Turn Prisons into Colleges - <AUTHOR> https://www.nytimes.com/2018/03/06/opinion/prisons-colleges-education.html <comment><USER2> This whole piece reads like it's written by someone who has never set foot in an actual, general-population prison.

The scene it sets is of a collegial environment of highly motivated people who yearn to learn, and would commit themselves to pursuing a college degree, but for lack of access.

In reality, a large swath of the incarcerated population is not motivated to pursue additional education, or really any program that might help them get their lives back on track.

Part of it is because they frequently have underlying mental-health problems, addictions, learning disorders, or intellectual disabilities that often go undiagnosed or untreated in prison, and that must be addressed before they can get clear-headed enough to pursue their GED, let alone a college degree. Or they see a high-school or college diploma as pointless, either because they know the deck's stacked against them, or they don't know any other way of living.

So, it may be completely true that higher education is correlated with lower rates of recidivism, but that doesn't mean that increasing access to education _causes_ lower recidivism.

Rather, it likely means that people who are able and motivated to pursue higher education have lower rates and lower severities of mental-health issues or learning disorders, and a lack of those underlying issues predicts lower recidivism.

<comment><USER3> Prison was put in place as a catch all when we didn't understand all the ways humans could be broken. Now we have a better idea, but we don't use that information. Instead low iq career criminals are incarcerated with high iq crimes of passion like Hans Reiser. Then you add drug addicts and child molesters to the mix.

Hans Reiser would likely never kill another person in his life if he was free. If he could have full access to a computer he would have likely continued to learn and build things. Instead we dump him with the rest of the dregs of society together into a broken system who's main role is retribution, which IMO is a human instinct we should fight against not codify.

It seems a lot like the public school system in it's general lack of differentiation in regards to inputs(prisoners). In terms of a learning system, it's diverged.

<comment><USER4> > Hans Reiser would likely never kill another person in his life if he was > free.

Why not? He killed one already for no good reason. His high IQ just means he has less of an excuse. It doesn't make him a better person.

<comment><USER5> I'm sick of the apologia for these unforgivable criminals. By all means separate them from each other based on circumstances, for their own good, but if you murder people you're unfit to live in society, full stop.

<comment><USER6> The GP's point, I think, is that "unfit to live in society" doesn't mean "must live in some sort of hell-hole." Prison can just be another, slightly worse society. Like penal colonies were, before we stopped doing those.

<comment><USER7> I thought the point was that we should look at IQ in determining punishment and risk of recidivism. Which is a deeply misguided idea.

<comment><USER8> I can see how you got that, but it's not at all how I read it. I don't think _whataretensors_ is proposing that Hans Resier's abilities should lessen his punishment, but rather that we should allow him to continue using his abilities during his incarceration, and possibly contribute to society instead of being dead weight.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> > learning gives us a different understanding of ourselves and the world > around us, and it provides us tools to become more empathetic

This is the key. I really don't believe punishment works. I'm on mobile at the moment so it would be tedious to find sources, but I will do so later when I have time.

But a great example for this is with parenting. A child doesn't learn why changing their behavior is beneficial to them outside the context of punishment if punishment is used. They simply learn to hide the behavior, because it is the punishment itself that provides the negative feedback. Showing the child why a specific behavior is detrimental to them gives them negative feedback about the behavior itself. One of the best ways to show this to children is by appealing to their empathy. "Would you like it if X did that to you?" That's a simplistic example.

But in education, the examples are numerous. And for reasons that may be obvious prisoners won't necessarily be in education for say, a math degree, but they would be taking courses in history and philosophy, and the like. Humanities courses give the perspective that crime-affected communities often lack. And they give hope and possibility by exploring all the realms of human thought

Incarceration is inhumane. It does not work. How can someone possibly have hope for changing their behavior when they are treated like an animal in a cage? it does nothing for reinforcement since their freedom after a served sentence is likely to entail returning to a broken community.

<comment><USER10> > How can someone possibly have hope for changing their behavior when they are > treated like an animal in a cage?

If I were treated like an animal in a cage, I sure as hell would not like to go back to prison again.

<comment><USER11> No ex-convict wants to return to prison. However, they've just been put in a position where all of their peers are also criminals, and getting a well- compensated job after release is incredibly difficult, especially if they do not already have specialized skills and education. So it's very easy to fall back into bad habits, especially if that's how they were paying the bills.

Destigmatizing a criminal record when it comes to hiring (or anything else for that matter) would help a lot, but the government doesn't seem too interested in helping out with that (though I hope the current low unemployment rates help in this regard). Prison education programs would also help. If the government is going to lock people in little boxes with other criminals, stigmatize them for the rest of their lives, and seriously contend the point of it is to reduce recidivism, they need to be doing this sort of education at the very least.

<comment><USER12> > No ex-convict wants to return to prison.

Some do. Perhaps the most famous example is Charles Manson who said he'd been in prison for so much of his life that it was his home.

Sorry I forget the source, but one longtime prisoner said that after release, it's like he was still in jail, because after being imprisoned, the real prison is in your mind.

Incarceration becomes a mindset.

With three strikes laws locking people up for life for relatively minor third offences, this should give us pause.

Putting these examples aside, there is a lot of evidence that punishment simply does not work.

For example many states have the death penalty for capital crimes, sometimes by the medievally brutal electric chair[1], and still people continue to commit murder.

[1] Like burning at the stake with all the modern conveniences.

<comment><USER11> I think Charles Manson might be a bit of a statistical outlier.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> I'm a felon. Trafficking Marijuana. I considered the consequences, and knew it was very unlikely I would get sentenced to jail time, so for me the consequences played a role in the amount of marijuana I was willing to traffic(i.e. not enough to be likely jail time) What I vastly underestimated is the long term reduction in earning potential, and the level of instantly shut doors/disrespect that comes along with being a felon.

Anyways, I moved to tech bc it seemed like the easiest place to get a decent paying job w/ said conviction. I'm a white, well-spoken, intelligent and motivated male with a great family and support structure, connections, etc. and for me it is/was/will be incredibly difficult to overcome, so I can just imagine what it's like for less (attractive?) candidates. I will work my way into the position where I can take the extra risk involved in hiring people with criminal records if they are otherwise good cantidates, bc I've been through it.

Providing prison education is pivotal to helping the recidivism rate, as is promoting attitude changes toward hiring _criminals. (_ the ones who got caught)

<comment><USER14> That is heart breaking. Hopefully you live in a state where the records of Marijuana offenders will be expunged eventually.

<comment><USER15> > Hopefully you live in a state where the records of Marijuana offenders will > be expunged eventually.

I don't necessarily disagree with nixing arrests for personal amounts / use of Marijuana, even the "I sold my buddy a dime bag worth that one time," but once we get into serious commercial activity is it not valid to keep those particular convictions?

<comment><USER8> Simply, no. Marijuana prohibition is bad law, and convictions just for selling and possessing weed, unaccompanied by any other criminal activity, are morally and ethically unjustifiable. When the law dies, as it surely will, society will be well served if those convictions are expunged, restoring their victims to full access to commerce and employment.

<comment><USER15> Again, I don't particularly feel strongly about it, but it _feels_ off that someone trafficking large amounts of a drug, even if it's just pot, are let off. It demonstrates a clear willingness to to disregard law for personal gain.

In general, I don't really give a shit about drugs or drug use. Perhaps the feeling is just years of Drug War indoctrination, but it feels wrong and I'm trying to grapple with "Why" by asking.

<comment><USER8> > "clear willingness to to disregard law for personal gain"

You mean, the way _you_ disregard the law when you speed in order to get somewhere sooner? Yes, I'm equating speeding with the use of marijuana. And I'd argue that speeding is actually way more dangerous.

I apologize if this comes off as harsh, but the sentiment you express has contributed to horrific abuse of the legal system for decades. Too many people feel generally like you do, willing to put up with wildly disproportionate punishments for no other reason than _a law was broken_ , even if they don't really think the activities should be considered criminal.

Think about what you're saying: you don't really care much about the moral standing of the law, but you don't mind that folks prosecuted under it have their lives destroyed (sorry if I've distorted your position).

Remember, there's a lot of devil in the details of drug law. Florida, for example, assumes intent to distribute if you possess more than 20 grams of weed, allowing up to 5 years in prison and ten grand in fines. If the prosecutor finds a school, public housing, or even a fucking park within a thousand feet of your arrest, they can put you in prison for up to 15 years.

It's good that you're not a drug warrior type, and the american public as a whole is definitely coming to its senses regarding marijuana. But what kind of society puts up with destroying peoples lives for the sake of laws that they don't really feel strongly about?

<comment><USER13> Thanks Nate, I have to consider my position and how people perceive my intentions when discussing it, so I can't be as harsh as I think the situation necessitates to change opinions. And even with ban the box laws like CA has recently passed, with public record scraping services stored in private databases,the info is not going away even w expungment(not sure that it should). We need to change perception if for no other reason than: IT COST A FUCK TON OF MONEY to support people who don't participate in the economy, lifelong barriers/stigma very much alienate people from reintegration.

<comment><USER8> I admire your toughness, or magnanimity, or whatever word I'm looking for. I'm not sure I'd end up with as positive an attitude as you appear to have. That thing you said about trying to get to a place where you can prevent others from being unfairly discriminated against... that says so much about you I think. Even if you never get to that position, you've managed to turn a viciously unfair circumstance into something strong and positive for yourself. Much respect

<comment><USER13> Wow, I've never been called magnanimous before, lets go with that;-).

>Even if you never get to that position I will. I've recently been sucessfully asserting my way into those decisions where I am now, so I'm close already.

I really appreciate the compliment, the respect is mutual.

It's taken time, effort and reflection to not be bitter about it. Bitteress is not helpful, plus: Everyone loves a comeback!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> For your crime you are sentenced to 3 phd's in the field of astrophysics with no chance of parole.

May God have mercy on your soul.

<comment><USER17> Underrated comment ... education could very well be more punitive than the alternative!

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> At a previous job I had to turn people away that had felonies. Some of them just had drug related ones. Felt terrible about it.

If we are going to expect felons to reform and get a job and support themselves using legal means, well we have to make sure they have at least some opportunity at doing so.

Seems we could have thousands MOOCs available on non internet connected computers. These inmates should spend their time reflecting, studying, and working.

Who wants to spent another $35k a year when they get locked up again, instead providing them with near free education that might help them not come back to prison?

<comment><USER19> Part of the problem is it is legal to discriminate against felons and so many paths to success in our society are closed to them. A person with a felony is denied the pursuit of happiness.

<comment><USER20> Why is it a problem?

Wouldn't you want to know the background of a person before hiring a nanny for your child?

Now change nanny to employee and child to business.

<comment><USER21> Wait...are we talking an employee in the sense of a CEO, or in the sense of some lower-level position? First, my child is more precious than my business. Second, a nanny has much more direct influence over a child than an employee does over a business (except in the case of particularly-powerful employees, of course). Third (and ignored by the person you responded too, as well), not all felonies are created equal.

<comment><USER20> Does it matter? What if it is a low level position and the person stabs someone at the first disagreement? Why do I have to take that risk?

<comment><USER21> > Does it matter?

Stupid question. Yes.

> What if it is a low level position and the person stabs someone at the first > disagreement?

Why do you assume that "felon = violent"?

> Why do I have to take that risk?

Every hire is a risk. Running a business is a risk in the first place. If you're risk-averse, you probably aren't running a business, anyhow. So, why do you take that risk? Presumably because you've concluded during the interview that they can perform the task that you're hiring for better than the other candidates. If they can't, then it's a moot point anyhow, isn't it?

<comment><USER20> Why is the question stupid?

I can assume whatever I want if I am doing the hiring right? After all, it's my money which is being risked. Simply put, a business owner can hire whoever they want in practice.

Every hire is a risk, but hiring a felon is an increased risk. It is possible that it is an increased reward too, but with so many available candidates, why bother?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> "a study published in 2013 by the right-leaning RAND Corporation showing that inmates who took classes had a 43 percent lower likelihood of recidivism and a 13 percent higher likelihood of getting a job after leaving prison."

Of course, these are the more capable people in the first place. Most people in prison are too stupid for college. A much better solution is to limit college education to a fixed single digit percentage of the population so it can't be used as an expensive arms race of a signaling mechanism by everybody else.

<comment><USER11> > Most people in prison are too stupid for college.

[citation needed] on this incredibly inflammatory comment. Yes, people tend to end up in prison after a chain of bad decisions, but that doesn't necessarily mean they're unintelligent to the point of being incapable of learning things.

Arguably, a successful drug dealer has far more real-world experience in economics than a college grad on the topic.

<comment><USER23> I will point out that learning things and college are not the same thing. I feel that I know how to learn, but I am too 'stupid' to learn in a scholastic environment. It becomes a frustrating experience as you're left scrambling to learn using more effective methods in the off-hours and wasting your time the rest of the time. And I imagine frustration is already high among those in jail before you try to add more on them.

<comment><USER21> Well, true; it's completely possible to get through college without picking up anything lasting.

Class-time is a minority of the learning time. The basic idea is to gain a basic familiarization before class, then (during class) hopefully have the professor explain the same ideas in a different way and provide an opportunity to ask clarifying questions. Assignments should be structured to illustrate the concepts and encourage reaching a bit past what was taught. You shouldn't be doing the bulk of the learning in the classroom itself, IMO. Homework is for you. Tests are a final feedback of the result of the learning process.

I guess my point is that learning in the "off-hours" is kind of the intention (and is part of the best-case scenario, as described above). 2 hours of lecture implies 4 hours (or more) of extra work, done outside of the classroom, on your own or with others. School should provide structure and guidance to learning (providing a schedule, and an appropriate order of concepts to learn). Learning itself is a separate process.

<comment><USER23> _> Assignments should be structured to illustrate the concepts and encourage reaching a bit past what was taught._

I think this is the root problem. The structure never seemed right. It didn't assist with learning as it was never the appropriate topics at the appropriate time. Once you get away from college learning is _so much easier_ as you are not dependent on the linear timeline set out by someone else. And because you're actually learning, which is one of the most pleasurable things going, you are excited to keep reaching for more. College fosters none of that.

I understand that learning on your own time is part of the package, but the problem, which I may not have effectively communicated, is that you are still left learning the 'wrong way' as you still have to stick with the course requirements while also trying to learn the 'right way' because that is the only way you are going to learn anything at all. As it is, two hours of lecture is two hours that could have been spent actually learning instead of wasting time.

If you are smart, I am sure that none of this is a problem and the structure of the courses are most likely to your benefit. But for someone who is stupid like me, it just doesn't work. Literally _everyone_ can learn. Not everyone is smart.

<comment><USER21> For me, college was a good guide to find ideas that I might not have found on my own, or might have found in a suboptimal order. Hearing the basic ideas always got me excited enough to dig on my own, see how they're used, and what they build up to.

> As it is, two hours of lecture is two hours that could have been spent > actually learning instead of wasting time.

The most wasted lectures that I attended were the ones that I went to, but did something else instead of asking questions. There aren't many situations where you've got a roomful of people at your level or above (including an expert in the subject) that you can pose questions to.

> But for someone who is stupid like me, it just doesn't work.

Where did you get the idea that you're stupid? I don't see any evidence of that, and thinking of yourself that way is going to damage any of your efforts. Stupid people aren't generally the kinds that come onto HackerNews to have discussions about the nature of education.

<comment><USER23> _> There aren't many situations where you've got a roomful of people at your level or above (including an expert in the subject) that you can pose questions to._

While I understand the value of that in theory, in practice the questions are not available at the time the room is. This makes it mostly worthless. I understand people like you have minds that work in a different way, and that you are able to thrive in that environment. I don't want to minimize the benefit to someone like you, but you must also realize that not everyone is like you.

 _> Where did you get the idea that you're stupid?_

Too stupid _for college_. I don't know if anyone is truly stupid in every way. Everyone has their speciality.

I would suggest that, given how hard education is pushed in the US that there is a reason that the attainment rate is still just ~30% for four or more year programs and ~40% for two or more year programs: Because most people simply are not capable of thriving in that environment.

I don't see that as a problem though. There are many ways to skin the cat. College doesn't need to be for everyone, and it is faulty logic to think that we should push it on everyone. Especially to those in jail who, statistically, are likely among the group that are not suited for it in the first place.

I do agree that we should do more to enable learning for those people. But, again, learning is not the same thing as college.

<comment><USER24> Yes! College is run by ... wait for it ... people who were good at College. So its a tight positive feedback loop. There's nearly nobody there who empathizes with the rest of us. And it spins on its merry way, getting stranger and stranger.

<comment><USER21> I guess what I don't understand quite what you mean.

The lectures themselves weren't that useful to me, although learning to interpret the pattern of confusion was invaluable (like looking at a code diff, where it doesn't tell you what the problem is, just what the difference is). Often, even the textbooks weren't (another exercise in pattern matching, and comparing with other sources). I spent a lot of time learning the material in my own way, then learning the mapping between my understanding and the way that it was being taught in class.

The topics in class acted as a decent map of the "tech tree" involved in the pile of topics to study, and a possibly-appropriate order to learn them in.

Everyone thinks differently. Do you have a more efficient idea an "expert" to convey a large number of concepts to a large group of people? What's your preferred method of learning?

<comment><USER24> I'd prefer to learn from a 'teacher'. The sort of person who specializes in transmitting knowledge, adapting to the learners issues, bridging gaps between one concept and another.

Learning from folks who did well in college means they may think everyone will do well if they repeat their experience. Which is a far cry from 'teacher'. Heck, its not even 'expert'.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> This reads a lot like Pearson Education & such just want an in on the wildly profitable private prison industry

<comment><USER26> What's the only boondoggle bigger than Higher Education in the United States?

<comment><USER27> I've not seen Pearson sniffing around the healthcare market.

<comment><USER28> Pearson does a lot of clinical assessments

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> Idea for a novel: Faced with a fierce job market, young academics scramble for prison jobs. To cut costs, they are roomed and boarded with the very prisoners they're there to teach...

<comment><USER30> Add to that desperate young people looking to get ahead. They commit a crime in order to receive free education while incarcerated.

</comment></comment><comment><USER31> This provides something for free to an inmate. The philosophy of those like Sheriff Arpaio and those politically aligned with him run counter to this. Where inmates are limited in water while living in tents outside in order to save money. Until we can extricate the culture of cruel and unusual punishment in the name of greed by those like Joe Arpaio, we'll not overcome the political hurdles of doing something nice for an inmate to reduce recidivism.

</comment><comment><USER32> Here are some interesting initiatives with interesting challenges: [https://www.khanacademy.org/resources/out-of-school-time- pro...](https://www.khanacademy.org/resources/out-of-school-time-programs/out- of-school-programs-case-studies/a/use-case-correctional-facilities)

"Students who find themselves in prisons, jails, and correctional facilities have varied and intermittent educational backgrounds. Correctional facilities can use Khan Academy to support a variety of programs, including credit recovery, GED preparation, and adult continuing education. These facilities tend to be high-security environments with extremely limited Internet connectivity, if any.

Idaho Correctional Facilities - KA Lite, an offline version of Khan Academy, is impacting learners in the Idaho Department of Correction. The first 20 prisoners using Khan Academy exercises offline all passed the math portion of their GED course—the first time that had ever happened."

KA-Lite seems to be maintained by the Learning Equality organization:

[https://learningequality.org/about/](https://learningequality.org/about/)

"In the summer of 2012, our co-founder Jamie Alexandre was interning at Khan Academy when he and a fellow intern had the idea to bring Khan Academy offline using a low-cost Raspberry Pi."

[https://learningequality.org/kolibri/](https://learningequality.org/kolibri/) "Kolibri makes high quality education technology available in low-resource communities such as rural schools, refugee camps, orphanages, non-formal school systems, and prison systems."

</comment><comment><USER33> One concern I've always had when people discuss recidivism rates is that it's sort of impossible to find an effective control group, no?

Suppose you're fresh out of prison with no good employment options. My guess is that, when people talk about recidivism rates, that either look at it nominally or they try to control for socioeconomic status. But apart from socioeconomic status, I can see two major factors that might cause recidivism: 1) the personality that led you to end up in prison in the first place, and 2) the effect on your personality that your time in prison had.

Since the only way to study the personality of the prisoner population is to do so _after_ they go to prison, it seems impossible to isolate either effect. Maybe there's a clever study design that let's you do it.

Failing that though, it's sort of dishonest to assume that rehabilitation attempts or changing the prison environment in some way would be successful in reducing recidivism rates "if we would only try them."

What is the actual evidence on the efficacy of rehabilitation programs?

<comment><USER34> We can compare prison systems across populations. Bastøy prison in Norway has a recidivism rate of just 16%. It seems that all things being equal (i.e. if you can assume that "personality" averages out of the statistical equation when comparing across human populations) then they are doing something very important and remarkable for their people there. See [https://www.theguardian.com/society/2013/sep/04/bastoy- norwe...](https://www.theguardian.com/society/2013/sep/04/bastoy-norwegian- prison-works)

<comment><USER33> I think it's interesting exploratory work, but you can't just assume that the "personality" of Norwegian prisoners is the same as American ones. There are vast environmental and cultural between the two populations that play a causal role in personalities; to assume that personality differences would "average out" is not a reasonable assumption.

I don't mean to say that the Norwegian model can't or wouldn't work in the US, but it can't be considered any more than "exploratory" from a US policy perspective.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> The evolutionary reason prison exists is because it is cheaper to society and government than riot and vendetta. As society grows more peaceful perhaps the balance will tip in favour of no prisons and they'll be shut down by the powers that be.

</comment><comment><USER36> In my opinion, teaching meditation to inmates could change prisons in a significant way. You give them the tool that will allow them to cultivate inner peace, rewire their brain plus understand their own behavior by disengaging the "ego".

</comment><comment><USER37> Maybe not colleges but schools. Someone I know went to prison. He was there for 5 plus years but learned absolutely nothing. Like it's been said, he came out worse than before.

I like the prison to become learning institutions rather that punishment factories. Continuous punishment makes people more resilient in a sense that they will fight and be willing to take more punishment and reject whatever they are being punished for. Eventually, these people get out, it would be nice if they were better than when they went in.

</comment><comment><USER38> In each state there is probably one prison worth of people who are capable of earning a college degree. They should be put in one place and encouraged to do so.

The rest are mostly shiftless and incorrigible and prison makes them worse people. They should either be released or kept in prison until dead. They should not be "stewed" in prison and then released upon you and me.

</comment><comment><USER39> This reminds of the Shon Hopwood story from last year's CBS 60 Minutes.[1]

[1]: [https://www.cbsnews.com/news/meet-a-convicted-felon-who- beca...](https://www.cbsnews.com/news/meet-a-convicted-felon-who-became-a- georgetown-law-professor/)

</comment><comment><USER40> Education is really the key to more balanced equality. Giving "prisoners" more opportunities and options is a must.

</comment><comment><USER41> First, do no harm.

But, sure, this seems like a good idea.

But first, stop all the horrible stuff, currently hurting prisoners.

</comment><comment><USER42> It's symbolic of student loan debt

</comment><comment><USER11> > Imagine if prisons looked like the grounds of universities. Instead of > languishing in cells, incarcerated people sat in classrooms and learned > about climate science or poetry — just like college students.

In general I think this is a great idea, but for God's sake, teach them useful things that will help them get a job once the state lets them out of their cage, not crunchy liberal arts pablum and highly theoretical science that will get them nowhere career-wise. I say this as someone who made the mistake of going into debt to get a degree in English literature.

<comment><USER43> I do think there should be some English studies, but it should not be a primary focus. Reading books is a great way to help build empathy, and understanding how to read _well_ is a valuable tool in its own right.

<comment><USER11> Okay, yes, to be clear, I don't disagree with you here. Certainly literature and especially grammar classes can be a part of this. But if the government is going to steal my money to pay for locking people in little boxes, but then allows them to get degrees in poetry and climatology instead of veterinary medicine or computer science, well, that's doubly insulting to me.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER44> It seems like giving criminals a free college education is the very definition of a perverse incentive.

<comment><USER45> We already have plenty of perverse incentives with prison, but on the supply side.

Are you seriously suggesting that people would commit crimes to "get a free education"?

<comment><USER46> There are multiple cases where people commit crimes so they can get free prison medical care, so yes the incentives are out of wack.

<comment><USER47> The solution to this is to provide free health care outside of prison too. If someone needs something so desperately they're willing to give up their freedom to get it, the richest nation in history ought to be able to provide it for them.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER48> The point of punishment is not a Skinner box to use operant conditioning to bring about desired behavior. People are punished as a clear, unambiguous message that "you did wrong". This is the most humane option because it treats criminals as moral agents with free will who can change and choose what is good. These other "progressive" approaches treat a criminal like an irrational animal or child that must be conditioned. Consequently, the criminal learns their moral intuition is wrong, and to act irrationally and not accept responsibility for his or her own actions. A just penal code with appropriate punishment is the most humane and dignified way to treat criminals.</comment>


MakeDrive: Filesystem for the web - <AUTHOR> http://blog.humphd.org/introducing-makedrive/ <comment><USER2> Great, I appreciate getting back control on my files, and it seems this could help. For instance a web-app could have some configuration and save it in a text file instead of in some cookie or session data. Then I could backup this config, sync it with other accounts, etc. For any serious web-based editing, I certainly would need such a tool.

By the way, recently I started to use BTsync to get back control (I would prefer an open-source implementation, but hey) and it feel so much better. Sample workflow: take picture with DSLR, import them on desktop at work, near- instantly get them synched to my phone, check and remove bad shots on my phone, also rotate and adjust them, have the edited and filtered pics ready on my laptop back at home, have all the thing on a linode where I have some scripts doing renaming and analysing. And, guess what, all of this in China, where dropbox and google drive are often unreachable.

The most important in this workflow, which I also use for music, is that when I remove a picture or a track, I want it removed from all the devices, and never come back before my face. It is suprisingly difficult... (In both senses: it is artistically difficult and necessary to decide to delete for good a file, and it seems technically impossible with services like Google photo, Dropbox's camera upload, etc.)

</comment><comment><USER3> Nice work, looks great:)

On thing i noted as beeing polisheble was how the conflicting was done and renames of files.

When a file was renamed the other browsers acted as if the file had been deleted then recreated.

</comment><comment><USER4> This looks really cool. I love the demo application integrating with Brackets. I could imagine me setting this up and running it on my Chromebook instead of Google Drive.

</comment><comment><USER5> This is a very exciting project! Well done! This and the "Remote Storage" movement [1] seem to be making movements towards a web with data in the hands of the users. This is important if smaller SaaS companies want to sell into the big enterprise that have strict policies about data storage remaining on the internal network.

[1] [http://remotestorage.io/](http://remotestorage.io/)

</comment><comment><USER6> How do I get the makedrive working with filer-s3? From the comments and Wiki post seems it's native already, maybe just configuration issue. [https://wiki.mozilla.org/Webmaker/MakeDrive](https://wiki.mozilla.org/Webmaker/MakeDrive)

</comment><comment><USER7> Here is another (work-in-progress) project with similar approach:

[https://github.com/nexedi/jio](https://github.com/nexedi/jio)

Same idea, JavaScript only, multiple storages, simple API, with basic query- syntax.

Disclaimer: I contributed some parts to the project.

</comment><comment><USER6> Great work, I had a compatibility questions found it in the github, you should make a link to the github site evident. [https://github.com/mozilla/makedrive](https://github.com/mozilla/makedrive)

Best Regards,

</comment><comment><USER8> I can see the use case, but I can't yet figure out how MakeDrive is different from a syncing solution (say, OwnCloud, SparkleShare, SeaCloud etc.) combined with a node.js service which allows to access local files.

What do I miss?</comment>


2019-nCoV: early estimation of epidemiological parameters and predictions - <AUTHOR> https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.01.23.20018549v1 <comment><USER2> Per source: "Caution: Preprints are preliminary reports of work that have not been peer-reviewed. They should not be relied on to guide clinical practice or health-related behavior and should not be reported in news media as established information."

</comment><comment><USER3> >> We estimate the basic reproduction number of the infection (R_0) to be 3.8 (95% confidence interval, 3.6-4.0), indicating that 72-75% of transmissions must be prevented by control measures for infections to stop increasing.

>> We estimate that only 5.1% (95%CI, 4.8-5.5) of infections in Wuhan are identified, and by 21 January a total of 11,341 people (prediction interval, 9,217-14,245) had been infected in Wuhan since the start of the year.

>> Should the epidemic continue unabated in Wuhan, we predict the epidemic in Wuhan will be substantially larger by 4 February (191,529 infections; prediction interval, 132,751-273,649),</comment>


Show HN: Blog Analysis tool - <AUTHOR> http://bat.fiftyfiveandfive.com

<comment><USER2> The heading text is a bit hard to read, even with the text shadow.

<comment><AUTHOR> thanks, maybe the background should be darker. Also I'm thinking it needs some description text on the landing page.</comment></comment>


Winget Install Learning - <AUTHOR> https://devblogs.microsoft.com/commandline/winget-install-learning/ <comment><AUTHOR> tl;dr: Microsoft has acknowledged having worked with the (now discontinued) AppGet developer to better product direction for WinGet. This blog post is part of an ongoing effort to address claims that Microsoft copied a number of AppGet features/ideas without attribution.</comment>


Why humans can't navigate out of a paper bag - <AUTHOR> http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg20327211.000-why-humans-cant-navigate-out-of-a-paper-bag.html?DCMP=OTC-rss&nsref=online-news <comment><USER2> Bad title, good article. Starts slow, but picks up.</comment>


Google Person Finder for Typhoon Yolanda - <AUTHOR> http://google.org/personfinder/2013-yolanda/

<comment><USER2> Who actually uses this in the Philippines? The tool always gets shared across social networks whenever there's a typhoon but I've never heard of people actually finding lost families/friends with it.</comment>


On Facebook: Lots of friends + sexy pics = you're a narcissist - <AUTHOR> http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/RTGAM.20080925.wlfacebook25/BNStory/lifeFamily/home <comment><USER2> I think that journalists misunderstand "friends" in the context of FB. It's more like your address book. I have people on mine that I haven't seen face- to-face in years for whatever reason. Our paths may or may not cross again, but I know how to contact them if I'm ever where they are, or want to organize a reunion from primary school or am looking to hire someone with a particular skill/get hired somewhere or whatever. A few hundred people I think is perfectly normal.If FB had called it 'contacts' instead of friends, it would have been much clearer.</comment>


Which GPUs to Get for Deep Learning - <AUTHOR> http://timdettmers.wordpress.com/2014/08/14/which-gpu-for-deep-learning/ <comment><USER2> I disagree with his position on memory (he mentions in the post that anything above 1.5GB should be fine). In my experience, anything below 3GB can be pretty uncomfortable these days, if you want to work on serious problems.

It's not just about fitting the parameters into GPU memory, but also all the operations you perform on them, which can require a lot of intermediate storage. The example he gives only has fully-connected layers, but convolutional neural networks tend to require more space, especially some more recent implementations (e.g. FFT-based convolutions or the GEMM approach used by Caffe).

He mentions that his network (fully connected) has 52M parameters and compares it to Krizhevsky's 2012 ImageNet network (convolutional) network, which had 60M. But Krizhevsky actually explicitly mentions in his paper that memory was an issue:

"A single GTX 580 GPU has only 3GB of memory, which limits the maximum size of the networks that can be trained on it. It turns out that 1.2 million training examples are enough to train networks which are too big to fit on one GPU. Therefore we spread the net across two GPUs." (from [http://papers.nips.cc/paper/4824-imagenet-classification- wit...](http://papers.nips.cc/paper/4824-imagenet-classification-with-deep- convolutional-neural-networks) )

<comment><USER3> Serious is a spectrum, someone working on more "serious" problems than you might laugh at the idea of doing any work at all on a single consumer GPU.

<comment><USER2> Well, I did say "in my experience" :) I certainly didn't mean to imply that problems requiring less than 3GB of GPU RAM are laughable, or anything like that. I should have said something like like "problems that people are currently writing papers about", maybe.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> For those looking to do it on the jvm, I have a prepacked scientific computing framework that might be interesting:

[http://nd4j.org/](http://nd4j.org/)

This is a generic wrapper with ndarrays for cuda and normal blas operations. Deeplearning4j (my deeplearning project) also has support for GPUs (it's built on nd4j)

Stable version coming soon =D

For those of you in python land, I would look in to theano

<comment><USER5> Hey Adam, I just want to say I loved the recent talks you've given. The one at Hadoop Summit with Josh Patterson was so cool as a general overview. Keep it up!

<comment><USER4> Thanks! Things are coming along.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> The best value right now are used AMD GPUs. GPU cryptocurrency mining has become unprofitable so the used market is saturated with 290, 280x, and other AMD GPUs. If you have a limited budget this is probably the way to go.

<comment><USER7> What DL packages target AMD GPUs?

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Is there any reason why there isn't any AMD GPU? Mantle?

<comment><USER9> My guess is that while AMD GPUs would likely be better raw performance/$, my understanding is that their version of CUDA is sorely lacking compared to nVidia's offering.

<comment><USER10> AMD GPU's have no CUDA support, if someone wants to do some computing on it, usually OpenCL is the way to go.

<comment><USER9> Sorry, when I say "version of CUDA" I meant "whatever the hell they have on AMD" :)

Last I heard CUDA will outperform OpenCL on nVidia vs AMD at the same price point generally as a result of CUDA being in house and closer to hardware. As a result if you just care about compute performance you would go nVidia. If AMD offered their own Mantle based compute offering it would probably shift the other way.

<comment><USER11> There isn't really anything fundamentally that would make CUDA faster that OpenCL. There aren't any huge semantic differences between them.

<comment><USER12> The computing model, no, not really anything fundamentally different. It comes to tooling and profiling under Linux. Also, NVidia has slightly beefer cores and fewer ones, where as AMD has more cores (as I heard). Thus, for me, CUDA is a more complete tool-chain with proper compiler (nvcc), profiler (nvprof, nvvp) and libraries (cublas, cudnn, cufft).

<comment><USER11> There is an OpenCL profiler for AMD, and library equivalents for those in clBLAS / clFFT

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> The new Maxwell 970/980 kit is very interesting from a compute perspective.

970: $329 for 3494 SP / 109 DP GFLOPS @ 145W TDP

980: $549 for 4612 SP / 144 DP GFLOPS @ 165W TDP

<comment><USER14> If the article is correct (saying that the memory bandwidth is very important) then a 780Ti is still interesting (336GB/s[1] vs 224GB/s[2]). They increased the memory clock but they decreased the memory interface width from 384 to 256-bit, for some reason.

[1] [http://www.geforce.com/hardware/desktop-gpus/geforce- gtx-780...](http://www.geforce.com/hardware/desktop-gpus/geforce- gtx-780-ti/specifications)

[2] [http://www.geforce.com/hardware/desktop-gpus/geforce- gtx-980...](http://www.geforce.com/hardware/desktop-gpus/geforce- gtx-980/specifications)

<comment><USER15> nVidia released the first level cutdown (GM204) as the "80" part, while it really should be the 960 at most - the full/big Maxwell core hasn't been released yet.

Chances are the first fabbed version simply didn't work and they're waiting for the GM210.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Does anyone know if there are options to use GPUs on AWS to do calculations using Python for Deep Learning?

<comment><USER17> Amazon has GPU powered instances [1]

Python has pycuda [2]

Python has OpenCL [3] amusing ran by the same person as pycuda

[1] [http://docs.aws.amazon.com/AWSEC2/latest/UserGuide/using_clu...](http://docs.aws.amazon.com/AWSEC2/latest/UserGuide/using_cluster_computing.html)

[2] [http://documen.tician.de/pycuda/](http://documen.tician.de/pycuda/)

[3] [http://documen.tician.de/pyopencl/](http://documen.tician.de/pyopencl/)</comment></comment>


KeepassC – Curses based keepass written in Rust - <AUTHOR> http://raymontag.github.io/keepassc/ <comment><USER2> > [Rust] allows me to realize my vision of a secure password manager which is > not possible with Python.

Not trying to debunk this or anything, but could anyone expand on this (eg. what does secure mean in this context)? Has the author written somewhere about his decision (I couldn't find anything)?

<comment><USER3> My guesses:

\- ability to reliably erase memory that held passwords/keys with assurance it wasn't copied accidentally. AFAIK Python doesn't guarantee zeroing of freed memory.

\- type safety, error handling enforced by the type system, and race- condition-free concurrency might be an extra assurance.

<comment><USER4> What makes you think there's a reliable way to zero memory in Rust?

<comment><USER3> The fact that a systems programming language must have a way to do this, and Rust sort-of has: (it'd be better if it was a stable API though)

[https://doc.rust- lang.org/core/intrinsics/fn.volatile_set_me...](https://doc.rust- lang.org/core/intrinsics/fn.volatile_set_memory.html)

I know it's very tricky in presence of an optimizer. The current implementation in KeePassC uses the pointer after memset in Drop, so it might be just lucky ([https://github.com/raymontag/rust- keepass/issues/4](https://github.com/raymontag/rust-keepass/issues/4)).

<comment><USER5> I think you could just use black_box to get around the optimizer:

[http://doc.rust-lang.org/1.1.0/test/fn.black_box.html](http://doc.rust- lang.org/1.1.0/test/fn.black_box.html)

I've never actually tried it outside of tests, so I don't know if it applies here.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I love this.

I'm a bit surprised that there isn't currently a Linux distro that focuses on curses/ncurses apps. And if anyone is looking for the gap in the curses market there's no word processors. (Plenty of text editors though.)

<comment><USER7> Maybe this is due to a lack of proper widget toolkits. Curses is a real pain to program, and creating sophisticated UIs with it is borderline impossible. Things like dialog are not very flexible, and TurboVision (the best looking CUI ever) never took off, probably because of the lame C port.

<comment><USER8> Termbox is an "alternative", but it's, while easier to use, even more low- level. It's a shame there's no decent, modern high-level UI toolkit for terminals.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Why does the headline say "written in Rust" when the linked page says it's written in Python 3 (and the repository is full of Python and no Rust)?

<comment><USER10> There is a different repo for Rust implementation: [https://github.com/raymontag/rust-keepass](https://github.com/raymontag/rust- keepass)

I guess, OP posted the link to the blog post to highlight some reasoning behind the switch, not the code itself.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Does anyone here use www.passwordstore.org? I read through the source and I simply love how simple things are... therefore I wonder why something like keepass is preferred over passwordstore?

<comment><USER12> It seems that passwords are stored in files with plain text names that identify the website, service, etc. that the password is used for. Most other password managers don't expose this kind of information.

I haven't looked at those 3rd party clients mentioned on their website but I would say a console based command isn't an option for most people when there are password managers that come with a simple management gui and a convenient keyboard shortcut that insert the right account and password information directly into html login forms in your browser.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> Last I tried keepassc (about a month ago, definitely the python3 version), I couldn't find a way to make it load my .kdbx file which I routinely open/edit with keepassx. I tried renaming it to <something>.kdb and that didn't do it either. I didn't look that much into it but here goes: is my use case actually unsupported?

<comment><USER14> .kdb and .kdbx are two totally different formats. .kdb is used by KeePass and KeePassX, .kdbx is used by KeePass 2 and KeePassX 2.0 (currently Beta).

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> what is the meaning of: curses-based password manager

<comment><USER16> Not to be glib, but:

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Curses_(programming_library)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Curses_\(programming_library\))

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Password_manager](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Password_manager)</comment></comment>


Letter from Sen Wyden to the Internet - <AUTHOR> http://wyden.senate.gov/imo/media/doc/letter-to-internet.pdf

<comment><USER2> It's disheartening to not see any congress person stand up and admit that they were wrong in the initial bipartisan support that this bill had. Reacting is one thing, understand what caused the internet to revolt is another.

Instead, I was hoping this would cause some of the more sincere members of congress to admit that they pass legislation prepared by special interest groups without due diligence. Maybe I'm just too optimistic, but all reaction so far appears to be crowd-pleasing more than sincere.

</comment><comment><USER3> As a web page (Google Docs Viewer link -- Google account sign-in not necessary):

[https://docs.google.com/gview?url=http%3A%2F%2Fwyden.senate....](https://docs.google.com/gview?url=http%3A%2F%2Fwyden.senate.gov%2Fimo%2Fmedia%2Fdoc%2Fletter- to-internet.pdf)

Pertinent excerpt (after the "good job" part):

 _The Senate, however, has scheduled a vote for Tuesday,]ar1uary 24 at 2:15 PM to override my and move the Protect IP Act towards passage. _This will he the deciding vote_ that determines whether PIPA and SOFA move through the Congress or are turned back for more sober discussion._</comment>


Show HN: Super Debugger, a realtime messaging iOS Debugger tool - <AUTHOR> http://shopify.github.com/superdb/

<comment><USER2> This is cool. I have been building an app in RubyMotion and the REPL has been pretty useful.

That said, at least for me, the REPL is a bit overhyped. In most cases the stuff you will tweak with the REPL is UI stuff. But the thing is if you are using IB and designing your screens in Photoshop or Sketch, the UI should be pretty much in place before it hits the code.

As far as other use-cases beyond UI, if you are doing any other type of "testing" in the REPL, you probably should be writing unit tests :)

<comment><USER3> > if you are using IB

For anything nontrivial, IB is more of a hindrance than an aid. You probably are constructing the view programmatically.

<comment><USER4> I'm so tired of all the IB hate. IB is a tool, and it should be used when appropriate. Sure you can't do _everything_ in it, but for 80% of even "complex" views, things can be done _significantly_ faster in IB. Doing all UI creation and layout isn't faster and more "hardcore", it's ignoring a tool that has been around longer than OS X and iOS that was literally made for the job! Have fun maintaining that mess of UI layout code!

<comment><USER5> Isn't it fair to hate it just due to the clunky interface?

Many times I find it difficult to select a subview under another subview. Or, when adding a subview, it is too eager to be the subview of a subview. Those are the tip of my list of grievances.

I use it! Sometimes it's simpler and faster to go with IB instead of code, and you are definitely right about maintainability. But I sure wish there was something as convenient that wasn't awful to use. That's actually how I feel about all of Xcode. (Yes, I've tried AppCode, I liked it even less.)

<comment><USER6> You can select a specific view under others with ctrl-shift-click. I don't know anything to help with its over-eagerness to add subviews, though.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Builds on F-Script to give a Smalltalk-like syntax to iOS apps.

You can read a bit more about it here: [http://www.shopify.com/technology/7183290-introducing-the- su...](http://www.shopify.com/technology/7183290-introducing-the-super- debugger-a-wireless-real-time-debugger-for-ios-apps#axzz2I9qFiFse)

</comment><comment><USER7> I love when people put a bit of personality into their project pages. Those first 4 frames are delightfully fun. Nice Nintendo throwback.

<comment><USER8> "Personality" is one thing, but this is just awful.

I'm a developer, looking at the page to find out about a potentially useful tool. I'm not a graphic design student looking for inspiration; I value succinct, direct information, preferably with short examples that I don't have to go hunting (or scrolling miles) for. (Are there any real developers who seriously prefer a video?)

After the first couple of screens of scrolling with no more than a couple of scattered words, I gave up. The information density is so low that I've forgotten what the last screen says before I've read the next one.

<comment><USER9> Sooo what you're looking for is the Github readme, available from the button at the top of the wiki page. Wikis are for first looks, readmes are for the skin-and-bones usage guidelines.

<https://github.com/Shopify/superdb>

<comment><USER10> I wish the link went straight to this github page. In my experience wikis haven't been worth opening to get an overview of the product. Thanks for the link though.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Well I'm adding this to my current PonyDebugger, Charles Proxy & OHHTTPStubs debugging stack. Great job!

<comment><USER12> Using the same stack :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> Very interesting! I just started building a CLI for one of my apps to aid in debugging; this means I can scrap that dead-end work. Forked, will check it out.

<comment><USER14> Why would you scrap your work?

<comment><USER13> Fair question. Superdb does what I want: interactive state examination without breakpoints. I hadn't got very far with mine at all, and it was intimately bound up with the design of my app so wouldn't have been reusable even in my own future projects. Then there is the chance that I'll be able to contribute to superdb, something which appeals to my sense of community far more than writing some for-my-eyes-only, debug code for a closed-source app.

Mainly, though, I hate reinventing wheels. I'm not a very good programmer and it would take me far too long. I'll always look for a friendly giant to stand on before I try and build my own ladder.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Here's a possibly more comprehensive take on the same idea, illustrated by creating a badge:

<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7RkvUX_4Ros>

It demonstrates the creation of a graphical element in a live coding environment. The finished badge is then transferred to an iOS app and tweaked interactively.

One thing that isn't shown is that the code is simultaneously saved to a file within the Xcode project, so live tweaks and XCode project stay in sync.

<comment><AUTHOR> Although I haven't attempted it, I'm guessing that example would also be possible with Super Debugger. It would require a different interface, but I think it's possible.

>One thing that isn't shown is that the code is simultaneously saved to a file within the Xcode project, so live tweaks and XCode project stay in sync.

That's one thing I've yet to solve for superdb but would really love to get figured out. If you (or anyone) has any suggestions on how to implement it, let me know.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> superdbg is a more fitting name, anyone searching for a super database that's cloud-based, auto-scales, handles web-scale type load for their next generation social network might stumble upon superdb and be utterly disappointed.

</comment><comment><USER17> wow - where are these developers getting the designers to do these landing pages?

<comment><AUTHOR> I'm the developer and I did the design myself! (I'm not much of a designer, but I try to stick to the essentials. Typography, contrast, and direction)</comment></comment>


Why the $35 tablet will never exist - <AUTHOR> http://www.cio.com.au/article/354363/why_35_tablet_will_never_exist/?rid=-154 <comment><USER2> It's not too impossible. Take for example that I could buy an Android tablet from dealextreme.com for about $100 (free shipping). 7" touchscreen, wifi, sd slot. It's not the fastest, but it's probably usable.

$100 - shipping costs - profits (from all sources) = maybe $50? Or less? If the process was optimized more, the costs could go down to $35..

(I am not associated with the website.)

edit - I forgot about the 2GB of RAM, which the article does point out will bump up the price quite a bit. It's probably not possible unless they drop the RAM to something smaller.

</comment><comment><USER3> I dont think even the Indian government is claiming it will cost < 35 dollars to build. 35 Dollars seems to be the subsidized price.</comment>


Can you teach a man to fish who doesn't want to learn? - <AUTHOR> http://travisrobertson.com/leadership/can-you-teach-a-man-to-fish-who-doesnt-want-to-learn/

<comment><USER2> Don't click on link- page hijacking overlays.

<comment><AUTHOR> My apologies for offending you with my "hijacking overlay." It's been turned off. I'm quite new to the HN community and didn't realize this was a problem for a legitimate site to have.

Regards, Travis

<comment><USER2> I don't think it is policy (I don't speak for HN)- but I find it really irritating. Thank you for turning it off. I hope people enjoy your article.</comment></comment></comment>


Google results for Wikipedia pages now replaced with donation text - <AUTHOR> http://lmgtfy.com/?q=aide

<comment><USER2> It's part of the deepening relationship between Google and Wikipedia. Google is using Wikipedia content to flesh out its search results, in exchange for access to the free work of thousands of unpaid volunteers. Sergey Brin's recent $500,000 donation to Wikipedia seems like a bargain compared to other costs of data collection.

It's yet another reason why you should stop giving Wikipedia money [http://newslines.org/blog/stop-giving-wikipedia- money/](http://newslines.org/blog/stop-giving-wikipedia-money/)</comment>


Show HN: Pokey – Simulate Webhooks/other HTTP Requests - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/ccallebs/pokey

<comment><AUTHOR> I built this to scratch an itch I've been having when working on a service that uses SendGrid Webhooks extensively. To better simulate a production environment, I made something that generates SendGrid-esque requests to the application. Because I've just been using it locally, there's no authentication functionality yet (but it's in the pipe).

Although its primary focus is Webhooks, it could be used to mimic any sort of API request.</comment>


UK could be Europe's 'largest' economy by 2030 - <AUTHOR> http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-25519110 <comment><USER2> [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6968822](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6968822)</comment>


How I Accessed Employee Settings on Uber - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@nmock/accessing-employee-settings-on-uber-a3ecc5542315

<comment><AUTHOR> Author here: I was able to access employee settings for Uber Technologies, not just employee driver settings.

<comment><USER2> Very cool. With the same approach were you able to manipulate prices or surge/no surge?

Wouldn't be very useful in real life, but if they have a bug bounty program you could report it.

<comment><USER3> I don't think this is the case. Setting this "isAdmin" flag simply caused the UI to be rendered. But I'm pretty sure that require any access to the remote API calls will be rejected.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> This is nowhere near as bad as it seems at first - the impact looks limited to changing things within their own app, it's basically just the debug menu. It's not actually giving them access to any additional information or privileges.

</comment><comment><USER5> Theres no date on this story.

<comment><USER6> Bottom of the page. Feb 27th.</comment></comment>


I've managed to get a job interview in Oslo - <AUTHOR>

and would be grateful to know if there is anything worth doing/seeing/meeting in Oslo before going home? <comment><USER2> If the weather is clear (unlikely, I know) going up Holmenkollen is gorgeous. Visiting Vigeland park is a must too.

Good luck with the interview and if you plan on buying alcohol, do it at the duty free.

<comment><USER3> Both these are great suggestions to see the outdoors of Oslo. And if you want to see some local history;

Akershus Fortress - the resistance museum is particularly interesting and you can do a waterfront walk in the nearby area too.

Folk and Viking museums are really good if you have time to travel to the Oslo suburbs.

Munch Museum is good if you enjoy art. I always thought of his scream type picture before going there but he does some really light colorful stuff too. They have a national gallery but it doesn't compare to what you'll see in London/NY/Paris so would recommend the 'local specialty'.</comment></comment>


The art of debugging with Chrome DevTools - <AUTHOR> http://medium.com/frontmen/art-of-debugging-with-chrome-devtools-ab7b5fd8e0b4 <comment><USER2> In recent time Firefox has made great strides where dev tools are concerned. I'd love to see a stack up comparing the two from the POV of a new developer.</comment>


Reputation rule changes on stack overflow - <AUTHOR> http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/03/important-reputation-rule-changes/

<comment><USER2> Can I just delete all of my questions and leave the board?</comment>


Computer Bowl I (1988) - <AUTHOR> http://www.archive.org/details/episode_602 <comment><AUTHOR> For the other videos check out this index: [http://research.microsoft.com/en- us/um/people/gbell/tcmwebpa...](http://research.microsoft.com/en- us/um/people/gbell/tcmwebpage/computerbowl.html)</comment>


PhoneGap Build - <AUTHOR> https://build.phonegap.com/

<comment><USER2> Thanks for submitting this. I've applied to the beta. This sort of solution is very helpful to me, as I've used PhoneGap before to make apps before, but I don't have a Mac to access any more.

<comment><AUTHOR> Glad I could help. I subscribed as well, if it works well it will really be helpful.</comment></comment>