Philosophy Needs a New Definition - <AUTHOR> https://lareviewofbooks.org/article/philosophy-needs-a-new-definition/ <comment><USER2> _The cresting of a wave is but its fall; the flash of a bolt of lightning is but its fading.

Likewise, knowledge, drinking up the water of ignorance, grows so large that it completely annihilates itself.

This absolute knowledge is like the intrinsic fullness of the moon, which is unaffected by its apparent waxing and waning._

~Jnaneshwar

 _Knowledge that is acquired is not like this. Those who have it worry if audiences like it or not. It 's a bait for popularity. Disputational knowing wants customers. It has no soul... The only real customer is God. Chew quietly your sweet sugarcane God-Love, and stay playfully childish._

~Rumi

 _My words are very easy to understand

And very easy to practice.

Still, no one in the world

Can understand or practice them.

My words have an origin.

My deeds have a sovereign.

Truly, because people do not understand this,

They do not understand me.

That so few understand me is why I am treasured.

Therefore, the sage wears coarse clothes, concealing jade._

~Lao Tzu

Perhaps, the article showcases a confusion between the knowledge of the world, deemed philosophy, and the knowledge of the absolute, also called philosophy. Hence, there is philosophy as interpretation and argument on the one hand, and philosophy as revelation on the other. This is seen in the philosophers listed in the article.

<comment><USER3> Robert Pirsig differentiated philosophy in a similar way: between Philosophy, the knowledge of the world; and Philosophology, the kind of organising things they do in Anglo-American Philosophy departments, in his classic Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance.

<comment><USER2> Thank you.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Philosophy used to be the general designation assigned to anyone who thought alot. This was before science and the delineation of disciplines of thought.

Physicists used to be known as natural philosophers. As the conceptual tools and frameworks they used became so refined and distant from the sort of thinking people normally do that the intelligent layman couldn't contribute, it became clear the activity of the natural philosophers was not just philosophizing, it was doing physics. Thus the physicist was born.

Basically any time a field develops, in that a specific set of related questions is identified and pursued, the devotees to the field become identified with the field. Biologists, linguists, psychologists, physicists, chemists... They are all essentially philosophers, all thinking critically about problems that concern them, but we want to be precise with our language so we develop more specific words to describe them and their actions.

<comment><USER5> I like Russell's definition (and his beautiful prose):

 _Philosophy, as I shall understand the word, is something intermediate between theology and science. Like theology, it consists of speculations on matters as to which definite knowledge has, so far, been unascertainable; but like science, it appeals to human reason rather than to authority, whether that of tradition or that of revelation. All definite knowledge—so I should contend— belongs to science; all dogma as to what surpasses definite knowledge belongs to theology. But between theology and science there is a No Man 's Land, exposed to attack from both sides; this No Man's Land is philosophy_

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Think of a triangle. At one point is "philosopher", at another "asshole", and the third "idiot".

Consider the edge between "philosopher" and "idiot" to be "innocent love". Consider the edge between "philosopher" and "asshole" to be "pure knowledge".

The total idiot has all the love and none of the knowledge. The total asshole has all of the knowledge and none of the love. The total philosopher has all the love and all of the knowledge.

Anti-philosophers fall somewhere along the "asshole-idiot" spectrum. Stock brokers, tech bloggers, newscasters, Hollywood actors. You get the drift.

<comment><USER7> This is exactly the kind of comment which confirms my opinion about how useless philosophy is.

I am honestly wondering if you are trolling or actually trying to make a point.

<comment><USER8> Why do you think philosophy is useless?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> From the headline, I thought that the article would be some materialist Sam Harris fanboy talking about how analytic philosophy is the only real philosophy and how science can tell us objective truths about morality. Count me surprised! This writer has great taste.

Philosophy and poetry are closely related. Transmission of knowledge is very difficult. People don't learn well through textbooks and diagrams; they learn through metaphors and poetic forms. Philosophy _must_ be entangled with messy stuff like this, otherwise pedagogy is impossible.

<comment><USER10> For most people, yes, I'd agree. For me personally, not really. I grasp abstractions and formal stuff almost instantly, but it takes a lot of grappling with the text for me to come to terms with continental philosophy. Like, I had zero trouble with Kant's Critique, but I had to read Discipline and Punish 3 times before I felt like I "got it".

NOTE: This doesn't mean I disparage continental philosophy, just noting that the discursive/narrative mode is not intuitive for everyone.

<comment><USER11> I've noticed I have a similar problem myself. What other authors have you found interesting and accessible?

<comment><USER10> If you are interested at all in continental philosophy, I'd say Lyotard is a really good place to start for folks coming from an analytic philosophy or hard science background. He engages with some of the same ideas as the rest of the continental milieu but his writing style is not nearly as dense and allusive as the rest. For more contemporary stuff, Badiou is really interesting. He's, among other things, trying to bridge the gap between analytic and continental philosophy. If you want to dive deeper, I'd try to understand the historical development of contemporary continental philosophy from Kant through German idealism via Hegel. A lot of the stuff that is confusing in continental philosophy is confusing because we tend to teach it without regards to its historical development (I know my continental philosophy class was like this at least).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> People tend to forget that PhD (when translated into english) means "Doctor of Philosophy in..."

While getting my bachelor's in math, I often heard peers explain the following: Math ==> Physics ==> Chemistry ==> Biology ...with the intended implication that all science rests on math.

Here's the diagram I'd come back with. It wasn't exactly met with enthusiasm: Philosophy ==> Math ==> Physics ==> Chemistry ==> Biology

<comment><USER13> So what? In the UK we have a bunch of old farts who get made Knights of the Realm. Doesn't make them great fighters. It's just a name.

Philosophy today is a joke, it's all the bits which real, disciplined, thinkers can't be bothered with yet. Philosophy is a massive con, basically armchair thinkers who offer no practical, testable, recreatable, advice. And I did an actual Philosophy degree!

The only bastion of Philosophy had left was moral philosophy and even that's becoming irrelevant now neuroscience and social science are becoming grown up sciences and giving us cold, hard facts of why our brain finds things moral or not, and what moral rules actually work for communities.

Meanwhile, the moral philosophers all wander off and have a good old argument about if being altruistic is _really_ being altruistic because it makes you feel good and what is the meaning of the word 'know'. So edgy, so sexy, so completely pointless.

<comment><USER14> > So what? In the UK we have a bunch of old farts who get made Knights of the > Realm. Doesn't make them great fighters. It's just a name.

blatant non-sequitur

> Philosophy today is a joke, it's all the bits which real, disciplined, > thinkers can't be bothered with yet.

a recent study shows that "Physics, Mathematical Sciences and Philosophy are among the majors with the highest IQs in America, according to research." [https://thetab.com/us/2017/04/10/which-major-has-highest- iq-...](https://thetab.com/us/2017/04/10/which-major-has-highest-iq-64811) – third on the list between the mathematical sciences and materials engineering. would you agree that IQ is a proxy for 'real disciplined thinking'? if you do then your assertion about philosophy is false. if you don't then you would need to explain why philosophers uniquely exhibit high IQ but fail to be 'real disciplined thinkers'.

> Philosophy is a massive con, basically armchair thinkers who offer no > practical, testable, recreatable, advice. And I did an actual Philosophy > degree!

the philosophical method is conceptual analysis. this can indeed be done in an armchair. it can also be done through dialogue. it can be ventured into via literature and art as the article demonstrates. it can even be performed by computational devices. as one manipulates concepts one makes claims about their interrelations and their relations to the world. these claims are amenable to analysis. it's not a massive con, it's just extremely difficult while at the same time deceptively easy because it looks like all philosophers do is "think about a bunch of stuff". philosophy is as much about introspection to see where our biases lie. think of your mind like a weighing scales, if that scales is off the measurement will be incorrect. part of philosophy is the removal of prejudices and biases from your mind and being able to spot the flaws and fallacies of others. this takes a long time. not everyone is able to do it well, some cannot do it at all. because of relentlessly increasing specialisation philosophy plays a more mediating role, it also tends towards abstraction – thus, not everyone is cut out for it. it's not to everyone's taste. just because it's not for you there's no need to trash the entire discipline. i never liked accounting (for instance) but i'd never turn around then and say it was a joke or a con.

> The only bastion of Philosophy had left was moral philosophy and even that's > becoming irrelevant now neuroscience and social science are becoming grown > up sciences and giving us cold, hard facts of why our brain finds things > moral or not, and what moral rules actually work for communities.

bullshit. every branch of philosophy is thriving. i would argue that it is actually to the detriment of philosophy that moral philosophy and its various ethical branches (business ethics, environmental ethics, bioethics, territorial rights, human rights, and so on) secure funding over other areas through a perception that they're more relevant. they're not.

> Meanwhile, the moral philosophers all wander off and have a good old > argument about if being altruistic is really being altruistic because it > makes you feel good

kindergarten stuff – i suggest reading the works of the late Derek Parfit, for one, to see what actually concerns the contemporary moral philosopher

> and what is the meaning of the word 'know'.

wrong, that's epistemology (different branch to ethics)

> So edgy, so sexy, so completely pointless.

not an argument – you would think you might have learned that somewhere during your philosophy degree

<comment><USER13> > blatant non-sequitur

1\. Grandparent claims there's something meaningful behind the _name_ of a degree being prefixed with "Doctor of Philosophy in...".

2\. I draw parallels between a "Knight of the realm" bearing no relevance to the martial prowess of the recipients today.

It's just a name, a tradition, it's meaningless.

<comment><USER14> I see what you mean, that is an interesting parallel. An oversight on my part.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> To quote AL Daily:

 _Philosophy now comes to us in one form: the peer-reviewed article, published (preferably in English) in an academic journal. No wonder philosophy has become so irrelevant._

<comment><USER15> The incentives in academic philosophy aren't really around finding truth, but rather getting published so you can keep your tenure. There are a lot of academic philosophers that have crawled so far up their own asses they don't even know the way out any more. But they don't represent all of philosophy, even if they get a lot of attention.

Philosophy broadly defined is as vital and important as ever, though. I can't imagine a world in which trying to understand it is no longer important. Not everything there is to know about the world has been systematized enough to be considered a science, and any time you have a knowledge domain where the boundaries are fuzzy and poorly understood, there is going to be a place for philosophers to try and bring some order to it, even if it takes a few thousand years.

<comment><USER16> What strikes me most about philosophy is in how core it is to everything we do — and this is something I didn't realize for the longest time. The foundations of the economic, social, and political systems we live in are based upon philosophy; on theories of the nature of man laid down by thinkers such as Rousseau, Kant, and Smith. It turns out that "self evident truths" might actually be philosophical assertions. Philosophy is the first principle upon which many ideas we may initially take for granted rest upon, and I wonder if a general lack of explicit attention and examination on the subject is partially what enables some of the "post truth" attitudes we are seeing today. The more I learn, the more I can relate to "all I know is I know nothing."

<comment><USER17> "What strikes me most about philosophy is in how core it is to everything we do — and this is something I didn't realize for the longest time."

Same. I used to take strong exception to the idea that philosophy was worth any amount of time to study... but then I realized any argument to reject it or degrade its utility is necessarily philosophical and changed my tune.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> At this stage in life (maybe not at the time), I relate to my own education in philosophy as "learning to think", or "learning to reason", perhaps.

You have to follow a train of thought through and address even the minutest details for logical consistency, or another person (playing the devil's advocate, most likely) will find the inconsistencies and use them to poke a hole in the entire argument. This skill is not limited to debate. Debate is just one way to exercise it.

The usefulness of being able to carry out long, cohesive trains of thought is so general and pervasive that it's hard to describe any one situation, on the lines of "a hammer is useful for getting nails into a board", that describes it rather than diminishes it.

<comment><USER19> Following this stage, there is an important realization: The details never stop. There's always more "what if"s and more "unless"es. Always another stop on the train of thought. I say it's important, because sometimes our ideas seem very big or well-contained, when in fact, it's an impossibility.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> "myth, poetry, drama, mysticism, scientific thinking, political militancy, or social activism" are all alive and well. Whether we include them in 'philosophy' or not may be of importance for those seeking prestige or positions in these fields, but is a matter of little significance for the rest of us.

And there is also a need in this world for formalized thinking on fundamental questions. Not only has formal thinking often brought clarity and progress, formalism has a poetry of its own which poets know nothing about.

</comment><comment><USER21> I love that the author quotes Kant in the context of imbuing philosophy with storytelling. It's true!

>>> begin quote

One philosopher writes, with studied relief, of arriving to "the land of truth," which is "surrounded by a wide and stormy ocean, the region of illusion, where many a fog-bank, many an iceberg, seems to the mariner, on his voyage of discovery, a new country." The quote is not from Nietzsche or Benjamin's work, nor from other "literary philosophers" — it's from Kant's Critique of Pure Reason.

>>> end quote

</comment><comment><USER22> A good, if depressing, argument can be made for defining philosophy as "that which happens in academic philosophy departments." Ideas have a quorum of people that you have to convince in order to be taken seriously, when your thoughts aspire to the philosophical, then that quorum exists solely in the academy and related organizations grounded in the academy.

Any attempts to get outside of this mean expanding the quorum to "anyone, really." Which means the standard publishing cycle where your idea's merits are judged by sales figures. Which means that every single book out there is a philosophy treatise.

Any marketplace of ideas has to have its gatekeepers. Otherwise we all drown in a deluge of shit. Traditional literature, art, architecture, really any serious creative endeavor has an industry of people that serves as the gatekeepers that determine both the current status and the zeitgeist of the art. Outsiders must build their own audiences and fight their way in, rather than be able to tap the extant audience that the gatekeepers are the guardians of. It's difficult to see how it could happen any other way. Otherwise you get legions of wannabes proffering crap. Philosophy is no different.

<comment><USER23> Similarly, we could say that science is 'whatever studies Nature publishes', but that doesn't tell us much and threatens to leave the mistaken impression that Nature is merely capricious and arbitrary.

While I agree with your conclusion, we shouldn't forget that philosophy and other marketplaces you mention have standards based mostly on what proved to be true in the past, what can withstand argument and criticism in the idea marketplace, and on a commitment to excellence and achievement.

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> Profound philosophy needs to take into account messiness, but cannot be messy itself in its use of concepts, reasoning etc.

By being strict one can realise the limits of the very cognitive tools we use. Godel and Quine come to mind. The concepts are limiting, but that's all we have in philosophy.

The article mentions some exceptions, but it's a completely different playground. Rumi, Lao Tzu and Buddha were using their teachings as a practical instructions, rather than theories aiming to prove anything about the world.

For instance Rumi composed all his verses in a specific rhythms (obviously lost in translation) that, when sang and danced to, were meant to induce a specific states of mind.

Buddha explicitly said that metaphysical questions are orthogonal to the problem of suffering that he was solving (or just meaningless).

To make things even more complex, there are some similarities between teachings of the Buddha and western pragmatists.

The main problem (or the most fun part) in such discussions, is that there's no common ground to make such inter-paradigm comparisons. We always have to pick one of these viewpoints as a base and compare it to another one from that perspective.

<comment><USER25> >The article mentions some exceptions, but it's a completely different playground. Rumi, Lao Tzu and Buddha were using their teachings as a practical instructions, rather than theories aiming to prove anything about the world.

Is philosophy about proof or understanding? Math and the sciences are there to look for proof. Remember that Science used to be called Natural Philosophy, which has now become a philosophical enterprise based on conjecture and empirical reproducible observation.

We need philosophers through their teachings to make sense of all that messiness and let those branches of philosophy such as the sciences gradually work out how it works in ways that can be confirmed and proven.

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> This article must come from within academia itself, to presume that there is any such problem with philosophy; they have confused their academic problem as being philosophical; we all derive most of our philosophy from all kinds of art and experience, hardly any of it from college philosophy courses; and academic philosophy eventually admits those it is not likely to produce: there is plenty of philosophy that does not adhere to contemporary academic formalism, yet they teach it under the banner of philosophy just the same; they'd look stupid if they didn't!

</comment><comment><USER27> _When he who hears doesn 't understand him who speaks, and when he who speaks doesn't know what he himself means -- that is philosophy._

Voltaire

</comment><comment><USER28> I always had a simple way to think about philosophy.

There is a world of difference between knowing about philosophy (the history of it and what various philosophers "actually" meant) and then to be a philosopher (a thinker).

The person who knows a lot about philosophy is often academic. They can tell you the difference between Frege and Wittgenstein and have a million ways to interpret Nietcshe.

In my experience though, the best philosophers come from all parts of life and are what I would call careful thinkers. They can be well read or not it's the way they deal with the subject they discuss that makes them great.

So sure give philosophy a new definition in academia to fight over and debate if you'd like, it won't change much for those who know how to think.

</comment><comment><USER29> Highly recommend "My Big Toe" by Thomas Campbell</comment>


Senior VP Bob Mansfield removed from Apple's leadership page - <AUTHOR> http://www.apple.com/pr/bios/ <comment><USER2> Geeze, I'm reminded of Kremlinology; Wikipedia ([http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kremlinology](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kremlinology)) puts it well:

" _During the Cold War, lack of reliable information about the country forced Western analysts to "read between the lines" and to use the tiniest tidbits, such as the removal of portraits, the rearranging of chairs, positions at the reviewing stand for parades in Red Square...._"

<comment><USER3> Cupertinology?

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> From MacRumors:

> According to Reuters reporter Poornima Gupta, "Bob Mansfield is no longer on > Apple's exec team but will remain at Apple working on special projects > reporting to Cook."

> ...

> Last year, Apple announced that Mansfield would be retiring, but several > months later announced he would instead be staying at the company. Later, it > leaked that Tim Cook had faced an "insurrection" after Mansfield announced > his retirement, and Cook gave him an extremely generous benefits package.

So he's moved on to whatever special arrangement has been made for him?

[http://www.macrumors.com/2013/07/28/apple-senior-vice- presid...](http://www.macrumors.com/2013/07/28/apple-senior-vice-president- bob-mansfield-removed-from-leadership-webpage/)

</comment><comment><USER5> When I clicked on "Senior VP Bob Mansfield removed from Apple's leadership page", I was sort of expecting some kind of speculation on why Bob Mansfield was removed, what it might mean for Apple, maybe even a clue as to who exactly Bob Mansfield is and what he does at Apple. Instead I got a link to the leadership page. See, he's not there!

"Senior VP Bill the Cat removed from Apple's leadership page" would've carried just as much information.

<comment><USER6> Here is a page mirrored at archive.org, now 404ing on Apple's website, that will provide at least a little more information on Bill the Cat.

[http://web.archive.org/web/20130723144507/http://www.apple.c...](http://web.archive.org/web/20130723144507/http://www.apple.com/pr/bios/bob- mansfield.html)

According to [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bob_Mansfield](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bob_Mansfield), he was retiring as of 13 months ago but stayed on for some reason, possibly because of Scott Forstall's departure. Given the circumstances, his may have been an interim role while Apple searched for a long-term solution.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Not knowing anything about Apple leadership in the first place I was struck by the male homogenity on that page.

<comment><USER8> Yeah, my first thought was "wow look at all these old white guys". If the pictures weren't right next to each other I'd probably have trouble telling any two of them apart.

<comment><USER9> If you think that's an acceptable thing to say, :%s/white/any other race/g and re-read your comment.

<comment><USER10> Does everything have to be racist nowadays?

I'm an "old white guy". I wasn't offended.

<comment><USER9> That's great, I'm happy for you. However, implying that people of the same race look alike as to be indistinguishable from one another is offensive to a lot of people.

<comment><USER10> A lot of old white men _do_ look alike. It's not racist, it's an observation.

<comment><USER11> I suggest @jlgaddis's responses highlight an important distinction between "offensive" (the word used by @sjtgraham) and "racist". While it is always a good rule of thumb to seek not to offend, often we might waive that to aid humour or to bring out a point. In this case I suspect the OP (OC?) was trying to mock (in turn to highlight the uniformity of the Apple leadership team), by clever reversal, the common occurrence of some white people's inability to differentiate between people of other colours (I am brown, my sons at school are frequently referred to by names of other Indian kids, some who have graduated and left the school 3-4 years ago; that's hardly racist, or even offensive, especially in comparison to the lack of women and minority in positions of leadership and power).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> _taken from the wayback machine_

      Bob Mansfield
      Senior Vice President, Mac Hardware Engineering

      Bob Mansfield is Apple's senior vice president of Technologies, reporting to CEO Tim Cook.

[http://web.archive.org/web/20130723083752/http://www.apple.c...](http://web.archive.org/web/20130723083752/http://www.apple.com/pr/bios/)

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Has someone _accidentally_ deleted the profile of one of Apple's most important figureheads or has Mr. Mansfield decided to step aside?

<comment><USER13> Another option could be a transition into a less-visible role prior to his expected departure date of sometime in 2014....

<comment><USER14> Was this expected? I figured after he returned he'd be sticking around for a bit.

<comment><USER13> I believe he was committed to staying "at least" through 2014. I'm not sure of the details of it all, of course. I just thought it could be a possibility--it would be odd for him to leave less than a year after being convinced to stick around for a bit (in my opinion; I don't know the guy.)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> He is retiring. I guess several months turned into one month. Or, you don't want a lame duck VP on your leadership page. Probably a bit of both.

[http://www.apple.com/pr/library/2012/06/28Bob-Mansfield- Appl...](http://www.apple.com/pr/library/2012/06/28Bob-Mansfield-Apples- Senior-Vice-President-of-Hardware-Engineering-to-Retire.html)

</comment><comment><USER16> What about Andrea Jung on the board? No hyperlink for her profile and she was fired as CEO of Avon last year ([http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-10-05/avon-executive- chai...](http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-10-05/avon-executive-chairman- andrea-jung-to-step-down-at-year-end.html)).

</comment><comment><USER17> [http://www.mercurynews.com/business/ci_23751590/apples- bob-m...](http://www.mercurynews.com/business/ci_23751590/apples-bob- mansfield-no-longer-executive-team)

He's moving into "special projects", reporting to Cook.

</comment><comment><USER18> Bob didn't run the developer portal did he ?

<comment><USER19> He did hardware.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> He was essentially pulled out of the retirement to stay on for a while so this is not that surprising.

</comment><comment><USER21> Did anyone notice the only person not smiling in this page? Seems to be really sad while taking that pic.

<comment><USER22> There are several persons not smiling on the page.</comment></comment>


Show HN: Hacker News Search updated - <AUTHOR> https://hn.algolia.com Based on your feedback (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8874801) we've released a new version of the Hacker News Search. It's accessible through the search box in the footer of Hacker News. We hope you'll enjoy the new minimal design and the additional features.
Feel free to give us your dream list of improvements :)
ChangeLog: 2015-01-19
  - Custom date range picker
  - Responsive design
  - New "comments[<>=]X" syntax to filter by number of comments
  - If the story doesn't have any URL, the link goes to the HN discussion
  - Here and there cosmetics improvements (less padding, removed useless "upvote" arrow, ...)
2015-01-12
  - Full reimplementation based on Angular.js
  - Performance improvements
  - Minimal design to improve readability
  - Customizable sort order (by date/popularity, by date range)
  - New sharing features (Twitter & Facebook compliant)
  - Cloudfront-based assets delivering
  - Experimental UI
  - Inlined comments
  - Advanced filtering/refinements capabilities
  - <USER3> <comment><AUTHOR> Based on your feedback ([https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8874801](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8874801)) we've released a new version of the Hacker News Search. It's accessible through the search box in the footer of Hacker News. We hope you'll enjoy the new minimal design and the additional features.

Feel free to give us your dream list of improvements :)

ChangeLog:

2015-01-19

      - Custom date range picker

      - Responsive design

      - New "comments[<>=]X" syntax to filter by number of comments

      - If the story doesn't have any URL, the link goes to the HN discussion

      - Here and there cosmetics improvements (less padding, removed useless "upvote" arrow, ...)

2015-01-12

      - Full reimplementation based on Angular.js

      - Performance improvements

      - Minimal design to improve readability

      - Customizable sort order (by date/popularity, by date range)

      - New sharing features (Twitter & Facebook compliant)

      - Cloudfront-based assets delivering

      - Experimental UI

      - Inlined comments

      - Advanced filtering/refinements capabilities

      - <USER3>

</comment><comment><USER4> The new interface requires more clicks than the last one in order to select the options, and since I don't agree with the default options, it is quite annoying. The contrast for the drop down options is really, really bad. The fixed headers are an enormous waste of screen real estate for small laptops, and when this is coupled with the smaller line width, the effect is that information density is a lot worse.

On the front page of Hacker News, the number of points and the time an item was posted are not a links, but on your search results page, they are. They're not underlined, so you just have to guess that they are links. The little heart, person, and clock icons make it harder for the eye to scan across the line, and since they're not links, they don't really serve any purpose.

If the changes must stay, I would appreciate a "classic style" search option, preferably at at different URL, so that I don't have to switch to the old style every time.

</comment><comment><USER5> In the search results, the "link" part, which is supposed to point to the HN discussion instead points to hn.algolia.com

For every single link in the search results which are HN text submissions. The article submissions still point to the correct link.

<comment><AUTHOR> Are you using the default interface or the experimental interface (you can click on settings to see which one you are using)?

The default one should link to HN discussion/article

<comment><USER5> Default.

Interesting to see that choosing Experimental interface fixes the problem!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> The back-button does not work (as reported in [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8913272](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8913272))

<comment><USER7> Right, we'll fix that asap, it's very annoying.

<comment><USER8> Still broken - makes it effectively unusable.

I'd be really interested to know - what do you actually test for before you push a new version? Do you have a checklist, or do you just push your latest version and see what people complain about?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> No zoom on iOS. This means search is now unusable for me.

<comment><USER7> Not yet designed for 320px/smartphones, but it's definitely on the road map</comment></comment>


Recording Industry Claims Imaginary Value Gap as a Bigger Threat Than Piracy - <AUTHOR> https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2017/05/recording-industry-claims-imaginary-value-gap-bigger-threat-piracy <comment><USER2> >[...technological advancements] created a "value gap" that _deprives_ the recording industry of royalties they believe should be theirs.

Creative destruction is healthy and necessary for the function of economic progress.

Recording industry exectutives enjoyed decades of outsized profits (greater revenues as a proportion of sales than the artists themselves) distributing music. Now that the value of the service they offer has declined, due to technological progress, their profits are reduced.

The problem is that while this industry's value proposition has declined, they still have political capital that can force regulatory and anti-competitive actions onto the marketplace as strategies to retain profits.

</comment><comment><USER3> They literally know they're asking YouTube for money that they know doesn't actually exist. Their basis is that Google has money and they'd like it. That's it.

[https://rocknerd.co.uk/2017/04/03/record-labels-want- money-y...](https://rocknerd.co.uk/2017/04/03/record-labels-want-money- youtube-doesnt-earn-just-because-google-has-some-and-theyd-like-it/)

It's important to remember that the labels were saying the same things about Spotify last year, before it saved their backsides with 2016's numbers. But with Spotify, they own a chunk of it and have minimum income guarantees, i.e. free money.

</comment><comment><USER4> It's all imaginary. They just have enough legal clout to enforce it.</comment>


What is the future of short-term travel? - <AUTHOR> Trying to understand where the market will go from here. How will travel change — especially short-term travel. Do you think business-travel segment will grow? Or is there another segment that the likes of Airbnb will have to explore in the post-covid world. <comment><USER2> All of these "post-covid world" predictions assume a long term risk of the virus with the consequential measures.

I suspect that this is overblown and that we'll probably go back to normal in the short term (i.e. some time next year, probably, or in 2022).

We have been continuously fighting virii and diseases for billions of years. We have been through large scale epidemics of appaling diseases many, many times with sometimes double digit percentage points decrease in population. Result? The worls as it was in 2019. So I'm skeptical that Covid-19 will have consequences even just on par with the Spanish flu of 1918-1819. In teerms of global health AIDS has had a massively bigger impact (maybe 30 million+ deaths and counting).

The biggest impact of Covid-19 may be political because of the social consequences of the massive hit on the economy cause by widespread lockdowns.

Bottom line, travel will most likely resume as before. We're already seeing the beginning of that in Europe. If restrictions remain my guess is that they will be for environmental reasons (but perhaps implemented using Covid-19 as a pretext).

</comment><comment><USER3> Unless the response to, or impact of, Covid-19 leads to exogenous circumstances (e.g. massive global economic depression, unprecedented levels of global political coordination resulting in aggressive carbon emissions reduction targets, etc.) that somehow transform the travel landscape, I would expect existing trends to resume once the Covid-19 situation resolves.

Assuming we get back to "normal" in the next year or so, it seems to me that, with regard to business travel specifically, there's a tension at play between technology that increasingly enables asynchronous, location-independent collaboration and increasing global economic integration as new markets enter the fray.

</comment><comment><USER4> My position is: it will be not a "post-COVID world". I believe that all kinds of travels will be slowly coming back but it will be totally another procedure, vibes, and safety issue.

</comment><comment> Marketing-Ninja You should checkout Airtinery.com - the future or local travel.</comment>


Ask HN: Best ways to detect ideal areas for reforestation with sat data? - <AUTHOR> Hi HN! Is it possible to use only sat data available today to come up with ideal areas on which to try effective reforestation?<p>I wonder if currently such areas are decided by checking local geo data or physical surveys only instead of some sick machine learning and sat data. I know arable lands are monitored and can be prospected via sat data but I am looking for how to detect the best areas to try reforestation with a good degree of certainty that the reforestion is doable by sat data, before actually experimenting with the reforastion process in those places. I suppose this should involve a combo of terrain composition + land chemicals + rainfall data + wind patterns + actual green areas nearby + human presence + local tree species characteristics + historical tree coverage? <comment><USER2> maybe something like [https://www.descarteslabs.com/](https://www.descarteslabs.com/)</comment>


nReduce: an alliance of hackers - <AUTHOR> http://www.nreduce.com/

<comment><USER2> I think the headline is misleading. This seems to be an alliance of startup- oriented folks. Hackers would generally avoid the weasel-words and centralization: "virtual incubator" and reliance on a site that presents itself as more or less a monolith. I also don't see where investment and sponsorship fall into hacking. Computers are cheap enough that neither is really necessary to do interesting work, even if new hardware is required.

My guess is they said "hackers" when they meant "Hacker News readers".

<comment><USER3> Word. It's nasty how HN is diluting the term "hacker" to include things like "an MBA dropout with an idea". The whole assumption that "if you're a hacker, of course you want to start a business" is just so far away from reality that it's silly.

<comment><USER4> I don't know, I regard it as pretty hackerish to solve 'the money problem' once off and spend the rest of your life hacking.

Getting crazy rich and becoming a rockstar entrepreneur, not so much, but automating the rent and bill problem once and for all by coding something to bring in money, just one in a long string of problems a 'hacker' might consider solving in their lifetime.

<comment><USER5> Hackers think outside the box, it's not about getting more money, it's about how to avoid needing it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> It's a tiny bit frustrating that they only allow signing up via a Twitter handle. IMO,

Email-based signup > Facebook-based >> Twitter-based

On top of that, the permissions indicate that nReduce wants to post Tweets for me. Um, no thanks.

<comment><USER7> Ease of implementation mainly. Plus one less email/password to have to worry about. And what founder doesn't have a twitter account, it's sort of as essential as email at this point.

We won't post tweets. We added write permission so we could help organize groups together. Twitter doesn't really make it easy to choose exactly what permission you want to pick. It's write all or nothing.

<comment><USER8> Not to hijack the thread too heavily, but is there an easy way to add Twitter handles after you've signed up as a startup? I submitted just with one cofounder's and need to add more (forgot to throw them all in). Thanks, and this is a great idea; looking forward to participating.

<comment><USER7> Yep, just go to <http://s12.nreduce.com/startup/edit>. Let us know if you have any issues editing your team profile.

Thanks!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I've joined as part of the NRS12 batch and I can't wait to collaborate and share my progress with other founders.

Hopefully the community will graduate some awesome startups and will give the next batch some program klout.

My biggest worry is that this batch works well and a number of companies raise investment and we see thousands upon thousands of startups flooding the process the next batch.

However I'm stoked to be part of this.

Manchester UK participant.

<comment><USER10> I think the great thing about this is that it's scalable. It's purely a community driven effort - you host dinners at your own location, collaborate with other teams, get mentors. The benefit of nReduce isn't it's selection, like YC, it's the community. So, if this grew to thousands, that would be great, making everyone better off and more successful.

<comment><USER11> Or dilution will take place because there are no filters to keep the quality high.

<comment><USER12> I'd like to think that local communities will have at least somewhat of a filter for ignoring people who don't consistently make progress from week to week.

<comment><USER13> Unfortunately it's kind of hard to kick someone out of a meeting when everyone is just a member and on equal footing.

I've been in so many meetup groups which started off with really smart hard working people that have been slowly run down by tire kickers and dreamers coming along each week but never actually making any progress on their company.

EDIT: Ah just noticed in the FAQ that they kick teams out who don't ship, awesome, good to see them keeping the quality high.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> @nReduce I think this is a really nice approach and I´m pretty sure I will join the demo day. It´s a nice experiment and taking "self curing" patient communities into account, an evolutionary and self organized community can work really good.

Hint: The more you want to be like YC, the less you will be like YC. nR is nR, give it it´s own shape in the communication.

and... thank you for integrating the "Follow Discussion" Button. I just updated the git right here. <https://github.com/jermaink/hnfollowbutton>

Renamed from "Follow Discussion" from "View Discussion" which makes more sense. Also some compatibility issues solved.

<comment><USER7> Hey, great feedback! Yeah, we've changed around the intro copy. Also updated the HN Follow button css. Thanks!

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> I run Startup Riot (startupriot.com) and we'll be in Seattle on August 8th for our event. I would love to figure out a way to have nReduce teams attend/participate/present at our event. Joe or whoever can hit me up if you guys are interested. @sanjay or hit the contact form on our site. I would have pinged you guys directly but there isn't an easy way to do that on your site. Regardless - good luck with the first class. More startups making progress can't be a bad thing.

<comment><AUTHOR> Hi Sanjay,

Thanks for the note, I will DM you.

-Joe

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> Is this open to individuals? I've got a ton of ideas, and I'm a hacker. I just need some help with being able to leave my current job.

<comment><USER7> Yep, if you can ship every week we'll take you. Take a leave of absence at your job and see if you can build something amazing this summer.

<comment><USER17> I know this comment wasn't meant glibly, but "taking a leave of absence" isn't usually an option. FYI.

<comment><USER7> Really? I've found companies usually prefer it over quitting. Financially it may not be an option though, that I can understand.

<comment><USER17> I can only speak to my industry (public accounting) in my location (Texas, US), but there are a line of qualified candidates ready to fill my seat should I choose to quit. Or should I choose to ask for a leave of absence.

<comment><USER7> Good point. I'm fully immersed in the current bay area bubble so I sometimes lose perspective.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> What does the team behind nReduce get out of it? Deal flow lead bounty?

Not trying to be cynical I'd just like to know what the incentives are other than "let's just be awesome".

Apologies if it was explained somewhere, I did look but didn't see anything obvious.

<comment><USER7> Actually, the main motivation for me to start nReduce was so it would exist, and I could be part of it. I really wanted something like YC for my startup lizibot.com, and since YC wouldn't have us, we figured we'd try to solve our own problem.

I'm also thankful some great people (like Joe) have stepped up as partners and will be taking it over so I can focus on my startup.

<comment><USER19> I have applied to nReduce but my main question remains, "How are you going to execute this?"

If everyone is at the startup stage someone with more experience (more than one) needs to be available to help make connections. We need someone who can review each other's work and submit to different news site and media. This is a great idea but there needs to be a plan for execution.

A startup or a product without exposure is nothing. The benefit of being part of Ycombinator or other incubators is not the initial funding but the following guaranteed exposure (atleast one writeup by TC, mashable etc) and helping with connections.

We need similar kind of thing and I have got some ideas how we can collaborate on this

<comment><USER13> I'd say this is in the works, especially if a few great startups come out of it. Y-Combinator didn't start out being well known and covered on every tech site either.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> I think this is a neat idea, and I'd love to try it. It seems a bit odd to hold meetings at a bar, but that's not necessarily a dealbreaker.

But sadly, due to random bad luck I can't do it: my Tuesday evenings are spoken for. (It's one of the very few times during the week that I have a fixed schedule. Let's call it a sanity preservation activity.) If nReduce was on, say, Wednesday evening (or Tuesday morning), I'd sign up.

If the expectation is for people to take a leave of absence (or quit) from their job, anyway, then I would have scheduled it during the day, as most extracurricular activities (IME) are in the evenings.

<comment><AUTHOR> Hi Ken,

We are just scrappy guys putting this together, we needed a place that was open at night and that you could meet at : A Bar.

We have no expectations on whether you are employed or not, just if you can build great product.

Best, -Joe

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> So how does this work for remote teams that would miss a (full) week? Just update the next week with what shipped?

I am planning on attending a conference at the end of July (BSides Las Vegas/DEFCON, for those wondering), which would probably take me completely out of the running for shipping _anything_ that week.

I am still very interested, but have other responsibilities as well. How would this work?

<comment><USER7> Sure, as long as it's only a week, that's fine. Definitely gotta ship something the previous and next weeks though.

Looking forward to having you!

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> Toronto, Canada needs a hug over here. Any teams or members willing to partner-up so that we can rock this baby across the finish line ?

<comment><USER7> Just added Toronto to the RSVP list.

We'll put up an RSVP page soon that shows what the counts are for each city.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> Signed up, in St. Louis. I can get more teams signed up locally. I'd appreciate any input on how a team farther from the primary tech hubs should take advantage. I figure either we can host a dinner with a few other local teams casually and try to make it out to another Demo Day. Thoughts?

<comment><AUTHOR> We have a whole system for remote teams. The are treated the same as teams with physical locations and will be meeting with their group mates via video conferencing, online tools etc.

Please sign up, it is going to be awesome!

<comment><USER23> Cofounder already signed us up, I guess I'm catching up still. I think to do it well, I'd like to get at least 1 or 2 nearby startups at our level participating with us. I'm glad the remote components are there too. Excited to be a part of this.

Also, I'm an Associate Partner at a local VC fund. What else do you suggest for how investors can support or encourage this activity prior to Demo Day? Thanks for watching the comments.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> Oh, so this is what happened to NCombinator. I initially thought this was something else very similar.

</comment><comment><USER25> I'm most curious about the role mentors will play in nReduce. From what I understand, mentorship is the secret sauce at YC and TechStars. It also seems like the hardest type of person to attract to a fledgling operation (compared to hackers and investors).

<comment><USER7> We've got some interesting ideas here. From the mentors we've talk to already, a lot of them love the fact that they can start by offering "micro- mentorship". Giving startups advice with just 1 hour a week time commitment (split into 15 min chunks per startup they help). And they can do it from the comfort of their home.

That'll require a bit of curation by the nReduce team so the mentors only see the valid, honest questions submitted. But we're working on a way to manage that workload (between the nReduce partners and moderators).

What mentors get out of it is being exposed to lots of early stage startups and possibly find some great teams that they enjoy working with and can step in as official advisory roles if there's a fit.

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> Registered from Bangalore, India. Haven't seen anyone from the subcontinent replying to this post.If there are any, we can start a group here or head down to Singapore once a month for the tuesday dinners. Tiger airways has cheap fares.

</comment><comment><USER27> When you say "Ship every week " what does it mean ? Is it a feature ? Can a bug fix be considered a "ship for a week" ? . Are there any parameters on how you decide someone shipped this week

</comment><comment><USER28> Quick correction to the how it works page - Singapore is not in China.

<comment><USER7> Oops, boneheaded mistake. Fixed now, thanks! :)

<comment><USER29> And there's a little typo on the /how page "funtionality".

<comment><USER7> That's the "fun" version of functionality :) Fixed now

<comment><USER30> And FAQ on the help page links to #faq, should be faq.html

<comment><USER7> Fixed. Thanks for the tips!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> Application form doesn't seem to do anything (maybe it shut off the day before it starts?). Clicking "submit" just takes you to the top of the page. No contact form to complain to. :(

</comment><comment><USER32> Just signed Curvio up for it. We're already launched, but we have a half dozen new features/products to launch this summer, so hopefully this helps us stay on track even better! :)

<comment><AUTHOR> Perfect! We are a mix of pre launch / post launch companies. Excited to have you on board!

</comment></comment><comment><USER33> Interesting idea! But I can't understand the practical usage of it. We delivery what we do to our customers, and get feedback, why should we deliver it to bunch of hackers? :)

<comment><USER7> Great point! nReduce is __not __your customer. Your customers are your customers. nReduce is there to remind you and to motivate you to ship to your customers every week. Our goal is to motivate, plain and simple.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> I just launched last week and still have lot more to do. Can you describe How it might work out with demoday, meetups etc with East coast or folks not in the valley.

</comment><comment><USER34> I tried to sign up a few weeks ago, didn't get a response.

<comment><AUTHOR> Can you try again?

There were some error in our form where peoples email addresses weren't saved correctly.

<comment><USER34> OK, thanks.. actually I just got an email, so maybe I was signed up already, sorry.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> If there's a Boston area dinner, I'm interested.

<comment><AUTHOR> I think we are few teams shy of a boston group, do you know any more boston teams?

<comment><USER36> I'm in the Boston area and this sounds quite interesting. However, I am by myself and all I would be able to ship are screenshots, logic/sequence diagrams...I am trying to build a web software for small businesses but can only do the graphic portion. Would that work?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER37> For those of us bootstrapping while holding jobs, is it ok to not be full time for this as long as we are shipping?

<comment><USER7> Yep. If you can ship every week, maintain a fulltime job, and not go completely bonkers in 12 weeks we'd love to have you! :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER38> Sounds very interesting, but I may not be able to join this summer. Is it also going to be biannual?

<comment><USER7> Yep, we'll see how it goes. We're hoping to have more batches!

</comment></comment><comment><USER39> Can I be a startup and a mentor?

<comment><USER7> Yep, definitely

</comment></comment><comment><USER40> Great idea. Anyone else signing up from Zurich?

</comment><comment><USER41> Since somebody has to ask stupid questions -- what if I launched a new, different product every week?

I get how confusing that might look at demo day, but could one 'graduate' doing things that way?

<comment><AUTHOR> That is totally fine. We are not judges your idea / path.

In fact, inherent in our system is that their is no one person or group of people who can say yeah or neigh on all startups.

What our system does is we document your progress, so we try to answer the question, can this team execute on an idea.

Then the quality of the idea / traction / investor interest takes over from there.

The question is if when I launch an investor sees my progress, what will it say about my team?

Also, some people are joining just to be a part of the community and not really for the demo day. Our goal is to help startups, so we welcome all types.

</comment></comment><comment><USER42> Sounds fun. I have a great idea but I'm still flying solo, looks like you need a team

<comment><AUTHOR> First and foremost you need to be able to execute on your idea.

If you feel like you can do that solo, please sign up!</comment></comment>


Fearing Shadow Brokers leak, NSA reported critical flaw to Microsoft - <AUTHOR> https://arstechnica.com/security/2017/05/fearing-shadow-brokers-leak-nsa-reported-critical-flaw-to-microsoft/ <comment><AUTHOR> Welp, does this make everything okay? I've seen a lot of people complaining that this wasn't happening.

<comment><USER2> I can't think of any other action that would make sense.

They sat on, and used, an exploit for years. When they lost control of it, they made sure it disappeared.

No it doesn't make it OK?

They have more exploits no doubt, so I guess we'll see the same thing happen again at some stage.</comment></comment>


Million WebSockets and Go (2017) - <AUTHOR> https://gbws.io/articles/million-websocket-and-go/ <comment><USER2> So some time ago when I was playing around with my toy project (RaspChat) I noticed creating 2 channels and a go routine for every incoming websocket connection is not the answer. I was designing RaspChat to work on a 512MB Raspberry Pi; and I was bottle-necked by GC, and memory consumption around 3 - 4K connections. After loads of optimizations I got it around 5K. Digging deeper and found well I have to maintain a pool of go routines (like threadpool) and I have to write event loop. I was instantly pulling my hair. I was sacrificing so much simplicity, and flexibility of Node.js just because I was trying to avoid event loop and wanted to use channels (I did too much Erlang months before starting project and couldn't think anything other than process and messages). I got a backlash on my release ([https://github.com/maxpert/raspchat/releases/tag/v1.0.0-alph...](https://github.com/maxpert/raspchat/releases/tag/v1.0.0-alpha)) from go community telling me how I was using desierializers/leaving loop holes in file upload and I didn't know shit about language.

At that time I found uws ([https://github.com/uNetworking/uWebSockets.js](https://github.com/uNetworking/uWebSockets.js)) that easily got me to 10K easily, and I was like "I would rather bet on a community investing on efficient websocket event loop rather than me writing my own sh*t". Don't get me wrong; I love Golang! Seriously I love it so much I have been pushing my company to use Golang. I just don't want to glorify the language for being silver bullet (which it's fanboys usually do). I would never implement complicated business logic that involves many moving pieces. When my business requires dealing with shape of an object and mixing matching things to pass data around; I would rather choose a language that lets me deal with shapes of object. Go has it's specific use-cases and strengths, people advertising it as move it to go and it would be faster than Java/C#/Node.js etc. have not done it or have not dealt with complexity of maintaining it.

<comment><USER3> Pardon the obligatory throwing in of Rust, but it sounds like you were okay switching languages anyway - have you considered Rust as an option? It doesn't have GC and has a very healthy ecosystem (recently with async primitives officially supported by the syntax). It also has the pattern matching you seem to mean. Perhaps it would help you solve your optimization needs? Otherwise, I'd love to hear why it's not a good use case for it since I'm still exploring the language myself.

<comment><USER4> This kind of promotion creates the tense atmosphere around Rust in the community.

I wonder if anyone has read the linked article?

The overhead of goroutines are well known. The article describes the problem and a solution.

Now someone who got bitten by the overhead of goroutines complains with a (understandable) little bitter tone. He has a good explanation for the issue and why he didn't use Rust but Node.

Citation:

>> I started exploring various options ranging from Rust, Elixir, Crystal, and Node.js. Rust was my second choice, but it doesn't have a good, stable, production ready WebSocket server library yet. Crystal was dropped due to conservative nature of Boehm GC, and Elixir also used more memory than I expected. Node.js surprisingly gave me a nice balance of memory usage and speed.

Then someone didn't seem to have read all the stuff comes around and smartly calls "Use the awesome Rust".

Even as a Rust user myself I get annoyed.

<comment><USER5> Where is that citation from? Are you quoting from somewhere? I can't find it in the article.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> This is still super interesting, two years later but does anyone have an update?

Susheel Aroskar, a Netflix engineer, did a talk about push notifications [https://www.infoq.com/presentations/neflix-push-messaging- sc...](https://www.infoq.com/presentations/neflix-push-messaging-scale/) (2018)

<comment><USER6> [https://lwn.net/Articles/775238/](https://lwn.net/Articles/775238/)

Dave Doyle and Dylan O'Mahony did something pretty amazing related too with websockets for Bose.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> It's surprising to me that you apparently have to fight for memory usage for these cases when using Go.

A while ago I ran a (quite naively written) nodejs application that maxed out at ~700k WebSocket connections per server - using only 4GB of RAM. Here CPU became the bottleneck.

<comment><USER8> Go's concurrency design trades off memory usage for productivity; instead of red-blue functions where you have to explicitly design for function interrupt/yield points with the async keyword, you can just write sequential code and the runtime will handle the rest. The downside to this approach is that often the stack will have to be copied during the switching process vs the stackless approach preferred by Node.js, Rust, C# etc.

See the excellent Fibers Under a Magnifying Glass paper by Microsoft Research: [http://www.open- std.org/JTC1/SC22/WG21/docs/papers/2018/p136...](http://www.open- std.org/JTC1/SC22/WG21/docs/papers/2018/p1364r0.pdf)

<comment><USER9> This is not how Go "works" overall, you're talking about the size of the goroutine stack which is by default 4KB, so in a scenario with a lot of connections yes it's going to add up if you use 1:1 connection / goroutine, but outisde of that Go uses less memory than Node / C# / Java / Python ect ...

So I woudn't say "Go trades off memory usage for productivity" since Go is widely used for low memory footprint.

Same reasons why Go makes sense in services like Kubernetes where each pods are in the range of 2 digits MB, it woudn't be possible whith languages mentioned above.

Edit: In your edit context it makes more sense :)

<comment><USER10> > where each pods are in the range of 2 digits MB, it woudn't be possible > whith languages mentioned above.

Not sure about NodeJS and Python, but it's certainly doable with Java and C#. It's just that people don't take the time to configure the JVM/CLR correctly.

There's nothing magical about golang that you can't do in C# (and soon enough, in Java with the addition of value types). Arguably, C# and Java's value type implementations are superior anyway.

<comment><USER9> Kubernetes released in 2015, at that time it wasn't possible no to run some Java / C# servers with settings bellow 256MB ( -XMS ), I'm pretty sure it's still the case with Java as of today. Try to run some service with -XMX -XMS 128MB and tell us how it goes.

<comment><USER10> > Try to run some service with -XMX -XMS 128MB and tell us how it goes.

What does the service do? An API call that returns the current time? A batch processor? A payment portal? The memory usage depends on the type of work performed obviously.

Furthermore, there are already offerings like [https://quarkus.io/](https://quarkus.io/), micronaut, and others that make use of native image compilation for even smaller footprints.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> There's a brief mention of the load-balancer (nginx) in front of the Go servers; I'm curious if there's anything interesting happening there. I'd imagine that if you lose a server, all of the clients will try to reconnect and traffic will be spread across the existing servers. That's all find and good, but presumably when you bring up a new server to replace the failed on, it'll be seriously underutilized. Is there some easy solution here in nginx- land?

<comment><USER12> For websocket? Yes ([https://github.com/SocketCluster/loadbalancer](https://github.com/SocketCluster/loadbalancer)), but you would have to introduce another layer (AFAIK) that would detect failure and reconnect to a healthy target without informing the client.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> For mail.ru, I was expecting [1] you would use tarantool for this task

[1][https://hackernoon.com/tarantool-when-it-takes-500-lines- of-...](https://hackernoon.com/tarantool-when-it-takes-500-lines-of-code-to- notify-a-million-users-11d340523493)

</comment><comment><USER14> nothing beats this [https://github.com/uNetworking](https://github.com/uNetworking)</comment>


How flying messes with the mind - <AUTHOR> http://www.bbc.com/future/story/20170919-how-flying-seriously-messes-with-your-mind <comment><USER2> I actually enjoy flying (the being in the air part). I've flown with Southwest 12 times in the past year (all for pleasure, no business or family-related travel) and have had some terrible flights (like 2 hours sitting taxiway with no AC in July in Florida), but I still enjoy the _flying_ part.

My flying tips:

1\. Travel with someone who also enjoys traveling.

2\. Be well rested.

3\. Drink tons of water the day/evening before so you are well hydrated.

4\. Chapstick and hand lotion.

5\. Bring your own entertainment, like downloaded Netflix shows.

6\. Bring your own snacks.

7\. Research the airports you'll need to navigate ahead of time so you don't stress yourself out.

8\. Study the ground features as you take off and land. There are beautiful differences and unexpected sights you'll notice when looking for them, even in your home town.

9\. Don't drink the alcohol, even when it's free.

Of course, if you are afraid of dying, heights, or falling I doubt any of these tips will help you.

My experiences are on short US flights from/to Orlando, so planes are generally filled with cheerful Disney-going people. This study was done by Europeans, presumably accustomed to European flights, whose "economy class" flights are pretty uncomfortable and bleak, at least from my very limited experience flying around Europe.

<comment><USER3> 10\. Try to strike up a conversation with the stranger you'll be sitting next to for the next X hours. I'm not even an extrovert, but this is my favorite part of flying. I've sat next to some really interesting people. Some folks don't want to chat but in my experience that's pretty rare.

Some strangers I've previously sat next to: a retired nurse flying to take care of her mother in law who had dementia; a radiologist who had previously been a physicist at fermilab returning from an MRI conference; a bar tender/stripper; an evangelical who hosted asian exchange students; a heart surgeon who specialized in ablasions for treating a-fib; a 60'ish year-old man flying for his first time; a nanny/aupair; a Jewish grad student from Cape Town.

The flights pass so much more quickly when you're engaged in conversation, and it's pretty easy to get most people talking. Two of those passengers mentioned above I ended up in a car with. I gave the evangelical a ride to his hotel since it was on the way home from the airport for me. And with the radiologist we missed our connecting flight and rented a car together to drive the last 150 miles.

<comment><USER4> Hmm.

Strangers trying to talk to me for the next X hours is one of the worst things that can happen on a flight for me.

Even if they do respect my wishes and dont try and talk to me (doesn't always happen), you then have the remaining 10h 59m of the flight to sit awkwardly knowing that you've both managed to annoy each other for trying to instigate something for your own selfish reasons that the other person doesn't want (i.e. you want to talk and they dont, or you dont want to talk and they do - no one wins).

Or worse if you dont manage to stop the conversation attempt early, you end up talking to someone for the better part of 10 or 11 hours just out of _politeness_ and all that work/reading/sleep/coding you wanted to get done are lost while someone drones on and on about their garden or their last trip to <destination>

Please - only start conversations if you're really sure the other person is interested in talking to you! Particularly on long-haul flights!

YMMV I guess - I suppose on short-haul (<1.5 hours) it would be ok, but please please please never do this on long flights! :-)

<comment><USER5> My Mileage definitely Varies.

The pretty girl who struck up a conversation with me on the leg from Minneapolis to Regina, SK was a large part of the reason I decided to move to Minnesota. Single, introverted me decided that if women in MN were as attractive and outgoing as her, it should be a nice place to live.

She turned out to be Canadian, but I moved to Minnesota anyway. Still loving it 20 years later!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> More precisely: Oxygen deprivation, low air pressure, and low humidity can alter your mood.

<comment><USER7> Those are all true, but I think we will eventually discover that the psychological impact of flights is also real. Being packed in very close proximity to a large number of strangers and having limited mobility and autonomy for hours on end is a really unusual environment to put a hairless primate in, regardless of how well-trained it is.

I'm mild-mannered, low key, and non-claustrophobic and even I get stir crazy being cooped up in a plane after a while.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> >There are some studies, however, that show even relatively mild levels of hypoxia (deficiency in oxygen) can alter our ability to think clearly.

I do CO2 and O2 training tables for training longer breath holds. [1] I sometimes do these while playing Overwatch. I have noticed that I play like an absolute idiot while I am on a breath hold. I just end up making really tiny mistakes that I wouldn't normally, or running into situations that I shouldn't have.

1\. [https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=gix.apneatrain...](https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=gix.apneatrainer&hl=en)

<comment><USER9> Interesting...I've also spent a lot of time training in apnea, but I've never tried to test my cognitive abilities while training. Instead, I try to get to a state of meditative non-thought while training since it seems to improve results. So, I'm curious...do the mistakes start immediately or do they only kick in once you're near the end of your hold? The first 1-2 minutes of a hold are so easy for me that I'd be surprised if there were many negative cognitive effects.

Also, I used to get pretty severe effects from altitude whenever I'd go above about 10k elevation. But since I've trained apnea, the headaches, nausea and general crabbiness haven't happened and I've even been able to go for ~5 mi jogs. So I'm curious whether people who've trained in apnea would be somewhat resistant to the effects of flying just because our training has pushed us so far beyond the effects of flying that our bodies are accustomed to it. Of course it's also possible that we'd still be feeling the effects and just have a blind spot to it because we're more used to noticing the end stages of oxygen deprivation.

<comment><USER8> I'm pretty new to it, so my rounds are only just above 1 minute. I might just not have the CO2 tolerance yet, but I definitely notice some cognitive effects. My blood oxygen saturation during these generally stays above 90%. I'll try pay more attention to when the issues kick in and measure my blood oxygen then.

I've read that it's around 50% saturation that you're in danger of passing out, and most oximeters are only accurate to 70%. I've gotten no where close to those numbers though, so it's likely just lack of CO2 tolerance.

<comment><USER9> I wouldn't worry about O2 saturation with regard to passing out. When I've done holds using an oximeter, I can't really get my SpO2 below 90% either, even when I know I'm pretty close.

But there's just so much that contributes to being near blackout that isn't oxygen saturation that you're better off learning to recognize the subtle physiological cues. For example, you can blackout earlier (higher measurable O2 saturation) if you inhale too deeply. It may seem counterintuitive, but expanding your lungs more fully can increase pressure on the heart and make it harder for it to distribute the blood to your body and brain. Your blackout O2 saturation will also differ depending on how much gravity your heart is having to deal with. Standing, sitting and lying down will have different blackout O2 saturations and that's only considering dry training...in water, both swimming position and depth/pressure will factor in too.

So when I'm doing a hold, the main things I pay attention to are first diaphragm (first contractions, for me, are pretty reliably at 1/3-1/2 of a max hold), and then the feeling in my fingers/toes, but you'll start to notice a couple of other sensations as well if you start pushing yourself to the brink. Incidentally, you can be pretty sure if CO2 tolerance is your limiting factor if your first contractions come in the second half of your hold.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I just flew on a new Boeing 787 which claimed during the taxiing video to have light and air pressure systems that minimize jet lag. I've never felt better after both 10+ hour flights.

<comment><USER11> This is strictly anecdotal, but I flew a 787 to London (transatlantic) a few days ago, and to be honest I didn't notice any difference (apart from the chemically dimmed windows and the lighting) between it and most of the Airbus planes I've been on. I'd actually venture to say Airbus equipment is a little more comfortable.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> The biggest mind bleep for me is falling asleep while taxiing and waking up while landing.

<comment><USER13> I WISH I could do this. You have a rare gift.

<comment><USER14> The trick is believing.

Expect to fall asleep as soon as you are on the plane, eat before boarding and avoid coffee. I could never do it until I could. Now I start yawning at the gate.

<comment><USER9> > The trick is believing.

For those that lack belief, Valium or Xanax should do the trick too.

I don't fly international often enough to worry about getting hooked, so 2 pills (one to sleep on the plane and one to force myself to sleep at the right time once I reach my destination) have always made jet lag a easy for me.

<comment><USER14> You Americans are such extremists :). Straight to the hard stuff.

Valerian root works pretty well (especially with a small nip) and there are some other lighter options like melatonin. Also sugar pills :)

Doctors here don't give you Xanax unless you're having panic attacks.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> "Airplane noise and the taste of umami": [https://flavourjournal.biomedcentral.com/track/pdf/10.1186/2...](https://flavourjournal.biomedcentral.com/track/pdf/10.1186/2044-7248-3-2)

</comment><comment><USER16> I despise flying with a passion. I am usually pretty level headed in life, but between the TSA, sardine seating, and assured death if something goes wrong, it is hard to be comfortable.

Passing out before take off and waking up after landing would be a DREAM for me! I usually am forced to take 3 benadryl and hope for the best.

There's a reason I haven't flown since 2012 :)

EDIT: Benadryl = diphenhydramine, which is cheap, non-prescription, and usually acts within 25 minutes. Enough of it can put you out even after you just napped.

"You are less likely to be in an accident in a plane than in a car".

The above is a true statistic, but more nuance is required.

Firstly, the most dangerous situation is driving on a two lane, no barrier highway. This results in head on collisions, which often results in death.

If you can avoid that situaion, you are already doing better than most.

Additionally, you can control the type of vehicle you are in. A Miata is a deadly vehicle. A large modern SUV is safer.

Lastly, when something goes wrong on a plane, it goes /really wrong/. Hijacked = dead. Pilot error = dead. Fire = dead.

I don't to be killed or burned or maimed in a plane crash. I don't care if that means I have to drive a large, safe vehicle or avoid traveling in certain situations.

It is an idiosyncratic bias of mine, but it is an unnecessary game of russian roulette that has low, but uncontrolable risk.

Opting out is the safest choice I can make, per my estimation.

Lastly, humans have a low chance of dying in a warzone.

But Syrians have a higher chance.

Avoid being in a war zone. Statistics are your friend, averages are not.

<comment><USER17> > I usually am forced to take 3 benadryl and hope for the best.

Which would help because...? Acrivastine doesn't really have any sedative effect at all. And taking three at once is quite an overdose.

<comment><USER18> Benadryl in the US is diphenhydramine, which definitely does have drowsiness as a side effect. It's also pretty hard to OD on.

<comment><USER17> You mean it's Nytol then.

<comment><USER19> If the box says Benadryl, is it still Nytol?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> I flew twice weekly for 18 months and used to feel dreadful the day after flying.

</comment><comment><USER21> I fly a lot. I think that the #1 thing that makes people hate flying is being inflexible about time. Transportation in general is complicated and has a lot of moving parts (traffic, weather, accidents, etc.). Expecting transportation to always be on time is a good way to always be frustrated with transportation. So if you book a flight expecting the aircraft to arrive at your destination by a certain time and then have an event planned soon after that, you're going to be VERY upset when you discover that the flight was delayed because of _x_

</comment><comment><USER22> That article was all over the place and is in strong need of an editor.

</comment><comment><USER23> I've travelled a dozen times for work this year and the best tip I have, although not related to the flight itself, is to wear simple ear plus the entire time in the airport. I hadn't realized just how much all the noise and cross-talk announcements were having an effect but it makes a huge difference.</comment>


Iceland Is Doing Science – ~50% of People with Covid-19 Not Showing Symptoms - <AUTHOR> https://cleantechnica.com/2020/03/21/iceland-is-doing-science-50-of-people-with-covid-19-not-showing-symptoms-50-have-very-moderate-cold-symptoms/ <comment><USER2> Every positive sample in Iceland is sequenced so I don't think there should be any chance of false positives.

</comment><comment><USER3> I thought there was already a number that 80% won't need to go to the hospital.

<comment><USER4> There are many shades of gray between having no symptoms, showing mild symptoms, being really sick, and being sick enough to require hospitalization.</comment></comment>


Web 3.0 Demo - <AUTHOR> http://www.cortex-intelligence.com/tech/ <comment><USER2> How exactly is this Web 3.0? I never even really made sense of how you could call Web 2.0 "Web 2.0" when a) almost everyone who develops web 2.0 rich applications only create banners with gigantic, multicolored texts (eg. tutorials "How to make a fancy Web2.0 Logo) and b)This site uses the same technologies as web2.0 in the same ways as I've seen in other places.

We need to stop playing this game of semantics, and stop being so anxious to evolve without the real need to.

<comment><USER3> This is a great point--at what point specifically did things go from 1.0 to 2.0? Were there no 2.0 betas?

I think a lot of this might be driven by marketers/advertisers trying to sell their clients on "a new way" of selling their content. Remember when some company (Was it Slate.com?) came out with the full-page interstitial ad? That was a new way of advertising content--wouldn't you say that would have earned atleast a Web 1.1 rating?

"Web 2.0" _seems_ to be driven by sites being "interactive", I guess above and beyond just clicking around using 1.0(?) navigation. Furthermore, elements like mob behavior (Digg), social networking, RIA expereinces seem to let someone slap 2.0 on their site--not that it's wrong, but that seems to be the criteria. What else might I be missing in that list?

What would you call Hacker News? Just because it's born in the Web 2.0 "era", does it make it so?

<comment><USER4> I've always thought that 'Web 2.0' at first just meant that a site had user- generated/submitted content - so by that definition news.yc would be web 2.0 because pg does not post the stories and decide what we see.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I can't wait until the Web 4.0 demo

<comment><USER6> From what I hear it requires developers to make use of the Internet's inherent design to support multiple planets.

You think I'm joking about that last part? <http://www.spectrum.ieee.org/print/1700>

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> This reminds me very much of the irritating adverts that highlight specific words it knows about and pops up adverts related to them :/

Completely unconvinced...

<comment><USER8> the double underline ads? Opera lets you fix that problem with a user script:

window.opera.addEventListener('BeforeExternalScript', function(e) { if(matchBlackList(e.element.getAttribute('src'))) e.preventDefault(); },false);

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> So Web 3.0 = Ajax + Natural Language Processing?

heh, cute, but no.

<comment><USER10> My thoughts exactly.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> interesting. it show entities, but does it show relationships? I kind of see that in actions, but it reminds me a lot of grammar class. That's not bad though, as the semantic web is going to have a lot of those fundamentals. Very cool stuff overall.

</comment><comment><USER12> I think people simply have a habit of categorizing things to make them easier to understand and easier to remember. We associate many things with eras, generations, periods, dynasties, etc.

The web is always evolving; it's just easier to consider a particular time frame 'Web 1.0' and the next 'Web 2.0'. From my viewpoint, it seems as if each 'Web x.0' will/would occur after each recessionary cycle.

Then again, why try to make sense of something like this that is still so new?

</comment><comment><USER10> If entities were ever to become something big in the web, it isn't going to be by generating random links between entities and hoping that something useful comes out of it.

If anything, someone has to see a useful link between 2 entities and build an application around it. I doubt it will ever happen the other way around.

</comment><comment><USER13> English syntax and grammar is efficient at communicating ideas without throwing a bunch of highlighting and fancy colors and lines into the mix.

</comment><comment><USER14> Oh is Web 3.0 in beta already? Where can I sign up?

<comment><USER3> Before you can sign up, you have to download the latest version of the Internet.

<comment><USER15> Which version? 384 654 112 DVDs (with porn) or 3 DVDs (without porn)?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Calling something Web 3.0 does not make it so.

</comment><comment><USER17> Gmail lets me email nicely. Flickr lets me organize and share photos easily. reddit and news.yc give me news.

What does this let me do?

</comment><comment><USER18> Honestly, the web is confusing enough as it is. Something like this will scare people like my parents.

<comment><USER19> Heck, it already scares me. Wait, make that "confuses". Well, in fact I'm just not getting the point.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> Is there any open source semantic analysis stuff out there?

</comment><comment><USER21> Do i have to be the first to say _smart tags_?

<comment><USER4> The problem with using it for that is it doesn't seem to mark which 'entities' are more important than others. So even though it seems to be able to mark proper nouns and numbers, it doesn't differentiate between an 'entity' being the subject of an article and just being mentioned. There's probably ways to get around this(frequency counts of an entity in an article? number of google results for an entity?), but right now it doesn't seem to do that.</comment></comment>


Sunday Conversation with Tiger Woods - <AUTHOR> http://sports.espn.go.com/broadband/video/videopage?videoId=3331650&categoryId=2378529&lpos=spotlight&lid=tab3pos1

<comment><USER2> Thanks for sharing. We can all learn from Tiger Woods and his determination and heart.</comment>


Stop Using Datetime.now in Python - <AUTHOR> https://hakibenita.com/python-dependency-injection <comment><USER2> > How would you test this function ?

Don't test it, if you have time testing a library function there is probably an issue</comment>


Ask HN: Best way to gift Bitcoin for Christmas? - <AUTHOR> <comment><USER2> You could gift a physical coin model, along with the login credentials to a Coinbase account

<comment><USER3> Coinbase requires identity verification. Presumably, you won't be able to verify _their_ identity.

You can gift a printed paper wallet using something like this, securing the private key with tamper-evident stickers: [https://walletgenerator.net/](https://walletgenerator.net/)</comment></comment>


Paying teachers more results in higher pupil performance - <AUTHOR> http://blogs.lse.ac.uk/politicsandpolicy/2011/12/28/pupil-performance/ <comment><USER2> This is not time-series data. The study design here (a cross-sectional survey of varying countries, showing a bare correlation between two variables) is not adequate to show causation.

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

(By the way, the scatter of data points around the regression line in their plot suggests that the model is subject to large degrees of error in prediction.) It would take an experimental design (randomly assigning one group of teachers in the same country to receive pay raises while another group does not, with before-and-after comparisons of pupil performance) to show that paying teachers more results in higher pupil performance.

<http://escholarship.org/uc/item/6hb3k0nz>

There have been hundreds of studies of educational interventions over the years,

[http://www.amazon.com/Visible-Learning-Synthesis-Meta- Analys...](http://www.amazon.com/Visible-Learning-Synthesis-Meta-Analyses- Achievement/dp/0415476186)

and many thoughtful international comparisons of teaching practice,

[http://www.amazon.com/Teaching-Gap-Improving-Education- Class...](http://www.amazon.com/Teaching-Gap-Improving-Education- Classroom/dp/1439143137/)

[http://www.amazon.com/Knowing-Teaching-Elementary- Mathematic...](http://www.amazon.com/Knowing-Teaching-Elementary-Mathematics- Understanding/dp/0415873843/)

[http://www.amazon.com/Making-Learning-Whole-Principles- Trans...](http://www.amazon.com/Making-Learning-Whole-Principles- Transform/dp/0470633719/)

but none of those conclude that simply raising teacher pay, without changing teaching practices and perhaps also the composition of the teaching workforce, will have much to do with raising pupil performance in any place. Raising teacher pay systematically has been tried in the United States (notably in the state of Connecticut) and has not been shown to markedly raise pupil performance.

An economist who closely studies education policy has suggested that pay and other incentives be used to encourage the least effective teachers to seek other occupations while rewarding the most effective teachers with increased compensation and more professional support.

[http://edpro.stanford.edu/hanushek/admin/pages/files/uploads...](http://edpro.stanford.edu/hanushek/admin/pages/files/uploads/Hanushek%202009%20CNTP%20ch%208.pdf)

Such a policy, he estimates (showing his work in his article) would raise United States educational achievement to the level of the highest-performing countries. This is something worth verifying by experiment, although that will be politically difficult in any state of the United States

<http://www.cato.org/pubs/journal/cj30n1/cj30n1-8.pdf>

and perhaps in Britain as well.

<http://www.economist.com/node/17849199>

P.S. I'm curious about why the United States underperforms so much compared to salaries paid to teachers in the chart shown in the submitted blog post.

<comment><USER3> Everyone in the US has the opportunity (or close to everyone) to attend a near-standard public school in the US. Not all countries subscribe to this model, I believe. Although the US average is low, I strongly suspect that the top 10% of US students perform at or above the levels of all other countries.

As for paying more, this increases competition as stated, but you'd need all other factors to remain equal. The class size in US public schools is now ridiculous, 30+ kids per teacher at the local elementary here. Education funding should basically be doubled imho, and the number of teachers per student dropped to 17 or 18 maximum.

<comment><USER4> Agree. Triple it, 10 students per teacher, and see performance shoot up.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> This seems like they walked in looking for proof of their already established conclusion. If you look at Finland, Australia, Korea, Japan and New Zealand you see a cluster of countries who are paying their teachers well and who aren't getting results (Edit: By this I mean the countries below them aren't getting results yet are paying the same amount). Compare Denmark to Finland or Spain to New Zealand and then explain to me how the authors' thesis rings true.

Plus we have anecdotal evidence that contradicts their conclusion in the U.S: Individual State salaries vary pretty significantly ($37,000 to $59,000) yet education results don't seem to reflect those salaries

Teacher Salary By State: <http://www.teacherportal.com/teacher-salaries-by- state>

State Education Rankings: [http://www.vermontbiz.com/news/september/state- education-ran...](http://www.vermontbiz.com/news/september/state-education- ranking-shows-vermont-1-south-carolina-last)

I don't entirely disagree with the thesis that making "teacher" a more revered position will draw better people to it. But there are clearly other factors at play that the authors chose to disregard because they wanted to prove their already established conclusion.

(If it were me I'd be comparing Switzerland, Germany and Sweden and trying to figure what the differences are there)

<comment><USER6> "If you look at Finland... paying their teachers well and who aren't getting results."

I'd been given to understand Finland is generally regarded as one of the better education systems in the world.

<http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/8601207.stm> <http://siteselection.com/ssinsider/snapshot/sf011210.htm> [http://schoolmatters.knoxnews.com/forum/topics/how-does- finl...](http://schoolmatters.knoxnews.com/forum/topics/how-does-finlands- education)

<comment><USER5> You could very well be right. My point was the authors' conclusion didn't match their underlying data. So the validity of their underlying data didn't come into play.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Let's be clear: both explanations are that higher salaries result in better teachers which in turn results in higher student performance. It's not that saying that paying _a_ teacher more results in higher performance.

<comment><USER8> My first thought when I read the article title is that teachers would have more money to pay out of pocket to get materials for their students.

A lot of teachers do this, from kindergarten to high school. I've had to hang out in a educational supply store more than once in my life when I and <pick any friend that is a teacher> have passed by one. That teacher then blows a sizable chunk of coin without fail.

Arts & crafts, books, lined paper, sci calculators, and of course... stickers for that job well done.

<comment><USER9> Some US states have 60/40 plans built into their education budgets. What that means is 60% of the money the state gives to local schools must go to the "classroom." Now, how a state defines classroom is very loose. Most of the time, supplies, working facilities, new desks, books, and teaching materials fit into it. What is the other 40%? Administrative and teacher salaries, lunch programs, and transportation.

In my experience, schools in the US actually waste a huge sum of money because they have incompetent administrative staff (with the added bonus that they're overpaid).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I found the conclusion of the movie "Waiting for Superman" interesting basically the major obstacle for improving education in the US is that you can't fire bad teachers because of union contracts.

<comment><USER5> Well Yes but there's a backstory to that.

If you talk to teachers who worked in the pre-union days they'll tell you it was a nightmare. Because it was run by low-level politicians (school board members) who were cowardly to the point of causing havok.

Put it this way. Most people don't know the political positions of their individual school board members. So if someone comes to their house and says "this member is bad" they'll generally vote against them on the theory of "better safe than sorry". Which meant every crazy parent who thought their kid was treated unfairly would raise a fuss and get teachers fired because the Principal answered to the School Board members and those members had extremely tenuous holds on their position. Meaning teachers were getting fired fairly regularly, often for doing nothing wrong.

Teachers Unions were born out of that abuse. The problem now is we've swung to the other extreme. Where even teachers who are bad can't get fired. But I wouldn't say the problem is the union contracts. If anything it's that we haven't found an appropriate metric for measuring teacher performance.

<comment><USER11> _If anything it's that we haven't found an appropriate metric for measuring teacher performance._

Modern VAM (Value Added Modelling) methods tend to work well. This is basically building a statistical predictor of student performance, and then measuring whether individual teachers students meet this predictor.

The teachers unions fight tooth and nail against using them, but they work well.

<comment><USER12> Care to provide some evidence for this assertion?

I am aware of the some of the research into building multilevel models of student and teacher performance, but one of the issues here is that if these metrics are used, there is no test set which can be utilised to validate the model. This is an absolutely huge issue when you are essentially hiring and firing people based on the metric.

<comment><USER11> _...there is no test set which can be utilised to validate the model._

The collection of students used to develop the model are randomly partitioned - one partition is training data, the other validation data. This is regression 101.

This publication goes into detail: <http://www.rand.org/pubs/monographs/2004/RAND_MG158.pdf>

Note that if you believe VAM doesn't work, you must also believe that we have no statistical evidence that teacher quality matters at all. Is that actually your belief?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> I know everyone seems to want to pay teachers a higher salary, but in most school systems, they are already guaranteed a pay raise every year through the unions. Even if they did nothing to deserve it.

Most jobs tech jobs start out high, but plateau at a certain salary range (you also don't automatically get a raise every year). If you are a teacher long enough (10+ years), you will get up to the $70-80K range (I know a couple of older teachers that get paid this much). With summers and many more vacation days, it evens out in the end.

If you want better performance, we need better teachers. Because the unions will not allow us to put a measure on performance, the result is bad teachers getting into the system with the inability to fire them.

I'm also finally glad they are putting an end to "rubber rooms". If you don't know what they are, take a look here:

<http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/29/education/29rubber.html>

Another waste of our tax dollars that has been going on for years....

</comment><comment><USER14> I agree with the general notion but don't think raising _all_ teachers' salary will lead to better result. While Korean public school teachers are relatively well paid, top private 'Hakwon' teachers are paid several times more. Private education is a hot 'business' in S.Korea.

Sad part is that the goal of private education in S.Korea is to enter good universities, not to get good education. Sadder part is, after graduating, many can't find jobs and those that do usually don't work in the field they majored in because they picked their school by reputation and their majors by ease of entry.

</comment><comment><USER15> I bet that the correlation is much stronger for teacher starting salaries than for the 15 year in salaries that the study mentioned. What really matters is attracting the best people to be teachers, and when people look at jobs they mostly look at starting salaries.

But for some reason in the US we tend to have a very steep seniority based pay scale, with a far greater inequality between old and young teachers than you see in pretty much any other industry. You could argue that more experienced teachers are better, but studies show that experience stops mattering after 5 years, and it was also my subjective experience in school that older teachers didn't seem to be any better at teaching.

</comment><comment><USER16> UK note: over the last couple of decades there has been a _lot_ of effort to 'raise standards' (contested vocabulary) in teaching over here. Partially pay awards, but also degree only recruitment, only certain kinds of degree accepted for Secondary school subject specialism, staff development requirements &c

Public sector pay and conditions will drop relative to private sector in the UK over the next 10 years or so. If and when the business cycle picks up, you might see the 'quality' (contested vocabulary) drop again.

</comment><comment><USER17> Figure 1 above provides an insight into the relationship between teacher salaries and pupil outcomes, showing a clear statistical association between higher relative teachers' pay and higher standardised pupil scores across countries.

Aaaah! Correlation again being confused with causation. Omitted variable bias!

</comment><comment><USER18> They do this in China. IMHO, it is a pretty mixed bag. Mostly they teach kids how to take tests.</comment>


Nginx 1.13.4 - <AUTHOR> http://nginx.org/en/download.html <comment><AUTHOR> tarball: [http://nginx.org/download/nginx-1.13.4.tar.gz](http://nginx.org/download/nginx-1.13.4.tar.gz) (or wait for it to show up in your package manager)

The most notable change is the (new) mirror module which allows you to more transparently pass requests to your backends. Previously, this required modifying headers and potentially request body.

Documentation here: [http://nginx.org/en/docs/http/ngx_http_mirror_module.html](http://nginx.org/en/docs/http/ngx_http_mirror_module.html)</comment>


Ask HN: Does Wall Street Have a HN Equivalent? - <AUTHOR> <comment><USER2> The Bloomberg terminal?

</comment><comment><USER3> Wall Street Oasis is good.</comment>


AWS Certified Developer – Associate Exam Tips (2020) - <AUTHOR> https://blog.rajanpanchal.net/aws-certified-developer-associate-exam-tips-2020 <comment><USER2> Liked the tip to find answers in another questions. Do they ask any of VPC questions?

<comment><USER3> I don't think they ask. At least it wasn't in the exam I had.</comment></comment>