Cool Kids Lose, Though It May Take A Few Years  - <AUTHOR> http://www.npr.org/blogs/health/2014/06/12/321314037/cool-kids-lose-though-it-may-take-a-few-years?sc=tw <comment><USER2> I'm getting tired of this "nerds" vs "cool kids" narrative. It is a false dichotomy. Kids fall all over the map in terms of behavior and social groups as they grow up.

Case in point: I was a quiet "nerd" all the way through high school, but really found my element and became a social butterfly in college. Some other people have the opposite trajectory, or zig zag all over the place.

Kids are kids. All of them do stupid things at some point, and all of them have potential to grow and change their personalities to a large extent.

But, it seems to be popular in various circles these days to set up these labels of "cool" and "nerd" and it leads to pointless tribalism.

<comment><USER3> You just labeled yourself as a "nerd" in high school and demonstrated that it didn't forever cast you into a life of loneliness and despair. You excelled! Likewise, the cool kids won't be cool forever. That's the point. Who you are in high school doesn't define you.

<comment><USER4> _Who you are in high school doesn 't define you._

But it does for a lot of people. I know people who have the same friends from HS, listen to the same music and generally act the same way. They graduated HS, but never really left the mentality.

<comment><USER5> Actually, didn't we just see somewhere that your first name affected the possibility of getting an interview?

Something along the lines of identical resumes, where names were stereotypical African names vs. stereotypical "American" names, and the latter would get more interviews, in statistically significantly higher numbers.

<comment><USER6> It was in the Freakonomics documentary. They also referenced another study where they cataloged over 100 unique spellings of the name "Unique" (e.g. "Uneek").

They also appear to have covered it in a podcast...

[http://freakonomics.com/2013/04/08/how-much-does-your- name-m...](http://freakonomics.com/2013/04/08/how-much-does-your-name-matter- a-new-freakonomics-radio-podcast/)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> The study that this NPR piece reports about is focused on the outcomes of kids who were, as middle schoolers, pseudomature, which I suppose could be described as having mature interests but not mature behavior. (So, interested in drugs but lacking the ability to regulate themselves, or interested in sex but lacking the ability to engage in healthy relationships.)

The study found that pseudomaturity was associated with "short-term success with peers." That stands to reason. You know how kids look up to their older siblings? Well, in a way, pseudomature kids are acting the way older siblings act, and I can see how that might lead to peer approval.

But what I think bears mentioning is that in addition to kids who are pseudomature, you have kids who are genuinely mature and kids who are immature.

The kids who are genuinely mature are those who (unlike pseudomature kids) have mature behavior, and either have interests that are appropriate for their age or, if they have mature interests, are smart enough to know that they shouldn't act on those interests.

The kids who are immature are an interesting bunch. There are some (like I was in middle school) who do not have mature interests, but have mature behavior. There are others who neither have mature interests nor mature behavior.

The more you think about maturity as having to do with two spectrums -- one for interests and one for behavior -- the more the results of this study make sense, and the less it makes sense to use the "cool kids vs. nerds" narrative.

The results make sense because kids who get into adult situations but aren't able to handle them in grown-up ways are likely to end up in various forms of trouble, and it doesn't surprise me that the effects of that early trouble may persist into adulthood. You can also infer that kids who have mature interests are probably more likely to be exposed to mature themes at home, perhaps because of a troubled home life, which probably influences them as adults as well.

The reason the "cool kids vs. nerds" narrative doesn't make sense is because, really, what we're talking about is not popularity influencing outcomes but behavior influencing outcomes. Kids (whether they're cool or not) who aren't good at regulating their behavior in middle school are more likely to be bad at regulating their behavior in adulthood; kids (whether they're cool or not) who are good at regulating their behavior in middle school are more likely to be good at regulating their behavior in adulthood.

<comment><USER3> But these labels mean something to teenagers, and it doesn't matter if it's society's fault for creating these labels. Kids know who the "popular," "cool" kids are, and they know who the "nerds" are. Likewise, they know where they stand. And it matters to them, and it has an impact on them. The result will vary, of course, and there will always be exceptions. So the study is asking "what happened to the kids who their peers considered 'cool' or a 'nerd'?"

<comment><USER8> How universal are those categories? Can you generalize the results of this study to other times and places?

<comment><USER9> When I go visit my in-laws who have two daughters in high school, I'm amazed at how the things that were nerdy when I was in high school 10 years ago are cool now. These girls who watch Dr Who and make honor band are extremely popular. What's more, I hear from them that there is very little of the petty popularity war going on. I know that this is a very special school and things aren't happening this way everywhere, but it's encouraging nonetheless.

<comment><USER8> I think you may need to intervene and call out the nerds, otherwise they may start missing crucial developmental milestones.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> I'll never forget a peer of mine slapping me on the back and saying "nice guys don't win." This was as we were leaving class our senior year after the homecoming court was announced. He made it. I didn't. Fifteen years later, we are both doing well. But he definitely took a nose dive after high school; drugs, alcohol, legal trouble, dead-end jobs, etc. And I went to college, started a career and consider it the best time of my life. But, it was not a death sentence for him, and I'm not a millionaire or anything ;)

We both still live in the same town and are married with kids and have good jobs. And there are many more examples of both of us, but some "cool kids" continue their downward spiral or continue to ascend to great things as they shed their earlier un-coolness. It definitely didn't take a study to see this.

In my opinion, many "cool kids" find that doors get closed through their riskier behavior or poorer results in school and are no longer able to get by solely on good looks and athletic prowess. While hard work and education open up more opportunities for others, particularly as popularity is taken out of the equation.

EDIT: I should note that the king and queen of homecoming were _very_ attractive, but not necessarily "cool kids." It was very refreshing, and perhaps an indication of things to come.

<comment><USER8> "Nice guys don't win." \-- He sounds like a Jeffrey Skilling type character. The guys that say things like that in high school probably are the ones that go to Wall Street and become white collar criminals.

<comment><USER3> I am sure that is true in some cases. Had he pursued higher education, that may have happened. In this case, he was athletic, good looking and charming; in a word, popular. But he was also very good at being an asshole. I think there was the thought that "if this is working for me now, then it will always work for me."

We were friends in that we hung out with the same group of people. I made a point to hang out with this group of people and do the things they did so I could try to be popular. Luckily, I realized at some point that being myself was preferable.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Tangential but for peeps who're in their late 20's and early 30's in tech, do you feel like we have peaked and now are in the decline?

When I first got out of school, was feeling like a shiny new penny as most of my other peeps were going for law school or doing their gap year in life sciences or other prep for graduate school. Basically leading life as struggling students. So relatively, I had relative high spending power, living in the city with discretionary income and splurging it on un-necessary latte /gastro-pub/trendy lounges and going to feel-good rock-climbing/hiking trips on weekends (posted on FB obviously) and believing in the mission of the startup/corporation same as mine.

Now in my late 20's, I feel like both my programmer peers' buying power and personal power are waning. Financially, most of my friends who're going for medicine and law are now in residency/associate training and will soon over take me in earnings. For my friends in finance/ management/accounting, there is a well-defined path to promotion where I feel like I have capped out and they're gonna start making more and having more power in comapnies. Applying to accelerators and doing hackathons and making business cards for startup's seem awfully empty to me now.

In terms of personal agency, my friends who have pursued graduate research are wrapping their degrees and are either going for post-doc's or joining industry as Associate Scientists doing much more self-directed research than the off- the-shelf web CRUD and "Big Data" that I'm doing. My friends who are musicians or artists or film-makers, albeit still poor are pushing out their albums and films in festivals and galleries; not so much critical success but having something they made by themselves and persevered to show for. I just made a bunch of cogs tick in a number of corporations and a few vanity project that I call "startup's."

I feel like I followed the cult of PG kinda of like the cool kids in high school have followed the cult of "cheerleaders and football QB" and bought in the hype. When I don't really care about consumer web, whether Angular.js or Macaw or whatever is next is better than Backbone.js, or the next message queue performance metric's or the next startup mantra about "pivoting" and "increasing your luck surface area" so all I was doing was looking for personal validation or trying to get rich without a cause. Oh well, youth is wasted on the young and I hope to learn and from this experience to recoup my loss.

<comment><USER11> I think the problem here is that you were spending too much time comparing yourself to your peers. Instead of being happy for their success, you're seeing it as devaluing your own worth. Is the point of having a high paying 9-5 making more money than your friends, or is it about having the the ability to dictate what you can do in your spare time? And is the point of pursuing things in your spare time and time (like rock-climbing/hiking/taveling/doing cocaine off hookers) to show off on Facebook or for personal enjoyment and betterment? I recently saw an interview with Dave Chappelle where he said that "money is the fuel of choices" and I think he nailed it.

<comment><USER12> I've heard it said "money doesn't buy happiness, but it does buy options."

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Most people lose, whether they're nerds or cool kids. They end up in unhappy jobs or unhappy marriages for the rest of their lives, which is a kind of prison that can be hard to escape.

<comment><USER8> True. You can always eschew the nerd/cool argument and choose realism.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> The definition of "cool" defined as "Pseudomature behavior—ranging from minor delinquency to precocious romantic involvement" seems designed to detect poor kids and kids from dysfunctional and abusive homes. It's only the word 'cool' that's getting this into the media rotation. If the headline was "Poor kids and kids from dysfunctional and abusive homes lose," I'm not sure that anybody would be interested in reading the story.

Too bad the public isn't allowed to read the study, so I can't actually see all of their metrics for defining cool other than petty crime and early sexual behavior - things that plenty of clearly not-cool kids get into.

</comment><comment><USER15> From personal experience the path-of-least-grief is to assume that attractiveness, intelligence, personality, and diligence are all uncorrelated.

<comment><USER5> Very good.

However, I also remember that _some things_ do affect the outcome. For example, there are studies that being tall or attractive provides some advantages, or that being short or bald provide some disadvantages in controlled experiments.

<comment><USER15> Since people value attractiveness for its own sake I think it makes more sense as outcome itself.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> This doesn't address whether psuedomature behavior is the cause of these problems. It could simply be a effect of problematic life circumstances: parental divorce, child abuse, neglect, etc. that are pervasive across economic classes.

This is much more likely correlative than causative.

</comment><comment><USER17> Seems a little biased, considering he actually says "I would say I was part of the not-so-cool kids."

<comment><USER18> Which is why the scientific method was invented and is taught in grade school.

<comment><USER17> I wish they continued to teach it through out High School too, since there seems to be a significant misunderstanding of how science actually works.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> From Abstract:

Early adolescent pseudomature behavior predicted long-term difficulties in close relationships, as well as significant problems with alcohol and substance use, and elevated levels of criminal behavior.

</comment><comment><USER19> "Look everyone, I've proven mathematically that _I_ am now the cool one. Told you."

Pathetic.

<comment><USER18> Some sociologists have decided to tackle studying the concept of "cool" and how it affects peoples' lives. They clearly stated that their definition of "coolness" is based on pseudomaturity, for which they also defined criteria.

The paper and study are published, and may provide interesting insights, but are unlikely to be accepted as canon without sufficient followup study and peer review, which by publishing the study these sociologists are clearly inviting.

Now, are you saying it's pathetic for people whose fundamental focus of life is to try to better everyone's understanding of the human psyche and in this case psychological development in early years? Are you saying it's a subject not worth studying at all? Are you saying that it's impossible to conduct an unbiased study on the subject? Are you saying that it would be better for the study to be performed by someone who would identify themselves as falling within the "cool" group in their childhood?

Or are you saying you'd rather just dismiss the study and disparage the scientists on the basis that you do not agree with the results of what appears to be a properly documented scientific study?

Skepticism is encouraged in science, dismissiveness is not.

<comment><USER19> I'm saying that this is a thinly veiled _revenge of the nerds_. And I'm not a scientist, so my discouragement shouldn't harm anyone. It's called an opinion and it doesn't require a peer review.

<comment><USER18> If anything here is thinly veiled, it's your opinion.

<comment><USER19> Well I got good news for you. I'm not doing any science.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> The little secret is that nobody really thinks they are the cool kids.

<comment><USER21> What do you mean? Deep down no one actually thinks they are cool? In both my high school and grammar school there were kids who were self proclaimed 'cool'. They were seen as such too. I don't think this was out of the ordinary.

<comment><USER20> In a fishbowl like a high school, people are really driven by their insecurity.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> Talk about burying the lede - the most important sentence in the whole article is the final one.

</comment><comment><USER23> Also known as "peaking in high school."

</comment><comment><USER24> Moral of today's story - sit down, shut up, and do as you are told by authority figures who are morally and socially superior to you.

</comment><comment><USER25> Random statements alert:

\- "Cool" fuzzy term, no specific definition given.

\- "Lose" fuzzy term, no specific definition given.

<comment><USER26> From the abstract of the actual study:

\- "Cool" => "Pseudomature behavior—ranging from minor delinquency to precocious romantic involvement"

\- "Lose" => "Early adolescent pseudomature behavior predicted long-term difficulties in close relationships, as well as significant problems with alcohol and substance use, and elevated levels of criminal behavior."

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> Nerd is the new cool...</comment>


The Startup Death Spiral - <AUTHOR> http://steveblank.com/2009/09/07/the-customer-development-manifesto-the-death-spiral-part-3/

<comment><USER2> Well, I gotta say. That was exactly what happened at a start-up I used to work for.

The sales guy didn't produce, survived a couple rounds of the Board getting anxious, and then he got canned.

At that point, we were already redoing the marketing materials ad nauseum. The Board was bringing in various consultants, and the engineering staff was even getting pared down (a year and a couple million bucks in).

Then, the marketing guy quit, probably just before he got fired (that was me). Then, the CEO got axed a couple weeks later.

That experience is one of the big reasons I write code today, instead of focusing on marketing. It sucks being in a position where you know you are getting blamed for the failure of the product (at least partially), but you're not sure what you can do to make it better, or if it's your fault at all.

It's more clear cut in programming if your code or your product sucks.

</comment><comment><USER3> Pretty fantastic actually.

</comment><comment><USER4> I find it somewhat offensive that he isn't giving any solution to steps.

is this simply to sell his (very good) book?

<comment><USER5> He's following the structure of the book very closely, covering essentially exactly the same material. If he keeps going the way he is, he will cover the book's contents. Also, versions of his book are available for free on the net, or at least were when I last looked. So it's not clear that it's a marketing exercise.</comment></comment>


Samsung Denies That They're Charging Carriers for Android Updates - <AUTHOR> http://daringfireball.net/linked/2011/01/18/samsung-denies <comment><USER2> Link to the original article: <http://www.phonescoop.com/news/item.php?n=7346>

</comment><comment><USER3> Getting it fixed either way would be nice, regardless of whether it's the carrier or the handset manufacturer holding it up.

</comment><comment><USER4> They are still in the process of "hoping" to have "details" on the "status". In other words, no updates just yet.

</comment><comment><USER5> Is it possible for Google to say: "As long as the phone is under warranty you must deliver the latest version of Android within 1 month of release, or <fill in the blank, not sure of a good penalty>." ?

<comment><USER6> …or you cannot ship marketplace or any of the other google apps.</comment></comment>


Forget Elf on the Shelf: Worry about Hello Barbie, actual child surveillance toy - <AUTHOR> https://www.toytalk.com/hellobarbie/privacy/
Search for 'research' or 'data analysis'.
At a bare minimum, Mattel now has a 'focus group' of every child they have successfully sold to. And they will use the data gathered to help them sell more Barbies. Possibly by making better Barbies. (But more likely by learning how to manipulate children into wanting more Barbies.)
Maybe Elf on the Shelf 'prepares children for the surveillance state.' but Hello Barbie makes them actually live in one? <comment><USER2> great;)</comment>


DAO Counter-Attack - <AUTHOR> https://blog.slock.it/a-dao-counter-attack-613548408dd7#.qt9nm1yc5 <comment><USER2> This is essentially the "Stalker Attack" discussed a few weeks ago as a failure in the DAO in [http://hackingdistributed.com/2016/05/27/dao-call-for- morato...](http://hackingdistributed.com/2016/05/27/dao-call-for-moratorium/) (related HN discussion [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11791671](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11791671) (170 points, 22 days ago, 81 comments))

If they succeed blocking the attacker, then they'll also prove that nobody has a guarantee to withdraw any money from the DAO.

Somewhat related: "Why The Stalker attack is a non issue" [https://github.com/slockit/DAO/wiki/Why-The-Stalker- attack-i...](https://github.com/slockit/DAO/wiki/Why-The-Stalker-attack-is-a- non-issue)

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> "Shall we play a game?"

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ecPeSmF_ikc](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ecPeSmF_ikc)</comment>


The world's live Q&A app - <AUTHOR> http://www.vectrapp.com <comment><USER2> So this is essentially a 1-1 chat app that connects an "expert in any desired field". Self-described as "real-time wikipedia".

One thing I find annoying right off the bat is that this is an app only: there's no web version.

If you did want to actually spend your time answering questions, you'd be forced to do it on your phone instead of something with a full keyboard, screen real-estate and multi-tasking.

I'm not sure how they find experts (seems like they'd just be normal users who happen to get high ratings), but I wonder how they plan to prevent burn-out?

I know I am not alone in hating answering the same questions over and over. I actually make a very conscious effort at work to answer questions people ask me by updating our documentation (tickets, wiki pages or source) whenever I possibly can, even if they send a 1-1 chat message. It takes more time than answering directly, but it takes less time than providing that same answer a second time.

In fact, you see on communities like StackOverflow that some people seem to almost delight in closing questions after they've hunted down the duplicate.

So that seems to me to be a big barrier to sustainability. Enough user volume and churn is probably the only way to combat this -- keep bringing in fresh people willing to answer the same questions -- but that can only go so far.</comment>


"I'm going to destroy Android, because it's a stolen product." - <AUTHOR> http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5izacIaKf2hT_w5hDjmST8YtIM4Hw

<comment><USER2> Full quote: "I will spend my last dying breath if I need to, and I will spend every penny of Apple's $40 billion in the bank, to right this wrong... I'm going to destroy Android, because it's a stolen product. I'm willing to go thermonuclear war on this... I don't want your money. If you offer me $5 billion, I won't want it. I've got plenty of money. I want you to stop using our ideas in Android, that's all I want."</comment>


Ask HN: Is Windows 8 = just Windows 7 + a new start menu in Metro design? - <AUTHOR>

Could anyone test the new beta and make some experiences? <comment><USER2> Ars Technica has been running a series of articles: <http://arstechnica.com/microsoft/>

I have noticed that social networks are better integrated (whatever that's worth to you). For example if you click on "Photos" it will show you local photos, Facebook photos, and Flickr photos next to each other.

Also, Metro isn't just a new Start screen, it's a whole framework for application developers to make apps. It replaces the old overlapping-windows paradigm with full-screen (or tiling) app windows.

</comment><comment><USER3> I'm a Mac/Linux guy so I haven't really looked at it much. However, people should consider that 9/10 desktop computers run Windows so the little things that Microsoft does makes a difference.

My one big positive takeaway is that IE10 is the default browser, and it's on par with all the other HTML5 browsers available. This will go a long way towards getting the stragglers using "HTML5". It's about time for a lot of XP users to upgrade, right?

<comment><USER4> The fact that they made HTML5 a first-class platform is encouraging. Even IE10 lags behind other browsers if you look across all of the APIs, but then it also has some features that a lot of browsers haven't done yet (like css3 calc).

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> As far as I an tell yes it is, but with a few changes on how you interact with "applications". I believe this is Microsoft finally stepping into the tablet market. As a power user I will just disable metro or stay with Windows 7.

<comment><USER6> They are also betting on touch screens with Metro. MS believes that touch screens will be common on all computing devices in the next few years.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> What is it you specifically want to see? "make some experiences" is a bit vague to respond to, and the internet is loaded with videos and hands-on articles.</comment>


Show HN: I built a puzzle / programming challenge with a 0.125 BTC prize - <AUTHOR> https://formapi.io/blog/posts/2018-bitcoin-programming-challenge/ <comment><USER2> It's possible to complete the first challenge without writing any CSS -- just deactivate break points to bypass the anti-debugger loop, and then use react dev tools to modify state and set the `completed` key to true :)

5Kbf6NSm6SABiMHwDcuZKY17fmCsnsKRYxR4hcnGqfzPsTeZnEj

<comment><USER3> Or you can also find solutions directly in the source code. I see that someone moved out the funds 8 minutes ago ;)

[https://www.blockchain.com/btc/address/1CSSrZSSRf1RyShKGsYXw...](https://www.blockchain.com/btc/address/1CSSrZSSRf1RyShKGsYXwJzzsjPXi7p7gz)

<comment><AUTHOR> Whoops, I assumed the obfuscator would encrypt those strings. I should have checked that more carefully. Oh well!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Really nice idea.

One thing that's adding to the "frustration factor" of the CSS problems is that the updates seem rather racy (Firefox 63, MacOS), in the sense that if you edit further while an update is already running, it doesn't seem to trigger a further update. Makes moving things around 1px at a time more annoying that it should be.

(I'm another one stuck with a just few pixels difference on the triangle for CSS Puzzle 7. Once someone's claimed the final prize, might there be an option to skip through to the later puzzles?)

<comment><USER5> Ah, it's reassuring to see other people getting mad on that triangle. I am very curious to see the solution for that thing in particular, as I found all the other CSS puzzles way easier :)

My personal best (9px left): [https://i.imgur.com/A0LIDxT.png](https://i.imgur.com/A0LIDxT.png)

<comment><AUTHOR> Oops, sorry about that! The solution involved `transform: rotate(81deg);`, but now I'm realizing how frustrating that was.

I've updated the last puzzle to remove any transforms, so it should be much easier now, and you can move on to the next stage.

</comment></comment></comment><comment> m-ou-se All of the first challenge's puzzles can be solved with:

        .thing {
          background: url(data:image/png;base64,iVBO...);
          width: ...px;
          height: ...px;
        }

Where the image data is just the target image itself. :)

</comment><comment><USER6> I got through the first 6 css pixel perfect challenges but got stuck on the last one where I couldn't get the gradients to match.

<comment><USER7> It's possible to interpolate the correct values with a screenshot, the gimp and a calculator.

<comment><AUTHOR> Nice work, that's exactly what I had in mind when I wrote it.

For anyone else reading this - The puzzle has been updated to remove the gradients and transform, so it should be much easier now.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> For anyone frustrated with the colors on stage 7:

        container: #660076
        triangle: #fd8abb
        circle: #fee376

<comment><USER9> Thank you!

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> The css puzzle was definitiv fun but definitively frustrating due to inaccuracy and bugs of the html2canvas library.

However I have to say the second puzzle is pretty uninteresting. It just seems so arbitrary and just kills all possible fun by giving you exact instructions how you are supposed to complete it.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the feedback, and sorry about that! But if you can make it to the final stage, I think you might enjoy that one.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> There is a puzzle with a few million BTC as the prize! So far nobody has claimed it, we'll see if it stays that way.

<comment><USER12> Supposing I had a solution to that puzzle, how much real money do you reckon I could turn that into? Given that the exchange rate would drop dramatically as I started selling.

<comment><USER13> I suppose it depends on how long your willing to take to liquidate it

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Hey Nathan! I'm working on creating a website that is somewhat similar by much more wide scale that uses a pattern similar to this.

Email me at firstname.lastname@example.com if you're interested in chatting. The idea has tremendous potential and I'm nearing completion of a prototype.

Thanks in advance, Michael

</comment><comment><USER15> Got through the first puzzle, found the wallet empty - someone's already on the hunt!

</comment><comment><USER16> Thanks for the 0.005BTC - Client Side Dev :)

Edit: 500,000 Sat sounds better :P

<comment><AUTHOR> Hey well done, thanks for posting! Did you solve the first stage with the CSS puzzles?

I'd be really interested to know if you figured out the correct CSS, or if you found the solutions in the JS source, or if you disabled the debug protection and used the React Dev Tools. Haha I made a lot of mistakes here. But hacking/reverse engineering is all part of the challenge :)

<comment><USER16> I solved most of them using plain CSS except for the 7th puzzle, I had to right-click the solution canvas and view that within another tab so that I had access to the dev tools colour picker tool. Great puzzle though! Got me thinking about the possibilities of such projects.

A community run puzzle platform where people have to pay a few thousand Satoshi to play. Or simply a lottery style game that clocks out at midnight every day.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> The first puzzle 0 does not work at all on Firefox 64. The Target Result and Difference areas are entirely blank. There are no errors in the console.

<comment><AUTHOR> That's surprising, I tested this on Mac with Firefox 64, Chrome, and Safari. Which operating system are you using, and could you try disabling some extensions?

<comment><USER18> I got through the last css puzzle, but kept telling me that like 17 pixels are different. They were as identical as one could get it...

<comment><AUTHOR> Sorry about that, I made it too difficult! I've updated the last puzzle to remove any gradients and transforms, so it should be much easier now.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> got through all of them, and found all to be empty. wondering if anything was there at all to start with :(

<comment><USER20> Wow! How did you solve it this fast? Your comment is at max an hour after anyone solved first question. I gave up in second question.

<comment><AUTHOR> Don't worry, they were just trolling and trying to stop other people from doing the puzzles.

But someone was able to solve the final puzzle 24 hours after it went live. I'll be writing up some blog posts with the solutions.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> TL;DR from the web site:

>I know this isn't really a "programming challenging"

<comment><AUTHOR> Yeah I wasn't sure if I should include this CSS game, or where to put it. But I think it's a fun "warm-up" exercise, and stages 2-4 have some very challenging programming puzzles. Thanks for the feedback, I'll try to update the wording in the post!</comment></comment>


Any help? - <AUTHOR>

Hi there, I have recently released a new site, but I'm having trouble getting people interested. Does anyone have any pointers? <comment><USER2> at least, post a link</comment>


The World Might Be Better Off Without College for Everyone - <AUTHOR> https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2018/01/whats-college-good-for/546590/?single_page=true <comment><USER2> Notice that every time someone writes an article about how some people are not cut out for higher education, it's always other people's kids who should avoid it.

I'd like to know what Bryan Caplan's (the author) kids are up to these days. Are they welders? Plumbers? That credential inflation is a topic of this article really shows the author's hand: _someone keep these people out of higher ed, they don 't deserve it and they're just making it harder for my offspring to differentiate themselves in the job market._

<comment><USER3> I've made the same argument as the writer, and I have children. Frankly, I'm not sure how to advise them when the time comes. It may well be that for some, I'd suggest a college education, while for others, I might suggest learning a trade and getting ahead in it while they're young. That is to say, I think your comment makes a conclusion based on your assumptions about people who question the universal value of higher education, and you don't have anything real to back it up.

<comment><USER4> Here's one argument against college education for jobs: you're very likely to be forced to move far from home to find any work in your field. There just weren't programming jobs within an hour of me in upper NY so I had to move to a place in New Jersey that I don't like that much out of necessity. I'm sure it would've went the same for chemical engineering or whatever else with very few exceptions, maybe law or medicine. If I'd taken a trade like electrical work or plumbing I could live anywhere I wanted - everyone has toilets and wires - but now I'm at the mercy of the programming job market until I can transition to remote work, so it'll be years until I get to live somewhere to my preference.

Where do you live? If it's not in or very close to highly dense areas, encourage trades if you don't want to have to take a plane or drive hours to visit your grandchildren.

<comment><USER5> While I get your point it should also be noted that an area can only sustain so many plumbers and electricians. It's not like there are hundreds of new plumber jobs opening up every year, especially in a place like Upstate NY with a shitty economy. They need people to get educated but then come back home and help improve the home economy.

Of course I say this as someone who moved from Upstate NY to Texas for work.

<comment><USER6> True, but there's still a difference. If you graduate with 50k student debt, say in CS, you're absolutely urged to work in your niche field where you're compensated for your new expertise and can pay back the loan. That may mean moving to a particular place with an industry that caters to this niche.

If you did vocational (e.g. apprenticeship) schooling and graduate with little or no debt, that urgency is far smaller, and it tends to be much less of a niche.

i.e., there's less debt pressure to pursue work that adequately compensates for your new knowledge, and there's more places (nearby) as you don't work in a niche as much.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Caplan's whole book, _The Case Against Education_ , is excellent, and if it doesn't convince you, try also _Paying for the Party_ : [https://jakeseliger.com/2014/04/27/paying-for-the-party- eliz...](https://jakeseliger.com/2014/04/27/paying-for-the-party-elizabeth- armstrong-and-laura-hamilton) , which is, too, congruent with my own experience on the provider side of the education system.

We ought to be moving towards de-stigmatizing and strengthening the vocational education system: [http://seliger.com/2017/06/16/rare-good-political-news- boost...](http://seliger.com/2017/06/16/rare-good-political-news-boosting- apprenticeships) . Not everyone wants to be or is well-suited to being an abstract-symbol manipulator. I am! But just because someone doesn't have that disposition, doesn't mean they are less or worse of a person.

<comment><USER8> Caplan is absolutely correct to say the much of education system is a waste of resources, a pointless zero-sum competition that simply re-arranges people on the socio-economic ladder.

But strangely, Caplan is a libertarian capitalist, an advocate of the very system that sets up and enforces this a socio-economic ladder in the first place.

He's also thus an opponent of any kind of welfare system that would make this competition less intense by making the bottom of the ladder a less miserable place to be and make the difference between the top and bottom less grotesque.

<comment><USER9> You talk about the socio-economic ladder like it's a bad thing in and of itself. IMO, it's only a bad thing where it sets up an incentive gradient that encourages bad behavior. The libertarian capitalist view is very aware of how you're rewarded with socio-economic status when you feed the hungry, invent cures for diseases, and generally provide wanted goods and services.

<comment><USER8> > you're rewarded with socio-economic status when you feed the hungry

LOL

<comment><USER10> Could you please not post like this here, regardless of how wrong someone else is? it just makes the thread even worse.

[https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html)

<comment><USER8> Sure. How do you suggest responding to comments too laughable to warrant a serious response?

<comment><USER11> A wise old man used to tell me "Silence is the only good reply to stupidity."

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I'm sure it has downsides, but the US military does a fairly decent job of using their ASVAB[1] tests to see what jobs recruits are qualified for. As an employer, I'd much rather look at something like that rather than the name of a school and a GPA.

[1] [https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Armed_Services_Vocational_Ap...](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Armed_Services_Vocational_Aptitude_Battery)

<comment><USER13> Of course, but legal risks make things weird.

If a company gives a test, and there exists a protected group that does less well on the test, then discriminatory intent can be presumed. It is certainly legal to give such a test, but some valid connection to the job requirements would need to be shown. Proving that in court is probably more trouble than the test is worth.

Employers don't seem to get in trouble for requiring a degree though, or even for preferring a degree from a fancy institution, despite the fact that entering a degree program usually requires a test such as the SAT or ACT.

So that is the workaround for avoiding legal trouble: demand an unnecessary degree in order to filter by test score without directly demanding a test score. It's kind of like money laundering, but for test scores. Colleges make out very well in this deal.

<comment><USER14> The constitutional "disparate impact" constraints regarding protected groups you're referring to don't apply to businesses in Europe, who don't seem to use cognitive ability tests that much more frequently

[http://econlog.econlib.org/archives/2013/07/three_big_facts....](http://econlog.econlib.org/archives/2013/07/three_big_facts.html)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Interesting article (also something of a condensed version of his book, The Case against Education), and a couple of counterpoints.

Caplan is making several seemingly-logical assumptions that most readers will miss. I will say that at least some of these assumptions are false, negating the conclusion.

Caplan assumes that people are largely immutable ("What I'm cynical about is people."). His touts several studies about both the retention and application of knowledge that support his point excellently. That being said, these studies are, at best, empirical estimations of a philosophical issue. The issue of "real world" ability suffers from being largely impossible to test, has no real definition, and is fraught with assumptions, none of which make for rigorous science.

Caplan, as I imagine, is taking college at its full cost when arguing that less people ought to go. I would like to point out it is fully possible to provide a college level education for significantly less than is done so now. I believe point this out makes his pragmatic argument much less strong.

I take issue to this claim in particular "My exams are designed to measure comprehension, not memorization. Yet in a good class, four test-takers out of 40 demonstrate true economic understanding." If just 10% of students understand, I would argue the teacher is either grossly ineffective or the student is grossly underprepared. Teasing out the fault is difficult, but don't forget, this anecdote is wholly from the teacher. Also, what constitutes "true economic understanding"?

I don't disagree with Caplan's conclusion personally, but I do disagree with how he arrives there. Calling students philistines is both an unfair generalization and a sidelining insult. His assumptions allow him to arrive at an agreeable point, but that path taken is full of disagreeable compromises.

<comment><USER16> >I would like to point out it is fully possible to provide a college level education for significantly less than is done so now

Yea, exactly. That, and I just wish I could study and compete for degrees in an open, competitive and lucrative system.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> Why teach everyone advanced math and physics? Because you have to start training for it at a very young age in order to have mathematically and mentally matured enough to be ready for a modern PhD in your early 20's. The system is inefficient but has naturally evolved to give everyone a shot, starting everyone on this path and letting people drop out at different steps along the way. Our society needs scienstis, lawyers, doctors, and MBAs. Everyone's parent want their child to be one of these. So everyone is sent along this path.

It's better than the old style where you could only go to school if you were rich enough. That kind of society couldn't compete with a society that found the best among millions instead of thousands and thus naturally eroded away.

<comment><USER18> The fraction of people out of the total population that will actually want (need?) a PhD in math, physics, or other related fields doesn't really support your statement.

Also, I know plenty of parents who don't have specific career goals in mind for their children, who support their children following their own calling towards a particular profession.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> Purely from an individual financial perspective this also makes sense. Take the example of the UK: fees are a flat 9k per year. At the end of a 3 year degree you're at least 30k in debt (usually closer to 50k with living costs). What chance does a drama graduate from an unheard of university have of paying that back comfortably?! Has their degree really added to their ability to earn? Add to that a whopping 6% interest rate on student loans. It's enough to make a young person depressed. A number of my friends now use less that 5% of their degree knowledge and have learnt most of their craft on the job. Maybe we could just skip uni and get straight to learning on the job? It just seems so much more sensible for a lot of careers (CS included).

<comment><USER2> Fron a individual financial perspetive, this does not make sense, and the article says so:

FTA: "Would I advise an academically well-prepared 18-year-old to skip college because she won't learn much of value? Absolutely not. Studying irrelevancies for the next four years will impress future employers and raise her income potential. If she tried to leap straight into her first white-collar job, insisting, "I have the right stuff to graduate, I just choose not to," employers wouldn't believe her. To unilaterally curtail your education is to relegate yourself to a lower-quality pool of workers. For the individual, college pays."

<comment><USER19> The fact that this is true further emphasises the need to delete this paradigm from society. Studying irrelevancies for 4 of your most capable and potentially productive years is a real waste. (My point originally was a little different - it was that a bunch of people go to uni because "it's the done thing" while saddling themselves with a mountain of debt for a poorly chosen degree, often due to pressure from uni marketing, then not getting a job that can really support them or justify the amount spent on their education)

<comment><USER2> >Studying irrelevancies for 4 of your most capable and potentially productive years is a real waste.

By what measure are 18-22 your most capable and potentially productive years? The brain doesn't stop maturing until 25-30 [0]. College is a great time for that to happen: a place and time to make mistakes without severe consequences; to explore what interests you, fall in love, try drugs, travel abroad, meet people from outside your comfort zone.

Calling these activities a waste because the person is not contributing to some economic output indicator is brutally myopic. In the age of AI and rapid automation of labor, we should be considering more than ever the importance of putting human minds first.

This is why college should be free. Let people take the courses they want, drop out, go to a trade school, do whatever. We can afford it.

[0][http://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-24173194](http://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-24173194)

<comment><USER19> Except that college/uni is frought with unnecessary stress and anxiety driven by exams etc. And I'm not saying people should focus on making money from a young age - quite the opposite actually. We should be free to explore whatever we choose. I just feel the college/uni education system is a bit of a con and learning within the confines of that system is expensive and not that advantageous to most. I too believe uni should be free (it used to be here in the UK) - and funnily enough, less people chose to go to uni back then despite it being free! Now that it's super pricey, more people seem to go as more is spent on marketing degrees to the public and it's "just the done thing" in society.

Edit: just saw this on the BBC - very relevant to my point: [http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/education-42923529](http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/education-42923529)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment> Chiba-City It is easier today than ever before to share a basic great books history and philosophy "story" today. We can include our primate biology, geology, food history and organizational and strategic narratives from Sun Tzu to Aristotle to Schelling's game theory to Robert's Rules of order.

If we're going to live to 100, we should should share some tooling for how to get there better together. Education is not the problem. Constant crop dusting on filmic conflict fictions and staged sport conflicts is the problem. Living together in an industrial world secreted behind walls or even continents away on 1-way broadcast communications is foolhardy.

</comment><comment><USER20> It's beneficial for a broad segment of society to be in conversant in the liberal arts — particularly history. Not everyone needs or wants a degree, but it's hard to have an informed or politically engaged populace without this kind of education making its way into everyone's hands.

</comment><comment><USER21> We need a college education to be _accessible_ to anyone who is qualified. That's different from universal higher education. Those signals get crossed a lot.

<comment><USER7> _We need a college education to be accessible to anyone who is qualified_

You should read the article:

 _The labor market doesn't pay you for the useless subjects you master; it pays you for the preexisting traits you signal by mastering them. This is not a fringe idea. Michael Spence, Kenneth Arrow, and Joseph Stiglitz—all Nobel laureates in economics—made seminal contributions to the theory of educational signaling. Every college student who does the least work required to get good grades silently endorses the theory. But signaling plays almost no role in public discourse or policy making. As a society, we continue to push ever larger numbers of students into ever higher levels of education. The main effect is not better jobs or greater skill levels, but a credentialist arms race._

If college is mostly about signaling, then it's an arms race, and the faster the herd, the more the individual most race in order to keep up.

Accessibility to _higher education_ is important, but much more of that education should be vocational in nature. Right now we have a lot of access to college, but that access has led to ballooning problems with student loans, along with Girard-style mimetic crises ( [https://jakeseliger.com/2017/06/27/violence-and-the- sacred-o...](https://jakeseliger.com/2017/06/27/violence-and-the-sacred-on- campus/) ).

<comment><USER22> If college is part of a signaling arms race, if we conceive of education purely as a labor market good, why are we asking the laborers to stand down from that race and not the employers?

<comment><USER23> Indeed, if everybody knows that a college education is empty signaling, then how is it possibly still effective?

The best and biggest employers should have the best information on the value of college education (in whole and in terms of its parts, such as humanities courses). They could expand their potential labor pool and make better or cheaper hires by adopting different hiring standards. If there's an information arbitrage going on here, somebody should be able to make money from it.

In my view the elephant in the room is that maybe a college education is valuable after all, but we haven't put our finger on the precise reason.

<comment><USER24> > _The best and biggest employers should have the best information on the > value of college education (in whole and in terms of its parts, such as > humanities courses)._

Depends how one defines "best"; though this is debatable, because one could say that these are the most beholden to the signaling arms race despite the data they may have to the contrary (i.e alphabet, amazon, et al).

> _In my view the elephant in the room is that maybe a college education is > valuable after all, but we haven 't put our finger on the precise reason._

I don't think this is the elephant in the room at all, people routinely say that some parts of a college education can be valuable for various reasons, while others (as judged by value by the marketability of the graduates) are not valuable at all.

In my view, the "best" and biggest employers like it because it signals some default level of competence (which is growing weaker as the incentives are to push everyone through to get some kind of degree) as well as relative malleability and conformance to institutionalized authority (those who opted out, or didn't go might not conform to the corporate identity or end up making it expensive for the employer to employ them, compared to their counter parts; after all, hiring based on objective measurements/metrics without any human involvement isn't something that happens today). Also these companies are largely affected by the turnover rates compared to smaller ones, so it's easier to target colleges graduates as a cohort.

> _If there 's an information arbitrage going on here, somebody should be able > to make money from it._

I do think some employers take advantage of this environment, though I doubt it's alphabets, amazons, and apples…

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> The article defeats its own arguments with statements like, "In other words, education enriches individuals much more than it enriches nations." Hard to argue against education at that point but the article tries anyway. Let's ignore the fact that that is the point of education. When was it the the object of education to teach specific job skills? That's a new one to me. After all, we must be talking about fortune tellers if you can tell which job skills will be in most demand and pay best two decades from now.

It's sad that people don't want to learn, educate, or improve themselves. It's a defeatist attitude and sad that we as a society are willing to explore so little of people's potential. This attitude towards education in the US is, in many ways, more corrosive to our society than the lack of quality education itself.

</comment><comment><USER26> We're also incentivizing a disparity in credential signalling by making it so straightforward for 16 year olds to drop out of highschool. I'm not aware of any industrialized nation that makes this so easy.

</comment><comment><USER27> This take is so incredibly tired.

What good would life be if we only had technical writers and PR people?

Further, why stop at college? Why not just predetermine who is likely to be most successful based on their parents, and not school certain kids at all? This is beyond a slippery slope, and it's _always_ expressed by someone with a LOT of education, like a fucking professor of economics with a PhD from an Ivy League school.

My eyes couldn't be rolling harder. I have a successful career in tech of 20+ years, without a degree, and a HUGE amount of what's wrong with the culture of tech is that we are surrounded and led by folks who haven't studied sociology, political science, even economics, having HUMONGOUS impact on what those fields teach.

Far more rarely will you hear people for whom higher education was always out of reach say that we think it had nothing to offer us. It's a great privilege, but I _definitely_ think society could benefit from trying to get more education in the hands of folks who would do something with it, instead of greedy little fuckshits who think studying art and literature is a waste of time.

I've been working in tech since I was 16 years old, and I can never get that time back. There are subjects which I'll never be as able to learn - particularly higher math - as I was at that age.

I was excited to dive into my career when I was young, but I do not feel it yielded the best life I could have had.

<comment><USER28> > My eyes couldn't be rolling harder. I have a successful career in tech of > 20+ years, without a degree, and a HUGE amount of what's wrong with the > culture of tech is that we are surrounded and led by folks who haven't > studied sociology, political science, even economics, having HUMONGOUS > impact on what those fields teach.

Couldn't agree with this more. I'm relatively young, but I'm trying to get out of tech (and especially engineering) because of the lack of a stimulating cultural environment. The kind of conversations I like having, the kind of women I'd like to meet, and the kind of company I like to keep just don't exist in tech. Talking about video games was cool in my early 20s, but I've had 30+ coworkers that literally _only_ talked about video games and the most recent tech stack. Yuck.

Coming from having studied philosophy (at an elite school) and where most of my old classmates are lawyers now, it's kind of a bummer. As an aside, startup people/founders/investors tend to be much more eclectic, but tech, at the ground level, is an intellectual wasteland.

<comment><USER29> > Coming from having studied philosophy (at an elite school) and where most of > my old classmates are lawyers now, it's kind of a bummer. As an aside, > startup people/founders/investors tend to be much more eclectic, but tech, > at the ground level, is an intellectual wasteland.

Now my eyes are rolling. It must be contagious. I'm sure the famously fascinating and well loved folks known as Lawyers will be better to work with.

<comment><USER30> I know you were just trying to get in some cheap laughs by putting other people down, but being a lawyer has made my life much more fascinating.

It's hard to imagine another profession that has as good a balance between intellectual depth (law is very much a technical skill) and intellectual breadth (a natural result of having to become conversant in whatever domain forms the context of the current dispute). Because of my job, I've learned so much about fields as diverse as Vitamin D testing and DNA identification to Sikh religious apparel to Hellfire missile post-launch abort procedures.

So, I mean, you are of course entitled to laugh at the cliché of lawyers being boring suits. But the simple reality is that it's a deeply enriching field.

<comment><USER29> Read that quote. Philosophy at an elite school, all my former classmates are lawyers, intellectual wasteland. The cheap laughs already happened.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> Classic American: "I can't make money on it, it's useless".

Having an education (at least a high school diploma) is supposed to make you a civil and functioning citizen of your country, with enough knowledge to understand (albeit at a basic level) why things are the way they are.

<comment><USER10> National swipes are not allowed on HN, regardless of which nation. Please don't do it here.

[https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html)</comment></comment>


Google launches Google TV - <AUTHOR> http://www.google.com/tv/ <comment><USER2> So some background on this space.

This is hardly the first entrant and pretty much every tv and blu-ray you buy moving forward will have similar capabilities to what Google has announced. Though perhaps with a different provider.

Yahoo actually has the most TV's out right now with similar interactivity using their widget platform. They're on Sony, Samsung, Vizio and LG tvs <http://connectedtv.yahoo.com/>

Samsung has their own platform running on their TVs and blu-ray players. Its an HTML engine and also supports a "Flash Lite" or Stagecraft. (and their tvs still run yahoo widgets as well) <http://www.samsung.com/us/internetTV/>

Vudu (recently bought by Wal-Mart) has an app platform being supported by many manufacturers as well its Lua based and on Toshiba, LG and Sanyo products. (this is outside of their on-demand video service)

Panasonic has "Viera Cast" which is actually a cloud based service I haven't really figured out yet

So besides these there's quite a few "Over The Top" boxes that provide similar functions such as

Roku

Popcorn Hour (about to launch their new Popbox in a bit)

Apple TV

Boxee

Anyway its fun to see Google hopping into the space we'll see how well they do.

<comment><USER3> You are right.

Apple TV should have been this product, if it was open and allowed you to browse any website and ran flash, it didn't.

Boxee would be this product if it had shipped a box that worked with the TV. (Yeah, I know about the boxee box). The difference is Google has the muscle to close the loop on this one.

The others are all closed at various levels or lack developer traction.

Boxee is the closest in terms of being open, I was hoping to replace my apple tv (had it from day 1 and use it for my videos and photos)

<comment><USER4> You can hack the Apple TV and put Boxee on it. The fact that so many people did that should've clued Apple in.

What Google has, that only Yahoo and Microsoft can match, is federated search for video content. Apple should buy a search engine and apply it to search video content.

Google also has the brand clout to take on Microsoft and Apple. Yahoo has less brand power, but it has enough to leverage itself into this market.

<comment><USER3> Have you tried it? It crashes the Apple Tv about twice a day, I reverted back to the Apple Tv OS.

<comment><USER4> In that case, Apple gave up an even better opportunity than I thought.

<comment><USER3> I have read this a few times now about Apple trying to get a low cost TV package for iTunes.

[http://www.mercurynews.com/ci_15121131?IADID=Search- www.merc...](http://www.mercurynews.com/ci_15121131?IADID=Search- www.mercurynews.com-www.mercurynews.com)

I think until they can pull it off, AppleTV would remain crippled.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Not impressed yet. I watched the video and I can't tell if Google TV will know about the channels I already receive. If you look at their pitch (around 0:30), they say it's too hard to find what I want to watch because I receive hundreds of channels. I don't know about you, but I have a DVR, and it's quite easy to find and record any show and watch them anytime.

So if Google TV doesn't give me access to the live shows I already receive, it doesn't really solve a problem. I also have an AppleTV, so I understand the value of being able to watch video podcasts and YouTube on my large screen TV.

<comment><USER6> If you have the dish network google TV can interface with the scheduler and your dvr. Hopefully more providers will come along as this develops.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> RIP AppleTv. Apple had 3 years to do this and they missed it.

Android apps on the TV. The first person who gets the games to work with Logitech Controller or any generic controller will win - big.

This thing can dent iPhoneOS big time.

<comment><USER7> Android apps on the TV has the potential to be _huge_ particularly if the build these Google TV systems with a decent video chipset (like that Tegra chipset Nvidia's been demo'ing on a prototype Android tablet). Particularly with Logitech, long time maker of TV remotes _and_ game controllers, on board, this could challenge Wii for home gaming, possibly even challenge the Xbox 360 and PS3.

<comment><USER8> While I can see something like this doing very well against the Wii in the casual gaming market, the hardware is too slow to compete with the 360/PS3 graphically for hardcore gamers.

That said, this isn't necessarily a bad thing. Hasn't the Wii been wildly more profitable than its competitors?

<comment><USER7> We don't know what the hardware for GoogleTV will be yet do we? But you're probably right. The odds that it'd include Xbox360 level hardware are realllly slim. :-(

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I don't have TV, I have a 30" monitor. My sweetie and I roll the chair away from my desk and sit on the couch a few feet behind. HD content looks great, and I have a variety of sources to choose from, you tube, hulu, USENET, etc.

</comment><comment><USER10> It's unfortunate that the demo they performed went so badly. If I'm going to view internet on my TV, it has to be easier than plugging in my laptop. After watching them fiddle around with their devices so awkwardly, I doubt it will be any easier. Part of me was wishing that I could watch Steve Jobs debut a new web-enabled Television that just freaking _works_.

<comment><USER11> It's a beta presentation, relax. You can find on youtube many failures that happened on Steve Jobs presentations too. I'm sure the final version will work just fine, just like any google product.

<comment><USER12> Want to link to some? It would make sense that they've happened, but I can't really recall any actual examples...

<comment><USER11> <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AnVUvW42CUA>

[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KsKKQNZG3rE&feature=relat...](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KsKKQNZG3rE&feature=related)

[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=maIgu_7oLm0&feature=relat...](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=maIgu_7oLm0&feature=related)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Is it just me, or does this seem a lot like what boxee does? Perhaps Google, with it's brand name will be finally able to push the web+tv concept into the mainstream.

<comment><USER14> I wonder if Apple will react by updating AppleTV and turning into what everybody was hoping it would be from the beginning..

<comment><AUTHOR> I'm likely to be completely wrong, but I seriously think that Apple is prepping Apple TV for the iTunes cloud that we continue to hear about. It will be the premiere device for them if they want to enter that market. Imagine on demand streaming of all the shows you want for around $30/month. Ready to stream to your iPad, iPhone, iMac, and Apple TV.

<comment><USER15> I'd love to see it (sort of), but Apple has pretty a pretty piss-poor record of doing well anything in "the cloud". If anyone could get it right, it's google.

<comment><USER16> Spending over a billion dollars on a brand new datacenter says to me that they're interested in changing that record.

<comment><USER17> You must be with the U.S. Department of Education...

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> This doesn't seem to offer much more than TiVo. Based on Google's 2 minute pitch, much of what they promised is already available on the Gen 3 TiVo: record programs, Netflix, YouTube, video on demand, photos. The only things I saw that were new were a "global" search capability and bookmarks. Is that enough of a difference maker? Probably not. Maybe if there was some other benefit thrown in (aka no recurring service fees).

</comment><comment><USER19> I've never understood why solutions such as these are better than simply plugging your computer into your TV. Any answers? Am I missing something?

<comment><USER3> Plugging your computer to your TV is not an option unless you have a dedicated computer plugged to your TV. Then you want the computer to be quiet, small and not FUGLY.

You want the computer to be operated by a small keyboard and a remote rather than a mouse.

And you want your computer to have digial out, handle 7.1 surround and have appropriate software to handle GPU encoding etc. When you add that up, the cost goes high.

Hence, something like the logitech box or the boxee box (appropriately priced)will do the job without another computer. (I own an apple tv)

AppleTv got it right - other than the closed / crippled part.

<comment><USER20> You describe a Mac Mini. Quiet, small, inexpensive and not fugly!

<comment><USER21> You can read a bunch of posts here about a techy, clueful, Mac savvy guy and the many woes of trying to use a Mac Mini as a mediacentre:

<http://hicksdesign.co.uk/tag/mediacentre/>

He seems to finally settle with beaming media to his PS3 via DNLA _and_ buying an AppleTV to achieve his aims.

Key quote on the Mac Mini:

 _When it works, it's great. The trouble is that 15% of the time something happens – EyeTV crashes, iTunes has been updated and won't let you play anything until you've accepted terms and conditions, or another app is telling you that an update is available.

For these times, I don't have an easy solution, other than to screen share and sort it out with the MacBook. Sometimes (like in the instance of EyeTV crashing) you just have to restart._

There's few good answers in this space at the moment. I've got an Acer Revo running Ubuntu and XBMC that's doing great for me but it required me to climb a major learning hump to get it all into shape. I didn't mind that, in fact I enjoyed it, but there's few good, easy options for non-geeks, or even geeks with less time to spend. There are lots of mediocre options but they're all flawed in a variety of ways.

<comment><USER22> I find a Mac mini + Plex to be an excellent home media center: <http://www.plexapp.com/>

The new media management features in the upcoming Plex/Nine release look great: <http://vimeo.com/11880867>

The Apple Bluetooth keyboard is small enough to be living room friendly.

Overall, a Mac mini isn't quite as simple as AppleTV, but it's far more functional.

<comment><USER3> Yes, it definitely is more functional. Every now and then I am tempted to spend the $600 for a dedicated mini, but why bother?

If a boxee box does the job for $200, has 1080p, 7.1 out, 802.11n / Gig.E why bother spending $600?

I hope the Logitech setup GoogleTv box does the job.

<comment><USER22> For me, the mini performs other tasks.

It's always on, so it's a great home storage server (I have a Drobo w/ 4.5TB of storage attached via FireWire 800).

It downloads torrents & podcasts nicely.

Also, the shared library support coming in Plex/Nine looks killer. I'm looking forward to running Plex on my MacBook without having to maintain a separate metadata library.

<comment><USER3> I have two iMacs which already do what you say (Drobo as well). Don't want another device hooked there.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> The analytics they gather will be invaluable. Like nielsen ratings for web video (correlated by household instead of user or computer).

<comment><USER24> Nielsen's value lies in their ability to know exactly who is watching TV (or using the computer, now that they can monitor internet usage).

Members of a household log in to a Nielsen box when they watch TV, and Nielsen knows precise demographic information about each member of the households they monitor.

Google's not going to be able to tell you a Hispanic, thirteen-year-old male watched Ninja Turtles (online) from 8-8:15.

<comment><USER25> I bet they could. Just look at what Google account the Android phone acting as a remote is logged into. It'd probably be easy enough to build some demographic information just analyzing the users e-mail and searches.

<comment><USER24> Assuming that's true (what does a white person say in their e-mails), Nielsen can do it legally. There's no way Google can sniff and data mine your e-mail within the law or their TOS.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> I already have a google tv. It's call projector + laptop.

But of course, I'm not the market segment they are going after.

</comment><comment><USER27> This looks many times more powerful and easier to use than my current cable box (of which most cable companies give you no choice). Searching for shows on my cable box is slow and time-consuming, so GoogleTV looks very promising if it can interact nicely with existing set-top boxes.

This is also a great way for Google to enter the home entertainment space and begin leveraging this platform to expand the reach of their advertising and analytics platforms.

</comment><comment><USER28> They could do what iPhone did to phones to the desktop/television. A simple platform that does what 90% of people need (watch Hulu/Netflix, browse eBay, send email, etc). The Chrome Web Store can provide the App Store component.

I think the really critical part is getting the price so low that they get massive distribution. At least until TVs have it built in. No one thinks "I need to buy an internet computer for my TV", so they have to make it cheap enough that people will say "why not?"

They should make good money off ad revenue, so hopefully they can give the devices away, or get them down to $19 or $29.

<comment><USER29> Lots of new tvs are Internet enabled already with YouTube support and other stuff. And if your tv isn't, then there are bluesy players that do it, not to mention ps3s and xboxes. However the one thing usually missing is July, so if google can bring that then it's awesome

<comment><USER30> July?

<comment><USER31> Probably Hulu.

<comment><USER29> Yea I meant Hulu. I was typing it on the iPhone. And also sub "bluesy" with blu-ray.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> It'll be interesting to see if this goes anywhere. Microsoft (Xbox), Sony (PS3) and Apple (Apple TV) all have boxes that in some way attempt to bring in TV/movie/photo content to your TV. Those three haven't impressed me too much with their efforts. Of course I'm in Canada, so many great features are inaccessible to me.

Apple TV in particular has been particularly weak. It should have been something like this from the get go. Maybe they'll finally announce some interesting stuff for it now that the iPad is out the door.

</comment><comment><USER33> Cheapo laptop ($500), connected to my TV and surround sound, wireless keyboard + remote control to switch back to my FiOS TV is close enough for all of this for me.

</comment><comment><USER34> I see a simpler and arguably better search-find-consume cycle that includes more sources like the TV channels you subscribe to, PPV, etc.

I'm not sure if thats enough though. I guess that would depend on the price point + execution. Right now I already get what seems like the same results it promises — all of my video is sourced online and I just feed the video from my computer to my TV setup.

But I don't find cable valuable. Maybe this is more valuable for people who do?

</comment><comment><USER35> I just looked at this and thought "Boxee. Yeah, I have that already."

OK, so they've jumped into a market that's already got a few players and since they are so big they'll bring it to the masses. That's not all that exciting from where I sit.

</comment><comment><USER36> The video was mostly fumes. It's hard to really see the true vision of the product with that they released. But, at least this announcement may actually get Apple to rethink their Apple TV strategy.

</comment><comment><USER37> For anyone interested in an earlier failed attempt of Microsoft (China) into the living room

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

</comment><comment> brown9-2 It's not at all clear from the video, but what are you typing on when you watch to search for whatever it is you're asking the Google TV device to search for?

A keyboard plugged into the set-top box?

<comment><USER3> oh, for the demo they showed a keyboard and an android phone as well. The input device / controller is going to vary based on provider. I can imagine there will be many remotes with built in keyboards something like this:

[http://www.productwiki.com/upload/images/d_link_boxee_box_re...](http://www.productwiki.com/upload/images/d_link_boxee_box_remote_1.jpg)

</comment></comment><comment><USER38> Maybe there is something i am missing here, but how is this better than hooking your laptop to your TV and bookmarking on your favorite shows on your browser?

</comment><comment><USER39> I am all the sudden reminded of Windows Media Center. Microsoft sure seems to have a lot of trouble getting traction in some markets.

<comment><USER40> Microsoft just keeps missing the mark with Media Center (MCE). It's been around since 2002-2003, but has never gained any significant traction.

It's actually a pretty nice product. The UI works well and is pretty simple to use; if someone can use a Tivo, they can figure out MCE's interface.

The problem has always been the hardware and the marketing. When it first came out, you needed a dedicated PC to run it (unless you wanted to watch it on your monitor, thereby missing the point of the whole application), which was expensive (if you wanted it quiet) and painful for the lay-person to set up, especially considering Wifi wasn't quite up to the task (802.11b was what was primarily out there).

To get around this, MS had a good idea with the Extenders, but again, the execution was horribly flawed. You still likely needed a spare PC and a fast network connection to stream data to the Extender. Additionally, the companies that made extenders tended to be Linksys and D-Link... not exactly companies busrting with consumer friendly/simple UIs. Plus they were another $200-300 addition. Plus, Extenders were never marketed well either because the manufacturers didn't have the money, or they just didn't care.

Fortunately, MS did also build Extender functionality into the Xbox. But again, it is still some separate, hard to find mode on the Xbox. You have to pair it to a PC like you would a bluetooth device, and can be confusing for a non-techie. And once you have that done, now your Xbox has two different ways of playing music/video: One with the MCE mode and UI, and one with the native Xbox dashboard UI. Plus the Extender has to "connect" to your PC every time you want to use it.

Perhaps the most damning experience I've had with it came when I showed it to a friend of mine. He's about as enthusiastic about technology as you can get, but didn't know about MCE. Back in 2007ish, after looking at it for 5 minutes he said:

"This looks awesome, why haven't I ever seen this before? Good job Microsoft."

Hindsight is 20/20, but they really should have made it 100% native on the Xbox, or released a similar device that didn't require a PC sync.

</comment></comment><comment><USER41> I start feeling Google is spreading itself a little too thin... and we all know what happen when other giants made that mistake.

<comment><USER2> I get what you're saying but in this case I'm not sure I agree. I think Google's looking to extend Android to any embedded device that will run it. I think this is much more an extension of android then a whole new product direction.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> It sounds good, but what are the chances that this will come to Canada? We still don't get Hulu or Google Voice...

<comment><AUTHOR> It's open source. :-) Hopefully you'll be able to get plenty of devices that use it. Logitech is creating a companion device. They said it should be available worldwide.

</comment></comment><comment><USER42> I am totally confused. Is Google going to sell a box like apple TV and Boxee box?

<comment><USER43> Not quite; Google makes the software but the boxes will be sold by Sony, Logitech, etc.

</comment></comment><comment><USER44> Genius move, love it. It should make watching TV really fun.

</comment><comment><USER45> And the world yawns...

</comment><comment><USER46> looks like xbmc+apple tv combo (minus itunes)

</comment><comment><USER47> GTV is running on Atom instead of ARM, the Android VM approach makes sense to me now.</comment>


Ledger e-commerce and marketing data breach - <AUTHOR> https://www.ledger.com/addressing-the-july-2020-e-commerce-and-marketing-data-breach <comment><AUTHOR> FAQ for the breach: [https://support.ledger.com/hc/en- us/articles/360015559320](https://support.ledger.com/hc/en- us/articles/360015559320)

Caused by a misconfigured API key apparently</comment>


Ask HN: Which Startups Should Have an Open Source Alternative That Don't? - <AUTHOR> <comment><USER2> Most of them already have, not sure what you are looking for but the main issue with all the alternatives is that they are not popular enough or are just pestered with bugs.

<comment><AUTHOR> Looking for open source project ideas; core components to reduce the barrier of entry for possible competitors.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Intercom.io

<comment><USER4> We need a software version of that to run on own servers

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> The real estate sector is dying for more open source software. A good example is this:

[https://retsrabbit.com](https://retsrabbit.com)

All it does is act as a gateway between different data formats yet only proprietary solutions exist.</comment>


Show HN: Dominus 2 – Free Multiplayer Strategy Browser Game - <AUTHOR> http://dominus2.io/ <comment><USER2> I played one game and like what I saw so far, the controls felt a little fidgety, I wonder if you can streamline them a bit so there's less clicking.</comment>


Copenhagen Suborbitals: The world's only manned, amateur space program - <AUTHOR> https://copenhagensuborbitals.com/about-us/ <comment><AUTHOR> The most recent launch was August 2018, [https://copenhagensuborbitals.com/missions/nexo- ii/](https://copenhagensuborbitals.com/missions/nexo-ii/)

 _> The Nexø rocket class is a technology demonstrator in advance of building the significantly bigger Spica rocket that will take our astronaut to space ... The rocket flew in a perfect line up to app. 6500 m, where the nosecone was discarded, and the ballute did its job: Stabilising the rocket, and then deploying the main parachute that carried the rocket down to a gentle splashdown in the sea. The rocket was quickly recovered as planned – and even the nosecone was found. This splash cannot be underestimated: It was the first time we had a rocket land in a parachute, and that with a speed so low that an astronaut would have survived the impact. Also, the DPR system proved to be as successful as we hoped. This system, that uses a helium tank to maintain a constant pressure in the fuel og oxidizer tanks, paves the way for a rocket that can fly an astronaut all the way to space without the need for extremely complicated turbopumps. In other words: The Nexø I and II has done their job as concept demonstrators for the systems that now can be scaled up to the much bigger, manrated Spica rocket class._

</comment><comment><USER2> I was tangentially involved in the Nexo II launch. Alexandru Csete (author of Gqrx) used my GNU Radio DVB-S2 transmitter code to send live HD video from the rocket.

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uwSYv8eVQqQ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uwSYv8eVQqQ)

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WYF8Am- lt20](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WYF8Am-lt20)

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uqwJu6cSBW4](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uqwJu6cSBW4)

<comment><USER3> Ron, both of you are famous in free software and amateur radio communities due to your work, so thanks again.

I have some doubts though regarding the safety of manned launches here. Seems like a serious issue to me and I hope it's not treated lightly.

<comment><USER4> >I have some doubts though regarding the safety of manned launches here.

I have some doubts about the safety of climbing mount Everest too. That doesn't mean people shouldn't do it. People like to do risky stuff.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Cool project, but I always find it amusing when the word "suborbital" is used since it's sort of a fancy way to say normal or not space. Reminds me this Feynman story:

> Or his questioning of space shuttle engineers: ''They kept referring to the > problem by some complicated name - a 'pressure-induced vorticity oscillatory > wa-wa,' or something. I said, 'Oh, you mean a whistle!' 'Yes,' they said; > 'it exhibits the characteristics of a whistle.' ''

[http://movies2.nytimes.com/books/97/09/21/reviews/feynman- do...](http://movies2.nytimes.com/books/97/09/21/reviews/feynman- doyoucare.html)

<comment><USER6> I find the term is apt here, because 'space' is roughly defined as anything beyond 100km from Earth's surface (which they're aiming for). But reaching space is vastly easier than reaching orbit, which requires reaching a speed of about 28000km/h or 17000 mph, which they're definitely not aiming for!

<comment><USER5> That makes sense, I think I still think of an object reaching space as it can then stay there, vs just a peekaboo. :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I'm curious how a volunteer organization will achieve the culture and technical maturity to make human rated hardware without a high probability of a horrible death. Think about all the conditions in a long chain of events that must all go right, in a launch, to avoid cooking, freezing, squishing, cratering, asphyxiating, poisoning, exploding, or drowning your crew.

After decades of practice, NASA ended up under 1:100 odds of mishap at the end of the Shuttle program, with some estimates at 1:25. It would be fair to say all space programs need to go through a learning period where you blow a lot of things up and discover all the failure modes. SpaceX ate through several billion dollars on this path, before dialing in their launcher reliability, and they still don't think they're ready for humans.

How will CS do all this learning and get everything right?

<comment><USER8> Maybe that's not their primary goal? People have taken horrifying risks to push frontiers throughout history. The Oregon Trail claimed an estimated 21,000 lives.* Perhaps they are willing to accept a higher risk of death?

*Though, despite the horrific toll, the final odds of death on the O.T., once the dust had settled, were about 5% to NASA's ~4%.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> I wish them best of luck, but am more optimistic about Paul Allen's Stratolaunch system: [https://www.stratolaunch.com/2018/08/20/stratolaunch- announc...](https://www.stratolaunch.com/2018/08/20/stratolaunch-announces- new-launch-vehicles/) They hope to orbit a 370kg payload in 2020.

That mass seems almost sufficient to send up a human.

Could we build a 300kg capsule to carry a 70kg human payload, a few hours of air and power, parachute, heatshield, and enough thrust to de-orbit (with less than 5-7G of acceleration)?

Stratolaunch is using a Pegasus rocket [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pegasus_(rocket)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pegasus_\(rocket\)), which is obviously not rated for human spaceflight, but rich "explorers" might be interested.

<comment><USER10> Stratolaunch is far away from anything human related. There are a couple competitors who want to lift a couple 100kg to LEO by 2020.

They have not even built their own rocket yet and so far their efforts in that direction have not impressed progressed fast. It will be 10+ years before the launch a human, if ever. Given the existing competition, I don't think they will ever get there.

Outside of BlueOrigin and maybe Virgin Galactic are close to human suborbital flight.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Is it open-source? As that could speed up development in the area.

</comment><comment><USER12> Why aren't we all doing this! Isn't this the dream of everyone who ever built a model rocket?

<comment><USER13> Feasibility is the major contributing factor. Time, Space and Money are hard to come by. Then of course there is the red tape from the respective government involving permission for a very costly hobby. Then, the easiest to acquire, knowledge.

<comment><USER14> These people launch from international waters. They are a pirate space organisation!

<comment><USER15> A pirate space organisation that gets the air space over them closed by the government.

<comment><USER16> Air space over international waters can be controlled by a government?

<comment><USER17> "We fly our rockets from the military firing practice area ES D 139 in the Baltic Sea, 20 km east of of the Danish island of Bornholm. It spans 70×35 km, and are opened to us by the Royal Danish Navy for the launch time window. The Danish and Swedish authorities are very helpful, and close the airspace above for airtraffic in the hours of the actual launch."

[https://copenhagensuborbitals.com/about- us/](https://copenhagensuborbitals.com/about-us/)

<comment><USER18> There is this quote: "If all of your money is not get wasted to your hobby, your hobby sucks."

Updated: "...and won't require closing air space..."

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> These guys are super amazing! I worry that they will run up against the MTCR[1] in their next step between their unmanned and manned version, since driving out to international waters is 'exporting' as is flying above 100km :-) It would be awesome if the Danish government would come out and publicly sanction their efforts to cut off that potential mess.

[1] [https://www.nti.org/learn/treaties-and-regimes/missile- techn...](https://www.nti.org/learn/treaties-and-regimes/missile-technology- control-regime-mtcr/)

<comment><USER20> Their website states that they launch from a Danish Naval base and they receive help from Danish and Swedish authorities, so hopefully that means the Danish government could be open to helping out with the MTCR too.

[https://copenhagensuborbitals.com/about- us/](https://copenhagensuborbitals.com/about-us/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> This is awesome! I hope they get a nice bump in membership numbers after being featured on HN.

Does anyone know if there a way to get more involved in the project (eg as a volunteer of any kind)? I couldn't find anything on the website.

<comment><USER22> They are very open. You can basically just show up in their hangar and have a chat with whoever is around at the time. At least it used to be like this, I haven't been out there for some years.

CS are already very well known in Denmark. Everybody with any sort of engineering or science interest here knows about them.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> What actually makes them amateur at this point? Wouldn't it behiove them to incorporate as a non profit perhaps?

<comment><USER24> They kinda are a non-profit. They are, AFAIK, a _forening_ (translates to association), which allow them to collectively own assets and collect donations.

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> Something tells me that the space program is on hiatus:

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

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

<comment><USER26> He seems to have left the project four years ago. I suspect the murder might have an impact on the public relations side of things, but I'm also pretty sure people who do donate to them do their research better.

<comment><USER27> Correct!

For those interested (and can live with Google Translate) they have a very active and informative blog on:

[https://ing.dk/blogs/rumfart-pa-den-anden-made](https://ing.dk/blogs/rumfart- pa-den-anden-made)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> what about the african space program?

</comment><comment><USER29> One of the founders of Copenhagen Suborbitals are the now infamous Peter Madsen

[https://www.theguardian.com/global/2018/jan/07/copenhagen- ki...](https://www.theguardian.com/global/2018/jan/07/copenhagen-killing- peter-madsen-kim-wall-murder-submarine)

<comment><USER30> Just curious: what's the purpose of your post ?

<comment><USER31> An example of entrepreneurial accomplishment. Peter Madsen desperately wanted to go to space. So far he has made it to confined space.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> Hmmm. I think I might have to join this.</comment>