How Germany abolished tuition fees - <AUTHOR> http://www.bbc.com/news/education-34132664 <comment><USER2> >Can the German university system afford to expand and produce more graduates under the current taxpayer-funded "free" model?

It does not need to. Germany has a world-class apprenticeship system. Why would we want to copy the English/American system, when our society is built on different foundations. I remember the times when Germany was laughed at for its big industrial sector and was urged to move into (financial) services like the UK did. One financial crisis later the German way all of a sudden is the way to go. So for gods sake, do not change a running system.

I would argue that someone, who has a Meister [0] (confusing, because we have the Master instead of the Diplom now, too) has much better career prospects than someone who has studied "something with media" as we call it here, just because he or she did not know what to do.

We lately came up with something new, called Duales Studium, where you work at a company while you are studying at a special school that grants Bachelors, similar to the apprenticeship system. The model is quite popular, but I am not sure if it increases the number of higher education degrees or if their students would have studied at universities of applied science anyway.

[0]: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Master_craftsman#Germany](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Master_craftsman#Germany)

<comment> momo-reina I worked as a laborer in my eary twenties in Scotland and they have an apprenticeship system as well for trades like plumbing, masonry, and joinery (carpentry). 6 months in the classroom and 6 months apprenticed to a master.

Software Engineering seems to be moving in this direction but I think this is applicable to almost all fields of study.

<comment><USER2> The German system has multiple tiers, the lowest degree can be reached after 3 years or 2 years in some cases for high-school graduates. To get the degree you have to pass a test. After that you can get some additional degrees and/or pass the test to be a Meister, which is quite costly. In the past you had to have several years of work experience to apply to a Meister exam, but now you can visit schools, too.

In some professions you are not allowed to start a business if you do not have the Meister. As a Meister you are now able to train other people doing their apprenticeship and are allowed to study within your field at a university, usually to be an engineer instead of a craftsman. So technically you could get a Phd without having finished school (very unlikely).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> My experience of the UK and Germanic systems:

In the UK, you can do any degree and people will still hire you for a graduate job. Something like a bank or a consultancy won't care whether you did Engineering or Classics. They might care more which university you attended. The idea seems to be that anyone fairly smart can do anything.

In the Germanic world (Germany, Switzerland, Scandinavia) doing a degree is choosing a life path. You're an Electronic Engineer? Great, you can apply for jobs in EE. Nobody else can. And you'll have a hard time doing something else, relative to the British EE student. There's a real belief that studying something somehow makes you competent at a job.

Neither of these views is entirely true, of course. Your Classicist will find it harder than your CS guy to write good OO code. Your German EE guy may well find himself getting by on soft skills.

What does this mean with regard to tuition fees? I suppose the Germanic system requires a certain number of graduates in various sectors, and employers would feel justified in complaining if society does not push out a sensible number of engineers. Likewise, you will hear the occasional voice in the public debate about too many people being allowed to do courses with no specific purpose. Since society is paying for this, everyone who can write to a newspaper has a voice in what young people get up to. As a young person, you really need to be on the academic path quite early to beat the selection system.

In the UK, where having a degree is a sort of entry pass to the middle class, the debate is more about fairness than economic goals. If you make it expensive, poor kids have a hard time getting those nice desk jobs that allow you to buy a house and car. On the other hand, it's individual whether you want to take out a loan, a risk that's up to each 18 year old. If you want to climb the ladder, you can pay up and give it a shot.

So there's a big question of what university is for. Is it so that society can fill out certain jobs? Or is it a vehicle for individual advancement? Of course it's a bit of both, but there are legitimate arguments for higher or lower fees, and pros and cons on both sides.

<comment><USER4> This is spot on. One final point is that if you get a BSc in electrical engineering in Germany then you have little choice but to get your masters and PhD or you just won't get a job.

In the UK the BSc is often enough to get yourself on the job ladder.

Almost all the sciences in Germany have a PhD as an entry point for a good job. You start working at 30. In the UK you will already have been working for 9 years in industry.

This is simply because in Germany everyone else competing for jobs also has a PhD!

<comment><USER5> This indicates that education is an arms race, built around signalling relative qualities, not a human capital building exercise centred on the pursuit of knowledge and skills. If it were about gaining knowledge and understanding, your relative level of credentialing, and the selectivity of the institution would be almost irrelevant to employers. If education is an arms race, subsidizing it will only cause people to spend more time in school, studying to beat the competition.

We should also forget that this arms race is very costly regardless of tuition prices, as most of the cost of education (to the average post-secondary student) is not tuition, but lost wages.

<comment><USER6> David Garber describes this phenomenon in his book "The Utopia of Rules". Basically everythng that used to be learned on the job, becoming a craftsman, has now been replaced by studying a degree in it - essentially reenfocing the class sytem, as only the middle and upper classes will be able to afford it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I think the article is very quick to dismiss the difference in number of graduates between Germany and the UK (27 vs 48%, was it?). Why do half of young Brits get a University degree, while only a quarter of young Germans do? One part of the answer is of course the German school system, which only permits students who attended a "Gymnasium" (grammar school) to attend university, but that applies to roughly half of all students [1]. Since schools are tiered by academic ability, it would be safe to assume that those wishing to pursue higher education would attend a Gymnasium, so we're nearly back to square one.

Statistics [1] also show that in Germany 43% started a university education, but only 28% completed one. Meanwhile, UK universities boast with their high retention rates, which might raise the question of how they achieve this without compromising the quality of the degrees. (My experience in the UK was that just about anyone got a degree, and a third (that's a grade, not a fraction) is basically worthless)

All this, I think, leads to two points. First, a lot of jobs in the UK require a degree, although it is not clear to me why. Secondly, while German universities might not be as present at the very top, the baseline seems to be a lot higher than in the UK (several factors play into this, among them the ability to switch subjects (due to lack of fees and very little social stigma) and not caring about retention rates, i.e. letting bad students fail), which is probably while the German diploma was so highly regarded.

(Another major difference I noticed was that in German universities, nobody checks up on you, and you are expected to take responsibility as an adult, whereas in England, it felt like the University was trying to be my Mummy.)

Lastly, the omnipresent reminder: foreigners don't pay tuition in Germany, either. There is a language barrier, but I probably don't need to point out all the articles which were here on HN not so long ago about increasing numbers of US and British students in Germany.

[1] [https://de.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abiturientenquote_und_Studie...](https://de.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abiturientenquote_und_Studienanfängerquote#Studienberechtigte)

<comment><USER8> > Gymnasium" (grammar school) to attend university

first: there are different types of Gymnasium. I started not at a Gymnasium and then switched to a technical gymnasium.

Second: there are many other ways and an entire education industry devoted to get one to a University or similar. The 'Zweiter Bildungsweg'.

[https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zweiter_Bildungsweg](https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zweiter_Bildungsweg)

<comment><USER7> I'm fully aware, but allgemeinbildendes Gymnasium and technisches Gymnasium account for nearly everyone at university in my state. There are a bunch of different ways of getting into uni, which also kinda vary by state, but that's not all that relevant here.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> The article is written from an English perspective. It does follow very closely the usual worn out consensus of recent decades that it is mandatory to further increase the numbers of graduates, despite their growing personal indebtedness.

Apparently, according to the author, this is all justified by the fact that graduates have lower unemployment rates than non-graduates.

I think it is time to start questioning this dogma. It is the more able half of the population that is typically selected for entrance by the UK universities (and so it should be). Surely, it would be very surprising indeed, if they were not also the more employable half, regardless of whether they study or not? The content of their studies is increasingly irrelevant anyway, as is confirmed by the fact that "more than half of graduates are overqualified for their jobs". That means they are the more able people competing for the same old unqualified jobs and so, of course, they win.

In these circumstances, the "studies" of ever increasing proportion of population are nothing more than a way of transferring more of their future incomes to the bankers. It is an interesting "coincidence" that the drive for expansion of student numbers coincided with the introduction of the american model of personal loans for education and ever increasing fees.

</comment><comment><USER10> One reason why there are so few people studying in Germany is that we still have a really big apprenticeship system where in other countries most people go to university for (nurses, preschool teachers, there's even an application developer's apprenticeship).

One reason why Germany can allow itself to have no fees is the language barrier. Sweden offers lots of English master programmes and has introduced fees for non-EU citizens (EU citizens have to be treated the same as own citizens in this regard under EU law ). The Netherlands and Austria already complain about the masses of German students flocking to them. I guess there's some anxiety that there would be a storm of foreign students at British universities if fees were dropped.

<comment><USER11> > The Netherlands and Austria already complain about the masses of German > students flocking to them.

Yeah because our universities either have ridiculous waiting times (six years in waiting for medicine is THE NORM, even with a perfect 1.0 Abitur degree) or kick you out when you fail the same exam three times forever - you cannot continue your study in Germany but have to study abroad.

edit: oh, I forgot to mention the housing situation: most cities with big universities neglected building affordable housing for YEARS and the market for small-ish single occupant apartments is running hot, more than most students without wealthy parents can afford.

<comment><USER12> In Austria most studies have the same "fail three times and you're out" rule.

<comment><USER11> Yes but IIRC only for the same school and not the entire fucking country.

<comment><USER13> It used to be that states would allow one to take their bar exam a maximum of three times. I am not a lawyer, but I remember a fellow in Colorado who sued the state bar association to be allowed a fourth shot.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> There are less prospective university applicants in Germany because of their tiered and somewhat controversial secondary education system. It does not have anything to do with tuition fees.

As for tuition fees, you can make a completely tax funded third level education system work. Developing countries do it all the time, successfully. You do this by restricting entrance to the brightest through a harsh selection process.

The problem with this is that in the long run you end up with a large percentage of the population who has only minimal education. People might sneer at somebody with a degree in English Literature but it does make a difference to live in a country where the majority have some tertiary level education experience, if only because they appreciate education more and can instil that sort of appreciation in their kids.

<comment><USER15> > somewhat controversial secondary education system

{{citation}}

I'm a german, have gone through gymnasium and have a sibling who didn't, and many other family members who went through either of the three tracks. I have never heard anyone complain and am not aware of any controversy whatsoever, especially since students are provided ample opportunity to switch tracks at multiple points, and upgrade after the fact.

Please provide reference to this controversy you claim.

<comment><USER16> As a German, there is a huuge controversy about it.

\- [https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Regionale_Schule](https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Regionale_Schule)

\- [https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gesamtschule](https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gesamtschule)

\- [https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Profiloberstufe](https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Profiloberstufe)

The whole discussion about it even led to some states abolishing the old system and introducing "Gesamtschulen mit gymnasialer Oberstufe", essentially, the US middle/high-school system. In other places, the Profiloberstufe was introduced. In even other places, in the same city, Gesamtschulen, Regionalschulen, G8, G9, Profiloberstufe AND erweitertes Kurssystem exist next to each other!

<comment><USER15> That's not a huge controversy. A huge controversy is when you have people actually arguing about it. This looks like a few places experimenting.

> Profiloberstufe

This is a cost-saving measure.

> Regionale Schule

This doesn't include Gymnasium.

> Gesamtschule

This comes close, but effectively is just a school that combines all three tracks into one, with different students leaving at different grades. Notably it also has a reduced quality of education.

> some states abolishing the old system

"Abolishing"? Really? Which Bundesland has verboten solitary Gymnasiums? I couldn't see it in the article about Gesamtschule and google also didn't give me anything.

<comment><USER16> Some states forbid Hauptschule and Realschule, and some states forbid G9 and/or Kursoberstufe.

It's quite a large debate.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> The UK had no tuition fees when I went to university in 1983. They even gave you a couple of grand for living costs if you were hard up. The trouble was that university education was only available for about 15% of the population, basically sorted by exam results so if you didn't make that you were kind of screwed. Now it's like 47% go to university. Neither system was/is perfect.

</comment><comment><USER18> Another interesting part of the equation is BAföG.

From Wikipedia:

> The Bundesausbildungsförderungsgesetz (mostly known as BAföG, its > abbreviation) is the Federal Training Assistance Act for students at > secondary schools and universities in Germany. The law, which regulates > student loans in the country, is often referred to by students who simply > say they receive "BAföG".

Especially if a student's parents aren't well off, there's a good chance he/she can get a 0% loan from the government (and 50% of that loan is given as a gift).

<comment><USER19> Also BAFöG does not need to be paid back for 5 years after graduation, with a years worth of extension if the student cannot affort the associated costs when requested.

<comment><USER20> There is even a discount if you pay back the full amount of money. I think it was around 25% but I'm not sure.

<comment><USER18> And another one if you are in the top x% of your study

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> One Finnish student describes his experiences with the German education system:

[http://www.zeit.de/studium/hochschule/2015-08/study- abroad-g...](http://www.zeit.de/studium/hochschule/2015-08/study-abroad- germany)

<comment><USER7> Having studied in Germany, I have a few quibbles with that article.

On 1: teachers not uploading material is hardly a systemic issue. Not all academics are great teachers, that is true. But complaining about having to take notes seems a bit whiny to me.

On 2: whether you spend the semester learning and then have a quick recap before the exam, or whether you spend it goofing off and then quickly memorize everything until the end of the exam is your choice, and your responsibility. If you need constant motivation to keep working, that is not the universities problem. You have to work on that yourself.

3\. I have never taken such an exam, but the exams described here are just terrible. I assume this is related to point 1.

4\. I've only ever had one card at Karlsruhe Institute of Technology, for the library, the cantina, building access, printing credit, admin stuff, and student ID. As the author noted, this is being changed in Cologne too, so I'm not sure what's the point except a good rant.

5\. No argument here. Administration seems to be universally terrible.

6\. This is Point 1 again.

7\. Wtf, Cologne?

8\. Duplicate of #5.

I'm not claiming that everything is roses in Germany, but some of the author's points are about individual teachers or issues at the University of Cologne, and do not do the title justice.

<comment><USER22> it's not a problem specific to germany, but he makes a legitimate criticism of the classic lecture format. it is an antiquated mode of delivery, an extremely poor use of students' time, and really should not be part of university education any longer. i suppose it is one way of limiting cost...

<comment><USER6> What do you see as being better alternatives?

I am not saying they are not there, but compared to online course for example, I think pyscially attending lectures gives more incentive to learn having invested the effort to actually turn up.

What do other people think?

<comment><USER23> > What do you see as being better alternatives?

Online lectures. Uploaded scripts. (At least in my university good scripts were followed so closely, that a "lecture" was exactly what the name says "somebody reading the script". And bad lectures were an utter waste of time. I remember one math prof who permanently corrected his proofs back and forth - in the end we just took photos of his blackboard "art" (back in 2000), because taking notes was absolutely pointless.)

With modern technology those could be annotated; students could have online discussions about those (think "soundcloud-style interface").

Everyone could benefit from those, not only students. Can I please live in a world where I can do _every_ course from home, at my own pace? I'd happily pay to have my all tests evaluated and finally for time spent by university employees on my exams - for which I'd sign up whenever I am ready and without formally being enrolled as a student.

> I think pyscially attending lectures gives more incentive to learn

Or it allows for less time to learn. In my university the different institutes are distributed across the whole city and I spent _12_ hours every week just on commutes between those. Thus, people who need to work for paying for their studies (not tuition, but rent, food, transportation) are already excluded by being forced to physically attend. Same for people who already have a job. I am not talking about those few who can study while working because their employer supports this, I'm talking about the carpenter with an interest in theoretical physics, astronomy or arts.

<comment><USER7> > Online lectures. Uploaded scripts.

Online lectures provide too many distractions. Constant urge to check emails or HN. I tried a MOOC once (Andrew Ng's Machine Learning), and the pace was too slow for me to stay concentrated for even a couple of minutes. Still, recorded lectures can be useful (e.g. if you get sick, you can catch up after recovering). I just don't think that they're very well suited to being the _primary_ delivery format.

There is rarely a good excuse not to upload scripts, though, and at my university most are uploaded. My university also uploads lots of recorded lectures on youtube and provides discussion forums. Everyone can watch the lectures and download the material.

> In my university the different institutes are distributed across the whole > city

That's unfortunate, but it's a fairly rare problem in Germany. Many of the best universities are in fairly small cities like Heidelberg, Tübingen, Freiburg (all of these have a population between 90k and 150k). Those that aren't are often not that strewn about, or at least clustered (TU München has a Garching campus for natural sciences, but afaik students don't have to travel between the centre and Garching a lot).

My university (Karlsruhe) is a centrally located campus university. Everything is within 10 walking minutes.

> I'm talking about the carpenter with an interest in theoretical physics, > astronomy or arts.

I'm all in favour of enabling that, but you neglect that 90%+ of students are full-time students, and that is the model that universities cater to.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> Eliminating tuition fees depends on the benefit to the region.

In my little province for as long as I can recall there have always been complaints about the cost of tuition and any fees at the University.

It's a small University with a mix of local students, regional (within ~400km), some from the northeastern US and others from outside US/Canada (China in particular).

Eliminating any fees just means the student gets a break then as always when they are done with school immediately leaves the province for a job elsewhere. That's zero benefit to the taxpayers who would cover the cost.

<comment><USER25> This is a problem, even more so if you have regions with and without tuition. If provinces have the same tuition rates, there is not much damage done, because your province will receive employees from other provinces.

I have been to Canada for an exchange semester and it was an astonishing experience to me in regards to tuition. Most students I talked with where in favor of tuition fees (although they hit them quite a bit financially). In general, they were quite willing to spend a considerable amount of money on top of tuition for university related things. 3 books $200 each on the syllabus for a lecture that is not borrow-able in the university library? Not an issue, people just bought them (I actually bought one book via German amazon in its translation, because it was ~50 EUR there and ~200$ in Canada, so I saved considerably even when including shipping costs). In Germany, Professors often offer their lecture notes (often book grade layed out with latex) as free downloads.

In Germany I have lived in a dorm and had roommates that would probably not have studied with tuition as high as in Germany (back then my home state had a EUR 1200 a year tuition, a measure that was in place for roughly 5 years I think and quickly repealed because it was enormously unpopular). Knowing that education is sponsored by the state makes me much more willing in paying my taxes, now that I actually earn a living.

In the 19th century, lecturers apparently collected tuition upon entrance at the door of the lecture hall. Dunno if this might be a model for tuition to compromise on. Only pay for the services you take. Looking at American tuition fees, I sometimes wonder why students would not just pay for private tutors...

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Comparing the number of "graduates" is pretty much pointless. We always had a low number of graduates in Austria, partly because of the apprenticeship system, but also because many schools just didn't award degrees.

For example, if you become a Kindergarten teacher, or a primary school teacher, or a nurse, you just dodn't receive an academic degree.

A few years ago this started to change. Most schools were formally changed to "Hochschulen" and now award degrees. On paper, this measure vastly increases the number of academics in Austria. But in practice, not much has changed.

Such circumstances should be taken into account when comparing the percentage of graduates across countries. The raw numbers don't tell the whole story.

</comment><comment><USER26> I might have the wrong picture, but apparently here in Germany teachers and parents decide at a short age which of the three education and career paths their kid is to follow depending on how dumb / smart he is.

You can apparently switch tracks later on, but at a greater cost in time and effort, and the stigma and consequences of this will affect you during your whole professional life.

As a late bloomer myself I find it sickening that I'm contributing to such system with my taxes.

</comment><comment><USER27> Sadly I studied in the 4 years, which had these fees.

Paid about 3500€, but made enouh money to get rid of them in the first year after I got my degree.

<comment><USER18> Same here, even got one of the last years of the draft :)

In the end, the money I paid is barely anything compared to the salary it resulted in. Especially considering that I was able to get BAföG which basically paid for itself in the end.

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> Can anyone no matter what their grades move onto college? If not, then the German system is extremely unfair. People unable to attend college end up partially subsidizing those who can.

Can someone clarify how higher education works in Germany?

<comment><USER18> You can't easily attend university unless you went to the "Gymnasium". There are ways for those who didn't, but it's a lot harder.

> People unable to attend college end up partially subsidizing those who can.

How? The people that did attend college will more taxes over their lifetime, so you could argue that the college people are subsidising the other college people.

<comment><USER29> And the ones who didn't get to go to the Gymnasium -> University route will hit a ceiling and be unable to progress beyond a certain point.</comment></comment></comment>


Google Making Big Search Announcement Tomorrow? - <AUTHOR> http://www.businessinsider.com/google-holding-big-search-event-tomorrow-2011-6

<comment><AUTHOR> "Our new search strategy is to compute answers, not links" Schmidt

I'd stick with this</comment>


Git repository for movie torrents - <AUTHOR> https://www.reddit.com/r/torrents/comments/7kxrm5/git_repository_for_movie_torrents/ <comment><USER2> If it grew big enough, I would imagine GitHub would remove it on copyright grounds.

Although it does seem like a good idea, you could also develop a simple search front end, allowing people to simple clone to repo, host a simple php search page to search the repo.

<comment><AUTHOR> If GitHub chooses to shut down a repo, there's GitLab :-) Also AFAIK serving magnet links is perfectly legal</comment></comment>


Facebook Can Absolutely Control Its Algorithm - <AUTHOR> https://www.wired.com/story/facebook-can-absolutely-control-its-algorithm/ <comment><USER2> No one has claimed otherwise.

The claim is that it's either (1) inappropriate (because it is a social platform) or (2) extremely difficult ("For example, the Russian campaign purchased ads that both supported and criticized the Black Lives Matter movement, according to the Washington Post. Martinez, the former product manager, describes the problem as 'playing whack-a-mole.'")

That Facebook has control over its own algorithms is not news in any way. The title misrepresents the points being discussed.</comment>


Celebrate Woz's 70th - <AUTHOR> https://www.wozbday.com <comment><USER2> Anytime Woz comes up, I can't help but think of this sentence that he wrote, way back on Google+, sometime in 2013, after the release of the _Jobs_ film:

 _" And when Jobs (in the movie, but really a board does this) denied stock to the early garage team (some not even shown) I'm surprised that they chose not to show me giving about $10M of my own stock to them because it was the right thing. And $10M was a lot in that time."_

<comment><USER3> It always makes me sad that Wozniak, the real brains behind the operation get completely ignored in favour of Jobs who was just a salesman.

Similarly to Dennis Ritchie who worked on the C programming language and Unix, and dies a week after Jobs gets completely ignored and yet arguably has had more impact than someone who's just known for arguing about tech not being pretty enough

<comment><USER4> Not as famous as Jobs, but still well known and probably more beloved. Woz is kind of a living patron saint of engineers.

> someone who's just known for arguing about tech not being pretty enough

If you think that's all Jobs did, I don't know what to tell you.

He is in the running for most successful businessman in history.

<comment><USER5> Young folks probably don't remember how close Apple was to dying in the late 90's. It was _bad._ Jobs is directly responsible for that huge turnaround.

<comment><USER6> Jobs created the initial problem by undermining the Apple 2 GS.

<comment><USER7> Jobs had a long-term vision in the future of Apple as a consumer electronics company, as opposed to a techie company. The explosive growth of Apple in the 2000s and 2010s would never have happened if Apple hadn't matured out of being the company that made the Apple II line.

<comment><USER5> They explored some of this in the 90's with the Newton, Pippin, Macintosh TV, etc. None of that stuff was a resounding success. It was all too early.

<comment><USER6> Jobs is the one who killed the Newton when he returned.

Apple could have launched in iPhone like product years ahead of when they did if they kept that branch of the company afloat. That would have been a real 'visionary' move. Instead, they were forced to differentiate themselves in a crowded marketplace by emphasizing little design flourishes and style.

Job's only real contribution is managing to gaslight (a.k.a, his "reality distortion field") the entire industry into thinking he had any real insight or ability beyond that of a typical middle manager with a cluster-b personality disorder.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> It's always interesting to think about who has had the more successful, fulfilling life between Woz and Jobs.

Jobs had far more financial success, and was involved in the release of far more products, was far more famous than Woz, but died young and had...complicated relationships with everyone in his life.

Woz cashed out when he had enough to enjoy doing whatever he wanted for the rest of his life, organized music festivals, taught kids about computers and technology, played with cool gadgets, seems to be beloved by everyone who ever knew him, and is still going strong at 70.

<comment><USER8> However, Jobs had a much bigger impact on the world. local vs global. [https://sive.rs/local](https://sive.rs/local)

<comment><USER9> > Jobs had a much bigger impact on the world.

He created the App Store fiefdom which taxes developers more than their government. It also compelled them to price their work at less than the cost of a cup of coffee.

He turned the general purpose computers in most Americans' lives into locked down, tightly controlled "experiences". (The iPhone, which lacks the ability to install whatever you want.)

He created an expensive laptop that isn't user upgradable.

His company is now suing a mom and pop healthcare app for having a logo shaped like a pear, which seems par for the course.

He sold status and glamour, and he wasn't a very good person. You can praise him if you want, but I think he's the epitome of selfish and don't consider him a role model. If you have to behave like that to win, it isn't worth it.

Gates, for all of his flaws, is doing really good work to make this world a better place. I look up to him instead.

<comment><USER10> People seem to forget 90s Bill Gates. He was terrible and spiteful. There's no reason Jobs wouldn't turn into the current Bill, if he was able to live that long.

<comment><USER11> Jobs died age 56. Gates is 64 now and started his philanthropic endeavors in 2000, 20 years ago, when he was 44.

Jobs could have done it before he died. He didn't. No need to theorize.

Plus Gates always struck me as more balanced than the narcissistic Jobs. Plus Melinda has been a great influence.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I will share my father's impression of Woz.

He didn't work at Apple, but had a lot to do with them for a while in the early days.

He thought that Woz was a true intuitive genius. One of the best he had ever met. He did in a short amount of time what would take a team of others a long time.

He had such a creative mind about how things could be done differently, more efficiently more elegant.

He was far away from being a businessman. My dad thought that was a sign of sanity.

He got increasingly disillusioned with the financial aspect and seeing how it impacted other people at Apple (or did not)

He decided to get out it. He had lots of money already. (He did).

Dad thought that Woz would have preferred to give exciting solutions away and see what became of them.

He followed his heart and has (I think) enjoyed his life a lot more than most who just keep chasing more and more of it.

I am sure he was happy his Apple stock kept incrasing in value :)

<comment><USER13> He left after a head injury.

Was that truly Woz own pure and simple choice or was it influenced by his accident?

Did it change his ability to perform like he did before and thought it wasn't worth it to continue? Did it change his personality? Brain damage aside, did coming close to death by his own hand changed his outlook on life?

He never left Apple behind completely. Sure it ended up great but if not for the crash maybe what happened wasn't what he really wanted at the time.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> I've always been amazed at Woz's annus mirabilis from 1976 to 1977. At the age of 26, he designed a commercial micro computer from scratch, which had sound, color output, an OS, Integer BASIC, all the peripherals, programming guide, and more.

Think about this. At the beginning of 1976, Woz got hold of a 6502 chip for the first time. By March, he had the Apple I running. By April, he and Jobs (and briefly, Wayne) started Apple. In July, they started selling Apple I kits, and by August, Woz had completed a prototype of the Apple II. By April of 1977 (only one year later!!) they were at the West Coast Computer Faire with the full-fledged Apple II computer as we know it today. It continued in production in one form or another until 1993.

This was a tour-de-force of focus, efficiency, innovation, hard work, and plain brilliance that is almost unbelievable today. Think about what you've accomplished in the past year, and compare. Woz deserves all the credit he gets.

<comment><USER15> Woz was an amazing genius as a young man and turned into a lovable character when older, but really hasn't done anything besides that since. Which is OK, lots of people peak when young (most mathematicians), but still those accomplishments ended. Jobs was a horrible person for much of his life but turned Apple into the world's most successful company from a start in the grave (I know I was in the grave before he returned) and created technology that changed the world. One succeeded early and late (but not in the middle) and one succeeded early and enjoyed the success). Who leaves the bigger legacy? Jobs. Who is loved by all? Woz. Which is greater is not really fair to anyone.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> It's always been clear that Woz's integrity is off the charts.

Just a good human all around, wanting to build things for fun and help people because that's what people with power do.

A true icon who encompasses many of the things that make America great, and serves as a compass for us all to be a little better. Let's get wozzy.

<comment><USER17> Hmm..is that true?

[https://www.cbsnews.com/news/woz-u-steve-wozniak-former- stud...](https://www.cbsnews.com/news/woz-u-steve-wozniak-former-students- employees-raise-concerns/)

<comment><USER18> Considering his fame, brand recognition, and interests in education, it's pretty plausible to me that he got sort of "scammed" by the people who proposed woz u to him. If you read up on them, they're unsavory for sure.

It's a bad mark, for sure, but basically the only bad mark on an otherwise impeccable record. I feel like you certainly get one. So no, I don't think he was trying to scam people. He certainly didn't seem happy about the situation or try to smooth it over.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> I went to elementary and middle school (Blossom Hill and Fisher Middle respectively) in Los Gatos, where Woz resides. I remember he donated the Mac lab at Fisher (and I think Blossom Hill too?). My memory of this is a little hazy, but I'm fairly sure Fisher had introductory programming classes that I took also, which I'm sure he had a part in. This would have been around 1999-ish when that was fairly uncommon. I wasn't a theater kid, but Woz was also well known for being a big sponsor of the theater program as well, and I remember kids in the theater program at Fisher often got cool tech gifts courtesy of Woz (like the Game Boy Color before it came out in the US).

It's probably hard to attribute this to one thing growing up in Silicon Valley in the 90s, but I consider Woz a big part of why I'm a software engineer today. And as an adult, he's one of the engineers who I most admire both professionally and personally as a kind, curious, and generous person.

<comment><USER20> we used to go trick or treating up in monte sereno where he lives, and for a couple years he gave away ipod nano's instead of candy lol

<comment><USER21> ... the first time is always free ;)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> I was lucky enough to interview Woz about his development of the Disk II floppy disk system for the Apple II – it's quite a tale! [https://paleotronic.com/2018/05/19/steve-wozniak-talks- disk/](https://paleotronic.com/2018/05/19/steve-wozniak-talks-disk/)

He's a wonderful fellow to talk to...

<comment><USER23> I was at a table alone in a room with him, we were both at some Ted Nelson event and we had gotten there early.

I talked to him for about an hour and honestly had no idea it was him. He just came across as a jolly tech guy. Totally friendly and down to earth. There was crafts service there so when he got up to get something to drink, he brought back something for me, you know, just like some nice guy.

It was only later when people were giving him such reverence and acted flustered around him asking for photographs that I was like "wait, is that ... Steve Wozniak?!"

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> There are some people I can admire for their success, some people I can admire for their generosity, some people I can admire for their passions, etc. etc. Woz, for me, is the person I can admire for all of those qualities at once. He's just a great person overall. I'm excited for this event! It sounds super fun.

</comment><comment><USER25> Woz's Twitter is full of locations, occasionally exotic but often mundane, like a local dog park or restaurant.

I have always wondered if he posts in hope that people will meet him there, and talk to him. Has anyone done so, have some stories to share?

<comment><USER26> >> I have always wondered if he posts in hope that people will meet him there, and talk to him

I don't think that's the case. If he wants to meet and talk to people, he can just organize an event and thousands would apply.

<comment><USER27> Not quite the same thing. Thousands vs spontaneous few.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> I really hope he gets a lot more mainstream recognition and appreciation for what he has done for Apple.

It would be nice to see that who laughs last laughs best.

I don't like to hear phrases like: Engineers are important, but in the end it's all about marketing, see Jobs...

People should realize that there is nothing to market if there is not someone who solves complex technical problems.

<comment><USER29> Just as much as solved technical problems alone may go unused if they are not properly marketed. There's not one more important than the other.

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> We need more love and compassion in the world today than ever before. Focus on the common threads and be good humans like Woz.

</comment><comment><USER31> Good to see [https://signedbywoz.com/](https://signedbywoz.com/) is still up and running. I've had the signed Apple II schematic hanging in my office for over five years and I unexpectedly find it to be a constant source of inspiration.

</comment><comment><USER32> I met Woz when he came to Melbourne and he signed two Apple 2 computers for me.

<comment><USER33> I saw Woz at the Delta Sky Club in Madrid and gave him what was probably a too enthusiastic "Hello!" He said "hi" while trying really hard not to look at me.

I realized then that it must be exhausting to have so many people want to talk to you. It ain't easy being Woz.

<comment><USER34> I had seen Woz at the Computer History Museum at Mountain View. Much as I wanted to meet him and take a picture with him, I saw him politely turn down a woman who had walked up to him with what I'd assume was a similar request. It must be tiring, like you mention. I decided not to bother him.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> The video was really good;

Looks like the party will be streamed Tuesday 5pm pacific.

<comment><USER36> It's surprisingly moving, quite lovely. Raises my expectations that the party will really be something.

</comment></comment><comment><USER37> I can highly recommend Woz's biography iWoz [0]. Released in 2006, so before Jobs died. It's a fun read of the story of a young Woz that most off all just wanted to tinker with computers. I recognized a lot of my own youth in that story. Fun times.

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

<comment><USER38> I wanted to like it but it was hard for me to get into. The style of writing didn't particularly appeal to me unfortunately. :(

<comment><USER39> I found a lot of chapters seemingly targeting a young audience, then other chapters had a decent amount of technical stuff and seemed targeted at very knowledgeable audience. I think it struggled in that regard. But I still loved it and will reread it many times :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER40> Probably over-generalizing here and may get downvoted.

I am always suprised how much effort rich people put into birthdays. I remember growing up that birthdays weren't really a thing when we were poor, but as we became more middle class, we celebrated with cakes and eventually decorations came in. I once got invited to a birthday party at a special venue and thought, wow! this is grander than a wedding.

The inverse was also true, if someone did not celebrate their birthday they felt so sad, like no one cared about them and made a big deal about it. On the other side we were brought up with "well, no one cares about you other than your family, so be nice to each other and don't expect much from life, you get what you sow".

</comment><comment><USER41> Slight off-topic tangent:

Anybody able to identify all of the different covers of "Go your own way" in that video? I feel like I can hear Dolores (of Cranberries fame) even singing a version I'd not heard before.

EDIT: Found at least that one: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3LL7CLRt- es](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3LL7CLRt-es)

</comment><comment><USER42> For the curious, his birthday is August 11th.

</comment><comment><USER43> Happy Birthday Woz.

</comment><comment><USER44> In the video, the words 'Go your own way' are inspiring alone. To the little child inside me. I just donated to that charity.

</comment><comment><USER45> Woz is a good man.

<comment><USER46> I like Wozniak too and find him very inspiring but in a different way than Jobs - who was all about outwinning himself. Wozniak is a good soul type of guy, it wouldn't even suit him to be in the same limelight as Jobs.

</comment></comment><comment><USER47> funhouse 1989 -- Happy Birthday Woz !

</comment><comment><USER48> "Andy Herzfelt"?</comment>


The Real Danger of Copying Music (It's Not What You Think) - <AUTHOR> http://www.wired.com/opinion/2013/04/digital-music-is-like-a-mortgage

<comment><USER2> Just another "dignity" argument. That is, by selling something cheap (law services, music performance, movie experience, etc) you are doing decreasing the dignity of the person doing the service. Lanier almost makes a go of it, except that "dignity" is a slippery, subjective quality.

Who gets to say that "performing music" is of high dignity, while "giving haircuts" is of low or no dignity? Ordinarily, we in the USA let a free market decide. In the a few cases (copyrightable forms of art like music, legal services) we've allowed temporary monopolies or let a cartel set prices. Probably, Lanier is correct: making music is a hand-to-mouth existence. Probably, that's due to so many people who are able to passably strum a guitar while singing. The supply is high, so the actual market price is pretty low. Some places have "open mic" nights, and people perform for tips or beers, after all.

I think he's barking up the wrong tree.</comment>


The Experiment Journal - <AUTHOR> http://experiment.com/journal <comment><USER2> Really excited to this Journal come to life. The team at Experiment.com has been working really hard to crowd-fund science and this is definitely a step into the right direction. Science journals are really hard to consume for the general public, and with this, not only can we get small experiments outs of the way for cheap, but we can also get the findings quickly in a format that's friendly to the younger generation. Win-win.

<comment><USER3>
      Science journals are really hard to consume for the general public

A lot of things are difficult to consume for the general public. Every day people "agree" to terms of service that they don't understand. We hire lawyers to interpret the law for us. Doctors interpret the medical knowledge for us and make decisions for us that have serious consequences for our health. And so on. It's a mystery to me why people think that science should be different. It's a complex subject matter and most people will never be able to understand result from Riemannian geometry, systems neuroscience, computational climate research, etc. Requiring that the general public can consume the results of science will produce a dumbed-down Mickey Mouse version of science. What a waste.

<comment><USER4> It's not so clear cut as you seem to think. A lot of science is graspable in its essence by people who would struggle with the mathematics. And a lot of scientific journals are written in unnecessarily difficult prose. As for lawyers interpreting the law, well the law is much more complicated than science in several important respects: it is not a single system based on a small set of fundamental axioms, it is not even required to be consistent, it is continually changing.

Also, even if we do get a dumbed down version of science then, so long as it is still science, we can build upon it.

I'm glad you put 'agree' in quotation marks because of course people in general do not agree, they have in fact no option but to pretend to agree or forgo the service.</comment></comment></comment>


Researcher reveals huge Mac password flaw to protest Apple bug bounty - <AUTHOR> https://venturebeat.com/2019/02/06/researcher-reveals-huge-mac-password-flaw-to-protest-apple-bug-bounty/ <comment><USER2> >Generally, white hat security researchers publicly reveal flaws like this only after informing the company and giving it ample time to fix the issues. But Henze is refusing to assist Apple because it doesn't offer paid bug bounties

This is starting to look really bad for the infosec "community." Without rehashing all the old arguments around disclosure, and the sorta-recent arguments around bug bounties, we're now at the point where this doesn't not look like extortion.

"That's an awfully nice operating system you've got there. It'd be a shame if someone were to disclose a security flaw without giving you ample opportunity to fix it."

<comment><USER3> This isn't the mob burning someones shop down. This is more like pointing out, hey dude, your door is open, you should close it.

They don't owe apple anything, and they are not causing the damage (apple's negligence did). If apple doesn't want to handle this in private, they will have to handle this in public. I don't see the problem. Coordinated disclosure is a courtesy, not a rule.

<comment><USER2> You don't have to convince me.

You have to convince the technically disinclined that know nothing about disclosure, but know plenty about people acting in ways that "ensure their job security."</comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: Anyone being ordered back into the office? - <AUTHOR> I work for a small (~100 employees) electronics manufacturer. Most of our developers have been working from home since mid-March. We have been ordered to return to the physical office, despite an ongoing uptick in COVID19 cases in the area. Despite safety precautions, myself and many of my co-workers are concerned and uncomfortable with this. I'm curious if anyone else has experienced a similar situation, and if so - how did you handle it? <comment> non-entity I might be going back in a couple weeks. They're bringing people back in office mid-June at limited capacity (25% returning at that time) so I'll see. This is at a large, but regional fortune 500 company.

<comment><AUTHOR> How do they determine who goes back when?

<comment> non-entity At the moment in think different teams are doing different things. My boss told me that this first wave is mostly voluntary for our team. Also people will be coming on only part of the week, I think 2 days.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER2> What are they doing about people with childcare problems?

<comment><AUTHOR> There has been no specific communication - I think people are expected to exhaust FMLA.

</comment></comment><comment><USER2> It's funny because one of the major recommendations is to keep having Zoom meetings. So, what's the point.

Do they have an open office?

<comment><AUTHOR> Open office space - permanently closed windows, I believe.

</comment></comment><comment><USER2> we're lucky. Our management is doing it in three phases. Phase 1 People that want to go in.

Phase 2 is encourage.

Phase 3 is require.

And we're not even at phase 1. And, I think they're talking about September for phase 1, maybe.</comment>


Reddit vs Hacker News vs Twitter - <AUTHOR> http://williamedwardscoder.tumblr.com/post/18839832580/reddit-vs-hacker-news-vs-twitter <comment><USER3> > _The per-page time is actually quite high; often over 5 minutes on average > for a lot of my stories even when its a big crowd. I suspect some subtle > misreading of Google Analytics on my part, or else people might actually be > reading the whole thing carefully!?_

That might be because a lot of people do what I do: keep the article open while browsing comments on HN or Reddit, and switch back and forth between the two tabs while writing my own comment. In fact, I'm doing it right now. I don't know how Google Analytics would measure time spent on a page when the page sits idle in a background tab for the most part but brought to the foreground from time to time.

[Edit] Things get even more complicated if you open 5 articles and 5 comment pages at the same time, and take 30+ minutes to go through all of them.

<comment><USER4> This is why I wrote my own datapoint gathering script (I started it while at Techcrunch, curious about who scrolls down to comments, etc.).

It measures body focus, number of times unfocused, total focus time, scroll position, scroll rate and a bunch of other things.

It isn't completely working cross-browser yet, but it is close and useful enough where for Safari and Chrome visitors I can see how far down the page they are scrolling and how long the page is in focus for.

<comment><USER5> No doubt, this is part of the reason _this_ noscript_using_reader stopped visiting TC. Call me a tinfoilhat-guy, but I simply would not consent to the collection of such data. It's ironic that I've learned so much from your analysis of data collection techniques elsewhere.

<comment><USER6> If the site still functions without these scripts (As it should), then there isn't much of a reason to stop visiting a site because of it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> There is something systemically flawed with Reddit's moderator system which precludes it from ever being an unqualified success as a social news aggregator.

The primary issue revolves around the selection process for moderation. To become a moderator for a subreddit, you need to have thought of the name of the subreddit. That's it. This nomenclature designation act grants any user absolute power within that domain space, and the ability to grant _any_ other user the exact same powers.

The person who created the "programming" subreddit has no qualifications, no resume by which to judge their aptitude for the moderation job, and no process exists by which to vet newly added moderators.

A moderator can, for any or no reason, decide to activate the "spam filter" on any submitted article, removing it from public voting and view. This is the _only_ tool by which Reddit moderators are given to modify their respective domains, and when used for reasons other than spam, it "teaches" the filter to remove non-spam results. This is the cause of the "broken" spam filter on Reddit - moderator abuse.

<comment><USER8> I think you hit the nail on the head with your last point, though I wouldn't necessarily call it moderator abuse. The actions that moderators can take on reddit were built on a laissez faire model of moderation, where anything goes except blatant spam. This obviously doesn't work very well for moderators who choose to run their subreddits in a different manner, and this happens to be most of the big subreddits, because laissez faire moderation just doesn't work on a large scale.

For example, the sole /r/truereddit moderator believes in a laissez faire moderation style, and the subreddit is slowly getting worse and worse as the userbase increases. Every time a /r/truereddit post makes it to the front page, a virtual swarm of idiocy surrounds the entire subreddit for a few days.

But that's the only way the moderation system is designed to work. There's no way to remove/approve content without training the filter. If someone submits a codinghorror post to /r/programming that is completely off-topic, the moderators either have to remove it, effectively warning the filter that codinghorror might be spam, or hope that the userbase does the right thing and votes it down. Usually, they won't, especially the people who are voting from their customized front page, not paying attention to what subreddit something is in.

It's broken, and the admins have never really expressed any concerns about this fact.

<comment><USER7> One of the core problems with even talking about the issue is the general disdain Reddit users have for one another, or to be more accurate, the disdain individuals have for the collective. The idea that content can be "better" or "worse", and this can be judged by an individual to the exclusion of the group, completely circumvents the entire concept of Reddit - <USER2> news.

<comment><USER9> > _The idea that content can be "better" or "worse", and this can be judged by > an individual to the exclusion of the group_ [...]

This happens in every growing online community. As the community grows, the new members don't necessarily have the same interests as the original ones. This happened at digg, reddit, and now even HN has posts about declining quality, which is another way of saying content can be "better".

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> > A comment on HN is going to be mature and reasoned; often expanding or > exploring technical issues raised

That's what I love about HN : the content of comments here are of a very high quality.

It's something that I've noticed with my own posts - well reasoned comments attract a lot of positive karma. _Even_ if you're taking a controversial stance on an issue.

<comment><USER11> At least 50% of the time I don't even read the article, I just read the comments. I tend to be more interested in the conversation the posts generate than the posts themselves.

<comment><USER12> I would venture to guess I read the comments 90% more than the actual posts. The discussion (or the subject) will occasionally lead me to read the article in depth, but more often than not the discourse here is more enlightening overall. I can easily say HN is the only community where my behavior follows this model.

<comment><USER11> 90% is actually a more realistic metric for myself as well. I was being generous leaving it at "over 50%"....

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> > _Nobody actually follows the links in tweets though; click-through is often > in the low digits per tweet_

Tweet click-through data is obscured in Google Analytics because anyone who clicks from a mobile app shows up as a "direct" hit because there is no referring URL. There's some speculation and evidence[1] that this, at least in some cases, shows up as "Mozilla Compatible Agent".

[1] [http://www.seo-theory.com/2012/02/15/why-simply-believing- se...](http://www.seo-theory.com/2012/02/15/why-simply-believing-seo-bloggers- is-dangerous/)

<comment><AUTHOR> I've assigned the t.co domain trickle to Twitter.

The 'reactions' thing on Disqus doesn't seem 100% sadly.

Mouse-hovering over those reactions can be a nice pat on the back, when the reaction system works.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> Yesterday, I posted an article on HackerNews. Its received 62k views in total so far. HackerNews was the site that kicked off all of the view counts and it quickly jumped to the top spot #1.

After it reached the top spot, I thought I would also post it on Reddit. It didn't get a single upvote. It's the third time that a story of mine has made it to the front page of HackerNews and then not received a single visitor on Reddit. In the future I don't think it is worth bothering.

Ultimately, 100% of the traffic that I received, would not of happened if it weren't for the upvotes on HackerNews, because from these upvotes everyone started tweeting about it. It received 900 tweets in total.

Here was some of the highlights.

[https://s3-eu- west-1.amazonaws.com/files.chrisacky.com/githu...](https://s3-eu- west-1.amazonaws.com/files.chrisacky.com/github/trending.png)

(The highest it went to was 800 concurrent users).

I'm guessing 60k for an article within 24 hours is a lot!

<comment><USER4> > It didn't get a single upvote.

that is because it is in the spam filter. you need to message the moderators.

<comment><USER15> The decline of r/programming in recent months is due to the moderators selection. r/programming has a moderator problem more than a fan-boy problem.

<comment><USER8> Would you care to elaborate on this? Are you referring more to the removal of posts that have made it through the filter, or the lack of approval of posts that are stuck in the filter?

I think we do a pretty good job. No choice is as clear cut as people would like it to be (especially when it is their own content on the line). I've heard feedback from people who think we do an amazing job at moderating, keeping the ever-growing cesspool from leaking into the sacred realm of /r/programming, and I've heard feedback from people who think we're the devil, and that we're censoring the will of the people, and somebody call the ACLU right now!!!

But any community is going to get feedback from those two extremes. That's just how people react to moderation. The fact that there seems to be pretty equal feedback from both extremes tells me that we must either be doing something right, or everything completely wrong.

<comment><AUTHOR> Lots of my posts never get through the spam filter, yet I think they are programming related.

[http://williamedwardscoder.tumblr.com/post/16399069781/googl...](http://williamedwardscoder.tumblr.com/post/16399069781/google- moresql-is-real) for example

[http://williamedwardscoder.tumblr.com/post/13264962223/sum-o...](http://williamedwardscoder.tumblr.com/post/13264962223/sum- of-absolute-differences) and [http://williamedwardscoder.tumblr.com/post/13265364121/popen...](http://williamedwardscoder.tumblr.com/post/13265364121/popen3) are two others that I would like to share wider

I don't think they ever got through :(

(I've lost track of what I've tried to send through now; I tend to delete to tidy up when it fails)

Generally, the memory of proggit I have is warm and fuzzy and old. Naturally my memory is selective; but I remember it being far more like HN is now.

The comments were less brogrammer frat'ish. Now, they swin further and further daily towards the immature brat'ish frat'ish sadly.

Insightful comments are fewer and further between.

Maybe proggit needs a restart? The /r/republicofatheism -type reboot is all you can do on reddit because its not self-organising ;)

I lament the passing of the good old days.

<comment><USER8> That first one was submitted to /r/programming by a user who has a really bad history of incessantly spamming his/her own blog and nothing else. The user has 2 comments in 4 years, and only 2 submissions which are not self promotion (one of which is yours).

I couldn't find a trace of the other two, though looking at your account (or what I think is your account) I am seeing a slew of filtered posts, some of which are on topic, some of which are not. I just approved a couple of your most recent on-topic posts, however I can tell you that you will need to keep a good ratio between your own site(s) and other good content for the spam filter to go easy on you. It filters really heavily against people who submit the same domain a large part of the time, and we (moderators) tend to stick to that as well.

I will comment on your other points in a little while.

EDIT: Okay, now for the rest.

I think the warm fuzzy memories you have of proggit are akin to the warm fuzzy memories a lot of people have of reddit as a whole 3 or 4 years ago. But with a larger userbase comes a lot of noise and idiocy. In my opinion, /r/programming was one of the first subreddits to take real action against quality decay. There was a period of time, after the heyday, but while /r/programming was still a default, when rage comics and advice animals were rampant. Maybe not quite as rampant as the rest of the site, but it was pretty bad. There were lots of people who were not programmers submitting and commenting, so lots of stuff ended up being off topic.

I think the quality has improved immensely since then, and I think this is in part due to strict moderation and the disabling of self posts. I will allow that it certainly isn't as great as reddit as a whole was in its heyday, but it's getting better.

There's not much we can do about the comments. We can't moderate comments for stupidity (because that would be pretty messed up). The only thing I've ever moderated comments for is spam and personal info.

A reboot, unless it's in the form of a different sub, is probably not going to happen, but I'd certainly be interested in hearing any ideas for improving the subreddit in its current form.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks

I've tried to put moreSQL through again - is it on topic for proggit?

[http://www.reddit.com/r/programming/comments/qklxn/google_mo...](http://www.reddit.com/r/programming/comments/qklxn/google_moresql_is_real/)

I don't like the idea of having to scrape HN to find other people's content so I can hide my own content submissions in the noise.

<comment><USER8> I just approved that post. It should be fine.

And on your second note, the idea is not that you go seeking out content to mix in with your own. If you happen to come across a cool article, and it hasn't been submitted to proggit yet, just contribute it. This is probably part of the community vs content aspect you mentioned in a different comment, but sheer size of the site means that you cannot really ignore the community aspect.

I could probably get in trouble for saying this, but the reddit userbase, as a whole, is not smart enough to filter out what is good and bad. If a bunch of bloggers just auto submit every blog article they write, we will have tons of crappy, ad-ridden, off-topic posts being voted to the top. It still happens from time to time. HN might be smart enough to distinguish the good from the bad, but reddit surely is not. So we have to be at least a little restrictive.

I'm not saying your content falls into those categories, but we can't really give special treatment to people we like or are familiar with. There is one guy in the /r/programming approved submitters list, and he is a very noteworthy programmer who, for whatever reason, could not get any of his posts through the spam filter. He is the one exception. For the most part, everyone is lumped into the same bucket.

So when your posts get caught in the spam filter, just send us modmail. Sometimes we'll get them, sometimes we won't. That's just how it is. I saw earlier that you said you sometimes delete them if they've been filtered. This may be a bad idea. I cannot say for sure, because the admins don't really disclose this stuff, but deleting and resubmitting the same link has been known to hurt a user's standing with the spam filter, so just deleting it may do the same thing, I'm not sure. And there's really no reason to delete it. The only think it will clutter up is the spam filter, which is going to be cluttered no matter what.

Anyway, I hope this has been somewhat useful to you. Sorry about the massive walls of text. Let me know if you have any other questions or concerns.

<comment><AUTHOR> So I can infer the rules better, which of my posts are appropriate for proggit and which are not?

lets try and train the bayesian filter in my brain ;)

<comment><USER8> Haha. Well, to be completely honest, I was recruited as a moderator for /r/programming because of a novelty account I ran that essentially bitched about any submission that could remotely be construed as not being related to programming, so I, and the mod who added me, are pretty strict about what belongs in the sub and what doesn't.

Looking over your blog though, it seems like most of the stuff you write about is fine. We'll only have a huge problem with it if you start indiscriminately submitting every post on your blog, relevant to programming or not. If you're not sure, just submit anyway. One of the admins just added a feature yesterday that allows us to remove posts that are off topic without training the spam filter (long overdue), so if we do decide that something isn't right for the subreddit, it won't harm your standing with the filter.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> FWIW, it's currently in /r/programming's spam filter, and it won't be coming out because it's not about programming. Sorry to be all stackoverflow about it, but that's how we operate.

<comment><USER15> Is 'spam filter' nowadays an euphemism for 'moderators'?

<comment><USER16> Yes.

Reddit's spam filter is completely broken with no apparent activity from the current group of admins towards fixing it.

It seems that generally if you submit something to reddit, it will get caught in the spam filter, then you have to message a moderator to request that it get approved.

[Again, it seems] that you're not so much voting on an assortment of links, you're voting on an assortment of links that moderators have deemed worthy.

<comment><USER17> Yeah, I have always been puzzled about that. I will post extremely relevant content to various sub-reddits and they _never_ show up in new/hot/whatever. It's like insta-spammed somehow. I don't even bother messaging the admin.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> According to my own mining, I should have waited a few hours before posting this :)

Anyway, some time next week I'll be in a position to add a line describing the success of "deeply meta" posts like this one ;)

We just have to get someone to post it to proggit too, I guess. And perhaps dzone...

<comment><USER5> As an amateur, beginner programmer, I'm curious why you don't use something like Jekyll+S3 rather than tumblr. The dude that pulls my espresso shots uses tumblr...

<comment><AUTHOR> Its a good question.

Despite wishing they'd hire people to add features [http://williamedwardscoder.tumblr.com/post/18002362007/tumbl...](http://williamedwardscoder.tumblr.com/post/18002362007/tumblr- fumblr) (note the comment there from someone using Google Pages + Jekyll), I'm generally happy enough not to invest time nor money in self-hosting or paid hosting.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> No mention of Techmeme? I'll add that the best way of getting picked up by other bloggers is first Techmeme (not the largest audience but definitely the most influential in tech) and second HN.

I've had blog posts pick up their traffic peaks 2-3 days after they were posted as the route was techmeme -> other tech blogs -> mainstream media

<comment><USER14> What's the proceedure for getting included on Techmeme?

<comment><USER4> Good question. A combination of a few things:

\+ Attach yourself to a story cluster if a relevant one is already there by linking to a source post

\+ `tip @techmeme <url>` on twitter

\+ Message the editors on twitter

\+ Make sure your feed validates, can be autodiscovered etc.

\+ Techmeme can discover stories based on retweet counts, so make sure the same canonical URL is being retweeted and favorited from the post, from twitter, disqus etc.

\+ Post interesting things frequently enough that you become a source that is crawled by Techmeme

<comment><USER14> Good advice. I wondered why/how I got included on Techmeme before. I would assume it is based on "Techmeme can discover stories based on retweet counts,".

<comment><USER4> TM takes hints from a lot of sources - including HN. It has 30k+ sources that it directly crawls itself as well, and uses a lot of different hints to work out what is popular. The biggest hint to a big story is inbound links from other blogs that are also sources, and from there things like popularity on social media

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I must admit I'm nauseated by the number of references to reddit on HN. I think reddit is powerful and fills a void, but the few times I've visited > cmnd+w. Twitter is also useful on occasion, but simply not my "cup of tea." These sites feel like eternal September, and make me consider suicide (not to over-dramatize...).

<comment><USER18> I think to a certain extent 3 or 4 years ago Reddit was very much like HN is now. When I first joined Reddit (2007) there was generally a lot of reasoned discussion, and the submissions were very much programmer orientated in a way that's long since passed.

I'd imagine (although I suppose I have no real evidence for this) that the people who talk about Reddit and HN in the same context were active on Reddit a few years ago.

<comment><AUTHOR> (blog author)

yes

I was rather hoping this blog post would turn up on proggit and, instead of hate-clicking, there'd be a discussion about rediscovering proggit's past.

I've tried to think of solutions before too: [http://williamedwardscoder.tumblr.com/post/15581427232/self-...](http://williamedwardscoder.tumblr.com/post/15581427232/self- organizing-reddit)

Being pro-content anti-community is not so popular over on proggit ;)

<comment><USER18> It's nice to get confirmation! I did once get a lot of comment upvotes lambasting the poor quality of comments on the science reddit, but frankly I think the sheer size of the reddit community will make it very, very hard to return to how it was. The culture that seems to be pushed by a subset of (mostly non-technical) reddit users is largely incompatible with the culture that I (and I assume others) are looking for in a social news site.

There are of course some areas of reddit which maintain a largely engaged user base willing to make in depth and interesting comments, but they tend to be rare, hard to find and often suffer from the mainstream reddit culture being dragged in by more casual visitors.

Perhaps we have to simply resign ourselves to a migration between social news platforms every few years.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> My experience with HN has been much better than with Reddit. In reddit, even good posts get down ratings a lot of time.

The one thing i like about hacker news is your posts still have 1 point minimum even if others dont like it, whereas in reddit you fall down to 0 points which makes you feel discouraging sometimes.

<comment><USER3> A lot of downvotes on reddit are actually inserted by the system, accompanied by the same number of upvotes to balance them out. This is supposed to be some sort of anti-spam anti-troll measure, though I'm not sure how that even works.

Anyway, the upshot is that you never know the true number of downvotes you got. This can be discouraging for people who don't know about computer- generated phantom votes.

<comment><AUTHOR> What bugs me more is that the numbers jump all over the place if you refresh the page. Even the number of comments seems out of sync.

That CAP gets so much in the way is irritating. Its like stackoverflow used to be a while ago.

You can make big sites that don't have such laggy BASE. I guess not with the reddit infrastructure perhaps.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> What I'd really like to see is some sort of "diffusion" system to let me know which link aggregation site found a URL first.

</comment><comment><USER21> On what data are these assumptions based? Don't see any reference.

So for me he uses numbers to support his conclusions but I can't check them.

<comment><AUTHOR> They are based on my Google analytics account.

I am not going to share it with you ;)

Feel free to disbelieve my data or my conclusions.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: what should I do with SneakerGeeks.com? - <AUTHOR>

I've been squatting this domain for 5ish years and collected around 3K email addresses on a landing page with the strap-line: "SneakerGeeks — the box-fresh forum for trainer collectors".
Guess you could say that means my concept has validated, but as I'm focusing most of my energies on CycleLove at the moment I don't have time to build a community around SneakerGeeks at the moment. Nevertheless I'mm loathe to let the domain name slip out of my hands (stupid I know).
I would love to do something along the lines of a Tim Ferris 'muse' with it, eg that generated a small amount of $$$ on auto-pilot... drop-shipped SneakerGeek products of some description, perhaps t-shirts?
PS. Here are some first t-shirt ideas I did a while back when I went under the Twitter moniker of @3stripe — https://dl.dropbox.com/u/5809556/Hacker%20News/sneakergeeks_product_roughs.png — not sure if I get away with using the Adidas logo like that though...
http://www.sneakergeeks.com/ <comment><AUTHOR> Thread fail.</comment>


Cω - <AUTHOR> http://research.microsoft.com/en-us/um/cambridge/projects/comega/doc/comega_startpage.htm

<comment><USER2> I wish they wouldn't use non-word characters in the names of their products. I thought ".Net" was bad enough when it came out - then C# and F#. But I don't even know how to type this. On this page: [http://research.microsoft.com/en- us/um/cambridge/projects/co...](http://research.microsoft.com/en- us/um/cambridge/projects/comega/doc/comega_whatis.htm) they refer to it as Cw, Cω, and Comega. The artist formerly known as incomprehensible.

<comment><USER3> Well, it's not a product.

"Cω is an experimental research language. There are no plans to turn it into a commercial language supported by Microsoft. It is not supported by either the C# or the Visual Studio teams. There are no plans to integrate it into any product."

I guess people working in research enjoy the leeway of being able to name their projects any way they want.

<comment><USER4> Except the guy gave two other examples of impossible-to-search-for Microsoft- given names: .net and c#.

<comment><USER5> If you search for either of those terms in Google or Bing you find the appropriate resources right away. People love to regurgitate that these names are not searchable but somehow we've found a way. Cω isn't typeable, but that's a different issue.

<comment><USER6> there are come problems with readable url's(ex stack overflow, questions with c# in the title end up looking like questions about c).

<comment><USER5> There are issues if the stubs you use in your URLs only allow a-z and 0-9. You could just as easily escape each character in the stub and preserve the title of the post/question you're representing. This is a problem with Stack Overflow though, not the name of the language (C#).

Wikipedia has this issue solved. You can use any Unicode character in their titles and they get used as the stub by escaping those characters. Anyway, it's not like the whole world _only_ uses the English alphabet. This should be handled properly.

<comment><USER7> C Sharp always seems to me that it should be spelled C♯, not C#. But then I'm coming from a music background.

<comment><USER8> Yes. The technical term for # is "octothorpe", so if we follow the "comega" approach for C#, that gives us "coctothorpe", a very ...unpretty term.

Far better to type C♯. Or, if you're the one naming a new language, to look for a better name.

<comment><USER7> It's hard enough to persuade people to type curly quotes and proper accents even when it's easy to do (e.g. on OS X). Chances of them learning to type a ♯? Minimal.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> People here seriously don't recognize the Greek letter omega? What kind of geeks are you anyway?

Anyway, this project is long dead as far as I know, although much (but far from all) of it was incorporated into C#.

</comment><comment><USER10> I loved Cw back in 2004. I even wrote an article on it [http://jcooney.net/post/2004/10/06/OMG-Ccf89-is- Awesome!-You...](http://jcooney.net/post/2004/10/06/OMG-Ccf89-is-Awesome!-You- should-check-it-out.aspx) unfortunately after several blog and hosting platform migrations it got lost. "retail" C# has mostly caught up on many of the cool features of Cw.

<comment><USER11> The Internet Archive to the rescue! [http://replay.waybackmachine.org/20060208140949/http://dotne...](http://replay.waybackmachine.org/20060208140949/http://dotnetjunkies.com/WebLog/josephcooney/articles/27776.aspx)

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> From wikipedia: [The symbol ω is used] in relational database theory to represent NULL, a missing or inapplicable value.

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Omega>

<comment><USER13> I thought it was from this usage:

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_uncountable_ordinal>

basically going as far as possible in the sequence C, C++, ...

<comment><USER14> Not to be too pedantic, but little omega is not the first uncountable ordinal (it is countable by definition), it is the first infinite one.

<comment><USER13> You know what, you're right (and if I may add, on both counts ;-).

The wikipedia page I referenced, loosely summarized, is referring to an ordinal number with the cardinality aleph-1. The plain omega that I should have referenced has cardinality aleph-0.

Unfortunately, the ordinal I wanted does not have its own wikipedia page. WTF? Merely countable is not notable enough?

<comment><USER15> Some research project about a new language and the top comments are about how weird its name is and how the character looks like a butt? I'm speechless.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Much of this excellent research project has been "embraced & extended" into C# at this point.

</comment><comment><USER17> Like my advice for any programming language I think they should show their source for "Hello World" on the home page. Code snippets are worth a thousand words. Yields a good quick thumbnail feel for the language.

</comment><comment><USER18> This is compelling for a variety of reasons, but they're the same reasons i find Scala is compelling. But Scala has a syntax that is terser and less bracket-y (so far as i have seen), and is further a long as a language.

I'm curious how they see themselves relative to the capabilities of languages like Scala.

</comment><comment><USER19> So do you pronounce it C-butt or C-boobs?

<comment><USER20> C-balls?

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> I had to look it up: it's pronounced "cee omega" according to Wikipedia.

<comment><USER22> That's also evident from the URL: _comega_ _startpage.htm

<comment><USER23> I pronounced it co-mega in my head. But c-omega makes more sense.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> why is this even news? most of this appeared in production a LINQ

</comment><comment><USER25> To me, the most interesting thing about these comments are that almost nobody knows anything about greek nowadays. Honestly, people, you should at least recognize this from your experience at Uni at some point...

<comment><USER26> What's really the most interesting thing is that I don't think but a few people have mentioned anything other than the name in their comments resulting in a meaningless discussion about what could be something quite interesting.

<comment><USER25> An even better point.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> This Cω/LINQ concept of unifying XML and object data access with SQL- and XPath-like syntax is elegant and obvious (aka _intuitive_ ).

Does it get much usage?

Most XML access is delegated to tools these days, and SQL is so familiar (and type-based access so unfamiliar), that it seems unlikely to make inroads on either - nor offer substantial practical benefits. That is: no order-of- magnitude benefit to overcome barriers to adoption.

Have you personally found LINQ beneficial? Has it been _widely_ adopted? Why/why not, do you think?

<comment><USER9> "LINQ to Objects" (i.e. the set of standard query operators, basically map/filter/fold and sundries) is hugely beneficial and ubiquitous in the recent codebases I've worked on. LINQ to SQL and similar IQueryable providers can be useful and are used, but unfortunately still suffer from the fact that querying is just one part of an ORM solution, and the state of ORMs in general and Microsoft's in particular is still kind of a mess. I haven't seen huge resistance to adopting them though - using some kind of LINQ-based ORM is pretty standard in ASP.NET MVC projects.

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> My main concern for this language would be (not that using lower case omega in conjuction with the letter C advertises looking at one's breasts or ass) that there is no room for specifics. It says it takes all these great qualities and generalizes them. Other than that, that brief overview makes it sound like something worth looking into.

</comment><comment><USER29> Here's the project's page ... it's an follow-on to Cedric Fournet et. al.'s work on Polyphonic C# [http://research.microsoft.com/en- us/um/cambridge/projects/co...](http://research.microsoft.com/en- us/um/cambridge/projects/comega/)

</comment><comment><USER30> It is interesting that 16 hours after the post only 4 (or so) comments on this page has anything to the language itself. The rest, including the highest voted threads, are about the choice of the name :)

</comment><comment><USER31> Wow! The most interesting thing I found in this was the "chords" idea of concurrent programming. Check it out. I've never seen anything like it -- has this been thought about?

</comment><comment><USER32> Will this be better than Python? I'm still a programming tinkerer so I don't have enough knowledge to evaluate.

<comment><USER33> Learning to program with a language as academic as this would be like learning about the basics of electromagnetism by building a particle accelerator :)

<comment><USER34> >like learning about the basics of electromagnetism by building a particle accelerator

I think you mean "using" and in which case I assume you're saying it would be the only way to do it effectively but that the results might be hard to apply in practice and no one else has managed to do it so far?

If you meant "building" then I'd have to say you meant "you wouldn't learn anything as it's about applying knowledge, an engineering task, and not about learning.

Perhaps I misunderstood, it's late and I have had a drink ...

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> How about speed? The Linq is to slow versus to sp call

</comment><comment><USER36> Sorry for the juvenile humor here, but this looks like I would have to pronounce it "C-nutz". Glad there are no release plans to send this into the wild.

</comment><comment><USER37> looks like a curvy penis and a pair of balls to me. read into that as you will(y).

</comment><comment><USER38> ω reminds me the symbol people usually use for 'ass' on internet chats. I remember this language as C-ass. :)</comment>


Pinboard is Down - <AUTHOR> https://pinboard.in/

<comment><AUTHOR> I've missed it 5 times already in the 2 last hours.

And I'm feeling stupid about not having an updated local copy. That said, as long as it comes back up again I'll continue to use it.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> update

@Pinboard 1m minute ago

Site is down; taking a look to see what's happened right now</comment>