bradfordarner

That is very good to know. That reassures me a little.

I was really impressed with the speed difference they noted between Python and R and the fact that Numba wasn't too much slower than C++ implementations. However, given the state of the R code I became wary of accepting the benchmarks at face value.

I haven't made the jump from R to Python for statistical applications yet. So, this article gave me something to think about. In terms of programmer happiness, I'm willing to live with a little slower performance in Python and not have to spend hours in C++.

It is unfortunate that the authors of this paper didn't reach out to experts in each programming language in order to write high-quality code against which they could have run the analysis. This seems like the perfect use-case for open-source: academic study, subject-matter experts in one area who are stepping outside their areas of expertise and an interesting subject matter.

They should have crowd-sourced the code for this study with a Top Coder-like contest.

'Nothing' is all about context!

Plus, college kids won't be able to steal your data...there isn't any.

Great argument! I think you are making a valid point. If I understand your point correctly, it is primarily a question of placing a value on different activities and comparing the price of a Soylent meal to the opportunity cost of lost time.

I agree with you. Hence, the reason that I completely support the idea that someone else may face a situation in which Soylent becomes the most valuable option. Without a doubt, I think it is better to eat a healthy Soylent meal than cheap fast food. While I do think that $4/meal is incredibly cheap for the cities in which I live, Paris and London, we still are able to eat on less than that amount per meal by shopping uniquely in the produce section of the market.

My logical jumping-off point is that healthy eating habits are the most important factor in long-term health, which leads to more time to devote to meaningful activities because of increased life span and a decrease of down-time due to sickness. In addition to the value derived from long-term health, I think there is also a value to be derived from the enjoyment of food and the exposure to a wide variety of culinary-styles. However, that is a valuation that other may not share.

Well played!!

In fact, I agree with you...I only listen to non-fiction at 2x the speed. Most modern non-fiction has one main point that they stretch out over 200 pages.

I couldn't imagine listening to a novel at double to speed.

It has next to nothing to do with France in and of itself. I'm utilizing a stereotype to make a point.

Yes, I've been living in Paris and London, 2 of the most expensive cities in the world. By the way, I've also lived in Mali, where it was not as easy as one would think to eat for less than $4 per day.

Soylent's tag line is "What if you never had to worry about food again?" If their goal is to focus on healthy eating, then they need to rethink their messaging. The entire message is about the speed of eating. "Eat quick...eat cheaper".

"...never had to worry about food again..." Where in that statement is there any ambiguity about their desire to take market share away from home-cooked meals?

Don't get me wrong, if they can make a business out of it, that is great. However, it strikes me that it would be far more profitable, on an individual level, to buy cheap food from the produce section of a grocery store, and healthier.

Why would anyone want to use this?

I'm a maniac about time management and do everything possible to not waste even a moment of the day (e.g. if I'm doing any trivial physical activity, I'll be listening to an audiobook at 2x speed). However, I would never want to get rid of eating. Since marrying a French woman, I've come to understand the importance of enjoying what you are eating...we aren't simply machines that need to be fed.

$4 dollars per meal is expensive!! My wife and I eat for the 2 of us on less than that in a day...and we eat fresh tuna, organic rice and loads of great vegetables. Just walk through the fresh produce section of your local supermarket...the cheapest stuff in the store and the healthiest is in the produce section.

What time has wasted in all of this exposure to inexpensive, healthy nutrition? None.

One of the biggest wastes of time in one's life is being sick and the other is early death. While I can't speak much about the latter, I'm sick once per year at the maximum and I have not had a debilitating sickness for the past 4 years that has prevented me from working, studying or coding for even a moment. I attribute much of this to my wife's refusal to eat food that is crap.

Maybe that is why the French are healthier...they don't try to reinvent the wheel and replace the thousands of healthy, inexpensive and delicious items that already exist for our pleasure...food!!

Wow! The quantity of bad advice in these comments is shocking, if not down right disturbing.

If Intel, GE, or Mircosoft hired a consultant to advise them on the right move, the vast majority of people on HN would scream bloody-murder and speak about it as a perfect example of big-business and its stupidity. What hypocrisy!

Ben, the reality is that you clearly have moved past Steve Blank's description of a start-up; you have found a working business model. Now, the challenge is to find out if that business model is something that can last for 5 years or 50. No one on this board has run a successful company for 50 years. Thus, everyone, definitely including myself, is well out of their league.

However, since entering the old school world of finance, I have realized that there are many men and women who are twice our age who would be able to give you great advice. You need adult supervision and that is OK. You don't know how to hire an executive (i.e. adult supervision). Thus, you should first find someone who can help you find adult supervision. A great place to start is in the 'boring' industries: finance and manufacturing. Find a wise advisor who can help you find an executive to lead.

You are no longer a start-up. Running a post-start-up company like a start-up will kill it as quickly as running a start-up like a Fortune 500.

Haha, actually I thought about that as I was writing. I was going to change what I wrote a bit for that reason and then I recalled my No. 1 rule in life: "Don't be a douchebag!" and I left what I wrote as is.

Yeah, be careful about that. The head of brand protection at Monster is a guy that I have had business contact with. He is one of my least favorite people I have ever met in my life and I have had the pleasure of speaking with scumbag insurgents/terrorists face-to-face in a war zone.

I'm intrigued by 'premortems' because the name sounds interesting. However, I find myself very hesitant to pay with my email for a 'free' signup unless I know what it is. Even with the examples, I have no idea what a 'premortem' is or what form that takes in your app; its value is still a complete unknown to me even after visiting your site and blog.

I don't see any unique value proposition that offers me value. For those who understand what a 'premortem' is they might find it valuable but I cannot even begin to understand it nor do I find it necessary to invest time enough to find out because I don't understand its value. In the words of Clayton Christensen, what job is it accomplishing? When I walk by a restaurant that is new, I have no idea what the food might taste like but at least I know what value food offers. In this case, I don't even understand the value that 'premortems' offer.

So, I would offer the following suggestions:

1. Give a clear, one line explanation of what can be achieved with a 'premortem' (i.e. what job is getting done; more successful projects doesn't count as a tagline because it gives no explanation of what that means. You set X = 'Premortem' and Y = 'Successful project' but there is no explanation given of the correlation between X and Y.)

2. Give a clear demonstration of that being achieved with an example 'premortem' (i.e. how the job is done with your site)

3. Show pictures/screenshots of that being done (There is currently too much reading to be done on the site)

Once again the name is interesting enough to get me to write this explanation. Thus, there is at least minimal value in the name. I'm intrigued but purely by curiosity. The curiosity is simply a vessel waiting to be filled in order to create value.

Absolutely. Berkshire holds sizable positions in companies that spend significant amounts of money on marketing and website design.

What I find fascinating is the absolute simplicity. People do not buy shares in BRK for fancy design or cutting-edge tech solutions. They buy shares because Warren Buffett has return 586,000% gain over the life of the fund (i.e. 1964 to present).

Berkshire, with Warren Buffett at the helm, does one thing really well: make money. That is their product and that is all they focus on.

Startups are not defined by their growth. However, VC-backed startups are customarily focused on growth. The difference between these two statements is subtle but important.

'Revenue first, growth second', a paraphrasing of Clayten Christiansen.

VC's essentially use founders like race horses. They pump in the steroids, exercise them to the point of optimal performance or death, and then put them out to pasture if they don't perform. Founders are part of a portfolio plain and simple. They are part of a stable. The VC's are benevolent trainers but they have one goal: ROI. Their benevolence is in direct correlation to their ROI, which is largely determined by growth. The irony is that Wall Street operates in exactly the same way. The difference is that the relationship between Bank and Borrower or Shareholder and Company is more clearly defined than the relationship between VC and Founder.

There isn't anything wrong with VC's. They play a vital role in the financial community. Yet, at the end of the day, a VC is going to look at a startup as a financial product. VC's are offering their partners a product just like a startup is seeking to offer the market a product. The fortunate part about the rest of the business world, cut-throat though it may be to some, is that no one expects anyone else to be benevolent. They expect people to conduct business.

The better the VC-Startup relationship is defined, the better it will be for the long-term health of founders. On the other hand, VC's have no incentive to change course because their is still a willing market of young people who want to strike it rich. In some sense, it would be far better for the market and founders if data was more readily available. In fact, it is a jilted environment. It is always in the VC's favor because they hold the money. However, it doesn't mean that they hold future value. If it did, they wouldn't need to go fund startups.

The current VC-Founder relationship is imbalanced compared to other portions of the marketplace. The VC's hold additional chips because of the allure of a successful exit, the siren of Silicon Valley.

I completely disagree with your statement. Maybe there is a bigger question: 'Is crossing the chasm to widespread adoption always a good thing?' Maybe we should be trying to build platforms that are high-quality instead of high-quantity. We are caught in a world that is obsessed with inclusion rather than exclusion. Is that, by necessity, the default position? Should it be?

The internet contributed to building support for the Arab Spring throughout the world but it was tyrannical regimes that were the root cause. Wikileaks is not new. We used to have a little thing called 'investigative journalism', a profession in which people would put their live's on the line to reveal scandals and uncover secrets they felt the world should have known.

Technology does not motivate moral growth. People motivate moral growth. Nazi Germany was the most technologically advanced society in the world when they invaded Poland and set the course for World War II.

The reality is that we are segmenting ourselves from other internet users just by taking part in the HN community. Most people here would admit, the minute HN would spread to the point of being widely adopted, we would all leave. I don't come to HN to be inundated with cat pictures. I'm here because I learn things every time I visit a link posted on HN.

What a waste of my eyes!

As someone who spent years working in government-ese, there is nothing new here at all. None of the documents are actually classified. They are standard policy propositions layered with heavy technical/government jargon. The intelligence community and DOD is meticulous about properly classifying even the most mundane information that could be connected to anything of consequence for national security. Hence, it has been the standard for decades that every single classified document must have a header and footer with its classification level clearly posted. I was put on the spot once in a brief for not having a footer with the brief's classification on one slide in a PowerPoint. None of these documents have the required headers or footers. Logical conclusion, none of them require it because none of them are classified.

The real government is far more boring than the one that appears in popular conspiracy theories and movies. Trust me, the real government is a boring employer...great health insurance though!

This story should be a case study for virality in a niche community. It was 100% political (i.e. as captivating and informative as a car crash) and yet...it captured the attention of hackers the world over, apparently.

As someone who spent a number of years exposed to the world of spying during my time in Special Operations, it was clear that there was nothing new here. It was the same story replayed in a new format...a format that caught the attention of those who know what lies behind computer code. To me, that is what makes this entire thing ridiculous. The very people who know the technicalities behind hacking, the internet and all things to do with computing fell right into spreading a story that was dominated by fluff, lack of specificity and conspiracy theories.

I'll let you in on a secret...the coders who work for the NSA are not any different than the rest of the coding community. We did use Google...I mean we searched for people's name just like millions of other people do every single day. It's called open source information. Yet, apparently when the government uses it everyone wants to believe that it is a grave violation of our rights. What about a white supremacist group using it to track down a gay rights leader's physical address and harassing him? Is that not far worse? Shouldn't we be more worried about that?

I had thought that Wikileaks revealing the State Department reports and leaking reports from Aghanistan and Iraq would have convinced people that the government does not know significantly more than the rest of us. The way this story took over HN showed otherwise. Clearly, conspiracy theories still sell. They are urban myths. They have enough detail to stick in our minds but lack the specificity that would really answer the question: is this even realistically feasible or portrayed in a rational manner?

Unfortunately, I spent yesterday feeling as though there was nothing worth reading on HN. Every story was the same tired generalizations of the NSA. I learned nothing yesterday. Sad.

Core thesis: 'No...Malcolm Gladwell is wrong. You can't be me. Why? Because I'm cool. Yes, that's right. I'm cool, like Warren Buffet."

This article is a phenomenal example of an intelligent and successful person lacking any rational and logical basis for their core thesis.

There are countless individuals who have become experts in their respective field, yet lack any formal training in logic, argumentation or critical thinking. They naturally believe that because people listen to them in a particular field, their skills of reasoning and grasp of logic must be superior. Often they tend to equally believe that their 'gifts' are 'in-born' because they don't ever remember feeling any different; they have been intelligent their entire life.

There are so many logical fumbles in this short piece, whether it be an excerpt or not, that it could be used as an philosophical exercise in pointing out faulty lines of reasoning. Example => So, how does Warren Buffet disprove the 10,000 hour rule? Author's response: "Because he was involved in business affairs from a young age." I assume that her line of reasoning is as follows: 'Warren was incredibly young when he had successfully started his first business. At that age he could not have possibly invested 10,000 hours in the study of business. Thus, he must have been born with business talent.'

Interestingly enough, Warren Buffet's case may be worth looking into in order to better refine the 10,000 hour rule. That being said, the above line of reasoning is hugely problematic. Nowhere is Warren Buffet's 'expertise' at a young age commented upon or evidence given in support of it. The 10,000 hour rule says that you will become an expert with 10,000 hours of deliberate practice/training at ever increasing levels of complexity. The rule does not come to say that you can't be successful without 10,000 hours of practice. (Look at Mark Zuckerber!) The author has both misunderstood and misapplied the correlation between these concepts and what could be meant by the word 'success'. Beyond a couple of other problems, the second major issue is that invalidating one proposition does not inherently validate an opposing proposition. Thus, just because the 10,000 hour rule may be invalidated by Warren Buffet's experience, we cannot make the logical leap to declare that he, therefore, has in-born/genetic attributes that we would consider 'talent'. These are 2 entirely separate arguments that may be related but are not directly tied to one another. I could go on and on with the problems in this article.

The short of it: Paul Graham was being overly optimistic in thinking that writing helps everyone form better arguments and think more carefully. Somebody should introduce Temple Grandin to a philosophy class on critical thinking and basic reasoning.

This reminds me so much of being over there. This documentary does such a great job of showing the utter confusion and screwed up nature of fighting counter-insurgencies.

Every day is like choosing between different types of cancer. There is no 'winning' only seemingly less lethal varieties of the same disease. To make it worse, you are choosing which cancer to support through an intermediary, the interpreter. After a short time there you realize how much of a gap the language barrier is and how debilitating it is to not be able to build genuine relationships with your interlocuteur because you have to wait for the interpretation.

There is no 'solution' to Afghanistan and there is no 'winning'. People accuse NATO soldiers of war crimes everyday without even realizing the legitimate war crimes we prevented every single place we went. Afghanistan is still the jungle and the strongest wins. That isn't going to change from one day to the next. At this point, warfare is all that they know. They've been at it for over 30 years.

Unfortunately, you walk away thinking that the only solution is to be the strongest.

It is fascinating to step back and realize that this WSJ article is indicative of the fact that Tesla has yet to 'cross the chasm'. I can't wait to get a Tesla and most of my friends are of the same mind, but we are clearly still among the minority. While most of us associated with the tech world are naturally supportive of Elon Musk and cheering him on with force, we must still be the minority. Man...I'm such an early adopter! What a shameful thing to be! (Read strong tone of sarcasm)

The underlying principle of the article seems to be one of anti-subsidy, a position which is imminently defensible in light of many problematic government subsidies. Tesla still has a lot to prove. That being said, the author failed to set up a balanced argument since he did not mention the fact that most long-lasting companies have been subsidized by the government at one time or another in their history and many at their infancy.

Did I mention that Elon Musk is freaking awesome!!!

Agreed! This is brilliant!

Once again a wonderful example of something incredibly simple but incredibly useful. This would be particularly beneficial for Crossfit style workouts that are closely linked to a timer and where there is a different set of exercises every single day.

Brilliant!

After spending years in the military, where your profession is basically standing around for long hours without knowing what the hell is going on, I decided that standing sucked.

There is one general rule: get up and move around! The human body is built to resist staying in the same position for too long. We are built to move.

Go for a run! Or, just go grab a coffee across the street. Just move!

Your alternative proposition (hypothesis has a different meaning in philosophy than it does in the sciences) is rather confusing from a philosophical perspective. What is 'educated'? Education is a culturally relative idea that is very hard to closely define. Thus, for a religious person being 'educated' may mean something very different from a gypsy who grows up on the streets of Paris who is very 'educated' in the workings of life on the street. Does the 'educated' individual mean some one who can create amazing works of art? Or, does it indicate some one who has memorized and repeats certain culturally important texts and ideas?

There is certainly a cultural side to philosophy in Modern Western society that is largely anti-religious from the very beginning. I started out as your average fervent evangelical Christian, which I am no longer, but it was initially incredibly uncomfortable in a philosophy department to try to hold on to certain belief systems. However, it is not necessarily for the reasons that one would believe. It is a culturally phenomenon. In older generations, it was entirely unacceptable to be religious and be in philosophy. You were naturally routed towards theology by the university staff because the topics of conversation are entirely different; modern philosophy does not concern itself with the question of religion. Yet, the vast majority of older philosophy professors, when being honest, will acknowledge that despite their atheism there are still countless religious systems that have fascinating thinkers and concepts that are both rational and consistent.

It just so happens that in America, Christianity is the de facto symbol for religion and it is both irrational and inconsistent.

Agreed. That is the frustrating part. The education system is so great and their health system is incredible. I really liked living in Paris. It is without a doubt the most beautiful city that I have ever lived in. Plus, I absolutely love the French language.

We are sort of in the same position. We would like to head out to Silicon Valley get some experience there and then move back to France and become involved in entrepreneurship in Paris while our children would finish high school and go to university.

This is phenomenal news for France! After having married a French woman, lived in France and subsequently we moved back to the U.S., I realized how far behind France was in the entrepreneurial game when compared to the States. Yet, there are really brilliant people in France! These measures are definitely a step forward. I will be interested to see if they speak about it on Le Grand Journal this evening. Once we have children, we have thought about moving back to France because the education system is so good but, we have been very pessimistic about doing so because entrepreneurship is so looked down upon.

Unfortunately, I don’t think Hollande’s efforts are going to have too great an effect long-term. My experience has indicated that the French system is set up in such a way as to reward people who don’t take any risks. It is not simply the banking system or taxes that is to blame. There is a cultural stigma against taking risks that does not exist in the States. The education system is at least 100x better than the best schools in America, yet good test score count for very little when it comes to the hustle required in entrepreneurship, much less web based entrepreneurship where everyone is brilliant and hard working. There is simply not the same commitment to innovation. I often felt that I had made a faux pas when I lived in France and spoke about different business ideas at dinner or a party.

Unfortunately, politics is not the only problem holding the many brilliant people in France back from innovating and changing the world. In France, it is not culturally acceptable to want to be like Elon Musk.