tinymollusk

> every time you trick someone it ekes away at their trust and happiness using your platform. But this occurs over many such interactions so it won't show up in your metrics until much later

Is there any way to prove when this is about to happen, or has happened? Otherwise it seems just as likely that users could have less distaste over time because the site has optimized to show them what they like.

If analytics can't measure it, and users dont notice it, how can we know if its real? Does every site that does a lot of a/b testing have this happen, and if not, what are the objective conditions under which it happens?

(disclaimer: I just launched a split testing product offering.)

I wonder if a proxy device with some smarts regarding data transmission patterns (learned from when a device is newly added to the network) could provide some security.

Get a new device, plug it in to a locked-down network that passes all packets through a deep packet inspector connected to some ML. Add in proxy features so if the vendor turns off their service, your personal network MitM can mimic the server on the other side.

I doubt this is feasible due to the fact that consumers clearly value "it just works" (implying simplicity/less security) over secure/private. (And probably a bunch of other factors I'm not thinking of.)

Do you know if it's easy to start using pyenv with existing projects, or should I wait until my next de novo project?

Given how bad the modern human is at understanding probability, I see no reason to think the ancients were better.

What if closed systems are just that much different than open systems that it's not generalizable?

Closed systems don't have Black Swan possibilities. Black swans are sometimes super-linear, jolting results in directions and scale unimagined.

To answer briefly (and respectfully): because an MMORPG is a different type of system than reality. Comparing cars to buses.

This applies to everything in life. Just because an expert tells you it'll work, doesn't mean it will. Balance the possible negative effects against the possible gains, and once you have learned how it affects yourself, make your own decision.

(Unless trying something creates a condition that cannot be reverted, e.g. death)

Good catch, thank you! I've got to update the copy tomorrow, will make a pass through this as well.

I can help you increase your visit-to-signup conversion rate for free, if you're interested. Just soft launched my own service (www.leadnexus.co), where I will split test your signup forms to find more effective options. Your volume might make it a little tougher to optimize, but I bet I can improve on that ~0.3% conversion rate for you.

(That goes for anyone reading this -- happy to see if I can help, to test out my own idea. Not ready for a bigger announcement, but ping me via the site or travis@leadnexus.co if you want to give it a shot.)

Link - https://www.leadnexus.co

It gives a high-risk group the ability to notify their friends and family and practice what to do in event of a heart attack. My mom frequently stays with me, but outside of "call 911" I don't really know what to do in teh event of a heart attack. Time lost is lives lost, so better preparation could quite literally save lives.

Is something like mod_php what you'd consider a CGI application? I always think of CGIs from before the day when webservers made it easy to integrate a runtime. For me, CGIs were usually binary executables that the webserver handed data to. I always thought it was about the data exchange, instead of about application state, because http requests are by default generically stateless.

I remember CGI; curious if you're able to elaborate how you see the analogy.

If you're interested, I just finished a conversion tool designed to help sites get more signups. Won't know until we try, but I'm pretty sure I could increase your signups by 30-50%.

I'm soft launching this week and willing to set you up for free so I can test out my tech. My email is in my profile.

(same goes for any other HN reader who stumbles across this -- free optimization service for anyone who reaches out and is a nice person.)

Isn't smoking cigarettes protective against Parkinson's?

How did you acquire the visitors? Did they indicate interest with a search or click to get to your site?

I agree that it feels fairly obvious, but if it were such a strong impact on crime rates, wouldn't that be obvious in the data?

I use multi-armed bandit algorithms to optimize things. It acts as a self-healing algorithm to minimize opportunity cost / "loss" as it searches the space.

Broken Windows Theory is at best, hotly contested. The wikipedia article linked above covers the debate (which has been around since the theory was published in 1982, without much resolution in whether the evidence supports the theory).

Extrapolating previous trends of energy consumption. Historically, technological advances have greatly increased the energy consumption per human. At an accelerating pace (exponential energy consumption growth).

According to Geoffrey West's "Scale", humans biological needs are about 90 watts at rest, 250 watts for an extremely active lifestyle. The average American uses about 11,000 watts, 2 orders of magnitude more, and more than a blue whale.

It is possible we will invent new ways to tap energy, but exponential growth will have to end somehow.

(Unless you meant to imply that our technological progress could hasten the heat death of the universe, in which case I fully agree.)

Note - I do not mean this will happen any time soon, just that there is a theoretical upper bound to innovation: how much energy exists in the universe.

Very good points. Seems like this leaves us with "trust benchmarks that probably aren't generalizable to your use-case" or "run your own expensive benchmarks before you have the scale to have the data to simulate the scale".

What's the best strategy here? I've defaulted to MySQL, pg, or sqlite, based on my preference of the moment. I haven't had enough good/bad outcomes to form a stronger opinion, but I'm now realizing I've never really thought this decision through (despite building a few data systems that I'm pretty proud of).

True, but that is because every major database is good enough for 99% of people even when run on the cheapest linode available ;).

But the larger issue -- that they have direct financial incentive to unconsciously bias the results -- still exists. This isn't anything against Arango's team, I'm sure they're lovely people, but even physics experimental results have been shown to be biased when the experimenter knew the testing hypothesis.

"I think I've been in the top 5% of my age cohort all my life in understanding the power of incentives, and all my life I've underestimated it. Never a year passes that I don't get some surprise that pushes my limit a little farther." -- Charlie Munger

Because the two agents in this game both benefit by inflating titles, without direct perceivable cost.

The CTO/lead gets a better title to inflate their ego and (possibly) future earnings.

The company gives the employee something the employee values but costs the employer nothing.

The risk you run here is internally over-emphasizing events that happened more recently as more important. That could make them more relevant to your recent experience but not necessarily something of more value than the problems you were solving earlier in your career.

I have also found increased risk of bikeshedding. The higher you go, the more likely you're working cross-disciplinary with ego-intellects. That also leads to suppressing dissent (hierarchy relationships more than experience-based), leading to worse decisions.

Please don't listen to the HBR articles, they're generally very terrible and often can be summed up by survivorship bias.

You find it ludicrous because you haven't experienced it or seen it with your own eyes?

As one of the recent newcomers, should I feel defensive when I read something like this? I understand there are people with much more knowledge. Isn't this true of everyone, in every field?

The message I've gotten is "try things out". Innovation isn't necessarily improving specific techniques, but applying them to new fields. To apply techniques to things that are more mundane like data processing in non-AI-focused companies, you're gonna need bodies who know how to apply these newer programming techniques to solve problems.

Not every electrician has to understand electrical engineering.

^ This is one person's opinion that reflects their own experience.

I am a 35 year old who has done development, and may do it again in the future. I have kept my skillset updated by taking several AI courses during a sabbatical.

If you are competing against a group that competes for roles that select for what you think is silly, you'll never win. This does not describe most startups; it may be an indicator of bad startups.

There is age discrimination, for sure. In the startup cohort study of the future, I am quite confident those exhibiting this discrimination will not be on the successful side.

Younger devs focus on their skills. Older devs focus on the value they bring to the company. Companies that focus on the latter will do better.

YMMV, we live in a probabilistic world.

That proves Slack doesn't work in the same sense that it proves frictionless professional interaction doesn't work.

As in, it proves nothing except it's an ineffective product for what humans use it for. Same as we'd say if Slack wasn't around -- "is IRC really the best way for us to do this?"

No. Of course not. We don't live in a best-case world, however; the relevant question to their user base is "are we helping you more than alternatives?", and for an entrepreneurial community like HN, "what does the better solution that solves the same problem look like?"

They have those features, and (possibly) those intentions.

If I use a chainsaw to slice my morning butter, is that the chainsaw's fault?

(I haven't seen Slack identify itself as a document store; I have seen almost every company encompass that use-case. Is that Slack's fault?)

This will come across as harsh, but that isn't my intention. My intent is to explore ideas, so I apologize in advance.

Are your friends aware that scientific breakthroughs have not typically come with rewards to the observer/identifier/mathematician? If so, they likely selected for a role that benefits the other humans but not themselves; if not, perhaps they are unrealistic about expectations as a thinker.

We all seem to love new thinkers so much, but telling people what they've built is incorrect has rarely been personally profitable. Outside of the maths/sciences, hell, they freaking crucified Jesus for his social policies.

The entire structure of human civilization suggests its unprofitable to tell people they're wrong. It requires that wrongness to "create new paradigms". People who buy into the system are unlikely to overturn it, so the complaints become less "they dont like me for my ideas because they're recolutionary" and more "they don't like me because my ideas aren't as mainstream as theirs".

If your metric is the latter, can you help me understand what the problem is?

You Are Not So Smart && The Halo Effect.