40% of foreign students in the US have no close American friends on campus - <AUTHOR> https://qz.com/31376/40-of-foreign-students-in-the-us-have-no-close-friends-on-campus-the-culture-shock-of-loneliness/ <comment><USER2> It seems obvious that a huge (and hard to solve) reason for this is simply language! There are many levels of language proficiency:

       Level 1: Can read and write it at your own pace
       Level 2: Can comfortably converse in a professional setting (little slang or cultural knowledge needed)
       Level 3: Can comfortably converse in a social setting (slang, faster speech, less clarification)
       Level 4: Can do all of the above passively, being able to pick up valuable information just by overhearing conversation without focused metal effort
       Level 5: Ability to do all of the above in a noisy and hectic situation (like a party, sporting event, etc)

It's really, really hard to make good friends without getting to Level 4 or 5. I work with many people for whom English is a second language. At work they don't miss a beat and are great teammates. But it can fall apart in a social setting. Once there are 5 overlapping streams of conversation stuffed full of cultural references these coworkers of mine very frequently lose track of the conversation and become quieter and quieter over time.

I bet you'd find that this 40% number is much different for students studying abroad in a country where their native language is common. My US friends who moved to the UK or Australia had no problem making friends.

<comment><USER3> I'm not convinced that language is actually such an essential aspect. Cultural similarity seems like a much bigger one.

For example, I've seen Indians with great English struggle a lot more to fit in and acclimate than French students with poor English but more shared cultural touchstones. As an American, I've found it to be much easier to make friends with Europeans than with students from non-Western cultures—even after controlling for English levels.

<comment><USER4> I agree to this. As a Non western student I never had any American friends in Collage. After more than a decade living in the US I still don't have any. Primarily because I am introverted but culturally I care less about American sports and music (two big cultural domains).

Edit: Another important factor (at least during collage) is the financial one. As a student from a poor country I had far less financial resources to afford a life style that American students enjoy. For example, I couldn't afford to go out or have a Car.

<comment><USER5> you do know that many Americans don't focus heavily on American sports and music? As someone who was born in the USA and raised, I have zero interest in sports. Music, I have a fleeting interest due to it's global acceptance.

Financially, not all Americans are rich or come from 2 income households. Alot of 18yr olds+ celebrate independence by moving out, taking a crappy local job at a fast food or retail and still, make American friends.

Introvertness isn't an issue, did you actually try? There are so many clubs that allow anyone to join and be friends. From meetup.com to local bookclubs.

But, we're also forgetting the big issue. Being American isn't like most countries in the world where you're born into a homogenous society. If you've lived more than a decade in the USA, and are a citizen, congratulations! You're a citizen, if any of your friends who aren't native born but also become naturalized, congratulations they're Americans!

Of course, I, know nothing of your background, so the above is all assumptions.

But, I felt like having to write this, as I wrap up spending 6 months in Japan.

<comment><USER6> "Introvertness isn't an issue, did you actually try?"

I don't think you understand introvertedness.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> People should know the Quartz headline is wrong.

Follow the source link and you find that 40% have no close _American_ friends, which is different from "friends on campus". I checked the source looking for a baseline (how many domestic students have no close friends) and discovered that it was specifically about international students making friends with Americans.

> "Nearly 40 percent of the survey respondents had no close American friends > and would have liked more meaningful interaction with people born here"

This is a very different result - still important, but the corrected stat and the free-response listed in the source make clear that we're looking at a different question than simple loneliness.

edit: The HN headline has been updated, which is great news. Now if only Quartz could meet the same standards...

<comment><USER8> This completely invalidates the headline! Go study in Japan or anywhere, and you will see that foreign students mostly hang out with each other. Certainly their close friends will be fellow foreign students. This is mostly because local students already have an established friend group.

Besides, many are on short exchange programmes. How close friends can you really become during a 1-2 year exchange? How many of those 40% had just arrived on the last couple of months?

<comment><USER9> "Go study in Japan or anywhere, and you will see that foreign students mostly hang out with each other."

That is not a right comparison. The U.S is not Japan.

<comment><USER10> Full points for worthless technical accuracy on "the US is not Japan". Zero points for accuracy of any kind on "the US is not anywhere".

<comment><USER9> Yes. If you know any history, the U.S is singular. I deserve more than zero points for highlighting that.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Before I got into software development I worked for a South Korean company that helped high-level students get into American and Canadian universities. The single biggest source of stress for myself and the other westerners working there is that the administration's (and the parents'!) only goal was to get these kids into a school, and absolutely no thought was given to acclimating them to a different culture or teaching them the skills they would need to thrive in a very different educational system and social climate. We (the foreign teachers) would try to sneak cultural lessons in and hold extra classes about how to join campus organizations and social clubs, and we'd always get in trouble with the management because "it wasn't important". There's a very real sense in East Asia that once you get into an American university that you'll become successful, but some of the brightest kids are coming back to their home countries with a 2.7GPA, a memory of crushing loneliness, and many tens of thousands of dollars wasted. It's a solvable problem that no one is really interested in even examining.

<comment><USER12> I'd say many expat europeans or americans in Asia (Shangai, south korea) don't make any effort in making close native friends. Many of them prefer to hang out with people from their own country, or other western people. Only a few think about "acclimating to a different culture or learn new skills they would need to thrive in a very different educational system and social climate".

<comment><USER13> I lived 5 years in South Korea, and well:

* It was incredibly easy to meet other foreigners, and not necessarily westerners, far from that actually. I now have genuine friends on every continent.

* Since you're on the same boat, you can relate. Given how unique the work and life environment can be, it's nice to be able to talk with people who'll understand you.

* Making native friends isn't easy, even when you're making real efforts.

I don't have an unlimited amount of energy I can put into socializing, so after a short while I stopped trying too hard. Even the Korean friends I made before my move weren't too interested in hanging out once I lived there.

<comment><USER14> I wonder how much it comes from the culture in Korea. I've been living in Tokyo for 3 years, and although I never to the university here, I my observations in the country are that: * Korean people tend to stick together and don't mix much with other nationalities * Chinese people integrate so well that their Japanese friends and acquaintances barely notice they are not Japanese. And as they are not afraid to speak in English they're able to make English speaking friends too. * Unless they had some exposure to western countries, many Japanese people tend to be superficially friendly due to keeping their public persona separated from their true feelings (the 2 concepts of tatemae vs honne). And this not specific to making international friends, as they have themselves the same difficulty making Japanese true friends. * English speaking foreigners tend to hang out together or with English speaking Japanese people, unless they're introduced through a friend to Japanese people who can't speak English.

<comment><USER11> A great deal of that is probably the tension between the two countries - Koreans tend to feel it far more personally (they were the ones invaded, after all). Having lived in Seoul for the same amount of time I'd say the same thing, only about Japanese. I'd say you're on the money about Chinese folks, though. Chinese people bring the party with them, for sure.

Koreans have a saying about their neighbors: "The Chinese love you rudely. The Japanese hate you politely."

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> I spent a year in US as a foreign student. From my previous experiences (internships in UK and Germany), I knew it would be difficult to make friends with "locals". In UK, I was in a dorm during the summer with a private room, shared bathroom and kitchen. Most people were eating in their room. I finally made friend with one british guy as he was cooking. He told me later he didn't think he would make friends during the short summer session, even less with a foreigner. His girlfriend owned a pub, I had a great summer!

In the US, I didn't realize it would be even more difficult because 90% of the students in MS are foreigners in the college I attended. Anyway, I decided that the best way to make American friends was to be with them all day long. I joined a fraternity on campus.

This was not easy. Most fraternities never had a foreign student, except the one I was accepted in. Because my english was not great, I focused all my time on 1 fraternity to increase my chances of being accepted. I was the only foreigner in all fraternities this week.

It was not always easy, but it was worth it. I joined while doing my MS, all my brothers where freshmen. We had very different work load and about 4-year difference. But I did make friends with all of them. I spent Christmas with one of my friend's family (I didn't leave the US for winter break). It was a great experience.

I'm rather an introvert. But when you travel in a foreign country, you have to talk to strangers all the time. Expectations are also lower when you don't master the language fully. You have to be very direct and explicit in your communications.

<comment><USER16> > In UK, I was in a dorm during the summer with a private room, shared > bathroom and kitchen.

That's a shame. The kitchens were the most social spaces at my university. I think taking hot food into rooms was forbidden -- in any case, few did so.

I remember giving my views on plans for new dorms at my university, which were planned to use small kitchens shared between 4-6 students. I, and many others, objected -- they were replacing buildings with large kitchens, shared with 20 or more students. Much better for meeting people and making friends. It opened after I'd graduated, but judging by the pictures, the kitchens are for about 12-14 people, possibly more :-)

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> Fwiw 10 years ago I was organizing weekly dance parties in a college town. 80% of our attendance was foreign students. Nightly I would have kids from all over the world profusiosly thanking me. The bulk of the complements were in one way another "thank you so much for putting this on I feel like I'm home. I don't get American culture but I get this." 10 years later I still have people coming up to me randomly thanking me saying they've stuck around because of friends they made.

In my limited experience I feel there's a real cultural mis-match with kids from other countries coming here to study. Most of the kids I met were from huge cities and the shock of being in a small college town was in many was too much for them. That and the greek system was overtly hostile to them.

On side a note it's humorous what many kids take back with them from their time in America. It's worth doing an image search of "American party" to see what I mean.

<comment><USER18> Why do you say that the greek system was hostile to foreign students, more so than the regular social experience of college?

<comment><USER17> Well I'm speaking from experience and this in no way will apply across all schools or groups. As such I know of some great organizations which have great missions and members and do great work. That said at this particular university which was largely greek, the largest fraternities and sororities were the largest offenders of indoctrinated and systemic racism which had subsequently seeped into the school culture and administration as a whole. That school has had numerous national scandals as a direct result. The scandals are just the instances that get reported and they're just the tip of the iceberg. Daily life for the kids I knew was fraught with fear and apprehension. It's also one of the reasons why I think when we were doing our parties we had so many foreign kids come out and respond the way they did.

<comment><USER19> What part of the country was this? I find this hard to believe on the west coast or parts of the east coast (NYE/Boston). If you're talking the South or midwest then ok it makes sense.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> As a former international student, the first year was incredibly lonely as I used to be a deep introvert. The article mentions some of the obstacles but perhaps one of biggest ones is being able to communicate well with Americans. I used to be incredibly anxious about buying groceries simply because I talked very fast English with a heavy accent. I could _talk_ but not _communicate_ ; which means that I could convey facts, but I couldn't strike up a conversation with a stranger, or make a joke. I didn't understand American sarcasm and would be alarmed by some of the things Americans said. And this is despite me having pretty good knowledge of English; I can only imagine how hard it must be for Chinese/Korean etc. students.

The best thing that happened to me was to get an internship in a company where my team was composed mostly of Americans. I learned how to talk slower and more importantly, slowly understood sarcasm as well. Perhaps most Americans don't realize just how much of a shared culture is needed for immigrants to understand before they can communicate effectively.

<comment><USER21> The political correctness statement is so spot on. I still struggle with that till now. People just don't want to talk about certain issues here it seems; a stark contrast to europeans

<comment><USER22> Give an example.

<comment><USER23> Not exactly political correctness in left vs right meaning but, where I am from, you would say something like "I would kill him/you" causally and no one will think twice. That sort of thing tends to freak out Americans (I know cause I said it) who tend to take it much more seriously. For me, it was just causal expression.

Americans expect you to show a lot more enthusiasm then Europeans and if you don't show it, they will consider you rude and act towards you accordingly. Every single question is "good question" \- it seemed to be rude to say that some of them are not good questions even to third parties in social setting.

On political correctness: in my culture, I know maybe one person who would identify herself as feminist publicly. You are expected to dislike feminism even when you are pro-equality. It seems to be the opposite in American liberal campuses (tho radical feminism seems to be waaay more aggressive then anything I know in here). Moreover, what Americans consider "too revealing" seems "perfectly normal" to me. I have seen American boys react in surprising way toward girls that wore mini skirts that were short, but still within normal range to me.

So, if you want example of political correctness, people from here might consider it perfectly normal to blame feminity when woman does something stupid or just makes them angry - that definitely wont fly in many American groups. That does not necessary means the person who said it is sexist, I would even say actual sexist tend to be more careful over what they say in my experience. Nevertheless, American liberals would not accept such thing at all.

<comment><USER22> > people from here might consider it perfectly normal to blame feminity when > woman does something stupid or just makes them angry [...] That does not > necessary means the person who said it is sexist

I am going to be descriptive here. Non-judgemental. But: that... is sexist. By definition. It perpetuates the idea that "being a woman" is a thing that can be blamed for an action. Continuing to talk in that way perpetuates sexism.

> You are expected to dislike feminism even when you are pro-equality.

Again, this is structural/cultural sexism. You might not want to hear that, and you might not think it's a problem, but that's what it is. So when you enter a place where the culture is not accepting of that sexism, I don't know why you should expect not to have backlash if you continue to act like that.

<comment><USER23> I understand the impact you have in mind.

I mostly wanted to distinguish "saying those things as verbal salad" from "really assuming girls are like that and/or raising girls to be like that". Kind of like with the "killed him" thing - the person saying the words does not really think about killing. As in, the person saying it would treat me equally while different more polite person might not say it out of politeness, but will treat me like the stereotype. The latter kind exist and is the bigger threat to me.

I am not saying that our culture does not have elements of sexism in it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> When I was in college, circa 20 years ago, I studied Korean. (I had a friend growing up who was Korean, and he taught me swear words and such, and I figured if I ever got the chance to study I would.)

Anyway, I was 6 months into a language course that was heavily populated by US-born Korean students who were taking it for the easy A... I needed a tutor to keep up so I reached out to the teacher who introduced me to a few Korean exchange students.

They lived in their own apartment, not the dorms. They cooked their own food, didn't go to the cafeterias. Fast forward a bit, my fraternity had a charity event and I invited a few of them... was a casual invite, said something like, "Hey we're doing this thing, tell your friends!"

A week later at the charity concert like 60 Korean exchange students showed up. Every single one of them was dressed in a tux or evening gown. Totally classed up the place. Had no idea there were that many exchange students until that night.

And they were all really appreciative of the invite. Basically said no one had invited them to any events on campus before... I met some new folks, knew just enough Korean at that point to ingratiate myself and get invited out drinking after the event... and quickly realized I was playing checkers at a chess tournament when it came to drinking with Koreans. Ha.

Made some friends out of the deal, but it wouldn't have happened without everyone going outside of their comfort zone a bit.

</comment><comment><USER25> I sometimes work with foreign engineers, often educated in America and working their first or second job. My wife and I often invite them and their spouse home for a dinner.

In every case, they mention sometime during the evening that its the first American home they have ever been inside. After years of school and job. Every, every case.

Americans, we can do something about this! Invite a newcomer coworker to join you for dinner! Its so simple.

<comment><USER26> That's a great point.

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> Just an anecdote from a medium sized German town:

We had two big bunches of foreign students, Chinese and US Americans. Americans organized a lot of parties, the Chinese were hard to engage with. We had a big international community (language exchange regular meetings, parties, movies, BBQs, etc.) But the general thing from the Chinese group was what seemed like shyness. Even when one managed to get them to join, they tended to leave early and barely interact (not for a lack of trying). There were exceptions of course, and I'm currently subletting my apartment (while in another country) to two Chinese students, one of whom turned out to be very talkative once he opened up. But for the majority I met it's really hard to get them to get them to open up. There is some cultural barrier that's very hard to break.

Of course this might be the same for other nationalities, but as those usually arrived here alone, they didn't have a group of countrymen to fall back to and I couldn't tell.

</comment><comment><USER28> I moved to the US when I was 12 and my middle school principal tried finding someone who spoke my language that I could shadow. She couldn't. Little did I know then, but I think that it might have been the thing that had the biggest outcome in my success in the US.

There were other kids who joined the school from other countries right around the same time as me (we all did ESL together), but they all spoke languages that were highly represented in the school. Over the years, it was incredibly noticeable to me how insular they ended up -- hanging out mostly with expat friends, speaking their native language on breaks, etc.

Meanwhile, I had to try and make American friends any way possible -- which for me was through our school's robotics club (and since I am typing this here, you can guess that the rest is history)

I completely understand the way immigrants rightfully treasure and celebrate their heritage. But I have always found it puzzling -- especially in college -- to see people from overseas mostly hanging out with their own.

I have heard far too many times how "cold" Americans are, how they aren't friendly to foreigners, etc. At least in my experience, that could not be further from the truth. What I HAVE observed is foreigners like myself failing to leave the safety of their known communities and fulling embracing the experience they supposedly came here for.

</comment><comment><USER29> I can't generalize for every school, or everyone at every school. I attended an engineering program at one of the top 5 schools by total international student population.

Honestly, international students are cliquey. Many of them that I talk to openly admit to cheating on their english proficiency exams universities require you to take before you can attend. Meshing with local students is nearly impossible if you don't understand the language proficiently.

I'd expect you'd see roughly the same numbers if you looked at American students in Chinese universities, or elsewhere. But we have to make this anti- American because its Quartz, and Trump is bad, right?

<comment><USER30> > international students are cliquey.

It might help if you understand why they're cliquey. Many of them are living away from home for the first time, so hanging out with familiar faces and having shared cultural references is comforting (though it sounds wrong). They may not be as proficient in English as they are in their native tongues, so they speak their own languages when they're with each other. And of course to an outsider, a group of people speaking a foreign language seems very forbidding and closed off. Believe me, they (mostly) don't want to be seen that way.

I think pretty much every "group" is cliquey. My own Masters class (about 20-25 people, 50-50 American/foreign) splintered into 2-3 disjoint groups almost immediately after the introductory mixer. I understood and spoke English fine. But not knowing any American pop culture (music, TV shows, sci- fi, games etc. and my own introversion, meant I didn't know then how to deal with people I didn't that have much in common with) meant that I was filtered out of the most likely "group" (students roughly my age). They may all have been speaking English but all the alien (to me) cultural references made it seem forbidding (who's Stephen Colbert? what's Arrested Development? why is it a faux pas to admit liking Coldplay and U2 and Nickelback?). I ended up hanging out with other students from my own country.

> I'd expect you'd see roughly the same numbers if you looked at American > students in Chinese universities, or elsewhere

You're right. Most people struggle to flourish socially in foreign cultures; I think this is universally true.

> But we have to make this anti-American

I didn't see the article as anti-American at all. It was more "Isn't it unfortunate how these students are missing out?"

I personally blame myself for my own social isolation during my Masters. I should've tried harder.

<comment><USER31> Out of curiousity, did you meet or make many American friends? To me, I enjoy meeting different people from different cultures. I imagine I am not the only one.

<comment><USER30> Not many. I too enjoy meeting people from different cultures but...it's difficult, for me at least. I mean I find it hard to make friends period, regardless of culture.

<comment><USER31> I understand that. Going back to your original comment, I think Americans will understand that you don't get those culturual references, and several will not mind showing you and helping you. For me it's actually a lot of fun to show different parts of american cultureand seeing someone else experience it for the first time (Like here: [https://xkcd.com/1053/](https://xkcd.com/1053/) ). One of the most interesting things that happens if they ask "well why is this part of culture like this", because sometimes I do not even know, so I get to learn a bit about my culture as well.

<comment><USER30> Agreed. And that's the part that I take the blame for. When you're adrift in a culture, you should ask for help. In my (relative) immaturity, I thought asking questions would be considered annoying, rather than being a way to build bridges.

<comment><USER31> I understand why you could have that mentality though, you can't be blamed for it. I hope sometime you would be able to visit the USA with that knowledge and get a better experience!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> You can become extremely proficient in the language and be highly sensitive to the culture. You can also spend 10 years in the country to the point were you grasp practically everything, no matter how much randomness is involved in the conversation or the place and time it takes place.

It does not matter. Majority of foreigners, westerners or not, won't have real local friends in English speaking countries.

Even though you do acclimatize to the culture and language you might still not be fond of it. I lived in countries were it would have been easier than in others to interact with people, but in the end I wasn't able to because I either wasn't a fond drinker (commonplace in all english speaking countries) or I didn't enjoy being involved in mundane silly-office conversations during the smoke break.

Most of the fresh expats can't even realize what they are getting into when they move into another country. If you are deciding to do so and you come across this post, do it, go and check it out, but beware that your inner you will never completely mold to that place.

</comment><comment><USER33> I am curious as to what the ultimate goal is for these foreign undergrads. Get a job in America? Go back home and get a job?

I guess it all depends on the home country and the American school, but I wonder how valuable an American undergrad degree is worth in their home countries?

I know in Japan it often isn't seen as worth it because in Japanese undergrad programs, the people you meet often are a major part of your network along with the people you went to high school and middle school. And these networks are essential to your career arc.

So, by going to school in the US, you lose out on these networks.

But, if your goal is to get a job at an international company where you speak English or get a job in the US, then I guess it is worth it.

<comment><USER34> Some people (like me) just wanted to experience living in the US for some longer time. Some people (like me) just wanted to experience something else than just the home country. Eventually getting a job here was on the plan, but since I over time started to dislike this place, I will be going back home in a few months. I am glad I came here because it allowed to learn more about the US.

</comment></comment><comment><USER35> It takes a lot of courage to put yourself in a strange environment, away from familiar comforts and friends and family, into the care of strangers, to learn about a million faults they have, and then learn to love them anyway, and, most importantly, to _really allow the experience to change you._

</comment><comment><USER36> What does close friends mean? A lot of relationships in the US are based on "activity" partners[0]. Someone to go out with, sharing a same hobby, passions etc. Close friends in other countries means a lot more than just activity partners.

I had the same experience in grad school, I only had "activity" partners, than what I would call close friendships with Americans. It always felt "distant". It's sadly true even today.

[0] I couldn't find the relevant article that discussed about this, specifically in the American context.

<comment><USER37> Yes the most American website ever is meetup.com go search the meetups in your area and at least 95% if not 100% are what you DO at work or when not at work, and almost none exist to BE someone or to hang out with an identity. The only identity groups will be like "something area singles group". I find it typically American that all americans aspire while not wanting to appear aspirational, so lots of americans want to start a business, but none would ever be caught dead at a meetup called "we want to start our businesses" or "we want to lose weight", americans can have "gym buddies" to hang out with cool bros but never "weight loss buddies" because that sounds very aspirational. Perhaps Americans are too pessimistic to be caught sounding that optimistic, I donno. Its a pity, you'd think meetup would be a good place for "I wanna learn (some technology)" but thats as unamerican as possible because its identifying as wanting to learn something as opposed to physically doing something, and even worse its aspirational.

Also it never fails to amuse me that they'll be about one hiking group per half million people in a metro area and they all claim they're the "real group" the "fun group" the only "active group". Something to do with Dunbar's number you just can't have 1000 americans work together they have to make smaller tribes and pretend the other tribes don't exist. All a bunch of foolishness. Sometimes I think meetup.com is all an elaborate stunt by some grad student gathering anthropological data about Dunbars number.

</comment></comment><comment><USER38> I teach at a midwest college and I worry about my international students. Some of them do great but too many of them struggle and I don't have the skills or even the time to help them. I try to make sure that they get mixed into groups with the students from the USA in the hopes of encouraging the creation of friendships but I often feel like the university is just taking their international tuition and not doing enough to help them.

<comment><USER39> As a foreign student, thank you. Among close American friends, some of them were acquired through my class projects. Although it might not be the most effective channel, it definitely makes a difference.

I think the best the school could do is to make the students stay in dorms with shared rooms when they come to study. Roommates, in my anecdotal experience, are among the best channels to acquire friends. If the school doesn't have the policy in the first place, then perhaps there is little that anyone could do to help, if the students don't make it a priority.

</comment></comment><comment><USER40> > 40% of foreign students in the US have no close friends on campus

Missing important data for contrast: How many non-foreign have no close friends on campus.

<comment><USER41> Exactly. Close friends? I'd guess it's _at least_ 20-25%.

College can be a weird place. Personally I had a lot of people I hung out with for a semester or two, but nobody I liked enough to truly be friends with.

</comment></comment><comment><USER42> When I came to the US, I made an effort to reach out to Americans (in the dorms, in class, etc). I found that, after you remove the veneer of programmed culture and biases, under it we're basically all the same: similar goals, fears, aspirations, etc. I formed some very close friendships with Americans, and I'm still close friends with them 20+ years later.

My point is: as a newbie in this country, _I_ had to make the effort; if I didn't do that, I would not have made those friendships.

<comment><USER43> Not everyone is up to making that effort (I agree that they _should_).

For me personally, I could easily have ended up in the 40%. I was not very social, and would have had problems making friends with anyone. As an Indian, I'd probably have welcomed Indian friends, just because I'd have felt less ill-at-ease with them. Luckily, my English was good, I loved playing sports, and some American students made an effort to make friends. That made all the difference. I really appreciate those classmates who made an effort to know a strange-looking, strange-talking kid. They made a massive positive difference in my life.

Also, I did some free tutoring. I probably wouldn't know anyone outside of Engineering, had I not done that.

Another large difference nowadays, I suspect, is that a critical mass of students of certain cultures has been reached. So it's perhaps difficult to break out of a default behaviour of hanging out with "your own kind". When a foreign student arrives in the US, the local <insert foreign-country here> students association welcomes them and helps set them up. Right there are laid the potential foundations of remaining in the comfort zone of fellow countrymen.

</comment></comment><comment><USER44> It is the same for almost anybody studying in a foreign country. It takes a fairly high level of self-confidence to really put yourself out there and cultural/linguistic differences can be confusing to navigate. I myself have studied in 3 foreign countries and can say that it requires a lot of effort to make local friends.

</comment><comment><USER45> See also "When a Chinese PhD Student Meets a German Supervisor " [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12769385](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12769385)

</comment><comment><USER46> 40% of US students in the US have no close American friends on campus too. We all went to college. Come one. That is how it is. I wouldn't call the dude saying hi to me everyday the room next door ma friend. They are all just living around me. We all have to pretend to be nice to each other because none of us wants trouble. Sure we do hang out or get drunk at the party. But we are not friends. The only true friend I got is my college sweet heart.

</comment><comment><USER47> I remember, several years ago (2010-ish), a friend's roommate brought a couple of his Indian coworkers home. I got to meet them because I was hanging out with my friend at the time. They hung out for a bit, and then he took them to a shooting range, bringing his gun collection along.

Before they left, he told my friend and I that he was doing this because he read a statistic showing that a huge percent of Indian-born workers have never been in an American's home, so he wanted to get his coworkers out of that statistic.

In hindsight, that act was the only decent thing that man has ever done (he is no longer on speaking terms with me, my friend, or virtually everyone else we know for a variety of reasons that have nothing to do with his co-workers).

<comment><USER48> Dude, the stories you didn't tell are far more intriguing

</comment></comment><comment><USER49> I wonder if they tried to normalise how different people and different cultures define what is meant by "close friends". I mean I'd probably say that I've made maybe 4 close friends in my entire life (5 if you count my wife), half of which I've lost contact with, without ever really feeling I'm lacking friends, acquaintances and people to hang out with.

</comment><comment><USER50> So 60% DO have close friends that have a very different culture and language. I find that very positive. I traveled all my life, and I know how hard it is to do it. Well done !

</comment><comment><USER51> Most foreign students are in the US for a two years masters program, which is not that long a time to assimilate to any culture. I am from a relatively similar western culture, I arrived here thinking to myself in English 50% of the time (not my native language, but my main "Internet language"). I still spent my whole first year with my closest group of friends consisting chiefly of Germans, Greeks (from actual Greece, not a frat house), Indians and Chinese. It wasn't that it was easier to breach that cultural gap, but more that other international students were _aware_ that there was a gap to be breached. Americans seemed always more likely to only understand overtures of friendship in their very specific cultural context, and even with extensive American media exposure it takes a few comical mishaps to become fully conversant in that cultural code, independent of language. English fluency was the lesser of the issues for me, but admittedly having a strong accent can make it even harder to be understood at a loud party even if it is perfectly fine for asking questions in class. I don't blame the natives at all for it, but do keep in mind that it is the foreign students who often do 9 parts in 10 of the effort. Wonder what is the statistic - even for colleges that are 50/50 overall - of "American student with no foreign student close friends".

For the curious: I did end up having a much closer group of friends including roughly 50% American students later, though, after bonding over one of the most American experiences possible, a Spring break trip.

</comment><comment><USER3> Did they compare against American students though? Modern culture is making _everyone_ increasingly lonely and isolated, so I wouldn't be surprised if a good portion of that number is explained by the fact that going off to college and making close friends can be difficult whether you're from Nebraska or Nanjing.

That being said, the cultural aspect can't be ignored. There's a reason that despite going to two very international schools, almost all of my close friends are European, American, or Australian.

</comment><comment><USER31> I would like to frame my thoughts on this as an American that is dating a Taiwanese person, and as someone who has traveled around the USA a lot. I also ran my thoughts by her and she agreed with what I said.

First, I think there are two types of people who travel to a new place (this can be a different part of the country, or a foreign student to the USA): 1) the person who wants to try new things and enjoy where they are, or 2) the type of person who hates where they are and refuse to try anything new.

The latter type of foreign student will not make any American friends. They will only stick with their culture and friends of their culture. She has also said a lot of people feel very nervous speaking English, because they will they will get something wrong and get ridiculed for doing so.

As an American with foreigners in my classes, there are also people who speak their native language to other students who speak it. I empathize with the fact that it is easier for them, but by doing that, the effect that I get is the feeling of exclusion, so I cannot even attempt to try to befriend them. As an anecdote to that, I can say I have felt resentful when I have been the only American in a group of Taiwanese and they did not speak English at all when I was there, as the message I got is they don't want me in the conversation.

I hate to say, it is very intimidating, but if you want to befriend Americans while in the country, you HAVE to speak English as much as possible. I am, and I would like to think any others are very forgiving in the fact that they know English isn't your first language, and are happy to accommodate that. If you do not, most Americans will feel excluded and not even attempt to befriend you.

<comment><USER52> It goes both ways. Aside from cultural differences, I would assume you would also feel excluded or isolated if you were the only non-American among a group of Americans who only spoke English, and you didn't understand or speak English.

Note that English is used as a universal language in international settings, and that you are a native English speaker. It's somewhat easier for you since they would know a least a little bit of English, while you wouldn't know their language unless you have some level of proficiency.

Also, Americans generally have a culture of accommodation or assimilation, while people from other cultures may not. The social environment when the host population interacts among each other as peers is also different than when interacting with foreigners, as it requires a separate form of interaction that isn't the norm. This applies to both Americans and other nationalities.

<comment><USER31> I agree, and it wouldn't surprise to hear that there are also Americans who are uninterested in trying to accomidate forgeiners, and I imagine that would be very discouraging for someone who tries to get out of their comfort zone as well.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER53> If foreign students want to make American friends, they should be prepared to feel uncomfortable and also be willing to make others uncomfortable.

There is no easy way. You have to separate yourself from your comfort zone. That includes others from your home country as well as other international students. Live with an American roommate, go to every (American) party you are invited to. Say no to every (non-American) party you are invited to. Find an American gf/bf or keep trying. Join volunteering activities (food drives, blood drives, salvation army etc) to meet locals.

In a couple of years, you would have made yourself deeply uncomfortable on many occasions, annoyed some people, but by now you'll be talking and walking like an American.

This applies in general to immigrants who tend to huddle together because it is the easier thing to do. That is why in most cases, cultural assimilation takes atleast a generation.

</comment><comment><USER54> I went to UC Berkeley in the 80's and I found it a sterile and unfriendly environment. Maybe it was me. I had one friend from all the classes I took. One. I had a lot friends from working in the CS department.

I think the reason was the hyper-competitiveness between students. It doesn't foster any sort of cooperation.

<comment><USER55> Right now everybody cheats, so there is a lot more cooperation - but typically only in your racial group.

</comment></comment><comment><USER56> Consider yourself in the following scenario:

You hang out with Indians and they start talking about Cricket, a sport that is widely watched there, but also a sport that most likely you know nothing about. How can you partake in that conversation? you can, probably, but only at a basic level and you might not have a lot to add.

So, the same happens with American football, or baseball, or sports that are not widely followed elsewhere.

Those types of conversations marginalize foreigners, even if it's non intentional. Now, if you have empathy, you might prefer to talk about something else, with the purpose of being inclusive.

<comment><USER57> >So, the same happens with American football, or baseball, or sports that are not widely followed elsewhere. Those types of conversations marginalize foreigners, even if it's non intentional.

What about those of us Americans who don't give two shits about American football or baseball or other sports (including cricket)?

And am I "marginalizing" someone if I want to talk about D&D, or retro gaming, or astrophysics, or some obscure musical genre?

</comment></comment><comment><USER58> I had a college roommate from Hong Kong for a couple years. He specifically asked for an American roommate, and I think we both benefited from the exchange. His English was far better than most of his friends after that time. It's hard though, if I were in his place, I might have been more insular as well seeking out those with my native language.

He also got to laugh hysterically as he saw me try to pronounce some greetings/messages in Cantonese to his father who would call from Hong Kong, so there was that benefit too.

</comment><comment><USER59> I personally chose to come to University in the US and had a great experience. While my campus had issues with international students and domestic students being divided, we did a lot of research for our newspaper and wrote opinion pieces on how to bridge the gap.

If you'd like to read about another perspective to how international students feel after coming to the US, here's an opinion piece I wrote: [http://www.dailynebraskan.com/opinion/agrawal-us- universitie...](http://www.dailynebraskan.com/opinion/agrawal-us-universities- offer-international-students-one-of-a- kind/article_2d384054-5cdb-11e5-9e63-b7c49c6a4267.html)

If you'd like to read more about what it's like to be an international student making friends with domestic students: [http://www.dailynebraskan.com/opinion/agrawal-making- friends...](http://www.dailynebraskan.com/opinion/agrawal-making-friends-with- domestic-students/article_4355f66e-6c90-11e5-9b2a-f72e6e6fe7da.html)

Here's an article one of my colleagues wrote about making friends with international students as a domestic student: [http://www.dailynebraskan.com/opinion/simon-making- friends-w...](http://www.dailynebraskan.com/opinion/simon-making-friends-with- international-students/article_5e6a8fc4-6c8f-11e5-83be-8f73e6a588f8.html)

</comment><comment><USER60> As someone who grew up heavily in both the west and east, it's most definitely a cultural issue. IMO Americans tend to be oblivious to so many things and try to hide their ignorance behind liberal values. Which I'm all for, but conversing becomes a game of "what can I say and not have to have a huge discussion explaining my opinion." Mix that in with the college experience and it starts to make sense. I blame the schools for not properly educating children in this country.

</comment><comment><USER61> My wife studied at an American college. She had no friends. The college had over 100 students 100% of them from India, Middle East and Turkey. The college was nothing but a way for H4 women to get F1 so that they could eventually get OPT and instead of being deadweight at home they could stand on their own legs. This is probably one of the N colleges out there.

There aren't too many American citizens in these colleges and I will not be surprised if these student constitute 50% of total F1s.

</comment><comment><USER62> If there are 750K foreign students coming in every year to the US why are there only 65K H1 visas per year available? Surely they should expect at least 10% of them to want to work in the US after their education right? With that why is everyone acting as if the Indian outsourcing companies are the problem for the H1 visa shortage?

<comment><USER63> Its because 65K is for workers without degrees from US colleges & another 25K is for people with degrees from US to get the OPT. The 65K gets 85% applicants from IT companies based out of India, those jobs don't pay well but companies willing to pay decent salaries get thrown out of it coz of sheer probabilities. There was a post some time back recommending a application fee based on the number of applications from a single entity.

<comment><USER34> Not quite. You only get the 25K if you graduate in the US from a graduate program. If you graduate with a Bachelors you are not eligible for the extended cap (25K). But the OPT still works.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER64> When I was in school, international students had a week prior to orientation with their own orientation. They formed friend groups from this orientation, so it's not too surprising that they would stick to those friend groups rather than then branching out to the people they have less in common with the following weeks.

<comment><USER65> Yep. Through the orientation they are also introduced to organizations on campus that provide outings and other social activities specifically just for these people who happen to have nothing much in common besides being international students. It's kind of a weird idea, honestly: oh you're from Belarus, you're from Indonesia, and you're from Peru? Here are a bunch of activities you can all participate in for free or cheap, that are ostensibly mostly about exposing you to the local culture & attractions, but without having to interact with local students or other local people.

Further, students from some countries have the option of a critical mass of their compatriots to hang out with, which I'm sure is a tempting comfort to rely on. >30% and >15% of international students are from China and India respectively: [http://www.iie.org/Services/Project-Atlas/United- States/Inte...](http://www.iie.org/Services/Project-Atlas/United- States/International-Students-In-US)

</comment></comment><comment><USER66> For me personally as a foreign student from India the biggest hurdle was cultural. I didnt know much about Star Wars, or American TV of the 1980s-90s which meant I couldnt just jump in to most conversations. The second biggest hurdle was that I just didnt enjoy drinking and drinking games to the extent that is a part of contemporary American college setup. Thus I didnt have stories of things I did while drunk. All this combined meant it became hard to enjoy settings with predominantly American/Western groups.

At some point sub-consciously I stopped trying and went into my comfort zone i.e. other Indian people who got my jokes, and where I didnt have to give cultural context before every life story I was telling. I do regret not having made friends from alternate cultures while I had the best opportunity i.e. in college.

<comment><USER67> I'm surprised drinking culture hasn't been mentioned more here. As an American who when to an American university, I had no friends who were non-American. When I reflect on the reason for this, I do remember meeting students from other countries but they had different priorities than myself and my group of friends at the time so we never really clicked. (our priority was to go out and drink as often as possible - 4 days per week usually) For someone coming from a country where alcohol is consumed in moderation from young ages, I can see how this would be an unappealing scene to get into.

<comment><USER57> >I'm surprised drinking culture hasn't been mentioned more here. As an American who when to an American university, I had no friends who were non- American.

Yeah, I think it's a big factor. I'm a white American and went to an American university, and in my later years (I transferred midway through to go to a better engineering school), _all_ of my friends were _non_ -American. Why didn't I have any American friends? Probably largely because I don't drink and don't care about sports. (I'm not a teetotaler, I just don't like alcohol much, and at most will drink a little wine, and even here I hate the dry ones. I also have a peculiar condition where it seems that alcohol has no effect on me; I can drink a couple glasses of wine and not feel anything. I don't want to try any more than that.)

I had a few American friends at my first university, but I met them because I lived on the same floor in the dorm as them. I never had the dorm experience in the second university. And they didn't drink either.

Dating American women has never gone all that great for me either. Now I'm dating an Asian woman, who, you guessed it, doesn't drink.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER68> A very one sided argument and a good example of using statistics for evil.

I came to the US in 2007 for my Undergrad from Dubai (Indian by Birth). I lived on a dorm floor with 40 people and only another Indian and I didn't actually talk to that guy much. Most of my friends are Americans including some of my closest - To be honest, the few Indian friends I have are people from work.

End of the day it comes down to your comfort zone. People who come to another country to get an "American degree" will stick to their comfort zone. For those of us who come to explore and understand the local culture, we're going to assimilate into the local culture (my kickball team calls me a coconut: Brown on the outside and white on the inside).

Do you want to stay a tourist or become a local?

</comment><comment><USER69> I was a foreign student, and I ended up assimilating by becoming friends with first gen Americans (children of immigrants). Once I got used to a handful of cultural norms (took about a year or two), it became easy to interact with Americans directly.

Today my closest friends are the ones I made in college.

</comment><comment><USER59> Please note this article is from 2012. I feel like the HN headline should be edited to reflect this.

</comment><comment><USER70> Years ago I studied abroad for a year in the U.K. I'm American, so no language barriers, but I found it very difficult to make British friends. I was friends with my flat mates who were British, but otherwise only the Germans were friendly to me. The other international students tended to stick to themselves (particularly the Chinese and Pakistani), despite my attempts at bridging the gap.

Homophily is a known social bias, and certainly affects people in their own country let alone a foreign one. I wonder how much of this is "America" per se, versus standard social forces that affect all populations.

</comment><comment><USER71> I think it has more to do with the culture than with the campus context. It seems to me that North Americans value more politeness and independence, whereas Europeans think more in term of honesty and reliability. That's why you hear stories of French people being "rude" and Americans being "superficial" or "fake", for instance. Building strong relationships is not impossible, but it is more difficult and it takes time, and a semester can be too short. I'd imagine it can be even worse for people with even fewer common cultural ties.

</comment><comment><USER72> I was friends with many foreign students in college (a large school in the midwest), and it was because all of them wanted to meet people unlike them. One friend, from Zimbabwe (who was originally from Sri Lanka), once said to me, "I can never understand why all of the foreign students hang out with only people from their own country." She was pretty exceptional, but it's true in general. A lot of Americans do the same thing when they go overseas. It kind of makes no sense to go all of that way, and then just hang out with people just like you.

</comment><comment><USER73> What percent of Americans have close friends of any nationality on campus?

<comment><USER59> ^ repost.

<comment><USER73> What does that mean? Did someone else ask the same thing? If so, no one has time to read every single comment before commenting, sorry.

<comment><USER59> Sorry, I didn't make that very clear - I meant that I completely agree!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER74> As a university student in London, I noticed Chinese students (the main foreign contingent of the student body) overwhelmingly tended to socialise with one another, and groups of Chinese students speaking Mandarin to each other was a common sight on campus. If you weren't a Chinese speaker, it was hard to penetrate these groups (I tried and failed). Is this also the case in American colleges?

</comment><comment><USER75> so a solid majority of 60% gets to have a close US friend sounds impressive (too good to be true actually)

how does this compare to foreign students in Canada, Germany, UAE, UK

<comment><USER76> It's unbelievable impressive from my experience. I've only travelled and studied within Europe but I would say, foreign students pretty much never have _close_ native friends. But then again in the US there is no language barrier.

</comment></comment><comment><USER77> Why should they have "close" American friends? [http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/worldviews/wp/2013/05/15...](http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/worldviews/wp/2013/05/15/a-fascinating- map-of-the-worlds-most-and-least-racially-tolerant-countries/)

</comment><comment><USER78> I studied hospitality in Switzerland for a while and was surprised that some of my classmates just wouldn't integrate with the students there. It was as if they had some aversion to change/something different. Normally I wouldnt find that behavior odd but the whole point of hospitality is to engage and be welcoming. I could see it being a stonger issue for people in other areas of study

</comment><comment><USER79> I assume much of this is due to language or cultural barriers, even if it's mostly perceived and not a legitimate barrier. Not surprising that most foreign students congregate with one another, but they're missing out on part of the experience of studying abroad surely. This goes both ways BTW, US students studying abroad in many countries experience the same thing as well.

</comment><comment><USER80> I found that sports and trivia knowledge is more important than language skills when interacting with the "locals".

</comment><comment><USER81> Having lived in a few countries, I wouldn't be surprised if an extended research showed that in country X, a significant percentage of foreigners have no close friend from X.

In fact it is much easier to make friends with other foreigners, even when not fluent in country X's language.

</comment><comment><USER82> theres a mad dash for everyone in the world to come to american universities and suck every last drop of credibility from them. for a long time college has been getting worse. we went from college being a selective and prestigious club to what we have now: giant degree mills where actual learning is a fucking foot note. and college has become this way because everyone needs a college degree now because there are no jobs for the ordinary joe who doesnt have a degree or connections. so college has been on this slow decline and now we see a ton of asian students who are coming and getting degrees while they still have some value. so at the end of the day the whole thing just stinks. you walk around and look at all the amazing buildings and amenities that the school spent millions upon millions upon millions of fucking dollars on to attract the rich foreign students and out of state party students and the domestic rich students. meanwhile the quality of the education that students get has plummeted. students dont learn anything anymore. elon musk read his physics text book and showed up to exams. he was able to pass because he _learned the material_. maybe other people have has a different experience but that has not been possible at my school. i had a single professor who went against the current and taught for understanding and at the start of the class he practically got on his hands and knees and begged the students to read the book. being new, i didnt understand. but soon i realized that it was because students dont actually read the books! every other professor chooses some shit textbook thats filled with irrelevant material and you are forced to only read the equations and game the fucking system and get points. _learning_ has been totally abandoned! and now i see swarms of asian students cheating on every exam and i look at the state of the college and it just depresses me. i was in an algorithms class and we had a quiz. times up, we are walking to the front to turn things in and there was an asian guy standing in front of the desk, looking at other peoples papers and copying the answers. completely brazen. and the nobody did anything. nobody gave a shit. and i go to a well known school. the state of affairs is not good.

</comment><comment><USER83> So you move far away AND prefer the company of yourself... what's the problem here?

<comment><USER84> If you're an introvert or very shy, it doesn't matter how far or close you're from home - it's very difficult to make friends.

</comment></comment><comment><USER85> As a point of comparison how many domestic students have no close friends on campus? In other words, what's the differential between foreign students and those who grew up here?

</comment><comment><USER86> "You never meet people in their own country" is a factoid I've noticed.

You have more in common with fellow travelers than you will have with people who are just status quo.

</comment><comment><USER87> Student unions should encourage "welcome committees" to make sure no one whom wants to participate in the social scene is left out. (dorm life was the best.)

</comment><comment><USER88> It is because Americans are cultureless robots pumped full of paper thin thoughts, who have replaced any experience of togetherness with consumer preferences

</comment><comment><USER89> Living in south east Asia I see more than 40% of US American expatriates who are living here not having even a single native/local friend...

</comment><comment><USER63> Another way to look at this is American students don't engage with 40% foreign students on campus. It takes two to tango.

</comment><comment><USER90> My experience in the U in my generation, started with 60 students and ended only 6 from different levels/years.

</comment><comment><USER91> I wouldn't be surprised if 40% of all students have no close friends on campus.

</comment><comment><USER82> love the foreign students.</comment>


Citizenfour HD - <AUTHOR> http://cryptome.org/Citizenfour-HD.7z https://twitter.com/Cryptomeorg/status/566616227582582785 <comment><AUTHOR> The movie was entered into public record ([https://twitter.com/Cryptomeorg/status/566616227582582785](https://twitter.com/Cryptomeorg/status/566616227582582785) & [http://cryptome.org/2015/02/edwards-019-027.pdf](http://cryptome.org/2015/02/edwards-019-027.pdf)):

Mirrors: [http://ergot.yfkm.eu/Citizenfour- HD.mp4](http://ergot.yfkm.eu/Citizenfour-HD.mp4) & [http://ergot.yfkm.eu/Citizenfour.mp4](http://ergot.yfkm.eu/Citizenfour.mp4)

<comment><USER2> It seems like most of the people in this thread care more about how you posted a title link to a huge zip file.

Maybe next time you should do a "Show HN" and put the URL in the post text instead of as the title link.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Having the url point to an utterly huge file instead of a landing page can cause problems for some people. The default behavior on my phone in chrome, for example, is to start downloading in the background.

<comment><USER4> It's perfectly fine to link to a large file directly - it seems like your browser is broken.

<comment><USER5> The browser isn't broken, this is the expected behavior. When you click a link for a downloadable file, your browser fetches it in the background since there is no page to display.

The problem in this instance is that there is no 'landing page', it's just there on Cryptome in a big list of pages and other downloads. The real issue is Cryptome's spartan UX gives no easy way to handle this, it's either link to the home page with no context, or link to the file directly.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> You may want to pay for watching this movie, so they make more of the same. Vote with your wallet.

<comment><USER7> Agreed. Though, I don't know of any way to directly send money to Laura Poitras and co.

I'm sure they would also appreciate donations made to the EFF.

<comment><USER8> You could also consider donating to the Freedom of the Press Foundation [https://freedom.press/donate](https://freedom.press/donate) or the Courage Found [https://couragefound.org/donate](https://couragefound.org/donate)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> magnet:? xt=urn:btih:799e43f3aff3fa9af8b7bfc2950501721829ddee&dn=+Citiz enfour.2014.HDRiP+Xvid&tr=udp%3A%2F%2Fopen.demonii.com%3A1337& tr=udp%3A%2F%2Ftracker.coppersurfer.tk%3A6969&tr=udp%3A%2F%2Ft racker.leechers- paradise.org%3A6969&tr=udp%3A%2F%2Fexodus.desync.com%3A6969

</comment><comment><USER10> FYI: Local cinemas are still playing it, for those who enjoy the cinemas. I watched it in San Francisco, so check your local movie listings.

</comment><comment><USER11> Linking straight to the file is going to be VERY expensive for people like me who pay per MB as it would automatically download in a lot of browsers when clicked.

Do consider linking to a page that directs people to the file.

<comment><USER12> Agreed! I uploaded the movie on my own server with a very short post to explain what it's all about. Download should be quite fast depending on your location.

[http://www.pilgrimbreak.com/citizenfour-hd-high-speed- downlo...](http://www.pilgrimbreak.com/citizenfour-hd-high-speed-download/)

<comment><USER13> Thanks for rehosting, but your version is definitely not HD, coming in at 640x360 resolution.

<comment><USER12> Yes, sorry that, I am currently getting the Citizenfour.2014.720p.WEB- DL.AAC2.0.H264-FGT version and will update the post once ready.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Go watch it on a big screen. The chilling effect is way bigger in a large audience than at home.

<comment><USER15> most amusing reason I've heard to see a movie on the big screen :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> Mirrors: [http://brueste.tk/mydealz/Citizenfour- HD.mp4](http://brueste.tk/mydealz/Citizenfour-HD.mp4) [http://mydealz.marvinbeer.de/Citizenfour- HD.mp4](http://mydealz.marvinbeer.de/Citizenfour-HD.mp4) [http://22.214.171.124/Citizenfour-HD.mp4](http://18.104.22.168/Citizenfour- HD.mp4)

</comment><comment><USER17> This redistribution does not seem to be authorized by the copyright holders, and directly linking to the file doesn't seem to be appropriate for HN.

</comment><comment><USER18> we worked on Citizenfour and this is not a legitimate film. Please don't share if you're a friend of the film

</comment><comment><USER19> got a magnet uri for bittorrent instead?

<comment><USER12> Downloads are so slow that I decided to host it on my own server, no bandwidth limit, should be faster. Enjoy!

[http://www.pilgrimbreak.com/citizenfour-hd-high-speed- downlo...](http://www.pilgrimbreak.com/citizenfour-hd-high-speed-download/)

<comment><USER13> Thanks for rehosting, but your version is definitely not HD, coming in at 640x360 resolution

<comment><USER12> I have uploaded the 3.4GB version too, sorry for the inconvenience.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Github now supports rendering tabular data - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/blog/1601-see-your-csvs <comment><USER2> "git actually has a simple design, with stable and reasonably well-documented data structures. In fact, I'm a huge proponent of designing your code around the data, rather than the other way around, and I think it's one of the reasons git has been fairly successful […] I will, in fact, claim that the difference between a bad programmer and a good one is whether he considers his code or his data structures more important."

\--Linus Torvalds

(source: [http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/163185/torval...](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/163185/torvalds- quote-about-good-programmer))

<comment><USER3> Along the same lines, a quote from 1975(!):

"Fred Brooks, in Chapter 9 of The Mythical Man-Month, said this:

Show me your flowchart and conceal your tables, and I shall continue to be mystified. Show me your tables, and I won't usually need your flowchart; it'll be obvious."

[http://www.dreamsongs.com/ObjectsHaveNotFailedNarr.html](http://www.dreamsongs.com/ObjectsHaveNotFailedNarr.html)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> The money line:

 _Building software is about more than code._

GitHub's ably and subtly positioning themselves as attractive for a much wider audience than programmers.

<comment><USER5> Programmers are data manipulators, no? Github is about streamlining data manipulation (storing your code, helping you with CSVs/GEOJSON). They're just lowering the bar to make data manipulation more accessible.

One day, everyone is going to be a programmer. Is everyone a professional driver? Not at all. But most people do know how to drive a car.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Unfortunately, Git isn't a good way to collaborate on massive csv files for two reasons a) git stores changes at the file level, rather than row level, b) for massive datasets, you quickly run into file size limits. That's why I am looking forward to dat[1], a collaborative DVCS that's going to blow Git off the water for this kind of tasks, even if it achieves only half of its objectives.

[1] [https://github.com/maxogden/dat](https://github.com/maxogden/dat)

<comment><USER7> _git stores changes at the file level, rather than row level_

It applies delta compression when storing blobs in pack files.

<comment><USER8> git does not handle large files well. Actually none of the open-source VCS do a good job. I think that was picardo's main point.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> In next iteration of this feature, please provide an option for sticky column and row headers - ie. scroll table down with headers in place. Such solution helps inspect large files with many columns. Surely you can do better than rendering a standard html table?

<comment><USER10> I second this motion. Pull request, anyone?

<comment><USER11> Where to? Do we have access to the source of this?

On that topic, I have never found much of Github's source code, which is extremely hypocritical, and makes me fear the day we'll want to move away from them. I'd be glad to be wrong and find out that I had just never looked in the right place.

<comment><USER12> That's not hypocrisy in the slightest. It would be if Github made claims like "we think companies should open-source all of their product's code", but they would never make such a claim. In fact, their business model is selling features to people who want to keep their code private.

Against your wishes, maybe; Hypocritical, no.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> It would be nice if GitHub added better support for column-oriented data in diffs, too. This article shows how it could work, with an example implementation in a fork of GitLab: [http://theodi.org/blog/adapting-git- simple-data](http://theodi.org/blog/adapting-git-simple-data)

</comment><comment><USER14> I love this company. They just get it.

<comment><USER15> If you ignore the new UI.

<comment><USER16> The UI in general isn't too bad, but the new arrangement and location of things is definitely a bit off.

(And yes, I know arrangement is like 80% of UI, but you get my point.)

<comment><USER17> The fact that I have to click on something to see language breakdowns is a problem. The fact that I have to refresh the repo page to make the language breakdowns go away is a bigger problem.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> A tabular/graphical JSON explorer would be interesting as well.

<comment><USER19> I totally agree. This the next logical step.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> Is GitHub turning into an operating system?

<comment><USER21> Not sure, but it might be turning into an IDE. They've got a good part of it in place. Something like FP Complete: [https://www.fpcomplete.com/](https://www.fpcomplete.com/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> Bracing myself for the Github IDE. If they do that right, any browser can become your development machine.

</comment><comment><USER23> Hopefully they'll add sorting soon

<comment><USER24> 1) Agreed - allowing users to click on a column heading and then sort it by ascending or descending values would be killer.

2) Adding embed codes for these tables would also be incredibly useful for news organisations and non-profits.

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> A massive amount of time and energy is wasted by news organizations on the question of how to show tabular data. This is an incredible feature, and one I'm assuming can be hackable/extended in various useful ways.

Anyone stress-test it with bulk data yet?

<comment><USER26> It would be good if browsers had native support and rendering of SQLite in the same way that Chrome works with PDFs.

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> This is great, but their basic text editor isn't usable for me for what I think are pretty reasonably sized files (170kb of Markdown). This doesn't have to be because the editor they use (Ace) works fine with it, so I don't know what they're doing to it. A tech support person said it was only there for small files, not for serious editing.

I was working on a project and wanted non-techies to edit Markdown for me on the site, being able to preview the results, but couldn't make it work on these files.

So I wish they'd fix that rather than more editors for other file types.

<comment><USER28> Can you link me to such a file?

As a former developer on Ace and now employee at GitHub I've honestly never run into a problem. I can't promise anything but I'd like to see what you mean.

<comment><USER12> I just tried this with a (very superficial) test case[1] at 189KB and the editor seemed fine, both for editing source and generating previews. I even used the editor to double the file's length, saved, and reopened without problems.

[1] [https://github.com/BHSPitMonkey/Large-Markdown- Test/blob/mas...](https://github.com/BHSPitMonkey/Large-Markdown- Test/blob/master/README.md)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> Cool feature. What happens on gigantic files? Does it limit, paginate, lazy- load?

<comment><USER28> The limit is 600kb; I'll have to publically document that. Only 3% of GitHub's one million CSV files go over that limit.

As you might imagine, shoving in that many rows into the DOM kills any browser. G

<comment><USER4> I'm actually kinda surprised that the number is that high.

Part of me wants to make a stumble-upon that grabs a random csv from GitHub. I feel like there's probably some really interesting data waiting to be explored.

<comment><USER30> Please do it!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> I've wanted this for so long in my docs. It's so easy to build a doc ecosystem around my code on github between rendering md, and shoving YARD output into gh-pages!

</comment><comment><USER32> It looks like this (ruby's CSV library) defines CSV to be some unknown superset of RFC 4180, so just following the RFC should get this feature to work.

</comment><comment><USER33> I was wishing for this for a while, but didn't imagine they'll actually do it. This is awesome (Now all I need is to have it editable...)

</comment><comment><USER34> This does not appear to be retroactive, after looking at .csvs in my old repos.

<comment><USER28> It should be. Can you provide a link?

<comment><USER35> Mine still doesn't work:[https://github.com/kasbah/nomech_mini- hw/blob/master/nomech_...](https://github.com/kasbah/nomech_mini- hw/blob/master/nomech_mini.csv)

<comment><USER36> That's not a CSV file, it's tab separated (I think, I haven't actually checked whether those are tabs), you will need to have the right extension for the contained data for it to work.

<comment><USER28> Indeed. I made a PR for the original poster: [https://github.com/kasbah/nomech_mini- hw/pull/1](https://github.com/kasbah/nomech_mini-hw/pull/1)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER37> Great. Nested comments, anyone?

</comment><comment><USER38> Is the viewer open source?

<comment><USER28> The viewer is just Ruby's CSV library, iterated within an ERB.</comment></comment>


How NASA and ISRO discovered water on the Moon - <AUTHOR> https://jatan.space/how-nasa-and-chandrayaan-discovered-water-on-the-moon/ <comment><USER2> This is potentially the most important discovery in planetary science to date. The reason, which is left until the end of this article, is that water can be electrolyzed to yield hydrolox propellant, i.e. rocket fuel.

Rocket fuel dominates logistics in space. The tyranny of the rocket equation is that it takes an exponential (literally exponential, not in the colloquial sense) amount of fuel for a linear increase in velocity. This is why it's so hard to go to Mars, and why we need to slingshot around Jupiter to go anywhere else.

A source of rocket fuel above Earth's gravity well would break the tyranny of the rocket equation, and serve as a stepping stone to other parts of the solar system where water is abundant (i.e. Ceres, Mars). Until we have nuclear or other exotic propulsion, water is the oil of space.

To paraphrase the lunar anthropic principle, if the universe had wanted humanity to become a spacefaring species, it would have given us a Moon, and it would have put water on it.

We're just scratching the surface of what these lunar water deposits mean.

<comment><USER3> I see it the other way around.

Earthers find it hard to kick the idea that hydrogen and hydrocarbons are fuels, but that is because oxygen is free on the surface of the Earth.

On Luna you might use that hydrogen to reduce hematite ore (found in commercial quantity by astronauts) to Iron and Oxygen. Oxygen is like 7/8 the mass of the fuel you need, you can make storage tanks, residential neighborhoods, whatever you want out of steel if you can find a small amount of carbon. You can recycle the hydrogen, it's not lost as it would be if you burned it.

Lunar oxygen mining to refuel something like the SpaceX Starship faces tough competition from Earth via the SpaceX Starship -- a 1990s study looked at 5 Earth to Mars mission scenarios with and without lunar materials and it wasn't clear you could win with lunar oxygen.

The moon is close in configuration space to the Earth but far away in phase space (including energy differences) NASA figured Apollo hardware could make it to Venus

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

because you can use resonances around the moon to get a kick away from the Earth as opposed to fighting the gravity well with a low-ISP rocket on the way up and down from La Luna (no, atmospheric reentry on Earth is not "a problem" but rather free delta-V and one hell of a preimage for your landing site)

A good main belt asteroid might be like Saudi Arabia but with the relative proportions of sand and hydrocarbons reversed. You would be looking at a solar 5km/sec mission unless we got lucky and found a medium rare asteroid in the "near earth" area.

Either way if you could build a chemical factory that can make things like Kapton, Mylar or sheet graphene it shouldn't be that hard to handle giant films to make a solar sail factory, install sunshades at L1, beam solar power to moon bases at night, etc.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I know the guidelines on submission titles but this is a good example of how one (missing/removed) word completely changes the entire meaning.

Perhaps the "How" should be added back in?

\--

Edit: The title has been changed. Originally, it was " _NASA and ISRO discovered water on the Moon_ ".

<comment><USER5> The "How" prefix was likely removed automatically during submission. dang has confirmed there is a list of suffixes and prefixes that this happens with, but it is not public what they are.

Edit: when I posted this the title was "NASA and ISRO discovered water on the Moon"

<comment><USER6> I'm fairly certain the word "quietly" is automatically removed from submission titles.

i.e. "Apple quietly drops case against X" => "Apple drops case against X"

However, I do think "quietly" provides extra context - it indicates Apple (in this fictitious scenario) did not issue an official statement on what they did or why; a 3rd party just happened to notice by reviewing public legal documents.

<comment><USER7> It also implies a nefariousness that might not be appropriate.

<comment><USER8> That's true but given that HN (via dang and the rules) often states that it's supposed to be a more highbrow forum I think the subtleties of the title should be left to the author of the submission.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I'd like to correct the record here a bit. Although Clementine, the first spacecraft to sense water ice on the moon, was indeed funded by NASA (and the Ballistic Missile Defense Organization), it was in fact designed, built, and operated by my senior colleagues at the US Naval Research Laboratory. For some reason NRL rarely gets mentioned in this story even though it was our spacecraft!

[https://www.nrl.navy.mil/clementine/](https://www.nrl.navy.mil/clementine/)

</comment><comment><USER10> > equivalent to at least 240,000 Olympic-sized swimming pools

For scale, the Earth has enough water to fill ~532 trillion pools.

<comment><USER11> I wonder what the most efficient way to move bulk amounts of water out of earth's gravity well would be?

It's probably mostly like any bulk freight lifted to orbit/escape: you could pump it up space elevators, assuming you could get around the problems of making those; An orbital ring is more physically plausible but has a much higher initial outlay. Maybe you could accelerate a stream of it accurately enough that the resulting hail of ice would reach, say, an earth-moon l3/4 point slow enough to be continuously captured and processed.

<comment><USER12> One of the first futurists I read had a bunch of suggestions.

The most interesting was combining earth hydrogen with lunar oxygen freed up by reduction operations on moon regolith.

More pedestrian was having ships sell their surplus fuel to a transfer station in orbit. If your mission is completely nominal, you will have reaction mass that you no longer need. Better to leave it for the next guy. I'm not sure how you do that in a failsafe way, though. A burst line or a stuck valve could ruin everybody's day.

It might require aux tanks that can be removed. For longer missions that might be worth the complexity.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> It would be nice if we could stop moving the goalposts to give credit to our favorite institutions. The Soviet probe Luna 24 in 1976 brought back samples that were found to be 0.1% water. "NASA and ISRO are the discoverers because they did the analysis without returning to earth" is such a cop-out.

<comment><USER14> What did the Soviets do that was special? Did the samples from the Apollo missions not show any water content?

<comment><USER13> Very little. What was there was dismissed as contamination, though a 2008 analysis showed small amounts of water locked inside pieces of volcanic glass inside the Apollo samples. The recent tremendous emphasis on the Chandrayaan-1 mission is motivated largely by the failure of Chandrayaan-2.

<comment><AUTHOR> That's not right. The Chandrayaan 2 failure has nothing to do with the Chandrayaan 1 discoveries. The lander of Chandrayaan 2 failed but it was not tasked with a follow-up science of any of these water-related discoveries. That is the job of the Chandrayaan 2 orbiter.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment> phoe-krk [2019], [2009]

</comment><comment><USER15> s/NASA and ISRO/Air Force/

Article can't even get that part right....

<comment><USER16> Do you have any sources to back this up?

<comment><USER15> Well apparently I shouldn't have had the snark because even I couldn't get it right. Should have been US Navy, which built and operated the Clementine spacecraft which discovered large reservoirs of water on the moon. Follow-up missions by NASA and ISRO confirmed this with better instruments, but it was a military mission that made the initial discovery.

It's a bit of a contentious issue because loonies had trouble getting NASA interested in the Moon again, and NASA rejected without evidence the notion of cold trap volatiles. So they went around NASA and used defense money to get an early version of Lunar Prospector launched, which was the Clementine mission, and gave the evidence necessary to prove the value of the poles as potential sources of in-situ resources.

(I got all the details of this from a talk given by a retired Air Force general who was involved, so I mistakenly thought it was the Air Force that ran it. Looks like it was actually a research division within the Navy.)

[https://www.lpi.usra.edu/publications/slidesets/clem2nd/](https://www.lpi.usra.edu/publications/slidesets/clem2nd/)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Now I am worried about exploitation in the name of exploration by humans

<comment><USER12> Would it be so bad if the mining was on the far side of the moon?

<comment><USER18> It won't stop there.

<comment><USER12> Could be. One of the things I'm worried about is that I think space mining rhetoric has vastly underestimated the consequences of the dust, both on the moon and in the asteroid belt. It might take generations to scrape the far side of the moon, but the dust could be a problem within a few years.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


CS349D Cloud Computing Technology, Autumn 2017 - <AUTHOR> https://web.stanford.edu/class/cs349d/ <comment><USER2> It's pretty great to see students diving into serverless architecture head-on. We've been partnering and participating in a number of student hackathons with StdLib [1] and the amount students can achieve in less than 36 hours with our FaaS platform has knocked our socks off, kudos to AWS for kickstarting this transition. It's been wild to see the evolution of the "serverless" landscape just in the past 12 months, messaging has moved from cost-reduction (no over- provisioning) to time-saving and ease-of-use across the board. Seems that developers are finally starting to value the _time it takes to learn and implement something_ and optimize for shipping value ASAP.

What's exciting to me is that this is just the beginning. These students are representative of the next generation of developers. So much innovation left to go; I believe we'll eventually look upon the "cloud" as merely an extension of our own computers, auto-scaling and responding to any workload seamlessly much like how nowadays we rarely give second thought to memory management, garbage collection, etc. when writing in JavaScript or Python.

[1] [https://stdlib.com/](https://stdlib.com/)

</comment><comment><USER3> Why is there no discussion on Docker or Kubernetes or Mesos or container technology in general? I hope the syllabus is revised to include discussion on these two topics, since all major cloud providers are investing much in container deployments—if only for a single day. Also, might be nice if they invited a speaker from Docker (I know a contact at Docker if class organizer needs one).

<comment><USER4> Interesting point, we did have a pretty good discussion about operations and VMs/containers in the guest lecture by Aaron Davidson from Databricks on 11/13 (slides/notes on the website).

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Can anyone with a Stanford ID please post the list of project ideas mentioned on this page? The URL [https://web.stanford.edu/class/cs349d/restricted/projects.ht...](https://web.stanford.edu/class/cs349d/restricted/projects.html) isn't open to the public. Would be a great help!

<comment><USER6> [https://pastebin.com/CmxE4Z5Y](https://pastebin.com/CmxE4Z5Y)

Maybe half of this year's final projects focused on serverless/AWS Lambda, with another significant portion on hardware acceleration for cloud workloads (AI, databases, SDN).

<comment><USER7> Shoot, now we have to implement all of those before someone else does :).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Are video lectures for this course publicly available?</comment>


Cancer test that can spot one cancer cell in a billion moves closer to real use - <AUTHOR> http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20110104/ap_on_he_me/us_med_cancer_blood_test

<comment><USER2> I wonder how many cases it is going to detect that would have disappeared on their own, given how sensitive the test is.

<comment><USER3> I'd bet everyone has transient cancer cells in their body, the problem occurs when the response mechanisms break down. Not sure how much clinical value a test this sensitive will have. Any oncologists out there?

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> For those interested in more background on the microfluidic technology used, here is the original paper published in Nature in 2007: [http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v450/n7173/abs/nature06...](http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v450/n7173/abs/nature06385.html)</comment>