Parents are 5X as Worried about Infection and School than Work and Paying Bills - <AUTHOR> https://www.interest.com/mortgage/pandemic-top-parent-school-vs-mortgage-worries/ <comment><USER2> I can't believe how dismissive people are about people who are worried about their finances during this. So many false equivalencies being made about bankruptcy being preferable to death. I am not one of these people that is cavalier about COVID, it's a real danger and the long term damage to the body is just being discovered. But we all know for sure what the long term health effects of poverty are. Whether you like to admit it or not, the economy is vitally important to our health, life expectancy, and quality of living. You can be worried about both COVID and the economy.

<comment> spaced-out If you care about the economy, the best thing we (the US) can do is follow the lead of other countries that have gotten this under control with evidence- based measures, and push the government to provide support to those in need, so the economy can bounce back quickly, rather than sliding into depression.

<comment><USER3> You currently do not have a government that will be swayed by evidence.

<comment><USER4> It isn't only the government, it's a significant minority of the population nationally; and at a local level it can approach significant majority.

A Marion County Florida Sheriff ordered that staff and visitors to his office cannot wear masks. That order is uncivilized behavior. The state governor should have removed him from power. People speeding on roads get sanctioned more, for being less of a menace to society.

At least the kooks who wear masks to have Zoom conference calls aren't subjecting anyone to risk their health or life.

<comment><USER5> You've touched on exactly what worries me most about the Trump era. Somehow, unnecessary combativeness and _flamboyant_ disagreement has come to be valued in and of itself. As if somehow anyone wins by acting childishly.

<comment><USER6> > As if somehow anyone wins by acting childishly.

Certain people apparently do.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Yeah this is definitely not surprising to the least! Even if I was laid off I am more worried about my children having long term health effects (or worse) than missing a few bills, and that is before considering how flexible lenders are claiming to be (I've gotten emails from all my major bills about covid related help they can provide).

I am just so confused why some people are acting like kids are a different species when it comes to covid. Yes they have less effects than adults but some children do go to the hospital and ICU. And also they can easily spread it to the parents/grandparents.

<comment><USER8> > I am just so confused why some people are acting like kids are a different > species when it comes to covid.

Well, it's not that surprising when you have a disease whose harm factor is a function of your age. The vast majority of covid deaths are the elderly. The tiniest minority of covid deaths are young children. Their ability to spread to adults is their biggest risk factor, not the disease itself.

<comment><USER9> > Their ability to spread to adults is their biggest risk factor

Others have mentioned this, but just for emphasis: you do not know that. Nor does anyone else. Repeating it is irresponsible, and you should stop doing that.

There have been a lot of lessons the epidemic can teach us. But one big one is that magical thinking is still accepted as a substitute for reason by a frightening number of people, and that's before you get to the outright grifters.

<comment><USER10> But we do know that. Or at least we can glean as much based upon the distribution by age for hospital admittance and death.

We don't know what, if any, the long term consequences will be. But the short term death risk for young children appears to be minimal.

<comment><USER11> The difference in worry parents have over short term and "long term" death risks for their kids is marginal. In particular: if something could happen to jeopardize your kids lives _while they are still kids_ \--- which we do not know --- it's an overwhelming worry.

This is one of those conversations where message board logic stands a good chance of taking us far away from how real-world humans would reason.

<comment><USER3> I think all it really does is that it highlights the difference between those who have children and those who do not. As a parent, I couldn't care less about the monetary impact of COVID-19 beyond the basics to survive and the years have taught us to be very frugal when we need to be.

Meanwhile, the thought of sending my kids back to school in two weeks has me sleepless (again). We have already seen different evidence surface in the last month or so but zero adjustment to the school plans. As much as I would like to approach this all in a dispassionate and rational way the parent 'module' in me tells me in no uncertain terms that I'm doing something irresponsible by not standing up for them more forcefully and trusting the experts on this.

<comment><USER11> My kids are going back to college in a couple days. They're adults! They're sharing an apartment this semester! And I'm a wreck. It's hard for me to fathom how this story is even news. What would be shocking is if the numbers had come in any closer between infection and work.

<comment><USER12> My oldest daughter left for college yesterday, living in a dorm. She's only 10min away, but between having her move out and worrying about COVID, I'm a basket case. I expect the campus to shut down in a month when cases numbers balloon, but I hope I'm wrong and they keep things under control.

<comment><USER13> You should strongly encourage your daughter to commute from home, since her college is only 10 minutes away. Students will take precautions during classes which will limit the spread, but in the evenings when they return to their dorms, they will let down their guards and the inevitable will happen. COVID spreads easily in dorms.

<comment><USER14> There's also the potential that they bring it home, causing the op to get sick/die. I'm a little more afraid of dying early, not because I want to live, but because : A. I don't want my kids to grow up w/out a dad, and B. I don't want to miss the important things in life. C. I'm hoping their chance of serious illness is less, but if I were wrong, I'd wish for death quickly afterwards.

I'm also sure things are easier when you have a parent to lean on for support, when a crisis comes up. (Lots of those on the horizon)...i'd rather be here to help them w/ that.

So part of me feels me living is important to their survival (mine are <4 yrs old - 2 boys, I'm 40). So, it might be safer and less traumatic if they stayed in the dorm, assuming they're healthy and have higher chances, and assuming they're good at social distancing / masking up to keep viral load down.

It'd be a hard decision to weigh, but I'd probably have a family council discuss the pros and cons and call a vote or something.

Basically commute or dorms, they can still catch it. At least in dorms maybe they don't infect older more vulnerable people or family members. Honestly, I'd probably teach them to code and say, hey work w/ dad till this is over then go to college :).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> The survey does say just enough about their methods to make it sound like it's not at all something that can be taken all that seriously.

"In a recent survey, we asked about 1,000 parents what their biggest worry amidst the pandemic was, and what we found was a surprise. It turns out that the majority of parents are worried about their families being infected by the virus rather than finding work or paying the mortgage."

I'm not sure why that's surprising. If you ask 1,000 people who have jobs that aren't gone or at immediate risk of going away, then yep, that's exactly what we're going to worry about. There's probably some serious statistical problems there.

<comment><USER16> Why do you think they all had jobs, or their jobs weren't at risk? All it says, afaik, is they asked 1000 parents.

<comment><USER17> Seems to me that would of been an important data point they could of gathered during the survey.

<comment><USER16> Could be, but if you want to answer the question "what are most people worried about" the correct thing to do is ask a random sample of 1000 people, not just to ask the people who've lost jobs.

<comment><USER18> Correct, but that's the question: _is_ this a random sample, or do their methods have a selection bias?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> The study doesn't say how many of the respondents still have jobs.

If I have a steady job, then of course I will worry more about my kids -- because I don't don't have to worry about the bills!

If you have kids you will worry about their safety.

If you lost your job, you may still worry about their safety more than your bills, since you know that the bills can always be dealt with later.

This survey seems quite flawed.

<comment><USER20> Yup! I'm equally worried about my kids and bringing home the bacon because my travel industry employer is going out of business and I still haven't found a new job.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> People are, statistically speaking, really bad at figuring out what to worry about. See: terrorist attacks, plane crashes, shark attacks, abduction by strangers. So maybe this is good news about the pandemic.

<comment><USER22> This is encouraging. People are most worried about the most serious problem.

<comment><USER23> Are they? Nobody seems to care much about the ordinary flu, though lots still die from it. Hospital acquired infections are a major cause of death, but few worry about that. The most likely causes of death for children are drowning and car accidents, but people worry far more about terrorist incidents. And on it goes.

<comment><USER24> Do you believe that the flu poses a more significant risk than COVID-19, despite being both more contagious and more deadly?

<comment><USER21> Well, I'm going to die of something, but surely I'm more likely to die of the flu. You can do weird things with statistics.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> Worrying about a potentially deadly illness that you can do little about, vs worrying about losing your source of income and having to.. look for another job.

I'm definitely more worried about infection, too.

<comment><USER26> My thought is the fear of additional medical costs due to infection on top of the bills I am expected to pay.

<comment><USER27> Yep. If you have to spend a week in hospital in the US it can break you even if you have "decent" insurance. Three words that strike terror into the hearts of Americans: "Out of network"

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> I've personally heard from several tens of parents that they are primarily worried about the economic and social affects of all these so-called safety measures governments and communities are taking. Just because it's easy to measure cases and deaths and hard to measure lost human connection, depression, children being left in environments of neglect, delayed/paused innovation and economic growth, etc. doesn't mean that those costs are less than the loss of life incurred from not being "safe". I would rather my children (and I have 5) grow up not being told they need to be afraid of everything. I would rather they grow up being able to learn with and interact with their peers face to face. And I am absolutely willing to sacrifice possibly a few years of extra time I could have my grandparents around for that. My grandparents are also happy to make that sacrifice so their grandchildren and great grandchildren can grow up in a better world.

We all will die. Can't let a fear of dying prevent us from living.

<comment><USER29> The fear is not death.

How about the fact that long term effects are unknown. Or what sort of ongoing medical issues will people have for the rest of their lives?

There is people who believe that once you're done with this virus, it is gone from your system and you're back to normal. Certainly that is the case for many, but there are still many more that will continue to suffer from what they are calling now 'long haulers'.

Spend some time in a large (91k people and growing) Survivors group [0] to get a feeling of what people are facing.

[0] [https://www.facebook.com/groups/COVID19survivorcorps/](https://www.facebook.com/groups/COVID19survivorcorps/)

<comment><USER28> Sure - but the point/principle still applies. Every day we confront unknown risks that we don't fully understand. But we just keep on living. I think we have enough data for people to evaluate their own personal risk and generally take appropriate personal measures for safety. We can and should make efforts to accommodate those who assess their personal risk to be significant. But when you/others ask schools to close - are you really considering what the short-medium-long term costs of those choices really are? I have personally taken neighborhood kids to pick up free lunches offered by schools while they were shut down - because those kids' parents didn't care to take them and neither cared to help them feed themselves. I've seen working parents leave their young children at home because child care logistics and cost were not acceptable for their circumstances. I know kids down the street that are basically ignored by their parents that are not likely to have a healthy structured school environment they can count on.

I believe these hard to measure costs are enormous but easy to ignore because the affected demographic can't fight for their rights/desires - they can't even vote. And privileged SV folks and internet yuppies are happy to drive this line forward. I have friends who have lost their jobs. I have a cousin who has lost their small business. Not because of COVID - but because of the "cure" for COVID.

<comment><USER30> Most of this just speaks to how problematic it is for a society to rely on (poorly-funded and unevenly-resourced) schools alone for universal childcare, alleviating child hunger, ensuring safety from awful households, and other concerns that could have been addressed elsewhere (this is all orthogonal to the effects of COVID).

<comment><USER28> Yes - in some imaginary world it might be easier to close schools without adverse consequences. But we don't live in that world. We live in one where closing schools has lots of bad short and long term consequences. So acknowledging that we must decide between existing alternatives - not between fictitious ones - what do people want?

Adverse affects of closing schools for a year on 56 million elementary, middle, and high school students? Or maybe 500,000 people dying a bit early (just making numbers up on this one - adjust up or down depending on various factors)? That is not so one-sided obvious as many people on the internet seem to want to make it.

<comment><USER29> How many kids need to die from attending school and catching covid? For me, 1 is enough and we are already there.

How many children will bring it home to adults? For me, 1 is enough and we are already there.

On the other hand, not all 56 million kids will end up ruined if education is delayed a bit or parents need to come up with new and creative ways to educate their children safely.

You're basically arguing to 'stay the course' during a global pandemic and fact is that isn't workable either.

<comment><USER31> > How many kids need to die from attending school and catching covid? For me, > 1 is enough and we are already there.

This is equally as irrational as people who just want to fling the floodgates open.

~5 children per year die on playground equipment in the US. Are you actually proposing that we sit around until we've neutered a lethal virus enough that it's less dangerous than playground equipment?

The IFR for school age children is astonishingly low. Low enough that we don't even really have a good sample size. CAs data right now is showing 1 death out of ~50k infections. My first Google hit with IFR estimates for those age ranges puts them at 0.0016% for 5-9, and 0.00032% for 10-17.

Assuming every single one of those kids is in the higher risk 5-9 bracket and that every single one gets infected, we would end up with less than a thousand fatalities. That's about 10% lower than children that die from drowning (or congenital birth abnormalities, or drug overdose/poisoning, they all hover around 980 per year). It's slightly higher than the number of children who die from heart disease.

On the other hand, it's less than a quarter the number of children who die in car crashes per year, and less than a third the number who die from firearm accidents.

I don't suppose that you're going to stop putting your kids in the car, despite it being 4 times more likely to kill them than the worst case scenario of Covid in schools.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> This is a terrible article. It's subtle clickbait, seemingly designed too discourage constructive discussion while encouraging argumentation.

The choices are ambiguously worded to the point that one could project a spectrum of meanings to them. We know nothing about the sample other than that there are 1000 of them and they are parents. We don't know where they live. We don't know whether they're employed and what their level of employment and financial circumstance is. We don't know how old they are or how old their children are.

Finally they are asked what their greatest worry is and then they have to choose between three choices or assert that they have no worries at all.

At the same time the completely ambiguous results and ambiguous wording allow anyone who feels like arguing to project their own hopes and fears to the results.

Just stay away from bullsh*t like this. It's poison.

<comment><USER33> "Just stay away from bullsh*t like this. It's poison."

I say that to myself so much when reading any kind of news on the pandemic. The pandemic landing in a US presidential election year has made it at least 3x worse in my opinion.

</comment></comment><comment><USER34> This seems like a worthless comparison. One hundred percent of parents can get C19 and 100% of their children can get it too. How many of these parents still have jobs? The unemployment rate for parents is probably lower than the aggregate population. Again, this (5x!) is a worthless comparison.

</comment><comment><USER35> The headline is completely wrong. The study shows that infection is the _top concern_ of five times more parents than work or paying bills. The parents most concerned about infection may only be slightly less concerned about work or money.

</comment><comment><USER36> I am going to sound like a looney, but bear with me.

The mortality rate of Covid isn't that much higher than the seasonal flu for those aged under 50. (most children or their parents). It is far lower for those under the age of 30. Assuming 200k Americans have died from Covid, current stats put the number of deaths under the age of 18 at 70/200k and 18-44 at 6k/200k.

In other words, you child is more likely to die of the seasonal flu and about 50-100x more likely to commit suicide than dying of COVID 19. The parents themselves are at about an equal risk of dying of Covid as they are of dying by the flu.

Covid is killing plenty of folks over 50. We know this. We've known this from the start. It is incredibly odd to me, that no country has taken precautions that particularly target the safety of these older people. In places where Covid is on its last legs like MA/NY, a large number of deaths are coming out of old age homes. Surely there must be way to address those directly.

The concerns around COVID are misplaced. It is a drop-let borne disease that primarily kills old people and uses delayed symptoms to facilitate spread. Sanitizing surfaces is not going to help. Acting paranoid about your kids is not going to help. ________

P.S: _I have looked up legitimate stats for my claims, but am not linking them atm, due to lack of time. Also, I am purely looking at death and not side effects. I also don 't claim to make the comparisons in controlled-trial manner. Lastly, masks and distancing are essential, irrespective of the points I make above. It also assumes that the current strategy is to distance until a vaccine arrives. Because, I don't think herd immunity or complete eradication are realistic possibilities._

<comment><USER37> I think the big concern for young people is the lingering effects. Once people get a flu and recover, they're back to normal. People with COVID are struggling to breathe months later and heart damage is being reported.

<comment><USER36> I particularly left them out because it is insanely difficult to find any real stats on what the rate of lingering effects of COVID might be. The only thing we know, is the effects only manifest for seriously symptomatic patients.

Of course, in case of substantial rate of effects post illness, my comment would be rendered entirely invalid.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER38> Parents have good reason to be worried, not so much that their kids will suffer permanent complications, but that they will spread it around the whole family, hitting the elderly hardest.

Teachers have a right to be heard on this as well.

</comment><comment><USER39> There is far too much "survey says!" in the place of news.

I can't quantify my emotions and share their weight distribution. Anybody writing an article like this has already written the entire thing before doing any of the questioning, and it's stupidly easy to get a survey result by asking the right question.

</comment><comment><USER40> Damn work has always been the easiest part in life, I mean as long as I can find one. And once I get a job I won't worry too much about bills.

But infection and school...I have no control over them. They control me, and definitely I'm going to be more worried about them. Same for kids and family.

<comment><USER41> Yeah, I think the lack of control is a key observation here. I bet most people would tell you they're more scared of plane crashes than car accidents, even though most people are at much larger risk of a car accident.

</comment></comment><comment><USER42> The goal has shifted. The lockdowns and extreme shutdowns were in an effort to keep hospital resources from becoming overridden thus causing even more death.

The new goal of attempting to prevent the actual transmission of the disease itself has been disastrous.

</comment><comment><USER43> Yeah the health ramifications are massive. you may go under debt and probably accrue more of you default on a few payments but if you are sick and can't get back up fast potentially your entirely family will suffer a lot

<comment><USER27> The bigger worry here is that the kids pass it to a parent since most cases in children are mild. A bad case of covid (not even talking about a fatal case) could have you out of commission unable to work for months. And then medical bills on top of that.

</comment></comment><comment><USER44> 5x more worried? That implies measuring "worriedness" on a ratio scale (ie a scale with fixed zero). This wasn't discussed in the article. Maybe they meant "5x more parents are worried," although looks more like 3.5x

</comment><comment><USER45> Who was sampled in this study? Renters do not pay a Mortgage. Only the unemployed (not working & looking for work), the employed looking for another job, or the underemployed are worried about finding a job.

</comment><comment><USER46> Well of course - they can delay retirement, cut back, or work longer hours later to make up for financial hardship and address debts eventually. They cannot bring their children back from the dead.

</comment><comment><USER47> I wish I was living in a country where the government takes care of its citizens and makes sure they don't have to worry about losing their jobs or homes because of a global pandemic.

</comment><comment><USER48> I wish there was more conversation happening about other countries who have already successfully put kids back at school.

That might give confidence to people in North America who feel uncertain about it.

<comment><USER49> > I wish there was more conversation happening about other countries who have > already successfully put kids back at school.

> That might give confidence to people in North America who feel uncertain > about it.

This is like trying to give someone confidence to jump out of a plane _without_ a parachute by talking about all the people who've safely jumped out of planes _with_ parachutes. It's BS: the situations are different, so the examples don't apply.

Step 1 of opening us schools in the US is implementing policy to get to the (lower) infection rates of those countries that have been able to safely open up schools. Unfortunately, there are US political factions that just want to skip that step and go straight to the end of the plan.

<comment><USER48> I don't think you analogy is well thought out.

It's more like giving them the confidence to jump by telling them that other people have successfully jumped.

Perhaps the jumper does not have the ideal mindset, but it's better to inform them that it is possible rather than keeping them in the dark, acting as if no one has ever successfully jumped before.

<comment><USER49> > I don't think you analogy is well thought out.

> It's more like giving them the confidence to jump by telling them that other > people have successfully jumped.

No, you're missing the point: other people have successfully "jumped" (opened schools), but the person you're talking to (the US) _is not equipped like they were_ and will _die_ if they jump. Success in this case doesn't have anything to do with having the mindset to jump or not, it has _everything_ to do with having made the right preparations _before_ jumping.

The kind of mindset change that you seem to be advocating for is the exact thing that got us into this mess: the idea that you can be successful merely by confidently believing you will succeed (see [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Power_of_Positive_Thinking...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Power_of_Positive_Thinking#Popular_culture)). That kind of thing causes people to overconfidently blunder into failure like an idiot.

If there's any mindset change needed here, it's to convince the person adopt the the mindset to be willing to turn the plane around, land, buy a parachute, take a parachuting class, go back up in the plane, and _only then jump_.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER50> It's an interesting thing to balance. The health risk of the disease vs the 'developmental' risk of a lack of 'normal' social interaction with other kids and teachers in a 'so-called' formal school setting. I am all for my kids returning to school, but that is easy for me to say and so I think everyone needs to have the space to make the decisions that they feel comfortable with. And that extends to the teachers as well, and this is where it gets really interesting. What happens if the teachers aren't comfortable with going back to a class full of little germ spreaders?

</comment><comment><USER51> Not me. I'm more concerned about my kids going back to school so that I don't need to be here all day and try and monitor their education on my own AND trying to focus on my job. The risk of me or my children DYING from COVID is practically zero.

The average age of a COVID death is 70+ years old. The average life expectancy in USA is < 80 years old. People won't live forever, no matter how many masks we wear or how hard we lock down.

<comment><USER52> My spouse has no relevant health complications, and has been knocked absolutely _FLAT_ from this. We didn't have to go to the hospital, there were no ventilators involved. But now, almost 4 months later, and they struggle to walk 100 paces, to go upstairs, etc. The risks are more than dying vs not- dying.

</comment></comment><comment><USER53> I don't like that the handing of COVID has turned into a partisan issue. Putting emphasis on death risks has become an equivalent of Democrat virtue signalling, while focusing on the economic factors is almost solely viewed as support for Republicans.

Wake up, people, that's not how you solve problems. What we need is a good, high-quality debate, and a way to quantify and compare costs and benefits from both sides. We need mortality numbers for different age groups from different independent sources. We need research on mental health effects of lockdown and pulling kids away from school. Anecdotally, I have a 6-year-old son, who got noticeably distressed after the school went online-only during his Kindergarten. I am not worried about his academic success (he's doing Grade 2 workbooks at home), but the lack of social interaction is certainly freaking him out. Except, I don't know the real numbers. In fact, nobody does, because there is too so much focus on political stand-offs instead. It's hurting both sides, really.

It's like with Hydroxychloroquine. Ever since Trump endorsed it, the republican media is proclaiming it to be The Cure (with people literally considering it for prophylactic (sic!)), while the democrat sources are censoring videos and avoiding the topic, because the paper stating its benefits used weak methodology. And again, your stance on HCQ is used as a proxy for your political orientation, rather than an honest professional opinion. All that instead instead of an actual unbiased research aimed at discovering cases and circumstances where it could work. And a proper debate between medical professionals on risks and possible advantages.

</comment><comment><USER54> that's because we are used to paying bills and know what to do about work - the unknown is always scary

</comment><comment><USER55> Dubious study. Clear affiliate site.

</comment><comment><USER56> Without meaningful information about the geographies of the participants, how this data would be valuable is not quite clear to me.

</comment><comment><USER57> The article didn't share the survey method and the sample size is 1000. I couldn't take it seriously

<comment><USER58> A sample size of 1000 is huge.

[https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/howcan-a-poll- of-...](https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/howcan-a-poll-of-only-100/)

<comment><USER59> It could be huge or tiny depending on the size of the mean and standard deviation of the effect you're looking for in comparison to the mean and sdev of unrelated variations.

<comment><USER60> Given that the QOI is a single multinomial proportion, an unweighted[1] random sample of the population has a maximum[2] ~3.1% margin of error on either side.

You could argue the QOI is something else (the sum or difference, or even the ratio estimator reported in the title). Margins of error on ratio estimators are quite a bit larger because of numerical properties of ratios.

Since there is interest, I ran a quick simulation[3] to derive the CI of the ratio estimate above ("5x"). By Monte Carlo and using standard assumptions, the confidence interval on the "5X" quantity of interest is 4.51 - 6.82x calculated via the quantile method.[4]

The confidence interval is not appreciably smaller in magnitude if you double the sample size, we're well past the point of diminishing returns.

[1] Weighting would induce a design effect, but here I would suggest that the real problem is a poorly defined population and sample frame, not sample error. This is the real issue here: we have zero reason to believe these 1,000 people are a random sample of any interesting population.

[2] For a parameter \theta = 0.5 -- uncertainly decreases as the statistic becomes further from 0.5. But classical MOEs overreport like this.

[3] R Code on Pastebin: [https://pastebin.com/raw/UjHg7qnR](https://pastebin.com/raw/UjHg7qnR)

[4] Similar results come from taking the numerical sd of the sampling distribution and calculating a NACI about the mean, I just did the quantile trick because it's less code.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER61> Makes sense in the US. The Trump administration has done an abhorrent job handling the virus and isn't making the slightest effort to change course.

<comment><USER62> s/abhorrent/malicious/

I subscribe to Hanlon's Razor, but at this point we're well past any benefit of the doubt.

</comment></comment><comment><USER63> Data on euromomo for 0 - 14 shows that excess mortality this year is indistinguishable from other years.

At this link, check out the euromomo section:

[https://ourworldindata.org/excess-mortality- covid](https://ourworldindata.org/excess-mortality-covid)

The charts above clearly show the effect on 14+ due to covid this year.

If you scroll down further, you can select 0-14 in the country-by-country data.

What you'll see there is that Sweden looks the same as all of the other countries for 0-14, and they did not close their schools for those ages.

EDIT: what's with the downvotes for showing data?

</comment><comment><USER64> There is a massive, silent demographic who wants a return to status quo.

There was a conference call with the school district the other night. A friend in the district was in awe at how many parents want their children to return to school, are upset about sports, etc.

Many people want to look at this as a black and white issue - either you believe social distancing and masks are necessary, or you believe that Bill Gates wants to put a microchip in your head. The media is of course greatly to blame for this.

The reality is that there are many people who share different priorities than vocal groups on the Internet. Several times I have written blog posts about lay statistical analysis of the virus, and how more conservative states have the benefit of seeing reopening in action in states like Florida and Texas. Many of the responses assume I am against masks, against social distancing, trolling etc. No discourse is possible.

<comment><USER65> Silent?

<comment><USER64> On the Internet, I believe so. You see the crazies and the anti-maskers but anyone worried about e.g. the mental health of their children or the viability of their family business is filtered out.

We are seeing waves of permanent restaurant closings where I am from, and people seem reluctant to put 2 and 2 together.</comment></comment></comment>


"Thinking about science leads individuals to endorse more stringent moral norms" - <AUTHOR> http://www.salon.com/2013/03/23/does_studying_science_make_you_a_better_person_partner/ <comment><USER2> This study is nonsense. They ask nonsensical questions such as "Do you _believe_ in science?". They are also using this fad protocol where they have someone (nearly always an 18-21 yr old white college student) read an article then test their opinions on things before and after, and then make grandiose claims regarding what that implies. This is not science, this is pop- psychology.

<comment><USER3> > They ask nonsensical questions such as "Do you believe in science?"

Why is it nonsensical? Scientific method is a human invention, you can either believe in it, or not. The notion that a theory producing verifiable predictions is "true" is pure fiat. And then there's the whole idea that scientific discoveries, like laws of physics, are universal. Plenty of things to believe in.

<comment><USER4> Science doesn't mean scientific method, and even if you were talking about the scientific method, what exactly does it mean to believe in it? Absolutely nothing. It's like asking "What do hindus believe?" and expecting to get an answer that isn't dumb.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> _On the surface, these results seems counterintuitive; science, after all, is — in the strictest sense — amoral._

Either this is just another insincere sentence thrown in to fill the article, or the author's intuition is terrible. Something along these lines: "They are engaged with something amoral, therefore they must be amoral!", genious. A farm or the act of farming is also amoral, so I guess you expect farmers to be pretty indecent. Really, it's been so many years and why do journalists still think these filler sentences help their article?

<comment><USER6> Actually, doing science is moral, and so is farming. Both are helping you to live a better life, which is the essence of morality.

So I agree with you that the author is totally wrong, just for different reasons.

<comment><USER7> Plenty of science exists with questionable morals. E.g. military science

<comment><USER6> If I had said, "Cars are used for transportation," would you say, "I know a guy whose car doesn't have a motor, but he sleeps in it"?

Or if I had said, "Tables are flat surfaces," would you say, "I saw a table in the museum of modern art that had a curving surface"?

So, yes, you are completely right, and I don't dispute what you're saying, but it does not invalidate the generalization. Analogously to the example cases I just gave.

There is probably some philosophical name for and explanation of this phenomenon, but I don't know what it is.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> > were recruited and received course credit for participation

I think it is ironic that a research into morality was conducting by coercing student participants into the research. In academic courses, it is common for students and lecturers to benchmark students (and award final grades) based the rank of students ordered by marks, and so giving students marks for something is also punishing students who don't get the marks.

Getting research participation by threatening a punishment such as a loss of rank in the class for those who don't participate is coercive, and it casts both the researchers and UCSD (and its human ethics committee) in bad light.

Coercive research is also less likely to be accurate - in this case, it brings up the alternative explanation that the science words prompted students to think about their courses, which might be the sole reason they are participating in the study, putting them into exam mentality so they give the answers they think they are 'supposed' to give.

</comment><comment><USER9> They classified the undergraduate psychology major as a "science"?

<comment><USER10> Yes, they did: see this sentence in the article:

>But science majors (including those studying biology, chemistry and psychology) judged him more harshly than non-science majors.

If you think psychology is ascientific, then you're living in the psychology of about a century ago. Psychology has been incredibly rigorous since the 1920s, and by virtually any metric it's as hard a hard science as any other hard science.

<comment><USER11> > If you think psychology is ascientific, then you're living in the psychology > of about a century ago.

On the contrary, psychology is today widely recognized as scientific in name only:

[http://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2012/12/the- myth-o...](http://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2012/12/the-myth-of-self- correcting-science/266228/)

But beyond the many psychology scandals presently being discussed, it's important to say that descriptions, regardless of how detailed they are, don't constitute science. For science, one must risk a testable explanation, a _theory_. The absence of theories, testable and tested, and on which different psychologists can agree, is what separates psychology from mainstream science.

In the crafting of the new DSM-V (about to be published), psychologists added mental conditions, and removed conditions, based on -- evidence? -- no, on votes, and secret votes at that. This is not science.

The unscientific state of psychology has led the present director of the NIMH to take note of the gradual eclipsing of psychology by neuroscience:

[http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=faulty- circ...](http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=faulty-circuits)

A quote: "In most areas of medicine, doctors have historically tried to glean something about the underlying cause of a patient's illness before figuring out a treatment that addresses the source of the problem. When it came to mental or behavioral disorders in the past, however, no physical cause was detectable so the problem was long assumed by doctors to be solely "mental," and psychological therapies followed suit.

Today _scientific approaches based on modern biology, neuroscience and genomics are replacing nearly a century of purely psychological theories_ , yielding new approaches to the treatment of mental illnesses."

> Psychology has been incredibly rigorous since the 1920s, and by virtually > any metric it's as hard a hard science as any other hard science.

Quite false. Few psychologists agree with each other on anything, and fewer still are willing to put forth a testable, falsifiable theory about the workings of the human mind. This is why spectacular frauds like Stapel and Hauser can play the field like a badly tuned violin -- few practitioners are qualified to recognize that it's not science.

<comment><USER10> You appear to be living in the psychology of about a century ago.

I'd recommend Daniel Kahneman's Thinking Fast and Slow as a good layperson's introduction to cognitive psychology in the fields of decision-making and estimation.

I also suggest you see <http://mres.gmu.edu/pmwiki/uploads/Main/Hedges1987.pdf> for a review of the degree of consistency within psychology and physics.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> "Do you believe in science?"

What kind of question is that? Nature follows its laws whether we have an opinion about it or not. Science is just the study of these laws. The question itself makes no sense.

<comment><USER13> Do you honestly read that question as asking if you believe in science in the same way as, for example, you can believe in reincarnation or God? A sentence can have more than one reading and generally a good approach is to discern the meaning as intended by the author rather than picking one that doesn't make any sense. Obviously It's asking whether you believe in science as a fundamentally important part of modern society, whether you believe in the worth of the scientific method and rationalism etc.

<comment><USER12> > Obviously it's asking whether you believe in science as a fundamentally > important part of modern society

Well, the answer to that is indeed so obvious that if that's what the author was intending, I can hardly believe he's asking it.

<comment><USER13> Its obvious to me too, but I'm pretty sure there are some fairly deep layers of anti-science sentiment in some demographics. Also I think its possible to be extremely in favour of science and its mode of thought, and conversely perhaps more wary.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> From the description of the study, you could also argue thinking about science makes you more likely to take texts at face value (a willingness to make the mental leap from reading a _story_ about John to judging John's _actions_ ) and encourages Manichean black-and-white thinking (moving closer to the 100 of absolute condemnation)

</comment><comment><USER15> Hell yes it does! Reason, logic, and observation all the way baby!

<comment><USER16> Agree.

I wonder where most of them stand on terms like church/religion and state and marriage equality.

I've notice software engineers in general tend to be more open minded on those areas.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> How does an observed, measured, calculated and critically considered process of understanding everything around you considered "belief"? That's like saying, I believe in wine making. No, it's a process of making wine. Science is the process of understanding the universe.

One of the pet peeves when people say "believe in science".

Aside from that, are we sure that it's "causing" people to become more moral or is it that science itself encourages reflection and critical thinking that can develop into a moral compass? You're less likely to be rash, disorganized or deleterious to people around you if you also have to be a good scientist, which by definition involves a fair amount of observation and self-dicipline.

It's harder to be an ass when you perceive yourself to be one. Unless you're sociopathic to begin with.

<comment><USER18> > One of the pet peeves when people say "believe in science".

The phrase "believe in" can also mean "have faith in".

The majority of scientific discoveries are not something that most people can observe, measure, calculate, etc -- either because they don't have the ability or the time to do so. In order to trust scientific finding, people have to have faith in the science that's been performed by others.

<comment><USER17> So they trust the wine makers that their label is as good as they say it is when they taste it. I guess that makes sense.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Exactly how convinced are we that college students that report that they don't really "believe in science" are being honest?

</comment><comment><USER20> Correlation is not causation.

C'mon people..

<comment><USER13> Care to point out exactly where and how you think these post doctorate researchers have got correlation and causation confused? Because at the moment your comment is looking fairly absurd.</comment></comment>


Show HN: improved HN bookmarklet - <AUTHOR> http://kaspa.rs/hn-bookmarklet/

<comment><AUTHOR> This was a quick 15 min hack last night based on the new API. It's different from the original bookmarklet in two ways:

1) If the URL is already added to HN, it will go straight to disucssion thread, without automatically voting

2) If the URL is not yet added, it will ask if you want to submit it

</comment><comment><USER2> Nice. I've got a bookmarklet I wrote exactly like this, which has morphed into chrome extension to automatically notify you when their is a HN discussion for the page you are on. Should polish it up and release it. Good work

</comment><comment><USER3> Doesn't work in Opera 11.11. Really good idea though.

<comment><AUTHOR> Fixed. Thanks for the tip.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Nicely done, worked perfectly in FF4.</comment>


Online Jamming and Concert Technology - <AUTHOR> https://online.stanford.edu/courses/sohs-music0001-online-jamming-and-concert-technology <comment><USER2> I've used JamKazam ([https://www.jamkazam.com](https://www.jamkazam.com)) a few times recently to play folk music with some friends. The sort of music we play relies very heavily on listening to each other and improvising, and surprisingly it _just about_ works on JamKazam. It's certainly not perfect, but we're not going to be hanging out in pubs together any time soon.

The important number is round-trip latency, and we found that around 25ms is good enough (we're all quite used to playing with people of varying time- keeping ability anyway). I think there's scope to improve on that using a library like Roc ([https://github.com/roc-project/roc](https://github.com/roc- project/roc)) where you can target a specific latency. I've been meaning to play around with it, but to be honest I'd rather be playing music :)

<comment><USER3> JamKazam founder here. Happy to come across a user!

We see that too: 25ms one-way latency is the max to stay in sync, and that includes both internet + audio device encode/decode, which gets eaten up quite fast!

We are looking at providing an _optional_ premium networking service to offer a faster connection as an alternative to the open internet. Nothing too expensive, like $10/month is the goal. Hope that gets you and your friends under that magic threshold when it's available, if you try it out.

<comment><USER4> Hi, I clicked on the learn more link for the jamblaster and it's a dead link?

<comment><USER3> _wince_

We need to take that section/link down.

We did do a KickStarter for the JamBlaster, made ~200 and shipped them.

[https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1091884999/jamblaster-t...](https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1091884999/jamblaster- the-ultimate-smartphone-accessory-for-m)

But we are not in a position to be focusing on custom hardware.

... a dedicated device is half the puzzle. That, and a low-latency network connection to your peers. You have those two and you can get a reliable experience.

<comment><USER5> For people that are interested in putting something like this together, Bela might be a good starting point.

[https://bela.io](https://bela.io)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I know of a musician who has been performing online shows for the past couple of months. He does them solo, just singing and playing guitar. He streams video using OBS Studio and Crowdcast.io, and all of us attending the show participate through text chat. His video has a latency of about 30 seconds, presumably because it's using a typical RTMP + CDN setup, designed for non- interactive broadcasts. So sometimes after he finishes a song, there's an awkward moment, because even though we're sending our equivalent of applause through the chat, he won't see it for another 30 seconds. He knows about the latency, and he believes it's necessary for a reliable, high-quality stream. So he just tries to carry on like it's not there. But I wonder if it's possible to do better. FWIW, his most well-attended show so far had ~170 people watching, and the audience is usually much smaller.

<comment><USER7> That sounds small enough that casting through Discord or Twitch may be an option. Those seem designed more more interactive broadcasts and thus lower latency.

I don't know at what point the scaling breaks down.

<comment><USER8> Twitch has a record of over 2M viewers of a single active steam. I don't think scale for most individual artists is a factor.

<comment><USER7> Ha! I'll take your word for it. You would know.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Jamulus is another take on this. It's server based and uses lossy compression (opus). People host public servers and the software has a server browser.

[http://llcon.sourceforge.net/](http://llcon.sourceforge.net/)

[http://llcon.sourceforge.net/PerformingBandRehearsalsontheIn...](http://llcon.sourceforge.net/PerformingBandRehearsalsontheInternetWithJamulus.pdf)

</comment><comment><USER10> We've been using JackTrip for a couple of years. I would recommend it to anyone looking into telematic performances.

</comment><comment><USER11> Any amount of latency seems like too much latency when jamming with others. I could see how this would work with audio engines like SuperCollider, but I'm curious how one goes about this for live recordings.

<comment><USER12> Latency is kind of funny in the context of jamming. Sound only travels about a foot per millisecond. An orchestra pit is thirty or forty feet across. A big festival stage can be thirty feet across.

So we have these pretty ordinary situations where there's about thirty milliseconds of latency between when a drumstick strikes a head and a guitar player hears it. Of course, in a modern live pop performance there's all the crazy monitoring and latency compensation to try to make a football stadium acoustically comprehensible, but there is still the physical reality of how people normally play music together.

If I ping google.com from my house, on my crummy wifi, right now I'm getting about 10ms. This is roughtly the latency a guitar player experiences standing at the end of a 10 foot cord from their amp between their pick plucking a string and the resulting sound striking their eardrums.

Reality has latency.

<comment><USER13> Reminds me of a marching band of a college. The drums and the brass section would gradually dis-synchronize, the sound disintegrated into chaos, until the conductor couldn't stand it and shouted at everyone. My guess is that the players weren't paying attention to the conductor at all.

But even with zero auditory latency, musicians (classical musicians at least) don't really use sound to synchronize, because the cue must come before the sound is made.

That's why in any competent orchestra, musicians rely on visual synchronization. For example, the string sections look at the concert master, who in turn communicate with the conductor and the soloist.

In chamber music, the musicians constantly look, nod, and body gesture at each other to synchronize.

The internet is competing with light not sound.

<comment><USER14> Typically this is why marching band field arrangements put the drumline in back. The drumline plays with the conductor's hands, and everyone else plays with the beat of the drumline as it travels forward towards the audience, therefore arriving synchronized to the audience. Drumline hears everyone else as dragging, brass thinks the woodwinds are dragging, but it all works out from the perspective of the audience.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> You can use ninjam, reaper and audio hijack for audio syncing but video syncing seems problematic.

<comment><USER16> ninjam works very well for audio syncing, but the problem I've run into is that (at least with the default settings) it seems to sync everything a measure behind, i.e. you play to what others played one measure ago. This works well for jamming, but playing a song with chord changes was hard to coordinate.

<comment><USER17> A given channel has two controls: tempo (because there is an audible click track to keep people in sync) and a repeat duration. To make it work, either (a) it has to be a modal jam (no chord changes), or (b) play 12 bar blues and set the latency to 12 bars.</comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: React Native or Swift for iOS app? - <AUTHOR> So I'm building a mobile app whose core feature is scanning QRcodes. I notice how effective the WhatsApp on iPhone scans QRcode even in low light conditions. I want that kind of efficiency in my app because it's the most important feature. Can ReactNative provide this or do I have to go with Swift? <comment><USER2> Either way, if you're adventure enough, try SCADE beta release that will run on Android and iOS natively using Swift langauge. To check SCADE out, [http://scade.io](http://scade.io) and they are working with PerfectlySoft who doing Server-side Swift Perfect.ly

</comment><comment><USER3> You don't have to do this in Swift necessarily, you can go with ReactNative. Please look at this: [https://github.com/moaazsidat/react-native-qrcode- scanner](https://github.com/moaazsidat/react-native-qrcode-scanner)</comment>


Smartphone startups take on Google, Apple and put privacy first - <AUTHOR> https://www.dw.com/en/smartphone-startups-take-on-google-apple-and-put-privacy-first/a-52369255 <comment><USER2> I wish the article was a little more technically competent. It leaves out a lot of other important projects in this space like PinePhone, LineageOS, and even the proprietary alternative of Sailfish.

I also take issue with a lot of articles talking about data collection as the boogeyman without actually explaining how data collection happens and how to minimize it.

You don't have to actually get rid of Apple or Google, which can massively handicap the usability of your device, to gain some semblance of privacy. There are a lot of simple changes to be made:

\- Turning off location history in Google and Apple Maps

\- Auditing Google/Apple/social media account privacy settings

\- Make sure you're on a recent/the latest Android version

\- Audit and minimize app permissions

\- Uninstall apps that you don't need or have web alternatives

\- Installing content blockers on web browsers

\- Set up a PiHole

\- On Android, you could switch to an alternative App Store like F-Droid

I suggest these sorts of thing only because these projects, while very admirable, are years away from being viable alternatives. Most smartphone users outside the technically inclined would absolutely not make the trade- offs required to live with something like a Librem or even giving up Google Play on LineageOS.

The other issue I take with articles like this is that they fail to understand the value that data collection _can_ provide to consumers as well. A lot of useful features actually depend on using your data. The assumption that the consumer is unhappy about this trade-off is not necessarily correct.

A great example of that concept is how Google and Apple use aggregated location information to determine traffic conditions. This is a highly useful feature to most smartphone owners. It would be impossible to implement without collecting location data.

That's just one example of many. In many ways the utility of the smartphone outshines the personal computer precisely _because_ it can gather more data from more sensors to be put to use.

Fighting Apple and Google with alternatives is a losing battle if you ask me - privacy will never be protected until strong regulations with real teeth become universal.

In reality, there will never be more than two smartphone operating systems that any significant number of the public use. If you don't believe me just look to the personal computer world - in 30 years has any operating system gained any more traction than Windows or macOS? Sure, Desktop Linux is more usable and popular than ever, but the fact remains that 95%+ of the general population still doesn't use it. While me and my technically inclined friends can finally use Linux as a daily driver and even play AAA commercial video games on it, something of a pipe dream 10 years ago, that doesn't help the 90% of people that are still on Windows. That desktop computing situation is a lot like the future of smartphones - Apple and Google aren't going anywhere. That's why I say that regulations and laws are going to be the only way to reign in mass data collection, because getting people to switch to alternatives will never be more than 5% effective.

<comment><USER3> > Turning off location history in Google and Apple Maps

Google dark patterns make this a no-go. I have multiple locations stored on my Google maps. With location history turned off I was fine until a few months ago when maps told me in order to access that data I need to turn location history back on. So google cripples their software unless you turn on tracking.

<comment><USER4> Use alternative maps -

[https://en.mapy.cz/](https://en.mapy.cz/), [https://maps.me/](https://maps.me/) \- Google Maps is useless anyway.

<comment><USER5> > Google Maps is useless anyway

Care to elaborate on that? It seems very useful, considering the amount of people that use it on a daily basis

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Ars Technica recently tested the current version of the Purism Libre: [https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2020/01/librem-5-phone- hands...](https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2020/01/librem-5-phone-hands-on-a- proof-of-concept-for-the-open-source-smartphone/)

It seems that it's still more a prototype than a functioning phone, where even basic functionality like replying to a SMS is not implemented yet. That's not really surprising or discouraging though, it's simply a lot of software that you have to reimplement, so even attaining feature parity with current phones seems quite difficult with this approach.

I think we need a political/organizational solution to the privacy problem, fighting back with technology will not work.

Taking aside the usability issues I think these initiatives are fantastic though and while I don't think they will replace current smartphones they might find unexpected markets that can benefit from the open approach. For example, I think an affordable, fully open mobile computing device could become as successful as the Raspberry Pi and provide a great platform for many innovative, data-driven mobile applications.

<comment><USER7> > think we need a political/organizational solution to the privacy problem

I agree, and I'd add that that's because there isn't much money in privacy at the moment, and there's a lot of money in violating privacy. And, that's probably because there's too many people who don't understand privacy in technology, or don't consider it a priority. I think that regulation can't come soon enough. Anyone who helps privacy and tech politics move faster is a hero.

<comment><USER6> Yes, I think there's a trend (maybe fake, I hope real) that people become more savvy in respect to privacy. As the article says, 70 % of people say they learned more about privacy last year. We can already see the first large corporations that use this for their marketing (though with mixed real committments I'd say), and I think more will follow. Also, there are so many privacy legislations now and more are coming, not only in the EU but also in other parts of the world.

It's a real problem and it will get more prevalent the more data we collect. I think we're only at the beginning of the data-driven economy and there's still so much potential for harnessing data to improve things, but we have to ensure the security of the data and the privacy of the persons that it belongs to.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> It is really hard to beat apple and Google due to their app stores. Windows phone wasn't bad but it lost the market badly because of lack of apps. Any new phone OS is going to lack the apps which people are used to and won't sell. Devs won't make apps for a platform until it has users. It's a classic chicken and egg problem which is very hard to solve.

<comment><USER9> It's dumb to target the same market, everybody. This ship has sailed. It doesn't mean that there isn't subset of a market for privacy/security enthusiasts (purism), or for productivity people and digital minimalists who could do with one app like Notion and maybe email.

<comment><USER10> Even those niche markets are still too small to hit the economies of scale necessary for per unit costs to be remotely affordable. These variable costs are magnitudes higher than just launching some privacy-first service like protonmail.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> They could have mentioned [https://www.pine64.org/pinephone/](https://www.pine64.org/pinephone/)

</comment><comment><USER12> Link to the Librem 5 product page: [https://puri.sm/products/librem-5/](https://puri.sm/products/librem-5/)

<comment><USER13> Can the Librem 5 phone make calls yet?

<comment><USER14> Yes. It has been able to for quite some time.

[https://mobile.twitter.com/thelinuxgamer/status/121251196907...](https://mobile.twitter.com/thelinuxgamer/status/1212511969070239744)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> It's hard to imagine that even a smartphone platform dedicated to privacy will be able to out perform the resources of Google, Apple who have entire groups working on solely that problem.

Unless the point is to lock down the phone so strictly that no info can leak or be taken off the phone. That's simple. But that would make a phone that's practically useless for everyday personal use except if you're a paranoid spy.

I guess the need to have privacy and security while offering users some level of reasonable usability through 3rd party apps is why Google and Apple are succeeding in the face of such privacy focused startups.

<comment><USER16> Google will at best deliver you privacy against everyone but Google.

<comment><USER17> Which is not at all considering their business model is to prostitute your data to the highest bidder.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Honestly, the killers are Google Photos and Google Maps.

Google Photos lets me back up photos from my phone AND copy them to my PC. I haven't found any other way to copy photos from an iPhone into a laptop (unless you use macOS). Since they already handle my photos, I might as well use it for backups.

And Google Maps is pretty uncontested when it comes to moving around. Apple Maps doesn't even have a "biking" option (in a country where > 90% of the population bike everywhere, that's a killer).

<comment><USER19> > I haven't found any other way to copy photos from an iPhone into a laptop

Both SyncThing and Resilio Sync work well for this, but require your "server"/laptop to be on in order to sync.

You can also just plug in the device, and it should mount as USB storage on both Windows and Linux.

(I have no financial interest in either pieces of software, other than regularly needing to recommend them to my PhotoStructure users).

<comment><USER5> So, you have to keep a computer on to sync files. And then, what about automatically tagging people, suggesting fixes (rotation, lights), searching by location name, sharing albums, etc?

<comment><USER19> That's what I want PhotoStructure to do.

It already has best-of-class deduping, "variant" clustering support, and metadata inference, as well as a UI that makes browsing very large libraries feel serendipitous. I release roughly every month, and it's free (in exchange for feedback) during the closed beta. Here's what's coming soon: [https://photostructure.com/about/release- notes/](https://photostructure.com/about/release-notes/)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> > Rankin warned that tech giants were now "redefining the word "privacy" in > their own marketing." While they may claim to protect it, what they really > want is to protect privacy from their competitors, he added. "They add > security measures to their software and services so only they can capture, > view and sell all of your data and others can't."

I've been making this case for over a year now, and I'm very pleased to see someone else making it too. It's an incredibly important point that not enough people are bringing up.

<comment> open-source-ux The tech giants redefined the word "privacy" years ago. How did they get away with it? Quite simply because the tech community let them get away with it.

When it comes to privacy, the tech community is full of contradictions and double-standards. Too many people in the field view privacy solely through the lens of security i.e. if your data is securely held and never leaked that is good enough - no matter how much data is captured. This suits the tech giants very well. In fact, it appears to be how many of these tech giants view privacy themselves.

Of course, you can't have privacy without security. But security simply by itself does not equal privacy. Questions about how much data is held about users, or how relentless is the level of tracking are rarely raised. (Until some of that user data gets leaked and we get a glimpse of the sheer volume of data held.)

Another example: the language around tracking users. It's purposefully worded to sound benign or neutral: telemetry, analytics, web beacons, logging. We don't challenge the use of this language - we gladly use it ourselves.

<comment><USER20> I agree (obviously, I suppose).

> Of course, you can't have privacy without security. But security simply by > itself does not equal privacy.

Privacy is not the same as security, and I agree that you can't have privacy without security. I also think that you can't have security without privacy.

This is part of why the argument that some companies make about how securely they're holding our data is a nonstarter for me. That form of security only comes into play after the first form of security: preventing the unauthorized data collection. If the companies don't have my data, then their security practices around how they protect my data don't matter.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> I like a lot the LibreM but I don't consider it a viable option for a use in the real world. On the other hand, the /e/ smartphone is doing a great world to keep me out of the Google ecosystem, and I'm very impressed how far they go on this aspect, even removing call to Google server during connectivity checks, replacing Google NTP servers by NTP pool servers. I don't know any other Android custom ROM doing this.

<comment><USER22> Maybe because the actual privacy benefit for this change is negligible? (Or so I 've been told).

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> If they can come up with a "Play Store" that developers can drop in ungoogled versions of their official apps, that would be killer.

<comment><USER24> I think you're looking for this: [https://f-droid.org/](https://f-droid.org/)

<comment><USER23> The store I'm suggesting would contain commercial, non FOSS apps as well. There are some apps I use that will probably never be open source and there's no website version either.

For wider adoption, I think this would be necessary. Otherwise these phones will always remain a niche product.

<comment><USER25> FlatHub has commercial, proprietary apps in Flatpak sandbox format. It's generally targeted at "desktop" users, but the Flatpak sandbox ought to work just as easily on mobile devices based on mainline Linux, including the Purism phone.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> As someone who spent some time in the mobile industry the telecom operators are the greatest barrier to overcome in these situations. They're quite inflexible.

When I was involved in a phone project we were provided a firmware blob for the baseband and it had DMA to the main processor. We did quite a bit of RF fuzzing and well, the results are what you would expect.

<comment><USER27> What I would expect is some snooping by the baseband - I'm curious, could you expand further on your techniques or findings?

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> These boutique type phones are cute, but they really only serve as a bell- weather on how much consumers are interested in privacy-enabled or unGoogled mobile devices. Between either having to wait 6 months, or pay $2k USD you're I find it unlikely that Librem/Purism will make turn the consumer market toward privacy/security.

<comment><USER17> Is choose the privacy/security focused phone if they were as good as a mid range android. They're not even close to that but hopefully they'll catch up soon. Can't see Librem or Purism being the ones to do it though tbh

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> I think if someone could find a way to make an iOS compatible operating system (e.g. Current iOS applications could be built & run on the system with little modification), then it would be a huge hit. Not sure of the legal implications, for de facto reverse engineering, but it would at least put out another option.

<comment><USER30> I dont think this is a good idea, because it would need a lot of cash and man- hours to burn just to have a mediocre finished mockup at the end.

Microsoft had a better approach once, still expensive/buggy, but at least more doable, which was adapting the various iOS kits and calling back window primitives in the backend.

And yet, they abandoned because its also a bad move in the sense that nobody will care about your platform if they just need to target iOS.

You will be doomed and have to chase and implement everything they do in iOS, even if it doesnt make sense, and nobody will care about your platform.

You will also end with more bugs and application crashes, so your platform will be seing as something inferior to Apple (emphasizing the "nobody cares about you" effect)

By the way, Blackberry took that route by implementing Android and we can see how nobody cares about Blackberry as an app platform, because in the end you know they will have to follow Android.

For me the only way to get out of this trap, is to have a distinct platform, that for some reason, people want to develop for it.

I mean, the web did this trick once, Linux is also doing this. Its doable, but its a lot of hard work and community effort based a lot in other goals other than cash.

Another way to do this trick, is to create a consortium, and to create some base API, inspired by iOS, Android and the Web, and to have a lot of industry leaders onboard.

They would need to finance the prototype or the reference implementation on top of something like Linux.

It was tried with Tizen, but given it was more of a Samsumg project without community to drive it forward it failed. Also, i dont think it can compete with Android and iOS in platform quality.. so this probably was also one of the reasons they have failed.

</comment></comment><comment><USER31> Exciting times to live in with multiple privacy focused smartphones in development: we have /e/, purisms librem, and The pinephone. If just one of them succeeds enough to get to gen 3 or 4, the whole industry will be dramatically better</comment>


Show HN: Arthunter.io, human powered art search for interior designers - <AUTHOR> https://arthunter.io <comment><USER2> Like the Idea though I'm not a designer! Very good strategy to start your MVP with human powered engine, but I guess eventually you would need to make it AI powered to automate the search if you gain traction and need to scale. It would be too much effort to just do human powered search to just show the results while you are not sure if the users would be interested in any of them! Just to look back in history, Yahoo was a human powered search and google is an AI powered search and only one of them is alive today:)

<comment><AUTHOR> Hey - thanks so much! We definitely plan on using AI to improve our search capabilities (and have some internal tooling already built to make things speedy). Appreciate you checking it out!</comment></comment>


Ask HN: Best resources for trading noobs - <AUTHOR> I've always wanted to do a bit of trading, but feel like I lack knowledge in a bunch of areas. Since there's a ton of you guys who are quite versed in trading of stocks and options, so I'm wondering if you could list good starting points for people who like me are interested in getting started on the stock market. Papers, books, webpages are all okay.<p>I'm an avid reader and and want to dedicate a bit of time to economics and markets in particular. Help! Thanks guys. <comment><USER2> It happens that there was a particularly fine HN thread on this a week ago, which a lot of non-weekenders might have missed: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1447438>

<comment><AUTHOR> oh, fantastic! Thank you _very_ much. This is perfect!

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Reminiscences of a Stock Operator, Edwin Lefevre Absolute classic.

Beyond Candlesticks: New Japanese Charting Techniques Revealed, Steve Nison You might not end up using candlesticks, but they help you understand time/strength in stock movement.

Also read this blog: <http://tradermike.net/>

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks! Will definitely go through these.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I misread the headline. I thought there was an emerging market for undeveloped tech talent (noobs) like there is for sports league drafting and trades. I have some noobs I'd like to trade in for some with different talent sets.

</comment><comment><USER5> Buy and read "A Random Walk Down Wall Street"

\-- MV

<comment><AUTHOR> Obrigado, Mario!</comment></comment>


The Last Dalai Lama? - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/2015/12/06/magazine/the-last-dalai-lama.html?_r=0 <comment><USER2>
      "The Dalai Lama's second-oldest brother, Gyalo Thondup,
      helped the C.I.A. train Tibetan guerrillas in Colorado,
      among other places, and parachute them back into Tibet."

I had no idea the US had done this.

This link has more details: [http://www.historynet.com/cias-secret-war-in- tibet.htm](http://www.historynet.com/cias-secret-war-in-tibet.htm)

As does Wikipedia: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CIA_Tibetan_program](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CIA_Tibetan_program)

<comment><USER3> There are a couple books about it. The other place they trained them was in Ithaca, which is why there is still a big tibetan community there and that's where the Dalai Lama's summer home is. It's a pretty crazy story though; iirc after China found out about the program the CIA just disowned them rather than helping to further support or extract them, and just left them all over there to die.

<comment><USER4> Any books you'd recommend?

<comment><USER3> I haven't read any of them, but there are a few with good reviews on Amazon.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Relevant: [http://news.yahoo.com/china-tells-dalai-lama-again- respect-r...](http://news.yahoo.com/china-tells-dalai-lama-again-respect- reincarnation-093117967.html)

<comment><USER6> Link goes nowhere.

<comment><USER7> Loads fine over here.

<comment><USER8> It 404s for me. (In the Southern US.)

<comment><USER5> Weird.. it does for me too now.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Western meddling in Sino-Tibetan affairs by the US government is understandable and is just international politics. But meddling by so-called 'anti-establishment' celebrities is the height of irony. The equivalent of Russell Brandt yelling "Free Tibet" at Glastonbury would be Al Wei Wei (famous Chinese social activist / artist) holding a concert in Shenzhen with proceeds going to some Singapore-based non-profit called "Free Cherokee Nation". The odds of the Cherokee Nation miraculously gaining sovereignty from the USA, and Al Wei Wei's ultimate benefit, if any, are so large and so remote, respectively, that we couldn't help but view such an act as self-serving. And so are all these western celebrities viewed by those in Asia (if at all). It is, in a sense, an self-aggrandizing gesture for a purely Western audience with little effect on China. It is, therefore, a circle-jerk.

<comment> guard-of-terra Well, I can imagine things like what you describe (regarding Cherokee Nation) and I won't find that especially odd.

But Tibetians are much more numerous and they've lost their independence much more recently, making their case incomparable to that of Cherokee. Your parable is shaky.

You seem to think that Dalai Lama issue is either solely about annoying China, or solely about self-presentation. It is not. People are genuinely interested in Buddhism because it looks elegant and less stained than other major religions.

<comment><USER3> > People are genuinely interested in Buddhism because it looks elegant and > less stained than other major religions.

Because it was basically invented by white folks in the last 150 years and designed to appeal to those with scientific mindset. I'm not saying that's bad, but it's a little propagandistic not to acknowledge it.

<comment><USER10> > Because it was basically invented by white folks in the last 150 years

This is astonishing. Can you let us know which buddhist principles were invented by white folks (and by whom) in the past 150 years.

<comment><USER3> > Can you let us know which buddhist principles were invented by white folks > (and by whom) in the past 150 years.

I don't know to what extent individual principles or beliefs were created. Rather, the argument is that the religion as a whole was created by removing the parts that didn't fit the narrative. Think of it like the Jefferson Bible, but if pretty much the entire living tradition of Christianity was also removed from the religion instead of just redacting and rearranging the text.

<comment><USER11> That's a rather difficult argument to square with Buddhism still including two entirely separate traditions, and arguably its "purest", least syncretic and most devout forms being in those parts of the world least affected by the West...

<comment><USER12> The only thing the white folk invented in the past 150 years regarding Buddhism is their books about what they think Buddhism is.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment> guard-of-terra The Chinese stance on Dalai Lama is kind of weird:

They kind of recognise him, he is free to travel, nontheless they pressure other people to not see him.

Seems like they can't explain what they're trying to do to themself.

<comment> guard-of-terra The rest of the world stance on Dalai Lama is counterproductive too.

Chinese tell you: Do as we wish; or else. If you do as we tell you, nothing changes; otherwise, Things May Happen To You. (In this case, "don't meet Dalai Lama") And the world is happy to oblige. I mean, what will they demand next? As a person, I would _never_ tolerate things like this from third party. You want me to behave how you like? Pay. Countries are just happy to give Chinese something for nothing. If barter will be in place, stakes will eventually rise, but as long as they get free service, no inflation for them!

Pope taking orders from communist party on the other side of the globe under "Or Else" threats is an especial pity. Where's your realm, Pope, in this world or in another one?

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> Required viewing: [https://youtu.be/X48G7Y0VWW4](https://youtu.be/X48G7Y0VWW4)

</comment><comment><USER14> That's a much different headline without the question mark.</comment>


Drone Swarms Are Going to Be Terrifying and Hard to Stop - <AUTHOR> https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2018/03/drone-swarms-are-going-to-be-terrifying/555005/?single_page=true <comment><USER2> Defense wise, this is just an engineering problem to be solved. With the right technology, funding, testing, research and development this can be solved.

First phase should be how to detect very small items moving through the air that can receive and/or send signals. Since drones can be 100% plastic, wood, or other compound or material and move at very high speeds there should be some serious research and development going into this. As this would also help solve the were is the shot coming from problem without relying on sound. I would guess measuring the differences from sensors using air pressure, wind, temperature, etc. changes versus normal conditions in nanoseconds or picoseconds would be pretty good.

Second phase would probably be how to jam, intercept and/or repurpose the commands and guidance systems of the said drones. It is easier and cheaper to just have them land in a safe place and unarm, versus using ammunition to shoot them down. This would help in investigating and finding out who the owner is and improve defense capabilities without destroying evidence.

Third phase could be using scientific research from the first phases to create legal and regulation guidelines and policies. This would help filter out legitimate drones, home brewed drones and trace owners of the drones, plot previous flight paths and malicious usage (i.e. someone doing something with your drone without your knowledge and tracking who, when, what, where they did it).

<comment><USER3> The big question is cost. Does it make sense to shoot down a hundred $100 drones with a defense system that costs $100000 per interception?

<comment><USER4> Doesn't matter what the cost of the weapon is. It's the cost of the potential damage that matters.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Zap them? Can you create a charged field and point at them? Of course you have to watch for your own equipment, and if the drones are above, they will still drop

</comment><comment><USER6> I expect bolas, slingshots and arrows to make a resurgence in popularity.

</comment><comment><USER7> Obligatory Slaughterbots link: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9CO6M2HsoIA](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9CO6M2HsoIA)</comment>


Ask HN: Website where I pay someone for startup advice? - <AUTHOR> I'm trying to remember a website which offered a way to pay for startup or other type of advice.  You would see a list of people who were offering advice and their hourly rate, and you could then arrange to call them at that time and have a chat.
Can anyone on HN suggest the name of the website?
Thanks <comment><USER2> [https://clarity.fm/](https://clarity.fm/)</comment>


Blast from the past (1985): 2 MB Macintosh upgrade (2012) - <AUTHOR> http://brucefwebster.com/2012/02/22/blast-from-the-past-1985-2-mb-macintosh-upgrade/

<comment><AUTHOR> The history of the Mac Plus 128K ROM development is a pretty interesting topic BTW. As a side note, anyone remember the ~$200 1MB SIMMs from 1987 before 1Mbit DRAM prices rose again?</comment>


Understanding the Lego Monolith Architecture - <AUTHOR> https://www.slalom.com/thinking/understanding-the-lego-monolith-architecture <comment><USER2> This is a good way to get sued.</comment>


Nuggets of Thought – Modern thinkers on business, philosophy of success and life - <AUTHOR> http://nuggetsofthought.com <comment> aaron-lebo This makes the mistake of correlating monetary success with wisdom.

Those are all salesmen. Go read Hatching Twitter. Jack Dorsey doesn't come off well. Ed Catmull was extolling the virtues of the creative environment at Pixar in Creativity, Inc. while John was regularly harassing women there. I like Paul but he's one for big claims and the other end of that is where you have to beg on HN to get Coinbase to give you your own money.

These guys are all impressive in their own right, but they should be taken with a huge grain of salt. Too much recency bias. I'd suggest that none of them belong in the same thought process as Marcus Aurelius, and they are put on the same level here. If they do belong there, you'll know an about 500 years. As it is, I'm not sure how much more to trust them than John McArthur, Creflo Dollar, or a random HN commentator. Hero worship is dangerous.

This is one of the Catmull quotes presented in full:

 _The takeaway here is worth repeating: Getting the team right is the necessary precursor to getting the ideas right. It is easy to say you want talented people, and you do, but the way those people interact with one another is the real key. Even the smartest people can form an ineffective team if they are mismatched. That means it is better to focus on how a team is performing, not on the talents of the individuals within it. A good team is made up of people who complement each other. There is an important principle here that may seem obvious, yet — in my experience — is not obvious at all. Getting the right people and the right chemistry is more important than getting the right idea._

How that could be written while sexual harassment was going on is boggling.

<comment><USER3> Paul Graham, Jeff Bezos, Charlie Munger, Naval Ravikant, Sherlock Holmes, Richard Feynman, Edwid Catmull, and so on... the majority of the people on the list are most certainly _not_ salespeople, and many of them are world leaders in their respective fields.

Sure, it's unlikely any of them will be remembered as Marcus Arelius (Feynman has a decent shot, though). But that is an incredibly high bar that leaves behind much potential insight. It's also definitionally not attainable by someone who is still alive today, so we have to keep that in mind.

<comment> aaron-lebo Holmes is fictional. Graham and Bezos are salesmen in every sense of the word. See my post for Catsmull.

It's not so much about having an incredibly high bar (though I'll admit it's unfair), but just being aware that what they are selling you as insight might not be as insightful as you think it is. Most people don't have the experience to know whether they are wrong (I don't), this is the inherent danger. We also tend to gloss over when they are wrong.

Skepticism is warranted, though maybe not the cynicism.

<comment><USER3> You can make the argument that Bezos is a salesmen. But that is not certainly NOT his primary role... so it's a misleading statement and it doesn't support your main point.

I would argue that this collection of content has a fairly high signal to noise, for someone who is sifting through it critically.

<comment><USER4> You believe selling is not his primary role? You used a double negative in your comment so I'm unclear.

Anyway, as his duty to Amazon is selling equity and debt to drive growth - <USER2> has been for the last 2 decades, if not 3 - I'd conclude that sales best defines his primary duty.

Sure, he manages and directionally pushes the organization, but he's doing that to improve his ability to raise capital, increase shareholder confidence, and build a tappable revenue pipeline.

How would you argue he's not primarily a salesman?

<comment><USER3> Sorry, sloppy typing on my phone.

He drives the vision and values of the company, makes major strategic decisions, and so on. He decided to reinvest all profits into the growth of the company for more than a decade, despite immense whining from investors. And he drove the internal systems to be so well decoupled that AWS could spring out from internal infrastructure as an amazingly successful secondary business. And countless other things.

It sounds like you are describing the generic, money-manager CEO that is brought in to run an existing stable business. I don't think Bezos fits that mold.

Even in your own description, you said:

> build a tappable revenue pipeline.

which is much beyond the capabilities of a pure salesperson.

I totally agree that great CEOs need to be great salespeople (the good kind... not the slimy kind). But that is only one aspect of what they need to do -- especially for complex, changing domains like where Amazon operates.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> It's a journal site where curators share bite-sized quotes and excerpts from the books they've read on business, philosophy, psychology and everyday life.</comment>


isitchristmas.com source code on github - <AUTHOR> http://github.com/isit/christmas/tree/master

<comment><USER2> Even if it's a small project the code is mediocre at best. For example, isn't there a library for PHP that handles internalization and why do internalization in both JavaScript and PHP (and no is only internalized in the JavaScript version...)

Lastly it's a really bad idea to determine language based on IP, a much safer way is to use the browser's language (ACCEPT_LANGUAGE header).

</comment><comment><USER3> Here's the source code for IsTheYesNoSiteMemeOverplayed.com

 yes

</comment><comment><USER4> On the one hand, I like to encourage programmers who bake in internationalization, even in trivial projects.

On the other hand, I have dealt with far too many programmers who think romanizing Japanese is an acceptable alternative because all dem squigglies are hard.

This isn't a pedantic distinction: 'HAI' is not an acceptable localized message. It's just not. It would be funny except it happens in systems that got contracted out for six figures.

<comment><USER5> Would katakana be accepted (as opposed to full kanji)? Can't speak for anyone else, but as a non Japanese speaker, I find katakana a lot easier to work with, but am unsure whether it looks amateurish to use it exclusively in Japanese eyes.

<comment><USER6> Why is Katakana easier to work with? I mean, usually my code is either unicode-safe... or it isn't. I've never ran into "kind of unicode-safe as long as the character doesn't have too many lines" ;)

<comment><USER5> My knowledge of Japanese is poor, but I know the romanization of many of the sounds used. For example, "kaze wo atsumete". If I type that on a Japanese keyboard, I get the katakana to match. Working out what the equivalent kanji are (if any in this case?) would be impossible to me.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Does it scale dynamically via EC2? I need a version of this that runs on BigTable in case I run in to scaling issues. Please help.

<comment><USER8> Does it solve the halting problem? I also need a version of this that tells me how to optimally pack my presents in polynomial time.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> LOL, this actually wrong pronunciation of Chinese PinYin. The right one is `Bú Shì`. The explaination here: [http://www.nciku.com/search/zh/detail/%E4%B8%8D%E6%98%AF/130...](http://www.nciku.com/search/zh/detail/%E4%B8%8D%E6%98%AF/1301254)

<http://github.com/isit/christmas/tree/master/iic.js>

132 "CN": "BÙ SHÌ", // China (Mandarin)

</comment><comment><USER5> Or, just for fun, in Sinatra - <http://sinatra.rubyforge.org/> :

      require 'sinatra'
      get '/' do
        %{

#{Time.now.mday == 25 && Time.now.month == 12 ? "YES" : "NO"}

          }
      end

Sure, no internationalization or adaptation to local time, but I'd arrogantly assume most Internet users can understand YES and NO as well as I understand JA and NEIN or OUI and NON (apologies to speakers of non-Latin derived languages.. :))

<comment><USER10> I'm never sure what to make of posts like this.

Sure, it is a short code snippet that works some of the time, but the original was trying to solve a more difficult problem. This code doesn't even try.

What good is pretty code if it only runs on localhost?

Oh, and if you really do only care about localhost, there isn't much difference between the Sinatra/Ruby code and PHP:

        <?php $date = getdate(); ?>

<?php echo $date[mday] == 25 && $date[mon] == 12 ? "YES" : "NO" ?>

<comment><USER5> If you stuck to just UTC, you could run it anywhere and it'd be logically (though not pragmatically) correct.

In any case, I was being flippant because I thought the original was a joke of sorts. It was amusingly overengineered, so I thought I'd go too far in the opposite direction to play devil's advocate, as it were.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Why not just do a static version of the site for 364 days of the year and just git push on the hour of xmas? It'd be good enough, infinitely more scalable, and offers the benefit of looking into past revisions to find previous dates xmas occurred on.

<comment><USER11> Or additionally, he could just shutdown the site on xmas day and post a disclaimer for the other 364 days that the site has a 99.997% success rate. (or a 0.003% failure rate)

<comment><USER12> You're off by a few factors of 10

<comment><USER13> Yeah, even without doing the computation or just noting that 365 < 1000, it would be pretty absurd to be able to do far better than any Amazon S3 guarantee (to give one example) while still being able to be "down" for an entire day!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Also, gotta love their handy RSS feed: <http://isitchristmas.com/rss.xml>

</comment><comment><USER15> And the url is so not internationalized. Stuff like esnavidad.com should redirect.</comment>


It's the future - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@boopathi/it-s-the-future-7a4207e028c2 <comment><USER2> This is the pure distillation of everything I hate about front-end development right now, especially as presented by posts on HN and meetups.

Look upon my frameworks, ye mighty, and despair.

I can't really blame the native folks for laughing at us anymore.

We've gotten so wrapped up in ax-sharpening that we've just made the entire ecosystem a morass of sadness and bloat.

I wonder if this would've happened if it wasn't so hip to write these things, if money wasn't sloshing around so freely (in some parts of the country, anyway) and sustaining such haphazard growth.

<comment><USER3> All I know is I don't know how to learn front end anymore. I started delving into react and flux, but when trying to do personal "real world" projects it seems like there is no end of unsupported opinion on every aspect -- disregarding the confusing levels of ES6 adoption across examples (ranging from no ES6 features used to "this isn't even ES7 yet"), It seems like everyone has a different answer for where to throw in a new abstraction. I still don't know what dispatcher to use, if I should even use a package. And the frameworks, they're all advertised "lightweight" swiss army knives of code, but I can't really figure out objectively why one should even be used in the first place.

It seems that there are a dozen implementations of every idea with a slight change here or there. I used to find github activity as a good way to judge whether a framework was well-supported and popular enough to be relatively future proof, but even that's not a good way to go as few packages make it to 300 commits in the JS ecosystem.

All this just to display a webpage.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> If you started on front-end around 2004 like I did you've seen the natural progression of plain-js -> Prototype -> jQuery -> Backbone -> Ember/Angular -> React like a slow process that took more than 10 years but it does make sense now.

I agree that learning front-end today must be overwhelming but is the suggested alternative? Do things like we did a decade ago and figure it out yourself?</comment>