Why Tough Teachers Get Good Results - <AUTHOR> http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB10001424052702304213904579095303368899132 <comment><USER2> The implications in this article that strict = effective are flat-out stupid. A teacher does not have to be hardass to encourage children to have high expectations and to be OK with failure.

I think a truly effective teacher, at all levels, will encourage curiosity and creativity in subject-matter. The best way to do this, in my view, is mutual respect.

The teacher's idolised in this article seem to operate through fear, which eventually fades into a semblance of respect over time.

Praise doesn't make you a bad learner, learning in environments that encourage low expectations and stock answers to every situations probably will. Strictness might correlate with high expectations, but it sure as hell isn't the best way of going about it.

That said, I agree with a number of points in the article (some are implied from the provided data):

\- Students with higher expectations perform closer to their potential (whether internal or external expectations, though other research suggests that internal motivation is far more important than external).

\- There is possibly a formative stage of development where children's expectations are adjusted to their environment. Being surrounded by high expectations will correlate with high expectations with the learners.

\- People who aren't afraid to fail will achieve more than those who are.

\- Students who are in environments that emphasise strict route learning perform better on tests and memory exercises (spelling bees) than those who don't.

None of that really goes beyond common sense.

I'd really love for education to move beyond success = memorisation and into success = adaptability and understanding. The world rewards autodidacts because a lot of us worked this out on our own.

<comment><USER3> > I think a truly effective teacher, at all levels, will encourage curiosity > and creativity in subject-matter

Yes. The question is how do you encourage curiosity and creativity in kids? No, we are not talking about adults. I see this humble request as something similar to what JFK asked when he said America should send a man to the moon. If you have the opportunity, read about the changes all levels of education in the United States had to go through to meet the demands of that "simple" challenge. When you're done come back let's compare to now

> The teacher's idolised in this article seem to operate through fear, which > eventually fades into a semblance of respect over time.

I'm Ghanaian. Educated in Ghana and lived all my life in Ghana. I've had several teachers like Mr. K along the way at almost all levels. I hated my primary and junior high school English Language teacher for "good" reasons. (Especially when he commanded, yes commanded, that English is the only language permitted to be spoken on campus.) I'd say worse things about him to my parents. But my dad liked him because his homework assignments kept me busy all the time. I knew I was a smart kid but the score I had for his tests said something else about me and I wasn't ready to accept that. No! So you know what, I worked harder and harder for what I knew was mine. Progress follows hardwork.

Now, every time I have the prized opportunity of shaking that man's hand I do so with a beaming face and a sort of pride that says to him: "I can't thank you enough for coming into my life." He's proud of his students and we're proud of him too. I speak and (perhaps) write good English because he piqued my interest and taught me to strive because I can always get better.

> None of that really goes beyond common sense

Beats my imagination that we always have to be reminded about commonsense. I was told economics is plain commonsense. But there's a Nobel prize for it, right? Maybe commonsense put itself too much in our face we linger for what's rare. And that "the solution is not the obvious solution" mantra (a.k.a bullshit) might not be true after all.

If you agree, can we just return to commonsense?

<comment><USER4> "I speak and (perhaps) write good English because he piqued my interest and taught me to strive because I can always get better."

You used "piqued" correctly, that already puts you beyond probably 80% of native-born English speakers in writing. ;)

<comment><USER5> woah. is this an actual statistic? any chance you have a reference for where you got that number? (genuine curiosity)

<comment><USER4> Sorry, no, that number was completely pulled out of my ass as a slightly more interesting way of saying that failed attempts to use that phrase are distressingly common. "Peaked my interest" and "peeked my interest" both get millions of hits on Google search. My impression is it's one of the most common English errors you see that doesn't involve pronoun trouble.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Back in high school, our journalism teacher was legendary for his scathing, but usually humorous criticism. And yet the Friday after we published the newspaper, critique day, was one of the most-eagerly anticipated days, as he would alternate between complementing people and then ripping others apart for not just things like punctuation and sentence structure _, but higher-level failures such as failing to interview key people and providing fair coverage. A lot of students cried and even though he 's still a teacher today, I can't imagine that the discipline and excellence he demanded would go over well today.

But it worked, the newspaper and yearbook were consistently the best in the country. It wasn't just a niche club, they were actually credit classes that filled up. It was actually _cool* to be on staff, despite how seriously it was taken (though thinking back, my main contribution was installing NES emulators on all the machines, so it couldn't have been _that_ serious)...

Edit: to clarify, I can't recall if he "ripped" into people for spelling errors/grammatical mistakes, though he'd point them out in a funny way and move on. But boy, if you did something like a professional breach...such as interview your same best friend for an article that you did last month, he might go off on it. Sloppy writing (burying the lede) was also jumped on, but in a constructive way. But that kind of constructive criticism...singling someone out in class...I didn't see it much out of high school.

<comment><USER7> I think there must be a psychological equivalent to the feeling that your kids' sports teams "play to their opponents."

I would not be surprised for research to demonstrate that children perform to the expectations given them, particularly when those expectations are clear and consistent. In fact, most people thrive in environments where they understand the rules, rewards, penalties, and where those structures are evenly and consistently enforced.

<comment><USER8> The environment you describe doesn't include "ripping people a new one" for spelling errors.

Correcting mistakes is one thing but insulting people making errors is probably harmful not helpful.

<comment><USER7> My strictest, and most beneficial, professor was so hard on my writing that, when I finally produced something up to his expectations, his feedback comment casually wondered whether I had plagiarized it.

It's cliche because there's some merit: he wasn't our friend, but had an incredibly positive effect on our abilities in the subject.

I've no strong opinion whether public shaming is good or bad with spelling errors. Maybe the hypersensitivity we've culturally adopted to the emotional state of children biases our perception of the impact of such things.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Jaime Escalante

[http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jaime_Escalante](http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jaime_Escalante)

"In 1987, 27 percent of all Mexican Americans who scored 3 or higher on the calculus AP exam were students at Garfield High"

[http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stand_and_Deliver](http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stand_and_Deliver)

<comment><USER10> Wow. I guess I'll have to watch the movie.

<comment><USER11> It was the go-to movie when we had a math substitute. Definitely recommend watching.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> It's impressive to me how she takes all this unrelated research and weaves it into "tough teachers" (tho that's possibly the fault of her editor).

It seems like the actually determining feature was that,

> "The core belief of these teachers was, 'Every student in my room is > underperforming based on their potential, and it's my job to do something > about it—and I can do something about it,'"

Punishing people for fucking up - traditionally what we think of as "tough", I think - is just punishing people for regressing to the mean: [http://crookedtimber.org/2010/09/28/mean-and- regressive/](http://crookedtimber.org/2010/09/28/mean-and-regressive/)

<comment><USER3> She's asking teachers to deliver "tough love" [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tough_love](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tough_love)

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> > What makes a teacher successful? ... Their No. 1 finding: "They were > strict," she says. "None of us expected that."

Teachers are not successful _because_ they are strict (it's not directly causative): they are successful because they are in command of the classroom.

You _can_ gain better command of a classroom through fear of abuse, yes, but this is not a method we should aspire to.

<comment><USER14> Strictness and abuse are completely unrelated. To imply that to require pupils obey rules is abuse is mind boggling.

<comment><USER13> The article is deliberately connecting the two (e.g. in the first paragraph), which is why I comment on it.

<comment><USER15> 7th paragraph:

> Now I'm not calling for abuse; I'd be the first to complain if a teacher > called my kids names

<comment><USER13> The fact that the 7th paragraph says "Now I'm not calling for..." implies that the connection was made in the first 6 paragraphs, yes.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Tough or not, Good teachers are good at the following:

\- Get the students _genuinely_ interested in listening to the teacher. This is critical. If a student has no interest in listening to you, they will most likely under-perform. On the other hand, a not so high IQ'ed student might over-perform if they actually become interested in listening and learning. Inspiration and motivation are the key.

\- Make each student feel that the teacher is talking to _them_ . Yes, sort of personalized. I remember a professor in college and every time he spoke, I could relate to it and really loved listening to him because it felt like he was only talking to me. Guess what, I excelled in that class.

\- Encourage students to talk, ask questions, debate whatever.Related to #1 point.

\- Actually take an interest in students if possible. For a small class size, this is not very difficult. Get to know your students as much as possible _outside_. Lot of students do bad in class not because they are stupid but because they might have other factors in their personal life impacting their performance. Find out if possible and figure out a way to work around that. Remember, everyone is different. Every student is different.

\- Last but not the least, be interested in teaching. Yes, did I need to say that ? If you really love to teach, you _will_ find out ways to get your students to do well.

If you are good at most of the above, one could care less if you are tough or soft or whatever.

<comment><USER17> > \- Get the students genuinely interested in listening to the teacher. This > is critical. If a student has no interest in listening to you, they will > most likely under-perform. On the other hand, a not so high IQ'ed student > might over-perform if they actually become interested in listening and > learning. Inspiration and motivation are the key.

This assumes that the secret to the student's success is the teacher, not the student him/herself. The article's view of the teacher's role is to push/inspire the student into putting in the required effort to learn things on their own (mostly by reading books, doing exercises and thinking independently). Students shouldn't get their knowledge from teachers, but from books (I think it's dangerous to establish teachers as gatekeepers of knowledge and as authority figures).

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> In my eyes this kind of vision, that old teaching style is better than new style, derives from old people more out of a sentimental desire than out of real results. Modern teaching methods are very likely much more successful than older one's, because in such kind of details humanity generally is able to improve well (can't provide statistics, though).

People are not completely wrong, though, when they say that the old paradigm was more efficiently executed than the new one. The reason might not be that it is more efficient in general though, but simply that we did it for thousands of years, while the new approach is only done for a few centuries. It's very likely that we go too far and need to add more discipline, but that is part of the stuff science can do and will do in a few centuries anyway.

The main reason I am writing this comment is that I believe the way to progress is forward not backwards. The idea can not be to see that a new paradigm applied for 3-5 generations of teachers is less efficient then the old one that was applied for hundreds or thousands of generations and then just go backwards. The idea should be to improve upon what we do now. Yes, teachers of now need to learn again to be more demanding and they should regain the power to do so with the necessary force. But explanation, praise and convincing need to stay in the game! At least for myself I can say that I learned much more in the last 2 years then in all 13 years of school, because learning on the internet works based on motivation, detailed explanations and rewarding, "gamey" technology and not on old people in front of the class who tell me what an idiot I am.

<comment><USER19> >The main reason I am writing this comment is that I believe the way to progress is forward not backwards.

I couldn't disagree more, forward only implies new, which isn't necessarily better.

The old paradigm of teaching, I find, was built on a lack of rules; evolving naturally from the one-on-one home upbringing, to apprenticeships and into the modern classroom. (Feel free to add jumps.)

Obviously it had flaws, as with a despotic ruler the students were at the mercy if his/her whims, but from what we're seeing today that hasn't been mitigated in the least. Despite serious efforts (teacher evaluations, PISA testing, etc.)

Instead, because teachers are being scrutinized down to the atom and the school system is monopolizing education, we have children who aren't taught to respect their teachers, and parents who aren't taking appropriate action to it because teaching is being brought out of their area of responsibility.

How can we hope to best human nature at teaching when human nature is something we've barely scratched the surface of? Is it really right to bet our children's future on a live experiment in human understanding? Yes, of course we have to attempt to improve, and obviously there is and always has been room for improvement, but the teachers weren't the enemy in that regard. They were generally doing what they could every day to make kids learn.

Now, instead of teachers, we have politicians trying to secure the upcoming election by ripping apart the status quo so they are able to use fancy sentences and faulty statistics in the media.

<comment><USER18> I love your straight disagreement and have to agree with most of your arguments. Your first line is not complete, though. You said forward doesn't imply better, which is true. Forward can even mean worse. But we already know that backwards never gets better, because it was already shitty the last time. We must make new experiences to find the path towards better.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> I had a teacher like this in high school for math. He taught algebra, geometry and calculus. He also ran the math team. ( He used to teach at Kenwood Academy in the Chicago public schools where I graduated in 1987 but now he is at New Trier. [http://www.newtrier.k12.il.us/person.aspx?id=4450](http://www.newtrier.k12.il.us/person.aspx?id=4450) ). He was a strict, no-nonsense, here is the homework, here is the test, here is your grade, "oh, you didn't understand that, too bad, we're moving on" kind of guy. Was he successful? That depends on how you define it. There is a lot of survivor ship bias. Most kids would have some exposure to him for algebra and geometry and so when calculus was an option kids would think "hmmm, do I want to go through this with this guy?" Those who said yes did well. ( I think students scored either 4 or 5 on the test, 3s were rare and lower was almost unheard of ) The thing is that many very bright, capable kids who were interested in math said no to calculus because of him. I certainly never felt like I learned more from him than any other teacher I had who tried to get everyone to learn the material.

Maybe a better comparison would be algebra and geometry since he taught those classes but other teachers did as well. Did his students perform any better than the students of other teachers? I would say not although I don't have the data to back it up. I had another teacher for algebra and then him for geometry and when I was in his geometry class with other students that had him for algebra I felt we were even. I never felt like the kids who had him for algebra were way ahead of me when it came to doing the algebra that came up in geometry.

<comment><USER3> One thing that's true of the Mr K's out there is that they define their success entirely in terms of the success of _all_ their students. While a help-you-get-creative teacher will allow you fail because you "want" to (who really does?), a teacher who delivers tough love would make sure you succeed. In this permissive era where parents allow their kids to while away time in front of televisions and computer doing basically nothing, it's only great if teachers could act _in loco parentis_ and instruct not only in science and math but also in discipline and self-control

<comment> vezzy-fnord _In this permissive era where parents allow their kids to while away time in front of televisions and computer doing basically nothing_

And also where they prohibit them from outside interactions and tightly monitor their social lives (or lack thereof).

Hardly seems permissive to me.

<comment><USER3> Especially true for Africans and African Americans. But that represents a smaller percentage. When majority of Snapchat users are early teenagers then parents are really monitoring outside interactions and social lives.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> One of the most concise descriptions of good teachers I've seen actually came from pg in his "rarely asked questions" list. [http://www.paulgraham.com/raq.html](http://www.paulgraham.com/raq.html)

(1) They had high standards. (2) They liked us. (3) They were interested in the subject.

I've been unable to express what makes a good teacher more concretely than that.

<comment><USER22> I think that's more valid to parenting than to teaching. For me to call one a teacher, one has to have:

(1) Something to teach me.

(2) Willingness to teach me.

(3) A serious attitude towards teaching once he decides on that.

<comment><USER21> You could almost argue that your 1, 2, and 3 are the same thing as my 3, 2, and 1.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> My 2 cents on great teachers _... I only had a few. Perhaps 2 in high school. Another 2 in undergrad. And perhaps 6 or 7 in grad school.

My observation on them is consistent with what the article conveyed.

1 - They knew exactly how much a top student was capable of, and kept the bar at the top of that range. No higher, and definitely no lower.

2 - They were passionate masters of the material. They were teachers, who covered computer science and biology. They were biologists and computer scientists who taught. (And economists, etc)

3 - They taught the same classes over and over. (Like the conductor) This was perhaps enabled by 2, and allowed them to know 1.

4 - They weren't afraid to give bad grades.

5 - They prepared you both for the exam (AP, final, or whatever) and to think deeply. It wasn't (Content OR Reasoning), it was (Content AND Reasoning).

Teachers like this are few and far between.

_ I will define great as "People who I thank later for the lasting impact of what I learned from them."

</comment><comment><USER24> Also very important to note: being strict works only when the teacher is actually competent. I've had high school teachers whose understanding of math was basically the textbook + epsilon. They were strict in order to keep the class under control, but they did not inspire me to do my best at mathematics.

<comment><USER25> This is extremely important. Incompetent + strict leads to an angry and defensive teacher who loses the respect of the class.

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> Sure criticizing a below average performance tends to correlate with a better performance next time, and praise of above average performances tends to correlate with the next performance being worse. That's because the comparisons are to an average.

 _And he found that all of them "deliberately picked unsentimental coaches who would challenge them and drive them to higher levels of performance."_

The article ignores selection bias from the get go. Participants in most high school activities [in the US] tend to be self-selected. In the string section of an orchestra, they are not only self selected but also thoroughly weeded out by the institution; there are no novices or dabblers.

<comment><USER27> >That's because the comparisons are to an average.

Also known as Regression toward the mean[1]. Talked about a bunch in Kahneman's Thinking, Fast and Slow.

[1]: [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Regression_toward_the_mean](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Regression_toward_the_mean)

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> I see these articles, and what troubles me is that they assert schools are a certain way without backing it up. People love to complain how spoiled kids are these days, but how much truth are in those claims? My education was certainly like the article's Mr. K, but my schools were chronically low performing.

Specifcally,

-Are schools really eschewing rote memorization?

-Are schools really less "strict" than before? Does a teacher really have less control of their classroom than today?

-Are helicopter parents really more of thing today than in the past?

-Are kids really not being taught they can fail a class?

I've yet to see any evidence cited for the above assertions, but I do hear them constantly being repeated.

<comment><USER29> >> Are schools really less "strict" than before? Does a teacher really have less control of their classroom than today?

In the USA, teachers used to be able to _hit_ students, about 30 years ago. Things have changed quite a bit.

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> > _how praise kills kids ' self-esteem_

That's dramatically over-simplifying. Praising kids for inherent qualities, or for achievements, can kill self-esteem/achievement. Praising kids for effort seems to work quite well.

</comment><comment><USER31> I find the arguments here are kind of missing the point. Replace the word teacher with the manager, and student with employee and how many of you would continue to agree with the premise of the article? How many of you would continue to agree with the article, if your manager was the one with "strict discipline" and "unyielding demmands"?

Also this article reveres rote learning in a way that I disagree with and I think many of you would disagree with in a context closer to home. How many of you would like to see CS 101 classes be dominated by memorization of semicolon placement in C++?

<comment><USER32>
      > How many of you would like to see CS 101 classes be
      > dominated by memorization of semicolon placement in C++?

Do they memorize semicolon placement or something more fundamental? Many speaking about rote learning forget that you _must_ learn the fundamentals.

</comment></comment><comment><USER33> Nice how he took Dweck's research and summarily dismissed one of its core results: that it's praising _intelligence_ that's counterproductive, and that praising _effort_ works. It's even in the quote, but apparently he didn't notice the word "intelligence".

Edit: coincidentally, this was just posted: [http://womeninastronomy.blogspot.com/2014/01/why-so-few- grow...](http://womeninastronomy.blogspot.com/2014/01/why-so-few-growth- mindset.html#)!

</comment><comment><USER34> Its "Why tough teachers get good SAT scores" not good education results.

<comment><USER15> The delightful irony of refuting an article that painstakingly makes the case that the conventional wisdom is wrong by curtly repeating the conventional wisdom.

SAT scores are mentioned exactly once in the article (well, twice, but in reference to the same finding), I have copy-pasted it for your convenience:

> When she applied the ["Grit Scale"] to incoming West Point cadets, she found > that those who scored higher were less likely to drop out of the school's > notoriously brutal summer boot camp known as "Beast Barracks." West Point's > own measure—an index that includes SAT scores, class rank, leadership and > physical aptitude—wasn't able to predict retention.

</comment></comment><comment><USER35> I haven't read the article but from personal experience I know this is not correct. Tough teachers without inclination and ability to better the student only makes them worse. As put in by one of the best teachers I had 'A teacher's job is to make student interested in the subject'. Whatever approach makes the student reach to this, would be right.

<comment><USER36> you are using two different "types of teachers" to judge his argument and construct your argument.

A teacher without inclination and ability to better the students would perform bad even with your approach, which is "whatever approach to make student interested".

I think to read the article in article's spirit, he is talking only about teachers interested and able to "teach". The article's definition of teacher is someone who can teach (make students better) and not someone who is appointed by school and is not interested in students.

Considering this, the question OP is trying to address is : among the various approaches which is the best approach to teach.

I would say, an article containing analysis on data is more informative to me than just making a statement, whatever approach is right.

</comment></comment><comment><USER37> It's probably my personal leanings from growing up in an immigrant family, but I think the article is spot-on. American educational philosophy is a total disaster. American teachers are simply not in control of their classrooms. Kids need structure, they need discipline, and they need order. It's a prerequisite for learning.

</comment><comment><USER38> I agree with some points in that article. I remember that overly nice teachers aiming primary for fun often taught us very little. It was pleasant, but we have been behind. However, I believe you can have high expectations without being jerk about it.

But:

0.) Practice is not the same as rote learning especially in math above third grade. Practice in math means that you have to solve many different exercises and occasionally having to come up with solutions by yourself. Practice in math means that you are occasionally faced with exercises you have not seen before and you have to logic-think your way out of that.

Rote learning is quite opposite of that. Drilling essentially the same exercises over and over is opposite of that too.

Incidentally, those international tests try to confront students with unfamiliar situations and measure how they perform there.

1.) Why is everybody so obsessed with multiplication tables? It is something 6-7 years old have to learn. I just doubt that whatever happened in the first grade is all that much important years later on when you are 16 years old (age those international tests are done).

Even if you had worst first grade teacher in the world that did not taught you how much 2+2 is, teacher in fourth grade was supposed to force you to learn that. How come it did not happened?

2.) Is it possible that while super tough teacher in the beginning could be great for talented committed students, but not really match for average one? Only student with huge commitment and talent would persist and all others would gave up.

I was such average kid in music, hated that and stopped playing as soon as I could. It is quite possible that if I would find at least something enjoyable on lessons, I would learn more.

Of course, it does not really matter whether I play music today. But, it would matter if I would learn to hate math or computers the same way as I hated music practice.

</comment><comment><USER39> "Rote learning, long discredited, is now recognized as one reason that children whose families come from India (where memorization is still prized) are creaming their peers in the National Spelling Bee Championship."

Clearly, What America Needs is spelling bee champions.

<comment><USER16> i checked and indian american kids have won 9 out of the last 13 championships including the last 6 consecutively. [http://www.spellingbee.com/champions-and- their-winning-words](http://www.spellingbee.com/champions-and-their-winning- words)

<comment><USER39> Full credit to them: I am not going to disparage anyone for doing something well. Yet when I think of work that the nation and world really need done, spelling recondite words doesn't make the list.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER40> The best teachers are able to adapt -- they have command in the classroom & students respect them. Each student CAN be treated differently depending on what they respond to. Some students might react best to a bit of tough-love, other will respond better to positive encouragement. The key is knowing your students well enough to know what makes them tick.

</comment><comment><USER41> This is a Malcolm Gladwell-esque article/book in the worst sense; a mismatch of famous studies (I believe I've read about all of them before; many have shown up in HN) that are used or abused to drive a narrative or idea of something that sounds plausible. Too long to comment on all the mistakes she's making.

</comment><comment><USER42> 1: A little pain is good for you.

The article states that "constructive, even painful feedback" is necessary. It conjures an idea of being hurtful to students. That's not the truth though. It means giving uncompromising honest feedback. When something is incorrect, it is stated as being incorrect, and a student can learn. That might be painful to the student's ego to hear that they were wrong, and is something we might tiptoe around now, but it's not being cruel, in fact it's being respectful to the student. It's not the pain that's good for you, it's the honest and constructive feedback, and if you feel some pain in hearing that, deal with it. But show me a study that shows that going around calling your students idiots who will never make anything of themselves will help them because it's painful and I will be surprised. In response, pain isn't good for you, honest evaluation is good for you, and you might feel pain when you hear it.

2\. Drill, baby drill. The article mentions drills, but the real takeaway from the article is memorization. I'm in favor of memorization in terms of learning, because it allows you to conjure up simple methods without having to go through a process. When I want to know what 8 _7 is, I know it 's 56, I don't have to count on my fingers. When I need to think about what 82_70 is, I know it's 5740 because I know 8 _7 and 7_ 2 off the top of my head. That said, drills in school aren't necessarily the most effective way to memorize something. Many memory training things use very different methods, and we don't even try to teach our children with those methods. If we recognize that it's commitment to memory that is important and not drills, we could be more effective.

3\. Failure is an option. This I absolutely agree with. But part of the problem we have is that we have institutionalized the fear of failure. You say that failure is a good thing, but the article pushes for antiquated systems where a failure can have all sorts of permanent social ramifications. From primary school where a student gets held back, to secondary school where grades determine your choice of post-secondary education, to university where a poor GPA can ruin your options. We rarely get an opportunity to learn from these mistakes without judgment. If a teacher allowed you to retake a test until you understood the material, that would allow failure to be an option, but we concern ourselves with the logistical problems of having students at different points in the curriculum. So we are afraid that if we fail we will not keep up, and once we stop keeping up, there's little point in trying any more. The class marches on, and even if we learn the things we failed the first time around, that test is already taken.

4\. Strict vs. nice is again honest vs. dishonest. A strict teacher says "Do this assignment by this date and I will grade it for you." Then they accept the assignment on that date and grade it. A student who is late completing the assignment asks the strict teacher to submit it late, and the strict teacher says no. The "nice" teacher will say yes. The strict teacher was honest and forthright in their request. The nice teacher wasn't. When you're dealing with someone who honors their word, it's easy to know what is expected, and it's easy to respect them. When you're dealing with the nice teacher, you're a bit uncomfortable, why did you do the assignment on time when Jimmy handed his in late and didn't have anything happen? Then next time when you have an assignment due, you aren't sure if you have given your best work, (and you're afraid of failure), but you think maybe the nice teacher will let you hand it in late. You wait to finish it until it's late, and then you're uncertain whether the teacher will still accept it, and eventually it just goes unsubmitted altogether. With the strict teacher, you know they will only accept it tomorrow, so you do what you can. Or you don't. Either way, you know the consequences.

But what that gets twisted into is an idea that a strict teacher has to be dishonest, and tell the students they are worse than they are. That they have to hurt them to make them feel better. Again, I don't think it's the hurt that helps, but the honesty and integrity.

The article gives an anecdote about coddling a child in first and second grade vs. a third grade teacher that tells them to get to work. This isn't really a matter of strictness the way the rest of the point is. It also has not a lot to do with learning in the traditional sense, but more of learning in a social sense. The big takeaway in this is still integrity. When you make a reasonable request to the class, and a child in the class has an issue with it, do you modify that request? You you make things lighter for them. If you do, you're undermining your own integrity. You're saying "What I asked you to do wasn't important, so if you have a problem with it, you can make me change it." It's hard to hit a moving target like that.

5\. Creativity can be learned. Creativity is only as useful as the student's ability to express it. A problem with this model is that an excellent student doesn't have an opportunity to demonstrate any special talent. Neither do they have much ability to do so in the current system. Does that mean that it's better to regress to a point of rapping knuckles with yardsticks and ineffective drills?

6\. Grit trumps talent. "Grit" is a person's ability to continue to work consistently. When a person gives up on something, it's often because attempting to continue working on it causes unbearable stress, or there's an absolute indifference to it. The stress is going to come from a fear of judgment from failure. Something is hard, that means we're recognizing that we might make a mistake, that we don't understand it fully and if we ask for help or show something incorrectly we will be ridiculed. This means we barely dip our toes into things we struggle with, and don't get interested. How will moving to a culture of fear and pain teach students to be optimistic?

7\. Praise makes you weak. Yes, praise in general is pretty pointless. It's vapid and hurtful, because it makes students seek more praise. Instead, if a student is left alone, they're going to feel intrinsic motivation from the actual learning. There's an element of overjustification effect that takes place.

That said, the absence of praise doesn't mean that a culture of insults and diminuation should take its place

8\. Stress makes us strong Not really. I just strictly disagree with that. Dealing with stress makes you strong as you learn to deal with it. Being under stress is harmful. Being put into a stressful class will not make you strong because you can't do anything about it. Sort of the difference between a good exercise regimen where you damage your muscles and then let them heal, and a situation where you're constantly overstressing them and never have an opportunity to have a break. One will build strength, the other can cause long-term damage.

The Mr. K in the article is finally described as cold, unyielding and kind of scary. These are not bad qualities. Being Cold just means he's not likely to yield to an emotional request, unyielding indicates he's going to stand by his word. Like I mentioned earlier, honesty and integrity is a good thing, and he embodies these characteristics. Being scary is a bit of a wild card, it means he's causing anxiety in the students, that's probably not great for performance, but it probably leads them to not question his requests, which just leads to a stronger understanding of his expectation.

The Mr. K character in the story doesn't embody the sort of things that the individual points seem to.

You can be a kind and fair teacher, you don't have to lose your temper, you don't have to yell, you don't have to tell your students their work is terrible when it's average. You don't have to embarrass them in front of their peers.

But you will be more effective if you are honest, trustworthy, and challenge your students to excel. If you structure your class so that the student is graded based on how well they know the subject rather than how few times they have made mistakes. If you provide the resources that a student needs to improve themselves when they've fallen behind the pack, and if you provide the resources that a student needs when they've excelled beyond the pack.

</comment><comment> guard-of-terra The better question is "why classical music teaching gravitates to be a concentration camp".

Because come on, no other areas see this. Math it hard too, but do math teachers scream on promising students? They usually don't.

Maybe sports are another exception.

</comment><comment><USER43> The article makes several points, each backed up by maybe one piece of research or anecdote vaguely related to the point.

It's sad how irresponsible journalists like this make a greater impact on public debate with flimsy articles like these.

</comment><comment><USER44> "Sure, our teacher was tough - but look at how many students came back to his funeral!"

Of course the ones that showed up for the concert liked him - the ones that wanted to piss on his grave were, I'd guess, off doing _that_. Confirmation bias much, WSJ?

<comment><USER45> Of course the students that showed up for the concert liked him. But the point is, that's how many students liked him enough to come to his funeral.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> _" a teacher who basically tortured us through adolescence"_

This "torture" idea came up in my mind just reading the title. Having a professor that is being harsh only objectively may be good in a limited sense, but in my experience this is just rare (and I had "the joy" of being educated by a good lot of harsh teachers). Being harsh objectively is the only kind that is supposedly beneficial, and it is "supposedly" because its efficiency is just very dependent on the subject's susceptibility. This is rare because it requires a lot of discipline on the teacher's part. Most often than not, around an harsh attitude the reason is pushed aside to make room for ever- dominating emotive behavior. On the teacher's side this leads to an unconstrained way of pulling the strings, and on the pupil's side - to cede and degenerate into fear, close-mindedness, and self disrespect, among many others. Don't get me wrong, the primary results will be there. The teaching's goal will be reached, if we're to ignore the costs (and we often do). I just guess the difficulty of summing it all up or realistically considering the entire thing on its true value as a parent or policy-maker if one hasn't been subjected to it and its effects.

 _" My old teacher Mr. K seldom praised us. His highest compliment was «not bad.» It turns out he was onto something." "the belief, the faith really, in students' ability to do better."_

That of course is valid only if the amount of disparage in pupil's overall social interaction is minor, otherwise there wouldn't be enough confidence to build up in the first place. The writer praises her teacher for his results and concludes that the means must have been justified. I don't. What I see is the most rudimentary automatic negative-reaction based system. Any deviation from the expected parameters causes a literally negative reaction from the ruler that enforces the entire process. A most rudimentary form of teaching. It doesn't need any calibration to student's profile, it doesn't require much refinement of pedagogics as the task of getting back (somehow) in the normal parameters falls mostly on the student, and it definitely relieves the teacher of any kind of stress for the locus of control that is the pupil performance not being in his direct reach. (Actually, a harsh teacher gets rid of his stress in the lessons.) As a researched material this article presents itself, I'm disappointed of the conclusion. I expected efficiency without getting back to the old and brute ways.

The state of the education may not be rosy, but getting into "harsh" seems a bit extreme to me. Instead of "harsh" I would call for "serious". You only need teachers to show you the way and the limits. It's you and only you that should be harsh on yourself, no one else.</comment>


Ask HN: Back-testing system? - <AUTHOR>

I am working on a back-testing system as part of a research project for my senior thesis. Would anyone be interested in seeing the system put on the web for everyone to use? Do you think it could be built into a viable online business? <comment><USER2> Wow - I don't think I'd ever heard of "back-testing" before. Google'd it - interesting...

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Backtesting>

</comment><comment><USER3> yes, i'd be interested in seeing it put on the web for use. for casual observers, this is interesting.

no, i don't think it could be built into a viable online business. most people who have backtesting needs have access to the necessary data via existing subscription services.

unless a new service provides "cleaner" data and more breadth than existing services, it'd be hard to be competitive.

the consumers in this market are relatively insensitive to price, so that wouldn't be seen as a significant advantage either.</comment>


Using Deep Learning to Create Professional-Level Photographs - <AUTHOR> https://research.googleblog.com/2017/07/using-deep-learning-to-create.html <comment><AUTHOR> For those who think it's just another lame DL based instagram filter...

The method proposed in the paper([https://arxiv.org/abs/1707.03491](https://arxiv.org/abs/1707.03491)) is mimicing a photographer's work: From taking the picture(image composition) to post-processing(traditional filter like HDR, Saturation. But also GAN powered local brightness editing).In the end it also picks the best photos(Aesthetic ranking)

Selected comments from professional photographers at the end of paper is very informative. There's also a showcase of model created photos in [http://google.github.io/creatism](http://google.github.io/creatism)

[Disclaimer: I'm the second author of the paper]

<comment><USER2> Did you have anyone say "Professional photographers don't apply HDR filters to single photos"?

<comment><USER3> Why would they say that? You can't have HDR with a single exposure.

I think you're trying to say professional photographers don't apply tone mapping to single exposures, but that is false. There are times when it's not 'technically proper' to apply tone mapping to a single exposure, but it makes for a better picture.

Really it sounds like you're trying to make a snarky comment referencing how some professional photographers complain about novices over using HDR on flickr. But who cares. You can have a professional quality photograph that uses what some pros think is incorrect tone mapping. Just like how you can have a novice hack together a working professional-level product that many professional engineers think is trash. If it works and meets the criteria, who cares.

<comment><USER4> > You can't have HDR with a single exposure

14 stops of dynamic range in a single shot (RAW on a modern DSLR) counts in my book.

<comment><USER5> HDR worthy of the name seems to require multiple levels of light gathering, to me. Either exposure time or aperture needs to vary. If you don't, you either blow out on bright light, or you have too much noise in dim areas. You might not notice if the scene is well and reasonably evenly lit though.

<comment><USER4> You never vary aperture when taking bracketed exposures to merge to HDR. The depth of field would vary from exposure to exposure, making things inconsistent when you merge them. It's shutter speed you vary.

My point is that with 2005-era DSLRs, I had to use HDR techniques (or strobes) to, say, correctly expose a room and the environment out a window. Shooting into the sun, I'd have to use HDR, polarizers, and/or ND grads to expose both the sky and the foreground. With my D750? I've got 4 stops more dynamic range and the situations where I need HDR have almost all gone away. I can get the same thing from a single RAW exposure.

These days, HDR only seems necessary if you want to have ridiculous tone mapping where you pull in your global highlights to be within a stop or two of your global shadows and still keep the noise levels down.

<comment><USER6> I still find a need to bracket occasionally.

But to your point... it seems that "HDR" means two different things these days.

1\. A tool to expand the dynamic range.

2\. A style of tone mapping.

These two things frequently coincide, but there's no reason for #1 to have crazy surreal tones, and #2 frequently comes from a single exposure.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> When a topic like self-driving vehicles comes up, the Hacker News crowd is mainly in favor: "Creative destruction! Disruption! Go go gadget robots!" Not surprising. How many Hacker News readers drive trucks or taxis for a living? How many regard commuting as an enjoyable hobby?

Photography, on the other hand, is a very common hobby in the tech community. And the comments here seem to reflect that this effort strikes a little close to home: "Those pictures are lousy, if you find them appealing you have no taste! Just because they're 'professional' doesn't mean they're good! Machines can't replace human judgment, they have no soul! I bet that machine had a lot of human help!"

Tech people may tell you great stories about meritocracy and reason, but in the end we are just emotional monkeys. Like the rest of humanity.

Those of us who can accept this may at least aspire to be wise monkeys.

<comment><USER8> Ha, I'm one of those techies you're talking about. Spent an embarrassing amount on camera gear, and I'm always "that guy" with the ridiculous rig at someone's casual party.

But you know what? I love this shit. I like photography for the good photos, not because I'm building my self esteem on top of it. I want to capture the scene or the moment in a way that, IMO, does it justice. If this technology makes that easier, and gives it to more people - great. Progress.

And what I really love is how it subtracts a huge amount from the price of entry. It's like when software synths came out and made it possible to make music without $10k+ worth of MIDI hardware. What followed? An explosion of creativity which I've been luxuriating in ever since. Get the ability to create beautiful images in as many hands as possible, says I. For me, at least, "more beautiful images in the world" was the whole idea.

<comment><USER9> Honestly, this "creative destruction" has already to some extent entered the photography field. You can take very capable, often professional looking photographs for the vast majority of circumstances with just your phone.

There are still many situations where more professional expertise is required (portrait photography is probably one of the best examples, knowledge of proper lighting is still required for best results). But I've gotten the impression that overall demand for photographers -- and pay -- is slower these days, largely due to technological advances. (See articles like this: [http://www.nytimes.com/2010/03/30/business/media/30photogs.h...](http://www.nytimes.com/2010/03/30/business/media/30photogs.html))

In a way, this is fine though -- as you say, it gives power to more people, which is great.

Per the parent post's point, to be honest, I perceived much of the criticism to be more that they really couldn't think of a good way to use it in their own hobby level work. I personally can't think of a good use case. On the other hand, the most useful application I can think of for this is more in reverse: social media companies with huge image libraries their users have graciously "donated" to them, could use this AI algorithm or something similar to pick, or construct, the most "professional" looking image of anything they can identify from their vast library, and sell it or license it to media / content publishers for a relatively low cost. Such could be but one more competitor to any professional landscape / scenery photographers out there.

<comment><USER6> It's true that a phone today an produce a photo that's technically pretty good. I've got a friend who's had shows of iPhone photos, and won numerous awards with them.

This doesn't mean that someone armed with their phone will take good photos. There's still the matter of composition, as well as capturing the "the decisive moment"[1].

The tool described in the OP provides an automated means of finding some worthwhile composition within a library of images, thus providing an aid to someone less skilled at composition - although it's not going to produce something from nothing. If the photographer failed to point the camera in the direction of the best photo, then they've failed.

But I can't see any way that automated tools can, after the fact, help us to capture that decisive moment.

[1] [http://truecenterpublishing.com/photopsy/decisive_moment.htm](http://truecenterpublishing.com/photopsy/decisive_moment.htm)

<comment><USER10> Would frame extracted from a 120 fps video might help for this. If it's possible to learn composition, I think that selection of the decisive moment is reachable.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Talking as a semi-pro (I've put in some money into cameras and lenses and spent a good bit of time on photo editing), this is a bit underwhelming. For landscapes (which this seemed to focus on), I've found that opening up the Windows photo editing programs and clicking 'enchance' or Gimp and clicking some equivalent already gets you most of the way there in terms editing for aesthetic effect. The most tricky bit is deciding on the artistic merit of a particular crop or shot, and as indicated by the difference between the model's and photographer's opinion at the end of the paper, the model is not that great at it. Still, pretty cool that they did that analysis.

<comment><USER12> The other huge thing that is lacking is content. Image processing is only 10% of good photography. The rest is about conveying an idea to your audience. It can be humor, documenting an event, making people aware about societal problems, taking people to somewhere they would normally not be able to access, or seeing the world in a way that most people don't see.

Truly good photographers don't just produce beautiful photos; they produce _meaningful_ photos.

The tech is great but I'm not a fan of the title of the article ;)

<comment><USER13> That depends on what kind of photography it is.

Photojournalism is almost always about the story and what the picture evokes. It could be a simple pic of a boy covered in dust, but made evocative because the dust is from a bomb explosion that killed his father and not from playing in the park.

But in case of a lot of landscape photography, the content is intrinsic to the picture itself—the photo does not get its value from anything external to it. Likewise for portraits.

<comment><USER12> Not sure I agree with that. There's good landscape/portrait photography, and there's really great landscape/portrait photography.

Great landscape photography takes you to an interesting location or interesting angle. A post-processing algorithm cannot _take you_ somewhere interesting.

Good landscape photography makes you say, "Wow, that's beautiful!"

Great landscape photography makes you say, "Holy crap, what is that? Where is that?"

[https://500px.com/photo/4505244/rainbow-glass-by-junya- haseg...](https://500px.com/photo/4505244/rainbow-glass-by-junya-hasegawa)

[https://1x.com/photo/41156/portfolio/60972](https://1x.com/photo/41156/portfolio/60972)

[https://500px.com/photo/103746295/the-white-silence-by- danie...](https://500px.com/photo/103746295/the-white-silence-by-daniel- kordan)

[http://ngm.nationalgeographic.com/2008/08/photo- contest/stei...](http://ngm.nationalgeographic.com/2008/08/photo- contest/steinmetz-text)

[http://hongwrong.com/verical-horizon-hk/](http://hongwrong.com/verical- horizon-hk/)

[https://500px.com/photo/103960697/one-thousand-and-one- night...](https://500px.com/photo/103960697/one-thousand-and-one-nights- by-%C4%B0lhan-eroglu)

[https://500px.com/photo/5211062/harvest-by-rob- kruyt](https://500px.com/photo/5211062/harvest-by-rob-kruyt)

<comment><USER14> I significantly prefer the article's photos to those.

Buildings are boring as is snow, photo of person or animal / shadows not landscape, and over edited. Now, I suspect as someone that's looking at a lot of photos those pinged some novelty feeling in you, but that does not mean they are objectively good.

By comparison the article's photos (and those linked: [http://google.github.io/creatism](http://google.github.io/creatism)) generally evoked that I wish I was there feeling.

<comment><USER15> I see what you mean, though I do like buildings. (But I always had a soft spot for Hong Kong.)

I predict a similar divide will crop up in computer generated music: very soon normal people will prefer their pleasant sounds, even while more discerning (semi-) pros will deride their lack of artistic merit for a lot longer.

Computer generated art will shine as Gebrauchskunst first---eg get a 'professional level' soundtrack and video editing for your youtube video shot on a phone.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Automatically selecting what portion to crop is impressive, but just slamming the saturation level to maximum and applying an HDR filter is the sign of "professional" photography rather than good photography.

<comment><USER17> This is mentioned on page 6. They agree it's limitation of the current tuning method. [https://arxiv.org/abs/1707.03491](https://arxiv.org/abs/1707.03491)

</comment></comment><comment> d-sc As someone who lives in a relatively rural area with similar geography to much of the mountains and forests in these pictures I have noticed previously how professional pictures of these areas have a similar feeling of over saturating the emotion.

It's interesting to see algorithms catching up to being able to replicate this. However when you mention these kind of abilities to photographers, they get defensive, almost like you are threatening their identity by saying a computer can do it.

<comment><USER18> > they get defensive, almost like you are threatening their identity by saying > a computer can do it.

It's a fairly common reaction from most people. Hayao Miyazaki, director of Spirited Away, got very upset after being shown a demo of AI doing animation:

[https://qz.com/859454/the-director-of-spirited-away-says- ani...](https://qz.com/859454/the-director-of-spirited-away-says-animation- made-by-artificial-intelligence-is-an-insult-to-life-itself/)

<comment><USER17> I feel like that misses a lot of the context of the video. It was animating mutilated bodies in a prototype for a horror game. It's no wonder it was upsetting.

<comment><USER19> At the end of the video he seems to show the other side - "I feel like we are nearing the end of times. We humans are losing faith in ourselves."

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> It is an interesting project and shows significant accomplishment. I'm not sold on the idea of "professional level" except in so far as people getting paid to make images. I am not sold because the little details of the images don't really hold up to close scrutiny (and I don't mean pixel peeping).

1\. The diagonal lines in the clouds and the bright tree trunk at the extreme right of the first image are distractions that don't support the general aesthetic.

2\. The bright linear object impinging on the right edge of the cow image and the bright patch of the partial face of the mountain on the extreme left. Probably the gravel at the left too since it does not really support the central theme.

3\. The big black lump that obscures the 'corner' where the midground mountain meets the ground plane in the house image.

4\. The minimal snow on the peaks in the snow capped mountain image is more documenting a crime scene than creating interest. I mean technically, yes there is snow and the claim that there was snow would probably stand up in a court of law, but it's not very interesting snow.

For me, it's the attention to detail that separates better than average snapshots from professional art. Or to put it another way, these are not the grade of images that a professional photographer would put in their portfolio. Even if they would get lots of likes on Facebook.

Again, it's an interesting project and a significant accomplishment. I just don't think the criteria by which images are being judged professional are adequate.

<comment><USER21> But the emphasis was on the processing, not the content of the images themselves, other than cropping. I don't think the intention at this point was to get into adding / removing actual physical elements from the scene.

Edit: I guess it depends if there were other images in their corpus that didn't have any flaws, but who's to know?

<comment><USER20> With the exception of the weakly snow capped mountains (part of photography is showing up at the right time) different crops would have eliminated the conditions I described. But to unpack my critique a bit further, an unwillingness to make compromises like the weakly snowcapped mountains and paying the price of an extra week in the field waiting on foul weather is part of how professional photographers get professional shots...and part of how the maintain their professional reputation is not publishing shots that don't live up to a high standard.

Or to put it another way, compare the images in the blog post to Carter Gowl's [http://www.gowlphoto.com](http://www.gowlphoto.com). Gowl produces a couple of images a year and those are good enough to charge a couple of hundred dollars per print. Even if the images in the blog post were appropriately high resolution, I don't see them commanding a similar price. YMMV.

<comment><USER22> The blog post itself actually confirms what you are saying. They say they asked professional photographers to rate their creations. 40% of their creations were rated at semi-pro or pro level. Looking at their plot only very few of them got a solid 4.0 (professional rating). So, the headline is kind of misleading.

<comment><USER20> Out of curiosity, I looked at the linked photos of Jasper National Park (one of the locations) on Google maps. They make an interesting point of comparison, [https://www.google.com/search?q=jasper+national+park](https://www.google.com/search?q=jasper+national+park)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> I don't know why but the "professional" label on this really irritates me. I'm curious to know how the images that got graded on their "professional" scale were selected for inclusion in the sample. Surely by a human who judged them to be the best of many? I'd love to see the duds.

<comment><USER17> They use images with high aesthetic ratings from the AVA dataset (Aesthetic Visual Analysis). Scoring is described in section 5 in the article.

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> Very impressed by the results.

I hope that one day our driverless cars will alert us when there is a pretty view (or a rainbow) so we take a moment to look up from our phones. Every route can be a scenic route if you have an artistic eye.

<comment><USER25> our driverless cars will just take a photo of the pretty view and notify us that it's ready to view on our phone.

<comment><USER26> Problably just tell us how many likes the trip received on the internet.

<comment><USER27> Other algorithms could detect whether a picture your friend posted on their trip is the sort of thing you would like and automatically like it for you.

<comment><USER28> [http://supersadtruelovestory.com](http://supersadtruelovestory.com)

Interesting book that centers around some of these themes. Worth a read if you haven't yet.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> Interesting how hi-res the photos of a small section of Google Street Car photo can be compared to what users see online; here's an example from the linked article:

[https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-6bVWUgA8NEI/WWe1uoW8ayI/AAAAAAAAB...](https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-6bVWUgA8NEI/WWe1uoW8ayI/AAAAAAAAB4Q/PeoM8jc_xMwYvNYc5HJAnrJi0GrrjvKMQCEwYBhgL/s1600/image7.png)

<comment><USER30> You can see the hi-res version in street view if you zoom in.

[http://i.imgur.com/4raWafu.jpg](http://i.imgur.com/4raWafu.jpg)

<comment><USER29> Maybe I wasn't not clear enough, my point was the hi-res photos used in the research appear to be of higher resolution than what the public version of Google Street Car zoom offers.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> When a photographer takes or edits a picture, she doesn't need to predict or simulate her own reaction. There is no model or training necessary, because the real outcome is so easily accessible. However, she is only one person, and perhaps can't proxy well for a larger group.

The model has the reverse situation, of course: it cannot perfectly guess the emotional response for any one person, but it has access to a larger assortment of data.

In addition, in different contexts it may be easier/cheaper to place a machine vs. a human in a certain locale to get a picture.

If my theorizing makes any sense, it suggests that this technology would be useful in contexts where: the locale is hard to reach and the topic is likely to evoke a wide variety of emotional responses.

<comment><USER17> A photographer does have to predict their reaction. I'm not a pro but I take dozens of photos before one I really like. I've heard pros take hundreds or thousands for each one that they let other people see. And it makes sense to automate cases like this where you have 40,000 photos that you want to edit.

</comment></comment><comment><USER32> Retouching is another field to play with - I am experimenting with CNN/GANs to clone styles of retouchers I like. If you are a photographer, you know that most studio photos look very bland and retouching is what makes them pop; for that everyone has a different bag of tricks. If you use plugins like Portraiture or do basic manual frequency separation followed by curves and dodge/burn adjustments, you leave some imprint of your taste. This can be cloned using CNN/GANs pretty well; the main issue is to prevent spills of retouched area to areas you want to stay unaffected.

</comment><comment><USER33> "Someday this technique might even help you to take better photos in the real world."

So what? Maybe I missed it, but what are some potentially meaningful applications of this technology? What motivated this to begin with? Or are these questions that we even bother asking anymore?

I remember the first time someone showed me the Snapchat app -- it would make them look like a cartoon dog, or all these other real-time overlays. I thought, 'jesus, so glad we're all getting advanced computer science degrees so we can work on utterly useless shit like this...'

<comment><USER34> Well I don't really get Instagram or Snapchat either, _but_ they created something that has made tens of millions of people happy, and turned a thousand other people into millionaires (or billionaires!) basically overnight. By that measure, what have you or I ever done...?

I think this research is spot on, and can't wait to have it on my phone. And I love taking photos the old fashioned way, too.

</comment></comment><comment><USER35> this is amazing, but 'professional photographers' aren't really the best arbiters of what a 'good' photograph is. Also, training on national parks binds the results to a naturally bland subject, no pun intended. While an amazing achievement, nothing shown here demonstrates ability beyond a photographer's assistant/digital tech adjusting settings to a client's tastes in Capture One Pro. Jon Rafman's 9 Eyes project comes to mind as something that produced interesting photographs, as does the idea to find a more rigorous panel of 'experts' (e.g. MoMA), or training the model on streets/different locations than national parks.

</comment><comment><USER36> Related: Arsenal ([https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/2092430307/arsenal- the-...](https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/2092430307/arsenal-the- intelligent-camera-assistant-0/description)) is trying to build a hardware camera attachment that uses ML to find the perfect levels for your photo in realtime.

</comment><comment><USER37> This is cool but I really don't get why one could call this actually creating "Professional-Level" photographs. It's more like a very good auto-retouch. There's still the matter of someone actually being there, realizing it is a beautiful place, and dragging a large camera with them and waiting for the right light.

<comment><USER19> Not quite. As the article says, the algorithm did the "realizing it is a beautiful place" and Google Streetview did that "dragging a large camera".

</comment></comment><comment><USER38> I think some of these results are really lovely, the one at Interlaken is a perfect travel photo. Would be interesting to see more types of work this could apply to.

Saw a few people talking about retouching and studio work - I do a lot of studio shoots and retouching on my own, and would be happy to help or participate in projects. Feel free to reach out.

</comment><comment><USER39> The first thought after going through all these photos was: incredibly stilted. It's amazingly impressive, but the human photographer will always be able to capture the subtleties that AI will miss. But very cool nonetheless

</comment><comment><USER40> Instead of augmented reality I would call this "distorted reality". People will prefer to visit places with Street View than being there. Real reality is uglier

</comment><comment><USER41> Up to what point can the output be controlled? Can complex conditions be created? e.g. a lake with a mountain background during the evening

</comment><comment><USER42> Is deep learning comparable to perceptual exposure?

</comment><comment><USER43> In the future maybe we can just hook up a drone to this and have it fly around taking nice pictures.

</comment><comment><USER44> I find the colors in the results images consistently worse than in the original images.

</comment><comment><USER45> ML = Wisdom of Crowds

</comment><comment><USER46> Would be interesting to see how well you could train this kind of thing off of a large catalog of lightroom edit data. to then mimic a specific editors style.

</comment><comment><USER47> _For example, whether a photograph is beautiful is measured by its aesthetic value, which is a highly subjective concept._

Oh really.

</comment><comment><USER48> [deleted]

<comment><USER49> You're implying that the source photo was taken by a professional photographer, but these are all clearly sourced from Google Maps. There was no pre-existing framing because it is a 360 photo, and the exposure is probably automatically set by the camera. I doubt the people hiking trails with a camera backpack really spend much time configuring their gear- because it would take too much time.

</comment></comment><comment><USER50> wow automation isn't leaving any fields untouched

</comment><comment><USER51> Lately, there has been lots of talk of deep learning applied to create tools which can generate requirements – designs – software code – create builds – test builds as well help with deploying builds to various environments. I'm excited for the future developments capable with ML.

</comment><comment><USER52> If they're doing dodging/burning, then they could really use the processing on raw files instead of jpegs. The dynamic range is obviously limited when dodging/burning jpegs, as you can see from the flat clouds and blown highlights on the cows.

</comment><comment><USER53> Great, not all we need is specialized machine learning inference accelerators in our mobile phones. I wonder if Google has even considered making a mobile TPU for its future Pixel phones.

<comment><USER54> Qualcomm added recently some improvements for running deep learnning in mobile, and google is also working in mobile nets that use less operations. I don't think you will see TPUs or something similar in mobile soon, but there are other small improvements that are being done now.

Unless someone can put a huge battery in a small mobile, forget about running big (and good) networks in mobile.

</comment></comment><comment><USER55> From the article the caption of the first picture was interesting: "A professional(?) photograph of Jasper National Park, Canada." Is that the open scene from The Shining? If so I wonder why the question mark, is Stanley Kubrick not a professional photographer?

<comment><USER56> Keep reading, it's from Street View!</comment></comment>


Pixelfed – Federated Image Sharing - <AUTHOR> https://pixelfed.org/ <comment><USER2> This is how we probably should proceed with decentralization.

The problem that I see currently with this approach is not many are willing to host there own servers. Even people who are fairly tech savy won't host any server because of the costs involved. I am not going to host a server unless I get benefit out of it or its dirt cheap to host them.

The solution I think is instead of hosting it on cloud we host it at home. This way we have control over the cost. Again, if I can choose the kind of content that I am hosting then that would be great. I like to save images on certain topics. I don't mind serving them from my home since I already have unlimited data connection. Running a server on Raspberry PI would be ideal. There are already millions of PIs out there and they can be used for decentralization of apps. In the end, we might even be able to convince general population to host there own content. We will have to provide them tools and utilities to make hosting as easy as possible.

The major problem I think is NAT which is preventing direct hosting of content from home. Solve that and you most probably have solved decentralization.

<comment><USER3> > The major problem I think is NAT

NAT is not a problem. All you have to do is configure port forwarding on your router correctly. Dynamic IP assignment is a bit more of a problem, but it can be overcome by using dynamic DNS services. All of this is fairly trivial.

> I don't mind serving them from my home

I do. And I think it goes for a lot of people. My connection is residential, so somewhere in the ToS it says that I cannot run public servers off of it. Besides, there is no guaranteed uptime, I would need to deal with things like backups, hardware replacements and whatever other maintenance myself. Whereas with a service like Instagram, I just take pictures on my phone and upload. There is no overhead, my stuff is always available and I don't have to worry about backups.

<comment><USER4> > All you have to do is configure port forwarding on your router correctly. > Dynamic IP assignment is a bit more of a problem, but it can be overcome by > using dynamic DNS services.

But most people don't even know what a 'port' is, let alone do they know that their router may let them change some settings.

> there is no guaranteed uptime, I would need to deal with things like backups

Are these important criteria for a federated system?

> my stuff is always available

Until it's not because the centralized provider went out of business/censored you/was acquired/killed the product for strategic reasons

EDIT: typo

<comment><USER3> > Are these important criteria for a federated system?

As long as I am storing data on my node and/or use my node to access the system, yes, it is. Also, the comment I was replying to just said "The solution I think is instead of hosting it on cloud we host it at home" and suggested running a server on a Raspberry Pi. Nothing about federation.

> Until it's not because the centralized provider went out of > business/censored you/was acquired...

What do you think is more likely, that Instagram goes out of business or that a Raspberry Pi sitting under my bed dies and takes my photos with it?

<comment><USER4> You are correct, I was assuming federation in a decentralized system. If it's an isolated node in your home, it looks a lot different, and I agree with your administration pain points.

> What do you think is more likely, that Instagram goes out of business or > that a Raspberry Pi sitting under my bed dies and takes my photos with it?

Of course your RPI is more likely to die than Instagram going out of business. But with Instagram, the risk is more around them booting/censoring/sharing your stuff.

Does Google Picassa still exist?

<comment><USER3> No. Picasa doesn't exist. But all my photos are now in Google Photos, very much intact, even though I have had multiple device failures over the years and if I was hosting these photos myself chances are I would not have them by now.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I definitely agree that federation is the right approach for moving forward. This is how the internet was meant to work in the first place.

One huge advantage of ActivityPub based federation is that every service that uses it can talk to any other service. So, you can share data between Mastodon, PeerTube, PixelFed, Plume, and any other federated platforms. This also allows different competing services in the same space such as Mastodon and Pleroma to work with each other. Meanwhile, traditional commercial platforms like Fb, Twitter, and Youtube have zero incentive to allow users to move data between them.

While I agree that it would be great if people could just host via their ISP, VPS hosting has gotten both a lot easier and cheaper nowadays. You can get a Digital Ocean server for 5 bucks a month, and thanks to containers it's much easier to package and distribute the services. VPS providers will also often have cheap backup options. This dramatically lowers the barrier for managing a service.

<comment><USER2> I understand VPS are cheap now but they are not free like in case of centralized services. Hosting costs are same everywhere. I think developers from developing nations would still prefer a home based solution over a VPS because its consuming (INR 3600/year in India) out of there pockets. General population won't even think of self hosting because centralized services are "free" both in affordability and setup. Very few give a damn about privacy. Cost is a factor that definitely affects self hosting when you think about developing nations.

Another thing is data, in case of self hosting at home, you are always in control of your data. Your data never leaves your home. Unless you explicitly want it to. In case of VPS, data is out there on someone else's infra. Backups are most probably not free. So yes both sides have their own pros and cons.

<comment><USER5> For sure, I think it would be fantastic if people could just host their own sites from home. I'm just noting that the barrier to hosting is dramatically lower today than even a decade ago. So, self hosted sites are becoming viable option again, and hopefully that will lead to more decentralization.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Instead of at home(well, it can be at someones house still), I feel like this could be the domain of local clubs. Groups of interested people can pool money to pay for server hardware(or space in a local datacenter), and a business internet connection. This also adds the effect that at least a core set of users know each other in real life, which can help reduce problems like trolling, illegal content, and spam. Also, their server is local. If they setup a mesh network, then they could still have services if the city somehow becomes disconnected from the larger internet.

<comment><USER7> What's going to convince them to do that, rather than "join the Facebook group"?

<comment><USER6> My thought would be that there are probably multiple people interested in the idea of federation or decentralization in most moderately sized cities. If they find each other, then can start from there and spread the word.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Pixelfed is evolving quite fast. I am using it since soon one year. The community just needs more users and more instances.

ActivityPub is really on the raise. I saw recently that [https://people.kernel.org](https://people.kernel.org) is using WriteFreely.

<comment><USER9> WriteFreely is also fantastic. Have been a paying user (edit: of write.as) since sometimes earlier this year and I have finally starting to write stupid blog posts again, including two who got some traffic from both HN and lobste.rs.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Part of the issue with federation is the very nebulous concept of servers themselves.

What should my domain name be? This question alone is enough to stop someone in their tracks. There's only so many non-stupid sounding names. And should the name focus on a location, a hobby, myself?

If I allow people to sign up, should it only be for people I know IRL? What if I mix online friends and IRL friends on the same server, is that weird?

I'm looking forward to trying full decentralization tbh. Federation feels like a strange halfway house.

<comment><USER11> I believe "federation" isn't supposed to be a federation of individuals, but a federation of small communities. You still have to be organized and grouped with some people around some goals or topics if you want to create a community and add it to the federation.

As an individual, you can then join several of those communities in the federation.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Let me mention that the developer is extremely productive and - in my opinion - talented.

As far as I know he is mostly working alone one his spare time and works in another field during the day.

<comment><USER12> In what field does he work during the day?

<comment><USER13> Full stack development. His work hours have recently been cut, so if you know of a freelance project or a full-time position that needs to be fulfilled, get in touch with him: [https://mastodon.social/@dansup/102409415828557030](https://mastodon.social/@dansup/102409415828557030)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Is there a docker(-compose) setup I can use to give it a try? I think this would lower the barrier to entry a lot. I have a blog running on ghost I wouldn't have without a maintained docker container. I miss Instagram, pixelfed looks like a great alternative!

</comment><comment><USER15> There is a massive drop in nodes at [https://the- federation.info/pixelfed](https://the-federation.info/pixelfed). Seems like a SPOF host deactivated their 50 something nodes?

Other than that I'm skeptical about this. If it doesn't host ads or any other money making scheme, how do you pay for servers to host some many pictures? Being image focused, I imagine the server gets expansive fast when your node becomes big. This might also explain the SPOF deactivating their node.

<comment><USER16> Seems like the drop is everywhere according to that website. [https://the- federation.info/mastodon](https://the-federation.info/mastodon)

I would say either the chart is wrong, the data is still being collected or something is very wrong with the federation system.

<comment><USER17> The chart on the main page is already bouncing back.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> I am confused and the docs site seems to be dead. Who runs the nodes? Where is the data stored? Is the data encrypted? What are the legal ramifications of running a node, like am I expected to moderate content people put on my node? What if someone uploads child porn?

<comment><USER18> there are moderation tool's and avoiding things like that has been a major concern of its creator lately. He's definitely aware of and working to help mitigate problems like that. HOWEVER no tool is perfect and if you have ANY site that allows people to upload things that is going to be a concern. On the other hand, that's why their are laws to protect owners of servers that can't reasonably be expected to look at everything that's uploaded. Without those laws youtube, dropbox, and other similar services could not exist. They'd be litigated into oblivion.

<comment><USER3> A centralized, commercial service, like Facebook or Instagram or Medium has ways to mitigate this. At the very least a staff of moderators and a legal department. But in this case, considering the distributed nature of this project, if I am running a node, I might not be aware that there is illegal content being stored on my system. And yet under the current legal system, I am pretty sure I could be liable. I am not sure what the recourse for something like this would be.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> And here's its own Mastodon/Fediverse account: [https://mastodon.social/@pixelfed](https://mastodon.social/@pixelfed)

</comment><comment><USER20> Since people are constantly putting "Bad Stuff" on Instagram, Ello, etc., how does one deal with it on a federated platform? Is it up to each node operator to manage the liability?

<comment><USER21> It looks like there is a community policy, which seems good, but I wonder how it's enforced? [https://pixelfed.social/site/kb/community- guidelines](https://pixelfed.social/site/kb/community-guidelines)

edit: I was mistaken, this is only for the official instance. There is 0 anti abuse tooling for other instances.

<comment><USER22> Just like on large centralized instances.

Someone complains. Someone checks the complaint and acts accordingly.

Chances are if you have a small instance with users you know personally, you will have less issues.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> I wish some of these new federated services would have nice, native (Like in natively designed, speaking the interface language of iOS / Android) apps. I think this would be critical for anyone to use it seriously.

<comment><USER24> I've had very good luck with Tusky [[https://tusky.app/](https://tusky.app/)]...which i think was designed originally for mastodon...And i've been using it for my pleroma instance to great success.

<comment><USER25> I haven't been able to use any activity pub apps with pixelfed.

<comment><USER24> Ah, ok, sorry i thought the comment was more in the general sense of apps for federated services/platforms. While I have had positive experiences with apps interacting with platforms such as gnu social, mastodon, pleroma...but, I do not have experience with pixlefed. (Thanks for clarifying this.)

<comment><USER25> No problem. I see Instagram as a mobile-first platform, so the lack of an app is what is preventing me from using Pixelfed.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> Does anybody know if there's something that looks (simple) like this that I can host myself to share family photos with my family?

Preferably something I can just spin up in a Docker container and point at an NFS share.

<comment><USER24> "Simple" is a relative thing, so I'll simply point you to some options that exist, and you can judge for yourself: [https://fediverse.party/en/fediverse/](https://fediverse.party/en/fediverse/)

Also, Nextcloud has been used for the use-case you described...its less about sharing in the social media sense, and more about exposing a bunch of media/photos/videos that live on your local/home server or your VPS (that is running nextcloud). [https://nextcloud.com/](https://nextcloud.com/)

<comment><USER26> Thks, by simple I meant to use, I'm not concerned about the setup requirements. Also I'm looking for something more along the lines of the social tour sharing of photos where we can tag and label them as we share them. I've used next cloud briefly, is not quite what I'm after.

I'll look into the other. Thanks

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> The idea servers being up and down, potentially losing all your images to a dead server, and upload limits isn't ideal. I like the idea but Facebook is far more motivated and capable to fulfill my non-tech friend's needs. And without my friends sharing I don't think I'd adopt a sharing platform.

</comment><comment><USER22> This looks interesting.

With Mastodon there's a gateway that will automatically post your messages to twitter.

Is there a gateway to Instagram for Pixelfed?

PS if you have a large following it could be interesting to publish to Twitter and Instagram only after a delay, encouraging users to go to the source (i.e. your mastodon/pixelfed instance).

<comment><USER28> No, Instagram doesn't automatically let you post stuff to it in any way.

<comment><USER22> Indeed, content publishing appears to be "in private beta" at the moment (since when?): [https://developers.facebook.com/docs/instagram- api/guides/co...](https://developers.facebook.com/docs/instagram- api/guides/content-publishing)

There's also a github project to explore the private API at [https://github.com/mgp25/Instagram-API](https://github.com/mgp25/Instagram- API)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> Yet another federated system. Yay.

Every single time I see another one of them popping up all I keep thinking is how some of us had their website for 20+ years.

Interactions were first guestbooks, then pingbacks, then webmentions. And it works, it always had.

<comment><USER30> Pingbacks quickly became a vehicle for spam - I haven't seen one in years.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> For those interested in hosting this project you should _absolutely_ follow them on Mastodon. The guy behind it is posting constant updates.

</comment><comment><USER31> where/what are the images actually stored on?

</comment><comment><USER32> the landing page seems dope, but then clicking through to joining is very confusing. What exactly is a user supposed to do? Do I need to run one of these nodes?

any plan to improve the onboarding experience, or do we plan on just letting this die?

<comment><USER13> Your user experience will be the same regardless of which node you choose, since you can follow people regardless of what node they're using. Every user account is constructed as @email@example.com.

But, yeah, onboarding is a rough problem to solve when your goal isn't for one server to contain all the data. It requires learning some new stuff that I couldn't be bothered to learn for far too long. If privacy-conscious people aren't willing to learn them, nobody will and these projects will just die.

<comment><USER33> > Your user experience will be the same regardless of which node you choose

How do I know or find out who owns/runs the node I choose? Surely some nodes are more stable than others, and the user experience wouldn't be the same if the node I chose decides to shut down tomorrow.

<comment><USER13> Here's how Mastodon does it: the owner's account is visible from the homepage of the node, the owner of every node that Mastodon includes on its homepage has agreed to give at least a three-month warning before shutting down, as well as to decentralize the control of the server to at least two individuals: [https://joinmastodon.org/covenant](https://joinmastodon.org/covenant)

I assume that Pixelfed wants to do something similar, but a little bit further down the line. As far as I'm aware, Pixelfed's current goal is to encourage people to start their own servers instead of relying on the main one. Whenever they feel like the main servers are gaining too much control of the network, they close the registration in order to pivot people to other nodes. Once other nodes start to stand out, Pixelfed will probably have more strict guidelines on which ones to link to.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> Is there a way to limit who can join the server that I choose to host?

</comment><comment><USER35> A large issue with federated social networks is that they are complicated to set up. It believe would be a lot easier to gain adoption if devs stuck to php5 instead of using 5 to 10 different hot and new languages.

<comment><USER5> Docker exists precisely to solve this problem.

<comment><USER35> Docker is a great solution for people that like docker. However, there is still a large barrier of entry to using the docker image as compared to a php5 implementation.

My point is that a php5 solution would make one of these federated social network implementations accessible to a much larger audience.

<comment><USER36> It would also make it accessible to all of the hackers that are more than using to exploit shitty apps implemented in PHP5.

(I am half-trolling. I know that it is possible to write insecure code in any language, but the mix of PHP + popular codebases + "you can run anywhere you want" is a recipe for disaster)

<comment><USER24> So, I'll go out on a limb and assume that the original comments were related to php in general (say, the latter 7 versions - which are faster and receiving more updates/patches, etc.)...which tends to be a platform that is more easily accessible for most.

<comment><USER36> Yeah, I know. I am making no distinction though. I've been burned by Wordpress already, even with installations without any sort of plugins whatsoever.

It will take many more years before I ever get to trust any code that is PHP (no matter the version) and that is open source. Its "easiness to get deployed" still translates in my head to "it is easy to be vulnerable without developers knowing" and I think the language is in an evolutionary dead-end anyway.

<comment><USER24> Yeah, as much as i like and use php myself, I have to admit that you're not wrong. My hope is that present and future languages and associated environments get as easy to setup/deploy as php, BUT are more secure, prevent practitioners from shooting themselves in the foot, etc.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER37> How will it deal with steganography?

</comment><comment><USER38> Please ELI5 federated services like these?

<comment><USER39> Instead of making an account with e.g. Twitter, there are multiple sites such as BobsTwitter.social, Witter.com, whatever. No matter which site you make an account on, you can follow anyone on any of the different services, interact with their tweets, etc. seamlessly. Your information is only hosted on the site you made the account on. If you get banned from BobsTwitter.social, you can move to Witter.com and people using BobsTwitter would still be able to follow you without having to do anything special

</comment></comment><comment><USER40> So, this is the new Instagram?

<comment><USER41> Unlikely, outside of tech circles no one is interested or cares about federation.

<comment><USER42> You might be right about people not being interested in federation on a conceptual level (or not, I don't know), but people certainly are interested in the benefits of federation can bring. People want more robust hosting, lower costs, and less dependence on centralized services. I think it's unlikely anyone would sign up to a 'new Instagram' built on this specifically because it's based on federatation but if it was marketed as more robust, cheaper and not dependent on Facebook then I can see non-tech people being curious about it.

<comment><USER43> _People want more robust hosting, lower costs, and less dependence on centralized services._

The people outside of tech circles that I know just want images to show up and they don't want to pay for them. I guess that those would fall under the "robust hosting, lower costs" section in a roundabout way, but "less dependence on centralized services" is pretty much the opposite of what people want from my experience.

<comment><USER42> Meet more people.

<comment><USER43> Right back at you.

<comment><USER42> If you meet more people then you'll meet people who are interested in the benefits of federated content.

If I meet more people then I will too, but I already know some so it won't make much difference. Maybe it'd reinforce what I already know.

The problem is your admission that it's "pretty much the opposite of what people want from my experience". You don't have enough experience. Ergo... meet more people.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER44> What about licenses?

<comment><USER18> "Pixelfed is open-sourced software licensed under the AGPL license."

or did you mean some other definition of "licenses"

</comment></comment><comment><USER45> Incentivize.the.nodes

Just add a token cmon

Consumers are exempt, tokens are scarce, nodes compete</comment>


Show HN: Approximal – hyperlocal augmented serendipity for iOS - <AUTHOR> http://approximalapp.com/ <comment><USER2> Just installed it... really beautiful and well done. Looking forward to bumping into people unexpectedly!

</comment><comment><USER3> Wow! This could be super useful.</comment>


Swedish Programmer Hacks iPhone - <AUTHOR> http://www.idg.se/2.1085/1.546965/swedish-programmer-hacks-iphone

<comment><USER2> That's just sending operator SMS, it's not hacking.</comment>


Password length or complexity? Math says length… - <AUTHOR> https://www.renditioninfosec.com/2017/09/password-length-or-complexity-math-says-length/ <comment><USER2> Obligatory xkcd: [https://www.xkcd.com/936/](https://www.xkcd.com/936/)

Prepare to never forget the phrase CORRECT HORSE BATTERY STAPLE!</comment>


Ask HN: How much should startups pay per beta tester? - <AUTHOR>

For startups that pay for usability testing and feedback what is an appropriate price to pay? I know sites like UserTesting.com charge about $40 per test. It inspired me to create a campaign to try and gather some data about what startups would be willing to pay to use a service like "UserTesting" to get feedback for their site / concept / design etc.<p>Visit http://takemymoneys.com/usertesting to participate in the pricing campaign. Hopefully we will collect some interesting data. <comment><USER2> Note that beta testing is not user testing. I would read up on the background to usability testing. Briefly, there are two types of usability tests - _formative_ and _summative_ \- summative research is more when you are developing the product and want to iterate rapidly based on feedback from users. Summative testing is when you want to create a baseline of data for comparison with future releases.

Your beta testers should be using the product over a longer period of time than a usability test, which is typically a one-off session.

</comment><comment><USER3> You shouldn't be paying for beta testers. If you can't find people to test your product and provide feedback then you should look over your target market again. If you e-mail an early adopter of your service you can gleam useful feedback through that and they will gladly provide more to better meet their needs. Also hints of "suggest feedback" and an easy to submit method go a long way.</comment>


US government sides against Microsoft in Supreme Court patent case - <AUTHOR> http://www.networkworld.com/news/2011/032111-microsoft-i4i-patent.html

<comment><AUTHOR> If you don't want to read the article,

The US solicitor general, which represents the federal government in the Supreme Court, on Friday filed an amicus brief in support of i4i, saying that the US Patent and Trademark Office should not be second-guessed by a jury.

(Microsoft winning this is a good thing.)</comment>


On Earth Day, lessons from Covid-19 pandemic offer hope - <AUTHOR> https://news.mit.edu/2020/earth-day-covid-19-reif-0422 <comment><AUTHOR> tl;dr...

"The first lesson is that our deepest well of practical hope is in science and the people who practice it," Reif writes, citing health care workers, public health experts, and the engineers and scientists working on solutions for protective equipment, ventilators, testing, contact tracing, therapeutic drugs, and possible vaccines for Covid-19.

"Similarly, in the fight to slow and adapt to climate change, I believe we must actively build on this implicit respect for the power of science," he adds. "Science is also our best warning system — if we can force ourselves to listen."</comment>


Announcing: Distill 2013 - <AUTHOR> https://distill.engineyard.com/

<comment><USER2> Not (directly) related to the event itself, but I just want to say that I think that page design is beautiful.</comment>