What's the Difference Between Children's Books in China and the U.S.? - <AUTHOR> https://www.npr.org/sections/goatsandsoda/2018/01/06/573869099/whats-the-difference-between-children-s-books-in-china-and-the-u-s <comment><USER2> I work in publishing, and tangentially with children's books published inside and outside of China. My main observation is that the Chinese market for children's books (read: parents) is totally uninterested in books produced in China. 99% of children's books published in China are imported and translated from other countries, mostly the US.

In other words, the (politically-influenced) Chinese publishing industry is producing didactic children's books, but Chinese consumers are not interested in those books at all.

<comment><USER3> What's published in China is amusing. Current events are touchy politically, so there's a vast amount of wuxia. See any Chinese drama site. Novels about business success are popular.

China has explicit political movie censorship. The golden dragon logo at the beginning is the "passed by censor" label. The Chinese army even produces an occasional feature film. "Sky Fighters", is a ripoff of "Top Gun", but worse. The USAF, especially the Strategic Air Command, used to do stuff like that in the 1950s. See "Strategic Air Command"[1], with Jimmie Stuart (considered good) or "Bombers B-52" (not so good).

[1] [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VGjyH2ulsCk](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VGjyH2ulsCk)

<comment><USER4> There are always a tons of fans for Wuxia in China for probably hundreds years. Supply follows demand. And Internet-literature is a big thing in China. There are also a lot of Wuxia or quasi-wuxia published online. I wonder which country don't censor movies? China actually has quite a few political-metaphor movies up. Not to mention recently one filmed by Feng XiaoGang. I am not saying China bureau of movies production are doing a good job. In fact they have been complained quite a a lot. China still hasn't implement a good classification system. Quite a few films got cut because it has to suit majority(including children) which really annoys people. As your last film example, many Chinese viewers don't think that film is good.

<comment><USER5> > I wonder which country don't censor movies?

The USA, for one.

The MPAA does rate movies, and most theater chains choose not to run movies rated to contain extreme violence or sexuality, but anyone can privately film and distribute a political (for example) film that might embarrass the US government.

Many such movies also run in theaters- see Fahrenheit 9/11, Citizenfour, All the President's Men, etc.

<comment><USER6> What about The Forecaster, a film about Martin Armstrong? It's critical of banks, government corruption and was effectively denied viewing in the US short of downloading pirated copies for years despite being successful globally. Initially, Netflix was set to stream the documentary but suddenly reversed that decision, yet other movies you list were not blocked.

Censorship in the US may be more subtle than elsewhere, but it is present. Banks and governments have their methods which have become disturbingly effective. Also consider SJWs who effectively drown out or ostracize anyone with a differing viewpoint - you are free to think whatever you want, as long as you agree with us!

[http://imdb.com/title/tt4103404/](http://imdb.com/title/tt4103404/) [https://www.armstrongeconomics.com/world- news/corruption/cen...](https://www.armstrongeconomics.com/world- news/corruption/censorship-trying-to-cover-up-the-truth/)

<comment><USER7> I find it hard to believe that the reason it was dropped was due to criticism of banks and allegations of government corruption, given there is copious amounts of other films with the same subjects available, including on Netflix.

<comment><USER6> You're right, it isn't just the criticism.

Armstrong advised Reagan, Thatcher and numerous other administrations over the past few decades. He has been behind the curtain.

His computer system has been accurately forecasting long-term socio-economic trends and their apices since the eighties. This is what the banks wanted.

When Armstrong turned the banks down, they sought to forcibly acquire the software and utilized government to squeeze him. The story continued on with illegitimate confiscation of billions and civil rights transgressions as Armstrong was jailed for years over contempt of court because there were no legitimate charges that could be brought against him.

So yes, there's definitely a history that makes Armstrong a target. The deeper you dig, the more it makes sense why The Forecaster was effectively blocked in the US and others have no problem.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I'm French, but spent a portion of my childhood living in the USA (South Carolina) due to my father's work.

The one thing that my extremely French parents couldn't stop making fun of at the time, and still can't stop making fun of now 20 years later, is the American habit of praising children repeatedly, putting stickers on homework, giving participation ribbons for every event, etc.

It was actually an interesting dichotomy: I'd get my homework back from the teacher with it saying "Great job!" with a cute little star sticker, and then at home my mom would get mad at me because she thought I made dumb mistakes and would make me do it all over again.

Definitely a strong contrast between French and American values in schooling, at least in the 90s. I'm left handed, and in the 2nd grade I had a teacher who would tear apart any piece of paper I gave her that had any ink smudge on it (fountain pens are mandatory in French grade school - which also confused my parents when we moved to the US and I was expected to write everything in pencil) and make me do it all over again. I do have really neat handwriting now ¯\\_(ツ)_/¯

15 years later, as a grad student in the US, teachers I TA'd for repeatedly told me I was too harsh in my grading and that I shouldn't take off points for small mistakes, typos, etc. That's another big difference between French and US schooling: in France, you're graded out of 20; but at the high school/college level, if you have an average above 15/20, you're most certainly in the top of your class. In fact, in some top tier universities the class average might be 8/20\. In grad school in the US, I had a 90%+ average, and routinely got 100% on tests - something just completely foreign to me.

<comment><USER9> > 15 years later, as a grad student in the US, teachers I TA'd for repeatedly > told me I was too harsh in my grading and that I shouldn't take off points > for small mistakes, typos, etc.

I am surprised that you got resistance on this in an educational setting, of all places. When I notice typos and grammatical errors, it almost always lowers my opinion of the material. It signals sloppy writing or possibly unclear thinking. It calls into question the meticulousness of the work as a whole. I expect more from a news outlet or a review journal with a copy editor. Professional writers and publishers should produce expert writing.

I should note a few things, for the sake of context: I had some years of private schooling early on; my father would make me write book reports during summer vacation; he self-published a book later in life and was very proud that others repeatedly complimented it for being free of typos and grammatical errors. (None of my peers had this experience growing up, to my knowledge.)

University standards should impose higher standards than what is typically expected in regular life. This is how writing is taught and reinforced. I think the internet, as a whole, dumbs-down writing skills by exposing readers to terrible writing on such a regular basis that they no longer perceive the difference. I don't know a solution to that problem.

<comment><USER8> It was a mid ranked state university, and the professors were not that great.

I had a professor who made me regrade an entire batch of homework because, in her words, my comments explaining the mistakes were unnecessary - the students just care about their grade. Eye roll.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> As someone with a kid in China, kids TV is _far_ more formative than books. Why? Books in Chinese are not read by kids, they are read by parents since it is impossible to learn enough Chinese characters to achieve literacy while young! In my observation, most Chinese parents are very busy and do not spend much time reading with their kids.

<comment><USER11> > In my observation, most Chinese parents are very busy and do not spend much > time reading with their kids.

Grandparents and Tiger Moms don't read to their kids? Grandparents lived with their grandchildren in China as a whole. My wife teaches English to Chinese children through the internet and the sessions cost them about $20 US dollars. There is always an adult close at hand and seems much more active in their children's lives.

Now for your daily dose of Chinese Propaganda 88% of parents read 23 minutes everyday. Also there is no link to said "study." [http://www.china.org.cn/china/2011-04/21/content_22412555.ht...](http://www.china.org.cn/china/2011-04/21/content_22412555.htm)

One big take away. In the US we push all Kindergarten students to read (age 5 or 6). In this paper 77% read at age 8 grades 2 or grade 3 in the US.

<comment><USER12> What makes you think that Tiger Moms and predominant child raising style in China?

<comment><USER11> > What makes you think ...

I follow the money that is spent on education in China by the child's parents. We don't even come close in the US.

[http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/china/2017-10/30/content_338809...](http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/china/2017-10/30/content_33880964.htm)

Just look at VIP Kids and the other English teaching startups where Chinese parents spend $20 for a 25 minute session twice a week. VIP Kids now has 30,000 US employees teaching these kids.

[https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-08-23/china- s-v...](https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-08-23/china-s-vipkid- raises-200-million-from-tencent-sequoia-china)

If they aren't the predominant style they still spend a ton of money on children's education.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> I cannot talk about China, but in Germany the classic children's book "Der Struwwelpeter" is to my knowledge still quite popular and often read to children:

German original: > [http://sternchenland.com/downloads/unsortiertes/Der%20Struww...](http://sternchenland.com/downloads/unsortiertes/Der%20Struwwelpeter%20-%20Heinrich%20Hofmann.pdf)

English translation > [https://archive.org/details/englishstruwwelp00hoffrich](https://archive.org/details/englishstruwwelp00hoffrich)

(note that you should prefer to read this in German if you can, since lots of subtleties are lost in the English adaption).

Here is a movie adaption of this book (in German) - note that they added an epilogue at the end where all stories still come to a happy end:

> [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dpcPz- > GvHYI](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dpcPz-GvHYI)

In particular consider the third ("Die gar traurige Geschichte mit dem Feuerzeug"/"The dreadful story about Harriet and the matches"; 16:54 in the video) and the sixth ("Die Geschichte vom Daumenlutscher"/"The story of little thumb-a-suck"; 13:38 in the video) story to see why this might be somewhat different from what I consider as a typical US-American children's book from my non-US perspective. :-)

<comment><USER14> English children's stories were also quite dark before the industrial revolution. In fact, I have read, that there wasn't much of a distinction between the appropriate subject matter for children and adults.

After the industrial revolution, with nuclear families moving to cities, and education suddenly becoming more important and children being moved out of the labor force, the idea of "childhood" as a uniquely innocent period was invented.

A lot of the sanitized fairy tales we read have very dark origins.

<comment><USER13> > A lot of the sanitized fairy tales we read have very dark origins.

I still consider lots of fairy tales that I was told as a child as very dark (I don't mean the idyllic world "Disney" versions).

For example in the Grimm version of Cinderella the evil sisters cut cut away their heels and toes with a knife to fit in the shoe and at the end the pigeons peck the eyes of the evil sisters (see [http://gutenberg.spiegel.de/buch/-6248/16](http://gutenberg.spiegel.de/buch/-6248/16)).

Or in "The red shoes" by Hans Christian Andersen the little girl protagonist prompts the headman to chop her feet (wearing the red shoes) to get rid of the shoes.

Edit: or Snow White: At the end the evil stepmother has to dance in red-hot iron shoes at the daughjter's wedding until she dies (see [http://gutenberg.spiegel.de/buch/-6248/16](http://gutenberg.spiegel.de/buch/-6248/16))

<comment><USER14> Yes, exactly. Those made it over to the English version in the old days.

It would be interesting to learn why the German version retains the darkness. Maybe its because Germans get to/are encouraged to read it in the original.

<comment><USER13> > It would be interesting to learn why the German version retains the > darkness.

Because this is the version that the Brothers Grimm wrote down. I am nevertheless aware that there exist other (sometimes even darker) versions of the fairy tales than the versions written down by the Brothers Grimm. In this sense the versions of the Brothers Grimm are not "the original", but some version of the fairy tales (this is the difference between "Volksmärchen" (folk tales) and Kunstmärchen (literary fairy stories) - only for the letter one there exist some concept of "the original").

So I would say that Grimm brothers versions of the fairy tales conserved the zeitgeist of the beginning of the 19th century and there exists to my knowledge no other popular collection of German original language folk fairy tales. But of course today there exist translations of collections of folk fairy tales from different language areas.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> My experience being a father is that children aquire and consume vast amounts of books. They reread them until they understand them and then they either discard them and never touch them again or they like them and keep reading them. I haven't been able to see a simple thematic pattern for my daughter but what I did notice us that she really hates it when you try to read books she but in the discard pile. I am quite sure that she would loose her intrest in books if I kept taking books she didn't like.

Instead I let her dicide what she wants and hope that this will let her develop and refine her taste.

I guess what I'm trying to say is that i suspect top down government of children's books will backfire in diminished interest and cruder taste for culture.

<comment><USER16> As a father of a 6 year old voracious reader, I agree. He is devouring books faster than I can find them. You expose them to lot of different books and then sit back and observe which one they pick up again and again to read. Talk to them about what they liked about the book, to discover what actually interests them.

Initially I tried to influence the books he would read, but after a while he refused to read them (he would read them in his own time). So now I just let him be and just track what interests him and periodically introduce him to new stuff.

<comment><USER17> Take him to the library and let him roam around and pick whatever he likes. I used to do this at the age of 9-10-11: I would go to the library once a week, pick about 5-6 books and read them all by the next week. Wish I had discovered the library when I was 6 :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> _Cheung notes that children in China consistently score higher on academic tests compared to children in the U.S. and Mexico._

If we're going to play this game, which culture's children's books teach kids more about honesty, I wonder?

[https://www.nytimes.com/2017/10/13/world/asia/china- science-...](https://www.nytimes.com/2017/10/13/world/asia/china-science- fraud-scandals.html)

[https://www.theatlantic.com/education/archive/2016/03/how- so...](https://www.theatlantic.com/education/archive/2016/03/how- sophisticated-test-scams-from-china-are-making-their-way-into-the-us/474474/)

<comment><USER4> Both of them are teaching children to be honest people. Chinese children scored higher just because they were trained earlier. That's it. And there are several minor reasons mentioned in book <Outliers: The Story of Success>. China has a lot of people, and there are cheaters to blame, it's not only about those cheaters' honesty, there are economic problems too. Try to generalize or portray all Chinese students as dishonest people are just not objective. If you wanted to play that game, who got more prisoner to citizen ratio? Given they read those cutie books taught them to be law-bide people.

<comment><USER19> > Chinese children scored higher just because they were trained earlier.

No, Chinese children scored higher because only a sample was taken from urban Shanghai and compared to the entire USA. Imagine comparing San Francisco to the whole of China, including its much poorer and less educated hinterlands.

There are false generalizations all around.

<comment><USER4> Are you talking about PISA? Alright, that test has sample problems due to Hukou system[0] and limited city participation, it may expand to more cities. In fact the U.S. didn't participate as a whole but 3 states.

I will put my argument more widely, East-Asian countries tend to train their children at a very young age, and their pronunciation of numbers helped them to learn arithmetic(stated in the book <Outliers>).

China has a basically working K-12 program, and there were a series of documentaries shoot in UK, not long later, UK imported elementary math books from Shanghai. But China still need to improve it's higher-ed system. Preferably learn from Russia, France and Germany.

[0][https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Programme_for_International_St...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Programme_for_International_Student_Assessment#China)

<comment><USER19> China has a K-9 program, education isn't compulsory after the 9th grade is completed, high school is optional. Whether you get a good education or not depends on your hukou, it is far from universally good, first tier cities having the best, rural villages having much much worse.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> > The Foolish Old Man Who Removed The Mountain

This is a real story in India - [https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dashrath_Manjhi](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dashrath_Manjhi)

There is also a good movie made on him - [http://m.imdb.com/title/tt3449292/](http://m.imdb.com/title/tt3449292/)

</comment><comment><USER21> _...generally viewing intelligence as a trait that can be acquired through hard work rather than a quality that you 're born with._

The first thing that came to mind when I read this was Lysenko-ism.

<comment><USER22> Why? Lysenkoism was an instance of a mistaken biological theory being elevated to political truth.

That quote just seems to be garden-variety "growth mindset" vs. "fixed mindset" self-motivation.

<comment><USER23> You could argue that the trait we call intelligence is about how quickly efforts to learn something new result in new capabilities, rather than _whether_ effort to learn something results in new capabilities at all. And from my (admittedly shallow) familiarity with the field, that argument seems to be substantiated.

Problem is, even if that's true, it's not a particularly useful truth to most individuals. A growth mindset _is_ useful -- unless you're particularly _unintelligent_ , it's probably true that your efforts to learn will have results that make you more capable, and effort can compound on effort. You should probably act as if you can become more capable than you are, even if there are degrees of inborn intelligence.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> _Ostensibly it 's about a cat that has an appetite for sloppy letters — "written too large or too small, or if the letter is missing a stroke,"_

 _But the underlying point is clear: "This is really instilling the idea of effort — that children have to learn to consistently practice in order to achieve a certain level,"_

My take on the underlying point of that story is quite different: conform or be exterminated.

<comment><USER25> > _conform or be exterminated_

You didn't persevere to the end:

"And lest you've been worrying about the fate of that cat — Cheung has reassuring news. Once the kids improve their handwriting, 'the cat feels very hungry,' says Cheung. But then the kids take pity on him — and write a few sloppy letters for him to eat."

<comment><USER26> It's about the fate of the letters, not the cat. At the end, non-conforming letters get made just so they can get exterminated. Great.

<comment><USER25> > _At the end, non-conforming letters get made just so they can get > exterminated_

You're overprojecting. They're inanimate letters. The children are learning penmanship. In the end, out of compassion for the cat that was previously plaguing them, they bend the rules to be nice. It's certainly cuter than the German fairy tales I was raised on.

<comment><USER26> > They're inanimate letters.

Cats don't actually starve when they don't get to eat those.

And why only say that now? What does the "compassion for the cat" have to do with it it either way?

What German fairy tales about non-conformist things being destroyed were you raised on? And did your learning of penmanship involve any of that?

And they don't even bend the (part of the) rules (under discussion here), non- conforming letters still get eaten.

<comment><USER27> >What German fairy tales about non-conformist things being destroyed were you raised on?

Not fairy tales but media for children in general: Pinocchio and Thomas the Tank Engine.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> This article annoyed me the last time I ran into it because when they go into possible effects they point to test scores to try and quantify the effect of dedication oriented children's stories but go to no effort to try and quantify the effect of happiness oriented children's stories despite it would be quite easy to note suicide is almost twice as common in china vs the united states.

<comment><USER29> There are so many differences between the US and China that statements like these ("children's books are raising test scores," "happiness-focused culture is lowering suicide rates") are completely silly. There are innumerable variables at play, and they're all adding to and canceling each other out in wild and unpredictable ways.

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> And the hunt for the "magic sauce" in education trundles on...

</comment><comment><USER31> > Cheung notes that children in China consistently score higher on academic > tests compared to children in the U.S. and Mexico

But I doubt this is because of books. After all, children of chinese descent consistently score higher on academic tests everywhere in the world, including the U.S.

The elephant in the room is that ethnic chinese children have got more of what it takes, _conditio sine qua non_ , to score high on academic tests.

</comment><comment><USER32> I would like to read the paper but it is paywalled

<comment><USER33> sci-hub.bz

<comment><USER34> Doesn't work for me. Can you please suggest any others?</comment></comment></comment>


Cool Bootstrap template - <AUTHOR> https://bootstrapmade.com/themes/flat-king-one-page-template/

<comment><USER2> What's the license? The SHOW TERMS button does not work (using Firefox on Linux).

<comment><AUTHOR> Look there [https://creativemarket.com/angelo.studio/53883-FLAT-KING- One...](https://creativemarket.com/angelo.studio/53883-FLAT-KING-One-Page- Template)

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Nice colors :)</comment>


Russia may deem civil servants' use of Gmail, Facebook 'high treason' - <AUTHOR> http://rt.com/politics/gmail-facebook-treason-high-521/

<comment><USER2> I honestly don't see how american-run social media companies can disentangle themselves from the NSA now. It remains to be seen if the public in most countries will even take notice, but this kind of response will not be the last we see from foreign government agencies. If Facebook or Gmail do fall from public grace, the only certain thing is that their successor won't be run by an american company. International trust in american companies may be fundamentally tainted now.

<comment><USER3> > If Facebook or Gmail do fall from public grace, the only certain thing is > that their successor won't be run by an american company.

Who's to say we'll ever see a major international company like that again? I foresee a future where DNS root server control is yanked away from the USG and the internet is partitioned.

The pendulum has peaked at globalization and now it's swinging towards isolationism. Whether we like it or not borders have been drawn along the previously wild-west-like internet, and it may take on the form of virtual Berlin Walls.

Hopefully someday we can enjoy the same euphoria that followed Germany's reunification but on a global scale, and that day may take a century to get here.

<comment><USER4> I'd definitely read a sci-fi book based on those premises. Preferably, lead character would be developer. _Not_ hacker; I'm not interested much in that point of view.

<comment><USER5> Kind of reminds me of an abstraction of the Snow Crash concept of city-state issued visas and specialized bar codes that allow you to walk into said city- state problem free.

<comment><USER6> "Welcome to Mr. Lee's Greater Hong Kong"

I was thinking this after the NSA thing. People could end up in 150 person (Dunbar number) sized LLCs like the city-states in the novel.

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Snow_crash](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Snow_crash)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Well, this is a typical link bait, peppered with the eerie "cold war" overtones. Let me clear up a few things.

Firstly, the proposal is covering specifically military and state employees. No one is going to shut down Gmail or Facebook countrywide. This is ridiculous.

Secondly, it's not a ban, but a request to develop a set of instructions on handling in-house data for the employees.

Thirdly, the proposal calls for encryption of all sensitive data sent over the internet.

A little less sensational, is it? :)

</comment><comment><USER8> The article says "immediately limit civil servants' access to the popular US internet services and social networks" \- which I have to admit actually makes sense.

If the NSA can get details of the personal lives of individuals then it could open them up for blackmail and therefore to be a security risk.

</comment><comment><USER9> Years ago, when Russia was vehemently against US expanding its anti-rocket shields, I was against Russia, and supported US, because "US are the good guys, right?". Over the past few years I've started to understand Russia's position. _Nobody_ should want US to become too powerful, because clearly you can't depend on Americans to keep their own government in check, no matter how good the US Constitution is.

So I kind've understand this move from Russia, too, even though it will probably end badly for Russia, to the point where they become more like China, but I feel that US _deserves_ this from every country in the world, until they roll back all the spying, and end these programs and laws (Patriot Act, FISA).

I imagine that if there are hundreds of corporations lobbying the US government to stop because they are losing business overseas, they will eventually do it, because they know that the end of the day, and despite all their public statements, the spying is _not_ that useful for catching terrorists, and _specific_ investigations and wiretapping should still be possible under reasonable laws anyway.

<comment><USER7> A bit of history in relation to the proposed anti-ballistic defense system in Europe.

In 2002, the US unilaterally withdrew from the ABM treaty with Russia. The treaty had been active since the 70s and sought to decrease the amount of those very systems installed. In the same year, no longer bound by the treaty, the US started to look into expansion of its defense arsenal in Europe, which eventually led them to Poland.

It is no surprise then that Russia saw it as an unfriendly gesture at best. Any independent country would, when all of a sudden someone dumps the anti- ballistic treaty and then decides to build a defensive shield along your borders.

The EU has traditionally been used as a playground to advance the US agenda. The proposed defense system is no exception. Gladly, it did not come to fruition. Otherwise, we'd seen a very different Europe now.

Given our attachment to history, Russia is still often seen as this "cold war" aggressor out to get you. But if the past decade is of any lesson, I think we have a new candidate on this role.

<comment><USER10> >Any independent country would, when all of a sudden someone dumps the anti- ballistic treaty and then decides to build a defensive shield along your borders.

Look at this from Poland's side. Not building the defensive shield means that Russia has still the right to pressure the country with missiles. Russia wouldn't need to object the defense shield if they didn't want that. Pressuring your neighbors with weapons is still cold war tactics. In this case Russia was clearly the bad guy. Russia is also the bad guy when it manipulates the energy prices for Europe, but it seems that wasn't enough for them.

<comment><USER8> Would the missile defence system that was planned for Poland really have protected Poland from attack from Russia? They are pretty close so cruise missiles and/or aircraft would presumably be preferable to use rather than ballistic missiles.

<comment><USER11> The opposite is true. Poland would have been wiped out as the first order of business if anything was about to start. I suspect them being a prime target might have given them some thought.

<comment><USER8> The Russians apparently announced they would have deployed Iskander theatre missiles in the Kaliningrad Oblast to target any US missile defence base in Poland:

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/9K720_Iskander](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/9K720_Iskander)

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/US_missile_defense_complex_in_P...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/US_missile_defense_complex_in_Poland)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Very soon, Russia, Saudi, India and anyother countries can demand Google, Facebook, twitter,'s servers be located inside their borders and allow their own intelligent agents to access, inspect it.

Since China block google, Facebook, twitter already, they can also make the demand for Apple imsg, icloud, Microsoft and Skype servers be inside China , else they are blocked. Apple, M$ will have to agree or risk loosing that market.

</comment><comment><USER13> For official state use, not general use.

<comment><USER14> Which is technically illegal in most countries, storing government information on foreign systems.

Up until now, it may have been tolerated as long as it didn't concern obviously sensitive information, but you can expect a total ban in most countries on the planet, not just paranoid Russia.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> Since I don't know enough about Russia, I can't dismiss this report as sensationalist, but something tells me it is.

Perhaps someone with more knowledge can tell us if Russian law requires intent to prove "high treason"? And how influential is this "Lower House deputy" anyway?

<comment><USER16> This is just another episode in anti-american hysteria reality show called Russian internal politics.

>if Russian law requires

there is no such thing as "Russian law" in the sense "law" is understood in the Western world. There is though a will of whoever has the power - it is real Russian law and it doesn't require any prove for a guilty verdict.

>And how influential is this "Lower House deputy" anyway?

Just a government mouthpiece. The elections are based on party lists. So beyond 10th position in the leading party and 2-3rd position in other parties, these people are unknown nobodies. Some just buy the position in the list to get immunity from various criminal prosecutions the face.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> Obviously providing such data to the NSA is a crime. It's helping a foreign power, and it is taking away jobs from Russians at various Russian intelligence programs who now have less information about Russian citizens to look at.....

</comment><comment><USER9> Another interesting turn of events. It seems Russia is considering asylum for Snowden:

 _The head of the foreign affairs committee in Russia 's State Duma, or lower house of parliament, predicted "hysteria in the United States," if Russia were to agree to shelter Mr. Snowden, whom he likened to controversial WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange.

"Having promised Snowden refuge, Moscow is taking up the defense of those persecuted for political reasons. There will be hysteria in the United States," Alexei Pushkov wrote on Twitter. "In listening to phone calls and tacking Internet activity, U.S. intelligence agencies have violated the laws of their own country. In this sense, Snowden—like Assange—is a human-rights activist."_

[http://online.wsj.com/article/SB1000142412788732463430457853...](http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424127887324634304578538742328320134.html)

Note: You can search the URL in Google to get the full story)

<comment><USER18> Week ago, criminal case against vkontakte.ru's founder Pavel Durov was closed stating that he didn't intent to hit road police officer by a car after traffic jam halted his fleeing.

He did or he didn't, the rumor now is that FSB doesn't need classified intelligence committee hearings to access vkontakte.ru data now.

<comment><USER19> I can believe that, even more after they started requesting mobile phone numbers to login into vk.com. Since I refuse to give my number I cannot access or remove my profile.

<comment><USER20> What about Google Voice or a localized alternative for a virtual phone number? Worst case - burner phone.

Another thing to keep in mind: even if you "delete" your profile, given the situation there's zero guarantee that all copies of the data will be destroyed.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> Well this is interesting... This may just turn out to be a good opportunity for European companies to take over from Facebook, Google and twitter.

It would take a super human effort though. Unlikely it would happen but here's hoping.

That would definitely send a message to the corporate system of America.

Mess with our privacy and you loose your audience.

</comment><comment><USER22> Using Google itself is the biggest problem. Russia, Germany, somebody needs to create an alternative.

<comment><USER23> Yandex and Baidu have existed for a long time, go ahead and use them if you want to.

<comment><USER20> Why risk giving data to Russia/China when we have duckduckgo?

<comment><USER24> Under US jurisdiction.

<comment><USER20> True, although DDG's dedication to anonymizing searches seems it would make data retrieval more difficult.

That said, the options look unappealing. If it really comes down to it, would you rather be giving your information away to US, Chinese or Russian agents?

<comment><USER24> I'd rather give it away to the one that I'm not under the jurisdiction of.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> And what are the good email alternatives for an civilian that wants a good service and privacy?

<comment><USER26> What I use is thunderbird + enigmail, which encrypts the message with the receiver's public key and/or signs it with my private key.

I don't know if that's the best thing for privacy. I would appreciate a lot to hear some pros/cons.

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> We saw this already with Skype. FSB: we are not able to eavesdrop Skype calls and Skype is controlled by US, so it must be banned. And some time later: we reached an agreement with Microsoft, Skype is OK.

</comment><comment><USER28> See, this instantly makes me wonder how Russia (and everyone else for that matter) will respond to the "always on" kinect on the xbone...

</comment><comment><USER29> This is only a suggestion of a MP. Is Ilya Kostunov an important politician in Russia? What are the chances that this idea will become a law?

</comment><comment><USER30> I may sound paranoid and crazy but it smells horribly of gunpowder these months (excuse me if I am not contributing new information)

</comment><comment><USER31> Putin gets divorced and all of a sudden there are Russian warships moving into the Mediterranean and now Russian citizens might be punished for using Facebook or Gmail.

</comment><comment><USER32> This is a rule in every governmental agency.

</comment><comment><USER33> The original title is "Russia may deem civil servants' use of Gmail, Facebook 'high treason'", the edited one is a tad more sensationalist.

<comment><USER34> I wonder why it was changed, that one is bad enough.

I have to say, if I were asked by a business which valued privacy, I'd tell then to contractually and physically block all US services.

I mean, if I were working one some product I wanted to keep secret for reasonable market reasons, like hell would I want my employees using gmail and the like to discuss it. I would also be nervous about employees leaving them selves open to blackmail because of facebook posts. Look at Alan Turing's experience of being gay. Say my lead developer was a member of a "secret" gay group on FB and became compromised? Now imagine I was not a business, but a government.

<comment><USER23> OK, I understand why you don't want people you work with to use Gmail. But treason for using Gmail? And what is the penalty? And we think this is a fair idea, to completely ruin people's lives because they use the 'wrong' internet service that we don't like?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> I agree with Russia on this one.</comment>


Show HN: We just launched badges for Khan Academy - <AUTHOR>

Yesterday we added a brand new badging incentive system to the Khan Academy. It's really simple for now, round 1, blah blah all that jazz.
We're dealing with all types of internal debates about proper behavior to encourage and how users will respond. We've seen students in schools get extremely excited about very, very simple game mechanics attached to their practice problems/homework/etc, and building the roots of a deeper badging system seemed like an important next step to help us guide users through desired paths in the system.
You can check out all of our badges here http://www.khanacademy.org/badges/view (and I blogged just a bit more information at http://bjk5.com/post/2426884194/khan-academy-now-has-badges). Would love to get some feedback. <comment><USER2> This is a great idea. Khan Academy is one of the coolest learning resources out there, and I've been happy to see it get some more coverage recently (via Reddit).

I think you're totally right in that small game mechanics can really be the difference between drudging through repetitve learning and having fun.

Looking forward to earning some of these badges :)

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Clickable: <http://www.khanacademy.org/badges/view>

</comment><comment><USER3> It would have been exciting (well, at least till 7th grade) if one had such a system in schools instead of marks or grades. They are just not cool enough to give incentive to most of the children.

<comment><AUTHOR> The tricky part here (as it is for grades, I suppose) is that the more these types of rewards are used for real-life evaluation, the stronger the incentive to cheat. While I agree that grades are fairly broken as-is for a number of students, placing such a heavy weight on mechanics such as badges makes them more worrisome and less fun.

In the long-term, yes, right direction...in the short-term, we have lots of work to do first.</comment></comment>


Washington voters approve legalized marijuana - <AUTHOR> http://mynorthwest.com/11/2121970/Washington-voters-approved-legalized-marijuana <comment><USER2> I'm not someone who would take advantage of the legalization of marijuana, but I am in favor of legalization because I don't think it's the government's job to tell you what you can or can't do. If drinking is legal, smoking weed should be too.

I understand the concept behind a tax on marijuana, but I don't understand a 25% tax on every stage of the process... If you're saying that it's legal to use marijuana responsibly and you're limiting how much you can buy, I don't see the point of a whole 25% tax on top of that.

Is marijuana bad and the government needs to bribed to let it? Are we selling out purely for the economic benefits? Or is neutral and the government are running what boils down to a protection racket?

<comment> Tuna-Fish > I don't see the point of a whole 25% tax on top of that.

I would like to point out that a 25% tax on legally produced marijuana is _very low_. A 500% tax would still be low. Considering the amounts consumed, growing marijuana is really easy and cheap. Without the legislation against it, when grown in volume by professionals it should have a cost per kg nearing that of hydroponic cabbage, or some 1000 times less than it's present street price.

<comment><USER3> That doesn't mean the tax is low. Cabbage is grown like cabbage, and it doesn't have 25% tax on it.

And what is 500% tax? You pay 4x your revenue for the right to grow marijuana? It's not a tax then, it's prohibitive fine.

<comment><USER4> 500% tax is isn't 4x revenue. Either the consumer pays the tax, so its 4x the product cost, or the vendor pays it, and prices the tax into the sale price, so the tax us 83% of revenue.

Take an example: water costs 2cents/gallon. a 500% tax would make water 10cents a gallon. That would be enough to promote agressive conservation, but not prohibitively expensive.

Soda costs <$1/quart at grocery, less at wholesale. But if you buy it at a restaurant, you pay >$1/pint, for 500% markup. Yet it's not prohibitve, because the baseline is sooooo cheap.

<comment><USER5> Municipal water costs in the US average around .0015 cents a gallon. Flushing your toilets with .0075 cents per gallon would not be prohibitive, growing crops with .0075 cents per gallon water would be. However, far more water goes to growing crops than flushing toilets.

PS: There are actually huge swings in water costs in different areas, which does impact water use significantly.

<comment><USER6> _growing crops with .0075 cents per gallon water would be_

Only because everybody else is growing with 0.0015 cents a gallon. If everybody was growing with 0.0075 cents per gallon, food would be more expensive, but we wouldn't suddenly be unable to feed ourselves.

<comment><USER5> All things being equal if water averaged .0075 cents per gallon it's because there was less of it. So, we would still use some of it to grow crops, but we would not be growing as much food.

PS: We are used to abundance, but there really are hard limits out there.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Provided we also legalize same-sex marriage, this voting cycle will make me proud to be a Washington native.

<comment><USER8> Y'all also fell for another initiative from Tim Eyman.

<comment><USER9> Why is a roadblock to higher taxes bad? As long as the current tax % is sufficient, I don't see why that % shouldn't be sustained indefinitely.

<comment><USER10> The exact same thing keeps being struck down by the state Supreme Court nearly every year.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> It'll be interesting to see what, if any, effect this has north of the border in British Columbia. Marijuana decriminalization and legalization has often been discussed in Canada, but one of the main arguments against a change in the law is that the United States would not approve. Seems like that may be changing.

<comment><USER12> >but one of the main arguments against a change in the law is that the United States would not approve.

How embarrassing for your country. The US doesn't approve of prostitution either, though?

<comment><USER13> To my knowledge there is no equivalent of the Controlled Substances Act. Prostitution laws are all state laws.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> It'd be nice if we could leave politics to other sites, please. Pretty please? There are a zillion sub-reddits where you can discuss this stuff as much as you want, but just one Hacker News, which does not need to go political.

(I'm pretty happy with the results too, but that's neither here nor there)

</comment><comment><USER15> Congratulations Washington! Today is a day of forward thinking across the United States.

Also, Colorado voted to legalize Marijuana as well.

</comment><comment><USER16> This'll take a lot of pressure off of people in Redmond...

<comment><USER17> How so? You can still fail a drug test for weed, same as you can for alcohol, and employers like MS can still fire you.

<comment><USER18> MS doesn't do drug tests. Atleast I don't remember taking one when I was there.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> It's interesting to consider how much of the legislative and voting process actually impacts the act.

A lot of voters probably view marijuana as positive/neutral, though how many were actually swayed by the 25% tax?

In the end there's a larger systemic problem, where you compromise and are either hurting consumers of a neutral/positive product or benefiting as a governmental system by feeding off of a negative product. Either way, regardless of your views it's a forward step for society, though with somewhat perverse implications.

</comment><comment><USER20> Ah, the smell of progress...

</comment><comment><USER21> I just moved here but this seems like a big deal too [http://vote.wa.gov/results/current/Initiative-Measure- No-124...](http://vote.wa.gov/results/current/Initiative-Measure- No-1240-Concerns-creation-of-a-public-charter-school-system_ByCounty.html)

</comment><comment><USER22> Moving up next year, makes me happy to see.

</comment><comment><USER23> We also got another district this cycle. Hurrah. Northwest peoples!

</comment><comment><USER24> California... _shake my head_</comment>


Meteor 1.1 Released – Now Supporting Microsoft Windows and MongoDB 3.0 - <AUTHOR> https://www.meteor.com/blog/2015/03/31/meteor-11-microsoft-windows-mongodb-30 <comment><USER2> I think I might give Meteor a shot. For a long time I have been working with AngularJS and Node.js. Recently I have been working exclusively with React.js + Flux and Node.js to build isomorphic web applications. I like the fact Meteor is isomorphic by default and comes with everything you need. I have always somewhat seen it as this outlier, a great looking framework but lacking the same vocality that Facebook and Google can give their respective libraries and frameworks.

Even seeing Meteor from a prototyping perspective it looks like a great tool. The integration with MongoDB (3.0 is fantastic by the way) and ability to quickly create and work with collections from within your Meteor applications without really needing to glue anything together or configure is something that appeals to me (especially as a front-end developer who is asked to prototype things quite a lot). Coupled with the support for authentication, user accounts and easy deployment, these are definitely key features to a modern web application.

Windows support is definitely an added bonus, especially for me who switches between a MacBook Pro and a PC for .NET development.

<comment><USER3> If you get lost at any point, I highly recommend [https://www.discovermeteor.com/](https://www.discovermeteor.com/). Definitely much useful than the official documentation if you're looking for any sort of tutorial.

<comment><USER4> Why aren't these great books turned into the official documentation if the current official docs are lacking in so much quality?

<comment><USER5> Because that sort of "consulting economy" is the open source business model de jure.

<comment><USER6> It's not really new, except perhaps it being more indie now. In most (but not all) niches over the years, the paid, formal published for-profit books have provided the best documentation, right back to the 70s, through O'Reilly's catalogue (he got rich for a reason), through MSDN, and right up to now. Indeed, it's possibly better now because a single author can do it all on their own.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Meteor is great, I can't create a web app with other stacks faster than with Meteor.

My record was saving the day with a demo in less than 1 hour.

I'm glad is more mature.

The only thing I miss is Postgres as alternative to MongoDB.

Mongo is really comfortable but some projects needs Postgres badassness.

Should be doable for Meteor's team since Postgres is now super friendly to JSON. I guess the main challenge is in the SQL support because is a beast in itself. But starting small with a MiniSQL API at the frontend would be totally fine.

<comment><USER8> +1 vote for a relational alternative. I am a fan of NoSQL, and I am a fan of Mongo, but I'd love to have the power of Meteor with a relational backend too.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Meteor and bootstrap combined have made it awesome to prototype new ideas. Everything is very smooth and as a beginner web developer I'm not banging my head against the wall writing large amounts of code to link various frameworks together.

A few hours a day for a week have already generated real progress with a startup idea, which would have taken me weeks using angular/express/mongo/node separately. As someone with a full time job who is trying to work on side projects in my free time after work, it's really nice to see progress every night and definitely motivates me to keep going.

Keep it up!

<comment><USER10> Is the real time nature of Meteor important to your product?

I ask because I'm considering trying Meteor to prototype some ideas none of which particularly need real-time data updates in the client.

Would I be better off with some alternative framework or is meteor still super quick to pick up and get stuff done for 'regular' web apps? Being able to knock an idea out quickly vastly outweighs any kind of scalability concerns and most performance concerns.

(Bearing in mind that I am familiar with JS and Android development, free time for noodling on personal projects is in very short supply and not got the time to learn a totally new language)

<comment><USER11> That's a good question. I've been learning and using Meteor for a few months and my projects do not require reactivity at their core.

Meteor is built around reactivity, and there is some overhead built in to the platform to make it possible, but it's pretty easy to design things so your app isn't overloaded by trying to "real time all the things".

The simplest step is to structure publications so as to deliver the least amount of reactive data needed at each step of the user experience. Another important approach is to understand what forces re-computations and re- renderings and try to minimize them when you can.

It's also possible to serve non-reactive data (meteor-dumb-collections) and obviate many performance concerns related to reactivity.

The speed and relative ease of working with Meteor makes this approach well worth it to me.

Also worth noting is that many of the production apps built with Meteor are not billed as a "real time solution to x". I suspect they have also spent a good amount of time designing around reactivity so they only take advantage of it where it's useful.

<comment><USER10> Thnx, good suggestions

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I recently started a moderately large project in Meteor and I must say, although I was a little apprehensive at the start, I am truly amazed at how far Meteor has come.

Built-in reactivity, latency-compensation and the lot makes development really fun. It feels like a mature platform, the community is growing and is extremely helpful. I would recommend anyone who is still wondering, to just try to build an app or two with it and you will know what I am talking about.

PS. If you are in the Bay Area, they have Dev Shops at their HQ in SF every 4th Thursday: [http://www.meetup.com/Meteor- SFBay/events/221409952/](http://www.meetup.com/Meteor-SFBay/events/221409952/)

<comment><USER13> If you're in the Bay Area but not in SF, we also have the South Bay meetup (that I run): [http://www.meetup.com/Meteor-South- Bay/](http://www.meetup.com/Meteor-South-Bay/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> Rapid prototyping is all fine and dandy...but what happens if my idea actually does gain traction? This is the part that makes me uneasy about Meteor. It sounds like I'm either going to have to rewrite everything completely, or wait until Meteor matures, if I need to scale.

<comment><USER15> [http://stackoverflow.com/questions/18083835/how-many- concurr...](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/18083835/how-many-concurrent- users-can-a-web-app-built-in-meteor-js-handle)

2500 subscriptions per minutes on a shitty $5 digital ocean droplet (in 2013). Don't put the cart before the horse, 99.99% of applications don't reach even 100 concurrent users on a regular basis.

<comment><USER16> exactly for big cakephp site...wordpress maybe

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Been working with Meteor for over a year and loved every minute. Meteor solves the biggest problems facing modern app development: one-language/code base/API for web and mobile, syncing data between client and server, free simple hosting. My intro to Meteor slides have links, etc [http://fsto.meteor.com/#/4/5](http://fsto.meteor.com/#/4/5) and I fast- forwarded to GIF that perfectly captures how stoked I was after building a few apps.

</comment><comment><USER18> I made a snapshot on Terminal.com which lets you try Meteor 1.1 in seconds. Check it out here: [https://www.terminal.com/snapshot/be98f98eece7e102bab130b91d...](https://www.terminal.com/snapshot/be98f98eece7e102bab130b91d2388c0aaa54e7c4344d90e7379a1cbab741483)

This boots a CentOS 6 box running Meteor 1.1. It's also running on Terminal so you can snapshot your progress anytime you want (or resize to a bigger machine without rebooting too).

<comment><USER19> How do I navigate to `my_cool_app`? Do I need to change the apache configuration, or symlink into `/var/www/html`, or what?

<comment><USER20> If you go back it's in /root

<comment><USER19> Yes, but how do I open it in a browser? Browsing to `localhost:80` obviously only goes to the pre-configured default page from apache.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> I'm curious what startups or big companies are using Meteor in production

<comment><USER22> My custom packaging startup Packlane ([http://packlane.com](http://packlane.com)) uses Meteor. Really grateful for this update since the old Mongo version had some major issues.

<comment><USER13> The reason your site is taking long to load is because you have multiple >1MB assets. Open up the Chrome inspector and look at the network tab. You're loading 7.7MB, 7.3MB of which are images. There are two gifs that are over 2MB in size. You should reduce the size of them to 200KB at most, and also consider delaying loading images that are below the initial viewport until the user needs to see them. I also recommend compressing all of your jpg's and using a tool like ImageOptim to strip out any extraneous data.

<comment><USER22> Just deployed a new version of the app with optimized images. Thanks so much for the thorough, constructive feedback.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> I used Meteor a number of times a few years ago and was totally blown away by it. Utterly fantastic.

Then went down the route of working in enterprise java for a few years and now, trying to get into full stack javascript based development, I feel totally swamped.

<comment><USER24> What are you getting hung up on the most?

<comment><USER23> I've been wanting to get into nodejs but haven't touched javascript in years and have been put off by the hassle of having to go through it again tbh.

<comment><USER25> So much easier when these frameworks are new and light, and the underlying languages are not changing at light speed...I'm with you.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> As a .NET developer, I've been looking forward to official Windows support for a long time. I am installing it now!

I'm hoping with better VS support for Node.js, there will be more MS shops playing around with Meteor and Node.

</comment><comment><USER27> I've been working with meteor since 0.6.3 and I have had only great experiences with it. I've been going to the meetups in my area which has brought me together with a great community of developers from all sorts of backgrounds - and even connected me with people from across the world via webcast. Nothing but good vibes and support in this community. I saw someone commented with the Discover Meteor book link, and that is the perfect place to start - you need literally zero coding experience to build a production quality app within an afternoon. Also be sure to check out the Telescope project ([http://www.telescopeapp.org/](http://www.telescopeapp.org/)) put together by one of the co-authors, Sacha Grief - a designer out of Osaka. He is seriously one of the most dedicated, helpful people out there when it comes to Meteor and I can guarantee if you email him he will respond with help :)

<comment><USER13> Can I ask which meetup you've been attending? We (the organizers of such meetups) would love to hear where you're having a great time!

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> Responsive SQL, please!

<comment><USER29> Definitely my biggest current beef with Meteor. It seems technically possible and I understand why they would go with Mongo first, so hopefully its just a matter of time.

<comment><USER30> Ben (the guy in the video) is working on SQL support!

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EJzulpXZn6g](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EJzulpXZn6g)

Here's a follow-up talk he did:

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zSI68J9wNJ0](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zSI68J9wNJ0)

Also, there's prototype-grade support for Redis:

[https://github.com/meteor/redis-livedata](https://github.com/meteor/redis- livedata)

And that's just the beginning. There are lots more databases that will follow: [https://www.meteor.com/full-stack-db-drivers](https://www.meteor.com/full- stack-db-drivers)

<comment><USER31> This looks good with the videos. I'm contemplating building an app that requires SQL. I've built a few apps with meteor but mongo's lock keeps crashing my website down.

The current third party packages with SQL support are very experimental and don't support nearly as much as the native mongo driver.

I assume when Meteor does this or if Arunoda does it would be pretty awesome. Especially with PostgreSQL since it supports native live queries.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> I get an astroturfing vibe from Meteor. Coming from the consulting world, I have seen this too many times from entities with vested commercial interests. For this reason I always withhold any opinion until real world experience checks in from someone trusted.

<comment><USER33> Absolutely, I made a comment making a similar point when they hit 1.0

The Meteor marketing team seems to want to entrench themselves in every naive tech company they can and I can't believe that there could be so many Meteor users here with enough experience to comment so stridently on it.

My experience with Meteor was that my current company hired someone (who is/was literally writing a book on Meteor) to be the lead dev and they built a whole dashboard application in Meteor.

I arrived 6 months later and began working with them on that application and another Express app that they flat-out refused to touch.

I found that though Meteor was easy to pickup and figure out at a surface level, that it got very complex very fast when you started down the path of making a large application with lots of moving parts. Performance was terrible and there were always strange quirks and assumptions that Meteor would make that needed to be worked around later (one instance was their use of random string _ids in mongo which weren't valid ObjectIds).

Meteor tries to do everything for you and when you want to do something different, you have to go find some esoteric knowledge to hack around some core architecture or pattern. They don't play well with others and any questions or criticisms I had for this Meteor evangelist usually resulted in abstract arguments that boiled down to me needing to change my entire way of thinking about web apps to work with it effectively.

One of my arguments was "hey, where are all the other meteor devs? what happens if you leave or get hit by a bus?" which was also deflected somehow or made to sound ridiculous...

4 months later they leave to start their own consulting company and try to get themselves hired as an outside consultant for whatever rate.

I rewrote the entire application with a MEAN stack in 6 weeks with more features, better performance and a decoupled architecture and we've never looked back.

Admiral Ackbar would recognize Meteor for what it truly is... but unless you've got a Jedi or 2 on your team you'll want to be double and triple checking your needs before moving forward with Meteor.

</dissent>

<comment><USER13> Sorry you had a bad experience with the developer.

However, there is no such thing as the "Meteor marketing team". Meteor doesn't employ any marketing people (yet). Anyone talking enthusiastically about Meteor is just genuinely excited about it.

I'm curious to hear specific examples of esoteric concepts that you had a tough time with. In my experience, Meteor is the opposite of esoteric and actually very easy to work with, even as application complexity increases. If you can outline your issues, maybe we can try to address them. Thanks!

<comment><USER33> I didn't have a bad experience with the developer so much as my company did. They paid the person for a years worth of development that was scrapped because it was in an esoteric framework.

DDP is an esoteric concept, the idea of mini-mongo is an esoteric concept. And the tough time I had with them was in understanding why it was important for our application and how I was supposed to accomplish certain things within the construct.

Here's another example, we had the need to allow users to upload a zipped folder of web content which would then be unzipped to a location on the file system that was acting as our "cdn" until that location was an actual CDN.

Everything about accomplishing this was an enormous headache because it had to be done the "meteor-way" and it wasn't even a dogmatic thing (like some people are about the "angular way")... we literally had to do everything the Meteor way because it's isomorphic and you can't isolate anything outside of it without tremendous pain.

Another example of Meteor problems? How about when it upgraded to 0.9 and I couldn't run `meteor --version` without it trying to automagically upgrade to 0.9, which was a version that broke all a bunch of the 3rd party meteor plugins we were dependent on. We had to essentially just pray that our production application didn't spontaneously upgrade itself and embarrass our company during a fund-raising round.

You can apologize all you want and blame whatever on this particular dev and/or a naive implementation; but the truth is that Meteor over extends itself with its blatant self promotion and cares more about getting entrenching itself in the startup/web-development zeitgeist and than it does on actually being a useful tool.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> If you're just learning about Meteor or haven't really checked it out yet, I recommend reading the mission page: [https://www.meteor.com/about](https://www.meteor.com/about) \- not only is it inspiring, but it helps frame what they're shooting for. The first paragraph:

"Writing software is too hard and it takes too long. It's time for a new way to write software — especially application software, the user-facing software we use every day to talk to people and keep track of things."

</comment><comment><USER34> Meteor is great i used it to prototype the live section of www.sportskeeda.com. Then i had to switch to jquery polling to make it faster. Meteor was fast except for the initial load that used to take a couple of extra seconds. This was reduced to large extent on Modulus.

So my suggestion to anyone considering Meteor in production is to deploy on Modulus.

</comment><comment><USER35> What does support for sql databases look like with meteor? Is it stable and supported enough to use postgres?

<comment><USER36> It only support Mongodb because it is built on a specific mongodb feature. Basically, if you update Mongodb outside meteor, meteor can track that change.

</comment></comment><comment><USER37> I took a look at Meteor pre-1.0 and definitely plan to revisit. I just checked to see if "Mongo package fails to report closure of inactive cursors." [1] is marked resolved. I may be misremembering the issue, but it seemed like a bug with a smell. The sort of subtle bug that might measure the water level, one that could be hard to debug for a beginner if encountered in the wild and one that is essential to have fixed for production apps.

1\. [https://github.com/meteor/meteor/issues/2792](https://github.com/meteor/meteor/issues/2792)

</comment><comment><USER38> When will RethinkDB be supported? :-)

<comment><USER39> Michel, I thought you were playing with this idea? ;)

</comment></comment><comment><USER40> Great! Curious about MongoDB 3.0 and WiredTiger storage engine performance in my meteor apps. Also curious how it performs in comparison with PostgreSQL.

</comment><comment><USER41> Has anyone used MEAN and Meteor? What are the benefits of one over the other?

<comment><USER13> Read this: [http://wiki.dandascalescu.com/essays/meteor_js_vs_the_mean_s...](http://wiki.dandascalescu.com/essays/meteor_js_vs_the_mean_stack)

</comment></comment><comment><USER42> They have forgot to think about deployment. Creating a package for Meteor, for a Linux distro, is a major pain in the ass and discouraged by the Meteor developers.

</comment><comment><USER16> Trello user voice converted to realease !!

</comment><comment><USER43> here's my question for those building their 'app' 'startup' with meteor.js

what does it accomplish for you that normal server rendered framework doesn't do for you?

when you build a meteor.js app you need phantomjs to get it indexed...it won't work on older browsers....the list goes on

I just have trouble justifying why I would need to write my next app using meteor.js

<comment><USER13> It accomplishes many things that other frameworks don't, the most important of which are ease of use and dramatic productivity gains. I recommend reading meteor.com/about for a high level overview and then diving into the description of projects at meteor.com/projects to understand how the various components of Meteor function. The original screencast at meteor.com/screencast is also a very useful introduction, and if you want to spend about half an hour building an app to get the basics down, meteor.com/try will do just that.

Using phantomjs to index your site has not caused any problems for most of us building apps in production for the past two years. From an engineering standpoint there are better alternatives such as server-side rendering (btw, there is a Meteor package that does this: [https://github.com/meteorhacks/meteor- ssr](https://github.com/meteorhacks/meteor-ssr)), so outside of performance considerations this isn't a super big deal. A lot of Meteor apps also aren't Google-facing but instead apps that you use after log in, where Meteor's advantages have the biggest effect on one's productivity.

Meteor works in every evergreen browser and quite a few older ones. It will fall back to polling if there is no support for websockets and the Blaze view library works in IE8+.

I recommend just trying it out. It takes no time to install and get your first app started (<1 min) and you will immediately start to see the benefits. Come tell us more about your situation at forums.meteor.com and maybe we can help!

</comment></comment><comment><USER43> my gripes with meteor are:

not sure how ddp works or how to scale a meteor app. does not work with postgresql or any other db.

The biggest issue for me is the tight coupling to MongoDB.

Background: we used Meteor back in mid 2013. we ended up wasting a lot of time and resources because we had to learn everything. when we did, it did not perform so well, over 1MB going back and forth for what could've been achieved with a simple LAMP or ROR app. I think they've dropped Meteor completely.

Anyways, the windows support is nice. Might give it another go now. Not sure what the deal is with MongoDB 3.0. I've been using postgresql entirely now.

<comment><USER13> DDP is very simple. Think of it like REST for websockets. Here is the project page: [https://www.meteor.com/ddp](https://www.meteor.com/ddp) and here is the spec: [https://github.com/meteor/meteor/blob/devel/packages/ddp/DDP...](https://github.com/meteor/meteor/blob/devel/packages/ddp/DDP.md). If you have any questions, post them on forums.meteor.com and we'll try to help you out.

It's not "tightly coupled" to MongoDB; Mongo is simply the only database that livequery ([https://www.meteor.com/livequery](https://www.meteor.com/livequery)) has implemented support for at the moment. There are community projects for MySQL and PostgreSQL, as well as partially complete drivers for Redis and Elastic. Official (My)SQL support is on the roadmap and will probably appear later this year.

<comment><USER43> any dates on when you might see that happening? postgresql support would be a massive game breaker move.

<comment><USER30> I am really excited about Ben Green's work on mysql and postgresql support in Meteor!

(Check out my other posts on this page for links to Ben's talks about this work.)

[https://github.com/numtel/meteor-mysql](https://github.com/numtel/meteor- mysql) [https://github.com/nothingisdead/pg-live- query](https://github.com/nothingisdead/pg-live-query)</comment></comment></comment></comment>


How to Spend $1k on Training - <AUTHOR> You have $1,000 to spend on a workshop, conference, or online training course/subscription for front-end development. What do you buy? <comment><USER2> anything on udemy by traversy media or stephen grider. $100-max. subs- $40/month frontendmasters.com, tyler mginnis courses- be it JS, React, Redux, React Native...pay for them all bc my man is a boss. Like $17/month</comment>


Working Calculator in Super Mario Maker [video] - <AUTHOR> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pRrqK2LyHes <comment><USER2> The actual impressive logic circuit used: [http://i.imgur.com/rltt1y7.jpg](http://i.imgur.com/rltt1y7.jpg)

<comment><USER3> With all the careful routing of the "signals", the author seems like someone who might enjoy doing IC design work.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> A link to another video of the same level. This one, however, adds 6 + 6 to get 12, which (in the final scene), shows how the digital numbers are created (timing flying bomb-ombs exploding near ice blocks).

OP's video shows 4 + 4 = 8, in which none of the ice blocks need to be removed, so kind of magical when you're seeing it the first time and wondering how those blocks got there.

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rCTGXUNg2fE&feature=youtu.be](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rCTGXUNg2fE&feature=youtu.be)

</comment><comment><USER3> This seems to be a mechanical calculator. I've always found mechanical calculators fascinating and delightfully intuitive, because of how physical they are --- you can actually _see_ components move around and perform calculation. Although in this case, I would've liked to see more details on how the sum is generated.

Related: Super Mario Maker is Turing-Complete: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HcLE1MuyodA](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HcLE1MuyodA)

<comment><USER5> You might like this 'Marble Adding Machine':

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GcDshWmhF4A](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GcDshWmhF4A)

<comment><USER6> Thanks, I just lost an hour watching this guy's homemade workworking machine videos. Fantastic stuff!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Nice demo, but the dialogue on top of the video is fairly annoying: "I have no idea how he did it!", "This is insane!", "You can't see it here but my jaw just completely dropped.". Would have been better with a commentary from someone who had a clue what was going on.

<comment><USER8> I felt the same way. IGN though, so I suppose you could expect as much.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> As you watch the video, notice how Mario is moving along with the shells. This isn't just for show: the shells will disappear if they move too far offscreen, and the music-note blocks won't produce an item when hit unless they're actually visible. Building a circuit this complex under these constraints is a huge achievement.

</comment><comment><USER10> It's pretty cool that it displays the sum as digital numbers.

</comment><comment><USER11> I wish I could put one third the amount of dedication I just witnessed into my own work, sometimes.

</comment><comment><USER12> Remember seeing something like this in Little Big Planet, like eight years ago. Cool to see it with Mario.

<comment><USER13> > Remember seeing something like this in Little Big Planet, like eight years > ago.

The big difference is that LBP has a basic scripting system (circuit boards). Whereas this is a mechanical calculator based on nothing but Mario physics.

<comment><USER12> You're right. This was more intricate. The maker had to crush the ice blocks into the shape of the numbers. This is pretty intense.</comment></comment></comment>


Death of the Salesmen? If software is great, salespeople aren't needed - <AUTHOR> http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/new-relic-death-of-the-salesmen-07012011.html

<comment><USER2> ...so Apple wouldn't need Apple retail stores if only their products were better. Right.

If your product is new to the market, chances are that nobody woke up this morning dying to try it out. It doesn't matter how great or intuitive a product is. You still need someone to sell it. This has been true since Sumerian times.

<comment><AUTHOR> New Relic, zoho, 37signals are in the same camp of not wasting money on sales force. Cost of their service is incremental and not requiring approval from CTO/CIO. Most companies targeting enterprises have to invest in sales force because its big ticket and the enterprises are used to do business that way.</comment></comment>


The world's best cyber army doesn't belong to Russia - <AUTHOR> http://www.reuters.com/article/us-election-intelligence-commentary-idUSKCN10F1H5 <comment><USER2> > In fact, the United States is the only country ever to launch an actual > cyberwar -- when the Obama administration used a cyberattack to destroy > thousands of centrifuges, used for nuclear enrichment, in Iran. This was an > illegal act of war, according to the Defense Department's own definition.</comment>


It's a Self, Self, Self Serve World - <AUTHOR> http://leedumond.com/blog/its-a-self-self-self-serve-world/ <comment><USER2> Is this necessarily a bad thing? Let's take the gas pump for example. I care far more about me getting out of the gas station and on my way then the attendant. I also don't have to help a particularly whiny customer before starting my car.

I can tell you I get done a lot faster when I jump out of my car and pump my own gas, versus waiting for the attendant (Except I technically break the law every time I do so, thanks NJ!)</comment>


Show HN: An ad-hoc SQL reporting tool - <AUTHOR> http://querytreeapp.com/ <comment><USER2> If the goal is to get people to try it out, putting a sign-up for a free trial page between the call to action and the action is at odds with that goal. I don't want a 14 day free trial, I just want a sandbox to play in and I expect it right now.

I'd also think that supporting SQLlite might broaden the appeal.

Good luck.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Desperate to get feedback on this tool, so please feel free to fill out my Google Forms doc if you have time :)

[https://goo.gl/forms/YIiYFCxhD8niiF1w1](https://goo.gl/forms/YIiYFCxhD8niiF1w1)</comment>


Ask HN: United States' history from other ancient civilizations' perspective - <AUTHOR> The other night it struck me how interesting it would be to read United States' history from the perspective of other cultures that already existed at the time, and preferably from the perspective of the most ancient civilizations.  How did they learn about it, what did they have to say at the time and what was their strategy / approach, how did they handle this new entity throughout history?<p>Any recommendations on books or other resources that cover this? <comment><USER2> I'm not sure I understand your question. From, say, France's perspective? Alexis de Tocqueville's _Democracy In America_ may be what you're looking for. More recently, I'm sure that there are tons of French perspectives on the US available.

Or do you mean from the perspective of ancient Rome or Greece? That would more likely be speculative historical fiction. Someone may have written such, but I don't know of any examples.

<comment><AUTHOR> I guess China would be the first specific that came to mind while thinking of this. That they were one of Earth's first human civilizations, and still exist as a nation today, intrigues me if we could peer deeply inside their historical documents mentioning United States and its inception. Also Egypt.

It seems quite amazing to me to think about the massive trove of historical documents / knowledge their civilization had already acquired by that time, and that historical knowledge likely informed their perspective on the situation. What sort of perspective arose in their country at the time when they first heard about the United States, and how has that perspective evolved over the years.

I think there are many facets to this that could be explored, but I don't have any in particular in mind. More interested to get a better understanding of what's out there for a native English speaker to consume on this topic.

<comment><USER3> Definitely read _Democracy in America_ , it's amazing. The best, most insightful book on today's USA that I've read, though written in the 1830s. Even the chapter titles are fascinating. Some from Volume II:

 _Why Democratic Nations Show A More Ardent And Enduring Love Of Equality Than Of Liberty_

 _The Principle Of Equality Suggests To The Americans The Idea Of The Indefinite Perfectibility Of Man_

 _Of The Taste For Physical Well-Being In America_

 _Causes Of Fanatical Enthusiasm In Some Americans_

 _The Americans Combat Individualism By The Principle Of Interest Rightly Understood_

 _Of The Spirit In Which The Americans Cultivate The Arts_

 _Why The National Vanity Of The Americans Is More Restless And Captious Than That Of The English_

 _How The Americans Understand The Equality Of The Sexes_

 _Why So Many Ambitious Men And So Little Lofty Ambition Are To Be Found In The United States_

[https://www.gutenberg.org/files/816/816-h/816-h.htm#link2HCH...](https://www.gutenberg.org/files/816/816-h/816-h.htm#link2HCH0060)</comment></comment></comment>


Facebook Blocks Blockchain, Not ICO - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/blockchangers/facebook-bans-legit-blockchain-conference-75ce0bce0328 <comment><USER2> Probably not much can be done besides bringing more attention to this, gave it an upvote and clap.</comment>


Why the 13" MacBook Pro didn't get a Core i5 upgrade - <AUTHOR> http://arstechnica.com/apple/news/2010/04/why-the-13-macbook-pro-didnt-get-a-core-i5-upgrade.ars <comment><USER2> I have one of the last-generation MacBook Pro 13", and it is easily the best laptop I've ever owned. A year later and I can still get 5+ hours of weekend hacking done on it before I need to plug it in. The updates here may not be considerable, but for my money, it's still the best portable laptop around.

</comment><comment><USER3> Same old Core 2 Duo wouldn't stop me from buying one. The 1280 by 800 resolution, on the other hand, is much more of a bummer.

<comment><USER4> Indeed. The thing that would make me reconsider replacing my white plastic Macbook most would be better resolution and/or a IPS screen.

<comment><USER5> I was optimistic about IPS, since they seem to have found a supplier for the iPad. I still use a thinkpad T42p for the UXGA IPS 15" screen, although the 2GB RAM, Pentium M is kind of limiting. (it's no longer my primary machine; 15" 2008 MBP being upgraded to 17" MBP)

<comment><USER6> Built-in IPS would probably cut into their 24" Cinema Display sales. Especially on the 17", considering it has the same resolution as the 24".

<comment><USER7> I'm not sure how this'll affect your argument, but I'll wager that 24" CD is on its last legs - to be replace most likely by 21" and 27" that match the screens of iMacs introduced in Oct 2009

<comment><USER5> I think the 30" ACD is even more at risk, since it has been unchanged in ~forever. It was released in June 2004!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I don't think the i5 and i7 are a "tiny speed boost"; I get a 3x speed boost for things like running unit tests (which benefit from hyperthreading). The Moose test suite took 30 seconds on my old machine (Core Duo) and now takes 7 seconds on my new i7.

Meanwhile, rxvt-unicode _still_ doesn't require a very powerful graphics card.

</comment><comment><USER9> I was hoping to get one of the 13" Macbook Pros to replace my 3 year old white Macbook. I love the 13" form factor. Unfortunately, there just isn't enough of a performance increase to justify the leap.

So I sprung for the 15" with a high-res screen. That is definitely an upgrade...

</comment><comment><USER10> Sometimes logic still doesn't make up for disappointment. I guess my way of delaying gratification this time would be "It's not i3/5/7 (is it me or is Intel after BMW number scheme) something and no USB 3.0" and they don't give me an Mac + iPad for Back to School.

<comment><USER11> It's even worse when part of the logic is "we got a killer deal on these outdated chips".

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> It feels like this also has something to do with the MacBook Air, which hasn't had an upgrade in quite some time now. It would be suicide to the Macbook Air line if they released another powerful 13" laptop that gave the Air no competitive advantage than simply it's weight.

<comment><USER13> _> It would be suicide to the Macbook Air line if they released another powerful 13" laptop that gave the Air no competitive advantage than simply it's weight._

Isn't that basically the case already? To go from the base 13" MBP to the base Air, you're getting a Core 2 that's .54GHz slower, a worse graphics card, half the battery life, only 2 GB RAM, no optical drive, and only 1 USB port, all for $300 more. All you're getting in return for all of that is the fact that it's super-thin and super-light.

<comment><USER14> I don't think anyone buys an Air _instead_ of another computer. I see it more as competing with the iPad.

<comment><USER15> That's probably true. I have a Mac Pro at home where I do most of my real work and an MBA simply for maximum portability. I've started carrying an iPad too (fits perfectly in the side pocket of my MBA case) Together they're a pretty great combo. Kind of like a wireless secondary display for web pages, e-mail, games, etc.

<comment><USER16> This is the first time I've seen an abbreviation for Macbook Air given as MBA. Fantastic considering the target market.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> I've been looking to replace my 15" PowerBook G4 for some time now, and really stretched my patience for this update. Going to grad school next year, I wanted something portable, and hoped to buy the 13" the second they gave the line a performance boost. Unfortunately, they skipped over it, and I decided to go with the 15" for the i5. Sure, the Core 2 Duo would have been sufficient for most of my needs, but I play in Photoshop/Logic Pro quite a bit, and knowing that apps like these and more will soon be optimized to take advantage of the threading capabilities, I felt going with the 13" would put me at a long term disadvantage. I guess I sacrificed the portability for what is, to me, a better long term investment. The bigger screen isn't so bad either, although, the new 15"s tend to have a bit more fat around the edges than their PowerBook predecessors.</comment>