Climate Science Is Not Settled - T-A http://online.wsj.com/articles/climate-science-is-not-settled-1411143565 <comment><AUTHOR> "The crucial scientific question for policy isn't whether the climate is changing. That is a settled matter: The climate has always changed and always will. Geological and historical records show the occurrence of major climate shifts, sometimes over only a few decades. We know, for instance, that during the 20th century the Earth's global average surface temperature rose 1.4 degrees Fahrenheit.

Nor is the crucial question whether humans are influencing the climate. That is no hoax: There is little doubt in the scientific community that continually growing amounts of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, due largely to carbon- dioxide emissions from the conventional use of fossil fuels, are influencing the climate. There is also little doubt that the carbon dioxide will persist in the atmosphere for several centuries. The impact today of human activity appears to be comparable to the intrinsic, natural variability of the climate system itself...

Society's choices in the years ahead will necessarily be based on uncertain knowledge of future climates. That uncertainty need not be an excuse for inaction."

Much better than I expected of the WSJ. If it consistently took this line instead of buying into absurd conspiracy theories or claiming snow in January means climate change is a hoax, our national discourse would be much healthier, on both sides.

</comment><comment><USER2> Steve Koonin is an incredibly smart guy with a huge amount of experience in climate and energy issues, and is saying things in this article that any competent computational physicist who has looked into climate modelling believes.

Compare for example my own short take on the same issues, written two years ago: [http://www.tjradcliffe.com/?p=886](http://www.tjradcliffe.com/?p=886)

You'll see basically similar concerns raised. If you're seriously wedded to the idea that consensus is important to the science, you should dig up the independent opinions of a few other computational physicists (not climate scientists, who are not computational physicists). Having done so, you might find that there is a consensus amongst computational physicists that climate models are problematic in ways that make them questionable guides to policy, although most of us will also say that we should be concerned about the amount of garbage we are dumping into the atmosphere (and there are reasons to want to get off fossil fuels that go beyond the climate change argument.)

Denialists have poisoned the public discourse on climate change, but Warmists have unfortunately responded by digging in their heels in a particularly anti- scientific way. I hope Koonin's piece will help bring the scientific discussion back to fundamentals, and perhaps decouple the policy discussion from models a bit.

For example: we know that carbon taxes work pretty well in reducing CO2 emissions ([http://www.theglobeandmail.com/globe-debate/the-insidious- tr...](http://www.theglobeandmail.com/globe-debate/the-insidious-truth-about- bcs-carbon-tax-it-works/article19512237/)) and we know that carbon taxes can be used to reduce corporate and income taxes. So anyone who is opposed to carbon taxes is necessarily in favour of higher corporate and income taxes.

This is a policy discussion that can and should be had independently of any detailed climate model results, and I invite everyone who is in favour of higher corporate and income taxes to chime in here in support of their position, and explain why those taxes are so much better than the carbon taxes that could partially replace them.

<comment><USER3> [http://www.skepticalscience.com/climate-models- intermediate....](http://www.skepticalscience.com/climate-models- intermediate.htm)

[http://www.theguardian.com/environment/climate- consensus-97-...](http://www.theguardian.com/environment/climate- consensus-97-per-cent/2014/jul/21/realistic-climate-models-accurately- predicted-global-warming)

And can you please stop with the 'Warmist' label? It's stupid, about as much as 'denialist' is narrow for the veritable zoo of opinions - educated or uneducated - that's sprung up in the public discourse.

I've also read your post and 1-2 W/m2 does sound like very little. However, and I quote from Wikipedia:

> Of the ~340 W/m2 of solar radiation received by the Earth, an average of ~77 > W/m2 is reflected back to space by clouds and the atmosphere, and ~23 W/m2 > is reflected by the surface albedo, leaving about 240 W/m2 of solar energy > input to the Earth's energy budget.

That's a change of 0.5%. Doesn't sound like much, does it, but at 273 K that corresponds to about 1.5 degrees already. At the upper end of that and 300 K it's 2.5 degrees. Sure, it's simplistic and it's how to keep it quite that straightforward, but to see that number and be ignorant enough of the context to trivialise it and call it not a big deal is pretty disingenuous. Sure, a 2.5 K (or something like it) rise isn't going to bring the downfall of civilisation per se. But there's more to it than that. And, mind you, 2.5 K is at the lower end of IPCC projections, so there's evidently a lot more ground to cover than the simplistic numbers mentioned here.

<comment><USER2> Who is trivializing anything? This is what is so bizarre about these discussions, and why I use the term "Warmist": because it identifies a nearly religious zeal on the part of some non-scientists who insist that anyone who does anything other than repeat the mantra "the science is settled; we must implement every imaginable solution except nuclear power" is somehow "trivializing" the issue.

I'm clearly on the record as being concerned about climate change and strongly in favour of implementing social policies (including carbon taxes) that will a) reduce GHG emissions and b) protect the most vulnerable, but because I don't quack like precisely the right kind of duck I'm routinely accused of somehow trivializing something, or being the enemy (this is not the first time I've had this kind of discussion, obviously). This is what you see from rival religions, not from scientists. I was involved in the 17 keV neutrino controversy, so I'm no stranger to scientific disagreement, and it simply doesn't have this strange dynamic.

If anyone is trivializing anything, it is Warmists trivializing physics. For example, why anyone would go from a 0.5% change in energy budget to a 0.5% change in absolute temperature is beyond me. Heating and temperature in the atmosphere are connected by complex and non-linear factors, which is one of the reasons we need to do modelling in the first place. Even in the simplest case of a black body the non-linear Stephan-Bolzmann law applies, not Newton's law of cooling (which is linear, but irrelevant to this case.)

So the argument you're making is not even wrong: it simply doesn't speak to the question of what the plausible effect of climate change on the Earth in general and humanity in particular will be.

This kind of argument just feeds the Denialist trolls who are doing so much damage to this discourse, because they will pick up on your errors and cry "hoax!" and other such nonsense rather than "honest, innocent and naive mistake", which in fairness what I think your error most likely is.

Finally, as I said above, I've had this kind of discussion before and it's never ended well, so I'm going to stop here and let you have the last word. Enjoy!

<comment><USER4> I agree that global warming attracts religious types. As a result, it is generally hard to have a serious conversation about it. HN has a better ratio of science vs religion, luckily.

<comment><USER5> I'd deeply religious - and I concur.

Based on my experience, the debate about Global Warming is is mostly polemical.

In my opinion, a debate about measurable natural phenomena should be scientific - where a single verifiable fact trumps all previous consensus and conjecture.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I always thought that when people used the word "settled" in connection to climate change they were referring to the question of whether humans have influenced climate. Even though this article dismisses that question as "yeah there's little doubt about that", this is _precisely_ what plenty of people have been arguing is not the case. So this article seems a lot like moving the goal posts to me.

Obviously climate science as a whole isn't "settled", any more than any other science is "settled".

<comment><USER7> Yeah I agree. The article was actually good and calls out very reasonable criticisms against current climate science. However the headline makes it seem the debate on whether humans influence the climate isn't settled.

<comment><USER8> One thing that the author points out is that the impact by humans is relatively small (compared to natural sourcing), and that natural variation is both vast and frequent.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> "Settled" is not a word you can use when describing any science. Medicine is not settled, nor is physics or computer science. But we can still glean useful insights from the evidence and experiments we have done. While it's wrong to claim climate science is settled, I can't recall any credible figure who said that it was. So to me this seems like a bit of a straw man.

</comment><comment><USER10> "Climate Science Is Not Settled" is an irresponsible title IMO when the main points of contention in public discourse are whether anthropogenic climate change is even real or not, and action vs. inaction.

It's a good article and I'm happy to see it (assuming the information is accurate). But deniers will point to the title to argue that the whole things is a hoax and that we should do nothing.

I'm sure the phenomenon of "Warmists" is a real thing too, and something to watch out for. But it's incredibly hard to talk about the subtle points presented in this article when so many people refuse to believe that anything is happening at all. It's like trying to debate foreign policy with someone who thinks that 9/11 was an inside job.

</comment><comment><USER11> I'm surprised by the finest possible resolution quoted, a 60 mile grid. It corresponds to about 55,000 cells covering earth (times maybe 100 altitude bands). That's not a large amount of memory.

I assume the limitation is that all those cells have to be simulated in small time slices for 100 years, and the necessary time slice would scale inversely with the grid size, so computation is O(n^3) on the inverse size of the grid.

Can someone comment on what kind of computer it would take to halve the size of the grid?

<comment><USER2> There are usually quite a bit fewer than 100 altitude slices. There may be as few as 10: [http://www.ipcc- data.org/guidelines/pages/gcm_guide.html](http://www.ipcc- data.org/guidelines/pages/gcm_guide.html)

Simulations are typically done in one day time-steps or less.

The thing is, there is a lot of physics going on in each cell, and in some respects reducing the cell size makes things more problematic rather than less. For example, the effects of a supercell thunderstorm can dominate the atmosphere over tens of kilometers. With a 100 km (60 mile) scale you can plausibly average over those effects within a cell, as you can reasonably claim that most such "local" phenomena will be happening well away from cell boundaries.

So as you reduce the cell size, you start having to think about the internal details of local disturbances that you were previously averaging away and hoping to catch in your overall parameterizations, and the model complexity goes up tremendously, likely without becoming a whole lot more accurate.

Even at these large scales the amount of physics that goes on within a single cell is huge, and getting all the heat and mass balances right is fantastically difficult, which is where a lot of the computational power goes.

So it isn't really a question of halving the grid size while keeping the physics the same, because you are going to have to substantially revise your model to accommodate the new scale. I'm sure this work is ongoing, but it's extremely complex and difficult.

<comment><USER12> What sort of physics calculations can you do within a cell? I would have expected the data structure for a cell to contain a handful of scalar parameters (e.g. temperature, pressure, humidity, velocity vector) related by a few scalar equations - a negligible amount of computation. It sounds like there's quite a few orders of magnitude more stuff going on within a cell than I would have expected. What am I missing?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> It seems that the article has a simple thesis. a) climate is hard b) human activity is affecting it but because it's hard it's tough to know how much c) hence it's difficult to know what the correct policies should be.

As an economist might say - without clarity on the positive, it's challenging to resolve the normative.

But I am a little puzzled by the failure to discuss outcomes in terms of mathematical expectation. And of course, the author knows more than I ever will about this.

Hence: If our activity might just trigger a sequence of events leading to human extinction...(in other words such a sequence is conceivable and credible) then even if the risk is low as estimated by our (weak) ability to assess such risk, then the outcome is surely so hideous that if our policies are taking us in a direction that makes such an outcome more likely (even if we are not sure by how much) then there is cause for caution and re- examination of policy. It seems to me that our situation at present is of this form. Despite our poor understanding and the fact that things aren't 'settled' (as if they ever will be) this unsettled 'knowledge' is all we have and we have to take it seriously, most particularly if the possible outcomes are ghastly. We can't just wait for better science.

</comment><comment><USER14> Wow.

I am amazed that an article filled with such a vast amount of FUD is frontpaging. But let's go point-by-point, lest the science described in thousands of papers of climate research get lost in the cloud of false skepticism, shall we?

> The models roughly describe the shrinking extent of Arctic sea ice observed > over the past two decades, but they fail to describe the comparable growth > of Antarctic sea ice, which is now at a record high.

The science of _why_ Antarctic sea ice extent is growing is perfectly well known: the discharge of melting cold water from the Antarctic glaciers forms ice as it hits the coastal winds of the continent. That the models don't necessarily account the extent of this is almost irrelevant, since the sea ice extent has a very minute impact on climate patterns.

Let us note that this is a not-at-all subtle piece of FUD that would appear to account that Antarctic sea ice is compensating for Arctic melting. It's not. There's over 500 Gt of yearly glacier loss in the Antarctic, and the sea ice extent which is, at most, a few meters thick, is absolutely minuscule in comparison to the amount of additional water dissolving into the sea from kilometers-thick walls of ice. Also, the topic has been reasonably well- studied, and the changes in the atmosphere are more than enough to account for the observed effects.

> Even though the human influence on climate was much smaller in the past, the > models do not account for the fact that the rate of global sea-level rise 70 > years ago was as large as what we observe today—about one foot per century.

It is most definitely increasing, and it is accelerating rapidly, especially if the West Antarctic Ice Sheet accelerates its collapse ([http://www.skepticalscience.com/sea-level- rise.htm](http://www.skepticalscience.com/sea-level-rise.htm)). The fact that we have been observing linear trends thus far doesn't mean that we'll continue to observe them; evidence points that we're in the beggining of an exponential loss of ice.

> A crucial measure of our knowledge of feedbacks is climate sensitivity—that > is, the warming induced by a hypothetical doubling of carbon-dioxide > concentration. Today's best estimate of the sensitivity (between 2.7 degrees > Fahrenheit and 8.1 degrees Fahrenheit) is no different, and no more certain, > than it was 30 years ago. And this is despite an heroic research effort > costing billions of dollars.

This is, again, FUD.

First of all, the radiative forcing produced by CO2 is well-known and established by physics. It is known that the Earth's albedo is decreasing, and the certainty that out lower bounds are erroneous has increased substantially.

Moreover, we are now aware of potential feedback loops that we didn't know about. It's interesting that he's never mentioning the Big One: the potential for frozen clathrates in Siberia and the Arctic to release methane that would trigger a certain mass extinction event.

> A transparent rigor would also be a welcome development, especially given > the momentous political and policy decisions at stake. That could be > supported by regular, independent, "red team" reviews to stress-test and > challenge the projections by focusing on their deficiencies and > uncertainties; that would certainly be the best practice of the scientific > method. But because the natural climate changes over decades, it will take > many years to get the data needed to confidently isolate and quantify the > effects of human influences.

So, in his opinion, the models clearly described in papers, the data publicly available by NASA and dozens of different government organizations is not enough? A 3000-page report summarizing the findings of hundreds of papers, with multiple, independently corroborated lines of evidence using different data sets isn't enough?

This an _obvious_ attempt to discredit climate scientists. I would suggest anyone who has a shred of doubt as to the integrity of these people that you just walk into any Atmospheric Sciences Department of your local university and buy any teacher a cup of coffee and have a chat. Seriously, they will talk your ear off about their research.

As a personal note, most climate scientists are the kind of people smart enough and capable enough to be making decent cunks of money outside of their chosen field (a combination of knowledge in physics, chemistry, and computational modeling are desired skill in many lucrative fields). They're not doing this for the money, or the recognition, and it pains me that people are willing to believe the ramblings posted in a Murdoch-owned newspaper on the matter without willing to question the economic interests behind climate denialism. But I digress.

> But climate strategies beyond such "no regrets" efforts carry costs, risks > and questions of effectiveness, so nonscientific factors inevitably enter > the decision. These include our tolerance for risk and the priorities that > we assign to economic development, poverty reduction, environmental quality, > and intergenerational and geographical equity.

There's something that should be really important, which people raised on the typical media diet of "two sides of the story" and "fair and balanced" should understand:

We're not debating whether climate change is something serious or not.

The current debate is whether we're facing a future where "merely" the following things will happen:

* An acidified ocean where almost all fish stocks will collapse, with a PH that will make the growth of crustaceans and zooplankton difficult, to say the least.

* Megadroughts will become a common occurency, as will increased levels of flooding resulting in losses of crop efficiencies above 10%

* All of the planet's ecosystems will be permanently affected, making the harvesting of crops such as coffee and cocoa a thing of the past

* An acceleration into our current period of mass extinction, with unforeseen consequences

Or, nn the other extreme, quite literally, we have a scenario of a degradation of the Earth's biosphere to the point where humans face complete extinction within the next century.

The last scenario could be triggered by one of the many feedback cycles which include the sudden release of methane clathrates, an exponential collapse of the West Antarctic Ice Sheet leading to the rapid increase in sea level of multiple feet, or just sufficiently large megadrought events in enough places in the globe to disrupt the global food supply chain. Hell, just an increase in temperature of 4 degrees C ("just") would be enough.

My final rebuttal:

> Individuals and countries can legitimately disagree about these matters

No, they cannot, unless they're legitimate experts in climate science with an understanding that actually improves upon what we have, they have squat to say on the science of it.

This fake notion that anyone can have an opinion on knowledge that's in flux is intellectually dishonest. Experts are allowed to disagree. Us laymen have almost nothing to add to the conversation, unless we want to gamble with our own demise. Anyone who thinks otherwise is plainly ignorant of the science, and that's not a point in discussion.

The only thing this discourse does is play down the supposed "alarmism" of the situation. I don't know man, if you think that a potential, non-trivial chance of the collapse of the biosphere isn't something to be alarmed of, then I don't know what is.

<comment><USER4> _False skepticism_ is a new concept for me.

Still, I would like to thank you for a detailed answer. For me, an outsider to the science and politics of climate affairs, it sheds light on one party of the argument. Perhaps the other party will have an equally eloquent exposition - I have not yet read all the comments in this thread.

<comment><USER14> I don't know whether it was sarcastic or not, but to clarify: false skepticism is when FUD is cast around on the excuse that it is an attack on an institutional status quo. The reason why it is false is because real skepticism has a knack for rigorously questioning specific points in lines of evidence and proposing why established theories are cargo-culting their data.

As you can see here, none of that is taking place. In fact, the entire article is a massive logical fallacy that implicitly tries to frame the IPCC's current policy proposals as some sort of extreme.

If anything, the IPCC's report is _extremely_ conservative, as it does not analyze the Black Swan events which include methan clathrates and the loss of effectiveness of carbon sinks, or the warming of the deep oceans.

Thus, it frames the debate in a fallacious way.

Actual skepticism has been well-served by the internal debates amongst climate scientists, and if you read the stuff by the emintent experts, you will see that they are _shitting their pants in fear_.

When climate experts are seriously scared of the possibilities of total extinction, we should be listening, and at best, making thoughtful critiques.

This,in contrast, is stinking bullshit.

<comment><USER4> Look, I appreciate your point, but _shitting pants_ is not an argument. Not a scientific argument.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> I was hoping to find something about acidification of sea water, caused by CO2. Even if the warmth of the earth isn't caused by us, it seems like the acidification of the ocean might be. A similarly skeptical look at this would be welcomed.

<comment><USER8> Please, this debate is contentious enough without bringing SQL-vs-NoSQL into it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> FUD is not only for operating systems anymore.

</comment><comment><USER17> Science is that which explains and predicts.

If you are missing either of these attributes -- you are in the realm of legends, folklore, and farmer's almanacs.

</comment><comment><USER3> > Dr. Koonin was undersecretary for science in the Energy Department during > President Barack Obama's first term and is currently director of the Center > for Urban Science and Progress at New York University. His previous > positions include professor of theoretical physics and provost at Caltech, > as well as chief scientist of BP, BP.LN +0.42% where his work focused on > renewable and low-carbon energy technologies.

> We are very far from the knowledge needed to make good climate policy

Complete and total horseshit. Even if you'd only assume that the scientists are 90% right any good actuaries will tell you that you should spend about 90% on measures that back up what they've put forward.

Hacker News, I expected something better than this in the #2 spot.

Here, read this: [http://www.ipcc.ch/report/ar5/](http://www.ipcc.ch/report/ar5/)

Or this: [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_warming](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_warming)

Or this: [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ocean_acidification](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ocean_acidification)

Or this one is excellent: [http://www.skepticalscience.com/](http://www.skepticalscience.com/)

Edit: Alright, here we go with the downvotes for calling out bullshit regarding climate change on Hacker News. Well, it's not like I expected any better. Next I expect a replies either trying to argue random points about how there were forests in Greenland in the middle ages or some pretensions about being open-minded. While still barely having a grasp of a periphery of relevant facts.

But that's OK, the warriors having upvoted this to the top immediately know best. Or at least as well as Murdoch, publisher of the WSJ who has recently installed a prime minister in Australia who called climate change 'crap' and has abolished a carbon tax a minute fraction of those found in the rest of the OECD.

<comment><USER18> What's your point? That Dr. Koonin is not a trustworthy source because he worked for BP?

<comment><USER19> I would take the opinions of an industry expert with a large pinch of salt on the subject of negative externalities of the industry they are involved in, no matter what the industry.</comment></comment></comment>


Tries as the evolution of nothing - <AUTHOR> http://wordsandbuttons.online/tries_as_the_evolution_of_nothing.html <comment><USER2> Skimming the benchmark, I didn't see any negative tests (checking for words _not_ contained), which can be as or more important than the positive case depending on the expected use.

</comment><comment><USER3> I'll admit I skipped straight to the conclusion after a few demos. How is knowing a "tries" count going to help me beyond knowing "nothing can be sorted faster than n(log(n))"? Every "try" is a retrieval and costs read time?

EDIT: I'm much worse at algorithms than I originally thought.

<comment><USER4> I think the author means the data structure 'trie', not the action 'try': [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trie](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trie)

<comment><USER3> Yeah, rereading this article today it really doesn't give a summary of what "tries" are until pretty deep into it. Smiling that the author updated the title because of my debauchery last night.</comment></comment></comment>


Clean, Simple, Instant way to search for Trailers on the Web - InstaMovi - <AUTHOR> http://instamovi.com

<comment><AUTHOR> Please drop in your suggestions here. This was my last weekend project.</comment>


Newer TCP implementations - <AUTHOR> http://intronetworks.cs.luc.edu/current/html/newtcps.html

<comment><USER2> I guess "newer" is relative. I was expecting to see discussion of MPTCP, DCTCP, Bolt, Remy, and PCC.

<comment><AUTHOR> PCC was discussed here last week [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8381480](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8381480) I don't think that page mentions if it's fair to Reno streams though.

<comment><USER3> "last week"? That says 109 days ago. What'd I miss?

Edit: ah, here's last week [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8862453](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8862453)

<comment><AUTHOR> Oh, I must have pasted the wrong link from the search. Thanks :)</comment></comment></comment></comment>


The Most Beautiful Piece of Code That Prints 42 - <AUTHOR> https://www.fluentcpp.com/2018/05/11/the-most-beautiful-piece-of-code-that-prints-42/ <comment><USER2>
        #include <stdio.h>

        #define SIX 1+5
        #define NINE 8+1

        int main(void)
        {
            printf("%d * %d = %d\n", SIX, NINE, SIX * NINE);
            return 0;
        }

[https://github.com/Keith-S-Thompson/42](https://github.com/Keith-S- Thompson/42)

<comment><USER3> Ever waste days debugging a subtle bug introduced by C macros? It's PTSD material.

I love C but I will never understand why C has a naive macro system.

<comment><USER4> I always thought it was a historical choice that simple substitution languages were simpler to implement so were chosen as a default.

It is kind of infuriating that the preprocessor always feels simultaneously _too powerful_ and _not powerful enough_ for the jobs you want to get done. I find myself reaching for other tools (kaitai, m4 etc) a lot more these days to take the role.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Like most code, this is way too easy in Perl 6.

        > perl6 -e 'say "Life, the Universe and Everything".WHY'
        42

<comment><USER6> For non perl users - does this really work or are you being ironic?

<comment><USER5> [https://github.com/rakudo/rakudo/blob/master/src/core/Str.pm...](https://github.com/rakudo/rakudo/blob/master/src/core/Str.pm6#L21)

Oh, it works.

<comment><USER6> Today I learned about meta methods. Thanks :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I submitted it already in the linked comments section, but here it is again:

        #include <iostream>

        int main(void)
        {
            std::cout << (6 * '9') % ('h'*'2'-'g'*'2') << std::endl;
        }

</comment><comment><USER8> Freek Wiedijk's Most Functional winner of the 2014 International Obfuscated C Code Contest is an obvious candidate.:

[1] [https://www.ioccc.org/2014/wiedijk/prog.c](https://www.ioccc.org/2014/wiedijk/prog.c)

[2] [https://www.ioccc.org/2014/wiedijk/hint.html](https://www.ioccc.org/2014/wiedijk/hint.html)

</comment><comment><USER9> It's too bad the code examples have to be in C++. When I saw the prompt, it brought to mind the fabulous Shakespeare Programming Language, which would allow for a more poetic approach:

[http://shakespearelang.sourceforge.net/report/shakespeare/sh...](http://shakespearelang.sourceforge.net/report/shakespeare/shakespeare.html#SECTION00090000000000000000)

</comment><comment><USER10> Cached:

[https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:O9K6ou...](https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:O9K6ouDFELQJ:https://www.fluentcpp.com/2018/05/11/the- most-beautiful-piece-of-code-that-prints-42/)

</comment><comment><USER11> HTML version:

42

</comment><comment><USER12> Beautiful code is simple maintainable code. In C this is a simple as:

#include <stdio.h>

int main(void) { puts("42"); return 0; }

<comment><USER13> I was curious why you would return a value and not just make the main function return void (in the interests of simplicity and maintainability, and assuming you're using C not C++). So I wrote my own such program, and discovered that void main(void) returns 3 to the OS. Any ideas why?

<comment><USER14> Because returning void means that, on most platform, return whatever is left in %eax at the time of function termination.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> ATDT42

(Coz 42 is Gods phone #, duh...)

<comment><USER16> _MAJIKTHISE:_ I mean what's the use of us sitting up all night saying there may -

 _VROOMFONDEL:_ Or may not be

 _MAJIKTHISE:_ …or may not be… a god, if this machine comes along the next morning and gives you 'is telephone number?</comment></comment>


BOKU Launches, Makes Some Mobile Purchases For Mobile Payments  - <AUTHOR> http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/06/16/boku-launches-makes-some-mobile-purchases-for-mobile-payments/ <comment><USER2> This could be a real boon for startups looking for easy micropayments. I'll probably test-drive it just to see whether it should be recommended to my customers.</comment>


The Freehacker's Union - <AUTHOR> http://www.zedshaw.com/essays/the_freehackers_union.html Do you need the UNION? and do you think "Business Is Killing The Art Of The Hack"? <comment><USER2> Dupe: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=282731>, <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=309195>

<comment><USER3> Worse than dupe: dead org. Zed hasn't posted to the mailing list since 11/26 last year, meetups kind of fell through.

<comment><USER4> Maybe it'll startup again with new found interest. I'm moving to NYC and would love to start going to some of these meetupy type events.

<comment><USER3> There was a news.yc NYC meetup, which I couldn't make it to, but I imagine was neat :)

If you want it to be serious, I think the trick is to get people to sign up to show cool stuff ahead of time, and advertise what people will be presenting.

If you'd like, I can help you organize (not that I have experience with that kind of things). I'd imagine we can find a place, issue a call for presentations, see how many responses there are, then make a site with the list of speakers.

<comment><USER4> I'm not sure when exactly I'll be moving [hoping for April 1st, but I might be commuting from Philly for a little bit since our apartment isn't getting rented...] When I do actually move, I'll let you know. I'd love to see what we can come up with.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Nicely said. That very fact bothered me for a long time & now I'm happy there's at least one in this universe who think like me.

I was unlucky that I was not there when "home brew computer club" formed. Dammit I missed the golden age. I regret that.I really do.

I was looking for a place for me to fit in. A guy with the hacker gene. Grown so carefully in me thanks to all those hackers lived & left their experiences behind, on text files or whatever media. A guy who has lot of things to learn but struggling to find people who are willing to make another hacker with their knowledge & skills, like the real hackers who lived on this planet some times back.

I was looking for the right place. Right place for me to grow. I went there, I came here. No where is perfect. Maybe that's the way it is. Since the time is changed, the hackers of new days has to build their own world like a kid building a lego castle with pieces picked from HERE & THERE.

</comment><comment><USER6> The postmortem

<http://www.zedshaw.com/blog/2009-03-16.html>

</comment><comment><USER7> "One thing I found through doing all this hardware hacking is that people who wield a soldering iron in NYC are kind of secretive. I mean, they're nice enough, but they really hold their secrets close to their chest. Take sourcing parts as an example. I would go to meetings where people showed off cool projects they made, and ask them where they get their parts. They would just evade the question, or tell me "digikey", which is bullshit because I saw some Radio Shack shit in their gear."

Why is this so?

<comment><USER8> It's like being a C programmer, and someone asks you - "How do you declare a variable". You could try to explain, but it's not very interesting to answer such basic questions. If you don't even know where to buy electronic parts, you're not even at newbie level yet. You have not even started.

<comment><USER9> "Where do you get your parts?" is a lot more like "What editor do you use?" than "How do you declare a variable?". It's cool as hell to find a parts shop you never knew existed, or to find a useful component that Radio Shack sells, or to find a website which sells a drop-in solution for what you need.

<comment><USER8> Not in the context that Zed is asking in. He's asking because he has no idea what is in the devices, not because he wants to find a new store.

<comment><USER9> No, that is incorrect.

 _I've actually built a huge number of circuits, read tons of books and learned how to program a PIC basic stamp. I fucking love this shit._

Then:

 _I had to do my own research and found that, no, these guys get some of their shit from the NYU Computer Store on 242 Greene St near Washington Square Park. It's obvious since everyone in NYC uses Arduinos and this store has most of the parts I've seen them use. That store has an entire section that's dedicated to hardware hacking gear, including parts, kits, tons of Arduino components, full stamps, everything._

There is much more context and information in the original article. Zed recognized the parts, really did just want to know where the parts came from, and was interested to learn of the parts shop.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I actually joined and then attended the Boston FU meet a few times (there were only four of us that ever showed and after a few meetings it fizzled out). Here's something I whipped together in 30 minutes to bring to the first meet:

[http://blog.raamdev.com/2008/08/27/boston-fu-retractable- ear...](http://blog.raamdev.com/2008/08/27/boston-fu-retractable-earbud-hack)

I love the idea behind FU and wish there were more open hacking groups around where people could attend, even if only to watch and listen to others. I don't necessarily have a ton of time for hacking stuff, but if I could spend an hour or two every week looking over someone's shoulder while they make something, or listen to someone explain their crazy ideas and then have open discussions as a group, I think it would help everyone explore new ideas and opinions.

If not for my ridiculous schedule (working at a start-up), I'd be more inclined to get such a group going myself.

</comment><comment><USER11> It started out sort of vague (I joined the mailing list quite early), but as it acquired definition, it seemed to be ending up excessively concentrated in a "Zed"-like niche, i.e. the combination of scripting hacks and music / theatre-like performances.

So I drifted away and terminated subscription, and I guess many others did the same (and have had that impression confirmed from a couple of private emails).

<comment><USER12> I think that will happen with any broadly-defined "geek" social group.

The nerd club at my college was hugely slanted towards roleplaying and anime, so I felt sort of like an outsider caring mainly for computers and video games. An electronics nerd would have zero fun, but then again, it was a liberal arts college, so what do you expect?

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> One related question. I came across this book from the article "Making things talk" and I kind of like it (from what I can tell by reading excerpts at books.google.com). Can I enjoy this book and make cool programs like the one in book if I don't have a background in Electronics? Just curious.

<comment><USER14> Yes you can, the book will cover all the electronics stuff you will need to build the projects it presents. I find it to be a nice intro to physical computing stuff.

Tom Igoe, the author, co-wrote "Physical Computing" with Dan O'Sullivan, which is a book used in NYU's ITP for teaching artists and other non-engineers about electronics, microcontroller programming, mechanical devices, etc. So that should give you an idea of the expectations the book has from the reader, if you haven't done any electronics you will still enjoy it and, better yet, learn quite a bit from it.

I also suggest you check out his site <http://tigoe.net/pcomp/> as it contains tutorials, syllabi from his classes at NYU's ITP, and other resources.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> > Everyone who attends has to eventually show something. If it's your first > night,

Reminds me of Fight Club.

Can't wait for Project Mayhem.

</comment><comment><USER12> "I'm finding that every geek gathering is full of asshole MBAs, groupies, and their wannabes."

Someone please explain to me how MBAs show up at geek meetups of any description. I would think stuff would be way too oriented away from money for them to show up. Maybe I'm just crassly stereotyping too much.

<comment><USER16> There are different sorts of MBAs. My mother's was focused on computers and tech, and though she's since moved out of that field, at the time she was quite the geek.

Having an MBA doesn't make you a bad person. It's just that MBAs more than many other degrees will attract a high proportion of the "make money and intimidate people" crowd. That's not exclusive. I know computer scientists who are equally clueless about what they do, but who think this degree will make them rich.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> Apparently, he want this to be open. I was hoping for a secret cabal since then we could make programming mystical and perhaps attract more people.

</comment><comment><USER18> I went to two meetings here in NYC. Met some great people and had a great time seeing what other hackers were up to. I keep assuming all the layoffs combined with the onset of winter were to blame for things kind of petering out. It was a particularly weird time to keep momentum going for anything, but it'd be nice to get together again. I'm glad some links to similar groups have been posted, I hope to check them out.

</comment><comment><USER19> These things do exist everywhere. They're just invite-only.

</comment><comment><USER20> angry man... just ignore the mbas if they bother you. or move to california.

<comment><USER9> Yeah, California's a _great_ place for a wound-up guy who doesn't want to hang with entrepreneurs.</comment></comment>


The Ph.D. Problem  - <AUTHOR> http://harvardmagazine.com/2009/11/professionalization-in-academy <comment><USER2> "Academia" is not shorthand for "Humanities Academia." Maybe this author's argument is true for the humanities, but I know some academic researchers in science and engineering can move into industry. That is, their skills are valued by people outside of their academic circle.

<comment><USER3> I don't see how the article applies only to the humanities. It seems to be about supply-and-demand and self-regulating professional bodies.

I think a lot of the considerations of the article apply to, for example, mathematics.

Science and Engineering is the area with the most immediate application but even here, there's quite divide between theoretical CS and what's practiced in the field.

<comment><USER4> Could you elaborate?

You bring up an interesting possibility, but it is not intuitively obvious. In mathematics it is relatively easy to break into the field with the backing of an institution (I mean easy relative to doing the same thing in say English or History, not in an absolute sense). In fact, there is a long tradition of amateurs making some significant contributions, with Fermat being the crown (if now somewhat dated example.)

Also, one of his major complaints is how long it takes to get the PHD. At least at UNLV (where I am currently seeking a master's in Math) most of my peers that are seeking their PHD expect to get it within 6 years after starting their graduate studies. While this is still longer than a usual JD or MD program, it is at the very low end of the 6-9 year spectrum that was discussed in the article.

And while there is certainly a divide between theoretical mathematicians and their applied counterparts (or scientists who us mathematics) it is almost solely in choice of topic, not about disagreement over real facts, which you can see in some topics in the humanities between the professors and the general public.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Focuses very much on a Ph.D. in English, which is in some ways the worst rather than the average case.

However, the argument that getting a Ph.D. is getting harder while its (financial) value is decreasing seems correct to me. That might not actually be a bad thing, and is very much to be expected - the market value of doing cool and interesting things goes down as the value of tedious or dangerous jobs goes up. I think we will see even more of that in the future.

We keep complaining about people maximizing their profits rather than happiness. But then, when some choose to pursue their interests and get PhD's in areas that aren't so hot in the industry, we criticize them for bad career decisions. Maybe everything's OK with the system, after all.

<comment><USER6> Thank you! IMO, the smartest thing to do in life is to pursue the options that maximize happiness. Money has a weak causal relationship with happiness[1]. Consequently, those getting a Ph.D. in English, for example, should do so if that's what makes them happy, but they should know there will be little returns from it.

It's the same reason why many of us on HN pursue independent employment: there's been plenty of articles here indicating entrepreneurialism means lower incomes than employment, and it most certainly has higher risk. But the real satisfaction comes from being independent!

[1] <http://www.physorg.com/news70817137.html>

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> The article briefly touched on something I find more dangerous: systemic conformity in academia. If you want to be influential, your best bet is to become allied to academia. As the article notes, "independent" researchers are viewed with suspicion, if viewed at all. Since there are incentives to conform (albeit loosely) to some norms while perusing a PH.D. there is a lot of hill climbing and not a lot of long jumps.

<comment><USER8> "Long Jumps" is a myth imho.

What appears to be a long jump to a non-expert on first glance, on deeper inspection will usually turn out to have involved multiple small incremental steps culminating a final discovery. Since we have to acknowledge _somebody_ we usually pick the guy/gal who finished the job. I'm not saying that all work is equal, but imho planning for long jumps is impossible (it's not like researchers don't want to make big leaps in understanding).

Examples which have changed my mind about this: Andrew Wiles' Fermat proof, evolution of RISC, quantum theories. I am pretty sure that if I dig into it, I'll find that relativity and evolution also built upon previous work.

<comment><USER9> > "Long Jumps" is a myth imho.

You are 100% on point.

The parent's poster's point on conformity is well taken. Still, "independent" researchers are viewed with suspicion because research is hard. As psranga points out, to make a long jump a researcher has to stay on top of the incremental steps. Unfortunately, for 99.9% of people, to do this they must be fluent with the literature and much more importantly talk with other researchers. No one works in a vacuum (and don't bother bringing up counter examples like einstein or newton).

Conformity is a big problem. It might arise when too many PhDs are hustling for a small pie. I'm not sure.

<comment><USER10> _Conformity is a big problem._

What was the big heresy for one generation changes into "what you have to say to get tenure" in another.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> This is a conversation dominated by science majors.

I'm an art major. As in studio. Classic humanity major.

If I said "You should worry about what Adorno thinks about cultural production when you make a web object, since it means potnetially you end up with a more passive than active population: When you build an object on the web, how do you plan on activating the population, because of his critique?"

Most people here would go huh? by the sound of this conversation. In Practice, what humanities students say, especially when they sit down with engineers, is important. It is a pity that there is no practical humanities anymore. It is really useful to learn to think critically in that way about the world.

</comment><comment><USER12> This is just what professional disciplines tend to be like, as the author notes. You might just as well say that "the main product of structural engineering is not the production of bridges but the reproduction of structural engineering." It's probably true in the same sense that it's true of academia, but so what?

<comment><USER13> Structural engineers produce bridges, even if they are arguably just a side produce. In the worst case academics only produce academics.

<comment><USER14> Academics also advance humanity's knowledge in their field through research and writing, so that others may stand on their shoulders and see further. Perhaps you don't believe that things like critical literary analysis are providing us any actual benefit, but I disagree and I'm sure that any humanities professor would disagree too.

<comment><AUTHOR> I'm sincerely curious to hear your case in defence of critical literary analysis.

<comment><USER12> Why would it need any defense? Are you seriously suggesting that no-one should be reading literature and analyzing it? It's been an important part of Western culture for a few thousand years. Seems like it would be a bit rash to give it up now.

<comment><USER15> Despite the literal intepretation, you might be mistaken in assuming that "critical literary analysis" is the same as "reading literature and analyzing it".

Instead, I think the phrase is being used here as a term of the art, referring to something closer to "postmodern critical theory".

There are definitely those who wonder if this is useful. I too would be interested in hearing a defense.

<comment><USER12> Most of the people who whine about postmodern critical theory haven't even read any, so I'm not sure how to give a defense of work which people haven't read. I expect that most of it is rather low in quality, but most of the work done in every discipline is rather low in quality. And in any case, not all literary criticism in the academy is "postmodern" in the invidious sense.

>Instead, I think the phrase ["critical literary analysis"] is being used here as a term of the art,

There is no such term of art, as a quick google scholar search would tell you, so I see no reason not to interpret the OP literally.

<comment><USER15> _I see no reason not to interpret the OP literally_

Well, luckily even a casual adherence to postmodernism gives you that right! But in my old fashioned manner, _I_ still think intentionality counts for something, and I don't think the author intended to say that we should give up on reading. :)

 _Most of the people who whine about postmodern critical theory haven't even read any_

I actually have read a fair bit, and periodically urge it on others, likely in the same way that some people turn their friends onto LSD. Much of it is junk, but some of it is gold. For example, Michel Foucault's "History of Sexuality Volume 1" and "Discipline and Punish" permanently changed the way I see the world around me.

So when I said I'd like to see a defense, I meant only that -- that I'd enjoy it. And, of course, that John F. Kennedy was not a homosexual: <http://www.info.ucl.ac.be/~pvr/decon.html>

<comment><USER12> >and I don't think the author intended to say that we should give up on reading. :)

He did, however, seem to be saying that we should give up on literary criticism, which is a different thing -- you shouldn't even need a google search to tell you the difference between reading and analyzing :) It was s a stupid thing of him to say, but then I've heard quite a few scientists say it, and I'm quite willing to believe that he meant it.

>Much of it is junk, but some of it is gold.

So, why are you asking for a defense of it? Isn't the fact that some of it "changed the way you see the world around you" enough of a defense?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Academia in the humanities field is particularly calcified and corrupt because it's so hard to measure the quality of the output (or even if anyone wants it at all).

At least with things like maths or computer science research can be verified and has utility to the broader world.

<comment><USER12> On the other hand, the claim that the humanities are not "practical" has become virtually a tautology, because "practical" has become almost a synonym for "scientific". Nowadays, people don't seem to think that work on love or ethics or aesthetics has practical value. I am not sure why, since actual human lives are intimately concerned with these topics.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> _The argument that they need the training to be qualified to teach undergraduates is belied by the fact that they are already teaching undergraduates._

But often: badly. (I was perhaps a prime example.)

</comment><comment><USER17> The academy is really no different from mega-corporations like Wal-mart, both revolve around money and power. Both are government subsidized. The republicans fund their pet industries (military complex, healthcare, corporate interests) until democrats seize power, yank their government subsidies, and routes all that money into the academy, unions, etc (and doing a pretty damn good job of catching up to republicans in terms of being corporate shills).</comment>


Erlang gen_server reloaded: manage server behaviour and metrics in one place - <AUTHOR> https://www.erlang-solutions.com/blog/erlang-gen_server-reloaded.html?utm_source=HN&utm_medium=HN&utm_campaign=gen_serverBlog <comment><USER2> This looks like the 'gateway service' architectural pattern, in which you put a thin layer in front of your API service in order to perform activities common to all calls, like logging, metrics, authentication, session management, etc.

It's a little unusual to put that in as a proxy in front of a gen_server, because normally intra-erlang messaging doesn't need those facilities, which are normally handled at the border. But for metrics I can see it.

<comment><USER3> Yeah, I'm a little surprised this didn't illustrate the metrics gathering part, because aside from that, there isn't a lot to be gained from using this pattern.

<comment><USER4> Would have been too much for the blog. Here is the stats functionality described: [https://github.com/sqor/CommonServiceInterface#statistic- fun...](https://github.com/sqor/CommonServiceInterface#statistic- functionality)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> When you look at how the composibility of Futures/Promises make both sideffecting and transformation tasks like monitoring completely trivial, it becomes really hard to accept the actor model as a reasonable choice.

<comment><USER2> What on earth? This is literally a post about the easy composability of the actor model.

<comment><USER5> There is little-to-no actor composition in this post, except that which is hidden by the framework that they've implementated... instead, it describes using the methods of an interface to communicate between your implementation, and their framework.

Composition of actors would allow for "wrapping" the actions of one actor in another and an implementation of RPC within your service itself (separate actors for both requests and responses), but that's not generally a thing you would do directly. Why? Because it's nontrivial, and you'd likely want a framework like theirs to orchestrate it.

<comment><USER2> Apparently you misunderstand all three of the original blog post, the actor model, and erlang's specific implementation.

Composition of actors in the actor model is done by message proxying, just like this blog post does. The original actor's API is preserved and undergoes no semantic change, just like composition in any other functional concurrency paradigm.

This works in erlang where it wouldn't work in most other languages because actors are very lightweight and message passing is a fast, optimized language primitive.

Having written many hundreds of promises and awaits, and many thousands of actors, I'd have to say that the actor paradigm is far easier to scale and reason about than any promise or async/await implementation. That's partly because almost every other language is pretty terrible at concurrency. But your mileage may vary and everyone has their preferences.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Children of parents classified as "tiger" have worse grades, are more depressed - <AUTHOR> http://www.slate.com/articles/double_x/doublex/2013/05/_tiger_mom_study_shows_the_parenting_method_doesn_t_work.html <comment><USER2> I was under the impression that Amy Chua (the woman who wrote "Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother") gave up the "tiger mom" strategy after one of her children had a breakdown:

"What brings the situation to an end is two horrifying incidents. First, Lulu hacks off her hair with a pair of scissors; then, on a family holiday to Moscow, she and Chua get into a public argument that culminates in Lulu smashing a glass in a cafe, screaming, "I'm not what you want – I'm not Chinese! I don't want to be Chinese. Why can't you get that through your head? I hate the violin. I hate my life. I hate you, and I hate this family!" Her relationship with Lulu in crisis, Chua, finally, thankfully, raises the white flag."

[http://www.guardian.co.uk/lifeandstyle/2011/jan/15/amy- chua-...](http://www.guardian.co.uk/lifeandstyle/2011/jan/15/amy-chua-tiger- mother-interview)

<comment><USER3> > "I'm not what you want – I'm not Chinese! I don't want to be Chinese. Why > can't you get that through your head? I hate the violin. I hate my life. I > hate you, and I hate this family!" Her relationship with Lulu in crisis, > Chua, finally, thankfully, raises the white flag."

I started crying when I read that. I literally have tears in my eyes right now. I'm hardly surprised, though.

I expressed my opinions years ago here on HN, about this tiger mom horseshit and how it's basically child abuse, to me, even though I'm into my 30s it's still with me.

My mom did this shit to me and I had a couple of good, solid breakdowns. Constant pressure, college resume padding horseshit, extracurricular activities that I don't care about (kudos to you if you enjoyed them but most of the people at these things aren't enthused about it). NOthing I ever did was good enough, impossible busy work, constant comparisons to so-and-so kid's, being paraded out to brag about the family name, etc.

Then I did the unforgivable. I flunked out of college. I got _FAT_ \-- the worse! And grew a beard. She told me I was a complete embarrassment and she didn't want me around. Because of a beard. I guess I was about 25 when she said that, and I've seen her a three times since then.

<comment><USER4> At least you're still alive.

I am reminded of the tragic case of Mengyao "May" Zhou, an MIT grad and Stanford grad student, whose death in 2007 was ruled a suicide. (While there was no clear evidence of foul play, the evidence for suicide was not overwhelming either -- in particular, she left no note.) While she was clearly very successful in her studies and was thought to be happy, some of the details that came out at the time left me with the distinct impression that she killed herself to get out of a life she had not chosen and could see no other escape from. Her father in particular seemed to have a habit of stating flatly how she had felt, as if he didn't have to ask her. That struck me as a big red flag that suggested that he related to her as an extension of himself rather than as a separate person -- a common pattern in "tiger" parenting.

I emphasize that this is only my impression; I didn't know her and have no privileged information about her. But the father's subsequent behavior -- insisting she was murdered and making rather wild suggestions about who could have done it and why -- did nothing to change that impression (even making allowances for understandable grief). Instead of stopping to wonder whether he really knew her -- who wouldn't wonder that after an unexpected suicide? -- he dug himself into his position. I think that in his denial that she could have felt any other way than how he wanted her to feel, he is still refusing to hear the message of her suicide.

It is bad enough to be living a life designed by someone else, where you know it's not your choice but you feel compelled to do it anyway. But to have had your own desires and feelings so rigidly unacknowledged for your whole life that you can't even imagine living your own life for your own reasons -- that seems to me unbearably painful. I have a feeling that is the place May Zhou was in.

<comment><USER5> I remember reading this NYT article on Elizabeth Shin's tragic suicide:

[http://www.nytimes.com/2002/04/28/magazine/who-was- responsib...](http://www.nytimes.com/2002/04/28/magazine/who-was-responsible- for-elizabeth-shin.html)

It's a sobering read, including interviews with the parents, Shin's classmates, etc.

<comment><USER4> A sad story. Thanks for the link.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> As I commented when I shared the link kindly posted here among my Facebook friends, "Like most studies of child-rearing of this nature, it is correlational rather than experimental, subject to argument about definitions, and not yet replicated, but this is food for thought." So if we think about what this means, yes, parents should be affectionate toward their children rather than reserved. Parents should also be open to children pursuing THEIR OWN interests rather than the profile of interests reputedly best for getting into a famous college. Indeed, parents should be open to the possibility that a career in private industry in an occupation in which job applicants show what they can do through work-sample tests and being a "smart and gets things done" worker can be better for a young person than piling on lots of higher education degrees.

That said, letting Junior play video games all day (as contrasted with WRITING a few video games) is not good for Junior either. Maybe Junior won't report being depressed in that case until reaching his twenties and finding out he is unemployable at a living wage that allows independence from Mom and Dad. Maybe Junior, while growing up and having limited life experience, might benefit from some actual adult leadership and guidance. It is possible to do too little as well as too much in parenting.

(Basis of knowledge: I am the father in a "half-Asian" family, although oddly I am probably the "tiger-like" parent as a native-born American, while my Taiwanese wife is more easy-going. We have one child who has grown into independent adult life as a hacker and three younger children still living at home.)

<comment><USER7> You know, unless Junior wants to go pro.

<comment><USER6> _You know, unless Junior wants to go pro._

Are you talking about the video games? I have local friends who have more children than I have, and two of the boys in that family traveled overseas to try out the professional gaming circuit in one of the countries with serious gaming pros. (That family is very supportive of children trying out their interests, to its credit.) After the boys made the trip, they came back here, and if the last report I heard about their activities is still current information, they are buckling down in their studies and pursuing other careers.

<comment><USER7> How is being a pro gamer different than being a pro athlete? Lots of people try and some finally make it. I bet all those who tried and failed are happier for trying.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> In Japan there is the concept of "amae". The feeling of being loved and "taken care of" is recognized as a valid need, and it is as much the job of the parents to make their children feel safe and supported as it is the job of the children to make their parents proud through high achievement. I don't know what Chinese parents are like back on the mainland, but I suspect that they have similar ideas, as Japanese concepts of loyalty are largely borrowed from Confucius.

Not that amae-based relationships can't be pathological, but they are less one-sidedly authoritarian.

So not only does it not work, I have grave doubts as to whether "tiger parenting" is normal among Chinese, or Asians in general. If anything it's a pathological development among certain first-generation Asian immigrants, who felt the need to produce exceptional children in order to compensate for perceived cultural disadvantages.

<comment> eric-hu > If anything it's a pathological development among certain first-generation > Asian immigrants

I was thinking this throughout your comment. I've also observed that it's a trait much stronger among first generation families or those closer to them (second generation instead of fifth, for instance).

I grew up as the children of Chinese immigrants and spent a year in college studying abroad in Beijing. I expected to see a city of 20 million high- achievers. I was in for quite a surprise. The people I met there were more like the non-Asians I knew in America than the Asians I knew.

I have no idea what specifically about immigration causes this behavior, or if it's just correlation. It could simply be the case that people prone to extreme "life optimization" are more okay with the emotional upheaval of moving to another country.

<comment><USER8> 1) Asian immigrants tend to self-select for high achievement.

2) Asians historically were at a cultural disadvantage compared to other Westerners in America. Americans were at least passingly familiar with other European cultures, and had quite a bit of common ground with them; much less so with Asians so there was a mutual unintelligibility problem. So to compensate, Asian parents tended to pressure their kids to excel in something universal that Americans would consider valuable -- hence the tendency of Asians to gravitate towards the hard sciences, math, and music (oddly enough, Western classical music at that). Amy Tan wrote about this, remarking how unusual and against the odds it was that she became a writer instead of the scientist or classical violinist her mother wanted her to be.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> It's almost like kids benefit from running around outside with other kids, rather than being forced to be mini adults. Or something.

<comment><USER10> On the contrary, the chart in the article shows that "permissive" parenting produced lower achievement than "authoritative" parenting. The distinction in the article isn't about letting kids "be kids" but whether parents are responsive/warm versus cold.

<comment><AUTHOR> "Authoritative" parenting means letting kids explore the world and their own interests while still setting strict limits that are necessary for the health & well-being of the kid. An authoritative parent wouldn't prevent their kid from running around outside with other kids, they'd let the kid run around outside "but stay away from the railroad tracks, and don't get drunk or do drugs, and be home by 11".

<comment><USER10> That's not really how it's defined in the article. It's more "this is what you're going to do, but I'm willing to negotiate the details."

<comment><AUTHOR> There's a bunch of background in the psych literature beyond just this article. Here's one summary of authoritative parenting:

[http://psychology.about.com/od/childcare/f/authoritative- par...](http://psychology.about.com/od/childcare/f/authoritative- parenting.htm)

If you've ever had a good boss, there's a good analogy there. A good boss doesn't micro-manage or tell you what to do: she lets you arrange your time as necessary to accomplish your objectives and exercise a lot of discretion about your day-to-day work. However, she doesn't let you just spin your wheels and not accomplish anything either. She provides just enough guidance to ensure that you're still moving forwards without dictating _how_ you move forwards.

A good parent is very similar. He provides structure and direction, but lets the child discover his/her own interests and pursue them. It's only when the kid is at risk of stepping seriously off the rails that the parent steps in.

<comment><USER11> Definitely agree. But I wonder what happens when your parent(s) do both those things but in different ways for different things?

Kinda what I could say happened to me, my father being extremely authoritative(making me work at very young age for his business), but at the same time not being around to not set very much boundaries.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I never know what to make of these kinds of studies. The author has full license to decide what "categories" will be part of their spectrum and what their definitions will be, and then further to interpret every data point by themselves. The former you can review and question, the latter you cannot.

So let's question the former:

>Kim decided that for her study, she would both parse further the different dimensions of the Eurocentric profiles and create new ones that better fit the styles of the East Asian families.

Oof. Two biases don't make a right.

>The responsiveness that's considered an aspect of "authoritative" parenting, for example, was broadened to include both positive and negative attributes: warmth and hostility. Control, she would write, has "multiple facets … positive control is measured by parental monitoring and democratic parenting; negative control is measured by psychological control and punitive parenting."

The Stasi were a form of positive control, apparently. Just kidding -- kind of. Suffice it to say none of the above are so mutually exclusive that they should be put in categories called "positive" and "negative."

<comment><USER13> Go read the actual study then rather than the article, and find out how she justified her decisions. Most likely, she based them on definitions that were defined and validated by multiple previous studies before her, or presents research demonstrating validity of her claims.

From my time in academia, I can assure you spend most of your time and writing justifying your decisions, and a whole load of very critical people have to agree with your judgement before something gets published.

<comment><USER12> >Go read the actual study then rather than the article, and find out how she justified her decisions.

If you've got $11.95 to spare, I'll take you up on that. Unfortunately all that's available is the abstract. But if you want me to analyze that, I will. 232 words, not counting the copyright. 122 unique. 'Tiger' occurs 7 times -- 4th behind 'parenting' (15), 'the' (12), and 'and' (9). My analysis concludes that Kim doesn't just have something she wants to say, she has something she wants the public to hear. I.e., right or wrong, Kim has an agenda.

>Most likely, she based them on definitions that were defined and validated by multiple previous studies before her

I don't see how; she openly states in the quoted section of the parent comment that her delineation of categories was aimed at challenging the standard in the field.

>a whole load of very critical people have to agree with your judgement before something gets published.

In this case, it was the fine people over at the AAJP. The Asian American Journal of Psychology. Most def not a journal oriented toward "their version" of the truth, I'm sure.

<comment><USER14> What is "their" version?

<comment><USER13> Find out here:

<https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5684360>

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> "he vast majority of parents were foreign-born in Hong Kong or southern China, with relatively low educational attainment and a median income of between $30,001 and $45,000 in each of the study's three phases, spaced out equally over eight years."

Wait. Amy Chua is US born, no, and of at least the educational attainment needed to teach at Yale Law--which I assume is paying her & her husband rather more than $45K between them. So how do she and her daughters relate to this, except as a hook to grab our attention.

<comment><USER16> Yeah, and her father is a EE professor at Berkeley who predicted the existence of the memristor...not exactly a family of "low educational attainment".

<comment><USER17> We do not possess a media with any skeptical abilities, regurgitation of press releases and narratives is all we have.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> It sounds like the study reduced the definition of "tiger parenting" to simple authoritarian attitudes.

I went to a high-achievement school with a lot of kids of tiger parent types, including an elite music school. That's not the whole picture. Maybe these kids ended up depressed (who knows), but worse grades? I don't think so.

The study notes "the vast majority" of parents it looked at had "relatively low educational attainment and a median income of between $30,001 and $45,000". Oddly it claims it also "controlled for socioeconomic status", but that seems suspect when the vast majority of the sample is in one particular income range.

So the study mostly looked at poorer households with low-educated parents. This is quite different from Chua, a Yale law professor, on the high end of both income and education.

There's a big difference between just yelling at someone and yelling at someone while putting them in elite schools, music lessons, explaining derivatives to them, critiquing their essays, etc. I don't doubt for a SECOND the psychological impacts of authoritarianism, high stress and poor socialization. For me the argument against tiger parenting is more than it's not worth the psychological damage it inflicts and that it kills creativity, both of which are really important in life, beyond just being a finely honed academic machine. But poorer grades, no way. This study is just using its own simplistic definition of the term.

</comment><comment><USER19> What's clear to me from these articles and studies is that there's no silver bullet - if you want to raise your child well, you have to spend a lot of energy understanding your child and guide him, but from his perspective, not your own. Be firm, for his own sake, but without injecting yourself too much. It's wrong to forcefully impose your own goals and expectation borne out of your own insecurities on your children at a stage when children can make decisions on their own, but it's also wrong to be secretive, manipulative and passive-aggressive about your expectations or pretend to yourself that they don't exist. Instead be gradually open about your own feelings and expectations and why you have them and allow them to make decisions that incorporate, but aren't forced by your own desires. All of this is a hard balancing act that demands a lot of mental effort and emotional maturity, not something we can follow out of a book. The more we try to follow someone else's rules for raising a child, the less effort we spend understanding own child and/or look inside ourselves to understand what we truly need to do.

</comment><comment><USER20> I had to google what is tiger mom, and found this: "never allowed:

\- attend a sleepover

\- have a playdate

\- be in a school play

\- complain about not being in a school play

\- watch TV or play computer games

\- choose their own extracurricular activities

\- get any grade less than an "A"

\- not be the No. 1 student in every subject except gym and drama

\- play any instrument other than the piano or violin

\- not play the piano or violin."

Well, fuck.

<comment><USER21> Oh crap. Why do someone want to do this with their own children?

I am especially puzzled about the purpose of: "- play any instrument other than the piano or violin \- not play the piano or violin." I just don't understand the logic behind this two restrictions.

<comment><USER22> The idea is that if they cut out all the extracurricular / social aspects of a child's life, then the child will have nothing better to do other than focusing on academia. Of course, in reality that doesn't happen. Children will rebel when they come to that age.

As for the no violin / piano. I think you have it wrong. It's "no musical instruments other than piano or violin." ([http://articles.chicagotribune.com/2011-03-06/news/ct-met- ti...](http://articles.chicagotribune.com/2011-03-06/news/ct-met-tiger- mom-20110306_1_tiger-mother-amy-chua-tiger-mom))

<comment><USER23> "Never allowed to: \- play any instrument other than the piano or violin \- not play the piano or violin."

you read it wrong.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> From the article:

"Tiger parenting doesn't produce superior outcomes in kids"

Not to point out the obvious, but correlation doesn't equal causation. It could very well be that the worse grades a child gets, the more reason the parents have to become "tiger".

</comment><comment><USER25> i'm asian american and grew up in california, i knew lots of asian kids growing up.

all the kids that had super-strict parents were screwed up in some way by the age of 25.

dropouts, burnouts, social maladjusts, booksmart losers, drug addicts, delinquents, criminals, etc.

not all asian parents are like that, but a LOT are, i'd say probably 4-5x the rate you'd find in the general population. /anecdata

</comment><comment><USER26> I jailbroke the paper for you guys: <http://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/85192141/2013-kim.pdf>

</comment><comment><USER27> There is the old saying that "talent skips a generation". It is much an observation on parenting styles as anything. This "tiger" moniker just refers to extremely pushy (read "abusive") parents. Their reward will be producing children who grow up hating them.

</comment><comment><USER28> I feel like this was always obviously the case in the United States. Nothing about US culture complements tiger parenting. Go ask Chinese kids in China how they feel about it. (hint: their culture fully supports and _expects_ this parenting style)

<comment><USER29> I'm not sure I understand your hint. When I studied in Beijing, most Chinese college kids I talked to just lamented about how hard they worked throughout their childhood and how overly stressed out they always were. Nobody spoke positively about this.

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> I'm reading this as: Asian students perform better than other groups even with ineffective parenting. Am I missing something?

>"Whenever scholars compare European-American and Asian-American families," she said, parents among the latter "almost always score higher on controlling and lower on warmth, which means they're more likely to be classified as authoritarian." Yet, their kids were outperforming whites in school. This gave rise to the "achievement/adjustment paradox": kids doing well by external measures while feeling torn apart inside.

<comment><USER31> _Am I missing something?_

One thing that comes to mind; at least in the Bay Area, asian students often grow up in whole communities made up of other asians, so even if their parents are mucking things up a bit, they are still fully immersed in the culture of extreme focus on academics and achievement.

</comment></comment><comment><USER32> Both of Amy Chua's children are, in a sense, positive outcomes. One was "good enough" for her mother's standards, and another rebelled. But sometimes, different outcomes happen:

[http://www.nytimes.com/2002/04/28/magazine/who-was- responsib...](http://www.nytimes.com/2002/04/28/magazine/who-was-responsible- for-elizabeth-shin.html)

</comment><comment><USER33> If tiger moms organize and control their kid's lives, do the kids ever learn skills relating to decision making and time management, two absolutely crucial skills for 'real world' survival?

<comment><USER23> Not even just those two skills, but anything to do with the 'real world'. I struggle to talk to people and have constant shivers even when I know I'm in a non-threatening environment. I just can't make conversation easily.

Even something as simple as when I took the train for the first time by myself going to uni. I was petrified I would miss my stop or something equally stupid, when the solution would be to just get off and hop onto a train that would take me back.

Again, I don't think I have a tiger mum, but she's awfully close.

</comment></comment><comment><USER34> Curious, why no mention of parenting that leads to high-achieving and high- depressive kids.

<comment><USER30> I think the implication is that those are incompatible.

<comment><USER35> Unless you include every jewish male character in a woody allen movie or a philip roth novel, which can be read as a case study on highly depressed high achievers.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> This "Tiger Parent" situation is a bit of a conundrum: we as society are unable to tolerate this form of child abuse, but are equally unable to say something about it, for fear of being considered "racist" by someone hiding behind the shield of "Chinese Tradition".

<comment><USER37> Because it's not child abuse. Just because a group of people don't agree with it does it make it "child abuse."

<comment><USER36> Keep telling yourself that. I'm sure that will help you sleep at night. Meanwhile, this "successful" woman will keep verbally/mentally/emotionally abusing her children, and nice people like you will look the other way.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> This is mostly due to the study's redefinition of the term "tiger" to include "unsupportive."

<comment><USER38> Not according to the fine article.

The 'Tiger' category emerged from a clustering analysis of parenting styles, and was defined by high scores on both positive ("Warmth, reasoning, monitoring, and democratic parenting") and negative ("hostility, psychological control, shaming, and punitive measures") dimensions.

The claim is that even when they show lots of warmth and positive parenting, parents who are also hostile and shaming, have kids who do just as poorly as the kids of very harsh, unsupportive parents.

<comment><USER10> Right. The article defined the "tiger" category to include hostility, the opposite of "supportive."

<comment><USER39> Human beings aren't computers and human interactions aren't binary. It is perfectly possible for a parent to be both supportive of their children (i.e., have genuine warmth) and be hostile (i.e., lots of shaming). There is no contradiction here.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Show HN: Biff – Self-hosted Firebase alternative for Clojure - <AUTHOR> https://findka.com/biff/ <comment><AUTHOR> Hi, Biff author here. There's background info + comparison to Firebase in the link, but to briefly summarize:

I've been doing Clojure web dev for a while but hadn't found a setup that I really liked yet. My latest approach was using Firebase + ClojureScript (for my startup[1]) which was really nice but had some significant limitations for my use case (mostly related to the ephemeral Node backend). At one point I realized that I could provide Firebase's query subscription feature using Crux[2] instead without too much effort. So I started working on Biff, and I've been using it in production for 2.5 months now. It's been a joy to use.

Also, I do think that web dev in Clojure can be a little hard to get into, due to the (appropriate) community preference for libraries over frameworks. I think there is a need for more frameworks that curate a set of libraries for you. I'd love it if Biff eventually became a sort of "Rails for Clojure" that would let anyone get up to speed quickly but would allow you to switch out the components easily as you go on.

(About the name: I named it after Biff Tannen from Back to the Future).

[1] [https://findka.com](https://findka.com)

[2] [https://opencrux.com](https://opencrux.com)

<comment><USER2> I could not find this info in the docs or the faq: Is Biff suitable for a Javascript front end? is there an API for a plain JS frontend to use Biff? (I like clojure backends with boring JS in the front)

That's my only question about it. Thank you for sharing it. I found the project very enjoyable to browse and really appreciate that you shared several of your key design decisions.

Good Work!

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks! I haven't used a plain JS backend with it myself, but I think that would work well (the majority of Biff is backend code anyway). I haven't exposed a JS api, but doing so should be pretty easy. All of Biff's frontend code is in the biff.client namespace, and the only function you need is biff.client/init-sub [1], which takes:

\- an atom, the contents of which describe what data you're subscribing to

\- another atom, which is populated with the results of your subscriptions

\- a function for handling server-sent websocket events (if your app uses any)

and it returns a function for sending websocket events to the server (which is used for sending transactions + any custom events you define).

[1] [https://github.com/jacobobryant/biff/blob/98ad188924bee9121d...](https://github.com/jacobobryant/biff/blob/98ad188924bee9121d3870d2a3500519ded76eb1/example/src/example/client/app.cljs#L18)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> Very interesting!

I think the biggest weak points of firebase are a. a weak query engine (as soon as you reach non-trivial complexity you end up having to de-normalize data) and b. a weak rule engine (relying on a bunch of boolean logic is not going to scale as your app grows. you need more abstraction power)

Looks like your library addresses both -- crux has datalog queryability, and the rule dsl you wrote seems pretty powerful.

Good work Jacob!

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks! I'm also looking forward to finishing the Materialize[1] integration I've been working on (currently blocked while I wait for them to release some features). Although Crux has datalog, you can't subscribe to datalog queries. But with Materialize, you can basically subscribe to arbitrary SQL queries. I have a branch that lets you define the SQL queries on the backend and then subscribe to the results via Biff's existing subscription system.

[1] [https://materialize.io](https://materialize.io)

<comment><USER3> Cool! Two noob qs:

1\. Would love to learn a bit more about how the rule engine works.

From what I understand crux in essence only gives you key->blob semantics. How do you know that one `doc` is a `user`, and another doc is an `game`, etc

2\. re: datalog subscriptions -- do you know if this is something inherently very difficult, or is it that crux hasn't implemented this yet?

<comment><USER4> Hi, I work on Crux :)

1) Crux is schemaless at its core, but you can build your own ~class hierarchy model using regular attributes and Datalog rules to differentiate between types of entities.

2) Subscribing to arbitrary Datalog without any form of polling requires a fundamentally different form of query algorithm (i.e. incremental view maintenance, as seen in Materialize), however there's a whole spectrum of possibilities available if you are willing to accept polling at some level. Hasura has quite an inspiring take on subscriptions that we may yet try to recreate on top of Crux: [https://hasura.io/blog/1-million-active-graphql- subscription...](https://hasura.io/blog/1-million-active-graphql- subscriptions/)

<comment><USER3> Very cool, thanks for the context refset! : )

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment> dorian-graph Looks interesting! Was Crux an easy choice? Did you consider any other databases (non-Datalog)? Or Datahike?

<comment><AUTHOR> Crux was a pretty straightforward choice. Didn't really consider any non- datalog DBs. I've used Datomic quite a bit, but preferred crux since it's open source, has filesystem persistence and doesn't require a separate process for the transactor (nothing wrong with Datomic's choices; the tradeoffs just make it unsuitable for Biff). I went with crux over datahike since it's more mature and has postgres persistence (and Kafka persistence, not that I need that yet). I haven't actually used the bihemporality features of crux yet, but maybe they'll come in handy.

<comment> dorian-graph That makes sense to me. I've been trying to decide out of Crux or Datahike for a side project. I was leaning towards Datahike because I didn't like the idea of having to do a full document update like you do in Crux, but I need to dig into it a bit more.

<comment><AUTHOR> Are you concerned about that for performance reasons or for ease-of-use reasons? To address the latter, I made a separate transaction format for Biff that allows merging (it's similar to Firebase's transaction format). So e.g.

      {[:users #uuid "some-user-uuid"] {:db/merge true
                                        :username "foo"}}

gets converted to

      [[:crux.tx/put (merge (crux/entity db #uuid "some-user-uuid")
                            {:username "foo"})]]

There is a race condition though; if another tx updated that document after the crux/entity call but before `:username "foo"` was written, then that tx would get clobbered. I'm planning to add `:crux.tx/match` operations automatically to prevent that from happening. There was talk on #crux in Clojurians slack today of using the newly-added transaction function feature to do merges. Haven't looked into that myself.

<comment> dorian-graph Just for ease-of-use. In Datomic/Datahike you can update a single datom/fact. I'll have to look into making some similar sort of helpers for what you've done.

<comment><USER5> [https://opencrux.com/docs#_transaction_functions](https://opencrux.com/docs#_transaction_functions) ``` (crux/submit-tx node [[:crux.tx/put {:crux.db/id :crux.fn/assoc :crux.db/fn '(fn [ctx eid k v] (let [db (crux.api/db ctx) entity (crux.api/entity db eid)] [[:crux.tx/put (assoc entity k v)]]))}]])

(crux/submit-tx [[:crux.tx/fn :crux.fn/assoc doc-id k v]]) ```

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Interesting... side question, Are you trying to make Findka something like the old Prismatic?

<comment><AUTHOR> Yeah, I think Prismatic's end goal was pretty much the exact same as mine. (I never used Prismatic while it was running, but a while ago someone else mentioned that Findka seemed similar).

<comment><USER6> Awesome. It reminded me of it. Prismatic seemed to always give real high quality content. Almost magical. Good luck!</comment></comment></comment>


Wang Tiles and Turing Machines (2012) - <AUTHOR> http://grahamshawcross.com/2012/10/12/wang-tiles-and-turing-machines/

<comment><USER2> I wrote a similar article on this a few years ago:

[https://moyix.wordpress.com/2012/04/06/computing-with- tiles/](https://moyix.wordpress.com/2012/04/06/computing-with-tiles/)

The tilings, with an appropriate color scheme, turn out to be quite beautiful:

[https://i.imgur.com/EB3rX.png](https://i.imgur.com/EB3rX.png)

</comment><comment><USER3> These were featured in Greg Egans fantastic book Diaspora [1]. I can't recommend it enough

[1] [http://gregegan.customer.netspace.net.au/DIASPORA/DIASPORA.h...](http://gregegan.customer.netspace.net.au/DIASPORA/DIASPORA.html)

</comment><comment><USER4> I think there's a mistake on the Fibonacci sequence tiling, this one: [http://grahamshawcross.com/2012/10/12/wang-tiles-and- turing-...](http://grahamshawcross.com/2012/10/12/wang-tiles-and-turing- machines/usersgrahamshawcrossdocumentsapplicationaperiodic_tilingdw-3/)

Shouldn't there be a diagonal up/right light/dark green line between 5 and 8? I.e. tiles (6,3), (6,4), (7,2), (7,3), numbering from 1 (x,y) style?

<comment><USER5> > Shouldn't there be a diagonal up/right light/dark green line between 5 and > 8?

Yes.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Here's a free C++ wang tile implementation I wrote: [https://github.com/crawl/crawl/blob/master/crawl- ref/source/...](https://github.com/crawl/crawl/blob/master/crawl- ref/source/domino.h)

It includes a stochastic solver for non-trivial tile sets.</comment>


Google AdWords for TV - <AUTHOR> http://www.google.com/adwords/tvads/index-b.html <comment><USER2> We've been trying it out on a limited basis. You pick show-level targeting, set a max CPM (cost per thousand households) bid, and a max daily budget. Then, after it runs, you get reports about # of impressions, etc.

It clearly brings a lot of traffic when it runs, and those do clearly turn into some sales (self-reported in our post-checkout survey). We don't yet have enough data to know whether it pays for itself.

If you want some "orders of magnitude" numbers to play with, we're talking about a few bucks per thousand households CPM rates, with a "click through rate" (visitors per watching household) in the few-tenths-of-a-percent range (hard to track but we try). We're still trying to nail down those numbers, but it seems to be a fairly expensive way to find visitors (although within an order of magnitude of other methods, so we're hoping that with tweaking of bids/message/targeting we can make it comparable, because it scales to massive volume really well if you can afford it!).

Our current 30-second spot: <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pTM2AVeyEMg>

<comment><USER3> Did you do the commercial yourselves or hire an outside firm? Also, your logo is pretty confusing. It took me a while to actually realize that it was the logo for NerdKits while watching that commercial.

<comment><USER2> I did the sketches (pencil+paper+scanner), my co-founder did the music + video compositing of the commercial, and we paid $100 for the voiceover. We're DIY people so we had to give it a shot ourselves first. :-)

You can see an earlier version here: <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aScFQhwHfyE> with a totally different feel...

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> This is like adwords without keyword targeting: does the marketplace by itself add enough value to be worth using?

</comment><comment><USER5> I've often thought of trying Adwords for TV. Several years ago I used to make animated commercials for cable TV and one of the major hassles was getting airtime on cable stations. Has anyone tried it?

</comment><comment><USER6> Page says I need to graduate from starter edition to standard edition to try it. Instructions can be found "here". Click here and I get "page not available". Some other page says there starter editions no longer even exist. Maybe the error message is wrong, and should say I cannot use it because I'm not in the USA.

</comment><comment><USER7> This page <http://www.google.com/adwords/tvads/how.html> seems to indicate that the maximum video upload size is 100MB. This seems awfully small for broadcast-quality video. I guess it's only 30 seconds or so, but still.

<comment><USER8> That works out to ~26.666 Mbit. That's about the quality of Blu-Ray.

<comment><USER7> Wow, that's actually great. Thanks for the info.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> What is this <http://www.google.com/adwords/tvads/index-b.html> and <http://www.google.com/adwords/tvads/index-c.html> ?

<comment><USER10> They're doing an A/B test using Google Website Optimizer. You can see the Javascript footprint if you know what to look for.

Incidentally, this is the first time I've ever seen Google using GWO. It is not good software -- for one thing, this thread exists where if they were doing good A/B testing it wouldn't. I used to joke that they'd swallow broken glass before using it on a site which actually mattered to their business interests. Guess I was wrong. (Although they won't be putting it on any app anytime soon.)

<comment><USER11> Have you tried out the multivariate experiment type in Optimizer? Unlike the "classic" A/B test, there's effectively no risk of exposing the fact that someone is part of an experimental group to normal users. (Of course, HN types could still pick out the telltale JS fragments in the page source, but that's a risk with _any_ testing that has a client-side component.)

We've been pretty happy with GWO's combination of being a) free, b) easy for marketing+management types to use for reporting, and c) integrated with our Analytics and AdWords accounts.

Just out of curiosity, though: are there competitive hosted solutions you would recommend over GWO? More options would be a good thing to know about...

<comment><USER12> Actually, I have been working on such a tool: Visual Website Optimizer <http://visualwebsiteoptimizer.com>

Let me know if you would like a beta invite.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Giving up is never an option, it's always a choice.  - <AUTHOR> http://fromtheorisun.blogspot.com/2011/09/best-mistake-of-my-life-my-colleeg.html

<comment><AUTHOR> The article says: "Take the step. Give your best. And see the result."</comment>


Successful Freenet attack results in arrest - <AUTHOR> https://www.reddit.com/r/Freenet/comments/3ti8c9/successful_freenet_attack_results_in_arrest/ <comment><USER2> They should be legally required to disclose exactly how they can isolate who downloaded the files. It's great that they seem to have caught some truly bad guys, but the whole concept of "evidence" is completely called into question when your surreptitious legal strategy requires breaking a complex protocol.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Reddit discussion links to article that discusses the arrest and Freenet involvement. The Reddit comment has relevant links on possible ways that Freenet was exploited as well as tools that target Freenet.</comment>


Memo to a Young Leader: What Kind of Boss Are You? - <AUTHOR> http://discussionleader.hbsp.com/taylor/2008/05/memo_to_a_young_leader_what_ki.html

<comment><USER2> Don't be a boss. Be a leader.

If you can't be a leader, then be a manager.

But please, don't be a boss.</comment>