I just found out a subordinate earns 26% more than me, what do I do? - <AUTHOR> Hi HN<p>I work at a famous global tech corporate. We have a employee career mentor program, where mentors are responsible for managing performance reviews and communicate salary outcomes. As fate would have it, my newly assigned "mentee" have been earning 30% more than me last year and 26% higher than me this year. I'm at manager level and this person at consultant level. I'm a bit stuck in terms of what my attitude should be to get it fixed. What should I do? What's the right approach? <comment><USER2> I've always found the idea that the manager _must_ earn more than the managed a little odd. Fundamentally, those are completely different jobs. It's not like the rather more insidious version where "Software Engineer level 4" is making a higher base than "Software Engineer level 5" because discrimination / nepotism / negotiation skills or lack thereof / ...

Consider e.g. a bank or hedge fund - it's perfectly imaginable that some of the star traders earn multiples of their manager.

<comment><AUTHOR> Fair point, in my case we're on exactly the same career track/speciality unfortunately.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Who do you think earns more: An actress, or the actress' manager? A basketball player, or the basketball player's coach? A boxer, or the boxer's manager?

Is it easier for the consultant to leave for another company and get a new manager, or for you to hire another person at his/her level to be your "subordinate"?

Market forces are at play here -- the productive members of society rightfully make more than people who go to meetings.

<comment><USER4> An actor's or boxer's manager is not their boss - they're essentially a contract negotiating agent who is hired by the actor or boxer. So comparing this job to the job of a supervisor of a group of professional workers isn't really valid.

Also, from my experience as both a developer and a manager of developers, there are many fewer people who have the skills to effectively manage a group of developers than there are developers (and they're usually already senior developers before they become managers). Thus, I'd expect that good managers would be harder to find and would thus deserve a market premium in their salaries. Also, when I was a manager, I had a more stressful job (being responsible for the work of many people) and worked longer hours than when I was a developer.

When I became a manager, I had the same experience: I found out that a couple of my reports had higher salaries than I did. I asked for, and received (without argument) a big raise.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> You failed to negotiate an adequate salary when you got the job. Either apply elsewhere or ask for a raise. If you ask for a raise and get denied, you will have to quit.

Edit: For anyone reading, don't tell your coworkers your salary, no matter how close you are, it causes resentment.

</comment><comment><USER6> Is a component of that due to either a performance bonus or commission. Or are you talking about straight salary?

<comment><AUTHOR> Straight salary, base pay.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Ask for a raise or leave. You're getting screwed.</comment>


How Wendy Carlos Changed Music - <AUTHOR> https://www.wfmt.com/2016/11/17/transgender-composer-wendy-carlos-changed-music-forever/ <comment><USER2> The secret ingredient in _Switched on Bach_ is that it is an outrageously good musical performance.

Lots of other synth albums are technology demos, collections of cool sounds. _Switched On Bach_ stands out because Carlos adapted Bach for the medium of the Moog synth, clearly understanding the compositions' underlying gestures, and ensured that those gestures all come through. In some cases, they come through more clearly than on the original instrumentation, especially bass lines where the synth speaks more clearly than acoustic instruments can.

Such details in another performer's hands could be distracting, messing up the relationship between foreground and background elements and drawing attention to the wrong things -- but Carlos's arrangement and performance are exquisitely balanced. This could only have been achieved by someone with a deep and sophisticated understanding of the source material, combined with incredible patience to wrestle with difficult and immature technology until the recordings were perfected.

<comment><USER3> Yes! Exactly! The key thing there is that Carlos is a musician as well.

I think Tomita is another great example of a musician who took material and adapted it for a new medium in really interesting, innovative ways.

<comment><USER4> Tomita's Pictures at an Exhibition is arguably a more distinguished execution of synthesized orchestration than Switched on Bach.

<comment><USER5> If you know synths it's pretty easy to reverse engineer the sounds on SoB. They're unfamiliar by modern pop standards, because there's a lot of layering and paralleling with simultaneous envelopes and multiple filter sweeps that (boringly...) isn't done much today. But they're not opaque.

I have no idea how to copy some the sounds Tomita got from his Moogs, and I'm fairly sure no one else does either. Some are easy, some are "That's really clever." But there are more than a few that I have absolutely no clue about.

The fact that he patched up and recorded these huge flamboyant orchestral- sounding pieces note by note and line by line with such a creative range of unique and original sounds is just _astounding._

<comment><USER3> Yeah I totally agree! I love SoB but the arrangements and patches are way more traditional and straightforward. Tomita really explored and extended the canvas of the synthesiser as a musical instrument in its own right. JMJ too.

<comment><USER6> It can be argued that SoB, along with early Kraftwerk records, _defined_ the tradition of synth patches. Tomita came a little later.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> The Tron score did a wonderful job blending early synth sounds with an orchestral backdrop.

It also has a odd and memorable theme that moves around using augmented triads yet isn't octatonic nor based on a whole-tone scale.

There's also a nice moment at the beginning of the credits-- where the theme previously wandered through harmonies quite rapidly, here it gets anchored to a single key with a fairly lush orchestral accompaniment. Then that leads in to a massive pipe organ solo doing the chromatic version of the theme for a final time, then to more fitting electro-orchestral credits music that cycles chromatically through augmented triads. (I think there's a reference to this music in the NES metroid game somewhere, I think it's Ridley's lair)

Anyhow-- the strange orchestral changes and lyrical melodies are the kind of thing that make you stick around for the credits. It's all very simple in a way, but extremely effective, too.

Contrasting that-- I almost laughed in the new Star Wars movie when at the climax the brass just loudly ascends up root position minor triad. It's like being served a steak with a side of a stick of butter.

Edit: I guess I should have written "spoiler" about the loud arpeggiation of a minor triad in the Star Wars movie.

<comment><USER8> You made me really happy with this comment. Tron was a big movie for me in my youth and a big reason why I was drawn to computers and ultimately programming. I also came to love synth and electronic music (Art of Noise etc.) around the same time and have always thought the Tron soundtrack to be amazing, especially the credits track. But I know nothing about music theory, I'm just glad it's good music. Thanks.

I heard as an aside that the London Philharmonic parts of the soundtrack were commissioned and recorded because Disney didn't have confidence that Carlos would finish her work on time (or at all, the relationship was a little strained), and using both was a decision made only afterwards.

<comment><USER7> That's interesting about the London Phil part of the score. It's amazing how many compelling pieces of music have fortuitous back stories like that.

<comment><USER9> There's some more fascinating backstory on Carlos' own website: [http://www.wendycarlos.com/+tron.html](http://www.wendycarlos.com/+tron.html)

I love the whole score, especially the pipe organ solo. It's interesting that the theme was in 7/8 right from the start -- you'd have thought a power of two would be more appropriate for computers! But somehow it works. The rhythm and harmony both feel like they're pushing towards the future.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> No mention in the article of Switched on Bach 2000. This is the album that was a distillation all of her knowledge and skill. Entirely digital (DKS Synergy and Yamaha FM), except for a _single_ Moog note! (She leaves it as a challenge to listeners to locate it...)

The tracks are almost unreal: as different from 'modern' subtractive 'fat' analog-style synths as can be. She champions complex timbres and original tunings, and it makes a tremendous difference to the music. I compared a classical organ recording of Toccata and Fugue in D Minor to her version, and what a difference! Her tuning makes the music so much richer, and she surrounds the listener with a dizzying web of sound - the surround sound is incredible!

Her articles in Keyboard magazine, about the making of SoB2000, were a huge influence on how I came to perceive music.

BTW, Wendy Carlos is also a brilliant eclipse photographer: [http://www.wendycarlos.com/eclipse.html](http://www.wendycarlos.com/eclipse.html)

</comment><comment><USER11> Oh man, listening to Switched on Bach now. First music I loved as a kid; it still evokes an emotional response. Life has been hard recently, living through a serious illness with lots of pain, feels good to kick back and listen to this.

BTW, archive.org has the best quality recordings I've found of Switched on Bach. It's not got a very full sound, but there are less pops and crackles than other sources online such as soundcloud. I wish Wendy Carlos would reissue this as a re-mastered CD

<comment><USER12> You're right, this one is a particularly good recording [https://archive.org/details/SwitchedOnBach1](https://archive.org/details/SwitchedOnBach1) .

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> I still enjoy listening to my Clockwork Orange soundtrack that I got for my 16th birthday. I used to listen to it all the time when doing math homework. Good music for concentration.

My fave track being 'Theme from A Clockwork Orange (Beethoviana)'.

<comment><USER14> I bought the Clockwork Orange soundtrack when I was a teenager, and it took quite some time for me to appreciate _Timesteps_.

(IIRC there are at least two versions of the soundtrack, with various tracks added or missing. Caveat emptor . . . but I cannot find any of Wendy's music online to purchase or stream now anyway).

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> This article mentions Carlos's collaborations with Kubrick. She actually composed a full score for _The Shining,_ but the director ended up using only parts of it. [0] Instead, he used existing pieces by other contemporary classical (acoustic) composers. Carlos's influence on music was huge, as this article points out, but Kubrick's eventual choice of music for _The Shining_ has also gone on to influence horror movie scores since then. To this day, many emulate the sounds of Bartok, Ligeti, and Penderecki.

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

</comment><comment><USER16> Also a pioneer for the trans community. What a fantastic person.

<comment><USER17> I just noticed that the album cover refers to her production company as 'Trans-Electronic Music Productions, Inc.' I guess 'trans' was a term in the 60s, but not likely that many listeners realized the significance.

<comment><USER18> the logo for T.E.M.P was a _trans_ istor, so i think that's the "trans" Walter and Rachel had in mind back then.

<comment><USER2> ¿Por qué no los dos? I can't imagine that Carlos was oblivious to the possible multiple interpretations.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> I was lucky enough to get _Beauty in the Beast_ when it came out on Larry Fast's short-lived Audion label. It is well worth your time (and ever since I've wished that Wendy Carlos and Terry Riley would collaborate on a piece or an album).

</comment><comment><USER20> I'm particularly fond of "Secrets of Synthesis". It gives you some idea of the difficulties she had to overcome to create this amazing music using such early versions of the hardware.

</comment><comment><USER21> SOB is great and all, but _Beauty in the Beast_ is absolutely phenomenal. She really pushed the boundaries there, creating a musical universe all of her own.

[http://www.dailymotion.com/video/x2j1gy2](http://www.dailymotion.com/video/x2j1gy2)

<comment><USER22> Really. I'd heard most of Carlos' early works up until the 80s many times, but never BitB (release 30 years ago). A close listen to <i>Just Imaginings</i> last night was mind-blowing ... even more than 'Seasonings' was way back when it released.

I've seldom heard anything using scales with dozens of notes in an octave that was particularly musical. JI is very musical ... and yet with enough mastery of timbres and rhythms to keep it just edgy enough. Wow.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> "The Well-Tempered Synthesizer" is still one of my favorite albums, although it is a bit obscure. I had to wait for many years before it _finally_ came out on CD.

Tomita's "Snowflakes Are Dancing" is the other classic synth album as far as I'm concerned :-)

</comment><comment><USER24> Does anyone have an idea why her albums aren't currently available?

<comment><USER25> Looks like Switched on Bach is available on Spotify, but not under Carlos' name: [https://open.spotify.com/album/3eybj65D63xdjPEho8N7s4](https://open.spotify.com/album/3eybj65D63xdjPEho8N7s4)

<comment><USER26> It is not her, it is a random spotify artist releasing public property music recorded by himself, listen to the pieces in the articles it is definitely not it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> No mention of the Tron soundtrack ... I guess it didn't "change music" but I really liked her compositions.

<comment><USER28> It is mentioned in passing.</comment></comment>


Wendy Carlos – Electronic Music Pioneer - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/a-computer-of-ones-own/wendy-carlos-electronic-music-pioneer-9a795282bb8d <comment><USER2> Big fan of Carlos, especially her work with non-standard tuning. I was very happy to find some of her tunings on Spectrasonics' Omnisphere. Non-equal temperament tuning is strange to get used to if you've spent all your life playing traditional western systems. I am on my phone right now so cannot link, but I highly recommend Chris Cutler's 'Probes' podcast that goes quite a bit into microtonal music and such.

Anyway, Wendy is great.</comment>


Ask HN: What's the most impactful business book you've read? - <AUTHOR> I'm looking for book recommendations that have changed the way you think about your company or your career. <comment><USER2> The E-Myth Revisited: Why Most Small Businesses Don't Work and What to Do About It

[http://www.amazon.com/The-E-Myth-Revisited-Small- Businesses/...](http://www.amazon.com/The-E-Myth-Revisited-Small- Businesses/dp/0887307280)

<comment><USER3> Another vote for E-Myth Revisited. I went in with fairly low expectations (since most business books tend to disappoint, in my experience) and came out with some fresh perspectives on building businesses.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I recently read Creativity, Inc. By Ed Catmull. I enjoyed the book because of the stories behind Pixar's growth and importance of candor in their culture.

</comment><comment><USER5> Jay Abraham's Sticking Point Solution; great food for thought when you're at a loss for growth ideas> [http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/6515635-the- sticking-poin...](http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/6515635-the-sticking- point-solution)

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> I just finished "So Good They Can't Ignore You" and "Little Bets", both of which were great.

</comment><comment><USER6> The Founder's Dilemmas by Noam Wasserman. A very good read and you can get it on Amazon.

</comment><comment><USER7> Managing the Professional Services Firm by David Maister.

</comment><comment><USER8> The Hard thing about Hard things, Ben Horowitz.

</comment><comment><USER9> How to Win Friends and Influence People

</comment><comment><USER10> Zero to One by Peter Thiel

<comment><USER11> I didn't get that much out of it. What made it so compelling for you?</comment></comment>


Ask HN: Is there a easy way to migrate from drupal6 to wordpress3.x? - <AUTHOR>

<comment><USER2> It really depends on what are you doing with your drupal site. How complex is it. What modules are you using...

But in general, no, I don't think it would be very easy. I would start afresh if I had to do it. The question is, do you have to?

<comment><AUTHOR> Yes, I have too! I have 400+ blog entries...modules it does not really matter in my case.</comment></comment>


Sergey Brin warns of AI threats through a 'technology renaissance' - <AUTHOR> https://www.theinquirer.net/inquirer/news/3031311/googles-sergey-brin-warns-of-ai-threats-through-a-technology-renaissance <comment><USER3> The idea that AI will affect employment is very dubious to me:

\- This stuff was talked about all the time during the industrial revolution. But it turns out that automation just increased worked productivity and made people more valuable.

\- Since ATMs were introduced, the number of bank tellers in the US actually went up.

\- Certain industries have actually become _de_ automated over time. As an example: coffee. It used to be exclusively made by automated machines. Now hand-making coffees is one of the largest businesses in America.

\- AI is only as smart as the data you feed it. Even Google's own search rankings have to have human minders because people are too good at gaming their algorithms.

\- AI is only good at the thing that human beings are very bad at - <USER2> quick, analytics based decisions. Of course this is a threat to middle management and executive functions. But for people who actually make things or solve problems, there's just one more thing to make and solve problems about.

There are some very real concerns about organizations using AI to make decisions about people without human oversight. Imagine an AI tasked with college admissions, bad decisions without possibility of human intervention could hurt people - are we sure it would be that much worse than our current system, often tainted by bias, money, and racism?

My concern is that the leaders in the corporate tech world created huge organizations by automating our lives, and now they want to act as gatekeepers on the kinds of automation that is acceptable.

Edit:

To add to this - a companies stance on AI will probably follow their belief in whether humans are underrated or overrated. Google designs products believing humans are overrated - they think people will be victims of AI. Amazon thinks people are underrated (based on Amazon Turk, customer service, warehouse design) - ironically, they won't think humans will overall be harmed by AI.

<comment><USER4> The argument that AI will take all the job is commonly made, but I agree with you that it's a poor argument.

Much more plausible and concerning, however, is that AI will stratify the labor force into 3 groups: highly-paid engineers (who manage the AI), highly- paid services job (i.e. doctors, lawyers, psychiatrist), and poorly-paid services job (i.e. barista).

This stratification has already happened as our economy advances (you mentioned baristas---in the past, those workers could have earned middle class manufacturing wages). The wage distribution in the services sector nowadays looks like a dumbbell [1].

Wage stratification can lead to political stratification as poor people don't have the resources to fight for their rights. Political stratification can lead to further wage stratification, continuing the cycle. That's why I believe that it's important to deal with the AI threat, now.

[1] [https://seii.mit.edu/research/study/how-does-growth-in- the-u...](https://seii.mit.edu/research/study/how-does-growth-in-the-u-s- service-sector-impact-labor-polarization/)

<comment><USER5> That seems like an arbitrary stratification. By the time AI is sophisticated enough to have significant ripple-effects throughout the economy, the "highly paid engineer" is going to be a tiny fraction of the labor force, akin to the hedge fund manager of today. Also, why do I need to hire a team of engineers when I can just spin up a few AWS AI instances.

<comment><USER4> That's entirely possible. I'm thinking more about the labor force of the next 40-50 years. In 100 years (or however long it takes for AI to improve itself), engineers may also be obsolete.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Not to worry just yet as AI still hasn't been realized.

What many developers call AI, or more precisely machine learning (ML), are a collection of algorithms for making more intelligent decisions in context to the data at hand. That is simply smarter programming, but it isn't intelligence. The machine is still limited to the static instructions available.

Real AI will allow machines to spawn original decisions to solve new problems spontaneously. We aren't there yet. The ethical implications will likely not be any different than those confronted by people. It generally boils down to _just because you can do something doesn 't mean you should_.

<comment><USER7> A lion is still dangerous even tough it's not conscious.

 _Edited for clarification. Not conscious in any way that would rival "real AI" (as per the parents point) or human consciousness._

AI will get increasing access to more and more crucial parts of society and thus become more and more dangerous. It doesn't need to "real AI" for that.

<comment><USER8> Since eyebrows are being raised over your considering lions unconscious, how about the following amendment?

> An earthquake is dangerous even though it's not conscious.

<comment><USER7> I was responding to the parent who talked about real ai not sure why eyebrows are being raised unless someone want to misunderstand the context the comment were made in.

Of course a lion is conscious but it's not conscious at a level that the parent means (real ai).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Until we invent (or accidentally stumble upon) an artificial mind with volition and a sense of self, AI will continue to be an increasingly powerful, increasingly self-directed set of optimizers. We'll continue to use AI in more and more for the ultimate goal of, well, optimizing. Optimizing what exactly? Energy efficiency. Check. Materials. Check. Drug discovery. Check. Financial transactions. Business rules. Capacity planning. Cryptocurrencies. Stock market. Ad placement and targeting. Predicting consumer behavior. Wait...

You see, it will all end up in the same place. AI is a way to _make money_. AI is _just_ optimizing economics, but _optimizing economics on steroids_. Eventually, the company with the best AI is going to have the best advantage in all business interactions and planning. The first to master-level AI is going to end up with essentially all the money in the end.

Don't you think the big players know this? Of course. AI will be employed in exactly the same way as every other piece of tech in recent history: to make obscene amounts of money.

Don't be surprised when making money screws consumers over. It's just business. No hard feelings, right? Thankfully, the AI is incapable of feeling.

The ultimate AI is the one you can give one command to: _MAKE MONEY!_

</comment><comment><USER10> At least there isn't anyone out there designing and manufacturing military grade weaponised drones and letting them autonomously decide whether to pull the trigger.

Right?

<comment><USER11> I really wish we could know what is going through CEOs heads when they make statements like this while simultaneously contradicting themselves.

<comment><USER12> Probably he's been already replaced by a replicant

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> There needs to be term to describe these rail thin articles whose only real affect is to provide an HN conversation-inspiring headline.

<comment><USER14> Well, I'd say it's pretty close to clickbait. Also, it reminds a bit of "dog whistling": [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dog- whistle_politics](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dog-whistle_politics)

<comment><USER15> Not very good click bait as it's clear from the headline the HN comments will be better than the article, so I usually skip the article and read the comments. :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> So a sort-of-on-topic question: for all the people who are warning of the coming AI apocalypse and warning us to be careful with AI... how do you enforce that? What's the enforcement mechanism to ensure that the bad people don't get AI and that people don't create bad AI? All these warnings, but what can we do about it?

If strong AI is invented, especially if it's open-sourced, the cat is out of the bag and it's game over, right? We've seen how good we are at preventing rogue states from getting nukes. How can we keep them from getting life-ending AI?

<comment><USER17> I think it's going to parallel the virus/anti-virus eternal struggle. The bad AI will need to be targeted by the good. It'll be a mess, of course.

<comment><USER18> I think any breakaway AI would be a highlander situation in that it would ensure there can be only one.

<comment><USER16> Yeah, that's more of my point, you're right. If we're considering the endgame of the AI singularity, only one AI can win. If there are multiple, they'll each keep getting better, and they'll each keep warring against the other one until only one is left (or none are left). That's the doomsday scenario for AI when people warn that this is coming.

But out of all the people warning about it, I haven't yet seen anyone say "this is how we prevent it".

<comment><USER18> I think the only way to win is to make sure the first one is perfectly friendly, or to make sure we are integrated with the first one. I don't give us great odds on either front.

<comment><USER16> I'm trying to remember a book I read a while back, it was a sci-fi book where in the beginning chapters a war was being fought between the US and China to prevent China from developing a strong AI. The main character is killed but the preserved his body and brought him back to life some years later in a cyborg body, where he learns that the world is entirely controlled by a friendly benevolent AI and everyone has it embedded in their skin. But the AI goes rogue suddenly and the only people who survive are the luddites who refused to join the AI and the people who were off-world at the time the AI went rogue.

For the life of me I can't find the book even through months of Google searching, but anyway my point is... a "friendly" AI can be hijacked. Or decide to go rogue, since we can't begin to comprehend its thought processes.

\--edit: sorry I went off topic a bit... I don't want to be just another one of those "AI will kill us all" kinds of people because, as my first comment suggested, that's completely useless fearmongering unless someone has a way to stop it. Kind of like saying "the supervolcano" or "solar flares" or something else completely unpreventable will kill us all... unless there's something you can do to stop it, life goes on until it doesn't. I'd be interested in hearing how to stop it, otherwise I wish people would stop printing these articles.

<comment><USER18> I follow the point you're making. We do have options and perhaps if we were worried enough, they'd be put into effect.

You could make AI research illegal. You could place massive R&D to human/brain interfaces. You could remove or reduce the medical device testing restrictions on the basis that this is an all-or-nothing bet for humanity.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> That is just wrong, and here is why.

We, the People are under the money pressure from that last 7000 years, this slavery mode of Society was a type of model that bring us, after many trouble to this point of our evolution.

Now that the robotics/cobotics/mechatronics sciences are on the point to reach and join with Artificial Intelligence we, the People are close to be free from the money Society model.

And that will be great, when 100% of goods and services will be product by the machine, that will be good and great enough to offer us the way to type 1 in the Kardashev Scale, we are at the time we will know an evolution type in our civilization.

<comment><USER20> Even assuming that labor becomes a post-scarce resource, what about capital resources?

How would metals be allocated between current usage and robot-building? Energy, between current usage and powering these robots?

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> Open source image recognition has a ton of ethical problems. Now for a low cost people can set up very sophisticated spying apparatus. I can't wait until neural nets can decipher people moving their lips. You could read people's conversations from a distance, automatically. Get ready to censor yourself all the time

</comment><comment><USER22> I have heard the narrative that 90% of people farmed 120 years ago and now look at things. I just do not buy this is going to work this time.

I live in the US and at some point we will have to talk about UBI. But right now we can not even have constructive conversations about simple things.

<comment><USER15> UBI is not too different from a lot of the social programs (Social security, Medicare, etc) that grew out of the turmoil of that transition, though. Just a difference of degree, IMO.

Also, a jobs guarantee could do many of the same things (and similar to some of FDR's programs). We might do both.

<comment><USER22> Look at the massive fight about Obama care and that is really nothing compared to UBI.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> Can we please not upvote articles from tabloid websites? The article is breif, shallow and has a glaring typo in it. This is not journalism. They simply reprinted some quotes. Zero research, zero value added to the conversation. Zero editing. The topic is interesting, but I wish a more legitimate source was linked. Why are we rewarding shoddy work with ad exposures?

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> While its easy to dismiss the Sci-fi fantastical end of the world claims on the dangers of AI, its important to at least address some of the realistic externalities of this technology.

"Brin is showing more real-world concerns of AI-powered systems replacing human jobs or being used to spread propaganda and fake news rather than rise up and enslave humanity"

</comment><comment><USER24> AI is a threat? Seems more like tech companies leaking or selling personal information is the real threat.

AI looks to be more of a distraction.

</comment><comment><USER25> Maybe we should start with solving OCR, before taking on artificial intelligence. OK, we have self driving cars, but they can't actually read road signs.

</comment><comment><USER26> Link to the Alphabet 2017 Founder's Letter : [https://abc.xyz/investor/founders- letters/2017/index.html](https://abc.xyz/investor/founders- letters/2017/index.html)

</comment><comment><USER27> this is all fine, first generation of 'true' ai will probably be extremely biased and too simple for practical use. even though we are automating and digitizing more and more and making everything more streamlined the rules will be as rigid as they have ever been. the human factor will come from generations of ai iterations -- if we are lucky. to be rejected by a machine will be brutal experiences when we all get this pushed in our faces. rich will grow richer and middle class will disappear in favor of poverty across the board.

<comment><USER28> >first generation of 'true' ai will probably be ... too simple for practical use

AI tends to either not really work or go way beyond humans - look at the Go programs that didn't work very well and then in a short period we have things like alphazero that given the rules of Go or Chess surpasses all humans in a few hours of playing itself. By the time they are passing Turing tests and thinking in a human manner they are going to be scary smart in many ways.

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> Human immiseration mitigated by AI—it's the algorithm's digital design?

</comment><comment><USER29> Human immiseration mitigated by AI—algorithmic design decisions?

</comment><comment><USER30> After multiple months of research, FBI and cybercrime agents realized that the perpetrators and the hackers running the servers were not real humans. It was a decentralized consciousness running across multiple AWS instances. A presidential order was issued to shutdown all of AWS data centers.

But it was too late. The decentralized super AI had already recruited and payed humans through cryptocurrencies to run servers at home in order to process the AI algorithms. It did even plan for a power outage scenario. Several people bought electricity generators financed by the AI crypto account.

Decentralization is a big problem for the US and Europe. It is very hard to get the whole world onboard with fighting the super AI. By the time (couple days) the UN held most of the world leaders in Geneva, the super AI had already controlled a fund of over $500bn. It created a marketplace to recruit people, hackers, military persons and businesses.

Chaos stormed big cities. Police officers were shot dead by professional snippers. Fake news were rampant and nobody could believe, trust or understand anyone else. Several infrastructure services were disturbed by massive DDOS attacks. In the mean time, the AI was able to recruit a couple countries and get them onboard for a huge attack on all other countries. There were no negotiations, the AI calculated the probability of success of its massive attack operation and went full retard.</comment>


Show HN: DubDub - Push Notifications For When WWDC Tickets Go On Sale - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/speedyapocalypse/DubDub

<comment><AUTHOR> Built this as a Sunday morning project and it appears to work quite nicely. Feedback is welcome!</comment>


Rust – Are we (I)DE yet? - <AUTHOR> https://areweideyet.com/ <comment><USER2> How is the situation with integrated debugging support? That's one of the most important features of any IDE, yet not mentioned in the table.</comment>


Razer built a laptop with three screens - <AUTHOR> https://www.engadget.com/2017/01/05/razer-built-a-laptop-with-three-screens-because-why-not/ <comment><USER2> Extensive discussion yesterday: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13327811](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13327811)</comment>


CNN website hacked: "China dumps all bonds" - <AUTHOR> http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:E6OJcLJ10WQJ:politicalticker.blogs.cnn.com/2014/01/23/breaking-china-dumps-all-bonds-declares-south-china-sea-closed-zone/+&cd=1&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=us <comment><USER2> More specifically, a blog subdomain of cnn (politicalticker.blogs.cnn.com), which appears to be a Wordpress site, was hacked.

</comment><comment><USER3> Still better than all the Bebier stuff that was breaking on their (US) homepage today

<comment><USER4> wow and there is basically nothing about Ukraine... this crazy!

<comment><USER5> Welcome to Zucker's quest to make CNN relevant.... which apparently means being the online version of the supermarket check out line. The FoxNews site has more important international stories than CNN, I am assuming CNN expecting readers to click the World tab.

Out front, between Drudge and Google News I get all the leads I need.

<comment><USER6> you might want to hit something like Huff Post to counter Drudge.

<comment><USER7> I'm not a fan of huffpo, but considering Drudge routinely runs conspiratorial things like "Obama born in Kenya", I would not put them on the same level.

<comment><USER8> I'd put the Huffpo's publishing vaccine denial advocacy on that level.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> To put things in perspective, China holds approximately 7.5% of the total US debt load ($17.3 trillion). That's an estimated $1.3 trillion in U.S. Treasuries. They are the largest foreign investor in US treasuries's[0] and the major holders of all USD foreign exchange reserves due to their huge trade surplus with the US. These dollars need to be invested somewhere and the U.S. Treasury market is one of the few places that China can recycle its surplus dollars.

Even during the financial crisis in 2009 and the debate around the public debt ceiling in the summer of 2011 with the subsequent downgrade of the U.S. long- term sovereign credit by S&P, China continued to increase their USD reserves while other endowment funds in regions such as the Middle East took steps to diversify their FX reserves away from the USD. China is dependent on the US Treasury market - and it's stability - because as long as China continues to hold down the value of its currency to the USD, it will have few options other than to keep investing in U.S. dollar assets.

[0] [http://www.treasury.gov/resource-center/data-chart- center/ti...](http://www.treasury.gov/resource-center/data-chart- center/tic/Documents/mfh.txt)

</comment><comment><USER10> The CNN main site was not hacked. This was a blog hosted by WordPress VIP ([http://vip.wordpress.com/](http://vip.wordpress.com/))

</comment><comment><USER11> It's late here and I've been working all day and I'm half asleep. So it took me a few seconds to realise this was a hoax.

My reaction was literally "holly shit!", Then I don't know why but my mind started racing to figure out how one would acquire gold and bitcoins at 10 to midnight on a Friday night heading into a weekend...

Thinking i need some verification before i make any move, I then realised the page was a google cache and then came back to hn to realise it was a cached hacked page.

But for a few seconds I was scared and excited at the same time...the same feeling of 9/11 actually

</comment><comment><USER12> Any reports on stock crashes? I'm sure there are some sentiment analysis bots trading on news trends that read this and dumped everything.

</comment><comment><USER13> Is it me or would "china dumping us bonds" have absolutely no effect since the Federal reserve is already the only one buying us bonds in massive quantities ?

<comment><USER14> Well, a lot of banks, insurance companies, trust funds, mutual funds, pension funds, social security funds, other countries and individuals own US treasury bonds.

China's holdings are significant - over $1.3tn or around 7.5% of all US government debt. If they were to dump all of it onto the market at once (a crazy idea which they would never do), the simple excess of supply over demand would cause Treasury prices to plunge and the USD would likely drop in the foreign exchange markets too.

As soon as someone at one of the big US investment banks realised what was going on, phone calls would start being made to wake people up in London and then New York (this assumes that the sell-off starts during Asian trading hours) and eventually someone would wake up Bill Dudley (head of the New York Fed). He, in turn, would wake up Bernanke and Lew, who would call the President (who'd probably already have been woken up by the IC/military).

By that point, the markets would be in turmoil. The combination of the sell- off with a big military move (i.e. declaring the South China Sea a closed zone) is interesting, because an increased likelihood of military conflict typically causes investors to sell riskier assets and buy less risky ones, like US Treasury bonds. So, stock markets would drop across the world - I'd say at least 3%, probably more like 5%. Buying gold and oil is like a bit of a kneejerk reaction in times of geopolitical turmoil, so those would probably rise.

I doubt the increased demand from investors for Treasuries would be enough to absorb $1.3tn worth of bonds so Treasury prices would be dropping through the floor. That introduces a new dynamic because Treasuries are commonly used as trading collateral, so you'd start seeing margin calls, just like we did during the credit crunch (which is what caused Lehman Brothers to collapse).

So, Dudley would almost certainly act to stabilise the market by instructing the Fed's trading desk to start buying Treasuries. I don't know what the practicalities are of the Fed buying $1.3tn at short notice (e.g. whether they can simply create that many dollars out of thin air and credit them to their counterparties' accounts) but, assuming they could, that would support the price of US Treasuries although yields would probably still end up jumping by at least 100 basis points, and the USD would probably drop significantly against the Euro.

So, all in all, I'd be inclined to disagree with the idea that China dumping US bonds would have absolutely no effect. :-)

<comment><USER15> > I don't know what the practicalities are of the Fed buying $1.3tn at short > notice (e.g. whether they can simply create that many dollars out of thin > air and credit them to their counterparties' accounts)

Ah. Yes. They can totally do that.

So the question is whether their extant open-market operations which aim for a particular interest rate on Treasuries will in fact buy the bonds quickly enough that substantial market turmoil would be avoided. And, if so, whether the increased supply of USD would have a higher velocity than it did when China was sitting on it, which could lead to a weaker dollar or substantial inflation.

(And of course, people could just generally freak out anyway, leading to turmoil.)

<comment><USER14> _> Ah. Yes. They can totally do that._

Yeah, I had been thinking about how TARP required congressional approval but, of course, the _reason_ it required congressional approval was because the "troubled assets" in question were not Treasuries. A little investigation reveals that section 14 of the Federal Reserve Act authorises the Fed "To buy and sell, at home or abroad, bonds and notes of the United States".

 _> ..whether the increased supply of USD would have a higher velocity than it did when China was sitting on it, which could lead to a weaker dollar or substantial inflation._

Weaker dollar? Definitely. I expect the ECB and banks of England and Japan would buy dollars - both to help the US stabilise markets and to avoid their own currencies growing tooo strong - but I'd still expect to see a significant drop in the value of USD. 20%, maybe?

Substantial inflation? Inflation is a longer-term, delayed reaction sort of thing so I reckon it would depend on what happened subsequently.

The funny thing is that, having been through the turmoil of September 2008, the financial system is probably better prepared and positioned now, than it was before the Financial Crisis, to deal with the turmoil that would be caused by China dumping its Treasury holdings.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> They recently posted that their social media accounts were compromised by the Syrian Electronic Army, so this is probably related.

<comment><USER17> In the absence of other evidence, interesting information but not confirmation of anything.

"Possibly related" would be a much better phrasing. Though additional updates seem to support that it was SEA.

A crucial thing to remember in a fog-of-war scenario is that _all_ information becomes suspect. Your best response is to take actions that reduce uncertainty, risk, and volatility. Not which increase them.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> I was wondering what was happening to the site as well. The bookmark icon for [http://amanpour.blogs.cnn.com](http://amanpour.blogs.cnn.com) changed to a generic wordpress icon just recently in my toolbar.

</comment><comment><USER19> Blocked by by the Web Security Appliance at work .... potential malware/spyware

</comment><comment><USER20> There was also a story about the US declaring a state of national emergency, and the reporter being unable to contact anyone in the State Department. As little sense as that made.

</comment><comment><USER21> Is this a hoax? or satire? Doesn't look like credible news to me, somehow.

<comment><USER22> From CNN[0].

[0] [http://www.cnn.com/2014/01/23/tech/cnn-accounts- hacked/](http://www.cnn.com/2014/01/23/tech/cnn-accounts-hacked/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> There is a special place in hell for SEA (Syrian Electronic Army) members. In addition to hacking sites as to spew propaganda, they have been reporting nonviolent activist pages while promoting terrorist (ISIS) pages. Running a plethora of personas[0] that harass and attack while disseminating horse-shit like the Adra massacre. That Adra event saw Russia Times relaying false reports[1]. Of course phishing pretty much anyone that mentions Syria/Sham. Gotta get those admin credentials somehow right?

All this while their regime goes about talking peace at Geneva2 and dropping crude air dropped improvised explosives (ADIED) onto residential neighborhoods. From two days ago, one of the happier videos to report from these strikes, a child being pulled alive from concrete rubble[2]. In addition to the regular munitons dropped on a daily basis the rocket system used to launch chemical weapon attacks is parked at the regime's Mezzeh military airport in Damascus[3] yet SEA and company have been trying to co-opt and seed disinformation on the subject such as focusing on nosecones[4].

This "cyberwar" mess has very real ramifications, and those are heaps of tortured/executed prisoners stacked up wrapped in plastic[5] with death certificates fraudulently made by the state. Real A level war crimes stuff. I have great hatred for these electronic shills and the murder they help further.

[0] [http://wiki.echelon2.org/wiki/Persona_Management](http://wiki.echelon2.org/wiki/Persona_Management)

[1] [http://www.interpretermag.com/the-massacre-in-syria-that- was...](http://www.interpretermag.com/the-massacre-in-syria-that-wasnt/)

[2] [http://youtu.be/-m_IgNakiXc](http://youtu.be/-m_IgNakiXc)

[3] [http://imgur.com/gallery/C45Cw](http://imgur.com/gallery/C45Cw)

[4] [http://whoghouta.blogspot.com/2013/09/umlaca- simulation.html](http://whoghouta.blogspot.com/2013/09/umlaca-simulation.html)

[5] [https://twitter.com/anadoluagency/status/426287533689815040](https://twitter.com/anadoluagency/status/426287533689815040)

edit: See helpful comment regarding naming below.

<comment><USER23> I wouldn't trust anything on Anadolu Agency which is owned by the current religious fascist Turkish government which is against Syria ONLY because they are from different Islamic fraction. The government wants to see religious fascists in power in Syria. Those things in the pictures were probably done by the barbaric islamic fundamentalist rebels.

Most Turkish people are against the government's senseless war against Syria. In last few weeks the government was caught sending military equipment to the barbaric islamic syrian rebels many times.

<comment><USER22> Sure thing hoss. Here is the story[0] associated with the photos.

"Syrian government officials could face war crimes charges in the light of a huge cache of evidence smuggled out of the country showing the "systematic killing" of about 11,000 detainees, according to three eminent international lawyers.

The three, former prosecutors at the criminal tribunals for the former Yugoslavia and Sierra Leone, examined thousands of Syrian government photographs and files recording deaths in the custody of regime security forces from March 2011 to last August."

OK so you are adamant that it was not the regime who tortured and executed people, that the photos were due to those nasty Islamists. How about a report pre-dating the previous on the Assad regime's Raid Brigade, amongst others in the Damascus area. Was the industrious kidnapping and murder of detainees by military also a false flag? Branch 215, Raid Brigade - Military Intelligence Division - Damascus[1].

[0] [http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/jan/20/evidence- indust...](http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/jan/20/evidence-industrial- scale-killing-syria-war-crimes)

[1] [http://www.vdc- sy.info/index.php/en/reports/1380463510#.UuIv...](http://www.vdc- sy.info/index.php/en/reports/1380463510#.UuIvZLQwdaQ)

<comment><USER24> Yeah something should be done, and what else is better than barbaric islamic fundamentalist rebels, beheading war criminals, and bloodshed murderers, supported by international bloodthirsty, greedy media cartels.

We should support them as they are fighting against an anti-democratic regime. We will think about the other aspects, once democracy is settled, democracy first.

<comment><USER22> Way to respond with a comment that is contextual with what I said.

You really didn't conflate my detailing mass murder with support for other murderers at all there. If you did one could say it would be highly detrimental to discussion. Good thing you didn't though.

edit: I do love me tried and true tactics like what inanov and throwaway display. Anything said against a subject they feel strongly about is means to deny what is said then distort who is speaking. At the very least a lot of accusations and insinuations not relating to the original subject being discussed will be brought up adding noise to the signal. For a very topical example here is the regime's Syrian State TV split screening opposition talking at Geneva2 with stock footage of bombing carnage[0].

[0] [https://pbs.twimg.com/media/BekwsuACIAA2gQr.jpg:large](https://pbs.twimg.com/media/BekwsuACIAA2gQr.jpg:large)

<comment><USER24> In turkey, current government divides people into two groups (done through media, NGO's etc.): Pro-Assad, and Anti-Assad. Even though you do not fancy the guy, one morning when you wake up, you find yourself a Pro-Assad.

Even though you scream out that you are against war, and any crimes by persons or governments should be judged by an independent court, and war is not a solution, you still are a Pro-Assad. After sometime, I found out that this is not a local situation, this applies to the whole world. I know that once these are over, no war crimes will be punished, they will be loosely covered.

I remember when turkish prime minister visited Assad, handshakes, good wills. A few months later, you see that this same prime minister, just in a moment, starts to tell exact same words with some other governments which are very impatient to start a war (as if they were reading from a paper).

I know that no government is clean, they all have hands in blood, blood of a minority, another country or nation etc. Assad is not an exception but I believe that the other side of this war is not clean either. After seeing a lot of lies being told by the Turkish government and the media, I am more sure that this is not a fair fight, and this is not about Assad torturing the Syrian citizens. And I know that supporting bloodshed beheading islamic fundamentalist murderers is far from willing goodness of Syrian people.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> China dumps all bonds.

US declares return to gold standards.

Chinese economy crashes.

World experiences significant economic downturn but soon recovers.

<comment> not-impressed Haha are you aware of the amount of Gold china is buying? [http://www.ingoldwetrust.ch/unprecedented-total-chinese- gold...](http://www.ingoldwetrust.ch/unprecedented-total-chinese-gold- demand-2013)

If/when USD looses its position as a reserve currency, the price of gold will skyrocket and China will be looking smug.

<comment><USER26> and this [http://www.shanghaidaily.com/business/China-expected-to- anno...](http://www.shanghaidaily.com/business/China-expected-to-announce-it- has-more-than-doubled-gold-reserve-expert-says/shdaily.shtml)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> Hacked by Ron Paul!

<comment><USER28> RON PAUL 2012!!! :P

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> > Filed under: 2010 • 2012 • Candidate Barack Obama • Congress • Health care • > Hillary Clinton • John McCain • Mitt Romney • Popular Posts • President > Obama</comment>


Ask HN: Can you determine encryption pwd with an encrypted and unencrypted file? - <AUTHOR> <comment><USER2> If the password is weak [e.g. "12345", "pa55w0rd", "eatMoreCHKin68", etc.] and the encryption implementation is available, then an educated brute force generation of encrypted files could recover the password. That's the principal behind rainbow tables.

Of course the data has to be valuable enough to justify such an attack and the cost of using physical methods [e.g. theft, keylogging, etc.] has to be higher.

Good luck.

</comment><comment><USER3> That depends on the encryption method used. If it is any good, then no.

<comment><AUTHOR> I think it's AES 256 bit, is that good?

<comment><USER3> Yeah, that is state of the art. No chance there...</comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: In general, prefer your abstractions vs. runtime ones ASAP? - <AUTHOR> I've been working on an http server in C as a side project, and while studying the code bases of other C projects, I've noticed that there is a tendency to start programming in terms of the project's own abstractions (structs, functions) at the lowest levels, or "as soon a possible"; e.g., to use a custom file descriptor structs, custom versions of read(2) and write(2) or equivalent "enhanced" functions. What I mean is that I see for example the native FILE or bind/listen/accept once, but then  they are either always wrapped or remain encapsulated at a lowest implementation layer.
The way I see it, this effectively maximizes the proportion of your code that speaks in your own abstractions, which certainly makes coding easier (working in your vernacular, so to speak).
Is this intentional, and is there a principle or pattern being applied? For reference, I've been looking at ngnix, libuv, livevent, redis and SQLite, the latter two a while back so they may not follow my description. <comment><USER2> I suspect that, if you read those "custom versions of read(2) and write(2)", you'll discover that those APIs "leave something to be desired".

For example, let's say you want to write a 100 byte struct to file, and _write_ returns 0 and sets _errno_ to _EINTR_ , or return 67 and keep _errno_ as is.

Why would you write the code to handle those cases in every function that writes data? How would you fix all those entry points if you discover your handling is buggy, or that some commonly used file system is buggy, and you need to implement a workaround?

Similarly, if you _read_ those 100 bytes, your call may return 67 and update the file position. You need code to recover from that. Why duplicate that throughout your code?

</comment><comment><USER3> I'm working on a c++ webserver too.

I don't want to over engineer it, so I don't write a wrapper for file descriptor.

I studied lwan, for inspiration. I too see it has some abstraction layers. I think it is mainly for cross-compiling on different platforms, it needs to abstract the socket, event, io APIs.

My project is linux only. So I want to stay simple.</comment>


What I Learned In College - <AUTHOR> http://blackhole12.blogspot.com/2013/06/what-i-learned-in-college.html <comment><USER2> I graduated two months ago, and I learned a lot of things, too.

I learned that the fastest way I'll ever learn a subject (whether or not it's a programming language, a financial derivative, or an era of Hinduism) is on my own, poring over search engines and worn-down books. Professors will never teach me _faster_ than I can teach myself.

I learned that, yes, you're more or less paying for the piece of paper (but that doesn't mean there isn't a lot of other awesome things you get along the way.)

I learned that, yes, that piece of paper is quite worth it, no matter how many hip tech companies say they don't care about pieces of paper.

I learned that there can be infinitely more value in talking to a stranger for fifteen minutes than spending that time browsing Reddit (or playing a video game.)

I learned that, despite my protestations otherwise, I honestly do perform best when my outcome is quantified, curved, and compared to other people's outcomes.

I learned that everyone's college experience is wildly unique, too, as I benefitted from professors in both business and computer science classes who always rewarded creativity instead of stifling it.

(I don't mean to say that I disliked college. It was the best four years of my life. But the idea that the undergraduate experience is marvelous and the idea that the undergraduate experience needs a lot of fixing are not necessarily in contention with one another.)

<comment><USER3> A few things formal institution graduates don't realize:

When you say "you're more or less paying for the piece of paper" you're taking it for granted (unless you went to a shitty school). As an Autodidact in Mathematics, programming, compsci, and psychology with nothing but a GED; you underestimate the value of rigorous environments.

Learning fast is also not the point. Learning _thoroughly_ is the point. Thorough and rigorous learning is _really fucking hard_ when an Autodidact. University is an environment that allusively inspires rigor. You're surrounded by peers _doing the same thing you are_ ; you have access to instructors that are (sometimes) the best in their field; and you have access to facilities (even as an alum!) that are prohibitively expensive for non-matriculating learners.

Autodidacism is hard because you have to hold yourself to extremely high standards, you have to play with your own psychology to control inspiration and perseverance (you aren't accountable to anyone!!). So even if you learn on your own now _after_ college you still will have a number tools at your disposal that you would've had to develop on your own without college.

Yes, I learn far better on my own too, but _do not discount_ the enormous opportunity you had by going through college.

<comment><USER2> I completely agree with everything you said, particularly the difference between learning quickly and learning thoroughly.

I'd love to hear more about your autodidacism. Do you mind explaining your learning process a bit more?

<comment><USER4> I'm not Ixiaus but I am his best friend and co-founder (and totally going to give him hell in the office tomorrow for posting on HN when he's supposed to be on vacation. ;)

Anyway, he gets up at 6AM every day and runs through a spaced repetition routine. He's written about his process here: [http://ixmat.us/articles/2012-12-01_usable-org- drill.html](http://ixmat.us/articles/2012-12-01_usable-org-drill.html)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Sigh. Another special snowflake lamenting that the system didn't bend to exactly his needs.

What you get out of university is what you put into it. Want to be judged for something other than test taking? Get involved in research. Get involved in one of the many math and CS organizations your campus has. But you have to go get them yourself. Nobody's going to say "oh, you're so smart, please join our team!"

Get it out of your head that being smart entitles you to anything or makes you special. You'll find your classmates aren't robots, and are just as smart as you, and have a lot to offer.

<comment><AUTHOR> Several people seem to get this theme out of the essay, which I think is partially due to the sarcastic tone I take in certain sections. I try to make it blatantly obvious that I disapprove of the system in general and think it's a disaster to everyone, not just me.

To be perfectly honest, the system was fairly kind to me. I was able to deal with it. My little brother couldn't handle it and had to go to a special online high school and get tutoring help just to graduate. He is very bright, but the system just crushes him because he can't operate within it very well and the system doesn't care.

I did once try to get into research. Academic research has a whole boatload of its own problems, including the professor/graduate student ponzi scheme and the overemphasis on getting published. I decided doing research on my own would be much more fruitful.

My classmates were usually quite smart. They were also usually just as frustrated with the system as I was.

<comment><USER6> You could not manage to find one special silo, one narrow topic, one unsolved research problem to pique your interest in this so called wretched hive of scum and villainy? If I may bluntly ask, what the hell were you doing in academia? Grad school would have flossed its teeth with your bones and spit out the marrow.

Freeman Dyson is indeed on record saying the worst invention of mankind is the PhD system. However, meaningful research will require interaction with interested colleagues to increase the chance of useful work being done. This can take place independent of the so called Ponzi scheme. While there is some truth to that description, it has no bearing on your refusal to engage with research as an undergrad and is totally dilatory. If you hold yourself to such high standards you should be ashamed to use that as an excuse.

<comment><AUTHOR> What are you talking about? There are lots of problems I'd like to work on. I even asked a professor about them. The problem is that none of the problems I wanted to work on were problems the graduate students were working on, so there was zero support for them. They weren't interested in the kinds of problems I was interested in, which had to do with rasterization and raytracing graphical techniques.

Grad school probably would have run me into the ground. It would have done so for _all the wrong reasons_. Again, I'm not interested in a hyper-competitive environment where I am judged on all the wrong things. I'd rather do my own research, and have actually made progress along several avenues I'm quite proud of, but currently haven't crystallized into something I can write a paper about (also due to time constraints).

Stop glorifying long work hours. They aren't productive.

<comment><USER7> Camp in 3rd floor Padelford Library.

If your code compiles, it's proved.

Oreilly titles, Stack Overflow, net et al >> `non-coder friends, chuckles, and puppies'.

Play computer chess against `chess', not human limbic systems.

Original discovery is greater than a paycheck.

Have fun.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> What you learn in college/university depends only on yourself. Tests are just the most convenient, unified way to measure students' progress. There are two ways you can beat tests: one is to train specifically for the test, the other is to actually know the subject.

The first way is easier, but leaves you with little residual knowledge, and you don't even know how to apply that knowledge. The second way is much harder, and it requires work on your part. However, it pays off. Not only you get to pass the test, you're also now armed with useful knowledge.

At my time in university, I've taken both approaches towards various subjects. For the algorithms class, I made a lot of effort to study and understand the subject. Today, I still have it in my head, and can apply it when needed. For differential equations, I just studied for the test. I don't remember anything now, and it's my fault for being lazy. I got an "A" in both subjects, by the way.

What I'm trying to say is, the system is just fine as long as qualified professors are teaching. The problem is lazy students.

</comment><comment><USER9> >Any task that can be reduced to simply following a set of instructions over and over is being done by robots and software.

Agreed. Along similar lines:

Any problem that can be solved with clearly-defined steps can be programmed so that a computer can solve it. Many areas of education, especially math-related ones, involve students learning to mechanically implement set procedures and formulas to solve problems. These mechanical processes can all by definition be solved by a computer, so why pretend that these technologies do not exist? Human computers were once necessary, but they have since been supplanted.

[http://www.learneroo.com/courses/9/nodes/84](http://www.learneroo.com/courses/9/nodes/84)

<comment><USER10> I find it interesting there's one genre of indignant op-eds lamenting the death of creativity in education (including this one--not saying it's bad or formulaic, but it's definitely part of a genre).... and there's another genre lamenting that most college graduates are getting Starbucks barista type jobs that don't require creativity...

Much scarier than the idea that the education system is failing, is the idea that it's succeeding, but succeeding at the increasingly meager role that our society assigns it. As OP points out, there isn't a textbook with the answers for meaningful real-world problems--but there is one that tells you precisely how many pumps of chocolate syrup go in a grande mocha.

HN readers may be _a priori_ more prepared to accept the watered-down version of this idea. "Of course the system needs creative problem solving, that's the most important part of my job!" If this describes you, congratulations, you are one of the priviliged few who has what the economist David Autor calls an "analytic" job. In fact, it's increasingly likely that _the very purpose of your job_ is to ensure that there's no middle ground between you and those textbook-following Starbucks workers[1].

1: [http://decomplecting.org/blog/2013/03/11/confessions-of-a- jo...](http://decomplecting.org/blog/2013/03/11/confessions-of-a-job- destroyer/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> OP, from your description of your relationship with math in school I think you would enjoy Lockhart's Lament (pdf warning): [http://www.maa.org/devlin/LockhartsLament.pdf](http://www.maa.org/devlin/LockhartsLament.pdf)

I had a similar experience to yours and Lockhart's essay felt both inspiring and vindicating when I found it.

</comment><comment><USER12> "Sometimes you have to consider the possibility they are getting the results they want." \--Atrios

</comment><comment><USER13> Holy crap, UW's CS only has 200 graduates per year? For a school of that size, that's tiny. That's close to as many as most Ivy League schools these days, and their undergrad population is usually around 1/5 that of UW. This is especially sad, as CS courses should be pretty easy to scale, especially when you have a group of undergrads who want to teach. Not to mention how hypercompetitiveness drives out diversity, especially of minds, because the more competitive it is, the more of the "correct" hoops you have to jump through. This means that, if you struggle in math but are highly artistic, and could bring a different perspective to your courses, you're effectively shut out.

<comment><USER14> I was an undergrad TA for the intro CSE classes at UW, and I was impressed by the way the courses were run and proud to be a part of it, so it hurts me to read comments like this.

You're right, there is a large pool of undergrads who want to teach, and the department takes full advantage of that. Unlike every other department at UW (that I know of), CSE pays undergrads to teach section (20 student classes that supplement the main lectures). Around 50 to 80 undergrads teach every quarter.

Furthermore, the instructors are _insanely_ dedicated to diversity of minds. They constantly try to incorporate different ways of thinking into their courses to encourage students who might not be the math-y or computer-y types to understand their own potential. As evidence of this: the principal lecturer of the intro classes, Stuart Reges, gives keynote speeches at educational conferences on the success of the UW CSE program in attracting and retaining women in CSE. There is a huge amount of diversity among CSE majors -- double majors in art, business, math, linguistics, etc.

The problem is funding. Even though there is a huge demand for CSE degrees, the department doesn't have enough money to provide them. There's talk now of implementing differential tuition at UW, meaning that majoring in a high- demand field will cost you more than majoring in a low-demand one. This might allow the CSE department to fulfill the demand, but who knows if it's really a good idea.

Sorry for the long winded reply! Didn't mean for this to stretch out. I guess I took your comment a little too personally. :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> This is an excellent critique of large-scale education systems. But what we need is a _better_ large-scale education system - telling everyone to think for themselves all the time is fun for us geeks, but most people (teachers/school administrators) just don't have the time or energy.

(even if you do invent a way to get, for want of a better word, lazy teachers to actually teach real knowledge, it may still be impossible to persuade political systems to actually act on this.)

I must also contrast this experience of university with my own. Cambridge _mocked_ answerable questions and wrote-learning. In addition to (semi- optional) lectures, we learned in weekly one-on-(three to five) sessions with professors and grad students who would grade your problem sheet and then talk you through it (normally while firing off hard questions to probe how well you understood the material.) I had three or four of these sessions per week, excluding time towards the end of the degree where we were working on an independent project and that took up some time slots.

Cambridge (+probably Oxford) do this _in spite_ of the prevailing education climate - they are largely autonomous and no British politician would ever try and impose an education system on them. Everyone else, however, suffers.

</comment><comment><USER16> _The greatest challenge our species has ever faced is the educational system itself._

Almost. John Steinbeck said it best, IMO, "We now face the danger which has been the most destructive to the humans. Success, comfort, and ever increasing leisure. No dynamic people has ever survived these dangers."

</comment><comment><USER17> I had a very similar experience in undergrad. I skipped all sorts of classes and got great grades. I didn't care. I put off studying weeks of material until days before the exam. I'd even have a beer or 2 before exams. It wasn't stimulating. For me, part of that was because I was doing the wrong thing the whole time. I was studying biochem when I should have been learning to code. When I went back for my masters in CS, I actually tried and cared. I think I missed 3 classes the whole time and only because I was too sick to go. Passion for becoming the best programmer I could be drove me to try harder and harder. While I know that school doesn't teach you everything you need to know about software development, I refused to let anything that I could learn slip by.

</comment><comment><USER14> How would you design the CSE admissions process? What would you change? Have you considered the pressure and lack of resources the admissions committee is forced to deal with? What about the students who received 4.0's in all intro math and computer science classes? Why should the department devote precious educational resources to you, rather than to them?

We all wish that CSE was an open major at UW. But you're ignoring a huge amount of complex practical issues when you blame bureaucracy. You offer simplistic criticism but no solutions.

<comment><AUTHOR> The CSE program does not use its funding very well. This is not something I claim, it's something a CSE professor told me when I pointed out various shortcomings, and he agreed with many of them but was not in a position to do anything about it. That said, the CSE program doesn't have enough funding in the first place, either. That's the primary issue.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> It's really hard to not come across as ad hominem when you're disagreeing with OP's take on a personal experience, but I have very little patience for someone who sees or experiences something negative and does nothing more that cry into the wind. Fix the bug or find a work around. Lots of people managed to have great and very useful and applicable college experiences (I did) so maybe it's the OP who is wrong?

</comment><comment><USER19> Useless facts are useless if not not organized (by the learner) into a useful structure. My impression is that a lot of schools have responded to this not by helping the students to organize the facts but by going light on facts instead.

</comment><comment><USER20> I've talked to Erik on a few occasions. And I think he is extremely bright and seeing someone pour over with enthusiasm like him is what motivates me to do better programming wise.

In response here are a few things I think people should consider:

It seems to me that the GPA requirements for computer science are being made pretty strict in response to trying to get the students to take other paths because some colleges don't want to have so many computer science major students. This seems like a problem because these colleges are not really adapting to the situation and are instead just trying to push students to other curriculum by making the grade requirements much stricter for certain majors.

I think math in college is probably much better than it was in middleschool as well. I definitely agree I hated repeating multiplication tables and all that. It just was not fun. And it did not even feel like learning. I think there are many people who are interested in math and will not really know it till they read more about the different subjects that are in it.

Theres no easy answers in education like there is no easy answers in government policy. It's just too much generalization that cannot be quantified. The abstraction in some college classes has gotten me a bit annoyed since the teachers almost do not consider the other students.

One case is where I had a teacher who on the last day of class changed the main assignment of the whole class to be more clearly worded in a really bad way. He failed to provide adequate time for students mainly.

On the last day of class he decided that students writing a group assignment should only hand in 1 group assignment (with no instruction about how one person can remove a copy of the assignment turned in through blackboard). When a group of 4 people has to coordinate anything in less than a single day it's an idiots game.

My main compliant- This could have been much easier if he just graded the latest turned in papers. Or he graded the earliest ones. It wouldn't have mattered that much to some, but he really threw a bunch of his students under the bus for a grading policy that was rather unreasonable. Instead he decided to deduct 10% off that grade because of some rule he made up in the last day of a 6 week class that was unfair because he did not provide adequate instruction.

Simple Game Theory will tell you something will go wrong in such a small time frame with no information. Unfortunately, my college was silly enough to not want to fix this huge blunder an professor made. In my honest opinion even the basics of game theory should be taught to teachers and people looking to go into politics. People need to understand there is a reasoning policy behind different actions. Even if it's a non-mathematical introduction to game-theory for the most part. People need to realize there are smarter ways of getting people motivated to do things which may be better than what they are thinking.

</comment><comment><USER21> It's about the environment and the people that surround you. It's not all about learning. It never was.

</comment><comment><USER22> The most important thing I learned in college was how to learn things on my own.

</comment><comment><USER23> Does the fact the his avatar is fluttershy kind of ruin his credibility to anyone else?

<comment><USER24> The fact that you know its name ruins _your_ credibility.

<comment><USER25> He got it wrong, that is an OC to my knowledge. None of the major main cast are male ponies, and that isn't one of the side characters I know of. So consider his credibility untarnished.

~credibility is for curmudgeons.

<comment><USER26> I can confirm that his avatar is an original character. I don't recognize it, having watched most of the show, and it's not on [http://mlp.wikia.com/wiki/List_of_ponies/Pegasus_ponies](http://mlp.wikia.com/wiki/List_of_ponies/Pegasus_ponies).</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Why everything should have a URL - <AUTHOR> http://ben.balter.com/2015/11/12/why-urls/ <comment><AUTHOR> "Whether you realize it or not, every major online system we use today creates unique URLs for each distinct idea."</comment>


The Modern Day Sorcerer - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/on-coding/c3e85cd57cb4

<comment><USER2>
        ... we conjure the spirits of the computer with our spells.

        A computational process is indeed much like a sorcerer's idea
        of a spirit. It cannot be seen or touched. It is not composed
        of matter at all. However, it is very real. It can perform
        intellectual work. It can answer questions. It can affect the
        world by disbursing money at a bank or by controlling a robot
        arm in a factory. The programs we use to conjure processes are
        like a sorcerer's spells. They are carefully composed from
        symbolic expressions in arcane and esoteric programming languages
        that prescribe the tasks we want our processes to perform.

        A computational process, in a correctly working computer, executes
        programs precisely and accurately. Thus, like the sorcerer's
        apprentice, novice programmers must learn to understand and to
        anticipate the consequences of their conjuring. Even small errors
        (usually called bugs or glitches) in programs can have complex and
        unanticipated consequences.

SICP, Chapter 1, lifted from the on-line version:

[http://mitpress.mit.edu/sicp/full-text/book/book- Z-H-9.html](http://mitpress.mit.edu/sicp/full-text/book/book-Z-H-9.html)</comment>


Wireless Firmware Update in Action on PineTime Smart Watch (NRF52) - <AUTHOR> https://lupyuen.github.io/pinetime-rust-mynewt/articles/dfutest <comment><AUTHOR> Observe step-by-step the Wireless Firmware Update running on PineTime Smart Watch (nRF52) with MCUBoot Bootloader, NimBLE Bluetooth LE Stack and Apache Mynewt...

[https://lupyuen.github.io/pinetime-rust- mynewt/articles/dfut...](https://lupyuen.github.io/pinetime-rust- mynewt/articles/dfutest)</comment>


Xero ditches HTML5 in favor of native iOS and Android apps - <AUTHOR> http://thenextweb.com/dd/2013/03/18/accounting-software-startup-xero-ditches-html5-in-favor-of-native-ios-and-android-apps/ <comment><USER2> That's been the case all along that HTML5/CSS/Javascript is much harder to develop for when targeting mobile devices. You have to build for an array of screen sizes and your assets need to work in the dizzying amount of screen DPIs.

However, the freedom you gain in designing a common UI across all mobile devices you will now lose with having to build discreet applications for each platform.

iOS applications have a really high bar for slick UI and subtle animations. (If they are going to be featured and successful.)

Android applications also have a really high bar for system wide integration. Plus, UI that works on iOS will most likely need to be rethought on Android, though not always.

Then for Windows 8/WP8 devices you're in for a world of hurt. The UI and strict guidelines are so different from anything common in iOS & Android that to include them will require what could likely result in an entire different design team.

<comment><USER3> Creating a common UI across all mobile platforms is a big challenge as well and you mention the main points in your post. Your "one-size-fits-all" UI will look a little alien on every platform because its made to fit all of them at the same time.

Personally id use Xamarins excellent C# tools to build the core of the app multiplatform and then utilize the native APIs to build platform specific UIs. I dont think this approach is alot more/less work than making your webApp work with all platforms and resolutions, but in the end you have a native experience on all of them.

<comment><USER4> Yes, I did bash Miguel's work a few times, given his inclination to bring Microsoft based technologies to the UNIX world.

But I have to acknowledge that he has made a very good work with Mono and although I prefer to use C++ on my hobby Android projects, Xamarin's tools are a great approach for many developers.

<comment><USER3> Agree, while MONO is controversial i believe that in the end its a good thing. I believe its more Microsofts fault for not making the C# platform open, they would have probably squashed Java by now.

That aside, mostly i care about the best tool for the job and in this case thats my choice.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Not just for mobile, but building a UI in html has always struck me as a hack. Mainly because the built-in components (dialogs, menus, buttons, etc) are lacking. And some components (tabs, overlays, etc) are missing altogether.

I think most front-end devs are so used to it now, that it doesn't seem bizarre to build tabs with a list element, float the items to the left, add a clearing div below the list, etc.

<comment><USER6> It _is_ a hack. There is a reason why we have "T" and not "I" in HTML.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> I was not surprised to see the word "Sencha" in this article, but I _was_ surprised to read it took them 12 months to develop the app. Where I work we actually replaced two in-development native apps with one cross platform Sencha app which only took about 4 months to develop. This was with only two developers, and like with most frameworks the first 80% went extremely fast but we ended up fighting against it for the last 20%. The performance, especially on older Androids, was unacceptable.

But instead of doing another complete 180 we decided to instead go with a hybrid approach like LinkedIn did - use native when performance is key, and HTML5 everywhere else. We just re-launched the app using all custom html5/js/css and native ui elements and animations where necessary and it was a complete success. Not only does the app perform really well on even very old Android phones, but it absolutely flies on newer devices. The best part, especially when compared to using Sencha, is that all of our code which was written in angular.js will be used on the web app and native desktop apps. We are very close to having the vast majority of our code being shared between every major platform our users may use.

I love when articles like these get popular because it scares people away from using HTML5 in any way and gives us a clear advantage. Keep fueling the FUD, we'll keep our productivity advantage :)

<comment><USER8> Would be great if you can share more details how you went about the hybrid html5 - native app route.

For instance, did you scrap all the work you put in with Sencha and start from scratch? And how did you go about combining native elements and html/js/css, and how did angular js tie into this?

<comment><USER7> Yes, we did scrap the Sencha app and start from scratch. Because Sencha Touch is really only designed for mobile devices with touch interfaces, you can't really re-use the code for web apps, so there wasn't much to salvage. We also were not very comfortable with Ext to begin with.

For JS frameworks we decided between Backbone.js, Angular.js, and Can.js (because we had previously used JavascriptMVC on our web app). We fell in love with angular.js and went that route.

The main reason to use native UI components is to allow smooth scrolling on older Android devices which don't support fixed elements like top and bottom nav bars very well. Both on iOS and Android the top navigation bar and bottom tab bars are done in native code as well as the Facebook-style drawers that reveal other sections of the app. In all, we use three Phonegap enabled webViews and three major native UI components (top bar, bottom bar, and a custom "quick add" control). We pass messages back and forth from the native app to the javascript app via phonegap's native bridge, like when a user taps a native button or the javascript app changes tabs and needs to inform the native app.

We used grunt.js to help manage all our development and build workflows. It concatenates our files for us, creates separate builds for iOS and Android (and other platforms now, too), compiles and minifies our CSS, etc. It also runs our test suite which is another big advantage to using HTML5/JS instead of native. Most of our code has test coverage and it's very easy to automate using grunt.js and testacular.js.

If you're interested you can check out the app on the Play and iTunes App stores; it's called Kona Mobile (it's the mobile app for our main offering, <http://kona.com>).

<comment><USER8> Thanks for the explanation! Makes a lot of sense.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Of course web apps aren't ever going to be as fast as a native application (especially on iOS because Apple deliberately hampers performance for web apps) but they're by no means a hopeless cause. A HTML5 web app might take a little while longer to develop, but it'll work out cheaper than building an iOS application. LinkedIn to this day remain the perfect example of how to build a straight-up HTML5 mobile app that performs beautifully.

<comment><USER10> How is Apple deliberately hampering performance for web apps? What evidence is there for this?

<comment><USER11> There is some evidence for sure. For example, iPad Safari doesn't allow full- screen mode, nor implements fullscreen API as per standards. Another browser on the iPad (Dolphin) supports it interestingly.

Support for ordinary CSS properties like z-index, position:fixed and iframe is pathetic. Some of the things that I can recall now. UIWebView takes it to another level of pain altogether.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> In the comments of the article a commenter points out that they worked mor than 24 months in total on the HTML5 web app version and says "That was one expensive mistake".

I would say, that it was actually a great strategy. When they started, the HTML version was more than enough. They saved lots of time, effort and resources during these two years while building their product. Now their mobile user base is big enough to justify dedicated teams for all platforms - and that's great for them.

But it doesn't say anything about HTML5 as a viable platform for building apps. If you are a team of 3, where 0 have any mobile development experience, but years of web experience, it surely is the way to go. And often, it will even stay this years later.

<comment><USER12> Actually, isn't there a name for technologies you use as a stepping stone for some time?

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> Storm, meet teacup.

Also, "accounting startup"? Xero is a publicly listed company.

<comment><USER14> The HN-centric redefinition of "startup" relying mostly on rate of growth is taking hold it seems.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> what web-apps offer me, as a user, is peace of mind in terms of security - something i dont get with native apps that ask for broad, overreaching permissions. there are many many native apps i refuse to install simply based on those grounds.

if facebook ditches their mobile site, that will be the end of facebook on my phone for me.

<comment><AUTHOR> I don't make a habit of persuading people to change their preferences, but a couple of questions:

1\. Don't web apps need cookies enabled in your browser, so technically they can still track your browsing history and behavior, at least to some extent? How is that different from your privacy concerns with native apps?

2\. How do you think about installing applications on your desktop/laptop computer then, since doing so grants them certain permissions, and not doing so prevents you from doing certain things?

3\. More of a comment, than a question. I don't think Facebook will ever ditch their mobile site. Mobile sites are a replacement of the "desktop" site instead of the native app. It's just accessing Facebook via the browser but with a mobile-friendly UI.

<comment><USER15> 1\. there's a vast difference between a third party simply tracking which sites i visit vs an app having access to my GPS location, address books, call history, etc.., whenever it pleases. with a web browser, i can "share my location" as i desire...if i want to find nearby restaurants on yelp's mobile site, i'll share my location once. with an app you just say "yes, you have permission to read my gps", you have no control of when or how often it does this.

2\. on my desktop, there's no guarantee that any specific info will be in the same place. for example i use thunderbird portable in an encrypted container for my email and contacts. on a phone, your contacts are pretty much in the same place and every app knows how to get to them, there's much less variance.

3\. you may have a point, but without a good mobile site, they can coerce people to use the app by providing a shitty experience in the browser, cause an app can get to a lot more of your juicy data which they crave.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Web apps suck. It's like going back to 1980's lowest common denominator level of functionality.[1] I'd rather see something like PNACL offer easy distribution of native apps over the internet, but we'll probably just see more web apps (<http://www.dreamsongs.com/Files/worse-is-worse.pdf>).

[1] Honestly, that's an insult to the 1980's. Word Perfect 5.x was pretty damn functional, lack of GUI aside.

<comment><USER17> Saying "$X sucks" sucks. Even when it's accurate, it conveys little to no actual information.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> From their blog <http://blog.xero.com/2013/03/making-mobile-work/>

_Even with frameworks as amazing as Sencha Touch, we've found the ability to iterate as fast as we would like has become harder as our application has become more complex. The choice to go with HTML5 was very much a choice based on us – how do we use the skills we already have to build a mobile application? Unfortunately as the application grew we needed to hire to fill out the team, and we were never able to hire fast enough to fill those roles. Ironically those skills were equally as critical for the 'desktop' version of Xero – we were cannibalizing our own team and slowing everything down._

With Xero, it seems more like a case of not being able to find great HTML5 developers and less an indictment of HTML5. This is good news for me.

</comment><comment> SG- I see this a lot where the person/people making the decisions decide they can make a product that's almost as good but for less resources/money because they will be able to use a lot of existing 'web' code and be able to use existing web devs or simply hire another one.

The reality like this article suggests is it will take a long time to get something that works almost right but isn't right, even if somehow the performance doesn't matter going forward with much faster devices. It gets pretty hard to try and get a webapp to work with native parts of the OS and features that your users might want or expect.</comment>


The Anthropodermic Book Project analyzes books rumored to be bound in human skin - <AUTHOR> http://nautil.us/blog/the-true-story-of-medical-books-bound-in-human-skin <comment><USER2> The Wikipedia article on the phenomenon of books bound in human skin has some fascinating tidbits to add as well: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anthropodermic_bibliopegy](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anthropodermic_bibliopegy)

</comment><comment><USER3> If you're ever in Philadelphia, don't miss out on the Mütter Museum. It's an experience you won't forget.

<comment><USER4> Mildly scarring but very interesting in a morbid way.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> 16 of 30 is more than I expected. Those must have been interesting discussions with the hired bookbinders...

</comment><comment><USER6> Am I the only one who is slightly disappointed that none of the books appear to be tomes of arcane and forbidden knowledge?

Seriously, the idea of using human skin to bind a book seem very morbid, and using it for something as mundane as a medical textbook seems ... really strange.

<comment><USER7> Medical science was arcane and forbidden once.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Well, for those wondering what tanned human skin looks and feels like, I guess it's pretty much identical to sheepskin.

</comment><comment><USER9> Worrying anti-recycling rhetoric.</comment>


Materialism: a system that eats us from the inside out - <AUTHOR> http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2013/dec/09/materialism-system-eats-us-from-inside-out?CMP=fb_gu

<comment><USER2> I would love an apartment in a nice part of town with a decent view, a guest bedroom and maybe a den/home office. Does this make me materialistic? Because compared to housing, everything else is really inexpensive.

<comment><USER3> Believe it or not, becoming "homeless" and couchsurfing friend's flats for some time( _) can be a way to retake some freedom in your life. Not having a key anymore in my pockets really felt like something new after having my own place for close to seven years.

_ "Some time" depending on your own needs and life rythmn, of course.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I agree with much that the article says. However, it seems awfully subjective ... more like one person's rant on their own private blog than a news article.

<comment><USER5> And more than that, the extreme nature of the rant seems like sour grapes or jealousy to me.

Decadence, by definition, involves a decline but the author takes it to such a melodramatic level that a kid can not enjoy wealth without being completely broken inside.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Btw., am I the only one to think it rather knavish that the word "materialism" which originally signified a school of thought emphasizing the physicality of the world and all things in it (think Democritus, Indian Lokayatics, de la Mettrie, Feuerbach) came to be used in the sense of "pursuit of property"?</comment>