Could Removing Social Media Metrics Reduce Polarization? - <AUTHOR> https://onezero.medium.com/could-removing-social-media-metrics-reduce-polarization-4d604352c705 <comment><USER2> I don't trust Twitter and Facebook when they justify these proposals by claiming they improve social welfare.

Hiding the number of likes makes their algorithm less transparent. Removing transparency makes it harder to distinguish between paid content. At the end of the day it's all about dollars.

</comment><comment><USER3> No, the polarization (and attendant culture war) has been going on longer than social media as we know it have existed. It doesn't help, but it's just not the big factor it's assumed to be either - an assumption driven by social media companies' desire to trade engagement for ad $. The people who are doing most to drive social polarization are the least likely to be motivated by social proof. Consider that 8ch and its ilk have no social scoring mechanism but produce some of the most radical extremists.

<comment><USER4> My current hypothesis is that our current culture war is being driven by a lack of accountability. From graft in politics to anonymous bullying online, more and more people are able to get away with worse and worse bad faith behavior for longer and longer.

<comment><USER5> The USA's problem is the voting system. Currently, it favors extremism eg try to get the nomination in primaries saying another side is actually ok. Change system something like ranked-choice voting and you get nominees literally singing kumbaya together [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IyJKh_CwPI4](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IyJKh_CwPI4) .

<comment><USER6> >Currently, it favors extremism eg try to get the nomination in primaries saying another side is actually ok.

This is just flat out wrong, and I think you might be conflating what could be interpreted as a "purity spiral" on the left right now as "normal". It is most certainly _not_ normal. The 2016 Dems nominated the most centrist candidate in a generation (at least), and Trump managed to win the general by essentially playing the game better in the Electoral College. Even if I accepted your premise for a moment (I don't, in reality) that ranked-choice voting actually pushes candidates into aligning with each other ideologically, to the extent it makes them less detested by their ostensible political opponents, it is not at all clear that this is an optimum outcome. Especially in times of political turmoil - and I don't think it's controversial to suggest that we are in one right now a la the 1970s - a "regression to the mean" of choice in political candidates seems to be the exact opposite of a good idea. That just spells "status quo" for electoral outcomes, and would cause many (or most) to lose faith in the political system all together.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I've always thought that Reddit would be better without displaying karma. What value does it provide except to create a perverse goal for some people?

<comment><USER8> They very first version of Reddit used spark lines instead of points. People hated it. We experimented multiple times with removing karma from the equation. It always reduced engagement.

People just really need that dopamine hit of seeing their points go up.

Honestly I prefer the way HN does it, where only the submitter can see their own points.

<comment><USER9> In hindsight, maybe optimizing for engagement also optimized for polarization?

<comment><USER10> You're probably correct, but what product owner is going to take the chance on purposefully chasing lower engagement?

<comment><USER8> Hacker News. :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> What?! Polarization has been around since long before social media.

The two systemic factors driving it have been 1) open democratic primaries which push party nominees away from the center and towards greater polarization, and 2) increasingly polarized media originally driven cable TV news that could profitably deliver to a specific niche, e.g. Fox News, and websites generally.

Social media is just the icing on the cake.

<comment><USER12> The first paragraph in the introduction of this study lists more factors: [https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/25897956](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/25897956)

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> It's a giant political dodge that has nothing to do with the underlying issues. You want to know what's the real cancer, the real drug these dealers don't want you regulating? The NOTIFICATIONS. That's something everyone on the inside knows. The average person treats validating push notifications like a mouse getting cheese and will act out and continue to generate content to get it.

Look at the emails and push notifications these companies send out to regular people on a constant, daily basis, and you will find the cancer you're looking for. Eliminating like counts and follower numbers is a nice idea that excites teenage activists but is pointless now that these companies have already built accounts with zillions of followers.

<comment><USER14> I did notice that notifications were habit-inducing early on, and disabled them entirely for Facebook/Twitter/Email years ago. Still, finding myself regularly going back to all of them, I'm not sure that it's the only problem

<comment><USER15> This XKCD makes a similar argument highlighting opening habits rather than notifications: [https://xkcd.com/2183/](https://xkcd.com/2183/)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Right before social media started to take off the academics were arguing if we were already seeing polarization [e.g. 0]. It might be worth considering whether the polarization trend changed with social media before attributing causes and potential solutions.

[0] Abramowitz, A. I., & Saunders, K. L. (2008). Is polarization a myth?. The Journal of Politics, 70(2), 542-555. [http://www.acsu.buffalo.edu/~jcampbel/documents/AbramowitzJO...](http://www.acsu.buffalo.edu/~jcampbel/documents/AbramowitzJOP_001.pdf)

</comment><comment><USER17> Making twitter a little less like Jerry Springer could definitely help. Don't promote tweets from opposing groups to opposing groups. How hard can this really be?

<comment><USER18> I've never really seen tweets from opposing groups promoted to me. As a non- public-figure (AKA, nobody is directly @-ing me or attacking me), Twitter makes it really easy to stay in your own bubble. You follow who you want, and that's it. You might get some suggested tweets, but they're tweets fav'd or followed by people you're following.

<comment><USER19> There's also the promoted/sponsored tweets, and I think that's what they were hinting at (eg a Chinese news agency promoting their pro-China news stories to Hong Kong Twitter users [1]).

But that's very easy to avoid. Get one of the original Twitter clients like Tweetbot (iOS / MacOS) [2] or Fenix (Android) [3] and you'll get a chronological timeline, no promoted ads, mute/keyword filters, and you'll never see other people's likes & replies suggested to you as notifications. It puts you in control and removes the worst parts of Twitter.

[1] [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20734808](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20734808)

[2] [https://tapbots.com/tweetbot/](https://tapbots.com/tweetbot/)

[3] [https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=it.mvilla.andr...](https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=it.mvilla.android.fenix2)

<comment><USER17> Nothing really puts you in control of twitter, when half the Twittersphere is calling you a moron because you said one thing which is counter to half the population. It doesn't matter how much you ignore them once they put you on the news. You don't even have to be as stupid as the people below to have a negative outcome from Twitter. Just consistently use it to cite your honest moral opinion and I guarantee someone will hunt you down as if you were the worst serial killer.

[https://pjmedia.com/lifestyle/7-people-whose-lives-were- ruin...](https://pjmedia.com/lifestyle/7-people-whose-lives-were-ruined-by- social-media/) [https://www.theclever.com/15-tweets-that-have-ruined- peoples...](https://www.theclever.com/15-tweets-that-have-ruined-peoples- lives/)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> The physical world is hugely polarized. I don't see how tweaking the UI of websites is going to reduce real-world tendencies, it's a losing battle.

<comment><USER21> It seems to me the online world is more polarized (and abusive) than the real world.

<comment><USER22> Online culture may have driven this, but in a survey of people in the USA people were asked which type of person they would least like their children to marry. The "types" were things like same-gender, transgender, Christian, Muslim, no-college, Republican.

Those who identified as Democrats had Republican as "least liked".

Those who identified as Republican had the first two I listed.

However more polarised online is, that above is real world polarisation, and it's pretty serious.

Source: [https://open.spotify.com/episode/3ymwgbNCHG9f34dmxPNNuj?si=R...](https://open.spotify.com/episode/3ymwgbNCHG9f34dmxPNNuj?si=RivNDo1FS_CCG5mXiaud6w)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> > _"The problem, of course, that Dorsey and Zuckerberg and everybody else are > running into is they've built an entire business model in which metrics are > a central component or central mechanism by which engagement with the > platforms is driven."_

This is the heart of the matter. These platforms exist not only to enable polarization, but their very business model _thrives_ on polarization. There are a lot of other second-order effects, too, such as "The Perception Gap," which I saw posted to HN recently: [https://perceptiongap.us/](https://perceptiongap.us/)

</comment><comment><USER24> I always wondered if social media instead of polarizing could actively counteract bubble metrics to lead people to a more centrist view. Essentially by "inverting" the interest function partially.

<comment><USER25> Who gets to decide what is extreme?

<comment><USER3> The targets of extremism.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> I think making reshares and retweets much harder than the 1-2 clicks it takes now would have far more impact.

</comment><comment><USER27> Politics is driven by the most extreme, passionately held views because those people are the most motivated to do something about it. Responding to extremes is a game of chasing goalposts.

Removing social media points isn't going to change any of that. People care more about belonging than being factually correct. As long as there is a place for two people who happen to share the same beliefs to find each other, polarization will continue to be a thing.

</comment><comment><USER28> Question for the HN admins: What was the impact of removing vote counts from comments? What lessons did you draw from it?

<comment><USER29> I don't know. It was a long time ago. I could make an answer up, but you could do that too.

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> I've experimented with this theory by opting myself out of these vanity metrics using a browser plugin I wrote to hide them.

I can say that hiding them has reduced my engagement, which was my goal (the plugin is called Disengaged), but hasn't done anything for polarization.

To establish a link between engagement with these sites and polarization, you would basically be taking the stance that these sites are inherently polarizing, so using them less (by removing the engagement generators) decreases polarization.

Not a bad theory, but not one we can expect the businesses and investors behind these sites to implement on society's behalf.

</comment><comment><USER31> I don't know about polarization, but I'd bet it would make everything a little less addicting in a very healthy way. When I left facebook, part of the reason was that whenever I posted, it came from a weird emotional place. Instead of casual "i'm gonna share the thing" it was "think really hard about how to make it super cool." Here too, but to a lesser degree since it's more anonymous and I don't know you all.

<comment><USER32> I don't see anything great about being casual. If I post some underwater photos on Facebook then I absolutely think hard about making them super cool! I don't waste my friends' time by posting sloppy garbage.

</comment></comment><comment><USER33> The problem isn't the like button, that's a symptom. The problem is human nature; specifically confirmation bias. The internet has enabled people to find what they want to find and see what they want to see.

We are a species that survived because we are social. That said, perhaps we are getting too close, too connected? Maybe we're wired for less "engagement"? Perhsps occasionally being quite and/or lonely has benefits?

</comment><comment><USER34> No.

Remove the text.

Make it a long form conversation. Yes, voice. So that you can hear inflection, empathy, sarcasm, hmmmms and uncertainty.

Every tweet reads like a proclamation. No nuance.

</comment><comment><USER35> I like how WeChat does it for their "Moments" posts, where you can see only the number of Likes from your friends.

[https://www.quora.com/Who-can-see-what-you-publish-and- comme...](https://www.quora.com/Who-can-see-what-you-publish-and-comment-in- the-Wechat-Moments-section)

</comment><comment><USER36> What is wrong with "polarization" beyond it being different to the centre? All this talk of it seems nothing more than mere reactionary.

Surely, views from the extreme shouldn't just be dismissed, and we should understand _why_ people hold those views instead of doubling down and trying to eliminate them.

<comment><USER3> We already understand that pretty well. Trying to hug it out with people who are already committed to killing you is a fool's errand. There are several groups devoted to deradicalization if you want to research that in greater depth.

<comment><USER37> Wow.

That's a huge chasm you've shoveled to define polarization, "people committed to killing you", there are definitely extreme whackos out there but do you really think they're that representative of the whole or is there maybe a more nuanced way of defining the polarization effects of social media?

<comment><USER38> If we step it back a bit to "committed to policies which cause avoidable death", or "protection of those who have caused death by negligence", or "mistreatment of others in a context which is known to trigger suicide", then ... yes, that's all mainstream policy.

One example of this was [https://www.independent.co.uk/voices/katie-hopkins- when-is-e...](https://www.independent.co.uk/voices/katie-hopkins-when-is- enough-enough-10186490.html) ; now, is Katie Hopkins "an extreme whacko" for overtly demanding the murder of refugees, or is she "just saying what everyone is thinking" among Sun and LBC audiences?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER39> Instagram is already testing hiding Like counts in several countries: [https://www.nytimes.com/2019/07/18/world/instagram-hidden- li...](https://www.nytimes.com/2019/07/18/world/instagram-hidden-likes.html)

</comment><comment><USER40> Polarizing opinions drive views.

It might help to tamper the anxiety from watching your own posts, but let's be real—social media is a polarizing place because there's money to be made from drama, even (especially?) if it's fictional.

Looking to reduce polarization? Blame our ad model.

<comment><USER41> CGP Grey's "This Video Will Make You Angry"[1] makes this point well. Opposing ideas will generate a lot of discussion/activity but mostly within the opposed groups instead of between them. That further drives polarization as the opposed groups mostly believe their own caricatures of the other group (which further disincentives cross-group discussion).

[1] [https://youtu.be/rE3j_RHkqJc](https://youtu.be/rE3j_RHkqJc)

</comment></comment><comment><USER42> Absolutely. Anything you measure and show the measure as a sign of progression will skew things towards behaviors that lean towards an increased occurrence of that metric.

To quote Worf: "If victory doesn't matter, why keep score?".

</comment><comment><USER43> Someone should make a social network where bots autonomously interact with and like your posts in a positive way, as part of the core design.

Call it Turing Club

</comment><comment><USER44> Could reducing polarization reduce profits?

</comment><comment><USER45> Paywall. But how does the author deal with replies, which are a very strong metric?</comment>


LooseStitch - Free Online Outliner - <AUTHOR> http://loosestitch.com/

<comment><USER2> Hmm. It's a very beautiful app, but its user experience is iffy. Case in point: [http://screenshots.markbao.com/43208b3dcc19bd9cf1a8e8864459e...](http://screenshots.markbao.com/43208b3dcc19bd9cf1a8e8864459e749.png)

Perhaps it's just my tendency as a developer, but I hate having this "view" part and an "edit" part in different places. Why should I have this part where I can see my outline, but then I have to click, move my mouse over to the side, edit, and then click save on the box? Most of the time during outlining, I want to use _zero_ mouse. I don't want to use it to add new rows, to delete rows, etc. It would be awesome if it acted like a text editor with outlining helpers.

Much of the time that I use outlining is during notetaking, where speed is a pretty big factor. Maybe this is a different use of outlining that I'm not familiar with?

An example of an app (that, I should add, I love) that this app should emulate with view+edit on the same place is OmniOutliner: [http://screenshots.markbao.com/7e2b04d5fb6f2721287848166a108...](http://screenshots.markbao.com/7e2b04d5fb6f2721287848166a108215.png)

So here's one way you can refactor it: [http://screenshots.markbao.com/ebef2709d6f0ddde877da8339bac7...](http://screenshots.markbao.com/ebef2709d6f0ddde877da8339bac7345.png)

 _(Side note: why the hell are they using Dreamhost to host their app? I use them for personal sites. Outages every week.)_

<comment><USER3> My personal project is an outliner. My personal project has been an outliner for about eight years now, on and off, and the primary reason that it has been so long is not that I've failed to carry through; it is that my entire goal is to make a "no compromises" outliner, and the open source text widgets just haven't been good enough to support it. (I could come close in some ways, but never close enough that it would ever be a _joy_ to use; always terribly and unfixable quirks that people would have found in the first hour or even the first minute.)

I _think_ QT is good enough now, but I haven't gotten far enough in my current iteration to be sure. But certainly the web is very likely not good enough to give a really good experience. It might be, but I doubt it. Outliners really, really, _really_ push the text widgets, way more than you might think just looking at them. (Especially if you want to take full advantage of them.)

Numerous open source outliners exist with the "click to edit this node" model, but it's just uselessly klunky, in my opinion.

If you don't find this uselessly klunky, pop "open source outliner" into Google and you can find several others that will be quite a bit better and run locally. (I haven't got any recommendations, as I don't like any of them or I'd simply use them.)

<comment><USER4> I really like Omni Outliner for the Mac (wish there was an iPhone version).

I like having my outliner local since I often use it for meeting notes and tend to jump around quite a bit at a fast pace. Maybe a web version can be fast enough with lots of client side scripting.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Tried it out, biggest complaint is that I can't do "in place" editing -

Example: As Mark Bao mentioned, have to edit to the side, rather than in place. Pressing enter to head to the box, and then hitting enter (or escape) to go back isn't bad, but it is not as ideal as if I could double click and edit in place.

Second (more irritating for me) I can't grab something and drag and drop it.

I know these are challenging technical problems (with solutions) but they do make the experience a little difficult for me.

Also, in Chrome Alt+up and alt+down shortcuts are not working for me. No idea if this is something I've changed as a setting or not. Other shortcuts appear to work fine - but why is it one button (?) to open the help and another (space) to close? I don't see space used elsewhere, perhaps just use space for both?

For exporting, I was not too pleased with how it exported to HTML. I was actually expecting a bunch of nested lists, but it gave me lots of divs and styled it as an outline via CSS. I don't know how other people feel about it, I was looking to use it to outline blog posts: so for me being able to export and then import a list of lists would have been dynamite.

</comment><comment><USER6> I love outlining but I hate outliners. They all make some mistake that limits their usefulness to me. This one makes the mistake of wanting me to register before trying it out. Haven't we learned from applications like <http://jottit.com> that this is the wrong way to do things? Let me build my outline and then make me register if I want to keep it

<comment><USER7> Outliner users seem even more finicky than other users. (I say this as one of them.)</comment></comment>


LAVA: prevent ticket fraud with Ethereum - <AUTHOR> http://www.lavamovement.com <comment><USER2> Blockchain all the things! They don't describe how they will track 'fraudulent' ticket sales. This just seems like a closed source platform for trading tickets. Since it's not open, I don't see any real use case for a blockchain. Please correct me if I missed something on the website. Seems like another instance of people with a tool looking for a problem to solve (like most blockchain apps so far). This is from a big blockchain fanboy.

Also, why do hip new companies love hijacking scroll?</comment>


System predicts 85% of cyber-attacks using input from human experts - <AUTHOR> https://www.csail.mit.edu/System_predicts_85_percent_of_cyber_attacks_using_input_from_human_experts%20 <comment><USER2> Is it me or is the press release really bad? This publication seems to talk about some fraud prevention system rather than cyber attacks. Maybe fraud with a computer is now a cyber attack? The paper[1] cites this as malicious behavior (8.2):

• Terms of service abuse: This category covers fraudulent violations of the terms of service agreement. Frauds of this sort have very distinct signatures. Two simple examples are the abusive use of promotional codes, or deleting the web browser's cookies to participate more times than allowed in an online voting platform.

Incognito-Mode is the way to be a cyber-attacker! The paper is really interesting and great, but I guess it has nothing to do with this headline:

> MIT reveals AI platform which detects 85 percent of cyberattacks

It's more like online-vote manipulation with while (1); do curl -XPOST <url>; done won't work anymore.

1: [https://people.csail.mit.edu/kalyan/AI2_Paper.pdf](https://people.csail.mit.edu/kalyan/AI2_Paper.pdf)

</comment><comment><USER3> Cyber attacks seem to be employing a bit of AI and data science these days.

</comment><comment><USER4> Url changed from [http://www.zdnet.com/article/mit-reveals-ai-platform- which-d...](http://www.zdnet.com/article/mit-reveals-ai-platform-which- detects-85-percent-of-cyberattacks/), which copies this without linking to it. I didn't realize that zdnet had descended quite to that.

<comment><USER5> It's a press release. They were probably sent a copy to publish.

<comment><USER4> Ah thanks, that makes more sense.</comment></comment></comment>


How Twitter DDoS'd our Website 61 times in Past 2 days - <AUTHOR> http://trialx.com/enablers/2011/02/how-twitter-ddosd-our-website-61-times-in-past-2-days/

<comment><USER2> in short, twitter didn't DDoS them, it was the result of all the various bots that look for new urls posted to twitter and fetch them for whatever reason.

the article says the "DDos" was "80 requests within the span of 2-3 seconds". if that amount of traffic causes as much trouble to your server as it did for that site (load average of 31, out of swap memory, server reboots), you have a really shitty architecture.

it sounds like twitter did these guys a favor by pointing out how poorly engineered their site was. why they posted about it and drew attention to their problem, i have no idea.

<comment><AUTHOR> All these requests were first time requests before the cache pages were created, hence it caused so much load.

<comment><USER3> How many requests does it take to start caching?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> You shouldn't be getting DDoS'd by a bunch of bots. Since you're using Apache with that hardware, you should be able to avoid crashing the entire server. Regardless, you should be able to control your server enough to avoid having it swap/crash. May want to hire a sysadmin with more experience.

</comment><comment><USER5> I'm not familiar with the interals of WP Super Cache, but it is really odd that a cached page can't be served ~80 req/s. Perhaps Varnish will work in the case where WP Super Cache can't be tooled to write-through to cache or sooner.

<comment><USER5> Something else is really amiss here. As I refresh the article to double-check the "~80 req/s:"

$ curl -I -m5 [http://trialx.com/enablers/2011/02/how-twitter-ddosd-our- web...](http://trialx.com/enablers/2011/02/how-twitter-ddosd-our- website-61-times-in-past-2-days/) curl: (28) connect() timed out!

Surely their caching is still enabled and most of their articles should be hot in an LRU.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> "How I Run a Website with Swap On"</comment>


Show HN: Tea discovery and coupons site - <AUTHOR> http://puretea.co <comment><USER2> If the setup process images actually showed up I'd give it a try :)

</comment><comment><USER3> Nice colors, by the way.</comment>


Ask HN: How do you track working time of your remote workers? - <AUTHOR>

What are the best tools you use to track your remote team about what they do and how much time they really spend.<p>Most tools are for remote freelancers but our team is completely remote and sometimes I have a feeling that my employees just don't work full-time. How can I fix it? <comment><USER2> By tracking results not time. That might seem a bit terse and ambiguous. The reason for that is that trust is a huge aspect of employing remote workers. If you've lost that (or never had it) that is the real problem that needs to be solved.

</comment><comment><USER3> If they aren't working full-time remote, then your issue isn't tracking, it's trust.

You can put a butt in a seat, but if they aren't doing the work remotely, they are only gonna stare at the screen in an office.

What you need to do is track results and have a development process like scrum to keep everything in line.

</comment><comment><USER4> I feel as a remote worker I do more work. I don't get distracted and will often pull off 6 hours of continual work which, yes, is less than the 8...but I'd never do 6hrs straight of continual work in an office. Too many distractions. What are your expectations?

</comment><comment><USER5> We use Slack. You obviously can't track between timezones (if you're asleep & they're awake), but like others said, you need to measure results not time.

If you don't trust your team, you've hired the wrong people.

</comment><comment><USER6> My former remote boss used to spend his day going through Skype contacts to video conference his reports. His theory was that it's hard to lie face-to- face. He'd basically do one-on-one scrums.

</comment><comment><USER7> Try Sococo (shameless plug). Users report a higher feeling of connectedness when they can actually see their group talking, meeting, sharing docs.</comment>


Amazon ElastiCache - Now With a Dash of Redis - <AUTHOR> http://aws.typepad.com/aws/2013/09/amazon-elasticache-now-with-a-dash-of-redis.html <comment><USER2> Based on a personal experience, I found that setting up a dedicated machine is way cheaper than using those services.

I ended up replacing the following:

\- Mongodb on a EC2 instance instead of Dynamodb

\- EC2 Mysql instance instead of RDS

\- Redis instance instead of Elastic Cache

\- Solr on EC2 instead of Cloud Search

\- FFmpeg instance instead of Elastic transcoder

<comment><USER3> +1 for Mongodb on a EC2 instance instead of Dynamodb

We're transitioning off Dynamo as soon as possible as the billing structure makes it either a real headache or very expensive.

For example: if you want to make a backup of a large table or move data around, it'll either take days or cost you an arm and a leg. This is just one of many annoyances. Ever since making the decision to go with Dynamo over Mongo, I've been getting dirty looks from my team.

<comment><USER4> The set of problems where you're really struggling between mongodb and dynamodb as a choice is practically non-existent. They have hugely different characteristics and vastly different trade-offs. You might want to spend some time reading about the architecture of various databases before just picking one.

<comment><USER5> seriously, you're comparing apples and oranges. Mongodb usecase has nothing to do with dynamodb.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> So basically we can now replace the painful SQS with hosted Redis! Yayy!

RE: Mongo. If you're using EC2 for MongoDB you're most likely doing it wrong. Not sure if there is much written about the Foursquare problem out there, maybe I'll get around to writing about it, one day. Pretty much the only company that I know off doing bullet-proof, scalable and fast Mongo hosting is [http://objectrocket.com/](http://objectrocket.com/). There's a reason Rackspace acquired them. Unless you're able to get placement of your SSD loaded servers in the same datacenters as Amazon, go with them. It's well worth your time to not muck around with Mongo.

</comment><comment><USER7> Good on them for doing this, its missing one substantial configuration option though: Redis Authentication. Security groups are great, but it would be comforting to have some challenge when hitting cache.

<comment><USER8> Exactly. This is especially important when using it in conjunction with Heroku.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> So, how does ElastiCache fare compared to all the hosted Redis-as-a-service (or Redis-as-a-PaaS-addon) products?

<comment><USER10> Well unless you roll with a Micro instance (213mb of RAM and dismal performance), the price for a Small on-demand instance (1.3GB memory) is ~$54 per month. You save quite a bit by going with a reserved instance, where you pay about $70 up-front but then your monthly instance price is almost halved, coming in at around $32 per/mo.

Either way, it's going to be more cost-effective at a lower level to go with something like Redis-to-go, Openredis, etc... if you need something simple.

Long story short, if you're on Heroku and (like me) were thinking/hoping that this might be a nice alternative to the various add-ons available ... I don't think that the juice is worth the squeeze. One, you have to administer and maintain things yourself (which is trivial for something like this, so not a big deal) but the pricing doesn't line up. The Redis providers leading the market today are able to do so because they provision the heavy-hitter EC2 nodes and then chop them up.

It's important to note though you can get a free micro instance for a year on the free usage tier. Micro's are like the section-8 housing of the server world, but free is free and beggars can't be choosers ;)

<comment><USER11> The prices of many Redis-Service-Provider will drop rapidly after amazons release ?

<comment><USER12> Or they will all start making more money.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Of all the things that you can put to the cloud, I'm not sure why people would want a cloud-hosted memory store. It's easy as heck to set it up in your own server, probably costs less to maintain and host, and faster too as it's closer to your data centers.

<comment><USER14> They handle automatic failover, which redis does not currently do out of the box. That part is pretty cool. Maybe not worth the price, but definitely useful.

<comment><USER15> Actually, Redis has a pretty clever failover solution now, in redis-sentinel: [http://redis.io/topics/sentinel](http://redis.io/topics/sentinel)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> It was only a matter of time before they added Redis to the mix. Glad to see it happening sooner rather than later though.

<comment><USER17> We just spent days moving stuff away from Elasticache due to memcached limitations, and would love to have moved to managed Redis. We're an AWS partner, with the highest level support contract and if we'd known two weeks ago that this was in the pipeline, we would have waited. AWS, why don't you give us any road map for stuff like this?

<comment><USER18> yeah we recently migrated from memcached on elasticache to redis on EC2 (and bought the reservations), though our migration rolled out about 4-6 weeks ago. oh well, I guess.

<comment><USER19> According to this it should be quite easy to move your current redis on EC2 back to ElastiCache:

"Seamless Integration: If you are running Redis on EC2, you can transfer its contents to a new Amazon ElastiCache for Redis node. You may also attach a Redis node running on EC2 to an Amazon ElastiCache for Redis node."[1]

... at least after your reservations run out.

[1] [https://aws.amazon.com/about-aws/whats- new/2013/09/04/amazon...](https://aws.amazon.com/about-aws/whats- new/2013/09/04/amazon-elasticache-for-redis/)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Looks to me like this doesn't support more than one redis instance in a cluster (to make a ring) - just replication groups. I'm guessing that's a "TBD" thing. :(

</comment><comment><USER21> Wow, this is yet another major step forward for redis adoption! Congrats to antirez and the whole redis team!</comment>


Zadie Smith's Varieties of Individuality - <AUTHOR> https://newrepublic.com/article/147111/zadie-smiths-varieties-individuality <comment><USER2> Zadie Smith's essays are tremendous. I highly recommend her earlier collection "Changing My Mind".</comment>


Writing modern JavaScript code - <AUTHOR> https://dev.to/scastiel/writing-modern-javascript-code <comment><USER2> The biggest issue with calling anything "modern JavaScript" is how much of a moving target it is. Javascript, especially with react and react native seems to be at an opportune moment to become the de-fact user interface language for all but the most specialized projects. It would help if the community understood its role as having moved beyond the DOM manipulation tool to be a more stable, predictable language.</comment>


Announcing Microsoft Web Template Studio - <AUTHOR> https://blogs.windows.com/buildingapps/2019/05/15/announcing-microsoft-web-template-studio/ <comment><USER2> So now you can bootstrap your bootstrap? I love it. I often feel like the most annoying part of any project is actually starting it.

</comment><comment><USER3> I'm coaching this project for the next few months, would love to hear some feedback!

<comment><USER4> I'm a fairly new React developer, but I've built complex SPAs, React Native apps, and static generated sites with Gatsby. These are all very different patterns and approaches with major tradeoffs.

What exactly is the pattern used in a WTS project? Looks like serverless rendered pages similar to Next.js?

<comment><USER3> Thanks for mentioning those patterns, I'll take a look at them. The idea for this project is to allow the user to choose the pattern, frameworks, and backend services easily so they fit with their use case.

Right now, we have a React + React Router pattern with an Express node backend, but the goal is to incorporate different patterns and technologies in the generation wizard so users can choose. One piece of feedback we want to hear from the community is: what do you prefer to use when it comes to frameworks and application patterns for web applications?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I guess it's the LightSwitch of this tech hype cycle!

</comment><comment><USER6> Is this released today or next service pack or maybe next year or maybe never? A bit sick of MS and their so called shipping definiion, i.e. WSL2 will probably hit GA April 2020 as deep dive guys hinted it will miss the fall release, meanwhile scott the god proclaims "we are shipping Linux kernel", it's not even available to insiders yet. #fail oh and where is that your phone app mirroring announced build 2018

<comment><USER7> You can install the VSCode extension, today, with a few key presses.

This is explicitly mentioned in the article.</comment></comment>


RhodeCode 1.4.1 Mercurial and Git web management system - <AUTHOR> http://demo.rhodecode.org/rhodecode

<comment><USER2> Awesome. Been looking for something like this for awhile now.</comment>


Google Chrome To Support Add-Ons - <AUTHOR> http://www.informationweek.com/shared/printableArticle.jhtml?articleID=210602700 <comment><USER2> I'm worried about the way they plan to separate the tabs into "separate instances"... it seems to me as cross-domain user scripting could do wonders to advance the browsing experience. Imagine installing a user script which adds hooks to Hacker News and other user scripts which use those hooks on other sites.

As a simple example, you could add a "submit to HN" links all over the place (ones that work without having to leave whatever site you're on). Our collective imagination of what could be done with that far exceeds what I'm thinking of.

<comment><USER3> Wait what? How do tabs in different processes preclude cross-domain user scripting? You can already do that!

In addition if you use the task manager you'll notice that child tabs are within the same process as well.

<comment><USER2> _Wait what? How do tabs in different processes preclude cross-domain user scripting?_

Didn't express myself clearly, sorry - I meant to say that I hope their security policy will allow cross-domain scripting from within addons.

<comment><USER3> Ah okay fair enough. Its kind of early to say at this point, but yes, I would like cross-domain scripting too.

That and a pony.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


EPFL Spinoff Turns Thousands of UAV Photos into 3D maps - <AUTHOR> http://actu.epfl.ch/news/epfl-spinoff-turns-thousands-of-2d-photos-into-3d-/

<comment><AUTHOR> Something that may help Apple digitize the world a little cheaper</comment>


HTML5 For Web Designers (85 Pages) - <AUTHOR> http://books.alistapart.com/product/html5-for-web-designers <comment><USER2> "The HTML5 spec is 900 pages and hard to read. HTML5 for Web Designers is 85 pages and fun to read. Easy choice."

The HTML5 spec is current, uses hyperlinks and free. Easy choice.

<comment><USER3> I agree with the other commentator in spirit. Just because the spec is free doesn't mean it is suitable for web developers. The HTML5 spec should be written for browser developers.

For example, the C++ spec is available (although, not sure if its free, but imagine it is), but I'd recommend it to VERY few people. I'd much more likely recommend Lippman's text or Koenig's, even if there is a $20 price premium on those books.

In the same way, if this book distills HTML5 into what is necessary and useful for web devs then it is worth $20.

<comment><USER2> FWIW The HTML5 spec also comes in web dev flavours: <http://www.w3.org/TR/html-markup/> <http://dev.w3.org/html5/spec-author- view/>

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Not finished yet, but worth a mentioning: <http://diveintohtml5.org/>

</comment><comment><USER5> Looks nice. But is there a preview or sample available before I buy this?

<comment><USER6> The first chapter is available at A List Apart: [http://www.alistapart.com/articles/a-brief-history-of- markup...](http://www.alistapart.com/articles/a-brief-history-of-markup/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> why no digital distribution (as in PDF)?</comment>


'Lopping,' 'Tips' and the 'Z-List': Bias Lawsuit Explores Harvard's Admissions - <AUTHOR> https://www.nytimes.com/2018/07/29/us/harvard-admissions-asian-americans.html <comment><USER2> I understand the outrage of racial discrimination in this case, but I'm saddened over the lack of outrage over Harvard's self-described "Z-List" students who get into the school solely based on their family's money and power. No one is suing Harvard over the fact that you can buy your way in.

We've come to accept that money and legacy power provides access and opportunity regardless of merit. If that more fundamental problem was solved, many of these others would melt away on their own.

<comment><USER3> It's a private university. Why shouldn't you be able to buy your way in?

<comment><USER4> Given the sheer amount of taxpayer dollars they absorb via tax breaks etc they should be subject to oversight. Harvard costs taxpayers billions of dollars, perhaps with good ROI given their stature but at a huge cost.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> This sort of thing reminds me of the process to select and promote generals. With veritable mountains of qualified candidates, the selection process has to invariably use political methods in order to produce a desired outcome.

These processes were completely political until the ancient Greeks, who experimented with things like randomness to grant power to lower-class citizens. Some of my favorite videos on YouTube describe these political methods.

Randomness seems to have fallen out of favor ever since, I think it might have died with the Romans.

But imagine Harvard actually making public policy that they're just going to randomly select the the top applicants. They still won't be able to shape the demographics the way they want. Ensuring that they get to define the concept of a diverse student body is so important for them that they're fighting tooth and nail to preserve it.

I stated the last time this came up that this was an existential issue for Harvard and the whole concept of the Ivy League. But now I see it as a public policy and individual rights issue. Should Harvard have the right to shape their student body demographically? And if not, what does that make Harvard? What distinguishes the Ivy League from other universities? Obviously Harvard is of the opinion that this is a bet-the-company moment for them.

<comment><USER6> The concept you refer to is called "Sortition"

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

<comment><USER5> Thanks for that! I didn't even consider juries.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> The stats on how they scored asians were pretty incredible.

Asian personalities were only 2 or better at the top decile (top 10%), african-americans scored 2 or better 8 deciles in (top 80%, only the worst 20% didn't score 2 or better).

Personalities were scored on: likability, helpfulness, courage, kindness, positive personality, people like to be around them, the person is widely respected.

Harvard insists this was unbiased, but it's pretty incredible that Asians score so low on these measures and African-Americans so highly.

This was a key scoring measure because it was the one area Asians got crushed in (and was very subjective). They actually used I think a similar subjective scoring tool in the past to keep out other groups.

Interesting article here:

[https://www.nytimes.com/2018/06/25/opinion/harvard-asian- ame...](https://www.nytimes.com/2018/06/25/opinion/harvard-asian-american- racism.html)

<comment><USER8> > Harvard insists this was unbiased, but it's pretty incredible that Asians > score so low on these measures and African-Americans so highly.

Considering asians are considered "model minorities" and the best "assimilated" minority group in the US, it does seem odd. Also considering harvard alumni interviewers generally rated asian personalities just as high as everyone else's, I wonder why there is such a divergence from american culture at large/alumni and admissions' officers?

I wonder if there are transcripts or video recordings of interviews and a methodology these admissions officers used.

It would be great if harvard released all data ( minus identifying info ) and we could look through the dataset.

<comment><USER9> > asians are considered "model minorities" and the best "assimilated" minority

By who? What data is there? A stereotype is not evidence; repetition doesn't make it more likely. Nor can we infer from a stereotype - or even real data about assimilation - something about the personalities of individuals.

<comment><USER10> When people complain about diversity in Silicon Valley, Asians don't count.

<comment><USER9> Right, because there isn't much racial discrimination against Asians (though perhaps among founders and CEOs), and not against white people and males either. There is against women and other minorities, so that would seem to be the place to focus our efforts.

<comment><USER10> There isn't much discrimination against women or other minorities either.

<comment><USER9> There is overwhelming and widely accepted evidence that there is discrimination and women and minorities.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> They just repurposed a system that was designed in the 1930s to keep Jews out, to keeping Asians out. The smoking gun is how the admissions committee's ratings for "personality" differ so much from alumni volunteer interviewers.

<comment><USER12> Agreed and for similar reasons imo, to guard against admiting too many students with no ambition beyond a comfy middle class lifestyle.

<comment><USER12> Lots of downvotes. To clarify my point: The elite schools only want to admit so many future doctor/lawyer/engineers. Today, the way they limit those numbers hits asian applicants disproportionately hard. 80 years ago, jewish applicants were hit disproportionately hard. There was racism mixed in then as there is now, but having read a bit about those policies and experienced the current ones, I think the main thrust was the same: managing the large number of applicants looking for a ticket to the upper middle class.

<comment><USER13> You were downvoted probably because you could have stated it more tactfully. The real problem is that many Asian applicants tend to look similar on paper. There is a real problem among Asian families for hyper-optimizing on gaming the admissions system and overly trying to superficially hit all of the checkboxes for admissions (max out AP classes, start SAT test prep in middle school, play a musical instrument, etc.), instead of trying to raise well- rounded children with their own idiosyncratic interests and unique character.

If you have an admissions system that tries to select for uniqueness in addition to aptitude, it's going to naturally disfavor cookie-cutter applicants that do not attempt to differentiate or stand out from the crowd.

<comment><USER14> Uniqueness and well-roundedness are traits of privilege. The activities typically used to signal "uniqueness" for college admissions like philanthropy and political activism have roots in privilege. If you're not from a rich, well-connected white family, the best chance for success is through the typical tryhard, academic STEM path. You can't afford to be unique. You don't have cronyism or money to fall back on.

<comment><USER13> This does not hold up at all to scrutiny, because Harvard accepts many students that do not come from privileged backgrounds. In fact, their lack of privilege and the challenges they overcame are seen as very "unique" and favorable by the admissions committees.

<comment><USER14> Look up the income statistics. There are very few low income students at Harvard and similar "holistic" universities. It's a school for rich people.

MIT cares more about scores and STEM and MIT actually has around the lowest family income and lowest percent of rich people in the Ivy League tier.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> From an earlier thread:

I was a college admissions officer for a few years and am familiar with the process at the top Ivies.

The outcome is racist but there's no intent to be racist.

Imagine your job is to create the best possible 2000-student freshman class for Harvard from the 40,000 students who apply.

You review the applications and notice to your horror that 600-1000 of them all have perfect or near perfect test scores, boring essays, so-so extracurriculars (Overwatch tournaments and robotics club don't cut it), play an instrument (very well, but not remarkably), and want to study pre-med.

Their grades and scores are STELLAR! But if you admit these students your campus is fucked. Half the freshman class can't do pre-med. Once the pre-med spots fill up what will the rest do? That seems like a very horrible situation to put students in. There's just not enough spots.

What's going to happen to campus social life if half the class has a history of not being social at all? Who's going to produce art and go into politics? Who's going into investment banking to pull down big bonuses 10 years from now?

So you work your way through them and try to take the very best of them. The rest of them you reject. They'll get into fine schools and be successful, there's just only so many slots of students like that in the class.

This cohort of students happens to be disproportionately asian. No one is out to discriminate against asian people, their applications are just very problematic at scale.

<comment><USER15> We don't discriminate against asian people, just their problematic culture.

<comment><USER12> Correct. There's a belief at the very top of these schools that they only want so many people leading one-dimensional lives focused on entering upper middle class trades like law and medicine.

<comment><USER16> This is just classism dressed up as racism. People who don't want to enter the upper middle class and have strong extracurriculars are just the already upper middle class/upper class. The professions like law/medicine are what the lower classes shoot for, trying to be a journalist or a political player is the domain of the higher classes.

"These people work too hard for too low aspirations, we need more people who work less hard but have higher aspirations"

Those people are the rich and powerful.

<comment><USER17> ivy league educations are obviously a very scarce good. is it really so wrong to want to limit the amount of unambitious professionals they matriculate?

i was a smart enough kid that i probably could have done well academically at an ivy league school, but the whole time i was in college i knew i had no loftier goals than just getting a nice job as a software engineer and enjoying my time after work. there are hundreds of good state schools that do a great job preparing you for this kind of life if you put in the work. a spot at a school like MIT would honestly have been wasted on me, even though i was likely "smart enough" to be there.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> College admissions aren't about sat scores anymore. I graduated from high school this year, and know 2 people going to Harvard. It doesn't matter if you get perfect sat scores, it matters about what you do outside of school, and whether you spend all your time studying or actually doing something that will contribute to society. Numbers just aren't enough to admit students by, since if they admitted everyone with perfect scores, they would have way too many students.

<comment><USER19> I graduated from highschool 20+ years ago (1997, holy smokes!) and it was the same deal then. There were about 25 of us in my graduating class that ran the table with perfect SATs, 5s on all our APs, perfect GPA, etc and we all applied to pretty much all the Ivies. It was arbitrary who got in where, no rhyme or reason as far as we could tell then. Sounds like it hasn't changed much.

<comment><USER20> Except for if you read the article you would see that it's not arbitrary, but based on racial discrimination.

<comment><USER13> That has not been proven at all.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> Regardless of race, giving preferential treatment to relatives of donors seems like pure cronyism. If a small town government does things like that, we roll our eyes and lament backwards rural towns.

<comment><USER22> If anything, it would make race a "we better not talk about this" smokescreen of anger and eggshell stepping to act as a moat around the real discussion.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> Why is SAT so ridiculously easy that thousands have perfect score?

<comment><USER24> It was "recentered" in 1995. The right side of the distribution was essentially truncated. A 1600 on the pre-1995 SAT was quite an accomplishment (I don't have data at my fingertips, but in most years, fewer than 10 students achieved a perfect score of 1600 and only a few dozen scored 1550+). By contrast, several hundred students a year scored 1600 on the recentered test.

The scoring system has been changed several times since 1995 and I have no idea how the current system compares to the pre-1995 system or the recentered test given for some years afterward.

Many, including myself, suspect that one of the motivations for the recentering was to give colleges cover for their admissions decisions. It is pretty hard to turn down students who get 1600s when only 7 or 8 students a year do so. It is easier to "shape" a class without provoking criticism when a large percentage of students score 1500+.

<comment><USER25> It's hard bordering on impossible to make a single test that measures most of the college-bound high school graduate population and can also make non- arbitrary distinctions among top-1% students.

Lopping off the top of the distribution looks to me like a recognition that pre-recentering scores in the top 100 points or so were essentially measuring the luck of top-performing students on which questions they drew and how well their educated guesses landed.

<comment><USER22> Why not administer a second test to distinguish between the SAT's high scorers? Students who knew they were very strong beforehand could just take the hard test to begin with.

<comment><USER26> They have these, they're the SAT subject tests.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> I think the part of the issue that bothers me most is how much of a double standard there is between what counts as racism against African Americans and rasism against Asian Americans. Objectively, if you have two identical applications to Harvard except one is labeled black and the other is labeled Asian, the black one has a higher chance of success.

They do the same thing with fake job applications with white names and black names. When whites get called back at higher rates that rasism. Yet when it's Harvard doing it to Asians, that's okay.

This just rubs me the wrong way.

Edit: this post has 30+ votes at 4 hours old and went from the front page to not the top 3 in less than 30 minutes. Looks like mods nuked it.

<comment><USER28> Mods didn't. Users flagged it.

<comment><USER29> Thank you for the info.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> 'Yet another was "bright & busy" but it was "a bit difficult to see what would hold him in during a lop."'

'admissions officers then fine-tune the final class using a form that lists five pieces of information about the applicant; they give an example of a form that has spaces for the applicant's name, LIN (lineage), ETH (ethnicity), ATH (athlete), and HFAI (financial aid).'

It's undeniably racism.

I wonder what the outcome would be if one or two Ivies stick their necks out and institute race blind, legacy blind admissions.

<comment><USER24> See CalTech for an example of an elite school that has race-blind admissions. As far as I can tell, it hasn't put any pressure on the Ivy's to change. Incidentally, Caltech's latest class is roughly 50% Asian and about 30% white.

<comment><USER13> There may be some geographic bias there because California's Asian population is much higher than the US as a whole.

<comment><USER31> I would be interested to see if there is any bias toward state of residence for a school as widely known and respected as CalTech.

<comment><USER32> Of course there is. Harvard has a disproportionate number of students from New England, and more specifically Massachusetts, as well. Plenty of smart kids don't want to be too far from home or travel a long way to an unfamiliar environment.

As for CalTech's rep, I'm just one person on the East Coast and wasn't a Tech- type student but I forget it exists all the time. If someone asked me to name a West Coast school to compare to MIT, "Stanford" would be all I could think of.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> It's worth reminding everyone that Harvard is the reason there's any discrimination in the admissions process. Students used to get accepted on academic merit alone.

But Harvard wanted to covertly discriminate against Jewish applicants. The reason why you have to write essays about your extracurricular activities, for example, is because a Jewish applicant back then typically wouldn't have any.

It's also when legacy admissions began for the same reason.

Why the hell are we still allowing this? It should be grades and test scores only.

<comment><USER13> Hell no. Optimizing solely for grades and test scores will get you rote- memorizing robots with zero personal skills and minimal potential.

A completely merit-based, objective admissions system simply does not exist.

<comment><USER34> You are making a reasonable, but baseless claim. You are saying that 4.0 GPA students with 1600 SAT scores have zero personal skills, are robots, and have minimal potential. We know though, that SAT is a one of the best available predictors of outcome.

<comment><USER13> I am saying that grades and SATs are just two factors in predicting potential. Saying that we should only use those two factors when we have a wealth of other factors to complement them is sheer naivety.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER2> The article says that there are only 1600 spots at Harvard, and of the applicants "3,500 had perfect SAT math scores, 2,700 had perfect SAT verbal scores, and more than 8,000 had straight A's" (doesn't say how many had all three).

Obviously hard objective criteria are not be enough to get into Harvard, and they need to dip into subjectivity which is rife with bias. The only fair solutions are to make the SATs harder (Havard can't control this) or expand the university and accept more students and make the school larger.

It boggles my mind why they don't expand the school. The US population and GDP increase, the demand for education and exemplary leaders in society increase, Harvard's endowment and prestige increase, yet their class size remains the same. I'd say they have an obligation to increase class size.

<comment><USER27> >Obviously hard objective criteria are not be enough to get into Harvard, and they need to dip into subjectivity which is rife with bias.

I think you are missing the point OP is making. The top 80% of blacks score well on the subjective stuff. Only the top 10% of Asians score that well. With that, there are a few possibilities.

1) Blacks are more interesting than Asians.

2) Personality is uncorrelated with test scores.

3) Harvard is purposely scoring to change the racial split of the class.

Of those, I think 3 is most likely. I am open to discussion but I think Harvard is to smart to be doing it on accident and the racial split is to politically acceptable to be by chance.

<comment><USER2> I wish you were right, because if the issue was just a few racist admissions officers, then the solution would be simple: fire them and get non-racist ones, problem solved. However, there is a fourth, more likely explanation:

4) Harvard's scoring is unintentionally hurting Asian students.

From the article, it seems that Harvard focuses on establishing student diversity that roughly tracks the US population, bringing in big money donors, bringing in legacy students, and finding leaders that have traits similar to other successful leaders in the past.

None of these values have the intent to reduce Asian admission, but that is their undeniable effect.

It means that Asian students don't face a single racist admissions officer, they face a facially race-neutral system that has a discriminatory effect. To fix it, you can't just fire a few people, you need to make much larger changes. My original point was that the only fair and effective solution would need to require a larger class size.

<comment><USER27> >4) Harvard's scoring is unintentionally hurting Asian students.

It's Harvard we are taking about, not a community college. Someone in admissions knew it was happening and let it keep happening. If you are willing to say unintentional means knew it was happening and didn't care to stop it, sure it was unintentional. The issue I have with that is if the same thing was happening but you replaced Asian with African, people would be up in arms. Such a double standard offends my sense of equality.

<comment><USER2> I am not arguing with you that it's wrong, I am saying the solution isn't as easy as you describe. This isn't a tumor you can cut out, it's a veiny cancer that is hard to see and widespread. I'd bet there were a number of individuals that knew about it, felt it was wrong, and maybe some did do something about it. Firing them would probably make the system worse, not better.

It's quite easy for a bunch of non-racist individuals to create a well- intentioned system that has a racist effect. It happens in many institutional systems, this year's Pulitzer prize went to a guy who showed that D.C.'s well intentioned and black-run criminal justice system discriminated against black people in their own city.

When you have systemic problems like this, you can't just swap out some individuals, you need to fix the system. My original point is that increasing Harvard's class size will be a necessary component. It may also require a change of leadership (e.g., president or dean of admissions), but this is not a personnel problem, it 's a structural one.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> I don't get why they don't use lotteries. Have a grade cutoff, then choose at random. You should get unbiased results. The remaining bias is grade bias which would reflect poor schools and their corellation with ethnicity. Which will give a clearer startegy for intervention.

<comment><USER36> This is the solution. It also solves the problem that all your candidates are cluster so tightly together by grade score that it is impossible to separate them by any ranking process. Just set the threshold to enter the lottery and go from there.

</comment></comment><comment><USER37> When will people understand that "We do have some very affirmative goals though that I think are important to understand. That when we talk about diversity of backgrounds and experiences, it includes different academic interests. It includes different occupations of parents. It includes socioeconomic differences. It includes different viewpoints on issues." is a good thing. This always gets me a negative reaction, people want college admissions to be straight top scorers, job prospects to be picked as the people with the top qualifications. I don't get it and it doesn't benefit anyone.

<comment><USER38> It's because the language and approach with respect to Asians (and specifically Chinese, Korean, Japanese backgrounds) echoes the explicitly racist efforts of top universities, especially Harvard, in the early 20th Century against Jews. Holistic applications in the Ivy League were created solely to keep the Jewish population to a manageable level.

This for people who relatively recently experienced severe racist treatment by the government, currently experience racist treatment in pop culture (Lauryn Hill's racist treatment of Koreans in Doo Wop for example, or Spike Lee's movies), and see local governments creating intentionally racist policies (Philadelphia's attempt to ban security glass in liquor stores).

</comment></comment><comment><USER39> _You don't have son of a police officer._

Well that's an obnoxious qualification to help one into a selective school. In future I won't be as concerned with mundane corruption like the free coffee and donuts in any quick-trip they feel like shaking down...

</comment><comment><USER40> This is terrible to read about from a European perspective.

\- It seems getting into America's most prestigious institution on merit is incredibly unlikely, compared to if you happened to have rich relatives. If 50 or 60 rich kids a year out of a pool of what? A few hundred people rich enough to be z-listed? Maybe not even that. Versus the busload of ordinary kids who need to slip through the eye of the needle.

\- Athletes I guess are a special American thing where universities are involved. Maybe not Harvard, but some of the others will let people attend for free. Which isn't even then terribly fair, because they make a lot of money off those kids, possibly a lot more per person than a comparable athlete would get in the free market. That's if their sport is one of the popular ones.

\- You can't work your way out of poverty over two generations. If anything is the American Dream (arguably there's more people outside of America who have one of these, but I digress), it's being able to see your kids succeed. But they want 1st gen immigrants according to the article.

At the end of this, I still don't quite understand how you communicate all this stuff in your admissions form. Do they have a drop-down for ethnicity? If they did, I would game it, knowing that they seem to like Vietnamese people more than Chinese. And where do you say "my name is Smith, but please check the donation register for ...". I've got a hard luck story as well, is that what the essay is for?

<comment><USER41> Coming from a European perspective as well, I do understand the idea behind Harvard's admission process.

They want to mold a group of people that are coming from the money, brain, physical and societal elite. It is not a school, it is an elite network generating institution.

The academic aspect is their legitimacy generating element. If you take this viewpoint, everything they do makes sense.

</comment></comment><comment><USER42> >Harvard says it also considers "tips," or admissions advantages, for some applicants. The plaintiffs say the college gives tips to five groups: racial and ethnic minorities; legacies, or the children of Harvard or Radcliffe alumni; relatives of a Harvard donor; the children of staff or faculty members; and recruited athletes.

I just don't think you can, at the same time, claim to be for diversity in admissions and allow legacy admissions and preferential treatment for donors.

To the asian issue I wonder if it isn't even a negative treatment, just that other racial minorities get a tip and many whites make it through legacy and donoring. If asians are underrepresented among donors and legacies it would explain the discrepancy pretty well.

<comment><USER27> >To the asian issue I wonder if it isn't even a negative treatment, just that other racial minorities get a tip and many whites make it through legacy and donoring.

I am going to make some assumptions and I apologise if they are wrong. I am going to assume that you think racism is wrong. I think that includes structural rasism. That is, policies, procedures, and practices by institutions that systematically disadvantage on race over another. From you above comment, it seems like you believe other racial minorities get an excplicit tip as a matter of policy. It also seems like you believe whites get an implicit tip due to the due to the process of how legacies work.

Yet, you seemed to stop a step short of calling this structural rasism against Asian Americans. Is there something I am missing for why you didn't take that last step?

<comment><USER42> >Yet, you seemed to stop a step short of calling this structural racism against Asian Americans. Is there something I am missing for why you didn't take that last step?

If we remove legacy admissions, does the Harvard admission system become racist against white people? I don't think so. Harvard is trying to counter- balance a (semi) racially stratified society.

Imagine a caste society. Higher caste children are provided with much more material support and are going to be more equipped to get high scores on standardized tests and participate in extracurricular activities (and the right ones). Would a school that looked only at test scores and extracurriculars be race-blind? No, it would just be an indirect observer of race, in this way we have 'laundered' race.

In a racist structure there is no way to be blind to race, you either perpetuate it or you work against it.

<comment><USER27> >In a racist structure there is no way to be blind to race, you either perpetuate it or you work against it.

You could be trying to say one thing while I hear something different. Do you think it is okay to elevate underrepresented minorities despite a lack of objectively measurable merit?

<comment><USER42> >Do you think it is okay to elevate underrepresented minorities despite a lack of objectively measurable merit?

In the sense that you mean it - yes. But I would say that there is no such thing as 'objectively measurable merit' and that frequently the type of merit we measure when admitting applicants to the Ivy League isn't really merit at all but instead laundered privilege (whether on race or class or anything else). Some intelligent black girl who goes to a school that performs in the bottom third and takes the hardest classes available to her and has to work a job after school has basically no chance to make it to Harvard or Stanford or Cornell. Some intelligent Asian girl who goes to a private school and takes the hardest classes available and plays tennis and is on the debate team still has a decent chance. Who is more meritorious? We aren't really measuring merit at all, we're measuring likelihood to pass into the upper echelons of society.

And then to the extent that there are lots of white and Asian kids who have grown up in circumstances which allow them to signal in a way that the black girl above can't, I really don't have a problem with Harvard stepping in and fixing that.

<comment><USER27> I think we are disagreeing about what it means to be meritorious. Both people should have equal work ethic. I would say that the person who has been to private school, taken hard classes, is physically fit, and a practiced debater has a higher chance to succeed at Harvard and afterward due to having better cognitive skills.

>And then to the extent that there are lots of white and Asian kids who have grown up in circumstances which allow them to signal in a way that the black girl above can't, I really don't have a problem with Harvard stepping in and fixing that.

I would say that Asian culture has done a better job, on average, of preparing its children with good study habits, work ethic, and cognitive skills than Black culture has. Thus it bothers me that Harvard who are less well prepared because of their skin color.

<comment><USER42> >Both people should have equal work ethic. I would say that the person who has been to private school, taken hard classes, is physically fit, and a practiced debater has a higher chance to succeed at Harvard and afterward due to having better cognitive skills.

The whole point of my example was to pose two people of equal intelligence with equal work ethic. I'll admit the Asian girl has a higher chance to succeed at Harvard but I don't believe that's due to her merit, it's due to being placed in a more challenging environment, something that is completely out of her control.

>I would say that Asian culture has done a better job, on average, of preparing its children with good study habits, work ethic, and cognitive skills than Black culture has.

1\. Culture doesn't just emerge spontaneously, it's a response to environment. Asians and blacks have very different historical circumstances thus different cultures.

2\. It's completely unfair to hold an 18 year old accountable to the 'culture of their race' (if there is such a thing). The 18 year old black girl didn't choose to be born into her culture any more than the 18 year old Asian girl chose to be born into hers. The black girl didn't choose to live in a poor area or have poor parents or go to a bad school just like the Asian girl didn't choose to live in a good area or have middle/upper-class parents or go to a good school. These things are irrelevant to merit and yet they all count for one girl and against the other. That's not really a merit-based system.

<comment><USER27> >The whole point of my example was to pose two people of equal intelligence with equal work ethic. I'll admit the Asian girl has a higher chance to succeed at Harvard but I don't believe that's due to her merit, it's due to being placed in a more challenging environment, something that is completely out of her control.

I agree that being placed in an environment that could be more challenging was out of her control. But, her choice to work hard, and do well in those things was her choice. In life she got dealt a straight flush but she played it well. Much like accusing someone of being admitted because a diversity initiative is an insult to their hard work and ability, accusing someone of their success being solely because of their privilege is an insult to their hard work and ability.

> 1\. Culture doesn't just emerge spontaneously, it's a response to > environment. Asians and blacks have very different historical circumstances > thus different cultures.

Yes, they do have different historical circumstances. Remember, Asian Americans have not been treated great on the West Coast. They have still been able to do very well. Look at Jewish culture. They have been mistreated for over a thousand years and are still able to have good results. Were blacks mistreated and oppressed? Absolutely they were! That doesn't change the fact that 91% of Asian/Pacific Islanders graduate high school and only 76% of Blacks do [0]. If we don't focus the cause of that difference, there are always going to be more Asians with perfect SAT scores than Blacks with the same apply to Harvard.

>2\. It's completely unfair to hold an 18 year old accountable to the 'culture of their race' (if there is such a thing).

I completely agree but you were advocating for Harvard to try and correct for that difference which I do not think they should do because it requires treating someone different because of their race.

>These things are irrelevant to merit and yet they all count for one girl and against the other. That's not really a merit-based system.

Example 1: Person A goes to Harvard and pulls a 4.0. Person B goes to community college and gets a 4.0. Both get business degrees. It is almost guaranteed that person A learned more. Thus as an employer if you only have one job and want to decide on personal ability, person A gets the job.

Example 2: Person A goes to an elite private high school and gets a 4.0. Person B goes to a very poorly ranked public high school and gets a 4.0. It is almost guaranteed that person A learned more. Thus as an college administrator if you only have one acceptance letter to send and want to decide on personal ability, person A gets the letter.

In my understanding, both example are a merit-based system. In example 2, person B had the deck stacked against them from the start. When we measure personal ability person A has a greater ability and thus more merit. Yet, I feel like you will disagree about this being merit-based.

Would you be willing to explain why you think the quality of school is irrelevant to merit? It would really help my understanding if you were able to put a working definition to your concept of merit.

[0][https://nces.ed.gov/programs/coe/indicator_coi.asp](https://nces.ed.gov/programs/coe/indicator_coi.asp)

<comment><USER42> >But, her choice to work hard, and do well in those things was her choice. In life she got dealt a straight flush but she played it well.

Yes but the other girl gets dealt a shit hand and still plays it well. The two girls are equally meritorious yet only one will get admitted.

>If we don't focus the cause of that difference

... I am focusing on the cause of that difference. I think the opposite here, that it is _you_ who is failing to consider the cause of that difference.

>I completely agree but you were advocating for Harvard to try and correct for that difference which I do not think they should do because it requires treating someone different because of their race.

Yes, Harvard should correct for that difference _because_ it is unfair to hold someone accountable for a culture they did not choose.

>Example 2: Person A goes to an elite private high school and gets a 4.0. Person B goes to a very poorly ranked public high school and gets a 4.0. It is almost guaranteed that person A learned more. Thus as an college administrator if you only have one acceptance letter to send and want to decide on personal ability, person A gets the letter.

>In my understanding, both example are a merit-based system. In example 2, person B had the deck stacked against them from the start. When we measure personal ability person A has a greater ability and thus more merit. Yet, I feel like you will disagree about this being merit-based.

>Would you be willing to explain why you think the quality of school is irrelevant to merit? It would really help my understanding if you were able to put a working definition to your concept of merit.

To me merit is something that comes from within, not from without. So take a feudal example. It's best to have a king who understands the duties of being a king. Most people in a kingdom will grow up with no real understanding of what is it to be a king. The king's firstborn son however, grows up in an entirely different culture. He will be cultivated from birth and given every advantage in order to turn him into the best king possible. Does that make bloodline aristocracy a merit-based system? After all, at the time of the king's death it is obvious that his son has received the best preparation.

Now, I think if you're a normal person something about that will bother you, it doesn't quite seem like merit. It seems like inherited privilege which has been converted into knowledge, but that knowledge isn't itself merit. I feel the same way about our current system. It is based on inherited privilege which takes place in the realm of knowledge and test scores but it doesn't really strike me as being 'merit.'

<comment><USER27> You have a very interesting world view.

>The two girls are equally meritorious yet only one will get admitted.

>To me merit is something that comes from within, not from without.

>but that knowledge isn't itself merit.

I don't get your definition of merit. The crown prince might be given every advantage be that doesn't mean when the king dies the crown prince is best qualified to rule. History is full of examples. Thus because the crown prince will become king regardless of his current ability when the king dies it is not a meritocracy.

In the book Player of Games the Azad society plays a game called Azad. A person's rank in society is determined by how well they play the game in the "annual" tournament. People who are able to be better trained on the game perform better and thus have a higher rank in society. From how you have spoken, I think you would count this training as privilege and not something that increased merit.

If we had a similar test that accurately predicted future success and job applications were decided by this test, would that be meritocratic? Would that change if parents were able to send there kinds of a special $10k/yr school that significantly increased their children's results on the test? Either way, what is your reasoning?

<comment><USER42> >The crown prince might be given every advantage be that doesn't mean when the king dies the crown prince is best qualified to rule. History is full of examples. Thus because the crown prince will become king regardless of his current ability when the king dies it is not a meritocracy.

Yes, there are exceptions. But for most of history the crown prince, is in fact the best person to rule. All of those instances are meritocratic? We'll admit the occasional error but would you at least say that bloodline aristocracy is _often_ meritocratic by your definition?

>From how you have spoken, I think you would count this training as privilege and not something that increased merit.

Correct. If in Azad society my parent's wealth or the high school I attended had a significant bearing on my skill at the game then I would say that is not a meritocratic system.

>If we had a similar test that accurately predicted future success and job applications were decided by this test, would that be meritocratic?

If it was able to remove environmental and structural effects then yes, that would be meritocratic.

>Would that change if parents were able to send there kinds of a special $10k/yr school that significantly increased their children's results on the test?

Absolutely it would change. It's no longer a measure of merit, now it's a measure of merit AND your parents' wealth AND your parents' willingness to spend on your development. We can't separate out those factors so the test is now useless as a measure of merit.

<comment><USER27> >All of those instances are meritocratic? We'll admit the occasional error but would you at least say that bloodline aristocracy is often meritocratic by your definition?

I would say that it often has the same outcome as a meritocratic system. Suppose if every US election, after deciding the winner, they rolled a 20-sided dice and on a 1, elected the loser instead. This would be democratic most of the time but it would not be a democratic system. Similarly since a bloodline aristocracy uses bloodline as the deciding factor not merit, it is not meritocratic.

>Absolutely it would change. It's no longer a measure of merit, now it's a measure of merit AND your parents' wealth AND your parents' willingness to spend on your development. We can't separate out those factors so the test is now useless as a measure of merit.

I feel like what you are saying is that merit is independent of the training and experiences you receive. I define merit as the ability to perform the given task well. With that definition, you have to include training and experience because they have effects on ability to perform. So if you exclude training and experiences, what do you mean by merit?

<comment><USER42> >I would say that it often has the same outcome as a meritocratic system.

Doesn't that seem even a little bit condemnatory of your conception of merit? Your meritocracy is frequently indistinguishable from aristocracy. That once in a while they differ isn't a great credit, it's damning with faint praise.

>I feel like what you are saying is that merit is independent of the training and experiences you receive. I define merit as the ability to perform the given task well. With that definition, you have to include training and experience because they have effects on ability to perform. So if you exclude training and experiences, what do you mean by merit?

Then why call it a meritocracy? Call it a knowledgocracy or something of that sort. Again, I find merit to be something that comes from within not from without. The asian girl's advantage over the black girl is entirely from without so it shouldn't be considered - they should have an equal chance to be admitted.

<comment><USER27> >Your meritocracy is frequently indistinguishable from aristocracy.

I think there is a big leap from saying the crown Prince is most qualified to take the thrown and saying a meritocracy is frequently indistinguishable from aristocracy. I think Prince Charles is probably most qualified to take the thrown but I don't want the British government to go back to mostly inherited positions.

>Then why call it a meritocracy?

Google defines a meritocracy as "government or the holding of power by people selected on the basis of their ability." So since it is deciding on ability which is dependent on training and experience it is still a meritocracy.

>I find merit to be something that comes from within not from without.

But what is that thing within? It seems like you have ruled out experience and skills because both of those can be bought by wealthy parents. Even hard work is something that can be taught. It seems like you mean something closer to potiential (future ability) than merit (current ability). Also, what do you look for as evidence of merit?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER43> Part of what we should be asking is why Harvard is even relevant?

That these Ivy League schools have such an outsized influence in politics and American culture should be something that should be examined and debated.

</comment><comment><USER44> Would love to see a concerted movement to arrange a boycott of Harvard by Asian students - having a graduating class without any Asian students would send a very a strong symbolic message.

<comment><USER45> It won't happen. Imagine there are 3800 Asians, with perfect SAT, validictorians, excellence, etc. You can make 95% people boycott, the other Asian applicants will apply even if they sign to the pledge.

It is better for professors of Asian descent to leave, and not join, Harvard. That will send a better message.</comment></comment>


"Anonymous" File-Sharing Darknet Ruled Illegal - <AUTHOR> https://torrentfreak.com/anonymous-file-sharing-ruled-illegal-by-german-court-121123/

<comment><AUTHOR> I have to say, it's interesting to see where this is going to lead to. I thought this wouldn't be possible in Europe, but tide seems to be turning here too.

They could have mentioned it's not just "darknet" it's F2F - Friend 2 Friend network. So there aren't public exit nodes as there is with Tor network. There are only relays, between network nodes.

I just wonder when Freenet, GNUnet ja Tor will be banned on same basis? As well as other tools like it.

Based on this policy any "cyber locker" could be taken down. It doesn't matter if they knew what the file content was or if they didn't. Maybe this comment has something illegal embedded using stEganogRaphy? Maybe Hacker News will be taken down too, due spreading illegal content?

anVzdCBzb21lIHJhbmRvbSBzdHVmZg==

This is how Facebook should work: <http://secushare.org/>

<comment><USER2> Germany is pretty weird about IP laws. They always seem to apply them in the strictest sense, without any consideration for common sense. I think this would be pretty easily appealed and overturned.

<comment><USER3> The Hamburg court is notorious for applying the law in the strictest sense, other courts in germany are not. But since for any internet related issue the plaintiff (aka copyright industry) usually use the Hamburg court for their cases.

 _sigh_. this sucks. and hard.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> >Update: Contrary to the U.S. and elsewhere, a previous ruling in Germany already makes wireless network operators liable for copyright infringements of others.

Germany has an interesting history of computer misuse. I'm surprised that CCC hasn't hacked wifi of German politicians (at their homes and offices) and transferred a variety of files.

</comment><comment><USER5> More accurately:

Users of "Anonymous" File-Sharing Darknet Ruled Liable

The software has not been ruled illegal, but users were held liable for files passing through their computer - even if they are not involved in the transfer or aware of the contents.

<comment><USER2> Which in a way makes it illegal to use the software - if you happen to be in a F2F network where someone shares some copyrighted material.

<comment><USER5> Yes, just like it's illegal to walk out of a store (with stolen merchandise.)

<comment><USER6> I doubt it is illegal to walk out of a store with stolen merchandise that someone else put in your pocket (without your knowledge).

Of course it might be hard to prove that that was what happened in the store case.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I still don't understand how cases like this are brought up. It seems to me like random people are targeted at random times. I see stories like this every day, not about Darknet specifically but about rulings against file sharers and pirates. Could anyone shed light on how a select few people are singled out of the masses of people who fileshare.

<comment><USER8> In this case, the defendant added the anti-piracy monitoring company as a friend.

<comment><USER9> I don't understand how these company's are legal. It just seems to me that in order to get a list of illegal sharers they "must" at least attempt to download or share the copyrighted material. So why aren't they are just as guilty as they people they report?

<comment><USER10> In most cases they are authorized (and paid by) the legal copyright holders to find violators. At least in US most cases are brought by industry organizations.

I heard (and believe it's true) that in Germany, lawyers are given the right to bring cases against law breakers (maybe only civil) with no client, without support or even knowledge of the "victim". Paid on a bounty system. Idea being all these lawyers are incentivized to go out and deter crime.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> The whole point of Retroshare is that you only connect to your trusted friends and route your teh warez requestz to other nodes through them. Retroshare is friend-to-friend, or F2F. It's not a closed darknet but it's a darknet. You need to have a friend (or preferably friends) through which to connect.

The guy in question had the local equivalent of MAFIAA as a trusted F2F friend. That's a completely wrong position to begin with. This doesn't make Retroshare or darknets or F2F networks illegal.

With friends, you can do whatever you want so as long as nobody gets hurt or the MAFIAA won't know about it.

</comment><comment><USER12> Does the ruling technically means that anyone who processes the copyrighted song on his wetware, for example Jingle Bells (copyrighted by Disney), and then shares the file by means of acoustic murmuring in a public toilet in Hamburg with trusted friends, one of which is an anti-piracy maniac, will be sentenced for 6 months?

</comment><comment><USER13> ... "In Germany", where they don't have safe harbor laws, so it has no effect on the United States.

<comment><USER14> IANAL. Germany does have a common carrier status for ISPs just like the US. It doesn't extend to private citizens.

The liability in cases like this is not really settled, though it's not looking very promising. It's already very difficult to find open Wifi, which is at least partly due to concerns about liability and their widespread discussion in the media. OTOH I think there've been Tor exit nodes in Germany for a long time, though not without subjecting their operators to some legal harassment (and bills).

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> > users exchange data through encrypted transfers and the network setup > ensures that the true sender of the file is always obfuscated

If this were really true in practice, the authorities shouldn't be able to see whether copyrighted content is transferred through your computer in theory (except by breaking the law themselves by putting surveillance software on your computer)... or am I missing something? (or do they have a "weaker" meaning for the term 'obsfucated'?)

<comment><USER16> > In this case, the defendant added the anti-piracy monitoring company as a > friend, which allowed him to be "caught."

<comment><USER17> What's the company called? I don't want to friend them by accident.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> > In this case, the defendant added the anti-piracy monitoring company as a > friend, which allowed him to be "caught."

This is equivalent to asking a friend for his wifi key, downloading a song and then have him sued for copyright infringement. Obviously he is the bad guy!

</comment><comment><USER19> In the US, aren't those who run tor exit nodes already liable for the activity of those they host? I don't see how this is much different -- different network in a different country, maybe, but conceptually similar/identical.

<comment><USER20> I believe Tor exit nodes are considered internet service providers and thus are granted safe harbor under the DMCA and CDA Section 230.

<comment><USER19> Interesting. Does that provision also cover those operating unsecured wireless networks?</comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: What should I consider when choosing a career as a CS grad? - <AUTHOR> I am approaching the end of my MS in Computer Engineering and in the last few years I have been exposed to a variety of different fields, ranging from data science to web and system programming. It's now time to make a choice between all the various opportunities that this industry has to offer, and I'm struggling to take a decision. What are some long term considerations to make before committing to a specific career? <comment><USER2> With a masters, your topic of research likely gets you an advantage with companies doing the same work. Especially for hardware jobs, your research and academic record might be your only way in. Software, especially web, is much more flexible and it's mostly a matter of building a portfolio and learning the whiteboard problems.</comment>


Let me break down exactly how we've screwed over creative people - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/the-mission/let-me-break-down-exactly-how-weve-screwed-creative-people-over-2dda7656dae9 <comment><USER2> There's a flip side to this argument that creative people have screwed everyone else over as well. The intoduction of in perpetuity copyright is, what I believe, to be one of the most harmful things we have done to hurt those wanting to enter a creativity based field and also us as a society that supports creativity. Our history and our culture is seized for corporate interests, and on the surface people are fine with it.

Being able to control your creative work so you can realize profit from it is a good thing because it should give you incentive to do more. We must also understand this isn't some inherent right that ideas/thoughts are owned as property, it's a relatively new concept in history, but society has allowed this as after some time these works should provide a benefit back to society. When creative works are never released back to society, part of that contract is broken. While corporate profiteers can bribe our law makers to license our culture, people inherently know this is wrong. This is why you're seeing this insistance that creativity is free, and this causes harm to those wanting to enter the field as you haven't yet sold your thoughts in to corporate ownership to be packaged and push out as pablum creativity.

If the idea of allowing thoughts to be copyrighted was to encourage more creative works (this was the original intent). Why do we allow copyright to be passed from generation to generation as if it's the family broach?</comment>