How to Raise a Scientist in the Xbox Age - <AUTHOR> http://www.wsj.com/articles/how-to-raise-a-scientist-in-the-xbox-age-1450137781 <comment><USER3> > Try taking apart a modern cellphone or a laptop computer. > Assuming you can > even figure out how to pry it open, the > inside is as mysterious and > inscrutable as the outside.

I remember taking apart old radios as a child in the 70s, marvelling at the colourful transistors and resistors. But I had no way of knowing what exactly these were, and even less of a clue as to how it all worked. So sure, it's hard to intuit how a smartphone or a computer works just by looking at the insides. But today's budding scientists have the world's knowledge at their fingertips, and will be able to find diagrams and schematics for a lot of devices, and a large number of sites explaining what every component is and how it works. You don't raise scientists, you give them interesting toys to play with, and they simply raise themselves.

<comment><USER4> I disagree a little bit with you. One clock radio I pulled apart had a mechanical time display and while the radio was indeed an inscrutable PCB covered in components it matched the level of complexity I expected to see.

Nowadays the complexity is hidden under a smooth patch of black plastic that can have smart phone levels of complexity internally and no hint at the that from the outside.

Obviously it's swings and roundabouts since you can indeed find a wealth of information online about any of these subjects but sometimes it feels like it's harder to kindle the initial fire of curiosity.

<comment><USER5> ICs are literal magic black boxes. The same-looking square can be the brain of a device, a stone that knows where it is, a full-blown radar[0], or just two capacitors and an op amp. And you can't tell by just looking at it; the only visual difference is in the magic runes written on the dark stone.

[0] - [https://www.google.com/atap/project- soli/](https://www.google.com/atap/project-soli/)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Anecdotal maybe, but I got interested in computer science _because_ of video games.

I learned programming from messing around with the online game Roblox, which is essentially a game engine with Lua scripting support. I played lots of games, wanted to learn how to make the same thing myself, and discovered the wonderful world of programming. A majority of the programmers I am friends with I met through Roblox, and have been friends with ever since, and all of them got into programming the same way.

<comment><USER7> My interest in CS/programming came from the Internet but my interest in the Internet came as a direct result of gaming.

<comment><USER8> Me too. I played tons of xbox in high school (Halo 2/3 CoD 4), but when I went to college my gaming time went essentially to zero. However I decided to pick up CS because I thought it would be really cool to understand how computers and game systems worked.

I just recently graduated and picked up the new xbox since I have some free time now. I ran into an issue playing Halo 5 where I kept getting disconnected from the game, and it turns out it is a bug in the networking software in combination with the "instant on" feature that was causing it. My networks class gave me a decent enough background where I can actually understand the bug is. I thought that was pretty cool!

[http://www.neogaf.com/forum/showthread.php?t=931438](http://www.neogaf.com/forum/showthread.php?t=931438)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I think the biggest obstacle to raising scientists and engineers is... parents. Especially if they are overcaucious and subscribe to the popular belief that technology is evil and kids should play football outside. Kids are naturally curious, and it takes effort to screw that up. Also, there are tried and true methods of increasing chances that a kid will grow up with interest in science and engineering. Unfortunately, they are very uncomfortable to the mainstream views. Some examples:

\- let kids have free time, instead of structuring their every waking minute

\- give kids lots of unsupervised computer time - you can't do anything _but_ play stupid games if you only have strict time limits, but if they are not worried about using up their weekly allowance, they may start doing some creative stuff (including discovering programming)

\- don't mind kids learning how to break stuff, or literally blow shit up - maybe even encourage them; that especially _includes_ pyrotechnics

\- let them read the book past midnight

\- don't obsess too much about grades

\- realize that doing science often literally looks like being less social than peers and involves not going out to play football every evening

And above all,

\- be patient

<comment><USER9> That's great advice until you realize that your kids are just spending all that computer time watching stupid YouTube videos and not actually learning anything at all except "What are those?"

Time will tell though... I know I wasted a lot of time as a kid, but that was pre-internet, I had to read books to learn things.

<comment><USER5> You have to accept that kids will spend a lot of time doing stupid shit. That's the part of learning experience. But at some point there may come a moment when a kid starts to wonder how to _make_ stupid shit like what they saw, and there is the opportunity for them to learn creative/technical stuff. But they won't get that chance with hard, strict limits - then there's only time to _watch_.

BTW. I personally wouldn't discount even the educational value of stupid YouTube videos. Kids pull a lot more out of media than adults do. We see just a funny clip, but for a kid it's a way to learn a new language, learn new phrases of the native language, learn some culture, etc.

<comment><USER10> > But at some point there may come a moment when a kid starts to wonder how to > make stupid shit like what they saw

My journey in the past decade has roughly been "stupid shit", "how does that stupid shit work?", "why am I consuming the stupid shit when my peers are clearly capable of creating it?"

The biggest leap was realizing that it was _my peers_ creating much of this, so it was feasible for me to do the same!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Scientists were raised in the 'Nintendo age'. Scientists were raised in the 'TV' age. Scientists were raised in whatever kids wasted their time doing before TV.

<comment><USER12> This scientist was raised in the Nintendo/ TV age, but with parents who limited my time at such activities. Spending time outside was mandatory. Boredom followed by inventing games/tearing stuff apart was frequent. There's certainly no 100% foolproof method to raising a scientist (and I think that'd be a terrible parenting goal :), but there may be things to learn here.

It would be fascinating to have a study of current 25-35 year olds occupations and parenting rules. Perhaps it's been done? (a few rules that could be asked about "limited screen time", punishment (e.g. spanking, timeout), being sent "outside", etc...).

<comment><USER13> My father would not get me a Nintendo and instead gave me something programmable (a BBC). He said I was free to buy a Nintendo though which I obviously could not afford. So I programmed until I was old enough to get a weekend job at 15, and I bought and sold games a lot. Good moves Father! The value of money and a programming career.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Non-paywalled version: [https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&c...](https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=1&cad=rja&uact=8&ved=0ahUKEwikuqzamOPJAhVH5GMKHVi1AM4QqQIIHTAA&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.wsj.com%2Farticles%2Fhow- to-raise-a-scientist-in-the-xbox- age-1450137781&usg=AFQjCNHxMlufWbRKKNMcUl9xQEXT0gUJdA&sig2=1v9nQygIHlbdtvDzsHtyxQ)

<comment><USER15> The quick suggestion at the end of buying your kid a mechanical clock and a screwdriver is great.

Going shopping later today.

<comment><USER16> Pulling apart appliances is a great idea. I've had that in the back of my mind but pushed it back for too long. Thanks for the reminder.

This article reflects some of my own views. I moderate my kids' access time to electronic games very tightly. We have frequent group discussions on things we've seen, done, learned, etc. The conversations are really amazing and are a good lead-in to bedtime.

It shouldn't surprise me, but I often hear more intelligent conversation from my kids than I do from most media sources. In fact, we sometimes analyse places like The Verge for their prejudice as an exercise in critical thinking around flawed arguments and fallacies. We look at youtube for history, engineering and biology videos. We've developed board games, Rube Goldberg machines, flying craft, gone on bike hikes, looked at water safety...

If you live in the suburbs and you look in your local area, there are many free educational community activities too. We've looked at construction, robotics, software and sports activities to name a few.

We even make up our own learning activities. Eg. we went shopping together and discussed food priorities, food costs for equivalent items, set a budget, discussed buying local v/s imported food, etc.

There are learning opportunities all around. I feel that education on computers is over-rated and critical thinking outside of a computer is underrated. It just takes a lot of time and energy. I usually put in a weekend of planning about a month before school holidays.

<comment><USER10> I don't know, I opened up (too) many toys and appliances as a kid and the only thing I learned was how to open things up. As far as I was concerned, the resistors in there were lined up in a pentagram to summon the proper amounts of electrical current. Guided disassembly would have been much less frustrating for me (in terms of learning) and my parents (in terms of me not being able to reassemble everything quite perfectly... or playing bomb defuser)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Man this article screams "kids today blah blah blah" and is totally ill founded. I was born in 1993 and grew up with video games and now I'm a scientist (anecdotal I know, but this article isn't scientific either). Being a scientist is about asking questions that intrigue you and finding the answer to them. People who want to do this will do this regardless of whether or not they play video games (or do any other leisurely activity like Netflix bingeing).

<comment><USER18> 21, 22 year old scientist?

<comment><USER17> Yep, 22!

<comment><USER19> happy to hear that, it proves my hunch on the matter

<comment><USER5> > _hunch_

Isn't it what we called "basic arithmetics" back in the day? :).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> "Kids these days weren't as $X as my generation, they should do $Y instead of $Z because that's what I did."

I'm pretty sure you could find variants of this scrawled into a cave wall in the cradle of civilization if you looked hard enough.

<comment><USER21> The famous Socrates quote : [https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/63219-the- children-now-love...](https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/63219-the-children-now- love-luxury-they-have-bad-manners-contempt)

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> > Modern children are also deprived of another key ingredient that has powered > many a young person down the road to a career in science: boredom, and lots > of it.

I've always had a little pet theory that boredom is actually a major driver behind a lot of innovations, and doesn't just matter in children.

<comment><USER23> Agreed. Boredom is a motivator, the issue is how it's relieved.

The easy fix is gaming, it's like junk food for boredom hunger. Take away the junk food and you get reading/tinkering/creative play etc etc.

<comment><USER5> I disagree about it; I'd say gaming is actually a great way to exercise creativity and to progress to more... practical stuff.

There is, on the other hand, one "easy fix" that most kids end up taking - <USER2> is _spending time with people_. Hanging out. It's an infinite time sink. You can get bored or tired with a video game, but other people are the best at inventing something new to do or experience. Except if all the kids do is hanging out with each other, they aren't exactly learning much.

So I guess it depends on who you want your kid to become. If you're aiming for a "people person", then by all means, cut out computer time. But if you want an engineer, I'd personally stick with video games.

<comment><USER10> > You can get bored or tired with a video game, but other people are the best > at inventing something new to do or experience.

That sounds like a driver of innovation too! Maybe the real issue is that kids should be taught motivational skills to make hanging out "productive".

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> The big difference today is how ruthless the competition is to position yourself for a rewarding career in science. Even at a young age, you need to be setting yourself apart with _accomplishments_ not just curiosity.

If you were to read the the autobiography of many of today's top scientists like E.O. Wilson [0], they explicitly say that they wouldn't be accepted into hard science program today with a childhood spent collecting bugs.

So the "scary" part of little Johnny going through an Xbox phase for a few years is that even if he comes out the other side curious about the natural world, little Suzy has already entered the Intel Science Fair, made connections at a research university, etc.

[0]: [http://www.amazon.com/Letters-Young-Scientist-Edward- Wilson/...](http://www.amazon.com/Letters-Young-Scientist-Edward- Wilson/dp/1491525908)

<comment><USER25> This is essentially the issue. Having a head start matters. A lot. I went through a phase where I played a lot of video games. I don't regret any of it, but I feel like if I was in a more rigorous high school and had exposure to advanced material I would have benefited from it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> In my case, the simple lack of money was my teacher. (That, and the internet)

I couldn't afford a computer, but I wanted one badly. I learned used Xboxes ($100) could run Linux with some elbow grease.

So I put together every dime I had and bought one. A week later the hard drive died, so I had to learn to replace that (found an e-waste spindle, learned to hack the Xbox to accept unlocked drives). And it turns out the VGA adapter had to be hand-made with parts from DigiKey. Then old corroded traces started failing. Debacle after debacle, I killed that thing and resurrected it, again and again.

Viola, I began to learn tremendous amounts about things that had before been utter black boxes. Probably the single biggest impetuous to me working in technology.

</comment><comment><USER27> Bah. Paywall.

And yeah, I still play video games. And I'm a scientist. Actually, video games probably helped develop my scientific mind. I wish video games wouldn't be equivalent to drivel in the eyes of casual observers. There is so much more to gaming.

</comment><comment><USER28> As a scientist, I was amused by a simplistic representation of what the "scientist" class of people need to be happy in the game Anno 2205. In order for the scientists to be happy, they need (aside from subsistence food, water, and lowbrow entertainment): luxury food, stimulants, computers, replicators, and secrecy. In my experience, all of the above (save for replicators, which are slated to be essential but not yet developed) are critical to being a scientist.

But, how do we produce scientists? By fostering open minded curiosity and its cousin, wonder, then introducing critical thought as a guide once the former two have been established firmly. The path of curiosity inevitably leads toward uncharted territory, and, instead of cautioning against the unknown for fear of failure, we should encourage the young to forge ahead-- this is something that most parents will not do, because the unknown is frightening. To raise a scientist, I assume it might also be helpful (but not ethical) to have a complex series of lies / unprovable or counterfactual stories to tell to the child as though they were truth, so that they may have practice in combating poor thought or ignorance, another critical task that scientists must perform at all times to the best of their ability.

In short: first cultivate a hunger for knowledge, and then a hunger for facts, and finally a hunger for truth.

</comment><comment><USER29> I think of long ago when people would put in countless hours on projects because they had less distractions. But I've also found people will still put in countless hours on projects. Including grinding on xbox games, but also electronic and web / digital / app building feats. Even if we have less scientist types and more distracted types, we have a way to instantly connect the ground breaking scientist / builders so that their work can be modified by us less gifted distracted losers.

</comment><comment><USER30> I'd like to offer Robert Scherrer, the author of this article, some cheese with his whine.

> But I could have created a better chemistry set from the liquids in my own > refrigerator.

I was a student in a mostly remote, freshman college science class. Other than our one week on campus, all of our chemistry "experiments" were done with things we had in our house or that could be bought at any corner store.

There are plenty of people who do this for a variety of reasons - [https://duckduckgo.com/?q=at+home+chemistry&t=ffhp](https://duckduckgo.com/?q=at+home+chemistry&t=ffhp)

(And since he seems to think that getting in trouble is important, I feel the need to point out that you can still get in trouble with chemicals found around the house - e.g. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bleach#Chlorine- based_bleaches](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bleach#Chlorine-based_bleaches) . Tangent, many years ago I had a friend who did not know this – until he landed in the ER after mixing way too many and varied household cleaners.)

> Assuming you can even figure out how to pry it open, the inside is as > mysterious and inscrutable as the outside.

Not if you have a minimally knowledgeable mentor (i.e. knowledgeable enough to know how to lookup what you find online). If you have a kid and aren't able to be their knowledgeable mentor, you and your kid/s really should check out your closest makerspace/s.

>Yet how can we expect junior scientists to daydream, when they can be playing computer games instead?

Give them games with scientific content, e.g.

\- [http://www.sciencemuseum.org.uk/online_science/games.aspx](http://www.sciencemuseum.org.uk/online_science/games.aspx)

\- [http://www.onlinecolleges.net/50-great-sites-for-serious- edu...](http://www.onlinecolleges.net/50-great-sites-for-serious-educational- games/)

In fact, there's an emerging field of education focused on Game-Based Learning:

\- [http://newmedia.org/game-based-learning--what-it-is-why- it-w...](http://newmedia.org/game-based-learning--what-it-is-why-it-works-and- where-its-going.html)

\- [http://serc.carleton.edu/introgeo/games/index.html](http://serc.carleton.edu/introgeo/games/index.html)

And look, there's even some hyper-relevant research _Becoming Chemists through Game-Based Inquiry Learning: The Case of "Legends of Alkhimia"_ \- [http://eric.ed.gov/?id=EJ985421](http://eric.ed.gov/?id=EJ985421) / [http://www.ejel.org/issue/download.html?idArticle=188](http://www.ejel.org/issue/download.html?idArticle=188) that shows...

>Two evaluation criteria were used: (1) effectiveness of separation, and (2) demonstration of conceptual understanding of chemistry. We found that the Alkhimia students significantly outperformed the control students when assessed on the extent to which effective separation was achieved in the students' proposed solution (t75 = 2.56, p = 0.026) and when assessed with respect to conceptual understanding of chemistry in the separation task (t75 = 3.41, p = 0.002).</comment>


Ask HN: I am in the middle of pregnancy, should I still interview Google? - <AUTHOR> I am a software engineer at bay area. Google's recruiter contacted me couple months ago for a pretty interesting job position. I passed the phone interview and are preparing for the upcoming onsite. But I am now concerned about how my pregnancy could affect the interview.
Personally I don't think pregnancy can affect my work much: I had a baby during PhD, which I believe was more tough than work. But I made it through with on-time project deliveries and publications.
However, I haven't worked long in industry, so not much sure about the current situation. Should I hide or tell them that I am pregnant? Should I use my PhD experience to show pregnancy won't affect much? Or should I interview at all when pregnant? <comment><USER2> > It is also a bit hard for me to start the conversation about pregnancy: I am > pretty sure the hiring manager is a man...

More than a few executive-level moms that I know-- actually received more empathy and encouragement from men bosses during pregnancy, than their female colleagues.

Transparency is a desirable managerial trait. Try this word track-- "It's really too early to discuss this, but full disclosure, we may be having a new addition to our family next year. My intention to keep right on working. We already have one little one. And with the help of my spouse, we've managed it all amazingly well."

Then focus the remaining 99.9% of your conversation discussing the job and how you can help move his agenda forward. BTW, all the best to you & your expanding family!

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks!

I said that because my PhD advisor is a female professor and she was very nice and very helpful during my first pregnance.

I like you advice about how to bring this up. Will use it! Thanks!

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> I would interview--they are not allowed to take your pregnancy into account. They are legally forbidden from asking you about that or how you would manage your children.

Good luck with the interview!

</comment><comment><USER4> How far along are you? If you're not far along enough to show, don't bring this up. Regardless of how open-minded hiring managers are, it will definitely unconsciously bias a decision. Don't make it a deciding factor.

If you have a great interview and an offer, that's the time to bring up any potential time off or accommodations that you'll need. Corporette has some really great resources around this:

\+ [http://corporette.com/2011/06/16/taking-a-new-job-while- preg...](http://corporette.com/2011/06/16/taking-a-new-job-while-pregnant/) \+ [http://corporette.com/2012/11/20/how-to-negotiate-future- mat...](http://corporette.com/2012/11/20/how-to-negotiate-future-maternity- leave/)

And, congratulations!

<comment><USER5> > it will definitely unconsciously bias a decision

What makes you say that? I assume you're in HR or have done a lot of hiring? Or have read meta-studies on hiring practices?

<comment><USER4> I don't have any specific studies, but I have read about human cognitive biases in general (Thinking Fast and Slow, Freakonomics), have talked to pregnant women going through the interview process, and have myself interviewed as a pregnant woman over the past couple years. I've also read countless forums (Corporette posts[1], the excellent Ask A Manager[2] blog, Laurie Ruettimann [3] that talk specifically about workplace psychology in a non-clinical way.

The hiring manager likes to think they are not biased, but they always are, in the same way all humans are. Be it by names in resumes [4], or because employees experience a "cultural mismatch", we are imperfect as humans and will judge a person just as much as we judge credentials or resumes.

The best hiring managers will recognize that this is a Thing That Exists and try to actively overcome these biases. But the world is not made up of best hiring managers. It is made up of people who may or may not assume that because you are pregnant you will not do as much work, or they don't want to give you leave or deal with FMLA, or they don't want to deal with you potentially not coming back after your leave is over.

This is a constant fear for women, this fear of being judged on our childbearing potential, and comes up over and over again in both motherhood forums and professional work forums, as well as more recently in the national conversation with the likes of Lean In, Anna Marie Slaughter, and others.

I've had conversations with women who are worried that they should remove their engagement and wedding ring in case the employer sees it and assumes the woman is newly married and wants to have children right away, ruining the amount of time she might put into the career. Other women are terrified of losing their jobs after coming back from a maternity leave where men or non- pregnant coworkers handle all of the business and they suddenly feel they are not needed.

To anyone unfamiliar with how hiring and workplace psychology work, these concerns seem far-fetched. To many women working today, they are an unfortunate reality, although one that doesn't exist everywhere and is starting to shift, hopefully, with things like an increasing number of more flexible parental leave policies.

So, don't mention anything until you're far along enough in the process that it's time for both parties to evaluate whether they want to work with each other (i.e. the offer stage). Then it's 100% worth putting on the table.

[1][http://corporette.com/](http://corporette.com/) [2][http://www.askamanager.org/](http://www.askamanager.org/) [3] [http://laurieruettimann.com/](http://laurieruettimann.com/) [4][http://freakonomics.com/2013/04/08/how-much-does-your- name-m...](http://freakonomics.com/2013/04/08/how-much-does-your-name-matter- a-new-freakonomics-radio-podcast/)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Definitely go for the interview. You have no reason to discuss your pregnancy with interviewers. If your pregnancy is obvious and the interviewers bring it up (as a kind of ice-breaking "small talk"), don't be alarmed, just play it cool, as if they're commenting on your hat.

Remember, Google is a big company, and unless you're being hired for a very specific position, none of those people who interview you will likely be in your team when you join. So, "What happens after she delivers a baby?" is not really the interviewers' concern.

If you're really worried, you could tell the recruiter/HR person after the interview is over and they contact you. I don't expect anything other than "Oh, congratulations!" But if (God forbid) any one of them is stupid enough to say "Oh really? Now we have to re-think your application.", then you have a story to tell HN, and hopefully somebody will be fired from Google.

(I mean, statistically speaking, none of the people you meet during the interview process will be in the same team as you when you join, so I don't see why anyone would be "worried" about your pregnancy. A competent new hire is still a competent new hire even if she has to delay joining the company for, say, half a year, and Google has so many employees that "one hired person will not be available for several months" shouldn't be a problem for anyone.)

\- Ex-Googler

* p.s. If you do get rejected, don't assume it's because of your pregnancy, even if somebody commented on it during the interview. Chances are that such comment wouldn't even make it into the interview feedback (if if they do, they will be summarily ignored). Lots of really great people get rejected from Google for mysterious reasons all the time.

<comment><AUTHOR> Got it. Very appreciate!

My interview will be a special hire so the team that is supposed to hire me will do the interview.

Anyway, thanks for your advice!

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> No worry about pregnancy. I am pretty sure the interviewers won't ask any question about it :) It is very un-googly and prohibited (and illegal) to take that into account when they evaluate your candidacy. If anything make you feel uncomfortable during interview, just contact your recruiter. They should take care of you immediately.

</comment><comment><USER8> Since you live in the US, and benefits for parents are almost non existent and letting people go if things don't work out is cheap, I wouldn't think anyone at Google would fail at attracting talent because of a pregnancy.

I don't think they'll even ask, and I would feel offended and would never answer such question regardless of my state.

</comment><comment><USER9> In my opinion, your pregnancy is none of Google's business...though I appreciate the irony of that statement. Anyway, there is no obligation to disclose any medical condition and in a company Google's size there is undoubtedly significant human resources experience with pregnancy and strong guidance for those engaged in the hiring process.

An employer inclined to find issue in a woman's pregnancy, has an issue with women in general.

Good luck.

</comment><comment><USER10> What's the potential downside?

</comment><comment><USER5> I would definitely address it in the interview (and the things that naturally follow and non-intuitively follow from said fact).

Did your pregnancy come up before?

Best case scenario they understand and make leeway for a talented person they need on the team. Worst case scenario they decide you're not worth the effort. Middle case you're on an extended probationary period as they're investing a little more than average on you.

Certainly laying down all the facts clearly should do well for you at any company you want to work for.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks!

I was aware of my pregnancy right before getting recruiter's email. At that time I didn't think too much and went though phone interview without mentioning pregnancy (plus it is traditionally believed that people should keep it secret within the first three uncertain months of pregnancy in my hometown's old culture).

I am not sure who I should talk to in the interview. Because the onsite rounds will be focusing on tech not general chat. Maybe the hiring manager who is going to take me to the lunch?

It is also a bit hard for me to start the conversation about pregnancy: I am pretty sure the hiring manager is a man, I feel it is a bit wired to talk about my pregnancy and maybe something about it to a strange man in person. Any suggestion?

Also my belly is not that big yet :) so maybe I can avoid the wired talk by waring more/loose cloths?

<comment><USER5> > I am not sure who I should talk to in the interview.

>It is also a bit hard for me to start the conversation about pregnancy

Successful strategies to solve these problems, I think, will show them how you should be a cherished employee.

Maybe there's some homework and social hacking you could do to find the right people to talk to. Maybe there's some more experienced moms at Google that could steer you in the right direction on how to breach this.

>I feel it is a bit wired to talk about my pregnancy

As a man I feel all pregnant ladies are the embodiment of the infinite creativity of nature and as such I try to give them lots and lots of leeway and respect. Be proud, lady. You're not a leper, you're a goddess incarnate. Nothing to be shy or shameful of :)

Certainly you spoke with someone in HR or Recruiting during your interview process? Certainly they'll be happy to help you with feels and mommy coordination.

Good luck. I'm sure you'll be fine.</comment></comment></comment>


Viral video shows how wealth is really distributed - <AUTHOR> http://economy.money.cnn.com/2013/03/08/wealth-video/ <comment><USER2> Good ole socialist wealth envy class warfare blah blah blah.

Wealth is produced. If there were a fixed amount of it, we'd all still be nomadic hunter-gatherers. Therefore, the gain of wealth is NOT a zero sum game. When some CEO (good, bad, or hopelessly incompetent) makes 14 bazillion dollars, that does nothing whatsoever to take anything from you. You don't need to worry about what that CEO makes. You need to worry about what YOU make.

Consider the White House Chief Calligrapher makes $96,725 per year. What a complete and utter waste of tax money. If it were not for the fact that its our tax money, it wouldn't matter a hill of beans. If Microsoft or Apple wanted to hire a Chief Calligrapher at $96,725 or $967,250 it wouldn't matter a hill of beans except to the shareholders of each company who might not think such an expenditure is going to pay off all that well.

I recommend reading Henry Hazlitt's Economics in One Lesson: [http://www.fee.org/library/detail/economics-in-one-lesson- pd...](http://www.fee.org/library/detail/economics-in-one-lesson-pdf-doc- audio#axzz2NEqtKsCL)

<comment><USER3> > Wealth is produced. If there were a fixed amount of it, we'd all still be > nomadic hunter-gatherers. Therefore, the gain of wealth is NOT a zero sum > game.

Sure, but if the 1%er have gains above average growth, they taking it from the rest. A simple fact, that has a lot to do with interest Tt doesn't make them bad people. It ist just a mathematical fact.

The US have a big problem with wealth distribution (the biggest in the western world). The US has a higher GDP per capita then Switzerland, Germany, Austria, Netherland, Sweden, etc. Do you really believe the US has a higher avarage living standard?

<comment><USER4> > Sure, but if the 1%er have gains above average growth, they taking it from > the rest. A simple fact, that has a lot to do with interest Tt doesn't make > them bad people. It ist just a mathematical fact.

So by your logic if the 1% of runners run faster than the average person, they are taking running speed from the rest?

I would suggest to rather see it this way: If they are making above average gains they are probably better at investing their capital than the average person, but also helped by the increased bargaining power of the amount of capital that they have.

> The US have a big problem with wealth distribution (the biggest in the > western world). The US has a higher GDP per capita then Switzerland, > Germany, Austria, Netherland, Sweden, etc. Do you really believe the US has > a higher avarage living standard?

The USA has a much lower GDP per capita than most of those countries you have mentioned.

<comment><USER3> > I would suggest to rather see it this way: If they are making above average > gains they are probably better at investing their capital than the average > person, but also helped by the increased bargaining power of the amount of > capital that they have.

Again you ignoring mathematics. The interest function is an exponential function. It transfers money from borrowers to lenders - it's a law. It has nothing to do with wiser investment decisions. If don't have savings you can't invest.

> The USA has a much lower GDP per capita than most of those countries you > have mentioned.

I am sorry, that is not right. All countries that I mentioned have lower GDP per capita that the US. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_GDP_(PPP)_...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_GDP_\(PPP\)_per_capita) There are only 3 countries in Europe who have a higher GDP per capita: Lichtenstein, Luxenbourg and Norway. The economic power of the US is immense, but the allocation should be optimized.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Wow. In my opinion, the discussion on CNN is better than it is here. If this becomes popular here, this might change but at the moment Disqus is doing a great job of filtering a large number of comments. Kudos to Disqus on making popular media comments work well.

<comment><USER6> For those on a mobile device (the "Join the Conversation" feature wasn't working for me on my phone), here is the top comment at time of writing this. User 'spm' writes:

I think people are missing the larger point these type of graphs show. Of course there has always been rich and poor in America. And the bottom poor in America are doing better than the "middle class" in Zimbabwe or some other third world country. But the real point of these type of graphs is that return on PRODUCTIVITY has skewed exponentially toward the wealthy. It's evidence that supply side economics does not work. THERE IS NO TRICKLE DOWN lol. The rich just get richer while inflation and stagnant wages make the poor get poorer. This is not political rhetoric or demonization of the wealthy. It's simply reality and can be substantiated with data and numbers.

People also need to stop with this logical fallacy about the wealthy working hard for their wealth. Typically that's not how it works , wealthy people typically increase their wealth exponentially by NOT working hard...instead choosing to use this little thing called....the stock market. The whole point of the stock market is to make your money work for you...and get more of it. That little 15K you've slaved to get into your 401K, yea someone makes that in a week....off of dividends lol. Even CEOs who make hundreds of millions of dollars do not work in the traditional sense. They get paid to make decisions, and often times those decisions are out right HORRIBLE affecting the lives of the middle class and poor who work under them(if they don't get laid off). Luckily many CEOs have golden parachutes which takes care of that pesky notion of accountability which they can then use to make investments(and continue to grow their wealth exponentially) in the case that they are fired

<comment><USER4> You mention that their wealth is put into the stock market, which is only part of the story since most of that wealth is in a variety of investments with a potential return of which the stock market is only one example. That wealth also provides the capital that funds many startups or help other companies grow. Some of these investments are rubbish, as you say, but the rubbish investments reduces the value of the portfolio. The wealth that remains and grows are because they are generally managed well by the wealthy individuals or whoever is managing it for them, picking the right investments. This is a good thing and there is a kind of trickle down that results because of this, in the form of investments being allocated to people worthy to invest in.

<comment><USER7> What is the difference between a good investment and a rubbish one? A good investment is one where you invest in a company that produces a product for which there is demand greater than supply. And where does demand come from?

<comment><USER4> You have to be able to produce the product or deliver the service at a lower cost than people are willing to pay for it. Demand is just one factor that affects how much they are willing to pay. The most basic example is an investment in an invention that saves people time and money, so people are willing to pay a portion of the time and money they are saving. Demand is then influenced by various things, including how important or significant this saving is, and how many other options they have to achieve similar savings, including alternatives from competitors. A good investor would be someone who understands and consider all these factors.

<comment><USER7> When you have a large wealth gap it simply becomes less profitable to produce goods that are of high utility to those with less money.

So you may get more bang for your buck by investing in companies that give labour saving benefits to the already wealthy, thus net increasing unemployment. With less income disparity the best goods to invest in may be ones which provide quality of living improvements across the spectrum.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Maybe Sam Harris should have used the reality vs. the perception of inequality rather than firewood for his case study in how people can become irrationally attached to a comforting idea.</comment>


Catching integer overflows with template metaprogramming (2015) - <AUTHOR> https://capnproto.org/news/2015-03-02-security-advisory-and-integer-overflow-protection.html <comment><USER2> "Some day, I would like to design a language that gets this right. But for the moment, I remain focused on Sandstorm.io. Hopefully someone will beat me to it. Hint hint. "

Some language already did beat him to it: Ada

[http://www.ada-auth.org/standards/12rat/html/Rat12-2-4.html](http://www.ada- auth.org/standards/12rat/html/Rat12-2-4.html)

Ada's rules for type invariants check them in all the places you would expect, and are straightforward to use.

It's about as correct as you can get without it being impossible to compute :)

<comment><USER3> I thought Ada did only runtime checks? I am asking for (and my template hackery implements) compile-time checks. Runtime checks are slow and don't fully mitigate security bugs, though they probably downgrade the bugs to DoS attacks. But if these are actually checked by the compiler, that's pretty cool and I might actually have to play with Ada at some point!

<comment><USER4> Idris or F*? I think they are not practical because compile times end up extremely slow. I think want you want will necessarily have this effect of very slow compile times.

<comment><USER5> Came here to suggest Idris, as it compiles to C. F* is still experimental and Idris is just coming up on a RC. They could also drop down into C and manually verify it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6>
      Why don't programming languages do this?

I worked on a contribution to clang-analyser a few months ago - one of the things I learned was (1) No-one likes code analysers that raise false alarms and (2) it's really difficult not to raise false alarms. For example, consider checking this program for divide-by-zero bugs:

      for (int i=-99999 ; i<99999 ; i+=2) {
        printf("%d\n", 100/i);
      }
      for (int i=-100000 ; i<100000 ; i+=2) {
        printf("%d\n", 100/i);
      }

A programmer can clearly see that in the first loop there is no divide-by-zero as i will jump directly from -1 to +1 - whereas in the second loop the counter will hit 0 and trigger a divide-by-zero.

But for a static analyser, your options are:

1\. Model i as a single value, and simulate all ~400,000 passes through the loops. Slow - you basically have to run the program at compile time.

2\. Same but truncate the simulation after, say, 20 loops on the assumption that most bugs would have been found on the first few passes. This misses the bug in the second loop.

3\. Model i as "Integer in the range -99,999 to +99,999" and generate a false alarm on the first loop.

4\. Support arbitrarily complex symbolic values. Difficult - as the value of a variable might depend on complicated business logic.

I guess the benefit of starting a new programming language is you can choose option 3 and say "Working code is illegal, deal with it" from the start.

<comment><USER3> For my purposes, I would be happy with a way that I can specify constraints specifically in certain critical code sections, where I'd be happy to work around some false positives. Most other code could go on ignoring overflow as it does today.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> That's a pretty impressive response - committing to fuzzing with AFL, improving current fuzzing test coverage, adding new coding guidelines, and a paid security audit.

In regards to 4 (valgrind) perhaps utilizing other sanitizers would be a good idea.

Awesome that they tested whether those methods would actually have caught this bug - and multiple did. That's a smart metric.

And a writeup about TMP and compile time safety to boot.

I'm struggling to come up with anything more that I'd want in a disclosure.

<comment><USER3> [https://twitter.com/BenLaurie/status/575079375307153409](https://twitter.com/BenLaurie/status/575079375307153409) :)

The sad part of the story is that Cap'n Proto actually hasn't had a release since then, so (so far) I've effectively gotten out of doing any of those release-oriented things I promised. Many changes have gone into git master, but Sandstorm used git master directly, meaning there wasn't sufficient incentive to do the work of a release. (And as an understaffed startup we could never quite justify spending the time.)

The good news is that I joined Cloudflare two weeks ago, who is a big Cap'n Proto user, and it looks like I'll have more time and justification to do releases there. (And yes, I do intend to fulfill all the promises in doing so.)

<comment><USER7> > The good news is that I joined Cloudflare two weeks ago, who is a big Cap'n > Proto user, and it looks like I'll have more time and justification to do > releases there

That's great news, thanks for the disclaimer/ info.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Two other ways of checking integer bound invariants:

1\. Undefined behavior sanitizer, which checks integer overflows at run-time, like INT_MAX + 1. Can optionally check other invariants; see [https://gcc.gnu.org/onlinedocs/gcc/Instrumentation- Options.h...](https://gcc.gnu.org/onlinedocs/gcc/Instrumentation-Options.html) and [https://clang.llvm.org/docs/UndefinedBehaviorSanitizer.html](https://clang.llvm.org/docs/UndefinedBehaviorSanitizer.html).

2\. Abstract interpretation - using a lot of constraint solver cycles and enough math to choke a dinosaur, you can check some integer bounds at compile time "relationally", like knowing that x < y. See, for example, "Pentagons: A Weakly Relational Abstract Domain for the Efficient Validation of Array Accesses": [https://www.microsoft.com/en- us/research/publication/pentago...](https://www.microsoft.com/en- us/research/publication/pentagons-a-weakly-relational-abstract-domain-for-the- efficient-validation-of-array-accesses/). I'm not sure, but that code might be available in [https://github.com/Microsoft/CodeContracts](https://github.com/Microsoft/CodeContracts).

<comment><USER3> #1 doesn't get you very far since it can only catch cases that are locally detectable -- where the compiler can prove that some lines of code will always result in an overflow.

Consider the code:

        int f(int x) {
          return x + 1;
        }

This code could overflow, but surely the compiler won't complain about it -- it would instead assume that you don't intend to pass a value for x that is too large. In order for the compiler to have enough information to complain, it would need you to specify explicitly what the range of x is -- so that it can detect violations both within the function definition and at call sites. There is no built-in way to specify this.

But, this is exactly what my template hacking adds -- a way to specify the actual range of each variable.

I haven't looked closely at your #2. Presumably it also requires some constraint annotations to be added to your code. But if they've provided tools that can process those annotations and detect violations, that's pretty cool.

<comment><USER9> The best ones you can straight-up buy are SPARK and Astree that I'm aware of. I've already linked to SPARK. Astree is limited in application but pretty amazing in what it does:

[https://www.di.ens.fr/~cousot/publications.www/CousotEtAl- ES...](https://www.di.ens.fr/~cousot/publications.www/CousotEtAl-ESOP05.pdf)

My idea was to subset as many components as possible to static-ish components it could handle then focus more on integration testing. Then one could reap the benefits in a larger project. Similar idea for SPARK, which is probably cheaper.

<comment><USER10> SPARK is indeed very adapted to some kinds of code (protocols, serialization, deserialization, index manipulation, masks...). Proving the absence of runtime errors in such code is easy (not much help needed for the provers, just type your data structures well) and makes you think of every case. Fun. Even better : once AoRTE is proved, remove _all_ runtime checks and get C-like performance. You can also prove some isolated functional properties ('the answer to message X can only be message Y or Z'... just sprinkle some asserts, post-conditions or check the nice Contract_Case syntax). Or you can go to 'platinum'-level and prove your complete protocol/algorithm. The tech is great and it keeps improving, it gets easier every year...

<comment><USER9> Oh yeah, Rod Chapman and others at Praxis did amazing work. It's probably the single, most-practical tools in engineered software since abstract, state machines for specification or Cleanroom for building. Their error rate was so low.

The traditional problem, though, was that some tools were good for specifying full correctness of high-level models while others were good for verifying properties of code itself. They rarely did both well. Still true with SPARK. Before DeepSpec, I was already pushing for mixing them up a lot with different tools on different components with some sort of unified logic. You might find it interesting that one of those was with SPARK and the successful Event-B method. I'll give you a paper show how hard it is to use Event-B by itself down to low-level code followed by how a combo improves things.

[http://eb2all.loria.fr/html_files/files/landingsystem.pdf](http://eb2all.loria.fr/html_files/files/landingsystem.pdf)

[http://journal.ub.tu- berlin.de/eceasst/article/view/785/782](http://journal.ub.tu- berlin.de/eceasst/article/view/785/782)

One last thing before I head out is that the landing system paper is great for illustrating difficulty of correctness. It shows a small number of straight- forward requirements and design specs. Then, verification conditions are derived down to the low level code that must all be maintained true for total correctness. As in, it makes explicit all the stuff a developer must get right in their head to correctly solve this simple problem. I find it's a nice reality check for people even if they don't know the notation on intrinsic complexity of software & how that affects verification. Especially why you want to use simpler, automated methods than hope to test your way out of that level of complexity w/ corner cases. ;)

<comment><USER10> Thanks for the paper.

It's indeed a game-changer to be able to mix Ada2012, Spark, and C in an industry-grade programming environment. You can gradually convert a legacy codebase. I've been replacing some crufty C parts with Ada-with-Spark- restrictions then full-Spark-with-AoRTE-proof and even some functional proof with great success and can now stop worrying about crashes in security- sensitive attack-surface parts. Network/file interfaces, etc. Most of my experiments are very encouraging ! Coupled with CodePeer and/or afl-fuzz for Ada code, almost-bug-free code becomes somewhat more accessible.

Rod Chapman is also a great showman with great success stories, also very funny... and Yannick Moy at AdaCore is an amazing teacher and doing great work leading Spark further, including on small embedded targets.

I think you're doing great work around here reminding everyone once in a while about Ada & Spark, especially in articles that devolve into 'Rust-would-have- caught-it' :-).

<comment><USER9> Appreciate the kind words. I plan to get back to experimenting myself. One of my ideas is coding in both Rust and Ada/SPARK to let borrow checker catch temporal errors while Ada/SPARK handles the rest. Optionally a C version or use an Ada-to-C compiler if Taft's is still available to throw every free analyzer or tester for C at it. Far as apps, check out Ironsides DNS that was done in SPARK. Borrow-checking and testing it will be my first project if it get back into Ada.

Note: There's also work right now on a verified front-end for SPARK to integrate it into CompCert. Then, the ASM is verified as well. Exciting times. :)

EDIT to add: Yeah, that Rust would've caught it was a bit annoying. Worst was them saying it was first, safe, systems language. pjmpl and I demolished that one, though. Now we just get the other one which is at least accurate if it's memory bugs. Progress. (Shrugs)

<comment><USER10> Well then you're going to be happy : there's a new Spark-to-C compiler. [http://blog.adacore.com/spark-tetris-on-the- arduboy](http://blog.adacore.com/spark-tetris-on-the-arduboy) Maybe that's the one you're thinking about ?

Also, I heard Rod Chapman (at the last AdaCore tech day) say they had great success using 'the' Ada-to-C compiler some years ago. Looks like AdaCore still have the code for it, not doing much with it. You might get the code if you ask nicely (maybe T.Taft directly now that he works for AdaCore) :-D.

If you get any new idea on some combination of Spark, Ada and other tech, I'd send yannick moy an email :-D. Always helpful and insightful.

If you plan on doing your borrow checker as some kind of new static analysis pass for Ada, I'd also look into libadalang, there's some great (open source !) progress there. I also played a lot with gnat2xml but I don't recommend : it works but it was painful...

I also wondered some time ago about a Spark-to-rust compiler. But I'm waiting for my rust skills to improve first.

Anyway, it's very strange to see rust every so often mentionned for embedded software. I get the interest for 'normal' unconstrained software. But after 10 years of large-scale real-time embedded-systems programming in Ada and I maybe faced once a memory safety bug that the borrow checker would have prevented. Mostly the bugs you get are constraint_errors (overflow, underflow, array bounds,...) most already caught by the type system at compile or static- analysis time. The rest are mostly 'real' bugs : logic or temporal. You never doubt of the state of the program when reading the code, such a lower cognitive load... Going back to C from time to time is so painful, especially, when you think of all the help you're missing.

When in need of pointer go for not null access types, when in need for dynamic allocation go for controlled types (scoped deallocation) and storage pools... Everyone (except haskellers...) is missing on so much, it feels like living in the future where the compiler works (a lot !) for you. Sorry for the rant...

By the way I found one of the ways to catch temporal errors (other than uninitialized variables that are caught) in Spark is to use an enumerated state variable and check it all the time (post/pre or in invariants). It's almost always a good idea anyway to have an explicit state instead of some 'nah none will call this code in such sequence...'.

Also interesting : like functional programming or the borrow checker, or strong typing, Spark changes the way you think about your code. You think about how 'provable' your design and code is and it makes code more readable, simple. You can also just start with data flow annotations (also great for safety and security-critical code), makes reading code easier.

I'll be looking out for your next dive back into Ada then !

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> > Some day, I would like to design a language that gets this right. But for > the moment, I remain focused on Sandstorm.io. Hopefully someone will beat me > to it.

Two language that do it: Whiley ([http://whiley.org/](http://whiley.org/)) and Dafny ([http://rise4fun.com/dafny](http://rise4fun.com/dafny)).

I expect (but not sure) that the proving power is about the same as what can be achieved by template meta-programming.

</comment><comment><USER12> I'm unclear on how this would work out practically. Cases where my integers belong to a fixed range seems rare. I'd like to have seen more discussion of how it caught the bugs it did.

<comment><USER3> Cap'n Proto by its nature is doing a lot of work with integers that represent sizes, indices, offsets, addresses, etc. These tend to have well-defined ranges -- and unusually bad failure modes. So it works unusually well here.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> Boo I thought it was a reference to fictional Tom Parris's holodeck program</comment>


Wing Commander III is now free - <AUTHOR> http://www.pcworld.com/article/2461827/free-game-alert-eas-giving-away-wing-commander-iii-and-its-wonderfully-bad-cutscenes.html <comment><USER2> I suppose it has to be asked. Will installing Origin or this specific title result in the installation of intrusive and undisclosed DRM software on my computer? If so, can the game title still be played after removing Origin and any bundled DRM?

<comment><USER3> Yes it requires DRM. It also scans every file on your PC and sends info back to EA. No, you can't play it without Origin installed.

<comment><USER2> Then it is not free as in speech. It is not free as in beer. It is available at the small, non-monetary cost of all of your privacy plus some of your control over your computer.

EA has failed its race. It has failed itself. It has failed the human it knows as the customer. The gamer, its playmate, it has failed. Its heart has not been valiant enough, its marketing has not been skilled enough, and it has failed the true gamers.

<comment><USER4> Or you could just buy it from gog.com DRM free...

<comment><USER2> An excellent suggestion!

In fact, that would send a very clear message to EA that their DRM is worth, at best, negative $6 to some customers. If people would rather pay $6 for a game without the DRM than pay $0 for the game inextricably bundled with the DRM, even a corporate executive could do that math without screwing it up.

Of course, if you opt for Origin instead, I guess that also sends the message that you don't value your control over your computer any more than $6.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Was wishing for the Mac version to be free, but then remembered the Mac version is probably 68K (instruction set).

But still, had so much fun playing this on my 68030 back in the day ( _just_ before Apple made the 68K to PowerPC transition...)

<comment><USER6> For $6 you can get a Mac-compatible version from GOG.com. The Windows version on GOG.com is just the DOS version running inside DOSBox, and I'd be surprised if the Mac version isn't too.

That's the irony of the Mac processor switch: it's usually easier to run an old game in DOSBox or a Windows VM than to run a classic MacOS or PowerPC OS X game.

<comment><USER4> Yes, I believe most GOG games on Mac run in Boxer, which is DOSBox with a slightly more intuitive frontend/setup process - [http://boxerapp.com/](http://boxerapp.com/)</comment></comment></comment>


LinkedIn Salary - <AUTHOR> https://www.linkedin.com/salary/ <comment><USER2> Software Engineer in San Francisco Bay Area median base salary $120,000/yr

Salesperson in Houston, Texas median base salary $29,000/yr

Hmm, neither of these make me feel especially good about income potential available currently. The software in SF number also seems much closer to what I would expect to see in Austin or Houston, and I would expect a good experienced engineer can pull closer to $150k+ in those cities.</comment>


A Google employee forgot to remove Post-it notes and it's fueling a lawsuit - <AUTHOR> http://qz.com/250346/a-google-employee-forgot-to-remove-post-it-notes-and-thats-fueling-a-lawsuit/ <comment><USER2> If this is representative of Google's general approach to dealing with partners, then it should be fully exposed and prosecuted. Google has enough power and money not to need to act in bad faith like this.

<comment><USER3> I feel like we need more details to start passing judgement. For all we know VSL is trying to claim that their patent gives them a monopoly over an entire problem domain rather than just a specific implementation.

If Google had decided in the middle of talks that they would just roll their own solution, it makes sense to tell their engineers not to touch the details of VSL's system, lest it influence their own implementation/solution.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> What a weird premise for an article, that a careless post it note is the cause for the lawsuit. Perhaps Google shouldn't have (allegedly) infringed on the IP in the first place instead of being annoyed that they were sloppy and got caught doing it.

<comment><USER5> Turn it around: think of Google as a young startup, VST is a big 800-lb gorilla. Startup is working on something cool; big gorilla comes along and says "hey, you should buy that from me, and/or license my patents". But maybe patents are these all-too-common obvious troll-patents, and startup's stuff is different anyway. But startup would still be rightfully concerned about (arguably frivolous) lawsuits.

Seems like the perspective changes depending on who plays David and who is Goliath. Generally, YC crowd is pretty hard core anti-patent, especially where software and algorithms are concerned.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> A scribbled note on a post-it doesn't mean policy. It may not even represent fact. I don't see where anyone could go with this.

<comment><USER2> It's evidence of intent.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Remember everyone, "Don't be evil!"

 _wink wink nudge nudge_

<comment><USER8> If you think this is evil you want to see how patents are handled in the defense industry.

Company A copies company B's idea straight from the patent, company B finds out and confronts company A, company B gets a call from the government (who are buying the product from company A) saying "cease or we stop contract X with you".

That leaves company B to fight in a foreign market only which is why you see a lot of defense products sold overseas only...

Lawyers don't even get a look in.

Edit: just to add, yes this is illegal but try going up against the government after you've signed various secret development agreements with them. Occasionally these things do go to court but you don't see it as they are sealed.

<comment><USER9> > company B gets a call from the government (who are buying the product from > company A) saying "cease or we stop contract X with you".

I'm pretty sure that's illegal, at least in developed countries. I'd record that call and leak it to the press or something, see how that works out for them. Government agents unduly threatening retribution for lawful disputes between private companies is probably a small scandal.

<comment><USER3> I remember reading an article/blogpost about a specific instance that was related to technology that could be used to tap underwater fiber optic lines. The company with the patent wasn't a government contractor. They ended up in a situation where a big government contractor got to benefit from the fruits of their innovation, while the government basically said, "f*ck off."</comment></comment></comment></comment>


All the current trees in Barcelona - <AUTHOR> https://jjvidalmac.carto.com/viz/c3c54164-7fcf-11e4-b04f-0e853d047bba/public_map <comment><USER2> Hi Barcelona readers

If you're into BCN geo stuff please come along to GeomobBCN - our next event is on 6th of May, details here:

[https://thegeomob.com/post/may-6th-2020-geomobbcn- details](https://thegeomob.com/post/may-6th-2020-geomobbcn-details)

Here's a twitter thread summary of our last event in January, lots of cool maps of Barcelona: [https://twitter.com/geomob/status/1217706889280217089](https://twitter.com/geomob/status/1217706889280217089)

<comment><USER3> I guess a significant part of HN readers are in the US; my sense is that most US residents are currently avoiding any trip to Europe for the next few months, due to the Coronavirus epidemic/issue.

I guess you won't get much interest for your event, in terms of attending in person.

Edit: not sure why I am being downvoted.

<comment><USER4> The message was addressed to "Barcelona readers", i.e. readers in Barcelona. But even if it hadn't been, do you think your comment would really contributed something helpful?

<comment><USER3> You are probably right; I originally thought that the message was to invite people from abroad to visit Barcelona, hence my skepticism about people wanting to travel there.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> There is an app called Urban Trees ([https://urbantrees.app/](https://urbantrees.app/)) based on open data of several cities. With the app you get an AR view of the trees around you, with their labels etc.

They currently have data from Barcelona, Bristol, Clark County, Edmonton, Frankfurt, Las Vegas, London, Melbourne, New York, Paris, Portland, Rostock, San Francisco, Santa Monica, Seattle, Vancouver, Washington DC, Vienna and Zurich.

<comment><USER6> this is a great resource!

I visited Granada, Spain recently and learned from a guide how a particular type of tree is planted along Gran Via specifically to absorb radiation and pollution off the streets. I cannot recall the name for the type of tree.

I sure hope Urban Trees can expand to include more and more cities so that we can learn more about the plants in cities across the world and some of the interesting perspective on urban planning!

<comment><USER7> "Absorbing radiation and pollution" is magical, fact-free thinking.

If you want to learn botany, there's _Crime Pays But Botany Doesn 't_

[https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC3CBOpT2-NRvoc2ecFMDCsA](https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC3CBOpT2-NRvoc2ecFMDCsA)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> 50 years from now, will cities provide "APIs" for residents to query & access city data and services? will i be able to "REST" some "JSON" telling me when the tree around the corner that my dog likes best was last watered? i would love this.

note: "quotes" used because who knows what interfaces will be the saveurs du jour, then.

<comment><USER9> 50 years? Try Iceland, right now. [http://docs.apis.is/](http://docs.apis.is/) APIs for gas stations, concerts, TV schedules, school syllabi...

<comment><USER10> Those Vikings are sure damn smart...

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> This is not "all the current trees in Barcelona", as the parks have no trees. I am fun at parties as well.

<comment><USER12> That was my first thought as well. Their main park, where the zoo is, has only the trees along the walk way defined. Maybe I didn't understand where this thing was supposed to be going.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> Possible source of the data [https://opendata- ajuntament.barcelona.cat/data/en/dataset?q=...](https://opendata- ajuntament.barcelona.cat/data/en/dataset?q=Trees)

</comment><comment><USER14> When I was in my early 20s (late '90s) I was lucky enough to spend a month in Barcelona with my future wife. It remains one of my all-time favorite cities in the world. I'll never forget walking its tree-lined streets to the sea.

</comment><comment><USER15> Another Cool tree app is [https://www.curio.xyz/world](https://www.curio.xyz/world) With lots of user tagged trees too

</comment><comment><USER16> Same, for Amsterdam: [https://maps.amsterdam.nl/bomen/?LANG=en](https://maps.amsterdam.nl/bomen/?LANG=en)

</comment><comment><USER7> IIRC, many places (not all) in the world, tree density strongly correlates positively with property values. Does this hold true in Barcelona?

</comment><comment><USER17> This is actually useful for finding parks.

<comment> ezequiel-garzon No more than a regular map, as the trees in big parks don't have a mark: [https://imgur.com/a/HIfFZTd](https://imgur.com/a/HIfFZTd)

<comment><USER18> Even trees in small parks don't appear. I think the map lists only trees near streets.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> not sure it's "current trees" as the dataset was created 5 years ago.

<comment><USER20> Barcelona's map will continue to shift over the coming years too, with its move towards 'superblocks'. Even within the space of a year since my previous visit, the block I used to live on was converted.

Likely we will see more trees and plants around those areas now the roads have been converted to open spaces.

<comment><USER7> What sort of architecture, housing and commercial uses are going into those converted areas?</comment></comment></comment>


Show HN: Making a Minecraft Sword in Snap Blocks (VR) [video] - <AUTHOR> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rlCX9uB-zyA <comment><AUTHOR> Hi everyone. I'm one of the creators of Snap Blocks. It's a in-development VR game for the Oculus Quest where you can build stuff by snapping blocks together. It's kind of like a mix between Lego and Minecraft.

In this video, I built the Diamond sword that many of you know from Minecraft. It's a simple thing to build, but super fun (I might be biased though, haha).

You can get it for free from SideQuest: [https://sidequestvr.com/app/938](https://sidequestvr.com/app/938)</comment>


YouTube Red is having an identity crisis - <AUTHOR> https://digiday.com/media/neither-hulu-netflix-spotify-youtube-red-identity-crisis/ <comment><USER2> YouTube itself is having the identity crisis. With the launch of YouTube Red, it stopped being YouTube and started being TheirTube. The fact that they have moved away from their online editor and have made recent anti-creator revenue changes is just more evidence that the people at the top don't quite understand what made YouTube great in the first place: You.

<comment><USER3> >The fact that they have moved away from their online editor and have made recent anti-creator revenue changes is just more evidence that the people at the top don't quite understand what made YouTube great in the first place: You.

They understand that perfectly. They also understand that "you" don't bring them sufficient revenue, and they've decided that's no longer acceptable in a world where they have to compete against Netflix and Amazon.

Users need to understand that Youtube exists for the benefit of Google, their advertisers and first-party media companies like Sony and Disney, and either accept their bottom tier status in that hierarchy or else find another, more amenable platform for their content.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I swear every time I see YouTube Red, I'm reading RedTube (DON"T GO THERE. NSFW)</comment>


Show HN: Gothefoutside - <AUTHOR> http://gothefoutside.com/

<comment><USER2> In the future please consider building pages like this as static websites. It's much easier to scale your API if you don't also have to worry about serving the HTML, and it would load much faster than the 56 seconds it's taking now: [http://www.webpagetest.org/result/150417_N7_14PK/](http://www.webpagetest.org/result/150417_N7_14PK/)

If you're interested, here are some details, but you can also just Google "static website": [https://eager.io/blog/build-static- websites/](https://eager.io/blog/build-static-websites/)

</comment><comment><USER3> I like the idea, but I don't really get the whole swearing like a drunken sailor thing. It's not funny, it's just stupid. I get that its Dave McClure's gimmick or whatever, but I think we can be more original than that.

<comment><USER4> Normally I'd agree, but I think they're doing this in the style of [http://www.whatthefuckshouldimakefordinner.com/](http://www.whatthefuckshouldimakefordinner.com/)

<comment> jack-r-abbit I'm wondering if comparing one crass site to another crass site is the best defense here. The OP's comment could be just as valid for either site.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> It really wants me to go to Witchita for some reason. The troll in the cage does seem quite nice, but its just shy of two thousand miles away from me.

<comment><USER6> It tried to send me to a nice place 800 kilometers (500 miles) away. I wonder whether the problem is with locating me or with the database of great outdoor places.

<comment><USER7> It would be nice if there were some way to look at that database, so I can know whether I ought to go through the effort to look up my old pictures of the Brooklyn Bridge Park carousel or whether not to bother.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Why don't you go the fuck outside and check out.... indoor golfing.

</comment><comment><USER9> Tough domain name. Between 'got' and 'he' and the non-word 'f', I had a hard time parsing it.

<comment> jack-r-abbit Got Hef* Outside?

* Nickname of Hugh Hefner

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> I thought this was going to be about the Flash of Unstyled Text browsers experience with custom fonts.

</comment><comment><USER11> Where does it pull the photos from? I'm sure there's one of my photos there.

<comment><USER7> Arbitrary URLs or uploads on the 'contribute' form, apparently.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Yes, I'd love to go the fuck outside and check out this pulsating orange dots.

</comment><comment><USER13> Crashed my browser (Chrome 42), any one else experiencing that?</comment>


The Substitutability of Physical and Social Warmth in Daily Life (2013) - <AUTHOR> https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3406601/ <comment><USER2> Interesting read, particularly being someone who takes lots of baths when alone. The difference between even two similar activities: shower (dance hot/cold) and bath (ahh) is profound.

Lots of subtleties though too: primarily, perception.

Ex1: My mother is a person who always hugs on meeting. Early life, good. Lots of physical affection. Later life, mixed. As [yes, hug] is at best normal, or duty, while [no hug] only produces cold. Normal is set high so all is down. Yet friends with families that shun physical affection would probably report mother as "very warm."

Ex2: Converse, had friend I hadn't seen in years basically insist on hug "none of that handshake shit." Rest of visit was decidedly warm. (Helped he kept house at 80+ ... 'or did he?')

Other is subconscious for examples like "think or say warm.". Like the Buddha example of 'monkey with a red hat'. " Have it clearly pictured? Now try not think of the monkey."

Having been freezing to death many times (last was cave in Himalayas), thinking warm often produces reverse effect. I want be warm, I'm thinking "warm," but subconscious focus is "sooo cold. !cold."

Be interesting to see if geographic effects have large play on ideas like family size or number of kids. "Want to stay married? Move to the South.". Could be iterative too. Trend is yes, feedback develops in resistance, but social institutions have also now formed that reinforce.

Perception is wild.

</comment><comment><USER3> Key elements from the abstract, paraphrased and summarized:

* interpersonal warmth is important to human

* Other recent research says physical warmth/coldness can inspire the feelings, and vice versa

* This paper says people tend to subconsciously self-regulate their feelings of social warmth by applying physical warmth.

</comment><comment><USER4> Interesting research. I wonder if there is an evolutionary link between the need for shared bodily heat for survival and these emotional manifestations.

<comment><USER5> Sounds like an evolutionary explanation, or part of it anyway. We produce and radiate heat that is mostly wasted, so shared bodily heat like you said does make sense from the point of view of physics. At the same time letting someone close enough to be able to mutually benefit from heat (and get cozy) is possible when there's mutual affection.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> We don't merely wish to experience warmth in our social interactions we desire to get _cozy._ Having recently invested in dehumidifiers I can state that, roughly speaking,

coziness = 0.8 * warmth + 0.2 * dryness

</comment><comment><USER7> Unconscious? Eh. The evidence looks weak.

Not sure someone ever unconsciously gets in the shower, and all else being equal, it's more parsimonious to say the person wants to shower to feel better, and isn't inventing a rationalization (Wow, I'm just really dirty today. I should shower again. This has nothing to do with the crushing loneliness I'm feeling) for self soothing behavior. Their evidence that it's unconscious was "people don't assume (in a statistically significant way) other people are sad because they shower", which could be easily read to mean "people aren't very good at theory of mind."

Criticism aside, though, it's interesting to think that the cognitive mechanisms might overlap. There seems to be increasing evidence that our abstract reasoning is built from the cognitive building blocks acquired by exploring the physical world as infants.

<comment><USER8> There's preliminary evidence suggesting that there's a persistent somatosensory difference, i.e. the "unconscious" part is that the person doesn't directly sense the underlying physiological shift that motivates the behavior. See [1] (which cites this article).

[1] [https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5595273/](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5595273/)

<comment><USER7> Neat! Thanks for the link.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> This reminds me of Robert Sapolsky's lecture on how we handle metaphor:

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2s7-ULyEyA0](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2s7-ULyEyA0)

</comment><comment><USER10> This is pretty much why, even though HN has better discussion quality than most websites, I'm leaving.

I guess this isn't super related to the article but from my experiences here on HN, even if conversations are not outright trolling or insulting, the warmth just isn't there.

The style of argument isn't horrible but it's also not as constructive as it would be if it were amongst in-person friends who knew and cared about each other.

It's been great. All the best. Bye!

<comment><USER11> Don't leave. Take a long warm bath/shower and come back!</comment></comment>


Daughter of Tiger Mom gets into Harvard - <AUTHOR> http://abovethelaw.com/2011/04/sophia-chua-rubenfeld-got-into-and-is-going-to-harvard-tiger-mom-triumphant-her-cub-is-harvard-bound/

<comment><USER2> Upper crust Manhattan kid gets into Harvard ... film at 11.

<comment> steve-howard Additionally, I don't think anyone was criticizing the book on the basis that working kids like slaves doesn't produce academic results, just that doing so may be harmful and unethical. Even Mussolini got the trains running on time.

<comment><USER3> > Even Mussolini got the trains running on time.

Or maybe not: <http://www.snopes.com/history/govern/trains.asp>

<comment> steve-howard Thanks, I guess I never looked beyond the claims of the high-school survey of European history. There are still, no doubt, plenty of examples of people achieving certain results at the expense of more important ones (treating people like people, for instance).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Is this a late April Fools' joke? This reads like a parody of middle class striving meets stereotypical Asian obsession with "face".

</comment><comment><USER5> Big deal, she's a legacy.

<comment><USER6> Exactly. Two parents as alumni? This would be a bigger story if she hadn't gotten in.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Big whoop? Apparently they accepted 2158 people this year. [http://crimson- ws2.hcs.harvard.edu/article/2011/3/31/percent...](http://crimson- ws2.hcs.harvard.edu/article/2011/3/31/percent-class-students-year/)

Where are the other 600 word articles for the 2100 other acceptances? What mothers (if any) do those people have? You could write a book!

</comment><comment><USER8> What the hell has "beauty" got to do with getting into Harvard? Is college entrance a beauty contest now?

</comment><comment><USER9> I wish I had some way of finding out where the writer went to college.

</comment><comment><USER10> Warm congratulations to her.

</comment><comment><USER11> win for Brown!</comment>


Aqua became a visible selling point for people to move to the new OS - <AUTHOR> http://www.macworld.com/article/154036/2010/09/osxorigins.html <comment><AUTHOR> "After catching flack from developers over Rhapsody, Apple realized it needed a dramatically different approach to win converts to OS X, and Aqua was a key part of that. 'Aqua became a visible selling point for people to move to the new OS,' Tevanian recalled. 'If you just said, "Well, it kinda works a little better underneath," not many people would care.'"</comment>


Ruby's Object.new in C - <AUTHOR> https://www.omniref.com/ruby/2.2.0.preview1/symbols/Object#annotation=4033996&line=1866

<comment><USER2> Whoa, this is potentially amazing.

I always mean to dig into some popular Ruby gems or the Ruby core and read the code so I can improve my style.

But reading other peoples' code is tough - you can usually figure out _what_ they're doing, but not necessarily _why._ This could change that.

It's like Genius (neé RapGenius) for code. That's a very good thing.

<comment><USER3> For layout purposes, have you seen Docco[1] based on Rocco[2]? Coffeescript uses this[3] and the documentation looks very similar. The longform comments are a style choice in this case, as these packages just pull comments from the code.

Literate style code[4] is another example of comments being a primary actor in programming.

If having long comments inline is a problem, most text editors could hypothetically be extended to have automatically collapsed/collapsible comments after the first line.

[1]: [http://jashkenas.github.io/docco/](http://jashkenas.github.io/docco/)

[2]: [http://rtomayko.github.io/rocco/rocco.html](http://rtomayko.github.io/rocco/rocco.html)

[3]: [http://coffeescript.org/documentation/docs/coffee- script.htm...](http://coffeescript.org/documentation/docs/coffee-script.html)

[4]: [https://raw.githubusercontent.com/jashkenas/journo/master/jo...](https://raw.githubusercontent.com/jashkenas/journo/master/journo.litcoffee)

<comment><USER2> Whoa, thanks! I hadn't seen any of those. Those all produce some really nice output.

Ultimately, I think the two can and should coexist. The benefit (and, I guess, potential drawback) of the OmniRef/RapGenius approach is that it allows the whole world to comment on code (and perhaps ask questions as well) versus generators like Docco/Rocco that (of course) can only display comments _in_ the code that are provided by the code's maintainers.

Genius.com has a feature where they have verified contributors - for example, Genius/GZA from Wu-Tang sometimes explains his own lyrics on there. Those comments are displayed much like everybody elses' comments but are given special visual prominence because they're assumed to be authoritative.

OmniRef could do something like that too - longform inline comments could be displayed on the sidebar (ala [http://coffeescript.org/documentation/docs/coffee- script.htm...](http://coffeescript.org/documentation/docs/coffee-script.html)) as a part of the stream of comments, and given special precedence.

<comment><USER4> We actually do give project members the ability to claim their code and make "verified" annotations -- we're just not doing the greatest job of surfacing that right now.

I'll add that to our to-do list. Thanks!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I think something like a built-in 'back' function for previously visited annotations would be very useful instead of having to press back on the browser. Perhaps even a whole listing of annotations that you visited before.

Either way, I would like to agree with JohnBooty in that this has amazing potential. Great work!

</comment><comment><USER6> I strongly dislike this 'Didn't find what you needed?' modal popping up whenever I mouse away from the site. Please stop it, or use a cookie to check if I've already closed the window.

<comment><USER4> Sorry, that's a bug. I'll make it less obtrusive.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Basic C question. In the rb_class_new_instance function, isn't "VALUE obj" a local variable and therefor should not be returned?

<comment><AUTHOR> Would love to have questions like this on Omniref for other code readers. VALUE is in fact a pointer, ie a raw integer, which is pass by value in C, so it's fine to return.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> The line numbers are messed up in latest Chrome OSX.

<comment><USER4> Do you have a local copy of inconsolata installed? When people have reported code line numbering problems in the past, it's been because they're (unknowingly) using a local font with a messed-up line height.</comment></comment>


Connect.Me : from Hoax to 20k users in a few hours - <AUTHOR> http://www.equalsdrummond.name/?p=418 <comment><USER2> This article leaves me none the wiser as to what connect.me is. Perhaps 20k people are concerned with reserving their username on any service that springs up...whether or not it's clear what the service is.

</comment><comment><USER3> What does it do - did 20k people sign up without knowing anything about it?

Kind of reminds me of dating sites: I have long had the theory that the less you write about yourself, the more attractive you will seem, because it leaves more to the imagination.

</comment><comment><USER4> My general mode of operations with services that require 3rd party authentication to work is:

\- Join, get the username I want \- Visit auth platform, nuke their permission to do anything

Generally works pretty well.

<comment><USER5> Until auth platform adds new permissions. And there's some stuff you just can't nuke without removing them.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Where's the hoax?

<comment><USER7> It would seem there's no there there, as of yet.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> After reading the article and the Connect.Me about I still have no idea what it does.</comment>


The Subtext Buried in Seven Great Movie Chess Scenes - <AUTHOR> http://fivethirtyeight.com/datalab/the-subtext-buried-in-seven-great-movie-chess-scenes/ <comment><USER2> I wasted a good 15 minutes on the first X-men chess claim only to find that they botched it.

axb2 is not mate. this is:

3\. Nxb2 axb2+ 4\. Qxb2 P(c3)xb2++

Speaking of which, the chess column in the SF Chronicle drives me nuts because the solution is in error about once a month (because the logic is wrong, pieces are omitted from the graphic, or the solution printed doesn't correspond to the printed position).

</comment><comment><USER3> No Blade Runner?

<comment><AUTHOR> oh yeah. I'd heard they were mimicking a very classic game</comment></comment>


The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy is 42 - <AUTHOR> http://www.chortle.co.uk/news/2020/02/28/45518/the_hitchhiker%E2%80%99s_guide_to_the_galaxy_is_42%21 <comment><AUTHOR> [https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m000g55m/episodes/guide](https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m000g55m/episodes/guide)</comment>