jfasi

That's only if you're storing one copy of the video.

Thiel makes some interesting points, and I don't necessarily disagree with the substance of what he's saying. However, I'd like to offer a reframing of the college debate that goes beyond the views put forward by Thiel et al. with regards to higher education. I'd like to break offer two points regarding higher education.

Firstly, Thiel argues that society suffers when high-caliber people go through elite colleges and take positions at conservative organizations in old industries. He implies that society would be better served if more of these people went off to do startups or other cutting-edge organizations.

My rebuttal to this is: lots of elite college-trained people are going to startups. There is no system barrier between highly-trained (if somewhat conservatively thinking) people and cutting edge stuff. In fact, some of the most elite MBA programs are taking note of the interest among their students and creating programming specifically to help them enter that realm [1].

Also, what's wrong with highly trained people going into management consulting and investment banking? If talent gravitates toward these industries, it's not because peoples' training made them useless for any other purpose, but rather because of standard economics: people have a right to want to get paid.

Furthermore, I'd argue that Thiel is mistakenly conflating lack of sexiness with social damage. General Motors and JP Morgan are not startups, and few starry-eyed undergrads would dream of a mid-tier leadership role in such an organization over founding their own billion dollar company. But what's wrong with having competent and well-trained leaders in charge of these companies? They might not show up on the covers of popular entrepreneurship magazines, and they might not be the first do something sexy and innovative, but these sorts of companies do deliver a tremendous amount of growth and innovation to the economy. GM's size and distribution clout makes it as viable and worthy a source of innovation as, say, Tesla, and there's nothing wrong with training people to lead those productive if boring machines.

Secondly, on the topic of Obama's push for more higher education, I believe Thiel brings to the argument a Silicon Valley/disruptive innovation-centered view on what is actually a different problem. Thiel argues that talent is best allocated to new industries because they are the ones that produce "black-swan" type economic innovations. This may be true, but I think it fails to discuss a more systemic issue.

As few as fifteen years ago, American manufacturing represented a significantly larger portion of the economy, with a hiring demand to match [1]. As recently as two or three decades ago, a high school-educated person could live comfortably and securely on a manufacturing salary. Our economy is currently dealing with a decline of well-paying work for relatively low-skilled labor. We're transitioning from a work-based economy to a service economy where intellectual skills are most valuable.

The economic study establishment sees this. Obama sees this. Cast in this light, the spike in college tuitions is not the irrational bubble that Thiel attempts to portray, but rather a natural and unavoidable consequence of millions of people suddenly realizing that their futures depend on skills that until now only private colleges have been able to give them. Economically, subsidizing higher education is a natural response. Culturally, placing higher value on higher-tier educations is a natural consequence given the fact that simply having a degree is no longer by itself a marker of intellectual exceptionality. Hence the spike in demand for prestige.

The only way this country is going to transmute the legacy of its fantastic economic power from the twentieth century into correspondingly fantastic economic power in the twenty-first century is by successfully making a transition to a knowledge economy. People know this, and they're reacting en mass. Money is being poured by the bucketload into higher education. Radical experiments are taking place in education technology. Traditional institutions are rethinking themselves. This change is already in progress, and it's clear the solution is more focus on education rather than less.

[1] http://fortune.com/2015/01/03/business-school-startups-entre...

[2] http://www.usitc.gov/research_and_analysis/documents/Pierce%...

Google gets a customer and free advertising, the company gets 100k worth of free computing resources. It's called a "win-win." It's not quite a "free lunch," but it's "one of the main ways in which healthy business gets done."

> Ad Hominem

Def.: Any attempt to discredit a view by calling attention to the character, actions or personal circumstances of those who hold it rather than the reasoning they provide in support of it.

"Ad hominem" is Latin for "against the person." Anything that involves an attack on a person's character we call an Abusive Ad Hominem. Anything that appeals to a person's unique circumstances we call a Circumstantial ad Hominem. These are both fallacious for the simple reason that the personal character and circumstances of the individual reasoner are logically irrelevant to the question whether the reasoning itself is any good.

http://www.csus.edu/indiv/g/gaskilld/criticalthinking/Six%20...

As of my writing this we're six top-level comments in and already a full third of them miss the point of the article, going on to complain about The Economist advocating not punishing companies for malfeasance. For their benefit as well as for the benefit of this comment section as a whole, here's a quick summary of some of the article's central points:

* The article compares the practice of public attorneys demanding settlements in place of public indictment to extortion:

"The formula is simple: find a large company that may (or may not) have done something wrong; threaten its managers with commercial ruin, preferably with criminal charges; force them to use their shareholders’ money to pay an enormous fine to drop the charges in a secret settlement (so nobody can check the details)."

* It points out that this process bypasses the regular justice system, which ought to progress by both legislation and precedent-based case study:

"Perhaps the most destructive part of it all is the secrecy and opacity. The public never finds out the full facts of the case, nor discovers which specific people—with souls and bodies—were to blame. Since the cases never go to court, precedent is not established, so it is unclear what exactly is illegal."

* It further argues that this government-dominated settlement process places all power in the hands of the attorney, thereby undermining the rule of law by introducing an element of arbitrariness and politics to what should be governed by blind justice:

"This undermines the predictability and clarity that serve as the foundations for the rule of law, and risks the prospect of a selective—and potentially corrupt—system of justice in which everybody is guilty of something and punishment is determined by political deals."

* It does not argue that companies should not be liable for misdeeds, in fact it acknowledges the fact:

"In many cases, the companies deserved some form of punishment:...[followed by some examples]"

No, and I should have address this in my initial comment. I expanded on this in another comment:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8119589

To your second point, oversight is orthogonal to my original point: no matter where you land on the breadth of collections spectrum, more oversight is better. I agree with you there and in hindsight I could have done better to point that out in my original post.

Now the first point deserves a response. This demand for proof of effectiveness for various intelligence gathering techniques misses the point of my initial comment. The public doesn't know if cracking this program was a significant source of information. On the other hand, neither does Al Qaeda. Spreading fear, uncertainty, and doubt among your enemies is part of role of intelligence gathering, to the point where spreading the same among the population can be acceptable.

Consider the revelation that the NSA is gathering only a relatively small sample of phone records [1]. This information came out through a leak. Why didn't the NSA rebut allegations that they were sucking up every single conversation by revealing this information? It probably wouldn't have saved them in the public eye, but it would have at least dispelled the extremely damaging public perception of the NSA as an unstoppable Big Brother-style surveillance machine that's going to murder you for the contents of your emails, as opposed to an agency that, despite their twisting the letter of the law, is still forced to operate within legal boundaries. Why didn't this report come out to try to at least correct the public's paranoia?

The answer is because doing so would have given the US's enemies guidance on how to run their operations, which would allow them to more effectively evade detection. In this context, this sort of secrecy and fear appears to be a hateful but ultimately necessary part of intelligence: you can't assuage the public without assuaging your enemies.

At the same time, the public still have to be protected from a spy agency, and this is where mandatory oversight and regulation comes into play. While Congress has vowed to implement strengthened oversight over the NSA, the public isn't satisfied because this oversight is performed in secret. I'm sort of prepared to let myself be convinced that this oversight exists, but the truth is that whatever solution is implemented is bound to be unsatisfying for exactly the reason I point out above: hateful secrecy is necessary.

[1] http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/nsa-is...

This provides a useful way to frame people concerns' about Snowden's revelations.

Every intelligence service exists at the intersection of two completely opposite goals: in order to fulfill their mandate to protect their country from its enemies, they need as much information about the actions of their enemies as possible. On the other hand, in order to protect their country from themselves, they need to have as light a touch as possible. There is no solution; you have to compromise.

The thing about compromises is that even though they tend to kinda sorta almost make sense when viewed in context, no one is every happy with them. Any large agency is going to employ a substantial number of people who find these compromises distasteful.

This report indicates that Al Qaeda, an organization that no one in their right mind would say should be allowed to operate freely, benefits from these sorts of disclosures. They learn what's vulnerable, they change their behavior, and they become more difficult to fight. What's worse, it's conceivable that the intelligence agency's response could be to increase the intensity of their activity, the better to capture the enemy's new behaviors.

Now imagine the quandary the intelligence agency faces. They try every day to meet mandates that are fundamentally unreconcilable. They employ people who disagree with the compromises at which they've arrived, and each and every one of them could potentially let the cat out of the bag and render their current work useless.

I don't mean this argument to criticize of praise the actions of the NSA. I only suggest that those (Americans) among you who demonize the NSA and advocate for it's removal consider this reframing of the discussion.

Whenever Google puts out a product, you can bet your bottom dollar the comments will be dominated by the cynical view that every product Google releases is somehow the product of a group of shady, hunched-over people with wild eyes rubbing their hands together and saying "How do we get even more data out of people?" "I've got it!" "cackling." This comment is not like that. In the interest of varying the discussion, here's an alternate interpretation.

Google produces Android, which is a platform. The platform business model is well understood: gain a toehold by making a product that provides some fundamental service (telephony, mobile internet, app store), then expand the value of your platform by covering the long tail of things people might find useful (Keep, the new camera app, the various rollouts mobile versions of well-known Google products).

This if why Google Keep exists. Let's say Keep has 10 engineers working on it. Imagine the impact those ten people can have: Android has an addressable market of well over a billion handsets. If you apply standard shitty-startup-business-plan logic, capturing even one percent of them is a significant user base. And they don't even need to worry about revenue because the advertising business is literally printing money! It almost makes you envy them for working at such a large company.

Is it just me, or did they really just fit a quintic curve to theirs "Fraudsters are Sneaky" plot? There had better be a good reason for their using such a high-dimensional polynomial.

This is why I love C++. It turns even the most basic programming tasks into orgies of systems programming pedantry.

Naturally, a complete answer will depend on your advertising goals, and any serious advertising campaign will want to be prefaced with experiments and cost/benefit analysis, etc.

That being said, you can check out these ad networks. I get the sense that they're somewhat stilted in their demographics, but whatever:

- Reddit

- StumbleUpon

- Digg

- Pinterest

- I think Demand offers display advertising?

- Project Wonderful

This underscores what appears to be an interesting strategic move by Facebook: build an ecosystem of applications, which in turn encourages people to use their other products. In turn, this provides continued competition against Twitter, Tumblr, etc.

The interesting thing about this app is that it's an experiment: viral success of social applications appears to be a hit or miss sort of thing, so why not throw many things at the wall and see what sticks á la Paper, Home, Messenger, or buy something already big á la Instagram or Snapchat.

One benefit of this strategy is that it raises barriers to entry for your competitors: the more modes of social interaction you offer, the fewer opportunities for your competitors to chip away at your empire, and the more enticing your properties become to advertisers.

> "The balloons are delivering 10x more bandwidth, 10x steer-ability, and are staying up 10x as long..."

I find the scale of these improvements simultaneously inspiring and troubling. What does it imply that you can make this sort of improvement in a year? It's inspiring because it suggests how brilliant these people are, and it showcases the power of human ingenuity, etc. It's troubling because it makes this improvement seem like low-hanging fruit. What other amazing things still are waiting to happen in relatively short time scales, simply because no one is thinking about them in the right way?

Hm. That's actually a good point.

Let's face it. Silicon Valley has hit the big time. The sheer size of our industry coupled with the impact it has on everyday non-technical citizens means we are a political force to be reckoned with. Monetarily speaking, we're not quite as powerful as, for instance, oil and defense, but we more than make up for that in the respect we generally afforded by the population. However, the industry's rhetoric and attitudes haven't caught up to that fact, hence these sort of blunt political statements.

> The good thing about Science is that it’s true whether or not you believe in it.

There is a sort of anti-religion and anti-pseudoscience zeitgeist in American society, and scientists like Neil deGrasse Tyson and Richard Dawkins make up the figureheads of this movement. The perception is that the rationalist scientific project is under attack by people who try to sell scientifically false statements. Off the top of my head I can name climate change deniers, anti-vaccination activists and creationists as members of a perceived cabal of enemies of scientific progress.

It can be debated whether or not such a cabal really exists or whether its perception is a result of the recent expansion of the reach of ideas and messages made possible by the internet and social networking: perhaps people with wildly differing views are suddenly in contact with one another and are surprised by the variety of opinion out there.

This tweet is not meant to be a philosophically consistent statement concerning the merits of science, but rather a sort of "preaching to the choir" message meant to rally the base against this perceived enemy.

I love this article. Despite the multitudes of news sources telling us about how commerce is now global and business is no longer tied to a place and the internet is changing the world, there is still an ocean of enterprises of which we US-based-or-english-speaking technologists are ignorant.

Take a moment to think about this: Alibaba is a huge company, growing in an absolutely enormous market, providing a pile of services, and most American technologists know nothing about it. Expand this thinking to countries: there are markets that are only just beginning to enjoy the degree of technological luxury the US and Europe enjoys. Who will serve them? These are people just like us, they have needs and desires much like ours. Who will satisfy them?

If you're an entrepreneur, there are millions if not billions of people who are on the cusp of becoming your target market, and the dominant technological discourse and journalistic coverage gives you no insight into the market they occupy. Not the languages they speak, not the companies who would be your competitors, not the cultural differences that would make selling difficult. Nothing.

I hope this article opens peoples' eyes to the fact that the US-based-or-english-speaking countries are soon going to be a relatively small portion of the world. We need news sources like this to practice the globalization sermon they all preach.

The author could have played this completely differently. Instead of thinking of himself as being surrounded by idiots, he could think of himself as a fox in the hen house.

Put it another way. He's the only person in the organization who knows what they're doing when it comes to testing. He's in a position where he can have a tremendous positive effect on his organization. If instead of complaining that his fellow testers are incompetent, he could bring a benefit to the organization and pocket part of it.

Here's the script: "Hello Mr. Suit. Notice how I've discovered ten times as many bugs as my compatriots combined in the same amount of time. Why don't you fire ten of them and bump me up to fifty an hour. You'll be saving ninety dollars an hour at the cost of an extra forty-one going to me." Every business-minded manager would at least consider this. Naturally the numbers need to be adjusted, but anyone with a significantly higher output than their colleagues has the opportunity to make this sort of case.

Here's another potential script: "Lemme level with you, Mr. Suit, these guys are all kids who like playing games, while I've got years of experience as a professional tester under my belt. Why don't you replace their manager with me, and I'll train them myself. Ill whip them into shape, their overall bug detection rate will double, and you won't have to pay a penny. Just replace their ineffective manager with me."

Lesson learned: this situation isn't cause for bitching and moaning, it's an opportunity to cut throats.

Say what you will, but while Boyer-Moore can be tricky to implement, it's not exactly a fancy algorithm.

While I appreciate the high-mindedness of the EFF's approach, I wonder if it would be more effective to borrow a page from the Buzzfeed school of attention grabbing. The primary challenge is getting people who aren't techies to care. A headline like "Five Things You Already Do With Your Computer That Could Land You In Prison" is a great way to do this: it's inflammatory, it's emotionally driven, it captures the attention of non-techies, and it can naturally be pivoted into a discussion of why these things are illegal in the first place.

I agree with you when it comes to clients. Clients want to hire you to do a specific piece of work, and in that case vague, open-ended agreements are indeed poison. When it comes to partnerships, however, the mutually beneficial agreement might not be immediately obvious. It's entirely possible that a "get to know you" sort of conversation will be necessary, will turn out to be very fruitful, and would be impossible to have over email. Also keep in mind, they're vetting you as much as you're vetting them. They want to get a feel for you as a potential partner, and if you behave like the author from the get-go, it's likely not in their best interests to not work with you.

To my second point, if you say you're in charge of product development, it's your job to dive into these sorts of conversations on the off chance they might develop into meaningful partnerships. I can be annoying and frustrating, and it certainly can seem wasteful to someone with an engineer's mindset, but that's why it's a job and not a hobby. Expecting people to come to you with perfectly-fitting opportunities gift wrapped in exactly the communication style you use will keep you from ever achieving anything.

> I don't know if I maybe lost a few nice business opportunities because of my attitude regarding this, but maybe at least I had more time programming new features for my customers that way.

This is an awful attitude to have.

Firstly, business is the art of reaching mutually beneficial agreements with people. Part of what makes a good business person a good business person is an ability to navigate the potentially frustrating waters of professional communication. Consider the exchange the author laid out. He repeats the same thing over and over again (give me details please), assuming the other person will pick up on the passive aggressive repetition and begin to do things on his terms. Instead of accommodating this person's communication style, he blows them off. Notice this: he blows off the opportunity not on its substance, but on his impression of its messenger. If the guy wants a phone call, roll your eyes privately, give him a phone call, and blow him off ten minutes in if the opportunity doesn't seem worthwhile.

Secondly, there's this idea that time spent programming is the most productive, and anything that subtracts from your precious programming time is a waste of time. This is a tricky point, and I'm going to head off all the impassioned comments stating that programming actually is sacred by saying: sometimes the biggest gains can be made through design and development, but sometimes not. Witness all imperfect products that represent successful businesses because their leadership knew when to devote attention to development and when to pull off and devote attention to business.

If he were a programmer being paid for his programming time, it would be absolutely the case that any time spent not programming was a waste. However, the post clearly states that he's in charge of the product, and yet he seems to have budgeted little time and apparently no attention to furthering the product. If doing product work is such a waste of his time, it would be in his best interest to bring on someone who will do that full time for him, allowing him to focus on programming full time.

> Tor's Bleeding Edge nodes (guards and exits) [1]

Seriously, the choice of Heartbleed as a name is genius. It makes for so many awesome derivative names. I mean c'mon, "Bleeding Edges?" That's brilliant.

[1] https://encrypted.redteam.net/bleeding_edges/

A few questions in the way of exploration rather than accusations, feel free to answer or not answer however you're comfortable.

Could you elaborate on what led to these circumstances? Did you find the courseload too difficult? What percentage of your attention did you devote to your coursework? What was your background with the subjects before you went to college?

More general questions: What is your social situation like i.e. do you have friends you can talk to? Are you living by yourself or with roommates? Are there any academic advisers you can reach out to? Are there any mental health services at your college you would feel comfortable reaching out to for help?

While is commentary makes an excellent case for dishonesty on Zidisha's part, I wonder if some context is necessary. Looking beyond the dishonesty, this commentary talks about a 25 percent interest rate in the implicit context of the credit environment of a developed country. In that context, these practices and interest rates are extremely suspicious, morally dubious, and possibly illegal.

This raises the question of why Zidisha is making these statements. To assume a developed-world business context excludes the possibility that these practices are accepted and commonplace in the markets Zidisha serves. I have no experience with those markets, but it's worth excluding this possibility before expressing distaste for these practices.

Consider the following plausible scenario: Zidisha performs research into the market and discovers that these practices and rates are acceptable. One can even imagine they are preferable to the status quo. The issue is that Zidisha as a company has to generate press and justify its business to a developed-world audience whose gut reaction to such practices would make the company look like a pack of usurers, when in fact they could very well be doing a lot of good.

To me, this communication seems a compromise response to this conflict: translate the numbers and practices as best you can into language and terms developed-world audiences understand. Perhaps the company took some liberties with labeling and conversions along the way, and if this is the case they would do well to be more conservative, but overall I give the benefit of the doubt that this communicate is the result of a tricky conflict of business environments rather than deception.

Whenever I read an article about income inequality, I can't help but ponder the phrase "the rich get richer." Consider the process by which people acquire extreme wealth: invest your money in various vehicles, hopefully collect gains (money, prestige, experience), reinvest the gains. This process doesn't by any means guarantee wealth, but it can be very kind to those blessed with good judgement, good fortune, and initial excess capital.

In a discussion of income inequality, the most relevant factor is excess capital. For those on the bottom of the ladder, whose money goes toward basic expenses, this potentially virtuous cycle is completely out of reach. Their money is best spent on purchasing stability rather than attempting to secure wealth. For those in the middle nurturing already-comfortable lives, the upside of shooting the moon in an attempt to gain wealth is often outweighed by the risk of sustaining financially disruptive losses, as well as the discomfort inherent in turning away from a lifestyle that pleases them. [1]

Then there are the wealthy. I'm not talking about the faux-wealthy whose lifestyle preferences drive them to buy Maseratis and condos on credit and spending the rest of their lives wearing golden handcuffs. I'm talking about those who have money left over after they've secured themselves a comfortable lifestyle. They have excess capital. Ten thousand dollars can go into the stock market, a hundred thousand dollars can go into a small business, a million dollars can go into a more sizable business, ten million can go into multiple sizable businesses, etc.

The opportunities for growth scale with the size of your disposable income. If you take this view, it suddenly becomes stupidly obvious why the one percent of the one percent makes so much more than the ninety-nine percent of the one percent: they had more to begin with. I'm all but certain if you zoom in on the the one percent of the one percent of the one percent, you'll see a similar disparity.

Unrelated corollary: This also helps to explain both why traditional entrepreneurs are older, and why tech entrepreneurs tend to be younger: non-tech leaders spend their lives amassing wealth, techies are so in demand they get a good dose of it when they're young. Although the acquisition appetites of behemoths like Google and Facebook certainly don't hurt.

[1] I'm so certain someone will respond to this comment by quoting that one study where happiness flattens around like $75,000 that I won't even bother finding it myself.

I think it would be helpful to try to understand the perspective of management.

Consider an extreme stereotype: the "business school guy." He went to XYZ school of management, where he learned that a business is an organization that takes in raw materials and creates something more valuable than the sum of the unfinished parts. He learned how to raise money by selling his business idea to other people who think like him. He learned about how to manage people, perform marketing, design products, and set priorities for his organization.

I don't mean to suggest this is the type you're working with here, but I offer a relatable character to which you can add traits or from which you can remove them to fit the particulars of your experience.

For him, running a business is as much an exercise in tradeoffs and compromises as building an engineering system probably is for you:

You end up running with an imperfect design because of time constraints and because you're a slave to shipping. He runs with an imperfect business plan because that's what his board thinks is best and because he's a slave to their opinions. You devote time and energy to a technology only to have it fail when you need it most. He pursues partnerships and deals that fall through because of unforeseen differences, despite his best efforts. You end up rewriting your architecture because it didn't meet your requirements as well as you expected. He pivots the business because his original business plan isn't panning out as he anticipated. Et cetera.

The point is that generally people in management can be assumed to be doing their best. Despite what hacker news and TechCrunch try to convince you, running a company is a job just the same as building an engineering system. Incentives aren't always aligned, you have to cut corners, and conflicts are unavoidable. As someone on the inside of engineering divisions of technology giants, I can tell you that you get this sort of conflict and frustration even at these "engineering-first" sorts of places.

Naturally some companies are better than others. You want to find a manager who thinks of himself as your equal rather than your slaver. Instead of asking yourself "does this management know what it's doing?" ask yourself "does this management make me better as a professional?" If you can say "yes" to the second question, the answer to the first question doesn't matter. The company can fail, but if you come out of it better than you came in, you still succeeded.

I could be wrong here, but from my reading of the source this doesn't look like an A* search algorithm. For starters, the search space is nondeterministic, and since you can only explore in one direction, you're not really performing a search space exploration as much as choosing a direction and going with it.

Secondly, the implementation doesn't perform the combination of current state score and proposed state score that lies at the heart of the A* algorithm. Instead it takes the current state for granted (which, again, it must given the inability to backtrack) and chooses the available move with the largest score.

Thirdly, and I'm reaching a little here, I can't find any place where any heuristic is used to optimize search performance by pruning the search tree. The search space is brute forced on each iteration, and the entire tree is scored.

At the expense of seeming pedantic I suggest this is a greedy play algorithm rather than A*. You can be even more precise and call it a single-ply minimax.

Now that that's out of the way, I should temper my criticism with the fact that this implementation works. It's not algorithmically complicated because it doesn't have to be. It doesn't use any of the typical performance tricks because it doesn't need to. What it lacks in sophistication it makes up in "good enough."

Don't celebrate. However ridiculous they might seem, defending against legal actions like this takes time, money, and focus away from efforts that will actually drive the EFF's mission forward.

Instead of patting the EFF on the back for quashing this motion, think of all the resources that went into this hollow victory, and do your best to replenish them.