The people trying to save programming from itself - <AUTHOR> https://killscreen.com/articles/people-trying-save-programming <comment><USER3> It's interesting how often we see these articles (and associated discussions) saying that programming is harder than it should be, and that if only we had a better language, it would be much easier.

In my experience, choice of language makes only a superficial difference to the difficulty of a project. The real challenge is always figuring out exactly what you're trying to do, and exactly how you're going to achieve it. And these questions aren't solved by a language because they're questions about your project itself, not about the implementation.

Sure, some toolchains are better suited to some types of project - I would really not want to do serious number crunching in JavaScript, or an interactive GUI in COBOL. But there's generally at least one (and usually bogglingly many more) solid, freely available toolchains to suit any given application.

<comment><USER4> It's the same logic used when people decide to build their own framework, or advocate against not using a framework - by writing everything yourself, you'll understand everything. It boils down to "other people's code is hard to read", which can probably be extended to entire languages and other concepts as well.

It's in part laziness - reading and understanding someone else's code takes a lot of focused effort. But it's also a matter of gratification - writing code is far more satisfying (IMO) than reading and comprehending others'. Most developers I know - and probably myself included - are of the "I get paid to write code" mentality, and often not really being mindful of whether what they write now will still be understandable in 5 - 10 years time. Sure, they will follow best practices, clean coding and all that stuff, but what about (high- level) documentation? Revisiting the user stories from which the code was born? Writing good commit messages and pull request descriptions? These all seem secondary to the code itself, which I guess is true to a degree, but all that other stuff is important too.

Getting into a new project is hard. Starting from scratch and writing your own is easy. Writing code and other stuff so that others getting into your project is easier is hard (as is allowing others into your domain and code for that matter)

<comment><USER5> > It's in part laziness - reading and understanding someone else's code takes > a lot of focused effort. But it's also a matter of gratification - <USER2> > code is far more satisfying (IMO) than reading and comprehending others'.

No, it is rather the problem that other people's source code changes all the time. If the other programmer can assure me that his source code is good enough that it can be used for 10-20 years without any problems (and will be maintained this long time) and the only changes that will happen are small bugfixes, I can easily be convinced to read into all the gory details of it (of course only if the source code is useful), since I know that the knowledge that I gain by diving into these details will help me for many years after.

The situation that we have is that every few months a new framework comes out and such a deep reading into is not worth it since in a few month something new will come and in few years the original framework will be forgotten, making all the investment into understanding it deeply worthless.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> > Roberts explains: "We're in the mess that we are in now because of software > engineering preferences from 30 years ago, made by people that just didn't > write enough code to have those preferences be worth anything."

This is a typical attitude of younger programmers towards the previous generation.

> he decided to create his own programming language

And this is the typical solution.

It's happened so many times before it's either really funny or no longer funny. I'm not sure which.

The reason why "everything is broken" is because writing correct software, that does all the things, in any language, is difficult. That's not to say that new solutions cannot make improvements but it is naive to think that new solutions will solve all the problems. A good rule of thumb is to make sure you really understand a system before you replace it.

</comment><comment><USER7> This sounds like something that should have a simple description, but I'm not sure the article tells enough to work out what it is.

(Unless the simple description is Not Invented Here syndrome, which I imagine it's not).

I had a quick look at the website linked at the end but it's just a site with a list of projects like a text editor and some game debugging components.

<comment><USER3> I'm not really sure, it rambles a bit. It seems basically to be advertising a coding community or something, with a fair amount of indie superiority complex on the side?

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> As usual, the article grossly oversimplifies the position of the people in it, and the discussion on HN focuses on the gross oversimplifications.

Better to hear it from the horse's mouth eg:

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k56wra39lwA](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k56wra39lwA)

[https://mollyrocket.com/casey/stream_0019.html](https://mollyrocket.com/casey/stream_0019.html)

[https://mollyrocket.com/casey/stream_0020.html](https://mollyrocket.com/casey/stream_0020.html)

You might still disagree, but at least you'll have something coherent to disagree with.</comment>


Big Calculator: How Texas Instruments Monopolized Math Class - <AUTHOR> https://gen.medium.com/big-calculator-how-texas-instruments-monopolized-math-class-67ee165045dc <comment><USER2> I love how the answer given to this problem is more funding. Such an indication of what's wrong with modern education. This entire article is exposing the TI monopoly on calculators, getting 85-90% profit margins, and our solution is to strike to get taxpayer money to keep paying for the things? We should encourage competition.

Consider - an app that replicates this functionality on the phone, but tracks if the user at any point closes the app. This then is reported to the teacher so the teacher knows if there was any cheating.

<comment><USER3> forget the app or phone

how about: a standardized test calculator specification, with careful boundaries around what is required, what is permitted and what is not.

Then let competition drive prices and features.

<comment><USER4> This doesn't really work in the classroom, because right now teachers rely on being able to teach exactly how to perform a given calculation. Have lots of different calculators with differing interfaces, some of which the teacher doesn't even know, and teaching becomes much more difficult.

<comment><USER5> Honestly that sounds like a bug to be fixed. You don't teach to drive exactly one type of car.

<comment><USER6> I mean, you sort of do! Every modern US car has a wheel to steer, a brake pedal on the left, a gas pedal on the right. Calculator UIs vary way more than that. In the US, you can drive a manual after training on automatic, but that's not true everywhere.

And in-car driving instruction happens with the teacher next to the student in a car they're familiar with. It's not like they're radioing to 30 students each in a separate car.

Also, the calculator is a tool to teach math. If someone gets distracted figuring out the calculator, they're behind. The student driver car is to teach driving.

<comment><USER7> Sounds like the UI needs a spec as well then.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Tangential story: When I was in middle school, we had a computers class where we had a mock stock-buying competition. Each team of 4 students was given a pretend 10,000 dollars to invest in the market, and then we could buy/sell throughout the semester and whoever was left with the most equity would win.

We 7th graders didn't know which company to buy and our teacher told us we had 1 minute left to choose a stock. We looked around the room and I saw the calculator in front of us. "Oh great, let's go with Texas Instruments, TI, everyone has one of their calculators!"...So, we bought $10,000 of "TI", which turned out to be "Telecom Italia", an Italian phone company...

...which actually did REALLY well, we were nationally ranked in the game after a couple of weeks, but TI ended up tanking for whatever reason and we lost in the end.

<comment><USER9> My elementary school had a similar thing in (I believe) a math class I was in. I recall that we were given newspapers with a list of stock prices and were in groups. I can't recall if we were given any lesson on how the stock market worked. We had fairly little time to pick stocks. I'm not sure that I learned anything other than to actually know what you're doing if you're going to invest in random stocks.

<comment><USER10> The people whose lucky guesses paid off probably learned a different lesson.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> As far as I can tell the TI graphing calculators are riding entirely off of mind share/familiarity, both among students and teachers, and teaching materials, which reinforces the former. Specifically textbooks and teacher training all use TI graphing calculators. Presumably tests are therefore made with the capabilities of a TI graphing calculator in mind.

CollegeBoard actually has a wide range of calculators it allows for the SAT ([https://collegereadiness.collegeboard.org/sat/taking-the- tes...](https://collegereadiness.collegeboard.org/sat/taking-the- test/calculator-policy)), but very few test takers take advantage of this.

TI graphing calculators are based on sufficiently old hardware that it is probably faster to emulate a TI calculator on something with the power of a Raspberry Pi. Indeed an open source third party emulator already exists ([https://github.com/CE-Programming/CEmu](https://github.com/CE- Programming/CEmu)). Does anyone know what the legality of selling a calculator that is a dedicated emulator of a TI graphing calculator (not just an online one like Desmos, but a purpose-made physical calculator that does nothing else)? I'm curious why this hasn't already been done before.

EDIT: I mean a dedicated emulator that can do nothing else but be a graphing calculator, e.g. not something on a smartphone.

<comment><USER12> I have two high school age sons. They attend the same school. I bought graphing calculators for both. One told me Casio was ok. The other said the school requires TI. Go figure..

Software emulations on smart phone are not permitted due to school rules about mobile device use in class. Also they aren't allowed for tests due to the potential for cheating. Of course you can cheat by storing extra info in a graphing calculator but they don't seem to have thought of that..

<comment><USER13> Back when (and where) I grew up calculators were hardly ever used in math classes and completely forbidden in exams. I later went the IMO route and obtained a degree in mathematics; neither required a calculator.

I still fail to understand why the hell graphing calculators are required for some high school math curriculum.

<comment><USER14> Statistics is taking a larger and larger part in many math curricula and is quite aided by the use of a graphing calculator. The AP Stats coursework and exam also assumes you will have one.

<comment><USER13> To learn and demonstrate understanding of statistical concepts, no calculator is required. In fact calculating and graphing by hand are great for learning. To bridge the gap to the real world, a computer, however crappy, with Excel installed, however outdated, is infinitely better. (Not that I endorse Excel, it's just the most common tool among the general public.)

I happen to be a physicist too and while I'm not an experimentalist, I've been through plenty of experimental training, and have participated in real world data analysis projects. Never once have I seen any physicist doing any statistics with a graphing calculator (I did see a few when I taught undergrads mostly from other departments, so there's that).

<comment><USER15> Perhaps you can learn without a calculator, but these timed statistics tests do not function without one. Do you really expect people to do repetitive operations on even n=10 datasets when they only have an hour? You can't use Excel (because it's on more capable PC that you can use to cheat).

At the end of the day, if you want to remove the calculator from the statistics classroom you probably also have to remove the standardized test.

<comment><USER16> You can always make problems with steps that involve "easy" numbers. My experience with high school math was that if you wrote 1.414 when the answer was sqrt(2), you got the problem wrong. So I am not sure what the calculators added, really.

<comment><USER17> If the answer is ugly, always try squaring it or dividing by pi to see if you get something that looks rational.

<comment><USER16> Yeah, it's amusing how often that works. I remember taking the amateur radio exam which involves some path around impedance and power. The answers were always in the form of 0.5, 1, 1.414, 2. It's always 1.414 (or 0.707, its close cousin).

<comment><USER13> The ham radio exam is a joke (at least for the technician class in the U.S.). Just a bunch of multiple choice questions from a public question pool. I literally went through the pool twice before my exam and got a perfect score, although I hardly knew how to install and operate radios. (I just needed the license to be able to remotely operate a radio telescope.)

<comment><USER16> If I recall correctly there is no math until you get to Extra. But I agree that the questions are trivial and the multiple-choice format makes it even more trivial.

I am honestly shocked that there are any operators that aren't Extra class.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> My son's Eagle Scout project is to collect unused TI-83/4, rehab them, and give them away to the incoming students.

If you have any kicking around, drop me email and I can fwd to him.

<comment><USER19> That's an awesome Eagle Scout project. Addresses a real community need, leverages volunteer people-power, scales well, low risk. What an excellent choice.

That can be readily-combined with fundraising canvassing, too. The Girl Scouts could pick that up with a drop-box at every cookie table...

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> I can never be too mad at TI for this, since I'm only a programmer today because of a Ti-83+ and TI-BASIC

Or at least that's what I thought about I got to the part about the guilt the author felt over the purchase, and the teacher trying to buy them out of pocket. It really is despicable that we require 100$+ purchase every student's education when there are so many realistic cheaper alternatives

<comment><USER21> Shouldn't there be millions of used Ti-83s by now? Seems like there shouldn't be a real need to buy new when the market should be saturated with used. I know I have 2 Ti-83s in a box somewhere collecting dust.

This could be solved with a simple sellback program.

1\. Purchase from school for $100

2\. Sell back for $95

3\. Repeat forever until calculator breaks

<comment><USER22> Do most people them them on to college as well though?

<comment><USER23> In my college experience, students weren't permitted to use graphing calculators in math classes, and other math-heavy classes (eg, physics, chemistry, etc) used simple math on exams and permitted laptops during labs/classwork.

<comment><USER24> Same, the only time I used a TI graphing calculator was during one unit of high school math. I don't think we used them during the test for that semester either.

The general rule was scientific calculator only.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> Shamelessly posting an old project of mine:

[https://knightos.org](https://knightos.org)

The build server has been dead for years, so you'll have to compile it yourself. If anyone's TI calculator is gathering dust in your closet, you might find this to be a fun hack to play with :)

<comment><USER26> 2016: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12360757](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12360757)

2014: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8747729](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8747729)

<comment><USER25> 2015: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10630779](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10630779)

(June) 2014: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7896990](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7896990)

<comment><USER26> Ah yes!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> From my experience, calculators in classrooms have had a few interesting and odd effects on intuition and expectation. For years, classes were separated and had "theoretical" components without calculator use and "computational" components with calculator use. The computational parts would involve gross numbers with real-ish answers --- things don't work out so nicely. But the theory parts would always have very nice answers (if some sort of computation had to be done).

It turns out that I came to expect theoretical aspects to always work out nicely; similarly, I often failed to see the light through the hairy parts of the computational parts.

This came to the fore when I took an Ordinary Differential Equations / Calculus of Variations course. There were no calculators now --- when we needed computational power, we used various CAS. I remember being very confused the first time we showed a solution existed to some ODE, and then "found it" to any degree of precision we wanted. This was partly theory, but it was very imperfect! My mathematical intuition ended up sharpening strongly during that semester.

Now I'm a number theorist. When I teach, I don't use calculators. I'm acutely aware, however, that early elementary number theory ends up being presented as a delightful and pure little topic. I think there is some need for continued computational aspects in math courses, but I haven't quite seen it done just right yet. (When I do incorporate computational aspects, it's either attached to a basic programming course or attached to an introductory sagemath CAS course).

<comment><USER28> The computation of early (primary school) math courses could be done with a counting board, which is a type of general-purpose computer with memory consisting of buttons/coins and a human for a CPU.

Later (high school / undergraduate coursework), it would be good to use a programming language like Python or Julia or Swift ....

I also think students should spend at least a few weeks or months using a slide rule and printed tables for basic arithmetic, but more to learn about logarithms and mathematical history than to learn about computational mathematics per se.

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> I am always surprised in hearing that American students need a programmable, graphing calculator. In most of Asia such is not required, only a much cheaper 'scientfic' calculator, even for graduate courses in science and engineering.

Some disciplines even in sciences/engineering, for example Computer Science, does not require any sort of calculator usually.

<comment><USER30> It's a relatively recent development. I majored in physics, and made it through differential equations in the 1990s without one. It's a requirement for my daughter's high school math class.

<comment><USER29> It does does raise the question. Why do American highschoolers need it, and why not them in the rest of the world. Why saddle students and parents with an additional 100$+ expense, when very possibly it isn't strictly pedagogically necessary.

<comment><USER12> For the most part "graphing calculator" seems to be a catch all term for "scientific calculator with the features we need" in that little actual graphing is done. But I have seen problems in my son's "Algebra 2" class that require plotting polynomials on the calculator then describing their roots, shape etc. As a way to build intuition about the geometric interpretation of functions, that seems like a reasonable approach although Wolfram alpha would do a decent job too.

<comment><USER31> In the UK we have similar questions of plotting and describing geometric functions, however we were simply taught how to plot them by hand, or just directly interrogate the equation to spot where an asymptote might be, roots etc.

IMO this gives a much better inherent understanding of equations, rather than just plugging in some numbers into a calculator and reading what comes out.

<comment><USER32> Even I have two graphic calculators (HP not TI). I never used them really to draw even a single graph. I mostly use the larger display just to check and copy more easy previous results. On work I prefer these days to use just my HP35S (two lines display / RPN).

And yes, drawing the graph by yourself is for sure the way better way to learn something. But what do we know ...

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> By 'eck, when I were a lad we drew cumulative frequency curves and histograms by hand, and looked up statistical values in the back of a common formulae book.

When those tasks would have slowed class down — the teacher might not have wanted us to spend time drawing a curve when the real lesson was interpreting it — our teachers did it for us and put it on the class TV. Calculating statistical values was also done quickly with a $17 Casio engineering calculator.

TI-83s existed, but there was a culture in my school (ironically, a private one) that graphing calculators were a status-signaling more-money-than-sense thing. Too bad that such a culture isn't ubiquitous.

— _Sent from my iPhone XS_

<comment><USER34> Anyone else use a slide rule in school?

I have tried to explain it to my wife, but she can't grok it. I'm going to have to buy one from fleaBay to get her to understand.

<comment><USER35> Nope. Never even saw one used. I understand what it's FOR, but as a means of calculation they're obsolete.

When I entered the workforce and met engineers much older (say, born 10+ years before I was in 1970), they'd often have one in a desk drawer, but they weren't using them either.

<comment><USER28> > _I understand what [a slide rule is] FOR, but as a means of calculation they > 're obsolete._

As a pedagogical tool it is much superior. People who spend a few months using a slide rule come to a strong intuitive understanding of logarithms that no number of purely symbolic exercises with logs can ever match. Slide rules are also quite efficient tools for doing approximate calculations, much faster than pen and paper.

For anything too sophisticated for a slide rule to handle, students should use a general-purpose programming language and a full-sized keyboard.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> You don't need a graphic calculator for high school. Hundreds of millions of kids in China and India graduate without one and do just fine. Differential calculus is now 400+ years old and generations of humans have done fine without a graphing calculator.

<comment><USER37> > You don't need a graphic calculator for high school.

Well, you need one if the instructor makes it a requirement, which my kid's high school does. They're actually tested on linear regression, but they don't know how to compute sum of least squares: they know how to type a list into their calculator and run the least squares function. It's on the exam, and if they don't have the TI graphing calculator with that exact function programmed into it, they fail the test.

<comment><USER36> Insane. What on earth is even going on in these school districts? Why don't they just ask TI to set the math curriculum next?

<comment><USER38> School should just replace the final exam with one question: What is the confirmation code on the receipt from your $100 TI Education Verification?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER39> It's fun to find the cheapest scientific calculator possible. Here's one for $1:

[https://www.aliexpress.com/item/32848639456.html?spm=a2g0o.p...](https://www.aliexpress.com/item/32848639456.html?spm=a2g0o.productlist.0.0.20f65e66p1pfoC&algo_pvid=f56f95ee-2a17-4eca-a0a3-e58c0caee983&algo_expid=f56f95ee-2a17-4eca-a0a3-e58c0caee983-33&btsid=103e61f1-2862-4bb7-852e-1728d3127f1e&ws_ab_test=searchweb0_0,searchweb201602_1,searchweb201603_52)

<comment><USER40> Wow, that looks like a pretty exact clone of the Casio FX-350MS [1]. Apart from the colour scheme, the shape of the directional keys, and some of the lettering, they're identical.

[1] [https://www.casio- intl.com/asia/en/calc/products/fx-350MS/](https://www.casio- intl.com/asia/en/calc/products/fx-350MS/)

<comment><USER41> Yeah, it's clearly a knockoff. They even borrowed the idea of having five red, dot-separated letters above the screen. S.U.P.E.R. probably means nothing, but if Casio has it, Kenko must have it too.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER42> I saw a youtube interviewing the guy that wrote the code for the HP-35. He said that David Packard got mad when he heard that every engineer in a certain division of HP was going to get their own HP-35. He said that one calculator could easily be shared among 4 or 5 people.

<comment><USER43> David Packard just wanted engineers to practice peer programming more

</comment></comment><comment><USER44> As someone who has just got out of the curriculum that enforces usage of the TI calculators, given the ubiquity of these devices, I wish it was used more in teaching students about low-level programming, hardware, etc. especially with older models such as the TI-84+ there's great hacking potential. Compared to programming on the modern software stack, the Z80 is minimal. Plus, who said it has to be in assembly? Forth would do!

Some of my own hacking attempts:

[1] [https://github.com/siraben/zkeme80/](https://github.com/siraben/zkeme80/)

[2] [https://github.com/siraben/ti84-forth/](https://github.com/siraben/ti84-forth/)

<comment><USER45> You can go more mainstream with the TI-84 Plus CE. It has a C compiler.

</comment></comment><comment><USER46> They didn't in New Zealand; Casio did. Then students come to university and stop using them much - too limited and primitive compared to computers and smartphones, too powerful for the courses where we're trying to teach and assess analytical maths skills.

</comment><comment><USER29> I doubt it does. Most of Asia you'd find Casio is the preferred brand, and TI, HP isn't even available.

The Casio ones should be cheaper in the US too(they usually cost around 10$), I would think them very popular there as well, unless perhaps TI and HP has some kind of nerfarious link up with the Dept of Education to monopolize the market.

</comment><comment><USER47> Not related to the monopoly stuff but I like HP calculators best! For college I used an HP 35S—it's a programmable scientific calculator and fun to program because it uses RPN stacks for calculations and storing results.

<comment><USER48> Nothing beats my old HP-48G that I used in college. Unfortunately, HP has all but left that space and my HP 35S (yes, I do own one) is but a shadow of what HP calculators once were.

<comment><USER46> Well, a 48GX would! (The same but with more RAM that's also expandable.) I have a 48G too, but nowadays I just use computers.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER49> Why have no edtechs created a low cost version of the TI-83/84? One that mirrors the functionality of the TI calcs so that they can still be used with textbooks that are dependent on those. The article estimates the TI's cost $15-20 to make, but even that seems very high for what they are.

I imagine the harder part is getting approval from the organizations that administer standardized tests like College Board and the states themselves.

<comment><USER50> There are a lot of buttons. Those probably push the BOM up. If you switched to using a shitty membrane keypad you could probably save a lot of money.

<comment><USER51> If I remember the innards of my TI-83 correctly (I used it during school 15 years ago, added LED lighting to the display and tore it apart for that purpose) Texas Instruments already uses a shitty membrane keypad. At least I don't remember seeing lots of microswitches.

<comment><USER50> It's possible. I'm old enough that I had an 82.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER52> Has math education actually improved with the introduction of calculators? Easy and equitable solution would be to remove them from classes and tests.

<comment><USER53> Has introducing students to a programmable computer dedicated to math improved math education? Yes, yes it has. Writing a program to automate certain computations certainly helps your understanding better than performing said computations by rote multiple times.

<comment><USER54> How often do high school students actually use graphing calculators to write programs? If it's only one day a year, then they can do that by going to the computer lab. I have doubts that graphing calculators provide any educational value except in rare instances. Are those rare instances worth every student having such an expensive thing for several years?

<comment><USER53> > How often do high school students actually use graphing calculators to write > programs?

In my experience that's where all the time saved by automating rote calculation went. Maybe this is a generational thing but for a lot of my peers Ti-84s were their first experience with programming. It's probably the only context where most students are exposed to computing that doesn't involve always connected data-harvesting.

> going to the computer lab

A student has no incentive to write programs if they aren't actually going to use them.

> Are those rare instances worth every student having such an expensive thing > for several years?

I remember buying mine at a flea market for literally a quarter. TI-84s have been around for so long that they're really only expensive if you're hellbent on only buying new. Every garage sale and Goodwill in the country has at least one of these for cheap.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER55> In highschool, I had a TI-83, and had fun doing things like programming blackjack on it, so I could look like I was doing work while having fun. I went to an engineering school and switched to an HP-48GX for my years at it, and fell in love with the RPN input. I miss that calculator, but not the TI.

I think I sold the HP 8 years after I bought it for $20 more than I bought it for. They were discontinued, and surveyors and others that had special modules that could plug into it would pay a premium for a replacement one.

<comment><USER56> I had a TI-86 and then won an HP-48GX. At some point the TI-86 was lost or stolen, I don't care, the HP-48GX was so much better. I especially liked working with units, which made everything in science classes that much more convenient. The only thing I missed about the TI-86 was the Mario clone, with level editor, and a puzzle game called DStar.

While the TI-83 and 86 had a pedestrian Z80, the HP series apparently had a weird nybble-serial architecture called Saturn that worked on 64-bit values.

<comment><USER57> While it didn't have Mario, the HP48GX did have an almost perfect clone of Phoenix. If it had been in color, I might have been convinced it was an emulation.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER58> The first program I ever wrote was a quadratic equation solver on a TI-82. Fond memories.

However, that was in the mid 90s.

It's shocking those calculators are still around and cost that much.

</comment><comment><USER59> Monopoly or not, I would have not been able to be nearly as lazy in high school math (circa 2000-2003) if not for the ability to program all the formulae into my TI-82. At the time the chance to trade study hours for video games, soccer and guitar was precious to me beyond measure.

</comment><comment><USER60> What I fail to understand is this teachers assumption of financial responsibility for an expense outside their contract. What kind of union are they running? Seriously, if all of the teachers simply refused to purchase mandated equipment for their students, the district would either have to assume that responsibility, or change policy. By "doing the best for the students", the teacher allows the district to go unaccountable for their decisions, perpetuating the problem.

I love teachers, family is full of them, and maybe they shouldn't allow themselves to be used so ruthlessly by the state?

<comment><USER61> As a Texas teacher's child, my answer is "what union"? TCTA (Texas Classroom Teachers' Association) appears to be toothless compared to the unions in other parts of the country: each year, my mom and every other teacher in her school district signed a blind contract that said that they could be sent to any school in the district, to teach any subject and grade level they were licensed for. In my mom's case, that could have been middle school elective Spanish (teach colors and numbers, sing fun songs, play Loteria, break up squabbling tweens), upper level high school Spanish (teach novels, mark essays, dealing with sophisticated language she hadn't since college) or 9th grade remedial US History (attempt to make surly teenagers remember important dates), the sort of change that could greatly expand her workload - hello, totally new lesson plans!

Not letting the state treat them that way would require looking at how their colleagues up north manage to get tenure and long-term contracts. But that would involve being in a true union.

</comment></comment><comment><USER62> Why do you even need a calculator for a math class? Plotting a graph is trivial. Calculating stuff too. Pen and paper, and eventually - a compass, ruler, protractor is all you need to understand high school math.

</comment><comment><USER63> _Giving a child a four-function calculator would leave them woefully underprepared for the requirements of more advanced math and science classes._

What math class requires a calculator?

I still remember struggling with my Differential Equations class (got a D on the midterm), and my father said "Why is it so hard? You were always so great at arithmetic, just use a calculator!"

At the time, a simple graphing calculator was high end (and out of my price range), nowadays I probably _could_ do most of that homework with an equation solving smart app)

<comment><USER64> Staring with calculus I think, we had problems that basically tested our ability to use a graphing calculator. The classes are designed to use one, and trying to do so without would be very tedious.

</comment></comment><comment><USER65> Standardization is inevitable. Teachers cannot and will not use calculators unless the module they are using (in the textbook or purchased separately) contains button by button instructions that work on the exact model of calculator used in their classroom. Something needs to be done to break the TI monopoly, though. There's no reason to pay that much for such primitive functionality, and the need for dedicated devices that can't be used to cheat won't go away.

<comment><USER66> Why "cannot"?

I am not so completely old and my textbooks didn't take any particular model of calculator into account. Especially all the university math classes where it started to matter.

<comment><USER65> Speaking of my high school teachers, some of them could, but enough of them needed to be walked through it themselves. We only used calculators with specially designed lesson plans. Most of the time they sat in plastic bins on the shelf. (I guess we were lucky that the school got grants to buy them.)

It's possible that it's different now. When I was in high school, using graphing calculators was a new trend, and a lot of the teachers resented having to teach something they didn't learn in school.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER67> Trurl's Machine, by Stanislaw Lem

Once upon a time Trurl the constructor built an eight-story thinking machine. When it was finished, he gave it a coat of white paint, trimmed the edges in lavender, stepped back, squinted, then added a little curlicue on the front and, where one might imagine the forehead to be, a few pale orange polkadots. Extremely pleased with himself, he whistled an air and, as is always done on such occasions, asked it the ritual question of how much is two plus two.

The machine stirred. Its tubes began to glow, its coils warmed up, current coursed through all its circuits like a waterfall, transformers hummed and throbbed, there was a clanging, and a chugging, and such an ungodly racket that Trurl began to think of adding a special mentation muffler. Meanwhile the machine labored on, as if it had been given the most difficult problem in the Universe to solve; the ground shook, the sand slid underfoot from the vibration, valves popped like champagne corks, the relays nearly gave way under the strain. At last, when Trurl had grown extremely impatient, the machine ground to a halt and said in a voice like thunder: SEVEN!

[...]

[https://books.google.nl/books?id=xhbFAgAAQBAJ&pg=PT21&lpg=PT...](https://books.google.nl/books?id=xhbFAgAAQBAJ&pg=PT21&lpg=PT21&dq=%22Once+upon+a+time+Trurl+the+constructor+built+an+eight- story+thinking+machine%22&source=bl&ots=NqPvRaqdoh&sig=ACfU3U2sG1psPfMgDit_OaRuP24tA20AyQ&hl=en&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwiu3KXXtInmAhUBjqQKHZMiD3sQ6AEwAHoECAoQAQ#v=onepage&q=%22Once%20upon%20a%20time%20Trurl%20the%20constructor%20built%20an%20eight- story%20thinking%20machine%22&f=false)

</comment><comment><USER68> My old company had the word 'Instruments' in its name but it was not a competitor to Texas Instruments. When I would meet people and tell them where I worked, they would often confuse it with TI. This was so widespread that my company made a t-shirt that had on it the slogan 'We don't make calculators.'

</comment><comment><USER69> I had a TI-89 in school because having CAS in your pocket was just plain awesome. Besides, it was much cheaper than mathmatica. Interestingly once I got into higher level[1] stuff the abilities of your calculator were of much less importance. Really computational stuff was done on a computer (in the lab) and any math in class could be handled with a basic calculator. When I sat for the FE and PE (fundamentals and professional engineering exams) they require you to use a _dumb_ calculator. No programmability allowed. [https://ncees.org/exams/calculator/](https://ncees.org/exams/calculator/)

[1] I have an electrical engineering degree from a US public university.

<comment><USER70> I took the FE in 2003 in Illinois. All I took in was my basic scientific calculator (no programability or graphing). I was shocked when they turned around (against our pre-exam instructions) and allowed non-querty graphing calculators. I went through the first half with my scientific calc, then ran home at lunch to get my TI-89 for the second half. Thankfully I lived nearby the testing facility. Passed the FE on the first try. I've never taken the PE (have never worked under one for the required period).

</comment></comment><comment><USER71> In our math classes in Hungary we could use any calculator we wanted, it doesn't cost too much to get one that can do trig functions and logarithm. One popular model was the Casio fx-82MS for $10-$20, but you can get cheaper models as well.

And the "problem" that teachers would not know how your particular brand works sounds weird. There are so many ways to figure this out. I mean the student can read the manual. Or ask for help from fellow students.

And our standardized secondary school graduation exam defines what you can do with calculators:

> On solving the problems, you may use a calculator that cannot store and > display textual information. You may also use any edition of the four-digit > data tables. The use of any other electronic device or printed or written > material is forbidden!

> The use of calculators in the reasoning behind a particular solution may be > accepted without further mathematical explanation in case of the following > operations: addition, subtraction, multiplication, division, calculating > powers and roots, n!, n-choose-k, replacing the tables found in the 4-digit > Data Booklet (sin, cos, tan, log, and their inverse functions), approximate > values of the numbers π and e, finding the solutions of the standard > quadratic equation. No further explanation is needed when the calculator is > used to find the mean and the standard deviation, as long as the text of the > question does not explicitly require the candidate to show detailed work. In > any other cases, results obtained through the use of a calculator are > considered as unexplained and points for such results will not be awarded.

By the way these sheets are publicly available even in English, e.g. from Spring 2019:

Basic level: [http://dload.oktatas.educatio.hu/erettsegi/feladatok_2019tav...](http://dload.oktatas.educatio.hu/erettsegi/feladatok_2019tavasz_kozep/k_matang_19maj_fl.pdf) Advanced level: [http://dload.oktatas.educatio.hu/erettsegi/feladatok_2019tav...](http://dload.oktatas.educatio.hu/erettsegi/feladatok_2019tavasz_emelt/e_matang_19maj_fl.pdf)

</comment><comment><USER72> It's too bad, because much nicer calculators can be made now, e.g. [https://www.swissmicros.com/dm42.php](https://www.swissmicros.com/dm42.php)

</comment><comment><USER73> I honestly think I'm better at math / CS for going with an HP48G. RPN / stack based calculator. Drastically better construction. Luckily I went to a school district that allowed it.

</comment><comment><USER74> I went to high school outside America. We not only did not have calculators, we were not allowed to use them in our tests.

Why the hell does a math class need a calculator?

And if you need a calculator, just allow a smartphone instead.

Its a strange class indeed that forbids phones but allows calculators. What a precise way to thread requirements precisely to require more useless equipment.

American schools are so annoying.

</comment><comment><USER75> Any other example of consumers products that haven't improved dramatically for a couple decade and exist contrary to the technological progress?

What comes to my mind - a great adoption of electronic dictionaries in Japan (電子辞書). Many are Japanese who study English, find it more convenient.

</comment><comment><USER76> It might be a bit late to ask, but out of curiosity, what kind of tools are you using nowadays to replace calculators? I prefer free and open source ones, so I have a shortcut to open a terminal with GNU Octave (or python if not installed).

I use xcas when I need CAS, but the interface is a bit unwieldy.

</comment><comment><USER77> I went to school in the 90-00s. We started off with log-table sheets at our high school. I bought a Casio FX-991ms at some point of time in the university. I still love that machine. It has moved along with me across thousands of miles. It works perfectly even after a decade.

</comment><comment><USER78> Out-of-Band Story: I was at the Apple WWDC in the 1990s, where the guy demoed the graphing calculator app. He had been working on it as an unpaid "pseudo- hacker" for quite some time.

He received a standing ovation.

Don't you just love geeks?

<comment><USER79> Interesting story about the Apple Graphing Calculator app that I probably saw here on HN a couple years ago: [https://www.pacifict.com/Story/](https://www.pacifict.com/Story/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER80> On US.

We never had restrictions, HP, Casio, TI, just bring your favourite one into the class.

</comment><comment><USER81> Its funny, that since the TI was allowed to be used during math tests, I thought it was only for school and I should get a "real" calculator from HP when I left school.

</comment><comment><USER82> I'm surprised no one just clones TI-85 etc. from scratch. A small pcb, cheap switches and buttons, a cheap micro controller and cheap lcd screen is all you would need.

</comment><comment><USER83> Sorry for offtopic. What is the best iOS alternative to ti89? Ever since leaving Android that is was I miss the most.

</comment><comment><USER84> Any know if there's an archive of TI-83 calculator games?

(And, ideally, the ability to play them on the computer.)

<comment><USER76> IIRC, TI-Planet has a lot of those, as well as emulators.

<comment><USER76> Mostly in French, unfortunately.

Games: [https://tiplanet.org/forum/archives_list.php?cat=Jeux+z80](https://tiplanet.org/forum/archives_list.php?cat=Jeux+z80)

A lot of emulators there: [https://tiplanet.org/forum/archives_list.php?cat=Utilitaires...](https://tiplanet.org/forum/archives_list.php?cat=Utilitaires+PC+z80)

One of them is web-based: [https://tiplanet.org/forum/archives_voir.php?id=1414](https://tiplanet.org/forum/archives_voir.php?id=1414) (also hosted online at brandonmeyer.net/projects/TI8XEmu/TI8XEmu.html but I can't access it now)

Coming second as communities are Omnimaga, and ti-calc.org

I feel like the only redeeming quality of these calculators is the community around them; and they make kids interested into programming and electronics. The landscape is looking better and better for who wants to hack his calculator.

Of course, the most convenient emulator is offered by numworks for their calculator: it's right there, on their website: [https://www.numworks.com/simulator/](https://www.numworks.com/simulator/)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER85> Used, working, TI 83-Plus calculators are fairly cheap on eBay. Saw several for $27 to $35, shipped.

</comment><comment><USER86> As usual, xkcd [https://xkcd.com/768/](https://xkcd.com/768/) is relevant.

</comment><comment><USER87> This same topic showed up on pol 3 weeks ago.

</comment><comment><USER88> I still fail to understand why they shouldn't just be allowed to use computers. This is a failure of the education system to adapt.

<comment><USER89> Part of the problem is affordability of $100 calculators for both the students and the educators. That problem remains, and is worse, if you want to get them to buy and use computers.

However, this was partially addressed in the article. Phones (if students have them) have apps which make solving the math problems too easy, scan the problem and the steps and solution are displayed. So teachers can't permit them in the classroom if they eliminate the learning objective entirely.

With regard to computers, though, Desmos [0] was spoken of in the article. They have apps for computers and phones, and they've made some headway with making the computer program available when students have mandatory tests that are already on computers.

I don't think your judgement really makes sense, the education system is adapting. But it's a long process and the problem still remains, if educational materials and curricula require the use of technology, and the teachers and students can't afford it, then it's still a failure or sets up classes of people to fail due to lack of economic viability.

[0] [https://www.desmos.com/](https://www.desmos.com/)

<comment><USER88> "Phones (if students have them) have apps which make solving the math problems too easy, scan the problem and the steps and solution are displayed" If teaching is obsoleted by technology then it is teaching that must change not the technology.

<comment><USER89> The material is not obsoleted. We wouldn't say that literacy was useless because phones can read off everything to us. Why would we say the same about K-12 mathematics?

<comment><USER88> Phones can read things to us but it's grossly inefficient and alot of literacy is about reading comprehension. The same can't be said for most of K-12 mathematics.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Litecoin [LTC] X11 hardfork at block 564,480 - <AUTHOR> https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=549572.0;all <comment><USER2> > We don't need the Litecoin developers. > We need the majority to support > this to make this hardfork work.

This is a pretty interesting comment from the person who is proposing the fork. I wonder how the currency will split if a sizable amount of people switch to this method of mining? Will the devs be forced to accept their fork or will this just split off into a litecoin 2.0 that is ASIC resistant which previously mined coins grandfathered into this new fork

<comment><USER3> Either outcome could happen. The devs can stick with the old fork, they can move to the new one. To my knowledge there's no reason 2 litecoin networks can't exist at the same time, aside from being inconvenient & confusing.

<comment><USER2> Could this lead to double spend scenerios? For example, I have 10 LTC on the current system and these guys fork to form a new network. Can I then spend the 10 LTC I have twice, once on their new network and once on the old network?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Isn't it just a matter of time that someone will make ASICs also for X11? To me any type of algorithm can eventually be implemented in an ASIC. Perhaps some algorithms take longer than others, but it's just a matter of time.

<comment> wes-exp ASIC inevitability is a falsehood. Software can be modified very quickly, whereas hardware requires much longer development cycles. Software can always outpace hardware, if the community is willing to commit to ASIC resistance by changing the software.

<comment><USER5> That's why FPGAs exist

And I'm sure existing ASICS can be adapted to new algorithms, they're developed in VHDL/Verilog, surely, not as easily as changing an FPGA, still, it won't be a work from scratch.

<comment><USER6> The only way to exclude FPGAs from mining a cryptocurrency is to create a problem that requires the average FPGA to completely (not partially) self- reconfigure faster than the average FPGA's configuration time in order to be competitive. Either that or somehow create a problem that requires more LUTs and logic cells than an FPGA is capable of supplying. But then you could just make multiple FPGAs work together. So you'd need some kind of latency based problem to make it difficult for multiple FPGAs to work together.

Has anybody tried looking at making GPUs do what they are designed for? Namely sorting and rasterizing triangles. If a cryptocurrency was made to use a very large number of triangles as the problem, perhaps GPUs would be the most efficient device to solve it with.

<comment><USER3> FPGA's rule themselves out. You can use them for prototyping your ASIC, but FPGA's are extremely costly per silicon area, and generally less power efficient than anything else.

Oh, and nobody is using triangles because hashing lends itself so well to Proof-of-Work. The "work" must be difficult to perform, but very easy to verify. Like a zip file that takes 20 minutes to compress, but only 5 seconds to unzip. To verify a triangle you would have to re-render it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Yesterday something about Auroracoin (never heard of it before), now Litecoin is undergoing some big change, and meanwhile the value of my bitcoins went down 10% overnight. Can anyone explain to me what is happening? Why does anyone care about Auroracoin and a Litecoin protocol change and why does it drive another cryptocurrency's value down?

<comment><USER8> * Apparently the Auroracoin thing was actually a planned fork.

* This Litecoin thing appears to be some random person with no authority trying to make stuff happen.

* Bitcoin price is falling because news is claiming banks in China must close all accounts related to bitcoin-businesses by April 15th. I don't know if it's true or not, but I'm not panic-selling my coins.

<comment><USER7> Thanks!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I don't see what the point of this is? ASICs are actually good; they perform the necessary proof of work while using a lot less power. Running all those GPUs is a needless waste.

It sounds like this is just some GPU owners wanting to turn back time to protect their assets.

<comment><USER10> the energy usage of bitcoin and the altcoins is, in my opinion, one of the few things that could threaten its viability long term. people aren't going to be able to understand the reasoning that this is the cost of decentralization - it's going to look like a phenomenal waste of energy, even if low-powered ASICs are doing most of the work. not that the average consumer has a problem with that, but govts might.

i wonder if there is a solution to the byzantine general's problem with that is resistant to 50% malicious nodes but doesn't require so much energy overhead. even proof-of-stake coins still require energy wasting.

<comment><USER11> > people aren't going to be able to understand the reasoning that this is the > cost of decentralization

As compared to entire blocks of office high-rises in every major city required for our current financial system?

<comment><USER10> Well, commercial organizations that own office space are already forming and expanding around BitCoin - so the cost of keeping those businesses physically open would be _in addition to_ the cost of keeping the BitCoin network up and running. It's not like we're getting rid of the need for buildings.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> What I don't get is what's with those hundreds of alt coins. Sometimes I get a feeling that people who missed the BTC growth are just trying to make up for it by creating their own coin. I understand that people are passionate about it and all, but it makes much more sense to have a few coins with plenty of people working on it rather than a new coin popping up every week, and being forgotten a few weeks later.

It's like everyone would fork Linux kernel, make some adjustment and try to promote it as something new rather than doing a pull request.

Or, like everyone was writing their own blogging engines after WP's success.

<comment><USER13> There is a lot of nonsense, but there are also some fascinating ideas being tested out. For example I hope that "Proof of Stakes" instead of "Proof of Work" can succeed, because I dislike the waste of energy that comes with Bitcoin mining. Then there are differing distribution models, or the "encode a contract" approaches. Anonymity is another interesting field.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> What is X11?

<comment><USER15> It is a combination of hashing algo's[1]: "X11 consists of the following algorithms: blake, bmw, groestl, jh, keccak, skein, luffa, cubehash, shavite, simd, and echo."

[1]: [http://www.reddit.com/r/CryptoCurrency/comments/21bely/have_...](http://www.reddit.com/r/CryptoCurrency/comments/21bely/have_you_already_heard_of_x11_hashing_algorithm/)

<comment><USER14> Yeah that's the only thing I found about it, but who created this, where is the specifications, tests, etc.

This looks like someone took many different hash functions and for some reason thinks it's "anti-ASIC"...

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> I wonder how long it will take before people start using Proof-of-Stake coins, which don't have the ASIC mining issues at all. (Naturally, because "mining" with Proof-of-Stake is not a competition of processing power)

<comment><USER17> There are still problems with proof-of-stake being more manipulable and fork- prone: the incentives to converge on a single consensus are much lower. (Search for ["proof of stake" "nothing at stake"] for some related discussion.)

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> Why not use Primecoin or Riecoin algorithms? Those won't work on GPUs/ASICS either and produce some actual scientific value.

<comment><USER19> Only two downsides:

1) The existing algorithms for finding prime chains or clusters are rather involved, and people may keep superior algorithms private.

2) They're not very botnet-resistant.

<comment><USER3> Point #1 is actually kind of exciting to me.

<comment><USER19> Yes, as an algorithm designer myself, I can see the attraction:-) I'd make a bad competitive miner though, as I'd be too eager to publish my optimizations, and get some recognition for that...

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> [http://lmgtfy.com/?q=altcoin+pumps](http://lmgtfy.com/?q=altcoin+pumps)

</comment><comment><USER13> I guess that means the (tiny) amount of LTC I own has just doubled.

</comment><comment><USER21> so this hardforks into a new currency and you can still sell LTC on an exchange which still supports it. Sounds like built in double spent.

<comment><USER22> >a new currency

That's the answer to your question. It really is a new currency, but everyone with Litecoins gets an amount of the new currency equal to their Litecoin stake.

After that, Litecoin and Litecoin X11 are separate entities, which will not have the same price. Possibly Litecoin X11 will be worthless, if it doesn't get much support. Like any digital currency of this kind, it will be worth whatever people are willing to pay for it. Exchanges will have to opt in to accept Litecoin X11, as a separate currency from Litecoin.

<comment><USER3> Or, if the buy-in is significant, Litecoin goes the way of the DoDo and Litecoin X11 replaces it under the Litecoin moniker.

<comment><USER22> That's possible, although it's less likely because if the X11 fork won, then there's a chance the project would lose the original Litecoin developers.

That would be very disruptive, and would probably pull the price down, and that is a risk which may deter some people from using the X11 fork.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> How can that site break so much on mobile devices/small screens, wth completely unreadable. How do they do that escape from view effect?

</comment><comment><USER5> I don't know what's the X11 protocol, but to think a protocol can be "ASIC resistant" looks naive

Scrypt has a bigger memory footprint, but ASICs can work with more memory, no problem

Not to mention decreasing mineability may end up isolating their fork (causing their value to go down)

<comment><USER24> The point of scrypt isn't really to be "ASIC-resistant", but to make it much more expensive to build ASICs to efficiently reverse its outputs.

<comment><USER5> I haven't heard any explanation why this would be so

Ok, this explains a little bit about X11 [http://www.reddit.com/r/CryptoCurrency/comments/21bely/have_...](http://www.reddit.com/r/CryptoCurrency/comments/21bely/have_you_already_heard_of_x11_hashing_algorithm/)

But whatever a GPU can do, a properly designed ASIC _can do as well_

It seems they're counting on implementation time for new ASICs for this algorithm.

<comment><USER24> Indeed. They seem to be switching out and tunable unpredictable memory access (i.e. have to spend a lot of money building an ASIC with a lot of die area -- see the scrypt paper to understand why: [https://www.tarsnap.com/scrypt/scrypt.pdf](https://www.tarsnap.com/scrypt/scrypt.pdf)) for a faster but more "obfuscated" construction. The circuit needed to implement this will be more complex, but it will be much cheaper to mass- produce.

In short, this is what happens when people who know nothing about cryptography try to sell their unexamined constructions.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


The New York Times Introduces a Web Site (1996) - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/1996/01/22/business/the-new-york-times-introduces-a-web-site.html <comment><AUTHOR> The oldest snapshot on Archive.org is from November 1996: [http://web.archive.org/web/19961112181513/http://www.nytimes...](http://web.archive.org/web/19961112181513/http://www.nytimes.com/)

Back then, they even had a low-bandwidth version of the site: [http://web.archive.org/web/19990117023050/http://www.nytimes...](http://web.archive.org/web/19990117023050/http://www.nytimes.com/info/contents/textpath.html)

The website included various tutorials on how to use it, including a guide that covers the different browsers. None of the browsers listed are actively developed today: [http://web.archive.org/web/19961112182937/http://www.nytimes...](http://web.archive.org/web/19961112182937/http://www.nytimes.com/subscribe/help/browser.html)

edit: A couple of other observations:

\- How many other content websites have published for nearly this long and yet have their oldest articles remain on their original URLs? Most news sites can't even do a redesign without breaking all of their old article URLs.

\- I like this Spiderbites feature -- a sitemap of a year's worth of articles (likely for webcrawlers at the time): [http://spiderbites.nytimes.com/free_1996/](http://spiderbites.nytimes.com/free_1996/)

<comment><USER2> That awkward moment when website you made 20 years ago is better to read articles.

<comment><USER3> >"That awkward moment when website you made 20 years ago is better to read articles."

Am I the only one who thinks that the whitespace heavy and well designed NYT modern site is better? Good line height, good type choice, very good readability.

As opposed to times new roman at 1.0 line height, is that really the pinnacle of readability? Eight grade book report format?

<comment> fsck--off I use a low brightness setting on my laptop because I am uncomfortable looking at bright screens for extended periods of time. I prefer the body text to be #000 on something close to #FFF (this website uses #828282, which is fine for me.) The Times uses #333 for their body text which is probably enough contrast for bright screens, but it is noticeably poorer on the dimmer screen that I use. I don't see a reason to make the text more difficult for the people with poor vision, especially elderly, who on the whole have poorer vision, to read. I can use extensions and overwrite their CSS to change this, but I shouldn't have to.

The fixed headers are very annoying on small laptops, where vertical screen space is already limited. It makes no sense to stuff the main navigation menu into a hamburger bar on the FRONT PAGE of a newspaper web site so that a tiny amount of white space may be added to the sides.

A navigation bar shouldn't scroll down the screen with me and steal screen space when I'm reading an article. I would rather hit the back button, change tabs, or scroll to the top and click on a different section when I'm done reading an article. And the layout is just ugly when Javascript is turned off because there is no spacing between the full size images and the body text.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> It's pretty impressive how good a job the NYT has done of maintaining historical articles.

You can even find quite old articles from key historical times and they're presented just like articles today. For example, the famous Crittenden Compromise is at [http://www.nytimes.com/1861/02/06/news/the-crittenden- compro...](http://www.nytimes.com/1861/02/06/news/the-crittenden- compromise.html?pagewanted=all)

<comment><USER5> There's so much opportunity for Orwellian abuse in this new archival model.

Sure there's archive.org - but in the old model, you'd say something in print, copy it a million or so times, then distribute it on paper around the world.

If an evildoer wanted to change a claim from say, 20 years ago, they'd have to create a forgery that looks like it's 20 years old, then secretly swap out all the archival copies in libraries and get large-scale mass obedience from librarians or manually make the swap at each library individually.

These days, you need to add an exclusion to the archive.org bot in robots.txt and then flip a few bits. It's a different ballgame.

In the traditional model, someone could find say, an original copy of the 20 year old newspaper and present that as evidence. Forging that document would be sufficiently hard for a single individual. But in the new model, claiming something is an "original copy" of a web page can be easily disputed because such a forgery can be trivially crafted.

Think about the implications in places with large civil unrest, very little free press, and mostly state-owned media. What's the solution for _those_ societies?

It's a problem.

<comment><USER6> > in the old model, you'd say something in print, copy it a million or so > times, then distribute it on paper around the world.

> If an evildoer wanted to change a claim from say, 20 years ago, they'd have > to create a forgery that looks like it's 20 years old, then secretly swap > out all the archival copies in libraries and get large-scale mass obedience > from librarians or manually make the swap at each library individually.

It has happened: [http://www.unz.com/plee/india-v-china-border- games/](http://www.unz.com/plee/india-v-china-border-games/) (the relevant bit begins at "India's claim to AP is complicated in an interesting way.")

You're correct, of course, that it's become easier in the modern model. But people who feel strongly about the more adversarial issues of the modern day already archive enemy publications themselves, lest they mysteriously change in the future. The climate change issue is full of this sort of thing.

Even the fact that forged "original copies" are easy to create can be overcome; you just need to contemporaneously deposit a copy somewhere that creates records of when you make deposits and withdrawals. Again, the amount of adversarial forethought required has changed enough to make a significant difference.

I wish archive.org wouldn't delete old material based on new robots.txt policies, though. :/

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> And thanks to them, we have the world's greatest Perl debugger/profiler: [https://metacpan.org/pod/Devel::NYTProf](https://metacpan.org/pod/Devel::NYTProf)

</comment><comment><USER8>
        The electronic newspaper
        (address: http:/www.nytimes.com)

hilarious, but—then again—the colon-double slash still isn't clear to most people.

<comment><USER9> Remember when people coming from the DOS/Windows world would say "reverse- backslash"?

<comment><USER10> Remember? I almost never hear people refer to it as anything other than a 'forward slash' which makes me ask them: 'so what's a regular slash look like?'

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> It's funny because this is the digital version of an article that was printed in a newspaper about that newspaper going digital.

If only they had any idea of the pain they were about to cause themselves. :)

<comment><USER12> The pain would have come either way. Probably did better by understanding it's evolution then just ignoring it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> some behind-the-scenes from those days [http://www.nytimes.com/2016/01/22/insider/1996-in-gamble- new...](http://www.nytimes.com/2016/01/22/insider/1996-in-gamble-newspapers- push-into-on-line-publishing.html)

</comment><comment><USER14> I would love to see the complete evolution of the home page.

<comment><USER15> Scraped from archive.org: [http://imgur.com/a/PlCfX](http://imgur.com/a/PlCfX)

<comment><USER14> wow, surprisingly consistent layout!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> > "The market is booming for newspapers on the World Wide Web," Mr. Kelsey > said.

Not anymore. :)

</comment><comment><USER17> I find it interesting that they explicitly excluded reporting that appears in the news paper. They were on the web early but with caution.

> The New York Times on the Web, as the electronic publication is known, > contains ..., reporting that does not appear in the newspaper, ..."

</comment><comment><USER18> My impression is the mercury news from san jose had an earlier, if paid, presence.

Funny how the NYT wanted to charge nearly two dollars to allow you to print older articles. Asking people to pay for the own digitization.

<comment><USER19> I'm pulling this mostly from my decaying memory but nando.net (Raleigh? News and Observer) was neck-and-neck with the SJ Mercury with a web presence. Many of the early newspaper web sites were simply HTML variations on existing online presences (CI$, Prodigy, AOL, etc).

<comment><USER20> You're correct. News and Observer (nando.net I think) was a daily visit for me back in the mid 90's. It was the first one I found which provided a full newspaper without being hidden in a walled garden and without needing monthly fees. AP & Reuters were available online but locked behind a very expensive paywall.

Nando was the first time I read of breaking news online. The story on the Oklahoma City bombing jolted me awake one morning. Reading Nando over coffee on my tiny 12 inch screen of a Macintosh LC.

I've often wondered if they could have leveraged their very early lead into something else.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> Who had their first website online back then in 1996 as well?

 _raises hand_

Good memories... Claris Home Page!

</comment><comment><USER22> After 20 years, they still are adapting to the 'new' platform. Look through their site with fresh eyes: If you were designing a news website (rather than moving a newspaper to this new platform), how many design, UI and functionality choices would you make differently?

A quick start:

* The separation of different forms of content: They don't really mix text with video, images and graphics, even though most web-native bloggers will do it. They seem to lack fluency with mixing media; it's a project for them. They'll staple a video and decorate text with images and graphics, but they don't really commuicate with it; they don't say, 'here's how Clinton responded to Sanders:" <video>, or, 'here was the scene when the earthquake struck' <video>, or even in a movie review, here's what the scene looks like: <video> or <image>. Instead, they try to describe the visual with text. Even explanatory graphics are a separate, special production, on a separate page.

* The font in their title: Back when printing fancy fonts was a technological feat, this font communicated that they were serious and sophisticated. Now, if you step back and ignore the history, it looks like a kid playing with fonts. (Look at it this way: would you _ever_ use that font on a website you were designing?). It says, insists even: We're anchored to the paper age and will never let go. We're the old, dying generation. If you want something new, go elsewhere.

* The discoverability of content: Obviously mimicing a newspaper, but a bad choice for the web. How many links are on that home page (scroll down)? And even more content doesn't even appear there. All that hard work and content, unlikely ever to be found, buried and lost forever. It's tragic. But that's what they did in the hard copy newspaper so I guess it's ok.

* Also, where are stories updated since I visited a couple hours ago? Oh look, if I look at every link a red 'updated' indicator is next to some links (just like the web 20 years ago!), which I see if I examine every one of them (and how do I identify brand new links in this massive page of links?) - but where in this multi-page story are the new parts? I guess I'll just re-read the whole thing.

I say this all out of love. They are an very important institution. The news business is hard enough; stop handicapping yourselves! From the outside they look like they still, in 2015, haven't fully embraced the new technology. What would you say about another business' web team (that was not adapting a newspaper to the web) that produced a site that looked like this? Egads. [1]

EDIT: Some minor edits and additions

[1] I'm not blaming the web developers; I assume they are working within the general constraint of: Make it look like the newspaper.

<comment><USER23> Just because something is in vogue doesn't mean it is the right answer in the long term. Their mission is NOT about generating more pageviews in the short term to rack up ad revenue but stick to being a reliable source of information. Outlets like Buzzfeed have their own place but that doesn't mean New York Times need to "adapt" to become one of those. That's the worst decision they can make. People who go to New York Times are not there because they're bored and want to read the next "what sex and the city character are you?". They are there because they want to stay on top of _only_ what matters _today_ , which means not everyone will appreciate it if the front page is an infinite scroll page of links. Also your opinion about their font is your opinion. I am fond of it. Lastly, there are tons of articles with embedded media, here's one: [http://www.nytimes.com/2016/01/20/nyregion/bronx-school- embr...](http://www.nytimes.com/2016/01/20/nyregion/bronx-school-embraces-a- new-tool-in-counseling-hip-hop.html)

<comment><USER22> > Just because something is in vogue doesn't mean it is the right answer in > the long term. Their mission is NOT about generating more pageviews in the > short term to rack up ad revenue

Nothing I mentioned was abouut trends or short term page view revenue. It's about making their site more functional, improving their content by taking advantage of multimedia (hardly a trend by now) and making their excellent content more available to their readers.

> there are tons of articles with embedded media, here's one: > [http://www.nytimes.com/2016/01/20/nyregion/bronx-school- > embr...](http://www.nytimes.com/2016/01/20/nyregion/bronx-school-embr..).

In that article, the photos are what I meant by 'decorative' media (I'll agree it's not a perfect choice of word). the not integral to the story - you could skip the photos and not miss anything. The video is separate from the text of the story; they are not integrated; from reading the story, There is no indication that the author of the text knows that the video exists.

What I see many amateur bloggers do is tell one story and use the right tool for the right moment. Where text tells the the story best, use that; switch to video/audio/whatever when that does best. The story is what matters, not the media used. As one possible example:

 _At New Visions Charter High School in the Bronx, here 's how one innovative class starts its day:_

<video of segment class> Click <here> to watch the full class (45 min.)

 _What you just saw is a new school program that seeks to use hip-hop music to reach teenagers who may not respond to more traditional counseling. Called hip-hop therapy, it encourages them to give voice to their day-to-day struggles in neighborhoods where poverty and crime are constants, and provides a foundation for school leaders to engage directly with them in a way that seems more enjoyable than intrusive._

<comment><USER23> Video is popular nowadays not because that's what users want but because that's what generates more ad revenue for media. There are certain cases where video storytelling is better than textual/visual storytelling but very rarely so. In case you have forgotten, there's this thing called "TV" that has been in the video space long before Internet came along. That didn't mean NYT had to turn themselves into CNN. I would _never_ visit a NYT article if they start autoplaying videos on their website, for the same reason I never visit college humor anymore (they used to be a nice fun site but at certain point they started only serving videos, and nobody has time for videos)

<comment><USER22> Separating mediums, text and video, is I think an archaic perspective on communication. Convergence happened long ago (for bloggers, as I've mentioned a few times).

We should be fluent enough to use whatever medium best gets across the next idea in the article.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> come on NYTimes, update the iOS app for iPad Pro --- it currently is gigantic (I presume because the screen design is just a scaled-up version of the iPad Air)

<comment><USER25> It is a valid concern and an excellent bookmark to their original challenge with multiple browsers. Today people read the web on phones from 4" diagonal to tablets 12" to laptops 12" to desktops 37". And designing something which is consumed comfortably across that range is not a trivial task.

<comment><USER24> I agree it's a challenge

I am also a paid subscriber and so I have a vested interest in seeing them do this right

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> "..the Web as being similar to our traditional print role -- to act as a thoughtful, unbiased filter and to provide our customers with information they need and can trust."

Unbiased? Some quality reporting to be sure, especially when politics aren't involved, but they jumped the bias shark a long time ago.

</comment><comment><USER27> I like to call the incognito window my nytimes reader. I paid for the nytimes for a bit but it costs more per week than a monthly netflix subscription and it feels stupid to pay for not knowing how to use the incognito window. It's like a "I don't know how to use software" tax.

<comment><USER28> > it feels stupid to pay for not knowing how to use the incognito window

That's not what you're paying for. You're paying journalists to research and fact check important news stories, and for developers to build interesting and novel ways to display content, and about a million other things that I'm not going to list here. It's one thing to get around the paywall because you don't read NYT often or don't have the money and wouldn't pay anyway, but if you've got the means to pay then you probably should.

And before someone says something to the extent of "the NYT is a rag, they print misinformation all the time!" I'll preemptively say that every writer has their own internal biases and you should ready multiple news sources if you want to distill some semblance of the "truth." I don't think there's any denying that NYT is at the very least in the upper tier of news organizations today.

<comment><USER26> However it costs something like $37 per month. I've been a long time subscriber but that's very steep considering that barely cheaper than the print version.

<comment><USER29> It's $15 a month (3.75/wk). I don't know why you believe the cost is $37, but that is not accurate.

<comment><USER30> It's $3.75 a week for Web and smartphone access only. For Web and tablets it's $5 a week, and for both it's $8.75/wk.

<comment><USER31> Tablets have web browsers too :)</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>