Problems with Systemd and Why I Like BSD Init - <AUTHOR> http://bsdmag.org/randy_w_3/ <comment><USER2> I've been FreeBSD wherever I can (mostly personal machines), but did work on a high availability VPN based off FreeBSD that a major Telco bought years ago.

There is another post mentioning the desktop/web thinking and the server/sysadmin thinking.

My thinking - the server/sysadmins are right, but the majority are people in the desktop/web crowd.

I actually expect things to get worse once you rope in the container (docker/deis/kubernetes/mesos/etc) crowd.

The general attitude seems to be "this doesn't work for me, let me invent something new".

If you've spent anytime trying to develop on top of containers and have a deep systems background, you are resisting a hell we had in the late 90s and early 2000s...because "new shiny thing".

SystemD is endemic of the new generation trying to solve problems on top of linux. Rather than understand and address the problem, invent something monolithic that isn't better than what it replaced.

Oh then force it on distros and not be open to criticism.

I really hate this debate and probably should keep quiet.

<comment><USER3> I'm an admin and really like a lot of the features SystemD brings, my main concern is that it seems to be overreaching.

<comment><USER4> I'm mainly sysadmin, but I also do some occasional embedded development, and use systemd-enabled Arch on the desktop.

Systemd solves _so many pain points_ in _all_ areas that I don't care about ideological debates.

And most of the touted "advantages" of sysvinit are, in practice, a nightmare. "people should just know what they're doing"? Well, too bad, nobody does! Distribution maintainers don't know how to write robust init scripts, software vendors don't know how to write robust init scripts, _nobody does!_

Taking away the "freedom" to introduce the halting problem to service definitions is, in practice, _godsent_.

"With BSD init, I can just edit the /etc/rc script and replace it with arbitrary shell code."

And now try to debug it one year later when you don't even remember that you did any changes to it. The shit I've seen on Linux systems' /etc/rc.local would give Lovecraft nightmares.

And the ability to sprinkle echo statements all over your init system does not make a system "easy to debug", unless you're a PHP "devop" who thinks that OOP is the source of all evil in the world.

"The way systemd does parallel startup bothers me. If service A depends on service B, they were traditionally started in sequence; A only starts after B is done starting."

Unless it doesn't, because init scripts _cannot_ reliably determine whether a daemon has started up. Grab, say, debian's sysvinit sctipts and count the amount of sleep statements sprinkled all over them. That's not sequential startup, that's a race condition waiting to happen!

"Why should systemd implement NTP when ntpd already exists?"

Because ntpd is a steaming, insecure pile of crap. And no, openntpd is not a solution, it's just a nicer problem. Why do I need an ntp _server_ on a pure client machine? Just because ntpdate is an even bigger pile of crap?

"Being unable to shutdown the system."

As if that never happened with sysvinit. Badly behaving init scripts can cause a lot of havoc, at least systemd has a configurable hard cut-off.

"Debian should not have adopted it for at least a few more years; they're supposed to be the slow, steady, and stable distro. "

Debian profits the most from ripping out the unusable joke that was their own "parallelized startup enabled" sysvinit. I've seen more Debian stable+sysvinit systems unable to boot up than I've seen Arch+systemd systems.

<comment><USER5> Full ACK. It makes so many things so much easier and, notably, much more resilient. Ever had to debug a broken init script?

The ability to "simply edit init scripts so that it works" often results in nasty, broken hacks ending up in production.

<comment><USER6> And once more the whole debate goes of into file format lala land.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> This article seem to reinforce that there is a split in thinking going on within the Linux community.

On the one hand you have the traditional server/sysadmin thinking about uptime and stability.

On the other hand you have the desktop/web thinking of rebooting often (or shutting down when not used, starting up before using) and being on the bleeding edge.

Another thing is that his mention about standard ways of doing something. I think that was why Freedesktop was set up in the first place.

But they seem to have gone massively off the rails almost from the outset, or it was simply too dominated by Gnome/Red Hat people (it was after all founded by once such person, Havoc Pennington) to really get things properly generic and modularized.

Asi write this i get to thinking about politics and thinktanks, and how they can make political decisions seem like they are scientifically based, when they really are rubberstamping preconceived political notions.

Similarly it may well be that Freedesktop exist to rubberstamp Red Hat/Gnome notions about Linux, by virtue of appearing to be a independent entity (similarly Gnome has its own foundation, but a large segment of its core developers are under Red Hat employ).

BTW, i seem to recall that while the BSD people had implemented most of the systemd APIs for various settings changes, they had run into a problem with logind.

Probably because logind depends heavily on PAM to get its job done, and PAM seems to fly in the face of basic unix-isms.

<comment><USER7> _On the other hand you have the desktop /web thinking of rebooting often (or shutting down when not used, starting up before using) and being on the bleeding edge._

I actually find this line of thinking baffling... I don't remember the last time I actively chose to shutdown/reboot voluntarily. Spending time optimizing the boot sequence strikes me as a total waste of effort.

Modern computers support sleep and hibernate... why would anyone choose to reboot except to apply OS updates on certain operating systems that insist on a reboot?

I would _much_ rather focus on uptime stability and flawless sleep/hibernate so we can encourage people to never reboot unless they're forced to.

That'd better serve phones, tablets, and other devices that share this infrastructure and need this capability, and it would cater to a public that is getting used to always-on, always-available technology.

<comment><USER6> Best i can tell, it comes from the -sec community. This because a encrypted HDD in a laptop is at its safest when the laptop is turned fully off. At that point you have no keys in RAM or anything like that. Thus when you do not use your computer you turn it off, you do not sleep, you do not hibernate, you turn it off.

The systemd devs have a thing about listening to the -sec community. You can see this in how while the Linux default is to treat namespace mounts at private, systemd mount them as shared unless told otherwise. This because the -sec people recommend it that way (allows a sysadmin to override mounts from outside the namespace, to avoid dos-ing apparently).

Then again they also have a bit of theater in them. For example they accepted a patch to lock the computer if a HID devices was plugged in. But while the original patch did it on any device, they modified it so that it only happens on the device ids of known mouse wigglers used in police computer seizure kits.

<comment><USER8> > Then again they also have a bit of theater in them. For example they > accepted a patch to lock the computer if a HID devices was plugged in. But > while the original patch did it on any device, they modified it so that it > only happens on the device ids of known mouse wigglers used in police > computer seizure kits.

There was a series of two patches: one to logind to add a mechanism to tell all active user sessions to lock, and one to the udev rules provided with systemd to add a policy that plugging in a known mouse wiggler causes all active user sessions to lock.

(It wouldn't make any sense to lock the screen when inserting any HID device.)

Separately from that, logind also implements other policies for when to lock the screen, such as when closing a laptop lid without an external monitor connected.

<comment><USER6> And how bloody hard it is to make the wiggler change the ID to look like any old mouse? Or one gets kitbashed out of a existing mouse? Or a new one comes to market that is not part of the IDs systemd have on file?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Over time, I have come to think that systemd probably should have been two projects. One to replace init, watch services as they run, restart them if needed; if you get dependencies out of that, being able to start services in parallel sort of falls out of that for free, but I feel that few people really need that (OTOH, if it comes for free, it doesn't hurt, either).

The other project could include all the rest, basically. Again, having a unified API for applications to e.g. get notified when the network connection changes, time changes or a USB flash drive is connected, or a new display, or whatever - that makes sense; having it effectively mixed in with the init system does not neccessarily. As a bonus, if it was an independent project, it might have been portable across different Unixoid systems.

For reasons totally unrelated, though, I installed FreeBSD on the new home server I got recently, and it was a really pleasant experience. Plus I installed OpenBSD on an old laptop I saved from becoming landfill, which was fun, too. There are good reasons to like BSD even if one gets along with systemd just fine.

</comment><comment><USER10> This man makes valid points about the state of GNU and BSD. I've been tempted to leave linux completely as of late, but the truth of the matter is that I love GNU too much to go.

Yes, RMS is pretty pegged on the autistic scale, but he's not wrong, and Snowden proved that GNU as an ideology is pretty much our only hope against nation states intending to deprive us of our freedoms.

GNU is the closest thing to a soul the software industry could have, demanding nothing less than freedom for the users of software and writers of software. Their (not) unix is a beautiful thing to look at, and companies like Novell/SuSE and Red Hat built their empires on its foundation.

Now, Red Hat is taking an active role in rewriting everything but the kernel, in order to push-out and/or marginalize the GNU crowd. If they were honest, they would have Poettering come out and state publicly that they are creating a replacement Operating System for the linux kernel. but they're not. They're wrapping themselves in the GPL (and the goodwill that comes with it) while trying to destroy Stallman's creation.

Red Hat has quietly declared war against GNU, and those that support it, embracing and promoting the watered-down (and far more profitable) "open source" concept as they go.

In that war, systemd is merely another salvo that (I think) began either with Havoc Pennington writing dbus off the back of Nat Friedman of Ximian's hard work and research, or their complete takeover of freedesktop.org. NetworkManager, Avahi, and PulseAudio being pushed into all the distributions, always long before they were stable (and all written by Poettering), proved with a paper trail that they had worked the kinks out of their embrace-and- extend plan long before systemd was ever mentioned on a debian mailing list for adoption.

I wish the author well, but some of us are gonna stick around to try and keep GNU strong against this new threat. We've lost Debian, Arch, and Ubuntu, but this war is far from over.

<comment><USER11> Well said. It's too bad some people seem to believe down-voting the truth will make their cognitive dissonance go away.

> They're wrapping themselves in the GPL

...while encouraging a development style that isolates processes so they use IPC when they should be simply linking to a library and making a function call. Systemd depends heavily on dbus, because it ties developers into this model.

This enables a rather convenient way for freeloading propriety software to _use_ GPL code, without having to be subject to the _requirements_ of GPL code. If you get some package to provide their services over dbus, you only have to "use" the software instead of linking against a library.

Even ignoring systemd's bad design that tightly couples together services that worked fine as separate specs for decades, and even ignoring the _terrible_ "we don't give a crap if we break your environment for no reason" attitude that is common among systemd's authors, this end-run around the GPL is a very good reason to avoid systemd.

Now, I'm sure some people in this thread think I'm making crap up, being paranoid, or similar. To those people I say: when are you going to start paying attention? This is _obvious_ when you look at the Linux community over the last 20 years. Stop being distracted by _technical_ features instead of investing in your future. Are you going to be happy when all distros are _de facto_ variants of Red Hat? Some of you might be, but if you're going to ignore the vast majority of Linux and Unix, could you at least _fork the project_ instead of dragging the rest of the community down with you?\

<comment><USER12> So let me get this straight - you are arguing _simultaneously_ that systemd's DBus APIs should be library calls, and that systemd should be less tightly coupled?

Please tell me this is a parody?

<comment><USER13> You're aware there are a number of different libc-implementations one can choose from, right?

<comment><USER10> in case he/she isn't, I'll just mention musl and uClibc.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Well, if people would like to try a linux-kernel OS without systemd - or in general if you like to try a _good_ OS - I will always recommend Slackware. It... just run. It's no-frill, no-political choices always prefers semplicity. On a desktop machine a slackware-current it's a joy.

<comment><USER15> Agree. I just set up a Slackware system for testing purposes, and I am amazed how easy it was. Slackware is one of the oldest Linux distros ever, and it was actually my first distro. After a long journey to many other distros Slackware brought back the good feeling of having control over my machine. There are still a lot of customizations to be done (enable TRIM for SSD etc.) but nevertheless I like it because I know that my machine does exactly what I want it to do.

KISS is a magic principle that just works. The Unix/Linux world should never let it go.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> >> Many of the problems they described with init systems are already solved by both OpenRC and BSD init

which problems is he talking about?

<comment><USER17> Service babysitting.

This includes for example environment control (env, ulimit, cgroups, chroot), auto-restarts, changing uids.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> As I migrate more and more (production) services to Docker, I have a Linux split into two distinct usages.

A minimal system as a base image for Docker, and then install by apt or curl (would never, never have used curl for installing software 5 years ago) into a service image. And a second Linux as a base system for running Docker (and nothing else). Start/stop is managed by Docker ( /Nomad/Swarm/...). Next step might be moving the base image away from Linux.

</comment><comment><USER19> I guess he makes a good point because he's saying that the standard APIs are a good thing and BSD should also focus on that to ease development for large projects like GNOME and KDE.

I can completely understand why systemd need their own timers as part of those APIs, I however cannot see the point of having their own NTP service. Maybe the old one was broken with systemd?

But that's just one valid point, not being able to see the necessity of timesyncd does not invalidate the underlying goal of systemd, nor does it warrant moving to another distro.

Because bottom line here, bsdmag is a BSD oriented zine so its focus is to promote BSD distros. I used to use 100% BSD 8 years ago but my migration to Linux is now complete.

The BSD license in my opinion hurts open source more than GPL. There are three major examples that I can think of where big corporations have used BSD code to avoid re-inventing the wheel and piggybacking on open source. Microsoft when they used some BSD userland tools, Apple when they built OS X and Juniper when they made JunOS.

I used to interpret these decisions as flattering, but they are in fact simply taking the code they need, with the license that allows them to do it. They would never take GPL code as freely because they would risk being locked in by its requirements.

<comment><USER20> >I used to interpret these decisions as flattering, but they are in fact simply taking the code they need, with the license that allows them to do it. They would never take GPL code as freely because they would risk being locked in by its requirements.

1) Have you not considered that it was the intention of the developers of that code that it could be used in this way, without giving back? 2) Have you considered that the rest of the world benefits from the use of BSD code in Apple and Juniper products, even if they don't give any code back? Anyone who uses these products receives gets to use better code than what may have been written from scratch. 3) Apple and Juniper both give code back to FreeBSD 4) Even if they didn't, it does not hurt FreeBSD any to have companies use their code and not give anything back. 5) We're agreed that Microsoft, Apple, or Juniper would never have used GPL code in their kernels. So how exactly has the open source world lost out due to the existence of the BSD license?

<comment><USER15> > So how exactly has the open source world lost out due to the existence of > the BSD license?

iOS (based on BSD Unix) is proprietary. Android (based on GPL Linux) is open. iOS came first and seemed to be the huge winner. Then Google took GNU/Linux (GPL), built Android around it, and outpaced iOS by far.

Now the BSD developers have to pay (!) for their own (!) developments when they buy idevices. They have no option to modify anything. They are just consumers.

The Linux developers can take the code, tweak their devices (Cyanogenmod) and do a lot of other things with it. There is Android for x86 for instance.

BSD is good for hardware producers. GPL is good for hardware consumers.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> My main criticism of systemd is that the project doesn't seem to have any bounds. They are actively trying to re-implement everything instead of having a clear definition of what problems they're trying to fix. That tends to end badly, usually in a unportable web of dependencies and components being shoved in the wrong places (D-BUS inside the kernel just doesn't seem right to me).

Having said that...

It does have some nice things. It's very easy to create robust service startup definitions (units) without resorting to brittle shell scripts checking PID files and whatnot. Also, services start in their own resource groups for better resource allocation between them.

These alone have changed my opinion about systemd. These solve real sysadmin issues.

</comment><comment><USER12> Meh. In the literary genre of systemd criticism there are better examples, mostly from people fond of the microkernel design aesthetic.

"Systemd will start them both at the same time, but buffer any messages A tries to send to B until B is ready."

It's not systemd which is buffering messages, it's the kernel's IP or UNIX domain sockets. (Also, this means that daemons don't need to run setuid root just to bind a low socket.)

"With systemd, the order is not deterministic, so you don't know what's going to happen next time you boot."

All you need to do is define the dependency graph properly, then any possible ordering will be fine. You might as well argue that "make -jN" is somehow harmful.

"A server spends several minutes in the BIOS during POST anyway, before the bootloader is even run; making the OS boot faster doesn't change very much"

Never used virtualization or containers?

"That doesn't feel modular to me." "Cleaning up or re-implementing ntpd is a good thing, but OpenBSD didn't feel the need to make it part of init."

The systemd project is not (any more) an init system, it's a collection of tools to create a Linux-based OS from. [http://www.openntpd.org/](http://www.openntpd.org/) says that OpenBSD includes OpenNTPD as part of its base system.

"OpenNTPD was primarily developed by Henning Brauer as part of the OpenBSD Project and gets released as a base component of OpenBSD every six months."

Clearly this is the same as what systemd does? Do we conclude from this that OpenBSD feels "not modular", since it has an NTP implementation in the same repository as its init, or is it only bad if systemd does it?

"Regular journal corruption that Lennart says is not a problem. It seems obvious that a non-transactional binary log is a terrible idea."

As opposed to plain text files, which magically survive having random blocks overwritten by hypothetical filesystem bugs or hardware issues without losing a single line of log content?

"Numerous reports of systemd hanging on boot because of something in fstab that violated POLA."

Does this refer to systemd implementing the "nofail" keyword exactly as it was documented? The author will be very surprised when he discovers that FreeBSD does _exactly_ the same thing, except that the keyword is called "failok".

"To my knowledge, no one has ever lost data as a result of a bug in ZFS."

Does the author have access to Sun/Oracle's internal bug tracker where such customer bugs would be reported, in particular during the early years of ZFS's existence?

<comment><USER22> I feel like you're being deliberately disingenuous here. Most of your rebuttals are straw-man arguments or they take a very narrow interpretation of the original statement.

<comment><USER3> The virtualization / containers criticism is completely valid

<comment><USER23> Um, not really. On BSD, you're using jails and startup is virtually instantaneous unless you want to define start orders and staggering.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> isn't FreeBSD considering switching to nosh[0]? I seem to remember reading about it but cannot find any reference now.

[0] [http://homepage.ntlworld.com./jonathan.deboynepollard/Softwa...](http://homepage.ntlworld.com./jonathan.deboynepollard/Softwares/nosh.html)

</comment><comment><USER25> Seeing the way that Linux have and comparing it with FreeBSD, I think that Linux is the best OS for developers and FreeBSD for sysadmins.</comment>


Kolmogorov Complicity and the Parable of Lightning - <AUTHOR> https://slatestarcodex.com/2017/10/23/kolmogorov-complicity-and-the-parable-of-lightning/ <comment><USER2> Scott Aaronson's post on Kolmogorov, mentioned in the post above, was discussed on HN a couple of months ago [1].

[1] [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14966002](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14966002)

</comment><comment><USER3> There is a very large problem with comparing these sorts of issues between pre-Enlightenment and post-Enlightenment cultures. Prior to the Englightenment, all knowledge was religious knowledge. Astronomy was the study of how God arrayed the heavens. Geology was the study of the firmament and how God created it. Physics was the motion God gave to every object. Agriculture was when God wanted you to plant your crops. Biology was how Gods morality was reflected in the living things in nature. There was no difference between religious ideas and ideas about reality - there was no separation whatever.

The Enlightenment was significant because it gave us a wedge. It allowed us to say 'religion is about the spiritual, about the ephemeral and ineffable, and science is about material reality'. That is a difference larger than modern people can easily understand. If your religious beliefs are beliefs about your everyday life and the visceral world you live in, you see things very differently. You can't simply live next door to someone with a different set of beliefs from your own. That person is an agent of evil, a soldier fighting in the cosmic and Earthly war between Good and Evil which will either see an eternity of peace and paradise (here, on this planet, not somewhere else) or an eternity of suffering depending upon who wins the war.

While Kolmogorov might have been able to build a bubble, those before the Enlightenment could not. It was impossible to defer judgement to some never- to-come 'afterlife'. It was impossible to extend to others a tolerance for their differing views. It was impossible for considering different ideas about how reality worked to not have a moral and religious consequence. The Enlightenment was so profoundly and deeply successful that those who grew up in societies where it took root can't even conceive of how different it would be to believe that everything which occurs in the world is the direct and immediate expression of the will of a god which suffuses all things and which the material world is but a slim skin over.

</comment><comment><USER4> > But politically-savvy Kolmogorov types can't just build a bubble. They have > to build a whisper network.

The trouble with whisper networks, though, is that they breed poorly-supported misinformation (fake news?) that may or may not have anything to do with whether thunder or lightning comes first.

Seems like if you want to reduce the incentive to create fake-news-breeding whisper networks, you should do what you can to not incentivize whisper- network creation.

<comment><USER5> Well, obviously the best thing is to ensure that all truths are politically acceptable. But given that we live in a society in which certain truths aren't acceptable, what's the best course that individuals can pursue on the margin?

<comment><USER6> I worry more that the problem isn't that certain truths aren't acceptable but rather that certain truths aren't generally representable. People in general don't understand probabilities and in political races this means that in practice predictions get simplified down to "Candidate A is certainly going to win" or "It's a toss up!".

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> This talk of many people knowing the orthodoxy is wrong kinda reminds me of the predictability crisis as described in this HN post from a week ago [1]. Only here, people did eventually speak out against the orthodoxy and seemed to have some effect.

[1] [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15509347](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15509347)

</comment><comment><USER8> For such a smart person, it surprises me that he seems to have missed the point of what is going on in <insert politicized debate of the day here>.

In modern Western thought, voices aren't suppressed. Instead, they are politicized and used to put the speaker on a "side". Then the people on that side will defend their side (although not always the speaker) using that person as a proxy for their side.

We see this in global warming, in nuclear power, in gender equality, in free speech rights, in gun rights, in nurture vs nature.

I can think of only two examples where something similar to the behavior called out in this article occurs in the modern West. The first is the "neural network conspiracy" where CIFAR funded research for years, until they suddenly won. The other is cold fusion, where there are persistent rumors that this wasn't perhaps the dead end it was made out to be (I don't have the expertise to evaluate that and tell if it is crackpots or not though).

<comment><USER9> He didn't miss that; in fact, he wrote about it frequently in the past.

It's not true that voices aren't suppressed in the modern Western world, though. The original post by Scott Aaaronson, the one from which this post takes it title, was a response to present-day suppression of opinions. Both Scotts have opted to write their posts in a very general tone (even though they're obvious responses to some recent events), but I'll nevertheless spell it out in concrete terms: if you express your disagreement with the current feminist/social justice ideology on a public forum, you risk losing your job to an angry Twitter mob.

<comment><USER8> _He didn 't miss that; in fact, he wrote about it frequently in the past._

Can you point to that?

 _if you express your disagreement with the current feminist /social justice ideology on a public forum_

While I agree that kind of behavior is what he is referring to, I'd note that is a perfect example of exactly what I said.

In the case of Damore specifically, yes, he lost his job but in return picked up numerous speaking engagements and is now a player in the culture wars. That's a long way from being executed!

He's suing Google, and being represented by Harmeet Dhillon, "a prominent San Francisco Republican who was considered for a post in the Trump administration" who is "a member of the Republican National Committee". Is it possible to be more entrenched in the mainstream culture wars than that?

Far from being Kolmogorov or Giordano Bruno, it seems to me he is closer to Kanye West circa the 2006 "Bush Doesn't Care About Black People" interview, or the Dixie Chicks anti-war comments, or Judith Miller's pro-Iraq war NY Times columns. All made some people really, really mad, and had some consequences for their authors, but long term just solidified their position for the other side.

<comment><USER10> If you're genuinely interested in how someone could view the situations as equivalent, here's one post (regrettably long, but I haven't found better): [http://unqualified- reservations.blogspot.com/2009/01/gentle-...](http://unqualified- reservations.blogspot.com/2009/01/gentle-introduction-to-unqualified.html)

Kolmogorov also becomes more relatable if you consider Damore's computer- science-related activities at Google _science_ , and the role he's now cast into as _politics_. We don't execute, but we can blacklist and exclude. (Consider what might happen if he wanted to present a paper at a conference.)

<comment><USER8> That linked article was too long to read properly sorry.

 _In the history of American democracy, if you take the mainstream political position (Overton Window, if you care) at time T1, and place it on the map at a later time T2, T1 is always way to the right, near the fringe or outside it. So, for instance, if you take the average segregationist voter of 1963 and let him vote in the 2008 election, he will be way out on the wacky right wing. Cthulhu has passed him by._

Clearly 2009 and 2017 are pretty different worlds.

 _We don 't execute, but we can blacklist and exclude. (Consider what might happen if he wanted to present a paper at a conference.)_

This is precisely my point. There is no _we_ \- there are multiple groups, and while some may exclude others will welcome him.

As a specific - real world - example I'd note the rapturous reception any anti-climate change paper gets, and how authors get _invited_ to present at anti-climate change conferences.

Yes, they maybe excluded and blacklisted from orthodox scientific conferences, but they have an entire separate world open to them. That's very different to being suppressed.

<comment><USER11> If all you care about is the camaraderie of people who think like you, that is fine. But many people care about other things too.

For example if you believe that climate change is a conspiracy by the Chinese to weaken the American economy, then even if you can go to anti-climate change conferences and be popular among climate change denialists, you won't be very happy because you will believe that in the end the Chinese are still going to destroy your country.

You could gain some social power but lose all your structural power[1]. For the sort of people who care more about objective reality than about popularity contests, that is a bad deal.

[1] [https://squid314.livejournal.com/354385.html](https://squid314.livejournal.com/354385.html)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Lightning comes before thunder.

Sue me.</comment>


He Helped Build an Artists' Utopia. Now He Faces Trial for 36 Deaths There - <AUTHOR> https://www.nytimes.com/2018/12/12/magazine/oakland-warehouse-fire-ghost-ship.html <comment><USER2> Wow this story is tragic all the way through. I hope the people involved can heal to any extent.</comment>


Amazon: Books About Having Sex With Kids OK, But Porn Out Of Bounds - <AUTHOR> http://www.businessinsider.com/amazon-its-ok-to-write-books-about-having-sex-with-kids-but-porn-is-out-of-bounds-2010-11

<comment><USER2> Looks like they took that book down, as the URL isn't working:

[http://www.amazon.com/Pedophiles-Guide-Love-Pleasure- ebook/p...](http://www.amazon.com/Pedophiles-Guide-Love-Pleasure- ebook/product- reviews/B0049U4CF6/ref=sr_1_1_cm_cr_acr_pop_hist_all?ie=UTF8&showViewpoints=1&qid=1289461076&sr=8-1)</comment>


I am disappoint, Wolfram Alpha - <AUTHOR> http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=hours+between+1pm+march+10+and+1pm+march+11+2012

<comment><USER2> I cringe so hard when I see Reddit style memes like "I am disappoint" on HN. Please, please don't let this become commonplace..

<comment><AUTHOR> Point taken.

<comment><USER3> TYL

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> This isn't wrong - /any/ time zone has a constant 24 hour delta before those two points in time.

What is changing is your time zone from, say, GMT to BST.

<comment><USER5> It provides the right output if the right timezone is given:

[http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=hours+between+1pm+est+m...](http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=hours+between+1pm+est+march+10+and+1pm+est+march+11)

<comment><AUTHOR> [http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=hours+between+1pm+est+m...](http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=hours+between+1pm+est+march+10+and+1pm+edt+march+11)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I'm disappointed that it won't intepret gmt and bst when entered into the search bar, but it clearly knows what they are in the results.

Ergo you can't search;

"hours between 1pm GMT march 10 and 1pm BST march 11 2012" [http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=hours+between+1pm+GMT+m...](http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=hours+between+1pm+GMT+march+10+and+1pm+BST+march+11+2012)

And get a desired response. In fact it really screws up. Going to keep trying, also I thought that BST kicked in at the end of March. (Google informs me: 25th march)

</comment><comment><USER7> if you add a location, it gives you the right answer... example: [http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=hours+between+1pm+march...](http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=hours+between+1pm+march+10+and+1pm+march+11+2012+in+new+york)

0.9583 days = 22 hours 59 minutes 57 seconds

the time change does not apply everywhere, in places near the equator there is no daylight saving time change.

</comment><comment><USER8> The result is accurate. Add a location (ie ontario, Canada) to the end of the query. Not every place has Daylight savings time.

<comment><AUTHOR> This still says 24 hours for me. Is this different from what you're seeing?

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> I am not sure what you are disappointed about. A more descriptive title would be good.

<comment><USER10> It says that there are 24 hours between 1pm EST March 10 and 1pm EDT March 11, when there are really 23. It's probably using my IP address (and the original poster's IP address) to pick these timezones, so you may see something different, but it also gives the incorrect number of hours if you specify the timezones:

[http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=Hours+between+1pm+EST+M...](http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=Hours+between+1pm+EST+March+10+and+1pm+EDT+March+11)

It also gives 0.9583 (23/24) as the amount of days, so one hand doesn't know what the other is doing.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> I'm disappointed at you...</comment>


Show HN: Embeddable Skulpt – Python in the browser for teaching the basics - <AUTHOR> https://trinket.io/python

<comment><AUTHOR> This tech can be used for multiple purposes but it's a subset of Python so perfect for the restricted needs of a beginner. Plus it supports turtle, which is an awesome and proven way to give beginners a more intuitive sense of what's going on. Comments, suggestions, and new use cases welcome!

</comment><comment><USER2> Thanks for sharing. This is what I drew, [http://postimg.org/image/4ripqnv4d/](http://postimg.org/image/4ripqnv4d/) Can anyone draw anything cooler?

<comment><AUTHOR> Nice! I dig it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Any chance we can 'import os'?

<comment><USER4> No support for os. Yet. Maybe in a future version. ;)</comment></comment>


Hand Size--Not Sex--Determines Sense of Touch - <AUTHOR> http://sciencenow.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/full/2009/1218/2?rss=1

<comment><USER2> But sex determines hand size, so sex does determine sense of touch -- just not in the brain like they thought it might. </nitpicking>

<comment><USER3> Sex correlates to but does not determine hand size.

<comment><USER4> _correlates to but does not determine_

The parent to your comment refers to "determine" in the statistical sense (just as in the submitted article), and so this point needs to be looked at further.

<comment><USER3> "this point needs to be looked at further." why?

 _On average, men and women with the same size fingertips perform at the same level_ so once you know the size of someones fingertips knowing their gender is useless (in this context). What more do you want to study?

<comment><USER4> Thanks for the follow-up question.

"(Finger size does not explain all individual variability, however; there are differences between people with the same size fingers, perhaps as a result of differences in the mechanical properties of skin or in how each person's brain processes the information.)"

"However, other types of tactile tasks may not work the same way, he adds. For example, passively pressing the skin against a textured object--as the study participants did--involves different neuronal pathways than actively moving the fingers around an object and may be controlled differently."

You are correct that the cited study found for its sample "when the scientists looked at the results by finger size, they found that the sex difference disappeared." Then one would want to check other forms of touch perception, as mentioned in the submitted article, try another sample for replication,

<http://norvig.com/experiment-design.html>

and so on.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


WikiLeaks published secret information about Icelandic meltdown - <AUTHOR> http://icelandweatherreport.com/2009/08/kaupthings-loan-book-exposed-and-an-injunction-ordered-against-ruv.html

<comment><USER3> Link to original source: [http://wikileaks.org/wiki/Financial_collapse:_Confidential_e...](http://wikileaks.org/wiki/Financial_collapse:_Confidential_exposure_analysis_of_205_companies_each_owing_above_%E2%82%AC45M_to_Icelandic_bank_Kaupthing%2C_26_Sep_2008)

<comment> brown9-2 _At 18:55 GMT Sat Aug 1, Iceland's national broadcaster, RÚV, had its 19:00 nightly newscast enjoyed to prevent reporting the document. Instead RÚV showed a link to this page._

That's a nice way to sort of get around the injunction and a nice f-u to the courts decision.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> There are official designations for material classed as "Top Secret" - <USER2> are "merely" confidential minutes from the Board of Directors meeting.

</comment><comment><USER5> Please remove the caps from the title, they really aren't necessary.

</comment><comment><USER6> Kaputhing...

</comment><comment><USER7> Witch hunting. This breaks confidentiality law. It's a list of Kaupthing's biggest clients with a short risk assessment for each one.

<comment><USER8> Isn't wikileaks sort of all about publishing technically illegal documents. It may be illegal in the letter of the law to publish, but if you expose illegal behavior that was actually causing harm to society then its ok. I'm not sure that I totally buy into it but I think thats the general idea.

<comment><USER7> I understand the idea of edgy journalism where the end justifies the means etc. etc.

However I'm struggling to see how this document exposes anything illegal or harmful.</comment></comment></comment>


Elementary Algebra (1971) - <AUTHOR> http://www.softwarepreservation.org/projects/apl/Papers/ElementaryAlgebra <comment><USER2> He also wrote a book on elementary functions as a sequel to this to act as a precalc text [http://code.jsoftware.com/wiki/Doc/Elementary_Functions_An_A...](http://code.jsoftware.com/wiki/Doc/Elementary_Functions_An_Algorithmic_Treatment)

This is an interesting book, uses multiplication tables flipped around to show the pattern of zeros that make up the cartesian coord system, introduces determinants and matrix operations, monadic functions used as function arguments, tracing functions/analysis, proof by induction.. wish this was my highschool algebra text.

</comment><comment><USER3> Anyone read this? How is it? I was never good at math and I have it on my "todo" list. Go back to some material from my high school and undergrad and fill the gaps. ;)

<comment><USER2> If you want to fill gaps, any typical undergrad calculus text will do such as Stewart's _Early Transcendentals_ book. You do enough of those 8,000+ exercises and your highschool gaps will fill themselves. My favorite beginner math books are Thomas VanDrunen's _Discrete Mathematics and Functional Programming_ because it's entirely done in SML, and Apostol's Calculus because you end up doing so many exercises you absolutely will never make a silly algebra mistake in a proof or forget a trig identity ever again. Often Apostol will just defer to endless calculating in the chapter exercises if he doesn't have anything he wants to add to the material, this is really good practice if your basic math education is shit like mine was.

<comment><USER3> Awesome! Thanks a lot!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I'm curious what the historical significance of this is. I've seen a lot of cool math resources here lately.

<comment><USER5> The author is the inventor of the programming language APL, and the formulas are working APL programs.

<comment><USER4> Ahh - nice!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> "when two or more functions occur in succession with no parentheses between them, the rightmost function is executed first. " \-- this is wrong....at least according to traditional order of operations....

<comment><USER7> that sounds like a standard convention of mathematical notation to me

if you're composing some function g : X --> Y with a function f : Y --> Z then

let x be some element of X.

then f g (x) = f(g(x)) = f(y), say, where y = g(x).

<comment><USER8> Yes, but a * b + c is not normally interpreted as a * (b + c), in this text it is.

1+2x3+4x5 evaluates to 1+2x23 which in turn evaluates to 1+46 which is 47. In the normal way it would be 1+6+20 or 27.

(edit: messed up on the order of operations and added example from the book).

<comment><USER9> That looked really weird to me too. Iverson is finessing the whole issue of order of operations by assuming there is no order of operations. To see what the issue is, see [http://www.slate.com/articles/health_and_science/science/201...](http://www.slate.com/articles/health_and_science/science/2013/03/facebook_math_problem_why_pemdas_doesn_t_always_give_a_clear_answer.html), where the author says that the CORRECT order of operations is PEMDAS and then uses "PEDMAS" in the same article. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Order_of_operations](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Order_of_operations) lists a variety of mnemonics that are inconsistent with standard current software. I'm amused that if you put 1-3^2 into the Google calculator, it will helpfully rewrite your equation as "1-(3^2)". I gather that the PEDMAS order of operations was an invention related to the development of an early software language and would have been very recent in 1971 when Iverson was writing.

<comment><USER8> It's not that PEDMAS was a new thing in 1971, if you look at the article about the timeline of Parsing ([https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16856694](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16856694)) then you'll see that the earliest programming languages didn't have operator precedence, and that this annoyed users of those languages.

It's probably either because parsing operators with precedence wasn't really a solved problem in 1964 when Iverson first started working on APL, or because Iverson disagrees with the normal precedence rules. If you look at Notation of a tool of thought (also linked on HN in the recent past ), then there is this passage (when comparing APL with normal math notation):

> In the interpretation of composite expressions APL agrees in the use of > parentheses, but differs in eschewing hierarchy so as to treat all functions > (user-defined as well as primitive) alike, and in adopting a single rule for > the application of both monadic and dyadic functions: the right argument of > a function is the value of the entire expression to its right. An important > consequence of this rule is that any portion of an expression which is free > of parentheses may be read analytically from left to right (since the > leading function at any stage is the "outer" or overall function to be > applied to the result on its right), and constructively from right to left > (since the rule is easily seen to be equivalent to the rule that execution > is carried out from right to left)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> > The present text treats the usual topics expected in a second course in high > school algebra.

Looking at that table of contents, high school algebra classes were badass in the 70s!

<comment><USER11> Almost all schools and universities have different criteria for what is considered 'high-school' / 'undergrad' / 'post-grad'. I've seen calculus treated as a post-graduate subject, and as a high-school subject -- the same concepts, no less.

<comment><USER5> Calculus as a post-graduate subject?

That would either be real analysis, in which case "the same concepts" is a highly misleading description at best, or else it was not a math department.

That said, browsing a syllabus for a real analysis course, you could be pardoned for thinking it was the same material as a Calculus course. You would be wrong, but you will see a lot of the same keywords.

The difference is that things which are claimed in the Calculus course, such as the mean value theorem, actually get rigorous proofs from the 13 standard axioms for the real numbers. The first 9 being the usual rules of arithmetic for fields. The next 3 make it into an ordered field. And most of the attention goes to the 13'th axiom, _If a non-empty subset has an upper bound, then it has a least upper bound._</comment></comment></comment>


The most elegant implementation of FizzBuzz - <AUTHOR> http://klipse.ghost.io/the-most-elegant-implementation-of-fizzbuzz/ <comment><USER2> This is very nice. Here's my Python port:

      from itertools import cycle, imap, count, islice
      from operator import add

      def fizzbuzz(n):
          fizzes = cycle(["", "", "Fizz"])
          buzzes = cycle(["", "", "", "", "Buzz"])
          words = imap(add, fizzes, buzzes)
          numbers = imap(str, count(1))
          _fizzbuzz = imap(max, words, numbers)
          return list(islice(_fizzbuzz, n))

<comment><USER3> Here's a different sort-of-functional python fizzbuzz.

While it doesn't use the spiffy lazy lists of itertools, and does have the typical "if x % n == 0" test, it does generalize easily to the "and print Baz every 37th number" case.

      def joinmap(func, elements, separator):
        return separator.join(map(func, elements))

      def fb_value(x, fb={3:'Fizz', 5:'Buzz'}):
        words = joinmap(lambda n: fb[n] if x % n == 0 else '', fb.keys(), '')
        return words if words else str(x)

      def fb_range(low=1, high=100):
        return joinmap(fb_value, range(low, 1 + high), '\n')

      print fb_range()

<comment><USER2> That's excellent!

Treating a dictionary as an iterator automatically iterates over its .keys(), so you can remove the .keys() in fb.keys() and just map over fb itself.

>>> map(lambda x: x+x, {2: "who", 4: "do", 6: "we", 8: "appreciate"})

[16, 4, 8, 12]

A problem that this highlights is that the order in which the Fizz and Buzz and other strings get concatenated depends on the order of the underlying dictionary hash, which can be thought of as random. In Python 3 it even changes from run to run.

[https://docs.python.org/3/whatsnew/3.3.html#summary- release-...](https://docs.python.org/3/whatsnew/3.3.html#summary-release- highlights)

$ python3 -c 'print(list({"foo": "bar", "baz": "qux"}))'

['foo', 'baz']

$ python3 -c 'print(list({"foo": "bar", "baz": "qux"}))'

['baz', 'foo']

For predictable behavior across larger sets of divisors, and for consistent behavior on Python 3, you'd probably want to use collections.OrderedDict.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Not that I subscribe to 'elegance' but...this example was in a recent article on core.match, and it's really terse:

      (with-out-str (doseq [n (range 1 11)]
        (println
          (match [(mod n 3) (mod n 5)]
                 [0 0] "FizzBuzz"
                 [0 _] "Fizz"
                 [_ 0] "Buzz"
                 :else n))))

</comment><comment><USER5> That's a slick way to remove the conditionals indeed. Inspired by it, here's a Scala version (checked with v2.11):

      object Fizzbuzz
      {
          val fizzes = List (None, None, Some ("Fizz")).toStream;
          val buzzes = List (None, None, None, None, Some ("Buzz")).toStream;
          val reducer : (Option[String], Option[String]) => Option[String] =
              (a, b) => Option ((a ++ b).mkString).filterNot (_.isEmpty);

          def apply (amount : Int) : Seq[String] =
              Stream.continually (fizzes)
                  .flatten
                  .zip (Stream.continually (buzzes).flatten)
                  .map (reducer.tupled)
                  .zipWithIndex
                  .map {
                      case (s, n) => s.getOrElse ((n + 1).toString);
                      }
                  .take (amount);
      }

      Fizzbuzz (100).foreach (println)

<comment><AUTHOR> It's amazing how scala syntax is verbose - not to say ugly!

<comment><USER5> I was being intentionally verbose so that readers not familiar with Scala or the collections types/methods used would have an easier time following it. I also was avoiding use of pattern matching as they are cousins to conditionals IMHO.

However, below is another version which employs idioms more commonly found:

      object Fizzbuzz
      {
          val fizzes = None :: None :: Some ("Fizz") :: Nil;
          val buzzes = None :: None :: None :: None :: Some ("Buzz") :: Nil;

          def apply (amount : Int) : TraversableOnce[String] =
          {
              val alternates = Stream.continually (fizzes).flatten
                .zip (Stream.continually (buzzes).flatten)
                .take (amount)
                .toArray;

              0.until (amount).map { n =>
                  alternates (n) match {
                      case (Some (f), Some (b)) => f + b;
                      case (Some (f), None) => f;
                      case (None, Some (b)) => b;
                      case _ => (n + 1).toString
                      }
                  }
          }
      }

      Fizzbuzz (100).foreach (println);

<comment><AUTHOR> Oh! I see. It's much more concise and clean now.

But still I prefer the clojure version using pattern matching over the scala one: [http://blog.klipse.tech/clojure/2016/10/25/core- match.html#f...](http://blog.klipse.tech/clojure/2016/10/25/core- match.html#fizzbuzz)

<comment><USER5> Gotcha. Then here's a translation into Scala from the link you provided which I believe maintains the spirit of the clojure version:

      object Fizzbuzz
      {
          def apply (amount : Int) : TraversableOnce[String] =
              1.to (amount).map { n =>
                  (n % 3, n % 5) match {
                      case (0, 0) => "FizzBuzz";
                      case (0, _) => "Fizz";
                      case (_, 0) => "Buzz";
                      case _ => n.toString
                      }
                  }
      }

      Fizzbuzz (100).foreach (println);

EDIT: When I said "Gotcha", I meant that as in "understood" and not in an adversarial manner. Quite the opposite, actually, as this is a respectful thread which I believe both parties have enjoyed.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> All I've learned is I can't stand any code called "elegant."

<comment><USER7> Probably a valid complaint against code like this. In an organization with a lot of more junior developers I might strike this code in a code review as being non obvious. On the other hand, I trust this code more than similar basic conditional based fizzbuzz since there's no conditionals or nested logic to get wrong. It's also simple to extend, ie, a 'Bazz' on 7 requirement would be adding one more cycle to the mix.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> If you looked at the assembly code, though, there still is a branch (aka an if statement) -- it's just hidden inside the "choice" function.

<comment><AUTHOR> Indeed.

But I think that the point of functional programming is to provide a layer of programming that exposes a clean API. You know: now side effects, no global variables etc..

And maybe: no if!</comment></comment>


What if your consciousness is an illusion created by your brain? - <AUTHOR> https://aeon.co/essays/what-if-your-consciousness-is-an-illusion-created-by-your-brain <comment><USER2> What a perfectly incorrect explanation. Just invert it.</comment>


[Poll] What would you learn, and how much would you pay? - <AUTHOR> http://iwanttolearn.heroku.com/

<comment><USER2> You should raise the price or multiply everything by a factor of at least 10 to 100. <http://teamtreehouse.com/> just raise 4.75million dollars around the sandbox you are playing in and they have 10k + paying members. Which means you are playing in a great sandbox - congrats, though it also means that if your competitors are charging your rates per month, then you should at least charge what they are charging right now per month or more.

</comment><comment><USER3> Was hoping this wasn't just a poll. I'd sign up.

In case this post comes to much, I'm a hobbyist pythonista looking to elevate myself to "employable," most likely to do contract work and advance my own projects.

I'm willing to pay. Anybody know anybody?

<comment><AUTHOR> It may be just a poll for now, but there are definite plans for providing such lessons.</comment></comment>


Tea grown in the Scottish Highlands - <AUTHOR> http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/c1806f2c-b071-11e5-b46e-3ef837cafba3.html <comment><USER2> Click the web link up the top next to "X comments" and click the link to get past the paywall.

</comment><comment><USER3> If you reach the page through a Google search ("tea grown in scotland" gave it as the 8th result), they show you the article after a short marketing- interests questionnaire.

<comment><USER4> or you can see article by clicking Cached in google

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Cool paywall</comment>


College Unaffordable Even in Higher Income Brackets - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/2016/06/23/education/college-unaffordable-even-in-higher-income-brackets.html?mabReward=CTM&action=click&pgtype=Homepage&region=CColumn&module=Recommendation&src=rechp&WT.nav=RecEngine <comment><USER2> In my experience the middle and higher income brackets (middle and upper middle suburban class) is the bracket that is hurt the most by college costs. Too rich for substantial need-based financial aid, too poor to pay without big loans. The only answer is merit scholarships, but those can't go for everyone, so you end up with moms taking their kids to 1000 summer activities so they're competitive :-)

Here's a possible solution also from personal experience: I went to high school in Texas and about 70% of the top students went to University of Texas at Austin because a) very good school (top 10 in CS) b) at least at the time, you got in automatically by being in the top 8% of your class, which isn't that hard in huge Texas schools c) not cheap but not $40k a year.

Most parents realized this was a likely outcome for the kids early on (or pretty much expected them to go there) and started to save up money since their child was born. The result was the most unstressful college application process I've seen!

Of course, not everyone lives in a state where the flagship public college is a top 10 in CS and many other majors, nor can everyone save up 18 years before the kid goes to college, but some can make it happen.

<comment><USER3> That experience sounds remarkably familiar. I know here in Mass at least UMass Amherst has a remarkably good computer science program for how cheap it can be (if you qualify for the right tuition credit programs by scoring well on standardized tests in high school). Though it's a poor indicator of an undergrad program, their CS grad program was ranked #25 in the country.

While I understand your point, I take some issue with:

> the middle and higher income brackets (middle and upper middle suburban > class) is the bracket that is hurt the most by college costs

Your points are all well made, but I'd argue that being lower class you're entirely dependent on financial aid and tuition subsidies if you get them at all. In the middle and upper middle class your fear (from anecdotal first hand experience) isn't _if_ you'll go to college (which is a huge indicator today of whether or not you'll be better than your parents -- education), but where you'll go to college. I know a lot of peers who went to state or safety schools because of cost. I don't know a lot of peers whose family is in that same tax bracket that just didn't go to college. I do know many friends who couldn't feasibly go to college at all, and it's stripped their career growth and job opportunities. Not trying to argue, just facilitate discussion by voicing a dissenting opinion.

<comment><USER2> That's definitely a good point. If you're in a low bracket and aren't able to get a full ride or good scholarship (doesn't mean you're bad or didn't work hard enough, but only a small % of people can get those), you're definitely going to be wondering if you can go to college at all. And if you barely afford to, there's all kinds of external costs associated with college (books, for example). Sometimes scholarships only cover tuition.

At least back home in Texas though, you can go to cheap community college and transfer to UT Austin or another UT campus. Two years is definitely better than four.

<comment><USER3> I have a lot of friends I graduated public HS here in Mass who went to Salem State and transferred to UMass Amherst. Best part was (to my understanding) they got full rides for their last 2 years of college because they met an arbitrary GPA requirement (might have been straight-As).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> I think a reality that will hopefully soon catch up with societal stigma in the United States is that college isn't right for everyone. I understand this as a separate point from college being unattainably expensive, but it is an important point.

I have friends who would be mechanics, Peace Corps volunteers, electricians, or plumbers if they hadn't instead gone to a private 4-year institution, pressured to attend the best schools possible because they did well in high school. The permanent solution for this is either adjusted student loans or free community colleges, or some combination of the two. People on the opposite side of this issue I've talked to have often expressed concern that the bachelor's degree will basically become devalued if everyone has access. My response is always "it already IS devalued, but hardly anyone has access". It's near impossible to get a job in a desirable field without a college degree and relevant experience, but it's also prohibitively expensive to get a degree. Where will the 22 year olds with $100,000 worth of debt working at McDonald's going to be in 30-50 years? I have friends who in their early 20s are recognizing it's worth accruing more debt at even higher education in hopes of getting a job that will make the investment worth it.

> Unless we make college affordable for people of all financial means, > opportunity through higher education will be a false promise.

But this is half of it, right? Plenty of people who walk out of colleges with no debt still can't find a job because the market is changing so much. As today's jobs move towards automation, I think most here can agree that current careers will change forever (frequently on HN the conversation steers towards more technological jobs). What I don't frequently see posted here is that automation will free up creative jobs where going to college is a necessary path. Writers exposed to other young writers can become inspired for life, especially given the opportunities. This turned into sort of a soapbox and is mostly anecdotal, but I think most would agree a national conversation needs to be had about this.

<comment><USER4> _> I think a reality that will hopefully soon catch up with societal stigma in the United States is that college isn't right for everyone_

The idea that this stigma exists is mostly a conservative pundit talking point used to justify cutting education budgets. If you look at labor market data, it's unsubstantiated. And if you visit middle America, you'll find plenty of people with disdain for college degrees.

The United States doesn't have an over-abundance of people with tertiary degrees.

The USA in the bottom half of the developed-world pack for 25-34 year olds, less than half of whom obtained ANY form of post-highschool education -- including community college.

More importantly, many high-growth fields are also high-tech and require tertiary education or exceptional self-teaching.

The problem isn't an over-supply of college educated workers. Rather, the problem is an unwillingness to subsidize tertiary education together with the misconception that college without accompanying training in employable skills is a worthwhile investment.

<comment><USER5> What do tertiary degrees get you? If you're an employer, why would you want to employ these people?

<comment><USER6> Most notably computational finance and research in the natural sciences (material, biochem, physics) all require tertiary degrees since those courses are simply not available at the undergraduate level.

The benefits of hiring these people by the financial and the pharma sector should be obvious.

<comment><USER5> Sure, but these fields are known for being selective, and objectively requiring a very high level of domain-specific knowledge. Presumably, they will remain this way in the future, despite the cost of education rising.

Notably, if the field doesn't objectively require a very high level of domain- specific knowledge, but rather a general baseline command of a broad topic, eg. software development?

<comment><USER4> _> Sure, but these fields are known for being selective_

Lots of fields that aren't so selective also require a tertiary (= post- highscool) education of some form. Most notably, a huge swath of jobs in health care that involve patient contact.

 _> Notably, if the field doesn't objectively require a very high level of domain-specific knowledge, but rather a general baseline command of a broad topic, eg. software development?_

It's of course possible to become a competent software developer without a tertiary education. I know, I did it (programming job offers right out of high school).

But it's not _common_ , and the secondary education system in the USA isn't set up to enable that sort of thing at scale. IMO it should, but it doesn't, and subidizing tertiary education is far more likely to succeed, and at lower cost, than such a drastic reform to such a huge sprawling institution.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment> rm_-rf_slash My partner and I - both well-educated and well-employed professionals - sketched out our long-term financial plan recently. The only way we envisioned owning property would be to build our own a considerable distance away from our small city's center. That alone proved to be a significant part of our budget, which is already under considerable pressure from student loans and car payments.

We estimated the expenses for future children and the picture was not pretty. Then we factored in higher education, assuming costs rise at the same rate as the last 30 years - roughly our lifetimes - and concluded that by the time our future kids are at college age, they will likely be paying for most of it themselves, with debt they may hold their entire lives.

So we aren't having any.

EDIT: Just to be clear, I am not simply saying that I am forgoing children because their college costs would be too high, I'm saying EVERYTHING is too expensive, and college in 20-30 years, assuming current rates, will be forbiddingly so.

<comment><USER7> Why not send your future kids to community college and then have them transfer?

<comment><USER8> That's the plan for our son who will be going in a couple years. He doesn't know what he wants to do, so why pay much more (not that its super cheap, but cheaper than many other options). I myself transferred schools multiple times - the greatest thing is the credits transfer, but the gpa does not, so if you screw up a few classes in the beginning, you can reset that.

In the end people really only look what you list on your resume - not the first x years, but where you graduated from and how well you did at the end.

<comment><USER9> My transfer credit was included in my GPA. :( It isn't too bad, but still.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> So long as the government guarantees students that they can get the loan, and guarantees lenders that it will be paid back (mostly by making the debt lifelong and not dischargeable through bankruptcy) the cost of education will simply be set at whatever the maximum available loan is.

This will cause the value of the education to be transferred away from the student and to the administrators of the institutions. The student will be allowed to keep a small percentage of this value for his/her trouble, a sharecropper of their own education.

</comment><comment><USER11> College may become unaffordable, but education should not.

With price pressure like this, I suspect online and other forms of post-high- school education will become more and more valuable. Employers will start looking at them with more attention, and definitely certificates of passing serious exams will become (more) valuable.

Of course, these exams certificates are not going to be free, and even the online courses are not going to be free. But they are going (and currently are) _massively_ less expensive than a college, while possibly giving comparable levels of knowledge. (Also, the "buy new books" racket will hopefully be gone with online courses + relatively independent exams.)

<comment><USER5> College/University has not solely been about education in a long time. It's about signalling [1][2], and therefore it's a competitive advantage. The accessibility of signalling is inversely proportional to its value -- it's no longer exclusive. This happens with certifications too.

[1] [https://www.jstor.org/stable/1882010](https://www.jstor.org/stable/1882010) [2] [http://www.econtalk.org/archives/2014/04/bryan_caplan_on.htm...](http://www.econtalk.org/archives/2014/04/bryan_caplan_on.html)

<comment><USER11> As signalling becomes too costly, it can become separated from skill certification.

Much like a diploma from Yale now is not a signal of exceptionally good knowledge but a signal of financial ability and having the right connections, going to _any_ full-time university can become such a signal.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> And yet, college enrollment continues to trend upward. The price continues to climb, but it's clearly not _unaffordable_ yet.

[http://nces.ed.gov/programs/digest/d15/tables/dt15_302.60.as...](http://nces.ed.gov/programs/digest/d15/tables/dt15_302.60.asp?current=yes)

<comment><USER11> It's financed by debt. That is, it's _probably_ already unaffordable because the debts are going to be crippling, but it's not felt yet.

It's like you're already severely poisoned but are not yet feeling the effects, and more people around see you and consider the poison for themselves.

<comment><USER12> Sounds like the solution might be to ease back on guaranteed student loans and tighten up available credit so it goes to qualified borrowers who are likely to be able to pay back what they borrow, rather than mandating that everyone who wants to goes to college without any consideration for ability to repay what they've borrowed.

But then, that would result in decreasing enrollment rates and hysterics in the headlines about how kids can't afford education, and we can't have that. We've worked ourselves into a corner - by subsidizing education so heavily in pursuit of increased attendance rates, we've driven prices sky-high, and now can't cut those subsidies without hanging some people out to dry.

We'll know that college is truly unaffordable - or at least the college premium reaches the point where it's not worth the cost - when enrollment rates start trending downwards. Until then, it's a giant ball of subsidies and relief programs and reforms and restructurings that work to maintain a system that is empirically affordable, even if it's extremely painful.

<comment><USER13> _by subsidizing education so heavily in pursuit of increased attendance rates, we 've driven prices sky-high_

At least for me, the relationship you're implying between subsidies and educational costs needs some explanation. If, say, three-quarters of a college's students are having 25-50% of their fees subsidized, what about those subsidies _forces_ the college to raise their fees disproportionately to their costs?

<comment><USER12> Nothing forces them to; basic economics tells us that their prices will rise to the point that consumers will bear, and that subsidy increases the price that consumers will bear.

Recent research ([http://www.nber.org/chapters/c13711.pdf](http://www.nber.org/chapters/c13711.pdf)) bears out subsidy as a cost driver, as well.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> I'm a little surprised that no one has suggested joining the military.

When I was in high school, my parents had no money for me for College. We were middle class, and my grades weren't competitive enough for me to get a scholarship.

So I did what I thought would work well (in 2002)- I joined the USAF as an enlisted "Computer Programmer". Fortunately, _did_ have a good education, so my ASVAB (military job test to determine what jobs you could be) score was relatively high. Joining as a computer programmer opened up the world to me like I couldn't imagine.

Ultimately, I ended up taking night and weekend classes while in the USAF and finished my bachelor's degree shortly before getting out. Later I would go on to get my Master's with my GI Bill because I didn't want it to go to waste.

I felt honored to serve my country and to contribute how I could and I graduated both undergrad and grad school with zero dollars of debt.

I think more people should consider this option, at least if they have a decent education and good military jobs open to them. Understandably, if someone joins as say, infantry, in the Army, it may not be so easy to go to school (though I have plenty of friends who did and took online classes!)

It's not for everyone, but it's definitely an option.

</comment><comment><USER15> This just isn't true. Compared to most of the U.S. I make a lot of money (Software Engineer in Silicon Valley). I have kids a few years from college, so this topic weighs on me. I ran my financials through Stanford's cost calculator (Stanford is among the most expensive schools), and my expected contribution would be under $10K / year. Yes, it costs $65K+ / year for tuition, housing, etc., but the reality is that those costs are not nearly as terrifying when you factor in financial aid programs that are available.

I remember how terrified I was of my student loans in my day. I also remember how awesome it felt when they got paid off. This has turned into a political topic and whenever that happens logic and facts go out the window in favor of emotion triggering pseudo-statistics.

<comment><USER16> 1\. Stanford is an outlier in terms of financial aid--they provide far more financial aid than most schools.

2\. Good luck getting into Stanford.

<comment><USER15> I just ran through the same calculator at UC Berkeley. The difference in expectations is minimal.

I then ran through the CSU calculator. The cost is actually doubled for CSUs, which have a lower total cost, but no grant/scholarship programs offered directly through the university financial aid office. My own experience with that environment tells me there are plenty of grant/scholarship options.

<comment><USER16> I'm not sure why you think looking at three California University calculators for one year's tuition is any more a representative sample than your previous anecdotes. You're disagreeing with national surveys of the cost that people actually pay over four years. You're disagreeing based on a limited sample of promotional calculators of one year cost from one area of the country.

<comment><USER15> Because out-of-state tuition costs are dramatically higher. I could look at other Ivy's, but they would be very similar to Stanford. The CSU calculator is for all CSUs (~20 schools). All UCs will have similar costs and financial aid scenarios.

If I lived in Alabama, my income wouldn't be relevant. I have no idea what I would make in that part of the country.

What I do know, and what is plainly obvious, is that this topic is fueled by fear mongering.

Tuition costs have risen and will continue to rise. College is a tough financial investment and has been for generations. As somebody who is going through the process in the very near future, I have to look at the reality and not the press snippets and public discourse that arises from them. This particular study completely ignores the availability of scholarships and grants in the private and public sectors. The UC and Stanford calculators I pointed out took that into consideration. The CSU calculator did not.

I wouldn't exactly call them promotional calculators.

<comment><USER16> > Because out-of-state tuition costs are dramatically higher.

Yes, true... which doesn't expand your sample size in any way.

> I could look at other Ivy's, but they would be very similar to Stanford.

You could look at the list of Ivy's and find that Standford is not an Ivy.

You could also look at the list of Ivy's and discover that they are not similar to other Ivy's.

You could also look into how these places calculate your income and discover that your income is very different from the amount that you put into the calculators.

You could also send a kid there and discover that there are lots of costs a simplistic calculator doesn't include.

You could also send a kit there and discover that cost changes from year to year, and usually goes up.

You could also read my previous post and acknowledge that your anecdotal experience which of putting numbers into a calculator is completely irrelevant to the many experiences of people in different parts of the country who actually go to schools and pay for them.

> What I do know, and what is plainly obvious, is that this topic is fueled by > fear mongering.

The fact that smart people disagree with you is strong evidence that your assertion is not obvious.

<comment><USER15> I'm sure you consider yourself very smart. I see that you are vested in this argument. I can only surmise that my position doesn't match your political views. Get outside, go relax. This discussion isn't worth the strain it's putting on you.

<comment><USER16> If you don't want to debate, you can just stop debating. You don't have to condescend the person you're debating with. Is that really the person you want to be?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> I dropped out of college after two years, in part because I personally knew two people with a Bachelor's degree in hand who delivered newspapers for a living, both of whom had pretty pathetic lives. At age 18, my boyfriend delivered newspapers. I was very familiar with the terrible hours and pay. I felt extremely clear that I could deliver newspapers without a degree and my life would be vastly better if I did so without first being saddled with a mountain of debt.

We sell people on the idea that college is The Ticket to a serious career with good pay. It isn't that cut and dried. We really need to stop promoting that idea.

I later returned to school when I had a better idea of what I wanted to do with my life. One of my positive experiences was with community college in California. The in state rates are surprisingly low. I wrapped up my AA and this inspired my husband to start going to college. As a military member, he got 75% of his tuition covered. His out of pocket tuition expenses were substantially less than the cost of textbooks.

The community college system in California is one of its little known strengths. Many four year colleges have agreements in place with community colleges that make it easy to do your first two years cheaply and then transfer to a prestigious four year program. California Virtual Campus is also an amazing resource.

</comment><comment><USER18> "a college education is being priced out of the reach of middle-class and even upper-middle-class families."

If this were true, we would see one of two things: (1) colleges would be empty and closing their doors, or (2) we'd have an enormous debt bubble.

(1) is obviously false.

(2) is more interesting and, indeed, debt levels may be high. However, in a development that most pieces like this ignore, the federal government now has significant loan repayment forgiveness programs, along with income-sensitive repayment plans.

So no, with huge programs that will wipe student debt clean, I laugh in the face of a headline that asserts that college is "unaffordable even in higher income brackets."

Look here:

[https://studentaid.ed.gov/sa/repay- loans/understand/plans/in...](https://studentaid.ed.gov/sa/repay- loans/understand/plans/income-driven)

"Most federal student loans are eligible for at least one income-driven repayment plan. If your income is low enough, your payment could be as low as $0 per month."

So $0 a month is unaffordable??

<comment><USER19> The income-sensitive repayment plans come with a lot of caveats. My wife took that route before we married and it was mostly just a huge debt trap with interest piling up and she still struggled to make payments. I have not done the math with median debt/income/compound interest over X years but it seems to me that a lot of people who go that route will wind up with debt they will never be able to repay in their lifetimes. After we married it turns out the income part is based on household; my income is much larger than hers, and while hers has gone up since she still has trouble paying the new monthly rates based on our joint income from her salary alone.

<comment><USER18> The income is based on the tax return. It may be to your advantage to file separate returns.

Absolutely, it may be debt you will never pay off. If after several years you don't repay it, it is wiped clean. What a deal.

<comment><USER19> > If after several years you don't repay it, it is wiped clean. What a deal.

I had to check this as I had not heard of that before. "Several years" is 25 years under income-based repayment (years before you switched to income-based repayment do not count). The loans are not "wiped clean" \- whatever balance is forgiven after 25 years is counted as taxable income, so actually you would be in a worse off position after getting your loans forgiven. Source: [http://www.finaid.org/loans/ibrfaq.phtml](http://www.finaid.org/loans/ibrfaq.phtml)

All this of course only applies to federal student loans. About half of my wife's loan balances are from private lenders and from what I hear this ratio is common.

<comment><USER18> How is paying a percentage of the loan balance as taxes worse than paying the entire loan balance?

It would all be due at once (offhand I don't know what sorts of payment plans IRS has) so it could be worse that way.

<comment><USER19> > How is paying a percentage of the loan balance as taxes worse than paying > the entire loan balance?

The IRS is much more aggressive about collections and will seize your property and garnish your wages:

[https://www.irs.gov/businesses/small-businesses-self- employe...](https://www.irs.gov/businesses/small-businesses-self- employed/understanding-a-federal-tax-lien)

[https://www.irs.gov/businesses/small-businesses-self- employe...](https://www.irs.gov/businesses/small-businesses-self- employed/levy)

When that 25 year forgiveness kicks in the tax money will be due all at once. Even with a payment plan the IRS collection schedule is 3-5 years. 30% of a lot of fake income is still a ton of money. This "debt forgiveness" will force a lot of people into bankruptcy, which btw does not discharge all tax obligations ([http://www.nolo.com/legal-encyclopedia/will-bankruptcy- stop-...](http://www.nolo.com/legal-encyclopedia/will-bankruptcy-stop-irs- collecting-tax-debts.html))

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> I went to college and graduated with a Computer Engineering degree from SJSU without any financial help from my parents, the government or anybody else. Oh and I had to support my child from the second year on as well. It took me about 30% longer to finish it, and I was sleep deprived most of those years due to having to work AND go to school, but I graduated with $0 debt.

</comment><comment><USER21> I'd be interested in seeing how a "single payer" approach to college financing would work.

High level - The government pours many billions of dollars into colleges and universities every year, but because the money is disseminated via millions of individual loans to individual students, any buying power (and downward pressure on prices) that the government could provide is effectively eliminated. For a university this is a best case scenario: sell a "necessary" product to millions of individual customers with infinite money.

If instead, the universities could only "sell" to the government, the government would be able to actually demand meaningful concessions in price.

I'm thinking something like:

1\. Students -$-> Gov't -$-> Universities (many more sellers than buyers)

Instead of:

2\. Gov't -$-> Students -$-> Universities (many more buyers than sellers)

Easy to see how case 1 would keep prices lower in an ideal world...

</comment><comment><USER22> I dropped out of college (computer science) few months ago. Ahhh, the sense of freedom and gaining my sanity back. I don't even know why I enrolled; plus I hated teachers and most students. When I was there, I rarely attended lectures and instead watched them online, read books and did practical things on my own - so it didn't even make sense to be enrolled. At least I won't be a debt slave.

</comment><comment><USER23> College at its current cost is too expensive for America, period. It has gone up faster than inflation. I still think any college accepting money backed by the federal government should be required to offer courses for a set amount per credit hour. People seem to have no issue with government dictating how much medical procedures and supplies cost, why not college.

</comment><comment><USER24> I'd say a bigger problem is parents encouraging their kids to go to college to do what they enjoy instead of encouraging them to go to college for a profession that will pay the bills. If you want to "do what you enjoy" for a living, and it pays $25k/year in salary... maybe don't spend $100k on college...?

</comment><comment><USER25> Perhaps the key is something between a boot camp (I mean the coding kind, not the military kind) and a 4-year school? A lot of time and money is wasted on the culture of college (sports, activities, partying, Greek life, etc....) and it seems there's a lot of room for disruption.

</comment><comment><USER26> I'd have guessed most families sending kids to college were making upwards of $100K anyway. The headline felt a little misleading because I thought it was already taken for granted that it was hard to afford for most sub-$90k households, particular if they have multiple kids.

</comment><comment><USER27> It's almost like a government-encouraged oligopoly is maximizing the amount of value they can seize from people regulatorily encouraged / forced to buy their product.

</comment><comment><USER28> Why is every other advanced economy in the world able to deal with this, but America can't? People who respond in discussions like this that the real problem _must_ be so many greedy kids wanting things like a good job, financial stability, etc need to first confront the fact that this is a uniquely American problem.

</comment><comment><USER29> interesting article but was it necessary for the authors photograph to be as large as the entire text itself?

</comment><comment><USER30> Solutions --

1) Wait for the bubble to pop and see if prices reach a new equilibrium. 2) Double-down on current solutions, i.e. more subsidies. 3) Impose a head tax on everyone a la Obamacare.

<comment><USER31> Don't more subsidies put upward pressure on prices?[1][2][3]

Also, how would a head tax improve the cost of education?

[1][http://college.usatoday.com/2015/08/20/report-federal-aid- ri...](http://college.usatoday.com/2015/08/20/report-federal-aid-rising- tuition/) [2][https://fee.org/articles/student-loan-subsidies-cause- almost...](https://fee.org/articles/student-loan-subsidies-cause-almost-all- of-the-increase-in-tuition/) [3][http://www.slate.com/blogs/moneybox/2015/09/08/student_loans...](http://www.slate.com/blogs/moneybox/2015/09/08/student_loans_drive_up_college_costs_what_should_we_do_about_it.html)

<comment><USER30> Yes they do. I didn't say the solutions would actually WORK. But this is America, so we'll deal with this problem the way we've dealt with health care.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> Well with Over 675,049 California ballots remain uncounted. Bernie could still win the state.

[http://vote.sos.ca.gov/unprocessed-ballots- status/](http://vote.sos.ca.gov/unprocessed-ballots-status/)

<comment><USER33> You remind me of myself in 2008. #RonPaul2008</comment></comment>


Digital Spying - <AUTHOR> http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2012/03/ff_nsadatacenter/all/1

<comment><USER2> In the meantime they want to propose a new law to monitor web and e-mail use in UK.

<http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-17576745>

It's like it's all coming together for these Governments. I wouldn't be surprised if more of them decided to push for this type of laws in the same time, and it's not completely coincidental.</comment>


Nvidia Acquires Cumulus - <AUTHOR> https://blogs.nvidia.com/blog/2020/05/04/nvidia-acquires-cumulus/ <comment><USER2> Cumulus is a great complement to their earlier Mellanox acquisition. I'm hoping for good things to come from this.

... that is, if nVidia doesn't force their bad open source habits down on either of these 2 companies. But there is no indication they will.

<comment><USER3> Cumulus Linux isn't free software, if anything this might increase the chances of them releasing public version of this.

<comment><USER4> Everything in the Cumulus distribution except switchd is opensource (According to sales people anyways, and seems true so far, been browsing some python source on our switches), switchd is using information in the Linux kernel to program/configure Broadcom and Mellanox ASICs. Their contributions to the Linux kernel and the FRR routing package is not insignificant.

I hope Nvidia is going to keep allowing Cumulus to support Broadcom ASICs and keep upstreaming their development efforts.

Disclamier: The company is work for is a small but happy Cumulus customer.

<comment><USER5> Cumulus co-founder and original switchd author here.

Mellanox sells switches with Broadcom silicon, so certainly in the short and medium term there will be no changes there. Long term is harder to say. It is possible that once Mellanox/Nvidia's ASIC portfolio is sufficiently complete they'll stop adding support for newer competitor ASICs, but I have no special insight there.

Thanks for using Cumulus, glad to hear you're having a good experience with it!

<comment><USER4> May i ask about your thoughts regarding switchd now that Mellanox has been pushing Switchdev quite hard and Broadcom SAI (and i guess SAI could be "plugged" into the kernel just as switchd with some "glue" (netlink) so we don't have to modify userspace?).

It seems like the actual "programming ASIC" importance at least for Mellanox Spectrums is less of a USP by every new kernel release, i still see value in the support, packaging and sponsoring development though.

<comment><USER5> switchd living in userspace was in large part a result of the highly proprietary NDA's ASIC SDKs. Mellanox is making small (and welcome) steps in opening up by putting some functionality into their switchdev driver, but if you want a full feature set in 2020, you need their userspace SDK, which means switchd.

SAI, like OFDPA and OpenNSL before them (and a few more, can't even keep track anymore) are giant closed-source userspace binary blobs that Broadcom released to try (and fail) to mollify folks who want open-source networking. If you're serious about feature set and performance, there is unfortunately still no alternative to the proprietary NDA'd SDKs.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Now that nvidia owns a full switch OS, I wonder if this means that Onix, which they inherited from their Mellanox acquisition, will eventually be phased out.

We've been running Onix just because it's cheaper than Cumulus (read: no yearly contract).

<comment><USER7> This definitely looks like throwing in the towel on Onyx. Cumulus was always more mature and it was going to take a lot of investment to catch up.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> The question is will they still support Cumulus on non Mellanox ODM switches which 99% of use an ASICs from Mellanox's competitor Broadcom?

</comment><comment> 1-6 The blog needs to make text black. It's hard to read without highlighting text.

<comment><USER9> Not when you have Javascript blocked by default, using some adblocker. Try the difference!</comment></comment>


The girl who conned the Ivy League - <AUTHOR> http://www.rollingstone.com/news/story/31770765/the_girl_who_conned_the_ivy_league/6 <comment><USER2> "The girl who conned the Ivy League...

...gained admission to three universities — including _continuing-ed_ programs at Harvard and Columbia."

I assume by "continuing ed" they mean the Harvard Extension School and its Columbia analogue. From extension.harvard.edu:

      To take courses at Harvard Extension School, you simply register.
      No application is required.

Never let the truth get in the way of a good headline.

</comment><comment><USER3> An interesting comment from the article: "From the genius, to the anxiety, through the social awkwardness, Esther Reed is a classic case of Asperger's Syndrome! Anyone who has lived with family members who have this condition, as I have, should be able to instantly recognize it. The clues are all there. Her father was a "shy and reclusive man" who had his family living out in the woods isolated from society. There is the source of her autistic spectrum disorder; she probably inherited it from him. She is not amoral as one person previously commented, but rather, as Esther admitted, she didn't realize her actions would hurt others. Again, this is classic Asperger's -- the inability to put yourself in someone else's shoes, the lack of empathy, the self- centered egotism resulting from an inability to generate a theory of mind, i.e. see things from someone else's point of view or understand how what you might do or say would affect the other person. Esther had personal problems a normal person would have been able to handle by confronting and facing her family and expressing her feelings to them and if necessary, just openly leaving to start over, i.e. without running away in the way that she did -- making her paper existence vanish -- and without snapping and acting as she did. People with Asperger's try to hold it together but often snap and act out. In children, it is tantrums. As an adult, Reed snapped and impulsively grabbed a co-worker's purse -- not the act of a genius criminal, since obviously the suspicion would fall on co-workers. She could not handle pressure and personal problems a normal person would have been able to handle without Esther's extreme behavior. Even as a child, she had a hyperresponsivity to stress as described by her teacher which was echoed in her adult life when she became completely dysfunctional when stressed at Columbia and on the run. Ironically, her defense attorney was right, but apparently he didn't have a clue as to the correct diagnosis."

<comment><USER4> Actually she sounds like a clear case of a sociopath.

Aspies lack EQ, but not necessary empathy. Sociopaths lack empathy altogether, and will result to destructive actions to get what they want with no regard to people around them, or sometimes, even themselves.

<comment><USER5> It seemed to me that she was genuinely concerned--at least somewhat--about minimizing her damage to others. She did rationalize that choosing a missing girl's ID probably wouldn't be that bad.

 _"No one would be hurt by the theft, she reasoned, as long as she was careful not to rack up debt. "I always thought, mistakenly, if there was no financial loss, there was no harm," she says."_

So it seems her inability to recognize her damage to others was more problem in rationale than understanding of empathy.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> The original link goes to the last page.

First page: [http://www.rollingstone.com/news/story/31770765/the_girl_who...](http://www.rollingstone.com/news/story/31770765/the_girl_who_conned_the_ivy_league/)

<comment><USER7> Even better - the print version: [http://www.rollingstone.com/news/story/31770765/the_girl_who...](http://www.rollingstone.com/news/story/31770765/the_girl_who_conned_the_ivy_league/print)

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> I'm surprised she didn't just go to another country and go from there - I'm not sure how easily other countries would be able to trace her back to the missing people in the US.

Worst case she could have started off as an illegal immigrant - it seems with her resourcefulness and intelligence she could have done well.

<comment><USER9> Well, then you wouldn't be hearing about it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> It seems to me the fascination with this type of story (and it's not the first I've seen here) is the element of remaking ourselves. A lot of famous people got famous under a stage name: John Wayne was born Marion Robert Morrison; John Mellencamp became famous as John Cougar; Julie Newmar was born Julia Chalene Newmeyer. On this site, the man behind Mixergy took the name Andrew Warner because his ethnic name was an obstacle to business success. Many people also go by "handles" on various online forums rather than their real name and plenty of people have nicknames that their close friends use for them.

I suppose one lesson to learn here is that there is a right way and a wrong way to remake yourself. And that assuming a new identity does not automatically prevent problems from following you.

</comment><comment><USER11> >To survive these daily onslaughts, Esther put on her familiar mask of haughty confidence and switched on her emotional autopilot, mimicking social interactions while feeling nothing

Hmm, that summarises about 50% of social interactions generally.

</comment><comment><USER12> Not surprising that she was discovered and arrested. The whole point of a missing person's list is to work as an alert system.

</comment><comment><USER13> The most striking thing about this story to me is how this girl ended up being suspected of being Public Enemy Number One.

That truly says something about the world we live in these days. Sad.

</comment><comment><USER14> This reminds me of:

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_P._Burdell>

also see:

[http://www.rollingstone.com/news/story/29787673/the_boy_who_...](http://www.rollingstone.com/news/story/29787673/the_boy_who_heard_too_much/print)

and

<http://www.museumofhoaxes.com/hoax/weblog/comments/4446/>

<comment><USER15> My first thought was

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

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> _"Investigators had never encountered anyone like this mysterious young woman..."_

Really, only because they hadn't read about the cases of classic "hackers": Kevin Mitnick, Kevin Poulson, ...

Fading between assumed identities is a pretty common scheme in my reading, though perhaps less common in reality.

</comment><comment><USER17> Wow, what a terrible layout!

If anyone here isn't using Readability, this would be a good time to start: <http://lab.arc90.com/experiments/readability/>

</comment><comment><USER18> Dup: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1054299></comment>