Japan's Universities Are Failing - <AUTHOR> https://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/japan/2016-10-31/japan-gets-schooled <comment><USER2> Being a PhD student in Japan (and a non-native English speaker) I agree with many points in the article. Some frustrating things about my own experience:

\- In my lab, all of the papers written by Japanese students have to be checked by foreign students (which are mostly non-native speakers). The quality of the writing is typically less than mediocre, with a few exceptions.

\- We have a seminar every week in which the Japanese students talk in Japanese and will get questions only by the Japanese, while the foreign students present in English and will only get questions from the other foreign students. The environment is a bit toxic.

\- I have a monthly meeting of 30 minutes with my supervisor (should be bi- weekly but he almost never has time for it). Those meetings are usually about which journal or conference we should submit an article to, seldom and barely scratching the surface of what my research is about.

\- Teachers who give their classes in English will get many complaints from Japanese students. In the end most of them switch (back) to teaching in Japanese again.

\- This year I will probably have to go to some sort of job hunting myself, but I'm mostly considering jobs in academia because of the job hunting process for companies seems inhumane. I have heard of cases where students join a company and end up working on projects not remotely related to their research interests.

I often blame myself for not speaking enough Japanese and because of that missing opportunities, but at the same time I am of the opinion that education on the masters and PhD level should be given in English because that seems to be the de facto language of international academia.

<comment><USER3> >I have heard of cases where students join a company and end up working on projects not remotely related to their research interests.

This is normal worldwide - they hire you for your problem-solving skills, not for your tiny research niche

<comment><USER4> I would have to disagree with "normal"\-- many phd students at top (CS) univs in Europe and US can get hired for research-relevant work - e.g. off the top of my head Goog Research, MSR, FAIR, Uber, Snapchat, AirBnB hire a non-trivial # of Phd researchers for relevant fields -- that said some fields are better fits, e.g. a typical exmaple being stochastic modeling tends to align well /w finance.

<comment><USER5> Then apply to those companies. If they're willing to apply for visas for Indian and Chinese grads, there's no reason they'd have a problem doing the same for Japanese grads.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I graduated one of the top schools in Japan and went to the US to get a PhD. (But somehow I got patriotic and came back to Japan after that, don't judge me.) In many ways, Japan feels like a gridlocked country. And people (especially young) already know it but can't do anything about it. I'll point out that the heart of the problem is its lifetime employment system, which the entire economy and social system of Japan is optimized for and depending upon.

So you wanna change schools? You have to change the system and reposition many teachers, but nope, it's not allowed. Teachers are well protected by the Japanese labor law and they can't do any other job (and from what I saw they're particularly inflexible work force). You want more diverse students? Good luck with finding a good career path for them, because under the lifetime employment system you can get good choices only when you're young, and you have to stay in the same company for the rest of your life. Again, many people assume that way and many financial systems in Japan are built upon this assumption. And finally, you want many more competitive researchers? Nooo, because there are too many mediocre researchers that have tenure already. You can't compete with them. Again, blame the lifetime employment system.

I, too, honestly don't know what's a good exit path from this. Personally I think having more immigrants is a way to go, but then there's this right-wing people and Trumpism going rampage right now. Sigh.

<comment><USER7> I think the way you fix a situation like this is to create new, informal institutions. Young people have to feel empowered and have pride in building small communities, and by extension, small businesses. There will always be pressure from others to stop screwing around in the dirt, but you have to preserve and have the desire to want to be living with uncertainty. Over decades I think you can chip away at the fossilized foundations of old institutions (big government, big business, the schools that feed into it and the cultural lockdown they have on young people)

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> I've always heard that uni is a bit of a formality in Japan, and that most career-minded individuals expect to be trained and mentored on the job when they enter the corporate world.

Not sure how true that is or if the article touches on that, since it's paywalled.

<comment><USER9> Japanese universities are relatively easy to graduate from (frankly, this is true for many Ivy-league departments as well), but that doesn't mean people don't try.

First, many folks, especially at the better schools, are genuinely interested in the topics they are studying. As such, they will go above and beyond in some or all of their classes.

Second, in many programs, the professors have contacts in the field that can lead to premium jobs. These are often the most-adored professor in a given department -- mainly because they add a human side to the sometimes bookish disposition of many of the professors... and they make it rain. The student know who these professors are via their senpais, and they go way out of their way to make a good impression in those professors classes. This effort usually reaps huge dividends for talented students.

<comment><USER8> Interesting—thanks for your in-depth perspective.

I didn't mean to imply that nobody tries in Japanese university, of course, especially since I have no first-hand experience. I'd just heard that the culture is, in general, less rigorous than in Western universities.

The point about networking through professors is really interesting to me. Alongside other replies about the intensity of the job hunt for Japanese students, it does sound like the system is geared as a bit of a 'hiring pipeline'—to an extent at least.

Note: I skipped out on attending university altogether, so I don't have a strong sense for the extent to which Western universities differ in these regards.

<comment><USER10> Someone told me that the hard part about universities in Japan is getting in. Once you're in, you have to try to fail. Conversely, High School, while rote, is hard. In that sense, it's a bit opposite of other places like the Us where High School is not hard but typically University is hard.

<comment><USER9> This is largely a misconception about Japanese high schools.

Most Japanese high schools are ridiculously easy to graduate from.

That said, most of the _competitive_ Japanese high schools -- that is, the ones who send their students to the best schools -- require quite a bit of work to graduate from. There is a reason for this.

High schools are divided into tracks in Japan via entrance exams, so the competitive high schools get students who are largely on board with rigorous study. Their goal is to crush the college entrance exam, and the best schools are quite good at test prep (and often go beyond test prep into "proper" learning of the topic). The students know they will have to work hard, and they mostly do. I humbly suggest that the students in these high schools work about as hard as high school students in the US who are trying to get into highly competitive universities.

That said, most high schools in Japan are not terribly competitive to enter and don't have high academic ambitions for their graduates (and that's totally ok). These students often have a lot of fun in high school, much like American high school students who are aiming at low competitive universities or no university.

<comment><USER11> Yeah, I worked in a low level high school in Japan. People don't realise that for every high level school (where students are virtually all prepping for university entrance exams), there or 4 or 5 high schools that are prepping students for trade schools and/or jobs.

Having said that, high level high schools in Japan have a bigger curriculum than what I was familiar with (in Canada). They will cover quite a lot of the stuff that you'd cover in first year university. However, I'll agree that it probably isn't that much different than what students voluntarily cover if they are trying to get into competitive universities in the US, for instance.

Finally, I'd like to echo that students in low level high schools in Japan generally have a lot of fun. It was probably the best atmosphere of any place I've ever worked. Obviously there are some students that are having problems, but the vast majority really enjoy this time. You can see it on their faces -- smiling all day long.

I'm not planning on having kids, but if I were, I wouldn't hesitate to put them into the Japanese school system. Personally, I love it. There are advantages and disadvantages, but as long as the parents aren't pushing their kids into places they don't want to go it offers a lot more opportunity, IMHO.

Just one last point, since it was raised above: employers _do_ spend a lot of time training. I had a friend who graduated from a prestigious university as an engineer. She went to work at a fibre optics company. She spent the first 2 years there building cables and studying. The company wanted to make sure that she understood everything about the business from top to bottom. Now nearly 10 years later, she's managing an engineering group. Very different environment.

<comment><USER12> >> There are advantages and disadvantages, but as long as the parents aren't pushing their kids into places they don't want to go it offers a lot more opportunity, IMHO.

In practice, parents who would like their children to keep their options open, struggle in the Japanese system. You have to decide from an early age to either go for it and work like a dog, or to slack off and enjoy life until entering the work-force but then having very clear limitations on your career.

One personal observation relevant to some HN folks concerns Kousen (technical college). The competition to get accepted is only moderate while the quality of education there is high, I feel. It's not the standard route, but it is definitely worth considering for those who wish to pursue a STEM field.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> I really don't see a way out for Japan that's not immigration. It might lead to social upheaval, but it sounds like that kind of change is sorely needed. A well executed immigration policy could inject fresh blood into that country.

<comment><USER14> > I really don't see a way out for Japan that's not immigration.

That's a pretty small-minded and dogmatic statement; it basically amounts to "copy US policy, it's the only way." At some point, someone in the world is going to actually have to solve the problem of stagnant or declining populations, without copping out and just importing new populations from elsewhere.

<comment><USER15> Well, that "US way" has worked better than every other developed country in that respect, why not adopt it?

<comment><USER16> Because there are huge side effects by copying the "US way". If you want a much smaller scale and a weaker version of the US then adopt it. That is definitely not what the Japanese people want.

<comment><USER13> Right, and the current situation is one such consequence of that. Of course they could try something else - they've been trying since the 90's from what I understand, with mixed results at best.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> As an Asian and knowing many Japanese friends, I just said this report is true. However not only universities in Japan, all the universities in asian countries are facing structural problems in college education.

People treat college degrees like their passports/certificates to get higher positions in society and better works. They are willing to study harder to enter colleges, and then play for 4 years in university.

It's about cultural problems, especially bureaucracy. It exists in asian blood. People would not like to face the truth, but obey the order. Maybe it's originated from Prussian education system and chinese bureaucratic system(former Roman Empire in Asian), and finally cause the failures of education and creativity.

<comment><USER18> As an Asian, it is true that most of the countries in Asia work hard to enter college but in Korea, this is no longer true that they party in university.

Tightening job market drove students to study job-related certificates and tests such as Test of English for International Communication (TOEIC). This is so grueling for young generations with grow student debts.

Students often defer their graduations to appear fresh in the job market. [http://thediplomat.com/2014/05/south-korean-students- delayin...](http://thediplomat.com/2014/05/south-korean-students-delaying- graduation/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> Why would the Japanese look to a London based publication for validation of their rankings among Asian universities? This sort of thing is not an exact science and it's a shame Asia (I know India does this a lot) continues to hold the West (UK/USA specifically) as some great arbitrator and moderator of the world when they may have their own vested interests about things - and of course vice versa.

<comment><USER20>
      > London based

It's US based. Perhaps you're thinking of _The Economist_?

<comment><USER21> "Uiversity of Tokyo lost its number one ranking, falling to number seven, in the Asia university rankings published by the Times Higher Education of London"

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> I applied to a university in Japan and got in.

Essentially it's hard to get in, once you in, you pass. Work culture in Japan and school is a bit toxic.

</comment><comment><USER23> If Japanese universities are failing, how they are leaders in science?

<comment><USER24> Brilliant research universities can be terrible educators, and vice versa.

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> Looks like an interesting article after the first couple of paragraphs, but the paywall makes it hard to say really.

<comment><USER26> Click "Web" at the top, and click the non-Hacker News link

<comment><USER25> Thanks for pointing that out, it's a useful feature, but that doesn't get around the paywall here.

<comment><USER27> Try opening the 'web' link in a different browser, maybe in private mode. That worked for me.

<comment><USER25> No go on incognito, but switching browsers did it. Thanks

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> One little-known fact is that to be accepted by todai is not that difficult compared to be accepted by todai risan (the medical doctor course). About 3000 people enter todai every year but only 100 are accepted to risan. Recently as a trend, almost all of the top students in the very top high school try to go there and it is a problem which is considered a huge waste of intelligent people in Japan. I have heard that one todai dropout took 10 years to be accepted by todai risan. The trend continues for students entering other medical doctor courses at other prestigious universities, such as Kyoto University and so on.

</comment><comment><USER28> According to the same survey by Times Higher Education, Harvard is #6 in US! So why is Harvard in such decline? /s

As soon as their economy picks up, I bet that THE and others would start praising the virtues of the Japanese education system again, regardless of any changes (or no change) in education.

<comment><USER29> _As soon as their economy picks up..._

Japan had their real estate and stock market bubble in 1990. The Nikkei index reached nearly 40,000. People in Japan speculated that Japan would pass the US in GDP in a few years.

Then came the long crash.[1] The Nikkei index dropped all the way to 7000 by 2003. Then it recovered some, but crashed again in 2008. There's been considerable recovery since; it's now around 20,000. But that's still half of the peak.

(The US market is back above its all-time peak before the 2008 crash. It's probably overinflated, but not as badly as before 2008.)

Japan was the first country to hit the "postindustrial wall", or "what are all these people going to do"? I'd hoped they'd come up with a solution the US could copy. But the best Japan has been able to come up with is heavy spending on infrastructure to keep people busy.

[1] [http://finance.yahoo.com/chart/%5En225?ltr=1#eyJtdWx0aUNvbG9...](http://finance.yahoo.com/chart/%5En225?ltr=1#eyJtdWx0aUNvbG9yTGluZSI6ZmFsc2UsImJvbGxpbmdlclVwcGVyQ29sb3IiOiIjZTIwMDgxIiwiYm9sbGluZ2VyTG93ZXJDb2xvciI6IiM5NTUyZmYiLCJtZmlMaW5lQ29sb3IiOiIjNDVlM2ZmIiwibWFjZERpdmVyZ2VuY2VDb2xvciI6IiNmZjdiMTIiLCJtYWNkTWFjZENvbG9yIjoiIzc4N2Q4MiIsIm1hY2RTaWduYWxDb2xvciI6IiMwMDAwMDAiLCJyc2lMaW5lQ29sb3IiOiIjZmZiNzAwIiwic3RvY2hLTGluZUNvbG9yIjoiI2ZmYjcwMCIsInN0b2NoRExpbmVDb2xvciI6IiM0NWUzZmYiLCJyYW5nZSI6Im1heCJ9)

<comment><USER30> The problem of Japan is caused specifically because of its make work culture.

Jobs are focused on shoe face, NOT on producing value.

What matters is not how good you are it is how many years you have put into the company working 80 hour weeks.

It is unsurprising to me that a culture not focused on producing value wouldn't produce much value.

<comment><USER31> Shoe face?

<comment><USER32> You know, shoe face, the classic make work gambit where you employ people to makes shoes with their faces because it's inefficient you have to employ a lot of people to have any sort of production. It's pretty common in the East.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> I spent a thanksgiving back in junior year with a japanese student (along with a jewish bro) in my american uni smoking chronic and covering led zepplin guitar in between turkey eating. Japan needs to send more college students to the US.

</comment><comment><USER34> I suspect (and I read this somewhere) that all the huge investment in infrastructure (dams, trains, highways) has not paid off.

And now they're stuck with the debt associated plus the ongoing cost of maintenance.

</comment><comment><USER35> Anything growing in current Japan except their age?

<comment> purple-again I hear they dabble in video games...

</comment></comment><comment><USER36> Why should we need to attend universities? Apart from the inexplicit or hands- on component of technical training, learning can be done via the web. Leaving home and becoming independent can be rehearsed by travelling or taking a job elsewhere. Finding a spouse can be done online. Credibility and commitment can be measured by some combination of IQ testing and sitting outside the employer's office (a la Fight Club). The idea that universities will help you to think independently is untrue. They create conformity. Indeed, as historical religious institutions, they were founded for this purpose.</comment>


Show HN: Standup meetings and data analytics in Slack - <AUTHOR> https://blog.standuply.com/standuply-2-0-intelligent-data-assistant-628ca8c51bf <comment><AUTHOR> We've been working hard to show this version of the Slack bot to you. From now on you can not only run asynchronous standup meetings but also attach data to your reports and share it with your team on Slack.

Looking to have your feedback.</comment>


Prevent users from sharing their login information - <AUTHOR>

There are certain sites that have tutorials or other content of value and charge a membership fees. I was wondering what prevents users from buying membership on a site and
then sharing their login info with friends/family or posting that information
publicly online. That way, only one person actually buys the subscription
but multiple people can gain access. <comment><USER2> 1 session per account is pretty useful, that way it's less likely users will borrow their account to other people. IP restrictions is another soloution.

<comment><AUTHOR> That's the only thing I could come up with as well.</comment></comment>


Macron's tech visa is designed to make France better for startups than the US - <AUTHOR> https://qz.com/1016742/emmanuel-macrons-new-tech-visa-is-designed-to-make-france-more-friendly-for-startups-than-the-us-or-uk/ <comment><USER2> Lol,

Start by eliminating all these useless laws and regulations that make entrepreneurship a nightmare, start lowering taxes on small businesses and start-ups then we'll talk. In France you will get taxed well before making your first cent of revenue.

<comment><USER3> Italy has the same hostility toward small businesses. Legislation is way too favorable to large companies and incumbents. Until that changes, it'll take more than a visa to be a magnet for startups.

<comment><USER4> Its not hostility... Its how do you think your streets, and roads, and all the other things that created your modern society are paid for. Anti Tax is a sham. You want to just avail of everything free and not chip in for it? Would you rather be nickle and dimed for every single thing?

<comment><USER5> They don't have property taxes, vehicle licensing fees, or gasoline taxes?

<comment><USER4> Is this how you would fund the military and healthcare?? with property and gasoline taxes? how amusing.

Excessive tax is a burden, fair enough. But "Tax is theft" fetishism is just a lack of the reality of how civilization happens and avoidance of societal responsibility.

If you don't want to pay tax you should be micro charged for every single little thing you do, and pay private prices for all your "Services"

<comment><USER5> Well, plenty of countries manage on VAT, tariff, excise and lots of other taxes... again, it doesn't _NEED_ to be income tax (frankly, I'm not a fan of property taxes, but it's a reasonable approach to local roads). Also, I don't feel that _ANYONE_ should have more than half their income taken in taxes, period...

If a government can't manage to function on less than half the combined income of all its' citizens, it shouldn't be doing some of the things it's doing. As to the US, I feel the military should be cut dramatically, and that healthcare really should have included reform to medicare/medicaid and va medical. A co- op NPO would have been a better approach, allowing it as a baseline option to increase competition with private carriers.

Also, normalizing the laws between the states should have been a larger priority as well. Right now, inter-state carriers are pretty much non-existent as a direct channel.

That doesn't even get into the bullshit passive-aggressive laws regarding "women's health" from the right.

Just because I'm against raising taxes without cause doesn't mean I believe there should be no taxes.. and yeah, I wouldn't mind seeing purpose taxes closer to what they're being spent on. The layers of bureaucracy in a general income/vat tax at a national level only feeds systemic corruption, and over- spending.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Here's[1] the link to the actual French government page that talks about the visa in detail. I wonder how much of an impact this'll have since it requires the applicant to have a masters degree or higher.

[1] [http://visa.lafrenchtech.com/4/french-tech-visa-for- employee...](http://visa.lafrenchtech.com/4/french-tech-visa-for-employees)

</comment><comment><USER7> It won't work. Fund raising like anything that involve a certain level of power is political in France.

I love my country but its qualities relies elsewhere. For example, in its healthcare system, in the transports or even in the nuclear industry (without endorsing it).

Its a cultural issue that started with Louis XIV and Versailles (the centralisation).

It's not a bad thing in itself. It's just a different path.</comment>


Blender Is Free Software - <AUTHOR> https://code.blender.org/2019/06/blender-is-free-software/ <comment><USER3> It's nice a high profile project such as Blender speaks about freedom to push back against the "source available" movement.

I've always wondered why niche specific software such as Blender doesn't have a ton of industry backing. Any medium sized graphics shop could have a full developer on the payroll for a fraction of the repeated licensing costs of proprietary solutions, that is, someone who works full time on Blender and whom you can directly approach, in-house, for features and fixes.

And it wouldn't even interfere with their competitive edge, since the software isn't their business. They don't have to care about the GPL as long as the software does what they want.

I think it has something to do with appealing to an employee's vanity, where getting a very expensive software package "for free" to do your job makes one feel appreciated.

<comment><USER4> Tangent Animation is trying to change this! They use almost 100% Blender, have some developers and contribute back to the community. See "Next-Gen" on Netflix for their latest movie.

Disclaimer: Worked for them as a Blender developer on Next-Gen

<comment><USER5> Are you able to talk about anything you did there? I only get to work on open source in my spare time (and nothing as complex as Blender). What did a normal day look like for you?

<comment><USER6> Our repository is public. You can look at every single commit we did: [https://github.com/tangent- animation/blender278/commits/mast...](https://github.com/tangent- animation/blender278/commits/master)

"Normal days" changed during the course of the project. In the beginning, it was work on new features for months if necessary, towards the end it were overnight patches for "frame x in shot y looks wrong/crashes/takes forever".

<comment><USER5> Thank you!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I try to say _libre software_ rather than _Free Software_ , and I wish the FSF would back the _libre_ term fully.

When RMS is giving a speech, he has an opportunity to expound on what's now wordplay about "free software", to a captive audience that's perhaps already receptive or prepared to listen.

But low-level grassroots advocacy opportunities often happen in contexts in which people are talking for some other purpose, and if you only say "free software", and they don't already know what you mean, you're actually working against your goal. People who don't know what "free software" means naturally assume you mean software for which they don't pay money. If you instead say "libre software", it's not misleading, and if they don't know, and they care, they can ask you about it, or look it up.

(I suspect it would've been better to fully embrace the "libre" term before an office suite was branded that. Now we have a new potential source of confusion, such as "Yes, I already tried Libre, but liked Office better". But I still usually feel more effective saying "libre software" than "free software". And, in practice, I end up saying "open source" perhaps the majority of the time, even when I'm thinking libre specifically, because "open source" is more established than "libre", perhaps because the FSF keeps saying "free".)

<comment><USER8> I'm a soon-to-be third year CS student. If I started to use the term "libre software" I'd be ridiculed to hell and back. I think you overestimate the receptiveness of developers.

<comment><USER9> I'm not sure how to interpret your reply in the context of what the parent is saying. Of course if it's not common to use the term then people will find it odd, out of place or maybe even pretentious. If some influential people manage to push it, eventually it'll be accepted.

If our industry as a whole managed to utter words like "cloud computing", "webscale" or "full stack" with a straight face I really think "libre software" shouldn't be that out of reach.

<comment><USER10> I never uttered "full stack" with a straight face. Actually, in the last interview I had with a CEO where he asked if I was a "full stack developer" I just laughed.

<comment><USER11> I don't get it - what's laughable about the idea of someone who can write both the front-end and back-end of a web application?

I know people who do that in practice.

<comment><USER10> Yeah, I can do that too. And a LITTLE bit more.

<comment><USER11> So what do you mean? That anyone can do this? I don't really know anything about front-end web development, so I couldn't do full-stack, and it isn't the case that anyone could.

I still can't understand why you think it's such a hilarious question that you laugh out loud about it?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Can someone provide some context for this post?

Are there calls to change Blender's license?

Are add-on developers violating GPL? The post mentions that a bridge between open source and proprietary needs to be open source but the add-on itself doesn't?

Is it just a "how dare you sell products closed source products on top of blender?"

The business model of providing support is all well and good but it's just one. If the software is super easy to use then why would you pay?

<comment><USER13> Somebody recently launched a new site "Blender Depot" which hosts a bunch of Blender add-ons and provides a batch install feature.

Some of the add-ons on this site are commercial plugins available for sale by their authors. All Blender plugins have to be GPL so this sort of redistribution is legal but some of these authors have been rather upset about it. So a large argument ensued on the Blender forums about the GPL, the ethics of software redistribution even when copyright law says it is okay, etc.

<comment><USER14> I don't think using an API of a GPL software means your software "has to be" GPL. For example, not all software running on Linux using Linux APIs (syscalls) is GPL.

<comment><USER15> Linux has an explicit exception in its license so that user space software doesn't fall under GPL. [https://github.com/torvalds/linux/blob/master/LICENSES/excep...](https://github.com/torvalds/linux/blob/master/LICENSES/exceptions/Linux- syscall-note)

> NOTE! This copyright does _not_ cover user programs that use kernel services > by normal system calls - this is merely considered normal use of the kernel, > and does _not_ fall under the heading of "derived work".

<comment><USER16> That's not an actual exception but a note clarifying what the GPLv2.0 covers.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> From the article:

"And if you think you 'suffer from piracy' or find it hard to do business with Free Software? Just distinguish yourselves with the proven successful free/open source business model: provide docs, training, content, frequent updates and support. Your customers will love you!"

Well, then why does Blender need a development fund? [0]

I honestly agree with most of what this article says and I admire the spirit of open source development and the GPL. Still, I don't think it's a viable business model for all of us under all circumstances. People need to be able to make money with their software or otherwise some software just won't be available. I guess that's effectively what this says for the Blender community. Nothing wrong with that at all, just not the way to go for everyone.

[0] [https://fund.blender.org/](https://fund.blender.org/)

<comment><USER18> Why? People want to donate. Would be silly not to take their money and use it to improve the project even more. I would argue that donations is a key part of this style of FOSS business model.

<comment><USER19> The realty is that donation-based is not a sustainable business model. You basically can't always afford to _eat_ based on it, leave alone to rent an apartment.

Ditto for the much touted GPL "service model" - charging for support and training. Realistically, this just does NOT work for anyone except for RedHat, because otherwise there would've been plentful examples everytime this subject surfaces and there's always none. Also saying this as an ISV with tens of years of experience - making living off GPL-licensed software through secondary services is an absolute suicidal pipe dream. Even the double- licensed model (which is not applicable in Belnder's add-on case) is dramatically inferior to more conventional licensing models.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> This argument has been going on for a while, but apparently exploded recently.

Im so conflicted about this. I feel like my left brain is fighting my right brain. Or mom and dad are fighting again.

On one hand, I have been a huge blender fan for over a decade and personally would give away anything I developed for it. Even if it were high quality. I am all for this way of doing it. Kind of forcing a level playing field no matter if you are AAA studio or some broke but talented college student making 3d models.

On the other hand I totally get how those add-on devs feel being officially told "Thanks for all your hard work, but if someone takes your add-on and gives it away, it's fine." \- These add-on devs can charge users to download the add-on, not for the add-on. I used to believe it wasnt right to charge for the ability to download a 'free' add-on, but after seeing how high quality some of the addons are, I completely feel they deserve some compensation for improving blender even more.

Basically, I don't even know what's right anymore.

<comment><USER21> If only there were a license that made the original project open but allowed you to license derived works in whichever way was most appropriate...

<comment><USER17> There are such open source licenses: LGPL and MPL for example. These, however, come with their own set of caveats.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> When 90% of the plugins and tutorials are available for proprietary software it's hard to support blender.

It also doesn't help that the UI of the blender is extremely hostile for new users. When other tools are easier to use and have better tooling it's hard to justify the usage of blender.

<comment><USER23> > plugins are available for proprietary software

I'm genuinely surprised that FOSS projects like Blender (or, for another example, GIMP) don't offer ABI compatibility to allow the use of plugins made for the specific nonstandard ABIs of popular proprietary systems.

Anyone know why they don't? Is it just a platform thing—e.g. having to support those plugins would mean having to compile winelib into your project?

<comment><USER24> Can whomever is downvoting explain why this approach wouldn't work? I think the above is a very insightful comment.

<comment><USER25> I didn't downvote, but I would expect most programmers to be able to guess at the gigantic amount of effort required to maintain compatibility across a considerable semantic mismatch and at least understand the choice to spend resources elsewhere, especially in the context of open source, where there is no payroll to mitigate drudgery.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> I see a ton of people talk about how difficult blender is/was to use, but what I found funny is some of those same people use VIM..

Blender took me almost the exact same amount of time to learn as 3ds, but honestly once I got used to blender, I actually find 3ds harder and more confusing to use and actually changed a bunch of keybindings to more closely match blender.

<comment><USER21> Yep. Blender is impossible to use without instruction, but once you learn it it's perfectly usable.

<comment><USER26> I think they started improving the UI with version 2.5, and now with the 2.8 release the UI is very user friendly. I still find the undo stack confusing sometimes.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> Wait a second.

Shouldn't it be possible for someone to sell a Blender add-on but it keep it closed source and non-GPL?

That's just writing code for an API. As we all know from Google vs Oracle case it would be disastrous if API's could be copyrighted. GPL is "just" a copyright license.

I'm not sure how Blender add-ons work though.

<comment><USER28> GPL-licensed projects can't link against non-GPL code. This provision is extended to cover plugins and functional extensions of interpreted environments. That's why a lot of people don't like the GPL.

[https://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl- faq.html#GPLPlugins](https://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-faq.html#GPLPlugins)

[https://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl- faq.html#IfInterpreterIsGPL](https://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl- faq.html#IfInterpreterIsGPL)

<comment><USER29> But what do the plugins link against? As far as the plugin creator is concerned the license of the object files of the API could be MIT, closed source, GPL or whatever. He doesn't bundle any Blender code.

<comment><USER28> The GPL is written in such a way that the GPL argues that any plugin designed for a GPL-licensed application is itself GPL-licensed.

> If the main program and the plugins are a single combined program then this > means you must license the plug-in under the GPL or a GPL-compatible free > software license and distribute it with source code in a GPL-compliant way. > A main program that is separate from its plug-ins makes no requirements for > the plug-ins.

ok, so does Blender and a Blender plugin constitute a combined program?

> If the main program uses fork and exec to invoke plug-ins, and they > establish intimate communication by sharing complex data structures, or > shipping complex data structures back and forth, that can make them one > single combined program. A main program that uses simple fork and exec to > invoke plug-ins and does not establish intimate communication between them > results in the plug-ins being a separate program.

depends on the definition of "intimate communication".

Does a process that spawns another process and then communicates with that process over a unix pipe constitute "intimate communication"?

There's no section of definitions that provides a legal definition of "intimate communication". It also does not provide a legal definition of "control flow". If one system sends a message to another system and then takes action based on a response, is that control flow? Does it depend on whether or not the systems are synchronous? It also doesn't provide a legal definition for "dynamic linking".

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GNU_General_Public_License#Com...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GNU_General_Public_License#Communicating_and_bundling_with_non- GPL_programs)

> The FSF thus draws the line between "library" and "other program" via 1) > "complexity" and "intimacy" of information exchange, and 2) mechanism > (rather than semantics), but resigns that the question is not clear-cut and > that in complex situations, case law will decide.

honestly I'm not sure anyone actually knows because it hasn't been tried in court and there isn't established case law.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> > The GPL has often be called infectious ... Proprietary code is infectious in > ways too (try to use proprietary code in your work and face the > consequences).

I don't think the comparison is fair. The reason is that use of proprietary code does not necessarily convert an entire codebase's license into that of the proprietary software. On the other hand, GPL's terms insist that the client code be released under the same term.

</comment><comment><USER31> I'm using blender every day and absolutely love it. the fact that it's run by such a genuine and inspirational guy like Ton makes me like blender even more :) if you want to know more about him and his plan for Blender watch this interview [https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=qJEWOTZnFeg&vl=en](https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=qJEWOTZnFeg&vl=en) or the tour of their new office (it's really funny) [https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=ZkKPXn6QBx8](https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=ZkKPXn6QBx8)

</comment><comment><USER15> > Blender's scripting API is an integral part of the software. Blender add-ons > work, look and feel like Blender features. And as for any other Blender > feature that means – it has to be free, free and free forever! Paying for an > add-on can only mean access to the add-on download service… offering it to > you as GNU GPL. Your freedom as a user and developer is guaranteed.

This is the same issue that wordpress has faced in the past, I believe - <USER2> proprietary plugins allowed to a GPLed product?

<comment><USER32> They treat addons as GPL'd. The same issue comes up with Blender Game Engine, requiring the whole game to be GPL.

<comment><USER33> Notice that the Blender Game Engine is discontinued anyway. People seem to instead use Armory3D[1], which has full Blender integration and is zlib licensed[2].

1: [https://armory3d.org](https://armory3d.org) 2: [https://github.com/armory3d/armory/blob/master/LICENSE.md](https://github.com/armory3d/armory/blob/master/LICENSE.md)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> Does Blender make any money? Are the developers compensated?

I've always had a kind of conflicting perspective, as a developer myself, I enjoy the vibrant exchange of information and source which is open and often free and even "gratis". It has helped me grow and learn, it empowers me to be more productive as I can leverage a lot of existing code. That said, it also often worries me that the culture isn't willing to pay for a lot of these, since being a developer is also my profession. If we get users used to not paying for software, and developers willing to work for free, does it devalue the job of developer?

For example, I often wonder, if there was only proprietary software, would developer salaries be even higher?

Would there be more devs who are small businesses, one to 3 man teams, working on software like grep, 7zip, calendars, todos, calculators, etc. ?

As it seems, open source, especially the licenses which have the side effect of being mostly "gratis" forces the market into offering a service or product which isn't the software itself. Which is why a lot of devs can't make a living of being a small business, we need to be employed by bigger companies who offer collateral products or services.

<comment><USER35> The direct financial impact is one thing to consider. But another is... I'll describe it as capability, complexity, and progress. The ability for developers to build on each other's stuff is hugely significant. Otherwise, every company reimplements the same stuff, and even for what they buy, the standard (and interoperable) solution that the industry settles on and is thus able to advance further, is determined by the vagaries of business: pricing, approach, market segmentation, lockin strategy, leaders' whims, etc. Quality factors in there somewhere. As a prominent CEO once said, "We're not here to write excellent software. We're here to write software that's better than our competitors'."

Free software is more important at the foundational levels, because the virtuous cycle of endless improvement raises the baseline for everyone over time.

For those of us whose livelihoods depend on software salaries, it cuts both ways. We can't get paid for writing grep, but we also don't have to spend our careers rewriting grep over and over again at different companies.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> An API can be used as a GPL propagation route only for as long as there's a single implementation of it that's GPL'd. And only potentially at that.

For example, if I "publish" an API:

        int strlength(const char *);

and ship a GPL code for it, I cannot realistically expect anyone depending on strlength() to be suddenly liable for GPL'ing their work. That'd be ridiculous.

Meaning that for the Blender add-ons to _not_ be subject to Blender's GPL clause it should be sufficient to have an alternative implementation of Blender's API. This, incidentally, will also validate addons against GPL criteria for "derived software" \- whether the code in question can or cannot function without GPL-licensed software. If it can, then it's not a derived work and not a subject to GPL terms.

The only way for Blender to prevent commercial addons (which is ultimately what their actions amount to) is to explicitly prohibit that in their license.

<comment><USER36> Sure, once there's a some-other-license re-implementation of blender it's fair game. Pretty sure there isn't one though?

<comment><USER37> Does it have to be a real reimplementation? What if I made a terrible, low effort 3D modelling application that "officially supports" the same API that blender supports, but isn't GPL. Would non-GPL addons targeting that be legal?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER38> Blender is a great application some day I will put more time into learning it. I have always loved drawing, photography and video. Even as a kid in the 80s when two of those were very expensive. I was into it so much that as a child and teen I was labelled as "that kid that likes to draw". Later in life I was moments away from apply to an art college (NSCAD) but backed out.

Also as a kid I liked programming but I never did make anything. BASIC from magazines typed line by line into an Atari 600XL no storage, in the winter when power interruptions or outages were common.

You would think with those interests Blender would be my thing but I was a generation too early and too poor.

By the way I think many people don't know of all the capabilities Blender. Those that do use it may believe it's only for 3D graphics. But it's so much more than 3D graphics it has video editing, green screen even 3D printing and a game engine.

<comment><USER39> I didn't realize Blender did video editing! I do very basic editing, mostly with Kdenlive. I will have to give Blender a try.

<comment><USER35> It's pretty awkward to use for video editing. I tried it out, repeating a simple project I'd done in kdenlive. You have to do a lot of manual format setup. Worse, by default it'll be unusably slow until you configure the caching just right. I found it more of a "sure, you _could_ get this done in blender, but..."

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER40> Blender is a great piece of software and I appreciate their choice of license (GPL). Obviously the GPL put a lot of thought in the development of their licenses and it's important for software developers to know about the subtle differences. With AGPL they try to close the loophole that companies use to build a network layer around GPL licensed code. AFAIK if you link to GPL your work is "derived", so you have to open it which is not the case if used "over the network".

I wonder if AGPL should be considered a secret weapon against the big SaaS companies. On HN I read that GPL and especially AGPL software/libraries are a no-go for some of these companies, but maybe this can be a feature for small players?

</comment><comment><USER41> Obviously, as it was since 20 years ago. This question was being answered and clear a lot of time ago.

After buying books about blender, spending many hours and trying to learn it, I personally find that is still a big pain to use it, but this is a different question (and we can't blame propietary software for it; can we?).

The real problem with blender is not if is free software or not, IMHO. Maybe Blender is the next low hanging fruit in the eyes of "put big company here". A clon provided with a few buttons here and there, some money for marketing and voilá, "we invented this zuppa-new thing that is great". Has happened before.

<comment><USER42> What you're suggesting is what happened to MySQL. Oracle bought it and the community forked the last pre-Oracle version to a new project, MariaDB, where everyone continues on as before.

<comment><USER41> This is the normal way when a program was widely accepted and has a lot of legacy code around that needs to be maintained. This is not the case with blender. I remember when skype, or the germ of whatssap, were born, nurtured and developped in Linux. We don't have any good alternative to skype nowadays. Nobody remembers skype as open source.

Blender interface was ridiculously hard to grasp for a newbie and as result, it looks still like a minoritary arcane software. I'm not in the community and could be wrong, but seen from outside it seems that blender is still struggling to be widely known or adopted. Twelve years had passed after "Big Buck Bunny" and blender seems to have problems still to attract new users (or it moves in a very closed circle).

<comment><USER43> Yeah nice comparison to a single user software to a social networking application.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER44> This is a little dirty, but couldn't they comply with the letter of the GPL and release the code, but none of the build/install scripts?

Then only the most motivated users could get it for "free"?

<comment><USER45> I don't really support it, but this exact method appears to be working pretty well for Ardour (and yes, they are using GPL 2). It has resulted in some awkward situations, such as Ardour being available in the package managers of some Linux distros, but only as outdated, poorly installed versions. I remember installing such a version and finding it basically unusable.

Nonetheless, this technique gets them patrons, currently at 3701 subscribers giving $8819.00/month.

<comment><USER46> Last I checked, Ardour was fairly easy to install from a git checkout, at least on Linux. Their website advises uses to install the paid binary instead, but in practice it's easier to install from source than Blender IME.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER47> What motivated this post? The general licensing discussiin regarding SaaS appropriation by large players or something specific to Blender?

</comment><comment><USER48> How cool is this, Python!

"Blender has a flexible Python controlled interface. Layout, colors, size and even fonts can be adjusted. Use hundreds of add-ons by the community or create your own using Blender's accessible Python API."

</comment><comment><USER49> Information comes in different forms, and I am not quite sure why software is considered speech (and must, therefore, be free), but, say, schematics of an industrial electronic device or the blueprint of an airplane is not.

<comment><USER50> There are certainly some people who argue that any form of IP shouldn't exist. Copyleft is a way to work within the existing IP system, but they would prefer IP be abolished. As for why free software took off while free $(other engineering discipline) hasn't, I'd say it's because "everyone" has a computer, but very few have an airplane factory.

<comment><USER49> "everyone" has bookshelves; should books be free, then?

<comment><USER50> There already are lots of books in the public domain or licensed under creative commons. But in general, yes, the same arguments some people use for removing IP restrictions on software apply equally to books. Or music. Or anything else subject to copyright.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER51> I know how Foundations and Donor Advised Funds make their decisions, people that aspire to support open source don't have the discretion over the foundation funds to do so.

</comment><comment><USER52> Without Blender we probably couldn't have started to develop our VR app as a small startup. Also, Ton seems to be genuinely nice and super funny guy.

</comment><comment><USER53> Python was once an underdog looking up to java, now python stand shoulder to shoulder next to java. Only a matter of time for blender i guess.

</comment><comment><USER54> Not only is Blender free but there is a huge amount of incredibly high quality stock content that is creative commons too like blendswap.com

</comment><comment><USER55> Blender is one of those projects that even people who aren't into FOSS have at least heard of. It's pretty nifty!

</comment><comment><USER56> I don't understand the point of this post. It's full of fluff. Is he arguing that people should open source the add-ons they create for Blender?

<comment><USER57> He explicitly says so in the comments section:

"Blender add-ons (Python scripts using the Blender API) have to be GPL license compatible. You pay for the service to download it, not for the software. Never feel bad about harming any GPL developer by sharing her/his code. Sharing is an act of love!"

<comment> village-idiot Paraphrasing from another comment, you know that the post is unclear when you have to explain it in the comments section.

<comment><USER58> I think most discussions about the GPL have this feature.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER59> The GPL is infectious, as in laughter.

</comment><comment><USER60> They give away code, but place restrictions on using it. When did we become so vile?

</comment><comment><USER61> I really wanted to try to learn blender for 2d animation.

I think the new version in beta needs a few improvements on this front. Its so new that it will take a bit more time to get good tutorials made.

That being said, the UI in the beta version is much improved. I am looking forward to getting better at using it.

<comment> em-bee the next major version is supposed to have a much improved UI

</comment></comment><comment><USER62> Blender is free[×], forever

[×] subject to terms and conditions, restrictions, our definition of the word free, and what we allow you to do with it even after you receive it</comment>


Suggestions to find a business opportunity in a developing country - <AUTHOR>

I'd like to know what is your suggestions to find a business opportunity in a developing country, more precisely in Brazil.
I've been looking out to find problems that I could solve for small business. I confess that as a graduate student I'm having a hard time discovering possible niches to work on.
I feel like i'm on a desert, I can't come up with my own ideas but I don't know what small businesses need as I've been doing mostly distributed systems research, except for some time that I worked as a programmer on a legal firm developing internal systems. Entrepeneurship looks like some secret cult here.
Most discussions here on hacker news seems to be focused on consumer services; it seems hard to apply the advice given on those situations in an economic environment like Brazil, where legal requirements are complex, taxes are high, and there is lack of venture capital for funding.
Self-funded businesses targeting small business clients seem to have a greater chance of surviving. Sure it won't be the next twitter or facebook, but I'm more interested in having creative freedom and enough money to have a regular life (i.e. I don't need to own yatch).
With this context in mind, what would you suggest as a good approach to find business opportunities? <comment><USER2> How can you say entrepreneurship is a secret cult when there are so many small businesses in Brazil?

Your problem right now is you lack domain specific knowledge. Over here in Australia, there are several software companies focussing on agribusinesses. What is there to say there isn't similar needs in Brazil?

<comment><AUTHOR> By "secret cult" I was trying to mean that there's a lack of data about it's practice, you know? It's hard to find people sharing their experiences on entrepeneurship like you find here.

I totally agree with you about the lack of domain knowledge. What do you think is a good way to develop this knowledge? To get a job on some company outside my field (i.e. software development)?

<comment><USER2> Let's say you want to target the agrisoftware business. You might see if they don't have a tablet offering - then write a simple data collection app for farmers. There'd surely be forums online to give you some idea. Then show it to them, and see if they want to license it or buy your company.

You can also pick an industry and field questions on LinkedIn or Quora.</comment></comment></comment>


Congratulations Facebook - <AUTHOR> http://www.tonyamoyal.com/blog/?p=15

<comment><USER2> I don't think anybody types "porn" when looking for porn.. I could probably join on three more terms and exceed facebook: <http://tr.im/dvoc>.

Just a thought -- you get what you measure.

<comment><USER3> I don't understand why someone would google for "facebook" in the first place (or at least, more than once). I wonder how accurately the web search traffic for facebook correlates with its actual usage/popularity.

<comment><USER4> A surprisingly large number of people always use their favorite search engine to get to other sites. They Google for "facebook" or "www.facebook.com". This goes for all web sites.

<comment> old-gregg I do it all the time. With all these web 2.0 domain names I can never be sure was it wufoo or woofu or woofoo dot com. But google _is_ sure.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I read somewhere that many people use Facebook for some of the same reasons they use porn websites...not even joking.</comment>


How Twitter Cards Work (technical) - <AUTHOR> http://blog.trywildcard.com/post/94445586523/how-twitter-cards-work

<comment><USER2> If Twitter could use common standard like microdata (proposed by w3c), it would probably be a better approach.

The big problem with Twitter product cards is the lack of real time information (ie the data shown to user is crawler dependent). So, e-commerce vendors with dynamic pricing needs (like hotels, airlines) wont use it much. E-Commerce vendors (like Etsy) where users are little less price sensitive have a better shot at using these cards.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> This is a really straight forward explanation of how to implement cards in Twitter. Each social platform (Pinterest, FB, Goog Now, Twitter) requires a different implementation to achieve a similar goal. This is a good nuts and bolts view of what you need to do in Twitter to make it happen</comment>


Why We Procrastinate - <AUTHOR> http://nautil.us/issue/16/nothingness/why-we-procrastinate <comment><USER2> It's an interesting idea - could we deal with procrastination by visualising ourselves in the future position where the task is not done? I don't think it's the full story on procrastination though.

Procrastination can be rational. If you have a difficult phone call to make, and you can't get focus to deal with it, it's rational to not do the obvious thing of picking up the phone and making a mess of the call.

I procrastinate when I don't feel able to get a task sufficiently into focus that I can progress it. There's a particular struggle with sequencing steps - working out a series of things to do to contain the task.

My technique for getting around this is to brainstorm simple things I could do around my outcome. This could be as trivial as writing a paragraph about why it feels hard.

After a bit of this, I can string together four or five tasks. Once I have a sequence of things, I can get some motion. Then procrastination ceases to be a problem.

Something else I find useful is to accept exhaustion. If I can't sequence, it may be because of exhaustion. Go and lay on a couch with no intent, and try to think about it with no pressure. Sometimes new ideas come here. But if I fall asleep - it was needed. Come back after rest for another go.

<comment><USER3> >you can't get focus to deal with it... working out a series of things to do to contain the task... brainstorm simple things I could do around my outcome... writing a paragraph about why it feels hard... string together four or five tasks... Come back after rest for another go.

This is not what I consider procrastination, and I consider myself a major procrastinator, struggling constantly with time management issues because of it.

What you are describing is a context of ancillary effort surrounding the task. These are Things Being Done To Do The Thing.

Necessary but insufficient. Secondary, but nonetheless essential.

Procrastination, on the other hand, is the Absolute Evasion Of All Things Related To The Task At Hand.

Not lead up. Not preparation. Not sequencing. Not anything.

Anything But.

Do Something, but make damn well sure it's Not The Thing That Relates To What You Ought To Be Doing.

Email fidgeting. Netflix grazing. Guitar strumming. Water boiling watching. But not The Thing. And not Near The Thing.

Anything But The Thing.

This is doubly hard when creative (read: conceptual, thinking, fuzzy, ethereal, imaginative) work is The Thing To Be Done. Because sometimes Not Doing The Thing is what Needs To Be Done To Do It.

But just as often, _oh man, do we like to fool ourselves_ into even avoiding Not Doing The Thing Needed To Do the Thing We Need To Do by simply Not Even Doing That.

If you pack batteries all day into tiny boxes in a warehouse filled with angry and watchful foremen (I've done this), there's no possibility for confusion between Getting It Done and Not Getting It Done.

But if you've got 600 words to write on how SEC New Rule 506(c) pertains to real estate crowdfunding, who's to say that sitting on your ass and watching 7 episodes of Adventure Time isn't integral to your effort. (It's not. But still, who's to say?)

Don't even get me started on billable hours. That's a whole nother can of worms.

<comment><USER4> What you describe here my friend, doesn't seem to be procrastination. The above are pretty much all the hallmark signs of resistance. An interesting read; "The war of Art" -Steven Pressfield.

edit: care to explain the downvote?

<comment> squeaky-clean Also not the downvoter, but I can also see why. Your comment doesn't really give me much to understand or respond to. What do you mean by it is not procrastination? You're going to have to explain that. The only thing I could about resistance in the sense you use was a small paragraph on Wikipedia about a term coined by Steven Pressfield. So it's probably not something known by anyone who has not read that book (which does seem interesting by the way, thank you). Even then, the way it was described, it doesn't sound like procrastination and resistance need to be mutually exclusive.

Also looking into it (just based on the wiki blurb, not having read the book. So it's entirely possible I'm misunderstanding it). But a "universal force that he claims acts against human creativity" sounds cheesy. There's no external force acting against me when I watch Adventure Time instead of accomplishing something (I'm guilty of that too), or browse HN while at the office. I'm just being lazy and doing something easy and enjoyable, instead of something hard but beneficial. And that matches the definition of procrastination pretty well.

<comment><USER4> Thanks for taking the time to explain this to me, I really appreciate the feedback. I shall ensure replies are more thought out in future. Sometimes it takes someone pointing something out to me, to allow me to course correct and I thank you.

I guess I really connected with what you said and it was well written. You said it in a way that would take me quite some time to get across, and described it much better than I could. That blended pretty well with my own experiences. I could procrastinate about procrastinating myself, it's not a good place and a frustrating feeling. I tried to read as many books and read about as many other people as possible to try better my understanding of why I do it so much, so often, despite me knowing a lot of data about it. I believe what Petsfold is trying to do is to personify procrastination to a recongizable point, like a character, so you can consciously choose to not let that character win. That's my main takeaway from the book. It's certainly helped me. I still procrastinate, but I feel like I know a little more. Almost like "what is it I'm resisting about x that's making me procrastinate so much". This can sometimes, not always, help me identify and act on variables that might be affecting me at that moment in time. Best of luck, and thank you again.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Keith Chen has done some research about the effect of language on economic behavior. He also did a TED talk: [https://www.ted.com/talks/keith_chen_could_your_language_aff...](https://www.ted.com/talks/keith_chen_could_your_language_affect_your_ability_to_save_money)

 _What can economists learn from linguists? Behavioral economist Keith Chen introduces a fascinating pattern from his research: that languages without a concept for the future — "It rain tomorrow," instead of "It will rain tomorrow" — correlate strongly with high savings rates._

It seems like the lack of a future tense in one's language could make it easier for a person to identify with their "future self" (as the article terms it).

<comment><USER6> How does "It rain tomorrow" not indicate a concept of the future?

For that matter, how does "It rain tomorrow" not indicate a phrase in the original language that might as well have been translated into English as "It will rain tomorrow"?

<comment><USER7> It doesn't have _grammaticalisation_ of time, is what was meant.

It's obviously got at least one word for the future ("tomorrow"), which is kind of like having a library function strcat instead of just +

Also, English doesn't have a future tense, so there's that.

<comment><USER8> > Also, English doesn't have a future tense, so there's that.

Has happened, is happening, will happen?

[http://www.grammar-monster.com/glossary/future_tense.htm](http://www.grammar- monster.com/glossary/future_tense.htm)

<comment><USER9> [does happen, will happen], [go, will go] - notice that the active verb doesn't change from present to future, rather there is an auxiliary added to mark the tense. Contrast to French where you have [vois/see, verrai/will see] and the verb itself is modified.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> TL;DR for the busy:

The post focuses on the fact that it's hard for us to think about our future selves. So procrastination is the result of short-term bias, and a desire for immediate gratification.

\---

I personally think that's irresponsibly oversimplistic. Procrastination can get much, much more complex than that.

<comment><USER11> > I personally think that's irresponsibly oversimplistic. Procrastination can > get much, much more complex than that.

Well said. I find there are two main reasons I might procrastinate. Sometimes it's because I'm working on something boring or frustrating, and I just want a break from it. Sometimes it's because I'm scared I'll fail, whereas if I never start, I'll never risk that.

I'm trying (with a bit of success so far) to reshape my habits to stop the second kind of procrastination. The first kind, I don't even consider to be a bad thing. When I was a child, I learned to program and do maths because I found "school maths" boring. I read a lot of amazing books because I couldn't be bothered to memorise facts in a sub-par geography class. Now I'm (supposedly) an adult, this form of procrastination consists of deferring low- priority but necessary tasks (e.g. timesheets, marking students' work, health and safety reviews) and working on cool things that motivate me.

<comment><USER12> Out of curiosity, what are some of the things you're trying to combat the 2nd type of procrastination? I've been experimenting with habits and other organizational systems to use my time more effectively, and it's been going pretty well so far.

The main thing I do when I realize I'm frittering away time when there's something pressing that I really should be doing, I think "OK. On xxx Date in the future, you are going to be held accountable for The Thing. That date is approaching, and when it gets here, you are either going to fail or succeed, and the difference will likely be what you spend your time on right now."

This is moderately successful for important tasks with important consequences, but not so helpful when I really should, say, do my laundry. But I figure that if I can get the hard things sorted out, I'll slot the laundry in somewhere later (textbook procrastination rationalizations, yes, I recognize the irony).

I'm also playing with todo lists to help me plan better - keeping everything in my head is certainly not optimal. I sampled a bunch of methods: so far Wunderlist has been the best for just straight todos. I would like to change my habits so that when I'm too tired (physically or mentally) to do intellectual work, I default to a less demanding task - exercise, errands, whatever - instead of HN. But that's still a work in progress.

One other thing is that I've been keeping more notebooks. If something happens, and after the fact I think "Hmm, that could have gone better..." I'll jot some notes down about what I could have done instead. When the semester starts (I'm an undergrad student) I also want to start keeping a rough weekly plan in the notebook, like this: [http://calnewport.com/blog/2014/08/08/deep- habits-plan-your-...](http://calnewport.com/blog/2014/08/08/deep-habits-plan- your-week-in-advance/)

<comment><USER11> > Out of curiosity, what are some of the things you're trying to combat the > 2nd type of procrastination?

Yeah, like you, changing habits/organisation is a big thing. Another is that I've set things up such that it's far easier to exile myself from the internet. I try to restrict my leisure browsing to one VM and my work to another VM. So on.

> This is moderately successful for important tasks with important > consequences, but not so helpful when I really should, say, do my laundry. > But I figure that if I can get the hard things sorted out, I'll slot the > laundry in somewhere later (textbook procrastination rationalizations, yes, > I recognize the irony).

I don't mind letting these things languish. If it takes me a long time to do laundry, so what?

Thanks for sharing your findings about todo lists. My todo list is essentially the same thing as my calendar, and I wonder if I'd benefit from separating them a bit.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Relevant Calvin & Hobbes: [http://web.mit.edu/manoli/mood/www/calvin- full.html](http://web.mit.edu/manoli/mood/www/calvin-full.html)

</comment><comment><USER14> TL;DR "That's a problem for future Homer. Man, I don't envy that guy."

</comment><comment><USER15> _We humans, Parfit argued, are not a consistent identity moving through time_

Our identity is more stable at some times than others however. Supposedly, stability peaks mid-life[1]. I wonder if middle aged people procrastinate less.

Also, how much do people differ in their ability to identify with their future selves? We know that people have different time preference and some people emphasize the immediate (discount) more than others. Do they procrastinate more, too? Is this difference innate, cultural, ideological?

Peter Frost theorizes that viewing yourself as part of this great chain of ancestors and descendants was very adaptive (maybe even more important than mastering agriculture) at one time and helped drive human expansion.[2] Which would make it at least partially cultural.

Finally, some people view procrastination as a fundamentally rational way to avoid doing work that may never need to be done, like you would a gut feeling about someone's trustworthiness. This doesn't work in an artificial setting of term papers but in a complex system you can simply wait things out quite often.

[1] [http://bps-research-digest.blogspot.com/2014/08/the- stabilit...](http://bps-research-digest.blogspot.com/2014/08/the-stability-of- your-personality-peaks.html)

[2] [http://evoandproud.blogspot.com/2014/08/the-agricultural- rev...](http://evoandproud.blogspot.com/2014/08/the-agricultural-revolution- that-wasnt.html)

<comment><USER10> Yeah, I think procrastination, like laziness, might be better described as "work aversion". Procrastination and laziness both imply that the "problem" is with the individual who's afflicted with it, and it also almost implies that the environment has little-to-nothing to do with it. But there are many 'procrastinators' who actually work really hard at certain things. (World of Warcraft strikes me as one of those things that actually requires a lot of hard work.)

So again, for the people who do struggle with procrastination in their own lives, figuring out how to do something about it (if they want to do something about it at all!) requires a very thorough self-examination.

<comment><USER16> I've always wondered where the notions of procrastination and laziness came from. No one actively compromises their survivability through either.

To me it seems like the notion came from our history of servitude. Of course a Lord is going to pressure his peasants to work harder. So of course the head of a hide is going to be pressuring his nephews to get working.

Laziness and procrastination only become negative in the concept that we have to work 8 hours a day, 5 days a week. I'm sure the generation before Henry Ford reduced work hours to 8 hour days and work weeks to 5 days thought their kids were lazy. Who wouldn't when you're working 12 hour days 6 days a week!

My son might be of the generation working 4 hour days 4 days a week. He might be of the generation where mandatory work is a thing of the past.

<comment><USER17> > I'm sure the generation before Henry Ford reduced work hours to 8 hour days > and work weeks to 5 days thought their kids were lazy.

I doubt it... At the very least you need to go much further back than Ford.

While Ford was one of the earlier industrialists to willingly accept and embrace the 8 hour day, it was by no means his doing. AFL and other unions had been fighting for working hours reductions for decades by then - with loss of life on more than once occasion - , and gradually started getting concessions.

The first widespread demands for an 8 hour day in the US happened 30 years or so before Ford was even born.

The first attempt at introducing 8 hour working day for federal employees passed in 1868, when Ford was 5.

New York got partial 8 hour working days (for certain traides) from 1872.

In 1889, the Second International agreed with the AFL to make May 1st 1890 a day for demonstrations in commemoration of the Haymarket massacre, and in support of the 8 hour working day. And so, the US unions fight for the 8 hour working day is actually directly responsible for May 1st as the international day for labour demonstrations.

It wasn't until 1914 that Ford cut working hours from 9 to 8, at a point when millions of workers in other industries had already achieved it. At that point, 8 hour working day had been a labour demand for 2-3 generations already.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> I've always found every time I make the difficult choice, the next difficult choice get's slightly easier. It's a dangerous belief as the opposite might also be true.

</comment><comment><USER19> I will assume being a suffering procrastinator, but wanna add something. Sometimes procrastinating feels like the 'creative high', except it's obviously twisted. I will jump into playing music because I suddenly have an 'idea'. Or will delve into a programming language for the same reason.

It's like a parallel choreography of desires ending being counter productive.

Fight it. (I wish I was taught courage patience and application earlier)

</comment><comment><USER20> Considering one's future self as a different person could have the opposite effect. We might then _sympathise_ with that person, and take measures not to be mean to him, in the same way we wouldn't be mean to a friend.

But it's a nice idea. Another tendency we have is to shed our skins and not remember what it was like to be a child. This effects the way we interact with children.

<comment><USER10> Some severe procrastinators, I think, also sort of hate themselves and their future selves, and see themselves as unworthy and undeserving of anything substantial. The procrastination might be a symptom of depression, etc.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> An interesting solution to procrastination that I just came across is Beeminder [1], which lets you set a goal and a matching consequence for not staying on track to meet your goal. If you fall off track, you pay the consequence.

1\. [https://www.beeminder.com/](https://www.beeminder.com/)

<comment><USER22> But the research cited in the article indicates that people are more willing to submit their future self to consequences that they wouldn't want in the short-term. That's consistent with my experience with approaches like the site you cited, which is that it doesn't help me procrastinate less, but vastly increases my stress and panic associated with a deadline as the consequence approaches, when it's too late to work effectively.

<comment><USER21> Actually Beeminder gets around that problem by making you quantify your goal and then defining a roadmap to reach the goal. If you go off the "yellow brick road," the penalty comes into play. It's like breaking your overall goal into a bunch of little goals, but the actual implementation is a little more subtle than that.

<comment><USER23> > _That 's consistent with my experience with approaches like the site you > cited, which is that it doesn't help me procrastinate less, but vastly > increases my stress and panic associated with a deadline as the consequence > approaches, when it's too late to work effectively._

That GP's quote describes my exact experience with Beeminder. I lost a bit of money there, while procrastinating even more because of huge amounts of stress related to failing the task and losing money I can't really afford to lose.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> Whenever the topic of procrastination comes up I always like to refer to pg's essay on it: [http://paulgraham.com/procrastination.html](http://paulgraham.com/procrastination.html)

Procrastination comes in all various sorts and forms. We have to remember that things other people perceive as productive, but we know aren't productive to what we need to accomplish, is procrastination as well. Of course, there's also the form of procrastination that represents fear of failure.

</comment><comment><USER25> The examples in the article sound more or less like a wild re-explanation of the economic concepts of present value and discount rate. With all the literature available there, it's a shame the article doesn't make that connection.

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

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

<comment><USER26> You're confusing a subconscious psychological mechanism with a rationally applied economic concept.

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> Discounting the future self is only one of many possible reasons for procrastination, which is a complex subject. If you want to listen to a podcast that reviews the many different lines of inquiry into the subject, including several branches of science and also philosophy, check out the iProcrastinate podcast with Dr. Tim Pychyl.

[http://iprocrastinate.libsyn.com/](http://iprocrastinate.libsyn.com/)

<comment><USER28> Listening to a Podcast about procrastination instead of coding on one of the rare days I get to the office before 8am... interesting suggestion you make mon frere

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> In a physical sense, future you _is_ someone else. All the atoms that make up our bodies are replaced within some timeframe. Sympathizing with future you shouldn't be predicated on that person having your personality anyway: we are all more than capable of sympathizing even with complete strangers. Perhaps we've been procrastinating much worse than we realize on that.

</comment><comment><USER30> My personal theory is that my lizard-brain procrastinates in the hope that some percentage of the things it puts off doing, will eventually not need to be done. (Either they take care of themselves, or turn out to be unimportant)

Basically, procrastination is a rational manifestation of laziness, which as has been discussed in the past is a survival trait (avoid expending energy if possible)

</comment><comment><USER31> Is there a relationship between one's ability to emphathize with others, and one's ability to plan for the future?

If we think of our future selves as other people, maybe the folks who can't think of other people's feelings very well also have a hard time planning for their future selves.

<comment><USER32> I think its more of the ADHD never think about the future at all issue.

</comment></comment><comment><USER33> I recommend the book "The Now Habit" to anyone interested in fixing procrastination. It's a decent read, and you'll learn a thing or two about how to deal with procrastination.

</comment><comment><USER34> I think in many cases its just a fear or making a start, and possibly failing

</comment><comment><USER35> So suicide is in fact serial murder.

<comment><USER36> I had the clojuresque thought "I'm immutable" too... and it made me rethink this design choice: maybe I should version myself, to keep in mind that future me is also me!

<comment><USER37> I do this.

Every year or two, I get a tattoo representing an idea or a defining point in my life. There are a few that aren't in line with the current _me_ , but they're a permanent visual reminder of who used to live in this skin, so I love them just as much. Sort of real-life version tagging.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER38> I've written about something similar -- [http://goo.gl/SbveOA](http://goo.gl/SbveOA) \-- though in that case I was about making proclamations on behalf of future you.

In some ways the theories are at odds. My argument is that people often view their future selves as the identical person that they are today, just in the future. That they can't identify that the future person is, in effect, a very different person. This article posits that people view future person as a separate person altogether, and screw them anyways.

It is a fascinating topic that you can waste away a day contemplating. Ah well, future you can do what you were supposed to do today.

</comment><comment><USER36> TL;DR for the busy: GO read it. NOW! Not because your future YOU will feel better, but because this future you IS YOU

<comment><USER36> I was downvoted for what I think is a fun illustration of what the article says. I really enjoyed this article.

It was an epiphany... for me. I guess my downvoter didn't see it that way

<comment><USER10> I relate to how you're feeling. Different communities have different expectations of what good content is. HN is a tough crowd. Lurk more, read more.

It's okay to have epiphanies, the challenge is to communicate them in a way that your audience appreciates.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER39> I'll read this later.

</comment><comment><USER40> Looks like an interesting article, bookmarked to read it later.</comment>


Background Task Support in WSL - <AUTHOR> https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/commandline/2017/12/04/background-task-support-in-wsl/ <comment><USER2> I was initially very happy about WSL, but the more I use it, the more I realize _it is not ubuntu_. The character buffer often fails, network requests often seem to hang for no reason, the WSL shell is not integrated into the Operating system like it is in for example Mint or Ubuntu, various programs have slight but annoying differences.

I'll just stick to my dual boot and VM's.

<comment><USER3> We'll keep working on it. Hopefully we can win you back some day.</comment></comment>


Bot watches over 1k hours of Trump and Biden interviews and writes a debate - <AUTHOR> https://twitter.com/KeatonPatti/status/1283416579070459910 <comment><USER2> "I forced a bot to watch 1000 hours of [blank]" is just a meme.

[https://twitter.com/search?q=I%20forced%20a%20bot%20to%20wat...](https://twitter.com/search?q=I%20forced%20a%20bot%20to%20watch&src=typed_query)</comment>


VBulletin.com Hacked with Zero Day Exploit - <AUTHOR> http://news.softpedia.com/news/vbulletin-zero-day-used-to-hack-official-vbulletin-website-and-foxit-software-495620.shtml <comment><USER2> Some background on VBulletin for the uninitiated: back in the day (2000-2006ish), bulletin boards/forums were extremely popular. The popular choices were PHP-based. There were some in MSFT-based languages, but not widely adopted by the new-age crowd and upstarts. Your choices included PHPBB (FOSS), IPB (commercial), or VBulletin (commercial); SMF was new and "hot" (FOSS), and MyBB (FOSS) gained popularity since it was the child of a few VBulletin wizards.

Up until VB4, VBulletin was the bees knees. When it tried to take on an entirely new social face, that's when users quickly opted for other solutions.

Two of the most popular forums today are still based on VB3, which would be WarriorForum and WebHostingTalk. DigitalPoint runs on SMF, and I have no idea who uses PHPBB on a huge scale, and I'm not even sure what's going on with IPB.

<comment><AUTHOR> Kind of. Though there's also the whole saga with the buyout and XenForo. Basically, a big company called Internet Brands bought Jelsoft, the makers of vBulletin. They pretty much said they wanted vBulletin 4 out stat, even if it meant outsourcing a significant amount of development.

The old Jelsoft team then left to start XenForo. vBulletin 5 came out (with half the staff being new and the price being ramped up significantly), and the negative feedback basically overwhelmed the official site for a few months. People left en masse to XenForo.

Internet Brands then sued XenForo for 'stolen code', which ended up costing everyone a lot of money and dragged on for a few years before the case was dropped.

They then released vBulletin 5. Reception was... negative. To put it lightly. Features were missing, the style was half complete, bugs were everywhere. People left even quicker. Marketshare for this version is roughly at about 1%.

Either way, you've got a company in meltdown that had to get somewhat inexperienced programmers to take over both PHP 4 era legacy code and somewhat put together a new forum script at the same time. Something was sure to break.

IPB released IPB 4, which cause a sizeable amount of discontent in that community, partly due to features that were removed because the staff thought they 'weren't necessary' any more. Many people disagreed.

Digitalpoint moved to XenForo.

And the free scripts? Well, there's currently a bit of a divide between 'old school' forum scripts and 'modern' forum scripts. On the one side, you have phpBB, MyBB, SMF, and their various forks and spinoffs. On the other, there's stuff like Discourse and NodeBB. PhpBB got a bit ignored simply because it was seen as behind the times and not adding new stuff fast as.

(that said, big phpBB sites do exist, Gaia Online runs a modified version and quite a few others are out there too, especially for large open source projects).

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> There's an interesting discussion about this here, which has input from some of the vBulletin developers and support staff:

[https://theadminzone.com/threads/vbulletin-com-forums- hacked...](https://theadminzone.com/threads/vbulletin-com-forums- hacked.136961/)

Apparently, details of 479895 users have been dumped.

Might include credit card details, based on some older screenshots.

In other news, something like this was kind of inevitable. It's happened before, and it may have something to do with the questionable code quality of the latest version or changes by the newer owners of the company. But that's a long story.</comment>


The country that closed its psychiatric hospitals - <AUTHOR> https://members.tortoisemedia.com/2019/12/16/country-that-closed-its-mental-health-institutions-ian-birrell/content.html <comment><AUTHOR> When people talk about a human rights approach to mental health treatment there are roughly two different systems, and they're not really compatible with each other.

The most well known, main-stream, approach uses the UDHR. In Europe this flows into the ECHR. This means that people have a right to life; they have a right to liberty; a right to effective remedy; a right not to be discriminated against; etc. But in ECHR there are exemptions. For example, article 5 says:

> (e) the lawful detention of persons for the prevention of the spreading of > infectious diseases, of persons of unsound mind, alcoholics or drug addicts > or vagrants.

The other approach - more radical, less mainstream - is to use another United Nations convention, the CRPD (convention on rights for people with disabilities), in particular using the interpretation of that convention by the UN Committee for the CRPD. Under this system you cannot have forced treatment; you cannot have detention for mental illness; you cannot have substituted decision making.

This is the committee's discussion of Article 14: [https://www.ohchr.org/Documents/HRBodies/CRPD/GC/GuidelinesA...](https://www.ohchr.org/Documents/HRBodies/CRPD/GC/GuidelinesArticle14.doc)

I found this discussion to be a useful summary: [https://www.nationalelfservice.net/mental- health/disability-...](https://www.nationalelfservice.net/mental- health/disability-rights-mental-health-treatment-and-the-united-nations- ronr2019/)

The author of the submitted article is from the UK, so I guess the UN report on mental health treatment in the UK is useful: [https://www.ohchr.org/Documents/HRBodies/CRPD/CRPD.C.15.R.2....](https://www.ohchr.org/Documents/HRBodies/CRPD/CRPD.C.15.R.2.Rev.1-ENG.doc)

UDHR: [https://www.un.org/en/universal-declaration-human- rights/](https://www.un.org/en/universal-declaration-human-rights/) ECHR: [https://www.echr.coe.int/Documents/Convention_ENG.pdf](https://www.echr.coe.int/Documents/Convention_ENG.pdf) CRPD: [https://www.un.org/development/desa/disabilities/convention-...](https://www.un.org/development/desa/disabilities/convention- on-the-rights-of-persons-with-disabilities.html)</comment>