Why It's Never Mattered That America's Schools 'Lag' Behind Other Countries - <AUTHOR> http://techcrunch.com/2012/09/16/why-its-never-mattered-that-americas-schools-lag-behind-other-countries/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+Techcrunch+%28TechCrunch%29&utm_content=Google+Reader

<comment><USER3> The article says, "While the United States has a dismal track-record of inequality, we treat our brightest minds quite well."

And the second part of that statement is baloney. While everyone knows that the United States does badly in educational equality, the idea that we do well by able students is directly disagreed with by scholars who have spent years studying the issue.

<http://educationnext.org/teaching-math-to-the-talented/>

"Unfortunately, we found that the percentage of students in the U.S. Class of 2009 who were highly accomplished in math is well below that of most countries with which the United States generally compares itself. No fewer than 30 of the 56 other countries that participated in the Program for International Student Assessment (PISA) math test, including most of the world's industrialized nations, had a larger percentage of students who scored at the international equivalent of the advanced level on our own National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) tests. Moreover, while the percentage of students scoring at the advanced level on NAEP varies considerably among the 50 states, not even the best state does well in international comparison. A 2005 report from the National Academy of Sciences, Rising Above the Gathering Storm, succinctly put the issue into perspective: 'Although many people assume that the United States will always be a world leader in science and technology, this may not continue to be the case inasmuch as great minds and ideas exist throughout the world.'"

The full report underlying this online article can be found here:

[http://www.hks.harvard.edu/pepg/PDF/Papers/PEPG10-19_Hanushe...](http://www.hks.harvard.edu/pepg/PDF/Papers/PEPG10-19_HanushekPetersonWoessmann.pdf)

Anyway, this is implausible based on recent reports that millions of United States students find school boringly easy,

[http://www.usatoday.com/news/education/story/2012-07-09/scho...](http://www.usatoday.com/news/education/story/2012-07-09/school- too-easy/56120106/1)

"The findings, out today from the Center for American Progress, a Washington think tank that champions "progressive ideas,' analyze three years of questionnaires from the Department of Education's National Assessment of Educational Progress, a national test given each year. Among the findings:

•37% of fourth-graders say their math work is "often" or 'always' too easy;

•57% of eighth-graders say their history work is 'often' or 'always' too easy;

•39% of 12th-graders say they rarely write about what they read in class."

The claim is also implausible on the basis of comparisons of the national score distribution in a variety of countries on the TIMSS and PIRLS data on achievement in mathematics, science, and reading.

[http://timssandpirls.bc.edu/TIMSS2007/PDF/T07_M_IR_Chapter1....](http://timssandpirls.bc.edu/TIMSS2007/PDF/T07_M_IR_Chapter1.pdf)

(See Exhibit 1.1 for country distributions of scores in mathematics.)

[http://timssandpirls.bc.edu/TIMSS2007/PDF/T07_S_IR_Chapter1....](http://timssandpirls.bc.edu/TIMSS2007/PDF/T07_S_IR_Chapter1.pdf)

(See Exhibit 1.1 for country distributions of scores in science, where the United States fares somewhat better, comparatively, than in mathematics.)

<http://timssandpirls.bc.edu/PDF/P06_IR_Ch1.pdf>

(Exhibit 1.1 in this PIRLS document shows reading achievement distributions for fourth grade, not including eighth grade data as in the two charts linked above.)

The United States certainly has societal advantages that result in better economic performance than could be expected from the results of its school system. The United States is internally peaceful, stable, free

[http://www.freedomhouse.org/report/freedom-world/freedom- wor...](http://www.freedomhouse.org/report/freedom-world/freedom-world-2012)

and noncorrupt

<http://cpi.transparency.org/cpi2011/>

enough to attract immigration from all over the world, and several United States immigration categories strongly favor persons who received strong primary and secondary educations in their native countries. The "brain drain" is a phenomenon of long standing, and helps the United States make up for what it doesn't do for its own native-born students.

AFTER EDIT: The Hacker News management writes in the Hacker News welcome letter about how to write a good comment:

"The test for substance is a lot like it is for links. Does your comment teach us anything? There are two ways to do that: by pointing out some consideration that hadn't previously been mentioned, and by giving more information about the topic, perhaps from personal experience."

And I just remembered, as I am about to do an activity with my son, that my personal experience includes running an ongoing course in advanced mathematics (prealgebra mathematics for elementary age pupils) that draws client from throughout the native-born and immigrant community in Minnesota, a state with strong public schools. My course location is in one of the very best school districts in Minnesota. But parents who are American-born and graduates of MIT, and first-generation immigrant parents from China, from India, from Poland, from Romania, from Ghana, from Korea, from Pakistan, and from other countries I may have forgotten sign up their children for my courses, even though they already live in school districts that are considered good school districts, because they know very well that American schools don't do as good a job teaching foundational mathematics as schools in many other countries.

<http://www.ams.org/notices/200502/fea-kenschaft.pdf>

<http://www.ams.org/notices/199908/rev-howe.pdf>

I learned this in Taiwan, where the school system in general does better at lest cost than in the United States. It is the basis of my current occupation that people living in the United States who are actually aware of the situation in other countries seek mathematics education besides that which is poorly provided by United States public schools.

<comment><USER4> I'll chime in here to say that indeed we don't treat our brightest minds quite well. For one, by trying to let no child be left behind, and raise average test scores, our schools are spending most of their time trying to raise the bottom half to the standard. Kids who can easily pass the tests are left to languish. And I mean this literally. My son has been relegated to the corner of the classroom to spend hours poking around in the meager classroom library while the teacher worked intensively with the laggards. Programs for "gifted" kids are unpopular with parents because they seem "elitist" so schools have to go to crazy lengths to obfuscate them and make them as low-profile as possible. You're unlikely to even hear the term "gifted" in a school nowadays. They have to use euphemisms like Early Learning Program. Even in high schools where it finally becomes politically workable to sort the smarter kids into AP classes, the "best" schools use those classes and the bright students as a factory farm of AP credits earned, which raise the rankings of their school system, and make it easier to justify continued budget increases. So rather than encouraging critical thinking, writing, and creativity, they're teaching to the test.

I actually agree with many of the facts that the article lays out. I actually don't think that there's much point in getting heartburn about the US's standing in the ratings, because a lot of the ratings are probably useless or easily-gamed metrics. And it's critically important for US interests that we make it easy for the world's best and brightest to continue to immigrate. The big problem with the article is that, as other readers point out, it's a self- defeating argument. The reason that our poor education outcomes don't matter is that we import the top performers from other countries? Well, it's a good thing that we import the top performers (in a selfish way of seeing things). But that's beside the point.

I think that one of the factors contributing to our education challenges is that we have a large and diverse population, but we also have naive notions of what equality means, and we too often think that correlation equals causation. Going to college correlates with success later in life. That's because smarter, harder-working kids tend to go to college. It does not mean that sending dumb lazy kids to college you'll make them successful. If you send dumb kids to college, you end up with dumb kids with no college degree and $40,000 in student loan debt the incurred before they dropped out. I'm using the term "dumb" to make a point, but the truth is that there's nothing wrong with not being cut out for the academic life. In fact, if you are prepared in childhood to be determined, hard-working, and creative, you can become a very successful person without having ever been an academic type. I spent three years doing carpentry, and I got to know a lot of tradespeople who did important things, enjoyed their work, and lived comfortable middle class lives, and sent their kids to college. But we're allergic to the idea that people are cut out for different kinds of life purpose because some people are more academically oriented than others.

<comment><USER5> Yes, we've got to get past this "elitism" nonsense. The fact is, we all do better when the best students are allowed to soar.

Is it really anti-elitism, or just general anti-intellectualism? We have no problem with "elitism" in sports -- we fall all over ourselves to identify and develop the most talented kids. Maybe I'm out of the loop since I don't have kids, but is there anyone who argues that we should spend most of our efforts on the unathletic and uncoordinated, and leave the high-performers to their own devices? If they do, I sure don't hear about it; it seems quite the opposite. So why does this argument carry the day in the academic sphere?

Side note: have you considered home-schooling?

<comment><USER6> > We have no problem with "elitism" in sports -- we fall all over ourselves to > identify and develop the most talented kids.

Except we don't necessarily even do that. Youth sports programs in the US usually emphasize teamwork and winning over developing individual talent, while the approach in European youth academies for, say, soccer is the exact opposite.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> This whole flag-waving typical Techcrunch rant is based on the assumption that education only serves to feed the economy. Profit is all that matters.

So many of America's social problems can be traced back to a lack of a decent educational system, and if anything, this article inadvertently explains why. If someone really thinks economic dominance is enough to keep an empire from crumbling, I suggest some history lessons.

<comment><USER8> Well put. They don't realize that a well educated population is a more rational one. It's also one of the reasons why I am against this whole shift in only learning things that are "immediately practical" such as math and science (don't get me wrong, I think math and science are important but other subjects are just as important). It's one of the reasons why I wish philosophy and debate were mandatory courses in most schools. I don't believe making kids memorize multiplication tables when they are in kindergarten is going to help them, especially when they are barely able to comprehend them since they are so cognitively underdeveloped.

In addition: From what I am noticing, the kids that go to college to study degrees that involve dealing with unsolvable or unsolved problems are the kids that understand and not just memorize what they are taught. The education system downplays understanding and focuses on memorization. This obviously comes from America's result based culture. This leads to a population of people that can't think for themselves and only do what they are told. Something that goes against the whole idea of democracy.

TL;DR I believe that at younger ages children should be taught how to think rather than what to memorize.

<comment><USER9> The country's taking the opposite path. Kids start their school day with the _Pledge of Allegiance to the Wealthy_. Ignorance is strength.

<comment><USER10> What does the pledge of allegiance have to do with wealthy people?

<comment><USER9> Pledging allegiance to the flag/country encourage kids to support or fight in for-profit wars and other nefarious gov't activities that mainly benefit the rich. The "under God" part is advertising for religions, again profiting the wealthy few.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Basically screw 90% of the population. Let private schools educate the rich and if they can't hold up the weight give out student visas to people who actually got legit primary education.

I moved to the states when I was 13 and wasted 5 years in subpar new york city schools. If not for the decent education that I received prior to moving here, I would probably be in a similar position as a good portion of my high school classmates. I'd be finishing up a worthless CC degree and have little hope of getting a job that pays much above the minimum wage.

<comment><USER12> I am legitimately curious. What did you do instead?

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> > The U.S. holds roughly 17% of the world's International students, compared > to 2nd-place Britain (~12%) and far more than education powerhouses, Korea, > Switzerland, and Sweden (all below 5%).

Considering the U.S. has a population of 300 million vs. the UK's 63 million (and Sweden's 9 million), aren't these numbers actually damning? Or are they just saying "size matters"?

<comment><USER14> Well since the UK is so close and economically/politically connected with other large developed countries you would expect their rate of international students to be greater than the US all things being equal.

<comment><USER15> I think the majority of the uk's international students are from less developed countries. Historically they were from the countries in the Empire, although recently there are more from Europe as our universities are better than many other countries.

<comment><USER16> _our universities are better_ Do we really compare better? Recommend any references?

<comment><USER15> Not better than all other countries in Europe, but a substantial number.

Italy's awful University system is well documented eg [http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/family- fiefdo...](http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/family-fiefdoms- blamed-for-tainting-italian-universities-2089120.html)

Look at these rankings for example, the UK is right up at the top, followed by Switzerland, the Netherlands, Germany and France, but many other countries are right down the list. [http://www.timeshighereducation.co.uk/world-university- ranki...](http://www.timeshighereducation.co.uk/world-university- rankings/2011-2012/europe.html)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> I find the conclusion dubious.

The US compensates its bad education system by attracting external talent through other factors ? Yeah, I agree with that. But saying "we need not to be scared into trying to be like other countries" is a recipe for disaster on the long term. Because it works until some other country becomes more attractive than the US (not likely right now, but it's imaginable). And, if anything, having a good education system will give you _more_ talent. There's no way it will give you less, since people aren't coming for the education anyway.

<comment><USER18> The immigrants aren't coming for the middle and high school education, they are coming for college/graduate level education, which is top-notch in the US, atleast in the best schools.

Combine with that the multiplier effect of significantly better economic opportunities post-college, and its clear why immigrants are willing to jump through hoops (one of the worst immigration systems) to come to the US.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> TL;DR summary: we're not good at educating people, but that doesn't matter because (a) only the top few percent matter, and (b) we can import talent to make up for domestic shortfall.

I don't agree with either of these.

Only the top quartile matter, and therefore the bottom three-fourths can wallow in ignorance and stupidity? We _don't have universal healthcare_ because of this fucking attitude. If you have ignorant people, you end up with an ignorant, fucked-up culture. We pay for the ignorance of average Americans in so many ways that it infuriates me even to get into this discussion.

Secondly, I don't think we can count on being a destination country forever. Our immigration policies are getting worse over time, while European countries and Canada are becoming increasingly attractive. The gap is narrowing. There was a time when the smartest in the world wanted to come to the United States-- not necessarily New York or Silicon Valley, but even central Ohio. Now, they're equally attracted to Canada, Australia, Scandinavia, and even Japan (which is less xenophobic than its reputation would indicate).

I don't think the smartest and hardest-working people come to "America" anymore. They go to star cities, industries, and companies: Wall Street, Silicon Valley, and U.S. research academia are top-notch, and happen to be in the U.S. People come to the U.S. because a few currently-leading locations are here, but what does this do for the rest of the country?

Also, New York is arguably the world's best city and Silicon Valley is the world's best suburb, but these places are also ignominously expensive. Living in the star cities, we can easily delude ourselves into believing that we're insulated from the decline in "flyover country", but the bare fact is that we suffer every day (when we pay rent or make mortgage payments, the prices being so high because it's so hard to get a high-paying job outside of a few locations) for what has happened to the rest of the country.

American decline is real, and it's shitty, and it has everything to do with a lack of education and culture. Hours of schooling are just a proxy measure and not a very good one, but the lack of attention paid to education in this country is a big fucking deal.

<comment><USER20> We don't have universal healthcare for a variety of reasons, most of which highly educated agree with. Many people don't seem to understand that federalism is slower and the idea is to see what works. The problem is that healthcare reform is not being appropriately worked on at the state level - primarily due to huge interventions at the federal level that prevent experimentation.

Anyway, there are tons of high paying jobs outside of NY and SF - <USER2> choose to live there because the like the culture and the cities -- that's why the rent is high.

<comment><USER19> Rent is high in New York and Silicon Valley because the markets are warped by regulatory corruption and the extreme illiquidity of the market. Right now, local incomes can support those levels (just barely) but that can change, and when it does, urban decay will set in. Urban decay starts at least a decade before prices start to drop, because people hoard real estate rather than selling it when the market softens.

The problem with real estate markets is that there's extreme demand inelasticity, which means that declining conditions (reduced effective supply) actually cause aggregate prices to go up, in the same way that a hurricane in the Gulf drives up gas prices even though it's not a good thing.

The idea that high rents come from "desirability" is hopelessly naive. Very rich people can live whereever they want, so the difference between a $50-million apartment vs. a $10-million one is driven by those factors: how old the building is, how many third-world despots and celebrities live there there, whether it has a view of The Park. For the rest of us, the rent we pay is dictated by scarcity conditions rooted in regulatory corruption and the slow reaction of new housing construction to economic forces (i.e. that 10 jobs can be created faster than 10 houses)-- not "desirability". Real estate agents want you to believe that the reason The Rent Is Too Damn High is that New York is such an awesome place to live, but economics don't bear them out. Supply-side disruptions and failures push up prices much more than actual value increases or income improvements.

Regarding high-paying jobs outside of those locations, they exist but there aren't as many as there should or could be. The near-impossibility of getting funding for a new technology business away from the coasts is a real problem. Venture capital is ugly and I'd really like to see us, as a society, come up with something better, but it's the only option for a lot of companies in the global marketplace.

As for universal healthcare, we would have had it in 1948 if the Dixiecrat racists (who were afraid that a universal plan would require them to desegregate the hospitals) hadn't threatened to destroy Truman by stonewalling everything he did. Universal healthcare plans have problems-- Canada's system is far from perfect, and the UK's NHS has some serious flaws-- but all of those plans are leagues better than the horrendously shitty system that we have in the U.S.

<comment><USER21> You make an extremely good point. NYC and SF rents would not be nearly as high if there were more supply, and there isn't more supply because the housing market is so over-regulated. Manhattan is cramped, but outside a few places in the UES and Financial District, it's filled with block after block of low/mid- rise construction, mostly 80+ years old. The reason is that it's extremely difficult to tear down this crap and build new high rises because of regulations.

<comment><USER22> Also because of our property-tax regime. Tearing down a depreciated/ing low- rise to put up a fresh new high-rise will cause a reassessment of your property value, and because the building is new you'll get hit with a massive tax increase based on your property value shooting up.

The problem being that real-estate property values are only liquidated on selling a building, so you just end up passing the tax on to renters.

A tax on land-value or space usage tends to work better for allowing high- value construction to be done rather than continual depreciation of a whole city.

<comment><USER23> don't forget income tax shield --

for every $1Mn shouse shielding ^=$60K in tax

you are making 2x median wage earners pay double Tax

That's really the worse, most regressive tax right now.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> I think it is the fact that we have such a ``weak" education system that America is capable of institutions such as Google, Apple, and the whole startup culture. Lately, this has been less and less relevant due to the Internet (as long as you have uncensored Internet, it probably doesn't matter which locality you're in).

Nonetheless, I don't think there is anything inherently so wrong about the US college/university system. People outside of the US wouldn't be spending buckets' loads of money to send their kids here. And lately, Canada seems to be absorbing a lot of influence as a tech powerhouse.

I think it is the lack of structure and social order that allows anyone to question any values. As long as America keeps the best and brightest from all over the world in the country, America will stay on top.

However, the Internet has been the great equalizer. It is probable and possible to build great companies anywhere, especially if your products are digital.

<comment><USER12> > Nonetheless, I don't think there is anything inherently so wrong about the > US college/university system. People outside of the US wouldn't be spending > buckets' loads of money to send their kids here.

Like MIT and Berkeley? Yep, those are said to be quite nice, but I don't know anyone who on their own free will would go to the US for a degree there. At leas here (Central Europe) it has the the image of being bad and expensive.

<comment><USER25> And yet 23% of MIT international students are from Europe. I think this is the point where I should say that your anecdote doesn't replace data.

<comment><USER12> Actually it appears like you misunderstood me, because what you just said proves what I wrote, which is that there are exceptions like the MIT. However, I know enough Americans personally to know that most universities aren't at this level.

EDIT: Sorry, I just reread it. I really didn't point out well, that I consider the MIT or Berkeley an exception, but saying that they are good university and doubting anyone here would say they are not doing a great job I falsely amused that would be clear. Yep, the MIT and Berkeley are great university and like a lot of other people I'd love to go there, but that's not what I was talking about and that's what I wanted to make clear mentioning them.

But also think about why elite universities have such a percentage of foreigners.

Do you know the percentages of other universities? I am curious, because when I think about the university I study at, which currently is in a huge mess, because a governmental coalition we had for two periods (for the first time in history) changed the laws regarding its financial support in a way that it was against the constitution and therefor was killed off. Since nobody acted upon this on time and there are now no appropriate laws and most universities are struggling with big debts (for the first time). Still universities here are free, still the universities here are pioneering in many fields, winning international awards, etc. If the financial situation doesn't change (the laws aren't fixed in what way ever) this situation is going to change, but despite strong restrictions 22.57% (just checked on this year) of the students here are from other countries. This is for computer science on one of the worse universities here (I for myself am thinking about going to another state for a better one), which isn't really the best field. Most people come here to study medicine here. That's a famous field here. Lots of international politicians come here for health related stuff, so I am sure the numbers there would be different. They are also the ones that are always the first in transplanting various organs, world records when it comes to the number of them, etc.

What I want to say is that the fact that you have one or two very famous universities in the field of technology doesn't say your system is good. I can study here too, research whatever I want, pioneering in various areas, get everything I need, still I know very well how messed up our system is (and was for at least a decade now). So I really don't think that the comment about everyone going to the US is true, just because you have 23% Europeans at your elite university. The reason by the way could also be that they have rich parents coming from Europe, because as a matter of fact forty(!) percent of Ph.D. scientists working in the United States were born abroad[1].

See, I don't want to talk bad the educational system in the US, but when a lot of US American citizen go to Cuba, which is basically the enemy of the united states, has huge financial problems, which due to a large part are because of economical sanctions that would even mean the end for a country like Germany then saying the US educational system appears to just be wrong (also see PISA). This doesn't mean the US doesn't have some damn fine universities like MIT, Berkeley, etc. or that many European countries are doing so much better (I explained how really messed up the university I am going to is - even if there are many that are off worse), but if you look to Scandinavia or Asia then things could be _way_ better.

[1] <http://www.whitehouse.gov/cea/cea_immigration_062007.pdf>

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> I know Techcrunch posted this...but why is it on HN?

This has nothing to do with technology, hacking, or really anything that is remotely interesting.

This thread is just going to turn a giant shitfest about government vs free market, why collegiate education is the root of all evil, etc etc. Same tired old debates.

Flagged.

</comment><comment><USER27> Has anyone here had a positive educational experience?

The article brings up the USA and china and although I had to supplement my usa education (we used the same textbook for 4 years in my elementary school) and saw that my cousins in china were learning calculus while my class was still on extremely basic algebra, I never envied them their Chinese education steeped in rote memorization.

My impression is other countries might test better but they have their own problems. My cousins in China had the curiosity beaten out of them and had no time to really understand what they were studying or pursue what really interested them. The cutthroat testing environment really harmed them psychologically as well. I consider myself really lucky. The first rule of education should be "do no harm" and often that just means being more hands off.

Many of my friends learn better on their own and at least the USA lets smart kids do that more than many other countries do.

I have a bias in that I tend to think most problems can be solved by technology. Maybe this whole conversation is on a problem fast becoming obsolete due to the great equalizer: the Internet. That's my hope, anyway. (btw the best open courseware stuff comes out of USA universities.)

</comment><comment><USER28> The article assumes that given that the U.S. thrived in the post-war environment with a K-12 system subpar on a given set of metrics, those metrics don't matter. It fails to acknowledge that today's environment of several emergent, competitive countries viably aspiring for at least global significance is very different from one where every viable competitor raced to outdo each other in the orgy of self-destruction that bombed much of the first world to the third.

An educated population, as measured by PISA scores, "has powerful effects on individual earnings, on the distribution of income, and on economic growth," e.g. a "one country-level standard deviation equivalent to 47 test-score points in PISA 2000 mathematics higher test performance [yielded] around one percentage point higher annual [per capita GDP] growth rates", with broader evidence quoted in the same paper pointing to a 1.5 to 2 percentage point effective size. From a social perspective, test score inequality and earnings inequality across OECD countries have a simple correlation of 0.85 [1].

The link between schooling and test scores is not 100% causal, with the aforementioned study [1] conceding that "cognitive skills may be developed in formal schooling, but they may also come from the family, the peers, the culture, and so forth.". That said, the data suggests that "strong accountability systems that accurately measure student performance; local autonomy that allows schools to make appropriate educational choices; and choice and competition in schools so that parents can enter into determining the incentives that schools face" have been shown to have a significant positive effect on the economically relevant metrics of cognitive skill. It should be noted that there is little evidence of education expenditure per pupil and any relevant metrics being related.

TechCrunch quotes a _Nature_ article that asserts that the "average test scores are mostly irrelevant as a measure of economic potential". Unsurprisingly, the original article [2] is mis-represented. Far from arguing that we can sit on our laurels the commentary in _Nature_ argues that given "90% of the variance in the scores is within countries rather than between countries" we need not drill our students for hours as they do in Singapore or India, but "should [instead look] at how our best schools educate top performers". The argument is thus on _how_ we improve our education system rather than _whether_ we need to.

TL;DR Just because we got to market in a jalopy for the last half century doesn't mean a tune-up isn't in order. Even if we have a larger population that hedges against trashing up a good portion of our human capital so long as a lucky few succeed, an under-performing school system, hinted at by the U.S.'s PISA scores, leaves potential growth on the table. This is unfair and inefficient.

[1] [https://openknowledge.worldbank.org/bitstream/handle/10986/7...](https://openknowledge.worldbank.org/bitstream/handle/10986/7154/wps4122.pdf?sequence=1)

[2] [http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v453/n7191/full/453028a...](http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v453/n7191/full/453028a.html#an1)

<comment><USER14> > That said, the data suggests that "strong accountability systems that > accurately measure student performance; local autonomy that allows schools > to make appropriate educational choices; and choice and competition in > schools so that parents can enter into determining the incentives that > schools face" have been shown to have a significant positive effect on the > economically relevant metrics of cognitive skill.

That's interesting because that is almost the opposite of what many of the comments here are suggesting we change.

Mainly that we nationalize the education system.

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> Only caring about the top quartile (aka ignoring the majority) is dangerous, because it has been proven that humans are not very good at judging the relative intelligence of people more intelligent than they are.

Thus, a dumb population will elect dumb leaders who make dumb decisions. One has to wonder if we currently see something related to that.

</comment><comment><USER30> I think everyone would agree that it's pointless to send children into a public education system and then act like _it doesn't matter_ what the outcome is for the majority of them. Unless you are totally indifferent to the wastage of tax revenue.

</comment><comment><USER31> Totally off-topic:

Shouldn't it be "countries'" with an apostrophe? To denote possession?

</comment><comment><USER32> American schools don't lag behind other countries... American demographics lag behind other countries.

If you break down the PISA scores by american demographic groups then you'll see that whites do better than whites in almost every European country... Asians better than practically every Asian country... and the same goes for Blacks and Latinos.

<comment><USER33> Reference?

</comment></comment><comment><USER34> There are some reasons for US economic power (e.g. WWII) but the main reason is companies got larger and more successful than elsewhere because until China it was the largest domestic market.

Successful companies attract money, money attracts people.

<comment><USER35> Don't forget the very important fact that in the US companies are _allowed_ to get massive (modulo a few antitrust cases) and keep their profits, of which there is no artificial limit. Both the companies and the citizens are, to a large extent, left unmolested by the government. This is not the case everywhere. There are many other factors as well.

<comment><USER34> Granted by view is limited, but I'd assume companies are allowed to get massive in the UK, France, Germany, Italy, Japan and elsewhere too. What these countries lack is a large domestic market - with Japan the second largest, and Japan the second largest economy for most of the 20th century after WWII. The UK was large when it had the empire as a domestic market.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> This article fails to specify exactly to what end "it has never mattered." Assuming that the reasoning of the article is correct (the other comments have sufficiently questioned this issue), it still "matters" that the U.S. public education is subject glaring inequalities, that low-income schools often fail to graduate the majority of their students, that income level is so positively correlated to academic achievement, that students can be trapped in classrooms with 40+ students with no hope of individual attention. Addressing and reforming these problems is independent of the privilege and success of elite students.

</comment><comment><USER37> >The U.S. is the 6th worst in terms of high school graduation, with 23% failing to attain a diploma

I'm surprised that the graduation rate was that high, as I was expecting the "did not graduate rate" to be closer to 30%, not closer to 20%.

Personally, my high school only graduated 59.1% of its incoming freshman for the class of 2000.

</comment><comment><USER38> Hmm, sounds more like la-la-hands-in-the-ears denial.

It's not just schools. The tide's have turned in general.

Before the 17th century Britain wasn't much. Afterwards, it was the world's superpower (with France by the side).

Before the 20th century, the US wasn't much. After WWI, WWII especially, the exchanged the role of superpower with Britain. Now they're falling by the wayside too. It's not something that happens overnight, might take several decades, but it's not like the world looks to the US as it once did anymore (or will again: those things are not normally reversible).

<comment><USER15> Britain started worrying about its educational decline in the 1890s recession...

<comment><USER39> It's also worth noting that the British made a deliberate decision to _not_ challenge America's ascendency to dominance. I think it's fairly obvious how that decision has benefited both nations.

I don't think the same can't be said about Sino-American affairs today. I worry about that.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER40> Innovation is never the primary factor to obtain a good education for oneself. One only learns of innovation once one has a good education.

The conclusions of this article are atrocious and frankly, appalling. When just about all of the problems in the US and US policy abroad come because of an uneducated populous how can one claim that this is not important?

A lot of immigrants don't really want to come here anymore and many are leaving or planning to leave because of the conditions caused by the horrific education in the US. It's ironic that this is one of the problems that we have it in our power to fix, yet one of the things that keeps the status quo thus removed from politicians' agendas.</comment>


Oracle cheers net neutrality rules rollback - <AUTHOR> https://www.axios.com/oracle-cheers-net-neutrality-rules-rollback-2394354723.html <comment><USER2> Not surprising. Oracle is the big iron for ISP databases. The more info the ISP's can slurp, the bigger the database they'll need to store it in

More easy money for Oracle, unfortunately for the rest of us</comment>


Ask HN: Why do people use TM when talking about non-trademarked terms? - <AUTHOR> I have noticed with a fair amount of frequency people will commonly say things like "...It Just Works (TM)..." or, from a post today, "...real (TM) open source...". I see this here on HN, Reddit, and Stack Overflow.
What is the purpose of this? I assume it is similar to people starting sentences with "I mean..." or ending statements with question marks that are not questions (e.g., "I use this technology all the time?"). I do not understand what effect is trying to be achieved by this usage. Is it emphasis? If so, why not use underscores, which are used in Markdown to achieve the same?
Edit: added sites where I commonly see this idiom. <comment><USER2> This explains the gist of it better than I can [https://ell.stackexchange.com/questions/17108/what-is-the- tm...](https://ell.stackexchange.com/questions/17108/what-is-the-tm-of-do-the- right-thingtm)</comment>


New Chrome extension: block sites from Google's web search results - <AUTHOR> http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2011/02/new-chrome-extension-block-sites-from.html <comment><USER2> I just wanted to say thanks to all the people on Hacker News who asked for this option. We'll look at offering a "block site" option directly in the search results over time, but it takes longer to write, test, and launch that code.

In the mean time, use this extension to clean up your own search results and tell us which sites you don't want to see in Google.

<comment><USER3> So, does this mean expertsexchange will eventually get shoved down the search results?

(AKA great stuff!)

<comment><USER4> I installed the extension and blocked experts exchange first thing ... not sure if I'll even use it for any other sites ...

<comment><USER5> ehow.com, ezinearticles.com. I'm sure there are many others, but those piss me off daily.

<comment><USER6> Yeah, those and WiseGeek for me. I keep on getting WiseGeek in searches (especially if I search for a question, which I occasionally do) and the content is complete and utter crap.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> 1\. <http://bit.ly/gTADhE>

2\. Click Install, close page

3\. Open each of the links below in a new tab, click block on the first result

4\. Win.

<http://www.google.com/search?q=Mahalo>

<http://www.google.com/search?q=ehow>

<http://www.google.com/search?q=experts-exchange>

<http://www.google.com/search?q=livestrong.com>

<http://www.google.com/search?q=answerbag>

<http://www.google.com/search?q=bills.com>

<http://www.google.com/search?q=chacha.com>

<http://www.google.com/search?q=associated+content>

<http://www.google.com/search?q=efreedom>

<http://www.google.com/search?q=questionhub>

<http://www.google.com/search?q=squidoo.com>

<http://www.google.com/search?q=about.com>

<http://www.google.com/search?q=yellowpages.com>

\----

Edits: fixed formatting, added suggestions

This method is fine. The actual data sent to Google when you block a domain does not contain the search query (or the referrer).

This is what gets sent when you block a domain:

      http://www.google.com/gen_204?atyp=i&oi=site_blocker&ct=addToBlocklist&ei=[CSRF-cookie]&cad=mattcutts.com

and unblock:

      http://www.google.com/gen_204?atyp=i&oi=site_blocker&ct=deleteFromBlocklist&ei=undefined&cad=mattcutts.com

(Interestingly the CSRF token is broken when unblocking.)

<comment><USER8> Doesn't this tell Google "Mahalo is a spam result if I search for 'Mahalo'"?

Seems like you should do this when you get one of these and you wanted Stackoverflow.

<comment><USER9> I don't think it records which search first resulted in the block, only that a block exists

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> 1\. Does this remove results from each page, or from the resultset? In other words, if 7 of the first-page results are blocked, will I see only 3 results on that page?

2\. Any plans for a Firefox extension? I'm willing to install Chrome just for running Google searches, but would rather add it to my main browser.

e: After a month or so, I would absolutely _love_ to see the top 10 or so blocked domains. It's OK if you can't do this, but it would be interesting/amusing.

<comment><USER2> Right now, you'll see only three results. We'll look at refreshing, but in answer to #2, we're also looking at putting this more directly into Google's search results.

I think having block options directly on Google's search results is the right long-term answer. But this extension lets people clean up their personal results while sending block data to Google that we might be able to use as a signal to improve overall search quality.

Thanks to everyone at HN who poked us by asking for this, by the way.

<comment><USER9> > _We'll look at refreshing, but in answer to #2, we're also looking at > putting this more directly into Google's search results._

Don't worry about refreshing -- I'd much rather see three good results than 7 bad ones. The idea of being able to block content farms entirely is _literally_ making me giggle at my desk. Focus on that!

Thank you, thank you, thank you x1000 for this.

<comment><USER2> I've been using it for a few weeks while we tested it, and it really does feel nice to block a site that you never want to see again. :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> The website used as an example in the first screenshot (<http://thecontentfarm.tumblr.com/>) just made my day.

<comment><USER2> I made the screenshots this weekend, so I threw that in there. <http://thecontentfarm.tumblr.com/> is pretty funny.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Why do I need to use Chrome and then an extension if this is being offered by Google?

Make this a google labs feature directly for Google itself in the personalization options.

(also please make it available via a URL option, not just cookies or javascript)

<comment><USER12> I'll take the version that walks today over the version that runs in 6 months.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> Well played, Google.

Not only did you just make your search engine 50 times more valuable to me, but you've just ensured I'll be spending almost all of my browsing time inside Chrome.

</comment><comment><USER14> Why make this a Chrome extension rather than a google labs type feature?

<comment><USER2> The Chrome extension was faster to roll out and lets us iterate faster as well because it's outside of front-end pushes. We're looking at offering block links in the search results too, but that code takes longer to write, test, and launch.

<comment><USER15> It seems we've come full circle -- features easier to push out in client software than through modification of server code.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Any chance we can get the blocklist transfered via sync in the next iteration of this plugin?

<comment><USER17> I second that suggestion. It would make the extension that much more awesome to not have to block sites on each device. Might also help to lower the noise on Google's end, so they're not seeing multiple blocks on the same domain from the same users, though I'm sure they account for this already.

<comment><USER18> It's a bit difficult to implement sync of arbitrary data in a Chrome extension now. The extension developer has to setup their own storage and implement their own sync code. Either that, or some developers just store their data in the bookmark system, which has its own problems (please don't do this Matt!).

We (the extension posse) are working on making this really easy to do [1], but nothing exists yet.

[1] <http://crbug.com/47327>

<comment><USER2> Aaron, thanks for stopping by with an update on Chrome sync--much appreciated. And thanks for making Chrome extensions fast/easy/powerful to write.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> So HN, what sites are we all blocking?

<comment><USER20> My first round includes eHow, Mahalo, Associated Content, Experts Exchange, Squidoo and Examiner.

Update: I added answers.yahoo.com as well, which has consistently terrible content and yet is often highly ranked.

<comment><USER21> I really often get exactly the answer I need from Yahoo Answers, just to throw that in there...

<comment><USER22> I've found that there are some more taboo (but valid) questions that are only ever answered on Yahoo! Answers, presumably because people aren't worried about their identity there.

For an extreme example: [http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20071113122412AA...](http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20071113122412AAHwZQD) (Warning: Taboo. And the answer probably isn't relevant to 95% of the posters here. :)

<comment><USER20> I found Wikipedia's answer to be of much higher quality (and properly cited).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Assuming it's a normal extension and has to abide by the same rules that Non- Google Authored extensions do, the extension manifest indicates the extension doesn't have access to do any cross domain posts so all the filtering is done client side. Digging a little deeper, it looks like the blocked sites are stored in Chrome's LocalStorage, which if memory serves me correctly is somehow isolated per extension.

It should be relatively easy to listen in on the background page while the extension is running and write a script to extract the list of blocked sites or update it with a master list so you don't have to block dozens or hundreds of sites manually.

Not that I think everyone should blindly block everything everyone else does on HN; I personally loathe Experts Exchange, but I do find an answer I needed from them now and then.

I was more curious than anything.

Update: As "dsl" posted above, it does look like the extension makes a call out to a Google Endpoint to record the block as well, but I don't believe that call actually filters the data for you. That's still done client side. So it's probably best not to call the end point directly or update the blocked sites list directly, but actual use the extension as intended?

<comment><USER23> Yes they block client side (several posts from matt confirm it in this thread).

But you mention something important; for me I don't want to 100% block most of those websites, but to give them lower priority (never in my top 10 for exemple). Like you, as much as I hate Experts exchange sometimes they do have the answer when no one else does. This extension sems to solve that by giving a "show" link to display hidden results (when there are any).

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> Normally I don't post this sort of thing (try to focus on valuable content) but dear god THANK YOU!

I'm cackling maniacally while I block expertsexchange, Mahalo, and several other sites. I'm so happy right now.

</comment><comment><USER25> Free karma points to whoever creates a corresponding Firefox extension...

<comment><USER26> There is a Greasemonkey script[1] which does blacklisting. It works by sending "-site:example.com" with every search query. The script does a lot more cleanups like removing link tracking and ads, so if you don't feel like using all the functions, look in the code and check out "RemoveBadLinks()" function. Maybe you want to comment all other public functions in init().

[1] <http://userscripts.org/scripts/show/79742>

<comment><USER27> Wouldn't that reach a limit pretty soon? I've commented on this before, but there's a max character length for the search box.

<comment><USER26> MaxLenght of the input field is 2048, so you can put lots of domains in it. Of course, it's not a complete solution but it works to some extents, specially because it filters out stuff on server side and not with a css' display:none.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> would be cool if there was a subscription option where you can subscribe to some master list that gets updated by people you trust.

or just simply a bulk insert

<comment><USER29> My concern with an "AdBlock Easylist" style centralized block list is that it removes, or at least blurs the consensus feedback to Google of what is a content farm, what is a low-quality non-farm site, and what is useful.

A user above listed about.com as something they wanted to block, while I find them to be not very in depth, I wouldn't classify it as useless, and certainly not a content farm like livestrong.com.

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> I was just griping about this to my wife yesterday. The noise is drowning out the signal in my recent searches...

<comment><USER2> Please install the extension and let us know what sites are annoying you. You're exactly the sort of person we want that feedback from. In the process, you'll keep them from showing up for you again.

<comment><USER30> Oops? Maybe I am not referring to the same problem - Rather than identifying "content farms" I am hoping to block sites that are returned that do not have the search terms on the page returned, and therefore should not be in the results, in my opinion.

Is this Google's intention for usage?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> Isn't anyone else kind of bewildered by this?

I mean this is kind of like if a kid pissed all over the floor in wal-mart, and when you notified an employee about it they gave you a mop to clean it up yourself.

<comment><USER13> It is more like being in a Walmart full of zombies and having all the Walmart employees killing zombies as fast as they can but then when you ask what is up with all the zombies they hand you a shotgun so you can help them by killing the zombies in your immediate vicinity.

On the one hand, in an ideal world there wouldn't be a large and ever growing number of zombies at Walmart, but on the other hand, thanks a million for the shotgun because I'd rather get to killing some zombies myself than whine about the fact that the Walmart employees aren't killing them fast enough while they are eating my brains.

<comment><USER31> Really? This is kind of like some sort of weird time warp, and the Yahoo mentality of "curating" the internet is back in fashion. Which is weird, because Google came to power because that strategy doesn't work.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> Having a big company behaving like a local one-- listening to the customer's opinions is really nice.

However, this is a feature that Google actually had. Why did you remove it? I accept the Search Wiki was not particuarly a success[1], but the remove option was very nice.

Alas, thanks for listening. I'll be waiting for the server-side option.

1: [http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2008/11/searchwiki-make- searc...](http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2008/11/searchwiki-make-search-your- own.html)

<comment><USER2> I think users are more savvy about recognizing spam/low-quality/content farm sites than a few years ago. At least some of the previous features also had unfortunate UI issues, e.g. the default was to block a single url for that single query.

</comment></comment><comment><USER33> Positive move by Google, which should help the best content to rank in search.

However when Google start using this feedback data directly in their algorithm there are two dangers, which both can be overcome:

1\. Abuse by SEOs trying to get their competitors blocked

2\. Bad use of block data on a site wide basis in the search algorithm. Eg just because certain pages on a site cause users to give block data doesn't mean other pages on that site contain unique useful content. High volume publishing or community sites will have a large degree of noise, but due to nature the cross section of society as members there will be also valid useful content in the seams.

One approach is to let individual users block sites forever (as the extension now) but use the block data on a page, not domain basis in the search algorithm. Individual pages can also increase in quality over time (the qoura business model) so changes in page content needs to be considered too.

The Internet is a better place with non editorial user generated content (hacker news is user generated) after all the human race mind based knowledge is a not all published online. Google just needs to figure out which pages really add value in that specific search no matter which domain they sit on.

</comment><comment><USER34> You mean I never ever again need to see a search result pointing to experts- exchange?! This is the best gift ever! And it's not even my birthday.

</comment><comment><USER35> A few thoughts and requests:

1) I'd love to use this tool but because of my job still need to look at the "official" search results from time to time. Is it possible to allow &pws=0 override the blocked sites so &pws=0 both session-based and browser based personalisation?

2) There's a lot of talk among startups about ignoring what users want because they don't know best. I worry that this move from Google might actually be detrimental to user experience. If you end up blocking a bunch of thin sites then the chances are high that you're not going to get better results for your search query, you'll just get fewer results (since usually Google only returns these thin sites when there's little else to offer). Also - as users get trigger happy and block a bunch of sites they may well be harming their own search experience. I'd love to hear your thoughts on how Google can mitigate against this? Especially when this rolls out to your average user rather than just the tech-savvy HN crowd.

Tom

<comment><USER36> If you don't allow the extension to work in incognito mode (it's opt-in by default), then you can just open up an incognito / private browsing window instead (which Chrome makes pretty low-cost). This might have the benefit of removing any influence on your search results due to Google cookies that would otherwise be sent.

<comment><USER35> I don't think the plugin works via cookies though does it? Might be wrong....

<comment><USER36> By default Chrome does not allow plug-ins to run at all in incognito mode. You have to explicitly allow the setting highlighted in this screenshot (available from the URL "chrome://extensions")

[http://img6.imagebanana.com/img/0om09caa/20110215_135721_Sel...](http://img6.imagebanana.com/img/0om09caa/20110215_135721_Selection_001.png)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER37> Good work, squeaky wheels.

So: will this eventually be a search settings option once it is less beta or permanently an extension thing?

<comment><USER2> We'll look at offering this as a more direct option over time, depending on how popular the extension is and whether the data from it looks good.

</comment></comment><comment><USER38> Hey, I think I "called" this a few days back... yep: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2199498>

This little bit of successful nerd prognostication cheers me up more than perhaps it should, but oh well.

</comment><comment><USER39> Although this is Chrome only this is a great extension that I believe a few people on this site wanted. I remember other people made a mashup but this looks like a slightly better solution. I wonder why they don't want to do this server side though?

<comment><USER40> I imagine releasing server-side changes to Google's core search functionality is quite a bit harder than releasing an extension. If nothing else, there are tons of tests that need to pass and there's probably constraints on speed regressions and such. This is a much quicker way to get the same data so that they can determine whether the data is actually useful as a ranking signal.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> I feel like I just got a new upgraded Internet.

<comment><USER41> And we make fun of our parents for thinking that Google = internet. ;)

<comment><USER42> We do? I thought it was the blue IE6 'internet' icon?

<comment><USER5> E is for enternet.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER43> >...explore using it as a potential ranking signal for our search results

Democratic censorship.

<comment><USER44> What's the difference in Google censoring spam and users censoring spam?

<comment><USER2> I'll pass along an anecdote from Gmail, which also uses explicit user feedback to label spam emails. Some people come to Gmail and say "Why did you block the [mass low-quality] email that I sent?" It's a pretty good answer if the reply is "Enough people marked your emails as spam that the emails were considered spam."

The hope is that users are savvy enough that we can get a good signal out of the block signal.

<comment><USER43> This would only be a fair comparison if and only if you allow users the option to view the blocked search results.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER45> If this ends up being used as a "voting" system that factors into determining what sites show in public SERPs, folks could crowdsource competitor blocking using say Amazon's MTurk to knock competition off of Google, no?

</comment><comment><USER46> Finally Google accepts the elephant in the room. Just a few days ago a friend while being interviewed had mentioned about search being ineffective for content farm sites and the Google employee was like "No Search is fine. Nothing wrong there". Finally e-how, about.com, expertSEXchange.com can RIP, atleast for me. I also hope that over time, Google will use this data from users via Chrome to somehow incorporate crowdsourced search results in it's results not just for one user but all of them.

</comment><comment><USER47> I thought i was the only one doesn't want to see "experts exchange" in google search results. No, i'm not alone... :) :) Looks "experts exchange" is annoyingly very famous...

</comment><comment><USER48> Nice. My first target - every local restaurant result I get that appears before either (1) the official restaurant website or (2) Yelp. Local search results are always gunked up with yellowpages.com and local newspaper spam. Also, I find it highly suspicious that urbanspoon has consistently better placement than Yelp, despite having consistently weaker content.

</comment><comment><USER49> I created a site on app engine that essentially does the same thing via Google Custom search engine. Granted mine isn't as integrated or user friendly but still. The site is: <http://blacklist-search.appspot.com/>

Why can't Google offer something like this rather than only allowing it via a Chrome extension?

<comment><USER2> I think we can, but that sort of code takes longer to write, test, and launch. You'd want it to be really robust before you showed those sorts of options to 1B+ people a day. So the Chrome extension is a good interim step to see how much traction it gets and what sort of data emerges as a result

</comment></comment><comment><USER50> I know this is a legit extension from Google.

By why is this extension not marked as Verified author? [https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/nolijncfnkgaikbjbd...](https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/nolijncfnkgaikbjbdaogikpmpbdcdef)

The "nolijncfnkgaikbjbdaogikpmpbdcdef" makes it look suspicious as well.

<comment><USER2> Hmm. I'll ask if we can fix that.

</comment></comment><comment><USER51> "If installed, the extension also sends blocked site information to Google, and we will study the resulting feedback and explore using it as a potential ranking signal for our search results."

If that happens, what's to stop this being used by companies to influence the results to get rid of competitors?

<comment><USER40> Did you even read the snippet that you quoted? They will "study the resulting feedback and explore using it as a potential ranking signal for our search results."

They are well aware of the ways in which such a signal could be gamed. That's why they will "study" and "explore" ways to use the new data as a "potential" signal.

<comment><USER51> Was the twatty attitude really necessary?

I asked a simple question expecting someone with industry-appropriate know-how to expand further on Google's theoretical/possible intentions.

We already have an entire industry dedicated to gaming the search engines ranking signals/etc; we have some very talented black hats who undermine existing attempts to keep SERPs clean. I don't think it was that stupid a question.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER52> I was just bitching about experts-exchange last night and wanted this feature. Thanks for sharing.

</comment><comment><USER53> Thank god. Goodbye to: devcomments.com. osdir.com, and mail-archive.com!

<comment><USER54> osdir isn't actually too bad -- mailing lists are very poorly indexed by google and osdir exposes some of the data to be indexed.

</comment></comment><comment><USER55> Looks promising, but I'm unsure about the security angle. Google has just added a way for anyone to "DDos" competing websites into oblivion. I hope there are measures in place to prevent that.

<comment><USER40> They aren't yet using the data for ranking.

<comment><USER56> They are or probably would be doing that. See this comment by Matt Cutts: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2218531>

<comment><USER23> And you really think no one in the google search team has thought of how it could be abused ? Come on let's be serious here, they are not going to use these results verbatim or even block websites for everyone just because some users wanted to.

<comment><USER57> Even at that, just look at all the problems Reddit etc. have had with bury brigades working to game the system. I imagine with the reputation defender styled companies out there right now, this would be a natural service.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER58> When I first read the headline, I assumed it meant blocking all of Google's sites from the SERPs (Youtube, blogger, etc). Perhaps this would be a nice way to rule out any potential nepotism.

<comment><USER2> You can block google.com in the extension if you want (we didn't put in any code to prevent that), but your search results might behave in weird/unexpected ways if you do.

</comment></comment><comment><USER59> I note with mock irony that this works fine on blekko.com in any browser. You push the "this is spam" link in the SERP results and poof, its dead to you.

(Disclaimer: I work at Blekko)

</comment><comment><USER60> I know this questions is asked in different forms couple of times in the comments, but here it is again: 1\. Will there ever be Firefox extension which do the same?

</comment><comment><USER61> Awesome extension!

An option to hide the icon from the toolbar would be nice.

<comment><USER2> To hide the icon, you can right-click on the icon and select "Hide button." To bring it back, click Wrench->Tools->Extensions and click the "Show button" link.

I love Chrome. :)

<comment><USER61> I don't see that option on Linux v.8.0.552.224. But maybe I need a Chrome upgrade. Thanks for the tip, I'll try and get it working!

<comment><USER2> I'm using the dev version of Chrome on Linux, currently "10.0.648.45 dev". The developer channel has always been surprisingly stable for me.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER62> I think this tool will be "Very Misused" by a lot of people just to SQUASH their closest competitors. I can see some companies hiring "paid blockers" to squash competition websites and even in the Search Engine world you watch Microsoft and Google block and report each others sites in an even continuing search engine war what a sad day for free speech George Orwell 1984 :(

<comment><USER62> Enlightened people seldom or never possess a sense of responsibility. George Orwell

</comment></comment><comment><USER63> Google should make one of these for Bing also - with the option to send google my Bing blocklist.

</comment><comment><USER64> Why should I have to be signed in to my Google account to be able to use this functionality?

<comment><USER65> To attempt to prevent people gaming/spaming the system

</comment></comment><comment><USER66> Is it also integrated with WOT (Web of Trust) way to block and report bad sites? How if so?

</comment><comment><USER67> I'm going to try it first thing. I hope all of my Chrome instances sync the block entries.

</comment><comment><USER68> Finally I can block ycombinator.com Thank God!

</comment><comment><USER69> Sounds like an excellent feature. Just seems kinda weird that Google would start using user-click data when they were complaining so much about Bing using it.

<comment><USER70> This is not comparable, at all.

</comment></comment><comment><USER71> Is there something similar for Opera 11?

</comment><comment><USER72> answers.yahoo.com, here I come.

</comment><comment><USER73> just wondering what happens if you block google.com? is that a meta-block

</comment><comment><USER74> Is it possible to block Bing from copying search results using this? ;)

</comment><comment><USER62> One does not establish a dictatorship in order to safeguard a revolution; one makes a revolution in order to establish a dictatorship. George Orwell

</comment><comment><USER62> What can you do against the lunatic who is more intelligent than yourself, who gives your arguments a fair hearing and then simply persists in his lunacy? George Orwell

</comment><comment><USER62> Progress is not an illusion, it happens, but it is slow and invariably disappointing. George Orwell

</comment><comment><USER62> If you want a vision of the future, imagine a boot stamping on a human face - forever. George Orwell

</comment><comment><USER62> There are some ideas so wrong that only a very intelligent person could believe in them. George Orwell

</comment><comment><USER62> Freedom is the right to tell people what they do not want to hear. George Orwell</comment>


NASA-funded study reduces cost of missions to Moon and Mars by 90% - <AUTHOR> https://spacefrontier.org/2015/07/alliance-for-space-development-press-release-nasa-funded-study-reduces-cost-of-human-missions-to-moon-and-mars-by-factor-of-10/

<comment><USER2> Interesting proposal. The 90% number comes from an estimated $100 billion price tag for another moon shot - in short, the study estimates we could land humans on the moon for just $10 billion. It's unclear if that's $10 billion in addition to NASA's current budget.

> _Enabled by public-private partnerships, NASA's current human spaceflight > budget is sufficient to return humans to the surface of the Moon and develop > a permanent lunar base._

Does this mean repurposing NASA's entire budget? Doesn't the current budget include maintenance/monitoring for many long-term projects including Hubble, NuSTAR, New Horizons, STEREO, etc? So we'd have to choose to abandon all current research to fit another moon trip into the budget?

> _Mining fuel from lunar poles and transporting it to lunar orbit for use by > other spacecraft reduces the cost of sending humans to Mars and other > locations beyond low Earth orbit. These commercial fuel depots in lunar > orbit have the potential to cut the cost of sending humans to Mars by more > than $10 billion per year._

This second bullet point is a somewhat longer reach. Once we have fuel depots constructed in lunar orbit, we can more cheaply mine spaceship fuel from the moon's poles, and refuel ships in orbit instead of landing them on a gravity well.

First, this assumes the lunar poles will have the specific material we're using for fuel, something which is unknown to myself. Secondly, this assumes we have already constructed the orbiting fuel depots. This will definitely be the way to go once we have these constructed, but for now they don't reduce the price for lunar or Mars trips.</comment>


The Wikipedia war over Paul Revere - <AUTHOR> http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/0_if_by_land_1_if_by_sea_sarah_palin_supporters_tr.php <comment><USER2> Is there any way to see the age of the text on a wikipedia page? Might be a good way to combat the sense that everything on the page is solid. If most of the page is years old except for a couple of sentances from the last two days, I might check the history to see the motivation behind the change.

<comment><USER3> I was thinking that an interface that colored content based on how old it was would be pretty cool. Then I realized that, duh, a SCM style blame function would be cool for wikipedia (which may be available in the diff functionality, I don't remember or use the history diffing ability on wikipedia enough to know off hand). Then I thought, it would be nice to have wikipedia content in SCM anyway, and was thinking of writing something to import it into git.

And it may already exist. A search turned up <http://scytale.name/blog/2009/11/announcing-levitation> and the code is at <https://github.com/scy/levitation>

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> A politician's followers are rewriting history to fit what their leader says? How Orwellian.

<comment><USER5> It happens all the time, only this time we get to see it unfold in detail, with revision history.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Jay Walsh's estimate for the number of articles under protection is quite a bit off. I count 7631 right now, not 1500 (see [http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special:ProtectedP...](http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special:ProtectedPages&namespace=0&type=edit&level=0&sizetype=min)). His count is pretty close to the number of fully-protected pages, so he may just be confusing the two numbers.

Still a small number of the total articles, but I do regularly come across articles that I want to do some editing on, and am unable to without logging in (or in some cases, without being an administrator).

</comment><comment><USER7> I find this funny, but typical as in the facts win, and the losers get shown up. My mum just said "There's no hope, when there's people like [Palin]" I hope Palin keeps on bumbling while she's on this tour.

</comment><comment><USER8> This is an example of why I like Wikipedia and was an Editor there for several years: they handle drama and follow a set of principles pretty rigidly. NPOV is a clear rule to follow and it's great when I see it being enforced without flame drama to distract.

</comment><comment><USER9> Is there any way to disable those Apture Wikipedia pop-ups and just get to the real Wikipedia directly? The article refers to the Paul Revere revision page, but there's no clear way to see the revision history from the annoying Apture window.

<comment><USER10> Ghostery. It's like AdBlock, but for all 3rd-party code.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> I do wonder if she is just trolling us as a way to keep in the media to fund raise.

<comment><USER12> The difference between intent and effect is not always clear.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> I've stopped being angry about Palin and have just entered a morbid sadness for this country.

</comment><comment><USER12> >The really awful thing, though, is that we live in an age where, on every level, it is considered a sin to be wrong.

This seems to me to be really, really incorrect (and dangerous): we must maintain that it is a 'sin' to be wrong. The reason for this is that there are different sorts of wrong, from willful incompetence to dangerous reality- bending, from good-faith incorrectness to (to borrow the tvtropes phrase) Didn't Do The Research.

The startup mentality that the writer references--embracing failure and being willing to be wrong--comes from understanding hard facts about risk and managing it.

Palin and her ilk _actively distort reality_ to suit their worldview, and that is _wrong_. That's why the battle over the wikipedia page is important (and fear not, the page is now protected).

So the writer misses the point. Palin can't admit she was wrong because that would unmask her 'sin,' which is _why_ her 'renfields' (a term I rather like) are up in arms on Wikipedia.

He also repeats the FUD mantra about Wikipedia. Meh. If you're gonna cover a story on Wikipedia, there are basics I expect.

<comment><USER14> You're taking the author's words out of context and misrepresenting his opinion. He actually agrees with you. Here's the relevant text:

 _The really awful thing, though, is that we live in an age where, on every level, it is considered a sin to be wrong. From advertisers to kids on the playground to the world of corporate PR to politicians, the all-too-common wisdom is to defend the indefensible. That's what Palin is doing and that is what her renfields on Wikipedia are doing, and that's sad, because as anyone remotely successful in Silicon Valley can tell you, without owning our mistakes we cannot learn from them and without learning, we cannot win._

<comment><USER15> _Boston University history professor Brendan McConville said, "Basically when Paul Revere was stopped by the British, he did say to them, 'Look, there is a mobilization going on that you'll be confronting,' and the British are aware as they're marching down the countryside, they hear church bells ringing — she was right about that — and warning shots being fired. That's accurate."

Patrick Leehey of the Paul Revere House said Revere was probably bluffing his British captors, but reluctantly conceded that it could be construed as Revere warning the British._

[http://bostonherald.com/news/us_politics/view.bg?articleid=1...](http://bostonherald.com/news/us_politics/view.bg?articleid=1343353)

This is something of a reprise of the incident when Palin gave a Tea Party speech in front of a banner that read "1773". The Left jumped on it and said she was ignorant for not using a banner that said "1776", showing themselves ignorant of when the Boston Tea Party actually occurred.

All of this is perhaps besides the point though. I don't think Sarah Palin is qualified to be President and I hope she doesn't run. But Obama wasn't elected because he had anything decent qualifications. He's a Chicago political hack who stole Dem ballots from Hillary Clinton in Texas and who (literally) couldn't get a stop sign installed in Chicago. His "qualifications" are that he's black and many on the Left enjoyed the thought of themselves voting for a "person of color", never mind that his ancestors on both sides (especially his father's side) were slaveholders.

<comment><USER16> >Obama wasn't elected because he had anything decent qualifications. He's a Chicago political hack who stole Dem ballots from Hillary Clinton in Texas and who (literally) couldn't get a stop sign installed in Chicago. His "qualifications" are that he's black and many on the Left enjoyed the thought of themselves voting for a "person of color", never mind that his ancestors on both sides (especially his father's side) were slaveholders.

...

The irony of you starting a paragraph with "All of this is perhaps besides the point though." and ending it with the above utter non-sequitur is pretty intense.

Blatant political axe-grinding, get it the fuck out of HN.

<comment><USER15> >> Blatant political axe-grinding, get it the fuck out of HN.

The following are other comments on the post, which I quote without further comment:

1) _Palin and her ilk _actively distort reality_ to suit their worldview, and that is _wrong_.... So the writer misses the point. Palin can't admit she was wrong because that would unmask her 'sin,' which is _why_ her 'renfields' (a term I rather like) are up in arms on Wikipedia._

2) _A politician's followers are rewriting history to fit what their leader says? How Orwellian._

3) _My mum just said "There's no hope, when there's people like [Palin]"_

<comment><USER16> Yes, people commenting on the issue at hand. Your point?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Palin's account was more correct than the accounts of her detractors.

[http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/washington/2011/06/sarah- pal...](http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/washington/2011/06/sarah-palin-says- paul-revere-warned-the-british.html)

This is similar to the Orwellian incident where Palin made a true and factual comment about the fact that you can see Russia from an island in Alaska, Tina Fey made fun of it by changing the words to say that you could see Alaska from her house or office, then people started promoting the Tina Fey comedy routine as if it was reality.

edit: downvote this all you want it won't change reality

<comment><USER18> The point of Tina Fey making fun of Palin in that way was to point out how absurd it is to suggest that being able to see Russia from Alaska is related to competency in foreign politics.

It seems like this has escaped pretty much nobody _but_ Palin supporters.

<comment><USER19> She was making a joke. Calm down.

<comment><USER18> I know, and I think it's a funny one too....</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: Resources on social engineering - <AUTHOR>

Social engineering is of obvious interest to startups. Whether it's to get that contact with the CEO of a potential partner, or to get through to the sales manager who can give you a discount on your hosting plan, or even just to get past a gatekeeper and turn that lead into a sale, being able to work your way through the social network at another company is extremely useful.<p>What are some great resources (books, blogs, movies, or others) that you've found, on or off the web, that taught you to be a better social engineer? <comment><USER2> Social engineering is a well established industry and art. It just generally falls under the categories of "Sales and Marketing". See also "How to win friends and influence people" by Dale Carnegie.

</comment><comment><USER3> So on the technical side of an SE attack there's SET (the Social Engineering Toolkit): [http://www.social- engineer.org/framework/Computer_Based_Soci...](http://www.social- engineer.org/framework/Computer_Based_Social_Engineering_Tools:_Social_Engineer_Toolkit_%28SET%29)

And then I guess the rest of the resources on <http://www.social-engineer.org>

iamelgringo's suggestion of "How to win friends and influence people" is worthwhile if you've never read it.

</comment><comment><USER4> The Art of Deception by Kevin Mitnick is a fun read. It's more about how to defend against social engineering, but you can take it from the other side too. :)

</comment><comment><USER5> Bruce Schneier's blog could be an interesting read.

He talks about social engineering as a form of security attack but much of the examples he may provide are relevant.

[http://www.google.com/search?domains=www.schneier.com&si...](http://www.google.com/search?domains=www.schneier.com&sitesearch=www.schneier.com&q=social+engineering&hq=inurl:www.schneier.com)

</comment><comment><USER6> I have found psychology books to be rather interesting in understanding social engineering.

[http://www.amazon.com/Mistakes-Were-Made-But- Not/dp/01510109...](http://www.amazon.com/Mistakes-Were-Made-But- Not/dp/0151010986) [http://www.amazon.com/Lucifer-Effect-Understanding-Good- Peop...](http://www.amazon.com/Lucifer-Effect-Understanding-Good- People/dp/0812974441/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1292261334&sr=1-1)

..You get the idea.

</comment><comment><USER7> <http://labmice.techtarget.com/security/socialengineering.htm>

</comment><comment><USER8> <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1995394>

</comment><comment><USER9> 2600.com

</comment><comment><USER10> <http://www.ZacharyBurt.com>

<comment><USER10> Read through my list of articles and tell me to my face that my blog isn't an excellent resource for this. smh</comment></comment>


Snap to choose NYSE for IPO - <AUTHOR> http://www.cnbc.com/2017/01/30/snap-to-choose-nyse-for-ipo-source.html <comment><USER2> I'm amazed with Snapchat's staying power.

I was utterly bewildered by them turning down a reported 3 billion offer (and so was most everyone else), but it seems it wasn't so wrong after all.

[http://www.slate.com/blogs/moneybox/2015/03/12/snapchat_valu...](http://www.slate.com/blogs/moneybox/2015/03/12/snapchat_valuation_i_mocked_it_for_turning_down_3_billion_now_it_s_worth.html)</comment>


Listen to Paul Graham's essays as a podcast - <AUTHOR> https://play.ht/#/users/750a25af92ad458484a8966c0636b5c2 <comment><AUTHOR> We have just launched [https://play.ht](https://play.ht), an app that helps you listening to the best articles from Medium.com and other websites and blogs from around the web. The above link is for Paul Graham's blog, you can find all his essays as audio. Give it a try and let us know your feedback.</comment>


Show HN: Epiverse – a comment system for all webpages - <AUTHOR> https://epiverse.co/ <comment><USER2> This is really well done. As I'm sure is the case with many others, I've had this idea before. It certainly seems like an ideal way to browse comments on the web.

The trick is obviously going to be filling it with content. Have you considered scraping link aggregators for their comments, and syndicating them in the extension? So for example if I'm reading an article that has been posted to both HN and reddit, I open Epiverse and can see all the comments in one place.

I think that would be a cool way to bootstrap the user generated content.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks. Yeah you're absolutely right about content, that has come up in discussion. Basically AlienTube for the entire internet, sourcing multiple comment systems, with my own on top too. If I can't get enough users organically I might have to turn to that. I'd prefer not to because it might be a pretty big undertaking, and I'd prefer to have users in my own ecosystem.

So tough getting early users!

<comment><USER2> I would _highly recommend_ seeding the ecosystem with comments from other platforms. Sure, those won't be "users in your ecosystem," but you won't _have_ any users in your ecosystem if there are no comments to read. You need content for people to consume first, so they use the extension for that. You don't need to make them look like fake comments -- you can attribute them to reddit/HN or put them into their own section of the extension. But the point is that you want users to use your extension for READING the comments, because ONLY THEN will they begin to post. Nobody wants to spend their time writing a comment in an empty feed that nobody will see.

(You could even go the other direction, for comments posted in the extension, e.g. build a reddit bot that syndicates comments from Epiverse to reddit like "Someone commented on this in Epiverse, <link>".)

I understand it's a large undertaking, but so was making the extension. All that effort will be wasted if you don't get users!

To reduce the workload, you could consider modularizing the "comment syndication" system, and making the scrapers open source. Then you could get contributors to help you. i.e. a repo for scraping reddit comments on an article, a repo for scraping HN comments on an article, etc... Each repo would take in the URL of an article, find any posts on reddit/HN/etc, and push their comments into the epiverse system. Honestly, it wouldn't even be that much work... there are well-maintained APIs for reddit and HN, and probably many other link aggregators as well. But if you open source the design of syndication, then imagination is the only limit of where you can syndicate comments from (think: news sites, blogs, twitter... anywhere people write about the article and link to it).

It's a really well done extension and I want to see it work. But you gotta believe me, man, you NEED a growth hack to make this work. It will fizzle out otherwise.

Also, I really like the +N indicator icon that represents new comments. I have the extension installed now, and when I start to see that number growing, I'll know the extension is working. :)

Good luck!! It's a great idea and well executed. Now you just gotta grow it.

<comment><AUTHOR> Hmm. Alright, you might have just talked me into it.

I'll do a rewrite first since it's getting scrappy, and then add a couple of important features (e.g. reply notifications). I'll start sourcing from reddit comments, since that's going to be the easiest to scrape, has a significant amount of content and is probably enough to start with.

Open source syndication is an interesting idea and not one I'd thought of.

Thanks for the suggestions, really helpful.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Hey, this is a project I've been working on. The homepage has a demo of what the sidebar looks like (which overlays to the right of your browser when you open the extension). Feedback/questions appreciated!

<comment><USER3> Cool! Just curious to know if this is inspired from [https://hypothes.is/](https://hypothes.is/) . This is indeed a good idea. I had some feature request for hypothes.is team. Request: [https://groups.google.com/a/list.hypothes.is/forum/#!topic/d...](https://groups.google.com/a/list.hypothes.is/forum/#!topic/dev/O2vxfz8KHps)

I hope this feature request would be useful to you.

<comment><AUTHOR> Nope, first I've heard of hypothesis! However I have seen a few things like it/Epiverse (Genius is doing something very similar to hypothesis). Apparently during the conception of the internet web annotations were planned as a feature. I think we're still a way off web annotations (very ambitious), but a good bridge is a comments system, which I think we are ready for.

Thanks for the suggestion! I'll look into it. I am wary of asking permission from host sites because then it's not necessarily user controlled (plus there wouldn't be a huge difference between us and something like Disqus). There are potentially ways I could integrate things like host verification for comments though.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> An embedded option would be nice. I think it would be a great way to drive adoption. Also not everyone uses Chrome. I visited epiverse.co from my mobile browser and it just tried to open it in Chrome. At the very least a "comment with Epiverse" button would go a long way.

<comment><AUTHOR> Cheers. Sorry, I haven't given mobile use much thought since Chrome extensions aren't supported and I've only just rolled out the Firefox extension.</comment></comment>


Palliative Care and Coronavirus [pdf] - <AUTHOR> https://www.england.nhs.uk/coronavirus/wp-content/uploads/sites/52/2020/03/C0081-Speciality-guide-Palliative-care-and-coronavirus.pdf <comment><USER2> Take this as an opportunity to create a will, advanced directive, and other legal documents.

The process of doing this will help you think through things when you are not pressed for time. Waiting until you are in a health emergency is not a good idea.

Talk to any medical personnel you know about what the various care options mean in practice. Do you want to be hooked up to a vent? Do you want to be resuscitated?

Communicate what you want to your loved ones so they're not left guessing.</comment>


Building a Road Map for the Self-Driving Car - <AUTHOR> https://www.nytimes.com/2017/03/02/automobiles/wheels/self-driving-cars-gps-maps.html <comment><USER2> Why would the self driving cars need better maps than humans do? After all, we use this maps to go where we want to.

<comment><USER3> Yes, I'm also confused about this.

Existing maps should be enough, and LIDAR, etc. ensure that self-driving cars can respond to road conditions in an ad-hoc manner, instead of relying on a predefined detailed map.

The article doesn't make a good point of why this is needed. OTOH, given the money involved in the technology & companies mentioned in the article (like Here), I presume there must be a need for this.

<comment><USER4> How can a combination of existing maps/car technology and LIDAR pinpoint at high resolution where a car is? Imagine a scenario where a car needs to merge across two lanes of traffic and turn into an alley. The car has to be able to plan the merges before it gets to the alley, and know that it is at the proper place to turn. Before you say "GPS" think of how often your phone's GPS messes up.

<comment><USER5> Google Maps tells me a few hundred meters in advance so the car AI can know, too. The location does not need to be precise down to a centimeter, it should be enough to know "the alley is somewhat near" so it can start to get into the rightmost lane. Just as we humans do it. There are enough artifical obstacles on the road anyway (wrongly parked cars etc).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> This is an admission that self-driving cars aren't going to happen. You might as well just put them on tracks.

<comment><USER4> They aren't going to happen short term for consumers. The economics should work out fine for fleet vehicles that are confined to a single well mapped metropolitan area.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> >Creating them, however, is a monumental task. There are more than four million miles of roads in the United States.

I assume that most passenger-miles are driven on <0.5MM miles of roads, moreso if they are marketing mainly to normal suburb-city commuters. And the advantage of self driving cars isn't really in the last mile. In my commuting days, I would have said

driving myself for 40 minutes <<< self driving car drives for 35 minutes and I drive for 5 < self driving car drives for 40 minutes</comment>


My work is garbage - <AUTHOR>

It really is.  I'm a self taught programmer currently working for a startup where we're trying to develop a product in the healthcare IT space that users will want.  With requirements always in flux and never having enough hours in the day, I've stooped so low as to write sloppy spaghetti code to put a somewhat functional product into the hands of potential users.
Is this the right way of doing things?  Do others do this?  I feel demoralized because I know I can write good code, when I have time to do so, (it takes several iterations) but we're still attempting to find product/market fit, does it matter if I sacrifice code quality now to get us to our potential market sooner?  How would you do it?
I feel like code quality means nothing if you don't yet have a product that people want, but I hate being forced to write crappy code because it sometimes can bite back later
Advice? Commentary? Feel free to let the expletives fly, I know when I work on someone else's code and I see no comments and a jumbled mess I want to shoot somebody as well.  I am now that somebody <comment><USER3> Not an untypical predicament you're in. Best advice is to minimize features and release something to someone asap. That takes a lot of discipline to do, but starting simple and iterating has lots of benefits. Just a few: 1\. Instant feedback, so you can validate your assumptions about the product. (see: Lean Startup, Eric Ries) 2\. It's easier to keep releasing once you've already released. 3\. With a simple, limited feature set, your product is easier to understand to your early adopters.

</comment><comment><USER4> <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Technical_debt>

Note that the first cause listed (At the time of writing) is business pressure. This happens quite often. Sometimes you have to produce slop code to get anything out the door at all.

As an example; this whole demo is a hack of the worst sort:

<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K_y3cbIV-Xg>

There was a series of posts on the Bungie website about the development of halo2 outlining just how hackish this thing was.

[http://www.escapistmagazine.com/news/view/99883-Halo-2s-Deve...](http://www.escapistmagazine.com/news/view/99883-Halo-2s-Development- Was-a-Gigantic-Mess)

And some interviews.

For the sake of disclosure, I've never done a startup. But if I've been reading the right authors than the right thing to do in this situation is to go ahead with it and fix it later once you're off the ground.

EDIT: I also like jeffbcross's advice if that is at all possible.

</comment><comment><USER5> It depends.

If you feel like you're close to product/market fit or if your runway is short on your startup, you might want to continue the way you've been doing things.

On the other hand, as a self-taught programmer, I imagine there are a lot of skills that you can improve on. The danger of writing spaghetti code is you can't reuse it, and if you continue to write spaghetti code, it be becomes a habit. In the long term, your best investment is in yourself. Time spent on getting good at your craft may help you to get your product to market faster.

Also think about how much time you expect to use on revising/debugging old code. If you expect to extend or build on top your code, it is usually worth spending time revising it. I like to believe there are different degrees in quality for code. Spend more time on more vital or core components and less on others.

</comment><comment><USER6> How is your crappy code affecting your customers? Is it delaying adding new features? is it affecting performance in a meaningful way? do you have scaling issues? is the code buggy?

Are your customers providing feedback on too many bugs? slowness? new features not being added fast enough?

How much is it going to cost to clean up the code? Can that time be spent on something that's going to add more value to the customer?

Also each code change you introduce adds risk/time for testing, developing, debuging, release. make sure your adding value.

If your in the code fixing something else clean it up a little bit. Otherwise it seems to me your wasting time on vanity.

</comment><comment><USER7> Well, the best way to take out the garbage is to actually identify one - <USER2> first. Good that you have accepted this with complete humility.

Now, think over it, work hard, improve day by day.

</comment><comment><USER8> This, of course, only works when I will continue in the project. I once had to hand over a project with some code I had put together the previous week, to a just hired, more expert employee who was going to "perfect" the project, and it was not a pretty situation. By that time I knew the data very well, and the new person did not, but had to be made busy. I felt not just embarrassed, but also that the whole thing had been a waste of time for everybody.

</comment><comment><USER9> "but we're still attempting to find product/market fit"

Then find the product/market fit _first_. If the code works, you can clean it later.</comment>