Uber is forcing drivers in Seattle to listen to anti-union propaganda - <AUTHOR> https://thenextweb.com/us/2017/03/13/uber-is-forcing-drivers-in-seattle-to-listen-to-anti-union-propaganda/ <comment><USER2> Blogspam that doesn't even get the original story right. According to the WSJ that TNW is supposedly quoting, drivers are NOT being forced to listen to anything.

[https://www.wsj.com/articles/uber-gears-up-to-block-bid- to-f...](https://www.wsj.com/articles/uber-gears-up-to-block-bid-to-form-a- union-in-seattle-1489237201)

<comment><USER3> > Before accepting rides on his Uber app each day, Seattle driver Fasil Teka > must first choose whether to listen to company-run podcasts on voting > rights, collective bargaining and city council hearings.

No, technically not forced - the headline is misleading / clickbaity.

That said, drivers are going to be well aware that Uber's likely to be collecting metrics on who listens and who doesn't, and I'd hardly trust them to follow employment law to the letter.

<comment><USER4> Conjecture. You have literally no evidence in support of that belief. Not forced, full stop, the headline of the article is flat out wrong. If you defend this shit just because you agree with the sentiment, you have no right to an opinion about fake news.

EDIT: For the record, the parent has ghost-edited their post.

<comment><USER5> I would dial this back a bit. Worst case scenario, the commenter you are responding to is committing confirmation bias by making negative assumptions to match their existing negatives beliefs. Confirmation bias is easy to slip into even if you know it exists, and this angry response isn't useful.

Best case scenario (which I think is more likely), they are simply interpreting this story in context. Uber has several ethics scandals under their belt including ones involving them gathering and analyzing data for unethical purposes (guessing which of their customers have had one night stands).

<comment><USER4> How is this different from how fake news perpetuates? My foe has done bad things A, B and C, therefore it's OK to not just _assume_ they are doing D as well, but OK to present D _as fact_.

For the record, what I am reacting to is not the possibility of a belief that Uber might do such a thing[1], but the defence of a naked lie.

1: I think such a belief is an extremely shallow reading of Uber as wanting to do evil in and of itself, rather than willing to bend a lot of rules very very far to serve their customers (and sometimes cross the line in creative data- driven marketing), and have created a toxic corporate culture in the process -- it's easy to see how 'break all the rules as long as you're winning' can do that. I also don't think they will survive long, companies with less toxic cultures (but no less friendly to the taxi-interest-captured regulatory bodies or unions) will prevail because they can attract the better talent. Firing a driver with good performance because he doesn't listen to the company podcast is not even remotely consistent with that willingness. But that's not the discussion we're having.

<comment><USER3> This is a company who wrote software to detect and hide from law enforcement, and you think it's not feasible they'd try and come up with a score for how friendly a driver is to unionization? C'mon.

The headline is incorrect - they're not being forced - but it's hardly "fake news" conspiracy theory to speculate that some drivers may feel pressured over this.

<comment><USER4> The word was 'forced'. You defended it. C'mon yourself.

Speculating what people might be doing, _especially_ when it sounds plausible, then presenting it as fact, is _exactly_ fake news.

<comment><USER3> My post literally stated (now edited to add "the headline is misleading / clickbaity" to be even more crystal-clear on that point) that they're not technically forced.

<comment><USER4> I understand, and I understood before. You're defending the lie by saying that it's only _technically_ incorrect. You do understand that the phrase means that you think it's still substantially correct -- not that it conceivably could be true?

<comment><USER3> I believe it is substantially correct that Uber and companies like it engage in ethically dubious and legally murky anti-union actions.

I believe it implausible that Uber didn't consider the pressure/intimidation aspect that a daily prompt to listen to their propaganda entails when adding it to the system.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Imagine doing a podcast solely for your employees full of propaganda with the purpose of preventing them from unionizing. Seems like a very disturbing company culture.

<comment><USER7> I worked quite a few retail jobs in college and the only ones who did not have mandatory training on the horrors of unions were the ones that were already unionized.

Walmart goes so far to avoid any talk of unions that the one time employees unionized, they shut down that entire department for good, across every store.

<comment><USER8> The difference is that you were an employee of the store. Uber drivers are supposedly free agents.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> It should be compulsory for everyone to be a member of a union as the HR staff at Uber have recently shown. It's much better to let your Union representative deal with sexual harassment charges than _your company 's_ internal departments. In the UK there is ACAS as well but being a member of a union is important for all sorts of reasons; fair pay and better working conditions are just two.

<comment><USER10> I agree. As someone who only recently entered the workforce, I have noticed that people from the US seem to have a particular tendancy to dislike unions whereas here in the UK they are often seen as a good thing. Anyone have any thoughts as to why?

<comment><USER11> The US population has been under a sustained propaganda campaign for several decades intended to promote a hyper-capitalist/libertarian agenda that serves the interests of a very small number of people.

The media in the US promotes this message, both because its members have themselves been awash in the propaganda their whole lives and also because the media organs in this country are largely corporate.

Combine that with a general disinterest in critical thinking that has also been "encouraged" by those same cynical forces described above to ensure that they have an uneducated, incurious population that believes what they want.

So now you can see why income inequality is growing in the US.

<comment><USER12> It's ironic that the US population has continuously voted to increases social welfare spending since the 1970s. Thanks to all of this socialism, the US now has lower labour productivity growth than anytime in the past century.

<comment><USER13> That is actually remarkable given that women entered the workforce en-masse during that time. Rapidly increasing the work-force with the same basic needs being serviced and still having any per-worker productivity growth.

Couldn't also have to do with the phase out of Bretton-Woods and the recovery of Europe from WWII during that time?

And with all that social redistribution marginal-utility-wise productivity must be off the charts. $1 in additional purchased products for consumption sure provides a lot more utility to someone at the bottom than $1 in additional products does for a billionaire.

<comment><USER12> >That is actually remarkable given that women entered the workforce en-masse during that time.

The labour participation rate went from 60 percent in 1970 to 66 percent in 1992. At the same time, average hours worked per employed person declined from about 1900 hours a year in 1970 to 1790 hours a year in 1992:

[https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/USAAHWEP](https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/USAAHWEP)

So there was no relative growth in the size of the work force.

Socialism destroys the economy. Believe it or not, forcibly confiscating the earnings of highly productive people, to give without discrimination to less productive people, is poison to an economy. And that is all social welfarism amounts to:

[https://youtu.be/arOGHY27JwI](https://youtu.be/arOGHY27JwI)

Leftist authoritarianism that destroys incentives and breeds dependency.

But hey it's politically fashionable to defend welfare, because it makes it look like you stick up for the underdog, so that's what the majority will continue to do.

Any politician that promises more government "help", from the pocket of the faceless taxpayer, will have a major advantage in any election. That's why social welfare spending has increased so dramatically over the last 50 years.

<comment><USER13> "People not included in the participation rate include those who do not want to work or can't work. This includes people such as students, homemakers, incarcerated people and retirees."

The labor participation rate doesn't include homemakers.

<comment><USER12> You misunderstand. It groups those who do not work and are looking for a job, with those who work, as being part of the labour force, and thus "participating". Nonparticipants are anyone not looking for work, like homemakers, students, retirees, etc

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

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> I started talking to uber drivers in Seattle about unionization / Seattle regulations, and was surprised to discover nearly unanimous opposition to the idea. The only person not opposed was a career taxi driver. Almost no one else was or wanted uber to be a full time gig, and they wanted minimal hassle/regulation/etc. between them and an easy source of side income.

Anecdotal, with an n around 10, so not worth much, but I found it surprising. I suspect a lot of the Seattle unionization movement is thinly veiled rent seeking from the taxi lobby.

<comment><USER15> If I may give a weaker, counter example with anecdotal data from Seattle: I have only used Uber three times, and the last time I asked the driver about unionization and he was very for it (so an n of 1). He explained that all of the risk is on the driver and that sometimes Uber makes it very hard to work. He gave an example of a friend who was driving and ran over a rock while pulling into an apartment complex. The protocol was that another driver came and completed the ride for the user. However, his vehicle was now flagged as 'in an accident' when the problem was a flat tire, which his friend was able to fix that day.

Unfortunately, by being flagged as an accident the friend couldn't work again for a number of days as there was some sort of vetting process to ensure the vehicle was working right (very reasonable imo). However, as explained to me, there was some hang up with Uber where he couldn't get vetted for much longer than usual and couldn't work. He thinks that being unionized would allow for more driver friendly policies that would have prevented this.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> The interesting part of the article for me was the news that the Seattle city council voted to allow Uber drivers to unionize. It was illegal before? I thought the constitution guaranteed freedom of assembly. Do workers need permission to elect representatives to negotiate on their behalf?

<comment><USER17> Companies can't unionize -- it's called anti-competitive behaviour.

Depending on who you ask, Uber drivers aren't necessarily workers; they might be independent contractors, i.e., companies.

EDIT: Also, depending on the definition of "allowed to unionize" here, it's possible that this goes beyond allowing collective bargaining to prohibiting Uber from hiring anyone who isn't "blessed" by the union.

<comment><USER18> It's not really depending on who you ask and it's very surprising for me to read comments like yours on HN of all places, the law is very clearly laid out and some protest signs in Sillicon Valley do not change the reality. You can check the IRS website if you're confused about what the distinction is between a contractor and a worker.

<comment><USER19> Actually the worker / employee distinction is complex and not as cut and dried as you think.

This is a big part of the Uber/Delivered style of companies business model that is dodging the employer social security taxes.

<comment><USER20> The taxes are never dodged. Either Uber pays them (W2) or the independent contractor does (1040). The bigger issue, st least under Obamacare, was if they were elegiabke for group health insurance if they worked more than 30 hours.

<comment><USER19> Depends on country often self employed get better tax breaks in return for less benefits - this is "real" self employed contractors not faux self employment like Uber et al

<comment><USER20> Ya, depends on the country. In the USA, self employed kind of sucks because group health insurance is way cheaper than individual market insurance.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment> norea-armozel I'm quite glad to see people are beginning to recognize the benefits of labor unionization. I know that for some the idea of unions is horrendous but that's due to how many unions have become just another boss where they call the shots and not represent the grievances of their members. At its core the ability to collectively bargain is the best thing anyone can do under capitalism whether it's for wages and benefits as workers or lower prices on goods as consumers. To impede or outlaw that behavior fundamentally is anti-market propaganda and it should be met with fierce opposition by all.

</comment><comment><USER12> No one is forced to drive for Uber. The title is misleading and inflammatory. Fodder for the majority who are addicted to manufactured outrage.

Ironically, the title and the comments in hacker news are pro-union propaganda.

<comment><USER21> No one is _forced_ to do any job in the strict sense of the word, yet workers are constantly exploited because people need to work _somewhere_ to make a living and some of those places suck.

<comment><USER12> That doesn't make it exploitation. This attitude of promoting victimhood and helplessness is intellectual dishonest and harmful.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> It sucks but places like Walmart have been doing this for ages

</comment><comment><USER23> On the one hand, part of me thinks this is grimey, capitalistic slime-balling on the part of Uber; using psychological warfare to make a buck.

And on the other hand, part of me thinks that trying to unionize Uber drivers is a bad move. If I wanted to make a quick buck with a side-job, Uber would be a great way for me to do that without having to trudge through the Gigs on Craigslist, etc. etc. etc.

But if they unionize, it will become "just another job" and be tightly regulated, making the ability to get a quick buck nearly impossible; turning Uber into a full-fledged job with all the bureaucratic hooplah. While that would protect the fraction of workers looking to make Uber their full-time job, it would reduce the "Cowboy" nature of the job and make it hard for people to get in and get quick work.

<comment><USER24> I disagree. Here in Sweden, we actively discourage jobs that pay borderline- poverty wages. Taxi rides should not be cheap. You are buying someone else's time. That should be expensive for the middle-class.

<comment><USER25> > That should be expensive for the middle-class.

So you're saying only rich people should get taxi rides? I thought Sweden supported the poor more.

Also, you're aware that when the minimum wage is too high, it just means there will be more unemployment, not that everyone gets a raise.

Now the debate is: are people happier with a job with a low wage or are they happier at home doing nothing? Studies show that people are more depressed at home when unemployed and have more chance to improve their condition and salary by starting at lower paid jobs doing something. But many of the supporters of high minimum wage would rather people stay at home than improve themselves starting with lower paid jobs not because it helps the poor but because it helps the high minimum wage supporters sleep better at night knowing that although more people have no jobs, at least no one is being underpaid... well... except for those not being paid at all.

<comment><USER26> > So you're saying only rich people should get taxi rides?

I do agree with that, best if middle class people use public transport (or worse, their own car).

> I thought Sweden supported the poor more.

It has nothing to do with support of the poor. In India, taxis are incredibly cheap, and there is no shortage of poor people. Poor people can drive buses and trams, too, you know.

> Also, you're aware that when the minimum wage is too high, it just means > there will be more unemployment

No, it doesn't. It was never empirically proven that there is a connection between minimum wage and unemployment. (You are simplifying the whole economy to the labor market, but there is also demand side.)

<comment><USER25> That's amazing, you're basically saying better services should be for the rich only while the poor should use lower public services while saying at the same time that you support the poor. Incredible. That's what socialism always does, pretends to help the poor but in the end only the elite benefits from it.

> No, it doesn't. It was never empirically proven that there is a connection > between minimum wage and unemployment.

When it comes to low skill jobs, yes, increasing the minimum wage does create more unemployment as the middle class is not able to pay for them anymore, only the super rich. That's a well no fact, you can look it up.

<comment><USER24> That's not a fact. It's nonsense you believe to be a fact. Luxembourg, Sweden, Norway, Germany all have low unemployment rates (and higher total employment rates than the US) and have higher minimum wages. Economies adapt to higher minimum wages, they may lose jobs in the short term, then adapt and total employment can return to former levels if the correct policies are in place.

Btw, when you say socialism pretends to help the poor, but helps the elite, that doesn't help your case. By all objective measures, the poor are better off in western european social democratic countries than in a free-for-all capitalist society, like the US. There are other models, like Singapore that also work well, FYI.

<comment><USER27> > Luxembourg, Sweden, Norway, Germany all have low unemployment rates (and > higher total employment rates than the US) and have higher minimum wages.

France, Belgium and Ireland all have a higher minimum wage and higher unemployment rates than the US. Clearly the unemployment rate is affected by multiple factors. The issue is whether a higher minimum wage increases unemployment, not whether you can counteract it with other policies -- applying the other policies without raising the minimum wage could result in even less unemployment.

> Btw, when you say socialism pretends to help the poor, but helps the elite, > that doesn't help your case.

There are a huge number of nominally socialist policies in the US that really exist at the behest of large corporations. Mortgage interest tax deduction -- "help people own a home", really makes home ownership more expensive and transfers tax dollars to mortgage banks. Ditto student loan interest subsidies. Affordable housing subsidies -- placate political demand for lower housing costs without _actually_ lowering market rate housing costs for low- middle income working people, transfers tax dollars to landlords, encourages low income people to rent rather than own. Social security -- no progressive rate structure, tax cutoff for millionaires, benefits based on lifespan and historical income which both disadvantage lower income people. Tax deductions for employer-provided health insurance -- implicit subsidy to large insurance companies. Affordable Care Act -- _huge_ tax dollar subsidy to large insurance companies, effectively prohibits people from saving money with high deductible insurance plans that are less profitable to same insurance companies, and discourage overconsumption and overpayment to medical companies.

Skepticism is warranted.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> Listen comrades.

</comment><comment><USER29> why do they need a union, i thought they could choose their own rate?

<comment><USER30> Uber drivers cannot choose their own pay rate, if that's what you mean. Recently, they've been unable to even choose if they want to accept Uber Pool rides (i.e. there's no indication when you're picking someone up if they're the first in an Uber Pool ride).

</comment></comment><comment><USER31> Not that Uber isn't doing this to themselves... but I wonder who has the most to gain from all the bad press Uber is getting this past month.

<comment><USER32> You're asking to go silly places, and full conspiracy mode. So let's go there.

I'd say Democrats, and the liberal press. What better way to show Republicans being bad, then how quickly companies go full abusive when they're in power and working hard to remove consumer/worker protections.

Democrats would also love to get unions/workers out of the right. So they just need to show some soft support, and let it get quashed by ANY random republican with a chip on their shoulder (which is really any at this point).

Not only that the CEO of Uber has shown early support for Trump, and most Americans are of the thought that CEO/Company are the same thing (so it's easy to make news of them showing support for anything). In this case the Liberal media would like nothing less than making it untenable for a CEO to show support of any cause (due to CEOs being brutal conservative monsters). They would probably love to see the fallout from such support (further media attention), to make boards consider barring their CEOs from being political in any way.

That was an interesting mix of painful and fun to write.

<comment><USER31> I was thinking Lyft doesn't necessarily need Uber to fail, they're doing just fine?</comment></comment></comment>


Bankofamerica.com is down - <AUTHOR> https://www.bankofamerica.com/

<comment><USER2> traceroute bankofamerica.com

traceroute: Warning: bankofamerica.com has multiple addresses; using 18.104.22.168

traceroute to bankofamerica.com (18.104.22.168), 64 hops max, 52 byte packets

    	 1  10.242.2.1 (10.242.2.1)  22.506 ms  20.144 ms  17.502 ms

    	 2  rrcs-***-105-172-***.nys.biz.rr.com (***.105.172.***)  15.713 ms  14.517 ms  13.708 ms

    	 3  rdc-204-210-68-170.ne.northeast.rr.com (18.104.22.168)  19.284 ms  17.016 ms  14.870 ms

    	 4  g10-4-0-0.ptldmehx-rtr001.ne.northeast.rr.com (220.127.116.11)  15.874 ms  17.843 ms  16.786 ms

    	 5  rdc-204-210-69-49.ne.northeast.rr.com (188.8.131.52)  37.636 ms  36.087 ms  47.473 ms

    	 6  ae-5-0.cr0.nyc30.tbone.rr.com (22.214.171.124)  37.837 ms  38.048 ms  34.735 ms

    	 7  184.108.40.206 (18.104.22.168)  31.687 ms
    	    ae-0-0.pr0.nyc20.tbone.rr.com (220.127.116.11)  50.793 ms
    	    220.127.116.11 (220.127.116.11)  35.358 ms

    	 8  tengigabitethernet3-3.ar7.nyc1.gblx.net (18.104.22.168)  36.177 ms
    	    126.96.36.199 (220.127.116.11)  39.815 ms
    	    te7-4.ar1.nyc8.gblx.net (184.108.40.206)  30.077 ms

    	 9  lag1.ar7.dca3.gblx.net (126.96.36.199)  39.259 ms  43.567 ms  37.822 ms

    	10  prolexic-technologies.ethernet4-2.ar7.dca3.gblx.net (184.108.40.206)  39.852 ms  40.892 ms  42.304 ms

    	11  unknown.prolexic.com (126.96.36.199)  92.870 ms  40.866 ms  38.025 ms

    	12  unknown.prolexic.com (220.127.116.11)  35.344 ms  35.342 ms  43.157 ms

    	13  18.104.22.168 (126.96.36.199)  102.761 ms  107.928 ms  106.590 ms

    	14  18.104.22.168 (22.214.171.124)  167.647 ms  158.632 ms  144.629 ms

    	15  * * *

    	16  * * *

    	17  * * *

<comment><USER3> 11 18.104.22.168 (184.108.40.206) 78.322 ms 77.015 ms 77.841 ms

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Seems it was a short outage, since it works for me, and <http://www.downforeveryoneorjustme.com/bankofamerica.com> says it is up.

<comment><AUTHOR> That site was always reporting it as up, for me -- I think it was just pinging <http://bankofamerica.com/>, which seemed to work; but then immediately redirecting to https, which didn't.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> I couldn't get to two of these sites during these attacks — [http://bankinfosecurity.com/4-banks-respond-to-ddos- threats-...](http://bankinfosecurity.com/4-banks-respond-to-ddos- threats-a-5350) — so many days ago.

</comment><comment><USER6> It's actually not that surprising. Christmas week is their busiest time of the year in terms of transactions traffic.

</comment><comment><USER7> Yikes! Not used to a major bank website being down. Luckily I didn't need to do anything.

<comment><USER8> You're lucky, I had to try very hard to take _my_ bank's website down.

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> And...it looks like it's back up.

</comment><comment><USER9> Why is this news?

</comment><comment><USER10> Down from Unitymedia Germany.

</comment><comment><USER11> It's down for me, too!

<comment><USER11> Back up, but slow.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> The tubes to the interwebs is broke.</comment>


They knew it was round, damn it - <AUTHOR> https://thonyc.wordpress.com/2016/05/25/repeat-after-me-they-knew-it-was-round-damn-it/ <comment><USER2> This isn't the only childish myth that refuses to die. The so-called Galileo affair and Copernicus' alleged fear and trembling over publishing "his" heliocentric theory are two notorious and by now classical examples. In both cases, the supposedly grand Manichean battle between Religion and Science was nothing but the fallout of the provincial squabbling of petty men. Copernicus -- who was a classically educated cleric -- was reluctant to publish De Revolutionibus on account of hostility from rival astronomers (and though the Church had no doctrinal interest in something as theologically irrelevant as which rock orbits which other rock, Paul III and Cardinal von Schoenberg did take interest in his work). Furthermore, Copernicus' original contribution was not the idea of a heliocentric "universe", but the mathematization he produced that "saved the appearances" accounted for in the geocentric model. The Galileo "affair", which stretched for some 30 years IIRC, culminated in house arrest in the papal apartments overlooking the papal gardens, a fate far better than that of many in the 15th century or the 21st century for that matter. Ultimately, his house arrest was largely the result of Galileo's habit of harassing people and making enemies, some of whom were clerics, and nothing to do with doctrine (the story goes that Galileo was arrested and forced to abjure the very same heliocentrism Paul III and others encouraged and found so fascinating under pain of death, but anyone free of prejudice and acquainted with the history knows this account to be comically stupid as it is presented). There are many more such fabrications and misconceptions.

At least some of these myths are known to have their origins in the 19th century and in the slanderous writings of fanatical Enlightenment and Protestant writers whose rabid hatred for Rome seems to have, in their minds, given them license to resort to libel or corrupted their thinking. The author credits two men in the article who certainly had an axe to grind.

<comment><USER3> Uh, no. You are the one reading too much revisionist history.

On the morning of June 22, 1633, Galileo, dressed in the white shirt of penitence, entered the large hall of the Inquisition building. He knelt and listened to his sentence: "Whereas you, Galileo, the son of the late Vincenzo Galilei, Florentine, aged seventy years, were in the year 1615 denounced to this Holy Office for holding as true the false doctrine....." The reading continued for seventeen paragraphs...

"And, so that you will be more cautious in future, and an example for others to abstain from delinquencies of this sort, we order that the book Dialogue of Galileo Galilei be prohibited by public edict. We condemn you to formal imprisonment in this Holy Office at our pleasure."

"As a salutary penance we impose on you to recite the seven penitential psalms once a week for the next three years. And we reserve to ourselves the power of moderating, commuting, or taking off, the whole or part of the said penalties and penances."

"This we say, pronounce, sentence, declare, order and reserve by this or any other better manner or form that we reasonably can or shall think of. So we the undersigned Cardinals pronounce."

Seven of the ten cardinals signed the sentence.

Following the reading of the sentence, Galileo knelt to recite his abjuration:

"Desiring to remove from the minds of your Eminences, and of all faithful Christians, this strong suspicion, reasonably conceived against me, with sincere heart and unfeigned faith I abjure, curse, and detest the aforesaid errors and heresies, and generally every other error and sect whatsoever contrary to the said Holy Church; and I swear that in the future I will never again say or assert, verbally or in writing, anything that might furnish occasion for a similar suspicion regarding me...."

"I, the said Galileo Galilei, have abjured, sworn, promised, and bound myself as above; and in witness of the truth thereof I have with my own hand subscribed the present document of my abjuration, and recited it word for word at Rome, in the Convent of Minerva, this twenty-second day of June, 1633."

"I, Galileo Galilei, have abjured as above with my own hand."

<comment><USER4> You're both right. No one who studies Galileo disputes that he ran afoul of the Inquisition. The question is whether the specifics of his case justify framing it as part of an epic battle between science and religion (or reason and ignorance, or any other binary opposition really), and I think the parent comment is correct in suggesting that most historians today would answer "no" to that. Mario Biagioli's book _Galileo Courtier_ is a really excellent work of history that I recommend to anyone interested in the details - it's more about the role of patronage in supporting Galileo's work, but gives a lot of insight into the systems of authority at the time, and Galileo's unique personality.

<comment><USER5> There was also a third camp at the time: Jesuits.

Apparently Galileo met with Jesuit astronomers at the Vatican Observatory, and they suggested he might save both scientific evidence and theological correctness by adopting the Tychonic system, where the center of the universe is still the earth, but all the planets revolve around the sun, which revolves around the earth.

As it turns out, we now know that both the Copernican and the Tychonic are exactly equally wrong.

<comment><USER6> I don't think they were exactly equally wrong. The Tychonic system doesn't quite predict stellar parallax, for example. I'd say it's the worse model of those two.

And it looks less pretty on pictures, too.

EDIT: Ironically, the lack of observable (at the time) parallax was reportedly used by Tycho Brahe to argue against heliocentrism, because "stars obviously can't be far enough to make prallax unobservable". Now, that's clearly wrong.

<comment><USER7> Tycho Brahe was wrong but on stronger scientific ground given the observations available, stellar parallax wasn't observed until around 1806 by Giuseppe Calandrelli and not definitively measured until 1838 by Friedrich Bessel.

<comment><USER8> _Tycho Brahe was wrong but on stronger scientific ground given the observations available_

Depends on how much weight you place on different lines of reasoning.

One of Galileo's key insights was that there's no fundamental difference between the terrestrial and the celestial. In contrast, the Aristotelian heavens are made of aether, in part to be able to account for the diurnal motion of far-distant planets and stars.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> It turned out Columbus was wrong and everyone else was right. The Earth was simply too large to sail around the other way.

The only thing that kept Columbus' expedition from certain doom was bumping into a continent that was unknown to most of Europe, despite some Norse having settled there in earlier centuries.

Imagine if the Americas hadn't existed. He would likely have died in the middle of a huge ocean.

<comment><USER10> _Earth was simply too large to sail around the other way._

Yet ... 27 years after Columbus' first voyage, the Magellan expedition started it's circumnavigation sailing west proving it was possible.

There are plenty of islands in the Ocean to load up on food and water. Magellen, in fact, stopped at several islands.

<comment><USER11> It was too large for the ships Columbus took, provisioned as Columbus provisioned them. And everyone who ridiculed him knew that.

Magellan went out with a larger fleet and two years' provisions laid in.

<comment><USER10> _2 years ' provisions_

Magellan Voyage took 3 years.

<comment><USER12> Hey may have left with 2 years' provisions, but as you said, he stopped at many islands along the way to restock his provisions.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Wait. There are people who believe Columbus was the first person to establish as common knowledge that the world was round? Is this an American thing again?

<comment><USER14> I kid you not, it's taught in American elementary schools (at least it was to me, in the early-mid 2000s).

...Yeah. Thankfully my middle school general science textbook mentioned this shit's been known forever and the Greeks even estimated the circumference of the thing.

<comment><USER15> Compounding the error is the claim he discovered the Americas. He actually found the Caribbean islands. Which is kinda close, but not really the same.

But yay simplification that Columbus found America! At least that's what most teach the kids. My kid will know better.

<comment><USER16> How are the Caribbean islands not American?

<comment><USER17> They are not connected to continents.

<comment><USER18> True, but they're definitely in the same realm if you will. Just like Great Britain is part of Europe, and New Zealand is part of Australia. (Continentally-speaking!! Don't flame me, Kiwis).

Madagascar is Africa, Japan is Asia. I don't know what to categorize Iceland as, though.

<comment><USER19>
      > New Zealand is part of Australia. (Continentally-
      > speaking!! Don't flame me, Kiwis)

I'm not a kiwi, but NZ is on a subduction zone so can't be part of an existing continent. PNG is probably more what you were thinking of re: AU.

<comment><USER18> You're right. I was thinking of Papua New Guinea. I seem to always imagine NZ as being much closer to AU than it really is. Thanks.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> What's really amazing is how calumny works: the bigger the better.

It's very likely _nobody_ , since men walked the earth, who gave it a moment's thought ever believed the earth to be flat; it's absolutely certain nobody in Europe or the Middle East post Aristotle ever believed it either (as many comments already point out).

And yet, a myth invented in the 19th century to make fun of "medieval times" and the Catholic Church is still around today, and needs to be constantly refuted.

I think it works because it flatters us, making us feel sooo superior to those ancient characters that must have been sooo stupid and smug. Well, in this case at least, we're the smugs and the stupids.

<comment><USER6> > It's very likely nobody, since men walked the earth, who gave it a moment's > thought ever believed the earth to be flat

Ahem, [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flat_earth](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flat_earth)

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> I blame Stan Freberg.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stan_Freberg_Presents_the_Unit...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stan_Freberg_Presents_the_United_States_of_America_Volume_One:_The_Early_Years)

</comment><comment><USER22> Ah, Washington Irving. One of the greatest minds of his time; what he didn't know, he made up on the spot.

</comment><comment><USER23> Now try convincing [http://www.theflatearthsociety.org/](http://www.theflatearthsociety.org/) :)

<comment><USER24> Arguing with genuinely stupid people just makes me frustrated and depressed. It's far far easier to just ignore them.

<comment><USER25> It is extremely difficult to tell apart genuine stupidity from advanced trolling.

<comment><USER26> Indeed. I'm as certain as one can be that the flat earth movement is half stupid and half troll (at least on Internet message boards). I sincerely hope that my unscientific estimate is not erring in favor of the right hand side there.

<comment><USER27> I've always just assumed that it was just "trolling", like being a follower of the FSM - noodles all round.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> Of course they knew it was round. Under the belief that the Earth isn't round, land discovered by sailing west would have been taken for granted to be a new discovery, and not India, which lies to the east. Its inhabitants wouldn't have been dubbed Indians.

<comment><USER29> Whether they are called Indians or not has nothing to do with the myth that Europeans thought the Earth was flat.

The myth says "Columbus thought the Earth was round, while everyone else thought it was flat". Even if that myth was true, they would still be called Indians, because Columbus named them that.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> I'm pretty sure there were many Europeans who thought the Earth was flat. And given the quality of the Columbus' crew, some among them as well. The idea that it must be all or none is ridiculous. How many people today still reject Evolution?

<comment><USER30> The point is that we're still being taught that the reason Columbus sailed westward was to prove that the earth was round, which was certainly not the case. I have lost count of the times the 'we used to think the world was flat' argument has been used in discussions I have partaken in. Though it does have a valid point (we know more now than we used to) it is also misused, especially when it comes to discussions on science and religion. It is quite ironic when the defenders of science in that perceived battle perpetuate this myth.

<comment><USER3> Well, "the reason" is certainly wrong. But I think it is easy to understand the error. When Columbus thought he reached the Indies, it was the final difinitive proof that the world was indeed circumnavigable and thus round.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> A thorough rant if I ever read one.

</comment><comment><USER32> God != Religion;

Religions are ~2000 years old;

Humans are ~200,000 years old;

Earth is ~4,000,000,000 years old;

Religion was born when first con-man met the first fool;

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

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

<comment><USER33> > Religions are ~2000 years old

Ehm.</comment></comment>


Diaspora — Share the love. - <AUTHOR> http://blog.diasporafoundation.org/2011/10/12/we-love-you.html?

<comment><USER2> The Diaspora team published their financials awhile back. They weren't insane; they spent on some stuff I thought was silly, but they also paid themselves a pittance. The easy snark to supply here would be to say "what happened to the $200k", but that's easy to shoot down.

The reason you shouldn't give these people money is that they are very unlikely to succeed, and none of their published strategy makes a particularly compelling case for how this tiny team is going to make a dent in a space that Google and Apple are having trouble securing traction in.

One could make the observation that Diaspora is clearly a labor of love, and that to the extent that it is going to be important, it's going to be important with or without your money.

<comment><USER3> I think the lack of delivered milestones and need for more money indicates that this team with the current vision will likely _always_ need more money to deliver "the vision".

I think of the group that got pissed off at the Twitter client announcement months back and went out and built <http://rstat.us> in a weekend (a very rough deployed prototype).

Since then they have been hacking on it making it nicer and nicer to use. It is actually a really compelling replacement for Twitter; just without your social circles yet.

A project like Diaspora, with the charter that it has "take on Facebook" is too big to try and fund without a benevolent dictator at the helm, executing a singular vision.

That project either needs to be driven by the community as an open source project (again, with a singular dictator driving it) or it needs to be rolled up into a tight company vision with a first round of funding to get a deployment up and running with a wall, photos and messages and then move on from there.

I was annoyed to see the lack of updates on their product page and so many annoyed/angry donatees pissed off with the lack of updates.

More money isn't going to fix this. I am almost certain I could give them $500k and in a year and a half be here again with a rewritten back end and a request for "just a little more funding".

<comment><USER4> Ooh, rstat.us implements the OStatus protocol, so it interoperates with identi.ca. Good stuff!

The latest status.net release (the software behind identi.ca) looks an awful lot like Google+ or facebook, as opposed to previous versions' more specific Twitter-targeted style. After the #nymwars debacle on G+, I'm thinking perhaps identi.ca is the place to be, after all.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Share the love?? Good god, children, please give me more to go on than that. Where will my hard-earned money go to? Given your code output, I'd rather my cash didn't end up feeding you guys -- plenty of people work day jobs while working on their startup dreams, and there's no reason why you four can't.

Please, please -- never ask for money without delivering something that people feel is worth paying for. It might bring you in a few bucks now, but you are likely to lose goodwill and build an image of desperation.

Take my advice -- find real jobs, and let the community build Diaspora* by itself if it wants to. I don't mean to be harsh, but your skills are not essential to the project. Know when to cut loose -- you can still be involved with your beloved codebase, but for heaven's sake, get a real job before you all starve!

</comment><comment><USER6> I have yet to figure out how Diaspora couldn't reliably, quickly, and cheaply be implemented on top of XMPP (with maybe a protocol extension for rich profiles).

It's ultimately about delivering bits over the network and we have solved that problem and implemented our solution in free software already.

XMPP allows for friends, distributed registration, link-local access, basic profiles, broadcasts, multimedia, and extensibility to add app-specific goodies.

Diaspora only serves to acknowledge that Facebook is necessary, when what we should be doing is using existing tech to show it isn't.

<comment><USER7> This is the reason why I could never understand why Google seemed intent on promoting Wave as a fancier version of email or why they focused so much on the tech demo UI.

Under the hood, Wave was a federated XMPP network with privacy controls and the ability to move arbitrary data around. It had all the underpinnings not of an email killer, but of a distributed social network.

I was really excited about the potential of the project at the time, and came to be incredibly disheartened by the way nobody seemed to realize that the fancy placeholder UI wasn't where the actual interesting technology was.

ETA:

OneSocialWeb was another project predating Diaspora that was a distributed social network built on top of XMPP:

<http://onesocialweb.org/developers-xmpp.html>

<comment><USER6> If only the marketing of Diaspora could have been combined with the technical details of OneSocialWeb.

Facebook is great because it "gets" what average folks want and need. It being centralized is a _huge_ boon and while a few folks bitch about their privacy, very few people actually care. That isn't to say privacy concerns aren't legitimate - they are - but I know most of my peers just want to see pictures and read up on the latest news. Facebook is dead simple to use, requires nothing to get started, and has inertia. It won.

Many people on this site idolize Steve Jobs, so do what he would do:

1\. Acknowledge that Facebook won its game 2\. Start playing a different game.

You're spot on about Wave. Wave had the potential to be the next wave of communication (ugh), and they set their sights on probably the one standard that will never be disrupted, instead of trying to disrupt a relatively new segment. Wave should have been a social collaboration platform. I know that all I use Facebook for is communicating with members of my co-op, and we all could have easily moved our house business over. Instead, they blew it and we use Facebook for organization, scheduling, and collaboration.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Wow, hacker news whats up? This is a cool project that despite all the "what do they have to show for it" comments, has a real product. I know because I signed up on this pod: <https://diasp.org/> have any of you tried it? Seems like it works like other social networking sites, but unlike fb/g+, is open source and trying to be privacy aware.

If you don't want to give them money because you think they wasted 200K that's fine, don't do it. Really though there is a product and it seems to be working fine. Lets help them gain traction instead of bad mouthing innovators. I feel like hacker news should really support this type of product, but for some reason everyone here loves to hate it.

If you have technical concerns, that's fine, but lets help them not hinder the community with negativity. An open source facebook is exactly what the world needs now.

<comment><USER9> I don't think I've ever seen an open source project so roundly criticized for every little move they make. If people don't want to give them money then don't give them money, what's the point of all the hate?

<comment><USER10> I don't think I've ever seen an open source project so loudly pronounce what it was going to do before it did anything at all. (Not since okopipi promised to replace blue frog, anyway. Who remembers that? open source! peer to peer! how can it fail?!) Live by the buzz, die by the buzz.

<comment><USER11> I do. Surely the problem there was the non-appearance of any product, not the initial hype? Diaspora _has_ a product.

Also as I recall Okopipi failed to materialise because somehow it had lots of enthusiasts, but nobody actually working on it. You can see work happening on diaspora on github, by the four full time coders and many others.

<comment><USER10> I think right about now would have been a great time for Diaspora to announce their _first_ call for donations. "Hey look, we've got this great product and just need a little time and money to finish it off."

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> You, I really had high hopes for this product. I signed up for the updates, waited patiently for my invite, and held out this could be a really good product. After several months of little or no updates or an invite, I lost track.

The one thing this project failed to do was capitalise on their new found popularity. Instead of seeing dollar signs, they should have holed up and did as many 24 hour hackfests as they could to get this puppy up in a few weeks - ready or not for prime time and tinker on it after that.

Instead, they ran out of money, their support has dried up, and their window to get this released, closed long ago. Not to mention, they've let a bunch more competitors into their space, namely Google.

</comment><comment><USER13> On their site they claim 'Diaspora* is already in the top 2% of all open source projects ever.'

Kind of curious where they got these stats: All of the BSDs, the Linux kernel, all of the GNU project (gcc, GNOME, coreutils...), X11, Vim, Valgrind, LLVM, the list goes on of open source projects I think are slightly more popular.

Then again, if the number of projects is in the millions, the top 2% would place it in the top 20,000...

<comment><USER10> There are a lot of 10 line perl scripts on sourceforge.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> Diaspora asking for donations? What happened to the $200k and where is this new money going?

Then again...NY can be an expensive place to start a company

<comment><USER15> They got 178k after fees/taxes. Then, they had to spend 28k on Kickstarter's "fulfillment" requirements. So they had 150 to actually work with.

They spent $114k on salaries, taxes, workers comp, etc.

8.5k on hosting and whatnot - how on earth are they using that the resources to justify that?!

8k on LUXr training. 2.5k on "Diaspora graphics/printing." Probably a waste, but you gotta spend the budget somehow, I guess.

14k on housing and travel... curious.

So the 200k turned into 114k in their pockets, 14k of hotels/flights/etc, some training and a bunch of wasted hardware.

Yeah, 29k is poverty, especially in NYC, but these are NYU students. There's plenty of financial aid to go around, but in reality, it's an overwhelmingly wealthy college. I'd be _extremely_ surprised if their parents weren't already paying their rent/living expenses. And despite pocketing 76% of the cash, they don't have anything to show for it, and nobody's really believed they had a shot since that code release a year ago that showed they had no real technical skills to back up the project. Which probably explains the huge expenses for idle servers. I don't doubt their dedication or belief in themselves or the project, but for the love of god, stop indulging this fantasy.

<comment><USER7> >nobody's really believed they had a shot since that code release a year ago that showed they had no real technical skills to back up the project.

I really have no idea why people thought the project had a serious shot in the first place. From the get go they were talking up hugely ambitious features like video-chat while never explaining how they intended to deal with the core architecture of the project.

Simple fact of the matter is that they happened to announce when being pissed at Facebook was a common sentiment, and people expressed their anger by throwing money at these kids. It really didn't take more than a cursory look to see that the chances of something worthwhile being built, let alone taking off, were minimal.

<comment><USER15> I don't disagree. I certainly didn't throw them any money. But after that code release, even the most desperate facebook-hater knew Diaspora was nothing but well-intentioned vapor.

<comment><USER11> > nothing but well-intentioned vapor.

Why do people keep saying this? It exists. You can use it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> I don't want to donate money into what's probably going to turn into a giant hole. Diaspora had its opportunity but now it's just going to fade away into obscurity I think. I'd like to be proved wrong but I'm no way near believing in it enough to give them money.

They don't tell us how much money they need either. Or what it will be spent on. The stuff about me warmly hugging them or whatever and me being awesome comes off in a sort of weird corporate faux caring sort of way.

</comment><comment><USER17> i think its time we admitted that nobody wants a facebook clone. it doesn't matter how distributed it is, how open it is, how shiny it is, or anything else. nobody is going to replace facebook with a product that is essentially facebook. if google can't do it, a couple kids aren't going to do it either.

the next social networking phenomenon will be something new, not a new implementation of something old, and it's time to stop trying to re-invent old things.

<comment><USER18> Looking at the screenshots I'd say Diaspora is now a Google+ clone.

<comment><USER19> Not really. Diaspora already had most of its design in place, including the drag-and-drop 'Circles' feature (called Aspects in Diaspora), before Google+ was even announced.

<comment><USER20> Yes, exactly. Many Diaspora users were posting about Google+ ripping them off.

<comment><USER21> Which is pretty ridiculous, since Appleseed had circles since 2007, and I know Diaspora was aware of Appleseed before they released any code. Also, I spoke with someone from Google about Appleseed's circles two months before Diaspora even released any code.

Not that I'm claiming that Google+ stole Appleseed's idea for circles, since they put out a presentation in June 2010 talking about social segmentation from a theoretical perspective, and even if they did, it wouldn't raise much ire, since I stole the idea from Livejournal's friends list, which it had since, what, 2000?

There was a lot of precedence for groupings of social relationships, and honestly, I was shocked at the hubris of the Diaspora* team to claim that Google had pilfered them for inspiration.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> i've seen companies do a lot more with a lot less. I don't care if its NY, SF, or LA. I wouldn't donate based on what they produced with the original 200k

</comment><comment><USER20> Unfortunately when I log on to my Diaspora I just can't help but feel it's dead. At this point if this is a viable project the community should take it and run with it, but I don't see that happening.

I appreciate their goals and hopes, but more money isn't going to make this more viable. And if it is and we just don't know, it needs to be mentioned how in the request for cash.

</comment><comment><USER23> Smells of desperation.

</comment><comment><USER24> First, I vote to change the title to include a hint that they're asking for donations.

I admire what they're doing, and I think they should be proud of how far they've come, but I also think that Diaspora should continue by community involvement instead of by another round of soliciting donations. They probably could have done better off if they'd used a bit of that money and tried to market Diaspora a bit more, and they definitely should have at least summarized what they _have_ produced so far, if only for people who haven't yet joined or aren't familiar.

An example of how I think they could be better marketing themselves: I like how they're publishing their financials, mentioning and linking to that from their blog post would make me feel better about donating. My 2c.

</comment><comment><USER11> Aside from the question of funding, does anybody have any opinions on the product/code itself? I'm signed up and using it, and it seems to work fine. A decent number of my (non-tech) friends seem pretty keen to move to it. Should I be en/dis-couraging them?

</comment><comment><USER25> Our most recent blog post may answer some of your questions: [http://blog.diasporafoundation.org/2011/10/15/diaspora- not-v...](http://blog.diasporafoundation.org/2011/10/15/diaspora-not- vaporware-not-a-nigerian-prince.html)

</comment><comment><USER26> I feel like asking for donations with nothing really to show for it is stooping quite low.

</comment><comment><USER27> Sadly, the "spirit of community" is begging for money.

</comment><comment><USER28> This sounds an awful lot like "we don't feel like getting real jobs, so give us money to continue building a non-viable product".

Considering they blew through a couple hundred thousand and have little show for it -- I wonder how much money would now be required to create something viable? Only once they figure that out should go to the community or find investors.

<comment><USER11> > Considering they blew through a couple hundred thousand and have little show > for it

They haven't slain Facebook, but they have a working product, a decent sized fanbase, a good amount of community involvement via github, and, yes, a lot of hype. For some people, that would count as quite a lot.

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> haters gonna hate.

</comment><comment><USER30> Sounds like in the last year after the first code release they all did a bunch of LSD and turned their product into a open source hippy community.</comment>


Devuan Jessie 1.0.0 stable release candidate - <AUTHOR> https://lists.dyne.org/lurker/message/20170421.161009.6c644d3a.en.html <comment><USER2> "Devuan Jessie 1.0 RC" on HN yesterday: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14167447](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14167447)

For those who forgot what Devuan was, like i did – basically a Debian fork without systemd.

<comment><USER3> For systemd-less distros, I really like GuixSD. A functional approach & Scheme for all stuff is a big plus.

<comment><USER4> _A functional approach & Scheme for all stuff is a big plus._

I'll bite.

Why?

Being "functional" and using "Scheme for all stuff" is just a means to an end. What value does it bring me as a user or administrator?

Because I can think of at least one obvious downside: Scheme has no mainstream adoption. So they've picked a niche language (yes Scheme is niche) that users now have to learn.

So the value it brings, in terms of features, maintainability, etc, better be significant in order to justify that pain.

And I'm talking real value, not the value of intellectual rigor or functional purity. I'm talking about actual, real, tangible features that can't be gotten anywhere else.

<comment><USER3> Functional administration, not just implementation.

Most sysadmin operations are non-destructive. This has _huge_ implications.

<comment><USER4> Care to elaborate? This is a very vague statement taken in its own, and the GuixSD website does no better at explaining their real life value prop...

<comment><USER3> All system configuration and packages are described declaratively. You can roll back and forth between system definitions.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> "Devuan can be adopted as a flawless upgrade path from both Debian Wheezy and Jessie."

That _is_ nice, to have a supported path of simply add sources, signing keys and apt-get dist-upgrade. Impressive work.

I'm personally not convinced there's a viable near future for Linux without systemd (not counting the mess that is android (as a potential workstation / server distro) - I think Debian/kFreeBSD is a better path.

But I'd love to be wrong.

<comment><USER6> > I think Debian/kFreeBSD is a better path.

Is there an assumption that once Debian decided to go with systemd and an increasing amount of Debian standard software depended on it, the kFreeBSD port will have to be given up at some point?

<comment><USER5> Well, that's one way to look at it. Another way to look at it, is that when "all of Linux" went with systemd, there'd be little real interest and help upstream in various packages to port to "linux-without-systemd" \- but as long as open Solaris (by any name), free-, net- and openbsd exist - there's likely to be some help with porting to _a_ world without systemd.

<comment><USER7> What makes is so hard to write init scripts or run scripts or unit files for a daemon?

Of course, when you irreversibly mess things up by adding a hard dbus dependency, integrate udev in the init system, put systemd-resolved on 127.0.0.53 everywhere plus tons of other mess, then of course it's hard to "port" everything because you messed everything up so badly that it only works with your init system now.

<comment><USER5> Yeah, it's not the init scripts that are a problem, it's everything else, like keeping gnome working without logind etc.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Here's the official web page for that announcement at Devuan.org.

[https://devuan.org/os/debian-fork/stable-candidate- announce-...](https://devuan.org/os/debian-fork/stable-candidate- announce-042017)

</comment><comment><USER9> Duplicates [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14171119](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14171119) , posted earlier by Denis Roio .

</comment><comment><USER10> I never understand when OSS projects give themselves names that will never go mainstream. If the goal is semi-popularity at least, then "Devuan" will not work.

<comment><USER11> As I noted on another thread, the choice to call their initial release "Jessie" is also bizarre -- that's the same as the release name for Debian 8.0, which was released in 2015. Between that and the project name (which is a typo of "Debian"), it all makes the project look like it's _intentionally_ trying to create confusion between itself and Debian, rather than trying to succeed on its own merits.

<comment><USER12> The name "devuan" has been selected cause it's a merge of "debian" and "VUA" where "VUA" stand for "Veteran Unix Admins", the name of the group that started the fork.

It has to be pronounced as this: [http://danex.nexlab.it/devuan.wav](http://danex.nexlab.it/devuan.wav)

The first release has been named "jessie" cause it's a 1:1 replacement of debian jessie, and for our luck jessie is also a name of a minor planet, so, it match our nomenclature and reflect that is a very close path to switch from debian jessie, as Devuan consider itself the "real" continuation of debian after wheezy.</comment></comment></comment>


How the Mollusks of Fangataufa Came Back AFter a Nuclear Blast - <AUTHOR> http://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/how-the-miracle-mollusks-of-fangataufa-came-back-after-a-nuclear-blast <comment><USER2> The obvious answer was "as planctonic wandering larvae" from the start. No big surprises here.</comment>


Why Wall Street is way off on its Tinder and Instagram valuations - <AUTHOR> http://microfundy.tumblr.com/post/112130869445/why-wall-street-is-way-off-on-its-tinder-and

<comment><USER2> Most interesting thing about dating apps is how they drive user adoption.</comment>


Design first, then code. - <AUTHOR> http://emilhajric.wordpress.com/2009/08/09/design-first-then-code/ <comment><USER2> I'm not sure that "design" is necessary up-front. There are plenty of good strategies for rapid application development. I think what _is_ necessary is plenty of up-front _thought_, as in "why am I creating software?" and "what does it need to do and why does it need to do that?", then you are in a much better position to keep referring back to your original goals when making design decisions during the implementation process (without committing to an inflexible design should your needs evolve).

<comment><USER3> _I'm not sure that "design" is necessary up-front._

Most programmers aren't. And it's often a tug-of-war between designers and programmers to gain respect for their roles: have a designer always come later in the process and you'll get more of a limited traditional visual designer; have one always come earlier in the process and hand down visual specs like they're stone tablets, now you've got old school art directors from the Mad Men era and programmers are treated like code monkeys (still mostly the case at ad agencies today, actually); have one on your team that can design upfront while doing usability testing to validate features, all on a tight schedule, now you're talking about today's interaction designers, but they don't come cheap and most startups have a hard time landing one.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Should you design your entire app before you start coding?

You can, but that doesn't work very well. Part of the whole agile and test- driven development movement is a rejection of that "waterfall" / "Big Design Upfront" approach after seeing how it fails in the real world. Slogans like "do the simplest thing that could possibly work" and "You aren't going to need it" are there to stop you doing too much design.

Should you do design?

Of course. Slogans like "red, green, refactor" and "Don't repeat yourself" are there to get you to think about program design as you code. Also doing a bit of design thought before each coding task is good.

See also JEDI Programming - Just Enough Design Initially

[http://bradapp.blogspot.com/2009/07/jedi-programming-just- en...](http://bradapp.blogspot.com/2009/07/jedi-programming-just-enough- design.html)

<http://www.featuredrivendevelopment.com/node/507>

<comment><USER3> _You can, but that doesn't work very well._

Sure it does, just along a different metric - visual cohesiveness. It's a big difference between design and programming - you can and probably should slice off pieces of functionality to implement but doing that with design leads to one of the biggest criticisms of designers within an agile/xp/scrum programming setup: a frankenstein-looking interface.

There's a reason why "agile design" and "agile ux" is gaining steam as topics amongst designers (especially startup-focused ones like me) and it's because yes designing everything upfront is old school waterfall and clearly bad but designing on the go with super fast iterations can lead to an ill-considered spray-and-pray approach to the visuals. So we're trying to figure out a middle ground where the designer isn't just following behind and applying polish. That diminishes a designer's role just as much as it does to make a programmer always come later in the process and treat them like someone that simply implements what the designers make.

I'm not advocating an approach, just pointing out that there's definitely positives to having design go first, especially if you do user-focused research like running usability tests on mockups or paper prototypes. It'd be great if you could flip flop back and forth from having design or engineering drive the discussion and that's exactly the setup promoted in Bill Buxton's Sketching The User Experience.

<comment><USER4> The problem seems to be that "design" means two different things here - #1 User experience and graphic design, and #2 program architecture. I was talking mostly about #2.

I agree that if you want a slick-looking app, you have to put some upfront thought into #1 - maybe not nail down where every pixel goes, but establish the metaphors, colour schemes, mock up some sample screens and so on.

<comment><USER3> Agreed that we agree - I limited the discussion to #1 because that's how the blog post described it.

#2 is important as well, but honestly, I find that worrying too much about #2 upfront makes it too easy for coders to go down blind alleys and turn into "architecture astronauts" as Spolsky would say because they're busy implementing what's technically interesting rather than pure minimum needed to make an interface work. And don't get me wrong, that's just as much a danger for designers to go off into visual polish mode and get the interface looking like lickable candy rather than making the bare minimum interface they need to test with real users, whether with usability testing or metrics or what have you. I'm definitely an advocate for both designers and programmers to implement the smallest possible feature set they need to test their app or site in the real world.

Speaking of which, I'm not sure the original blog author limited the scope of their app either - they didn't explain how they define "success". I think it might just be that the interface actually got made and photoshop files got sliced up into html/css? That's a pretty low bar if that's the case.

<comment><USER4> _I find that worrying too much about #2 upfront makes it too easy for coders to go down blind alleys and turn into "architecture astronauts"_

I am still agreeing, and that's about where I came in. The words "Design first, then code" are fighting talk to an agile software guy. But if you add "but I meant graphic design not software design" I would say "oh... that's all right then, I guess".

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> You cannot not design first, no matter if you are developer or designer or UX.

When I did the Nasdaq Market Replay app, we sketched out some of the vital areas of the application, then tested to see whether they where viable, in the meantime we went on to do the rest of the design and getting feedback from the developers to see whether what we wanted was possible.

My personal philosophy is to design in the environment that we are developing in as early as possible.

That way we don't have this blind tag team situation where designers mindfuck and developers has to solve their mindfucks because the client approved them.

The agile process requires that all the involved are contributing all the time.

</comment><comment><USER4> the author basically says "I tried to do X, and just got stuck into the code. I failed. I started again, designing the entire User interface. After I was done designing I started the coding. This worked perfectly. So do the Design first and then code."

Maybe the reason that he succeeded the second time around was that he had already tried and failed, and so knew where the pitfalls were. It's not proven that design on it's own, without trying out some ideas first, is going to help. Many people would say that it' doesn't. I'd say that big upfront design without any reality checks can be a major hindrance later on when it turns out to be impractical.

Also "designing the entire User interface" ? Is he talking about graphic design or program architecture?

<comment><USER6> Graphic design. But it looks like few are reading the article that thoroughly anyway. ;)

I have to agree with the article up to a certain point though: creating mockups helps me find out what I need to build. Of course, creating a graphic design is something entirely different.

<comment><USER4> _Graphic design._

Yeah, it looks like it. So the article is poorly titled and poorly worded in that respect.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Bullshit.

You can design all you want, but you aren't going to take into account every last interaction. You can only do this by reacting to a prototype or implementation. Do some design, then some code, then react to the running system.

The important bit is to get to the minimal running system so that you can react to it.

This will also help you achieve conceptual integrity in your design; the missing stuff that you never thought of will come to you.

</comment><comment><USER8> This was a tenet of the 37signals book "Getting Real"

see: <http://gettingreal.37signals.com/ch09_Interface_First.php>

</comment><comment><USER9> hmm.. I'm not so sure if the author is right. If you're building one-time projects, I think he's right. But if you are building large apps that are constantly improved, you can't forecast what features must be added and what features you must get rid off. So it's all about designing your code, in a way that makes sure, that it's easy to change afterwards.

<comment><USER2> I don't think there's really such a thing as a "one-time project". It is very rare that you would create a piece of software in its entirety with no variation from your original design or conception of the software, and then never revisit or change it. As soon as you start modifying or maintaining software, you are in a position where your up-front design decisions may hinder your efforts to improve or add features.

<comment><USER9> "and that's why you never ..." :-)

With one-time projects I've meant products like a micro-page that a customer wants for some ad-campaign an then after some weeks have passed nobody will ever visit again.

But I agree, anything more than that is destined to be modified one day.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I don't think this is an argument for upfront design. Rather it's an argument for thinking about what you are doing.

</comment><comment><USER11> But... that's not _agile_!

<comment><USER12> Assuming you're not making a joke, I think these things get blown way out of proportion.

You're _always_ going to design before you code, even if you just take ten seconds before starting to type your tests into the IDE.

The question is "how much design is too much?"

The reason we have to ask that question is that for some folks design is supposed to eliminate all uncertainty and control execution. When design is taken to this extreme, bad things happen. But bad things happen when no forethought is put into work as well.

High-performing teams use design as a way of getting common understanding about a general plan of attack on the problem domain -- which can include things like initial data models. But the general idea is to do simple, easy things repetitively. So whatever you do for design, make it something that's easy enough to do every sprint. Perhaps that means an hour or two at the beginning of each sprint -- perhaps a day or two. But thinking ahead and getting group buy-in is always a good idea when there's more than just one of you. Heck, it's a good idea even when there's only one of you. Good design can try out and throw away ideas really quickly. Designing from code is a lot more painful.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the feedback guys, I appreciate it. I agree with you Daniel, you have a very good point. Although, I still think we should do the entire design before we do the cause: a) It's very easy and fast to get feedback. b) You're not creating any diversion with your team members. c) As a development guide(if you have a status update going on in every page of the website, that'll definitely make you think differently while developing the product).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> It seems to me that in this case the design is serving as a spec. If you don't have any idea what it's supposed to do it's kind of hard to build it. Then again, that seems rather obvious.</comment>


Linux perf rides the rocket - <AUTHOR> http://www.brendangregg.com/blog/2014-09-11/perf-kernel-line-tracing.html

<comment><USER2> Relevant Ubuntu bug: [https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/linux/+bug/1317811](https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/linux/+bug/1317811)

Relevant upstream discussion: [http://www.spinics.net/lists/netdev/msg282340.html](http://www.spinics.net/lists/netdev/msg282340.html)

</comment><comment><USER3> "Rides the Rocket" is a reference to Quake. It's a pretty crude joke about getting shot by a rocket launcher in the classic Quake deathmatch. It's likely there because of the similar, "frags", which is what they called kills, gruesomely short for the same "fragmentation"

</comment><comment><USER4> I see these most often on a EC2 PV instance's console when I'm watching it during instance termination. Apparently the (Ubuntu 14.04) kernel does something the xennet driver really doesn't like while shutting down.

</comment><comment><USER5> is anyone aware of similar articles for any of the BSD flavors or other operating systems?

<comment><USER6> Depends how similar. This article was specifically about kernel line number and local variable tracing, which I've only seen Linux do.

If you mean general kernel debugging, then my book on DTrace covers multiple operating systems including FreeBSD, and has around a thousand pages of examples.

It would be nice if DTrace could add kernel line number and local variable tracing. Recently I've seen FreeBSD kernel builds where inlining has become more common than I've seen in the past, and missing kernel functions is becoming a bit of a nuisance. It's generally possible to work around it, but it would be nice to just trace lines and variables if needed.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> _> This is pretty amazing. perf shows line numbers of those that can be instrumented directly, and those that can't in blue._

That looks like it just came from debugging info. I.e. the numbered lines correspond to places where a debugger could put a breakpoint.</comment>


US schools lay off hundreds of thousands - <AUTHOR> https://www.reuters.com/article/us-health-coronavirus-usa-teachers-insig/u-s-schools-lay-off-hundreds-of-thousands-setting-up-lasting-harm-to-kids-idUSKBN23B39R <comment><USER2> You know who's not laying off anyone? The military. Local funding of schools is ridiculous. Education benefits the whole nation. Educational investments shouldn't be dictated by transient economic conditions.

<comment><USER3> > Educational investments shouldn't be dictated by transient economic > conditions.

Could someone not make the same argument about the national defense?

Education is funded largely by local taxes, and local tax revenues are being gutted, so there isn't much that can be done here without nationalizing public education.

<comment> Spartan-S63 I don't think we should be opposed to nationalizing education. A common curriculum would help mobility when it comes to families moving across state lines. It would also ensure uniform funding and plentiful opportunities to poorer and rural schools.

<comment><USER4> Even shorter term I'd like us to move away from local property taxes being used for local schools. The state government should have a statewide pool of money they allocate to schools based on enrollment numbers, cost of living. This should be sufficiently funded such that teachers can make a living wage in the local school district.

Those who don't like this can still send their kids to private schools.

<comment><USER5> I'm a teacher myself, and I think this is very much needed. Right now, good neighborhoods just get better schools, while bad neighborhoods get worse. It's a horribly vicious circle, and shows even in areas where there's only one school (my county, the 5th biggest in the state, only has 25k people and one high school) if there's a huge amount of poverty (something like 65% of our students are on free or reduced lunch; over 80% live with either a single parent, grandparent(s), or other guardian), so it doesn't get the funding that, say, the school in the rich neighboorhood of the nearest big city gets, and it shows (it also doesn't help that our guidance councilor is ignorant and actively trying to make everything easier and less rigorous, but that's a different story). A state wide collection and distribution would help a lot; sadly, you're right and a lot of the parents in those better-off neighborhoods won't like it.

<comment><USER6> When I moved to the US, this was one of the things that surprised me the most. I found it really odd that my coworkers would look for homes based on how good the schools were in that neighborhood. The fact that all kids don't get equal opportunity makes it feel like a very broken society.

<comment><USER7> That has nothing to do with school funding. Your coworkers were looking for neighborhoods where they don't have to send their kids to school alongside black or Hispanic kids. Here in Maryland, my exurban county spends $14,400 per student per year. Baltimore spends $17,500, despite having substantially lower cost of living. (Even excluding federal funding, Baltimore spends $2,000 more.) The rich suburbs around DC spend $16,900. The rich Virginia county where I grew up, on the other side of DC, spends $15,300. DC itself spends $21,000 per student. DC also has some of the highest teacher salaries in the country. It has brand new, beautiful LEED Gold high schools your coworkers would never send their kids to because those schools are 99% black. Inside DC itself, schools are funded equally, but houses in neighborhoods districts to majority white schools cost hundreds of thousands of dollars more.

(When we talk about "systemic racism" in this country, that's what it means. It means that, even in blue states that are willing to provide ample funding to majority-minority schools, white and Asian parents would rather spend hundreds of thousands more on housing to avoid sending their kids to those well funded schools.)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Title: about teachers. Anecdotes: about teachers.

Buried in the article: _Susanna Loeb, a professor of education at Brown University, said she believes most of the 469,000 laid off in April were non- teacher personnel, as districts tend to fire teachers last_

If schools aren't open, a lot of janitorial, cafeteria worker, etc... are probably being laid off.

<comment><USER9> This just places even more burden on teachers to do everything. This is like keeping the troops but removing the supply lines.

<comment><USER10> Except, the janitors and / or lunch servers can be hired within a couple weeks and don't require training. Teachers are harder to hire because they have expertise, unions, and have years of experience.

<comment><USER9> And what about the instructional aides and other staff that do have significant training? And what about the web of relationships formed between the staff and students, including those between the janitors, lunch servers, etc and students? And what about the capacities and institutional knowledge that staff have about school operations?

Schools are complex operations, made simple only by those who don't understand them.

<comment><USER11> janitor-student relationships?

server-student relationships?

<comment><USER12> The lunch lady is a time honored and well known source of wisdom for those who get to know her.

<comment><USER13> Even if that's true, why would it not be true about the new school cook? Kids get new teachers every year and seem perfectly able to bond with them.

<comment><USER9> Consider perhaps part of the reason kids can adapt to new teachers each year is because there's consistency among the other members of the community, and that swapping the entire community out each year might be detrimental to their experience. Also, not all kids adapt that well to new teachers.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> It's odd to me that there is this bizarre certainty on hacker news that within 20 years the most common occupation, truck driving, will be nearly entirely obsolete, yet in an era where almost all human knowledge is available online for free, the idea that the education apparatus will either stay the same or continue to grow is somehow a given.

<comment><USER15> > where almost all human knowledge is available online for free

And it has been so for nearly 20 years and changed very little. MOOCs are a failure as people will not finish them. Online certificates carry no weight with employers even if people do.

We have promising prototypes of self driving trucks. We don't have such models for education.

<comment><USER16> We have plenty of promising prototypes. The original MITx / 6.002x had in the nineties rate it as being as-good-as or better than in-person.

OLI before that had good prototypes too.

The low-quality junk came in scaling. Part of that had to do with culture and people (business people took over from academics). Part of that with economics (people didn't shop on quality). Part on difficulty training. Etc.

<comment><USER15> The problem is not in information quality. I agree that is a solved problem. But that was never the big challenge in education (besides the politics of it).

The problem is in getting students to complete the work, be honestly assessed about the work, get feedback on their work as well as for employers to believe that the assessment means anything.

<comment><USER17> > The problem is not in information quality.

Information quality can be interpreted many ways. I wouldn't say most teachers are good at their job or at presenting information. Most I had were not good at the job - a lot of them were babysitters and acted as such. At the college level, it's possibly worse where the people are so consumed with their research that they have absolutely no interest in teaching or getting good at it.

Textbooks are also very poor quality. History textbooks are probably the worst offenders.

<comment><USER15> I was mostly referring to why MITx isn't a solution to education.

I agree with respect to the current education system.

History is hard to correct as it is politically thorny and frequently disputed. If I built a e-learning system, I wouldn't include that.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Just watched Bryan Caplan give a talk about how the majority of our education system's resources are spent towards a "signaling arms race".

What once required a high school diploma requires an undergraduate degree. What once required an undergraduate degree requires graduate school. Most of your time spend in school is learning skills that the labor market cares little for.

Not wholly convinced by his conclusion that entirely defunding education is the path forward, but it's a perspective I found very interesting!

Here's the interview: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1hZylJp- pHo&t=495s](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1hZylJp-pHo&t=495s)

<comment><USER15> I see it as less about signaling and more about proof.

A long time ago, a high school diploma was rigorous enough that people actually failed. A significant number of people did not earn one. Now, I don't even know of a friend of a friend who has failed to earn one, even if they just kept on retaking the courses at relatively easy schools until they passed.

It isn't clear to me what holding a high school diploma indicates about a person anymore simply because nearly everyone gets one.

What does holding a high school diploma prove?

<comment><USER19> This is what the "signaling arms race" refers to.

The other model, human capital theory, says that a high school diploma proves that the student has acquired specific skills (algebra, European history, etc) and therefore built up human capital. Signaling theory says the specific skills are not the point.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> I live in San Diego and this is sadly just more of the same. Public schools cut non-essential programs and then PTAs in upper and upper-middle class neighborhoods raise money from parents to add those programs back to their specific school. When time comes to vote on taxes to increase education budget, they are confused, as the public school system in San Diego is working great for them and their community.

You shouldn't be able to tell the income level of a neighborhood simply by looking at a picture of a public school, but in San Diego county, that is absolutely the case.

<comment><USER21> California pays for schools (at least the operational costs) at the state level since 2013 ([https://www.cde.ca.gov/fg/aa/lc/lcffoverview.asp](https://www.cde.ca.gov/fg/aa/lc/lcffoverview.asp)).

Local districts can propose bond measures, but there is no guarantee they will be accepted, even in rich districts. The school bond for Poway Unified was rejected on this past ballot.

What is really going to hurt district finances is enrollment. The State pays districts based on student enrollment. If students do not show up due to COVID fears, that represents a lot of lost money. Many students will not be showing up this upcoming school year.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> Could also do with cutting police funding. A local city in WA spends 53% of their budget on police[0].

Imagine if just a fraction of that went to education?

I'd love to see solid studies on the efficacy/use of police budgeting. At a cursory glance, it's an easy dataset with which to mislead: is crime going down because budgets are going up? Probably not. But without a solid study, we can't say for sure.

Still, I think we can agree: 53% is way too high (NYC in 2017 was 8% [1]).

[0] [https://mobile.twitter.com/jesusonah/status/1268650880800223...](https://mobile.twitter.com/jesusonah/status/1268650880800223235)

[1] [https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.forbes.com/sites/niallmccar...](https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.forbes.com/sites/niallmccarthy/2017/08/07/how- much-do-u-s-cities-spend-every-year-on-policing-infographic/amp/)

<comment><USER23> But a lot of money is wasted in education, as well. There are incompetent teachers with too much seniority to fire, for example, who are at the top of the pay scale, and with nice pensions waiting for them when they do retire. Many competent ones as well, but it's a big enough problem that basically every teacher I've ever met can tell you stories.

<comment><USER24> I'm curious about the true total cost of pensions for jobs like teachers and cops.

<comment><USER25> Add at least 30% to the numbers provided by the government hired actuaries. Each percent the assumed discount rate is too high results in ~15% change in liabilities. Not even mentioning additional liabilities due to underfunding, bad investments/corruption, and erroneous assumptions about mortality.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> > _Robert Hull, chief executive of the National Association of State Boards of > Education, which represents states' interests, told Reuters most class sizes > actually will shrink when schools reopen. That is because of COVID-19 and > the need for social distancing. One adaptation will be to have students come > to school, on a staggered basis, only on certain days of the week, and > possibly receive video instruction other days. He predicted that some of > these changes would be permanent._

I have a 2nd and 5th grader, going into 3rd and 6th grade. I can say from first and second-hand experience that the social, emotional, and intellectual damage being caused to young children by closing schools is absolutely frightening. This is to say nothing of the tremendous cost to households who aren't able to adjust work schedules around their children not being in school. Or even of the children where school is their respite and dependable source of a decent meal.

If there are days where my children are not allowed to go to school in the fall, those are days my kids and I will be spending protesting either in front of the school, or in front of the State House.

If from my ultra privileged position I can see significant emotional and intellectual damage being done to my kids from this policy, I have a hard time imagining the widespread costs and impact that closing schools is having across society.

</comment><comment><USER27> Open up already. The lockdown has been a sham, with scientists and researchers already acknowledging no difference between areas that locked down and areas that didn't.

Enough is enough. How much more suffering does the world need to endure over bad models and bad policy.

</comment><comment><USER28> They should start with cutting the upper staff, (and their cushy expensive retirement package) of their school district. This would pave way for hiring more teachers and restoring the arts, music, shop classes back into vogue.

</comment><comment><USER29> On-Topic: Anything that good hackers would find interesting. That includes more than hacking and startups. If you had to reduce it to a sentence, the answer might be: anything that gratifies one's intellectual curiosity.*

Off-Topic: Most stories about politics, or crime, or sports, unless they're evidence of some interesting new phenomenon. Videos of pratfalls or disasters, or cute animal pictures. _If they 'd cover it on TV news, it's probably off- topic._

*[https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html)

<comment><USER15> > anything that gratifies one's intellectual curiosity.

These layoffs could compromise the ability of millions of children to be curious. Is protecting future intellectual curiosity sufficiently interesting?

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> it's puzzling to me since I don't understand who is going to replace the teachers. how is this going to work?

also I feel like the priorities are totally wrong. on one side we invest in things that don't matter or are harmful. on another we screw people that have a meaningful contribution to society

<comment><USER31> The article says class sizes will double. But since classes will be through Zoom, teachers can just mute students who misbehave!

<comment><USER30> so we're gonna have 2 failures. doubling the class size and remote "learning". what a mess

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> I think we need a common online learning platform for K-12.

That at least gives everyone the same access to the best lecturers, independent of the low education budgets from poorer areas, as well as e.g. AP classes that they can't get locally.

It reduces the need for "redundant" teachers there just to deliver a mediocre lecture. Teachers are still needed to provide individual help, something that doesn't scale as easily as online lectures. That could be done locally or remotely.

Students need a computer and internet access. Providing them with that is cheaper than trying to fund local teachers and buildings, though.

Then we need some way to provide the social aspects provided by schools, sports, chemistry labs, as well as all the other services like food and counseling which are not part of education but are provided by the school system.

The same thing applies to the university system. I think this is the way out of the current cost explosion/bubble.

</comment><comment><USER33> Wait, public schools for children are not funded by the government in the US?

<comment><USER15> They are not funded by the national government. They are mostly funded by city and county governments, with some money from state governments.

Basically each city or county is mostly responsible for paying for the education of the children within its boundaries.

EDIT: I am slightly off on the percentages. See the comment below.

<comment><USER34> Explains a lot about the state of primary and secondary education in the USA.

How can such a system not lead to massive disparities in quality and access to education, if there isn't a federal backstop to make up for differences in funding available from the state/county. Is there such a thing?

Glad I live in a country where schools get funding based on factors like socio-economic status of surrounding community (the poorer the community, the more funding from central government).

<comment><USER24> There _are_ massive disparities. If you're an upper-middle class parent, you are primarily concerned with getting your kids in nice schools, as one's life trajectory in the US correlates very strongly with the kind of schools one went to.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> It's an interesting time, for sure. My son just finished his academics to be a teacher, his next step is a semester of student teaching. But it's not certain if classes will convene in the fall.

</comment><comment><USER36> It is ironic that smaller class sizes will require many more teaching professionals. And here we are laying off people.

</comment><comment><USER37> and the stock market is still on a tear...

<comment><USER38> Better sell all my holdings in public schools

</comment></comment><comment><USER39> In some ways I view this as an opportunity for society. I would be happy to have a return to decentralized schooling or alternate models with more choice, rather than a one size fits all model that is increasingly being co-opted by political actors to propagandize children with certain views or values.

<comment><USER40> And children who don't have parents with resources to "alternative models," deserve poor education? (I'm assuming you mean a stay-at-home parent who chooses to teach home-schooling because all that's necessary for the survival of this theoretical family is only 1 income earner, not 2).

For reference, this is NOT an insignificant percentage of the US population [1].

1 - [https://www.financialsamurai.com/the-median-net-worth-of- us-...](https://www.financialsamurai.com/the-median-net-worth-of-us- households-over-time-has-gone-nowhere/)</comment></comment>


Your Email Is (Practically) Your Identity  - <AUTHOR> http://kevinmontrose.com/2011/07/31/your-email-is-practically-your-identity/

<comment><USER2> Identity is the aspect of one's personality (or something like this). Email is a contact method, which can be identity's representation - it can be associated with an identity, but it is certainly _not_ the identity itself.

First of all, every human has an identity — it is automatically created, it's just that there are no ways to address it by itself. On contrary, an email is obtained and, moreover, _provided_ by someone else. This is a fundamental difference which explains why an email just can't be an identity by itself.

It's only a person who should possess his own identity — and you can't possess an email address, you _always_ lease it from someone else (even in self-hosted scenario the domain part comes from ICANN).

Please, don't ever mistake identities with methods to contact. Identity does not even imply that such may exist. If you want to contact someone — ask for contact data, not identity, like you ask for a phone number and not a name. I'd also note that this does not mean that identity and contact means must not be associated together — it's just that they must be loosely coupled. The article's argument is wrong — if I'd lose my phone number and get another one I won't lose my identity to my friends — they just won't be able to contact me for some time.

I just hope someday someone (with the help of software vendors, most important - browser ones) would get the identity right. And use cryptography, so, I could actually _possess_ my own identities (i.e. my own keypairs). Sure, there are more enough problems with this approach, too, but at least the concept is not broken at the very core.</comment>


Game Development in Go - <AUTHOR> http://www.j15r.com/blog/2015/01/25/Game_Development_in_Go

<comment><USER2> I don't really see the appeal, nor do I see Go carving its own way into any field in particular in general. Least of all, game development.

</comment><comment><USER3> I would be hesitant to choose a language with a GC to develop games on a mobile device.</comment>


Most Cited Computer Science Articles - <AUTHOR> http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/stats/articles <comment><USER2> This listing (from 2015) is incomplete and almost certainly incorrect. Other resources are likely to be more accurate and informative.</comment>