jboy

Please elaborate.

I don't think that I'm putting words in his mouth. He's become famous recently for beating the "Monopoly good, competition bad" drum, but he's never really laid out a path to get to monopoly (other than "compete effectively, eg, win a niche and expand in concentric circles"). I suspect that a lot of people have (like myself) fit his comments into a larger patchwork of contrarian startup advice, which also includes suggestions to be mischievous (PG), move fast enough to risk breaking things (Facebook), etc.

It's interesting to me (and yes, it seems slightly ironic) that he has now, when discussing a competitor to one of his portfolio companies, discovered a second dimension of what's most important in his worldview. "Two! Two most important things for a startup! Monopoly and ethics!"

(Surely you would agree that he's never previously said "Monopoly is a virtue, BUT ...")

OK, so it's obviously a little transparent of Thiel to say that Uber [a competitor to Lyft, a company in which he has invested] is "on the cusp" of going too far, but Airbnb [another company in which he has invested] has "a different feel" and is OK.

But it's also a little ironic that the champion of "Competition is for losers", who says that monopolies can be a good thing for society [0], is against Uber trying their best to achieve such a monopoly.

[0] "Creative monopolists give customers more choices by adding entirely new categories of abundance to the world. Creative monopolies aren't just good for the rest of society; they're powerful engines for making it better." -- http://online.wsj.com/articles/peter-thiel-competition-is-fo...

Can you elaborate on the difference between finding references (in GLOBAL) and finding callers/callees (in cscope)?

The cscope caller/callee search is apparently still just text search in the code (rather than unambiguous call-graph resolution by compilation).

For me, the most useful information was the "Comparison with Similar Tools" table (in the OpenGrok project wiki), which was linked-to from the GNU GLOBAL page: https://github.com/OpenGrok/OpenGrok/wiki/Comparison-with-Si...

As a Vim user, the comparisons to Ctags and cscope were informative.

And the list of supported languages is impressive! Awk, Dos batch, COBOL, C, C++, C#, Erlang, Fortran, Java, JavaScript, Lisp, Lua, Pascal, Perl, PHP, Python, Ruby, Matlab, OCaml, Scheme, Tcl, TeX, Verilog, Vhdl and Vim.

Yeah, the Chris Dixon analogy piqued my interest too. I've thought about it a bit, and I've identified two useful ways to generalise UNIX commands to web businesses:

1. Take a command that would run over files on a filesystem, and instead run it over pages on the Web.

Examples: find | xargs grep -i -> web search engines (Google, etc.). talk -> IRC / ICQ. Creating timestamped text files in a per-user directory -> blogging.

2. Take a very powerful & useful UNIX command that's complex to use correctly (and possibly damaging if you screw it up), and make it easy, user-friendly and risk-free.

Examples: rsync -> Dropbox. awk -> spreadsheets (Visicalc, MS Excel).

I'm currently racking my brains for other commands that seemed useful but complex to me in my Linux sysadmin youth. :)

OK, you make a fair point. :)

The difference between one-vote-per-person and a vote proportional to the amount of money you are willing to risk, is a significant one. So I suppose Thinkable is halfway between the plutocratic and democratic approaches?

As an aside (tangent to your comment about the rest getting nothing), I don't know what Thinkable does if a campaign doesn't reach its funding target: Whether the money is restored to the sponsors or the researchers simply have to work on a smaller budget (maybe once a minimal funding threshold is passed).

The Dating Agency model discussed by the author is interesting, and I'm impressed that he went to the effort of discussing the idea with ethicists, lawyers and entrepreneurs (and of course, scientists).

> Every year, an untold number of potential new drugs or interventions, any one of which might go on to improve thousands of lives, are thrown away without being tested in humans. It is a matter of funding, not science: there is not enough money in the public or private sector to run clinical trials on every exciting proposal that comes out of research labs.

Thinkable.org is a recently-launched crowdfunding platform for cutting-edge scientific research: http://thinkable.org/discover

Similar to the article's Dating Agency model, Thinkable does review the campaigns before listing them publicly: "Dr McNeil said Thinkable would only allowed researchers affiliated with accredited research organisations to use the site and any funds donated would be managed by the organisation to ensure they were used for research." [1]

Thinkable doesn't appear to allow you to buy early spots in the clinical trial queue, but it certainly seems that they want to ensure that important science research won't be lost between the cracks due to a lack of funding. A more democratic approach to funding scientific research, in contrast to the plutocratic approach discussed in the article.

[1] http://www.smh.com.au/technology/sci-tech/young-scientists-u...

Edit: I temporarily removed my point about Thinkable being a democratic approach, because in retrospect it seemed a trivial & obvious observation, until I saw that wyager had just replied to that point specifically!

I have to disagree with your conclusion for several reasons:

1. Living longer doesn't mean your standard of living will rise. Even if you work longer, you will not necessarily accumulate significantly (or perhaps even any) more wealth. And if you are in poverty currently (ie, effectively earning nothing), multiplying that by another 300 years still leaves you with zero.

2. If there is any change to the accumulation patterns of money, I would suspect that either the rich would get (individually) richer -- or perhaps more money would be printed, thus de-valuing the existing money.

3. Being at the median global living standard does not guarantee that you will produce fewer children. For example, there are many people in Western countries who for religious reasons continue to produce large families. More time for them would presumably result in even larger families.

4. In fact, Africa is particularly interesting, because its birth rate is NOT dropping as fast as predicted due to economic development: http://www.economist.com/news/leaders/21598648-birth-rates-a...

SIFT and SURF are both patented in the US.

SIFT: http://www.google.com/patents/US6711293

SURF: http://worldwide.espacenet.com/publicationDetails/biblio?CC=...

More info: http://opencv-users.1802565.n2.nabble.com/SURF-protected-by-...

The sensationalist assertions made in this article (particularly in the headline) don't follow from the results that the article describes.

Part of the blame for this sensationalism seems to fall at the feet of the original scientist himself (Bosch). He makes an unfounded leap from the biological result that cancer seems to be an intrinsic property of genetic processes in cells (and the statements "You have to interfere with fundamental pathways", "It's a web of interactions" and "It's very difficult to do") to the assertion "will probably never be completely eradicated". Difficult is not the same as impossible.

He follows with more sensationalism: "You carry a time bomb in your body when you're born," he said. "It can explode early in life, or middle age or later."

I suppose it's understandable; he's probably just trying to get some publicity for his team's long-running research on hydra. And even he admits "that doesn't mean that, with a patient who develops cancer, there's nothing you can do."

But then the hedging of "probably" and "completely" was discarded by the article writers for a more sensationalist article and headline.

It might be worth waiting a month or two to see what it's like, and then running this poll again at the end of that trial period.

I think that many people (myself included) would feel more relaxed about the change if there were a commitment that the system would be reverted quickly at the end of the trial period, if a majority of users (perhaps 2/3 of poll participants) decided that they preferred the old system.

It seems that some of the deeper concerns about this change are: 1. These types of changes often seem to be made unilaterally, without any idea of what a significant majority might prefer. 2. Changes like this often seem to be one-way changes.

Start-ups have been hot-housing like this for years. I have friends who went through YC who did it. PG even suggested in one of his essays "Ever notice how much easier it is to hack at home than at work? So why not make work more like home?" [1]

[1] http://www.paulgraham.com/start.html

This is just a scaled-up version of what has already existed for years. The reason it's not more common is because it's logistically difficult to organise. I doubt that difficulty will suddenly decrease. The majority of people will always have families or different lifestyle preferences.

So I'm doubtful that society will be "dragged down" to a point where this is the social norm.

Hence, I think that the opprobrium and derision in this thread is stronger than it needs to be.

Your mention of sexism in the technology industry suggests to me that you interpreted my comment as men slut-shaming women. I agree that sexism in the technology industry is an important and sensitive issue.

My comment wasn't intended to suggest one gender slut-shaming the other gender; people of a gender can (and certainly do) slut-shame members of that same gender to control them and keep them in line. This is the comparison I was making.

In retrospect, I see that my comment was not sufficiently clear in this regard. Please re-consider my comment from this clarified point of view.

My point is that many of the comments in this thread suggest that Meta is like a cult or a sweatshop, or that the situation is "fucked up", etc. The commenters are implicitly trying to punish Meta for engaging in a behaviour with which those commenters do not agree.

What is wrong with someone choosing to devote themselves to a start-up about which they are enthusiastic? What's wrong with believing in something and devoting yourself to it for a while? Does it hurt anyone other than themselves? Why then is it so important for other people to disparage that person's choice so vocally?

Likewise, what is so wrong about a company where enthusiastic employees live in this arrangement? If you accept my axiom that the employees are enthusiastic about the start-up (based upon the reasons I outlined in my original comment), then why is this arrangement "fucked up"?

I hope you will re-consider your assertion that I am uneducated and that I am vomiting ignorant comments.

Many of the comments in this thread are depressingly similar to same-sex slut-shaming.

"I can't or don't want to do that, so I don't think you should be allowed to do that either. I'm going to judge you and speak badly of you, to try to punish you for doing something I don't want to, and discourage you and others from doing something I don't want to."

Meta is a start-up (cool) creating augmented reality (very cool) hardware (even more cool) for interactive interaction with virtual overlays (just unbelievably cool). I'm a computer vision / computer graphics guy, and everything about this project looks technologically awesome, with potentially world-changing applications.

They went through YC and are still getting positive press, so the start-up is looking about as successful as a start-up at this stage can be.

I bet you that every single one of the employees loves this idea, loves working on it, and honestly believes that Meta is going to change the world and be the next Apple. When I was in my twenties, I worked crazy hours and slept under my desk for a lot less.

EDIT: Added the word "same-sex" before "slut-shaming" to clarify the comparison I'm making.

This is an excellent answer, and (in my opinion, at least) really gets to the heart of the matter.

I'm not unduly obsessed with classes or design patterns in object-oriented languages, but to me the key benefit of functions, classes and design patterns is about defining a shared language of named abstractions.

These abstractions take care of details, so you can think at a higher level. The names are a common vocabulary shared between the designer/implementer and user/client of the code; and as yason says, if you choose your abstractions at an appropriate level, you can "talk about" (or describe/define) the problem+solution in terms that are best suited to the problem+solution.

And to note one more benefit of short functions: When you're talking about functions (operations) and classes (encapsulated state), you rely upon these abstractions to behave in a certain way. Shorter functions and simpler classes generally have fewer moving parts, thus making it easier to verify the correctness of the implementation of the abstraction concept.

It would seem that the two main incumbents in this market (founded in 2005 and 1998, respectively) are getting nervous about Freelancer.com's (founded in 2009) rapid growth (predicting ~73% in 2013) and recent IPO [1].

[1] http://www.zdnet.com/au/freelancer-more-than-triples-first-d...

> You should be worried then, because this data is routinely shared with the NSA, seems to be collected under the remit of a joint program

Exactly. Snowden says "If you send a data packet and if [sic] makes its way through the UK, we will get it."

Given that Snowden is an NSA whisteblower, who's talking here about the "Five Eyes" intelligence alliance (U.S., U.K., Canada, Australia and New Zealand), this suggests pretty strongly that the "we" is the NSA.

To me, much more concerning is Snowden's revelation that the British intelligence program 'Tempora' "saves everything":

"Tempora is the first 'I save everything' approach ('full take') in the intelligence world. It sucks in all data, no matter what it is, and which rights are violated by it. ... Right now, the system is capable of saving three days' worth of traffic [...]. 'Full take' means that the system saves everything. If you send a data packet and if makes its way through the UK, we will get it."

I think it would be an exceedingly interesting project to define a Pythonic syntax for Rust, then implement a Cfront-like frontend to translate Pythonic-Rust to brace-and-semicolon Rust before compiling it. (The Rust language spec is gradually reaching a point where there would presumably not be large, disruptive changes.)

You could make it available to the Rust community (and even the broader Rust-interested community on HN and Reddit) and see if it takes off.

If the Python-Rust were to become more popular than brace-and-semicolon Rust, the creators may well be persuaded to adopt it. Or at the very least, you'd have a thriving like-minded Python-Rust community. :)

To me, one of the most interesting design decisions of Rust is that the creators strongly try to avoid inventing new language features. Instead, they attempt to find the best combination of tried-and-true existing features from a variety of other languages.

I wonder whether language syntax could be considered such a "feature" -- that is, the Rust creators would consciously prefer to combine existing syntaxes (at this point, mainly C++, Haskell, OCaml and Ruby) than invent their own.

An argument could be made that they could just "use Python's syntax", but perhaps a counter-argument would be that Python's syntax would need to be extended so much (for types, pointers, templates, etc.) that the result would effectively be a new invention.

I type many, many more semicolons in C or C++ than I type line-continuation backslashes in Python, so I prefer the option that requires fewer keypresses and less syntactic noise.

Or to put it another way, I'd much rather have to syntactically announce a line-continuation (which happens rarely, and is thus an atypical event that is worthy of note) than announce the end of a statement (which happens every single statement, and is thus to me much less worthy of note).

My reasons for preferring indentation-as-block over brace block-delimiters are similar: The indentation is a much more subtle, unobtrusive, un-noisy alternative to braces.

Furthermore, when I code in C or C++, I indent (and brace-delimit) everything properly, according to a style guide; so if I'd be indenting the block anyway, why not make the indentation syntactically meaningful, to save me some keypresses and slightly decrease the syntactic noise?

Plus, for bonus points, brace-less blocks mean I never need to play the brace-matching game. ("Have I got an extra/missing brace in there somewhere? Put the cursor on the brace and tap `%` until I work out what's out of place." True, it doesn't happen frequently if you keep your blocks and functions small, but I'm quite happy to avoid it altogether.)

I realise I'm ignoring about two levels of irony here, but "Wear something people want." would actually be a great front for an Official HN T.

Inside enough that you need to know about YC to recognize that slogan, but general enough that just about any HN regular should get it. (To anyone else, it would simply seem like an intentionally abstract or unintentionally opaque statement, almost like Engrish.)

Plus, that sequence of 4 words is very Google-able, for anyone curious enough to want to know more...

I doubt that docking with the ISS is the end-goal of SpaceX. Musk talks about missions to Mars, and even helping to establish a human presence there. The latter certainly hasn't been done before.

My point was that, even at the 10-year mark, SpaceX is still working towards its goal -- a goal that may very well not yield its results until after the 20-year mark.

While I appreciate that Musk stands out partly as an exception to the rule, I think it's nevertheless reasonable to concede that not all entrepreneurs are focussed on 2-year goals.

There are some fantastic insights in this talk. I particularly liked:

What appeared at first to me as a defect forced me into automatic programming very early. What appears to be a fault, often, by a change of viewpoint, turns out to be one of the greatest assets you can have.

I'll really try to keep this one in mind the next time I run into a frustrating "just so" problem.

> Entrepreneurs are not interested in starting programs that will yield results only after 10-20 years

What about the SpaceX's of the world? Founded in 2002; docked with the ISS in 2012.

Giving Tesla credit as a brilliant and prolific inventor -- and in particular, giving him credit for electricity and related electrical technology -- is a new meme.

Twenty years ago it was all about Edison in science textbooks and in popular science. Tesla was a footnote.