Tell HN: We're looking for OSS projects that need UI Design help - <AUTHOR> I run a UI design studio that works with tech startups, but occasionally helps OSS projects out. We currentlu have a spot open to help out an open source project with their UI design for the coming month. Feel free to post your project or contact us directly.<p>Check out http://fairpixels.pro for work and contact details. (or my bio for an email address) <comment><USER2> Can you help the [https://calibre-ebook.com/](https://calibre-ebook.com/) project? (I'm not a maintainer, but their UI/UX really would benefit from you)

<comment><USER3> +1

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> It's a shame that the offer comes now because it's still too early... but the Purism Librem 5 phone[0]. It's just getting off the ground and this is an effort that really needs to succeed (more broadly).

[0] [https://puri.sm/shop/librem-5/](https://puri.sm/shop/librem-5/)

<comment><AUTHOR> We actually do this on an almost monthly basis, so who knows :) We would LOVE to work on this particular project. Is there anyone you know we can contact specifically for a more tight collaboration? Find my email in my bio

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Not my project, but I know that the guys at [https://riot.im](https://riot.im) would love any help or feedback they might be able to get on UI/UX. I use the project daily on several different devices so I'm happy to give them a shout here.

</comment><comment><USER6> The KeePass project ([https://keepass.info/](https://keepass.info/)) would be a good one to contribute to. Their website and the actual app itself could use some modernization.

<comment><USER7> This one is possible, but might be difficult. It's currently a single developer who approves all code additions with no version control to sync things up.

i.e. You have to manually maintain your own fork of the codebase

<comment><USER6> That's a shame if it's true. It's a project that could make a huge difference to people - both technical and non-technical.

I thought they were hosted on SourceForge and thus take patches but it's not clear from their website what the process is for contributing (proof that the website could use updating).

<comment><USER7> They are hosted on SourceForge, and you can access all the code, but basically anytime there is an update you have to download the newest version from SourceForge and reconcile with your private fork manually.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> _cough cough_

[https://www.libreoffice.org/](https://www.libreoffice.org/)

<comment><USER9> What's so bad about libreoffice? It's no worse than ms office, actually it's better because there are no stupid ribbons.

<comment><USER10> LibreOffice added the ribbon earlier this year. It's optional and not the default.

Also, I understand most users like the ribbon in MS Office. Most vocal people appear not to, but I recall an article about a survey and most ranged from indifferent to positive.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> There are currently 94 issues labeled as UI in the hacktoberfest effort on Github: [https://github.com/search?q=label%3Ahacktoberfest+label%3Aui...](https://github.com/search?q=label%3Ahacktoberfest+label%3Aui+state%3Aopen+type%3Aissue&type=Issues&utf8=%E2%9C%93)

</comment><comment><USER12> KDE.

Seriously. KDE has a good UI team but the number of projects and applications is huge and all the designers are volunteers.

There's Plasma Desktop and Plasma Mobile and a ton of applications.

And the visibility that your work will get by helping out there is more than most projects.

<comment><USER8> Compared with other OSS, the KDE designs are amazing. But still, that's not saying a lot when compared with more professional projects that gain more press.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> \- Git's default graphical user interface, "git gui". It's awful. There's no sense of what's important and what's safe. It's just the git command line hammered into a Tk-type interface.

<comment><USER14> Excellent suggestion and high visibility, but probably not a small task.

<comment><USER15> I think that could be a somewhat smaller task. Developers will have direct domain knowledge and the core features are fleshed out.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> You guys just doing UI mockups, or could you create a UI that represents a simple transaction? (For instance, using REST, get a list of things. Person picks one. Using REST call something else. End of functionality)

</comment><comment><USER17> [https://cachethq.io](https://cachethq.io)

We're really looking for a new frontend and dashboard to make Cachet easier to use :)

</comment><comment><USER18> [http://www.overseer.tv](http://www.overseer.tv) this is my show tracking app, could definitely use some UI/UX love. I came up with everything by wireframing on a piece of paper and then trying my best.

[https://github.com/smtheard/ShowTracker](https://github.com/smtheard/ShowTracker) is where the code lives.

</comment><comment><USER19> My home-hosted Cloud platform is in dire need of UI attention...

[https://github.com/zelon88/HRCloud2](https://github.com/zelon88/HRCloud2)

I am admittedly more of a logical, back-end programmer. Any help, advice, or direction would be greatly appreciated.

<comment><USER15> Do you use it yourself? Like how mature is it.

<comment><USER19> I do use it myself. The project was started in July of 2016 and was added to Github in August of 2016. I've been adding to it several times per week on average ever since.

I try to come up with ways to accomplish anything I would want a 3rd party service for from my home servers.

The API's are set and shouldn't be changing anytime soon. The overall structure of the application is set, but the current UI is modular and easily replaced. Now I'm mostly working on feature additions and fixing bugs.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Please take a look at my project - [https://zealdocs.org/](https://zealdocs.org/). It is a documentation browser for software developers.

</comment><comment><USER15> Oh man make a decent *BSD installer/configuration manager. I know there are current attempts at this but they all need help. I think FreeBSD would especially benefit from some direct improvement.

</comment><comment><USER21> Awesome.

I have some 3D virtual puppets that could use a lift up: [https://github.com/AquiGorka/puppets](https://github.com/AquiGorka/puppets)

</comment><comment><USER22> Please consider [https://conversations.im/](https://conversations.im/)

You might also want to help with F-Droid.

</comment><comment><USER23> [http://www.osetfoundation.org/volunteer](http://www.osetfoundation.org/volunteer)

</comment><comment><USER24> [https://github.com/yoe/sreview](https://github.com/yoe/sreview)

</comment><comment> alishan-l [https://biimer.com](https://biimer.com) No design at the moment

</comment><comment><USER25> could use some love. [http://schizoduckie.github.io/DuckieTV/?from=duckie.tv&/](http://schizoduckie.github.io/DuckieTV/?from=duckie.tv&/)</comment>


Google as a search engine is becoming useless - <AUTHOR> http://www.coalpha.org/Google-as-a-search-engine-is-becoming-useless-td7576886.html <comment><USER2> I didn't realize quite how bad it's become until I recently set up a small static site for a relatives two person business.

They had no web presence and a very unique name. The site quickly became the first result for a search on the company name in Bing and DDG. On Google its on page 3, behind all the auto generated business directories filled with google ads. Google has picked up all the Schema.org information from the site and indexed that and is using it in Google Maps.

My conclusion is that Google now gathers information for internal use. But only wants to share that information when it gets paid for it with ad views.

<comment><USER3> I've been using the internet since the mid 90's, and google since the early 00's.

Google's early minimalism and result quality made me _fanatically_ loyal. Even when google started doing some unromantic things, I stayed the course. The results were just _so good_. I scoffed at bing. Pshawed at duckduckgo, hussled an early invite to gmail, thought google wave was the new sliced bread, and generally viewed anyone who used yahoo as sadly mistaken.

In the last two years I've had so many misfire searches with multiple pages of spam that I've been driven away. Not at first, it's been a process. My first mitigation was to start searching by typing "<my query> reddit" that seemed to up my chances of getting non procedurally generated garbage content significantly.

This method started showing its cracks too so I gave duckduckgo a try. It's been better most of the time. Not as good as google use to be, but way better than google is now. The muscle memory is STILL so deep that about 50% of the time I still type <g><o><backspace><backspace><d><u><down><enter>.

Yes, I know I could set up my browser to search ddg from the url bar. My habits were forged decades ago. Besides that, I use lots of different devices, and I'd rather configure myself than every device.

It's pretty crazy to think the signal/noise ratio has gotten so bad to sway me. It's not looking good when I prognosticate forward from where we are. The protocols are still good, maybe some nerds just need to chisel out a fresh start somehow. I unironically propose we make a web ring.

<comment><USER4> To be fair to google its an arms race. They write an algorithm, people try and game it. If google sits and does nothing, they get worse over time. They are fighting back, but their strength against bad actors has considerably weakened. The amount of spam in their results is maddening sometimes.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> "They might be politicized, and of course have a left-oriented gay agenda" (said for Apple and Amazon). So Apple and Amazon have a _left_ and _gay_ agenda...

Sorry, but I don't think I need to read further after this. Non-sense started very early. Just another foggy-headed guy glorifying his vile into a freedom fighting guise. Same with countless other religious fanatics. Logic is out of the window.

pass

</comment><comment><USER6> Factually incorrect (there were other search engines before Google), poorly formatted, and quite possibly one of the most egotistical un-self-aware things I've ever read.

"most people, being the mainstream dulltards they are"

Strong words from someone who can't spell.

"algorythm" (twice) ... "migrant crysis" ... "merchantile"

Hypocrisy 1:

"Its a basic logical fallacy, to believe an assertion is true just because others believe it."

"certainly some other people agree with me on this one"

Hypocrisy 2:

"what are you achieving by shouting a few words without PROVING any of them"

Elitism:

"The masses must NOT rule"

Hate:

"The muslims ... Too bad they suck as well."

And this WTF from one of the responses:

"It seems to me that the DNS Server would have a list of all the web pages title addresses alongside the number for the site."

CoAlpha seems to be an explicitly reactionary, implicitly racist, incel- friendly cesspit. Not worth anyone's time to follow a link there.

<comment><USER7> I did not RTFA yet so I do not know whether what you write here is based on fact or otherwise. What I _do_ notice is that you end your entry with a bunch of labels - _reactionary_ , _racist_ and _incel_ \- which tend to be used by people who are guilty of many of the same transgressions as those which you accuse this _CoAlpha_ site of: _hypocrisy_ , _elitism_ and _hate_. Your reaction would be more convincing had it not been for that last line, now it just reads like the pot who is berating the kettle for being black.

       ...[time passes]...

RTFA, the author named 'purpleduck' has diarrhoea of the typewriter and could have said what he wanted in a few lines instead of a number of pages: Google has jumped the shark when it comes to search. The rest is just drivel and as such this link was nor worthy of its position on the front page.

<comment><USER6> > tend to be used

Not sure if that's projection or whataboutism, but I also don't give a damn. The site identifies _itself_ as reactionary. It's right there in the name. Likewise, many of its members identify themselves as incels, and the name "CoAlpha" is a reference to the same ideological complex. The racism, while not admitted, is no less obvious. I'm pretty sure anyone reading this exchange would conclude that _you_ are the one with an unacknowledged agenda in offering such an aggressive yet truth- and insight-free defense of such tripe.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> But...uh...has anybody actually read the bullshit that guy was saying in the posts? Like..."If some enlightened being can, such as myself, he is the first to accept that others will not get it, but it is only human to be bewildered and sometimes frustrated by the fact. It is the pain of the enlightened. It is a life-long struggle to deal with it. ".

What the fuck dude? Does he really think he is the first and only intelligent person on the planet?

</comment><comment><USER9> Just skimmed through it but the main thesis seems blown out of proportion IMHO; Google still works very well (read: better than all its competitors), what bugs me a bit is that it tailors result to my previous history hence if I look for something that is different from what Google is expecting from me results won't be _that_ good. There's also to consider the fact that people have learned how to game the algorithm through SEO techniques and that's not a problem with Google itself but it something that could be applied to every search engine (at least with the underlying Information Retrieval theory that we have now).

</comment><comment><USER10> Remember back in the old days, when there were discussion articles or blog entries in the top results? Those were the best. Of course, there also was a lot of garbage, but it was much easier to find the gems. Now the total garbage and the gems are both hidden. The top results are usually mediocre main stream crap or purchasing sites.

<comment><USER11> Back in the old days search engines didn't have compete against an entire SEO industry that's trying to game the system, so the results were much more useful.

It seems that Google is losing this arms race.

<comment><USER12> Imho, if Google adopted a "cheat once, get banned" policy, most SEOs would drop most of their techniques. As it is now, they'll do whatever it takes and if they catch a penalty, remove the most aggressive things and ask for reinclusion. Voila, instantly back where they were before the penalty. If there was a risk to burn the domain for good, that looks very different.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> What a poorly formulated opinion.

If you want to whine and moan about Google's Search, I'm sure you can do so around a better article.

</comment><comment><USER14> I recently went to try to find a blog I'd read a couple of months ago on a site called satcom.guru about the recent 737 problems. I remembered that the blogger had written about MCAS, AoA vanes, and that he was somehow involved with satellite antennas. I punched a bunch of keywords into Google and got a bunch of recent news articles. After 3 pages of those, Google wouldn't give me any more results, and I hadn't found the page I was looking for. No luck on DDG either. It was the #2 result for my query on Bing. I can't believe I'm typing this, but I switched my default search engine to Bing.

<comment><USER15> There is an old saying that if you want to see the corpse of your enemy all you have to do is sit in front of your house and wait. It worked well for Bing.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> I stopped reading after the first sentence

> Before Google, you just had to know the www address of the sites you could > be interested in.

Before Google there were other search engines. Remember Altavista? Also Yahoo was a thing to discover new sites.

</comment><comment><USER17> While the demise of search result quality from Google, is a very relevant topic to discuss these days, I find it a bit hilarious that we're using this guy's ramblings as the basis for this debate. It includes gems like:

> Guess the bottom line and the core of my ARISTOCRATIC soul is this: people > who work are fucking slaves and inferior to the aristocrat.

> Working is worthless. Creating art is superior. I do the latter. Bless me, > and fuck everyone else. Fuck you. You are below. I am an aristocrat since > birth, and I wish there were more aristocrats in this proletarian world. The > middle class are nothing but enhanced proletarians who think the best thing > in life is having money. THAT is the shit of the world. That. Not > Trump...most people are the only pronlem in the world, the only thing that > makes a man of wisdom puke. The only thing that has no interest at all. > Everything else is good. Even pedophiles, being insane, they are > interesting. Most people arent, and as such they have no logical reason to > exist except to create a background on which the interesting sparklws and > shies. The grotesque thing is that the backdrop, in their solipsism, believe > they are the protagonists.

I looked hard for signs of sarcasm - none were found. I did however find:

> I want anyone who doesnt think he is a loser to die. He is insane and > detached from reality.

Entertaining if nothing else.

</comment><comment><USER18> As for 2018 Google receives over 63,000 searches per second on any given day. That's the average figure of how many people use Google a day, which translates into at least 2 trillion searches per year, 3.8 million searches per minute, 228 million searches per hour, and 5.6 billion searches per day.

People are using Google because it's easy, the results are relevant and get better and better every year (Google release an update to their algorithm every few months)

Google doesn't become useless, it just becomes a better version of Google in early stage

</comment><comment><USER19> _Before Google, you just had to know the www address of the sites you could be interested in._

It was terrible. We only had Excite, AOL, Yahoo, Lycos, Alta Vista, Hotbot, Ask Jeeves, and MetaCrawler to choose from.

</comment><comment><USER20> My anecdata: I recently made a vim config, put it on GitHub, made a blog post, and posted it on Reddit. Googling the project description puts the reddit post on top with no mention of either of the others. DDG & Bing have the github on top followed immediately by the blog and reddit posts

</comment><comment><USER21> looking at the other threads on this site's forum, this is a very, very bad site and has no place on hacker news. flagged.</comment>


New data on college majors confirms old trend: technocracy is crushing humanism - <AUTHOR> https://www.nytimes.com/2018/08/08/opinion/oh-the-humanities.html <comment><USER2> Makes sense- it used to be that college was a place where the ruling class sent their children to be educated in how to be gentlemen/managers. The humanities were considered what such a person needed to know; an understanding of people and society, but not specific work skills since it would be the underclass doing the work.

Now, college is increasingly a form of trade school where members of every class go to learn a marketable skill, in order to sell their labor. Not everybody can be a member of the ruling class, and people are realizing that. Getting a degree in the humanities is only advantageous if you have a reasonable expectation that you'll never have to know a specific trade but will simply be in the management.

<comment><USER3> I'd rather have management that knows its business/technology over a humanities major any day

<comment><USER4> Maybe you're picturing "management" on the wrong level. Think "Limited Partners in VC firms", not CEOs. Being in management—even being a CEO!—is still a trade-skill (it is, in fact, the quintessential haute-bourgeoisie trade-skill) and not the sort of thing you'd historically learn in college. Most historical "captains of industry"—think e.g. Henry Ford, Andrew Carnegie, John D. Rockefeller—never went to college.

College, really, was for the people who boss CEOs around: the patrons (modernly, "angel investors") of the founders who started the company; the capitalists who sit on the boards of the the mutual funds who invest in IPOed companies; etc. People who got taught how to "manage wealth" and the essentials of an MBA on their daddy's knee (with said father possibly being one of the wealthy middle-class "captains of industry"), and are now, in their teenage years, being sent off for "polishing" at college, such that they can be a _good_ person, not just a _brutally efficient_ one. (And, also, to enculturate them into the upper-class by immersion among upper-class children, so that a merely-wealthy family can be thus transmuted into an upper-class _dynasty_ , with descendants worthy of noble status in countries that grant such.)

Or, to put that another way: the humanities were created to turn people like Jeff Bezos into people like Elon Musk. (Or to turn people like during- Microsoft Bill Gates into people like post-Microsoft Bill Gates.) To take people who already have a knack for "making money", but are still fundamentally human with human drives like greed and pride; and inculcate into them a perspective on wealth as being a means to a greater, humanitarian end.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Committing 4 years of your life to study various artistic works and social studies is a luxury, and it does have value. Good career prospects are not part of this value proposition.

I wonder how much better-informed current rising freshmen are about career prospects after seeing the fallout of the great recession. I wonder where they get their research for choosing their college majors.

<comment><USER6> > Good career prospects are not part of this value proposition

This is a relatively new situation. It wasn't long ago that having a degree humanities was sufficient to get an entry level position for a good middle- class job. Now college/university is seen as a necessity, that is no longer sufficient to stand-out career-wise.

<comment><USER7> It's the slow disaster that seems to be ignored.

People want a roadmap to secure job. Or at least a secure field.

Without proper guidance on how to achieve this modest goal young adults lose valuable productive years of their life.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I was lucky enough to go an engineering school that required us to take a lot of humanities. In retrospect, I wish I had taken more than the minimum.

I think schools need to do a better job requiring humanities majors to take STEM classes in the same way I was required to take humanities. I have plenty of friends in humanities who took the bare minimum which was only one class (physics for poets or something similar) and a lab (which could be psych or some other soft science).

<comment><USER9> >I think schools need to do a better job requiring humanities majors to take STEM classes in the same way I was required to take humanities.

This. And incorporating more technology/computing into the humanities themselves.

<comment><USER10> Exactly. Both fields have so much they can learn from each other. I'm really glad that I ended up doing a STEM major with a humanities minor (almost double major, but class fell through final semester). It taught me a lot and I'd say I definitely learned more useful skills in my humanities courses, working as a teacher now (of a STEM subject). There's just so much STEM fields _can 't_ teach, like how to interact with and understand other people; it's just not something that can be boiled down to a science.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> > But a hopeful road map to humanism's recovery might include variations on > those older themes. First, a return of serious academic interest in the > possible (I would say likely) truth of religious claims. Second, a regained > sense of history as a repository of wisdom and example rather than just a > litany of crimes and wrongthink. Finally, a cultural recoil from the tyranny > of the digital and the virtual and the Very Online, today's version of the > technocratic, technological, potentially totalitarian Machine that Jacobs's > Christian humanists opposed.

This is actually pretty insightful for an NYT piece.

<comment><USER5> I'll withhold comment about the religious aspects, but I think I would like to see more academic interest in what it means to "live the good life" in a developing era of high technology, with an anxiety-inducing attention economy, lower-cost material needs but increasingly tempting highly marketed material wants and positional goods (an economy in the style of Tyler Cowen's "Average is Over"). Teach people enough to critically understand whether progress is a treadmill, and whether the treadmill is worth getting off.

There is evidence (higher suicide rates, and depression rates, although depression rates may be influenced by underlying trends in clinical technique) that all this progress doesn't make us any happier. Keeping up with the Joneses to compete for status results in a pretty shitty nash equilibrium when there are a billion people in the world.

It feels like any and all effort that the humanities put into making an actual impact on modern day life is just lashing out at power structures. This can help achieve equality in the long run, but for student's who are studying these topics, it does not provide anything actionable to their own lives. Academic Philosophy is applicable to a student's current and future life, but the way that it is studied only rarely provides a grounding foundation for a personal lifestyle philosophy.

<comment><USER12> "I think I would like to see more academic interest in what it means to "live the good life" in a developing era of high technology,"

That would be very good. I've seen more work on that topic here on HN, indeed, I've _contributed_ more work on that topic here in HN than I personally have seen come out of academia. This is not a statement of pride in HN or myself, it is a condemnation of academia. I see a lot of judgmental discussions about whether things are good or bad or pathological or qualifying for DSM diagnoses, but very little on how to navigate the morass.

This used to be a core topic for philosophy; it's certainly a huge component of Stoicism, if not the main focus, for instance.

I will however give academia one bit of the benefit of the doubt, which is that it's been awfully hard to keep up lately. Writing about how to have the good life in 1990 would have only marginal utility in dealing with the civilizational neurotic hysteria that social media is creating, for instance.

But it would still be nice to see some more effort put in this direction. I can only imagine going to my advisor and telling them I want to focus on this. They may individually and intellectually support me, but the system will utterly reject it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Is it a little early to begin the lament when the average University requires 2 years of humanities before technical classes and not the other way round?

</comment><comment> andy-x I think many colleges like to attract a lot of international students these days (who are paying with hard cash). I doubt that many international students would ever go into humanities/social studies. Could that be a reason for relative shrinking of those majors? In general more hard statistics would be useful here.

</comment><comment><USER14> I think that a populace educated in the humanities is an immense societal good. Of course, this view is informed by my own personal interest in these subjects and has little to do with the economic incentives college students must consider. I was able to balance these interests by attending a school with a "liberal arts" slant and choosing to major in a science. I think I got some quality exposure to the humanities in my gen ed courses but was still able to obtain an (economically) valuable degree.

<comment><USER10> I completely agree. I'm a teacher in a STEM field who graduated with a STEM degree and a humanities minor. I've honestly found my humanities minor to be _much_ more beneficial when dealing with students, and I wish we could convince them to interact with the humanities more in secondary school, as I think it would do them a load of good. Just like I think it would do _everyone_ good.

Though, of course, that's not to say we can't incorporate STEM aspects into humanities courses as well. I'm certain there's new ways to analyze things that opens up with computers, and everyone should be scientifically literate (and mathematically literate, but that might be the math teacher coming out in me)

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> Yay, we're winning!

</comment><comment><USER16> A decline in students majoring in humanist subjects doesn't necessarily correlate with a decline in humanism itself. The real issue is that if you're going to go into crazy debt for an education you better pick something that will get you out of debt. You can still study these things in an unofficial way.

<comment><USER17> Assimilating a meaningful part of the canon requires a considerable time investment. For many people, university is the only time in their lives they will have that time for reading. Sadly, you just cannot expect the average working person (especially after they become parents to child) to maintain time and motivation for such a program of study.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> The humanities (and liberal arts in general) are important for a functioning society because they endeavor to teach people what it means to be a person in a world full of people.

[https://news.stanford.edu/news/2012/february/nussbaum- democr...](https://news.stanford.edu/news/2012/february/nussbaum-democracy- humanities-020912.html)

>Increasingly viewed as "useless" by politicians, humanities and arts programming is being replaced by technical training courses in sciences, engineering and technology in the name of economic gain. While technical skills are important for the future health of nations, Nussbaum said that they alone do not make for a fully educated student. Without people with a liberal arts background, she said, the world would be filled with "narrow, technically trained workers, rather than complete citizens who can think for themselves, criticize tradition and authority, and understand the significance of another person's sufferings and achievements."

>These so-called soft-skills are essential for developing a "decent world culture" and maintaining healthy democracies, she said. Study of history and culture imparts the ability to approach global issues as a citizen of the world. Study of philosophy teaches the critical thinking skills that help us reason about our choices. Participation in the creative arts fosters an empathetic capacity and, Nussbaum said, "allows us to imagine the challenges facing someone unlike ourselves."

>In closing, Nussbaum reiterated that the arts and humanities not only "shape people who are able to see other human beings as full people with thoughts and feelings" but also build "nations that are able to overcome fear and suspicion in favor of sympathetic and well-reasoned debate."

<comment><USER19> I keep on seeing this unsupported assertion everywhere when the humanities are called upon to justify themselves or feel envious - that humanities are the best for critical thinking.

Why does it mean that they can think for themselves when in many cases the humanities slavishly follow what came before even in face of evidence that says no it really doesn't work that way (people who look at Marx for economics for instance)? Why are social skills assumed to stem from them only? Why is the ability to divine objective truths about reality and literally prove something indisputably impossible or true not count as critical thinking? There is nothing more critical than seeing and stating "and yet it moves" despite what everybody thinks. The utility of humanities is done a great disservice by these arguments

The author's very thesis is incoherent- complaining both about death of tradition and people not thinking for themselves. Complaining about advertisers while praising soft skills is a similar contradiction.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> I've been to grad school in English and taught humanities classes for ten years. In many respects, humanists have their own habits and beliefs to blame: [https://jakeseliger.com/2018/08/08/oh-the- humanities](https://jakeseliger.com/2018/08/08/oh-the-humanities).

I'm surprised the reckoning has taken this long to arrive, or be noticed.

<comment><USER21> Your objection to the humanities as it is taught today is that it has veered toward what is useful. That is true, but that is not what is shifting people from the humanities. What is useful to society is not necessarily useful to the individual, so people veer to engineering to get their paycheck. Sticking to what is beautiful without regard to any application to society would not have saved the humanities either.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> I really disagree with the thesis of this article, namely, that the decreasing number of humanities majors at elite schools is reflective of overall cultural decline.

It's not because of cultural decline, it's because there's been a leveling of the playing field wherein competition has gotten a lot fiercer on two fronts: it's generally harder to get into elite colleges, and top-tier employers look at a broader range of schools than they used to. Put another way, being born into a wealthy family, attending Suburb Country Day and then spending a few years at boarding school is less of a tailwind for getting into Harvard than it used to be; and also, going to Harvard is less of a tailwind for getting a top-tier job than it used to be. So, the applicant pool to Harvard is less wealthy and more scrappy and pragmatic; and also, students once at Harvard make more practical decisions with regard to what they choose to study.

To give an example of an industry I know firsthand, as a (relatively) recent Goldman IBD alum I can tell you that there's been a profound shift in analyst recruiting over the last couple decades. 20 years ago, NESCAC alumni with humanities degrees were like half the analyst class and state school grads (other than Wharton) were an endangered species. Today the senior partner in your group might have a history degree from Williams, but few if any of the analysts do.

This is reflective of increased competition, not disenlightenment. And it's a good thing. The state school finance majors are better investment bankers and deserve the opportunity more.

<comment><USER23> Your reply is symptomatic. In what forsaken world is a society's cultural vitality to be measured by the quality of its investment bankers? That is decadence itself.

<comment><USER15> Finance is one of the pillars of modern society. You need finance to bankroll everything from scientific research to wars to infrastructure development. The dominance of the British Empire, for example, was intertwined with that of its banks: [https://insights.som.yale.edu/insights/can-place-built-on- gl...](https://insights.som.yale.edu/insights/can-place-built-on-global- banking-survive-britain-s-retreat-from-europe). The quality of a country's investment bankers is incredibly important, and America has benefited tremendously from having a very strong banking sector. (You should watch Hamilton.)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> While reading, I just kept thinking the old Clinton campaign quote "It's the economy, stupid!". In other words, we sold a generation on college being the way to middle class or better jobs, and there aren't many middle class or better jobs that require humanities degrees. There are no apollonites leading the charge, it's each person individually looking at what it will take to pay down their debt everyone told them to take on, and realizing poetry and French literature won't help the majority of the time.

The post briefly adresses this but then goes off on how we need more inquiry into religious truths and less of the "Very Online". Maybe I am possessed by Apollo and that has left me unable to understand how that would ever work. Any change that doesn't directly adress the economic incentives will work only on those who have hereditary wealth and don't need to care about those incentives at 18.

<comment><USER25> This really seems to be one of the important problems (not the only one and I certainly wouldn't want to write a thesis here)

Humanities in the 70s/80s meant your degree wouldn't cost 6 digits and you could probably find a good enough job as a teacher or in the editorial market (press/publishers/etc) or in several other places.

Today those degrees costs one zero more and pays half of what it used to, and your knowledge of Latin won't be only useful for fancy coffee names, if you're lucky.

<comment><USER26> It's really the result of a shift in mindset about education from primarily being about the benefit to society to one where the primary benefit is to the educated individual. I unfortunately can't find it anywhere, but I remember reading an interesting Rolling Stone article that traced the shift in thinking to Ronald Reagan, first during his governorship of California and eventually during his presidency. What happens when you start viewing education that way is that you start subjecting it to the laws of supply and demand. If you view an education as having hundreds of thousands of dollars of value for a graduate, you start to be able to charge hundreds of thousands of dollars for the privilege of getting that education. When it was viewed primarily as a public service that people did to become better citizens, there was more emphasis on cost controls since the state was shouldering more of the burden cost.

Once that shift in mindset happened, or so posited the article, the increase in the cost of education that we've seen over the past 3 decades becomes an inevitable conclusion of schools closing the gap between what they charge and what people are willing to pay. And once education becomes this expensive, the move towards STEM and away from humanities also becomes inevitable so long as both degrees are roughly the same cost. If the humanities want to survive and thrive in today's educational environment, they need to figure out how to charge significantly less for that degree. If a humanities grad can emerge into the job market with $20k in debt compared to a STEM major that comes out with 10x that, you might see more people choosing the humanities route.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> I would have loved to major in a "humanist" major -- probably history or anthropology. Unfortunately education and living are expensive and life in an ivory tower doesn't pay.

</comment><comment><USER28> If humanist degrees don't pay, perhaps the supply exceeds the demand for this knowledge.

<comment><USER29> Not everything can be readily explained by trotting out free market dogma.

<comment><USER12> If we don't "free market dogma" applying to college major decisions, then we've got to figure out how to make it so choosing humanities is not signing up for a near-lifetime of debt with no practical way of discharging it.

If there is _any_ discipline for which it make absolutely, utterly no sense that college today is so many multiples more expensive than it was 50 years ago, it's the humanities. Have books gotten more expensive? No. A huge chunk of the material is public domain, so it's not licensing problems. We shouldn't need more administrators, we should need massively fewer what with computers taking care of all the tedious paperwork. The teachers involved are making maybe a couple of times more than what they would have 50 years ago, inflation adjusted, and a great deal of them are making less than they did back then, as associate professors. Where is all the money going?

<comment><USER30> > Where is all the money going?

It's complicated? And depends on if you're talking about elite private universities, middle-tier state schools, for-profit schools, etc.

Most classes of schools have larger administrations: some are just bloat, of course, but others are managing demand for increased student services, greater requirements on compliance for federal grants, increased desire to woo wealthy private donors, etc.

Virtually all classes of universities are trying to expand their facilities and update or maintain their physical plants; this becomes an arms race when students are paying full freight--who will pay in the high five figures yearly to attend some place with run-down buildings?

Elite universities have sharply expanded financial aid as they have broadened their student bodies beyond the already wealthy.

For-profit schools charge what they can and direct the extra to shareholders, propped up by federal student loans; this has led to a wide range of abuses.

Finally, we must not forget that there has been a major effort to defund public higher education. Rather than casting a university degree as something that other citizens benefit from, it's depicted as purely a private good that students themselves should pay for. See "Unmaking the Public University" by Newfield. In this case the "higher tuition" is not new money to the university, but shifting the burden of paying for the education from society to the individual.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> Some (lots of?) of 'humanism' means 'superstition and myth'. I'm glad those things are on the way out.

<comment><USER32> So 'humanism' means the opposite of 'Humanism'? How can we debate on a level playing field if one set of goalposts sounds just like the other?

<comment><USER31> Not debating anything. Anyway, the OP defined the issue as the decline in history, philosophy, religion. Thus my comment.</comment></comment></comment>


AirBnB has 54% 1-star reviews on Trustpilot - <AUTHOR> https://www.trustpilot.com/review/www.airbnb.com

<comment><USER2> It's interesting that most of the one star reviewer have only one review history on Trustpilot. Feels dodgy

I practically live in Airbnb around Europe for last 6 months and never had a bad experience, except once which was resolved + I was given $100 free credit.

</comment><comment><USER3> If this is real it'd be a pretty big scandal. A journalist could try setting up some accounts and seeing if the behaviour listed (editing reviews to be more positive) and so on are actually true.

OTOH I wouldn't be surprised to find that a lot of people DO have bad experiences, just because, well, a lot of people are just dumb. If AirBNB was wholesale editing reviews or revoking coupons you'd think that'd have attracted someone's attention by now.

Edit: It's also interesting because searching for AirBNB problems shows the opposite, where they side with guests that are bad, e.g.: [http://www.airbnbhell.com/hosts-beware-mediation- say/](http://www.airbnbhell.com/hosts-beware-mediation-say/) \-- This is what I'd expect. Like Amazon, you can probably afford to piss off some suppliers if you maintain a stellar customer service reputation.

Really, what are hosts going to do? The hosts that aren't making a living off this will just leave or not, no big deal. The hosts that depend on AirBNB since they've gone and rented out properties specifically to do this (perhaps illegally) are just going to have to go out of their way to be nice about things since they don't have much recourse.

</comment><comment><USER4> I'm sure AirBnB has its faults, but Trustpilot/ResellerRatings are based on extorting businesses to moderate/respond to negative reviews.

</comment><comment><USER5> You always have to consider that people who have bad experiences are much more likely to seek out a site like Trustpilot to vent. Obviously many people have also had great experiences using AirBnB. It will nevertheless be interesting to see how they respond to this publicity.

</comment><comment><USER6> I just left a review a little while ago after seeing this site.

I also just signed up because I became furious reading the other reviews and realizing that I've also been duped by AirBnb and needed to vent to explain my situation.

If a host does not show or completely misrepresents the place --- goood luck, you are in for a treat with AirBnb non-service.

A place I stayed at had no kitchen (it was demolished and being renovated, this was not mentioned in the listing).

I could go on and on....

</comment><comment><USER7> We live in Europe and prefer using housetrip. It's based here and seems less dodgy/tacky and has what seems to be very close in number listings. I believe they were around before airbnb, although I'm not sure. I know I was using then before I heard about airbnb.

<comment><USER8> I'm also European, and I had never heard of them. On first impression, it looks like an AirBnB clone lacking in polish (eg. no hybrid list/map view; detected my language, but showed me prices in GBP, etc).

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> wtf trust is pilot good English no fake all</comment>


Password Hacking on TENEX: Using Paged Virtual Memory to Break Security - <AUTHOR> https://www.sjoerdlangkemper.nl/2016/11/01/tenex-password-bug/ <comment><USER2> My dad's version of Meltdown :)

<comment><USER3> Sort of reminds me more of how cryptographic routines will go out of their way to not break out of loops early, albeit now to protect against timing attacks.</comment></comment>


Why I Collapsed on the Job - <AUTHOR> https://www.chronicle.com/article/Why-I-Collapsed-on-the-Job/242537 <comment><USER2> Burnout doesn't differentiate between gender, race, sexual orientation, social status or the size of your bank account.

Much like when I was in flying training and we were subjected to the altitude simulation pressure chamber so that we could each identify how we individually experienced the onset of hypoxia, I think it is important that everyone notates down the onset of burnout at home or at work.

For me, Stage 1 is when I start feeling myself getting irritable and snapping at those close to me for no reason at all. S2 is when I start having trouble sleeping, and get a really stiff neck leading to headaches. I've got to catch it at that point otherwise if it moves to S3 - crippling headaches, inability to focus on simple tasks or S4 - inability to even get out of a chair due to the feeling of extreme fatigue, then the recovery process is SO much longer and harder.

Keep a working journal, or better still, ask someone close to you that you can trust to note any out of character behavioural changes and advise you of them so that you can start to detect patterns and take action to mitigate.

<comment><USER3> I agree you need to catch it early. I often wonder what the most time- efficient form of mitigation is.

<comment><USER4> The most efficient mitigation is saying no to any additional obligation, and most probably also to some current obligations you already had accepted.

Thinking about the issue in terms of time-efficiency will likely not help. It takes as long as it takes until you are back in balance, and accepting that is part of the remedy.

<comment><USER2> This is also an important factor. I know when I am experiencing burnout, the feeling of anxiety and being overwhelmed is heightened. _Any_ extra task thrown at me just snowballs those feelings until I become paralysed with indecision.

It is important to 'shed the load' when you feel the onset of burnout. Don't take on anything new - just focus on finishing what you have, and then take a break or reward yourself accordingly before doing any more.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Employers, as well as state institutions need to look more at the health of their employees. Even in Germany we have the problem that people at universities work way too much.

People need to be told to stop and take a step back. Hard borders are a necessity. No longer than 40 hours (better 35) per week for EVERYONE. Being it doctors, university professors, steal workers, teachers, cleaning personal.

There are enough resources and money flowing through society to enable everyone having work that pays to live and time to live itself. No need for multiple jobs and getting torn apart to make a living.

We are not in the time of industrialization. This time is long gone and we should be further than running people down and get a pair of new ones if they are broken.

<comment><USER6> As an American teacher who routinely works 50-60, the idea of only working 35/wk feels like a dream.

<comment><USER7> Why do you need to work 50-60 hours a week? I know my teachers in HS in Ontario were only scheduled for 4 hours of instruction a day. Are American teachers scheduled for more instruction?

How much do grading, lesson planning, and extracurriculars contribute to that figure? 8 hours every working day seems kind of excessive; I graded well over a hundred assignments a week in college as a TA in 10 hours flat.

It certainly seemed to me to be a very cushy job at the time but I'd love to hear your perspective.

<comment><USER8> Is this supposed to be some kind of joke, or do you really imagine that lesson planning and grading alone for 4 daily hours of classroom instruction would take less than an additional 4 hours?

<comment><USER7> Not the first time you do it, but by the third, fourth, year in a row, I imagine you would be reusing the lesson plans, assignments, and tests.

I know for a fact that's what my HS math teacher did because we got ahold of the old tests and assignments a couple of times and they were almost identical.

Side note: I'm making him sound like a lazy slacker but he was the best teacher I've ever had in my life. He taught so much so well that I had perfect grades and didn't learn any new math in university for the first 6 months.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Wow the comments in here. This is not an article about the struggles of women in academia, it's an article about the struggles of being a tenured professor in general which are indeed hard. The primary problems are indeed what were pointed out. Professors end up being saddled with a lot of unpaid work that isn't research related: journal obligations, teaching, committees, operations, HR etc. This isn't even getting into another enormous time sink which went unmentioned, fundraising, which I've seen eat up substantial amounts of PI time via grant writing, industry relations, attending conferences to try to find money, contract negotiations etc.

Most experienced PIs never actually make it back into the lab once they get tenure (assuming they are lab researchers), which is a real shame. It becomes difficult to say no to all this stuff because thousands of people are fighting tooth and nail over a tiny number of positions, and they get used to slaving away with this kind of workload because it's what academia demands of you to get a tenured position. Once you have it you just keep doing what you've been doing.

</comment><comment><USER10> > But suddenly my body refused to heal from a simple infection, leading to > inflammation that left me bedridden and unable to perform most of my duties > for five long weeks.

I whish she had tell us more about this, more precisely about what exactly convinced her the real cause was her burning out rather than an exceptionally nasty infection.

Not that I doubt it was, but honestly it's what I'm most curious about.

<comment><USER11> Constant stress impacts negatively the immune system, you can look it up it's quite well researched. Men sana in corpore sano :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> The point the author seems to make by peppering the article with these mentions of gender seems to be that burnouts in education are gender related.

These struggles are universal for all teachers, not just women. Saying 'xyz is hard in education, especially for women' creates an environment in which men should just suck it up and 'stop whining' because women have it truly hard.

Saying no to people is hard for many people of both genders and regardless of gender it is hard for couples to have children and both have a demanding career, whatever the underlying cause. Taking care of children and the house are not the only things that can cause stress outside of work and all of those reasons are not gender bound.

This sexist approach is unfair to the men in education who can't say no, have to take care of a family on their own, etc. Furthermore it signals to me that all of the other information in the article should be taken with a grain of salt just as an article on space exploration by a flat earther should be taken with a grain of salt.

This subjective approach should not be rewarded here on HN or anywhere else.

<comment><USER13> >xyz is hard in education, especially for women' creates an environment in which men should just suck it up and 'stop whining' because women have it truly hard.

It isn't a competition. Everyone's experiences are valid and correct. That women, on average, face the problems of (profession) plus the problems of being a woman in (profession). This doesn't mean that men don't have problems, that their problems are somehow invalidated, or that they should "man up" and take it - the idea that men should do so is actually a problem of _men_ in (profession), because men also have their own set of problems.

That women generally, on average, face more and more significant issues does not invalidate anybody and should not cause a competition to find who is most disadvantaged. It should be one component of a rallying point by which everyone's lives can be improved, men and women and everyone else.

<comment><USER12> "It isn't a competition." and "...women generally, on average, face more and more significant issues"?

Double standards aside, that is exactly my point. It isn't a competition and it isn't fruitful to talk about gender when describing the struggles of people in a profession unless those struggles are directly related to gender. Which in this case they clearly aren't.

I think reducing every problem, in this case getting overworked, to gender devalues the real discussion about gender inequality.

One real problem with people getting overworked is budget. More money for more workers will make everybody's job easier. Another aspect is people's personal lives in which they can face challenges that cause them stress and make it hard to balance work and life. Solving things like this will make everybody's lives better regardless of their age, race, gender, sexual preference, etc.

You also say: "women generally, on average, face more and more significant issues" "men also have their own set of problems." "Everyone's experiences are valid and correct." Again this is the 'men have problems but women have the real problems' argument. "Everyone's experiences are valid and correct." some are just more valid and correct.

<comment><USER13> It _isn't_ a competition. There is no "more valid and correct", and I did not suggest that there was - in fact, I directly stated the opposite multiple times.

Just because a worse thing exists does not make something not bad. The world is allowed to be made out of shades of grey.

<comment><USER12> "The world is allowed to be made out of shades of grey."

I never said it isn't. I just don't see how voicing an opinion on who has it worse or not in a discussion about a different subject can lead to anything else than the polarisation of the discussion.

You can do whatever you want of course. I was just pointing out that I feel that there is some underlying sexism in the article and that it should probably be taken into account when determining its value.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Meanwhile in the third world [https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2018-02-22/hungry- ve...](https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2018-02-22/hungry-venezuelan- workers-are-collapsing-so-is-the-oil-industry)

</comment><comment><USER15> TLDR: It's an anectode of "an associate professor of education-policy studies" at Penn State who suffered from burn-out.

I have no idea what we are supposed to take away from her story. Don't work too hard and learn to say no, I guess. There is no clear narrative and the article reeks of self pity (she does not get tired of mentioning that she's a "twice an immigrant" and a woman).

EDIT: what bothers me about the article is that there is no root cause analysis and no solution is offered.

Also, I am unsure the n-th order immigrant argument is valid. The very concept of a second order immigrant seems bizarre to me. And if they exist, it remains to be proven that k-th order immigrants have it strictly more difficult than l-th order immigrants for all k>l.

<comment><USER16> Yeah. She writes as if this is unique to her profession, gender (?!) ... but it is not. This sounds like any other burnout stories from so many fields. Sure some fields are worse than others but academia is probably one of the better ones.

<comment><USER17> Let's not forget health workers. Doctors and nurses often work ridiculous hours with unimaginable stress, literally life and death decisions every day.

I often consider myself to be very lucky to write JS for a living. I earn a decent wage, work decent hours, have reasonably good employability and portability of work, and if I make a mistake I can only kill the browser.

<comment><USER18> My girlfriend is a NP. She does make a good living, but the amount of stuff she puts up with is something I could never put up with. I may be stressed about a production emergency or a looming deadline, but for the most part I work 8-4. She deals with long, changing hours and has told me stories that have made me physically ill just from the description. I'm not sure how they handle this. She's had to put up with this even before she got an actual job. Clinical took a toll on her even before she graduated. The fact that LPNs and RNs even go to work everyday with lower pay and crazy hours amazes me. My hat goes off to the medical profession. Our system may be a mess but the doctors and nurses are making a lot of sacrifices to keep people healthy and alive.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Anonymous threatens net blackout over SOPA - <AUTHOR> http://youranonnews.tumblr.com/post/14561417793/anonymous-update-and-message-on-opblackout <comment><USER2> Look, I appreciate the sentiment, but a website compromise spree is only going to give the lawmakers more ammunition with which to create more legislation designed to oppress in the name of protecting us from the bad guys.

Speaking as a parent of two kids, temper tantrums never work.

<comment><USER3> As far as I can tell, they're not telling anyone to deface sites - they are saying that you should black out your sites, and encourage others to do the same.

Wikipedia was/is considering doing something similar.

<comment><USER2> I may have misread the statement. I read the statement, addressed in part to "Hacktivists", reading:

> Replace the front page of every website we can with a simple, clear protest > page.

Given past operating procedure, that seems like a call to action to deface every site you can get access to. If it's not, then I rescind my original comment.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> A random thought popped into my head around defacing sites. Rather than defacing the front pages of every website they can, they should change the 404 pages to say something like 'Content censored by SOPA legislation'.

Every time someone comes across an out of date link, or makes a typo they will think that they have been denied their request due to SOPA :)

</comment><comment><USER5> The actual article makes no references to hacking or defacing websites. It explicitly references outreach and legal protest. The poster of this link clearly has an axe to grind, and based on the number of kneejerk responses he was successful.

<comment><USER4> Yes they did:

"Replace the front page of every website we can with a simple, clear protest page."

<comment><USER6> It's sort of ambiguous, but the sentence "Encourage friends, businesses, organizations, social media to take a stand along side us in the same way" implies voluntary cooperation. Without anything more explicit, it seems like they're talking about people voluntarily replacing their own front pages.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> It's unfortunate how many of the comments in this thread are based on the title of the HN link to this article and not the actual article.

</comment><comment><USER8> > The House Judiciary Committee is reconvening on the 21st of December. In > short, we were lied to.

I think Anonymous is mistaken. The house judiciary committee's website indicates that the scheduled Dec 21st markup has actually been postponed [1].

[1] <http://judiciary.house.gov/hearings/mark_12152011.html>

</comment><comment><USER9> I would really rather Anonymous just stay out of this. Kind of taints the purity of the Anti-SOPA campaign and its never good to be associated with criminals, especially the ones who expose active duty undercover cops who have dedicated their lives to protect us. Just saying.

</comment><comment><USER10> If google would make an anti-SOPA doodle for their homepage, that would be awesome, and effective too.

</comment><comment><USER11> I am not sure whether vandals are any better than censors, but I'd rather we got rid of both of them.

<comment><AUTHOR> I think there's enough information present to get a sense of the Tao between the two... vandals are, if not a complete straw man, at least an over-hyped source of genuine danger.

Personally, I'd take vandalism, and having to white-wash my storefront any day, over a government forcing my payment processors to shut me down by fiat. Frankly it's hard to imagine someone I'd sympathize with who wouldn't feel the same way; but if you're that person, now's the time to air reason on the side of order; a few weeks from now the cause will definitely be lost.

<comment><USER12> If SOPA's proponents fight dirty, why can't the opposition? I'm speaking pragmatically here. Unfortunately, institutions are amoral to the core, and respond best to power. Affecting change is not as easy as maintaining the moral high ground and repeating your position. People may need to feel the consequences of their actions.

There must be a way to use the public's fear as a way to carry this message. Why can't we fund commercials for each state that list the bill's supporters as trying to censor the Internet? Alternately, why not blackout some of the more important routers in protest? I hate that I'm suggesting we break things temporarily to get people's attention, but, what else is new, right?

The problem is marketing: how do we make people care?

<comment><AUTHOR> I think we should break things. If I ran any US-facing websites I was the beneficiary of, I'd break them in a heartbeat. But it's not really the answer. The US congress is full of what appear (on youtube) to be cockroaches. They're not sycophants or nice guys who started well but somehow ended up favoring the deportation and torture of civilians, censorship of the internet, and negating your property rights in favor of multinationals that want to frack your pasture. You really should deal with the vermin the way Tunisians, Egyptians, Libyans, and now Syrians have dealt with theirs; we wouldn't be having this stupid conversation if the aliens that ran your country weren't a bunch of unrepentant nazis.

So now you pried my opinion outta me ;)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> ...and everything looks like a nail.

</comment><comment><USER14> The proposed "OpBlackOut front page kit" for those who dont feel like downloading it --

<http://img46.imageshack.us/img46/115/anonymousq.png>

</comment><comment><USER15> I think this is very ill-conceived. If they want every website they can deface on the internet to get defaced, this will not prove anything.

Moreover, I would like to ask a question ... aren't only FOREIGN sites affected by SOPA's provisions for revoking DNS and cash flows? What exactly is a foreign site?

Aren't domestic sites already being seized and no one really cares?

Or am I mistaken?

<comment> the-cakeboss I believe that this is the case. There are already provisions in place to deal with sites within the juridiction of the DoJ. The primary affect of the bill is to give powers to those 'injured' parties seeking recourse against those sites thought to be distributing copyrighted material. The bill ( from my reading, I could be mistaken ) grants no new power to deal with domestic sites beyond amending the definition used in conjunction with already existing laws. Specifically section 2319 of title 18 of U.S. Code.

This link seems to expire so hopefully linking to the google item will work...

[http://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&#...</a>

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> If I may update Freud…

 _Anonymous_ seeks to deny the state the power to censor websites, not because _Anonymous_ wants to do away with website censorship, but because they want to monopolize it.

</comment><comment><USER17> I really don't like SOPA, but I also don't like being on the same side as these children. If they don't get their own way, they throw a tantrum by DoSing certain portions of the Internets.

<comment><USER18> I tend to agree.

Using a DDoS campaign to protest web censorship is just a bit more irony than I can handle.

<comment><USER19> No where in the article was there a call for a DDoS campaign. They're saying to be active in the protest of SOPA by putting it on your website and by encouraging other to do so as well: "Encourage friends, businesses, organizations, social media to take a stand along side us in the same way. Use/distribute the OpBlackOut material we've provided for this purpose, or make your own (but please try to be concise and indict SOPA specifically so the message is clear, unanimous and omnipresent)"

<comment><USER18> Yeah, reading it again I see the .zip file for download. I think the message would be more accessible if they had an example site that didn't didn't require one to download and unzip stuff onto your local drive. (hmm...)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Mmm...short of making a judgment on this, I think as the forces of order and chaos get pushed into closer-range conflict by the ideologues on either side, there are bound to be more violent confrontations until the matter's settled one way or another. Having it settled in favor of chaos would be to basically retain the status quo. Settling in favor of order would be an entirely different internet. Our impact in this, individually is limited. I'm not backing Anonymous by posting this, but I do think at some point we need to pick a side and support not just the logical, but also to some extent the emotional arguments that go along with it.</comment>


The benefits and costs of investing in early childhood education - <AUTHOR> http://equitablegrowth.org/report/the-benefits-and-costs-of-investing-in-early-childhood-education/ <comment><AUTHOR> Some summary charts, claiming $750 in per-capita benefits by 2050, breaking even in 8 years: [http://equitablegrowth.org/report/prek-snapshot- us/](http://equitablegrowth.org/report/prek-snapshot-us/)</comment>