Education is Our Generation's Big Problem. Let's Fix it. - <AUTHOR> http://blog.bloc.io/education-is-our-problem <comment><USER2> "Do I even need to mention which segments of our population rely on student loans the most, and thus are getting screwed the most by the student loan crisis? Hint: It's not the happy white suburban family of 4."

Actually, according to the Wall Street Journal ([http://online.wsj.com/article/SB1000087239639044424690457757...](http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10000872396390444246904577575382576303876.html)), the upper-middle class has seen the sharpest jump in student debt since 2007. Households with less income have an easier time finding student aid and those in the upper class can more readily afford the rising costs. This puts the upper-middle class in a kind of purgatory for financial aid.

<comment><USER3> If a private college wants to give financial aid to a student who is poor, that is its business and it gets to define what 'poor' means for its purposes.

Kids from households making $200,000/yr may not be Maybach rich, but they don't need Pell Grants. and I certainly wouldn't describe their state as "purgatory" just because they aren't getting handouts.

The basis for giving this kind of handout (which I understand along with the general opposition to any handouts) is to improve class mobility and give poor kids a chance (after all, they did not choose to be born to the 'wrong' family). What reason is there for people with plenty of money to get that sort of handout? This I don't understand.

<comment><USER4> _If a private college wants to give_ financial aid _to a student who is poor_

 _just because they aren't getting_ handouts.

Why is it when the kid is poor, its financial aid, if the kid is middle class, its a handout? The language seems twisted to articulate your point, rather than the point speaking on its own.

Also, let's take my situation. My mother made $102,000 last year. We're well off, by any metric. Making 100% over the median income makes you upper middle class.

My in-state total costs for my public university are $10,099 a semester. I didn't choose the crazy private school, I didn't go out of state, I'm at literally the cheapest school I can be at.

It still cost 27% of her net income per year. That's a reasonable amount of money? I don't think it is.

Now, you can say you're supposed to save beforehand, except back then we were poor as dirt and couldn't afford to. Does that get factored in into any kind of federal aid? Nope. Last years tax return, only.

I have enough merit based scholarships that she can afford to send me there, but I think it's ridiculous to ignore that there is a larger problem in academic costs.

EDIT: The argument could also be made that students should be working through school to offset the costs. I personally find that rather backward, (Why is college the only education not funded by taxes?) but it's the most practical solution currently available.

<comment><USER5> $102k must have had a hell of a lot of taxes taken out such that $11k is 27% of the net income.

<comment><USER6> There are two semesters in an academic year. ;)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> There are serious problems with the for-profit university model (like the University Of Phoenix) as outlined in this article.

I think it's worth pointing out that these businesses are aware that they may have a problem, and have stepped up their political giving massively to protect their interests. Mostly, to Republican candidates, and especially to Mitt Romney. [1]

[1] [http://www.nytimes.com/2012/01/15/us/politics/mitt-romney- of...](http://www.nytimes.com/2012/01/15/us/politics/mitt-romney-offers- praise-for-a-donors-business.html?_r=2&ref=politics)

<comment><USER8> Similarly, the non-profit education sector donates heavily to Democrats.

<http://www.opensecrets.org/industries/indus.php?ind=W04>

Also, purely coincidentally, non-profits are exempt from the "gainful employment" rule and all the other new rules being levied against competitors to the non-profit education sector.

Weird. It's almost as if the politicians don't care much when _their_ cronies rip students off, only when other guys do it.

<comment><USER7> The chart you linked to doesn't refer to giving from educational _institutions_ themselves. The chart is tracking contributions from _individual employees_ [1] of those institutions. Seems to me that simply represents the fact that professors tend to be Democrats.

On the other hand, with for profit colleges, _institutions themselves [2]_ are contributing _directly_ to superpacs and other political groups. It's a totally different metric.

[1] from your link: _"Since school districts, colleges and universities are generally prohibited from forming political action committees, political contributions from the education industry generally come from the individuals associated with the field."_

[2] _The Apollo Group, which owns the University of Phoenix, contributed $75,000 last month to Restore Our Future, a super PAC run by former Romney aides. The pro-Romney super PAC is one of the biggest players in the GOP's long-running nomination fight, pumping more than $38 million into commercials, direct mail and automated phone calls that promote Romney and attack his GOP rivals._ [http://www.usatoday.com/news/politics/story/2012-03-26/romne...](http://www.usatoday.com/news/politics/story/2012-03-26/romney- for-profit-colleges/53865654/1)

<comment><USER8> One chart measures which party gains if more money flows to the non-profit sector. The other chart measures which party gains if more money flows to the for-profit sector.

You can nitpick the details of exactly what entities the money flows through, but the politicians aren't.

<comment><USER7> It is a valid difference, and politicians _are_ aware of it.

Organic giving from individuals who work in the educational sector doesn't come hand in hand with _organized, well financed political pressure_ in the same way that a lobbying effort/targeted giving coming directly from a specific industry does.

<comment><USER8> Yes, clearly the non-profit sector is far less influential than the for-profit one, in spite of donating vastly more money. Education as a whole donated $6.3M to Obama, the for-profit sector donated $145k to John Kline and $107k to Romney [1].

Clearly the for-profit sector is vastly more influential.

This influence is proven by the fact that the politicians are making special rules for the non-profit sector and explicitly exempting the for-profits from them.

Oh wait, my mistake - I live in the real world, where $6.3M > $145k, and politicians target for-profits for special rules and throw more money at non- profits.

[1] Unfortunately OpenSecrets doesn't explicitly break the non-profit sector out of education as a whole.

<comment><USER4> _Yes, clearly the non-profit sector is far less influential than the for- profit one, in spite of donating vastly more money. Education as a whole donated $6.3M to Obama, the for-profit sector donated $145k to John Kline and $107k to Romney [1]._

This argument doesn't make any sense. He just spelled this out for you, but I'll try it again.

 _Individual donations from non-profit education employees_ are not lobbying on the part of an industry. They're citizens playing an active role in politics.

 _Corporations in the for-profit education business_ are lobbying in an attempt to further increase their profit margins despite providing a product that is comparatively worthless.

 _Oh wait, my mistake - I live in the real world, where $6.3M > $145k, and politicians target for-profits for special rules and throw more money at non- profits._

Just as they should. For profit schools are student farms, churning them out and providing predatory loans to their uneducated students.

Nobody gives a degree from a for-profit school any kind of respect, it carries no more prestige than a high school degree. That makes their product _worthless_. They're attempting to legislate around their failings, not improve their product to a competitive level with the non-profit education system.

Seeing as the non-profit schools are _supposed_ to be public institutions created to better the country, it's appropriate for them to receive federal funding.

<comment><USER8> _Just as they should. For profit schools are student farms, churning them out and providing predatory loans to their uneducated students._

I'm confused. The "gainful employment" rule seems to target low quality schools. If, as you assert, non-profits are of higher quality, why exempt them from the "gainful employment" rule? After all, the rule won't affect them (if you are right).

The answer is, of course, that if you are wrong and some non-profits are also low quality, the employees of those schools will have less money to donate to Democrats.

But I'm sure no politician anywhere cares about that.

<comment><USER4> First, let me point out rather amusingly that you did not respond to any of my points on the nature of campaign contributions. I'd ask again for you to do so.

As for your questions.

 _I'm confused. The "gainful employment" rule seems to target low quality schools._

Incorrect. Your false assertion here completely derails the remainder of your post, making it irrelevant. If you would like a correct explanation of the gainful employment rule, let me know.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Allowing lenders (or providing greater incentive for them) to modulate rates on loans based on (a) the institution attended, (b) the major chosen, and (c) individual performance metrics, e.g. GPA, would be a solid step towards resolving education debt insolvency.

This could be achieved by switching government subsidies from loan guarantees to payment-share plans by which the government pays a portion of each payment but ceases to do so in case of default. These loans should be absolvable in bankruptcy - an immature decision made in one's adolescence shouldn't be a lifelong burden. Thus, the credit risk is retained by the lender while financial impact lessened on the student.

Unpopular as measures radically increasing costs on liberal arts majors may be, the present situation is a clear example of artificially locked markets producing inefficient outcomes.

<comment><USER10> I was just about to suggest the same thing. The degree seems like a very important piece of information to a creditor making a decision. If I know that 60% of students of a particular degree will default within 4 years, why would I continue to loan that money out? If it's impossible for them to get out of it, that'd be good enough a reason.

It seems that most of my engineering friends have a very existentialist perspective on it: the person is entirely responsible for the actions they take. If they got themselves into debt, then they should figure out how to get themselves out of debt.

That's valid. The student wasn't forced to go study art history, but they were lied to by a lot of people, including their parents and society, which are two difficult groups to ignore. I think it's good that we're airing out some of college's dirty laundry--it needs to be known that if you go study art history, there may be a greater than 50% chance that you will be jobless or working as a waiter or waitress. I had this debate with someone last weekend where I made the same argument, and she got very defensive. It's hard to get specific and criticize certain degrees without being offensive to somebody because people feel they need to defend their choices. I later found out she studied art history, she was a waitress, and she had just quit her job. To her credit, she probably didn't realize her job options were grim when she chose to do that. If this issue is spoken about publicly, it should at the very least make the decision easier for people. Every graduating senior in high school should hear both sides of the story and fully understand they can't arbitrarily pick any degree and expect the same results.

<comment><USER11> Maybe _everyone_ should become an engineer, so everyone can be happily living in a technocracy were we make everything remotely tangible into money.

Maybe we should tell people to stop doing psychology, art history, history, political sciences, theology, literature etc. I mean, it's on Wikipedia, right? You can just go there and read about it, you know, as a hobby, so, why bother studying it?

Maybe we can all become engineers and convert everything into profit. What do you mean I probably shouldn't track someone's every movement? Why? It's the logical solution, it's possible, it's doable, it gives the greatest monetary return. And it's the best developmental solution! It's perfect!

<comment><USER12> That's a false dichotomy. Nobody is suggesting that _nobody_ should choose a liberal arts degree. What's being suggested is that _less_ people should be doing it because there's more supply for those professions than there is demand. There's very high demand for technology degrees and trade skills (welders are in desperate demand, for instance). These truths aren't being communicated to college freshmen as well as they should be, and that's causing a major crisis for a lot of liberal arts college grads who enter a job market that simply doesn't need them.

<comment><USER11> Why is it a false dichotomy? Do you honestly believe that people will all of a sudden flog to STEM subjects just because somebody tells them they will forever be unemployed otherwise?

We might just have this arguement because this is, after all, HN, but it still astounds me how hard it seems to grasp for many here that not everyone is actually even remotely interested in programming or "building a product".

I am absolutely convinced that ultimately a society as a whole can only benefit from a workforce (how I hate that word) that is educated _beyond_ the requirements of their day jobs. The more you are interested in outside of your actual occupation, the more these interests will also play into your work and thus influence its outcome.

We have a constant stream of articles here that tell us how people became programmers without studying CS etc. Why however do people always assume everyone else is incapable of learning something else after studying something in the humanities? I know only very few people who expect to work directly with their field of study. In fact, most of the people who do are the ones who will at least try to go on and go into academia. Most other people I have ever met were very aware of the fact that there might be quite a disjunction between their area of study and their future job.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> It's not a financial problem (well it is), it's a cultural problem. American culture just doesn't value education and learning in general.

Isaac Asimov articulated this very well:

 _Anti-intellectualism has been a constant thread winding its way through our political and cultural life, nurtured by the false notion that democracy means that 'my ignorance is just as good as your knowledge'._

<comment><USER14> I don't buy it. We have a culture that rewards everyone going to college, even if they'd be better off not going to college. And your explanation for this is that we don't value education? I'd argue the exact opposite. We value education _too much_.

<comment><USER15> That's inaccurate. We have corporate cultures which value the possession of a certificate of achievement, not a culture which values education.

Depending on the survey you have up to 50% of the US denying evolution. A process that is clearly evident without any leaps of faith. That's not indicative of a culture that values education. There are many other aspects of math, science and technology that large swaths don't understand or misunderstand that would not occur if education were truly valued.

<comment><USER16> People who are religious can still value education, even though certain religious beliefs are in conflict.

<comment><USER15> I won't disagree with that as there are many aspects to education beyond the technical (literature, art, philosophy, etc). I used evolution as an example because the statistics were easy to find. I also find it strange that the Roman Catholic church can express an acceptance of it, but so many people in the US still deny it.

It's not the only scientific or technical concept that's grossly misunderstood in this country (or the world in general).

How about the false connection between autism and MMR?

I've removed other examples that tended to fall back on showing religious groups as particularly in conflict with science.

Here's a still controversial but areligious one: WTC collapse. A 'model' using chicken wire and gasoline was used to persuade a non-negligible percent of the population that planes filled with fuel crashing into the upper half of 110 story buildings would be unable to cause the collapse of said buildings. A fundamental failure in education has occurred when you get engineers accepting things like this.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> > Why administration had to grow 4x the pace of enrollment is beyond me.

While I won't claim that every single administrative dollar has been well spent, between 1993 and 2007, this would cover things like on campus tech support and IT staff and equipment (email, online registration, transcripts, etc), more broadly available and diverse student support (counseling, LGBT support organizations, ombudsmen, etc), and presumably tutoring services that help the growing fraction of the population in college thrive, rather than simply prep-school graduates. Again, I'm not going to claim that 4x increase relative to enrollment is the right amount, but compared to universities 20 years ago, they are providing more services.

</comment><comment><USER18> One thing that really bothers me is how much universities are allowed to raise their tuition on existing students. I started college paying about $6k a year in tuition my freshmen year. My senior year cost me $11k. The difference in tuition raises overall probably increased my total loan amount by ~$10k by the time I graduated. This is huge and there is no way students can take this into account when applying for college. I don't know why there are no laws protecting students by requiring fixed tuition rates for students? Universities are notoriously bad for raising rates by thousands a year, which students must take into debt or leave.

*Edit - Ok, the tuition when I first went to college was $20k a year. I had a $14k scholarship, so it was a manageable $6k a year. Now the tuition, 5 years later, is over $27k. That is a 35% increase at about 7% a year. Pretty ridiculous if you ask me, especially for a state school which should be affordable.

<comment><USER19> The federal government's Medicaid mandate is destroying state education budgets-- Medicaid is literally crowding out state public university education spending.

[http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/ezra- klein/post/medicaid...](http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/ezra- klein/post/medicaid-squeezing-higher-education- funding/2011/10/31/gIQAKIWOZM_blog.html)

<comment><USER18> I'm talking about out-of-state tuition though, which from my understanding was not subsidized by the state government at all. The funny thing is, the university I went to was still cheaper and better than my in-state alternatives.

<comment><USER20> It's all the same pie, from the point-of-view of state government. They need to make their budget balance, and the school is a target-rich environment for them.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> I was excited to read this article, because I want to see more attempts to improve education. But then I saw that this is a for-profit education company.

I know there is a place for private educational endeavors in our society. But if you really want to fix education for everyone, you've got to focus on public education. Yes, it's a big ugly political seemingly unchangeable mess. But it's the only system that reaches everyone.

Every generation has a revolution waiting to happen. Improving public education might be the next significant social revolution in the US, but it won't be led by for-profit education companies.

<comment><USER22> How much failure would it take from the not-for-profit public education system before you'd consider the possibility that it is the very incentive system created by their non-profit status that has a huge hand in the failure?

We've created a system in which the reward for being an excellent teacher is... what, exactly? More paperwork? More friction from the ever-larger administration for not doing the same as everybody else? More frustration with not being allowed to be the good teacher because they have to teach ever harder to the test?

Until you fix the incentive system you're not going to get better teaching, and yeah, that's probably going to involve someone making some money, because it's beyond me how to fix the incentive system in the presence of an open- ended promise to keep the money hose opened and pointed at them no matter how much they fail. I suppose we could always try giving the same people _even more_ money if they just promise to try really, really hard to do something else a couple of times until they give up.

And I am also pretty sure that true 21st century education isn't going to just a tweaked 20th century education. It's going to be something totally different, and the non-profit system simply won't get us there. Why would they? They don't get defunded for using decades-old totally outdated education systems. (In contrast to the decades-old non-outdated parts, which do exist, but are not 100% of the curriculum by any means.) We know that, because that's already the current situation. They've got no reason to move.

<comment><USER21> _How much failure would it take from the not-for-profit public education system before you'd consider the possibility that it is the very incentive system created by their non-profit status that has a huge hand in the failure?_

That is part of the failure, and I am deeply affected by it right now. I am a pretty good teacher, and I watch terrible teachers get paid more than me because they've been at it longer. I can't pay off my family's student loans, and I can't afford anything more than a small condo.

But I still don't think privatizing education is the answer. There is always the possibility of taking education back from the politicians, and setting up a system that does incentivize good teaching. It's not as simple as paying teachers more if their students pass tests.

One fix that would go a long way is restructuring our approach to tuition in service sectors. If you take away my student loans, I would be a happy, hard working teacher the rest of my life. I will get some portion of my loans forgiven for teaching in a high-need area, but that won't go a long way. The same goes for other service sectors, where a reasonable job will leave you paying off student loans until you are past retirement age.

There are bureaucratic fixes. You can give more professional freedoms to highly-effective teachers. Measuring effective teaching is difficult, but not impossible.

As soon as you give up on public education and only see privatization as the answer, you give up on addressing the education gap between different socioeconomic groups.

<comment><USER22> "It's not as simple as paying teachers more if their students pass tests."

That's not the interesting thing that privatization allows. What it allows is the doing of something fundamentally different.

I don't see privatization as "the current school system, just private". Yes, that is what it is now, mostly, unless you poke around what are currently very fringe bits. What I see is a world in which (in a nutshell) self-serve homeschooling becomes easier and easier and more effective until it eats the current system from the inside. Give it about 20 years. Public schooling will survive, but as part of a large ecosystem, instead of the whole.

"As soon as you give up on public education and only see privatization as the answer, you give up on addressing the education gap between different socioeconomic groups."

No we don't. Vouchers may not be 100% "free market", but it's not going to keep me up at night.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> I'm not sure that education is the big problem, but it's definitely up there. I think probably the financial climate leading to unemployment/underemployment is a bigger one, but significantly more difficult to fix.

<comment><USER24> Imagine a world where you can retrain yourself on the order of months, not years, and take on little or no debt to do it. How would that impact unemployment or underemployment?

When Obama stands in front of a bankrupt auto factory in Detroit and says, "We'll retool these factories and retrain these workers to produce wind turbines, solar panels, and electric cars!", how do we do it?

People are desperate to answer that question and services like bloc.io, Udacity, Coursera, Khan Academy, University Now, etc. are just our best first answers.

Education is more than a big problem: it's the root problem.

Caveat lector: I help run <http://devbootcamp.com> and the bloc.io guys work out of our offices 2-3 days per week.

<comment><USER25> >Imagine a world where you can retrain yourself on the order of months, not years, and take on little or no debt to do it. How would that impact unemployment or underemployment?

It would have very little effect on un- or underemployment, since un- and underemployment are driven by demand, not supply.

There is zero evidence that unemployment in the United States today is driven by a mismatch between skills-employers-want and skills-workers-have, for instance.

Paul Krugman discusses this in a few of his columns.

<comment><USER8> _It would have very little effect on un- or underemployment, since un- and underemployment are driven by demand, not supply._

Funny - demand is doing just fine. It's only employment that is suffering. See stats here:

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2240468>

The Keynesians haven't been proven wrong on their claims that increased demand -> increased production. It's the part where increased production -> increased employment that they have been shown conclusively to be incorrect.

<comment><USER25> I feared that mentioning Krugman would bring out the Krugman-haters with their nonsense. Sadly, I was right to fear.

You know that the Fed statistics that you cite show that, for example, durable goods production is down 6% since 2007? Even though population has increased in that time. That is to say, the graphs support what I said and what Paul Krugman says, not the nonsense that you think you've learned from Fox News.

<http://www.nytimes.com/2010/09/27/opinion/27krugman.html>

[http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/05/09/a-structural- bla...](http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/05/09/a-structural-blast-from- the-past/)

<comment><USER8> You are completely ignoring the point - if demand increases but producers don't need to hire people to produce more, employment does not increase. I.e., demand may be correlated with production, but production need not be correlated with employment.

If you looked at the fed stats I cited, they show precisely a lack of correlation between production and employment.

Nothing you have cited disputes this fundamental point. Krugman doesn't even try, he just declares victory and insults those who disagree.

<comment><USER25> >if demand increases but producers don't need to hire people to produce more, employment does not increase.

If fishes rode bicycles... but they don't.

Productivity growth doesn't change that much year over year:

<http://www.bls.gov/lpc/prodybar.htm>

And recessions are generally times of low change, since it doesn't make sense to invest in labor-saving technology when labor is cheap.

> production need not be correlated with employment.

In a speculative robot-filled future, that could be true. On Earth in 2012, if you want something done, you hire a human to do it.

<comment><USER8> _If fishes rode bicycles... but they don't._

Nonsense. Should I post the graphs again? The graphs clearly demonstrate increased production without a corresponding increase in employment. This is the "jobless recovery" that many columnists lament. Some graphs again:

<http://research.stlouisfed.org/fred2/series/PAYEMS>

<http://research.stlouisfed.org/fred2/series/INDPRO>

<http://research.stlouisfed.org/fred2/series/GDPC1>

<http://research.stlouisfed.org/fred2/series/MANEMP>

<http://research.stlouisfed.org/fred2/series/IPMAN>

 _And recessions are generally times of low change, since it doesn't make sense to invest in labor-saving technology when labor is cheap._

Labor is more expensive than ever before. Another graph for you to ignore:

<http://research.stlouisfed.org/fred2/series/ECIWAG>

According to Keynesians (e.g. Krugman), recessions are caused by labor not becoming cheap in response to exogenous shocks (due to sticky nominal wages). Do you disagree with this theory?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> I agree education (and even more particularly, the method and quality of teaching) is a problem, but it's not the same problem as student debt.

As far as I can tell, much of the (debt) problem is caused by bad decision making by clueless parents and teenagers who think they need to send their kid to an Ivy League or think that their child somehow needs to spend 40k a year to go to an in-state school.

Let's be honest. The cost of education is going up, yes. But getting into debt is also bad and a poor choice. Yet nobody is responsible enough to consider it when making college choices, just to whine about it after the fact.

Students do not need to own a television or get cable or even have a video game console. Students probably don't even need a car, definitely don't need smartphones, and at least where I went to school, could probably do just fine without owning a computer, too. Likewise, instead of getting into debt they could go to cheaper community colleges or a whole slew of things.

Instead many college students, regardless of economic background, seem to have smartphones, Macs, and 42" TVs.

When I see someone complaining about college debt, I see somebody who went to an overly expensive school, without a plan, and did whatever they felt like without ever stopping to consider first if they could make a living when they were done. I see a child.

As someone who looked at the big picture when making college decisions and now has no college debt two years out of school, I have no sympathy.

I turned down the University of Chicago (among others) so that I wouldn't be in debt and to hear all the whining about it from entitled feeling kids who didn't make smart decisions makes me angry.

Now I'll agree that you may need to take on some debt to complete college. But if you're taking on more than the cost of a new car, you're doing it wrong.

Don't get me wrong, either. I concur that colleges waste lots of money.

<comment><USER24> I attended the University of Chicago, paid for it myself, and took on 100% of the debt.

I'm still paying it off, but it was worth it! My life is without question 100x better for it.

Your point is fair, though: with few exceptions student's expectations of how transformative their college education to be absolutely eclipses the reality.

<comment><USER27> I think the OP's characterization of the decisionmaking process that leads to crippling educational debt is somewhat unfair. It's definitely driven by the parents and children who he condemns as "clueless." But I think it's important to consider that many of these "clueless" have been told their entire lives that "education is a great investment" and "graduates of prestigious universities all become successful and rich," and have never really been confronted with any reason to question these pronouncements, which have appeared consistent with their own observations and experiences. Colleges and universities don't hesitate to trot out these tropes in their recruitment literature, though I suppose it's a mark of the "clueless" that they hold educational institutions to a different standard of credibility than used car salesmen or carnival barkers.

I see a parallel to the recent mortgage crisis. Sure, fundamentally, the crisis was just huge numbers of people defaulting en-masse on their mortgages. They all made "clueless" decisions by taking on more mortgage debt than they could handle. Maybe they deserve what they get, and maybe the appropriate response is to be angry at these entitled whiners who made worse decisions than the OP. But these decisions were facilitated by lenders and securities brokers who were acting in less than good faith.

I'm inclined to view both the homeowners in the mortgage crisis and the students and families struggling with education debt right now more as victims of poor information availability and outmoded decision heuristics that fell behind the times, and less as entitled whiners.

I guess I should note that I also went to the University of Chicago (hi Jesse) and it's fairly clear by now that it was a terrible choice for me. So maybe I'm just grasping for rationalizations while desperately fleeing from the crushing psychological weight of the responsibility for that choice and the long and uninterrupted sequence of related bad choices that have more or less ruined my life.

<comment><USER26> Can't really tell if the last line is sarcasm for sure (I think it is?).

I can't stand when people are taught to listen instead of think, and that predilection of mine is why I can't see the sub-prime mortgage crisis as being at all similar to college debt.

Someone who is going to college is supposed to be bright, intelligent, and motivated. A budding critical thinker who can deal with new and complex ideas. Hence I don't think someone who makes decisions based on what they're told is a good candidate for college. Likewise I don't think someone who is focused on the past success of others is exactly an ideal college candidate, either. Both of these things are ostensibly why there are large essay sections as part of the college application process.

In any case, I think it's kind of disingenuous and silly to have the same expectations of someone without a high school degree and three kids working 60 hours a week getting pitched on a bad loan and a top end of the spectrum student getting pitched on colleges. You can't have the same expectations.

That said, I think you hit the nail on the head when comparing modern college recruitment practices to used car salesmen. In fact, visiting MIT (academic activity related) remains one of the most disillusioning experiences of my life. Sure, science goes on there, but I felt like I was inside of an infomercial.

If anything perhaps both are a sign that K-12 needs to have more coverage of financial- and media- literacy.

But I guess I've regarded the success of graduates of Ivy Leagues and other prestigious schools as having more to do with being part of the good old boys club and networking with the wealthy than actually having anything to do with having good teachers.

<comment><USER27> No sarcasm; just a lot of regret and self-loathing.

It seems like the root of our disagreement is our differeing expectations for the cognitive and decisionmaking abilities of teenagers. As other posters have mentioned, there are lots of social factors at play in the college decision, and I think those factors can be far more powerful than what's necessary to lead a straight-A high school student astray.

If we pared away all of the people who were susceptible to making bad decisions based on what they're told or who are focused on the past successes of others, only the tiniest sliver of the population would remain as viable candidates for college. Maybe this is the point you're making - maybe you think we should shut down almost every university and tell everyone outside the enlightened sliver to go figure out something else to do. (Might actually not be that bad of an idea.) Or maybe you have a different view of people's cognitive abilities at age 17.

The approach that you personally took toward your college decision is, I think, pretty exceptional, and puts you toward the top of the top 1% of rational 17-year-old decisionmakers. I hesitate to condemn people as clueless and undeserving of our sympathy because they fall short of that lofty standard.

<comment><USER26> I'm not really sure what point I'm making.

I agree there are large structural flaws with college (well, pretty much the whole educational system). Good teachers and good researchers aren't the same thing for sure. Likewise, many amenities at college today are not really necessary, but also likely don't have a anywhere near an order of magnitude impact on costs. At some schools healthy food is often replaced by junk food provided through restaurant contractors, which is not so great, but maybe is a little cheaper. I agree that something needs to change with how college works, and that the costs are getting a bit silly when they're almost at the point that you could get together with a class of friends and hire expert personal tutors instead.

Likewise, I definitely think that many people who feel they need to go to college are people who shouldn't go to college, or who at least aren't ready for it. Witness the huge numbers of remedial courses at many public institutions, as well as decreasing standards in many courses. I sometimes take classes at the local community college for fun and I'll have classmates who can barely read and write using student loans to fail their courses. Sadly enough, I've seen some of the same at 4 year schools. It's just depressing and I often wonder how they even got through High School. (And I'm not talking about non-English speakers or anything, either. Upper or upper-middle class Caucasians who have maybe 5th or 6th grade level language skills.)

Of course some people just eat McDonald's and play WoW instead of going to class while living off loans. I had a room mate one year in the dorms who did that.

I'm sure you're right that social pressure is a lot of it. Dad goes to college, assumes the kids will too, then doesn't much pay attention while they do rather mediocre in school, aren't ready for college, but absolutely feel like they've got to. So on and so forth.

I can't accept the notion that social pressure is really a valid excuse, though, even if it's behind the reality for some of the problems.

But I'm the kind of cruel bastard who hates it when people worry about what everyone else thinks and who if ever has kids will move several times on purpose and keep them from watching TV and hopefully raise them so that they can trust themselves instead of their peers with lots of comments like 'well, if Freddy jumped off a cliff would you?.'

I've also got to think another part of it is the notion that the credential is meaningful, but doesn't represent any skill or knowledge. So many people these days think of the paper first, the socialization second, and learning third.

I'm sure there's something, too, with the excessive helicopter parenting keeping even smart 17/18-year-olds from really thinking for themselves.

I guess I'm just not super sympathetic about things that irritate me, and my experiences have rarely exposed me to the sympathetic side.

One thing I just thought about is ROTC. Better than debt, I guess? The people I knew in it were definitely on the straight and narrow and all set to finish with decent grades and no debt.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> I just graduated with my CS degree this May, and I only took on a total of 20k debt and lived on campus, and that 20k was just the stafford loans that 3 of my scholarships mandated I take in order to qualify. Note, now that I graduated, I already paid off over half that on just reserve funds from summer jobs that I have had dating back to High School.

While I was there, only about 1 in 5 students actually had a full financial aid package. _Most_ of them didn't fill out FAFSAs, or didn't even use subsidized stafford loans - they had direct bank loans from their parents for upwards of $60k a year.

In my opinion, the people of the 22ed century will look back and think we were hilariously dumb. We have instantanous communication of ideas and knowledge via the internet, and our internet speeds are only getting better. If you want to _learn_ something, it is easier than ever to find a community of fellow learners for a subject, find tons of free learning materials on that subject, and buckle down without the financial obligations and classroom environment (which doesn't work for everyone, and you inherently have less engagement there because one teacher can not effectively engage with even just 10 people all the time).

Like the article said, the degree is the problem. But I don't think thats the _real_ problem - moreso the problem than that is the inability for _individuals_ to have ideas and persue them in business ventures, because upstart small business will demand much less degree knowledge from employees (even if they are very skilled) since they draw from a local pool.

You get the degree because you will be applying to massive companies with huge HR that don't want to try to interpret you as a _person_ but want to get a quick diagnostic of if you are capable or not from a one word answer to a 3 word question: Got a degree? If hiring was more based on individual accomplishment and demonstratable knowledge rather than paper, we would all be better off for it by getting off the degree treadmill.

<comment><USER29> As others have said before, education is incredibly cheap now, but credentials are becoming more and more expensive.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> I think the biggest problem with higher education today is the fact that colleges aren't the one issuing the student loans. If a student enters the workforce and can't find a job to pay back their loan, the colleges aren't the ones on the hook; the students are, and eventually, the taxpayers. I understand that government-backed loans are a way to try to make higher education available to more people but all this easy money has resulted in a huge cash grab by for profit institutions who frankly could care less whether or not their graduates actually pay the loans back. Couple that with the almost religious belief that a college education is the only way to achieve the American dream and you have a recipe for the exact disaster we're flying head first into today.

<comment><USER30> The traditional name for this: The agency problem. [http://www.investopedia.com/terms/a/agencyproblem.asp#axzz23...](http://www.investopedia.com/terms/a/agencyproblem.asp#axzz23B7SZN50)

</comment></comment><comment><USER31> I don't think there's a private solution to this problem. If we look to functional educational systems (example: germany), we see that other countries are often much better at matching people up with careers that match their talents (or lack thereof). Instead, we have colleges that will take whoever can pay over whoever might be the brightest academically. The people who can pay aren't necessarily the sharpest crayon in the box, and the people who can't might be the next cure for [insert x here].

State universities at the very least should be tuition free so as to not completely fuck over students from dysfunctional families who won't help/families that can't afford it. Of course, it would also be wiser to raise entrance standards and somehow figure out how to stop the ridiculous GPA inflation that goes on in the liberal arts fields. STEM still pays relatively well, but that's because our standards haven't dropped; unfortunately, many requirements for maintaining a scholarship fail to take choice of major into account when setting a minimum GPA.

Anyone can get a liberal arts degree if they have enough (or can borrow enough) money, which is why it means shit nowadays as a measure of IQ.

<comment><USER32> I _am_ at a state university, and there's a couple of issues that people here aren't really aware of.

University funding comes from three sources: tuition, state funds and research grants (federal or industrial). The last two have been steadily declining, so that leaves tuition as an ever more important source of funds. The university is building new dormitories to get new paying bodies. It doesn't matter just how damn incapable the students are, what counts is that they pay. You can't encourage anyone to drop their chosen degree, if you do you might have to apologize to the chair and the parents.

Again, funds are scarce, and the administration tries to hive off teaching of introductory courses to adjuncts. It takes anyone a year or two to learn the ropes, then people leave because working conditions here are poor, the classes are too large and the workload too heavy. No one is concerned about the revolving door for introductory courses. Besides, you have to have an excellent command of the subject matter to be able to teach a beginners' class, you just cannot put a bottom-of-the-barrel type in front of an introductory course and expect the students to do well.

Again, it's the undergraduates that pay, and they money goes primarily into teaching facilities. Meanwhile the research space is neglected. There is no money to replace the fifty year old rotting tiles in my office, everything goes to provide a nice environment to the dear undergrad kids.

Someone might notice that mathematics and computing are peculiar in that there is not much capital equipment or education needed to be productive. One can be a decent programmer with a bachelor's degree and grow into software engineering. But consider the physical sciences, biology, chemistry physics. To produce any results one needs capital equipment and a PhD. No one goes anywhere far in biology even with a Masters.

Startup mania. I'd love to join a startup in my field. Try that with a sick wife. Can't afford it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER33> I feel like this is just swapping degrees for certifications. In this case the certification is just saying you completed training with so and so (so and so being bloc.io). Either way, everybody's just chasing paper and maybe learning something in the process.

EDIT: What I meant by certification was more abstract. On a resume, saying you completed tutelage with an individual or a group (and have achievements to go along with them) is pretty similar to completing certification that implies knowledge attained prior to completing the certification...the disfunctional nature of certifications, degrees, and mentor-based systems notwithstanding. People market themselves with this stuff, no matter what precisely it is, or where they got it from.

<comment><USER34> we don't offer certification, we believe in the "your work is your resume" philosophy.

<comment><USER33> I like that policy! I'm just curious how it ultimately boils down to a difference in the mindset of people looking to market themselves with skills. I personally find this model to be really cool and wish you all the best in expanding into your other areas of teaching!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> Here are a couple of random thoughts:

Maybe we need to start outsourcing our education to China and India. We can send our kids to India for their undergraduate degrees and then they can come back here to get their post-graduate degrees.

Move towards knowledge certification instead of a degree that states you completed your degree. Bar Exam, MCSE, Board Certifications, etc. If you have the drive and capacity to learn without attending college then you should be rewarded only having to take a certification exam.

Once enough schools go belly up people can just start listing those institutions on their resumes. Since the school is close there won't be an easy way to verify. (Just kidding of course)

</comment><comment><USER36> The adverse effects of a warming atmosphere is a more existential problem, and I would argue that it is for this reason that it is a more fundamental one. Education is irreelevant if food supplies are increasingly scarce.

<comment><USER37> I would argue, that educations and science are the most likely sources of the solution to food problem.

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

</comment></comment><comment><USER38> While I strongly support educational reform, I should point out that it is not just higher education, it's also high school, middle school, elementary school, kindergarten, and daycare. Every single aspect of the entire educational system down to the time spent on kids when they're too young to speak properly is broken. Consequently, fixing this is not as simple as having an online university, but I agree that the solution is very likely to be some sort of private, for-profit company, simply because that's the only feasible catalyst.

</comment><comment><USER39> I'm somewhat curious to know how big of a problem (and what forms it takes) this is around the world—if people could share what this looks like from where they are, I'd be tremendously interested.

</comment><comment><USER40> > Once you default on a student loan, you'll be hounded for life: student loan > debt is the absolute worst kind of debt you can have, _as it is not > absolvable by bankruptcy_.

I've always wondered two things about this.

1\. How is that even legal? I thought the whole point of bankruptcy was to raise a big flag that says "I can no longer pay my debts", and they go away. Why is student loan debt different?

2\. Why do American students tolerate it? Look what happened in Quebec when they tried to raise tuition even a little.

<comment><USER41> 1) Congress passed a law after a lot of lobbying. The reasoning was that when a student graduates they have substantial debt and no assets, so every student would just declare bankruptcy the day after graduating and wouldn't have to pay back the providers.

<comment><USER40> So the lenders wanted protection.

They are now 100% guaranteed to make money by lending it to uninformed children.

Crazy.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER42> Yes, education is our generation's (18-30) problem.

Schools are lousy and degrade basic skills, as well as degrading deep cultural literacy and history. Idiots are held as heros. College costs are skyrocketing and dysfunctional buildings are being built by the colleges. The list of problems could go on... reams of paper have been spent documenting them.

Yes, there's a problem. I argue the essence of the problem is the deification of money.

</comment><comment><USER43> There's another fix: Hire these graduates into the public sector or a random non-profit, let them make income-based payments, and then forgive their loans after 10 years, regardless of how much they've paid back. The taxpayers pick up the rest.

Thanks, Congress!

[http://studentaid.ed.gov/repay-loans/forgiveness- cancellatio...](http://studentaid.ed.gov/repay-loans/forgiveness- cancellation/charts/public-service)

<comment><USER44> I think encouraging people to make better education investments is a better idea than making other people pay for their poor choices.

<comment><USER43> I agree. To a first order approximation, "Thanks, Congress!" always has an implied sarcasm tag.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER45> As with most things government is involved with, the education industry has evolved for the care and feeding of the providers and not the consumers.

In a normal market, the customers have the power. In a market where the consumers don't really pay or think they don't, they have no leverage.

And students are just passing through, are quite busy, so they aren't exactly lobbying Congress. But rest assured everyone else involved is.

</comment><comment><USER46> Maybe the problem is that there's less and less need for most types of workers.

We have a global population steadily lurching toward 8 billion. And, the richest of us seem to need less and less. And, that's coupled with aggressively commoditized global services industry that is providing more and more value for less and less cost.

Seems like major equilibrium shift waiting to happen.

</comment><comment><USER47> Obviously, matters relating to shortfalls in our education system are important, but the real problem is campaign finance. With election candidates raising the vast majority of their funds from special interests, there is little incentive to fix problems that are profitable for said special interests.

</comment><comment><USER48> Re-introduce cheap, accessible, well-funded public universities that people can study out, without subsidizing for-profit or even private universities. Public options allow the market to work while overcoming the underprovided nature of education.

</comment><comment><USER49> Agile Education. Is that a thing? If not, why? If yes, how?

Edit: serious question.

</comment><comment><USER50> The approaches to education in the past five decades or so have produced mediocre results in producing a more civic individual. I wonder if the fundamentals of logic are imparted in any elementary school curriculum.

Our electorate is already pitifully informed. However what's really woeful is that a large portion of the vote bank cannot dissect a simple election campaign claim or promise.</comment>


Early Ritchie Unix Talk [ca. 1972] - <AUTHOR> http://cm.bell-labs.com/cm/cs/who/dmr/notes.html

<comment><USER2> link is dead :(, can this be seen anywhere else?

<comment><USER3> I find google cache. [http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:http://...](http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:http://cm.bell- labs.com/cm/cs/who/dmr/notes.html)</comment></comment>


CSRF on moneybookers, yfrog and few other sites - <AUTHOR> http://homakov.blogspot.com/2012/03/hacking-skrillformer-moneybookers.html?sup well, let's teach develepers. <comment><USER2> Previous relevant discussions on HN:

\- <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3791281>

\- <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3789673>

\- <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3778158>

</comment><comment><USER3> Egor, I very much appreciate your efforts. That's a lot of examples, a whole lot work.

I'm a complete noob about browser security stuff. So I had to lookup "CSRF". Maybe spell out acronyms or link to their definitions.

Cross-site request forgery

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cross-site_request_forgery>

[https://www.owasp.org/index.php/Cross- Site_Request_Forgery_(...](https://www.owasp.org/index.php/Cross- Site_Request_Forgery_\(CSRF\))

Since I'm working on some public facing websites, and need to learn this stuff, your work is definitely helpful. Thank you.

</comment><comment><USER4> There are CSRF vulns everywhere. Infact, It was a CSRF that got me into the Google Hall of Fame!</comment>


How to screw up a startup community - <AUTHOR> http://programming.tudorconstantin.com/2013/12/how-to-screw-up-startup-community.html

<comment><USER2> Wow. This hit way too close to home. I was in the early stages of this almost- exact situation 6 months ago.

I was part of a small four-man team, all undergrads, yet somehow we bootstrapped our way to $60k revenue in the first 3 months.

Eventually we found our way into the local startup community, soon after adopting one of the main community organizers as an adviser. The team as a whole lacking in experience, we were glad to have a mentor make him self available to us. I was skeptical though.

From the very start when I first met him I felt something was off. His intentions were very opaque and I could never figure out what his endgame was; despite being very open and direct about it he always managed to dodge my inquiries. That gut feeling was strong, and I went with it, leaving the team to pursue other opportunities. The rest of the team stuck with him.

Within the past month this 'mentor' launched a direct competitor to our team's product with a different team he was 'advising'. I feel bad for the old team, and can't blame them for having faith in someone they thought had their best interest in mind. The one thing I learned from the experience is that predators really do exist, and they hide behind unclear intentions.</comment>


To Persuade Someone, Look Emotional - <AUTHOR> http://nautil.us/blog/to-persuade-someone-look-emotional <comment><USER2> > According to a recent study, people who make instinct-based moral judgments > are perceived by their peers to be more moral and more trustworthy than > those who rely on reasoning alone.

That's a depressing fact if true. Reasoning is a superior way of making a moral judgement, solely because we're wired to thing about ourselves and our close tribe before anything else. It's only through reasoning that we can consider the true "big picture."

<comment><USER3> I've heard worse from an interviewing course from a Human Resources veteran who left the field to care for family that has me conclude that much of humanity is frankly batshit insane by the definition of 'divorced from reality'.

In addition to paying 80% attention to how it is said instead of the content of what is said they tend to judge people who are better at putting on an appropriate 'mask' of confidence as 'trustworthy' when they all know that nearly everyone puts on a show for interviews anyway. That is believing that people who demonstrate better capabilities of actively faking emotions are more trustworthy. When aptitude is widely linked to practice. Saying you want a surgeon who can't stand the sight of blood so they'll make fewer unnecessary cuts is more logical than that.

That is beyond trusting your intuition and into flat out divorced from reality and putting on a heaping helping of cognitive dissonance on top.

The revelation was disturbing yet it also explains /a lot/ of societal dysfunctions and why high functioning sociopaths are disproportionate among CEOs.

<comment><USER4> I somewhat agree with you, but I don't think you're giving these intuitions enough credit. Feelings are fine-tuned over millions of years to be good signals. Things like the halo effect, for example trusting people because they are attractive, are well-rooted in empirical evidence.

Humans may recently have found a better way but that remains to be seen; on the face of it, reason is much more abstract and hence more 'divorced from reality'. It certainly doesn't warrant an immediate switch of strategies.

<comment> maze-le >> Feelings are fine-tuned over millions of years to be good signals.

If you're going for a hunt on large mammals, gut feelings about your peers is probably a good way to judge a person. An interview for a job is (usually) an entirely different situation.

>> Things like the halo effect, for example trusting people because they are attractive, are well-rooted in empirical evidence.

Oh my god, please don't tell me you trust people because they are looking good. If you do, you should consider establishing a different trust-metric, one that maybe has to do with the job a person is actually requested to do.

<comment><USER5> I didn't read it as "we should trust people based on looks", but more as "we DO trust people based on looks" (I assume the "empirical evidence" refers to evidence of this being hardwired into us, not to evidence of it being useful).

<comment><USER4> I meant that the existence of the effect means it was selected as beneficial. If we want to override this response we should use our higher-level reasoning to (1) understand why it works that way (2) show that we can do better.

The burden of proof is on those proposing a new system. I doubt it's as easy as many rationalists assume.

<comment><USER6> ... not necessarily.

The existence of the effect really means that it wasn't selected against.

<comment><USER4> Sounds right; maybe it's a side-effect of something else.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I've done A/B/C testing to see how likely someone is to install Telegram when they get surprised that I don't have Whatsapp. Those to whom I explain in a straight-faced manner that Whatsapp is intrusive, almost never install it. Those to whom I whine that I don't like the intrusiveness are very likely to install it. The third group, to whom I whine that I just don't like Whatsapp, are also likely to install it.

In short, don't give someone a reason to do something. Just whine.

<comment><USER8> On a related note, I noticed that it's a bit socially looked down upon to be privacy conscious. This is pretty much a 180 from what the public perception was 20 years ago.

<comment><USER9> Everyone is fine with you being privacy conscious to some degree. It's when you start telling them that _they should be too_ that it tends to get a negative response.

I'd argue that this is why the GP succeeds in their B/C tests - because they made it about their own choices. In A it's trying to convince the other party of a position on privacy instead which is, unsurprisingly, a lot harder

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> TFA doesn't differentiate between types of emotion. What if it's anger, exasperation, or some other negative emotion?

I've worked with people who tended to display these emotions when making decisions, interacting with people, and carrying out their work. Far from persuading me, it was more likely to make me think that the quality of their decision-making (and other aspects of their work) was compromised.

<comment><USER11> "Emotional" in this context is generally understood as "appealing to the audience's emotions."

Displaying anger _at_ your audience may not be convincing, but if you want your audience to be angry about something else, then displaying the anger you want them to share can be quite effective.

<comment><USER12> Like certain popular politicians who shall not be named.

A common enemy is among the oldest tricks in the book.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> The title suggests that what you need to do is appear to be making an emotional decision but the article seems to suggest that you need to actually make an emotional decision. The difference is between Dukakis quickly saying no and instead revealing all the feelings he'd have before choosing principle over vengeance.

</comment><comment><USER14> I think it's also because people who feel strongly on an issue want at least to see that you take the issue with the same gravity they do, and the best way to demonstrate that is that you, too, have a visible emotional response to the topic, that it gave you as much internal turmoil to come to the conclusion you did.

The worst thing you can do is to make a weighty issue seem simple or that you regard it tritely. That's what Dukakis did wrong, even though I have every belief he actually did think the issue through.

</comment><comment><USER15> In the absence of historical data, receiving information from another person, without any quick way to verify what has been communicated, coupled with a necessity to decide/act, has long required/used a shortcut.

You look in that person's face, you make the call. You'all remember that stuff. Maybe not so common now, but it's still on TV.. "My word is my bond." and all that.

If that utterance doesn't come with a hardcore look of sincerity playing across the face, well then it's not believable. Looking emotional doesn't mean looking distraught. It means not looking like a mannequin.

Even with data, logic, reason, and an armful of facts, imagine two people with equal amounts of the aforementioned, trying to convince a 3rd party, but one of the individuals throws in expressions/mannerisms that communicate "trust", "sincerity", and "competence"...

</comment><comment><USER16> Is persuasion using emotion to heighten the strength of the persuasion manipulation?

Relevant - [https://i.imgur.com/yN2l1Cp.png](https://i.imgur.com/yN2l1Cp.png)

<comment><USER17> The other screenshotted discussion:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17662135](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17662135) [How to tell the difference between persuasion and manipulation]

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> Persuasion seems like a pseudoscience , much like hypnotherapy, telekinesis, speed reading, ediic memory, etc. If were as effective as the people claim, you could just persuade a million people to give you $1 and be a millionaire. That example may seem contrived, but how hard should it be to persuade someone to give someone as little as $1, especially with special persuasion techniques? Surely that shouldn't be too hard. But that is what panhandlers try do, so I think much of persuasion is just begging, or begging is the most effective persuasion technique. If you keep pestering enough people to do something, some may capitulate. There's not much science or any sort of special 'social engineering' techniques involved in that. People think that there is a science or special skill to being persuasive, but 4-year-olds and beggars seem to excel at it.

People who are reasonably intelligent and competent are not going to fall for these persuasion techniques...it's better to learn how to be more competent than waste time trying to learn persuasion. Yeah, you can probably persuade a stranger to give you a few dollar, but it won't work in situations where the stakes are higher. Regarding Dukakis and the 1988 presidential debate, attributing his loss to his answer is an example of the Post hoc ergo propter hoc fallacy. Because he lost, pundit needs to work backwards to try to find a reason why he lost, but that does not prove that his answer was why he lost. Scott Adams (and this is where I disagree with him) attributes Trump's win to special persuasion techniques, but Trump was going to get about 50% of the vote (just by virtue of being that GOP nominee) regardless of any special techniques. And also, if pursation were so effecvie, he why not just purade everoyne watchign his Periscopte to give him a few dolalr.s Surely that shoudl not be too hard.

</comment><comment><USER19> 'scientists say' << I guess I could either read the source material or just wait a year and see another headline that refutes their conclusions.

<comment><USER20> that is a scientific fact, any refutations are more probable that no refutations</comment></comment>


Tom wheeler helps stop Comcast/Time Warner merger - <AUTHOR> http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/the-switch/wp/2015/04/24/the-fcc-is-a-former-cable-lobbyist-and-he-just-helped-kill-cables-biggest-deal/

<comment><AUTHOR> "When I was at CTIA and NCTA, I was an advocate for those interests and I hope I did a very good job as an advocate for them, Today, I have a different client. My client is the American people, and I want to be the best damn advocate they can get." \--Tom Wheeler

What a quote for the press to play with.</comment>


Porting a JavaScript App to WebAssembly with Rust (Part 1) - <AUTHOR> https://slowtec.de/posts/2019-12-20-porting-javascript-to-rust-part-1.html <comment><USER2> While it's just part one, I feel like whether the end result successfully overcomes the problems mentioned is missing. I wonder if in fact it does.

Personally I wouldn't refactor an entire application from scratch unless it was fairly simple. Instead I prefer incremental refactoring and I've found that typescript can be helpful in that regard.

<comment><USER3> Also, while Rust does bring additional guarantees to the table, I wonder if they are really the ones that matter (much) in web dev.

Having a strongly typed language is a bonus, but a) there is TypeScript and b) the maintainability nightmares I have encountered had nothing to do with the language itself, but more with core programming principles like separation of concerns, state management (well, I'll admit that existance of MobX doesn't help there...) and similar.

So I don't buy the motivation, but it's still interesting to see what can be done in Rust.

<comment><USER4> > well, I'll admit that existance of MobX doesn't help there...

'Doesn't' or 'does'? We've found MobX to really help.

<comment><USER3> Doesn't, imho of course. MobX makes creating and using global variables way too easy. One of the more nightmarish legacy projects included hunting down the culprit that sometimes changed some variable in mobx store. Abysmall tooling (compared to Redux) doesn't help either.

Currently my go-to store is Redux Toolkit [0]. Explicit store management, but much less verbose than regular Redux. Also, initial state, actions and reducers are all defined in one place (slice).

[0] [https://redux-toolkit.js.org/](https://redux-toolkit.js.org/)

<comment><USER4> Thanks, enabling strict mode (requires observable change through an @action only) helps imo.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Interesting take, but there is no indication that the new Rust-based stack will be « less expensive » to maintain than the current one. I am curious to see the next posts in the series. I would also like to know if they considered other alternatives; they mention Elm, what about TypeScript. The issues they mention seem to also have to do with the specific choice of frameworks or tools: React, Webpack, etc. Not so much with JavaScript itself?

<comment><USER6> Could be less expensive if the devs expected to work on it were highly experienced in Rust, but not experienced with JS, which sounds more like the case.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> While I love Rust, I don't think this here is a good use case for it - TypeScript nowadays works really well with JSX and can be introduced incrementally.

Rust's guarantees work best in a highly concurrent setting - a web app isn't really one.

Rust shines not on the application level, but on the framework/library level, where things like memory usage and performance are critical.

A framework with virtual DOM written entirely in Rust would go a long way. Same with a template compiler.

<comment><USER8> I use Rust all the time, where 90% of what I write is on the application level, and 5% is concurrent. I just like the language.

<comment><USER9> Enjoying the language you're using is as important as pretty much anything else.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I thought DOM manipulation from WASM was pretty expensive because it needs to be bridged through JS -- is that still true?

<comment><USER11> You still need to go call into Javascript to do any kind of DOM manipulation. The solution I used for wasm-forth (a forth implementation targeting wasm), is to have a js "interpreter", implemented as a single function, that executes a sequence of DOM manipulation instructions, represented as an array of integers. On the forth side, the instructions are generated by a virtual DOM library: as the virtual DOMs are diffed, instead of manipulating the DOM directly it generates a sequence of opcodes to send in one go to the Javascript interpreter.

The cost of the Javascript bridge is minimal: it's a single function call to render or update a whole page, and there is no serialization/deserialization involved since both languages can understand arrays of integers natively.

<comment><USER12> This is a really neat idea! Was there an inspiration for this? I think something like this could be very useful!

<comment><USER13> That's basically what ReactNative does.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> > In the next series we'll see how to translate the legacy JavaScript code to > working Rust code.

this is the part I came to see.

</comment><comment><USER15> [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kY- pUxKQMUE](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kY-pUxKQMUE)

seriously though, i've been very interested to see how webassembly adoption goes. does anyone have examples of new projects implemented in webassembly? i've seen lots of examples of ports, but am more curious about its use in product development.

</comment><comment><USER16> Sounds like typescript and angular would be a better fit here.

Angular is "batteries included" compared to react, so you generally won't hit the same dependency hell since angular comes with pretty much everything you need (although not redux pattern support (yet)). Typescript is a strictly- typed JavaScript.

Reprogramming a web front end in rust sounds like a way to lead to huge maintenance issues in the future (i.e. you need to find developers who know rust AND how frontends and things like redux actually work - you'll probably get someone who is good at one, and half-assed at the other). I am also uncertain how you'd debug things in the browser for wasm - e.g. would the redux Dev tools work?

Where I see wasm as useful is if you are doing any heavy-lifting in the browser - so all the examples they give on the various web sites about games and cryptography etc, but probably also parsing/serialisation of binary data from the server for example. I don't feel like basic SPA stuff is a good fit.

</comment><comment><USER17> This is cool. I'll be paying attention to this. If for no other reason than to see what it's like porting from one language to another.

</comment><comment><USER18> While Rust is a very cool technology, I don't think it is the best tool for web development. Manual memory management and constant thinking about ownership and memory sharing is additional productivity overhead, and you don't gain anything from it because the final code is running in a GCed runtime anyways.

I'd use TypeScript or Scala.js.

<comment><USER19> WebAssembly code has to do its own memory management anyway. You don't get the benefits of the JavaScript GC.

<comment><USER18> I didn't say you got benefits of JS GC nor lack of JS GC. And that's the point: you don't get benefits, but you pay the price in lower productivity. Rust is a pleasant language to write in, but it is nowhere as expressive and fast to develop in as TypeScript, Scala or even Kotlin.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Did anyone find a subscribe link? I'm curious to see how this progresses.

<comment><USER21> [https://slowtec.de/feed.rss](https://slowtec.de/feed.rss)

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> This seems like a solution looking for a problem but cool to see. A far more practical suggestion would be to just use typescript and incrementally rewrite.

</comment><comment><USER23> > Maintaining Software that is written in a dynamically typed language like > JavaScript is costly. Maintaining a JavaScript frontend that is build with > React, NPM, WebPack and Babel is even more expensive.

Not exactly. In modern browsers JavaScript executes in a VM. If the JavaScript instance is written in a strongly typed way it executes quickly by receiving the full benefits of a compiled language. Aside from arithmetic it executes almost as fast as Java. That is one of the strengths of TypeScript.

I do completely agree about NPM, dependency overkill, and framework insanity.

In short, don't blame the language for being slow. Blame marketing and bad developers. That being said I have little faith that WASM will be fast once it meets the reality of bad developers and marketing teams.

<comment><USER24> I think that quote isn't about JS performance but maintaining software written in JS.

<comment><USER23> Again, that goes to the quality of product/people in a given instance. I have done this long enough to fully appreciate that when it comes to fucking up software on the web people will find a way whether it's for some poorly conceived developer motivation or media/marketing motivation.

<comment><USER25> i think the original post just mentionned « costly ». It didn't say it was impossible to mess things up even with rust. Just that it removes the cost of checking types are still matching after a refactoring or a dependency update.

<comment><USER26> This a true, but the advantage is probably more than offset by the relative cost of JS vs Rust developers. You can also add Flow types.

A single threaded environment does not yield the usual advantages of the Rust borrow checker.

<comment><USER27> > the relative cost of JS vs Rust developers

I.e. pay peanuts, get code monkeys?

> A single threaded environment does not yield the usual advantages of the > Rust borrow checker.

This is quite wrong - reference invalidation and async code that's being scheduled within a single thread are two common examples where it matters a lot.

<comment><USER28> Lots of boilerplate and error-prone code can also be avoided by implementing `drop` on relevant types, this can yield to pretty interesting APIs in the web space.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Revolutionary iOS application which catches your sounds while you are sleeping - <AUTHOR> http://snorecatcherapp.com/

<comment><USER2> Whats revolutionary about it? This already exists for Android.

</comment><comment><USER3> SleepDroid was much earlier :)</comment>


Show HN: GIF creation from automatically determined video highlights – Demo - <AUTHOR> http://people.ee.ethz.ch/~gyglim/work_public/autogif <comment><USER2> That's impressive...I submitted this clip from So You Think You Can Dance:

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TLtSfYX8tJk](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TLtSfYX8tJk)

The results:

[http://people.ee.ethz.ch/~gyglim/work_public/autogif/gif.fcg...](http://people.ee.ethz.ch/~gyglim/work_public/autogif/gif.fcgi/gif/TLtSfYX8tJk)

...and while it's debatable which of the segments are most interesting (the performance has a lot of highlights), at least all of the extracts are of actual dancing action, and none consist of cheering-crowd-announcer shots.

edit: Just tried it with the Game of Thrones Season 6 trailer:

[http://people.ee.ethz.ch/~gyglim/work_public/autogif/gif.fcg...](http://people.ee.ethz.ch/~gyglim/work_public/autogif/gif.fcgi/gif/EI0ib1NErqg)

The first 2 GIFs have decent action...the other 4 are relative duds in terms of action...but I do like the shot of Tyrion simply holding a torch in the darkness.

<comment><AUTHOR> Glad you like it :) It indeed works well in discriminating the rather good from the rather bad. It doesn't always find the best one of course. The biggest problem in my opinion is that the start and end of the GIF are not always prefect. This sometimes makes the GIF look bad even though the content that was selected would be interesting</comment></comment>


Arcade group promises ticket and claw games will no longer be "rigged" - <AUTHOR> https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2017/05/arcade-group-promises-ticket-and-claw-games-will-no-longer-be-rigged/ <comment><USER2> This sounds like it could tend to make the games less fun for most players; when randomly winnable games are allowed, the winnable games can be easy. A casual player doesn't want to have to lose every play until they get good. Hence, why the industry didn't choose to do this until lawmakers noticed that what they were doing was essentially gambling.</comment>


A Fake Amazon Reviewer Confesses - <AUTHOR> http://blogs.wsj.com/wallet/2009/07/09/delonghis-strange-brew-tracking-down-fake-amazon-raves/

<comment><USER2> I was expecting a big, tearful "OMG I did it and I am sad, forgive me" or something, but actually, there was nobody confessing to anything. It was a story about how a fake reviewer was found out, no more.

Misleading title.

<comment><USER3> The reviewer's techniques aren't even particularly interesting. It's no surprise that she (presumably) was caught out, since anyone could have verified that bias with a quick glance. I'm more interested in learning about people who do this for profit, how many of them there really are, and how they manage to stay hidden.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Check out the 1110 reviews of Tuscan Whole Milk, 1 gallon, 128 fl oz: [http://www.amazon.com/Tuscan-Whole-Milk- Gallon-128/product-r...](http://www.amazon.com/Tuscan-Whole-Milk- Gallon-128/product-reviews/B00032G1S0)

<comment><USER5> or the classic three wolf moon tshirt

[http://www.amazon.com/Mountain-Three-Short-Sleeve- Black/dp/B...](http://www.amazon.com/Mountain-Three-Short-Sleeve- Black/dp/B000NZW3KC/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> _So the Atlanta lawyer did what many of us would – he surfed to Amazon.com and began_ trolling _user reviews for high-end espresso makers._

This brought a completely different scenario to mind from that which the writer intended :)

<comment><USER7> Might be an interesting strategy - write bad reviews of the products you are interest in, and see where the rejection of your trolling is the fiercest. Might be the most passionate users there :-)

<comment><USER8> That explains the reviews on, for instance, any book authored by Ayn Rand.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Remember, only the dumb ones get caught. Fake reviews put up by clever PR firms would not be discovered so easily.

This also shows that Amazon doesn't even do the most basic of automated checks for fakes.

</comment><comment><USER10> I can never bring myself to trust Amazon reviews. I'm a big Consumer Search fan, tho.

<http://www.consumersearch.com/>

<comment><USER11> I'll only use amazon reviews for books, but for that I found them to be great. I don't think I've ever bought a book the turned out to be very different from how I expected it to be based on the amazon book reviews. The thing I've found is to read the 1-3 star reviews. For some reason they tend to go into more detail about the book than the 5 star reviews.

<comment><USER12> I read 1-star reviews for entertainment, but don't trust them, they are often hilariously inaccurate.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> The only thing surprising here is that she was so easy to discover. Does Amazon require people to use real names? Do they actually check IDs?

</comment><comment><USER14> I gave up on Amazon reviews years ago when I noticed that almost everything had 10 5-star reviews the first couple of days. Mom, dad, brothers, sisters, aunt, uncle, secretary, mailman, bartender, yea - that oughta do it.

<comment><USER15> I do like that they make it easy to get to the best negative reviews. In general, I find that they tend to be the most useful by far.

<comment><USER16> Even a negative review can be spun to make the product seem more positive. Ex: "Two stars. Works great and beats the other XYZ brand by a mile, but it doesn't have [random obscure feature that no one else would ever care about], so I'll stick with the XYZ brand." (see what I did there?)

The other problem is that negative reviews are an open mic for people to complain about whatever, and they tend toward the extreme. Ex "One star: Mine broke, and only a few months out of warranty. Piece of junk."

How many people (what %) ever leave comments when the product is just mediocre?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> A fake user review on the Internet? Say it ain't so. Surprised this made the WSJ.</comment>


Show HN: Dozen – My number puzzle game (Browser/Android) - import-this https://import-this.github.io/dozen/ <comment><AUTHOR> On the home page I have no idea what the name of this thing is. Its apparently "12" which spins in. Maybe the name with a description "a number puzzle game".

Then the game modes are "clean", "dirty", "filthy". I'm on a work break, so I'm not sure clicking anything other than clean is good.

so "Clean" I get some instructions about merging rows. Though to be honest I'm not sure why the top row merges and why the bottom example isn't. I tried the help screen and I have the same questions. I get through the help that rows "merge" and the numbers add, but I don't get why some don't merge.

Sorry to be a downer, because the game seems like fun. I think it needs some documentation help.

<comment> import-this Thank you a lot for your feedback. Not to worry. :)

Even though the logo is the number 12, I call the game 'dozen' instead of 'twelve', so I guess I could make some space and add that. Not sure yet how it will look, though. Nobody had pointed out something like that so far, tbh.

Clicking any of the modes would be good, but clicking them in the order that they are in is (let's say) preferred. So your natural tendency was correct! Nothing wrong here, as far as I can tell.

As for the rules, there is no reason why. It's just how the rules of the game are for this mode (they change slightly for each mode). Also, just to make sure, it's tiles that merge, not rows. I'll make them fall one by one, to make this even clearer.

<comment><AUTHOR> I played it again. I get it. The tricky thing to figure out was 1 matches 2 ,then same number matches. I think for me its the color thing, (maybe 1 & 2 the same color?). Once you get it though its not a problem.

The tetris side slide works too. The drop button wasn't super smooth, but otherwise it worked well. (macbook pro/ chrome)

Music/ some sound effects might help. I noticed some of the smaller numbers can get "stuck" under larger ones and that can be a little frustrating.

Nice work.

<comment> import-this Thank you for taking the time to check it out and replying. Hope you enjoy it.

I have changed the intro a bit, since I liked your suggestion (changes will go online in a few days probably).

Each modes changes a bit what matches and what doesn't, so I am not sure if making them the same color helps. I'll reconsider it, though. :)

Music/sound is on the TODO list, but it's on low priority, since a lot of people mute these things, especially on mobile.

Could you please clarify what you meant by the not smooth drop button? Does it not respond instantly or is the animation not smooth? It is a fast drop (around 100ms or less), so I'm not sure if it can look smoother at that speed.

Thank you.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment> import-this Hello, everyone. Dev here. Looking forward to your comments.</comment>


Show HN: Tag and discover GitHub projects. - <AUTHOR>

Http://narly.us
Just saw 'repos.io' on the front page.
Narly.us is solving a similar problem so thought I'd share it here. What do you think? Useful or not? Features I need?
The main difference is Narly.us is trying to be a public place for the community to organize and qualify projects via tagging while repos.io seems to be more account based (organize your personal repos) <comment><USER3> At top you could say "work on this site" and link to it on github - <USER2> than only on the about page <http://github.com/plusjade/narly> \- what widgets exist, if any, for github built websites?

</comment><comment><USER4> Is it wrong to ask both projects to merge? Both have features worth keeping, but it seems somewhat a duplication of effort on both's part.

repos.io would probably be perfect if I could go around tagging things.

</comment><comment><USER5> <http://narly.us> (clickable)

Very much like the About page. Good luck : )</comment>


EMV and Chip cards - <AUTHOR> https://squareup.com/emv

<comment><USER2> This is a great move to help reduce fraud for their US merchants, but even more important is it expands their potential market. Adding a chip reader opens up the rest of the world.

However, I'm still not sure how they will handle the PIN part of Chip and PIN, as the usual requirement is that the PIN is entered on a dedicated Pin Entry Device which then only presents the unlocked smart card to the merchant register.

<comment><USER3> I think this only handles chip and signature cards, which is pretty useless.

Does anyone know if people can use chip and pin cards but only sign for them?

<comment><USER4> If the card supports it. Simplified: the card/chip has a list of "cardholder verification methods" ordered by preference If the terminal/reader supports one of these methods, the card/chip will use it.

Some cards are pin only - notably most of Maestro, Visa Electron and V-PAY cards.

A lot, a majority?, of chipcards issued in the U.S. prefers signatures - I'm uncertain what the percentage is for which doesn't support pin at all.

<comment><USER5> What's really frustrating is the preference for signature. It makes almost all US chip cards useless outside of the US and Canada because, for whatever reason, standalone terminals and even some online POS pads will trip over the "signature preferred" bit. It also means that cards like you list are not usable at a signature-only terminal, even one like SquareUp that can do online, live verification.

Why can't the US financial system just _follow_ the rest of the world for once?

<comment><USER6> I haven't run into the "signature preferred" problem yet with automated PoS terminals. Where did you run into this issue? I had no problem buying train tickets with my US-bank-issued EMV card at AMS airport using my PIN.

<comment><USER5> If I may ask, which bank issued yours? My (former) JPMC card didn't work at any unattended terminals like Luas stops in Dublin. When I went to some stores and used the PIN pad, the terminal spit out a paper for me to sign. I'm looking for a card that is confirmed to work as a PIN-primary card. So far, only the State Department FCU seems to have one.

<comment><USER6> Mine is a Barclaycard Arrival+ ([http://www.barclaycardarrival.com/](http://www.barclaycardarrival.com/)). It is not a PIN-primary card, but it absolutely works in PIN mode at automated PoS systems.

PenFed ([https://www.penfed.org/visasignaturepoints/](https://www.penfed.org/visasignaturepoints/)) also offers a true chip-and-PIN EMV card in the US (again, signature priority, but I've verified the PIN works at PoS).

I don't think your JPMC card has a PIN assigned to the chip. Its PIN can only be used at an ATM to get a cash advance.

<comment><USER3> Barclays is a British bank fwiw. They're likely to have all the infrastructure in place.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> As a british immigrant to North America, I couldn't believe how far behind in this regard the States and Canada were. Canada has since caught up, but the US is only now getting there.

Anecdotal story: the only time my credit card has been defrauded is after a 3 day stay in the USA

<comment><USER8> I have read that after the EMV system was introduced in the UK the fraud rate actually went up. [http://cacm.acm.org/magazines/2014/6/175170-emv/fulltext](http://cacm.acm.org/magazines/2014/6/175170-emv/fulltext)

<comment><USER9> > Log in to Read the Full Article

Care to explain how and why the fraud rate went up?

Chip and PIN cards are widely deployed here in Spain, and all cases of fraud around me involved drunk people not covering the keypad when entering their PIN. In ATMs there's a nice animation of a hand covering the number pad, but not on POS (LCD displays just say "Enter your PIN"), and many people are careless or forget to do so.

I used to hear more cases of CC fraud back when magnetic strips were used, but I might just be biased.

<comment><USER10> It's worth noting that because you add this chip, it doesn't necessarily mean you remove the magnetic stripe.

My VISA (issued by a Danish bank), has both a chip and the magnetic stripe.

<comment><USER11> That's pretty much just so the card is usable in the US if you travel there though.

<comment><USER10> And also when the card reader in the store here in Denmark says "Use the magnetic stripe!" for some reason.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I wonder what their plans are for NFC / PayPass / PayWave? Are there technological barriers to it? Could a NFC enabled Smartphone act as a payment terminal?

It's only on rare occasions now that I have to even put in a pin (in Australia), NFC style payment terminals are pretty much ubiquitous.

NFC payments in 80-90% of stores, many parking machines, >50% of vending machines.

<comment><USER13> I'm not an expert on this area but I believe NFC smartphones can't currently act as payment terminals because PCI rules mandate that such things should be self-contained single-purpose devices with their own PIN pad.

However, the game could change completely with the move to tokenization.

That's really cool that contactless is so ubiquitous in Oz. As a nation you guys are very much ahead of the game on the whole contactless/NFC thing.

<comment><USER14> _I believe NFC smartphones can 't currently act as payment terminals because PCI rules mandate that such things should be self-contained single-purpose devices with their own PIN pad._

The NFC cards, SIMs, keyfobs etc. don't necessarily require a PIN here in Poland; you're good for ~$15 USD (50 PLN).

If you need to pay more than that, you then have to enter your PIN as you suggest.

Limits the use cases to corner-shop-equivalent purchases, still quite a large market!

<comment><USER15> In Canada, some merchants are now accepting NFC payments without PIN for up to CAD200 (USD180). When they first arrived, limits were typically more like $25.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> A couple of data points:

American Express sent me a new card—unprovoked—about two months ago that is chipped. As mentioned elsewhere, it is a chip and signature card (as opposed to a chip and pin). I'm nothing particularly special as a credit card user so, if I received a card, seems the roll out has already well underway.

Another point is, as mentioned elsewhere, PayPal already offers a chip and pin compatible bluetooth device in a few countries marketed as part of their PayPal Here brand[0].

[0] - [https://www.paypal.com/uk/webapps/mpp/how-to-use-paypal- here](https://www.paypal.com/uk/webapps/mpp/how-to-use-paypal-here)

<comment><USER17> IIRC the bank->merchant liability shift for the US is scheduled for sometime next year. The banks can't very well shift the liability if they haven't given their customers the new cards!

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> It looks like they're not able to power strictly off the audio jack anymore with this tech. The product brief indicates that it uses a MicroUSB charging connector. I wonder how many transactions a single charge can handle.

<comment><USER17> I'll be impressed if they've somehow managed all the data flows over the audio jack, personally... some sort of built-in modem?

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> Seems they want to sell the EMV card readers instead of providing them for free.

<comment><USER10> Honest question: does Square save money if credit card fraud decreases? It would make most sense that the parties who lose money when fraud occurs would offer these devices for free, or subsidize them, and I'm unsure of whether Square is one of these parties.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> Can't imagine not using these ... the only problem is the cards are weaker and the chip starts to come out.

(Only if you don't use a wallet)...

</comment><comment><USER21> And still no NFC.

<comment><USER22> If NFC ever takes off as a must-have in the payments world, I'm sure Square would try to use the NFC in phones through their app.

But given that they've already tried a "Just use the app, forget your wallet" approach that didn't take off like they wanted, I'm guessing they're not ready to try anything outside of mainstream payment cards.

<comment><USER15> NFC (specifically PayPass, PayWave & Interac Flash) is becoming fairly ubiquitous in Canada.

<comment><USER23> How is your experience with the reliability? I was recently up in Edmonton and anecdotally it seemed like people had serious issues with the NFC payment methods. Several times I saw people attempt to pay via NFC, try 5 times, then eventually pay via insertion+PIN. Looked profoundly frustrating.

<comment><USER24> In Australia, I would say about at least 75% of all in-person payments I make are with PayPass/PayWave. That other 25% is cash and the odd place that hasnt updated their terminals yet. Some banks will even give you like a 5% cash back if you use contactless.

It's very reliable and is the defacto method of payment in places like pubs. Often I'll hand my card over and they'll ask 'Can I just PayWave that?'

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> After reading the wikipedia article on this, these cards seems to be full of fallback mechanisms that make them virtually useless for more advanced protection but in only a few constrained situations, and it's biggest benefit is that it allows MasterCard and the others to shift liability of fraud from the Bank to the merchant and the customer.

<comment><USER17> Nope.

It allows the shift in liability to the _merchant_ if they don't perform a chip transaction.

Fallback is at merchant discretion, if they want to take transactions under those circumstances then that's their risk.

Other than that, no EMV is not perfect, but it's a DAMN site better than the everything-in-the-clear magstripe. Did you read the linked article about fraud levels?</comment></comment>