Are you paid to look busy? - <AUTHOR> http://www.pbs.org/newshour/making-sense/ask-says-notorious-occupy-academic-job-exist/ <comment><USER2> "We should do away with the absolutely specious notion that everybody has to earn a living. It is a fact today that one in ten thousand of us can make a technological breakthrough capable of supporting all the rest. The youth of today are absolutely right in recognizing this nonsense of earning a living. We keep inventing jobs because of this false idea that everybody has to be employed at some kind of drudgery because, according to Malthusian Darwinian theory he must justify his right to exist. So we have inspectors of inspectors and people making instruments for inspectors to inspect inspectors. The true business of people should be to go back to school and think about whatever it was they were thinking about before somebody came along and told them they had to earn a living." -- Buckminster Fuller

<comment><USER3> This sounds great, but you still need money to survive.

This would mean that the few that did work would essentially be supporting the rest of society. Why would I ever want to start a million dollar business if I knew the majority of my earnings would be taken from me by the government to support people that didn't need to do anything??

You don't have to get a crappy job and work for someone you hate for the rest of your life. I started a business 2 years ago and I don't plan on getting a job anytime soon.

You have the freedom to do this..or work for someone..or you could even live in the woods on berries.

<comment><USER4> You appear to be getting downvoted, but you've struck at the heart of the issue:

If we want to do away with meaningless jobs, people will still need resources to survive. And that "one-in-ten-thousand" (or whatever) will need to be taxed very heavily so the wealth can be spread. We can't have all of our financial resources siloed into an increasingly small number of people's wallets.

A great benefit to this system will be that people can do important work that might not necessarily reward them financially. The downside is that, well, those who do financially well will have to share their earnings. And we'll have to detach the notion of financial success with the notion of power, which will be difficult.

And all of this runs anathema to the usual sort of libertarian financial- might-makes-right of the tech world, unfortunately.

[Edit, since I can't reply to zo1, yet, below: No, I wasn't trying to tie libertarianism to "financial-might-makes-right." I meant that the tech world seems to slant libertarian, and people in this world seem to aggrandize money as the supreme metric of success.]

<comment><USER5> > And that "one-in-ten-thousand" (or whatever) will need to be taxed very > heavily so the wealth can be spread

I think this is always going to be problematic because once wealth gets concentrated it's going to be very hard to redistribute it, short of some revolution or coup. And I sense that this is going to be especially hard in democratic countries where there's a very close nexus between elected representatives and wealth holders; US, India being prime examples that I could think of.

An alternative is to have systems and institutions such that wealth concentration doesn't even happen in the first place. Also I believe wealth gets concentrated by systemic and institutionalized transfer of wealth from middle and poor class to a selected few rich and not because those who are wealthy are geniuses or are contributing proportionately to society.

I can think of a few examples of systemic, institutionalized wealth transfers that are happening right now.

1\. Riding on others hard work: A labor working in inhuman conditions with peanuts for wage producing textiles which are sold with profit margin of a few thousand percentages.

2\. Privatizing essential services: Poor/middle class persons having to pay out regular health premium and still live in fear of getting their claim rejected and end up paying through their nose for smallest of diseases, medicines.

3\. Rent seeking: Natural resources (oil, spectrum etc.,), licenses, monopoly, forced software contracts, patents and such.

4\. Crony Capitalism: Govt bail outs for failed private institutions that have caused massive financial crisis which in itself was a wealth transfer from poor to rich of a scale that was perhaps unheard of.

5\. Crony Capitalism: Tax payer's money getting transferred to weapon's manufacturers and private military contractors who in turn are going to protect the interest of private oil corporations.

6\. Riding on others hard work: Illegal or institutionalized collusion among private corporations to suppress the wage by not allowing free labor market.

7\. Resource transfer: Government snatching massive tracts of farming land from the poor farmers and giving them away to private corporations for pittance.

9\. Erect massive blockade to democratic institutions so that the common citizen, for whom they were meant for in the first place, will have no choice but to resort to middle men and shell out huge sums. Courts (lawyers, out of court settlements etc.,), parliaments (lobbyists) etc.,

If I look at the list of wealthiest people, rent seeking behavior and riding on cheap labor jumps out!

Sure, they probably deserve to be wealthier than above average, but does the wealth they have accumulated is proportional to their social contribution?

The intersection between those who have contributed to advancement of our civilization in whatever small way _and_ the rich people is almost an empty set. That's a clear enough indicator that those who are very wealthy really don't deserve it and in fact snatched the wealth from others to start with!

<comment><USER6> Don't forget: 10\. Wal-Mart and Friends: Paying your employees an extremely low wage with unpredictable shifts (so they can't get a second job). The end result being that your employees need food stamps to survive, so your profits are ultimately subsidized by tax payers.

<comment><USER7> Everyone loves the low-prices of WalMart, but they then turn around and bitterly complain about the low-wages that WalMart pays their employees.

Even if these employees could get a second job, what makes you think they will be able to find one? Unemployment is sky-rocketing in the US.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> This reminds me of a study focusing on soccer games. It analyzed A) how often players shot goals toward the left, middle and right sides of the net; and B) how often goalies responded by jumping toward the left, middle and right sides.

The stats revealed a surprising phenomenon. Though opposing players shot toward each area of the goal evenly — about 33% of the time — goalies jumped toward the left or the right 80-90% of the time.

So what explains the irrational behavior of these highly skilled goalies? The researcher who presented this to me and others at a conference argued that it came down to the appearance of productivity. If a goalie leaps left or right and fails to stop the goal, he can claim that he tried his best. But if a goalie remains in the center, even if doing so is the most effective option, he risks looking like he did nothing.

I call this "productivity theater." In other words, there's sometimes a disconnect between what it means to be an effective worker and what it means to appear effective.

To offer just one example from the workplace: in some offices, the culture dictates that employees must stay from 8 to 6 each day. Their schedules may make them look like hard workers, but some are probably checking Facebook or email much of the day. Contrast this with offices that emphasize owning and completing projects rather than working an amount of time. With the second policy, you're likely to find some workers who appear less busy but make more meaningful contributions.

<comment><USER9> You're referring to penalty kicks. And I think the study you refer to is discussed here: [http://www.scienceofsocceronline.com/2009/04/penalty- kicks-b...](http://www.scienceofsocceronline.com/2009/04/penalty-kicks-by- numbers.html).

That discussion gets a number of things wrong and trivializes the odds against the goalkeeper. Any goalie preparing for a match in the sudden death stages of a tournament, like the World Cup [1], would study previous kicks from the opposing players. The players also study goalkeepers past shootouts. So any pattern the goalkeeper chooses to adopt influences the direction of future kicks by opposing players, and vice versa. In other words, if I know that the opposing goalie stays in the center, as a rule, 30% of the time (heck even 10%), there's no way I'm going to shoot down the middle. I'm going to go for the right or left corner to increase my odds.

Going down the middle actually requires more skill than the linked article credits it with. As a player, you'll have to disguise the direction and you'll want to aim for the upper half (if it's too low, the goalie can save with the feet), meaning you could miss and hit the bar or worse, row Z.

The reason goalies don't just stay in the center is that it's more likely that the opposing player would aim for the bottom left/right corners. And if a goalkeeper spent more time in the center, he/she increases the odds further that shots against that particular goalie would go to the bottom left/right corners.

I think the reason most penalty kicks go to the bottom left corner (left from the player's perspective) is that most players are right-footed and they can strike the ball with more force to their left than (with the open foot) to their right. With enough speed and accuracy, a shot to the bottom corner (just sneaking by the post) will beat the goalie even if the goalie dives in the right direction. A shot to the upper corner will always beat the goalie; just can't get there in time. But shots to the upper half of the goal are tough, especially when you consider that the player is very likely suffering from nerves at the time.

1\. 32 days, 8 hours and 45 minutes from now, yay!!

<comment><USER8> Thanks for reviewing the study and offering your take on goalies' behavior. As someone who knows very little about soccer, I was mainly interested in how it might serve as a metaphor for productivity in the workplace. But it was interesting to learn more about the context for the study as well as how goalies and other players anticipatw moves.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> My employee next to me is working hard. I'm in elinks in terminal on HN and on IRC, with vertical split of htop in tmux. He thinks I'm working hard too, with all those numbers, columns, scrolling output and blinking cursor.

I feel so bad right now. I'm going to go actually work.

<comment><USER11> When reading stuff like this I wonder, how do the Windows folks manage to do the same? A browser disguised as Visual Studio? doubledesktop.exe? I'm so thankful for my *nix with all these little toys.

<comment><USER12> [http://codereddit.com/](http://codereddit.com/)

Reddit that looks like source code. For opening in Visual Studio's built-in browser. I am not a Windows dev.

<comment><USER13> Wow, the load-comments-inline functionality is beautiful.

In fact, the whole thing actually looks better than some of the subreddit styles.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> "And then I thought, well, maybe that explains some other things, like why is it there's this deep, popular resentment against people who have real jobs? They can get people so angry at auto-workers, just because they make 30 bucks an hour, which is like nowhere near what corporate lawyers make, but nobody seems to resent them. They get angry at the auto-workers; they get angry at teachers."

I thought people were angry at these people because of their unions - all the other jobs he listed are nonunion and thus the higher wage is actually a market wage.

<comment><USER15> Lawyers are not unionized but the bar exam definitely does limit supply.

You are correct though - one major reason why teachers and auto-workers might get criticism is because they pay an organization to make sure companies and other individuals cannot contract freely.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> The worlds wasted wealth...

[http://www.amazon.com/The-Worlds-Wasted-Wealth- Environment/d...](http://www.amazon.com/The-Worlds-Wasted-Wealth- Environment/dp/0962442321)

The book is poorly written to the point it seems less than credible but it has some interesting takes on the situation. The author postulates something he calls "waste distribution territories" that have risen to take advantage of technological advancements. The basic gist is that instead of people working less as technology advances, unnecessary jobs are added to society and people work the same or even more at selling insurance, filling out forms in HR etc. etc. He points out numerous specific examples of this waste and there are many more he misses. He does offer some specific solutions to this problem that are very unlikely to be rationally implemented without a major structural collapse first. Overall, a poorly written book with some very insightful concepts.

</comment><comment><USER17> 5 years ago I worked as a consultant at a large enterprise software company. There were definitely large periods of time (months long) where I was averaging 3 hours a week of actual work. Insane, insane work hours. There would be a 5 person team (Analysts, QAs, developer) spending 5 weeks on a release that consisted in 45 min worth of text changes. I don't usually hear people on HN talk about not having work to do. I guess it's different at start ups. It's just fucking unbelievable to me though that I would get paid so much to do so little. And I feel like some kind jerk complaining about it.

</comment><comment><USER18> There's a saying in my country for this: "they pretend to pay us, and we pretend to work" \- meaning the salary isn't great, and they're getting what they're paying for.

<comment><USER19> I've heard that one too. It's brilliant! I don't think it's really what we're talking about here though.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> I've had this concept rolling around in my head occasionally...the best path in becoming a better programmer is to _sincerely desire to automate yourself out of your job_.

Instead of backing up a system via GUI every week, figure out the API calls needed to hook up via a script. After a few weeks of triggering that script by hand, write a cron job and a logger that logs the relevant transactions. After awhile of manually SSHing into the backup server to verify the existence of those backups, write some kind of litmus test that fails if the backups were corrupted. Instead of checking the log every once in awhile, have it email you (and just to be safe, use other kinds of push notifications too ) when success or failure happens. And instead of lackadaisically running emergency drills to see that the backups do work, write a automated deployment system that runs off of those backups, and put that in a cron job.

At the end of all that, you still should want to be "the human". You should still want to SSH in manually, check the checksums, deploy from backup on a lazy Friday just to make sure...but those are _intentional_ actions...not just some repetitive drill you do because you have to. And if something does go clusterfuck, you're still there to handle things.

So the test is: now that you've automated the robot-part of your work...which, the fact that you could automate it means it would have been automated _some day_...what do you feel free to do now? Does your company have the foresight to reward you, both in salary, and in discretion to pursue projects that truly require human insight and expertise? Or is the culture such that it's just better to keep your automated-workflow to yourself, and spend the day surfing the internet? Not that either of those choices are wrong...I mean, when I'm near retirement age, I will definitely choose the latter happily...but if that first option of moving ahead isn't available, then that's a sign that you might have to open your horizons.

Of course, if you can't automate any of your work...congratulations, it just might mean you're working on exciting, non-repetitive things that (...for now) require the best of human insight and intelligence.

edit: forgot to add the best bit...no matter what the outcome at the end of the automation process, you'll still have become a better developer by just building it out. I think 99% of my experience and knowledge of the command- line (and also, much-needed appreciation of functional design) grew out of an impatience with perfectly good GUIs. Just one of the other upsides to being a programmer...you can appreciably lessen your own workload so directly through improvement of your personal craftsmanship.

<comment><USER21> > Does your company have the foresight to reward you

More like to they have the foresight to patent your ideas in their name, take your IP and restrict it via copyright, and then make fortunes off of it while the rest of the world withers in squalor.

There is a huge market movement in the IP industry not just because of how it is an obvious quick buck today to just sue everyone and put money down the legal black hole, but that in the long run when the means of production are wholly automated, you rule the world if the men with the guns give you exclusive rights to those ideas.

<comment><USER20> Sure, I think this is a legit fear -- which is why keeping it to yourself and whistling while you work may be the path to take.

But again, if you were able to automate it, then someone who is not you will be able to. And more likely, that someone will be a SaaS who _really_ doesn't give a shit about fair labor as it pertains to your situation.

It's likely automation _will_ eat the world...but my hope is that rather than virtual enslavement (or SkyNet), society will have reached a political point where living wages is a popular, enforceable concept, and the human race overall has risen above the economic rat race...but that's a long path (or may require World War 3, in the case of the Star Trek universe). In the mean time, for that political environment to even become favorable, more individual agents -- who are also hopefully, forward-thinking and not-entirely-selfish -- have to push the idea that humans have real value even after their initial grunt work has been automated.

edit: also, this is why I meant "automate" in the most pedant, grinding way...as in, take care of the crap work, even if it means learning how to write a script that has surely been done before (the GUI app is likely based on such a script)...now, if in your automation of the backup routine, you are hit with a Eureka moment and come up with an incredible, unrivaled compression scheme to store your backups...consult a lawyer before writing your idea on paper.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> Seinfeld already did it. [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yd9ma2UVLHM](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yd9ma2UVLHM)

</comment><comment><USER23> If you are developer or some sort of IT engineer, don't automatically think your job is not BS. Like job of developing thin client to a windows server running licensed software to get around license costs of software, where price is based on number of users... Yes, this types of businesses generate TONS of money from essentially the fact, that supplier and customer could not get in agreement for more reasonable license...

<comment><USER21> I'd argue (as would most of the free software community) the creation of proprietary software is entirely bullshit. Because you have to eventually reinvent it with either permissive or copyleft licenses to just avoid the huge black hole that is legal bullshit and bureaucracy around licensing rights to a number that is not even scarce once its made. And until it is foss, you are just denying the users their freedoms to the stuff they are paying you for, and until it is sufficiently free it really isn't even a working product in my book.

Hell, even projects like Tizen vs Android and ZFS vs BTRFS vs XFS and KVM vs Xen vs Vmware vs Virtualbox are all bullshit jobs and unnecessary work reinventing the same wheel over and over to either satisfy a boss need out of the chief developers, the inability for the forerunner to accept others opinions into their project, or just raw license and legalese incompatibility bullshit.

It is, though, 99% bs. And every time someone tries to reinvent IMing after xmpp (without being able to, in a paragraph, describe the intrinsic flaw in xmpp you can't fix through amendments to the standard, and how their alternative immediately fixes them) it is just more BS. All the photo sharing websites, all the web apps, 99.99% of them are all bullshit because someone already did it before, and you just want to tweak a few knobs (which you could have easily done if all involved projects were open contribution and pliable to change and forking) and had simple results, but no, you have to start from scratch and spend a million LOCs reinventing wordpress. And you still write it in Lua! If you wrote it in, say, python, I'd be all over that because that presents a tangible benefit - "Lua is awful, I don't like it, and as a user of my software, you don't like it either, and you can't just patch fix that, so here is a replacement in python".

<comment><USER24> While I'd agree with that sentiment for most _sold_ software, there's another aspect to consider. There are some jobs that don't ever really go away, and software is one of them. It's similar at times to the traditional "trades" such being a plumber or electrician.

So while "proprietary" (i.e. closed source or limiting who has access to it) may not be the precise description, a LOT of software is (and will be) "in- house" stuff. This is because while commodity solutions are great in many way, the are general tools, and will never map _exactly_ to the current task and needs of a business.

Just like how the plumber is happy to buy common solutions to piping problems (e.g. standard sizes, common specialized parts that solve problems that show up all the time), a software engineer can pull from Free Software as his "standard parts". In the end, though, because every need is at least _slightly_ different, a business will always need to hire somebody to put those parts together - just like they hire an in-house plumber or other specialist.

A consequence of this, though, is that all that specialized work is not going to be particularly useful outside the place where it was originally used. The occasional useful features can be pushed back upstream, but that still leaves a lot of glue around.

As time goes on, and the collection of "standard tools" grows, I expect the ratio of "glue" to "useful new feature" to increase.

<comment><USER25> My guess is that the ratio of custom to glue stuff should be more constant over time. As old custom stuff becomes standard, it simply enables people to start tackling harder problems and create more custom stuff.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> No, I'm not, and it's one of the things I enjoy about programming. Some weeks I work 30 hours, others I work 60. But if I did the things I committed to doing this week, then I go home. Why sit in the office and pretend to be working? It makes no sense.

<comment><USER3> Most managers would not accept this. Since most developers are paid salary (as opposed to hourly), many feel like if you were leaving early, you aren't working hard enough.

I've seen it at every place I've ever worked. At one place, my manager directly told me I needed to stay until 6 or 7 every night or the boss will think that I'm slacking.

<comment><USER26> That seems completely backwards. You are being paid salary but treated as if you were hourly. If your managers think it's important for you to be in the office 9-5 every day, why don't they just set up an hourly rate and make you punch a timecard? To me, the reason to have salary is that you are paying a worker to do a job. Highly paying jobs usually require highly skilled workers, and those workers should be judged on their results. Completion of the job and all of its duties is worth $XXX,000 per year, and it is up to the employee to determine how best to allocate their time and resources. The fundamental mistake of the approach you describe is that software development is not a profession in which merely showing up and putting in labor is of great value. I can pay Jim the Janitor $10/hour to show up and sit in front of a computer. He is never going to write me a distributed map-reduce powered vectorized graph search in Erlang (or whatever).

Let's say my boss tells me to write a TPS report collector. So I come in for 10 hours every day for a month and slave away on a bunch of crufty repetitive boilerplate code which is low on creativity and high on required hours. I eventually manage to hack together a custom report finder and parser, and generate the necessary solution as described by his email. What if my coworker wakes up after a good night's sleep, comes into the office and talks to everyone involved about the project, then realizes that what the VP of MarketResources really wants is some nice graphs of the TPS trends? He finds an open source TPS report analysis framework, spends a couple days integrating it into the workflow, learns a great solution for dynamically generating graphs while out for drinks after a local dev meetup, submits it all to the boss after two weeks and then takes a vacation. Who has really provided more value to the company here? My point isn't about frameworks vs custom software, it's about good solutions to hard problems. Salary employees, especially software developers, should be evaluated on their ability to come up with great solutions to hard problems and provide value to the team and company. Not whether they showed up at 7am or 10am.

Programming is not like digging a ditch, where 17 man hours are required to dig a ditch of length 14 and width 5. It is quite possible and even common to spend a lot of time working on widgets, features, and implementations which are completely unnecessary, non-optimal, or completely wrong. It is well understood that one great programmer can be worth many, many novice programmers because even 20 novice programmers given twice the time will not come up with the brilliantly simple and elegant solution of the veteran expert. So the more you can do to make the programmers you do have happy and as effective as possible, the better.

<comment><USER27> Have you ever seen cost plus government dev projects? They make more money the more pointlessly complex and slow to develop your solution it. If only the world was a sensible meritocracy.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> The bulk of my clients pay me hourly, on an as needed basis.

I've had a few clients; where it sometimes it feels like they are making stuff up for me to do just so I'll be available when real work comes down the pike.

I have mixed feelings about this.. on one hand--billable hours. On the other hand--it is not satisfying to do things with absolutely no business value.

<comment><USER29> If your client is a medium to large sized company, it may also be a case of needing to use budget or have budget reduced the next year.

A place I once worked one year had a big budget surplus. They bought a Winnebago, affectionately named the Waltabago after Walt, the guy who ran the team. The next year, Walt bought a Sunfire V1280 with his leftover budget. Walt was a good manager and generally a good guy. It's just that the nature of his business had unpredictable ups and downs, so he was incentivized to make justifiable but wasteful purchases in order to avoid over-spending in peak cost years.

<comment><USER30> Did you get to borrow the Winnebago?

We call this need to spend the budget thing 'slippage' in the UK. Once we had a little bit of slippage, about £1k, so we bought some Sony Mavica floppy disk cameras when they were new and exotic. We just lent them out to staff to learn how to take digital pictures. That lead to digital editing, storyboards &c and quite a lot of upskill. Much better powerpoints.

Just a thought...

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> _Office Space_ (1999) is a great and rather funny movie about this topic: [7,9 stars on IMDb]

* IMDb: [http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0151804/](http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0151804/)

* Trailer: [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_IwzZYRejZQ](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_IwzZYRejZQ)

</comment><comment><USER32> I would read this article but I am busily typing my name over and over into a word document.

<comment><USER33> I think Black Books[0] sums this phenomenon up nicely...

[0] [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mVGdhAetJaQ](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mVGdhAetJaQ)

<comment><USER34> And how to suceed at board level - [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1WGrmTJnfIg](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1WGrmTJnfIg)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> Is my job a bullshit job? No, but...

I'm miserably reminded every week when I do my TPS^H^H^H timesheet just what proportion of my job is bullshit activity that I have to get through _so that_ I can get to the part where I am actually going to work on something that will matter to someone. ("Look! I actually spent almost 10 hours this week [designing/] writing [/testing] code!") Knowing _what_ needs doing is of course important, but after the third time of hearing it, it's time to shut up and go to work, people!

So many meetings, so many... (sobs bitterly in corner)

<comment><USER36> My employer pays for my internet connection but requires you to file an expense report, I never do because it feels like part of the job responsibilities to get a fraction of the salary is to file the damn thing. I'm basically giving my employer a discount in order to avoid paperwork.

</comment></comment><comment><USER37> There's an aspect of this frustrating, forced busy-work behavior that can get baked into software development, and it isn't going away anytime soon.

Technology innately gives rise to a behavior called yak shaving, and it's not limited to software development, but pretty much any form of technology- related behavior is prone to it, when layers upon layers of technology compound one another and accumulate their own accretion disks of cruft.

[http://projects.csail.mit.edu/gsb/old-archive/gsb- archive/gs...](http://projects.csail.mit.edu/gsb/old-archive/gsb- archive/gsb2000-02-11.html)

A very simple example is needing anti-freeze to drive a car. If there were no chemical companies producing millions of gallons of anti-freeze a year, and no auto-stores to distibute periphery car necessities, and gas stations, and auto mechanics didn't supply anti-freeze, because it's beyond the scope of their expertise, how would I produce the right anti-freeze for my car on my own? Well, what _are_ the requirements for producing industrial grade ethylene glycol?

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

A similar open-source software example would be dependency hell.

Just compare the differences in dependencies between two very popular open- source web browsers:

[http://packages.ubuntu.com/trusty/web/chromium- browser](http://packages.ubuntu.com/trusty/web/chromium-browser)

[http://packages.ubuntu.com/trusty/web/firefox](http://packages.ubuntu.com/trusty/web/firefox)

In order to accurately compare the two applications, how would you take advantage of the fact that these are open-source projects, and actually review the source code, and then build from source?

Each application is built upon many other independent software projects, each sub-project with it's own disciplines, specializations and dependencies. It's time consuming and painstaking behavior to dig into the source trees for these programs and all their dependencies.

How deep can you go before you give up?

</comment><comment><USER38> For Reference:

David Graeber's original article: [http://www.strikemag.org/bullshit- jobs/](http://www.strikemag.org/bullshit-jobs/)

David Graeber's Book, "Debt: The First 5,000 Years": [http://www.amazon.com/Debt- First-5-000-Years/dp/1612191290/](http://www.amazon.com/Debt- First-5-000-Years/dp/1612191290/)

</comment><comment><USER19> Combine this with how miserable low-rank work like shopping bag packers and store work is, and you have a great clusterfuck of a society.

<comment><USER39> I don't think that's the point at all. Even low-wage work would be more satisfying, in the author's view, because your labor is directly beneficial. You can see the results of it. Of course we'd all like to make more money than a store clerk, but in the quest for money we might end up doing things that satisfy us much less than simple labor would. For my part, as a developer, I'm among the fortunate.

<comment><USER27> Have you ever unloaded a truck with a group of teamsters? I did one summer. I was shocked how aggravated they became at me for hustling. I got sent back to my department because "at that rate we'll have it unpacked in an hour and we've got 4 hours to do it."

Nothing special about white collar jobs here.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER40> My employers are actually serious about pair programming, so I am easily getting more work done now than I've ever done before.

We take lunch, we take breaks, we work fixed hours, but holy moly we also get a helluva lot done every day. It's both exhausting and refreshing.

</comment><comment><USER41> I was in Houston for a couple of years in 2011-2012 for a big bank in the capacity of a Software Engineer. The environment there was caustic and anti- relaxation. The people introduced artificial stresses to sound and seem important (mostly to avoid being laid off). There's one manager especially who reminded me of a wolf on prowl. He roamed about in the office from time to time and shouted orders arbitrarily at people. Most of them ignored him, but he seemed important to many. I got tired of the constant bickering and unnecessary meetings, left the job.

</comment><comment><USER42> This reminds me slightly of the scene in the movie "Office Space" when the consultants were interviewing one of the employees and he was discussing "People Skills".

</comment><comment><USER43> Relevant short, "el Empleo": [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cxUuU1jwMgM](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cxUuU1jwMgM)

</comment><comment><USER44> The guy I work for really has no idea how easy certain tasks are once you automate them. I have done nothing to correct his misconceptions.

(I'm a CS grad student, working under a professor who somehow got tenure despite being unable to program his way out of a cardboard box. I swear, half of this job is tricking him into thinking I'm doing his work, so I can focus on doing actual research. ...I really need to find a new advisor.)

<comment><USER45> What research are you working on?

</comment></comment><comment><USER46> well they sure have a point. then i work from home (telecommute then) i dont work "as long" but i certainly get much more done AND i am also happier.

thats mainly because i dont have to "look busy" or "browse sites for a moment until my brain is able to function decently enough to work again" instead i can go for a job, do the laundry, what not. works much better than sitting on the computer.

</comment><comment><USER47> Just two weeks ago I was talking to a guy in the military. His government job was to monitor military test taking. At times only 2 people would show up in one day to take a test. He gets paid $20+ an hour. I didn't ask how many hours a week he worked, but I got the impression it was his current main job.

</comment><comment><USER48> When all you pay for is butts in the seats, don't be surprised if the only thing you get is a bunch of asses.

</comment><comment><USER49> I always felt most people in IT offices occur very busy, when their work is harldy any time consuming, just to keep their job, they act busy all the time...I felt this false pretense is the primary reason most people loose confidence in trying new things and being experimental.

</comment><comment><USER50> Case in point: last week Barclays bank announced they were laying off 20,000 staff. Share price immediately went up 8%.</comment>


Ask HN: Any Windows SSH manager that comes with a hipster terminal? - <AUTHOR> Been using MacBooks for the last 7 or so years for both work/home, but just started a new job that is a totally Windows shop as far as workstations/laptops.
I'm not sure yet what I can/can't install, so I may be relegated to SecureCRT or the like.  However, if I'm lucky enough to install things, anyone know of an SSH manager that incorporates a good looking terminal?  I just want fast and halfway decent looking.  New-fangled Windows 10 hipster stuff is totally fine.  I'm down.  Just haven't kept up with the Windows 10 terminal scene since about 2-3 years...
Thanks! <comment><USER2> [https://mobaxterm.mobatek.net/](https://mobaxterm.mobatek.net/) \- whenever I'm in Windows, this is my terminal (and file transfer client, and the kitchen sink) of choice. Not sure if that's "hipster", but it's an indispensable powertool, IMNSHO.

</comment><comment><USER3> Microsoft actually make one: [https://devblogs.microsoft.com/commandline/introducing- windo...](https://devblogs.microsoft.com/commandline/introducing-windows- terminal/)

The other option would be to enable WSL, and just run a Linux distro and use the terminal on that.

<comment><USER4> +1 for Terminal. Windows terminal is quite nice and improving quickly. It is definitely worth a look.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: Other innovative companies like 3M? - <AUTHOR> What are some other innovative companies like 3M is/was reputed to be?
I had read some years ago in a book about various companies (most of them were American, IIRC) that 3M was a very innovative company and kept coming out with new products. Today I was buying some 3M product online and was reminded of that book, which triggered this question. Note: the companies could be into any field, not just physical products or software.
Thanks to all who reply. <comment><USER2> I'd argue that Microsoft is like that. Their research divisions create a lot of amazing things. They're just not very good at marketing those aspects of their company, although friends at Microsoft say some of the internal demo videos are breathtaking.

<comment><USER3> Out of curiosity: Besides the Hololens, what are some amazing things their research has generated in the past 10 years?

<comment><USER2> Preventing SIDS via data analysis: [https://news.microsoft.com/features/love- aaron-children-may-...](https://news.microsoft.com/features/love-aaron- children-may-susceptible-sids/)

Original Microsoft Surface (tabletop computing): [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zxk_WywMTzc](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zxk_WywMTzc)

Real-time language translation on Skype: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eu9kMIeS0wQ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eu9kMIeS0wQ)

TouchWall: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PimbkQNKzb4](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PimbkQNKzb4)

F#, TypeScript, P, and possibly other programming languages

HoloDesk

Kinect

Industry-leading speech recognition: [https://blogs.microsoft.com/next/2016/09/13/microsoft- resear...](https://blogs.microsoft.com/next/2016/09/13/microsoft-researchers- achieve-speech-recognition-milestone/)

HomeOS

There are more, but I'm too lazy to Google it. They also had a dual-screen, folding tablet that I really wished had made it to the market, but I can't remember the name.

<comment><AUTHOR> Interesting list. Coincidentally, I was checking F# out briefly just a few days ago. Read a lot of positive things about it, including that some people think the language is fairly well-designed. I'm not a language design expert though, so can't comment its design. But this makes me want to try it out properly. Thank you.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Pizza hut on XBox - <AUTHOR> http://majornelson.com/2013/04/23/pizza-hut-on-xbox-gold-unlocked-for-select-sports-apps-this-weekend/

<comment><USER2> I remember when the original Pizza Hut website allowing you to submit orders via the web was a huge deal:

[http://web.archive.org/web/19961219205128/http://www.pizzahu...](http://web.archive.org/web/19961219205128/http://www.pizzahut.com/)</comment>


WWDC Watch Party and Group Get Togethers - <AUTHOR> https://wwdcwatch.party <comment><AUTHOR> Apple just released the event line up yesterday for WWDC on June 22, 2020-June 26, 2020 - [https://developer.apple.com/wwdc](https://developer.apple.com/wwdc)

\- Keynote and Platform State of the Union (Day 1) \- 100+ Engineering Sessions \- All New Developer Forum \- 1-on-1 Developer Labs (by Appointment)

If you are looking for someone to watch with on Day 1, i'm hosting a WWDC Watch Party and group get together. More info here: [https://wwdcwatch.party](https://wwdcwatch.party).</comment>


Email Templates for Performance Management Process - <AUTHOR> https://grosum.com/blog/11-email-templates-performance-management-process/ <comment><AUTHOR> Performance Management needs to better communicated to people. Here are some email templates which you can use to communicate better performance review process.</comment>


Clever Gets $10 Million To Provide A Standardized API For School Data - <AUTHOR> http://techcrunch.com/2013/12/05/clever-10m-sequoia/ <comment><USER2> Good for them! I was recently in charge of a team that developed a website to teach remedial algebra to children, which is now used extensively in Florida middle and high schools. The signin system, using Clever as a bridge, incorporated districts' native signin systems, so teachers and students could just use their familiar school logins to get in the system. Out of the gate we had to support over half a million students.

Working with their API was really a delight, and I certainly have experience with some less than enjoyable services. Apparently public school IT systems are notoriously a pain in the neck to work with, but Clever just abstracts all of that out so you don't have to worry about it. Clever's development team was also very competent and professional. They seemed to really know their stuff and went out of their way to help us be successful. Assuming they take proactive steps to protect teacher and student personal data I wish them all the success in the world!

</comment><comment><USER3> Last Spring, Clever was pitching me for a job (which full disclosure I accepted). I was dubious, edtech startups don't have the best track record, and they had barely gotten started (just got into YC). However after hearing the problem they set out to solve, and seeing how they planned to do it, I was convinced. Clever bypasses most of the biggest problems edtech startups run into, specifically selling to schools. Schools don't like to pay for things, and when they do it's shrouded in bureaucracy. Clever is free for schools, and instead sells to developers, easing their pain and in turn making it easier for them to sell and get setup with schools. From the Clever point of view a new schools takes 5 minutes to onboard.

This is one of the major points that allowed us to see this level of growth over the past year, and I'm excited to see where Clever takes education going forward.

We're also actively hiring so head over to our jobs page if being on the forefront of a revolution in the edtech space sounds interesting to you. [https://getclever.com/about/jobs](https://getclever.com/about/jobs)

<comment><USER4> I'm a teacher by day and a hacker on my own time, so I look at ed tech initiatives with a critical eye. One thing I want in educational offerings: free and open access for teachers, students, and schools. These kinds of offerings are the only kind that have the potential to truly disrupt existing learning gaps.

What you are describing sounds good, but I'd like to know: is what Clever offers truly open source, or is it just free as in beer?

From my quick perusal of the Clever site, I don't see any real assurance that this is a truly open offering. I admit I'm taking a quick look on my lunch break, so please correct me if my impression is off.

<comment><USER5> there are plenty of non-profits in the edtech space if you're really looking for "free and open access". Gooru ([http://www.goorulearning.org/#discover](http://www.goorulearning.org/#discover)) is a Google spinoff backed by the Gates Foundation and others, for instance.

<comment><USER4> It's not so much that I'm looking for nonprofits myself. I challenge the notion that anyone is really doing anything to improve public education if they are just another private company, with a profit motive, having access to student data.

I have rarely seen companies continue to serve students well when there is a profit motive involved. People should get paid well for their work, I have no issue with that. But I am wary of where the profit motive leads ed tech initiatives.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> It is a shame how silo-ed each K-12 system is, in regards to data/integration. It is also a shame as to what some/most vendors call an API (sorry, a nightly CSV is NOT an API). Only in education do you see such poor APIs and programming on a whole making tens/hundreds of millions of dollars. I've seen source code from several major players that would cause shivers in both the lack of quality and holes in security.

These are HUGE hurdles for districts. They often realize it too late and end up getting taken to the cleaners by some freelancer or company who milk the hours trying to do integrations/data-warehosues (I've seen 60k/1yr jobs that were solved with 10k/2wk rewrites).

Congratulations on the funding, I am excited to see any company that can help break down those barriers. Sorry that I sometimes take business away from you as a freelancer doing integrations sometimes (you do get mentioned from time- to-time) ;)

<comment><USER7> Thanks for the support!

No need to apologize for your custom integration work. As a company building integrations in an automated & scalable way, we can't cover all possible use cases & combinations. I'm thrilled to see devs doing great work at a reasonable rate (& let's talk - maybe we can send some referrals your way!).

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> This sounds pretty interesting. I'm a bit confused by your business model though. It sounds like you aren't selling to schools but instead you are charging developers of education applications.

Who pays the the developers? Is the school expected to pay the developers?

<comment><USER9> And this then becomes the problem.

Clever act like they are doing this out of the kindness of their hearts. They aren't.

They act like this is "free" for schools. It isn't. Because the costs of Clever and LearnSprout get sent right back to the school in the form of higher fees for the other apps they buy. Oh, and instead of paying one price for Clever, they are going to pay that price over and over and over.

Clever is just another "Vertically Integrated Network" right out of 1999. Their customers are largely going to be VC-funded startups who want to show that they have "solved" this issue by paying the Clever tax. Since most of those VC-funded startups are going to be offering free-services themselves, Clever is really just a giant hoover vacuum for VC funds.

It's a 1999 business model and it will likely lead to the same resolution in the end.

<comment><USER10> Nonsense.

I'll put aside a host of successful companies over the last 14 years that have been quite successful pursuing similar businesses.

Instead I'll challenge your assumption that the (enormous) efficiency gains you get from Clever result in higher prices for anyone. This is only true if the integration was otherwise free for the people selling products to schools.

It's not. It's actually incredibly expensive to perform these integrations on an ad-hoc basis. I'd bet this solution ends up cheaper for everyone.

I guess you could argue the downside of there being fewer programmer jobs available since people are having to do less work. That's a bummer I guess.

<comment><USER11> Despite the negative parent, wouldn't you agree that the cost of integration has to be absorbed by somebody? In this case, the application vendors have to pass the cost to the schools (plus a margin).

[edit] The question is whether the schools will be better off having one party in control? That's usually not a recipe for cost containment.

<comment><USER10> _Despite the negative parent, wouldn 't you agree that the cost of integration has to be absorbed by somebody?_

That's the point I'm making. Of course the integration has a cost. I believe that it simply costs a whole lot more of if everyone does that integration themselves. I can pay Clever a monthly fee or I can pay several developers to go out and learn how to do it at $100k a pop. Even if Clever is charging me $10k/month I'm still coming out pretty far ahead.

Not to mention the cost of ongoing maintenance every time something changes at an individual school.

tldr; you can spread the cost of integrating one time out among a bunch of companies, or each company can do it themselves. One of those is (by far) not only more efficient, but very likely much cheaper as well.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Hmm. This is data which has no real value to schools themselves, which they are enticed to give access to for free. Other people wanting access to the data in aggregate are then required to pay the aggregators. Other aggregators can not plausibly compete with a better price, because the original aggregators (Clever) have occupied the very scarce mindshare of the schools' "we give our data to these people" role. The schools will not be bothered to give the data to more than one aggregator, and so Clever thereby obtains an effective monopoly in providing aggregated data.

(It reminds me of Google book scanning thing, which has the same issue, but worse.)

<comment><USER13> I'm not sure that's an accurate portrayal of Clever's value prop. Clever is limited in what they can do with student data because of privacy laws. That's not really their play.

Their value proposition is in providing a common interface to the growing number of systems used to manage student information at schools in the United States.

Schools in the US are free to choose -- more accurately, _must_ purchase their own -- student information system. Many different systems (old and new) exist in the market. If I'm an application developer who is building a literacy app that students will use in the media-lab/classroom at school, the customer (school) will inevitably need a way to get student performance data back in to their student management systems.

There are no industry-wide standards for this, currently. I wouldn't expect any to emerge in the immediate future either. Schools in the US are autonomous, and are structured differently in different areas of the country. For example, here in Florida, schools are organized in to large administrative districts, where decisions are made for groups of thousands of students. By contrast, in northern Ohio, each school is largely independent. Florida school districts are some of the largest, in the country. According to NCES, there were 13,629 school districts in the US as of 2010 [1]. That number is trending downward slowly, but that's still a very large number of independent bodies making decisions. We'll likely see some consolidation instandards, but given the backlash against "Common Core" (an attempt at a standardized curriculum), I wouldn't hold my breath.

1: [http://nces.ed.gov/programs/digest/d11/tables/dt11_091.asp](http://nces.ed.gov/programs/digest/d11/tables/dt11_091.asp)

<comment><USER14> > There are no industry-wide standards for this, currently.

There are but they suck.

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sharable_Content_Object_Referen...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sharable_Content_Object_Reference_Model)

<comment><USER13> There's LTI and BasicLTI as well. I'm sure there are more, but I'm not really involved in the space much any more. I do know this. I get phone calls from a friend in the industry asking for help, and every time I take a peak under the covers, I see that things continue to suck very, very hard. One of the biggest problems is bad implementations of an already lackluster standard.

I would posit as an axiom that getting _good_ developers to work with shitty tools is a major hurdle to getting said developers to stick around. IMO, Clever will have a positive impact on the development of educational content, because they will abstract away a lot of the "suck" associated with interfacing with the common SIS/SMS applications in the market.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> "For developers, that means integrating with individual schools on a one-to- one basis, and that just doesn't scale"

sadly, it still means this exact thing for Clever's devs. good luck to them - it's a dirty job, but someone's gotta do it.

<comment><USER6> The quote is not true. I've personally done dozens and dozens of integrations, which can/are all be applied to any district. It's actually fairly simple with a functional programming approach, set theory, working with the k-12 companies directly, and if you think of them as data flows. I've taken over for some ex- fb/ex-google, large k-12 companies, vc funded ones... and every single one does it in a really coupled/tangled-mess manner where the statement is actually true (I take over their codebases). If done right, the integrations are a few hundred lines of code (even doing schools, courses, students, teachers, enrollments, grades, standards, etc). The only thing that changes between districts is typically a couple of business rules which are done as filters on the data flow. The unit/integration tests take more lines than the integration.

Example integration flow of SIS to LMS: SIS client (pull) <\- business rule filters <\- integration itself -> business rule filters -> LMS client (push)

Example integration flow of LMS to SIS: LMS client (pull) <\- business rule filters <\- integration itself -> business rule filters -> SIS client (push)

Examples of system clients: [https://github.com/rockymadden/brainhoney.js](https://github.com/rockymadden/brainhoney.js) [https://github.com/rockymadden/masteryconnect.js](https://github.com/rockymadden/masteryconnect.js)

Example of K-12 specific spec that is often so mangled into most codebases it causes bugs: [https://github.com/rockymadden/lti.js](https://github.com/rockymadden/lti.js)

Some I've done (almost a cartesian product): Infinite Campus, BrainHoney, MasteryConnect, Moodle, IFAS, Blackboard, Safari Montage, Edgenuity, netTrekker, PowerSchool, Canvas, dozens more...

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> I'm not a programmer, but it sounds to me like the 'standard API' will be proprietary (?). Seems like a fundamental change from SIF ([https://www.sifassociation.org/Pages/default.aspx](https://www.sifassociation.org/Pages/default.aspx)).

Working in education for years, I can tell you there is a real need for an open standard that is palatable and feasible for schools and vendors aiming to integrate with student systems.

<comment><USER17> this is exactly the point. This is only perpetuating the propriety and just changing the hurdles for vendors and schools to pass data. SIF was great in its time...it was expensive and cumbersome because it required specific knowledge which many district admins don't possess. The new SIF 3 using the CEDS should hope to alleviate many of these issues. As some one who has looked into data integration with Clever, the costs were prohibitive on a large scale, especially when you consider they are continual. While development may be expensive, we aren't paying for it after it is developed...

<comment><USER18> There are some examples for SIF 3.0 check out: [http://kb.nsip.edu.au/display/SATWVC/SIF+REST+-+URL+Structur...](http://kb.nsip.edu.au/display/SATWVC/SIF+REST+-+URL+Structure) some REST clients here [http://sif.dd.com.au/demos/](http://sif.dd.com.au/demos/) Example URL here:[http://siftraining.dd.com.au/api/StudentPersonals/](http://siftraining.dd.com.au/api/StudentPersonals/) and heaps of training materials [http://kb.nsip.edu.au/display/SATWVC/SIF+AU+Technical+Worksh...](http://kb.nsip.edu.au/display/SATWVC/SIF+AU+Technical+Workshops+and+VITTA+Conference) and a github with example clients and endpoints [https://github.com/nsip](https://github.com/nsip) and Australia has just signed up to SIF as a country. [https://www.sifassociation.org/AboutUs/Why- Interoperability/...](https://www.sifassociation.org/AboutUs/Why- Interoperability/Pages/Statement-of-Intent-\(AU\).aspx)

So open Standards look to be in pretty good shape. Perhaps Clever should support SIF as well? Then it wont be able to be blamed as being so propitiatory.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> This is great. Hopefully this will fuel make the sales channel for grade level software easier.

I envision a Clever App Store, where districts/schools/teachers have credits that can be used to buy interactive work sheets, attendance apps, or whatever else developers dream up.

</comment><comment><USER20> I'm a manager for a fairly big SIS and I think this is great news. We deal with a lot of nightly CSV files and it's awful. I'm hoping we take a look at working with Clever in the future.

<comment><USER7> We'd love to partner with you! Drop us a line - email@example.com

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> I work with several schools as part of my volunteer work. And while it's a neat idea, but it is an EdTech startup that doesn't understand the legalities of school data. In the 49 states that Clever isn't sitting with servers in using them would be illegal.

In most states you couldn't store data on third parties servers with out consent from the kids parents.

Using Cloud Offerings just isn't permissible in most places because of the legalities. Clever would need a lot more than $10M to change all the necessary Federal, State, County, City, laws.

<comment><USER22> Can you point to the actual law that outlaws this?

I work in edtech, and there is a _lot_ of FUD around this issue. I'm not in the US, so I'm not familiar with the specifics of the laws there though.

<comment><USER21> FERPA is the big one.[http://www.ed.gov/policy/gen/guid/fpco/ferpa/index.html](http://www.ed.gov/policy/gen/guid/fpco/ferpa/index.html)

<comment><USER22> IANAL, but to me that reads like it specifically gives permission of what Clever is doing.

 _FERPA allows schools to disclose those records, without consent, to the following parties or under the following conditions (34 CFR § 99.31): ... \- Organizations conducting certain studies for or on behalf of the school; \- Accrediting organizations;_

And additionally:

 _Schools may disclose, without consent, "directory" information such as a student's name, address, telephone number, date and place of birth, honors and awards, and dates of attendance._

<comment><USER23> I believe this is the why our Armed Forces recruiters often have the names, addresses and phone numbers of our graduating seniors every year. It's usually up to the school administrators to release this information upon request, and most do. Private schools do not have this issue.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> As a parent it's frustrating that my children's marks aren't accessible behind some sort of API. We have a web interface that we can use (which I guess is way way better than what was there when I was a kid), but I'd like to have my cake and eat it too :).

Getting API access to the system as a parent is hard to impossible. The vendor's site is geared towards selling to schools and supporting them.

<comment><USER7> You're right - Clever isn't built for your use case today - but it is one we'd love to support down the road.

In the meantime, you might want to take a look at the Dept of Ed's "MyData" initiative ([http://www.ed.gov/edblogs/technology/mydata/](http://www.ed.gov/edblogs/technology/mydata/)). It's addressing your need pretty closely (although not with an API).

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> To the best of my understanding, Clever provides access to read-only data from the SIS. It does NOT provide a mechanism for education vendors to write data back into the SIS (an extremely important aspect of the problem in this ecosystem).

While the SIS stores core student data, there is a lot of missing functionality that could be supplemented well by products specializing in a particular niche (eg school lunch tracking, alerting, progress reporting, special education documentation, medicaid reimbursement, etc). However, schools feel unable to use these products since SISes generally disallow information write-back, arguing that accepting data from 3rd party vendors makes the database unstable and violates their end-user license agreement with the district.

Clever has helped with the easy problem, but the harder one is no closer to being solved.

<comment><USER18> Agreed. We have plenty of examples of services which dump data out of a SIS and then run custom scripts to organise it for this use or that, from putting accounts into AD to creating a census or students ids for state. All been done. There are other businesses like StudentNet and GroupCall which are doing much of the same thing for cloud Identity as a Service. Some of these guys can offer the addition of real identify matching services and the tracking of students across schools.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> I applaud Clever's effort, but a superior solution to this problem is an industry standard, open interface. The market may be too fragmented for something like this to get off the ground, but it is sorely needed, and putting all the eggs in Clever's basket is not the answer.

You would probably be right if you argued that Clever solves an issue of having to re-create the "integration wheel" for every implementation, and so saves money in the short run. However, if Clever is successful, they will be a gatekeeper, and could demand significant fees from software vendors, possibly resulting in higher prices for schools.

</comment><comment><USER26> As someone who works as a school with a few SISes and LMSes around, would it be possible for me to use clever to integrate my existing systems and save headache? We're currently knee deep in Moodle, PowerSchool, SchoolAdmin, Active Directory, Google Apps, and even have some Access databases floating around.

<comment><USER7> Clever should be able to help with a few of those integrations! Send us an email (info AT getclever.com).

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> _Clever is 100% secure_ [1]

That seems like a dangerous claim.

What does that mean in real terms, (beyond "end-to-end encryption")?

If ~10% of US school-age children's personal data is stored with Clever, that's a lot of data to potentially lose...

[1] [http://getclever.com/schools](http://getclever.com/schools)

</comment><comment><USER28> this seems like the type of thing teacher's unions would squash/render useless quickly. Anything that tracks data as a function of teacher performance would not be allowed, severly limiting the usefulness of the software. I HOPE HOPE HOPE I am wrong, can anyone explain to me why I am wrong?

<comment><USER7> (Clever cofounder here)

We get love from teachers all the time at Clever (which, as a former teacher, makes me incredibly delighted).

Schools are using more and more technology (see [http://edsurge.com/](http://edsurge.com/) for some examples), but often the burden of tech falls to the teacher. I remember burning the midnight oil manually setting up class rosters in MasteryConnect as a teacher, and fighting "roster rot" as students switched in and out of my class over the course of the school year.

With Clever, teachers get to focus on using the tool with their students, instead of managing data. They love it!

<comment><USER28> that makes sense. Thanks for the heads up! I clearly read the article with my own biases in place. Best of luck to you!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> Does anybody know if Clever for Higher Ed exists? (Clever is super focused on K-12)

<comment><USER30> Good luck with that.

</comment></comment><comment><USER31> Ignorant question maybe, is Clever going to integrate into LMS, ala Canvas, Blackboard? Do they relate in any way? I imagine it could enhance the LMS/port too the systems?

</comment><comment><USER32> Interesting I have not seen any mention of InBloom - since they are both a standard API for School, and unlike Clever, an open standard. And they already interoperate with SIF.

<comment><USER25> Thanks for the InBloom mention! Looks like they have pretty good traction.

</comment></comment><comment><USER33> What's Clever's equivalent for the Health Care Complex?

<comment><USER7> We love the work our YC S12 batchmates Eligible are doing in the Healthcare space. Check them out - [https://eligibleapi.com](https://eligibleapi.com)

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> How does Clever deal with SIF?

<comment><USER34> It doesn't (thankfully). SIF is a bloated mess.

<comment><USER22> _It doesn 't (thankfully)._

:(

 _SIF is a bloated mess._

It is indeed.

Are you interested in international (Australia) expansion?

<comment><USER18> Huh? SIF used to be complex, but now its simple. It uses the same approach as Clever http[s]://<hostname>/<SIFObject Name>s[/{id}|<SIF Object Name>]. Thats very similar to Clever. So how can it be bloated, or maybe your not experienced with SIF? Which NSIP.edu.au can help you with. try [http://sif.dd.com.au/SIFDirectRest/sif/v2_5/objects/au/v1_3/...](http://sif.dd.com.au/SIFDirectRest/sif/v2_5/objects/au/v1_3/StudentPersonals).

<comment><USER22> Hi Dan ;)

I think you'll find that's SIF 3. I think that last time we spoke there was only one SIF 3 deployment around, and that was a pilot. All production instances are SIF 2 - or has that changed recently?

As I've said previously - I quite like the SIF data model, but I'm not keen on the SIF 2 programming model (to be fair - as many have said: it's pretty old software now). The SIF 3 programming model is a lot better.

<comment><USER18> Hey What a laugh - to meet you on here. Yes my comments were about SIF 3.x. Now that said the best thing that happens with SIF is that schools and Edu Authorities get their Data into order - so it can be used properly externally - WHILE - it remains under their control. So this means ALL the SIF 2.x projects can migrate to SIF 3.x with a update to the software (as I pointed to its on GetHub) - but they dont have to change the data, the business events, their authorisation etc. So SIF 3.x bring both a low entry option for those wanting to share there data and a migration path for those existing.

I have a full online course in SIF 3.x and the Open Source Framework if you want to learn more.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Data shows a surprising campus free speech problem - <AUTHOR> https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2018/8/3/17644180/political-correctness-free-speech-liberal-data-georgetown <comment><USER2> FTA:

> What Ungar is suggesting here is that the "campus free speech" crisis is > somewhat manufactured. Conservative student groups invite speakers famous > for offensive and racially charged speech — all of the above speakers fit > that bill — in a deliberate attempt to provoke the campus left. In other > words, they're trolling. When students react by protesting or disrupting the > event, the conservatives use it as proof that there's real intolerance for > conservative ideas.

I don't understand their reasoning. Are they trying to downplay free speech incidents perpetrated by "the campus left" just because they systematically target a selection of high-profile speakers?

<comment><USER3> I think you're interpreting that paragraph from the article very uncharitably. Protesting against "offensive and racially charged speech" that is tailored to provoke the left because it goes against everything the left stands for is very different from silencing conservative speech in general. Why should "the left" allow offensive speech for the sake of free speech from the right? Is the right to be offensive and to perpetuate stereotypes and regressive viewpoints more important than the harm such speech causes?

I don't see where the left is "systematically" targeting high-profile speakers either considering that it's the speakers themselves and the conservative student groups provoking and trolling the campus left. I see this a great deal online, too, where right-wingers love to comment on left-leaning Twitter users' posts or Reddit threads to insult people, troll, and generally just provoke a response. Then they cite those posts as "evidence" that conservative speech is being censored online and that everyone on the left is polarized and unwilling to step out of their own echo chambers. It's really leftists not wanting to feed the trolls because doing so wouldn't lead to anything productive anyways.

The campus left wouldn't, for example, disrupt the meetings of the conservative student groups themselves, prevent conservative students from organizing, or encourage school administrations to ban harmless conservative viewpoints, for example. That's what I see as "systematically targeting" conservatism, not the the article is talking about.

<comment><USER2> > Protesting against "offensive and racially charged speech" that is tailored > to provoke the left because it goes against everything the left stands for > is very different from silencing conservative speech in general.

Your assertion is not only oblivious to the point (suppressing free speech) but it is also miopic and self-serving (i.e., "if a speaker expresses ideas I don't like then I somehow have the right to suppress it").

The whole moral lesson that a free society depends on the right to express ideas that you personally don't support is lost to you.</comment></comment></comment>


Bringing Boys And Girls To Computer Science With 'Alice' - <AUTHOR> http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/06/090623112115.htm

<comment><USER2> Article: "Rodger, who is trying to turn that around by making programming fun to learn." [...] Prof Rodger: "It's a nationwide problem that there aren't many women in computer science in general. For example, we only have three women faculty in our department, out of 24 positions. And it's been the same for the 15 years I've been here."

And? 3 women in the faculty, what's the relevance? I don't understand what the sex of the programmer has to do with anything. What is the nationwide problem that having more female programmers will correct?

<comment><USER3> I think the strategy is hope that girls are accomplished enough logical thinkers to be successful programmers, who can nonetheless be bamboozled into believing that a career in computer science will involve a lot of telling fantastic stories about golfing dragons without ever having to write code.

You are never going to address a gap in the number of female programmers by playing around with dragon-and-drop programming. Industry does not need dragon-and-drop. They need people who will take an intensely boring specification document about business rules for an insurance company, and translate that specification document into functional Java code and XML files. Your XML editor will not have a dragon-and-drop interface.

A large part of me thinks that people who are not programmers are not programmers precisely because they have some notion of what programmers _actually do_ for a living and _would hate it_.

<comment><USER4> As much as I loved the phrase "dragon-and-drop interface", I believe it works better as "dragon-drop interface".

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I really wish people would stop naming their software 'Alice.' This is at least the third one I've seen.

On the other hand, it sounds effective at getting people interested in programming.

<comment><USER6> This one's been around for years. Does it actually postdate your other two examples?

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Does anybody here know somebody that has used this program to aid their learning of computer science concepts? It's certainly an admirable cause, but is this a better introduction to programming than something like Logo, which has been used to teach programming to kids for many years?

Alice is impressive, and you can see the obvious programming influence, but it seems like "Moviemaker with control flow and objects" more than anything else. What problem is it trying to solve?

For me, the hardest part of learning elementary computer science was not things like OOP or if-statements, it was data structures, algorithms, and the difficulty of keeping many different interactions in your headspace. It seems like in many CS programs, the data structures or algorithms class is the "weeder" that separates the CS majors from the wannabe CS majors. Personally, I believe the drop-off at this level is more important to address than how many students enroll in CS 101.

<comment><USER4> Step one is to "break the ice" and get them interested in computers.

Step _two_ is to figure out if they're any good at that.

A good childhood should be spent breaking the ice on numerous possible interests and finding out what works with you and what doesn't. Everybody gets abundant opportunity today to figure out whether they like sports, of all kinds; we could do with more (good!) opportunities to figure out if you like programming, or many of the other interests and hobbies that few children ever get exposed to. Most won't be any good at programming. That's OK, because everybody should be trying lots of things, and you won't be terribly good at most of them. (Where "good" here includes some concept of enjoying it enough to want to do it on your own, along with raw talent.)

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> I used Alice to start off a beginning programming class at the high school level. It worked great - they got really into it and loved to make things. I think it helped my students' programming intuition as well as retain some of the girls who were very hesitant about taking the class.

</comment><comment><USER9> I'm glad to see more attention come to this project. As noted in article, this was originally started by Randy Pausch, known in large part for his "The Last Lecture" lecture and book. He did some amazing things, and this project is carrying on his legacy.

</comment><comment><USER10> What really got me into programming was making web pages. In school they never really go past "Here is how to make a link and make text bold". I think a lot of kids could see the artistic and creative side to making an interactive website that all their friends check out. I could see kids competing to see who can add the coolest feature or make it look the best. But alas, my public school never got far enough into anything for people to make anything fun.</comment>


Cancer chief sees cell phone risks - <AUTHOR> http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/08205/898803-114.stm <comment><USER2> Yet another dupe of <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=255047></comment>


100 CEOs rally in support of Ontario's basic income pilot - <AUTHOR> https://www.thestar.com/news/queenspark/2018/10/18/canadian-ceos-unite-in-bid-to-save-basic-income-project.html <comment><AUTHOR> The lead organizer of this effort, Floyd Marinescu, is a longtime member of the software community with contributions dating back to the early days of J2EE through his site The Server Side. More recently he is the founder and CEO of the company behind InfoQ and the QCon series of developer conferences worldwide.</comment>


Renting in America Has Never Been This Expensive - <AUTHOR> http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-08-13/renting-in-america-has-never-been-this-expensive <comment><USER2> It's simple ... Everyone got 'hip to the game' of extorting other people's productivity vs. being productive themselves (aka rent at elevated prices)

> The housing bubble that blew up was re-inflated to keep tax revenue alive > and keep the economy afloat (High entry cost warranting high rents)

> Fed rates have been kept low attracting speculation

> Tons of investment firms got into property management/real-estate

> Money seeks easiest method of return.. My father once said "People will > always need a roof over their head"

> The U.S is pumping immigrants in hand over fist to offset lowered U.S birth > rates (to keep the hamster wheel turning)

> Housing is a need and, as such, there is a ton of room to exploit people... > (Markets they call it)

The funny thing about people highlighting wealth inequality is that those in the middle exploiting the crap out of each other for their own gain don't get the huge role they are playing in the over-all outcome. Meanwhile, it's those at the top who are making the lion's share of the profit while the dummies below eat each other. Of course, this eventually ends in tears but myopia causes one to ignore that and get what you can while the good is still gettin'. Bay area landlord "I heard your salary went up.. Your rent has just went up too"

A true zoo.. and to think what American society would be like if we were trying to elevate each other as opposed to coming up with creative ways to exploit and keep others down. Instead of focusing on academic or economic interpretations, the biggest thing manifesting is : greed/selfishness/lack of comprehension of a greater whole

<comment><USER3> We also set up regulations to make building truly dense affordable housing impossible. Where it is possible, it offers lower returns than low density luxury housing.

<comment><USER4> > _[affordable housing] offers lower returns than low density luxury housing._

Not true - as a RE investor you're always looking for around 1% of the property's value per month as rent ($1 in rent per month for every $100 the property is worth). Much below that and you're not going to have sustainable cash flow.

It is much, _much_ easier to get $1k per month in rent from five $100k properties than it is to get $5k per month from a $500k property. Especially in areas with high property values (California), you're lucky to break 0.4-0.5%, which is not going to support any meaningful level of investment, only speculation. Which in turn helps drive a cyclical market, which helps pump up the higher end home values, which further hurts cash flow, etc etc.

Lower value housing may offer lower returns in an absolute sense but as a far as ROI it's much easier to make it on the lower end of the scale.

<comment><USER5> The 1% is based on those costs. If the costs to build affordable housing are greatly inflated due to permits, city fees, professional services, zoning waivers, subsidy to BMR, and additional construction costs, the ROI will be artificially lower than single family detached luxury homes.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment> rm_-rf_slash Understated in these discussions is the role of landlords. In Ithaca, NY, where I live, people's proportion of income going towards housing by some counts surpasses Manhattan and San Francisco. Yes, it's a college town with students already accepting the huge cost of tuition and throwing rent on the debt pile. Yes, the city is hemmed in by a lake to the north and hills to the rest. But there are like three landlords in the entire city. One in particular, Jason Fane, is notorious for jacking up prices on his Ithaca properties as collateral for his investments in China. Meanwhile, Collegetown is becoming increasingly split between obnoxiously priced condos and old houses that look more depressingly decrepit with each passing year.

<comment><USER6> My 9 roommates and I paid $60k a year for one of those decrepit old houses-- and this was 10 years ago. At $500 per month each, it didn't seem that bad, but we really got ripped off. The density of college living (for instance I had to walk through a roommates room to get to mine) allows landlords in Ithaca to get a level of rent that they'd never get from families or older individuals.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> This is true even in rural areas. I bought a house 2.5 years ago and have a monthly payment (including taxes and insurance) that is about 20% less than an equivalent monthly rental.

I didn't want to buy a house. I wanted to keep renting and retain the flexibility and freedom that renting gave me. It just no longer made sense financially.

What are the underlying reasons for the disparity between rental and home ownership costs? Obviously low interest rates are one and rented houses that were bought by their owners at higher interest rates reflect that in their price. But surely this would eventually normalize if rates stay low.

There must be something else since the relatively low cost of home ownership should be putting downward pressure on rental rates.

<comment><USER8> It is always the case that the monthly cost to buy is lower than rent. It has to be, because the rent is covering the cost of repairs and depreciation which isn't included in your mortgage payment. And then there needs to be some left over to cover vacancies, and some profit for the landlord. Clearly in some markets buying is legitimately a better deal. But most people do a fairly cursory and incomplete analysis before coming to that conclusion.

20% is actually not a very large margin. Depending on how much your house cost, and how much your rent was, it may have actually been cheaper to rent.

<comment><USER9> Keep in mind that with a mortgage you're still renting -- you're just renting money instead of the house. I know this is a simplified view, but some of your points (e.g., profit for the landlord) have equivalents for a mortgage (profit for the bank, via interest). Also, you're going to be paying for maintenance in either case. In the case of owning it may not be literally baked into your mortgage payment, but that doesn't mean you're not going to be responsible for repairs on your own house.

Also, keep in mind that a landlord isn't entitled to profit just because they're attempting to make a profit. It is entirely possible (and it does happen in reality) that a certain rental market is such that the landlord will not be able to turn a profit or may in fact even lose money. Being a landlord is just like any other business -- it can fail.

Finally, rental markets are often _just different_. Here in Houston, I could not buy an apartment like the one I rent for the same price that I pay. There aren't many condo buildings for one thing, and the ones that do exist charge exorbitant monthly maintenance fees. These fees would bring the monthly cost of owning such a condo to about $500-$1000/month more than what I currently pay in rent. At the same time, any townhouse or SFH that I might buy which is larger than what I rent is naturally going to cost more -- often times significantly more. In other words, the rental market sometimes has options that _don 't exist_ in the for-sale market. (The opposite is of course true as well.)

<comment><USER8> Fair enough, I did not sufficiently qualify my statement. But my main point is that looking at just mortgage vs rent is leaving a lot of costs out of the equation.

If you can get rent for less than the monthly mortgage payment, then the landlord is basically subsidizing you to live there and it's a pretty great deal. Buying in those conditions is a sucker bet.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Multiple factors figure into why the rent is so high, but from a government policy standpoint, I'm interested in "the decision by consumers to rent over purchase" but what is more likely, that in spite of low mortgage rates, a number of buyers are not eligible for credit from private lenders.

The other policy piece that I think is interesting is the private housing market's ability to deliver housing choices-- what are developers producing, are they producing luxury units, are they producing affordable options in high enough quantity, and are developers inhibited by government regulation in delivering a diversity of housing choices.

<comment><USER11> I'm definitely in the "rent over purchase" group, even though I could get a mortgage with good terms. I think people are a bit nervous to purchase a home after seeing what happened in 2008.

<comment><USER12> I think it depends on where you're buying your house. The value of my house dipped slightly in 2008/2009 but is now about 12% higher than it was in 2007. Buying a home is still a good long-term investment but you have to be in a position to hold onto it (perhaps by renting it out after you vacate it).

<comment><USER11> Mostly the interest and upkeep that are keeping me away from purchasing.

If I bought a 200k house, in 5 years I would have paid 43k in interest and still owe 180k on the mortgage (according to some amortization table I found), and probably many thousand more fixing stuff that breaks.

After 30 years I will have paid $164,813 in interest, so even if the house doubles in value it doesn't seem like a great investment.

Am I missing something? Maybe I'm not understanding it correctly but it doesn't seem like that great of a deal.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I think this is caused by a couple of things.

Artificially low interest rates (insofar as the fed rates are artifical)

Banks less willing to loan money to anyone that doesn't fit a narrow financial profile.

Individuals and business with access to existing capital can get money extremely cheaply (see points 1 and 2 above)

This creates a stratification that makes it difficult for one group of people to enter the real estate market and easy for another group to enter and speculate in it.

The group without access to loans obviously must rent even if they would like to buy. This inflates the demand for rentals thus raising their price.

The group with capital/access to loans can buy real estate with the express purpose of renting it taking homes off the market (decreasing supply, raising prices and further pushing up the bar for home ownership). This is even more attractive because of the increased demand and price for rental units. Of course by increasing the supply of rental units this should counteract rental prices but under the current circumstances I think there's a feedback loop that favors rising rental prices and entering/expanding the landlord business.

</comment><comment><USER13> My unproven suspicion is this is the consequence of the much-celebrated flight from the suburbs and return to the city.

\- Take a large population spread over a big area.

\- Consider that they are used to 2,000sqft homes and not the 300sqft apartments of decades long past

\- Squish them all into cities

Boom, you've got yourself runaway prices.

<comment><USER14> I agree with you entirely. I read recently that the population growth of downtown Toronto has tripled in the past five years. Assuming that is a trend consistent with most major North American cities, the cost of housing has to compensate.

<comment><USER15> I don't read this site very often but did read this article about renting vs. buying using Toronto as an example. With his math you come out way ahead by renting in a new building downtown vs. buying a house in the suburbs.

[http://www.mrmoneymustache.com/2015/07/27/rent-vs- buy/](http://www.mrmoneymustache.com/2015/07/27/rent-vs-buy/)

Of course, you might not agree with his math.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> It wasn't explicitly mentioned, but I assume they are referring to a percentage of gross income, not net (after taxes) income? 50% of gross is gigantic, which would be a much higher percentage of your take-home pay. I remember as a student in NYC many years ago, some friends would spend about 70% of their take-home pay on rent, which on average would probably be half their gross, give or take. So I guess the numbers make sense, but that is still hard to imagine.

</comment><comment><USER12> "Exceptions include the Silicon Valley area in California, where homeowners and renters each devote 42 percent of income to housing costs."

Single engineers and DINKs in the SF area should be buying if they're expecting to stay any real length of time. Price corrections when the housing market collapsed may not have helped SF like it did in other areas of the country but mortgage rates are dirt cheap and rent versus own pricing is at parity.

<comment><USER17> My family and I lived in Mountain view for 2 years. We knew we'd only be there for a year or two, and decided to rent, not buy.

After two years, we'd sunk $120K into our rental. Meanwhile, a friend bought a house at the same time for $1.3M and sold it just before we left for $1.6M. Even after real estate commissions, taxes, mortgage interest (which is tax deductible) and upkeep, I'm sure he came out well ahead of us.

<comment><USER18> The market doesn't always move in that direction. Your friend could have been in a much different position if he invested at a different point in time. If you take into account the real estate commission + recordation fees, your friend probably payed about 120k-130k. Also take into account the mortgage interest and the opportunity cost of the money he could have otherwise invested in this crazy bull market and your friend probably just barely broke even. This is in a great market, imagine what would have happened in a bad market to him...

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> who at bloomberg thought it would be a good idea to pollute my browsing history as i scroll between articles. ugh.

at least use replaceState instead of pushState

</comment><comment><USER20> not just in America, I think we are seeing the same in many major economies of the world - London, China, Australia, Brazil (house price vs income ratio being significantly higher than before)

Good for those of us who own property but not so great for the rest, and makes you wonder whether it's sustainable.

<comment><USER21> Of course it is not sustainable and will end in tears.

Governments around the world have been (re)-inflating asset prices by keeping interest rates artificially low (far below even the official inflation rates, never mind the real ones). This causes an ultimately speculative stampede into assets (stocks, real-estate, etc)

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> I miss the super saturated double gradient Bloomberg used to have on their banners and feature images after the redesign.</comment>


Tesla Model X Prototype Uses Side View Camera in Place of Rear View Mirrors - <AUTHOR> http://my.teslamotors.com/forum/forums/side-view-cameras-back-model-x-page

<comment><USER2> So when I loose power and want to glide over onto the shoulder and out of traffic, I'm doing it blind. Does add to the excitement of the event, I suppose.</comment>


Apple Store Update - <AUTHOR> http://store.apple.com/

<comment><USER2> Assuming that the online store makes up 10% of total sales, Apple is losing approximately $35,000 per second that their website is down.</comment>


Let's Build a Browser Engine in Swift - <AUTHOR> http://www.screaming.org/blog/2014/08/15/lets-build-a-browser-engine-in-swift/

<comment><USER2> Nice blog. Swift looks like a nice language to get working with (certainly, nicer than Rust), and I've been finding that rebuilding things (a simple app in my case rather than a browser engine!) is a good way to learn programming concepts/the language. My one bit of feedback would be that your hyper-link font color is pretty difficult to read!</comment>


The Sublime Beauty of Powerball - <AUTHOR> http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2016/01/powerball-math/423558/?single_page=true <comment><AUTHOR> Some reader comments: [http://www.theatlantic.com/notes/2016/01/the-sublime- beauty-...](http://www.theatlantic.com/notes/2016/01/the-sublime-beauty-of- powerball-contd/423819/)

Most readers didn't agree with the author, bringing up the obvious 'idiot tax' arguments. I mostly agree that it's foolish to spend money on this type of thing but I appreciate the authors perspective and it was a new way of looking at it for me.</comment>


EPA Freezes Grants, Tells Employees Not to Talk About It, Sources Say - <AUTHOR> http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/environmental-protection-grants-staff_us_5886825be4b0e3a7356b575f <comment><USER2> There will still be leaks, and they will most likely be protected under First Amendment rules:

 _" Should the Trump administration find out who talked to reporters and seek to retaliate against federal employees who leak unflattering material, there is good reason to believe that these employees are legally protected. An internal government decision such as the EPA's freezing all grants and contracts is a matter of public concern and is not a matter of national security. That makes it difficult for the Trump administration to argue that it has a right to silence these employees."_

[http://www.salon.com/2017/01/24/donald-trump-is-already- tryi...](http://www.salon.com/2017/01/24/donald-trump-is-already-trying-to- muzzle-leakers-but-government-employees-have-broad-free-speech-rights/)

</comment><comment><USER3> Trump is following Canada's previous Prime Minister Steven Harper's play book.

Harper cut funding to climate and environmental scientists and put a gag order on everyone involved.

Canadians finally had enough and kicked his party so far to the curb in the last election that even garbage collection refused to pick them up.

<comment><USER4> Canadians evidently are smarter than Americans. And Canadians don't have the gun culture which causes most normally intelligent people to vote for politicians they wouldn't invite into their house as long as they keep any gun restriction legislation out of US laws.</comment></comment>