The Benefits of Failing at French - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/2014/07/16/opinion/16alexander.html <comment><USER2> The author hits an important point. I'm a native French speaker and speak to anglophones trying to improve their french everyday and the overwhelming majority gets distracted if they don't get the noun genders right, pick the right verb tenses and all sorts of things like that. They hesitate mid- sentence trying to remember the rules and get it perfectly instead of just saying "Tommy hitted me" like in the article. As soon as they start hesitating, they freeze and switch back to English.

I can't emphasize how important it is to just keep going. The point of language is to get the message across. The details like verbs and genders will come with practice and to practice, you need to use the positive feedback loop that getting the message across generates.

<comment><USER3> I learned French in my mid-20s -- in France. I spent a year learning French at a school and literally couldn't even understand fluent, spoken French by the time my ex-girlfriend moved back to the US. I stayed in France and began dating a French girl who didn't speak English at all -- so we had these weird intellectual/juvenile sounding conversations in the beginning - with me basically speaking confusing, garbled French 100% of the time. Point is, after about one month together with her, I understood spoken French very well, and could articulate some fairly complex thoughts. It just felt like the language came crashing into my head once I had to "articulate" what needed to be articulated and "hear" what needed to be heard. It's one of the strangest feelings of immersive learning that I can remember. Like DonPellegrino mentioned, I never really cared about gender and proper grammar, because... when your girlfriend doesn't know your language, you just have to force the thoughts out somehow. This might sound obvious, but if you have a partner who speaks another language fluently, just speak in your native tongue and ask them to speak in their native tongue. From my experience, the most powerful part of learning a language is just "slowing" it down in your head. You'd think you could just watch television to do this -- but in my experience (multiple languages now), you can't. It just seems like you need to be engaged intimately with another human being to get these results.

<comment><USER4> How does that happen, entering a relationship with someone you can barely speak to? I'm very curious!

<comment><USER3> For me - a dating website. Having lived in two foreign countries, I can see that my story might be impossible otherwise. It's just that, from my experience, when you meet someone on a dating website and you tell them you're a foreigner and you're pretty bad at their language, it creates a sort of "expectation" or "context" that can be nice for the first meeting (which was a drink for us). It switches the date from an awkward, "try-to-impress-her" meeting to "hey, this is kind of fun and weird" date, and can work with the right person. I brought a translation dictionary to dates before I knew French really well. With this particular girl, I remember it taking an extraordinarily large amount of time for us to even go through details like family, etc. But, she was patient and intrigued I suppose, because we only communicated in my garbled French. On subsequent dates, I remember taking walks around the city. I can't remember too many exact details because it was 7 years ago -- just that she was very patient and quirky and I truly felt like a little kid absorbing up the French.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I set out to learn Spanish almost exactly one year ago, deciding it was ridiculous to be monolingual in a world of thousands of languages. My approach was as intensive as the author's; I completed the Duolingo skill tree, read books on grammar and slang, watched, listened to, and read Spanish media and Spanish translations of English media, attended meetups, etc.

While I'm only 23, I experienced the same "mental fountain of youth" effect the author describes. At first, it all sounded like gibberish even if reading along with what I was listening to. My mind refused to accept words and concepts that didn't map one-to-one with English. I repeatedly mixed up similar looking words.

Despite constant failure, I kept at it, and eventually it just "clicked". Spanish errors started to sound like "he hitted me". I went from barely memorizing a few words a day, to successfully internalizing hundreds. And the best part is, all these cognitive benefits have transferred to other realms. I memorize stuff on Anki now just for the hell of it because it's so easy. I am about halfway to being fluent in German after only a month of study. I really can't recommend learning a foreign language enough.

<comment><USER6> I'm glad to hear a glowing report from using Duolingo. I find it easy to put in daily practice with (must maintain my streak!) and it's good to hear that it gave you a good foundation at the end of it all.

<comment><USER5> Fortunately, I like languages and Duolingo enough to use it regardless of the streak. I've experienced a lot of weirdness with it that ultimately caused me to lose it despite daily practice.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> "Into the face of the young man who sat on the terrace of the Hotel Magnifique at Cannes there had crept a look of furtive shame, the shifty hangdog look which announces that an Englishman is about to speak French."

― P.G. Wodehouse, The Luck of the Bodkins

</comment><comment><USER8> I'm French and I do realize it's a pretty complicated language to learn. Ridiculous amounts of exceptions to every single rule, dozens of tenses (which no one ever uses), lack of general structure, arbitrary genders, it's got it all.

My personal piece of advice to anyone: don't waste your time learning French, it's a dying language. Go for Spanish if you need a latin language, it's at least used in Spain, the United States, Central and South America. And once you speak Spanish, French comes rather easy (with the benefit of Italian and Portuguese becoming almost trivial).

<comment><AUTHOR> Would you say French is more or less complicated than English (from how much you can evaluate the two fairly, though it seems like your English is excellent)? I'm frequently catching myself on how hard English must be to learn...having it pushed on to me in school is only second in born-privilege to being a U.S. citizen by birth. My Vietnamese parents have been in the states nearly 40 years, speaking English in their jobs and to me everday, and it's still off.

I took French in high school just because most everyone else was taking Spanish...that was not a good attempt at rebelling :). I do love the language though, but liking it has no relation to having the discipline to be fluent in it...having situations where you need to speak it is the key factor, and that's not a frequent situation in the States.

Still, I'm almost certain that if I hadn't taken French (or Spanish), I would've never known what the nuance of something like the subjunctive mood, in French or in English, and I like thinking through sentence structure when writing and reading...not sure if that casual academic pleasure offers the same level of brain benefits the OP refers to.

<comment><USER9> Native French speaker here, I think going from "I don't know the language" to "I can hold me end in a conversation" is easier in English than in French. French has a richer set of verb tenses, while with English you can go a long way be knowing present, "<present> \+ ed" and "will + <present>". You also don't need to understand why a chair feminine and an oven is masculine (hint: there is no reason).

One thing I do think French has over English is ease of pronunciation; although not completely regular, most letters have one pronunciation (unless they have an accent, which gives them a different, but clear pronunciation). If you know the phonemes, French gives you a much easier time. Try reading this [1] out loud for kicks. I probably got 90-95% of that right, but even after 15+ years of speaking English, I still got caught by a few words.

[1] [http://pauillac.inria.fr/~xleroy/stuff/english- pronunciation...](http://pauillac.inria.fr/~xleroy/stuff/english- pronunciation.html)

<comment><USER10> I was having the same expectation in French, hoping to survive with only present, passé composé, future proche and "en train de" and avoid more complex things :) And it will probably be enough, if I'd master them, but I still don't remember tons of verbs, words and the pronunciation, oh my god.. As an Italian it shouldn't be that difficult, many things are almost the same, and in some situation it is (e.g. reading it) but the pronunciation is not easy and false friends are everywhere, so most of the time I don't know if I'm saying something that is sort-of French or I'm just mimicking French by removing some vowels and consonants here and there from Italian words...

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Great article. Tired of learning stupid front-end JS frameworks and would love to hear your guys' story about failures at other hobbies and not just foreign languages and what insights you gained from it.

Me personally, I took up basketball and thought that I could be like LeBron dunking on everybody, then I realized that I was short and Asian and have no leaping ability; then I shifted my goal a little bit to aim to be like Allen Iverson to try to cross and drive, then I realized that I wasn't fast nor agile and had no crafty finishing moves around the rim, so I settled on being Jason Kidd before he could shoot, a point guard who passes the ball but I enjoy throwing my teammates good passes at the right time for the bucket so they can finish.

I took up guitar and thought I could be like Jimmi Hendrix, soloing and have women throw panties at me up on stage. Then I realized that I had little finger strength nor dexterity to play sixteenth-notes, bends, and vibratos. So I settled on just trying to mime the part and playing with emotions like when you're doing a bend or a vibrato, contorting your face with wistful wrinkles and tilting your head rhythmically like Santana would behind his sunglasses. But I enjoy playing music esp. when it's heavily distorted so that no one can hear properly the poor tone and timing of my playing.

Finally I also took up daytrading and thought I could be like George Soros and play a game of chicken with the British treasury and make a killin'! Then I realized that I had little to no understanding of the dynamics of the option pricing model and had no discipline except that I was overwhelmed with greed and ego when the market is riding high and conversely with fear like a chicken when the market goes against me. So I settled on keeping trading and accepting to give my broker and hedge funds my money, but trying to preserve my capital for as much as possible and taking small losses - so I can extend giving of my money to Wall Street for as long as possible.

Would love to hear what you guys' failures and success stories at learning a different craft and your insights gained.

<comment><USER12> You build up your finger strength with practice, and also using your little finger instead of sliding your entire hand over because your pinkie hurts. Pinkie pain is just a stage.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> A couple of points:

1) The guy lists his activities with heavy focus on Rosetta Stone. To me that pretty much invalidates his claims on the spot. RS is not really well respected in language learning circles (at least a couple of years ago, it was not). Pimsleur is better due to its exponential backoff repetition model and it's "how do you say" prompts.

2) I did not see any mention of activities that actually built vocabulary. Not in a "listen to a show" way, but in a "read a book and translate every word you don't understand". I learned English that way. As a Russian, I studied it in school and in private courses to no effect. When I came to Australia, I decided to re-read Tolkien's "The Hobbit" but this time in the original rather than Russian translation. Of course, I did not realize that Tolkien was philologist... So, I may have learnt a bit more of vocabulary and grammar than I really needed for street English.

3) When you learn your first foreign language, you are learning two things at once: language-learning practices and specifics of specific language (vocabulary, grammar, sounds). That's why Esperanto as the first foreign language is great. ([http://www.springboard2languages.org/](http://www.springboard2languages.org/)) You learn the practices (in a very supporting community [http://lernu.net/](http://lernu.net/)) with a very regular language. Then, you can attack a more complex language like French.

4) As an aside, last couple of years, language learning startups were quite popular. Unfortunately, they all try to address global market and don't dive deep enough into any single language. Therefore most of the interesting & academic research that could have really impacted language learning process goes unused. I have about 10 pages of (technical) notes on what _I_ would want from a language-learning website and I have seen less than 10% of it out in the wild.

<comment><USER14> To pull a bit out of the Esperanto / Springboard2Languages idea, particularly watch this linked TEDx talk about teaching Esperanto to young school children: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8gSAkUOElsg](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8gSAkUOElsg)

How it serves as a good simplified language because it's so regular, there's very little learning before you can start saying your own sentences instead of reciting pre-made ones.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> I can't recommend the Pimsleur language courses enough. They teach languages in a way that's similar to how a toddler learns to speak - by going from sounds to words, and by gradually expanding your lexicon while jogging your memory on previously learned words and phrases. In my experience, 45-50 daily 30-minute lessons were enough to comfortably navigate a new country. Most courses include ninety 30-minute lessons.

</comment><comment><USER16> There's a reason why toddlers learn so "easily": They must communicate in order to get what they want.

If you were placed in a similar situation, where you cannot get what you want unless you speak the language, it would not take you very long to learn. I went through this twice in my life: Once between ages 5 and 16 (French), and once between ages 31 and 35 (Japanese). In both cases, it took about 6 months to get the basics, after which the rate of learning slowed a bit due to the decline in novel situations requiring new usage or vocabulary.

</comment><comment><USER17> > After a year of struggling with the language, I retook the cognitive > assessment, and the results shocked me. My scores had skyrocketed, placing > me above average in seven of 10 categories, and average in the other three. > My verbal memory score leapt from the bottom half to the 88th — the 88th! — > percentile and my visual memory test shot from the bottom 5th percentile to > the 50th. Studying a language had been like drinking from a mental fountain > of youth. > > What might explain such an improvement?

What? 'regression to the mean' comes to mind. People shocked by their extremely low scores are often shocked to find that their scores improve over time...

<comment><USER18> While that is completely true, its somewhat unlikely to go from the mid point of the distribution to the tails. Its not impossible, of course, but its less likely. The 5th to the 50th certainly suffers from that problem, however.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> Ta-Nehisi Coates at the Atlantic has talked in depth over the past few years about his attempts to learn French as an adult and I believe he's incommunicado at the moment due to an immersion program.

Nice video here showing his level at the time, great moment near the end when's he's asked by his conversation partner to explain his recent article for the magazine (the widely discussed 'case for reparations' article).

[http://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2014/06/a-l...](http://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2014/06/a-last- tango-with-paris/373168/)

</comment><comment><USER20> The best thing about speaking bad French is that it makes French people speak English to you. Possibly because they don't want to hear their beloved language mangled, but I don't really know. All I know is that they kindly switched once they heard me speaking. :)

</comment><comment><USER21> I challenge any Anglophone without mastery of the French language to say the word, "flourure" (making sure to elongate the Rs) before a group of Francophones _without feeling absolutely ridiculous_

There are other examples but I find this word (meaning flouride) especially comical as it stumbles out of my mouth at the pharmacy -- as does anyone within hearing distance ;-)

I believe the "th" sound is generally difficult for latins. As a test, if you are Francophone please stand before a mirror and quickly say, "hello, my name is thof thimblefith", making sure to enunciate each "th" clearly. If you can do so you will have mastered a lisp.

</comment><comment><USER22> Speaking of personal experience, when begun at an early age, learning a language will be really easier and almost innate. I started learning French at the age of 8 within school classes, then English at the age of 11 and finally Spanish when 17. I am thus not as fluent in Spanish as I am in French or English BUT since French is a dying language and way complicated I find English to be the perfect language to use, even on a personal level and despite the fact Arabic is my native tongue.

Bottom line is, if you are a parent and wish for your kids to learn a particular language, start as they are young.

</comment><comment><USER23> I tried to learn Mandarin a year ago because I started a relationship with a Chinese girl. The words made no sense (felt just a completely random sounds), got angry and gave up after a couple of days.

A year later, after hearing a lot of Mandarin (she speaks quite a lot of Mandarin over the phone and I spent a month in China), I gave another shot. It feels much easier, more familiar and less random.

Of course, it's a totally anecdotal 'evidence'... But getting familiar with the sound of the language before actually studying might help.

</comment><comment><USER24> Spanish native speaker here. I'm still waiting for my ah-ha moment (I'm learning Japanese for the past 4 months at a rate of 4 hours per week), I do hope it arrives. It took me probably 5 years to be fluent in English, and probably 4 more to actually be good enough as to read/write government proposals, abstracts/CFP, and finally co-authoring a published book "Java 7 Recipes"; my accent still lingers (javapubhouse.com if you want to hear it), the Ys, Js all come out with the same sound for me. I did learn French for 5 years, but lost most of it due to not practicing it. Learning French coming from Spanish felt a little weird because there are gender swaps (for the inanimate objects) that do trip you up. Did try to learn German for 5 months just after finishing French, so I ended up sounding like a French speaking German, which my teacher hated (and whom scared me away from the language!)

I noticed that I'm not really going anywhere fast with my Japanese and I think I might be doing it wrong (listen to one hour podcast while running / biking). Some stuff sticks but in general it does seem that my progress is nowhere near what I had when learning the other languages in a more structured format.

<comment><USER25> Going off-topic a bit, I highly recommend you peruse the forum over at the Reviewing the Kanji site (koohii.com). Even if you have no interest in the book the site is based around (Heisig's Remembering the Kanji) there are troves of great advice and methods for Japanese self-study to be found there.

<comment><USER24> Neat, will check it out. Yeah, Kanji might be a tall order right now (still working with Hiragana/Katakana first), but found the forums. Kinda nice to find a community of Japanese learners

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> This is timely. I'm about 4 weeks into a "let's learn Korean" self-study program. The last time I seriously tried to learn a foreign language was Spanish in high school and it was quite a debacle. But after many years married to a Korean woman, I finally decided I was embarrassed enough not knowing more than a few utility words in Korean to take the plunge.

I remember looking into learning Korean about 6 or 7 years ago and there really weren't many on-line self-study resources and very few classes I could take. This time I found an virtual explosion of resources, free text books, skype practice sessions, listening guides, vocabulary resources, etc. For more popular languages, like French, the number of resources is almost mindboggling.

I've decided to focus the beginning of my studies on raw vocabulary acquisition and I've settled on using Anki to do this. My friends know that I have a pretty bad memory, so I've been shocked and surprised at how well Anki has worked. In 4 weeks I've managed to memorize (to different degrees of recall) about 300 words (out of a list of the 1000 most common).

Last week I sat down to start my grammar lessons with a free university textbook and was even more shocked and surprised at how much of the text I was able to decode. I wouldn't call it comprehension exactly, but maybe 20-40% of the beginner-level sentences I could read well enough to get the gist without knowing any grammar. I checked ahead into later chapters and was amazed that I was still able to work out some non-negligible percent of most of the lessons.

For practice I watched a couple Korean tv shows (they love to put subtitles under everything which is helpful) and was also surprised that I could work out some bits of the nightly news. Not enough to really know what was going on, but within a month going from knowing basic foods and the word "bathroom" to starting some minimal comprehension felt pretty remarkable.

More recently I've been practicing language production and took the attitude the article advocates -- just focus on getting the point across, don't worry about all the grammar bits. So, when something my wife and I are doing involves some vocabulary I remember, I try to formulate a basic sentence around it. I know I'm missing some things, but I told my wife to just grade me on "is it understandable or not?" not on "is it correct or not?". It's eased up the pressure quite a bit.

More importantly, even if my little experiment fails in the end. Outside of language study, I feel much more..."engaged" all the time. Like my brain is turned up a little. I'm finding my memory is definitely improving and some mental tasks that were starting to become harder as I've aged have started to become easier.

It's actually kind of cool.

<comment><USER27> Out of curiosity, what are the texts/resources you're getting vocab from? Where do you get shows to watch? Did you pick up on the basics like the alphabet and pronunciation first and study that together?

My husband's just like you and beyond knowing words for his favorite foods and some of the lyrics to Gangnam Style, he doesn't know much more. I would like to change that. Plus it'd be nice to practice my rusting Korean with him - there's few Koreans in SF and most assume I'm Chinese despite my Standard Korean dialect. I really want him to learn for raising our future kids fluent in multiple languages but no real stress there - between me (fluent in 2, conversational in 1, formerly conversational in 2-3 I could pick up again), my bilingual mother, and my polyglot father (former military interpreter, near fluent to fluent in 4 and currently learning 3-4 others or however many he maxed out on with his best friends Duolingo and iTunes U...) I think they will be covered.

I dug up some of my old books, AppleTV has KORTV and Crunchyroll and Netflix/Amazon have an okay movie selection (can't figure out how to get it to show/hide subtitles in multiple languages and sometimes english is just burned into the video itself -_- )...I also talked to some Duolingo people at I/O about contributing to "Korean for English speakers", but eh. I grew up with the language and my limited formal study was with a super nerdy polyglot linguistics researcher at Yonsei (Korean Ivy-level-esque university) so I have no idea where to start for new mostly monolingual learners for a less popular language.

<comment><USER26> I learned Hangul years ago from some website. It's impressively easy to learn and makes figuring out pronunciation _way_ easier than writing Korean in a Latin alphabet.

There's actually a great list of resources here.

[http://www.reddit.com/r/korean](http://www.reddit.com/r/korean)

and more specifically here: [http://www.reddit.com/r/Korean/comments/rq3th/the_ultimate_b...](http://www.reddit.com/r/Korean/comments/rq3th/the_ultimate_beginners_resource_thread/)

Right now I'm using Ankidroid and Anki for Windows and OS X (all free and they sync with Ankiweb, Anki for iOS is some small fee) for vocabulary. There's tons of "decks" (all free) available through Anki. I'm currently grinding through the "Korean 1000 most common words" deck since it also has a vocal pronunciation for each word for me to practice against.

You have to be a little disciplined with it: for each card, listen, practice the pronunciation and then when you flip the card the for the meaning score your result honestly for the SRS system to work right. You only ever get 20 new words a day, but it adds up really fast.

Right now I do a morning session (or I break it up into two 15 minute sessions), and then in the afternoons I use Ankidroid to generate a list of words I keep forgetting to practice against. I do this every day.

I'm using this textbook at the moment. [http://artsonline.monash.edu.au/korean/my- korean-1/](http://artsonline.monash.edu.au/korean/my-korean-1/)

It's free, and I just upload it to my google play books account and read it on my tablet. I'm also entering every sentence and vocabulary word from this book into a new Anki deck so I can practice more as well as get some time learning how to type in Korean.

I don't have a Korean keyboard, so I took a screen shot of this one ([http://www.branah.com/korean](http://www.branah.com/korean)) and printed it out and just stick it on top of my cheapo $5 Logitech keyboard to help me. It's slow, but I'm getting steadily faster.

About once a week, I'll do an extended study session and sit down for a few hours and try to _write_ all of the vocabulary I'm learning and what it means. This is giving me practice actually writing Hangul, which will help me later in reading people's messy handwriting. I'll probably start doing this as well to improve my handwriting since figuring out how to fit different syllables in a square is still a challenge for me. [http://koreanvitamin.wordpress.com/2012/11/28/how-to- practic...](http://koreanvitamin.wordpress.com/2012/11/28/how-to-practice- writing-hangul/)

I've tried and struggled a _lot_ with memorizing vocabulary in the past which is why I've put it off for so many years, so I can't say enough good things about Anki. If I have a criticism, it's that I'm much better now at remembering Korean->English than I am going from English->Korean. There's some decks that cover that as well though, and I'm planning on making a "1000 most common words in English to Korean" deck at some point when my Korean and typing gets better.

There's also a deck of every TOPIK vocabulary word I'm planning on moving to next. It's almost 8,000 words.

For videos, I'm not as much into those yet. But I'm planning on moving to start that in a few months to build listening comprehension. My goal is not academic/formal Korean, but more conversational/colloquial. So I'm thinking of shows like Running Man on www.dramafever.com might be good to watch, at least if you get tired studying you can be entertained.

There's also quite a few youtube channels at various levels of complexity. The people who make the videos usually put quite a bit of effort into them to make them at least entertaining.

In my queue for future studying:

[https://www.youtube.com/user/talktomeinkorean](https://www.youtube.com/user/talktomeinkorean)

[https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCg-p3lQIqmhh7gHpyaOmOiQ](https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCg-p3lQIqmhh7gHpyaOmOiQ) (he puts subtitles everywhere in Korean and English so it's super helpful to pause on each sentence and work them out)

[https://www.youtube.com/user/sweetandtasty/videos](https://www.youtube.com/user/sweetandtasty/videos) \- mostly English, but she provides lots of entertaining background stuff and nouns for things

\- Based on my readings from other people and what to expect, I'm expecting to get up to _very_ basic conversational level in 6-9 months and be able to handle most typical daily conversational needs somewhere between 1-2 years of study. Korean is a _very_ hard language for English speakers to learn (as I'm finding out).

<comment><USER28> Sorry to push my own side project but it might be useful to you guys.

[http://www.toktogi.com](http://www.toktogi.com)

It's a popup dictionary extension for Chrome and Firefox that is based on an open source K-E dictionary ([https://github.com/garfieldnate/kengdic](https://github.com/garfieldnate/kengdic)). It still needs a lot of work, but I plan to open source it soon and hopefully allow people to contribute back to and improve the original dictionary as well.

<comment><USER26> OMG, this is amazing. I've already added it. Really appreciate it, this will definitely come in all sorts of handy.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> Much of the discussion here is focused on the linguistic acquisition aspects of this article. I see the largely ignored wider aspect to be that of skills learning, particularly in light of _unlearning_ and lost plasticity.

The key paragraphs are these:

"[A] 2-year-old's brain has a substantial neurological advantage, with 50 percent more synapses — the connections between neurons — than an adult brain, way more than it needs. This excess, which is an insurance policy against early trauma, is also crucial to childhood language acquisition, as is the plasticity, or adaptability, of the young brain.

[NB: I challenge the assumption that the excess neural capacity is simply for trauma recovery -- it seems specifically applicable to the very mental plasticity that youthful skill acquisition entails, and which _needs_ to be discarded as concrete skills are laid down.]

"Another advantage a toddler holds is his very lack of experience. After speaking our native language for decades, we adults can't help but hear the second language through the filter of the first. And this filter doesn't take decades to develop. Researchers have found that newborn Japanese babies can distinguish between the English "L" and "R" sounds, but if not exposed to Western languages, they begin to lose that ability — not by the age of 6 or even 3 — but by eight months.

"Adult language learners are, to borrow a phrase used by some psycholinguists, too smart for our own good. We process too much data at once, try to get everything right from the get-go and are self-conscious about our efforts. But toddlers instinctively grasp what's important and are quite content to say, "Tommy hitted me," as long as Tommy gets what's coming to him."

That is, if you're trying to learn something, _anything_ , as an adult, you're up against two principle blocks:

• Your brain has physiologically adapted. It's no longer sufficiently plastic to accept novel concepts.

• You've got a litany of previously acquired skills (or biases) which get in the way of the new knowledge. It's a form of Mark Twain's famous "It's not the things you don't know, but what you know for sure that just ain't so".

Or, in this case, just ain't what the new skill you're trying to pick up is.

Which may also help explain youthful hiring bias in software and tech.

</comment><comment><USER30> Without realizing it, we think in the language we know[1]. When starting to learn another language, we still think in our native language and translate it to the foreign one.

However, when reaching a higher experience with a second/third language, the thought process gradually changes. My native language is French, but very often I have thoughts "in English", because the idea seems easier to express/understand with the way English works. Sometimes, the words don't exist in French to express the idea I'm thinking, while it exists in English.

I've read somewhere (citation needed) that at some point, one would stop thinking in language and start thinking in concept.

[1] [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Language_and_thought](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Language_and_thought)

<comment><USER13> My first language is Russian. But I spent so long outside of Russian language and culture that my language of thought and speech is English. Not a citation, but a confirmative data point.

Still, I feel that my English speech and thought lacks the nuances I get when my mind and my mouth switches back into Russian.

</comment></comment><comment><USER31> I started to learn French a year ago and I made a lot of progress. There are just a few bugs left to fix in my own vocabulary management tool, and then I'm ready to learn some words, systematically well tracked and documented. ;)

</comment><comment><USER32> one problem i have with foreign languages is how its taught. a child spends years to just get to 'i hitted the dog' and still mispronounces most of the words and its like 'yay great job. despite the kid having the synapse advantages over an adult.

an adult spends a few months learning an entire language and its like 'what? you have to learn how to spell it correctly, say all the right tenses, pronounce it correctly, etc etc or else you're not learning!'.

i feel like we're forced to focus on so much detail and our minds just quits on us.

<comment><USER33> Children seem to always figure out the details eventually, whereas many second language learners seem to miss out on some details unless explicitly corrected, and even then find it hard to change established speaking habits. I'm not sure anyone really knows why this is, but it's one reason why some people recommend trying very hard to avoid speaking (and listening to others speak) incorrect sentences when learning a language.

</comment></comment><comment><USER34> few days late, but thought I'd share my anecdote. several years ago now, I was on a road trip through the largest island of Japan, Honshu, and was staying at a cheap roadside motel in the middle of nowhere. My girlfriend was having a shower, and I walked out of the room without the keycard as you needed it to operate the lights etc in the room. off I went to grab a few cold drinks from the vending machine, and then suddenly realised I had no idea what room number or even what floor our room was on. Despite what she says, my girlfriend is fluent in Japanese and I'd always relied on her to do all the hard work, and spent maybe 3 months picking up a bit of the language a few years previously.

Well, I had no choice but to go to the front desk and explain the situation using the full range of my vocabulary. As a few people have already mentioned, native Japanese speakers tend to treat you with a mix of awe and pity when you clearly can't speak the language but nonetheless attempt it. But exactly as the article described, I concentrated on saying what I could, not what was necessarily correct. I actually surprised myself, and my girlfriend when I eventually returned to the room and explained why the cold drinks were now tepid.

</comment><comment><USER35> I imagine that most earnest attempts at problem solving will yield the same cognitive benefits. So I just won't stop programming. Good thing I love it.

</comment><comment> guard-of-terra The L-R confusion with asian languages' speakers is very strange to me btw.

For example, English has t and th and f, most other languages don't have th and some don't even have f. However it's very rare to see non-native English speakers to swap or merge those sounds. Virtually unseen in writing.

Asian languages' speakers do swap r and l and vice versa in writing too.

<comment><USER36> Asian languages have neither the English R (tongue curled backward in mouth, sides curled upward relative to mouth; "retroflex approximant") nor L (tongue straight, sides curled downward; "lateral alveolar approximant"). Rather, they have an R which is a combination of these (tongue straight, sides curled upward; "alveolar approximant"). Without a native sound to map these two distinct sounds to, it's easy to confuse them.

I've definitely seen foreigners confuse TH and T in writing. TH is very often pronounced (and therefore sometimes likely misremembered) as T. TH and T a more distinct than R and L however; TH is fricative (has duration), T is plosive (instantaneous).

What's more common is for foreigners to confuse our sundry vowels. I count at least 14 distinct sounds. Many foreign languages have only 5. But since we have only 5 written vowels, we notice less when a foreigner uses the wrong vowel (and brush it off more as an accent).

English speakers confuse u and ü in German; ㄱ (k), ㅋ (kh), and ㄲ (kk) in Korean (heck I know phonetics and I can't get these right); e and é, and gender in French (quick, where do the accents go in "resume"?). Chinese speakers confuse second-person pronouns in English. Japanese confuse green and blue. There are a ton more examples of such confusion; they're all due to our minds mapping information based on our native tongues.

</comment></comment><comment><USER37> Dr. Carlos do Amaral Freire has supposedly learnt 115 languages. I find that difficult to comprehend.

[http://thelinguistblogger.wordpress.com/2008/09/30/the- wisdo...](http://thelinguistblogger.wordpress.com/2008/09/30/the-wisdom-of-a- man-who-knows-115-languages/)

<comment><USER38> Any such claim implies a much lower level of proficiency for "learnt a language" than most of us are referring to when we say that someone has learned a language fluently.

</comment></comment><comment><USER39> When I'm learning a human language, especially immersed, I find that I can play the Set game twice as well. Proof enough for me.

[http://www.setgame.com/set](http://www.setgame.com/set)

</comment><comment><USER38> First I'll address the point about cognitive testing found in the article. "So to reassure myself that nothing was amiss, just before tackling French I took a cognitive assessment called CNS Vital Signs, recommended by a psychologist friend. The results were anything but reassuring: I scored below average for my age group in nearly all of the categories, notably landing in the bottom 10th percentile on the composite memory test and in the lowest 5 percent on the visual memory test." And later the author writes, "After a year of struggling with the language, I retook the cognitive assessment, and the results shocked me. My scores had skyrocketed, placing me above average in seven of 10 categories, and average in the other three. My verbal memory score leapt from the bottom half to the 88th — the 88th! — percentile and my visual memory test shot from the bottom 5th percentile to the 50th. Studying a language had been like drinking from a mental fountain of youth." An alternative explanation is that the author enjoyed a practice effect from taking the test more than once, and didn't necessarily gain much from his effort to learn French. To tease out which explanation makes more sense, we would have to know more about score stability ("reliability" in the psychometric sense) of the CNS Vital Signs test, and what validation studies have show about practice effects from repeated test-taking on that test.

I grew up as a monolingual native speaker of General American English in the heartland of that dialect in the upper Midwest of the United States. My first foreign language instruction in school occurred in the fourth grade of elementary school. My school district was very unusual among American school districts of that era in having mandatory German classes each week in fourth, fifth, and sixth grade, promoted and developed by a school district employee who was a refugee from Germany. So everyone I went to elementary school with had early exposure to foreign language learning--at least early compared to most other American school pupils.

I studied more German in junior high, moving to another school district in ninth grade that didn't offer German at all in junior high, even though that state (Wisconsin) has a higher percentage of German-descended persons than any other state in the United States. In tenth grade I moved back to my home town in Minnesota, and took one more year of high school German, which I bombed at after the time off occasioned by my move out of state. The following year in eleventh grade I started taking Russian, which went more smoothly for me, in part because German grammar got me ready for Russian grammar, and in part because the teacher was more kindly and more engaging and I had classmates in Russian class who were highly motivated to learn languages and shared their love of languages with me.

I went into university as an intending Russian major, hoping to take Chinese on the side as an elective course. But as soon as I started taking Chinese classes, I fell in love with that language--no declensions of nouns, no conjugation of verbs, and mostly indication of grammar by word order, as in English--and eventually switched my major course to Chinese when I had to formally declare a major and dropped taking Russian classes after a while. Chinese is of course especially challenging when it comes to achieving full literacy. (Chinese is plenty challenging for native speakers of the spoken language to achieve full literacy in the Chinese Han character writing system.) But I persisted, and enjoyed along the way learning about methods of language study from the writings of John DeFrancis, the dean of teachers of Chinese language to a whole generation of American students.

As I left the United States for a first stay overseas, with a university degree in Chinese language, I could read a book in Modern Standard Chinese reasonably comfortably and could also read some of the classic texts in Literary Chinese, but I could barely keep up with a live Chinese conversation. Landing in Taiwan in 1982, I had a headache soon after I arrived, and it was immensely gratifying to be able to go to the corner drugstore and say, "I would like to buy aspirin" and be understood well enough to get what I wanted. That relieved my headache even more than taking the medicine. Before I had left, I had spoken to two different Americans who had each spent a year living in Taiwan after two years of studying Chinese in the United States. They gave me what seemed like very contradictory descriptions of how they were able to get along linguistically in Taiwan with that much background in Chinese. One said, "It was great. As soon as I got of the plane I found out I could use my Chinese to talk to people." The other said, "It was terrible. For the first six months I was there I could hardly understand a thing that people were saying around me." I found out that they were BOTH correct, as I could communicate my needs, when I had them, especially around local people who were used to meeting American students, but I had the worst time for the longest time really understanding radio broadcasting or live conversation. I was very gratified when I could first listen through the full weather forecast on the radio and understand every word and phrase--months after arrival.

I have studied other languages, both "dead" classical languages and living languages from various language families. Every language on earth has purely arbitrary features that make it differ from other languages, and what makes a language "easy" or hard is mostly resemblance to a language a learner already knows. (German felt very easy indeed to me after I had studied Russian and classical Greek, for example, even though it had seemed hard earlier.) Young people in Taiwan used to tell me that Japanese is "easy" in about the same way that many Americans say Spanish is easy. There are many opportunities to learn each language in each of those places, but to learn them well is not particularly easy, really.

My experiences as a language learner have turned into advice I share on the World Wide Web[1] and here on Hacker News.[2] Fortunately, there are a lot of tips (one could say hacks) that help learners learn foreign languages better. I admire the many participants on Hacker News who participate while using English as a second language. That is not easy. Few Americans could participate in online discussion in any language other than English. I'm not sure I think that studying Chinese and other languages I've studied really strengthened my cognition, but I am glad for the experiences I had overseas and think that even Americans who will never leave the United States should make the effort to learn at least one foreign human language.

[1] [http://learninfreedom.org/languagebooks.html](http://learninfreedom.org/languagebooks.html)

[2] [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6302276#up_6302816](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6302276#up_6302816)

</comment><comment><USER40> _Short of cauterizing your own genitals, nothing seems like it would change who you are like speaking in an-other 's language. Blech, I'd rather wear someone else's underwear, no thanks, I'll take the 12 credits but no way am I retaining anything. "Well, science says you lose the ability to learn languages as you get older." Oh, did NPR just interview TED? Dummies in other countries and dummies in the CIA learn as adults, are they all using different science? An American describes another American who is fluent in French as "oh my God, he's so smart, he speaks French and everything" but this statement is easily unmasked as a defense by getting him to describe a Frenchman who speaks English: "well, they all speak English over there." The bilingualism is robbed of the "intelligence" signification because it's seen as customary.... who they are. America is a branded-identity nation, which means hearing yourself speak in not-your accent, with not-your vocabulary sounds very not-you, which is why when an American tries to speak French he feels self-conscious, but the Frenchman hearing it feels you aren't even trying. He'd be wrong, you are trying: trying not to become French._

 _" Ugh, I hate psychobabble, why can't you be more like Malcolm Gladwell and give me practical neuroscience based tips like 'get up before dawn' or 'play basketball annoyingly'?" Fine, here's your concrete advice that you won't take for shaving 6 months off your second language acquisition: master the accent first. Before even one word of vocabulary. The accent will teach you the rhythm of the words and the grammar-- it will make it okay for you to learn the vocabulary. And you will think differently. American exceptiono- isolationism isn't arrogance, it's a cognitive bias impressed on us from kindergarten when we learn that there are only two languages in the world, English and Everything Else. Which teaches us that a German is more similar to an Italian than a Texan to a New Yorker, and I can predict with 100% accuracy that if that made you pause you only speak English. Can't wait to hear your foreign policy ideas over drinks. You should work for NPR._

 _Once you have the accent down, pick a foreign language actor or actress you admire, and learn the language as if you were them. Talk like them. This trick works because you are thinking like someone else, acting like someone else, yet simultaneously distancing yourself from this change-- I 'm doing this, but it's not me, I'm just pretending. The self-consciousness is removed because it's not "you" who is doing it. Yet it is; and after a time, you'll become it-- and the positive benefit for society is you'll hate the guy you used to be. C'est la vie._

[http://thelastpsychiatrist.com/2012/05/thank_god_the_heart_a...](http://thelastpsychiatrist.com/2012/05/thank_god_the_heart_attack_gri.html)

<comment><USER41> I love TLP but losing your accent is easier said than done. I started learning English when I was a few years old and I've lived in the US for 22 years speaking English 99% of the time. My German accent is still clearly there. I'm not sure what it would take at this point but it's not something that happens easily. I listen to the way other people pronounce words but hearing your own accent is hard.

Interestingly, my kids claim they can't really hear my accent, they know I speak a little differently but they don't think I sound like Arnold or Angela.

<comment><USER42> I think TLP's accent advice falls squarely into the "fake it until you make it" category - like becoming a confident presenter by impersonating somebody confident when you get on stage. It's not that if you try hard your accent will go away, it's more that you (consciously) do an impression of the accent you're learning. So if you're studying German you go full Ahhhnold.

I didn't read that TLP column until I was mostly fluent in my second language, but in retrospect I think it's spot on (and one of his best - he can be a little hit or miss).

<comment><USER43> This is a big stumbling block for Swedes trying to speak Danish (which is a very similar language grammatically, but pronounced quite differently). Going "all in" reminds many people too much of Swedish comedians making fun of how Danish sounds, so they worry they'll sound mocking if they speak like _that_. So, many will try for a less "exaggerated" Danish accent instead, which ends up not sounding very Danish at all. Doing the Swedish-comedian-impersonating- Danish accent is actually a decent place to start, but it just sounds wrong and borderline offensive to Swedish ears to try it.

<comment><USER42> I don't think it actually matters whether you're any good at the impersonation - the point is to convince your brain that you're creating a new persona, rather than trying to change your existing one. (An overarching theme of TLP's writings is how extraordinarily good the brain is at insulating itself from change.)</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


PolarSSL Remote Code Execution and a Denial of Service - <AUTHOR> https://www.certifiedsecure.com/polarssl-advisory/

<comment><USER2> In the case of OpenVPN -- can anyone confirm if this is mitigated simply by requiring a ta key? I believe it would, as the server won't move to the next step and process certificates/keys unless the ta key is accepted.</comment>


The "Split Strings" Challenge Using Java - <AUTHOR> https://ao.gl/the-split-strings-challenge-using-java/ <comment><USER2> in unicon/icon it would be

procedure StringSplit(str)

        #
        # define a local to hold an initial empty list
        #
        local l := list()

        #
        # if the length of the string is odd then concatenate an "_" character
        #
        str ||:= ((*str % 2 = 1) & "_")
        #
        # scan the string and put each two characters onto the end of the list
        # created above, fail when you reach the end of the string
        #
        str ? while put(l, move(2))
        #
        # return the list to the calling program
        #
        return l
     end

and for an example string of "this is a string" it will return the list ["th", "is", " i", "s ", "a ", "st", "ri", "ng"]

and for an example string of "this is a string2" it will return the list ["th", "is", " i", "s ", "a ", "st", "ri", "ng", "2_"]

Nice and simple compared to the example given in Java.</comment>


A Five Minute Introduction to NoSQL Injection - <AUTHOR> http://www.east5th.co/blog/2016/10/24/a-five-minute-introduction-to-nosql-injection/ <comment><USER2> kind of deceptive... need to register an email to get</comment>


Does She Look Like a Music Pirate? - <AUTHOR> http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/08_18/b4082042959954.htm?campaign_id=rss_topEmailedStories <comment><USER2> I wonder how much of the music being stolen on the internet really translates into lost revenue. My gut feeling is college and highschool students are responsible for most music downloads and they don't typically have the money to buy all the music they want. But these people typically grow up and get jobs and start purchasing music on iTunes (or Amazon) because their time becomes more valuable.

<comment><USER3> Your right about college students, but not high school students. They have the largest disposable income of any age group. Many of them have jobs, many of them get given money by grandma/mom/pop/etc..., but very few of them need to spend money on necessities- almost all of their income goes to consumer goods. This is why so much advertising is targeted at teenagers.

This is also why the internet is going to be death to the parts of the recording industry that cannot (or will not) adapt- the age group that is their biggest customer is also the most internet savvy.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> RIAA has been digging its own grave for years now. The faster the music industry implodes, the better it will be for consumers and more importantly, artists.

</comment><comment><USER5> Intimidating and suing your potential customers just seems like a really dumb business strategy to me.

</comment><comment><USER6> For some reason I just imagined "Does Marsellus Wallace look like a pirate?!"

<comment><USER7> What?

<comment><USER6> What ain't no web site I ever heard of! They speak Lisp in What?!

(I see some moderators have no sense of humor, even on the weekend.)

<comment><USER8> Haha! I love it

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> What is going on with Business Week? I have to click five times to read the whole article and more than half of the page is crammed with ads and links.

</comment><comment><USER10> <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=174515>

<comment><AUTHOR> Sorry, didn't mean to dup. I use the bookmarklet and just expect a dup to be caught.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> This is a very interesting case, but more so, shows the disgraceful practices of the RIAA.</comment>


USB/IP Project - <AUTHOR> http://usbip.sourceforge.net/ <comment><USER2> I've got a couple of the Chinese made "Remote USB" servers which are interesting but not as compatible as I would like.

What I find really amusing is that back when USB was proposed I argued that rather than create an entirely new infrastructure why not just use Ethernet packets. There are additional protocol types available in the bit encoding and all sorts of infrastructure that already supported layer 2 switching. Plus the "phy" (10/100 at the time) was dirt cheap and already available. It never went anywhere, and at the time I figured that nobody wants to support a standard that they can't see how to make licensing money off of it. Somewhere I have VHDL code for a PC parallel port emulator that ran over my protocol. It fit in a small FPGA with the ethernet MAC so it wasn't like we were talking about a lot of gates. Just no consortium fees and no way to keep people out of the ecosystem you didn't like.

Doing USB over IP is an interesting way of re-creating that work (although mine was multi-master so technically a bit better :-)). Of course these days USB 3.0 is faster than the ethernet port on most machines so it was no doubt doomed from the start. But its fun to do. The SATA over Ethernet stuff that CoRAID did was like that, very nice work.

<comment><USER3> It's been funny to watch the various phy standards converge in feature-space (alas, not interop-space) over time. PCI got a packet architecture with addresses and routing and credit-based flow control, USB got a packet architecture with addresses and routing and credit-based flow control, SATA said "screw it, we'll just become PCI-e, because they have packets and routing and flow control," and thunderbolt basically _is_ PCI-e...

Unfortunately I think Ethernet might be too fragmented to ever take the convergence to its logical conclusion. But who knows. If someone high on the food chain at Intel wakes up on the other side of the bed one day it could happen.

<comment><USER4> Ethernet's also got the fun problem of the length of the runs being hugely different than pcie. What I expect is some kind of optical interface because of that. Optical thunderbolt might be the way for that to happen.

<comment><USER3> I thought 40G/100G ethernet was already optical (and multiplexed, much like PCIe)?

EDIT: yep [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/100_Gigabit_Ethernet](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/100_Gigabit_Ethernet)

I'm pretty sure that the only obstacles against "ethernet as a truly universal bus" are either minor (someone's got to invest in making adapter interfaces) or of the "why bother" variety. Unfortunately the latter is a bit of a show stopper as far as I can tell :)

<comment><USER4> Hadn't thought about 40G/100G ethernet. It'd definitely be in that same area for doing that. I'd definitely agree that the obstacles at this point are either minor or a "why bother" kind of thing. With speeds continuing to go up, I'd expect it in a generator or two simply because the "why bother" will shift the other way, why bother to make a new standard when this one does it too and is nearly ubiquitous. My guess at least for peripherials is going to be in the optical thunderbolt area, more because of the way the device network matches what people are designing for anyway. I'd guess once there's two standards, a local (optical pcie) and remote (optical ethernet), things might begin converging more and more until it's less distinct between the two.

I'd expect optical more because it's easier to get high bandwidth and low latency on interconnects than copper because of the lower crosstalk and everything. It's just a question of market forces pushing things to converge.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> TL;DR: It doesn't work. The project has been abandoned, the last update is >4 years old. Don't waste your time.

Two weeks ago I have had to implement a solution that, for technical reasons, required a usb/ip implementation so I compared everything that was available.

I spent half a day on the project, perusing mailing lists and documentation trying to get usb/ip (as linked here) to work. Eventually, I got discovery working (win7 client connecting to linux/arm server) but the connection would never be established.

Eventually, since usb/ip turned out to be a horrible waste of time, I used a professional solution for about $40 which took 5min to set up and works like a charm since then.

<comment><USER6> what solution did you end up with (soft- or hardware?) and what devices was it supporting?

I've got a bunch of things that I'd like more switchable than standard 'kvm' type muxes can do, so curious how it worked out.

<comment><USER7> Yes, please... what did you wind up using?

<comment><USER5> I ended up using the solution from [http://www.virtualhere.com/](http://www.virtualhere.com/)

The server runs fine even on a raspi 2, to which I switched after having some problems running it on a beaglebone black.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Just buy one of these: [http://www.amazon.com/Silex-SX-DS-4000U2-Print- Server-800MHz...](http://www.amazon.com/Silex-SX-DS-4000U2-Print- Server-800MHz- blau/dp/B006D3RCN6/ref=sr_1_6?ie=UTF8&qid=1444692814&sr=8-6&keywords=silex) .

Works awesome, lets you buy the cheap non-workgroup version of pretty much everything (printer, scanner, label printer, ...) and still hook it up to a central server.

I have a Fujitsu ScanSnap ix500 hooked up this way, which scans directly to Dropbox. Put the scanner anywhere where it's convenient to access, put paper in it, press scan button, by the time you walk back to your desk it's on the dropbox. Order of magnitude improvement over other setups.

<comment><USER9> I bought one of these: [http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B005GM1Q1O/?&tag=bcgpfeed-2...](http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B005GM1Q1O/?&tag=bcgpfeed-20)

It's dirt cheap ($10-20), easy to load linux on [1], and it can be a simple file server, it can run minidlna, google cloud print [2], all kinds of stuff.

800MHz is not a screamer, but most simple I/O tasks like A/V streaming and printing are a walk in the park.

[1] [http://archlinuxarm.org/platforms/armv5/pogoplug- series-4](http://archlinuxarm.org/platforms/armv5/pogoplug-series-4)

[2] [http://geekvisit.com/hacking-pogoplug-mobile-adding- airprint...](http://geekvisit.com/hacking-pogoplug-mobile-adding-airprint- cloudprint-print-chromebook-cloudprint-printer/)

<comment><USER10> Similarly, I found a used pogoplug at a thrift shop with a $5 sticker on it. I bought it knowing little about it but suspecting it could be hacked. At the checkout they told me the sticker color indicated it was half off, so it cost me less than $3.

With the shipping software the pogoplugs are usually useless secondhand, as the web interface is hidden if you haven't registered the device with the company (and it can't be de-authed without the original owner's credentials). But the administrative interface is still available, if you know the path. Dropbear is already installed, so you can just start it, log in, overwrite the bootloader[0] and run one of several Linux distributions from a flash drive (I use Debian[1]).

My unit[2] has a 700 MHz dual-ARMv6. It only has 256MB of built-in RAM, but it's simple to allocate 1GB of the OS flash drive as swap.

Last year I picked up a number of old MIDI keyboards a local college was throwing out. I figured they were just old and the college had replaced them with something newer, but they worked fine for me under Linux. So I offered one of them to my brother, and he couldn't get it to work under Windows. Of course, it turns out the device is 15 years old and never had a 64-bit driver. So I've been experimenting with using the Python midistream package to stream MIDI over ethernet to a Windows host. Unfortunately, the package (since subsumed by a project called scenic[3]) hasn't had a new release since 2012. But it still works, and it makes for a pretty fun hack.

[0] [http://projects.doozan.com/uboot/](http://projects.doozan.com/uboot/)

[1] [http://forum.doozan.com/read.php?2,16044](http://forum.doozan.com/read.php?2,16044)

[2] [https://smile.amazon.com/dp/B004TDY924](https://smile.amazon.com/dp/B004TDY924)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I hate to say it but sourceforge feels like the new "Meg" these days, even uBlock Origin tries to block going to sourceforge. Looks like an interesting project though. I love the support of ReactOS, but I wonder if the project is still active at all? The featured last bit of news is from 2011.

<comment><USER12> I dunno what Meg is, but I did chuckle when uBlock Origin blocked SF. Good for them.

<comment><USER13> Family Guy joke.

<comment><USER11> Brian (I believe) gets called the new Meg in an episode, Meg tries to join in on the joke only to get told to shut up.

<comment><USER14> Comedic genius!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> This is also part of the mainline Linux kernel now (look under drivers/usb/usbip/ and tools/usb/usbip/).

<comment><USER16> The Linux stuff, but what about the Windows stuff?

Last I checked, there was someone from Eltima Marketing proposing the site be updated with some revenue sharing deal to their proprietary and costly Windows and etc. USB over IP solution.

Also, there were numerous users in their forums posting signed and patched drivers for modern Windows since the ones available for download aren't signed, so I saw.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> On the one hand, this looks incredibly cool. On the other hand, I actually find it a bit worrying. With things like BadUSB[1] still out there, I would be worried about anything that gives USB devices more wide reach or higher privileges.

That this project aims to offer "full functionality" of the device, afaik, means it is likely doing exactly the kind of thing that I find worrying. Can anyone talk about this a little more in-depth?

[1] [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nuruzFqMgIw](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nuruzFqMgIw)

</comment><comment><USER18> Hmm I appreciate more work in this field, especially Windoze compatibility, but... as said in Star Wars: Clone Wars... "Fifty tried, fifty died".

USBoIP is a minefield.

<comment><USER19> Off-topic: Where in "Star Wars: Clone Wars" is that quote said? I seem to remember Durge boasting something similar, but the only direct references DDG et al. report are from fan-fiction [0], [1], and your comment itself.

(Fanfics not reviewed for Work Safety, caveat lector.)

[0] [https://www.fanfiction.net/s/11066605/8/Star-Wars-The- Mandal...](https://www.fanfiction.net/s/11066605/8/Star-Wars-The-Mandalorian- Effect)

[1] [https://www.fanfiction.net/s/9886787/6/Coruscant-School- for-...](https://www.fanfiction.net/s/9886787/6/Coruscant-School-for-Tomorrow- s-Leaders)

<comment><USER18> This quote comes from the kid living on Iego, where Anakin and Obi-Wan get trapped in a separatist lasernet. IIRC it was the last of the Blue Shadow Virus episodes.

<comment><USER19> Thank you. For any other searchers, Jaybo [0] says this in Episode 0202 [1] of "Star Wars: The Clone Wars" (not "Star Wars: Clone Wars" \- an earlier series, of which I thought my encyclopedic knowledge had failed me, spurring my question).

[0] [http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Jaybo_Hood](http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Jaybo_Hood) [1] [http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Mystery_of_a_Thousand_Moons](http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Mystery_of_a_Thousand_Moons)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> This gave me the idea to use my Raspberry pi as a remote hub for Keyboard/Mouse.

Unfortunately, it seems it can't make it working, whether I use the official apt-get binaries, or try to compile myself[1] (either with the version available on sourceforge, or in the linux kernel src).

Anyone who succeed to make this running on Raspberry Pi (Raspbian)? It would be a perfect application!

[1]: [https://www.raspberrypi.org/forums/viewtopic.php?f=28&t=1077...](https://www.raspberrypi.org/forums/viewtopic.php?f=28&t=107720)

</comment><comment><USER21> Can I have the reverse? IP over USB at USB 3.x speeds?

<comment><USER22> yes on linux(usbnet) at least for a long while, not sure about usb3.x or windows support though.

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

A quick google showed there are Gigabit NIC over USB3.0 on the market already(for a while): [http://www.amazon.com/Network-Adapter-Anker-Ethernet- Support...](http://www.amazon.com/Network-Adapter-Anker-Ethernet- Supporting/dp/B00NOP70EC)

<comment><USER21> I don't want a USB NIC, though, I want just USB to USB with as little shit in between them as possible to be as cheap as possible. Maybe even allow straight DMA to DMA across the machines due to it being USB 3.x.

<comment><USER9> Thunderbolt is much closer to the PCIe bridge/RDMA style interface you seek. Not as ubiquitous or cheap as USB, though.

<comment><USER21> Yeah, that's 100% of the problem.

Intel refuses to deploy Thunderbolt everywhere, even though I have two Z87/Z97 motherboards with Intel GPU-powered DisplayPort ports and Intel could have trivially baked this into their chipset.

The only computer I have Thunderbolt on? My MBPr. The only computer I don't need a shitton of cheap bandwidth on? My MBPr.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> I would love to see this develop into a widely adopted standard. Apple uses a similar technology with their Airport Express devices for printer sharing, always been annoyed it was so restrictive in being able to connect to it.

</comment><comment><USER24> I wish I had a million bucks to donate to this project. It could be great, but it's languishing unmaintained on SourceForge.

Side note, can someone please buy me a code-signing certificate?

</comment><comment><USER25> blocked by uBlock Origin ..

</comment><comment><USER26> seems the network latency would break the realtime expectations of high data rate USB 3.0 hardware on the USB bus.

and using a still image from a webcam seems like the worst use case... there are much better protocols for serving video streams.

<comment><USER27> One of the more compelling use-cases for USB over IP is connecting proprietary licensing dongles to virtual machines.

<comment><USER28> can't you use vt-d and have it passthrough?

<comment><USER27> That still ties it to a physical VM host doesn't it - what happens if you want to host the VM in a cluster and have it migrate?</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Show HN: React PWA – A scalable Progressive Web Application foundation - <AUTHOR> https://www.reactpwa.com <comment><USER2> Very impressive engineering on the whole stack. The question that arises to my mind is, maybe even too much engineering?

Hard to understand the architecture when there is so many moving parts which makes me not want to use it for my own stuff. Because if I don't know how it works how can I fix/change it when I have to? Also the loader icons last for worryingly long time when I'm running it on my localhost. Which means the caching isn't working as it's supposed to or should it really take that long to load a single webpage? Not trying to attack on anyone here, just observing.

How is your serviceWorker configured? The problem I have had with them is the N+1 (or sometimes more) times it takes to reload changes which is infuriating to me and I've stopped using them altogether since the benefits aren't that great (for me at least).

Maybe if you could bootstrap with this step by step it would be easier to get to know the structure a little better. So say you could first bootstrap à la create-react-app with bare minimum to get things rolling and then add on caching features which there seems to be plenty of.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for your comment and raising the question. We are working on documentation and are really moving fast to get it understandable. To understand the architecture I will create a Video thus making it more easy to understand.

Regarding performance, Please try building and running the application. Development mode is not good for measuring performance. The site [https://www.reactpwa.com](https://www.reactpwa.com) & [https://demo.reactpwa.com](https://demo.reactpwa.com) are built with the same boilerplate and are performing really nice. Any inputs here are appreciated.

<comment><USER3> Many people don't have the time to watch a video. Docs should be the source of truth

<comment><USER4> Currently the site is down due to heavy traffic. The docs are written and in progress. You can also view pages on github wiki. Thank you for checking it out. :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> FYI react-create-app also has PWA features: [https://github.com/facebookincubator/create-react- app/blob/m...](https://github.com/facebookincubator/create-react- app/blob/master/packages/react-scripts/template/README.md#making-a- progressive-web-app)

<comment><AUTHOR> Yes it does but it does not provide SEO support with SSR (Server side rendering)

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Initial page load: 279kb Click on 'Features': 1.58Mb (40 requests) Click on 'PWA': 2.88Mb (74 requests) ...

If you visit this page on mobile and start to scroll down while it's still loading, you'll have to scroll down multiple time because the loaded content resets the scrollbar (Firefox on Android)

Top comment: 'Impressive engineering on the whole stack'

Really?

<comment><USER7> Welcome to React.

"I use React over Angular because it is so small! Also here are my 2 MB of 3rd party modules that are loaded directly on the home view, that the other frameworks come with and lazy load when needed".

<comment><USER8> > Welcome to React.

Looks like less than 200kb of JS. And the initial page load is less than 30kb HTML/CSS.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> The website is getting hugged, ouch.

Still, it seems perfectly possible to integrate this boilerplate with create- react-app using custom scripts if anyone is interested

<comment><AUTHOR> Odd. Can you please provide more details? I shall look into it asap ?

<comment><USER10> I got a plain 504 the first time I tried.

I refreshed, and got a Cloudflare page with a banner at the top saying "This page ([https://www.reactpwa.com/](https://www.reactpwa.com/)) is currently offline. However, because the site uses Cloudflare's Always Online™ technology you can continue to surf a snapshot of the site." The bottom of that page where the "snapshot of the site" presumably should be is a differently branded 502 error page.

<comment><AUTHOR> The traffic is really hitting hard right now, and the server was not supposed to be handling that. Its just 512 MB ram and now I need to scale it. #unExpectedProgress.

Sorry, can you please check again?

<comment><USER11> If it's only a static website you could simply use Firebase hosting. It's free and scales automatically using Google's CDN.

<comment><USER4> It is not a static website. It is made using the same boilerplate that is mentioned in the documentation. As the repo maintainer believes in using what he has made. ;)

<comment><USER11> Eh, he could also use Firebase functions to accomplish that and again for free with CDN without worrying about scaling issues.

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LOeioOKUKI8](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LOeioOKUKI8)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Please visit [https://github.com/Atyantik/react- pwa](https://github.com/Atyantik/react-pwa) if the site is down

<comment><USER12> It's a gh-pages site right? Never seen one of those bulk over heavy traffic. Or are they (you?) hosting it somewhere else?

edit: nevermind, reading more of the github README.md I realize the site itself is a PWA (make sense) and you probably need a server and not a static site like gh-pages.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yes. Right now upgrading server for heavy traffic :) Should be up and running more smoothly in 20 mins I guess :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Have we solved the issue of server-side rendering + code splitting? I see both in features, but last time we attempted this, we had to give up one of those features.

<comment><USER14> What is code-splitting? Is it asynchronous loading of components?

If you're interested in a React-based static site generator that does that: [https://github.com/fiatjaf/sitio](https://github.com/fiatjaf/sitio)

<comment><USER4> It means load only the code for the page/route that you are visiting and not the code of entire site.

Suppose you visit only example.com/about-us page then why should the server load example.com, example.com/faq, example.com/blog code together with it?

I hope you got the point of code-splitting. :)

<comment><USER14> A new name for a very old concept. People keep inventing these things...

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> We are looking for ReactJS contributors. Please reach us at admin [AT] atyantik.com

<comment><USER15> The word "contributors" just sent chills down my spine.

<comment><USER16> why?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> I still don't get what React Router offers that some simpler router, like page.js, for example, doesn't.

<comment><AUTHOR> Well its just used by many people. Thus with great documentation and support.

<comment><USER14> page.js is used by many people, documentation is great and support is not needed at all because it is simple and just works (while React Router is incredibly complicated for such a simple thing).

React Router depends on a ton of libraries and thus has a huge impact on your build size (not to mention your disk while developing).

But maybe because they have "React" in the name and have got some network effects everybody keeps using and recommending them?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> hey - pretty cool. I wonder if you can incorporate something like Netflix's optimization

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15567657](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15567657)

</comment><comment><USER18> Website does not load. Same as [https://github.com/vuejs- templates/pwa](https://github.com/vuejs-templates/pwa) for react?

<comment><USER4> No it is based on es6/7 jsx. Also it has server side rendering, code splitting and many more features. Kindly check the github repo link shared by tirthbodawala.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> This is such a coincidence. I was looking for such thing today and found few projects that are from last year and abandoned. Wondered why this is and thought about doing it myself.

...

Aww, this is such a mess. I am sorry but this project is making me think twice before using it.

Look at the creators website... php tags visible [https://www.atyantik.com/](https://www.atyantik.com/)

A lot of comments on slow loading and site not being available. I appreciate your desire to use and share new technology, but this might be too early for this project.

Wish you luck!

<comment><USER20> The PHP tags are clearly part of the graphic design. They're part of the <blockquote> styles.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> Any plan for supporting typescript?

<comment><AUTHOR> Well its pretty easy to add typescript support. We can add it depending on user requests.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> Can someone give a tldr since the site is down?

<comment><USER4> Kindly check the github repo and its wiki pages: [https://github.com/atyantik/react-pwa](https://github.com/atyantik/react-pwa)</comment></comment>


Moving away from Gmail. Which service to choose? - <AUTHOR>

I know i could go all nerdy and set up my own mail server but honestly I don't want to deal with it. My main concern with Gmail/Google in general is ad targeting and I've been slowly moving away from their services that I've been using since 2005.
I am looking for following:
- IMAP based email.
- Reasonable inbox size ( 5 GB or so) - contact syncing ( Card DAV, LDAP ) - calendar sync - nice little extra would be custom domain
I've heard good things about Fastmail but I'm not sure if $40 a year is too much. Maybe not I just don't know other options. I've also heard about Rackspace but that seems more complex to setup plus I couldn't find the pricing on their site.
Thanks for suggestions. <comment><USER2> I can't speak highly enough of Fastmail.

Great UI (nowadays, I've heard it has been rough in the past), they've just added calendars with CalDAV sync and are working on contact sync with CardDAV. My custom domain (bayne.id.au) was handled quickly and easily. Also, they have excellent support - I've emailed them a few times and always wound up speaking to a clueful developer (when it hasn't been PEBKAC on my part).

I do wonder what the software world is coming to, though, when $40 / year is considered expensive. I saw a similar complaint about an Android app I use (Tasker) which costs around $5 if I remember rightly. $5! That's less than the price of a (good) hamburger, for an app that makes my life easier in a number of significant ways.

Are we on some sort of doomed race to the bottom like budget airlines?

<comment><USER3> Going to second Fastmail. I've been a user of it for the past three months and it's easily worth the cost, especially considering it's for something as vital as email. Before Fastmail I hosted my own email server and used sup to access my email. Switching to Fastmail was one of my biggest productivity boosts in the past 6 months. Really wish they'd get CardDAV sync in though :-/.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I would recommend Outlook.com from MS.

I switched from all of my google services recently[1] for the same reason as you, targeting. And for the email services, I picked outlook for its minimal nature and the nice UI that gives a pleasant experience compared to the cluttered Gmail interface(IMO).

I created a new email with Outlook and forwarded all my Gmail content to the Outlook including contacts using their 'Gmail to Outlook' migration tool[2]. And along with it created some aliases for different purposes. The only thing I miss from Gmail is their multiple email accounts using "+', but as said Outlook provides a more or less alternative "aliases" feature.

One thing I really like about Outlook apart from its UI and manageability is its ability on managing everything from my Twitter account to Gmail chat right from the mailbox itself.

[1] - [http://blog.therth.com/blog/2014/09/23/my-new- outlook/](http://blog.therth.com/blog/2014/09/23/my-new-outlook/) [2] - [http://www.microsoft.com/en-in/outlook- com/gmail/](http://www.microsoft.com/en-in/outlook-com/gmail/)

<comment><USER5> Upvoted for the courage of recommending a service that actually works fine but is not welcome in the HN's hipster culture. Expect getting downvoted to oblivion...

<comment><USER4> So, that means I shouldn't post a service/product that even if suffices the OP's question but didn't welcomed by community?

It's a matter of choice isn't it?

<comment><USER5> Hey I'm on your side, I was being sarcastic. I also switched from gmail to outlook. But in HN everything "mainstream" gets downvoted. You like Outlook? Enjoy the downvotes, You like MS Office instead of XYZ ? Downvoted, etc, etc

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> > I've also heard about Rackspace but that seems more complex to setup plus I > couldn't find the pricing on their site

Rackspace Mail costs $2/mailbox/month. It comes with 24/7/365 phone/chat/email support and a 100% uptime SLA. The product began as MailTrust, a separate company Rackspace acquired, with over 2M users (now over 3M).

[http://www.rackspace.com/email- hosting/webmail/pricing/](http://www.rackspace.com/email- hosting/webmail/pricing/)

They host all the mailboxes on my domains for a couple bucks a month. I don't use their webmail, just IMAP (Thunderbird/K9). There's nothing complex to set up for e-mail; I don't know about calendar or contact syncing since I don't use those things.

<comment><USER7> Minimum quantity of 5 though.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> @comatory, think it this way. Google should be paying you $40/yr for using their service. Fastmail's business is emails. But Google's business is ads not search. That is a big difference. Considering that I have been using Fastmail's free service since 19 Oct 2003. I can assure you that they are doing a great job. The people at Fastmail need to live and their charges are very nice for the service they provide. Their webmail is great and delivery is good. But if your concern is staying away from PRISM, then I guess getting up your own is the way to go. Hotmail(Outlook.com) is great but there is not guarantee its going remain the same. Yahoo mail was great at one time, now its just a pain. Good Luck. Do tell what is your final decision. I too am planning to move away from Gmail.

</comment><comment><USER9> You may want to check the free mail from Zoho. They offer 5GB, ad-free email service that is free of cost and can be configured in POP / IMAP as well. You can configure your domain.

[https://mail.zoho.com/](https://mail.zoho.com/)

</comment><comment><USER10> Some people are mentiong services like Fastmail here.

To me this sounds like replacing one "evil" with another. Can somebody please prove me wrong! Right now, I'm walking the Postfix+Dovecot+Roundcube path. Other options I'm looking into right now are:

[https://www.mailpile.is/](https://www.mailpile.is/) \- which look very promising

[https://whiteout.io/](https://whiteout.io/) \- also interesting

<comment><USER3> In terms of ownership of data, Fastmail is definitely not ideal. However, I trust a company that has a single paid product and employees committed to the point of buying the company back from their acquirer ([http://blog.fastmail.com/2013/09/25/exciting-news- fastmail-s...](http://blog.fastmail.com/2013/09/25/exciting-news-fastmail- staff-purchase-the-business-from-opera/)) more than a company with a free product committed to monetizing me and my data.

I recently switched from a setup similar to yours (Postfix+Dovecot+sup) to Fastmail because I'll never have to worry about deliverability again and Fastmail's web client is miles beyond anything else other there, especially the open source offerings (Mailpile looks promising though! I'm hoping this won't stay the case).

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> This might be besides the point, but if you pay for Gmail then the experience is ad free. I've got no complaints with it so far.

[1] [https://www.google.com/work/apps/business](https://www.google.com/work/apps/business)

[2] [https://www.google.com/work/apps/business/products/gmail/](https://www.google.com/work/apps/business/products/gmail/)

</comment><comment> LogIN- Postfix, dovecot, roundcube.. you'll figure something...

</comment><comment><USER12> Zimbra might help.

</comment><comment><USER13> I've been using Zoho Mail [1] service for past one year. While it's not very fancy it gets the job done for me well and is lightweight. Even got a custom domain for free!

[https://www.zoho.com/mail/](https://www.zoho.com/mail/)</comment>