As a female engineer, I am not diversity - <AUTHOR> https://hackernoon.com/i-am-not-diversity-8f5abc876acc <comment><USER2> In reference to the point she makes about people not assuming women are developers, I now make it a point to assume two things about most everyone (male and female identifying) that I meet in tech:

1) That they are competent and smart until they definitely prove otherwise to me.

2) That they are technical and interested in technology.

It's worked really well for me so far. In practice it means when I meet someone I say "You're a dev right?". Most people appreciate being assumed to be technical, and if they aren't we still get a great convo out of it. I admit it's kind of a silly thing, but so far in years of doing it I don't know of a time it's made anyone feel bad.

Edit - Also, if their answer to the dev question is that they are instead a product manager, UX, Designer, etc, I try and follow up with a funny compliment about their field. "Ah, so you make apps useable", etc. Again, just a simple conversational technique to make people feel valued.

<comment><USER3> I try to do the same, and I share your experience.

That said, sometimes it gets awkward in funny ways. A few months ago I was at a conference/event selling our product (booth and everything), talking to two young Polish girls who were running a tech startup. I don't recall the details by heart, but it was some marketplace I think. Our product is relatively technical, so your approach, "You're a dev, right?" usually pays off. But these founders giggled, rolled their eyes, and said "Do we _look_ like developers to you?"

Eh, yes? :/

<comment><USER4> I can see that getting awkward! But, you might also have been able to save the moment with a confident "Yes. You look like you'd make awesome developers."

I try to live by "It's only awkward if you let it be awkward" to get through those situations.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Great article. Thanks for sharing this. I think perspectives like yours are what we need to move beyond what are often one-dimensional conversations about diversity.

Aside: Please forgive the nitpick, but despite its widespread use I really don't think "extroverted introvert" is a thing. The problem is that these two things are opposite ends of a spectrum. I think what people really mean when they say "extroverted introvert" is one of two things:

1) Ambivert : "a person whose personality has a balance of extrovert and introvert features"

2) Introvert, but not shy : It is a common misconception that introverts are inherently shy. The two are correlated, but not the same thing. You can be introverted and not be shy, either inherently or by learning to overcome shyness. Extra/introversion has more to do with your preferences and where you derive energy from. Shyness is more fear-based, and fear can be overcome.

Anyway that's not really a critical part of your article but I've sort of unintentionally become a Myers-Briggs nerd over the years and enjoy discussing stuff like that :)

<comment><USER6> I just finished "The personality brokers", fantastic book, which explores how E<>I entered popular culture via the Myers-Briggs test.

When the E<>I spectrum was subjected to more rigorous analysis it turned out it may just be a metric of "talkativeness" and not really related to the Jungian concept.

<comment><USER5> Hmm.. Talkativeness seems way too narrow to me. The theory of deriving energy externally vs. internally makes the most sense to me personally. Though it would certainly correlate with talkativeness. But I'm not an expert on the matter :)

<comment><USER7> Yeah but then you have to define energy.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I just hope this diversity drama never comes to my country.

I already work in a very diverse workplace. Both genders and multiple nationalities are represented, and I really don't see what that brigs to the table. I mean, why is diversity good per se?

I don't see any correlation between any demographic variable and being a good coworker.

<comment><USER9> On an individual level, it doesn't improve being a good coworker.

On an institutional level, you get a broader set of ideas when you have a more diverse workforce, giving you a better chance at a black swan idea. And frankly, better odds of preventing disaster (Chevy wouldn't have tried to sell a car called the "Nova" in Mexico if they'd had a spanish speaker on the team. No Va means No Go).

There's also evidence that diverse teams do better - [https://www.mckinsey.com/business- functions/organization/our...](https://www.mckinsey.com/business- functions/organization/our-insights/delivering-through-diversity)

<comment><USER8> > you get a broader set of ideas

I'm sorry but I'm still failing to see it. My experience in my company does not support that hypothesis (and it's really a large one) and the link you provided the only thing that is really proving is that more executive women is correlated with more profitability, which could perfectly be (and probably be) the consequence of other institutional factors.

We do have locals in every market we play, but that's pretty common sense, you have to know the language and cultural references.

But again, I'm not in the US nor I work for a US company. Maybe that has something to do, IDK.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I'm going to say it. The most excluded group in SV are conservative republicans. Its a death sentence to your career to come out as one. If you truly value diversity, their point of view is the most absent from tech.

<comment><USER11> It's also the most incompatible point of view. They do not want to be around diversity.

<comment><USER12> Every one of them? Isnt this the textbook definition of generalization that diversity is supposed to counter?

<comment><USER13> Well, conservatives in the US have thrown in with a party that typically demonizes people of color, is actively working to disenfranchise them, and has a growing white nationalist element to it.

Are there some conservatives who really just care about there being too much government regulation, or whatever? Sure. Looking at the party they rally around and the way it wants to treat people, there sure are some general trends that do not speak to a desire to embrace diversity.

<comment><USER14> There's a difference between being a Republican, and being a Conservative. To that end, the Republican party itself is not the monolith that you see in the Democratic party. There still exist factions that resulted in the passage of a lot of Democratic policies while the Reps. controlled Congress during the last presidency.

While I don't support the Republican party, I still hold conservative ideals, primarily regarding regulation and oversight. My social views are fairly liberal, but I don't identify with the progressive movement and intersectional politics.

EDIT: I think diversity is great, but diversity as an end goal is misguided.

<comment><USER11> > To that end, the Republican party itself is not the monolith that you see in > the Democratic party.

What on earth are you talking about?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> I do think that pointing at someone's physical body and saying, "They bring diversity because they're X!" is wrong.

However, I do think that gender and race have an influence on your thought processes because of who you tend to associate with.

In addition, she spent 15 years in China, which is definitely not very common here in the US. That alone means she's going to think somewhat differently than the average engineer.

And finally, a lack of diversity in a group (all white hetero males, for example) indicates an attempt to exclude diversity, though perhaps subconsciously.

<comment><USER16> A group of white males can be diverse, we just don't accept it.

Do you think a group of white males who went to Stanford, MIT etc... right after high school, are the same as those who joined the military, yet now work in the same company?

<comment><USER17> They will have a common thread: they all will be recipients of privileged treatment by society. That is indeed a crucially important fact that will share their attitudes and perspectives.

<comment><USER18> White male coal miners, it could be argued, have had a lot less privilege than a Bobo Stanford grad female accountant. Nancy Pelosi has had a heck of a lot more privilege than some laid off Detroit auto worker.

Elizabeth Holmes, who's father was Christian Holmes IV, a former Vice President of Enron, was a lot more privileged than pretty much anyone reading this now.

The idea that gender alone determines privilege is ridiculous. It's far more complex. Yet hiring a pedigreed Elizabeth Holmes would be "diversity" but hiring some West Virginia white male community college grad from a coal miner family would be "Privilege." That's ridiculous. Hiring a black Princeton grad is "diversity" but hiring a white University of El Paso grad is "privilege."

If people really care about diversity, they'd hire for diversity of experience or diversity of thought rather than diversity of biology.

<comment><USER17> Please do some.more reading on what white privilege is. You are confusing it for physical or financial comfort: this is not an correct interpretation.

White privilege is seeing that politicians are mainly white men, that the people often cast as the heroes of movies and TV shows and books are white men, that nearly everything in society characterizes the "good guy" or the ideal person as being a white man. (I also hope that you learned about the history of how people of color, especially black men, where presented in society.)

It's also why white people are not afraid of being murdered by cops as they reach for their car registration and insurance. Or as they answer the door to a belligerent, entitled, drunk, off-duty cop who attempts to B&E into their home. [1] (This sort of thing never, ever happens to white people.)

The privilege isn't something as superficial as more money: it's significantly deeper. It's summarized as the notion that being a white man means every opportunity is available to you and there are no closed doors.

Perhaps a better way to think about it is that white privilege is the absence of any systematic biases or abuses based upon your gender or skin complexion.

[1] [https://eu.usatoday.com/story/news/2018/09/24/dallas- police-...](https://eu.usatoday.com/story/news/2018/09/24/dallas-police- officer-amber-guyger-fired-killing-neighbor/1413182002/)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> If men and women are completely interchangeable, physically and psychologically, then this article makes a lot of sense.

But if women really do have something different (at least on average) to bring to the table, then this women really does add diversity.

The purpose of diversity is not quotas, but differences that work together and add something to the whole.

<comment><USER20> I think the point is that the diversity she brings isn't enough diversity to justify her as someone who is adding to diversity in a tech company. You could add 1000s of women like her and the company wouldn't be particularly different.

<comment><USER21> It seems obvious that adding 1000s of women like her would absolutely meaningfully change the company though

<comment><USER22> Adding 1000 people would change most companies, regardless of what those people look or think like.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment> trevor-e Does anyone else find it weird/disturbing that someone is compiling a list of women engineers and where they work? I understand having a list of influential speakers and such to look up to, but this does not seem to be the case. The author mentioned she has no idea how she made it on there.

Link: [https://cristinacordova.github.io/women- eng/](https://cristinacordova.github.io/women-eng/)

<comment><USER23> Yeah that's kind of weird... I'm reminded of Romney's "notebook full of women", but at least I don't think the contents were made public?

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> I liked the article, but even her expanded definition of diversity doesn't resonate completely with me. My brother and I had exactly the same background and upbringing. And we are both remarkably different people. None of the metrics of diversity mentioned here would reflect that, but it's reality.

The priority should be diverse people, not diverse backgrounds.

</comment><comment><USER6> I think the finer point is that pinning diversity to something specific like gender works against people that don't _want_ to be viewed as a diversity candidate. It's hard to get this right and the end goal is that we don't even talk about diversity anymore but just recognize its benefits.

<comment><USER25> Word. I'm a female undergrad in mathematics, and the department is _constantly_ trying to get me involved with female-oriented STEM events, offering to sponsor me for "women in STEM"-type conferences, etc etc. I refuse on principle.

It's well-meaning, probably, but really gets on my nerves sometimes. I want to be a mathematician, not a "female mathematician". It feels like I have this bright red sign covering my face that says "FOSTER DIVERSITY HERE". It's okay guys! I'm already fostered!

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> I agree with her, diversity is more than just race, sex, sexual preference, etc. However I would say that I think these things as a top level attribute DO correlate with different lived experiences that you want in a diverse workforce.

Companies are not going to ask you about your political leanings, they are probably not going to give you some mental test to see how you react to situation A and situation B. If you look at the stats, race and gender do correlate between stark differences in people. For instance, the "wealth gap" between black and white Americans is about 10x, growing in poverty vs. growing up in a stable middle class family causes a different lived experience, you view the world differently because of how you grew up. That's not to say that all black people are poor and all white people are rich, but if you're working with a limited data set and are thinking about how you can get some people in a room with different lived experiences, you could do a lot worse than saying "let's get a mix of different races in here". I think the same thing applies to women and other traits that companies and institutions use for their diversity metrics.

</comment><comment><USER27> Interesting that this person does not mention diversity of political opinion, which seems to be lacking.

<comment><USER28> That's not something you should ask someone in a job interview though. And most people (mercifully) don't talk about politics at work. So what would promoting political diversity look like?

<comment><USER29> >So what would promoting political diversity look like?

Not ostracizing people for having political opinions that are not the majority but fairly mainstream.

I work at the satellite office of an east coast tech company and how you have to be careful not to say anything that betrays politics that are not officially condoned is a bi-weekly gripe among the group I eat lunch with.

I'm not saying it should be perfectly acceptable to tell your coworkers you went to a KKK chapter (is that their organizational unit?) barbecue when discussing what you did over the weekend but if you went to see NASCAR you shouldn't feel compelled to tell people you stayed home.

<comment><USER22> Is NASCAR uncool now? :(

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> Does it matter who's diversity? If the argument is that a company with a non- diverse workforce can't deal with users from different walks of life, they don't have a diversity problem, they have an empathy problem. (Arguably most programmers have an empathy problem.)

While I'm sure hiring 2 women and 0.2 black people for every scrum team may help fix the empathy issue, so would hiring white guys who don't think they're the center of the universe. Of course to do that we'd need to stop (as an industry) rewarding and recognizing people who think they're the elite for doing a perfectly normal white-collar job that occasionally involves high school math.

(And I definitely don't think we need diversity of political opinions. I don't want to know my coworkers' political opinions, whatever they may be. What would be great would be if I could get coworkers who just don't think their particular ideology is super important in terms of their work life. Any companies that are more on the chill side like this?)

</comment><comment><USER31> The ultimate diversity is individuality. Stop looking at sex, age and skin color and start looking at the competence alone.

</comment><comment><USER32> This comment might not be relevant to the article.

Isn't diversity ultimately relative to the group you are comparing to? And how you want to define the group might differ among people? Also how you weigh the trait in relation to its effect on the some kind of performance metric of the group?

Someone with trait A could be considered diverse if we define a group with predominantly trait B. Does having diverse traits (a mix of both A and B) highly correlated with better performance/survival/whatever metric? Maybe having diversity means the group can adapt better over time (surviving an evolutionary bottleneck in some sense)?

Most of these concepts are obviously not quantifiable in this way, but I think we need some kind of framework to think about how we define diversity.

</comment><comment><USER33> Hire remotely if you want diversity...

</comment><comment><USER34> All this article says to me is that no matter how hard I work or what decisions I make or what my life experiences are, I'll never be good enough for progressives. I'll fall "lower" than others on some arbitrary and ever- changing grading scale which puts value to my experiences.

</comment><comment><USER35> _> "I'm not bringing in the diverse perspective that is so critical to the success of any company."_

Based on what evidence, or even logic, is diversity critical to the success of even _some_ companies? Let alone _any_ company?

<comment><AUTHOR> Here are a few articles on why diversity is good for business:

[https://techcrunch.com/2018/01/18/diverse-teams-are-still- re...](https://techcrunch.com/2018/01/18/diverse-teams-are-still-really-good- for-business-mckinsey-says/)

[https://www.inc.com/ian-altman/5-reasons-why-workplace- diver...](https://www.inc.com/ian-altman/5-reasons-why-workplace-diversity-is- good-for-business.html)

<comment><USER22> I wonder if those studies got correlation vs causation correctly. Maybe well- doing companies have more satellite offices. Or particular cities have become magnets for people to come do business and have good ecosystem for kickstarting their growth.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> Agreed, diversity should mean more than simply ethnicity and gender.

Age is one thing she left out, it's great for one's career these days to look ~28.

</comment><comment><USER37> I'm kind of surprised by the extent to which people have bought into this diversity thing, to the point where it's actually literally a thing people care about. My understanding is that this modern push for diversity and all the rhetoric surrounding it effectively started as a dogwhistle used by liberals to push affirmative action in pursuit of social justice without having to talk about the uncomfortable reality of white privilege and the controversial politics of social justice and reparations. Diversity is sort of a cop-out, a way for liberal white people to convince less liberal white people that affirmative action is the right thing not because white people did anything wrong ever but because it make white people richer.

Taking this as a serious thing on its own devoid of the political context in which it became a necessary tactic and getting into the weeds about what truly is diversity is sort of like the liberal equivalent of taking the Republican rhetoric about makers and takers, welfare frauds and the need for voter ids seriously without realizing that these talking points are largely understood by their audiences to be about black people and immigrants. Seeing the world through rhetorical devices created specifically to confuse the issues results in confusion like this entire article. This is not what diversity means to people for whom it's an important issue.

<comment><USER37> Otherwise, do we believe the biggest advocates of diversity are just really passionate about making shareholders richer by getting workers to produce more at lower costs? That is what makes them push for a more diverse workplace everywhere? I mean some middle manager somewhere might be convinced that diversity is an important ingredient for increased productivity and that may be true for some definition of diversity, but by and large the push for diversity comes from an entirely different place that is far more about the politics of gender, race and social justice and the movement that is providing the actual weight behind this push for diversity doesn't care one bit about which teams and companies are more productive.

</comment></comment><comment><USER38> I get the point the author is making, but I'm not 100% sure I agree with how she expressed it. By limiting the definition of diversity/minority, we can probably identify a cohort for any individual where they are in the majority.

Diversity measured across an entire company or large cohort doesn't really show the value of diversity in the first place. For me, the real power of diversity is at a micro-level. The author would absolutely add diversity to a three person team where one member is an Indian woman born, raised, and educated to PhD in India, another is a Croatian man with no formal education beyond secondary school, and the third person was a poor kid from Detroit that scrapped their way through community college and into the job market.

When I'm putting a team together, I try my hardest to create diversity. That doesn't mean running through a checklist of gender, ethnicity, sexual identification, etc. but it does mean looking for people with different points of view, experience, and ways of solving problems.

tl;dr: Diversity == good, agree gender doesn't necessarily mean diversity, diversity is a meaningless term without context.

<comment><USER39> I think checklists get favored because they're easy to codify in the form of procedures and business processes. They're also easy to measure and report on.

The broader, more complex concerns you point to are difficult to measure and thus perhaps more likely to be given short shrift.

<comment><USER38> All excellent points. It's definitely not press-release material, but (IMHO) highlights how things should be. Companies would naturally reach the desired levels of "diversity" if they simply practiced it at a micro level. Certainly some teams would look "unbalanced" by some of the traditional metrics, but I think everything would even out on the larger scale.

An interesting anecdote was that I led Engineering for a startup that was acquired by a large ($50-100 Billion) company. After we were acquired, several people commented on my collective team as being the "most diverse" in the company. That was nice to hear, but (for me) the most gratifying part was the team members taking stock and collectively thinking "oh yeah, I guess we are diverse!" It happened on purpose, but with the intention of using diversity as a source of strength not as a means of checking off a box.

<comment><USER39> Thinking about this further, something else comes to mind.

One of the other things worth considering is that failing to comply with checklist-driven diversity can land you in court for supposed discrimination, where the traditional metrics matter quite a bit and other approaches matter not at all. Between liability and ease of implementation and measurement, it's definitely going to be privileged over other approaches.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER40> This article is part of the problem. By pointing out that she does not contribute to "diversity" because of her economic and cultural background, the author reinforces the idea that those are the interesting ingredients of this elusive "diversity." She says nothing about her ideas, interests, or opinions. Does she perhaps add to diversity by having original thoughts? Or are her political opinions and taste in music predictable? I'd say this article is evidence that she may in fact possess some intellectual diversity, but that it is something that she herself does not recognize as such.

<comment><USER38> You said (in a much better way) part of what I was trying to say in another post. She reduces herself to bullet points and ignores all of the things that I would consider critical parts of what makes people different. Upon a reread, I think that was her point. Measuring diversity based on a few predefined attributes makes no sense. Creating diversity by hiring someone because they're female isn't the answer, we need to go beyond that to truly have diversity.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you for your thoughtful response!

>>> Measuring diversity based on a few predefined attributes makes no sense. Creating diversity by hiring someone because they're female isn't the answer, we need to go beyond that to truly have diversity.

I think I might have been a tad overdramatic by just saying "I'm not diversity" in the title, but what you wrote above there is exactly what I'm trying to communicate: diversity is more than just bullet points, we need to see it more holistically.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER41> She doesn't know what is it to suffer from diversity. Elizabeth Warren has 0.0001% things to say about that.</comment>


France, Spain, and Italy's English skills are on the decline: study - <AUTHOR> https://qz.com/1736699/france-spain-and-italys-english-skills-are-on-the-decline/ <comment> Al-Khwarizmi As a Spanish person, I can confirm that average English proficiency in Spain is poor in absolute terms. It has often been reported to be the country that speaks English worst in the EU, and it may very well be (although the French also deserve a honorable mention). But I find the claim that it has been declining since 2014 very difficult to believe, to say the least.

English is studied in primary school, which wasn't the case 20 years ago, let alone 50, so young people all have at least a minimal level whereas most people that are now passing away don't speak any English at all. This alone should be an important factor pushing average proficiency up. The coming of Netflix, HBO and their ilk in the last few years have made viewing TV series in English much more common (regular TV typically only offers dubbed versions). I teach at a university in English, ten years ago we didn't even offer that possibility and now demand is steadily increasing.

OK, I don't have actual data, they do... but given the limitations of their data (acknowledged in the piece itself), I'm taking it with a huge grain of salt.

<comment><USER2> I have visited Spain a few times over the last 20 years. I do not speak Spanish and I try to get by speaking English (these are few days at a time visit, and not long term stay).

From this one man's experience, it is not that Spain has regressed in its proficiency with English, but I find that other southern European countries (particularly Portugal) has upped the ante - a LOT.

To compare Paris (I understand it does not represent all of France, but it is one view point), 20 years ago I would have difficult time in ordering in a restaurant. A hardship many English-speaking visitors today will find hard to empathize with. In most places in Paris today I can get by with English and get complex transactions done.

Portugal has truly baked-in English proficiency into their national psyche now. Zealotry aside, this enables Portugal to further their economic and cultural interests more, I think.

<comment><USER3> > In most places in Paris today I can get by with English and get complex > transactions done.

First times I went to France (90's), there were people I met who genuinely did not understand English at all - even simple words -, and I had shopkeepers who, when my stumbling French was also insufficient, pulled strangers off the street to translate, and at least in smaller towns it sometimes took multiple tries to find someone.

By my last few trips it'd become hard to practice my French because people switch to English the moment I stumble in French...

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> My pet theory is that English proficiency is much better in countries where movies are subtitled, not dubbed.

Incidentally it also explains why native english speakers tend to have no idea about other languages.

The rise of youtube talking heads should also help... i'm pretty sure my daughter got most of her english from there.

<comment><USER5> My personal observation of people who watch lots of anime with subtitles but only understand a handful of Japanese words and can't pronounce them correctly indicates that passive exposure to a language isn't enough to learn much. You also need to try and practice using it yourself.

<comment><USER6> I agree to a certain extent but keep in mind that Japanese grammar is completely different from any latin based language. That makes really difficult to asimilate full sentences, locate where the action or the subject are, etc.

<comment><USER7> It's only visually different. Much like Russian. That is a relatively big barrier though.

Grammar and concepts are comparable. It's no Chinese for sure. Much less alien than Korean too.

(And let's not try comparing it with Hebrew, Indic languages or Arabic vs Latin group.)

<comment><USER6> It's way more than visual. For example, Japanese plurals aren't evident and need to be understood from context. Another example is the word order, in Japanese, the verb goes at the end of the sentence. Add to it Hiragana and Katakana characters and it becomes quite difficult to learn.

<comment><USER8> In English also verb end can go. Plurality--they can usually be disregarded, too.

<comment><USER9> > In English also verb end can go.

This sounds wrong to me…

<comment><USER10> Point this is.

(Though i think the correct pseudo translation would be "In English also verb can end go". Subtle difference, but more like German - und auf den Punkt.)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Living in Italy, in Milan, I can try to outline the situation in Italy

Even admitting that the study is true, which I don't believe, there are factors at play

\- most Italian English speakers have been moving to foreign countries for the past 20 years (between 100 thousands and 250 thousands a year)

\- Italy, after Japan, is the oldest country in the World, many Italians have never met an English speaking person and the last one for many of them was soon after WW2

\- English has never been important in Italy, unless you had to communicate with anglophones. German, French and Spanish are much more widespread either because they were studied at school, are easier for us to learn and we have the majority of exchanges with those countries (France is the main commercial partner, Germany is the second largest buyer of Italian products, including tourism)

\- immigration brought here a lot of people coming from non-english backgrounds, in Milan the second most spoken language is now (probably) Chinese. It's easier to meet a Japanese on the streets than an American and a lot of workers in base services (transport, delivery, cleaning etc.) come from south america, northern Africa or East Europe

Speaking a very good English is almost irrelevant, the majority of the people an Italian needs to speak to speak a worse English than them, assuming they even speak English at all

it's not uncommon to meet a Tunisian transporter speaking with a Bosnian mason in a Chinese bar and they use Italian - their own version of it - as lingua franca

It's fascinating

Edit: forgot to mention that many Italians in the past migrated to Germany or Belgium, that's why they speak German or French, but not English.

</comment><comment><USER12> It is not that they are failing in English, rather that they are less dependent on foreign content, having localized versions from whatever might be relevant.

As polyglot speaker, I am really thankfully to have been brought up learning multiple languages.

English only got relevant during the last century, and as human history is full of different kinds of lingua francas throuhout the milenias, others will follow.

<comment><USER13> English is dominant now, and as you say history shows the dominant lingua francas changes over time - all the time. But I don't think another existing nation's language will take over. Not Spanish, Arabic, Mandarin, etc. Instead, I think an evolved version of English will dominate in 100-200 years time.

We already have many localised Englishes across the world, American, Australian, Indian, various pidgin English, but also in politics, business, social media there are "New Speak" version of English in those contexts.

One of these will evolve to be the lingua franca of the young connected people and dominate. And then be superseded by the next evolved language.

Once we colonize Mars and elsewhere there will be some interesting forks in languages I am sure.

<comment><USER14> Important to note that this has probably happened before with other popular languages. The way you describe the hypothetical future of English sounds a lot like you could be talking about Latin. The phrase _lingua franca_ itself came about to describe a very similar story.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Another article on that page [https://qz.com/1213443/the-world-is-getting- better-at-englis...](https://qz.com/1213443/the-world-is-getting-better-at- english-but-some-countries-are-learning-faster-than-others/) lists English proficiency by country. English proficiency is measured by average score on a test by a certain English testing company, which is obviously a flawed measure but ^\\_o_/^.

<comment><USER16> Which has a link to [https://www.ef.edu/epi/](https://www.ef.edu/epi/), where neither England nor the UK are listed.

So I guess we don't make the grade :-(

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> From my experience, English has been mostly useless in these countries as far back as I can remember. Even in touristy Paris, there are plenty of places where nobody speaks a word of English and this gets even 'worse' when you venture outside of cities. I'm from the country with the highest English proficiency (Netherlands), so I'm used to everyone speaking English. The benefit of this though, is that I can do basic stuff, like ordering coffee, in about 6 languages.

I wonder, though, whether the conclusion from the data is correct. It could be that more people are getting access to the internet, so even people who didn't have a reason to learn English half a decade ago are now looking for courses online.

</comment><comment><USER18> 2 remarks:

\- of course Europe's largest economies are going to be the least incentivized to adopt English due to their larger internal market both in terms of culture as well as economics.

\- The International Englishes (plural) are different from both UK and US English. The scientific community has its own 'dialect', and the EU political/administration/diplomatic English is different still. Standard tests based on US/UK spelling/grammar/vocabulary might not capture these nuances.

<comment><USER19> > Standard tests based on US/UK spelling/grammar/vocabulary might not capture > these nuances.

Standardized tests don't do well at assessing language fluency in general. For one example, my sister was born in the US, grew up in the US, was educated in English, spoke English (exclusively) at home, and graduated from the University of Pennsylvania. She failed the State Department's test of fluency in English.

<comment><USER9> Similarly, I know a number of fluent Spanish speakers who got caught up in high school Spanish because they didn't have an understanding of grammar to the level of what was required in the class…

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Fascinating.

Native English speaker, here. Can speak "emergency" Spanish and German, but that's about it (asking for directions, ordering food, making limited small talk in a hideous accent I've been told, etc). Tried French for a while but stopped because it's way too hard to learn without immersion. In a way it's not really surprising to me that Germany is the country retaining English proficiency - English is a Germanic language after all. That the Romance language countries are drifting away from English is not surprising in that regard.

Still, as economies continue to globalize it is curious that there's a regression at all. English has been the language of business for probably a generation or more at this point. Is this a leading indicator of an economic decoupling we'll see in the coming decades?

<comment><USER20> I learned a little bit of Norwegian before traveling there. Sure most people we met spoke English but it did help when the trams in Oslo were being rerouted and I was able to read the sign at the otherwise empty tram stop telling us the stop was closed and where to go instead! Or read the Norwegian menu and order appetizers (in English), at which point the waitress realized we weren't Norwegian and gave us the English menus (I didn't realize most restaurants had English menus as well, good for us). I wouldn't have fared well with the main courses. I've found lay food terminology is one the least universal things.

My point is, however, that I found learning Norwegian easier than learning Spanish, which I was fluent in at one point, years ago. There weren't 14 tenses to learn like in Spanish, sentence structure felt more familiar and closer to English, and there were many more cognates than I expected. Sure there were some new things like putting articles before or appended to nouns to denote indefinite or definite. Or even the gendered articles (my favorite thing about English is nearly all nouns are neuter).

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> I think it is the opposite - everybody is speaking english a bit, so less people bother to test or obtain any formal proof. And google translate makes it easier to get away with poor English when communicating.

Also we are in an age in which native english speakers are a minority, so what is good english will inevitably change.

</comment><comment><USER22> I moved to France a few years ago. I did know that French don't know English as much as they do not want to speak English yet I am still amazed by how much. I think that the main reason for that is that they have their own French speaking view of the planet in which they happily live. There are French businesses, French universities and research, French (ex-)colonies, French tourism etc. One could say that the same are true for other countries, eg Germany where English are much more/better spoken, but apparently it's not like this and I have no explanation for that.

<comment><USER23> > I did know that French don't know English as much as they do not want to > speak English yet I am still amazed by how much.

I hate it when I hear the stereotype "French people do speak English but they're not going to because they are so proud" (maybe not exactly what you're saying...). It's simply untrue. People who speak good English will very happy to practice whenever the opportunity shows up.

It's not easy to learn a foreign language, and most French people who didn't have the opportunity to study abroad, or who don't need English at their workplace don't speak English very well. However, I think most of them speak _some_ English, as long as you're patient and don't expect them to be fluent. For many people, it's intimidating to speak English, even if they've learnt the basics at school.

> they have their own French speaking view of the planet

Indeed, they live in a country where they can get by using their own national language and most of them don't have enough opportunities to meet English speaking foreigners. Why should you expect them to learn your language, especially if you're the one moving there?

> Germany where English are much more/better spoken

English is hard for roman languages speakers. It seeems Italian, Spaniards, French have a harder time than Germans or Dutch...

<comment><USER24> Patience is definitely key and most people who only speak one language have no patience for someone who partially knows their language to talk to them. I've been learning Spanish and traveling in Latin America and the only people I can successfully have actual conversations with in Spanish are ones who also know English because they seem to understand what it's like to have trouble expressing themselves. I'll speak in Spanish and they listen even though I'm slower than a normal person and I'll do the same if they talk back to me in English.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> From my experience answering emails from customers all around the world I am not surprised: Spaniards are by far the most difficult to communicate with. It seems even going Google translate way (they write in Spanish and then translate my emails to Spanish) is more difficult with them than with say Koreans or Chinese.

I handle emails for the company I've founded for 5 years now. My experience is that nationality of the customer has big predictive value when it comes to how the communication goes. For example:

Germans - decent English with funny spelling/grammar quirks (der computer, der solver, using gender pronouns when referring to things etc.)

Chinese - rarely write any English but are very smart at using Google translate, I rarely have any communication issues with them. General computer literacy very high.

Japanese - exceptionally polite. Often write perfect English. Some of them don't though but they always make an effort (no pasting of Google Translate) and apologize profusely for their English being not so good.

Scandinavians: write better English than many native speakers, absolutely no issues. If I were to point the best speaking Scandi country it would be Finland.

Russians: often appear rude as I think translating Russian word by word results in rude sounding English. Maybe it's about the culture as well. I like communicating with them though. They sometimes use veiled or not so veiled insults towards me and my software. I keep the tone in my emails sometimes suggesting their brain is just malfunctioning and they are wasting my time. It usually goes well and problems are resolved quickly.

French: surprisingly much easier to communicate with than Spaniards. They rarely write correct English but somehow I am usually able to resolve the issue while when I see an email in Spanglish I brace myself for incoming trouble. French email domains (laposte, orange.fr) suck though. They often lose emails without any message. At this point if someone orders using laposte email I am emailing them from my personal account asking to provide functional email address. It sometimes gets to them but not always. We don't have those issues with any other email provider.

I could do a few more but those I feel strongest about. I am one guy who sells software to a specific niche. I am also not a native speaker so take it for what it is.

</comment><comment><USER26> I'm surprised to see Singapore behind some other countries. It's the main official language. When I visited Singapore, every person and group we overheard spoke english by default and with the same level of proficiency as american or british people (no accent). Also, everything is labeled mainly in english and only optionally in one of the other 3 official languages.

</comment><comment><USER27> The solution to this (assuming you see it as a problem in search of a solution) is to stop watching dubbed media. Content targeted at anyone over say 10 years just shouldn't be dubbed, period.

Language isn't merely vocabulary, grammar and pronounciation. It's also nuance in expression, proverbs, slang, idioms. All of this is _lost_ when content is translated and dubbed. When a person in a US sitcom uses an idiom, the spanish dubbed content translates to a similar _Spanish_ idiom. With subtitles not only do I get the pronounciation and vocabulary, I also see in the subtitles a best-effort mapping from the english idiom to the corresponding idiom in my native language.

I think this is solving itself automatically as movies and traditional TV gives way for youtube and netflix where dubbed content isn't as common.

</comment><comment><USER28> English is on course to eat up smaller languages. Mass communication has brought the world closer together, and with that, diversity is lost. It's too early to say whether it's for better or for worse, but here we are.

<comment><USER29> That's really not true. Many people I know _also_ speak English, but that doesn't mean that they somehow forget how to speak their own language. If anything, small communities with an own language tend to be fiercely proud of that language, and do everything in their power to protect it [see e.g. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Low_German](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Low_German)]. And if these languages _do_ disappear, it tends to be because the _national_ language is taught in schools and slowly replaces it in younger generations.

<comment><USER28> I'm a speaker of one of the smaller languages, and every educated person I know lament the inability to express themselves without resorting to English idioms. It isn't that they don't exist, some people are great at my language, it's just that something like 99% of the movies I watch, podcasts I listen to, or papers I read are in English. I simply am much better at high level English than my own language. Colloquial English not so much though.

<comment><USER29> Is the national language in your country English, or another language?

<comment><USER28> It is a different language, notably it's a northern Germanic language so the compatibility is fairly high. It also isn't mutually intelligible with English at all. I should maybe just say it's Swedish.

<comment><USER30> English started out life as a Germanic language but has changed somewhat over the last 1500 years. For example _scir gerefe_ which becomes _shire reeve_ and eventually sheriff. Yes, Rosco P Coltrane and company have a job title that is over 1500 years old. A shire is roughly a county in modern terms. For example Devonshire, Lanarkshire, Sir Fynwy etc in Britain. That last is Welsh.

Look at words like day, tag, dag and so on in the various Germanic languages. When you see that in English, the letter g morphed into y in a lot of words, it makes sense and of course we have to allow for some rather random spelling in the past and a great vowel shift or two. I live in Yeovil which was recorded as gifle (a fork in a river) in about 900. The nearby river Yeo seems to be named after the town which is named for its location on a feature of the river ...

These islands from 55 BC to 1066 AD became a revolving door to various invasions, some of which included Swedes and Danes generally as vikings, Angles, Saxons, Jutes, Italians (Romans) and any other tom, dick or harry that could find a boat and fancied duffing up a few Britons and settling down and raise a few apples and chickens! When the Northmen - Norsemen - Normans ie Duke William of Normandy turned up in 1066 they eventually did the job properly and ... eventually became English themselves and simply gave the language a bit of a twist. For example we have both Saxon and Frankish (French) words for many things eg meat: cow and beef, sheep and mutton, chicken and errr chicken, pig and pork.

I think that because English has had so many influences in the past that it has developed a certain flexibility that many languages do not. It is also a relatively new language - only 1500 years old! I learned Latin at school for several years, along with French and lived in Germany for 10 years (off and on). English can be warped and twisted and generally abused and yet the meaning remains intact better than some other languages.

The ultimate irony here is that I am talking about the new kid language on the block on HN!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> As it stated in an article, probably it is not a very representative example of the general population. People taking an online English tests probably already feel to need one.

</comment><comment><USER32> This makes no sense to me.

I travel frequetly around Europe, particularly to these countries.

Felt English proficiency has steadily improved over the last thirty years.

When I visited these countries as a backpacking teenager, in my summer holidays, almost no one spoke English.

Since about a decade everyone who is under thirty seems to speak English quite well. Aka: I do not need to use my crappy Spanish or Italian or more or less non-existing French skills to get along. :)

</comment><comment><USER19> > EF Education First, a Swedish company based in Switzerland that manages more > than 600 language schools across 50 countries.

Wow, I remember the English First billboards in Shanghai around 2009-2010. They showed a white guy and a Chinese woman raising their hands together, and their arms were shackled together at the wrist with a really heavy rope.

This must have worked for the Chinese target audience, but I found it hilarious.

> There are some concerns, as Quartz's Nikhil Sonnad noted about last year's > report, about how representative the data it collects and analyzes is of the > general population of each country. "The proficiency scores are based on > free online tests, so the people taking them are self-selected," he wrote, > "They are not a representative sample of the country's citizens, and may > instead represent a group that is particularly interested in English and has > access to the internet." Even so, Sonnad says "it is the best dataset > available for measuring English ability across countries."

This is a weird concern to raise -- the idea that EF's data isn't representative because it's pulled from a sample of citizens extraordinarily interested in English would strongly imply that the true proficiency level in every country is much lower than reported, and to a lesser extent that the gaps between countries are probably wider than reported.

> correlation doesn't necessarily prove causation. Is it, as EF and others > argue, that better English skills facilitate global trade and investment, > which leads to growth and new jobs? Or is it that rich countries can invest > more in bilingual education?

Surely these are both true.

<comment><USER33> > This is a weird concern to raise -- the idea that EF's data isn't > representative because it's pulled from a sample of citizens extraordinarily > interested in English would strongly imply that the true proficiency level > in every country is much lower than reported, and to a lesser extent that > the gaps between countries are probably wider than reported.

No, if your samples aren't representative then any conclusion you draw can be flawed for thousands of different reasons and in all possible directions. Two examples.

1) Let's say that the top 1% of English speakers of countries A and B took the test. You say "the gaps then would be wider than reported". Wrong, even if in this 1% sample country A scores the highest, it might very well have _lower_ overall proficiency. If proficiency is normally distributed, but has a much greater variance in country A than country B, the maximum of A will be higher than of B, even with a lower average.

2) Now you take the tests at time t and t+1. However, at time t the test was less popular, so only 0.5% of the top speakers took the test, while at t+1 1% of the top speakers took the test. You would conclude that a lower score a time t+1 implies that the skill got worse, while it might have very well improved by a lot.

(In fact, I'm pretty sure that's what happened. I never heard of EF before 2017, so I couldn't have taken the test before then)

<comment><USER19> > 2) Now you take the tests at time t and t+1. However, at time t the test was > less popular, so only 0.5% of the top speakers took the test, while at t+1 > 1% of the top speakers took the test. You would conclude that a lower score > a time t+1 implies that the skill got worse, while it might have very well > improved by a lot.

I agree with this in full. I don't see what it's responding to in my comment, though.

> 1) Let's say that the top 1% of English speakers of countries A and B took > the test. You say "the gaps then would be wider than reported". Wrong, even > if in this 1% sample country A scores the highest, it might very well have > lower overall proficiency. If proficiency is normally distributed, but has a > much greater variance in country A than country B, the maximum of A will be > higher than of B, even with a lower average.

I'm not following you here. I claimed that when the test pool for each country is strongly self-selected for interest in English, the gap between the countries' average proficiency levels (in reality) is very likely to be larger than the gap between those countries' average test scores. The test scores are suffering from restriction of range.

An example in which country A has higher test scores than B at the same time it has _lower_ proficiency looks like an example of that phenomenon, not a counterexample.

If A and B have the same mean proficiency and different variance, and selection into the test pool is driven only by proficiency, then the country with higher variance will test better under this system while having the same mean proficiency, that's true.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> Isn't this potentially beneficial for those countries?

\- The language barrier creates a distinct market for products and services -> good for local companies.

\- The language barrier creates a distinct market for media and entertainment -> good for local culture.

\- Can't read US media directly -> slightly more political independence.

\- People can't speak English -> slightly less brain drain (alas, most educated people learn English anyway, but not all).

</comment><comment><USER35> Nice, one thing I noticed in Italy is people eager to practice their Spanish with me everywhere I went .

Even witnessed French tourists interacting with Italian customer service workers... in Spanish ! On two different occasions. It blew.my mind lol not used to see Spanish used as a Lingua Franca outside Spanish speaking countries...

</comment><comment><USER36> > France, Spain, and Italy's English skills are on the decline: study (qz.com)

No, they simply are not [2]

France has INCREASED as per the report, Spain has dropped.

"English proficiency levels are rising in the European Union, with more EU countries than ever in the Very High Proficiency band. France's scores have improved for the past two years"

[0] [https://www.ef.com/wwen/epi/](https://www.ef.com/wwen/epi/)

[1] [https://www.ef.com/epi/regions/europe/](https://www.ef.com/epi/regions/europe/)

[2] [https://www.ef.com/__/~/media/centralefcom/epi/downloads/ful...](https://www.ef.com/__/~/media/centralefcom/epi/downloads/full- reports/v9/ef-epi-2019-english.pdf)

</comment><comment><USER6> This reminds me the comments in the different app or video game stores (like steam). Spanish people ALWAYS complain about apps or games not being translated to Spanish and vote them very low because of it. I can't understand how people haven't realized yet how important is to know English nowadays.

</comment><comment><USER37> On the other hand, as an American I was blown away by how good most Icelanders' English was. The young people for the most part spoke perfect English that was about on par with your average American college student.

<comment><USER38> I talked to an Icelander about this, and he said it was entirely because of YouTube. There's not a lot of Icelandic content, so all the kids just watch English videos.

</comment></comment><comment><USER39> Anecdata: I spent 5 weeks in Spain in 2009 and 2 weeks in Spain 2019. I can tell you for sure that people who work in customer-facing industries speak MUCH more and better English now than they did 10 years ago.

</comment><comment><USER40> No one cares about perfect English, queen's English, when speaking with Europeans. The place it matters is in writing, where improper constructions can be really irritating. And writing well is a real skill.

</comment><comment><USER41> "English is becoming less relevant in developed economies"

<comment> Joe-Z Doesn't sound right, does it?

Even weirder is this re-phrasing: "The more integrated into the global economy you are, the less you need english"

Greetings from Austria!

</comment></comment><comment><USER38> I was recently in both Barcelona and Paris, and if I compare English proficiency in both cities compared to 20 or 30 years ago, it's night and day different. So many more people speak English now than ever before.

Being able to speak a few key phrases in French, Spanish, or Catalan still goes a long way.

</comment><comment><USER42> It's interesting that the countries which score lowest are where the Romance languages are spoken. I wonder what the reasons for that are. FYI I'm an English speaker who speaks 2 other Germanic languages and Spanish. The Spanish I find by far the hardest and that could also be reversed. Just an hypothesis.

<comment><USER43> Weird, I had the opposite experience - I moved to Spain after Uni but during Uni I worked in Germany for half a year.

I found Spanish much easier to learn than German because the grammar is simpler and the words are often similar to Latin words which are in turn similar to English words.

I never had to use Flash Cards when learning Spanish, they were vital for German.

For example, Mano is similar to Manual which is related to the Hand, obviously in German it is simpler as the word is the same.

However, negocio is similar to negotiate which reminds me of business... Betrieb on the other hand - probably going to need the flash cards.

</comment></comment><comment><USER44> My wife and I (both Americans) got married in Italy, have lived in Spain near her family and visited France to see friends we made when our children were in French school together here in the US. In numerous visits we have rarely met anyone in Italy, Spain or France who speaks English as well as my wife speaks their native language. A classic that never gets old for some reason is the reaction when she tells French people that it would be better for all of us to speak French rather than English.

</comment><comment><USER45> As an American, I always feel stupid when Europeans apologize for their countrymen's language skills. Sure, French people might not be as good at English as Germans, but nevertheless, I've met a significant number of French teenagers who spoke better English than I did French, even though I'd been studying longer (sometimes much longer) than they had.

<comment><USER46> There is a strong imbalance there. There are three dozen common languages in Europe. As an American, you stand no chance against that language diversity when it comes to matching up with a given person in Europe who only needs to learn English to match up with you.

<comment><USER45> Sure, but I don't know even one foreign language as well as similarly- positioned Europeans tend to know English, and neither do most Americans.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER47> That's cos they are all learning Chinese.

<comment><USER46> Language adoption figures indicate that essentially nobody is learning Mandarin outside of China. It's such a small percentage as to be rounding error versus the major international languages like English, Spanish, French, German. Due to the tightly controlled culture of China (eg the firewall), which barricades foreigners to the outside and natives to the inside, that will continue to be true. The difficulty of learning Mandarin makes that even worse.

</comment></comment><comment><USER48> And in the US.

</comment><comment><USER49> No shit, learning English from a romanic language is hard. German to English is easy mode.

<comment><USER17> I'm sure that's a factor, but it's also a bit cultural. Countries with the highest proficiency tend to use subtitles in stead of dubbing for foreign language movies. Because of this, you get much more familiar with other languages. I learned most of my English from watching movies and the internet. I was pretty much fluent in English before I even started getting English classes in High School, so I never had to actively learn it.

<comment><USER50> Also smaller languages usually don't have a lively community around niche topics (specific games, cartoons, startups, programming, etc) so you end up in discussing things in English. Personally I learned English from fantasy books and WOW.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER51> I didn't see it mentioned, but Greece speaks English quite well. I often comment that Greece is like Europe on easy-mode for Americans.

</comment><comment><USER52> Nationalism, which leads to dubbing or subbing every piece of English content that's on TV... this is one of the issues.

<comment><USER9> What's wrong with subtitles? Subtitles are great.

</comment></comment><comment><USER53> English is just one of thousands of languages in this world.

Europe has many languages and most European countries trade most with their neighbours. IMHO it makes sense to learn the language of a neighbouring country before trying "fit the American mold" (and I say that from the UK).

</comment><comment><USER54> That's good news for Québec where they have made laws to treat English speakers as second class citizens. Businesses in Québec are advised not to greet customers with "Bonjour-Hi" but just "Bonjour" to preserve the identity & French culture in Québec.</comment>


Repairing a vintage 40-kilovolt xenon lamp igniter - <AUTHOR> http://www.righto.com/2020/03/repairing-vintage-40-kilovolt-xenon.html?m=1 <comment><USER2> Also see CuriousMarc's companion video, which shows how the spark gap works with a coherer for primitive radio transmissions. [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9zG_DlxyugQ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9zG_DlxyugQ) reply

</comment><comment><USER3> Excerpts:

"So where is the spark gap in this unit? It turns out to be the ceramic cylinder. I opened up the cylinder and found a stack of eight metal disks with (maybe) carbon electrodes in the center. The disks are separated by mica washers to leave 0.33 mm gaps between each pair. This forms a series of 7 tiny spark gaps.

This type of spark gap is known as a "quenched spark gap". Spark gap transmitters were the first form of radio transmitter, used from 1887 to 1920. They used a spark to transmit Morse code via radio waves (details). The quenched spark gap was one type of spark gap used in these transmitters, as shown in the diagram below.

 _By combining multiple small gaps, the quenched spark gap could cool off efficiently._ "

[...]

" _Spark gaps generate radio waves across a wide spectrum_ ; inventor David Hughes first noticed this interference in 1878."

</comment><comment><USER4> A similar circuit is in every plasma cutter.[1] For the same reason; you need a high voltage pulse to ionize the working gas (usually air) and start the arc.

[1] [https://guelphweddingshop.blogspot.com/](https://guelphweddingshop.blogspot.com/)

<comment><USER2> If you used xenon as the working gas in a plasma cutter, would you essentially have a xenon arc lamp?

<comment><USER4> Yes.[1]

[1] [https://youtu.be/qUutgYBqSoI](https://youtu.be/qUutgYBqSoI)

(I miss the days of TechShop, when I had access to tools like that.)

<comment><USER5> I miss TechShop, too. If making is your passion theres good news: it isn't dead. Current virus issue excluded there are many smaller maker spaces you can join in the bay.

<comment><USER4> I have small tools. TechShop had the big stuff - CNC mills, waterjets, plasma cutters. I used all of those. The smaller maker spaces are at the low-end 3D printer level. Maybe a wood shop. There's Humanmade in SF, which has much of the old TechShop gear, but it's an hour away and twice as expensive as TechShop.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> That schematic of a Tesla coil is the same as a spark-gap transmitter, except of course the latter is designed to emit as much as possible and has an antenna connected where the output torus would be; see page 375 of this excellent book: [https://archive.org/details/principlesunderl00unit](https://archive.org/details/principlesunderl00unit)

(Although very old, that book is great at explaining the basics of what radio actually is.)</comment>


Google Launches Fuchsia.dev - <AUTHOR> https://fuchsia.dev/fuchsia-src <comment><USER2> [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20311071](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20311071)

<comment><AUTHOR> My apologies, I did look for it but did not see it.

<comment><USER2> No worries! Looking for it at all puts you in the upper percentiles :)</comment></comment></comment>


Which programming language is fastest? – Computer Language Benchmarks Game - <AUTHOR> https://benchmarksgame-team.pages.debian.net/benchmarksgame/ <comment><USER2> Was there something in particular you wanted to share?</comment>


Amazon snags exclusive deal for e-editions - <AUTHOR> http://finance.yahoo.com/news/Amazon-snags-exclusive-deal-apf-983242177.html?

<comment><USER2> link is 404'd</comment>


It's a Sony – Rebranding a 70-year-old electronics company [pdf] - <AUTHOR> https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B3YII660_TdASkVvRkZGWmF1VWs/view?usp=sharing <comment><AUTHOR> Hello Y Combinator,

My name is Michael Lund Pedersen.

As a 26-year-old Digital Designer and aspiring Experience Economist, I have acknowledged that the Sony Corporation needs to change.

More than ever, Sony has become irrelevant as a provider of our everyday devices. Sony needs to rebrand itself as well as simplify and streamline its offerings.

I am making this thread in the hope that you will look at my project "It's a Sony" and offer your feedback.

See and download the project at [https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B3YII660_TdASkVvRkZGWmF1VWs...](https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B3YII660_TdASkVvRkZGWmF1VWs/view?usp=sharing)

See and download images used in the project at [https://flic.kr/s/aHskXGCvLS](https://flic.kr/s/aHskXGCvLS)

Thank you for your time.

Best regards,

Michael Lund Pedersen

Digital Designer

itsasonyblog.wordpress.com

<comment><USER2> It seems like you should propose your project to Sony, not to HN, or maybe I am completely missing the scope of it.

Anyway, I would add a "in my opinion" to the sentence:

>More than ever, Sony has become irrelevant as a provider of our everyday devices. Sony needs to rebrand itself as well as simplify and streamline its offerings.</comment></comment>


Berlin reports rise in fatalities as new bike lanes fail to keep cyclists safe - <AUTHOR> https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/aug/24/berlin-reports-rise-in-fatalities-as-new-bike-lanes-fail-to-keep-cyclists-safe <comment><USER2> "Articulated lorry": that's a semi truck, right? Although I've never been to Berlin, I can confirm that in USA they pay no attention to cyclists. The best advice is to never be beside one. Only attempt to pass on the right if they are completely stopped with other completely stopped traffic in front of them. Don't pass on the left if they're approaching intersections.

Frankly I don't know why these trucks are allowed in any dense urban areas. From various freight deliveries I've received, I've learned that the semi trailer is usually about 20% full anyway. Any normal delivery that a semi can make, a box truck can make. Box truck drivers might also ignore everyone else on the road, but in general they seem less distracted by difficulties in the basic task of driving.

<comment><USER3> > Although I've never been to Berlin, I can confirm that in USA they pay no > attention to cyclists. The best advice is to never be beside one. Only > attempt to pass on the right if they are completely stopped with other > completely stopped traffic in front of them.

Sigh.

In Germany, a cyclist riding properly takes more or less a whole lane on its own, like a car. No, we don't pass trucks on the right, not even if they are stopped.

Here is how it looks, in ideal and less than ideal cases: [https://www.adfc.de/fileadmin/user_upload/Im- Alltag/Verkehrs...](https://www.adfc.de/fileadmin/user_upload/Im- Alltag/Verkehrssicherheit/Download/Sicher_Rad_fahren_-_komprimiert.pdf)

This kind of accident usually happens if the truck overtakes a cyclist which is crossing an intersection, the cyclist going straight ahead, and the truck turning to the right. Usually, the truck drivers do not see the cyclist. This kind of accident is, with high frequency, deadly.

"Not seeing" the cyclist is more of a cognitive problem than a visual problem. Apparently, drivers seem to cognitively mask out things which are not dangerous obstacles _to them_.

It happens more frequently if there is a bicycle path at the right side. Bicycle paths do make mixed traffic more dangerous. Cyclists pressure groups like ADFC are against extending bicycle paths, for that reason, but many uneducated cyclist prefer them because the _feel_ safer.

One measure is to set a maximum speed limit for trucks turning so that cyclists could escape it.

What I believe more in is a technical measure, an autonomous emergency brake, which just stops the truck if there is any cyclist at the side.

Also, many UK cities have introduced general speed limits in city areas of 20 mph, and they seem to work really well, even if not everyone follows them yet.

<comment><USER2> _Sigh.

In Germany, a cyclist riding properly takes more or less a whole lane on its own, like a car. No, we don't pass trucks on the right, not even if they are stopped._

Sigh. One could probably find American cyclists who will happily park behind a big truck and wait to get pancaked too. Momentum is valuable. To each her own. I do agree that in many situations it's better to split lanes and pass on the left than to pass on the right. It isn't always possible.

 _This kind of accident usually happens if the truck overtakes a cyclist which is crossing an intersection, the cyclist going straight ahead..._

As I'm sure you agree, cyclists entering an intersection should already have taken the whole lane, to prevent exactly that problem. Cyclists beside a big truck are already in the wrong place. As you indicate, grade-separated bike lanes are a big reason why cyclists might not realize that they're in such a situation. The grade separation is often interrupted at intersections. At that point cyclists in the bike lane aren't much different from cyclists on the sidewalk.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> A lot of these sorts of accidents can be avoided with proper intersection design. Just tossing a cyclist onto an intersection is asking for trouble. Cyclists are easy to overlook. ensuring that they only meet cars at 90 degree angles improves their visibility greatly. [http://www.protectedintersection.com/](http://www.protectedintersection.com/) has more info on what a safe intersection looks like.</comment>


Y we did not submit to Y Combinator - <AUTHOR>

1. 10% arbitrary evaluation of equity arrived at via a pre-determined valuation of $6000(ave) is simply BS unless the IP is considered worthless upon consideration. 2. Desperation does NOT equal success. When you sell-out, you HAVE already sold-out. (ie the period enlightenment before sell-out) so no matter how successful you become, you will always have these $6k partners stymieing the proceedings from there-on-in. 3. Middlemen are the PROBLEM with free-enterprise not the SOLUTION. They cunningly present themselves as the solution to the very problems they create. If you need one, you have nothing of real value. 4.Ycombinator, despite their claimed virtues, are trying to CONTROL TECH STARTUPS through simple avarice. They don't control the end-user so they actually control nothing unless you submit to their BS. Solution: Don't sell-out. Persist. If you build it, and they want it. They will come. Ycombination is a construct best ignored by the serious players. <comment><USER2> What does YCombinator give you?

\-- Access to advice from more experienced people (in many respects: programming, architecture, business model, user acquisition, usability, user experience. It's rare for any startup to have 2-3 founders that together are rock solid in all these areas)

\-- A name-brand incubator that helps you attract talent

\-- A name-brand incubator that helps you attract high-value first adopters

\-- Networking with other very talented YCombinator applicants and alumni

\-- Plenty of news coverage from tech pundits and other journalists because of the YCombinator brand

I would bet you that the overwhelming majority of YCombinator applicants do not apply for the money. They most likely apply for all the other intangible benefits.

</comment><comment><USER3> Try not to sound like a conspiracy theorist, it doesn't help convey your point.

I'm sure somewhere in that statement is a cogent opinion about downside of accepting equity investments and the loss of control entailed, but the lack of structure and general ranting makes it hard to see.

</comment><comment><USER4> If you believe that Y-combinator provides better than a 10% improvement in your odds of success, then they are more than worth what they ask for.

</comment><comment><USER5> If you aren't interested that's fine, My start-up wouldn't even qualify for Y-Combinator but that has nothing to do with what they represent. I think its great, you should keep negative thoughts to yourself.

Some people won't get anywhere without the network so who are you to tell them to not follow their dreams because you don't want them to Sell Out.

Last time I checked most Start ups can't wait to Sell Out to someone...

</comment><comment><USER6> Good luck pitching Mike Arrington :)

</comment><comment><USER7> No.</comment>


Ask HN: Video conferencing that works with group singing? - <AUTHOR> Hello. Could you recommend any video conferencing services that would work with group singing?
I work with two organizations that use video conferencing apps for online classes. During these online classes, the participants sing together (10-20 people). The problem we're having is that the voices are out of sync. I assume this is because of the different latency participants have with the server.
We have tried zoom.us, webex, hangouts, skype-- same problem across all apps (out of sync singing).
I don't know enough about video conferencing technology to know what to look for in terms of features. Perhaps a service that lets me adjust the latency of each participant manually? Or a service that dynamically adjusts for latency in a way that makes in-sync group singing possible?
Any help the HN community could provide is much appreciated! <comment><USER2> Unfortunately that will be really tough. I have a live audio background and the recommendation I have always heard is to keep the latency of your signal path at the 1 ms level when dealing with monitoring applications. That's a solid order of magnitude below what is common for VOIP let alone video. You could maybe get away with audio only, but round trip latency is still getting up there.

Edit: I know of some pro-grade point to point audio solutions that are able to handle this problem, but I'm unsure if there's anything consumer ready.

<comment><USER3> Have you any experience with [http://cleanfeed.net/](http://cleanfeed.net/) or [https://ipdtl.com/](https://ipdtl.com/) or squadcast.fm?

I'm assuming they are good for interviews because you can correctly merge the separate audio tracks later, rather than because they keep the latency down?

<comment><AUTHOR> I'm not familiar with any of these but I'm going to check them out. Thank you!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> One way is achieving low latency, which is technically super hard, as others point out. Keep in mind that another way is selecting less latency sensitive music, "slower" music with longer held tones. But that's a style change.

<comment><AUTHOR> Wow this is an interesting comment. I hadn't considered changing the music in this way. I'll give it a try. Thank you!

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> I just spoke to a friend regarding your issue, they said at their company they ran into a similar situation.

Their solution was to use Zoom Video Conferencing, apparently they have the option to have users phone in or have Zoom call users over the telecom network for audio whilst receiving video over the internet.

I didn't ask on costs, but it might be a viable solution.

      Edit>> I see you tried zoom, did you try the telecom audio solution?

<comment><AUTHOR> I'll see what happens when we go video over the internet and audio over phones. Thanks!

<comment><USER6> Hi OP, did you ever find a good solution for this? Trying to set something up for my daughter's kindergarten class.

(email in profile)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Discord has <200ms latency for audio chat. Is that sufficient? Not Enterprise ready but it may not matter for your use case.

<comment><AUTHOR> Discord will be what I use in my next attempt with a test group. And I don't know if it will work but I'll try it along with the other suggestions (slower, longer tone music and perhaps some lead singers turned up more). Thanks!

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Semi off-topic, but the development of solution for this problem is a minor plot thread in "Rainbow's End" by Verner Vinge, which was a fairly popular sci-fi book with some really cool "near-future" predictions.

</comment><comment><USER9> If you can get by with audio only I'd recommend Mumble with a strategically placed location of the server (to keep latency consistent between users assuming no routing shenanigans, need to test for this) and hope for the best.

<comment><AUTHOR> I'll give Mumble a try. Thank you!

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Hey Kemitime, I'm trying to solve this problem at the moment. I'm looking to have a couple of people leading the singing, with others following on from where they are, with their mics down.

<comment><USER11> There is a big market for this right now; churches across the world want to do group singing remotely just as they would do together a regular Sunday service.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> you really need to be < 20ms latency to coordinate multiple instruments (voices).

The best solution is JamKazam [https://www.jamkazam.com/](https://www.jamkazam.com/) (I have no affiliation and have not used the product in years)

You'll each need a good interface and Ethernet connections. A good interface on windows would typically have an ASIO driver. This is not an easy thing for more then a few people. Note: Jamkazam also makes an all-in-one device (JAMBLASTER).

<comment><AUTHOR> This looks really cool. I have a feeling that most of our participants won't be able to set up ethernet-based connections and use special hardware. Worth more investigation on my end before I assume too much. Thank you!

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> What about Whereby?

<comment><AUTHOR> Oh right, this is the new appear.in. I remember really liking how easy it is to join rooms. Going to give this another look. Thank you!</comment></comment>


Scientists report first results from CUORE neutrino experiment - <AUTHOR> http://news.mit.edu/2018/scientists-report-first-results-neutrino-mountain-experiment-matter-antimatter-0326 <comment><USER2> TL;DR: No events observed yet.</comment>


Why most Hardware Specs are Total Bullshit - <AUTHOR> http://www.wired.com/gadgetlab/2010/12/hardware-specs/

<comment><USER2> more: [http://www.maximumpc.com/article/features/display_myths_shat...](http://www.maximumpc.com/article/features/display_myths_shattered)</comment>


Warcarft 3 Reforged Menu Is a Webapp - <AUTHOR> https://twitter.com/colincornaby/status/1223073101312753664 <comment><USER2> I don't pay attention to video games at all, but the outrage over the Warcraft remake is so spectacular that I've seen it in almost every community I frequent. They seemed to have made dozens, if not hundreds, of mistakes. It's impressive.

(Also, OP, you have a typo in the title.)</comment>


AI will make human obsolete in 120 years, a large survey of experts says - <AUTHOR> http://www.futuretimeline.net/blog/2017/06/13.htm <comment><USER2> I love the way that the various (bizarre) predictions are all so completely different that the mean is almost a straight line through the middle of the available values. A 50% chance! Haha.

Headline should have been "experts fail to agree on chances of high-level AI"

</comment><comment><USER3> > _A large survey of experts in artificial intelligence suggests there is a > 50% chance of AI outperforming humans in all tasks within 45 years and of > automating all human jobs in 120 years._

And, since the only function of humans is to perform quantifiable tasks or have jobs, AI will thus make humans obsolete, right?

<comment><USER4> But value only exists in the minds of humans. With them gone ai would be obsolete.

<comment><USER3> Reminds me of Asimov's "The Last Question"

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> This would make a great onion headline. Very subtle. Probably also completely unintended. Fantastic.

</comment><comment><USER6> I don't care what the experts say. When does the AI think it will make humans obsolete? Work estimation is most accurate when done by those doing the work.

</comment><comment><USER7> Hopefully the kind of thinking that brought "experts" to this conclusion would become obsolete.

It's eugenics with a nasty twist.

And its very ignorant of what humans are capable of. That's because these experts have been indoctrinated into a religion that views all existence as physical-mechanical, either resource or waste. Efficiency and highest current value are God, all else must be replaced, its "obsolete", toss it. Its a six creation story over and over again, in which The Creators must never be satisfied, in which the El never must say "it is good".

I don't doubt that computational entities could dominate humans in 120 years. There are many possible futures/ways this could play out, but its ridiculous to say that humans would be "obsolete". Evolution doesn't happen that way. It's not some dumb consumer capitalist marketing ploy, where new products make old ones "obsolete".

This kind of thinking has and will continue to result in bloody conflict. Many humans actually _wish_ to _impose_ obsolescence on humans. They believe in their own ineptitude. This has _already happened_ in many work forces. People are coerced into unhealthy dependence on global power systems that don't recognize our ingenuity or creativity. As a result _we_ don't even recognize it. Look at indigenous cultures. Deride them if you will, but their ecological participation has often been incredibly sophisticated. Then empire comes along and coerces them by force and reward into forgetting, into trauma and despair, into some form of money-worship. If you're reading this, its happened to you. We all come from this legacy. We all have ancestors that have been conquered by exploitative cultures. We all have exploiters in our ancestry too.

</comment><comment><USER8> There's a great tale by Nasreddin, a turkish 13th century philosopher.

The tale was about him making a bet with a sultan: he would teach one of his donkeys to talk in 20 years. If he won the bet, he would be rewarded with a chest of gold, but if he lost, he would be beheaded.

When his wife asked him why he'd make such a frivolous bet, he replied:

In 20 years, either I will be dead, the donkey will be dead or the sultan will be dead.

In other words: the longer the timescale of your prediction the more meaningless it is. If you aren't even around to see the results of your prediction or bet, then it's already meaningless.

Knowing how bad people are at making long term predictions makes it an even more pointless debate. Why not 130 years? Or 120.005 years? Or 1000.

</comment><comment><USER9> The title ("AI will make human obsolete in 120 years, a large survey of experts says") of this HN post does not match the article headline "Future milestones in AI predicted by experts".

Instead it is a corruption of the article's first sentence: "A large survey of experts in artificial intelligence suggests there is a 50% chance of AI outperforming humans in all tasks within 45 years and of automating all human jobs in 120 years".

And since the latter means "experts have no idea if or when AI will be able to automate all human jobs", I think this is a pretty bad choice of title.

</comment><comment><USER10> Let us set aside the fact that value is subjective and the reflexive problems that entails when discussing humans being "obsolete".

120 years is too long for any of these experts to have any skin in the game.

Let us see what they have to say about five years from now, and if they will put some money on it.

</comment><comment><USER11> AI will automate production.

It says nothing about consumption.

Economic activity requires both.

</comment><comment><USER12> Pascal's scam

</comment><comment><USER13> 9/10 dentists prefer Crest.</comment>


Ask HN: General distaste of working in Financial companies? - <AUTHOR>

Yesterday, we had this question "Am i making too much?" -
http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1754154
Among the discussions, few mentioned the finance as a no-no. I tend to not think of it as a HN bias(pro startups/boo-java).
to quote a few from the recent post: " I work in finance.... but I hate it everyday"; "I am avoiding the financial sector as well as larger institutions like the plague" "I would stay the hell away from them though, personally" "The jobs that pay significantly more (such as hard core finance) tend to pay a lot more because the work is life-shortening, specialized, and reputation-based"
I have read few comments in the past too which mirror similar emotions. So my curiosity was piqued.. <comment><USER2> I feel that one of the causes of this bias is that startups are often thought of as the antithesis of "big finance". Because of this, disgruntled (ex)finance people come here looking for a change and a challenge in something completely different (possibly naively thinking that "completely different" means "something I'll enjoy because I don't enjoy what I'm doing now").

The core problems with finance, as I see them (from the inside):

\- Many in the financial sector work in companies with 100,000+ colleagues. Depending on the role/department/team/company, it can feel like you don't make a difference.

\- Many of these companies are far from 'lean' and are slow moving behemoths.

\- Many people get into the sector for the reasons 'staunch' said: quick money.

\- The technology is archaic and 'usability' and 'experience' are words that are seldom even known outside of new recruits.

However, most disgruntled financial employees are the victim of circumstance.

I work in finance and love it. My team is small and crucial to the company's core business -- I am made to feel like I make a difference… and I do. Those huge, lumbering systems are fantastic when trying to figure out how to get things working and how to improve them. Dealing constantly with legal constraints can be great fun if you think of them as constraints rather than just "a pain in the ass". The opportunities for learning are near endless. Legacy systems are the most fascinating bit of history I've seen and occasionally I'll spend my morning among COBOL, my afternoon with C and my evening with JSPs.

To conclude: If you're in the right place, finance is fascinating and hugely enjoyable. If you're in the wrong place, it can be frustrating and boring beyond imagination. What type are going to be on HN, mostly? Those who were caught in the last group and are looking for the polar opposite experience to see if this is what works.

</comment><comment><USER3> I have to agree both with fakelvis and staunch.

To fakelvis's point, IT in finance could be fantastic if you get into a good area (I believe they are far and few). You will be working on cutting edge stuff and decommissioning legacy apps at every opportunity that presents itself for a re-ramp of the app. At my previous employer, I was lucky to join a team with tons of legacy that worked and was problematic. Mandates came down from management and the business users to rewrite and re-platform the old stuff to accomodate new requirements. We were given the green light to build the new platform in whatever way we saw fit. We were free to choose languages, design, and architecture of our liking to accomplish the task. The new platform was strategic in nature as well and was meant to be put in place for a long time. This was a great experience for me and gave me as a developer, the rare opportunity to work on an app from scratch. My user base was great and very knowledgeable in the finance space so I learned alot as well.

To staunch's point, the finance culture is broken and full of megalomania. Tons of developers and finance people with delusions of grandeur. The one thing I hate about the finance industry is how IT is treated and viewed by some parts of the business. We are viewed as nothing more than a utility. Too often I hear developers talking about 'moving up' and by this they mean leaving this creative craft of software development to be on the 'fun' side, i.e. the business end. This, to say the least, is demoralizing to the people that want to build systems for a living when you constantly have to hear this. Given this reality, I think the life of an developer in finance is short- lived. Burnout rates are high and job satisfaction is low. I have yet to meet developers that are excited about career prospects in finance.

I created a blog that will start talking about this and other things I see here: <http://techjobsspace.blogspot.com>

Anyway, these are my 2-cents. I am also looking to start something up on the side and get out of this dungeon.

<comment><USER2> I can't agree with every point you've made more.

When I first started in the sector I was confronted with this 'IT is a utility' mindset from 'the business'. It was demoralising.

Luckily, a new CEO came in following an acquisition and the first thing he said in a company-wide conference was how the company needed to value and respect IT more (as we knew more about the company and the systems than anyone else, he said). Overnight, almost everyone in the department came to love their job.

Saying that, three years later and people are starting to worry about their prospects (and rightly so, it seems).

I'm similarly interested in pursuing things on the side (as a serious project rather than a means to 'get out'). If you fancy it, reach out (email in profile).

As for your blog -- the first post is great, keep it up.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> The problem with the financial industry is cultural. It's endemically toxic. Every jackass has seen Wall Street and half of them want to be Gordon Gekko.

The only good reason to work in the financial industry is if you want to have the best odds of making the most money as quickly as possible. You just have to not care about almost anything else to do that.

You also have to work with people that made that choice.</comment>


Helium – Like Bootstrap, but in 30kb - johnx123-up https://github.com/cbrauckmuller/helium

<comment><AUTHOR> Pro tip: Link your demo from the top of your readme file, especially when you're handing out the Github URL.

<comment><USER2> I'm not able to find the demo? Did you find it in the readme file?

<comment><USER3> Hey guys, I'm Chris, the developer of Helium. We were pretty surprised by the amount of attention the project is receiving, and unfortunately don't have a live demo of the base project up right now. However as an example of what it can do, you can check out our first live project built with Helium over at <https://fundrise.com>

<comment><USER2> No worries. Thanks for replying back with a link to a working example. It's the first thing I like to see when looking at something like this.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Any links to examples? The main page shows the HTML code but not what the resulting styles look like...

<comment> johnx123-up <https://fundrise.com/> found via <http://dribbble.com/shots/908088-New- Fundrise-Homepage>

<comment><USER5> I presume the main style sheet at fundrise.com [1] could have been called helium.css to give you guys at least a minimum amount of credit.

[1] [https://s3.amazonaws.com/fundrise-content/css/master- respons...](https://s3.amazonaws.com/fundrise-content/css/master- responsive.css)

<comment><USER6> > New homepage for <http://fundrise.com> launched today. It's fully responsive > and built with Helium (<http://github.com/cbrauckmuller/helium>), our in- > house responsive framework.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Very cool, but I don't see file size as a significant factor when making a decision about what library to use. With SPDY, fast pipes & 4G, minification etc, worrying about super tiny file sizes is becoming a legacy issue.

<comment><USER8> In the US. In other countries, not so much.

<comment><USER9> Well, I'm in Sweden on a gigabit connection right now. Quite a few countries have good cable and cell infrastructures. So, "other countries" might generalizing.

<comment><USER10> I was about to say the same thing. I live in Thailand and haven't had any issue with slow websites (besides the usual borked connection every now and then). I've worked for two different companies here that rely heavily on the cloud for extremely operations and both selling cloud-based software (both are SMEs are targeting SMEs).

Now, I don't even think the overall quality of internet connections is that great in the US and I'd say most European countries do a better job overall (less disparities inside individual countries, _not_ among all European countries).

And finally: [http://www.techpark.net/2010/04/15/broadband-internet- speeds...](http://www.techpark.net/2010/04/15/broadband-internet- speeds-2009-2010-the-top-10-countries/)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I've uploaded a screenshot for anyone who just wants a peek: <http://decodering.com/post/41361083824/helium>

(I tweaked the padding too.)

</comment><comment><USER12> > The compiled default CSS file weighs in at a comparatively tiny 30k, versus > approximately 100k for Bootstrap and almost 200k for Foundation.

At first I was sceptical that this was even close to a fair comparison, however even after stripping Bootstrap back to comparable functionality its CSS still weighs in at 68KB.

I will be watching this project with interest, but I think it probably needs a lot more use before all the edge case bugs (that Bootstrap has probably already dealt with) get ironed out.

<comment> johnx123-up I'm not the original author. I don't know how you checked that. But...

1\. [https://github.com/cbrauckmuller/helium/blob/master/css/mast...](https://github.com/cbrauckmuller/helium/blob/master/css/master.css) 41kb (with whitespace)

2\. YUI Minified 33kb

3\. Minfied + gzip 5.8kb

<comment><USER13> He stripped Bootstrap of the functionality not included in Helium and compressed that. The README most likely lists the compressed version of the full Bootstrap library.

5.8kb is impressive, though.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Skeleton [1] is a nice lightweight alternative too, with very discreet default styles.

[1] <http://www.getskeleton.com>

</comment><comment><USER15> Are there like many of these floating around? It seems like We get a "Like Bootstrap" every week or so. Ink,

<http://ink.sapo.pt/index.php>

Didn't even got to frontpage two weeks ago. And possibly many others.

</comment><comment><USER16> Very interesting stuff. I have been working on my own project this way from scratch too. Gotten so far as under 100kb with all images [raw data URIs] combined so far.

Will give this project a close look in the weekend.

</comment><comment><USER17> What's the selector count and how does it tackle specificity?

</comment><comment><USER18> Very interesting.

An example site would be excellent.

</comment><comment><USER19> I might just be missing it, but is this published under an open source license? I didn't see it noted anywhere...

</comment><comment><USER20> I could really see myself using this soon for a project I am working on. Glad someone made this.

</comment><comment><USER21> sounds cool, needs more demos

</comment><comment><USER22> Add a demo plz!</comment>


NSA Chief Bet Money on AT&T as It Spied on You (2014) - <AUTHOR> http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2014/11/03/nsa-chief-cashed-in-on-at-t-as-it-spied-on-you.html <comment><USER2> >At the same time Gen. Keith Alexander was running the National Security Agency, the United States' biggest spying outfit, he was also trading stocks in an obscure technology company that had a sweetheart deal with one of the NSA's most important sources of intelligence—the global phone and Internet giant AT&T.

Is that a conflict of interest?</comment>


How to Get Meetings With People Too Busy to See You - <AUTHOR> http://women2.com/how-to-get-meetings-with-people-too-busy-to-see-you/

<comment><USER2> This is a straight cut and paste job. I don't see it as industrial scale content farming but its pretty strange to see it - it's this article [http://steveblank.com/2013/08/12/how-to-get-meetings-with- pe...](http://steveblank.com/2013/08/12/how-to-get-meetings-with-people-too- busy-to-see-you/) copied in its _entirety_ and then linked to. Quoting is one thing, this is strange.</comment>