and it holds
up well, and has the advantage of not needing any particular value for "zero
point energy" (which is just the vacuum energy as I described a few paragraphs
above, and which ought to be _unprobe-able_ by observers similar to us, which
is in fairly serious conflict with the vacuum fluctuation idea taken to
extremes).
This is elucidated with citations under "Relativistic van der Waals force" and
under "Generalities" in your [1].
Taking virtual particles too seriously can be misleading, even if it works out
mathematically.
------
goldenkey
All this is saying is that using extremely high energy lasers or some other
high energy mechanism to keep coherence, is going to necessarily cause a local
time dilation due to the high density of energy.
Highly dense energy/matter warps the space around it.
Its not like we cant take this into account though in our measuring devices.
If they are measuring accurately and extremely extremely often, any error will
accumulate so that even a normal clock is more accurate. Therefore its not
hard to tune within reason. Error needs ti approach 0 as number of
measurements per second approaches infinite.
~~~
M_Grey
They seem to be saying that any measurement regime, in achieving the necessary
accuracy, will cause arbitrarily large measurement uncertainties. The authors
at least, seem to think that this is fundamental, but as you say, it might
just be a limitation of our current notion of a highly accurate clock.
It might not matter though, if this is another in a long line of essentially
non-falsifiable ideas.
~~~
goldenkey
If time is not well ordered on the quantum scale then we be damned!!
~~~
M_Grey
Right?! It's not like the TDSE is so easy to manage under the current regime.
Plus I _like_ causality...
------
inetknght
Let's pretend that I've never taken a single physics class at all, ever.
Who's to say that the inaccuracies are merely caused by fluctuations in
spacetime? If you turn on the radio to a frequency on which there is no known
transmitter, you hear background radiation. Is it not the same for spacetime?
As you measure time (space) more precisely (more instantaneously) and more
often, your measurements will occur more often on various boundaries of the
background radiation of gravity (which we all know fluctuates spacetime). At
that point, the is the error rate you see not also the rate of background
radiation? If you could measure or predict the velocity of multiple background
spacetime radation sources, you could reduce error? Thus, the error rate of
measuring time is the rate of change of gravity.
Of course we built gravity wave detectors, so that nullifies that whole
thought. Right? Or does it? The collision and merging of celestial bodies is
arguably one of the biggest events in the universe. But what if spacetime or
gravity (are they the same thing? I don't know) 'bounces' back on like a wave
crashing against a wall, then surely there's fluctuations in spacetime due to
past events. Wouldn't that intrinsically cause minute "errors" in
measurements?
What keywords should I search to find (hopefully free) online resources to
answer my questions?
~~~
killjoywashere
My physics is pretty old, but I'll try: skimming the actual article (1), it
looks like they're isolating time in the Heisenberg uncertainty principle
(putting all the Δ on the other side of the equality) and then following those
Δ's in the other variables, which is a common use of the uncertainty
principle). They imagine some displacement, then insert the result back into
the uncertainty principle to see how that Δ would propagate back onto time.
I was sort of excited about this because it seemed like they might be
suggesting there was actually a window here to explore a quantum theory of
gravity. Alas, they say "Although the methods presented here suffice to
describe the entanglement of clocks arising from gravitational interaction, a
full description of the physics with no background space–time would require a
fundamental quantum theory of gravity".
To your specific question "Who's to say that the inaccuracies are merely
caused by fluctuations in spacetime?" I don't think they're claiming they
found a theoretical cause to explain some observed fluctuations. In fact, they
put in some notional values to see what comes out and observe "this effect is
not large enough to be measured with the current experimental capabilities".
Now, I think what you're getting at is the idea that you would expect the
ticking of clocks to vary over space time. What they're saying is, "Of course,
but we believe the problem is even more fiendish: the tick rate not only
varies but it accumulates uncertainty to the point that a system which starts
out as a clock can no longer be considered a clock at all. Further, [what I
believe they are saying] the clock's coherence decays in a way that
potentially varies with path and frame of reference. At which point, one
starts wondering, why haven't we all flown apart already?
And they're doing this, again, all from a theoretical standpoint. It' the same
sort of thought experiment you might get if you modify Euclid's fifth axiom:
all sorts of weird stuff is possible, and we don't really need experiments to
show the math, although there are experiments that can be done.
(1)
[http://www.pnas.org/content/early/2017/03/06/1616427114.full...](http://www.pnas.org/content/early/2017/03/06/1616427114.full.pdf)
------
wayn3
There is a lesser known uncertainty relationship that works similar to the one
seen in position/momentum.
This is especially treacherous since atomic clocks seek to measure time by
counting energy state transitions in cesium atoms.
I'm not sure whether it applies at the scales we currently work with.
------
UhUhUhUh
It seems that this could be generalized to "as measurement gets more precise,
what is being measured appears more fuzzy". This begins to define a sort of
law and a sort of epistemological "wall" we have been bumping against for the
past century or so.
~~~
mirimir
Well, it's about trade-offs in measuring complementary variables. But concept
of time becoming fuzzy is new for me.
------
nvader
This effect was the a key plot point in Terry Pratchett's Thief of Time.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
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Nest: What's in the 4.3 software update - lordbusiness
https://nest.com/blog/2014/11/04/whats-in-the-4-3-software-update/
======
lordbusiness
My nest paid for itself in the first 8 months of use. The difference in my
utilities was that dramatic. And I was a person who had actually bothered to
set his thermostat and thought I had a decent setup going.
I'm not so interested in the Protect product. I just need a smoke alarm to
wake me up. The rest is just bloat to me. :-)
~~~
richev
We had a thermostat that was just plain confusing to program, plus it was
damned ugly.
I am not sure if the Nest has saved me any money but it looks a lot nicer on
the wall than our old thermostat, and really is nice and easy to use!
I still find myself showing it off when friends come to visit...need to stop
doing that probably. :-)
~~~
jazzdog
That (looks nice and fun) is the only reason I kick around the idea of getting
a Nest. Living in San Diego, there's not much reason for a thermostat. It does
get chilly in the winter, but we use firewood to heat the house. We use the
A/C maybe two weeks a year. But that UI sure looks nice.
------
bhhaskin
The nest is a little pricey, but it is really worth it. My family loves ours.
We are thinking about replacing our smoke detectors with the protect next.
~~~
mikhaill
Just be careful about two things about the Nest protect, which are not obvious
when you first purchase it.
1\. If your house has the 3rd wire running between all the smoke alarms, so if
one detects smoke, they all ring, Protect will not work with that system. It
doesn't have the hook up for the 3rd wire. Nest will tell you to replace all
the smoke detectors with the protect if you want the alarm to go off in the
entire house.
2\. If the Nest does detect smoke, it goes off and there is no way to turn it
off until it thinks the smoke has cleared. Short of climbing up to the ceiling
and ripping it off the power supply it will not turn off. You can't turn off
the alarm via the app or by physically pressing the button.
I was originally very excited by the nest protect, but now not so much.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Tipu's Tiger - Thevet
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tipu%27s_Tiger
======
dct
Also featured in Sharpe's Tiger
([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sharpe's_Tiger](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sharpe's_Tiger))
------
Camillo
I love the British reaction.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
How to Get Personal and Professional Value from Idle Web Surfing - yters
http://www.thesimpledollar.com/2008/05/15/how-to-get-personal-and-professional-value-from-idle-web-surfing/
The article's points are fairly obvious when you think about it, but I haven't seen enough emphasis on the <i>real</i> social network you can develop online in the articles I've read. It is also helpful for me to realize web surfing isn't all necessarily wasted time and can actually be quite valuable.<p>Also, in the spirit of the article:<p>I found this at lifehacker.com. Besides the regular sites, such as proggit, hn, & /., I also semi-regularly check boingboing.net, makezine.com/blog, hackaday.com, aldaily.com, tcsdaily.com, and my old undergrad tutors' site: scriptoriumdaily.org.<p>boingboing, makezine, and hackaday all go together. They focus on hacks, makezine and hackaday on the tech side and boingboing more on the cultural side.<p>aldaily and tcsdaily also go together, aldaily represents the humanities side of academia and tcsdaily represents the business/tech side of academia; though both are written informally.<p>The last one is written from a Christian perspective, but I usually find the articles to be pretty insightful, and if you are an atheist and don't get all these religious wingnuts you might get a better idea of what makes the more reasonable ones tick.
======
yters
The article's points are fairly obvious when you think about it, but I haven't
seen enough emphasis on the _real_ social network you can develop online in
the articles I've read. It is also helpful for me to realize web surfing isn't
all necessarily wasted time and can actually be quite valuable.
Also, in the spirit of the article:
I found this at lifehacker.com. Besides the regular sites, such as proggit,
hn, & /., I also semi-regularly check boingboing.net, makezine.com/blog,
hackaday.com, aldaily.com, tcsdaily.com, and my old undergrad tutors' site:
scriptoriumdaily.com.
boingboing, makezine, and hackaday all go together. They focus on hacks,
makezine and hackaday on the tech side and boingboing more on the cultural
side.
aldaily and tcsdaily also go together, aldaily represents the humanities side
of academia and tcsdaily represents the business/tech side of academia; though
both are written informally.
The last one is written from a Christian perspective, but I usually find the
articles to be pretty insightful, and if you are an atheist and don't get all
these religious wingnuts you might get a better idea of what makes the more
reasonable ones tick.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Civ game 236 years old - erehweb
http://erehweb.wordpress.com/2012/06/12/civ-game-for-236-years/
======
davewicket
Have you tried turning it off and on again?
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Spore: What happened? - mshafrir
http://videogames.yahoo.com/events/plugged-in/spore-what-happened-/1387746
======
patio11
One day Will Wright and Peter Molyneux got together and decided to settle,
once and for all, who could ship the most awesome tech demo in a box declaring
it was a game. Molyneux got the drop on Wright by nearly a decade with Black
and White, which featured stunning graphics, adaptive AI, some of the best
emergent behavior I have ever seen, and a campaign mode which could not be
beaten because apparently QA had missed level 4 (it was cleverly hidden by
being shipped with only 5 levels, not the planned 82, thus lulling QA into a
false sense of security) and did not see that the scripting was impossible to
complete.
But Wright toiled and toiled for a decade, and then came out with Spore. And
yay the gamers did look upon it and say, verily, it was an even more
impressive tech demo than Black and White, with beautiful graphics and a host
of content creation tools (though no AI to speak of), and that Wright had
successfully created a null game while making it appear to the player as if
there were six of them.
Thus Wright won the contest.
------
icefox
I followed all the news and was very much looking forward to playing Spore.
But I didn't buy it at the last minute because of the DRM. EA was using Spore
to push DRM even tighter for PC Gaming and I just couldn't agree with that. I
also didn't pirate the game so I still have never played it. I put my money on
the line and said no. Maybe I am only one guy, but by not playing it I also
didn't tell my friends about it.
~~~
Retric
I did the same thing. However, it was more out of fear what the DRM would do
to my system than an unwillingness to have any DRM. Granted, I heard the game
sucked, but I would have still gotten it if the DRM had not had such a bad
reputation.
------
dantheman
It wasn't fun. It tried to be too many things, and none of them were
sufficiently polished or really all that entertaining. I think the Real Time
Strategy portion sucked the most.
Also, the game was very simple -- If it had more complexity it might have been
more fun.
~~~
Batsu
It's strange.
In the beginning, they described their model creation, the procedural
animation, the sheer massiveness of working with an entire universe... stuff
never seen before in a game. It was huge. Everyone was excited.
In the end, the game was much too simple to be enjoyable.
------
ryanelkins
I really wanted to like Spore. I got it the day it came out and played it for
quite a while. Ultimately it was just too simplistic for my tastes.
Even if it remained simple, I might have enjoyed it more if I could more
freely explore. It just seems like the game is worried about you getting bored
and so injects alot of things that have to be taken care of relatively
quickly. Even in the space stage it seems I could never get too far away with
someone needing me to come all the way back because of an attack or eco-
disaster. I just got tired of being interrupted all the time.
The Massively Single-player concept didn't seem to scale well as your empire
got larger. The massiveness seemed to punish the player rather than reward
him.
------
replicatorblog
I wrote a lot about Spore when it launched. The sad part is the potential it
offered will likely never be realized with Wright gone from EA.
It was the first game to aggressively try to marry bits and atoms. Bing Gordon
wanted the creature creation tool to serve double duty as a way to make
customized "Pokemon" style games offline. It was the first game designed to
have the characters 3D printed.
[http://replicatorinc.com/blog/2009/01/review-spore-
sculptor-...](http://replicatorinc.com/blog/2009/01/review-spore-
sculptor-3d-printing-service/)
The metadata in a .png file could be used to recreate the design in the
editor.
It was a terrible game, but probably the best entry level cad program I ever
used. You could do just about anything.
[http://replicatorinc.com/blog/2009/02/75-creative-uses-of-
th...](http://replicatorinc.com/blog/2009/02/75-creative-uses-of-the-spore-
creature-creator/)
It is the kind of launch only a big company could do successfully and
unfortunately it didn't work out. I hope they would at least consider open
sourcing the design tools. I agree with the general sentiment that the game
was just terribly boring. Put the tech in the hands of someone who gets
gameplay and there is still potential.
------
noarchy
DRM issues aside, the game simply wasn't good enough for me to recommend it to
anyone. The early play experience was decent, but I quickly found myself
losing interest. In particular, once I got onto land and found myself facing
MMO-style grind quests...yeah, that quickly drained my interest. I tried to
stick with it, but couldn't.
------
dkimball
I agree with those here who are observing that it failed because it was a
lemon. No one should generate _that_ level of hype, especially not while the
game in question is trapped in development hell to the point that they cut an
entire "stage" of the game and any number of features from the others.
People have a high level of tolerance for corporate BS when the product behind
it is good. _Spore_ only offers five or six hours of gameplay, not the five or
six years it seemed to be promising; if it had delivered on its promise of the
moon, I think we would have heard an awful lot less about SecuROM.
------
Roridge
it came... it saw... it failed... everyone felt sad because Robin Williams
said it was great... but it wasn't
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Concurrent Programming Constructs in Multi-Engine Prolog - fogus
http://logic.csci.unt.edu/tarau/research/LeanProlog/slides_damp11.pdf
======
wccrawford
I'm starting to hate scribd more all the time now.
When you advance to certain slides in that slideshow, it moves an ad from the
bottom to the top, which moves the slides. So you can't just click through it,
you have to constantly readjust the scroll. And they move back if you go back.
Intrusive ads are bad enough, but destroying the presentation of the page is
going too far.
~~~
getsat
I hate how the full document loads, is displayed for 100ms, then I get
redirected to a "This document is not publicly available" page.
------
hsmyers
To paraphrase Tufte, bullets do not a presentation make. If it is worth
writing about then write about it, do not summarize it into little pieces that
may or may not reveal the 'point' in question. Beyond that---an interesting
idea, form aside...
------
z5h
Cool stuff. The link at the end seems broken. This one worked for me
<http://logic.csci.unt.edu/tarau/research/LeanProlog/>
| {
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} |
The Sustainability of Human Progress (John McCarthy) - DaniFong
http://www-formal.stanford.edu/jmc/progress/index.html
======
DaniFong
Note that while I don't share all of his views, this webpage is a broad,
reasoned, concise case for optimism amidst the obstacles we'll face.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Another $1K App on the App Store - kushsolitary
https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/the-fleas/id519800737?mt=8
======
coderholic
My guess is that is to manipulate all of the app discount sites that scan the
app store and report on apps that have recently been discounted. If the
developers drop the app to $0.99 then all of those sites will report this as a
huge saving, and possibly feature it more prominently as a result (I'm
assuming those sites are all automated - and there are a lot of them!)
~~~
LinaLauneBaer
I am the developer of one of those "discount sites". Well I do not have a site
but apps for iOS and OS X that show you the discounts. I filter those things
out on the server side in extreme cases and my Mac app allows you to specify
your own filter criteria like in iTunes where you can have smart playlists. So
for example you could ignore apps where the old price is $999 and the new
price is $0.99 or something like that.
<http://store-news-app.com/>
------
andrewroycarter
I wanted to say this must be an April Fool's thing, but looking at the past
price points <http://appshopper.com/games/the-fleas-2>
------
fnayr
That's fine. If they lower their price quickly back to $.99 Apple can ban them
(and has stated they will ban developers engaging in blatant price
manipulations). If they don't, no one will buy it, and if some poor schmuck
does he will get a refund on an accidental purchase.
~~~
spinlock
Why would apple want to ban people from dropping the price of an app from $999
to $0.99? Are they just trying to make sure that people who buy at high prices
don't feel bad about their purchases?
~~~
wahnfrieden
Why would you want your customers to feel cheated? It also leads to more
refund requests, which have a processing overhead.
~~~
gdilla
Right, and Apple debits your account for the purchase price (not the net 70%
amount) when a user demands a refund. So a lot of this and you can actually
run negative.
------
gurvinder
Its usually done to trick the top grossing apps rankings. Developer will raise
the price to $1k then buy himself some copies using different fake accounts,
thus raising the ranking. Once ranking is achieved, they will reduce the price
in hope to get more sales.
~~~
nchuhoai
I'm no expert in App Store rankings but isn't that quite expensive way of
doing so? Assuming you pay it 10 times, you end up with burning 3000 dollars
in Apple transaction cuts.
And I doubt 10 sales, will get you into top-grossing
------
bkanber
I don't understand -- why would they do this? Trying to trick someone into
dropping $1k on their app? Or is there some way you can game the app store by
messing with prices?
~~~
fnayr
They do it so that when they lower the price to $.99 3 days later, the robots
pick up on the 10000% lower price.
~~~
Bill_Dimm
It would only be 99.9% lower.
------
c3vin
this seems like a brilliant online ordering system for heroin
~~~
jpdoctor
... with built-in money laundering.
~~~
vajrabum
at a cost of only 30$!
------
ja27
If you have an AppAnnie account you can see the grossing ranks. Looks like
someone in India bought a copy. It's the #6 best-grossing iPhone/iPod app in
India right now. It also peaked at #21 in Malaysia on the 29th. So it looks
like 2 sales at that price.
[http://www.appannie.com/app/ios/519800737/ranking/#view=gros...](http://www.appannie.com/app/ios/519800737/ranking/#view=grossing-
ranks&date=2013-04-01)
~~~
TylerE
Almost makes me wonder if they're trying to trick people - e.g. this just see
a price starting with 99 and assume 99 cents
How does Apple handle things like this? Does it immediately auth the CC for
purchases over a certain amount?
------
mattyohe
You can see the erratic pricing activity here:
<http://appshopper.com/games/the-fleas-2>
------
creeo
I'm one of the developers of this app and I can say that you shouldn't expect
a price drop on this app soon. It's been 100$ for several months and now it's
1000$. It's not a special type of promotion, not a way to trick app review
sites, it's just 999$ for an app and that's it. Some people can afford buying
an app for 1k$ and you know what? We are not one of them so we just can't
afford buying our own app for promotion purposes :) Those people who don't
like our app are always able to receive their money back. Some do, but some
don't and it helps us continue the development of our new project. You can
continue discussing "how scum we are" but the truth is no one is trying to
fool anybody. It's absolutely legal to sell an app for 999$, and those who
bought it for 99$ or 999$ don't write reviews that spill dirt on us or our
game, they just play it and make some effort to entertain themselves, and
those who got it for free very often are too lazy to read 5 words in the
training mode just to understand how to play. I'm done.
~~~
syncerr
This must be trolling.
> Those people who don't like our app are always able to receive their money
> back.
Can you explain the refund process?
~~~
creeo
I'm not sure about the customer loses but when he requests a refund, we don't
receive a cent of it. For us it's 100% money back. People do that quite often.
And it's not trolling.
------
igorgue
When price changes from say free to 1K and people have to update do you have
to pay for the update?
~~~
fnayr
No
------
ck2
Are there legit apps over $100 ?
~~~
callmeed
I recall one that helped you study for the bar exam and was really expensive.
I assumed it was legitimate.
~~~
UnoriginalGuy
This one I think: <https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/barmax-ca/id345722008?mt=8>
Called BarMax. They even call it "cheaper" on their official web-site. Which
just raises the question: cheaper than /what/?
~~~
mikecarlucci
$999 is cheap for a bar review. Prices do vary from state to state, but
BarMax, Barbri, and Kaplan all offer programs for the CA bar.
Barbri for California: $4,135
[http://www.barbri.com/courseInfo/barReviewCourse/pricing.htm...](http://www.barbri.com/courseInfo/barReviewCourse/pricing.html)
Kaplan for California $2,190 [http://www.kaptest.com/Bar-Exam/Bar-Review-
Courses/General-B...](http://www.kaptest.com/Bar-Exam/Bar-Review-
Courses/General-Bar-Review/complete-california-bar-review-course.html)
------
RougeFemme
I ignored this initially, thinking it had be an April Fools' joke. Then I saw
the comments piling up and thought I should check it out. I will continue to
treat it as an April Fools' joke.
------
chrisjack
It seem to be a good way to have free marketing. They will probably drop it
back tomorow to free or 0.99$
------
weakwire
free marketing? I'll take it!
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Bridgewater Makes $1.5B Options Bet on Falling Market (2019) - tristanj
https://www.wsj.com/articles/bridgewater-bets-big-on-market-drop-11574418601
======
tristanj
Bridgewater bet over $1B that the stock market would fall by March. The
article is from November 2019. If they're still holding their bet, it would
have paid off handsomely.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Plan to Turn Asteroids into Spaceships Could Spur Off-Earth Mining - ohjeez
http://www.space.com/33079-turning-asteroids-into-spaceships-made-in-space.html
======
beamatronic
Instead of lifting a lot of mass out of your gravity well and accelerating it,
it does make a lot of sense to take advantage of this "free" mass and energy.
You get some measure of radiation shielding as well. If we have thought of
this, then certainly if there are any other intelligent space-faring species
out there, then they have thought of it also. Perhaps we will find a surprise
out there one day, as we scan asteroids and comets that fly by.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Is Microsoft Excel an Adequate Statistics Package? - Jerry2
http://www.practicalstats.com/xlsstats/excelstats.html
======
avs733
A couple notes from a heavy Excel and heavy R (and heavy several other similar
products) user...
factories run on excel...terrifyingly so. I know semiconductor semiconductor
fabs that basically run on queries in a many sheeted workbooks. The reason is
because not everyone codes, especially not factory foreman, technicians, etc.
They don't need a continuously running app (well they do but they don't know
it) they just need formatted data.
That links to comment two. The issue that Excel solves over code goes back
(IMHO) to two issues that come up with coders/noncoders. First, most users of
excel are interested in the answer rather than the process. I get the value of
being able to audit your steps visually, but the transition from Excel to R is
a transition from the primary visual being data (i.e., results) to process.
Depending on your perspective that can be highly meaningful.
Second, and probably more importantly, Excel lets you visualize your data as
it progresses. For those with lower (or just different/less abstract) spatial
and visual reasoning ability, seeing the progress of data from column to
column can have a fairly profound effect. This extends to students who are
trying to learn by seeing the progression as steps of a processing algorithm
are applied. Doing so in code abstracts that process heavily. For some,
especially those not used to treating data in the abstract/blind via code.
~~~
SmokyBorbon
> factories run on excel...terrifyingly so
Chemical plants too. But that does not mean there is no code.
An Excel document can be programmed with VBA to make connections to network
resources, read/write files, send emails, etc.
I might not be the most effective tool for every task but it's everywhere and
allows workers to automate work without making a request to hire a developer
or buy new software. Someone can gradually automate business tasks on their
own initiative rather than go through multiple layers of corporate
bureaucracy.
~~~
avs733
absolutely agreed. I mean terrifying more in the sense of the lack of controls
that I have typically seen in place and the way 'pull request equivalents' are
handled and modifications are made.
------
kprybol
The other reason to not use Excel for stats? It's virtually impossible to
reproduce your work unless you documented every step in some other format.
Excel is easily one of the worst tools you can use if you ever need to refer
back to/redo your original work at any point in the future or if you need to
be able to validate your result with any confidence. Yea I know there are some
people who are freaking magicians with VBA who can "fix" many of the problems
listed, but that doesn't absolve excel of its statistical sins.
~~~
MlCROSOFT
I think that's where R stats package (R Project) really shines, I love the
command line console that displays every input / action so you have a track
record of what you did. Used it for T-tests, linear regression, ANOVA, MANOVA.
For those working in biological / environmental science fields, I would
definitely recommend it.
~~~
okket
There is a free R course on Codeschool if anyone wants to try it for an hour
or two. It's fun.
[https://www.codeschool.com/courses/try-r](https://www.codeschool.com/courses/try-r)
------
hexane360
I've spent a lot of time using Excel in ways it was never meant for.
If anyone is trapped using Excel to make a box plot, it is possible (disclamer
please for the love of god never do this): Make a stacked column chart. The
first series should be equal to Q1 minus the graph minimum. Format this to be
invisible. Series two should be median - Q1, formatted as a black outline on a
white bar. Series three should be Q3 - median, formatted like series two.
Error bars can be added to give the whiskers. Here's an example:
[https://i.ytimg.com/vi/ucWmfmXb1kk/maxresdefault.jpg](https://i.ytimg.com/vi/ucWmfmXb1kk/maxresdefault.jpg)
Again, don't do this.
For a histogram, just make a min and max for each bin, and use countifs(range,
">=" & min, range, "<" & max) to get the amount in each bin.
~~~
bereasonable
Excel 2016 supports box and whisker plots.
------
twunde
I disagree. Where I work, we have one person that does all the hedging, price
calculations and other financial modeling and he only uses Excel. The only
practical downsides to his use of Excel it's that he doesn't have direct
database access so we generally need to create the initial reports to give him
the data and secondly Excel can only hold a little over 2M rows.
~~~
throw_away_777
How do you verify that his calculations are correct?
~~~
shostack
Why do you think this can't be verified? You can see the formulas in cells, or
you can see the macro code. Further, you could auto import older data inputs
and outputs via data connections in Excel and set up some automated checks to
flag if something is off.
Is there a use case where you think this wouldn't be possible?
~~~
throw_away_777
You can verify it sure, but it is much harder to verify excel equations than
code. There is no github for Excel (besides saving with different names). You
generally don't see the equations when you look at Excel - this is one of the
reasons Excel is so error prone.
~~~
shostack
Fully agree. My point was that it can indeed be verified though in many
circumstances.
That said, I think there's always a balance between a quick down and dirty
business solution that gets the job done, vs. something fully engineered.
Additionally, it is much easier for business users to shoulder more of the
workload while letting people with programming knowledge focus on other tasks.
------
ramblenode
A point I have not seen mentioned is that Excel encourages bad practices for
data visualization. No other statistics or data analysis software I am aware
of gives you the option of 3D-ifying a 2D plot. This adds negative value to
the plot for anyone who is actually interested in data over eye candy. Simple
example is a pie chart. Give it depth and it becomes much more difficult to
reason about, and one's reasoning could easily change if the chart was
rotated.
~~~
learningman
Agreed for the most part, although there are rare valid uses for 3d graphs. I
think most contemporary data vis people would say that Excel makes it possible
to make pie charts at all means it may encourage bad practices.
~~~
infinite8s
What are those rare valid uses for 3D graphs?
~~~
learningman
I can think of one-- we had a 96-element datatable (12x8) and limited space in
our biochemical journal article. We were looking to graphically show
differences in orders of magnitude to help explain the assay. A 3d column
chart fit the bill because we could show lots of data in a small space, and
readers could quickly see the range of values.
------
ee8aq3g5c6
Let's not forget the time Excel's bad UI contributed to a bombshell paper's
faulty evidence in favor of fiscal austerity, probably prolonging the European
recession: [http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2013-04-18/faq-
reinha...](http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2013-04-18/faq-reinhart-
rogoff-and-the-excel-error-that-changed-history)
~~~
nolok
Yeah no, if people who were decided by this paper took it at face value
without checking the numbers made sense, it's not an excel ui's fault. As for
the others, they would have picked that policy choice with or without that
paper.
~~~
ee8aq3g5c6
Sure, we could argue over multiple possible sources of blame and maybe we will
conclude that Excel is not the most important. It seems nearly impossible to
have that debate in a rigorous way. In any case, "the evidence will be ignored
anyway" is not a good argument to use a tool that will produce bad evidence.
------
teamonkey
> "Changes in Excel 2010 have improved its use for statistics considerably.
> For earlier versions of Excel, however, the answer is generally ‘No’. The
> following refers to versions prior to 2010 (2011 on the Mac)."
------
tangue
Considering Microsoft recent involvment with R I have the crazy hope that
future versions of Excel will be shipped with R as a scripting language.
~~~
Mikeb85
IMO adding scripting to a spreadsheet is a waste of time when R can simply
import a spreadsheet, perform whatever operations needed, then spit out
another spreadsheet/database/whatever format you want.
~~~
actuallyalys
Plus, if you use a tool like RStudio or Jupyter, it's pretty easy to see the
data as you manipulate it, which is a commonly cited advantage of Excel, with
none of the awkwardness of trying to look at cell formulas.
------
godzillabrennus
Harper Reed gave a fireside chat at 1871 in Chicago a year back where he said
that he's yet to see any meaningful data opportunity that can't be addressed
by Excel. Most are just trying to build a solution where there isn't a
problem.
~~~
ramblenode
He has apparently never worked with a dataset of more than 1,048,576
observations, Excel's row limit [0].
[0] [https://support.office.com/en-us/article/Excel-
specification...](https://support.office.com/en-us/article/Excel-
specifications-and-limits-ca36e2dc-1f09-4620-b726-67c00b05040f)
------
lordnacho
Never, ever use Excel for anything other than prototyping, spot-checking data,
or as a makeshift GUI while you develop a proper one.
I've seen several financial shops where people were moving millions of dollars
around using Excel. IMHO, it's always an indicator of deficient processes and
lack of coding skill. Yes, I do know that some clever people use it. They are
productive in spite of excel, not because of it.
Your main problem with excel is not that some statistical function is missing,
or wrong, or misleading. Sure, that's an issue, but you can live with a few
things being wrong if you can detect them and fix them yourself. I'll come
back to stats later...
The problem with Excel is it's damn near undebuggable. There's simply nothing
in the way of someone making a beast of a calculation, with the flow going all
over several sheets. You can even make things circular if you want. The data
and the code are all together, mixed up. Was a number in a given cell written
there by the VB code, or was it an input? You can use the auditing functions,
but chances are you will see a spaghetti of arrows.
It's also non trivial to find differences between different versions.
Typically the dude who is using excel has also never heard of Git or SVN, so
you will see a load of sheets like "portfolio1" and "portfolio2_new_old" and
so on. I don't know if it's changed, but when I was using Excel, the files had
code files within them, rather than separate files, like we do with most other
languages.
Of course you aren't forced to write crappy spreadsheets, but there's simply a
tendency for people who don't code to be a bit messy. But Excel is positively
inviting trouble. It's so flexible that anyone under a little pressure will
hack in some extra bell or whistle, building up tech debt for future
generations. It basically lulls the novice into thinking they can build
anything.
Amazingly I've met several people in finance who pride themselves on
spreadsheets that stretch over thousands of lines. I remember a billion dollar
merger where the analyst in charge of the "modelling" showed me how they
reached the line limit (I think that's gone now, so good luck!). It's as if
making things complicated justified their salaries, so maybe that's why excel
is so popular.
Now, about statistics. If you're doing anything non-trivial, you absolutely do
not have space to look at all the individual numbers in your matrices. Just
like if you're solving equations on a piece of paper, you need your own
symbolism. You need to be able to give things names and see short statements
at the appropriate level of abstraction. You probably need to be able to
verify the pieces independently, too. So unit tests for various operations,
that aren't intruding into the business logic.
~~~
ZanyProgrammer
I could've sworn I've seen people who work in the financial and maybe data
science industries who've praised Excel to the heavens on HN. Like on the same
level as Python, R, etc.
I don't work in finance (or data science really) so I can't comment, but it
seems merely a tool to me.
~~~
lordnacho
No way, not data science. How are you going to load in millions, possibly
billions of individual numbers?
With finance there's a lot of things that seem like good fits, but only if you
keep them small. Something like a personal budget is fine, where everything
fits on a screen.
~~~
blahi
I have 2.4 billion data points loaded in Excel at the moment.
Not that it matters. "Data science" is not something that magically kicks in
after you go beyond some "big data" threshold.
Excel is heavily used in managerial science type of positions and I can assure
you those are rather heavy on the "data science" workflows.
~~~
ramblenode
The maximum number of rows in the most recent version is 1,048,576 [0]. I'm
deducing then that your data is in wide format. What would happen if you
wanted it in long format? It seems you would just be out of luck with Excel,
which is not a problem in any other major statistics software.
[0] [https://support.office.com/en-us/article/Excel-
specification...](https://support.office.com/en-us/article/Excel-
specifications-and-limits-ca36e2dc-1f09-4620-b726-67c00b05040f)
~~~
blahi
Except that there is Power Pivot which is xVelocity - the same columnar store
database use in SQL Server.
------
itisbiz
I've been recommending to all the people I work with to use Excel add-in Power
Query to connect to data and do all calculations and transformations. Then
they can just replace/update data sources and refresh queries. It's somewhat
more accessible for non technical people than Power Pivot/ DAX/MDX. it's easy
to make tabular dimensional record sets ready for consumption by pivot tables,
Tableau, etc. You can choose to keep data in model instead of showing in
worksheet to bypass row limits and connect model to pivot table. Best of all
it teaches people ETL, better data management, separation of data and report.
------
princeb
there are a few unique issues i face with excel beyond the stats package.
1\. if you shift cells (ctrl c, ctrl v) around, delete or insert rows, you may
mess up existing cell references in formulas without realizing it. your
vlookups, hlookups will not change your column numbers just because you did.
your vba code will not change your A1 cell references. things will blow up
here in spectacular fashion.
2\. if you have a massive spreadsheet with a lot of lookups, UDFs, non-static
cell values (like a Bloomberg real time feed), it's not so clear which UDFs in
which cells get calculated in what order. sometimes it results in #value
errors, which is a million times more desirable than if there was a iferr(...,
0) or iferr(..., "") and you can't tell if there was a failure.
3\. your macros will happily destroy your work if you let it by mistake
(writing over formulas in the wrong sheet etc). python will generally not
destroy the code it's running.
4\. AUTOFORMAT will destroy, without any honor or humanity, any data if it
just barely looks like it should be something else. I've had strings get
converted into dates, 0s get stripped off (I think geneticists also face that
same issue), all kinds of nonsense.
some of the problems I see raised here in HN (such as errors in formulas,
sanity checking) are also issues in other tools like scipy, matlab. common
errors in these languages are off-by-one matrix references, terminating loops
prematurely (esp for numerical solutions), formulas not written correctly,
brackets in the wrong place or + instead of -, typos in variable names, nan
versus 0 vs na, these are things that affect excel equally.
otherwise, excel is pretty good. it's quick to prototype, it gives passable
charts if all you need are passable charts. it's very good at displaying
intermediate results. it's pretty ok for WSYWIG presentation, formatting,
especially if you have custom reports to produce every week rather than
regular ones that tex can solve. the biggest thing about excel is that
everyone uses excel and if you try to send over results in a non-excel format
they'll (clients or whoever) ask you to send it back in xls.
oh also... mediocre workers can produce excel sheets of passable quality.
mediocre works may not even produce a single scipy script of any quality. I
have seen some horrific matlab code, written by people with engineering
background. i've seen one guy, in his desire to make a programming language
look just like excel, write a single line for each of the 50 charts he creates
and calls them Chart1, chart2, chart3, rather than use a for loop even though
it's just 2 lines. it's totally bizarre.
~~~
viraptor
> your vlookups, hlookups will not change your column numbers
If you're not using tables yet, you should. They solve that problem easily,
and make addressing more explicit (relative to the table name rather than the
sheet)
~~~
princeb
you can still use table names in vlookups, and it will still not solve your
problem because vlookups do not work by table headers but by column numbers
~~~
viraptor
You can use either index/match as avs733 suggested, or alternatively:
=VLOOKUP(value, Sometable, MATCH("Column2", Sometable[#Headers]))
------
fithisux
Never, there are better alternatives and especially FOSS. For windows, PSPP is
there to make your life easier. If you are a spreadsheet guy Libreoffice will
make you never turn back to excel and can be programmed in StarBasic. R is
amazing, but if you do not want to invest Scilab and Octave are there. if you
are the freeware proprietary guy Google Sheets, WPS Office or FreeOffice are
better alternatives than Excel. And if you have a good PC, why not give the
FOSS giac/xcas a try, you may find your sanity.
------
ramblenode
Related discussion:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12370605](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12370605)
------
galkk
"statistics don't lie quote but liars use statistics"
Well, the similar can be said about authors of that article (don't know about
newer version of Excel though).
Basically they are saying "Of course, it all appears only to old versions of
Excel but there were sooo much problems with them".
So, what?
------
nimish
Excel can calculate whatever you need but the main issue is that it will
modify your data to be helpful like converting number strings to floats unless
you tell it not to and even then...
------
Fej
When an article title poses a question like that... the answer is probably no.
------
chris_wot
How does LibreOffice compare?
~~~
gaius
It's just as unsuitable. But there are plenty of open source packages that R
the right tool for the job...
~~~
nn3
The article disagrees with you
""" Solution #2: Alternatives to Excel Yalta (ref 1) states that p-values
[inverse probability distributions] reported by the free OpenOffice’s Calc
spreadsheet and the open-source Gnumeric spreadsheet do not have the same
numerical problems as does Excel - their programmers used accurate
algorithms."""
It is not surprising because with an open source program everyone who can
program can fix such issues, while with Microsoft you are at the mercy of the
likely overworked Excel team.
~~~
Delmania
> It is not surprising because with an open source program everyone who can
> program can fix such issues, while with Microsoft you are at the mercy of
> the likely overworked Excel team.
Yep, that's the theory behind open source applications. The reality is that in
a company, people will prefer Excel because Microsoft is a point of contact
that can work with, blame, or yell at to fix because you're paying them. With
OpenOffice or LibreOffice, sure, you could have your engineering department
fix it, or they could work on the software you need for your business.
~~~
chris_wot
In the rather large Australian company I work for currently my manager asked
himself out loud "how many tines did we ask Microsoft for support with
Office"?
The answer was - "never". They wouldn't have listened and so it was not only
pointless, but it was actively frowned upon!
You can purchase a rather less expensive support contract with Collabora. You
don't have to build or fix the software yourself.
------
0x145555
Excel is the de facto standard for my STAT 301 class.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Chomsky, Valiant and the algorithmic mirror - petar
http://www.maymounkov.org/chomsky-valiant-algorithmic-mirror
======
mrng
Google Cache:
[http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:http://...](http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:http://www.maymounkov.org/chomsky-
valiant-algorithmic-mirror)
for those of you getting the "Over Quota" error.
~~~
petar
Sorry folks. Should be back up soon. In the meantime, there is a mirror
article here:
[http://petar.svbtle.com/](http://petar.svbtle.com/)
------
petar
While the blog is "Over Quota", use this alternative link to the article:
http://petar.svbtle.com/
------
malgorithms
some quick info: Petar Maymounkov, the author, is the same guy who invented
kademlia, the distributed hash table that many p2p networks use
([http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kademlia](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kademlia)).
------
petar
And the article is back up on the original link.
------
6ren
tinkling?
~~~
petar
faintly entlightening
~~~
6ren
Do you have a reference for that, or are you Humpty Dumptying?
~~~
petar
Reference for which? The meaning of "tinkling" or the claim made in the
sentence that contains it?
~~~
6ren
For the meaning of tinkling.
_EDIT_ ah, you probably meant "inkling".
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
htaccess tester tool adds GitHub action, CLI and more - andreascreten
https://madewithlove.be/our-htaccess-tester-tool-has-new-features/
======
andreascreten
I built this tool years ago, recently my team took the effort to make it
compatible with a modern workflow. We started by building an API and a CLI on
top of that. The Github Action was not planned but felt like a logical next
step. Hope this helps a lot of people out there!
------
lucwollants
A very reliable way to test your htaccess file before enabling it on your
Apache webserver.
~~~
andreascreten
Glad you like it!
------
miggyq
This is awesome! It's gonna save me so much time
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Any smooth cubic surface contains 27 lines - tokenadult
http://blogs.ams.org/visualinsight/2016/02/15/27-lines-on-a-cubic-surface/
======
stephengillie
The Wikipedia article might be more accessible:
[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cubic_surface](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cubic_surface)
~~~
johnhattan
Ahh, thank you. My first reaction was "A surface of a cube is a square". I can
define a square with way fewer than 27 lines.
~~~
manofcode
Haha, my thoughts exactly
------
Cogito
Is anyone aware of which Greg Egan is referenced in the article?
I couldn't see any links to the original work, but I might be blind.
I suspect that it is the Australian scifi author, as it is the sort of thing
he has done before, but I haven't dug into it yet.
~~~
ttctciyf
Yeah, it's the SF author - he's collaborated previously with John Baez, as for
example at
[https://golem.ph.utexas.edu/category/2009/10/girih_by_egan.h...](https://golem.ph.utexas.edu/category/2009/10/girih_by_egan.html)
where you can see the link to the applet goes to Egan's site at
[http://www.gregegan.net/](http://www.gregegan.net/) or on the paper
[http://arxiv.org/abs/gr-qc/0208010](http://arxiv.org/abs/gr-qc/0208010) co-
authored by Egan, Baez and J. Daniel Christensen (referenced in Egan's
wikipedia entry.)
------
ourcat
Someone needs to build a threeJS/WebGL scene of this. So we can drag it
around.
~~~
user2994cb
[http://matthewarcus.github.io/polyjs/clebsch.html](http://matthewarcus.github.io/polyjs/clebsch.html)
------
IngoBlechschmid
Incidentally, this topic gave rise to a much larger theory, namely _mirror
symmetry_ (unrelated to reflection at everyday mirrors). Please take the
following account of the history with some grain of salt, I'm not an expert on
this topic.
After counting lines on a smooth cubic surface, you could also count lines on
other manifolds, for instance three-dimensional ones given by a quintic
polynomial (these are examples for "Calabi–Yau manifolds"). Also you could
count curves of degree two, three, and so on instead of lines, which are
curves of degree one. The calculations get increasingly harder: The case of
degree two curves was only settled in 1986.
It therefore came as a surprise when a group of physicists (Philip Candelas,
Xenia de la Ossa, Paul Green, and Linda Parkes) announced in 1991 a formula
for calculating the result for curves of _any_ degree. They did so by
inventing a new technique, mirror symmetry, in which one relates the "complex
geometry" (as in "complex numbers") of the manifold on which you're counting
curves to the "symplectic geometry" of a certain other manifold, dubbed
_mirror_ of the original one.
Many aspects of mirror symmetry are still widely non-understood and many
conjectures are motivated and made plausible by physical arguments.
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mirror_symmetry_(string_theory...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mirror_symmetry_\(string_theory\))
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homological_mirror_symmetry](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homological_mirror_symmetry)
------
pklausler
Is the converse statement also true -- i.e., do 27 distinct lines define a
cubic surface? Will have to think about this.
~~~
enedil
Take 27 lines that intersect in exactly one point (all coincide in the same).
Would you tell that they define a smooth surface?
~~~
duskwuff
Certainly. Those lines could all lie in a plane, for instance -- that's very
much a smooth surface.
~~~
impendia
It would not be cubic though (a plane is defined by a linear rather than a
cubic equation).
(p.s. I was not the downvoter)
~~~
thaumasiotes
It's a little odd to say a polynomial "isn't cubic" just because the degree-3
coefficient is zero. Ordinarily what matters is that every coefficient of
degree higher than three is zero.
Think of the result that you can fit a polynomial of degree _n_ to go through
_n_ +1 points. It's easy to show that the polynomial indicated by that theorem
which goes through a set of collinear points must be a line (degree-1
polynomial), no matter how many points are given[1]. But we don't say "as long
as the points aren't collinear, this theorem holds"; we just accept that a
line is a special case of cubic polynomial.
[1] Proof: the polynomial of degree _n_ going through _n_ +1 points is unique.
The line going through _n_ +1 collinear points goes through all of those
points, and therefore must be the unique polynomial of degree _n_ to do so.
I do see in the wikipedia article, though, that "cubic surface" appears to be
defined to exclude polynomials which have any nonzero term of degree other
than three. It's a weird world. :/
~~~
impendia
> Proof: the polynomial of degree n going through n+1 points is unique.
Suppose you have nine points lined up in an exact 3x3 grid. What, according to
your proposed definition, is the unique degree 8 polynomial going through
them?
There are two obvious cubic polynomials I can think of: One, cover the nine
points by three horizontal lines and multiply the equations of the lines. Two,
do the same with the vertical lines.
I can't really think of any reasonable way to distinguish any one of these (or
another) polynomial over other candidates.
In contrast, with the definition that a cubic polynomial requires its
coefficients to be of degree 3, you get things like Bezout's theorem:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bézout%27s_theorem](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bézout%27s_theorem)
~~~
thaumasiotes
I was bothered as I was writing my comment by an issue related to this one. A
curve covering a horizontal/vertical 3x3 grid of points cannot be a
polynomial, as, if it is interpreted as a function, it has the range
{true,false}, but some other domain, probably ℝ^2. The result I mention should
be applicable to a set of points which can be represented as a function from ℝ
to ℝ; no curve covering two different points which are vertically aligned can
be represented that way (well, you could transpose the axes, but for a 3x3
grid that won't work either).
I do have some questions, because I don't fully understand what you're saying:
Suppose the 9 points are {-1,0,1} × {-1,0,1}. The horizontal line equations
are y = -1, y = 0, and y = 1. If I multiply those together, I get y^3 = 0,
which is a single horizontal line. I feel I must have done something wrong
there.
If I instead do (y + 1)(y - 0)(y - 1) = 0 I get y^3 - y = 0, which at least
has y = -1, y = 0, and y = 1 as solutions. Since a cubic equation can't have
four roots, this graph consists exactly of three horizontal lines. It's not a
polynomial, since it has the " = 0" constraint embedded. (Using the definition
on wikipedia, "[i]n mathematics, a polynomial is an expression consisting of
variables (or indeterminates) and coefficients, that involves only the
operations of addition, subtraction, multiplication, and non-negative integer
exponents".) Is this what you meant?
I know I've seen a diagram of exactly the example you're talking about
somewhere, as something in the spirit of "math fun facts". But I can't find
it; do you know of a writeup you could point me toward?
~~~
impendia
I don't know of a good writeup, but y^3 - y = 0, or alternatively x^3 - x = 0,
among other polynomials, is what you want.
In "ordinary" algebra, typically we consider polynomials of one variable,
which we write f(x). The graph of the polynomial represents the set of
solutions to y = f(x), or alternatively y - f(x) = 0.
In algebraic geometry, the solution set to y - f(x) = 0 is indeed a plane
curve, but we think of y - f(x) as a special case of a polynomial in the two
variables x and y. All such polynomials (except constant polynomials) also
define plane curves. This is the concept that generalizes.
In particular: y^3 - y = 0 and x^3 - x = 0 are both plane curves, they are
both polynomials in x and y (i.e. we can think of y^3 - y = 0 as a polynomial
in not only y but also x, even though x doesn't appear), and the intersection
of these two curves is the set of nine points in question.
Hope this helps.
------
amelius
Any polynomial of degree n has n roots, but some of them may be degenerate,
and some of them may be complex.
So, how would that translate to the cubic-surface situation? Are there cubic-
surfaces that are "degenerate", and thus have actually less than 27 lines?
Are all the lines expressible in real numbers? Or do we need complex numbers,
like it is the case for polynomial roots?
Just some questions that popped into my mind.
~~~
GFK_of_xmaspast
> Any polynomial of degree n has n roots, but some of them may be degenerate,
> and some of them may be complex
This is not true with multiple variables, consider for example "x __2 + y __2
- 1 "
------
DigitalJack
Can we get one in the shape of a kitten?
------
ternbot
27 * 4 = 108
------
jsprogrammer
> _No matter how one goes about it, the proof of this theorem is nontrivial._
Is there a proof of this?
Also, AMS: adding additional text to the text I selected to copy is not cool.
~~~
omaranto
Are you asking for a proof of the "fact" that all proofs of the theorem about
cubic surfaces having 27 lines are non-trivial? If so, then no, there is not
even a _definition_ of non-trivial proof, let alone a proof that any specific
proof is non-trivial or a proof that there exists a fact all of whose proofs
are non-trivial.
~~~
amelius
My definition of a trivial proof would be a proof that is mechanically
verifiable. I.e., it is verifiable by even something as "dumb" as a computer.
Of course, such proofs tend to be longer than most proofs that are considered
non-trivial.
~~~
omaranto
Maybe years ago that would have been a plausible definition, but by now many
proofs have been verified by computer, including several which probably no-one
would feel comfortable calling trivial.
------
ClayFerguson
If you look up "-1/12" on Wikipedia page about; 1+2+3+4...=-1/12 it has a
mention that: "Bosonic string theory not consistent in dimensions other than
26". But if you add one dimension for time you get 27. I wonder if there is a
relation between all these pointing to the number 27.
~~~
evanpw
That 26 already includes a dimension for time.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Help Internet Troll Get RV Back - sarciszewski
http://www.gofundme.com/nrkx6c
======
sarciszewski
If you don't know who Jaime Cochran is, the cliffnotes version of her story
is: Incredibly smart, talented, and hilarious trans woman.
~~~
piffy
I hear she loves Hacker News and posts here almost every day.
------
greggh
If I give a lot more money, can I paint my name on the side of the RV?
------
braenaru
What is the rate for having things added to the RV paintwork?
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Know what your competitors are doing in 5 minutes - tyherox
https://webscanner.netlify.com/
======
pettycashstash2
I hate this clickbait were coming soon. Instant delete
~~~
tyherox
Fair enough. I simply wanted to test an idea efficiently but I respect your
opinion.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Linux EBPF Off-CPU Flame Graph - jsnell
http://www.brendangregg.com/blog/2016-01-20/ebpf-offcpu-flame-graph.html
======
planckscnst
Off-cpu flame graphs are probably my favorite tool for discovering possible
optimizations. They can also be created efficiently using SystemTap since you
can do pretty much anything in-kernel. In fact, I was able to really narrow in
by limiting my set of stack traces to only times when the process had been
asleep for longer than some time. We had a network server where the p999 and
p9999 latencies would spike up very occasionally (a few minutes out of an
hour). Looking at the traces where the process was blocked for a long time
pinpointed the exact issue and we were able to fix the problem.
~~~
brendangregg
Yes, I mentioned SystemTap in the post. SystemTap can not only can do this,
but can currently do it better (user & kernel stacks, more than just x86_64,
and more than 20 stack frames), and can also do it on older kernels (earlier
than 4.1). So if anyone looks at this and wants it now on Linux, their best
bet is likely SystemTap, as it can do the in kernel summarization. And it can
include user-mode stacks too!
So why is eBPF important? One reason is that it's core kernel, so eventually
everyone will have this in their Linux systems.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Belgian team develops “LCD” contact-lens display - pwg
http://optics.org/news/3/12/6
======
nsxwolf
What a mean trick that headline is. Everyone reading that thinks its going to
be an awesome augmented reality enabling HUD, and instead we find out its only
a "display" for everyone BUT the wearer.
~~~
cdooh
Isn't there a rule about writing biat switching headlines?
~~~
MalphasWats
It's the headline of the actual article. I suggest you write a strongly worded
letter to the editor explaining the HN submission guidelines.
Probably best send it in triplicate, just to be sure.
~~~
jack-r-abbit
It also isn't really inaccurate. The team was Belgian. They developed a
contact-lens. The contact-lens uses "LCD" technology and acts as a display.
True... I thought it was going to be a HUD type thing but I blame that on me
wanting a HUD and having no interest in using my contact-lens to display
things to passers-by.
------
stevep98
I never understood how contact-lens displays were supposed to deliver a
focussable image on the retina. Is this doable? Maybe it will require some
kind of magic metamaterials or something.
~~~
Udo
I don't think it's doable with today's technology, that's why laser-based
retina projection is what everybody's working on right now. Achieving the same
effect with a thin and semitransparent lens would require a lot of engineering
to achieve tightly controllable photon angles and I imagine power/data
transmission to the lens would also be an issue. Also, personally I would
rather put on a pair of glasses than stick a piece of plastic directly into my
eye.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Washington, Minnesota officially endorse a “safer, faster” traffic merge - smacktoward
http://arstechnica.com/cars/2014/07/the-beauty-of-zipper-merging-or-why-you-should-drive-ruder/
======
malandrew
That video explanation made no sense to me. Basically the "interface"
presented to the drivers has not changed, so why would drivers deviate from
how they currently merge? Because the government said so? I don't see this
working.
However there are two solutions that could promote zipper merging:
(1) Force both lanes to the center before moving that center lane to the side
that is available ahead:
____________________________________________
\________/
_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ ________
____________/
______________________/_____________________
(2) Present a long-barrier between both lanes well before the merge that only
permit late merging, so that those in the continuing lane feel morally
obligated to let those queued up in.
____________________________________________
_ _ _ _____________ ____________________
/
______________________/_____________________
~~~
Negitivefrags
In New Zealand we just have signs like this all over the place:
[http://i.imgur.com/AtaDOGX.jpg](http://i.imgur.com/AtaDOGX.jpg)
~~~
joelcollinsdc
Its pedantic, but I think this is sublty different than what is being dicussed
here. All over the US, there are situations where 2 lanes converge to 1 and
drivers "take turns" merging. But I think the scenario that is being discussed
is a little different, where there is 1 "working" lane and one "closed" lane,
the thought process of drivers in the lane that they know is 'closed' up ahead
is to merge early.
I wonder if cultures where queueing (like, in the grocery store) is not as
common as in the US have this problem? I suspect not.
~~~
JeanMertz
I live in the Netherlands, but drive through Belgium when driving home from
work.
There is one area where a permanent two-lane road merges into a single lane.
The funny thing is that (mostly) Belgians never use the second (left) lane
that eventually merges into the single right lane.
This always seems stupid to me, because it increases the length of the traffic
jam so much, that the traffic jam goes all the way over a roundabout, causing
stops for all drivers, even the ones not going in the same direction as us.
The worst thing is, whenever I use the left lane - which I do all the time
(and in return, pass 60 cars waiting in line), people sometimes get so angry
that I've had two trucks in the past few months hitting the gas and blocking
the left lane so no one can pass anymore.
Crazy people...
Last month a new sign was installed along the road "Please use both lanes,
drive all the way to the front and THEN start merging". Even now, people still
choose to wait in line at the right lane. It is as if people feel guilty when
they see a whole lane being empty and available to drive on.
~~~
vrikis
This is what it's like in Scotland!! People here get SO angry, thinking that
you have "skipped" all the other patiently waiting people... And then they
don't let you merge! And it makes absolutely no sense to me, because they
cause one reallllyyyy long traffic jam then...
------
molf
I'm surprised this is written like zipper merging is some kind of recently
discovered secret. Zipper merging (or weaving) has been standard practice in
parts of Europe for 20 years (maybe longer – I can't really remember anything
else). Since March 2014 it is even _mandatory_ in Belgium, and anyone merging
early may risk a €55 fine [1].
It has been repeatedly advocated and promoted by various governments in Europe
[2] and I doubt anyone questions its effectivity. Some experiments have been
done in the past with alternative methods like zipper merging with groups of
cars, but this is only applied when traffic can be regulated (with lights or
traffic controllers). The nice thing about zipper merging is that with enough
public knowledge, drivers can regulate merging themselves.
[1]:[http://www.vandaag.be/binnenland/145761_ritsen-verplicht-
van...](http://www.vandaag.be/binnenland/145761_ritsen-verplicht-
vanaf-1-maart.html)
[2]:[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TNhnLYI2Efw](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TNhnLYI2Efw)
– Dutch government TV ad from 1989 which explains and promotes zipper merging
(albeit very poorly, I must admit).
~~~
ChikkaChiChi
It's not the concept that is newsworthy, it's the decision to actively promote
it that is.
~~~
dubfan
More importantly, the decision by American transportation authorities to
promote it is newsworthy. It seems like Northern Europe takes a more
systematic and serious attitude towards driving, while the American attitude
is more "eat my breakfast while driving 50mph in the left lane, and give the
finger to everyone who passes me on the right"
------
notacoward
Zipper merging works great as long as everyone on both sides is willing to
alternate (or if strong enforcement requires them to do so). Otherwise,
letting "late mergers" scream past fifty "early mergers" often creates a
situation worse than simple early merge. There's plenty of blame to go around.
* The vast majority of the people blasting down the late-merge lane clearly have no interest in alternating or merging into the largest/safest gap at the end. They'll squeeze into the smallest latest gap that they think they can possibly get away with.
* Quite a few of the early mergers feel they've already done their part. Whether they're competitive, territorial, or sincerely concerned with traffic flow/safety, they're not much interested in alternating with the late mergers either.
So how does this play out _every effing day_ at construction projects and toll
booths? You end up with a few late mergers playing chicken with a few early
mergers at the chokepoint, jockeying for position inch by inch and degree by
degree as they try to cut each other off. That's where all the "vigilantes"
come from - they're people who are _already_ stuck in the aftermath, they know
how it happened, and they have decided that they'd rather settle for forced
early merge than botched zipper merge.
Without enforcing proper merge behavior _on both sides_ , zipper merge just
becomes a big Prisoners' Dilemma game with a few defectors screwing all of the
cooperators.
~~~
john_b
> _" Without enforcing proper merge behavior on both sides, zipper merge just
> becomes a big Prisoners' Dilemma game with a few defectors screwing all of
> the cooperators."_
Except unlike prisoner's dilemma, it's not a zero (or negative) sum game. The
entire traffic flow can speed up if zipper merging is done. The "late mergers"
don't have to risk losing their game of "chicken" while the "vigilantes" don't
have to deal with the reckless maneuvers of some of the former.
People don't do zipper merging because people are human and drive emotionally
[1]. The stereotypes of the conservative early merger claiming the moral high
ground and the reckless late merger doing anything to save a few minutes are
the cultural results of this mentality.
[1] Another example is the special breed of driver who stops the traffic flow
on a major road (which has the right of way) to let someone on a minor cross
road or parking lot exit onto the major road, thus inconveniencing everyone
behind them for the self satisfaction of having helped the one person they can
see.
~~~
ics
> [...] inconveniencing everyone behind them for the self satisfaction of
> having helped the one person they can see.
Or because you know that otherwise they'll be at that crossing for the next
hour if nobody's willing to let them by. Perhaps there are some funny
allusions to net neutrality to be made here...
~~~
dionidium
Just because you want to turn left, doesn't mean you have to sit helpless
waiting to do so. You're allowed to turn right and locate a safe place to turn
around.
~~~
ics
I have sympathy for left-turners in particularly busy intersections where
there is no turn light. Driving in NYC, you pretty much have to nudge as close
to the opposing lane as you can until the light turns yellow/red and you can
scoot yourself out of gridlock. Furthermore, you must account for streets
which are one way, too narrow, full, or active to stop and turn around.
However, this was not the situation I was really talking about at all.
The scenario I had in mind while writing my post is that of the local road
which crosses a major stretch of highway. Such highways might be an actual
interstate, a busy two-lane highway, etc. One of the worst types of road to
cross is the one that is far too wide for its own good– an ambitious 6-lane
road with not enough traffic to ever be full (Trenholm Road in SC, ahem), but
enough so that drivers spread out across all lanes and make crossing very
annoying sometimes. There are parts of the Taconic (NY) that pretty bad to
cross, though I'm usually the one on the highway. The local cross sometimes
gets backed up 5-10 cars, 2-3 of which are stuck in the median. Getting on the
highway or going around by going the next town can add 10+ miles. Letting
someone cross by slowing down a bit and changing lanes is not, in my opinion,
a smug assault on the efficiency of those driving on the highway... it's just
something a few people do when they recognize that nothing is very efficient
anyway. (Note that I haven't said much about safety because it was only a
small part of their comment, and not the part I was responding to. I hope it's
clear that I am _not_ advocating for people to test fate by slamming their
brakes to let someone curtsy across the pavement.)
------
ChikkaChiChi
In practice zipper merging works amazingly well. MNDOT has used signage to
tell drivers to maintain speed and stay in their lanes for the past few years
of construction in the northern Twin Cities. You wouldn't believe how much
faster traffic moves when these simple reminders are posted.
The problem is that without the signs (and enforcement) drivers in the Twin
Cities Metro regularly shoot to seal any gap that may allow someone signaling
to enter their lane, regardless of the distance to the merge point. This
behavior also occurs in on-ramp situations where drivers are entering the
highway and slow lane drivers refuse to move over, but don't want you in front
of them!
I have driven in many states and never has the mentality that you cannot, MUST
NOT, let someone ahead of you been as bad as it is here. Minnesota Nice,
indeed.
~~~
dusing
I live in the Twin Cities and "Minnesota nice" means merging incredibly early
when a lane is posted as closed. As a transplant I can always count on getting
and extra 1/2 - 1 mile ahead by staying in the closed lane.
It is getting better, but still 40% of the time the car at the end of the
zipper merge is NOT happy to see you, and thinks they are letting you in.
Signage is helping at the big construction areas.
~~~
tedsanders
The whole point of zipper merging is to minimize speed differences between
lanes for maximum efficiency and maximum safety.
The proper way to execute a late zipper merge is to match speeds and merge at
the end.
You are not correctly zipper merging if you are passing other cars before
merging at the end.
~~~
nhaehnle
dusing is probably talking about the (rather common in some places) situation
where one lane has half a kilometer of slow-to-standing vehicles, while the
other lane is entirely free.
In this situation, _of course_ you're going to pass those other cars (please
do so slowly and carefully if you pass them on the right). It would be
ridiculous to slow to a standstill with half a kilometer of empty road ahead
of you.
When zipper merging works correctly, you usually _cannot_ pass cars in the
other lane, because traffic automatically flows in the right way. So in a
sense you are right that if you pass cars in the other lane, _someone_ is
doing the merging wrong. That someone are the people in the crowded lane,
however, not the one of who is passing them in the empty lane.
~~~
tedsanders
Thank you for your charitable interpretation of my comment, but in fact I
don't think it is ridiculous to drive slowly in the right lane. I really do
think that's the correct strategy.
Even if the second lane is free, it's safer and more efficient to match speeds
with the first lane. And shouldn't we take actions that maximize safety and
efficiency? Note that there is no global gain from speeding down the right
lane, since the bottleneck is what controls the flow.
I suspect many of you will disagree with me, so let me address some possible
concerns.
Is it safer? Yes. Generally driving is safer when all vehicles are moving at
similar speeds. Relative speeds being low mean that there's plenty of time to
react to danger. It's also safer because other drivers are more predictable
when going at a single speed.
Is it more efficient? Yes. The bottleneck is constraining the flow, so gains
before the bottleneck end up being useless. The important thing is to make
sure that traffic is entering the bottleneck at a fast, consistent speed.
Predictable and uncontested merges are the best way to stop the traffic lane
from slowing. Going at the speed of the left lane offers two benefits here.
First, it's easier and more predictable to merge when you travel at the same
speed as other traffic. Second, if you travel at the same speed as other
drivers, they won't get annoyed at you and attempt block you out (to
everyone's detriment).
Is it weird? Yes. Driving below the speed limit with space in front of you is
an odd thing to do. But in this case, you're matching the speed of traffic and
there's no global opportunity cost because the bottleneck ahead is the
constraint, not your speed. It's weird, but it makes sense.
The reason that the zipper merge is recommended by so many travel departments
is not because it's straight-up more efficient than other merging strategies -
it's because it's more robust to defection.
But just because it is robust to defection, that doesn't mean the optimal
strategy is to defect.
For those of you who disagree, why? Could you point out where you feel my
logic fell short?
~~~
nhaehnle
Hmm, probably we don't disagree by much anyway. Perhaps it's clearer if we put
some numbers to it: Suppose that the occupied lane is doing stop-and-go (due
to the natural waves occurring in traffic), with a maximum speed of 20km/h.
What should the speed be for somebody in the unoccupied lane? Certainly 80km/h
is far too much. On the other hand, it also doesn't make sense (IMHO) to come
to a complete stop in the free lane just because cars in the occupied lane
have to stop. I feel that a steady 30km/h is a good compromise.
Does that sound reasonable to you?
~~~
tedsanders
If the left lane is going an average speed of 10 km/h, then I believe the
right lane should drive at 10 km/h. Doing otherwise is being selfish and
unsafe, with no global benefit. It feels weird, but it makes the most sense as
far as I can reason.
------
pwenzel
As a driver in the Twin Cities area, I can back the stereotype that
Minnesotans don't know how to zipper. It speaks so truly of the Minnesota
condition.
People begin often merge far too early, and get offended when folks like
myself "budge" at the front of the line.
Learn to zipper, darn it!
Edit: This TPT parody, How to Talk Minnesotan, shows how to drive in Minnesota
(scrub to 11:58):
[http://video.tpt.org/video/2365042610/](http://video.tpt.org/video/2365042610/)
If you ever lived in rural Minnesota, you know this is completely dead on.
~~~
jerf
People think they are being nice. Education can work very quickly and
efficiently on such people by showing them they aren't being nice after all.
I live in the US in a "nice driver" area with a number of traffic circles. On
a fairly routine basis I come up to a traffic circle and stop because there is
someone in it coming towards me, but then they try to "helpfully" stop and
wave me in, slowing down themselves, everyone behind them, and even slowing me
down as now I'm confused and less likely to move. Or I get stuck behind such a
person in the circle and have to stop gracelessly as they unexpectedly stop in
the middle. (This being a traffic circle it's not that dangerous due to lack
of speed, plus over time I've learned to predict who is going to do this based
on the car body language...) I haven't yet witnessed this causing an accident
but it's just a matter of time, it snarls things up that badly. They _think_
they're being friendly. If someone would explain that "friendly" is using the
traffic circles as designed, they'd probably do the right thing in the future,
but so far I haven't discovered the hand gestures that properly express that.
~~~
jrs235
Someone died today because someone didnt know how to merge (the on ramp is to
get up to speed) and probably because someone thought they'd be 'nice' and
slowed down. My guess is both vehicles at the merge point slowed drastically
and everyone on the interstate were too close to each other for the speed and
volume of traffic. Sad.
[http://www.wxow.com/story/26101450/2014/07/24/breaking-
part-...](http://www.wxow.com/story/26101450/2014/07/24/breaking-part-
of-i-90-closed-due-to-an-accident)
Edit: or perhaps we should fault inattentive driving on the truck driver.
Still sad.
~~~
jrs235
It sucks because the speed limit through there should probably be 40 not 55
when traffic is heavy. The problem then is people on the interstate still
tailgate and/or don't leave adequate room to allow zipper merging.
Edit: to clarify, the slower speed should be that low only now during
construction and lane closure.
------
barnwell5
"Optimal" means different things to different people. What the DoT may be
trying to maximize (safety, lack of frustration) is generally not what drivers
want to maximize (overall speed) and I think there's confusion about that when
zipper merge is discussed. The linked article uses the word 'faster' but the
Minnesota pdf they cite actually says "Our analysis has shown that the Zipper
System has no effect on travel time through the work zone."
Here is a Michigan DoT paper[1] from 2007 that analyzed zipper merge studies
in various states and countries. Only 1 out of 6 showed statistically
significant increase in throughput.
"It was found that the system did not increase the throughput or decrease the
length of the queue." (Netherlands)
"It was found that the throughput did not increase, but the queuing was more
efficient and there were less frustrated drivers." (UK)
"Beacher, Fontaine, and Garber (12) found that there was an increase in the
throughput and a decrease in the queue length; however, the difference was not
statistically significant." (Virginia)
"However, flow did not appear to be significantly affected by the dynamic late
lane merge system." (Kansas)
"The data from both of the studies shows that the typical queue length
decreased and the lane usage were nearly equal, but the throughput decreased
slightly." (Minnesota)
"The results from Maryland’s deployment show an increase in the overall
throughput, a reduction of the maximum queue length, and a more even
distribution of volume between lanes."
1:
[http://www.michigan.gov/documents/mdot/MDOT_Research_Report_...](http://www.michigan.gov/documents/mdot/MDOT_Research_Report_RC1500_Part1_209842_7.pdf)
------
justinpaulson
The problem is, there are two very different ways to merge based on the flow
of traffic. If traffic is moving, then early merge is the preferred method. If
traffic is not moving, then a late merge makes more sense.
The problem is people who do not merge early when traffic is flowing. These
people wait until the last second to merge instead of finding an opening while
traffic is flowing and force traffic to slow down in order to let them in.
And the really real problem is that the average driver in the USA has no idea
what they are doing and should probably not be driving at all. It would take a
huge change in the way we train drivers to get them to recognize when they
should use each type of merge. And forcing people into one way to merge or the
other is not really the "fastest/safest" way, because it varies on conditions.
------
joshstrange
I have to deal with such a merge almost daily as the main road I use is under
heavy construction. I am an "early merger" mainly because the people in the
left lane (right lane goes away) will not let you in if they have a choice and
it is widely seen as being a "douchbag" if you fly down the right hand lane
expecting to be let in at the end. I'm not saying that I disagree with this
article in fact I've sat in near standstill traffic in the lefthand land and
I've had plenty of time to wonder if merging at the merge point does make more
sense, which I think it does.
I personally wish they would have closed off the entire right lane as there is
only a couple hundred meter stretch where this road is 2 lanes and so I wish
they had just kept it a single lane all the way though while construction was
underway. Here is the road in question:
[http://s.joshstrange.com/oRq9.png](http://s.joshstrange.com/oRq9.png) From
where you see Louie Pl it turns into a 2 lane road then goes back to 1 lane at
Opportunity Way then back to 2 lane where you see it get fatter again. However
construction makes the road for a mile or two after Opportunity Way 1 lane
only so the 2 lanes for such a small stretch are almost more trouble than they
are worth.
------
beejiu
As a driver in the UK, I don't understand what exactly the difference between
a merge and an overtake is. It is quite common here for roads to change from 2
lanes to 1 lane. There's no signage telling you to merge. There's no rules
telling you what to do. You just operate by the same logic as an overtake, and
you'll find that, quite naturally, everybody 'zip merges'. Perhaps the reason
for the inefficiency is having rules in the first instance.
~~~
o0-0o
The difference is localized. The UK is much smaller, and therefore has less
regional tastes about merging. In the Midwest and Eastern seaboards of the US
you have polite and diverse people respectively. In California, you have
experienced drivers. California works like the zipper merge already, and the
rest of the US is flummoxed by what to do - depending on where you are.
~~~
teamonkey
I don't think it's so much about being smaller, more that there is only one
set of rules for the whole country and those rules are more strongly enforced.
Also, from what I can tell, the driving exam is far more rigorous in the UK.
~~~
bsder
Speeds in the UK are _way_ slower than the US, and cars are way more expensive
to run in the UK than the US.
Consequently, everybody and their dog doesn't expect to drive a car in the UK.
~~~
jameshart
Demonstrably and comically false (except on the running costs front - you're
spot on there). Not only are UK motorway speed limits 70mph (and traffic
speeds higher still), 70mph is also the limit on most dual carriageways, and
major undivided roads have a 60mph limit. In the US you'll rarely find a road
with no central divider with a limit above 45, and only major multilane
highways go to 65 and higher limits (depending on state).
------
bpdenimy
So Negitivefrags is probably right that the best top-down way to get this to
happen is to place signage. But it's sort of fun to think of the best bottom-
up way to get this to happen, assuming your local government isn't putting up
signs.
For example, I love going a constant speed in start-stop traffic (letting gaps
appear ahead of me then closing them as traffic stops) so as to smooth out the
ride of everyone behind me.
So what's the optimal way to get this behavior to spread? It's probably not
just to gun it to the front of the line and yell 'zipper!', everyone just
thinks you're an asshole.
VikingCoder suggests "If you want to show people how it's done, you go the
same speed as the cars next to you in the open lane, and zipper merge at the
end." I love it, because it's really awkward, and people will note it enough
to _maybe_ think through what's happening, what your logic is.
But I dunno, maybe there's something else more clever out there, too.
------
Brian-Puccio
Locally (metro NYC), I've heard this referred to as "alternate merge" and it's
usually mentioned in the context of someone saying something along the lines
of "there was a traffic jam due to an accident and then when it was MY TURN to
go, the person in the other lane didn't let me in". Usually there's a comment
about how the plates were from out of state, too.
This is not to be confused with, e.g., a road that splits and the left lane
split it moving fine and the right lane is backed up and a driver in the left
lane waits until the last possible second to move over, often times coming to
a complete stop, thus backing up what should be a free-flowing lane. No, in
that case you didn't move over in time, you don't get to slow down traffic,
you take the lane you're in and keep going, you'll have to take the next exit.
------
iLoch
This works pretty well where I live. Here in Vancouver, a major bridge that
takes traffic into the downtown core is only 3 undivided lanes. There's a huge
amount of traffic flowing over this bridge in the morning as it connects work
to home for somewhere in the range of 60,000 - 70,000 commuters daily. From
the residential side of the bridge, traffic zipper merges from 4 lanes into
either one or two depending on the time of day. The traffic is coming from two
different sources (west and east) so each source will zipper merge and then
the zipper merged lanes will zipper merge onto the bridge. I honestly have no
idea what this would look like any other way.
Zipper merges are obvious and natural if you set them up right - what it takes
is the knowledge to do it. Once people know that they should be yielding to
the mergers, the whole merge process speeds up considerably.
~~~
arecurrence
I see this as well whenever crossing the Lions Gate southbound. I suspect if
there weren't 4 lanes merging together it would be a different situation (I
don't see people doing this correctly in other parts of the peninsula that
merge).
------
adrr
I thought the zipper merge was the standard way to merge? You stay in your
lane till the merge section(end of your lane) and its every other car. Maybe
its a California thing.
~~~
kelnos
I've rarely seen people in (northern) California do proper zipper merges. CA
has some of the most clueless and inattentive driving I've ever seen.
~~~
Noted
I rarely have seen issues in California with zipper merge, when the lanes are
actually merging. Most of the time the issue I've seen is when people are
cutting over from a turn only lane to try and force their way to go straight.
~~~
joshwa
Turn-only lanes (using a turn-only lane to go straight) is where I see the
worst cheater/vigilante behavior. (It's always BMW's who do it, too... )
Those turn-only lanes are just wasted capacity that could be used to carry
more traffic into a zipper merge. I'm guessing that at some peak hour the turn
lane has utility, but at reverse-peak they should be able to switch to a
regular lane leading to a merge point.
~~~
dubfan
Zipper merging inside an intersection will almost certainly lead to gridlock
due to incomplete mergers before the light changes.
~~~
joshwa
Referring to exit-only lanes on highways, not signaled intersections.
------
kelnos
Since this is a solution that requires "everyone" to change their behavior, my
guess would be that it'd be more productive (and faster?) just to wait for
self-driving cars to be prevalent enough that they "set the tone" for what
constitutes normal driving in these situations.
------
Cthulhu_
I've recently sold my car (a crappy Opel) and replaced it with a motorcycle,
and my behavior in traffic has definitely changed re: merging. The other day
there was a mile-long queue in front of a highway exit, traffic was up on the
hard shoulder or whatever the term is. If I were still in my car, I would've
been polite and just queued up - would probably cost me 15 minutes to get to
the exit and further on.
Now though, I did full D-bag and just drove past most of the line. At the
exit, the queue started breaking up, leaving plenty of room for me to merge
into.
Actually if everyone took a motorcycle instead of their car, most of these
problems would be gone. But that's probably a silly argument.
------
buro9
This sounds like Italian driving.
If you haven't driven in Italy, expect zero braking during merges. I really do
mean zero.
Trucks will move over (at speed), cars will move over (at speed). The "zipper"
action is seamless and fluid, even when the vehicles are temporarily extremely
close to each other.
Just look down the road, see a merge may happen. If you are a truck move over,
if you are a car you may need to accelerate to move over.
The first time you experience this it looks and feels scary, especially as
people merge with only 50cm-1m between vehicles. But once you're used to it
you realise that you virtually never slow down and merges are really quick and
easy.
------
curtis
Late merging works fine in Seattle, and in my experience the lane that's
closed moves substantially faster than the open lane because Seattle drivers
will actually let you merge in. That's not how I recalled it working when I
lived in Texas though. In Texas if you got caught in the closed lane you were
pretty much stuck there for a while, while the guys in the open lane whizzed
by too fast for anybody in the slower (possibly stopped) closed lane to merge
safely.
~~~
arjie
If the person merging late had to stop, then it means they went too far
without getting a space (because they didn't take the chance they were given
or no one gave them space). This is the problem with zipper merging: if
everyone gets it right it's beautiful but the failure mode is near
catastrophic (effectively stopping one lane) and easy to get into. One or two
bad actors can ruin it.
------
aenean
Traffic management is a fascinating intersection of sociology, fluid dynamics,
behavior change, and urban planning.
If you're interested in this field, I can't recommend the work of Tom
Vanderbilt enough. His book "Traffic" brought urban planning to the masses in
the same manner "Freakonomics" made social and public policy accessible.
[http://tomvanderbilt.com/traffic/](http://tomvanderbilt.com/traffic/)
~~~
iLoch
I've always found it fascinating how a single bad driver can cause a massive
traffic jam ("ghost traffic jam"). I think this should be taught when you're
learning to drive as part of some sort of mandatory basic training - zipper
merges should be in there too.
------
blahedo
A lot of people and a lot of articles discuss resistance to this as a matter
of misguided "politeness", and a _LOT_ of the support for it carries a tone of
smugness---there is definitely a weirdly emotional component to this.
But here's the fairly objective thing I want to know: the people who have been
(very negatively!) described as "early merge vigilantes" generally operate by
staying in the lane that goes away but pacing the cars in the other lane,
blocking the people behind them from zooming ahead; and then quickly merging
just before the lane goes away (usually an enabler in the other lane will make
this work better so neither has to slow down or stop at this point). So here's
the question: isn't this _exactly_ what the zipper merge is supposed to
accomplish, with both lanes travelling the same speed? Why is this so-called
"vigilante" behaviour being described as bad? If a driver that's smug about
their late-merging behaviour being optimal is going noticeably faster in their
lane than the lane that merged, doesn't that mean that what they're doing is
exactly _not_ a zipper merge?
Perhaps the answer is that the ideal to aim for is not "late" merging, so much
as "speed matching" merging: when there is a merge ahead, if you're in the
faster of the two lanes (whichever one that is!), slow down a smidge _now_ and
then you won't have to screech to a braking halt at the merge point (and
you'll also make the flow better for everyone behind you). Zooming ahead
because there's a briefly clear section of road may be "late" merging in some
sense, but is not the same thing as "zipper" merging and is not improving
flow.
~~~
lamontcg
The point is also to fill both lanes, so your last suggestion doesn't work
very well.
And I've been known to be a "vigilante" before. I'd give it up in a second if
people would actually start filling the other lane.
There's a merge here in Seattle -- the southbound I-5 collector-distributor
with the onramp to 90 where it merges back into I-5 -- where people zipper
halfway reasonably well and I actually routinely stay in the less-filled lane
and late-merge.
Washingtonians are awful at late merging/zippering though. Even when people
are late merging you get tons of people merging early and then the line moves
forwards and it screws over the lane that is being merged into. People just
won't simply drive forwards to the merge spot.
Dividers might help in some cases, but when the road is empty and everyone is
doing 60+ mph the dividers are going to cause accidents. You could try to put
down double lines on the road to block merging, but nobody pays attention to
those here either.
Getting zippering into drivers ed and getting them early, spamming the TV with
ads, and putting signs up all over the place and carpet bombing the message
might work.
Happy to see them doing this.
Oh yeah, and there's definitely an emotional component to it. When I'm stuck
behind 50 cars and some asshat in a BMW goes speeding past to late merge the
world goes completely red. I would love to stop doing that. If everyone
zippers the asshat just has to pick a lane like everyone else, and there's no
way to "cheat".
And yes, "asshat" and "cheat" are all in my own brain. I find it extremely
difficult to stop thinking that way when I see it though.
------
dr_faustus
Well, this is (has always been) the standard in Germany and it works pretty
well. We even have one of those great German words for it:
Reißverschlussverfahren (= zipper procedure).
Concerning people not letting you in: In case of ending lanes (except ramps)
you are obliged to let people in. There is always the occasional douchebag
that doesnt but it almost never happend to me. At worst you have to wait for
one car to pass.
------
dubfan
I see the negative effects of early merging regularly. The freeway onramp
closest to my home leads to a frequently congested portion of the freeway.
People merging ASAP often end up having to stop on the onramp, blocking
traffic behind them which can then back up onto surface streets. They do this
despite the onramp merge lane continuing for quite some time after it first
connects to the freeway.
------
thirdstation
Perhaps instead of merging one lane into another, the animosity toward late
mergers can be alleviated by making all lanes move.
If no one feels like they are in the free lane, they'll be forced to
cooperate.
So, on a two-lane highway, make one center lane and have both lanes funnel
into it. then you can move that free-flowing lane wherever you need.
~~~
thirdstation
malandrew types faster than me. And has better ASCII art.
------
ch4s3
This is pretty brilliant, but how do you encourage this without a light or
years of including it in driver education?
~~~
dubfan
Even including it in driver's education isn't likely to help. Driver's
education teaches people to use blinkers, but from informal observation I'd
estimate 1/3 of drivers in my area don't use their blinkers at all.
------
emerod
In contrast to the states promoting zipper merging, Indiana recently
redesigned some interchanges to effectively eliminate the single merge point.
They added extra lanes so that one "preferred" lane (the one that formerly
backed up everyone for three miles) is no longer the sole access for any of
the off-ramps. Now, everyone has basically three miles in which to merge into,
out of, or across this lane, rather than piling into it all at once.
This picture doesn't show the full extent of the redesign, but the yellow
highlighted part is the former problem lane.
[http://www.in.gov/indot/files/MPOICI69_NBInterchange_2012.JP...](http://www.in.gov/indot/files/MPOICI69_NBInterchange_2012.JPG)
[http://www.in.gov/indot/3071.htm](http://www.in.gov/indot/3071.htm)
------
Jach
Alternatively... Since the government forces me to bring my vehicle to one of
their locations every other year for emissions testing, have them install a
speed control unit with a beacon to communicate with other cars. (Yes it will
be harder to install on some cars than others -- even just the beacon would be
valuable.) Over the course of five years, retrofit every vehicle with a beacon
and have it already installed on new cars, have severe penalties for vehicles
caught driving around not broadcasting their signal, and now everyone can have
a bit more automation in their automobiles since the systems will enforce safe
merge gaps and other nice things like computer-enforced speed limits. Plus it
prepares everyone for a fully automated experience that can come sometime in
the 2020s.
I can dream right?
------
colanderman
"Merge rudely."
It's only rude if no-one else is doing it (i.e. you're speeding ahead of
everyone merging early). If everyone stays in their lane until the merge
point, no-one's zooming ahead, so it stays fair.
------
walesmd
On most military bases, and therefore in military heavy towns like San
Antonio, the zipper merge is used to great effect. I've even seen it used at
T-intersections (where the perpendicular road must stop) - on almost every
military base, when traffic is backed up, you'll see drivers immediately
implement the zipper - one car from right of way, one from the intersecting
road.
------
IgorPartola
I really wish people would actually do this. I call this "driver karma". For
every person you let in, you get to go in front of another person. If everyone
followed this heuristic, we wouldn't have a problem. Oh, and if you let a bus
full of people in front of you, your score is increased by the number of
people on the bus :).
------
anishkothari
This 2008 article in Wired[1] changed the way I merge forever and it has paid
off when I drive in Chicago's endless construction and traffic.
[1][http://archive.wired.com/culture/culturereviews/magazine/16-...](http://archive.wired.com/culture/culturereviews/magazine/16-08/pl_print)
------
zobzu
Early merge feels more polite, late merge is safer and faster on the overall
traffic (and much faster if you're the only one doing it + you're seen as
impolite)
They want to make it more common. Pretty sure everywhere in EU everyone late
merge. In west USA at least, I only see early merges.
------
niix
Seems great in theory, but what if the other drive isn't willing to let you in
- or - vise versa?
------
mark-r
The nicest thing about zipper merging is that everyone can see the fairness of
it, when it works. It's the lack of fairness that most infuriates people with
the free-for-all system.
Minnesota still does a very poor job of letting people know where the expected
merge point is.
------
GFK_of_xmaspast
I grew up and learned to drive in Washington; I moved away 20 years ago but
come back regularly, and if there's one thing I know about Washington drivers
it's: they can't merge for shit.
------
Shivetya
With the low cost of portable lighting and signage why not traffic light both
lanes and alternate who goes through, just like we do with highway congestion
on ramp lights?
------
mchanson
I've never understood early merging. Why eliminate a lane of traffic before
necessary.
------
txlMan
In Germany we've been doing this for decades. Welcome to the future.
------
GreenPlastic
I'm the asshole who merges in at the last possible second. It's really
annoying that they're doing this as I routinely save 10 minutes off my commute
by jumping into lanes that will eventually merge in.
------
korzun
Want faster and safer traffic merging?
> Part of DMV road test should cover highway and emergency (road block)
> situations. > Utilize responsive testing (how fast person reacts to
> something). Could be an in-house application. > Older drivers should have
> extra testing once they hit certain age. > Re-test drivers every 10 years. >
> Driving and doing your make up? Reading a book/iPad? Eating chipotle?
> License suspension. Bye bye.
In general every situation where I had to steer out of the way was caused by
an older person who should NOT be driving.
Zipper merging on New York roads? Fuhgeddaboudit.
~~~
DanBC
> In general every situation where I had to steer out of the way was caused by
> an older person who should NOT be driving.
Do you have any statistics about driving accidents? Because all the stats I've
seen show that older drivers are safer better drivers than young people, and
this is especially true when comparing to young males under the age of 26.
~~~
korzun
Those statistics do not include cases where older person switches lanes into
your car and you luckily avoid it.
They also do not include cases where other people cause accidents and go on
their marry way while you wreck your vehicle avoiding them.
Like the other poster stated, it's young (novice drivers) and old drivers.
It's also a scientific fact that you reaction time decreases as you grow
older.
>Because all the stats I've seen show that older drivers are safer better
drivers than young people.
Sure.
[http://consumerreports.org/cro/magazine/2012/10/teenagers-
an...](http://consumerreports.org/cro/magazine/2012/10/teenagers-and-older-
people-are-the-riskiest-drivers/index.htm)
[http://www.cdc.gov/motorvehiclesafety/older_adult_drivers/ad...](http://www.cdc.gov/motorvehiclesafety/older_adult_drivers/adult-
drivers_factsheet.html)
> Age-related declines in vision and cognitive functioning (ability to reason
> and remember), as well as physical changes, may affect some older adults'
> driving abilities.5
> Per mile traveled, fatal crash rates increase starting at age 75 and
> increase notably after age 80. This is largely due to increased
> susceptibility to injury and medical complications among older drivers
> rather than an increased tendency to get into crashes
~~~
TheCoelacanth
> This is largely due to increased susceptibility to injury and medical
> complications among older drivers rather than an increased tendency to get
> into crashes
So it's not that they are more likely to get into crashes, it's that they are
more likely to die from the injuries that a crash causes while a younger
person would survive if they received the same injuries.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Why You Should Be An Office Nomad - timjahn
http://entrepreneursunpluggd.com/blog/3-reasons-why-im-an-office-nomad-2
======
alokhar
This is really cool. I've read a lot about ideal working environments, and it
seems the general consensus is that working alone, isolated, and for long
periods of time is the best. This might be true for heavy thinking tasks, but
I've realized that its very, very nice to go work at a pub or a coffee shop on
campus. Especially on campus there is a good chance of encountering someone
who is doing the same.
~~~
timjahn
Couldn't agree more. Working isolated works for some tasks (like getting "in
the zone" while developing) but I definitely thrive off of the ambiance of a
coffee shop environment.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Windows Command-Line: Unicode and UTF-8 Output Text Buffer - ingve
https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/commandline/2018/11/15/windows-command-line-unicode-and-utf-8-output-text-buffer/
======
ggm
And remind me, which manufacturer of s/w is responsible for on-the-fly mis-
encoding datastreams as latin1 and other misnomers (up-converting '...'
strings to the more pretty versions which demands randomly converting code
from 7 bit to 8 bit, but mussing up the encoding hints for instance, or doing
the same in cut-buffers passing through Word/Excel) .. Redmond I'm looking at
you...
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Ask HN: Anyone using Python 3 in production? - iamelgringo
I'd love to make the switch over to Python 3 before I get tons of code written on my startup. Anyone using it in production?
======
justin_vanw
Nobody is switching to Python 3. If you go first you get all of the pain and
no advantages (plus switching later isn't very hard anwyay). I would import
unicode_literals, division, and the print() function from __future__ and stick
with 2.6.
~~~
endtime
What are the benefits of print()?
~~~
samdk
It has optional arguments which make certain things a lot easier and make it
much more consistent with the rest of the language.
_sep_ is the separator between arguments, so you can do something like:
>> print('a','b','c',sep='')
abc
_end_ is the value at the end of the line (useful, for example, if you want to
print without a newline at the end).
_file_ lets you specify a file to print to, so for example you can do
_file=sys.stderr_ to print to stderr instead of stdout.
~~~
gometro33
Being part of __future__, is print() slated for release in 2.7 or is it
strictly a 3.x feature?
~~~
timf
In 2.7, print is still the print statement by default:
<http://docs.python.org/2.7/library/functions.html#print>
------
jnoller
We in python-dev land have been working on discussing various help documents
and things associated with the website. For now, if you have lots of 2.x
dependencies - use 2.x - it's stable and well supported by the community.
If you're doing greenfield development, and don't plan on lots of external
dependencies, use 3. Personally, if I didn't have dependencies on a few
"really big" external libraries, I _would_ be running 3 in production.
This wiki page - a work in progress - should help you if you're thinking about
switching.
<http://wiki.python.org/moin/Python2orPython3>
------
pilif
We are running a web service (just the API no front end) written in Python 3
for a tiny bit less than one year.
Even under considerable load, the traditional Apache/mod_wsgi combination
never failed (though we had some encoding issues during development).
The reason to go p3 was for one the new string handling, which I personally
find absolutely beautiful and the idea of future proofing the application. We
are a small shop and certainly don't have the resources to rewrite the thing
in 3 years when all the cool stuff is happening in python 3 land.
This was also the reason to start development of another application in PHP5
just when 5.0.0 came out. There it paid off, though with p3 I'm not quite
sure. It looks as if we are stuck with 2.x maybe forever.
------
surething
The big holdback for my outfit is the lack of NumPy support.
~~~
jnoller
This is coming this year, as far as I have been told.
~~~
cdavid
it is kind of there if you use the trunk, actually
------
tonetheman
We are not switching anytime soon. I have not looked at what they did to the
syntax (hopefully nothing). There is really no advantage for us and most
likely it will break things.
If are starting from scratch it might be OK. I guess it depends on your needs
for library support.
IMO it was a bad idea to split development like they did. But I am just a user
and not in charge. :)
If it was me I would pick 2.6
~~~
For_Iconoclasm
The syntax changed in some areas. For example, the print statement no longer
exists; there is a print function to replace it.
------
pquerna
We aren't running Python 3 yet -- we are using Python 2.6.
The most impressive things that might push us to upgrade are the new VMs like
unladen swallow or PyPy, assuming they don't get backported support for 2.7ish
style python.
But right now, most libraries are made for 2.x only, and there isn't yet a
large enough performance or memory use gap to force us to take the porting
hit.
~~~
sapphirecat
Unladen swallow is still based on the 2.x series:
[http://code.google.com/p/unladen-
swallow/source/browse/trunk...](http://code.google.com/p/unladen-
swallow/source/browse/trunk/Include/patchlevel.h)
What I'm writing today to distribute is targeted at 2.x, where x>=5. If I
didn't want to distribute it, I'd be using 2.6 and writing as close to 3.x as
it allows.
~~~
sfk
<http://www.python.org/dev/peps/pep-3146/>
<http://svn.python.org/view/python/branches/py3k-jit/>
------
Daishiman
No Django support, no Python 3.
~~~
barnaby
Ditto. I do mostly Django development, so I'm tied to 2.6 for the moment, but
I'll upgrade the second that I can.
Also, Ubuntu ships with 2.6 and I'm too lazy to switch
------
nailer
There's no great benefit for the pain. The really cool work in the language -
new GIL-removal work, PyPy, pip and virtualenv, etc aren't yet included in
Python 3.
When I make the jump, it will probably be to the inevitable 3.5 or 4.0 that
includes all the juicy stuff.
~~~
jnoller
Why on earth would PyPy be included? If GIL-Removal, PyPy, pip and virtualenv
being included is your "must have" list, you're going to be waiting long after
everyone else has moved onward :)
For me, it's simply "I just need my dependencies" - which is a simple
statement, but an incredibly hard problem.
~~~
cdavid
I think the problem is that python 3 is just different, without much
improvements over 2 for many people. For example, the things which IMO were
worth fixing at backward incompatibility price (like the import system,
improved C API with ABI across minor versions, packaging) were not fixed.
I have (in small parts) contributed to the python 3 conversion for
numpy/scipy, and the only reason why I have done so is to be a good "python
citizen", and because numpy is a major library in the python ecosystem. But I
don't see any advantage in doing so. The cost is high, and the advantages near
inexistent for me
~~~
jnoller
You see - the reason your hit list of itches were not fixed were because no
one stepped in to do them - this isn't anyones fault, but it doesn't mean
important things were not fixed. Instead, the other itches (such as bytes vs.
strings/unicode) were fixed.
Function annotations, the standard library cleanup, and other things came
along for the really big ride, which was the bytes/unicode/etc ride. So,
there's lots of improvements that came with 3.0 - but the nice thing is is
that it continues to evolve.
We now have a New (more rational) GIL, we're probably going to have a futures
package (<http://www.python.org/dev/peps/pep-3148/>) and so on (heck, python3
is also getting a jit). And things will continue to be added. Everyone knows
and admits that the transition will take years, but now with 2.x being "done"
(meaning, no more releases past 2.7) and more great work being done in 3.x,
hopefully people in general will start to see the benefits.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Introducing SourceKit-LSP - mbroncano
https://forums.swift.org/t/introducing-sourcekit-lsp/17964
======
peterkelly
I've recently started adding support for the Language Server Protocol (LSP) in
a language project I'm working on, and it's a godsend. If you're not familiar
with it, it's basically an editor- and language-agnostic protocol for
implementing typical IDE behaviours like error highlighting, code completion,
hover information, find references, etc. It solves the M*N problem in which
every language would have to have a separate plugin tailored towards the APIs
of every editor; now you just write either to be LSP compliant and it takes
care of 90% of integration effort (writing the language server itself of
course is still a lot of work).
Although it's still necessary to do a little plumbing work to integrate into
each editor, this is largely boilerplate that differs little between
languages. Most of the functionality resides in a JSON-RPC server implemented
in your language of choice.
I've found it particularly useful when used in conjunction with the Monaco
code editor [1] (the engine that powers Visual Studio Code), along with a
supporting plugin for talking to a remote LSP server [2]. These make it
possible to build interactive coding environments into a web app which include
many of the typical editing features you're used to in IDEs.
It's great to see Apple along with other language vendors adopting this as a
standard.
[1] [https://github.com/Microsoft/monaco-
editor](https://github.com/Microsoft/monaco-editor)
[2] [https://github.com/TypeFox/monaco-
languageclient](https://github.com/TypeFox/monaco-languageclient)
~~~
alexashka
I think it's a positive, but I also question what the point is.
What I'd like, is a better IDE, not an IDE that can provide features I've had
for 30 years, for 30 different languages, in a consistent manner.
I dont' _want_ 30 languages, and 1 basic lowest common denominator ide. I want
2-3 languages, and excellent ides that push the boundaries of the unique
features of each language.
~~~
zapzupnz
It's not like those sorts of IDEs don't exist. Swift and ObjC have Xcode, C#
has VS, Java has IntelliJ, etc.
> What I'd like [...] not an IDE that can provide features [...] in a
> consistent manner
How is providing consistent support for many languages a bad thing? This I
don't understand. People love their tools, for better or worse, so why should
being forced to change tools be the _only_ workflow?
Your beloved one-IDE-for-a-couple-of-languages already exist and have done for
years, so no need to be a Grinch.
~~~
cellularmitosis
> excellent ides that push the boundaries of the unique features of each
> language
> Swift and ObjC have Xcode
Hard disagree that Xcode falls under the category of "excellent". Is this
parameter a concrete type, or a protocol? Sure would be nice if they were
color coded... that's pretty low-hanging fruit.
But that's looking at the trees. The important point is that the forest is
rubbish. It is 2018 and our developer experience is still fundamentally
oriented around the idea of _individual text files_. This has been the
fundamental unit of organization for 50 years.
A typical developer task might require examining 7 or maybe 12 small pieces of
code, all of which are in different files. If this were in the physical realm,
you'd grab these pieces and plop them on your desk, arrange them this way or
that, think about them for a while, play with a few ideas for possible
changes, settle on one, and then start implementing the changes.
About the only affordance which Xcode offers to facilitate this sort of work
is command+click to jump to a definition.
I literally resort to _taking screenshots of code snippets_ and arrange them
in diagramming software in order to think through a problem. Why is my IDE not
facilitating this sort of work?
Edit: though if we are stuck on text-file-oriented program organization for
the time being, there's still a lot which can be done to improve upon that,
e.g.
[https://youtu.be/0Vq2rcjWbTc?t=1429](https://youtu.be/0Vq2rcjWbTc?t=1429)
~~~
still_grokking
There is a nice solution for this problem. I really don't know why it did not
take of. Maybe nobody knows about it?
[https://www.uni-
ulm.de/en/in/pm/research/projects/inline.htm...](https://www.uni-
ulm.de/en/in/pm/research/projects/inline.html)
All this "code portal" features of Inline should be found in any modern code
editor! But nobody implemented them in any of the usual IDEs until now to my
knowledge. That's a real pity.
~~~
peterkelly
That looks amazing and has given me some ideas for my project. Thankyou!
~~~
still_grokking
Nice to see someone noticed this one. The ideas are indeed great, so spread
the word. Really want to see this features in every code editor in the future.
------
sqs
Very excited to see this. We will use this project to add Swift support to
Sourcegraph soon so you can get hovers, go-to-definition, find-references,
etc., when browsing code on
GitHub/GitLab/Bitbucket/Phabricator/Sourcegraph/etc.
[https://github.com/sourcegraph/sourcegraph/issues/979](https://github.com/sourcegraph/sourcegraph/issues/979)
------
KingMob
LSP seems like an interesting concept, but it would be nice if it included
more support for REPLs. I'm thinking of things like "evaluate highlighted
section" or "recompile function under cursor".
------
sdegutis
> _SourceKit-LSP is built on top of sourcekitd 23 and clangd 23 for high-
> fidelity language support, and provides a powerful source code index as well
> as cross-language support._
That's pretty much been Apple's motto for a while: need language support for
anything other than compiling the language, like IDEs or documentation
generation? Why not add it _directly into the compiler?_ This has pros and
cons, but personally I like the direction Microsoft has gone: rewrite
everything in JavaScript (actually TypeScript) so that it's super portable and
more easily embeddable.
~~~
geodel
Seems Apple as a company is not totally hijacked by Javascript people. I am
happy that Apple took some stand against Java/Flash/Javascript when it
interfered with quality of user experience.
~~~
nerdponx
I think in this case Javascript just happens to be the most portable
programming language right now.
~~~
azinman2
Python and Perl too....
~~~
nerdponx
Python and Perl don't (yet) run in a browser. Also Javascript is probably
somewhat "faster" (than CPython, at least) due to its JIT.
~~~
lizmat
Perl 6 runs on Chrome:
[https://perl6.github.io/6pad/](https://perl6.github.io/6pad/) Other browsers
will follow soon.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Show HN: Navigate text files in a browser and Node.js - anpur
https://github.com/anpur/line-navigator
======
smt88
Does this avoid reading the whole file into memory?
~~~
anpur
Exactly, it was initially created because FileReader.readAsText() from HTML5
File API loads whole file to the memory, so it crashes for files larger than
~400 MB.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Lack of Oxford Comma Could Cost Maine Company Millions in Overtime Dispute - uyoakaoma
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/03/16/us/oxford-comma-lawsuit.html
======
gnicholas
The title of this HN post, like nearly every headline I've seen for this
lawsuit, is misleading. The headlines makes it seem as if the company forgot
an Oxford comma and is now losing millions as a result of having made a
typographical error.
This is not the case. There is a statute that does not have a comma where one
might be, and the litigants fought over whether the lack of a comma toward the
end of a list ought to be read in light of the Oxford comma convention or not.
And it's actually more complicated, as the last item in the list is
(potentially) compound, which makes it difficult to tell whether the "and" is
to be attached to the final element alone, or to be a binding of the final
element and previous elements.
Not that this its uncommon for articles to have misleading headlines, but I've
been surprised at the extent to which nearly every article (save this one [1],
by the ever-precise law professors at the Volokh Conspiracy) have
misrepresented the case (or misunderstood it?) to make it seem like a
company's typo led to a million dollar loss.
1: [https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/volokh-
conspiracy/wp/201...](https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/volokh-
conspiracy/wp/2017/03/15/a-b-or-c-vs-a-b-or-c-the-serial-comma-and-the-law/)
~~~
eranation
Why on earth not to use programming language like constructs to write legal
documents.
No compiler or anyone who can read code ever had any ambiguity reading simple
code.
let overtime_allowed = true unless (action in [canning, processing,
preserving, freezing, drying, marketing, storing, packing_for (shipment or
distribution)] of [Agricultural produce, Meat and fish products, Perishable
foods])
~~~
Karunamon
There's an argument to be made that it already is. It's called lawyerese (or
just L), its programmers are highly regulated and highly paid.
What happened here is what happens when someone with insufficient skill tries
to write an L program. The language has no such thing as linting or syntax
checking, so while a faulty program will always run, it will return with
unexpected or absurd results. L failures tend to make C's nasal demons look
positively friendly by comparison.
There's no formal spec, it's literally centuries of ad-hoc patches and fixes
and revisions piled onto one another.
~~~
JoshTriplett
> What happened here is what happens when someone with insufficient skill
> tries to write an L program. The language has no such thing as linting or
> syntax checking, so while a faulty program will always run, it will return
> with unexpected or absurd results. L failures tend to make C's nasal demons
> look positively friendly by comparison.
Worse than that, legal "code" has thousands of frequently used implementations
(judges) and millions of one-time-use implementations (jurors), all of which
may interpret it differently, both from each other and even from their own
past versions. So if you thought writing JavaScript was bad because you have
to deal with a half-dozen browser implementations and quirks...
~~~
jacques_chester
Jurors don't interpret law and judges have a well-organised system for
exception handling.
The legal system is massively reliable. By the time something reaches an
appeal court, you're already into 5th 9 territory. You can live an entire life
under it, moving through it, completely surrounded by it, and never have to
see it or think about it.
~~~
JoshTriplett
> Jurors don't interpret law
They can and do. Quoting the Oregon constitution:
"In all criminal cases whatever, the jury shall have the right to determine
the law, and the facts under the direction of the Court as to the law, and the
right of new trial, as in civil cases."
Similar measures exist in other legal jurisdictions, though it isn't
universal.
> judges have a well-organised system for exception handling
I didn't suggest they don't; I suggested that two different judges can
interpret the law differently.
~~~
jacques_chester
> _under the direction of the Court as to the law_
The point here is that jurors decide on facts _according to law_ , as
instructed by a judge[0]. The judge is also asked during trial to consider
legal questions -- not the jurors.
> _I suggested that two different judges can interpret the law differently._
I suggested that is why there is a hierarchy of courts, with the hardest and
most important ones being delegated upwards via the process of appeal.
I am, of course, not a lawyer and this isn't legal advice. I did enjoy my time
in law school though. The main thing I learned is that the law is a language
that resembles but is not common English. Phrases like the one you quoted have
to be read in the larger context of case law and statute law.
[0]
[http://www.americanbar.org/groups/public_education/resources...](http://www.americanbar.org/groups/public_education/resources/law_related_education_network/how_courts_work/juryinstruct.html)
------
mbillie1
Alternate headline: workers to receive appropriate compensation following
accurate interpretation of state law.
~~~
wlll
I have never fully understood the insistence that employers should be allowed
to demand unpaid work from their employees.
Surely if your business is only viable with coerced labour then it isn't a
viable business?
Or maybe if you need employees help to run it without pay them then they can
be given a share of the business so they can benefit from the future returns
that their efforts provide?
~~~
cortesoft
No one is demanding unpaid work. The question is whether they are owed 1.5x
their salary or just their salary.
Overtime rules say that if you work overtime (and the definition of overtime
varies by state), they have to pay you 1.5x your salary. In this case, they
were only paying their regular salary.
No one was working for free.
~~~
wlll
Ah, gotcha. For some reason I always associated overtime with "unpaid".
Probably because when I was a kid and had crappy jobs there would always be
stuff that would need to be done at the start and end of every shift that
outside my regular hours and therefore unpaid. I wasn't savvy enough to ask
for pay, or to tell them where to stick it.
_edit_ concrete example: Blockbuster Video. Shop closed at 11, the time I
stopped getting paid. At that point I had to lock up and do accounts stuff,
clean, and general admin (plugging the CC machine into the phone line so it
could phone home and get lists of updated cards to watch for) etc. Would
usually take about half an hour ISTR.
~~~
veritas3241
GameStop is a company that had similar tactics. Had to close the registers,
process and late trade-ins, and close/clean the store. Then they trusted me to
take thousands of dollars to the bank and drop it in the slot. But all of it
was unpaid.
~~~
cavanasm
Was it GameStop, or the store manager? I'd bet money the GameStop corporate HR
people would have fired the guy on the spot if they heard about something like
that. My own retail experience (big box office supply store) was so metrics
driven I can absolutely imagine a scenario where the store manager tries to
illegally cut work hours to make his store's numbers look better.
------
weeksie
I don't think I've ever heard an impassioned argument against the Oxford
Comma. I mean, I have no problem with it, but there seems to be a belief that
this is a less filling/tastes great holy war, but really, omitting the serial
comma is fairly archaic at this point. At least in my experience. Sometimes
lists need one, sometimes they don't. At this point in the evolution of our
written language that should be a fairly unambiguous proposition.
~~~
leephillips
"omitting the serial comma is fairly archaic at this point"
Wish that were true! But many news organization style guides condemn the
Oxford comma, with sometimes disastrous results:
[http://www.chronicle.com/blogs/linguafranca/2016/12/06/for-w...](http://www.chronicle.com/blogs/linguafranca/2016/12/06/for-
want-of-an-oxford-comma/)
~~~
mercer
Is there _any_ good argument for eschewing the extra comma when it clearly
disambiguates the meaning of the sentence?
I can't think of one, but I also find it (slightly) difficult to believe that
anyone smart enough to write an article would insist on ambiguity for no good
reason...
EDIT: to disambiguate my own comment: with 'when' I meant 'in cases where
leaving out the comma causes ambiguity'. Personally I try to prioritize
clarity so sometimes I will use an extra comma, and sometimes I won't.
~~~
jakelazaroff
It can create ambiguity as well as remove it, depending on which terms can be
appositives to other terms. Classic example:
"To my parents, Ayn Rand and God." (ambiguous without the comma)
"To my mother, Ayn Rand, and God." (ambiguous with the comma)
~~~
UweSchmidt
Not a native speaker, but if Ayn Rand is your mother I'd blame the first comma
for the ambiguity.
"To my mother Ayn Rand, and God."
~~~
SamBam
But that's just grammatically wrong, in English.
Appositive clauses require a comma. Forgetting God, you can just look at the
sentence "To my mother, Ayn Rand." We put a comma there because the object of
the sentence is "mother," and then we're clarifying who "mother" is. We'd only
omit the comma if "Mother Ayn Rand" were a noun phrase all by itself, like
"Father John."
Similarly: "This is to my arch-nemesis, Ayn Rand, who always doubted me." The
commas are necessary there for the same reason.
(How did Ayn Rand enter this discussion..?)
------
rayiner
The law in question excluded "canning, processing, preserving, freezing,
drying, marketing, storing, packing for shipment or distribution of"
agricultural products from the requirement for 1.5x overtime pay.
In a sane world where everyone used the Oxford comma, that sentence would be
clear and the last item in the sequence would be "packing (for shipment or
distribution)" and the drivers would be entitled to their overtime pay. But
the Maine Legislature's drafting manual recommends omitting the Oxford comma
so the above sentence is ambiguous. And it's really ambiguous because either
meaning could really be what the Legislature intended.
~~~
marcoperaza
The way I read it, the intended meaning is as if the comma was right after
shipment. A list like that requires a conjunction before the last element.
"Or" serves that function. If "or" was merely internal to the final item, it
would be grammatically incorrect.
Here is the full context, with the only grammatically correct place to put the
comma:
_The canning, processing, preserving, freezing, drying, marketing, storing,
packing for shipment[,] or distribution of:_
_(1) Agricultural produce;_
_(2) Meat and fish products; and_
_(3) Perishable foods._
edit: fixed formatting
~~~
cvoss
I also read it the way you do. But interestingly, there is what appears to be
an Oxford _semicolon_ between items (2) and (3). The inclusion of an Oxford
delimiter in one list and its exclusion in another list would seem
inconsistent. If anything, the second list is the one that does not need the
extra punctuation because the items of that second list are also delimited by
newlines and the enumeration. Very weird indeed.
------
burntwater
My question is, what makes the canning industry so unique and special that
it's deserving of exemptions from fair pay?
~~~
briandear
Not even that -- the fact that legislators actually wrote this as a law is
interesting. There is likely a historical reason or something unique about
that industry that prompted this.
~~~
jessaustin
Probable historical reason: the industry had money and therefore political
power, and its workers were poor immigrants therefore without political power.
------
kazinator
It is perfectly clear here that "distribution" is a separate list element, set
off by the final disjunction "or":
_The canning, processing, preserving, freezing, drying, marketing, storing,
packing for shipment or distribution of:_
The pattern being: _A, B, C, D or E_.
This does not change even if we add a spurious comma after D:
_A, B, C, D, or E_.
D and E are still separately listed items.
Quite simply, _D or E_ cannot be a single list item without being preceded by
some conjunction.
If the intended meaning were "packing (for shipment or distribution)" to the
exclusion of "distribution", then the conjunction "and" or "or" would be
required before that entire phrase:
_A, B, C, D or E for X or Y._
Here the entire phrase _E for X or Y_ (such as _packing for shipment or
distribution_ ) is now the last list item (and, again, that is clear whether
or not we add a spurious comma after D).
The "or" in (for shipment or distribution) belongs to this inner phrase and
therefore cannot serve as the delimiting conjunction of the last list item;
another delimiter is required.
Thus, the insertion of the comma makes no difference. The alternative
interpretation is hard to justify, because it is based on the claim that a
meaning-altering conjunction is missing, even though the existing text happens
to be grammatical.
------
seanwilson
In almost every case I see people arguing for an Oxford comma I see a sentence
that should be broken up or restructured to make it less ambiguous. A sentence
where not noticing a comma can drastically alter it's meaning (especially when
it's a losing battle to make everyone understand the Oxford comma) is not a
good sentence.
~~~
unethical_ban
Give an example that doesn't use parentheses or a bulleted list.
It seems clear to me that if you are listing multiple items in a sentence, a
comma should separate every item in the list.
Alternatively, we could use the semi-colon for lists. This is what I do
sometimes at work, especially when the items in the list may contain commas.
~~~
jotux
>Give an example that doesn't use parentheses or a bulleted list.
Why the arbitrary restriction on bulleted lists? Situations like this seem
ideally suited for a simple list.
~~~
unethical_ban
Because prose doesn't use bulleted lists.
~~~
jotux
The law in question has a numbered list.
------
jeffmk
Avoiding the Oxford comma is the JavaScript automatic semicolon insertion of
English grammar.
Each has odd exceptions that have to be thought about, and each is polarizing.
In both cases I really wonder: why the insistence on adding to cognitive load?
------
stupidcar
"I'd like to thank my parents, Ayn Rand and God."
~~~
bandrami
Now, if you make it singular, it's the _presence_ of an Oxford comma that
makes it ambiguous:
"I'd like to thank my mother, Ayn Rand, and God"
Whereas
"I'd like to thank my mother, Ayn Rand and God"
As long as English uses commas for both apposition and list separation, there
will always be ambiguity no matter which comma convention is used.
~~~
noja
Why do you have that first comma.
"I'd like to thank my mother Ayn Rand, and God" is clearer.
~~~
in_cahoots
Yes, but how do you handle the case where your mother is not Ayn Rand and you
want to thank three individuals?
~~~
mrob
"I'd like to thank my mother, to thank Ayn Rand, and to thank God."
~~~
desdiv
Following the conventions of programming languages with mandatory bounds
checking (and thus have to keep track of the array size at all times):
"I'd like to thank three people: my mother, Ayn Rand, and God."
------
bmcusick
There should be an "or" before the word "packing" if "packing for shipment or
distribution" is a single phrase (rather than two alternatives). The Oxford
Comma debate is a sideshow. It's all about where you find the "or", which
indicates the last choice.
------
JetSpiegel
Original Source: [https://www.nytimes.com/2017/03/16/us/oxford-comma-
lawsuit.h...](https://www.nytimes.com/2017/03/16/us/oxford-comma-
lawsuit.html?_r=0)
------
j_joshua
The canning, processing, preserving, freezing, drying, marketing, storing,
packing for shipment or distribution of...
More telling is the difference between the verbs ending in "ing" and those
not.
canning, processing, preserving, freezing, drying, marketing, storing, and
packing are the actions.
shipment and distribution relate to packing.
If distribution was supposed to be a separate activity, they would have used
"distributing of" instead of "distribution of".
------
kolbe
It's kind of amazing that we even write laws this way anymore. There isn't
much to gain from freely allowing legislators to use the English language to
dictate our system of rules. I'm sure there are much clearer templates that
everyone should follow.
~~~
swayvil
Yes, law should be written like code. A "tree of nested assertions" or
whatever you call it.
Law is code. The hardware is masses of people.
------
danbruc
Couldn't they just have looked up the intended meaning of the law? I mean laws
or not made by just writing down the law in its final form, there are designs,
discussions, and drafts. Wouldn't it be likely that there are documents
showing the intended meaning more clearly, for example by listing the
exceptions as bullet points? In my opinion that would provide a way better
argument to settle the issue one way or another than appealing to grammar
rules and style guides.
------
madenine
Ignoring the comma issue, it still seems poorly worded.
"The canning, processing, preserving, freezing, drying, marketing, storing,
packing for shipment or distribution of:"
Lets group related activities based on what workers might be doing/where they
might be doing it.
If the law intended to exclude truck drivers from overtime, our groups could
be:
\- Canning, Processing, Preserving, Freezing, Drying (processing facility?)
\- Marketing (?)
\- Storing, Packing for Shipment (Warehouse)
\- Distribution (On the road)
Why is one sentence trying to define rules for all those groups?
~~~
logfromblammo
I think there is a legal principle that takes all enumerations as closed sets.
You may enumerate a set as an example of a class. You might say, "animals,
such as lions, tigers and bears." If you wrote that as legalese, only lions,
tigers, and bears would be considered "animals" for the purpose of the
chapter.
Legalese has to be really specific with respect to lists, otherwise clever
lawyers can argue their way around the holes in whatever manner best benefits
their client. If you're going to specify _any_ sub-activity of the industry in
question, you have to specify _all_ of them that you with to include for the
purposes of the law.
I would say that distribution includes shipment, so "packing for shipment or
distribution" is unnecessarily redundant. As such, I would prefer the
interpretation of "packing for shipment, or distribution". Just as you
wouldn't say "lions, tigers, tigers, and bears" you would never say "shipment
or distribution" as its own clause. Distribution is shipment.
So to make it unambiguous, you could use stricter redundancy aversion:
"packing for shipment or shipment".
------
bandrami
The case was decided on equity, not grammar. What the comma style did was give
the company a specious argument to make.
~~~
jessaustin
IANAL, but if this verdict were based on equity it would have helped out
everybody on cannery row, not just the drivers.
~~~
bandrami
Well, "equity"
------
ape4
Perhaps they should adopt programming language like syntax for laws. eg You
will be jailed for [kill, hurt, steal].
~~~
donarb
Define 'kill'. What about self-defense, soldier in time of war, accidental,
negligence? You're going to need an overly large switch statement to decide,
and that's just one crime.
~~~
mcbits
If laws were codified in a machine-friendly format, automatic code analysis
could alert lawmakers and the public to ambiguity, conflicts, redundancy,
unused code, opportunities for optimization and verbosity.
------
boltzmannbrain
JFK and Stalin are still the best proponents for using the Oxford comma:
[http://www.verbicidemagazine.com/wp-
content/uploads/2011/09/...](http://www.verbicidemagazine.com/wp-
content/uploads/2011/09/Oxford-Comma.jpg)
------
sixhobbits
There are two types of people this world: those who use oxford commas, those
who don't and those who should.
------
bob_rad
This should totally be a case study in grammar lessons. This comma could cost
you millions kids, pay attention!
~~~
sjcsjc
This comma could cost you millions kids. Pay attention! FTFY
~~~
elros
Well if we're gonna be pedantic let's not forget the vocative comma:
"This comma could cost you millions, kids." :-)
~~~
sjcsjc
I stand corrected.
------
Joeboy
[https://www.firstthings.com/blogs/firstthoughts/2011/11/roge...](https://www.firstthings.com/blogs/firstthoughts/2011/11/roger-
casement-the-gay-irish-humanitarian-who-was-hanged-on-a-comma)
------
gtirloni
Instead of discussing a grammar issue, why not go back to the intent of the
law and apply it as... intended? What were the lawmakers thinking when they
wrote that law? Are they still around? Are there any notes or recorded
sessions discussing this?
~~~
shmageggy
Do we expect the truckers to do said research in order to know how to
interpret the law? Of course not. The whole point is that the law should be
explicit and unambiguous as written.
~~~
danbruc
It would be sufficient if the court does it.
------
lotsofpulp
I wonder how Maine is able to exempt works from overtime, wouldn't that
contradict federal overtime laws?
[https://www.dol.gov/whd/overtime_pay.htm](https://www.dol.gov/whd/overtime_pay.htm)
~~~
maxerickson
The federal law has lots of exemptions that apply to various hourly workers.
~~~
lotsofpulp
Oh, I thought the only exemption was for the usual adminstrative/white collar
type work:
[https://www.dol.gov/whd/overtime/final2016/SmallBusinessGuid...](https://www.dol.gov/whd/overtime/final2016/SmallBusinessGuide.pdf)
------
PuffinBlue
The article asks:
> Does the law intend to exempt the distribution of the three categories that
> follow, or does it mean to exempt packing for the shipping or distribution
> of them?
I'd say it does both. It exempts workers who package for shipment AND workers
who distribute.
Discuss... :-)
~~~
briandear
Are shipment and distribution fundamentally different? Seem like synonyms to
me and thus the lack of comma ought not matter because: "package for shipment
-- or distribution." I guess my question is how packing would be materially
different for shipment or distribution.
Since it seems analogous, a reasonably intelligent person could assume that
the sentence could read, "packing for shipment or shipment" that implies that
shipment is a separate activity while packing for shipment is another
activity. -- since shipping is really a subset of distribution actions.
My question is why they sued -- clarity should have been sought before
engaging in the work. It wasn't like these guys were unaware of the law. They
chose to read it in the most advantageous way rather than obtaining clarity
before working.
~~~
donarb
What person goes and reads all applicable laws before taking a job? You've got
federal/state/local laws to sift through.
And who's to say that a company can't hire lawyers to comb through old laws
looking for loopholes to screw over workers?
------
Mz
As a freelance writer, this is sort of cool to me.
"The pen is mightier than the sword" and all that. A little comma -- or lack
thereof -- moves millions of dollars in one direction or the other.
Food for thought.
------
hughlang
They could have done so much more with that first sentence. Example: "An
appeals court ruling on Monday was a victory for truck drivers, punctuation
pedants and nazis"
------
dredmorbius
Of possible relevance: _The New York Times_ , per its internal style guide,
eschews the Oxford Comma.
I smell a possible revolt on the part of Mr. Victor.
------
dsfyu404ed
Meanwhile a complete jerk move did cost Maine university employees thousands
of dollars in unpaid wages over the course of a decade.
------
timthelion
Why is everyone discussing the grammar and no one questioning why laws have
such silly exceptions? Why should there be an exception for the packaging of
perishable goods? It is not like the goods cannot be packaged if the workers
are paid extra for working over-time. And it is not like a well planned
logistics chain should necessarilly be forced to have workers working
overtime. So really, this exception is just a gift to a specific industry.
------
verbatim
The longstanding question posed by Vampire Weekend has finally been answered:
Oakhurst Dairy cares.
------
d--b
Or: why AI is a long way to understand natural languages.
------
kaosjester
The sheer amount of misused punctuation in this comments section seems to
indicate a systematic problem.
~~~
christotty
I believe you mean systemic.
~~~
danielweber
Muphry's Law.
------
dmckeon
Also posted to HN as:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13886467](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13886467)
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13879156](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13879156)
For me the lesson here is "use unambigious language" rather than
"{always|never} use an Oxford comma".
The 29-page decision shows that the "Oxford comma" is only part of the court's
interpretation of the law, and shows that the court examined several paths to
reach an interpretation.
[http://cases.justia.com/federal/appellate-
courts/ca1/16-1901...](http://cases.justia.com/federal/appellate-
courts/ca1/16-1901/16-1901-2017-03-13.pdf?ts=1489437006)
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Gmail for Desktop (unofficial) built using Electron - thfc06
https://github.com/drewbkoch/gmail
======
thfc06
Hi guys,
Started playing around with Electron this weekend and threw together this
Gmail desktop app. Would love feedback and pull requests to make it better!
-Drew
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Ask HN: How do you handle mongodb migrations? - uptownhr
So you wrote your app with mongodb and went live. Maybe some small changes to db structure aren't that big of a deal but eventually, you need to migrate data.<p>How have you guys been handling migrations in mongo?
======
jwilliams
For really deep, structural (and large datasets), then it's pretty difficult
to avoid downtime.
That said, those circumstances are hopefully pretty rare. We generally write
scripts that bridge between the two formats. One to copy/transform and one to
cleanup after. Run the transform, test and verify, then move to cleanup.
It's a huge pain, but if you keep on top of if --especially the cleanup-- then
it gets easier. It tends to get really hard once you get a lot of cruft. You
end up with the code vs data dichotomy. So keeping on top of that really helps
longer term.
~~~
uptownhr
How did you go about setting this up? Your own framework or any solutions out
there?
------
CerealBoy
It's been a while since I've played with mongo, but you could run an out-of-
band task to run through all existing data, transform, then push into a new DB
/ instance.
Your existing server would continue, you have a new endpoint to test with
updated application code, deployment can then be a standard blue-green
approach.
------
pryelluw
When you say migrate, what do you mean exactly?
~~~
uptownhr
Like a migrate in rdb, with mysql postgres. Something that keeps track and
makes DB schema changes.
------
nik736
"So you wrote your app with mongodb and went live."
No.
~~~
scalesolved
I don't think is the sort of posting we want on hackernews, either provide
some context or advice for the OP as this is not helpful and doesn't
contribute anything.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Improve Your Technical Slides - sant0sk1
http://nubyonrails.com/articles/improve-your-technical-slides
======
johnm
Some good basics that go a long ways.
Though, I don't think most hackers really need to bother buying fonts. That's
an extra. :-)
Other good info:
Presentation Zen (<http://www.presentationzen.com/>) -- both the blog and the
book.
Guy's 10 / 20 / 30 rule:
<http://blog.guykawasaki.com/2005/12/the_102030_rule.html>
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Ask HN: Found an identical product to mine. Should I double down or refocus? - dolevyao
Long time lurker, first time poster here - I hope this is not a stupid question.<p>I have been working on a SaaS B2B MVP for a few months, however I am self-taught and it's taking some time. Initial feedback from potential customers has been very very encouraging, and am considering investing my savings into this, leaving my well paying job in finance and building a company around this product.<p>Unfortunately, I have recently discovered that this product exists already in the US, has raised a few million in financing and has 10,000 paying customers.
I have tried their product, and it's very, very, very similar to what I am building, just generally better and more polished. It was a great feeling to see that my idea has market following, and equally crushing to know that someone is executing it way faster than me.<p>I am now uncertain on whether I should go ahead and risk being branded "The USCompanyProduct of Europe", a copycat, or worse, or if I should refocus on changing my product. I have great conviction in the current product and I think it addresses a big market, but I don't want to be seen as someone who "stole" the idea of a VC funded startup.<p>Is it even possible to focus on Europe whilst the US company (hopefully) focuses on the US (for now)?
Am I being silly in worrying about the US company? Am I being silly in even considering building something which already exists in a different market (for now)?<p>Thanks!
======
AnimalMuppet
Congratulations! Your competitor just validated your idea for you. Now you
know the idea is worth pursuing.
And if USCo has 10,000 paying customers, you know the market is big. Big
enough that you can make a nice living there even if you aren't the dominant
player.
The question is, can you become a significant player in Europe before USCo
gets there? Local knowledge is a big edge for you; sometimes US companies find
it difficult crossing cultures. That gives you time to get established, at
least in your own country, and maybe in all of Europe.
To me, it sounds like you need outside money to scale quickly. If you can get
it, definitely double down. If you can't, though... sooner or later USCo is
going to show up in force. If you haven't grown by then, it's going to be
difficult to get any more customers, and you'll probably slowly lose the
customers you have, and your company will die. So if you can't get the funding
to scale (or can't do it self-funded), then I'd consider refocusing.
------
qwrusz
Competition happens. Sometimes it shows up early. Before being able to give a
good answer to your questions, to be honest I think you are asking the wrong
questions in this situation.
How have you been building something for months and only recently discovered
an identical competitor with millions in funding and 10k in paying customers?
Surely you did research before starting and after starting have been keeping
an eye on developments in the industry? Or no? Without understanding how you
operate, it is hard to understand whether to recommend a double down or pivot.
Thanks.
------
walterbell
Are there geographical differences in customer requirements that would allow
you to differentiate your solution based on your local market knowledge?
The existence of the US company reduces your market risk. If you have a handle
on technical execution, then technical risk is also low. That leaves sales and
scaling. If you can grow quickly in the European market, you could even be
acquired by the US company for customers rather than technology. Or vice-
versa. VC funding is no guarantee of long-term success or healthy management
teams.
~~~
dolevyao
That's a good point, thank you for the explanation. I suspect customer
requirements will be very, very similar, so don't think there is much scope
for product differentiation.
I now really do think this will be a "sell fast and scale fast" play on our
end, tech execution should not be an issue.
~~~
wj
There is always some scope for product differentiation and a lot of scope for
marketing differentiation. There are hundred(s) of different CRM products on
the market and some differentiate themselves on features (specific
features/workflows for particular industries) and some trumpet their lack of
features as the "simple crm" or "lightweight crm".
Another example is that there are dozens of customer service software products
across all price ranges and target business sizes.
------
adnanh
Gitlab and GitHub tackle same issues and have the same market. As someone
said, if you are not violating copyright or patent law, you're good. Ideas are
worthless, it's the execution part that matters... If you are better at it
you'll win. If the market is big enough for both of you, you won't have
problems. Imagine if McDonalds didn't start when they saw KFC was already into
fast food business? Or burger king, or if we only had one pizza business.
Competition pushes companies forward, having a monopoly is only good for the
business, not the users.
------
mindcrime
First of all, unless you're violating copyright or patent law, I wouldn't
waste 2 seconds worrying about being seen as having "stolen" an "idea".
With that said, consider this: your product is not the sole basis for
competition in the market. Your product is also not (hopefully) static and
unchanging. And also, "the market" for your product can most likely be
segmented in many ways, some of which would likely allow you to avoid head to
head competition with this other company.
My recommendation is that you read the book _The Discipline of Market Leaders_
which does a good job of explaining the ideas behind different vectors of
competition: product, price, operational efficiency, customer intimacy, etc.
_Is it even possible to focus on Europe whilst the US company (hopefully)
focuses on the US (for now)?_
Absolutely. In fact, if the other company focuses on the US to exclusion, you
could focus on Europe, Asia, Africa, South America, etc. and "encircle" them.
One of the big Japanese heavy equipment manufacturers famously did something
like that to Caterpillar. For more on that, see:
[https://www.google.com/search?num=30&q=komatsu+encircle+cate...](https://www.google.com/search?num=30&q=komatsu+encircle+caterpillar&)
~~~
dnt404-1
I posted a question in the vein of "unless you're violating copyright or
patent law".
How do you know if you are breaking copyright or patent law? How do you figure
out the jungle of patents? or patents that are too general and thus similar?
If the competitor is using PHP, and I use Python is that a different product
in the view of the "patent"?
~~~
mindcrime
_How do you know if you are breaking copyright or patent law?_
Well, copyright law is easy... if you haven't seen or copied the code of your
competitor's product, there's no way you could be violating your copyright.
Presumably you know if you've done that or not.
Patent is different, and I don't know that there's any easy answer to that
one. But realistically speaking, _anything_ you do has the _potential_ to be a
violation of someone's existing patent, so if you try for 100% upfront
assurance that you're not violating any patents, you'd have to constrain
yourself from ever building anything.
If you're really interested, you can search the various patent databases for
patents owned by known competitors, but a lot of people avoid doing this
because of the rules that make damages for "knowing patent infringement"
stiffer than the ones for "accidental" (not a legal term, but you get the
idea) patent infringement.
_If the competitor is using PHP, and I use Python is that a different product
in the view of the "patent"?_
IANAL, but as I understand it, the answer is "not necessarily". I think if
possible patent violations are a big concern, you have to just bite the
bullet, hire patent attorneys, have them research the existing body of
patents, and give you an opinion. I've never done it, but I'm guessing that
doing that is not cheap. :-(
------
iDemonix
I've freelanced on projects before where this has happened. It's just
validation of the idea.
In my, admittedly limited, experience, when a project carries on regardless,
usually it means the project managers can use weaknesses of the new competitor
to further improve their product.
In my one experience where they canned the project as someone had already
beaten them, I remember noticing some time after that the competition were no
longer operating.
On a side note, I'm working on some smaller scale SaaS side project pieces, I
have no idea if I have any skills that could be of use but let me know if some
assistance could help you out.
------
soneca
Not a stupid question at all!
First, forget about being "branded", "labeled", "be seen as", etc. These
things are totally irrelevant for your business success.
Now, I would keep building on your current product, without radical pivots.
But would not keep building the exact same product. A company with 10,000
paying customers and millions in financing will most certainly alienate some
segment of their customers. While this might be rational for them from a
cost/benefit point of view, it might be rational for you to target that exact
segment they are alienating and build a successful and very profitable
bootstrapped business.
If you need some help figuring out what segments they are alienating and would
be a better target for you, email me (email on my profile). I have good
experience in this kind of strategic analysis.
Good luck!
------
BjoernKW
Double down. I can't think of any product category for which there's only
space for one competitor on the market. There are plenty of competitors for
pretty much every product out there. Why should your software have to be a
unique snowflake?
I wouldn't care about "copycat" criticism either. Is Sainsbury's a copycat of
Tesco (or vice versa)? Is Toyota a copycat of BMW?
Of course not. There are virtually limitless angles for differentiation, one
of which is geographic. Do you know why there are so-called "European
copycats" of US startups? Because those US startups can't focus on every
market at once and focussing on the home market at first totally makes sense.
Just as it then makes sense for other companies in these regional markets to
try and fill that gap.
------
telebone_man
You haven't mentioned this as an option - but food for thought. Have you
considered some kind of partnership? Your competitor may have plans for
Europe, in the future, and buying you out may save them hassle later on.
Furthermore, if you have something they don't have in terms of feature set or
can demonstrate an ability to innovate they could make a job for you. Perhaps,
'Head of EU xxx'.
------
itamarst
One thing to keep in mind:
The problem with VC-funded competitors is that they can afford to lose money
on every customer and live off investor money (for a while, anyway). You can't
afford that.
Doesn't mean you shouldn't do it, especially if you can do it in market
they're not actually doing anything about. Just something to keep in mind.
------
bossx
Go for it! Competition drives innovation on all sides, and the world is big.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Welcome to Powder Mountain – a utopian club for the millennial elite - Southworth
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2018/mar/16/powder-mountain-ski-resort-summit-elite-club-rich-millennials?CMP=share_btn_tw
======
masonic
[https://hn.algolia.com/?query=powder%20utopian&sort=byDate&p...](https://hn.algolia.com/?query=powder%20utopian&sort=byDate&prefix=false&page=0&dateRange=all&type=story)
------
yazr
DUP
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16602878](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16602878)
(my own submission 30 minutes before yours. Wonder why it was not marked as
dup)
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Google Adds Voice And Video Chat to Gmail - dawie
http://www.techcrunch.com/2008/11/11/google-adds-voice-and-video-chat-to-gmail/
======
lowkey
Okay, installed. Now need someone to video chat with. Requirements: Intel Mac,
Gmail account, Video Chat add-on, a personality.
------
shadytrees
This is a duplicate: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=360952>
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
The Myth of the Myth of the 10x Programmer - payne92
https://payne.org/blog/the-myth-of-the-myth-of-the-10x-programmer/
======
remmargorp64
10X programmers DO exist. They aren't just a myth, and they aren't just about
knowing when to buy vs build, or when to use a particular framework or
toolkit, or how to "mentor" other developers.
Chris Sawyer wrote 99% of the code for RollerCoaster Tycoon in x86 assembly
language, with the remaining one percent written in C.
RollerCoaster Tycoon was a beautiful game which still stands the test of time
to this day. The fact that a single person was able to build a blockbuster-
level game almost entirely by themselves _in assembly_ is a truly impressive
feat which very few programmers would even dream of undertaking.
Being a "real" 10X programmer is like being a savant. It's about being FUCKING
SMART, and it's about being able to deliver a working, polished product in the
same time that a normal team of ten people would be able to deliver it (or in
a tenth of the time that a single person might).
~~~
Nition
Not to diminish the achievement, but worth noting I think that RollerCoaster
Tycoon was based on his earlier Transport Tycoon engine, so at least he did
get to split the work up between two projects.
I have a personal theory the that the average 10x programmer is say 2.5x
smarter than average, but also 4x more focused on work, netting a 2.5x4=10x
total when you remove all the procrastination and general fumbling around of
the average developer.
~~~
JackFr
> worth noting I think that RollerCoaster Tycoon was based on his earlier
> Transport Tycoon engine,
The 10x productivity comes in large part from the code they DON'T write.
~~~
jacquesm
And from writing things the right way the first time around rather than on
iteration #3 or so.
------
jimbokun
Here is your 10x programmer:
[https://norvig.com/sudoku.html](https://norvig.com/sudoku.html)
"In this essay I tackle the problem of solving every Sudoku puzzle. It turns
out to be quite easy (about one page of code for the main idea and two pages
for embellishments) using two ideas: constraint propagation and search."
If you gave this task to an "average" developer, how long would it take for
them to implement? How many lines of code would it be? Would the
implementation be correct? How long would their code take to execute?
% python sudo.py
All tests pass.
Solved 50 of 50 easy puzzles (avg 0.01 secs (86 Hz), max 0.03 secs).
Solved 95 of 95 hard puzzles (avg 0.04 secs (24 Hz), max 0.18 secs).
Solved 11 of 11 hardest puzzles (avg 0.01 secs (71 Hz), max 0.02 secs).
Solved 99 of 99 random puzzles (avg 0.01 secs (85 Hz), max 0.02 secs).
Does the average developer know what "constraint propagation" and "search"
mean in the above sense, or remember enough about them from their CS class to
recognize them as the right tools and how to implement them?
Also, can the average developer implement a spell checker from scratch on a
single transcontinental flight?
[https://norvig.com/spell-correct.html](https://norvig.com/spell-correct.html)
So Norvig is always the paradigmatic example of the 10x developer, for me.
Having a broad range of CS techniques at your disposal and knowing how and
when to deploy them, is almost a super power.
~~~
mjw1007
I'm sure Norvig is very good, but I think the sudoku webpage is presenting a
finished program in an idealised way, not recording the process he used to
write it, false starts and all.
(It seems likely to me that there were some false starts, because eliminate()
returns either `values` or False, when both of its callers would be just as
happy if it returned True or False.)
~~~
jimbokun
He didn't give an implementation time for the sudoku solver, but he did say he
completed the spell checker in a single transcontinental flight.
~~~
WalterBright
I don't remember how long it took me to do the spell checker challenge:
[https://github.com/dlang/dmd/blob/master/src/dmd/root/spelle...](https://github.com/dlang/dmd/blob/master/src/dmd/root/speller.d)
but I'm sure it was much longer than it took Peter. This checker is used by
the D compiler to look for a misspelled identifier when a symbol lookup fails.
The identifiers in scope form the dictionary.
It works surprisingly well. I added it to the Digital Mars C++ compiler as
well.
[https://github.com/DigitalMars/Compiler/blob/master/dm/src/d...](https://github.com/DigitalMars/Compiler/blob/master/dm/src/dmc/dspeller.d)
------
amznthrowaway5
> highly productive developers (10x or otherwise) are problem-solving at a
> much higher level
This is a very important point, but calling these highly productive developers
"10x" doesn't really make sense. They are more like "infinity times" compared
to the average when it comes to getting a difficult task done, since the
average developer would just get stuck and never be able to invent good
designs and solve the difficult problems. Even worse, some programmers are in
the negative on many tasks, adding additional complexity and overhead while
making little to no positive contributions, especially when you give them a
problem beyond their capabilities.
~~~
wpasc
Joel Spolsky's "Hitting the high notes" always comes to mind for me when this
debate arises.
~~~
goatinaboat
Spolsky is a 10x blogger. Neither he nor any of his employees were ever 10x
programmers. There was nothing algorithmically clever about FogBugz or
CityDesk or whatever.
~~~
lolc
Did you miss how they cross-compiled Vbscript to PHP? I'd say for a lot of
programmers this would have been quite the challenge, algorithmically
speaking. And I would classify it as clever. With both the positive and
negative connotations of the word.
------
marcus_holmes
I think part of the objection to 10x programmers is around expectations, self-
assessment, and attitudes.
There are people out there who have difficulty working with others. Some of
those people feel that this difficulty is because they're so FUCKING SMART and
the others are morons who are beneath them. They're extremely difficult to
work with in a team environment, but come across as completely confident about
their own abilities.
These people are toxic to work with. They drag everyone else in the team down
(part of the reason they are productive is that everyone else has to spend
time and effort dealing with their bullshit).
Management should spot this and deal with it. But in a lot of situations the
"10x" has managed to get into a position where they have a lot of information
that the rest of the team doesn't have (deliberately, usually) and getting rid
of them would be difficult. And some managers buy into the whole myth as well,
and having a toxic "10x" on their team that they have to carefully manage is a
point of pride, or something.
This archetype, the lone genius developer who is 10x everyone else, is
extremely appealing to some people. Regardless of their actual ability, they
start believing that they are this. And worse, behaving like this.
So while, yes, there are some programmers out there who are very productive,
the majority of self-proclaimed "10x programmers" you're actually likely to
meet are just socially unaware assholes with inflated egos.
~~~
leroman
Being a consultant for a considerable part of my career, whilst sometimes
working solo on writing a system from scratch.
In one example, re-writing a system written by 7 team members + architect,
taking half the time.. Maybe due to working in an organization without a
formal org position.. I had to make sure bad requirements, process, tech
decisions etc.. don't get in the way of properly collecting requirements,
designing and building this system, seen today as a hugely successful project
for this company. I have to say, some people see me as an asshole, no doubt,
other's see me as a bulldozer that got the work done and stand behind me and
keep in touch to this day.
Our interaction will depend heavily on if you are in my way or not, though I
don't consider my self toxic or hoarder of information.
~~~
marcus_holmes
I'm glad this appears to give you some satisfaction, but I hope I never have
to work with you, or around you, or on any project you've worked on.
~~~
username90
What is wrong with ignoring and working around toxic people who only
undermines the project?
~~~
leroman
Ignoring sounds passive but there is nothing passive about telling people
their ideas and cooperation is unproductive (be it people from product, RnD,
management, QA etc), you spend much time and energy convincing them their
ideas are not concrete, or are going in a bad direction, or are simply bad..
Having the burden of completing the project (successfully!) on me, I have to
cut through the BS and provide results, not attend to egos and fragility of
everyone involved.. Never the less, I try to be dry and not personal as I can
to communicate the situation as simple as possible to the other party.. In my
consulting career I learned that being "nice" is not worth it and ends up
costing me in mental health..
------
hardwaregeek
Y'know, productivity is kind of overrated. The programmers who I admire aren't
the people who could implement a React CMS in record time, but the people who
built React. Or Rust, or Haskell, or FFmpeg. I guess one could argue that the
programmers are 10x, 100x or even (10^n)x simply because their work has helped
other programmers become more effective, thus through the multiplier effect
resulting in massive productivity. Or because you need someone who can work at
10x to build something of large impact. But first, that just means that Large
Impact => 10x, not that 10x => Large Impact. Second, that's oversimplifying a
massive, nuanced impact into a number for no real reason.
Honestly I suspect the idea of 10x developers was created as a way to explain
to managers why you need to pay ol' Leslie over there the big bucks. If you
claim Leslie works at 10x the speed and only needs 2x the salary, the math
works out for a business major. So I guess that's the reason you need the
number.
~~~
terminaljunkid
> If you claim Leslie works at 10x the speed and only needs 2x the salary, the
> math works out for a business major. So I guess that's the reason you need
> the number.
I think that's perfectly justified. So much is lost in software quality
because those people think programming as dry labour and outsource to cheap
sources, losing so much in future revenues but unfortunately that's not even
measurable.
Joel Spolsky put it nicely in a post: It is not that it requires `n` bad
programmers to do what one good programmer does. It is that `n` bad
programmers can't build what a good programmer builds, no matter how big `n`
is or how much time it takes.
------
gilbetron
The concept of the 10x programmer seems to have been drifted from its original
meaning. It isn't that there's a coder that is 10x better than a _good_ coder.
It is that a lot of people are really bad at their jobs, and a coder that
thinks and learns about problems can be far better than those people. It comes
from terrible "corporate drone" software developers in the 80s and 90s - the
ones that would takes weeks to developer simple routines. Bring in someone
that loves software dev, and they appear magical.
Today, with Google and Stack Overflow, that gap has diminished, but there is
definitely people still way better than "average" developers. However, if you
have someone that keeps their skills sharp and their problem solving desire
sharper, you won't fine anyone 10x - maybe 2 or 3x, at best.
~~~
headmelted
Agreed.
I've never encountered someone that I think is genuinely a 10x programmer.
I've worked with a few people that thought I was one, which I'm most certainly
not, and I've explained that to them.
I've encountered a lot of what I would call .2x programmers though. As you've
said, there are a lot of people that are really bad at the job. It's not a
slight either - there are a lot of people doing this job that really don't
care for it at all.
It's hard to be good at a job you don't enjoy. Especially if life forces you
to do it 40+ hours per week.
~~~
saagarjha
> I've never encountered someone that I think is genuinely a 10x programmer.
I have. (Interestingly, some of these people knew this and had a surprising
lack of modesty about it as well…) Usually I think it boils down to being able
to have the experience to consistently guess right on things, come up with new
ideas, and not get tangled in the weeds: most of them are smart, but not so
smart that you’re just lost when talking to them.
~~~
m0zg
>> not so smart that you’re just lost when talking to them
That, BTW, is a sure sign that someone is trying to appear smarter than they
really are. Having worked at 2 research labs over the course of my career I
know more than my fair share of genius-level people. Without fail, they are
humble about it, and can explain complex concepts in a way the rest of us can
understand. This is something that just blows my mind pretty consistently
actually, and IMO it is a sign of true, deep understanding of a complex
subject. The person didn't just memorize formulas (although many of them excel
at that as well), they understand why things are the way they are, the real
meaning behind it all.
It could be that this is selection bias though, and I only got to know
geniuses who aren't also assholes.
~~~
prostheticvamp
As Feynman said: you don’t really understand a subject until you can explain
it to your grandfather.
~~~
1337shadow
And that's how I explained the cloud to my grandma: the company buys big daddy
servers which make baby computers that the company sells for profit. She was
so happy she finally understood what my job was at the time.
~~~
afarrell
When I read this gestation/birth analogy, it makes it seem to me like a large
piece of hardware assembles and ejects a small piece of hardware. I assume in-
person there was more detail or different imagery?
------
WalterBright
I personally know many programmers who are easily 10x average programmers. No
question about it.
They crank out code that is easy to read, easy to understand, works right out
of the box, and gives years of trouble-free operation.
Sean Parent is one of those programmers. It's pretty obvious when he describes
how he replaced a nightmarish tangle of code that re-invented a simple rotate
algorithm.
It's a remarkable talk:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W2tWOdzgXHA](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W2tWOdzgXHA)
------
nybblesio
The OP's example is perfect: he didn't go to the leaf-nodes and write _each
test by hand_. Instead, it was clear that writing a tool to do the job would
be better. Software is all about leverage. This is what defines a 10x
programmer.
However, I'm constantly amazed how many programmers fail to see the forest for
the trees.
To a large extent, not seeing (or seeing and ignoring) this type of solution
is learned behavior. Many environments are hostile to this world view. Writing
tools (especially those that generate code...eek!) is seen as "over-
engineering" and "unnecessary complexity". If you're in a factory, on a line,
your job isn't to climb away from your leaf-node.
Any programmer has the potential to be 10x, they just have to see and act upon
it. Few do.
~~~
skybrian
It seems like you're almost debating yourself here, making arguments for
opposite sides. If anyone could do it and environmental effects make all the
difference, why emphasize individual initiative?
But maybe the best thing to do would be to find a better environment, if you
can?
------
CognitiveLens
It's worth pointing out that the research found a 10x _spread_ between the
least-productive and most-productive engineers - a '10xer' isn't someone who
does ten times more than the average, so it becomes less mythical if you think
about someone who does, e.g. 2x more than average in an organization with a
few burned out engineers doing 20% of the average.
~~~
odyssey7
Ah, so the secret to having a bunch of 5x engineers is to not burn them out.
------
BXLE_1-1-BitIs1
I remember one programmer that I characterised with "He writes a lot of code".
I ended up with one of his not small routines that I replaced with a one page
assembler routine in MVS NIP rather than OPEN.
When reworking printing software to support multi color, I researched a
commonly used subroutine though several layers of calls and replaced it with,
yes, a single character constant.
I lost count of the many legacy applications where I tossed out great gobs of
code produced by "productive" programmers.
~~~
RealityVoid
I do not think 10x means "churns out code" but rather "produces results". And
by this metric, by golly, there are a couple 10x out there for sure.
~~~
prostheticvamp
I think OP here was asserting that he was 10x in comparison to that guy, as
being much more efficient.
------
petilon
10x programmers do exist. But here's the thing: its not worth being a 10x
programmer. Managers don't necessarily want them.
First of all, if you complete a project 10x faster than the expected time,
managers will assume that they had overestimated the project, as opposed to
recognizing that you're a 10x programmer. I have seen this time after time
after time.
Secondly, if a manager does recognize that you're a 10x programmer then you
will be seen as a risk: what happens if you leave the company? If the product
was built by a team then that's a legit business. If the product was built by
just 1 person then that's not a legit business as the business can suddenly
collapse if that 1 person leaves.
Third, you make your co-workers look bad by raising the expectations bar. You
will not win any popularity contests. You may make your manager look bad too,
if your performance diminishes the value of the manager.
If you're indeed a highly capable programmer here's my advice: don't be a 10x
programmer by doing 10x the quantity of work or completing projects in 1/10th
the time. Instead be a 1.1x programmer, then expend your remaining energy
helping your teammates grow, and broadening your influence. (So scale yourself
horizontally instead of vertically.) This advice is often not easy to heed if
you're introverted, and if you're extroverted you are already a manager
instead of a programmer.
~~~
pepper_sauce
The modern workplace for an employee is really not designed to incentivize
above average productivity. I don't claim to be an anything-X developer but I
find my productivity runs in cycles. In the circumstances I've turned out high
value work in a matter of hours or days, I've literally been told by
colleagues to slow down because I was making them look bad, while management
assume that's just how long the task takes. At the other end of the spectrum
when I'm (relatively) under-performing nobody cares: that's just how long a
task takes, and nobody feels threatened.
The damping effect is real.
------
e1g
I think we instinctively recognize the outsized levels of certain pros: a 10x
leader that is a different creature from a typical manager, or a captivating
writer that is 10x better than the average novelist, or a 10x actor vs a
standard-issue LA newcomer, or a 10x teacher who inspires far beyond what
curriculum mandates. Can we accept 10x lawyers, coaches, artists, or musicians
based on their impact? We do, and we seek and celebrate them. Why fashion
designers but not app designers, why essay writers but not program writers?
------
Eridrus
One thing I have observed recently is the existence of "10X projects".
This might be a symptom of working at a big company, but I have been really
impressed by the ability of some projects to achieve their ends while others
get stuck in quagmires due to the fault of nobody on the project per se, but
rather the definition of the project itself.
------
1e-9
Harder problem => Increased productivity variance
For extremely hard problems, it's not difficult to measure greater than 10X
differences between highly-talented senior developers and the average
productivity of those capable of meeting requirements.
------
dustinmoris
This whole 10x programmers debate is tiring. Why do we even argue over such a
dumb thing? OF COURSE THEY EXIST. That is not even debatable. It's a fact of
life that there are people who can achieve more than others. It is the case in
sports, in politics, in school, and not surprisingly also in tech.
You have football players who play their entire life and they don't progress
beyond a hobby team and then you've got the likes of Christiano Ronaldo and
Lionel Messi.
The question is does it give a 10x dev a justification to behave like a dig?
No, it doesn't. You still have to be a good team player, just like in a
football team a 10x player won't perform well if he/she is pissing off the
rest of the team.
So can we stop debabting about facts of life and just get on with it?
~~~
lazarljubenovic
I never understood the concept of 10x apart from it being a (misused) meme.
For (almost) every developer you can find one that will do "the thing" a few
times faster and one that will do it a few times slower. It also depends on
what is "the thing".
~~~
anthonypasq
This is another example of this delusion people have about specificity when
comparing outliers to normal people.
Genius level programmers are better than you at everything related to computer
science. And if they aren't familiar with it, they will become familiar with
it in a fraction of the time and then easily surpass you. This is why we call
human intelligence 'general'. Because it applies everywhere.
Unless you think your ability to do your job is entirely dependent on tooling
and learned knowledge, smarter people will quickly become better than you.
------
ccheever
I think the way to think about this is that there are some people who figure
out ways to do things or invent things that just wouldn't be figured out or
discovered by other people.
So, it's not 10x or anything-X even, it's just that, if the stuff that can be
uniquely provided by "10x" people is important to you, then you need someone
like that. 10 1x developers aren't likely to give you that (except to the
extent that you have 10 chances to discover that one of them is actually a
10xer on some dimension).
------
bloody-crow
I think team sports is a good analogy here. There's no people who are 10x
stronger, or who can run 10x faster than their teammates, but there's
certainly people who'd score 10x points in certain circumstances than anybody
else, and that is what 10x programmer is about.
~~~
james_s_tayler
Team sports is a terrible analogy. Like someone else mentioned, software is
about leverage. There is no leverage in team sports.
------
mikekchar
The reality of the situation is that rather than 10x programmers, there are
actually 0.1x programmers. Frequently you will have teams that are so burdened
by whatever hurdles are in their way that they produce only a tenth of what
they could be producing. Interestingly, there are programmers who self impose
those hurdles. There are programmers to impose those hurdles on others as
well. Quite frequently, though, the hurdles are either imposed from afar, or
occur as a result of unfortunate decision making that has accumulated over a
number of years.
A real "10x" programmer is a programmer who is able to unshackled themselves
from the burdens that turn them into 0.1x programmers. Beware, however,
because many of these people achieve their productivity at the expense of
others on the team. Indeed, there is a special breed of programmer who will
inflict 0.1x burdens on the rest of the team precisely so that they can appear
to be a 10x programmer.
I once worked on a team of 5000 programmers, where the average number of lines
of code produced per programmer per day was 1. We can all argue that KLOC per
month is a terrible productivity measure. However when your productivity is
around 20 LOC per month (without the K), there is something _seriously_ wrong
;-) 0.01x programmers (at best)????
~~~
ClumsyPilot
Are we talking about a case where a given developer has re-written 100 lines
of code, and added 1 line net?
Or do you mean that only 1 line was written or re-written? If so, what are
people doing, having 7-hour meetings?
~~~
mikekchar
No. We had 31 million lines of code and it was so complex that even changing 1
line had massive implications. Definitely the worst code base I've ever worked
on. I originally started working there as a contractor because they had single
functions which had reached the file size limits for their build system and
they didn't know what to do (you know... maybe split this function up into
smaller functions... maybe...). There were people who were unrolling loops
because they were unaware that the compiler would do it for them under the
hood. And then somebody would modify one part of that loop, so you'd be
looking for some strange behaviour and it would be buried in the middle of
some code that was copy and pasted 100 times. Total nightmare. Don't even get
me started on how they did their memory allocation.
~~~
sibeliuss
Very curious to know what you were working on! 31 million lines of code?
~~~
mikekchar
It was a telephone switch (Now defunct Bell Norther Research)
~~~
sibeliuss
The scale of this is too vast to even conceive....
------
t0astbread
It doesn't matter whether 10x programmers exist. Programming is not a sport
and as such, competition will only lead to narrow thinking, useless
optimization and hatred. What we should really strive for is making
programming a more creative activity where people learn from and inspire each
other, not a competition.
Oh and also, "finding the 10x engineer" feels like a hotspot to inject hidden
bias into recruiting.
~~~
closeparen
Communication overhead is expensive. All else being equal, it’s much better to
build a small elite team that can operate successfully with less structure and
process, rather than a large average one.
~~~
t0astbread
Right. But you can't build a functioning team that works together and can rely
on each other by fostering a culture of competition and hiring only the
"predestined" 10x engineers.
If the team culture is to help each other, forgive mistakes and learn from
each other without measuring who's the best the team will automatically build
itself without the need to hire only "10x engineers".
Or so I suppose. I'm not an HR person or anyone else with expertise in this
field so you should take what I say with a grain of salt. I've just been
thinking about this a lot as of late.
~~~
closeparen
Where I’ve seen teams with high concentrations of unusually smart people, they
gelled and collaborated at least as well as anyone else. In fact the bandwidth
and fidelity of their idea transfers is part of what made them impressive.
It’s like they had their own little language to describe the codebase and what
to do with it.
These were mature and soft-spoken people; might be different with brash young
hotshots.
~~~
t0astbread
To me that sounds like an environment where there's not a lot of competition
involved. (Which is what I was describing.)
~~~
closeparen
They were far and away the most selective team in the company.
I’ve seen this before in university too; competitive to get into can still be
cooperative once in.
~~~
t0astbread
HN thread limit might cut this off but what if someone in that team starts
experiencing problems and self-doubt? If everything in the team has always
worked smoothly before they might not be able to handle it.
Additionally, elitist teams might scare off some people that could otherwise
be great engineers if they just got a little entry help. Sure they can "get
that elsewhere" but if every team behaved like that there's not only nowhere
to enter, but there's also sort of an omnipresent assumption that you have to
be good from the start in order to be able to achieve something in
engineering.
I'm not saying your described team doesn't work but it's not exactly the kind
of culture HR should be striving for in my opinion. (Albeit it's still far
better than than a team that doesn't work at all or works against each other.)
------
koonsolo
I've been a 10x developer compared to my yesterday self.
I needed to add a feature that required a big rewrite of my framework. This
would take maybe 2 weeks.
The next day I realized I could support that exact same user benefit with only
a few lines of code.
Sometimes just looking at the problem differently, or sleeping over it can
have a huge impact, not only compared to other developers, but also to
yourself.
------
yodsanklai
> I think 10x developers, like world-class athletes, musicians, and authors,
> absolutely do exist.
For this question to make sense, one should give a better definition of what
constitutes the output of a programmer.
In a sense, there are Nx programmers for any arbitrary N because some
developers can build things that other can't.
But we can't reduce the work of a software engineer to "programming". Most
"programmers" today aren't developing some new hobby systems from scratch
(it's the easy part IMHO). They work in the context of a team, they have to
deal with legacy code (possibly boring, using technologies they don't like),
they write doc, review code, discuss designs and solutions, they give talks to
present their work, they train or supervise colleagues, they interact with
difficult managers or colleagues and so on...
In that context, I wonder how "star programmers" operate. I wouldn't be
surprised if some of them are even under-performers.
------
thoman23
A few people have touched on it here, but I'll add my voice. I firmly believe
that there are programmers who are better described as a "1 vs. 0" programmer.
Some programmers have a creative talent in them that leads them to create
elegant solutions that literally a team of 50 average programmers would not.
------
gandalfgeek
If you look at the original paper (going back to 1968) where the data for a
10x difference was first found, there are a ton of... issues.
I've covered this in detail here:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gho89X72Xas](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gho89X72Xas)
------
oarabbus_
There are 10x salespeople, 10x authors, 10x basketball players, and 10x
scientists; why should there not be 10x programmers?
------
overgard
I agree with the article, but I also think it leaves out something fairly
important, which is minimizing huge time sinks. Instead of being 10x better,
how can you reduce wasted time 10x?
I remember working with this one guy that was light years smarter than me, but
if you watched him use the IDE it was _painful_. He did _everything_ in the
menus, slowly. How much of his life could he have back from memorizing f5 and
a couple other shortcuts?
Maybe you could reduce waste in various ways:
* Learn keyboard shortcuts instead of pecking through menus
* Use search instead of browsing (especially with keyboard shortcuts!)
* Have you ever lost half a day debugging something that turned out to be dumb? (I have!) Is there a way to modify your coding style or your testing habits so you never hit that again?
* Do you know your stack well enough that (given the time) you could reimplement the same ideas yourself? (Or is it a magic box that you can't debug? How much time and effort do you spend prodding the magic box?)
* Have you automated all the manual things you currently do?
* Are you wasting a lot of time dealing with bad abstractions when something much more basic would suffice?
* Are you mastering your tools/languages/frameworks, or are you switching around so often that you spend a lot of time looking things up?
* Do you have input into how your tasks are written, or are you stuck with whatever breakdown someone else came up with? Is your work getting awkwardly twisted to fit into these milestones? Can you work out a better system with your leads?
That's the tip of the ice berg -- I think if you look at almost anything you
do, you can generally find some aspect of it that's cumbersome and wasting
your time. I feel like when you account for wasted effort/time, and removing
it, becoming "10x" starts to seem a lot more reasonable -- it's not about
being a genius, it's about being introspective and careful about how you
perform your work. It saddens me to say this, but I think that sort of
introspection is rare. I see so many programmers doing uncomfortable awkward
things every day, because it's only like 10 extra seconds, except those 10
seconds times 20 times a day times a year and now that cost is out of control
~~~
wvenable
If you think 10x programmers are merely more efficient and writing code,
you're wrong. A 10x programmer produces 10x less code to solve the problem
which is why they're 10x faster at it and the quality if higher.
Some of this advice is good but actually being _speedy_ is not necessary.
------
slowhand09
They are rare, but definitely out there. I've worked with one, managed one,
never been one. One charateristic I observed over these 2, they'd take a
manual home and read it over a day or two. They'd retain most of it. They tend
to be touch typist not needing to look at the keyboard often. This reduces
context switching and lets them flow when they are being creative. They know
and remember syntax, library routines and interfaces so they aren't stopping
to look things up. They "try on the fly", fail fast and often, and move to
alternatives when blocked. The ones I know I'd love to start a company with.
But I would be the bottleneck...
------
NohatCoder
I don't know if there is truly such a thing as a 10x programmer, but I have no
doubt that 0.1x programmers exist in hordes. Even people who at small scale
seem competent can often end up making a complicated mess when dealing with
bigger projects.
------
kunglao
Considering how software development has become relatively lucrative and so
many want to throw themselves at this, it's bound to create a large pool of
incompetent engineers. Specially because this isn't an industry that is
regulated like medical doctors or architects. Given that, I think it should be
relatively easy to find 10x performers on different teams.
However, to find a 10x guy in a high-performing team, that'd be a sight :)
------
keanzu
If we take a simple application of Price's law:
The square root of the number of people in a domain do 50% of the work.
In a group of 121 the top 11 are doing 10x the work of the other 110.
------
helsinkiandrew
The best way to carry 8 gallons of milk across a muddy field in a leather bag
is to leave it in the cow.
I never assumed that the 10x programmer was actually writing 10x the amount of
code in the same time but instead knowing how to do something in a 10th of the
time, with less risk and cost (by a using a better algorithm, novel approach,
or 3rd party package etc).
It's the difference between being a developer and a programmer
------
SideburnsOfDoom
> I developed them in 3 days, by writing a C program to automatically generate
> the range of tests.
So they were 10X at that task. Are they like that, consistently, all the time?
Maybe next time it's another person's turn to have the insight on how to
drastically simplify the task.
This is not "10x people" at all then. This is a "10x day" or a "10x week" in a
fairly normal person.
------
nhumrich
I find that I am a 10x developer when I compare myself to other versions of
myself. I have had days where I honestly feel bad because I got almost nothing
done, and other days where I get a ton done. If I was able to correctly
channel my focus and effort, I would be 10x then I used to be. Now sure, maybe
the time spent not as focused allows me to have those bursts of productivity.
------
chx
I'd argue today a team could be 10x. Yes it requires someone who knows the
concepts and can effectively communicate them but also awesome project
managers, designers and QA personnel. A great team (I am lucky to be part of
one) functions like a well oiled machine churning out acceptably quality
features and fixes the problems at a surprising rate.
------
sunstone
To make an analogy with the ancient Roman trieme ships with three tiers of
rowers. A 10x rower in that context is not the guy who can pull the oar 10
times harder, it's the guy who, while he can pull the oar, can also tell you
when the ship is on course because he knows how to navigate and thereby makes
everyone's effort more efficient.
------
DantesKite
Despite the differences in definition, reading the comments on this page has
been lovely. I’ve enjoyed the many perspectives.
------
noicebrewery
The author of this article is a 10x self-promoter for using a hotly debated
precept to humblebrag about his accomplishments.
------
liamcardenas
Why wouldn’t there be such thing as a 10x programmer? Is the average
programmer so good? There are outliers in every industry. Professional
athletes are a clear example — they are often many orders of magnitude better
than the average player of their respective sport.
There are probably also a few 100x engineers, maybe someone like Elon.
~~~
paublyrne
The equivalent comparison would be professional athletes at the top of their
sport to other professional athletes in that sport working or playing in a
lower league. Would the the top performers be 10x the other ones? Hard to
quantify this, but I'd say no, more like 2x or at most 3x
~~~
thoman23
All you have to do is look at someone like LeBron. He single-handedly makes a
team a championship contender.
------
whateveracct
If you're really 10x and you're giving that 10x to some company and not
getting 10x value, you're doing yourself a disservice! Either get fair value
(probably won't happen) or give them less than that 10x and use your spare
energy for other pursuits (relaxing, entrepreneurship, art, hobbies, etc)
------
d--b
He’s saying 10x developers are those won’t don’t code 10 times faster the same
code, but those who find ways to code 10x less for the same results. that I
agree with.
But then he compares 10x developers to world class athletes... That’s a bad
comparison. The 10x developer is the guy who takes the bus instead of running
marathon!
------
cmhnn
How does an industry so full of brilliant people who consider themselves much
smarter than their users keep arguing in these absolutes about programmers
like their skills are easily classified.
Many things have become popular that were originally written like ass by
someone who was better at making something people found useful than they were
at data structures or thinking in big O.
A lot of genius language design people are nearly useless when the whole messy
world of shit like network, filesystems and interacting with things not their
language is involved.
Programmers being human also are not some consistent machines that constantly
maintain some level of productivity regardless of what is going on in their
personal life or their interests waxing or waning in a given problem space.
The people whose code has changed the world are maybe a handful or two. So,
astounding developers much better than most do exist. But even they are not
some multiple of every coder for every problem.
Nevermind, it's time to stop even thinking about programmers alleging truisms
about programming and go get my MSNBC|FOX fix so I can get the necessary
stimulus to knee jerk.
------
DonHopkins
It's not that Alan Turing was a 10x or 100x programmer (not that there were
many others to compare him to at the time), but that he had a deep intuitive
understanding of mathematics, which he could apply to many problems from
different fields.
------
xornor
It is very easy to find -10x programmers, which proves that there are also 10x
programmers. It depends on the reference skill level.
------
paulus_magnus2
Can we stop the self hate already? There definitely are 10x musicians, 10x
painters, sportsmen and 10x programmers. You know what never exists in 10x
form? Burocrats and middle managers who write articles like this one.
I suggest to flag this as fake news and all future articles intended to
devalue young talented programmers who yet are to discover their true market
value.
~~~
michaelbuckbee
Not trying to be a jerk, but I think you might need to re-read the article as
the author is clearly a developer themselves and thinks that there are
definitely 10x developers (just that they can't be found with a simple coding
test).
~~~
Bnshsysjab
I would like to think I’m one of them, I’d flail about in attempt to solve
some random programmer test, but I’m also the guy that sits back and says ‘hey
how about we rethink this i n s a n e architecture?’
------
tanseydavid
10X programmers do exist but good luck finding them as Job Seekers.
It is also a concept which is NOT SCALABLE.
------
xtf
Problem is the scale. Script kiddies and junior programmers are 0.1x to 0.6x
or people reinventing the wheel by not using a framework, they could be far
less and let's not talk about security. Experienced (senior) devs should be
counted as 1x. Beside knowing to programming fast, they (should) know how
programm more correctly.
------
loopz
What have the company done in the past 15 years to build a progressive
learning culture?
------
bsaul
If you look at it the other way, is there any field where some pro aren’t 10x
« better » than other pros, at least by some metrics ?
In sport it’s pretty obvious there are, and you can measure it because there’s
a « winner » and a « looser » at the end of each game. But i’d imagine it’s
there in pretty much anything.
------
jpswade
Being a 10x programmer is not sustainable and doesn’t scale well.
A great team is not made up of lone rangers and wild stallions.
------
wanone
10x programmer @ 1x pay
------
lincpa
If you use [The Pure Function Pipeline Data Flow v3.0 with Warehouse/Workshop
Model]([https://github.com/linpengcheng/PurefunctionPipelineDataflow](https://github.com/linpengcheng/PurefunctionPipelineDataflow)),
although the development speed will be a little slower, thinking will be a
little more, but later reading, incremental development and maintenance will
be less than ten times.
------
ten_xer
As a 10x programmer myself (NOT TO BRAG) I will tell you we definitely exist.
My greatest annoyance is watching the rest of you peons crawl along at a
snails pace while I am inventing the next groundbreaking technology that will
completely flip your existence upside down. Perhaps the only person who could
even understand my level of motivation is Elon Musk, but I'm not even sure if
I would have the patience to explain it to him.
It is a daily occurrence that while you are trying to find a missing semicolon
that I'm already cleverly arranging your old commits using git rebase to turn
your finger-painting into a Van Gogh. My only advice is just to get used to
it, because we aren't going away. The best thing you can do is hope to get a
management role so that you can be freed from the burden of competing with us.
Let's be frank: most of us 10x programmers are on the deep end of the spectrum
and therefore won't want or perform well in a management role, but for those
of us that can, managing normal programmers would be excruciating.
~~~
slowhand09
This guy is so 10X his/her user didn't exist before this response. And he's
been 10X and productive talking about it!
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Amazon Says It Has Over 10k Employees Working on Alexa, Echo - deegles
https://www.wsj.com/articles/amazon-says-it-has-over-10-000-employees-working-on-alexa-echo-1542138284
======
m0zg
And those employees are doing a rather poor job on the AI side of things.
Hardware itself is OK, it hears me better than its Google counterpart thanks
to the phased microphone array. But both speech recognition and natural
language understanding are piss poor and other than ordering stuff from Amazon
and setting the time it's not useful for much, nor does it understand me in a
sufficiently high percentage of interactions, nor is it in any way
"conversational", the way Google Home is. Alexa app is also lackluster and
feels like it's held together by duct tape, like all other Amazon apps.
For me the quality of AI in this case outweighs the creep factor of Google.
FWIW, I replaced my Echo with a Google Home Mini.
Full disclosure: I'm an ex-Googler who nevertheless thinks that ads are
cancer, and pervasive tracking shouldn't be legal.
~~~
mattlondon
I have both a Google home and Amazon echo literally next to each other. I have
found that the Amazon device is really poor at hearing you.
The Google device I can talk to from any room in my apartment and it hears me
correctly 95% of the time, it even triggers and understands me if I am
brushing my teeth with an electronic toothbrush at the same time. It is
impressive.
The Amazon device on the other hand has a 50/50 chance of triggering, and I
often have to walk right up to it to clearly enunciate "computer" before it
wakes up. Not sure if this because I speak en-gb instead of en-us.
(I have both only because the Google one does not reliably work with Samsung
smartthings any more (it used to work fine!) but the Amazon one does. Amazon
one is also good for music but Google tries to sell you a YouTube
subscription. Google one is hugely better at random day to day
questions/queries/translation/usefulness etc - I guess that is b cause they
are a search engine and not an e-commerce site)
~~~
mitgraduate
Even Amazon's music search sucks. It can never find the song unless you
provide an accurate name. Its fuzzy matching sucks too, doesn't even account
for regional trend in songs.
~~~
m0zg
Apple's music search sucks too, especially if your music tastes are even
slightly outside the mainstream. It simply doesn't personalize per user, so
when I search, I have to wade through a list of unfamiliar band and musician
names until I type almost the whole thing. For a company whose motto once upon
a time was "design is how it works", this is inexcusable.
------
hanoz
I hope at least some of them are working on Alexa's seeming inability to do
any kind of learning on the go. For instance if, as you repeatedly inform me,
there's no station called Summer FM Groove Salad, then maybe, just maybe, I
mean _Soma_ FM Groove Salad, like the one in ten times you hear me correctly.
~~~
dangrover
This. I never tell Alexa to set a timer for 15 or 50 minutes (only 16 or 49)
due to tendency to confuse.
~~~
beatgammit
16 doesn't get confused with 60?
------
jclulow
I guess it takes a lot of people to listen to the accumulated recordings from
all of those people's living rooms!
~~~
verisimilidude
Wouldn't be the first time, won't be the last. For example...
[https://www.businessinsider.com/expensify-is-proud-to-use-
hu...](https://www.businessinsider.com/expensify-is-proud-to-use-humans-in-
its-automated-service-2017-11)
------
lawrenceyan
Amazon is a competently run technology company with smart people from my
limited experience. I wonder why Alexa is so much worse compared to Google
Assistant then.
Perhaps natural language processing / understanding applications aren’t as
well researched or developed at Amazon? Maybe it’s the difference in culture
between the two companies with Google being much more academic in nature and
research oriented compared to the more process oriented operations / logistics
focus of Amazon that has caused such a widening gap to build up?
~~~
partiallypro
Seems pretty simple to me, Google has more data and users that keep adding
even more data to optimize their offerings. I doubt Alexa has even 1/10th the
users as Google's assistant.
This is the unfortunate barrier to entry when it involves big data. Even
behemoths Amazon and Microsoft are stuck with smaller pools of voice data than
Apple or Google. It makes it very difficult to compete...imagine being an even
smaller player, you have no shot. If Amazon and Microsoft weren't cloud
competitors I bet they'd do a joint venture. They are already playing the most
friendly with each other.
~~~
CydeWeys
Amazon has still sold millions of these devices and thus has inordinate
amounts of data. When you're talking about training sets that are, say, 1
trillion large vs 10 trillion, does it really make that much of a difference?
It's diminishing returns. 10X the data size comes nowhere close to a 10X
difference in quality at that scale.
~~~
RestlessMind
I neither work on Alexa nor on Google Assistant. But based on my experience,
going from 99% accuracy to 99.9% would require much more data than 0.9%. Same
with adding each subsequent "9".
And the _perceived_ quality difference between 99% accuracy and 99.99%
accuracy is much much bigger.
~~~
frankchn
In my experience, like with high availability, each additional 9 requires
between double to 10x the resources to achieve.
------
walterbell
Has anyone tried to build an open-source voice assistant using the $100
Respeaker far-field mike array dev board,
[https://respeaker.io](https://respeaker.io) &
[http://wiki.seeedstudio.com/ReSpeaker_Core_v2.0/](http://wiki.seeedstudio.com/ReSpeaker_Core_v2.0/)?
_> ReSpeaker Core v2.0 is designed for voice interface applications. It is
based on the Rockchip RK3229, a quad-core ARM Cortex A7, running up to 1.5GHz,
with 1GB RAM. The board features a six microphone array with speech algorithms
including DoA (Direction of Arrival), BF (Beam-Forming), AEC (Acoustic Echo
Cancellation), etc. ReSpeaker Core v2.0 runs a GNU/Linux operating system ...
Our BF and AEC algorithms are provided by Alango, a professional audio DSP
company used in the automotive industry._
Voice assistants are magical when they do-what-you-mean. If there was an
active OSS community for voice assistants, it would enable experimentation
with privacy-preserving architecture and customization for niche use cases and
language.
~~~
j88439h84
\-
[https://github.com/NaomiProject/Naomi](https://github.com/NaomiProject/Naomi)
\- [http://mycroft.ai](http://mycroft.ai)
\- [http://snips.ai](http://snips.ai)
~~~
walterbell
That reminds me that Google has DIY kits at Target, but they are designed as
Google service extensions.
[https://aiyprojects.withgoogle.com](https://aiyprojects.withgoogle.com)
------
warent
My guess is ~9950 of those employees just do data labeling.
~~~
DiabloD3
That still implies 50 of them are trying to make it seem like anything but a
toy.
I was given a Google Home Mini as a Christmas gift (the resident tech god for
most people's lives doesn't have one? what, how can this be!? someone
rectified that for me), and I've been toying with it... and its the Google
assistant in my phone, but in a stand alone device.
I mean, don't get me wrong, that's a lot more useful than people realize
because.... IT ACTUALLY WORKS. Ridiculously loud kitchen fan hood roaring
along at levels that are probably considered unsafe by OSHA standards? "Hey
Google, do the thing." "Okay, I'm doing the thing." Upstairs, far away from
it? Not even yelling at it, it understands me reasonably and does things
alarmingly often.
The best impossible magic? "Okay Google, turn my television off." My
Chromecast is not named "television" nor "my television", is only referenced
in my Home config as the default TV for that room (of which the TV and Mini
share), and somehow turns the TV off even though the Chromecast does not
expose this functionality anywhere in the Home app (and was assumed to only
know how to issue exactly one HDMI CEC command (turn TV on and switch input to
here) due to some undocumented and strange hardware issue... hundreds of
threads across the Internet all about how can they turn the TV off even though
they can turn the TV on, none of them ever figuring out how to issue CEC off
or even if the Chromecast can... it can, and the assistant in my tiny speakers
knows how to issue this probably undocumented command to the Chromecast).
My experience with Alexa? Ideal listening conditions, no background noise,
only me talking. "Alexa, do the skill that you know how to do and is
advertised in the commercials on TV, any off them." "I'm not quite sure how to
help you with that".
~~~
shimylining
I have been using Alexa for years. I've been controlling my TV and I have WiFi
smart plugs. It is super useful and it has never had issues understanding what
I was saying.
I have noticed people who have issues they place the device next to a sound
source such as a TV or fan or something and obviously this will mess it up.
I also don't understand why so much hate for Alexa. Everyone in this thread
just seems like a Debbie downer, shi*ing on everything all the time.
~~~
atdt
I'll give you a concrete example. The primary light fixture in my small
apartment is a standing lamp in the corner of the living room. I bought a
smart plug for the lamp and during set-up I chose the name "lamp", since that
is what we call it (in our household you don't have to say /which/ lamp, since
it's obvious). Now, Alexa doesn't know what to do if I ask it to "turn off the
light", which is disappointing enough, but it also fails to understand "turn
off the lamp" \-- instead I have to remember to drop the 'the' and say "turn
off lamp", which is so unnatural. It feels like I have to bend and deform
natural language into something Alexa can parse, which is the exact opposite
of what assistants promise to do.
~~~
wkearney99
Well, naming devices for voice control is more tedious than you'd think. You
have one device that you named poorly. Try having a house with over 150
devices! Naming matters. Putting a little thought into it makes a big
difference in usability.
I've got one that gets used everyday. It's named "Breakfast Table". 'Alexa,
turn on Breakfast Table' works quite reliably. Now, am I actually turning on
the table? No, of course not, but that rolls off the tongue a lot better than
"Alexa, turn off pendant lamp over the breakfast table". Or recessed ceiling
cans as opposed to just "living room ceiling". We really don't have many
devices with 'lamp' or 'light' as part of their name. Because we're not really
asking for control over a light, we're asking for light for an activity at a
location.
But there still ends up being a few that are clunky. "Family room endtable"
for a reading lamp near that end of the sectional, or 'Family room sofa" for
the two on a console table behind the other part. Haven't hit upon better
names for those. Activity naming is an option but we really don't call for
lighting in a scene oriented kind of way. Some folks seem to like that, go
figure.
Bearing in mind with an open floorplan just about everything on a level is
within line of sight and earshot. The placing of multiple Alexa devices took a
little fine tuning to overcome reflection from lots of wood and drywall
surfaces. That allows for unexpected pickup. Oh, the units handle avoiding
overlap with each other, but sometimes facing one way in a room leads to the
sound being picked up by the one in that direction. As you'd expect sound
waves would travel. But without a LOT more intrusive sensors (cameras, motion,
position) it's handling things remarkably well just with voice.
The great tragedy is the leap to conclusions people make. "Promise to do"....
where? By whom?
Oh, you want a TV cartoon equivalent of Rosie the Robot... we're not there
yet. But given the hilariously low price point for these devices, we're
getting quite a lot of bang for the buck in the meanwhile.
------
Zaheer
W/o Paywall: [https://outline.com/vqmqwg](https://outline.com/vqmqwg)
This org could be it's own company (like many other Amazon orgs)! For context,
number of employees at:
Motorola (2014): 40,000
Nvidia: 11,528
AMD: 8,900
~~~
njharman
I bet there are more Alexa customers than nvidia ones. And way more than
direct AMD ones.
~~~
kevinventullo
Amazon has sold about 35 million Echo units, which is a little under half of
the total number of PlayStation 3 units sold to date, each of which has an
Nvidia GPU in it.
~~~
new_guy
100 million, they released numbers the other day
[https://www.reddit.com/r/amazonecho/comments/ad2drt/100_mill...](https://www.reddit.com/r/amazonecho/comments/ad2drt/100_million_alexa_devices_have_been_sold_yes/)
~~~
devoply
1 employee per 10,000 echos doesn't seem like much.
------
curiousDog
And yet, Google has way better speech recognition than Alexa.
~~~
Baeocystin
I'm surprised at the number of people saying there's a noticeable difference.
I've been using Dots for a few months, now, and it pretty much understands me
every time, even with the vent hood of the range on, etc.
I did have one odd error, where when I named one of my lamps 'halogen', Alexa
would always ask back "did you mean halogen?" with the exact same
pronunciation I had used. Then proceed to turn it off or on like I'd asked in
the first place. This struck me as more of a bug than anything else, and I
worked around it by just using a different name. But still, if that's the only
listening error I've dealt with after several months' use, I'm impressed.
~~~
B1FF_PSUVM
> when I named one of my lamps 'halogen', Alexa would always ask back "did you
> mean halogen?" with the exact same pronunciation I had used.
Maybe due to
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/H-dropping](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/H-dropping)
?
~~~
Baeocystin
An interesting thought. In my case, though, I live and work in the bay area of
California, so no H-dropping, and the accent I use is probably the one that is
the most common in terms of use for a training set.
(I was saying 'hale-oh-gen', as was Alexa, FWIW. Now I'm curious if others can
repeat the same error!)
------
arikr
Does anyone have an approx breakdown by role?
e.g. how many software engineers vs how many data labelers
or how many are full-time vs contractors, etc
------
RIMR
10,000 people, any my Echo still doesn't understand the difference between any
of my smarthome devices that contain the word "lamp" in their names.
------
kureikain
I have many alexa devices in my home and I love it. They solve lot of problem
for us. From automate my home to a speaker(via bluetooth).
But one thing concern me a lot is Alexa is constantly stream/read data to
internet. I'm not sure what it's but it consume to 114Mbps per device.
With that huge data it is sending back to Alexa, I imagine they may have a
huge team of scientist to work on it.
One thing I noticed is Alexa understand my broken English way better than my
wife(native). Probably I have speak to it to much and it learned my voice.
~~~
burtonator
It's massively insane that people put microphones into their house and
willingly stream all conversations to a private 3rd party in exchange for
minor convenience.
~~~
marcinzm
>all conversations
I believe Alexa only streams what you say after the trigger word and not all
conversations. Assuming you believe Amazon.
~~~
ekianjo
if its technically possible to do it without you knowing then all that is left
is how much you trust Amazon with that. Note that Amazon may have to surrender
its devices access to three letters agencies for random reasons as well. You
have to live with that assumption.
~~~
JaRail
It's widely understood how the wake-word system works. You can monitor how
much data is being uploaded and when. So no, it's not possible to just stream
everything you say undetected.
~~~
pvorb
I believe 99 percent of Alexa users wouldn't notice the increased data usage.
If "three letter agencies" carefully choose who they spy on, it might go
undetected for a very long time.
~~~
discodave
If a three letter agency is interested in _you_ then you would be lucky if
your Alexa is the best bugging device they have.
------
bsenftner
Seems like an 80/20 rule might apply here: 8K of them are in marketing, with
the remaining 2K also being split 80/20 to 1,600 tech/infrastructure support
and 400 actual ML/AI, device & application developers.
------
yegle
Alexa seems to not understand simple questions like "current temperature in
Celsius" which is really a deal breaker for me.
(I don't own any Alexa device but when I visit Seattle they have one in the
room).
------
mr_custard
I don't care how many people they have working on Alexa or Echo - those things
will _never_ be allowed inside my house. Massive security risk.
~~~
JacobJans
Do you have a smart phone? It's not any different.
Edit: But it also constantly tracks your location and has a built in camera.
~~~
millstone
Has there ever been a documented case of a smart phone randomly burst out in
creepy laughter or sending private conversations to random contacts?
~~~
tirpen
Here is Android sending private conversations to random contacts:
[https://daringfireball.net/linked/2011/01/06/android-
sms](https://daringfireball.net/linked/2011/01/06/android-sms)
------
aviv
My 6yo son thinks Alexa is an actual person... he might be on to something.
~~~
erikig
I wonder if any of the 10,000 people are actually named Alexa, and if so do
they get any preferential treatment?
~~~
monk_e_boy
I always feel sorry for all the Alexas. And the Harry Potters who were living
their lives just fine before the books.
My friend is named Tressa Green. Her dad assured me he had no idea that most
people pronounced Tres-sa as Tree-sa.
[edit] this is a fun read:
[https://www.radiotimes.com/news/film/2018-03-22/meet-the-
rea...](https://www.radiotimes.com/news/film/2018-03-22/meet-the-real-life-
muggles-named-harry-potter/)
~~~
stuart_marshall
If you look at the lists of ranked baby names by year, you'll see a massive
drop off of Alexas about when Amazon shipped.
------
dbrgn
If those 10k employees earn 90k$ on average, that would be 900 million dollars
per year just for salaries.
The echo dot costs 30$.
I'm sure Amazon just wants to make a great user-centric product and will not
agressively violate your privacy to make more money! </sarcasm>
------
IloveHN84
How many of them are working on tagging manually the audio tracks for machine
learning?
------
40acres
Amazon must have a very decentralized recruiting methodology because I've been
contacted by recruiters for Alexa at least 4 times.
It seems like Alexa, Go, and AWS have massive staffing targets based on my
interactions w/ recruiters.
~~~
stuart_marshall
Yes, every group in Amazon has its own recruiters who largely find candidates
independently. However, Amazon does have a good central database of everybody
who is contacted, who last talked with them, what happened with the contact,
etc. And they're usually pretty good about having only one group active with a
candidate at a time.
------
cruella_deville
the link below points to the source code for alexa based personal assistants
in a can.
[https://www.amazon.com/gp/help/customer/display.html?nodeId=...](https://www.amazon.com/gp/help/customer/display.html?nodeId=..).
you can also access alexa by browser, but you need to sign in
[https://www.amazon.com/ap/signin?showRmrMe=1&openid.return_t...](https://www.amazon.com/ap/signin?showRmrMe=1&openid.return_t..).
there is also a way of saddling an SDcard into the echodot debug port and
booting whatever you have put on the SD thus you may run custom boot up on the
dot and hax around.
[https://medium.com/@micaksica/exploring-the-amazon-echo-
dot-...](https://medium.com/@micaksica/exploring-the-amazon-echo-dot-..).
[https://medium.com/@micaksica/exploring-the-amazon-echo-
dot-...](https://medium.com/@micaksica/exploring-the-amazon-echo-dot-..).
One of the most interesting things to get into is the MP3files that make up
the dots responses to you, writing your own skills is cool too.
and here are a bunch of fidjitty tricks to do to your dot.
[https://hackaday.com/?s=echo+dot](https://hackaday.com/?s=echo+dot)
------
guard0g
Wow. Is the software that complex that it takes 10k employees to work with
it?!! :)
~~~
testplzignore
Me: That's a pretty complex thing to build. I'm guessing it'll take about 12
months.
Management: Great! We'll hire 10000 people and have it done before lunch!
Me: ...
------
sys_64738
Do people like having these devices in their house? Don't you feel like
they're listening to everything you say? My wife says these will never be
allowed in my house.
~~~
brokenmachine
Your wife is wise. I won't have one in my house either. It's crazy to me that
anyone would be ok with them post Snowden revelations.
------
notsofastbuddy
Is there any public info on the numbers for Google and Apple?
~~~
saagarjha
Apple likely has fewer people in their entire software engineering
organization; they generally hire fewer people than you’d expect for most
projects.
------
rhlala
Really hudge, how they are going to make it very lucrative? Monthly payment?
Or sponsored hidden ads?
------
tomwilshere
And it's still no match for Google.
------
908087
Once Amazon/Google/etc manage to get their audio surveillance embedded into
every device on earth, will breathing oxygen and speaking aloud be considered
"agreeing to Amazon/Google/etc privacy policies"?
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
The “Vulgar Mechanick” and His Magical Oven - dang
http://nautil.us/issue/12/feedback/the-vulgar-mechanic-and-his-magical-oven
======
speeder
Sometimes I wonder, what magic still exists to be invented?
I am glad for my world full of science, but sad that all my ideas have been
done before, and better than I could do no less.
------
mturmon
I don't have time to read the whole thing this afternoon, but this looks like
a fantastic piece. The concept of the thermostat as one of the first
autonomous machines is worth remembering. The frontiers of AI are pushed back
in hard-to-perceive ways.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Ask HN: How you measure time to ramp-up for new engineers as a manager? - ahmadassaf
How would we measure time to ramp-up for new engineers (i.e. time it takes before engineer is considered to be productive and on boarded)
======
s3nnyy
It boils down to the question of how to measure the productivity of software
engineers in general, which is hard to answer.
Very hard, juniors can get productive within two weeks, but seniors or leads
might need up to 6 months.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Turning Saltwater From Earth and Sea Into Drinking Water - iProject
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/06/10/science/earth/turning-saltwater-from-earth-and-sea-into-drinking-water.html?
======
hendler
Interesting that there was no mention of Dean Kamen's "slingshot"
<http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2008/03/colbert-and-kam/>
[http://www.thedailybeast.com/newsweek/2008/04/04/big-
problem...](http://www.thedailybeast.com/newsweek/2008/04/04/big-problem-neat-
solution.html)
~~~
thaumaturgy
Almost two years ago I commented in an HN thread about this,
"DEKA is a strange duck. They have some genuinely brilliant people there,
working on some genuinely revolutionary inventions -- but they just can't seem
to actually bring them to market. Or, they're not interested in bringing them
to market. ... I've yet to hear of the Stirling engine / water purifier being
deployed anywhere; ... I really don't "get" them. The best I can figure is
that everyone (influential) there is happy just to be working on these
puzzles, and they don't really care if anyone uses them or not."
(<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1793446>)
That opinion seems to be withstanding time's test.
~~~
planetguy
Actually, I'd say the truly brilliant people are in the marketing department,
building huge hype for something which... presumably doesn't work as well as
advertised or else we'd have heard about it again in the intervening three
years. I don't know precisely what _is_ wrong with it, but it's safe to assume
that there's something.
------
danielharan
As for energy, it's probably much cheaper to reduce consumption. This is a
hidden subsidy to agriculture and industry.
------
adnam
Desalination is less of a problem than pumping water to farmland, industry and
residences high above sea-level.
~~~
excuse-me
Where do you get the saltwater high above sea-level?
~~~
epochwolf
I think they are talking about pumping desalinated seawater over a thousand
miles inland.
------
brunnsbe
Out in the archipelagos in Finland (and I guess also Sweden) converting salt
water into drinking water is becoming more common as it's quite easy when the
salt amount in the Baltic Sea is quite low compared to the oceans.
~~~
excuse-me
They are having to start drinking WATER in Finland? Has the booze finally run
out?
~~~
brunnsbe
You need some water to create booze. ;-)
------
ChuckMcM
Most people believe that bottled water is just tap water marked up a few
thousand percent, it would be interesting if these desalinator plants sold
bottled water. They could run at a profit apparently, and they could make an
interesting argument:
"Conserve our precious natural water sources by drinking -Wapure-, purified
water."
This would then make it a _good_ thing to drink bottled water since you would
be keeping cows and what not alive.
~~~
zcid
My issue with drinking bottled water is the bottles. Estimates are around 1
billion bottles thrown away each year in California alone.
[http://www.consrv.ca.gov/index/news/2003%20News%20Releases/P...](http://www.consrv.ca.gov/index/news/2003%20News%20Releases/Pages/NR2003-13_Water_Bottle_Crisis.aspx)
~~~
ChuckMcM
This is one of those things where I wish the report would include their
methodology. This report was brought up during the "Great Bottled Water
Debate" at Google and a couple of people wondered how they came up with their
numbers.
As it turns out, if you sit at a dump site (at least in Northern California,
and Google is fortunate to be built right next to one) and watch the trash
being unloaded you will note that there is little recyclable material left in
the trash when it gets there, further the waste management company does some
separation as well because they get to keep any money they get from the
recyclables that get that far (unlike the ones in the cans at the curb which
they split with the city).
What was clear though was that between a fairly large homeless population
which relies in part on recycling fees and waste management contracts that are
structured to provide a disproportionate benefit to the waste management
company, they both get paid for disposing 'X' tons of waste which is measured
on the way in, and they get paid for 'Y' tons of recyclables they recover post
ingress weigh-in so its a double win for them.
The result is that in California there are several mechanisms in place which
select for recycling. This results in very little recyclable material actually
getting into landfills (which is good) but it also makes statements like the
one you link, essentially false.
------
6ren
Question: why do desalination plants use a filtering system, instead of
evaporation? (like that desert survival trick of spreading plastic over a
hole)
(guessing) Is it because (1) evaporation is actually very energy inefficient
compared to filtration, especially at scale; or (2) evaporation doesn't
separate out impurities that also evaporate.
~~~
kijin
(1) is definitely a factor. It takes a very large amount of energy to boil
water.
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Desalination#Methods>
> _Reverse osmosis plant membrane systems typically use less energy than
> thermal distillation, which has led to a reduction in overall desalination
> costs over the past decade._
But the wikipedia article says that 85% of desalination worldwide still uses
distillation.
~~~
ams6110
Seems like a good area to use solar energy though. Water is easy to store and
if you can make enough on sunny days to carry you through nights and overcast
times, efficiency doesn't really matter as much since your energy source is
"free."
~~~
planetguy
I'm sure it's possible, and that someone has sat down and done the
mathematics, and figured out that it's just not worthwhile.
The most efficient way to do it is to use solar thermal, not solar electric,
power -- build a huge array of mirrors to focus on heaters which boil your
water and distill it out. But it's not really "free" -- you need a lot of
land, a lot of mirrors, and a staff of people who keep the mirrors clean and
replace the broken ones.
Oh, what the hell, I'll do the maths myself. To heat up and boil one litre of
water from 20 degrees C takes 2.6 million joules. Sunlight, on a sunny day, is
one kilowatt per square metre; let's generously assume we can get 50%
efficiency over the eight hours of the day when the sun is high in the sky
[don't forget, this is solar _thermal_ power, it's more efficient than
photovoltaics]. So each square metre of collecting area in our plant can boil
5.5 litres of water per day. The desal plant in this article produces 27.5
million gallons per day so to replace it with solar we'd need nineteen million
square metres, or nineteen square km, of mirrors. That's a _lot_ of mirrors,
and a lot of squeegee men.
If you wanted a solar-powered desal plant I'm sure you could do it cheaper
using photovoltaics plus reverse osmosis.
~~~
phreeza
Wouldn't it be possible to somehow recover the latent heat of the boiling
water when it passes back into the liquid phase, minus the salt? I'm pretty
sure I learned the theoretical maximum efficiency for this in my undergrad
physics class but I can't quite remember.
~~~
kijin
Maybe you could use the steam to pre-heat the water that enters the system? If
the water is at 60C instead of 20C to begin with, that will reduce the amount
of energy needed to boil it. Besides, all that steam needs to be condensed
back to water anyway if people are going to drink it. (I think that's what
they already do in advanced "multi-stage" distillation plants.)
Theoretically, you could also add a steam turbine to make some extra
electricity on the side, but I don't know how efficient such an add-on might
be.
------
antidoh
California, with its long coastline and big brain and capital pools, could
transform itself into a fresh water sheikdom.
~~~
arethuza
Your comment about California having a "long coastline" got me wondering how
it compares to other places. It turns out that even if you measure the length
of the coastline quite generously (i.e. tidal shoreline) the length of the
California coast is 3,427 miles.
That sounds pretty impressive until you compare it with places with more
crinkly coastlines - Norway has ~13,000 miles of coastline and even tiny
little Scotland has 6,158 miles.
However, I suspect that there won't be much call for de-salination in Norway
or here in Scotland (where it has been raining for most of the last week).
~~~
josefresco
You don't even need to leave the US to find a state with a _longer_ coastline.
Maine's comes in at 4,568 miles
~~~
jonknee
That's a bit deceptive though because that figure for Maine includes all the
islands and what not. Maine isn't very big, there's no way it has that much
actual coastline.
------
hexagonal
(Production of desalinated water costs 2.1 times more than
fresh groundwater and 70 percent more than surface water,
according to El Paso Water Utilities.)
Copyediting fail. How about "110% and 70% more"?
------
cheatercheater
Can you couple this with osmosis based energy production for double win?
[http://www.renewableenergyworld.com/rea/news/article/2010/10...](http://www.renewableenergyworld.com/rea/news/article/2010/10/osmosis-
re-emerges-as-a-promising-power-source)
~~~
planetguy
No, because thermodynamics is a bitch.
Desalination works by reverse osmosis and costs energy. Rather a lot of
energy, in fact.
Osmosis-based energy production goes by forward osmosis and produces energy.
However if you were paying attention back there when I said "thermodynamics is
a bitch" it should come as no surprise that the energy you get out by wasting
your fresh water isn't as much as the energy you put in to get it in the first
place.
~~~
cheatercheater
> it should come as no surprise that the energy you get out by wasting your
> fresh water isn't as much as the energy you put in to get it in the first
> place
Agreed, but maybe the effect can be used to alleviate the cost of getting the
fresh water? For example, it doesn't cost so much to heat up a building once
it's been heated up if it has heat exchangers in its HVAC: the output heat is
used to heat up incoming hot air. A wasteful process can be made more
efficient with stupid tricks.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
The quitting economy - acconrad
https://aeon.co/essays/how-work-changed-to-make-us-all-passionate-quitters
======
wyc
The most recent resource I've read on this was The Alliance by Reid Hoffman.
In it, he postulates that both employees and employers are lying through their
teeth: employers tell employees about the benefits, investment in its people,
and family-feel. Employees say they want to be lifers. This never happens.
Instead, 2 years is a pretty common stretch before turnover in white collar
jobs, especially for younger folk. Employees become better off from firm-
hopping, and employers have no reason to offer long-ROI incentives such as
paid masters' programs.
To make everyone better off, Hoffman suggests that we should introduce
timeboxed contracts called "tours of duty" that explicitly state the true
benefits for either party and the duration of the contract. I really am not a
fan of misappropriation of military terms, but I guess it gets the point
across.
For example, maybe a marketer wants to start a company, but an existing
company needs a senior marketer to strategize and execute the plan for its
next segment. The company could give the marketer opportunities to meet
funding sources and receive education about company building, while the
marketer can whole-heartedly deliver on agreed objectives for the time period
of two years.
It's an idea that seems to straddle between W2 and 1099, as many of the "gig
economy" jobs seem to do. Some further definition here may be welcome.
~~~
sidlls
> Instead, 2 years is a pretty common stretch before turnover in white collar
> jobs, especially for younger folk. Employees become better off from firm-
> hopping, and employers have no reason to offer long-ROI incentives such as
> paid masters' programs.
I'd have gladly stayed at my third job for much longer than the ~21 months I
did had there been training, retirement, reasonable pay increases, and career
development offered. The same for my forth job. Some number of jobs later and
my current one is also my longest tenure to date. Not coincidentally I have
had and continue to have a clear path of career development, non-trivial pay
increases and bonuses that aren't tiny. I've given up on employer-provided
proper retirement plans and education/training.
"Firm hopping" exists, in my opinion, precisely because companies tend to
either not recognize the role they must play in supporting long term tenures
or else simply don't value them enough to allocate resources to the support.
~~~
pm90
A lot of this can be mitigated by managers having genuine conversations with
their employees. The ideal manager I would work with (I've seen some managers
come close but never hit all the right notes) would first and foremost be
genuinely interested in my career progress as an employee. Different employees
have different ambitions and expectations and there is just no way for a
manager to know all of this just by observing someone; they really need to
actively communicate and find out, to have a genuine conversation about how
much raise they can provide or why they can't, what future they see for the
employee. Especially if the employee is performing below expectations... that
conversation can be tough, but I think one of the qualities of being a good
manager is to convey this information in a way which makes the employee try to
remedy the situation rather than just disparage them.
~~~
VLM
That would imply the hiring process didn't select a perfect match 100% of the
time, which is a slap in the face of a large budget item, that's not going to
happen.
The fiction must be maintained at all costs that the employee was the perfect
fit at hiring time; neither overqualified aka too expensive or underqualified
aka the manager screwed up.
~~~
HeyLaughingBoy
Not at all.
People change, companies change, the business changes. The person you needed
when you hired him might not be the exact person you'll need in a year, but a
good manager will first see if that person can grow into a new role instead of
firing him and hiring someone else.
------
diego_moita
Again, here's HN with a Silicon Valley bias.
This is not an unavoidable trend and is not global. Japan's work market isn't
exactly like this. Germany's Mittelstands are eating the world precisely by
buckling this trend. Northern Italy (around Milan) has an artisan industry
that thrives on skilled artisans working for small cottage industries, etc.
If you want workers skilled in a very niche and crucial technology then you
desperately need to invent strategies to avoid this. This is particularly true
to technologies that rely in manual work or manipulating precision machines
such as mechanics, clothing, specialty food (e.g: fine cheeses and wines),
etc.
A better discussion are the side effects of becoming an economy that lost
manufacturing skills, such as Silicon Valley and Great Britain.
~~~
mr_spothawk
> manual work or manipulating precision machines such as mechanics, clothing,
> specialty food (e.g: fine cheeses and wines), etc.
computers count in your list of precision machines, right?
~~~
diego_moita
The key issue is how niche, rare and unreplaceable the skill is.
If your skill is MS-Office then you're not niche and you're easy to replace.
If your skill is Maya, Autocad or Oracle then you are a little harder to
replace and you can see more stable jobs.
~~~
santaclaus
> If your skill is Maya, Autocad or Oracle
Maybe not Oracle, but most gigs related to Maya were shipped off to Canada
yeas ago.
------
dalbasal
I really think trying to reason about labour markets using pure theory in a
Hayek-Friedman-esque way is a dead end.
It's the 2nd time in two days I made the recommendation, but throwing Ronald
Coase into the Neoliberal canon would help a lot. He was a "chicago school"
academic from the same intellectual family, so it shouldn't be too much of a
culture shock.
He wan't like "progressives" in the "evidence based" sense but he also
objected to first principles theory like Friedman. Instead, he tried to find
persistent phenomenon and theorized about why they exist.There was always a
link to the real world.
Anyway, the pure theory approach leads to a general conclusion/assumption that
markets are the same. The market for labour, barbie dolls, whatever.
IRL, labour markets are obviously very different than most other markets. It's
inflexible. People stay in jobs a long time and most employers actively try to
lower their average turnover. Why?
If flexibility is so wonderfully efficient, why do almost all companies have
such a big inflexible workforce? Why is the market for labour so different _in
practice_ than the market for oral hygiene products and services.
Why isn't Wall street staffed by day labourers or SV products built by
quarterly contractors? You have to look past pure theory to answer these
questions. I think you probably have to look beyond economics, or at least to
its fringes (like behavioral economics).
~~~
didgeoridoo
Transaction costs.
Both the employee (search costs, hours in the day) and employer (job training,
search costs, process knowledge) incur far greater transaction costs than you
see in commodity markets. Business models that lower transaction costs (e.g.
"gig economy" middlemen) tend to lead to the emergence of highly flexible
labor markets. This currently only applies to jobs that don't require a high
level of nontransferrable knowledge, because nobody has yet invented an "I
know Kung-Fu" machine that can transplant a company's 5 year marketing
strategy into the head of a day-laborer CMO.
None of this requires going outside pretty basic economic theory.
Edit: I just realized this sounds like I'm explaining Coase theorem to the
person who cited Coase. It's not for you, it's for others reading your
comment. I'm disagreeing with your conclusion, not your premises.
~~~
dalbasal
:)
That's definitely a very Ronald Coasian answer! We should start that lobby to
get Ronald Coase accepted into neoliberalism or novoliberalism or whatever
comes next.
I purposely didn't give the answer because I think there are possibly other
explanations besides transaction costs and regulation (probably the more
friedman-esque go-to). The reason I like his papers a lot is because of his
questions. He has a Darwinian sort of approach. Why does the moth have such a
strange beak. Lets look for the matching orchid.
I think (don't know, speculation) labour markets are special in other ways,
not just high transaction costs. A company is a society. People have loyalties
and identity tied into it. We are a social animal in very fundamental ways.
Our psyche handles the intricate nuances of human cooperation by default.
Things happen in a team of people that know each-other, like each other or
just think of themselves as part of a group that I think are fundamental to
this question. I don't think transaction costs sums it up. I suspect group-
oriented work plays a bigger role. Also employer-specific skillsets, though
that probably can be lumped into transaction costs.
Incidentally, I feel that "basic economic theory" tends to acknowledge
transaction costs mostly as a caveat to basic models: " _assuming no /low
transaction costs_," more often that actually accounting for it. I think this
is also true for "economist hat" thinking. Coase complained about this a lot.
Coase theorem is (at least to me) taught as a theory about bargaining and
contracts solving problems like externalities. For Coase, the caveat was the
"theorem." In the absence of transactions costs blah blah pareto optimals.
externalities... He thought it was obvious that the pareto efficiency doesn't
actually happen in reality, externalities continue. Therefore _transaction
costs must be high_.
To me, this is the big difference between Friedman and Coase. Friedman's a
pure theory guy. The main opposition to this view today is a theory-less
econometrics/evidence based "wonkish" analysis. Coase is a middle ground.
Theories make predictions. In some cases they are good. In cases where they're
not, we need theoretical expansion. Neoliberals tend to reach for "distortion"
as an explanation far too often, and selectively IMO.
(we're really in the weeds here, sorry)
~~~
didgeoridoo
Huh. I think this highlights the fact (that I didn't realize until now,
really) that I never really considered Friedman an "economist" in the
strictest sense — in my view he's more of a normative political theorist, who
uses economic models combined with empirical evidence from history to draw
conclusions about policy. Though I'm politically & philosophically simpatico,
I've never really looked to Friedman (or Hayek, for that matter) for practical
economics.
~~~
dalbasal
Friedman was a professional economist all his life. His most famous area was
on monetary policy which was very politically important in that era of
hyperinflation disasters.
But, economics bleeds into political science readily. Marx was an economist.
Hayek (mentioned in the article) is most famous for political pamphleteering,
but he was certainly an economist too. Both he and Friedman got the nobel
prize for their economics.
Neoliberalism is very much an economics-politics hybrid movement.
------
pmontra
I've been self employed since 2006. In a way, consultants are the greatest job
quitters around and the most flexible. I had so many customers/jobs in these
11 years. I didn't even have to quit and they didn't have to fire me.
About one of the points of the post, companies often chose the fashionable
tools of the year because of buzzwording, ease of recruiting and because they
build the CVs of managers too. Would you manage either a bunch of VB or Elixir
developers today? So I'm working on Python and Elixir now, plus a Ruby pet
project waiting for less busy times.
------
BjoernKW
"[...] thinking of themselves as the CEO of Me, Inc; and to survive in the
neoliberal world of work, the CEO of Me, Inc must be a quitter."
I fail to see how that's a bad thing. I've never quite understood this notion
of tying your fate, your welfare and your livelihood to a single company.
By not thinking of yourself as the CEO of Me Inc. you ultimately become a
commodity for employers to do with as they please. At the very least there
will be a power differential where the employer will always gain the upper
hand in negotiations.
Seeing and marketing yourself as a service provider in a market economy
instead will allow you to focus on creating value in lieu of trading time for
money. This can be beneficial to both parties. This whole idea of using 'time
spent' as a surrogate measure for 'value created' is a large contributing
factor to waste in modern economies.
~~~
michaelt
I fail to see how that's a bad thing.
Quitting itself isn't bad, but shorter job tenures and reduced job security
may have second-order effects.
For example, economic downturns will cause faster rises in unemployment,
leading to faster drops in consumer spending.
And employers are going to see lower returns from investing in training -
meaning colleges might need even more focus on applied skills.
Hell, it might even limit the complexity of projects our society is capable of
delivering - we might be less able to successfully deliver projects that take
longer than a year or two.
~~~
LolWolf
> Hell, it might even limit the complexity of projects our society is capable
> of delivering - we might be less able to successfully deliver projects that
> take longer than a year or two.
I guess that's somewhat true. But I feel that for companies handling more
complex topics (not just the new 'AI deep learning on big data with hadoop on
rails in the cloud' startup), experts are hired with the understanding that
both the work is interesting and it would be a long-term project with long-
term benefits.
This is all, of course, without counting academia as possibly the ultimate
example of long-term hiring with high-risk, high-reward returns.
------
usgroup
This is very noticeable in London. It's a relative rarity to find a dev that's
worked anywhere longer than a couple years. The simple economics of it is that
until a certain salary, there is no easier way to ratchet up the pay scale
then to use the negotiating leverage of having a job to get the next one on
better terms. Meanwhile, the supply situation for devs is such that employers
have to accept the situation. I'm not sure it's an employer led effect at all;
especially given the size of the SME scene in London.
~~~
TomSawyer
I'm reminded of the Netflix slide deck that was making the rounds, last year.
Adjusting pay, yearly, based on the market value of the employee seems like an
ideal solution to this problem. If you stay at a typical company for a year
you might get a 5% raise and have some seniority and relationships under your
belt. This model tends to undervalue the true costs of replacing you and the
likelihood that there's another company willing to pay 10%+ over your current
pay.
~~~
sgt101
In fact you can pay under the market, a bit, if you treat your people like
humans, develop them, stretch them and insist on a positive working
environment (no rudeness, fair dos for everyone even if they look, talk or
smell different). People will not switch away for minimal reward and
considerable risk of being landed in a dead end with a bunch of sociopaths.
Also many people realise that their current track has 5/10 years of seniority
to build - and then that's your lot. The option of switching to management or
to tracks like architecture or even non-functional work like finance or
intellectual property is attractive to many people.
------
mathattack
It can be difficult to hire in this environment. I've had 3 employees quit
less than 3 months into new full-time positions. My first inclination is to
ask, "What are we doing wrong?" but the more I look around it seems like a
common industry problem. Perhaps it's rational behavior - as the article
highlights, companies now view people as disposable. There's loyalty to a
manager, but not a company. (You always want a good reference)
~~~
wonderwonder
Often in the current market you don't even need a reference at all. Many
companies refuse to provide any reference at all besides confirming an
employees starting and ending dates to a prospective employer. This is I am
sure to reduce the risk of litigation thus increasing shareholder value.
------
deedubaya
401k, bonus, sabbatical, profit sharing, "sitting the bench", annual raise,
stipends. These are words and phrases most younger workers don't even know the
meaning of.
Employers have been extracting maximum value out of employees with little
investment in those employees in return. It's no wonder high turn over is so
common place.
------
ThomPete
Firm hopping happens because hierarchy hopping within an organization get's
obstructed. Sooner or later you can't get further up because someone has the
position you want and you start looking for opportunities that allow you to
move up.
~~~
mertd
That reminds me of frequent lane switching in traffic congestion. Unless the
lane next to you is moving faster because of a fundamental reason (early stage
unicorn), you'll get stuck again 100 feet down the road.
~~~
ThomPete
Exactly
------
Anatidae
There is a reality that lots of companies look at their employees as the same
as when they hired them. Meaning, a junior person has a hard time shaking that
"junior" title, but can move to a new company and start fresh.
In addition, it is shocking how often companies don't promote from within, but
offer higher level jobs to outsiders "experts".
Then you have the situation where your company just isn't growing. They can't
afford to give you raises or have positions you can move into. Again, for
growth you have to move on.
Like many others said, the biggest reason employees don't stick around is that
the current corporate culture views employees as expendable resources they
would rather not have to have. Shareholders come first, at all costs - even to
the internal health of the company.
------
FullMtlAlcoholc
One of the serendipitious consequences for the "quitting economy" in my
experience is that I have gained experience working in a number of diverse
industries such as finance, insurance, biotech, entertainment and gaming,
hospitality, etc. giving me first hand insight into how such sectors work.
This has not only increased my ability to apply novel solutions when new
problems approached, it has informed and broadened my world view in seeing how
the pieces of society and the economy fit together for professional and
personal benefit.
Does anyone else feel this way?
~~~
wastedhours
Yep - one of the things I recommend people to do when mentoring them is to
read a sh*t load about other industries (I still maintain that buying random
magazines is a fantastic way for people to learn) - those novel approaches
will work wonders when creating solutions.
If you can sell an employer on the benefits of diverse experience, it can reap
wonders.
~~~
ZenoArrow
Learning from magazines is definitely a great way to ease yourself into
learning about a new subject. It's worked out very well for me. The only other
approach I find that works as well as a starting point is subject-focused
online forums. For example, if I want to learn about creating an electric car,
no magazines that I know of, but there is a forum covering this subject:
[http://www.diyelectriccar.com/](http://www.diyelectriccar.com/)
Just reading through the content gives a good feel for common issues and
solutions.
------
dajohnson89
Every company I've ever worked for nickels and dimes my pay. If I didn't have
to fight for a market/above-market salary, good benefits, and regular raises
commensurate with what I'm adding to the company with my increased tenure and
effectiveness, I'd gladly stay.
But it never works out that way. It's painfully simple -- you get what you pay
for.
------
mcguire
I have a question about the term 'neolibral'.
I seem to have missed when it became common. Further, it seems identical to
what we called neoconservative back in the 1990s: free market economics, very
limited government, Hayak, etc.
Is William F. Buckley a neolibral? Ronald Reagan?
~~~
TheCoelacanth
There is a lot of overlap between people with neoconservative views and people
with neoliberal views. Neoliberalism is purely an economic position while
neoconservatism is primarily focused on foreign policy. Reagan is definitely a
neoliberal.
------
fierarul
I've quit only once, from the mega-corp, in order to start freelancing.
I've never quit from a customer project. And oddly, I've worked for very few
customer for years and years. Controlling and understanding the entire cash-
flow really helped.
My other IT friends did job-hop while young but as they settled down, they
started staying longer. After 30 it's basically smooth sailing.
So, I don't see a quitting economy. It's phase in young adults.
~~~
ell0ell0
I dunno i'm 35, own a home and have a kid and the longest I've ever worked
anywhere is my current job at 2.5 years. I'm only sticking it out here to get
a bit more vested and then I'm taking my shares and going on to the next thing
as always. Especially because each time I change jobs I end up with a close to
a 20% raise on average...
~~~
toomuchtodo
I'm 34, married, have a toddler, and have definitely stopped hopping (used to
be at a gig no more than 2-3 years each).
My last gig was a startup, and it's my last startup. I'm at an enterprise now
that pays a bit less than double what I made at my last gig, no more than 40
hours a week, no on call, and they treat their employees very well.
------
ilaksh
I have a theory that part of this is related to shrinking real economies.
People use less energy, buy less stuff, etc. The real economy shrinks. Money
has less utility. Business lags. Fewer employers can afford to pay
competitively.
I think that the economic system assumes constant growth, and doesn't have a
way to deal with the sustainable consumption rates that we are now trying to
adjust to.
------
zeveb
I think it's important to note the negatives of the previous way of working.
In the old days, pay was less (because the company was responsible for one's
pension, and often for many benefits — e.g. corporate vacations were once a
thing), and if the company _did_ fail then one was left with nothing.
Advancement could be very slow. One was working according to the whims of a
slow-to-change set of central managers, who were no better at allocating
resources than was the Politburo. Since one's colleagues were much the same
for one's career, one youthful slip-up could have lasting consequences. One
didn't have as much flexibility to live & work where one would have wished.
There were benefits to this way of working, of course: one could more-or-less
just turn up, do one's job and life would go on. But it didn't give one as
many opportunities to excel.
Our modern way is more dynamic and _can_ be just as or even more secure,
provided one has the discipline to save, invest & insure.
~~~
Qub3d
> In the old days, pay was less
How can you suggest this? When adjusted for inflation, wages have remained
constant or decreased in purchasing power, _unless_ you happen to be in the
top 5% of earners[0].
>Advancement could be very slow
As opposed to today's "non-existent"? The article we're discussing is all
about how people hop jobs precisely because internal advancement is becoming a
rare thing.
[0]:[https://www.advisorperspectives.com/images/content_image/dat...](https://www.advisorperspectives.com/images/content_image/data/44/440c34f52d3d1d344a1cca6b755557ae.png)
~~~
bretchet
I'm about to hop after being at my current company for almost 3 years. I feel
I've shown my ability to be a lead engineer, but there's no room in my
department for a new lead. I've also expressed the desire to manage, but talks
with my manager about this have dead-ended. We _are_ getting a new manager in
my team's chain, but I was told they would be coming from outside the company.
The sad part is our current lead is bad, really bad. He won't be moved or
dismissed either. So despite leading several successful projects, I'll be
stuck at senior. So, fuck it, I'm moving on.
------
ntrepid8
I've had a few sales jobs where I was employed full-time (w2 not 1099) but
also had an employment agreement with a defined term. Most often the term was
1 to 3 years, and if you were going to be let go it would happen when the term
was over. They just would not renew your contract.
You could still be fired "for cause" but that almost never happened. The
employee would almost have to commit a crime to be terminated early.
Of course you could always quit during the term if you wanted, but that meant
you would have to pay back the signing bonus received when the contract was
signed :)
I really did not mind this structure, but it seems like it's confined to
specific industries and outside of those almost no one does it. For example,
I've never seen a software dev job with this sort of structure.
------
jdauriemma
I am hoping that studies emerge that positively correlate a firm's mean
employee satisfaction / tenure with long-term financial health. This was
conventional wisdom for a while but as far as I can tell, data models just
aren't sophisticated enough to prove it out. Yet.
------
g9yuayon
Changing jobs every two years is not necessarily a good strategy for techies
who want to gain deep experience. When joining a new company, it will take
time for one to become productive by learning the dynamics of the company as
well as the unique business and technical challenges. And then it will take
time for the person to learn something deep by building a truly great product.
------
candles12345
Couldn't we just drop the application bullshit? Didn't they do without this in
the old days?
------
seanmceligot
This quitting is completely forced in government work. Every few years the
project will be turned over to an entire new group of programmers and system
admins at a lower price. They often spend years trying to figure out how the
code and configuration works and learn the business rules. It's sad to watch.
------
treyfitty
tl;dr: Our capitalistic economy, which incentivized the notion of "maximizing
shareholder returns," created an environment in which Companies who are
efficient in hiring the right amount of disposable assets. Because of this,
employees better be ready to quit when they sense better pastures elsewhere.
It was a good read, and a reminder that we are all subservient to the
Shareholders (directly or indirectly). The companies of the previous
generation had 3 pillars that needed to be strong: Sense of Customer, Employee
Satisfaction, Shareholder support. All the attention is now shifted in winning
Shareholder support.
I wish we could abandon this cargo cult mentality that shareholders are the
utmost important stakeholders of a company. It's already been discussed that
maximizing shareholder value is meaningless: [https://hbr.org/2016/09/the-
false-premise-of-the-shareholder...](https://hbr.org/2016/09/the-false-
premise-of-the-shareholder-value-debate)
~~~
haburka
The issue with abandoning the maximizing the shareholders profit mentality is
that it has to be replaced with something else, and unless we change the way
investment works, then it will still be serving the shareholders. The
shareholders should be the one with power to make decisions, as they own the
company. Additionally, not all companies serve greedy shareholders. Believe it
or not, shareholders are people too who have multi faceted interests besides
making money.
~~~
tradesmanhelix
The problem with the "shareholder value only" model is its focus on generating
short-term returns vs. creating long-term value. How is this sustainable?
I don't think we should abandon shareholder profit completely (after all,
companies _do_ need to make money in order to stay in business). However, I do
think the philosophy needs to be balanced with other aims like investment in
employees, giving back to the community, environmental stewardship, and
thinking about the long-term future of the company.
Importantly, these things shouldn't be after-thoughts - they should be
cornerstones of the corporate philosophy.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Gender-spotting tool could have rumbled fake blogger - essrand
http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn20581-genderspotting-tool-could-have-rumbled-fake-blogger.html
======
gaius
But how is this affected by sexual orientation? Now I don't actually know
about this mind, but sometimes I drink in a bar that is a local hotspot for
lesbians, and there are definitely some that are more masculine and some that
are more feminine (clothes, haircut, choice of drink, etc). Whether that's
just fashion or carries over to writing too I don't know.
------
greim
What they should do is apply these sort of algorithms to detect sock puppets
and "personas" used by powerful interests to astroturf the internet.
------
erehweb
...or not. Article notes that blog post came out as only 63% likely to be
male.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Microsoft's Holiday Disaster: PC Sales Shrank For The First Time In 5 Years - SlipperySlope
http://www.businessinsider.com/microsoft-pc-sales-shrank-for-the-first-time-in-5-years-2013-1
======
SlipperySlope
essentially ...
"Windows 8 wasn't going to be as big a catalyst," said Shaw Wu, analyst at
Sterne Agee. "It's so different, it's almost uncomfortably different from past
Windows, and there's a risk that Windows 8 ends up like Vista."
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Offer HN: Complete design with HTML/CSS for $999 - ashraful
Hi. I am a freelance web designer and developer. I am going to give one startup a completely custom design for their entire website/app for $999.<p>My portfolio is at madebyargon.com<p>Email me at [email protected] if you are interested.
======
drats
Clickable: <http://madebyargon.com/>
Wish I had $999 to spare on my pet project. Good luck.
~~~
ashraful
Email me with details about your project. I'll try to help you out if
possible.
------
motyar
Good. add few links of your work.
~~~
ashraful
I am working on building a new portfolio site, since this one is a bit out of
date. Will launch next month hopefully.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
10,000 year clock of the Long Now - put your name down for a visit - cormullion
http://www.10000yearclock.net/learnmore.html
======
pavel_lishin
Strongly reminds me of Anathem, which isn't surprising - The Long Now was
apparently a big inspiration for Stephenson.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
VW accused of ruining Mexican crops with weather-altering technology (2018) - Tomte
https://money.cnn.com/2018/08/23/news/companies/vw-volkswagen-mexico-drought/index.html
======
rmason
Reached out on twitter to see if my friends in the car business know if any of
the Big 3 are using these anti-hail cannons. If true, talk about unintended
consequences.
Wouldn't it be cheaper to cover the new cars in plastic tarps?
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Student Startup Plan - jdavid
http://www.sba.gov/startupamerica/student-startup-plan
======
wtvanhest
This isn't new, and it still causes the graduate's debt to increase very
quickly so the risk is very real. If the gov paid the interest that would
cause both moral hazard and reduce real risk on the graduate.
~~~
flountown
Agreed, this is just a re-branding for the appearance of helping innovation.
Now, if they were taking on student's private debt and letting them do IBR,
that would be a program; however, the logistics and risk would be absurd.
------
fredgrott
something to know:
Generally, if you are responsible for making loan payments, and the loan is
canceled (forgiven), you must include the amount that was forgiven in your
gross income for tax purposes. However, if you fulfill certain requirements,
two types of student loan assistance may be tax free. The types of assistance
discussed in this chapter are:
Student loan cancellation, and
Student loan repayment assistance.
Student Loan Cancellation
If your student loan is canceled, you may not have to include any amount in
income. This section describes the requirements for tax-free treatment of
canceled student loans.
Qualifying Loans
To qualify for tax-free treatment, for the cancellation of your loan, your
loan must have been made by a qualified lender to assist you in attending an
eligible educational institution and contain a provision that all or part of
the debt will be canceled if you work:
For a certain period of time,
In certain professions, and
For any of a broad class of employers.
see:
[http://www.irs.gov/publications/p970/ch05.html](http://www.irs.gov/publications/p970/ch05.html)
------
maaku
This is just the IBR plan, right? The one which has already existed for years?
------
oatmealsnap
Wow! This seems like is could be a really good initiative. Are there any
success stories form this program yet?
~~~
davidddavidson
It's not a new thing. It's just a different marketing strategy for income
based repayment.
------
jedanbik
Did they really need to provide "fictitious examples?"
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Evernote is down - arthurcolle
https://maintenance.evernote.com/maintenance.html
======
arthurcolle
Frustrating when the whole point is to "stay connected." I have a critical
meeting where I prepared notes and they didn't sync and now I have to just
deal with that.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Why I Go Home: A Developer Dad's Manifesto - aschepis
http://adamschepis.com/blog/2011/09/15/why-i-go-home-a-dads-manifesto/
======
gruseom
Sorry, but this is getting a little unctuous.
I don't think the trend in our time of parents organizing their lives around
their children is very good for anybody, especially the children. I'm
thinking, for example, of fathers who call their kids "buddy" and think it's
the meaning of life to play with them. This is pandemic where I live. People
have convinced themselves that the good life consists of being child-centered
parents in child-centered families. Everybody [†] is busy confirming to
everybody else that this is true (consider the platitudinous tone of most of
the comments in this thread), but I doubt that it is true. It has much to do
with parents' emotional needs (edit: specifically the need to Be A Good
Parent, which if you think about it is actually a selfish concern) and little
to do with kids'. Children ought to be running around outside playing with
_other children_ and depending on nice-but-otherly (not pseudo-peer) adults to
keep their world secure and stable and fix things when they cry. Children
raised by child-centered parents seem at a loss when they aren't at the center
of attention. This bodes ill for inner strength and good breeding. Most such
parents fail even to teach their kids basic manners. They're so identified
with their child, or rather with the mini-me they imagine their child to be,
that they don't notice if the child is routinely disrespectful to others. When
they do occasionally notice something egregious and limply intervene, it's
always with the same whiney "Honey..." followed by a feeble plea which the
child ignores with no consequences. What they ought to do, of course, is what
any ordinary mammal does when their offspring goes too far - smack them.
Figuratively if you prefer.
The problem is that we're immature and infantilized ourselves, so we've
forgotten all of this. Perhaps it's an outgrowth of postwar youth culture.
One tell-tale symptom is that children have fewer friends than they used to,
and adults consequently have fewer friends and less time for the ones they do
have. (Nowadays when a friend has a kid I tell them "See you in 20 years." Not
my choice.) Adults' time is taken up with the sacred family-ness we all must
bow before. Children's time is taken up by their parents. I remember how hard
it used to be to arrange for my son to play with a classmate after school.
(Arrange! When such a thing need to be _arranged_ in the first place, we're
already losers. This whole subject really needs a Louis CK to do it justice.)
Parents would look up times for "play dates" in a calendar. I swear they were
jealous of their kids seeing other "buddies".
In short, a little neglect never hurt anybody.
p.s. Maybe it seems like the above hasn't much to do with "work-life balance"
(blessed be its name), but it totally does. However, I'm over quota.
[†] Well, everybody in my lily-white liberal world.
~~~
eob
Let me take a wild guess: you don't have kids, do you?
~~~
watmough
"Adults' time is taken up with the sacred family-ness we all must bow before.
Children's time is taken up by their parents. I remember how hard it used to
be to arrange for my son to play with a classmate after school. (Arrange! When
such a thing need to be arranged in the first place, we're already losers.
This whole subject really needs a Louis CK to do it justice.)"
Heh, I initially had the same reaction, but he's talking a lot of sense. It
needs to be read a couple of times.
Way too many peoples' lives are utterly dominated by their children,
essentially because children can be allowed to exist in this world for even a
minute without supervision.
This is very much not how it was for me as a child. Benign neglect would be
putting it nicely.
~~~
gruseom
Your last paragraph (if I'm reading it correctly) leads to a point I've often
mulled over. We tend as parents to overcompensate for what happened to _us_ as
children. I think this happens at the social-historical level too. Traditional
child-rearing was something between harsh and brutal. Physical and emotional
violence was common. We have rightly come to abhor that. But, typically human,
we (or at least the educated white North American middle class) have merely
flipped a bit and gone to the opposite extreme of elevating our children to
little gods. This can't be good for the little buggers, deceive ourselves and
adore our own virtue though we may. (Side note to the indignant: I like
children. Including my own!)
Back to how, as parents, we overcompensate for what happened to ourselves in
the past: we do this unconsciously, so it's hard to know that we're doing it.
And it's a bad thing, because almost inevitably we end up creating a mirror
image of the old mistakes. But there is a way out of this dilemma: personal
healing and growth. To the extent that one can integrate one's own experience,
feel one's own feelings, etc., one becomes free of the compulsion to resolve
them through one's child and able to behold the child as an independent being.
~~~
mbreese
> We tend as parents to overcompensate for what happened to us as children
It happens at all levels. It's a common criticism of militaries that are
equipped to fight the last war, not the next one.
------
phuff
This reminds me of this great article by Clayton Christensen to Harvard
Business students about life balance: <http://hbr.org/2010/07/how-will-you-
measure-your-life/ar/1>
Looking back over a short 7 year or so career I can't remember many projects
where I can go: "Oh man, I'm so glad I spent all that time late at night on
that project. It's really made a lasting difference in the world."
I'm sure there are some things that are worth spending a lot of overtime on;
I'm sure there are ways to write software that will literally make a massive
change in the way the world works. But most of the stuff that I see coming out
of startups, most of the stuff that I've worked on in a wide variety of
companies is stuff that ends up being rewritten soon, or changed or what have
you.
One of my favorite CS professors was diagnosed with terminal cancer relatively
early in life (late 50s, early 60s). He had another 10 or 15 years of teaching
in him probably if he hadn't gotten sick. Towards the end of his fight with
cancer, one of the other professors visited him and came back to us and said
that he had been visiting the dying professor on a way to his daughter's flute
recital. The dying professor looked at him when he mentioned the recital and
said something like: "Good! More flute recitals! More ball games! Fewer
papers! fewer conferences!"
I know that the time I spend away from work, particularly on my family -- my
relationship with my spouse, with my kids -- ends up being the time that
matters most in the long term.
~~~
watmough
Time is so fleeting, and so precious. It's criminal to stuck in cube for a
large portion of that lifetime.
Every so often, stop, just stop and think about what's important. Best to do
it now, rather than regret later.
------
jswinghammer
Totally agree with all these points. Ever since my first daughter was born I
made a similar decision but I still work less hours than you do. I end up
working around 40 hours a week and have never felt compelled to work any more.
I will work after the kids go to bed particularly when my wife goes to bed and
I don't feel like reading for whatever reason.
My first obligation on this Earth is to my family and part of that means not
being gone all the time at work. I do that for the kids but also for my wife.
Raising kids is hard work and she needs my help particularly at the end of the
day. This changes a little when the kids are older and are less physically
demanding I guess but when you have small kids you really need to take your
wife's feelings into account when deciding how much to work. She really needs
to feel respected and honored in the decision and part of that comes from
making sure she is in total agreement with the final decision.
Also if you're any good at programming companies are so desperate to hire you
that they will accept pretty much whatever schedule within reason you want.
You might not be the absolute favorite employee of management but if you're
good people will respect you and your contribution.
~~~
BlazingFrog
> My first obligation on this Earth is to my family
No disrespect but to what was your first obligation before you had a wife and
kids?
I'm always tempted to interpret this kind of statement one of two ways: either
your life before your family was so miserably empty that it gave you a purpose
(nothing wrong with that) or you're borderline schizophrenic that you can fool
yourself (or worse, truly believe) that your personality suddenly morphed and
you're now a different individual who will be just as content with a lifestyle
radically different from what he ever had, obligations as well as
satisfactions that cannot be possibly imagined until you actually cross that
line and have kids.
I personally have a hard time believing people can change _that_ much...
~~~
mbreese
> No disrespect but to what was your first obligation before you had a wife
> and kids
Obviously something else... ?
Life has a way of changing whether you want it to or not. So, maybe whatever
was #1 got bumped down to #2. That doesn't mean that their life was meaning-
less and empty before having a family. Nor does it mean that their lives
really had to change all that much with a family.
I don't understand the false dichotomy here.
~~~
Tyrannosaurs
This is exactly it.
You don't prioritise your life around things that aren't relevant to you - to
have your number 1 priority as kids when you don't have kids clearly makes no
sense.
It's like suggesting that someone who gets a new hobby had an empty life
before that hobby. Nope, they just filled it with different things. When
something they wanted to do more came along, everything else got shuffled
about a bit.
------
DanielStraight
Reminds me of:
[http://jbf.posterous.com/bluyah-development-
blog-5-things-i-...](http://jbf.posterous.com/bluyah-development-
blog-5-things-i-wish-someo)
From which comes one of my favorite lines about business ever:
"You will be forced to choose between work and family - and there’s only one
right answer."
------
minimax
> When you work crazy hours you yo-yo between 20 hour days and 8 hour days
> that really only have a few hours of productivity (or none at all!)
This would not have made any sense to me until I had actually spent three
months working 12-18 hour days (+ Saturdays). Yay for salespeople selling
things the company doesn't actually make! It's a really stupid feeling to
spend 12 hours staring at your keyboard, getting almost nothing done, and
knowing you're going to come back and do the same thing tomorrow.
~~~
aschepis
and honestly, you probably could have done the job better and faster if you
had done 8-10 hours (or less) per day and had enough time to mow your lawn,
pay your bills, unwind, etc.
~~~
minimax
No question about it. Repetitive long hours are deleterious to critical and
creative thinking abilities. It always makes me think twice when I see stories
about game dev / wall st / startup developers working insane hours. I think
the story is better than the reality.
------
MartinCron
_Death marches and late nights take a lot out of you_
Death marches seem to happen far less often (in my experience) when I'm
releasing early and releasing often.
If the system automatically tests and ships out every incremental change
multiple times daily, you don't have the crazy weeks before/after big releases
as there are no big releases. Shipping new code is a normal part of every day
and I get to go home to hang out with my kids on time.
~~~
thom
A bad week or tricky release isn't a death march, and I congratulate you on a
career well managed if that's what you genuinely believe.
~~~
MartinCron
You are completely correct. I've been involved with bad weeks, tricky
releases, death marches, pretty much every sort of dysfunctional software
development clusterfuck you can imagine short of Duke Nukem Forever.
The point remains the same. My experience shows that committing to
incrementalism in design/code/test/release improves quality of life as well as
quality of product.
------
johngalt
Sounds like he's made the right decision. It's important to have balance in
your life. However, I don't want to hear him cry "ageism!" when that young kid
that's doing 80hour weeks gets promoted ahead of him. It's important to make
these kinds of sacrifices when you have a family, but you should also
understand that they are _your_ sacrifices.
~~~
beagledude
experience can do in 40 hours what younger, inexperienced can do in 80. As you
build your tool chest, things become faster and less mistake prone.
~~~
hga
Except that it's often more like 80 minutes vs. 80 hours, or the inexperienced
---although it's more often the less ... skilled---simply can't solve the
problem at all. In my other comment I mentioned debugging; my ability to
recognize the ... pattern/smell/whatever of a bug will often let me
heuristically narrow the search to an amazing degree. What once would take me
hours or days became minutes.
~~~
MortenK
You're just a whole bucket full of humble aren't you :-)
~~~
hga
Heh, indeed.
But just as it's unbecoming to boast about what you are not, one needs to
recognize what one is and can do to arrange that things work out best, at
least in startups where that vs. e.g. politics determines personal and
project/corporate success. The flip side of the theme of the 2nd Dirty Harry
movie, "A man's got to know his own limitations."
Plus I think I'm allowed to be proud of what I've accomplished over decades of
hard work. I started with punched card FORTRAN "IV" on the IBM 1130 in high
school in the fall of 1977 (scare quotes because it was closer to a FORTRAN
II, e.g. no logical IFs), that prompted me to begin a lifelong independent
study of software engineering (since I realized there _had_ to be better ways
to do this) and the cited level of skill in debugging nasty C programs was
achieved by 1999, a full 22 years later. One would really hope one has learned
a thing or two over a couple of decades.
------
Rotor
This is a great article about work/life balance. Frequently that balance is
asymmetrically weighted in favor of work at the expense of time spent with
family.
The author is making a commendable point to commit to time well spent with his
family while still putting in nine hours at the office.
When we're near the end of our lives and reflecting, are you going to wish you
spent more time with your family or more time at the office? There's a simple
answer there.
~~~
stygianguest
I'll just make a comment from my cosy European perspective. He's still working
9 hours a day. But it's okay, he "doesn't feel as burned out". Seriously, is
this what is expected, or is it just the default?
~~~
tobych
I think 8-5 is actually 8 hours in the US: federal laws guarantee you an hour
lunch break, just as in the UK. Of course, I imagine in a lot of start-ups
that's ignored or perhaps doesn't even hold.
~~~
stygianguest
Ah, so that probably means he's not actually working 9 solid hours per day.
That's better. I admit to doing the same, albeit at different times of the day
(10h-19h).
------
polemic
I completely agree with the post. Most of the negative responses are clearly
from people who have no clue what it means to be a parent. Firstly, it has
nothing to do with raising kids with 'good manners', or anything as simple or
_boring_ as that. Hanging, teaching and interacting with your kids is actually
_fun_ and _rewarding_. A lot like coding.
I can also highly recommend a 4 day week. 1 day a week is purely my daughter
(20 months) and I. Not only does it give you more time than you have in an
evening, it also opens up other opportunities to go out and do things you
wouldn't normally be involved with. I've been fortunate to have employers who
are happy to oblige and live in a country - New Zealand - where it's
relatively easy to arrange.
I also agree that it makes you a more focused coder. It gives you a healthy
dose of perspective about what you're doing, and I've found I spend far more
time on productive work than I did before.
------
aschepis
hey all, thanks for the positive discussion. Apologies that my blog is
terribly slow. I didn't notice that it spiked because, well, it was between
4:30 and 7:30 ;)
I'm working in my spare time to get it all off of wordpress and onto Jekyll so
i can just host it out of S3 and get rid of the EC2 instance its running on.
~~~
0x12
> I'm working in my spare time
There is a subtle joke in there somewhere.
Great piece and thank you for writing it.
------
zrail
After a particularly bad stint at a previous job I've vowed to never work past
my normal hours just for the sake of being there. If there's something
immediately wrong that I can help with, or if it's something that I broke,
I'll stay and work the problem. Otherwise, I'm in out at my established hours.
------
creationix
As an added bonus, I've discovered that not being able to hack till after the
kids are in bed means you're more motivated to get them to bed on time. They
get more sleep and you can code once the house is quiet and you brain just had
a break. I find it extremely productive.
------
thebany
My husband (a developer who is frequently "death-marching" his way through
projects) sent me this article yesterday. We are about to have our first
child, and it was so cool to read this, especially since we've already been
talking about what it's going to be like after our son is born in regards to
his work schedule. He also works with West Coasters and is a team leader,
which makes things tricky in terms of scheduling meetings and conference
calls. Let me just say I so appreciate that this blog post was written and
that he came across it. I love that my husband loves his job and is so
incredibly talented at it. He is so dedicated to his work and spends way more
than 9 hours a day at it (his recent "early" bedtime has been 3am
consistently, with 6am actually being the most frequent hour he finally lays
down to get a minute of shuteye). It's a kind of commitment that I admire, and
that I myself have benefitted from. But it's also good to read that his
dedication can still be seen, even if he isn't "death marching" through coding
problems night after night. I do not see this at all as "parents organizing
their lives around their children," but rather a parents taking care of and
giving priority to all aspects of their lives, especially their children. I
think there is so much wisdom in the statements concerning how a person can
always get another job, but not just "get" another family.
Cheers to you and yours and all the hard work you put into all aspects of your
life!
------
mkent
Sometimes I think about how lucky most of us white collar workers really are.
I grew up with a Dad that worked rotating day/evening/graveyard shifts and I
know how much it would have meant to me if he could have spent more time with
us.
My neighbour, who used to work in construction, gave me some advice after the
birth of my son: "Make sure to spend time with your kids, especially when
they're young. One of my biggest regrets was working too much and not being
around to watch them grow up." Now they live in Australia.
------
chubs
I find it really hard, because nobody in this career has kids! Very few have
wives, i have a suspicion that most are single. So when you put family first,
it really is a culture clash. My solution is to try and become self employed.
I hope it works out.
~~~
abalashov
Maybe in bohemian Silicon Valley startup circles of 20-somethings. However,
that is an extremely inaccurate supposition about the IT profession as a
whole.
------
gorbachev
I was recently in the process of changing roles at work, so I was doing a few
internal interviews for another roles that seemed to be good fits.
I lost one of the roles, because apparently I wasn't hungry enough for it. One
of the reasons stated by the manager doing the hiring was that I consider my
kids more important than my work. It wasn't stated exactly like that, but
that's what he meant. In my younger days I would've let the idiot have it or
bursted out laughing.
I am so glad I no longer work there.
------
Tyrannosaurs
One thing that seems to be missing from the debate here is that spending time
with your kids is actually fun, it's something that's nice to do and really
isn't a sacrifice.
I know no-one who spends time with their kids out of a sense of obligation
(and trust me, your kids would work out if that's what you were doing and
really not want you about) - in spending time with my daughters instead of in
the office, I'm doing what I want to do, not what I feel I should do.
------
robmay
I think people should do what they want to do. If you are passionate about
your work, and want to spend more time there than everyone else, I'm not sure
that sends a bad message to kids. If you want to spend more time home with
kids, that's fine too. People are different, and you shouldn't adopt the
standards of other people.
------
topherjaynes
Thanks for giving all of us future Dads (or soon to be) something to aspire
to.
------
vegai
He should cut that 9 hours at the office to 6. And yes, I fail at this too :(
------
geebee
Egads, are we at the point where developers with young children have to write
a manifesto to justify working a "mere" nine hours a day, followed by frequent
meetings after the kid goes to bed?
------
mathattack
I would have never understood this before I had a child of my own.
------
cgopalan
I feel the same way about my cat. I love her and would rather spend a bigger
percentage of time with her than what I spend now.
Question though is, why is this on hacker news?
------
jroseattle
Very true, and I learned this early on: your job, no matter how much you like
it, will never hug you back.
------
pointyhat
I'm in the UK.
I spend as much time as possible with my children so that I can teach them
that a 37 hour working week is actually normal and that they don't NEED to
become an American-style 80-hour-a-week corporate slave.
Humans have needs: family, friendship and companionship.
"Work" is a relatively new thing; a product of the rapid growth of the
population and the distribution of self-responsibility. Go back a couple of
thousand years, and we were farming in family groups much like the Amish are
today.
We're short-changing ourselves and missing out on a large chunk of life by not
spending time with our closest ones.
------
georgieporgie
I'm impressed that the guy managed to find a wife while working so hard during
the earlier years.
~~~
aschepis
LOL. I'm lucky, that's very true. She is a saint.
~~~
eludwig
Long time lurker and made an account just to reply to this. What does it say
about the expectations of this industry when you have to _even_ weigh working
almost 60 hours a week against 15 hours with your daughter!! Good god. I am so
glad that you made the right choice. Great article.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Spacemacs: The best editor is neither Emacs nor Vim, it's Emacs and Vim - Garbage
http://spacemacs.org/
======
lorenzhs
This comes up fairly frequently on HN (mostly in comments, but also
submissions) - most notably perhaps
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9394144](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9394144)
and
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10837833](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10837833)
It seems that there's quite some interest in Spacemacs and lots of people hear
about it for the first time every time it's being talked about, maybe these
old discussions can be interesting as well.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Ask HN: open source Posterous-style email validation? - davi
Does anyone know of an open source library for validating email headers a la Posterous? I think their model strikes a great balance between usability and security, and wonder if there's anything out there that would facilitate building a similar feature into a homebrew web app.
======
patio11
pyspf (Google it) will do SPF checking for you. If you'd rather do it
yourself, SPF is really, really simple to validate in your language of choice.
However, not everybody uses SPF.
As for "validating" the rest of the email headers, well... I want to strike a
balance between "sure you can do that, good luck!" and "the entire anti-spam
community has tried this and it is basically impossible, which is why we rely
heavily on IP reputation and Bayes-based approaches which do not treat the
contents of the headers as semantically meaningful, since they are in the
hands of the enemy".
~~~
davi
Thanks very much, that's helpful. Maybe good enough for a small, experimental
project (i.e. one step beyond 'nothing'). An open source effort to take a
crack at the larger scope you lay out would be a good thing.
------
frognibble
Here's a sketch for checking the validity of the sender. It does not handle
all cases and I am sure it has some holes. I am interested in feedback on
this. Are there other things to check? Are these checks "safe" for some
definition of safe?
Step 1: If DKIM header present, then use result of DKIM validation.
Step 2: If sending domain has SPF record, then use result of SPF validation.
Step 3: If message passes SPF check using a conservatively guessed SPF record,
then treat the message as valid.
Step 4: If message came from same IP address as other messages for user and
some headers match headers from previous messages (fuzzy match on message
id?), then treat the message as valid.
Step 5: What next? Messages will make it past the previous steps.
~~~
JoachimSchipper
Well, each of these has problems.
DKIM, which is not widely deployed, typically protects the message, From: and
To: headers, and other headers. If this is actually used, you only have to
worry about replayed messages (a hacker sends 1,000,000 copies of a legitimate
blog post), which is doable. Unfortunately, you can't do anything if this
header is not present - even if I have a Yahoo/GMail/... address, which would
otherwise be DKIM'ed, I may have sent this message via another mail server.
SPF, which checks that the server sending the mail is authorized to do so,
would work reasonably well, or at least hand off the issue to the
administrator of the sending mail server. Unfortunately, there are quite a few
domains without SPF or which SOFTFAIL all; worse, prank-loving coworkers may
have access to the same mailserver.
"Same IP address" falls afoul of the pranking coworkers again, and is a very
weak heuristic anyway.
There are at least two solutions that work. The actually secure one is
requiring the user to PGP- or S/MIME-sign all mail; the other one is to send
back a challenge. Mailing lists managers typically do this - send a message
with "Subject: 23dsaf2: please confirm post" and accept any response that
contains 23dsaf2 in the subject.
~~~
frognibble
The context of this thread is creating a Posterous-style email validation.
Posterous does not use either of the two solutions that you suggest.
It's OK that DKIM is not widely deployed because the logic falls back to other
mechanisms when the DKIM header is not present. DKIM is deployed on GMail and
Yahoo Mail, so it is worth doing. Replay attacks are easy to defeat by not
posting duplicate content. It's probably a good idea do to dup detection to
handle the case where the user accidentally sends the message twice.
~~~
JoachimSchipper
Hmm, yes, I was just pointing out that there are other solutions.
Yes, I agree that DKIM+duplicate detection is fairly good; you just can't rely
on it being present, and if it isn't you have to fall back to much less
reliable stuff.
------
japherwocky
Zed Shaw's Lamson project (<http://lamsonproject.com>) has some solid code for
handling most of the messiest parts of dealing with email - bounces, unicode,
etc.
It's structured in a way that makes it very easy to snip out the parts you
want to use without necessarily using all the rest.
------
phreeza
Wasn't it shown yesterday that posterous has basically no security at all?
<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1441997>
~~~
convel
_This security hole is now fixed. We had a specific problem with the way we
dealt with SPF records. Dustin didn't set any up, and there was a specific way
that Robin Duckett's email server responded that caused us to flag it as a
false negative for spoofing._
<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1443143>
~~~
MichaelApproved
What keeps someone else behind the same smtp server from spoofing an email?
~~~
_delirium
A lot of SMTP servers implementing SMTP AUTH will add an annotation
"(Authenticated sender: localusername)" or similar, which will let you
distinguish between different users of the same mail server, even when they
spoof the From: header. Not sure if that's the solution Posterous is using, or
how widespread it is, though.
------
karimyaghmour
I'm still wondering what Posterous plans to do when they reach enough of a
critical mass that spammers will actively try to impersonate existing
accounts. Generalized, non-sender-server-enforced sender authentication does
not exist. That's why SPF and DKIM came along ... I'm sure they've had to pour
over this. Anyone have a link on design/discussion?
~~~
pyre
They could always go with GPG/PGP.
------
MichaelApproved
Validating with headers is like securing a webpage by keeping the URL a secret
or browser user agent and ip address. It gives a false sense of security and
is very vulnerable to cracks.
If you're going to validate with headers then feel free to call it usable but
don't call it security.
------
kljensen
Is there any degree of "free" validation if you route all the emails through
another service that probably does some of this. E.g. a gmail account that
forwards all incoming mail onto your servers.
------
quadhome
Am I missing something obvious against backtracking the headers to the server
immediately before your own? If the IP of that machine differs in future
emails, ask for confirmations?
~~~
MichaelApproved
Since you can't validate beyond the SMTP server you're going to have trouble
when two or more people are behind the same server.
~~~
quadhome
Presumably it's their server's issue at that point.
If a server allows multiple people to send from the same address, then you
can't validate further than that.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
A Look Inside AOL's Platform Strategy; My Conversation with Userplane's CEO - shayan
http://mashable.com/2007/11/05/aol-platform/
"AOL may not be totally clueless after all. "
======
joeguilmette
AOL has a strategy?
~~~
mrtron
Not really. Their general strategy right now is to reduce costs since the
money coming in is lower than expected and dropping.
Userplanes is an example of a product that sounds great, could have been
great, and then was crippled, underused and never delivered what it could
have.
But isn't it interesting to see such a giant fall? I really think they are an
example of a company that could not handle a disruptive innovation.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
AMA with COO of Stack Exchange - gloves
https://plus.google.com/events/c8nurjg4aqpihup1bqhhl67mjjk
======
NKCSS
Maybe add a (video) tag? I am not in a position to watch videos at this time;
others might appreciate it as well.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Show HN: domain - musiic703
Hey guys I've seen people selling domains. And well I think I want to sell it. How do I go about doing that. If anyone interested just email me<p>Domain : workzstation.com<p>[email protected]
======
samstave
$25.00
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
The Apollo 11 Journey in Photographs - andyjohnson0
http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2012/07/the-apollo-11-journey-in-photographs/260125/
======
rogerbinns
There is a wonderful HD video showing the first 30 seconds of launch from a
high speed camera, taking 8 minutes. It is incredible the details just for
that part of the mission. <http://vimeo.com/4366695>
I recall reading somewhere that the walls of the lunar lander were so thin
that if you stabbed them with a pencil it would go right through.
~~~
laserDinosaur
I think there is a quote of one of them saying that they were scared that if
they dropped a screwdriver it would go right through the floor.
------
matt_e
I highly recommend the book 'Full Moon' compiled by photographer Michael
Light. He's gone through the archives and reproduced many of the old medium
format photographs taken by the astronauts on the Apollo Missions. I find the
shots from the astronauts on board the craft at least as fascinating as the
moon landscapes, seeing them up there strapped into technology (apparent from
design, typography, etc) that's so clearly from an era that from today's POV
looks so archaic. It really gives an appreciation for how badass those guys
were, trapped in a little glass and metal bubble way out in the middle of
nowhere, so far from any kind of life support.
<http://www.michaellight.net/workFullMoon.html>
~~~
goatforce5
> so clearly from an era that from today's POV looks so archaic
I managed to get maybe 45 minutes at the Smithsonian on a quick visit to DC
15+ years ago. Being able to go right up next to the actual capsules that some
of the early astronauts had used and seeing the rivets didn't always exactly
line up, or bundles of cables tied together with bits of string... It all
looked a bit rickety.
Those guys had giant balls to be strapped in to those rockets and hope for the
best.
------
cjoh
This isn't a dig but just a note: every human being in all of these
photographs is white. Even the parade picture at the end is, from what I can
gather, all white. Makes you think about the real exclusion happening then,
and how much progress we've made today, where its almost unsettling to see
pictures of major events with political figures containing all whites, and
where the president we have today apparently wouldn't have been allowed
anywhere near these events.
~~~
jordanb
Gil Scott-heron (of "the Revolution will not be Televised") wrote a beat poem
on that very topic:
<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PtBy_ppG4hY>
------
js2
I cannot recommend "A Man on the Moon" by Andrew Chaikin highly enough. It's
an incredible read. Go find it and read it.
The HBO mini-series, From the Earth to the Moon, largely based on that book is
also quite excellent. Go find it and watch it. --
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/From_the_Earth_to_the_Moon_(TV_...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/From_the_Earth_to_the_Moon_\(TV_miniseries\))
If you're still looking for more material after that, I'd go read "Failure is
Not an Option" by Gene Kranz.
~~~
andyjohnson0
Chaikin's book is excellent. Two books on Apollo that I'd recommend:
1\. How Apollo Flew to the Moon, by W David Woods. Don't be put off by the
cheesy cover, this book goes into a lot of technical detail and does a pretty
good job of explaining things.
2\. Digital Apollo by David A. Mindell. A detailed look at the use of digital
technology in Apollo, particularly for guidance. Lots of chewy technical
detail.
These books would definitely appeal to many HN readers with an interest in
spaceflight.
------
dm8
I feel mission control crew are under-represented in all the pictures. Without
taking any glory from astronauts as they were men on the front, mission
control were the brains of this mission. I guess History channel had wonderful
documentary on role of mission control and how they were organized.
Engineering management at it finest with the inspiration leaders throughout
the ranks.
------
ommunist
It is unusual how many people still believe in this hoax. Dudes, this never
happened. Only the Soviet robots did really something on the Moon. Check the
regolite story, check the Stormwind icebreaker mission story. No, you do not
want to see the truth, you just like to please yourself with that warm and
fuzzy feeling of being proud.
~~~
ColinWright
Fascinating. I'd like to ask you a couple of questions:
* How did they fake the video of the astronauts on the Moon? Please be careful to pay attention to explaining the arc of the dust they kick up.
* How did they fake the open-loop back on the recordings where the delay exactly matches the orbit of the Moon, and in an apparently unanticipated analysis 40 years later it was possible to deduce from the recordings alone the date of the recording?
Thanks.
~~~
ommunist
For the second one - there was an agreement with the USSR government about the
Moon, so 'Luna-10' station could be used for that, or the earlier robot. With
regard to the 1st one, I should check the available fx tech of that time. How
shall you explain the founding of the intact Apollo housing (supposed to be
burned) in the Atlantic ocean? Check this photo.
<http://www.warandpeace.ru/ru/reports/view/70866/> \- illustration 17.
------
sharkweek
I don't mean to go all Carl Sagan on everyone, but these photos are such a
great reminder of how stunning of a universe we have left to explore. And
while I know the money doesn't exist in exploration funding to really push the
space frontier yet, I really hope I eventually see the day where it becomes a
priority again.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
America’s Housing Affordability Crisis Spreads to the Midwest - jseliger
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-07-30/america-s-housing-affordability-crisis-spreads-to-the-heartland
======
jseliger
The many bad laws and policies in coastal cities (mandating single-family
houses with large lots and subsidized parking) are also in place in most other
cities that have been remained relatively affordable through low demand. But
as coastal cities squeeze people out, those same policies are going to have
similar effects.
~~~
Gibbon1
I'm unsure it's that simple, since none of those policies are recent enough to
explain why housing starts have been below the historical trend for ten years.
Excessively low property taxes in California likely doesn't help, but doesn't
explain the high prices in other coastal cities.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Ask HN: How do we help students that are stuck at home? - Areading314
I can't even imagine how disruptive it must be for students to be stuck at home trying to learn everything they are going to need for their college and future. What are some things HNers can do to help?
======
pshapiro99
Use your social media to share links to free learning resources, including
those offered by your local public libraries. Amplify (retweet) educators
doing that.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
To Live Your Best Life, Do Mathematics - digital55
https://www.quantamagazine.org/20170202-math-and-the-best-life-francis-su-interview/
======
110011
As a counterpoint to the overly exuberant article let me chime in as a
graduating theoretical computer scientist. Math is hard and despite its beauty
and allure academic life doesn't take place in a vacuum- ergo there's a lot of
politics and pettiness from your peers. You should expect to invest years of
your life into making progress on some hard problem with little encouragement
in the meantime, this takes a tremendous toll on the mind and not for someone
who falls easy prey to self doubt. Sometimes even after you publish your top
result that took a lot out of you, it may take many years before people
appreciate, let alone understand, your work- the vast majority of papers are
never going to be read. To compensate for this horrible feedback mechanism you
need to basically play the popularity game and try to give many talks and talk
up your result when you meet people, so there's a lot of salesmanship involved
here as well. So the career path of a junior scientist is pretty crushing
mentally and I couldn't stomach it in the long run.
In an ideal world I might have continued in academia but the career path is so
twisted you have to either be insanely good (at math and at managing time) or
just hate yourself enough to sacrifice your best years working essentially in
the metaphorical darkness well outside the spotlight and most likely alone and
poorly paid.
~~~
Balgair
Chiming in from Bio: Yep, this is true here too.
I can't find the citations right now, but there was a recent study done
through Elsiver's website. The group got a hold of the servers for Elsiver and
took a look at page views. They wanted to know what the rates of papers being
read was. It was... disheartening. They found that ~46% (again, not sure here
as I can't find the source) of papers will _never_ be looked at outside of the
authors, reviewers, and the editors. The articles are not only never
downloaded, but the pages are never even loaded. The stats were, to me,
confusing, but hey that is what peer review is for. Still, if you take this
paper (that I can't find now) to be true, ~half of all papers are effectively
lecturing into the void. I admit, I drank a bit after reading that one.
~~~
justinpombrio
In CS, most authors host "preprint" copies of their papers on their own
website, and most views are of those versions. So I wouldn't be surprised if
Elsiver's defunct distribution system isn't getting used much (at least in
this field).
~~~
Balgair
Yes, but roughly half of all papers will never even be page-loaded from the
'official' source (if you believe my recollection). I am not a CS researcher,
but I would imagine that of 10 people that cite a paper, at least one will
bother to download the original paper or look up the source. Hell, even
'vanity' page-views of your own work would have been counted in the paper that
I mentioned, and that is with many authors on a single paper too.
I honestly don't know what to make of it really. I at least bother to look at
my papers once, if only to show my family on the Holidays, and I have a lot of
so-authors that may be doing the same. Are most researchers so fed-up with
their own work as to not even bother looking at it again? What is going
through their minds concerning their efforts? It's just ... heartbreaking. At
least half of researchers don't seem to care at all, not even the people that
put all that time and effort to get their research out there. Like, what are
we doing with our lives?
~~~
JamesBarney
To be fair most papers are written for readers that have the exact same
viewpoint and specialty. So they are incredibly difficult to parse for people
in the same field but a different sub specialty.
I think many more papers would be read if authors invested more time in
learning how to write.
------
EternalData
I took this to be a general call to learn and practice mathematics, and not as
a summons to a career in academia, so perhaps I'm seeing it a bit differently.
I have to say as somebody who through attrition always feared math in
university that it is meaningful to think about reasons why people fear
embracing certain types of knowledge. It's only after the fact that I realize
how useful and even how romantic applications of mathematics might be.
I might never be a starry-eyed or an often-drunk academic, but I've grown to
really see my initial lack of mathematical learning to be an immensely high
opportunity cost. So I can relate to anybody who thinks of structural reasons
people might shy away from math and indeed all forms of intimidating
knowledge.
~~~
posterboy
>how romantic applications of mathematics might be.
like, in the dating market or do you mean a philosophical potential? The
philosophical aspect is huge, eg. _to tell_ once meant counting, or logic and
language having a common Greek root.
~~~
EternalData
I mean, I was thinking more of romance as "imbued with idealism", but if
differential equations can help me find true love, even better.
------
gthtjtkt
Based on all the supposed benefits of doing math, it sounds like people would
be better off studying philosophy. Same benefits but a much broader appeal,
and far more applicable to most people's everyday lives.
When I finally "discovered" philosophy in college, I was angry that we hadn't
been exposed to it at all in middle or high school. Instead, I'd been forced
to waste years on things like math, biology, etc. that I had no interest in
and no use for. Our history / social studies classes would be greatly improved
if they incorporated more philosophy.
~~~
jcoffland
I disagree. I find math much more interesting. Philosophy is vague. It's all
guesses and interpretation, with the exception perhaps of pure logic. I like
the purity of math. It's all a matter of preference.
~~~
ThomPete
The concepts you deal with in philosophy are vague, the challenge is to
provide very precise analysis of these vague (fuzzy?) concepts.
But yeah I don't think one is better than the other. Each provide value.
I would actually claim that to live your best life, be an engineer. They seem
to me at least to be living in that sweet-spot between the abstract, creative
and the concrete.
~~~
apocalypstyx
Along with a increased chance of being a creationist and/or jihadist.
[http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Salem_Hypothesis](http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Salem_Hypothesis)
[http://scienceblogs.com/tfk/2007/11/11/the-salem-
hypothesis-...](http://scienceblogs.com/tfk/2007/11/11/the-salem-hypothesis-
explained/)
[http://www.theness.com/index.php/creationists-mechanical-
eng...](http://www.theness.com/index.php/creationists-mechanical-engineers-
and-the-second-law-of-thermodynamics/)
~~~
danbruc
This has a 99% probability of being absolute nonsense. Looks more like 30
years of anecdotal evidence and hearsay. Try find a credible source with
actual numbers.
~~~
apocalypstyx
I'd love to know where that 99% comes from. (Or maybe I wouldn't.)
I'd say there's far more than anecdotal evidence, but not, obviously, not
enough to draw necessarily firm conclusions. So I would say there's enough
question to sustain further scientific inquiry. That, interestingly enough,
puts us in a position at odds with one of a common traits noted among
engineers, in psychological terms: 'need for closure'; which would put the
'engineering mindset' in conflict with the 'scientific mindset', due to the
open-ended nature of the science. (Of course, this is only my own
speculation.) Which is why we get things like this:
[http://cosmicfingerprints.com/ee/](http://cosmicfingerprints.com/ee/)
Harder numbers:
[http://www.nuff.ox.ac.uk/users/gambetta/Engineers%20of%20Jih...](http://www.nuff.ox.ac.uk/users/gambetta/Engineers%20of%20Jihad.pdf)
(expanded book form)
[http://press.princeton.edu/titles/10656.html](http://press.princeton.edu/titles/10656.html)
(less numbers, but foundational)
[http://www.sicotests.com/psyarticle.asp?id=212](http://www.sicotests.com/psyarticle.asp?id=212)
[http://www.sicotests.com/psyarticle.asp?id=235](http://www.sicotests.com/psyarticle.asp?id=235)
~~~
danbruc
I pulled the 99% out of thin air, I just wanted to emphasize how small I
estimate the chances of this being true. I found one analysis [1] that found
that creationist or only half as likely to be engineers as the general
population, admittedly only using data from a preexisting survey as proxy for
the question at hand.
Maybe it is a naive view on my side but I expect that additional education
will make it less likely that one believes religious claims to be true in
general and this extends to becoming an engineer and being a creationist.
But even if there was indeed a correlation of the form claimed by the Salem
hypothesis, I would naturally want to look for traits that make it more likely
for one to become an engineer and a creationist, not for something that causes
engineers to become creationists.
You did not explicitly spell it out this way and I am inclined to think you do
not think this causation exists, but your response to a comment suggesting
that it might be a good choice to become an engineer at least allows the
interpretation that becoming an engineer causes becoming a creationist.
And I obviously consider the idea of a causal relationship between being an
engineer and being a creationist even more unlikely than that of certain
traits increasing the likelihood of becoming an engineer as well as a
creationist.
Not that it is unlikely in the general case that learning about X makes one
more likely to also believe Y, that is actually certainly pretty common, but
in the concrete case I am really unable to see which things one learns when
becoming an engineer are suitable to turn one into a creationist.
Finally I am not sure what you wanted the express with the Evolution 2.0
article, but at least in the linked article the reasoning is heavily flawed.
[1]
[https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic/talk.origins/Xunl5Sl...](https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic/talk.origins/Xunl5SlJmZc)
------
sametmax
The problem with this theory, is that it completely ignores that a lot of
people good at math have poor people skills. And you need people to be happy
and improve your life opportunities.
So yeah, math is beautiful, and if you like it, go for it.
But if you look for a skill to acquire or practice, your taste no
withstanding, this may not be the best investment. Sport, social skills,
languages, time management, self introspection and cooking are examples of
things that usually pay off better than math in your life. It brings more
people, opportunities, health, money, etc.
Again, not saying math is not a good thing to practice. We need math as a
specie. And an individual may need it for his or her happiness. But as a
strategy I don't think so.
~~~
RandomInteger4
Maybe people good at math are actually great at people skills and you're just
repeating a bias spread by a banality driven media.
~~~
ianai
In my experience, people are all equally bad at math. There are just people
who have spent longer with the problem(s)/domain(s) and have developed a skill
set around it. They start from the same beginnings, though. If you take them
out of their usual 'watering hole' they go straight back to beginner status
(and of course the degree of it varies by how far it is from their usual
routine).
~~~
sametmax
Yes, but some personality traits will make you more apt and willing to keep
working on it.
There is a limit in the skills you can acquire. If you spend time and energy
on flirting, learning to dress up, building social network, you will have less
time to learn maths.
Because of course you'll have sport, music, games, books, movies, family and
other study topics taking time as well.
Now maths incline kids, given the choice, will usually choose working on math
than going to 10 groups of people to chit chat about superficial topics just
to stay in the network.
Nothing wrong about it, just an observation.
------
Koshkin
Well, mathematics is hard. It takes a lot of effort to really learn it, a lot
of dedication and (self-)motivation. Not everyone can do it, and, frankly,
very few people - even among those who have spent many years studying
mathematics - could say that it is the best way to live your life.
~~~
macawfish
I profoundly disagree. I believe that mathematics can be learned and
appreciated by many, because mathematics is a language for articulating inner
urges and perceptions that are common to a wide range of creatures, not only
humans. This idea that mathematics is only for the few is self fulfilling, and
perpetuated by narrow ideas of what it constitutes.
~~~
kutkloon7
I agree. I think that mathematics is being teached the wrong way. Especially
in the USA, the state of math education is absolutely terrible.
I suspect a more visual approach to be more useful than the classical textbook
approach. It is true that a lot of textbooks do use pictures, but video's
would help a lot, I think.
~~~
FabHK
There is a wonderful book, "Visual Group Theory", that demonstrates this
approach [1].
However, there are people who learn better algebraically than visually. So,
combining different approaches would probably be optimal -- the problem
currently is that often a very dry (and anti-historical) endless litany of
definition, theorem, proof is taught.
[1]
[http://web.bentley.edu/empl/c/ncarter/vgt/](http://web.bentley.edu/empl/c/ncarter/vgt/)
------
primodemus
Francis is a great lecturer:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sqEyWLGvvdw&list=PL04BA7A9EB...](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sqEyWLGvvdw&list=PL04BA7A9EB907EDAF)
~~~
mcshicks
I agree, I watched his lectures when trying to teach myself real analysis. He
also has a website with lots of useful info including links to the videos
organized by lecture number/subject and some other interesting links
[http://analysisyawp.blogspot.com/](http://analysisyawp.blogspot.com/)
------
westoncb
It seems like a lot of the benefits mentioned could arise from many other
activities with similar likelihood. I think a lot of it has to do with
developing expertise at something _you believe_ is important, and which you
are (or can become) comfortable doing.
Totally agree that for people working in abstract technical areas (e.g.
software architecture, philosophy, inventing things), however, mathematics has
a special sort of value over other subjects. It deals in these super distilled
concepts which have very general applicability; so, the concepts you learn end
up expanding this pool you can draw from for coming up with new, related
ideas, in a wide range of fields.
It's also important to learn it as a sort of literacy, to widen the range of
technical material you can read.
------
stablemap
Everyone I know who went to his MAA farewell address said it was wonderful.
Definitely follow their link to read or hear the whole thing:
[https://mathyawp.wordpress.com/2017/01/08/mathematics-for-
hu...](https://mathyawp.wordpress.com/2017/01/08/mathematics-for-human-
flourishing/)
~~~
danielahn
There's a link at the top of your linked site to an audio recording - maybe it
was recently edited in
~~~
stablemap
The Wayback machine does not absolve me—probably I just missed it twice. Thank
you.
------
nojvek
I wonder if inmates have access to computers, would they become good
programmers?
~~~
Hydraulix989
Give anyone (not just inmates) a computer and they are much more likely to
become good Candy Crush players, Facebook users, and Buzzfeed readers than
good programmers.
~~~
GuiA
Sure, just like give anyone access to a library and they are much more likely
to read magazines and romance novels than 19th century French literature.
That's missing the point though. The point is access and opportunity. Even if
only 5% become programmers, it's a net win overall (and that's not even
counting the people who might play Candy Crush but still use the computer to
better themselves in other ways - learning, filing taxes, etc.).
~~~
xor1
There's nothing wrong with his response given how the original post was
worded...
------
SZJX
Well maths always sounds good with all its allure of "purity" and "intellect".
However I think one should remember that maths is basically some very-high
level abstractions on our analog, chaotic world. Just like rigid
linguistics/grammatical rules fail miserably in representing actual human
languages, abstract maths probably also cannot claim to represent the real
essence of the world that well. Even a statistical/neural network-style
approach does it so much better. So yeah, if you're so into constructing and
deconstructing abstruse abstractions, maybe do maths very seriously. But does
it really represent the "truth" of life? I think that might be a bit dubious.
------
jwtadvice
While I can not claim to have made any imporant progress on the sorts of toy
problems I like to work on (e.g. counting/bounding the number of strings two
regular expressions both accept, counting the number of ways to represent
integers using polynomials), I find the mere process of working on them,
inventing new notation to succinctly express ideas and read relevant (and
completely irrelevant) mathematical textbooks and articles a way to keep an
"active brain" but relax: probably because nobody expects me to produce
anything and my career doesn't depend on it.
------
king_panic
Elementary math skills, which many of us reading and writing on Hacker News
know, would change the lives of many millions of people in ways we take for
granted.
~~~
acqq
"The greatest shortcoming of the human race is our inability to understand the
exponential function"
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sI1C9DyIi_8](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sI1C9DyIi_8)
------
recycleme
Interesting. Anyone have a recommendation on a Math app for everyday use?
~~~
sn9
The level of math amenable to apps isn't really what Su is talking about.
I would suggest learning proofs, and maybe pick up some _Art of Problem
Solving_ books. Or perhaps working through the foundational curriculum of any
decent math program (e.g., algebra, analysis, topology, number theory, etc.).
~~~
dllthomas
[http://incredible.pm](http://incredible.pm) is perhaps relevant, albeit
shallow and localized.
------
stOneskull
it reminds me of the awesome team who get involved with the numberphile
youtube series. guys like james grimes and matt parker. inspiring the love.
------
KennyCason
I was recently explaining to a group the radiance of learning math for many
years. It is really hard to convey the beauty that you see in things after
years of studying math/logic. That amazing feeling through your mind when you
solve something new. I can sometimes only best describe it as a lens that
allows you to sense a previously imperceivable part of the universe and self.
I can't even imagine walking around without this lens. Perhaps that sounds a
bit hyperbolic or mystical, but this is my feeling.
------
sillypuddy
Frank Su is a great teacher. I had him in ~2000 Teaching Game theory at
Cornell, and I still remember the Math Fun Facts he used to start the class.
------
dgotrik
Here's the video:
[https://www.facebook.com/maanews/videos/10154879169165419/](https://www.facebook.com/maanews/videos/10154879169165419/)
------
losteverything
Surprised no mention of music.
<play, beauty, truth, justice and love.
Math and music gives me all those.
My Math inclination brings tears To binary situations and lasts (as in the
last time I'll ....)
Truth is a set.
Justice is relativity (<,>,=)
Play is math humor with the pun as king.
And love is random uncontrolable feeling.
------
norcimo5
"To Live Your Best Life, Do +Applied+ Mathematics". There's something
delightful about using mathematics as a mean to an end...
------
RA_Fisher
Being math with different syntaxes, this is true for programming as well.
~~~
sn9
That's certainly the contention of the authors of _How to Design Programs_.
[http://www.ccs.neu.edu/home/matthias/HtDP2e/part_preface.htm...](http://www.ccs.neu.edu/home/matthias/HtDP2e/part_preface.html)
------
katehall
I would rather say "to live your best life, make art"
------
n0mad01
and also take your vitamin d.
------
wnevets
> In 2015 he became the first person of color to lead the MAA.
I didn't realize chinese was a person of color.
~~~
eru
Compare
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7819625](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7819625)
------
cosinetau
The Greeks also drank hemlock. Just saying.
------
andrewflnr
Su seems almost blind to the fact that you can do math outside an academic
environment. You don't need to go to school for math to experience truth,
beauty, play, etc in the context of math. You can read books, play around with
the results, read articles on places like Quanta. You probably won't discover
new things this way, but it will enrich your life.
If your goal is for math to make people's lives better, then assuming school
is involved at all is another unnecessary restriction.
~~~
drakenot
_Su opened his talk with the story of Christopher, an inmate serving a long
sentence for armed robbery who had begun to teach himself math from textbooks
he had ordered. After seven years in prison, during which he studied algebra,
trigonometry, geometry and calculus, he wrote to Su asking for advice on how
to continue his work. After Su told this story, he asked the packed ballroom
at the Marriott Marquis, his voice breaking: “When you think of who does
mathematics, do you think of Christopher?”_
It doesn't sound like he has that bias to me. He opens his talk speaking about
someone who is a non-traditional student doing match outside an academic
environment.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Apple Flips the Switch, iCloud Goes Live - digiwizard
http://www.macobserver.com/tmo/article/apple_flips_the_switch_icloud_goes_live/
======
pohl
I was able to successfully log on from a linux machine (1.73GHz quad-core i7
with 8G of RAM, using chrome). Unfortunately, the interface could well be the
slowest web interface that I have ever seen.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Clearbit - dankohn1
http://blog.alexmaccaw.com/clearbit
======
dankohn1
Congrats on the promising-looking service. I found it ridiculous that LinkedIn
has killed their API, and am thrilled to see alternatives. I just recommended
you to a document-serving service I really like called DocSend, which lets me
monitor who is looking at file I upload. It would be great to get details on
the person and company based on their email address.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Before Macintosh: The Apple Lisa - bookofjoe
https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/dgreelish/before-macintosh-the-apple-lisa#
======
mimixco
Thank you for starting out with props to Doug Engelbart. He doesn't get enough
credit for inventing the GUI.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
No One Likes Levi’s Stadium - coloneltcb
https://theringer.com/san-francisco-49ers-levis-stadium-santa-clara-c29a140a1726#.cjfcad11e
======
DrScump
This article gets a lot wrong. (There is plenty _genuinely_ wrong with the
stadium without going fictional). To wit:
1) "the 49ers are averaging 70,178 fans per game"
As with all major league sports, reported attendance represents _tickets
issued_ , not turnstile counts nor butts in seats. In 2014, the 49ers claimed
that all available seat licenses were "sold out".
2) "the stadium is an hour away from San Francisco, when there’s no traffic,
and there is always traffic."
True, but largely irrelevant. Back when the stadium was being planned, I was
in a focus group of 49ers season ticket holders, and among the statistics
given was that over 50% actually lived _south_ (including the East Bay south
of Oakland) of SF County, so the location change was of minimal impact to the
majority of attendees). And as for traffic, games are mostly Sunday, where
commute traffic is not an issue.
3) "(Santa Clara) has threatened to seize the stadium from the 49ers." Um, no.
The linked article says that stadium _management_ may be taken over, not a
repossession of the building.
4) "The freakin’ sun is a problem. They didn’t think about the freakin’ sun.
The stadium has a north-south alignment so TV cameras can avoid glare,"
I doubt that the TV glare claim is valid -- after all, Candlestick had the
same orientation. The _real_ purpose was so that _suiteholders and home-side
Club seat holders would never have to look into the sun_ and would always have
the sun _behind_ them. A side effect of this is that the other side, where we
mere plebs sit, are _in the sun the entire game_.
That was already a known negative even from Candlestick, which got far less
direct sun (due to cloud cover pouring through the San Bruno Gap) -- even
there, fans prioritized avoiding the east side of the stadium. Seat rights in
Lower East were always easier to obtain than on the west (home) side
concourse.
From the second I saw the new design, I was livid. It's a hideous mishmash of
architectural designs above the lower bowl, with the suite building and the
east structure looking like they were made from different brands of children's
erector sets, but there are massive gaps between all structures, which means
that there can be no concentration of fan noise. Hence, no Home Field
Advantage. A _majority_ of fans are exposed to full sun for your brutally hot
August and September games and have no coverage at all from rain.
5) "Traffic and parking are bad at all stadiums, but the situation at Levi’s
is impressively bad.... Levi’s is in a location that’s difficult to access and
without ample room for the cars of all the people going to the game."
No, that's not the problem. The location has _more_ access than Candlestick
and has far more paved parking (my Candlestick parking passes would routinely
sell for 3 to 4 times what my Levi's passes do).
The _problem_ : pedestrians and vehicles (and VTA rail) all compete for the
same surface streets, and pedestrian cycles cut vehicle thoughput by probably
60+%. Candlestick had _pedestrian overpasses_ and one-way traffic routing to
maximize flow, plus a single, massive paved lot inside the traffic perimeter
-- people in the paved lot didn't cross any road at all to enter.
I foresaw both issues and raised them with both the season ticket department
and Legends (the sales agents for Levi's); neither could have cared less for
any advice.
6) "The stadium is pretty close to the San Jose airport, so it falls under the
flight path of many incoming planes." False, at approach or takeoff altitudes,
anyway. SJC's runways run north-south; Levi's is to the west. Air traffic is
the least of their problems.
7) "It’s expensive as hell." Well, Club seats and suites certainly are. The
cheapest seat ($85) is much more expensive than Candlestick ($29!). The lower
bowl isn't unreasonable by modern standards, but end zone seats are a hard
sell now, and I think those SBL holders are doomed to lose money.
8) "Does (the 49ers record) have anything to do with the stadium? No, but it’s
a fun coincidence." I disagree! I think the loss of any home-field feel had a
_lot_ to do with the 2014 collapse. No visiting team will be intimidated by
this sterile, fan-suppressing stadium.
The headline claim of "It’s one thing to build an expensive stadium with
taxpayer money." is also inherently misleading. The stadium itself was all
_privately funded_ , although there were land and services concessions by the
city.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Creating Read-Only References to Objects in JavaScript - bolshchikov
http://blog.bolshchikov.net/post/70680524646/creating-read-only-reference-to-object-in-javascript
======
TazeTSchnitzel
ES6 will add proxies, another approach.
~~~
bolshchikov
Yes, that would be great. However, the approximate arrival time of ES6 will be
exactly the year from now.
~~~
GeneralMayhem
You can use them now on Node with the experimental --harmony-proxies flag.
------
CountHackulus
What if you just did
var x = { ...};
var y = Object.create(x);
Object.freeze(y);
Object.preventExtension(y);
Wouldn't that achieve the same effect?
~~~
bolshchikov
No, you can still mutate the array and it will influence the original model.
[http://jsbin.com/IvIXUZO/1/edit](http://jsbin.com/IvIXUZO/1/edit)
~~~
krebby
so just deep-clone your object before freezing / sealing, right?
~~~
Sharlin
No need to freeze/seal if you deep-clone; it's not your business what the
recipient does with its own copy. The point is, copying can be expensive. In
C++, you can pass by copy, by reference, or by const reference. The idea is
that a const reference means that the object is not modifiable _through that
reference_ , no matter whether it's itself const or not.
------
GowGuy47
This seems like a cool idea. What was your need for this solution if you don't
mind me asking? Developing a library?
~~~
teleclimber
I am not the developer but it is quite useful if you have Javascript objects
that handle your app's data (the "M" in MVC), and the Views request data
objects from these models.
If you just pass a reference then the View could accidentally alter the data
object which would corrupt all other view's data objects and the Model's copy
as well. Yikes.
My current solution is to create a deep-clone of the data object and pass that
back to each view that asks for it. That way if a View changes the data
object, it doesn't affect the other copies of the data.
The solution presented here also prevents the View from modifying its own copy
(which should help reduce bugs within the View), and it keeps copies of the
object up to date, which is a neat trick.
------
jayferd
function makeRef(x) { return function() { return x; }; }
~~~
effbott
This doesn't make the target object read-only - it just returns a reference to
it.
data = {one: "one"}
ref = makeRef(data)
ref().two = "two"
data
=> Object {one: "one", two: "two"}
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Nearly All of Wikipedia Is Written by Just 1 Percent of Its Editors - sds111
https://motherboard.vice.com/en_us/article/7x47bb/wikipedia-editors-elite-diversity-foundation
======
zbentley
The title of the article is a bit vague. "Nearly all" means 77%, which would
potentially be a more accurate title for this submission. To use a common
Wikipedia standard, "nearly all" seems like an example of a weasel word
([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Weasel_word](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Weasel_word))
or otherwise vague detensifier.
Not sure what the guidelines regarding deviation from linked article headlines
are, though.
~~~
vorg
Even worse than weasel words is false logic, such as these two statements:
> a recent study that looked at the 250 million edits made on Wikipedia during
> its first ten years
> At the time of writing, there are roughly 132,000 registered editors who
> have been active on Wikipedia in the last month
being used to conclude that:
> So statistically speaking, only about 1,300 people are creating over three-
> quarters of the 600 new articles posted to Wikipedia every day
This assumes the number of daily new articles being posted in 2017 is the same
as the average number of edits of both new and existing articles being made
from 2001 to 2011 (averaged over all 10 years), which is a ridiculous
assumption.
~~~
zbentley
That does seem very suspect. Is historical data on submission rates easily
available?
------
contravariant
After doing some googling I found an article [1] that provides a somewhat more
nuanced view. While it is true that around 70% of the edits each month are
generated from the top 1% of users, this is only true for the top 1% _of that
month_. When you look over a longer period the majority of edits come from
users with less than 100 edits in total (which seems to be around 90% of the
population).
[1]: [http://asc-parc.blogspot.nl/2007/05/long-tail-and-power-
law-...](http://asc-parc.blogspot.nl/2007/05/long-tail-and-power-law-graphs-
of-user.html)
~~~
carussell
Past work, same conclusion as your link:
[https://web.archive.org/web/20140803134036/http://www.aarons...](https://web.archive.org/web/20140803134036/http://www.aaronsw.com/weblog/whowriteswikipedia)
------
oldboyFX
Isn't this true of almost all ecosystems and isn't it aptly explained by the
Pareto principle?
1% of individuals hold 90% of the worlds wealth
1% of actors get lead roles in 90% of holywood movies
10% of sales people earn 90% of company's profits
0.1% of product designers influenced how 90% of todays products look
And so on...
------
Waterluvian
Doesn't feel all that surprising. My contributions to Wikipedia are generally
fixing typos, light grammar. If you count me as an editor, I wonder how many
more like me there are that skew that number?
------
jasode
A similar participation ratio has been observed across many online social
community and not just Wikipedia:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1%25_rule_(Internet_culture)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1%25_rule_\(Internet_culture\))
------
karmakaze
Even if the stat held for longer than a month, it's not surprising that for
each subject matter expert there are 99-ish casual contributors.
------
mankash666
100% of the world's science was discovered/formalized by 0.00001% of humanity.
Implies nothing on the science's accuracy
------
byron_fast
So the same as every other forum.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Ask HN: Pharmaceutical BigCo wants to acquire my iPad app. Advice? - luckyclueless
Hey HN, throwaway account here.<p>My partner and I created an iPad app and it's been pretty successful (especially considering it was only a 4 week investment). The app is in the top 100 US & China, covered by NYT, ABC, Gizmodo, etc.<p>Now a BigCo Pharmaceutical is asking to buy the app (not the company), code and all. They want to rebrand it and re-release it as one of their products.<p>We are an LLC, but we didn't take any funding, so we don't have any "advisors" as such. We're technicians, not lawyers, and we are more or less clueless on the best way to go about negotiating (and closing) this deal.<p>What advice can you give us on negotiating? Are there any HNers out there that have been through this sort of mini-acquisition before that are willing to reach out to us? (please comment and I'll ping you via my normal account). Have any good links to read?<p>A few details you might want to know:<p>* Our app's revenue was <$10k in the last 30 days, but it hasn't been out very long.<p>* We've been getting a good deal of press, but we don't think it will last. Now is probably a good time to exit.<p>* We'd love to sell. We're not that emotionally invested into the product; this app isn't our life passion (it was actually started as joke)<p>We'd be grateful for any advice you have for us.<p>P.S.
Just finished reading:<p>[1] http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1985552<p>[2] http://www.davidgcohen.com/2010/06/18/you-have-acquisition-interest-now-what/<p>[3] http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1639523<p>[4] http://giffconstable.com/2010/11/selling-your-company-some-core-questions/<p>[5] http://www.seattle20.com/tv/clip/StartupDay-2010-Exit-Strategies-for-Startups-by-Hadi-Partovi.aspx<p>Thanks!
======
curt
Depending on your city, (if you're in the midwest email me and I can recommend
a few people) there are firms (Small-Cap Investment Bankers) that specialize
in acquisitions. Hire one, it'll cost money but you you'll avoid mistakes and
get the optimal deal possible. If you don't know the due diligence process,
you can very easily get screwed, so don't do it yourself (unless they are
offering peanuts and doesn't make sense to hire anyone).
By what you said they should be offering at least a few hundred thousand if
not $500k+. They are interested for the branding/PR aspect which could be
valued into the millions. So don't only look at the financial, this is more of
a strategic buy, so instead of asking what the company is worth to you... Ask
what it's worth to them...
~~~
luckyclueless
Great advice. I'm in SoCal and I have no idea which acquisition firms are
good. I'll ask around.
First I'm going to see if I can get them to tell us a ballpark figure before I
involve any other parties.
~~~
curt
Be very careful, you might accidentally make an offer. Read up on contract law
and if you don't understand it find someone that does.
Make sure to close the holding LLC after the sale so you limit any potential
liability.
EDIT: Most of these firms will give you a few hours of advise for free in the
hope of more business. Don't be afraid to ask. Also you can make the payments
contingent on the sale as a percentage.
------
thushan
Congrats! That's so cool that something that started off as a side project
might have a nice payoff. I would say one thing in regards to this posting
actually. You're almost taking a bit of your possible sale value by saying the
items in bullet point #3 and #2. I don't believe in the outlandish
expectations a lot of people have for their projects/startups, but conversely
you're selling yourself short by saying those things.
~~~
luckyclueless
Agreed, we certainly don't plan on telling our suitors those things. But here
on HN we're among friends and I want to be candid.
That said, I can see what you're saying. If I don't believe our product has
significant 'worth' then I am likely to sell myself short simply by having
that kind of mindset.
------
thedealmaker
Being reasonable and pragmatic is the most important thing to do in this
situation. There are a few things you should keep in mind. 1. Interest is just
that...interest. They may want the app but they may have other motives such as
assessing the market, costs, etc. So be open but keep this in mind. 2. Don't
waste too much time on this. This company could be in talks with other
companies with similar apps so make quick decisions. If you are open to sell
don't deliberate to long. Pick a number that would be a multiple of your
time/money invested (say 4x's) and offer a 1 year fixed price consulting
agreement with said company that insures you income for another year to move
on to your next venture. It also gives said company help with the transition.
3. If it doesn't work out don't fret. It tells you that you are on the right
track if you continue to push forward. Consider it validation and toast to the
moment any damn way.
------
joshu
Who reached out? What is the guy's title?
Drop me a line if you want to ask more specific questions.
A lawyer would definitely help. I can recommend a good one, depending on where
you are.
~~~
luckyclueless
@joshu thanks for the offer to answer a question or two, I'll probably take
you up on it. (I'm a big fan of your work.) Let me see if I can figure out if
we are even in the same ballpark in terms of money and then I'll start getting
more serious about a lawyer.
------
pwhelan
I have no experience in this so be skeptical of this. It might be a good idea
to bring on an adviser for this sale? Perhaps talk with a VC just to help on
the sale for some flat fee -- say 5k$ + 3% of the sale - transactions fees?
Use your own numbers of course.
If they are offering serious money (being BigPharma I imagine it isn't
peanuts) you will want this handled professionally. Peace of mind that you are
getting a good deal and while they company maintains interest.
Kudos on the success!
------
asdfj843lkdjs
Could you live with yourselves if the company made WAY more from your app then
they paid you for it? If yes, then sell.
I'd just ask for the number that would buy me freedom. And if they gave me
that, I'd happily sell.And I wouldn't care how much more they make.
~~~
luckyclueless
I could live with this. They have a significantly bigger marketing budget and
an existing product they could piggy-back on. We couldn't make as much money
in the same way if we stayed independent, but we might be able to through
other avenues.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
A call made by computer descends sheriff's helicopter at home - monsterix
http://www.polygon.com/2014/11/7/7172827/destiny-swatting
======
Someone1234
You notice so called "SWATTING" hasn't taken off in other parts of the world,
and that certainly isn't down to those parts having less internet trolls or
crazies online.
In most other places they will send a normal unit around to check out the
report unless they have a credible reason for believing it is legitimate. For
example in the UK they will do a drive-by via an unarmed unit, if the lights
are off, they will go knock on the door and politely ask the occupant about
the call.
In the US they send in ultra-militarized units holding automatic weapons in
what can only be described as a tank, break down doors, rustle up whoever is
inside regardless of if they did anything and in general make a huge spectacle
out of the entire thing.
US police forces have no proportionality. Heck they have no common sense. Plus
the general public in the US seems to approve of the "just in case" OTT
reaction. For example in the recent White House wall jump the Secret Service
got criticised for showing restraint, a US senator asked (paraphrasing) "Why
didn't you just shoot him? Your job isn't to show restraint it is to protect
the White House!" That's a US senator!
The US is like the wild west sometimes...
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Hundreds of academics at top UK universities accused of bullying - pseudolus
https://www.theguardian.com/education/2018/sep/28/academics-uk-universities-accused-bullying-students-colleagues
======
colllectorof
At this point it's pretty much impossible to read such articles and figure out
whether there is an actual institutional problem.
You know that The Guardian will present anything they can as an issue that
requires institutional change. That's just what they do these say. If you're
willing to engage in willful confirmation bias, you can take any large
institution and find enough disgruntled people to to build a "case".
I see nothing in this article about the authors trying to disprove their own
hypothesis.
_" The Guardian sent freedom of information requests to 135 universities.
Responses revealed a total of 294 complaints against academics at 55
institutions. A further 30 universities reported 337 complaints against all
staff – academic and non-academic. Across 105 universities, at least 184 staff
have been disciplined and 32 dismissed for bullying since 2013."_
Compared to the corporate world, that sounds incredibly low, actually.
Of course, these days any official statistic with inconveniently "good"
numbers can be dismissed on the grounds that there are systematic attempts to
cover things up and institutional pressure not to report incidents. But that
in itself is often a form of confirmation bias.
~~~
throwaway0255
> At this point it's pretty much impossible to read such articles and figure
> out whether there is an actual institutional problem.
I have a similar feeling about all articles from all sources (that I’m aware
of) in journalism.
Every time an article interests me enough to dig deeper into the subject, I
find the original article was inaccurate and biased, and frequently
misrepresents small but significant details to fit a narrative in a way that
can’t have been a mistake.
The way I consume news these days isn’t the greatest, but it’s the best I can
do: I only read headlines. If a claim in the headline would cause the source
major legal issues if untrue, I mostly trust that the event occurred, but not
necessarily how they say it did.
I ignore all other claims in headlines, and I don’t read the body of the
article, because it’s usually just a thinly-veiled opinion piece by a non-
expert, or worse, the dramatic prose of a journalist who seems to think their
writing is the story.
If there’s an event in a headline that seems to have actually happened, and
it’s relevant to my interests, I research it independently.
~~~
eksemplar
Have you considered paying for news? If they are free, then you’re the product
being sold.
Aside from that, your approach makes little sense. You read headlines and
comments, but headlines are notoriously bad, especially on free news, and
comments are a jungle. I mean, anyone could tell you anything and not ever be
held accountable, unlike actual media, but you’d rather spend time on anarchy,
uninformed opinions and outright lies?
Furthermore looking at this particular article, even if we say the numbers are
lower than they are in the private sector, does that mean there isn’t a
problem? We’re talking about people in power who are bullying their juniors
who are trying to do research that may alter human history. Even if the
numbers are lower than somewhere else, that’s still not good.
~~~
kiriakasis
Consider a city where the murder rate is half of the country wide one, it
would be a little unusual to claim it has a institutionalized murder problem
based on those numbers.
Maybe it has one (e.g. particularly bad neighborhoods) but it would be a weird
conclusion from just the number
(I didn't read the article, did not feel that was relevant to this specific
response)
------
JohnnyGan
I was once told a story by a professor at my undergrad about a new sessional
instructor that just arrived at the school. Apparently a couple of years
before, this sessional instructor was one of the top PHD students the country.
He was going to grad school at one of the most prestigious universities, and
his supervisors were the leading authors in their field. He published
regularly since undergrad, and was teaching a couple of classes. One day, he
found out that his supervisors were faking their results. These results were
crucial to a couple massive papers for his supervisors. So he blew the whistle
on his supervisors, and the papers got redacted. There were a couple of
disciplinary measures for his supervisors, but within a few months they were
back at work. This sessional instructor, however, was now blacklisted in his
field. His advisors were editors for the top journals, and they had many
connections to other researchers. I don't think he ever managed to finish his
PHD, but they hired him as a sessional instructor for a couple classes at my
school anyway. I think he now sells cars on the side to pay his bills.
~~~
rleigh
I know an ex-postdoc who's promising career was cut short by also identifying
and exposing fraud. I suspect it's more common than we think, and it's
thoroughly wrong that being honest and professional can ruin your career in a
moment. If you find all your research was based on fabricated data, what
choice do you have? Expose it, or knowingly continue the fraud and be equally
culpable. You're ruined either way.
The deeper problem is the environment which drives people to commit fraud in
the first place. These whistleblowers are victims of that.
As someone who left after my PhD due to not having a good publication record,
I've seen the nature of the pressure to suceed at all costs to advance in your
career. It's brutal. I doubt most start out with bad intentions, but fraud is
the ticket to success for a significant minority.
------
kartan
> “Some students were driven to attempt suicide as a result, others broke down
> and simply vanished from science.”
It is hard to evaluate how much talent and how much suffering bullying causes.
In every company I have been there had been some level of bullying. The result
usually is that options were not discussed, people left or get depressed, long
non-paid hours produced no real results as work was done in the wrong
projects, etc... Bullying in school or politics has even worst consequences.
There is a lot of untapped potential in human society. Bullying has a high
toll on society.
------
noobermin
Reading that article conjured up some bad memories. I once as a grad student
tried out for a big name scientist working at the LHC. The professor was harsh
and abrasive, and while he called out bullshit, which was good and great, he
also was extremely harsh and toxic in his criticism. I once attending a group
meeting where everyone was walking on eggshells to avoid pissing him off. I
remember as one of the more senior group members talking faster and faster as
the professor tried to ask her whether she had finished some analysis. At that
point I decided to leave and do something else, which ended up being the right
decision both personally and scientifically (although the prof got promoted,
their specific SUSY search ended up being unfruitful, and of course, the LHC
didn't find evidence of SUSY).
Especially given the LHC's current negative results for physics beyond SM, is
it not surprising few particle physicists are willing to confront the issues
regarding SUSY's negative results? How many other leading scientists at CERN
are like that and intimidate anyone who would dare to question them?
I guess this post did turn into a sort of a dig at CERN, but I think a more
broader point is not only do these toxic people make everyone miserable, but
they hamper science too when the bosses are abrasive AND end up being wrong.
So, the whole argument of "abrasive => calls out BS => makes them effective
managers" like that which was in the discussion about Linus is undermined.
------
timdellinger
Being a PhD student is basically working 50-60 hours a week for low pay, for a
boss who pretty much has absolute power over you.
I've seen it all - scientific misconduct of every kind imaginable, professors
impregnating postdocs, professors who regularly make their grad students cry,
professors who neglect their teaching, etc. There are no checks and balances.
The system often creates monsters.
------
DanielleMolloy
There were three recent scandals at MPIs a few weeks to months back, the most
recent one being: [http://www.sciencemag.org/news/2018/08/she-s-world-s-top-
emp...](http://www.sciencemag.org/news/2018/08/she-s-world-s-top-empathy-
researcher-colleagues-say-she-bullied-and-intimidated-them)
I'm glad that this new Guardian article highlights that it is a structural
problem. When reading up on the MPI cases it seemed as if it was a problem of
few labs only. Due to the power imbalance, as a to-be-PhD student you are
strongly advised to experience several labs before making a decision where to
go. Don't only look at metrics such as reputation. It is incredibly hard to
find a good PhD advisor, and intuition trained by good and bad experiences
does help.
Similarly bad are people in those labs who don't recognize the behaviour as
such because they either have never experienced a non-dysfunctional lab or see
benefit in licking upwards (they may hope they can be in the intimidating
position one time). Every party enabling this seems to confuse abusiveness
with strength and assertiveness. Is it Stockholm syndrome?
The supervisor's perspective is that grant pressure can be very stressful. But
as soon as multiple people agree to the point that they file formal complaints
the problem can't be the PhD student anymore.
I have still proportionally seen more functional than dysfunctional labs in
science though, great labs do exist. I would expect that the problem is much
worse in industry than in academia.
~~~
xioxox
It should be noted that MPIs are extremely hierarchical organisations, where
basically everything is run by directors who have a lot of freedom. When a
director retires, the whole institute has to be reshaped.
~~~
vymague
How is it different from other German universities and institutes?
~~~
rotskoff
The MPIs are set up as director-driven research organizations. There is one
person, typically a very prominent scientist, that oversees a group of junior
faculty (who I believe have only fixed term positions---i.e., no possibility
of tenure). Unlike most university settings, where each faculty member
controls their research program independently, the Max Planck Institutes add
another level to the hierarchy.
------
trukterious
The twist is the 'crybully' \-- someone who bullies others and claims
victimhood when confronted. In this way an accusation or counter-accusation of
bullying can itself be a form of bullying.
~~~
colllectorof
The term "bully" is not helpful in the first place. It's too vague. It used to
refer to kids who beat up other kids in school. That's a specific behavior.
Modern usage had deteriorated into meaninglessness. It's kinds of ridiculous
that the terms is used to refer to adults.
But what you said is essentially valid, except I would state it in even
broader terms. Accusations of bullying became an effective way to launch a
social attack, either proactively or in retaliation.
This is why you can't solve this by simply instituting punitive rules and
committees that "fight bullying". Beyond certain very basic level (you get
fired if you punch someone at work, clear cut case) they will get mercilessly
abused.
What you really need is to increase autonomy of all participants of the system
so people can act in response. No one should be completely in thrall to their
boss or adviser. At the very lease people should be able to leave without
being harasses and sabotaged at their destination.
~~~
scott_s
> The term "bully" is not helpful in the first place. It's too vague. It used
> to refer to kids who beat up other kids in school. That's a specific
> behavior. Modern usage had deteriorated into meaninglessness. It's kinds of
> ridiculous that the terms is used to refer to adults.
A cursory look at the Wikipedia etymology contradicts the notion that it was
ever limited to children, or that the current usage is significantly broader
than it has been in the past.
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bullying#Etymology](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bullying#Etymology)
------
rotskoff
One peculiarity of the academic system (true to some extent in start-ups) is
that people transition from researchers to managers without any real training
or evaluation of their proclivity for management. While you may be a
spectacular researcher, that does not mean that you have the disposition,
skill, or compassion to be an effective leader. Of course, some are naturals
and many others get ample experience in labs where there's a hierarchical
structure. Still, the utter lack of evaluation and reflection on group
dynamics, productivity, etc., strikes me as a real weakness for the way that
we currently organize academic research.
~~~
Fomite
It often frustrates me that this is true at universities that _have business
schools_.
I can take an 8-week summer course on polishing my NSF CAREER proposal - I'd
_kill_ to be able to do the same for basic management skills (including
hiring).
------
DrNuke
My time in the UK as a postgrad EU foreigner ten years ago was ok and I never
witnessed anything shady. The system was built to avoid any sort of public
confrontation, this being the norm in the UK: just mind your own business,
refer to your direct supervisor, be transparent and you will be fine.
------
l00sed
I feel this way at Harvard too... Professors seem only to care about their
professional goals and esteem and I will often feel dismissed when I'm not
directly serving those goals. I think it's only natural, but I would hope that
more awareness about the issue might serve to change the culture.
------
sjg007
I think it is endemic across academia.
------
ninja10
Career sabotage, IP theft?! That's terrible. If it was a regular job it may be
easy to leave or find another one, but doing a degree, especially a PhD, is a
serious commitment and a lifestyle change. Outside of this, the bullying
behavior is common enough across everywhere ... put a person with serious ego
and control issues in a power position and they will end up a tyrant.
~~~
posterboy
The article doesn't talk about IP theft at all. It doesn't even imply taking
advantage by superiors. It doesn't explore motives for the abuse at all.
~~~
colllectorof
It does:
_' Another PhD student spoke of “abuse of power” by their adviser, which
included “career sabotage, IP [intellectual property] theft and more general
bullying such as belittling comments, often in front of or in response to
senior academics”.'_
------
quickben
Similar abuses are happening here in Canada too.
They really have to forbid profs names to appear on student papers. It would
remove a lot of the incentive.
~~~
majos
What? The goal of a PhD is to train somebody to be a researcher and
collaborator. The best way to do this is to collaborate with them on research.
Collaborators deserve authorship.
I understand that many labs are hierarchical with ideas solely handed down
from top to bottom, but _removing_ advisor authorship is a big step.
~~~
quickben
And thus, we are in the present conundrum:
Some profs are decent human beings, and the system runs. Some profs are
sociopaths, and the system gets abused.
Other fields got their rules in place because of above. It is not fair to the
profs that are decent human beings, but, ignoring the second point, makes it
unfair to a lot more students that go through it.
------
ourmandave
Apropos to nothing, the headline reminded me of _Monty Python 's Meaning of
Life_ rugby match between the students and the masters.
------
coldtea
Aside from the legitimate cases, there's a lot of trash complaints that you
get when you lower the bar for accusations...
Every person with a pet grievance, no matter how BS it is, will come out of
the woodwork...
Especially when everyone has been raised all emotionally, told they were
little geniuses and would achieve everything "they wanted to", and was
promised to be the King/Queen of the World just for showing up...
~~~
_red
This situation is exasperated by the "everyone deserves to go to university"
concept.
Taking the sub-105 IQ set and putting them situations where they are not
capable of competing winds up creating unhappiness all around. No doubt some
of that dynamic fosters a bullying mindset in professors.
~~~
antt
I find it's the over 105 IQ set that's the problem. Especially when they find
out IQ has nothing to do with success.
------
gaius
_HR managers appearing more concerned about avoiding negative publicity than
protecting staff_
But this is literally the job of the HR department. That is why Workers need
guilds or unions as a counterweight.
------
malvosenior
This article doesn’t do a good job defining bullying, but the examples they
give sound normal to mild compared to the private sector. “Extreme pressure to
produce results” sounds more like typical (bad) management than bullying.
~~~
rossdavidh
"At another internationally renowned laboratory, the pressure was reportedly
so extreme people were driven to falsify data rather than incur the wrath of
the director."
One difference between private sector (typically) and academia is that if you
fake your results in the private sector, it will come out when the product
ships and is no good. As we have seen with the reproducibility crisis in many
fields of science, the feedback loop is much slower in academia. "Extreme
pressure to produce results" is a very imprecise statement, but one issue I
worry about is the primary investigator wanting to get someone else to fake
his data for him, so he has plausible deniability if it should come to light.
I agree the article is rather imprecise, but I think there is a real problem.
~~~
watwut
> One difference between private sector (typically) and academia is that if
> you fake your results in the private sector, it will come out when the
> product ships and is no good.
I dont really think so. Pretty often, at that point no one remembers or care
who was responsible for what and someone else will be pressured to spend
nights fixing your mistakes.
------
k__
Professors often told me my choice of programming language (JS) or database
(MySQL) wasn't real technology but only toys.
Somehow I expected them to be more reflected...
~~~
KirinDave
I'm fairly certain offhand comments like this are not quite at the magnitude
the article is complaining about.
JS distaste is widespread in the industry, as well.
------
posterboy
The miscarriage story is really ambivalent. It supposes two extremely
contrasting opinions without offering a solution.
So far, it's a case of miscommunication. To blame only the students and
subordinate workers for lack of understanding would be one-sided. But the
article doesn't offer a nice explanation nor a solution to the exemplary
problem. I wouldn't expect either that pregnancy at the work place was a good
idea. I am actually rather opposed to it in general, and for more free time
for mothers.
By the way: One has to wonder whether the situation was any different at the
newspaper producing this article.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Scientist grow dinosaur leg on chicken - esalazar
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-3487977/Scientist-grow-dinosaur-leg-CHICKEN-bizarre-reverse-evolution-experiment.html
======
tkinom
We can, but should we?
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
When the makers of Grand Theft Auto raid your house - CPAhem
https://www.abc.net.au/news/science/2018-11-08/grand-theft-auto-cheat-crackdown-house-raid/10472358
======
BoorishBears
Eventually you cross a line with anything.
Once you’re making hundreds of thousands of dollars selling cheats, you’re
just begging for police involvement.
And in case you’re thinking hundreds of thousands sounds high, I personally
know developers of other menus for the game that were pulling in 5k a week at
points, and they were nowhere near as well known
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Show HN: Detect which iOS devices are used on your site - dieulot
https://www.dieulot.fr/idevice
======
valgaze
Not device-type, looks famous.co can infer battery mode from Safari:
[https://imgur.com/a/XvAGvWS](https://imgur.com/a/XvAGvWS)
~~~
dieulot
They’re trying to autoplay a video, which Safari blocks if the device is in
low power mode. [https://pastebin.com/xxN2VPi4](https://pastebin.com/xxN2VPi4)
Nice find!
------
jrockway
Why include the lookup table in the client code? If you're just mapping (CPU,
resolution) to a model, why not just send that tuple to your analytics
framework and look it up when displaying? Doing the lookup on the client code
means every client has to download the table, and you have to blow away their
cached copy whenever you come up with an improvement in the mapping. Limiting
it to iDevices certainly makes this table smaller, but I feel like that's a
starting off point only... real websites are going to want data about other
platforms.
~~~
mygo
> Why include the lookup table in the client code?
maybe it’s a static site.
~~~
jrockway
The example was sending the data to Google Analytics, though.
~~~
krispbyte
Which reinforces the need to do the lookup in client code since you can't code
it into GA.
~~~
mygo
I mean you _could_ just get the data from the client that the lookup needs and
then send that data to your server for your server to do the lookup and then
return the result to the client
but maybe it’s a static site
------
Tepix
It recognized an iPhone X as iPhone 8 plus.
~~~
mygo
I visited it on an iPhone X and it did “Your device is an iPhone X” for me,
but I believe you. Not sure why you’re getting downvotes for reporting your
own actual user experience... especially on a Show HN... am I missing
something?
~~~
dogma1138
It seems that beyond the generation it tries to guess the rest based on the
screen res changing the font size and DPI via accessibility settings switches
between XS and XS max for me.
------
Sephr
There's also navigator.hardwareConcurrency which can tell you the number of
CPU threads available to a device.
Unfortunately, it looks like Apple caps this value to 2 on iOS for anti-
fingerprinting purposes.
~~~
Cyph0n
Sounds more like “fortunately” for iOS users...
~~~
Sephr
Fortunately for privacy; unfortunately for the performance of heavy webapps
that may need an accurate hardware.navigatorConcurrency value for CPU scaling.
~~~
dogma1138
How many heavy web apps that would need it actually run on an iOS device?
------
bestham
I recently wondered how the "Login alert for Mobile Safari on Apple iPhone 7
Plus"-email from Facebook could tell my what device I used to log in to the
html version of Facebook. They must be doing the same correlation between SOC
and screen size that is mentioned in the article.
------
monochromatic
I’ve long assumed that websites could tell what kind of device I’m using. Is
that not true?
~~~
bdibs
On my Google Analytics account, it shows Android mobile devices as their full
model names, but iPhones and iPads as just Apple iPhone/iPad.
I'm sure Google could still narrow it down using other factors, like screen
size, but they're not sharing that with Analytics users.
~~~
MonkeyDan
Android Chrome includes phone model in the user-agent.
------
snacktaster
pretty neat. what would be the best way for me to block this
~~~
threeseed
Would also recommend you file a bug at
[https://bugreport.apple.com](https://bugreport.apple.com).
This is linked directly to their internal bug tracker (Radar) so I can assure
you it will be read and triaged by an engineering or product manager.
~~~
jakobegger
And you might even get a message "Closed as duplicate" three months later...
------
terandle
Nice, could be useful when I’m trying to answer someones questions about their
phone remotely and they don’t know which one they have.
~~~
jbob2000
But realistically speaking, ad networks are going to add this to their code to
gather even more information about you.
~~~
cocoa19
To be honest, it would surprise me if they are not already doing this.
On a side note, when you install, launch and maximize TOR browser, you get a
warning advising you not to maximize it. Web servers/attackers can use max
screen size as an additional point to determine your identity.
~~~
LeoPanthera
That’s confusing. Wouldn’t it be better if everyone maximised their window? If
you have a random window size you have a much higher chance of it being
unique.
~~~
ChrisSD
The default TOR viewport size isn't random. It picks a multiple of 200x100,
with 1000x1000 as the maximum
------
AndrewKemendo
Man, I needed this last summer when I was doing a huge project. Glad someone
can benefit from it!
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Open source tools - dsc
http://www.socialbrite.org/2010/07/16/12-open-source-tools-you-should-be-using/
======
Mongoose
It feels like this same article could have been published 3 years ago. Most of
these (Firefox, Wordpress and maybe VLC and Handbrake aside) have been great
apps that no one uses for years.
------
faragon
And git?
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Ancient life, millions of years old and barely alive, found beneath ocean floor - J3L2404
http://www.washingtonpost.com/national/health-science/ancient-life-millions-of-years-old-and-barely-alive-found-beneath-ocean-floor/2012/05/17/gIQA3zIRWU_story.html
======
rickyconnolly
From a shrewd entrepreneurial point of view, these critters must have all
kinds of interesting enzymes and hardware that allow them to operate at such
low metabolic rates.
Dissecting their repair mechanisms might give us insights into regenerative
medicine in the near future, and technical knowledge for suspended animation
for long distance transport or generation jumping in the not-so-near future.
~~~
anusinha
Studying organisms like these would certainly teach us a lot about cellular
maintenance and extremely slow patterns of gene regulation.
Relatedly, note that storing information in DNA is the longest lived form of
information storage. Harddrives tend to deteriorate in ~10 years or so. Flash
Memory has a similar life time. Books can last hundreds to thousands of years,
but no more, and stones and rocks and fossils, perhaps a few hundreds of
millions of years. But genetic information can be maintained for billions of
years--it is a discrete information encoding, is easily copyable, and has
noise tolerance and error correction. Not very useful (yet!) to store
information and data, but very interesting to think about conceptually: humans
have been reconstructing in metal and silicon what nature developed billions
of years ago. Sort of cool to think about.
------
nsns
"Their strategy for staying alive is to be barely alive at all."
And yet some creatures are believed to be immortal while being "very alive".
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biological_immortality>
------
rhino42
Why is the post by easy dead? It looks fine to me....
~~~
pohl
Good question. Is a relatively young (45 days) account with low karma (17)
enough to auto-kill posts? None of easy's submissions or comments seem out of
line to me. I'm quoting the post here because Rachel Sussman's TED talk on
species longevity is spectacular.
_If you found this interesting you might also enjoy a TED talk by Rachel
Sussman entitled "The world's oldest living things":_
[http://www.ted.com/talks/lang/en/rachel_sussman_the_world_s_...](http://www.ted.com/talks/lang/en/rachel_sussman_the_world_s_oldest_living_things.html)
~~~
easy
Maybe it's "too much too soon" from a new account? I think all the submissions
I made so far came from technology review articles I've been reading so
perhaps PGs code thinks I'm an account created to spam for a particular
domain.
~~~
mkr-hn
Probably a few people being overeager with the flag link.
~~~
rhino42
That's my best guess. Worst part is, easy probably didn't even know it was
dead
~~~
chc
Why wouldn't easy have known? easy isn't hellbanned AFAIK.
~~~
easy
As far as I can tell the status of a comment as being dead is not apparent to
the user who posted it (unless they're not logged in obviously). This is
actually quite an elegant way of dealing with trolls if you think about it;
instead of knowing they've been banned and trying to game their way around it
they assume they are just being ignored and give up.
------
furiouslysleepy
C'thulu?
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
A Mysterious Explosion Took Place in Russia. What Happened? - yread
https://foreignpolicy.com/2019/08/12/russia-mysterious-explosion-arctic-putin-chernobyl/
======
detritus
My only hope with this is that Russia are contriving to give the impression
they're actually proceeding with this madness, without actually doing so.
This tech strikes me as being entirely too provocative and escalatory a beast,
irrespective of its recklessness and obscene potential impact on the
environment
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Scientists decode breast cancer DNA - codedivine
http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2009/10/08/2709016.htm
======
prat
There have been a number of targeted sequencing experiments of breast cancer
cells before: using next gen sequencing platforms and microarrays. Comlpete
sequencing is by no means a breakthrough. A complete sequencing (3bn letters)
has not been tried for a reason - and that reason is that the increase in
information content from complete sequencing is minimal - almost zero. infact
it will be wasteful exercise to look at the whole genome when you expect to
find problem in a handful of genes. Moreover the full sequence of a tumor cell
varies from patient to patient and also between cell to cell in the same
patient (unlike in healthy cells/patients). that's why no one does full genome
sequencing of tumor cells - just targeted sequencing of selected genes.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Climate change skeptics/deniers pay better - jgrahamc
http://www.jgc.org/blog/2009/12/climate-change-skeptics-deniers-pay.html
======
jrmurad
> I wonder if this implies something about gullibility.
I wonder if this implies that skeptics/deniers are more productive (and have
more money to spend.)
I wonder if this implies that skeptics/deniers are more curious (and will
follow a link to learn more.)
I wonder if this implies that skeptics/deniers are less anti-business (and
don't ignore advertisements.)
Maybe not but I don't particularly think that clicking a blog ad is a clear
implication of "gullibility" either.
~~~
jrmurad
Also, you only say what percentage of revenue comes from likely "deniers"
(based on origin.) If you think you're measuring "gullibility," wouldn't it be
more informative to know the two percentages of likely vs. unknown/random who
visit your site and generate ad revenue, right?
------
billybob
Strange the number of posts I see with this logic:
1) I fund my site via ads 2) User group X clicks on those ads more often than
others 3) They're suckers!
In other words, "I have contempt for the people who pay my bills."
If you think so poorly of advertising (which is understandable), maybe you
shouldn't fund your site with it?
~~~
martythemaniak
"maybe you shouldn't fund your site with it"
Maybe you should read the part that says $0.50 is a typical month. What
exactly can one "fund" with 50 cents?
~~~
oconnor0
My once-a-month small candy bar habit.
------
ars
Have things gotten so bad, that simply reading about other opinions (on the
"denier" blog), gets you branded as a heretic?
~~~
jgrahamc
No, but I was assuming that the vast number of people who do read those blogs
agree with their contents (because of homophily) and that only rarely are
people reading things concerning opposing ideas.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
How can there be collisions in Hashing functions? - robzyb
https://np.reddit.com/r/algorithms/comments/6bidyg/how_can_there_be_collisions_in_hashing_functions/
======
CarolineW
I'm curious as to your reasons for posting this. It's clearly a conversation
between people who don't understand something and people who can't explain
things. But why do you think it's of value for us here on HN? What lessons do
you think we should be learning from it?
You've posted it, so you think I should read it. Why?
~~~
robzyb
Well... the conversation piqued my interest partly from a pedagogical
perspective, and partly from a philosophical perspective.
The pedagogical aspect relates to the fact that the thread's OP clearly isn't
lacking in intelligence nor knowledge, and I would've expected that some of
the explanations would be sufficient. I found it interesting as a case study
in learning/teaching.
The philosophical perspective relates to the link between our perspective of
the world and the actual truth underlying it. The thread's OP was quite
certain about the fact they were claiming as true, and was actually making a
good argument for it. At least, the argument was good insofar as it was
logical and wasn't falling victim to any egregious logical fallacy. It's
interesting to consider consider this debate in contrast to a political debate
which doesn't necessarily have such a solid underlying truth
On a personal note, I'm also slightly envious of the "OH!" moment that the
thread's OP is going to have when everything falls into place in their mental
model of hash functions. I remember when differential calculus first "clicked"
with me, and when statistical hypothesis testing "clicked" with me. I'm still
waiting for monads to "click" with me.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Response to Tim Bray's Departure - forrestbrazeal
https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/response-tim-brays-departure-brad-porter/
======
fsociety
Interestingly Brad just proved Tim Bray's point by stroking his own ego and
only talking about processes that Amazon is introducing in response to
COVID-19 - instead of talking about the worker being fired for raising
concerns about their workplace conditions.
Even better is scrolling down to the comments section and seeing all the
managers comment about how great they are. It's like an Amazon version of VC's
congratulating themselves.
This one paragraph bugged me quite a bit.
"You can allow time off and leaves of absence. You can commit to taking care
of employees if they do get sick, regardless of where they caught the virus.
These are all things Amazon did almost immediately. But you can’t entirely
eliminate the fear and concerns that we all share. ".
You could try not firing people when they raise real concerns about dieing for
the cause of raising Amazon's market cap. That'd be a good start. Next Amazon
should recognize the power dynamic they've created with this firing and work
to destroy it.
It's too bad we can't see the memos Tim talked about with the disgusting
comments about the workers. That would put the nail in the coffin as the
'distinguished engineers' of Amazon duke it out.
Lastly, props to Tim for not stroking his ego when he wrote his post. Boo to
Brad for stroking his ego when talking about respecting low-skilled workers as
humans.
~~~
tw202005061625
The manager replies all praising seems more like what a bunch of underlings to
a dictator would do to praise the dictator. Or cult-like if they really
believe that - but I have to think many of them are doing it for "points" in
the political game - and really understand that the warehouse people are
treated like complete crap.
------
TheRealDunkirk
> Ultimately though, Tim Bray is simply wrong when he says “It’s that Amazon
> treats the humans in the warehouses as fungible units of pick-and-pack
> potential.” I find that deeply offensive to the core. For those of us who
> work in World-Wide Operations, nothing could be farther from the truth.
As if the depth of your offense should matter. We've all read the stories, and
I won't belabor them here. If this is true, then pay them well, and respect
them. That's how you prove that what Tim said about how you treat workers
couldn't be further from the truth, not by grandstanding about your personal
offense.
Companies expect to buy our loyalty with platitudes. I don't understand how
the best and brightest, sitting at the top of some of the largest
organizations in the world, don't see how that rankles a lot of people, when
they could easily SPEND THE MONEY to make a difference, instead of just paying
lip service to "caring."
~~~
yborg
>I don't understand how the best and brightest, sitting at the top of some of
the largest organizations in the world, don't see how that rankles a lot of
people
Because they don't actually care if it rankles anybody. It doesn't affect
their compensation. It doesn't even affect their organization because they
know people will continue to flock to work there because they have little
choice. The platitudes are pro forma precisely because they are boring and
thus won't attract coverage, either news or legal. I actually appreciate the
rare Master Of The Universe that slips up and just tells people that they'll
get nothing and like it, but it's rare because this is considered gauche and
you have a harder time getting invited to Davos.
------
mapleoin
Clear BS, textbook example of cherrypicking. Tim Bray's post makes it clear
that he was concerned with how the management reacted to employee strikes on
numerous ocassions, not how fast Amazon is changing their response to the
pandemic.
------
raiyu
Completely misses the point that the main reason for Tim Bray leaving is
because Amazon retaliated against an employee that was highlighting concerns.
~~~
ashtonkem
Almost certainly missed that point on purpose.
~~~
rumanator
It's as if his goal was to shift the focus away from the problem.
------
jeffrallen
I worked with Brad and I know he's got good judgement and ethics. But he
missed the point: Tim quit because he could not make Amazon understand that
taking the chickenshit way out by firing union organisers is bad business and
bad for society.
~~~
ashtonkem
There’s a good chance he knows what Bray was saying, but couldn’t respond
effectively to that.
------
zentiggr
Upvoted for awareness of just how tone deaf and self-congratulatory this
sounds.
Never a word about unfair firings, poor warehouse conditions, or all the other
ongoing stories.
Somebody drank too much kool-aid, and can't see the reality at the lowest paid
levels anymore.
------
Edmond
When your first instinct is to defend those with all the power and privilege,
you've already lost the debate. Especially at a moment like this.
------
suthakamal
Gross.
The lack of empathy or recognition of the terrible conditions warehouse
workers have complained of (and have been well documented by journalists) is
pretty striking.
------
glimmung
His "faux offended" stance in a matter of (other people's) life and death is
not a good look.
He says "If we want people to choose to work for Amazon helping deliver
packages to customers, job number one is to convince those valuable employees
that you are doing everything you can every day to keep them safe. ", which
sounds right - but is it appropriate to fire people for Amazon's failure in
this regard?
------
Tomte
Fascinating how a senior Amazonian actually works hard to taint his
reputation.
I mean, sure, you're "deeply offended" by the allegations. But you have no
real response.
What about all those reports about work conditions? You just ignore them. What
about the despicable libel or slander (I can never remember which is which)
Amazon heaped upon the recently fired employee?
But sure, you wrote AI software to protect workers. That makes everything
right.
------
lmilcin
Companies that have good principles and act on them do not need to fire people
for speaking up.
If they speak up and are right, you thank them and correct the problem.
If they speak up and are not right, you provide proofs or ignore it altogether
if it is going to be obvious.
The only reason to fire is if you know they are right but you have no
intention to correct it.
Scaring your employees into silence is going to be difficult to defend.
------
haunter
Those comments tho from the other Amazon employees, it's like a cult
------
eyeareque
This read like it was written or highly edited by PR.
------
justin66
Very unimpressive.
------
throwawayfortb
Commenters here are putting too much trust in Tim Bray's one sided take, and
are criticizing Brad Porter unnecessarily for setting the record straight on
just how much Amazon has done to protect warehouse workers. Not to mention
they increased their baseline and overtime wages before the online outrage
machine spun up, and were paying industry leading wages for such a position to
begin with. Resharing a different perspective:
Amazon did not fire these people without cause. They fired them because they
violated company policies. These employees were using company time and
resources to push personal political agendas that have no place at work. They
were rightfully fired, and a huge number of Amazon employees are thankful they
are gone. There is a big silent majority, probably at all major tech
companies, that is left voiceless because the activist left is vocal and
aggressively shouts down anyone who is even slightly to the right of their own
views. At Amazon, most of us seek a professional workplace where employees are
working towards the common goal of helping customers. These employees that Tim
is standing up for were the opposite of that, distracting everyone with loud
activism and probably not focusing on their own jobs either.
To provide a counter to Tim's account: Chris Smalls was told to quarantine
himself and not come to the work site because he was in close contact with
someone who tested positive for COVID-19
([https://thehill.com/regulation/labor/490805-fired-amazon-
str...](https://thehill.com/regulation/labor/490805-fired-amazon-striker-
demands-bezos-protect-workers-in-open-letter)). He came to the site anyways to
protest. Why wouldn't he get fired for putting others at risk? People who
think this firing was malicious are speculating. If this was a topic that
Hacker News readers had a different group perspective on, they would call it a
conspiracy theory. Someone would surely be quoting Hanlon's Razor by now.
Maren Costa and Emily Cunningham were the most visible ringleaders of
activists pretending to be employees. They clearly were not doing their job as
well as they could, because they had time enough to engage in lengthy
political discussions on mailing lists during the workday. They were also
repeatedly disrupting everyone else's work. They, and others from their group,
would spam hundreds of company mailing lists repeatedly. They would send long
political rants, links to activist events, and even solicit employee
information. It was very over the top, and pleas from list moderators to stop
spamming were ignored or met with baseless accusations of racism (or another
-ism). That reaction, to shout down opposing views with absurd justifications,
is the mental gymnastics of intersectionality at work. It's the unfortunate
culture of intolerance that this aggressive flavor of progressive activism has
taken on in workplaces like Google, Facebook, and Amazon.
I'm also dismayed at the public reaction to these events. For some reason, the
general public simply craves stories attacking winners, and the same is true
for Amazon. If you want to balance out the info you've been exposed to, check
out Amazon's official blog on the large number of changes they've made in
response to COVID-19, at [https://blog.aboutamazon.com/company-news/amazons-
actions-to...](https://blog.aboutamazon.com/company-news/amazons-actions-to-
help-employees-communities-and-customers-affected-by-covid-19). Were you aware
that Amazon set up a nonprofit COVID-19 supply store for healthcare and
government organizations ([https://business.amazon.com/en/work-with-
us/healthcare/covid...](https://business.amazon.com/en/work-with-
us/healthcare/covid-19-supplies))? What about Jeff Bezos's statement on the
expenses relating to COVID-19 ([https://www.marketwatch.com/story/amazons-ceo-
tells-investor...](https://www.marketwatch.com/story/amazons-ceo-tells-
investors-if-youre-shareowner-you-may-want-to-take-a-seat-as-he-explains-why-
the-company-will-spend-entirety-of-4-billion-profit-2020-04-30))?
Tim Bray quitting is his personal choice. I respect that he has the right to
make this choice. But he's not a hero, and the HN crowd would do well not to
immediately put him on a pedestal or to take all his opinions and claims at
face value. When it comes to those fired employees he is standing up for, Tim
is willfully overlooking their clear abuse of Amazon's employee rules, company
resources, and other employees. I don't think it's an accident that he's
leaving all those details out. He may be calling Amazon a 'chickenshit', but I
actually think he's the coward in this instance.
~~~
jeffrallen
When the only thing management can imagine to do about labor organising is to
fire the organisers, that's a failure of imagination, of leadership and a
failure of fiduciary responsibility to the shareholders. When management
cannot make peace with labor, investors end up paying the price from strikes,
customer boycotts, government over regulation, and poor workplace morale. It
is worthwhile to live in harmony with labor, ask German and Swiss managers
why.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
I built a resume-padder and earned $700 in the process - polyfractal
http://euphonious-intuition.com/2012/07/i-built-a-resume-padder-and-earned-700-in-the-process/
======
potomak
My side projects look like gifts to me, I feel uncomfortable to sell them.
Maybe this isn't the entrepreneur way but I feel bonded with most of the lines
of code I write. I think I could sell two side projects of mine
(<http://tomato.es> and <http://drawbang.com>) profitably but I use them to
experiment and I really like to see them grow naturally, they're like little
plants growing in a big forest.
~~~
dag11
I just checked out your drawbang. It's pretty neat!
<http://i.imgur.com/IeiQB.gif>
You should add some tooltips on the buttons though, as some of them aren't
immediately all that clear.
~~~
potomak
You're right, thanks for reporting.
I've created an issue for that:
<https://github.com/potomak/drawbang/issues/45>
------
muellerwolfram
funny to read that, i'm just about to launch my side project with basically
the same idea. its not ready yet, but you can peek a sneak preview at
<http://www.themescroller.com>
i think that the themeforest ui sucks for finding themes as well. additionally
i think it would be cool to compare themes from different marketplaces...so
thats what i'm working at right now
~~~
polyfractal
_Very_ nice. After getting feedback, this is basically what I imagined
ThemeSquirrel should turn into. Good job grabbing the screenshots of the live
preview, and directing right to it. I was too lazy to adjust ThemeSquirrel to
do that but I really should have. Also great idea of aggregating the
marketplaces.
A few thoughts:
-I'd make the "Large" thumbnail default. It was the biggest complaint I got, and I noticed a lot of people switching to the large size when I checked my analytics.
-Open the previews in a new tab/window. I know most people scroll-click things, but it'd be best to make that default (imo). Most people don't buy the first theme they click, so you ideally want to keep them at your site as long as possible.
~~~
muellerwolfram
hey thanks a lot for your feedback. really appreciate that!
i always thought that open links in new window is kind of aggressive. but a
friend of mine also instinctively suggested that, the first time he saw the
site, so maybe that's what people want/expect...
did they give you a reason why they'd prefer larger images? isn't it harder to
compare themes then?
~~~
polyfractal
Sure! I hope your site goes well, it has a lot of potential.
It feels a little aggressive on some sites, but for an "aggregating" site I
actually prefer them to open in new tabs. As I see it, I'm using your site to
find something...but I probably will look at several different options on your
list. I don't like navigating back and forward a lot...I'd rather just close
tabs and go back to the aggregator.
Now, that could just be me. I do compulsively open tabs (I have like 40 tabs
open right now).
As to larger images: reduces clutter, makes it easier to scan, easier to see
details.
If you want to read the initial feedback I got, you can see it here:
<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3502418>
------
picsoung
Very inspiringm, I will consider doing the same thing with my side projects.
Thanks !
~~~
polyfractal
Awesome, glad you enjoyed my story! Hope you make a bit of money off your side
projects (or perhaps find a way to monetize them and keep them in your
portfolio)
------
withinthreshold
Wow, this is what i needed. To show me that even something simple can make a
change in my financial position. I've almost gave up trying to build something
on the side, you definitely put me back on track, thank you!
------
sktrdie
This is nice and surely the project was worth $700. However, 700 is my monthly
rent. I'd rather it stay on my hard drive and allow it to become something
bigger in the future instead of selling the idea to someone else willing to go
the next step.
~~~
polyfractal
Yep, I went through the same thought process while trying to decide if I
should sell or not. Your side projects may turn into something bigger if you
hold on to it...but are you going to put the time in required to do that?
In the end, I looked at everything on my plate and knew that I would never
touch ThemeSquirrel ever again. I have other side projects that I'm far more
interested in, with much larger visions of growth/monetization.
It didn't matter that ThemeSquirrel was making money, or that there were
actionable pieces of feedback that I could use to improve the site. I simply
did not care for the project anymore, and had no desire to operate in the
WordPress theme ecosystem.
If I held on to the project, it would eventually have died a slow, gasping
death. It's fun to dream about scaling side projects into real companies...but
if I never acted on it...it's just dreaming.
------
zanny
6 hours is impressive. It took me that long to just do the jquery + javascript
course tracks on codeacademy when I was learning js + jq O.o
~~~
polyfractal
To be entirely fair, jQuery Masonry and jsTree do _a lot_ of the hard work for
you. Supply them with some JSON and the defaults are pretty good.
I'm a very "copy/paste/modify" learner. So it was pretty easy to grab the
jQuery Masonry examples and fiddle with them until I got the output that I
wanted.
I also had done two previous greasemonkey scripts to alter the HN interface,
which is where I learned a lot of jQuery fundamentals.
------
Evbn
I made an Android app with a small user/fan base that I published for free
after Admob went wonky in the Google acquisition, but I might want to sell to
someone who wants to add ads or port to iPhone since I am too busy to maintain
it.
Flippa gets good reviews here, but all the sites listed on its front page look
like junk and Spam, nothing even as worthwhile as little ThemeSquirrel
~~~
polyfractal
Repost of a comment I made elsewhere about Flippa:
Yeah, 95% of Flippa is garbage.
A few gems pop up from time to time, but there is so much noise it is hard to
find them. For a while I really wanted to purchase an app, renovate it by
fixing sales funnels/marketing/bugs and start building a portfolio of semi-
passive income.
I ended up with a strict set of filter options. Must be X months old, with Y
monthly unique making Z revenue. That filtered out a lot of the garbage. I had
Flippa email me once a week with these sites/apps, which I then glanced
through manually. Most of them were still crap, or way overpriced (like 20
months net-profit).
I _really_ wish there was an "Abandoned App" equivalent to Flippa. A place
where programmers could sell off their side projects and abandoned web-apps. I
wouldn't allow any adsense sites or anything that wasn't a real "web app"
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
How the Biggest YC Companies Got Started - sachitgupta
http://mixergy.com/ycombinator
======
AndrewWarner
Raldi, I made a change in response to your comment: "I think it would be a lot
more ethical if you presented it openly as such, right from the start. For
example, the big button at the bottom of the page could say, "Subscribe to our
interview-of-the-week series!""
The button is changed. It didn't occur to me that people would think that this
wasn't coming via email over time. I guess I was too close to this project.
~~~
raldi
Thanks! I've edited my comment.
------
raldi
The interviews are trapped behind a spamwall. You can't reach them until you
divulge your email address. Once you're on the list, only then do they admit
that they actually only have one interview available so far, and send you a
link to download it.
Edit: Originally, I included the direct-download link here. But Andrew's made
some changes to the site's UI in the past hour which directly addressed my
biggest objections, so I'm removing it.
~~~
AndrewWarner
Mike, I have the interviews. They're interviews I recorded over the past 6
years.
I'm trying a new way of distributing them. It's an experiment to see if giving
1 interview at a time will get more people to listen to each interview. In the
past, I put all the interviews on a single page, but I looked at the data and
noticed that most people download the interview with the biggest name and
ignore the others. I think the less known people are often more helpful.
And I would never spam you. I'm asking for an email address because that's the
easiest way to do this. The original idea for this was to have it come out via
RSS so you could get a new one in your podcast app every couple of days. But
that seems like a pain.
~~~
raldi
I think it would be a lot more ethical if you presented it openly as such,
right from the start. For example, the big button at the bottom of the page
could say, "Subscribe to our interview-of-the-week series!"
~~~
garry
Andrew has spent a lot of time and energy compiling this reference. I don't
think it is unreasonable for him to get an email address in exchange. We all
love free content but we frankly are not entitled to it.
~~~
AndrewWarner
Thanks Garry.
My goal is to give people 1 interview at a time and see if they listen to more
interviews than if I give them 10 at once.
I went with email because it was easier than the other options.
~~~
raldi
Have you considered adding a tip jar, or a for-pay, instant-access-to-any-
interview option?
------
virtuexru
Quite possibly the worst article submission ever that is voted up only on its
merit of a good clickbait title.
~~~
AndrewWarner
What don't you like about it? Say more. I'm open to your feedback.
~~~
sushid
It might a combination of these few things:
1\. Only a single interview 2\. No interviews with actual YC-backed founders
3\. Has a spamwall 4\. Has a bunch of audio ads at the start
Edit: Andrew has addressed all four issues almost immediately. I believe that
my fourth issue was just me making a frivolous point. My initial impression
was that there were no interviews at the moment (besides the one with Jessica
Livingston) and hearing a few ads after jumping through the hoop felt like I
was deceived. Thanks for the clarification, Andrew.
~~~
AndrewWarner
1\. Only a single interview
>> I might have explained it wrong. It's multiple interviews. (After reading
your comment, I made a change to the text above the email box.)
2\. No interviews with actual YC-backed founders
>> I'm sending my interviews with the founders of Airbnb, TwitchTV, inDinero
and other YC-backed companies.
3\. Has a spamwall
>> I would never spam you. I'm not an anonymous internet guy. Many people from
HN have been to my house for dinner of the office for a drink. If I ever
spammed, I could never look them in the eye.
4\. Has a bunch of audio ads at the start
>> You're right. I'll ask my editor what it would cost to have the ads edited
out of all my old interviews. If someone here has a suggestion for how to do
it, let me know. It might be too expensive to do to over 1000 interviews, but
you're right and it's something I should explore.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Why do chocolate chip cookies have 37% (1/e) chocolate in them? - msvan
http://math.stackexchange.com/questions/651823/is-there-a-mathematical-reason-why-chocolate-chip-cookies-have-37-1-e-chocola
======
pyduan
This feels like pure numerology to me, with the entire argument being based on
some vague numeric coincidence. I have no experience in food manufacturing,
but I'm willing to bet there are much easier ways to mix dough at any desired
proportion than the one described here.
Here's another, potentially simpler explanation: I am no pastry chef, but it
seems these recipes often use a 2:1 mix of different types of chocolate (e.g.
dark and milk) [1]. Now if the recipe contains 1/4 of one type and half of
this of another type, that's 25% + 12.5% = 37.5%, which is about as close to
37% than 1/e. Ta-da!
And this is just one explanation I just made up on the spot; I'm sure one can
find many others by playing around with the numbers. I don't know for sure
what the real answer is or if there even is one (it could just be that
marketing thought 37% sounded more elaborate than a round number like 40%
while also costing less to produce and tasting the same), but one shouldn't
forget to apply Occam's razor here.
[1] a quick Google search gives me this:
[http://www.talkfood.com/forum/showthread.php/3230-37-Chocola...](http://www.talkfood.com/forum/showthread.php/3230-37-Chocolate-
chips-cookies)
------
001sky
This is incredibly confusing: 37% of what? By mass or by volume?
The answer about even distribution pre-supposes physical dispersion
characteristics, but does not mention which measure of proportion is relevant
(it would seem volume); nor any means of reliable testing. As another
commenter has aluded, the "100% chocolate%" concept (even for the chocolate)
is also at best inaccurate. So, this looks to be more of a coincidental
alignemnet of numbers, and a game of causation/correlation. To wit: A cookie
with 37% by volume of 72% chocolate is in no way the same cookie as one with
37% by mass of 40% milk chocolate. Either by taste, consistency, or chemistry.
So, i would think any proper answer for this question would need to be robust
the these particulars.
~~~
tpurves
I read the hypothesis as relating the appearance of the cookie. That is the
proportionate ratio of visible chocolate to dough on the surface of the cookie
as it relates to the maximizing the visual appeal of the cookie on product
packaging.
So we are talking about "perceived" cookie quality based on visible surface
area of chocolate.
Now in this case, what I think is happening here is that we are observing a
simple case of the golden ratio. Humans, consistently and subconsciously see
distributions of ~38% to be harmonious (sometimes crudely approximated as the
rule of thirds).
Therefore it stands to reason that this "golden mean" ratio of visible
chocolate creates the most visibly appealing image.
With the cooperation of a chocolate chip packaging manufacturer or online
retailer we could test this. Simply conduct some extensive A/B testing of chip
packaging that varies only by ratio of visible chocolate. And see if the
golden mean comes out best.
However, I suspect this testing has already been done.
As for the best _tasting_ ratios of all ingredients (including chocolate) in a
chocolate chip cookie, fortunately, significant research in this area has
recently been published. You may have seen this link from the food lab:
[http://sweets.seriouseats.com/2013/12/the-food-lab-the-
best-...](http://sweets.seriouseats.com/2013/12/the-food-lab-the-best-
chocolate-chip-cookies.html)
~~~
001sky
> great article.
------
OldSchool
Reminds me of the movie "Pi."
"Max... You will find that thing everywhere... As soon as you discard
scientific rigor, you're no longer a mathematician, you're a numerologist."
[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d1IzNKIHhp0](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d1IzNKIHhp0)
~~~
mjn
My favorite recent example of that:
[http://www.2014equals420.com/about.html](http://www.2014equals420.com/about.html)
It starts with the curious observation that 2014, spoken aloud as "twenty
fourteen", becomes "teen 420" in reverse. Perhaps just a coincidence. But then
it further notes that April 20, or 4/20, is the date of Easter in 2014. Two
coincidences! Now the numerologist starts getting suspicious...
~~~
wtetzner
I don't get it. What does "Teen 420" mean? How can it be equal to 2014 if it's
the reverse of saying 2014?
~~~
mjn
The number has somehow become significant in marijuana subculture:
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/420_(cannabis_culture)](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/420_\(cannabis_culture\))
------
drakaal
All that and nobody figured out that the cookie isn't 63% things that are not
chocolate chips. The Chips are milk instead of semi-sweet and so they are 37%
Chocolate.
Just like these are not 28% not Chocolate bar.
[http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B004BR1C46?tag=itemsid-20](http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B004BR1C46?tag=itemsid-20)
~~~
biot
Nice affiliate link. You should print that as a QR code onto a t-shirt and
send it to Archive.org.
~~~
drakaal
I would, but the commission on chocolate is so low that I don't think I would
get a good ROI.
But I did sell 3 Chocolate bars with that link so it might work out better
than I thought.
I'll promise in a week to do a follow up with stats from the link and Post it
on HN "How I made 84 cents on a single Hacker News Post And So Can You"
------
liebfraumilch
I think the answer given by dfc is the correct interpretation: the chips are
37% chocolate, not that the cookies are 37% chocolate chips.
------
jrockway
I doubt it has anything to do with 1/e. Someone in marketing probably liked
the number 37% and manufacturing said, "yeah, that won't cost us much extra".
Nothing to do with infinite sums or the distribution of chocolate chips in
dough. Just marketing.
For the same reason, why is Ivory 99.44% pure? Because 99.44% sounded catchier
than 99%.
------
DanBC
Clifford Stoll has a great chocolate chip cookie recipe in his book "cuckoos
egg" \- about his experience tracking crackers through international networks.
(With cameo appearance from RTM and the worm).
I'd put it here but the experience of cutting / pasting on iPhone is painful.
(Hints and tips gratefully received).
~~~
sp332
"Two eggs, 1 cup brown sugar, 1/2 cup regular sugar, 2 sticks softened butter.
Fold in 2 1/4 cups flour, 1/2 teaspoon salt, 1 teaspoon baking soda, and a
couple tablespoons of vanilla. For an extra chocolate jag, toss in 3
tablespoons of cocoa. Oh, don't forget 2 cups of chocolate chips. Bake 'em at
375 degrees for 10 minutes."
This is very similar to the Toll House cookie recipe, but with even more
vanilla which I think is an excellent idea. And that extra cocoa powder looks
good too!
Edit: For metric measures, 250 ml white sugar, 250 ml soft butter, 530 ml
flour, 2.5 ml salt, 5 ml baking soda, 30 ml vanilla, (optional 45 ml cocoa),
250 ml chocolate chips.
I wonder if someone could do this in by-weight measures? Flour is too
compressible to measure accurately by volume.
~~~
sp332
Whoops, plus 125 ml white sugar for the metric.
------
aaronsnoswell
"Someone once briefly explained to me why it is that chocolate chip cookies
have 37% chocolate in them." -Someone once pulled your leg mate.
------
bluedino
They shouldn't. The best cookies are going to have ~ 60% cacao chips.
------
auctiontheory
I like my cookies to contain πr² chocolate chips.
------
unfunco
I would like a cookie with 62% chocolate chips.
~~~
PeterWhittaker
Years ago I embarked upon a quest to maximize the amount of chips I could put
into a cookie and still have it meet a rough operational definition of cookie:
It had to look like a cookie and I had to be able to pick it up and eat
without getting chocolate on my fingers.
In other words, a blob of chocolate wouldn't qualify, but a blob of chocolate
with pastry handles might.
But that seemed like a lot of work and not very Occam-y.
I found that by playing with the butter-flour-chip ratio, I could get a very
thin very crisp cookie, almost more of a wafer, that I could grasp by the
edges and lift to my mouth with clean fingers; there was enough chocolate that
the shock of biting in didn't travel through the cookie and cause it to break,
but enough dough to prevent anything beyond reasonable crumbs from falling
away.
I cannot remember the recipe and don't know if I ever wrote it down, but I'm
pretty sure the order by quantity was chips, butter, flour, and maybe an egg
or two.
62%? Yeah, well past that, if memory serves.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Black Hole Sun: a slight reversal of fortune for Apple - eiramanit
http://siracusa.tumblr.com/post/513260338/black-hole-sun
======
tptacek
(a) Apple was never in my recollection a huge gravitational force for
engineering talent. Google was, almost from day one. I don't see what's
changed.
(b) There are high-profile people who have taken positions at Apple recently.
~~~
whyenot
I think when the Advanced Technology Group existed at Apple (closed in 1997 by
Steve Jobs), it did tend to attract some big names such as Alan Kay and Gary
Starkweather (inventor of the laser printer). Maybe not a huge gravitational
force, but still noticeable.
~~~
tptacek
Yes, and I think that gravitational "tug" is pretty much still there. Bear in
mind, they may also attract a different class of high-caliber engineer than
typically contributes to Hacker News: RF, chip design, industrial design...
I _know_ they have some pull in security now, and they don't exactly have a
spotless reputation for security, so I don't think it's the news cycle that's
doing it.
------
edge17
the "gravitational sink" argument makes no sense. you could have said the same
thing about microsoft 10 years ago, but look at what a difference 10 years has
made.
silicon valley and the technology industry is a desert of shifting sand dunes.
i remember telling my old man the same thing about microsoft, but he just told
me to wait and see. he's an economist, and much smarter than me.
------
coliveira
If having James Gosling were so important for a company's success, then SUN
wouldn't have the end it had. Truth is, the success of a tech company is the
combination of good engineering and smart business practices -- and the second
element is the most important to make money.
------
kevbin
How far did big-name talent hoarding get Microsoft or the Washington Redskins
over the last 10 or 12 years? Going after big names is a warning sign.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
(Dis)Functional Bowling (FP/TDD debate) - fogus
http://alaska-kamtchatka.blogspot.com/2009/07/disfunctional-bowling.html
======
akeefer
There's nothing like a totally contrived example to prove absolutely nothing
about the efficacy of any given methodology or programming paradigm.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Minefold (YC W12) is powering down - Kenan
http://blog.minefold.com/post/62013928578
======
anthonyb
For me it was the opposite - I was quite happy to pay, but didn't have enough
control of, or visibility into, what was going on on the server.
I set up a minefold instance for my daughter and her friends to play on,
having previously spent time setting up and maintaining a custom server for
her and her friends. Unfortunately, disputes between kids tend to escalate
into all out war unless you can monitor and keep a lid on things, so Minefold
wasn't the answer either.
------
manlycode
If you liked Minefold, I'm working on a service called Pickaxe
([http://get.pickaxe.io](http://get.pickaxe.io)) that's in a similar vein.
It's not up and running yet, BUT you can still register to be eligible to
beta-test it (for free) when it's available.
[http://get.pickaxe.io](http://get.pickaxe.io)
~~~
chrislloyd
Good luck! Homepage looks great.
------
lowglow
Hey Chris and Dave, This is Dan. I'd love for you to come on Techendo
([http://techendo.co/](http://techendo.co/)) and have me interview you about
your experiences running minefold. I think you've seen a lot and have a lot to
share with other entrepreneurs who are trying their own thing now.
------
Debugreality
Better luck next time guys. Unfortunately they don't always work out. Nice
exit note.
Game development and game related development is pretty tough market to crack
unfortunately.
------
CrazedGeek
Aww, I liked Minefold a lot. I think it was a tad too expensive, though: for
my own uses, it was a good order of magnitude cheaper to rent a "normal"
server. Still sad to see it go.
------
iancarroll
I loved Minefold. Sadly, I never got to fully use it. It was a great way to
play with some friends though. It sucks they shut it down.
------
speeq
Sad to see another great Minecraft host go down. Minefold and CloudCrafting
were the only two hosts which offered hourly servers.
------
andrewflnr
Gawd, freemium is one thing, but it takes some balls to tell a for-profit
company, "yeah, your product is great, you just need to make the whole thing
free." I understand being accustomed to things being free on teh intarwebs,
since I am as well, but do people not take the half-second necessary to
realize that it has to be paid for _somehow_ , or it doesn't happen at all?
What fraction of the population is really this dumb?
------
kunle
Chris and Dave are a class act. Sad to see em go.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Metis: MIT's Multicore MapReduce in C++ - snihalani
http://pdos.csail.mit.edu/metis/
======
pilooch
The paper indicates good performance increase compared to phoenix. Very
welcome and useful, thanks!
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Automatically Link Twitter Usernames In Content - paulund
http://www.paulund.co.uk/automatically-link-twitter
======
ColinWright
... on WordPress - like that's the only system anyone ever uses.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Compiling at Compile Time - luu
https://blog.veitheller.de/Compiling_at_Compile_Time.html
======
ephaeton
"At runtime, we could use cond for that, but since that is a macro as well, we
can’t use it at compile time."
D'oh. Who writes a lisp with macros where you can't use macros at macro-
expansion-time??
------
sansnomme
In Nim:
[https://howistart.org/posts/nim/1/](https://howistart.org/posts/nim/1/)
~~~
jeff_ciesielski
I wrote something similar a while back (also in nim):
[https://github.com/Jeff-Ciesielski/synesthesia](https://github.com/Jeff-
Ciesielski/synesthesia)
When I stop being so darn busy, I do want to revisit my original project of
doing the same thing for a FORTH derivative.
------
windsurfer
This is horrifying and awesome.
------
rgoulter
See also: Compile-Time Snake [https://github.com/mattbierner/STT-C-Compile-
Time-Snake](https://github.com/mattbierner/STT-C-Compile-Time-Snake)
------
gnulinux
Hah, remember doing this in C++ templates when I learned C++ metaprogramming
is Turing complete, back in high school. Named my library yabi "yet another
brainfuck implementation". Simpler times.
------
w-m
And then there's this compile-time C compiler implemented as C++14 constant
expressions of course:
[https://github.com/keiichiw/constexpr-8cc](https://github.com/keiichiw/constexpr-8cc)
Can be only months now, until somebody combines a constexpr compile-time C-to-
WASM compiler with a constexpr compile-time WASM interpreter to run any
software ever written, at compile time..
~~~
lonelappde
That would require emulating all syscalls (side-effects) to get a mock of the
Real World inside the compile time environment.
~~~
enriquto
the path to glory is a long and arduous one
------
rurban
Only lisp macros, no magic
~~~
m463
in lisp lambda is the definition of magic
~~~
rurban
no, macros are
------
hr0m
In D with D "mixins":
[https://github.com/m3m0ry/drainfuck](https://github.com/m3m0ry/drainfuck)
~~~
Doxin
You might be better off linking directly to the source code:
[https://github.com/m3m0ry/drainfuck/blob/master/source/app.d](https://github.com/m3m0ry/drainfuck/blob/master/source/app.d)
For people unfamiliar with D, a mixin is essentially equivalent to compile-
time eval. you call mixin() with a string, that call then gets replaced with
that string compiled as D code. Combine that with the fact that you can run
arbitrary code at compile time in D and you get brainfuck-as-a-DSL in 27 lines
of code.
------
keyle
Posts like these is why I read HN religiously!
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Show HN: Opp.io – Meetings. Followed. Up - bujatt
https://opp.io/frontpage/
======
tixocloud
Had a peek and love the concept! Having worked in many different environments,
this could be a great tool to help everyone stay on track.
------
eecks
You really need an example on the front page
~~~
bujatt
Hi eecks, you mean of the integrations?
~~~
eecks
Your first screen shot shows an example in a browser. It would be cool to see
that as a demo.
~~~
bujatt
hi eecks, do you think a video would help?
[http://cl.ly/3u3I0c050Y1G](http://cl.ly/3u3I0c050Y1G) (we have this but we
want to fine tune it)
------
bujatt
Hi, I am one of the guys behind this. Would love to hear your feedback on our
tool.
~~~
galfarragem
Looks interesting WHEN integrated with other software (Evernote, Slack,
Trello, etc). If not is yet another app to deal with.
~~~
bujatt
Just tapped on our roadmap :)
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Developer/designer partner for a side project. - gianluka
Hello Guys!<p>I am Gianluca Rispo, a hundred % Italian designer. Except that, I am a really great thinker with a lot of ideas.<p>I was wondering if there were out there, someone who has design (hybrid front-end, UI) or development skills who wanted to partner up in these neat ideas for possible future startups.<p>Feel free to contact me on twitter @GianlucaRispo or email gianlucarispo (at) outlook.com<p>Cheers!
======
mahadazad
Please see your email, I just sent.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Sneak Peek of PineTime Smart Watch and Why It’s Perfect for Teaching IoT - freedomben
https://medium.com/swlh/sneak-peek-of-pinetime-smart-watch-and-why-its-perfect-for-teaching-iot-81b74161c159
======
haspoken
Twitter link for article so all can view it:
[https://t.co/b6b5ctZSXd](https://t.co/b6b5ctZSXd)
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
DigitalOcean raises $100M in debt as it scales toward revenue of $300M - drchiu
https://techcrunch.com/2020/02/20/digitalocean-raises-100m-in-debt-as-it-scales-towards-revenue-of-300m-profitability/
======
cdolan
This article had more detail and substance than I usually find on TechCrunch
or startup coverage in general. I do want to point out two things that
bothered me in the article:
1\. Using the word “raise” when talking about financing via debt seems
inappropriate and very start-upy. This is a low cost of capital line of
credit, is it not (due to their infrastructure and broad customer base)?
2\. Why in the world are statements like this not met with scorn? _“... scale
to $1 billion in revenue in the next five years, and it will become free cash
flow profitable (something the CEO also referred to, loosely, as
profitability) in the next two.“_
On point #2 - thats NOT profitability. Thats called “Cash Flow Positive”, and
its an incredible achievement, but definitions matter. In my opinion, “cash
flow profitable” isn’t a real thing (its “cash flow positive”), but the real
issue is - cash flow positive ≠ profitability.
_Edit: On why definitions matter, recall WeWork “Community Adjusted EBITDA”._
_Edit #2: The Author knows that the CEO is making stuff up, which is why this
bothers me. It’s evident by the parenthetical disclaimer, “...(something the
CEO also referred to, loosely, as profitability)”.... Then call the CEO out,
Alex Wilhelm (author), if you think its BS!_
~~~
gruglife
Regarding point #2, many in the finance world (which I work in) consider cash
flow positive a better representation of actual profitability than the actual
net profit/loss reported on the P&L. In short, cash flow shows if the actual
core business is bringing in money or losing money, while the net profit
includes a lot of "noise" (probably not the best word to use but can't think
of how to phrase this). For example, depreciation is an expense reported on
the P&L but the company isn't actually moving money out of their accounts to
pay someone for depreciation. This is known as a non-cash expense and effects
the overall net profit reported on the P&L. Also, companies can be motivated
to show 0 or negative profit on the P&L to avoid paying corporate tax. Amazon
was notorious for this as any profit they had, they would re-invest back into
the business.
Whenever I look at the profitability of the company, I don't look at the P&L
number but jump to the cash flow statement and look at Net Cash Flows from
Operating Activities (the first of three). First, I look if this positive, and
second, if it is growing over time.
Hope this helps
~~~
scarface74
Not counting depreciation as part of your loss in a business is about like all
of the Uber drivers who don’t take into account the wear and tear on their
cars when calculating how much money they are making. Depreciation is a real
expense. If you depreciate an asset down from $1000 to $0 in 3 years, you’re
accounting for the fact that in three years you are going to have to replace
it.
There is a reason we have GAAP, to keep crap like WeWork’s “Community Adjusted
Ebitda” and Uber from saying that their financials _really_ aren’t as bad as
they look if you ignore a dozen expenses.
~~~
kaetemi
Imagine you're a growing startup, and you have a yearly recurring investment
(you're growing, after all!) of $1000 that's linearly depreciated over 5
years.
Let's say your income is 1100$ each year.
Your profit, according to accounting, would be 900$ for the first year,
counting only $200 of the investment, then for the following years you'll see
a profit of $700, $500, $300, and $100, as the investments accumulate. Oh no!
A downward trend!
The cash flow, however, will simply show $100 profit each year.
Which one is more representative of the growing business with recurring
investments?
~~~
amscanne
In year one, you’re generating $1100 of income with $1000 of capital invested
(that will last 5 years).
By year five, you’re generating $1100 of income with $5000 of capital invested
(that will require $1000 each year to keep up).
You’re _way_ better off in year one here, so it seems the GAAP approach is
actually showing the decline accurately. This isn’t a growing startup, it’s a
startup needing more equipment to make the same money each year.
~~~
kaetemi
You're right, growing capital but not growing income... I made a poor example.
(Imagining a bottom pricing scenario, while keeping a positive cashflow.)
Good point. At year 6 this logic breaks down. (Then again, no longer a
'startup' at that point.) Better hope the replacement equipment is double
worth it's money. :)
Should make some spreadsheets with more scenarios.
------
dcchambers
I have some personal stuff hosted on DO. I really like their options, service,
their branding, UX/UI, etc...but they are kind of in a weird spot. Halfway
between being good for cheap personal projets, and being good for enterprise.
If I want a simple VPS there are cheaper options.
If I am an enterprise spending millions/year on cloud infra I am probably only
looking at AWS, Azure, GCP, etc.
How does DO get out of this spot? I want them to succeed and I will continue
to support them as the big guys need the competition, but I fail to see how
they compete against the likes of Amazon without undercutting
significantly...and that won't bring profits. I think the margins on cloud
infra is already pretty thin.
~~~
raiyu
You hit the nail on the head, we are best for SMBs and teams that want to get
things done quickly and don't need the hyperscale and added complexity of AWS.
Our focus has always been on simplicity and as our customer needs and our own
internal needs have grown we've added additional products to continue to allow
customers to scale with us. We launched with just Droplets in 2012 and have
since added block storage, Spaces object storage, load balancing, kubernetes,
managed databases, firewalls, and more.
Our goal isn't to be bigger than AWS or Google, but simply to provide a great
service to our customers and to continue to expand our offering as those needs
grow.
~~~
dkersten
What I really wish for is a simple way of running docker containers (like AWS
Fargate, or at least ECS), because I want to run docker containers across
multiple droplets, but I don't want the full complexity of Kubernetes. Also
something akin to auto-scaling groups. If DO had those, I'd use it a whole lot
more than I do (currently I only spend use approx. $140/month on DO).
~~~
mattste
I just led a migration for my small team from Zeit Now to Render
([https://render.com/](https://render.com/)). It has filled this need pretty
well. There are some features that I wish existed but overall the simplicity
has been great for our use case. They do not have auto-scaling but it's
planned
([https://feedback.render.com/features/p/autoscaling](https://feedback.render.com/features/p/autoscaling)).
~~~
Kkoala
How is Render different from Heroku? It seems like a slightly more expensive
than Heroku with slightly fewer features?
~~~
anurag
Render is more flexible than Heroku: you can host apps that rely on disks
(like Elasticsearch and MySQL), private services, cron jobs, and of course
free static sites. You also get automatic zero downtime deploys, health checks
and small but handy features like HTTP/2 and automatic HTTP->HTTPS redirects.
It's considerably less expensive as your application scales: a webapp that
needs 3GB RAM costs $50/month on Render; on Heroku you'll pay $250/month for
2.5GB RAM, and $500/month for the next tier (14GB RAM).
And you get free chat support.
------
rsync
"Spruill told TechCrunch that DigitalOcean will scale to $1 billion in revenue
in the next five years, and it will become free cash flow profitable
(something the CEO also referred to, loosely, as profitability) in the next
two."
I find this to be incredible. DO is not a speculative e-business ... they are
not a social network. They are the proverbial sellers of picks and shovels
during the gold rush:
"The way to get rich during the gold rush isn't mining gold - it's selling the
picks and shovels."
Here is a pick and shovel seller that can't make a profit and is going into
debt ...
~~~
djsumdog
Did they miss their window? Would this business make more sense during the
2001 dot-com craze? Are startups currently afraid to go with anyone who isn't
AWS/GCE/Azure because they understand the cost of moving platforms is high?
~~~
loldigitalocean
No. Compare Linode and DigitalOcean. Linode bootstrapped, took very few
financial instruments to aid the journey, had a few missteps along the way,
completely reinvented the entire business more than once, and still serves a
niche that makes them a successful (and profitable, as in real profitable, not
imaginary profitable) company. Their margins are quite good. Slicehost had a
solid business when Rackspace bought them, too, despite Rackspace subsequently
burying that business in their wandering-through-tech mass grave.
DigitalOcean, on the other hand, took a Sand Hill approach and is throwing
money at becoming an AWS unicorn without realizing they are never going to be
AWS. Read this carefully, DO: you will never, ever, _ever_ be AWS. Full stop.
You are not in the conversation, nor is Linode, nor is prgmr (but lsc knows
that), nor is Vultr, and so on, and so on. Ask IBM about trying to take on
AWS.
DigitalOcean is an incredible waste of capital and appears almost as if they
didn’t bother to look at Linode’s story at all. The companies are nearly
identical behind the scenes and are pursuing the exact same addressable
market, but one is a VC darling intent on burning capital on a _completely_
solved problem and therefore gets VC ecosystem attention and expands to fill
that attention. Seriously, you can address this market with Excel and some
Python scripts; I exaggerate, but not much. The amount of money DigitalOcean
spends given my intimate familiarity with the problem space has been baffling
to me for the last decade.
DigitalOcean should buy Linode with this debt so the Linode people can come in
and fire the right people at DO and shed about seven hundred pounds of weight.
When, not if, when DigitalOcean collapses, Linode will continue on and enjoy a
sudden inflow of DO’s market share. Linode long predates DO and will postdate
them, too.
I have a poor opinion of Linode in a lot of ways, by the way, so.
~~~
raiyu
Our original business was bootstrapped with no outside investment so we know
that growth model very well. In fact that bootstrapping allowed us to build
DigitalOcean when no VCs were interested in funding us by self-funding through
the profits from our original business.
The problem with the approach you detailed is that it is based on growth rate.
If you have more customers coming to you than you have cash on hand to buy
servers, you will be forced to turn customers away.
So if you are growing rapidly you will need outside investment, whether equity
or debt, in order to grow the business.
In our case we raised equity that helped us to secure additional debt terms
and also due to our high growth after product market fit we also needed
additional cash to continue to build out our operations.
I'm a fan of bootstrapping businesses and not raising outside capital unless
it is necessary, but in our case the choice was to raise capital or turn away
customers.
~~~
loldigitalocean
I’ll reiterate the margins. Based on your account, my suspicion is only
reinforced, actually: if you had big enough capacity problems to need a $3
million round to buy gear at the size you were in 2013, I’m mystified that
your margins were that low. Was that the $10/month decision biting you (notice
Linode waited) or the far bigger headcount? How far Linode got on basically
two technical employees, including the founder driving gear to the datacenter
in the back of his Ridgeline, would seemingly surprise you, as would when the
revenue was sufficient to sustain ongoing server spend. Linode ran out of
capacity ALL THE TIME. It’s a HUGE market. Turning away a customer is not
fatal in the slightest.
One server, three months, paid off. Two months profit, next server. Linode
_leased_ in the beginning! I’m not arrogant enough to assume I could do it
better, but I do know the technical side very well, and with an American
Express and a decent funnel of people you know you can be profitable in under
a year at this. The fundamentals of what is basically a rack-and-stack game,
and what is possible with $400 million of capital... it just doesn’t align
with how I’d expect a VPS provider to operate, but you’ve convinced the
checkbooks to keep it going, I guess.
I actually compare DO and Linode’s approach all the time as an example of VC
methodology versus patience. The $400 million raise game is not appropriate
for the VPS space. It’s a market literally defined by bootstrappers.
If you hit $1 billion ARR in that market, by the way, I’ll shut up. Knowing
what I know about the market, that sounds about as likely as DigitalOcean
colonizing Mars, but I’ll applaud you if you do it.
~~~
raiyu
I apologize. I'm confused - is the point that we should have raised less debt?
Or not used debt?
Linode was founded in 2003 and grew to $100MM in revenue in 16 years.
DigitalOcean was founded in 2011 and launched in 2012 and grew to $250MM in
revenue in 7 years.
Stands to reason we would need more money over a shorter period of time to
achieve that.
The $3MM seed round wasn't used to buy equipment but to fund the business. It
improved our balance sheet which allowed us to obtain more leases from vendors
which were getting worried about how much exposure they had to us without much
of a financial history.
Secondly, we went from signing up 5 customers a day to 250 customers a day
after product market fit. When we signed up 5 customers a day I could do most
of the customer support myself along with one employee and some backstop from
our original company. But at 250 customers signing up every day we obviously
needed a dedicated support team, so there were immediate necessities to hiring
more people as we went from an "idea/product" to a complete company. We didn't
need to hire one more support person, we needed to hire an entire support team
over night so that we could have 24/7/365 coverage. Again hard to do that if
you don't have capital available to pay salaries. And that's just one
team/function of the company that underwent tremendous stress pre and post
product market fit.
As for the financial health of the business:
The debt terms require repayment as you yourself know. Whether you use leases
or have a single larger structure like debt, either way this isn't "burn"
money. You need to repay it with interest.
With an equity raise you can "burn" the money because you never have to repay
it, as investors received stock in exchange for the funds.
When you look at the equity side of the business we have raised a total of
$123MM to date and the last raise was in July 2015. We haven't raised any
outside equity capital to fund the business since then.
Meaning that we are capital efficient and not losing $50MM/yr or some
outrageous amount. Otherwise we would have been forced to raise an additional
round of funding.
------
Sohcahtoa82
Does DO still disconnect your droplet from the Internet for three hours if you
get DDoSed?
That's what made me switch from DO to AWS a few years ago. I used my droplet
as an IRC bouncer to hide my home IP address. I'm an op in an IRC channel and
someone started spamming racial slurs, so I banned them. They responded with a
DDoS. I could tell my connection was a bit slow, but nothing crashed, but then
it dropped offline and I got an e-mail from DO saying they're taking my
droplet offline to protect their network.
Made me realize that I could never use them for any sort of game server, since
the skids love to fire up LOIC whenever they get upset.
~~~
staller
Did you continue to get DDoS after moving to AWS? I figure that AWS would take
similar steps if you are not using Shield or one of their other products that
would help mitigation.
I'd like to know if anyone has experience there.
~~~
realmod
All instances use shield by default IIRC.
~~~
jerryoftheyear
There are two levels of AWS Shield, "Standard" and "Advanced". You are correct
that all instances receive "Standard" protection from Shield by default.
[https://aws.amazon.com/shield/](https://aws.amazon.com/shield/)
------
mhb
Raising $100M in debt is the same as borrowing $100M, right?
~~~
patio11
Those are two ways to phrase the same thought, yes, but there are things about
raising corporate debt which don't necessarily line up 1:1 with expectations
consumers might have about borrowing money.
One example, which is de rigeur for raising debt via bond issuance or for very
large loans from banks, is "covenants" (restrictions on your future behavior
for the duration the debt is in place), which may foreclose your ability to do
things you'd otherwise want to do or may cause those things to become more
costly than you'd otherwise expect them to be.
A few trivial examples of covenants: "Here's $50 million, but if you ever have
less than $5 million in the bank, you're in default." or "Here's $50 million,
but if your net cash burn ever exceeds $5 million in a quarter, you're in
default." or "Here's $50 million, but if you need any more money, it has to
come from us at whatever pricing we decide to make available. If you issue
debt or equity elsewhere, you're in default."
You very urgently do not want to default.
One can imagine other features. Historically, the downside protections for
debt investors in startups were _extremely_ toothy [0]. This is one reason
startups have been askance about raising debt historically. (Another reason is
that VCs, who invest to get equity, tell founders "Please don't get money from
my competitors", generally not in exactly those words.)
[0] This is a polite way to say "They routinely were written to wipe out all
common equityholders like e.g. employees and founders."
~~~
hinkley
Is there a hypothetical situation where I could broker a deal where some new
investor with extremely deep pockets makes that loan go away and gives me
extra money all in one transaction?
'default' means 'pay us back now or give us your collateral', right?
~~~
patio11
You might or might not be allowed to do that.
US consumers generally expect there to be no pre-payment penalty. That isn’t a
universal feature of all loans. As to particular features of particular loans
ask the really expensive lawyers or investment bankers who negotiated them,
but plausibly “I owe you $45M; here’s a new equity investor; we’re done after
the wire clears right.” might lead to “We agree you owe us $60M.”
~~~
hinkley
I remember when I was just out of college, I was warned that there was such a
thing as a mortgage that did not allow for extra payments, and that you should
check for that when applying.
If you couldn't, or even if you did the payment incorrectly, anything extra
would just be treated as if you sent your payment in for the subsequent month
a little early. I've heard of the latter happening to friends, but I've never
seen or heard of the former.
~~~
bluedino
Many loans you have to be careful that you don't pay them like that. If you
don't specify that you're paying down principal with the extra, it just goes
toward next month's payment. So next month you might only owe $50 instead of
$500.
------
humbfool2
I host my websites on DO. Their UI and API is really cool. Linode and Scaleway
both lost my data. DO is far more reliable than Linode and scale way. It's
always good to have options to choose from. I hope they succeed.
Companies like Netlify, Zeit and Heroku are also doing good but I don't see
any Enterprise applications for such services.
One thing I especially like about DO is that they are not stagnant in terms of
features. They continuously keep adding new features.
~~~
brandon272
How did Linode and Scaleway lose your data?
------
nknealk
To raise a material amount of debt, lenders generally require there to be
collateralized physical assets against that debt. Compare that to equity
financing which firms can use on literally anything (eg. marketing spend,
hiring, etc).
So my guess is the $100M is going to go towards expanding their data centers
in some way. We might see new regions from DO in the coming years or
additional server types/services that run on top of those new servers.
~~~
cdolan
The first part of your comment I’d say is accurate, but why would they have to
spend a meaningful part of the $100 mil debt on infrastructure?
DO likely collateralized their existing infrastructure to get the $100 mil
line of credit/debt, but will spend the $100 mil on other things in addition
to some infrastructure (as the article suggested)
------
GekkePrutser
I used them for my private VPSes but they became too big and business-like.
I moved to Scaleway now, it's still in a much earlier stage, cheaper and with
unlimited bandwidth. I like the way you can still talk directly to their guys
on slack to ask questions. However they're becoming big too. I hope they'll
still love us and I don't have to move again soon :)
~~~
chrysoprace
What's your experience with the service? I'm with Linode at the moment,
primarily because DO doesn't have an Aussie region. Seems like Scaleway is
much better value for money; however reviews on Reddit don't seem favourable.
~~~
termau
Try binarylane if you're in aus
~~~
PixyMisa
BinaryLane are amazing.
------
polote
A lot of complains here but I don't understand why is that worse than raising
the same amount of money from VC ?
~~~
dwild
A VC does the deal in exchange of a part of the company. They will make their
money once you exit, either by becoming public, or by an acquisition. The deal
can be different and could certainly include some kind of repayment, but
that's not the norm for a VC deal.
A loan has to be repaid though, whether the company exit or not. The terms are
fixed and you need to pay them. This can be quite hard when you get a few bad
months, while a VC will just get sad if that happens.
~~~
icedchai
Assuming a successful outcome, VC deals are actually more expensive. They cost
founders and common holders much more in potential returns. Don't forget about
the dividends associated with preferred shares. Those shares are basically
earning interest, just like debt.
Given that nobody expects to fail, why wouldn't a company do debt _if_ they
can afford it and are credit worthy?
And the bad outcome for both is the same: the company goes broke.
------
neom
DigitalOcean has always had loads of debt, it's how you build such a capex
heavy business, you use lease lines and credit.
~~~
djsumdog
I wonder if they would have if they didn't have to cut prices to compete with
Vultr.
~~~
Dirlewanger
First time I'm hearing of Vultr...they look like a carbon copy of DO. What
does Vultr have that they don't?
~~~
porker
> What does Vultr have that they don't?
According to multiple HN users, a more unreliable (internal) network.
~~~
bluedino
Ironically I moved from DO to Vultr because their network was more reliable
------
gexla
Echoing a lot of other comments here. I don't get why DigitalOcean exists. I
would never use them over AWS, GCP, or Azure. They can't beat anyone on cost
or functionality. I'm not convinced on simplicity. The other platforms aren't
that difficult to use and for some you have to deal with regardless. For
example, if you want to use Google Maps, then you need to use GCP to get
access to the API. Since you're already in there, it's not much further to
setup a VPS.
~~~
jdance
I'm a DO customer. I tried to figure out what running a windows server would
cost on Azure once (since DO doesn't provide windows). I didn't manage to
figure it out after like 20 minutes, and the complexity was just mind blowing.
I literally got a bit of a shock, and felt pretty stupid that I couldn't
figure out such a simple thing. The thought going through my head was
something like "does people actually use this?". So that's a radically
different perspective for you :)
~~~
gexla
I haven't used Azure much. But because it's Microsoft, it's going to be a
default option for a lot of customers who are entrenched in the MS world.
AWS is complex also, but I remember when you're only option to launch an EC2
instance was through the command line. And it's still easier to figure out
than most of my tech stack. Not that I need to be adding anything with
needless complexity.
I do actually like DigitalOcean, but in an AWS / GCP / Azure world I feel it's
best to learn one of those well.
------
BonoboIO
DigitalOcean has raised a total of $305.4M in funding over 11 rounds. Their
latest funding was raised on Dec 27, 2018 from a Secondary Market round. [1]
[1]
[https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/digitalocean#section...](https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/digitalocean#section-
funding-rounds)
~~~
raiyu
Crunchbase lumps together everything including debt as funding. DigitalOcean
raised $123MM in equity and the last raise was an $83MM Series B led by Access
in 2015. There hasn't been a need since to raise equity investment and instead
debt is being used to continue to grow the business and expand our
infrastructure footprint.
------
chrshawkes
I prefer Linode. Same level of service, if not better and cheaper. Linode does
100 million in revenue and as far as I can tell they aren't borrowing against
their future to get it.
~~~
bklyn11201
My guess is that a company like Linode with 100 million in revenue is using
lines of credit to make large purchases of servers that will pay off over time
as their revenue grows. I'm not sure what's scary about D.O. borrowing 1/3 of
this year's revenue to continue growing.
------
reedwolf
What happens when one of these mini-cloud providers like DO, Linode, and Vultr
folds?
What are the consequences as a customer?
Does all your data just evaporate into the aether?
~~~
drewnick
Yes, which is why no matter who your provider is, you should have an off-site
backup.
------
Elect2
What stopped me from using DO is that they will null your server IP address if
the server got DDOS. I never heart aws/gcp did this.
------
chirau
I was at fireside chat with the DigitalOcean CEO. Not once did he mention
this. Very interesting though. I have always thought that debt would be the
only way they grow and remain relevant in a crowded cloud space.
------
Tokkemon
My company recently moved all their hosting to DO and we couldn't be happier.
It's some of the best hosting we've ever had, especially their Spaces product.
------
brianbreslin
What is their current valuation? I wondered if google or microsoft would buy
them, amazon can't due to anti-trust issues, but the others might be able to.
~~~
capableweb
I'm interested to hear how the reasoning is behind thinking that Amazon would
be hit by any anti-trust issues and not Google or Microsoft. As far as I know,
all three of them are in the cloud/hosting business.
~~~
toast0
Google and Microsoft don't have a dominant market position in cloud hosting;
and their other dominant positions don't seem to be impacting the cloud
marketplace (well, maybe Microsoft is doing some tying)
~~~
wu_187
Google and Microsoft actually do have dominant positions in cloud hosting,
just not in the "traditional" sense of webhosting.
------
luord
I was reminded about the "debt is coming" post that was shared a couple of
weeks back. This is a good example of that, I think.
~~~
steve_adams_86
It seems from what I've read here that digitalocean has always carried
relatively higher debt than other, similar companies. It might not be a good
example.
------
captncraig
Didn't they just have layoffs recently?
~~~
Tokkemon
For restructuring purposes.
~~~
almost_usual
Isn’t that every layoff?
------
markus_zhang
I don't see anything about the structure of the debt. Wish we could see more
details.
------
spicyramen
I love DO justo no GPUs
------
floatinglotus
This company has always been a joke.
~~~
Tokkemon
No.
| {
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} |
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