This Industry is Fucked (2015) - <AUTHOR> https://blog.jessfraz.com/post/this-industry-is-fucked/ <comment><USER2> I think everyone jumping in to say "it's not the industry it's the people" or "other industries are like this, too" is missing the point.

We tech people tend to think of ourselves as problem-solvers and intellectuals who would welcome anyone interested in the domain, and who was willing to contribute. And yet, many, many women in this industry feel marginalized and/or excluded. _Even if_ that is based on the behaviour of a few bad actors, _even if_ it is somethat that other male-dominated industries (like finance or manufacturing) suffer from, why not try and fix this? Why tolerate the behaviour, or shoot the messenger?

People who get angry at posts like this seem to feel personally attacked somehow, which is a weird reaction. (I mean, unless you also harass women, in which case you should feel guilty and take this peronsally, and you should stop.) Otherwise, why not band together in solidarity with the women who experience it, and help put a stop to it? It will make your industry better, your companies more valuable, your workplaces more pleasant, and your conferences more interesting. And most importantly, people who right now are getting a lot of shit thrown their way will be treated better. There is seriously no downside.

<comment><USER3> > I think everyone jumping in to say "it's not the industry it's the people" > or "other industries are like this, too" is missing the point.

To the contrary. It's exactly on point. We don't see anyone saying "school industry is fucked" just because some teachers are abusing the students or "airline industry is fucked" because pilots pick up stewardesses.

I find it really repulsive how it's somehow okay in our industry to throw blanket accusations and demand collective responsibility.

This is a huge weakness of our environment. Something that actually makes me consider leaving the industry from time to time.

<comment><USER4> >> ... or "airline industry is fucked" because pilots pick up stewardesses.

You're right. They don't for the reason you mentioned. They do it for worse things:

[http://www.westword.com/news/frontier-airlines-subject-of- ge...](http://www.westword.com/news/frontier-airlines-subject-of-gender- discrimination-investigation-8004262)

[https://bossip.com/1365175/another-one-second-black- female-d...](https://bossip.com/1365175/another-one-second-black-female- doctor-says-delta-airlines-discriminated-against-her/)

[https://www.change.org/p/stop-the-bullying-intimidation- and-...](https://www.change.org/p/stop-the-bullying-intimidation-and- discrimination-against-women-on-el-al-flights)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> One charitable hypothesis could be raised that the ratio of harassers in male population is constant, but in male dominated social groups the number of potential victims is lower, thus the the frequency of harassment events females suffer is higher than in social groups with a more balanced ratio.

I have no statistics for or against this.

The test we need is: How often are individuals in social groups with skewed sex ratios who are of the rarer sex in the said group sexually harassed, and is this ratio skewed in software engineering.

Generally, from what I can gather from the anecdotal evidence of my female friends, a certain percentage of us men in general are assholes. It seems that as a matter of fact they have to suffer the real possibility harassment where ever they are (not constantly, but they have to consider it a plausible event). Which to a guy sounds just horrible.

<comment><USER6> I think that reduces further to: A certain percentage of _people_ are assholes.

<comment><USER5> With the life experience I have, I would claim there is a strong gender bias here.

I'm a heterosexual male, pushing 40, not too bad looking. No one has ever asked me to sit in their lap, grabbed my but, catcalled after me, or "jokingly" appraised my breasts or other body parts. I've never been anywhere, where I've had to consider the possibility of rape.

How often do you hear females lurking in dark parks, just to hunt down men who they can rape?

Yes, sexual and psychological violence goes both ways, but still females are more often the victims.

It might be totally symmetric in female dominated groups with males being the victims.

What ever that is, males don't get their buts squeezed in elevators by random strangers. Or I'm missing from some action I'm not aware off.

<comment><USER7> You have never seen a drunk woman acting unappropriated to a man? Odd, as I see that all the time in the city during weekend nights, or hotels near conferences. I would go as far as saying that its everyday activity in bars.

The reaction is practically always the same, ie that the man ignores it or at worst tells the woman to please stop hitting/yelling/acting inappropriate, and the woman either blowing it off or laugh it off. If the man complains more he will most likely hear "man up" and just take it, which is the cultural image of a male victim of female violence.

<comment><USER5> "You have never seen a drunk woman acting unappropriated to a man?"

I've used my personal experience, sampled over thirty years as the metric. It's the only data set I can approach with some certainty it's not polluted with observer bias. I've never been _personally_ assaulted in such a way. I did not deny the large spectrum of abusive behaviours that exist.

To quote myself:

"Yes, sexual and psychological violence goes both ways, but still females are more often the victims."

The original post was about experiences of sexual harassment and I stated few statistical reasons that come to my mind that can cause it.

There is a tendency for some reason to disregard these sorts of claims "because that happens to everybody". No. That's just wrong. Two wrongs don't make a right. Like in engineering, in social settings problems need to be tackled one at a time. That some men suffer violent attacks from some women does not make it right that some women are sexually assaulted by some men.

The male to female "sexual predator" pattern is a specific pathology that exists and needs to be taken seriously. Just like female to male "violent abuse without retribution" is another - but different kind.

Men don't need to "man up" just like "boys will be boys" is not an acceptable defence.

I would like to point out that women were more like capital and not like free citizens even in the most progressive countries until hundred years ago [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Women's_suffrage](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Women's_suffrage).

Values and attitudes travel across generations. These affect stereotypes, which affect our mental processing _even if one is against said stereotypes_. There is a very good reason females can be still considered statistical underdogs for a while - the fact that can be abused by predatory individuals as a shield with impunity. The fact that these abuses happen, do not mean we should not still be in general vigilant in upholding female rights for a few generations still.

<comment><USER6> > with some certainty it's not polluted with observer bias

Except, of course, _your_ bias, which is pretty clear. I think you'd be surprised at what we do to our own memories.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> _Ever since I started speaking at conferences and contributing to open source projects I have been endlessly harassed. I've gotten hundreds of private messages on IRC and emails about sex, rape, and death threats. People emailing me saying they jerked off to my conference talk video (you're welcome btw) is mild in comparison to sending photoshopped pictures of me covered in blood._

I find that shocking. I know people say things about others to their friends, but to actually direct that to another person is disappointing.

</comment><comment><USER9> Guys who behave this way are the insecure loser types who are desperate, thirsty, socially incapable, selfish, lacking empathy, unable to be attractive to a woman, and unable get laid. If any of this describes you then pay attention.

Get off your computer and learn some social skills. Google for advice on dating, social skills, style / how to dress, seduction, and most importantly how to get over your insecurities and psychological issues. There are tons of great resources on all of these subjects for men. Become an actual player women love to be around instead of an anti-social loser they despise.

We can talk about "the industry" and all this non-sense forever. The ugly truth is that thirsty men harassing women is as old as the hills. The more sexually repressed a culture or particular sub-group is (read: socially awkward computer geeks), the more this shit goes on. It takes tremendous courage and effort to transform yourself for the better if you weren't lucky enough to be naturally gifted in these areas. It can be done, but most will be too cowardly and too lazy to do it. Therefore, unfortunately I see no end to this problem any time soon.

</comment><comment><USER10> I thought that this old post may no longer be as relevant. Maybe we have made progress.

Then I read the comments on this thread. :(

We must do better.

<comment><USER11> > _I thought that this old post may no longer be as relevant. Maybe we have > made progress._

Since 2013?

Also, in human issues (as opposed to technology) there's no monotonically increasing progress. There periods of the past that are way more tolerant and peaceful than periods that preceded them, and vice versa.

Like the sixties gave way to the selfish seventies and eighties (and macho Reaganism, etc), like the cosmopolitan Europe of the 20s and 30s gave way to the Nazi hell of the late 30s to mid-40s, like the Roman republic decayed into the rule of crazy emperors, etc.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> A recent, and difficult to listen to, ted talk around harassment on social media this by Ashley Judd.

[http://www.ted.com/talks/ashley_judd_how_online_abuse_of_wom...](http://www.ted.com/talks/ashley_judd_how_online_abuse_of_women_has_spiraled_out_of_control)

It is beyond me where this level of vitriol is coming from, are women that threatening?

<comment><USER13> An eye-opening idea for me was the concept that it is not women that are fragile, but men. The slightest indication of a threat to masculinity sends men into a fit of rage.

<comment><USER14> An eye-opening idea for me was the concept that generalisations that pertain to millions (let alone billions) of people are invariably wrong.

If you'd have worded it "The slightest indication of a threat to masculinity sends _some_ men into a fit of rage" you might have had a point, rather than sounding like a troll.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> I strongly agree. Some time ago I started recriminating some coworkers sexist attitudes, now I have given up fighting against the current, no more fighting. And in the advertisement industry is far worse.

</comment><comment><USER16> I think you could easily retitle this as "Men are fucked", or probably closer to the point: "Boys are fucked". It's a male dominated, youth-oriented industry, and all of the sexism and harassment that a woman will encounter is an outgrowth of that.

This isn't to excuse the behaviour, but merely to ask if there are any examples of young-male oriented industries that have better behaviour?

<comment><USER17> The harassment is not due to being a male/youth dominated industry, but a large one and by definition incredibly well connected. It's easy for a very small percentage of idiots to make a very large noise.

We need to be finding these people and getting them out of our industry on a permanent basis. They can go work on a landfill as far as I'm concerned.

<comment><USER18> > We need to be finding these people and getting them out of our industry on a > permanent basis.

Sadly every time that's tried the freeze peaches crowd descends and claims not being able to send death threats and say that jews should die is persecution, and anyway she was probably a slut asking for it.

<comment><USER19> To be fair, every time that's tried the social justice crowd takes it too far and tries to kick people out for holding the wrong opinions, even if they never actually harassed anyone.

Good intentions do not protect from being corrupted by power, who knew?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> There are always going to be disturbed individuals. The important thing is they are recognized as such and not diffused into the male collective.

The shocking thing for men to quickly realize from all the women speaking out is they are relating eerily similar stories and there seems to be a rather large number of disturbed men than one would have thought.

The problem in tech more than other professions is there are far too many self important individuals who will latch on to anything to think less of others to maintain their inflated sense of self. The whole mythlogy of 10x engineer, genius programmer accentuates this. This is not just a job, its identity.

To these neanderthals the idea that women have brains as good as anyone's has not 'registered' and its convenient to think of women as lesser then them and their place as 'unearned'. They lash out in any way they can, abusive and agressive behavior anonymously, and via politics and put downs in the office. The internet has opened the floodgates for mentally disturbed indivuals to launch persistent and dedicated rampages against individuals with zero risk and consequences.

I think it important to distinguish between normal people and those clearly struggling to come to terms to their social environment. It's even more important for organizations to quickly identify such individuals and get rid of them. Once there are consequences people fall in line. Only zero tolerance works for bigotry.

</comment><comment><USER21> This industry is so young and naive. Also arrogant for thinking it's the only industry with a problem.

All industries are f*cked.

It's the human condition.

<comment><USER11> > _All industries are f_ cked.*

Not much of an answer. And not qualified with any metrics either.

<comment><USER22> One of your comments is dead. I don't know why, I think it's a word filter maybe.

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13442908](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13442908)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> It's not original in tech industry. Probably every girl/woman that has at least a bit significant online presence encounters similar problems. My GF is an amateur photomodel, you should see what messages she constantly receives.

</comment><comment><USER24> This is irrelevant to the industry. And I feel offended by attacking the industry. Banking, retail, fashion, you will get such comments everywhere. A lot of men are jerks indeed but this is a social problem, not an industry one.

<comment><USER25> >Banking, retail, fashion, you will get such comments everywhere. A lot of men are jerks indeed but this is a social problem, not an industry one.

This is a moral equivalence fallacy, a red herring of sorts. You are saying this women's frustration with her industry is irrelevant to her industry because a handful of unrelated indusries have problems that could be similar.

This argument ignores that CS/IT is largely male and notorious are for this disgusting behavior. It's one of the only industries that had a greater percentage of women in the 80s than it does now. There are industries that do not suffer from this problem at all or nearly to the same degree.

In full, this women's expirence is directly related to overt mysogeny in industry culture and labeling it as a "social problem" willfully ignores this problem in tech thus perpetuating it further.

<comment><USER19> Notoriety is not direct evidence. People can be notorious without being guilty. I don't know whether other fields with a similar proportion of men have similar problems.

Studies highly welcome. Hearsay somewhat less.

<comment><USER25> >Notoriety is not direct evidence. People can be notorious without being guilty.

This argument is a fallacy fallacy. Sure I made a unsubstantiated claim but it doesn't contradict or invalidate my general argument.

>I don't know weather other fields with a similar proportion of men have similar problems.

How is this relevant? I get the feeling that you read my comment looking for some insignificant hyperbole you could attack in order to derail my general argument to perpetuate your willful ignorance enabled by your male priveldge.

>Studies highly welcome

How about listening to the _women_ in tech like the one who wrote the blog post we are commenting on?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> Programmers are kittens, from my experience. they are usually some of the best people. They are often shy as well.

<comment><USER19> Sampling bias, exacerbated by what you said. Sampling programmers you see what you observe, but sampling _messages received_ you select for the bad crowd. Especially considering how cheap messages are and the outsize effect a bad apple can have.

<comment><USER27> A lot of it can be managed. This probably isn't something most people want to hear, but Justin Bieber and Donald Trump don't get harassed. They don't read their Twitter notifications, and have people reading their mail for them. Public figures need to risk-manage, for example you'll never meet the Goldman Sachs CEO at some random bar, for obvious reasons. You also can't send him an email, since you don't know his address.

CEOs, men and women, ancient and contemporary have had to find ways to avoid crowds and their envy/anger/pettiness for centuries. Just make yourself less accessible.

<comment><USER14> > You also can't send him an email, since you don't know his address

Not true. E-mail addresses of famous people are quite public, and your e-mail to lloyd.blankfein_at_gs.com or billg_at_microsoft.com _will_ get read. Though - like you point out - it will likely be read by a team of secretaries or aides and only flagged to Lloyd if the message is deemed important or you are deemed important enough.

<comment><USER27> Interesting.

The point is that public figures have always had to shield themselves from the mediocrity of crowds, because it's easier to free yourself up from that than to change the whole society or industry.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> Hopefully this will be constructive. It's a tough pill to swallow but it's needed:

This is only a problem because of a) the immaturity of the average tech guy, _relative to other professions_ and b) the lack of success with women of the average tech guy, _again relative to the overall population_.

Tech professions attract _mostly_ left-brained people, and attract some personality types _much more_ than other types. A tech guy is more likely to be an introvert. He's also more likely to have poor social skills, which relates to both A and B. It would be interesting to know if insecure attachment styles are more prevalent in the tech industry (likely), if anxiety disorders are more prevalent (likely; and someone with anxiety might be more likely to spend their free time indoors harassing people than playing football outside) and if low self-esteem is more prevalent (sadly, in my experience, likely; obviously 'harassment behavior' isn't something to be proud of, so doing it, while apparently desirable for some, would just result in lowered self-respect for them).

This is _more prevalent_ in the open-source community, since there are no selection standards. You need neither a degree from MIT or Stanford, or to go through the tough Google interview standards, so you'll end up with the crap that's left on top of the sieve.

This problem will not get fixed anytime soon, and certainly can't get fixed through politics of any kind, since it's founded in personality and psychology. Mandatory pre-school with screening of all children for attachment disorders would help a lot, and hopefully someone reading this will be convinced to promote that as a solution.

To those who would say this is just speculation and ad hominem: it's _conjecture_ , not speculation, and can be debated. It isn't ad hominem: to find a solution, asking "why" is necessary. There's no contempt here, though some of what I said may not be nice, I'm not assigning lower worth to anyone.

<comment><USER17> I really don't care what the cause is, they can go. Why have them?

<comment><USER27> Go where? How do you get rid of them?

The problem is exactly the same as the following:

In an organization, you'll have some employees that are more psychologically healthy, and some less. Some will have substance abuse problems. The employees with substance abuse problems will be less productive, on average. In other words, they're dragging the organization down.

There's no "getting rid of them". They'll just burden another company. Same as here, in open-source, you can't "get rid of them", it's logistically impossible.

This problem logistically can't get fixed through exclusion. It can only get fixed by "raising the floor" (in other words, making sure that the most troubled men become less troubled). Raising the median/average won't help. Same as raising the median income won't help the people in poverty, raising the minimum wage will.

In the original metaphor, since substance abuse and attachment disorders are correlated, again the best solution is early detection of attachment disorders in young children, and improving their situation.

Why not help the least fortunate? I can guarantee you, the kinds of guys sending Photoshopped pics of bloody cadavers are not happy people. There's psychological inequality just as much as economic inequality, though for psychology, most people find it harder to be compassionate.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> I haven't read all the comments but must say this;

The behaviour she witnessed is not about technology, industry or gender -yet I agree that the women is targeted more. It's just people when they think they are unreachable, they can get away with it. Internet is the perfect place for them to be themselves.

I am not saying it's how it should be but it's kind of unavoidable in the current state of internet. So the best is dealing with this as you do in real life: keep your distance, ignore them as much as possible, use your rights when you can (let the authorities deal with them if there are threats for example) and don't let them get into your skin.

</comment><comment><USER29> [https://blog.jessfraz.com/](https://blog.jessfraz.com/) seems to suggest she did not, in fact, quit the industry. (Good, it would only make the problem worse, no?)

<comment><USER18> > suggest she did not, in fact, quit the industry.

TFA's 5th paragraph states that she will not, in fact, quit the industry. Why would you infer that she'd have quit?

<comment><USER29> Oh thanks, I actually misread that part!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> I'll just say that in Turkey I have worked with many female programmers and different females on the periphery (ones who interact with programmers on a daily basis, but may not be, themselves, programmers) and we do not have that problem here. No one disrespects them or makes advances towards or anything like that.

Not only that, but more and more women are taking Computer Science and getting into programming here in Turkey.

I'm also an American (born and raised) so I'd have to say it's a cultural issue, not an industry one. Fix your culture.

<comment><USER25> >it's a cultural issue, not an industry one

Industries have cultures. Cultural issues and issues within an industry's culture are not mutually exclusive by definition.

>Fix your culture

That's the point of this blog post and conversation. We aren't going to fix anything by skirting blame onto greater societal forces and continue on business as normal

</comment></comment><comment><USER31> Things every male (person) should be taught by their parents:

1) Would I do/say this to another male (person of a sex I'm not sexually oriented towards)? If not, don't do it any other person/gender either.

That's basically it.

TLDR; Treat everyone as a person first and foremost, and a potential partner/mate later.

</comment><comment><USER32> It was discussed previously:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9835375](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9835375)

</comment><comment><USER33> Extrapolating your personal issues to a whole gender and industry is asinine at best. Can we rise above this?

</comment><comment><USER34> Awful. Report & publicly out them.

<comment><USER18> Of course that generally ends up with even more harassment and basically nothing done.

</comment></comment><comment><USER35> You could add [2015] to the title

<comment><USER36> The only reason this was posted is that the author has a recent technical blog post trending on the main page right now, and it's quite good:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13442281](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13442281)

Judging from the disaster that is this thread, it should probably be flagged into the ground before a flamewar starts.

<comment><AUTHOR> I posted it, with a 90% expectation of it going nowhere, and 10% expectation of a few comments that showed the general viewpoint of a community that I felt has some of better elements of humanity in it.

However what we got was, 80+ comments of basically flame war, and over half telling her to 'get over herself'. :(

So based on that, then yes she's right. This Industry is Fucked[1]. And I am ashamed to be part of it these days.

\--

[1] And it's not just sexism; The whole industry has been taken over by the suits and wide-boys, who are busily destroying it from the inside out.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER37> I think she means this video: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1qlLUf7KtAw](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1qlLUf7KtAw)</comment>


Google Search for "American Inventors" English vs. Spanish - <AUTHOR> https://www.reddit.com/r/CringeAnarchy/comments/6trj3x/google_american_inventors_in_english_search_vs/ <comment><USER2> I'm as disillusioned with the direction of Google and other SV companies as anyone with regards to censorship, deleting accounts, and manipulation of their products to push their agendas.

On the other hand, this particular case seems pretty benign: probably due to the fact that the Spanish equivalent to "American inventor" in English would be "US inventor". The " American" part in Spanish has a higher bias with "African American" than it does in US English.

</comment><comment><USER3> Is this dog whistling some kind of conspiracy? Who actually knows how the algorithm works? Maybe these are the inventors americans are clicking on more.</comment>


Transform your browser into a lightning fast, cinematic way to discover the Web. - <AUTHOR> http://cooliris.com/ <comment><USER2> While I love this conceptually, cooliris.com hasn't had very rich support for varying types of RSS feeds. For instance, they fail to support basic MediaRSS constructs like groups, even though I pass it perfectly reasonable / compliant MediaRSS tags for multiple images in a post gallery.

I got (a very polite) brush off here: [http://developer.cooliris.com/dev_forum/comments.php?Discuss...](http://developer.cooliris.com/dev_forum/comments.php?DiscussionID=189)

Being a startup founder / engineer myself, I totally understand that one can't really accomodate every request immediately... but if the life of your product is to extract images out of RSS, I'd consider it pretty important to handle galleries as intelligently as possible.

"Be liberal in what you accept, and conservative in what you send." \-- jon RFC-1122 (originates in RFC760)

Cooliris desperately needs to be more liberal in what they accept.

</comment><comment><USER3> Cooliris is the only firefox extension that decided to INSTALL itself onto my start menu when I updated it and still hasn't regained its original support for Facebook.

I've uninstalled it.

<comment><USER4> Argh, I hate Cooliris, it turned OfTheWorld.tv (unmetered on my ISP), running quite well with Flash into a slow, motion-sickness-inducing wall of bright colours whenever I move the mouse :(</comment></comment>


Show HN: nada – mobile first, up to 10 boxes temporary email - <AUTHOR> https://getnada.com <comment><AUTHOR> I have submitted before, but got no love :-(

What's different? it supports attachments, works great on mobiles. Has local storage for keeping up to 10 inboxes and supports socket.io for instant msg retrieval. Written in nodejs, mongo, and haraka.

</comment><comment><USER2> Love it. The mobile angle is so important.</comment>


Node.js vs. Golang - <AUTHOR> What are your thoughts on Microservices development in Node.js vs Golang? Benefits or negatives of both <comment><USER2> What did you do to explore the differences yourself? A simple google search will bring a legion of answers [0][1] (first two hits for models vs golang).

Your question is too broad to be answered properly. Let us know what you already found yourself and what specific items you could not answer. That way we can spend our time efficiently and provide you an answer that you can actually use.

[0] [https://www.google.nl/amp/www.hostingadvice.com/blog/nodejs-...](https://www.google.nl/amp/www.hostingadvice.com/blog/nodejs- vs-golang/amp/)

[1] [https://da-14.com/blog/golang-vs-nodejs-comparison- performan...](https://da-14.com/blog/golang-vs-nodejs-comparison-performance- speed-scalability-and-other)

</comment><comment><USER3> Golang: Easy to get started, hard to master (worth it) - maturing and run by experienced if opinionated people.

Node: Easy to get started, can let you get shit done. Easy to dig your own grave, problems sometimes come from left field.

Honestly, writing golang makes me feel like I'm trying to revive Brutalism - it is blocky overbuilt and feels solid - it just doesn't feel "elegant", and you really don't want to cut corners. Node is more "fun" \- but it just feels like I'm adding to a pile of hacks and checking that in -

Node: I have been bitten by more than once - situations totally out of my control left me dead in the water. Golang, not so much.

Lastly when I work in go, I can understand my dependencies and deal with them. Most of my node experience entails praying all the dependencies work and dealing with it if they don't or stop.

Really the choice is yours because both WORK, but for me personally I would not want to work in node again. Honestly set them both up and figure out what one you like more - it should not be hard to write a basic sign up and log in micro service.

<comment><USER4> Why not D instead of Go? If GC is not an issue, and you want a standalone native executable (like Go), D seems to tick all the points. In addition, you get a much more elegant language.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Unless you seek really good real time system use NodeJS otherwise Go. I use NodeJS and MongoDB to handle upto 6k req/sec on two quad core server on AWS with average latency time less than 60ms with each request hitting Mongo at least 2 times. New version of JS i.e. ES7 is way more productive than Golang syntax.</comment>


Craftsmanship – The alternative to the four-hour work week mindset - <AUTHOR> https://hackernoon.com/craftsmanship-the-alternative-to-the-four-hour-work-week-mindset-e464a2dd34f4 <comment><USER2> _To lounge on a beach or travel the world and not actively engage in building your arsenal of expertise is professional malpractice._

I've seen this thought expressed before in writing about Startups. If you're not burning your life down 24/7 in the struggle to make it Big, you're doing it wrong.

But that's silly.

The entire _goal_ of building a business, in my mind, is to get the point where you can lounge on a beach or travel the world and not need to actively engage in anything except the pursuit of happiness.

I personally averaged out at a little less than four hours of work per week in 2017, running the sort of low maintenance, feature complete, Software-as-a- Service business that the author spends a paragraph explaining is not in fact a "serious company".

But look at the product and you'll see craftsmanship. Ten years of work, in fact as of roughly today. But never at the author's pace. Always at mine. Those two things are not mutually exclusive.

That's the great thing about building a business. You can do it any way you like.

<comment><USER3> Did you _build_ the business on 4 hours a week over 10 years? That'd be maybe one full time year worth of work over the period. Is it now fully supporting you, i.e. more than 6 figures of profit? If you did that on four hours a week over the duration, I salute you, and care to share your niche?

If not, and you did spend more time in the first few years getting the business established, then how can you compare your relaxation on maintenance mode of a business after it is running smoothly with the initial effort it takes to get off the ground? That's pulling up the ladder after you succeeded, not relevant advice.

<comment><USER2> Indeed, there were weeks early on where I would work upwards of 20 hours building the product (though it was launched and signing up customers after the first of those weeks.) The important thing is that it never consumed all my time or focus.

It wasn't my main revenue stream during the early years, and didn't hit the six figure, quit the day job level until maybe year five or six.

As to ladders, I spend most of my time here and on my blog [1] explaining in detail how to climb it, and encouraging people to do so. Sadly, few choose to. The VC route has a much better PR team, selling the benefits of rockets over ladders.

[1] [http://www.expatsoftware.com/articles/](http://www.expatsoftware.com/articles/)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I am probably in the age bracket that puts me in the 'old fashioned' end of the spectrum of HN readers, but I fully agree with the premise of the article. Craftsmanship is a lost art form these days.

While I admire, and respect the wishes of a lot of younger people in my industry these days to want to travel a lot, and build a business that can be operated anywhere, I think a lot of them don't yet have the realisation that _anything_ you do day in day out, can become routine, boring and something that you will yearn to be 'free' from after a while.

<comment><USER5> > _Craftsmanship is a lost art form these days._

In my experience, that is not equally true everywhere in the world.

It's certainly very true in the USA. In my opinion that's partly because college and trade schools are so expensive. Unsurprinsingly, the result is students with less years of experience practicing their craft.

I think this is mostly cultural. The original American craft is business. Everything else is seen through the lens of business. Everything becomes a hustle. Including things that really shouldn't, like teaching a craft, or learning one. In other cultures, the craft itself - practicing it, preserving it, transmitting it - is the priority, and business is a tool to achieve that end. Not so in the US.

I don't know Australia (where I think you're from) but perhaps it's similar there?

<comment><USER6> As a lifelong citizen on the USA, I agree, and so does Paul Graham ("Made in the USA," [http://www.paulgraham.com/usa.html](http://www.paulgraham.com/usa.html)).

Most Americans are uninterested in craftsmanship. Actually, I think it's more basic. Most Americans are unaware of craftsmanship. They just do not understand what it is. They think it is a flourish that maybe adds 10%. A knife is a knife. If one costs three times as much because of "better craftsmanship," an American is likely to think that means it has some decorative etchings.

A knife is a knife, so for most Americans, shopping is just about finding the cheapest one. They are all knives, so only a fool would pay $100 when you can get one for $10. They figure that the one that costs $100 is because its maker hasn't put together the most efficient factory, or that it somehow became fashionable, maybe because a movie star had one --- certainly not because it lasts longer, will stay sharper longer, or anything practical like that.

Americans are sometimes okay with spending more on a particular manifestation of a general item. For example, it's okay to have an expensive car. But even then, they don't think Porsches are crafted better. It's that they look better (but for no objective reason, it's just what you like) and that they go faster (but not for any clever reason, they just have a big engine, what's so hard about that?). Or if you're not into sports cars, you might spend a bunch of money on a Jaguar. But the Jaguar is not a more comfortable ride because of more craftsmanship. It's just a matter of adding more padding to the seats and using bigger springs in the suspension. Anyone could do it. You just make things bigger. Bigger is better. More is always better. "Less is more," is some kind of Buddhist mantra by people who can't afford the nice things in life, so they kid themselves.

There are many exceptions. For example, Steve Jobs. Also, I find that many craftsmen appreciate craftsmanship: a plumber, mechanic, or carpenter. The problem is that most Americans don't work in these blue-collar jobs. The goal is white-collar jobs, and maybe that is the root of the problem. In America there are so many ways to make money at a desk or through a clever deal, that that has become the aspiration.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> This author has either not read or not understood the 4-Hour Work Week.

At no point does the 4HWW talk about passively creating a business. What the book does point out is that when you sell billable hours you only make money at work, while if you sell product you make money anytime someone buys your product. Making money from a product sale while asleep is referred to as "passive income". Any app developer selling an app or web subscription is earning a passive income.

The criticism also ignores the 4HWW approach, which is to talk to experts & run experiments in order to learn the best way to do things rather than flail wildly without guidance.

Lastly, the criticism ignores the "Dreamlining" portion of the 4HWW where Tim explores the difference between ownership of possessions and access to experiences. While many of the methods in 4HWW are now obsolete due to changes in how SEO works and saturation in web businesses, the section on Dreamlining is still worth a read.

<comment><USER8> Hi there. I am Daniel, the author. The post wasn't intended to be a slight at Tim Ferriss or the 4 Hour Work Week. I think Tim, is an interesting guy and he immerses himself in his craft, which underlies why he is as successful as he is. As other comments have suggested and what the post tries to make explicit is that the mindset of shortcuts and silver bullets is what is really what I found objectionable.

<comment><USER7> Hi Daniel, thank you for taking the time to comment. I appreciate your view that shortcuts and silver bullets aren't a recipe for success, and probably agree with you. However, I don't recall anything in 4HWW promoting shortcuts or silverbullets, and I would have found your essay on craftsmanship stronger if you'd left 4HWW out of it.

Edit: Also, you sparked an interesting discussion & reached the front page of HN, so that's pretty cool!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> "Startup graveyards are full of visionaries without expertise or the proper skills to execute, for no other reason then ideas are not self executing, but are rather made into being by intense engagement by skilled operators."

As an engineer who gets approached to build other people's ideas regularly, I find this trait to be true.

<comment><USER9> I don't think Tim Ferriss is the issue, nor is the 4 Hour Work Week. I think Tim Ferris chose the title for marketing purposes. I do however, agree that a lot of his followers are looking for too many shortcuts.

<comment><USER10> >> a lot of his followers are looking for too many shortcuts.

In the old days, people devoted their careers to a company and companies looked out for people. Continuous layoff cycles were rare and long-timers earned pensions. These days there are layoffs in good times and bad. Sometimes layoffs hit entire divisions and even top rated people are let go.

 _Why the heck would i trust some traditional system and not try to find shortcuts?_

<comment><USER11> _In the old days, people devoted their careers to a company and companies looked out for people._

Really? I've been hearing that lament regularly for the last 35 years.

<comment><USER12> Yes. IDK in the US, but it was common in Europe until the 80s-90s or so.

<comment><USER13> That was the impression here too, but I think the truth has been shrouded in nostalgia. I think the truth is that it was just a large growth period (reconstruction, expansion, and population boom after Wii), and there was a lot of demand for workers. When demand for workers is high, and work is prevalent, workers get a really good deal. It was good until the economy changed, but that's why romantacizing it isn't worthwhile. The companies weren't any better, they were just behaving in their own self interest.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> While I agree that it's bullshit that you can be successful working 4 hours per week, there was a good point in the book: It's not worth making yourself unhappy working relentlessly in an unfulfilling job in order to enjoy the fruits of your labor in some distant future. Better to work less hours so you can enjoy your life while you're young.

<comment><USER15> There's a pretty wide spectrum between 4 hours per week and working yourself to death.

As a co-founder/technical person, I immensely enjoy what I do. Frankly, I'll get bored pretty quickly sitting at the beach and staring at the ocean. It's fun and relaxing, but I kinda "get the point" after some time. Whereas, there are endless challenges to keep me motivated, curious, and ultimately satisfied "at work".

It was more or less the same satisfaction and fulfillment I had as an employee. I just enjoyed the challenges and still got compensated generously back then.

Disclaimer: I didn't read the book. I'm sure it has some great points or it won't resonate with so many people. Also I should mention that at our company we instated a 45-days holidays per year policy (this includes personal and public holidays, we're 100% remote, no VC, but no dreams of mega money). So we do see a lot of value in _not_ working to death.

<comment><USER16> Sure, but you don't have to spend all that time staring at the ocean. You can spend it exploring the cities of the world and all the history and culture they have to offer. You can spend it learning new things. You can spend it hiking or skiing or skeet shooting. You can spend it with friends and family. You can spend it writing or painting or woodworking. You can spend it volunteering or building an organization to make the world a better place. You can spend it doing for fun what you used to do for work.

We spend so much of our lives working just to be able to feed and house ourselves. There are so many things we could do with our lives if we didn't have to, and lying on the beach is only one of thousands.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Taking ownership of and responsibility for one's own work, taking pride in it, and seeing the whole project through to completion (rather than being a cog on an assembly line, to mix metaphors) are certainly craftsmanship values.

But for code, "craftsmanship" is problematic. Not just that it changes so quickly (compared with traditional crafts), that ideal skills don't have time to be defined, let alone mastered.

This is caused by the malleable, abstract thought-stuff of code, and it occurs even within the work of the individual coder: as soon as you master something, it should be abstracted into a library or framework - a product. This puts the coder at a higher level, which is a different level, and therefore not yet mastered. Such factoring opportunities are far rarer in traditional, physical crafts.

Productization obsoletes craftsmanship.

Of course, not every task is sufficiently self-contained to be usefully factored out - instead, the code itself is pretty much the best "abstraction" you can do. But can these ad hoc tasks really be mastered either?

> 'I didn't know how to do x, so I just had to figure it out.' This is what I > regularly hear from successful founders, whereas 'I couldn't find someone to > do X, so I had to reconsider whether to pursue it at all' is a common > refrain from unsuccessful founders.

Grit, resourcefulness, improvisation - great! But "figuring it out" is much closer to hacking a solution than achieving craftsmanship-like mastery...

<comment><USER18> > This is caused by the malleable, abstract thought-stuff of code, and it > occurs even within the work of the individual coder: as soon as you master > something, it should be abstracted into a library or framework - a product.

You can also turn this around: Maybe software craftsmanship is not about writing great code (for the reasons you mentioned; the article also doesn't phrase it that way), but about skillfully using existing tools. Peek into the open source libraries you use, disassemble the closed-source ones, take your time to really understand that occasional bug.

There are many tools that rarely change (extreme examples: Unix, RDBMS, programming languages), and grokking them is not something that can be productized. Yet I see few people/businesses making that investment; it's easier in the short term to treat everything as a black box and add more abstraction glue, and that's what I see many people/businesses do.

<comment><USER17> Yes, there are meta-skills of tool use. Another enduring eg: vi. Muscle-memory investment is retained - very like tool-use in a physical craft. I think git will last forever(!) too.

Still seems more like a journey man or handyman than craftsmanship, but maybe that's not fair of me.

I agree there is deep craft in understanding tools. Hmmm, maybe developing/maintaining those enduring tools is even closer to craftsmanship? Unfortunately, enduring codebases get worse over time by conglomeration! The antithesis of craftsmanship. People who have written the same kind of enduring tool several times (from scratch) would probably be the epitome of software craftsmanship. e.g. plan 9 and go.

But, gluing black-boxes is more productive.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> This guy has some great points. I can't get past the fact that he didn't review his writing at all, nor did he have anyone else proof-read it. The writing quality is poor.

" _... your way your way..._ ", " _... just a by standard..._ ", improper uses of " _then_ ", " _this tasks_ " etc... all distract from the thesis.

<comment><USER8> Thanks for pointing that out (quite embarrassing). I made those edits and I appreciate you bringing them to my attention/

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> The article states this as well, but I wanted to hammer on it. Tim's book is a quite serviceable read on building a sustainable Internet business, and warns against the kind of mentality that everyone seems to associate him with. He's really up-front about the fact that it can take years of 60-hour work weeks before you ever see a four-hour one.

He's also stated in a blog post that he chose the title for the book based on market testing. It's far more of an indictment on society than it is on him that people take the spirit of his book wrong.

<comment><USER21> I felt the whole book to be a bit tongue in cheek anyway, as if no one was expected to actually try it. The point of the book for me wasn't to achieve the four hour work week, it was to take control of your work week so you can have a better life.

<comment><USER20> For me the big win was the realization that if you are an excellent performer at your job, you can negotiate perks. And a lot of that perk negotiation can involve asking for forgiveness rather than permission.

Huge mental shift.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> They are using different metrics of success. That kind of social hustling that is devoid of any meaningful engineering is indeed a way to make a very decent and respectable personal income, even if none of your businesses are ever that useful or produce any good technology.

Whereas most hackers I think view success as "changing the world for the better directly via the production of software or electronics".

</comment><comment><USER23> It's a nice fantasy, but sadly not correct. Delivering an important share of the production value is valuable on the business side, that's true. But it's not the major factor. It's one of multiple bargaining chips. Knowing the right people is another. Building hype for the product is another. Being directly involved in the sales process is yet another. And there are multiple more.

An enterprise is more than what it produces and therefore an enterpreneur also needs to be more. Not more in the sense of "higher level" but more in the sense of multi-tasking. Scale out, not scale up.

And being mediocre in each area is actually quite okay if one therefore is able to understand which area is currently the most important. If you have an exceptional product but nobody buys it, the hype building part is very well the most important area at that time, as an example.

So yes, craftmanship is important. It will make you produce great things, and the production of these things may make you a success as entrepreneur. But it's by far not to be singled out as The Major Factor.

</comment><comment><USER24> I agree with the central idea, but the "networking events" are not representative of the industry. They attract professional b*itters by definition.

There is nothing unique about running a startup, it's another business, but, as of today, with great expectations and generally more money and higher risk of quick failure than a mainstream business.

</comment><comment><USER25> Every year devs debate over how to optimize the "X hour work week" function.

I personally don't care what X is, I care about variation. I chafe under a steady X hours a week schedule. I'd rather go hard for a season, take a huge break, then go back to working 50-80 hours a week. Is anyone else like this?

<comment><USER26> No, because even 40 is nearing too much for me. I'm happy and productive with my 4 to 6 hour days of development.

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> >What is missed in all of this is the mindset of craftsmanship; that one's expertise and deliberate focus on one's craft is actually the primary driver for success and not some crapshoot of a series of hacks.

I'm all for craftsmanship for the sake of it, but this statement is naive.

You _need_ craftsmanship for some type of businesses. For the rest, you do not. I have seen way too many people become successful financially with spaghetti, and even more who never got off the ground because they felt honing their craft would bring in more money.

If you're trying to run a business, be as good as you need to be. I suspect many/most businesses will not benefit from becoming a master.

</comment><comment><USER6> > people talk about having an amazing idea that they want to farm out

"Ideas are just a multiplier of execution," \--- [https://sivers.org/multiply](https://sivers.org/multiply)

</comment><comment><USER28> Anything worth doing takes a long time. Sure, you can get going relatively fast to the person who's doing nothing, but just like a software product, the last 10% is the same amount of effort as the first 90%. There's a trail of hard work behind every founder that achieves outsized success.

Jay Acunzo has a really good podcast about this subject: Unthinkable.fm. It's focused on not embracing the hacks-culture and instead focusing on the craft. It's texhnically a podcast about marketing, but a lot of what he talks about applies to other disciplines too. Most of the interviews are super interesting too.

</comment><comment><USER29> > 4-hour mindset

It is usually meant to work 4 hours for others (client/employer), i.e. what you get paid for. And you spend the rest of the time honing your existing skills, acquiring new skills, etc... among other things.

<comment><USER30> That is certainly not what Tim Ferris wrote about in the "4 hour workweek" book, which is what the blog post referred to. The book is quite literally about optimizing your life so that hours worked per week reduces to somewhere very low (four came from an A/B test, as TF explains in one of the first chapters).

<comment><USER29> I've not read Ferris, but e.g. I consider watching some CS lectures as the part of a recreation and leisure instead of working.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> I've been writing animation software for 3 years, about 4-12 hours / day ( I also freelance 4 hours a day for money ). Before I started, I was a guy so obsessed, he was spending weekends and evenings writing painting apps, and 3d programs for fun. I have always likened myself to a carpenter building a house.

Anyway, I've re-written most sections of my app 5-10 times. I'm re-writing much of the 50k lines right now (I'm adding in redux + immutable, but also refactoring lots and cleaning up lots).

At this point, I'm fairly convinced you can't pay people to make an app like I'm making(to the same quality). I'm also fairly convinced if I was on a team, it wouldn't have worked either. Let me explain why...

Re-writing the same stuff to get better code, to help enable things to work a different way, this feels bad, like wasted work, but it moves the project forward. It feels bad even though I'm re-writing my own code. If I was on a team, I think there would be more negativity around it.

If I was paid to do something, I would focus my time on adding features, but not really on refactoring. I'd do enough to show results, but I'd paint myself into a corner, at which point development would slow down. It would be hard to get 'cleanup' projects approved. Management wouldn't understand.

So, back to general stuff on being a craftsman.. something I've been going through was this constant sensation that "launch is coming", "launching next month!", but it was always in the distance.

For a whole year, it felt like I'd launch was one month away.

I think the lesson I was supposed to learn from this, was that I need to be hungry for the work I'm doing. The work is the reward, learning to enjoy the process.

The work is my food, and I'm learning to be hungry.

Loving the work, getting to the point where if I'm allowed to work on it, I've won, that's craftsmanship to me. Steve Wozniak is my hero in this sense. He loved the work, he loved "getting close" to the work and the code. He encouraged going over sections you already knew were pretty spiffy, just to get that much closer to the code.

Anyway, I think all the "work less" movement is because people haven't actually found work they actually like. I make animation software, and it's been a hard school to learn to like it, which you would think would be easy.

When the definition of anything changes to "work", it almost innately becomes harder to enjoy. I think the real lesson of the next decade is learning to enjoy work, especially when it becomes very difficult and harder to enjoy. To enjoy the unenjoyable is perhaps a secret to living.

When I release my software, I want to be standing beside it straight and tall, beaming at the craftsmanship. Part of me hates sales, and in a way, it goes with the craftsmanship part, knowing that only a truly great product is worth selling, and that product does much of the selling itself, after the initial people have used it.

<comment><USER32> The last few years I too have been building a piece of animation software, but the first crappy version of it was released after just six months of development.

I hate dealing with the business part (ads, billing, etc), but moderately spoiling the app with ads and in-apps allows me not to be distracted earning money. Staying hungry just means taking freelance gigs for me.

Overall, adding new complex features turned out to be orthogonal to monetization efficiency, but I continued to implement them. Two years ago I discovered a tiny obscured fan community of the app and helped them grow. Since then the most enjoyable part of my work is interacting with some of the dedicated users and discovering the new ways of using content they create.

They cannot pay me, but the I am proud of making a great product for them. The code is shit to be honest, but does it matter?

</comment></comment><comment><USER33> I can't help but think of Ezra Pound's Canto XLV, "Usura". [https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/54319/canto- xlv](https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/54319/canto-xlv) ;

a line from the poem, "no picture is made to endure nor to live with but it is made to sell and sell quickly"

We have swapped real value for fake artifice in too many ways in our economy...

</comment><comment><USER34> TL;DR the Tim Ferris phenomenon? Isn't he just the original blogspammer?

</comment><comment><USER35> As long as you don't confuse being ineffective for craftsmanship. It's not craft when something takes longer to build than it should. Or is of higher quality than needs to be. It's craft when something is juuuuust perfectly suited to its purpose.

Do more, work less.

<comment><USER36> > It's not craft when something takes longer to build than it should.

Who determines the should part of that?

The outside observer that claims they can build an Uber clone in a weekend? (an intentionally absurd example, although not uncommon either)

Or the builder. And if it's the actual builder-owner, who else is there to specify _to them_ , how long _their_ building & craftsmanship should take? I say: nobody; period.

I'll take the old id Software mantra: it'll be done when it's done. It's glorious in its go fuck yourself attitude toward artificially pressurized deadlines.

Or Shigeru Miyamoto: "A delayed game is eventually good, but a rushed game is forever bad." Although I might change it to: a delayed game may eventually be good, but a rushed game is forever bad. The spirit of it is correct.

<comment><USER35> > Or the builder. And if it's the actual builder-owner, who else is there to > specify to them, how long their building & craftsmanship should take? I say: > nobody; period.

Exactly. The builder will know when they're being effective and when they're just fucking around.

Deep down we all know even if we sometimes don't want to admit it.

And a great game never finished because it ran out of budget or time or the builder got distracted by a shiny new project is just that, a game never finished.</comment></comment></comment>


L.A. = We have 99 problems and cars are all of them - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@FleckParking/l-a-we-have-99-problems-cars-are-all-of-them-7bb8b452f9c4 <comment><USER2> Cars are awesome for light suburbs and rural areas, but they do not scale as density increases. Los Angeles passed this size and density long, long ago. Orange County (basically part of LA unless you live here) is doing so right about now.

I truly do not get the LA car culture thing. I mean... the traffic is so bad you don't even get to really _drive_ there. You just sit there in your car stuck in a traffic jam. People own these expensive sports cars that they can't drive faster than 10mph most of the time. It's a classic example of a tragedy of the commons.

LA is building transit but not enough and not fast enough. It's a truly huge city, both in population and in physical footprint, and to cover it all with useful transit will require decades of build-out.</comment>


The Extreme Physics Pushing Moore's Law to the Next Level [video] - <AUTHOR> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f0gMdGrVteI <comment><AUTHOR> Pretty interesting review of microprocessor manufacturing, and the tech and machines that produce them.

I wonder how much of this is a standard procedure for any fab, versus something that ASML really has an edge on.</comment>


Ask HN: Common Core Math, Better? Or Worse? - <AUTHOR> What do you think of common core math? I'm not a fan of common core at all, but I love how it teaches math. Instead of counting by ones, or doing crazy right to left carry the 1 nonsense it concentrates on going left to right.
For example, normally 14 + 17 would be:
7+4=11 -> Put the 1 in the ones place to "carry" it -> 1+1=2, plus your carried 1 = 3 -> Answer: 31
At higher levels it becomes harder to do math in your head with this foundation and students are more likely to depend on slow paper methods or calculators.
With common core 14 + 17 is:
(Tens place) 10 + 10 = 20 -> (Ones place) 7+4 = 6+4+1 = 10+1 = 11 -> 20 + 11 = 31.
This can indeed be harder to learn when on paper, but with the help of a teacher this is incredibly easy, and very fast. Most of you are probably already doing this in your head, and you probably taught it to yourself because what you learned in school is slow and taxes your personal RAM.
I don't get all the up and arms about it. As I understand it, this is how Asian countries do math (based on the abacus). When you look at the statistics, US schools do better at lower levels but cliff dives when it comes to middle school and beyond.
Some links:
Khan Academy: https://www.khanacademy.org/commoncore
Google Image Search for 'common core math': https://www.google.com/search?q=common+core+math&newwindow=1&safe=off&es_sm=122&qscrl=1&source=lnms&tbm=isch&sa=X&ei=TusQVMn3Bo62yATlnoH4CQ&ved=0CAkQ_AUoAg&biw=1920&bih=965 <comment><USER2> > "Most of you are probably already doing this in your head"

This is the cargo cult thinking behind common core. What the self-appointed geniuses behind common core have done is, they observed that high performing students use various mental shortcuts so they don't have to do addition the formal way, or refer to multiplication tables. So they said, "let's not teach students to do addition the formal way, and let's not make them memorize multiplication tables", assuming this would make all the students high performers.

But the reason high performers are high performers is that they _did_ learn addition the formal way and they _did_ memorize their multiplication tables, then proceeded _beyond_ that to adopt mental shortcuts. You can't just skip the foundational stuff.

<comment><AUTHOR> 1\. You can't shortcut your way out of not knowing the multiplication table and basic arithmetic. Nobody does this.

2\. The "formal way" as you put it is complex and unnecessary. It makes things harder, especially once you hit algebra. If you can't do simple two digit addition in your head by the time you start learning things that involve larger processes like inequalities and quadratic equations you WILL slow down and possibly become frustrated and lose confidence. If you want to get by in these subjects you have to start to depend on the calculator.

But guess what? Now you want to be a computer science major and all of the sudden you have to learn how to graph trig functions and find the instantaneous rate under a curve. Calculators can't help you now. In fact, everything you've just spent 4+ years cheating on must be fully understood at the manual level to even begin to grasp what you need to know now....

What you see in common core is not some magic a genius cabal created out of a Darwinian spite for the rest of mankind. It is an easier process that is used to create a much stronger foundation in mathematics. Nobody is telling kids to not know their multiplication tables, what they are saying is that there is an easier and quicker way to learn math.

That being said, I don't like monopolies and putting one on education is a dismal thing to do. With privatisation (real privatisation down to the accreditation level) you allow different things to be tried rather than one state staying, "This is how things will be done, hopefully we won't all be retarded in 20 years. If not, let's take credit and ignore that thing called the internet. If so, blame the current administration."

If enough people honestly believe "new math" (good song by Tom Lehrer) is the way to go, they can teach it to their kids. If people think what is proven to be better is... well... better, let them do it. When major differences appear in children from the same generation with one group knowing math and another not (like Asia vs. America), there'll be no complaining to do.

<comment><USER2> > The "formal way" as you put it is complex and unnecessary. It makes things > harder, especially once you hit algebra. If you can't do simple two digit > addition in your head by the time you start learning things that involve > larger processes like inequalities and quadratic equations you WILL slow > down and possibly become frustrated and lose confidence.

But how do you _learn_ to do two digit addition in your head? You learn by doing two digit addition _on paper_ over and over again. Students who are good at this will begin to notice patterns and develop shortcuts. __You cannot just skip the learning and go right to the shortcuts. __

This is the kind of stuff they 're peddling under common core: [http://ace.mu.nu/archives/346625.php](http://ace.mu.nu/archives/346625.php) [http://twitchy.com/2014/04/10/common-core-insanity-for- six-y...](http://twitchy.com/2014/04/10/common-core-insanity-for-six-year- olds-nyc-mom-knows-garbage-math-when-she-sees-it-pic/)

<comment><AUTHOR> Nobody is talking about shorcuts.

You learn by starting with the tens place and moving on to the ones place. LEFT to RIGHT. NOT right to left.

27+38

30 + 20 = 50

7+8 = 5+8+2 = 5+10 = 15

50 + 15 = 65

This is a lightning fast process that you do on paper to understand, and in your head in practice. Carrying, as I've said 3 times now is inefficient, slow, and harms the future possibility of doing well in upper level math.

BTW, I'm no stranger to the alternative media. Hell, I still watch the Infowars feed. (I would also say that the english side of common core is appalling.) But you have to recognize that the stuff is 99% bullshit, just as with the case with FOX and CNN. (Note that math can NOT be memorized, you're dealing with infinity.) These sites pander to a specific audience just like everyone else. Hateful/scared people love hateful/scared sites. Its a shame everyone has to spin everything into something bigger than it actually is.

Just the facts. This kind of math is faster, easier to learn, and easier to do. It's results (already proven) create a higher confidence in math and a better ability to perform at the higher levels. This stuff isn't new in any way. It's the same as using an abacus. (You know, those things they used in old one room schoolhouses where you slide the ones and ten places?) And tell me, how well do you think modern Americans compare to children in the 19th century with math? You sell yourself as someone who might know about a certain book by Charlotte Iserbyt, so I assume you know where I'm going with this.

Check out the Khan Academy site listed in the OP and do a little for yourself. Learn it in order to understand it.

<comment><USER2> First of all, I think that technique is nuts as an educational method. Five and six year olds cannot instantly intuit that 27+38 = (20+30)+(5+8+2) in their heads before they've ever had lessons on doing math the mechanical way, carrying the one, etc. They need to know how to _add_ before they can start doing intuitive pre-processing in their heads. They may be able to do the pre- processing later, after they've seen a lot of math problems, but you can't just skip the basics.

Second of all, did you follow the Twitchy link I posted? At the bottom of the page they have about ten other links to other posts, each pointing to a "technique" or "problem" in a common core math book more absurd than the last. Your "abacus-like" method is less insane than some of them, but the sum total is entirely consistent with what I'm saying: it's a cargo cult mentality.

<comment><AUTHOR> "Five and six year olds cannot instantly intuit that 27+38 =..."

"... before they've ever had lessons on doing math the mechanical way, carrying the one, etc."

Really? It's not OK to teach the easier way because you don't think it's intuitive (even though it is much more intuitive), but it is OK to teach the harder way that they won't use in upper level math when it's obviously not intuitive? (put one digit at the bottom, subtract one from another, and add three digits instead of 2? wtf? why can't I just add two numbers? children don't have stubborn bias' that cause them to automatically hate everything new)

I don't know if you've noticed but adding 20 and 30 is adding. They need to know how to add? You're not trying.

You're too stubborn to pay attention to yourself and I'm not stupid enough to keep talking to a brick wall.

<comment><USER2> One cannot _intuit_ until one knows the territory. Intuition is what the good students will develop by the time they get to "upper level math". And they develop it by seeing and solving a lot of math problems step by step. The "hard way" is not as fast as intuition, but it has a set of instructions that can be taught and followed. You cannot just tell the students in first grade: you don't need to follow any instructions, just start intuiting the answers by looking at the big picture.

What you call "the hard way" is the way people have learned addition for a thousand years, and it works. It worked for Newton, Einstein, and the guys who put men on the moon.

Aside: The day I see a Millennial kid make change from a cash register without having to look at the computer screen is the day I might start taking math education advice from your generation...

Aside #2: I too did an image search for 'common core math'. Look what I found! I think they make my point for me:

[http://i1.wp.com/truthinamericaneducation.com/wp- content/upl...](http://i1.wp.com/truthinamericaneducation.com/wp- content/uploads/2013/03/Common-Core_13.jpg)

[http://greenecountyteaparty.ohlc.org/wp- content/uploads/site...](http://greenecountyteaparty.ohlc.org/wp- content/uploads/sites/30/2014/03/Common-Core-math-problem.png)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> > I'm not a fan of common core at all, but I love how it teaches math.

When the debate started heating up I took a course on common core. The amount of misconceptions surrounding it are surprising. My favorite probably being that the federal government is mandating it, when it was voluntarily adopted by 43 states. Another is that the images being passed around on Reddit and showing up in your search are the mandated way to teach math. They aren't. Nor are Khan Academy's lessons. It is more about landings than the individual stairs. By landing X student should be able to do Y. What stairs you took in between is your business. Lesson plans are still derived by the teachers, some are just awful at their jobs or themselves have misconceptions that they have to follow a hideous thing done by another teacher in another state.

<comment><AUTHOR> Sounds like laziness to me, which is of course rampant among teachers.

It does amaze me that googling "common core math" brings up the things it does. Even in a world where we have access to all information, everyone seems to be trying to bullshit everything. I find it very difficult to find the facts on most things.

But when I saw that Khan Academies methods were starting to mirror "The Great Courses" "Secrets of Mental Math"[1] and that it was a part of the common core, I was impressed. Once I started learning things this way, I was better able to handle all math. I used to hate it, dread it. But this kind of thing makes it easy and fun. I'm glad kids are being exposed to it.

[1] [http://www.thegreatcourses.com/courses/secrets-of-mental- mat...](http://www.thegreatcourses.com/courses/secrets-of-mental- math.html?cid=1406)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> The great thing about common core is the disappearance of multiple-choice tests. Anyone who grew up outside the US will tell you that having to show your reasoning is much superior to picking between ABC and D.

<comment><AUTHOR> I didn't know that, is that universal or only for math? It definitely makes sense for math as you can get close and easily guess. So you can have no idea what you're doing and still get a 70% or so.

<comment><USER5> I can count the number of multiple-choice tests I had on the fingers of my hands, and all of them were tests preparing for tech certifications.

When discussing the multiple choice format between students, we've always thought that it's way easier to get the guess the right answer between choices than to show how you got there.

It's even worse outside of math classes, say history, and you're asked "when did $COUNTRY get its independence", obviously, it's much easier when you have a list of choices to choose from.</comment></comment></comment>


19-year-old Connor Krukosky resurrects antique z890 and gets job with IBM - <AUTHOR> https://www.fastcompany.com/3063265/how-to-be-a-success-at-everything/this-teenage-ibm-employee-got-his-job-by-buying-an-old-mai <comment><AUTHOR> Here is the long video from awhile ago about his adventure

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=45X4VP8CGtk](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=45X4VP8CGtk)</comment>


A Farmer Who Wants to Go Beyond Organic - <AUTHOR> https://www.forbes.com/sites/theresabeckhusen/2018/10/12/luke-peterson-wants-to-take-his-farm-beyond-organic <comment><USER2> For clarity, there is no specific equipment use requirement to be certified organic in the USA.

The statement "To achieve certification, Peterson restored 40-year-old cultivation equipment" implies such an action.

Peterson could have bought or leased new or used equipment.

See background: [https://www.ams.usda.gov/sites/default/files/media/who_needs...](https://www.ams.usda.gov/sites/default/files/media/who_needs_to_be_certified.pdf)

Also, the story mentions the number of farms that are certified organic but that is not the only metric to consider: number of acres certified organic, revenue of the organic ecosystem by year, revenue by sector, organic imports, etc.

See details [https://www.nass.usda.gov/Surveys/Guide_to_NASS_Surveys/Orga...](https://www.nass.usda.gov/Surveys/Guide_to_NASS_Surveys/Organic_Production/index.php)

<comment><USER3> You are correct. I suspect the reason he uses old machines is that with 80 acres, he doesn't generate the free cash flow for anything other than picking over the junk pile.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Yes, this is important.

Regenerative Agriculture is ranked #11 in Project Drawdown's list of solutions to climate change, higher than offshore wind turbines (#22), nuclear (#20), or electric cars (#49) [0].

This will be a political battle first and foremost, as so much farming activity depends on subsidy incentives favouring conventional methods.

[0] [https://www.drawdown.org/solutions/food/regenerative- agricul...](https://www.drawdown.org/solutions/food/regenerative-agriculture)

</comment><comment><USER3> I am 100% behind the concept, but there needs to be a demonstration of scalability. 80 acres in Western Minnesota isn't a farm, it is a hobby. Maybe with 10x the land, you could earn a living and support a family. 80 acres is a collection of small research demonstration plots.</comment>


5% for the chicken man - <AUTHOR>

What would convince YC to look at a VERY late application for Summer 2014 batch?
Paul Graham wants this application.
He asked for it in 2008, as my idea absolutely nails #17 of his list of "Start Ups We'd Like to Fund."
If extenuating circumstances count: I live in rural Nicaragua and only heard of YC weeks ago. I had no idea when the true, final deadline was as I couldn't find an actual YC '14 start date anywhere. I was ready to send in the application 7 hours ago.
I understand there must be a cut-off date. I understand the YC summer batch might start today (I could be there tomorrow). But I have worked for 9 months on this idea and it will not wait. My application is done. The idea is simple. It could launch in a month. It will take YC maybe two minutes to realize the massive potential. They want this.
 I had the entire application ready to go at about 1 AM last night (after my 1 minute intro video finally uploaded to YouTube - which took forever on my limacious internet connection). I went to paste my answers into the online application and I read "Sorry, we are no longer accepting applications for Summer 2014."
Fuck me !
Impossible. But so it is. And so here I sit in the jungle asking myself, and now you: "What would convince YC to look at a VERY late application for Summer 2014 batch?
If I were in Mountain View right now, I would be on the side of the road, dressed in a bright yellow chicken costume (why not?), next to a huge hand-painted sign that reads:
"Hey Paul, I have #17 in my pocket. Please let me apply late. firstname.lastname@example.com"
In fact, I am willing to make this insane offer:
I will give 5% equity of my start up to the first person (one person) who does this (chicken suit with sign), IF I get into the YC Summer 14 batch. <comment><AUTHOR> Thanks Zindlerb. A public demo would spawn 50 competitors - as this is a new idea, not some tweak on existing stuff. "Basically impossible" is fine with me. I just want them to read the application. Either way, I will take your advice and I will continue to focus of the startup.

</comment><comment><USER2> A public demo that made it to the top of HN would be a good start. Honestly, it is so improbable you will get into ycominator that applying this late is basically impossible. Just focus on your startup and wait till next round.

</comment><comment><USER3> _Paul Graham wants this application. He asked for it in 2008_

PG is not at YC anymore.

<comment><AUTHOR> Good point. But his ideas live on and his idea #17 written in 2008 still applies. But you are correct. The chicken man sign should read: "Hey Sam, I have P.G.'s #17 in my pocket..."</comment></comment>


Google TV, Take 2: Android Apps now on Smart TVs  - <AUTHOR> http://www.wired.com/gadgetlab/2011/10/google-tv-android-market/

<comment><USER2> I got my Google TV for free at Google Zeitgeist. I'm really, really, glad I didn't pay for it.

I was pretty excited when I got it, since I've never subscribed to cable, and watch most of my shows online.

Unfortunately, there's a huge issue with Google TV: almost every streaming content provider has summarily blocked Google TV's access.

So, if you buy a Google TV, what you're essentially getting is a fancy YouTube/Netflix player. Google has this pipe dream of YouTube replacing traditional and nontraditional premium content channels (cable, Hulu, Netflix)... but honestly, YouTube is a terrible user experience on the TV, since most videos only last minutes.

The thought of having to use that tiny controller-keyboard (the Google TV boasts an absurdly complicated controlled that kind of feels like using a PlayStation3 Controller, a smartphone from the early 2000's, and a TV remote, all at the same time) to navigate through the complex menus of GoogleTV every time my 3 minute YouTube clip ends is pretty unappealing.

Today, my GoogleTV sits collecting dust. I hooked up a cheap laptop to my TV through HDMI, and control it through VNC. It's a cheaper, easier to use, and simpler solution for watching Netflix and YouTube, and I even get to watch other things that I want to watch or download movies too.

The UI and platform improvements to GoogleTV are nice, but until they get some content providers on board, I don't see much point.

Right now, it seems like they're catching up with the AppleTV in terms of UI/UX... which is good, except when you realize that AppleTV is and was a failure as well.

<comment><USER3> > Right now, it seems like they're catching up with the AppleTV in terms of > UI/UX... which is good, except when you realize that AppleTV is and was a > failure as well.

AppleTV has one killer feature: AirPlay. For me, this does exactly what you are doing with your VNC-controlled PC, but it has a nicer UI and is wirelessly connected to a device I always carry with me.

<comment><USER4> Android devices have DLNA since before Airplay existed. It does pretty much the same thing.

<comment><USER5> DLNA can share the devices screen, including any app? I did not think it went that far?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I'm probably the only one, but I love the GoogleTV. Had it since early this year and use it absolutely every single day. It's always on, so it's always so easy to look up something on youtube, show somebody your pictures, watch a video from my NAS, look up a recipe or a place to visit on the web, etc.

At first I thought the full keyboard was a bit too much, but now I don't mind it at all, just makes it easier to find stuff online. I love it, can't wait for the update.

The fact that it's always on is the killer for me. One keypress and you're searching for whatever you want. Whenever people visit me and we're talking about something, I just press the search key and we can all search together for it, much more social then pulling up a phone and looking down. I love it, cant wait for the update.

<comment><USER7> How do you watch video from your NAS. Did you setup a DLNA server, or something. That has been hard for me to figure out. Other then that it's been great.

<comment><USER6> Yes, I use an asus router for my wireless, with Tomato running, and that includes a DLNA server. I added a 2Tb harddrive connected via USB to the router, so my videos stay online all the time. Pretty awesome.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I got a free GoogleTV from Google last December and I really enjoy it, especially after a software update that auto-installed earlier this year. My only disappointment has been not having time to try writing an app for it - this has been a busy year for me. (I wrote a simple web site <http://cookingspace.com/> 3 1/2 years ago to help me track nutrients in the meals I eat, and I had hoped to have time to write a custom rich client for this web app for my own use.)

I may buy the new version if the hardware is much better but I'll wait a while to see what any future software updates do for version 1.

Most of my use is with Netflix streaming, and I have considered quitting my Hulu+ account because they block use with GoogleTV.

</comment><comment><USER8> I got a free GoogleTV from Google last December and I really enjoy it, especially after a software update that auto-installed earlier this year. My only disappointment has been not having time to try writing an app for it - this has been a busy year for me. (I wrote a simple web site <http://cookingspace.com/> 3 1/2 years ago to help me track nutrients in the meals I eat, and I had hoped to have time to write a custom rich client for my own use.)

I may buy the new version if the hardware is much better but I'll wait a while to see what any future software updates do for version 1.

Most of my use is with Netflix streaming, and I have considered quitting my Hulu+ account because they block use with GoogleTV.</comment>


What It's Like to Walk in NYC as a Woman - <AUTHOR> http://digg.com/video/street-harassment-psa

<comment><USER2> I live in a small liberalish college town and I've never seen this type of behavior before (here). It must be incredibly difficult to deal with that on a daily basis and attempt to feel safe at all.</comment>


Russia enacts 'draconian' law for bloggers and online media - <AUTHOR> http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-28583669 <comment><USER2> _It means bloggers with more than 3,000 daily readers must register with the mass media regulator, Roskomnadzor, and conform to the regulations that govern the country 's larger media outlets._

We have a simillar law in Poland, good old communist legacy. Formally, you need to register every media outlet with the court. Whether this applies to blogs is unclear, and it's generally not enforced.

But it could be. Which is a situation bureaucrats love.

I'm guessing that this is how it will work in Russia. No one will get in trouble for praising Putin on their unregistered website.

<comment><USER3> Yes, the old system loved registration of everything. In theory you're still supposed to also notify of the new place you live at if you spend there over 3 days. In practice nobody cares.

<comment><USER4> In practice, all of these unenforced rules are suddenly enforced if you can't get the undesirable person on anything else.

> "One declares so many things to be a crime that it becomes impossible for > men to live without breaking laws." -- Ayn You-Know-Who

<comment><USER5> It's pretty much how business law already works over there. The tax system is set up in such way that it's impossible for a business to pay all taxes and still turn in a profit.

So all businesses cheat on their taxes. Majority of business deals are made with a huge cash component - if a contract is for 100K, it's written for 30K and 70K is paid in cash under the table. Until they run afoul of the government, it's considered to be ok and nobody gets in trouble.

However, the minute government wants to acquire or close that business, they accuse the business of tax fraud, hit them with huge fines, close them down, throw the founders in jail, etc.

<comment><USER3> > So all businesses cheat on their taxes.

Wow. This is a perfect place for "[citation needed]". Same for the rest of the message really.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Russia has always tried to control media, Putin (and comrades) launch conspiracies, and twist stories to fit their bill. Some examples are the 'failure' of the olympic games opening (they aired the rehearsal). And the airplane MH17 appearantly was shot down by the Ukrainian government, in a grand masterplan to make holland and asia turn agains Russia.

I don't think this will ever change until the citizens rize and overthrow the government.

<comment><USER7> There where too many bloody revolutions in russian history. And looking at Egypt, Syria, Ukraine, Lybia and many other countries after the revolution epidemia theres not much russians who thinks that overthrowing the government is a good idea. Even amongst those russians who think that mr Putin is a bad choice.

<comment><USER8> Apparently, Russian shills discovered HN.

<comment><USER9> Looks like people beyond the borders are misinformed about Russian internal politics. Putin is, no doubt, the evil, but the statement about revolutions is true. There's no point in converting ex-nuclear superpower to failed state just because current government sucks. Successful democratic revolution may happen when there are trusted new leaders who can take the power, transform the state and step back on next elections. State of the opposition in Russia is so pathetic, that, despite among these people there are some really smart guys, it won't be able to run the government. We have to wait until we'll see grassroot support for the young generation of politicians with crystal-clean record (Maria Gaidar, Luba Sobol etc) and good organization capable of fighting even on rigged elections. If revolution will overthrow Putin tomorrow, we'll see new NSDAP as a replacement. There's no point in replicating the Arab spring mess now.

<comment><USER10> So if a junta is brutal enough and keep the quality of the opposition down (Siberia, assassinations, etc) then you think it is wrong to try to overthrow the dictator?!

From 1984 "If you want a picture of the future, imagine a boot stamping on a human face — forever."

How can things change, then? An invasion is not better than a revolution. Economic pressures work for most countries today (not e.g. North Korea) but not for oil countries -- note that most problem states do live on resource exports (see resource curse).

<comment><USER9> I don't think so. I think that people of any country have to look at all existing opportunities. For North Korea, some African or Asian countries there's no point in waiting for good and revolution is the only way for changes. As for Russia (and, possibly, for China), we have the options. The political game is quite dangerous here and political institutions are imperfect but they still may evolve in time to something better. Putin, compared to the dictators in the rest of the world, is very soft and weak: his power is based on popular support and he is well-aware that he has to distribute wealth to the people, boosting economy and imitating western-style democracy. Either he will keep the wealth growing (and thus the country open - it's essential for Russian economy, so millenials will travel and get educated about the benefits of western life style), or the popular discontent will blow him out of Kremlin. We still hope that the first option will be the case. We need more educated people to build reliable and inclusive political system.

<comment><USER10> Thanks for a reasoned and informed opinion on this subject.

How do you think about this:

You should not help dictators based on natural resources economically. Countries built on industry will have to democratize when they reach a certain economic level. Countries who get their money from natural resources will just generate more money in Swiss banks if the prices increase.

Edit: pcj50, I doubt even the Saudi A king describes his country as democratic. The West is enough dependent on them that they get a free card. Realpolitik in a democracy means being nice when it isn't too expensive (or the voters back home cares). Dictators are even worse. In sum, there are only varying levels of grey, no black/white. But, well, you knew all this.

<comment><USER9> Russian economy is not based on natural resources, actually. Russia was industrialized in 3 waves (development of mountain manufacturing civilization in Urals in XVII-XVIII, in 1870-1913 and finally by Stalin) long time ago and now has visible post-industrial sector (8.5% of GNP is generated by Internet and IT companies). The patterns that apply to dictatorships of banana republics here don't work: it will not be able to replace import of iPhones, but it is capable of replacing the western technologies that are blocked by sanctions. It can sustain any sanctions by manufacturing luxury goods for elites and providing food and fun for ordinary people. Upper middle class in Moscow will suffer, of course, from the lack of iPhones, but they are hated by the rest of the country, anyway, so who cares.

The only way to push democracy to such a big and advanced country is to increase cultural exchange, encouraging tourism and supporting Russian education system.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Didn't Dianne Feinstein try something similar against bloggers, only that instead of forcing them to register so they aren't anonymous, she wanted to completely exclude them from any sort of 1st amendment protection against the government?

[https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20130807/13153224102/sen-f...](https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20130807/13153224102/sen- feinstein-during-shield-law-debate-real-journalists-draw-salaries.shtml)

<comment><USER12> As cynical as I am about SCOTUS even they would have struck down that law.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> There is a worldwide crisis of _truth_ and journalism as a whole has been usurped by those that wish to control the message. You see it in every format and in every country. You see countries acting desperately in the face of a changing world. People are getting more information from around the globe thanks to the Internet. And it scares the living crap out of them. Because the truth scares them.

Be prepared for more astro-turfing, more main stream media bias, more placed articles, more leaked information, and more chaos in the message.

</comment><comment><USER14> Cue Putin apologists appearing out of the blue with their false equivalencies. Every time, like clockwork.

<comment><USER15> It is interesting, that as an argument of moral right to restrict basic civil rights or to start war in Ukraine or other shit, Putin's dolls use a thesis that the US or other countries did something similar like SOPA, war in Iraq, Guantanamo or shutting down of different protests.

Usually these guys (Putin's apologist not major players) don't know much details about the subject (as well as most other people/all of us) but they use these arguments to justify crimes of Putin's regime.

It is like to justify killing of innocent people in the USSR because Nazi Germany did this too.

Disclaimer: i don't compare the US or other countries with Nazi Germany but used this example as a hyperbole to show the issue.

<comment><USER16> At the same time the outrage from the west about Ukrainian separatists shooting down a civilian plane versus a totally different attitude when the US shot down an Iranian civilian plane does not sit right with me either.

These things should all be dealt with equally, no matter who the perpetrators are and who the victims.

<comment><USER15> These things should NOT all be dealt with equally! Because if you state this then you mean that the politics and the relationship between Russia and the west are not led by LAW but by "bad things" an opposite side did.

These things should be dealt by LAW and JUSTICE and you should not link one to another because if you do then you end up justifying the USSR crimes because Nazi Germany did this!

UPD: A crime should be a crime in all countries. The problem is that some countries use other's crimes as an argument. I said "things should NOT all be dealt with equally" because the judgement should base not on what others think about this but what the moral and the law says.

<comment><USER17> The point is, that if something is illegal for one party, it's illegal for all. The point isn't that the USSR crimes are ok because Nazi Germany did it, it's that if it is a crime for the USSR then it must be a crime for Nazi Germany, or the UK, or the US.

This, of course, isn't how the world works. But if you believe it should be, it's hard to accept the Russians are the only ones who have crimes to answer for - they just seem to be the only ones being brought to account.

<comment><USER15> I am confused with your reply: > But if you believe it should be - what you mean?

>The point is, that if something is illegal for one party, it's illegal for all. \- in some countries the law doesn't work and this country's elite don't act basing on the law and justice but use manipulation (like my example with USSR and Nazi Germany) to justify it's actions which results in more bad things.

Example USSR-Germany is a parallel to what some Russians are stating: like the current law on blogging is okay because the US initiated similar law too. Bloggers, free media and readers are in fact victims of this manipulation because the US has nothing to do with Russia's internal policy. And still some Russians use this argument as a justification of this law.

Please read my previous comment thoroughly.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Crap, Yandex ain't FSB? Looks like I'll have to rethink my idea of switching to them for NSA-proof email.

And yes, I am more worried about the NSA than the FSB: I don't live in Russia.

</comment><comment><USER19> I don't know why anyone would find this surprising, there is no balance of power in Russia, it is a dictatorship.

</comment><comment><USER20> I am a blogger in Russia and I don't see any problems with it. This is soft law that cannot be named 'draconian'.

<comment><USER21> [http://rupolitics.blogspot.com/2014/01/blog- post_17.html](http://rupolitics.blogspot.com/2014/01/blog-post_17.html)

This is your blog, correct? Then I understand why you wouldn't see any problem with this new law.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> I'll just leave this here - [http://www.institutionalinvestor.com/Article/1020662/How- Har...](http://www.institutionalinvestor.com/Article/1020662/How-Harvard-lost- Russia.html)

</comment><comment><USER23> "Draconian"? The us almost went this way a couple years ago with sopa.

<comment><USER9> SOPA is not even close to this law in terms of the damage to the liberties.

<comment><USER23> The purpose of sopa was to censor websites from Americans. Same law same damage.

<comment><USER24> That wasn't really the purpose of it, though the purpose may be just as bad, if not worse.</comment></comment></comment></comment>