Feds say Yale discriminates against Asian, white applicants - <AUTHOR> https://apnews.com/e97f08eb935989840bda430bb7a32e15 <comment><USER2> Man, I remember appplying to colleges and being rather selective about how I self identified. I'm half Asian, and half "white" (which is weird in itself because it's technically a bunch of different races bundled into one light skinned bucket).

On almost all my applications I identified as Asian (better chance of acceptance and scholarships!).

The only exceptions were Ivy and California schools which even in the late 90's were obviously discriminating against Asians. You know it's bad when you identify as white to get a diversity edge.

Even today at work,I regularly get ignored for diversity metrics. Being an Asian American is so weird.

<comment><USER3> This is true about one of my workplaces. Diversity this, diversity that. As a Director, I remind them that I'm not white. They seem to handwave it away and not count it despite Asian-Americans being underrepresented in this line of work. Such is life.

EDIT: If you're an Asian-American you get used to this kind of "model minority" discrimination / racism. It just is what it is. My guess is it is similar for Jewish people.

<comment><USER4> If you have been paying attention you may have seen the term "BIPOC" pop up overnight. This is a less handwave-y way of excluding Asians when it is convenient.

<comment><USER5> I was confused by the B in BIPOC. I thought African-Americans were people of color?

I'm trying to be earnest here because if that's the term that should be used I will use it, but I'd like to know its genesis. It feels wrong to refer to entire, disparate groups of people (indigenous peoples and Latinos in the Dakotas probably have very little in common) by an acronym that seemingly double-counts a particular group seems odd.

<comment><USER4> it essentially just means "the black and indigenous subset of people of color". Some definitions say it is to emphasize them more but includes all POC, but the former definition is effectively what it means in any context where one would find it necessary to use it at all.

<comment><USER5> Oh wow I completely misunderstood it then. So BIPOC is a subset of POC, got it. Thank you.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> It's easy to engage in a zero sum game of fighting for the "fair" share of the pie, but I believe the fundamental problem is that our education system as it exists today has immense scalability problems: it's built upon the idea of creating scarcity around qualifications and putting people against each other. I honestly think we are already headed in the direction of providing a more open education through the internet. COVID has probably accelerated the process.

I hope we can find ways to lift each other up rather than bring each other down.

<comment><USER7> This scarcity problem was the issue I had with the free college proposals last year. It basically proposed that we should make everyone professionals. But, this isn't possible! For every manager, there are 10 workers. "Working class" jobs are necessary. The solution should not be give everyone an escape from hell, it should be make the jobs less hellish. Better wages, better healthcare, more respect and dignity overall.

Saying that everybody should not go to college might at first seem elitist, but I think its elitist to presume that college is the only path, where people demonstrate their "merit".

<comment><USER8> 10 people don't need 1 manager. The company'd be best served if all 11 people worked and managed themselves, like adults.

<comment><USER9> Well, I think if large groups of people (companies) are collaborating, some degree of hierarchy should be maintained. While, yes, even if all employees are reasonable adults, it would still benefit their shared objective if there is structure in what they are working on, and when.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I've had a couple of observations about this whole process, and I would love to be convinced (either way!) with real data / evidence.

1) For all the contortions that universities in the US go to, to adjust and hand-tune their population -- does it produce a meaningfully _better_ class than if they used a simple score cutoff? Would such a class (chosen by simple, unbiased score cutoff) be so much worse at innovation, leadership, (alumni donations??) than a class chosen by our heavy judgement-laden process? Sports, maybe?

What is all this extra effort and political decision-making worth, in actual outcome? Many other countries use purely exam based entrance. Or allow anyone in, and test them once there and kick out if they don't pass. What is the value of the "high judgement" method of admissions? Is it that you're more likely to produce a president or CEO?

2) To echo Justice O'Connor's final question on the matter in oral arguments, when do we know that we're _done_ with this policy? Who says we're done and fixed the situation? How will we know we've reached a point where we can agree that we've achieved something that was the goal, or is it just arbitrary, up to whomever is in power at the moment? If not, will this just go on forever? Is that not ripe for some bad side effects, or worse, corruption of the process?

3) Why have universities adopted themselves as the place where this modification of outcomes should be applied? As I understand it, the problem of diversity etc. etc. happens long before the college/university stage. Attempting to fix it at the end does no one very much good, than if the effort was applied earlier in students' lives. Or, the metrics by which you decide if it's working become softer and softer.

I struggle to find satisfactory answers to these questions, and therefore don't find myself convinced for why AA is reasonable (or legal).

<comment><USER11> 1) The incentives are different for different universities. Less elite universities don't (generally) do all this because, you're right, there's no point. More elite universities do, because they're incentivized to.

Elite universities play a zero-sum game with one another for the far right tail of prestige/power/access. Part of that game does depend on producing the right sort of graduates -- but no exam will find them, and the sorts of things that identify them aren't generally the sorts of things you can grade/fail them on either. The other part of the game is played not with the graduate but with _everyone else_. Harvard is Harvard (to most people) not because of the mean Harvard grad's success, but because everyone else couldn't get in. Those two incentive structures point more or less at what we've got: painstaking care taken to identify a very small group of candidates, who are then _highly_ credentialed (ex: grade inflation). (All while retaining the aura of meritocracy.)

<comment><USER12> > Part of that game does depend on producing the right sort of graduates -- > but no exam will find them, and the sorts of things that identify them > aren't generally the sorts of things you can grade/fail them on either

And this is just a way to show class/status with more steps. The fundamental problem is that there exists positions in society where holding it isn't merit based, but connection and class based. Harvard is a vector for which some people of a lower class are allowed to ascend - but only under the auspices of the current crop of upper-class.

<comment><USER11> Sure, but Harvard's position in society is no more fixed than anyone else's (albeit with more inertia). They maintain their status by producing high status graduates.

If we want to influence that dynamic (say, to push it toward justice, perhaps meritocratic justice), we can identify high status-granting institution/processes (ex: Harvard) and try to make them grant status differently. But, of course, if you interfere with that process it's going to be less effective... but maybe that's okay; maybe burning the process/institution (slowly) and redistributing status along the way is worth it. Or, maybe, if you're skillful, you can get away without burning the process. But this is a big, complicated, social process and heavy-handed manipulation simply won't work -- you'll never rid status of connection and class, because status /is/ connection and class. You can only hope to redistribute things in a more just way (however defined).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Why do schools need to know the race and ethnicity of their applicants in order to make merit-based admissions decisions? Even things like geographical location and economic adversity can be anonymized and quantified. It seems like a no-brainer to hire some accounting firm to filter applications for racially identifying material before they are reviewed by the admissions board.

<comment><USER14> I think this gets to the crux of the issue that's almost impossible to solve for in a "blind" way: if you _don 't_ look at race you're going to have a very wealthy, white, suburban, homogenous class of admitted students. And there is definite value in a diverse class: differences of thought, background, opinion, and lived experience make for a much more interesting discussion in the classroom.

<comment><USER15> > I think this gets to the crux of the issue that's almost impossible to solve > for in a "blind" way: if you _don 't_ look at race you're going to have a > very wealthy, white, suburban, homogenous class of admitted students

Why not provide racially neutral class-based / disadvantage-based affirmative action instead? You get points if your parent(s) are poor. You get points if you have a single parent. You get points if you or your parent(s) have been on welfare. You get points if your parent(s) are in or have been to prison. You get points if you went to a high school with a low average academic achievement. You get points if your parent(s) have a history of homelessness or drug addiction or serious mental illness. You get points if you reside in a low income area.

That would produce a diverse student body without any direct consideration of race.

<comment><USER16> I think your assumption here is that if you were to filter based on those things you'd get an outcome that would be representative of the total population. But I don't see why you think that. Look at relatively poor Asian kids in the NYC public schools system. Even if you were to apply your filter there, they would still likely end up massively over-represented. Similar (but less dramatic) outcomes are likely even with Whites. Even factors like social class and family income don't carve things up in such obvious ways.

<comment><USER15> Why must the outcome "be representative of the total population"? If group X is Y% of the national population, must group X also be exactly Y% of the student body at universities? It is inevitable that, in anything, some groups will be overrepresented and other groups underrepresented, partly just by random chance, partly due to all kinds of complex cultural and historical reasons. To the extent under-representation is due to bad historical reasons (past oppression/persecution/discrimination/etc), then yes I think something should be done about it. But why not do that at the individual level, of the individual who is socially disadvantaged due to that history of oppression?

I have no problem with the idea that people from disadvantaged backgrounds get some special consideration. But compare two individuals: (a) a person from an under-represented racial/ethnic minority who comes from a privileged background (e.g. parents who are university professors, politicians, corporate executives, doctors, lawyers, etc) (b) a person from the ethnic/racial majority (or a minority which is not considered to be "under-represented") who grew up in extreme poverty, suffering from child abuse and neglect, parental drug addiction and criminality, homelessness, etc. How is a system fair if (a) gets given a preference but there isn't one for (b)? That's why I think affirmative action should be based on individualised assessment of social disadvantage, not group membership.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> By the way, you all know this is going to come up in California this fall? Because there is a proposition on the ballot (Prop 16, ACA 5) to repeal the current CA Constitutional section that government shall not discriminate based on race.

[https://elections.cdn.sos.ca.gov/ballot- measures/pdf/aca-5.p...](https://elections.cdn.sos.ca.gov/ballot- measures/pdf/aca-5.pdf) [http://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/codes_displaySection...](http://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/codes_displaySection.xhtml?lawCode=CONS&sectionNum=SEC.%2031.&article=I)

 _" The State shall not discriminate against, or grant preferential treatment to, any individual or group on the basis of race, sex, color, ethnicity, or national origin in the operation of public employment, public education, or public contracting."_

<comment><USER17> Washington has a similar law, and a referendum to repeal it was on the ballot last year (I-1000/R-88). It was narrowly defeated (ie, the law was not repealed). Interestingly, according to Ballotpedia, there were many newspaper editorials in favor of repealing the anti-discrimination law, but only one against (in the WSJ [1]), and it also makes mention of the issue of Ivy League admissions.

[1] [https://www.wsj.com/articles/legalizing- discrimination-11571...](https://www.wsj.com/articles/legalizing- discrimination-11571602815)

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> Remember when The College Board was developing an "adversity score" but then dropped it in the face of criticism?

I honestly wish we would just do that. We would actually have something quantitative instead of vague generalizations about "personality". The methodology could be scrutinized, and centralized (instead of every college coming up with its own special formula), and we could stop talking about this every X months.

<comment><USER19> > adversity score

Hm - so people who faced more "adversity" would be propelled to the top of the list? I can see that going horribly wrong: if it worked perfectly, you'd end up with yo-yo generations where one generation went to a good college and had a successful career (and if you don't believe one thing follows from the other, why bother with the adversity score at all?) while the next would be relegated to struggling, giving their children the needed "adversity". Realistically, though, you'd have smart parents finding the right mix of adversity to give their kids a leg up just just the way they find the right mix of extracurricular and volunteer activity today.

<comment><USER20> Nah, you'd just have wealthy people deciding how they calculate the score and making sure they can tweak the numbers to show their kids are disadvantaged.

<comment><USER21> Just like some wealthy parents find a friendly doctor to diagnose their child with a "learning disability" to get extra accommodations on tests. Knowing how to work the system confers huge advantages on the privileged.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> On a very related note, California Prop 16 will be on the ballot in November, seeking to remove the following text from the CA constitution:

>The State shall not discriminate against, or grant preferential treatment to, any individual or group on the basis of race, sex, color, ethnicity, or national origin in the operation of public employment, public education, or public contracting.

[https://ballotpedia.org/California_Proposition_16,_Repeal_Pr...](https://ballotpedia.org/California_Proposition_16,_Repeal_Proposition_209_Affirmative_Action_Amendment_\(2020\))

<comment><USER23> I wonder what impact the ordering of those clauses has on people reading/voting. I didn't even notice "or grant preferential treatment to" until the ~third read through, still trying to figure out why anyone would vote to repeal this.

Alternative ordering for comparison:

>The State shall not grant preferential treatment to, or discriminate against, any individual or group on the basis of race, sex, color, ethnicity, or national origin in the operation of public employment, public education, or public contracting.

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> I don't mean to be edgy here, but this is necessarily true in service of affirmative action. It's obviously impossible to enact affirmative action without the corresponding penalty on outgroup members.

Although it's perplexing just how...nasty?...the discrimination against Asians is. I can't imagine ever trying to justify that "all Asians" have personality defects that make them disproportionately bad candidates for college, as is proven to be what the colleges are doing here.

Utterly unacceptable, IMHO.

<comment><USER25> I may get a lot of hate for this... But I think affirmative action has opposite the desired effect. The majority groups are dicriminated against by design. I don't think this does anything to fix the tensions causing racism in the first place. I think it makes them worse.

The government should find a way to benefit minorities without outright descrimination against those that doesn't fit their definition. My personal favorite idea is improving schools. If we diverted enough money and resources to primary schools in poor areas, we could achieve similar outcomes to affirmative action without just switching the groups we discrimate against.

<comment><USER26> AIUI, it's even worse, as the primary beneficiaries of affirmative action are well off members of the minority group (e.g. the kids of doctors and dentists) rather than students whose SES would be significantly improved by a degree from a prestigious institution. This is because admission is the first hurdle, not the last, and being well off removes potential sources of stress.

<comment><USER27> If you look on LinkedIn you'll see the vast majority of "African-American" Ivy League alumni are actually African immigrants. It seems without fail when I run into someone black that's a successful doctor or lawyer they often turn out to be an African immigrant. They're often quite coy about it and will only tell you when you ask them directly.

There's nothing wrong with immigrants but it seems as though immigrants are benefiting from programs meant to help the descendants of African-American slaves. The only question is if the Ivy League universities care about this or not.

<comment><USER28> A lot of children of African immigrants are actually outperforming the US population as a whole in regards to education.

<comment><USER29> The ethnicity with the highest fraction of PhDs is Nigerian.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> It's only a matter of time before "asian privilege" becomes a common phrase and / or people start campaigning to no longer classify asian / pacific- islanders as a "minority".

<comment><USER31> I've already seen people jokingly use the term "schrodinger's minority" to refer to Asian's and Indians. They're excluded from minority statistics when trying to push for more diversity hires, but included in minority statistics when trying to show how many succesful businesses are run by minorities.

<comment><USER20> I heard someone once joke that Asians and Indians are granted non-minority status because of their high math scores.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> To be clear, Yale _absolutely_ does discriminate against Asian applicants. As far as I can tell, they justify it using the same language about "personality" that they used to justifying discriminating against Jews in the the first half of the 20th century.

<comment><USER33> It reminds me a bit what my parents told me about the soviet union. So basically it was kind of the same. Too much jews in the universities, so lets discriminate them. The same is going on here, as far as race plays any role. Kind of sad to see this kind of decision making around the globe.

<comment><USER34> It reminds you of the Soviet Union because the underlying philosophy is the same. Equality at all costs.

<comment><USER35> The buzzword now is "equity." The left now seeks equality of outcome rather than equality of opportunity. All such initiatives are oppressive should be rejected outright.

<comment><USER36> The Left is a very ambiguous phrase.

Also, separating outcome and opportunity is tricky because it's a feedback loop.

I don't disagree with you, I just want more precision [edit]: and nuance.

<comment><USER35> The human potential lost to poverty is heartbreaking. Unfortunately, it seems like the political toolbox we've been bequeathed is filled with wooden spoons instead of scalpels. Open to ideas.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER37> The issue is not really that they discriminate (which is bad). But the fact that they have arbitrarily made this into a Zero Sum Game.

Why an organization with 30 BILLION in endowment cannot admit more than 2000 eighteen year olds baffles me. If you want to admit more POKs then increase the class size and hire more professors with that vast amount of money.

I realize places like Yale try to be like old, exclusive country clubs. But if that's the case then they should be taxed on that money.

<comment><USER38> >I realize places like Yale try to be like old, exclusive country clubs. But if that's the case then they should be taxed on that money.

How would this be enforced? That private universities can't get tax exempt status if they don't spend a certain % of their net assets each year? Doesn't this effectively penalize organizations operating on an endowment funding model?

<comment><USER39> Lots of people have wanted to do just that for a long time. At least this proposal gives the universities a (perhaps temporary) way out.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER40> I think if Yale had a true meritocracy for admissions, they would have a majority Asian student body.

And I think if they actually admitted all of the Asian students that fulfilled their acceptance criteria, they would probably want to expand the school so that a more diverse student body could fit into Yale.

Out of curiosity, I wonder how much larger Yale would have to be, in order to retain all th Black, Hispanic, and Native American students that they currently have, while also including the white and Asian students who were discriminated against.

Would Yale be twenty-five percent larger? Twice as large? What's the scale here?

<comment><USER41> I would love for them to report enrolled Native Americans and what tribes they are from did they attend high school on a reservation. I keep discovering Native Americans who don't actually have any connection to any tribe.

</comment></comment><comment><USER42> Yale discriminates _in favor_ of Whites. If admissions were based purely on merit as they are at Caltech or Berkeley, you would have far more Asians and far fewer Caucasians. This was also true when they discriminated against Jews (using the same techniques) at a time when Jews were not considered White.

<comment> _--___-___ By your own post, you seem to consider Jews a separate population from gentile whites. If that were the case, I'd suggest you double check the relative (to national proportion) population of non-athelte/legacy gentile whites at Yale and similar schools before making posts like this.

</comment></comment><comment><USER43> Before we get our pitchforks out here, let's remember that Yale's percentage of Black students is 7.4%[1]. That's not exactly a gigantic portion. In fact Yale is on the lower end compared to Harvard's 14.3%[2] and MIT's 12% [3]. If Yale is truly discriminating in favor of Black and Hispanic students, well, they're not doing an excellent job of it.

[1]: [https://oir.yale.edu/sites/default/files/factsheet_2018-19_0...](https://oir.yale.edu/sites/default/files/factsheet_2018-19_031020.pdf)

[2]: [https://college.harvard.edu/admissions/admissions- statistics](https://college.harvard.edu/admissions/admissions-statistics)

[3]: [https://web.mit.edu/facts/enrollment.html](https://web.mit.edu/facts/enrollment.html)

<comment><USER27> Most of the black students are probably African immigrants. I see it all the time. If you just browse through LinkedIn and look at black Harvard/Ivy League alumni you'll immediately notice all the African immigrants

<comment><USER44> This is very true, and speaking as a non-black/african person, I noticed they're very different culturally. They carry a sense of national pride related to their home country, and draw from it constantly. I'm thinking about Nigerian immigrants specifically.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER45> The age-old question of whether we want equal opportunity or equal outcome...

<comment><USER46> Harrison Bergeron is the logical conclusion to fundamentally equal outcome. Is that a society anyone really wants to live in?

<comment><USER30> Show me any evidence that this isn't literally what the far left wants? CA is moving to remove hiring anti-discrimination protections, as if nothing could go wrong with that line of reasoning...

<comment><USER46> The far left wants power, not equality.

<comment><USER30> Even as someone who identifies as a liberal, I 100% agree with your sentiment here. Anyone who thinks otherwise is blind to the obvious narrative or too simple to acknowledge basic tenants of human behavior.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER47> [https://www.theamericanconservative.com/articles/the-myth- of...](https://www.theamericanconservative.com/articles/the-myth-of-american- meritocracy/)

This has been an open secret since at least 2012.

Quotas restricting Asians, and affirmative action benefiting Jews, who make up an astounding full quarter of the student bodies of Harvard, Yale, and Columbia, despite being only 2% of the population, which is 5x their rate of admission at Caltech, an elite school with a famously merit-based, AA-free admission process:

 _The campus is located in the Los Angeles area, home to one of America's largest and most successful Jewish communities, and Jews have traditionally been strongly drawn to the natural sciences. Indeed, at least three of Caltech's last six presidents have been of Jewish origin, and the same is true for two of its most renowned faculty members, theoretical physics Nobel Laureates Richard Feynman and Murray Gell-Mann. But Caltech's current undergraduates are just 5.5 percent Jewish, and the figure seems to have been around this level for some years; meanwhile, Asian enrollment is 39 percent, or seven times larger. It is intriguing that the school which admits students based on the strictest, most objective academic standards has by a very wide margin the lowest Jewish enrollment for any elite university._

The author is apparently Jewish himself, BTW.

</comment><comment><USER48> Just wondering if it is a crime to lie about your race n college applications. What if a bunch of Asians just decided to write black on their college admissions applications - \- Will the colleges rescind the applications.

Also do mixed race individuals get to pick either white or black on college applications?

<comment><USER42> [https://edition.cnn.com/2015/04/07/living/feat-mindy- kaling-...](https://edition.cnn.com/2015/04/07/living/feat-mindy-kaling- brother-affirmative-action/index.html)

</comment></comment><comment><USER49> As a european I don't get why americans are so obsessed about race. I would never even think of writing about my skin color on a university application. That seems very foreign to me. People today are making the same old mistakes, just treat everyone the same and it'll sort itself out over time.

Such an obvious thing imo, but now it's simply popular to discriminate against whites and asian people. Awesome, we've come full circle.

<comment><USER50> It's partly due to specific historic reasons, but it's also just a consequence of different groups or races sharing a country.

I'm afraid you might start to see similar things in Europe with the demographic changes: [https://www.europarl.europa.eu/news/en/press- room/20190321IP...](https://www.europarl.europa.eu/news/en/press- room/20190321IPR32133/end-racist-discrimination-against-afro-european-people- in-the-eu)

</comment></comment><comment><USER51> In practice it seems that affirmative action primarily takes from Asians and unconnected whites to give to blacks. I have no objection to the latter—indeed, I can see some justification in taking from educated middle class Asians like me—but the obvious people from whom to take places are those who get in on connexions (most of whom are white). If this creates a shortfall, the obvious solution is to dismantle a bureaucracy that was clearly unneeded, say, 40 years ago. Unfortunately there is no political incentive to do this—the Republicans will almost certainly attempt to restore a situation by which blacks end up in the grand scheme of things disadvantaged, with no correction at university admissions, whilst the progressive narrative is controlled by mostly white liberal bourgeois class interests, and therefore will continue to find some other group to make the sacrifices it deems (not incorrectly in this case!) necessary, and happens to create not inconsiderable employment for them, inter alia—indeed, one might go so far as to say is necessary for their broader control of the capitalist system by holding onto cultural power within education.

<comment><USER52> Maybe universities should consider adding an optional box to specify if the applicant is willing to give up their potential seat for an affirmative action candidate. /s

<comment><USER51> I don't see why this is would actually be a bad idea—it just sounds like the offer wouldn't be taken up much. Most systems that allow people to express some preference to be kinder to someone else probably won't end up causing harm—the worst case is that they just don't cause anything.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER53> Lots of soapboxing in the comments here.

The Justice Dept made the exact same allegations against Harvard, and last year a Federal Judge found that Harvard was constitutionally in the clear.

SCOTUS has said that race can be narrowly used in admissions to promote diversity, which Yale says they are doing. The fact that the Justice Department wants Yale to cease _all_ uses of race in admissions (despite this interpretation) is suspect.

<comment><USER54> The rules around AA and the courts has been in a constant state of change since 1964. AA was justified as a temporary solution, thus there is no stare decisis which people can agree. I think it is unpredictable what the courts will do. The issue is setup to be never settled.

<comment><USER55> Indeed, one of the major precedents in favor of affirmative action (Grutter v. Bollinger) anticipated that it would no longer be needed after 2028.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER44> Any background why the fed is going after yale, but not Harvard Princeton MIT, Penn or Stanford?

<comment><USER56> Harvard has already faced this and had it shut down. Because it's the fed maybe they're subject to some kind of double jeopardy type thing? Or just tying different courts?

<comment><USER15> SFFA vs Harvard isn't over yet. Harvard won at District Court level but SFFA is appealing. It is likely to ultimately be decided by the Supreme Court, but it is probably going to take a few years for the case to get there.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER57> 1\. it's all about diversity and equality these days, meaning every thing should be distributed proportionally based on race population and by gender. the ultimate goal will be wealth re-distribution(or, communism), until then, it is not going to stop.

2\. especially in hi tech and elite universities.

3\. NBA is an exception, actually all sports can be an exceptions.

4\. Asian is not considered as minority when it come to college admissions, what doe minority mean?

5\. MIT and many other STEM universities has 50:50 boys and girls, if not so, it's called gender discrimination.

...

So, let's throw out SAT/ACT/GPA and admit people via 'holistic' review, i.e. totally subjective, which means, the more miserable you're the better chance you will have, we joked as parents the best we can do for our kids is going to jail, do drugs, go bankrupt, so our kids can get some benefits. Nice family, law-biding family are basically punished.

I have not seen anywhere more communism like in USA now, you cut the corner because of your race or gender, merit-based is racism, we're going to hell.

I wish those AA pumpers will get a doctor who was admitted/graduated/career-ed based on AA rules, when they need a cure the most at hospitals.

<comment><USER58> the United States population is equivalent to 4.25% of the total world population while accounted for 15.2% of global gross domestic product (GDP). The world definitely need more diversity in the wealth distribution , let's start by just cutting every single American's income every month by 11% and donate it to other countries in the world.

</comment></comment><comment><USER59> Kind of a complicated assertion here:

The investigation also found that Yale uses race as a factor in multiple steps of the admissions process and that Yale "racially balances its classes."

The Supreme Court has ruled colleges and universities may consider race in admissions decisions but has said that must be done in a narrowly tailored way to promote diversity

If they're "racially balancing" their classes, that does sound like it is a narrowly tailored way to promote diversity in their classes. Whether or not that's actually a noble or appropriate goal is a different question, but it sounds like it's allowed...

Of course the definition of "balance" here is tricky. Corresponding ratios to the overall racial balance of the country? The state? Overall racial balance of all applicants? Of all alumni?

<comment><USER56> Of all alumni is dangerous because these schools banned black students until the 70s.

Then when allowing them actively worked to limit entrance.

Finally they all operate with legacy admissions so the racist bans on applicants have a long tail

<comment><USER24> Which schools?

The school in question never formally disallowed blacks.

"Yale's first black graduate was Courtland Van Rensselaer Creed, who received his medical degree in 1857 and went on to have a prominent practice in New York City"

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER60> I wonder if you could build a model to assign handicaps to each applicant? Forget racial quotas, just assign a modifier to each applicant based on the difficulty they have likely faced in their lives. Race, but also household income, zip code, alma mater, siblings, how many parents, etc... Then just hide all that info from the review board.

In that way, you could get right at what is most interesting- which students are actually the most impressive.

Past student body provides the training dataset- just define what measures a successful student whom you are happy to have. College GPA, graduation date, post-graduation compensation, whatever.

</comment><comment><USER61> HN is weirdly silent about identity politics except for threads like these. Threads about discrimination in tech get a few dozen post, a third of which are to the tune of "does this belong on HN?" But an article about discrimination at a college with a horrific engineering program and no cachet in the tech industry gets 500 posts.

Can anyone explain why this belongs on HN or why it gets so much attention? I don't understand it.

<comment><USER62> Possibly because commenting on those threads is a minefield, so nobody votes for them and they end up quickly forgotten.

<comment><USER61> This thread is a minefield. Any claims about discrimination on race or gender is going to ignite controversy. Why is it OK to talk about this subject despite the fact that it's in no way relevant to tech?

Why is this on HN?

<comment><USER62> On other sites, much of the posts are fueled by indignation. That's a bit less here, and very few people are going to reply: "yeah, I know. It's a shame.", especially because that's against the rules. But it's only _a_ possible factor.

> Why is this on HN?

Relatively many students and recently graduated under the members, more than on e.g. reddit?

<comment><USER61> These threads appear to be driven by indignation as much as anything I've read on reddit, hence my confusion.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment> ur-whale The thing I never understood about the US is why asking for someone's "race" (or whatever the current PC term for it is) on a form, government or otherwise, is not flat out illegal on account of being a) entirely meaningless b) downright insulting c) guaranteed to produce the kind of outcome we're discussing here.

</comment><comment><USER63> They need to make clear it's discrimination against Asian AMERICANS.

<comment> atom-morgan And? Why the exception for African Americans?

</comment></comment><comment><USER64> The higher education sorting hat has really got to be disbanded. It is increasingly at odds with the 21st century.

<comment><USER65> This is a symptom of issues that still very much exist in the 21st century. In the US access to a good education is closely tied wealth, which is closely tied to homeownership and property values, which are in turn still benefiting from discriminatory housing policies [1].

As an example, the Bay Area has some of the best schools and most expensive real estate in the country. This is due to a lack of supply, yet _to this day_ it is illegal to build high density and inexpensive housing in the vast majority of lots so that the less wealthy can start building equity, which again is a huge portion of wealth. Ordinances like high minimum lot sizes and low coverage were deliberately designed to make it more expensive for POC to buy into a neighborhood. This is covered extensively in The Color of Law, and is a great read [2].

Perhaps the better approach is to fix these systemic issues so that schools didn't have to compensate for them.

[1] [https://www.brookings.edu/blog/up- front/2020/02/27/examining...](https://www.brookings.edu/blog/up- front/2020/02/27/examining-the-black-white-wealth-gap/)

[2] [https://www.amazon.com/Color-Law-Forgotten-Government- Segreg...](https://www.amazon.com/Color-Law-Forgotten-Government- Segregated/dp/1631492853)

<comment><USER64> Yeah but in the 21st century it's ridiculous to associate physical buildings with good education. There's no reason, today, why students can't consume lectures from several world class instructors at scale. Video lectures are not even inferior to the actual experience. Do you know how many lectures are skipped entirely by students in college? Do you know how many students are distracted by phones and laptops in lectures? This whole system needs to be retooled. The main thing students need from college is enforced accountability and pacing to keep them from dawdling. This can be done with proctors and tutors coupled with world class video lectures from top professors.

<comment><USER65> I'll echo the other poster that this is a nice thing to say, but it really glosses over many realities regarding the various ways wealth influences education. It is not just about the physical building, or even the lectures themselves. It's the entire picture of what it means to have more wealth than others.

First, there's k-12, and not just higher education, which the quality and access thereof is impacted greatly by wealth — Nicer, more expensive homes tend to also have nicer school districts.

It is not a leap to say that a student from a disadvantaged background had to struggle a lot more to learn than one that didn't. Either because of costs (Supplies, tutors, extracurricular activities etc.), or environment (Parent's help and education, support). This is why higher education attempts to compensate for opportunity: They understand the cards are stacked against some groups more than others.

Yes anybody from any race/ethnicity can face these struggles, but remember that a lot of these disadvantages are still _structurally engrained_ to target a particular group. These aren't slight advantages, and housing isn't the only issue, but taken together it has resulted in white families having _6.7x more wealth_ than a typical black family.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> In my opinion, policies like this stem from having good intentions, but intervening where there is just friction instead of where there is most value.

Intervening at Ivy League admissions is a surefire way to benefit those minorities who are currently the least inhibited, while expending a lot of social (and potentially "real") capital to do so.

Intervening much earlier in the process would be much harder, but would provide relatively more assistance to those who are so disadvantaged as to otherwise end up nowhere near college admissions anywhere, much less the Ivy Leagues.

</comment><comment><USER66> The whole undergraduate system in the US needs dismantling and rebuilding. it is costly, wasteful, discriminatory and largely about signaling than any skills. If race-based admissions moves to STEM graduate school, then we're in trouble.

[https://medium.com/swlh/y-combinator-not-lambda-school-is- un...](https://medium.com/swlh/y-combinator-not-lambda-school-is-un..).

</comment><comment><USER67> With no data backing this up, I feel like people would be happier with quotas.

If Asians were told that at most X% of school Y could be Asian to save room for other ethnicities for social reasons, they could probably accept that better than being told that it was because they were being categorically determined as having shitty or empty personalities.

</comment><comment><USER68> I feel sorry for Yale (et al) in this case because they're being presented with a very hard problem (defining and measuring merit in a reliable non-game- able way), one that likely has no widely accepted solution, and one that we as a society have actively decided to completely ignore in favor of everyone looking out for themselves.

<comment><USER69> I sympathize as well, but I think the problem is much more fundamental; I think there _is_ no universally acceptable solution.

\- If you think merit is a function of _de facto_ performance, you will not deem it justified when the bar for admission is lowered for under-performing groups.

\- If you think merit is a function of effort[0], then you will not deem it justified when everybody is held to the same standard of performance.

The reason this is such a touchy issue, I think, is that both approaches result in a _de facto_ racial (and/or other immutable-trait-based) hierarchy. In my estimation, the determining ideological factor in picking a side is whether one prefers implicit vs explicit hierarchies.

[0] There's probably a better word than _effort_ , but it's not coming to mind.

</comment></comment><comment><USER70> my solution to this problem is the same as my solution to the tech megacorp oligopily problem.

there are too many students chasing to few colleges. there should be 20 Yales, 30 Harvards and 50 MITs. just like there should be 10 Microsofts, 20 Googles and 50 Apples. if competition for credentials wasnt so pirate cut throat due to induced artifical scarcity, then society wouldnt be nitpicking over admissions quota minutia.

imagine a world where we cut the Pentagon's budget by 15%, and poured that $150 billion into turning every Community College into a University on par with Yale and the Ivys. imagine a world where unemployable grad students were not ground up and churned out through a system that only has teaching jobs for a fraction of them.

the solution to all higher education problems is to radically increase the supply to meet the demand.

dont you want humanity to have an orbital base around Alpha Centauri someday? how else are we going to achieve that?

<comment><USER71> Very true, especially with the modern logistics of education.

Today we could show the best lecture any prof has ever given to a village in nirvana that got running water 10 years ago. That doesn't replace direct mentoring, but would still elevate education to new standards.

Special schools for particularly gifted people should exist, but the product today is more prestige than quality of education (which is good, but not the primary selling point anymore).

</comment></comment><comment><USER72> I see how everyone speaks about the discrimination against Asian males, but what about white males? If Freedom is not for everyone then no one is trully free.

In this rebel youth aim to destroy older "conservative" ideas apparently someone broke some of the oldes hard earned lessons by mankind about freedom and equalty.

<comment><USER73> To be clear, I'm not saying I don't care about the discrimination against white men, but generally speaking white men have more societal advantages in North America than Asian men such as likelihood in getting positions in leadership roles at companies, political positions, as well as desirability in online dating. My hunch is that's why it's not as 'highlighted' (for lack of a better term) than Asian men who are discriminated against.

</comment></comment><comment><USER74> Some numbers [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Race_and_ethnicity_in_the_Unit...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Race_and_ethnicity_in_the_United_States)

</comment><comment><USER27> Honestly at this point the US should just adopt the East Asian college entrance model.

One exam per year at the same time with no exceptions.

Completely race blind and no additional criteria other than school class rank and average school exam score.

</comment><comment><USER75> >The Supreme Court has ruled colleges and universities may consider race in admissions decisions but has said that must be done in a narrowly tailored way to promote diversity

Sounds like SCOTUS will agree with Yale on this one.

</comment><comment><USER76> I don't even blame Yale, I blame the stupid government incentives to do this. The question of your race should never even be raised.

</comment><comment><USER77> The real discrimination is continued legacy and athletic admissions which artificially inflate the number of white students (discriminating against Asians and other minorities).

43% of white students at Harvard are legacy, athletes, or related to donors. Source: [https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/study-harvard- finds-43-...](https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/study-harvard- finds-43-percent-white-students-are-legacy-athletes-n1060361)

</comment><comment><USER78> >The findings detailed in a letter to the college's attorneys Thursday mark the latest action by the Trump administration aimed at rooting out discrimination in the college application process, following complaints from students about the application process at some Ivy League colleges.

I'm an Asian liberal and I think trump is an idiot but the reality is that all people, as altruistic or immoral as they appear to be, are, in fact, complex amalgamations of good, evil, intelligence and stupidity. My judgement of trump is just a biased simplification of reality and the complexity of his character.

Props to trump for supporting this initiative.

</comment><comment><USER79> Has it occurred to any of you that somebody might just want to intentionally make us hate each other with this "racism" BS? To keep us divided? In the end, who really cares if someone is black, white, Korean, or half Vietnamese? Denying an earned admission to someone because that someone is of the color, sex, religion or original nationality not in fashion at the time for the leftist taste only serves to make us dislike each other more and more.

<comment><USER80> > In the end, who really cares if someone is black, white, Korean, or half > Vietnamese?

Yale, in this case.

</comment></comment><comment><USER81> I'd rather colleges were just forced to give up legacy preference.

</comment><comment><USER82> Why race information is needed for college and job applications?

</comment><comment><USER83> This is election-year flack, pure and simple. Can we trust anything the Dept. of Justice does? The Attorney General is clearly a proxy for Trump's desire to reward his friends and punish his enemies. Barr's first priority is not enforcing the law, it's enabling Trump's twisted agenda.

</comment><comment><USER84> I wonder what the makeup of the 14% of the incoming freshman class that are legacy's is...

</comment><comment><USER85> How is everyone's first reaction not that this is Trump electioneering? I have no idea if there's merit here or not, but the replies below seem to largely fail to acknowledge two facts:

(a) All top schools weigh race and gender. They consider student body diversity important. You can disagree that they should, but it's true.

(b) Bill Barr's DOJ is one of the least trustworthy entities in the USA on this subject this side of the KKK.

<comment><USER24> Sigh.

This is something that has been pursued by the DOJ for years.

The lawsuit that began this process was in 2014.

Also, allusions to the KKK are just obscene. You can have political views, but shoehorning them in while exhibiting such ignorance about the underlying facts of the case just destroys the quality of the conversation.

IMO.

</comment></comment><comment><USER56> Weird that they don't mention that the vast majority of legacy entries are white, followed by Asian.

Any school that had racist policies that banned black and other PoC that still has legacy admissions is fundamentally biased in favor of white applicants, and will always be.

The bar for legacy entry is incredibly low, far below GPA requirements for any affirmative action has ever been.

<comment><USER24> Isn't that obviously going to wean itself out of existence in a generation or two, if whites are (as alleged) being discriminated against so heavily?

<comment><USER56> It will take more than a couple of generations, because the children of people who got legacy admittance also get legacy admittance, which removes available slots for people who don't just have the benefit of being born to the right parents.

That's the big cudgel right: look at the racial spread of legacy acceptances, and if that does not match (within reason) the average racial spread then legacy admittance is adding a discriminatory pressure against those races that are less represented.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER86> This "finding" is absolutely tasteless. Studies found that SATs have little to no correlation to graduating from a university, same thing with GREs in grad school. African American students are proven year over year to have far less educational resources in their communities, live in poverty, etc. And far less African Americans apply to get into Yale compared to their white or Asian counterparts and the ones that do apply have a better shot of getting in due to their hard work than the African Americans that don't apply. And on top of that still has to deal with inequality across the board. So yes, to the 5% of Yale students that are African Americans, their acceptance was very well deserved. Knock off the bs about IQ this and IQ that. Try that crap in the real world at your job and see how far that gets you.

</comment><comment><USER87> Free advice: there is no reason this suit could not have been brought in the prior 3 years. It is shameless election year politics via the courts. Whatever you think of the merits of the case, realize what this is from the timing and the unprofessional release accompanying the filing.

 _" Yale College could fill its entire entering class several times over with applicants who reach the 99th percentile in standardized testing and who have perfect high school grade point averages, but we do not base admission on such numbers alone," President Peter Salovey wrote. "Rather, we look at the whole person when selecting whom to admit among the many thousands of highly qualified applicants."_ ([https://www.nytimes.com/aponline/2020/08/13/us/politics/ap-u...](https://www.nytimes.com/aponline/2020/08/13/us/politics/ap- us-yale-discrimination.html), the other post on this on the front page)

This argument will be shown to have merit. Simply put, the question of whether to have a class that represents the population vs the applicant pool is at the discretion of the college. A lower ratio of acceptance by race is not de facto indicative of individual discrimination. They can pick and choose a class from the top tenth of a percent of the graduating seniors in the US. Every student there is elite.</comment>


New Zealand Environment in Serious Trouble - <AUTHOR> https://www.radionz.co.nz/news/national/387308/nature-at-risk-damning-report-warns-environment-in-serious-trouble <comment><USER2> They need to limit population expansion.</comment>


Tom's Essay (2008) - <AUTHOR> https://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/09/23/toms-essay/ <comment><USER2> _> My daughter also seems to have a knack for technology [...] Sometimes I will find her recreating Rihanna's "Umbrella" song, track by track, on Garageband when she's bored._

That's a fun detail - the basic loop for _Umbrella_ is in fact a slowed down default Garageband sample.

[https://medium.com/micro-chop/rihannas-grammy-award- winning-...](https://medium.com/micro-chop/rihannas-grammy-award-winning- umbrella-is-a-garageband-loop-3e1430446363)

</comment><comment><USER3> If you want to listen to "Tom's Diner", here's a performance by Suzanne Vega (live, 1994; song starts at 1:20):

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DkYPge6ZKSQ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DkYPge6ZKSQ)

And the DNA remix:

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7_2Vpz3fu-Q](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7_2Vpz3fu-Q)

</comment><comment><USER4> I've loved Suzanne Vega's music since I had her first album on cassette when I was about 13 years old. I finally got to see her live last year whe she toured her Solitude Standing album as a 30 year anniversary - she did the whole album and indeed opened with the A Capella Tom's Diner.

It's great to hear how she embraced other people's versions - she totally understands the social aspects of 'song' and she's not just 'in it for the money'.

</comment><comment><USER5> The Nick Batt from DNA mentioned in the article is Nick from sonicstate. He has a youtube channel where he does great reviews of all kinds of synth gear.

<comment><USER6> I _hate_ the DNA cover simply because _it omits the last few lines of the lyric_... which provide key context to the rest of the song.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> It's a bit of a ramble but it's an interesting look at how digital technology impacted an artist who had been focusing on making very analog work.</comment>


Top 10 Worst Captchas - <AUTHOR> http://www.johnmwillis.com/other/top-10-worst-captchas/

<comment><USER2> How about this ? [http://bigadda.com/system/wordverification/verify.php?T=1234...](http://bigadda.com/system/wordverification/verify.php?T=12345)

(BigAdda is a major Indian social network)

</comment><comment><USER3> Funny, but would seriously have needed links to the actual items. For example the math problem -- wtf?

<comment><USER4> [http://www.google.com/search?q=%22note%3A+if+you+do+not+know...](http://www.google.com/search?q=%22note%3A+if+you+do+not+know+the+answer+to+this+question%22)

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Captchas suck, still a hurt point on the internet.

</comment><comment><USER6> I could read three of them (barely)</comment>


Updating Your Password on LinkedIn and Other Account Security Best Practices - <AUTHOR> http://blog.linkedin.com/2012/06/06/updating-your-password-on-linkedin-and-other-account-security-best-practices/

<comment><USER2> _Substitute numbers for letters that look similar (for example, substitute "0″ for "o" or "3″ for "E"._

Am I correct in thinking that the amount of entropy added with cute tricks like this is essentially nil? Is this advice even remotely valid?

 _Never give your password to others or write it down._

I don't think the advice to never write your password down is very useful unless coupled with a better way to manage all of your passwords besides memorizing them (like a password manager).

<comment><USER3> Agreed on both counts. It would be trivial to add a handful of common replacements like the ones mentioned during a dictionary attack.

I also find at least a little bit hilarious that Linkedin is lecturing us on security best practices. The main reason you need a strong password (assuming lock outs are in place) is because this kind of thing happens.

<comment><USER4> Most of my passwords are written down on a sheet of paper. Even if you knew that the sheet of paper contains some of my passwords, I don't think you'd be able to extract them since there's a layer of encryption between my eyes and my fingers.

<comment> excuse-me xkcd to the rescue once again - <http://xkcd.com/538/>

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Seems foolish for them to have posted this. It's not very good advice on choosing a password and feels like the wrong response to the story about passwords apparently having been leaked.

<comment><USER6> Indeed. It's almost as if they're blaming the victim here.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> This is getting silly now, the hash for my unique strong password was in the list. And there are many others who have stated the same. It should have taken them a whole of 5 minutes to find if these hashes were from their database. It's shameful and shows an utter disrespect for security that they didn't bother salting them (and sha1 really?).

Now it's time for them to own up to the mistake and inform their users, before anyone has anything else compromised.

</comment><comment><USER8> From the updated blog entry:

 _"It is worth noting that the affected members who update their passwords and members whose passwords have not been compromised benefit from the enhanced security we just recently put in place, which includes hashing and salting of our current password databases."_

Still doing it wrong I see.

<comment><USER9> Because I'm obviously missing something: what's wrong with a hash + salt?

Depending on how it's done, wouldn't a hash of an unknown salt + password be impossible to translate back to plaintext? Even if the salt is known, as long as it changes per user, doesn't that make the look up incredibly time consuming? (Honest questions)

<comment> excuse-me You can't have an "unknown" salt

A salt protects you against rainbow tables of precomputed hashes of known words. It's still possible to just try all possible inputs and check the resulting hash against the list - and on GPUs it can actually be faster than reading rainbow tables from a disk.

Remember you don't need the original password, just any string that hashes to the same value. The one thing a salt does give you is that you can't crack a single passwd and then check for all other entries with the same hash = users with the same passwd.

But if you use a weak hashing function (sha-1 isn't state of the art) it may be that collisions, with different shorter keys producing the same output, are more likely than you would expect from the number of bits.

<comment><USER9> Of course you have to know the salt, but I'm suggesting something like using a different storage medium, so that one vector of attack cannot get both keys- unknown to the attacker.

I should have made that more clear.

<comment> excuse-me That's dangerously close to "security through obscurity" - whatever process reads the passwd store has to know about and have permission to read the salt store - so just putting it in a different file or giving it a different name only buys you a false sense of security.

The reason for moving the passwords out of /etc/passwd is that there are a s lot of processes that do need to read the user list but don't need access to the passwd hash. But there is nothing to gain from splitting the salts out of /etc/shadow into a another file

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> The Dropbox post on passwords (and their password strength estimation tool) is much better at describing what strong passwords actually are.

<http://tech.dropbox.com/?p=165>

The advice from LinkedIn like "Don't use a word from the dictionary" and "Substitute numbers for letters that look similar (for example, substitute "0″ for "o" or "3″ for "E"." are security theater.

</comment><comment><USER11> " _At this time, we're still unable to confirm that any security breach has occurred_ ..."

Really? How long does it take to verify that this breach is accurate and sound an alarm?

<comment><USER12> They will wait for market to close or near the close (like 15 mintes before close): so that market does not pile up on this bad news. They will probably confirm this soon.</comment></comment>


Intel Lowers Sales Outlook for Third Quarter on Weak Demand for Chips - <AUTHOR> http://allthingsd.com/20120907/intel-lowers-sales-outlook-for-third-quarter-on-weak-demand-for-chips/

<comment><AUTHOR> Essentially ...

"Intel says its customers are reducing their inventory, which, in English, means they're buying fewer chips because they haven't used up the ones they had already bought in the prior quarters. That's because they're not selling as many PCs or servers. Indeed, consumers who are in the market for a new PC will be holding back on their purchases until Windows 8 is released, but that market is already sputtering anyway, in no small part because Apple's iPad continues to batter notebooks sales."

Up to now in mobile, Intel has been utterly crushed by ARM licensees. Microsoft's bet-the-company approach to Windows 8 unification with mobile and ARM has not been helpful to Intel.

How long will it take for Intel to field design-winning chips for mobile? Will it be 2012 starting with Microsoft Surface & Motorola, or much later if at all?

<comment><USER2> Doubt it. They essentially don't have anything that competitive with ARM until the 14 nm Airmont late 2014, or 2015 if delays happen. That's also the year 64 bit ARM chips will appear though, and I think ARM will benefit from a lot of hype that year. A lot of chip companies will be trying to attack Intel in the server space with those chips, including Nvidia.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: Which VPN provider do you recommend? - <AUTHOR> This article caused a bit of controversy in the comments about "VPN" shilling: https://vpnpro.com/blog/hidden-vpn-owners-unveiled-97-vpns-23-companies/. I am curious what the most highly recommended VPNs are by the HN community based on privacy, price, and convenience. <comment><USER2> [https://mullvad.net](https://mullvad.net)

So far they seem not to be involved in the typical affiliate marketing ploy used by so many other providers, and their account creation system is unique.

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19734003](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19734003)

[https://www.google.com/search?q=vpn+affiliate+marketing](https://www.google.com/search?q=vpn+affiliate+marketing)

</comment><comment><USER3> I came across nordvpn from several angles, and, correct me if I'm wrong, is not chinese owned or influenced. It is what I use on a linux box, using a manual config (their auto install doesn't work quite so easily if the correct packages are not already present (openvpn, etc)). I also manually create the manual null default route. I should write a blog article about the nuances of my manual config.

</comment><comment><USER4> CryptoHippie [0], does multi-hop, multi-jurisdiction and out-of-band authentification.

[0] [https://secure.cryptohippie.com/](https://secure.cryptohippie.com/)

</comment><comment><USER5> When I was looking for a VPN I used this : [https://thatoneprivacysite.net/](https://thatoneprivacysite.net/)

No idea how accurate it is though.</comment>


Image EXIF Orientation Bug – or Feature? - <AUTHOR> https://blog.praveen.science/crazy-image-exif-orientation-bug-or-feature/ <comment><USER2> >I've found the results strange in Safari and Chrome, since there's this CSS property for <img />, image-orientation, and with it one can say to use the EXIF declared on the photo metadata to fix the orientation. The default value is 0deg. If you want show the image with the correct orientation, the value must be from-image.

I went to the linked specification ([https://www.w3.org/TR/css3-images/#image- orientation](https://www.w3.org/TR/css3-images/#image-orientation)) and "from- image" is not specified here as a possible value of "image-orientation".

<comment><USER3> It seems that Firefox from-image is nonstandard (from-image in specification is only defined for image-resolution). And default behavior of ignoring EXIF rotation seems correct according to this weird specification:

>Note that some devices will "tag" an image with some metadata indicating its correct orientation, so image viewing software can do the necessary transformation themselves. Due to legacy compatibility restraints, Web browsers are required to ignore this data by default. A future level of this specification is expected to have a value that applies the metadata-specified transformation automatically.

IMO EXIF rotation should be applied always, and any CSS rotations should combine with it, not override.

<comment><USER4> > IMO EXIF rotation should be applied always, and any CSS rotations should > combine with it, not override.

I agree. EXIF rotation is a part of the image and it's just an implementation detail of the image data. Browsers shouldn't leak this.

<comment><USER5> Presumably the issue is "Given that browsers that ignore EXIF rotation already exist, should modern browsers display the same page differently?"

<comment><USER2> Yes because it will fix more pages than it will break.

<comment><AUTHOR> But what about the compatibility, graceful degradation, etc. of the browsers that yet don't support this feature? Won't that break everything else?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> The exiftran utility can strip the EXIF orientation tag and apply the rotation _losslessly_ to the image. Looks like it worth doing it. AFAIK imagemagick reencodes the image.

</comment><comment><USER6> Correct conclusion, strip the info. EXIF is a mess on the web, thankfully Digikam easily normalizes all of my photos with simple batch process. Not my videos though.

<comment><AUTHOR> Most of the online upload services do it. Like Imgur strips these information. :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> One thing I one day want to try is to include some unique search terms in an image EXIF description to see if Googlebot picks it up in a way that is subsequently searchable.

As for Wordpress people using third party services to remove bloat from images in a paid for, tediously manual way - don't! Configure your server to do it with Google's mod_pagespeed. You can serve src_set images whilst you are at it that way making the web quicker and more eco friendly.

<comment><USER8> Or just load the image into GIMP and make use of its nifty image optimisation while saving it again.

(Oh, and feature. Definitely feature.)

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> To fix these:

        convert -auto-orient in.jpg out.jpg

<comment><USER10> A note for clueless windows users:

        convert /?
        Converts a FAT volume to NTFS.

        CONVERT volume /FS:NTFS [/V] [/CvtArea:filename] [/NoSecurity] [/X]

          volume      Specifies the drive letter (followed by a colon),
                      mount point, or volume name.
          /FS:NTFS    Specifies that the volume will be converted to NTFS.
          /V          Specifies that Convert will be run in verbose mode.
          /CvtArea:filename
                      Specifies a contiguous file in the root directory
                      that will be the place holder for NTFS system files.
          /NoSecurity Specifies that the security settings on the converted
                      files and directories allow access by all users.
          /X          Forces the volume to dismount first if necessary.
                      All open handles to the volume will not be valid.

You probably can't do any damage attempting to use it to convert images, but there might be a way to screw up attempting to convert an image so badly you destroy your filesystem.

<comment><USER9> It's unfortunate that ImageMagick decided to call their primary command "convert".</comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: Letting users self-host your server software. Why is it so complicated? - open-source-ux It's almost 2019 and if you want a simple way for your non-technical users or customers to self-install your software on a web server, you are simply out of luck.
How can this be?
In case you are tempted to suggest one of the following solutions, they are neither simple or easy (and would defeat many, if not most, users):
- providing docker images
- providing a list of command line instructions for installation
- using sandstorm or cloudron
Isn't it kind-of crazy that even web-friendly languages like Python and Ruby are anything but simple if you want to bundle and distribute your web app for easy server deployment?
I don't believe in conspiracies, but could it be that SaaS providers secretly prefer this situation? Why? Because anything to make the process of self-hosting an app as simple as a one-click WordPress install might tempt some customers down the self-install path.
Why aren't one-click installs the norm? Just think of the countless opportunities it would unlock for developers to reach more users or customers. But no-one seems to have any interest in solving this problem.
Agree or disagree? <comment><AUTHOR> You just can't make money from solving this problem. (And if you could then we would have multiple competing wannabe monopolies.)</comment>


"Equality" and "Democracy, or 'I Am as Good as You Are'" Essays by C.S. Lewis - <AUTHOR> http://www.tlchrist.info/cs_lewis.htm <comment><AUTHOR> "Equality" is from 1943; no specific date was given for the other. Lewis, perhaps best remembered for "The Chronicles of Narnia", "The Screwtape Letters", and his space trilogy, died in 1963.</comment>


The best reviewed online coding bootcamps - <AUTHOR> https://www.switchup.org/all-online-course-providers <comment><USER2> That's a pretty comprehensive resource for those looking for a career change and the search is sensible.</comment>


SF Airport officials making arrests of Internet rideshare drivers - <AUTHOR> http://sanfrancisco.cbslocal.com/2013/07/29/sfo-citizen-arrests-internet-rideshare

<comment><USER2> Rideshare drivers are exempt from regulation, vehicle inspections, insurance and driver requirements? I'd be upset too if I was a taxi driver.

Regardless, the taxi industry can easily defend against Uber and their ilk. It's not a high barrier of entry quite frankly. Uber helicopters on the other hand...</comment>


[TO HN WEB DESIGNER] Please remove new black line from top - <AUTHOR> I understand that it is very tempting to improve HN design. But do not try to make heavy changes, it is already one of the best!<p>That new black line on top is really distracting and making design much worse. Please remove it. <comment><USER2> The black line appears when someone notable in the community passes away.

In this case [http://www.media.mit.edu/people/in- memory/papert](http://www.media.mit.edu/people/in-memory/papert)

</comment><comment><USER3> I would guess it's there because of [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12201810](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12201810)

</comment><comment><USER4> If you really want to contact the web designer, there is a 'contact' link in the footer. But as others have noted it's because somebody notable passed away.

</comment><comment><USER5> I thought it was a "mourning" thing and was trying to find out who, known to the HN demographic, had died.

It's it not that?

</comment><comment><USER6> Ha, and I thought Papert deserved more than a 5-pixel tall black line :-)</comment>


Nintendo, Microsoft, and Sony commit to disclose drop rates for loot boxes - <AUTHOR> https://www.theverge.com/2019/8/7/20758626/nintendo-microsoft-sony-loot-box-drop-rate-disclosure-video-games <comment><USER2> I'm not aware of any Nintendo titles that didn't already do this.

This is good in theory but I don't think it really matters. People are innumerate. I enjoy a few gacha games that are conducive to F2P players. My sense from reading random reddit threads is that most people are both very bad at understanding the in game utility of various items/characters/whatever's and at understanding the odds of getting them in a lottery. A lot of people complain when they try 100 pulls to get a 0.5% chance, and don't get it. They consult calculators and look at the probabilities within c pulls and don't internalize it correct.

And then they get an opportunity to just buy things straight up and perceive $10 for something specific to be good value because it is better relative to the norm.

That's what really messes with innumerates. Promotions offering low value that is higher than their anchored norm.

</comment><comment><USER3> This is a good first step, as a game that involve anything of monetary value, or upon which contestants may wager money is considered as gambling. And with such games, the odds usually need to be disclosed.</comment>


Scottish Power: "Billing chaos caused by a new IT system" - <AUTHOR> https://www.theguardian.com/money/2020/mar/01/scottish-power-bills-bailiffs-accounting-chaos <comment><USER3> If I were in this position, I would:

1\. Send a clear letter outlining you are not a customer to head office by registered post.

2\. Then do nothing at all.

If they eventually send bailiffs, or hit your credit record, take them to small claims court. By notifying them in a registered letter, you will satisfy the court that you took steps to rectify their mistake, and should get a decent payout for your troubles. Do not take it to the energy ombudsman - <USER2> tend to be powerless to actually do much apart from make statements about things.

<comment><USER4> "The calls pursued him to his wife's hospital bedside where she was being treated for cancer."

Also, it's not easy to ignore someone who's threatening you with law enforcement. Because they're threatening you with law enforcement.

<comment><USER5> Who are? There isn't any mention of law enforcement in the article.

<comment><USER6> Think there's some confusion between American/British English meaning of the word "bailiff"

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I moved to Scotland 2 years ago. After one year I switched providers away from Scottish Power. They sent me a final bill (snail mail) for £0.05, but their internet and phone payment systems kept breaking on me. When I finally got through to a human they told me "our system can't accept such low payments".

They forgave the amount. Weeks later I got another snail mail letter saying I was £0.04 in credit.

Every interaction I had with them was farcical - I wouldn't touch them with a 10ft pole.

<comment><USER8> I had them when I lived in London, 15 years ago.

Our electric meter ticked over from 99999kWh to 0. You'd think that this happens fairly often.

Well, Scottish power had never heard of such a thing, told me that meters "didn't run out of numbers", and that the bill for £12,000 for my power use this month was correct. They'd billed for 100,000 kWH in a month - never mind that I'd have had to be burning 134kW nonstop, on a 5kW domestic circuit.

They sent bailiffs - we told them to come back with police.

The police came - expecting a cannabis factory. Searched the apartment, the loft, broke some stuff, left the white carpets brown, left.

My flatmates were, at this point, losing their minds. One of them is a criminal barrister, and this whole situation could destroy her career.

So she goes to her head of chambers, a well respected QC, and explains the situation, as she's worried that the police are going to call him about "the cannabis factory".

He finds the whole thing outrageous - writes a forceful letter to each of Scottish power and Hammersmith & Fulham police.

And that was that.

If I hadn't been living with a barrister, I'd probably be in prison now, for stealing non-existent electricity to grow non-existent drugs.

<comment><USER9> Surely a judge would have thrown this out? Had you consulted a lawyer for the damages? Or at the minimum, a cease and desist letter for the harrassment?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I had a water meter mismatch screwup some years ago.

I'd get a bill, go check my meter, reading doesn't match, call them up, you have this wrong, send an engineer to ensure you fix it. Engineer comes, yup, this is the wrong meter, wait a month, rinse and repeat.

After a few iterations I had my bank unwind the bill payments. "I will pay you when you bill me correctly, and not before".

Eventually they phoned me. They'd tried to fix the account and it was impossible so their new plan was to discard the old account with the incorrect bills entirely, set me up a new account with the right meter, was that OK?

A while later I got lawyer letters saying the supplier would sue me over the debt from the old account unless I paid. I did them the courtesy of phoning. They said those letters are automatic and they had no intention of actually trying to recover the money - and I heard nothing more about it.

So basically I got a few months of free water for my trouble. Not great, but not awful.

<comment><USER11> Yeah, most of those systems have an automated dunning system built in.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> IT doesn't exist in a vacuum. This sounds like bad business practices are causing the billing chaos.

<comment><USER13> This. I was a Scottish Power customer about six years ago when they were censured for fucking up a great many customer's bills, mine included. They have been failing at billing for a long time.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> I think there's a much deeper problem at Scottish Power than just IT systems. I spent close to a year trying to get them to fix an incorrect bill and nobody I talked to had any idea what to do (probably 6 or 7 people across various departments).

I know many others who have had similar problems with Scottish Power, and I'm sure there will be more testimonies in other comments.

The question on my mind is how does a company resolve such deep-rooted institutional failings?

<comment><USER15> Sounds to me more like Scottish Power is a scam run by the mob. Not entirely sure of the law in Scotland but I would publicize this theory and see if SP files a lawsuit which would open them to discovery.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> Reminds me of a similar story out of the UK where the postal service IT systems were supposedly losing accounting info and getting contractors into legal trouble: [https://www.cbronline.com/news/horizon-it-system-errors- sent...](https://www.cbronline.com/news/horizon-it-system-errors-sent-people- to-prison-now-the-post-office-is-paying-out)

<comment><USER17> This is an enormous scandal and, in my opinion, calls into question the nature of the legal system itself. The law is clearly biased towards assuming the establishment is being truthful and accurate, and trying to prove otherwise is an uphill battle.

<comment><USER18> I can't help but agree. In both of these cases the court should have essentially frozen the companies' ability to pursue any debts at all in the courts until they remedied their obvious internal problems. As is, the consequences of these errors is sickeningly one-sided.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> It seems like there is some blame with the ombudsman who will only take complaints for people who have already gone through a non-functional complaints process.

The idea of an ombudsman is to have a human point of contact when the machine of bureaucracy has become wholly unreasonable. Adding bureaucratic barriers in front of the ombudsman kind of defeats their purpose.

</comment><comment><USER20> Just a note: Scottish Power is owned by Iberdrola, the Spanish multi-national utility. Iberdrola has Avangrid as a listed subsidiary in the US, operating under different brands.

As one of the biggest utilities in the world, this is pretty inexcusable!

<comment><USER21> I live in Maine. The State way up there in the corner of the states... Search for articles on 'billing issues' from our (largest) power company, Central Maine Power.... (It has been a pretty large deal for almost a few years now; Major cluster*)

Any guesses who they were somewhat-recently bought out by? Yup. You guessed correctly.

I'm not sure these are issues; I believe it's how this terrible company just tries to make more money.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> I'm really confused by the title as posted here. It seems to have almost nothing to do with the article. It's a cherry pick of a single sentence from the article that talks about a _prior_ incident. Not the current one the article is talking about.

<comment><AUTHOR> The full title was too long and did not convey the relevance of the article to HN. From my reading, I understand that Scottish Power is still using the IT system mentioned in the quote I re-purposed as a title. According to Gerald Slater, quoted in the article, that IT system is the reason behind its false billing of non-customers:

>> They are calling my good name into question and, at the very least, should change their chaotic systems to ensure my treatment does not happen to anyone else.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> ScottishPower (its all one word in their name) are a nightmare. They pulled the same shit as Enron did (turning off generation at peak times to drive up the price to turn back on the same generation). As recently as 2015 they were banned from taking on new retail customers because they ignored too many regulator instructions, broke rules and were generally shit at customer services. They're notorious for unlawful cold calling, aggressive sales techniques and billing randomly. They set the bailiffs on people who are not even their customers and who went through all the correct steps to prove they owed nothing.

</comment><comment><USER24> This seems like a larger issue with collections. How can a company be even able to send collectors to people they have no business relationship with (and presumably can't produce any documentation towards that effect).

<comment><USER25> Easily... it's just a contract - anyone can contract a debt collector.

A reasonably one would require proof including the original contract, but, big companies like this are so automated, they have their processes down to an art.

It will pretty much be an export of unpaid debt gets sent to a collection agency. The collection agency will try to hound people as much as possible to pay.

People who don't pay may get taken to court and the debt collectors will either win by default, or, the person will show up, say they haven't been a customer and win with ease.

Also, any reasonable debt company would drop immediately upon sending proof, but, so do a lot of liars, so it's a hard one, but the law is on the customer's side.

<comment><USER10> In the UK collecting personal debt (from individuals not companies) requires a license which you'll lose if you harass people. No doorstepping, no calling employers or family, no 2am calls, nothing like that is permitted.

You maybe won't even need to show up for this bogus nonsense in court. If they've any sense lawyers for a firm that's clearly got a paperwork muddle will cancel the case, because unlike you if they show up with crap the judge may throw the book at them. As officers of the court they have a duty here which a lay person doesn't have to get all their paperwork straight. If they show up and the judge says well this seems like it's not even your customer - they may be in some real trouble. "The computer says" won't work on a judge.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> This is just how they roll in the UK. Nobody has a clue what they are doing, or even cares

</comment><comment><USER27> I've had one of these letters, 600 quid they wanted for my neighbours electric, addresses to the owner occupier. never had a Scottish power account and it's nothing to do with me.

I called them, but we shall see if that stops them.

</comment><comment><USER28> Sounds like the IT system correctly automated and accelerated the customer's process.</comment>