Offer HN now at news.ycombinator.com/offers - <AUTHOR> http://news.ycombinator.com/offers <comment><USER2> Could Offer HN be added to the main navigation bar? Otherwise I fear it will quickly fade into obscurity.

<comment><USER3> At least it needs to be added to: <http://news.ycombinator.com/lists>

<comment><USER4> /offers (and /offerless) aren't permanent yet: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1839988>

<comment><USER3> Thanks, that makes sense. In fairness pg could also paste it into the server invocation too though.

<comment><USER5> For the benefit of those who, like me, had trouble understanding the parent comment: by "it", idoh means "code to add /offers to <http://news.ycombinator.com/lists">.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> In case you don't want the offers on your homepage, please use the link that pg created specifically for that reason in the other thread: <http://news.ycombinator.com/offerless>

<comment><USER7> Thanks. I really, really dislike the offers showing up by default, but at least this gives me a way out of seeing them.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Offtopic and I'll eat the downvotes accordingly:

Submitter, your link in your profile appears to be broken. I attended school with someone sharing your name (doubtful it's actually you) and was going to look up your profile. Just a heads up.

<comment><AUTHOR> ah thanks for the tip.. did some domain shuffling recently and I've neglected to forward that one on.. <http://bradleyjoyce.com> should work :-) Thanks!

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> I planned to add similar list to just released HNResources (<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1840164>) Now I'll just add links to offers and offerless lists. One issue I didn't know how to fix is that most offers is limited in time and better to be removed. Are these lists are cleared or old offers just shifted down?

</comment><comment><USER10> Hmm. <http://news.ycombinator.com/asks> and <http://news.ycombinator.com/tells> don't seem to point to anything.

Might go along well with <http://news.ycombinator.com/offers>

<comment><USER11> Good point there, it is a little inconsistent, since this was just launched it should be safe to rename it from 'offers' to 'offer', and perhaps set up a 301 redirect so existing links aren't broken.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Serious question... how do you post to these sort of things? Do you just start your subject line with "Offer HN:"?

<comment><USER13> Any post that starts with "Offer " gets included in the list: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1839808>

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> How do I make my offer appear here? I just posted an offer at <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1843501> but I don't see it on <http://news.ycombinator.com/offers>

</comment><comment><USER15> I think this will be a good addition for a lot of people.

</comment><comment><USER16> Flagged as spam ^_^</comment>


Qubes Architecture - actual security-oriented OS - <AUTHOR> http://qubes-os.org/files/doc/arch-spec-0.3.pdf

<comment><AUTHOR> I thought I'll post this after the Indian OS link hit the front page. The document discusses many interesting things related to the OS security, while providing a fairly easy reading for most tech people. This project is actually live and downloadable from <http://qubes-os.org/Home.html> and has an interesting team behind.</comment>


Convert PDF to Word online - <AUTHOR> https://docs.zone/pdf-to-word

<comment><USER2> Why not just use Pandoc? [http://pandoc.org/](http://pandoc.org/)</comment>


Wealthy families pushed to gentrify neighborhoods but avoid local schools - <AUTHOR> https://chalkbeat.org/posts/us/2018/03/16/an-integration-dilemma-school-choice-is-pushing-wealthy-families-to-gentrify-neighborhoods-but-avoid-local-schools/ <comment><USER2> Can't really blame the families though, if the schools in their neighborhoods are bad and they have the option to send their students somewhere better. Race has nothing to do with it.

<comment><USER3> Exactly. As long as they're paying the same tax towards public education as everyone else, I don't see a problem. Whether it is enough or being used effectively is up in the air however.</comment></comment>


Addressing the recent attention focused on Strava and our global heatmap - <AUTHOR> https://blog.strava.com/press/a-letter-to-the-strava-community/ <comment><USER2> Earlier this week when this broke I thought it was merely a curious funny coincidence.

I was later walking the dogs with my wife when she told me her mother was shocked that Strava was giving away the location of military bases. This was when I first became aware of Strava as a controversy.

So crazy how uninformed a populace can be. How is it Stravas fault that people use their software? If I logged onto Facebook and posted th location of a secret military base would it be Facebooks fault that I posted it?

Anyway, I have been an almost daily user of Strava for years- it's the best at what it does.

<comment><USER3> How are you so comfortable that the idea that information should just be shared willy-nilly?

That no human has to step in and check and maybe sometimes go, hmm, that's actually not a good idea to do that.

Computers are super-stupid, literal automatons being allowed to do whatever because Silicon Valley makes more money if it doesn't have to curate anything.

Normal humans expect computers to be a bit like humans. Have some common sense. Not have a god view. Forget stuff that happened 5 years ago, or at least be pretty hazy about it. Definitely not remember stuff from 20 years ago. Not, and this is totally crazy I know, record every voice search you've ever done in some creepy vault somewhere where it's used to sell you shit. Not be able to track you every movement from the time you leave your work, to when you go sleep with your bit-on-the-side, to where you go buy your drugs, to when you go back to your boyfriend.

We know they're not. Normal people don't, or at least haven't really thought the consequences through.

I find your view more disturbing and odd than your in-law's.

<comment><USER4> > How are you so comfortable that the idea that information should just be > shared willy-nilly?

It actually is a _feature_. The problem is that not every feature is for everyone. When you are working in a security sensitive environment (or just like to have your privacy), you should be aware of risks and act accordingly.

> Normal humans expect computers to be a bit like humans.

This is about product design, not computer or software architecture.

The one lesson "normal humans" (whatever that means to you) should learn is that every bit of data can help to identify them.

<comment><USER5> > When you are working in a security sensitive environment

Transferring this burden to the individual could very well lead, quickly, to no one wanting to take sensitive positions. Which would be a societal catastrophe of epic proportions.

<comment><USER4> I'll agree the moment we don't let the same people walk around with loaded guns.

<comment><USER5> People like doctors, lawyers, engineers, and priests?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Blaming strava is absurd. I am a strava user and privacy setting on all my runs by default is that routes are hidden. I have to manually go and edit the run to make it visible to public. As long as strava used the data available publicly I don't see as their fault. It is ridiculous to blame them. I find the privacy setting on strava clearer than any other social network but if military personnel for the sake of vanity end up posting their run publicly then there is anything strava can do. Even without the routes data released by strava, I can simply hover over iraq or Syria and see the running or cycling routes. This feature actually has been of great use to me while traveling.

<comment><USER7> As a Strava user, I have to agree with you here and just say that a lot of the outrage seems to come from people that never used the service. I've been using Strava for a couple of years already, and I must say that they are one of the most privacy concerned services out there. At one point I was getting annoyed already at them constantly publishing tips on how to change your privacy settings to stay secure and to make sure that others can't find out your location and that you know the implications of all the new features that they pushed forward (like flybys, home/starting point and others).

What I find absurd here is the fact that people working in the military or other privacy sensitive fields would actually use a public social network to constantly publish updates on your activities and your precise location. I'm just a random guy that runs and bikes and still don't let my activities public or only share some with friends. I still find it weird to blame Strava here for something that is so obvious. No matter what platform you use, be it you personal site, Facebook or others, you just don't share certain things when you know you work in a certain environment.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Smartphone user: "All my apps can collect all my data, I have nothing to hide, my life is an open book"

* sees collected data *

Smartphone user: "How did they do this to me"

</comment><comment><USER9> Well I think the heatmap is the best thing from strava. I wish it was embedded/viewable in the strava ios app to to browse running routes - particularly when I'm in a new place. I've also discovered a load of footpaths near me just by browsing it on the website.

</comment><comment><USER10> Vet here

We get OpSec briefing shoved down our throats down so much that im putting this one on the DoD and the base's risk management policy.

Guys srsly wth

</comment><comment> semi-extrinsic What I've yet to see is anyone commenting on how secret these "secret" military bases really are. I have a feeling, based on the amount of attention this is getting in mainstream media, that the militaries involved aren't too concerned. Also, any nation state with access to satellite intel presumably already knows about all of these.

So if "secret" means "not listed on Wikipedia", I'm afraid only more arguments in favor of surveillance will come of this.

<comment><USER11> The problem doesn't begin, nor end at identifying military bases. There's a much a larger problem going on here where individuals' privacy is being waved around for what amounts to PR.

<comment><USER12> By PR, are you referring to the media publicizing this for dramatic effect, or Strava implementing social features? There are lots of shady ways companies try to go viral, but given how much individuals clearly want to share this data, I'm not sure blaming Strava for facilitating that sharing is very fair or accurate.

<comment><USER11> I don't think they're publicizing this for dramatic effect - just that they are painfully careless with the data that they keep. Whether the tools are useful and whether people want to use them carelessly isn't the point. A bit (a lot) more discretion would be appreciated from Strava.

As far as I'm concerned, this is an industry norm, so my problem isn't so much with Strava, but the dangerous cultures that surround massive data collection operations.

Disclaimer: I work in adtech. Opinions are my own.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> I find it interesting that a lot of people seem to feel that this isn't Strava's fault, but the fault of the users who didn't manage their privacy settings correctly. Having done a lot recently related to GDPR in the EU I've been coming around to the way of thinking that has influenced this law.

We as technologists need to start taking some responsibility for our users privacy. Firstly, just because you can collect the data doesn't mean you should. There is this general idea that we should collect and store as much data as we can, just in case we can find a use for it. The problem is that firstly even if we claim to be only using/exposing 'anonymised' data, as this Strava situation shows, it is very hard to truly anonymise data. Secondly, the raw data is still stored somewhere and in the event of a data breach it doesn't matter what a users privacy setting was if you were still collecting and storing the data.

<comment><USER14> So if you want to start a new social network site to allow people to publicly share fitness information and routes used by runners, swimmers and cyclists, how would you go about it that would be different from what Strava already does?

Strava doesn't collect the data because it can, it's doing so because that's the service it provides. This isn't a case of installing some generic Messenger app and discovering that it also collects and sends to their servers the list of local wifi networks (for which there may be a valid technical reason but it would otherwise be surprising as it's removed from the main objective which is to send messages), it's more like installing a forum app and discovering that your post on the forums can be read by anyone else that accesses the same forum... I get that not all people have the same understanding of how an Internet forum works but that doesn't mean that it's always the website's fault here.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> If anyone from Strava is watching this thread - is there any way to delete a user's information from these heat maps? I ask, because I'm not seeing anything in any of the suggested links. If so, how can I request my own records be completely deleted?

<comment><USER15> Not a strava employee, but under [https://www.strava.com/settings/privacy](https://www.strava.com/settings/privacy) There is a setting to disable your activity data from being incorporated into the heatmaps, which I would assume (hopefully) is retroactive at some point - not sure how frequently those maps are regenerated

<comment><USER11> Heh. You know what they say about assumptions.. :\

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> I love using the heatmap tool especially the one that shows the differences from 1 year to the next. As a MTB'er, I see the routes that people stop using because of downed trees and other obstacles. Helps prioritize where trail cleaning must be done.

</comment><comment><USER17> I wasn't aware that people were blaming Strava for this. I think it's pretty clear that the purpose of strava as a social network for runners is to share your run data with others, or at least to benefit from others data. I'd need these answers before I could judge how culpable they are:

1) Does Strava present the user with privacy settings and properly explain what they do? (i.e. they don't have to dig in settings to even know that they exist)

2) Is data set to 'private' omitted from anonymized aggregate statistics like the heatmap?

If the answer to both is 'yes', then I don't understand what the fuss is about.

</comment><comment><USER18> I'm on team Blame Strava. When you have an obvious comprehension failure by large numbers of users, it's a UX design bug. Don't blame the users.

It's pretty clear why in this case. The privacy settings are overcomplicated and misleading. It's not intuitive at all that turning on "enhanced privacy" still includes you in route leaderboards and the heatmap, which you might not even know is a thing. This was bad design.

<comment><USER19> I don't blame strava for this incident because it's obvious that your information is being sent to them and there must be some onus on users, maybe there should even be some pain until the message sinks in.

What isn't obvious is if they are retaining the information or who they are sharing it with, etc. For my non-social uses there is no reason that the data really needs to leave my phone but it does anyway. We need much better consumer laws here and these things need to be made obvious and with explicit permission given by the user for each step.

In any case, I've found tech like this is more of a distraction and offers no real value. I'm a lot happier now that I've deleted strava, stopped using fitbit, removed my bike computer and gone back to basics. It feels like I can just go for a bike ride again without having to start recording and analyze all the feedback. It's like that feeling when you throw out all those kitchen gadgets you never used.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> I don't use Strava, so pardon the ignorant question -- is the default for your data to be public?

If so, then I completely blame them for this. If not, then this is clearly a user error.

<comment><USER21> The main selling point for Strava when it was introduced was to share the information to compete with any other person also using Strava. When first setting it up, at least when I did it years ago, is to set a privacy sector for which areas to not upload detailed route for. So in this case I would say it is the users fault to not understand that areas not set to private will be public available when you select to share your workout. The public available data to compete with others and the large userbase is the one reason to use Strava instead of any other fitness tracker

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> This is one of those 'good problems to have'.

"Sorry we have SO MANY users that it shows the location of, well, everything."

<comment><AUTHOR> I don't see why this is Strava's problem, to be honest.

The military, CIA should have a clear policy to disable all location services, on all devices at all times.

If you're not supposed to be somewhere and you go for a run on Strava, it's pretty much your fault.

<comment><USER23> I am not an active Strava user but from what I've read the company engaged in some dark UX patterns that made it really confusing (unclear if purposefully confusing) to understand what you were sharing. The most egregious sound like the privacy setting on native mobile are more limited than on web , which is a problem considering how many users probably ever only use the app on mobile.

<comment><USER24> I'm a quasi-active user and never realized my updates were public beyond the people who followed me. It has absolutely no UI indicating it the way, e.g. Facebook does, and does not show me any activity of people whom I do not follow.

Doesn't look like they're actually public, though? [https://www.strava.com/athletes/22230419](https://www.strava.com/athletes/22230419)

<comment><USER12> Updates are _effectively_ public because once they're collected by a third- party and / or shared with anyone, it's now out of your control. But my understanding (in which I'm not certain) is that the controversy is the heatmap feature, and that your name wouldn't show up in this proof-of-concept attack unless you had opted into that specific feature.

<comment><USER24> I get what the controversy is about, but I don't get how this is OK from Strava's PoV — none of my runs are "public" in the sense that I think of it — they're not on the website that's my "profile" and they're not visible to people who are not following me in the app...

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> this whole thing must be great PR for Strava. they've basically become a household name overnight.

</comment><comment><USER26> Out of curiosity, for those who feel Strava is blameless, how would feel if the US government were collecting this information?

<comment><USER21> Stravas main objective is to share information about workouts by tracking where you have been between you start and stop the workout, how could they do that without collecting the route for the workout? The users select when to start and stop the tracking.

I like privacy and think GDPR could clean up some of the mess online, but I don't even see that this tracking done by Strava is in any conflict with the law

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> I see a lot of people talking about how it is unfair to blame Strava for this.

That is BS. When you make anonymized data available publicly, you ABSOLUTELY bear a responsibility to making sure that your anonymized data is actually anonymous.

> However, we learned over the weekend that Strava members in the military, > humanitarian workers and others living abroad may have shared their location > in areas without other activity density and, in doing so, inadvertently > increased awareness of sensitive locations.

Strava absolutely needs to be held to account for not filtering out anonymous data from regions that don't have other activity density. This should be a legal responsibility .(Currently I think the FTC can bring legal action for violating a privacy policy, but this is the only legal enforcement route?)

Strava also has a ethical responsibility to block data from sensitive area (such as military bases).

<comment><USER28> > Strava also has a ethical responsibility to block data from sensitive area > (such as military bases).

How are they supposed to know if they're displaying data for a secret base if the information to determine it actually is secret is, umm...secret?

I blame the joes -- they should know better than to share their location data because it's not a good idea for countless reasons. Back when I was deployed with the 82nd Airborne such a thing would be inconceivable.

<comment><USER27> > How are they supposed to know if they're displaying data for a secret base > if the information to determine it actually is secret is, umm...secret?

This isn't about hiding secret bases, censoring a region from the data they release will obviously leave a blind spot. This is about not exposing the activity data of sensitive regions.</comment></comment></comment>


Intel to offer 'free' Wi-Fi in its ultrabooks and tablets - <AUTHOR> http://gigaom.com/mobile/intel-to-offer-free-wi-fi-in-its-ultrabooks-tablets/

<comment><USER2> Although I like this idea, I worry about the attack vectors that might open up. If stealing session cookies doesn't even require a manual connection any more, the reward rate for such an attack becomes much higher.

That being said, I don't think those concerns are an indication that this technology is bad. It is an indication that security practices around free and open WiFi networks needs to be improved.

It is likely that this technology will be available before we see any real improvements to that sort of security, so hopefully the system would be easy to configure/turn off and would use sensible defaults to ensure it minimises risk.

EDIT: edited for clarity/grammar

</comment><comment><USER3> Really this is more like a feature to help you choose which AP to use when you can see more than one open AP at a time. But it doesn't provide any APs that aren't already open.

</comment><comment><USER4> First comment on article:

"Would this be hardware-based or software-based? As in, what if I put Linux on my ultrabook, can I still avail of this feature?"

</comment><comment><USER5> Connects automatically when in range of any supported network even when device is in sleep mode. What a wonderful way to needlessly drain your battery.

If your device is asleep during your commute, do you really expect it to have any charge left after driving through downtown and connecting to two dozen wifi networks?

Sounds like more Windows malware to me.

<comment><USER6> Worse than the battery life implications are the security implications. I do not ever want to connect to some random, sniffed wifi network and have automatically all my data pulled to my notebook.

However, as you will most certainly be able to disable that feature, I think it is a great addition, since there seems to be no downside. If you do not like it, do not install it :)

<comment><USER7> But is it opt-in or opt-out? It is import to not introduce insecure defaults.</comment></comment></comment>


The End of College Tuition Pricing as We Know It? - <AUTHOR> https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/grade-point/wp/2015/09/01/are-we-nearing-the-end-of-college-tuition-pricing-as-we-know-it/ <comment><USER3> Georgia Tech's $7,000 Master of Science in Computer Science [0] (with partnership with Udacity)

or the University of Illinois $20,000 iMBA [1] (at Coursera) is getting us closer to "The End of College Tuition Pricing as We Know it".

A 50% discount from a $200,000 undergraduate degree at Harvard is not.

[0] - [http://www.omscs.gatech.edu/](http://www.omscs.gatech.edu/)

[1] - [https://www.coursera.org/course/imba](https://www.coursera.org/course/imba)

<comment><USER4> Thanks for linking to that GTech MSCS degree. That is perfect for my brother who is disabled and is learning CS on his own via MOOCS.

The UIUC iMBA smells like a scam. MBA's are mostly about the networking.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Here is the main point of the article:

 _Students at private colleges received an average 42 percent discount on their tuition in 2014-2015. As recently as 2010, it was 36 percent.

There is another number that is perhaps even more important for students and parents to consider. The same survey, from the national association of college financial officers, found that the average discount for first-year students is 48 percent. That gap of six percentage points between the overall rate and the discount for freshmen usually means that colleges are giving bigger grants to first-year students than everyone else.

In other words, it's a classic bait and switch. Colleges attract students with a bigger discount and a boatload of financial aid the first year, and then once the students like the campus and want to stay to actually finish their degree, they give the students less aid for their remaining years._

The author never fully distinguishes between scholarships and financial aid. He lumps them together in a "discount" category. The two forms of cost-saving are very different and should have been addressed separately in the article.

It makes sense that merit scholarships pay our more on aggregate to freshmen rather than seniors, as some percentage will lose their scholarships due to poor grades (happened to a friend), social infractions, or some other merit scholarship-ending action. Most scholarships in my experience are real (half tuition, full tuition) rather than nominal ($25k per year).

I can't speak to financial aid, but I assume it's like any other contract where you can see the terms and conditions and amount that the college is willing to subsidize your education expenses every year, subject to certain academic and social standing requirements. Again, some percentage of students probably lose financial aid for not meeting these requirements from one year to the next. Maybe it's easier to game financial aid as tuition rises and students are offered a fixed nominal amount?

Is it fair to characterize financial aid as a bait and switch?

<comment><USER6> > the college is willing to subsidize your education expenses every year

The college isn't subsidizing anything.

It's called price discrimination. That's what the article is partially about.

If you look at the demand curve, you see that different people are willing to pay different prices for the same service. Some people have more money, some less. Some want it more, some less.

Ideally, what a service provider wants to do is charge everyone the maximum price they're willing to pay. This maximizes their revenue at the expense of everyone else.

They blow up their tuition to ridiculous levels and then discount all the way down the demand curve to maximize intake. They discount using scholarships, financial aid, and other programs. And then they sell you the bullshit that they're helping you.

We don't tolerate this abuse from any other industry.

<comment><USER5> > They blow up their tuition to ridiculous levels and then discount all the > way down the demand curve to maximize intake

Ridiculous for some, not ridiculous for others. Some parents don't even bat an eyelash while writing the $200k check for their kid. If schools couldn't get away with charging the $200k sticker price, they wouldn't.

First degree price discrimination would be an auction system. We would see spots at Harvard, Stanford, and MIT going for tens of millions of dollars. Merit would mean money. Thankfully, we aren't at that point yet.

I agree that the system is broken and extortionate, and that a lot of students are getting much less out of a degree/attending school than what they are paying for it.

But it's what we as a society are choosing to reinforce. Public education is still seen (in most cases) as inferior to private education by parents and employers. We are not enforcing a progressive tax system to reduce inequality and generate revenues to pay for more investment in education and infrastructure. Instead we are spending on war, social security, and healthcare. We are transferring wealth away from the young and the middle class to the old and the wealthy. As a democratic country, these decisions are on all of us.

<comment><USER7> > First degree price discrimination would be an auction system. We would see > spots at Harvard, Stanford, and MIT going for tens of millions of dollars. > Merit would mean money.

The problem with this is that if it were too rampant it would diminish the value of the product being bought. Harvard/Stanford/MIT are valuable institutions to attend partly because seats there can't just be outright bought.

If Harvard abolished its admissions system and replaced it with a $10,000,000 price tag per seat, the school would lose the majority of its prestige rather quickly, the quality of the student base would deteriorate even more rapidly, and it wouldn't be too long before even wealthy parents wouldn't be willing to pay that price tag.

The current strategy is probably reasonably close to the optimal long-term profit-maximizing strategy with the property that the school's prestige and reputation are maintained (or even enhanced) each year.

<comment><USER5> Right, it will never get to the point of an open auction. Then it altogether stops being functional (learning skills & networking) and starts being solely art (aesthetics and marketing). Currently, it's a mixture of the two, with aesthetics pulling ahead rather quickly - is what you learned or who you met in Philosophy 101 $100k more important to you today than it would have been to you 10 years ago?

There is some behind-closed-doors deal making going on, but that has always happened and will always happen.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> The practice of guaranteeing the same price for four years is neither new nor groundbreaking. It's called tuition lock, and state institutions (at least in my state) have done that for decades.

And to answer the headline's question. No. No this is not the end of tuition pricing as we know it. It's just a different sales pitch and marketing strategy.

<comment><USER9> It's not just the same tuition for all 4 years though. For instance if you pay 10,000 for tuition with 48% "discount" through merit-scholarships or what have you. Then next year that discount is only 40%, but your tuition stays the same at 10,000. You're still paying 800 more in tuition, but your tuition didn't go up.

<comment><USER10> Which, to me, falls into the "It's just a different sales pitch and marketing strategy." category. It's a marketing stunt to make it sound good & reasonable at first glance, but the devil is in the details.

<comment><USER11> Apartment complexes do a variation of this all the time.

In your first year, they give you "one month free" and then amortize it over the life of the lease. In the second year, you don't get on the one month _and_ there's an increase, so it becomes a huge increase all at once.

For example (made up numbers):

Year 1: $1k/month on a 12 month lease, 1 month free amortized -> $917/month

Year 2: Year 1 + 5% -> $1050/month

Removing the discount and increasing the base is a double whammy. And - <USER2> in the article - the switching costs (economic and emotional) are so high that many people will go along with it.

<comment><USER12> Once, while living in a big city, I was paying about $625/mo for my apartment. When the lease neared expiration, they offered me a new lease at around $800/mo. I tossed that in the garbage, and moved before my last month was up, to a much worse place that was only $500/mo. (You can buy a lot of mousetraps and roach baits with an extra $125/mo.)

The last week of the month, I got a call from the old landlords. They said they hadn't received a signed copy of their lease renewal. I asked why they thought I would accept such a huge increase in rent. They said they had just renovated the place before I moved in. I laughed at them, told them I'd give the keys back on the last day of my current lease, so please be prepared to return my security deposit, and hung up.

I'd like to imagine that the apartment went vacant for a few months after that, and they cried into their pillows every night because of it, but that wasn't very likely. The apartment market had a pretty rapid turnover back then, so it was probably only empty a few weeks.

In my view, that huge price hike was a clear GTFO/FOAD signal. But the university undergraduate education market is much less competitive than the apartment rental markets, and the cost to going to a competitor much higher, so it's no surprise that they can get away with higher and more frequent price hikes.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> _Tuition pricing should be based on demonstrated need and real merit, not just the desire of a college to steal a few smart students from a competitor down the street._

What does "real merit" mean? I can't think of any definition that doesn't include trying to bring in more smart students...

<comment><USER14> I think they mean the merit of the institution.

<comment><USER15> I don't think so, because it's right after "real need" which is referring to students. If it is as you suggest then it's a badly formed sentence.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Just out of curiosity, does anyone have a link to an example breakdown of the costs per student in a typical university?

A full course load is about 12 hours total spent in class per week, for 16 weeks. Let's bump this number up to 20 hours, to account for overhead (homework grading, office hours, course design, etc). And given a class size of 25 students, that means 1 instructor can handle 50 full time students. If that instructor gets paid 100K a year, that works out to be 2K of instructor time per student. So what other overhead is involved that brings the cost of college up to 20 - 50K per year? You have the building, administration, potentially lab equipment, and teaching supplies (chalk/markers/copy paper/etc). But I still can't see that bumping the price up that much. Is the per-student share of the building cost really that high? Or are there 10 administrative staff for every one instructor?

<comment><USER17> The goal of most colleges is to grow without bound, consuming entire cities in the process. Administrative staff make up a big part of costs and instructors are paid far less on average than 100k. The real costs are in the construction of huge, fancy new buildings and luxury facilities designed to entice parents and students alike.

<comment><USER18> new construction is the main reason I don't donate any money to my college. When I went there 15 years ago the tuition was around 18k and when I left 4 years later it was 23k and they were just starting to put up new buildings right and left.

Now its 55k

</comment></comment></comment><comment> a-dub Rolling back the Bush-era provisions that make private student loans non- dischargable in bankruptcy would do wonders in putting downward pressure on tuition. Federal loans are capped at around $50k which seems to me like a perfectly reasonable number for educational debt, especially considering the wealth of options available for adjusting terms when there's trouble making payments. (as opposed to private loans, which just sail right on into default)

<comment><USER19> > Rolling back the Bush-era provisions that make private student loans non- > dischargable in bankruptcy would do wonders in putting downward pressure on > tuition.

Would it? I was under the impression that private student loan lending collapsed shortly after the 2009 crash and hadn't really recovered, though its risen slightly since the crash. If private student loans were the main driver of tuition, it should have collapsed after the 2009 crash as well.

<comment> a-dub Interesting. You're right. It halved in 2009 and dropped even further to about 40% of its previous high, although it appears to be growing again... [1]

I still think that it would be wise to structure the marketplace such that there is even less private lending. I think this ultimately gives the Federal government more policy levers that can be used to push back on tuition.

I do agree with the original piece that the peek-a-boo games that college's play with their financial aid packages are silly. The pricing should be clear and simple, discounts for low-income students should be stated up front. Today's "Let's make a deal" games are just dumb...

[1] [http://trends.collegeboard.org/student-aid/figures- tables/to...](http://trends.collegeboard.org/student-aid/figures-tables/total- federa-nonfederal-loans-time)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Can someone with a micro-econ background explain what is going wrong with the free market model and how to fix it?

It used to be that goods and services would compete on price and quality. If someone could offer the same quality for less, buyers would go there. It was self regulating to some point: predation was limited by the system.

Now, however, there are dozens of markets where this is no longer true. There are geographically region-locked prices: pharmaceuticals, textbooks, dvd's, etc. There are opaque and arbitrary prices like healthcare, software (hello oracle), and per the article, airlines and tuition.

Some of this is due to artificial protections like patents and copyrights. But not all of it. What's up?

<comment><USER21> (1) Akerloff's paper "Market for Lemons": ability to assess quality depends on information. Adequate information may not be available to all parties equally and may be costly to acquire.

It may not be realistic for private individuals to assess the quality of their healthcare or tuition, even after the event. See also VW: it's easy to lie about details which affect the quality.

(2) Increasing perfection of price discrimination: market participants charging different prices to different customers. Airlines can do this because of the ID requirements and non-resaleable tickets. Private healthcare can do this too.

(3) Switching costs: Oracle win at lockin. Big problem in the software world, but also for tuition (incomplete courses not portable).

(4) Regulatory capture & paid lobbying: applies to pharmaceuticals, textbooks, DVDs, healthcare.

<comment><USER22> The information issue with healthcare and education is even more perverse than in "Market for Lemons" \- it's not that the quality of the product is unknown (although it often arguably is), it's that the price is unknown. As the article says, incoming freshman have no idea how much their 2nd through 4th years will cost, just an upper ceiling. They are usually misled to believe their final tuition will be lower than it actually is, skewing their value judgement. Likewise with healthcare, I often get surprise bills from my insurance company for just doing what my doctor instructs me to do. There's a lot of incentive for doctors to do unnecessary procedures without explaining the costs.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> _But every good strategy eventually runs its course, and there is increasing evidence that the days of tuition discounting are coming to an end._

Yet the only evidence offered is that tuition discounting has gotten greater recently.

It's ... kind of _interesting_ how the article manages to spin "X is going higher" as evidence for "X is going to go way down".

</comment><comment><USER24> No.

Betteridge's law of headlines is an adage that states: "Any headline that ends in a question mark can be answered by the word no." It is named after Ian Betteridge, a British technology journalist,[1][2] although the principle is much older.</comment>


Researchers store digital images in common small metabolite molecules - <AUTHOR> https://www.brown.edu/news/2019-07-03/molecules <comment><USER2> Now we can rsync the entire internet and send it in isolinear chips like a subscription service. Goodbye ISPs!</comment>


Accelerator outperforming Y Combinator and TechStars? - <AUTHOR> http://www.iijiij.com/2011/05/10/an-accelerator-that-outperforms-y-combinator-and-techstars-08868 <comment><AUTHOR> Although Starve Ups has been around for several years and seems to enjoy bucketloads of success with the start ups that it takes under its wing, I'd never heard of the organisation. I'm wondering why Starve Ups is not getting similar amounts of press coverage as YCombinator and TechStars.</comment>


It is criminal that Apple gets away with not allowing alternative defaults - <AUTHOR> http://ma.tt/2013/11/apple-defaults/

<comment><USER2> Except that Google does the exact same thing with Google Play Services on Android. Ask Skyhook. On top of that, Google keeps pushing organic SERP listings further and further down the page to push people to Google+.

We actually live in much better times than the Microsoft monopoly days. Apple, Google, Amazon, Facebook have asymmetric business models. Consumers benefit in the long run as they all battle each other.

Apple doesn't have to monetize Maps so they can chip away at Google's ad revenue. Google doesn't have to monetize Android OS and devices so they can chip away at Apple's hardware/software revenue.

<comment><USER3> Apple is accused of being criminal. So showing that Google does the same thing is a refutation?

If Bank of America illegally forecloses on people, it's okay because Citibank does that too?

<comment><USER4> Apple is not being accused of being criminal by anyone who understands antitrust law. The proof is the comparison to Microsoft, an entity that held a clear monopoly where Apple does not.

<comment><USER5> Modern anti-trust law is not about monopolies.

You can nearly count the number of substantial monopoly cases in US history on one hand.

However, take a look over the anti-trust cases just since 1994 (almost none of which have to do with monopolies):

[http://www.justice.gov/atr/cases/index.html#page=page-1](http://www.justice.gov/atr/cases/index.html#page=page-1)

<comment><USER4> I can tell you haven't read the indictments. If you had, you'd notice a common theme that A) matches the Apple/Amazon books case you brought up earlier, and B) very much does not match the Maps case.

The DOJ is concerned with suppression of competition on an industry level. Amazon/Apple arguably did so. Microsoft certainly did so. Two platforms in fierce competition, neither in a truly dominant market position, using their own Maps application, is not what the DOJ is going to worry about.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Apple provides a solution that is a single unit, hardware AND software that is tied together. Think of it as a car, the whole thing is purchased at one time, functions entirely on its own from end to end, but you can add features to it.

The alternatives are allowed, but you are buying a singular device, not a platform for other developers per se, it just happens to allow developers to create software for it.

On the other hand, you have Microsoft which has historically been a platform software solution, building a culture of allowing anyone to build on it, licensing portions and features to developers for them to build on. Until recently, there was only tepid attempts at hardware branded Microsoft where as Apple has always been hardware bound to software to the point you can't easily install OSX on anything other than Apple hardware. The same cannot be said for Microsoft, the only other company that is bound by this rule of multiple defaults.

That rule came about because Microsoft had licensing rules that prevent devs from using MS software on their own hardware if that hardware included competing software. If you wanted to use Windows, you HAD TO use IE only. Microsoft was using monopolistic practices, but did not have a monopoly btw.

In a nutshell, Apple is selling a singular device that happens to have a doorway that allows users to install addition software to expand the hardware/OS beyond its default intended (by Apple standards based on analyzing the user market) purposes.

Other alternatives are hardware solutions that allow your choice of software as middleware to gain access to the hardware functionality. Two hugely different ideologies.

One is a fork, the other is build-a-bear.

</comment><comment><USER7> It's interesting that Google reportedly demanded Apple allow Latitude in Maps on the iPhone as a prerequisite for providing turn-by-turn navigation. Apple refused, built their own maps product...and then Google cancels Latitude?

[http://appleinsider.com/articles/12/09/26/disagreements- over...](http://appleinsider.com/articles/12/09/26/disagreements-over-turn-by- turn-directions-prompted-apple-to-ditch-google-maps)

<comment><USER8> I think the Apple Insider piece is a problematic summary of Paczowski's piece, and leads to a mistaken idea of what went wrong with the Google-Apple negotiations The original article is at [http://appleinsider.com/articles/12/09/26/disagreements- over...](http://appleinsider.com/articles/12/09/26/disagreements-over-turn-by- turn-directions-prompted-apple-to-ditch-google-maps)

Paczowski's article says that Google's request to include Latitude was one of four items that were "major points of contention between the two companies" (besides the general deterioration in the relationship between the two companies), while claiming that voice navigation was the most important. Nowhere is it suggested that inclusion of Latitude was non-negotiable or the point on which negotiations crumbled.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> The dofference is thhat Microsoft was a monopolost at the time, and Apple right now is far from being the only choice.

<comment><USER10> Exactly.

Also on current growth trends, Apple is going to lose to Android. So not only don't they have a monopoly, they don't have any prospect of gaining one either.

<comment><USER11> Not so. Apple is increasing (1) it's market share in the US, and that was in the quarter before the new phones were released. I assume you're talking about the US market, since that's the region the DOJ has jurisdiction over to scrutinize monopolies.

Apple is doing just fine against Android in the US market, and most developed markets, though I don't expect them to get anything like a monopoly and don't think they're interested in pursuing one.

(1) [http://appleinsider.com/articles/13/11/05/apple-samsung- leng...](http://appleinsider.com/articles/13/11/05/apple-samsung-lengthen-us- smartphone-marketshare-lead-in-q3)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> There's the software politics side of this. They're abstract and legalistic. I think there is merit in thinking about this stuff in terms of freedom, abuse of market power & such. There are definitely things companies can do that make the tech ecosystem worse for users and we need to watch out for them. But there are also costs to legal interventions, antitrust and such.

Getting regulators involved means these decisions will be made based on provable things and rigid rules and that's not ideal here. The best thing for users, progression of technology and such are pretty subjective issues. Legalistic systems are not good at making these kinds of decisions.

They're not optimal either, perhaps worse than just eating things play out. Remember that the IE/MS stuff from the 90s basically sorted itself out. The legal interventions had little effect on the long term. Yes, IE dominance may have slowed down the development of the web for a while. But, the quality gap between IE & Firefox/Chrome combined with improvements in software distribution via the web got the market back to solid competition pretty quickly. Meanwhile the long antitrust stuff was a huge, expensive distraction.

There are genuine reasons for locking down iOS. The reality is that putting power in users hands also creates complexity. The ability to change settings is also the ability to screw up settings. Can't change also means "can't screw up." If a computer has features like this which a user doesn't understand, they effectively reduce the power of that computer _for them._

I'm not saying that Apple made the right decisions. I'm not saying their motivations are all about user experience or that the desire to dictate users' maps, browsers, calendars, doesn't play a role. " _blatantly self-interested and user-hostile stance_ " sounds a little strong to me, but it's not completely unreasonable. What I _am_ saying is that we have no perfect solution to these things.

If the choice is leave it to Apple & competition or get judges & lawyers involved, I prefer to let it play out unless things get pretty bad.

</comment><comment><USER13> This is the hacker news comment thread from yesterday which I presume sparked off this post: "Apple maps: how Google lost when everyone thought it had won" [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6711551](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6711551)

</comment><comment><USER14> Link bait title; it's not criminal, it's Apple's prerogative to not allow default apps to be replaced, just like how it's Google's prerogative to demand a Google account to be installed before using an Android phone or the Play store.

</comment><comment><USER15> I couldn't disagree more about the problem statement or the solution.

First, people do have a choice. Don't buy iOS/iPhone/Tablet. Buy something else that fits your needs. Competition is strong. Problem solved. There's plenty of alternates. As they say, 'vote with your wallet/eyes/?'

Second, shouldn't Apple ultimately fail if this is a bad choice? Won't they get out innovated? Someone pointed out Microsoft, and I agree. They were great 15 years ago. Less so and less so every year, enough so that OS X is considered the 'leader' in the tech community. Hell, even my mom wants a mac now.

</comment><comment><USER16> Well, by default Wordpress doesn't present me with alternatives to Akismet as well.

<comment><USER5> If the DOJ decides that blogging is an important market, and the theoretical abuse is meaningful in terms of impacting consumers, they could pursue Wordpress over the matter.

Smart phones in the US is a market measured in the tens of billions of dollars per year. Apple has over 40% of it. The money involved makes it a much bigger issue than eg blogging.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> It is also criminal that Apple and Microsoft get away with enforcing a 'single point of app store'.

Monopoly or not, states set the rules and these two are points where imho government should enforce choice.

<comment><USER11> The problem with that is that you'd be making the Kindle business model illegal too. Same for games consoles, both handheld and portable. There's nothing novel or unique about app stores. Companies have been able to tightly control the media ecosystem for their devices for decades. Disrupting that would make the entire business model of subsidizing the device on the back of controlling access to the media nonviable.

Goodbye video console market. Asta la Vista Gameboy. So long Kindle e-book reader. Unless you want to pay triple the current price for your next model of any of those. A sudden price hike like that would kill those markets stone dead.

Be careful what you wish for, lest you get it.

<comment><USER6> Except the parent is wrong, the federal government limits states in matters of commerce, the bulk of which would be conducted interstate, not intrastate.

States cannot limit the prosecution of commerce outside itself. It was an attempt to limit state rivalries, such as Texas telling Other states it had to pay a premium to use its ports.

<comment><USER18> I believe "state" here was used in the generic sense to refer to any organized political entity rather than the 50 states that make up the US.

<comment><USER6> Except he didn't say "state", he said "states" which does mean the 50 states that make up the US.

<comment><USER17> I'm no english native speaker, meant state in plural, sorry.

<comment><USER6> Well, when someone refers to states, they mean the 50 US states if they are speaking of US law, otherwise they would refer to it differently. Moving on.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> The choice of default is meaningless for browsers, even if you had it, because the only browser that exists on iOS is Safari.

Yes, you might be able to download something called "Chrome" or "Firefox", but what you're getting isn't those browsers.

What you're getting is iOS Safari the browser, with the interface around it replaced by Google or Mozilla.

This is because Apples TOS forbid you from creating a program that downloads and executes code from the internet to drive your application, which basically means no downloading html/JS and no "executing" html by rendering it, or running JS.

And this is the really criminal part, the default choice, that's just the icing on the cake.

<comment><USER20> I originally came to a similar line of reasoning as you, but I've found a surprising number of people use Chrome on iOS. It's probably not large in relative terms, but they are out there. The primary benefit seems to be being able to sync their browser with their phone, which I do find handy on Android, so I can see the appeal. Obviously if you use Safari on your desktop machine, you're then doubly invested in using mobile safari. Often javascript execution isn't the bottleneck anyway, network is, so interpreted JS can be good enough (maybe at least if you don't know what you're missing out on when it does hurt you).

<comment><USER19> If you think of a browser as "just this thing that renders the page", you're correct, it's basically irrelevant how it technically is implemented.

However that'd be a very poor view of what a browser is. A browser is the platform, the runtime if you will, that lets us build applications on the internet.

The first browser was pretty much good at nothing but rendering bits of text, shortly followed by images, and it grew from there.

Today browsers have a myriad of capabilities that make exciting applications on the internet possible, such as: CSS transitions, CSS animations, CSS gradients, CSS calc, html5, WebGL, Web Audio Data, media streaming data, video elements, audio elements, binary data handling, object URLs, zip URLs, binary data requesting, cross origin resources sharing, WebSockets, WebRTC, realtime video/audio capture/encoding/transmission/decoding/playback, and so forth.

This are features of the "browser engine implementation". And not all browsers implement the same features. For instance take iOS safari which lacked the CSS capability for position:fixed and usable overflow:scroll handling until just about a year ago. All browsers in 1997 already implemented this flawlessly, and correctly. But for whatever reason, Apple didn't until more than a decade after the inception of that feature.

Similarly other features aren't implemented, too numerous to list, save for the one that annoys me personally most, that is WebGL.

A similar situation was evident on the desktop internet in the time period between 1998 and 2004, where Internet Explorer 6 ruled supreme. But other browsers (chiefly Firefox) offered a different implementation, and hence put Microsoft under pressure to improve internet explorer if they wish to stay relevant.

The same kind of pressure cannot be exerted on Apples iOS browser, because you're forbidden from exercising it. This is bad for the Web, it's bad for me and it's bad for you.

Unsurmountable barriers to competition are always bad for everybody, except the one building the barrier.

<comment><USER21> Your analogy to IE6 isn't clear, because Apple has a clear incentive to keep its browser competitive with browsers on Android.

<comment><USER19> The incentive to keep iOS safari competitive with Android browsers isn't as strong, as it would be if iOS Safari would have to compete with browsers on the same platform.

Significantly, the lack of features on iOS Safari, which might be present on Android, makes using these features equally infeasible just as effectively. Nobody wants a mobile webapp that only works on Android.

Lastly, the health of the web should not be governed by the rise and fall of mobile operating systems. Android or iOS may rise or fall, and with it, competitive pressure for the predominant browser vendor would change.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> I have both the GMail and Chrome apps installed on my iPad, though I mostly prefer Safari. When I open a link in the GMail app, it opens it in Chrome. I can find no way to alter this setting.

One might argue that it's not the same situation, but it's quite clear that no player wants us to step outside their dome, and it's equally sad - however not surprising in any way.

<comment><USER20> well, the first search result I get for "gmail ios chrome" has a screenshot and mentions how to turn it off, but for more specific help, here's the help page on how to enable or disable opening gmail links in Chrome: [https://support.google.com/mail/answer/3114652](https://support.google.com/mail/answer/3114652)

(tl;dr: go to "google apps" in the settings)

<comment><USER22> There it was, thanks! That's commendable of them. While I hope everyone now disregards the specific example in my comment, I'm afraid it doesn't change my personal view of the involved companies and their intentions very much.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> Nor is Apple the market leader.

<comment><USER5> Apple had almost no market share in e-books when the DOJ pursued them over price fixing. Amazon was dominant to a dramatic degree.

Being the market leader is not the prime qualifier. Consumer harm is.

I would however argue that Apple is in fact the market leader in the US. Individual companies are what matter, not open source platforms; that is, the DOJ is going to look at the behavior of companies. It's the companies who make the money, and charge consumers, and that's where the DOJ looks. If Apple does something with its 40% share (with Samsung at 24%, and companies like Motorola all the way down at 6%), that is viewed as meaningfully harming consumers, the DOJ will pursue them.

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> Criminal or not - if you let commercial entities dictate things this way and you accept this, it shows that your self-esteem is too low.

If you respect yourself, you don't let others play you.

<comment><USER3> Yeah, people with low self-esteem _deserve_ to be victims right? If you're a sucker or a victim, it's because you deserve it. Very compelling argument… (I'm being sarcastic obviously)

<comment><USER25> No one deserves to be a victim but it certainly doesn't stop people finding a large source of victims.

Agree with you and the OP.</comment></comment></comment>


Zeihan on Geopolitics of Covid-19 (1hr lecture) - <AUTHOR> https://us02web.zoom.us/rec/play/uZV8drj9-z83SIDH5QSDAvcoW9XoKK2shHIa-6VbxBrmAXMCNQXzM7QUM-tVFGFLsNYcjYIXdbXBQ9vF?continueMode=true <comment><AUTHOR> Peter Zeihan (formerly of stratfor) is a big name in the world of geopolitical risk analysis, and provides consulting services to various industries. He's published three books concerning the current global order, its collapse, and the winners/losers of the next hundred years.

If you're familiar with his work, the first quarter of this presentation will be old hat to you - very much an abridged version of his typical conference presentation.

He then segues into discussing the current status of the coronavirus epidemic globally, as well as how its progression may impact the future he's previously modeled.</comment>


A collection of non-standard punctuation marks - <AUTHOR> http://progressivepunctuation.com/ <comment><USER2> On a congruent note, California flops on compulsory English[1], the expressive void of the interwebs yawns at over a thousand emoji code points[2], and people actually think it's a great idea to champion patented punctuation marks[3] in everyday grammar. Can this guy[4] even spell his name yet?

[1] [https://outline.com/Gea52v](https://outline.com/Gea52v)

[2] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emoji](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emoji)

[3] [https://www.google.com/patents/USD608820](https://www.google.com/patents/USD608820)

[4] [https://modelviewculture.com/pieces/i-can-text-you-a-pile- of...](https://modelviewculture.com/pieces/i-can-text-you-a-pile-of-poo-but-i- cant-write-my-name)

<comment><USER3> Just to be clear, that patent is a Design Patent, 15 years. It's the first time I have ever seen a Design Patent mentioned in the wild. So the only remaining item on my IP punch list is a plant patent. As much as I admire Luther Burbank, asexually reproduced plants didn't need their own category.

<comment><USER4> So there's nothing patented under 35 U.S.C. 161 (Plant Patents)?

[https://www.uspto.gov/patents-getting-started/patent- basics/...](https://www.uspto.gov/patents-getting-started/patent-basics/types- patent-applications/general-information-about-35-usc-161)

<comment><USER5> I think gp is looking for the patent to be mentioned elsewhere, not simply a patent as registered.

It's actually a version of bingo!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> In chess, !? is _interesting_ and ?! is _dubious_. So I suppose the interrobang, ‽, is _WTF_.

</comment><comment><USER6> Proposals for an irony punctuation sign have been around since late nineteenth century. Stylistically, I prefer this relatively recent Dutch proposal¹.

But, as noted in the wikipedia articles, some feel that explicitly indicating when text is meant ironically defeats its purpose; irony is supposed to make you think.

1: The 'Het ironieteken van de CPNB' one the right: [https://nl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ironieteken](https://nl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ironieteken)

<comment><USER7> "But, as noted in the wikipedia articles, some feel that explicitly indicating when text is meant ironically defeats its purpose"

Is that, in itself, irony?

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> I've seen these "non-standard" ones in practice:

?! - Shock and confusion "Apple did what?!"

/s - Sarcasm "wow, I'm happy /s"

(?) - Doubt "I think Mark said we was done (?)"

<comment><USER9> sort of related: it drives me crazy when people use a question mark to show doubt, (sometimes sarcastically), instead of to ask a question. i've never seen (?) before, but i see "i think mark said he was done?", a lot.

even though it drives me crazy, it shows that special punctuation is unnecessary. people can just keep doing that awful thing, and there's no real ambiguity.

<comment><USER10> Many people raise the pitch of their voice as if asking a question when saying something doubtfully, so the question mark reads similarly to how one would say it out loud.

If you have access to formatting, a similar way of achieving the same thing would be to italicise "think"

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I occasionally use interrobang (?! - not sure if there is a unicode character), but the rest seem quite useless.

Also, this site doesn't let you copy text...WTF developers?

<comment><USER12> I'd use a question comma, there are often times where I'll phrase a question and then expound on some deeper specifics - generally things that I would consider implied, but that many people would miss, leading to the misinterpretation of the question.

Essentially everything (for me, at least) after the question comma is generally parenthetic in nature.

<comment><USER11> All the examples of question comma on the site can easily be written as two sentences though.

<comment><USER12> And most sentences with a semi-colon could also; it's often a matter of personal preference without well-defined fixed rules.

<comment><USER13> > And most sentences with a semi-colon could also

Well, yeah, since the difference between a comma and a semi-colon is the latter joins independent clauses, it is necessarily the case that any semi- colon use for joining (as opposed to its use in, e.g., lists) can be replaced by a period, you just lose the indication that the two independent clauses are tightly associated.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Try covering up the names of these while guessing what each is supposed to symbolize. Personally, I found some of these to be rather unintuitive and sometimes arbitrary.

<comment><USER15> They're not real. It's a joke.

<comment><AUTHOR> Real or not the Sarcmarc would help sooo much.

<comment><USER16> Don't people already use /s for this?

<comment><AUTHOR> They do and I think its an argument for the sarcmark.

<comment><USER17> On the other hand, I can type "/s" with my keyboard _right now_ and it's not copyrighted.

<comment><USER18> Still people type the ‽ all over this thread (can't handle Windows without the awesome WinCompose)…

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Cool ideas, would love to see more... but this site itself seems unfortunately over-designed to me.

It's a slideshow-style listicle (These 10 Punctuation Marks Will Blow Your Mind!), forces you to click to the next one, and makes you scroll to see an example usage for each punctuation mark.

<comment><USER20> The idea is very interesting, but the animation is too much. I had to close it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> Why won't this scroll? Page doesn't work really on my iPhone 6se.

<comment><USER22> and makes my screen look really dirty.

<comment><USER23> Yeah, I views on a laptop and thought something smudged my screen...

It's this: [http://progressivepunctuation.com/assets/img/concrete- wall-h...](http://progressivepunctuation.com/assets/img/concrete-wall- home.png)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> Some years ago I made the case for an interrocolon, the purpose of which I do not see addressed in that list: "when the direct object of an interrogative statement references an example, a URL or another statement in a follow-on block of text". I encounter uses for this all the time especially when texting.

[https://xefer.com/2008/03/interrocolon](https://xefer.com/2008/03/interrocolon)

</comment><comment><USER25> What can this do that emojis can't?

<comment><USER26> I can't think of a corresponding emoji for many of these, like sarcasm, certitude, snark (maybe the one with its tongue sticking out?), doubt, irony, etc.

<comment><USER27> We are lacking emoji for many important emotions, but IMO we should fix that by adding emoji. I think emoji are much more aligned with natural modes of human expression than punctuation marks are.

<comment><AUTHOR> Is it a problem to have more than one way to express things?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> The Artist Formerly And Then Again Known As Prince had his own single- character font just for rendering His Symbol, and his PR company send around copies of a floppy disk with Windows and Mac versions of the font, along with these instructions for writing about him:

[https://www.milk.com/wall-o-shame/bruce_font.html](https://www.milk.com/wall- o-shame/bruce_font.html)

[http://anildash.com/2014/06/my-favorite-floppy-of-all- time.h...](http://anildash.com/2014/06/my-favorite-floppy-of-all-time.html)

[https://parkerhiggins.net/2013/01/writing-the-prince- symbol-...](https://parkerhiggins.net/2013/01/writing-the-prince-symbol-in- unicode/)

</comment><comment><USER29> How many of these are part of Unicode?

The download link just a font that uses the Unicode Private Use Area to display each of these glyphs, which is particularly disappointing for interrobang which I know has an entry at U+203D, but I'm not sure about the rest of them?

</comment><comment><USER30> It seems people want a way to express emotion in something like a side- channel. Interpunction is fine for that, however we can't pronounce interpunction by itself and second interpunction can be placed only at specific points in the sentence (usually at the end). Emoji can be placed everywhere, however emojis can't be spoken out loud.

Lojban, a constructed language, has a very interesting feature: attitudinals: [https://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Lojban/Attitudinals](https://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Lojban/Attitudinals)

An example from Wikipedia:

mlatu .ui (a cat! yay!)

English has also attitudinals however they belong to informal speech.

</comment><comment><USER31> Like it or not, the "friendly period" punctuation already exists :)

<comment><USER32> And it was organically and democratically determined.

</comment></comment><comment><USER33> Much punctuation evolved organically from scribal shorthand. On the internet, I can see a contraction of /s into a symbol being one of the likeliest candidates for turning into punctuation.

<comment><USER15> And that's as formal as someone being labelled a 'troll'.

None of the internet's fads or memes deserve to be preserved in punctuation rules. This is a joke.

</comment></comment><comment><USER34> How can someone seriously propose I put a copyrighted symbol in my text to let them know it's sarcastic? [rhetorical question device] I'll bet the world will be a better place if they profit off every sarcastic sentence someone writes. [sarcastic sentence device] If you're too dumb to work out what's sarcastic, why should you benefit from my help? [friendly period]

(nb. There's a missing "sarcastic sentence device", but I don't know where to put it, when it applies to a piece of punctuation.)

</comment><comment><USER35> This site design is beautiful---in static form. The animations are utterly unnecessary though and detract from the presentation as well as get repetitive when scrolling from item to item.

</comment><comment><USER36> Please don't show this page to Larry Wall.

</comment><comment><USER28> Years ago I wrote a perfectly reasonable comment like /* WTF??!?!!?!???? */ and the old C compiler complained about "invalid trigraph". A syntax error in the middle of a comment!

Took me a while to figure out that "trigraph" was referring to some part of "??!?!!?!????" and not "WTF".

</comment><comment><USER37> A couple of these reminded me of musical symbols I'd see on staffs and so they were already associated with something in my mind and couldn't be re- associated with whatever the authors wanted.

Aw hell, I'll just mark up my text with a bunch of musical punctuation. Throw pianos and fortes all over everything.

</comment><comment><USER13> The interrobang is in notable use; of the rest, the question/exclamation commas would be useful and so clear in intent that I'd adopt them immediately if they were widely supported (fonts and keyboards.)

</comment><comment><USER38> Percontation is vastly underrated.</comment>


ErlangCamp Amsterdam 2013, exclusive rate of only €55 sponsored by Spil Games - <AUTHOR> http://erlangcamp.com/amsterdam

<comment><USER2> We do ErlangCamp at cost, more or less, as a service to the community. Generally it comes out to between a 100 and 150 dollars a seat. Considering the quality of the speakers and the material this is already really inexpensive. Spil Games generosity cuts that, already insane price, in half more or less. If you have an interest in Erlang and you are in Europe its nots not to attend.

Full Disclosure - I am one of the organizers.

<comment><USER3> s/nots/nuts/</comment></comment>


This Is What World War III Will Look Like - <AUTHOR> http://time.com/3934583/world-war-3/

<comment><USER2> An article about War World III and no mention of nuclear weapons.</comment>


Some Facebook Interns Are Earning $6,000 a Month  - <AUTHOR> http://mashable.com/2012/06/08/facebook-internship/

<comment><USER2> This seems unbelievable coming from France where most internships are usually pais between 500€ to maybe 1k/1.5k€ per month...

I'm going to be looking for an internship somewhere next year, maybe I should be going in the US !

<comment><USER3> That's a general problem in Europe. Software engineering professionals are paid a fraction of what their colleagues earn in the US, especially in Silicon Valley. I think the cause is simply that European companies haven't worked out how to create comparable value as SV from software engineering, so of course they can't afford to pay the engineers as well. And then they complain of the brain drain towards the US.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I'm curious about these numbers. Do Facebook interns receive insurance? Do they get any other benefits, like stock or bonuses? Undergraduates have echoed numbers like this to me, which is great, but we should be careful to compare internships with other internships, not against full-time employees. They don't seem to be apples to apples comparisons.

<comment><USER5> They do not get full-time benefits such as insurance or stock. Simply payment and usually temporary subsidized housing.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> not uncommon in SV. my intern pay check was higher than this. And the company wasn't facebook.

<comment><USER7> Same here, even outside of the valley with certain large tech companies.

<comment><USER8> It's hard to compare since internships are usually paid by the hour (at least nominally) and we don't know how many hours/week they worked, but that seems right on line with what New York companies pay their interns. Perhaps on the higher end, sure, but nothing surprising.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> My biggest concern with this article is that it's simply a number of glassdoor numbers collated into a list.

</comment><comment><USER10> For what it's worth, that's approximately half of what some interns make at Apple.

My understanding is that one receives 1.5 times their typical salary after eight hours and twice their typical pay after 12 hours. Some students are willing to put in the occasional 100 hour week when internships only last four months. Considering the base salary Apple offers is already relatively substantial (speaking as a student, at least) that can be quite a lot of money.

</comment><comment><USER9> Microsoft also pays more than this. So does any number of the larger tech companies.

</comment><comment><USER11> The article doesn't mention the corporate housing options they offer, or the relocation reimbursement, or the various other perks that (pretty dependably) come with any offer from a large tech company in the U.S.

</comment><comment><USER5> Why is this news? Software engineering interns are ALWAYS paid because they usually produce something usable by the company. My intern paycheck was equivalent and it also wasn't FB.</comment>