As Facebook Turns 10, Zuckerberg Wants to Change How Tech Industry Works - <AUTHOR> http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2014/01/28/as-facebook-turns-10-zuckerberg-wants-to-change-how-tech-industry-works/?module=BlogPost-Title&version=Blog%20Main&contentCollection=Technology&action=Click&pgtype=Blogs&region=Body

<comment><USER2> "To start, he believes he's eliminated the technical advantages enjoyed by Amazon, Google and Yahoo. "

I hope this is just reporter hyperbole, and not a real quote, because if not, that's pretty arrogant, and from a quick glance, pretty wrong ....

(I can certainly understand if he _hopes_ to achieve that, but to think he already has is, well, hubris)

</comment><comment><USER3> "Open Compute is an initiative that Facebook started three years ago to help big computing centers add the kind of cost cuts and efficiency gains that open-source software — where programmers share ideas and code across company, university and even national boundaries — to single computer servers and Web management.

If that sounds technical, you're right."

I've read that first sentence 10 times and I'm still not sure how it parses as English.

</comment><comment><USER4> "Thank you for visiting NYTimes.com We hope you've enjoyed your 10 free articles this month. You can come back next month for another 10 free articles, or choose unlimited access with a Digital Subscription and continue to enjoy the world's best journalism, anytime, anywhere and on any device. Subscribing is quick and easy."

</comment><comment><USER5> In the video that accompanies this article, Mark talks about how one of his goals is to bring down the cost of subscribing to data access on just your phone.

I know this is elementary, but I just realized that each year I spend $1,200 on the ability to access data on my phone. That is a pretty hefty expense.

<comment><USER6> Just out of curiosity which country are you in and how much data are you getting?

I ask because I am in Australia (where its well known that the cost of data is insane) and I am getting 1.5 gig a month for $15.

<comment><USER5> Holy cow!! I live in the US (specially Dallas, Texas) and my carrier is AT&T and I have the "unlimited" plan (which is actually not possible to get now a days bc they have data caps, they just throttle me if I use too much data, hints the quote around unlimited)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Maybe I'm jaded by perennial Internet jargon, but I couldn't find any content in this article.

Sample of many words written with nothing said: _" People are starting new businesses made for the way customers want to consume technology – more flexible, with more choice and control"_. Mm. Enlightening.

<comment><USER8> well, that's story deadlines for you.</comment></comment>


Revolut launches fastest and easiest way to get cryptocurrencies - <AUTHOR> https://techcrunch.com/2017/12/05/revolut-cryptocurrency/ <comment><USER2> I just downloaded the update. Apparently it only works for Premium users for the first few weeks due to high demand.</comment>


Show HN: Alicatejs is a single page, templateless, component oriented framework - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/dryajov/alicatejs

<comment><AUTHOR> I'm the author of the framework, and would really appreciate some feedback. The framework is still in pretty early stages, and not necessarily ready for production. Please ask questions, and leave feedback :)</comment>


Does anybody here use Stikipad (hosted wikis) and know what's going on with it? - <AUTHOR> http://stikipad.com/

<comment><AUTHOR> The site has been down for over a week now and I haven't been able to find out what's going on...</comment>


Elon Musk: BFR AMA on r/space in 2 hours (It might be r/spacex) - <AUTHOR> https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/919262509227323392 <comment><USER2> Seems like a nice way to distract from the layoffs over at Tesla today.</comment>


Free Market? Not in Canada. Uber gets screwed. - <AUTHOR> http://www.thestar.com/news/gta/article/1298266--uber-taxi-charged-with-licensing-offences

<comment><USER2> This article about Uber founder Travis' disregard for local taxi rules was interesting, I believe I found it through hn.

<http://pandodaily.com/2012/10/24/travis-shrugged/></comment>


Europe's AI Startups Don't Use AI - <AUTHOR> https://www.ft.com/content/21b19010-3e9f-11e9-b896-fe36ec32aece <comment><USER2> Why is this surprising? "Using AI" is hyped up, and startups (maybe rightly) believe that this gives them more investor interest and higher valuations. I certainly see this in the US as well. Also, in many cases a startup might employ something AI-ish in a non-essential way, which is better than outright lies :)</comment>


Homeschooled with MIT courses at 5, accepted to MIT at 15 - <AUTHOR> http://news.mit.edu/2015/ahaan-rungta-mit-opencourseware-mitx-1116 <comment><USER2> I applaud this family, and am glad for Ahaan's sake that he isn't just shipping himself off to college, but is going to still have his support structure.

I was homeschooled, along with my two sisters, my entire educational career until college. We all started taking college classes early, my older sister correspondence at 14, my twin and I correspondence at 15. All of us took classes at local colleges before starting 'real college'. All of us scored high on our ACTs, all of us got scholarships to college.

My parents didn't really push us, we were just smart. We had childhoods, I was a starter on the basketball team, and played college soccer for a year. I also read 10+ books a week, played way, way too much Civilization and Total Annihilation, and did plenty of volunteer work, especially at our local public access station.

For my sisters, going to and living at 'real college' worked out well, they both succeeded in their own ways (my older sister graduated with two masters a few days after she turned 21, my twin sister received a lot of recognition from professionals in her field before graduating, was salutatorian, etc), whereas I didn't do so well being away from home and the support structure. I'm lazy, and I thought could just not do assignments I didn't want to and do well enough on other assignments to make up for it. Long story short, my GPA dropped enough to lose my scholarship, and I decided that the private college experience wasn't worth borrowing tens of thousands of dollars for.

So I moved home, finished my bachelors from the state university in town. Snagged an internship and then got a job offer from that company, essentially during my junior year for a full time job, contingent on finishing school.

My point in typing up this story is not to say that I am or was awesome. My point is that I am pretty sure that Ahaan Rungta is a pretty smart kid, his parents probably pushed him less than you think, and that as long as he and his family figure out how to navigate the maturity journey, he'll be fine.

<comment><USER3> >My point in typing up this story is not to say that I am or was awesome.

Are you sure? Being a smart fellow, you must know that your experience is not evidence that this young man was not "pushed" too much and that he will "be fine."

That said, my suspicion is that Rungta's early achievement is not cause for concern about his social development. Conducting research, for instance, is an intensely collaborative experience that he will probably have, and would provide ample opportunity for interacting with people of many ages. He probably will be fine.

<comment><USER2> > Are you sure?

Well, of course, all of us deal with pride and so part of my motivation to type up the story is that I'm proud of what I've accomplished, yeah.

> Being a smart fellow, you must know that your experience is not evidence > that this young man was not "pushed" too much and that he will "be fine."

Of course my experience is not evidence of someone else's experience. However, I have experience being homeschooled, and entering college early, so I think I have a degree of ability to relate to Ahaan Rungta's situation that others in this thread do not. I think my contribution to the thread is to provide a counter-point to those who were decrying his parents for pushing him too hard, or depriving him of a childhood, which can only be provided by personal experience.

Additionally, I think my story demonstrates the variability of how children, within the same family, respond to environmental and parental stimuli. My sisters were fine starting school early, I wasn't so much, and if I would have lived at home during my first year of college, instead of in a dorm four hours away, it would have been different.

<comment><USER3> I won't speculate on your motives, I'd just like to point out that the story you've related simply doesn't provide a counterpoint to the idea that rapid academic advancement might lead to developmental problems or result from undue pressure. All of the accomplishments you cite could be expected of a precocious student, and could go hand in hand with adjustment issues (and seem to have done so in your case as a college student).

I'm not claiming that the subject of this article should be expected to have such problems (see my other comments), only that your story doesn't serve its stated purpose.

<comment><USER2> Hm. I feel that I've written poorly, because I don't understand why you're making your argument from my writing. I feel like you're just restating my argument without the personal experience.

My point in writing was entirely to say that I've been through a similar journey, as have others in my family, and (while I didn't mention this originally), I have friends who have done the same thing. Thus, I have observed this situation from several different perspectives.

Based on what little evidence I have from this article, Ahaan Rungta's family is taking the course of action that has the best probability of a positive outcome. However, as my own story and that of my family illustrates, some kids will do fine and others won't, coming out of essentially the same circumstances.

Will Ahaan Rungta be fine? Depends on what you mean by fine. I mean that he's likely to graduate from school no more messed up than any other college student, and that his family seems to have positioned themselves to do that the best.

<comment><USER3> To whatever extent your comment was intended to contribute to the discussion, I apologize for any misunderstanding. To whatever extent it might have been motivated by pride, I wish you luck, for your sake and those around you, in overcoming this tendency. Beyond that, I think this conversation is now of too little value for us and those reading to continue.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I went to college early (14, graduated 18). I've spoken with a lot of similar folks over the years, and the biggest takeaway for me was that everyone's experience and needs were different.

Some people were pushed by their parents, but mostly it was people who were bored with the normal experience and found an out. Out of that set, maybe about half regret it, and wished they had slowed down and enjoyed high school/childhood more.

People tend to assume that folks who go to college early would be socially awkward, but that was not my experience. The social/emotional intelligence distribution was pretty normal.

Out of everything, the common denominator was supportive parents.

<comment><USER5> What do you mean by "supportive parents"? I think that eludes some. You can be supportive without really being helpful. Can anyone provide some context as to what that support looked like?

<comment><USER4> Yes, that is tough to define. "Enabling" might be a better way of phrasing it.

I wasn't a completely functioning adult at that age, in a lot of ways. I did not know college was an option, I just complained to my folks that I was bored (like any bored kid). They really helped find things to keep me occupied, and eventually found the college option for me.

In addition, the typical stuff you might expect was also important. For example, paying for college would have been very difficult for me (getting a job at 14 would have been too much on top of everything else). Getting to/from campus was also difficult, and I was too young to live on campus or drive. I also had to deal with all of the normal teenager BS (hormones, depression, etc), in addition to going to college, and they helped (as I expect most good parents do).

Sorry if that doesn't answer your question, the circumstances varied a lot depending on the individual.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Children can do a lot more than they're given credit for. My 4-year-old demanded music lessons when his older brother was playing cello. He started on both cello and piano.

Entering kindergarden, in music class the teacher had a keyboard, asked the children who could play. A little girl banged out chopsticks. Another little boy picked out twinkle,twinkle,little star. My son Andrew raised his hand, and played some Beethoven sonata. The teacher asked him if he knew what that was. He told her.

He's not a prodigy. Has terrible handwriting! The 1st-grade evaluation suggested he had fine-motor issues. Yet he could play 64th-note runs on the piano endlessly. Its all because of regular teaching and fun practicing.

Kids can learn what they put their minds to. But it takes 10,000 hours not only from the pupil but from the tutor. My wife put in the time; Andrew plays wonderfully.

<comment><USER7> Fun fact: terrible handwriting is correlated with high dopamine levels in the brain, which is correlated with increased brain activity (~ intelligence).

<comment><USER8> Any link for additional reading on that fun fact?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I've hung out with Ahaan at school several times -- some people in the comments here are speculating that going to university this young might make it hard to adjust (socially), but honestly I assumed he was like ~20 (i.e. just like any other college-age dude). I had no clue he had such a neat backstory of how he got to MIT!

<comment><USER10> Yeah, there was a guy at my alma mater (Olin College of Engineering) who entered at 14 or 15. He was perfectly normal and well-adjusted. I mean, it was a weird cloistered tech school environment, so "normal" and "well-adjusted" are relative here, but I also didn't realize he was so young until he mentioned it.

I mean, sure, you get the occasional Ted Kaczynski, but the vast majority of kids I've heard of entering college early seem well-adjusted.

<comment><USER11> > you get the occasional Ted Kaczynski

Occasional? Ted was one of a kind. And apparently, you don't "get" someone like him. Allegedly, rather, you "make" that kind of person through government sponsored psychological torture experiments. [http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2000/06/harvard-...](http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2000/06/harvard- and-the-making-of-the-unabomber/378239/)

<comment><USER10> Yes, I was being a little glib when I said that.

That's, unfortunately, who a lot of people automatically jump to when they think of "maladjusted precocious children/young adults" I think there was a RadioLab episode about him as well?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I consider 4 years of my highschool a complete waste of time and would have loved to jump straight into a university right after elementary school. It would have been great to have OCW available at that time and not having to do everything myself including finding relevant books/sources.

Good for Ahaan he escaped it and I wish him the very best of luck @ MIT!

<comment><USER13> Out of curiousity, why did you find it such a waste?

<comment><USER14> I felt the same as bitL. I was in PEAK (gifted and talented) since the second grade. When I started High School, one of my freshmen classes was biology. We started the year off learning about cells -- something I had learned about in 3rd grade PEAK and still remembered clearly. I was actually pissed off that I was not being taught something new. From that point on, I didn't give two shits about high school. I scraped by with Cs and played computer games until I graduated.

I did start college a little early my senior year, using a program that let me take half the day off to attend college. But I could have easily been going to college since 9th grade.

As for the social stuff, I actually lost most of my friends in HS -- they all moved to other states, and I had no desire to gain new friends (I had good friends on the internet, that I still have to this day, ~20 years later).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> It would be interested to check in with him at 35 to see where he ended up compared to other 'normal' 35 year old MIT grads. Basically does pushing your kid like that from such and early age lead to any significant long term advantages.

<comment><USER16> _> pushing your kid like that_

I dunno about this... we're not intimate with his family so it seems a little unfair to characterize his parents as "pushing him". For all we know, the opposite may have happened and his parents were "holding him back" and trying to prevent a precocious teen from rushing into MIT at age 14 instead of 15.

As far as the article's text reveals, it says his parents were responsive and not pushy: _" Rungta is grateful to his parents and to MIT for being responsive to his needs every step of the way."_

<comment><USER17> Yeah for sure... I attended a school for gifted kids. Those who where a lot younger than the rest of us where always pushed by their parents and their parents always told they where not pushing.

And that is a first hand experience watching 42 gifted smart young children pushed in our education system and over their interessents on behalf of their parents. I attended this school for 6 years.

It was a pain, and as if school wasn't boring enough ( school is mandatory where I live ) you had to consider every word you wanted to say as a 16/17/18 year old when there where 9/10/11 year old depressed and ADHDish, but extremely smart kids around you the whole time.

In the end I am a hundred percent sure every kid can study MIT classes at every age. Most of the stuff is rational trivia. Also beeing gifted has nothing to do with your grades or your ability to follow classes or lectures. Because that's something your parents could've pushed on you, but for sure you are allowed to be happy that they didn't.

<comment><USER18> >school is mandatory where I live

Do you mind if I ask where you live? In most of the US school is "mandatory", but pretty much anyone can homeschool if they want.

<comment><USER19> There are a lot of state-by-state laws around homeschooling. Basically, some states make it easier than others as far as what rules apply. Some parents have to have their curriculum approved by a state board, others have mandatory checkins, and some have no requirements at all.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> MIT has always had a few of these "show pony" geniuses around. Two of them sadly committed suicide during my years at MIT. I dont know their minds, but I guess some of their sense of self worth was being a smart ass and marching to to a different drummer. When you are surrounded by thousands almost as smart as you you dont really stand out for being you anymore. MIT people are impresses by you doing something really clever. Also I suspect these guys were very lonely too. I hope Adaan has a sense of self worth built on more than being at MIT.

</comment><comment><USER21> Some commenters are afraid this kid was pushed way too hard and did not have time to learn proper social skills, play sports, get a holistic education in the humanities.

This all might be true but the article makes it very clear how precocious this kid is. I don't think his parents were trying to push him. If anything they seemed to struggle to get him the things that he needed to succeed.

Some people are just so laser focused on their desires that you just have to let them do their thing. I'm sure if he wants to play sports or learn history, he'll excel at it too.

<comment><USER22> "I'm sure if he wants to play sports or learn history, he'll excel at it too." I'm not so sure about that, maybe it depends how you see excel

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> As long as he did not exclusively learn technical stuff but also got a humanistic education, which we do not know, and enjoyed his childhood, which I think he did, because you cannot perform like that without enjoying it, I think this is pretty amazing parenting.

You could find other reasons to nitpick (Did he do sports? Did he develop social competences by interacting with other kids?), but even if these things are true, which we do not know, there are children, who got a regular education, that are still lacking in these regards and they are not enrolled at MIT at 15.

<comment><USER24> You have to realize the fact that humans have some really annoying bugs.

a) The first one is the fact that we want (mostly) to help each other and make each other happy. This looks benign, but combined with b) can be really irritating

b) Humans are bad at empathy. You might enjoy humanistic education or sports and so you automatically think that everyone else does too.

This probably worked fine for our ancestors (getting torn apart by a cave lion is something no-one would like) but kind of breaks in modern society.

Different people like different things, keep that in mind.

<comment><USER23> I think a bit different about humanism. I think a basic humanistic education is more like a drivers license for society. Know nothing about WW2? Well, you should not be allowed to vote, because it could turn out really bad for all of us. Democracy can be really dangerous without proper education.

What does all technical excellence mean as long as the Middle East is a clusterfuck? Most really big problems have little to do with technology.

<comment><USER25> Are you truly proposing a limit on voting rights based on educational achievements? I think that is a road that will lead to an elite class in our society, limiting political power to those who grew up in poverty or had other struggles.

We already have enough problems with an elite class within our economic power. Lets not extend that elitism into governmental processes as well.

<comment><USER23> I did not. I just wanted to say, that we should try to educate children, because they will be allowed to vote as adults.

<comment><USER25> Thank you for clarifying. I must have been thrown off by your exact words of, "Well, you should not be allowed to vote"

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> So many people praising this brainwashing I can't even believe it. I'm ready for the downvote but please comment to why it is not the case. That's a pretty story but if their parents went on teaching him something else than physics everybody would go on their horses and scream for child abuse.

What choice did the kid have? None. Dude didn't go out and was full MIT mode from the age of 5.

</comment><comment><USER27> It is better for the kids to praised about what they are doing rather than what they are getting. Personally, I don't care what prestigious thing he got. This kid is amazing for having studied so many things on his own.

The real aim here should be to be engaged and to be learning; which are things this kid seems to be have done plenty of. It is so cool that we now have all these learning resources accessible easily.

It's interesting how this kind of thing makes one think about their own life. I went to a talk by a computer scientist yesterday. He is studying cryptography. You could tell that he was so engaged, getting so much joy from his subject. People were interested in what he was explaining. You could tell that he is just loving every minute of his job. This is the kind of engagement level I am looking for. And by the way, I don't think one needs to be top- level at what they do to get there.

</comment><comment><USER28> Don't know this kid, or this situation, but to commenters here who seem envious, or young people who are inspired: being a child prodigy expires at age 25. Being known for your youth means that once you aren't young anymore you've lost that. If your identity is wrapped up in being precocious be ready with a second plan.

<comment><USER29> I don't know how many miss "being known". I think many regret not having so much intellectual stimulation, or opportunities to learn. (Seriously, how many of us, the HN crowd, considered their Primary School intellectually challenging?)

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> "When Rungta turned 12, his family moved to Lowell, Massachusetts, as his parents realized he needed to be in a more intellectually stimulating environment."

My friends in Fort Lauderdale are gonna LOVE this!

<comment><USER31> Ft. Lauderdale has intellectually stimulating aspects, just not of the highly technical variety. The arts scene, however...

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> I envy this guy so much! I felt delayed by school, which offered slow-paced, and uninspiring environment (learning interesting stuff on my own, after the lessons; at ~15 I started reading academic textbooks in physics and chemistry).

Right now I am very much for adjusting education to students, rather than the other way around (without expecting that everyone gets magically enlightened at the age of 18-19). Especially as the cohort-based learning is a direct heritage of the Prussian education (for teaching soldiers, not - scientists or engineers).

</comment><comment><USER32> I don't know man, I think there's something to be said about having a childhood. Being from India myself, I know the tremendous pressure parents put on kids to succeed. I hope that this kid wasn't subject to the same.

<comment><USER33> Agree with you. My wife and I are already arguing over the future of our 3-year-old. She wants him to learn to read and write. I want him to play, have time to be a boy, get in trouble, kiss a girl, and have a care-free childhood.

We're so obsessed with money, and forget all about the one currency that _really_ matters. Time. Time to _live_.

I'd rather he were average academically, and experience life exceptionally.

<comment><USER34> Up-voted for courageously (and beautifully) expressing a potentially unpopular opinion. Stay strong - it is hard not to feel guilty when other kids in kindergarten can seemingly write essays and do calculus, but in the end, it does not matter as much as it may appear to. And sometimes putting so much pressure may have unintended consequences. I know a few kids from affluent families in my town where their "early prodigies" are now college drop-outs.

<comment><USER35> Many early achievers burn out once they enter an environment where they are no longer the smartest person in the room all of the time.

<comment><USER36> I don't know, I think "burn out" is a somewhat loaded term. Personally during either secondary and (much later) tertiary education I simply found it hard to maintain interest in a dubiously presented, dry, fixed syllabus that was executed at the speed of the slowest person in the room by teachers with thousand-mile lecture stares. It was always clear to me that learning something by rote was not an effective use of time... the initial comprehension and applications were the only interesting portions. Thus, I turned to self-directed computing. When I finally went to college, I received a scholarship in the first semester, took a year overseas, then never returned. I'd like to study more, but feel the pedagogy is too alien to deliver solid results (in terms of time efficiency) versus competing life opportunities.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> _"I will never forget the feeling of walking into the lobby of Building 7, looking up, and then touching the pillars to see if they were real. I couldn't believe I was at MIT. My life and my ambitions moved to another level at that moment."_

I think this impressive achievement is more a testament to the role that aspirations acquired during childhood play in determining a person's success than it is a reflection of this young man's intelligence. Yes, the latter is necessary, but it isn't sufficient. I have little doubt that there are many 18 year olds entering MIT's class of 2019 who could have entered at 15 had they been provided a similarly advantageous upbringing.

These stories attract the attention of some of us because we wish we had been raised similarly. Had we not devoted our attention as children to, say, petty family turmoil or a hedonistic preoccupation with computer games, perhaps we would have progressed through life with a singularity of purpose and self- confidence that would have situated us in a better position today. We might have been spared years in our teens and twenties trying to find a sense of meaning in our work, unlike this fellow, who seems to have it figured out.

I won't speculate about his social skills. I've met college students his age running the gamut from borderline autistic to social butterfly. Yes, the sense of "peerlessness" must be a bit alienating, but many of us have had this experience without leapfrogging high school.

<comment><USER37> > These stories attract the attention of some of us because we wish we had > been raised similarly.

We wish we had been but we didn't live in the right time or place for an upbringing like this. I remember stealing my dad's college textbooks on mechanics and applied mathematics and sneaking them off to school; taking out Byte and Compute issues from the library when they were available... just starving for more all the time. Astronomy club. Chess club. In high school I went to night school with my friends' mom at the university in the big city when I wasn't working to help pay the rent. You just couldn't get the breadth and ease of access to information you can today. It was slow and laborious back then.

But a world like this? Today? Amazing. You don't even have to leave your house. He is lucky. I'm 33 now and I'd kill to be able to study mathematics full time and be a professor some day. It just wasn't in the cards. Parents, circumstances, life and all of that.

Yes... we'll envy stories like this. More of us could have been this hungry. We just couldn't get there.

<comment><USER38> Hell Im 23, and even with easy access to information its difficult if you have to work full-time to pay the bills. Ive been working full-time since I was 15, and no matter how many courses I completed or books I read, without financially stable parents there is no way a normal person can do this. Thats why most of us attend public school.

I have full confidence most people are capable, but they would need some exceptionally staunch parents and finacial stability. Plus a lot of drive to accomplish these goals (it is not for everyone).

<comment><USER39>
        > Thats why most of us attend public school.

This has to be the single most confusing AmE/BrE difference..

<comment><USER40> In case people don't know what is being referred to here, it's that in Britain a _Public School_ is something you pay for, and in America (and Australia!) a Public School is funded by the government and not the individual.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER41> "two-year-old son — already an avid reader" sounds somewhat unusual?

<comment><USER42> There are people who have a hard time learning to read and some who never manage it despite making every effort. Why is it so hard to believe that there are people at the other end of the spectrum who are able to learn to read as an infant?

<comment><USER43> This isn't normally distributed. Would you find someone learning to feed at 18 as surprising as someone learning at a week old? Reading at this age is certainly unusual.

<comment><USER42> Normal? No, but neither surprising.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER44> What I like is he came to America to go to MIT. That great mind is now an American mind, and with his family origin, I would hope a world thinking and sympathetic mind. Perhaps he can do good in this world.

</comment><comment><USER45> The school system is really best for the kids-in-the-middle, i.e. not the best fit for the really talented, as the case with this MIT kid here, neither is it for the D/F students. Public school was originated in Europe for training workers if memory serves me right.

Since Bush the public education system is more geared towards to the D/F students nonetheless, i.e., the no child left behind policy, a road to hell. This might have something to do with Bush, who is about a D student himself.

A solution I would like to see, is tax-relief for home-schooling families, they don't use the public education system so why pay for the school district property tax? This looks like a win-win for the family and the nation in the long run.

Human races compete and evolve, focusing on the left-behinders are so against nature, yes they should be taken care of, but the focus really should be on the other side.

<comment><USER23> > Public school was originated in Europe for training workers if memory serves > me right.

Actually, no. The idea is associated with Martin Luther, the Protestant Reformation, the Enlightment and stuff like this. This was years before workers had to be educated. It was actually about humanism and liberty from the catholic church.

</comment></comment><comment><USER46> This seems to have been drawn from the same statistical distribution of many stories that center around this idea that "MIT students are smarter than students anywhere." The ideology of MIT is that you should go to MIT daycare, then MIT kindergarten and all the way through to the PhD and beyond, and if they had enough people in that pipeline they wouldn't bother taking applications from anywhere else.

That idea is definitely one of the things holding Boston back in terms of startups -- you definitely see research labs at MIT that don't hire postdocs from Stanford or Cornell because they only want to hire MIT people. There are plenty of MIT grads who are mediocre at best but many local startups (particularly those started by MIT grads) don't realize this and often make up all sorts of excuses about why things went wrong.

<comment><USER47> In contrast (but not contradiction) with your experience, as an MIT undergraduate math major applying for PhD programs, my advisor warned me that the math dept. doesn't admit their own graduates. I applied anyway and indeed was not admitted (which was fine since I was admitted to UW-Madison, where I most wanted to go).

</comment></comment><comment><USER48> >Some people think I'm gifted, but I don't think so

Taking physics and chemistry classes at 5 years old? Call me crazy, but I think that can certainly be considered gifted by most standards.

<comment><USER49> Just another instance of dunning-kruger. When he's older and had more interactions with lower IQ people, he may come to terms with his gifts...

</comment></comment><comment><USER50> And then people wonder why there's a teenager suicide epidemic in Palo Alto and Silicon Valley in general...

<comment><USER51> The problem is mostly that parents and teachers have expectations for students beyond what most of them are intellectually capable of. There is also an excessive emphasis on empty credentialism. Both problems could be tempered via a recognition that people are not blank slates, some people like Ahaan are simply smarter than others, and the average high schooler should not be compared against him.

</comment></comment><comment><USER52> Their restaurant (Cafe Spice @ MIT) is pretty good!

<comment><USER11> That was the first question I was curious about. Secondly, which dish is their specialty...

</comment></comment><comment><USER53> I did my bachelor's from ages 14-18; there's some things that you can't really do (frat parties) but most of the social opportunities are open to you. It helps to make friends if you are in a group-centric major - I was a chemist, so lots of long hours in the lab with cool people. There's been some questions about whether the parents push too hard in these sorts of cases; for me, I was definitely motivated more by my own desire to get out in the world and start getting real things done. This isn't always a productive desire - I wish I'd taken the time to learn more about the stuff that grew to interest me later (math/CS), instead of blitzing through all my chem requirements. I guess for other people doing the same thing the only advice I'd have is that while the cliche is that life is short, it's really longer than you think it is at that age and you shouldn't feel like you need to rush in order to maintain a position in some sort of race. It's not bad to progress fast, just make sure it isn't at the expense of finding what you really love to do.

</comment><comment><USER54> I'd be willing to bet that Rungta watched and consumed with great joy Walter Lewin's Physics 8.01 videos. I'd further bet that he mentioned them in this interview with MIT News, only to have his comments omitted from the piece, because Lewin is, in MIT's eyes, _persona non grata_. Of course this is just conjecture. I just said I'd be willing to take the bet.

</comment><comment><USER55> I find his drive and his parent's support commendable. Being someone who has not been homeschooled and does not know anyone who has, I am extremely curious about it.

-How does one go about replicating this kind of success? Or even moderate success. In typical schools, you have some measure of whether your child is "succeeding". How does one go about doing the same for home-schooled children.

-How do you go about providing the structure that schools provides towards increasingly complex material which will keep the child engaged and learning at the same time.

Not having children myself but watching my brother's children, I can see that the structure provided for children is extremely important, even for simple things like when to have food, go to bed, practice music etc.

Are there any good resources for raising home schooled children and providing structure?

<comment><USER56> Extremely important in what sense? What are the specific benefits you see to having a rigid structure? I have a little sister who is in my estimation smart, but spends every waking moment (when not in school or finishing up homework) on her iPad playing video games and watching Youtube videos. I sometimes wonder if a little bit of prodding on the part of my parents would help her find other hobbies.

I personally feel like I suffered from my parent's laissez faire attitude.

</comment></comment><comment><USER57> I plan on doing something like this for my kids as they get older. I already randomly watch open courseware type stuff offered from various universities and I've always noticed they have decent seeming English and Math sections too. So why not sit my kids in front of it too?

I don't think anyone is really happy with public schools these days. I object because of a Christian background. Yet my non-church going (atheist?) in-laws asked me once about "non-religious" based home school programs for their kids since they knew I would be home schooling. I really had no idea what to tell them.

</comment><comment><USER58> Even with all the positive support from parents this kid is an extreme outlier.

Terrence Tao supposedly knew numbers from Sesame Street at age 2, but I do not know of any avid kid readers at age 2.

I know plenty of kids ages 3-4 who know the alphabet but none are actual readers.

In fact I know plenty of kids who "read" a book at age 3, but they are not reading the way we adults are they are imitating the reading process.

Anecdotally I was a relatively early reader at age 5 (reading whole scary Grimm's tales) but my mom keeps insisting it was age 3 when I know it was not.

So if he really was reading at age 2 and half that is showing advanced potential.

</comment><comment><USER59> I think this was a great story and I hope to hear more like it. It has been one of the "promises" of the Internet that smart children could get access to as much learning as they can handle, breaking the bottleneck that was the availability of local resources.

Of course not everyone cares, or wants to learn all they can, but for those who do it is important to give them that opportunity. And it is in that context that I think the availability of course ware will help us guide smart, motivated, kids before their boredom leads them into an ill advised adventure.

</comment><comment><USER60> This is awesome. As someone who can't wait to graduate college so I can teach myself stuff through OCW (there's some irony there), I am glad it's available. It's a really great project.

</comment><comment><USER61> I would love some guidance on how to take advantage of OCW w/ my kids.

I don't want to reproduce Ahaan's story. My father was a biology teacher and always had tons of text books we could just kind of grind through growing up. I'm not doing the same for my kids at this time- mostly for lack of resources.

Just skimming through the OCM content- I don't see material in physics or science that can be used to introduce kids to the scientific method. It mostly looks like baptism by fire.

Any tips?

<comment><USER9> If OCW is too advanced to start, try Khan Academy first. It's great for K-12 material.

</comment></comment><comment><USER62> Truly impressive accomplishment. My congratulations.

And now imagine that you actually _do not need_ MIT. In comparison to what you have done, it is another rigid institution with a more or less rigid structure.

I hope the educational landscape will keep changing, giving more alternative bodies to aquire high end knowledge, e.g. through hacker spaces, virtual/internet based platforms, etc.

</comment><comment><USER63> Some people force maturing, when maturing comes on its own... And by doing so they loose childhood, which never comes back.

<comment><USER42> Some people mature earlier than others without being foced.

For some the ideal childhood is playing outside, playng games or playing sports. For others it's technology and science.

<comment><USER64> Exactly. Tinkering with things is not any different from any other games children play.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER65> <blockquote>"elementary and secondary education from OpenCourseWare"</blockquote>

How do you do that?

</comment><comment><USER66> The main argument for why this ok seems to be:

"Children are able to learn more, therefore any obsessively accelerated curriculum is justified even if it detracts from other aspects of child hood"

Um, I think that's just an excuse for not learning as an adult and pushing your own failed dreams on your offspring.

</comment><comment><USER67> I just don't understand how a 5 year old can comprehend a college level course.

How does he know enough math to follow along any scientific course? How can he be well enough versed in literature to follow along a liberal arts course, or history to comprehend a sociology course?

<comment><USER68> Well, the first-level answer would be "work backwards"...

...as soon as you don't understand the math, google it, then keep doing that until you start understanding things (though this is probably more what a 7yo would do, not a 5yo)

</comment></comment><comment><USER51> He seems to have tremendous breadth of curiosity, it will be interesting to see what he ultimately ends up specializing in. MIT is a big place, and trying to "major in everything" will almost certainly not turn out well.

</comment><comment><USER69> If you're skeptical about pushing children towards their limits, here's another take by Derek Sivers:

[https://sivers.org/kimo](https://sivers.org/kimo)

</comment><comment><USER70> Sees the world in buckyballs. Never played with an actual ball.

</comment><comment><USER71> His parents are amazing. If he's like most 15 year olds he won't realize that, but when he will it'll be quite a moment.

That took a lot of courage. Props.

</comment><comment><USER72> On a side note, I am very curious how family immigrate to US. From what I know there is no good path as Indian to immigrate legally.

Green card has 6 - 12 years of wait.

<comment><USER73> I have 3 friends from Bangladesh whose parents received their US green cards in 2000, 2002 and 2003. They had all applied for them in the early 1990s. I rarely hear of this happening anymore, so I imagine the process was more straightforward back then.

</comment></comment><comment><USER74> To me, this exemplifies the true potential of online education: not to lift the masses, but to enable the geniuses.

<comment><USER75> Well Ramanujan only needed one textbook to enable him. The tru e potential is in allowing everyone to get atleast a momentary ,fleeting glimpse of the worlds that the geniuses have opened up for us.

</comment></comment><comment><USER76> I wonder what he does after school. Impressive accomplishment! That's a lot of focus for a kid.

</comment><comment><USER77> I'd love to see a list of the order in which each class was provided to the child.

</comment><comment><USER65> How do you get "elementary and secondary education from OpenCourseWare"?

</comment><comment><USER78> I remember him from Brilliant.org, saw him solving problems there.

</comment><comment><USER79> _reads article about unbelievably driven and hard working young person_

 _watches video of American students at Yale yelling about safe spaces_

o_o</comment>


Unlimited Coding Courses for Life - <AUTHOR> https://devslopes.com/lifetime-access?tap_a=26239-4a34f3&tap_s=154836-d3e6bb <comment><USER2> One of the greatest investments that i have ever made . I have been with the devslopes team as a free student all the summer and then a subscription was logically the next step, but then the lifetime access was the perfect solution for me. i got all the content for life at only 599$. Yes it wasn't cheap, specially if you come from a country with low paid jobs or you work as a freelancer like me, but considering the fact that you get over 300 hours of content and it grows continually, considering that only an app sells to a client with 500 euro is more then a great investment. And even without the commercial part, investing in your passion and in yourself to get better it is priceless. So knowing the team, the teaching method and the great community always there to help, I undoubtedly recommended devslopes for both new or old developers that wish to be better in what they do, create and love. invest in yourself and in other people around you and you won't regret it!

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</comment><comment><USER14> Seems like a good deal but how do I get the Amazon Echo?

</comment><comment><USER15> Great courses and friendly help on the slack channels.

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<comment><AUTHOR> I thought so too. Figured I'd share.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> Awesome offer. I already got it.

</comment><comment><USER19> Best deal ever!!!

</comment><comment><USER20> Great</comment>


Do profits matter for Tech IPOs? Maybe not - <AUTHOR> https://craft.co/reports/tech-ipo <comment><USER2> Companies go public to raise capital. But it'd only make sense if they are generating enough earnings so that investors are not losing their money. For example, in the case of Snapchat, it'd probably be better off if they raise another few more rounds of funding from venture capital and figure out a profitable business model. Otherwise, who wants shares of a company that only takes but do not give?

<comment><USER3> From Snapchat's perspective, they should think about where they'll be able to find the cheapest capital to continue to fund their operations and where they'll get the highest valuation for a liquidity event. For both of these, going public seems like a good decision.

For investors, whether public or private, they should be concerned about companies that seem likely to only take and never give (the hope is that they'll eventually give). By this stage of funding, companies like Snap, Facebook, and Uber were getting some money from big institutions who would also likely be major holders in the IPO, so the gap of who would be potential investors by raising in public vs. private markets was shrinking.</comment></comment>


SOPA sponsors return: "think of the children" - <AUTHOR> http://www.slashgear.com/sopa-sponsor-has-another-internet-bill-that-records-you-247-20210264/

<comment><USER3> "Each time you use a credit card, each time you read your bank statement, all of your IP information and your search history will be required by your ISP to be stored for 18 months at all times."

How can my ISP store my search history? DuckDuckGo and Google offer https to do the searching.

How can my ISP know where I use my credit card? Whenever I pay by credit card I use https.

<comment><USER4> I might be revealing my stupidity here, but surely your ISP can MITM the HTTPS handshake and decrypt all of your traffic? Unless you have a pre-arranged key that hasn't travelled through their network.

<comment><USER5> SSL is designed so that only the server with the private key for a specific certificate can complete the handshake correctly for that certificate, and the certificate is tied to the domain name.

The ISP can MITM the handshake and return a different certificate, but unless a certificate authority supported by your browser is complicit, they can't get that certificate signed for the domain you're trying to visit, and the browser will complain.

<comment><USER6> I would expect that if the US government is requiring this, they'd also be able to get at least a few US based certificate authorities to play along.

<comment><USER5> If they did, we'd get versions of Firefox and Chromium at least with the US certificate authorities root certs yanked out within a day, and companies scrambling to replace their SSL certs with certs that'd still be trusted by users.

Unless they made it illegal to, I'm sure we'd see all the major browsers work to deprecate those certificate authorities pretty quickly - not doing so would make SSL useless.

<comment><USER7> _I'm sure we'd see all the major browsers work to deprecate those certificate authorities pretty quickly_

What about the recent Comodo breaches? Their certs are still trusted by all major browsers (as far as I'm aware).

I realise they weren't complicit in issuing the fraudulent certs, but the effect is the same.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Related: [http://torrentfreak.com/the-copyright-lobby-absolutely- loves...](http://torrentfreak.com/the-copyright-lobby-absolutely-loves-child- pornography-110709/)

There's a very slippery slope of misuse that eventually creeps in with any new enforcement privilege. One example - the extra abilities the Patriot act gave to law enforcement that now are used almost exclusively for non-terrorism related investigations.

<comment><USER9> That seems to be the right way to fight these things, if those that have been abused as children are against this law, then this law isn't to protect the children, but to simply push it under the rug.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> The first paragraph is completely wrong. Of the things listed in the first paragraph as things the bill requires, not a single one is correct.

The only factual statement in that paragraph is the link to the bill text.

In fact, I cannot find any even remotely plausible (or even an implausible) way to misread the bill so as to come up with his claims. Either the author is simply lying (to generate controversy and traffic perhaps), or is just repeating something he got elsewhere and made no effort whatsoever to verify.

This is not HN quality material. Flagging.

For those curious, here's what is actually going on. Under current law, an ISP has to cough up certain customer information to the government upon a proper legal request. That information is name, address, phone number connection records or session times and durations, how long the customer has been a customer and what services they use, subscriber phone number or subscriber number, temporary network addresses, means and source of how they pay for the service (including credit card number if that is how they pay).

As far as I can see, there is no requirement that the ISP retain this information. They just have to make it available if they have it. Practically, of course, most of it will be retained for business purposes.

What this bill adds to this is that the ISP has to keep a log for one year of temporary IP address assignments and mapping of them to the customer information listed earlier. So, it's adding a new data item to log, and it is making it so that the customer information mentioned early has to be kept a year (which in practice is not a change because it is almost certainly kept anyway regardless of legal requirements).

It also adds a section that says that access to this information may not be compelled except by a government entity. This may be good news for those who are doing file sharing, as on first reading it would prevent plaintiffs in civil suits from getting access to the information.

Anyway, there is nothing whatsoever that will "have your internet service provider tracking all of your financial dealings online. Each time you use a credit card, each time you read your bank statement, all of your IP information and your search history will be required by your ISP to be stored for 18 months at all times".

</comment><comment><USER11> Its worth noting that the RH (reported in house) version of the bill is significantly better. This requires logging only ip addresses and only for 12 months AND the response may only be compelled by a government entity.

            (1) A commercial provider of an electronic communication service shall retain for a period of at least one year a log of the temporarily assigned network addresses the provider assigns to a subscriber to or customer of such service that enables the identification of the corresponding customer or subscriber information under subsection (c)(2) of this section.

            `(2) Access to a record or information required to be retained under this subsection may not be compelled by any person or other entity that is not a governmental entity.

[http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi- bin/query/D?c112:1:./temp/~c1122yS...](http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi- bin/query/D?c112:1:./temp/~c1122yStpw:):

<comment><USER11> It still needs work, like requiring reasonable suspicion of child pornography, but it is significantly better. Also if anyone can confirm whether or not that Reported in House means that the actual bill that has been fixed and that it is not just suggested changes to the bill that would be great

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> We need to call them out on how Orwellian this bill is and how they are hiding behind child abuse to monitor the whole Internet and everyone, before they get a chance to ask "why are we against protecting children online?".

Let's frame the issue before they do. Also bring up the point that Rep. Lofgren tried to add an amendment called _"Keep Every American's Digital Data for Submission to the Federal Government Without a Warrant Act."_. Of course they rejected it.

<comment><USER13> Maybe Reddit should organize a campaign to send every member of congress a copy of _1984_, and maybe _Fahrenheit 451_. Seems like they could pull it off. On the other hand, it might just give them more ideas.

<comment><USER14> They could use a new book, they've finished reading Brave New World a while ago.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> When is Lamar Smith's next election? Are there any candidates running who would say they're opposed to this nonsense? Seriously consideing putting together a PAC in New York City.

Update: Ouch, this will be expensive... [http://www.opensecrets.org/politicians/elections.php?cycle=2...](http://www.opensecrets.org/politicians/elections.php?cycle=2012&cid=N00001811&type=I)

<comment><USER16> If there's a group of people that understand technology less than Smith and care less about protecting freedom of speech on the internet than him, it would have to be the people living in Texas's 21st congressional district, which he represents.

Smith's been in the House since 1987, so he won't be going away any time soon without a fight. He won his last reelection with 69% of the votes, in 2010. Even though you've got 2 more years to prepare to take him down, I'd say you're extremely unlikely to succeed, particularly when you consider how short the public's collective attention span is.

Reddit already did an analysis of this[0], and determined which Congresspeople who supported bills like the Patriot Act, NDAA, and SOPA/PIPA are most vulnerable in the 2012 elections. I think they decided upon one or two targets to focus on, which is a smart move. If they can come up with a winning strategy and get a pro-internet/freedom of speech politician who sticks to his principles into office, then they have hope of gaining support from other groups of people in future elections.

0: [http://www.reddit.com/r/politics/comments/nylx0/a_megalist_o...](http://www.reddit.com/r/politics/comments/nylx0/a_megalist_of_congressmen_facing_2012_reelection/)

\-----

Personally, I believe that many of the current problems with the political system stem from (a) the electoral system and (b) the campaign finance system.

The electoral system allows otherwise unelectable politicians to get into Congress and hold onto their seats purely by virtue of gerrymandered Congressional districts. This[1] is Texas's 21st Congressional district. Ignore the vast swaths of land in the middle of nowhere, as those are not very densely populated. Focus on the parts of the district that approach the cities of San Antonio and Austin. See how oddly shaped they are? This is to ensure that only wealthy people in those cities are in the district. By combining the social conservatives (religious people) in the rural areas with the fiscal conservatives (wealthy people) in the suburban areas, they've created a district that is unwinnable for a non-Republican (Democrat or 3rd party).

Moreover, the lack of proportional representation in favor of a winner-takes- all situation makes it impossible for 3rd parties to get a foothold in the public consciousness, so that they can build over several elections into a formidable force. So even in districts that aren't so blatantly gerrymandered, you're left with what's essentially a political duopoly.

We've gone over the campaign finance issues with lobbying and all in other threads here, so you probaly already know the issues with that. The bottom line is that solving any of these issues requires first getting "our" people into office, _using the current system_.

The best hope of doing this is to identify local elections where we can first bring in an opposition candidate who supports us. This requires an election where (a) there's an incumbent who isn't really liked by his/her constituents, (b) a dearth of opposition candidates, and (c) someone living in the district who's supportive of our views and has the time, interest, and ability to run and win. This person would have to run as a Democrat or Republican (whichever the incumbent isn't) in order to get people to vote for him. If we can repeat this process in the _same geographical area_ for several other positions, all of these candidates could then leave the parties they're a member of _at the same time_ and form a new one. Now you would have a 3rd party with credibility and _several respectable members already in political office_. From there, it would be a matter of expanding to other states, and eventually to the national level.

1: [https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/d/de/Texas.21st.Co...](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/d/de/Texas.21st.Congressional.District.gif)

<comment><USER17> (a) Virtually no-one ever admits their country's system is flawed. The Brits don't realise that the House of Lords is a really crappy substitute for a senate. The Americans don't realise that proportional representation, compulsory voting, and instant runoff voting is a much better system. They say stuff like "you'll just get a candidate that nobody hates, not someone who a few extremists really love, and if voting is compulsory you'll have normal people voting", and not realise that's a good thing.

I've no idea what the Australians get wrong ... though it probably involves having too many levels of government.

<comment><USER18> _The Americans don't realise that proportional representation, compulsory voting, and instant runoff voting is a much better system_

I can't comment on instant runoff voting, but my impression from following politics in Europe is that proportional representation creates a situation where all legislators toe the party line, as opposed to still having some degree of independence, as in Britain or the US. This gives an undue amount of influence to a small number of party bigwigs, and the inevitable mess results.

As for compulsory voting, at least in Belgium, it has been credited with fuelling the rise of more extreme parties, notably the anti-immigration Flemish nationalists, since people who feel disenfranchised by the whole system tend to cast a protest vote, without seriously considering the consequences. Also, the notion that you could get fined or jailed for not voting seems to me to be as illiberal an idea as ACTA or the Patriot act.

<comment><USER5> Coming from a country with proportional voting (Norway), I can't say I agree it makes people toe the party line - in Norway all the big parties have factions with varying level of parliamentary support.

But even if it did, it makes it sufficiently easy to establish new parties and get representation in parliament that the parties are careful about not letting too big conflicts arise these days (one of the current coalition partners in government, for example, started out as a large chunk of the youth organization of the other, which broke away as they were far more left wing than the parent party)

Norway has regularly had 10+ parties represented in parliament (with 169 seats).

If done well, this results in an environment where everyone are interested in compromises because it's the only way of getting anything done - anyone who just tries being obstructionist like the current crop of Republicns would end up with no influence, as it just makes the other parties go elsewhere to find someone to cooperate with to establish majorities.

The current government is a coalition of three parties, and coalition governments have become the rule rather than the exception in Norway over the last few decades.

<comment><USER18> I meant that members of parliament toe the party line in PR systems -- are you saying that members of parliament in Norway commonly vote against their party faction or even switch factions when they feel like it? If so, I'm impressed :-)

I fully agree about it being important that parties can be esatblished and elected easily; again in Belgium, there is a rule (initially devised to keep out the increasingly popular Flemish nationalists) that parties need to get 5% in elections to gain any seats at all.. It's good to hear not all countries have this!

I'm not so sure about the spirit of compromise being so positive; again relating to Belgium, decades of compromise agreements between Flemish and Waloon, and left- and right-leaning parties has created an institutional structure that is very complicated and obtuse (google the term "Belgian compromise"), and indeed its complexity and inflexibility have been at the heart of the recent problems.

It might be a bit unfair of me to base all my argument on the example of a single country, but I guess my main point is that it is not so much the choice of political system which determinces how messed up things get, but much more the polititians themselves. I'm not surprised that you as a Norwegian seem quite satisfied with your political system, because Scandinavians have a reputation for being prudent and reasonable, and I would bet that it wouldn't make all that much difference if the rules there were more like in the US for example.

<comment><USER5> It isn't unusual for votes to go against their party faction, though the parties do generally have rules that allow the party to demand they follow the party line in certain situations, though they can't legally enforce that. The worst they can do is exclude said person. There have been a number of situations where there have been important cases where they've tried to enforce a specific vote and members have left the party in question in order to vote as they pleased, which makes the parties careful about when they use those mechanisms.

But the ability for smaller parties to get in also mean that each of the parties are far more homogenous than the US parties, for example, so it's natural for them to toe the party line to a reasonable extent for important votes. In US terms, most of the parties in the current Norwegian parliament would've been members of the Democratic Party, but in Norway that span is considered so wide that it would be unthinkable for any of the current parties to merge.

In terms of barriers, there's a 4% limit below which you need to get in on direct votes, but no other limits (other than being able to fill a list, so you need at most a couple of dozen people willing to put their names on each regional list for parliamentary elections - a low enough number that even parties with a few hundred members have no problems fielding lists in parliamentary electins). The way the Norwegian system works is that most seats are tied to a region, so there's, say (I haven't looked up the actual number recently), 18 seats for Oslo. Each party provides an ordered list. So for the first 2 people on a party list to get in on direct votes, they need the total number of votes for Oslo / number of seats * 2, or more.

All the parties that get more than 4% nationwide then shares in a pot of additional seats that are used to even out _their_ share to best match the actual nationwide percentages. Which regional party list is awarded the seat depends on who got closest to getting in, but the party is determined based on proportion of the vote.

The combination of this is that small parties have a chance of getting in - <USER2> takes 15.000-20.000 or so votes per region to win a seat - and larger parties proportions are further evened out so there's no tactical advantages in fighting harder for "close" seats. At the same time a regional link is maintained, which tends to be one of the thing people like to use as an argument for single seat constituencies.

In terms of compromises, I think Belgium has a big problem because it is too disparate. Belgium has two alternatives: Devolution of power (or splitting the country up), or compromises that nobody will be happy with but that are still better for either side than if the other side were to shove things down their throat. When these types of compromises are bad it is usually a sign that both sides to some extent would prefer to shove decisions down the other sides throat, or they could've agreed to devolve more power to the regions...

Norway does have enough conflict too where neither side are happy, but that's the nature of a system that represents everyone reasonably well.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> I really don't understand why a republican would sponsor this. Their party claims to want a smaller government, and yet, they don't have a problem with a more intrusive one?

<comment><USER12> BOTH parties agree on the important things : getting more control and power for themselves.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> > Each time you use a credit card, each time you read your bank statement, all > of your IP information and your search history will be required by your ISP > to be stored for 18 months at all times.

Where did the author get that idea? I just read the bill, and the only part relating to ISP record-keeping is the section requiring ISPs to keep a log of what IP address is assigned to a customer. There's nothing about tracking searches or financial transactions, or any traffic monitoring at all.

</comment><comment><USER21> Am I reading this right? At the bottom of section 8 is this gem.

[...] a court shall presume [...] that the distribution or publication using the Internet of a photograph of [...] a specific person serves no legitimate purpose [...]

What does that mean? If you transmit a picture of somebody without them giving the okay first you're probably up to no good?

<comment><USER22> In my country you cannot store/distribute a picture of a person without explicit permission if the person is the picture's main content.

You can, however, use a picture of a group of people without asking them one by one.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> Lamar Smith, creator of SOPA and this bill, is the same guy who killed the "Ending Federal Marijuana Prohibition Act of 2011". Proposed by Barney Frank and Ron Paul, he cut it down before it had a chance using his rank of chairman of the House Committee on the Judiciary.

It would have pushed legislation from the federal to the state level. . A lot of our young ones are ruined in our current penal system over trivial crimes.

He is a staunch anti abortion activist, and has signed multiple bills to make abortion as difficult as possible, if not impossible. Even signing a bill to prevent a mother from taking her unborn over state lines to perform an abortion.

If you ever want to know my political opinion on something, just check Lamar Smiths' position, I'll be on the other end of it.

</comment><comment><USER24> Proposal: Smith's Law

Every discussion of internet regulations eventually references child pornography.

</comment><comment><USER25> The usual assumption about politicians and lawmaking goes something like this:

A lawmaker receives large contributions from certain moneyed groups with an agenda, and will introduce legislation favorable to that group. The only way to prevent this from happening is to either contribute more money to the opposing side or more directly by ensuring that passage of the legislation will anger so much of the populace that no amount of money will save the incumbent come election time.

That doesn't seem to make sense in this case. The same technologically clueless people who introduced SOPA aren't of their own accord going to decide that ISP's need to keep a year of DHCP logs in case that information is useful later.

It looks like the only entity to benefit from this would be the U.S. Attorney General, as it ostensibly will prevent the circumstance where the evidence of a case hinges on tying a person/household to an IP address but the logs are missing or overwritten.

Creepy. If this involved real-world monitoring and logging it would be the biggest news story of the day, but since it's the Internet it's just tech stuff.

</comment><comment><USER26> "Think of the Children!" will always remain a tactic as long as people are concerned that, by opposing the argument, they will be seen as "anti- children." Simply knowing that it is a tactic should take away the fear of opposing it for what it is. A manipulation tactic.

</comment><comment><USER27> This is the nuclear option but also shows they are desperate.

</comment><comment><USER28> I love living in a country where the government realizes it is too technologically inept to try to legislate and regulate the internet.

It just creates normal laws for the normal world, and whenever things from the internet crosses borders to the real world (like Amazon-orders) that just falls under the normal laws for mail-order businesses.

That seems reasonable and fully sufficient to me.

</comment><comment><USER29> Is it possible that a website be created that will aggregate thoughtful arguments against such legislation, attach videos, talking points, letter templates and such as well as connect local people that can practically get involved in resisting constant attacks on freedom?

Or is there such a website already?

</comment><comment><USER30> "Ultima Ratio Politicus"

 _English Translation: Think of the children._

<comment><USER31> Yup. The most popular current excuses to shirk problems by suppressing liberty:

(1) anti-terrorism (2) health and safety (3) think of the children

I was actually pretty shocked to hear initial talk of protecting American inventions from 'foreign thieves'. That kind of language seems way out of date...

</comment></comment><comment><USER32> Dammit, I hate being right: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3476099>

</comment><comment><USER33> Y Combinator is right to be mad, but wrong about the target.

Smith also attempted to expand the DMCA in 2006, again pushing for new wiretapping privileges for police. It's a question whether this guy is trying harder to destroy the Internet or the Fourth Amendment, but imagine how awesome it would be if that was just an academic question about a guy who didn't have a career in politics any more.

The bad news is he's been in office since 1987 and has won his most recent elections with crushing victories. The good news is he's a Republican, and SOPA is wildly anti-business; the other bad news is it may be tough to make that stick, because it's only obvious to the technologically literate. Fortunately, he also he has motivated, successful enemies on his home turf; his district includes parts of staunchly Democratic Austin, and that's because the Supreme Court ordered his Congressional district redrawn after the League of United Latin American Citizens won a gerrymandering lawsuit against then- governor Rick Perry. This probably also means he's extremely corrupt, but it's hard to imagine SOPA coming from anybody who wasn't extremely corrupt in the first place.

Let's all form a political action committee called the Coalition To Defend The Internet From Ignorant, Corrupt Assholes and get contributions from every millionaire in Silicon Valley so we can deep-six this guy so completely "Lamar Smith" becomes a synonym for "no career in politics ever again."

We can use a two-pronged attack; fund his Republican competitors, and find ways that they can show how pro-Hollywood and anti-business SOPA was (Republicans hate Hollywood), while at the same time also funding his liberal opponents. A Democratic victory in Smith's district is very unlikely, but his Democratic opponents probably hate him enough to make some noise, and I think it's extremely likely that Texas is full of younger Republicans who would love to take his place. There's got to be at least one who understands the Internet.

If you want context, I also posted nearly exactly this same thing on my blog, plus a bunch of links (mostly to Wikipedia) providing factual backdrop:

[http://gilesbowkett.blogspot.com/2012/01/lets-end-lamar- smit...](http://gilesbowkett.blogspot.com/2012/01/lets-end-lamar-smiths- political-career.html)

<comment><USER34> Let me just point out that, according to the research done by Steven Levitt, author of Freakonomics, money does not win elections, so if you agree with Levitt's conclusions, financing Smith's opponents is not the best way to proceed.

</comment></comment><comment><USER35> Doesn't corrupting US Congress harm children?

It devalues their future voting rights, etc at the very least.

</comment><comment><USER36> Where's YC with a startup to catch people who sexually abuse children?

<comment><USER37> Catching predators is (still) a matter of law enforcement (and IMHO that's a useful safeguard, even if flawed in some instances).

Providing law enforcement with better tools might be a worthwhile geek venture (and given the tools they are sold by megacorps, "better" might not even be hard), but with the existing procurement rules (etc etc) it's probably hard for a startup to enter that market.

Alternative route: Build tools to optimize other public office work, and then use the political process to request that freed money (and headcount) is retargetted to supporting the police ("think of the children!"). While there is still a procurement problem, there might be areas covered in less red tape than police work.</comment></comment>


What does YC think of "JihadOnYou.com" ? - <AUTHOR> http://mashable.com/2007/10/06/jihadonyou-lets-you-vent-your-anger/

<comment><USER2> Stupid but well done. Nice readable fonts, really easy to use.

</comment><comment><USER3> The comments that follow in this thread, if any, should be separated between the (critiques of the technical design and layout) and (moral, ethical ramifications, and subjective controversy)

That being said, the layout's nice, really intuitive design, and interesting concept. Keep in mind that TFA said that this was a quick weekend project.

On the other side of the aisle, this will probably piss people off. It was probably thought up over a couple of beers and some good laughs, so of course it shouldn't be taken seriously. It does good on keeping a disclaimer on the top of their website claiming that this is strictly for humor. And with me being personally against having humor repressed for the sake of a fundamental religion, I say go for it, but God(Allah?) help them if the mainstream media gets a hold of this.

</comment><comment><USER4> They could have at least given Eddie Izzard credit for coining the phrase "jihad on you!"

[http://www.auntiemomo.com/cakeordeath/d2ktranscription.html#...](http://www.auntiemomo.com/cakeordeath/d2ktranscription.html#churchofengland)

</comment><comment><USER5> Is there an Arabic localization?

</comment><comment><USER6> It's tasteless.

</comment><comment><USER7> I'm not sure where the audience is or how they plan on keeping them. If you don't find it tasteless and instead find it amusing, it's still a one-joke kind of site. So it probably sees a traffic spike associated with publicity and then drops of a cliff. Not much of a business model, imo. Or was your question about the morality of offensive sites?

<comment><USER8> It's surprising that it's taken until now for a formal way to flame people to pop up. You're probably right that most of their visitors will be of the one- time variety. If it keeps going, my guess is the audience will be fairly small except for the occassional post that's particularly incisive or interesting.

Before people get too deep into talk about whether it's offensive, the title is a reference to a bit by Eddie Izzard, the excellent British comedian. It's pretty innocuous.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: What are the best audio tracks/podcast worth listening? - <AUTHOR>

I am not talking about music and stuff. I am talking about interviews old and new, podcast, speeches, lectures and all these stuff worth listening. <comment><USER2> Radiolab, planet money, snap judgement, ted radio hour, on the media</comment>


Forster in Cambridge - <AUTHOR> https://lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v42/n15/richard-shone/forster-in-cambridge <comment><USER2> [https://archive.is/rhxLi](https://archive.is/rhxLi)

</comment><comment><USER3> Map of Clare's and King's [https://map.cam.ac.uk/#52.205200,0.116065,17](https://map.cam.ac.uk/#52.205200,0.116065,17)</comment>


Hate FB? Hate it enough to spend $9k? Web country club built for the rich - <AUTHOR> http://www.theregister.co.uk/2014/09/16/got_9000_to_burn_join_the_social_network_for_the_hoi_polloi/

<comment><USER2> Is this not what A Small World is?

<comment><USER3> Right or BestOfAllWorlds.

[http://www.wired.co.uk/news/archive/2012-08/28/best-of- all-w...](http://www.wired.co.uk/news/archive/2012-08/28/best-of-all-worlds)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> This is the douchiest thing I've ever heard of.

</comment><comment><USER5> Woop, and it's gone down. That was quick.

</comment><comment><USER6> It's just a buddypress installation.

<comment><USER7> Yup. They don't even seem to be trying to hide it much either [https://netropolitan.club/](https://netropolitan.club/) \- blatantly the standard WordPress login page with custom login icon or similar plugin installed

> As for security, Touchi-Peters claims the site was coded tightly.

Not a bash against WordPress but it's a bit cheeky to make it look like he hand coded the thing himself

<comment><USER5> I'm pretty sure a simple jQuery slider isn't going to protect the site from bots either.</comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: How would you invest 1K, 2K and 5K? - <AUTHOR>

Imagine you receive an envelope with 3 checks and a letter that says that you must invest all the money and try to get as much return as you can. The first check is 1k, the second 2 and the last of 5k (US$). The only thing is each investment need to be independent from each other. <comment><USER4> As moocow01 said, the answer will be generic for a generic question. But few things you should consider before investing.

1\. Try to invest in something you know inside out. In that way you increase odd of return.

2\. What about your risk profile and current financial situation? If you have any credit card debt with 16% interest then you better pay off that. Very few investment in US will have annual return 16% or more.

3\. If you are a risk averse person then you can invest the money into a index fund.

4\. Or you can invest that money in yourself by learning something (a new skill, language or tool) you think it will propel your career forward.

</comment><comment><USER5> Highest return? Nobody invests to get the lowest return. What makes it interesting is what your risk aversion is. If you need the highest _guaranteed_ return, you're looking at something with a very low yield and/or a very long timeframe, like a US treasury savings bond. If you want the highest _possible_ return, you're looking at something like a lottery ticket. Between these extremes are most of the interesting investments, but the returns are not astronomical or instantaneous.

<comment><USER6> I dispute this. I just sold my house, and will buy another one soon. I don't know the timeframe however, so there's no way I'd put the cash into the highest return vehicle because it will likely have a high volatility and I might need the cash at an inopportune time. As a result, I've dumped the cash in pretty much the lowest return vehicle, simply because I can take it back again whenever I need.

The timescale of the investment should definitely change the priorities.

<comment><USER5> I don't think we're actually in disagreement. The point I'm trying to make is that the risk and timescale are more important factors than the yield. You chose the highest yield investment you could find with the liquidity and stability you needed. The yield was not your primary concern--it almost never is.

<comment><USER6> Righteo, I think I misread your comment then. I agree.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> This is a very difficult question to answer for the "generic person" - <USER2> cant assume they have any one skill or advantage and you also cant assume they have any certain risk profile or goal besides hopefully increasing their money by X dollars over Y years.

Its also difficult because firstly you have to look at all the possible investment opportunities and understand if your larger pools of 5k and potentially 2k buy you into any better opportunities. In other words you have to justify why you used the 5k for an investment instead of the 2k - <USER3> knowing specifics about the person its quite difficult.

With such a small amount of money comparatively to other investors in most environments Id say the person would be best off "investing in themselves" - apply all 3 buckets to learning 3 different potentially marketable skills that they hopefully can eventually leverage to create larger investment buckets. If the amounts were larger I might answer differently but with those amounts your best market is yourself.

</comment><comment><USER8> If you manage to raise real returns by 1 percentage point above a high- interest savings account or an index fund, you're doing quite well. You've also earned a grand total of $80/year - how much money is that per hour worked?

Assuming you have no debt (or only ridiculously cheap debt), invest in yourself or save it for a rainy day; the latter allows you to not borrow for or insure small consumer stuff like computers or washing machines, which will be far more lucrative than "investing".

</comment><comment><USER9> 1k - launch a online store or market an MVP 2k - poker 5k - stock trading

In some ways this is really the order of things in life. The investments that take the least money require the most work and time. The investments that take the most money are fast but involve more risk.

I tried my hand at each but I can't say one is better than the other for making money.

<comment><USER10> Stock trading isn't an investment. It's more like a job since it takes time each day.

If you invest in stocks, do it so that you won't need to buy/sell for many years. (Save for exceptions during macroeconomic tail events)

<comment><USER9> If you think buy and hold doesn't require work, then I'd say that isn't investing either. It's either gambling or praying.

The amount of work and experience to really understand a company, industry, and overall market is nothing compared to what it takes for a quick flip.

Let's be realistic, what are your odds of doubling or tripling your money by finding the right stock? Within a reasonable time frame of course.

That's the one thing I learned from stocks - there is no free lunch. The best long term hold stocks are either 1) expensive so that your return is minimal 2) unknown and take just as much work as a job 3) requires you to assume a high level of risk

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> This question really depends on your risk profile. If you were younger I'd suggest speculating with the 1k and 2k, and investing the 5k in your retirement so you can benefit from many years of compound interest. What're the constraints you're working under?

</comment><comment><USER12> If "try and get as much return as you can" is the only input to the decision we are likely not investing but speculating and there is a difference. So if we are speculating here then I think I'd take those three envelopes to Vegas and split them between blackjack, craps and (hopefully) several hours of No- Limit poker. I could use a vacation anyway.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> 1k in counseling and coaching, 2k in myself (personal stuff, gadgets, etc) and 5k in promoting my startup on Adwords or FB ads

</comment><comment><USER13> Over what time frame? What percentage of the investor's net worth and yearly cashflow do these sums represent?

</comment><comment><USER14> I'd spend it on self-enhancement - study and effective counseling - that would increase my earning potential.

</comment><comment><USER15> Buy things and flip them. I assume this is your money?</comment>