A new digital divide: Young people who can't use keyboards - <AUTHOR> http://www.asahi.com/ajw/articles/AJ201803290068.html <comment><USER2> It's worth bearing in mind that the source is Japanese. All input methods for the Japanese language are a compromise. Inputting kanji on a physical keyboard is nowhere near as fluid as inputting Latin characters - you're constantly toggling between inputting kana and selecting the kanji options presented by the IME.

The prediction and correction technologies of smartphone keyboards are a very good match for kanji and hànzì input. As a second-language user of Chinese, I find it considerably faster and easier to input hànzì on a smartphone than with a physical keyboard. The context switching between inputting pīnyīn and selecting hànzì is much less expensive when the hànzì are presented directly above the on-screen keyboard. The prediction and correction algorithms seem to be far more intelligent on mobile, which largely compensates for the slower and more error-prone tactile experience.

It is my understanding that most young Japanese people prefer the flick input method, which is a refinement of the old keitai input method used on featurephones with numeric keypads; they are often startlingly quick at using this method, but it poses a far higher switching cost when moving to a QWERTY- derived physical keyboard. I find it entirely plausible that the flick method could simply be inherently superior.

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8V-za9LT_30](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8V-za9LT_30)

<comment><USER3> As a Japanese native speaker who has to enter many Japanese texts on a daily basis both on a PC and on a smartphone, I feel obliged to point out that the quality of an IME (a piece of software providing possible kanji/alphabet sequences for a given phonetic relization), is far better on a PC (its built- in MS-IME, to be precise) than on a smartphone (iOS).

I started looking for some example to show how bad iOS's IME is, and I found it for the first try: it returns a wrong candidate for the first suggestion for "かんじをにゅうりょくする" (to enter kanji), returning "感じを入力する" (to enter sense) rather than the correct "漢字を入力する". Note that "漢字" (kanji) and "感じ" (sense) have the exact same phonetic relization: Both of them are pronounced as _kanji_. It seems as if iOS's IME does not take into account any contexts at all. If it did, how could it have calculated entering sense (?) is more likely than entering kanji? This kind of absurd error would rarely happen with Microsoft's IME and it always stresses me out when entering long texts in Japanese on a smartphone.

<comment><USER4> There are some better input methods for Japanese, and they are not available on smartphones.

SKK

What you are talking above is phrase-wise conversion. However, using SKK can easily distinguish "感じ" and "漢字" by "KanJi" and "Kanji", by explicitly specifying where the conversion starts and ends with Shift key. SKK can massively reduce the conversion candidates, so that people can faster obtain converted sentences.SKK is a good input method, but doesn't exist for smartphones.

T-Code (or TUT-Code)

We also have t-code input methods on computers but not on smartphones. It assigns 2 key strokes into one letter(kana or frequently used kanji) directly. For example, "kd" will type "の" and "is" will be "東". This input method is also very efficient and boost input speed, however it is designed for physical full size keyboard with 8 fingers. Its users can't do the same with software keyboard because they remember the key strokes with fingers.

<comment><USER5> If anybody is interested in a Kanji dataset for improved input methods, please check out the 52,835 characters I gathered.

[https://blog.usejournal.com/making-of-a-chinese- characters-d...](https://blog.usejournal.com/making-of-a-chinese-characters- dataset-92d4065cc7cc#2e67-5b7da3579715)

I made my own input method for Chinese Hanzi, which decomposes the characters and lets me find characters based on their IDS codes. It also predicts words both forwards and backwards (in case you don't know the first character, but do know the second).

[https://pingtype.github.io](https://pingtype.github.io)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Do your children a favor and get them a "real" computer with keyboard and mouse, instead of a tablet.

I've found it helps with several things. For one, I've seen children accustomed to using touch interfaces blurring the line between physical and virtual, i.e swiping at physical objects like books, photos, even walls. I've not seen this behavior with those used to non touch interfaces.

Also, learning to use a keyboard while learning the alphabet seems like a virtuous cycle, at least in my personal experiences.

And it may sound old fashioned, but making things too easy for kids makes them less independent and less willing to put in the effort required for learning.

Compare for example searching for animal pictures using voice search versus going to the search engine, typing out the term, clicking on "images"... The first is much easier and teaches instant gratification, while the second teaches perseverance and comes with a greater sense of accomplishment.

Disclaimer: purely anecdotal, take the preceding with a salt shaker...

<comment><USER7> > I've seen children accustomed to using touch interfaces blurring the line > between physical and virtual, i.e swiping at physical objects like books, > photos, even walls. I've not seen this behavior with those used to non touch > interfaces.

Why do you think this is a bad think? This is how kids learn how the world works, by trying the same thing in different contexts, like how small children put everything in their mouth. We don't criticize that, it's part of learning.

> Compare for example searching for animal pictures using voice search versus > going to the search engine, typing out the term, clicking on "images"

I don't know, when I was a kid I was searching for animal pictures by opening an atlas picture book. Was it better, did I became smarter because I did this this instead of using Google or a voice search?

I don't think that making information access easier is ever a bad think.

<comment><USER6> My worry with toddlers and touch interfaces is precisely because at that age they should be exploring the world, touching, tasting, smelling, feeling... By exposing them to something that doesn't react to the laws of physics, I fear they get a wrong first impression of the world, that at an early age they are not able to distinguish the difference between a book and a representation of one. I'm not against tablets, just that they shouldn't be given to toddlers at all, and to older kids once they are able to use the basics of a keyboard and mouse interface. Like walking before running so to speak.

Regarding looking things up in a book, it's a great skill to have, even from a purely enjoyment aspect, and I would certainly encourage kids to learn it. It doesn't mean not having access to the internet or voice search. Same way one can teach growing food or making fire with a bow, while still buying groceries every week and cooking on a convection range.

It's important in my view for kids to know where we've come from, to better understand the world as it is today.

<comment><USER8> > By exposing them to something that doesn't react to the laws of physics, I > fear they get a wrong first impression of the world, that at an early age > they are not able to distinguish the difference between a book and a > representation of one.

I'm not friends with how you casually throw the word "wrong" in there, as if it was an unquestionable universal agreement.

Transport yourself (by vessel of imagination) to a future where this toddler is 30 years old, and both you and this toddler-no-more are bidding for a project: a customer is going to write a neat piece of software dealing with technical spec sheets, but they need someone to do the interaction design for it. Of course, it's going to run on the next-next-next-next-next gen touch surfaces which is what is available at the time.

You both present your solutions to the customer, and after a few weeks they call you up to say, "Please don't get us wrong. Your interface was really good. We decided to go with the ex-toddler anyway. They had similar ideas to yours, it's just that yours felt a bit tied to the Newtonian laws of physics. The toddler seemed to think more freely about the medium and used that for good.

"We fear that, given your age, you have gotten a wrong first impression of digital interfaces. You seem to have problems distinguishing the difference between what we call a book these days, and one of those old objects made from dead trees."

I'm not saying it's good either, I'm saying it's _different_. And while the toddler perspective may look wrong with your 20th century eyes, it could very well be that _your_ perspective looks wrong with the toddlers 21st century eyes.

<comment><USER6> I work with a designer that has something like 20+ years of print experience. We make web sites. It's true that some habits are hard to break, like wanting pixel perfect shapes and alignments, which of course doesn't work too well with today's needs of responsive design, or mobile first interfaces.

But, after a basic introduction to the fundamentals of modern web design, the guy has come up with some great ideas, elegant and easy to navigate... And can still do posters flyers etc.

He is now even getting into 3d stuff for animations.

Point is, learning is incremental, and it's always possible to extend what one knows in new directions, if one is of curious mind and willing to change.

Now, concerning toddlers and tablets... the thing is, we are governed by the physical world in which we live. It's very important on a mental but also motor level to have a good understanding of that. I mean things that adults take for granted like balance, dexterity, hand eye coordination, a subconscious understanding of gravity, etc.

These are actually learned by trial and error, if you've ever seen a toddler stack blocks or learn to throw you'll have seen this in action.

During this period of learning about the world, having regular interactions with objects that do not follow the same rules is confusing to very young children. This is not just my opinion but something which many child psychologists agree on.

Again I'm not against tablets, but better not to introduce them earlier than 3 or 4 years old at the earliest.

I think that still gives them plenty of time to assimilate 21st century technology and think of the next big thing in 20 years. Which I probably won't understand ;-)

<comment><USER9> It really doesn't matter whether a child learns to stack blocks at ten months or at three years. Childhood comes before the rat race. I was phenomenally uncoordinated at least through the age of ten, and it didn't have anything to do with electronic devices because we didn't have those. I'm now perfectly capable of numerous complex and precise physical tasks.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> The first example provided in the article (indeed the first sentence) is "How do I double click?", and I want to focus on this.

As a kid in the 90s, I just took double clicking as a necessary evil. But after many many opportunities of trying (mostly successfully) to teach it to both the elderly and to kids, I've gradually grown to hate it. It's such a horrible gesture, difficult to perform, complicated to reason about and entirely disconnected from any real-world metaphor.

May double clicking die off and vanish, never to be found again, except for in the annals of bad ideas.

<comment><USER11> I often encounter people having issues double-clicking.

Actually, a lot of people have trouble just single-clicking, so double- clicking is even more of a challenge.

A lot of people just can't get the knack for clicking twice in quick succession. And the inconsistency between when they should single-click and when they should double-click causes a lot of confusion.

I think it probably would make life easier to get rid of the double-click.

<comment><USER12> The other week my Dutch language teacher (he's ~55) wrote an email "I would like to try Linux, can you please assist?" after learning about what is open source and libre software. I was pleasantly surprised to receive his email. So last week I went to install Fedora 28 on his new laptop. It all went smoothly. No, that's a lie; I had to do a little scary command-line surgery while he watched me do it (and heard me assure he doesn't need to do anything like that).

I set up all the requisite things, and since it was his first time, we went through a few common desktop workflows tailored to his needs. There I noticed: he was single-clicking where he needed to double-click—e.g. while opening a directory. I briefly explained the differences between the two and we tried again. He got better, but still struggled. I biked back home wondering if he'll continue to struggle with the double-click. :-(

<comment><USER13> Maybe Ubuntu would be more appropiate as a first time distro? I use Ubuntu because I end up frustrated having to google a million issues whenever I use any other linux distro. I grew up on windows desktop and can't really see any but the most determined ipad user from sticking with ubuntu let alone anything else.

<comment><USER12> I considered it, but Fedora is the beast I know for ~10 years, and I could debug it more confidently if something breaks (and I know I'll inevitably be called for tech support). Also, I've had "great success" with Fedora on my Father's (age: 67) desktop for already 3+ years; so I "built on top of that".

My professor's use cases are quite simple: writing articles in Libre Office (he's already familiar with it on Winblows), YouTube, and a browser—only one tab at a time; he was blissfully unaware of the concept of tabs until we walked through it!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> This is similar to the stereotype of: young people are good with computers. Browsing Instagram is not the same as creating value through programming and complex problem solving.

<comment><USER15> I've always felt that young people are seen as good with computers because they're more confident and less afraid of failure, and that even if their only experience is instagram they're more likely to google a scary error message or click around at random in various menus.

<comment><USER16> I'm not sure that that is the case, any longer. I have a lot of trouble with our college-aged interns, because they will barely make an effort to try doing something before getting stonewalled and bailing out to go ask someone to do it for them. Sometimes I just want to yell at them to run the code and see what happens, and then try to figure out _why_ what happened happened. And these are computer science majors.

<comment><USER17> > _doing something before getting stonewalled and bailing out to go ask > someone to do it for them_

Funny this is the problem. One of my major life lessons was learning _not_ to always persevere, and to ask for help as soon as possible. Solves more problems faster, teaches you more ways of looking at a problem and smoothly scales to delegation.

<comment><USER18> This cannot be emphasized enough. In a social+technical work environment, the more you "persevere" on your own, the more you'll become pigeonholed as a tech guru who solves immediate problems but loses influence in the higher-level decisions of your organization. There's still a balance, though, as asking for too much help will lead to resentment and people just straight up thinking you're stupid.

<comment><USER19> I'm not sure it really is a good thing that being too good at something is leading to pigeonholing. It's a shame that what was before (or for other discipline) named mastery is now just seen as relegating from higher levels. Can you pigeonhole in medicine? Nuclear physics ? Professional football /sports ? Cooking ? I could go on. I'd frankly rather have people with less high level view and more knowing what it really means to do something before deciding to do it.

<comment><USER17> > _being too good at something is leading to pigeonholing_

People who are good at something tend to ask for help when they need it. Asking for help is a way to get better. Blindly persevering wastes time and tends to force one into dead ends.

<comment><USER15> I don't think giving up instantly is the same thing as asking for help _when you need it_ , and I don't think e.g. spending 30 seconds minutes googling the definition of "ENOENT" before calling someone else over is blindly persevering. I think there's a path through the middle of the two extremes, where you try a bit of basic problem solving on your own, but ask for help when you're stuck, and learn from the experience.

<comment><USER17> > _spending 30 seconds minutes googling the definition of "ENOENT" before > calling someone else over is blindly persevering_

It's not blindly persevering. It is, however, giving up an opportunity to learn from and interact with a colleague. Whatever you were working on related to the query might have additional context filled in or expanded upon through conversation. Some of my most productive and unexpected insights came up as a result of such banter.

When you ask "what does this mean," you're asking for a definition. You're also communicating the problem and hinting at your angle of attack. Possible valuable and unexpected responses include "you're approaching it wrong" or "why are you working on that problem when X looks more lucrative"

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> I'm confused here. The article implies that kids aren't learning how to type because they don't have access to a PC at home. But for the majority of the history of computing, it was the case that most people wouldn't have had access to a PC at home as children. My parents learned to type on typewriters at college. I had a mandatory class entirely dedicated to typing in middle school. Have schools stopped offering computer classes, assuming that kids already know how to use them from their experience at home? If so, then that sounds like a problem all on its own given that poorer households might not have had a computer even during the PC golden age.

<comment><USER21> > Have schools stopped offering computer classes,

Many have stopped or at least severely cut back

> assuming that kids already know how to use them from their experience at > home?

Partly this and partly budget cuts. Computer skills aren't on the standardized tests, so they are a "waste of time" like art and music and history and everything else that isn't on the test. So they are deemphasized.

Some schools with money for computers and a computer teacher will at least try to integrate it into their language instruction by doing exercises on the computer.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> >Given that they can write and submit their school reports with smartphones

Would students really do this? I couldn't imagine trying to write an entire essay or a lab report on a smartphone. Maybe Japanese schools don't have to turn in longer things like that?

<comment><USER23> As someone who recently worked in education... yes. Anecdotally, I tended to see it at the community-college level with students who owned a large-screen phone and didn't own a computer.

I don't think anyone is writing whole research papers or serious lab reports on phones. A two-page reading response is totally doable. Something with footnotes or equations, not so much.

<comment><USER24> Yes, one can technically vomit out a few hundred words using a small touch screen. But the tools make it damn difficult to edit and re-organize text. Does this mean that all such reports are basically stream-of-consciousness writing instead of a more carefully polished piece of work?

<comment><USER25> It's not hard to edit & reorganised with larger screen smartphone at all.

<comment><USER26> It seems like it would be more awkward than with a mouse+keyboard controlled text editor, but I'd be happy to be proven wrong. I'd love to get better with working with touchscreens, but I haven't seen any way of getting the composability I've become accustomed to on the *nix command line and associated editors (be it vim, emacs or even the monoliths of atom and vscode).

<comment><USER23> Of course it's more awkward. But it's also not hard. And if a phone is all you've got, and you don't have the money to spend on a computer on top of it... then you make do. It's not the end of the world. It's fine.

<comment><USER26> That's a fair point. I know it's the not the end of the world, but I guess I was just hoping to be shown a particularly efficient method of touchscreen input.

<comment><USER27> Also: to further the point, it is possible but even more invonvenient to fix mistakes and reflow text on a physical page - but that doesn't mean that all text written on paper is stream-of-conciousness

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> An interesting part in the article:

> Lena-Sophie Mueller, of the German nonprofit Initiative D21, pointed out: > "Timetables (for railways) are no longer available in paper form. More and > more services are based on the Internet [...]"

This has been going on for quite a while. I distinctly remember being stranded in Düsseldorf a few years back. I was at the train station, looking for a train (I knew the destination but not which train I had to take). It was very late and since the roaming costs were horrendous (around 15 € per MB, I think), I had deactivated all mobile data on my phone.

I searched more or less the whole train station, failing to find some printed plan that told me which train to pick. You could see where the plans used to be, but they had all been removed. Luckily, a lonely waffle vendor still was around and helped me out with his iPhone.

I found a line/station map later on -- _inside_ the train in question. How anyone can come to the conclusion that this is the place to look, is beyond me.

<comment><USER29> All the stations I've been to have digital displays with all the trains in the next hours.

<comment><USER28> Remember that this is anecdata at best :)

I've been to Stuttgart recently and had no such problems at the train station there. I just wanted to point out that this phenomenon is not all that new.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> If you aren't actually creating content [art, software, serious writing, etc] then using a mobile is fine for just consuming and it isn't surprising that these groups don't know how to use a computer.

It is sad though, that young people appear to be less computer literate in terms of creating content (as an overall percentage of previous generations).

<comment><USER31> Less literate in terms of creating _anything_.

<comment><USER32> I agree and I'm in this group.

I blame the duration of modern education. It has made newer generations less flexible. Institutionalization. It's a paradox because the Internet has made the pollination of ideas more likely - but we are less likely to do new things, we stay in our boxes.

This shows up in the productivity and entrepreneurship statistics.

It may be true that wages are poor and rents are high - but also we're really not helping ourselves. Rates of self built homes should be increasing among young people but I don't see that. Usually over the years a generation gets richer but I suspect many young people with 'careers' are waiting for a golden goose.

If you are aged > 30 and rent in a major city and earn less than 40k-60k per year - you need to wake up and get out before you become a poor middle aged person. Most people my age from university are living like students a decade after leaving the university. Having to live with your parents or live in a house share cannot be half your adult life if you have a successful career, nor can forking most of your income over to a landlord.

HN's residents are an anomaly in the broader economy and their experience is alien to most of their generation.

<comment><USER33> Part of the reason for the decline in self-built in homes is advancements in modular home building. They're much better, and more economical than ever before. Even my Dad, who self-built two large homes himself, admitted it doesn't make sense to self-build. One is better off just working more in whatever specialty they do, and getting a modular home.

<comment><USER32> We're not buying those either. I've seen only one prefab in my area.

We're not even building Tiny Houses. That movement has faded away as the land permission issue dominated over their advantages.

Meanwhile: [https://youtu.be/M73r32vK7C4](https://youtu.be/M73r32vK7C4)

That's not a joke - there is a steep decline in being 'handy' \- I'm doing everything I can to learn how to be but it still feels a bit unnatural. That lack of adaptability is like an extra tax.

I don't think my parents are more handy either, but that's a generation that bought their houses at 5x-15x lower prices so millennials like me could really do with being more hands on.

To put this in perspective, my father bought his house for 40k 20 years ago and now it is valued at least 250k. I earn about the same as he did 20 years ago and I suspect I earn more per hour than my university peers. Bluntly - they're poor - the most sensitive subject you could talk about is how much you earn. That's private.

It's not the cost of equipment that's the problem. The cost of good power tools is lower than before and they're more effective. Materials prices are higher but not that much. The big constraint is psychological, possibly followed up by permissions for building.

There's a weird psychology with this subject - weird to hear it described but it's there.

Somehow _not having a house_ is believed to be less impoverished than going and building one. Count me out! I don't think forking over half your earnings to a landlord is sophisticated. I remember talking to people about the Tiny House concept and I got the strong impression that living in a modest self built dwelling was an admission of poverty.

<comment><USER34> I'm old and I just learned the "case length" trick!

<comment><USER35> Haha and I just learned the "draw a perfect circle around a nail" trick! No idea where that might be useful in my own life though.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> Having volunteered to teach kids coming from single-parent household with no computer at home, I've seen how the inability to type on a QWERTY keyboard with any modicum of speed (hunt-and-peck) actually limits them when we encourage them to 'iterate', 'try fast and fail', 'just code a line of something', or 'what will that do?'. If expressing your thoughts and intentions to the editor is painful and slow, it is a concrete barrier to learning how to fail faster.

Forgot teaching kids how to code right away , teach them how to type first so they can "commune" with the machine (ideally with ergonomics and whole arm movement in mind so RSI is not an issue).

<comment><USER37> Specifically I would suggest to let them learn to type _themselves_ , rather than following some program. (I.e., don't teach home-row typing.) I taught myself to type when I was 5 or 6, and type with wrists straight (so, at an angle to each other), hands in no fixed location, and both hands sharing duty for several keys. I credit this with my freedom from keyboard-related RSI even after 28 years of typing.

(I have had mouse-related RSI. Mice cause grip issues.)

Better still is to give them a real keyboard, i.e. one with key travel, not a crappy laptop keyboard. I learned on an Apple II, plenty of key travel. Typing on a MacBook over the course of three recent years nearly destroyed my typing ability due to what I can only describe as something like the yips. Switching back to a real keyboard has helped.

<comment><USER38> I think there's something to this. I can type with a pretty decent speed if I look down at the keys now and then; my hands float around the keyboard and mostly hit keys with the first two fingers on either hand, with the occasional left pinky for a modifier and right thumb for space.

I have tried to Learn To Touch Type multiple times in my life and every single time I could feel my wrists starting to ache from holding them close together and angled. Dealing with that's just not worth the increased speed and ability to never look at the keyboard that touch-typing would give me.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER39> I always thought the idea of the digital divide never went far enough. If you look at the work performed by regular people on a daily basis using computers and the work performed by skilled software engineers there is such an absurd level of difference in efficiency. Its no wonder that AI will replace most jobs people do.

AI will not be able to make those people more efficient, it will replace them. AI can't help them to be more efficient since they don't know how to think on any fundamental level.

> "Everybody in this country should learn to program a computer, because it > teaches you how to think" - Steve Jobs

</comment><comment><USER40> About two years ago, while carrying out user testing at Hunter College on a prototype for their site redesign/build (yet to be implemented due to bureaucracy...), we observed several test users default to tapping on the laptop screen to navigate. For that round the test users were students, and the ones who defaulted to tapping were of a younger age. Even after making the initial realization that the screen didn't have touch capabilities, every few moments they would still touch the screen in an attempt to tap navigation elements or to scroll a page.

Personally, it was kind of a shock to witness, especially seeing that it was safe to assume that there was less than a 10 year difference in our ages. It got me thinking about a near future possibility of keyboardless computers, and the dread of writing code without one. Though it's unlikely, it struck the fear of god in me haha

</comment><comment><USER41> This situation is not caused by complicated Japanese input methods. This is caused by young generation who don't use traditional computer with the keyboard.

It's another digital divide. Yes.

The generation who didn't have a personal computer in their young age is starting to retire.

Current 30s-40s years old workers are varies on computer literacy but many had a personal computer when they were a student. I belong to this generation.

I was hoping that the next generation will be completely digital native and all of them has computer literacy. Just laugh us and obliterate us from work force for we can't stand a chance against such a gifted digital native generation at birth. Just like we get rid of those annoying old people who don't have a computer literacy.

The invention of smartphone make that dream not happens. The smartphone makes people stupid. There is nothing smart about that computer.

The smartphone is inefficient and restricted computer. You don't have a freedom to choose the OS. You don't even have a root access to that very computer you own. It doesn't have a keyboard which is the most efficient input device for text. The smartphone is designed for reading the text, not for writing. So the young generation starting to lose the ability to write the text.

What makes me surprise is, that current students use the smartphone to read the papers, to write the necessary essay and reports necessary for graduation.

The fresh young generations who has just graduated enter the working class without learning how to use the keyboard. But the real work which involve a lot of text writing requires efficient input device such as the keyboard.

So the current trending of smartphone reduce the effective good workers from already reducing younger population in Japan.

I refuse to own a phone. Smartphone is the worst invention of our time. It disrupt attention, reduce computer literacy, or even plain literacy for it makes harder to write the text for most of them.

<comment><USER42> > The smartphone is inefficient and restricted computer.

It's worse than this. The smartphone is such a complete abstraction with "apps" that modern teenagers don't even have a correct concept of "computer".

The fact that an "app" is actually a recipe and that something (aka a computer) needs to _execute_ that recipe is a revelation.

<comment><USER41> Yes, the "app" ecosystem is ridiculous.

I think I don't need to remind you this. But most apps are nothing but browser wrapper for their specific URL. Most of them doesn't require a special purpose user-agent at all. Just standard web browser should suffice.

These days, when people hear there exits a new fashionable web service, they immediately search the "app" for that from locked-in app distribution platform offered by Apple or Google. Install the top result(hopefully the official app) without the doubt, and use that web service via the app even though that app is straightforward browser wrapper and nothing requires to be an app.

So in order to reach the mass, web services of today has no choice but to release the corresponding app even though their web service is 100% usable from ordinary web browser.

The smartphone makes people stupid.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER43> I didn't introduce anything electronic to my son until he was about 7. I then told him, he wouldn't be allowed to use a computer until he learns to type first.

One year later, he was typing over 100 wpm. Now a teenager, he types about 130wpm.

He started with a basic online course to learn the proper technique. Then afterward, he started playing an online game called nitrotype. Which made learning to type fast enjoyable.

</comment><comment><USER44> I've seen this claim over and over, and failed to see how this is a big deal. Most people in Japan in 80s couldn't type either. (An English typewriter wasn't something that most people would use or own.) Even if kids can't type, I bet they would learn typing faster than the kids 30 years ago. Sounds like a fuss about nothing.

</comment><comment><USER45> When I look at computer interfaces, I'm drawn back to the (probably mythical) story of the QWERTY keyboard, that it was designed to slow us down because our brains are faster than the mechanism of the typewriter. The modern GUI could be interpreted in that way too: Forcing us to direct the computer through a series of painfully discrete steps, to camouflage the fact that it can't interpret natural language.

I've seen kids type on their phones, faster than I can type on a QWERTY keyboard. So, give them a phone that mimics a wireless keyboard and let them use it to interact with a bigger computer.

As for learning things like Excel, the sad part is not that they haven't been taught the mechanical skills, but that those tools could enrich their K-12 education, e.g., in math and science class.

<comment><USER46> QWERTY was invented to move letters that were often close to each other in words to be further apart on the keyboard so as to prevent jams when two keys were pressed at once on a typewriter.

<comment><USER47> [https://www.smithsonianmag.com/arts-culture/fact-of- fiction-...](https://www.smithsonianmag.com/arts-culture/fact-of-fiction-the- legend-of-the-qwerty-keyboard-49863249/)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER48> I've seen this phenomenon while teaching a teenager programming (in america). He had no problem typing letters, but when it came to symbols like $ % [ ( etc, it took him forever to find them. It makes sense as modern computers don't require that you edit autoexec.bat files to get a game running and he is probably mostly on a phone or tablet anyway. But I was surprised!

</comment><comment><USER49> I can confirm this. My brother is in high school and their school uses ipads religiously to submit work, handle slide decks and do quizzes. At his age, I had a typing speed of ~40-50WPM, he can barely do 30, with a lower accuracy (spellcheck subtly saving him). No proper typing form either because touchscreen devices are really just one finger-based. This definitely exists.

</comment><comment><USER50> My mother told me she saw a baby using a smartphone. He was swiping, typing, zooming etc.. The mother of the baby said he was 16 months old.

So I can believe in a few years kids will grow up used to smooth phone/tablet type keyboards and not the physical type.

</comment><comment><USER51> During the fourth grade we were taught to type on keyboards, but only as one part of a computer class. I forgot how soon after. Once I got interested in PC gaming I learned to hunt and peck quicky, program batch files, and use macros.

Then I got a computer science degree and worked for almost two years as a programmer; typing by staring at keys using two fingers. When the time came it didn't take long to relearn 'proper' typing.

For some kids a little exposure to fundamentals at the right time is enough. And there is more to computing than input technique. So long as the kids are interested and motivated nature will find a way.

</comment><comment><USER52> In the meantime, services like Venmo are becoming mobile only since the majority of users only use the mobile app (so they say). Many new startup ideas are mobile-first since that is where their user base is.

<comment><USER53> > Many new startup ideas are mobile-first since that is where their user base > is

The main reason it's smart to go mobile first is the transition from mobile to desktop is significantly easier than going from desktop to mobile. It's very easy to design a desktop product that's almost impossible to make mobile and almost impossible to do the opposite.

</comment></comment><comment><USER54> > Young people who can't use keyboards

How is this different from previous generations?

The examples listed (not knowing how to use a keyboard, not knowing how to double click and not knowing what a 'cell' in a spreadsheet is) were all extremely common among my classmates back in highschool (and this is talking about the 90's here, so computers were in fairly widespread use at this point).

The new digital divide is just like the old one.

<comment><USER55> In the 2000's I had to write physics and chemistry lab reports, typically 4-5 pages long, with enough formulas that I ended up ditching Word and MathType for some basic LaTeX.

In maths I had to write Excel macros and Mathematica scripts.

I know that education in Japan is probably a bit more disconnected from reality compared to the pragmatism we see here, but still, the goal of high- school is to prepare students for college no?

<comment><USER56> > but still, the goal of high-school is to prepare students for college no

It depends on who you ask. In the school I work at, in the Rural South in America, many parents and students say the goal of high school should be to teach the students how to do a competent job and take care of themselves after school. So they complain about having to learn Algebra II and other "useless" stuff, while they don't even know how loans and interest and debt and such works. Or how to book a hotel, things like that.

School has, basically, become expected to teach students both job training and basic life skills that, a few generations ago, parents and companies would have explained. It's become basically free training, and, honestly, it defeats the purpose of education; universities are the same way.

<comment><USER57> It depends on who you ask because school serves different purposes for different people. School is a service that someone can use as part of their education.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER58> The world are always evolving. Nothing sad about this. This is like saying young people can't use abacus anymore. These new generation of young people will grow up and with new kind of input method or paradigim.

Who knows maybe the traditional way of programming with keyboard will evolve to something completely different for the next generation of people.

<comment><USER59> I think your statement would be completely appropriate if we were talking about something like a futuristic device like a 'neural lace' that enabled you to input using your brain at an extremely high rate and with minimal to no effort. Calculators and abacuses do the exact same thing, but calculators enable it to be done vastly more quickly and easily.

In this case touch screens are simply vastly inferior for the vast majority of all tasks. At best, they're something different. At worst, they're a textbook example of artificial demand [1] for a mediocre technology driven by highly effective marketing.

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

</comment></comment><comment><USER60> I think it will take time, keyboard, when first encounters can be hard to use, saying that, younger people these days have access to a keyboard almost 24/7 whether it be iPads or mobiles that they use.

I'd like to see how kids of this generation can manage using a franking machine [1] or even a photocopier.

Our currently generation 25-40 used floppy disks at some point, now it's just an icon on your software suite [2]. Will this be the case for keyboard in 10 years time? Will the physical version be needed?

[1] [https://frankingmachinecompare.co.uk/what-is-franking- machin...](https://frankingmachinecompare.co.uk/what-is-franking-machine-used- for/) [2] [https://www.hanselman.com/blog/TheFloppyDiskMeansSaveAnd14Ot...](https://www.hanselman.com/blog/TheFloppyDiskMeansSaveAnd14OtherOldPeopleIconsThatDontMakeSenseAnymore.aspx)

<comment><USER17> > _now it 's just an icon on your software suite_

I'm trying to remember the last time I saw this icon. Either what I'm working on has "save" as text, is constantly auto-saved or requires Ctrl-S.

<comment><USER60> I guess this is true too, we're moving so fast with software.

A few programes here and there do still utilize a floppy disk as a mark to save something though.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER61> I'm going to go against the grain that is advocating for "keyboards are better" and say that maybe the touchscreen can be a gateway to a more efficient method of rendering text to a screen vs. a keyboard.

Keyboards suck and cause your hands to be in an unnatural position for a long time.

<comment><USER29> The keyboard gives me the ability to directly "link" my mind to the text field. I don't have to actively type, just think about what I want to say. I couldn't achieve that with a touch screen yet.

</comment></comment><comment><USER62> Smartphones are easier to use. One only has to remember how to scroll and how to use an app store. Compared to them, PCs are much more difficult to use: they have windows, taskbars, file browsers, right and double clicks, and often don't have a sane browser preinstalled. Installing software on a PC is complicated and it is easy to download a virus instead of Flash Player. Often external devices don't work without drivers. As desktop OS don't have proper process isolation, one usually has to use an antivirus.

Also, smartphones have physical volume keys and sleep/wakeup much faster than PC.

And PCs still don't have dedicated keys to switch input languages.

But typing on a smartphone is a hell. I always make mistakes and hit the wrong button.

</comment><comment><USER63> as a blue collar engine tech, I dont think you can segment the part of the population that cant use a keyboard into old/young. I know plenty of people within my age that freeze up trying to type in something as simple as a first name. I work with veterans that cant search for a part number, or a make/model of a vehicle without pausing 5 seconds between keys. My typing speed is great, but its because I got into Linux and programming. The largest determination of your typing ability is whether you spend most of the day with your hands on a wrench or your fingers on a keyboard.

</comment><comment><USER64> Back in 2011, Dan Russell (search researcher at Google) found that as much as 90% of typical computer users did not know how to use Ctrl-F to find something on a webpage. Since then, I imagine the overall percentage has gotten worse, what with Find in Page being more or less buried:

[https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2011/08/crazy...](https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2011/08/crazy-90-percent- of-people-dont-know-how-to-use-ctrl-f/243840/)

</comment><comment><USER65> This is one reason why Apple will either have to eventually cave in and make laptops with touchscreens or just give up and just make ipads (I supposed they could say they will just make both so consumers can choose). They are teaching a generation of people to touch their screen. I see my college students using the touchscreen on their windows laptops all the time (I hardly ever use the touchscreen on my laptop). It is only a matter of time before noting having a touchscreen on a laptop will be seen as a serious deficiency in the eyes of consumers.

<comment><USER66> Just a side note... man, the number of people who touch monitors is way too high. Keep your grubby fingers off my monitor.

<comment><USER67> Ugh, even other peoples screens. Like seeing a macbook screen covered in fingerprints and oil is just the most disgusting thing ever.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER68> I've met (teaching) too many teens that can't really use a computer. The procedural and hierarchical structure abstractions, even the desktop metaphor is lost on them. Idk if there's much of a future for widespread general purpose computing. The situation is understandable, as it's way more difficult to get the gist of how your system works nowadays than 20-30 years ago, and they're really using mobile paradigms that don't expect you to think about it, but I don't think it's a good prospect.

</comment><comment><USER69> I'm a Japanese young engineer and same generation. I've encountered a similar situation. There were many colleagues of the company who don't know copy and paste and so on. It seemed Kanji problem in comments, but young people can type Kanji exactly, on rather, they don't know how to use computer like double click, where is power button etc. Also, Japanese IT companies hire new employees don't have CS degrees. They hire people in all of major. It may be a problem with hiring method.

</comment><comment><USER70> I have never not had access to a desktop PC, but what about people who can't afford one? Say a poor family has $100 to spend on a kid. They're going to get a phone every time. I could definitely see a poor kid only grow up on mobile devices.

Related story: My college roommate studied accounting and one of the first classes they made him take was remedial computing. Here's how Excel works, use alt-tab to switch windows, that kind of thing. I thought the class sounded dumb but maybe it's necessary.

</comment><comment><USER71> As I see mobile eat desktop, I worry that we loose computers as a tool for creativity and end up with computers as purely communication and consumption aids.

</comment><comment><USER72> Hello computer

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v9kTVZiJ3Uc](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v9kTVZiJ3Uc)

</comment><comment><USER73> I mostly hate tactile-less devices, fingers and eyes are nicely decoupled, and now I'm forced to focus on my smartphone.

But recently I tried typing on android keyboard with all fingers. It's hard (no tactile delimitation or confirmation) but doable. I wonder if kids these days consider this as normal pro use of smartphones. Basically cultural relativity.

</comment><comment><USER74> Maybe this is the case in Japan. It is certainly not true in Europe.

People use keyboards all the time and submitting anything beyond basic on a smartphone does not happen here.

I was at our local library recently, during the time students were preparing for exams. Everyone had z phone to check messages. Almost everyone had a laptop. I did not see a single tablet.

</comment><comment><USER75> I'm in high school. I know how to double click, I know how to work with excel spreadsheets. I plan to pursue a CS degree and eventually get an engineering job in the future. Heck, I even read Hacker News.

Yes, us teens are on our smartphones a lot, but the majority of us know how to use computers... this article is pretty misleading.

<comment><USER67> We're not talking about the minority of kids here. Yes, there are tons of other teens like you who code and use computers. But look at the majority of younger kids at your school. What devices are they on?

</comment></comment><comment><USER76> I still prefer pencil and paper.

I find it's the least limiting because you can draw anything, the easiest to use because you don't have to learn a GUI or a language, and the fastest -- yet software people will still wonder how they can GREP it. Another contra is legibility and possibly aesthetics.

</comment><comment><USER29> It's too real. My niece once told me that she doesn't like using Word on her Laptop because it's better on the iPad... Because they keyboard is more like on her smartphone there.

I was like "WTF" internally... And she's writing her first CV and application letters like that.

</comment><comment><USER77> I don't think this is a US problem. Elementary school in US commonly uses computers a lot. My children had typing lessons in 1-3 grade, and standardized tests (both math and language arts) are done on a pc/chromebook where you're expected to type.

</comment><comment><USER78> Looking at the context, it seemss like it's the keyboard that needs to evolve for these languages. I can't fathom anyone writing a school report on a smartphone in english

</comment><comment><USER79> I wish my ability to type at 150 WPM was a more marketable skill. It seems mostly irrelevant as anyone who can type above 50 WPM is good enough for 99% of situations.

</comment><comment><USER80> >"How do I double click?" "What is a cell in a spreadsheet?"

>it is not uncommon for even would-be system engineers to ask such questions.

How the hell is it even possible?

</comment><comment><USER81> I've noticed this at theCoderSchool where I teach kids to code. The majority of the kids can't type.

</comment><comment><USER82> They don't teach touch-typing in school anymore? It's really surprising and disheartening, if so.

</comment><comment><USER83> People write reports on smartphones?

Everyone around me can def use a keyboard. Not ten finger touch type but near enough

<comment><USER84> This article talks primarily about people from Japan, whose script I imagine is much easier and faster to enter via a smartphone.

</comment></comment><comment><USER85> IMHO 10 finger typing technique should be taught at schools just like hand- writting

</comment><comment><USER86> I'm just curious how is the smartphone generation going to write code...

</comment><comment><USER87> I understand the issue described in the article, but I don't understand why people from this thread are so obfuscated about smartphones, teens not using physical keyboards or babies using smartphones better than they keep their own balance on 2 feet.

We were drawing with blood in caves, we were scratching stones with other stones, we were sculpting symbols on walls in Egypt, we started writing on papyrus, then paper, then started using typewriters, then physical keyboards and now virtual keyboards. Don't act like the generation that critiques the next generation because they see the world different.

Kids from today probably will be the ones communicating through brainwaves with the IoT or similar; a more efficient and higher throughput interface. Yes, it's important to learn how to use pencil and paper and how to type faster on a keyboard but move on.

I actually find it cumbersome to write on a keyboard on the phone, but also I feel that everything else is slow, interfaces are cumbersome, unintuitive and mostly just stupid.

If I search for a path on google maps, from point A to point B in a different country than I am now, and I forget to switch to car instead of public transport, then I don't get any result. And I am like how the fuck there is no path since there is an obvious big street over there, in the middle of the screen. Oh there is a small icon somewhere to switch the type of transport from public transport to car. What if they would check there are no results and suggest to change the transport type? Thanks for rounding the corners of the search bar, it makes a great difference.

Let me rant about search and reaching for an app on any OS. I have 120 apps on my iPhone 8, I use 5-6 everyday let's say. But once in a while I want to open an app that I don't know where it is because I don't use it often. I know how is called because is a well-known app and has the same name with their service or business or whole company. I use the search functionality on iOS, swipe down type 3 letters, wait, wait, fucking wait 2 seconds to get the results. It should be lightning fast, there are 120 strings to search through why the hell it takes so long. Oh, I typed last letter wrong, delete it, results are refreshing, write the correct one, wait again for results.

If I notice the lack of motion or changes then is too slow.

You will say that I can organize things in folders, after 3 months, oh is that app that connects to the camera in photos folder, utils, connectivity or "not often". Who cares? I know how the app is called, I can search for it, why is it slow?

Huge props for the fact that the text box gets focused when swiping down and I don't have to ("click?") touch on it to focus.

There are just 2 examples, but I use apps on my phone everyday, I search for public transport on my phone every weekend, multiple times a day. Why focus on making the 3 dots for settings as 3 dots instead of 3 lines from the burger icon? It's still unintuitive and the rest of the app is unintuitive. I could rant for weeks about other features or functionalities, on any platform you want.

God bless autocomplete!

Stop whining about small things, see the bigger context, meet people where they are going, understand their intentions, maker super usual tasks extremely easy and stop being stubborn. You will move on or other will move past you, sooner or later, worst case you will pass with your idea.

Context: I am working as a programmer full-time, participated for a long time in high school and university in algorithmic contests. I had multiple computers and used different OS-es. I am confortable with the CLI and I have a decent understanding how things work on the internet, what happens on multiple layers from when you type in your browser URL bar to when you see the website.

</comment><comment><USER88> _they can write and submit their school reports with smartphones_

I can only imagine these reports must be completely trivial if they can be written without the use of a keyboard. Standards aren't slipping they say...

</comment><comment><USER89> Cant say i feel sorry for the people who chose to be enslaved to interfaces. Information technology will continue to expand into human life more and more, whether you are prepared or not.

<comment><USER90> In my experience with kids, it's not a choice. It's mostly poor kids who have this problem. Their family doesn't have a PC, and an old/cheap smartphone is the way they access the Internet.

<comment><USER33> Yeah definitely. A phone is considered much more necessary for basic functioning in a modern society - whereas the computer is a little 'extra'. Naturally poorer people only invest in the more basic, cheaper thing.

I believe projects like Raspberry Pi were attempts to mitigate this issue too. Hopefully they gain more traction in society at large.

<comment><USER91> Well that's some of what it's doing now but originally it was for A Level students to get real experience in the two years of school before they went to university.

And A level students in STEM subjects are not typically from poor backgrounds.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER92> "However, much of this does not align with the knowledge necessary to work in their future jobs."

This is _not_ a problem. If they're not smart enough to realize they are deficient in necessary skills for future personal prosperity then I probably don't want to hire them for my company anyway. And if for some reason I do, then they better damned well learn how to type in a hurry. It's not the most difficult skill.

Do you know where the real problem is with the damned smart phones and not knowing how to type and do your job? Managers. We've got a world full of people supposed to be managing and instead they're spending their time texting unintelligible and incomplete crap to their employees while they gallivant around.

WTF happened to actually _working_?!</comment>


A Maddening Sound - <AUTHOR> https://newrepublic.com/article/132128/maddening-sound <comment><USER2> I can hear the "Hum" most of the time when in bed in my sleeping room. I have been trying to find the location, but so far without success. I know that the source is not in our house, because I disconnected the house from the electric grid for testing. My best guesses for the source of the "Hum" are:

\- A transformator station located not too far away from our house. \- A nearby neighbor running some machine 24h a day, maybe for heating or cooling. \- Sounds of an machine, maybe for waste water treatment, travelling though the sewer pipes. This is my favorite theory.

If you hear the "Hum", try to simply accept that it's there and there is nothing you can do about it. This helped me tremendously get back to normal sleeping hours.</comment>


Twittering every boolean value - <AUTHOR> https://twitter.com/everyboolean <comment><USER2> Still waiting for them to tweet FileNotFound...

[http://thedailywtf.com/articles/What_Is_Truth_0x3f_](http://thedailywtf.com/articles/What_Is_Truth_0x3f_)

</comment><comment><USER3> Eh, you'd think the creator would at least type some case sensitive boolean values like True and False.

<comment><USER4> We'll have to wait for @everybooleanrepresentation to get that fancy.

<comment><USER5> true</comment></comment></comment>


0x42c - OS for DCPU-16 - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/jdiez17/0x42c

<comment><USER2> So...how does it work? The README file isn't terribly informative.</comment>


Lemming Suicide Myth: Disney Film Faked Bogus Behavior - <AUTHOR> http://www.adfg.alaska.gov/index.cfm?adfg=wildlifenews.view_article&articles_id=56 <comment><USER4> I had a huge argument with my philosophy professor about this. Our class was discussing the distinguishing characteristics between humans and animals. Someone brought up humans commit suicide while animals don't. The professor claimed that was false and brought up lemmings as evidence. I chimed in that lemming suicides were most likely myth and even if it was real, we shouldn't accept the idea of lemming suicides until we have definitive proof. He claimed lemming suicides were established fact and that if I or anyone rejected the idea in our papers on the topic, we'd be penalized for positing a factually incorrect statement. A bit of back and forth later, he said he was the ultimate authority on the topic and ended the discussion.

Naturally, in my paper, I wrote that lemming suicides were likely myth ( with sources ) and naturally I got penalized.

I still remember it years later and whenever the topic of lemming suicides come up, I make it my business to correct people. Years from now, on my death bed, my last words will be "lemming suicide is a myth".

<comment><USER5> But lots of animals commit suicide. You don't need to talk about lemmings.

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

And your discussion sounds with your professor sounds really stupid - <USER2> literally claimed to be the ultimate authority on lemmings? An academic with a chair said that? Sounds so unlikely I'm not sure I believe you.

<comment><USER6> _An academic with a chair said that? Sounds so unlikely I 'm not sure I believe you._

Are you now claiming to be the ultimate authority on academics and their interactions with 'paidleaf?

<comment><USER5> > Are you now claiming to be the ultimate authority on academics and their > interactions with 'paidleaf?

No?

I said 'I'm not sure I believe you' \- that only makes a statement about what I believe about this interaction. It doesn't claim anything about ultimate authority at all.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> This is covered in the 99% Invisible podcast episode 256 Sounds Natural - [https://99percentinvisible.org/episode/sounds- natural/](https://99percentinvisible.org/episode/sounds-natural/)

I found this entire episode fascinating, especially the part about Elephant footsteps being nearly silent in the real world.

<comment><USER8> I was lucky enough to have an elephant ride through the jungle in Thailand, can confirm that they are almost silent, only noise is the brush being pushed to one side on a path just wide enough for a person to walk. Amazing animals.

<comment><USER9> Not so lucky for the elephant though I'm afraid to say[1] :( The best way to experience elephants is on safari, where you can get close to truly wild elephants in their natural environment - something that to me at least feels much more rewarding than riding one in captivity. With a well chosen safari the fees you pay will be going to local guides and helping support and protect the animals too.

[1] [https://www.independent.co.uk/travel/asia/elephant-riding- ph...](https://www.independent.co.uk/travel/asia/elephant-riding-phuket-bali- chiang-mai-koh-samui-rides-sanctuary-nature-park-ethics-intrepid- travel-a7185061.html)

<comment><USER8> Have to admit I'm torn about the whole issue. Animals in the wild are amazing but how may people can go see elephants in the wild. I recently brought my son to a dolphin show, while he has a new appreciation keeping intelligent animals in a tank that would normally roam over 1000s of KMs really bothers me.

<comment><USER10> With new technology such as VR, live streams, television, photographs there has to be a better way to do this rather than holding them in captivity

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Disney popularized the myth, but I think it was around before them. I think they wanted to get video of those famous/interesting lemming suicides but the lemmings wouldn't do it, so they coerced them into it.

<comment><USER12> Tldr: Disney committed lemming genocide

<comment><USER13> Wouldn't xenocide be a more apt description? A quick search for genocide gives the definition of:

"the deliberate killing of a large group of people, especially those of a particular ethnic group or nation."

While xenocide is described as:

xenocide (plural xenocides)

The killing of a stranger or foreigner. (science fiction) The genocide of an entire alien species. (US, colloquial) The intentional killing of an entire foreign (plant or animal) species.

[https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/xenocide](https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/xenocide)

Either is fine really, just seems like a semantic curiosity.

<comment><USER14> Probably -- the problem is that no one actually knows the word xenocide who isn't an Orson Scott Card fan.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Talk about unnecessary cruelty, lemmings are quite cute creatures, can't imagine what was going thru their heads ("the Disney filmmakers") when they threw all those lemmings off a cliff to their deaths for a film.

<comment><USER16> > lemmings are quite cute creatures

The most important attribute for animal rights causes it seems. If Facebook campaigns are any measure...

<comment><USER17> I had an environmental ethics professor in college. Her pet cause was the plight of the atlantic bluefin tuna. She frequently lamented that only the cute animals get any real support.

<comment><USER18> And yet we eat both bunnies (cute) and pigs (arguably not cute).

Fish, though, yeah, they're not getting any cuteness bonus. Not much outcry about "factory farming" in aquaculture.

I have recently, and irrationally, stopped eating octopus because they're so smart. Maybe some viral videos of tuna doing amazing things would help...

<comment><USER19> _> and pigs (arguably not cute)._

Ah come on![0]

[0] [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PBJgCDBx2bU](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PBJgCDBx2bU)

EDIT: P.S.

 _> Not much outcry about "factory farming" in aquaculture._

I try not to eat Salmon; it's pretty much always farmed, often in ugly conditions which is a travesty for such a noble creature.

<comment><USER20> If you're going to eat salmon anyway (and lots of people do), it's _much_ less destructive to eat it factory farmed. This actually goes for every single fish.

<comment><USER21> factory farming contributes to ocean dead zones

<comment><USER19> There's a kind of a compromise going on here. Wild Salmon stocks are limited and were it not for farming demand would outstrip what's available. Apparently the tradeoff here is "dead zones" in the ocean unfortunately.

Of course, as I say, the farmed salmon is not the same fish as the wild one. The flesh is dyed pink. The flavour doesn't benefit from the wild salmon's varied diet, and the texture isn't developed by all that swimming upstream.

There is a very wide variance in the quality of farmed salmon too, to the point where you really can't be sure what you're eating unless you actually know the farm it's coming from.

I've heard it said that farmed salmon carries little of the health benefits of wild salmon. Personally I'd prefer to just pay a lot to eat salmon very rarely than to eat farmed salmon frequently. But everywhere you go there is otherwise indiscriminate demand.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> Disney is a money-many endeavor that sometimes cuts corners and spreads untruths. I'm not against making money, just against those who would lie and defraud others to make more of it.

Businessinsider.com has a page that shows four that Disney apologized about or said were untrue. [1]

In the same way, Dan Rather, Brian Williams, and others were believed to be great reporters, even though they created their own sensationalized fake news to get ratings.

One of the items from Rather was called "Fake but Accurate" by Rather. _" The New York Times' headline report on this interview, including the phrase "Fake but Accurate," created an immediate backlash from critics of CBS's broadcast. The conservative-leaning Weekly Standard proceeded to predict the end of CBS's news division."_ [2]

One of Williams stories about being in a flaming plane that was shot down was debunked by the soldiers who were in the plane with him, the plane that was unhit and unlit. Williams later apologized, saying he didn't _" know what screwed up in my mind that caused me to conflate one aircraft with another."_ [3]

[1] [http://www.businessinsider.com/discovery-channels-fake- docum...](http://www.businessinsider.com/discovery-channels-fake- documentaries-2014-9)

[2] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Killian_documents_controversy](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Killian_documents_controversy)

[3] [https://www.pbs.org/newshour/nation/nbcs-brian-williams- apol...](https://www.pbs.org/newshour/nation/nbcs-brian-williams-apologizes- false-iraq-war-story)

<comment><USER23> Re: Brian Williams - many leading memory scientists say that Brain Williams didn't sensationalize his story, but rather created a false memory over time. There's a lot of evidence of this, and 10+ years is a long time in terms of memory and you will start combining multiple people's stories in your own recollection.

[https://well.blogs.nytimes.com/2015/02/09/was-brian- williams...](https://well.blogs.nytimes.com/2015/02/09/was-brian-williams-a- victim-of-false-memory/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> If any entertainment company is known for taking old myths and putting a new family-friendly shine on 'em it's Disney!

</comment><comment><USER25> "White Wilderness" snippet - [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AOOs8MaR1YM](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AOOs8MaR1YM)

<comment><USER16> Which is interestingly the 2nd highest ranked video when you search "lemmings" on Youtube...

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> Terriers stay small because they're given whiskey as pups and the way to catch a bird is to throw salt on its tail are two other childhood facts that I find hard to completely give up.

<comment><USER27> The second is more a matter of degree than principle.

<comment><USER28> 325 degrees farenheit to be exact.

<comment><USER29> Or 325 lbs.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> upon reading the whole article, it is mostly true.

"mass dispersal" occurs when the population grows too much and the food runs out, sometimes it can be very directional, and sometimes they will pile up on the shore until they gets too packed and they try to swim across frigid waters.

the Disney mass suicide documentary says this can be observed every 7 - <USER3> years, and then they over dramatized how it looks

edit: removed blue planet reference, peace!

edit2: alright folks, what is inaccurate or disagreeable about what I wrote? I'm downvoted so far that I can't even post a rebuttal anymore and have zero feedback about how I read the Alaska Government's article incorrectly

<comment><USER31> Suicide is deliberate. Any unfortunate death due to overcrowding attributed to suicide is simply false. There is no evidence of intentional death or racing towards a cliff, merely that when faced with no other apparent route of escape, they have a great chance of dying when trying to cross a body of frigid water. That's entirely different from the portrayal by Disney and the associated myth.

<comment><USER32> I've never seen the Disney "documentary", but then I've heard this myth many times before. And never, not once, is suicide meant as intentional, but rather that they'd just follow the leader off a cliff or something. Like the ants that can be made to walk in a circle forever (also a myth).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> Just a few days ago on hn I discovered the stanford prison expweiment was largely faked, and now this. I guess this is good reason to be suspicious of pop science factoids that often get thrown around in discussions.

</comment><comment><USER34> Oh wow, this brings me back. I did a report in 6th grade about this, and had to try really hard to convince all my friend the lemmings game lied to them. I remember typing it on an electric typewriter.

</comment><comment><USER35> An entire genre of adventure game, reduced to simple entertainment. :-)

Yet another black mark against Disney's attempts to make "nature more interesting" only to be just making up just so stories.

<comment><USER36> Adventure game? Always thought of it as a puzzle game.

</comment></comment><comment><USER37> Wait.. is the game based on this same fictional fact?

<comment><USER38> Yes, but it existed before the game or Disney were around.

<comment><USER39> It took me a while to realize that you were saying that the myth was around before the game and Disney. For some reason I thought you meant the game was around before Disney.

<comment><USER40> You thought that because the last (parent's) sentence was talking about the game, and "it" tends to refer to the last noun that was talked about.

<comment><USER41> Wouldn't the last noun be 'the fictional fact'?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER42> I'm still mad at the discovery channel for convincing me that Megaladon was still out there.

</comment><comment> cup-of-tea There's a great short story by Arthur C. Clarke about lemmings, but he does admit in a later foreword that the premise is actually a myth.

</comment><comment><USER43> So do we know whether Disney actually killed lemmings for a film?

There's some people claiming that 'most survived' and others accepting that they were killed.

While I'm not much of an animal rights activist, killing animals relatively ethically in medical research seems like a far cry from tossing lemmings off of cliffs.

</comment><comment><USER44> In unrelated news, 500 sheep killed themselves by jumping off a cliff in Turkey: [http://www.hurriyetdailynews.com/500-sheep-die-in-mass- suici...](http://www.hurriyetdailynews.com/500-sheep-die-in-mass-suicide-jump- in-eastern-turkey-133225)

</comment><comment><USER45> And myth explanations spawn more myths. I had read (forgot the source) that it was a myth and that the lemmings were really jumping off cliffs to swim to an island people weren't generally aware of.

Although swimming to an island is closer to the truth of swimming across a river than suicide is.

</comment><comment><USER46> This is triply interesting for me because I had _never heard of this myth_ and, reading the comments, I appear the be the only one out of the loop on the myth itself or the game. I wonder how many other pop-sci myths I'm unaware of.

<comment> matt-attack Curious if you've heard of someone being called a "lemming" meaning they're easily coerced or will follow a leader blindly.

<comment><USER19> Only ever heard someone be called a "lemon" which was I presumed because they were so winsome they made you purse up your mouth like you'd just tasted lemon.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER47> Oh wow, they killed animals just to make a film?

I am a Disney fan but never knew about this. Disappointed. I would think modern Disney probably is much better than that nowadays. I think nothing like this would happen today thanks to CGI.

<comment><USER48> If you are OK with eating meat, you should be OK with killing animals for a movie, in my opinion. When you eat a steak, you could eat potatoes or something instead, but you choose to eat an animal because you like how it tastes. I don't see that as any different from killing animals for a movie, in both cases you are unnecessarily killing an animal for your enjoyment.

<comment><USER47> Well when you eat a animal, you are doing it because eating is necessary, and some people are picky eaters conditioned to like meat since childhood.

But I feel like killing them for a movie is a waste, unless they are eaten later maybe but still not too much better. Like if you kill a animal, you should try to use every single part of it as possible. Same thing the Native Americans believe.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER49> Disney seemed as determined to create a dark analogy as the Standford Prison guy.

</comment><comment><USER50> I'm glad we had the myth for a bit, if only for the game.

</comment><comment><USER51> There should be a list of commonly known facts that people who are new to the internet have to read so they don't think things like this are novel.

<comment><USER52> [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_common_misconceptions](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_common_misconceptions)

Which among many other things, mentions the Lemming Suicide myth:

> Lemmings do not engage in mass suicidal dives off cliffs when migrating. > This misconception was popularized by the Disney film White Wilderness, > which shot many of the migration scenes (also staged by using multiple shots > of different groups of lemmings) on a large, snow-covered turntable in a > studio. Photographers later pushed the lemmings off a cliff.[234] The > misconception itself is much older, dating back to at least the late 19th > century.

<comment><USER53> This is one of my favorite wikipedia pages. I'm not aware of any other resource that does so much to fix our broken epistemology.

<comment><USER54> That's not epistemology... epistemology is about the fundamental nature of truth and knowledge, like whether reality is shared and knowable. I think you mean 'common sense.' Though nowadays always spoken of positively, originally 'common sense' referred to the sense of commoners, being incomplete and unreasoned and just an accumulation of happenstance. That's pretty much what common misconceptions are.

<comment><USER53> I know what epistemology is, but apparently you don't. "the fundamental nature of truth and knowledge, like whether reality is shared and knowable" is not epistemology but metaphysics. Epistemology may dip into metaphysics, (and vice-versa) but they are generally distinct fields.

By "our broken epistemology" I mean "our broken methodologies of evaluating the truth of our beliefs and the certainty of our knowledge". The brokenness of our practical epistemology is why these common misconceptions not only exist, but continue to dominate.

I could have been more precise and said "our broken epistemological systems",

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER55> Nature documentaries are laboriously produced works of fiction.

<comment><USER56> Like any other form of art, it tells you a lie to speak the truth.

</comment></comment><comment><USER57> Even more childhood dreams destroyed. Fuck Micky Mouse!

</comment><comment><USER58> This is not my personal experience.

Lemmings are fearless creatures that will scream to any animal, including humans, that cross their path.

I have seen a Lemmings confronting a crow. The crow sends the lemmings flying on three different occasions until it took the lemming dead body and left flying. The lemmings never tried to run or hide, it just was screaming at the crow until its very last moments.

So I can see that "mass suicide" is a myth. But it has some true on it looking at the lemmings' behaviour.</comment>


Ask HN:  Making the most out of a 5 year savings plan - <AUTHOR>

I want to start putting away around 1500 a month. My end goal is a downpayment for a house in about 5 years, at least 100k, so I don't want to get too risky or volatile, but having everything in a 60 month CD doesn't seem so rewarding either at ~2% interest rate.<p>So, what would you do? <comment><USER2> Percentages.

Some percentage in a CD. Some percentage in corporate bonds (BulletShares ETFs are good for your purposes). Some percent in a lower-volatility index ETF (say dividend-yielding stocks -- DVY being an example). Maybe some percentage in a lower-volitility ETF (say dividend-yielding stocks in developed non-US markets -- IDV being an example).

You might also consider things like US Treasury bills and notes, for the tax advantages.</comment>


Uncovering the jobs that customers hire products and services to do - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/the-job-to-be-done/uncovering-the-jobs-that-customers-hire-products-and-services-to-do-834269006f50#.skyvkqsii <comment><USER2> seems interesting.</comment>


Edison and the Ghost Machine - <AUTHOR> https://www.thoughtco.com/edison-and-the-ghost-machine-2594017 <comment><USER2> This article is driving me crazy with sentences like, "Edison's was a scientist's approach: If there was a popular need or desire, an invention might be able to fill it." In what way is that a scientist's approach? Since when is a "scientist's approach" dictated by popular need and/or desire to any extent past what might get funded?

<comment><USER3> It's certainly not the definition a _scientist_ would use, but I think they are saying it's the scientific approach because _" an invention might be able to fill it"_. Not because it is based on a popular need or desire.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Tim Powers, an overall excellent author, wrote a book that involves Edison and his ghost phone: Expiration Date. Well worth a read.

<comment><USER5> Seconded! He also wrote _On Stranger Tides_ , which served as inspiration to Ron Gilbert to make The Secret of Monkey Island, also inspired on the Pirates of the Caribbean ride, which in turn inspired the Pirates of the Caribbean movies, one of which is called On Stranger Tides... but it all starts with the novel by Tim Powers, which I thoroughly recommend :)</comment></comment>


Show HN: 1 week project, website screenshots emailed to you and archived daily - <AUTHOR> https://www.dailysitesnap.com

<comment><AUTHOR> Last Thursday, I built a simple service that took a screenshot of a supplied URL (sitegazer.herokuapp.com). It became very popular on HN ([https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6612286](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6612286)) and quickly failed to scale. The residual traffic has resulted in about 500 URLs snapped though -- enough to motivate me to continue the project.

DailySiteSnap is actually what I set out to build (SiteGazer was an MVP) because I wanted to track the visual/design progress of my other project, CameraLends.

The payment plans haven't been wired in, so right now all accounts are still free. Please give feedback if you have any! I plan to launch the paid features in the upcoming week.

</comment><comment><USER2> I am wondering if there isn't any copyright infringement like derivative work when you grab a webpage and then do some monitoring on it through your website.

It is worth asking a lawyer. Otherwise I think this is a cool project too.

</comment><comment><USER3> This is such a cool idea!

I'm a little confused about the pricing. If we sign up now, is it like a free 1 week trial? All of my projects are open source. Would you consider offering this service free to open projects?</comment>


Ruby Tricks - <AUTHOR> http://www.rubyinside.com/21-ruby-tricks-902.html

<comment><USER2> it has a note - This post was written in early 2008 and looking back on it, there are a couple of tricks that I wouldn't recommend anymore - or to which extra warnings need to be added. I've added paragraphs like this where necessary. Enjoy! :-)</comment>