"Theater" vs. "Theatre": The Great New York Times Language Swap - <AUTHOR> http://meta.bitfilter.net/theater-vs-theatre-the-great-new-york-times-language-swap/ <comment><USER3> I think I found another one, and it looks like it swapped twice: [http://chronicle.nytlabs.com/?keyword=Aesthetic.esthetic](http://chronicle.nytlabs.com/?keyword=Aesthetic.esthetic)

Edit:

Another: [http://chronicle.nytlabs.com/?keyword=Archaeology.archeology](http://chronicle.nytlabs.com/?keyword=Archaeology.archeology)

A very early switch: [http://chronicle.nytlabs.com/?keyword=Toward.towards](http://chronicle.nytlabs.com/?keyword=Toward.towards)

Another: [http://chronicle.nytlabs.com/?keyword=catalogue.catalog](http://chronicle.nytlabs.com/?keyword=catalogue.catalog)

And another: [http://chronicle.nytlabs.com/?keyword=centre.center](http://chronicle.nytlabs.com/?keyword=centre.center)

A weaker one: [http://chronicle.nytlabs.com/?keyword=fibre.fiber](http://chronicle.nytlabs.com/?keyword=fibre.fiber)

<comment><USER4> "Tokyo" replaced "Tokio" in about 1930: [http://chronicle.nytlabs.com/?keyword=tokyo.tokio](http://chronicle.nytlabs.com/?keyword=tokyo.tokio) ["Tokyo" is somewhat closer to the Japanese pronunciation]

"Muslim" replaced "moslem" in about 1988: [http://chronicle.nytlabs.com/?keyword=moslem.muslim](http://chronicle.nytlabs.com/?keyword=moslem.muslim) [Apparently for good reason: [http://hnn.us/article/524](http://hnn.us/article/524) ]

"Peking" was replaced by "Peiping" in 1930, but it was back to "Peking" in 1962, and then finally changed to "Beijing" in 1985: [http://chronicle.nytlabs.com/?keyword=peking.beijing.peiping](http://chronicle.nytlabs.com/?keyword=peking.beijing.peiping)

<comment><USER5> Constantinople vs Istanbul shows a nice clean switch: [http://chronicle.nytlabs.com/?keyword=constantinople.istanbu...](http://chronicle.nytlabs.com/?keyword=constantinople.istanbul)

Burma vs Myanmar is messier [http://chronicle.nytlabs.com/?keyword=burma.myanmar](http://chronicle.nytlabs.com/?keyword=burma.myanmar)

<comment><USER6> That one is a bit controversial because 'Burma' was changed to 'Myanmar' by the military dictatorship.

<comment><USER7> Why would that be controversial? State changed it's official name and newspaper started to call it by its new name.

<comment><USER8> To the Burmese, the word "Myanmar" represents the oppressive and insane dictator who overthrew a democratic society to institute a communism that nobody wanted, keeping Burma in the dark ages for decades. One of the dictatorial general's feats as he rose to power was quashing civil unrest and rival communist movements among the minority tribes of Burma, and "Myanmar" is the name of the majority ethnicity. You can understand that people remain a little sore about the name change.

"Burma" is an English corruption of the Yangonese word for "Myanmar", but to the Burmese democratic movement--and the many minority tribes--the word represents an ethnicity-neutral name for the entire country.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> While searching for my own I tried "computer"

[http://chronicle.nytlabs.com/?keyword=computer&format=count](http://chronicle.nytlabs.com/?keyword=computer&format=count)

Virtually none before 1950 except a strange peak in 1938 of 66. My curiosity piqued I dug deeper to find out it was the name of a horse !

</comment><comment><USER10> Corea and Korea

[http://chronicle.nytlabs.com/?keyword=korea.corea.korean.cor...](http://chronicle.nytlabs.com/?keyword=korea.corea.korean.corean)

Some history: "Corea" was more common in the English speaking world for the territory we call Korea today. At some point during the Japanese colonial period, as Japan solidified its ownership of the territory, the preferred spelling in English speaking countries became "Korea". ("Corea" is still used in many other languages and neither the Koreans nor the Japanese use Korea or Corea when talking about the peninsula).

There's a conspiracy theory that one of the cultural suppression activities the Japanese colonial government took part in (along with forcible language conversion and various geomanctic engineering efforts like driving thousands of iron poles into the ground at traditional seats of Korean power and moving entrance gates to palaces to break the flow of Chi) was broadcasting out to the world that "Korea" was the preferred spelling since it put Korea after Japan in alphabetized lists of countries in English speaking territories.

More pragmatically, both spellings were used up until the 20th century. But Korea was relatively unknown in the West outside of mild curiosity. The actual popularization of one spelling over the other seems to be the result of writings on Korea by the U.S. missionary and later consul general at the time, Horace Newton Allen, who exclusively used "Korea" when writing about the country.

This spelling was picked up and at the World's Columbian Exhibition in Chicago in 1893, the exhibit listed both spellings as correct, but people were generally told that "Korea" was the preferred spelling. Allen was heavily involved in the planning of the exhibit.

On the graph here, you can see that Korea wasn't a topic at all in the NYTs reporting until directly after the exhibition, which seems to have been successful in bringing attention to the country. But the more familiar "Corea" was used until 1897, when it was pretty much dropped in favor or "Korea".

Interest stayed low until the Korean war after which the amount of reporting on the country steadily increased.

</comment><comment><USER11> Funny, how years get born and then forgotten over time:

[http://chronicle.nytlabs.com/?keyword=2010.2000.1990.1980.19...](http://chronicle.nytlabs.com/?keyword=2010.2000.1990.1980.1970.1960.1950.1940.1930.1920.1910.1900.1890.1880.1870.1860.1850)

There is a little anticipation in the preceding years, then a big explosion in the year itself and then slow decline in the following years.

<comment><USER12> The secondary peaks 2-4 years out are interesting. Or perhaps it's better conceptualized as troughs the year after. Wonder what the reason is for that?

<comment><USER13> The availability of the substitute "last year" for "2013"?

<comment><USER11> Thats clever! The longer a year has gone, the less likely you will say "last year", "one year ago", "two years ago" and rather go for the years "full name" like "2014". This could be a reason for the revivals.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment> chestnut-tree Another difference in usage between British English and American English: In the US, you go to a movie theater to see a film. Or you go to the theater to see a play.

In the UK, you go to a cinema to see a film. Going to the theatre is understood to mean going to see a play/musical/performing arts.

<comment><USER14> In the US you go to a movie theatre to see a _movie_.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> This is exactly what I have been trying to achieve with my CutSpel Chrome extension - so far not too much interest, but I might try another submission in a little while.

[http://www.cutspel.com](http://www.cutspel.com)

<comment><USER16> I'd argue there's a vast difference between using two different, accepted spellings of a word, and using a Chrome extension that alters English words, transforming them into not English words.

<comment><USER15> I think you might have misunderstood what cutspel is trying to achieve. This is the same thing as what NYT did by choosing a different spelling - that is to reform English spelling through familiarity with a new spelling. It worked for theater so why not other words.

The text on the page after modification by cutspel is still English - <USER2> more rationaly spelt.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> The word "It" has never appeared in the NY Times. [http://chronicle.nytlabs.com/?keyword=it](http://chronicle.nytlabs.com/?keyword=it)

<comment><USER3> [http://chronicle.nytlabs.com/?keyword=it.this.that.an.a.thes...](http://chronicle.nytlabs.com/?keyword=it.this.that.an.a.these)

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> I could have really used Chronicle in high school english (1987) - I was constantly getting essays handed back with the accusation that I was making up words (said evidence being the lack of the words in my English instructor's somewhat dated dictionary).

"Horrific" was one that always got me in trouble - though, apparently, it is a somewhat new word.

[http://chronicle.nytlabs.com/?keyword=horrific](http://chronicle.nytlabs.com/?keyword=horrific)

</comment><comment><USER19> I was just puzzling about this the other day. I live in the USA and I've always spelled the word as theatre. Only recently, I've noticed that spellcheck is balking at this.

It's somewhat comforting to know that my way of spelling the word isn't wrong and I don't really mind that my country wants to spell it differently.

<comment><USER20> _> It's somewhat comforting to know that my way of spelling the word isn't wrong_

It might even be more comforting to know that your way is actually _more_ correct, in a traditionalist sense: the Anglo-French _theatre_ comes directly from Greek _théatron_ (through Latin _thĕātrum_ ). Somehow "your country" is bent on morphing the word for whatever reason, similarly to what they are doing to _center_ / _centre_.

<comment><USER21> It's not really accurate to say the US is the one doing the morphing. Before the early 19th century, both spellings of most of these words were acceptable in the UK and the US, because these words came into English both from French and from Latin. It's more accurate to say that the UK and the US, when each settled on one of the two spellings as standard, chose to settle differently.

This standardization in the US was greatly influenced by Noah Webster and his dictionary. He tended to go with the spelling variant that fit more with how the word was pronounced. His dictionary was influential enough to make those spellings dominant in the US. Those spellings then came to be seen as Americanisms in the UK (even though they had long been acceptable UK spellings...), and so the UK standardized on the other spellings.

Webster was also an advocate of spelling simplification, and was responsible for dropping the 'k' from 'musick' and 'publick', and those were picked up in the UK.

See: [http://www.livescience.com/33844-british-american-word- spell...](http://www.livescience.com/33844-british-american-word- spelling.html)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> These swaps are clearly "non-organic" (i.e. didn't emerge from gradual changes in colloquial language). Are they the result of a change in editing staff? Spelling correction software?

<comment><USER18> They updated their style guide.

<comment><USER23> Are the style guides updated to reflect the public use of these words? If so, I imagine if we were to graph the change in use over time in the public would be a much more gradual and organic one?

<comment><USER24> Yep, as the Google N-Gram view in the article shows, usage of "theater" overtook "theater" in the late 1970s, but the two had quite similar usage rates from the 1940s onwards.

Style guides generally update to represent the editorial team's preferences, to reflect changes in the wider world (e.g. see the comment in this thread about "Constaninople"→"Istanbul", or to make a point (see the New Yorker's continued use of diaresis in coöperation etc.[1])

[1]: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diaeresis_%28diacritic%29#Engl...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diaeresis_%28diacritic%29#English)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> In high school chemistry (mid 1990's), I was told that "sulfur" had become standardised over "sulphur". Seems like this began happening in the mid 70's... [http://chronicle.nytlabs.com/?keyword=sulfur.sulphur](http://chronicle.nytlabs.com/?keyword=sulfur.sulphur)

</comment><comment><USER26> Dropped to 0.02% circa 1878, stayed about there until a slow trend upwards started in 2012, now at 0.09% in 2014: [http://chronicle.nytlabs.com/?keyword=while.whilst&format=pe...](http://chronicle.nytlabs.com/?keyword=while.whilst&format=percent)

</comment><comment><USER27> Istanbul, of course, used to be Constantinople, but a long time gone is about 1930: [http://chronicle.nytlabs.com/?keyword=istanbul.constantinopl...](http://chronicle.nytlabs.com/?keyword=istanbul.constantinople)

</comment><comment><USER28> This was discovered a week ago on Hacker News: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8090272](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8090272)

</comment><comment><USER29> I've always heard the distinction being that "theater" is general and applies more to movie theaters whereas "theatre" was more specifically stage plays.

</comment><comment><USER11> "Yesterday" has suffered greatly lately:

[http://chronicle.nytlabs.com/?keyword=yesterday](http://chronicle.nytlabs.com/?keyword=yesterday)

<comment><USER3> Looks like saying the specific day is now preffered: [http://chronicle.nytlabs.com/?keyword=yesterday.monday.tuesd...](http://chronicle.nytlabs.com/?keyword=yesterday.monday.tuesday.wednesday.thursday.friday.saturday.sunday)

I searched some other rough synonyms of yesterday, but this had the strongest match.

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> While the discussion of language is mildly interesting, I suspect these changes are editorial decisions, likely caused by staff changes at the paper.

</comment><comment><USER31> NY Times used 'cigaret' for 'cigarette' for about a year or so. They switched back in embarassment.

</comment><comment><USER32> on a different angle, "smartphone" first occurrence in 1998, which matches with wikipedia reporting it in 1997 from Ericsson blob:[http://chronicle.nytlabs.com/d4661696-f25d-47be-8a83-8996420...](http://chronicle.nytlabs.com/d4661696-f25d-47be-8a83-8996420cb177)

<comment><USER23> Something I've noticed (anecdotally) over the past few years in the USA is the switch from the term 'cell phone' to 'mobile phone'. Here in the UK we've used the term 'mobile phone' exclusively I think for the past 20 or 30 years.

It's not as clear as other examples, but you can certainly see a visible trend in the last decade: [http://chronicle.nytlabs.com/?keyword=Mobile%20phone.Cell%20...](http://chronicle.nytlabs.com/?keyword=Mobile%20phone.Cell%20Phone)

<comment><USER33> Kind of amusing to see the archaic term "wireless" start to recover its popularity around 1990.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> "He" is and has always been more common than "She". [http://chronicle.nytlabs.com/?keyword=she.he](http://chronicle.nytlabs.com/?keyword=she.he)

</comment><comment><USER34> théatre...

</comment><comment><USER35> As an aside, my web dev company runs about 10 web sites for theatre companies and all of them spell their names ending in 're' while the venues they play at spell their names ending in 'er'.

The first time we signed up one of these companies, I asked about the spelling and was given the same history as outlined in the article. With the second company that signed us, we mis-typed theatre and were taken to the woodshed for making the error.

So we are used to spelling it as theatre in the correct use of the word and are surprised the NY Times has not for many years.

</comment><comment><USER36> booooring</comment>


Two Periodic Functions with Sum as Identity Function - <AUTHOR> https://groups.google.com/d/topic/projectfermat/WNOVWmCj-gg/discussion <comment><USER2> Wouldn't sin^2(x) and cos^2(x) be a simple solution?

<comment><USER3> Can you explain how that is solving the said problem? sin^(x) + cos^(x) = 1, right? Is it periodic? Sorry, been sometime since I last did this kind of math.</comment></comment>


Sometimes Chrome is the Broken Browser - <AUTHOR> http://sampsonblog.com/376/sometimes-chrome-is-the-broken-browser

<comment><USER2> Chrome has a ton of bugs related to Canvas and CSS Animations -- mostly because they've switched to a new compositing system that hasn't had the kinks worked out. It's especially bad when using 3D transforms; 2D transforms are quite a bit more stable.

One thing I've noticed is that the bugs are easy to trigger, but require a lot of code to do so, which the Chrome team rejects as a valid "bug report". So the bugs don't get fixed because they don't have a short bit of HTML/CSS/JavaScript.

I just work around Chrome bugs now, rather than report them. Oh well.

</comment><comment><USER3> Chrome used to be known as the sleek and fast one. But now, every time I use Safari, I realize: wow, that one has much better performance! But it doesn't crash often I must say.</comment>


The plot against the Principality of Sealand - <AUTHOR> https://narratively.com/the-plot-against-the-principality-of-sealand/ <comment><USER2> Sealand is a freaking oil rig. Countries don't become accepted as countries by declaring themselves as such. They become countries by having a sizeable military to protect their claims OR the threat of other established nations' sizeable militaries protecting their claims as allies.

It's part of the reason I hate the concept of countries but unfortunately that's the status quo.

If Sealand did something that the world hated enough, the US military would probably take them out in a heartbeat. They are just not doing enough for people to actually care that much.

<comment><USER3> Two things:

1\. Sealand is built on an old defense platform, not an oil rig.

2\. Countries become accepted as countries _exactly_ by declaring themselves as such, and then having that declaration _recognized by other countries_. Being able to protect your claim is nice, to be sure — especially if you want your country to last — but it is absolutely not necessary, in order to become one.

<comment><USER4> _Being able to protect your claim is nice, to be sure — especially if you want your country to last — but it is absolutely not necessary._

Sovereignty is _defined_ as the ability to exert one's will on a given territory.

<comment><USER5> You're actually both right.

In international relations there's two competing notions of nationhood. One notion is being recognized as such by other countries. The other notion is having land, a permanent population, and a monopoly on violence. Let's call these de jure nationhood and de facto nationhood.

Both notions have their faults (full disclosure, I am partial to the latter). De jure nationhood has absurdities like the order of Malta. De jure nationhood is also terribly misaligned with facts on the ground in cases like transnistria and Palestine. De facto nationhood comes with the bitter pill that anyone who can organize enough violence is instantly legitimate, which leads to recognizing some rather unsavory groups.

<comment><USER6> > anyone who can organize enough violence is instantly legitimate, which leads > to recognizing some rather unsavory groups.

I'm not sure that this is the case. Perhaps instead of "monopoly on violence", we should rather talk about a "property right on violence" \- the key is not so much organizing enough of it, but keeping it in check from others. Note that just "organizing enough violence" doesn't tell us much of anything about this while OTOH, not defending one's claim from opportunistic outsiders _is_ meaningful evidence that one probably wouldn't be providing effective security even if some sort of conflict were to flare up entirely on its own.

<comment><USER5> The term "monopoly on violence" does not mean the sole user of violence or even a frequent user, merely that anyone who wishes to use violence legitimately (aka legally) must get permission from the monopoly holder.

[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monopoly_on_violence](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monopoly_on_violence)

<comment><USER6> > that anyone who wishes to use violence legitimately (aka legally) must get > permission from the monopoly holder.

Yes, but then I kinda fail to unambiguously see what you mean by "unsavory" \- if these groups _are_ successfully regulating the use of violence within their territory, that means they're providing the most basic function of a state. It just seems to be a fact about society that new states originally get started mostly when "roving bandits" start providing basic security within some stable territory and thus acting as "stationary bandits". It's not _that_ clear why the fact that these groups are "unsavory" should be an obstacle to acknowledging this dynamic.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I'm somewhat astonished that the article doesn't even mention HavenCo, the world's first (and likely last) attempt at a sovereign data haven, based in Sealand:

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HavenCo](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HavenCo)</comment>


Interview by a 15 Year Old - <AUTHOR> http://paulgraham.com/int15.html <comment><USER2> I'd like to just say thanks to Paul for doing this, it was probably hugely meaningful to the kid. Ages ago I interviewed Neil deGrasse Tyson for an 8th grade assignment - it is still one of the best moments of my life, and one of the major reasons I am a scientist now.

I recently read Judd Apatow's book "Sick in the Head", wherein he interviews comedians, beginning in high school. Looking back, I wish I'd contacted more of my heroes. There's very real meaning that comes from it, even just to humanize people a teenager looks up to. I'd love to see more of this.

<comment><USER3> Tyson himself cited his experience with Carl Sagan as one of the best moments of HIS life:

> At the time deGrasse Tyson was just a 17-year-old kid from the Bronx with > dreams of being a scientist, but Sagan had invited him to spend a Saturday > with him in Ithaca at Cornell University, after seeing his application to > attend University there.

> He toured their labs there, and Sagan gave him a book, "The Cosmic > Collection" and inscribed it "to a future astronomer":

> DeGrasse Tyson describes how this influenced his entire life:

> At the end of the day, he drove me back to the bus station. The snow was > falling harder. He wrote his phone number, his home phone number, on a scrap > of paper. And he said, "If the bus can't get through, call me. Spend the > night at my home, with my family."

> I already knew I wanted to become a scientist, but that afternoon I learned > from Carl the kind of person I wanted to become. He reached out to me and to > countless others. Inspiring so many of us to study, teach, and do science. > Science is a cooperative enterprise, spanning the generations.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4>
      Is there anything else that isn't taught to young students that you wish would be
      incorporated into the material, or any other thoughts on education?

I can't comment on the US education system, but back home I think one of the most important ingredient missing from my school education was _Critical Thinking_ [0]. I happened to stumble upon this field by happenstance and was baffled why this is not integral to our education. I attributed this to the assumption that free thinking and critiquing adults is not what an authority/regime would want. Additionally most teachers/adults don't want to be bombarded by "why"s to which they don't have an answer. But then there is also the Hanlon's razor.

[0] Wiki def: intellectually disciplined process of actively and skillfully conceptualizing, applying, analyzing, synthesizing, and/or evaluating information gathered from, or generated by, observation, experience, reflection, reasoning, or communication, as a guide to belief and action

<comment><USER5> The funny thing is that pretty much every single curriculum says this in the liner notes and syllabus. It's just as much of a buzzword these days as "synergy" and "outside-the-box."

Critical thinking is simultaneously hard to teach and _uncomfortable_ to teach. For one, when you teach someone to think critically, you now have them questioning everything else that you're teaching them. Many, many people define "critical thinking" as "thinking like I do." Which, of course, leads to them discouraging critical thinking.

I had a history teacher in high school who loved talking about critical thinking and how important it was that we question everything. He didn't like the fact that every single one of my papers (which were all about developing a viewpoint and explaining it) were diametrically opposed to his political opinions.

Looking back, I wrote some genuinely cringe-worthy shit, mostly just to wind him up. Hilariously, as mad as he got at me, I was probably one of the few kids in the class who really took his "critical thinking" lectures to heart.

<comment><USER6> > Many, many people define "critical thinking" as "thinking like I do."

This should be emphasized more. I was dating a guy who claimed to be a critical thinker, which actually was worse than what you described here. Essentially, his definition of critical thinking was "agreeing with me." This --among ample other reasons--is why he is an ex.

But later in life I realised it wasn't just him, a lot of other "intellectuals"[0], are like that.

[0]: I've grown to snort and snicker when I hear the word lately. I believe anyone who calls himself (or someone else, because they've given themselves the authority to decide who is and who isn't) an intellectual, is a pompous little shit.

<comment><USER5> I do agree that anyone who calls himself an intellectual is probably a pompous idiot, but I'm mixed regarding calling other people intellectuals.

The definition of "intellectual," as I see it, seems to be "Someone who studies society and proposes solutions for its problems." In and of itself, I think that this is a completely neutral concept, and I can name plenty of people who occupy that position. The issue is that intelligence (which is required to be an intellectual) is an _intrinsically desirable trait_ , meaning that someone who is smart (even if they are nothing else) is often seen as more desirable or worth more than a less smart individual. More importantly, having this position implies leadership. If you're going to propose solutions, you're not very good at your job if no one is actually listening to you. And since we value leaders over followers, it follows that intellectuals are considered more valuable.

This means that calling someone an intellectual doesn't just define them as "someone who studies society and proposes solutions for its problems" \- it defines them as someone who has _insight_ regarding society and proposes _worthwhile_ solutions for its problems.

This makes things weird. I can still call a shitty artist an artist. I can still call a shitty programmer a programmer. But when I call someone an intellectual, it's making a _positive judgment_ regarding his ideas. After all, a shitty intellectual is just a guy with stupid ideas. And who am I, Omegaham, a random electron microscope technician from Oregon, to say that Noam Chomsky or Thomas Sowell has worthwhile ideas? I mean, I have opinions, but saying so definitively is way above my pay grade.

As a result, the term is so screwed up by connotation that I tend to use "intellectual" exactly the same as you - sarcastically. For me, an "intellectual" is "someone who would call himself an intellectual," with all of the misguided arrogance that doing so implies.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> > Why do you think so many people are hesitant to learn to code, when it is > such an incredible opportunity?

For the same reason people don't learn other skills. Accountants, when they hit partner, hit mid-6 figures in their 40s, but unless you enjoy finance and accounting, it's boring as hell.

People on HN might be shocked to find that most of the world finds programming extremely boring. My wife is extremely smart, smarter than me, but she couldn't last a year as a programmer simply because she finds it boring.

In college, I was at the cusp of applying to med school, and just before I stopped myself, because I didn't want the life of a doctor. It represented an incredible opportunity, but it just wasn't for me. Instead, I loved to code and am still doing it 20 years later. It's the passion and interest that matter, not the opportunity.

</comment><comment><USER8> > I wouldn't advise people to try to start startups before about 23. Before > that you should be exploring.

Man, I wish he had written this five years ago. I focused far too early and had to spend a lot of time correcting that course. Finally in the thick of exploring and loving it. Yes, there's hints in other essays about this but the hard age limit says that in a way the others don't. I was a incredibly dumb smart student.

<comment><USER9> I agree that this is really important. I love seeing how popular entrepreneurship as an option is becoming, but it does seem one effect is that one effect is that young people are trying to start businesses before they really know anything about... anything. I'd like to think that I'm still young enough that this is coming more from memory of where I was at in my late teens and early twenties, rather than some kind of indictment of "kids today". It's just so valuable to get some experience before you go trying to start a company. For one thing, I imagine it would be much more difficult to manage people if you had never had any experience from the other side. (A varied set of experience would be ideal.) That's just one example of many though.

So, if you think you want to start a company, that's great! Keep that goal in mind and work toward it. The first step would be to learn and experience as much as you can.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> "An entrepreneur is someone who starts their own business. But only a tiny fraction of new businesses are startups."

This needs a context: [http://www.paulgraham.com/growth.html](http://www.paulgraham.com/growth.html)

Because Paul Graham (and probably Silicon Valley in large) clearly has different definition for a term 'startup' than the rest of the world. ([http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/start-up](http://www.merriam- webster.com/dictionary/start-up))

<comment><USER11> >I am really interested for Paul Graham and others to define term 'startup'.

Here you go: [http://www.paulgraham.com/growth.html](http://www.paulgraham.com/growth.html)

<comment><USER10> thanks, I found that right before you posted reply and already changed my comment before seeing yours :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> > Based on my experiences, the best way to teach kids is to show them the > hidden interestingness in the things you want them to learn.

This is consistent with the ideas behind BetterExplained [1] and Crash Course [2], both excellent learning resources that are really compelling.

"Learning is about a permanent shift in viewpoint, an Aha! moment, not memorizing facts that are quickly forgotten."

\---

[1] [http://www.betterexplained.com/](http://www.betterexplained.com/)

[2] [http://www.youtube.com/crashcourse/](http://www.youtube.com/crashcourse/)

</comment><comment><USER12> "The combination of forces that produced the default curriculum was so random"

This seems true and sad. What would be a first principles approach to "What should every kid learn" if we were to start from scratch you think?

<comment><USER13> > "What should every kid learn" if we were to start from scratch you think?

Depends on socio economic class I would imagine. If you belong to middle class in India for example, you would want you kids to buy into 'the cult of achievement' where achievement is defined by how many people you can prove that you are better than. Because this is only one of the few methods available to Indian middle class to ensure that her child is not going to live a life of destitution. You probably won't care if your child is 'thinking critically'.

But I guess it is an interesting question as to what school would mean if you belong to upper class in America where you are free from social morality and hierarchies. I would imagine you want you child to learn how to be passionate about things so they can escape a life of constant boredom.

<comment><USER14> Is it fair to say that there isn't (or may not be) a such thing as first principles at all, outside of acculturation, if education is so context dependent?

<comment><USER15> Kids need to learn to read. Society works sooo much better when you can assume every adult can read.

Give man a fish vs. teach to fish..

<comment><USER16> This _was_ true when print was orders of magnitude cheaper to distribute than audio or video. Of course text still has distinct advantages, particularly for further education (a lot easier to skim and pull the factoid you need out of a textbook than 80 hours of video), but "society" shouldn't be affected nearly as much as it used to be.

<comment><USER15> ...and here I type you an answer. I can't really use video yet.

Larger percentage of humans are literate than ever before. Larger body of knowledge is in written form than ever before. I think we are going to rely more on text in the future, not less. Even with video content, you search, tag and label them with text. That is not going away.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> \</comment><comment> Most people are not suited to it. I'd be surprised if more than 1% of people are. And even for those few, it's a mistake to start too young. If a startup succeeds, it takes over your life in a way that cuts off lots of other opportunities. It's a mistake to do that sort of pruning before you understand what you're losing by it.

I wouldn't advise people to try to start startups before about 23. Before that you should be exploring. \</comment><comment>

<comment><USER18> > "it's a mistake to start too young"

> "don't start before 23"

Oh Silicon Valley. I've been in tech in the Bay Area for about 5 years now, regularly attending various events and being a part of the community, and most startup founders under 30-35 are ridiculously naive and boring, with very little to show over time. People over 30 with a decade or so of industry and work experience tend to be much more realistic and methodical about what they're doing (I'm 25).

PG is very successful and has some interesting things to say, but it's important to keep in mind that taking advice from someone whose vision of startups in the last 10 years came exclusively from manning YCombinator is going to be deeply biased.

<comment><USER17> I'm kinda confused. It looked like you are also confirming PG's observation but you ended with a skeptical tone.

Anyway this was interesting to me because most people tend to overly support youngster's into entrepreneurship but this looked more realistic and practical.

<comment><USER19> > It looked like you are also confirming PG's observation but you ended with a > skeptical tone.

Both of these things are necessary on HN if you want to maximize the number of upvotes.

<comment><USER17> I'm also excited about my first comment with 4 upvotes :P

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> "I think all kids should learn how to program at some point. I'm not sure what's the right age." I do not think all kids should learn how to program. I think programming is just one of many skills that one can master, not a must- have skill.

<comment><USER21> I say this every time "learn to code" comes up, kids should learn to cook. People who can cook a meal from basic ingredients are healthier (than they would have been living on ready meals and takeaways), wealthier because it's cheaper, more relaxed because they have a hobby and more attractive to whatever is the gender of their preference.

Humans have been cooking for thousands and thousands of years, but modern schools have no idea how to teach it, hence the epidemics of obesity, diabetes, etc. So how on Earth can they teach anyone to "code" and should that _reallly_ be priority?

Silicon Valley VCs want everyone to learn to code because it'll be cheap grist for their mill...

<comment><USER22> You can code for $60/h and pay $5-$10 of that to someone else to cook a meal for you and clean up too. Why on earth would you want to be the latter guy?

<comment><USER23> If everyone can code you won't code for $60/h

<comment><USER22> If everyone can code we will automate the economy to such an extent that goods and services will be practically free.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> > Sometimes to the extent of redefining the playing field so that the obstacle > is no longer in the way.

And sometimes, as Marcus Aurelius said : The impediment to action advances action. What stands in the way becomes the way.

</comment><comment><USER25> Maybe I'd like to say that this is bad, that's awful, a long list of these other things have been left out, and generally call BS.

Nope. This time PG wins, and I'd lose.

Very nicely done. Succinct. Nice. Elegant. Top stuff.

Sure, wish I'd read that in middle school.

Only one point left: Where can I apply to go back to, say, the sixth grade and have a do-over?

</comment><comment><USER26> "What makes a good entrepereneur? Are these the type of people you accept into the program?"

The entrepreneurs around me are numerious. My neighbor's are very rich. I grew up with wealthy kids. Many are entrepreneurs. They all(95%), or more gave one trait in common, and it's never mentioned in these Q & A's, but we are all in the big world now. That trait; They have a sympathetic/understanding/wealthy parent.

The wealthy parent(usually the father) bankrolls the Entrepreneur.

See, poor, middle class kids usually get one chance at a risky entrepreneurial endeavor. If they do get funding, it's usually high rate credit cards. If they fail, they don't get a do over card, and it's Hello UPS, or some other barely livable job where you need to commute 1.5 hours.

For some reason this is never talked about, and probally for good reason. Yes, there are exceptions. Yes, guys like PG have tried to reverse the formula, but I have seen this combination work so many times, I feel comfortable calling it a law. It makes as much sense as Moores law, in my eyes. Rich dad helps(money, legal, generation of networking, sometimes the idea, the garage, encouragement, family CPA.) out kid=Kid becomes Entrepreneur. If you born into the right family--it's great. To the poor, middle class kids, do well in school. Get a credential in something. Don't fall for this BS about hard work, and a good idea. Give a rich boy a shot at funding your endeavor, but realize you will have to work a lot harder than the rich kid. Don't bust a gasket in the process. Most of the Entrepreneurs leave what I'm telling you out of their orations. It's embarrassing most weren't Horatio Algiers? Most of their wives, wives usually out of their league, don't even know the real story. I've only heard one Entrepreneur tell the absolute truth, and that was George Sorors. But George's first love is writing, and you can't be in denial if you want to be a good writer/journalist.

(Didn't edit, so please lay off my typos. I don't usually even come back to a post, so the nit picking goes unheard. I sometimes fear writing a post like this, because they can track an ip. And even if speaking honesly, we all need to play the game--smile, and act like the free money wasen't there. I really wish Google didn't index every word forever. Hopefully, one day, we will have the ability to pick, and choose what is on Google servers. At least, what we wrote?)

<comment><USER5> This is a really good point, and it's not just because of the bankrolling that the parents do. They also set a good example for financial management, discipline, respect for education, and perspective toward business.

My parents are upper-middle-class. They're not rich, but they're wealthy enough that they know what to do with money. If I were thinking about starting a business, I could easily bounce ideas off my dad and get genuinely good advice. And if he couldn't give me the advice I needed, he knows people who would be able to do so.

In contrast, someone who grows up poor is working in a vacuum. Whom are you going to ask, your deadbeat dad? His shithead friends? Your mom, who's working two minimum-wage jobs just to put food on the table and keep the lights on? They work their asses off, but they have no idea how to build a business.

As a result, it's no surprise that the wealthy tend to come from the middle class. The rich might fall from grace into the middle class, and the middle class will often make a whole bunch of money and become rich, but the poor tend to stay where they are.

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> "But if you teach them arithmetic as a series of secret tricks—for example, that you can add 6 million and 3 million by adding 6 and 3 and then sticking the million back on at the end—it becomes like a game."

Looking back, this was what separated the subjects I loved and was great at, and the subjects where I struggled. In the former group, at an early age I saw learning as a game where I could improve continously.

</comment><comment><USER28> I was surprised that the presence and importance of teaching the arts in school wasn't mentioned given Paul's background. Aside from the inherent benefit of learning art for art's sake, it requires self-discipline and relentless self critique. No artist thinks they will just be "ok", they want to be the best. I think this type of self-driven pursuit would benefit any young person on their path towards a startup.

</comment><comment><USER29> Probably a silly question, but what is the book that the high school freshman is writing? Just curious what exactly it is.

But it's a decent interview regardless.

</comment><comment><USER30> > "And even for those few, it's a mistake to start too young. If a startup > succeeds, it takes over your life in a way that cuts off lots of other > opportunities."

Curious for more of an explanation here. I am 27. When is too young? As someone who sold their company, I can attest that it takes over your life, but the amount of things I have learned is insane and I wouldn't trade that.

</comment><comment><USER31> PG, thanks for doing and sharing this. I like your advice on exploring 'hidden interestingness', this may work for teens and adults too.

</comment><comment><USER32> Sorry for being a grumpy grandpa, but I think the first thing we need to learn young people is that 'coding' is not 'programming' (cue discussion on linguistic descriptivism vs prescriptivism in which I'd normally be in the former camp and defend the use of "y'all"...)</comment>


Why Companies Like Lyft, Uber, Postmates, Instacart etc Will Never Be Profitable - <AUTHOR> https://hackernoon.com/why-companies-like-lyft-uber-postmates-instacart-etc-will-never-be-profitable-ecdfde647175#.lcoo6lhn5 <comment><USER2> I would have guessed it was because you can't really apply economies of scale to it, guess I was wrong</comment>


Larry Niven: Bordered in Black - <AUTHOR> https://www.scribd.com/doc/100964572/Larry-Niven-Bordered-in-Black <comment><AUTHOR> Why is Jason Momoa and other maori so big and strong?</comment>


Whiteboard Alternative – The Bamboo Board - <AUTHOR> http://imulus.com/blog/george/opinion/whiteboard-alternative-the-bamboo-board <comment><USER2> Instead of working and working to get a decent surface finish with paints, we just get a big piece of lexan and put it over whatever we want the backdrop to be (usually just the wall of the room).

Lexan is clear, scratch resistant and super easy to erase.

<comment><USER3> I see 4ft x 8ft sheets of "polycarbonate sheet from LEXAN" for US$167.00 at Home Depot. Is that comparable to what you're using? What's your source?

<comment><AUTHOR> Something I did was to get a 4' x 8' board of something called either "shower board", "melamine board", or "hardboard" (depends on the store you're in). Here it is at Lowe's: [http://www.lowes.com/ProductDisplay?partNumber=16605-46498-3...](http://www.lowes.com/ProductDisplay?partNumber=16605-46498-300). It's around $13. They're not as nice or durable as "real" whiteboards, but they work _surprisingly_ well, considering their low cost.

In a Lowe's or a Home Depot, you can have them cut the board to a custom size, usually for $0.25 a cut (or free if you're polite). So I had them cut the board into three panels, each 48" x 32". (Also makes it easier to transport than a single 4' x 8' board.) And then I got some "mirror clips" (<http://www.amazon.com/dp/B001KAKT1O/>) for $2 or so (for a four-pack).

So for less than $20, you can have three mounted boards, each one being a pretty good size. And, actually, I only got one four-pack of clips, and kept the other two boards mobile, for moving around from one room to another.

So $15 for a mounted whiteboard and two mobile whiteboards. It's hard to beat that. (But I do think the bamboo boards look awfully nice.)

<comment><USER4> We use shower boards at the startup where I work, and we not only mount them on walls but also cut them into smaller whiteboards that we can carry around in "decks." We might take a blank deck into a conference room, work out a design on several mini-whiteboards, and then carry them back to our offices to refer to when coding.

<comment><USER5> When I want a record of a whiteboard, I simply take a picture of it. Guards against accidental smear/erasure, too.

Not that taking them back and perhaps continuing to mark them up doesn't make sense, too.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> How is the readability from a distance? Between the grain of the individual boards and their color it seems like there is less contrast and more "noise" when compared to a generic white board.

They do look nice though.

</comment><comment><USER7> Very pretty, and I love the idea, but the video implies to me that erasing might be difficult. Note how much they had to wipe to erase _brand new_ writing. Either that's a bunch of grooves, or it's just a fair bit harder to erase than e.g. a normal whiteboard.

Use an old (red!) marker. Leave it on for a month. _Then_ erase it and show me it erases well (with alcohol cleaners is fine, whatever works). That's real world use, not write-now, erase-in-seconds. Until then, I trust nothing but glass to actually erase, and have yet to see anything but glass beat standard whiteboards.

<comment><USER8> I know of at least one temporary dry erase surface that works well. It's a 3M dry erase "sheet" that comes in rolls. You can buy it from American science and surplus: [http://www.sciplus.com/search.cfm/scategory/SFM/term/whitebo...](http://www.sciplus.com/search.cfm/scategory/SFM/term/whiteboard/srch.fp/1)

I have a 6' x 10' surface of it on my bedroom wall, and it works great, even for erasing old marker.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Could you tell us how easy it is to erase after leaving a message up for a week? I've seen whiteboard alternatives that erase fine at first, but are impossible to erase if you don't get to it in a day or two.

<comment><USER10> even with the old overwriting trick?

<comment><USER9> Good trick! I'll try it the next chance I get. Still, it'd be nice to know I wouldn't have to resort to such measures.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Pretty cool, but iPad + Paper + stylus has almost completely replaced physical whiteboards for me. The ability to save/send/flip thru drawings is a killer feature that physical whiteboards can't deliver.

<comment><USER12> I tend to use whiteboards with a team who are all in the room with me, rather than as an individual (although I'm thinking of installing one in my home office, just to see how useful it would be). The iPad is less useful in this case, although I suppose you could get a big TV screen connected (or apple tv). Also, there are apps specifically designed to take and share photos of physical whiteboards…

The real killer for me is still the lag. Handwriting is just painful, although perhaps simple diagrams are not so bad? It seems to me that an Android tablet could distinguish itself by providing both very low lag with something like the Wacom accuracy. The iPad is unlikely to ever reach the ideal 1 ms lag -- I suspect the retina displays have relatively high response times (but have no evidence).

<comment><USER13> There's a lot of variation in responsiveness between different apps. Have you tried Penultimate? You certainly may be more discerning than I, but I've found it to have almost no lag.

<comment><USER12> I think I must have very nearly every app of this type in the app store. All have noticeable lag with a jot pro stylus, though some are reasonable when just using a finger -- I guess the lag simply can't be seen in that case.

I find handwriting with my fingers to be a bit unnatural, unfortunately; it tends to break my flow.

<comment><USER13> That's really too bad. Although I'm happy with Penultimate, it's unfortunate that various sorts of latency rarely seems to be considered for consumer electronics.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> If you're looking for an attractive alternative to whiteboards, chalkboard paint or glass have always been good options.

<comment><USER15> Indeed, isn't glass in front of the bamboo easier, cheaper and more proven?

Heck even faster. 5 days in startup time is like... Weeks.

<comment><USER16> Yes, we could have done glass. We considered grabbing recycled shower doors. Ultimately this solution felt better so we went with it. Still might try the shower door idea in the future.

<comment><USER10> Cabinet grade plywood would work too, it already has a great surface...

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Never sacrifice function for form.

</comment><comment><USER18> Magic Whiteboard is pretty cool too:

<http://www.magicwhiteboard.co.uk/>

It's basically a roll of big white sheets that stick to walls without adhesive. They're also erasable/reusable.

Took off after appearing on Dragon's Den (a TV show where entrepreneurs pitch their ideas to investors):

<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_QvguJJNilA>

<comment><USER19> Those are great if you're bunkered down in a hotel conference room or something, but they really don't compare to a proper whiteboard. Erasure, in particular, but also size and wall imperfections..

<comment><USER18> Of course, they're no match for a permanent whiteboard - just another neat tool for startups who present in random places.

The article also mentioned that there's now a clear version of IdeaPaint, which is great news:

<http://www.ideapaint.com/work/products/#ideapaint>

<comment><USER19> Yep, still grossly expensive though. $225 for 50 square feet compares favorably to high quality whiteboards, but not to paint.

Yes, high tech engineered polymer coating, I know. :)

<comment><USER20> It's less than half that price at Lowe's Hardware:

      8 oz (10 sq ft) = $30
      17 oz (20 sq ft) = $50
      29 oz (40 sq ft) = $100

Free shipping on the larger two sizes.

I haven't used it yet, but I'm about to go to Sherwin Williams to get the recommended primer to stainless so I can paint whiteboards on the front of commercial freezer doors.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> Another writing board variant: <http://habrahabr.ru/post/132863/>

Disregard text (or put it into some translator Ru->En), just look at the pictures. Basically the board is some hard base with blue paper on top of it, and all that covered with glass sheet. Write on it with white markers. The target was to make the board very similar to the blueprint.

</comment><comment><USER16> Huh, it works wonders. I'll add a video to my blog post to show you how easy it is. Don't be a hater.

<comment><USER22> The critique was meant for using such a solution in long term or how long do you already use it?

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> This is a really really bad idea. I have one. They do not work well. It is _extremely_ difficult to erase.

If you're looking for something different, they sell paint that can turn any wall into a chalkboard/whiteboard.

<comment><USER19> Did you make it yourself with the same whiteboard repair fluid that the author used? That seems to be the key, though I've never tried nor seen the product.

I've used glass over (x), but it's heavy and expensive in large sizes.

The cheapest portable whiteboard option is the laminated MDF sheets they sell at Lowes. $15 for a 4x8 foot sheet.

The whiteboard paint is merely OK...it's difficult to erase, unless your wall is glass smooth.

Chalkboards are beautiful but create way too much dust for use near computers.

<comment><USER23> > Did you make it yourself with the same whiteboard repair fluid that the > author used?

No, it was an expensive thing off of Amazon. This thing:

[http://www.amazon.com/Three-Seattle-Channel-Inches- Bamboo/dp...](http://www.amazon.com/Three-Seattle-Channel-Inches- Bamboo/dp/B0038LKA2G/ref=sr_1_3?ie=UTF8&qid=1340985739&sr=8-3&keywords=bamboo+whiteboard)

I'll probably leave a shitty review when the thing pisses me off again.

<comment><USER24> Isn't this a completely different product from the OP? I don't see why its erasing properties would be at all related.

<comment><USER23> Well, they're both bamboo. If the OP's coating works better than whatever is on my thing, that's great. Just sharing my experience.

<comment><USER25> 'cept, now that we get down to it, your experience was not "I have one"</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Towards Automated Application-Specific Software Stacks - <AUTHOR> https://arxiv.org/abs/1907.01933 <comment><USER2> So, language-agnostic dead code elimination by intercepting at much lower level? That's great. How does it work with dynamic linking?

</comment><comment><USER3> Sounds like the kind of thing that will break all the edge cases of your application! Unless you have perfect test coverage... But that's unlikely.

Imagine you have an application that processes images and this tool decides to drop GIF format support. How will it really know what you need or don't need? The answer is likely that it just won't.</comment>


PHP: First Programming Language to Add Modern Crypto into Its Standard Library - <AUTHOR> https://dev.to/paragonie/php-72-the-first-programming-language-to-add-modern-cryptography-to-its-standard-library <comment><USER2> >Go 1.8 will use X25519 and ChaCha20-Poly1305 in its TLS stack, but it doesn't offer modern application-layer cryptography in its standard library.

What qualifies as a standard library? I think Go supports both in the "x" repository which is officially part of the Go project, but is distributed separately and with different compatibility guarantees. It even gets vendored back into the main repository.

<comment><AUTHOR> 1\. Install the language.

2\. Don't install anything optional.

There, that's the standard library.

Some ecosystems will never add something like NaCl/libsodium to the standard library because the main developer experience _requires_ package management, but that's irrelevant to the very narrowly defined claim being made.

<comment><USER2> Install the language how, and from where?

What if my package manager includes libs like those under "x"? Or if it excludes certain libs? Homebrew is capable of this for many languages.

What if my language includes different libs depending on install target, like targeting embedded environments? I think Rust does this.

I think there is a large grey area being overlooked.

EDIT: This is particularly true in PHP land. If I just install the meta php package in most distributions, I will get a different set of extensions included.

<comment><AUTHOR> > Install the language how, and from where?

Compile from src. Use the default options.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> Isn't PHP generally the first language to put anything in their standard library? I remember back when I did PHP dev, it seemed like all the batteries were always included.

</comment><comment><USER4> All very nice, but then calling this "SipHash-2-4 (fast hash for hash tables and similar data structures)" for the slowest hash function in existence is again the product of false marketing.

</comment><comment><USER5> > Invites developers to implement RSA-ECB

Huh?

<comment><AUTHOR> The post linked above explains that in detail, but this is the exact section: [https://paragonie.com/blog/2016/12/everything-you-know- about...](https://paragonie.com/blog/2016/12/everything-you-know-about-public- key-encryption-in-php-is-wrong#rsa-ecb)

You mostly see this in amateur Java apps but badly written PHP that tries to use RSA makes the same mistake.</comment></comment>


There Is In Fact A Tech-Talent Shortage And There Always Will Be - <AUTHOR> http://techcrunch.com/2013/05/05/there-is-in-fact-a-tech-talent-shortage-and-there-always-will-be/

<comment><USER2> Has anyone checked the state of the labor market in chemistry recently? Almost no one does benchwork any longer, this tends to be contracted out to China, and increasingly the big players are opening up R&D centers overseas, too. What is left stateside is sales, management that oversees the contractors, and regulatory affairs.

Why should IT be immune?

</comment><comment><USER3> I want a $5 prime ribeye steak. I can't find one. Does that mean there's a cow shortage?</comment>


Watch a swarm of flying robotic drones construct a tiny building - <AUTHOR> http://www.botjunkie.com/2011/01/14/autonomous-quadrotor-teams-may-build-your-next-house/ <comment><USER2> I'm going to be a pedant here - that does not look like a swarm, and they don't claim it is (in the video, at least). By "swarm" I would understand that all have the same programming and that the assembly process is emergent from simpler instructions plus exploration and feedback. Instead they appear to be programmed to act sequentially with a pre-planned set of actions. There is no feedback, no emergence. In short, it's nowhere near as cool as you seem to think it is. It's just a bunch of dumb machines doing exactly what they are told to do, with no smarts.

<comment><USER3> No smarts? From their behavior, I got the impression that the robots were assessing what was the next step in construction, which included assessing if another robot was still working on construction. They also had to avoid collisions.

Anything programmed by humans is a "dumb machine doing exactly what they are told." I think you meant that to mean each individual step was hardcoded. I don't think it was. I think they were all following the same algorithm. The group certainly spends a lot of time on path planning: <http://repository.upenn.edu/grasp_papers/>

<comment><USER2> Actually, you may be more right than you know (sorry). I've found this quote: "We tell the quadrotors what structure to build and they figure out the assembly plan and then build it." [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W18Z3UnnS_0&feature=play...](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W18Z3UnnS_0&feature=player_embedded)

It still doesn't look very swarm-like to me (more like some kind of planner algorithm; I know the quote implies a distributed intelligence, but look at the way they queue always in exactly the same place, do laps, etc etc), but that certainly sounds more promising.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> This lab has several other videos with quad rotor robots like this (e.g. <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MvRTALJp8DM>), but don't worry about them escaping and starting a robot domination: they rely on infrared motion capture systems in that room for extremely precise location sensing.

Once GPS gets sub-meter accuracy, then we should start worrying.

<comment><USER5> GPS + Accelerometer is already pretty darn accurate, I'm not really sure why they use the IR room. Perhaps simply easier to set up, and easier to co- ordinate the bots?

<comment><USER6> These things don't look very powerful, to put it mildly. GPS means outdoors which means wind which is a bit harder for a small, light hovering robot to handle. Indoor lets them demonstrate the principle with a useful simplifying assumption of no wind.

<comment><USER7> Did you watch the same videos I did? They have these things lifting sizeable pieces of 2x4's (<https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YBsJwapanWI>) and they pull of some pretty absurd manoeuvring (<https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MvRTALJp8DM>) and recovery (<https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=geqip_0Vjec>).

Navigational issues resolved, I have a hard time seeing these things having trouble with a modest wind.

<comment><USER6> Yes, I did see the same videos. And I still think no wind is a useful simplifying assumption for them, particularly on power grounds.

A constant wind I agree looks like it would be within their capabilities, though their route planning software would need to take account of it and approach the target from upwind by default - not impossible but another thing to account for.

The real issue for me is gusting. They are definitely small and light enough that power-to-weight issues, particularly when carrying a load with a higher surface area to the wind than the craft itself, means that it _will_ get knocked off course by gusts. That obviously needs allowing for when navigating to and from the construction site, but particularly when dropping off a load - if the release comes at the same point as the gust, the part simply won't end up where they wanted.

Do I think all of these problems are unsolvable? No, but it makes a useful simplifying assumption for their version 1 that they don't have to deal with any of them because they're flying indoors.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Pretty neat! I'm sure they'll get to it eventually, but there's no advantage to having three drones in this demo, since the work isn't pipelined. It seems that a drone has to wait until one finishes picking stuff up before it can pick up something itself.

<comment><USER9> Right, but they're saving travel time. When one drone is flying back to grab a piece, the next drone is lowering a piece into place.

<comment><USER10> Indeed. Because the work IS pipelined

Pickup --> Travel --> Deploy --> Return to pickup

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Interesting, but robotic cranes on the ground would seem to be more efficient and reliable in ordinary circumstances. It's not a question of how to grip it, It's a simple question of weight ratios.

<comment><USER12> What you say makes sense - robotic cranes should be able to operate with heavier pieces, and will require less energy per piece placement.

However, MAVs (micro air vehicles) could reach into places where cranes wouldn't be able - i.e. inside the building. Also you can have many more MAVs working at the same time than cranes, so MAVs might be able to considerably speed up the building process.

<comment><USER13> There's no reason you can't combine these approaches. Using larger ground- based equipment to move girders and small, flying machines to do things like interior finishing makes a lot of sense.

<comment><USER11> A 4x8 sheet of 1/2" Gypsum board weighs nearly 60 pounds. A five gallon bucket of paint weighs about the same. A quadrotor couldn't finish an office because it would be too large to fit through the door...never mind the rotating blades.

<comment><USER14> You're right. But. As robotics becomes practical for building, we will not just replace human with robots. We will change how we build to make it easier to build with robots.

For instance, I was noticing that while you might not want to use magnets for everything in your building, you _could_ use them as a guide during that intermediate period where the robot can't just put things together, but they can be mostly correct. Magnets could be used to do things like guide pieces of wood together with a sheath containing powerful magnets, then the wood can screwed together, then the sheaths recovered and used again on some other bits of wood.

Everything about building a house may change; for instance, a few years ago there were some news stories about this: [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3fhryxVAsa4&eurl%20=](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3fhryxVAsa4&eurl%20=) only scaled up to human residence sizes, which is obviously not that tricky. [http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m0NSX/is_7_49/ai_n6149...](http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m0NSX/is_7_49/ai_n6149111/) Cheap robot labor changes what the cheapest houses are.

The biggest challenge may very well be keeping codes up to date. I suspect that the crossover may very well be swift when it happens; robots are improving very rapidly and when they cross the line where they are a more cost-effective way to build a house, they aren't going to sort of edge up to it and pull alongside it, they're going to blow right past it and keep going.

Times are tough now but the next several decades still stand to be very interesting times, in all senses of the phrase.

(Oh, and personally I don't think flying robots have much future in construction. The economics are nonsense, excepting cargo helicopters, which are regularly used for some purposes today. I'm more speaking in general.)

<comment><USER15> It's funny, people have been talking about prefab houses (related, but not the same, as on-site robotic assembly) for years, but they still are a niche item. Despite all kinds of efforts to popularize them, such as:

<http://www.dwell.com/magazine/the-prefab-issue.html>

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> I've been cleaning up after a flood disaster for the past few days, the most amazing technology i've seen in that time is the bobcats and their drivers. It takes 10-15 people a few hours to empty a house of all it's waterlogged belongings on to the street, and then 15 minutes for the bobcat to get it up on the back of a truck. When I see a tech demo like this I'm very optimistic about it's potential for disaster relief, where simple structures, shelters, and platforms would be of great benefit.

<comment><USER17> Brisbane?

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> I like the audible menacing drone. Any autonomous robot should emit a menacing drone.

</comment><comment><USER6> Great fun, but I suspect NIMBY concerns would kill any practical application.

Let's imagine they get the machines scaled to the point when they could build an actual habitable structure, and that they sort the power concerns that I suspect would make it insurmountably uneconomic.

Now, imagine a squad of sufficiently large and powerful helicopters buzzing away all day _next to your office_. How many people are going to be OK with that?

<comment><USER19> Why couldn't small drones build things out of small elements? A lot of our assumptions about what is a reasonable unit of work are based on examples with humans in the loop. It might make more sense to think of a fleet of these things as a form of 3D printer.

<comment><USER6> Lots of them working together means active traffic management becomes critical to prevent collisions. That'll be regulated because even if they're moving things the size of bricks rather than I beams, do you want to see what happens when two hovering robots each carrying a brick 5 metres off the ground bump into each other and suddenly stop hovering? Or if they start creating turbulence for each other and interfere with flight even without contact? Even if it doesn't get regulated by law the insurance implications would force _de facto_ regulation.

Lots of small components means more joints. With a brick as our example that's fine but I'm not convinced the gain over a squad of fairly cheap bricklayers is there - with a girder frame structure as is more typical for large commercial premises that means for the same design it's simultaneously weaker, heavier and more expensive. Not a trio of attributes I'd want to apply to my structure.

This is a sort of technology I love, that's clearly very interesting and with all sorts of potential. But I don't see construction as the ideal target market for it, by a long way. Freight unloading would have been a great case had it not gone containerised some years ago. Warehouse order picking as with Amazon et al? Perhaps. You can have the storage floor as a controlled space without people underneath which reduces the safety issues and there wouldn't be the same problem with noise nuisance. If we wanted to go down that road though I'm not sure it's a big enough win over cranes / arms and conveyor belts, or that either is a win over fairly cheap people pushing trolleys (having worked alongside exactly that in the past).

If we want to stick with construction it would make good sense for use in hazardous environments because it would provide a way of deploying a large, highly mobile force to an area where you couldn't deploy human labour (or where that deployment becomes severely impractical / unattractive for whatever reason - see the film 'Moon' for example), but I'm not sure that's a large enough market to justify the expense of developing the tech enough to make it fully usable. There doesn't seem to currently be a shortage of labour prepared to go and work in Siberian gold mines or northern Canadian tar sands quarries, for the right price, and I can't see the power technology for these devices scaling to the point to make them likely cheaper any time soon to invest in it.

Cool tech searching for a better application IMHO. I'd love to see that better application though and would be heading down there to watch when it happened.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Next I want these drones to make hexagonal structures and feed off of flower polen.

</comment><comment><USER21> Wow, unions are gonna hate these.

<comment><USER22> The shortsightedness of people worried about fewer jobs because of new technology is ridiculous. If you can build a house for the cost of land and materials only, the cost of living is lowered for everyone. With enough advancement and automation, the cost of life's necessities drops. As it decreases, the amount of human labor necessary to support day-to-day life will drop with it. Eventually we'll be able to support ourselves with very little laborious work, focusing instead on content production and other interesting and creative endeavors. Why try to prevent that?

<comment><USER23> Its Capitalism when everyone works for themselves (ok, the money works for them).

Its Socialism when we all work for the collective.

What do you call it when nobody works?

<comment><USER21> Arabia? Greece? Hehehe.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> This tech would have a great application in robotic fruit-picking/pruning applications.

</comment><comment><USER25> I highly recommend checking out The General Robotics, Automation, Sensing and Perception (GRASP)'s other projects as well:

<http://www.grasp.upenn.edu/research>

</comment><comment><USER26> I think flying swarm rebotics would be best weaponized. You could call them hack-mans, man-chops, person-hacks...HRM

<comment><USER27> Who do you think comprise the biggest funders this sort of research?

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> Robotic construction will eventually take over the construction industry. Especially once robotic transportation becomes possible.

There are many complex processes being performed at construction sites. Many steps take highly optimized machines to perform robotically but that a single human can do just by changing tools.

Because of these processes, automating the entire construction process would be very expensive to do right at the site.

All parts would have be modularized so they could be snapped together. Or robots will have to be able to change tools. Or parts will have to be moved from robot to robot, with as much work being done before parts are actually brought to the site.

Either way, it will be interesting to see how it works out.

</comment><comment><USER29> This is just way too much fun.

</comment><comment><USER30> This is awesome! It's sort of like a less precise large-scale 3D printer or MineCraft. I'm sure I'm not the only person who thinks this is certainly the beginning of automated construction. It works for assembly lines. We may finally be getting to the point where the same process will work in more mobile volatile environments.

</comment><comment><USER31> The power limitation doesn't seem very difficult to surmount, a drone could just go swap its dead battery with one from a pool of batteries on chargers, and keep working.

They'd need two batteries in a drone to do that of course, or perhaps some other robot could execute the battery swap.

</comment><comment><USER32> robots building robots. that would be cool

</comment><comment><USER33> Anybody know the weight of each column?

<comment><USER7> In another video they show 4 of them working together to lift a 1.2 kg structure, and they don't seem to have much trouble with it. It also shows a single copter lifting a piece of 2x4 several inches long, but doesn't give the weight. As just a ballpark guess I'd say these things probably max out at lifting and flying with a little under half a kg, they don't seem to have any trouble with at least .25 kg. The columns in the video linked at the top of the page are most likey a lot lighter than that, simply because there's no need for them to be heavy.

EDIT: that piece of 2x4 looks to be about 12 inches long. Assuming the wood is pine (likely, and also light), and using 350kg/m^3 as the pine's density (<http://www.simetric.co.uk/si_wood.htm> the lightest figure quoted) that works out to about .55 kg. ([http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=350+kg%2Fm^3+*+%282*4*1...](http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=350+kg%2Fm^3+*+%282*4*12%29+inches^3)). Quite impressive.

</comment></comment><comment><USER34> "...May Build Your Next House". Yea, right. All in all it's designed to kill people in the end.

</comment><comment><USER35> Imagine the damage virii of the future will be able to do to our infrastructure...

</comment><comment><USER36> 36 battery changes later...

<comment><USER7> No problem. These things can do precision landing so there's no reason they couldn't juice themselves back up in shifts.

</comment></comment><comment><USER37> Great show, but there needs to be another device (carried by the quad rotors) to create very strong bonds between the parts. If the quad rotors could carry this bond-making robot that temporarily attaches to the parts and joins pieces with adhesive/nailgun/puzzle-piece fit, then they would be on to something.

Make a structure of actual use, like a tiny bridge across a moat that could hold people. The magnets have got to go.

<comment><USER10> What would be cooler would be a completely separate bond-building robot that can weld / whatever and can independently traverse the completed building. When it was too far from its next destination a quadrotor would come and give it a lift.

You might have several different types of crawler. A couple to receive materials from the quadrotor and hold them in place while a third follows a weld pattern.

</comment></comment><comment><USER38> I think the part connection is just an implementation detail. They can make these guys place something and another robot attaches.

<comment><USER39> It's not. Their positioning is inaccurate, and the magnet helps guide to the final position.</comment></comment>