Pharo Smalltalk Overview - <AUTHOR> https://www.pharo.org/features <comment><USER2> My favourite feature of Pharo (which I believe it inherited from Squeak) from my very limited experience with Smalltalk environments is the ability to search for methods via example.

In the Finder window, you can type an example of an input and the result that you want, for instance `2. -2`, and the system will search for a method to do that operation for you. In this case you'd see the "negated" method which given `2` spits out `-2`.

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=awAB4zHrlHI](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=awAB4zHrlHI)

<comment><USER3> This seems like total magic. How on earth is that implemented?

<comment><USER4> Venturing a guess: Make up a unit test that runs on all relevant functions of the class (I.e. type) that the object "2" belongs to, and pick functions that pass the test.

<comment> iso8859-1 How could that possibly be safe in a non-pure programming language? There could be a function that deletes the n first files found in the working directory.

<comment><USER5> I remembering wondering about the same thing a few years ago, and came across this: [https://stackoverflow.com/questions/30177559/how-does- find-b...](https://stackoverflow.com/questions/30177559/how-does-find-by- example-work-in-the-pharo-finder/30178067#30178067)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Bunch of previous big Pharo threads:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18968116](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18968116)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18267445](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18267445)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16754872](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16754872)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14504244](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14504244)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11690125](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11690125)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9386775](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9386775)

<comment><USER7> I'm sure it can't be done, but I'd love to see Pharo running natively on iOS one day.

<comment><USER8> Why not? I'm sure if you cull the JIT you could probably compile it for the platform. Apparently there's even macOS and ARM support, so it's more than halfway there ;)

<comment><USER9> Squeak was ported to iOS right after the iPhone came out. The virtual machine only had an interpreter back then but, as you said, there is not reason why the JIT (called Cog) couldn't be used as well. Apple has never allowed it on the app store (but applications built with it have been allowed as long as they are completely closed) so people can't get it, but that is a non technical issue.

The needed code is at

[https://github.com/OpenSmalltalk/opensmalltalk- vm/tree/Cog/p...](https://github.com/OpenSmalltalk/opensmalltalk- vm/tree/Cog/platforms/iOS)

<comment><USER8> Not so, Apple has closed some loopholes in iOS 14 to make (already limiting) JIT restrictions more annoying to the point where it's not really usable anymore…

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I love Smalltalk but apart from the commercial versions, the UI frameworks are very limited or immature and have very few examples or doc's. Yes, you can build your own 'morphs' etc but that doesn't scale well for anything but one off small/toy applications.

Pharo is probably the best placed open source Smalltalk to get into the enterprise dev market and has a promising UI framework under dev at the moment but until this gets sorted out I think it will remain on the sidelines for a while yet.

<comment><USER11> Commercial Smalltalks for Windows are as flexible as Win32.

[http://www.cincomsmalltalk.com/main/](http://www.cincomsmalltalk.com/main/)

This was the path they were on when Java happened.

<comment><USER12> There is also Dolphin Smalltalk[0] which is an open source Smalltalk with native Win32 UI support.

[0] [https://github.com/dolphinsmalltalk](https://github.com/dolphinsmalltalk)

<comment><USER11> Yes that was another one.

I was using Smalltalk/V for Windows 3.x back in the day, as part of some university project assignments.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> I love the idea of being able to visualize the state of everything while it's running, for me, that's the killer feature I'd love to see in other languages.

<comment><USER14> Erlang's VM comes to mind. It has great APIs for inspecting a running system and quite a few options for consuming that data: build-in observer [0], CLI version [1], web live dashboard [3] and more.

[0] [https://erlang.org/doc/apps/observer/observer_ug.html](https://erlang.org/doc/apps/observer/observer_ug.html)

[1] [https://github.com/zhongwencool/observer_cli](https://github.com/zhongwencool/observer_cli)

[2] [https://github.com/phoenixframework/phoenix_live_dashboard](https://github.com/phoenixframework/phoenix_live_dashboard)

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> We started to describe these features in more detail on the The Pharo Dev blog: [https://thepharo.dev/tag/pharofeatures/](https://thepharo.dev/tag/pharofeatures/)

</comment><comment><USER16> From my little experience with Pharo, i can say it offers many things i can't find elsewhere and there is a huge room for innovation and improvement, and on top of that a lot of fun, Pharo is not getting the attention it deserves.

</comment><comment><USER17> I love Pharo and occasionally explore it, but I worry that there are very few examples of applications developed with it. [0]The ones listed seem to be old(at least the last time i checked). This page is currently unavailable

[0][https://pharo.org/success](https://pharo.org/success)

<comment><USER18> Glamorous Toolkit[0] is pretty neat! More of something designed for making software on top of, but it's a pretty cool example of what's possible.

[0]: [https://gtoolkit.com/](https://gtoolkit.com/)

<comment><USER19> Why is that only possible in Pharo? The concepts seem pretty language agnostic. Maybe I've mis-understood what it does but I can imagine a devtools plugin for Chrome/Firefox that basically does effectively

        if (x instanceof foo) ShowUIForFoo
        else if (x isnstanceof bar) ShowUIForBar
        ...

And then let you register your object UIs so they show up in the debugger.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> I've been meaning to find some time and go through the Pharo MOOC. Would love to learn the language and environment.

[https://mooc.pharo.org/](https://mooc.pharo.org/)

<comment><USER21> I enjoyed that MOOC, I can definitely recommend having a look. I watched the videos in French, IIRC there was English dubbing available, but it was not great.

<comment><USER20> Thanks for the encouragement! Yes, I've seen the English dubbing, as I've watched the few videos or so. It seems like an interesting language, and I really like the idea of interactive programming systems. It's similar to what I use and the languages I am interested in, but I haven't given a Smalltalk system proper learning time. I feel it's an area of computer science that has not received much attention. If programming languages and their environments were more interactive and gave better feedback, then I feel I don't need all sorts of fancy stuff like dependent types, which really seem to excite people. If the system's interactability and feedback is good enough, I, the programmer, can make the right decisions, which is the primary challenge when programming.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> Possibly a case of a Hacker News Hug of Death.

</comment><comment><USER23> The main thing that put me down on investigating Pharo even for hobby projects is the absence of native multi-threading support. I know that it depends on the application context but still...

</comment><comment><USER24> the "Smalltalk" word is missing from this page and the main one, interesting marketing move :)

<comment><USER11> Pharo is no longer a pure Smalltalk-80, it follows its own path.

Squeak is the real Smalltalk for modern computers if one wants to be precise.

<comment><USER25> Didn't Cuis[1] branch off from Squeak even before that to be closer to its ST-80 roots. Although, if I recall correctly, it does at least use Morphic and not MVC.

[1]: [https://github.com/Cuis-Smalltalk/Cuis-Smalltalk- Dev](https://github.com/Cuis-Smalltalk/Cuis-Smalltalk-Dev)

<comment><USER9> The focus of Cuis is simplicity, not tradition. So it is only closer to ST80 than Squeak in the cases where new features make Squeak "fat", like Etoys.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> "The server is temporarily unavailable".

Wonder if it's written in Pharo.

<comment><USER27> It appears to be. Zinc is the default http client/server package.

      $ curl -I https://www.pharo.org/features
      HTTP/1.1 200 OK
      Date: Tue, 21 Jul 2020 05:18:23 GMT
      Server: Zinc HTTP Components 1.0
      Content-Type: text/html;charset=utf-8
      Content-Length: 27546
      Connection: close

Not sure how common it is to have it serve traffic directly instead of through a reverse proxy like nginx though.</comment></comment>


Ethereum Is Better Than Bitcoin - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@nfwdev/ethereum-is-better-than-bitcoin-d1575327a930 <comment><USER2> Lol, i used to think the same thing. But in > 1 year, only Bitcoin has world integration and ethereum has none.

The alliance seems to be just that, they joined it and do nothing.

Don't forget that a lot of etherum transactions are used through the same wallets

</comment><comment><USER3> And for all the same reasons, EOS and NEM are better than Ethereum. Not a great post from ethBuddha

</comment><comment><USER4> The person who wrote it is clueless. :D

</comment><comment><USER5> Betamax is better than VHS</comment>


QuillBot: Free Paraphrasing Tool - <AUTHOR> https://quillbot.com/app <comment><USER2> Looks like a great force-multiplier tool to assist the fake product review business!

<comment><USER3> It's still far more economical and effective to hire real people to type those. Plus, it's easy to recognize fully conciseness-optimized English. And when leaving reviews, your average person doesn't write the most concise English possible.

Neural networks are capable of optimizing English. The knowledge and capacity to do this is already globally widespread. Sorry to be the one to tell you.

<comment><AUTHOR> Glad you agree. I suspect QuillBot is not ideal for fake reviews anyways since you would likely want a diversity of positive opinions rather than the same ones regurgitated. What I'm really excited to see is, where this technology goes in regards to education and writing enhancement. (For clarity, I'm the CEO of Quillbot)

<comment><USER3> Your product is a good tool for teaching improved English. A tutor once told me, for a standardized English test, the shortest answer option that still sounds natural is likely the right one. I nearly aced it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Since I am not a native English speaker, I use quillbot to make my sentences sound more natural. Especially when I write an email or for the texts on my web apps.

Also, I met the founders before our yc interviews. They are very cool guys, with an impressive tech.

<comment><AUTHOR> Totally remembered our couch conversation. Appreciate the kind words and support. Hope your startup is doing well and I'm glad you found our website helpful!

<comment><USER4> Also, I've met quite many office workers in France and Korea that would be very interested in your service. They regularly have to make powerpoint slides in English. This kind of presentations can have a big impact on their careers, but they struggle because of the language. They sometimes call proof-reading services. They are high-quality but not flexible. You have to send them the finished document and cannot make last minute modifications. Maybe, the companies could even pay to make it accessible for their employees (or embedded in an powerpoint). Foreign branches of international corporations could be a good target because the communication between local workers and the HQ is always problematic.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> This is so much fun. Does anyone know any opensource alternatives of this kind of text and essay manipulation?

</comment><comment><USER6> Seems to do a consistent job making comparable sentences. Curious what tech is underneath the UI.

<comment><AUTHOR> It uses a deep sequence to sequence model, and the drop-down thesaurus are phrase embeddings trained on large corpuses like Reddit and Wikipedia.

<comment><USER7> What did you use for the parallel data? the paraphrases are much better than an auto-encoder.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Cool idea! I tried it, but it gave me back the same sentence I put in :(. I guess my sentence was not interesting enough. Unfortunately my connection is too slow to poke around more.

</comment><comment><USER9> Cant get past the captcha.

<comment><AUTHOR> We considered removing recaptcha, since we are fully aware of how annoying it is, but we had to keep it because of the rampant bot abuse.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> I couldn't find the premium pricing anywhere. Now it wants me to signup before I can know it. Maybe I missed it?

</comment><comment><USER11> It changed the meaning of a paragraph I tested it with.

<comment><AUTHOR> The system is by no means perfect. If I had to compare it to self driving cars, I'd say its a level 2 on automation safety. You should have your hands on the wheel when you use it, but it still makes driving easier.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> I like this. This will help in writing email.

</comment><comment> your-nanny after the fifth captcha chalkenge/demand I quit. please don't waste my time</comment>


UserVoice Security Incident Notification - <AUTHOR> https://community.uservoice.com/blog/uservoice-security-incident-notification/ <comment><USER2> Another thread on the incident report here: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11664713](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11664713) [https://status.uservoice.com/incidents/fb7ml8b3nphf](https://status.uservoice.com/incidents/fb7ml8b3nphf)

There's a bit more info in this one about exactly what was compromised though. While I can understand the abundance of caution in resetting passwords despite only hashes and salts being lost, it is odd that they would "[presume] the attackers may be able to decrypt the passwords," assuming they're using strong encryption.

<comment><USER3> I wouldn't call resetting passwords an "abundance of caution" in this case. It's very likely that the attackers are able to retrieve passwords when they have the SHA1 hash and the salt (not exactly by decrypting though).

Here's a good blog post how and why this is problematic: [https://www.troyhunt.com/our-password-hashing-has-no- clothes...](https://www.troyhunt.com/our-password-hashing-has-no-clothes/)

<comment><USER2> Do they say somewhere that they're only using sha1 though? That's sort of what I meant: if bcrypt or scrypt is used, with an appropriate work factor, the risk should be very minimal. The fact that they're assuming it's not suggests they are using weaker encryption.

<comment><USER3> Yes they said that in the first paragraph of the incident report you posted a link to ;)

 _Unfortunately, the passwords were hashed with the SHA1 hashing algorithm, which by today's standards is considered weak_

Also, hashing != encryption

<comment><USER2> Ahh thanks. I read the email they sent out, which had very similar content, but omitted that bit. Just skimmed the post itself, but obviously missed that key info.

Interesting that they don't include strengthening their encryption (ok, hashing) in the list of steps they plan to take, but presumably they will.

<comment><USER3> From the same incident report: _When users reset their password, we're going to be hashing it with the bcrypt algorithm with a strong cost value._

<comment><USER2> My god, I swear they're ninja editing the thing on me! I'm really not normally someone to comment before RTFA. Thanks for patiently leading me through it. :P

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> "In late April, the UserVoice security team learned that an unauthorized party illegally accessed one of UserVoice's backend reporting systems and was able to view user data on a small subset of users. The user data includes name, email, and a hashed password and salt. Unfortunately, the passwords were hashed with the SHA1 hashing algorithm, which by today's standards is considered weak. As such, we're resetting the passwords for all users in our database."

Further information: [https://status.uservoice.com/incidents/fb7ml8b3nphf](https://status.uservoice.com/incidents/fb7ml8b3nphf)

</comment><comment><USER4> Just got an email from Uservoice about this.

Apparently I'm part of the "0.001%" that was affected in the breach.

<comment><USER5> Me too. Maybe 0.001% is not accurate.

<comment><USER6> seconded. I got one too. It seems unlikely we'd converge here if it was only a tiny fraction of users...

<comment><USER5> Funny thing, 37 minutes after receiving the first one, i received another notification on a secondary e-mail (also a gmail account) that is used for a toy project's free UserVoice account and is totally unrelated to the first one).</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Prosecutors shouldn't have immunity from their unethical – or unlawful – acts - <AUTHOR> http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2015/feb/05/prosecutors-immunity-unethical-unlawful-acts#The%20Guardian

<comment><USER2> The whole notion of absolute immunity for government agents, whether it's the mailman or a prosecutor is completely nuts - it seems ridiculous to me that our legal system includes government agents who are allowed to operate outside of the constraints of the same laws that govern the rest of us.

I don't have a problem with a cop or prosecutor being immune to a lawsuit as long as he was acting within the bounds of the law, but I do have a problem with that immunity being considered an inalienable right as opposed to a privilege - I would prefer to see immunity granted by a grand jury in the same way that indictments are. I know you'd have to put some work in to figure out how to do it, but there has to be a solution of some kind - blanket immunity for government agents is not something that a free society should tolerate.

<comment><USER3> > _" being immune to a lawsuit as long as he was acting within the bounds of > the law"_

There is no need for immunity when one acts within the bounds of the law. All that protects against is the hassle and cost of frivolous lawsuits. Absolute immunity prevents having to have another lawsuit to determine if the conduct in the first one was appropriate, and so on.

But you are right that absolute immunity of any kind is nuts. It's the mark of a tyrannical regime, and claims of self-policing do not in any way diminish this.

However, the real problem is that gag orders can be enforced after the trial is over. Why would any form of democracy want to lock up crucial information about how its laws are being interpreted from the public? What is the point of even having laws if the public is not made aware of how they are being interpreted in court?

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I am not a fan of opening up grand jury testimony to the public, because that will likely end up revealing juror names in the end. I do think there needs to be a panel of judges who can review the proceedings in particularly sensitive cases and that panel should be well outside of the same jurisdiction.

Another reason it is hard to change the system is that many of these prosecutors end up in political positions of power and do their best to stifle any change that might reveal similar actions they took.

<comment><USER5> What is wrong with revealing juror names? I don't want juries to be anonymous. I want them to be subject to public scrutiny. They occasionally make huge, society-shifting decisions.

<comment> a-priori It exposes jurors to the risk of harassment, intimidation and violence, both during and after the case, from people who don't like their verdict. And there will always be one side who does not like their verdict.

It puts them in the position where they have to consider their personal safety when they make a verdict, rather than just the evidence presented. A juror shouldn't be thinking "which verdict is less likely to get me killed?" when they're making a decision.

<comment><USER5> Violence is rightly against the law; we're all OK with that I think.

However, I do want a juror to think, "which verdict is likely to subject me to social ostracization?" I don't see anything wrong with that. Otherwise, the powerful can always force a mistrial with no consequences.

<comment><USER6> > However, I do want a juror to think, "which verdict is likely to subject me > to social ostracization?" I don't see anything wrong with that.

The fact that it tends to increase the incentive for juries to act like lynch mobs is one major potential problem with that.

(Of course, the actual issue in the source article is about grand juries, not trial juries, so "verdict" isn't properly within the domain of concern -- but the same general principal is at place. Do we want juries acting based on the facts properly before them, or do we want them acting as proxy for public trial-by-media? Because the latter is what wanting a juror to think "which verdict is likely to subject me to social ostracization" is asking for.)

<comment><USER5> I agree that the desired outcome is for juries to make decisions based on fact and good purpose, but I don't think anonymity helps to achieve this outcome.

I think that a neighbor openly questioning the decision or a business deciding to cut off ties with a morally reprehensible actor are more likely to promote good decision making.

If anonymity is desirable, why have public trials at all?

Anybody can go to a trial and see the jurors' faces, so what difference does it make?

If they were to be truly anonymous (ie, not visible), then how do we even know they're real people?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I'm all for getting rid of absolute immunity, but it's a very bad idea to throw out grand jury secrecy just because of what happened in the Michael Brown and Eric Garner cases. In every other grand jury proceeding, the prosecutor does not sabotage his own presentment, and when the grand jury doesn't indict it's because the prosecutor's evidence is crap, and so the secrecy prevents an innocent person from being smeared. Keep in mind that grand juries are entirely one-sided - the defendant does not have a chance to refute anything the prosecutor says. Get rid of their secrecy and you've just given prosecutors one more way to abuse grand juries.

<comment><USER8> But grand juries almost always indict if the prosecutor wants them to. Look up the statistics.

<comment><USER7> I'm well aware, but that doesn't change my point. It's still more common for non-cops to not be indicted than it is for prosecutors to sabotage their own presentment so that cops aren't indicted. The non-cops have more to lose, so let's not do something that will harm them just because there were recently two high-profile non-indictments of cops.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> And another link to the same content: [http://www.northwestern.edu/newscenter/stories/2015/02/opini...](http://www.northwestern.edu/newscenter/stories/2015/02/opinion- guardian-van-brunt-prosecutors.html)

</comment><comment><USER9> The fact that they do is a point against having a system of laws in the first place. Seriously, it delegitimizes the concept of law altogether. The law is equal for all, or isn't law; this physics teaches us.

</comment><comment><USER10> Sovereign immunity is literally derived from the divine right of the King to be immune from prosecution and civil suit. It's an anachronism in the legal field, and one that most people don't realize exists, but is responsible for a lot of ills in our criminal justice system.

There are two types of sovereign immunity granted to law enforcement and prosecutors today. The first is investigative or "qualified immunity," which is the weaker of the two. This is the type of immunity detectives and police officers have in investigating crimes. Prosecutors can occasionally find themselves subject to the same level of immunity if they direct investigations e.g through specific instructions to county detectives or outright interviewing of witnesses not produced by the police.

The doctrine states that you cannot sue a person engaged in investigatory activities on behalf of the state _unless_ you can show first that he or she violated a _clearly established_ Constitutional right. So even if a police officer violates a Constitutional right, it must be _clearly established._

Some states and circuit courts disagree on what "clearly established" means on a per-right basis, but basically if a police officer busts down your door without a warrant absent exigent circumstances, they've lost their immunity, and you can sue him or her for deprivation of civil rights under 42 U.S.C. § 1983.

Short of egregious actions, it's difficult to pierce this shield. Many states even have a "good faith" exception to this rule, where if the police officer was unaware that the right they were violating was clearly established, then qualified immunity applies. Which is a perfect example of the law gone haywire. If ignorance of the law isn't a defense for citizens, why should law enforcement officers be able to use it to claim immunity?

The second, and much more powerful, form of sovereign immunity is "judicial immunity." It applies not only to judges, who arguably actually should be immune from threats of prosecution, but also to prosecutors during preparation for grand jury and trial. The truly problematic part is that judicial immunity is _absolute_. It cannot be pierced for any reason, no matter how egregiously a prosecutor violates your Constitutional rights: hiding exculpatory evidence, deliberately keeping you in prison for long periods to force a plea, etc.

Of course there is recourse to the ethics committee of a state. However, in all but the most public and embarrassing cases, state ethics boards are toothless against prosecutors. Usually, a complaint has to be a approved by a regional reviewer, who is tied into the county legal system and has a strong incentive not to aggravate the prosecutor's office.

The only saving grace here is the "municipal person" theory. Essentially, if a state governmental agency, such as a county, has a policy or practice that actively encourages or directs its employees, whether investigators or prosecutors, to violate Constitutional rights, then one can sue the municipality which is not protected by investigative or judicial immunity under Section 1983.

</comment><comment><USER11> Limiting liability could be accomplished by bonding. Bad prosecutors would price themselves out of the market.

<comment><USER12> That pushes the problem onto campaign finance and bribery.

<comment><USER11> How does requiring a bond do that? It's form of insurance. But, instead of pricing depending on how a government performs, the price signal is shifted to the individual.

<comment><USER12> If you can get people to give you money, you don't have to care how expensive your bond is. It invites quid pro quo.

<comment><USER11> How does that differ from now?</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Microsoft's Latest Save-The-Zune Plan: Astrology - <AUTHOR> http://www.alleyinsider.com/2008/10/-microsoft-s-new-save-the-zune-plan-astrology-last-decade-s-one-hit-wonders-msft-

<comment><USER2> I think the only way to fix the Zune is to somehow get free wifi on it (similar to the Kindle) and allow music to stream across the internet, any music you want.

The entire collection of all music on the go is worth $20/mo to me, and if anyone can pull it off, MS can.

Obviously in the current state of the world, outside of Asia, this is probably not a good product, but as WiMax starts to go mainstream, hopefully we can see similar applications.

The reason is because the Zune has no competitive advantage over the iPod. Every "cool" feature that is has is killed by its counter-intuitive software and obtuse case design. It needs something game changing, and that's the next game changing feature.

Of course, the cell phone will probably have a much better chance to make this a reality first before the Zune, but they can try.

<comment><USER3> _Of course, the cell phone will probably have a much better chance to make this a reality first before the Zune, but they can try._

So far, Microsoft have been a step behind Apple... every step of the way. They brought out a 30GB product just as Apple were pushing the Nano. They introduced Wifi, but Apple were the first to sell music over Wifi and brows the internet on an iPod.

And now they are battling to sell music players while Apple is concentrating on small tablets that happen to be phones and happen to be music players.

My advice to Microsoft: Just as you backstabbed your PlaysForSure partners to launch Zune, I think you should backstab your Windows Mobile partners: Buy RIM and merge Zune into RIM phones.

Special note to Ballmer: Microsft-RIM is Waaaaaaaaaaaaaay more interesting than Micosoft-Yahoo. In my opinion.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> How exactly are they going to save a product's image by affiliating it with pseudo-science?

</comment><comment><USER5> Is it still about? Don't think it ever came to the UK or EU either?</comment>


4 Ways You're Lying to Yourself About Being Productive - <AUTHOR> http://www.thedailymuse.com/career/4-ways-youre-lying-to-yourself-about-being-productive/ <comment><USER2> Yep, on a given day I'm guilty of multiple violations, though I try hard to stay focused. These are some good tips. I've used the rhythm approach before, but find that I often justify small, unimportant tasks as being productive because they fit into a broader goal...</comment>


More jails replace in-person visits with awful video chat products - <AUTHOR> https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2019/04/more-jails-replace-in-person-visits-with-awful-video-chat-products/ <comment><USER2> Terrible policy. In-person visitation is known [0][1] to reduce recidivism rates. Video visitation should be included as an addition, not a replacement, to in-person visitation.

Lots more information about the subject (costs, providers, etc.) can be found at Prison Policy Initiative:

[https://www.prisonpolicy.org/visitation/report.html](https://www.prisonpolicy.org/visitation/report.html)

[https://www.prisonpolicy.org/reports/prisonvisits.html](https://www.prisonpolicy.org/reports/prisonvisits.html)

[https://www.prisonpolicy.org/phones/state_of_phone_justice.h...](https://www.prisonpolicy.org/phones/state_of_phone_justice.html)

[0]: [https://law.yale.edu/system/files/area/center/liman/document...](https://law.yale.edu/system/files/area/center/liman/document/prison_visitation_policies.pdf)

[1]: [https://mn.gov/doc/assets/11-11MNPrisonVisitationStudy_tcm10...](https://mn.gov/doc/assets/11-11MNPrisonVisitationStudy_tcm1089-272781.pdf)

<comment><USER3> The principal agent problem - higher recidivism rates cost society indirectly over the long term, but jails make more money in the here and now.

<comment><USER4> Why not provide a financial incentive to reduce recidivism? Is that not currently the case?

<comment><USER5> > Why not provide a financial incentive to reduce recidivism? Is that not > currently the case?

Because then prison officials would have incentives to aid ex-prisoners in avoiding being identified as perpetrators of later crimes.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> > Of course, jails could offer video calling without shutting down in-person > visits. But the fact that jails get a share of the proceeds from these > services creates a perverse incentive for them to end in-person visits. As > long as in-person visits are available, many family members will take the > time to drive to prison and see their loved one. But if only video visits > are available on site, more family members will opt for the convenience and > privacy they get by calling from home.

You're not "opting for convenience and privacy" here; you're making the only choice you have in the face of prisons looking to make a couple of dollars.

<comment><USER7> What they mean is that once they stop in person visits you can opt for "privacy and conscience" of calling in from home for a fee vs. using the video terminal at the jail for free.

I had to reread this part to figure out that is what they meant.

This is a horrible additional punishment for the prisoners. Unless this punishment is reflected in shorter sentences (which it won't be) this must stop.

What would a prison look like that is designed with the right incentives?

Can we give bonuses for recidivism rate declines?

<comment><USER8> Why couldn't the arrangement be that a repeat "guest" is paid for 10 or 20% less each time they stay? (To be strictly fair, that structure should apply to parole officers, half-way houses, and other providers working to rehabilitate release prisoners.)

I've given this 30s of thought so I'm more than happy to be shown to be very wrong about this idea.

<comment><USER9> Fun idea, another 30 seconds of thought: flip it around and just pay the prisoner to stay out. You get $10k for every year you don't return to prison after leaving, for some amount of time. Also might help ex-cons stay on their feet.

Adjust figures and timing as necessary so that it's worth your while, but doesn't incentivize gaming the system too much. This is cheaper to the state than the prison time anyway.

<comment><USER10> Won't work for two reasons:

1\. You now have an incentive to commit a crime and spend time in prison. People will rightfully ask why they don't get $10k a year for not breaking the law.

2\. It could reduce recidivism, and isn't strictly punitive. It's incompatible with the way the US runs prisons.

<comment><USER9> #1a is a question of figures. It would likely work better for crimes with unnecessarily long sentences, or that are unlikely to be repeated. The goal is to help keep people afloat while they build a new life. Worst case, some amount of "fraud" is probably expected and just built into the cost of the program.

#1b might be improved with proper framing. Effective politicians are good at spinning proposals a particular way. E.g. depending on who you're presenting the idea to, emphasize how the offer goes away if you break strict conduct rules, or maybe you can only do it once, or you talk about it in terms of how long it will take for the state to earn a profit, etc.

I'm not touching #2.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> There is a reason America leads the world in percentage of population in prison. Our prison population represents ~22% of the worlds prison population. Our corporations discovered that if you treat prisoners like a renewable resource as opposed to a human being, you can make more money. They literally thrive on human suffering.

They house prisoners for the least amount of money they can while charging as much as they can. Prisoner safety means nothing with sexual assault, murders and drug use running rampant. Removing in person visits is just another way to wring funds from the incarcerated and now their families. They want released prisoners to return to prison as they can continue to earn off of them.

The way we allow prisoners to be treated in this country is a black mark on the soul of the nation.

<comment><USER12> I think you're under the impression that the prisons mentioned here are privately run. All three mentioned in the article, like 90% of prisons in the US, are run by governments (in this case municipal authorities).

<comment><USER11> I am not under that impression at all; private corporations profit greatly from government prisons. Private companies administer the phone systems, bail bonds, cafeteria / commissaries, etc. Since they profit from it they lobby hard for harsh sentencing laws, against marijuana legalization, etc. ensuring a steady supply of prisoners to feed the complex. They affect future prisoners even before they have been accused of a crime, supporting the campaigns of those they know will support tough prison sentences including judges, sheriffs etc.

</comment></comment></comment><comment> m-p-3 Imagine the implications if technology like realtime deepfakes becomes possible. You could basically fake a relatives or a prisoner and act on their behalf to extract information or cover up that something happened to them.

Terrible idea all around.

<comment><USER13> The emoji unicorn 'masks' on the iPhone are pretty close as is. Such a thing can't be more than 5 years away, if not already here.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> As if US jails weren't already reprehensible and embarrassingly bad enough.

This is not just punishing the inmate, this is punishing their extended family and anyone who cares about them as well.

Some people just don't appear to care about being labeled "morally bankrupt". By the time they're done, police, judges and jails will be superfluous because society will have no values left to protect.

The latter is somewhat tongue-in-cheek of course, but this is definitely narrowing the moral gap between jailers and inmates even further.

Absolutely embarrassing for any modern society.

<comment><USER15> That's the thing about bankruptcy, there's no further to fall.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> This is truly disturbing. Whoever is selling these products is an ethical case study waiting to happen. I'm sure these solutions use open source software, perhaps it's time we wrote restrictions into licenses to prevent this tech from being used for such evil purposes.

<comment><USER17> > perhaps it's time we wrote restrictions into licenses to prevent this tech > from being used for such evil purposes.

Such software would no longer be open source (canonically defined by OSI) or free (canonically defined by the FSF), and it would cause all sorts of problems for developers as it would be incompatible with other licenses such as the GPL. And it would be impossible to somehow enumerate all "evil purposes" in a licenses, and if you theoretically did, virtually everyone else would disagree with at least some part of it.

<comment><USER18> I see this attitude a lot on HN, something along the lines of "the social problems created by this new/hypothetical technology would be hard to solve, so let's not bother trying". But as the current social media regulation fracas shows, if technologists are unwilling to engage with broader society to address the problems they create, solutions will be imposed upon them by politicians who are probably less informed about which measures are or aren't effective.

We're willing to devote a lot of time and effort to solving hard technical problems, we should be at least as willing to use some of that energy to solve the associated social problems as well.

<comment><USER19> > We're willing to devote a lot of time and effort to solving hard technical > problems, we should be at least as willing to use some of that energy to > solve the associated social problems as well.

Here's the thing: technological expertise in no way implies social expertise. In fact anecdotally they are inversely correlated. Technologists would benefit from moving in the humility direction outside of their chosen field, they are already hubristic enough as is.

For what it's worth, this phenomenon is widespread beyond technologists. It's easy to think that because you're really good in one field, that you must be really good in other fields too. But sadly it generally isn't so.

<comment><USER18> For sure, it's not up to technologists alone to solve these problems, but we should be willing to be part of the larger discussion and to learn more about the social ramifications of technological choices.

<comment><USER20> We _did_ have those discussions. That's why the licenses are written the way they are. "Don't do evil" with the license is not a term that can be added either in theory or in practice. There is no world in which suddenly the prison-industrial complex is stopped because we wrote the right licenses.

You can make more narrow restrictions, but those will still have a way of backfiring or having unanticipated results anyhow, not to mention that I'm yet to see one of these sorts of licenses end up on a product where it actually matters anyhow.

Practically and legally speaking, there's no lever here to discuss the misuse of. I mean, heck, I'd give you at least a 25% chance these things were already developed in a context that doesn't permit open source to be used anyhow.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> [https://www.mytechfriends.com/contact.html](https://www.mytechfriends.com/contact.html)

Disgraceful people. The name of the company is particularly insulting...

<comment><USER6> Notice how the advertisement has "no cost to your facility" as the highlighted part–there's no word about how much it costs inmates and their families.

<comment><USER21> Trying to think what one can do to combat this prison industrial complex cash machine...

<comment><USER22> Vigilante justice. Jk?

<comment><USER6> Sounds like a great way to end up in exactly the situation where you have to deal with this issue but have no way to enact change…

<comment><USER23> How so? There's so much you can do to harass people within the limits of the law.

Just name and shame the individuals developing this kind of software, they deserve much worse but it's a good start.

<comment><USER6> Vigilante justice will land you in jail. There's not a whole lot you can do from there.

<comment><USER23> Not at all, only very specific kinds of vigilante justice will land you in jail. It is not difficult to hurt people without breaking the law.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> Really inhumane. Don't the people implementing these projects have any feelings? Why don't they think for a second from the perspectives of prisoner/family? Human greed is growing day by day.

</comment><comment><USER25> > Even some advocates of the change admit that it has downsides for inmates > and their families. Ryan Rickert, jail administrator at the Lowndes County > Adult Detention Center, acknowledged to The Commercial Dispatch that inmates > were disappointed they wouldn't get to see family members anymore.

> inmates were disappointed they wouldn't get to see family members anymore

</comment><comment><USER26> Access to internet must be recognized as a constitutional right, and people in prison should be able to freely use normal video calls and other messaging apps, independently from in person meetings.

</comment><comment><USER27> If you have literally any other option, don't work for these companies.

</comment><comment><USER28> This is the answer to the question, "How can we make inmates' lives more miserable while at the same time profiting even more off of them?"

</comment><comment><USER29> On a related note, appearing in front of a judge by video is becomming more common. Personally I think this is a violation of the 6th amendment.

<comment><USER30> Out of curiosity, why? The right to face your accuser doesn't require you to be able to hug them.

<comment><USER20> It does entitle you to face your accuser, though, not a recording of them, or a simulation of them, or a live-face-hacked stream of them, or any of the other things that may not be a concern right this very second but are coming down the pike fast.

<comment><USER31> I bet there's also a measurable difference in outcome when this type of communication is forced through a screen. By removing the face-to-face interaction you're making it easier to remove empathy from the situation...

But frankly welcome to the US - we have zero empathy for people who end up incarcerated ='(

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> This is disgusting. I work remotely so I know what is lost even over video conferencing. I have no issue if this allows more face time between physical visits, but to block physical visits entirely I would say is downright cruel and unusual.

These wardens should be required to chat with their wives and children over video chat only for at least a month and see how it feels.

</comment><comment><USER33> Soon they can replace the visitors with a terrible AI and we can go the full distance to dehumanizing these people.

<comment><USER34> AIs don't pay. The dystopia would be replacing the inmates with AI, either so that they don't have to be fed anymore (dark horror future) or to simply maximise lucrative visitor engagement (subtle black mirror style dark future).

</comment></comment><comment><USER35> What is wrong with America, makes me despair

<comment><USER36> *world

</comment></comment><comment><USER37> I don't know why people are demonizing this. By ending in-person visits, one jail is able to redirect manpower towards its GED program. That's somehow evil? No doubt video calls are inferior compared with face-to-face meetings, but the trade off seem entirely reasonable. Inmates will have more opportunities to talk to their family and they'll get more educational help. It's a decidedly positive development.

<comment><USER38> You have to take into account the loss due to the lack of in-person contact with their cared ones.

</comment></comment><comment><USER39> Surprisingly, the author doesn't mention that contraband (knives, phones, drugs, etc.) can't be passed via video.

I'm not saying the video visits are a good thing, just that I'd rather have a more balanced article.

<comment><USER40> Most prisons do visits through glass now, so no contraband that way either.

</comment></comment><comment><USER41> That's pretty messed up no matter how you look at it.

</comment><comment><USER42> Winning US prison system as usual.</comment>


Ask HN: Why don't we optimize for stability? - <AUTHOR>

Have you ever noticed how much time you spend quitting Safari or Firefox? Just exiting the program. Sometimes it's immediately, sometimes it's 20 minutes, at least 50% of the time it's `kill -9 motherfucker.app`
Why? Let me throw down the gauntlet, I'll pay $10k tomorrow for an Apple web browser that will never fucking crash on me.
There must be a market of people, just like me, who are fed up with browsers, mail clients, and basically all desktop software because it's so unreliable and who are more than happy to pay a premium, even an outrageous premium, to stop screwing around with software and get back to our real work.
Tomorrow I could (theoretically) go out and spend $10k on a hand-crafted work of art guitar from a luthier, or $200k for a mostly handcrafted precision automobile. For $100k I can go into space, but for no amount of money can I buy software that doesn't make me want to throw my computer into the swimming pool.
Will we ever see a boutique market of consumer software that's written with stability and quality in mind? I don't care that my web browser can clean up my neighbor's dogshit and tell me which AS number the website I'm looking at is on (21844, by the way), I just want to get my work done.
I'm not really interested in why Firefox, Safari, and Chrome all suck.  I know why, it's because all software sucks. I'm a consumer willing to pay money, lots of it, for a browser that doesn't suck. Build it and sell it to me. <comment><USER2> I agree, I do hate when things crash. But, I have to say, it has been a long time since something has crashed on me. I use Chrome on my macbook and it has never crashed, that I can recall.

At the same time, though, my boss at work is somehow capable of making _everything_ he touches crash. He has destroyed windows and apple operating systems like they're nothing.

</comment><comment><USER3> I kill Opera.exe more often than not. It takes only a few hours for it to reach 600 or 700 meg of ram and get stroppy, then it wants a fricking minute plus to actually close.

It's quite annoying.

<comment><USER4> The feature set in Opera is killer, and I had some loyalty because I feel like they've been behind some of the major advances in browser usability (tabs!), and haven't been given much credit.

But I eventually gave up. Google Chrome doesn't even have bloody mouse gestures working on linux, but it's fast and stable, and has high correctness.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Why don't we optimize for stability? Some of us do. It just happens that we're not writing web browsers.

</comment><comment><USER6> I run Chrome on Windows 7 and never, ever have to kill it.

Never.

</comment><comment><USER7> Chrome? I can't recall it crashing recently. Maybe it sucks on Mac?</comment>


Show HN: My 10 Hour Winter Break Project Mixmatic - <AUTHOR> http://www.mixmatic.co/

<comment> jack-r-abbit Interesting site. I lost interest in Spotify but I can see the novelty of a site like this.

But... your example URL makes it pretty easy to guess at other people's mixes... so not very private. Not that you claim it to be private. But if I was sending a mix to someone and typed in a special message for them, I would not really want random people to read it. Some sort of URL hash would at least make it harder to guess.

<comment><AUTHOR> Really I'd love to know why you stopped using Spotify (just out of curiosity).

Good point about the mixes, I may change that in the future but this isn't looking like it's gonna be a long term project so there might be marginal return on the time invested. Thanks for the feedback!

<comment> jack-r-abbit Nothing in particular lost me with Spotify... I just went back to playing from my own library. I didn't really dig the UI and controls so it didn't become my default player.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER2> Seems to be the season for mixtapes, found another one on HN recently <http://muxx.it>

<comment><USER3> I love this and the parent site, an awesome project for 10 hours. But it all makes me miss the simplicity of muxtape: <http://muxtape.com/story>

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I put together a usablity review of mixmatic.co using moustach.io. I hope you find this useful.

[http://moustach.io/welcome/e/reviewed/ozH9eZmzRYuRB5bycNJYb-...](http://moustach.io/welcome/e/reviewed/ozH9eZmzRYuRB5bycNJYb- BBbkBlqizX/9HsKSnpXSbqAtyeIib70Ng)

Good luck.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks I love it!

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> I don't use (and never have, but I suspect it's like Grooveshark) Spotify so this question might be stupid. What advantage does this have over just sending an email with a URL to a Spotify playlist?

<comment><AUTHOR> Good question :) you could certainly do that - this is more just a cooler, more visually appealing way of sharing a playlist with a friend that's made specifically for that purpose.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> First question: Why get co and not a com?

Second question: i like the design given the time constraints. What design tools did you use? Any tips on getting a good design quickly?

<comment><AUTHOR> 1\. The .com was taken and I really liked Mixmatic as the name.

2\. Thanks! I've been really concentrating on my design skills recently. Biggest tip to get good quickly: copy other designs and do it a lot. The design for this site leans heavily on the Instagram homepage. You just need to find another site that captures the feeling you're trying to create with your product and then put your own spin on it. Also looking up how books are laid out especially Renaissaincs era layouts that use the Golden Ratio like the Van der Graaf canon are very helpful. Email me I'd be glad to Skype some time.

There's no magic bullet. Everything's hard at first. But if you do it enough it gets easier.

<comment><USER6> Awesome answer! Thanks. Next, I literaly code css in notepad, any tips on tools and things to speed up design work? A quick list of what you use?

<comment><AUTHOR> No problem! I use Photoshop to mock things up and then code everything in SASS in TextMate. Pretty basic setup but it works for me.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Why does this have to be locked into spotify? Why not create a playlist with any other service? It's just a URL anyway.

<comment><AUTHOR> That's true I guess it's just to make it so that when you click the message it opens the spotify app but this definitely doesn't need to be specifically tied to it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Neat! Minor suggestion - link to an example playlist. There's also a minor grammar error in the text ("gives us").

<comment><AUTHOR> Example added and typo corrected. Thanks for the feedback :)

<comment><USER9> I would put the example on the frontpage and make it larger.

<comment><AUTHOR> Ok thanks for the feedback. Do you think there's too low of an incentive to click through to the compose page without one?

<comment><USER7> Yes. I have no idea there's an example on the next page so I'm lost before I even think about clicking. First thing I thought about when I landed on the homepage was "What is this for?" "What will the final product look like before I go through any trouble."

Without the example starting me dead in the face I would've lost interest. I only clicked around because this was on HN and I wanted to explore so I could give constructive feedback.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: Microsoft from non Webdev perspective? - <AUTHOR>

Okay, so if you've ever done any extensive frontend development, you probably hate IE. To put it bluntly Microsoft's browser platform sucks from a developer perspective. You make your app it works cause you know your W3C specs, etc, then you go to IE and no addEventListener or indexOf, or HTML comments (yes an IE6 bug) blows up your awesome app. Then you try to debug and get incredibly descriptive notices like [Object object] or just nothing.<p>So MS has failed badly for the webdev community, my real question is, what is it like developing with Microsoft tools for non-web apps, say Desktop or Mobile Apps? Do the tools make the grade of the GCC/Linux toolchain? Does everything fallapart for cross-platform Apps? <comment><USER3> I'd contest that argument. I'd agree perhaps with IE 8 being a PITA, but you can't reaaaaaaaally blame Microsoft for IE 6. It's not like google existed in its magnitude back then or even mozilla. Back then there wasn't much stability either i.t.o market leaders (if I remember correctly netscape escaped roundabout that time and opera didn't have much market stake).

If you check IE 9 developer tools, you can't even 'switch back' to IE 6 anymore (well, atleast not in x64 mode).

There's a reason why you should opt to use 'cross-browser' libraries such as jQuery. Google chrome has a couple of bugs and even firefox. Not all problems have solutions - take for example styling of 'web' controls. IE renders native controls, browsers render their specific controls - some allow text-indent while others don't.

In terms of application development - as far as I know all non .NET tools have pretty much be phased out (ie. VB6 etc.).

You essentially face the same problem to some degree (ex. users that still run with IE 6 are probably like to be running .NET 2.0 or none at all).

I think at the moment Microsoft is opting for cross-platform apps via web and wcf/web api services. You can also use Mono, but it's generally at least one major version behind (couple of years) and doesn't fully support everything the .NET framework does.

When talking about 'cross-platform' apps, people are rather quick to forget that applications are written during certain time periods. It's easy to support users who are using 10 year old software/hardware (ex. windows xp 32) with 10 year old software (.NET 1.0).

I reckon it's about the same effort to force a user to install 'open source' libraries such as open-gtk as it is to force the user to use a different browser or install the .NET framework if they're on windows.

I'm actually hoping that all the legacy windows operating systems get upgraded to Windows 8 when it gets released. Microsoft is running a campaign where you pay 30$ or something to upgrade a Windows XP+ OS to Windows 8. Windows 8 also boasts quite a bit of improved performance and less resource usage - <USER2> makes it perfect for all that legacy hardware (I reckon most PCs built the last 12 years should be able to run it). This would also pave the path to better HTML standards support with IE 10 and better .NET framework support (4.5).

In regards to the tools - I reckon if you're going a C#.NET route with professional+ visual studio with other addons, then I'd say the dev environment greatly surpasses that from what I've seen on linux (visual studio pro ~ $400 USD, addons are free and priced - I use resharper, mindscape web workbench and tangible t4 daily).

You could always go Java route if you don't like the .NET framework.</comment>


Fixing Ubuntu's broken excuse for a login screen - <AUTHOR> http://www.h-i-r.net/2009/12/fixing-ubuntus-broken-excuse-for-login.html

<comment><USER2> If you're concerned about account enumeration on a desktop OS (server edition doesn't use X), then you can disable it in GDM.

This seems like an angry rant by someone who doesn't bother investigating anything.

</comment><comment><USER3> Or install kubuntu-desktop, switch to it for login (kdm), and select the Gnome environment there. I find this provides me with a nicer login screen, and a nicer set of pointers (for some reason), without starting any other KDE stuff when I actually login, so it doesn't slow down my system.

When I buy a new machine, I may actually have the spare power to run KDE entirely. :/</comment>


Google's contract workforce demands equal benefits - <AUTHOR> https://www.cnbc.com/2018/12/05/googles-shadow-workforce-demands-more-from-ceo-sundar-pichai.html <comment><USER2> Intel, Nike, Microsoft, and HP are just a few companies that have HUGE contract worker forces.. This ought to be interesting moving forward. I know for a fact Intel has been abusing the CW system for years... CW's are a "resource" aka tax write-off.</comment>


How a Failed App Became a Business - <AUTHOR> http://www.thebigmoney.com/features/little-guy-economy/2010/07/08/how-failed-app-became-business?obref=obnetwork <comment><USER2> I thought I read this before...

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1505659></comment>


First stable release of Frameworks 5 - <AUTHOR> https://dot.kde.org/2014/07/07/kde-frameworks-5-makes-kde-software-more-accessible-all-qt-developers <comment><USER2> Shameless plug but the funding period for Randa meetings is due tomorrow and they have raised only 60% of the needed funds. Anyone interested to help: [http://www.kde.org/fundraisers/randameetings2014/](http://www.kde.org/fundraisers/randameetings2014/)

Disclaimer: I am not affiliated with KDE nor I have any connection or will participate to the meetings. I am just a KDE fan and I am sad they didn't reach their goal.

</comment><comment><USER3> Are these libraries at all portable? Do I have to be on Linux or KDE to make use of these? The feature set of eg Solid sounds very tricky to implement in a cross-platform way.

<comment><USER4> Solid is an abstraction layer. Currently, it has multiple backends, including a windows one[0].

[0] [https://projects.kde.org/projects/frameworks/solid/repositor...](https://projects.kde.org/projects/frameworks/solid/repository/revisions/master/show/src/solid/devices/backends/win)

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Fantastic. They seem to be handling this better than the debacle that was the 4.0 release. Kudos to the team for all their hard work.

<comment><USER6> KDE 4.0 was still somewhat immature when it was released, but I'd hesitate to call it a debacle. From what I remember, it was meant mainly for early adopters, so that issues could be discovered and resolved quickly. KDE 4.1 addressed many of these. KDE 4.2 and subsequent releases have provided an extremely robust desktop environment.

On the other hand, GNOME 3 was a debacle, without any doubt. KDE 4 resulted in nowhere near the level of backlash and response that GNOME 3 did. I mean, GNOME 3 was and is so bad that it spawned two rather significant and ongoing salvage attempts in MATE and Cinnamon, in addition to completely driving away a lot of existing users. We just didn't see anything close to that with KDE 4.

<comment><USER7> KDE4 was released when KDE3 was still seeing support. Gnome 3 dropped Gnome 2 entirely, and they even dropped the "compatibility mode" old desktop around the 3.4 release I think, well before most people were keen on switching to Gnome 3.

The early adopters of both complained about how different everything was, but at least in KDE land version 3 was still available for a while. It took the Mate project to maintain Gnome 2.</comment></comment></comment>


Periodic activity from a fast radio burst source [pdf] - <AUTHOR> https://arxiv.org/abs/2001.10275 <comment><AUTHOR> Related: [https://phys.org/news/2020-02-fast-radio-steady- day.html](https://phys.org/news/2020-02-fast-radio-steady-day.html)</comment>


I would never send my kids to school (2017) - <AUTHOR> https://supermemo.guru/wiki/I_would_never_send_my_kids_to_school <comment><USER2> Have to read more to be able to comment meaningfully, but an early red flag is distilled in this statement:

"I am looking for a formula for mass-production of little Nobel Prize winners, researchers, engineers, and creative problem solvers"

There are _many_ potential educational systems that would do better for the top [1|5|10]% of learners, while doing far worse for the remainder of the bell curve (however it is defined). One has to be upfront and honest with themselves, and audience, if the goals and proposals will benefit all overall, or select few. I am not yet convinced that less-structured approach will provide clear benefits for everybody :-/

<comment><USER3> People routinely criticize rigid schooling yet the very people they aspire to emulate are products of such systems. The people who often struggled in such systems (artists, athletes, celebrities) are looked down upon. Even entrepreneurs, by in large, did well in school. For every Steve Jobs there's 10 other founders who were former super students that aggressively tracked into tier-1 schools through hard work and (yes) conformity. No offense but every founder story I read about their "rebellion" is almost silly. It's always like "My parents wanted me to be an investment banker but I said NO!"

<comment><USER4> Yes, if you look at extreme versions like the Soviet system it by and large did what it was supposed to do and produced for all it's other flaws a pretty solid amount of very well trained experts, and a very highly educated general populace. I'd include athletes from your list as well because they also tend to thrive in very rigid environments, artists and celebrities less so.

In my experience whenever I hear people talk about unschooling or free thought for their children it isn't about children at all but about the political beliefs of their parents. There's still this kind of 60s hippie or California 'free spirit' individualist attitude that also has a renaissance in 'hacker' circles. It seems to me more about the beliefs of a certain social class than generally about education.

<comment><USER5> That's a rather charitable view of the Soviet education system, probably colored by the biased selection you'd see in the West.

By 1990, that "very highly educated general populace" was setting out jars of water in front of their TV screens, so they would get charged with healing powers of ESPers

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I don't always feel great about sending my kid to school, but until you can get a critical mass for some kind of alternative, the cost in social isolation for keeping kids out of school seems way too high to me.

<comment><USER7> There is also a cost in learning. I'll doff my hat to parents who have the time, energy, resources and ability to teach their own kids a wide range of subjects but in practice this seems to be the exception. Most homeschooled kids I've known have been very behind their schooled peers.

<comment><USER8> I taught a couple of home school co-ops during school. I found that for this particular group, these kids basically didn't learn math, but were good writers, well read and eloquent speakers.

My wife says that they were all incredible awkward to be around, so there may be something to the social thing.

<comment><USER9> > so there may be something to the social thing

You have a point there. In regular school you are forced to be 'social' or risk punishment. I put 'social' in quotes because I think what is considered social is subjective and mostly made up. But watching how people are treating one another in this world I'm not sure if that social component is really working out good. Homeschooled kids are definitely not as slavishly as the 'socially' drilled kids from regular school.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I'm struggling with this right now. My 7 year old child is "profoundly gifted" which is an IQ above 145 (he is almost 160). He is mostly a wonderful child and he is very very smart. He is well above his peers and is mostly sweet but he has extreme behavioral issues many times throughout the day. He has friends that love to play with him but like a German Shepherd, will out of nowhere attack them verbally because he perceived a slight and will scream and say horrible things. We have sent him to psychologists and behaviorists and burned through our savings and spent close to $200k over the last two years and we have run out of money. I'm getting close to the point where I accept that school isn't for him.

I've been told that most schools do not cater for profoundly gifted children, especially the asynchrony of the emotional development. I don't blame the schools because children like my son are very extreme. I don't know what setting is right for him, but we have no choice but to look into home schooling, let him grow academically and in emotional peace, and maybe when his maturity increases we can reintegrate him with other children. Or maybe home schooling will be such a relief for him that his anxiety or whatever it is that is causing this will get naturally alleviated.

<comment><USER11> Not sure if this is helpful or not; but I have a very similar 8 year old. (Although his emotional maturity isn't quite as far behind as your child, and his response is to shut down rather than attack.) Similar challenge with IQ where he works 3-4 years ahead of grade levels and tests as profoundly gifted.

We found a charter school that mixes home school and in class education. So he is in a typical school environment 2 days a week and we home school the other three days. This has been a good mix for us; he can get some socialization at school (plus other activities we are involved in). It's not as all encompassing and stressful as a full 5 day a week school would be. We can do academically advanced work 3 days a week; while still giving him a chance to work his underdeveloped social skills with a little less pressure on the system. Best of luck; parenting can be hard :)

<comment><USER10> Thank you. This is an interesting idea. I will look to see if my area has something similar (SF Bay Area).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I was homeschooled for all but 2nd and 3rd grade. I have mixed feelings about my experience of it (for me it worked out sort of OK for various lucky reasons) but no mixed feelings about the concept of it, and I now believe it should be illegal. It's possible, even common, to have a terrible social experience AND a terrible education in homeschooling.

Most of the reasoning for it was that public schools are evil and stupid and raise evil drone kids with evil drone values. This is a terrible perspective to inculcate into your children and it warped my view of everyone around me well into my twenties. Also the homeschooling community tends to self-select for a lot of the most narcissistic and BPD types of parents who actually do inflict major developmental and psychological damage and abuse on their children.

There was also a smattering of justifying it to the effect of "children learn better at home than they do in a classroom environment". This may be partly and technically true, but in practice it gets cancelled out by the fact that most parents are not actually able to educate children effectively past a 3rd grade level.

There are always exceptions. The broad exception, as usual, is when the family has plenty of money and the parents have LOTS of autonomy over their work schedules. The home-schooled children of doctors and lawyers that I knew had private tutors in some subjects and did all kinds of travel, participated in sports and robot building competitions, even worked for state legislators as part of their "high school".

Long story short, I am sending my children to Minneapolis public schools. As a parent, I hugely get the desire to keep your kids close and be their everything all the way through to adulthood. It was hard for us to watch our six year old get on the school bus and think about this first chapter of our lives together was in some sense ending. But I also know from experience and observation, the protectionist instinct to keep your kids that close for that long is really not healthy.

<comment><USER13> "I didn't like it, it worked out badly for me, so it should be illegal for everyone"? That seems like a bit of an over-reaction.

> There are always exceptions.

And yet you believe it should be illegal. It's going to be hard to make it illegal and still allow the exceptions, though. "Illegal unless you have plenty of money and autonomy over your schedule" is a pretty sketchy law.

<comment><USER12> > "I didn't like it, it worked out badly for me, so it should be illegal for > everyone"? That seems like a bit of an over-reaction.

It actually didn't work out that badly for me, I thought I made that clear. It worked out badly for most of the people I know, though.

I think it should be illegal because it's broadly unhealthy for society. It's part of a broader belief that the way to fix a suboptimal public education system is to make sure all parents have big incentives to invest time and resources to improve it, rather than for the wealthy to flee and create a system that works only for themselves and leave the public system and the remaining people it serves to wither on the vine.

> > There are always exceptions. > And yet you believe it should be illegal. > It's going to be hard to make it illegal and still allow the exceptions, > though.

Yes, despite the fact that some kids (such as myself) did OK under homeschooling, it should still be illegal. I also knew a kid who learned to drive a stick at age ten with no license, and he didn't die. He was an exception. Still a bad idea that should not be legal.

<comment><USER13> > I think it should be illegal because it's broadly unhealthy for society. > It's part of a broader belief that the way to fix a suboptimal public > education system is to make sure all parents have big incentives to invest > time and resources to improve it, rather than for the wealthy to flee and > create a system that works only for themselves and leave the public system > and the remaining people it serves to wither on the vine.

By that logic, private schools should also be made illegal. And that should be a higher priority than homeschooling, because (I believe) more people send their kids to private schools than homeschool. (Also by the same logic, charter schools and magnet schools are suspect.)

I mean, you are correct in saying that that may be the best chance for the public education system. However, I think that your proposed solution is not only misguided, but heavy-handed authoritarian to boot. Let's throw away parental authority over children, and give it to the state, so that the schools will be better? No thanks. I want the schools to be better, but not at your price.

<comment><USER12> > By that logic, private schools should also be made illegal.

I used to think this too, actually. But now I think that Finland's approach satisfies the goal while being a bit less drastic. Private schools are still allowed, but are not allowed to charge tuition fees (they are funded by a state grant if approved), are not allowed to have a selective admission process, and must offer the same educational and social services as the municipal schools.

It's important to remember, the current system we have is heavy-handed and authoritarian too. It traps lots of people in an underfunded system and then tells them that system is hopeless and they are bad for using it. And parents do not "give up authority over their children" by sending them to public school. By fearing and vilifying any state action whatsoever, what you end up doing is vilifying, fearing (and eventually crippling) democracy. Instead of doing this, consider looking at measures that have been tried, proven to work, and have high satisfaction where they have been done, and join me in advocating an evidence-based approach to improving life for normal people!

<comment><USER13> Parents do not give up control of their children by sending them to public school. (At least, not in the sense I meant. They do, voluntarily, give up some control, but that's not what I was talking about.)

But parents _being required_ to send their children to public school is a forced removal of control from parents. No, I will not join you in advocating that (not even if you include your restricted version of private schools). I trust the median parent to decide what's best for their children more than I trust the state.

<comment><USER12> How do you feel about truancy laws?

Also: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6T2zUEiVQU4](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6T2zUEiVQU4)

<comment><USER13> Ambivalent.

Also: I'm not going to watch a video to try to figure out what your point is. If you've got something to say, say it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Cached: [https://web.archive.org/web/20181117200216/https://supermemo...](https://web.archive.org/web/20181117200216/https://supermemo.guru/wiki/I_would_never_send_my_kids_to_school)

</comment><comment><USER15> A discussion about how school is modeled seems on point for this site, but the author of this seems a bit... zany?

"Before humanity is taken over by AI?"

<comment><USER16> Yeah, I get the sense that this guy attached himself to a topic in the early 80s and has been on a self-directed tangent ever since. He makes a lot of unfounded claims, peppering in _just_ enough references to sound credible.

I'm sure he believes everything he says wholeheartedly, but self-directed learning without guidance can lead you to pick up some weird ideas before having the context to understand why they're "weird". I don't think he's entirely off-base with his criticisms of the school system, but I also don't think he presents any arguments that aren't well-established already.

The question of which sources to trust (and thus learn from) is the biggest reason _not_ to go entirely self-directed with learning. One is equally likely to end up with a theological argument as a scientific one depending on which sources you were introduced to first.

<comment><USER17> I feel fortunate in that most of the zany ideas I attached myself to in my late teens/early 20's were re: physics and mathematics. Because they could be pretty easily shown as nonsense with just a tiny bit more education and thought, like concretely, useless nonsense, for very straight forward easy to demonstrate reasons, I was able to later discard them without too much difficulty, and accept that I didn't actually have any Big Ideas about math and physics, ideas that were going to change the world.

If my Big Ideas about how the world works had been about something more difficult to prove or disprove, like sociology or psychology, I kind of think I would still believe them, because it's one thing to elaborate your maths to a logical contradiction on a couple of sheets of paper, and another to run a well-controlled experiment with thousands of subjects.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> There's a movie relevant to this topic called Captain Fantastic. It's about a father who raises his kids in the forests of the Pacific NW.

I do think it's true that school is oppressive. I guess it's oppressive for the same reason modern mass societies are oppressive: strict conformity is tacitly enforced. The nail that stands out (for whatever reason) is usually hammered in. Of course we also gain a lot from the way we've arranged our societies (and our schools). We're optimizing for the best outcomes on average -- and we may be doing that fairly well -- but that doesn't mean we're anywhere close to optimal for a given individual.

Unfortunately, "optimal for each individual" may not be a realizable goal. But if you have the resources, alternative means of educating your children seem tempting.

It's also well-documented that girls seem to tolerate school better than boys (and get better grades), which is interesting.

</comment><comment><USER19> If you found this interesting, you may find John Taylor Gatto's "The Six- Lesson Schoolteacher" fascinating. He is mentioned in the linked book, of course.

[http://www.cantrip.org/gatto.html](http://www.cantrip.org/gatto.html)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17619435](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17619435)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=182727](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=182727)

</comment><comment><USER20> There is a lot to read here. So far as I can tell it's a mix of proven ideas (spaced repitition, need for sleep, exercise, etc) and speculation (everyone is better without heavily structured schooling).

My guess is we could use more customized, self-driven efforts in schools and intermingled age groups. Though I doubt his vision would be practical without devoting a lot more resources per child.

<comment><USER21> > ) and speculation (everyone is better without heavily structured schooling).

[https://www.theguardian.com/education/2016/sep/20/grammar- sc...](https://www.theguardian.com/education/2016/sep/20/grammar-schools-play- europe-top-education-system-finland-daycare)

[https://www.smithsonianmag.com/innovation/why-are- finlands-s...](https://www.smithsonianmag.com/innovation/why-are-finlands- schools-successful-49859555/)

This isn't speculation. Some of the best performing primary schools in the world are in Scandinavian countries, and they have a heavily unstructured "structure" if you want to call it that, day consisting of mostly playtime and activities, no standardized tests (even when there are testing, the results aren't publicized).

A far-cry from some of the rigor and structure our kids face here in the US, where the primary objective seems to have been to raise obedient subservient factory workers rather than inspire dreams, aspirations, and creativity and teaching children how to truly learn, rather than simply perform a task.

<comment><USER22> Picking Finland as a model is problematic. Compared to the US, it's a small, socially homogenous country that speaks a language isolate.

A much better comparison is Canada, which demographically and socially is much closer to the United States but ranks even higher than Finland in education scores.

AFAIK from my contacts in Canada, their schooling system is very similar to the US, but had much better results.

<comment><USER21> I am not just picking Finland however. I am picking Scandanavia as a region, which consists of 21 million, or a little over half of Canada's population. The sample size is large enough, in my opinion.

It passes the smell test as well: teaching children how to learn versus teaching children how to perform a task or pass a test Obviously the former is going to be better.

Not forcing children to sit in classrooms for the majority of the day is obviously going to be better.

Not being obsessed with standardize testing losing sight of the overall goal of preparing your children for life sounds obviously better.

Starting at 7 years old sounds obviously better - I can specifically attest to this as a parent, where Americans seem obsessed to have their glorified daycare service aka "preschool and kindergarten" so that they can work more of their already overworked life away)

Irrespective of the above points: I get it (the point about population size, different countries, economic systems, political systems, etc). This fact is brought up every time a desired attribute about a smaller country is mentioned. The things I am talking about are irrespective of population size. It requires a perspective change and getting rid of politicians that still somehow think the turn of the century, industrial-age, overtly standardized school system we have built here in America that more resembles a prison than a place of learning is working and just needs more: more money, more teachers, more books, more standardization (now we need to account for all different metrics and biases! more money to the test generators) etc, so we can keep on chugging along with this failed system when the elephant in the room is the system itself is what is a overall failure and needs a complete rebuild -- which is exactly what Finland did in the 60s when it had similar challenges from the Soviet-era education system.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> It's interesting to me to think, compared to our evolutionary history, schools are really really foreign and unnatural. Until relatively recently, the average kid would have grown up in a small community surrounded by her parents, relatives, and other adults. At toddler age she would play with other kids or find ways to amuse herself, later like 5, 6 and up, she'd start to help out with chores.

Whereas at a school kids are cooped up in a high pressure environment, with other kids who are all just as immature, and a few adults to supervise.

My parents homeschooled my brothers and I. I'm really torn as to whether I want to do the same for my kids some day. One the one hand, I feel like it was a good healthy environment to learn and grow up. On the other, I've always felt like I don't fit into society and sometimes am jealous of "normal" people.

<comment><USER24> _> I've always felt like I don't fit into society_

Many who were not homeschooled feel the same way. I don't think this has to do with being homeschooled or not, it has to do with how some people adapt better than others. I went to regular school and sometimes I get that feeling that it is hard to fit in with the average, but that is not a bad thing after all. Modern times are quite tough for everyone. Perhaps we all have that feeling but never talk about it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> Someone needs to disrupt education from the current Industrial Age model to a more current Information Age model. I lean towards a self-paced video model like Khan Academy, with some personal instruction to answer questions, along with some group activities to socialize the children. Unfortunately, our government and union run education institutions resist any changes.

<comment><USER9> It's even pre-industrial age model. School and its strict class system originate from the church. And I totally agree it should be disrupted by a more scientific proven model so kids can actually start to enjoy learning. The problem is that we have billions of people that were conditioned in traditional school. There is practically no way to change those peoples minds, whatever argument you come up with, it's futile. That's all the downvotes ;)

<comment><USER25> You're right, there are some elements from the Agrarian Age, namely getting summers off to help with the harvest. But, if it's one thing I have learned, it's that anything can be disrupted!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> School is supposed to be a place of learning. Instead, it became a daycare for kids to spend their days in autopilot mode

</comment><comment><USER27> Man, this is rant level 1000. It seems the guy was really hurt by the school system.

</comment><comment><USER28> Sounds like someone had a bad school experience.</comment>


How to Avoid Swallowing War Propaganda - <AUTHOR> https://www.currentaffairs.org/2020/01/how-to-avoid-swallowing-war-propaganda <comment><USER2> Read Chapter 6 of Mein Kampf and realize that America has honed that craft to an art form. [http://www.mondopolitico.com/library/meinkampf/v1c6.htm](http://www.mondopolitico.com/library/meinkampf/v1c6.htm)

Review the propaganda of our past wars and understand that this is what they do with every war to get people on board with the insanity of sending their own kids off to die for them. It's not new. Read War Is A Racket by Major General Smedley Butler: [https://www.ratical.org/ratville/CAH/warisaracket.html](https://www.ratical.org/ratville/CAH/warisaracket.html)

Understand that "both sides" agitate for war and/or violent manipulation of foreign countries. If you're upset that Russia interferes with our elections, look in the mirror. We do much worse and have done for decades. Defense contractors figure prominently in the investment portfolios of representatives of both parties.

Keep informed. This is a dependable, convenient place. [https://www.antiwar.com](https://www.antiwar.com)

</comment><comment><USER3> Read as wide a selection of news material as you can over a period of time: From the US, Europe, Russia, Middle East, China, Southern Asia, etc, etc.

You will eventually see where all of their individual biases cancel out, leaving you with a small, relatively accurate "nut" of information that's fairly close to the truth.

If you restrict yourself to (say) the US-only news sources, or the China-only news sources you have nobody to blame but yourself for your being badly misinformed.

</comment><comment><USER4> It's typical for centuries, if not millennia, that politicians will start external dramas (i.e., wars) as smokescreens to deflect and to distract from internal controversies.

</comment><comment><USER5> Forgot to mention the general was genocidal and to blame for tens of thousands of Iraqi and american killings, and that people are fine with assassinating him for that reason.

It's not propaganda to say "yes, he probably deserved it".

It is however dangerous that this was done, because of how it destabilises american relations with Iran.

Why not be honest?

<comment><USER6> One of the points made in the article is that the US had not the authority to decide to kill him, no more than any other country in the world. As a non-U.S. citizen, I find this compelling: the world is probably a more dangerous place now, because of a choice that was taken by one country unilaterally.

<comment><USER5> Absolutely. That's not propaganda.</comment></comment></comment>