Faith and the Expanding Universe of Georges Lemaître - <AUTHOR> http://churchlife.nd.edu/2019/04/04/faith-and-the-expanding-universe-of-georges-lemaitre/ <comment><USER2> Being a Catholic cosmologist, I have always been intrigued by Lemaitre's figure. I read «The Atom of the Universe: The Life and Work of Georges Lemaitre» [1] and discovered that Lemaitre was a pionieer of numerical analysis as well: he studied various computer languages (he seemed to be in love with Algol) and bought one of the first computing machines in the 50s.

[1] [https://www.amazon.com/Atom-Universe-Life-Georges- Lemaitre/d...](https://www.amazon.com/Atom-Universe-Life-Georges- Lemaitre/dp/8378862259)

</comment><comment><USER3> > his struggles to defend his "Big Bang" model of the origin of the universe > against those who accused him of being religiously motivated

His opponents literally proposed that matter simply came-to-be out of nothing in order to avoid the possibility that the universe might have a beginning.

If you are interested in the history of this disagreement about the nature of the universe you should also read Stanley Jaki's _God and the Cosmologists_ [1]

[1]: [https://www.amazon.com/God-Cosmologists-Stanley-L- Jaki/dp/08...](https://www.amazon.com/God-Cosmologists-Stanley-L- Jaki/dp/0895267497)

</comment><comment><USER4> See also Johannes Kepler:

> Geometry is one and eternal shining in the mind of God. That share in it > accorded to humans is one of the reasons that humanity is the image of God.

* [https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Johannes_Kepler](https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Johannes_Kepler)

</comment><comment><USER5> Are the mods off today?

</comment><comment><USER6> " For the former, it strengthens our case that science and faith are compatible."

No it's not. Humans are just able to hold contradictory or conflicting thoughts in their heads simultaneously

And it cheapens science when you try to superimpose your religious superstitions on it. Note that I'm talking about Faith here, not the faith that a hypothesis might work out which is useful to have.

<comment><USER7> LeMaitre wasn't imposing his superstitions on science. He's not insisting that Genesis is somehow a simplified account of the Big Bang. That kind of "scientific creationism" is mostly for American Evangelicals trying to justify their biblical absolutism.

LeMaitre is a Catholic priest, and despite their anti-science reputation from the late Medieval era, the Catholic Church is quote pro-science. They've accepted both evolution and the Big Bang for a very long time. They treat Genesis as a myth, a spiritually informative story that is not literally true.

They do believe in genuine miracles, but they downplay them substantially (though they're still quite popular with many individual Catholics). But the official teaching is that human beings evolved in a universe that began 14 billion years ago. There were many miracles in it, including the ensoulment of human beings which makes them categorically different from nonhuman animals, but that soul is metaphysical and immune to experiment -- and therefore doesn't conflict with science.

Catholic faith isn't faith in the world, but faith in the soul of humanity and the promise of an afterlife. That faith is unscientific while being compatible with science.

There are many reasons to criticize the Catholic church, but it's not guilty of imposing superstition on science. (Even the Medieval crimes against science are more complicated than the common story is told.) Christianity as a whole seems very anti-science from an American perspective, and that taints our perception of religion as a whole since it's our dominant religious force, but it's not absolutely impossible for somebody to be religiously faithful and a genuinely skeptical scientist.

Like you, I apply Occam's Razor, and tend to dismiss "faith" in that sense as an unneeded hypothesis. Catholicism is all about a "salvation" you and I feel no need of. Especially since, as I said, the Catholic Church has been guilty of so many recent crimes, and does not seem like a force for moral good. But I do think it's important to understand that there are people whose faith doesn't have to conflict with either science or ethics, and LeMaitre is one example.

<comment><USER8> > LeMaitre wasn't imposing his superstitions on science.

... because the two are not compatible, exactly.

> but that soul is metaphysical and immune to experiment -- and therefore > doesn't conflict with science.

Yes, it does. Being untestable is about as incompatible with science as you can get. And arbitrarily labeling an untestable claim with a fancy word also doesn't make it compatible with science.

<comment><USER9> >> but that soul is metaphysical and immune to experiment -- and therefore doesn't conflict with science.

> Yes, it does. Being untestable is about as incompatible with science as you > can get.

Math is not testable with the scientific method, but it is obviously compatible with science.

> And arbitrarily labeling an untestable claim with a fancy word also doesn't > make it compatible with science.

Like "multiverse" perhaps?

<comment><USER10> I think you'll find that multiverse interpretations of quantum mechanics, like all interpretations, are far more popular and important in the press and places like this this in science. Very _very_ few astronomers, cosmologists and physicists are dedicating their working life to something that is broadly considered unfalsifiable.

Don't confuse popular culture and science with the real thing. The most popular interpretation is "shut up and calculate" and will probably remain that for a very long time.

<comment><USER9> > Very very few astronomers, cosmologists and physicists are dedicating their > working life to something that is broadly considered unfalsifiable.

Correct me if I am wrong, but from what I understand, the multiverse is not observable directly or indirectly. Thus it is not scientifically falsifiable by virtue of not being observable.

<comment><USER10> There are a few circumstances that lend themselves to observation, such as looking for characteristic concentric circles in the CMB, but they've never been observed. Beyond the few limited cases, you're right it's not observable even in principle.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> > Appropriately recognizing Lemaître's name in the history of astronomy, by > accepting the recommendation of the IAU to use the term "Hubble-Lemaître > law", will benefit scientist-believers and scientist-atheists alike. For the > former, it strengthens our case that science and faith are compatible.

WTF?

Newton spent a lot of time on alchemy. Does the fact that we have Newton's laws of motion strengthen the case that science and alchemy are compatible?

If Lemaître deserves recognition on this, then that is for something he did while avoiding faith. The fact that someone made a contribution to human knowledge while avoiding faith does exactly nothing to validate other irrational behaviour the same person exhibited at other times, nor does it demonstrate any kind of compatibility, other than the obvious and trivial fact that people can be rational in some regard while being irrational in some other regard.

<comment><USER11> You realize the scientific method was invented by medieval monks, right?

<comment><USER12> Because during medieval times monks were the only ones educated enough to be able to do so. Not because religion helped them.

Let's not forget that during the same times we were struggling with proving the Earth was circling around the Sun because of what the scriptures said.

<comment><USER11> There's a decent argument to be made that it is an inherently Roman Catholic ideology. For example, no other civilization came up with the idea; the medieval scholastics did, and heralded it through the modern day. Obviously there's more to the argument than that, but there's no use talking about it unless you've studied the theology of the day.

And you are incorrect, during medieval times, monks were not the "only ones educated enough to be able to do so." Jews, merchants, royals were all quite educated. To say nothing of scholars in other civilizations, some of which operated at a higher technological and cultural level than the West did.

<comment><USER12> Please clear this up in terms of the names of the medieval monks as Wikipedia would easily disagree with you on this one.

<comment><USER11> Please define "this" -I made several statements. I don't really care what wikipedia says about much of anything.

<comment><USER12> You stated scientific method was invented by medieval monks. But even ancient Greeks were thinking of this through a concept called dialectic. So you have no basis for your arguments as you're orders of magnitude away from the truth.

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

<comment><USER11> The scientific method was first stated by Robert Grosseteste and later refined by Roger Bacon. They were both, FWIIW medieval monks -in the 1200s. Science and the scientific method and the business of scientific inquiry itself remained an unbroken tradition from the moment Grosseteste first stated it up until the present day. From Robbie BigBalls to James Clerk Maxwell; you could trace the direct scientific lineage.

The Greeks didn't do anything remotely resembling science; I've read, for example the remaining fragments of Eudoxus and Hipparchus (and Claudius Ptolemy); they had no concept of hypothesis experiment and verification. It was just model building -like modern Economics or something like noodle theory; it's only right by accident, because they have no way of testing when they're wrong or right. Cool idea using math to model reality: it's not the same thing.

This isn't something I just trot out for dick waving contests on the internet: I actually know something about it and thought about it well beyond the reading of wikipedia quackery. Avicenna, for example, was a very interesting character and arguably he and other islamic thinkers may have influenced Grosseteste. Heck, you could argue that Kautilya had developed something like the scientific method. However, none of them birthed the scientific tradition: the monks did. I'm sorry if this triggers you or whatever; it's a historical fact -as self evidently true as the existence of Julius Caesar or Philip II of Spain.

<comment><USER12> >> This isn't something I just trot out for dick waving contests on the internet: I actually know something about it and thought about it well beyond the reading of wikipedia quackery.

I don't think you know about it. Grosseteste directly quotes Aristotle while developing his idea for "scientific reasoning". And you're somehow denying the progress made by the Greeks/Romans whose works were translated by Grosseteste himself.

You sound like a typical religious fanatic who tends to deny the fact that religion per se did nothing for science. Church as an organisation - could, but again - in spite of religion.

>> I'm sorry if this triggers you or whatever; it's a historical fact -as self evidently true as the existence of Julius Caesar or Philip II of Spain.

I am not the one who is triggered. You're bringing many names and points, writing paragraphs here, but you are yet to quote a single source which you didn't do.

Not even going to start on the definite lack of attention to punctuation you tend to exhibit which is usually a sign of a person whose ego got a burn.

<comment><USER13> Greek dialectic, while cool and useful, is not the same thing as the scientific method. It was an essential ingredient to science, but not science itself.

The Islamic world had access to the same (and perhaps even more) Greek heritage, but did not have "science".

Regarding this so-called fact "that religion per se did nothing for science" here is at least a series of arguments for the case that the particularities of Christian theology (in contrast with other belief systems of the time and prior) made a fertile intellectual ground for science as a concept and practice to develop:

[https://tofspot.blogspot.com/2013/11/summa-origines- scientia...](https://tofspot.blogspot.com/2013/11/summa-origines-scientiarum- articulus-3.html)

<comment><USER12> None of the points presented in that blog have been invented by Christians as most of the Christian philosphy was copied from Greek philosophy and then adapted to scriptures.

And let's be honest - a blog is not a source. Give me a book that is you have read and it gave you the historical knowledge about where Christian philosophical basis came from.

<comment><USER13> > None of the points presented in that blog have been invented by Christians > as most of the Christian philosphy was copied from Greek philosophy and then > adapted to scriptures.

The point of the essay is explaining how those ideas were a result of specific Christian theological commitments in contrast to pre-Christian pagan notions: things like linear time, non-animism, the rational mind coming from the _Imago Dei_ , belief that the world is not an illusion, etc.

The article cites Alfred North Whitehead, who said:

"I do not think that I have even yet brought out the greatest contribution of medievalism to the formation of the scientific movement. I mean the inexpungable belief that every detailed occurrence can be correlated with its antecedents in a perfectly definite manner, exemplifying general principles. Without this belief the incredible labours of scientists would be without hope. It is this instinctive conviction, vividly poised before the imagination, which is the motive power of research: -- that there is a secret, a secret which can be unveiled."

> And let's be honest - a blog is not a source. Give me a book that is you > have read and it gave you the historical knowledge about where Christian > philosophical basis came from.

That's some rather bizarre special pleading. The post is well-argued and well- sourced. There's nothing inherently more authoritative about printing something in a book, and here I can actually provide you with my source, for free, _over the internet_.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Internet Explorer 9 beta - <AUTHOR> http://windows.microsoft.com/en-US/internet-explorer/download/ie-9/worldwide

<comment><USER2> The IE9 site asks me for my language, OS, and architecture.

* I don't know or care about this info

* My browser has already provided it to the site</comment>


Ask HN: What countries allow foreigners to work immediately upon arrival? - <AUTHOR>

I see an interesting discussion of United States immigration policies related to visas with work permission in another thread. How do other countries compare in regard to this issue? I am an American who has lived abroad, working abroad, for about six years of my life (in two separate three-year stays, with some visits in between). I didn't find it remarkable or onerous that I had to apply for visas with work permission when I lived overseas.
What countries make it easiest for foreign residents to work in the local economy? Is there any country where any foreigner fresh off the plane may immediately start working at any kind of job? What countries are the easiest countries to work in for
a) people from India
b) people from China
c) people from the United States
d) people from [insert arbitrary "Third World country here]
who have newly arrived and desire professional employment with high salaries in terms of the local economy? <comment><USER2> If you are an EU citizen you can work anywhere in the EU (with some temporary restrictions in Austria & Germany if I recall correctly). So for example a Latvian citizen can fly to the UK or Spain & apply for any job without additional paperwork.

<comment><AUTHOR> How readily can a non-EU citizen work in any of the EU countries?

<comment><USER3> That is lots of paperwork. Think of 4-6 months at least.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Based on my research if you're an Indian citizen (which I'm), there's hardly any country where you can just get off the plane, look for a job, get a bunch of job offers, and start working no matter how awesome a hacker you're.

USA is the worst in this regard - their H1B quota is so small every year it effectively ends up being a lottery. I've an Indian friend whom Google wanted to hire for their Mountain View office. Since getting a H1B is impossible, they sent him to their Zurich office - he worked there for a couple of years and then finally got a L1 transfer visa and moved to Mountain View.

EU is slightly better because it is not a lottery at least. But the process is ridiculously long for a non-EU citizen.

Australia and Canada - They're slightly better I think. They've point-based system to get permanent residentship without being tied to a particular employer?

Singapore - Singapore welcomes immigrant workers (I'm a permanent-resident of Singapore). Even though there's still some amount of paper-work and waiting time, it's fairly straight-forward.

Do add your experiences with other countries.</comment>


Why US corporations are hoarding cash and not investing (Paul Krugman) - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/2016/04/18/opinion/robber-baron-recessions.html <comment><AUTHOR> This longer piece, linked to in the Krugman column, is also very interesting: [http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/features/2010/1003.lynn- lon...](http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/features/2010/1003.lynn-longman.html)

<comment><AUTHOR> Here's a quote from it:

 _In dozens of cases between 1945 and 1981, antitrust officials forced large companies like AT &T, RCA, IBM, GE, and Xerox to make available, for free, the technologies they had developed in-house or gathered through acquisition. Over the thirty-seven years this policy was in place, American entrepreneurs gained access to tens of thousands of ideas—some patented, some not—including the technologies at the heart of the semiconductor. The effect was transformative. In Inventing the Electronic Century, the industrial historian Alfred D. Chandler Jr. argued that the explosive growth of Silicon Valley in subsequent decades was largely set in motion by these policies and the "middle-level bureaucrats" in the Justice Department's Antitrust Division who enforced them in the field._</comment></comment>


The Importance of Interface Language: Clicks, Taps, and Buttons - <AUTHOR> http://nearthespeedoflight.com/article/interface_language:_tapping__clicking_and_buttons

<comment><USER2> It's a constant source of amusement to me as an iOS developer when colleagues refer to "clicking" on buttons. I even had one boss who even, in all seriousness, asked me to add a tooltip to a button in the iOS app I was writing for him.

I think that if you care about your interface, the nomenclature you internalize matters.</comment>


Advantages of Elixir vs. Golang - <AUTHOR> https://www.cogini.com/blog/advantages-of-elixir-vs-golang/ <comment><USER2> >Dynamic typing makes it hard to avoid errors at runtime, requiring lots of testing.

Doesn't Elixir also have this problem?</comment>


The Xanadu Dream - <AUTHOR> http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/archives/001303.html <comment><USER2> _He is the archetypal borderline autistic, non-conformist, free-thinking technologist._

This is incorrect.

 _Like most programmers, Ted's reach often exceeded his grasp._

He can program, but he's not a programmer.

 _The above text is excerpted from the definitive 1995 Wired article on Project Xanadu, which is still as electrifying to read today as it was then. The hubris and sheer scale of the Xanadu dream are at turns both inspiring and desperately, hopelessly out of touch._

Desperately and hopelessly out of touch perhaps for you. The reason it's inspiring is the same reason that working at a great company or in a great computer lab or on great software is inspiring. You're working on something where your philosophy is embodied by the software.

The hubris and the sheer scale are called planning ahead. Instead of solving problem X, Nelson wanted to solve problems X, Y and Z all at once. Some problems need to be tackled all at once and Nelson was right about this. How many implementations of payments and micropayments have we seen that have failed on the Web? They fail because they aren't integrated with the Web.

 _But even that alone was enough to build a functional and useful internet for the world_

The Internet was already useful without the Web.

 _Consider the reality of what's actually possible, what people can understand, and what us all too human programmers can practically implement. It might not be the Xanadu you dreamed of -- heck, it might even suck -- but it'll at least have a fighting chance of existing in reality rather than fantasy._

If all we do is build good-enough software, we'll end up just applying patch after hacky patch to it to make it do the 100% thing. Again, sometimes you have to design with the whole of the problem in mind. Turn the corner cases into normal cases, in other words.

Off-topic... I'm sick and tired of having to defend the history of computing. I had to defend Smalltalk yesterday, and I've had to defend Lisp and Scheme against people as well. I had to defend friggin' Java against C...I shouldn't have to do that.

<comment><USER3> _I'm sick and tired of having to defend the history of computing._

Um, it's codinghorror. The author has no reputation for knowledge, insight or understanding. He's just a guy who talks about stuff. The programmer on the street, if you will.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> " _Every Xanadu service provider_ "

I would much rather live with broken links than rely on the centralized infrastructure that would be required to implement anything like Xanadu (which would ultimately end up being a government, university, or business run system anyways). Sure, Facebook Connect and Microsoft Passport are commercial "poison" in terms of centralized identification and authentication, but at least we have the ability to choose or implement our own systems.

<comment><USER5> Bingo,

Nelson anticipating many of the features of the web was great. The extra features he "anticipated" were exactly what made Xanadu impossible to implement as well _undesirable_ to implement (see RMS' The Right To Read).

<comment><USER2> _The extra features he "anticipated" were exactly what made Xanadu impossible to implement_

And yet everyone wants to implement all of those features eventually...funny how that works.

<comment><USER6> Isn't that how it always happens? Someone will come up with a grand vision that is impossible to implement given the current technology or environment. Someone else will strip it down to the essential bits that are achievable. The next person will add another feature or layer that adds value to the network as a whole (and which would be valueless if it were not for that first, dumbed-down version), etc.

<comment><USER3> aka "Worse is Better"

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> While I always been a great fan of Ted Nelson, his vision does not include distributed cryptographic filestores, where documents do not reside on individual servers, and where individual servers are in fact completely invisible and redundant.

<comment><USER8> IIRC one of the Xanadu hackers invented or reinvented the idea of the cryptohash of a document as a self-verifying identifier for the kind of lookup you mention. Are you sure that was not in the vision, even if Nelson himself was not so technical? (How I remember this: it came up on a mailing list (cap- talk?) when people were looking for prior art to challenge a patent. I may have it wrong.)

<comment><USER6> Yes, it was one of the Xanadu hackers who came up with that one (but it was never published and stayed internal to that group.) Post-Xanadu the idea migrated to Joule, Inc. then to Electric Communities, then MojoNation, and after that it just became the way things were done...

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> _"shipping is a feature"_

Yes indeed, it's the most powerful feature your software have.

<comment><USER10> Hmm... what about working?

<comment><USER11> Shipping comes first. You won't find out if it really works without shipping it.</comment></comment></comment>


Google in talks for SF's largest lease ever at Pier 70 - <AUTHOR> https://www.bizjournals.com/sanfrancisco/news/2019/12/19/google-search-could-lead-to-the-largest-office.html <comment><USER2> Why don't they lease one the piers SF gave to Ellison?</comment>


Spotted: Sergey Brin wearing Google Glass specs as he blends in on NYC subway - <AUTHOR> http://thenextweb.com/shareables/2013/01/21/spotted-sergey-brin-wearing-google-glass-specs-as-he-blends-in-on-nyc-subway/

<comment><USER2> "That a man as fabulously wealthy as Brin uses the train to get around is quite amusing. With his winter hat, beard and plastic bag, he looks just like a regular guy."

Seems like he simply realizes that being wealthy does not mean you have to show it off at every moment by going for expensive modes of transport over actually useful ones just because he can.

<comment><USER3> He's lucky - I work with people who are moderately wealthy, but instantly recognizable. They can't take public transport, eat openly in restaurants, go to the local store, or just generally be out "in public."

In Brin's case it's not a case of flaunting wealth or not, it's a case of being unrecognized, and hence able to be incognito.

<comment><USER4> After Michael Jackson's death, there was an excellent post by someone who worked with him as an audio engineer on some of his albums.

One day the engineers were discussing what path they took to walk to work when Michael Jackson came in. Michael said, "Wow, you guys are lucky to be able to walk to work."

They all went silent after that.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> It looks like a planned Google Glass marketing campaign. Why do I say that? Nobody in the picture has a phone out to detract from the Glass, when have you been on a train with people sitting down not on their phone?

Not a knock at Sergey or Google, I think its a cool depiction of what they expect the future to look like - something between seeing people everywhere wearing earbuds or on their phone except in the future people are wearing Glass.

<comment><USER6> The NYC subway doesn't have good cellular coverage. It's starting to appear in a few of the larger stations but there are no plans to extend it to the tunnels in the near future.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> While marketing/buzz might be one of the motivations, another factor could simply be Brin wanting a first-hand look at what every day, quick to quip, New Yorkers think of his new accoutrement. This research might be something he could delegate to others, but I respect that he doesn't.

</comment><comment><USER8> I don't understand why Google keeps going on about these glasses when their only purpose is as an always-on video camera. Why not keep it quiet until it can do what it is supposed to do.

Because an always-on video camera is a pretty dangerous thing. Not only will you be routinely violating Civil Rights and Privacy laws but you open yourself up to assault by other people. Not to mention vigorous enforcement by the police.

<comment><USER9> You seem to assume a lot of things. Your complete statement is nothing but a prejudicial bashing on a product made by a company that you don't like.</comment></comment>


United States' Net Position Deteriorates - <AUTHOR> http://mercatus.org/publication/united-states-net-position-deteriorates

<comment><USER2> I'd like to see a larger sample set ... 1980 to present?</comment>


Google Buys Motorola: very clever solution to the patent wars - <AUTHOR> http://daringfireball.net/linked/2011/08/15/google-moto

<comment><USER2> "I'd say where by "anti-competitive" he means "competitive"."

No, he meant what he said. They were being threatened with lawsuits left and right over patents. Patents that were trivial and should never have been granted. Their only defense was to grow some teeth of their own, or somehow remove their competitors' teeth.

So they did.

</comment><comment><USER3> <http://www.google.com/press/motorola/quotes/></comment>


Ask HN: Why Isn't Microsoft Included in FAANG? - <AUTHOR> Supposed question, but this acronym appears everywhere on Hacker News?
Is FAANG supposed to be big high-tech companies?
How did Netflix make the cut but not Microsoft? <comment><USER2> It was a stock market term originally, for hot tech-y stocks. At that time, Microsoft already was already old and boring. And now it's stuck as a somewhat generic catch-all.

<comment><AUTHOR> > Microsoft already was already old and boring

I'll leave "boring" to other judges, but Microsoft predates Apple by all of one year in the 1970s.

<comment><USER3> Yes. But at the point Apple became a rocket ship with the iPhone et al and the other FAANG companies were taking off, MS was stagnating.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Maybe I'm remembering wrong but my impression of the FAANG term was that they all had fast stock growth and were known for paying high salaries. In fact a whole separate realm of high total comp.

<comment><AUTHOR> > whole separate realm of high total comp.

In that case, I wonder how Apple made the cut but not Microsoft.

<comment><USER5> Microsoft did not enjoy the same reputation during the ballmer days as right now

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> The real injustice is that Netflix is included. It's a lot smaller than the others. I'm pretty sure it's to make the acronym sound better. FANG sounds better than FAAG.

IMO the lesson is that making groups of items in acronyms is not a great way to analyze the world. Remember the BRIC group of countries? Well, China took off, and the others didn't follow the same path at all.

<comment><USER7> The acronym was initially based on stock growth and later some people started using it as a proxy for compensation.

Netflix has some of the highest all-cash compensation in the industry. Compensation is easily $450k+ in cash per year for a regular senior dev at Netflix.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Other acronyms are in use to refer to tech giants, like GAFAM (which does include Microsoft but leaves out Netflix)

<comment> blaser-waffle FAANG aka fang or fangs also rolls of the tongue a lot better than GAFAM, which sounds like a sneezing noise.

But I believe FAANG referred to hot, fast growth tech companies with forward looking mentalities and high salaries. Microsoft was already a dominant player, practically monopoly in places, and wasn't a "growth" stock as much as a "store value" stock.

<comment><USER9> >GAFAM, which sounds like a sneezing noise.

There's been a different acronym going around: The G-MAFIA as in G(oogle) M(icrosoft) A(mazon) F(acebook) I(BM) A(pple).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Back in the day it was GYM (Google/Yahoo/Microsoft)

<comment><USER11> Snow White and the seven dwarves.

[https://www.networkworld.com/article/2212166/snow-white- and-...](https://www.networkworld.com/article/2212166/snow-white-and-the- seven-dwarfs.html)

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Because that would make it harder to pronounce.

</comment><comment><USER13> FAANG is a handy bacronym used to get the hype up and counter any FUD. In a word it's non-sense.

</comment><comment><USER14> FSABHATMAGJJAVA doesn't have a mellifluous ring to it.</comment>


Why we don't allow Java in job interviews - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@joshuatyler/why-we-dont-allow-java-in-job-interviews-aa09b618f0a1

<comment><USER2> I would ban every language in interviews. Ask people to code in advance or look at their opensource projects.</comment>


Netlify Dev - <AUTHOR> https://www.netlify.com/products/dev/ <comment><USER2> Can anyone explain the elevator pitch of Netlify to me? I know it's become quite popular in the last couple of years and I can't figure out why. I don't doubt that it's good at what it does, but it seems to do the same thing as any number of services.

For example, I see a lot of people talk about it for static sites. But you get free static sites through GitHub, nearly free static sites on Amazon S3. What does Netlify do special that these others don't? I'm not attempting to bash the service, I just want to understand what its killer features are.

<comment><USER3> > But you get free static sites through GitHub, nearly free static sites on > Amazon S3.

I've been really happy using Netlify (with Jekyll) for [https://www.checkbot.io/](https://www.checkbot.io/) \- I didn't have to think about server admin at all when I got traffic spikes from Hacker News and Product Hunt traffic, and development features make working on the website really straightforward.

Features I like:

\- Git based deploys automatically when you make a commit

\- Git based rollbacks if there's a problem with the latest commit

\- non-master Git branches are automatically deployed for preview

\- automatic CDN + HTTPS setup

\- no servers to admin i.e. they deal with security, scaling and configuration for you

\- they do instant cache invalidation of images/CSS/JS files for you so there's no stale files being served after deploys

\- before deploying you can run complex build scripts on Netlify to generate files to be deployed e.g. any static site generator you want to use, run arbitrary NPM scripts, you can download data that to be rendered on to a page

\- you can use Netlify CMS as a friendly web interface to edit blog posts, articles and FAQs. It's easy enough for non-technical people so it's possible to use for standard business websites that would normally require something more complex to admin like WordPress.

You can cobble together something like the above yourself but Netlify makes it simple and robust so you can get on with more important things.

People that say you can do something similar with e.g. a Digital Ocean droplet are missing the point and are for sure paying with their time. If you've worked in web dev for a while you've probably tried to automate many of the above features yourself but it's just never going to be as robust as a service that has a dedicated support team behind it.

<comment><USER4> If you're not aware, you get most of that for free with GitHub pages:

[https://pages.github.com/](https://pages.github.com/)

It deploys when you push, is based on Jekyll, and GitHub handles all of the hosting/HTTPS/caching themselves.

<comment><USER5> Gitlab too does this, along with free unlimited private repos & published static sites; html n Jekyll n all. Just a happy user.

<comment><USER6> Glad to hear that you enjoy using GitLab! Here's a link if anyone wondered [https://about.gitlab.com/product/pages/](https://about.gitlab.com/product/pages/)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Netlify is amazing:

1\. Free 2\. Good support 3\. Custom domains with SSL 4\. Takes care of most important backend stuff (forms and webhooks) 5\. Functions (Lambda with zero config needed) 6\. Abstracts server stuff like [redirects]([https://www.netlify.com/docs/redirects/](https://www.netlify.com/docs/redirects/))

Lambda and redirects are the best. I can just put my scripts in a folder and they automagically work.

In my LinkedIn profile my website address is not clickable, so people are copying it to browser. This gives me bogus source data, but with Netlify I can do a one-liner:

`/li /?utm_source=linkedin&utm_medium=profile`

If you go to [patrykkalinowski.com/li]([https://patrykkalinowski.com/li](https://patrykkalinowski.com/li)) from my LI profile, you'll end up on patrykkalinowski.com/?utm_source=linkedin&utm_medium=profile

Zero javascript redirects, zero nginx config, zero S3 settings - one line in text file, git push and I'm done!

<comment><USER8> > 1\. Free ... 4. Takes care of most important backend stuff (forms and > webhooks)

From my reading of [https://www.netlify.com/pricing/#forms](https://www.netlify.com/pricing/#forms) you will need to pay $19/month/site (!) just to collect the data from 1000 form submissions. By the time you have a couple of sites like this the price is already way too much for me and anyone else with basic backend knowledge. I hope I've misunderstood.

<comment><USER9> For a static site, I think 100 submissions/month for free is probably more than enough for the majority of people. Though going straight to $19/month is a pretty big step if you're just hosting your own personal website/blog.

It's $0,019 per submission, which I think is a fair price if you're actually sending that amount (and making money from it). It would costs you much more to build unless. That said, for personal (free) use there are a lot of alternative options.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Massive respect to the Netlify team. I played around with having my static site hosted by them (for free!) and got only a modicum of extra performance from a $5/mo Digital Ocean droplet.

With this ngrok competitor making it easier to experiment with lambdas/serverless technologies, they're creating a compelling reason to use them for production builds.

<comment><USER11> How is this a ngrok competitor?

<comment><USER12> Netlify Dev has a live sharing feature to let others view the site on your local environment.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Netlify service is ridiculously awesome. I host my site there for free and had some cert errors [1]. I messaged support and they had it fixed in less than 48 hrs. I seriously recommend others to use them rather than using Medium for their own content.

[1] www.powu3.com

<comment><USER14> Lately, I've been thinking to Port my Medium posts to Netlify. Could you please suggest any reason why you specifically mentioned this case ?

<comment><USER13> Better control and domain ownership. Especially since setting up a static site is super easy with Netlify. Set up a repo in either GitHub and Gitlab and Netlify will take care of the rest. The biggest downside is that it's hard to get exposure. However, it works for me since my site is just a portfolio site.

<comment><USER15> If you want to go further down this rabbit hole: [https://indieweb.org/POSSE](https://indieweb.org/POSSE)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> More context in this blog post: [https://www.netlify.com/blog/2019/04/09/netlify-dev--our- ent...](https://www.netlify.com/blog/2019/04/09/netlify-dev--our-entire- platform-right-on-your-laptop/)

</comment><comment><USER16> With our existing trend of moving everything to the cloud, I wonder why development environments aren't going in the same direction as well. It has so many benefits. I code on my digital ocean server (vim and tmux) and it gives allot of the benefits that netlify mentions like streaming live. If I don't have my computer I can just borrow anyone's computer (or use a public computer in the library) to make quick fixes or even implement features, all of which will be immediately live even if I log out of the system. If my laptop is lost or damaged, I just get a replacement and pick up exactly where I left off. With tools like react native, I can also dabble with mobile development in the cloud.

<comment><USER17> What's your setup like? I've been looking around to set something like this up, mainly for being able to do quick fixes on the go. (Or use my iPad when I'm on holiday)

<comment><USER16> Unfortunately I don't have much to share because my setup is so simple. Literally just vim (you can find really awesome vimrc on GitHub, mines pretty messy), and tmux (simple apt install).

When I visit my friends place I usually just use their computer, otherwise I'll use my MacBook pro or desktop. I don't think about setup much, I just use whatever devices around me to access and write code on my server instance.

<comment><USER17> Understood, for my purposes I was really looking for a more full-fletched dev environment. Being able to run a local dev server and a browser (for front-end dev). Sadly that doesn't seem to be possible on an iPad at the moment.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Looks super cool and super happy with Netlify hosting.

I just gave it a spin though and got this:

      Netlify Dev ◈ Starting Netlify Dev...
      Netlify Dev ◈ Overriding dist with setting derived from netlify.toml [dev] block:  null
      Netlify Dev ◈ No dev server detected, using simple static server
      Netlify Dev ◈ Unable to determine public folder for the dev server.
      Setup a netlify.toml file with a [dev] section to specify your dev server settings.

But the blog post and the TOML reference ([https://www.netlify.com/docs/netlify-toml- reference/](https://www.netlify.com/docs/netlify-toml-reference/)) don't seem to include details on what to include in the [dev] section of the TOML file to get this to work.

Anyone have this tool working locally?

<comment><USER19> hello! thanks for the report! i just pushed a small patch that now has some more helpful messages.. havent ironed out all the states yet and probably need a state machine since i already cant keep everything in my head!

[https://github.com/netlify/netlify-dev- plugin/commit/1c6df00...](https://github.com/netlify/netlify-dev- plugin/commit/1c6df0038ce48f5899ef405c14797bf4ac905fa3)

</comment></comment><comment> d--b I have no idea what this does. Site generator? functions? edge logic?

What?

<comment><USER20> It runs their platform on your laptop. If you want to know what "their platform" is, you can just click on the Products link.

Essentially, it takes your code (from a repository), runs a build command (if configured), and serves the result over HTTP on some domain.

<comment><USER21> Isn't this something which you can do with Jenkins? Pull code from Github and deploy it on S3 bucket?

I learned Jenkins creating the pipeline to AWS in less than a day.

<comment><USER20> Yes, but here you don't need to manage a Jenkins installation.

<comment><USER21> Right. But in this system, I'll need to manage Netlify.

<comment><USER22> To be honest, there is nothing to manage in Netlify. Just first time connect the git repo during sign up procedure. Additional benefits (at least for starter) are 1 click SSL management. They also provide functions and form, but I have not used them so not aware of how useful they are. :)

Sure they are not a huge improvement compared to your setup. But streamlining the procedure for someone not familiar with the pipeline is a great benefit.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> I part run a non-profit site on Netlify and the experience is pretty great. The real killer bit for me has been their GitHub integration where they will render a preview build of any PRs put up to the site.

</comment><comment><USER24> I love what Netlify is doing, but I've chosen to only watch it from afar for the past few years. I used to use a similar service that I loved very much called Divshot. But Google bought them, closed it down, and absorbed some of their tech for parts of the Firebase platform.

Now I use NearlyFreeSpeech.NET exactly because I do have to pay for it. I'm not sure how Netlify is able to offer their free tier. But I've learned the hard way that if you're not paying for it, you're not the customer.

</comment><comment><USER25> Netlify has been pretty great so far. My team was able to use the promise of a super quick CMS integration with Netlify CMS to justify getting out of building another nasty WordPress site (what our editors are familiar with). The actual Netlify setup caused no trouble at all and let us seamlessly move off of GitHub Pages, and now we can put in an integrated build process with NPM or whatever else we need.

Netlify CMS itself is a lot more raw but I see huge potential there, especially since it's open source. Our InfoSec folks loved the idea of content changes as commits. And the maintainers on Gitter are super open to help folks and work through changes. Already submitted a PR that was accepted and has made it into a release. And we haven't paid them anything yet, even with Google Single Sign-On integrated.

</comment><comment><USER26> For those interested in the GitHub integration / preview pull request features that Netlify offers, but don't want to migrate from your current host: I'm developing a product called FeaturePeek[1] that will spin up static builds into a feature environment you can share with your team / publicly. Unlike Netlify Dev / ngrok, you don't need to be online with your feature branch checked out for others to preview it. We can run dynamic builds too, and are agnostic of your host or cloud provider because we don't focus on production deployments. On top of that, we provide some collaboration tools so you can annotate / comment directly on the build.

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

<comment><USER27> >you don't need to be online with your feature branch checked out

Can you expand on what do you mean by this?

<comment><USER26> The `netlify dev --live` command opens up a tunnel to your local dev server port. If you close your laptop, the connection closes. Similarly, if you switch branches, the content of your build will change, even though the URL you've shared remains the same.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> My friends have used netlify for dev deployments, and it worked out pretty well as a hosted solution.

For this product I'm wondering what does this give over, running setup and deployment scripts locally? Or running a VM connected to CI server that would run test and production deployment?

<comment><USER12> For one, there is nothing to configure with Netlify Dev.

<comment><USER28> But the configuration needs to come from somewhere, like existing netlify config?

I noticed that one of the features mentioned is this --

> Netlify Dev automatically detects common tools like Gatsby, Hugo, Jekyll, > React Static, Eleventy, and more, providing a zero-config setup for your > local dev server.

If your framework supported by netlify, just plop the projects with no configuration.

I found one or two Python projects supported by netlify -- [https://www.netlify.com/tags/python/](https://www.netlify.com/tags/python/)

It looks like Netlify caters to frontend development, as far as backend, mostly static site generators supported.

I would try this out for Vue.js

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> This is exciting news.

How do you see `netlify dev` comparing to `firebase serve`? The `--live` feature sounds great and I can imagine the config variables are handled better, but otherwise I'm anticipating a similar experience. Is that correct or am I missing something core?

</comment><comment><USER30> We use Netlify for [https://standups.io](https://standups.io) and we still are not paying a penny for their service. It works for our different environments, creates deploy previews out of every branch, supports split testing, and we even use it as a CI for our ReactJS app using Cypress! It's so painless and reliable, we just love it.

<comment><USER31> Can you explain more? I mean, I see that you're essentially a video service. Don't you have a backend? Don't people login? How do you handle all that on a static site host?

<comment><USER30> Sure, happy to expand on it.

You're right, as a video service, we cannot do everything through them, we use our own encoder service with AWS Lambda, and manage users through a NodeJS app. And Netlify is a very important part of our stack, as it holds our main client app, which connects to these other parts of our stack.

Btw, congrats on TalkJS! Looks amazing.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> This is brilliant! I like Netlify a lot. A lot of my day to day infrastructure work doesn't rely on them, but I have used them for small sites here and there. Solid company!

</comment><comment><USER33> I instantly thought of the incomplete/error prone Zeit Now dev that was introduced a few weeks ago. If this(Netlify Dev) can replicate the entire system stably I might move on to Netlify Edge. Replicating and testing is a pretty big deal :-)

Offtopic, but can anyone explain the differences between Zeit Now v2 and Netlify Edge?

<comment><USER34> Yes, I have the feeling the whole "replicate locally" goes in the wrong direction.

You're just lying to yourself when saying local is the same as cloud...

<comment><USER20> Why? They're just computers, what makes your local machine _that_ different from a Netlify server?

<comment><USER34> Because functions are small self-contained stateless bits of code, they don't need much testing by themselves.

You need to test them with the services they are using and replicating your whole cloud infrastructure locally is nearly impossible.

<comment><USER20> Maybe they'll tell me I'm wrong, but Netlify strikes me as not targeting people who need a "whole cloud infrastructure" (since they don't offer many services), but a static site with a few simple backend functions.

<comment><USER34> Cloud be, yes.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> Fantastic service. We've moved some of our SPA's out of our Heroku infrastructure and into Netlify. The integration with GitHub (and Slack), automated builds and deploys, together with the built-in support for rewrites and a reverse proxy works great and has made our workflow easier and faster.

</comment><comment><USER36> Quote from the page:

"Decoupled web projects involve so many components. The hard part is testing all the pieces locally, together. Netlify Dev delivers this beautifully with one command."

What are these "decouples web projects" and "components" and "pieces" that are hard to test locally, together?

</comment><comment><USER37> I moved my blog from Medium to a static site hosted on Netlify's free. I'm really, really impressed with Netlify.

A++++++ would recommend.

</comment><comment><USER38> I recently moved my site[0] from WordPress to Netlify Used HUGO and then one of my Post regarding MacBook Thermals was trending on HN, The site had more than 12K visitors. If I had been using WordPress I could only imagine how catastrophic that would be. Though I crossed their 100GB limit. But since this was a rare spike in traffic I feel their free plan is very generous. Netlify+ static site generators is good alternative for WordPress. [0] [https://bsid.io](https://bsid.io)

<comment><USER39> With proper caching even a $5 DO droplet would be easily able to handle this load. With caching + cdn you should be able to handle virtually any load. I personally run cloudfront in front of all of my WP sites, even the low traffic ones because the costs are negligible.

<comment><USER38> I agree that DO would handle the load. The con is that it costs 5$+tax. Where as netlify is free and CDN and caching is taken care by netlify. Saves time

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER40> The comments here are so bizzarly positive for HN. Makes me feel that this might not be all genuine.

<comment><USER41> Check comment history for a sample of the positive commenters?

I mean, I could tell you that I too love Netlify with a passion but that would make it even more suspicious. But trust me, it's great. Try it for yourself.

</comment></comment><comment><USER42> I'm curious if anyone has used both Netlify and AWS Amplify and if they can do a quick compare and contrast? In some ways they seem very similar, but their messaging seems fairly different.

Disclaimer: I'm a JAMstack n00b and the last real web app I built was "old school" where we did crazy things like keep a session token around and server the HTML, CSS, and JS from a web app. As such, I may be slow on the uptake.

<comment><USER43> Netlify is focused on delivering your frontend and has some light backend features added on (form submission, lambda functions, auth). But you can't run a dynamic application on just netlify, because there is no database. But you might not need a database, which I think is netlify's proposition.

AWS Amplify is focused on providing you a backend (with GraphQL) powered by AWS services (dynamoDB, lambda). You can run an entire dynamic application with just AWS amplify. They also provide frontend hosting now, but that part I haven't used (oops that was your core question sorry). It seems that the CLI tool just configures S3 and CloudFront for you. This is probably much less polished then using netlify.

<comment><USER44> Netlify has integration with FaunaDB for the database tier.

<comment><USER43> FaunaDB looks like a great product for a serverless/SPA type app but I don't see how they are integrated with netlify other than they fit together well?

<comment><USER45> FaunaDB support is built into Netlify Dev and was shown in the Netlify CEO's keynote at the JAMstack conf. Netlify also has one-click deploy support for including FaunaDB with your applications. For instance this sample app can be deployed almost automatically: [https://github.com/sw-yx/netlify-fauna- todo](https://github.com/sw-yx/netlify-fauna-todo) (Disclaimer, I work for Fauna and helped with the one-click deploy integration.)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER46> Is this like working/collaborating on glitch.com/codesandbox (auto building, hot reloading) BUT being able to do it offline (train,plane dev) and then just push with one command ?

I guess i can see the value since i do realise im dependant to my internets connection to do some dev this last days (im a hacky ceo).

</comment><comment><USER47> This appears to be the first "Cloud Functions" service to provide tools for testing functions locally.

<comment><USER48> firebase and google cloud functions?

</comment></comment><comment><USER49> Moved from Github Pages to Netlify this year and have never been happier. Will definitely give this a shot.

</comment><comment><USER50> Netlify is just fantastic! I reluctantly checked them out last year, and am now hosting 3 SPAs there. By the far the most painless platform I've used, with a generous free tier.

Thanks to the team and great work as always!

</comment><comment><USER51> Anybody found a good CMS solution for static sites?

I love everything about gatsby/Hugo/etc on Netlify but the lack of good CMS with out of the box SEO tools for writers to easily publish is a no go for my clients.

Tried Netlify CMS and it unfortunately required way too much work to compete with the full featured Wordpress setup my editorial clients are used to.

<comment><USER52> [https://forestry.io/](https://forestry.io/) (hugo)

[https://www.contentful.com/](https://www.contentful.com/) (used this with jekyll)

<comment><USER53> +1 for Contentful with Gatsby. Painless setup.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER54> It has a few bugs to iron out.

I did a test to [https://trusting- heisenberg-a82012.netlify.com/](https://trusting- heisenberg-a82012.netlify.com/) and I get "Page Not Found Looks like you've followed a broken link or entered a URL that doesn't exist on this site.

Back to our site"

Other than that, it is a neat idea.

</comment><comment><USER55> Great move by Netlify.. they offer a lot of features such as asset optimization or authentication that can now be evaluated locally.

Currently I use netlify's redirects in production and maintain equivalent nginx configs for dev parity and a fallback just in case.

I'm super happy with the netlify build/edge products.

</comment><comment><USER56> This looks interesting, but am I the only one turned off by having to 'npm install' to try it out?

<comment><USER57> Yeah, I wish it were just a docker image up on the hub

<comment><USER58> That "just" is just your favorite alternative to "npm install". There's nothing "just" about it. Like preferring it was a pip or apt install.

<comment><USER56> Sure there is. When I'm done looking at it, I delete the Docker image and it's gone from my system. That's more effort with npm.

Also, the docker solution works for _everything_. So whether it's a node app, or python, or Go, or Ruby... the process is the same.

<comment><USER55> Getting a docker image to performantly access a local folder across platforms is a huge challenge.

I love docker but it's just not good enough at handling watched folders.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER59> My issue with netlify is the lack of data or analytics about traffic. I cannot even see the number of visits ! That's why I use GitHub + cloudflare.

<comment><USER52> Is that something that could be solved with Google Analytics, Mixpanel?

<comment><USER59> Google analytics gives very bad results, given the number of people using content blockers. I just want the number of unique visitors, I don't care about tracking or anything.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER60> Looks a bit like Squarespace, which also offers Git based deployment. I use it for a number of client sites and it just works.

</comment><comment><USER61> Agreed with others, Netlify is awesome. I deploy my personal Hugo site [https://zwbetz.com/](https://zwbetz.com/) to it, as well as all my Hugo themes

</comment><comment><USER62> meanwhile the link is down..

</comment><comment><USER63> based on the comments sounds like a great framework, but wow what a bad name. sounds like some kind of mix between bug zapper and a light beer? maybe life insurance also..

</comment><comment><USER64> Can we please stop the personal promote-jerking?

</comment><comment><USER65> I use netlify for about 6 out of 7 sites I manage for myself and family. The last one I have on linode purely out of laziness.

Netlify absolutely kills it with their entire suite of offerings. I highly highly recommend people try it out if they haven't yet.

<comment><USER58> I was blown away by how polished it was once I finally tried it a few months ago. I set up auto-deploy on push to Github + build command in like two clicks for all of my projects and never looked back.

Their free tier is probably too generous though. I know someone running the biggest website in a massive niche and they are serving their SPA for free from Netlify.

<comment> frosted-flakes Well, without their free tier they probably wouldn't be as big as they are today. It's the same model as freemium apps: get big, then start charging.

<comment><USER58> You justified a free tier but not why it's still free for one of the most trafficked websites in the world. ;)

<comment><USER66> Their free tier has a 100GB/month bandwidth cap — surely the most trafficked websites in the world would very quickly hit that limit, no?

Your point stands nonetheless — they could certainly be losing money on certain large users of their free tier. Serving relatively static content _has_ gotten extremely cheap across the board, though, and like the parent said, they might be benefiting from the pricing by more indirect means.

<comment><USER67> Aren't they just burning through VC cash as they suck up all the devs?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER68> Great stuff!

</comment><comment><USER64> Geocities 2.0</comment>


Show HN: Git Hosting - unlimited private repos, unlimited users - <AUTHOR> http://codebreak.com/

<comment> waqas- wow!</comment>


How to Make Money Writing Poetry - <AUTHOR> http://www.fastcompany.com/3043172/my-creative-life/these-poets-yes-poets-make-225-an-hour#1

<comment><USER2> Summary: be a novelty stunt. Not very encouraging.</comment>


The Myth of Charter Schools - <AUTHOR> http://www.nybooks.com/articles/archives/2010/nov/11/myth-charter-schools/

<comment><USER2> I'm undecided on this issue but slightly biased towards public schools (my mom is a public school teacher, I send my kids to public schools --- but because of where I live, my kids are going to de facto private school). I found this critique pretty devastating, and would be interested in seeing if any HN'ers can knock it down.

Here are (I believe all) of the factual arguments presented in the article:

* The film admits only 20% of charter schools gets "amazing results". In reality, the huge study that stat comes from says only 17% of charters beat public schools, 46% generate comparable results, and 37% are worse.

* The film higlights successes but ignores chains of charters with newsworthy mismanagement scandals (real estate scams, embezzlement, religious indoctrination, $300-400k salaries to teach small student bodies).

* Since test scores are what determines the perceived value of a charter, some charters expel students just before testing days or have high student turnover, particularly with low-performing students.

* The NAEP test the movie relies on for the claim that 70% of 8th graders can't read at grade level says nothing of the sort; the movie distorts the results so that any student scoring less than a B is "below grade level", when in fact only 25% are below C, not 70%. The author of the article was a member of the NAEP governing board.

* One of the film's heroes, Geoffrey Canada, runs a organization managing two (2) charter schools that is funded to the tune of $200MM, and is paid $400,000; the author of the article is an admirer, but implies that no public school system is similarly well equipped.

* In 2010 state tests, 60% of Canada's 4th graders were below "proficient". Canada also expelled his entire first middle school class because their scores were too low, which the movie didn't note.

* Another charter the movie celebrates, Green Dot's Locke High, took $15MM in funding and got only tiny improvements; only 15% of its students are now proficient in English, up from 13.7%; math rose from 4 to 6.7%.

* Another charter, SEED in DC, is successful, but spends 3 times what the average public school spends ($35,000 per student).

* Studies appear to show that teacher quality --- while the most important factor within a school --- accounts for only 10-20% of outcomes, while non-school factors account for almost 60% of the outcome.

* Americans are dissatisfied with the quality of schools in general, but 77% of them rate their own school A or B.

* Finland, the movie's model school system, is entirely unionized, has much lower poverty, and has a stronger social safety net than the US.

* While the movie points out that only 0.04% of teachers ever lose their certificate, it omits the fact that 50% of new teachers leave the profession within 5 years, mostly because of working conditions.

<comment><USER3> > * The film admits only 20% of charter schools gets "amazing results". In > reality, the huge study that stat comes from says only 17% of charters beat > public schools, 46% generate comparable results, and 37% are worse.

One difference - you can close the failing charters. Failing public schools are virtually immortal.

Another difference - choice is also valuable.

> * Finland, the movie's model school system, is entirely unionized, has much > lower poverty, and has a stronger social safety net than the US.

Finland is less populous than LA, almost all interactions involve relatives and long-term acquaintances, and it's all proto-Scandanavians.

The last point is important - anything works if you just have to deal with Scandanavians (or Mormons).

> * While the movie points out that only 0.04% of teachers ever lose their > certificate, it omits the fact that 50% of new teachers leave the profession > within 5 years, mostly because of working conditions.

Apples and Oranges. Bad working conditions drive out both good and bad teachers. (Conditions might be more of a issue for folks who have other options, which might be disproportionatly the good teachers.) Certificate revocation is likely to be dominated by bad teachers.

<comment><USER2> Failing public schools are routinely closed. Do you want them to be closed more rapidly? Me too. What does that have to do with charter schools?

You've restated the article author's point regarding Finland.

You also may have restated the author's point about the 50% of new teachers who don't stick it out 5 years.

<comment><USER3> > Failing public schools are routinely closed.

Actually, it's not routine. It's a long drawn out struggle. Charters get closed much faster.

> You've restated the article author's point regarding Finland.

The person whom I was responding to seemed to be suggesting that Finland's experience tells us something important about the US. My point is that it doesn't.

> You also may have restated the author's point about the 50% of new teachers > who don't stick it out 5 years.

Again, the person to whom I was responding suggested that certificate loss rates and the percentage of teachers leaving the profession because of work conditions have something to do with one another. They don't.

<comment><USER2> You really ought to read the article before arguing about it.

<comment><USER3> I'm not discussing the article. I'm discussing the message about the article. I'm responding to the claims and arguments of that message. The relationship between my responses and the article are irrelevant.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Charter schools are more for the adults who start the school rather than the children. I grew up in a state that had charter school mania, and it was always something like, some weird guy with a master's degree had a boner for Medieval Literature and his interpretation of the Origins of the University, so he'd start a charter school focused on Rhetoric, Sums and Figures, Swordsmanship, and Court Jesting (NO JOKE.). Or, some muslim elders from Somalia would start a somalian school catering to the special needs of somalian students, while simultaneously catering to the special employment needs of the school administrator's family who just arrived from Mogadishu. Or, a guy in the midwest who couldn't get a job as a final cut pro editor (no kidding?) so he'd start the "Media Sciences" charter school, etc etc. The actual kids attending these schools were a total afterthought.

<comment><AUTHOR> "I grew up in a state that had charter school mania, and it was always something like, some weird guy with a master's degree had a boner for Medieval Literature and his interpretation of the Origins of the University, so he'd start a charter school focused on Rhetoric, Sums and Figures, Swordsmanship, and Court Jesting."

I'm laughing because that sentence instantly reminded me of pg because of this:

<http://www.paulgraham.com/essay.html>

(Which is actually one of my favorite pg essays, but it's still kind of funny.)

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> I used to teach at a charter school in DC (<http://seeforever.org>)

Our student body was made up solely of court-involved truants. These were kids who refused to go to school. They attended from 8am until 8pm and worked on regular course work as well as vocational training (I worked in the tech vocational program teaching design / web development / and Cisco networking).

The school had a graduation rate over 90% and over 75% went on to college.

Charter schools do tend to be thematic and some may seem frivolous, but the good ones are designed to help a poorly served segment to excel. It doesn't always work, but when it does it is remarkable.

Charter schools cannot fix the entire system, but I do feel they are an important cog.

<comment><USER6> I really like the idea of thematic schools. Locally we have a charter school that is college prep with a focus on science (<http://coralacademy.org/>) and it's a great school. We also have two charter schools that focus on bilingual instruction that have produced really good results as the students receive each lesson twice. Once in their native language and once in english. Unfortunately it turns out that one of those schools is being investigated for test score manipulation so the results may be misleading.

If you have students that aren't willing or able to perform in a standard school having alternatives available for them is a great thing. There's no reason that students that have no desire to go to college or what not should not have the option of a school that also offers vocational programs.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> From the studies I've seen, once you take into account the risk selection practices of charter schools, the advantages disappear.

<comment><USER8> Why is this so? Does the charter school do the same thing as public school?

<comment><USER9> Part of it is demographics, and part of it is the fact that non-school factors play a HUGE role in achievement. If you have parents who are trying to get you into a charter school, you have parents who are making sure you're doing your homework and who care about your education, which already puts you in a higher-achieving sub-set.

<comment><USER10> _...part of it is the fact that non-school factors play a HUGE role in achievement._

If this is true (I believe this is likely to be the case), we should invest vastly less in education than we currently do. Rather than trying to find good teachers, we should just aim for the cheapest warm bodies we can find, not to mention speeding up the process (e.g., graduate at 14).

This belief lies behind the signalling model of education - education adds little value but signals to employers that value was already present.

<comment><USER2> Or, the opposite is true, and we need to spend wildly more to offset the fact that public policy can't fix the non-school factors at play. The average school apparently spends ~100k per student from k - 8. What's the lifetime dollar value of having someone complete high school with grade-level performance, as opposed to having the system give up on them? The average cost per year of keeping someone in prison is apparently $22000.

<comment><USER7> The billion-dollar policy question is whether it makes more sense to spend that money through the school system per se or through a broader social policy that aims more directly to ameliorate the socioeconomic factors affecting school performance.

<comment><USER11> Which of course leads to the questions of what that social policy would look like, how we could evaluate it and of course how to ensure that demand meets supply if it does work.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Not sure if this is a terribly relevant article, but I'll note that we actually homeschool throughout a charter school with minimal oversight. What this means is that we're enrolled in the school, they send a teacher out every week to evaluate progress, we do the teaching, and--critically--we get hundreds of dollars a year to use on curriculum. If it weren't for the last point we'd just do it alone; it's solely for the money that we stay in the school.

</comment><comment><USER13> I think Ravitch should be applauded for arguing an unpopular position with vigor. I also commend HN readers for reading critically. I hope we can point out her strengths as well as weaknesses, and I hope someone can provide some insight on the content of _Waiting for Superman_.

<comment><AUTHOR> "I think Ravitch should be applauded for arguing an unpopular position with vigor."

Technically her position is actually the more popular one, it's just that you'd never know it because the media has teamed up with silicon valley and wall street to push charter schools and standardized testing. Anyway there is some more analysis on the previous thread linked below, but the fact is that though both Ravitch and the movie make a lot of valid points, neither is fully correct and you're never really going to understand why without reading books. Hacker News is fun and all, but there's no way you're going to understand the last 50 years of educational research after reading a few dozen comments.

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1774156>

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> The article mentions the school systems in Finland as a potential model for our public school system, though there are economic differences. I was curious, so here are a couple of relevant links.

This article from BBC summarizes the basics, plus a couple videos. <http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/8601207.stm> This focuses in particular on student age, school structure, and respect for the teaching profession.

An longer article about Finland's school reforms since the 1970s. <http://www.jstor.org/stable/3098447>

</comment><comment><USER15> This seems central to Ravitch's argument:

``For many people, these arguments require a willing suspension of disbelief. Most Americans graduated from public schools, and most went from school to college or the workplace without thinking that their school had limited their life chances.''

In other words, her argument seems at least in part based on the assumption that the public schools of today are equivalent in quality with the public schools in which most adults today were themselves educated.

It's not clear to me that this is correct...

<comment><USER9> That's not central to the argument at all. The article's first argument is "only 17% of charter schools out-perform matched public schools, so it's unrealistic to expect them to be a silver bullet".

The schools in "Waiting for 'Superman'" are the rare few that are getting exceptional results. Yes, we as a country would be smarter if every public school was a charter school with exceptional results, but that's like saying we'd be smarter if every public college was replaced with Harvard or MIT.

And that's just the first argument. Then it breaks into several more about non-school factors being responsible for the majority of achievement variance among students, and about charter school selection effects[1], as well as a lot of discussion of relevant omissions and factual errors in the movie.

I'm not saying I agree absolutely with the article (I haven't seen WfS yet), but if you're dismissing it based on a fact-free first impression of a throw- away line halfway through it, you're doing yourself a disservice.

[1] - Since only students with parents who are deeply involved in their education even apply to charter schools, those students are at an inherent advantage whether or not they get in.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> One thing I didn't like about the WFS is they did not give enough credit to "good" public school teachers. I thought they swiped everyone with one brush and made it seem like it's their fault.

</comment><comment><USER17> Single page link: [http://www.nybooks.com/articles/archives/2010/nov/11/myth- ch...](http://www.nybooks.com/articles/archives/2010/nov/11/myth-charter- schools/?pagination=false)</comment>


The 3 Motivational Forces of Developers - <AUTHOR> http://www.bennorthrop.com/Essays/2013/developer-motivation.php

<comment><USER2> 4 drives (Carl Jung) -> 4 constraints (Lawrence Lessig)

bond -> social norms, acquire -> market forces, protect -> legal rules, understand -> architecture.</comment>


NSA reform bill to trim back US surveillance unveiled in Congress - <AUTHOR> http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/sep/25/nsa-reform-bill-surveillance-congress

<comment><USER2> I'm afraid I just won't believe any reform at all after the blatant lying and the not prosecutions.

If this bill passes, through _this_ Congress, and _this_ President signs it, then my assumption is that the NSA will point to the bill and say "That. That's exactly what we're doing. See? It's the law." while really doing all they're doing now, possibly in different and more roundabout ways like having GCHQ spy on US citizens and then sharing the data. And they'll try extra hard to be more secretive.

How can they be trusted _at all_ without unannounced visits by anyone who wants to roaming the halls?</comment>


There's no such thing as job security in the USA anymore - <AUTHOR> http://vilkeliskis.com/no-jobs <comment><USER2> Just wait till you see the lack of job security in the sales department of any company in any industry.

Typically you'll have a few managers and a few reps who are friends of the owners and are therefore politically protected.

The rest of sales force are either extremely underpaid and do grunt work, or are fired quite quickly for literally no reason other than "it's not working out".</comment>


Ask HN: What would you do with 4 lisp hackers and a designer somewhere in central europe? - <AUTHOR>

Q1: Suppose, hypothetically, that a tech company somewhere in central europe (in a country that is poor but belongs to the EU) went bankrupt and suddenly 4 seasoned common lisp programmers and 1 graphic designer who all knew each other and worked well together and spoke fluent english suddenly were looking for work. What would you have them do if you could afford to pay them to work on it for 6 months?<p>Q2: If you had this idea but not the cash to pay them to do it how would you fund the idea (besides YC/Seedcamp/etc, suppose hypothetically they aren't interested in relocating)? <comment><USER2> _What would you do with 4 lisp hackers and a designer somewhere in central europe?_

I'd watch them try to replace a lightbulb and take notes on all the hilarious punch-lines that ensue. Alternatively, you could see what happens when they walk into a bar.

<comment><USER3> hire one more guy and make a human pyramid

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Q1: I would leave them alone for now. Sorry, but unless I know what my relationship is within the group, I would treat them like outsourced work (which means, I would avoid). There's just too many things that can go wrong - they may have gone belly up for a very good reason (ie - they maybe can't read the business trends or have no sense in user interface design).

If I were to do anything, I would help them find contract or consulting work and keep in touch to learn their capabilities - no need to rush into things.

Q2: Again, I would leave them alone, or I would give them the idea to work on (while leaving them alone). This is sounds like a recipe for disaster to me - a group of 4 people being given some work to do by an outsider, and the group of 4 doesn't like the idea enough to sacrifice for it...

If I'm missing some information that would change my views, please feel free to give it.

<comment><AUTHOR> hypothetically I've worked with them before and know all of them. and hypothetically they didn't go belly up as a group, they belonged to different parts of a large company that died because of... stuff that happened in japan... :-)

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> With cloud computing becoming popular I think there is a very good opportunity in the future for a big lisp system whose primitives kept ugly clustering issues hidden from a typical developer.

With that in mind, I would have them choose a few kinds of applications suitable for EC2 and then give me a proposal on how they would build a platform for other non-guru lisp programmers to easily run lisp programs that would make good use of as many EC2 instances as were available. It's no good if they come up with something only they can use - whatever they propose has to be usable by someone who may have only read SICP or the little schemer.

Should the selected application area have reasonable market potential, I'd then try and find some potential customers or partners. Ideally these would be indifferent to how their problem was solved but could understand why lisp+this platform is a good fit for their problem.

If no idea produced by the team made sense to any potential customer, then I'd give up on them and go find some other team.

</comment><comment><USER6> I'd do a Lisp operating system. The Lisp VM would be a part of the kernel. User Mode C programs would compile to Lisp bytecode and would all run sandboxed. Then I'd add support for languages like Ruby and Python by compiling them to Lisp.

<comment><USER7> After 6 months you'd have a rushed prototype. What good is that? Building a Lisp operating system may be interesting from an academic point of view, but it fills no need. A waste of 6 months.

In 6 months you can only do something mundane. For instance, adapt SBCL so it flawlessly interacts with CPAN and remove all the legacy lisp stuff. Then you'd have a clean lisp with a great library environment. People could actually -use- it. Still not a great business idea, but it has a small chance to rock the world. Especially since Ruby and Python are slowly becoming popular the ahead-of-the-curve guys are getting edgy. They want to move on to the next big language, and they want that language to be Lisp.

<comment><USER6> A "rushed prototype" might still be a good start. What was the business need filled by the Linux kernel when it was at 6 months?

Your mundane suggestion has quite a bit of merit. However the Lisp OS would rock the world in a much bigger way. What I described would actually be capable of running Linux apps, but would also open the door to advanced kernel hacking to ordinary application programmers. It would be capable of competing against a commercial version of Singularity. It would further enable innovation with regards to security and programming models. It would be in a position to become the Linux/BSD of the next generation of F/OSS operating systems.

It would hardly be a waste.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Plan A: Stage a programming contest in which the 4 CL programmers compete for the honor of being your cofounder. The graphic designer can act as judge.

(You may have better luck with 2 teams of 2. That's the conventional wisdom around here, at least -- better for everyone to have a cofounder.)

Plan B: For extra credit, try the _Ender's Game_ version of Plan A. Make the contest be "building a product that people want" and have each of the CL programming teams work on its own project. If, at the end of six months, any of the projects is attracting users or (praise be) making money, offer to invest more money in those projects.

</comment><comment><USER9> Hire out the designer and use the money to retrain the lisp hackers to do something useful?

I'm guessing that punchlines aren't what you were looking for though. You seem to be looking for a problem (a startup idea) that requires a particular solution (4 x hackers with a lisp and 1 x chilled-out designer). That seems the wrong way around to me. And frankly, if ideas are the easiest thing about a startup, you should worry if you can't come up with your own to be passionate about.

<comment><USER10> I disagree. If I had three great hacker friends, I'd brainstorm to find an awesome problem to work on. It's hard to find talent; especially hard to find talent in people I like to work with.

Anyway, I can't think of any good ideas. Good luck.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Q1. Throw up a portfolio site for them and hire them out at 2x what you have to pay them.

Q2. Taken care of in Q1.

</comment><comment><USER12> honestly your best bet is freelance work , that could perhaps turn into a saas model...

</comment><comment><USER13> The next new new thing?</comment>


Will Twitter 'Follow' Bug Raise Credibility Questions? - <AUTHOR> http://blogs.sfweekly.com/thesnitch/2010/05/twitter_follow_bug.php

<comment><USER2> Many websites have had serious security issues that make this follow bug look trivial in comparison, but they haven't felt any effect from it. For instance MySpace had a XSS vulnerability that added the XSS's creator to everyone's friend list. Facebook has its share of viruses that spread themselves by getting the user to click a link which then causes the virus to send itself to all their friends or write on their friend's walls. None of these problems have seriously effected the sites usage and it won't effect Twitter's either.

</comment><comment><USER3> Im going to say....no. Maybe some of us on HN laughing at how the engineers could have missed something like that, but the general public probably doesnt care now that its been fixed.</comment>


Storied Jason science advisory group loses contract with Pentagon - <AUTHOR> https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2019/04/storied-jason-science-advisory-group-loses-contract-pentagon <comment><AUTHOR> >One seminal JASON study examined the lifetime of plutonium "pits" \- the fissile material cores of nuclear weapons. The US stopped making pits in 1989 when the FBI & EPA shut down the production plant for rampant environmental damage. JASON was asked to assess how long pits last.

>JASON concluded that, with reasoned stewardship, pits would last at least 85-100 years & perhaps longer. This was far longer than previous estimates of 40-60 years. It significantly increased confidence in the US nuclear stockpile. [https://fas.org/irp/agency/dod/jason/pit.pdf](https://fas.org/irp/agency/dod/jason/pit.pdf) …

>But that study was done back in 2006. Now the Department of Energy is seeking to start making more pits again, arguing that it must begin now because it will take decades to replace all the current pits at the planned production rate of 80 per year.

>But remember that "at least 85-100 years" above? Congress has sensibly asked JASON to look at the issue again, 13 years later. Scientific techniques that artificially age plutonium provide even more data. However, I'm told that DOE is dragging their feet on finalizing the study. … >For more on JASON - <USER2> intentionally is a somewhat mysterious organization \- see this excellent book by @AnnFinkbeiner, who relays the full history of the group:

[https://twitter.com/StephenUCS/status/1115925589918089217](https://twitter.com/StephenUCS/status/1115925589918089217)</comment>