PowerPointless: Digital slideshows are the scourge of higher education - <AUTHOR> http://www.slate.com/articles/life/education/2014/03/powerpoint_in_higher_education_is_ruining_teaching.html <comment><USER2> I was totally with this presentation until the very end. "Don't put your slides/notes online, or people won't have to attend class, and that would be BAD."

No, it would not. Making useless work where none is needed is wrong, so there is no reason to artificially constrain students to being present. If a student is able to learn perfectly from a textbook and notes and other resources, or better yet, a video recording of the lecture, and is able to pass the tests and do the homework to prove they are indeed learning successfully, then there is no problem.

If you have to force students to attend lectures for the sole purpose of justifying the existence of your job, then your job should not exist.

<comment><USER3> I got a bit less far than that.

I feel like this lecturer is recognising that lecturers _appear_ to add more value if they deliberately hinder students from accessing resources outside of their lectures. That's not a good thing.

All the conclusions seem bad if you set learning as the goal: I disagreed with the suggestions that the slides shouldn't make sense and that students shouldn't be able to read ahead.

If the students are reading ahead, they are better able to interact with the material ahead. That's a good thing.

The goal of the teacher is to help the students learn the subject matter: it's not right to think that they can only do that by paying close attention to your every entertaining word at the time you elect to say it.

<comment><USER4> > _All the conclusions seem bad if you set learning as the goal: I disagreed > with the suggestions that the slides shouldn 't make sense and that students > shouldn't be able to read ahead._

When I held the course for Infosec 101, I made sure that everyone on the course knew two things on the first day:

1) slideware was NOT the study material, they were complementing the lectures and acted only as memory aids

2) the exam was deliberately designed and scored so that it could not be passed by merely trying to learn from the slideware

That gave the students two options. Either attend the lectures and read up on some of the external course material, or try to read all of the listed material and figure out what I'm going to emphasise in the exam. Most of them decided to attend. It probably helped that I was happily cultivating the legend of me being completely loose cannon and able to pull off pretty much any kind of stunt if it helped to make the material more memorable.

It worked too.

<comment><USER3> My suggestion is the same: obfuscating what's in the exam does not benefit the students but makes yourself seem more important to their success.

<comment><USER4> That was never my intention.

My goal was to actively discourage all kinds of rote learning, and require real understanding instead.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I've taught a few college classes. I've experimented with no slides, minimalist slides, and text-heavy slides.

Young whippersnappers don't seem to know how to take notes--so going with no slides is tough. Students cannot go back and review the lecture to make sure they understood key points. I'll use this method for teaching skills--e.g. calculating NPV in Excel--but not for introducing terms & definitions.

When I've used minimalist slides, I get a bunch of students complaining that there isn't enough detail. I think the lectures are more entertaining and engaging, personally, but for students who want to be able to review the material in preparation for an exam, minimalist slides aren't the best. Think about your average Discovery channel show. The shows are interesting and engaging, but if you had to explain everything to a friend later on, or had to take an exam on the material presented, how would you do? Without watching the whole thing over again, it would be hard to absorb all of the material.

I hate delivering the text-heavy slides to classes--I often want to skip over some points based on the flow of the lesson, but the doing so might cause confusion later on. Students will ask if they have to know that stuff for the exam.

Anyway, they key takeaway for me is to listen to the students and adjust to what they prefer, but not to ignore well-studied pedagogical best practices.

<comment><USER6> > Young whippersnappers don't seem to know how to take notes--so going with no > slides is tough. Students cannot go back and review the lecture to make sure > they understood key points.

If you're going to go to the effort of planning a verbal (i.e. text) lecture, and _then_ re-encoding it as slideshow, all for the purpose of getting students something to review... why not just write down your plan for the lecture--a transcript of what you're going to say--and then email it to the students?

In fact, ideally, do this _before_ the lecture. That way, many of the students will have already read through it once, and will be able to ask more thoughtful questions.

<comment><USER5> > That way, many of the students will have already read through it once, and > will be able to ask more thoughtful questions.

You haven't taught before, have you? :) I'm only slightly kidding. I would love to have students engage with the material before class. I typically assign readings that introduce key concepts, then cover those concepts from a different angle in class to give students an incentive to 1) read before class, and 2) actually show up to class. Based on scores from ridiculously easy pop quizzes about the readings, its seems that a minority of students do even the assigned readings; I doubt many but a select few would review an entire transcript of a class before attending.

But it's something worth trying, at least, so thank you for the suggestion.

<comment><USER7> Why are you teaching a class for students who don't want to learn the material?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I've always preferred being taught with a white/chalkboard. Being able to follow the professor's every thought, trying to keep 1 step ahead of them by guessing a solution before it's written out, seeing them make and correct mistakes in realtime, just being witness to that semi-stream of consciousness, has proven to be the most effective way for me to learn. Flipping slide-to- slide and having bucket after bucket of information splashed out on the screen, perfectly planned and coordinated, makes you a spectator more than a participant. And preparing slides ahead of time also results in a professor's tendency to put way more information into a lesson than necessary. This may apply more to science courses than liberal arts, though.

<comment><USER9> _seeing them make and correct mistakes in realtime_

I'm a teacher. This is one of the interesting decisions that goes into preparing lessons well. You want to plan well enough that you know what you are going to present, but not so well that it's all rote. Leaving room for yourself to make mistakes in front of students is really good.

I tell my students as often as I can, "Professional mathematicians, scientists, and programmers make mistakes all day, every day. They have just trained themselves to expect mistakes, and know how to deal with them when they arise."

I also tell students that if they are not making mistakes most days, they are not doing interesting or challenging enough work.

<comment><USER10> Some of the best profs I've had made mistakes _deliberately_. Making mistakes allowed them to point out common pitfalls and engage students by challenging them to find their mistakes.

<comment><USER11> I think this is a good illustration of the art of teaching. Getting people to really engage is difficult.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Playing devil's advocate for a moment:

A straightforward lecture delivered directly from a powerpoint is not automatically a bad thing. I think students sometimes over-estimate their ability to learn from reading slides and incorrectly assume that simply reading a powerpoint is equivalent to attending a class, even one where the slides are simply read aloud (which, yes, the OP alludes to in a different context). This seems silly, but actually hearing the words may help you understand and more importantly-- remember. I can't tell you how many times where my recollection of some important concept came back to me in a verbal manner, sometimes in the teacher's voice with the same inflection and cadence. (For a simple example from high school, alluded to in the slate piece: "the tangent is the opposite over adjacent." After hearing the teacher say that half a dozen times, I can't think "tangent is adjacent over opposite" without feeling is wrong.)

Obviously, if 100% of a class period is spent simply reciting bullet points from a slideshow, that may indicate a problem in the design of the course. But it's not unreasonable for some percentage of time to be devoted to lecture, however unoriginal the visual aides for the lecture might be. When I was in school, professors diligently copied notes from their own notebook onto the blackboard or overhead projector. It wasn't a huge difference really.

And yes there's a difference between students giving presentations and teachers giving presentations. Students see the presentation as the goal, the work that's going to get graded, something they have to do. Professors give lectures routinely as part of a lengthy course of instruction. Those are totally different scenarios and it doesn't make you a hypocrite to use slides while advising students to avoid them.

<comment><USER13> > A straightforward lecture delivered directly from a powerpoint is not > automatically a bad thing.

It might not be bad in itself and if you do it right it can be as good or better than a presentation without the material that is read aloud. But at the same time you are wasting the potential of a presentation that is solely meant to _help_ the attendee/listener _along_ and to drive home the _important_ points or even to just use it as a _rhetoric device_.

As an extreme example, look at this presentation: [http://youtu.be/taaEzHI9xyY](http://youtu.be/taaEzHI9xyY) [1]. Most of the time his slides do not even contain a summary of what he talks about but just the headline or the punchline. And I find his style very refreshing.

If you really want to have stuff that you want your listeners to be able to work through at home, something which contains all important aspects, then just publish lecture notes online.[2]

[1] He begins his talk with some more conversational stuff but later on (skip to 18:30) he also features more technical stuff, and there his presentation is more interesting for our discussion.

[2] I see myself making this point the third time in the discussion of the article and I'm somewhat surprised that it's not completely obvious.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> I cannot vote this up enough.

One of the best presentations I have attended was 90 minutes of stock photos. Each one was loosely connected to the next point that was to be made.

A couple of weeks ago I made a presentation where absolutely every bit of text said the exact opposite of what I was actually saying to the class. I was half way through the lesson before someone noticed. It got their attention though.

Slides are there to stop your class falling asleep, serve as a mind-jogger for yourself, and supply those rare bits of information that absolutely have to be visual, such as a graph or diagram. None of these things need text (except maybe the title).

<comment><USER12> * I was half way through the lesson before someone noticed.*

Were you halfway through before someone noticed or halfway through before someone decided to say something about it?

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> Please, let's return to the golden age of when I was in college and professors had to write things illegibly on the chalkboard before just reading them to us!

<comment><USER13> In mathematics that is still the preferred method, because (latex beamer) slides have far to little space to capture all the stuff you want to view in parallel to e.g. understand a proof. Additionally it forces the lecturer to slow down the information flow, which is equally important in mathematics.

In less complex subjects I would prefer slides and well written lecture notes. What Rebecca Schuman is criticising are slides that are simultaneously abused as lecture notes.

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> For readers who enjoy the general topic of the trade-offs of communicating through PowerPoint, the PowerPoint version of Lincoln's Gettysburg Address[1] by Peter Norvig, LISP hacker who is now Google's director of research, is not to be missed. Another very interesting discussion of PowerPoint you can find for free online is "PowerPoint Does Rocket Science"[2] by data visualization guru Edward Tufte.

[1] [http://norvig.com/Gettysburg/](http://norvig.com/Gettysburg/)

[2] [http://www.edwardtufte.com/bboard/q-and-a-fetch- msg?msg_id=0...](http://www.edwardtufte.com/bboard/q-and-a-fetch- msg?msg_id=0001yB)

When I give a public presentation, I use a whiteboard and marker, or a blackboard and chalk. If I were in a really large auditorium, I would use an old-fashioned overhead project with blank transparency sheets that I would hand draw on as I speak. I want my talks to be interactive and audience- responsive, not canned. (I do tend to prepare bullet-point outlines with references on a page or two of paper before I give a talk, and email that out afterward, but I say more than I what I write down, and I respond to audience questions.)

AFTER EDIT (TO ADD ANOTHER THOUGHT):

Just last evening I was at a presentation for parents, at which I was presenting with permanent market on paper pads on an easel, and during discussion a parent mentioned that she has her son open-enrolled in the half- day kindergarten program in my local school district. The kindergarten classes largely use smart boards run by the teacher's computer for instruction, so the little pupils (sixteen in her son's classroom) see a lot of slide shows. The other day, the teacher was telling the class about apples, and rather than bring an actual apple into the classroom, the teacher showed a slide of a stock drawing of an apple. (Apples are available year-round in any grocery store in my town, and cost a lot less than a smart board.) Would you want your children to have this kind of education in early childhood? Wouldn't it produce a deeper understanding of apples and how they grow to touch and cut open an apple while in a school unit about apples? (My school district has a paraprofessional teacher aide in each classroom along with the certified teacher for kindergarten and early elementary classes, so there should be sufficient adults in the room to let pupils touch and see actual apples during class.) This seems like PowerPoint gone mad in primary education.

<comment><USER16> Here's a reponse to Tufte in defense of PowerPoint, which was on HN a few weeks ago: [http://www.john-foreman.com/1/post/2014/01/defending- powerpo...](http://www.john-foreman.com/1/post/2014/01/defending-powerpoint- against-tufte.html)

<comment><USER17> What is good about the response? What is new in it? The author has two main points: 1) that Tufte had information dense slides in his presentations, and because PowerPoint can be used to show information dense slides, Tufte is wrong, and 2) that since Steve Jobs had forceful product announcement presentations with simple slides, and since Tufte likes Apple products, Tufte is wrong. While I suppose the second point is novel, neither are good.

Neither point addresses Tufte's central problem with PowerPoint, which is that the software, with its templates and bullet-point lists, encourages a certain style of ritualistic presentation, where the presenter's conclusions are the focus, not the backing evidence that leads to those conclusions. This sort of problem preceded PowerPoint (Tufte writes about similar problems with overhead projector presentations with transparencies filled with bullet points at IBM in his essay _The Cognitive Style of PowerPoint_ ), but PowerPoint inflamed the problem.

<comment><USER18> Citing Steve Jobs to defend slideshows only makes the case for what's wrong with slide shows. Jobs' slideshows were only ever a supplement to his presentation. If you removed the slideshows, the presentation would suffer somewhat (and only a little, if you ask me). However, if you removed Jobs, there would be no presentation. His slides were nothing you could review online later because you missed the live presentation.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> People need to understand that there are different types of powerpoint presentations. Here are some of the different types of Powerpoints I have experience with:

The Public Speaking: Should be a few words, a picture, a quote...basically what this presentation advocates for. Very minimalist. The focus should be on what the presenter is saying.

The Pitch Deck: In my opinion, a startup pitch deck should be very minimalist, but should be enough for someone to understand the pitch. Often investors ask me for pitch decks before a meeting. If there's only 3 words per slide, lots of valuable content might be missed. I still never have more than 3 bullet points per slide.

The Consulting Deck: When I worked for a big 3 management consulting firm, we used decks to present all of our information. It was much more technical and in depth, and it needed to stand alone in case a CEO wanted to read the study two years down the line. Many times it would have multiple graphs or infographics, and several bullet points. The top right would have a tracker saying which part of the presentation we were in, and the title would be a tagline which states the takeaway from the slide. This type of deck would never be presented to a large public audience, but rather around a table with a few stakeholders with in-depth subject matter knowledge.

Clearly there are different types of powerpoints for different situations. My best professors did notes by hand, rather than try to put everything on a powerpoint.

The most important rule that holds true to all Powerpoints, in my humble opinion, is _one point /takeaway per slide._

Too many people use powerpoints as a crutch rather than a tool, and it gives the slideshow a bad name.

</comment><comment><USER20> Terrible instructors will be terrible in any medium, so the problem isn't with the medium but the instructors. Great slideshow though, lots of insight for those of us that do actually care about how we teach.

</comment><comment><USER21> Reminds me of a story...

This year my dad, a football coach, lugged an overhead projector with a bucket full of transparencies and visa-vis markers to a football clinic he was asked to speak at. When the younger coaches saw the ancient contraption, word got out on twitter, and my dad was past capacity for his talk. Many of the youngest coaches had never even seen an overhead projector!

By the time his talk was over, he had drawn (we might say derived) his ideas right in front of them, adapting to the questions that came his way. Most people said they really enjoyed the more interactive style my father taught in contrast to the stale power points of some other presenters. A great reminder that some people (including me!) learn best when things are derived in front of them with a dynamic teacher.

</comment><comment><USER22> Some things to think about:

Students are often given the digital slides which they use to study off of for finals.

The act of writing/taking notes does help some in knowledge retention. Note taking doesn't happen when students have access to the slides.

But, really, power points aren't the issue with higher education (or education in general).

The purpose of classes are to enable learning. This seems to be best done through student involvement. Lecturing really isn't a good way to get students involved.

</comment><comment><USER23> An interesting point - but I wish the article wasn't a friggin' Powerpoint presentation itself.

I assume that is somewhat tongue-in-cheek, but still.. is it really necessary?

</comment><comment><USER24> I think this Seth Godin PDF on Powerpoint is very good.

"PowerPoint presents an amazing opportunity. You can use the screen to talk emotionally to the audience's right brain (through their eyes), and your words can go through the audience's ears to talk to their left brain.

That's what Stephen Spielberg does. It seems to work for him."

[http://www.sethgodin.com/freeprize/reallybad-1.pdf](http://www.sethgodin.com/freeprize/reallybad-1.pdf)

</comment><comment><USER25> Their mention of Prezi ([https://prezi.com/](https://prezi.com/)) just reminded me of it and of when I tried to convince a bunch of people at a "creative digital media agency" to at least give it a thought, instead of using powerpoint or slides crafted in photoshop and stitched in a pdf.

I was amazed to find out that they knew about it but they were like "what?! that thing is totally WRONG" or "it's to unstructured to send any clear message" or "is the epitome of BAD DESIGN" etc. And later heard similar thoughts from business people that tried it, like "yeah, that's even worse than keynote" or "couldn't get anything done with that".

So I still wonder: _why do lots of business /"creative-business" people find Prezi such a bad idea and some even call it "worse than powerpoint"?!_ (...to me it seemed like a _really big step forward_ in the presentation world)

<comment><USER26> I'm curious to know why you think it's a _really step forward_ in the presentation world. All I can think of is that stuff moves around the screen all around.

<comment><USER25> Yeah, most people use it badly, and the default templates are awful, but its zooming-in-out style is excellent for mind/knowledge-map based presentation.

You can start with a mind-map and then use it to actually tell a story, and have a glimpse at the mind map as an outline every time you "walk" the map. With links between "map regions" you can also more-easily have a non-linear flow that the speaker can improvise "on the spot" instead of having to follow a linear structure.

Yeah, the speaker needs to be a good story teller, not to just go from slide to slide like a mindless robot, but all good story tellers have "maps" in their heads, not "slides", so you have a tool that is much closer to the mental model of the speaker. The "visual detail" of how Prezi can move from slide to slide means a lot to visual thinkers.

...now I guess my answer is that most people doing business presentations just don't think very visually at all, they are mostly "words persons", and instead of a map in their heads, they have a list of bullet points that they need to sell in their heads :(

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> Looks like someone there got a hold of Edward Tufte's "The Cognitive Style of Powerpoint"

[http://www.edwardtufte.com/tufte/powerpoint](http://www.edwardtufte.com/tufte/powerpoint)

"the popular PowerPoint templates (ready-made designs) usually weaken verbal and spatial reasoning, and almost always corrupt statistical analysis."

</comment><comment><USER28> i ran into trouble in a master's programming for going sans powerpoint for a final presentation. Just dove into code & started showing things, illustrating concepts & showing classes/methods.

Needless to say i got a little talking to from my professor about how I should've had a powerpoint even though he got what i was explaining.

I received a slightly lower grade than a slew of people who just implemented some common algorithm & made a powerpoint about their wonderful journey (almost a direct analogue of the few paragraphs of the text that drove their ingenious work), even though I had spent all of my time you know... researching & experimenting with a novel algorithm.

It was at that point that I realized that even the highest echelons of academia can be a trough of mediocrity & conservatism.

being in a society that dictates super-linear patterns of thought/communication is a bummer for people whose minds don't work like that but still produce satisfactory (& often beyond) results

</comment><comment><USER29> I'm sorry. I could not get through that slideshow. The medium killed the message there.

Could this not have been presented better with a few paragraphs of text on an otherwise blank page?

(seriously.. TL;DR anyone?)

</comment><comment><USER30> I don't get the points about how it's bad to leak information (putting it on the web, showing things before you say them, giving enough information on the slideshow that you don't need to listen.) I mean these things might be bad for other reasons, but if the students don't show up or pay attention, that's on them. And if you can learn everything from the slideshow alone, well then great, what's the problem?

</comment><comment><USER31> This whole thing strikes me as a tone-deaf whine from someone who wants more attention paid to them in lectures.

I've seen exceptional presentations that stand on their own as documents to learn from; these are very valuable.

Nobody likes having a presentation read to them. This does not mean that we should make "slideshows" useless to force presenters into a different style. What the presenter says or does is ephemeral; the slideshow document lasts.

</comment><comment><USER32> There are all kinds of considerations that this doesn't take into account. A huge part of presenting involves knowing your audience. For just one example, having text on the slides is very important when you have an audience of mixed language backgrounds.

</comment><comment><USER33> I couldn't read this critique of slideshows because the slideshow didn't load.

Point taken, sir.

</comment><comment><USER34> I disagree, having slides allowed me to quickly learn all the material, much faster than if I was actually attending class. This freed up all my time to get work done and enjoy life in college.

<comment><USER13> What you would actually want to use in such a case are lecture notes. Or from a different angle, those slides you used have actually degraded into lecture notes and are thus necessarily worse as presentation material.

</comment></comment><comment><USER35> Challenge yourself to use fewer than five words on each slide.

Couple that with strong visuals and carefully rehearsed speaking — that's the way to teach and present.

</comment><comment><USER36> That slideshow was particularly annoying, more annoying than most slideshows ....

On the other hand it got the message across well, in fact better than most slideshows.

</comment><comment><USER37> For the people playing devil's advocate: why should a college lecture be any different than a TED talk or conference presentation?

<comment><USER32> Because it should present the whole story.

</comment></comment><comment><USER38> Which Wittgenstein quote is she referring to on slide 24? I searched a few quote sites but didn't find anything that would fit.

</comment><comment><USER39> In fact, part of the ivory tower stands unfelled: I don't think I have ever seen a math lecture or talk using powerpoint.

</comment><comment><USER40> I didn't get it. Can you explain the slides to me in private?</comment>


Cache is the new RAM (2014) - <AUTHOR> http://carlos.bueno.org/2014/11/cache.html <comment><USER2> [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8631898](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8631898)

</comment><comment><USER3> Not really, cache takes large chunk of space on the chip die size and also is power hungry, it's simply not scalable when you can have GB/TB memories that is slightly slower but totally expandable, cache is unable to cope with the increasingly large data set and will not be the solution for sql or nosql, memory with SSD is.

</comment><comment><USER4> So what is a good "SQL RAM CLUSTER" implementation I can try out?

<comment><USER5> [http://spark.apache.org/sql/](http://spark.apache.org/sql/) SparkSQL ?</comment></comment>


Systemd & the "core linux" band vs a world of many inits - <AUTHOR> https://plus.google.com/+MartinLanghoff/posts/MgAeGR6Pb8p

<comment><USER2> Please put (2012) in the title.</comment>


Google Pixel: the Android iPhone you've been waiting for - <AUTHOR> http://www.wsj.com/articles/google-pixel-review-the-android-iphone-youve-been-waiting-for-1476795541 <comment><USER2> I think it's overpriced. As someone with a Note 4 I don't really see m/any killer features to upgrade to. I half considered the iphone7, being waterproof is a decent feature but I'm not comfortable carrying a phone around that costs as much as a budget car in my pocket. I'd gladly miss this upgrade cycle because in my opinion we've hit "peak phone". A smartphone is a commodity item at this stage. What I do value is not having to work a day extra to afford a phone, those extra 8 hours are now mine.

<comment><USER3> On the other hand, my phone is the one device that's always with me, so it's one area where I am tempted to spend a bit more. However, what I'd pay extra for is better stability and a better experience for core features rather than new features.

But two new features well worth it this round of phones: Water resistance has been a long time coming. Also hoping unlimited high-res storage for photos in the cloud becomes a standard across all vendors. I know you aren't supposed to trust these services with your precious files, but I've been a horrible steward of my own photos and I'm always out of space on the device.

<comment><USER4> > Also hoping unlimited high-res storage for photos in the cloud becomes a > standard across all vendors. I know you aren't supposed to trust these > services with your precious files, but I've been a horrible steward of my > own photos and I'm always out of space on the device.

I, personally, absolutely refuse to use cloud storage of my photographs (or any data, really) that doesn't involve client-side encryption. Am I actually that concerned about my photographs themselves? No, not really — but it is the principle of the thing, as well as uncertainty about what the future might bring.

I feel the same way about my location history and other data. Can I guarantee that no government or employer for the rest of my life will penalise me for having attended a political meeting, a church or anything else? I really don't think so.

Once given to someone else, data can _never_ be pulled back. None of us can know the future, and so it makes sense to be as conservative as possible about what we let go of.

<comment><USER5> Do you trust yourself to store things safely without data loss (even in the face of theft, house fires and natural disasters) more than the multi-level redundancy employed in the cloud?

Is data loss less important to you than possible leakage of your photographs?

These are the tradeoffs the GP made choices in.

<comment><USER4> > Do you trust yourself to store things safely without data loss (even in the > face of theft, house fires and natural disasters) more than the multi-level > redundancy employed in the cloud?

No: I encrypt my data locally, using protocols I believe/hope are strong enough, and then upload the encrypted data to cloud storage providing multi- level redundancy.

Right now, this is a somewhat painful process, since Google (quite deliberately, I think — 'Don't Be Evil' is now but a fading memory) choose not to facilitate it, but there's no reason why it shouldn't be as simple and straightforward as using the cloud without encryption.

Key management isn't really that difficult: have one master key, stored encrypted under the highest-strength passphrase one can remember, accessible using trusted client software (i.e. _not_ something running in a browser). Done.

<comment><USER6> Honestly I'd imagine its more of an issue of, with encrypt then send, the only way you can browse your remote files, is to download them and then decrypt them

so that means no browsing thumbnails of what could be a large collection, no viewing dates or other information on those files (since that is information leaked).

the only real way is to cache all that information on each device that would want to access those photos, which is doable, but it would feel a bit awkward, especially if sharing any of the data with other devices

<comment><USER4> > Honestly I'd imagine its more of an issue of, with encrypt then send, the > only way you can browse your remote files, is to download them and then > decrypt them

That's the only way to view _any_ information: it has to be downloaded.

> so that means no browsing thumbnails of what could be a large collection, no > viewing dates or other information on those files (since that is information > leaked).

An client-side-encrypted photo store could easily support uploaded thumbnails (just not server-generated ones), and separate downloads for them. A client- side-encrypted data store could easily support separately-encrypted metadata, and there are some protocols for cryptographically-secure queries too.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> It's nice to see Google totally nail the hardware and overall experience. The camera sounds impressive.

The problem for me is that the $700 phones aren't twice as good as the $350 phones. The midrange (or low-high-end) has got good enough that I can't justify doubling the expense.

I've got a LG G4 with a faulty mic due to water damage. If I can't repair it I'm seriously considering buying another one because I can't see anything else as good at that price point and nothing that makes me want to spend more.

<comment><USER8> LG phones are one of the most repairable out there. Could easily taken it a apart and replace the mic yourself.

<comment><USER9> Which is nice because it will need to repaired often (bootloops suck)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> \- No replaceable battery

\- No SD card

\- Only 2 years updates

\- Same price range as the iPhone

No, that isn't what I was waiting for.

<comment><USER11> Who uses SD card anyway? I mean seriously pretty much everything is cloud hosted now days, so 64-128GB is not enough?

<comment><USER12> Can't tell if you being sarcastic. If not:

A) Charging an extra $100 for a little extra local storage is the biggest scam in technology right now, some are worse than others, but anything less than a TB for $100 is infuriating.

B) 64-128GB is not nearly enough for the ridiculous resolution the cameras work at, especially video.

C) Not everyone wants their stuff in the cloud.

<comment><USER13> Nearly all manufacturers are moving away from removable storage in phones.

For the majority of users, it complicates things, and can lead to nasty edge cases if they don't understand it.

Note that iPhones have never offered removable storage.

Also, SD cards can often be of dubious quality. Even good quality ones would never be as good as the NVMe (or similar) SSDs now used in high-end phones.

Put it this way - for your laptop, would you rather a NVMe SSD, or a MicroSD card you bought from Amazon? One is going to have much more predictable write performance under varying conditions, and you know will last. The other, well...I know what I'm trusting my data to.

<comment><USER14> There's definitely a contingent (perhaps even larger so outside the US) where SD storage is important.

The question is whether that group is large enough to create sufficient demand for a removable storage phone beyond the desire of these companies to drive adoption and lock in with their respective cloud services.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> I was initially unimpressed by the phone...however after reading/watching the Verge review about it[0], I'm considering it as my next phone (but I'll probably get in a bit later when they have better deals on it)

[0] [http://www.theverge.com/2016/10/18/13304090/google-pixel- pho...](http://www.theverge.com/2016/10/18/13304090/google-pixel-phone-review- pixel-xl)

<comment><USER16> You should also give the Ars Techinca review a shot.

[http://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2016/10/google-pixel- review-b...](http://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2016/10/google-pixel-review-bland- pricey-but-still-best-android-phone/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> Nah, still too big. If there's a Pixel Mini in a year and a half when I'm looking to replace this SE, then we can talk.

But let's be honest, the product line is a lot more likely to go Pixel -> Pixel 6 -> Pixel 6R -> Pixel 6 Max -> Pixel 7 -> Pixel One -> Pixel X or some nonsense like that.

<comment><USER18> I have two phone requirements: stock Android and <5" screen. The Pixel comes so close. If it were cheaper, I would compromise on the screen size. As it is, I just bought a new battery for my 2013 Gen 1 Moto X for $5 instead.

<comment><USER19> I recently made StockDroids[1] -- it's still not much but it's a good start if you're in the market for a new phone :)

[1]: [http://stockdroids.com/](http://stockdroids.com/)

<comment><USER20> Very nice. Maybe add a Filter/Search field to reduce the list.

<comment><USER19> Clicking the field's name on the left will let you filter. It should be more discoverable

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> From my perspective and talking to people who use Android phones, none of them was waiting for iPhone comparable priced Android device. For tech people: it is just assembly of generic hardware components, this time by Google. For non- tech people: it is not an iPhone, so why it is so expensive.

I don't think Google is trying to gouge people. It could be that half million sales of a device does not give economy of scale to price any cheaper.

<comment><USER22> As an Android person (and someone who was a fervent iPhone user until the iPhone 6), I've definitely been waiting for a phone without all the usual Android carrier crapware, with a great camera, and not a phablet.

Quite excited about the Pixel

<comment><USER23> You describe the OnePlus One (cannot comment on the successors after they broke up with CM).

The Pixel seems to be a phone loaded with Google crapware instead of carrier trash - and is (I agree with the GP) far too expensive in my world if you look at the hardware alone and want to dump the 'value added services' anyway.

<comment><USER24> You get the Google "crapware" on almost any Android device. (contractually mandated by Google)

The other crap that the vendors bolt on is always on top of that.

PS: I have the One Plus Two. Great device, very happy. Good price. No replaceable battery either, though.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> [https://youtu.be/mOwYlhUbsko](https://youtu.be/mOwYlhUbsko)

[https://youtu.be/jJOgF15LLZk](https://youtu.be/jJOgF15LLZk)

[https://youtu.be/-FCNA-RwRBQ](https://youtu.be/-FCNA-RwRBQ)

Initial reviews seem really positive. The touch response looks much improved, and that camera is a beast. Battery life looks much better than other Android phones too.

<comment><USER26> > Initial reviews seem really positive.

Not everyone likes it though: "The Google Pixel Is Too Dumb and Ugly to Replace Your iPhone"

[http://gizmodo.com/the-google-pixel-is-too-dumb-and-ugly- to-...](http://gizmodo.com/the-google-pixel-is-too-dumb-and-ugly-to-replace- your-i-1787877249)

The main problem is: It costs way too much and delivers too little for that. To be a competitor to the iPhone at the same price point, the Pixel has to really shine. This is where it fails and is reduced to a lighthouse product for a very special, small group of customers.

<comment><USER27> > To be a competitor to the iPhone at the same price point, the Pixel has to > really shine.

This is the rhetoric going around, but I'm not sure it's really true. Sure if their goal was to instantly knock the iPhone off in one generation, but it's not. The goal is to build a really strong and compelling Google ecosystem (home, assistant, chrome, chromecast, all the services that people already use) that the pixel is simply one part of. To me, this is the real end goal, to convince you to buy a Pixel not because it trumps the iPhone on its own merit, but because it ties in with all these other things you use/want to use.

I have no idea if that vision will come to fruition, but if it does, then the Pixel just needs to be "good enough" to start taking some market share.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> How many years of updates will it get? I'm not spending that kind of money to only get 2 years of official updates when the iphone gets 4-5 years of support.

<comment><USER29> Two years and another of security updates.

<comment><USER30> At least another year. Nexus5 is still bring updated, already past the official date.

<comment><USER31> Nexus 5 may get security updates, but it didn't get Nougat

<comment><USER30> This is literally the context of the comment I responded to. "and another of security updates."

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> The issue is it's hard to imagine Apple deciding to stop making phones, it's fairly easy to imagine google deciding to drop the minor product line or stop supporting it.

<comment><USER33> As they just did to all the Nexus users, where last year's phone buyers won't get software-only features like the Google Assistant, just to encourage new phone purchases.

<comment><USER34> Why do people keep saying that Nexus users won't be getting stuff like the Google Assistant? The Long Press activation requires 7.1. That's the only thing holding it up. All Nexus phones receiving 7.1 will have the same Google Assistant that is on Pixel. You can even enable it right now if you want by tweaking a Build.prop file if you running the latest version of the Google app (just not using Long Press). You can also just access it from Allo. It's not some grand conspiracy to get Nexus users to upgrade to Pixel.

The new launcher is called the Pixel Launcher (though leaks of it called it the Nexus Launcher). Speculating that Nexus users won't be getting the new launcher is reasonable (though they can just install the APK and it works fine). That has nothing to do with the Google Assistant though.

There will be a developer preview of 7.1 for Nexus devices in the next couple of months. Having to wait a couple months to get the latest and greatest Android release after it's publically available on another phone is definitely something Nexus owners can complain about. There is nothing to suggest that Nexus phones won't be getting features like Google Assistant though.

<comment><USER35> I don't think that's true. From what I've heard and read, Google Assistant will stay exclusive only on Pixel for now. Even when the 7.1 update reaches Nexus 6P.

[http://mashable.com/2016/10/06/google-assistant-not-in- andro...](http://mashable.com/2016/10/06/google-assistant-not-in-android- nougat-7-1/#jOkEngDz7iqP)

<comment><USER34> I stand corrected. I just received the 7.1 developer preview for the Nexus 6P and no Google Assistant.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> Is it just me or did we have a much better selection of phones a few years back? It feels like most phone are trying to mimic the iPhone and that is precisely the phone I don't want.

We used to have "hacker" friendly phones with hardware keyboards etc.

Does anyone remember the Nokia N900?

<comment><USER23> The N900 was great, but I've basically given up hope for one of those. My favorite was a OnePlus One for some time - it was too big and had some shortcomings, but it was a fast phone with superb CM support from day 1.

I flirt with the idea of getting a FairPhone 2 [1] again and again, because it seems a Good Idea and they seem to encourage ports to other platforms (i.e. there were rumors about a Jolla port).

1: [https://www.fairphone.com/](https://www.fairphone.com/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER37> "In most situations, I'd rather have the Pixel camera... One reason is the phone's superior screen. The AMOLED display makes photos look better; even ones taken on an iPhone."

What? How does a better screen make the camera better?

Also, in the comparison photos, they have shown different images for the Pixel and iPhone. How can we be expected to judge for ourselves based on that?

Come on, WSJ. This is just amateurish.

<comment><USER38> > Also, in the comparison photos, they have shown different images for the > Pixel and iPhone. How can we be expected to judge for ourselves based on > that?

Came here to say the same thing, it's incredibly hard to judge when you have 2 different pictures. A number of site have nailed this and have the same picture taken with each phone and a slider you can pull across the image to switch between the two phones. All that to say I'm not a photographer and I really couldn't give a shit about the pictures I take. No one has ever shamed me for not having enough definition in a picture I've posted and reallyI'd be fine with a camera from 2-3 iPhone models ago.

<comment><USER39> I'm confused... there are two sets of near-identical comparison photos with that pull-slider you described between them, and to my eyes it clearly and fairly shows that the Pixel's colors and clarity are better.

Are you guys complaining about the slight differences in angle and camera placement? (i.e. as you pull the slider across, things shift a little bit) It was a little un-satisfying in the sense of falling just short of perfect, but in my non-photographer mind it's plenty close enough to see a fair comparison...

<comment><USER37> Strange... that slider feature wasn't visible the first time I viewed the site. Maybe it got added in later, or maybe it was a browser issue.

Thanks for clearing that up, it's now a very good comparison.

<comment><USER39> Thank you too, yeah, I wondered about that. Maybe they had a compatibility issue that made it not load right in your first browser or the first time you read it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER40> For price-conscious potential buyers of the Pixel, the current used-phone market for non-Apple and non-Samsung phones are small enough that depreciation for such phones is rapid. Since Google is marketing the Pixel line as an iPhone competitor, it may indeed have sufficient demand that it depreciates closer to Apple and Samsung than to other Android phones. However, that remains to be seen.

It seems to me that limiting oneself to year-old iPhones, just after a new model is released and changing models every year strikes a nice balance between depreciation rate and usability/features.

<comment><USER41> Year-old new or year-old used?

</comment></comment><comment><USER42> I'm still loving my Sony Xperia Z5 compact. The phones are getting too big.

</comment><comment><USER43> I think I'll keep my Nexus 5X for another year or two until the specs of midrange phones surpass it, and then I'll probably go for a Sony or Motorola device, probably whatever the 2018 iteration of the Xperia X or Moto G will be (I favor Sony's hackability but Moto's aesthetic). I'll be pretty bummed to have to leave Project Fi, because it's the best carrier I've ever had, but I'm not buying a Pixel, and my 5X won't last forever.

What Google is asking for the Pixel is way too much money. On top of that, I absolutely cannot stand how metal-and-glass phones feel in my hands. I have sensitive skin, and every time I've held an iPhone I feel it digging in and causing me pain. Here's the thing, though: because of the iPhone's popularity, an iPhone user who doesn't like its feel can get any kind of case they can imagine. A simple Google Image Search turns up dozens, if not hundreds, of different leather and suede cases. Searching Etsy turns up options for hand- stitched leather. You can even get an iPhone case that doubles as a stuffed animal, if you really want something soft (seriously: do a Google Image Search for _plush iPhone case_ ). The Pixel will never reach that level of popularity. It will never be popular enough for there to be even a quarter of the cases available for it as there are iPhone cases (I'm skeptical it'll have even an eighth of the amount).

I also just don't trust Google to seriously make an "appliance phone". Look, Apple is very, very good at making phones that are basically consumer appliances. Google doesn't know how to do that. They've dressed the Pixel up as one, and given it a price and a fuselage to match, but they don't have the experience, and they don't have the app ecosystem. Even their first-party apps are horrendously inconsistent with one another. The reality is that if you want an appliance phone, you should buy Apple, and if you want a hackable gadget for geeks, you should get either an older Nexus phone or buy Sony.

</comment><comment><USER44> Why are new phones so large? I'm stuck on iPhone 5S because everything newer is so damn big.

<comment><USER27> Because people buy the bigger ones. The market seems to have established that the 5-5.7" range is where the money is to be made.

Anecdotally, 5" is pretty perfect for me, and using an iPhone 5 is a very frustrating experience.

</comment></comment><comment><USER45> I'm pretty sure this will be my next phone as it is available on Verizon and I _have_ to get out of the Droid Turbo trap. Having gone through three Turbos (2 Turbo I and one Turbo II) I'm strongly looking to jump away

This is an overwhelmingly positive step forward, even if it isn't up there with, say, the iPhone (which I don't think it is in terms of looks, ease of use, app ecosystem, etc) When the rush of orders dies down a bit over the next weeks, I'm going to be placing an order to replace my Turbo II.

<comment><USER18> This isn't what you said, but just to be clear to all readers: don't fall into the marketing trap. The Pixel is available for all carriers: [http://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2016/10/psa-if-you-like- updat...](http://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2016/10/psa-if-you-like-updates-dont- buy-the-google-pixel-phone-from-verizon/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER46> I've thought about replacing my Moto X, but the battery lasts two days. In fact I sometimes run out of battery because I forget I'm supposed to charge it.

I look at the pixel and nexus and other phones, and I see benchmarks where their battery lasts 7 to 13 hours depending on phone, and I assume those are all best case.

I never think about my phone. I think I'd think about it a lot, every day, when I got near the end of my active daytime period, or got home and realized my phone is still charging at work.

<comment><USER47> There's a user over on Reddit who is in Australia and was lucky enough to have received the Pixel XL early. He mentioned that he had low usage, about an hour a day, but is able to get to day 4 without charges in between. Others seem to be saying that two days is pretty easy with "normal" use.

<comment><USER46> Does he power down, or just not use a bunch of video/audio? My use is light phone/text, and rare email/web while standing in line (but usually I just "be" while I'm in line).

</comment></comment></comment><comment> mr-ron Preordered mine as a switch from Apple. Mostly because of the Daydream VR line, and I have found myself strongly disagreeing with a lot of Apple's vision. (Lack of VR, Lack of aux)

<comment><USER33> If you believe Robert Scoble, iPhone 8 is going to have like desktop-grade VR. Now mind you, _I_ don't believe Robert Scoble, but the claim has been made, as if it was fact.

</comment></comment><comment><USER48> The Google Pixel phone makes me wish the Google Play Edition phones had caught on, because the more I think about it, the more I realize that's all I really wanted:

\- The phone I want (an HTC One M7 or M8 at the time)

\- No OEM bloat

\- Continued OS and security updates

That's it. And unfortunately at the time it had been announced I had already purchased an M7 on-contract from Verizon, so I couldn't well get the GPE Edition.

It didn't continue, presumably because it didn't sell as well as they were hoping (though to be fair, none of HTC's phones for the past five years have sold as well as they were hoping). But I really liked that idea: rather than buying the Nexus, which has always had certain compromises (lack of SD card slot), buy the phone you want and Nexus-ify it.

After looking at the Google Pixel, I don't really want it: I'd prefer to just buy an HTC 10 that is debloated, not carrier locked, and guaranteed to get OS updates for several years.

</comment><comment><USER49> My Nexus 5 was my favorite phone. I replaced it with a 5x but I still prefer the old form factor more. The fingerprint reader is nice and so is the camera on the 5x.

Google hit a sweet spot with the Nexus 5 in terms of price performance and form factor they haven't been able to replicate since.

</comment><comment><USER36> LG V20 is the phone I've been waiting for but it looks like it will not be sold in Europe. :(

<comment><USER50> The V20 is also running 7.0 Nougat, and is available now, which the author failed to mention - in fact, she says the Pixel's the only one running it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER51> Why is the leading contender disqualified? The Samsung Galaxy 7 is still great.. remember the burning phone as the NOTE 7 (and it's more a phablet than phone)

<comment><USER23> As an owner of a S6E: I'd disqualify those due to unremovable crapware (anything starting with S basically), crappy support for rooting/flashing the phone (ODIN, flash fuse), crappy driver support for 3rd parties (-> No CM, probably never). Touchwiz.

If you like Apple, the iPhone is great I guess. If you like Samsung, the S6/S7 series might be great. I'd definitely agree that the hardware is superb in both cases, but would disqualify these devices (in my world, for my use cases and preferences) due to software concerns.

<comment><USER33> "unremovable crapware" like... Google Play Music, Google Play Movies, Google Play Books, Allo, Android Pay, Gmail, YouTube, Google Maps, Google Translate, et al.?

<comment><USER23> Short version: Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, I keep that although I don't use it really, no, no, yes

Different use cases and all, I guess. The first three are irrelevant in my world (and arguably should be opt in - add their Games thing to that list). You follow with yet another IM/chat/voip application. Android Pay? I'm neither interested, nor do I believe that adoption around here is high enough to use it for anything remotely serious. GMail is something I don't really use anymore, but still keep due to my mostly dormant Google account. YouTube is neat, honestly. Google Translate is something I rarely have a use for. If I need that, translate.google.com works fine in Firefox. Why would I install that as an application?

(Update: Only just noticed that you answered in my 'Samsung crapware' thread, I complained about 'Google crapware' in a sibling thread. Maybe we're actually in agreement? I cannot tell if you honestly consider Google's stuff as crap - as I do - or if this is sarcasm)

<comment><USER33> I just find it an interesting double standard where many people consider Samsung software bloat, and Google software not-bloat. Even though Google's is only there because it's contractually required, and it's equally non- removable.

Glad to hear you agree non-removable bloat is bad across the board! :)

<comment><USER52> Google's apps don't run unless you launch them.

<comment><USER23> And I can install a 'Skype stub' application that doesn't do a thing unless you start it as well.

It's still crapware, unwanted and useless. If I want anything but the Play Store (honestly.. I shudder, whenever I have to write/say that name. How can you take that name serious, ever?) itself, I can install it. Preinstalling applications is a Bad Idea™ most of the time, clutter if you're feeling nice, abusing the market position otherwise.

Why would I need Chrome on my mobile? Why is it impossible to remove it?

<comment><USER52> I don't disagree, but it's not a double standard to be more irritated by apps that get in your face and drain additional resources.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER53> seems a tad overpriced to me. I ordered Xiaomi Mi5s for 2/3 the price

</comment><comment><USER12> I really can't wait for a retro cell phone fad to be a thing.

Remember when you had to replace batteries instead of phones? Manually install SD cards? Type on that hard keyboard? Screens so small they didn't even fill a quarter of your man purse? Now you can live like a double naught!

Technology is cyclical.

</comment><comment><USER54> Lot of people talking about the phone being too large and I'm sitting here wishing it was bigger.

</comment><comment><USER55> I'd love to buy one if only I could. Still no Google products in Mexico.

</comment><comment><USER56> Insanely over priced, design is terrible as well. Sony's latest xperia device looks pretty sweet.

<comment><USER27> Eye of the beholder! To me, the Pixel is quite a nice design, and the new Xperias look awful.

</comment></comment><comment><USER57> No QI wireless charging :( Dear Google, I'll keep my Nexus 5

</comment><comment><USER58> No sd card, no sale.

</comment><comment><USER59> I can't even read this article through the google workaround. HN should seriously consider banning WSJ.

<comment><USER18> Alternatively, you could consider paying for articles you want to read...

<comment><USER59> The question is if it's appropriate to post paywalled links on a public news aggregator. Do we want to foster a culture of paying to view the links you see on HN? I don't.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER60> I subscribe to the WSJ and the one column I have learned to never read unless I want to shake my head at the way the modern media writes tech journalism is Joanna Stern's column. It is tech advice for people uncomfortable thinking for themselves or rightfully fearful they aren't able to keep up with changing technology.

"Hey, grown ups, have you heard about the latest thing? Let me tell you how to Snapchat like the kids are doing!"</comment>


Heroku Postgres Databases Patched - <AUTHOR> https://blog.heroku.com/archives/2013/4/4/heroku_postgres_databases_patched

<comment><USER2> In my opinion, this is a huge win for Heroku users, and is one (of many) reasons to use Heroku Postgres.

Not only does the Heroku Postgres service have a set of amazing features (easy provisioning, read slave creation, duplicate master creation, free backups), but their uptime is amazing and they're constantly looking out for their users.

Bringing down all databases for 60 seconds to make an enormous security patch is admirable, and it's great to see these guys helping all their customers out.

I've been using Heroku Postgres for close to 2 years now, and wouldn't look back at all. It's been one of the most valuable services we've used, +1.

<comment><USER3> Shucks. Well, I'll try to not let you down in the coming year, insomuch as I can muster.</comment></comment>


Math for seven-year-olds - <AUTHOR> http://jdh.hamkins.org/math-for-seven-year-olds-graph-coloring-chromatic-numbers-eulerian-paths/ <comment><USER2> I'm surprised he used the formal terminology here. When I teach graph theory to a younger audience I usually make up (or have them make up) names. I think it gives them a feel for inventing mathematics, but then again it's usually aimed at high school students who have already been convinced as to what math is and isn't, and saying words like "chromatic number" turn them off. I imagine these girls don't suffer from the same afflictions.

Still, this blog post was excellent. I don't understand why all elementary math education isn't in the form of games and activities like this.

<comment><USER3> Here is TEDx talk, "Why Math Education is Unnecessary", by a math teacher arguing that compulsory math classes should be replaced with voluntary math- based games: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xyowJZxrtbg](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xyowJZxrtbg)

Here is an essay by a mathematician, A Mathematician's Lament by Paul Lockhart (2002), arguing that math education is completely stupid, like teaching art only through paint-by-number exercises, and should be replaced by play: [https://www.maa.org/external_archive/devlin/LockhartsLament....](https://www.maa.org/external_archive/devlin/LockhartsLament.pdf)

And here is a short video of a democratic free school, Sudbury Valley School, where kids play freely all day long and learn math through video games, card games, and voluntary study: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=awOAmTaZ4XI](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=awOAmTaZ4XI)

<comment><USER4> Music is taught by the equivalent of paint by number, which is reading sheet music. Or play, which is improvisation. There's room for both.

<comment><USER5> Music as paint-by-number is one of the worst failings of music education. The most robust and life-long music in the world is in cultures that actually use notation only as appropriate if at all and don't think of it _as_ the music. Most of the world's music is not so notation-focused.

<comment><USER6> I don't think this is the fault of music notation. Prior to widespread availabity of recorded music, playing music from sheet music was a common activity in the West. If anything, I would say the death of lifelong musical performance is more the result of recording -- "this disc here is the music" rather than "this sheet music is the music" \-- the sheet music still needs a performer.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Interesting co-incidence. Just last week, I sent out an email to my friends, saying that I want to teach mathematics to their kids by a math-by-email service, kinda like the chess-by-email of the old days.

The idea is quite simple: I will send out a daily email with a grade appropriate set of math questions and/or games. Your child provides the answers back by email. I check the answers, provide corrections/feedback. And the next day's worksheet is customized to the child's history. If there is an interest, I could follow the child all the way from pre-K to graduate level Math subjects. Think about that -- wouldn't it be awesome if when you are getting your PhD, you could look back over 20 years of daily problems you solved and how you progressed in your conceptual understanding?

Naturally, you want to balance the gaming aspect with the rigorous aspects. You can start learning Graph Theory with diagram filling, but as you get more serious, there is no substitute to solving several hard problems to get a deeper/intuitive understanding of the concepts. There is no question that people learn different ways, some visually, others through games, and others through mental modeling. I am convinced that if we could tailor math teaching to each kid, we could get rid of the stigma that "Math is hard", or, worse, "Girls can't do Math".

Math, as I say, is a contact sport, not a spectator sport. You have to grab a pencil and a piece of paper to work on 20-30-40 harder and harder problems to master each concept. But to learn new concepts, you also have to cross the significant hurdle of climbing the first few rungs of each concept, so to speak. So let's learn by balancing games and theory.

<comment><USER8> or like math in the old days [1].

Israel Gelfand's stuff is model for enrichment at an upper level. Alexander Zvonkin's "Math from 3 to 7" book published by MSRI could be a model for younger kids.

I think the "new math"materials for the '60s and '70s and the Eastern European materials from a similar period provide a model for education. Unfortunately, they require mathy folks to present and interpret the material.

PS. I'm not criticizing public school teachers. I also feel inadequate. In order to teach DS7, I feel like I should probably work through Herstein's Abstract Algebra. I'll put it on the list... Currently I'm working through Euclid... Next Fall our homeschool will have a geometric focus... after that... who knows.

[1] See [http://gcpm.rutgers.edu/books.html](http://gcpm.rutgers.edu/books.html) ... this was a pale imitation of what Soviet era math circles would offer but is still way beyond anything extant.

<comment><USER7> Your URL is broken -- has extra dots at the end.

<comment><USER8> Fixed

<comment><USER9> _EDIT 4:_ The solution: use a dash. 😤

―――――――――

 _EDIT 3:_ Okay, I give up.

―――――――――

 _EDIT 2:_ Wow, okay, so my ZERO WIDTH SPACE was automatically escaped instead of treated as a separator. Anyway, I'm pretty sure the comment system accepts Markdown, so you should be able to use Markdown's URL syntax to clearly mark which part is the URL without using a space to do the same:

[1] See [[http://gcpm.rutgers.edu/books.html](http://gcpm.rutgers.edu/...](http://gcpm.rutgers.edu/books.html\]\(http://gcpm.rutgers.edu/books.html\)…) this was a pale imitation of what Soviet era math circles would offer but is still way beyond anything extant.

―――――――――

 _EDIT 1:_ Scratch that! Looks like as long as there's no space, it's still considered a part of the URL regardless! Perhaps using U+200B ZERO WIDTH SPACE would still be considered a valid separator and could be used in place of U+0020 SPACE:

[1] See [http://gcpm.rutgers.edu/books.html…](http://gcpm.rutgers.edu/books.html…) this was a pale imitation of what Soviet era math circles would offer but is still way beyond anything extant.

―――――――――

Just a tip—instead of adding a space after your three periods, you could have used U+2026 HORIZONTAL ELLIPSIS instead, like so:

[1] See [http://gcpm.rutgers.edu/books.html…](http://gcpm.rutgers.edu/books.html…) this was a pale imitation of what Soviet era math circles would offer but is still way beyond anything extant.

The HORIZONTAL ELLIPSIS isn't be interpreted as part of the URL since '…' isn't a legal character to use in URLs (unless you write it in escaped format (UTF-8 encoding), which would be '%E2%80%A6').

<comment><USER10>
      > Anyway, I'm pretty sure the comment system
      > accepts Markdown, ...

I suspect that's where you're wrong - I suspect the comment system is hand- rolled.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Fantastic! I'm going to print this out for my 9-year-old daughter to play with, and to teach to her friends when they come over (she loves to play school teacher). This is the kind of intuitive math games that I've been looking for to challenge her a bit without scaring her off with dry, boring stuff.

There's also the game of Sprout (or Sprouts) that is easy for kids to learn and has interesting mathematical implications.

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sprouts_(game)](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sprouts_\(game\))

</comment><comment><USER12> I introduced graph theory to my son when he was about 8 or 9 years old. By Nature, he's a networker (like to connect to people) so "friends of a friend" was very intuitive to him.

I have also tried to introduce the concepts to teenagers. In Denmark, we have an annual, national science weeks in primary and secondary schools. I have given [http://www.slideshare.net/geisshirt/naturvidenskabsfestival-...](http://www.slideshare.net/geisshirt/naturvidenskabsfestival-2012) as a talk/lecture at 4-5 schools and most 13-15 years old children get the ideas quickly - Facebook and other social medias are a big help :-)

</comment><comment><USER13> All of this looks awesome: [http://jdh.hamkins.org/category/math-for- kids/](http://jdh.hamkins.org/category/math-for-kids/)

</comment><comment><USER14> I appreciate the polish of making this into a small book. When educating kids, the 'take away' of having things in a format to take home and play with / show parents makes a big difference (as it does for adult learners).

</comment><comment><USER15> > _Next, we considered Eulerian paths and circuits, where one traces through > all the edges of a graph without lifting one's pencil and without retracing > any edge more than once. We started off with some easy examples, but then > considered more difficult cases._

Wait, there's math devoted to that? I used to do that as a kid for fun!

<comment><USER16> Ha! There's a whole branch of math dedicated to variations on it ([http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Graph_theory](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Graph_theory)).

<comment><USER17> For graph colouring I think the right WP link is Ramsey theory.

Also not sure graphs are a "branch" of mathematics, that would be like saying polygons are a "branch" of mathematics. (Branches would be like CA, AT, DG, ... as in [http://arxiv.org/list/math/recent.](http://arxiv.org/list/math/recent.)) I see graphs as just a common object that relates to a variety of mathematical areas.

<comment><USER10>
      > For graph colouring I think the right WP link
      > is Ramsey theory.

That turns out not to be the case: Ramsey theory is an area of Graph Theory that overlaps with, but neither subsumes, nor is subsumed by, questions related to coloring graphs.

      > Also not sure graphs are a "branch" of mathematics, ...

It may be the case that you are unsure, but my PhD is in Graph Theory, specifically, and I can assume you that it is a recognized area of mathematics.

      > I see graphs as just a common object that relates
      > to a variety of mathematical areas.

Similarly groups, topological spaces, sets, _etc._ Math is built on abstraction - the idea is to find commonality, extract it, then study it in its own right. Then anything you prove there applies to everything it came from. Graph Theory is like that, and it is its own subject within math.

<comment><USER8> Hmmm... Sets, Groups, Topology, Algebraic Structures... Sounds alot like the Bourbaki "Mother Structure's".

Sets and Algebra, I can teach as a homeschool dad. Group theory, topology, and abstract algebra are to difficult for me.

I don't think this is intrinsic. Lots of Rosen is hard for me.I suspect Smaullyan's math logic book coming out this Summer will be transparent(Euler diagrams alone make it clearer). Likewise, lots of Stewarts Calc is obscure. Yet, strangely Spivak's Calc is clear and simple. I suspect there are similar resources for abstract algebra and topology.. I assume that I will have worked through baby Rudin before DS finishes highschool... however, there must be a more direct, less abstract path.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> This! Graph theory should be taught very early to all children. It is as fundamental and important as simple algebra, and yields great insights without requiring tough computations.

<comment><USER19> When I was a child, we had set theory in elementary school. They dropped it shortly afterwards, though I still think it's very elementary.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> Great project. Strangely enough I was thinking about going through something similar just yesterday (to teach my work mate about graphs).

My daughter isn't even 3 yet so this would still be a little beyond her. Not by much though, given how approachable it has been made.

I've downloaded the kit for later in life.

</comment><comment><USER20> Amazing project! Does anyone know why a (2D?) map will need at most four colors while avoiding neighboring areas with the same color?

<comment><USER2> This is a monumental theorem called the four-color theorem, which specifically states that ever planar graph is 4-colorable. It actually took mathematicians many years and many pages (and computer programs!) to prove. There is a simpler proof that every planar graph needs at most 5 colors. [1]

Also, 2D is not quite specific enough. It turns out that there are non-planar graphs that can be drawn on a different kind of 2D-surface (the surface of a torus) that need more than four colors. [2] It turns out that for tori, the max number of colors is seven. And you can keep going up, culminating in this cool thing called the Euler characteristic. [3]

[1]: [http://jeremykun.com/2011/07/14/graph-coloring-or-proof- by-c...](http://jeremykun.com/2011/07/14/graph-coloring-or-proof-by-crayon/) [2]: [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toroidal_graph](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toroidal_graph) [3]: [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Euler_characteristic#Examples](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Euler_characteristic#Examples)

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> What I'd like is a companion booklet that looks with a bit more rigor and formalism at the topics - but not too much! - that would suit a Y13 (17-18yo) or an introductory lecture at undergrad level. I've never really had a proper introduction to graph theory.

Incidentally this has come at the perfect time. I was just discussing with my 8 yo different fields of mathematics and which symbologies he's used and starting him on Boolean set operations. Graph theory was mentioned (by me!) so this will be a good flexi-day if he wants to follow up on it.

A nice accompaniment might be a lightbot like game for exploring Eulerian paths.

<comment><USER2> I have given lectures to students of this age range (13-18 years), but I don't have a booklet. See this blog post: [http://jeremykun.com/2011/06/26/teaching- mathematics-graph-t...](http://jeremykun.com/2011/06/26/teaching-mathematics- graph-theory/)

<comment><USER21> That's great, an enjoyable and inspiring read. Can you - or another reader - recommend a resource that's perhaps just a little more advanced though, please? What's the next step after formalising the language used, understanding connectivity and path traversal ... perhaps, what would the subheadings of a follow up lesson to this be?

I'm not asking to be spoonfed, really!, there are just so many resources on the web and shooting off I tend to get lost in Wikipedia and drift around too much without getting a reasonably rigorous overview.

<comment><USER2> I think a good answer is going to depend heavily on your goals (applied or theoretical). Maybe you could elaborate on that?

<comment><USER21> Um ... bit of both. My goal is personal enjoyment - I've done graduate level maths [way in the past] but graph theory never really featured for some reason. Thanks for your continued consideration.

<comment><USER2> There are a lot of books out there for really applied and really theoretical versions. I personally prefer the CS perspective, which spends a lot of time on problems about graphs (finding matchings, covers, cliques, flows, traversals satisfying certain properties). A good overview text is Bondy & Murty[1]. This text sort of straddles theory and practice in that you get lots of topological intuition (like Euler characteristic), and lots of algorithms and applications. One thing that's conspicuously missing is a treatment of random graphs, which is a huge topic both in theory and in applications. I do like that the book covers some basic Ramsey theory, as this is one of the most popular topics in combinatorics and it gives you a good flavor of what's going on in modern research there.

[1]: [http://www.maths.lse.ac.uk/Personal/jozef/LTCC/Graph_Theory_...](http://www.maths.lse.ac.uk/Personal/jozef/LTCC/Graph_Theory_Bondy_Murty.pdf)

<comment><USER21> Excellent, thank you for your insight and your patient answers.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> If this sort of thing interests you, then either the modern Moebius Noodles[1] material or the vintage Young Math[2] materials like "Maps, Tracks, and the Bridges of Konigsberg: A Book about Networks by Michael Holt" would also.

[1] [http://http://www.moebiusnoodles.com/](http://http://www.moebiusnoodles.com/) [2] [http://www.valerieslivinglibrary.com/math.htm](http://www.valerieslivinglibrary.com/math.htm)

</comment><comment><USER22> This is the kind of experience would never be allowed with the Common Core type approach. I can't imagine people spending a classroom day on something like this (even though it's awesome and super valuable), but alas it's not content that will appear on the standardized tests.

<comment><USER23> Why wouldn't this be allowed with the Common Core? The Common Core is a set of standards for what students should have learned by the end of a year, and for fourth grade, for instance, the Core consists of things like "Use the four operations with whole numbers to solve problems," "Understand decimal notation for fractions, and compare decimal fractions, " and "Generate and analyze patterns."

One can fault the Common Core for not including enough discrete math -- it really focuses on numbers, algebra, and eventually modeling with polynomial and trigonometric functions -- and one can fault America for putting people into the classroom who don't know math [1] and then telling them they'll be awarded tenure or not based on student performance on some test [2].

People are confusing the same old problems we've always had (poor teacher training, stupid cobbled-together curricula like Integrated Math mandates by school boards, teaching to tests with high stakes for teachers and little value for students, etc) with Common Core. Read the standards [3], folks, and decide based on what they actually say what you might actually think.

[1] [http://www.nsf.gov/statistics/seind12/c1/c1s3.htm](http://www.nsf.gov/statistics/seind12/c1/c1s3.htm) , [http://www.math.vcu.edu/g1/journal/Journal7/Part%20I/Sterlin...](http://www.math.vcu.edu/g1/journal/Journal7/Part%20I/Sterling.html)

[2] [http://education.ohio.gov/Topics/Teaching/Educator- Evaluatio...](http://education.ohio.gov/Topics/Teaching/Educator-Evaluation- System/Ohio-s-Teacher-Evaluation-System/Student-Growth-Measures/Value-Added- Student-Growth-Measure)

[3] [http://www.corestandards.org/Math/Practice/](http://www.corestandards.org/Math/Practice/)

<comment><USER2> At a high level you're right, Common Core philosophy does encourage this sort of lesson. The unfortunate part is that Common Core still is largely a list of facts that students need to know, and when they need to know them. This is why graph theory is not "compatible" with the standards, because in the huge list of topics they pretend these things don't exist. And since the Common Core is really a document for non-teachers, I agree with the original comment that this wouldn't fly. It's just due to opposition by administrators, test writers, and standards-compliance checkers who read the document too thoroughly and, paradoxically, too shallowly. They don't look at this lesson to see whether it fits with the philosophy of learning espoused by the standard; rather, they check off which standards it covers and complain when the answer is zero. I put some fault in the document for this.

<comment><USER23> I'd disagree that it's a list of facts; the high school modeling standards are skills. I've read some good discussions of whether the earlier-year standards are useful for their age groups and am not sure (I think they're pretty reasonable). The high school modeling and geometry components are great.

But what does Common Core have to do with graph theory not being taught in elementary school? It never has been, and not because of new standards. It's not taught because too many teachers don't know it, and because too many "administrators, test writers, and standards-compliance checkers" have their noses where they shouldn't! It is terrible that in the US we have this attitude that teachers must be told exactly what to teach and when. We have it because we don't trust teachers, and swapping out NCTM standards for Common Core standards doesn't change that.

<comment><USER2> The modeling standard is, I feel, the most honest part of the standards. I'm arguing that if someone tried to teach graph theory as part of, say, modeling (which it is by all means), then they would see blowback from the people that make sure teachers are working toward meeting the standards.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> Wow, pretty sure I learnt this stuff after high school...kinda awesome/scary.

<comment><USER25> Yeah, math education is ordinary schools is terrible. I still haven't learned this, although I am 20...

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> Thanks, this was great. I got through the coloring with my 6yo this morning. I printed out two copies and we shared a desk and did it together. He enjoyed it and got mostly optimal answers. He got bogged down in the maps because coloring big areas frustrates him. So he is drawing robots now. I would suggest not trying to do this in one session with easily distracted boys.

</comment><comment><USER27> I remember when my wife took a course on set theory I was fascinated with the graph theory stuff. I wonder if there are other academic fields of math that you could customize for elementary schoolers - I know my dad taught me Boolean algebra and logic gates in Grade 4, so there's one.

</comment><comment><USER28> Using CHILDREN to solve NP-Complete problems? What have we become? Monsters, I tell you.

</comment><comment><USER29> The coloring of vertices is a great idea. I'm going to try that with my daughter.

</comment><comment><USER30> Great material! Can we get a follow up article for seventy year olds? Not a lot out there for the elderly. Math for seventy-year-olds Thanks!

</comment><comment><USER31> The Google Drive download link isn't working for me. Are there any mirrors?

</comment><comment><USER32> This is great - thanks for sharing!

</comment><comment><USER33> Graph Theory for Maths :D</comment>


An interview on what makes Postgres unique: extensions - <AUTHOR> http://www.craigkerstiens.com/2019/11/13/postgres-interview-from-art-of-postgresql/ <comment><USER2> My little business uses PG. Had a unique need for PK IDs. It was pretty easy to make a little extension in C to generate them for us, and linking in PG was super easy (but the .so has to be on replica before loading) and we only used the TEXT type cause I didn't want to figure out making a new 128bit data-type. But can't do this in RDS.

<comment><USER3> Interesting, sounds (without more detail) like uuid datatype / uuid-ossp (which is available on rds)?

<comment><USER2> ULID - [https://github.com/ulid/spec](https://github.com/ulid/spec) it's like 48bits of control and 80 bits of power packed into 128bits of fun!!

<comment><USER4> Why store it as text rather than raw bytes?

<comment><USER2> I wanted to ship in a few hours and didn't want to get into custom data-type. Maybe v2 ;)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Postgres has all sorts of great stories for customisation. It does custom aggregates better than MySQL or SQL Server, for example, because you can just write them in SQL with not hassle.

</comment><comment><USER6> Storing data is the most universal task in the software ecosystem. Data storage will be confronted as a problem by everyone even tangentially related to software - the Truly Inspired Software Engineer, the Almost Incompetent Software Engineer, the Developer, the Manager, the Lawyers. The Customers will care, sooner or later it becomes their problem. The Subcontractors care. Even the Government cares about data storage.

It is a not a problem where 'unique' or 'customised' are competitive advantages. 'Boring', 'available', 'reliable' and 'well understood' are competitive advantages. Relational databases are a great way to store small quantities of arbitrary data and PostgreSQL is a textbook relational database.

<comment><USER7> > It is a not a problem where 'unique' or 'customised' are competitive > advantages. 'Boring', 'available', 'reliable' and 'well understood' are > competitive advantages.

This analysis overlooks the importance of "hype" and "convenience" in the marketplace -- case in point, MongoDB. To this day people are realizing what a mistake it was to abandon constraints and transactions given to them by their "textbook relational databases".

> Relational databases are a great way to store small quantities of arbitrary > data and PostgreSQL is a textbook relational database.

Just want to make sure no one is mislead by this, Postgres scales to the amount of data needed by I'd argue 90%+ of the companies -- I'd bet my money on a single appropriately configured small-to-midsize Postgres instance being enough to handle your business needs for the next 10 years (if your company lasts that long) and beyond.

Also, Postgres's flexibility is indeed a huge competitive advantage. It can handle both full text search[0] (which I argue is usually good enough) and timeseries[1] data (better than InfluxDB can, in some cases[2]), made possible by it's extensibility. This is a competitive advantage for small to midsize companies that don't want to dedicate one person to mastery of Elasticsearch (which is often necessary), along with deploying & managing more infrastructure.

[0]: [https://www.postgresql.org/docs/current/textsearch.html](https://www.postgresql.org/docs/current/textsearch.html)

[1]: [https://timescale.com](https://timescale.com)

[2]: [https://blog.timescale.com/blog/timescaledb-vs-influxdb- for-...](https://blog.timescale.com/blog/timescaledb-vs-influxdb-for-time- series-data-timescale-influx-sql-nosql-36489299877/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> I don't think I can get any extensions loaded if I use RDS. They've basically handicapped what I'm reading is one of the most useful features of postgres

<comment><USER9> They publish a list of available extensions here [https://docs.aws.amazon.com/AmazonRDS/latest/UserGuide/CHAP_...](https://docs.aws.amazon.com/AmazonRDS/latest/UserGuide/CHAP_PostgreSQL.html#PostgreSQL.Concepts.General.FeatureSupport.Extensions)

But compared to the wide and wonderful world of available options, this list is extremely short, and missing basically all of the Foreign Data Wrappers.

<comment><USER10> For security reasons, I guess.

You can't really just let people load any old .so that could happily fopen() anything it wants on the host etc. They need to vet them.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> If RDS won't support the extension, it might as well not exist. Well, almost might as well. I'm lucky I don't need sfcgal but if I did I might give up on RDS.

<comment><USER9> I ran into this quite frustrating limitation recently twice in one day, for two different tasks. The MongoDB foreign data wrapper for a legacy data access task, and the rational numerical library for storing accurate fractions for a project dealing with financial data containing multiplicative rates and times where the cumulative floating point errors were throwing off final calculations.</comment></comment>


UI Showdown: Tweetbot vs. Twitter App - <AUTHOR> http://kaishinlab.com/tweetbot-vs-twitter/

<comment><AUTHOR> Hi all, I am interested to know if any of you have used Tweetbot for iPhone and would like to hear your feedback to wrap up my piece!</comment>


555 Timer IC Integrated Circuit - <AUTHOR> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/555_timer_IC <comment><USER2> Ah the good old 555 Timer IC. The joys of hardware engineering come flashing back to me. So much this tiny chip could do!</comment>


Data Science Hand Tools: Unix Power tools Revisited - <AUTHOR> http://radar.oreilly.com/2011/04/data-hand-tools.html <comment><USER2> Good post. It's also not hard to throw together quick data stream-processing tools like that in awk or C. I have a couple: drop (opposite of "head"), til ("til 10" -> "0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9"), slice (read given 4kb chunk numbers from file, via mmap), and dozens of little scripts. I don't really care for shell scripting, but awk is great.

If you want more stuff like this, check out _The Unix Programming Environment_ and _The Awk Programming Language_. Both co-written by Brian Kernighan.

<comment><USER3> Doesn't

        tail +n

do what your "drop" does? (Starts reading n lines from the beginning.)

<comment><USER2> It does! Didn't know that, thanks. :) I didn't check, given the name. ("til" and "drop" are names from k.)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Shocked, _shocked!_ to see an O'Reilly data article that does not pimp their Strata conference or their damn "data science" books. This is a great refresher on command-line tools, and I would love to see more stuff like this.

<comment><USER5>
      > or their damn "data science" books.

Are they that bad?

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Unix Power Tools is a great reference for data analysis.

The author does not mention the chapter on: "You Can't Quite Call this Editing" which I used extensively for some pretty involved flat file data analysis.

covers the great tools:

cut

tr

sort

uniq

also:

piping to grep and grep -v (invert match)

I also came across this great line in the sort man page for allocating in- memory usage SIZE for the sorting data:

SIZE may be followed by the following multiplicative suffixes: % 1% of memory, b 1, K 1024 (default), and so on for M, G, T, P, E, Z, Y.

...that says about all you need to know about unix ;)

</comment><comment><USER7> That nifty map-reduce block using awk-sort-uniq-xargs in the post is very smart!

I forward <http://tldp.org/LDP/abs/html/textproc.html> to everyone who joins my team newly; though only a very few of them make use of it, it would help a lot!</comment>


Bill Gates's barbed comments pop Google's broadband balloons - <AUTHOR> http://www.theregister.co.uk/2013/08/08/bill_gates_google_smackdown/

<comment><USER2> A reliable and ubiquitous means of communication is essential for logistics. If we need to know where and when we need vaccines, food, and water then what do we have now? Shoddy cellular infrastructure that's poorly reliable and easily disrupted.

What is logistics?[1] The management and flow of resources from the point of origin to the point of consumption, for example food items, materials, equipment, liquids, and staff. Abstract items like inventory information and security information are also essential to everyday life in developed countries.

Materials, distribution, and supply-chain management -- the bedrock of business development in developed nations -- require consistently available communications infrastructure, and there is no Comcast or AT&T in Africa. Those that rise to meet the challenge get embroiled in political infighting and corruption.

There's something to be said about air supremacy, and there certainly is none in Africa. What other air-based telecommunications infrastructure is there? Satellite communications is expensive and extremely difficult to implement.

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

<comment><USER3> > What other air-based telecommunications infrastructure is there?

Radio.

<comment><USER4> In particular, look at what the hams have done with cheap, low power radios. Many take it as a challenge to see how far they can reach on low power. This is called QRP.

The QRP hobbyists regularly communicate over hundreds or even a thousand miles on a few milliwatts of power. The record is 1650 miles with a 1 microwatt (micro, not milli!) transmitter.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Hes right and hes wrong.

Bill (and Melinda) Gates is having a phenomenal effect in Africa which I have the privlige of being involved in first hand.

Yet at the same time, Africa doesn't stop with health issues. The local information technology knowledge base in Africa is exploding and improving hard infrastructure to the continent will have a profoundly positive effect on African countries breaking free from the oft stereotypical mould of 'poor chaotic corrupt third world nations'.

<comment><USER6> Many countries in Asia that were poor and underdeveloped when I was a child now have better standards of living than I had in a developed country at the time. Africa is a big place but some countries are making clear progress. It is wonderful to have Bill and Melinda come in and give your free access to drugs but if you have a strong economy you can look after your own which is far more sustainable.

Cheaper rockets might seem like a plaything until you consider poor countries having better access to geospacial data for crops planning or easier access to education. Same goes for Internet.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Something to reflect upon: With this deployment, Google will -- frequency licensing agreements and such aside -- own the physical layer. Presuming encryption keeps it opaque to outside scrutiny.</comment>


Ask HN: Closest Thing to "Twitter for Code"? - <AUTHOR> I just discovered a trick that made me so happy I want to shout it to the world — ala Twitter. But most people who follow me on Twitter aren't programmers, so I'd rather not post there ...
Where can I do this?
The source of my joy pretty-prints json-formatted curl responses using Python's familiar json library:
curl $URL | python -m json.tool <comment><USER2> Github and link it on HN i guess :D

</comment><comment><USER3> github gists</comment>