The Unreasonable Ineffectiveness of Mathematics Education - <AUTHOR> http://www.refsmmat.com/articles/unreasonable-math.html <comment><USER3> Math = Numeracy, logic, geometry. Those are the three reasons I learned math. All three benefit from memorization. All three are practical. All three speed up future thinking. All three are scalable. All three are intuitive. All three are thinks you can't live without.

The reason why math is 'hard' is the same reason 'exercise' is hard. It takes a combination of skill and practice (a/k/a discipline) to make it 'easy'. And in a similar way to the endless "how to lose weight" fads, we see "how to do make math easy," when <easy> is not 'in their nature'.

The main problem with math education is that it is falsifiable. Math teachers can be measured, because math performance can be measured. This is why it makes educators nervous. And, I suspect, why they mostly suck at teaching it. They are the ultimate risk-averse sub-population. Subconsciously, 'educators' <hate> the idea of accountability, because it is predicated on the notion of potential failure. But the 'educational' establishement is <built> on the foundation of unquestionable <authority>. so math is for these guys an _existential threat_.

TLDR: To be good at teaching math, you have to be open to measuring your failure, which makes people feel bad. Including the teachers.

<comment><USER4> No. No no no. Yes, arithmetic math does benefit from repetition and memorization, is useful, and your comments on why getting good at arithmetic is hard are spot on.

But math is so much more than arithmetic. Math is about learning to apply a variety of available solutions and processes to solve a problem. Math is about understanding relationships. It's why I get better at math in a combination of my physics and programming courses than I ever did in algebra or calculus.

In fact, the biggest problem with mathematics education is that it is not falsifiable. Measuring reasoning, logic, critical thinking, and problem solving skills is almost as hard as teaching them. Writing a generally applicable test that measures whether a teacher taught you to actually use and solve problems with math is nigh-impossible, made worse that students (and most of all, parents) don't want to be held accountable for problem solving, because it's too fuzzy, or because you just "have to be smart". The fact that real math skills are tough to teach and tough to measure is the problem, not the reverse.

<comment><USER5> "Math is about learning to apply a variety of available solutions and processes to solve a problem."

Isn't programming about exactly the same things, only more entertaining, because interactive? For example: <http://jeremyshuback.com/learning-math- through-programming/>

<comment><USER6> Yes, they are related.

Math is also interactive, if you do it with a friend.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> One other suggestion: read some research on mathematics education. Look through some of the proceedings of some of the recent RUME (research on undergraduate math education) conferences, for example: <http://sigmaa.maa.org/rume/Site/Proceedings.html> This book How Students Learn (PDF can be downloaded for free) covers math education (as well as history and science) <http://www.nap.edu/catalog.php?record_id=10126> it is a sequel to the excellent (and free) book How People Learn: <http://www.nap.edu/catalog.php?record_id=9853>

Students need a motivating context, a reason to learn mathematics (or any topic). It's called situated learning (also situated cognition, situated action) - with techniques like problem-based learning, challenge-based learning, service learning, project-based learning, learning by design, learning through games, simulations, modeling, programming, etc.

That's one side of it. Another is embodied learning. That's how we understand math (and other) concepts. See for example work by Rafael Nunez [http://vislab.cs.vt.edu/~quek/classes/aware+embodiedinteract...](http://vislab.cs.vt.edu/~quek/classes/aware+embodiedinteraction/papers/nunem99.pdf) <http://www.cogsci.ucsd.edu/~nunez/web/FM.PDF>

<comment><USER8> OK, I know a bit about pedagogy, and a lot of it is crap. There's an awful lot of relativism in most of it. Many of the people who teach teachers simply don't care about what works in classrooms, because empiricism is an evil capitalist plot (or something like that). When the Wikipedia page for Education has gems like "Based on the works of Jung", you know you're not in a field which cares about hard facts. Not that it's a real problem - <USER2> statistics show that first year teachers are pretty poor (regardless of the amount of pedagogy training they have), but they learn on the job and are pretty good after about 2 years (unless they are just doing a year of teaching to pad their resume, but that's another debate).

I've got a lot of respect for cognitive science though, and that seems to be what you are recommending.

<comment><USER9> Note that Jung was one of the first people to invetigate the use of words in schizophrenia (in his thesis, as a matter of fact). Secondly, he created the conception of extroverts and introverts that we typically use to describe people today.

Seriously, go read some of the works of Jung before you sound off on his issues. I did, and I was pleasantly surprised at just how sensible he was.

I completely agree that much of modern educational training is quite poor, but take aim at (for example, the Myers Briggs or visual, auditory, kinesthetic learning) rather than poor old Jung.

<comment><USER10> Except the examples you've given like extroverts vs introverts are not scientifically rigorous and the terms already existed well before him all around the world in different cultures (outgoing vs shy/retiring etc).

<comment><USER9> Statistics was pretty much in its infancy back then, how would you have proposed he be scientifically rigorous?

Actually, if you could give me your definition of scientific rigour that would probably help.

<comment><USER10> Statistics was around then.

I consider science to be the art of making correct predictions. So you need a hypothesis (in the form of equations or computer programs) that can be tested on observations leading to correct predictions.

Extroversion/introversion might be scientifically rigorours by that definition (they might have done quantitative studies) but I'm not sure Jung did those, and even that it makes sense to create such a classificaton - people are a lot more complex and I don't really see the need for use of such classifications.

That's a problem I see with psychology, sociology, economics, and other "soft" fields. The quantification of things which are far more complex than the simplistic models created to the point that they are essentially meaningless. It's meaningless to quantify people into races or skin colors and that's about the level that those sciences are at.

<comment><USER9> Jung did his thesis in 1903. In 1903, regression had been invented, but was in England and may not have spread very far from there. Fisher was 13, and had not yet invented maximum likelihood and the application of statistics to experimental design that we all benefit from today. Karl Pearson was working on statistics, and had invented the chi squared three years previously. He was in the process of generalising regression analysis in 1903.

Multiple regression (OLS) had not yet been invented. I'm not sure how you expect Jung to have used an apparatus of statistics which really wasn't developed (till Fisher) into a coherent whole when Jung would have been in his forties, having already written a number of books.

Statistics in the sense of looking at populations did exist, but the whole apparatus of modern statistics was developed in the early part of the 20th century, concurrent with Jung.

I agree with your definition of science. Incidnetally, Hans Eysenck developed a physiological test for extraversion/ introversion in the 1950's involving the amount of stimulus required to become noticeable to a person. This has been comfirmed by further research.

Speaking as a (soon to be) psychology PhD (all going well...) I would argue that the "soft" sciences have the exact opposite problem, in that, jealous of all the cool theories of the physicists they have attempted to jump straight to the theory building without the benefits of hundreds of years of observation.

I agree that models in the soft sciences are somewhat simplistic, but I actually think that they're not simplistic enough. We (as a species) need to figure out some invariants if we're ever going to do successful science on people and the systems we create.

Back to Jung, while he didnt use the statistics that we would today, he did spend an awful lot of time attempting to figure out why we are the way we are, without resorting to sex sex sex (like the inimitable Freud). Personally, at this point he's probably better read as a philosopher and student of human nature, but he is well worth reading in that capacity.

That being said, he's an awful writer so it is a bit of struggle. Well worth it though, in my opinion.

<comment><USER9> Replying to myself as I believe we have triggered the algorithm for shouting matches (though I don't believe either of us were shouting). Dangers of fully automated approaches (black boxes), I suppose.

Funnily enough, I agree with you on psychologists and psychiatrists (to a certain extent). We understand so little, and claim to know so much. Our sample sizes and cultural range is quite poor (anthropologists are good at this, but they tend to lack even a basic understanding of statistics). I do believe that algorithmic approaches to predicting humans have potential, and the reason I now work in the private sector is to get access to some of this data as I believe that masses of data are the only way we'll get invariants to form useful landmarks towards understanding of people.

I would note, however, that I suspect you are classing pychologists (or cognitive scientists, as some of the hip american departments have rebranded themselves) as therapists, which although a common misconception is about as accurate as saying that computer scientists are software engineers (i.e. sometimes, but its not a one to one relationship). Thanks for the discussion, I enjoyed it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I will present a somewhat controversial point of view here. The problem with math education lies as much with teachers as it does with students.

If you have students that cannot understand basic formulas and memorize them, you are not going to teach them abstract concepts. Concrete math is much easier than abstract math for the vast majority of people. I cannot really believe the stories about people who are supposedly talented at math but are not engaged enough by the school curriculum and consequently fail at the tests. School level math is very easy for anyone with some aptitude for math. Anyone who fails it will probably have even greater difficulties with abstract concepts behind it.

That gifted students are not stimulated enough is the real problem. Math classes for gifted children is probably the only solution. Something like Stuyvesant High in New York City but on a wider scale.

As for better math education in Singapore and Taiwan, well, they do have better students than most US public schools. Both genetics and culture play a role here. Asian people have both higher average IQs and higher average conscientiousness. Their teachers are able to teach math at a higher level. US could surely learn from them, but not every school could use their techniques.

<comment><USER12> I disagree. The current perspective of IQ and ethnicities show that while there might be slight differences, they are dwarfed by the differences in the education process.

If you want another example besides Singapore, look at french math textbook for highschool students - with nth derivatives, etc.

Here's the first link googles gives me - something that a finishing highschool student, around 17 years old, is expected to do if he is enrolled in a "scientific" curriculum. (basically there are 4 curriculums - scientific, economic, literary (humanities), technical (vocational))

[http://maths54.free.fr/terminal/ch7_der_fonct_comp/cours_cha...](http://maths54.free.fr/terminal/ch7_der_fonct_comp/cours_chap7.pdf)

<comment><USER11> I do not want to discuss race/national IQ differences, this is a sensitive topic and does not really belong here. I am quite sure individual IQ differences are not controversial though and cannot be "dwarfed" by good educational processes.

The French textbook looks reasonably rigorous but as you say it is intended for "scientific" students. Thats basically what I was talking about in my post - you need to select for gifted students before moving on to complex math (not that derivatives are particularly hard if you do not have to prove theorems). In US I believe differential calculus belongs to AP Calculus high school classes. No idea about their level but content on the internet looks similar, maybe less rigorous.

<comment><USER12> FWI, I do not believe in IQ. The evolution of scores alone makes me think there is a confounding variable. Students should just study what they can get money from and they are interested in.

In France, there are 4 curriculum of approximately similar sizes - at least when I did my studies. There is no IQ selection.

There is no selection either based on being "gifted" or not - you just get a curriculum matching the job you said you were the most interested in, if you basic grades are enough (i.e. if you persistently had below average grades in math, you might not be enrolled in a scientific curriculum)

"scientific" students makes 25% of the students - I'm not sure it can be compared to the situation in the US unless 25% of the students go in AP classes.

[The other curricumulum also have decent math, only slightly less theoretical or more into specific domains, such as arithmetic or geometric progression mathematics (for economy and some BTS vocational studies)]

Edit : Enrollment trends are shown in <http://quanti.hypotheses.org/631/>

red is humanities

blue is economics

green is scientific

[apparently vocational studies are gaining ground, and humanities are declining, a good thing considering the job market]

<comment><USER13> > FWI, I do not believe in IQ.

As stated, this is a meaningless claim. Do you mean you don't believe in the accuracy or social value of of IQ testing, or don't believe that IQ exists as a measurable quantity, or don't believe in the practice of ranking people based on intelligence?

<comment><USER12> Sorry, I should be more precise.

First, I don't believe that IQ exist as a measurable quantity - IQ is too many things thrown together in a single bad. Tests group together various things which may be handled by different subsystems in the brain. If there is something called IQ, it's an aggregate.

Anyway, if there was such a unique quantity, actual data shows a progression of IQ scores in time - therefore if the tests are considered accurate and unbiased, it must be a "quantity" that can evolve based on the society a person lives it. It should then be considered not as a value, but as a function depending on a variable called society.

I do not know if studies have tried to measure the accuracy of repetitive measurement in low education adults enrolled in a learning program. If there are such studies and if they show inconsistent result (ie any change of IQ), then IQ should be considered as a function of 2 variables : f(society, personal experience).

Now, even if we consider that at a time t it could be accurately measured and that societal bias could be removed, considering how other qualities (such as determination, work ethic, consistency, creativity, competitiveness...) influence the outcome of any human activity, it seems foolish to rank people based on just one quality - especially if we don't know the other values, and their individual ponderation in the end result.

This ponderation could also be different depending on the activity, and IQ provide an absolute advantage in some activities (rhetoric?), but say determination would give an absolute advantage in other activities (startups?).

I prefer to say I "don't believe in IQ" because it's easier to say that way than giving this long version.

<comment><USER13> > I prefer to say I "don't believe in IQ" because it's easier to say that way > than giving this long version.

Yes, but for this subject, saying it that way is completely uninformative, to the degree that it's misleading. It would be like saying Harry is not now beating his wife -- it leaves too many questions unanswered.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Once again ColinWright graces the front page of HN on a weekend by submitting a story on mathematics education. The blog post submitted here, by an undergraduate physics major at the University of Texas at Austin, prompted me to read some of the author's other writings. The author's perspective on the importance of mathematics as a tool for understanding physics immediately reminded me of some good reads by older authors on physics. "How to Become a Good Theoretical Physicist" (HTML title "Theoretical Physics as a Challenge") by Nobel laureate Gerard 't Hooft

<http://www.staff.science.uu.nl/~hooft101/theorist.html>

lists essential knowledge that everyone should possess who desires to advance theoretical physics, and included in that knowledge is much mathematics. There is a whole book, The Road to Reality: A Complete Guide to the Laws of the Universe by Roger Penrose,

[http://www.amazon.com/The-Road-Reality-Complete- Universe/dp/...](http://www.amazon.com/The-Road-Reality-Complete- Universe/dp/0679776311/)

that is marketed as a book about physics but includes a huge section reviewing secondary school mathematics as an essential background to physics.

The blog post submitted here has a title that is an homage to the article "The Unreasonable Effectiveness of Mathematics in the Natural Sciences" by Eugene Wigner in Communications in Pure and Applied Mathematics, vol. 13, No. I (February 1960).

[https://dtrinkle.matse.illinois.edu/_media/unreasonable- effe...](https://dtrinkle.matse.illinois.edu/_media/unreasonable- effectiveness-cpam1960.pdf)

People who know physics have long been delighted to find in physics applications for the mathematics they learned in mathematics courses without a hint of how useful the mathematics would be. The blog post author, however, goes beyond that perspective to urge, "Let's think of mathematics in the abstract. Mathematics, at its most basic, is a very simple set of very well- defined rules. The rules describe the behavior and interaction of certain completely imaginary objects. Upon these rules, mathematicians have built others." And that brings to mind Paul Halmos's article (with its intentionally provocative title, an example of Halmos's spicy style in expository articles about mathematics) "Applied Mathematics Is Bad Mathematics" Halmos, P. "Applied mathematics is bad mathematics." Mathematics tomorrow (1984).

[http://books.google.com/books?hl=en&lr=&id=FcgB818WA...](http://books.google.com/books?hl=en&lr=&id=FcgB818WAQgC&oi=fnd&pg=PA193&dq=paul+halmos+applied+mathematics+is+bad+mathematics&ots=p0vNtw9Mxt&sig=VcLMDtZX26VSaeMCse4wPqjyzcs)

Halmos claims that mathematics is interesting and beautiful whether or not it has an apparent application.

Other replies already posted to this submission have helpfully mentioned the issue of empirical tests of what method of teaching mathematics may best help young learners appreciate (and later apply) mathematics. I have been deeply interested in cross-national comparisons of educational practice since living overseas beginning in 1982. In those days, one way in which school systems in most countries outdid the United States school system, economic level of countries being comparable, was that an American could go to many different places and expect university graduates (and perhaps high school graduates as well) to have a working knowledge of English for communication about business or research. I still surprise Chinese visitors to the United States, in 2012, if I join in on their Chinese-language conversations. No one expects Americans to learn any language other than English. Elsewhere in the world, the public school system is tasked with imparting at least one foreign language (most often English) and indeed a second language of school instruction (as in Taiwan or in Singapore) that in my generation was not spoken in most pupils' homes, as well as all the usual primary and secondary school subjects. At a minimum, that's one way in which schools in most parts of the world take on a tougher task than the educational goals of United States schools.

It was on my second stay overseas (1998-2001), that I became especially aware of differences in primary mathematics education. I began using the excellent Primary Mathematics series from Singapore

[http://www.singaporemath.com/Primary_Mathematics_US_Ed_s/39....](http://www.singaporemath.com/Primary_Mathematics_US_Ed_s/39.htm)

for homeschooling my own children, and I browsed Chinese-language bookstores in Taiwan for popular books about mathematics as my oldest son expressed an avid interest in mathematics. I discovered that the textbooks used in Singapore, Taiwan (and some neighboring countries) are far better designed than mathematics textbooks in the United States. (During that same stay in Taiwan, I had access to the samples United States textbooks in the storeroom of a school for expatriates, but they were never of any use to my family. I pored over those and was appalled at how poorly designed those textbooks were.) I discovered that the mathematics gap between the United States and the top countries of the world was, if anything, deeper and wider than the second- language gap.

Now I put instructional methodologies to the test by teaching supplemental mathematics courses to elementary-age pupils willing to take on a prealgebra- level course at that age. My pupils' families come from multiple countries in Asia, Europe, Africa, and the Caribbean Islands. (Oh, families from all over the United States also enroll in my classes. See my user profile for more specifics.) Simply by benefit of a better-designed set of instructional materials (formerly English translations of Russian textbooks, with reference to the Singapore textbooks, and now the Prealgebra textbook from the Art of Problem Solving),

[http://www.artofproblemsolving.com/Store/viewitem.php?item=p...](http://www.artofproblemsolving.com/Store/viewitem.php?item=prealgebra)

the pupils in my classes can make big jumps in mathematics level (as verified by various standardized tests they take in their schools of regular enrollment, and by their participation in the AMC mathematics tests) and gains in confidence and delight in solving unfamiliar problems. More schools in the United States could do this, if only they would. The experience of Singapore shows that a rethinking of the entire national education system is desirable for best results,

<http://www.merga.net.au/documents/RP182006.pdf>

but an immediate implementation of the best English-language textbooks, rarely used in United States schools, would be one helpful way to start improving mathematics instruction in the United States.

The blog post author begins his post with "In American schools, mathematics is taught as a dark art. Learn these sacred methods and you will become master of the ancient symbols. You must memorize the techniques to our satisfaction or your performance on the state standardized exams will be so poor that they will be forced to lower the passing grades." This implicitly mentions another difference between United States schools and schools in countries with better performance: American teachers show a method and then expect students to repeat applying the method to very similar exercises, while teachers in high- performing countries show an open-ended problem first, and have the students grapple with how to solve it and what method would be useful in related but not identical problems. From The Teaching Gap: Best Ideas from the World's Teachers for Improving Education in the Classroom (1999): "Readers who are parents will know that there are differences among American teachers; they might even have fought to move their child from one teacher's class into another teacher's class. Our point is that these differences, which appear so large within our culture, are dwarfed by the gap in general methods of teaching that exist across cultures. We are not talking about gaps in teachers' competence but about a gap in teaching methods." p. x

"When we watched a lesson from another country, we suddenly saw something different. Now we were struck by the similarity among the U.S. lessons and by how different they were from the other country's lesson. When we watched a Japanese lesson, for example, we noticed that the teacher presents a problem to the students without first demonstrating how to solve the problem. We realized that U.S. teachers almost never do this, and now we saw that a feature we hardly noticed before is perhaps one of the most important features of U.S. lessons--that the teacher almost always demonstrates a procedure for solving problems before assigning them to students. This is the value of cross-cultural comparisons. They allow us to detect the underlying commonalities that define particular systems of teaching, commonalities that otherwise hide in the background." p. 77

A great video on the differences in teaching approaches can be found at "What if Khan Academy was made in Japan?"

<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CHoXRvGTtAQ>

with actual video clips from the TIMSS study of classroom practices in various countries.

<comment><USER15> Why did you open with an ad hominem and ad datum reference?

<comment><USER16> _Ad datum_ means "to (toward) the given (item)." You probably meant _ad diem_ , "to the day (or date)."

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> I disagree on the premise that math is tought in the wrong way. Repetition is a very important part of learning so learning to use mathematical constructs is just as important as learning to know how to build them. Also, people don't naturally think in abstract terms, many learn from example first, interpolate and then gain an understanding. Humans are more inductive than deductive. So at the very least it's not that the current education is wrong, but that it needs to add the teaching of another skill.

Like another poster says, the topic requires research. Teaching to think in abstractions isn't easy.

</comment><comment><USER18> I don't recall ever wondering "why" I would ever "need" mathematics. I just always enjoyed it. To me, trying to convince students why they should enjoy mathematics (just because we do) seems like a good way to make students miserable.

Is mathematics education really failing because it doesn't produce _many_ mathematicians?

<comment><USER19> I think this is the real issue. A small fraction of people are fascinated by mathematics and enjoy it. The idea that there is some specific way to teach mathematics that will ignite some spark in a person who doesn't inherently have it I believe is false.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> This is indeed a serious problem. An interesting startup that is trying to address it is <http://www.mathalicious.com/>. They give math teachers lesson plans which tie math to things that students care about - 'is Kobe Bryant a better shooter than LeBron James?'. Things like that.

From my own experience, I was pretty bored with Math in high school. Through a series of coincidences I started reading some popular physics books, which led me to study Physics and re-discover Math as an incredible tool.

<comment><USER21> A pattern i see a lot is that people develop and interest in maths outside what their school was doing. Maybe we need to shift the onus onto individual children and families to foster interest in maths, regardless of how the schools teach it. It doesn't really matter how well you prepare the food if people don't have an appetite.

<comment><USER15> You say that parents should take a role in their children's intellectual development? Then what am I paying property taxes for?

<comment><USER13> > You say that parents should take a role in their children's intellectual > development? Then what am I paying property taxes for?

Let me ask another question -- do you really want to avoid having to provide an intellectual context for your children's life experience, and assign that responsibility to governments instead? Doesn't that sound dangerous? I shall resist quoting historical examples in which governments became the primary source of ideas and intellectual content for a new generation.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> This article really should reference Kirby's excellent article about a non- Platonic concept of mathematics, which, in arguing that the _writing_ of mathematics is necessary for the doing of mathematics. On this view, mathematics education is a necessarily in scriptural activity.

Kirby, Vicky. "Enumerating Language: "The Unreasonable Effectiveness of Mathematics"" Configurations, 11, 3 (2003).

</comment><comment><USER23> A few years ago I read an article [1] about a school teaching maths by pretending that the process was magic in Harry Potter. Perhaps what children and adults lack is a sense of imagination of how to apply concepts.

[1] [http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/nottinghamshire/7094593.s...](http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/nottinghamshire/7094593.stm)

</comment><comment><USER24> Interesting mathematics can be taught in high schools. In fact, I've tried and had some wonderful results. See my account of it here: [http://jeremykun.wordpress.com/2011/06/26/teaching- mathemati...](http://jeremykun.wordpress.com/2011/06/26/teaching-mathematics- graph-theory/).

</comment><comment><USER25> Great article. The lego air plane analogy is very accurate. It is certainly true that maths has lost some of its mysticism in early education but I think perhaps telling students that "maths is a set of abstract made up rules governing an imaginary universe" might alienate them just as much as before.

</comment><comment><USER26> great article, very well written with many agreeable points. But I doubt that the teaching of mathematics can be easily subverted into a better one, mostly because there is plenty of people that do not care enough: they think "math is hard and sucks" or simply do not care about knowing the alphabet of the knowledge. That's why at the University math is taught the good way, because there almost everybody is genuinely interested in the subject.

<comment><USER27> Math is hard and sucks because we are forced to do tedious and time consuming calculations by hand. Even with a calculator, it's still painful.

I basically cringe at khanacademy everytime they forced me to do this.

<comment><USER24> Mathematics is not about calculations. That's exactly the problem with math education, that the people designing the curriculum don't accept that.

<comment><USER15> You seem to be unaware of how curriculum has been designed in recent decades. The current "Where's the Math" protest movement is complaining that the curriculum is devoid of calculation.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> There's a few problems with the article. The rules argument he makes could instead be made for the more useful field of computer programming.

Also, the reductionist paradigm is dead. It worked for finding laws of physics and some chemistry, but otherwise, in the most useful fields of today, like biology/materials/chemistry (high throughput methods), computer vision, search engines etc. the automated creation of hypotheses through machine learning is winning out.

Conrad Wolfram gives a talk about the need for math education reform <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=60OVlfAUPJg>

He uses the term mathematics, but completely removing that term and replacing it with computer programming and machine learning should be done. They sound cooler and this step will remove all the baggage and ill-will mathematics has in society. That way, all mathematics teachers can be simply removed from high schools and colleges and replaced with computer programmers. Estonia is one of the few enlightened places on this subject with their introduction of programming as mandatory from year 1 in k12.

Almost the entire high school drop out rate can be attributed to maths teaching, and their is no solid empirical proof of it's utility over programming (the practice of "science" hasn't been applied to "maths" itself). <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mathematical_anxiety>

The same argument can be made for a number of other subjects, such as chemistry (why teach the periodic table?), languages (we have google translate and should taxpayers be funding this unproductive activity), and others (everything should be reexamined in light of search engines and instant information access).

The only useful subjects in k12 are probably

\- computer programming, including machine learning/statistics

\- physical education,

\- communication (reading/writing/public speaking/socialization)

\- general studies (trivia like history, geography, astronomy),

\- personal finance

\- physical crafts (3d printing, woodshop, cooking)

<comment><USER28> From reading your HN comments, you seem like the kind of person who has a small axiomatic set of principles, and then attempts to fit the world to those principles. Without going into the merits/demerits of that approach, I'd at least like to point out that it occasionally leads to absurd conclusions - such as replacing language courses with Google translate. Do you really think that Google translate is a feasible way to converse with someone in a foreign language? Or, for translating literature? Here is the opening paragraph of War and Peace, computer translation vs human. Note that Google translate assumed the whole thing was French, and left the Russian parts untranslated, so I had to manually translate the Russian words. Italics represent words originally in Russian.

Google translate:

Еh, my prince. Genoa and Lucca are only appendages of, _the manor_ , Buonaparte family. No, I warn you that if you do not tell me that we have war, even if you allow yourself to overcome all infamies, all the atrocities of this Antichrist (my word, I think) - I do you know more, you are no longer my friend, you are no longer _my faithful servant_ , as you say. _Ну, hello, hello_. I see that I frighten you, _sit down and talk_.

Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky translation:

Well, my prince, Genoa and Lucca are now no more than possessions, _estates_ , of the Buonaparte family. No, I warn you, if you do not tell me we are at war, if you still allow yourself to palliate all the infamies, all the atrocities of that Antichrist (upon my word, I believe it) - I no longer know you, you are no longer my friend, you are no longer _my faithful slave_ , as you say. _Well, good evening, good evening_. I see that I'm frightening you, _sit down and tell me about it_

<comment><USER10> Is it the responsibility of the taxpayer to fund the education for the leisure activity of the upper middle classes (speaking with foreigners or reading translated literature).

The education system that exists today (k12 + college) is a McReplica of what aristocratic people of earlier centuries considered fit for their children (who would never actually need to work). We're living the enviousness of the middle classes of a century ago (this same principle applies to the McMansions). It has no relation to what a more perfected reality could be.

With respect to google translate, I think we'll see a lot of improvements. I expect to see human level performance within 5 years (it's a "let the computers run long enough" + "enough data" problem).

<comment><USER28> What about countries where English is not the native tongue? Surely learning it can have huge advantages.

<comment><USER10> Yeah, I totally agree, in non-english speaking countries it's completely justifiable (until human-level language translation comes around).</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Forbes asked readers to turn off adblockers then immediately served them malware - <AUTHOR> http://www.engadget.com/2016/01/08/you-say-advertising-i-say-block-that-malware/ <comment><USER2> Forbes has come a long way down since the days of Malcolm Forbes, Sr. He did many exposes of bad business practices. Forbes is now owned by Integrated Whale Media Investments of Hong Kong.

If you're not that familiar with how ad serving works today, watch this IAB video.[1] Note how the online auction process works. After information about the user (location, demographics, income level, previous purchases, what user has looked at) has been obtained from a data provider, that info is submitted to an ad exchange. Advertisers then have an opportunity to bid for placing an ad in that space, and have 10ms to bid.

But sometimes, no advertiser bids in that round. The ad space is now "remnant space" \- ad space where all the big advertisers declined to buy. Remnant space is very cheap, maybe 5% of premium space. The first ad exchange goes out to a second lower-tier ad exchange, where the cycle repeats, at a lower price point. That's where junky ads and malware get inserted. Remnant-space sellers include Rubicon, PubMatic, and AdMeld (now owned by Google).

Many publishers are reluctant to set a minimum price and leave ad space unsold. Rather than fill unsold space with some non-ad content, or a house ad (Forbes running an ad for some other Forbes publication), they sell the space to one of those bottom-feeder services. This hurts their reputation and readership, and probably isn't worth the small revenue it generates.

Forbes covered the issue of ad exchange trust in 2014.[2] Their ad people need to read their own magazine.

[1] [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-Glgi9RRuJs](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-Glgi9RRuJs) [2] [http://www.forbes.com/sites/roberthof/2014/12/10/can-you- tru...](http://www.forbes.com/sites/roberthof/2014/12/10/can-you-trust-your- ad-exchange-new-index-may-provide-the-answer/)

<comment><USER3> For some clarification (as I've worked in the ad industry for years)

1) Advertisers (actually their ad agencies) use software called a DSP to connect to ad exchanges and bid on each impression. They have 100-250ms depending on the exchange's rules.

2) This kind of Real-Time Bidding (RTB) is used for both premium space and unsold/remnant inventory. The separate "rounds" is going away and there's a rapid movement to do a unified auction for each impression with all possible ad buyers (premium to cheap) in a single auction.

3) Lots of publishers do actually set a price floor but this is far more complicated than binary yes/no for a floor. There's a lot of math/science put into the online ad auction and yield management space.

4) Many networks don't use RTB and are safe from this.

5) This malware issue isn't because of adtech (the tech part) but rather the incentives and lack of regulation and enforcement. Lots of politics and mistrust has required tons of javascript tags just to render a simple banner, and as we all know, js can do just about anything so it immediately gives a bad advertiser power to do whatever they want. This is something being worked on with some newer formats. There's also no consequences of "getting caught". Most ad networks and bad advertisers are not big corporations but little companies in other countries that can just change names and come back in a few days to do it all over again.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Being that I make money from serving ads, I come at this a bit differently. In a lot of markets, it's one of the most passive ways to make money, but to be sure, the creepiness factor has been advertisers' hubris-induced-downfall.

In any case, I haven't seen anyone here mention the ad networks themselves. Every once and a while we would get a complaint about a bad ad - it wouldn't dismiss, etc. Over time, we whittled down our network list to ad networks that strictly test and vet the ads they serve, no matter how much time that takes.

The networks blaming a "rogue advertiser" means they're not even passing ads on their network through automated malware detection software, and so they have responsibility here.

Creepiness factor aside, the explosion of networks is a problem, because so very few are actually providing more than a basic service. We really should be holding networks responsible for their ads.

We did, and we haven't had a complaint for a very long time.

Edit: this doesn't absolve Forbes, especially if they did nothing to correct the problem.

Edit 2: by "we should hold the networks responsible" I mean "we the publishers" \- and as that "we" we still have a responsibility to our users/consumers. See Edit 1.

<comment><USER5> The problem isn't advertisements per se, the problem is advertisement networks that track users and sell their profiles. The only thing I have installed that counts as an ad blocker is Ghostery. I still get served advertisements at conscientious websites like duckduckgo.com or any other place that doesn't rely 100% on tracking networks.

Imagine if simply because you walked into Target, they hired a private investigator to follow you around and determine your personal habits, hobbies and other stores you visited. Imagine if they then used that information to attempt to lure you into the store, or sold that information to Best Buy so they could lure you into the store. I think most people would have a problem with such behavior. Making a more realistic physical analogy would be slipping an RFID token into your wallet without you noticing and only tracking you in stores that use the corresponding RFID reader.

In my opinion, tracking networks go the extra mile beyond a creepiness factor. My visit to your website isn't tacit approval for you to peruse my browsing of other websites. I shouldn't need to opt out of this behavior by installing Ghostery in the first place.

<comment><USER6> Individual profiles are rarely sold directly[1], but some demographic is taken so that the publisher can sell your traffic at a higher rate. This is a good thing because it means they can make more money with less traffic, _which in turn means_ that they don't have to appeal to anybody and everybody. This is (hypothetically) where quality content comes from.

Unfortunately most of the ad industry is really crap at this.

For example, Oracle/Bluekai leak `var bk_results` into the web page allowing anyone to pick up this data which means that this information can (and is) often used for much more than just better ads.

[1]: One notable space where they are sold is ABM. Unless you're a decision maker for an enterprise supply budget, this isn't you.

<comment><USER7> It is odd to see advertisers speak of tracking so casually. Tracking is still new. Up until a few years ago (like 3) the majority of the industry (by money) did not track users. A huge, but admittedly declining, segment still don't.

Billboards do not track. TV ads do not track. Physical shop fronts do not track. Radio ads do not track. And a great many website still sell space to people selling actual products, rather than banner ads, which bypasses all adblockers.

There are plenty of ways to get your message out, and make money in return, without inventing new supercookies for me to ferret out of my system.

<comment><USER8> > TV ads do not track.

Are we sure about that? Smart TVs would seem to make this at least possible, and probably easy.

<comment><USER9> Of course a smart TV tracks you. That's why the manufacturer made it (to earn money from you over its lifetime). The other features it has are just the bait on the hook.

<comment><USER7> Which is why I tell everyone to avoid SmartTVs and instead use some form of media player to support networking. It means yet another remote, but given that my TV remotes have already been usurped by my isp-provided decoder box. (Also a good idea as players are cheaper to replace than TVs.)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I can do without Forbes.

The problem with saying "switch off adblocker or no article" is that so many people are using adblockers, that those websites face an inevitable decline in influence if they continue that way. Because, despite what they say, it's not just about the money: it's the ability to influence the debate, whatever it might be. To have your editorials taken seriously and widely quoted. To make people listen. They're losing that ability, together with readers and revenue.

<comment><USER11> Are they though? Last I'd heard, it was still a minority of people using ad- blockers. Techies, sure, but most people are clueless, and only use ad- blockers when their techie spouses/relatives install them.

<comment><USER12> If what you are saying is true, then why would Forbes force this "minority" to disable their adblocker in the first place?

My understanding is that once Apple allowed this capability on iOS, it became more prevalent among the non-technical crowd.

<comment><USER11> Probably because corporate executives are asshole control freaks, so even if it's only 23% (according to the other responder using Forbes' own quote), they get pissed off and want to "fix" that. Also, nearly a quarter of viewers using ad-blockers still amounts to a lot of "lost" ad revenue, even if it's still a minority. (Using scare-quotes since you're not losing something if you never had it, but corporate executives don't believe that; just ask the MPAA and RIAA.)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> This reminds me of a time when a site asked me to enable JavaScript for "a better experience". I had been defaulting to JS off for a long time due to how effectively it stopped ads and other annoyances, and see these messages a lot, but this time I was momentarily curious for some reason; I did, only to be immediately assaulted with a bunch of ads, some crap following the pointer/scrolling, slide-overs, and other distracting annoyances that I would not at all call "a better experience". Fortunately I didn't get malware, but since then I've been much more cautious.

I know many are rather fond of sayings like "JS off will break most sites", but I challenge you to experience the web with it off by default and turn it on only for the few sites that absolutely need it; depending on what your most visited sites are, you may actually enjoy it. I find that the majority of sites are perfectly readable without JS.

On the other hand, I wonder if there are sites which use JS to hide the content and display a "turn _off_ JavaScript to view this article", or "install adblocker to view this article"...

<comment><USER14> I've observed that suggesting that JS isn't needed for most pages is one of the more reliable ways to get downvoted on HN. This is usually acco9mpanied with a complaint that their "web apps" need JS, similar to the "JS off will break most sites" fallacy that you mentioned.

The people making those claims probably _believe_ that everything would break without JS, because they are looking at it from the perspective of a business or designer. If you consider your own site to be "broken" if the analytics/tracking doesn't work, or the fad "UX" effects are not rendered, they it's easy to believe that JS should be mandatory.

This point of view is based on a fundamental misunderstanding of what the web is. HTML is more concerned with semantic abstractions than the specifics of how a page renders (use a pdf if you want to control the layout). This was an important design choice because it recognizes that the _client_ is responsible for the rendering, which is free to completely ignore the _suggestions_ made by the page.

Unfortunately, far too many people don't want to accept that they don't actually have control over the browser.

<comment><USER15> > This point of view is based on a fundamental misunderstanding of what the > web is. HTML is more concerned with semantic abstractions than the specifics > of how a page renders (use a pdf if you want to control the layout). This > was an important design choice because it recognizes that the client is > responsible for the rendering, which is free to completely ignore the > suggestions made by the page.

You are describing the web as it was 25 years ago. No modern browser works this way.

<comment><USER14> That's the fundamental misunderstanding I was talking about. You don't _know_ what browser is being used. Ever. You only know what the user agent decided to describe itself as and the requests it made to your servers. None of that tells you anything about what happened on the remote computer.

Besides, "modern browser" is a complete undefined term that is obviously subject to a lot of interpretation and opinion. Usually this term is used as either a euphemism for "I really want to put spyware on my website" or "I only use badly-designed tools".

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> This is rich, being reported by Engadget. I've reached out to them numerous times to let them know their ad networks try to redirect Chrome (Android) users to Play Store apps. It doesn't happen all the time, and it doesn't happen on desktop browsers. But it's frustrating and cheap.

They didn't respond.

</comment><comment><USER17> Loading forbes.com and scrolling to the bottom of the page requires nearly 500 http requests. Anybody willing to share what it's like to work on a project like that? I assume that they employ skilled web developers who are aware of best practices, but aren't empowered to improve things?

<comment><USER18> > Anybody willing to share what it's like to work on a project like that?

I used to work at Business Insider and we definitely had similar problems. It basically boils down to marketing & advertising being more important to publishers than technology or user experience.

It's organizationally difficult to resist every marketer who wants to add "just one line of JavaScript" for their pet project. Then there's the fact that you're beholden to ad networks and can't do much more than whack-a-mole when they serve junky ads. Probably once a day we'd notice a bad ad and have to block it from being served.

At one point, we got management buy-in for me to work on performance issues. We managed to improve performance by ~90%, but the bulk of the project was just exhaustively listing every script on the page and axing those which didn't have a good justification. Amazingly, for a majority of the scripts, nobody even knew why there were there still (they were often added to please an old advertiser who wanted a specific measurement).

It's hard to place blame. Developers don't have the political clout to prevent the bloat and are often under-resourced as it is. Marketers want to gather metrics, but with the small development teams at most media companies it's easier to rely on third-party vendors over performant in-house solutions. Management recognizes the problems, but without marketing and advertising there's no business model.

Personally, I think ad networks are the ones who should be taking the lead here: they're big enough that they can afford to block bad advertisers without endangering their profitability. They should be investing much more in automated solutions to detect and block bad/heavy ads. Unfortunately, there's not really an economic incentive for them to do so: users blame publishers for slow pages, not networks. And ad blocking is much more detrimental to publishers than the networks.

<comment><USER19> Someone needs to give the marketing team a 'budget' just like how they have a financial budget they must stay within.

300ms average load time added by the marketing team, or 200kb JavaScript, or whatever. Split it all up however you like, and let them fight amongst themselves for what goes live on the site.

That won't work for the developers who lack the authority to make this a rule, but that's what you go to management with along with any of the various studies showing how important speed is to users.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Forbes comes in first place bar none if you compute (shadiness/brand visibility). They do all kinds of shady stuff like clickbait titles, shadiest of the shadiest ad formats, that meaningless interstitial ad, and probably whole lot more I'm not even aware of. Whenever I somehow land on one of their pages (I NEVER visit them voluntarily, it's mostly via some clickbait title I click without thinking), I always think "Just die off already if you can't figure out how to make money without alienating people who have believed in you. You're being a disgrace to what Forbes used to be and people who worked hard to build up that reputation"

</comment><comment><USER21> In an "Ask HN:" someone is calling for a ban on Forbes.

Forbes has indeed reached a new plateau in stupidity.

Anyone using a text-only browser has seen that Forbes' most recent design transfers all the content but prevents the page from even displaying in even the most accomodating browser. The word that comes to my mind for their approach to web development is "boneheaded".

Quick and dirty script to view Forbes articles, with no ads:

      curl http://www.forbes.com/sites/... \
      |sed '
      1i\
      <html>

      s/\\n/\
      /g;
      s/\\r//g;
      s/\\"/\"/g;
      $a\
      </html>

      /./{2,/try {/d;
      /} catch/,$d;}
      ' > 1.html

Then view 1.html in your browser.

Why did I call their web design "boneheaded"?

They include two full copies of the article.

And this is before all the ads and God knows what are injected into the page.

</comment><comment><USER22> Maybe people will ultimately resort to scrapers to get to the content. Scrape it into your favorite text viewer. Of course the layout will keep changing, so it will become a contest to keep updating the scraper scripts, with websites dedicated to keeping the latest scripts available. Or is that what Adblock does already?

<comment><USER23> Scraping is mostly useful if you're trying to get at some structured data or something. (Though you might be thinking of "readability" modes which work by assigning scores to what it thinks is content) For sites like these I figure that using noscript or a headless browser like w3m can suffice. My layperson understanding is that Adblock works at the network level by blocking requests to addresses on its blacklist.

<comment><USER22> Unfortunately, text browsers like Lynx and Links have been locked out of many sites. When I go to forbes.com using links, it lets me click on the "30 under 30" article, but then I get a mostly blank screen and can go no further.

Life on the web must be tough for the sight-impaired, as well. Too bad it's gone in this direction.

<comment><USER24> This is probably a consequence of relying on AJAX to load content, and not of using a text-based browser. If I visit Forbes in Firefox with noscript enabled, I also get a mostly blank screen.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> Forbes is like a for-profit Wikipedia. Impossible to not see a Forbes result after when you do a google search. I think I saw a Forbes result when looking up some obscure string theory query. They are everywhere now. Like a kudzu. Their gateway pages are annoying, and I'm surprised they don't run afoul of Google's SEO guidelines.

<comment><USER26> I pretty much never see forbes links unless I am on HN, and usually go "Oh how quaint."

I most cases I would assume that you have a google search history that is influencing these results and thinks you like forbes, hah.

<comment><USER27> I have the same experience - I seldom encounter Forbes in search results. I wish I could say the same about w3schools, or whatever it's called.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> By default, I use comprehensive ad blockers on my client machines. I also suggest and assist installing them as well on anyone's machine without cost (normally billable).

A great deal of problems are solved full stop by doing that simple step. And it also sends the message of , "Not interested". I go to a website to read content, not to be swayed on what shit to buy immediately or later.

Oh, and punishment for allowing ads are "broken or slow machine clogged with malware". I'll pass.

</comment><comment><USER29> This problem is present, to varying but nonzero degrees, in all of the advertising networks. And they're doing a miserable job of fighting it. I recently saw malware advertised through AdSense, and decided to try to report it. There was no mechanism for doing so, and I checked everywhere.

</comment><comment><USER30> I used to be an avid Forbes reader but then came the ad insanity. One thing is for sure,

__I will not give up on my ad blocker__

even if it means not visiting and reading the sites whose content I enjoyed or even canceling my subscriptions. This is a free market, a new entrant will emerge for me in no time.

</comment><comment><USER31> Why are ad buyers permitted to provide ads that contain script in the first place? What was wrong with images?

<comment><USER32> Not aggressive enough. Gotta force the user to click and/or interact with your shitty ad!

</comment></comment><comment><USER33> No comments from Forbes on this?

<comment><USER9> They're probably hoping it will blow over. They might wait for the Internet's focus to move onto the next scandal and then quietly put out a statement shifting the blame.

</comment></comment><comment><USER34> I tweeted at them on Christmas day that I'm not going to be turning of my ad- blocker:

[https://twitter.com/aaronchall/status/679334126374297600](https://twitter.com/aaronchall/status/679334126374297600)

It's my computer, I'm not going to load crap I don't want to load on it. If they want to block other content for it, I don't have to visit their site.

</comment><comment><USER35> I won't be turning off my ad blocker, but why can't ad blockers disguise themselves?

Surely there's a way to trick their site into believing I have a normal adblock-free browser. Even a per-site whitelist kind of thing, whereby popular sites with adblock detection can be dealt with via addon scripts - say for uBlock.

<comment><USER36> It's just the nature of adblocking.

The adblocker prevents certain JS from loading. Sites can easily check which JS has loaded.

<comment><USER37> Ad blockers could pretty easily fetch resources and just throw them away to work around this, or insert workalike shims if it's happening client-side.

<comment><USER38> You'd still have to execute the JS - how do you expect an adblocker to emulate an abusive tracker like [http://cdn4.forter.com/script.js?sn=3326ea178bfb](http://cdn4.forter.com/script.js?sn=3326ea178bfb) (bonus: check out the way it abuses fake sourcemaps to try and hide from devtools, and additionally log with identifying information via a network request if you are trying to debug their scripts)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER39> Perhaps we're coming to an understanding that third-party advertising isn't such a great revenue model for the web because it requires users to abandon security. It's becoming increasingly clear that what we get for free by allowing these ads simply isn't worth giving up our security.

<comment><USER40> You might have meant this, but the problem isn't strictly third-party advertising, it's advertising _delivered by_ a third party. Nothing wrong [1] with company a paying for company b to host an image and deliver it along with its content, just as offline advertising works.

[1] Well, _less_ wrong ...

<comment><USER39> Yes "advertising delivered by a third party" is a more accurate description.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER41> Correct me if I am wrong but no advertiser pays for just showing ads on a website anymore.

They pay you for clicks.

If someone is blocking ads, they certainly are not going to click just because you ask them to allow them to be shown or find a way to force them being shown.

<comment><USER42> It's not entirely true, while CPC and CPA* ads have been getting more popular over time, CPM is still the best way to go for many other purposes.

Not everyone cares about getting people to click through to a landing page, lots of advertising is just about increasing the value of your brand, and if you want to reach as many people as possible you might not care whether they engage or not.

* Cost per click, action or mille

</comment></comment><comment><USER43> have faced this recently. didnt turn off adblocker bcoz i've seen 11(as far i can remember) ads blocked by my adblocker

</comment><comment><USER44> fuck adblockers, I know what they're thinking.

<comment><USER45> Nice to see Wendy Sullivan still getting work:

[http://www.metafilter.com/112362/Thats-no-booth- babe](http://www.metafilter.com/112362/Thats-no-booth-babe)

[http://www.sfweekly.com/sanfrancisco/sex-columnist-violet- bl...](http://www.sfweekly.com/sanfrancisco/sex-columnist-violet-blue-tries- to-restrain-online-foes/Content?oid=2168929)</comment></comment>


Facebook Timeline Remover: Works, but Malicious  - <AUTHOR> https://www.barracudanetworks.com/blogs/labsblog?bid=3097# <comment><USER2> What the bloody hell is Google doing with the $5 we're supposed to pay them for review and submission to the Chrome store if they're not catching this stuff? I'm a vociferous Chrome user, but one thing I have to give Mozilla credit for above Google is that their add-on review process is free and quick.

The unnecessary cost and additional process (e.g. requiring screenshots) are all reasons LikeBuster ([https://addons.mozilla.org/en- US/firefox/addon/likebuster-fo...](https://addons.mozilla.org/en- US/firefox/addon/likebuster-for-firefox/)) is available on Mozilla's Firefox add-on site but needs to be manually installed (<http://github.com/relwell/LikeBuster>) for Chrome. Knowing that the extra b.s. doesn't actually accomplish anything for user security really grinds my gears as someone who would like to make it as easy as possible for people to download my extension.

<comment><USER3> It's obvious what it's for. $5 keeps people from quickly and easily just spamming the store with thousands of extensions, while still keeping it cheap enough that anyone can afford.

It isn't for doing security screening, there's no way $5 would be worth the time of someone professional enough to look at your code for 20 or 30 minutes, God forbid if it's longer than that.

<comment><USER4> You're obviously right (by approximately a factor of 50) but let me add:

There is a way to make app review "for safety" scale at this price point: be ultra restrictive about what apps are allowed to do, and review them not as much for security as for compliance to API guidelines.

• _Cough_ •.

<comment><USER5> I would love to hear what restrictions you think you can place on a Turing complete brower extension (a model that already has tons of permissions that apparently aren't enough) would let you know that a sufficiently large subset are sufficiently safe to allow $5/app to be enough to subsidize screening the rest.

In this case, this is a browser extension, and the goal is to edit the page: there are tons of such extensions; while a couple of these had obvious "talks to the wrong server" problems, various of them were correctly only editing pages on Facebook, but were doing so maliciously.

The price point we are talking about here is simply so low: $5 is only going to purchase 40 minutes of a _minimum wage employee_... we aren't even talking a junior supervisor at a fast food restaurant, we are talking about the entry- level "try to get the orders in the computer right" position.

At these prices, even just reading the description and figuring out "oh, this should only be able to edit pages on this one website" is already going to be expensive. Figuring out "should only be using DOM to remove nodes and not add script elements" is impossible.

<comment><USER4> Honestly, I was just making a snarky point about the iOS App Store.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Its interesting to me how anti-timeline people are that they're willing to seek out extensions to get rid of it. I'm not sure I understand it, but honestly I don't understand Facebook so much either. Why the hate for timeline from average users? And when would you ever be looking at your own timeline anyway?

Disclosure: barracuda pay me to do stuff

<comment><USER7> Two columns of text. It's a horrible reading experience. Who wants to flip back and forth back and forth with their eyes to read?

        A | B
        C | D

It's like reading the House of Leaves except that I don't feel any more enlightened when I'm done.

The actual construction of a timeline I haven't heard any of my friends really complain too much about.

<comment><USER8> The thing that gets me is, what's behind that? FB has many many well-paid designers and interface people...how did that flip model come to be? Is that really the best they can do with the resources of Facebook? I'm reminded of Microsoft (yet again)...

<comment><USER9> My guess is getting people to scan left to right rather than top to bottom increases ad views.

<comment><USER8> By that token I would think that it's more like "a disjointed reading experience will allow for more cognitive 'slots' in which to place advertising."

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I'm a little surprised that after inspecting each plugin and finding:

"the first 3 plugins work well and do remove the Timeline after the user logins to Facebook. There is no suspicious activity."

that the final conclusion is:

"In conclusion, we would like to warn all Facebook users to not try any Facebook Timeline Remover apps or plugins."

Why take issue with an unsuspicious app that works as advertised? It's a little unfair to the people who built these apps.

Aside from the general privacy concern presented by every single FB / smartphone app which has access to some level of your personal data, it seems like this is being too specific in its claim that "Timeline removal apps are scams."

<comment><USER11> >Why take issue with an unsuspicious app that works as advertised?

      #include <closed_sw_boilerplate_warning.h>

Because you can't prove that the app isn't doing something suspicious. You know what it purports and appears to do, and you know that it needs access to your activity on facebook.com. Even then, it has an auto update mechanism, so even if it isn't doing something untoward now, it easily could in the future without you being the wiser.

Knowing how much of the average user's life is detailed on Facebook, it's one thing that deserves extra scrutiny when it comes to allowing randoms to have access to it.

<comment><USER10> This was exactly my point - the fact you can't prove that the app isn't doing something suspicious is true of every app. Yes, there are a lot of personal details on Facebook. There are on your phone, too. These are not Timeline- removal app-specific.

Yesterday, there was a post on Hacker News about the Wolfram Alpha Facebook Analytics [1] with very little concern about privacy (3 comments out of 104 mention privacy). My issue with this post is that it needlessly targets Timeline removal apps when it just seems to be making a general statement about being careful when installing any app.

[1][http://blog.stephenwolfram.com/2012/08/wolframalpha- personal...](http://blog.stephenwolfram.com/2012/08/wolframalpha-personal- analytics-for-facebook/)

<comment><USER11> Understood, but they took the time to compare all of the ones available in the chrome store, and roughly half of them (!) were requesting permissions they absolutely didn't need to function. That is worthy of mentioning, IMHO.

Lazy developer or spyware?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> The funny thing is that people probably think this plugin will revert their timeline back to old facebook profile.

Most users I know who dislike Timeline do so because they don't want you to see their timeline, they had no problem viewing other people's timelines.

</comment><comment><USER13> For people looking to greatly customize the Facebook UI using a non-malicious extension, check out Social Fixer (<http://socialfixer.com/>), previously known as Better Facebook.

Among (many) other things, it allows you to switch your timeline to show items in a single column. (Unfortunately, it will not disable timeline completely since the author feels the technique for doing that (pretending to be IE7 since timeline doesn't support it) is fragile.)

</comment><comment><USER14> Nothing new, a worm similar to this called LilyJade got a few million installs (using crossrider - a cross-browser extension thing) by spamming users facebook effectively bypassing csrf because they can read the webpage and spreading itself and banking the spammers a few hundread thousand dollars with CPA (survey scams - "please do this survey to unlock the content")

</comment><comment><USER15> I've been using Facebook social fixer (<http://socialfixer.com/>) and it's been great, turns Facebook back into a normal clutter-free experience. Plus, it has a "Friend tracker" which lets you see who've defriended you (vain, I know, but can't help it)

</comment><comment><USER16> This isn't what I was hoping it to be. I would love to have a browser extension that would iterate through every item, delete it and confirm the delete action. (In preparation for divorcing from Facebook entirely).

</comment><comment><USER9> Fluff Busting Purity, nee Facebook Purity, aka F B Purity (fbpurity.com) has been keeping my feed free of spam and other garbage for several years now.

They've got a feature that removes timeline (from your view, other people will still see your profile as a timeline) that works fairly well. Also, I can change colors, so now my Facebook experience is Zenburned. I really can't recommend these guys enough, and it's too bad Barracuda didn't study them.

</comment><comment><USER17> The old problem of power vs. security. You can't trust your users will be smart enough to understand "this extension should't access all sites", but you can just block the functionality from all the non-evil developers.</comment>


Cars and the Future - <AUTHOR> https://stratechery.com/2016/cars-and-the-future/ <comment><USER2> A good read, but it's another tech/car article that completely fails to take into account two huge things: Car Culture and things that aren't cities.

On car culture: There is still an extremely large community of people in the U.S. (and I have no reason to believe this is restricted to the U.S) who buy cars NOT based on efficiency and price, we buy what we like. This is a huge factor that I've heard no technical pundit address yet. Excluding the Tesla which is a masterpiece, almost every other electric car is extremely dull. Lackluster styling, meh on performance, and focuses on gadgets to make the sale. To a "car guy," an electric car is right there with a Honda Accord or a Toyota Camry; it's mashed potatoes. It's a doughnut with no filling. Yeah, it will do the job and it will do it well, but you don't have any fun with it. When I'm going to out to spend a years salary or so on transportation I want something I'm going to enjoy driving.

On the other thing, I have yet to see an even semi-autonomous car that can handle NOT being in a city. Intermittent Internet access, gravel/dirt roads, long stretches of unmarked highway, etc. I can't picture one of Google's cars making it's way up the driveway to my house, I have a feeling it would just stop at the edge of the driveway (dirt) and go "Welp, my tiny 8 inch tires can't handle an obstacle of that magnitude, get out and walk."

I realize these are the concerns of a small market but when people throw around terms like "the car of the future" I feel the need to point out that it's not the future for everyone, and in fact might be the future for a very small group of people while everyone else keeps doing what they're doing.

<comment><USER3> > Car Culture

Well, "car culture" was invented to sell economy cars - nobody gets excited over mashed potatoes, so they had to invent something sexier. I don't think anyone legitimately believes that the auto industry is going to keel over and disappear - autonomous cars will have a very, very long adoption period. But over that period, I expect the "car guy" segment of the market (sports cars, etc) to become more of the niche hobby of "human-controlled car racing". It's not like horses totally disappeared after the invention of the automobile; their purpose just became much more heavily weighted towards entertainment.

> things that aren't cities.

Autonomous vehicles already exist that work in non-city environments. But yeah, there is probably some infrastructure that would need to be built first -- and it will get built, just like roads did. I expect we'll see autonomous cars in cities first, but the algorithms and hardware will improve over time and extend to rural areas.

IMO we're about 15 years out from this entire debate being laughed at for how stupid we all were back in the mid-2010s :)

<comment><USER2> I would hope it becomes more niche. I'd say it will be a lot like the performance desktops that gamers build right now. Most people just get an off the shelf boring old laptop, but then the hobbyists who are into tinkering build custom machines that look sexy and run like hell. Hopefully we'll get to that point with cars in my lifetime.

The thing with the infrastructure argument is we're not funding our infrastructure right now enough to maintain what we've already got, let alone upgrade to roads and highways capable of keeping autonomous cars on the road. I'm sure this kind of thing will be huge in California, Texas, New York, etc. but for the rest of the states I think a Google car is going to have a hell of a time.

<comment><USER3> > we're not funding our infrastructure right now enough to maintain what we've > already got

We don't maintain our infrastructure because businesses aren't complaining loud enough. If it starts to infringe on some company's ability to make a profit, they'll start up and fund an astroturf campaign to improve the roads. It's kind of laughable how cheap lobbying actually is relative to the amount of money corporate America can throw around -- I'd bet you could make great strides in a localized area with even $100,000 to spend (a lot to an individual, but any decently large company spends more on alcohol for a holiday party than that). If we're going to have corporate money in our political system, let's at least try to make it work for us.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Good article. It's pretty interesting to consider what the future of transportation looks like and which companies are in the best position to take advantage of it.

I'm inclined to think that Uber may well have the best position on this. They may not have what it takes to put out the vehicle hardware or the self-driving software, but they do have the network and trust to set up self-driving, possibly electric, autonomous cars to substitute for conventional cars on at least some of their trips, from selected start and end locations. They're probably in the best position to make agreeable deals with whoever does end up making the best software.

<comment><USER5> Things like UberHop, where there's a pre-defined route seem like a logical first step. There's likely a large jump from that to fully autonomous vehicles that can drive on any road in any situation. But in that world, Uber (or Uber- like services) will have a jump on the competition as they'll have likely years of first-mover advantage, raising brand awareness about autonomous vehicles.

<comment><USER3> > raising brand awareness about autonomous vehicles.

IMO this is Uber's biggest strength. Once autonomous driving becomes even remotely real, investors would just be able to buy a bunch of cars, build a thin framework around some fleet management software and some payment processing, and have an Uber clone all of their own. Very little execution risk; the only requirements are capital investment. Uber has a built a powerful brand though, and will likely be the first choice of consumers.

But Uber will still likely be at a disadvantage in this scenario. Companies able to offer only driverless cars will have a huge advantage in cost structure: not only does a startup not have to pay drivers a share, they also don't have the overhead associated with hiring, managing, interacting, dispute resolution, etc. with drivers. They can just ignore what amounts to an enormous part of Uber's operations.

Sound familiar? It's exactly what Uber did to the taxi companies. Dispatching, metering, scheduling, etc. are all huge parts of taxi operations that Uber completely automates or ignores.

Of course, the whole industry will probably just end up going the route of the airline industry -- hedge funds and investment banks put up the cash for the airplanes (cars) via a holding company, then insure them and lease them out to airlines, which actually operate them. The only people who will make anything from it will be the banks.

<comment><USER4> I'm inclined to think that Uber still has an advantage in that the first self- driving systems will probably be pretty limited in the areas they can drive in. New self-driving rides only company X will have to sell the idea of "If you're in area Y, get a ride with X instead of Uber or a Taxi! Just make sure you're only going somewhere else in area Y or we can't help you." Uber will be able to say "You can always get an Uber ride from anywhere to anywhere. If we know you're going in the right area, we might send you a self-driving car, but you don't have to worry about it."

I think people will keep choosing Uber just because nobody feels like trying another limited solution in special cases, even if it's cheaper.

<comment><USER3> The vast, vast majority of Uber (and taxi) trips happen in densely populated areas where autonomous cars are likely to provide the most benefit.

Also, I don't think self-driving cars will see wide availability as a product unless they can serve a big majority of driving use cases. There will be an adoption curve, and given the price of an automobile, it will be very long.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> With regards to the simplicity implied with electronic propulsion I think far too many people vastly underestimate the complexity that is a battery pack, the regenerative systems, and propulsion motors. While electric motors are simple in theory they are very complex items on their own and long term viability has to be worked out. Throw in the packs weight alone requires juggling of the rest of the cars construction to get weight back down to acceptable levels.

Self driving, yeah I think Google is doing fine for Disneyland type environments but the ever changing world of driving cannot be surmounted by data. It will take systems which can make microsecond decisions and actually know what they have perceived. So identification of all objects in play is key. the government approach of having cars all talk to each other seems opposite of where the car companies went.

Last, ride sharing will likely get surpassed by automating buses of various sizes dynamically scheduled based on needs. Why there hasn't been a nationwide push to electrify school buses is beyond me, want to get a generation off to the right thinking fast, start with kids

<comment><USER7> > but the ever changing world of driving cannot be surmounted by data.

That's insane, of course it can! How can you look at the current technological changes and come to the conclusion that there's an invisible barrier we're never going to pass? Given hardware that is fast enough, of course we can construct software to make microsecond decisions about the environment!

<comment><USER5> The current technology is incredibly dependent upon high quality maps of the area. In theory that's a solvable problem, but it requires breakthroughs in mapping (it's prohibitively expensive to map to the degree needed for large areas), breakthroughs in reactions to unpredictable or untrained situations, breakthroughs in sensors that can work in poor climates (rain and snow) and breakthroughs in computing to be able to make it affordable once it's possible to process that.

It's not impossible, but it's probably safe to say that it's currently insurmountable by data given current technology and the cost structures involved. Given several large, game-changing breakthroughs, of course it's possible.

<comment><USER7> You're moving a bunch of goalposts here.

Mapping isn't required at all for self-driving, it's required for self- navigation. Also, the obvious solution to mapping is to let every car provide input as they're driving. What do you think Google is doing with both Google Maps and Waze? They collect a shit-ton of data while people are using those apps and driving. There's your mapping.

For untrained or unpredictable situations, you don't need a breakthrough, you just need the steady improvement of sensors and computer vision. You only need to encounter a situation once for the entire fleet of self-driving cars to be trained on it.

For computing, you don't need breakthroughs, you just need more, and we're getting more, every year, steadily. Self-driving cars is not a matter of flashes of genius, it's a boring matter of economics of making the sensors cheap enough, the data collection cheap enough, the computing cheap enough, for it to be fitted to every car and there we go.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> What saddens me about all this is that the trend away from cars also represents a trend away from _freedom._

If you have a car that you can drive, you can travel pretty much as you please, subject to the availability of time and economic resources (e.g. fuel, vehicle maintenance). Without one, you are either restricted to the distance you can travel on foot (or via human-powered devices like bicycles, which extend that range some but not to a great extent), or you become dependent on others to provide you the service of transportation...and, in many cases, those services are either heavily regulated by government (e.g. airlines, trains, traditional taxi services) or outright _provided_ by government (e.g. municipal buses and light rail). This gives the government the ability to arbitrarily deny the freedom to travel at its whim (e.g. the "no-fly" list).

Of the three trends cited, electric cars least affect the freedom to travel, though their limited range compared to vehicles with an IC engine might infringe somewhat. Self-driving cars rely heavily on communication with external services for their navigation and operation, and this provides a chokepoint where government can exert pressure. And we've certainly seen how governments are responding to the rise of ride-sharing services, by attempting to regulate them, which is still an ongoing controversy.

Is there anyone out there that is seriously addressing the threat to freedom that the demise of the traditional car represents?

<comment><USER9> What saddens me about the rise of cars is the loss of freedom. No longer can you travel where you want when you want on your horse, subject to the availability of grass and no cliffs. Now you will be limited the ares around gas stations, to the roads and the laws of government on those roads. Who will look out for our freedom that the demise of the horse represents?

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> I'm rather incredulous about the whole, _electric is simpler_.

Combustion engines are pretty damn simple, at their heart. Modern engines are complex monsters because we have been steadily refining them- lower emissions, more power, greater longevity. You have a whole host of devices managing the engine to make it perform optimally.

Electric engines can also pretty damn simple. And yet we switch to brushless for durability. We thermally manage the battery banks for performance. We add regenerative modes for efficiency.

I suspect eighty years from now, the electric engine will be just as complex if not more, than the combustion engine of today.

<comment><USER11> It's not really about being simpler, but rather that electric has _fewer moving parts_. A modern gasoline car has hundreds of moving parts while an electric car has more like 1-4 moving parts (the motors). This means that the electric car is simpler to maintain. Think about all the important car maintenance items you have to pay for. Oil changes, belt replacements, transmission fluid changes, spark plugs, etc. On an electric car, you have a much smaller list of things to worry about. Basically you only need to replace the battery and the tires. Battery replacement should only need to be done every 5-10 years and tires should wear pretty much the same as in a gasoline car.

<comment><USER10> I can't help but point out a spark plug is not a moving part.

<comment><USER12> There is a (small) spring-loaded reciprocating mechanical element - aka a moving part - in many (all?) spark plugs [0]. Lubricating this reciprocating interface is an active research area.

[0] [http://4.bp.blogspot.com/\--EcUF2vWkUM/T7aL828jmdI/AAAAAAAACP...](http://4.bp.blogspot.com/--EcUF2vWkUM/T7aL828jmdI/AAAAAAAACPg/BVrIW3eRdI4/s1600/spark_plug.png)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> I think this is interesting, from a planning standpoint of today. In Portland, there is a huge effort to focus on pushing biking and transit as opposed to improving the quality and capacity of our roads. I find this interesting, only because the concept of a 4 wheeled automobile that is around 6 feet wide. Existing infrastructure will be heavily utilized by this no matter what the future brings.

I am not an expert at all on city planning of course, and I realize its an incredibly complex field, but from a complete layman standpoint, investing in existing infrastructure today seems prudent.

<comment><USER14> Just as high speed trains are lighter and less crash-worthy than slow trains, self-driving cards will evolve to be as light as reasonably possible while providing comfort. Lanes will become narrower, or allocated on demand. The extent of disruption is mostly underrated.</comment></comment>


Dolphins Are Helping Us Hunt for Aliens - <AUTHOR> http://oceans.nautil.us/feature/583/dolphins-are-helping-us-hunt-for-aliens <comment><USER2> A typical clickbait title.

No, dolphins are not helping us hunt for aliens. Rather, researchers are putting forth the idea that dolphin intelligence might be a good model as they search for other intelligences in the universe.

As an aside, John Lilly is described as a neuroscientist who in 1961 was best known as trying to talk to dolphins (George C. Scott's character in Day of the Dolphin was based on him). He went on, however, to be equally well-known for his experimentation with LSD (which inspired a second Hollywood movie, Altered States). Lilly also developed the first sensory deprivation tank.

You would think that Lilly would appear on Wikipedia's listing of Caltech notable alumni, but he does not.</comment>


Show HN: RoastMe – Feedback markeplace  from users and experts for your product - <AUTHOR> https://roastme.xyz <comment><USER2> Cool Idea, as someone who's worked on a lot of ideas, getting feedback from users can be a laborious process. I think you're trying to solve a good problem, however the issue I think you may run into is people willing to pay for it. I also don't care about what experts feedback have on my product, I care about the target customer. Their feedback is much more valuable since they'd be the ones paying for it.

<comment><USER3> I feel the same. I'm much more interested in collecting a wide range of opinions from a big group of users from my broad niche (software developers, in my case) than I am in one or two experts who may or may not be my target audience.

I can imagine the situation where you would want an expert, but for me that would be more when I'm trying to fix a specific issue (users don't convert well on page X), and I don't have a specific problem. Right now I mainly want feedback to validate my core concept, and really that needs a certain volume of opinions.

OP, I'd suggest splitting the pricing: $X for an expert opinion (I think you could go quite a way above the current $5 here), or $Y for N opinions from random people who might fit my niche (you'd need some broad categories somehow though).

<comment><AUTHOR> Yeah, that's true... (We have a lot of software developers as experts too haha ;)).

I will think in your idea of splitting the price. The true is that "in a way" I did (you can buy specific experts) but some people say to me that the price is too low... But it's hard for me to upraise the price without any sell :S

Thanks!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> This is my first solo-founded product, I developed it with 3 weeks.

The goal is build a marketplace where people can share their expertise and get money or get feedback for your idea, product, website, etc.

Thanks!

<comment><USER4> Cool idea, kind of like ProductHunt meets Quora? I think in order for people to spend money you will need some well known experts, but I like the free offering and I put in a submission of my own. Congrats on the launch!

<comment><AUTHOR> Hi Tim and thanks for your submission. The idea is to increase the database of experts (in the lasts 2 days 9 news experts added) and then you can handpick expert review. I'm working in the promotion part of the product! Stay tunned

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> This is nice. I've started building two ideas for this, but I always stopped.

1\. A website where you uploaded a design and was guaranteed feedback on it once you gave feedback on someone elses design.

2\. Exactly the same, except purely though email. You'd email your design to firstname.lastname@example.com and you'd get another one in your inbox that you could reply to. Once that was done, you'd receive feedback on your design.

Oh and as a bonus I also have this page, that I've never shared anywhere before [http://jontelang.com/feedback/](http://jontelang.com/feedback/).

\--

On your site, this looks nice however for the 'see roasts'. It is unclear if the roasts there are free ones or kinda the proper paid roasts.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for your ideas. The email part is a very good way to reach more people.

You are the second person that say to me that the "see roasts" button is unclear. Message received! I will change it right now

Thanks!

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Really slick for something that was solo founded and developed within 3 weeks.

Couple of suggestions : The folks with good roasts rating can be invited to become experts that ways you are incentivizing everyone involved to give good and proper feedback. Bad roasts get negative points (a la Karma) and this can be used to determine the payout. I usually don't like changing the entire pricing/biz model for folks but i thought this might be something that you can look into.

The only thing that irritated me a bit was the color, i agree that red can look slick but the sharpness is a bit too much?

Regardless really good idea, well executed. Best of luck :)

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for your kind words!

Now I have a 'point' system (like karma) and the goal is to reward better roasters with free roasts, become an expert and more! I will take in consideration your suggestion!

The color is true that maybe is too "strong". I will try to improve it.

Thanks!

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Nice idea! One minor comment: I have the impression that the word "Roast" is being used as a linguistic reference. If so, non-native English speakers may not understand the name. Maybe consider a name that is more university understood?

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks! You are not the first one to sayme something similar... I was thinking in changing it to feedbackme or feedbackloop or something similar to make it more professional too, but it's hard to decide either do it or no.

<comment><USER7> Well nows the time to do it before you get too much traction.

</comment></comment></comment><comment> 100-xyz I also registered, but no confirmation email. Its been about 5 minutes.

<comment><AUTHOR> Bad news.

I will take a look what is happening and try to resend you the mail. If you have some problem, you can reach us in "email@example.com" and I will be glad to help you!

Thanks!

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Congrats on the launch. Looks really slick for 3 weeks.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks!! I did my best :)</comment></comment>


Ask HN: How do you develop locally with Kubernetes? - <AUTHOR> What's your dev workflow? <comment><USER2> Tilt is great for local development and coordinating teams of developers who build apps on Kubernetes: [https://tilt.dev/](https://tilt.dev/)

</comment><comment><USER3> Kind and Minikube are often used

Telepresence.io is another tool for hybrid local against remote cluster

Garden.io is another I haven't looked much into</comment>


Amazon Urbanism: Patents and the Totalizing World of Big Tech Futures - <AUTHOR> https://failedarchitecture.com/amazon-urbanism-patents-and-the-totalizing-world-of-big-tech-futures/ <comment><USER2> _" The city becomes a giant fulfillment center, and humans mere inventory pickers."_

That's almost the definition of a shopping mall.

</comment><comment><USER3> This is awesome and I can't wait until these become reality. I understand that media now lives on the message that tech is bad, but to make out some kind of dystopia from these patents it's a giant stretch.

<comment><USER4> Calling an independent magazine "the media" is just lazy criticism. You can be of a different opinion, but that's not an argument.

<comment><USER3> Any magazine is part of the media - especially if it's continuing the same exact discourse as other media outlets.</comment></comment></comment>


Do Ruby on Rails Developers Need Merb? - <AUTHOR> http://www.internetnews.com/dev-news/article.php/3778386/Do+Ruby+on+Rails+Developers+Need+Merb.htm <comment><USER2> Rails was created to make web applications like Basecamp. I think Seaside was probably a better choice for web applications.

Now that client side frameworks like Cappucino and SproutCore exist, I don't really see the point in using Rails or Seaside.

I would recommend Merb as a replacement for dynamic, content-driven sites that people currently use PHP for.

<comment><USER3> _Now that client side frameworks like Cappucino and SproutCore exist, I don't really see the point in using Rails or Seaside._

Why would a javascript client framework remove the need for a backend?

<comment><USER2> You still need a backend, just not a complicated framework. The backend for my Cappuccino application does not have to manage any UI state. It just reads and writes to a db.

<comment><USER3> Rails is perfect for building that.. that's what we're using it for on my current start-up.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Merb has grown so large, I think at this point Sinatra is better for very small projects. Use Merb if you want something like Rails, but with better internals and more flexibility of companion technologies.

I see Merb as being like Postgres and Rails like MySQL. Both are good products. Merb is better put together from a technical perspective, but doesn't have the mindshare that Rails has. This means less plugins being created, and less search results on Google for your error messages. For advanced programmers this usually doesn't matter, but for beginners it makes Merb much less accessible.

</comment><comment><USER5> >Do Ruby on Rails Developers Need Merb?

Yes.

For small sites, Rails is the ultimate in readable and simple frameworks.

However. For very small sites where the whole application is placed in one source file. For bigger sites where not all the controllers is placed in one directory. For sites which uses jQuery instead of prototype. For sites where thread-safety is important, the answer is Merb.

</comment><comment><USER6> Sounds like Scheme and Common Lisp all over again. Every popular framework eventually gets complicated and tempts us to do a "clean slate" rewrite.

Rails succeeded _because_ it's opinionated. I don't want to choose from five different ORM layers. I want one that works.

<comment><USER7> And Merb gives you that, with the basic Merb stack. And then when you change your mind later, that's cool too.</comment></comment>