Teacher spends two days as a student (2014) - <AUTHOR> https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/answer-sheet/wp/2014/10/24/teacher-spends-two-days-as-a-student-and-is-shocked-at-what-she-learned/?utm_term=.89d6b4dd1d71 <comment><USER2> Sitting for hours is bad ok...

For a long time I was a smoker, I would often walk out of the building with others, and take a break. Talking about their or my problem of the minute.

One of the other engineers who DIDNT smoke started coming out with us when we went. After a few weeks he noted out loud how his productivity had been UP since he started taking the journey with us.

It seems counter intuitive that getting up and moving around (even to do something bad) is good for you.

If your not a smoker, go hang out with them a few times a day (or use their smoke breaks to take your own break away from your desk).

<comment><USER3> Since when is it counter-intuitive that exercise is good? I'd have thought the opposite.

<comment><USER4> Probably because people don't view walking 500 steps at 1.5 mph, standing for 5 minutes, then returning as exercise. Unless there are stairs or a significant incline, there isn't a readily noticeable change in heart rate nor breathing pattern. So most people probably view moseying around the office for a couple of minutes as a waste of time.

One of the best things I did was setting an alarm to get up every 60 minutes. But then I followed it _too_ religiously by getting up damn near immediately. That broke productivity. I found a happy medium by finding an adequate stopping point and then getting up.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Why do teachers always think group projects and in-class demonstrations are great ideas? I hated that as a student. I found those classes to be really shallow, because groups of students rarely had good ideas or grasped the material well enough to present on it.

A good teacher can spend a whole class lecturing and is able to engage their students.

We don't need to fix class structure. We need to fix teachers.

<comment><USER6> Because you get group projects at work, And the groups at work rarely have good ideas or grasp material well enough to work on it.

<comment><USER7> "Group projects" at work are completely different from group projects in school. Work generally has managers. If someone isn't pulling their weight in a project, there's someone you can talk to about it and have something done about it. People have their income on the line.

At school, my teachers were almost always explicit about not wanting to manage. "Organize yourselves". There were countless times I had lazy project partners, even in grad level courses in college, that I could do nothing about. The teachers told me to just figure it out myself. They never took action against bums. This meant that lazy people could _assume_ they'd be taken care of by their more disciplined teammates. As a result, I never got any value out of group projects in school - whenever I had a group project, I always assumed I'd have to be doing _way more_ work than I'd have to for individual projects.

I've never had to deal with coworkers who acted that way.

<comment><USER6> You've never had incompetent coworkers? You've never worked at a megacorp where it was basically impossible to get fired? One of the things you could've done for your group projects is be the manager yourself. Assign tasks and divvy up the work load based on skill/knowledge. Obviously, don't give the doofus anything challenging. 99% of the time people are willing to do whatever they're explicitly instructed to do. Track assigned tasks and completion. If someone doesn't pull their weight, don't put their name on the finished project and turn in the assignment tracking with the project to explain why their name was removed.

<comment><USER7> I would never work at a megacorp. That sounds miserable.

And why are you assuming I didn't try managing projects? Of course I did. I would always divvy up the work in such a way that'd I'd have the more difficult portion and I'd keep tabs on people. And when I'd tell my teachers that someone wasn't pulling their weight, they'd say it's my problem. I took _one_ class in college where the professors actually took that into account and docked my teammates. Without threats from teachers, students do not give a fuck. Complete waste of my time in school.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Those are some awesome takeaways. I think that by the time you're a teacher, you forget what it's like to be a student. One of my biggest complaints with class is that its entirely passive learning and I am a completely hands on person. Additionally, after reading pedagogy of the oppressed, it's very easy to get bitter with education in general.

<comment><USER9> The egg timer seemed like an amazing idea:

 _set an egg timer every time I get up to talk and all eyes are on me. When the timer goes off, I am done. End of story. I can go on and on. I love to hear myself talk. I often cannot shut up. This is not really conducive to my students' learning, however much I might enjoy it._

Many teachers feel compelled to talk because they have a captive audience, so they prattle on about their personal lives or current events instead of engaging students in the topic they're supposed to be teaching.

<comment><USER10> Sounds very similar to the Pomodoro Technique[0] in a way.

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

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Not a teacher but an instructional designer. Digital courses tend to have very high dropout rates so my job is to design the best possible eLearning experience with maximum information/skill retention. I credit my successes (apologies for the shamelessness but it's necessary to make my point!) to my being a learner myself. It's simply not enough to know pedagogical, cognitive and design theories and techniques, you really have to become a learner yourself in order to get better at educating.

For example, in design stage where I'm scoping, scripting and storyboarding for a digital course, it's essential to keep close relationships with the subject matter experts and a sample of learners.

For the latter, one-off interviews are simply not enough. It's much more revealing when you station yourself "in the field" to observe and interact directly, so that you deeply understand their problems, work environment and ways of working. Even if you gain no new information, the experience will shape your design decisions and help make the course more "human."

But for subject matter experts, I tend to assume the role of the dumbest learner ever. Actually that's not very hard, I'm a slow learner myself! But by making no assumptions and asking the simplest questions, I find that I can get the course to flow better and much more easily digestible.

Brief stints are still not enough though. Outside my professional life, I take a few online courses to help me stay grounded and informed of the best and worst techniques. (And learn new things!)

So it really boils down to empathy. As educators we can suppose so much, but at the end of the day, it's the learners that receive it all. The closest we can get to understanding them is then to become learners ourselves.

</comment><comment><USER12> As a teacher, I was hoping for a little more depth. The observations are reasonable, if a little obvious.

I suppose it's good to remind teachers about things they already know, but are not regularly implementing.

<comment><USER13> I'm not sure it's the teachers' fault either. Not entirely anyway. They are beholden to school boards and parents (and ultimately all voters via funding). In fact - I suspect this was written for parents (etc) who are not involved in the day to day experience of school, but who demand certain things from schools without any concern for the real world effects (e.g. idiotic faith in standardized testing).

Those folks may not know these things. Unfortunately, they probably don't want to pause and think about it - If I showed this to some of my conservative friends and relatives they would take it as evidence that teachers are useless, not that the current teaching system needs some serious rearrangement.

<comment><USER12> The difficulty is that there is not an obvious "better way" for _all_ schools to serve _all_ students. The underlying goals of schools are often at odds and incompatible with each other, let alone the goals of the students/parents/communities that direct those schools. HN is full of people who hated the constraints of school but loved learning and succeeded based on that personal zeal, but I've known countless young people that wouldn't succeed in learning basic arithmetic or reasonable advanced literacy without a strong push to get them across the line. The answer is probably a larger variety of smaller schools (and cracking the nut of how to measure teacher effectiveness), but we're not economically or socially prepared to attempt that on the necessary scale.

<comment><USER14> Yes. I'm a teacher as well. The goals can be very contradictory.

Students and Parents want to learning to be individualized for them based on their specific needs. They don't want to be treated like products on an assembly line.

Students and Parents also don't want to be treated any differently than anyone else. They don't want another student to receive "better" treatment than what they are receiving.

GT students need different lessons that can keep up with them. GT students don't want to feel they are doing more work than non-GT students because they are GT. GT students don't want to have to do the same work as non-GT students. Otherwise what is the point? Non-GT students think it is unfair that GT students get to do different activities.

It can be hard to explain to students and parents that Samantha gets more unstructured learning time because she can handle it and Timmy has to be pushed along with less unstructured learning time because he goofs off the whole time.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> This is a repost of [https://grantwiggins.wordpress.com/2014/10/10/a-veteran- teac...](https://grantwiggins.wordpress.com/2014/10/10/a-veteran-teacher- turned-coach-shadows-2-students-for-2-days-a-sobering-lesson-learned/)

Discussed previously: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8442067](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8442067)

</comment><comment><USER16> Add metal detectors, wands, and barbed wire to the mix and you'll really know what it's like for some inner city high school kids (like myself once upon a time). Kids today have more time away from school than I did, I had more time away from school than my parents did, this article wasn't much of an eye opener, sorry.

Personally, high school is a waste, a transition period for students to truly find what they want out of life; in my opinion.

<comment><USER17> Yesterday there was a discussion here about antidepressants. I was tempted to jump in and comment that: sometimes depression isn't clinical, it can also be situational, that I had tried SSRIs and gotten nowhere, and the only thing that cured my depression was dropping out of college and finally getting a real life started.

School is a nightmare. Mix in bullying, antipathetic adults who behave like prison guards, teenage hormones. I don't know what the solution is, but American high school is a failed experiment.

Bravo to this principle for bothering to eat the dogfood.

(I was in cozy suburban schooling, incidentally; it felt like a prison. Now I live around your kind of schools, and I don't understand how anyone survives them.)

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> _...there was a good deal of sarcasm and snark directed at students and I recognized, uncomfortably, how much I myself have engaged in this kind of communication._

      No dark sarcasm in the classroom
      Teacher, leave them kids alone
      Hey! Teacher! Leave them kids alone!

(All in all, I agree, this should have been obvious without having to shadow any student at all.)

</comment><comment><USER19> This stuff seems to me to be inherent to institutionalized education. When you have an instituion with lots of kids to teach, what option is there but to have them all sit down all day and be passive. Also dealing with lots of kids and their misbehavior and having to get through a lesson plan at the same time would make adults feel like they have to be strict and direct "shh" towards the kids. When this organization is being run by the same organization that runs the DMV it's only natural to expect more extreme negative behaviors like sarcasm and snark and probably even more negative things that happen when there isn't a shadow teacher following.

In my mind home school seems like the the only real solution to these ills.

<comment><USER20> > home school seems like the the only real solution

Many parents/guardians are not suited to teaching a modern curriculum, or their talents are best employed in other areas. There are good schools, but they are rare and often expensive. Schooling co-ops are an interesting option, but again I think you have to get lucky with the available talent pool.

<comment><USER21> Parental involvement in education is kind of like eating healthy, in that its expensive and time consuming and not always fun, but the alternative being failure and disaster and death is kind of motivational. The stick is mightier than the carrot.

That also assumes a modern curriculum is good. It is highly optimized, but optimized to what? Like all group activities the odds of the group goals matching your own is very low.

<comment><USER20> Well said.

Of course, the goal should be to instruct the student as they would have wished from the perspective of their older selves. A damnably hard goal set to estimate. To enable fluid interaction with the bulk of society, however, my estimation is that the goals should include at least knowledge of the most popular curriculums, as taught to other students. There are a lot of socially valuable games set up around such curriculums and a student may be justifiably resentful if they are not competitive. A capable educator will go beyond that and treat the curriculums themselves as objects of study, but here the capabilities of the student come into play, since most are out of middle school before being able to comfortably make such distinctions.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> So basically, she thought it was OK to make fun of students when they asked a question that had been asked already. Wow, so sorry I missed being in her class...

<comment><USER23> Some context that may be relevant. Something like the following is not uncommon, at pretty much any grade level:

Teacher T, Student S (not always the same student), Students Ss

T: "I've put the exact steps you need to follow on the board, right here. Repeat that back to me."

Ss: "The steps are on the board."

T: "Great. Any questions? No? Makes sense? Cool, get started!" (walks among students to check work and help as needed)

(10 seconds later)

S: What do we do first?

T: It's on the board. Right there. The step labelled "1". And first on the list. Is there part of it you don't understand?

S: Oh, no, I just didn't know it was there.

(2 minutes later)

T: Uh, are you done?

S: No. I just didn't know what to do next.

T: Did... you do all the steps? On the board?

S: Oh, right! No, just step 1.

(5 minutes later)

S: Mr/Mrs T, what's step 3?

T: Did you check the board?

S: Uhhhhh, oh yeah.

(this happens some more. 6 hours later)

T: (grading papers. Several students missed one or more steps.)

(next day)

S: Why is my grade so low?

T: You didn't do step 4. At all.

S: I didn't know what to do there.

T: (points at list, still on board)

S: Oooooh, yeah.

T: (sneaks whisky from desk to make it through the day without killing self or others)

[EDIT] formatting

<comment><USER21> How long have you been teaching grad students?

(In a non-personal non-doxing manner, I'm just saying you read like my sister- in-law kinda and she's got 20 years in. Which sounds like a prison term. Um...)

<comment><USER23> I don't, but I know several teachers, and am married to one. Anecdotes from 3rd-9th grade, all running pretty much like that. I gather some level of this occurs almost daily. Most of them teach in "good" schools, too, so these are the students who are _easy_ to teach.

(for the record, I don't _think_ any of them actually drink at school)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> I am glad that this topic has been highlighted. It is really important to understand that education cannot be treated like 0 & 1 in the schedule. After some lessons student can be so much mentally exhausted that is really hard to imagine for someone who forget how it is, when you need to spend few hours being constantly focus and thinking.

</comment><comment><USER25> Classes with one guy talking to a sitting audience should have been abolished with the rise of VHS, but now more than ever.

</comment><comment><USER26> I am _shocked_ \--simply _shocked_ \--to discover that most teachers do not bother to view the experiences they supply from another perspective!

The tragedy of this article is that any lessons learned from such a stunt will not likely survive long enough to make any actual, substantial changes in public school pedagogy.

Students will continue to sit down and shut up, as they are expected to passively absorb all information given to them, to be regurgitated on demand. It would be difficult to change that even if you had the force of a published, peer-reviewed scientific study behind you, rather than just two days worth of anecdotes.

</comment><comment><USER27> I expected some new realizations here, but all I could find was a list of the 3 most obvious things about students.

Do we really need to follow students to learn that they sit a lot and listen a lot?

<comment><USER21> "they sit a lot and listen a lot"

For most of our couple hundred thousand year existence as a species we've been very successful using every learning technique except "sit down shut up and listen for a couple hours". In fact we've only done it for about a century almost exclusively with lower to middle class white European kids and all that's certain about that technique is its mostly resulted in the production of a lot of cannon fodder and factory (now cubical) drones. For most of our species history the shut up and listen technique has been limited to religion and brainwashing; perhaps there is no difference.

Its likely that what we arrogantly claim is education or training is merely implantation of weird religious beliefs via brainwashing, as opposed to actual education. Does it matter if the kid mindlessly repeats that 2+2=4, or the kid irrationally believes 2+2=4, or the kid understands how 2+2=4? In a world where all that matters is the correct oval is filled in on the endlessly growing number of standardized tests, I'm not optimistic anyone is learning anything other than to fill in ovals and parrot a belief in whatever this hour's authority claims is today's truth. Until tomorrow when it'll all be different.

This might explain how some new grads are so hopelessly useless in that perhaps they absorbed the "true believer" aesthetic and therefore were passed along, but they were never actually educated, never actually learned, perhaps algebra, or programming, or philosophy, or politics, or any other topic.

"I learned how to tell the teacher what they wanted to hear, then forgot it as completely as possible so as to endlessly repeat" could result in a very successful student career yet not so successful post-graduation.

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> Are 90-minute classes the norm? I dont have my old timetablez, but it think 60 minute classes were our norm, with much shorter breaks between.

<comment><USER12> Increasingly so. ~90 minute "block" classes are fairly common at the high school level in the US.

<comment><USER21> My middle school kids have English Lit as a block.

Honestly, as a grade school kid if I was reading something I enjoyed, 90 minutes was not much of an achievement. You can will yourself thru something you hate for 45 minutes, gym class perhaps. You probably have to be a grown adult (or older) to tolerate something like a worthless 90 minute class or business meeting.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> An interesting analysis would be to take the 87 (and counting) comments here on this submission and compare them with the 178 comments from some 900 days ago.

Can NLP do this? Can comments there be compared with comments here to see if there is a matching?

That would be a fascinating exercise. Anyone up for it?

</comment><comment><USER30> It's terribly disappointing to see even the Washington Post stoop to clickbait titles.

</comment><comment><USER31> Nobody knew school could be such torture. NOBODY! This discovery was made in the year of 2014 by Alexis Wiggins.

I know I'm bitter but it's only because I was a bottom 20% student in high school and I'm now a top 10% student in college.

</comment><comment><USER32> Why does she need to shadow a student to learn what it's like to be a student? Wasn't she a student once herself?

These things are pretty obvious. I always just assumed teachers didn't care.

<comment><USER33> Yeah I agree, I mean, I realized all this stuff around 8 years old. Even after reading this I don't think any other teachers actually care or will ever care. This teacher is just getting old and forgetting how much being in school sucks. Thankfully I can just work on computers and make tons of money and love it. I now learn more every single week than I probably learned in a few months of school and, I graduated. That isn't from work though as I'm over 40.

It's just because I love to read and learn. I was doing Autocad in 1988 in 8th grade. I was learning Unix/Slackware inside out in 1993 after I graduated. School barely gave me basics in 13 years and I could of learned all of that in less than a year. If my wife wasn't a stay at home mom I'd probably home school my kids. Sadly though I have to work all the time so, they go to a boring school and only learn how to take tests.

<comment><USER34> > School barely gave me basics in 13 years and I could of learned all of that > in less than a year.

Oh the irony...

<comment><USER35> what's the irony here ? asking for a friend.

<comment><USER36> 13 years in a designated place of learning is worth less than 1 year in unstructured freedom, according to OP. It's ironic because for OP a place where you are suppose to learn is not a good place to learn

<comment><USER26> I learned more about technical writing from _The Elements of Style_ and a one- semester university course that I ever did from 13 years of public schooling. I learned more about creative writing from being an immortal on a MUD and contributing to the underground newspaper than from anything I ever did in classes.

What I learned from the public school system was that I was not a good writer, and didn't know how to appreciate literature. As it turns out, that was antipodal from the truth. I have since re-synthesized the available data and revised my conclusion: my interests in school simply did not align with the curriculum mandated by school administrators. My grades were a measure of correlation rather than indicative of causation.

For instance, my teachers made me read Dante's _Inferno_. If Dennis Miller ever dropped the name Vanni Fucci into an obscure joke, I would probably get it, still having vague memories of the Malebolge filled with thieves and bitey reptiles. But I consider _Planescape: Torment_ to be a better work of art. It isn't in a standard poetic form, though. Torment is a bit tougher to read in its entirety, and no one would dare to allude to bronze spheres to make a point without some inkling that the audience has played it. It is one thing to be exposed to art that has been blessed as a canonical masterwork in a controlled, sterile classroom environment: it is another thing entirely to recognize art in the wilds of your own life, and to recognize its worth because you feel emotion in its presence. When the system values the former over the latter, it has failed in its purpose. It failed me.

So I consider myself fortunate that I taught myself to program in BASIC and C many years before my public schooling system decided to offer a programming course in Pascal. Had that been my first exposure to software development, I would certainly not be here, writing this, now.

<comment><USER21> "canonical masterwork"

Not a constant, there isn't even an ideal.

I had the worst stereotype of a 9th grade history teacher you can imagine with a curriculum of a dumbed down textbook written at about 80 IQ level to maximize sales and tests consisting mostly of matching names and dates. I almost failed that class...

We can't teach dead white male texts for political reasons anymore. Nothing motivates a white male teenager like telling him a book is forbidden. I'm reminded of a nearly illiterate friend who forced himself to read Huckleberry Finn solely because it was banned. So needless to say as a little rebel I grew up reading and enjoying Plutarch, Xenophon, Gibbon, Herodotus. In a different era under superior political leadership, those books would have been considered masterpieces. Today they are considered fuel for book burnings solely for racial reasons.

There's no constant to "canonical masterwork" but if there is any constant at all, its probably that your school textbook was not a "canonical masterwork", LOL.

<comment><USER26> Are you kidding?

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Western_canon#Literary_canon](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Western_canon#Literary_canon)

There is literally a literary canon. It has certainly evolved over time, but almost everything I was assigned to read in my high school literature classes was in it. My personal opinion is that no one would bother reading _Inferno_ today if it wasn't in the canon.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER37> The link could be more clickbaity by adding "this": _This teacher spends two days as a student and is shocked at what she learns_ ;)

<comment><USER32> Doctors hate her.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> Cut and pasted:

Are paywalls ok?

It's ok to post stories from sites with paywalls that have workarounds. In comments, it's ok to ask how to read an article and to help other users do so.

Now before you 'noob' me I did put in some effort. The old "google the title and click thru from google" doesn't work. Ghostery isn't helping. Adblock Plus isn't helping. Its a clickbait article and there's nothing wrong with that but it is a relevant issue in that I'm not switching browsers to read it.

<comment><USER38> The 'web' link is supposed to take you to the "google the title and click through from google" trick.

When I clicked on the link directly I did not get a paywall. FWIW I do not have ABP.

<comment><USER39> I've been on HN for almost 4 years now and didn't know about the 'web' link. Thank you!</comment></comment></comment>


Information Architect's 2006 Facebook redesigns - <AUTHOR> http://informationarchitects.jp/ias-2006-facebook-designs-redesigned/

<comment><USER2> I don't like it. The new Facebook design centers around the search bar for a reason. I'm sure Facebook designers tracked user behavior and gathered that the search bar should be more in focus. This redesign botches this concept completely. Information design !> usability design. Also, the distance you have to move your eyes left to right to read this is a readability issue. Basically, you have to work way too hard to read this and do what you want to do. That's my 2c.

<comment><USER3> The search issue is almost definitely a non issue, and an oversight on the part of iA. Just moving it to the top placement in the left hand column would give it almost the same placement it has on the real Facebook today.

<comment><USER4> Yes it is! As the parent comment said, the new design it's search focused with solid reasons behind it. Most people I know do basically 2 things on Facebook:

1\. Search friends, or suggested names constantly. And the new layout focuses exactly on this.

2\. Chat. (During chat: "do you know X Y?" -> 1, "saw person X with Z G" -> (if don't know) -> 1)

 _Disclosure: I usually don't use Facebook (just to connect with old friends, sometimes)._

<comment><USER5> So you're saying

"I don't use facebook but I am sure they did their research, therefore it's perfect as it is."

Seriously? The reason why the search is on the bottom is exactly because I thought that

1\. Facebook follows the push (feed/mail) paradigm and not the pull (search) paradigm 2\. Search in a feed application is a form of filtering (if user testing shows that people miss it, you can still place it under the logo) 3\. I do use facebook but I don't use the search because a) so far it has nnever shown me good results and b) it's not clear to me what kind of results it is supposed to show (my stuff, all of facebook...)

<comment><USER4> I didn't say I don't use it, I said I don't use it everyday.

I didn't say "it's perfect as it is". I said there are good reasons why the Facebook team moved in that direction.

Only because you don't use search doesn't mean no one is. I said most of the people I know, use it to find people they know. If they want to see what is someone doing, they don't go trough their friend list (referrer volume), but they search directly the name (search volume). In this case the search volume is bigger than the referrer one. Find ways to make it easier for users to search.

I think Facebook employs in part some of the Google paradigms in UX.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I could see it working well. Overall, there's a good sense of balance and flow, but my main concern would be the transition between the each-post detail mode and the single-post detail mode of the right column. The arrows and shading don't quite seem to express the change in linking readily enough; I'd suggest a more pronounced visual differentiation between the two.

</comment><comment><USER7> Brilliant design, but it doesn't seem like it would degrade very gracefully for lower resolutions.

<comment><USER8> The second and third columns provide a lot of collapsible space depending on the browser width, no?

<comment><USER7> Yes, but either the comments wouldn't be visible in low-resolution clients or facebook would have to provide a completely different layout (e.g. with inline comments) for them.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Outlook has basically proved this interface works well and I think it could be applied to other conversation types like Facebook. As in Outlook, making this an option would be cool.</comment>


Diffing The New York Times on thermal paper - <AUTHOR> http://www.niemanlab.org/2013/11/diffing-the-new-york-times-on-thermal-paper/

<comment><USER2> Here's a longer write up on the hardware involved and thinking behind it. It's linked from the article but I thought this explained it better.

[http://blog.nytlabs.com/2013/11/05/diff-a-live-comparator- fo...](http://blog.nytlabs.com/2013/11/05/diff-a-live-comparator-for-the-web/)

</comment><comment><USER3> Very similar to Berg's Little Printer

[http://bergcloud.com/littleprinter/](http://bergcloud.com/littleprinter/)

</comment><comment><USER4> Related project: [http://www.newsdiffs.org](http://www.newsdiffs.org)</comment>


Workers, don't fear the robot revolution - <AUTHOR> https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/workers-dont-fear-the-robot-revolution/2016/08/16/28c1606e-631f-11e6-96c0-37533479f3f5_story.html <comment><USER2> I think that this point of slow down in productivity is often completely forgotten when when discussing the AI/robot revolution/etc.

Latest official US productivity growth numbers show a clear decline [1]. We should not be afraid and fight the new technology opportunities, the truth is that it is needed for the economy.

[1] [http://www.wsj.com/articles/u-s-productivity-fell-1-in- first...](http://www.wsj.com/articles/u-s-productivity-fell-1-in-first- quarter-1462365346)</comment>


Computer programming as an art (1974) - <AUTHOR> https://dl.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=361612 <comment><USER2> It's always a joy to re-read Knuth's work.

For what it's worth I consider programming a "craft", and myself a "craftsman" \- or, if you prefer, an "artisan". I'd say the key difference between what I see as "art" versus "craft" is the primary purpose. The purpose of art is to express one's self; the purpose of a craft is utility. Note that this does not mean that self-expression is not possible through craft; on the contrary, it certainly is. The big difference is that when I'm creating software and am met with a situation where self-expression and utility conflict, I reconcile them with an emphasis on utility. In order for software to be beautiful, it must serve a function.

<comment><USER3> > The purpose of art is to express one's self; the purpose of a craft is > utility.

That is the clearest distinction I've seen yet between these. Thank you for that insight.

<comment><USER4> It's a nice distinction. I wonder whether we can go further though, and not even need that distinction. Here's my take on it.

Any human endeavour is worth its salt if it succeeds at discovering and expressing beauty. It can be a mathematical proof, a theory in physics, an elegant algorithm, a painting, a dance, a novel, a relationship - the list is as endless as the number of ways humans can come up with, and can be as deep and complex and subtle as they wish to make it, but it always comes back to finding and expressing beauty.

<comment><USER5> Keats famously said something quite similar, but this to me seems a bit reductionist.

<comment><USER4> I'm embarrassed to say that I wasn't aware of Keats' writings and your comment sent me to get more educated about him, which I found very interesting, so thanks for that :)

Not sure in what sense you find the view reductionist, but I suspect it could be from inadequately expressing what I mean

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Here is a text version:

[http://www.paulgraham.com/knuth.html](http://www.paulgraham.com/knuth.html)

Past discussion:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10892293](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10892293)

</comment><comment><USER7> I went to a great conference back in the beginning of 2000 at Ars Electronica, if you haven't gone I would highly recommend it, it's been around since the late 70es and is where art, technology and academia meets.

Anyway in 2003 I was there the talk was about Code as language.

Many interesting talks and debates that year. I think many of the talks are video-recorded.

[https://ars.electronica.art/aeblog/en/2014/11/04/code-die- sp...](https://ars.electronica.art/aeblog/en/2014/11/04/code-die-sprache- unserer-zeit/)

<comment><USER8> Thanks for sharing this!

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> If computer programming is an art, perhaps it could be taught as others arts are [0].

[0] [https://www.dreamsongs.com/MFASoftware.html](https://www.dreamsongs.com/MFASoftware.html)

</comment><comment><USER10> One of the easiest tells that a developer is immature is when they refer to software itself as an art, or poetry.

<comment><USER11> I suspect that's not the characterization most people would apply to Prof. Knuth.</comment></comment>


What I Learnt from Benchmarking Http4k, Ktor (Kotlin) and Actix (Rust) μservices - <AUTHOR> https://matej.laitl.cz/bench-rust-kotlin-microservices/ <comment><USER3> If the original author is reading this: I'm curious, did you do any vert.x benchmarking at all or did you abandon that "branch" before the actual benchmarking took place.

Also, could you expand a bit on what the team didn't like about vert.x?

<comment><AUTHOR> We did some benches with it, but it turned out they were not representative as the testing environment and probably also the code was off at the time.

> Also, could you expand a bit on what the team didn't like about vert.x?

Let's follow the discussion on [https://www.reddit.com/r/Kotlin/comments/isgvm6/what_i_learn...](https://www.reddit.com/r/Kotlin/comments/isgvm6/what_i_learnt_from_benchmarking_http4k_ktor/g5c3aky?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web2x&context=3)

If anybody wants to take the Vert.x stub and finish that, I'd be happy to open-source that, assist, and then benchmark it. - <USER2> [https://www.reddit.com/r/rust/comments/is9onc/what_i_learnt_...](https://www.reddit.com/r/rust/comments/is9onc/what_i_learnt_from_benchmarking_http4k_ktor/g58180f?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web2x&context=3)</comment></comment>


Epistle 3 - <AUTHOR> http://www.marclaidlaw.com/epistle-3/ <comment><USER2> The story actually sounds really fun to play, and fits the Half-Life universe perfectly. Funny that this script has reached the top of Reddit, HN and Twitter within hours of posting, and even crashed the authors site. Even to a blind man it's obvious the demand for the game is there, so it's amazing that Valve continues to ignore it and the fans, but I guess without a cash flow problem they really don't see the point in spending time developing it. A shame.

Edit, GitHub Mirror: [https://github.com/Jackathan/MarcLaidlaw- Epistle3/blob/maste...](https://github.com/Jackathan/MarcLaidlaw- Epistle3/blob/master/Epistle3_Corrected.md)

<comment><USER3> First of all, Valve has lost some interest in single player games [1]

Valve is also likely waiting for their new game engine, Source 2, to be completed because Source 1 is hideously outdated by today's standards.

And finally, they're going to have to come up with something truly great to live up to nearly 10 years of hype

[1][https://kotaku.com/5795355/valve-probably-done-with- single-p...](https://kotaku.com/5795355/valve-probably-done-with-single- player-games)

<comment><USER4> > Valve is also likely waiting for their new game engine, Source 2, to be > completed because Source 1 is hideously outdated by today's standards.

Source 2 was patched into Dota 2 years ago, and being patched into CS:GO this year.

Furthermore Source 1 didn't really get outdated as such, it got iterated on numerous times before introducing Source 2, which I assume will not be "completed" until Source 3 gets named the next version.

<comment><USER3> I'm assuming it's still not complete because there's still no news about a developer SDK (I'd assume they'd love to rake in engine licensing as soon as possible)

>Furthermore Source 1 didn't really get outdated as such, it got iterated on numerous times before introducing Source 2, which I assume will not be "completed" until Source 3 gets named the next version.

The main outdated thing about Source 1 is the authoring tools, which haven't changed much since Half Life 1 was released. Source 2 is supposed to fix that.

<comment><USER5> The new authoring tools are already available for Dota 2, you can install them in Steam.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> "Old friends have been silenced, or fallen by the wayside. I no longer know or recognize most members of the research team, though I believe the spirit of rebellion still persists. I expect you know better than I the appropriate course of action, and I leave you to it. Except no further correspondence from me regarding these matters; this is my final epistle."

This feels a lot like Marc talking about Valve, no?

<comment><USER7> If the paragraph you quoted is indeed Marc talking about Valve, then I feel that the sentence,

> "I expect you know... the appropriate course of action, and I leave you to > it."

points to the hope that people will take this story and create fan games with it. Having seen the tremendous quality and effort put into the Black Mesa [0] remake, I have great faith that the inevitable fan-made Episode 3 will live up to expectations.

[0] [https://www.blackmesasource.com/](https://www.blackmesasource.com/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Other places[1] are referring to this as 'Half-Life 2: Episode 3 Plot', not HL3

[1] [http://www.shacknews.com/article/101110/half-life- episode-3-...](http://www.shacknews.com/article/101110/half-life- episode-3-plot-leaked-by-former-valve-writer)

<comment><USER9> With no official confirmation of either title, "HL3" has come to refer to whatever is next in the series. I've seen tons of comments across different sites that continue to "correct" this but I really don't think it is a distinction that needs to be made.

<comment><USER10> The distinction is absolutely significant. It's all about expectations. The originally promised "HL2:Episode 3" didn't need to be some huge revolutionary product, just a satisfying conclusion to HL2 and its episodes, while setting up the scene for the next game. As soon as people start saying "HL3" they expect some grandiose, ground breaking product.

The story laid out here by Marc is much closer to what you would expect from Episode 3 rather than HL3.

<comment><USER9> I basically meant that (generally) everyone who has been talking about HL3 over the years is just referring to the next hypothetical installment.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Trying to imagine playing this, it sounds like they were struggling to get it "right", and it may have kept feeling like a poor cousin of other games. In comparison to HL1 & 2, the plot seems a bit slow-starting, ends on an actual anti-climax instead of a cruelly-interrupted climax, and the game mechanics (snow/stealth, map phasing, time bubbles) seem to suffer from other recent games having done variations on these very well.

Add the inherent disappointment of not having the portal gun that everyone's expecting to be in there somewhere, and it could feel like it was bound to disappoint.

HL1 & HL2 did a very good job of switching genres and game mechanics from level to level, while still keeping everything clear and centred on a simple familiar mystery plot. The levels were able to establish their genres very fast -- usually from the first scene you saw as the doors opened or you rounded a corner. Everything was clear, and in both cases the motivating story was very simple, and the "plot" was setting. You've got to get help; you've got to get to Lambda Complex, We've got to get you through the portal to shoot what's on the other side...

This HL3 plot seems to have got a bit "Lost" (sorry, tv series reference) as people's motivations are uncertain and there's exposition, and an attempt to partially unfold the mystery while always adding new ones... and still trying to make those bug-pod things work as a villain that didn't work in Ep1 or Ep2.

Still, the bones of a good game are there. From my amateur eyes, it just looks like it needed to stop trying to resist/subvert the viewer's expectations, and just hit a few of the notes the player's been waiting for so they can have a note of satisfaction on the way to the new mystery.

<comment><USER2> No game mechanics are mentioned in the story, so why wouldn't there be a portal gun? Extrapolating, if one is in a time travelling ship, the portal gun could actually generate portals between different time dimensions, and I can already think of a ton of gameplay ideas that could use this concept.

<comment><USER12> Using the portal gun to not only jump through space, but time as well?

Ummm, YES!

The 'structure' of the puzzles you could use that with would need to be very tightly controlled (enemy position vectors, amount you can travel backwards in time, maybe some sort of energy mechanic you have to pick up as you go along, etc). But still, WOW! Jumping back to the start of a level at the very end and you must manipulate time to accomplish the level, there is a LOT of possibility to talk about there. I have no idea what jumping forward in time would look like except if you went back, say 5 minutes, and then you could only go forward again up to that 5 min mark.

However, you can't use this in a PvP manner very well, only co-op. Maybe you could have the players ALL jump back in time except the user of the time device who got to essentially teleport around. However, the cheesing of that mechanic would be frustrating in the extreme.

<comment><USER13> You should check out the Titanfall 2 campaign. They do a thing like this and it's one of the coolest things I've ever seen in a shooter.

<comment><USER12> I wish I could!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> "This was the case until eighteen months ago, when I experienced a critical change in my circumstances, and was redeposited on these shores"

Marc Laidlaw left Valve in January 2016. The end of the post is also probably about Valve, as others have already figured out. I wonder what else there might be to discover.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Github mirror: [https://github.com/Jackathan/MarcLaidlaw- Epistle3](https://github.com/Jackathan/MarcLaidlaw-Epistle3)

<comment><USER15> While the source article is overwhelmed with requests; why was the story released this way?

<comment><USER16> Apparently his NDA has just expired.

<comment><USER17> Valve's ownership of its IP surely didn't expire so this still seems pretty odd.

<comment><USER18> The writer is claiming it's fanfic, and all the names have been changed.

I also suspect that if no game is going to be released, Valve will not bother with legal action; they look bad as it is already.

<comment><USER19> Valve's current market idea to not really make games doesn't mean that they don't want to take action on the ip 5, 10, 20, 50, 70 years from now and per their rights they are in their rights to wait that long. Content creators don't owe you a thing unless they already took your money for it.

<comment><USER20> An argument for content creators not owing you anything seems to mirror that content creators aren't owed any respect for their creations either. I mean we have IP laws to encourage content creaters to create by ensuring they can capitalise on their creations or perhaps to allow them to preserve the artistic merit of these creations.

In that spirit there's probably a good argument to be made that it's in the public interest to add to clearly incomplete bodies of work that appear to be abandoned. Whether that's practical or does more harm to the public good is the question.

<comment><USER19> Sure but what's a valid window? At 5 years Martin would have lost game of thrones.

Also they owe you for the thing they made already. If you forced them to complete works on your timeline then you're indenturing them.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> _My website 's down for now. I guess fanfic is popular, even a genderswapped snapshot of a dream I had many years ago._

[https://twitter.com/marc_laidlaw/status/900960760481726464](https://twitter.com/marc_laidlaw/status/900960760481726464)

</comment><comment><USER3> Version with the code words replaced: [https://www.reddit.com/r/HalfLife/comments/6vwelo/i_edited_m...](https://www.reddit.com/r/HalfLife/comments/6vwelo/i_edited_marc_laidlaws_conclusion_to_hl2ep3_to/)

</comment><comment><USER22> I'm not sure if I'm an idiot or if it's because English is not my native language or what, but I find it really difficult to follow this narration style.

Can someone give a short summary of what happened?

TD;CU (too dumb, can't understand).

<comment><USER23> They go to Antarctica to find the Borealis (the ship built by Aperture Science from Portal).

The Borealis is phasing in and out of reality. Rescue Dr Mossman from the Combine, she has details to make the Borealis phase in for enough time to get Freeman+Alyx+Mossman on board, chased by Combine.

While on board, discover Borealis is moving through Time as well as Space. Mossman wants Borealis recovered for the Resistance, Alyx wants it destroyed. They fight, Alyx kills Mossman.

Borealis reconfigured to fly through Space to Combine planet to try to destroy it with explosion, as they arrive G-man takes Alyx off the ship, Vortigaunts take Freeman.

Combine world too massive, powered by a Dyson sphere, Borealis explosion does nothing.

Freeman back on Earth sometime in the future, won't take part in any more conflict with Combine.

<comment><USER24> I haven't played the game, so I'm a bit confused: what parts of the story are slyly referring to Valve itself rather than the HL3 story? How do you get "welp, looks like HL3 is cancelled" based on this story?

<comment><USER25> The last paragraph is almost definitely about Valve:

"And here we are. I spoke of my return to this shore. It has been a circuitous path to lands I once knew, and surprising to see how much the terrain has changed. Enough time has passed that few remember me, or what I was saying when last I spoke, or what precisely we hoped to accomplish. At this point, the resistance will have failed or succeeded, no thanks to me. Old friends have been silenced, or fallen by the wayside. I no longer know or recognize most members of the research team, though I believe the spirit of rebellion still persists. I expect you know better than I the appropriate course of action, and I leave you to it. Expect no further correspondence from me regarding these matters; this is my final episode."

No more HL2:Episode N coming, the development team is too different.

<comment><USER26> Original says "my final epistle" which makes more sense contextually. But epistle has certainly been used as a clever stand-in reference to Episode.

<comment><USER25> Yeah, I should have said that I copied this from the "corrected" version which replaces the character and place references.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> I think a new Half Life game would be the perfect opportunity for Valve to showcase their virtual reality kit. So far there are no blockbuster VR games and the Half Life franchise (Portal included) has a history of being very innovative (e.g. HL2 using a physics engine for the narrative, HL1&2: story told through level design). There is a lot of potential to use immersive virtual reality to enhance the story telling.

<comment><USER28> They said years ago that HL3 would not be a VR focused game but I suspect that has changed by this point. There are still issues with normal locomotion in VR and nausea so I suspect either there will be some new idea in that realm or HL3 will take on Portal technology to explain teleportation based movement.

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> Im waiting for the fans to pick up the pieces and make it real.

<comment><USER16> While someone inevitably will try, I don't see it being good. The hallmark of the Half-Life series was not its plot, but an almost compulsive obsession with the gameplay quality. Few professional studios could rival Valve in that, let alone a fan project.

<comment><USER30> I mean, I don't know if you've seen Black Mesa (the game), but they've done an incredible job at making an HL1 reboot, with some levels drastically expanded, a lot of things tweaked, and it's amazing how well it works.

Valve doesn't have a monopoly in gameplay quality - they're just very consistent about it.

<comment><USER31> Black Mesa is great, but it also took over 8 years of development for first release and it still isn't done (last I checked the Xen chapters aren't in). So that's 13 years of development and counting.

They also had the entirety of HL1 to build the game from. Obviously they created a ton of unique assets and reworked stuff, but they had an entire game to work from.

Trying to make a full 'mod' of Episode 3 is nothing like Black Mesa and would be an incredible amount of work. With that said, I would love to see someone try.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> The real HL3: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aqRUjjuUl7U](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aqRUjjuUl7U)

</comment><comment><USER33> Half-Life 3 confirmed dead? :(

<comment><USER34> Well "Half Life 2: Episode 3" (what this post is really about) seems to be.

</comment></comment><comment><USER35> This would have been a treat for those who had finished episode 2 and were waiting anxiously for the next step in the saga.

Sometimes its simply not possible to do things and fans understand but Valve just shuttered the series and turned their back on fans. It's like Game of Thrones suddenly deciding to close down for no obvious reason and with no explanation to fans.

This reeks more than a little of the arrogance of success and it's in some ways a betrayal of all the gamers who appreciated Half life for what it was and propelled Valve to its initial success.

</comment><comment><USER36> Yeah, it never would have lived up to the hype. Explained nothing.

<comment><USER9> Has any entry in the Half Life series really explained anything? We get little glimpses into certain events, some from different perspectives (like the Black Mesa incident). We never get the whole picture and what we, as the player, know is told to us by other characters or shown through events we experience.

<comment><USER11> Yes, in that HL1 & 2 played on such well known tropes that it only needed to show you the scene and you knew the story.

The opening was laden with every disaster movie signal (up to and including "Nothing will go wrong" said in emphatic tones). The lift doors in Office Complex open to archetypal zombie horror. The scientist getting gunned down by the military cover up in We've Got Hostiles hits any number of movie tropes while clearly signalling the next bit is Rambo-style action...

It's fairly similar to the first Star Wars movie, in that because it is hitting the tropes quickly and clearly, and jumping from setting to setting, it can tell the story very efficiently.

<comment><USER9> My point was there are no arbitrary narrative components like computer terminals where you read a dead guy's email that explicitly explains the set up in text format. Or whatever, that seems to be a really common (lazy) way to tell a story.

I would argue that what you said is all about show vs tell. Which is a good thing for visual media.

<comment><USER37> I love those terminals and books in the Deus Ex series. They flesh out the world with much more detail than could ever be shared in cutscenes or NPC dialogue.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> It's interesting how much this differs from the storyline of the infamous leaked HL2 Beta [1], which was based on a rough version of what became HL2, Episode 1, and Episode 2. [1][http://combineoverwiki.net/wiki/Half- Life_2_original_storyli...](http://combineoverwiki.net/wiki/Half- Life_2_original_storyline#Arctic_regions)

</comment><comment><USER38> Not much of a story really, it seems like they had no intention of actually answering any of the mysteries around the G-Man and Alyx, but it sounds like it would have been a fun game.

<comment><USER39> The G-man is a Deus Ex Machina, it's always a lazy plot device.

<comment><USER40> perhaps, but he transcended that. his visible and unreachable appearances at other times, combined with his bizarre diction, made his character capture the imaginations of many.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER41> Most of the obfuscated references have been elucidated, but I'm not finding anything for who "Dearest Playa" is. Does anyone know?

<comment><USER42> "Dear Player"

</comment></comment><comment><USER43> It's a good and short read, and I accept it as closure for what I always thought was a very well written series.

</comment><comment><USER44> Half Life 3 confirmed!

</comment><comment><USER45> a lot of complaints about valve. u know what people also complain about a lot... companies milking their intelectual property.... i think half-life so far has left a great legacy. if they ever decide to continue it , it would be sweet. i'd hope it would be in the same fashion, shooter for pc, not VR bullshit. but hey... still enjoying half life 1 and 2+ so fuck all the whiners. be thankful for what you have got, not a needy little baby crying for more!. maybe if u guys behave thankful people like gabe/marc and others involved with what we love would listen.</comment>


Icebreakers.site – Conversation Starters - <AUTHOR> https://icebreakers.site/ <comment><AUTHOR> My team at work begins each planning session with an icebreaker-- it's a great way to get to know everyone a little better, especially since we are all remote and located around the globe. Each time it's my turn to come up with a question, I end up googling for "icebreaker questions" and have to sort through decent ones ("What skill do you think everyone should have?") to semi- not-great-for-work-ones ("Name something you hate about your boss.") to inappropriate ones ("What do you like best about women's bodies?") to outright illegal ones ("Are you religious?").

Since I'm lazy and wanted one place to easily give me a question to propose to the group, I made a progressive web app that randomly picks a question out of a pool of around 700 questions (that I think I've mostly vetted to be considered "decent" questions). The neat thing about it being a PWA is it can be installed as a Chrome app (or saved to a home screen on a mobile phone) and it will still work offline.

Full disclosure-- it's free to use, and there's no ads or anything, but I do have a Google analytics script on it, simply out of curiosity if anyone is using it. So if you are anti-Google or anti-analytics, don't go there. Otherwise, I hope it sparks some good conversations for you and lets you learn a little more about your fellow teammates.

</comment><comment><USER2> I like it! Good and minimalist implementation :) Also, you can improve it by adding "how to finish a conversation" feature ;)</comment>


KEO - <AUTHOR> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/KEO <comment><USER2> better titles on "This wikipedia page is interesting" posts, please!</comment>


UsingQR – "Electronic" paper invoices using JSON and QR codes - <AUTHOR> http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/UsingQR____Electronic__paper_invoices_using_JSON_and_QR_codes.html <comment><USER2> I'm in this space in Germany, where such ideas are always taken to their logical extremes.

The current push towards creating some kind of standard for electronic invoices (which would allow for a standardized data package to be transformed into QR) is called ZUGFeRD.

[http://www.ferd-net.de/front_content.php?idcat=231](http://www.ferd- net.de/front_content.php?idcat=231) The Zip(?!?) Containing the specification can be found here:

[http://www.awv-net.de/updates/zugferd/zugferd10.zip](http://www.awv- net.de/updates/zugferd/zugferd10.zip)

This is a push towards adding data to the PDF Metadata that would allow for digitally reading of that electronic invoice by financial systems.

The current problem, from my reading, is that there is not enough players that see a positive ROI for implementing this standard on a wide scale on systems where it would make sense.

</comment><comment><USER3> In Czech republic, QR codes that encode payment details for invoices are pretty common. It uses format called SPAYD for encoding of data which is variation of vCard formatting (as proposed in the begining of this article). Idea is that the same data in this format could also be transfered directly, but that is not so common, probably because there also is widely supported national standard for XML representation of entire invoices.

As for paperlessness: I routinely pay my cellphone bills by scanning said QR code from computer screen.

<comment> jon-wood I routinely pay my cellphone bills by doing absolutely nothing (apart from having a skim of my bank statement now and again). In the UK almost all regular payments are done using Direct Debit, where you grant the company billing you permission to transfer the money automatically. Sadly it lacks the ability to specify an upper bound on that, but I've yet to have any issues in practice so I'm not massively worried.

<comment><USER4> Do not do this!!!

If you end up in a dispute with your phone company, you are putting yourself at their mercy. It's waaay easier to fight a charge you haven't paid yet, then to recover money you've already paid.

I've gone through hell because of this.

<comment><USER5> The bank doesn't allow you to roll back the automatic transfer of money ? Over here (NL) all banks allow you to retrieve your money without any hassle within about 2 months.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Maybe the first usage of QR codes that actually makes sense to me. People don't want to scan codes to go to urls, but they do want reliable ways take messy human-reable data and put it into software. I hope more uses like this come up.

QR codes were originally invented for inventory tracking. This is just an extension of that.

<comment><USER7> Only problem with this is it discourages shifting to paper-less business. Remember when that was a goal of business and government. It's been so successful via the fact that it's simply easier than shuffling papers about. That being said, it is clever, sort-of a 255byte or so flash-rom storage on a piece of paper.

<comment><USER8> I think that things like migrating away from a paper-less society is best done in small steps. Who knows, things like these might actually speed up the process!

<comment><USER9> Some countries have already done it. It's not impossible or even that difficult if you get behind it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Why JSON?

QR can store binary data. Something like BSON would make a lot more sense, given the tiny amount of storage in a QR code. Even ASN.1 seems more appropriate than the silly data->ASCII->ASCII-structured-format->binary encoding that's going on here, and admittedly in a lot of other transport formats too.

<comment><USER11> Not wanting to start flame wars, but consider CBOR instead of BSON (which only really makes sense if you want to integrate with MongoDB).

[http://cbor.io/](http://cbor.io/)

<comment><USER12> I hadn't heard of this one before. I like that it has an RFC attached (RFC7049) which contains in the appendices comparisons to other similar systems such as MessagePack and BSON.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> A german banking app already tried to do something similar [0], but used the QR code to encode an URL containing all data instead. It seems a bit more efficient.

But FWIW, it never got popular. I guess you can tell by the design of the website.

[0] [http://www.bezahlcode.de](http://www.bezahlcode.de) (In German only)

Edit: It is actually not encoding all data of the invoice, but only the bank details needed for the transfer.

</comment><comment><USER14> It seems like a big step in the wrong direction. Sending invoices on paper should become a thing of the past. But even if you are sending invoices digitally, then choosing a common format would be the first problem. There are already several existing formats, from Edifact to XML based Oagis, with no winner in sight.

Rest assured that these petty JSON, vCard or the like ideas have little chance to work in real life, specifically if you need to compress invoices into the space limitations of QR codes... Real life B2B invoices are much more demanding.

When it comes to payment information, that is much simpler to solve. You don't even need to QR encode that, relatively simple forms with human readable numbers can be read by modern smartphone banking apps. I have two different installed (two different Swedish banks), works with most of the invoices I get home. The few that still come on paper, that is.

<comment><USER15> I wish there was some sort of financial/billing organization that could lay the law down and establish one of these as standards, but since billing is such a broad topic we may be lost on that front.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> This is really cool. However adoption will be a really challenging issue. When you end up having to upgrade your pos to print these qr codes (with little incentive) you could just end up switching to a square-esque system instead.

I think the Json format is cool. Qr codes as a representation should be one way of sharing it.

</comment><comment><USER17> In Bolivia, starting this year, all the electronically printed invoices have to include an QR code that contains the necessary information for tax filling.

Having one of the worst tax system in the world I'm surprised that somebody had the idea to implement this mechanism.

</comment><comment><USER18> I throught I read this is this discouraged. The QR code amount can differ from what is printed as text. It can yhen be used to scam a customer that does not pay attention as well as make it legally unclear what the balance due really is.</comment>


They Killed 'Star Wars,' and Why It Matters - <AUTHOR> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1Q3xQdfcoOQ <comment><USER2> I'm definitely looking forward to the "Why It Doesn't Matter" episode. Although it wouldn't be as intensely frenetic.</comment>


Dart Language Asynchrony Support: Phase 2 - <AUTHOR> https://www.dartlang.org/articles/beyond-async/

<comment><USER2> Idle curiosity because I've heard so little about it in the past year: Who out there is using Dart now?</comment>


Mozilla says Firefox 3 ready for prime-time - <AUTHOR> http://www.reuters.com/article/newsOne/idUSN2041266520080320

<comment><USER2> _Key rivals to Firefox are market leader Microsoft's Internet Explorer and Apple Inc's Safari browser._

It doesn't bode well for Opera when they aren't even included in the list. I'm not even an Opera user, but why _doesn't_ Opera get more love? They have some critical flaw in their browser? Or is it just because it's not the default of a major OS?

I do really enjoy that the browser wars got started again because they are now development platforms. Shows that a seemingly dead market doesn't always stay that way if you innovate.

<comment><USER3> I think that opera has become the third wheel when there is only enough space for 2. The opera browser is pretty good IMHO and it has some outstanding features that people may enjoy but it just doesn't have firefox's plugin support or the wide acceptability and market share of IE. If everybody used opera, everybody would probably continue using opera just how if everybody used firefox, they would continue using firefox, and how now that ~80% use IE, about 80% continue to use IE. Browsers and pretty much anything on the internet run into a phenomena known as network externalities. It is a situation where switching costs are so high that once a user is committed to one choice, they stick to it. Opera is just in the wrong market at the wrong time. This is also why firefox's progress is so amazing. Fighting network externalities is very tough (see ipv4 vs. ipv6).

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> The browser might be ready but the add-ins are not. I just installed Unbuntu 8.04 Hardy and the FF v3 beta 4 worked great, however 70% of my add-ins didn't work. Including things like Filter-set G (must for add blocking), Tab Mix Plus and FoxMark book mark Synchroniser, CustomizeGoogle. Things I can't live without. SO I went back to FF2. By the way you can have both installed and only minor problems using them with same settings. Don't launch at same time though

<comment><USER5> Install Mr. Tech Toolkit <https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/421>

Under "tools" in the extensions manager, there will be an option "make all compatible". It'll disable the compatibility checks. Works great for me so far.

<comment><USER6> Alternatively, you can add a boolean "extensions.checkCompatibility" field in about:config and set it to false.

<comment><USER4> I did that but it somewhat defeats the purpose of the whole thing. The problem is that some of the add-ins do NOT work with the beta version so overwriting the check is kind of an exercise in futility

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Prime time = no Firebug? Eep. I'll wait until it comes out on DVD. It worked fine for me, but I kind of use Firebug a lot. Sorry, I forgot I was on the internet. I use it alot.

Installing version 3 dumped all my sessions. Not a big deal, but FYI that you'll have to re-log in to everything if you have the same experience I did.

<comment><USER8> The Firebug 1.1 Beta works with FF3 <http://www.getfirebug.com/>

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Great, but I think I will wait for version 3.01 when they fix most of the bugs. I am still running v. 1.5, as FF 2.0 was terrible, ok maybe not terrible, I just didn't like a lot of the changes they did to the ui.

</comment><comment><USER10> First impressions: I like it. It starts up much more quickly (I'm on OS X), and the interface is nicer (the tabs look better, the back button is larger than the forward button).

</comment><comment><USER11> Does that mean that FF3 is now in Google-beta (as opposed to normal beta, where prime-time comes _after_ the beta versions)?

</comment><comment><USER12> I won't get on the bandwagon yet until I can use Vimperator and FireBug without any problems.</comment>


Free software ain't free to make, pal, it's expensive: Mozilla to bankro - <AUTHOR> https://www.theregister.co.uk/2019/06/11/mozilla_firefox_premium_services/ <comment><USER2> Why does it have to be a VPN? If money is what they need they could establish a casino as they are rather profitable..

Not that I have anything against VPNs or anything but its just another product. Why would a VPN service save the bacon?

I know that sounds dickish because it is, but I want to make free software projects myself and I want free software to flourish. Yet to survive we have to invent entire side businesses just to keep it alive.

<comment><USER3> I think a vpn operated by mozilla is at least something that I can have trust in.

<comment><USER4> It's ProtonVPN</comment></comment></comment>


Opinion: China Is Pushing Toward Global Blockchain Dominance - <AUTHOR> https://www.wired.com/story/opinion-china-is-pushing-toward-global-blockchain-dominance/ <comment><USER2> Sure. A database whose history ostensibly cannot be altered fits perfectly into a vision of keeping perfect records on people.

Imagine that data about everything you've ever done is recorded into a single, "immutable", and persistent database. Every school grade, police record, purchase, or transgression, no matter how small. All of it.

And then imagine building and controlling a society around that information, based on the assumption that the data cannot be altered.

...but then learn that it can (because incidentally, the government controls the majority of it). But good luck explaining that, because the "immutable" ledger says otherwise.</comment>


Planet Django - <AUTHOR> http://planetdjango.org/

<comment><USER2> There is also <http://www.djangoproject.com/community/> , the official aggregator.

<comment><USER3> this was apparently made as another option to the official aggregator. while its slightly easier to read, it looks nearly identical, and offers no new functionality to really make it worth switching -- especially for someone who reads the official aggregator in a feed reader.

<comment><USER4> One important addition that you can make is to add popularity metric to each post so that readers can segregate popular posts vs non popular posts.

One such thought of adding popular metric is:

1)Track the number of shares happening for that post in twitter,delicious,Google Reader (via Friendfeed API).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> The dates shown for the blog posts are incorrect. They all say September 20, 2009, when in fact the underlying dates go back to 2008. It looks more like the time at which it was imported. It should be displaying the pubDate from the feeds.

</comment><comment><USER6> Aggregators are fun. Here's one I made for Drupal:

<http://drupalfire.com/>

I've found that people visit the site once, subscribe to the RSS, and don't come back.

<comment><USER7> maybe they're happy just reading the RSS?

<comment><USER8> That's why you should insert ads into the RSS! ¬_¬

<comment><USER9> I subscribe via RSS using Firefox's live bookmark feature (so, I've got a directory of bookmarks that list rss article titles). When I want to read an article, I go to the site and read it via that RSS bookmark link (ads are there and all).

Do you use RSS differently? If so, how?

<comment><USER8> Through a "dedicated" RSS reader, Liferea.

<comment><USER9> Thanks for the reply. I've only ever used the method I described above. Seems nice to read the article on its own website (styled the way the author intended).</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Show HN: Ancestor Chat – Let family chat with you after you die - <AUTHOR> https://ancestorchat.com <comment><USER2> Inspired by a Black Mirror episode? :)

<comment><AUTHOR> Never watched that show but might give it a try. Aside from personally wishing I had such a tool when growing up, one of my inspirations for this comes from Superman's parents. They send their son to earth with a hologram AI version of themselves recorded in the ships computer or crystals. Superman later in life used to chat with them and learn about his origins and true parents.</comment></comment>


Want to start work as a consultant – what should I watch out for? - <AUTHOR>

I'm potentially going to start work on my first independent consultant job, but I was hoping to hear from others experienced in this area about what to expect in terms of standard agreements.<p>Do most pay all at the end or can I ask for half upfront? What is a standard rate per hour? Finally, should I agree to this: http://pastebin.com/7m2xBjLg <comment><USER2> Don't bill hourly.

Incorporate.

Never reduce your rate; cut project scope instead.

Every project worth doing is worth writing a statement of work.

A good SOW includes acceptance criteria.

Don't expect to work on your own paper; clients will require you to sign their contracts.

Get a lawyer, have them review every contract you sign. (This is why there are MSAs and SOWs.)

The lawyer advises, they don't decide.

If a lawyer is too expensive, your rates are too low.

Also, your rates are too low.

Don't position yourself based on tech stacks. "Node.js consultant" is a crappy differentiator.

Don't set your rates based on your previous full-time salary. Your rate is barely even _related_ to your salary.

Get health insurance.

 _Do not fuck around on taxes_. You owe them quarterly.

Serious consultancies don't demand up-front payment. Do what you need to until you get serious, though.

Finally: you need a lawyer to evaluate that clause. It could be a boilerplate IP assignment, or it could be a blanket concession that your client can file a difficult-to-dismiss lawsuit against you any time for all time.

If this project isn't worth the $200 that will cost you, it's not worth doing at all.

<comment><USER3> This is useful advice. Thank you.

How important are references or building a portfolio? And what do you tell clients to convince them to pick you and your rates?

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I would watch out for . . . prior to or during the term of this Agreement . . . the prior language doesn't sound quite right . . .

I typically work with multiple clients not a single client so I include in my contract that I retain the right use portions of the code provide as a deliverable for previous, current and future clients but will not re-use their code in it's entirety. Typically projects have some portions that are standard and re-used over and over . . . occasionally a client will request I agree not to re-use their business logic specific code and that's fair . . .

I would recommend asking them to change the wording to they only own the code/patents of work developed specifically during working hours for their company and projects and that you hold the rights to any code and IP developed on your own time and all work prior to your agreement. Using a more modern standard agreement would probably be a better starting point . . .and having an attorney review it would be recommended before signing anything.

As far as a rate . . . I would google similar job listings . . . without much knowledge of your position I would expect $100 to $200/hr . . . but I would get the IP agreement worked out at the same time as your salary . . .

</comment><comment><USER5> For small contracts, I usually ask for half up-front and half at delivery. Medium-size might be in thirds with the second payment invoiced when they get the prototype. For large contracts I tend to do monthly payments with a little bit of front-loading (ex: for a 100k project over 6 mos, 20k x 2 months and then 15k x 4 months).

Your hourly rate is entirely dependent on the project, skillset, and experience. A small PHP-only developer cannot command the same rate that a full-stack backend, frontend, and iOS developer might. Delivery timelines also play in - if they want it next week there's a premium.

I'd avoid that agreement, it's overly broad. I try to make mine assign on full payment / completion of project and cover only the work performed for the contract. If I can swing it, I try a non-exclusive license instead of full assignment as well, which allows me to reuse code.

</comment><comment><USER6> The contract specifies that any knowlege or work you did prior to the contract that you used to fulfill the contract is owned by the company. This is a method to become impoverished, and have all of your related prior knowledge and work owned by the company, causing you to be unable to do similar work for anyone else. There is no future to any of your knowledge and work related to work you did for the company, except by the permission and whim of the company.

Do not agree to this contract.

      "Consultant agrees that all...conceived, discovered,
      authored, invented, developed or reduced to practice by
      Consultant...prior to or during the term of this
      Agreement...and arising out of, or in connection with..."

</comment><comment><USER7> If I've never worked with the client before I always ask for 50% up front. No exceptions. Once we have a relationship I _may_ lower that, but it's not guaranteed.

Price yourself so that: _if_ that 50% turns out to be the only money you ever receive from them, the job will still have been worth your time.

Keep your clients at arms-length. They are _not_ your friends. Never allow the scope of a project to be changed based on a conversation or a phone call, anything that could get you sued needs to be in writing. Be very strict about this.

</comment><comment><USER8> Look up Consulting Guru Alan Weiss, brilliant advice applicable to general consulting, tons of content, sign-up for his e-newsletter> [http://www.summitconsulting.com/](http://www.summitconsulting.com/)

Also, suggest reading his recent release on launching a consulting practice> [http://www.amazon.com/Million-Dollar-Launch-Kick-start- Succe...](http://www.amazon.com/Million-Dollar-Launch-Kick-start- Successful/dp/0071826343/ref=la_B000AQ0PNG_1_5?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1412269482&sr=1-5)

</comment><comment><USER9> Read: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8395422](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8395422)

You could encounter such problems locally as well. I certainly have. Do not let such issues deter you. Just be aware that not all clients conduct themselves ethically. You need to protect yourself.

</comment><comment><USER10> It would be helpful to know what area you will be consulting in. That will help us to give pointers, suggest rates, and determine if that agreement makes sense for what you will be doing.

For example, that agreement may be ground for a company to claim rights to software you develop on your free time while you are in their pay.

<comment><AUTHOR> That's what I'm worried about. I'd be acting in a data analysis/software dev role. What can I do to change the language?

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> 1\. Well defined tangible deliverables (project requirements) are a must for any fixed cost projects.

2\. Either the client prepares the requirements document and you review it or you bill the client to prepare a requirements document.

</comment><comment><USER12> Search for "consulting agreement" on Docracy, that will get you started [https://www.docracy.com/](https://www.docracy.com/)

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you. I see that most agreements have the same sort of language about the company maintaining ownership of all work...

<comment><USER13> you are being contracted out to perform a service that will be entirely owned by the entity you do the work for.

That's the essence of contracting. It's not really any different than working at a company that also owns everything you do on the companies time.</comment></comment></comment>


The Truth about Disroot - <AUTHOR> https://privacy-watchdog.io/the-truth-about-disroot-org/ <comment><USER2> I like their free Nextcloud feature, but wouldn't upload anything in plaintext. It's now the fashion to encrypt everything before uploading it to cloud services. I use a combination of 7zip, Veracrypt, and if I can mount a cloud drive as a filesystem, then I use Cryptomator. The same goes for their email: PGP with friends who know how to use it too and if I need to contact grandma, then Whatsapp (which you can get on featurephones/dumbphones now)</comment>


A new interactive tutorial on debugging JavaScript in Chrome DevTools - <AUTHOR> https://developers.google.com/web/tools/chrome-devtools/javascript <comment><AUTHOR> I wrote this, just thought I'd spread the word. Feedback welcome. Go easy on me :)</comment>


Bike Commuting help Dutch meet physical activity guideline - <AUTHOR> http://www.ijbnpa.org/content/7/1/89 <comment><USER2> I ride my bike everywhere all year round here in Berlin and I find the main point of making it more enjoyable/safer for cyclists is having many other cyclists. It raises drivers awareness and provides a critical mass. I know this is some kind of chicken and egg situation but I find it to be true.

When I was living in England the Cycling Touring Club there deemphasised separate bike lanes arguing that they were for the convenience of drivers and not cyclists. For a long time I wanted to believe this but now I have arrived at the conclusion that integrated bike lanes (the ones on the same level as the actual road not behind a line of trees) are actually useful and it makes me feel safer using them.

<comment><USER3> I likewise feel the same in the US. In areas where cyclists are common, I am more confident that cars/etc are more used to cyclists and know how to 'handle' them. I've noticed that cyclists have become more common since ~2008 when gas prices spiked, and car drivers now tend to be more accommodating of them.

I think bike lanes are more useful as _indicators_ of bike traffic on a given road. The bike lane tells drivers that there may be many cyclists on that road, and to watch out for them. The lane's typical proximity to parked cars (prime 'dooring' territory), pedestrians, and debris can often make it less useful as an actual lane for cyclists.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I always find it absolutely fascinating to see how many people ride their bikes whenever I'm in the Netherlands. Where I come from, I think you'd have a really hard time seeing somebody ride a bike in public who's older than 30 years. It's probably already difficult to find someone who's older than 20 and not a student.

In the Netherlands however, people of all ages ride a bike on a daily basis. It's not unusual to see more bikes on the bike lane than cars on the street. I remember once I was walking through a Dutch city and had to wait for more than a minute before I could cross the street, because there was a huge chain of bikers passing by, they just kept coming one after another. And that wasn't a sports event, just regular people. Oh, and they go hella fast and ride up really close to the one riding before them.

Really cool!

<comment><USER5> Here's a sample video shot in the city where I live (Utrecht): <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n-AbPav5E5M>

At times (e.g. 6PM workdays) certain routes can be even busier. If you're interested, here are a lot more videos on this subject: <http://www.youtube.com/user/markenlei#p/u>

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> I would suspect that the density leading to more walking also aids greatly in that guideline, much like the denser US cities on the East Coast.

My wife's grandmother lives in Den Hague, and she has a Great Aunt who lives in a tiny town called Terneuzen (which apparently I never pronounced correctly, judging by native reaction). Two years ago, we went all over Holland, starting with a few days in Amsterdam. The biking culture was quite the shock to the system. Not just people biking to and from work, but everywhere. I remember riding trains and seeing bike lanes between cities. Kind of a revelation to me. I found it completely fascinating. The bike racks overflowed with so many bikes that I have no idea how folks keep track of where they left their bike.

I've unfortunately let my tech skills get rusty by moving into a project management position these last few years, and I don't speak Dutch. That said, I would immigrate there in heart beat if I could figure out a way to do so that wouldn't break our finances (I'm trying to get up to speed on Ruby to perhaps the point where I could consult/work remotely). Everything just seemed to make sense in that country, very logical people. Not only the biking, but their attitude towards social programs and families I found very refreshing.

Tot ziens!

<comment><USER3> If you're interested in biking more often, the easiest way is to ensure that you live a short distance from where you work. Then, at least when its nice out, it'll be easy to make your commute more interesting.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> The Dutch reclaimed a large proportion of their national territory from the sea, presumably because they needed more space and then proceeded to allow large scale immigration from Morocco. I wouldn't like to live in Holland. They're packed like sardines there. Not cycling is probably not an option

<comment><USER8> I'm baffled. Someone even upvoted this. I guess it's performance art!

<comment><USER7> Can I ask you to explain what you mean?

<comment><USER8> I suspect you are trolling? You made a characterization of the Netherlands that seems to be constructed from randomly chosen and misrepresented facts, misunderstandings, and hand-waving...

<comment><USER7> I wasn't trolling.

The netherlands has increased its area by an extraordinary 25% by reclaiming land from the sea.

Despite this the netherlands is one of the most densely populated countries on earth.

It has further increased its population by allowing immigration on a large scale, which whatever else its consequences is not going to reduce population density.

Now if you look at a nightime satellite view of Europe, the Netherlands is an uninterrupted patch of light.

I'd rather live in a country where I have the possibility of escaping from my fellow man every once in a while. That's not possible in Holland so I'd rather not live there.

I can, however, see why cycling is popular/necessary there

<comment><USER9> Use this list from Wikipedia, and order by population density:

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_sovereign_states_and_de...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_sovereign_states_and_dependent_territories_by_population_density)

The Netherlands is at the 28th spot, behind countries such as South Korea, Singapore, and Macao. Then compare the densities of e.g. Singapore (7,023 per km^2) and The Netherlands (401 per km^2).

Stating the facts makes it all seem far less dramatic, doesn't it?

<comment><USER7> "Stating the facts makes it all seem far less dramatic, doesn't it?"

I don't believe that I have stated any fictions if that's what your last remark implies.

I had a look at the wiki page you linked to.

Most of those 27 countries ahead of the Netherlands are negligible in terms of size, vatican City, Guernsey, Monaco, St Martin?

There are some sizeable countries but I don't believe being able to report a population density lower than, say, Bangladesh, is a cause for celebration.

As for living in a country with a population density of over 7000 per sq km, it is not something to be aspired to.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Employers Win Workers With Perks, Not Raises - <AUTHOR> http://www.dailyfinance.com/story/careers/raises-are-still-scarce-but-employee-perks-are-making-a-comebac/19866547/

<comment><USER2> Does interesting work count as a perk? I don't really care about most of the perks that were listed (e.g. on-site dry-cleaning, professional mentoring or subsidized training) but the best way to keep me on is to make sure I don't get bored. If I have to ask more than a couple of times for more challenging work and don't get anything from my manager, I'm going to find it somewhere else.

<comment><AUTHOR> A lot of the times ordinary office jobs consist of low morale repetitive tasks.. I agree with you, being engaged is a fundamental need of humanity.</comment></comment>