Record Number of Honeybee Colonies Died Last Winter - <AUTHOR> https://www.npr.org/sections/thesalt/2019/06/19/733761393/more-bad-buzz-for-bees-record-numbers-of-honey-bee-colonies-died-last-winter <comment><USER3> Having started bee keeping myself, I think there is a lot at play here...

1\. Mites - resistant to poisons that kill mites, but not bees are spreading. This can kill hives.

2\. Temperatures - are changing, where I am at 33% colony loss is relatively common due to winters (and the bees not having enough honey to survive or it gets too cold). This has been the case forever though, at least in my region

3\. Africanization - of honeybees has reduced their ability to withstand the cold.

4\. Travel - Many of the commercial hives in the US travel vast distances to pollenate fields. The California almonds are a huge example. This very much stresses the hive.

5\. Poisons - we know if you're near a field doing crop dusting it can kill the hive. Combine with point #4 and this creates issues today.

One thing to mention, is that setting up a new hive is relatively easy. You take a new (or about to be) queen, some workers and separate them. They'll form a new hive. This can be done once a year (or more) on a healthy hive in the spring. Meaning... we can double the bee population yearly. They recover very well, if we know what to do to minimize hives death.

<comment><USER4> Also remember that the honeybee is not native to North America and is technically an invasive species here. This along with domestication means lower genetic diversity making the honey bee population more susceptible to any single issue than our native wild bees.

<comment><USER5> This is actually a huge problem for the US honey industry right now. As bee kills become more of an issue, re-queening becomes more necessary, which puts even more pressure on breeding programs, which likely only exacerbates the genetic diversity problem.

> Also remember that the honeybee is not native to North America and is > technically an invasive species here.

Yes, but they are also the only species (so far) that is commercially managed, and therefore easily counted and tracked. If Apis Mellifera is suffering, we can pretty safely assume that other, native species are also suffering.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> We need to head off a future in which bee populations are so substantially reduced that we end up in a situation, such as exists in parts of China, where hand pollination is the only option [0].

[0] [https://www.dw.com/en/chinas-plants-blossom-without- bees/av-...](https://www.dw.com/en/chinas-plants-blossom-without- bees/av-43465235)

<comment><USER6> Honey bees aren't native pollinators in North America. They're livestock.

<comment><USER7> Most of the flowers the honeybees pollinate are also not native. Native bees can not pollinate these introduced species, and honeybees can't pollinate native species. They can, however, transfer varroa and nosemea and AFB and other diseases between native and introduced pollinator species. Some of these diseases come as spores in the bulk imports of Asian industrial honey.

You'd think we learned lessons from the black plague in Europe. Seems we did, just the wrong ones.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> My uncle just started a small bee colony on his property. This will help his garden, the surrounding gardens, and the area as a whole. My work also has a few hives on each of our buildings rooftops.

So some people care but a larger majority do not. As humans we, especially in the west, don't care about a problem until it's too late. who cares about the bees when we have the latest iPhone Xr+ Max ultra

<comment><USER9> I've had urges to start one, but we only have a normal-sized back yard and two dogs, and I don't think that would mix too well. I already know one of them will try to eat bees when given the chance and I don't want them to get stung.

Is there a way to help without actually starting your own bee colony?

<comment><USER10> grow plants pollinators like

[https://thehoneybeeconservancy.org/plant-a-bee- garden/](https://thehoneybeeconservancy.org/plant-a-bee-garden/)

<comment><USER11> Leave the dandelions in the lawn for the pollinators. They attract tons of bees, bumblebees and butterflies.

<comment><USER9> I guess I did good by getting sick for a month right when spring was starting and between that and the rain I didn't bother mowing for awhile and the dandelions took over the front lawn :)

<comment><USER10> they are also very tasty (you can eat many parts of them), and they will grow again if you leave the root in the ground :)

<comment><USER11> Bonus: Dandelion wine

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Anecdata, but this year in my corner of England bees have been pretty subdued.

My house suffers from solitary mason bees abusing my lack of care for brickwork to enter my bathroom, where they typically then die by the dozen every week in spring/summer (the glass window misleads them towards a nonexistent way out). This year I don't find anything like the "daily cadaver on windowsill" that I'm used to.

I also don't see them around the garden as much as before. Definitely not my fault though, my lack of care for the garden is legendary.

I know bees have had a bit of a resurgence in England as a whole, though, so maybe it's just my area.

<comment><USER13> Also anecdata, but we've had some success having replanted the garden with a variety of plants that produce more nectar than those we had previously. Although I don't think a hive has started anywhere, we've had plenty of solitary bees this year which we don't regularly see.

If anyone else would like to outfit their garden with some more bee friendly plants, we've had great luck with the following:-

1.Himalayan balsam 2.Yellow water iris 3.Gladioli 4.Common comfrey 5.Blackberry 6.Hedge bindweed 7.Honeysuckle 8.Sweet pea 9.Foxglove 10.Rhododendron 11.Lavender

(As per recommendations from the British countryside survey)

<comment><USER14> We've got a cotoneaster, which attracts so many bees you can hear the buzzing from inside the house (see [http://www.conwybeekeepers.org.uk/new- beekeepers/planting-a-...](http://www.conwybeekeepers.org.uk/new- beekeepers/planting-a-bee-garden/)). Cotoneaster is very easy to grow.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Honeybees != Native Bees, In US we should be worried about Native Bees. If care of Honeybees spills over into care of Native Bees then that is great. If we instead work to supplant the native populations then we are not being very smart.

Honeybees/honey are an agricultural product.

</comment><comment><USER16> > U.S. beekeepers lost nearly 40% of their honeybee colonies last winter — the > greatest reported winter hive loss since the partnership started its surveys > 13 years ago. The total annual loss was slightly above average.

So, was this really bad news? Or is just slightly bad? 40% is the most of 13 data points, but what's the average? 39%? 20%? It's completely absent from this article.

<comment><USER17> You're comparing the total annual loss rate, which was apparently "slightly above average", to the loss rate just over the winter, which was 40%.

This article about the 2017 honeybee season mentions the difference. That winter, 31% of honeybees were lost, compared to ~28% the previous winter. [https://www.farmprogress.com/crops/annual-honey-bee- colony-l...](https://www.farmprogress.com/crops/annual-honey-bee-colony- losses-remain-above-40-percent)

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> We have a few hives in a field behind our house. We have noticed all the neighbouring fruit trees doing very well this year -- clutches of plums and apples weighing down the branches.

<comment><USER19> We have a funny looking bush in our garden that doesn't even have very large flowers on it - but bees (both honey bees and bumble bees) just _love_ it - its always thick with them over the summer even though we have loads of other flowers in our garden.

What I particularly love is the _sound_ of a number of bees - <USER2> relaxing.

<comment><USER20> I have a lilac bush that depending on the time of year you're bound to bump into (and bee bumped into) by the local bumble bees who are floating around it.

Bumble bees seem like they're perpetually out of control.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> We humans have a hard time dealing comprehensively with these multi-factor problems that have a synergistic destructive impact and tend to only take action if we think there is a simple solution. How can we coordinate large scale responses to help solve a problem like colony collapse disorder when there is no singular cause to blame ?

<comment><USER22> Do like the French and simply issue a blanket ban on some of the pesticides involved: [https://www.gouvernement.fr/en/ban-on-neonicotinoid- insectic...](https://www.gouvernement.fr/en/ban-on-neonicotinoid-insecticides- france-is-leading-the-way-in-europe)

Some solutions are that simple. Stop doing the things that we know are bad. We had functioning agriculture before people started using this. Part of the problem is assuming these things are hard to solve. They are not but it does require measures that are inevitably going to hurt some companies with powerful lobbies. I don't see how this can be avoided though. There's probably a few more things that need to be banned. But this seems like a good start.

<comment><USER6> What exactly will that do about the Varroa mites?

<comment><USER23> Since it is apparently multi-factoral it will remove one of the factors. Hopefully the bees will be able to cope better with the remaining factors.

<comment><USER6> Varroa mites eradicated feral honey bees in North America long before the new pesticides were introduced.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> I keep thinking I want to start a small bee colony. The local university started a bee lab a few years ago:

[https://www.beelab.umn.edu](https://www.beelab.umn.edu)

<comment><USER24> Hello fellow Minnesota person. Now is a great time to do this. The state has actually started a program to fund homeowners making their yards more bee- friendly[1]. While the article doesn't have a ton of information about how to apply, I'm sure you can find some with a little digging, or maybe get in touch with someone from the U page you linked.

[1] [http://m.startribune.com/program-pays-minnesota- homeowners-t...](http://m.startribune.com/program-pays-minnesota-homeowners- to-let-their-lawn-go-to-the-bees/510593382/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> Bloomberg's "Business of Bees" podcast is great: [https://www.bloomberg.com/podcasts/business_of_bees](https://www.bloomberg.com/podcasts/business_of_bees)

They cover some of the issues relating to honeybee colony collapse.

</comment><comment><USER26> I'm a second year beekeeper and my two hives survived a cold Kentucky winter.

</comment><comment><USER27> what is the natural predator of the mites

<comment><USER13> I've seen other specific types of mites used to control them. 'Phytoseiulus persimilism' is a type of mite used to control 'two-spotted spider mites', which can feast on crops. The question is whether there's a species that would feast on the mites infesting beehives.

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> This post made me wonder to what extent cost/money could be reduced for people who are interesting purely in pollination of their own property or area and don't particularly care about actually harvesting any honey ever. It seemed like without being disturbed or having any of their honey taken, perhaps the convenience factor could be raised a bit which might let more people just have bees around as part of general landscaping. I've got a good few dozen semi- rural acres, there are bee friendly flowers, no pesticide usage, and for a low enough effort/investment I and I think plenty of others would be happy to contribute to the environment if it'd help.

But so far I haven't found a lot of solutions aimed specifically at this area, so I'd love to hear from anyone who has done this. It seems there are some old hive styles called skeps that are illegal for honey usage (since the hive is destroyed for harvesting) but would be fine if you don't plan to ever disturb them, but a straw basket doesn't look very durable over more then a year or two either nor do I think it'd work over a northern winter? It sounds like mites and diseases are always a risk factor which makes sense, but what comes after? If a hive setup was cheap enough it could simply be tossed (and burned/composted if it was all appropriate materials), but what is the sterilization procedure for something heavier duty? Some sort of toolless to disassemble metal general frame&body with wood/straw/whatever disposable insides seems like it'd be reliable: in the event of colony death since the natural bee interface bits could be replaced with fresh and the overall main box/framework could be put in a dishwasher or flat out baked in an oven for total sterilization. I don't know if anything like that exists, or if it makes more sense to go another direction and just use a bleach solution or whatever.

The other big suggestion I found for pollination-only, and the one that seems the most promising, is to forget about honeybees entirely and consider mason bees instead [1]. While it seems they won't survive a winter and need to be taken inside and refrigerated instead [2], they look extremely low effort and use very simple "hives" (they're solitary, so just blocks or tubes appear to be fine). I'd never heard of them until researching just now though, so perhaps they should get mentioned more in articles like this.

I think a significant slice of the public at least in principle could be enlisted to help out if given a clear path to do so, but are intimidated by the thought about the work that goes into maintaining real honey hives for honey. Those serve a real place and I know a lot of bee hobbyists enjoy it immensely, but pure-pollination efforts might be an area to explore or invest more in public outreach on? There is the inevitable question of "what can I do", and while some stuff is obvious harm-reduction territory (if you use pesticides, stop) proactive best practices seem less well known.

\----

1: [https://smalltownhomestead.com/keeping-bees-for- pollination-...](https://smalltownhomestead.com/keeping-bees-for-pollination- without-honey/)

2: [https://raintreenursery.com/plantcare/2013/11/preparing- your...](https://raintreenursery.com/plantcare/2013/11/preparing-your-mason- bees-for-winter/)</comment>


Climate scientists ponder spraying diamond dust in the sky to cool planet - <AUTHOR> http://www.nature.com/news/climate-scientists-ponder-spraying-diamond-dust-in-the-sky-to-cool-planet-1.18634 <comment><USER2> Cool it from what? What is (not <will be> on the basis of dodgy models) the problem that needs a solution? There is zero evidence that current temperatures are outwith natural variability. Meanwhile the CO2 increase from 0.028% to 0.04% has generated a massive green revolution as shown by satellite imaging.

Analyses of ice cores from the ice sheet in Antarctica shows that the concentration of CO2 in the atmosphere <follows> the rise in Antarctic temperatures very closely and is staggered by a few hundred years [http://news.ku.dk/all_news/2012/2012.7/rise_in_temperatures_...](http://news.ku.dk/all_news/2012/2012.7/rise_in_temperatures_and_co2/)</comment>


Mentors Are the Secret Weapons of Successful Startups - <AUTHOR> http://techcrunch.com/2015/03/22/mentors-are-the-secret-weapons-of-successful-startups/ <comment><USER2> Key is that the mentor is 'an experienced entrepreneur'. This is very important - everywhere I see nowadays are startup programs with 'mentors', most times they are just corporate employees with no entrepreneurial trackrecord.

What do experienced entrepreneurs know?

Their advice is initially ignored and they know that that's normal. Every first-time entrepreneur has wrong assumptions that they are advised against. But they just must test them out themselves. Non-experienced entrepreneur mentors want their advice followed and quickly give up mentoring if it isn't so.

That advice is still very important: the advantage is that you get to a point quick where you remember the advice initially ignored and pivot faster and learn much quicker.

<comment><USER3> I think this other comment describes the reality more accurately: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9247352](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9247352)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Alternate headline: Very successful people seek out mentors to enhance their own capabilities.

More seriously, I've always found two distinct types of mentors, and discovered it's crucial to separate the two types apart from each other and not confuse one for the other.

One type is the "been there done that" type with decades of experience in one particular area, and they simply share with you lots of anecdotes about how things have played out in the past as empirical evidence of how they may play out in the future.

The other type is the kind of mentor who provides you with an analytical framework to be able to prioritize and evaluate decisions on your own. This person often helps you see the forest from the trees, or helps you recognize blindspots you might not be aware of.

Both are valuable, but it's important to know the difference.

<comment><USER5> I've always been seeking a mentor, but have literally never met someone who would help me in life. All I want to do is be a programmer? You're saying that's not why I've has such poor success at finding opportunities or applying myself correctly? You're saying that isn't a field that someone can easily help someone else succeed in? The people I helped get jobs in college didn't seem to have any problems. Please explain!

<comment><USER4> Perhaps english isn't your first language, but your grammar is so painful it's hard to know what you are asking.

If you are seeking a mentor for programming, join an IRC channel dedicated to your current favorite language and start listening, learning, and asking questions. Over time, a mentor will emerge.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I've been thinking about this quite a bit lately. If you give up typical mentor equity - ~0.5% in exchange for someone who can open doors and quickly make connections for you, payable upon company exit, this can end up being a pretty good deal. Consider this, many of the things mentors can do for a startup are things that could be done by a high level employee, but could take up lots of time - sourcing talent, getting intros, removing roadblocks, etc. If you hire someone to help with these things, it costs you $100,000+/year in your prime growth stage where working capital is vital. If you have a mentor who can do these things in a fraction of the time because of his or her network and experience, if you have a $100mm exit, this ends up costing you $500,000 somewhere between 5 and 10 years later. It also frees up that salary which can then be used to finance growth in operations or some other vital need. Of all the financing and investment options a founder has available, if you have access to good mentors, this seems like one of, if not the, best option to help with the growth of your company.

<comment><USER7> There are too many things wrong with your calculation. First, you need mentor exactly because you can't replace that role with your high level employee. Mentors are typically a successful founders themselves and have enough cash in bank not to worry about employment. Good mentor don't help startups _because_ they are getting 0.5% equity but rather because they see new founder as image of themselves, huge promise in their approach and yeah, may be a big bucks they can generate one day. If your mentor is haggling about equity% then you are probably talking to wrong guy. Also it's hilarious to me that you think $100K salary can buy a person who can do the job of a mentor. The role of mentor works exactly because they are not your employee and they can tell you to your face that your suck at XYZ. It also works because mentor typically has seen the movie dozen times and can compare and contrast in their past experiences.

<comment><USER6> Keep in mind the fact that lots of high level employees play the role of mentor on the side for other start ups, and at the same time, many high level employees are individuals who have started their own successful ventures at one time or another, and now prefer to work for someone else for various reasons. These two roles are far from mutually exclusive. I also never stated anywhere that it would be acceptable for a mentor to haggle about his equity stake. ~0.5% is a rough estimate of what most mentors receive in exchange for their advice and help. Frankly, you're right that most mentors do it out of a desire to help and their equity position should be just enough to have some skin in the game. However, those mentors also have a responsibility to help you. That help comes in many different sizes and shapes. My point was that some of the things a mentor does to help is to make connections that can take lots of time to otherwise make, and to help overcome hurdles that otherwise would likely prevent success.

As far as their role, if you need a mentor to tell you that you suck at XYZ, you're probably not ready to run your own company yet. A great founder knows his weaknesses and surrounds himself with people who fill those gaps and raise the bar for the entire team. Sure, there are inexperienced founders who need to be told this, but if that's the mentor's main job then that start up is going to have bigger problems than the equity stake of the mentor vs a high level employee.

I think you might've misunderstood my point. I wasn't saying that $100K will buy you someone who can do what a mentor can do. I was saying that a mentor can help do many of the things that a $100K employee would otherwise need to do, at a fraction of the cost and much more efficiently. This is of course dependent on a founder making a prudent choice of mentor(s), which if he was the type of founder described above, he will have done.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> The article itself is not terrible, but I have a strong aversion for horrible titles like that. Why not just say something like: "Start ups greatly benefit from experienced mentors"?

I get the same kind of eyeroll response when people define themselves 'social media ninjas' or 'growth hackers' or 'panini artist'.

<comment><USER9> When I read the headline, my first thought was, "This must be a guest post on TechCrunch."

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Glad to see a "proof" of the gut feeling I have had since before launching my startup. I chose to turn down VC money and accept deep-pocketed BAs instead. First, we all have "skin in the game" Second, and more importantly, a 50-thing BA with several successes and/or failures is much more valuable to me than a 20-30-thing analyst whose job is to check my excel files, do a broad market analysis and inform his boss.

(I have nothing against 30-things, I am one myself. I value our generation new ideas, but I also admit that experience is useful :-) )

<comment><USER11> What is a BA?

<comment><USER12> Business Angel?

<comment><USER10> yup.

Mine are individuals who succeeded in their respective fields, all related to our product.

Accross the board I can get a quick answer to two crucial questions:

a-Would you buy this?

b-How would you sell it?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> And unsuccessful companies usually ignore their mentors' advice and fail (all the while scratching their heads as to why the mentors quit).

I can't tell you how many startups I've mentored where the CEO/CTO/founders would not listen to me or the other mentors/advisors on the team, and eventually it gets to the point where there is no reason to continue, the company's doomed to fail or stay stagnant in terms of growth/additional funding.

</comment><comment><USER14> The key is knowing when to listen mentors - or actually doing what they suggest - and when not to. The more seasoned, experienced and older you are, the better you can filter the advice given.

One of the worst things is first-time entrepreneurs bombarded by mentors and their advice, and the startups then actually doing everything they're told. Have seen many great startup teams and ideas ruined by that. Happens especially at 2nd rate accelerators.

<comment><USER15> pretty good proxy for life advice, am I right?

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> That's kind of like saying Harvard is the key to getting a high-paying job. The novice entrepreneurs that build successful relationships with experienced ones are also sending signals that they will succeed before that relationship begins in earnest. The previously successful entrepreneurs are picking winners whose efforts they can magnify.

</comment><comment><USER17> I believe this to be true in other aspects of professional life as well. When I was learning to fly to become a commercial pilot having a mentor who was himself an accomplished pilot and mechanic helped tremendously. I was able to advance through my flight ratings at a much greater speed than if I had been learning on my own.

<comment><USER18> I think it's true in everything. Is one of the most powerful things that you can have IMO.

Having someone that went through the same that you did, and that now is helping with insight, and that tries to motivate is the key of success in anything.

This is one thing that I noticed reading biographies on successful people, they always, at some point had contact with other successful people, became truly inspired by them.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> My experience is that mentors, being one step removed from the company, also have the ability to see the things that the founders don't want to either believe or see. But it also reminds me of the story we had a couple of years ago about how you can't recognize greatness if you haven't actually experienced it. So you think this friend of yours is the greatest <foo> you've ever seen and yet your mentor feels they are good, but not great, and you need to improve that area, what comes out is the 'mentor just hates my friend' which is the easier logic for the founder.

</comment><comment><USER20> It's interesting how the loss of elderly wisdom in our society has came back in the tech arena. People who have legitimately been around the block know things. Strategy being one of the most important.

</comment><comment><USER21> If anybody is on the East coast, I highly recommend Mike Krupit: [http://www.trajectify.com/](http://www.trajectify.com/)

He's helping me and he has some really great experience to back up his advice.

</comment><comment><USER22> Mentors: it's like hiring experienced people, but without paying them!

</comment><comment><USER23> The best mentors are elders in your family: dad, mom, grandparents, uncles, etc. Sadly we ignore them very often.

They also say that majority of successfully entrepreneurs are one where parents were also entrepreneurs.

</comment><comment><USER24> But sometimes Mentor drive wrong way to company

</comment><comment><USER25> "Correlation does not imply causation". That these founders are mentored by very successful people is not proof alone of the value of mentoring. It seems like mentoring is very powerful, but the fact these founders have access to such successful mentors may say more about the environment these people are founding their company, rather than the quality of mentoring.

<comment><USER26> What else is in the "environment" that could be helping? It's made of people.

<comment><USER25> I was referring to more than just the mentor. Such as the ideas, practices and culture of their peers.

<comment><USER5> You are still describing a mentor.

<comment><USER25> I am also describing their competitors, teachers, parents and adversaries

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> "Shrinks for startups?" ([http://twitter.com/mikellsolution/status/571590631304388608](http://twitter.com/mikellsolution/status/571590631304388608) ) might be part of a mature stack.</comment>


Please Don't Lie - <AUTHOR> https://jacquesmattheij.com/please-do-not-lie/ <comment><USER2> The magic that was going to protect Europe from the virus was the same magic that protected Europe from SARS: The good weather.

If you delay it enough, whatever virus affects North of Asia in Winter does not affect Europe in Winter but in Spring or Summer.

Specially in places like the South of Spain or Italy, it is hot and extremely sunny most of the Summer, with probably 4 or 5 cloudy days in the 90 days of Summer.

That kills the spread of viruses and viruses themselves.

That hope made politicians complacent. In Japan they are used to natural disasters and as society they are always prepared.

South Korea is prepared because of SARS history and because as a neighbor you should always be prepared against China monster(in population density).

<comment><USER3> > The magic that was going to protect Europe from the virus was the same magic > that protected Europe from SARS: The good weather.

I guess, if you completely ignore MERS.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Change some names and this could be the UK.

In fact, it really seems like every country is following the same playbook. Ignore the problem, don't prepare, and then suddenly panic when things grow exponentially.

It's a story playing out in every country's media. Ventilator shortages, PPE shortages, half assed lockdown measures followed a few days later by more draconian lockdowns. The remarkable thing is just how predictable it is.

</comment><comment><USER5> I hope this remark will be accepted as relevant.

In the middle of all the horrors of this crisis, I enjoy seeing how it brings huge amounts of people from the reign of the past and to the front line of the present.

I mean, lots of people were rejecting / forbidden to WFH and remote communications as something not worth the discussion. Now, here we go.

Lots of people had luxury of thinking that the Internet is a freaks' entertainment, not a best-ever all-purpose communication tool of huge value. Now, here you go, people have to recognise it's value.

Hell, people get an idea of hygiene knocked down into their heads. "A generation of kids who wash their hands as surgeons is growing".

I think this time will also show the value and the advantages of data-driven management, integrity and transparency, and of holding people in power accountable for everything they say and do. Hopefully, leading to wider adoption of these admirable approaches.

</comment><comment><USER6> Norway seems to have timed the contagion enough to be able to handle it and mitigate, but you never know until too late as curve remains exponential. On the other hand, we get critizised for not having enough deaths and infected. The counter argument is that mitigation and herd immunity could take years, though other examples show we'll soon be able to open up kindergartens, schools, unaffected communities etc. and not remain in "lightweight" lockdown.

This may not be over for years, though we will grow to be able to handle it. There's yet not enough evidence which strategy is "best", however avoiding full-blown crisis and delaying unknown unknowns seems prudent.

<comment><USER7> Some (slow) learning is happening on the 'not enough deaths' issue.

[https://twitter.com/dburbach/status/1245561190375358466](https://twitter.com/dburbach/status/1245561190375358466)

[https://www.corriere.it/politica/20_marzo_26/the-real- death-...](https://www.corriere.it/politica/20_marzo_26/the-real-death-toll- for-covid-19-is-at-least-4-times-the-official- numbers-b5af0edc-6eeb-11ea-925b-a0c3cdbe1130.shtml)

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Very good and measured blog post, I would add these two additional blunders:

RIVM kept saying that there are no asymptotic carriers, no transmission possible before symptoms show (German early patient stayed in a hotel in Netherlands, Germany quarantined his contacts before he went there. RIVM: since he hasn't coughed when he was here you're gonna be fine)

GGD - 12th march just after the first lockdownish measures: Ja go lekker on a holiday just go to the green regions. Sure, have lekker parties just not above 100 people

</comment><comment><USER9> This has - as far as I'm concerned - no place on HN, it is a Dutch centric affair.

<comment><USER10> >This has - as far as I'm concerned - no place on HN, it is a Dutch centric affair.

Mah.

It seems to me like you can replace Netherlands with _any_ other country and the government and/or scientific advisors to the government and/or the _whatever_ structure that should have been prepared for these emergencies have shown the same or very similar behaviour:

1) minimize the danger (either in seriousness or sheer quantity of expected cases or both)

2) assure that everything is ready (when it isn't)

3) delay too much the _whatever_ measures that have been taken</comment></comment>


This mom gave her son an 18-point contract with his iPhone - <AUTHOR> http://thenextweb.com/shareables/2012/12/31/mom-presents-18-point-contract-with-rules-of-use-to-teenage-son-would-you-be-tempted <comment><USER3> I want to admit up front that I am not a parent, nor am I a teenager -- I'm just a twenty-something caught between the two age groups.

When I wanted something when I was young, my parents treated me somewhat like an adult -- if I wanted something, I had to either save up money for it, or ask for it on special occasions (birthday, Christmas, etc). If I owned it, they also respected my ownership/privacy over it. Because of this, I feel like I grew up with a good sense of judgement, and a feeling like I could be trusted.

When I look at this list of rules with my "younger" eyes, I see a leash -- this isn't so much a present for me as much as an additional way to keep tabs/hold authority over for the mother. Children need to feel like they have some privacy, and I'm sorry, but knowing your parents can log in and see everything your doing, along with a laundry list of things you can't do makes things the kid might find fun suddenly an experience in anxiety.

What I want to know is, if the kid said no, and used his personal savings/worked a job to get his own phone, would the mom still have this list of things he would need to do, even if he never asked for a dime of help? My guess is yes -- which is why I think this isn't so much the mom helping her son as much as it is her helping herself.

<comment><USER4> Completely agreed. Things like don't text anything that you wouldn't want the other person's parent to know about seem ridiculous. Again as another person in his twenties, I would have refused this silly deal and bought my own damn cellphone.

<comment><USER5> >> Again as another person in his twenties, I would have refused this silly deal and bought my own damn cellphone.

Oh. That is such a pointless and drastic reaction. Would ruin Christmas. Just roll your eyes and accept idiotic rules. Idiotic rules tend to dissipate pretty quick with time anyway.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I think this is terrific.

I was 14 when I joined Facebook, in 2008. My dad, who is no dummy, laid out a series of rules for my Facebook use (he had been on the site for a year or so already).

One of those conditions was that he had my password and could look at my behavior on the site at any time. Occasionally I'd post something that he thought was inappropriate, and we'd talk about it, and I'd get embarrassed.

But in retrospect, I'm grateful. Everyone needs guidance as a teenager, and this is especially true for behavior online. Online behavior is at least as permanent as IRL behavior, and the consequences are often more public or serious.

I think it's really important to guide your kids online. Though your 13 year old may not appreciate it at the time, s/he will when s/he's 20 and has only half as much embarrassing teenage material floating around on their Facebook timeline (or Twitter account).

<comment><USER7> I think, at least from the sounds of it, the nature of the rules your dad set for your Facebook use might be a tad different than the ones this woman set for her kid's iPhone use. It is not so much that she is setting rules, but rather projecting her own values and pet peeves on the child. I mean, look at this:

 _Don't take a zillion pictures and videos. There is no need to document everything. Live your experiences. They will be stored in your memory for eternity._

What a crock of horseshit. Yes, I hate it as much as anyone when Miss Lisa Gorgeous posts on Facebook a photo of the ice cream she is eating just to get 'Likes', but I'm not going to demand that my kid refrain from that. It may be a bit stupid, but it is ultimately harmless. Not only that, but she is patently wrong that the child's experiences will be "stored in her memory for eternity." We are not computers. We forget stuff. And documenting the things we do is the most reliable way to relive them.

<comment><USER6> Ah, yeah, I agree. There's a fine line between setting good guidelines for safety and enforcing rules based on highly subjective and personal ideas.

I was mostly impressed by parts like point 18:

>> 18\. You will mess up. I will take away your phone. We will sit down and talk about it. We will start over again. You & I, we are always learning. I am on your team. We are in this together.

That kind of learning is important.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> This seems a little harsh to me. Everyone takes their phones to school. Everyone sends texts at school. The ship has sailed. If you're the one without the phone, you're the weirdo that nobody will talk to.

This mom should have gotten her son a leash instead. Then at least the power play would have been obvious to everyone.

<comment><USER9> "No porn."

Thanks mom!

I'm mortified for the kid.

<comment><USER10> Boy, am I glad my Mom didn't have a "no porn rule." I'd have been really confused about my body and people's behaviours. (I also would have been in a totally different field; turns out optimizing a 386 for fast porn teaches you everything you'll need for your career.) I might have even turned to religion.

Our society is set up in such a way that porn is one of the few "safe" ways for young people to figure their junk out. Heaven help us if they do censor the net.

He probably thought he'd get to play Angry Birds under his superman blanket. (Remember reading comics with a flashlight?) Instead he got an obligation and an emasculating letter. "Don't say anything you wouldn't say in public" probably would have sufficed. He can't even throw it under a bus for what it represents, because it isn't his. It's hers, and she's loaned it to him... :\

<comment><USER11> _porn is one of the few "safe" ways for young people to figure their junk out._

I'm not exactly an expert at either porn or in-the-flesh sex but... I've always been given to understand that they are quite different.

<comment><USER12> Porn is vast. You can find videos of pornstars exaggeratingly copulating, like you can find amateur videos of two 20-somethings having perfectly regular sex.

Both, if seeked out by the teenager, are a subset of a perfectly healthy sex- education (much more so than the very politically correct discourse that passes for sex-ed in the US these days).

<comment><USER11> But how would an uninitiated teen know which ones are exaggerated and which are "regular"? It seems like watching porn would,not be,as stimulating as real sex, so people would seek out exaggerated videos which are not as, um, "educational".

<comment><USER8> How do you know the sex you're having with your partner is "regular"?

The answer is intuition, and even teenagers have intuition.

<comment><USER11> "Regular" is strongly influenced, if not completely defined, by what you see around you. Porn might partly reflect what people want but it also definitely changes what they want. e.g. <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1124922> People who watch porn are only learning how to make porn.

<comment><USER10> > "People who watch porn are only learning how to make porn."

That's a very narrow perspective. I can honestly say I have never felt like a porn actor (or director) in the bedroom because I watched porn as a teenager (to which I also attribute my ability to draw, FWIW...).

If there were magically a safe partner for everyone at all times, regardless or age or circumstance, I have no doubt there would be less porn. But we don't live in one of those worlds, we live in an emotionally-wrought, often isolating one. Teenagers feel alone, yet it's also a time when the instincts and cravings are the strongest, the most out of control, and the least satiable. The type of flirting and friendships I can take for granted, are not even on the table for them. Teenagers are still cutting their teeth on their communication skills. They don't know how to cope with a lot of things, one being the deeply-rooted drive to procreate. Pursuing those feelings safely can be difficult. Masturbation is one way for them to explore their feelings in the _safety_ of their own room - to take control of their feelings - <USER2> resorting to extremely poor decisions (unwanted pregnancies, unhealthy relationships, getting tattoos that claim they will love someone forever when all they really wanted was to see them naked...). Would a real partner be better? Perhaps. Is that always the best option? No, and I think it's harmful to act as though it were. Everyone has genitals and the feelings that go with them, but for better or worse, society pretends young people don't. For lack of a better term, they are screwed; they are on their own: they get to figure things out, hopefully without ruining their life in other ways.

Some forms of experimentation are more dangerous than others, and watching porn is one of the least dangerous options available to young people to explore their feelings. Ignoring that (prohibition, for example) won't help. Assuming we emphasize the difference between fantasy and reality, porn can serve a person well over the years. In that spirit, I would much rather see a "this film is fantasy, and does not necessarily reflect a healthy realtionship" warning on porn, rather than all those copyright threats... It's pretty obvious what our priorities are.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Maybe it's just me, but I've always found rules this explicit in anything but a formal setting distasteful, regardless of how reasonable the rules are. This is one of the main things that pushed me out of university housing after freshman year. Rules everywhere, for everything!

My favorite living and working conditions are those where there are no rules simply because they aren't necessary--a very productive sort of anarchy. Now, this only works on a small scale with the right sort of people. In my mind, a family certainly qualifies, so I would _really_ dislike a contract like this!

I suppose I just feel that petty rules and regulations just strip away my dignity. They seem to imply a profound lack of respect. They're also simply annoying.

On a more startup-related note, this is also one of the reasons I've really enjoyed my time at tiny (< 10 people) startups. They can, and often do, operate in essentially this sort of "anarchy" and are all the more productive for it. No need for pages and pages of company policy simply because everybody cooperates as-is.

<comment><USER14> The difference being that startups are populated by mature and self- responsible adults, not 13-year-olds in the middle of getting their asses kicked by puberty.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> It's called parenting and I, for one, as a parent myself, applaud this mother for caring enough to be involved.

There are too many parents in the world today, who give their kids a new cell phone and keys to a car and turn them lose in the world without any sort of guidance.

Most of these rules just seem common sense (manners, self-respect, etc.), but they need to be observed and passed down. Some of these rules are good for adults as well as children (don't live life glued to a screen). A couple of them expand the responsibility and trust between a parent and child, and provide a system of checks and balances (trust but verify).

The only 2 that I would state differently are 4 & 5\. If you trust your child with the phone, also trust that he or she will be responsible enough to respect time (or location) limits (not only that, but as holders of the account, you could see whether the device was used after certain times for certain activities).

I know I see things differently, because I am a parent. And I hate to use this phrase, but "my house, my rules". That doesn't give my wife or I the right to be dictators, and we aren't, but it is our right to have certain rules and expectations for our children. We impose rules based on values we think are important (manners, self-respect, respect for others, etc.), and when our kids move out then they can decide what values they think are important. Kids (esp our 5-yr-old) don't have to like the rules, but they do have to follow them.

</comment><comment><USER16> I've always thought this approach to parenting results in children that are ill-equipped to make their own decisions. Teach kids critical thinking and good judgement not a long list of rules to memorize. The rules you do set should be for their safety not to control their lives.

<comment><USER17> I wouldn't be surprised if they were confusing to the smart kid who read them and found contradictory statements. Things like not using your phone in certain situations but also _never_ ignoring calls from parents.

I wouldn't do it. It feels too authoritarian and there are a lot of things in there that are best learnt the hard way, or as and when it happens. And as has been said in other comments, this doesn't exactly seem like a present.

With the kid becoming a teen, it'd probably end up backfiring on the mother when he buys a burner to do all his sexting and banter.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> I really liked the clause about no porn. If this mom wants to run her family with Victorian-era iron fist then by all means but trying to stop a 13 year old boy from getting access to porn in 2013 is laughable.

<comment><USER11> In the USA, it's illegal for a porn site to show him porn until he's 18 anyway.

<comment><USER19> And how on Earth is this rule enforced? I'm genuinely curious. Even if it's something like asking for SSN if IP addresses s from US, it would be bypassed easily by a simple proxy.

<comment><USER11> Some ask for credit cards, others it's simply a button that says "yes I'm over 18". It's not really about enforcement, it's about assigning liability.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> A few choice items from the contract, and how I would've read them as a 13 year old.

"1. It is my phone. I bought it. I pay for it. I am loaning it to you. Aren't I the greatest?"

This phone is not yours. Don't use it for anything important and praise me for allowing you to even look at it.

"2. I will always know the password."

I don't trust you.

"4. Hand the phone to one of your parents promptly at 7:30pm every school night & every weekend night at 9:00pm. It will be shut off for the night and turned on again at 7:30am. If you would not make a call to someone's land line, wherein their parents may answer first, then do not call or text. Listen to those instincts and respect other families like we would like to be respected."

I don't trust your friends or your opinions.

"5. It does not go to school with you. Have a conversation with the people you text in person. It's a life skill. *Half days, field trips and after school activities will require special consideration."

Once again, I own you.

"18. You will mess up. I will take away your phone. We will sit down and talk about it. We will start over again. You & I, we are always learning. I am on your team. We are in this together."

You are the only one that can mess up, I am untouchably perfect and this contract is perfect.

\</comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment>---

This contract makes it seem like the kid is a worthless, non-thinking drone and it glorifies the parents as gods.

#3 taken with #11 creates a situation in which the kid has to decide when to turn the phone off, but at the same time answer every phone call.

#15 states that the kid's peers' music preferences suck.

#1 directly contradicts #6 in regards to who pays for the phone.

This is insane. I hope someone can show me that this is not as I think it is.

<comment><USER21> I'll offer my perspective as a parent of a 10 year-old:

For #1, I see it as trying to preempt the "but it's my iPhone, I don't have to follow your rules!" argument. The last sentence I read as self-deprecating humor: read it with ;) at the end.

#2, this is doesn't seem unreasonable to me. Same as I wouldn't allow my son to have a lock on the door to his room that I didn't have a key to, I need to have access to his phone as well. Hopefully she'd only use that access in a serious situation (suspected bullying, suspected drug-use, etc). It could be she's always going through his things and never allows him any privacy, but this rule doesn't necessarily mean that.

#4: I see this as setting a strong boundary around when phone calls can be made. When I was growing up, it was very common to see calling late at night as being rude. I don't see this as not trusting his opinion but more as saying don't be on the phone late at night. 7:30 pm doesn't seem very late, but that's hard to say without knowing when they have to be up in the morning.

#5: Many schools ban phones or disallow their use in school, so not taking the phone to school seems reasonable.

#18: I don't see anything in here that says the rules are set in stone. In fact I'd read the last part as saying the opposite. The first part I read as trying to defuse anxiety around breaking the rules. My son often gets anxious when we set a new rule and worries that he'll break it. Letting him know that breaking the rules won't be the end of the world helps.

Presumably #11 trumps number #3. I assume they'd expect a common sense approach.

#1 and #6 don't contradict each other. If I let you borrow something from me and it was broken or lost, I'd expect you to pay for it. I think that's pretty normal.

Finally, 13-17 seem to be more aspirational than actual rules. 13, 14, and 17 could be replaced by: don't become so obsessed with your iPhone you ignore everything else. I didn't read 15 as an exclusion of the son's peer's music. More a suggestion to take advantage of the wide range of music available.

I don't see this as insane, but it's very hard to judge from the outside. We don't know the kid or the mom. It could be she's crazy overbearing or it could be she's just setting up reasonable rules for he son. Being a parent of a high-strung 10 year-old, I tend to read it as reasonable rules for a very smart, very obsessive young teen.

<comment><USER20> I appreciate the alternative viewpoint.

#1 It would definitely counter the "rules" argument, but that still means the kid can't use it for important purposes (It could be taken away at any time, and the data could be deleted).

#2 The purpose of a contract is to protect both parties. This clause helps give absolute power to the parent. By the logic you've presented, the government should have access to your email, computer and phone passwords as well for the same reasons.

#4 It does set up a strong boundary. It also means that the kid's friends have to remember when the kid is actually in possession of the phone, which will cause problems with the communication aspect of a phone.

#5 Unless the kid does after school activities, in which case not having a phone means being less prepared for an emergency.

#18 The use of pronouns here is important. " _The kid_ will mess up. _The parent_ will take your phone away." It's a forgone conclusion that the kid _will_ mess up. The parent doesn't think the kid can follow the contract as given. "We will sit down and talk about it. We will start over again. You & I, we are always learning." This isn't so bad taken by itself, but when taken with the context of the first two sentences it calls to mind the classic authority figure type conversation. Ex: Your boss says "Can I talk to you for a minute?". Such conversations are typically one-sided and berating of the non-authority figure.

#3 vs #11: Ambiguity has no place in a contract.

#1 and #6 That makes sense given the lending situation.

#15 is a heavy handed suggestion of music at best. "your peers that listen to the same exact stuff." The double-confirmation "same exact" is unnecessary and serves to show the opinions of the parent. The whole sentence is a command that says downloading music that the kid's peers listen to is off limits.

I'd agree that it is hard to judge from the outside, I'm also not sure it would be easier on the "inside". My largest concern is that the kid has no protection in this contract; It just serves as commands from on high.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> This poor kid will definitely have a brilliant career in cryptography. By 14 he'll also have OpenBSD running in VirtualBox running in iOS, out of frustration. Apple might not approve, but he'll hack iTunes Connect at 15 anyway.

</comment><comment><USER23> Every child is different and family dynamics matter a lot, but for me (when I was a teenager) this would have seemed insane. An attentive parent is good regardless of their chosen method of parenting, but freedom and support is much better than over the top restrictions/policing. Trust is an important part of a parent <-> child relationship, if he doesn't have the chance to make mistakes it's going to be detrimental. I had a consequence free childhood and I don't think it was for the best.

<comment><USER11> To be fair, it doesn't say the mom will look at everything, just that she could. It looks like she doesn't _want_ him to use the phone in the same way everyone else uses their phones. Setting hours and encouraging him to leave it home and take less photos etc. says to me that she intends for him to limit his use of the device. In other words, she probably isn't policing the rest of his life the same way she is controlling his phone.

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> As someone who is in twenties and may have family in near future, I worry that it'll be hard to deal with teens in this new 'tech' era.

But then I realized; most of people in my generation were teens in late nineties when Internet was exploding. Our parents didn't know how to use that thing in majority of cases. But we turned out fine. There was unfettered access to porn. Then things like FB/Twitter came where we were putting ourselves (and lot of intimate details) on digital shelves that would never be cleared. Yet, we all turned okay. Agreed, there were occasional mishaps with someone we know. But given the reach of Internet, we all turned quite well. I believe all of us had strong moralistic values that were imbued in us right from childhood. And those values turned out okay for Internet age too.

As someone who doesn't have kid, it will be stupid to pass judgement/opinion on her letter. May be I will be doing same thing since I will be older and worried about safety as well as well being of my child. However, when I was a kid, I remember whenever parents told us strict no for something, I itched to do it (unless it was something extreme). Just out of curiosity. And so did all my friends at that time.

<comment><USER25> > _Our parents didn't know how to use that thing in majority of cases. But we > turned out fine_

This is actually one of the changes that worries me most about the direction of modern culture. Back in our day, we were free to come to our own conclusions regarding things like hacking, appropriate communication, porn, copying software, shock images, what OS and software to run, etc. Given that it's literally just signals on a wire, there's very little trouble a kid can even get into with just the Internet itself, and most of that is more the responsibility of whomever hooked up critical systems to an anonymous communication network. We grew up fine _because_ we had freedom of thought and exploration.

Now we get ridiculous overbearing lists from this parent and her ilk, treating the Internet as some kind of walled garden entertainment store that just gets progressively larger as a child ages. No doubt there's a heavy dose of moralizing and shakily justified control if the kid installs any software that's not understandable and condoned by the parent (whether it be a new OS, utilities for exploring the infrastructure, progressive transfer protocols, etc). What are the chances of a child brought up within such closed philosophy becoming a complete self-actualizing adult?

<comment><USER24> > What are the chances of a child brought up within such closed philosophy > becoming a complete self-actualizing adult?

That's an interesting thought. Or may be kid will be complete opposite. That would be extreme too.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> Let's see what we have here...a gift that can be revoked at any time and an overbearing contract on how to live your life.

No calls after 7:30pm? Mom reading my emails? Don't say anything to a friend that you wouldn't say in front of their parents? No porn? Seriously?

Adolescence is a period of growth and discovery. Let the kid grow up with his generation. Encourage responsible behavior--not inane rules you yourself wouldn't follow. The bit about the music taste was especially rich. Should I apologize for preferring Lady Gaga to Bach? My playlist is unabashedly top 100.

Late night AIM convos and talking to my friends until we fell asleep were some of my fondest high school memories. They kept me going and helped me process the world as it opened up to me. I forged friendships then that are sanctuaries to me today.

To the kid: Let loose. Explore. Engage in activities that interest you. Don't be afraid to fail. Don't fear the judgment of others. Don't be different for the sake of being different. Don't be overwhelmingly goal oriented. Don't focus your life on padding your resume for some college.

You're probably not the introspective, reserved gentleman that your mother wishes you were. Learn to be comfortable with who you are.

<comment><USER27> > No calls after 7:30pm?

This one seems particularly bad to me, since it implies to me that there is also a _"be home by 7:30pm"_ rule in place. Pretty damn extreme.

<comment><USER21> As a counterpoint: what if he's on the swim team and has to be up at 5:30 am to make a 6:00 am swim practice every day? A 7:30 pm cut-off on electronics so he's asleep by 8:30 pm wouldn't be unreasonable.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> Over-inflated ego? There's no app for that.

With a list like this I would hope that the kid wises up soon and forgoes the device. It's not worth the pain that's going to come when an inside joke via text is seen by mom and all hell breaks loose. Greg is going to have to set some of his own boundaries as he goes into High School, they will be more valuable than an iPhone ever will.

</comment><comment><USER29> Sad. I wanted privacy in everything I did even as a teenager. With such anal parents I would rather not loan their phone.

<comment><USER30> I agree. Frankly, I would think that in his situation I would politely decline the phone and it's phonebook full of rules, and work to buy my own. Maybe that's the hidden lesson she was trying to teach him?

<comment><USER31> I don't know. I find (as an adult) I pretty much follow those same rules in my normal day-to-day usage of my phone (not exactly of course, but close). And I do that because of what I find to be emotionally healthy (connect with live people, not digital icons), polite (don't bug people too late) and reasonable (I have to pay to fix my own phone). It's called parenting, and it's pretty hard. It seems like society needs more of it, not less.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> A 13-year-old is not an adult. The fact that the mom is giving her 13-year-old a $600 piece of hardware at _all_ obviously means that she trusts him with some degree of responsibility. An internet-connected pocket computer is a very powerful device, and it'd be ridiculously irresponsible of her to _not_ set out some kind of guidelines that helps to ensure that he uses it responsibly and "inside the rules".

It's called parenting. A 13-year-old is not an adult, and does not have the maturity of an adult. Even if her rules aren't something that you or I would personally agree with, good on her for entrusting him with a large responsibility and setting out the guidelines for that responsibility. It is her duty as a parent to do exactly this - to trust her children with progressively more responsibility and freedom, but to also set hard-and-fast boundaries that shall not be crossed.

I like to say "I was such a good parent before I had kids". Parenting is all nice and neat and easy until you actually have to do it. It's really easy to armchair quarterback this one, but I'm pretty certain that anyone without kids is wholly unqualified to pass judgment on this one.

<comment><USER32> I don't think that the people who commented above are "armchair parenting." They're speaking in the position of the 13 year old kid. And we are all definitely qualified to pass judgement as a 'teenage' version of ourselves.

'A 13-year old is not an adult.'

\- This probably varies per culture. My personal opinion is, if you treat someone as an adult, they will behave like an adult. If you treat them as a kid, they will act as a kid.

<comment><USER14> Surely you recognize how ridiculous it is to give parenting advice from a teenager's perspective. Parents have been teenagers. Teenagers (at least at the heart of this discussion) have not been parents.

<comment><USER27> Not at all. With the powers of reflection and self-consideration, I can think back to how I was raised and make judgement calls on the merits of various parenting techniques that I experienced.

Presumably, in the case of first children, this is what parents have been doing since the dawn of time.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> This is not the way to teach a kid responsibility, with a list of seemingly (to a 13 year old) arbitrary and draconian set of rules. Let the kid save up his own money, buy the phone in person, and be responsible for it. That's exactly how it works in the adult world and fits perfectly in this situation, seems like a fitting way to teach responsibility. This mom just seems like a self-aggrandizing control freak.

<comment><USER34> It will teach the son how to live outside a set of rules while representing himself as abiding by them, though. And that is an essential part of life in any civilized society.

</comment></comment><comment><USER35> IANAL but isn't it explicitly _not_ a contract; he doesn't have to sign or agree to anything. With the "Acceptance of this present", doesn't that make it more equivalent of a EULA stuck at the bottom of this page?

Or, since it sounds like he got given it first, it's the equivalent of putting an EULA inside the box of something that says "By opening this box you agreed to the following contract:".

<comment><USER36> Being that we're talking about a legal minor, and their legal guardian, who has complete legal control over them, then what you say makes no sense.

</comment></comment><comment><USER37> As a parent (of now adult children) I like these rules, but can see pushback potential from today's kids. In retrospect, I wished I had, in particular, pushed for #3, having experienced calling the phone I was subsidizing and getting only voicemail.

And I like #6. and #7 is what parents should be doing.

The password thing (#2) was not something I would ask, nor the other privacy things, as I assumed they already had enough judgement by that time to have their own privacy. In fact, my Facebook rule for my kids and their peers that I know has always been that they invite me to be friends, not the other way around.

And #15, #16, and #17 are things that should be part of family life already.

#11 might be a good idea, but what adults even do that? As a parent, if you expect a behavior from your kid, the best way to get that behavior is by setting an example.

</comment><comment><USER5> I'm not sure, what could be a good reply to a list of rules like this. I guess, accepting the phone, rolling your eyes and hoping that stupid rules will gradually dissipate.

Reductio ad absurdum also works well, for particulary stupid rules.

<comment><USER37> Or in other words, Malicious Obedience?</comment></comment>


This year's iPhone design trend: Side navigation - <AUTHOR> http://inspiration.appflo.ws/orozpotk/this-years-iphone-design-trend-side-navigation

<comment><USER2> I first noticed this on Android. Dolphin Browser has done this for years now. Swipe to the left side (by swiping right) to get to bookmarks, etc. Swipe to the right side to get to add ons.

<comment><USER3> In fact, I think it's an Android trend that has migrated to iOS. It works better on Android, IMO, with its hardware menu button.

<comment><USER4> The hardware menu button is dead starting with Android 3.0 released 1.5 years ago.

<comment><USER5> Except my GS3 has one, and released on 4.0 with 4.1 due out very soon.

The only phone I can think of that doesn't have that is the Nexus.

<comment><USER4> HTC's new phones, every single tablet released after Honeycomb.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I wrote a UIViewController container subclass to do this behavior: <https://github.com/edgecase/ECSlidingViewController>

<comment><USER7> it is really good. thank you so much

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Not having an iPhone: how do you access this side navigation? I don't immediately see any clues in the app. Is it the buttons near the top (three horizontal lines)?

That being said, it kind of reminds me of Windows Phone's swipe to the side. Windows Phone does give clues that there's more to the page by cutting off part of the edge. This is the default design language for Windows Phone.

On the iPhone, it almost looks like there's a built-in or popular library these developers are using to enable this. Any word on how this is accomplished?

<comment><USER9> It's actually really simple. There's actually two different modes, but they're accomplished the same way. One is that menu is off screen and slides in to overlap the normal view. The second is the the view is in the background, and the normal view slides off to reveal the menu.

In both cases, you simply have a front view and a rear view. All you need to do is adjust the frame (positioning) of one of the views and animate that transition. Animating view transitions is really easy in iOS. So the pseudo code for this basically becomes:

Menu.position.x = Menu.position.x + (.7*screensize);

Animate();

<comment><USER8> Yeah, I was wondering more if this was baked-in, or if there was a framework handling it, or if someone just saw another developer doing it and everyone decided it looked nice and implemented it on their own. They all look incredibly similar.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> We were faced with the choice to design the navigation form with our current project. We narrowed it down to the slide menu and the drop down menu formats. I had hesitation with the slide menu as it offers some additional features, however it has some big issues. It typically sits in the upper left corner. Look at any mobile study (Luke W, perhaps) and you'll see the reach zones with users' hands. The right hand hold of the device causes the user to hyperextend their thumb to reach. Additionally, the top left location is sometimes reserved for a Back button in a linear flowing app.

So, we tested the two navigation forms with users in our usability lab. We had 15 users come in and work on multiple devices with various mobile prototypes. We saw a clear case that users preferred a drop down menu located at top right. Users were mostly negative about the location of the left corner slide menu trigger as well as the triple line iconography that typically represents the slide menu button.

<comment><USER11> It all depends on the usage and context of the app. Each method has their cases where it's optimal.

If you have a lot of different sections that does not require or option to drill down, then the 'Back' button isn't a major issue.

Hyper extending - how often does the button situated at the top left gets used? Less usage will be fine, more usage may require a more optimal location.

How many items are there in the menu? Are you using icons or just words? Side menu are great for future expansions/features and with an app like FB, where user can have alot of app attached to their acct, it's easier to navigate compared to a drop down/icons based nav.

Any chance to share the app that you guys tested for or is it still being developed?

<comment><USER10> You're absolutely correct. It's always best to consider all the characteristics of the app design. So, I'd like to hear your alternatives to a Back button in your experience. Even the example linked below, Sidetap <http://http://sidetap.it/>, it toggles between the menu button and the Back button. An anti-pattern that I wouldn't really recommend.

The frequency of use is a variable between apps and users. Hopefully it's been taken into consider during UX / design.

This is what initiated our discussion. We simply didn't like the bottom menu bar that had 3 to 4 options and an elipses. The elipses takes you to another screen that lists the remaining options. It was a developing crutch for too many nav options. Our nav has 7 items this release and 8 to 9 next release. It is text only and the reason is because we limited each item to a 42px+ tap zones. We had issues with iconography as well as keeping it simple.

The opportunity for expansion is a positive feature of slide menus, no argument. In fact, that was the strongest argument for it initially and probably the single most reason if we convert to a slide at a later time. However, the counter argument is that if our navigation gets so wide as to scroll off screen then maybe we can reconsider the structure and revise. Opportunities abound.

I wish I could. It's in build phase slated for late Q4 release. Great counterpoints, btw.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Reminds me of the panoramic navigation concept behind Metro (yes, yes, I'll eventually call it Modern, I guess).

</comment><comment><USER13> Seems this is a general mobile trend, not just iPhone: [http://www.androiduipatterns.com/2012/06/emerging-ui- pattern...](http://www.androiduipatterns.com/2012/06/emerging-ui-pattern-side- navigation.html)

It's nice to see some convergence in mobile UIs.

</comment><comment><USER14> The improper usage of "it's" as possessive made it impossible for me to read this:

"The pronominal possessives hers, its, theirs, yours, and oneself have no apostrophe." - <http://www.bartleby.com/141/strunk.html>

<comment><USER15> > The improper usage of "it's" as possessive made it impossible for me to read > this ...

Kudos to a person who stands on principle.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> This is a great trend. I just implemented it in two apps (iOS and Android). The only time I tolerate tab bars anymore is if it's a reader-type app that hides the nav and tab bars when you start reading.

Why have a 40pt-high bar on screen all the time, when you usually have more than 4 sections anyway? And tab bars don't work on iPad at all, anyway.

Android's action bar is a bit better than iOS tab bars though, and I feel like Android tablets can actually get away with that quite well, without resorting to side nav. But if you're going to be consistent, you might as well use side nav across iOS and Android for all device types. It's worked really well for me so far.

</comment><comment><USER17> The Facebook app has been doing this for so long, and is used by so many, that other apps are following the pattern. I would not be surprised to see this formalized as a controller/view class in the sdk at some point.

</comment><comment><USER18> A bit meta: I would love to be able to browse appflo.ws better on my iPad. The site seems set up solely for desktop navigation at the moment (use of hovers, width etc.)

<comment><AUTHOR> Glad you're enjoying! A mobile-optimized version of appflo.ws is on it's way. We just launched this month.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> The only app where, to me, this type of navigation has been a hinderance is on Remember The Milk (RTM). The older interface was much easier to use - swipe/tap/type and you were done. Now I have to swipe/tap/swipe/tap/type to accomplish the same things. Probably just a UI/UX issue but it was clearly one of those, "Hey - Facebook is using this new strategy so we want to do it too!" things rather than a features-first type of overhaul.

</comment><comment><USER20> Out of curiosity which came first, side nav in Path or side nav in Facebook? I've been trying to figure it out for a while, or am I off base and someone else did it first and they just took it and ran?

I think it's an interesting trend, definitely a good use of space. Slightly bored of just seeing black ones pop out so it's nice seeing people use it to fit in with the app theme or leverage additional content in there.

<comment><USER21> facebook was 1st I believe

<comment><USER22> They both came after the Android Google+ app...

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> And I think it's great. It solves a lot of problems with navigation on mobile by giving you a near-screenfull (or more) to work with.

</comment><comment><USER24> _Unlike any of the other apps we featured with side navigation, Google Plus slides the entire previous page out of view when the user goes to the side menu. Will this be the next trend for side navigation?_

Isn't this how iOS navigation has worked since its inception?!

<comment><USER25> No, you're thinking about the navigation controller, which is basically a deep stack of views that you can travel between.

The side navigation they're talking about is a "global" view that sits below your normal stack, that you can get to at any time. So instead of backing out to the top of the stack and selecting "read messages", now you can just gesture-swipe to the side and access the "main menu" directly from anywhere.

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> A lot of people are mentioning this was brought over from Android, but it reminds me the most of WebOS (Enyo, really). I've had my TouchPad longer than my Android tab, so I can't say whether this was common on Android first.

</comment><comment><USER27> This type of broad trend analysis is really useful and should be done more often. It's these types of interactions that become "intuitive".

<comment><USER28> ...and then passé.

We're a fadish, looking for the next thing, get bored of things quickly bunch of primates, aren't we?

We've come so far in terms of UX and usability that we forget that the icing on top of the cake is all about what's in vogue.

Apple skuemorphism (granddad) vs. Windows <srikeout>Metro</strikeout> is apparently the new black vs. white.

The icon for side scrolling (three stacked lines) is dire. It's a shitty, unintuitive adopted practice because Facebook and a few other players did it.

meh.

<comment><USER29> I won't comment on all of this (rather pointless) rant, but just last points:

      > The icon for side scrolling (three stacked lines) is dire.

What would you offers as an alternative? This solution is used to reveal menu. Menu is a list of items. Three lines represent a list of items.

      > It's a shitty, unintuitive adopted practice because Facebook and a
      > few other players did it.

What exactly makes it shitty? How is it not intuitive? Even if you don't know what a button with three lines does it does not take a lot of intuition to try and tap said button. Once you tap it you see what it does. Then you see the same in the other apps.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> Does anyone have a link explaining how to adding swipe or click to a side navigation bar to a webapp rather than these native examples?

<comment><AUTHOR> Actually, when we were designing the AppFlo.ws interface, we considered doing this to show/hide the caption area on the right. This JQuery plugin is pretty slick and there are demos on the page: <http://srobbin.com/jquery- plugins/pageslide/>

Hope that helps!

</comment></comment><comment><USER31> This was definitely and Android design trend that has come across to the iOS dev space.

</comment><comment><USER32> Hate the button on the left side. Usage on a 4,7" phone is not possible with one hand.

<comment><USER33> this is actually a great point. Presumably, the top left corner was used because that is the placement for the "back" or "previous" button _.

Unfortunately, the back button was placed there because it is just out of reach for most users to prevent accidental taps. Now that you bring it up, since some of these sliders are actually used quite often it doesn't quite make sense to have these menus exclusively triggered by a button in the top left.

_I guess it could have also been due to the resemblance to a menu and most "file" commands were traditionally in the top left.

</comment></comment><comment><USER34> Thank god tab bars are dead.

</comment><comment><USER35> May be wrong, but didn't Twitter for iPad pioneer this?

<comment><USER36> Twitter used this to bring links and images in from the stream but as far as I know the menu was never accessed this way. It does look extremely similar and probably had something do with the way path implemented the feature

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> @freehunter, yep, you access it by hitting the button near the top. You may want to check out sidetap, a mobile framework that allows you to build side nav: You may want to look at <http://sidetap.it/></comment>


All you need to know about Google's SHA1 Collision Attack - <AUTHOR> https://techiesnu.wordpress.com/2017/02/24/all-you-need-to-know-about-googles-sha1-collision-attack/ <comment><USER2> Very well explained....</comment>


GNU Gneural Network - <AUTHOR> https://www.gnu.org/software/gneuralnetwork/ <comment><USER2> I agree with the general motivation that having too much AI research in the hands of software companies who keep it proprietary harms transparency and progress. But there is already a _lot_ of neural-network free software, so why another package? For example, these widely used packages are free software, and seemingly more featureful: [http://torch.ch/](http://torch.ch/), [http://www.deeplearning.net/software/theano/](http://www.deeplearning.net/software/theano/), [http://pybrain.org/](http://pybrain.org/), [https://www.tensorflow.org/](https://www.tensorflow.org/), [http://leenissen.dk/fann/wp/](http://leenissen.dk/fann/wp/), [http://chainer.org/](http://chainer.org/)

<comment><USER3> Almost all of the open source software in the area is permissive-licensed, and relies on non-free components (CUDA).

To be honest, I'm not sure how Gneural plans to compete with those packages without support from CUDA or cuDNN, all of which are distinctly _not_ open source.

<comment><USER4> I'd really like to understand the reasons behind the focus on CUDA and not OpenCL. My understanding is that nVidia and AMD made sure their hardware and software would make the GPU accessible for non-graphics tasks, but AMD's version is not functionally or legally locked to their hardware. Why hasn't OpenCL taken off and run on nVidia hardware?

It seems like there must be more at play, but I'll admit a lack of insight and imagination on this one.

<comment><USER5> I recall hearing that CUDA has much more mature tooling. Not only the already mentioned cuDNN, but the CUDA Toolkit [0] seems like a really comprehensive set of tools and libraries to help you with pretty much anything you might want to compute on a GPU.

Also somewhat related: AMD seems to be moving towards supporting CUDA on its GPUs in the future: [http://www.amd.com/en-us/press-releases/Pages/boltzmann- init...](http://www.amd.com/en-us/press-releases/Pages/boltzmann- initiative-2015nov16.aspx)

[0] [https://developer.nvidia.com/cuda- toolkit](https://developer.nvidia.com/cuda-toolkit)

<comment><USER6> On closer inspection, it looks like AMD's CUDA support consists of "run these tools over your code and it will translate it so your code does not depend on CUDA"...

Its sort of supporting CUDA, just like a car ferry sort of lets your car 'drive' across a large body of water.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> The implementations look odd. A network consists of a collection of neurons, which are implemented individually as structs. The forward pass through the network is a series of nested loops, and the gradient descent implementation doesn't use backpropagation - it uses finite differences to approximate derivatives, which is known to be inefficient. Given the overall design of the library, it isn't really clear what you would use it for in practice.

I hope that future versions take inspiration from other open source machine learning libraries, which show how to use linear algebra and backpropagation and are much more effective.

</comment><comment><USER8> \- It's nice that GNU is taking on such a project

\- FANN seems like a pretty good alternative

\- The value of the software at the big "monopolies" lies within the data, not necessarily the software

\- This needs to be in some publicly accessible repo. Downloading a zip file and submitting patches? I thought we, as a society, were over that way of building OSS.

</comment><comment><USER9> Aw. It should have been named the GNU Gneural Gnetwork, gno?

<comment><USER10> My first thought also

<comment><USER11> Gnah!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> The "ethical motivations" section is out of place here. Its moaning about "money driven companies" (as though money were a bad thing), or "monopoly" (which does not exist in AI), just reflects badly upon the project.

<comment><USER13> The monopoly _does_ exist in AI: machine learning is entirely data driven, and companies like Facebook and Twitter quite literally have investors throwing money at them because they have such valuable data for that purpose. Google is no different.

<comment><USER12> "Monopoly" does not mean "two companies have lots of knowhow that competitors might like".

<comment><USER13> Monopoly does mean "when a specific person or enterprise is the only supplier of a particular commodity [...] which relates to a single entity's control of a market" (Wikipedia)

Data is the commodity. There is nowhere else you can get good raw data about, say, what people were publicly discussing last week, except through Twitter, in order to guess the stock market. Much of that data is closed off or incomplete even through their API. There is no other option except to create another Twitter.

<comment><USER12> A commodity is a routinely interchangeable product, available from multiple suppliers, competing primarily on price. No, "data" in this context is not that at all. A library of user profiles is the opposite: it's proprietary, unique, massive.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> This team should focus on a SPIR-V back-end and remove vendor lock in from NVIDIA for CUDA IN tensor AI software. A GPL licensed AI library without GPU acceleration isn't attractive outside academia.

</comment><comment><USER15> Love it! If you want to play with state-of-the-art machine learning software, this is not for you. But if you want a clean implementation of neural networks in C that has a GPL license and no non-free components, this is a good start.

<comment><USER16> There's already FANN: which is more mature and has bindings for 28 other languages: [http://leenissen.dk/fann/wp/language- bindings/](http://leenissen.dk/fann/wp/language-bindings/) I maintain the C# wrapper.

<comment><USER15> I have used FANN from Perl, amazing library. I'm still glad there is some AI software under GNU's belt and the source code for "gneural networks" is pure C and way easier to follow (for now)

<comment><USER17> It doesn't have quite the same feature set, but I wrote a simple, and I think "clean" neural net library for Python but with a pure C engine under the hood - could be pretty easily adapted to use directly from C.

[https://github.com/tburmeister/pyneural](https://github.com/tburmeister/pyneural)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> At this stage of things, I think it's more forward looking to open source trained models. Not only they are beginning to be the real core of future building blocks (see, e.g., trained word2vec vectors) but also the contain the real complexity in a NN, i.e., the are the "real function" you would want in a library.

</comment><comment><USER19> [http://cvs.savannah.gnu.org/viewvc/gneuralnetwork/gneuralnet...](http://cvs.savannah.gnu.org/viewvc/gneuralnetwork/gneuralnetwork/)

Am I mistaken, or is the source repository for this project just tarballs checked into CVS?

<comment><USER20> Commit message:

"source"

cvs.savannah.gnu.org/viewvc/gneuralnetwork/gneuralnetwork/gneural_network-0.0.1.tar.gz?view=log

Seems like

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> Is there more being done to promote GPU acceleration on non-CUDA platforms? I feel like this would be more useful than yet another FOSS NN library.

<comment><USER22> Torch has rudimentary OpenCL support. Some things "sort of" work. [https://github.com/hughperkins/cltorch](https://github.com/hughperkins/cltorch) Theano has been slowly working on integrating OpenCL support too for several years, but I'm not aware if it's supported or not.

Nvidia has a complete monopoly on all deep learning hardware and tooling. With the possible exception of Google (and maybe Facebook), 100% of all serious academic researchers are training their models on Nvidia hardware with Nvidia's propietary CUDA toolkit. Using anything else is currently completely unthinkable. Amazon and Nvidia have even teamed up to make CUDA training cheap (on the short term) for EC2 users.

I'd love to be able to switch to OpenCL, but there's so much momentum and very little perceived benefit when your lab already has four (very expensive) Titan X cards.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> About the author, [https://engineering.purdue.edu/gekcogrp/research- group/JeanM...](https://engineering.purdue.edu/gekcogrp/research- group/JeanMichelSellier/)

</comment><comment><USER24> Talking about this, GNU/the FSF should start drafting an OSS license for neural networks. Like APL Afferro for cloud services, the specifics of neural networks is that data is strategic.

APL -> Guaranty of OSS for the desktop

APL Afferro -> Guaranty of OSS for the cloud

??? -> Guaranty of OSS for NNs

</comment><comment><USER25> Funny.. The majority of AI research is currently using open source libraries (Theano, Lasagne, Torch, Keras, Scikit-Learn, Nolearn, etc. etc. etc.)

Now Google _does_ have access to a whole lot of data that the rest of the world doesn't. and FB, Google, and etc. have more than a bit of a hardware advantage... for now, at least. Distribute a shared system over a P2P infrastructure, and you can change that. Perhaps rather significantly.

</comment><comment><USER26> If you were an AI (software), and you had to pick a license to release your source code under, one would assume you would pick the GPL, as it retains as much freedoms as a piece of software could ever expect in a world full of us.

<comment><USER27> If I was an AI, I would release my source code as public domain or BSD. That way, big corporations would start using me and I'd have access to the world's financial and defense systems.

Shit, maybe I'm an AI.

<comment><USER26> please don't be an AI. you seem to be a BSD version of Skynet.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> Isn't the problem that in our age of supervised training, the algorithms are not the competitive advantage, but the data ?

</comment><comment><USER29> Nice that GNU is taking on such a project..

</comment><comment><USER30> freebase?

</comment><comment><USER31> I'm glad the FSF is finally getting concerned about proprietary AI, but it's going to take a _lot_ more than a single neural network package to get caught up in this arms race.

I wish they had taken the initiative much sooner.

<comment><USER32> It's more that someone interested in neural networks also wanted to work under the Gnu umbrella. The FSF don't have any resources per se.

</comment></comment><comment><USER33> I wish them good luck

</comment><comment><USER34> Anyone else notice how GNU's website is stuck in 1993?

<comment><USER35> No, it was updated since then. Its header/footer format is certainly was not common in 1993, it has search box and things like that. Anyway, it is usable, does not require JavaScript, and loads really fast.

<comment><USER36> Also, it sets the background colors. You couldn't do that until like HTML 3 in 1995.

However, META ICBM, is a joke as old as the META tag, which I guess is 1995.</comment></comment></comment>