College was my biggest mistake (2012) - <AUTHOR> http://stevecorona.com/college-was-my-biggest-mistake/ <comment><USER3> Hey guys, author here- this is an older post that someone reposted. I get alot of hate for this post, so let me sum it up here:

College was my biggest mistake. Not your biggest mistake. I'm not giving advice, just being honest about my experience. You have to "pay to play". Who knows if I would have been able to bootstrap myself without a year of college. All I know is I can't imagine the ridiculous amount of debt I'd be in if I finished.

It boils down to this: I wish that when I was 18 someone told me college wasn't the only option.

<comment><USER4> What worked in (y)our field, would not work elsewhere.

I'm the product of a Western-European system. Yearly tuition was like $2k. Your 44k would have covered 4 years in college including housing, food and ample beer.

IMHO, the real problem lies in the acceptance of the status quo in the American educational system and the unwillingness to let government play a role (through taxation, grants, etc). It's baffling to me that a first-world country like the USA doesn't want to invest in education. If you don't pay for the education, you'll pay for the unemployment benefits and/or lack of innovation.

I make a good living, but still I worry greatly about my daughter's future. Avg college tuition supposedly will reach 90k/yr by the time she's ready to attend, unless something is done about this madness.

Bill Gates has the right idea with his 10K BA challenge and I like what I see: [http://www.nytimes.com/2013/02/01/opinion/my-valuable- cheap-...](http://www.nytimes.com/2013/02/01/opinion/my-valuable-cheap- college-degree.html?_r=0) [http://www.nationalreview.com/articles/335522/10000-degree-k...](http://www.nationalreview.com/articles/335522/10000-degree- katrina-trinko)

<comment><USER5> The world's top universities are predominantly American. [1]

Please please please, don't let the government with its stinky paws turn them into some mediocre Western-European institutions.

Let people (students AND employers) realize the value of education, or lack thereof, on their own. Remove obstacles from competition (aka less government), don't add more through regulation.

[1] [http://www.timeshighereducation.co.uk/world-university- ranki...](http://www.timeshighereducation.co.uk/world-university- rankings/2012-13/world-ranking)

<comment><USER6> Those rankings give a 60% weighting towards research rather than teaching. It is unsurprising that the country with the only trillion-dollar GDP has the highest number of top universities, since research runs on money.

Half of that 60% is citations in research. Hardly surprising again that the Anglo universities get a guernsey there, given that English is the lingua franca these days, particularly in science. If a university only publishes in English, then it's going to get a wider citational audience as compared to splitting its output between French and English.

Ultimately, in the context of the discussion here, the concern is the quality of _teaching_ , not the quality of _research_. While there is an interaction between the two, they are not synonymous.

<comment><USER7> The GDP and population of the EU is larger than that of the United States.

<comment><USER8> erm... right... but the EU doesn't collect taxes from all of that... they are individual countries.

<comment><USER9> Right, and individual universities that are supported by those countries.

What you should be argueing is that researchers are more densely distributed in top universities in the US, because in Europe researchers are less likely to jump to another country. Especially when they prefer to publish in their own language.

This may or may not be true.

Truth is, I at least and I think we in general are rather envious of the awesome top universities the US has.

But I think the US should be envious that we in Europe have our quality spread over the universities, and no matter what your parents' income or background is, or how much effort you put into highschool, you will always be able to attend a quality university.

I think that's worth not having the world's top universities.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> > I could teach myself more in an afternoon than I would learn in a 10-week > class.

Yeah, no. This is the problem with so many of these anti-college diatribes: legitimate criticisms such as increasingly abysmal professor-to-administrative ratios are drowned out in complete hyperbole.

Or, taken another way: treat this article as an anecdote rather than a prescription.

<comment><USER11> Out of interest, are all classes in US universities 10 weeks?

<comment><USER12> No, this is a feature of RIT and a few other schools. Even RIT is switching to 15-week semesters this fall.

<comment><USER13> The history of this is controversial. Student Government was charged with polling the student body and making an official recommendation to President Destler on that basis. The students voted to keep 10-week quarters, but SG recommended against the popular vote. It wasn't just their fault, of course, but this kind of thing is part of the reason I left RIT. Nothing seemed to get done, at least not right.

<comment><USER12> Believe me, as a current student, I know how it happened. This really isn't the place for this discussion.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> > We were middle class, but not rich, so I had to borrow to afford a > $44,000/year RIT tuition. It's what everyone else does, right?

Sorry, not amongst myself and all my friends. 44K/year is an absurd amount of money.

I just posted on how I got a BA degree in 2004 from UC Berkeley for 11K total.

See here: [<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5154095>]

I think your title should be: "Going to an expensive college with no game-plan nor interest in working hard is the biggest mistake."

<comment><USER15> Sorry but your scenario is fallacious. Just because you got a scholarship does not mean it is possible for everyone to get a scholarship. There are only so many scholarships to go around and universities can only reduce their tuition by so much.

Additionally you did not list living costs, books, or any other additional charges you get hit with when going to school. Unfortunately the system depends on the majority of students paying the full price for tuition and housing. Don't try to pass off what happened to you as something that can happen to everyone if they pull up on their bootstraps hard enough.

<comment><USER14> > Sorry but your scenario is fallacious

How so? Taking the scholarship out of the question for a moment, how does that change my central argument? That still puts my degree around 15K (a reasonable sum).

Community College => State school BA. I bet most people could do this for under 20-25K depending on the school. Going to an expensive private school for all 4 years is absurd unless you have a decent amount of grant/scholarships etc.

<comment><USER16> I did 2 years of California Community College too (UCB wouldn't take me as a transfer student though), but be aware that California Community College was very inexpensive a few years ago (< $20/unit); and is still pretty inexpensive at $46/unit compared to similar systems in other states. For example, Wisconsin community college about $215/credit but if you pay for 12 credits, you can take up to 18 (at 19 they start charging you again). Yes, it's still less expensive than going to a state 4 year school, but it may still be too expensive to avoid financing.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Lots and lots of negative responses here. I'm probably in the minority then, on the same boat as the author that ran aground.

I never finished college. It was boring and just felt like an extension of high school, an experience that was mostly mediocre and not due for repetition.

It was just me, my sister, and my mom growing up. Not a lot of money from mom for college, though she helped where she could. After a while, I was pretty much doing what the author was. Side projects and self-education. Until I was 27, the most money I ever made in a year was $30k.

I went through a nasty breakup in 2007 and moved out to San Francisco. Within 2 weeks I had 2 offers for between $75-$85k. I thought getting $60k was going to be awesome. Needless to say, I was floored. To be honest, I'm 10x the engineer now than I was then.

I know that for a lot of people, your degrees were hard won and very valuable to you. Hell, I'm jealous from time to time of you guys and regret I never finished my computer engineering degree. I was scraping by and learning where I could, but almost totally missed out on the college experiences that so many other people have.

But I think what the author and I are saying is that there are multiple roads to success. There's nothing wrong with getting a degree if you're the kind of person that its good for. We just aren't those kinds of people. You don't have to be defensive because we aren't criticizing. At least, I'm not.

If anyone is looking for a node.js/js engineer hit me up. I run jsonip.com which is currently pushing almost 6 million requests per day. I can make things scale.

</comment><comment><USER18> I have a feeling a lot of people on Hacker News went to top-ranked colleges with full scholarships--Stanford, MIT, Berkeley, etc. These universities provide completely different environments and experiences than the typical college. They're also so well funded that they provide significantly better financial aid and scholarships as well. Provided you can get accepted, it's actually much, much harder to get a full ride at the University of Missouri than it is at Harvard.

In short, if you're going to one of the best colleges in the nation for free and you love classroom learning, _of course_ it's going to be a great experience. That's a no brainer.

What if you don't like classroom learning? What if you went to a bad high school, you disliked it from the beginning, and weren't motivated to get the grades to get into one of the top colleges because of your prior experiences with school?

Speaking as someone who started college at a state university, it was a very mixed bag. All these brilliant peers you guys are talking about? Yeah, they weren't there. I was taking classes as a freshman with seniors who were barely passing and bad-mouthed the professors whenever they could. When I mentioned functional programming to my advisor in the CS department, she didn't really even know what I was talking about. They had a theory of programming languages, which she "thought" would talk about them, but I wasn't allowed to take it for another three years because of all these requirements on how you progress through the courses. So instead I got to take a class on Java where you'd have a three hour lab with TAs there to assist you, and your only task would be to write FizzBuzz.

Now I eventually transferred to a much better school, and I had a much more enriching experience. Suddenly I had peers who were interning at Google, Facebook, etc. Suddenly I had an academic advisor who wanted me to push myself rather than hold myself back. Suddenly I had really interesting homework projects rather than a week to do FizzBuzz. And at that point I started to get a lot more out of college.

</comment><comment><USER19> > We were middle class, but not rich, so I had to borrow to afford a > $44,000/year RIT tuition. It's what everyone else does, right?

Yeah, there's your problem. I didn't spend 44K on my _entire_ bachelor's degree. Neither did anyone else I know... It's dang stupid to burn that kind of money if you can choose not to.

edit & reading this after lunch: OK, I was a tad nasty there. Apologies for being nasty. But I stand by my point that there are other options that are considerably cheaper.

<comment><USER20> Tuition at RIT in 2012-2013 is $32,784. It's only $44k if you include room and board.

It was much lower when OP when to school as well.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> I have yet to see someone who actually did the work and was _successful_ in college later regret having had his higher education. (Or, i.e., think that he would've been off better without it.)

By contrast, I've definitely seen people who dropped out of college and became successful in something, but who later regretted having not taken advantage of their college education.

<comment><USER22> I have on a few occasions, but it seems like a loaded perspective. To make it through four years of blood, sweat, and tears and to do it successfully requires significant investment in believing you are doing the right thing. With that, you'll always find some way to justify that you did the right thing, even if you somehow could prove it was a mistake.

It would be like a successful businessman who later regrets it all and wishes he had lived on welfare. It doesn't happen because if he truly wanted to live on welfare, he would not have built his business in the first place. On the other hand, you are apt to find people on welfare who regret not starting a business.

<comment><USER23> And yet people who drop out of college do so because they think they're doing the right thing, and yet they regret it much more frequently than the other way around.

The fact that you think you're making a huge investment doesn't explain the fact that some investments are more regrettable than others.

<comment><USER22> I, unfortunately, am not sure I fully understand you are trying to add. Regret doesn't magically appear later, it builds from doubts in the present.

College students noticing doubts about what they are doing, they are going to drop out to figure out what is wrong. People who successfully graduate are almost never going to have that problem just by making it to graduation. The whole idea that college graduates have that kind of regret infrequently is probably true, but it doesn't really tell us anything meaningful.

It is like noticing that college graduates are mostly hard working people. Well, sure. The people who aren't hard working dropped out already. That, however, doesn't also mean that all dropouts are not hard working. There are many reasons why people need to drop out and those reasons sometimes come with their own sets of doubt.

<comment><USER23> > People who successfully graduate are almost never going to have that > problem.

And yet many people who _successfully_ drop out of college to (say) pursue a business (through their blood, sweat, and tears, arguably sometimes even more so than their college-student counterparts), however, _do_ end up regretting it.

("Fake" dropouts like Bill Gates notwithstanding; see my comment above if you're not sure what I mean.)

The idea that the first group "almost never" going to have that problem, whereas the second group is likely to, should make you wonder why that might be the case. (It's not a tautology.)

<comment><USER22> > whereas the second group is likely to, should make you wonder why that might > be the case.

Not really. I've already explained it. To be in college in the first place means that you have some reason to want to graduate. Often life gets in the way, such as that great businesses opportunity you cannot pass up, but that doesn't make your reasons for wanting to go to college magically disappear.

I also find the attempt to make it a binary issue for graduates interesting. A successful business owner who regrets dropping out doesn't have to regret starting that successful business, but a college graduate has to regret dropping out if he wants to regret not starting a business, or whatever. Why can't a college graduate be happy with his accomplishments _and_ regret not starting a successful business during those years?

<comment><USER23> > Why can't a college graduate be happy with his accomplishments and regret > not starting a successful business during those years?

If you regret a choice, it means you wish you had made some other choice.

It doesn't make any sense to regret not making a business when you're happy with your current accomplishments... unless you're asking why someone couldn't have done both simultaneously, in which case the answer is: most people can't run a successful business and a successful college career simultaneously. One is already hard enough.

<comment><USER22> > It doesn't make any sense to regret not making a business when you're happy > with your current accomplishments...

So, you are saying someone who has a successful business and regrets not finishing college must regret starting said business? I don't think it works like that. It is quite possible to be happy with your business _and_ wish you could have done other things at the same time.

Likewise, I expect many graduates do wish they could have done more during that time of their life (just look at how many lament that they didn't get to party because they were studying all the time), but that doesn't mean they need to regret the accomplishment full stop.

<comment><USER23> I just looked up "regret" and it says:

"to feel sorry and sad about something previously done or said that now appears wrong, mistaken, or hurtful to others"

So, yes, if you regret something then, by definition, that means you wish you hadn't done it. That's what calling an action "wrong" or "a mistake" /means/.

<comment><USER22> I'm glad you were able to clear up any misconceptions you had. Hopefully this has made what I was telling you more clear.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> This is not something you should be proud of. Anyone can ace a class they are passionate about; the fact that you failed out of courses you were intellectually capable of destroying says a lot about your character. Getting a college degree is a sign of commitment and work ethic. If I can't trust you to stay with my firm when the work isn't a roller coaster of stimulation, then I can't count on you at all.

Full disclosure - I am an RIT grad.

</comment><comment><USER25> well, that's because your in us of a. I'am an european so i had my 5 years of software eng. degree for free, plus i was able to do freelance work in the same time. So, no debt, 5 extra years of partying, drinking with my mates (many of them recruited in the same university), and a nice diploma which really matters here over the pond :).

<comment><USER26> I think you're getting downvoted because of the comment's tone, but it is noteworthy to point out how different the college experience can be in Europe vs the US in my opinion.

<comment><USER25> Well, the article was in itself a bit anecdotical, as someone else put it, so i tried to keep up. Yes the experience is quite different, and while i am very passionate for what i'm doing (i'm programming a way or another since i was 12), i really think college is worth something, beside having fun: you learn how to think, how to evaluate, how to apply what you know ... and how to finish things you started - projects, jobs, assignements.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> I have several issues with posts/articles in this vain:

1\. The author assumes they wouldn't have done any better than they currently are even if they did ace/complete college. They might in fact have been far better off than they currently are, even if they consider themselves successful.

2\. The author possibly discounts indirect skills which they picked up during college. These are not necessarily taught but rather a by-product of the college environment (i.e. public speaking, word choice in conversation, social adaptation, ability to argue a point etc)

3\. Someone currently making a decision about going to college may think that they too won't derive any value from college since famous/successful person X didn't find it useful. There is an unfortunately amount of young people who believe being successful is their undeniable destiny and don't have a plan B. Most will at some point or another have to take a job and most likely that job will ask for a college degree.

<comment><USER28> 2) ... indirect skills ...

I was thinking about this too. I studied an irrelevant[1] subject at a top tier university. In a sense the _only_ benefits were indirect skills (a world famous university does look good on a resume, but not if they ask for transcripts (which only the INS/CIS has ever done)

I think that in the moment, once you have flipped the bit on college, you are no longer getting any benefits, certainly not any net benefits at which point pulling the rip-cord seems smart.

[1] History and Philosophy of Science - more relevant to software development than I normally admit.

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> > I could teach myself more in an afternoon than I would learn in a 10-week > class.

>The culmination of my second year was a 0.33 GPA.

</comment><comment><USER30> I'm in the same boat as you brother, college was my biggest mistake. And, much like you, every job I've had since college no one cared that I even went to college, they just cared if I could do the job/saw my portfolio and hired me. I've never been turned down for a job I wanted.

</comment><comment><USER31> I still regret college.

I completed it.

But I wish I had dropped out.

Also I wish I did not had this stupid 20k loan to pay too.

Here in Brazil the best wage you can get as programmer, is still around 36k (yes, I am not kidding).

I get right now 15k.

So I get 15k yearly, and I have a 20k loan =D How awesome is that?

<comment><USER32> Emigrate. You speak English, Portuguese and ... ? You've got tech skills, there are tech visas for a lot of developed countries. Spend < 10 years working abroad and pay off your loan and move back to Brazil with some wonderful life experience. Also, in a native English-speaking (British Isles, US, Canada, Oz and Kiwiland) country the second language is a total bonus a lot of time ... If you've got commitments that tie you to Brazil see if they can be loosened for a few years :)

<comment><USER31> I think a lot about that, but I am yet to figure where I should go, and how to do it.

Emigrating sounds a lot easier when you find a job elsewhere and is invited.

<comment><USER33> You hang out on HN long enough someone is bound to offer you one, but you should probably fill out your profile some more (email address and name, minimally). But even if they don't reach out to you, there are job opportunities posted almost every day. If you have the skill (you're here... it stands to reason) and put in the effort, you could be on a plane in a few months.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> I wish I had your courage. I toughed it out and did the whole four years. I would have been better off not going. I listened to people who told me I would end up a loser working minimum wage. Well done sir.

</comment><comment><USER35> I have to REALLY disagree here -- maybe it's because I just read Cal Newport's "So Good They Can't Ignore You," but I have to believe that you have significant career capital that others generally don't have.

Sure, it's easy to cash that in for a sweet job if you're a very hard worker (note: not necessarily "passionate") and/or if you have some valuable skills that would just deprecate if left to incubate in college for 4 years. Sure, if you're going to college for a liberal arts degree or english lit then the 4 year investment of >$100k is not worth your time.

I do respect the fact that you somewhat avoid the maxim that "it was a waste of time for ME therefore YOU shouldn't go to college." But I think the center is displaced disingenuously -- university is for developing a skill set that may not be there just yet. If I taught myself to cook and have been cooking for a few years, but my friends can't and they're all going to cooking school to learn to cook, I can't complain and say "Cooking school was a waste of time to me -- in fact all you need is passion to just go do it!" as if that's a meaningful statement or maxim to be sent out into the world. Because we know that borders on BS.

I believe significantly in taking advantage of your strengths; however hard work, regardless of the setting, is the true differentiator.

<comment><USER36> An english lit degree may not be worth the _money_ , but for the passionate, it absolutely is worth the _time_.

</comment></comment><comment><USER37> My frame of mind is that going to college should be for the knowledge, not for a job. If you want to go to school for a job, there are plenty of trade schools you can go to. If college was just for jobs, the majority of majors would be cut. If you are going to college just so you can get a job, then I believe that it will most likely end up as a mistake, especially in the software development field where it is possible to get a job without a CS degree.

<comment><USER38> I like your comment, I think it's the most concise explanation of why you should go to college, not for "job training" but to be educated and not simply about computer science. I think good programmers should have a good basis in general knowledge, and therefore college should make you a better person.

I say this as someone who hasn't finished his BS Computer Science degree. I probably have a couple of credits of CS courses to finish and some liberal arts (literally, some art classes) to finish my BS. I have been working in the profession for over 20 years and I feel like not finishing my BS is a bit of an albatross around my neck. Not because I feel it's holding me back, but because if I hadn't taken the courses I have taken, I wouldn't be interested in the broader subject of Computer Science. I never would have taken that Scheme class (SICP) that some of the other students complained about because it was in a language that "wasn't useful" (I was curious and thoroughly enjoyed the class). I never would have been curious about writing a B tree from scratch and learning about algorithms. I never would have been curious about Derivatives, Integrals, and Differential Equations. All things that don't generally directly apply to my day-to-day job, but because I have knowledge of them, I am a better engineer and problem solver. Even my philosophy credits help me with critical thinking. I could go on and on ...

</comment></comment><comment><USER39> I also went to RIT. Was the education worth the price? I don't really know. I did learn things, but I almost definitely could have learned them with some other less expensive form of education.

Do I regret it? Not at all. If given the chance again, I would go to RIT again every time. It was, and still is, the nerdiest school around. I froze my ass off, but it was still worth it. The people I met there are basically my second family. The times I had there are fondly remembered. What dollar amount can I put on people who turned out to be lifelong friends?

If all I cared about was getting an education, a job, and making money, it would have been a dumb idea. But the memories and awesome times that were had are priceless. It is sad that the author went there and graduated, but did not have that experience. Perhaps it is their attitude that prevented them from having it. If you are in the library, you are doing college wrong. You should have been at the hockey game instead.

Also, thanks to my CS degree and the RIT co-op program I was able to get a well paying job immediately upon graduation. I have been basically constantly employed since then, and all of my student loans were 100% paid off months ago.

</comment><comment><USER40> For my undergraduate degree in India, I paid $100 per year in a government owned college. Hostel room and food took $30 per month and all that money and more came back in scholarships. So I paid less than 0 in the 90's to get an engineering degree. Later I did my MS in US on a sabbatical, and my company paid 90% tuition fees. So all in all I spent may be $5000. When it was time for my MBA, again company paid 90% tuition fees, so I spent another $5000 out of pocket. That is it - 3 degrees in $10,000- all from good schools - <USER2> moulded me to what I am. Public education should be universal and free for the deserving. The expense comes back as tax dollars to the government besides ensuring good quality human resources for the country.

</comment><comment><USER41> College isn't for everyone so repeat after me.

B students end up working for C students and A students end up going back to college to teach.

I did 13 years in the Marine Corps, Got out during the technology boom. walked into a low paying Tech support job and now making a strong 6 figures. No College, Little bit of tech schools and no certifications.

If I had stayed in until retirement I would have missed the tech boom, Missed out learning a marketable skill that I taught myself while I was in the military, and My job prepared me for working on aircraft in the heat of summer and the cold of winter. No thanks I love being an office IT tech dude.

</comment><comment><USER42> To be honest, I'm starting to get too much of those anti-college posts.

Many point out that they didn't learn anything from uni/college. Well, how about studying in better one then? One person I know often mentions how pointless the university is and that he dropped out on day 5 although it was at most average university (UK).

Especially "didn't learn anything in year one". And you were not supposed, really. The point of first year is 1) introduce you to many areas so you can get a feeling of what do you want to do 2) not press too hard because some (mainly international) students have difficulties in adapting.

</comment><comment><USER43> >> Hustling = passion + ability to sell yourself. No degree required

Wow, inspiring writing, I agree too with the footnote that was attached, paraphrasing; this works in the computer industry. I think the reason why is that it's easy for the human mind to comprehend being a doctor, lawyer, scientist, etc. It's hard to contemplate wanting to actually do programming. The general populace just doesn't get it; those who do, can't imagine doing anything else. Even if it's not programming, just working with and through computers to see ideas come to light.

</comment><comment><USER12> A lot of great discussion on this article popped up when it was first written: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4364370>

</comment><comment><USER44> He's absolutely right. You don't need a degree of any kind to be a software developer. When i was in High School, I've been told that by devs at career fairs just about every time i attended. I always thought it was odd that a company rep at a career fair would tell me not to go to college. In all honesty, if you don't think education is necessary, then don't go to school. It's an absolutely legitimate claim. However, do the engineering world a favor and never call yourself an engineer or pretend to be one.

<comment><USER45> That's a new definition of "engineer" for me. Didn't realize that having a degree was a prerequisite of the title, like getting a PhD gives you "Dr."

<comment><USER44> Honestly, in this day and age the fact that you have an engineering degree is a sign that you can get your ass off the couch and strive to become something... not really any sign that you have something cooking in your head. Although, if you get through any engineering major curriculum you're likely not an complete idiot.

Engineering is a discipline. It's systematic, rigid, concise and if you fuck up you're liable for your actions. Would you hire someone who claims to be a self-taught electrical engineer, mechanical engineer? No. You know why? Because these people work their asses off to become licensed. Your hiring manager will probably lose people on his team if he hires someone who doesn't even have a single college credit. It's a matter of discipline and respect for your colleagues. In some areas it's regulated and you cannot hire an engineer without a degree.

Would you hire a self-taught software engineer? You can. What's the end result? All too often, your company on front-page news because this person made a rookie security mistake. Is he or she going to be responsible for leaking thousands of sensitive records to public? No. They might get fired, but that's it. Take this same example to medical field where a software bug can kill (and has before i.e. radiation treatments) and all of a sudden you can't even prosecute this "engineer" for murder.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER46> At 23, soon to be 24 I wish that I never went to college. Phone sales for a summer at State Farm + #1 at e-commerce startup taught me more than I ever learned in a classroom.

</comment><comment><USER47> I like such posts for bringing up the fact that you have to follow your path to be happy, not other's footsteps or society rules. On the other hand, some imbeciles think of such posts as an argument against education, and that's just a straight way to a society that breeds morons. So, if you are not bright, you might wanna have a pass on this one. Yeah, but who am I kidding, none of the slow ones will get my point anyway...

</comment><comment><USER48> Not to minimize anyone's strife, but... If spending one year in college is actually your "biggest mistake" thus far, you've had a comparatively sweet life.

</comment><comment><USER49> I hope everyone remembers this when they have kids! Give them the option of not going, rather than setting the expectation that it is expected. I plan to encourage mine to take at least a gap year when applying, rather than jumping in. (unless they are 100% certain of the field/direction, which is unlikely)

</comment><comment><USER50> I went to RIT in the 90s. My total student debt was something like $17k. In my case I felt it was worth it, but if faced with $140k in debt for the same education, I would seriously have my doubts and probably would have considered alternatives.

</comment><comment><USER51> _$400 a week is hardly enough to live comfortably_

Is the cost of living in Rochester that high, or was the author living somewhere else at this time?

<comment><USER3> 400/week after taxes is something like 1200/mo.

        1200
        -500 (rent, 2 roommates)
        -200 (food/beer)
        -100 (car)
        -350 (min student loan payment)

50 left over.

<comment><USER51> _-350 (min student loan payment)_

Ah, there's the part I forgot about.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER52> Not getting into a good college is the biggest mistake I ever made.

</comment><comment><USER53> 0.33 nice...</comment>


Norsk Data - <AUTHOR> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Norsk_Data <comment><USER2> Funny to see Norsk Data being mentioned in Hacker News. I actually had the pleasure of attending a guest lecture in 2014 at my university (University of Tromsø) during my studies where founder Rolf Skår, and multiple other notable people from ND, talked. It was extremely interesting to hear their stories, and also especially seeing how bright and engaged they were even though they all were almost in their 80s.

Something they talked about that wasn't mentioned here is how tightly Norsk Data worked with the military, and that one of their most powerful computers was specifically designed to analyze Sonar signals from sensors in North Norway to listen for submarines of the coast.

</comment><comment><USER3> A couple of years I was giving a talk on Low Power Wide Area Networking and showed off a LoRA module that my team had designed and manufactured. After the talk an elderly gentleman came over and asked lots of questions and was very interested in the module.

He seemed oddly familiar.

Turns out this was Lars Monrad-Krohn, one of the founders, and the CEO of Norsk Data. After the conference was over he smiled and asked "can I invite you gentlemen out for dinner so we can continue the conversation?".

We had a lovely evening and many interesting discussions. He is still sharp. And one of the nicest people I've met.

<comment><USER4> Nice. I miss my days at the greenfield Origo/TM in 96/97/98; I had the great pleasure of working with some incredibly clued in people who have done very well for themselves since. The Norwegian community was very much at the forefront; shutting down the Index project was a decision I'd truly like to see the other version of though.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Norsk Data management failed to realize that their customers only bought their proprietary hardware because that was the only way to run their software. The software was what the customers really wanted. The last years Norsk Data was in business, a large part of their income came from service contracts on their hardware. So it is understandable that Norsk Data missed the chance to switch to using standard unix and pc based hardware. The management was also very proud of their hardware and operating system. Which is very understandable since they had made them themselves in the early days. They had their own sql database, word processor, development tools and lots of customers. Norway could have been an IT giant. Instead Norsk Data had their Kodak moment 10 years before Kodak. The only thing left now is the Norsk Data campus in Oslo.

<comment><USER6> But the extra tragedy is that Kodak anticipated and tried to adopt to the digital revolution. Yet failed, overtaken by the sheer speed of adoption.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> > For a period in 1987, Norsk Data was the second largest company by stock > value in Norway, second only to Norsk Hydro, and employed over 4,500 people.

Interesting that a computer manufacturer was the second biggest company in Norway in 1987

<comment><USER8> Norway was not very rich back then yet, oil hadn't kicked in with full force.

<comment><USER9> Norway's GDP per capita was higher than US and UK in 1987. They have been rich for a long time.

[https://data.worldbank.org/share/widget?end=2018&indicators=...](https://data.worldbank.org/share/widget?end=2018&indicators=NY.GDP.PCAP.CD&locations=NO- US-EU-GB&name_desc=false&start=1987&view=chart)

<comment><USER8> Great chart! I guess my assumed reference was the current mental image where there's the oil fund worth over a million crowns for every citizen.

<comment><USER10> That fund affects day to day life a lot less than you might expect, FWIW. It's not like we get to just... spend that; it's somewhat comparable to saying "the New York Stock Exchange contains over $foobar dollars per citizen" (although of course the fund isn't managed at all like a stock exchange, either).

The most direct influence I've seen of the oil fund is that it provides capital behind some investments systems that are aimed to drive business creation in _non_-oil sectors (including technology).

<comment><USER11> Most other resource rich nations are victims of the resource curse. That you don't just spend that money and that the most direct influence you've seen is economic diversification is extraordinary as far as recent history is concerned.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Finally some acknowledgement for Norsk Data.

It was destroyed by a right wing government which refused to "pick winners", and grant broader governmental innovation funding. And of course in addition not winning the CPU arms race which happened at the time.

However to think that Norway had an infant computer industry, with its own NON-UNIX mainframe system, complete with hardware in several sizes, operating systems and so on. It was even cloned by the Soviet Union, and cloned spare parts were sold behind the iron curtain!

What this company achieved was monumental.

<comment><USER13> ND also had a Unix System V port running on their machines (the ND-4000 but not ND-800 series if I recall correctly).

Source: worked for ND 1988/9 (not in Norway, though) when the end was nigh and they were looking for a plan B as customers moved to open systems (= Unix)

Edit: didn't recall correctly; was ND-570 not ND-800 and ND-5000 not ND-4000 (in late 1980s these series were basically the same at the CMOS level and an ND-570 could be on-site migrated to 5000 by merely cutting a wire on the board with a knipper to engage additional instructions or address lines)

<comment><USER14> I suspect that's not entirely accurate. The ND-5000 series was a real upgrade to the ND-500 series, with distinct silicon.

However, I have seen the cutting-a-wire-on-a-board in real life. We bough an upgrade from an ND-530 to an ND-570, and a technician came with a knipper. It was surreal: The upgrade was north of 100KUSD. And all they did was cut a wire.

<comment><USER13> It's what made the rounds in dev circles where I worked. The technician would have still to upgrade/re-install the OS, and to prevent the perceived rip-off with the knipper to be noticed and make the customer feel bad, _I think_ they also discussed that the technician should do some theater job such as walking in with a packaged CPU upgrade kit so that the upgrade took at least 2 hours. It was not a rip-off, as the 5000 had, like all CPUs, a costly upfront development investment. Idk but the reason why some ND-500 -> 5000 upgrades may have come with real silicon while others only need the knippers job is maybe that once the 5000 CPU was produced in quantities, the 500 that were still sold were equipped with 5000 CPUs from that point on, to save an expensive CMOS production line. Even IBM, by around 1990 at the latest, produced all their non-X86 CPUs (for P-Series aka RS/6000, I-Series aka AS/400, and Z-Series aka S/390) off the same silicon.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> First time attempt at booting an ND-computer:

"!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!"

"No, 32 utropstegn, not 32 utropstegn, like this":

"32!"

"Ahhhhh..."

<comment><USER15> But it was 22!, not 32!.. if you wanted to boot SINTRAN-III at least :-)

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> I first heard of ND about 15 years ago when I inherited the source to a hoary old set of C libraries with a long history behind them.

I found an #ifdef ND5000 sitting in a header somewhere, and had to investigate.

<comment><USER14> Ah, the ND C-compiler. It was created in Germany. I still remember porting a fairly large application from FORTRAN to C, and then running it on the brand new compiler.

<comment><USER13> That was were i worked, in Kiel/North Germany! Though I didn't work on the elusive compiler stuff (only being there on an apprenticeship, and then on my first "real" freelance gig).

<comment><USER15> You knew Ralf H. then? I got compiler fixes directly from him - for bugs I found in my compiled code, and once for a special version of the Pascal compiler (the standard one couldn't pack records they way we needed)

<comment><USER13> Not sure, I'm not good with names. I remember there being two guys working permanently on compilers (Pascal, mostly, and C), and another student coming in occasionally during the period I've been there. I remember the main dev having reservations about C++ which was new at the time. I believe they had ties to CUA (Christian-Albrecht-University of Kiel), which had a pretty good reputation for compsci, and still has AFAIK.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> I want that terminal: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ND-500#/media/File:ND-560.jpeg](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ND-500#/media/File:ND-560.jpeg)

It looks a lot like the Siemens terminals. It was also marketed under the Tandberg name.

<comment><USER13> The green screens were cool, but the Nokia 80Hz+ ergonomic black-on-white terminals were actually much better and the ones that everybody wanted to use.

<comment><USER17> This one? [https://www.net.fujitsu.fi/fi/historia/mikrotietokone/esitte...](https://www.net.fujitsu.fi/fi/historia/mikrotietokone/esitteet/nokia_personal_computer.pdf)

<comment><USER12> OMG! LOVE IT!

<comment><USER17> And they even had their own iMac-liks colorful ones. Before Apple!

[https://www.net.fujitsu.fi/fi/historia/mikrotietokone/kuvat/...](https://www.net.fujitsu.fi/fi/historia/mikrotietokone/kuvat/mikromikko4_perhe.jpg)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Does anyone know what is the transparent container with white contents in the second picture of the wiki page? [0] It is mounted under the typing terminal.

[0] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Norsk_Data#/media/File:Norsk_D...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Norsk_Data#/media/File:Norsk_Data_1971.jpg)

<comment><USER19> I do believe that's an ASR-33 teletype, which have a built-in paper tape punch and reader. That's the chad bin for all the little bits punched out of the tape.

It's before my time, but I have used one. I can guarantee that it was never that tidy in practice. My experience with punching a tape is that the chads seem to go everywhere _except_ the bin. It's a fire hazard before long.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> I learned programming on a Nord-10 in high school. Me and two friends wrote a chess playing program in Nord-PL.

It wasn't very good, but we learned a lot, and all 3 of us made a career in software.

</comment><comment><USER21> This is slightly before my time, but worldwide all F16 Weapon System Trainers (simulators for the F16 aircraft) were hosted on Norsk Data machines. They had a hardware shared memory that allowed more than 1 processor. This was 1970's / 1980's. Replaced with SGI in the 1990's. There were Norsk Data manuals laying around in the company until about 2000, because back then when you bought a computer they came with books. I was told the Norsk was chosen due to political / work share issues, as at that time in the US SEL was the dominant real time mini computer vendor. But, I was not there, so who knows..

</comment><comment><USER22> Ha. My father worked for Norsk Data in the UK during the late 1980s and early 1990s after they bought Wordplex. They had incredible offices at a stately home near Newbury.

<comment><USER23> Weird... My father did too. He was one of the engineers who drove around fixing Wordplex word processors at customer sites. There were always a couple of spare machines sitting in his car or in the garage; he showed me how to play games on them. I even wrote some school projects on them; they had these huge daisy-wheel printers that sounded like machine guns!

<comment><USER22> Sounds very familiar - they probably knew each other.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> I do not understand how such innovative organizations end up falling apart. Bell Labs had a similar objective, only researchers were able to do basically anything with unlimited funding. Many salient innovations were made at Bell Labs, I wonder if such organizations exist to this day on the scale of Bell or Norsk Data.

<comment><USER25> Bell Labs fell apart because its reason to exist (and funding source) vanished when AT&T was broken up.

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> Would be interested to read more about their attempt to port the MIT Lisp Machine software to the ND-500.

<comment><USER27> Don't know anything about it, but here's an article about a keyboard intended for the machine: [http://xahlee.info/kbd/racal_norsk_kps_10_keyboard.html](http://xahlee.info/kbd/racal_norsk_kps_10_keyboard.html)

Looks cool.

<comment><USER28> On an unrelated note, thrilled to see Xah Lee is still around and kicking!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> Didn't know we used to have a computer industry here. Shame it's all gone now :/

</comment><comment><USER30> I worked on one, first job from university, reverse-engineering health systems data protocols to re-sell ND backed services into the hospital system. Decent enough machine but as soon as I got work on the pdp-11 and vax my heart was sold.

</comment><comment><USER31> My old college had an ND-570 and an ND-560. I learned ADA on those.

<comment><USER31> They had their own Unix port, called NDIX!

<comment><USER32> Based upon 4.2BSD (with the networking from 4.3BSD) and was a 40+ floppy disk install, IIRC. Learnt a lot on these plus the Prime superminis we used at uni.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> [http://sintran.com/sintran/history/history.html](http://sintran.com/sintran/history/history.html)

<comment><USER13> Coolest thing of SINTRAN (ND's O/S) was the command shell which was designed such that you could have expressive long names for commands and other files, yet could also use short forms for easy typing in a word-lattice kind of way (and more stylish than on Unix). For example, the "ls" command was "list- files" and you could write "li-fi" or "l-f" as long as there was no other command/executable in scope that would be ambiguous. Worked with more than a single hyphen as well (eg. set-file-permission etc.)

Actually I implemented a Unix glob filter that did exactly that out of boredom on a project 20 years ago :)

I guess emacs users and LISPers in general would be loving it (the concept not my C implementation that is).

<comment><USER34> Cisco shell is like this, 'show running-config' becomes 'sh ru'

<comment><USER35> The Cisco shell is a direct descendent of the DEC TOPS-20 one BTW.

<comment><USER36> > direct descendent

never heard anything like this - care to elaborate / point?

<comment><USER35> The Cisco founders were DEC20/TOPS20 fanatics from Stanford. It's perfectly sensible that their chosen CLI would reflect their favorite example - and it really is an excellent CLI.

Post Cisco, Len Bosack actually started a company, XKL, intending to build the next-gen DEC20. By the time this actually happened, the world had long moved on and XKL redirected to optical networks stuff.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER37> I don't know whether I am committing sampling bias, but this looks eerily familiar [1].

The perhaps incorrect deduction here is that the Nordics are ahead when it comes to core or fundamental science, but they are behind when it comes to tech business longevity and business expansion potential. Of course, many of its tech companies are rather old companies to start off with [2].

Some countries suffer from a kind of inverse of this: In South Africa, fundamental science is hard to come by. (The rest of Southern Africa is even worse.) An example of this is indeed also the tech industry: If you are a programmer in South Africa, you are quite likely to be _deploying_ and maintaining software such as Salesforce and Oracle, AWS workflows, MS SQL databases, PostgreSQL and MySQL, and so forth; and you are unlikely to be writing the actual code for the core technology that constitutes AWS, Oracle, etc. There are people writing apps, but I don't know many examples where the apps have global traction. Most websites written for local companies are shoddy and even the ones that look nice don't have any core invention behind them. Mark Shuttleworth actually lives in the Isle of Man now (not to mention Elon Musk...) and most South Africans probably don't know what Canonical is.

By contrast, if you already have a solid business in South Africa, your expansion potential is almost limitless. There are about 60 million people and most of them are below the age of 30 [3]. The youth unemployment rate, defined as unemployment of people between the age of 18 and I think 35, is usually around 60%. You also have, depending on who rates it, 7/10 of the top 10 universities in Africa as of 2020 [4]. You don't have to pay people with degrees a lot of money for it to be considered a high salary by global—especially American—standards.

[1] Norsk Data was caught off guard by the PC revolution, which had one big across hardware OS; Nokia didn't realise the importance of smartphones with one big across brand OS, apart from the iPhone. (Though I am still waiting for Linux Phone OS.)

[2] Nokia started off as a pulp mill. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nokia#1865%E2%80%931967](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nokia#1865%E2%80%931967)

[3] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_South_Africa#A...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_South_Africa#Age_and_sex_distribution)

[4] QS rates only nine universities in Africa, here is a pastebin as their website is difficult to navigate: [https://pastebin.com/raw/ixLJ0Lqq](https://pastebin.com/raw/ixLJ0Lqq). This means that the 10th university and below are not in the world top 500. It is quite likely that the University of Potchefstroom would be the 10th. Some sources claim 8/10 of the top 10, but I don't know which agency's ratings that is based on.

<comment><USER38> When talking about computer science, the original GSM network and Simula the first OOP language is also from Norway.

<comment><USER3> The GSM standard was an international effort. But as far as I know, the first GSM radio was built here in Trondheim, Norway.

In fact, I know where this radio is right now, because I've seen it :-).

I was at the local university (NTNU) where the lab dungeon keeper occasionally will test and refurbish old surplus lab equipment and then sell it. I was there to pick up a few power supplies and we started talking. Eventually he brought us on a tour of the dungeons and I found the first GSM radio standing on a shelf in the basement storage.

[http://borud.no/notes/gsm/](http://borud.no/notes/gsm/)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER39> Interesting to see the monumental software having been found in northern Europe :-D

</comment><comment><USER40> Can someone elaborate why this is being upvoted?

EDIT: Not sure why this comment is getting downvoted. I'm just interested in why people find the article interesting and/or if there was some recent news which made Norsk Data relevant again…

<comment><USER41> I believe it is because NORD-5 appears to be the first 32-bit minicomputer, built by Norsk Data in 1972.

<comment><USER42> -They also have the dubious honor of making the first 28-bit minicomputer, if the story I was told over beers at a geekfest at my alma mater holds true.

Apparently, in an effort to gain market share in the Soviet block (Which cloned ND products like there was no tomorrow anyway) without falling foul of COCOM rules, they neutered a few 32-bit NORDs and duly exported them east.

Presumably the COCOM regulations of the time said 'No 32 bit exports!'...</comment></comment></comment>


Show HN: Website for pickupgames around you - <AUTHOR> https://pickupgames.io <comment><AUTHOR> Shows a view of games / events around you (if any available - based on your current location and zip code) or you can choose to host your own by selecting to make it private or public.

Any feedback appreciate it. Thank you.

<comment><USER2> Registration doesn't solve any of _my_ problems as a user and it makes the two-sided marketplace harder to access. It may be more work for _you_ to manage a two sided marketplace without registration, but removing disincentives to use may be worth it.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you for the feedback. I will try to maybe display what events are available around your area without registering to the site. That way if people want to attend any games they can chose to register for an account prior to joining the event.</comment></comment></comment>


Facebook opens up Internet.org amidst net neutrality row - <AUTHOR> http://www.bbc.com/news/technology-32580586 <comment><USER2> \- HTTPS is a premium feature not included in Internet.org's package...

\- Internet services/sites are whitelisted - essentially by Facebook.

\- ISP tracking is baked into consumers' access. (Like Verizon's SuperCookies, which have just been rolled back for US consumers.)

\- Select developers _get_ to develop for the web ... but based off permission from higher ups. Because we all trust Facebook as a caretaker of a dev platform... we already know there will arbitrary rate-limiting for these devs.

The best part of Facebook's story was that Zuck _didn 't_ need permission to build it. How ironic...

Facebook has hijacked the word "Internet" for this initiative.

At best this is a whitewashed and severely limited offering that works against the push for _real_ Internet access. And it sets all of the worst kinds of precedents for first-time users across the world.

As for the PR spin around this campaign, some words that come to mind: "disingenuous", "delusional".

[http://www.medianama.com/2015/05/223-facebooks-internet- org-...](http://www.medianama.com/2015/05/223-facebooks-internet-org-privacy/)

<comment><USER3> A free, ad-supported offering has limitations and appears to serve the advertiser, not the "user"? Cue internet outrage!

       If you are not paying for it, you're not the customer; you're the product
       being sold. -- blue_beetle on mefi

It never gets less remarkable that people don't understand that.

<comment><USER4> I don't think this is the case here. This is a freemium model, hoping the people CAN afford internet but do not know they NEED it will pay for the normal services with the operator.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> \- No HTTPs \- FB says it will track and use the data \- FB approval process \- FB owns/gets to reuse the content \- Telco can shutdown service if app use increases

Are we doing enough to give the underprivileged access to Internet? This is not the internet, this is a f'ing monetisation channel!

</comment><comment><USER6> > But Facebook's founder Mark Zuckerberg said it was "not sustainable to offer > the whole internet for free".

I think that's exactly what they should do, if they're serious about this: just find a way to offer everyone the whole internet for free. If something must be compromised, then compromise speed, not access to sites. Sites that want to reach poor people would just have to practice draconian bandwidth discipline. At least that way, sites could opt in on their own terms, rather than having to kowtow to some consortium of rich people.

<comment><USER7> Everyone is complaining - why don't other people offer free internet? Just do it yourself

<comment><USER8> Should we not discuss our concerns for how people around the world connect to the same network? There are a number of people working on this problem, people who can handle the funding and work involved, but that still leaves room for us to comment on policy that will shape the way large populations interact with the rest of the world.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> > But Facebook's founder Mark Zuckerberg said it was "not sustainable to offer > the whole internet for free".

Quite plainly, that's false. 1Mb of an internet.org site costs operators exactly the same to carry as 1Mb of some other website.

Operators obviously have some average Mbs/user/month figure that they're willing to bundle as internet.org, expecting to recover this from the people who upgrade to a full internet plan. Whatever this number is, users can also be limited to this with a data cap, allowing them to There would then be no net neutrality concerns at all.

Facebook could continue to have the internet.org app, their proxy server, and they could be displayed as a default to the people on this plan. Those users would prefer them (they would really need to conserve data). It could even warn people about data consumption when they open the browser, as long as there is an option to click through. None of those things violate net neutrality, and they will keep 99% of users within the internet.org app.

Facebook has never said why they cannot do this, other than offering hand-wavy "poor people don't understand data caps because they don't know what megabytes are". This is false. Anyone who has a prepaid phone connection in, say, India understands how to navigate the bewildering complexity of phone plans (pay Rs. 30 to decrease the cost of calls by 50% between 10pm and 6am for 30 days). As long as there is some way for users to check how many MBs they have left, they will be fine.

I suspect that the real reason facebook opposes this is that they want to use their position as gatekeeper to shut out competition. If these "starter internet plans" operated as I described, Google will soon have its own "Google+ zero" built into Android.

Thanks to Android, Google enjoys unassailable market power as a gatekeeper on the device. The only way facebook can close that gap is by becoming the gatekeeper at the network level, which requires that net neutrality be subverted.

</comment><comment><USER10> I love to demonize big tech as much as the next guy, but I really think the public consensus in India against Internet.org is inherently biased. The catalyst for the movement was a Youtube video. The chosen method of lodging protest was via email. AIB themselves would not be the thought leaders they are today if internet access was restricted to them. Every activist has been, by definition, in a position of privilege with respect to internet access. It seems we are cautiously ignoring the situation of the millions who have not had internet penetration till date and to whom the internet is broadly synonymous with "major" services like Facebook and Wikipedia. I am not in favor of Facebook forming their own internet cartel and I think anti-trust laws should work tirelessly to prevent that. But I think if you gave the average unconnected Indian a choice between no internet on ideological principles, and free internet, but restricted to Facebook and a few other services, they would choose connectivity any day of the week

<comment><USER11> > But I think if you gave the average unconnected Indian a choice between no > internet on ideological principles, and free internet, but restricted to > Facebook and a few other services, they would choose connectivity any day of > the week

Sure they would. Does that mean it is good for the ecosystem on the whole? No.

80% of internet.org users are users with existing data plans. How hard do you think it is to get someone switch over from free to paid? Even for a person of privilege, he will prefer a free meal over a paid meal unless there is a huge difference in quality of a free meal (e.g. bread) vs. paid plan (e.g. steak). Considering that only well capitalised companies can provide free meals, you have just made the uphill battle that startups everyday fight against BigCos into a vertical slope.

It doesn't have to be like this. The Delhi Government is going to soon roll out a free neutral Internet covering large parts of the city. There are many models of free Internet implemented all over the world.

We'll get connectivity to the millions, but it won't be on Facebook terms - it'll be on the terms as decided by a democratically elected nation.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> On Zuckerberg's understanding of Net Neutrality and User Privacy, I'd like to quote Upton Sinclair, "It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends on his not understanding it."

Zuck has inadvertently admitted Internet-Org makes money by trading User Privacy. (Could the NSA be involved? Just asking) Wouldn't it be a good idea for a company like Facebook to make an entire generation of internet users believe that Privacy is not an option.

On April 17th, Zuck said they consult "Local Governments" to decide services (See his comment here during the QnA he had about Internet-Org: [https://www.facebook.com/zuck/posts/10102033678947881?commen...](https://www.facebook.com/zuck/posts/10102033678947881?comment_id=10102033689272191&reply_comment_id=10102033729885801&total_comments=281&comment_tracking=%7B%22tn%22%3A%22R9%22%7D)). Now he's saying Facebook and Telcos will decide which services to allow. Was he lying through his teeth during the QnA?

And please watch this Internet-Org ad broadcast in India - [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s390lZ5UXc4](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s390lZ5UXc4). Kindly enlighten me about who are they marketing it to?

I really respect Facebook and Zuck for their technological, business and charitable achievements. But it lessens with every passing day as Zuck hides an anti-Net Neutrality, anti-competitive and anti-privacy practice by giving it a false PR spin.

</comment><comment><USER13> I'm reminded of the old 'competitors' to the Internet that existed in the early 1990's. Remember Prodigy, or AoL?

<comment><USER14> Yes. And one important difference, you had to pay for those. (Some still are.)

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> I'll campaign for them if they put this in the tag line: "Free internet at the cost of your privacy". And change the domain from "internet.org" to "3rd- world-sucker-book.com" or something. I abhor the "social good" PR spin that Facebook is giving to this initiative. Otherwise, I'm all for providing connectivity to the billions. Just skip the charade. The whole initiative is a great pun on the word "free"

In the real world, this task should be best left to organizations that are truly working to keep the internet free & open (like mozilla).

</comment><comment><USER16> > Facebook says it will allow more websites and other online services to join > its "free mobile data" Internet.org scheme.

Great, so now other few big portals like Yahoo can also be accessed for "free". And Facebook will probably let you give their site for "free"... if you pay Facebook some $. Basically it always was clever business, is, and will be. Maybe it'd be a more palatable offering if Zuckerberg was more honest, if FB didn't masquerade internet.org as Zuck's blessing to humanity.

<comment><USER17> They are providing people who do not have internet with internet. They are giving people a useful service they did not have before for free. They aren't making people use the service or pay anything for it. I don't see a negative.

<comment><USER18> They are not providing the Internet to people who do not have the Internet. They are providing a couple of websites in a walled garden.

They are not giving people a useful service that they did not have before, they are giving people a deliberately broken and compromised system.

They are not giving it to people for free, they are making people pay with their data and security.

As for not forcing people to use it, there's a pretty strong push to get people to use it and a commercial monopoly in a given market is often a disincentive to new entrants.

Those are some of the negatives.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6>
        If you would just set me and my friends up as dictators,
        then we'd build a faux democracy and call it
        totalandcompletefreedom.org. Soon, everyone will benefit
        from the fake freedom and realize how amazing it is to
        be free.

</comment><comment><USER19> [https://newsroom.fb.com/news/2015/05/announcing-the- internet...](https://newsroom.fb.com/news/2015/05/announcing-the-internet-org- platform/)

</comment><comment><USER20> I am afraid that Mark and few others start to live up to their stereotype.

I am surprised how sneaky is their buisness and how far in the future they plan.

</comment><comment><USER21> is bad internet really worse than no internet? Sounds like people are letting perfect getting in the way of good enough.

<comment><USER9> It isn't bad Internet. It is a proprietary network like AOL and CompuServe, and not the Internet at all. The name is intentionally misleading.

Allowing such proprietary networks to run over public radio spectrum causes harm to the real internet - and not just by slowing it down and making it more expensive.

The main long-term harm is the stifling effect on innovation, especially in businesses that rely on network effects: Even if you are a regular internet user, but some of your friends are on internet.org, you can only use communication, collaboration or social networking apps that are on internet.org. Even in other categories of apps, you might only hear about those that are on internet.org.

This means that we will move from an economy where end users decide which apps get popular, to one where facebook picks the winners.

This is scary.

<comment><USER21> If the real internet is inherently better than this aol 2.0, shouldn't simple market forces choose the internet as the winner?

<comment><USER22> Wireless spectrum is a scarce public resource, allocated by government license, effectively granting the telco a monopoly. Simple market forces don't apply here.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> So to paraphrase...

Facebook: here's some free internet.

Angry people: Boo! Not enough free internet!!!

See also every free app in every App Store. It seems that this is just wired into human nature.

<comment><USER24> Your paraphrase is missing the other times white people showed up and built stuff "for them".

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> Good -- some Internet is better than no Internet, and if it takes a mountain of ads to get that to folks, so be it.

<comment><USER26> No this is not Internet. It is AOL v2. It could well mean that people never get any internet.

<comment><USER25> Semantics. internet.org gives folks the ability to connect on a global scale with others.

You would take that away from them, because it doesn't fit what you understand about how a set of computers should communicate?

<comment><USER27> The semantics are important. This could very well mean that those people won't get proper internet because "hey, what do you need that for, you've got internet.org!"

I understand the "some internet is better than none" but this isn't the internet. This is internet.org

On top of that, it means that Facebook gets to micromanage a populations internet usage, what they can and cannot see, with no legal oversight because "were doing you a favour!"

<comment><USER28> So you would literally go to these people and tell them they are going to continue to not have any way of communicating with one another or others throughout the world because what they're being offered isn't the "real" Internet?

You would tell them they must continue to live isolated from one another and the rest of the world? You'd deny them access to the single greatest invention humanity has _ever_ come up with because it doesn't fit your ideology?

<comment><USER18> But this isn't access to the single greatest invention humanity has ever come up with. It's a brand that takes its name and applies it to a surveillance monopoly.

It's internet.org that's denying people access to the Internet, not people pointing this fact out.

<comment><USER29> Internet.org _is_ a set of interconnected computers. You want to get political and philosophical about what is and isn't the Internet, but Mumtaz in Bangalore wants to send $5 to his wife, and doesn't get to do that unless internet.org exists.

<comment><USER22> Mumtaz is a female name. And since that suggests you aren't very familiar with India, I'll recommend not assuming that Internet.org is the only way people are going to get Internet.

It's not even taken seriously in India and got dragged into this debate only because of other proposals that are actually, intentionally malicious.

<comment><USER25> I work with a Mumtaz, are you telling me he's a lady?</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Social networks need a private "distance" measure. - <AUTHOR>

Not all friends are equal.  Not all work contacts are equal.
Social networks need a private "distance" measure, a scale of one to ten that allows you to fine tune your social network.
Sort of like having inner circles and outer circles.
Thoughts? <comment><USER2> Sure it does. What need i feel on FB, is there are some close relationships should not even know of my mafia wars friends and what i speak to them. May be have a group wall or something. But whatever it is it generically can be stated as having an inner and outer circle..or may be having more circles.</comment>


Show HN: Neofetch – A command-line system information tool written in bash 3.2+ - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/dylanaraps/neofetch <comment><AUTHOR> For those interested in how far the project has come, here's the first version of Neofetch (previously called fetch.sh).

[https://github.com/dylanaraps/neofetch/tree/90130a7e0763bffd...](https://github.com/dylanaraps/neofetch/tree/90130a7e0763bffd62c4b9ed6751a5b34913f46e)

Disclaimer: I'm the author of the project and have been working on this for around 3 years now. The project has grown from supporting only Arch Linux to supporting over 150 different Operating Systems and Distributions.</comment>


Do you watch videos longer than 5 minutes? - <AUTHOR> Hey guys, I've been trying to find out The average of time people spend on a single vídeo on YouTube. Some articles say people usually watch 50% of the video and stop. And vídeos longer than 5 minutes have less chance to be watched. Is that your case?<p>Thanks! <comment><USER2> It really depends on the video. If it's just someone in front of the camera talking, I don't watch at all.</comment>


How I Got Through a Painful Transitional Period in My Career - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@Jdrigge/how-i-got-through-a-painful-transitional-period-in-my-career-8bb778d89319 <comment><USER2> This is a good article. It reports experience simply. I think you should try reposting it. (And if anyone asked their friends to upvote it, they should call off their friends—doing that mostly doesn't work and tends to get accounts penalized).

</comment><comment><USER3> how does this have 4 upvotes in less than 1 minute? its ridiculous how rigged HN has become... just like reddit</comment>


Artificial Intelligence: March of the Machines - <AUTHOR> http://www.economist.com/news/leaders/21701119-what-history-tells-us-about-future-artificial-intelligenceand-how-society-should <comment><AUTHOR> This is a leading article of the Economist's special issue on AI.

Their take on the impact of AI on job markets is that welfare systems will have to be updated, but people should also adjust. They can take on new roles in society through lifelong learning and use of online learning, perhaps with the help of AI itself and video-game-style simulations. Character and social skills may become more important as these are unlikely to be fully substituted by machines in the foreseeable future.

I agree with most of it apart from their dismissive argument against the danger of AI as a very long term problem. Rapid progress in AI has just been demonstrated by deep learning's human-level performance in several tasks, emerged over the span of a few years. There is no guarantee that the upcoming advances will not catch us off-guard.</comment>


Startup Fundraising- The Curriculum - <AUTHOR> https://learn.onevest.com/path/4034936085170620193

<comment><USER2> I feel like this is good company for [http://startupclass.samaltman.com/](http://startupclass.samaltman.com/)</comment>


Apple-Ferrari Partnership Finally Bears Fruit With Siri-Connected Supercar - <AUTHOR> http://www.wired.com/autopia/2013/03/apple-ferrari-siri-ipad/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+wired%2Findex+%28Wired%3A+Top+Stories%29&utm_content=Google+Reader <comment><AUTHOR> Nice first step, cars are just begging for a UX designer to come in and rethink layouts. I can't wait for the 3D printed car.</comment>


Free SVG/TTF social icons all of the Illustrator files included - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/uloga/socialicons <comment><USER2> Looks interesting, would be great to have a screenshot sample in the README, more people are likely to bookmark it if they can quickly see what the icons look like.

<comment><AUTHOR> They have a example site, if you scroll to bottom or visit [http://uloga.github.io/socialicons/](http://uloga.github.io/socialicons/) you can see examples.</comment></comment>


Coffee Rust Is Going to Ruin Your Morning - <AUTHOR> https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2020/09/coffee-rust/616358/ <comment><USER2> We had wet summer this year and many tomatoes went brown from the fungal rot. But I have treated some of them with mycorrhizal fungi[1] shortly after planting and the treated plants are remarkably better off, still green. Seems like these symbiotic fungi protected the plants against the pest. Anyone tried that with coffee?

[1][https://www.symbiom.cz/en/p-3-symbivit](https://www.symbiom.cz/en/p-3-symbivit)</comment>


US fertility rate falls to 'all-time low,' CDC says - <AUTHOR> https://www.cnn.com/2019/07/24/health/fertility-rate-births-2018-cdc-study/index.html <comment><USER2> I really don't think this is a bad thing.

In practice it's bad because all our economics and industry is based around infinite growth. It's not about making products so good they last a long time, reduce factory work and increase wages for everyone involved. It's about advertising, selling people more things, pleasing shareholders (which always involves increase revenue; never stability), obsolescence (both planned and negligent), etc. When you talk about reducing overall pollution, reductions in population will reduce consumption and waste.

But for that type of attitude to take hold, there needs to be a huge shit if the way people in both the west and east look at the world. Sadly I don't think that will happen without a crisis, whether that's over or under population. Otherwise people start crying out "eugenics" or some racist "replacement" rubbish.

On a side tangent, I wonder if the very real risk over the abortion debate going to the Supreme Court in the US has an effect on this. Are people choosing to not have kids now because it may not be a choice soon, or if Cassy vs Planned Parenthood gets extended, will the birth rate increase because people lose one of their birth control options?

<comment><USER3> I know it's a typo but very funny

"But for that type of attitude to take hold, there needs to be a huge shit"

Pretty sure you meant shift</comment></comment>


Popcorn App DMCA Takedown - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/github/dmca/blob/master/2014-07-11-MPAA.md

<comment><USER2> Well, if that goes - there's a few more that'll be next.

If you know what you're doing, the convenience with which you can have a fully stocked and extremely up-to-date media experience is staggering.

For around $10 a month you can have every tv show, every movie (released to blu) at your fingertips in 1080p consistently / daily. A player like XBMC is just the final amazing cherry on top.

Truth is, unless the studios match this - it's going to be a long well-paced decline for them all.

<comment><USER3> The thing is, there's Amazon and Netflix which covers most movies and shows in the US.

Unfortunately it's JUST in the US. Netflix UK for example doesn't have Caprica. That was on Lovefilm ... then it's not Amazon prime now has it as Pay per view.

I was watching StarTrek TNG on Netflix last week. Started at the start of Season Three. Suddenly it disappears from my "Resume watching list". A quick search of it later only Season Four and later is available.

The Matrix, not on Netflix UK.

I could go on.

Studios need to stop thinking in terms of DVD sales, and regions and understand that the global market WILL NOT WAIT, and WILL NOT TOLERATE this behavior and look for other ways to watch movies/shows that they want to watch.

<comment><USER2> Yes, you're absolutely right. If I could send them 30 euros a month, instead of $10 to my usenet provider I would. I can't, so I don't. (I live way way way away, netflix is a distant dream here)

Also: I tried netflix at one point (year ago or so, with some proxy thing) - It pales in comparison to a proper XBMC setup. I would _still_ swap over, but it would be a step down.</comment></comment></comment>


Why ++[[]][+[]]+[+[]] = 10 in JavaScript - <AUTHOR> http://stackoverflow.com/questions/7202157/can-you-explain-why-10

<comment><USER3> Seems like "this is why Javascript sucks!" is a common reaction here, which I find strange on a "hacker" community. It's a fun little brainteaser, not production code. Use your head a little?

<comment><USER4> It demonstrates language issues that can (and often do) lead to problems in production. So the response is completely appropriate.

<comment><USER3> About the only problem I can think of here is that it makes it harder to filter/sanitize for XSS. But I don't think the problem here is Javascript. Look at SQL injection - trying to escape user input is just an endless game of whack-a-mole. The proper way to deal with it is parameterized queries. HTML doesn't have anything similar AFAIK.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> My question is, _when_ did that start working in Javascript?

Does this trick work in Brendan Eich's first JS implementaion in Netscape 2.0? Which came first, the spec or the implementation?

<comment><USER6> Funny thing, that.

The implementation came first. From what I understood, Microsoft looked at Netscape's implementation, wrote a spec from that and implemented it - so when time came to standardize it, Microsoft had a readily available spec (having written one after reverse engineering Netscape's implementation). Since Javascript has lots of little quirks, Microsoft didn't quite get everything right and so when the final spec was published, Netscape's implementation was actually in violation of it in a couple of places.

I guess that's funny depending on who you are.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> ((__=!($=[]))+$)[$++]+(_={}+$)[$]+_[$++]+_[$]+(__+_)[--$]+(!__+_)[$]

returns "foobar"

</comment><comment><USER8> This sort of thing really bothers me with Javascript. Using the unary + operator on an array should be an error. Hiding errors by having implicit type convertions doesn't help me fix those errors.

You may say that users don't need to see to see strange error messages they don't understand. Quite right, what we need instead is to have a way for browsers to transmit uncaught exceptions in JS to the server.

<comment><USER9> What should the unary + operator do except for type coercion into a number? Or are you saying it should only work on strings?

It just doesn't seem like something that would happen accidentally, there's no reason to put + on something unless you are explicitly trying to coerce it into a number. It's not like unary minus where -x; could have some other semantic meaning for something that is already a number and you make a mistake and give it an array (which javascript has, and I think is a much more likely source of error than the unary plus).

<comment><USER8> Using an array (or a string for that matter) where only a number should be is an error. I'd like to see an exception thrown and the current JS uncaught- exception-handler would be invoked, assuming something else catches it.

If I want an array to be a number, I'll call .Count on the array or whatever the applicable property I want is.

<comment><USER9> I don't think you understand what I am trying to say.

The unary '+' operator is completely pointless if something is already a number, it is a no-op. Literally the only time anyone would ever type +x is if x is _not_ a number, if someone chose to write +x and x turned out to unexpectedly be an array, pretty much the only thing that you know they were thinking of when they wrote the + was that they thought x isn't a number; maybe a string if they were using +x instead of parseFloat(x), but definitely not a number.

It just isn't a reasonable example of a situation where an array is being used where a number should be, +x where you know that x is a number would make no sense. If you talk about -x then that is completely different, people who write -x almost certainly expect it to be a number, and -[] === 0. Unary plus is just not the right example for awful type coercion here.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> From wtfjs.com:

      ",,," == Array((null,'cool',false,NaN,4)); // true

<comment><USER11> Clever, but not as surprising...

(null,'cool',false,NaN,4) evaluates to the last expression - <USER2>

Array(4) creates an array with 4 elements.

Array(4).toString() = ",,,"

<comment><USER12> You describe that as "not surprising"? Yikes.

<comment><USER11> It's surprising if you haven't used javascript before I guess.

<comment><USER13> You can use javascript for years and never come across a situation where you'd do or see several of the things found in that small statement.

<comment><USER11> There are only 3 things, which aren't surprising to anyone who has done much js.

      1). a list of expressions eg (foo,bar,baz) evaluates to the last one.
      2). Array(4) creates an empty array of 4 elements
      2). Array(4).toString() = ",,,"

<comment><USER14> I don't think the comma operator wouldn't be surprising to an experienced js programmer. I can't remember a single piece of serious code where I could see it in use.

The same applies to the void operator, I can think of one or two cases at most where it would be useful, but I don't see anyone using it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Thought some and came up with an way to convert whichever natural number you want into this form.

<https://gist.github.com/1531201>

It depends on underscore.js for the functional bits.

<comment><USER16> Wow, those are _really_ unfortunate variable names.

I've never seen the term "gook" outside of a racial slur context.

<comment><USER15> Changed. Figured that the time it would have taken to write up something about people being able to look past racial slurs blah blah blah was more than just "fixing" it.

<comment><USER15> Also, I meant to say thank you as well. I would like to avoid offending anyone with variable name choices. So, thank you for pointing that out.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Reminds me of: <http://adamcecc.blogspot.com/2011/01/javascript.html>

</comment><comment><USER18> I can't find a link to a page, from some time ago, in which every letter and number was obtained combining only parentheses and punctuation.

<comment><USER11> It's linked directly in the original question?

<http://sla.ckers.org/forum/read.php?24,33349,33405>

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> related: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1154338>

</comment><comment><USER20> I wonder how people come up with this kind of code to begin with?

<comment><USER21> This comes from an attempt to write valid JavaScript without using any letters or numbers. It's partly for the sake of demonstrating it's possible and part for security testing reasons, to show that poorly written input validation filters can be bypassed.

<comment><USER22> True! you wont use it. I guess it'll end up being just an Interview Question.

<comment><USER10> The correct interview question is, "Write a filter that blocks executable JavaScript but allows text." And the correct answer is "Kobayashi Maru."

<comment><USER23> _The correct interview question is, "Write a filter that blocks executable JavaScript but allows text._

I would hire you on the spot, my post history is littered with how irrelevant these type of questions are to gauging ones ability to develop real world solutions. You pretty much summed up the irony nicely.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> This is the reason I prefer strongly typed languages. Allowing developers to play fast and loose with data types only leads to less maintainability down the road and makes code difficult to read.

<comment><USER10> I am not a PL expert, but is this a strong vs. weak type problem or an implicit conversion problem? My layman's (simplistic) model is that "weakly typed" languages allow entities to change their type at runtime, strongly typed languages do not.

But what we have here is an expression where entities are being implicitly converted into intermediate values, along with operators that do different things based on the values they are given. For example, the behaviour of the "+" infix operator in JavaScript could be replicated in any strongly typed language that has pattern matching:

      x:string + y:string -> concat(x,y)
      x:stringable + y:string -> concat(toString(x), y)
      x:string + y:stringable -> concat(x, toString(y))
      x:numeric + y:numeric -> sum(x,y)
      ...

I recall implicit conversion being one of the gotchas in C++. While its casts break strictly strong typing, a program with lots of implicit conversions can behave just about as mysteriously as the example JavaScript.

Back in the day when I wrote C++ (by gaslight, after I rode my penny farthing to the office), any one-argument constructor was presumed to be an implicit conversion unless you provided the "explicit" keyword.

UPDATE (and thanks to the hacker who pointed me in this direction):

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

It seems that the expression "Strong typing" subsumes both the concept of static typing (variables and/or values do not change their types) and of coercion. (Along with other issues such as whether programmers can deliberately evade restrictions).

If I were to rewrite my question, I would ask if this is a strong typing problem overall or just the subset of strong typing issues concerning coercion?

So part of the issue with this code is implicit coercion, which is not "strong typing," but the other is polymorphic operators like "+", which are independent of strong vs. weak typing.

<comment><USER25> Wikipedia has a good page on this subject. In a nutshell, "strong/weak" typing is not formally defined. Usually languages are called weakly typed when they allow a lot of implicit type coercion or just don't strictly enforce types. It's not at all unique to dynamically typed languages. C is pretty weakly typed, for example. And a static language could just as easily have a quirk like this JavaScript thing.

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

Update to your update:

Strong typing does not subsume static typing. Ruby, for example, is dynamic and quite strongly typed. You can't bypass the type system at all, and the only real coercion is to boolean, which follows a very simple rule.

<comment><USER10> While the phrases don't seem to have strict definitions, by the Wikipedia description of Strong Typing ,there is an overlap with Static Typing:

 _The mandatory requirement, by a language definition, of compile-time checks for type constraint violations. That is, the compiler ensures that operations only occur on operand types that are valid for the operation. However, that is also the definition of static typing, leading some experts to state: "Static typing is often confused with StrongTyping"..._

 _Fixed and invariable typing of data objects. The type of a given data object does not vary over that object's lifetime. For example, class instances may not have their class altered._

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

I guess this is one of those things where the correct response to any claim about "Strong," "Static," "Weak," or "Dynamic" typing is to ask the speaker what, specifically, he is thinking of.

In this case, you and I are exploring the subject in some depth, but the person who originally used the phrase "Strongly Typed" is silent, so neither of us has any idea what he had in mind.

<comment><USER26> The thing is in a weakly typed language you can implement functions that do coercion, while a strongly typed language will not let you as generally there is a fixed type (or type class) to each parameter. That does not mean the standard built in or library functions have to do javascript levels of coercion though, I think there are better balances.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> Reminds me of the J programming language

<comment><USER28> Hold up, I think I just stumbled on to a fellow alum.

(Surely no other university teaches that language besides mine, right?)

<comment><USER29> Which university are you talking about?

(I'm learning J and other APL derivatives right now by myself by experimenting with the J docs and pinging the amazing people at the J software forums).

<comment><USER28> Trinity University in San Antonio. One of our profs has been working on J for decades.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> If you rely on that sort of thing in production code, you're doing it wrong.

<comment><USER8> Wow, -1 points! Are the two of you saying that this is a good thing for production code?

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> Putting this in the category of "not going to think hard about this, because it's only going to make me upset and angry."</comment>