How To Ask Questions The Smart Way - <AUTHOR> http://catb.org/~esr/faqs/smart-questions.html

<comment><USER2> A look at the section titles of the document reveals that a lot of effort has been made to put the advice in positive (do this) instead of negative (don't do that!), even if the document itself is clearly a catalog of donts. So it ends up sounding as if asking questions were a terribly complex endeavor, when in fact it just requires common sense and politeness.

Problem is that if you're prone to commit those faux-pas, you're not going to read this document before hand anyway. Its purpose seems to be to direct offenders to it to make them aware of their faults.

</comment><comment><USER3> This might make it slightly easier for some of you to read this. The document is in UTF-8. There are two places in the document that say it's in UTF-8. Yet the server currently reports the charset as iso-8859-1. So that's what Chrome's autodetect uses...

Jargon file entries appear to have the opposite problem -- server reports utf-8, but the file is in iso-8859-1, and it claims to be iso-8859-1.

<comment><USER4> That might explain this, ironic, section:

 _"If you're sending e-mail from a Windows machine, turn off Microsoft's problematic "Smart Quotes" feature ... This is so you'll avoid sprinkling garbage characters through your mail."_

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> The people who most need to read this document will never read it.

<comment><USER6> Heck, I LOVE reading, and I can't be bothered to actually read it. What are the chances that non-techies are going to read it, let alone actually follow it?

From what I skimmed, the advice is spot-on... But people with a problem don't have patience. They need to fix the problem and move on. And the ones asking for free help on the internet are usually not willing to pay for it. (People who have already exhausted other means are the exception... But then, they're already following this document!)

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Related: Amy Hoy on "Help Vampires"

<http://slash7.com/2006/12/22/vampires/>

</comment><comment><USER8> Make people work as least as possible and you maximize the chance of getting an answer.

<comment><USER9> For best results, play on the emotions of technical folk. It is like the old saying: Instead of asking "how can I do X in Linux?", state "Linux sucks, it cannot do X!"

Not only will people go out of their way to prove you wrong – thereby answering your question – but the resultant discussion will also provide insight into the problem beyond what would not normally be given in a direct response. The latter is often just as valuable as the answer itself.

I don't really want to advocate the behaviour, but it is interesting to see how people react to each.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> There should be one of these for "How to Open an Issue on an Issue Tracker the Smart Way." To get an account on an issue tracker system, you have to pass a quiz on it.

<comment><USER11> In the section "Be precise and informative about your problem" of the article there is a link to Simon Tatham's (PuTTY author) "How to Report Bugs Effectively": <http://www.chiark.greenend.org.uk/~sgtatham/bugs.html>

I've seen several open source projects link to that document as well, so it might be what you are looking for.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> > What we are, unapologetically, is hostile to people who seem to be unwilling > to think or to do their own homework before asking questions. People like > that are time sinks...

If people really thought of those questions as time sinks, they wouldn't bother responding. The aggravated forum response smacks more of a perverted delight in bullying the novice.

And I understand the impulse. You've just answered the same question three times, and get it again? What gives!? Someone should smack these people!

But if people are asking the same questions over and over, it's time to take another look at your search/FAQ/layout. If people are hostile to other people on your forum, it shouldn't be dismissed as "they just love challenging questions." It's time to fix your buggy culture.

Someone should write a companion piece working on the other end. How to Answer (Stupid) Questions the Smart Way:

1\. If hate customer service, let someone else handle it.

2\. Provide the most efficient answer.

3\. Don't question the question.

4\. Assume good faith (to crib from Wikipedia).

5\. ...

</comment><comment><USER13> <http://labs.phurix.net/articles/how-to-ask-a-question>

</comment><comment><USER14> The article is simply a massive preachy FAQ with intricate advice that really boils down to common sense and good manners. And yeah, the people who lack the common sense to post good questions, are not going to ever read something like that.

I think that the atmosphere and characteristics of the forum determines the quality of the questions more than anything else and especially more than any list of "rules" in the FAQ or front matter of the forum.

There are so many crummy forums out there and only a small number of really good ones. Comparing the crappy ones with the good ones, I'd say that a forum can cultivate "good questions" by using some of the following techniques:

[1] A good number of non-anonymous posters. If you have your name in the game, you're less likely to behave badly. [2] Active moderators who aren't afraid of yanking stuff or even requiring approval for each post. [3] Crowd-sourced up/down votes [4] A very specific topic.

</comment><comment><USER15> A classic. I also read esr's other material, like the 'Cathedral and the Bazaar', and the his views on the Halloween Documents.

</comment><comment><USER16> The internet has really progressed since that article was written.

Instead of hackers getting angry at newcomers we have resources such as stackexchange and quora that filter up the top questions and answers and make them easy to find.

</comment><comment><USER17> irc guidelines enlighten our daily speech too ;)

<comment><USER18> Especially the 'ask to ask' over instant messenger, when you're known to be responsible for something.

People giving polite introductions to themselves when I'm working annoys me greatly, as they're only saying "hi" to ask a question, and it requires that I respond to them and break my focus as they spend the next 3-5 minutes writing a question; whereas they could have just spent those 3-5 minutes saying in their IM:

"Hi,

I'm working on <X> and <Y> happened. Have you come across this before; and, how do I fix this?"

And accomplish the same thing without wasting my time.

</rant>

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> usually when i do the 7 steps described in "Before you ask" section, at that point if the question is not answered than nobody in the world will answer my question. So to conclude this paper should not exist.

<comment><USER20> _nobody in the world will answer my question_ \- It sounds like you haven't been asking the right questions. You'd be surprised at who turns up to answer really good questions.

All 7 steps are really overkill, but the first four, and enough of five ("inspection or experimentation") to apply what you find out from the first four steps, really are essential.

The last two steps (skilled friends & source code) are really optional, and if you need to resort to these to find the answer, it is likely that your problem is interesting to the mailing list.

It's worth comparing ESR's essay to SO's How to Ask page - <http://stackoverflow.com/questions/how-to-ask> \- which asks much less of the questioner, and reflects the difference between mailing list culture and that at SO.

<comment><USER21> I would expect the primary differences don't stem from "culture" so much as differing technical platforms. If your question is actually a Wiki, and can be interactively refined in conjunction with the answerers, the need to complete the checklist in advance is lessened. In the end, the checklist will pretty much end up filled out one way or another, and there's still a such thing as a bad question and a bad questioner, but in both cases there's a better (if not 100%) chance to rehabilitate them interactively.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> Bookmarked for later, thanks. But seems like an awful lot of trouble just to get asking right lol. From the comments seems like mixed feelings about this one.

<comment><USER6> No, most people agree that the article is correct about how to ask... They just disagree about whether the people who don't already know this will read it.

You're kind of proving our point. :D

Once you get into the habit of asking correctly, future questions are really easy. You'll have seen the results of asking the right question AFTER you have done your own research.

You'll also have learned how easy it is to get answers to most questions without asking a live human. And how much faster, too.

<comment><USER22> I wasn't asking a question... Dont know how I kind of proved any point by saying I planed to educate myself by reading the article lol. I was just making a statement about others comments and the general appearance of the article. Perhaps if it looked more "friendly" more people who should read it would read it.</comment></comment></comment>


Nintendo misses profits forecasts by 50%, but some hunt for a bright side - <AUTHOR> http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-04-24/nintendo-forecasts-profit-surge-as-new-games-drive-wii-u.html

<comment><AUTHOR> Submitter here: Just thought it was interesting that some emphasize the earnings target miss ([http://www.gamesindustry.biz/articles/2013-04-24-nintendo- mi...](http://www.gamesindustry.biz/articles/2013-04-24-nintendo-misses- profits-forecasts-by-50-percent-due-to-weak-wii-u-3ds-sales)) while others look for a rosy side (original link).</comment>


Best book to manage programmer/dev team? - <AUTHOR>

I'm a dev myself but managing a team of programmer/dev is a different ball game. I've been doing it for sometime now but still dev is a bunch of cats, if you know what I mean.
So what are some of the best books (or learning resources) you actually read that helped you for real?
I know the usual suspect, Peopleware and I plan to buy if it's wasn't the fact that it's a bit old. <comment><USER2> Peopleware is fairly timeless. You don't necessarily have to agree with it, but you should probably read it if only to baseline the decisions you make.

</comment><comment><USER3> Another timeless option would be The Mythical Man-Month</comment>


Study blames YouTube for rise in number of Flat Earthers - <AUTHOR> https://www.theguardian.com/science/2019/feb/17/study-blames-youtube-for-rise-in-number-of-flat-earthers <comment><USER2> There are so many of these clowns now, why don't they put in the effort to walk to the edge of the world? I mean, what's the freaking problem here? They are so smart and clever to use lasers to measure curvatures and other laughable metrics.

Let's go. Get a fundraiser going, and solve this "mystery" once and for all.

Sadly, all flat-earthers can do is constantly find an argument that something "went wrong" or "something is rigged".

How pathetic must be your life when you believe in something that even if you had a chance to prove it's not real, you would still find ways to conspire against your shitty truth?

<comment><USER3> Well, did you personally prove that the earth is round? I suspect that most of round-earthers didn't prove it themselves as well.

The problem is infeasiblity; it's infeasible for a regular person to confirm most of the scientific findings.

For example, ~75% of Americans live paycheck to paycheck. They already have a hard time putting food on the table.

This kind of arguments against flat-earthers needs to be retired. It doesn't make sense to dare a person to confirm any scientific finding.

Let's just call spade a spade: Round-earthers believe the earth is round because they listen to the right experts. Flat-earthers believe the earth is flat because they listen to the wrong experts.

We are just listeners. Let's stop acting like we prove these scientific findings ourselves.

<comment><USER4> Unless you're in the 'all potential evidence is faked' groupd I'd say the imagery provided by the flock of geostationary meteorological satellites is enough evidence to prove the earth is anything but flat. How else would it be possible to piece the overlapping imagery of these satellites together into a flat surface? Any flat-earthers around here who want to give it a try can get some imagery at [1] and start puzzling it all together.

[1] [https://en.allmetsat.com/](https://en.allmetsat.com/)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> > Some said they watched the videos only in order to debunk them but soon > found themselves won over by the material.

That's the crazy thing about conspiracy theory videos. Fact is we cannot independently verify everything in life, at some point we have to trust someone else. So when we find people switching sides it's not like science lost to conspiracy theories, it's just that one popular set of ideas lost to another. What else can you expect when we pick and choose ideas based on social acceptance as one of the criteria (see psychology studies on anchoring effect of social pressure).

</comment><comment><USER6> Why is this surprising? How is this much different from religion?

<comment><USER7> People are naive and perhaps that is the only thing that the flat-earth founder is trying to prove.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> I suspect that almost all of these "believers" are simply trolling the normies, or enjoying their little pub clubs.

On the other hand, I don't completely rule out Dark City...

<comment><USER9> A comforting belief, the reality is that the scientific and rational literacy of vast numbers of people are basically non-existent. People can be convinced to believe anything, regardless of the evidence.

<comment><USER10> The corollary to this is that much of the current paradigm of anything even of all of society may be considered completely insane in a short period of time, say 100 or more years. There is no way for humans to know any truth, they simply have appealing rhetoric which according to current norms or methods of inquiry seems reasonable and believable. Many of them don't even currently stand up to scrutiny but that doesn't stop anyone from accepting them at face value.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> There are some interesting parts in the videos that remain suspicious (kind like a lot 9/11) like the restricted fly zones over parts of the north/south poles where they claim the world ends, however they then take the scary hair guy from Ancient Aliens approach and clap their hands shouting "Therefore... it can only mean one thing..."</comment>


Japanese women push back against Valentine's tradition of 'obligation chocolate' - <AUTHOR> https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/feb/11/japanese-women-push-back-against-valentines-tradition-of-obligation-chocolate <comment><USER2> > Men are supposed to reciprocate on 14 March on White Day – an event dreamed > up by chocolate makers in the early 80s to boost sales.

Japan seems to have been especially susceptible to the power of suggestion by commercial entities. It was also the case with diamonds [1]

> Until 1959 the importation of diamonds had not even been permitted by the > postwar Japanese government. When the [marketing] campaign began in 1968, > less than 5 percent of Japanese women getting married received a diamond > engagement ring. By 1972 the proportion had risen to 27 percent. By 1978, > half of all Japanese women who were married wore a diamond on their ring > finger. And, by 1981, some 6o percent of Japanese brides wore diamonds.

[1] [https://edwardjayepstein.com/diamond/prologue.htm](https://edwardjayepstein.com/diamond/prologue.htm)

<comment><USER3> This is the key quote. Why is this article trying to make it seem like women are getting the short end of the stick? As far as I can tell men and women buy the same amount of chocolates. Also, they say that women are spending thousands of yen ... that's like 20 dollars. This article is filled with click bait deception and frankly it's garbage.

If you ever get married, buy a real ring from Tiffany's, have the stone removed, sell it, and have it re-set with zirconium.

<comment><USER4> You can't resell a diamond for anything close to the price you pay for it. Just buy a ring with no stone, and then have it set with the stone of your choice.

<comment><USER5> This is a much better choice. Before proposing to my wife, I used Etsy to have a ring custom made out of platinum and set with an 8mm moissanite. It's beautiful and was a tiny fraction the price of what a similar looking diamond would have cost.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> With 7 billion people on the planet, there's bound to be some cultural growing pains as we sort out which traditions make sense on a large scale and which don't. Happy to hear this one is falling out of favor. It sounds like a not great practice.

</comment><comment><USER7> We cannot protest everything. This is exhausting.

<comment><USER8> Unless you happen to be a Japanese woman who works somewhere that honors this tradition I don't see how this can exhaust you.

<comment><USER9> I think he's saying that having to face a reality he would rather ignore via no protest is exhausting.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I'm not really a fan of people feeling compelled to spend money for romantic gestures in general, so I'm pretty okay with this.

</comment><comment><USER11> Previously, self proclaimed ugly single guys protested it too.

</comment><comment><USER12> I'd like to point out that "thousands of yen" is "tens of dollars".

<comment><USER11> Each. For every giri (obligation) chocolate. You would need a plenty of those. And if it is something more serious like friendship or fondness, yet more.</comment></comment>


Nameof operator for modern C++, simple name of variables, types, functions, etc. - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/Neargye/nameof <comment><USER2> Something that both C and C++ (or any other language for that matter) should have had since day one. Very nice work. Looking forward to using it in my projects!</comment>


Ask HN: Gmail – getting emails intended for others - <AUTHOR> It appears my name and middle initial are extremely common. To date, in my gmail account I've received highly personal emails intended for other people. They're not spam or phishing emails either. These include:<p>- police reports<p>- job offers<p>- draft divorce settlements<p>- bills<p>- sea cadet schedules<p>It's probably due to gmail ignoring delimiters in email addresses, but are these emails being sent to all variations of the email address? When it's something like a job offer I do notify the sender that they've got the wrong email address, but this is all a bit concerning. <comment><USER2> I have this same problem. I have email@example.com and I regularly get emails that are sent to email@example.com.

They are real emails too, banking with sensitive info pdfs, signup emails, etc.

Not sure what's going on, since there's no way that the person would have access to email@example.com since it's the same as mine, just without a period.</comment>


The Development of Wooden Skyscrapers - <AUTHOR> http://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2015/jul/07/tree-houses-are-wooden-skyscrapers-the-future-of-tall-buildings

<comment> david-given It sounds better if you call it 'organically produced carbon fibre'...

Wood is awesome; I'd love to see this concept work.

<comment><USER2> I see what you did there

</comment></comment><comment> michel-slm The future is Kashyyyk</comment>


Advancements in Brain Control: Wheelchairs that Move by Thought  - <AUTHOR> http://singularityhub.com/2009/05/26/advancements-in-brain-control-wheelchairs-that-move-by-thought/

<comment><USER2> Cool!</comment>


19 year-old Stanford Ph.D. dropout Andrew Hsu is Changing Education - <AUTHOR> http://www.startupsopensourced.com/2011/07/28/19-year-old-stanford-ph-d-dropout-andrew-hsu-is-changing-education/

<comment><USER2> "In college, there's far less social pressure to maintain popularity, and you're actually valued for your intelligence. [...] The major difference to me in high school vs. college is the work in college–for me at least–is actually challenging and intellectually interesting."

I think Andrew's view of college is overly shaped by the fact that he went to an elite college at age 12. Had he matriculated at 18 he probably would have been bored as fuck. Especially if he was at a real college, i.e. one where the education and social dynamics were actually representative of the experience of the vast majority of college students.

Also, does he have any actual knowledge of the research that's been done on education? If he does, this interview certainly doesn't hint at it. Not to be overly critical, but I'm really not sold based on this interview.

<comment><USER3> I agree the interview does not get to the gist..

some new theories and applications to learning are coming out of neuroscience but I am unsure if Andrew specialized in that area at least from the interview.

The older neuroscience stuff we are already aware of that humans remember in 3s, 5s, and 7s of items, several channels used at once such as visual audio increases info percentage retained more so when skills re-used, etc.

<comment><USER2> Even if he did specialize in that area of neuroscience, it's largely irrelevant. Sociology and psychology are much more important for understanding how to do education right, followed by anthropology and cognitive development. There are definitely a few good insights from neuroscience, but it's not really a field that's produced many game changers, at least not yet. Even history is more important than neuroscience at this point.

<comment><USER4> Hi, I don't feel great about "calling you out", but I want to ask if you hold a degree, or have pursued extensive study (perhaps to the point of publishing a peer-reviewed article) in any of the fields of neuroscience, anthropology, psychology, sociology, cognitive development, or educational research?

Your reply comes off as highly authoritative, but I don't want to just default to trusting that you are an expert in every (or even any) field mentioned, and hence, are able to produce an authoritative hierarchy of their usefulness as applied to a specific unsolved problem.

Sorry to be that guy!

<comment><USER2> No problem. I've taken a few classes on education and I've read a bunch of books on the research.

It would be difficult to defend any sort of hierarchy in a rigorous way, but there is generally a pretty good consensus on which findings are the most important. For example, the is a pretty broad agreement that if a kid shows up at school after having not eaten for three days and their parents have been beating the shit out of them, then they probably aren't going to learn very well regardless of what neuroscience theory you're using. And since these sorts of problems effect 80+% of the kids in many school districts, you basically have to design schools around these sorts of issues before you can really start optimizing the content. Albeit all of the research sort of fits together.

It's a good question though, so I'll throw up a Squidoo page with a bunch of the best books on education that I've found.

<comment><USER2> <http://twitter.com/#!/AlexKrupp/status/97016704860823552>

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> OK, this guy sounds very impressive, but his educational experiences were so _very_ atypical that I'm concerned whether he'd have any real grasp of how normal people learn.

I get the feeling that going to his classes would be like getting swimming lessons from a mermaid.

<comment><USER6> And why shouldn't I want to take swimming lessons from a mermaid? Sounds like a dream.

<comment><USER5> I originally wrote "merman", I should have stuck with that. Yes, if you want to look at boobies then learning swimming from a mermaid is a good idea, but if you want to learn to swim it's non-ideal.

"OK, now thrash your tail"

"I don't have a tail!"

"Oh... uhhh, so do those leg things move independently or what?"

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Gaming has been addressed for years by others as it pertains to learning and the future. There are also others working in areas that are proving very useful.

(one of the best videos I've seen)

[http://www.phibetaiota.net/2010/09/video-visions-of-the- game...](http://www.phibetaiota.net/2010/09/video-visions-of-the- gamepocalypse-possible-futures-waking-up-thinking-and-creating-a-better- world/)

"Serious games"

[http://web.cs.wpi.edu/~rich/courses/imgd404x-c11/playable.ht...](http://web.cs.wpi.edu/~rich/courses/imgd404x-c11/playable.html)

<http://www.gamesforchange.org>

Child-driven education

[http://www.ted.com/talks/sugata_mitra_the_child_driven_educa...](http://www.ted.com/talks/sugata_mitra_the_child_driven_education.html)

<http://www.hole-in-the-wall.com/>

Music + hands-on creative work

[http://www.pittsburghlive.com/x/pittsburghtrib/news/s_543015...](http://www.pittsburghlive.com/x/pittsburghtrib/news/s_543015.html)

There's an incredible story (inspiring & practical) of a boy without healthy legs gaining access to salvaged computers and free software to apply his graphics skills to pull his way out of the slums....it's less than 3/4 of the way through this speech by Eben Moglen called "Before and After IP: Ownership of Ideas in the 21st Century" [http://moglen.law.columbia.edu/audio/DSG-CUNY- BeforeAndAfter...](http://moglen.law.columbia.edu/audio/DSG-CUNY- BeforeAndAfterIP.mp3)

I've been collecting a ton of related links and posting them at <http://re- configure.org/drupal/node/33>

<comment><USER7> Russian president calls for World of Warcraft-like game for Russian history - <http://dvice.com/archives/2011/07/russias-prez-wa.php>

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> I worked in 'educational technology' for years trying to solve 'issues' in education, training, and general Human learning. We called the field advancing Human Potential.

During this time, we tried out all sorts of concepts, worked with world leaders and world class theorists and researchers. We built all sorts of systems, and products, simulators, interactive games, expert systems, individual tutors, and other things of blended nature. These products were built for governments, research institutes, and commercial companies. Some of the 'products' had empirical results that surprisingly showed that they were 'useful', too. However, there weren't ever any revolutions in education or learning or educational theory, while I was there.

I eventually dropped out from this field from burnout. Why? Because of the people. This area of interest seems to attract people with very similar personality traits. Reading this article and the subject reminds me of the type of people who want to 'solve' education. It is not at all unusual to work with people in this field who complete advance degrees while still in puberty. I worked with a guy who ended up the chair of mathematics at world-class university before he was 20. These are all 'geniuses', as they have been taught and trained to think. And, interestingly they all seem to clamor around this tall flag of solving education.

I believe the failure of this field is actually that most of these people running it are very 'left brain' analytical thinkers. They think that they can solve these very dynamic, chaotic educational systems by decomposition and reductionism. It's kind of funny actually. Smart people get addicted to being smart, and they want to encourage the use of the systems that gave them the personal 'high' to begin with.

</comment><comment><USER9> TIL grad students who have second thoughts about their PhD program are the new college dropouts.

<comment><USER10> It's probably a marketing thing, since people with PhD's aren't usually the entrepreneur-type.

<comment><USER5> You'd be amazed by how many entrepreneurs have PhDs.

<comment><USER11> I would be. Is this really common? My own story is the common one of highshool dropout who dropped about because he was bored in school and this is something I hear about in many of my peers.

<comment><USER9> The attributes of good entrepreneurs and good research students are highly correlated. It's quite common in engineering, but less so in other fields where research isn't as likely to have direct commercial applications.

<comment><USER10> You guys are going to have to come up with some evidence. I don't see how someone who could go through the entire University process all the way to a research PhD if what they really wanted was to start their own business.

<comment><USER9> Examples are abundant. Stephen Wolfram would be a prominent example.

The "I need X, but existing X is nonexistent or crappy, so I'm going to make my own X" thinking seems to be a common motivator. Technically-competent entrepreneurs often fall into this case.

Meet some more grad students and you'll get a clearer picture of this fairly quickly. This is at least a consideration for many engineering grads.

<comment><USER5> Wolfram's one example. Most of the founders of Intel. Genentech. The vast majority of biotech or nanotech startups.

You won't find too many PhDs starting companies that make web apps and iPhone games, though. They're starting companies in the _really_ high tech areas, areas at the forefront of technology that folks without PhDs don't understand just yet.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> This dude is my mentee as part of 20 under 20. He is super sweet, super humble, and super curious about the world in a way that is refreshing to see for someone so accomplished at his age. This "Zen mind is beginner's mind" mentality is a harbinger of success IMHO. <3

</comment><comment><USER13> I think most people on HN could have completed high school academics by age 12 or 13 with sufficient discipline and focus. This is not all that remarkable intellectually, but it's rare that a child that age has the will (or opportunity) to make it happen.

<comment><USER14> I think the same thing. The question is, should we?

I wonder how many people who go on to do Nobel-quality work were in college at the age of 12? My intuition is very few. I think something very important is lost when bored 12-year-olds don't learn how to experiment on their own. Essentially 100% of the pioneer hackers cut their teeth this way.

Of course, I'm probably just jealous that I didn't matriculate early and have 3 BS's by 19.

<comment><USER13> I agree. In an ideal world people with these capabilities would be able to spend their childhoods in an environment tailored to very bright children their own age, with materials and curriculum tailored to their strengths and with attention paid to cultivating passion and minimizing overspecialization.

<comment> dan-k I really like that you included minimizing overspecialization. Academics is getting so hyper-compartmentalized that overspecialization is not only ignored in most disciplines, but it's even encouraged in many (computer science included). That's one of the reasons I'm starting to rethink my longstanding plans of going to grad school after finishing college next year. People who focus all of their waking lives on one thing will tend to get more attention for how quickly they progress in it than the rest of us, but that's not really good for that much beyond press coverage or your name in a record book. Truly revolutionary accomplishments require much more than an uncanny dedication to memorizing algorithms or chemical names, but those are precisely the sort of traits that will move you quickly through formal education (or get you that coveted expert status from the 10,000-hour rule). Though I certainly won't bash someone with three college degrees by 16, especially without knowing more about them personally, even Andrew Hsu shows evidence of that, with all of the degrees being in biochem-related fields. I strongly suspect that the next discovery that completely alters our paradigms of thought and/or creates a new field of study will come from someone with a broader background, who can synthesize expertise from many fields into insights that everyone else overlooks.

<comment><USER14> Don't let overspecialization discourage you from grad school!

Grad school is all about what you can do for yourself, not following other people's vision. You set your priorities, determine which classes you take (you could combine a history of Shakespearian tragedy and quantum mechanics with a CS degree, for example).

Here's some reading that might encourage you to rethink grad school. The memoir of James Watson (Watson and Crick, discoverers of DNA double helix) _Avoid Boring People_. Also, Hamming's speech "You and Your Research." (<http://www.cs.virginia.edu/~robins/YouAndYourResearch.html>) Both talk about why overspecialization is bad, and what you can do as a young researcher to broaden your understanding.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> I was wondering how he had 3 B.S.'s and was a drop out. And then I saw the next line. He dropped out of the _Ph.D. program_. At _19_.

...

Hats off.

</comment><comment><USER16> This person is very smart, but (as far as I can tell) he's never instructed everyday students before - is that a problem?

</comment><comment><USER17> What I wouldn't give for a TLDR. All I want to know is how his strategy for improving education diffs from Khan Academy, who I think is the frontrunner right now in that endeavor, without wading through the author's rant and a discussion on some kid's gaming habits.

</comment><comment><USER18> On one hand, I admire the guy for tackling such a worthwhile problem and also having accomplished so much so young.

On the other hand, I wonder if this may be the case of being extremely book smart and not so streetwise.

Why not wait till you finish your PhD at the young age of 22? You will be more mature by then and know quite a bit more.

If you already had built a working prototype(doesn't even have to be MVP) and experienced some sort of positive feedback, sure drop out.

Otherwise, continue working on your ideas in your spare time. Bill, Larry and Sergey only dropped out when they had something happening.

For those already in the workplace example of patio11 is very admirable.

The interview mentions that they are just getting started and are at least 6 months from a prototype. Unless Andrew has some sort of edge from his studies, this venture doesn't have any inherent advantages.

Disclaimer: I dropped out at 19 partially because I heard the PhD guys I was writing software for complaining so much about their progress. It took me 15 years to get back into school.

</comment><comment><USER19> I'm sure (if he hasn't already) he could definitely go to a few public schools (some of the rather worse ones, say in urban L.A. or something) to see how they work out. Might give him good ideas. It's a vital step to experience that stuff first hand.

</comment><comment><USER20> You know he's looking toward the future when he calls the Khan Academy videos "archaic" :P

</comment><comment><USER21> Weird, I think I went to college with him.

<comment><USER22> You don't remember if a 12 yo was in college with you?

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> \- Labeled as a "genius" from IQ testing at 6 years old

"I think genetics play a small role. I'm naturally smart and I have the ability to absorb information pretty quickly just by reading. But that only counts for a small part." - Andrew Hsu

I guess all the brainpower in the world can't magically cure arrogance or grant humility. I don't doubt that he'll be very successful in _something_ , but he's so comically out of touch with the reality of public education that I doubt he'll ever have an impact there.

<comment><AUTHOR> It didn't feel like I was talking to an alien who had no understanding of the problem with education today when I interviewed him. He started having attention problems in 4th grade (which is the age he's targeting), and all of the problems he described to me lined up with my own beliefs.

I know it reads as blatantly bragging, but from my interactions with Andrew (having met him at his office personally and then having done the interview over Skype), he didn't come across that way. It sounded to me like he had explained it many times before and was trying his best to succinctly give a straight answer. He seemed pretty normal by social standards, and I have some engineering friends who are sincere assholes with an ego much larger than Andrew's, if that's how you perceive him. I think most hackers and especially programmers have some amount of that cockiness though, that's not something we're all immune to. Even the CS professors admit that CS students walk around feeling more entitled than liberal arts students (and it's scribbled on the bathroom stalls: "Liberal arts degree dispenser below" right above the toilet paper roll in an engineering building on the campus I went to). Anyway, that wasn't the vibe I got from him, although I can see how you could read it that way.

It's an interesting point brought up: has he had enough painful experience with education to build a solution to it all? I don't know. I don't think it takes much to fix education; it's so broken that any young person today with an appreciation for gaming could probably figure out something better than what exists now. But I'm really interested in seeing what his team comes up with, and if someone wants to work on education, I'm more than supportive of those efforts because that whole process sucks right now.

<comment><USER24> "I don't think it takes much to fix education; it's so broken that any young person today with an appreciation for gaming could probably figure out something better than what exists now."

Why so?

<comment><USER25> The world of gaming has put a lot of work into discovering how to motivate people to keep going, even if what they're doing isn't actually that fun. Think of grinding in an MMORPG, or whatever the hell people do on Farmville: it's not that fun, probably significantly less fun than playing Super Mario Brothers 3, and yet people spend hours and hours on it.

And yet teachers have trouble getting students to learn anything.

<comment><USER24> I think this is inaccurate both in its presumed comparison and in the premise which underlies it.

First, grinding (really farming, no one outside of Korea grinds anymore, which I'll get to) in an MMO or playing Farmville is pretty low intensity mentally, it does not require that much of your attention. Multi-tasking is easy, for example. I'm not so sure that you would be able to grind away at mentally taxing activities. It generates fatigue.

Second, though, is that video games have not figured out a way to effectively reward boring activities. Let's use MMORPGs. When I played Final Fantasy XI, grinding was so tedious I quit before level 20. EverQuest 2 was better, but not too much more. WoW was fairly easy. RIFT was a breeze. Each new release is easier than the last, indicating that grinding is something game developers have learned to avoid rather than create ways of rewarding it. As an empirical test, it seems like a resounding rejection of thesis.

I'm not sure gamification is going to get much done on the education front. I think this idea resounds with techies because they like video games, they often like to show their accomplishments and they like the ego-stroke the concept of displacing education with games brings.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> Education is mostly about emotional communication. If you can communicate Emotional Space and Respect to someone and you can give them a compelling Emotional desire for why to learn something, and you consistently exemplify the skill, learning is very automatic. It happens in the animal kingdom all the time.</comment>


Boston Tried a Police State and it Failed - <AUTHOR> http://georgedonnelly.com/libertarian/boston-police-state-failed

<comment><USER2> _It's absolutely fascinating to me that only when they lifted the lockdown did they find the surviving Tsarnaev brother. That's when the owner of the boat Tsarnaev was hiding in came out of his house and noticed something amiss._

That's the big point here. It was only after the lockdown ended that someone found him.

During that day, I thought about if I lived in Boston what would the consequence have been to disallow the police from entering my home without a warrant. Would they have arrested me? On what charge? Would they have assumed I was hiding something and focused their entire force on me at the expense of possibly letting the real bad guy get away?

</comment><comment><USER3> How come a police state is so attractive at the beginning?

I would like to believe that I would have the courage to challenge this curfew if it comes to my town.

I would like to believe that this was accepted this time because the curfew was unexpected. I hope that next time, the curfew is resisted.

<comment><USER4> I've noticed that I've tolerated abuse in my life thinking that it would only be temporary condition. Sadly, abusers don't seem to reflect on their transgressions and seem to escalate them.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> I like the font of your article. But Alex Jones's pen is still bigger :)

<comment><USER6> "Alex Jones's pen is still bigger"

That's not a good thing, even though I find him very entertaining.</comment></comment>


UCSD Computer Scientists Develop Video Game that Teaches How to Program in Java - <AUTHOR> http://www.jacobsschool.ucsd.edu/news/news_releases/release.sfe?id=1347

<comment><USER2> This is outstanding!! Man, I would've loved to have this when I was in grade school. I remember being very excited about my one hour per week in front of the LOGO turtle. This goes way beyond. I'm not a big fan of java, but learning how to program in the same language your parents may be using at grown up work is pretty damn awesome.

<comment><USER3> The game feeling looks like more a modern LOGO game than a World of Warcraft game. The quest seems to be about moving a stone from A to B. It does not seems the player will become more and more powerfull while he grows its own library. It will be so fun to craft its set of functions ang go cast it in some PVP events. Maybe the Notch's new game (<http://0x10c.com>) will provide this king of "Master of Hackers" feeling.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> A really nice idea ... but why, oh why did they have to choose a language that has a lot of extra scaffolding like Java instead of something simpler like Python, or Ruby?

<comment><USER5> There it is. I wondered how far I'd have to read before we had a Java hate comment. Never fails.

<comment><USER4> It`s not a Java hate comment: I'm writing this as an educator with 20 years teaching experience who has learned that some languages are better teaching ones than others. Java has its place ... but another language would be better suited there.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> There's a lot to complain about with Java, but one part that IS great is that applications generally port pretty easily between environments (everywhere interesting for consumer software except iOS). Also this depends on Unity3d... guess what else is multi-platform! (including Win/OSX/Linux/web/iOS/Android)

I trust, then, that there's a good reason why this claims to be dependant on OSX. Seems to have something to do with this June (Java in Unity) thing.

</comment><comment><USER7> This is a great idea. The feeling of being able to do _anything_ combined with reasonable limitations (ideally invisible) to focus the player's energy is extremely engaging--perfect for teaching.

And I've always thought of magic spells in fantasy as a kind of hack using a secret, natural programming language. :-)

</comment><comment><USER8> So, I just tried this out. I think it would be a lot more user friendly if you could see what "spells" are available when making a new spell (i.e. have auto completion in the text editor). It's a pain to have to look at the spell book, and limits experimentation.

</comment><comment><USER9> This used to be called Robocode back in the day.

<comment><USER10> I came here to mention Robocode. I played the hell out of that back in the day. I am currently working on an indie game (RTS) that includes AI in singleplayer mode, and also allows you to program your own AIs by making a class that inherits from my abstract AI class which gives you access to an AI API. With Robocode there is a pretty high barrier to entry, but my goal is to have the game be entirely playable and a fun game, which then entices the user to go mess with the AI code.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> For Mac OSX 10.5 and Above.

I will have to check this out when I get access to a Mac that I can install it on. I loved the vim game at vim-adventures.com

</comment><comment><USER12> If you haven't heard about Greenfoot, it's a project with similar idea. <http://www.greenfoot.org>

</comment><comment><USER13> It's not about easiness --learning to code is probably simpler than learning to play such a game.

It's a about motivation.

</comment><comment><USER14> Code Spells? Sheesh, sounds a _lot_ like Land of Lisp, but done with Java. Wonder what Conrad Barski thinks of this.

</comment><comment><USER15> I'm trying to envision the MMO version of this, with special reference to (dungeon) raids.

"Leroy, you'll levitate the troll for 15 iterations. Zelda, you'll comment out the basilisk. Everybody, now's the time to warm up your caches. Ready check ... OK then. 0, 1, 2, 3 ... Go go go!!"

</comment><comment><USER16> I wonder if you could write an extension to an existing game/mmo to use the same code-as-spell system.

</comment><comment><USER17> super cool!</comment>


New research into "shaken baby syndrome" puts convictions in peril - <AUTHOR> http://reason.com/news/show/136176.html

<comment><USER2> This headline should read "New Research ... could free hundreds grieving parents wrongly wrongly convicted of killing their own child."

</comment><comment><USER3> Why ever shake babies? That's insane.

<comment><USER4> i agree with you, but i've seen SO many public service announcements about Do Not Shake Babies that i've stopped questioning this. now, when i hold babies, i'm overly cautious not to jostle them.

<comment><USER5> Which is sad. Babies in the first 3 months of life respond very well to the right kind of jostling. The 5 steps that every new parent should learn are: Swaddle, roll on Side, make a Shushing sound, Swing the baby back and forth, then finally Soothe with a pacifier. (I almost never went to the last one.)

<comment><USER6> Babies, like people, start to act differently from one another almost as soon as their born (earlier, if you ask my wife).

My friends had a colicky baby, and there was simply no way whatsoever to convince this child not to cry/scream. None. No way. There was no set of jostling, shushing, swinging, rocking, jiggling, singing, twisting, or hopping in place that would stop it. And as for the last one, neither of my two children could ever get the hang of a pacifier.

<comment><USER7> What about swaddling?

<comment><USER6> > there was simply no way whatsoever to convince this child not to cry/scream

Colicky-ness lasts for months. Everything was tried.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I wonder if there would be a market for a baby muzzle with some sort of tubing mechanism to ensure that the little snotball didn't choke to death on their own mucus.

<comment><USER9> Assuming you could make it safe, probably. It would need a built in alarm, so you didn't forget about them for too long. It should be held closed by electromagnets, so that if the battery runs out it releases.

There would probably be a market for automating lots of other aspects of parenting as well, but most of them (including the baby muzzle) would probably be pretty bad ideas.</comment></comment>


Starters, Finishers, and Large Teams - <AUTHOR> https://blog.andyet.com/2018/07/10/starters-finishers-and-large-teams <comment><USER2> [https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Celestial_Emporium_of_Benevo...](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Celestial_Emporium_of_Benevolent_Knowledge)

</comment><comment><USER3> I'm the guy who can't be bothered to understand complexity, because it doesn't interest me.

I could put my brain to work, figuring it out, but it's hard and not satisfying. I feel satisfied when I understand code right away because it's written by a clean code programmer.

So guess I'm lazy guard or something. I could also be incompetent though. :)

</comment><comment><USER4> starters - people you hire to act as programmers because you need headcount.

finishers - actual programmers.

guards - programmers that you should pay really well but you don't because you have a non-technical project manager and you think it's the same.

<comment><AUTHOR> I, the OP, am a starter myself. I was focused on finishers because they're often undervalued.

<comment><USER4> We all are starters in some way. The thing that helped me was to realize it and change my ways. Also it helps if starters do not run the show.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> So what happens when the starters design something that just doesn't work?

How are they getting feedback without finishing?

Finishers are actually the ones I want starting the project.

<comment><AUTHOR> In reality, everyone works together to make sure the project is successful throughout its lifespan. It's not usually a hand-off.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Can't stand those "starers". Always looking.</comment>


Show HN: Open source JavaScript web app - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/builderbook/builderbook <comment><USER2> That's fun and I like it!

Since this is the internet, I'll share my opinion; that's way too boilerplate to learn. I'll spend more time traversing folders then writing code. Cheers!

<comment><USER3> One of the authors here. True, the main repo is a big boilerplate :) Thanks for the feedback.

Within the repo, we have a boilerplate folder with fewer features and APIs.

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Hi community!

We've open sourced a web app that we use in production to sell our own book.

You can use it as a boilerplate for your own project. We built it with:

      - React,
      - Material-UI,
      - Next,
      - Express,
      - Mongoose and MongoDB.

You may also use this app "out of the box" if you'd like to sell your book on your own website.

Happy to answer any questions. We welcome any feedback.

</comment><comment><USER4> Scrolling is mostly broken on mobile safari.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks a lot for finding this problem. We haven't tested on Safari thus this problem with scrolling.

I pushed fixes: [https://github.com/builderbook/builderbook/issues/71](https://github.com/builderbook/builderbook/issues/71)

And deployed them.

Thanks again.</comment></comment>