Show HN: How I turned an old book into a (barely) profitable website - <AUTHOR> http://www.howacarworks.com/about <comment><USER2> "I can only imagine that going up as Google starts to recognise this as quality content and not just content farm rubbish."

Uh, no. It will go up as a function of traffic volume, so as your site starts to rank higher organically you'll see more revenue but the amount paid isn't a function of the 'quality' of the web site, its a function of what people bid to be there and what they pay per click.

Note that if it goes up really suddenly your likely as not to have your AdSense account suspended/cancelled, which after a lengthy review process they _may_ re-instate but Google may not (according to web reports) ever replaced the ad-revenue you lost while you were in this process.

That said, it is _great_ you are making this information available again. If such efforts create a modest return then perhaps the archivists job is once again secure.

<comment><USER3> I think you're misinterpreting what the OP means when he says that quote.

The way I read it, the OP was not saying that his AdSense payments would increase because he got higher bids for the ads due to higher quality content, but rather that as Google started to recognize that it was quality content, the PageRank of his site would go up, display it more prominently and generating more views and uniques.

I could be mistaken, but that interpretation seems to make a fair amount of logical sense.

<comment><USER4> PageRank is based on links, not on content. His PageRank will only go up if he gets more inbound links to the site.

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

<comment><USER5> I think the point was that Google spend a lot of effort to identify quality content vs. link farms, auto-generated content and low quality adsense- optimized content.

<comment><USER4> yes, but PageRank is a specific term with a specific meaning. It is a rank based on the number and quality of links to your site.

To say that PageRank will increase because the content is good quality is wrong, and I was just pointing that out.

What he meant to say was "... the search engine rankings of his site would go up..."

<comment><USER3> You're right, I misspoke when I said PageRank. The gist was the some though: higher quality content -> better search rankings (either through links due to higher quality content or google's non-PageRank algorithms).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Questions:

Why are there comments on the page?

How difficult would it be to compile it into an ebook and make it available on kindle/itunes/wherever else? Seems like you'd only need to make a couple of sales for it to compete with the adsense income. Maybe have it so if the visitor has read 3 or more consecutive pages it shows up with an ebook splash page, "advert free and easy to read blah blah blah"

<comment><AUTHOR> I put in the comments because I thought it'd be an easy way of adding some content for free as people add to the information already there, and also to let people moan about errors so that I can then go in and fix them. Comments are a fairly low-maintenance feedback system, especially with Disqus dealing with the spam filtering for me.

An eBook is a great idea. I just worry that the information is slightly out of date for people to actually pay for it. I know virtually nothing about ebook formats so this would be quite a learning curve for me. I'll bear it in mind though. I could realistically see 200 x $5 sales per year, which isn't to be sneezed at.

<comment><USER7> Yeah but comments will add load time and clutter to the page. Also I'll bet if this picks up any steam, the comments will devolve quickly without technically being spam.

<comment><USER8> Disqus loads in after page load, so it shouldn't add load time to the content. Also keep in mind that comments add SEO (and can be extremely valuable for this reason alone).

Plus I don't think it's such a bad idea from a reader's perspective. Seems like the worse case scenario is that no one uses it, and the best case scenario people are able to contribute to improvements.

<comment><USER9> If the comments load in after the page loads, crawlers are unlikely to see them, so you're not getting much SEO benefit.

Worst case is off-topic comments that take time to remove, significantly worse than nobody using it.

<comment><USER8> They actually have a deal with google where all of their comments are directly indexed and attributed to the sites (likely similar to canonical references).

It used to be a problem a couple years ago, and sites would then use the API to load in comments and include them server-side. Obviously this wasn't ideal, but it's a solved problem now.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> Just a thought: I might consider a different monetization strategy than AdSense. The ads really look awful and make the site seem significantly less 'quality' than it actually is.

I might experiment with some sort of freemium model; maybe for free you could get the first half of sections for every chapter and then you can pay ~$5 to get access to everything.

Or, as someone above mentioned, compile it into an ebook and have that advertised on the site for ~$10, but make the entire website free.

<comment><AUTHOR> You are right, the ads look absolutely shit - I could perhaps go with Buysellads when traffic picks up.

Interesting idea - I'm a huge admirer of things that follow that model - Michael Hartl's Rails Tutorial and Avdi Grimm's Object's On Rails.

I am hoping that people fixing cars are more transactional (read likely to click an ad) than people looking for coding tutorials. I might leave it as ads for six months and then try six months of freemium access and compare the two.

<comment><USER3> I like the idea of A/B testing the ad v. freemium models, but make sure to take into account the growth in traffic that will happen in the first 6 months etc.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> I'd welcome any suggestions on where to go next - it's a bit of a fire-and- forget side project, but I'd still like to get it as good as possible before I leave it to stew for 2013.

<comment><USER10> I'd load it up with all the "semantic web" style things I could find. <http://schema.org> type of stuff.

You could also see if it would be good as a source for citations in the relevant wikipedia articles, but that's a whole project in itself probably.

<comment><AUTHOR> I had a look at the Schema stuff - I actually use it on another site of mine ( <http://thebigeat.com> ) for listings of takeaways, but it has made no difference SEO-wise and it tends to make my markup look like shit. But nevermind A/B testing, I am doing A-Z testing here - throw everything and see what sticks.

I'm hesitant to go adding my site as a citation - it's a good idea but it just seems a bit black-hat for me. Hopefully it's something that might happen organically though.

<comment><USER10> Marching in and adding links to your site to WP is certainly a bad idea, as well as being plain ethically wrong. I was thinking more of turning up to the talk page for the car article and just offering them the content, but even that probably contravenes wiki-core directive #5749327.

I mentioned it because your site seems like a genuinely good source that WP would be happy to use, making it a win-win. Don't try and use wikipedia for pagerank boys and girls.

<comment><USER11> I've always had the impression that actually being linked from wikipedia isn't necessarily a good thing SEO wise. That is I think that a long time ago google decided to penalise sites being linked from major wiki's to stop them being spammed to death.

But I'm basing that only rumour and supposition so certainly don't take it as truth.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I would

1) Make the pages editable by trusted individuals but with your validation before any change goes live. Allow the authors to be credited (with links to their blogs, pages etc etc).

2) Why stop at cars? Find a domain "howdoesa???work" and subdir it off that - offer written credit to anybody who wants to add any large-ish content.

3) Put in some clever links to amazon etc so that if someone wants to buy a new car battery you might be able to nail som e affliate fees. Especially if they are on your page, have identified that they need a battery - why go back to the search bar when you have "click here for battery offers". I am suggesting keeping it "neat" though. Please don't start adding horrid looking ads disguised as CTA buttons.

4) Cut your mate into a %age so he's a good posterboy for digitising other content.

<comment><USER5> > Make the pages editable by trusted individuals

Way too much work

> Why stop at cars?

You'd need some content to begin with. He was lucky to have a friend who gave him permission to use the book. Other material might not be so easy to get.

> Put in some clever links to amazon etc

Great idea. Done tastefully, it would not be intrusive like an ad, but a useful tool for the reader who would need this kind of book.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> I'm surprised no-one has mentioned how badly in need of proofing this content is. I just looked through a handful of sections but the ones I saw were littered with missing words, out-of-place headings, and poorly-cropped illustrations. It seems like great content, and the idea of charging for it has merit, but you're not going to be able to do so without proofing the content; it doesn't seem to me that even a cursory scan-through of all the pages has been done.

</comment><comment><USER14> I've always wanted to see the entire library of haynes manuals put online or even in an ipad/iphone app. This looks a bit like a proof of concept to it. Perhaps the OP could approach Haynes pitching the idea and showing this as an example?

<comment><USER10> _> approach Haynes pitching the idea and showing this as an example?_

This is the correct answer. At least try and get a friend to do it, and take a cut.

The idea of being able to flick through all the haynes manuals on an ipad is brilliant. And I don't even like cars.

<comment><USER15> Question to motorheads:

Would you use a shop manual exclusively on an ( _your_ ) ipad?

Or would you prefer to have a paper copy, so that you don't get your ipad greasy and scratched while you're working on a car?

Question to everyone: when are we going to have devices that are cheap and rugged enough that my first question doesn't matter?

Edit: If that ever happens, they won't be sold by Apple, the company that made unboxing a fetish.

<comment><USER16> No. I need a paper manual. I can write notes on it _with grease_ , and not care about. It doesn't get scratched, need updates, or charging. Plus I can throw it in the trunk of my car and not worry about it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> This may have been a lucky break. Google keyword tool suggests that "how a car works" is 1) low competition 2) 135,000 global 3) 60,500 local. This is an amazing and rare find, most keywords like this are already well picked over by niche site creators - also from the looks of it you were the first registrant in 2011.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yeah, I felt lucky getting the domain. But then I also loved FixingACar.com as well.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> This is nifty, and I feel like this could be pushed a lot further. Epub output is an obvious next step, and I'd imagine a better table of contents view would make the web version more inviting. As for generating money, maybe hotlink products to an Amazon/etc affiliate link so when a user reads the page about "Replacing engine mountings", you can suggest sites that sell engine mountings.

I'm curious about the intermediate "Horrible HTML" stage. Did it retain the book layout at the stage? The scanned book images look much more appealing than the blog-style version (in my opinion). Even though the HTML was horrible, did it still display properly in a modern browser? I wonder if you could write a script to clean up and modernize the HTML while still retaining the nice layout, rather than reformatting into a blog and dumping images to the sidebar.

It would be interesting to see how much the process can be streamlined so you can convert books en masse. I assume there are plenty of books of this style with really good content that would be useful to convert in this manner.

<comment><AUTHOR> Sadly the HTML rendering was fairly dreadful but it did at least have the images in the correct order. It retained no placement, and each page is very different in layout. My early thought was to have perhaps 4 layouts which I could manually assign each page to. (eg. large central image, 2-large images, etc.)

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> The obvious next step to me would be for you to repeat this process with another out of print book now that you've established a market and proven its viability.

Offer the copyright holder some share of the profit and scale like mad.

Great stuff!

<comment><AUTHOR> That was my initial thought but I have to see how the revenue scales. At the moment it's only profitable because my labour has had zero cost.

It might scale quite nicely though - I think finding the right material is probably key.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> I'd make more of a feature of the awesome cut away drawings - I always loved them as a kid in Usborne books. Did your friend do the drawings?

<comment><AUTHOR> I'm not sure on the illustrations - I'd have to ask. He wrote some of the content, but also ran the company that owned the copyright on the work. They are wonderful and I have to emphasise them some more.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> It's a lovely idea, but from a design point of view, the site looks really quite unpleasant: the green pastel background, ugly font choices, an uninviting table of links as the home page, and inlining the figures far too small to be useful.

I would recommend at least following some of the design choices of the original book, so the difference between text and figures is not so jarring. But better to extract drawings out of the scans and relabel using a consistent set of fonts, while creating a more interesting and captivating layout. It would be awesome to see this book brought to life by a more modern design with all the benefits of hyperlinking (both internal and external, e.g. wikipedia).

It's a real shame the presentation is so poor, as the information is actually really useful and interesting. A great start anyway.

</comment><comment><USER22> this is great, actual useful content with great illustrations. It's refreshing to see something with some practical use.

Growing up I remember being obsessed with this: DK The Way Things Work. it was an amazing mac CD ROM with illustrations of everyday things broken down, with moving parts and all...

Probably one of the reason i became an engineer.

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

[http://www.amazon.com/Things-Work-CD-ROM- Version-1-0-mac/dp/...](http://www.amazon.com/Things-Work-CD-ROM- Version-1-0-mac/dp/0789400901)

Horrible Youtube video ( best i could find... ) <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f4MIVU5i_xE>

Cannot recommend it enough for kids. They don't make em like they used to :D

<comment><USER23> The Way Things Work (the book) is amazing; the new version also includes chapters on computers and electronics. Not sure about that dated "multimedia experience," but the book itself definitely holds up fantastically well.

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> Thanks for showing us. While my father can fix / build nearly anything, I overspecialized in computers and electronics, so I know almost nothing about cars. I've been looking for a way to remedy this and your site looks perfect.

<comment><AUTHOR> Buy a wreck and take it to pieces and try to understand it. Then just sell it for scrap and recoup most of your money. You could even sell the parts individually and make some profit. Then try a project car - I'm surprised more hackers aren't into cars really. Sadly I'm in an apartment at the moment without the space.

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> Looks like your site is already number 3 on my google search for "how a car works".

The homepage is a bit boring. You have a lot of pretty pictures, you should some how use them on your homepage. Perhaps include a relevant picture with every chapter heading.

And for good measure, include all the social share buttons junk. Google+, FB, Twitter, etc... Especially for if you get popular on HN. You'll want those sharing karmas...

I would also drop another adsense text box into the side nav. Perhaps remove the one at the bottom of the page.

<comment><USER7> > And for good measure, include all the social share buttons junk. Google+, > FB, Twitter, etc... Especially for if you get popular on HN. You'll want > those sharing karmas

Ugh, no, for crap's sake, don't do this. People will share things if they want to.

[http://www.poynter.org/latest-news/media-lab/social- media/14...](http://www.poynter.org/latest-news/media-lab/social- media/149922/limited-use-of-sharing-buttons-shows-desire-to-share-links- privately/)

[http://www.business2community.com/social-media/a-hot- button-...](http://www.business2community.com/social-media/a-hot-button-issue- do-social-sharing-buttons-work-0231001)

[http://www.searchenginejournal.com/too-many-social-media- sha...](http://www.searchenginejournal.com/too-many-social-media-sharing- buttons-make-your-site-less-social/48240/)

etc.

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> Questions:

1) How much time did it take after the scanning to get the site and content online? 2) Do you think you could automate the process and get a 2nd book done in a faster way?

<comment><AUTHOR> After the scanning I took about 2 days to OCR everything. That was fairly mindnumbing.

Then it was a case of coding up a fairly simple Rails app and parsing that content - another two days. Some thinking time in the middle - I'd say a week. Spread over a year(!)

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> And no mention of using Twitter Bootstrap?

I like how the site looks/works, you did an awesome job, but some credit in the "how I ..." should go to the Bootstrap team.

<comment><AUTHOR> You're right - and also credit should go to the excellent <http://bootswatch.com/> which is where I got the themed Bootstrap from. I'm a lover of Bootstrap but I hope it doesn't define the site.

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> Those images on the right side of each page are great; They could be used to good effect to make the site more appealing visually as well as unique, if you displayed one or more of them in full size interleaved with the text: maybe one on top of each page; and one on the sidebar. They may also help with SEO (use alt-image tags), and ad Click-thru-rates, if placed close to or next to the ads.

</comment><comment><USER29> The biggest beef I have is that the site doesn't tell you how a car works. I clicked on "Transmission" hoping to see how an automatic transmission works, but the TOC only had information on checking, filling, and adjusting various things. Perhaps the fixingacar.com domain would be more appropriate for this content?

</comment><comment><USER30> Scope creep suggestion: It may be cheesy but I believe a rotating little GIF animation on the home page/header of how a small part of a car works would draw in people. As it is now, it is static.

Think more <http://www.brainpop.com>, less Encyclopedia Brittanica

</comment><comment><USER31> I, for one, would be interested in seeing that nokogiri script that turns ugly HTML into markdown... although I'd totally understand if you want to keep it close as a competitive advantage. ;-) I regularly have to deal with the ugly HTML that various apps' "Export" features disgorge.

<comment><AUTHOR> It's so hacky that it's almost certainly a competitive disadvantage.

Converting to markdown is a bit of an overstatement - it only handles the limited content that I encountered in this book.

\- H1 heading -> ##

\- Strip P tags and add newlines

\- Replace 'See SHEET \d+' with [[Article:\d]]

</comment></comment><comment><USER32> You inspired me! This weekend I did my own book to website conversion: <http://recipesforseafood.com/>

I'll keep you posted as to what $$$ it generates (if any)...

Cheers,

Marcus

</comment><comment><USER33> This is really fascinating. Great article. I think fiddling with paper->web (or something else digital) and improving that workflow sounds like fun.

</comment><comment><USER34> what did/do you count as your expenses? surely you do not pay 60$/month for hosting. did you add the work you had to do?

<comment><AUTHOR> Hosting is on a $20/month Linode along with a bunch of other projects/sites/bits of code fluff. The actual bandwidth used by this site will be virtually nothing I imagine. I haven't valued my time at all. In that respect it is already earning me around $40 a month - a meal out.

<comment><USER35> Are you paying any money to the original author?

<comment><AUTHOR> He's not bothered - it's an experiment for both of us. If it works out then I'll see him right, but there's no point in hashing out some lengthy agreement if it doesn't bring in the bucks.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> this is awesome - I'm curious though - aren't you theoretically violating the copyright of the actual author?

<comment> shawn-butler This is essentially a derivative work. And the blog post specifically states he had the permission of the holder who was a family friend.

Now having the permission not in writing even (especially?) of friends and family is generally not a good idea, but not exactly the end of the world either.

</comment></comment><comment><USER37> Cool experiment. I thought about doing something like this myself. Maybe a remix of classic books under the public domain to create a new work with a contemporary message. Maybe then publish it online and monetize it via Adsense (although I'm not a big fan of that business model).

Instead, I decided to share a personal finance hack I developed called the No Budget Budget: <https://leanpub.com/nobudgetbudget/> and sell it as an affordable ebook.

Again, the monetization isn't great, but it means more people can read it and hopefully benefit from it.

The point is ideas are everywhere. I like pursuing ideas that will have the greatest positive impact. Then, like the legendary NFL coach Bill Walsh used to say, "the score takes care of itself".

<comment><USER19> Your link doesn't work for me.

<comment><USER37> Fixed. Thanks for the heads up.</comment></comment></comment>


Researchers find IQ scores dropping since the 1970s - <AUTHOR> https://medicalxpress.com/news/2018-06-iq-scores-1970s.amp <comment><USER4> I can't tell if it's because I'm just getting older or because I'm surrounded by distractions (both electronic and caused by this open office nightmare trend), but my ability to _concentrate_ seems to go down every year. When I was in my 20's, I could focus on a math problem for hours at a time. Now, I need to take a break and look at something else every 10 minutes. Is the world changing to make it harder to accumulate knowledge and improve intelligence?

<comment><USER5> Odd question, but do you read as much literature as when you were young? There seems to be a fairly strong correlation between reading literature/fiction and concentration in studies (and no, I don't have the sources on hand, I heard mention of them on YouTube, of all places.. Boo, I know. Improper citation, but what are you gonna do. Sometimes I listen to lectures when I work). I, personally, had gotten into the habit of reading technical papers all of the time and foregoing literature and fiction on the basis of "well, what good is that doing me?!" and had noticed that my focus had been slipping. Now, this could be anecdotal or I could have just needed the down time but, I started reading some scifi (is that what Hitchhiker's Guide and John Dies is?) again and my concentration seems to have gotten slowly better.... could also just be time away from the screen. Though I do read on a Kindle Paperwhite, so who knows.

<comment><USER6> I'm glad I found someone who mentioned this as I was going to. I've spent the first month and a half of my summer reading books (4 down, which is more than I've read in the past decade and a half combined) and I definitely feel as though it has helped me focus more. I've been more disciplined about really "reading aloud" the words in my head as opposed to when I was younger I kinda just skimmed and didn't really take in what I was saying.

Edit: should say outside of assigned readings for school work. Which tend to lean technical and are never fully read from cover to cover.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> This is an interesting study.

It is worth noting that the recent meta-analysis ([https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/24979188](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/24979188)) showed no such effect across a wide variety of scales and countries.

However, the really interesting question here (which is possible to answer because of the size and sampling of the Norwegian data) is what is happening in Norway, for this effect to be occurring in what appears like a consistent fashion?

In other words, we should in general rely on meta-analyses rather than individual studies when looking at results like these.

<comment><USER8> Good comment!

The paper you link also specifically mentions the results from Scandinavia:

> Our study did not find evidence for the plateauing or decline of the Flynn > effect in the United States, as has been documented in Norway (Sundet et > al., 2004) and Denmark (Teasdale & Owen, 2008; Teasdale & Owen, 2005), > respectively. Table 5.6 in the WAIS-IV manual (Wechsler, 2008) summarizes an > excellent planned comparison of the WAIS-III (standardized in 1995) and the > WAIS-IV (standardized in 2005) scores administered in counterbalanced order > to 240 examinees. This table shows results similar to our meta-analysis, > with average WAIS-III scores about 3 points higher than WAIS-IV scores. In > addition, the effect was similar across age and ability level cohorts. To > the extent that the United States and Scandinavia differ on at least the > variables proposed to be related to the plateauing of scores in Scandinavia > (e.g., family life factors [Sundet et al., 2004] and educational priorities > [Teasdale & Owen, 2008; Teasdale & Owen, 2005]), we might anticipate the > difference in IQ score patterns noted. For example, Scandinavia's parental > leave and subsidized childcare might be indices of optimal > socioenvironmental conditions and are generous relative to the United > States.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> The article:

"The researchers also found some differences between family groups, suggesting that some of the decline might be due to environmental factors. But they also suggest that lifestyle changes could account for some of the decline, as well, such as changes in the education system and children reading less and playing video games more. Sadly, other researchers have found similar results."

The paper:

"we show that the observed Flynn effect, its turning point, and subsequent decline can all be fully recovered from within-family variation. The analysis controls for all factors shared by siblings and finds no evidence for prominent causal hypotheses of the decline implicating genes and environmental factors that vary between, but not within, families."

Is this bad reporting or am I mis-understanding the conclusion of the authors?

EDIT: I think I was misunderstanding the conclusion of the authors. They believe they have shown that environmental factors are the main cause (from skimming the full paper's discussion).

<comment><USER10> Sounds like an oblique way to say the upbringing is the problem.

<comment><USER11> Sounds like an oblique way to say that IQ tests are aimed at people brought up by the 1960's educational system.

<comment><USER12> Bullshit, the tests are all pattern recognition and specifically avoid anything that must be taught.

<comment><USER13> A persons education isn't just about learning facts. It's also about learning approaches to thinking and problem solving.

A crude example would be these days people are less reliant on memorising information as they were 30 years ago because search engines enable the individual to find answers quickly. So you adapt your approach to a particular subject to learn how to search for answers instead of how to memorize those answers.

As an aside, since we are heading at pace to a future where our memory is augmented by the internet; if for the internet offline for whatever reason humanity could be thrown into the dark ages again with vasts sums of knowledge lost.

<comment><USER14> Then standardized tests came along and all kids learn is how to pass these same tests.

US education is an atrocity.

<comment><USER15> That's bullshit. Standardization can be done very effectively. If the tests are different enough year by year.

That said College Board is a very big risk factor, because its process and scoring is opaque.

US education is problematic because (inner city) children are not thaught the value of education. When parents are crazy, it's hard to teach the kids.

<comment><USER16> As Busta Rhymes put it:

        "When even role models tell us we're born to be felons
        We're never gettin' into Harvard or Carnegie Mellon
        And we gon' end up either robbin' somebody or killin'
        It's not fair that's all they can tell us
        That's why you hustle hella hard, never celebrate a holiday
        That'll be the day I coulda finally hit the lottery
        I refuse to ever lose or throw my shot away
        Or chalk it up as just another one that got away."

Is the problem 'children not being taught the value of education,' or that they /are/ taught that they're on a school-to-prison pipeline, without a lot of hope for much else?

<comment><USER15> I have no intimate knowledge of role models of every child, but how the fuck kids in the hood end up with a racist dumbass as one is nonsense. Those are not role models, those are the good old enemies of progress, the ethnophobes, the good evangelicals, or the good mothers who won't let their precious Percys play with Marquis.

It's not their fault that they are trapped, but the fact is still that. They incorrectly under value long term goals like staying out of jail (the overused example of making quick bucks by selling drugs), just like almost all people, they just pay for it much more, since they happen to be poor.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> I'm sure I'll be downvoted into oblivion for making the observation but surely this isn't surprising given that people with lower IQs tend to have more babies and have babies earlier in life than do people with higher IQs. [0]

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

<comment><USER18> That's a common myth. Higher than average IQ men have significantly more kids it's less significant and possibly negative for women.

"More rigorous studies carried out on Americans alive after the Second World War returned different results suggesting a slight positive correlation with respect to intelligence."

Critically these children are often had latter in life making studies based on younger age cohorts give different results.

Higher education also has a negative impact.

<comment><USER19> > ...possibly negative for women.

I hope I won't be downvoted crazy for this, but wasn't feminism offered as an answer to this? Better educated women have a bit more trouble having babies and keeping their career, since lots of men find it offputting to be dependent on their wives, due to traditional gender roles. Some developed countries have experienced normalization of fertility rates, and I've heard that more gender equality was a possible good explanation for this - more women can have both the baby and the career... This would also fit with the phenomenon you describe, of educated men having more kids, but educated women having less.

<comment><USER20> >since lots of men find it offputting to be dependent on their wives

Source please. It could very well be the other way around or more likely a mixture of both.

<comment><USER21> The ideology of male breadwinner is quite alive in more conservative and evangelical circles. Man living in such social group whose women earn more have lover social standing and consequently don't want it. Then there are people who don't care and I know of no groups that would believe in women being expected to he breadwinners.

So the bias would be toward that way.

<comment><USER22> Ideology of independent working woman seems far more pronounced to me. We all are expected to work, which necessarily makes having children – especially early in life, when they have the highest chance to be healthy – a big bother for women, and feminism doesn't help here in the least, even if it slightly compensates for the issue of "ideology of male breadwinner".

<comment><USER21> "Ideology of independent working woman" is basically ideology of same expectation on men and women. It does not compensate anything, bias in who is expected to earn more goes other way. A single women does not need to earn more then non-existent husband to feel enough feminine.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> I wondered if it was related to breastfeeding, since it is known to have a positive correlation. It turns out breastfeeding in Norway followed the exact opposite trend: falling from the end of WWI to 1970, and picking up since then ( source: [https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/Donor-milk-banking- and...](https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/Donor-milk-banking-and- breastfeeding-in-Norway.-Grøvslien- Grønn/b7e9fe381364dcd8d118cfb5f7988ca60a56f7b8) )

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> I am reminded of a quotation from the first chapter [0] of McLuhan's "Understanding Media":

"It is in our I.Q. testing that we have produced the greatest flood of misbegotten standards. Unaware of our typographic cultural bias, our testers assume that uniform and continuous habits are a sign of intelligence, thus eliminating the ear man and the tactile man."

If IQ tests make tacit assumptions of this kind, could the shift in the dominant media forms be playing a role?

[0] [http://web.mit.edu/allanmc/www/mcluhan.mediummessage.pdf](http://web.mit.edu/allanmc/www/mcluhan.mediummessage.pdf)

</comment><comment><USER24> I feel much dumber now in my 40s as opposed to my 20s. I pretty much stopped reading books after high school and am no longer able to solve certain math problems. Instead, I read stuff like this article.

<comment><USER25> I went the opposite way, I didn't graduate until I was nearly fifty.

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> Perhaps the most logical explanation is that people don't have to be as smart as they were when computers, the internet and DIY "recipes" are so readily available. Even using a paper map is obsolete when a smart phone can verbally direct you. How many people do math by hand now?

Example: California native Americans (Chumash) did not have to be smart. Every day was a great day, food and water were everywhere from the ocean to the valleys whereas in south America things were more difficult. Spaniards were stunned by the Aztec capital being larger and more advanced than anything in Europe. The Aztecs had astronomy, math, and domesticated turkeys for food. They created all that because they had too.

Food in Mesoamerica: [http://tlmorganfield.com/food-mesoamerica-domesticated- food-...](http://tlmorganfield.com/food-mesoamerica-domesticated-food- animals/)

Aztec capital, Tenochtitlan: [https://www.livescience.com/34660-tenochtitlan.html](https://www.livescience.com/34660-tenochtitlan.html)

<comment><USER27> > Even using a paper map is obsolete when a smart phone can verbally direct > you. How many people do math by hand now?

hardly convincing since IQ tests usually don't depend on your level of training or knowledge.

<comment><USER28> They try not to, but trying isn't the same thing as succeeding. IQ tests have documented cultural biases, and we know that you can study and prepare for IQ tests to improve your score.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> Why is every post asking questions WRT the effects of gender and migration being caveated so dramatically? It would appear people are afraid to even ask about what seem to be obvious relevant factors. There are noticable differences in the IQ averages between gender groups as well as origin, but the plasticity of IQ has also been established. The fear of reprisal and condemnation for wrongthink is starting to resemble Puritan New England. I sincerely hope we don't start burning witches...

<comment><USER30> Migration is a totally reasonable candidate, but if I imagine you're getting downvoted for how you're expressing yourself (i.e. very emotional) rather than what you're saying.

<comment><USER29> When reason fails, emotions rise, but I take your point and appreciate your reproof.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> Related: "... data ... from the UK Biobank... suggests genetic contributions to intelligence and educational achievement are currently disfavoured by natural selection". [1]

[1] [https://www.economist.com/science-and- technology/2017/12/19/...](https://www.economist.com/science-and- technology/2017/12/19/data-from-half-a-million-people-show-that-natural- selection-has-not-stopped)

</comment><comment><USER32> Some french scientist makes a compelling case for correlating this drop with the generalization of TV presence in homes. Found him : Michel Desmurget [https://www.dailymotion.com/video/xpjec4](https://www.dailymotion.com/video/xpjec4)

</comment><comment><USER33> I know a quite prominent MENSA member and according to him IQ tests are a fundamentally flawed way of measuring intelligence.

Not only are there different types of intelligence but more importantly, the current methodology is actually a test of one's ability to solve a very narrow type of puzzles. This can be practised effectively increasing your score significantly.

Does becoming good at puzzles mean I got any wiser?

<comment><USER34> I'm not an expert in the field, but my casual understanding is that the research shows basically the opposite to be true. That is to say that IQ is generally predictive of success and/or ability across just about any dimension you want to choose.

Said another way, if you had to hire somebody sight-unseen and you were only allowed to know one piece of information about them, IQ would be the strongest predictor of performance.

(I want to be very clear: that's not to say that the person with the highest IQ will always be the best performer; it's just to say that _if you had no other information_ , and you had to hire based on just one piece of information, IQ would be your best bet.)

<comment><USER35> You would have to define more formally what you mean by one piece of information and even then I think there are counterexamples to your argument.

For example, If I wanted to hire a doctor I would prefer to know if the applicant had medical degree over their IQ.

<comment><USER36> You don't need a formal definition, you just need to read more carefully:

> it's just to say that if you had no other information, and you had to hire > based on just one piece of information, IQ would be your best bet.

You might prefer to know if they have a medical degree, but that knowledge is already excluded.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> This test was done for people being examined for military service. It looks like Norway doesn't force military service, but does force people to be examined.

Perhaps people just take a mandatory military exam less seriously than they did during the cold war.

Also the culture of Norway is much less homogeneous than it was in the 70s and it's impossible to completely remove cultural biases from IQ tests--not to mention far more people who don't speak the language natively.

</comment><comment><USER37> Rather than claim that "IQ" has fallen they should give some examples of the particular questions which people have got worse at answering correctly, because "IQ" doesn't really exist; all that exists is the normalised score from a particular questionnaire.

I took an IQ test once. One of the questions that I couldn't answer was to spot what was missing in a picture. It was the hat band. I can't tell you exactly what kind of hat it was, but it was worn by a man and looked like something I might perhaps see in an old film. One of the questions that I could answer was to spot the odd one out in a list that looked something like: spondee, dactyl, trochee, ... If people have got worse at answering those two questions then I am not surprised.

<comment><USER19> Sounds like a really bad IQ test. I took a Mensa IQ test once, and all the questions were grids, 3x3, with various patterns in all cells except the lower right one, and 6 (I think) offered answer patterns. You pick the one that you think best fits into the overall pattern of the grid. Such a test seems much better to me, since it does not depend on what you know, though I guess even that might have some issues. Many popular IQ tests are really full of trick questions that mostly depend on whether you've seen the trick before...

<comment><USER38> Pattern recognition ability is associated with higher false positives. Eg, conspiracy theorists typically perform significantly better on pattern recognition tests. A pattern recognition test is indeed measuring something, but "intelligence quotient" may be a misnomer.

Full disclosure: I do very well on pattern recognition tests. I also am often accused of "reinventing the wheel." I think these are related; but then, I would.

<comment><USER19> You are implying that conspiracy theorists are unintelligent. Though it is a very tempting assumption :) I don't know if it's fully warranted. From my experience, ignorance is more essential to conspiracy theory thinking. People lack the will and/or time to learn all they need to make sense of the world, so they fall prey to overly simple, manipulative stories. And furthermore, it is known that more intelligent people tend to be more naive... I'm not saying you're fully wrong, lack of intelligence can surely help, but I think on the whole it's more complicated than just a lack of intelligence.

<comment><USER38> On the contrary, I was trying to suggest that intelligence is a broad term, and that being skilled at pattern recognition is a singular ability that is one small sliver of what most people usually mean when they talk about intelligence. IQ doesn't really measure what most people believe it measures, and may therefore be a misnomer.

<comment><USER19> Ok, I misunderstood. I agree with you. I think it's an interesting situation - the broader term is more relevant, but it's also less measurable. So we settle for what we can measure and kinda forget that it doesn't capture the full picture.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER39> The most important part of the abstract is this:

> The analysis controls for all factors shared by siblings and finds no > evidence for prominent causal hypotheses of the decline implicating genes > and environmental factors that vary between, but not within, families.

My first thought was the decline might be due to rising number of immigrants, but this suggests that is not true. Instead it appears the decline is due to some broader environmental factor that is common across all families. It also suggests that this is likely occurring in the rest of the developed world as well, since I can't think of anything obvious that's occurring in Norway that isn't also occurring in the rest of the developed world.

</comment><comment><USER40> Didn't read the article, but isn't IQ always steady?

100 the average, 130 top 2% etc.

Sure intelligence can change, but wouldn't IQ scores adjust to that?

<comment><USER41> From Wikipedia on the Flynn Effect: "When intelligence quotient (IQ) tests are initially standardized using a sample of test-takers, by convention the average of the test results is set to 100 and their standard deviation is set to 15 or 16 IQ points. When IQ tests are revised, they are again standardized using a new sample of test-takers, usually born more recently than the first. Again, the average result is set to 100. However, when the new test subjects take the older tests, in almost every case their average scores are significantly above 100."

I believe the posted study is discussing the reason why this trend of increasing scores might no longer hold.

<comment><USER42> >However, when the new test subjects take the older tests, in almost every case their average scores are significantly above 100."

If all these people have tried one IQ test they're likely to perform better on the older tests. just because they have a little more practice.

<comment><USER43> Tests are usually not the same, but they are "the same kind", and it is expected that practicing a kind of problem can give an advantage at solving the same kind of problem in the future. It's pretty much a fundamental aspect of learning.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER44> An oblique comment in the article about changing childhood behaviors - <USER2> video games and less book reading - was quite telling.

Is the population simply culturally drifting 'out from under' the norm for the test? Perhaps they could ask more video-game-related questions, and renormalize. "Which NPC is likely to give you a quest?" kind of thing.

</comment><comment><USER45> Is it possible that the kinds of people military entering service has changed over the years in Norway?

I haven't searched very hard, but it isn't clear how the conscription/selection criteria has evolved over the years. These would be very hard variables to properly control for.

<comment><USER8> Note that the intelligence tests are for people who are evaluated for conscription, not the ones who are finally conscripted, so they cover a large fraction of the population (80%-90% of males).

Since not everyone was given the test, there are indeed large selection effects. The main technical contribution of the paper we are discussing ([http://www.pnas.org/content/early/2018/06/05/1718793115](http://www.pnas.org/content/early/2018/06/05/1718793115)) is to try to estimate what the selection effect is.

They use a comparison of siblings. By comparing the score of brothers who were both given the test, one can can create a model to estimate the score of one brother from the score of the other. Then by comparing families where one brother was given the test and the other was not, one can estimate how the the probablility of the test board administering the test depends on the IQ of the testee. Then given that curve, one can estimate the average IQ of the entire population from the available test scores.

Their result is that selection bias hides some of the effect. That is, as the Norwegian military got smaller, the selection board got pickier and tested fewer (smarter) people, so if you just look at the average score you will not see the full drop.

</comment></comment><comment><USER46> The same results were also observed in Denmark in 2007.

[http://www.iapsych.com/iqmr/fe/LinkedDocuments/teasdale2008....](http://www.iapsych.com/iqmr/fe/LinkedDocuments/teasdale2008.pdf)

</comment><comment><USER47> First time comment here; felt compelled after reading some of the comments.

Please make sure you all pay attention to your physical state while trying to concentrate etc (for the people who've been seeing dips in performance and/or getting "in zone").

Only yesterday I noticed that I had somehow formed the habit of holding my breath when reading/learning/absorbing anything complex.

Seems pretty ridiculous but I went from having a hard time understanding some high mathematics to - when regulating breath appropriately - breezing through.

</comment><comment><USER48> I distinctly remember a professor in college saying that he felt like the caliber of students enrolling every year declines. I was kind of offended, but hey maybe we was right.

<comment><USER49> A much larger number of people attend college today than in the past. Since most of the smartest people were probably already going to college, increasing the size of the pool would almost certainly decrease the "average smartness" of college students.

Alternatively, you could just say that historically college students were disproportionately the "best students" during primary education, and increasing the size of the pool would result in more people who were not as good students attending college.

</comment></comment><comment><USER50> Looks like they ignored the national origin of the people tested. Norwegian IQs didn't drop. The average population of people living in Norway dropped.

The first chart in this link shows why: [https://www.ssb.no/en/befolkning/statistikker/innvbef/arkiv/...](https://www.ssb.no/en/befolkning/statistikker/innvbef/arkiv/2010-04-29)

<comment><USER51> > Using administrative register data and cognitive ability scores from > military conscription data covering three decades of Norwegian birth cohorts > (1962–1991)

Doesn't seem as if immigration played any role in this study.

</comment></comment><comment><USER52> When I read this one obvious explanation would be that as parents gets older their gametes accumulate more mutations, especially men, and the children they have later on in life suffer a bit. But that effect should be very small compared to the effect sizes reported here.

The bit about fish eating makes me think this might relate to omega-3/omega-6 fat balances in our diets?

<comment><USER53> When I read this one obvious explanation would be that IQ tests are designed with biased assumptions based on the cultural environments in which they were designed, and that those biased assumptions become more and more foreign as more generations pass since the test was originally designed.

See? I can speculate baselessly too.

<comment><USER52> There's certainly an advantage to taking IQ tests if you come from a culture that values abstract thoughts relatively highly compared to concrete thoughts. This is all based on Norwegian data and if there were some huge cultural shift in Norway I might not know. But usually when you see big changes it's adding iodine to the salt, or lead in the environment, or famines, or disease or something like that. Seriously, iodizing salt added 10 points to the IQs of Americans around the great lakes where iodine deficiency had been a big problem.

And generally if it was a matter of shifting cultural environments I'd hope that would be obvious from looking at the subtest scores.

</comment></comment></comment><comment> murph-almighty This is mostly irrelevant- I feel as though the phrase IQ has become so diluted by jackasses on social media who feel a need to brag about their IQ. Usually they got the results from some snake-oily trivia site. Because of this, that whenever I see a study that mentions IQ I immediately doubt it. What is a standard IQ test? What does it test for?

</comment><comment><USER54> The more testosterone a man has, the less likely he is to hang around to help bring up baby

[http://www.economist.com/news/science-and- technology/2167977...](http://www.economist.com/news/science-and- technology/21679772-changes-mans-testosterone-level-show-kind-parent-he-will- be-pot-luck)

</comment><comment><USER55> The original article, btw: [https://sci- hub.tw/http://www.pnas.org/content/early/2018/06...](https://sci- hub.tw/http://www.pnas.org/content/early/2018/06/05/1718793115)

</comment><comment><USER56> This is logically impossible for the population as a whole, because IQ is defined as a relative metric. I.e. an IQ of 100 is (ideally) equal to whatever the current median intelligence is.

It sounds like Norway's national service is just getting dumber by comparison.

</comment><comment><USER57> I will probably never understand IQ and its purpose for real life problems. It is either me who doesn't get it or all the people out there who lack introspection to understand what exactly it was that enabled them to grasp some new concept.

</comment><comment><USER58> Could this also explain why Mensa's admission standards have been watered down in recent years? I mean, on paper, they are still the same, but in practice - not so much.

<comment><USER59> Personally I negatively judge members of Mensa.

<comment><USER14> Anyone who pays an annual fee to prove they're smart...

It's like selling an "elevator pass". Too easy.

<comment><USER58> Easy has nothing to do with it. It's not like you have to renew an IQ test. You either passed it, or you didn't. An expired membership card proves they passed a proctored test just as well as an active membership does.

In any case, I agree with you in spirit. It's just bragging rights. I think a lot of people renew just so they can say they are a member. But that's stupid. It proves nothing. Nobody else cares. Nobody else is impressed. Want to show yourself to truly be an ass? Pull out your Mensa card.

I truly don't give a f*ck. I was in for one year. Their journal and discounts were not worth the price of membership. I already have friends and don't need any more. It would have been a waste of money to renew.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER60> It's hard to believe, I've read rather the opposite for quite a while, especially recently with Enlightement Now from Steven Pinker. I should get those references!

<comment><USER61> _Enlightenment Now_ highlights world-scale trends. This study highlights Norwegian trends. It is possible -- even likely -- that some small subgroups will exhibit trends that don't match the larger global trend. Norway's population is only 0.005 billion out of a world population of 7.6 billion.

As another example, it is _simultaneously_ true that world manufacturing output kept increasing even as Michigan's manufacturing diminished. There's no contradiction between those two facts.

<comment><USER60> I understand your point. However, in Enlightenment Now, you see patterns that are similar in all countries, especially Western countries. A country like Norway going backward is very unlikely, especially on a sustained manner over decades, no matter small the country is.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER62> the internet is quite addictive, the trick is to be a high functioning addict. you'll be dumber, but all the richer for it.

</comment><comment><USER63> How do these results correlate with the increase/decrease of wages and social services in said country, I wonder.

</comment><comment><USER42> Couldn't have anything to do with all the extra carbon dioxide in the air could it?

<comment><USER64> I don't think there is any reason to suspect that over a hundred other causes:

Radiation from cell phones

Increased screen time for children

More pesticides in our diets

The fact that we have to think about a greater variety of things through the course of a day has caused our brains to structure themselves for better context-switching at the expense of a little bit of focus

et cetera

</comment></comment><comment><USER65> Check the amount of sleep they get!

</comment><comment><USER66> So, technically, it's only the Norwegians who are getting dumber.

</comment><comment><USER67> I don't know about Norway, but here in Spain the % of people who sign up to the military who are immigrants has been steadily increasing these decades, so a drop in IQ does not surprise me at all.

<comment><USER11> Why would immigrants have a lower IQ than native spaniards?

Also, does Spain only administer IQ tests to members of the military?

Or are you saying that members of the military have a lower IQ than the rest of the population?

<comment><USER67> In TFA it says this drop in IQ was detected because of tests done to people who sign up to the military. I'm talking about how there are more and more immigrants joining the military here as years pass and that if in Norway the same is happening it's normal that IQ is dropping as I expect immigrants to have a lower IQ than natives.

<comment> ctrl-j >... I expect immigrants to have a lower IQ than natives.

Do you have any reason other than Xenophobia for expecting this?

<comment><USER46> [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nations_and_intelligence](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nations_and_intelligence)

Do you have any reason to suggest all nations have the same average IQ?

<comment> ctrl-j _If_ the controversial citations in the article you cited are true (which I haven't read in detail, but seem questionable at a glance.) - unless the predominant amount of individuals immigrating into Spain/Norway are coming from countries with lower average IQs I would not expect it to have an effect on the average IQ of Spain/Norway.

It also stands to reason that there is no reason to assume Spain is at the top of the chart when it comes to national average - so they are most likely also having immigration from countries with a higher average. This would mitigate the effect of countries with a lower average, would it not?

Returning to the original point:

Because immigration usually entails an amount of merit and ability - <USER3> successful immigrants are usually at the higher end of the capability spectrum of the originating countries population.

Doesn't it stand to reason immigration would have either a minuscule or positive effect on national average IQ?

<comment><USER46> Maybe pre-2015, but since the European Migrant Crisis, there has been a disproportionate amount of migration from sub-Saharan Africa, which is the region that scores lowest in those surveys.

[https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/10840/spain-migrant- crisi...](https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/10840/spain-migrant-crisis)</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Google – Open Location Code: Addresses for Everything, Everywhere - <AUTHOR> http://google-opensource.blogspot.com/2015/04/open-location-code-addresses-for.html

<comment><USER2> _Latitude and longitude coordinates can specify any location, but they're long and cumbersome_

I'm not sure I understand how this is easier to use than lat/long. WIth open location, how can you easily tell if one location is North or South of another location? Is it useful mainly as a wrapper for lat/long that needs to be decoded before use?

</comment><comment><USER3> I've thought about this too many times and I'm surprised the approach taken here is the most naive one. Replacement for addresses is long due but this is not it. People don't use addresses because they are short but because they are _readable_ and _memorizable_. I can't even expect someone to remember their own address as "CWC8+R9" let alone their friends. My idea was to assign fun names and possibly relevant to near by geography, weather patterns and history to every 6ftX6ft square in the world. In essence you machine generate the address as if you would have asked human standing there on that spot based on what they would see/feel there. If someone would want to steal this area, let me know by email :).

</comment><comment><USER4> what3words [0] seems to take a much better approach when it comes to memorable addresses. Rather than requiring you to remember a short series of random characters, what3words specifies three dictionary words (which can be customised for a nominal fee).

[0] [http://what3words.com/](http://what3words.com/)</comment>


Ask HN: Lack of progression in career. Companies that help you fight that? - <AUTHOR> If you get comfortable working with in a small company with small scope, you could be working yourself into a hole. That's what happened to me. Now I need to dig my way out and into a bigger company with better financial stability and bigger scope.
Main reason I want to do this? Being involuntarily jobless for a year time sucks. And I'm no fresh grad. I'm someone who's been doing this since 2007. If the average programmer with several years experience doesn't have trouble getting job offers, than I am most likely below average. Despite working on personal projects, I don't feel competitive anymore.
Now there's a problem with that. The companies most likely to solve my problem won't hire me. The ones that are more willing to hire me are the kind of companies that will keep me in that rut of being below-average. I'm mostly blind as to where are the "happy middle" companies that combine the better of those two things. And I don't know the "right" people to refer me to better jobs so instead I cold-apply everywhere. <comment><USER2> First it is generally a tough problem. There is more room at the bottom than there is at the top. Many people become entrepreneurs because they don't see any way up in the firms they work for.

At a big company you might feel you are not making a big impact, as for stability, all of the time I see headlines like "Intel lays off 10,000 engineers."

Feeling bitter about things won't help you get a job, at least if that attitude comes across in your communications with them.

<comment><AUTHOR> While there is more room at the bottom, the downside to that is that there is more skills saturation at the bottom. So I'm looking for advice that is more supportive of my goals to be a more competitive programmer and in-demand by more reputable software companies. I would love to work at a company like NVidia or Intel. I'd be in a better position to find work even if I get laid off from Intel vs. getting laid off at a mom & pop web company. My resume would look better.

I'm also not interested in starting my own business. The typical "startup scene" outcome for a typical person is to be in your 30's with 5 short-term jobs and zero net worth. I don't feel like I make a big impact in small companies either.

<comment><USER2> Are you sending out resumes and not getting interviews or are you getting interviews but no job?

If you want a big name company, look at AMZN, many of the people I know hear from AMZN recruiters more than once a month.

<comment><AUTHOR> I went through the hiring process with AMZN in March and didn't pass the first tech interview so I've been studying for improving on that. I then submitted my resumes to Microsoft and NVidia and didn't get a reply from them.

For now I'll have to wait until October if I want to re-apply to AMZN, and there are no local companies (I'm from Chicago) that have hiring practices similar to them. I get tons of resume rejects locally.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> It's possible the issue isn't your programming skills, it may be your job- getting skills; they're not the same skills. It's possible to be really good at your job and have a hard time getting a job.

So it's worth trying to figure out why companies might not hire you, instead of just presuming it's your skills (unless you have evidence otherwise.)</comment>


Ask HN: Red Flags for a 1-2 year developer? - <AUTHOR> I recently had an interview where I was asked a combination of whiteboard problems, and a couple of technical term definitions. Whiteboard wasn't an issue, since I think I kind of understand what I am suppose to do. The technical term definitions caught me off guard, but they would ask me things like what is an index, what is a cookie, what is a join, what is object oriented programming, benefits of these, etc. They also asked me to think in SQL, but I wasn't aware of how to do a problem using a join.
Ideally, I know, I should understand these concepts. I didn't prepare for the interview, and honestly, things went well up until the technical definitions.
But I did freak out a little bit, and feel like I should know these things. I should know what a join is, I should know what a cookie is. And I do, I have a very vague understanding of these things.  But in my day to day, I don't do complex joins, I don't have to remember what exactly a header is.
I guess my question is that should I be worried? Or was this simply just a matter of not preparing for my interview like a test? <comment><USER2> It helps to have an grasp of these terms meanings, but that doesn't mean you should know their definitions by heart. Try to explain in your own words, it should be enough. Unless you're dealing with some hard heads who want the textbook definition, you'll be alright.

</comment><comment><USER3> Don't. Whether you worry or not, it won't affect the outcome now.

Also, the point in such questions is not a checkbox "can rattle off the definition exactly," but rather a highpass "is not completely lost at sea."</comment>


Popcorn Time, Now Part of Netflix - <AUTHOR> https://blog.popcorntime.io/popcorn-time-now-part-of-netflix/

<comment><USER2> I can't believe I falled for this! I did not realized until saw the comments here :D

</comment><comment><USER3> Obvious April Fools is ... Obvious.

</comment><comment><USER4> Got me :)</comment>


Sails 0.8.9: A Rails-Inspired Real-Time Node MVC Framework - <AUTHOR> http://www.infoq.com/news/2013/04/Sails-0.8.9-Released

<comment><USER2> <https://github.com/balderdashy/sails>

<comment><USER3> Bless ya m'lud.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> A lot of folks also found this intro video useful: <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GK-tFvpIR7c>

Also, we have a google group and irc channel (#sailsjs on freenode) More on that here: sailsjs.org

</comment><comment><USER5> Is this production-ready? I want to start working on it right away for my new project :) I know looking at the version number hints us otherwise, but I'm just curious since these guys have actually used it in production before..

<comment><USER4> @neya yessir, or as production ready as Node.js + express + socket.io is. Here's our roadmap: <https://github.com/balderdashy/sails/wiki/roadmap>

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> I put this up weeks ago.... zero interest. Perhaps the timing of the posting was poor.... ? <https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5293519>

Anyway, glad these folks are getting some well deserved attention now.

<comment><USER4> Thank you :) Shortly afterwards, someone posted this: <https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5373342>

One of those things with timing I guess, right?

<comment><USER5> Dude, you're missing a donate button :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> How does this compare to Compund.js (<http://compoundjs.com/>)? I've only given it a cursory glance but it seems to be under active development, and similar in it's inspiration, no?

</comment><comment><USER8> This might just be what gets me onto the backend JS boat.

Any problems with setting up to use mongo?</comment>


Why the world's biggest companies face patent lawsuits in this small Texas town - <AUTHOR> http://www.today.com/news/see-why-world-s-biggest-companies-file-patent-lawsuits-small-t109624 <comment><USER2> A word of warning: a _VERY LOUD_ video is auto-playing on this page.</comment>


Ironic World Standards Day - <AUTHOR> http://robert.ocallahan.org/2016/10/ironic-world-standards-day.html <comment><USER2> "Multilevel standards are like onions. They're smelly and make you cry a lot" \- Ron Natalie

I found this quote when working with the CCSDS standards and it made life slightly more bearable.</comment>


Open Yale Courses - Game Theory - <AUTHOR> http://oyc.yale.edu/economics/game-theory/contents/sessions.html <comment><USER2> AcademicEarth.org is a non-profit compiling free online courses (MIT, Yale, etc).

I've started two and think both are very good:

Yale, History of the US civil war with prof. David W. Blight

and

MIT, Physics: Classical Mechanics with prof. Walter Lewin

<comment><USER3> That looks very interesting. Thanks for sharing

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I would suggest Shiller's Financial Markets lectures, I'm checking them out right now and they seem extremely interesting. Shiller's a good lecturer and clearly knows his stuff.

Also, if you're at the intro to physics level, you should really check out Shankar's physics lectures - I had Shankar several years ago and his classes (and books, for that matter) were excellent, he's a real fun teacher to have (though I can't specifically vouch for these lectures, as I haven't seen them).

</comment><comment><USER5> Cool! Thanks!</comment>


Ask YC: Implementing an SMS application - <AUTHOR> I am implementing an application that has SMS features and i will like to know if there are any free SMS providers that i can link my application to their SMS Center. I have heard about Kannel (i.e. an open source sms center) but i am not too sure if i have to attach a GSM or GPRS modem to my server for it to work? N.B. I do not live in the USA. thanks <comment><USER2> There's a new peepcode pdf about this that looks interesting. <https://peepcode.com/products/mms2r-pdf>

I'm sure the carrier negotiations in order to use shortcodes are different in countries outside the US. I have heard that docomo in Japan actually makes this sort of stuff really easy for developers (and that Japan has a burgeoning diy market of cool phone-based services as a result).

What country are you in?

I've done work using the email2sms gateways for both sms and mms. For sms it's kind of a pain because the gateways can't always be inferred just from carrier and number (T-mobile for instance, sometimes uses a nickname that you set up rather than your phone number, so your phone's sms email address ends up something like firstname.lastname@example.com instead of firstname.lastname@example.com). Receiving MMS is a HUGE pain because the carriers all include the attachments differently. Some carriers include multiple attachments -- some of them are spacer gifs and things like that -- and you have to figure out the correct one. Other carriers, like Sprint, don't even include an attachment, they have a link in the MMS email that takes you to a page, and that page has another link to the picture. I had to use come complicated regex's and multiple wget calls to download the picture. The whole thing was very fragile as a result. But, to Sprint's credit, they are so bloated and slow to change that in 9 months they never modified the way those messages were structured so nothing broke.

I haven't worked on this stuff in over a year, so it may be out of date, but given the glacial rate of change in telco's (esp in the US), I'd be surprised if the situation has changed much.

Again, though, could be a very different story depending on where you're actually located.

<comment><AUTHOR> I live in Nigeria, i.e. West Africa, I will like to talk to you and see what we can work out. my email address is aitoehigie [at] gmail [dot] com

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> I dont have any experience with hardware, but have developed using Ericsson's Parlay X libraries and they are very easy to use:

[http://www.ericsson.com/mobilityworld/sub/open/technologies/...](http://www.ericsson.com/mobilityworld/sub/open/technologies/parlayx/tools/telecom_web_services)

Its a useful library if the service provider you're trying to gain access to exposes Parlay X access to their network. Very easy to send/receive SMS, MMS, etc from your web application as they library wraps all the SOAP calls for you.

</comment><comment><USER4> Kannel still requires you to have a SMS provider or paired it with a modem as you mentioned. All it really does is give better control over your SMS in/outbond flow. I would recommend 41411 if you are going to server the US as well. I have used it with different applications, and still do. They have an API and you can get up and running within minutes. Best part, it is free.

<comment><AUTHOR> 41411 only covers the USA and that is not my target audience for now

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> I believe the free option is to use the carrier supplied email gateways (which is what something like Google Maps uses to send addresses). If you want a full two-way messaging system like Twitter, you have to pay up. You can find open source software, but you need access to the networks and that's going to cost money.

It's quite a racket, they often charge both the sender and the receiver.

<comment><USER6> I've heard you quickly get blocked as spam by the email gateways if you start doing this in bulk.

<comment><USER2> Yes, that's true. In my experience doing batch sms-emailing (with relatively small batches -- several hundred at a time only), we would take use two strategies: 1 -- queue the messages and send them slowly, maybe between 5-25 every minute. and 2 -- distribute across carriers. Group the users by carrier and then for each queued batch take from as many of the different carriers as possible, thus limiting the number of times you sent an email over any specific carrier's gateway in a given queued clump of messages.

This seemed to work but it was hard to guarantee message delivery.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> <http://www.textmarks.com/>

</comment><comment><USER8> Are you talking about sending, receiving, or both?</comment>


How can I get someone's email from their Twitter ID? - <AUTHOR> https://www.quora.com/How-228/answer/William-Boyd-181?share=1 <comment><USER2> @AlastalG</comment>


"I'm the nurse who switches off the ventilator" - <AUTHOR> https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-52345177 <comment><USER2> This must be so devastating. I think this puts a few things in perspective for me, and others. We're here for such a finite amount of time which too can be cut yet shorter.</comment>


Show HN: "All-in-one" Marketing API (Email, SMS, Social) - <AUTHOR> http://www.kingside.com/api/

<comment><USER2> Man, that sure looks like an easy way to send all of your communications from 1 spot. Looks great, good job!

</comment><comment><USER3> Looks pretty promising so far.

</comment><comment><USER4> Very cool!

<comment><AUTHOR> We also have a white labeled interface, plans management console, sub-user access and more: <http://www.KingSide.com>

Any comments / feedback appreciated.</comment></comment>


How to contribute to GNU Hurd (2006) - <AUTHOR> https://www.gnu.org/software/hurd/contributing.html <comment><USER2> Every time I checkout GNU Hurd I'm flabbergasted that it is still 32bit. It is something that is really hard to get past and honestly I don't have the skills to contribute to make it 64bit. But I just don't have time for something that is limited to 4GB address space[1]. Too far away from modern to be honest.

(IMHO)

[1] [https://www.gnu.org/software/hurd/faq/64-bit.html](https://www.gnu.org/software/hurd/faq/64-bit.html)

<comment><USER3> So if you were to use the hurd, you'd have to run n two-gigabyte shards instead of n/4 eight-gigabyte shards. This is not a big deal. The hurd has debilitating problem, this isn't one of them.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> So there's the "how", where's the "why"?

Why Hurd and not Linux? Or one of the BSDs? Or any of the thousands of OSS projects actually useful to real people in 2017?

<comment><USER5> Fine grain virtualisation is pretty hackish in Linux, but it's part of the design of the Hurd.

On the Hurd you can trivially virtualise the filesystem (on Linux you need FUSE for that but it doesn't go far enough), there are user namespaces by default (on Linux they are a hack and that makes local privilege escalation bugs really bad), drivers run in userspace, so different users can have different views on the hardware, etc.

All of this is quite relevant _today_ , especially on shared systems such as HPC clusters.

The Hurd is the only multi-server micro-kernel system with a Unix persona (other micro-kernel systems are either single-server systems or don't bother with a Unix-like persona). I find it a lot more elegant than Linux, which needs to move more and more things into privileged kernel space.

With the NetBSD rumpkernel the Hurd can reuse NetBSD device drivers in userspace.

There are a lot of things to like about the Hurd. If only it had more contributors! It's a great project that provides practical software freedom (like other high profile GNU packages), thereby liberating users from the root user.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Rather than trying to go mainstream or catch up to Linux, they could instead serve as a testing ground for experimental OS algorithms.

</comment><comment><USER7> They are notoriously hostile to first time contributors, don't hold your breath.

<comment><USER8> From which decade is your experience?

This document explicitly states that they encourage new contributions, there is a list of "easy" issues to work on, and they apparently participate in Google Summer of Code.

Of course reality might look different, but I'm willing to give them the benefit of the doubt that they mean what they write.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> (2016)

<comment><USER10> Given this is about the Hurd, there's a non-zero chance it could have been (1996), so I'm fine with a 2016 article...

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Nobody would even remember Hurd if it wasn't a GNU project. TempleOS has more organic interest than Hurd. Urbit has more organic interest than Hurd.</comment>


Google got it wrong. The open-office trend is destroying the workplace - <AUTHOR> http://www.washingtonpost.com/posteverything/wp/2014/12/30/google-got-it-wrong-the-open-office-trend-is-destroying-the-workplace/ <comment><USER2> [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8815065](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8815065)

</comment><comment><USER3> I am pretty sure this article is missing the point. Companies like Google and Facebook do in fact employ open work spaces. But they also deploy areas where employees can work with a lot more space. Areas like the sleep pods etc that Google is known for.

You can't just take the bits you like from a plan and throw out the stuff you don't want to pay for. There is a yin and yang to office spaces. This is a classic case of taking what you want and throwing out the rest because who needs that hippy bullshit.

<comment><USER4> Totally agree.

Also, if you have a flexible enough schedule, your desk is only a satellite office. If you want to be alone and in the quiet all day, home is often great for that.

I think some people miss out on the possibility that their employer pays more for their office than they pay for rent!

The final note about feeling self conscious leaving right at 5, I get it, but if you're effective, and the company is run with appropriate principles, that shouldn't be a thing. Leave at 3, catch up mail at home, who cares?

It's not reasonable to keep a bunch of opaque walls separating all employees so they can have flexible schedules while pretending not to. That is not progress.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Between morning rituals, standups, meetings, breaks, and blocking tasks I'm probably spending around 40% of my time on real work. Open offices probably cut that in half.

The problem is most claimed benefits are really just poor project management - which is really the biggest cause of low productivity. It isn't a good thing that you can easily interrupt a neighbor to solve an issue. Because 9/10 neighbors won't complain and you'll keep on doing it because you keep getting your issues solved. Interruptions should be difficult to encourage the creation of self-service tools or processes to solve common problems. I've seen the same person interrupted like 10 times in 30 minutes because he is so damn good at fixing everyone else's problems.

Most places don't use available tracking software well and they hire non technical people to manage technical projects. This leads to using multiple task tracking systems poorly and poorly defined direction and tasks. There aren't good processes in place to solve different types of issues so they revert to the lowest common denominator (face to face or email) when they could otherwise be handled asynchronously.

If everyone gets nice clearly defined tasks defined and managed in a single place and there are tools in place so they can help themselves you get a bunch better environment regardless of how people are sitting.

</comment><comment><USER6> Do people just throw the name "Google" into headlines now as a means to grab attention? Google neither invented nor popularized the open office, which has been around since the 1960's.

</comment><comment><USER7> The perfect office is a combination of working from my home some days, coming into an open office on others, then working remotely while traveling, and sometimes working in an office at the office.

Done.

</comment><comment><USER8> There are rough corners, but there's also room for improvement:

"Now Herman Miller, the firm that, however unintentionally, started the shift to cubicles, is trying to reshape the office yet again. The "Living Office" is a new attempt to combine the best of private and social space. It looks rather like a fancy hotel: open-plan but with desks set in friendly clusters and separated by low, clear partitions. Workers can also perch at a counter-top next to the coffee station, or lounge on sofas in a plaza or café-style seating in a courtyard. Benches nicknamed "landing strips" are placed outside conference rooms to encourage post-meeting chats. Pods are available for concentrated work, and even for relaxation. Everywhere there are glass-encased meeting rooms and a few solo spaces. About 30% of the staff have no permanent desk.

Light streams in and sound is controlled with dividing walls and "pink noise"—white noise focused on the frequencies of human speech, which can reduce the distance at which a conversation is audible from 50 feet to 12-16 feet. The result, the firm says, is greater focus, accuracy and short-term memory."

[http://www.economist.com/news/international/21637359-how- wor...](http://www.economist.com/news/international/21637359-how-workers- ended-up-cubesand-how-they-could-break-free-inside-box)

</comment><comment><USER9> Yes, overall, I much prefer having a separate office. When I consider taking on a new position, an open office is a huge negative and I expect a higher salary/benefits to compensate for it.

It's true that there is a bit less communication happening when each employee has a separate office but each interaction is MUCH more succinct and productive. There is no chit-chat and employees don't get penalized for not fitting in socially (you get more varied personality/thinking types). Also, employees feel more valued if they have their own office and they are more motivated to deliver results.

Open offices mix work and social aspects together and it makes it difficult for introverts to strive in the workplace.

It's OK for small startups but it's terrible for large companies. It's discrimination against introverts - These people will either leave your company or get fired because they won't be able to focus on their work whenever someone walks behind them.

</comment><comment><USER10> > Bosses love the ability to keep a closer eye on their employees, ensuring > clandestine porn-watching, constant social media-browsing and unlimited > personal cellphone use isn't occupying billing hours

As a boss, this is not why I advocate open spaces.

<comment><USER11> Ok, so why do you advocate open spaces?

Personally I hate them because they destroy my productivity and that's the one thing I enjoy about work.

The trade off is that I hear a lot more office gossip as well as lots of details of my coworker's personal lives, including their children's play date plans, personal health issues, etc. If that's what my boss is after then the open office plan is working splendidly.

<comment><USER10> > Ok, so why do you advocate open spaces?

I like having my teams sit together, not isolated from each other because it increases collaboration. This was my experience back in 2007 when I first worked in a shared office with 3 other people.

I empathize with you. The way we approach what you've discussed is to gently remind people when things get loud, that we have a "quiet library" policy.

It's certainly not so I can monitor what my teams are doing.

If I could design my own office it would be similar to Valve's model. Semi isolated areas with desks on wheels, so teams could sit together. There would also be "quiet" offices, where people can go work when they need complete isolation. This isn't too unlike what MSFT Google and FB already have today.

My problem with offices is that no matter how you slice it, they always end up being a proxy for status. It's difficult to scale offices with the number of people, so you have to allocate them in some sort of "fair" fashion. At one company, offices were originally assigned by tenure. As the company expanded, a number of executives and upper level managers specifically wanted offices because of their "title." The company changed it's stance to instead allocate offices by each department, based on role, then tenure.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I have the opposite yet same reaction to open office environments. I was always the loud person in the group, and I have a hard time staying out of conversations with others. I try to keep myself to myself, but I know that I distract others around me.

Ironically, having a private office not only kept my noise from other people, but I actually got quieter because it was simply the presence of the group around me that got me loud. I got a lot more work done too, since I wasn't constantly distracted from the discussions going on around me, work related or not.

</comment><comment><USER13> Needless to say this is not a vigorously researched opinion piece. She claims open plan leads to more _illness_ because "last flu season took down a succession of my co-workers like dominoes" \-- the epitome of anecdotal evidence.

As for the claim that communication's not a problem with private offices. Cornell did a study awhile back that found something interesting. The standard for team collaboration _changes_ depending on whether you have private or open offices. With open plan "frequent communication" means several times a day, often on the fly. But if you have a private office you concept of "frequent" means "several times a week in a scheduled meeting". [1]

So that's consistent with private office people saying everything's fine -- because they've lowered their standard for team interaction.

Cornell also noted that office workers are usually incentivized to prioritize their personal productivity over team productivity, because compensation is only or mostly tied to the former. That goes a long way towards describing why employees often complain that they can't focus and want to be left alone, while management extolls the virtues of increased team collaboration. Management are the ones that are properly incentivized to balance individual and team productivity.

[1] [https://web.archive.org/web/20140615182702/http://iwsp.human...](https://web.archive.org/web/20140615182702/http://iwsp.human.cornell.edu/file_uploads/office_ex2_1238259706.pdf)

<comment><USER14> Do you have evidence that open office actually increases team productivity? Not anecdotes, since as you point out those aren't worth much. And not team interaction, which is tangential to the real goal- team productivity.

<comment><USER13> Do you have evidence that private offices do? I'd imagine that it's a hard question for which to construct a perfectly controlled experiment in the real world. The Cornell study is one of the better ones I've seen.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> I work in an open office and it's certainly got a fair share of ups & downs. It makes for a more sociable office resulting in a stronger 'team' feel. However, the music/noise/chatter force me to wear headphones ( _and_ crank them up). Even with the 'phones, I'm definitely more effective working from home (even the team agrees).

I'd like to see companies implementing mixed layouts, perhaps where teams work together in open offices, but not _the entire company /multiple teams_. Or - as per the article - a mix between working in-open-office and from home.</comment>


Show HN: A simple social "Magic 8 Ball" app - Eight - <AUTHOR>

Hi Everyone,
Whyday has come and gone and I was toying around with a simple app (I know its late, but what the hell). Eight is a social eight ball, which uses random people on twitter to answer your questions. Users either vote yes or no, or ask questions. I mostly used this app to learn about oauth and a bit of sinatra.
I hope you folks have some fun :)
Any feedback would be appreciated.
URL: eightapp.safetyscissors.co <comment><AUTHOR> Sorry folks. Here is the alternative link: eightapp.heroku.com

</comment><comment><USER2> eightapp.heroku.com/list gives a server error...

</comment><comment><USER3> "This webpage is not available"</comment>