Mark Zuckerberg says he's no longer atheist,believes religion is very important - <AUTHOR> https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/acts-of-faith/wp/2016/12/30/mark-zuckerberg-says-hes-no-longer-an-atheist-believes-religion-is-very-important/ <comment><USER2> Zuckerberg: Merry Christmas and Happy Hanukkah

Commenter: Aren't you an atheist?

What a non-sequitur. I tell someone "have a good trip" even though I'm not going on the trip. I tell someone "Good luck with that promotion" even though it isn't my paycheck. Why would it be surprising that an atheist wished someone Merry Christmas or Happy Hanukkah?

<comment><USER3> Because a large number of atheists believe that even acknowledging a religion is a slippery slope into accepting its ideas as having validity.

Even describing oneself as agnostic is enough to drag people over from /r/atheism on Reddit into insisting that such a thing is impossible and you must either be religious or atheist and if somebody should insist that no, they're quite open-minded but see no hard evidence for either World view, they will be shouted down and called a liar.

Some parts of modern atheism is so toxic, it hardly a surprise that so many people wish to reject it. This is a perfect example of the kind of interaction that makes some people think atheists are just inconsiderate dickheads lacking basic manners or empathy.

<comment><USER4> Oh please. Either you're exaggerating, or you've been going to /r/atheism looking to start fights.

In regards to 'agnostic', what the word literally means is that you aren't certain. There are agnostic theists and agnostic atheists. If someone asks if you believe in God and you say you're agnostic, you're not answering the question completely. That's all people are saying, don't let it get to you.

<comment><USER3> There you go. You're doing it. Stop it.

I used to hang around in /r/agnostic and left because of the constant trolling from people insisting this argument you're making is valid. It isn't. It is perfectly possible to say "I have no evidence to support either world view, but plenty of others do, and I would like to see more of that before coming to a decision on my own".

Do I believe in the flying spaghetti monster? No. Why? Because I know exactly how it was conceived and why. Do I believe in the miracles the Catholic church claim for their saints and figureheads such as Jesus? Literally no fucking clue because I don't have primary source evidence. Could be true, could be bullshit. I'm not going to come down one way or the other without more evidence.

Your argument that I _must_ feel one way or the other, and I'm lying if I don't, is not just lacking empathy, patronising and rude, it's philosophical nonsense.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Seems like Zuck is trying to get ready for that political future....

[https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2016/dec/08/mark- zuck...](https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2016/dec/08/mark-zuckerberg- political-office-facebook-control)

</comment><comment><USER6> Believing that "religion is very important" is not the same as _not_ being an atheist.

I think that believing in Santa Claus, for instance, is a good (if not important) thing, at a certain age, but that does not make _me_ a believer.

<comment><USER7> He did reply to "aren't you an atheist?" with "no". But he also didn't commit to a specific religion in a most weaselly way (also, "Merry Christmas and Happy Hanukkah"?).

What's the problem, Zuck? Afraid to tell us the truth? Perhaps your beliefs are a _private_ matter?

<comment><USER8> He could, of course, say that nobody is forced to share their beliefs on Facebook. (My own "religion" is currently blank, for instance.)

Still I get the impression that Facebook does so much tracking of users via embedded wotsits that they know your religion / politics / sexuality et cetera...

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Seems like a very calculating answer from a very calculating person. I don't intend that as a compliment.

</comment><comment><USER10> Are religious people more inclined to be heavy facebook users?

From an informal and limited survey of people I know, I'd believe this to likely be true.

In which case religion is very important. To facebook.

<comment><USER11> My personal experience says no to that claim. Atheists / agnostics are just as likely to be active on there. I would say that I think more women than men use facebook in my experience and I recall more women than men claim a religion.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Who cares?

<comment><USER13> I find Zuckerberg to be interesting, only because he started out so young (similiar in age to myself) and seems to be navigating a very political world and crafting a public image accordingly, so his choices to me are curious as he attempts to "brand himself" in today's climate. To me he seems to be setting himself to be a politician (or influential figure of some type).

<comment><USER14> It could be well-crafted, or it could just be part of Zuckerberg growing up. A lot of big changes happen between one's 20s and 30s, and having children, in particular, tends to change one's outlook dramatically.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> He's looking ahead to his run for president in 20 years ;)

</comment><comment><USER11> Family has a way of making you want to make order out of chaos, to tie yourself to humanity of the past, to create and carry on traditions that were part of the formation in you. And you can understand this inside and from the outside and see it as a good thing. You see the benefits of religion and realize the futility of arguing the inconsistencies of any given holy book. Because real life will present you with even more of them on a weekly basis.

</comment><comment><USER16> "..but now I believe religion is very important." as in keeping society structured.

Closet Atheism, trying to keep religion around because the social alternative is a hard vacuum.</comment>


5 features Opera Browser did first (2012) - <AUTHOR> https://www.slashgeek.net/2012/06/08/5-features-opera-browser-did-first/ <comment><USER2> Opera did not invent tabbed browsing. Adam Stiles introduced them on his SimulBrowse browser, later NetCaptor, in 1997.

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

[https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/josephbernstein/meet- th...](https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/josephbernstein/meet-the-man-who- invented-tabs)

And they appear to have first appeared on a browser in 1994 with the InternetWorks web browser:

[https://www.complex.com/pop-culture/2013/12/evolution-of- tab...](https://www.complex.com/pop-culture/2013/12/evolution-of-tabs-web- browser-internet)</comment>


Show HN: React Resolver – Async Rendering and Data-Fetching for React - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/ericclemmons/react-resolver

<comment><USER2> This is nice but I can imagine it would still require a lot of boilerplate code in order to integrate nicely into a flux architecture in a production app. Comparatively, I think Fluxible does a good job in separating the async logic while providing you with clean Flux terms. Would be interested to see some higher-level integration library with Redux, Alt or a flux library.

<comment><AUTHOR> It's not much more than an additional 1 or 2 decorators, & even those can be a local file specific to how you write your app. In my experience, I only add a `@dispatcher()` decorator above it, and use `@resolve` as normal. 1 line doesn't constitute "a lot of boilerplate" in my opinion :)

I intentionally didn't couple this with a specific Flux lib since _this solves an entirely different problem_ than maintaining application state.

Look forward the Redux & Alt example, though, as those will have a very terse, so you won't have to use your imagination anymore!

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Is React Resolver related to React Nexus[1]?

[1] [https://github.com/elierotenberg/react- nexus](https://github.com/elierotenberg/react-nexus)

<comment><AUTHOR> Hey Elie! Not directly, no. It looks like both of our projects originated from "real world apps" (as you say) with SEO requirements and, in my case in particular, ensuring mobile users get a response ASAP before React progressively enhances the page.

It looks like we've landed on about the same architectural solution given React's synchronous nature.

I'll have to check it out in more detail as, to be honest, I was more aware of the Nexus Flux library.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Nice to see some effort in this area. How is it compatible with the flux architecure?

<comment> mike-cardwell Seems incompatible to me. You don't fetch data inside the components when you're using Flux.

<comment><USER5> but isn't the plan with Relay to do just that? or not?

<comment><AUTHOR> You're correct in that Relay correctly identified the same architectural problem with having data requirements _far away_ from the components that actually need it.

This is why React Resolver was created, and from what I've seen, also spurred React Nexus & React Transmit as well.

On an related note, v1 of React Resolver explicitly stated how it was similar to Relay with regards to fetching data for components. I've since dropped that messaging to avoid confusion since Relay isn't even available yet :)</comment></comment></comment></comment>


7 Principles Of Clean And Optimized CSS Code - <AUTHOR> http://www.smashingmagazine.com/2008/08/18/7-principles-of-clean-and-optimized-css-code/ <comment><USER2>
      margin: { 10px 20px 30px 40px; }

lol, wat? that's not even proper syntax.

Good intentions and a few good practices, but not a great understanding of the deeper issues involved in maintaining stylesheets for large sites with multiple contributors.

I would add :

      - Automate rollups and minification as a part of the build process
      - Outline the structure of the CSS in comments at the beginning of each CSS document.
      - Don't worry about whitespace cause you're going to minify it anyways.
      - Browser-specific CSS files can work against you.
      - Well written CSS often requires little documentation.  Focus on creating attributes that make sense. Nobody wants to RTFM.

<comment><USER3> I about vomited when he claimed that CSS files alone were exceeding 30KB. I'm still a little sick to my stomach. :-(

Does that really happen? Are conditional comments and CSS hacks really absolutely necessary? I've done a fair bit of CSS drudge work, including for some moderately complicated layouts (and hated every moment of it), and never resorted to either. There always seems to be a better way if I think about it hard enough.

The tips were ... eh.

But I did really really like the graphics that he used in his examples, with a page from the site folding back to reveal the code underneath. That was sexy.

EDIT: Hell, all the JS for the photo gallery at [<http://davidmckayphotography.com/>], combined, is just a shade over 30KB, and it does some fairly heavy lifting. I really hope the guy was kidding about 30K of CSS.

<comment><USER4> It's not uncommon for files for enterprise sites to exceed 30KB. Ours is about 45KB, but we have some work to do on it. Oh, and we call customizations for our other clients, too. Keep in mind, that this is an uncompressed file, which does need pruning, rollups and compression.</comment></comment></comment>


High-fidelity 3D Haptic Shape Rendering on Handheld VR Controllers - <AUTHOR> http://dl.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=2984526 <comment><USER2> Demonstration video: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SC5v3u0vmm4](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SC5v3u0vmm4)

</comment><comment> gene-h One thing I have found with haptics is that like VR, it can make you very sick. It has been shown that haptics can cause pretty nasty cases of vertigo[0]. In this study, after using a haptics device for 10 minutes the user started experiencing vertigo which lasted several hours, with mild symptoms persisting for several days.

I have noticed many of the same effects using the novint falcon haptic controller. It almost feels as if your hand is being pushed on when in fact it is not.

[0][https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/14511456](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/14511456)

<comment><USER3> I think it's unfair to compare the "haptic" feedback of a person being spun in a cyclone simulator to someone being handed a ball to touch. Are you saying you feel like you had vertigo for several days after shooting the novint pistol?

<comment><USER4> On the other hand this proves that malicious software can intentionally harm the user even when the device is no longer in use.

<comment><USER5> Only with the user's full cooperation. Video games cause motion sickness in some people too, but we don't worry about malware showing us moving images. You'd just take the headset off, close your eyes or let go of the haptic feedback handset.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Had the chance to try to demo a couple of months ago. It was pretty compelling although the "controllers" were pretty bulky.</comment>


Understanding Python bytecode by implementing tail call optimization - <AUTHOR> http://blog.fastforwardlabs.com/post/117173339298/bytecode-hacking-for-great-justice

<comment><USER2> This code does not do what the author thinks it does:

        def factorial(N, result=1):
            if N == 1:
                return 1
            return factorial(N-1, N*result)

<comment><AUTHOR> No, but the time complexity is the same.

<comment><USER2> Okay but if you are going to call the function factorial, why not have it actually calculate a factorial? This would have done the job:

        def factorial(N, result=1):
            if N == 1:
                return result
            return factorial(N-1, N*result)

Assuming that you never call it with the result argument.

As written, it just looks like the author never ran the code.</comment></comment></comment>


Chrome delays throttling of tabs after user feedback - <AUTHOR> https://groups.google.com/a/chromium.org/d/msg/blink-dev/XRqy8mIOWps/Ctq56g4VBQAJ <comment><AUTHOR> Follow up to [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13471543](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13471543)

Unfortunately, our current implementation throttles WebSockets. Because of this we ARE NOT SHIPPING this intervention in M56.

The current plan is to disable time-budget background timer throttling for the pages with active connection (websocket, webrtc and server-sent events) and to ship in M57 (subject to further feedback). We will keep you updated with the progress.</comment>


The Chinese Way of Hacking - <AUTHOR> http://www.fastcompany.com/1766812/inside-the-chinese-way-of-hacking

<comment><USER2> tl;dr: Whether the attackers are criminals, government agents, or bored kids is unknown, and even whether the attacks really originate in China is in question. No description of "The Chinese Way of Hacking" is given, other than speculation that one exists.

<comment><USER3> At a guess - bored Chinese guy starts learning about hacking, so he can view stuff that's not allowed in China (i.e. porn). Bored Chinese guy gets interested in hacking. Next, he starts defacing sites, or gets involved in organized cyber-crime. He gets busted, and given a choice - prison time, or a job in intelligence.

<comment><USER4> There's no need to become a hacker for porn in China. Mostly people learn about hacking for flying over the great fire wall, for youtube/facebook/twitter etc.

The crackers forming is another story. Pirated Windows XP is everywhere, along with Internet Explorer 6 (what a surprise). That makes cracking easy, and so called safe guard softwares like 360 popular.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> >They basically assume that the National Security Agency (NSA) is in all their networks.

This a really interesting point. With all the media coverage to all the alleged Chinese hacks, we tend to forget that the US Government is likely engaging in the same activities. Would it surprise anyone if the US has been engaging in digital espionage on foreign governments? I would be surprised (and somewhat outraged given our defense budget) if we weren't.

<comment><USER6> Of course we do. And so do the french, germans, russians, brits, koreans, australians - well, you get the point.

And it's far from just against traditional enemies. Did you catch the incident where the Americans informed the Australians that the Chinese were in their federal minister's computer systems? [1] Wait, how did US intelligence know what what was going on in .au computers better than they did?

[1] [http://www.news.com.au/technology/federal-ministers- emails-s...](http://www.news.com.au/technology/federal-ministers-emails- suspected-of-being-hacked/story-e6frfrnr-1226029713668)

<comment><USER7> It's entirely plausible that US intellignce services have totally owned the entire IT infrastructure of the Australian Government, but this incident does not imply that. Google didn't have to hack other companies to know they'd been hacked by the same perpetrators. They learned of it when they traced back the hack on their own system.

<comment><USER6> If you're looking for smoking guns in state intelligence matters you either need to not be a civilian or wait 40 years after the event. For everyone else there is reading between the lines.

<comment><USER7> Sure, read between the lines, but discounting perfectly benign, more plausible explanations like the one I outlined is silly. (Why would the US hackers tip their hands to the Australian Government, if they got the information from hacking Australian Government computers? That would spark an international incident for no real benefit.)

<comment><USER6> Pretty out there for a "more plausible explanation" that hackers would be launching attacks from desktop pcs of high level australian government officials.

I'm not even sure what you're arguing about - you actually think either a) the US doesn't conduct cyber espionage or b) the US doesn't spy on it's friends?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Great, so in summary:

We don't really know if the chinese govt are involved, but we suspect they are. And we don't really know if the U.S govt are involved, but we suspect they are.

... hmmm

</comment><comment><USER9> Another article hopping on the cyberwar 2011 bandwagon. [1]

Even NPR ran a similar story that was just as sensationalist and vague.

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2659501></comment>


Espanso: Cross-Platform Text Expander Written in Rust - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/federico-terzi/espanso <comment><USER2> One major thing I'm liking about rust, besides it's "regular" pros is that it's fiercely crossplatform , hence pretty much a faster java. It also has a lot of competing nascent gui frameworks.

People have written iOS android xplat games on rust too.

I only wished rust compiled to JS,a la scala f# et al. Not asm.js but full blown with inter-op and everything and as a publicized feature.

<comment><USER3> I agree, but I'm wondering if there is anything inherent in its design that facilitates this. Or is it mostly attributable to the fact that it makes use of LLVM?

<comment><AUTHOR> It's also cargo and the way the build system works.

Build scripts in Rust are written in Rust, not some ad-hoc declarative build language. This is a really good decision because you can do insane shit in your build scripts.

Also macros, you can generate say bindings relatively easily.

I've been doing some cross-platform GPU stuff lately and Rust makes so much of this a breeze.

I can't imagine combining C++ projects this easily.

I'm really bullish on wgpu ([https://github.com/gfx-rs/wgpu- rs](https://github.com/gfx-rs/wgpu-rs)). It's the Rust implementation of the WebGPU standard. It goes beyond the web though, it's a really nice GPGPU API to work with and will be a popular API in the next decade.

<comment><USER3> Right. Now that I think about it, I've seen some crates that perform interesting codegen tasks at compile time; things like ffi bindings that automatically stay up-to-date. The only part I found difficult about working with generated code was that RLS was not up to the task of parsing the generated code, so no intellisense. But that was several months ago, so perhaps it's already been addressed.

[edit] And I'm interested in further exploring macros to create a DSL for doing some magic in the spirit of, but not quite replicating, dotnet's Linq Expressions.

<comment><AUTHOR> I've been using CLion with the Rust plugin recently after having used VS Code for some time.

I'm not sure what my opinion is yet, but "go to definition" seems to work more often than not which is nice.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Is there anything Rust is bad for? I cannot think of one thing. I'm sure that pretty soon now, all software will be rewritten in Rust.

It just makes so much sense, it solves all bugs by not having any undefined behavior, it's fast because it doesn't have a GC (all GCs are slow and that's bad), and it's easy to read because there are no implicit behaviors.

Look at all of the things Rust can do, in production, at scale, at well- respected companies with serious investors!

[https://github.com/rust-unofficial/awesome-rust](https://github.com/rust- unofficial/awesome-rust)

<comment><USER5> Trolling like this will eventually get your main account banned as well, so please don't do it on HN.

[https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html)</comment></comment>


Where Did Earth's Water Come From? Study Casts Doubt on Current Meteorite Theory - <AUTHOR> https://www.sciencealert.com/study-proposes-new-origin-theory-for-earth-s-water <comment><AUTHOR> >Earth's water may have been inherited from material similar to enstatite chondrite meteorites

[https://science.sciencemag.org/content/369/6507/1110.editor-...](https://science.sciencemag.org/content/369/6507/1110.editor- summary)</comment>


Hacker Steals $8.4M Worth of Ethereum - <AUTHOR> https://www.bleepingcomputer.com/news/security/hacker-steals-8-4-million-worth-of-ethereum-from-veritaseum-platform/ <comment><USER2> Fourth hack! Sure this isn't directly taking Eth, but still, four hacks that end up being Eth in the past week or month is crazy. The total is close to $50M now!

</comment><comment><USER3> Just think of these guys as very well-paid pen testers.

</comment><comment><USER4> _again?!_

<comment><USER2> I know haha. By now this is crazy.</comment></comment>


Conservatives' culture wars come to Silicon Valley - <AUTHOR> https://www.politico.com/story/2017/12/27/tech-conservatives-culture-wars-silicon-valley-319244 <comment><USER2> One has to admit that there's something amusing about 'conservatives' (in quotes because I don't want to throw everybody into a group with Bannon et al) demanding diversity for its own sake when it's about representing their views in areas like the Silicon valley.

We've kind of made a 180 degree turn where people who liked to go on about absolute truths and so forth now demand inclusion simply because they are excluded, even if that exclusion occurs for completely benign or healthy reasons.

There is not a great liberal conspiracy that makes Bannon's views unpopular, it's just that his culture war is as unpopular in a successful melting pot as young earth creationism is in a room full of physicists. His views are not violently suppressed, nobody wants to silence him for spreading a truth only he has access to, it's just that people are simply tired of it.</comment>


Michael Moritz on how Sequoia Capital has maintained long-term success - <AUTHOR> http://themacro.com/articles/2016/02/michael-moritz-sequoia-success/ <comment><USER2> cool to see matt huang get a well deserved shout out</comment>


Shakespeare translator: You typeth. We translate - <AUTHOR> http://www.shmoop.com/shakespeare-translator/

<comment><USER2> But they couldn't even get the conjugation right in the headline. "You typeth"??? (Shakes head)</comment>


Resignation letter from Microsoft Employee - <AUTHOR> http://worldofsu.com/philipsu/?page_id=193 <comment><USER2> _If you consistently deliver what the business needs most, and you do it well, it's impossible not to get promoted. People tell me this isn't true, that it's all about the people you know and about "visibility." I have no idea how to consistently deliver impactful business results without becoming visible as a side effect. I hate it when developers ask me how to become "more visible." They hate it when I tell them to "do great work." They think I'm mocking them._

You can think this way if your idea of "what the business needs most" is "what currently has the sales guys in a tizzy." Forget about everything else. Oh, and if your code only works for current customers, and has to have a bunch of tweaks and fixes applied for each new customer, then people will think your code is what _allows_ them to sell to new customers. No kidding. If you write code that doesn't handle cases A, B, and C, then later you get credit for adding "support" for A, B, and C and making it possible to sell to customers X, Y, and Z. That's "visibility," because people from sales and marketing will mention your name appreciatively at high levels.

And for God's sake don't do any work on scaling or reliability, because a salesman never calls up your boss's boss and says, "It's been a long time since the scalability of your systems scotched a deal. I just want to say that's awesome and thank you." Wait until it breaks, make everyone thinks it's impossible, and then fix it.

EDIT: In a healthy organization, none of this will affect who gets promoted, but in an organization where people worry about "visibility," this is what they're talking about.

<comment><USER3> Unless you're at a non-profit, revenue/sales/profit are what drives the company. If you can duct tape a product that gets me $1B of yearly recurring revenue then I will take that over the cleanest architected product that no one wants to pay for.

In one of my other comments from a different thread I made the point that a lot of developers don't realize that they should understand the business. When you do understand it and the salesperson is in a tizzy about the "wrong thing", you can point out, "actually, that's not the real revenue driver. XYZ is. Why does the customer think ABC is? I'll tell you why, it's because DEF. But by doing XYZ we can deliver ABC in six months time."

I think you'll find when you can talk at the level of business a lot of things become clearer for you and the sales team.

<comment><USER4> False dichotomy ($1B vs zero).

Actually, in my experience, developers understand the business quite well. It's the other business functions which doesn't understand development.

You _WILL_ drive out (and keep out) good developers if you fail to treat developers as professionals whose inputs of how to develop software should be respected.

<comment><USER5> Yes, often businesses don't understand development... but...

Us dev's have it drilled into us time and time again that we are so special and can't possibly be expected to participate in the company as a whole (our time is too valuable! we can't stick to a schedule! they don't understand software!).

That's a load of bullshit, developers don't get to wall off their private kingdom of code, same as no one else gets to wall off their section of responsibility and dictate outwards from within. Please stop furthering the (on that note) false dichotomy that programmers are either: 1) mismanaged by egregiously incompetent tyrants 2) given free reign to dictate to the business

Software developers don't deserve any inherent respect. Their value added to the business does.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> _Turns out that there's a strong correlation between a student's grade and their assessment of the professor's abilities._

Very interesting.

 _I don't listen too carefully when a poor performer tells me how awful their previous manager was._

Wait, what? Are we confusing correlation with causation here? Let's say, for example, that a manager tends to give female employees poor ratings (or whatever BigCo calls a grade). Do we discount their negative assessment of the manager? If there's a poor relationship between an employee and a manager, I'm not surprised when there is negative performance _and_ a negative assessment.

Aren't we extremely interested in negative performers? We need to triage. Some employees are stars and will be stars no matter how you manage them. Ignore them, keep the kitchen stocked with whatever they drink. Some employees are poor performers no matter what you do. Identify them and fire them immediately, or better still leak their résumé to competitors, you get a 2-for-1.

The area of management opportunity are the "swing performers," those whose performance can be influenced by management practice. Some of the negative performers will be irredeemable, but some will be swing performers and it's worth listening to disgruntled poor performers if you can find a way to filter for swing performers in the hope that you can identify opportunities to turn them into good performers.

<comment><USER7> >Turns out that there's a strong correlation between a student's grade and their assessment of the professor's abilities.

One possible explanation is that the student's evaluation of the prof is based on how well he understands the course material (since the prof's job is to induce that understanding) - which, of course, also impacts the student's grade.

<comment><USER8> >Turns out that there's a strong correlation between a student's grade and their assessment of the professor's abilities.

In my experience with classmates, it initially might also look like this correlation is true, however I think the hypothesis is a bit more involved.

In one case, one class was taught with quite easy grading policies and many people ended up getting good grades - yet the smart students were unhappy with the professor and lack of challenge. In another cases, I've seen quite difficult abstract math classes and smart students would complain about the teacher as well - because of personal incompatibility - the teacher's style just didn't click with the student. And also, many times weak students would express a lot of respect and positive rating of a professor even though the teaching was over the top of their heads.

Yet obviously there were the lazy/less smart types who would just reduce the challenge to complaining about the prof - yet they are probably likely to complain about people in different situations (i.e. job)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I didn't read the whole thing... After I realized how stuck on himself he was, I just skimmed it.

Do quirky people really brag about how quirky they are? Do they write essays and call them farewell letters?

I've never yet met a fun person who goes around telling people how much fun they are.

<comment><USER10> I read the whole thing, and thought it was valuable. For example, little snippets like: "Turns out that there's a strong correlation between a student's grade and their assessment of the professor's abilities." were new ideas to me. I guess some of this comes from the management and leadership books he's read.

I didn't think he talks particularly much about himself or how quirky he is either.

Also interesting that this is the second person at Microsoft I've read about this week complaining about benefits being reduced. Michael Kaplan (interesting blog on internationalization issues at Microsoft besides) says "Microsoft, multi-billion dollar company that it may be, has no spine whatsoever to speak of.":

[http://blogs.msdn.com/b/michkap/archive/2010/10/09/10073622....](http://blogs.msdn.com/b/michkap/archive/2010/10/09/10073622.aspx)

<comment><USER11> A while back I did a lit review on the correlation between grades and teacher evaluations. I remember being surprised at how little of a correlation economists found between the two variables. Based on my memory, things like teacher personality, teacher nationality, grade variance, and class size matter a lot. Didn't pg have an essay about how "Turns out" is a euphemism for I'm too lazy to provide evidence?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> This was the best thing I've read all week, full of nuggets of wisdom. Who cares whether he calls himself fun or quirky or whatever else? You could get about 80% of what you need to know about life and work from that one collection of paragraphs, which mean's it's pretty worthwhile read as far as I'm concerned.

</comment><comment><USER13> > _Do you practice specific skills with repetition and intent?_

This troubles me a bit for coding, because:

 _There need be no real danger of it ever becoming a drudge, for any processes that are quite mechanical may be turned over to the machine itself_ \- Turing [http://libreamoi.com/index.php/why-is-programming- repetitive...](http://libreamoi.com/index.php/why-is-programming-repetitive- was-turing-wrong/)

\--

However... there surely _are_ skills in this process itself. What are they, and can they be practiced?

Concrete example: if you keep repeating code, you could (variously) write a function for it; a framework for it; a language macro; use an IDE that automates it; write a vim/emacs macro; etc

So perhaps one specific skill is to learn how to automate things with a concrete tool, and practice automating tasks (eg. writing a few vim macros as practice, to learn the syntax, API, pitfalls, conventions etc).

( _EDIT_ : or, more generally, practice using your tools )

Deeper skills are recognizing repetition (and regularity in general), defining it clearly enough to know what an automation would need to do; and know how to verify that you're correct. Implementing it is a final step. Another skill is in assessing whether such precise analysis is _worth it_ , given insufficient data to 100% nail the task; that the task may change (esp with new data); and of course that to estimate how much effort is involved in doing it "properly", verses a "good enough" solution, verses not automating at all.

But how does one practice those tasks with "repetition and intent"? They aren't like piano scales - each problem is unique and unknown. hmmm.

<comment><USER14> There are a variety of problem-solving sites you can practice on, if that's the sort of thing you're looking for...

<http://codekata.pragprog.com/2007/01/code_kata_backg.html#>

<http://projecteuler.net/>

<http://www.spoj.pl/tutorials/>

<http://programmingpraxis.com/>

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> I worked with Philip some, he's a really smart, interesting guy - I was definitely bummed when I heard he was leaving. His internal blog at MS had a lot of great advice for younger developers and managers, I managed to save it off before he left and the IT folks ate it

<comment><USER16> _great advice for younger developers and managers ... the IT folks ate it_

IT, ever shortsighted.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> It took all my discipline NOT to write an angry resignation letter. In the end, I didn't write any at all. No good can come from them unless they are the most vapid and empty of sentiments.

Microsoft employees can be broadly classified in two current states of mind: people who can't wait to leave and people who can't imagine leaving. I almost never encountered someone that was in-between these extremes. As such, you pretty much can't write a resignation letter that expresses meaningful sentiment that doesn't offend one of these large groups.

</comment><comment><USER18> I worked with Philip a bit last year. He's (well, was) probably one of my favorite MSFT employees - I don't think I've seen anyone else with such energy. Big loss for MSFT, great win for FB.

</comment><comment><USER19> He had me until: "What's your final level at Microsoft? Please don't say CEO or Technical Fellow – I can almost guarantee you it's not." He may be right, but there are some ambitious employees at Microsoft who truly do want to be CEO. If that's what they want, I hope they continue to bust their ass of to achieve it.

I really don't like when critics put a cap on someone's future.

<comment><USER20> Undoubtedly you are correct, someone else will eventually be CEO, thus his statement is categorically false. However he is being over the top to make a point, some people think it while knowing they don't work hard enough/care enough to get there. He is saying people need to stop lying to themselves and realistically view their future with the company.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> _"Practice articulating positions you disagree with faithfully and persuasively. Unless you can do this, you're implicitly assuming that people who disagree with you are idiots. Smart people understand why smart people disagree."_

WTB more of this everywhere.

</comment><comment><USER22> Two things struck me, one kind of minor - a Pentium 66? In 1997 my desktop machine at my new startup job was a Pentium Pro 200. It replaced the SGI Indy R4400 200 from my previous startup job. No offices with doors, though, of course.

The other thing was, and I don't mean these questions in a derogatory way, how do you start working for Microsoft in 1997, of all years. And how do you stay there for 12 years running? What kind of startup employee will you be when the only professional environment you have known is Microsoft? I'm not suggesting that there aren't perfectly excellent, sensible answers to all of these, and obviously his new employer thinks so. I just can't personally conceive what they are.

<comment><USER23> _What kind of startup employee will you be when the only professional environment you have known is Microsoft?_

Good thing he's not going to a startup, he's going to Facebook.

<comment><USER22> Facebook, behemoth that it is, is still a startup. We get a little carried away calling every little personal website project a startup and perhaps that's just right for the forum. But don't get tunnel vision. Facebook is a startup.

<comment><USER24> Then how do we categorize a startup if not by age (Facebook is already 5 years old) and size (hundreds of employees, billions in stock)?

<comment><USER25> If you have more money privately invested than money earned, you're probably a startup. If you're searching for a repeatable, scalable business model, you're probably a startup.

<comment><USER26> Or, your business might be a failure, yet past the point of being a startup. Clearly Facebook does not qualify as a failure, but they are not a startup in my estimation. They're an established business.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> _Good ideas are a dime a dozen. Great ideas are usually laughed at. Neither sees the light of day without you taking action._

While there were good stories and takeaways from his post, I keep hearing this same mantra coming across so many would-be entrepreneur stories. Why do people doubt themselves so much and not listen to their own ideas?

<comment><USER28> I think working in a corporation kills that confidence in yourself. It numbs you somehow.

<comment><USER3> The issue isn't confidence, it's motivation. Ideas are a dime and dozen. Execution on good ideas is what matters. Personally, it seems so blidingly obvious that I wouldn't even think to say it, but clearly for a lot people this seems controversial.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> It is hard to believe that someone that managed so many is focusing in his parting words on (1) telling people that got bad reviews that they aren't as good as they think they are, and (2) telling them to aim their sites lower (since not everyone can be president). That's not the kind of manager I'd want. There is nothing wrong with confidence and ambition; just redirect it towards taking risks to accomplish tasks that no one thought could be done.

Those people complaining, btw, probably have valid complaints, regardless of what they've output. Often people that have low output are a sign of poor hiring and/or management. Why didn't he focus on suggesting changes to remedy this?

In addition, he was ditching on the Litebulb mailing list, rather than suggesting an alternative. What if he were to suggest that MS had 20% time to work on Litebulb requests?

<comment><USER30> the attitudes in #1 and #2 are very typical of Microsoft managers

</comment></comment><comment><USER31> Compared to the EA breakup letter the other day, this was a lot more fun to read. What a surprising change to read a resignation letter that wasn't all FU & drama.

</comment><comment><USER32> I liked this because he explains really well on how employees may be misjudging a manager's negative attitude on them because they don't understand the requirements of the business (or productization, for that matter).

It often happens that you need to do something negative such as giving bad review, not approving some large piece of code which the employee thinks is beautifully written. Or even just fire someone.

I've been on both sides, and now on the management side I see that employees usually don't realize the truth, and consequently have hard time getting a lesson out of the incident.

</comment><comment><USER33> "Practice articulating positions you disagree with faithfully and persuasively. Unless you can do this, you're implicitly assuming that people who disagree with you are idiots. Smart people understand why smart people disagree."

This should be taught to everyone from a young age.

"Individuals are the sole cause of anything that's ever happened."

The most inspiring quote in the article. Reminds me of the Margaret Mead quote I have hanging in my room somewhere: "Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed people can change the world. Indeed, it is the only thing that ever has."

<comment><USER34> good stuff

</comment></comment><comment><USER35> _Individuals are the sole cause of anything that's ever happened._

Exactly!

</comment><comment><USER36> Meta-summary: Here is a list of platitudes which, if you completely internalize and act on them, will lead you to be successful enough to leave and get a job at Facebook.

<comment><USER37> As well as just about any other S&P500 company. There's some good knowledge in here.

</comment></comment><comment><USER38> ...but trust me on the sunscreen.

</comment><comment><USER39> Probably the longest resignation letter I've ever seen

<comment><USER40> One could call it "bloatware".

</comment></comment><comment><USER41> I thoroughly enjoyed reading it and the randomness ensured that every paragraph stands out on its own.

</comment><comment><USER42> Doesn't it show what's wrong with an organization when people's heads have this much politics and organizational complexity in them? His advice is to ship good software to get ahead, but his thought process is all about everything else.

</comment><comment><USER43> "Use Occam's Razor in interpersonal relations: look for the simplest, most straightforward explanation that assumes the best of everybody."

Works in general, but not when you are dealing with an outlier.

</comment><comment><USER44> _Once, at a Pizza Hut counter, I noticed that all the pens meant for signing credit card receipts had little flowers attached to their tops. Stuck together in a cup, the bunch of pens looked like a bouquet. I asked the cashier whether this was a new Pizza Hut policy. She said no – she had done it on her own. What would you pay to have her in your company?_

Maybe he missed the point? People typically attach things to the end of pens to stop them from getting stolen. Not to make bouquets.

<comment><USER45> Every interpretation tells us something about the observer. This person interpreted the change as an improvement at the counter.

</comment></comment><comment><USER46> Having a hard time reconciling the dismissive attitude toward soda theft and the celebratory attitude toward punishment for cattle theft, otherwise awesome essay.

</comment><comment><USER47> So this guy sounds like some office granny scolding the interns over trifles of etiquette. He summed up his 12 years of working at Microsoft with a bunch of smarmy anecdotes typical of office gossip & politics. Not a single mention about software or technology in general. No penetrating insights about the industry, products, the future.

I wonder about Microsoft's financial future if this is what their corporate culture has been reduced to. Everyone is so high on themselves and on playing Soap Opera over in Redmond that nothing truly new gets shipped.

</comment><comment><USER48> I very much enjoyed this, especially the part on compare with the best person in the office, no one else.

</comment><comment><USER49> Really needs a TL;DR

<comment><USER50> Does the "TL;DR" sentiment really belong at HN at all? I'd like to think this community is above that. The whole thrust of the site is about/for people who aren't interested in taking the easy way out.

<comment><USER51> I always appreciate the efforts of HN'ers who post a TL;DR summary. It's less about taking the easy way out, and more about saving time.

<comment><USER6> In that case, why is tertius _asking_ for a summary? If a summary is a good idea, the keyboard can be found between tertius' chair and screen ;-)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER52> >I've managed almost 150 people across dev/test/PM.

i stopped reading at this phrase. I was reading until it as i was genuinely curious how an engineer could write such BS.

<comment><USER53> I'd like to know what you think is BS about his letter.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: Shall I continue or pivot?  - <AUTHOR>

I want to hear your suggestions on whether I should continue on my startup (or project): TaggTo (http://www.taggto.com).
The original idea of "TaggTo" is: a platform for people to create "picture product reviews" (tagging product pictures). In Jan. 2013, we released first version of our app. However, there were very little downloads even after weeks. I tried my best to market it, but none of them worked. Finally we did a survey among those users who were active but stopped coming. The survey showed they stopped coming because:
1. most of the users don't want to write anything;
2. not enough content to consume.
Eventually decided to drop the "review" feature and shifted our focus to "social commerce". To make content more interesting, we pre-seeded many products, and focused mainly on Fashion and Home categories. We re-launched "TaggTo v2" in late Oct. 2013. This time we got more users signed up, but it's still not significant enough to make a difference. And the worse news was, my co-founder had to quit due to family reasons. And since I had been out of job for two years, I also took a contract job since last Sept. So now I am the only person working on it, part time.
Now I am facing a difficult decision on whether I should continue on this project --
Reasons to continue:
1. One of the biggest problems for the current TaggTo app is it's not engaging enough. I already have some ideas to tackle that.
2. We already put in a lot in the app -- we have a very solid foundation thanks to over engineering, :-D
3. Many people (including some angels / VCs) are actually impressed with the quality of the app.
Biggest fear for continue:
After moving away from our "picture review" feature, TaggTo lost its uniqueness. I am afraid even if I am able to attract a good amount of users with the new features, TaggTo still cannot standout due to lack of uniqueness.
Please click here to continue (sorry can't squeeze in 2k chars):
http://www.taggto.com/ask_hn.htm <comment><USER2> First I wouldn't put ask_hn.htm on your main domain. Secondly, the app, while well polished, doesn't offer anything original. It looks like you sunk a big chunk of cash and resources into the design and engineering. You should've focused more on answering why you're doing what you're doing.

You have an app. But what does it really do? Why would I use TaggTo? When would I use TaggTo? How does TaggTo make my life better? Does TaggTo offer me a way to express myself creatively?

The biggest and most important question, do you have a community around TaggTo or the ability to build a community around it?

I'd either pivot into something more community-driven or sink more funds into marketing.

</comment><comment><USER3> You should pitch this app to Conde Nast media. Specially their women magazines. They would love an app like this customized with their branding. Specially if the products advertised on their magazines also display on your app. This will make the magazine more social in a mobile world.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the suggestion. Yes, white labeling is another area I am constantly looking into. However, it seems hard to find the right contact to pitch. Any idea on that?

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> [http://www.taggto.com/ask_hn.htm](http://www.taggto.com/ask_hn.htm)

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks!</comment></comment>


LibrePCB 0.1.4 Released - <AUTHOR> https://librepcb.org/blog/2020-05-03_release_0.1.4/ <comment><USER2> I was looking for a comparison with other tools, and "LibrePCB vs. KiCad" in "comparison with other EDA tools" [1] gave some good measure:

"Although LibrePCB has many cool advantages, KiCad is (currently) much more powerful. It has an amazing amount of features which allow to design very complex PCBs. LibrePCB is still a very young software and thus lacks many features needed to design complex PCBs."

"So, if you are looking for an intuitive EDA tool to quickly design a simple PCB, you should give LibrePCB a try. But if you want to design complex PCBs, LibrePCB is probably not (yet) the tool you are looking for."

[1] [https://librepcb.org/compare/](https://librepcb.org/compare/)

<comment><USER3> Just make sure to check out horizon-eda as well: [https://horizon- eda.org/](https://horizon-eda.org/)

My goto eda tool these days, the whole way it behaves in UI and how the library is structured is just cool.

<comment><USER4> Their distribution method for Ubuntu is a bit unfortunate, I'm not sure I will install another package manager (flatpak?), give it root access, and then trust an unknown source (flathub?) just to try a software.

<comment><USER3> I thought there was a debian build, however feel free to post sth to in the github issues, I did so quite a few times already and at times the issue I had was fixed within 24 hours.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Here's a video from FOSDEM where Urban (the main author) explains why he started LibrePCB and how the library concepts are different from other similar tools like KiCAD: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vu-h5y6tK34](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vu-h5y6tK34) (Slides: [https://archive.fosdem.org/2018/schedule/event/cad_librepcb/](https://archive.fosdem.org/2018/schedule/event/cad_librepcb/))

Also, previous HN threads:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21676027](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21676027)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18569969](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18569969)

</comment><comment><USER4> I have played with LibrePCB before and the user experience is excellent. The file format is also interesting, a lisp-style, human readable text file that can be version-controlled and in some cases compared against other schematics. I also suspect that generating netlists from code (similar to SKIDL for KiCAD) would be quite doable.

My main issue were libraries, even though making footprints is easy enough. Is there a way to import the KiCAD standard library with footprints and symbols here? It would be amazing to have a large, CAD-agnostic component library!

</comment><comment><USER6> I think all those open source EDAs need to work on a shared parts library format, online or offline.

Hunting for libraries online takes a lot of efforts.

Embeetle devs once talked of building an online parts library, but I haven't heard of anything coming out of that

<comment><AUTHOR> A common parts library supported by multiple EDAs would be nice indeed. But its pretty hard to pull of, since the library organization and styles are quite different between these.

I mean: Importing / exporting the geometry data of footprints and symbols shouldn't be too hard. But one also needs to find a common set of categories, tags, relations between the parts, etc. Otherwise one will end up with a huge library which is impossible to navigate.

Also I would be afraid to just create yet another format which will lead to even more fragmentation.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> I'm an initiate to designing PCBs (and amateur electronics in general). I've been having a great time with KiCad, and would love to know what more seasoned pros would say would be the major difference between KiCad, Eagle, and LibrePCB in a practical sense.

<comment><USER8> I've used KiCad quite a bit, and enjoy it, but there is an unnecessarily steep learning curve--for example, a good experience depends largely on memorizing key shortcuts. There are also some really unintuitive things related to component libraries (footprints, 3D CAD representations, and schematics) that is kind of a holdover from its "every module does one thing and does one thing well" roots. They've made improvements of late, but it still isn't what I'd call intuitive. I think the future is a more integrated workflow, and I believe that's what I'm seeing in LibrePCB. That said, it's a younger project, and doesn't match up feature for feature yet. I'm thinking about giving LibrePCB a try for tinker projects, and if that goes well, maybe I'll try something bigger :)</comment></comment>


Ask HN: How do you come up with a price for an API? - <AUTHOR> <comment><USER2> 1\. Check your competition, or anything remotely similar.

2\. Ask potential clients for various prices to see which one sounds more affordable.

3\. If both 1&2 fail you'll have to improvise. Assume the worst case scenario for adoption (aka less than 1% from intended clientele), and the minimum amount of money you need to be barely viable, and then you come up with a number. Be as pessimistic as your comfort zone allows you.</comment>


FunkyVector - <AUTHOR> https://funkyvector.com <comment><AUTHOR> Infinite Print - Randomly generated procedural graphics using a seeded random. You'll never see the same image again, unless you save the seed. Only a few styles now, but more coming.</comment>


Sharp To Withdraw From PCs and focus on tablets - <AUTHOR> http://e.nikkei.com/e/fr/tnks/Nni20101021D21JFN06.htm

<comment><USER2> This might not be such a wise idea. I think tablets as a form factor are going to remain confined to a limited section of the market, mainly due to ergonomic factors rather than anything technological. Tablets aren't great for typing. When placed on a table or desk the viewing angle and viewing posture isn't ideal, and holding one limits you to one handed interaction only.</comment>


Electric taxi startup Téo Taxi closes shop, fires 460 drivers - <AUTHOR> https://montrealgazette.com/news/local-news/teo-taxi-fires-400-drivers-future-of-the-company-to-be-revealed-tuesday <comment><USER2> They had in particular a fleet of 42 Teslas S and X, in addition to Kia Souls and Nissan Leafs. They published a postmortem (in French) here: [https://s3.amazonaws.com/production- teomtl/memoire/memoire-p...](https://s3.amazonaws.com/production- teomtl/memoire/memoire-public-taxelco-janvier-2019.pdf)

</comment><comment><USER3> They never really had enough cars in the road. Whenever I looked, the wait times were 20-30 minutes, which was much worse than Uber (~5 min). I don't think I ever even used the entire free credit.

Plus, Montreal has excellent public transit, fairly terrible traffic/roads, and-despite the weather-is often quite walkable.</comment>


Ask HN: watching online video without Flash? - <AUTHOR>

I have a very simple goal: I want to disable 3rd party plug-ins in my browsers. Flashblock doesn't work for me because it reports the presence of Flash to google analytics, and I really want my visits to count as "no flash detected" because I want it to be a thing in the past.
Currently I always have it disabled, but it's annoyting to hit a good video and having to go to preferences/plugins/enable... However, the iPhone and Android oftentimes can do that. How?
Here's a good video I'd like to watch without having to enable that arcane tech from the gloomy Internet of the 90s... http://blip.tv/file/98282 <comment><USER2> How about changing your browsers user agent string to the appropriate iPhone or iPad/Mobile Safari one on those pages? I'm using Safari on a Mac, and choosing the iPad user string on the blip.tv page results in a HTML5-based video player.</comment>


Show HN: React Pattern Book – A low maintenance pattern library/style guide - <AUTHOR> https://springload.github.io/pattern-book/# <comment><USER2> So is this a package which builds a page showing a design system based on your existing CSS? Interesting, I think the landing page could explain this better. The demo link above helps a lot, I think it should be more prominent in your copy.

Also name confused me to think it was an actual physical/digital book i can buy off amazon...

Great work!

<comment><AUTHOR> Yes, that's right. It requires someone to wrap the HTML in '<Book>' tags but then it can autodetect the CSS Rules applied and display them.

I'm working on a new version of the homepage -- it's a hard concept to describe.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Sorry but I have a really hard time understanding what this does from the readme alone

</comment><comment><USER4> Demo link shows a blank page in Safari iPhone ([https://springload.github.io/lic-pattern- library/](https://springload.github.io/lic-pattern-library/))

<comment><USER5> Not just iPhone. Safari on MBP also just a blank page.

<comment><AUTHOR> This should be fixed now

(sorry but it took a while to find an iOS device to test on)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Didn't realize book on the top is a demo and you can actually click on it. Just one suggestion, dont try to create tgis red color busy background...u have a good idea here, just keep the page simple. Rivht now its confusing and hard to read on mobile phone

</comment><comment><USER7> Who really want to use any fb's products after this data privacy violation scandal ?

<comment><USER8> Facebook isn't getting anything out of me using their open-source JavaScript library that they couldn't get anyway.</comment></comment>


Firefox Monitor - <AUTHOR> https://monitor.firefox.com/ <comment><USER2> So this is just a copy of [https://haveibeenpwned.com/](https://haveibeenpwned.com/)?</comment>


Show HN: Neodoc v1.0.0-rc.1 - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/felixSchl/neodoc <comment><AUTHOR> The changes are detailed in the changelog [0]. I am posting this pre v1 in order to hopefully get feedback or learn about any regressions. The full test suite passes (with some minor alterations), so my confidence is quite high there are none, but there's been a substantial amount of change to the codebase, so I want to play it safe. The online playground [1] is a good place to start which is running the pre-release atm.

[0] [https://github.com/felixSchl/neodoc/blob/2cbdeaf2cba0da9a4bf...](https://github.com/felixSchl/neodoc/blob/2cbdeaf2cba0da9a4bfa0e737dded4e8500c7511/CHANGELOG.md#100-rcx ---2016-10-09) [1] [https://felixschl.github.io/neodoc](https://felixschl.github.io/neodoc)</comment>


Smart Alternative for Extension Cords - <AUTHOR> http://freshome.com/2009/12/26/smart-alternative-for-extension-cords-rambler-socket/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+FreshInspirationForYourHome+%28Fresh+Inspiration+for+Your+Home%29&utm_content=Google+Reader <comment><USER2> Looks like a mechanical problem waiting to cost you more money.

* Winding means sliding contacts to transfer the power... when they wear and ultimately fail, the failure mode is often overheating due to higher resistance. Now you have heat in a confined space (wall) with poor access. If you call the fire department to make sure there is no fire along with the smoke, they _will_ make sure, which is a _good_ thing, but it won't be pretty.

* The spool must have a spring rewind mechanism... again, rewind mechanisms tend to fail and now you have a cord that won't go back out of sight.

<comment> cool-RR Yes, problematic. I guess though that if the box in which the wire is rolled can be fully pulled out of the wall (after unscrewing of course) then maybe these problems won't be so bad.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> "Cute" maybe, not smart.

It doesn't seem easily replaceable (or even inspectable for damage)

It's not portable / it's fixed to that particular socket. So, if I occasionally need an extension cord in the garage and in the den I need to buy two of these instead of only on cord.

It's more complex, almost guranteed to be more expensive and more prone to break down.

Winding a cord that tightly probably damages it unless it's specially constructed.

Doesn't look like it can be all that long. 50',75',100' ext cords are common.

</comment><comment><USER4> It's usually not the distance to the plug I have a problem with, it's the number of outlets I need more of.

</comment><comment><USER5> That's probably not legal in the US. Fixed installations must not use flexing wires.

Flexing wires must be detachable from the fixed installation.

</comment><comment><USER6> While I like the idea, when building a cord into the wall, it should be of a gauge that can support the maximum current of the breaker installed. I don't know what European plugs are (pictured), but US ones are typically 20 amps. It takes a minimum of a 12-gauge electrical cord for that and the pictured cord looks like 16-gauge at best.

<comment><USER7> in germany at least, we have 10 or 16 amps rated, on 230V, and cables have 1.0 or 1.5 mm^2 cross-section per wire.

what is 12 and 16 "gauge" and what voltage do you folks use?

<comment><USER8> <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_wire_gauge>

US household current is 110V, 60Hz and typically 15 or 20 amps on a circuit. 16 gauge is approximately equivalent to a 1.5mm^2 cross-section solid wire, or to 30/0.25 (which I assume means 30 0.25 mm^2 strands).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I rarely need an extension cord for any purpose, and I rarely need it in the same place. Part of the appeal of an extension cord is that it is modular and mobile. With these plugs, I would have to replace every socket in my home. With an extension cord, I need only one. It also comes with me when I move. This is a fix in need of a problem.

<comment><USER10> It would be great for garage plugs or rooms near an external door.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Seems like two changes could hit many of the concerns here:

(1) The box can unclip from the wall, and disconnect from an internal fixed plug. An emergency pull handle is all you really need.

(2) A slow-but-steady retract mechanism. grinich's idea for a small electric winch makes a lot of sense if a spring version couldn't do it slowly and steadily enough.

And if you're worried a moron won't listen to your amperage ratings, a built- in breaker.

Still, a nice-to-have in the kitchen, workshop, and garage. The electric knife we use at thanksgiving has a uselessly short cord, and nobody remembers to find a good extension until _way_ too late in the evening -- too many other concerns first!

</comment><comment><USER12> If this is using a spring-loaded rewind, it's potentially dangerous.

One of the kids in my school up was blind in one eye (it looked terrible). He was next to one of those vacuum cleaners with a retractable cord and the end of the cord flew up and hit his eye when his mother was winding up the cord.

I'm pretty sure they don't allow spring-loaded rewind cords on vacuum cleaners any more.

<comment><USER13> Why not have a low-power electric winch pull the cord back?

<comment><USER14> Because then you need a motor and a battery, adding weight and cost to an already heavy and expensive item.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> I've seen similar concepts before, but they never actually make it into production. There's too many things wrong with this, not least of which the costs to manufacture and install. Also remember that tightly coiled power cables carrying significant load will heat up and could cause a fire.

</comment><comment><USER16> YAGNI

</comment><comment><USER17> Smart? Eh I dunno... don't install it on your outside walls or you won't feel too smart when your heating bill arrives. Insulation in wall keep warm in? That's umpossible!</comment>


Badger or Bulbasaur – have children lost touch with nature? - <AUTHOR> https://www.theguardian.com/books/2017/sep/30/robert-macfarlane-lost-words-children-nature <comment><USER2> I live in Australia. My kids are well-versed in British and American animals like squirrels, badgers, hares, raccoons, moose, bears and deer from childrens books and songs.

However, we don't have any of them here in Australia.

Knowledge of animals and experience in nature are frequently unrelated. My kids spend plenty of time outside but how often do they see _animals_ (other than the occasional bird)? They're asleep when possums and fruit bats are around. They occasionally see kangaroos on their grandparents farm. In general though, they see cats, dogs and other pets: the animals we deliberately introduce to kids.

<comment><USER3> This is very interesting. Do you know if they have any interesting misconceptions about those animals they know about but have never seen (assuming you yourself know enough about rabbits, badgers, hares and such to know that they are misconceptions)?

It's interesting when many people know about a certain phenomenon through media or things like cartoons, which obviously distort reality beyond any possibility of recognition.

The most amazing example I've ever seen is the one about bullfights. Apparently, many Americans know about bullfights from a single Bugs Bunny sketch, in which he is dressed as a Matador and kinda "dances" with the bull in the arena. This apparently made many people think that that's basically what happens in a bullfight. Then you get some nasty culture shock when people watch the real thing, as in this reddit thread (WARNING: video with blood and violence against animals, first in CGI then in real life): [https://www.reddit.com/r/videos/comments/68i332/to_those_who...](https://www.reddit.com/r/videos/comments/68i332/to_those_who_say_bullfighting_is_cultural/)

The comments were really surprising to me. I would expect most people from outside of Spain, Latin America and Portugal not to know about bullfights, but I definitely didn't expect people to know about it from a cartoon and harbor so many misconceptions about what it really is!

Spoiler: in a bullfight, the matador does nasty things to the bull (like sticking short spears with hooks so that they don't come out when the bull moves), dodges the bull's charge while distracting it with a cape, and in the end he kills it with a sword through the back. If the killing blow fails to kill the bull, they kill the animal with a knife just below the brain. Also, Matador literally means killer in Spanish, because he _kills_ the bull.

<comment><USER4> > Do you know if they have any interesting misconceptions about those animals > they know about but have never seen

Another misconception kids seem to have is about the hippopotamus, which is always depicted as a cute animal, but which in fact is one of the most dangerous animals around.

<comment><USER5> Baby hippos are really cute. In most people's minds they simply grow into a bigger version of that. Not the eventual psychopaths they are in reality.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Connection with nature in my opinion does not equal knowing the names of all of the life found in nature. Connecting with nature means dropping your misguided identification as being somehow separate from nature. Experiencing the unmistakable unity of humans being a part of this earth just as any other life is what I call being connected. Putting a label on a bird is not an experience of anything but a symbol.

<comment><USER7> The problem is that if you can't tell two similar-looking birds apart then you won't notice (or care) when one disappears. Names are important for this reason, they force you to identify the differences between animals, to tell one apart from another, and thereby appreciate the diversity of life around you - a diversity that is rapidly vanishing.

<comment><USER8> An excellent point! Since the Big Bang, our universe has been getting more and more complex, from particles, to atoms, to molecules, to the incredible diversity of life we see today, which yes is under great threat today. Putting a name on that diversity simply shows us our place in this complex universe.

</comment></comment></comment><comment> yoz-y As an aside, I think that animal and plant names are the least transferable knowledge between languages. Quite regularly when i happen to need to use a name of some animal I know it in my mother tongue or in English but not in French or some combination of those. To me this shows that even though having a passable knowledge of living things (i used to consider plant and mushroom encyclopaedias as "fun reading" when I was little) I never had any motivation to re-learn it

<comment><USER9> Richard Feynman had a very good quote on this topic. Effectively, knowing the name of an animal is the least useful knowledge about that animal.

[https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=ga_7j72CVlc](https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=ga_7j72CVlc)

<comment><USER10> If I understand correctly, Feynman implies there exist other defining properties, better than names, that are preferable when thinking about animals (or objects in general)... unless one is communicating with other people, in which case a name will do.

But it's names all the way down! These substitute properties are also only names. Using articulate attention (science), we divide the world into abstract categories, giving names to classes of "things" that are in fact unique, even if the classes are fuzzy around the edges and just leaky abstractions of reality.

Is thinking in terms of the _swirling, teeming, interconnected mass of "stuff"_ that's truly at the core of Nature a useful tool for getting ahead and making progress? It seems it's just too much to grasp, with everything unique and indivisible, no categories, no repeats. Even leaky abstractions (thrush! tiger! rock! water! human!) do better.

To question the utility of names is to question the utility of the power of articulate discrimination, one of evolution's critical inventions. Not sure what lies that way except inarticulate madness.

<comment> yoz-y I do not think that he (or us here) questions the utility of names. Rather, the utility of knowing only a name and not much else. Knowing the names of a hundred mushrooms is less useful than knowing which of them you can eat.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Children are a product of their environment. If adults don't care about nature anymore, why should they?

It's basically trips to the zoo and CGI characters to them.

</comment><comment><USER12> I guess this knowledge followed the path of the knowledge of star constellations.

Why are constellations not something you'd normally know nowadays? Because most people don't get to see them due to increasing light pollution and urbanization.

I for one had a proper look at the Milky Way for the first time when I was ten years old.

There's simply currently less nature to behold in peoples' lives.

<comment><USER13> I don't know constellations because I don't depend on them for navigation. I'm not sure why else I should even care that a bunch of ancients thought this bunch of stars looked like this animal or that one. It's not like I can even see half of them in the sky where I live, regardless of whether the stars are otherwise visible. And even if I could see them, all anyone ever seems to talk about is this small canon of Western names.

And if I ever needed to know for some reason, if it could ever in anyone's life possibly matter in the slightest whether this clump was called Cassiopeia by a bunch of people a thousand years ago, I'm about 10 seconds away from downloading an app that will superimpose constellations on my current sky. I can spend an hour reading about constellations and know more about them and their travels than many ancient astronomers could have observed in their lifetimes. And it doesn't mean a thing to me, because we know more about the universe than a handful of clumps that are occasionally visible to the naked eye.

I can appreciate the spectacle of a constellation, but everything about them that could possibly matter to my daily experience has been documented and indexed to the point that I never need to know it. I'm not trying to sail back to Ithaca. It has nothing really to do with urbanization and light pollution. Maybe I have fewer opportunities to see them, but if they blazed overhead every night, I probably wouldn't care one lick more about them.

<comment><USER12> Never have I ever found somebody who had opinions on constellations so strong that they would write three paragraphs about it.

Anyway my (currently) fiance used to use them as a pickup line(not on me though). She said it was pretty effective so there's that.

<comment><USER13> It's less an opinion about constellations than constellations as an example of knowledge people shouldn't worry about "losing" or being "disconnected" from. I imagine most people have a cognitive burden that's heavy enough with things they genuinely need to know without being expected to manage constellations, TV schedules, discrepancies in the Synoptic Gospels, the lyrics to "Time After Time," or how to fry a turkey. You can look all of it up when it matters, and your experience will not be much diminished.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> Regarding the study they mention(the one that shows that children recognize Pokemon better than real animals and plants).

There is an important aspect of this finding that the article doesn't discuss. They don't link to the study, so I can't check for myself.

All the Pokemon names they mention are first generation. There are only 150 first generation Pokemon. It's a relatively small closed corpus. They also have bright colors and are very easy to distinguish. How many species of animals or plants does England have? Way more than 150, of course. How large was the sample from which the ones used in the study were chosen? It wouldn't surprise me if there were more than 150 relevant species that are needed to be knowledgeable in "nature stuff" in England.

Of course kids in urban environments don't know much about naming animal or plant species, that's just common sense. My beef with the study is that it doesn't seem to go beyond the common-sense notion because of the problems above... Knowing a small limited corpus of highly distinct entities will always be easier than knowing the very large (although still finite) corpus of animal and plant species that might be quite similar on the surface (e.g. cork oak vs holm oak, bee vs wasp, cat vs lynx, etc)

<comment><USER14> If you only wanted "highlight" animals and plants, you could probably get away with a list of 150 (or less - I'm struggling to think of 150 off the top of my head) but they definitely wouldn't be as easily distinguished as the Pokemon.

Found the study - they used 100 common species.

[http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.477...](http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.477.3630&rep=rep1&type=pdf)

<comment><USER3> Cool, thanks. That definitely answers my questions. They really should link the study!

The part about distinguishing the animals from one another is still a problem, but I think that if Pokemon were actually real animals kids would distinguish them just fine anyway.

<comment><USER14> I'd also venture that Pokemon are almost certainly deliberately designed and focus tested to be recognisable and distinguishable because, well, that's how you market stuff and that makes this a bit of a dumb study.

Mother Nature, alas, does not have this luxury.

<comment><USER15> > that makes this a bit of a dumb study

Only if you assume no intent on the part of the study's authors. For example, I wonder if they would have had quite a different result if they'd used, say, 14 year olds. Or a mix of ages.

I wasn't overly encouraged that two of their citations were for the Biophilia Hypothesis. An interesting book, for sure, but not exactly rigorous science.

I was left with the definite impression that this study was as much about politics as science. To that end, maybe not dumb just not particularly impartial.

<comment><USER14> > I was left with the definite impression that this study was as much about > politics as science.

I suppose if they were trying to force a conversation about (say) getting children to zoos, it wasn't dumb.

But in the sense of extending the human race's knowledge, it was dumb.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Childhood is training for adulthood. It is almost certain that software and

Back when children were made to read en mass there were panics about them spending too much time in doors and not playing outside. When TV came along, too much time watching TV not reading nooks. Now Ipads.

I agree - there needs to be a balance. humans are designed to be roaming outdoors. but 10,000 years ago ones life and prosperity depended on correctly identifying edible vs poisonous plants. Today a kids life / prosperity depends on much more complex social and technological skills - and playing Pokémon with other kids will help improve both social and technological skills.

Don't leave them to be pulled about by evil corporations in mindless adverts, but do encourage modern play as well as other things.

PS Tooling in this case matters. I can easily find OSS tools to run a firewall, less to audit web usage (netflow etc) but I want to be able to audit how much TV was watched (where is the API output from Netflix let alone from a damn TV aerial). How do I get a report off my iphone saying how many minutes (hours) I was looking at facebook? HN?

In order to make good choices we need good tools - and those tools are anti the interests of the peddlars - so I really want OSS to step up and take its place. but I am not sure how tractable the problem is.

</comment><comment><USER17> A point I haven't seen here is where the children learnt the Pokémon names from. Was it TV? Games?

I'm asking this mostly because I'm old enough to just have missed the Pokémon hype, but I did play Magic the Gathering. And it was absolutely no problem to "kind of" know 100s of cards and remember all the properties (incl a name) when just given the illustration or a name. And I still do remember some of this, 20 years later - because it was useful applied knowledge.

On the other hand, although having grown up in the city and not having a close connection to nature... I did learn some bird and animal species out of interest. And nothing ever stuck. I'm especially bad with birds and mix up everything. I guess I can really identify 10-20 species, everything else I just declared unlearnable and I think I'll never try again. Of course I know an owl.. But the different species? Nope.

</comment><comment><USER14> This is the original study from 2002 - [http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.477...](http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.477.3630&rep=rep1&type=pdf)

</comment><comment><USER18> Here's my attempt to correct this depressing state of affairs \s [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pzagBTcYsYQ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pzagBTcYsYQ)

</comment><comment><USER19> Should have went with "Beaver or Bidoof" for the title.

</comment><comment><USER20> I thought going to the zoo was a thing for kids?

</comment><comment><USER21> Not only the children- most of the city-living adults too in my opinion. What is declared nature and what perverted- often reveals a totally warped perception.

When a re-introduced wulf hunts a sheep in a fence enclosed field, and eats it alive - that is considered acceptable nature. If a hunter would shoot said sheep outside the enclosure- that would be considered unnecessary brutal murder. Its like we humans, ironically the more dependent and closer to nature - the more, stopped being part of nature in these peoples eyes.

I also find it really interesting to what lengths some people go to fight for nature- as in venturing out in the woods, to saw through a perch post- which is totally unnecessary violence, as simply pissing near the feeding spot would make the hunt there nonviable for about a week.

And the animals out in the forest are totally idealized Disney versions for most people. The more stylish a animal looks, the more noble it is. Complete disregard for the "characters" out there- for example old boars, giving the "its-safe"-squeak to use young pigs as line of sight guinea-pigs for safety.

There are no deers, knowing that they are protected by hunting laws, parking there "Bambis" below the perch to protect them from foxes.

There are no animals, who loose the fear from man - or never had it. Badgers, Bears, Wulfes - all those why should they fear us, if they cant understand what we are and what tools are?

There is not contemplation for the strangeness of some of the creatures we routinely antromorphosize. There are horse-riders who do not get, the strict hierarchy that is a herd, and the spots and jobs within. They do not understand the concept of grooming friendships (which puts you on the exact same rank, if you get groomed back, below if only you groom, above if only you get groomed). Your horse does not know what hands are!

There are no over-testicled beasts in this world, that defend there territory against anything path-persisting.

There are no jock-groups among young animals pranking other animals.

There are no ravens "hunting" rabbits into car-traffic.

There is also no understanding on the terra-forming some animals attempt. Bucky the beaver wants your little settlement gone and flooded. He does not need protection after two generations- your house does.

But worst of all - there is no grasping of ones own footprint. To long for a second car- and then yell at the farmer/oil-driller who allows for it to drive, that is deeply intellectually dishonest and social schizophrenia at its worst. Your Greenpeace donation does not give you absolution in anyone's eyes. Quite contrary, it marks you as a continuous sinner, with a washing machine reflex.

What i observed, that helps nature along the most - is disorder and sloppiness. Just forget about those ten meters near the field-borders. Just leave that part of Forrest fallen into disrepair. Just dont harvest the fish from that pond this year. Just leave your wife bitching about how bad everything looks behind the house.

You will be surprised, how fast, how much will have a comeback. My dad used to be sloppy with our fish-pond- and one summer day i suddenly saw a Common kingfisher nesting there. If you want to do nature a favor, pick a spot to be protected from obsessive human compulsions on what nature has too look like.

Sorry, this turned out to be such a long post.

<comment><USER22> And yet this screed is just as one-sided. As an example -

>> Bucky the beaver wants your little settlement gone and flooded. He does not need protection after two generations- your house does.

Beavers are being reintroduced into the UK precisely because of the massive impact they have on local ecology. Bucky the beaver doesn't give two hoots about your house - but the earthworks Bucky and his family will undertake shape the local ecosystem and help keep everything alive.

<comment><USER21> What about the people that live where he is re-introduced? Is silently disowning someone by pushing a ecology that will make it vanish acceptable?

<comment><USER22> Most likely not silently, but in many cases yes. In the UK we have exterminated many of our large mammals over the years, to the detriment of many species and habitats.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> Is there a single article on that site that's not an extreme exaggeration of non-issues, including this one? Obviously I am exaggerating now, but, seems to be the spirit.

People learn about what matters to them. Random animals not native to your life do not matter to you. It's really no big deal, we love to learn and our brains massively reward us for doing so especially when we actually believe it will matter. That is why it takes little effort to bring someone up to speed on flora and fauna that matters, when it really does.

Leave the rest of the concern to the biologists.

<comment><USER24> This strikes me as short-sighted and I think you're missing the point. The concern is that _children don 't care about nature in the first place_.

You have to consider both causal directions: children don't know anything about nature because they don't care, __or __children don 't care about nature because they don't know. This process is self-reinforcing.

<comment><USER25> The article gives no evedence that children are worse now than before. And to me it seems like absolute rubbish. The younger generation seem to care more about the environment than previous generations if anything.

The author seems to just not like the fact children like Pokemon and they don't.</comment></comment></comment>


El Capitan for developers - <AUTHOR> http://pointlessramblings.com/posts/El_Capitan/

<comment><USER2> >"/usr/bin is no longer writeable - not even by the root user. Although /usr/bin should be left to the OS..."

yeah it sucks that some apps won't work out of the box, but /usr/bin should only be for apps provided by the OS anyways. OS X 10.11 simply enforces that best practice.</comment>


Does the angry blue bird multiply its mass? - <AUTHOR> http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2010/10/does-the-angry-blue-bird-multiply-its-mass

<comment><USER2> This is the kind of brilliant and pointless analysis that I love. Me, I would have just emailed the app author and asked them.

</comment><comment><USER3> You might laugh, but I genuinely thought this was going to be something about Twitter and the momentum caused by an avalanche of negative tweets - ie Gap logo, etc.

Turns out I couldn't be more wrong.

</comment><comment><USER4> Incredibly cool and in-depth post. But it's funny, I just assumed the conclusion intuitively since the first time I used a blue bird.

</comment><comment><USER5> Please note that "its" is the correct word to use in the title and the Wired article had it correct.

Edit: Thanks.

</comment><comment><USER6> I noticed something was not being conserved with the blue bird when I first tried out Angry Birds. My strategy was usually to explode the bird just before collision to take advantage of the extra force.

My assumption was that the mechanism for splitting 1 bird into 3 birds was an internal explosion. This would introduce a large amount of energy into the system and account for increased velocity in the resulting birds, and thus the increased momentum.

Of course there is a way to test my theory (and I realize it probably has little basis in how the game was actually programmed, but it satisfied my mechanical engineer side to reconcile what I was seeing with reality). You could launch the blue bird such that it falls just to the right of a standing piece of wood and "explode" it just as it's right next to the wood. If it is, in fact, an explosion that propels all 3 new birds to the right, then there would be an equal force directed to the left, which should knock the piece of wood over without touching it.

</comment><comment><USER7> Tomorrow: Does the angry yellow bird violate the conservation of momentum?

<comment><USER8> Angry yellow bird makes a noise as if it were angrily flapping its wings when you activate its speed boost, suggesting that it is not accelerating without having a new force act upon it. This is a completely Newtonian bird afaik.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> I love how the conclusion to all of this is that you should expand blue birds before impact - a conclusion I reached in twenty seconds by just trying it both ways.

</comment><comment><USER10> Neat-o. Hopefully, he'll explain next why the sticks and stones don't seem to have heard of Isaac Newton at times! Some of the planks won't even _slide_ and fall when they're in awkwardly precarious positions. But, then again, that's why I played for an hour at work the other day. :)

<comment><USER11> Yeah, static friction is very strong and kinetic friction is very weak. Several levels I had to wait quite a while for a pig or rock to verrry slowwwly roll off an edge.

<comment><USER10> Yup, first thing I thought of afterward was friction. But, alas, let me not continue reading too much into one of a few things in the middle of the day that actually _keeps_ me from thinking. Gotta have a refuge at your desk somehow...(besides just getting up and leaving for the day).</comment></comment></comment>


Why Every Educator Should Read Hacker News - <AUTHOR> http://educationismylife.com/why-every-educator-should-read-hacker-news/ <comment><USER3> Well, you couldn't ask for a more like-baity title for a submission to Hacker News, but there is some good food for thought in this article (blog post). I've read the article once. As I ponder it some more, and think about it as I take care of some home office business here, I may expand this comment during the edit window of two hours I have. I can say right away that Hacker News does have good discussions about education and education policy, with lots of thoughtful participants. Education policy is the issue that drew me to participate on Hacker News,

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4728123>

and I'm glad to see that so many participants, from the founder on to the newest member, enjoy thinking about and checking facts on education issues.

AFTER EDIT:

The author of the submitted article (blog post) writes, "what makes Hacker News so special is the community within this simple site." What I especially like about Hacker News is the variety of analytic frameworks represented here. I'll give two examples. In discussion the added value of school systems, people on Hacker News don't forget to look at the inputs to the system, the large amounts of money spent on K-12 education in various countries, as the outputs of the system, the learning benchmarks reached by students. I have been fond of writing on Hacker News "A teacher who is doing a good job helping students learn is worth his or her weight in gold," referring to research on the economics of education by economist Eric A. Hanushek.

[http://hanushek.stanford.edu/publications/valuing- teachers-h...](http://hanushek.stanford.edu/publications/valuing-teachers-how- much-good-teacher-worth)

A Facebook friend of mine, a Caltech graduate who formerly worked for a YC- funded start-up before taking on his current position as a data analyst, pointed out that by Hanushek's model, adding in reasonable assumptions about the number of students taught over a typical teacher's career, "I think it is safe to say that a good teacher is worth far more than his or her weight in gold, even a teacher who enjoys food, if you know what I mean," based on the current price of gold. Indeed, one of the analytic frameworks that Hacker News participants bring to the discussion is comparing inputs to outputs, to see what activities of schools and their staffs bring about the best added value for the most learners.

The author of the blog post submitted here writes that Hacker News is a group of people who "care about sharing knowledge, advancing their field, and holding each other accountable (which is WHY you should read it as an educator)." I can give an example of that sharing knowledge and holding each other accountable. Last year, a Washington Post blog column that functions largely as a site for propaganda pieces on education policy included a guest post with a story about an anonymous person in an unnamed place who had taken an unnamed test used for student evaluation in an unnamed state with unreported item content and concluded from that vaguely mentioned experience that the state test was not good. Many HN readers replied to that highly upvoted thread, asking the basic who, what, when, where, why questions that any professional journalist should ask before publishing a story. My comment to that thread,

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3315028>

which won quite a few upvotes from other participants in the thread, laid on the snark to express my dismay with how few actual facts were reported in the Washington Post blog piece, especially facts based on comparative policy analysis. Eventually the Hacker News community identified the person relating the story, the particular test (which had EASY item content, much easier than most HN participants initially guessed), and other important details from their own research and a follow-up post from the newspaper, which had many readers who were dissatisfied with the vagueness and point-of-view pushing of the first post. The follow-up of other bloggers to that debacle,

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3327847>

is the kind of thing that working professional educators can learn from as they seek more respect and societal recognition of their important work, so indeed it is beneficial for teachers in the classroom to visit Hacker News regularly to read the discussions here.

<comment><USER4> "if you can read this thank a teacher" is a classic car sticker.

However, in England and Wales, we have half a million of them (in a population of about 55+ million) and the turnover is estimated at about 9% per year (some of that is family break teachers leaving and returning). All teachers in UK have to have a national curriculum related degree... The Normal Distribution being what it is (and wage rates not huge and currently frozen) there might be quality issues ahead.

What about US?

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> I think the article opens with a good point.

 _I ENVY the design community. I am JEALOUS of the programmer/developer community. Want to know why? It's simple: They thrive on sharing, collaborating, and improving their field._

I honestly believe that the internet will change the way people collaborate and improve their respective fields. It's just that hackers being who they are, figured it out first. I can't wait to see a github or wikipedia like place for education and anything else out there.

I can truly say that I am overjoyed to be a part of the change that few people understand and fewer acknowledge (so far..). The next 20-30 years are going to be awesome!

</comment><comment><USER6> It is too bad that the links to the advertised site (pre-site?) don't work.

I'm always impressed when reading Mathematics Teacher or Arithmetic Teacher, or other such journals, how much energy, creativity, and love there is out there from teachers. A lot of it has no way out of the single classroom and it'd be good for more to get out.

<comment><USER7> > A lot of it has no way out of the single classroom

It feels like a lot of it has no way _into_ other classrooms, because of increased control over curricula and teaching. Some of that's a good thing; evidenced based teaching is important.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Conversely, we need an 'education for hackers' type site.

The closest are these resources from hackeducation:

[http://hackeducation.com/2012/03/17/what-every-techie- should...](http://hackeducation.com/2012/03/17/what-every-techie-should-know- about-education/)

<http://guide.hackeducation.com/techies.php>

<http://edtechhandbook.com/>

</comment><comment><USER4> UK _teacher_ comment: can anyone explain what an 'educator' is? I keep reading this strange word on US Web sites and in forums.

There are plenty of forums that discuss educational issues available to me. Most of them use 'noisy' forum software. Would be nice to have 'quiet' software like I find HN available that could run on ordinary hosted Web space.

<comment><USER9> Generally the term 'educator' is used to describe an individual who has completed at least a masters level degree in Education, one or more state certifications, and is employed full time as a teacher. The original motive for this lingual shift was, as far as I can tell, to distinguish between 'lay' teachers (which is to say people who simply teach what that know) and 'professional' teachers who have studied the art and practice of teaching.

However, in colloquial use, the term can be applied to anyone who is teaching students, regardless of their credentials much like folks will use the term 'engineer' to describe someone writing software even if they have yet to graduate from high school.

<comment><USER10> To me (and I'm not saying this means it is the correct definition, but I think the one automatically thought of by most people I know) the difference is that teacher implies someone who works with school children (up to 18), whereas educator would cover universities etc. as well.

<comment><USER9> Not disagreeing with you, but I find that to be an interesting take on it, Universities actually have a pretty well defined set of 'titles' associated with folks who teach there, things like 'lecturer', 'assistant professor' , 'full professor', Etc. I've known a couple of professors who would be hugely offended if you called them an 'educator' for the reason that one of the 'perks' of getting their PhD was that they could be called 'professor.'

I will keep my eye out for that usage to see if I can spot it.

<comment><USER10> I'd never specifically refer to someone as "an educator", unless I had no idea what they actually do, to me it's sort of a vague genre of job - <USER2> not as a synonym for actual titles.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I think a Stack Exchange website for educators would be a very good first step in the direction of collaboration. Stack Exchange is by far the most effective platform I have ever seen for questions and answers. Wouldn't take much to set up a teaching beta.</comment>


The Most Incredible Card Trick Ever - <AUTHOR> http://blogs.suntimes.com/ebert/art-in-many-forms/the-most-incredible-card-trick.html

<comment><USER2> lame "trick".</comment>