'It looks like a war zone': NJ docs say hospitals under siege, supplies low - <AUTHOR> https://www.nj.com/coronavirus/2020/03/it-looks-like-a-war-zone-2-docs-say-hospitals-are-under-siege-supplies-running-low.html <comment><USER2> I live in Bergen County. There is a lack of panic - although I'm on the north side, opposite of the most infected parts.

I went grocery shopping earlier today, there were a few people with masks but no one was really trying to keep a distance from others. Plenty of people there, perhaps a few less than usual. At times there are so many people that they have to restrict entry into the store and create a line outside (possibly to help with social distancing, but there are still too many people in the store for that to matter). It's the opposite of social distancing.

The disaster in NYC, and the counties immediately north/east of Bergen (Westchester, Rockland) is going to spill over. We're not going to be able to handle it and we don't have the clout of NY to push for more resources.

In a recent video, 3Blue1Brown wrote "The only thing to fear is a lack of fear itself." This is what worries me. My parents are at risk as long-time smokers and if Valley runs out of ventilators and PPE, our major/usual option is out.

(excellent video by the way) [https://youtu.be/Kas0tIxDvrg](https://youtu.be/Kas0tIxDvrg)

<comment><USER3> Even on this site where people are somewhat more technically oriented than the general public, you see people who haven't a fucking clue what an exponential function looks like. NYS is expecting the peak 2 weeks from now. The numbers are Not Good. ICU's will certainly be overwhelmed and doctors will have to choose who must die. I don't think the healthcare system in NY will collapse but it will be tenuous even with the field hospitals they're setting up.

I think in large parts of the country where people aren't taking this seriously, the healthcare system _will_ collapse and it will be awful. Especially if national leaders push to end lockdown very prematurely.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Hey président says beautiful virus will leave by Easter and all beautiful creatures will be fine and prosperous. 60% of Americans agree too.

<comment><USER5> He's making the big boy pants decisions. The Great Depression was horrible, men killed each other for fishing too much from the river, children ate bugs to stay alive, families forced to separate to ensure everyone was fed. There is a risk in staying shutdown anywhere we don't absolutely need it, but of course, there is a risk in opening up anywhere at all. Not a political commentary, not a political board and do NOT care how many % of Americans YOU think agree with YOU.

<comment><USER4> I stated the % that agree with him including you. The difference is that here we know it will kill around 1-5%. If there is economic downturn its not going to kill that many. Just look up homicides and suicides from great depression. But it's OK if you guys choose money over life. I'm glad I'm not there. That is not politics by the way, it's a matter of life and death.</comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: Should I keep this Job board for free or sell it as a lifetime deal? - <AUTHOR> HI folks, I've been in the data space for 12 yrs. I launched https://databirds.co to help people in data space to find their dream job.
I have a few ideas/doubts running through my mind. Please suggest which way is good?
1) Is the current niche good to start (Data Science, Data visualization, Data analytics) or is it too broad and I further niche down to Data Visualization (my core area) alone?
2) Should I keep this to one country (USA) specific or global?
3) Should I pre-vet the candidates so it saves time and gets quality candidates to recruiters (USP)?
4) Should I sell it as a one-off $1000 lifetime unlimited jobs deal? or a $99 per job?
5) Should I keep it completely free to post, but a small revenue from employer-sponsored banners or resume writing service for candidates?
6) something else?
Please let me know your thoughts. <comment><USER2> I'm not in this space but I would Ask your current customers and prospective customers what you can what you can do to improve. Test and learn. Add feedback mechanisms and other ways to capture input. Good luck

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for your feedback. I started talking to recruiters to understand their pain points and how I can make it better for them to source quality candidates. I'm also talking to candidates how this platform can be made better. Their #1 thing was they need updates and feedback on their profile if it was rejected.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Ignore #5 or think of it a supplemental revenue stream. Revenue from banner ads seems to be on the decline. Ab blockers and what not. My gut says that it's not a good way to fund your job board for the long haul.

<comment><AUTHOR> I should have been clear, I did not mean the annoying ads that bring in cents for clicks. I meant sponsored banners on the side that costs $100-$200/a month for the employer to put up their brand.</comment></comment>


Show HN: I made an IMDB for Tech - <AUTHOR> https://theymadethat.com/ <comment><USER2> This is cool and seems to have a nice flow to it. Not as data intensive as Crunchbase making it easier to read for general knowledge / trivia about a company / product.

I think CB is more focused on the finer details of a company for people to make business decisions.

How are you curating the database? I have been kicking around FinTECH Report [http://www.fintechreport.info](http://www.fintechreport.info) for a while now but curation is just such a de-motivator for me.

I was hoping that the respective owners/managers of a product might "take ownership" of the listings and manage them... I would love to hear how you solve for that.

P.S. I looked up Twitter and Biz Stone wasn't in the founder list. I'm sorry i'm not motivated to sign up and fix it. Honestly, i'm just not bothered to help out as a site visitor....but... I would hold it against the site if it missed such critical details as that. (Not trying to be harsh, just honest realistic feedback, if that's ok). :)

Good work though and interested to see where it goes.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yes CB is more for angels and investors. TheyMadeThat is more about giving credit and seeing someone's impact on the world through their work.

I've been doing the data by hand in order to dog food my UX. I'm not a designer and really the only way for me to fix UX is to feel a potential user's pain. Another reason for this is because at one point I was considering running this as a for profit project, so I couldn't use APIs like Crunchbase's without running into complications; and I didn't want to just scrape. The last reason is that the data just isn't there. I'm capturing data that no one else cares about. What's sad is that most visitors don't even see how deep of a rabbit hole this can be because they just seem to have no interest in making a 2nd or even 3rd click. (Of course the blame lies with me for not making a compelling enough UX and/or copywriting.) For details, read my other comments in this thread.

Thanks for checking it out.

PS if you or anyone has anything you don't like or really like let me know. Feel free to not be nice - I find those responses to be the most useful

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Could you tell us the difference between this and crunchbase?

<comment><USER4> And Wikipedia?

<comment><AUTHOR> Wikipedia is too free form because it's a wiki, making entries very inconsistent. The biggest issue is that only people and things that are 'notable' can be added to Wikipedia

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER2> P.P.S The highlighted "people" in the headline hurts my eyes.

<comment><AUTHOR> I'll fix it - thanks for the UX heads up. Design is definitely not my strong suit

<comment><USER2> No worries, same here :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Nice one

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks!</comment></comment>


Python Bytes Podcast #10 - <AUTHOR> https://pythonbytes.fm/10 <comment><AUTHOR> * Dismissing Python's Garbage Collection * PyPI Name Reservations * Hackers Exfiltrate US Government Data to Save Itself * Advanced Time Series Plots * Type Hints and mypy * Understanding the underscore</comment>


Power grid upgrades may cause blackouts, warns Braess's paradox - <AUTHOR> http://phys.org/news/2012-10-power-grid-blackouts-braess-paradox.html

<comment><AUTHOR> Whilst the case is of the UK, the same thing can happen on a larger or smaller scale in any other countrys. Certainly more to power distribution than you would initial think, large as well as small. Think circuit diagram almost, and the design considerations with aspects of those and how addressed. Not many wonder large capacitors around alas, water dams/pumped when capacity needs to take the excess and ontap when you need to handle a surge in demand that would cause all sorts of fun if not met. Truely is a balancing act in many aspects.</comment>


Why They Called It the Manhattan Project (2007) - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/2007/10/30/science/30manh.html?pagewanted=all <comment><USER2> I'm loving all the history of the atomic bomb and related articles, but I'm curious. Is this just a trend on HN right now or is something I'm not aware of going on?

<comment><USER3> There is a dramatic series made just for WGN-TV called Manhattan. Its about life in Los Alamos during the bomb development times. Its about spies, counter-spies, bored horny housewives and bomb development. it was more interesting in the beginning, but has bogged down in subplots.

<comment><USER4> Is Feynman cracking safes in it?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> " But General Groves feared that would draw undo attention."

Geez, the NYFT used to have copy editors. Dismayed to see that this goes back to 2007. I wonder if they were using voice recognition.

</comment><comment><USER6> The Manhattan Engineering District HQ was, for some time, on the 67th floor of the Empire State Building. Or so says "Oppenheimer and the Manhattan Project", Cynthia C. Kelly, ed. But that's a 2006 book, and the remark lacks a footnote. An earlier source is needed.

</comment><comment><USER7> My grandparents worked in Oak Ridge, Tennessee during the war. A couple interesting reads:

City Behind a Fence: [http://www.amazon.com/City-Behind-Fence- Tennessee-1942-1946/...](http://www.amazon.com/City-Behind-Fence- Tennessee-1942-1946/dp/0870493094/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1412268670&sr=8-1)

Girls of the Atomic City: [http://www.amazon.com/The-Girls-Atomic-City- Untold/dp/145161...](http://www.amazon.com/The-Girls-Atomic-City- Untold/dp/1451617534/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1412268670&sr=8-2)

</comment><comment><USER8> Oh the reaction that would happen now should any perceived as dangerous if not truly dangerous project were to be hidden around a major metro area or within. Considering the uproar slowly evolving over Ebola, the CDC, and hospitals who treated people, it doesn't take much this day and age to generate interest or work on people's fears.

<comment><USER9> I think the reaction would have been muted by the fact that the project was long gone by the time the details were widely known. And the danger of radiation was also not widely appreciated until the 50s.

I used to work a few years ago in/around some of the Columbia buildings used by the project, where the football-players-trucking-uranium-through-the- tunnels story was well-known. The story ended with: those players all died young, mostly from cancer. Maybe that part of the story is harder to confirm; it was left out of the OP.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> I actually work for a tech startup in the Chambers Street building that was the original HQ of the Manhattan Project. It kind of blew our minds when we found out!

</comment><comment><USER11> This article doesn't even mention Fermi! Anyway, I thought most people already knew the Manhattan Project began in Manhattan.

<comment><USER12> > This article doesn't even mention Fermi!

Or Leó Szilárd, who had the original idea for nuclear fission, supposedly while crossing a street:

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Le%C3%B3_Szil%C3%A1rd](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Le%C3%B3_Szil%C3%A1rd)

Quote: "The stoplight changed to green. Szilárd stepped off the curb. As he crossed the street time cracked open before him and he saw a way to the future, death into the world and all our woes, the shape of things to come."

A somewhat hyperbolic description, but still.

<comment><USER13> Hyperbolic? Well, it is right at the beginning of The Making of the Atomic Bomb, and it's Rhodes' hook used to introduce the bigger story.

But even so, he's not wrong. Szilard did have (or claimed to have) a sudden epiphay, which according to Rhodes was significantly informed by H. G. Wells' "The World Set Free", which does foretell nuclear war and "a way to the future, death into the world" etc.

<comment><USER12> > Hyperbolic? Well, it is right at the beginning of The Making of the Atomic > Bomb, and it's Rhodes' hook used to introduce the bigger story.

Then I retract my comment (too late to edit it) -- Rhodes' book is first-rate, one of the best on its topic. I've enjoyed Rhodes' writing on this topic immensely, and I can't recommend it too highly. I didn't realize the comment came from that book (I found it in an online Szilárd biography).

This is one of my all-time favorite books, along with its sequel.

<comment><USER13> It's incredible. I don't think I have read a non-fiction book that is as novelistic.

With TMAB he had the luxury of being allowed to paint a huge, sweeping story. I felt that Dark Sun suffered a little from not having the same width of canvas; it has to deal with a lot of different events and concerns, from the Rosenbergs to Oppenheimer's trial. But it's still a great book.

Speaking of which, I found Eric Schlosser's "Command and Control" to be horribly written in comparison. The writing is uneven and sloppy, and the way he jumps between two different stories (the Damascus incident and then the story of nuclear weapons) doesn't work at all. If I'm reading a (if not from a literary point of view, then at least factually) fascinating depiction of a nuclear incident, I don't want it to stop every few pages because the author wants to backtrack and tell me about the history of nuclear weapons. It's unfortunate, because the history the book tries to depict is fascinating.

Anyway, I wonder if Rhodes' other writings are as good?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> As an aside, I know someone who runs a cocktail bar called the Manhattans Project - [http://manhattansproject.com/](http://manhattansproject.com/)

He's also a developer and physics geek, so a lot of the drinks end up with fantastic nuclear program puns.

The FatManhattan etc.

If you're in London, UK, you should definitely join his mailing list and go along to an event (they happen every month or so).

<comment><USER11> As an aside, the Manhattan cocktail was invented for Churchill's mother.</comment></comment>


WikiLeaks set to launch new online system - <AUTHOR> http://www.ft.com/cms/s/2/ecac5dfe-1792-11e1-b00e-00144feabdc0.html

<comment><USER2> I will personally be surprised if Wikileaks launches a new submission system tomorrow. According to a recent Wikileaks press release:

"WikiLeaks is building a state-of-the-art secure submission system. Constructing the system is very complex. Due to the deteriorating state of internet security which directly impacts the ability of sources to communicate with journalists and human rights activists securely, WikiLeaks has decided to postpone the launch initially scheduled for Monday 28th 2011 [sic] in the interest of source protection."

</comment><comment><USER3> >Part of the problem stems from the acrimonious departure of Daniel Domscheit- Berg and other WikiLeaks volunteers in the summer of 2010. In his subsequent book about his time at WikiLeaks, Mr Domscheit-Berg accused Mr Assange of treating submissions with insufficient care and security, writing: "Children shouldn't play with guns."

In the book, DB mentions that before the departure the 'Architect' had been working hard on a new system which was really cool in some respect, but he took it with him (presumably for use in OpenLeaks).

</comment><comment><USER4> What would be his alternatives for getting donations this time? Bitcoin? Flattr? Anything else that doesn't imply cash by mail?

<comment><USER5> I think flattr is out of the option but bitcoin might be something to use. Of course, it would bring more heat on the bitcoin network.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Will the Frog Prince call Lemmiwinks, STAT!</comment>


Transactions in MongoDB - <AUTHOR> http://blog.mongodb.org/post/7494240825/transactions-in-mongodb

<comment><USER2> While I enjoy using MongoDB where appropriate, this example provided is somewhat of a straw man fallacy because it's missing the part of the transaction which decrements from the total number of each item available.

Edit: To address the issue of the total number decrement needed above, there is the two-phase commit, but then you're getting into something that isn't a transaction, by definition, and is more along the lines of eventual consistency.

<http://www.mongodb.org/display/DOCS/two-phase+commit></comment>


Why Twitter's Dying (And What You Can Learn from It) - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/bad-words/why-twitter-s-dying-and-what-you-can-learn-from-it-9ed233e37974#.of7r1pkp4 <comment><USER2> Alternatively:

"We have created an abusive society. We have normalized, regularized, and routinized abuse. We are abused at work, by the very rules, norms, and expectations of our jobs, at which we are merely "human resources", to be utilized, allocated, depleted. We are abused at play, by industries that seek to prey on our innocence and literally "target" our human weaknessses. And now we are abused at arm's length, through the lightwaves, by people we will never meet, for things we have barely even said. We live in a society where school shootings are the rule, not the exception, where more people will have taken antidepressants than not…and now one where nearly everyone will have been abused on the web…for a random, off-hand, throwaway comment, an idle thought, something trivial, unremarkable, meaningless."

(And on for a few more paragraphs of existential malaise. I do not use that term sarcastically.)

Consider that this is mostly not true. Real society has mostly not changed. Consider that the next level down of causation is that Twitter _convinces_ you this is the truth, and that's the real problem... who wants that?

I've made a hobby of sort of studying how community structures create patterns of interaction. There's a sense in which Twitter just thrusts too many people too closely together... it isn't quite fair to say it's a "zero-dimensional space" since there is structure in who is following who, but it is pretty densely packed. Combined with the characteristics of tweets enforced by that brutal character limit, and Twitter is just a terrible place for building a community, and a terrible way to get news about the world. It may be useful for other things, but not those.

The Internet at large can cause the same problems, but in general it disperses people a bit more.</comment>


Show HN: 44Con, a US style Information Security Conference in the UK. - <AUTHOR> http://www.44con.com/ <comment><AUTHOR> I thought I'd show you a project I've been working on with some friends for a while now (about 3 years for one of them!). The UK, while having some of the most advanced regulation, technology and people in the world as far as Information Security is concerned hasn't had a conference on the scale of CCC, CanSecWest or any of the big American conferences. 44Con aims to change that. We're bringing in speakers from around the world and putting the UK's biggest and best business and technical security conference in place.

We have a venue. We have speakers (from around the world) and we have beer. Oh good god, the beer (thanks to our sponsors!).

What does HN think?</comment>


An industry that helps Chinese cheat their way into and through US colleges - <AUTHOR> http://www.reuters.com/investigates/special-report/college-cheating-iowa/ <comment><USER2> As a former Chinese international student graduated from one of the top Canadian universities with distinction, I have mixed feelings about this. On one hand, the toxic culture permeated the Chinese visa student community is definitely responsible for the high rate of cheating. Most Chinese visa students came to study in the west did not came to pursue academic excellence. They (and their parents most likely) see it as a way to beef up their profile with a foreign diploma. This was a culture that I tried so desperately to stay away from when I was in school.

On the other hand, I feel bad that the broad generalization impacts tremendously negatively those Chinese visa students who did pursue their dream and passion which led them to a foreign university. I worked hard to graduate with distinction, and learned my stuff well enough to go on and have a successful career, but I always feel I have to go the extra mile just to prove myself; I have to go above-and-beyond just to gain equal footing. I cannot quantify the negative impact the those people cause, but it's incredibly unfair to be prejudiced just because I may look like those people.

Academic dishonesty is certainly _not_ a Chinese-only problem. The media singling out a group such as the Chinese visa students is certainly a popular thing to do to gain clicks, but it's a little unfair.

</end-of-rant>

<comment><USER3> As a former grad student who has interacted with both the good and the bad of your group, I understand the differences... and regret the unfortunate realities.

I remember a Chinese PhD student who could not function in spoken English . Nice guy. Always smiled, bobbed his head, and said "hi", and that was the extent of his verbal vocab. Still don't know how he got into an American graduate school. Really brings the department down. :-/

<comment><USER4> I attended a conference where young Chinese PhD was giving presentation and nobody could understand what he was saying. Finally one of the organizing professors interrupted him and requested that he should speak English. "But I'm speaking English." he replied with desperation in his voice.

He knew his stuff and could write and read English well, but it was very hard to understand what he was saying.

<comment><USER3> > He knew his stuff and could write and read English well,

Right, I really don't have any way to assess that of a grad student I meet in the halls if they can't speak to me. They may be _brilliant_ , they may be the best student there, and be totally walled off from everyone who doesn't speak their native tongue. I feel bad for them... but I don't think they should be in a grad school where English is the lingua franca.

I would vastly prefer "adequate English proficiency" be a hard criteria for attending a US graduate school. Not only are grad students part of a cohort themselves, they often are TAs and provide assistance and guidance to undergraduates. English adequacy is generally the de facto requirement to adequately assist others who are in college (in the US).

<comment><USER5> It is a requirement, it's just that apparently the test of English as a foreign language (TOEFL?) either are too easily cheated or aren't adequately checking for that. I should add I knew many excellent students in grad school, from dozens of countries, and good and bad us students :-) I never achieved any fluency in other languages, it would be incredibly hard to learn Mandarian or another non-romance language,and I appreciate the challenge for them.

At my grad school, there were students from two countries that there seemed to be widespread believe that there was widespread cheating. This included (not really cheating things) like copies of all tests given by any professor in the past. I didn't believe it at first, but then someone from said country showed it to me.

It's hard to believe if you really were cheating, how could you make it through a bachelors in CS? Someone should notice, right? I was a TA of a class where the prof eventually figured out one student was copying from another student. He gave him an F.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Australia is also a popular destination for Chinese students and sees high rates of cheating for many of the same reasons as those given in the article. Poor language skills allowed by lax student visa requirements, isolation, and the high penalties for failing a course when your family is paying full price creates desperation.

4 corners did a pretty good story on it and the smh investigation into MyMaster was also pretty good. Even if you can't get the video on 4 corners, the transcript is available.

[http://www.abc.net.au/4corners/stories/2015/04/20/4217741.ht...](http://www.abc.net.au/4corners/stories/2015/04/20/4217741.htm)

[http://www.smh.com.au/nsw/mymaster-essay-cheating-scandal- mo...](http://www.smh.com.au/nsw/mymaster-essay-cheating-scandal-more- than-70-university-students-face-suspension-20150312-1425oe.html)

<comment><USER7> Non-Chinese students also have those same problems, but they don't cheat like the Chinese.

Chinese students cheat because cheating is part of Chinese culture. Go to China and you'll be shocked at how little people care about others in public, or society at large.

This is a place where bystanders will watch cars swerve wildly around an open manhole cover over and over, nearly getting in accidents, doing nothing to help. When the Westerner comes by and closes the manhole cover, the Chinese are surprised. They'd never consider doing anything like that, because - what's in it for them?

This is a country where people pay others to go to prison for them. If they clip a child with their car, they'll deliberately run over the child again and again to make sure he dies and doesn't create hospital bills.

I was never more staggered by rampant, blatant cheating, plagiarism or dishonesty than when I spent a semester studying in a university there. For someone raised in the West, Chinese callousness and dishonesty towards strangers is unbelievable until you experience it.

<comment><USER8> > Chinese students cheat because cheating is part of Chinese culture. Go to > China and you'll be shocked at how little people care about others in > public, or society at large.

I am Chinese and I would respectfully disagree that cheating is some part of Chinese culture. The only example you gave was basically the bystander effect in action, which you then ascribe to... cheating somehow? Moral depravity of millions of people?

Chinese callousness towards strangers is shocking. Wait till you see what some us politicians have to say about foreigners!

<comment><USER9> I this cheating aspect of the chinese Culture very believable for several reasons. \- china is a highly competitive culture (extremely densly populated, need to competing aout ressource) \- china acts economically like Borg, they sold solar panels for less than the production costs to crush the European market (which they successfully did), the same is now happening with Steel btw. > I call that cheating as well \- china manipulates it's own currency \- china steels intelectual property notoriously

<comment><USER10> For the steel, no, if you import more ores, you will get lower prices. The production costs will lower due to large scale production.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> The international students have unreasonably high standards for maintaining financial assistance and staying out of academic probation(3.5-3.8 at my university). By design college courses give work just a little beyond what a student can reasonably accomplish(with a "good" grade) and curve accordingly. These kids aren't just cheating they are marginalizing students who are honest or don't have this kind of social access. If you're not part of a fraterntiy/sorority that archives coursework/tests of previous students or part of an international student in-group then you can easily fall through the cracks from this grade deflation effect.

<comment><USER12> > _If you 're not part of a fraterntiy/sorority that archives coursework/tests > of previous students or part of an international student in-group then you > can easily fall through the cracks from this grade deflation effect._

That is a huge problem for a lot of us more introverted types, especially if you're a transfer student from another school. I remember taking a bunch of classes where I didn't know anyone and had no one to discuss problems and solutions with. Organic chemistry, diff eq, among others, but pretty much all classes were like that. Having social anxiety issues made it very hard to work my way into the community. Meanwhile the other students had all been stuck together in the same program for years, the same dorms, the same fraternities, etc.

I'd come in and the entire rest of the class would be sitting around sharing their homework answers, copying each other on the ones they couldn't figure out, getting help from each other... Never had any access to it and I know I worked harder for lower grades (in some cases) just because I wasn't part of the in-group.

<comment><USER13> Even worse is when people with connections get interviews or jobs based solely on knowing people who can recommend them.

At least in programming we have GitHub/Twitter/meetups to help with that (worked great for me).

<comment><USER14> That's just personal/professional networking and you should consider working at it. I try to keep in touch with as many former co-workers as I can in case I find myself looking for something new or I can help out someone who is looking themselves.

That's my favorite opportunity: helping someone find a job when they need one.

<comment><USER13> Yeah I've done my fair share of networking as I mentioned. Just meant it's also a common complaint by introverted students.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> I went to a public university with a large international population and this doesn't surprise me in the slightest. A lot of the international students were extremely poor at english. One of the guys on my software project team was an international student who confirmed that it was very easy to pay someone to take the english proficiency exam.

Us Americans aren't so innocent though. The amount of adderall/vyvanse/ritalin... that goes through college campuses is ridiculous.

Honestly, I feel that it's just a symptom of extreme competition. With colleges and first time jobs taking such extreme care to filter on GPA and the likes, every little bit usually pays off.

<comment><USER16> These types of discussions always depress me. You'd think from reading them that everyone has cheated or popped some Adderall at some point, and it's a normal part of college. Is that really true? I never have, unless you count making up excuses for turning in the occasional thing late. I worked hard in school and got decent but not amazing grades (3.7 something). When I hear this shit it makes me feel like I was playing the game handicapped all along.

Either that or the cheaters among is are always looking for ways to rationalize it by making it seem more normative.

<comment><USER15> Don't feel bad. Cheating is like taking on technical debt. It's a short term reward, but it usually comes back to haunt you. After graduating, their employer will learn that they aren't nearly as good as their resume said they were and with your greater knowledge and word ethic, you'll probably come out ahead.

<comment><USER17> Yup, that's what I've seen. I have an engineering degree and it is was a common understanding that the cheaters were the guys and gals that ended up being technical reps, while the hard workers ended up doing the exciting work. It only takes 1-2 years in the work force to see who has got the chops and who doesn't.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Can confirm. I'm a professor at a US university.

One class of 40 students, about 20 were Chinese foreign students.

Turns out, they were each doing 40+ credits that semester. About 20+ from the U.S. university, and about 20+ from a Chinese university (online).

How's that possible? They were sharing assignments and exams. Each one had the responsibility to do the same assignment and exam over and over for about half a dozen others.

They were on track to complete a 4-year program in 2 years. The actual degree was being awarded by the Chinese university, and they were transferring the credits from the U.S. university.

<comment><USER19> Isn't that kinda counter productive? I would assume that a degree from a US university would count for much more which is part of the reason why so many of the Chinese upper class are sending their children to the US - the stamp on the paper is worth more than the actual education.

<comment><USER18> Yeah -- I wondered about that too. I think they were aiming to familiarize themselves with the U.S. as much as possible, in as short a time for as little money as possible. I think their real aim was a graduate program in the U.S. You'd be surprised at how much easier it is to get into a graduate program here if you're already here.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Part 1 and Part 2 of the series are also worth reading

[http://www.reuters.com/investigates/special- report/college-s...](http://www.reuters.com/investigates/special- report/college-sat-one/)

[http://www.reuters.com/investigates/special- report/college-s...](http://www.reuters.com/investigates/special- report/college-sat-two/)

<comment><USER21> Thanks, didn't realize that!

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> Sadly, not a new thing and not just US universities.

Ghostwriting scandal that hit a bunch of Australian universities about 18 months ago:

[http://www.smh.com.au/national/education/students-enlist- mym...](http://www.smh.com.au/national/education/students-enlist-mymaster- website-to-write-essays-assignments-20141110-11k0xg.html)

"Australia's international student market is a $15 billion industry and the country's largest export after iron ore, coal and gold"... and money talks.

</comment><comment><USER23> Cheating is and always should be a pox that needs to be eradicated. But let's not turn a blind eye to what's happening here locally. Parents in the 1% spend an extraordinary amount of money and resources on college-prep companies, many of which tell the kids exactly what extracurriculars to take, what to do after school, and virtually write the entire outline of their admissions essays. It's little wonder that schools like Harvard are playgrounds for the ultra- elite.

<comment><USER24> YES!

And I don't want to piss of the uhh, bros among us, but it was _extremely_ unfair as an international student to see mediocre fraternity brothers party through the semester, and then using their 'frat-connections' (basically the DL on all the old questions sets, collected over decades, and detailed coaching by fellow brothers on likely questions and answers) due exceedingly well in the exams, and then use their frat connections to land exceedingly awesome jobs. Blame the Chinese all you want, it hurts because they're the 'other'. (/rant. Sorry. Makes me really mad. I WORKED HARD TO LEARN AND ENJOYED CLASSES.) Funnily enough, I did exceedingly well in those exams that were open book (instructors knew the 'sharing of past papers happened, so they changed questions types) to which I didn't any scrap of paper. /humblebrag. But yeah, the system is unfair as it is.

Having said that, dear Americans, as broken as things are (despite those gosh darned 'cheatin' Chinese', as Trump would say), the system is better than anywhere else. Thanks for that : )

<comment><USER13> > and then use their frat connections to land exceedingly awesome jobs

That happens everywhere though. It's not endemic to "frat bros"—a lot of people find jobs through connections rather than only grades. Most of the time it's through a family friend or family member, or in CS through open source or meet ups. It sucks when you don't have any connections but it's not unfair; it's just how it is. Should I not tell an undergrad friend that my company is hiring interns and recommend her?

Of course an international student will have less connections which is why they sometimes struggle getting internships.

But yeah, the cheating stuff is messed up!

<comment><USER25> "it's not unfair; it's just how it is"

It kind of is unfair. Why should someone get preferential treatment just because you happen to know them? Also there's a difference between recommending someone for a job and "Hey this is my buddy, don't look at her resume and we can also skip most of the interview process". There's different degrees of nepotism, they are all usually a bit 'unfair'. But then, life is unfair and so you just deal with it and do the best with whatever resources you have.

<comment><USER26> > Why should someone get preferential treatment just because you happen to > know them?

Because I know what sort of work they will produce, their attitude towards work, and their general behavior/personality and whether that will fit into the team without causing disruption or loss of productivity. That's why.

Business isn't about making everyone feel loved and accepted, business is about making money as efficiently as possible by providing a product or service that your customer want/need. Anything which furthers those goals is absolutely fair, especially things which are discriminatory only on the basis of knowledge.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> When I began graduate school, it was very surprising to me to see how the Chinese kids all cheated together as a matter of course and the Indian kids all cheated together as a matter of course. Some of the Americans would cheat somewhat, but furtively, rather than just being an ingrained part of culture.

(with the exception of one top Indian student who had no need for cheating whatsoever)

</comment><comment><USER21> High school students' parents in China give gifts to teachers to guarantee good grades for their kids.

This culture of cheating goes beyond cheating on the American tests.

In the business world, it's common to give gifts to your boss to get a promotion.

China will not surpass us economically any time soon. Their educational and promotional systems have a long way to go.

</comment><comment><USER28> China's plagiarism problem : [http://www.forbes.com/2010/05/26/china-cheating- innovation-m...](http://www.forbes.com/2010/05/26/china-cheating-innovation- markets-economy-plagiarism.html)

</comment><comment><USER29> Instead of looking at the issue morally, one can see what it boils down to: learning vs credentialing

This shows that one wants a credential, but does not want to learn. There are tons of people out there who precisely want that.

<comment><USER26> And it's also precisely anathema to the purpose of a university. It's especially infuriating if people are doing it while studying CS or similar engineering topics, because in most cases the job market doesn't require the credentials only the skills and their cheating is causing grade deflation for people who actually put forth effort.

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> Discussion of a previous post in the series: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11380174](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11380174)

</comment><comment><USER31> I was taking a school bus license endorsement exam and saw they throw out a Chinese girl for cheating. The examiner said it was a fairly frequent occurrence. They couldn't read the questions or answers but they could match the picture with the correct line of answers on the computerized testing machine after enough memorization.

</comment><comment><USER32> This is happening on a mass scale at University of California, Irvine. Nobody is investigating.

<comment><USER33> I suspect this is also happening throughout the UC system, particularly Berkeley as well.

</comment></comment><comment><USER34> In the past, only the brightest and best Chinese students could come to US, mostly by scholarship for their master/PhD, most of them stayed after the study.

These days, the majority students from China are those ordinary kids(or even worse) with a rich dad, most of them are the only child in the family which was likely spoiled, these combined produced a quality issue, so we're seeing them on the news, that they cheat, they committed crimes, they do drugs,etc.

In the meantime, many universities are in need of cash, which is another reason in the mix.

So all in all, it's all about money, one needs that, another one has that but not much more than that, thus all kinds of related issues.

</comment><comment><USER35> I am sure they could stop it but the money the students bring is too valuable.

<comment><USER36> I have no relevant experience in academic finance, but I sincerely doubt it. The brand and reputation of the universities are what allows them to charge so much for tuition and get prestigious faculty (i.e. grant money).

Besides, at a large research University, tuition is usually not the majority of their income ([http://www.uiowa.edu/homepage/about- university/budget](http://www.uiowa.edu/homepage/about-university/budget))

<comment><USER37> I'd heard that seats at Harvard was going for $20 million per piece for internal students who wouldn't remotely qualify otherwise. There are always few seats like these reserved at most universities. If you do the math, that one guy basically covers the cost of his entire class.

<comment><USER36> Do you have any citations for this? I'm extremely skeptical. Harvard doesn't need the $20M; they're doing just fine as it is.

<comment><USER38> The nature of the problem dictates it can't go on record. I can only add I've heard the same anecdotal from my international students, not necessarily about Harvard but similar higher-tier schools going for $50,000 admission, probably with more fees for a certain GPA.

The degrees for cash are sold abroad from what I've gathered. I highly doubt the money goes to Harvard directly-instead it probably pays off the service offering the degree first, with money to admissions directors, professors and whoever else needs to look the other way. It'd be hard to hide huge sums of money in the US system, but possible abroad with in-person or otherwise hidden pay offs to people on the inside in the USA.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER39> Perhaps a dumb question but why doesn't the Chinese government crack down on this? I feel like they have a pretty good handle on what's going on within their borders, and this issue is poisoning the reputation of Chinese-born young people whether as applicants to companies, applicants to grad school, or generally as trustworthy human beings.

Is it because the college students benefiting from these operations are the children of influential people? That's the only explanation I can think of that makes any sense.

<comment><USER40> Why should the Chinese government help Chinese apply to American universities and companies? They certainly want the best and brightest to stay home.

<comment><USER39> True, but they also want their young people to get the best quality education available, especially in STEM, which is currently (and probably not forever) disproportionately situated in America.

<comment><USER21> No free speech. It hurts their educational systems very deeply. They also have a culture of bribing/gifting, from middle school up into the business world and government.

It all boils down to the government wanting to hold onto Asian culture, avoid conflict, keep control and save face.

They view democracy as America's attempt to insert a US-friendly leader. Democracies are arguably the best peace keepers humanity has ever seen, however, China does not view it this way.

This is my perspective after living in SE Asia for 2 years and Taiwan for 2 years. I travel through China occasionally.

Visit China, you can see for yourself

<comment><USER41> > Democracies are arguably the best peace keepers humanity has ever seen,

You might want to examine that belief, and how you acquired it. Evidence for it in the historical record is not exactly abundant.

(Feel free to dig back 25 centuries, and start by looking up how the Athenian democracy went around kicking their neighbors' butts, as told by one of the Athenian generals, a fair-minded bloke. Thucydides' Melian dialogue is the magic string.)

<comment><USER42> Didn't Athens fall because their democratic government assigned too little tax money to military? That's what happened in first Polish democracy (XV-XVIII centuries).

<comment><USER43> It had more to do with launching a boondoggle invasion of Syracuse that ended in total disaster, from what I remember from my Thucydides.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER44> Have seen at last one Chinese guy's profile on Upwork having some test passed with maximum score, completed within ~5 minutes (while the time for a test is usually ~40 minutes).

<comment><USER45> This is something that isn't just unique to higher education in the U.S, it's pretty much standard practice back in China as well. It's all about rote memorization & tests. What you can't memorize, you find a way to cheat through. You can't cheat? Then buy off your professor or teacher. Bribing educators in China is the quickest and easiest way to pass. Practically no creative learning takes place in China.

This is interesting to me because it's something that's inherent to China's culture. It persists passed the education stage of their life, well into adulthood. And that's a terrible shame because it sets up China for failure.

Without actually learning/understanding the material (and learning to think critically), the general populace isn't equipped and stands no chance when it comes to future innovations. The foundation for future technological innovation (in _any_ industry) simply isn't there. Their country has always been a few steps behind, and keeps falling further and further behind as the decades pass. There are no new big innovations coming out of China, they've only been able to hold their own (if you can call it that) by buying, copying or stealing technology from other countries, entities or businesses. The problem is, China's targets have wised up over the years, so future IP/technology theft will be much, much harder if not impossible.

Unfortunately, I think because this has its roots in China's culture (systemic), there is no quick fix as changing the culture of a billion people is nearly impossible. I think the entire thing needs to come down and be rebuilt from scratch.

<comment><USER21> > Unfortunately, I think because this has its roots in China's culture > (systemic), there is no quick fix as changing the culture of a billion > people is nearly impossible. I think the entire thing needs to come down and > be rebuilt from scratch.

I agree with everything you wrote up to here. I'd have said the same thing until I moved to Taiwan. Now I'm not sure what to think

I live in Kaohsiung (pronounced gow-shung), Taiwan, which is relatively unknown but is actually the second biggest city in Taiwan after Taipei. It's the site of a 1979 protest named the Kaohsiung or Formosa Incident [1]

People were protesting martial law and seeking democracy. The other day I was talking to someone who was at that protest. He told me the feeling of the populace was that steps towards democracy _must_ be made. Otherwise, people were going to start a revolution. 17 years later, in 1996, after a series of changes, Taiwan held its first direct election. Since then, a diverse cast of characters have been elected to the legislative body. Around 65-75% of the Taiwanese turn out to vote [2].

I feel Taiwan's warless entrance into democracy shows that governments can evolve without war. The BBC has a very succinct history of Taiwan that is pretty accurate if you're interested in learning more [3].

Taiwan is a very controversial subject, particularly to China, who claims ownership of it. Taiwan has its own government, holds elections, doesn't pay taxes to China, and you need a passport to go between TW and China.

There are a lot of differences between China and Taiwan so it's hard to predict what will happen in China. I am optimistic.

[1] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kaohsiung_Incident](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kaohsiung_Incident)

[2] [http://www.idea.int/vt/countryview.cfm?CountryCode=TW](http://www.idea.int/vt/countryview.cfm?CountryCode=TW)

[3] [http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/shared/spl/hi/asia_pac/04/taiwan_fla...](http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/shared/spl/hi/asia_pac/04/taiwan_flashpoint/html/history.stm)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> This story is _HUGE_

Entire copies of the SAT are getting released in China, and possibly the US. The College Board's ETS cancelled January 2016's test in China out of concern that the test that would be used was already available on the internet. Then they gave another test in March. Questions from that test started appearing online within hours after it finished [1]

The problem with this is that the College Board reuses tests. They do not feel it is feasible for them to issue unique questions for each test, according to [2]

This undermines the biggest criteria used to admit students to college

It means rich kids in China can buy their way into US colleges through these companies that compile actual SAT questions, and poorer kids who have done honest hard work will miss out on opportunities to study in the US.

So long as this goes unaddressed, we're importing rich kids who will arrive unprepared and return home without much further education. They're simply giving money to certain institutions in the US and not adding much to the development of US or Chinese innovations. The quality of schools could degrade, causing a weaker economy, etc. etc.

Hope the College Board can see how pervasive this is. The internet is a real game changer when it comes to maintaining academic integrity.

[1] [https://soundcloud.com/reuters/howtogamethesat#t=26:21](https://soundcloud.com/reuters/howtogamethesat#t=26:21)

[2] [https://soundcloud.com/reuters/howtogamethesat#t=5:40](https://soundcloud.com/reuters/howtogamethesat#t=5:40)

</comment><comment><USER46> I was enrolled in a Business Calculus course (100 level) my freshman year. The "instructor" of the class at the front of the room could not speak English intelligibly. I speak multiple languages and am decent at interpreting broken English, but it was not even close to understandable. I left, never went back (except for exams). I still passed just fine, but really was a terrible intro experience to college at a large state school.

<comment><USER47> Similar experience at a state school. I ended up dropping Calculus that semester and transferring to NYU, where Calculus was taught by an American nuclear physicist. Got an A+. He was a great professor.

I don't remember any cheating but I wasn't really looking for it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER48> Reading some of the comments here makes it clear that we (the global we) have _way_ overvalued the piece of paper that we get upon graduation and have largely ignored the process, habits, & knowledge that said piece of paper once stood for. The problem with all these developing nations & cheating isn't one of moral failing, but the fact that a cred is valued more than what the cred is supposed to stand for. I would argue that this has to do more with the venality of Western universities (and our superior marketing) that it has to do with much else.

We (Westerners) tell the world, and ourselves, all you need is a piece of paper and all will be well. This piece of propaganda plays a larger role than any perceived moral inferiorities among the developing peoples of the world.

<comment><USER21> > we (the global we) have way overvalued the piece of paper that we get upon > graduation

Well, that's subjective. It's meaningful to some people and not to others

Schools aren't meant to be perfect. Reputation is meant to help people identify trustworthy parties more quickly. That doesn't mean you can't re- scrutinize a school or person yourself. It's simply one optional filter. Some people find this more useful than others.

If you don't want to pay attention to certificates, that's your choice. People who attended these institutions may care and it's their right to defend their degree from dilution if they wish.

<comment><USER48> I said we have overvalued the certifications/diplomas, not that they don't have value. I also never implied that schools were meant to be perfect.

My point is that we have zeroed in on the certification/diploma too much and have begun (until recently) paying too much attention to whether the cert has been attained as opposed to what it is supposed to represent. The reason why I believe this happened is because it is much easier to quantify a diploma or any other certification, "Oh you graduated! That must mean X." It is harder to ascertain whether or not a person who gained a diploma or cert actually deserves it or learned anything in the process.

<comment><USER21> > I also never implied that schools were meant to be perfect.

Yeah, you're right, sorry.

> we have zeroed in on the certification/diploma too much and have begun > (until recently) paying too much attention to whether the cert has been > attained as opposed to what it is supposed to represent

I can only speak for myself. For me this story is not just about the value of the piece of paper. It's the down-the-road effects that I find interesting. You may feel the plight of China or Chinese students does not affect you. I consider them part of my community. I live in Taiwan, which, while a separate country from China, often gets lumped together with China. I think many people could make a case for how this issue affects them, whether in school or the workplace, beyond just the value of their degree. When this happens at all schools, it becomes the value of our educational system.

> The reason why I believe this happened is because it is much easier to > quantify a diploma or any other certification, "Oh you graduated! That must > mean X."

Yup, that happens, for sure

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER49> I know its naive but I find it really hard to understand why people value the piece of paper more than the knowledge.

The good news is that you can't cheat as a software developer. Or maybe you can? Depressing thought.

<comment><USER37> It's usually their rich parents who value piece of paper, not students themselves as much.

<comment><USER21> And, parents are told that their kids need this paper. Test-prep businesses, like the one mentioned in the article, tell them that in order to drum up business.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER50> That doesn't only apply to the Chinese. A German friend of mine faked his transcripts to do an MBA in California. As long as he paid the 25K in tuition fees, nobody cared to take a closer look. He did well, got his MBA, and lived happily ever after.

</comment><comment><USER51> You call it corruption; They call it innovation;

</comment><comment><USER52> Damn, first generation college student black americans sure are getting ripped off . . .

</comment><comment><USER53> > U.S. universities offer an easier way to get ahead, with a quality education > and better job prospects.

The better job prospects part might not be true. Those came back to China for jobs will get their current position with or without a U.S. degree.

<comment><USER21> .... with the US degree they have a chance to get a job in the US with a higher salary

<comment><USER53> I said "those came back to China". Most undergrad went back to China eventually. Just compare the number of Chinese students given in the article and the number of H1-B visa issued every year. Do the math.

<comment><USER21> Oh I see.. you're saying, the article claims students have a better chance of getting a job in the US, but in reality, the chance is not so great since H1-B visas are limited.

Are you happy that you studied in the US? Or do you think it was not worth it? Just curious.

<comment><USER53> For me personally, I don't think it is worth it. But if I hadn't studied abroad, it wouldn't have killed my interest to do so.

<comment><USER21> I understand 100%. I feel that way about a lot of things I try in life =)

How are you doing now?

By the way, I just watched a documentary about this kind of thing happening in China [1]. One American version of that story is a documentary named College, Inc [2]

[1] [https://youtu.be/BP61LwODTnY](https://youtu.be/BP61LwODTnY)

[2] [http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/frontline/film/collegeinc/](http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/frontline/film/collegeinc/)

<comment><USER53> Good Sharing. I come from a tier 1 city in China. The struggle people in [1] have seems very distant to me. I think they are good people, but they are just too naive to think they could get decent office jobs with such low grades. (At 5:37, it mentioned the girl only got 388 points for National Entrance Exam. It was terrible.) They might be better suited for a blue collar job or a service sector job (waiter/waitress etc). Those jobs might just pay much better.

And yes, I probably have better resources than those unfortunate. But guess who had paid the price? My great grandparents. They came to tier 1 city in 1900s, lived a hard life and did low skilled work like ironing cloth so that my grandparents could settle in city. The kid at 45:47 whining about how things were unfair to him was just making me sick.

<comment><USER21> Your story reminds me of how Americans view international students who enter American schools with minimal ability to speak English. We wonder what they are doing there.

I have an idea about why you did not find a job in America.. consider,

Many international students cheat on the SAT to either (a) get into good schools or (b) get good grades at those schools [1]. Employers filter resume/CV's based on good schools and good grades.

When an employer identifies that he/she has interviewed or hired someone who is not as good as their resume/CV indicates, the employer looks for a pattern. In short, H-1B's become risky hires for smaller businesses who don't have the time to sift through many CV's.

The rampant cheating in [1] hurts your chances of landing an interview, and it may also have an impact on the number of H-1B's set by the government. If existing H-1B holders are not measurably adding enough value to the American GDP, then there's no reason to increase the number given out.

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

> And yes, I probably have better resources than those unfortunate.

Right, exactly. There's nobody to tell the mother that this new school is probably not worth the money they're paying for it

> But guess who had paid the price? My great grandparents.

No doubt your ancestors worked hard. That was 100 years ago. Times have changed and we are better off focusing on today.

I suggest the following is always true:

Society is about more than helping just your family. Society is protection and support for a larger group so you can enjoy friends and relationships outside your family in relative safety. Some tax money goes to military and police who maintain order and prevent crime. Some taxes go towards educating the poor.

When a society focuses more on police and less on education, the poor stay poor. If the poor stay poor for too long, they believe less in themselves and become less productive members of society.

Education and police are more efficient when in balance. The poor manufacture everything. People need each other, and the rich need the poor as much as the poor need the rich.

<comment><USER53> > I have an idea about why you did not find a job in America.. consider,

I worked as a programmer in States for 2 years. I decided to go back on my own will.

> If existing H-1B holders are not measurably adding enough value to the > American GDP, then there's no reason to increase the number given out.

And I am not complaining the number of H1-B visa. In fact, I think the current policy works okay.

What I was suggesting was that people cheated their way out of U.S. colleges would most likely spend zero effort looking for jobs in States. Their goal was to get the degree so that their parents could have reasons to put them in some position back in home.

All in all, both group (kids in [1] and kids in the article) were doing very poorly academically in China. And all their struggles wouldn't be such a big deal if they just learn their places in the society.

<comment><USER21> > I worked as a programmer in States for 2 years. I decided to go back on my > own will.

> And I am not complaining the number of H1-B visa. In fact, I think the > current policy works okay.

Oh okay, I understand now.

> What I was suggesting was that people cheated their way out of U.S. colleges > would most likely spend zero effort looking for jobs in States. Their goal > was to get the degree so that their parents could have reasons to put them > in some position back in home.

Perhaps. You have better insight into what might be going through minds of Chinese students than I do.

> All in all, both group (kids in [1] and kids in the article) were doing very > poorly academically in China. And all their struggles wouldn't be such a big > deal if they just learn their places in the society.

You already noted you had better resources and therefore have an advantage at learning something that lands you an office job.

Assigning people to be poor forever is not a society in which I would like to live. This breeds more unproductive members of society. The rich pretend to ignore the poor, and vice versa. They don't communicate well. I support bettering communications between people, not worsening them. Countries like Germany, Finland, Norway and Sweden accept and support the poor.

So does China, for that matter. I have to believe some poor Chinese students do find success through public schools when given the right support. If the CPC believed the poor were only worth manual labor, they wouldn't provide education through high school. You don't need that much classroom training to move objects. Nor would they introduce programs like social workers who focus on poverty.

The question is, how much support do you want to provide to the poor, and what kind of future do you envision for China? Is it the same as it is today? Then fine, make no changes. But, if you wish for something better, I wonder if you're open to the idea that supporting the poor can bring about further economic growth. Building giant unoccupied buildings in China isn't helping you produce more GDP. Supporting and educating the poor would enable them to add more to GDP.

You could visit Europe, which has more social welfare programs, and ask yourself whether you would like to see any of those programs implemented in China. Perhaps you like China just the way it is in 2016. Or maybe you have another idea for how to improve your community or society.

I'm interested to hear your thoughts.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER54> The real question is how can you make money from this.

Cheating is a part of human nature, and its not very surprising it would happen, especially when the pressure is high at universities. If it wasn't good for survival, it wouldn't happen.

<comment><USER21> > The real question is how can you make money from this.

Apparently you can set up a homework helper service for graduates like Fanyi Translation [1] [2]

> If it wasn't good for survival, it wouldn't happen.

There are all kinds of things that happen in evolution that don't survive. _Happening_ isn't evidence that something is good for survival

[1] [https://translate.google.com/translate?hl=en&sl=zh- CN&tl=en&...](https://translate.google.com/translate?hl=en&sl=zh- CN&tl=en&u=http%3A%2F%2Farchive.is%2FXNZD1)

[2] [http://archive.is/XNZD1](http://archive.is/XNZD1)

</comment></comment><comment><USER55> A friend worked as a PM for similar service targeting different demographic (and mostly written assignments). They were pulling in over 1 million a month profit so this is fairly widespread and definitely not limited to Chinese students.

</comment><comment><USER56> Unrelated but: It's easy to believe that yr peers are cheating. But I believe there are a lot of hard working people that know the concequence of cheating your way through.

<comment><USER57> But often the consequences are rather light. I can't think of anyone facing any serious repercussions -- the worst was failing an assignment.

<comment><USER58> I've taught university classes, and failed students on the class for cheating. But it's true that I haven't seen anyone kicked out of a program or a university for cheating.

<comment><USER59> Anecdote: Foreign student where I went to school flat out cheated on the final. When caught, he copped to it. A humanities prof then went to bat for him, saying that it was okay to cheat where he came from. They didn't expel him.

<comment><USER60> The student may have come from a place where cheating is OK, but he came to a place where it's not OK.

(I don't fault the humanities professor, he may have grown up in a culture where it's acceptable to be full of shit.)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER61> One common mistake made by westerners is treating lack in language proficiency as low competency in work or study. Native English speakers take for granted the ability to speak English fluently but do not realize it takes years to master spoken English as a non-native speaker.

Although this is tangential to the issue being discussed here, but you can see this mistake appearing in lots of comments here.

<comment><USER21> You make a good point that one solution to this problem is getting the incoming Chinese students a better English education. They obviously don't really have it before arriving, and schools want their tuition.

Schools should enroll Chinese students in English education for 3-6 months prior to the beginning of the term.

<comment><USER61> I absolutely agree with you on this.

<comment><USER21> Cool. A big thing about learning language is getting the confidence to speak. You can get that by practicing with some native speakers.

In the classroom, if students don't feel comfortable speaking, they won't ask questions. If they don't ask questions, they won't learn as well as they could by asking.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER62> "a vibrant East Asian industry "? There were 30 students out of a student population of 30,000 that used this service. That comes to, what, 0.1 percent? How many of the other 49,970 students hedged their bets in other shady ways (sharing papers, duplicating homework, covering one another for labs)? This is not a situation limited to those unscrupulous foreigners. The whole article smacks of nationalism.

I know, its pretty cynical to have a business dedicated to systemized cheating. But how is that different from sororities and frats that make available (and sell) last years notes/exams? That's often a thriving cottage industry.

Caveat: I went to Iowa. I was in the Engineering program, which was 50% foreign students (99% of the graduate students) back then. These were some of the hardest-working, smartest scholars I have ever met.

I don't think there's anything new to learn in this article.

<comment><USER21> > I know, its pretty cynical to have a business dedicated to systemized > cheating. But how is that different from sororities and frats that make > available (and sell) last years notes/exams? That's often a thriving cottage > industry.

It isn't different. Cheating is cheating. This is an article about a business catering to Chinese students, called Fanyi Translation [1] [2].

If you have another article about fraternities or sororities cheating, you're welcome to submit it to HN for discussion.

[1] [https://translate.google.com/translate?hl=en&sl=zh- CN&tl=en&...](https://translate.google.com/translate?hl=en&sl=zh- CN&tl=en&u=http%3A%2F%2Farchive.is%2FXNZD1)

[2] [http://archive.is/XNZD1](http://archive.is/XNZD1)

<comment><USER62> Yeah, and 30 students out of 30,000 is a tiny drop in the bucket. Just putting it into perspective.

<comment><USER21> 2,797 are Chinese international students [1]. 30 is 1% of this demographic

> Today, the University of Iowa, one of the largest state universities in the > American Midwest, says it is investigating at least 30 students suspected of > cheating. Three sources familiar with the inquiry say the number under > investigation may be two or three times higher.

So, it could be 2% or 3%

The cheaters are not representative of all PRC-Chinese.

The story is definitely newsworthy

[1] [http://admissions.uiowa.edu/future-students/international- st...](http://admissions.uiowa.edu/future-students/international-student- profile)

<comment><USER62> ...and 30 is 100% of 30. You can make up any bogus statistic you like by cherry-picking the population.

<comment><USER21> Lol. It is not cherry picking.

The goal of this article is not to argue that cheating is part of Chinese culture. The goal is to identify a problem so that society can correct it. The problem is, there are a significant number of businesses that help Chinese students cheat.

The problem is widescale. SAT questions are regularly being shared online [1]

3 minute video [2]

Further details by podcast [3]

The article does not say that non-Chinese students do not cheat. Again, it is focused on a particular brand of cheating because the source of that problem can be traced. Its roots are in businesses that are sharing SAT questions. These researchers have identified that this information is often found on Chinese websites.

This is basic problem solving 101, not racism. Identify the source of cheating in each case, whether it's fraternities, or students from china, india, or south korea, and put a stop to each one.

That's the way we curb this behavior. Research an issue, get evidence, share information, hold a hearing where all parties can state their case, and give feedback to the offenders in the form of consequences.

The more publicly known this process is, the more future students will know what lies ahead when they cheat.

[1] [http://www.reuters.com/investigates/special- report/college-s...](http://www.reuters.com/investigates/special- report/college-sat-one/)

[2] [http://www.reuters.com/investigates/special- report/college-s...](http://www.reuters.com/investigates/special- report/college-sat-one#video-SAT)

[3] [https://soundcloud.com/reuters/howtogamethesat](https://soundcloud.com/reuters/howtogamethesat)</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


I don't use Semantic Web technologies anymore, though they still influence me - <AUTHOR> http://www.lespetitescases.net/why-I-dont-use-semantic-web-technologies-anymore-even-if-they-still-influence-me <comment><USER2> I could write a book on what's wrong with the semantic web. One of the worst isn't even technical, it's the community. There are some great people in the community but there are also a large number of extremely toxic people that drive people away. If the technology ever takes off it's going to be because some outside community cherry-picks the good parts and tells those people to f-off. That's already starting to happen and you'll hear no end of bitching from people in the semantic web community about how they're reinventing what they've already done years ago. Guess what? You're right. You're so toxic that it's worth redoing everything if it means they don't have to deal with the toxic attitudes.

<comment><USER3> I'm curious what those toxic attitudes are. Surely the "we already invented it and you're reinventing it" can't be the only case. I'm also curious if it's in an academia or in industry.

<comment><USER4> My take on the attitude in academia: Here we describe a set of algorithms that can solve a class of problems that previous algorithms can't. In the 60' someone published a solution to a problem we have improved upon with the novel innovation of called "hyperlinks". The technical, social and economical shortcomings of our solution are invalid because it is decentralised and therefor morally superior to the current offerings, used the world over, of industry practitioners who are only doing it for the money. More funding is needed for further research.

<comment><USER5> In general the decentralised fetishism isn't something that is big in academia (as in the academia that publishes paper). There's lots of issues in academia and even more with the semantic web, but fetishism of decentralisation isn't it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Semantic web tech solves a common problem. You have a database where you want to have some shared schema among many groups, and you want a way to infer facts based on first order logic. You want to be able to query multiple sources and reason about facts when taking into account multiple sources.

Whether you use semantic web tech or not that's still a common problem that doesn't always have a good plug and play solution. There's still a lot of places using jsonld format for metadata and cataloging information. You can google cooking recipes and get ratings, cook time; search for movies and see how high rated the movie is and who made it with a synopsis of the plot, all of these are product metadata powered by rdfs or jsonld metadata, a relic of the semantic web. It would be incorrect to say semantic web is dead. Any AI that can effectively use wikidata as a fact table would be jeopardy grade. There's still new tools coming out like RDFox that apply first order logic at multicore speed across huge datasets for reasoning. There is work being done to make it horizontally scalable. I think people will just go on an endless loop of getting the same pain points and creating new tools using the trending tech of the day, but even in this day and age, sometimes something like prolog or picat is what you need.

<comment><USER7> > you want a way to infer facts based on first order logic

Isn't that computationally infeasible? Semantic web standards are based on description logics, i.e. multi-modal logics chosen specifically for computational expediency.

Also, I wouldn't describe JSON-LD as a "relic" of anything. It's a fairly recent standard in the grand scheme of things, and many interesting projects these days implicitly rely on it.

<comment><USER8> So not an expert in this area, would love if someone corrects me. My understanding is generally FOL is infeasible. Propositional logic even can be computationaly difficult [1]. My understanding is that most of the semantic web stuff is done using a description logic of some flavor. These will be named based on the properties of the logic. The important thing is that they are generally decidable, and you can use something like MALET or some other solver to infer things from your database or ontology.(You give up some expressivity for decidability) Not sure how much stuff is going on with that these days. Played with a petrology ontology in protegé some back in college, but haven't followed the space. I remember OWL being important, but can't remember why at the moment.

[1] For example if you try to figure out if a formula is satisfiable. You can for sure do this using truth tables. The catch is that you're looking at 2^n complexity where n is the number of propositions in your formula.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I am still a fan of Googles OpenRefine tool. It's reconciliation feature that helps disambiguate Named Entities etc based on wikidata is really powerful - [https://github.com/OpenRefine/OpenRefine/wiki/Reconciliation](https://github.com/OpenRefine/OpenRefine/wiki/Reconciliation)

You can hook in your own reconciliation end point which we do at work to expand internal knowledge graphs.

<comment><USER5> Note that OpenRefine isn't really kept up to date.

The basic capabilities work ok, but lots of the additional capabilities have atrophied away.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> I had a lot of interest in the semantic web when I first started learning about it.

However, the efforts I've seen seem to be missing some critical factors for longer-term success. I think we've got a lot of work to do with regards to knowledge representation in general.

One of the big things for me is that the context for any fact is critical for it to be true or not.

You can have a fact like "Tim Cook is the CEO of Apple", represented in a graph like you would expect. However, that is only true _today_. Ten years ago it was Steve Jobs. Without explicit context encoded in the information graph, this web of data isn't as useful as it could be.

Context is important for reasoning in all kinds of situations. "What if Steve Ballmer was CEO of Apple?", is a hypothetical context, where it may be useful to do reasoning about. The context of "Who is the most distinguished captain of the Enterprise?" could be about the real world US Navy, or a fictional Star Trek universe (of which there are multiple).

<comment><AUTHOR> context-dependent, or "reified" assertions are a pain point for sure. I come from the perspective of cultural heritage data, where context is king. Which expert made this attribution for this painting? Who owned it _when_? According to which archival document? etc.

Almost all the engineering problems cited in the original post are still basically there, but graphical models are still the least painful way of doing this, particularly when trying to share data between institutions. Example: [https://linked.art/model/assertion/](https://linked.art/model/assertion/)

<comment><USER7> The OP mentions property graphs as a way around this problem. They can be seen as natural extensions of "RDF quads" which in turn are based on common RDF triples (Subject / Property / Object)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Shoutouts to the 11 other people on HN still working with rdf and similar in 2020.

</comment><comment><USER12> At an old job, I knew some very idealistic folks who kept pushing semantic web business. "Let's do that everywhere!" As an exercise, I would have them open a browser, visit various sites, and then look at the source. "Go on, check to see if it validates," I would say with an anticipatory grin. Whether hand- crafted HTML or generated by any number of frameworks, many sites can barely manage to close their tags, asking for semantic references is a "just won't happen in practice" thing.

I have also seen a great deal of consultant money, programmer time, sys-admin sweat, and the like focused on these toweringly-designed, completely-unused triple stores, layer upon layer of hot technologies (ever-moving, construction on the tower never ceased) fused together to create a resource-intense monstrosity that, at the end of the day, barely got used. But hey, let's look at that jazz semantic web example one more time.

The most painful part is that I understand the urge to build a gleaming repository for information, where the cool URIs never change; SPARQLing pinnacles, ready to broadcast the Library of Alexandria, glimmer; and the serene manifold of abstract information lies RESTful ... but I have come to understand that the web of today is an endlessly bulldozed mudscape where Someone Very Important has to have _that_ URL top-level _yesterday_ (never mind that they will forget about it tomorrow), of shoddy materials and wildly varying workmanship, and where nobody is listening to your eager endpoints because the commercials are just too loud. I too once labored for information architecture, to have the correct thing in the obvious place, with accurate links and current knowledge, to provide visitors with the knowledge they desired ... but PR preempted all of it to push yet more nice photographs in yet another place: the Web as a technology for distributing images that would once live on glossy pamphlets.

The vision is lovely, but we who have always lived in the castle have walked alone.

<comment><USER13> I would argue the problem is not the broken tags, but the business disadvantage to exposing semantic data.

Remember when microformats were all the rage, and you could get hReview or hRecipe or XFN data everywhere?

Then every host in turn realized that actually, it's _better_ if people can't scrape your site, and it's even better if they can't even see it and it's behind a login wall.

<comment><USER14> "better" is too strong: in many cases, structured data is not a problem (and if it is, people will scrape it anyway), but there's simply no business case for spending time on it. Most of the semweb stack had a horrible developer experience — bad documentation, tools, validators, etc. — and rarely had tangible benefit from spending time slogging through it.

The semantic data which has actually been implemented on a wide scale happened because someone could go to their boss and say "Spending time on x will mean better Google ranking" or "Facebook will use their new sharing display for our pages", and it was orders of magnitude simpler to implement so the time and risk were far more palatable.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> These a fair criticisms of the semantic web. One thing the author misses (does not touch on at all) is domain specific RDF resources for biology, medicine, etc.

schema.org and WikiData are great resources and for large companies, using these as a foundation for their own internal Knowledge Graphs can make sense. This expense is (maybe?) too large for small and medium size companies, they would not get enough benefit for the cost.

I worked with Google's Knowledge Graph as a contractor, and I am still a believer in the technology but I also respect other people's well founded scepticism.

</comment><comment><USER16> With the recent widespread interest in Category theory I still think it's a damn shame that RDF wasn't designed to treat relationships as stand-alone entities. Perhaps property graphs work better in that regard, although it's a bit weird how properties aren't themselves relationships, but perhaps that's a necessary concession to keep things efficient.

</comment><comment><USER17> I have some low-level hate for the Semantic Web. I run a small personal blog that I maintain using a relatively simple static site generator that I created that turns markdown files into clean(ish) html.

A couple of months ago I got interested in adding semantic information to my posts so I modified the generator to add some of the common semantic tags. It was an annoying job, since the semantic information pollutes the structure of the html.

Can anyone tell me what the semantic web does for me as a small-time publisher? Is it for search engines? Does it really matter that a book review (for instance, I have a few) is tagged properly?

<comment><USER18> > _Can anyone tell me what the semantic web does for me as a small-time > publisher? Is it for search engines?_

Yes, in practice it is mostly for bigger fish in the pond to easily identify and steal your content as needed.

For example, Google was using reviews from small competitors' sites in Google Shopping.

<comment><USER19> I think this is one of the big issues. The semantic information does make it easier for end users to find what they're looking for, but it also made denial of traffic possible.

In a lot of cases, the information was there to get eyeballs--so this is undesirable.

I guess if you don't really care about the eyeballs it can be "useful" for the big fish to pay most of the cost of serving the fraction of your server response that the end user was looking for...

<comment><USER20> So the root problem is actually that people care about the eyeballs. Nothing good comes from such incentive.

<comment><USER19> Maybe. Not sure what I think about that framing.

FWIW, I was picking "eyeballs" as something wider than just ad revenue. I think ads are the big share, but I'm sure there are people/orgs who want eyeballs for other reasons like ego/status, promote their company/brand/service/products, etc.

In some sense I think your framing is accurate, but I don't know about whether we'd be better off (have an informational ecosystem that is more net- positive?) without status chasers. Some share of them are inevitably gaming the system and diluting the ecosystem; others probably add net value in pursuit of eyeballs?

<comment><USER20> In context of semantic web, pursuit of the eyeballs is a problem because it makes the people owning/creating the data also want to be delivering that data directly to the users, and be the only ones allowing to do so. Semantic web works for the opposite goal - to allow the data to be automatically transmitted, processed and understood by software, and only perhaps eventually delivered in some form to end user.

As for building more net-positive information ecosystems, going for the eyeballs instead of actually caring to deliver good information isn't necessarily bad _per se_ , just suboptimal. It's better for an eyeball-chasing site to publish some information, if otherwise that information wouldn't be published at all. But it's the eyeballs being your primary revenue source that will make you work hard to make the data as useless as possible outside your own publication - which leads to a very unhealthy information ecosystem.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> I wouldn't call semweb dead; it just has found its niche(s) and is even stabilizing and gaining in those areas. I actually landed a gig for graph DBs, SPARQL, etc. in lab informatics for bio/chem. Earlier this year I attended a keynote held by Wikimedia Deutschland's Franziska Heine pushing for large publicly available RDF data sets, etc.

</comment><comment><USER19> I'm really interested in semantic authoring (not really structuring data with semantics--but marking semantics within running text), though I guess I'm disinterested in the semantic web.

I agree with a lot of the problems noted in other posts, and would add two other problems from the authoring side:

1\. Identifying and employing sound semantics requires a level of thought and clarity that I don't think most people are habituated to working at. It raises the bar somewhat on who can be contributing (either they have to understand and take care with the semantics, or you need a separate person to handle them?)

2\. I may be missing some good tools, but I haven't been able to find a good low-friction semantic authoring experience. Even if you are mentally prepared to write with explicit semantics, it still adds a lot of friction to the writing process (or requires subsequent semantic-edit passes).

</comment><comment><USER22> modern NLP makes the semantic web completely obsolete. if anything, you need less markup because it's confusing and more often than not, just wrong.

<comment><USER23> This is too extreme. If, like Google, you have a flock of Ph.D.s who you can put onto an NLP problem to extract semantics from text, then semantic markup becomes less valuable. Not all of us are in that situation. And I don't think parsing text is the only application of the semantic web. Having hugs databases full of knowledge is interesting in itself.

As for semantic markup being confusing and usually wrong, I don't know where you get that.

<comment><USER22> Yeah, but i think there is a difference between standardized markup data formats describing e.g. proteins, and generic text with annotations. The latter are redundant

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> I really want to like semantic web technologies, but every time I try to get into them I'm stymied: * A zillion standards that all reference each other * Two zillion incomplete and incompatible implementations of those specifications * No sense of direction within it all (what's the easy path?) * Multiple rebrandings of the same ideas (Semantic Web, Linked Data, Solid...)

<comment><USER7> "Solid" is just SOcial LInked Data anyway. I like LD as it seems clearer in intent than the "semantic web" label.

<comment><USER25> Yeah, in that sense Solid is a subset of Linked Data: linking personal data.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> When writing data structures that are not for describing or defining services I still can't help but think in triples. I also can't help but think of each data facet as though it were something described with meta-data would provide sufficient context that it would make sense if it were read out loud to a stranger.

</comment><comment><USER27> Or responsive web design techniques apparently.

<comment><USER28> It reads fine for me on mobile.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: who can i hire to hack my platform - <AUTHOR>

I am looking to hire someone to find and plug any and all security holes in my code and db before I start letting in the 13,223 users who have been on user wait list. Who's got links from reputable and transparent white hat hackers?<p>Thanks. Any help is appreciate because security is important to me. <comment><USER2> Hey, I think I can help you. PM me off list. @anand_himanshu

</comment><comment><USER3> If you are running Rails, you should ask @homakov ([https://twitter.com/homakov](https://twitter.com/homakov)) for his service.

He hacked Github and Facebook before.

<comment><USER4> Yep, Homakov is one of the best when Rails is involved.

<comment><AUTHOR> thanks, but not rails. i probably should have mentioned this. i'm not trendy - its php.

<comment><USER5> Egor works on the wire protocol; his work is not language specific. The reason people think he's good at Rails is that he's recently caught some serious rails stuff.

But since what he's really looking at is the protocol, his work should be equally good in any web setting.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


What Google for Jobs Can Do for You and Your Company - <AUTHOR> https://recooty.com/blog/what-google-for-jobs-can-do-for-you-your-company/ <comment><USER2> We needed a recruiting software which could provide us with the same level of high-tech yet easy to imply solutions for our recruiting issues, as we do to our clients. We needed something which can reduce the pain of their HR team by easing out the resume monitoring process, yet getting best of the talents to work with us. A software that can save our precious time on recruitment making them a better version of themselves. When we started looking for a solution, that's when we discovered Recooty through social media. Recooty was immediately integrated to our business website i.e., EngineerBabu Now we can post jobs on our own website, which helped to save our time looking for a perfect job portal. Also we ca now manage resumes with just a couple of clicks. Recooty was the simplest and most effective solution EngineerBabu could have.

</comment><comment><USER3> Great Product.

</comment><comment><USER4> According to the needs and purpose of our company(Cognic Systems), we didn't want to invest so much of our precious time and other resources on recruiting and definitely didn't want to let all these efforts go in vain. We needed qualified, capable and competent employees, be it a skilled developer or an experienced analyst, who could be productive and bring out the best of solutions to various problems. In a nutshell, we needed a simple yet effective recruiting software that could look after and supervise their recruiting process so that we can invest our resources on aspects which makes them better at serving their purpose.

Recooty does exactly what we needed the most. Once we integrated Recooty to their website, now we can post job openings for various jobs directly on our website. This saved so much of our time which we had to spend on looking for the perfect yet affordable job portal, which is quite hard to find. Recooty's integration with Google Job Board helped us gain a lot of exposure to the candidates with relevant skills and qualifications and get the right candidate for the right job. Now we can manage and filter resumes with just a couple of clicks, without any confusion.

5\. Review 'Recooty is an amazing tool and an ultimate solution to ease out the recruiting process. We were really quite messed up when it came to hiring good quality candidates with excellent skills. We spent thousands of bucks on various well-known job portals, still couldn't get satisfactory results. But now with Recooty, it all has come down to a new level of easy. After we integrated Recooty to our website and posted job openings there itself, we've got some really valuable employees on board with us who have effectively enhanced the quality of service we provide. It was an amazing experience working with Recooty and we're looking forward to keep experiencing more in future :)'</comment>


Google Pumps $2B into Africa's Biggest Wind Power Project - <AUTHOR> http://www.wired.com/2015/10/google-pumps-2b-into-africas-biggest-wind-power-project/ <comment><USER2> Very surprised to read google doesn't have a single datacenter in Africa.

The continent is huge and if latency is important, they would definitely need multiple locations there.

check this out for scale [http://kai.sub.blue/en/africa.html](http://kai.sub.blue/en/africa.html)

<comment><USER3> The reason is simple. Basic network capacity is underdeveloped. Radio waves account for the bulk of communication. And most importantly, there's little to no direct connection between neighboring countries. So even if Google built a datacenter in Africa, it would not solve latency issues and might even make it worse because virtually all requests go outside of the continent.

<comment><USER4> Political stability is also a potential issue. If you're putting K-hundred- million dollars into a top-rate data center, risks associated with political instability become hard to stomach. Kenya is a great place to work, and quite open to outside investment, but had major problems two elections back, a scare at the last election, and ongoing problems with al-shabab. One of the best places to work in SSA, and still doesn't feel all that stable.

<comment><USER5> But if you put K-hundred-million dollars into a wind park, that problem goes away?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I think they've corrected the headline to remove the 2 billion figure.

<comment><USER7> Yes, $2 billion figure is incorrect. Google's total investment in clean energy projects exceeds $2bn.

<comment><USER8> But it's not $2 billion into that specific wind project, as the title implies.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> But I read here and on reddit that Google is evil.

<comment><USER10> Lockheed Martin invests billions each year in clean energy development also, doesn't mean that some people won't take offense with their other activities.</comment></comment>


The big business of witch hunts (2012) - <AUTHOR> http://www.laphamsquarterly.org/roundtable/gold-and-silver-coined-human-blood <comment><USER2> Well that was an interesting historical survey; what was missing was the entire discussion of how the same process operates today.

In California when you are booked you need to pay for your own DNA test.

What seemed to be largely ignored in the Ferguson reporting was the larger context: the town cut taxes and instead supported its budget by accusing people of crimes and having them pay for their own punishment: [http://reason.com/blog/2015/12/16/ferguson-thinks-it-may- hav...](http://reason.com/blog/2015/12/16/ferguson-thinks-it-may-have-to- raise-tax) [https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the- watch/wp/2014/09/03/...](https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the- watch/wp/2014/09/03/how-st-louis-county-missouri-profits-from-poverty/)

[http://money.cnn.com/2015/10/21/news/aclu-biloxi-debtors- pri...](http://money.cnn.com/2015/10/21/news/aclu-biloxi-debtors-prison/)

[http://www.nytimes.com/2015/11/05/us/lawsuit-accuses- missour...](http://www.nytimes.com/2015/11/05/us/lawsuit-accuses-missouri- city-of-fining-homeowners-to-raise-revenue.html)

Not to mention the "civil forfeiture" scams.</comment>


Ask HN - Is it ethical to delete a submitted link that got no votes? - <AUTHOR>

Hi everyone.
Say I submit a link to HN, and after a while, it finally drops off the "new" page. In that time, its still 1 point and no comments.
However, the delete button is still there. Maybe there's a better chance for whatever-it-is if I submit it at a different time of day, but the only way I could do that is to delete the old one while I still have the chance.
I will admit to having done this in the past. But is it ethical? I can see how doing it every hour for days and days until someone pays attention dammit would not be ethical, but is there a level where resubmitting could be considered reasonable.
(I promise I won't do it on this one.) <comment><USER2> If you do it and get up voted the second time than it is ethical. Otherwise, it is unethical.

Seriously though, there should be a system where you lose points for every submit that doesn't get any up vote. If you really believe your story is interesting, you should be allowed to risk losing points as long as you want... until you run out of points.

<comment><USER3> That seems like it would discourage novel content. People would be less willing to risk points on something they're not sure will be voted up.

<comment><USER2> At the same time, if you think your novel content is not likely to get up voted, why would you post it ?

Ideally, I would like to see a StackOverflow-like karma system on HN. For instance, let's say you get X points for every up vote, it wouldn't be that scary to lose X/2 points for submitting a story that doesn't get up voted but yet, you would think about it twice.</comment></comment></comment>