Stop Calling it 'Identity Theft' - <AUTHOR> https://securitybytes.io/quick-one-stop-calling-it-identity-theft-10a5ab9e1b60 <comment><USER2> Regardless of what you call it, the fact that someone using your information to take out loans and signing all sorts of contracts should never be your problem.

If a credit card company issues a card in your name to someone else, then clearly they didn't do their verification properly.

It should be possible to have all your personal information floating around and still be certain that no one can use that information for anything. I'm pretty sure it works for Sweden where their SSN aren't secret, nor are addresses or phone numbers.

Sure that may mean that you need to show up in the bank, or have a secure government authentication method, but that's not beyond implementation.

<comment><USER3> Exactly, some of this is semantics. To me, a skimmer duplicated card isn't identity theft. Taking my identifying information and opening new credit is.

Again, this whole industry needs to change. We could cut massive amounts of the estimated $200B loss in the US with just simple things like mandatory chip+pin, 2FA or CCV for online purchases, your credit is always frozen and only unfrozen for a 24 hour period at your specific request (requiring MFA). It is so silly when I have to type in my 5 digit zip at the gas pump (something someone could easily find online or by asking for ID) even though my card has a chip.

<comment><USER4> Low trust versus high trust society is the thing you need to understand here. You live in a high trust society which means that, in general, it is more efficient to optimise for conversion rate than to deny valid but incompetent or "unable to provide all the details" consumers.

<comment><USER5> While that might be true to a degree, chances are that what is really going on here is that it is more profitable to externalize the costs of insufficient authentication to unsuspecting people. While both result in higher profits, one does so by actually increasing the value that is being created while the other does so by making a third party pay, possibly even more than the increase in profit, so one of them is more efficient for society, while the other is just more efficient for the company but might still even be less efficient for society overall.

<comment><USER4> I understand, but in practice the fraud liability when it comes to identifying parties between two huge companies is very, very clearly laid out.

As in, weeks or months or years of discussion.

Not talking about credit cards thougn which are kind of a special case, where yes, totally merchant gets screwed.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Mitchell & Webb did a sketch on this over ten years ago: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CS9ptA3Ya9E](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CS9ptA3Ya9E) It's worth a listen.

<comment><USER7> I was going to post this, just be warned anyone who was meant to be working, the Mitchell & Webb "related videos" on YouTube is an incredibly addictive spiral.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Someone used my credit card number and went on a spending spree with it about six months ago, and I had to get my details changed and a new number issued. Since then I've been referring to it as having my identity stolen. Not too long ago I met a guy who worked for a credit union, and he ripped me a new one for it, saying "you didn't get your identity stolen, that's just credit card fraud!"

While I see his point, that there's much, much more serious forms of it out there, I still think it's pretty much the same thing, and that just because I could get it more or less taken care of with an hour at the bank and didn't have to go through years and years of pain to get things undone doesn't make it any less identity theft.

Which is kind of the opposite point of the linked rant, I know. He's saying we shouldn't let it be called that so corporations can pin the responsibility on you and wiggle out of any liability.

<comment><USER9> Your case is distinctly different from "identity theft." They simply got an existing card number (by skimmg, by writing it down while holding your card, by dumping the database of some ecommerce website, etc.) They didn't pretend to be you and ask a bank for a new line of credit. Your case is most assuredly credit card fraud and nowhere near identity theft.

<comment><USER10> It's both "credit card fraud", and "gross negligence" on the part of the banks for not implementing a long overdue secure payment system.

<comment><USER11> There's no incentive for banks or credit card companies to fix online CC fraud, because it costs them nothing.

They provide no reasonable fraud controls, because for card-not-present, the merchant pays for the fraud. The merchant even gives the bank a $20-40 "bonus" in the form of a charge back fee for every occurance.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> If you are having to spend your time and resources to clean up a mess that was not of your making, not to mention prove yourself innocent of making it, then you are most certainly a victim in some sense.

You have a point about insurance, though I would argue that corporations should be required to carry identity theft insurance in proportion to the amount of personal data that they collect and store, for the benefit of the victims created as a result of the theft and misuse of said data.

<comment><USER5> But the point is that the bank is who makes you a victim by baselessly asserting that you are responsible for their blunders. You are not the victim of someone pretending to be you, the bank is. You are the victim of the bank making you spend resources on cleaning up their failure.

<comment><USER13> This only matters because a measure of blame is assigned to the victims. Even if we switch the words around and call it bank fraud, individual whose identity was copied will still be the one to endure the pain and effort of putting their affairs back in order.

<comment><USER5> Except it probably doesn't, framing matters.

People put up with it because they are led to believe that it's their problem, just like if someone broke into their home and stole their TV. People would be much less likely to accept the same reasoning from their bank if it were not stated as "Someone stole your identity, we are sorry you have to pay this", but instead as "A third party defrauded us, we are sorry you have to pay this".

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Identity Theft sounds better than, "someone pretending to be me has lead corporations, agencies, and other bureaucrats who have control and influence on my life to mistakenly attribute another person's actions to me, costing me time, damage to my reputation and money." And then all those other things.

<comment><USER15> That, I think, is how this article is trying to re-frame the conversation. If we describe someone using my details to take out a loan in my name as "identity theft", then it sounds like the onus is on me to sort it out and (possibly) absorb some of the cost of doing so. If we describe it as "credit fraud", then that makes it clear that the problem lies with the loaning organisation, is independent of me, and I should suffer no consequences.

<comment><USER16> Either way, "identity theft" or "credit fraud", the onus is on someone other than the corporation that let it happen. It's the victim, or the criminal, but neither of them blame the corporation with the name alone.

So I don't see any point in trying to get millions of people to change what they call it, if that's the other option.

<comment><USER17> I think the point is to change the way people think about the situation. If you reframe the problem for enough people, it might become an issue politicians campaign with.

<comment><USER16> Exactly, but as I pointed out, they've failed to reframe it so that the company is at fault. It's still the same thing under those 2 names. They're putting all that work into a new name that doesn't do what they want.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> The Mitchell and Webb clip about this is great: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CS9ptA3Ya9E](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CS9ptA3Ya9E)

</comment><comment><USER19> What amazes me is - Why the social security number was ever used as an identity number in the first place. This number should simply be used to trace your account with the social security department when you retire. The practice by institutions to use the last four digits of your social security as some sort of de facto secret number is not only foolish but laughable that no one has a problem with it. I should be able to freely float my social security number and not expect to have my identity stolen.

<comment><USER20> CGP Gray did a really good video[1] about this recently. The short version is that it's the least terrible mechanism presently available for uniquely identifying and disambiguating American citizens.

[1] [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Erp8IAUouus](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Erp8IAUouus)

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> I'm American.

I've come to understand that the organizations I used to favor, like Google, consider me to be a product and not a customer. Now, I'm realizing that my nation considers me to be a resource and not a person.

<comment><USER22> It's always been like that, what changed was the advertising.

Don't be depressed about it. Poke some fun at the owners.

<comment><USER21> Haha that's fair.

You're right - it's tough not to get angry about it given that I can't individually do much about it.

Laughter is the best medicine (or distraction).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> We should just call it "libel".

The credit issuer fails to adequately verify the identity of someone applying for credit (the thief) and lets them take out a loan in your name. The thief defaults on the loan. The credit issuer commits libel by reporting that you were the thief to the credit reporting agencies.

There are two crimes contained in every case of "identity theft". Everyday consumers are affected by libel. Credit issuers are affected by fraud (enabled by their own negligence).

</comment><comment><USER24> There is a question I've been pondering in the wake of all of these data breaches but I'm not a lawyer so my assessment doesn't necessarily reflect what the law says.

If person X opens a credit card in person Y's name and doesn't pay it back, the bank will tell all of the credit agencies that person Y doesn't pay their debts. When person Y eventually finds out about this would they be able to go after the bank for slander?

<comment><USER23> Libel, not slander. Slander is spoken, libel is written or otherwise published. I'm not a lawyer, but probably. Since you'd have to prove that the bank made false statements of fact to get the credit agency to remove the fraudulent debt from your record anyway you'd necessarily have gathered plenty of evidence to help your case.

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> While I get the author's point, the problem is that for a lot of us in the US (those primarily impacted by Equifax I believe, unless they do work overseas as well), if someone claims to be me and gets the IRS to send my income tax refund to them, they are not going to mea culpa and send me the refund too. I'm just hosed.

<comment><USER26> _they are not going to mea culpa and send me the refund too_

Isn't that exactly the author's point? In that scenario, the IRS has taken harmful action against you to make up a cost they incurred by falling for someone else's fraud, and they get away with it by calling you the _fraudster 's_ victim, not theirs.

<comment><USER25> while that's fair, they also state "The only way I get to be victim is if one of these organisations is duped and then they can't or won't address their mistakes or shortfalls and therefore they choose to pass the buck to me." And in this particular case, there is no recourse and you're certainly a victim. Last year there was something going on that they increased the fraud prevention-esque refunds with delays for a majority of people filing. Hopefully the IRS does similar this go around (and going forward).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> "The term 'Identity Theft' implies, and its usage accepts, that the person whose identity is being stolen is the victim. They're almost always not."

Flat out wrong. They nearly always are. They frequently have their credit impacted as a result of non-payments for credit, mortgages, etc. Also, I see "identity theft" as a subset of theft by conversion: [https://definitions.uslegal.com/t/theft-by- conversion/](https://definitions.uslegal.com/t/theft-by-conversion/) "Theft by conversion occurs when someone wrongfully uses property or funds of another for their own purposes." A person's name, SSN, address, financial history, credit rating, etc. are all their property. And it is being used without their consent and in blatant violation of other laws that already exist. They clearly are a victim (but not the only victim) of these illegal acts.

Also, let's not forget that it typically takes an enormous amount of time and effort to fully undo the damage. That time alone has a cost - and it has been forcefully taken from the person whose identity has been stolen by the perpetrator(s) of these crimes.

<comment><USER28> I think you're proving the authors point by misunderstanding it. Using the term 'Identity Theft' buys into the way that the corporations involved want us to think about the credit market. It allows them to take a crime against them and allow it to blow back against someone that was not a party to the fraud. But what the Equifax hack is now forcing people to confront is that no consumer is able to keep their information private. The system won't allow it. So forcing consumers to be in any way culpable for what is actually fraud against the corporation that is extending credit is wrong and we need to adjust our terminology to make this explicit.

All the pain that you're noting is imposed by the credit system, not the criminal who's "stealing" your identity. We're not victims of the criminal's crime, we're victims of the system's response to that crime. And that's an important distinction. The fact that we treat identity theft any different than if the bank (or other credit-extending institution) was defrauded/robbed through some other means (confidence scheme, armed robbery, etc) isn't correct and if we, as consumers, expect that situation to change, we need to reject biased terminology that frames the issue in the light that the corporations want it to be framed.

Your identity wasn't stolen, the bank was defrauded due to insufficient authentication procedures. When you say it that way, it becomes ridiculous that the consumer should have to endure the ordeal that they currently do.

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> I can't remember one place in Norway where this is still possible.

Every bank is using 2-auth for sign-in and signing papers. They don't event accept your hand signature without the 2-auth in addition.

You can't pay on webpages without 2-auth, so good luck using my card.

All the mail from the Government is digital, and of course with... 2-auth.

I even got a text when my child was born, saying we could now could fill in his name. And both parents had to sign the documents with... (you get it)

</comment><comment><USER30> Quicker one: start calling it 'identity fraud'

<comment><USER31> Still missing the point in my opinion. Nothing is happening to my identity, it is their verification mechanisms which are failing.

<comment><USER13> Well, something did happen to your identity - someone else associated a bunch of fraudulent purchases with it.

Whether it's your fault or not, whether banks assume all fault or not, it is still ultimately your identity (your credit score, your bank accounts, your home) which ends up troubled.

Consider for a moment the tech alternative. If someone hacks their way into my Google mail account and uses it to send out a ton of spam, who is going to suffer the consequences for it? Google, for using insecure sms messages for 2fa and not requiring 2fa for all accounts, or me when my account is closed?

<comment><USER5> > Well, something did happen to your identity - someone else associated a > bunch of fraudulent purchases with it.

Still, nothing happened to your identity. Your identity is who you are. You still are you.

> Whether it's your fault or not, whether banks assume all fault or not, it is > still ultimately your identity (your credit score, your bank accounts, your > home) which ends up troubled.

Apart from the fact that none of that is your identity, but rather your reputation, your contract, and your property: No, you actually have it all backwards.

There is no law of nature that implies that if a third party impersonates you to a bank, say, that therefore the bank has to start fraudulently telling people that you don't pay your loans, or harrass you to pay the loan they gave to that third party. Yes, that is a correct description of what banks actually do nowadaya, but the whole point of this discussion is that that should be illegal. The bank should be liable for reputational damage they cause by incorrectly attributing a third party's actions to you, and you'd be surprised how little your "identity" ends up troubled next time the bank is defrauded.

> Consider for a moment the tech alternative. If someone hacks their way into > my Google mail account and uses it to send out a ton of spam, who is going > to suffer the consequences for it? Google, for using insecure sms messages > for 2fa and not requiring 2fa for all accounts, or me when my account is > closed?

Are we talking about what google would do, or about what google should be held accountable for?

<comment><USER32> I cannot understand the lack of linguistic empathy in this kind of reply; many commenters are clearly using the term "identity theft" with a precise meaning, basically to descibe when somebody else is able to impersonate you. answering by a dictionary lookup of the words definition is entirely offtopic in my opinion.

And calling for a name to be changed is different from criticizing people who use it, some concept need to be expressed and sometimes the only way to meaningfully express them is with an improper term.

<comment><USER5> Well, except that this (sub-)thread was about how "identity" is a misleading word to use in this context, which is why I read falcolas' comment as a justification for why it is actually not misleading, which is why I focused on how that justification falls short.

If that comment was not meant as a justification, the only interpretation I can come up with is that it's a description of what empirically happens nowadays when something commonly called "identity theft" occurs, in which case I agree it could charitably be read as a reasonably accurate description ... however then it seems like a completely pointless comment, as that is essentially just the premise of the whole discussion, restated in a context where it has no specific relevance whatsoever.

Did I miss something?

Though I also think that criticizing people who use misleading language is legitimate as well, even if the meaning of what they are saying is perfectly clear, as long as you don't confuse the criticism of the form with criticism of the content.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> "The term 'Identity Theft' implies, and its usage accepts, that the person whose identity is being stolen is the victim. They're almost always not."

What.

If someone uses your information to take advantage of your good credit and get a car loan, then defaults on that loan, guess whose credit score just got hurt? Guess who's going to have a harder time getting a loan for one's own new car?

The whole article stems from the assumption that stealing someone's identity doesn't make that someone a victim. That assumption is blatantly false, and therefore so is pretty much the rest of the article.

Call it what you want, but fraud committed in your name still harms you, and thus still makes you a victim.

<comment><USER5> > Call it what you want, but fraud committed in your name still harms you, and > thus still makes you a victim.

No, it doesn't. If someone comes to you and claims that they are John Smith, and you loan them a thousand bucks, only to discover later that the person who you gave the thousand bucks to actually wasn't John Smith, then you, and you alone, are the victim, and you are out of a thousand bucks. Nothing of this has anything to do with John Smith.

Only if _you_ then harass John Smith to pay you a thousand bucks by making fraudulent claims that you loaned him a thousand bucks and tell everyone that John Smith is not credit worthy, then John Smith becomes a victim, specifically a victim of you.

<comment><USER33> "No, it doesn't."

Yes, it tangibly and demonstrably does. It means that the process of establishing/asserting your identity is much harder, since now there's someone else running around with the credentials normally used to assert said identity. You now need to spend time and money invalidating whatever credentials you can and hoping that the ones you can't invalidate aren't actually compromised.

If someone manages to get your Gmail password and use it to send spam, you're still a victim of cybercrime, even though you weren't necessarily a victim of the spamming.

Same thing here. Someone is using your credentials (like SSN and other identifiers) to defraud someone else. Even though you're not the direct victim of that fraud, you're still a victim of identity theft, since your credentials were compromised and used by someone else.

<comment><USER5> > Yes, it tangibly and demonstrably does. It means that the process of > establishing/asserting your identity is much harder, since now there's > someone else running around with the credentials normally used to assert > said identity. You now need to spend time and money invalidating whatever > credentials you can and hoping that the ones you can't invalidate aren't > actually compromised.

None of that is a harm from the fraud, it's all harm from the bank's unjustified claims .

> If someone manages to get your Gmail password and use it to send spam, > you're still a victim of cybercrime, even though you weren't necessarily a > victim of the spamming.

If someone manages to get your gmail password from Google, then Google is the victim of cybercrime. If Google then reacts by closing your account, you are a victim of Google.

> Same thing here. Someone is using your credentials (like SSN and other > identifiers) to defraud someone else. Even though you're not the direct > victim of that fraud, you're still a victim of identity theft, since your > credentials were compromised and used by someone else.

If you want to call the behavior of the bank (or whatever) in this situation "identity theft", well, sure. Though I would suggest that that is highly misleading. More appropriate terms would be slander or blackmail, maybe?

<comment><USER33> The fact that this is identity theft - and that the person whose credentials were used is indeed a victim - has absolutely zero to do with the bank's behavior. It has everything to do with the fact that credentials were stolen and used to impersonate someone else.

So:

"then Google is the victim of cybercrime"

Google's credentials weren't stolen. The user's credentials were stolen. The user is therefore the victim of the theft of credentials - a.k.a. "cybercrime" or - in this case - identity theft.

Google is also arguably a victim of fraud (or some other related crime), sure, but that is entirely separate from the fact that credentials were stolen in the first place.

"behavior of the bank"

Again: the bank's actions are irrelevant to the fact that credentials were stolen in the first place. Sure, it's a pretty shitty credential system, but they _are_ credentials nonetheless, and them being used to impersonate someone makes that someone a victim, plain and simple.

I'm really not sure how else to explain this. Seems pretty cut and dry to me.

<comment><USER5> There is one very important unstated assumption in all of this: Who defines what is considered credentials?

Let's forget about the Google example for a moment, as it's not really that great an analogy.

When someone steals your SSN, say, what they have stolen is just your SSN. There is nothing about an SSN that makes it inherently a credential, it's just a unique number signifying you. The only thing that then makes it a de-facto credential is the decision of a bank, say. The bank decides that they will take someone telling them your SSN as proof of your identity, and that is how it becomes a credential. If the bank does not decide to accept knowledge of your SSN as proof of your identity, then there is absolutely no problem with someone stealing your SSN, because then it's not a credential.

This unilateral decision on the part of the bank is what the "identity theft victim" is the victim of. The bank might just as well decide that knowing your first name proves your identity, thus supposedly making your name a credential.

<comment><USER33> "Who defines what is considered credentials?"

Whoever writes Wikipedia articles, for one: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Credential](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Credential)

        Examples of credentials include [...] identification
        documents, [...] passwords, user names, [...] and so on.

A social security number would fall under either "username" or "password", depending on how it's used, and the SS card itself would fall under "identification documents".

"it's just a unique number signifying you."

A.k.a. a credential.

"The bank decides that they will take someone telling them your SSN as proof of your identity"

Yes, because this is already commonplace throughout the U.S., including by the U.S. government. We can debate the pros and cons of the current SSN-reliant system all we want, but that doesn't change the fact that an SSN is a credential establishing identity, and that therefore the acquisition of an SSN by an unauthorized party constitutes theft of that credential and - ergo - "identity theft". It also doesn't change the fact that the legitimate owner of that credential was a victim of that actual theft (in addition to whatever actions from the bank in response to other crimes enabled by that theft).

"thus supposedly making your name a credential."

Your name _is_ a credential, per the above definition. It's a shitty credential, yes, and one which is easily forged (and by no means unique, unlike a SSN), but it's a credential nonetheless.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> Credit card fraud and identify theft are distinct threats with distinct solutions. On underground forums they're also distinct products obtained and sold in different ways (cvvs/dumps vs fullz).

It has taken a long time and a lot of media exposure to raise awareness of these two concepts to ordinary people. My parents now know what both identity theft and credit card fraud are - and they understand the basics of how to deal with each.

To start over again with any of these terms because of a nuance of definition and semantics would be extremely counterproductive.

</comment><comment><USER35> Regarding the way social security numbers are used in the US. It's the first thing you learn in security I'd say; don't ever ever ever use identifiers as passwords.

</comment><comment><USER36> If someone commits fraud in your name, and you suffer the consequences of their actions, then you're one of the victims of their fraud.

Noting that things bundled under "identity theft" are actually different crimes isn't a novel observation; the whole point of that label is to group the class of crimes where a criminal uses your personal information to perpetrate various kinds of fraud.

</comment><comment><USER37> It is identity theft in that they are posing as you to so they can perform fraud. It's identity as a societal thing like id with you name but their picture. Being able to do this remotely like credit charges(can be in brick n mortars though) etc just means normally they just need enough info. Once again it is mor societal concept of how we identify people we don't know.

<comment><USER38> The point is they're not stealing my identity from me, but from a third party. Why should I be on the hook for the consequences of someone else's negligence?

<comment><USER39> What about the _term_ "identity theft" suggests that you should be on the hook?

<comment><USER40> The idea that there is a victim, and that's you. You had a bad thing done to you and are now the worse. In fact nothing was done to you -- some big stupid corporation gave money to a criminal is what happened. The big stupid corporation would prefer that this be seen as : you owe them the money because they thought the criminal was you.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER41> I would call it "losing my sh!t" but I have already lost it even if I didnt really opt-in in the first place. And now I have lost it so much I have nothing left to lose...makes you wonder about a credit collapse huh. With everyone's personal information freely available I wonder if free credit monitoring would even matter.

</comment><comment><USER42> It's short for "identity data theft". You can't actually steal an identity.

</comment><comment><USER43> The cases given are already under regulatory protection and so have their own terminology. There are kinds of thefts which leave the bit trail pointing to someone, when they shouldn't be. If the bit trail is not crossing major regulatory boundaries, but is affecting things like what Google knows about someone's personal preference or what items Facebook decides to show in his/her feed, or some personally incriminating things is done to them in the digital world (ex the recent post about upwork), the fact that folks may trust the bit trail more than they trust the person can be damaging esply if in- person contact is not the norm. In all these cases it involves someone taking an identifying token and pretending to be you for a while. The taking is done without permission, so it amounts to stealing. So I don't see a particular harm in bucketing this category of activity as "identity theft".

</comment><comment><USER44> It should be called "Reputation Theft". Because what the criminal is doing is harming _your_ reputation with companies that _you_ want to do business with in the future.

<comment><USER5> No, the criminal is not doing anything like that. It's the company that is harming your reputation with them by blaming somebody else's actions on you.

</comment></comment><comment><USER45> [http://thinkinghard.com/blog/IdentityTheft.html](http://thinkinghard.com/blog/IdentityTheft.html) (2005)

</comment><comment><USER46> Identity theft means a specific thing. It doesn't mean someone is pretending to be physically you. what did I just read?

</comment><comment><USER47> But if one fraudulent use involving your identity enables a different fraudulent use and then another so that is becomes multiple cases such that it impunes my character then i would call that identity theft.

</comment><comment><USER48> Identity theft is not a joke, Jim! Millions of families suffer every year!

</comment><comment><USER49> Just like don't call people using computers for illegal activity a Hacker.

To bad that one was decided a long time ago.

<comment> wu-ikkyu Is HackerNews a place solely for news about people using computers for illegal activity?

<comment><USER49> Definition of Hacker: [https://www.merriam- webster.com/dictionary/hacker](https://www.merriam- webster.com/dictionary/hacker)

1 :one that hacks

2 :a person who is inexperienced or unskilled at a particular activity

        a tennis hacker

3 :an expert at programming and solving problems with a computer

4 :a person who illegally gains access to and sometimes tampers with information in a computer system

RMS on Hacking and Cracking

Yet when I say I am a hacker, people often think I am making a naughty admission, presenting myself specifically as a security breaker. How did this confusion develop?

Around 1980, when the news media took notice of hackers, they fixated on one narrow aspect of real hacking: the security breaking which some hackers occasionally did. They ignored all the rest of hacking, and took the term to mean breaking security, no more and no less. The media have since spread that definition, disregarding our attempts to correct them. As a result, most people have a mistaken idea of what we hackers actually do and what we think.

You can help correct the misunderstanding simply by making a distinction between security breaking and hacking—by using the term "cracking" for security breaking. The people who do it are "crackers" ( __*). Some of them may also be hackers, just as some of them may be chess players or golfers; most of them are not.

[https://stallman.org/articles/on- hacking.html](https://stallman.org/articles/on-hacking.html)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER50> Well , if we're just going to go on rants about words, then I'm going to bring up that old pro-piracy thing.

It's not identity theft because the other guy hasn't taken it away from you. Either both of you have it or neither does, and the first is just copying and the second is vandalism.

<comment><USER51> Piracy, not privacy, correct? :-)

<comment><USER50> Haha oops.</comment></comment></comment>


WebLisp: A Lisp Interpreter that runs inside the browser - <AUTHOR> http://christophdietze.com/weblisp

<comment><USER2> And a quick shout-out to JSLisp : <http://joeganley.com/code/jslisp.html> . That was an educational piece of JS for me.

<comment><USER3> Hey, thanks! I wrote that. I went here to post it, and it was already here.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Arclite is a subset of Arc written in Javascript.

<http://jonathan.tang.name/files/arclite/index.html>

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks, that looks interesting.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Sweet. It appears to have proper tail recursion.

(define (fib n) (fib-help n (lambda (fn fn-1) fn)))

(define (fib-help n k) (if (<= n 1) (k 1 1) (fib-help (- n 1) (lambda (fn-1 fn-2) (k (+ fn-1 fn-2) fn-1)))))

(fib 1000)

</comment><comment><USER6> So, are there any in-browser lisps that, you know, do something? Maybe one that plays in the Pipes space, letting you work with feeds of various sorts?

</comment><comment><USER7> <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greenspun%27s_Tenth_Rule>

<comment><USER8> The Tenth Rule applies only to "sufficiently complicated" programs that add so many features and support libraries that they become a poor subset of Lisp.

Implementing your a subset dialect of your favorite language in a poor/hostile/new environment is quite hackish, imo.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> How many of these are there anyway?

<comment><USER10> Franz, Inc. Allegro Common Lisp has Prompt and Maxima: * [http://www.franz.com/products/allegrocl/prompt/javatelnet.ht...](http://www.franz.com/products/allegrocl/prompt/javatelnet.html) * <http://www.franz.com/success/demos/maxima/javatelnet.html>

<comment><USER8> That is NOT a "web" Lisp; you're interacting via telnet with Franz Common Lisp, a piece of REAL software with 20+ years of history.

Type this into it:

      (disassemble (lambda ()))

It should spit an assembly language listing.

<comment><USER11> (disassemble (lambda ()))

<comment><USER8> Not a HN textarea form input, you type that into a Common Lisp repl (interactive shell.) It should look like this:

      CG-USER(1): (disassemble (lambda ()))
      ;; disassembly of #<Function (:ANONYMOUS-LAMBDA 130) @ #x20ec218a>
      ;; formals:

      ;; code start: #x20ec214c:
         0: e3 03       jcxz	5
         2: ff 57 8b  call	*[edi-117]      ; SYS::TRAP-WNAERR
         5: 80 7f cb 00 cmpb	[edi-53],$0   ; SYS::C_INTERRUPT-PENDING
         9: 74 03       jz	14
         11: ff 57 87  call	*[edi-121]      ; SYS::TRAP-SIGNAL-HIT
         14: 8b c7       movl	eax,edi
         16: f8          clc
         17: 8b 75 fc  movl	esi,[ebp-4]
         20: c3          ret
         21: 90          nop

Proof that it's not a javascript "web lisp" :-)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> No macros?</comment>


Dawn of the Ted - <AUTHOR> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=61RJGQcG_sM

<comment><AUTHOR> Warning: Contains Teddy Bear death</comment>


Jim Henson's Violent Wilkins Coffee Commercials (1957-1961) - <AUTHOR> http://www.openculture.com/2012/05/jim_hensons_violent_wilkins_coffee_commercials_1957-1961.html

<comment><USER2> Interesting how innovation is not an isolated incident in but rather seems to permeate many innovative peoples' lives.</comment>


Show HN: Edit any website in your browser with HTML5 - <AUTHOR> http://edit.lize.it/

<comment><USER2> Or you could just paste this: javascript:document.body.contentEditable='true'; document.designMode='on'; void 0

</comment><comment><USER3> Fun way to make fake headlines on nytimes.com, just had my wife fooled for a second :)

</comment><comment><USER4> some background info: <http://blog.whatwg.org/the-road-to- html-5-contenteditable>

</comment><comment><USER5> Well. "Frape" is a term I had never heard before.</comment>


Gmail is boiling the frog – and we are the frog - <AUTHOR> http://www.zdnet.com/gmail-is-boiling-the-frog-and-we-are-the-frog-7000023256/ <comment><USER2> "Google has positioned Gmail as a gateway drug to a world where everything runs according to Google."

This is precisely the point – software becomes simpler and more powerful when it is integrated. See: Apple.

</comment><comment><USER3> I've been looking to migrate away from the G for a while now, but aside from hosting my own what are the best alternatives? Or should I really just rent my own server space?

<comment><USER4> Try Outlook.com. Even if you've gotten used to Gmail's unconventional UX, you'll feel right at home with Outlook.com. It feels snappy, fluid, everything is marked clearly, and easy to use.

It's actually joy to use.

<comment><USER5> I second that. outlook.com is great and clean.

<comment><USER3> from wikipedia:

"Outlook.com has promised to respect user's privacy, specifically targeting Gmail's privacy practices.[45] Outlook.com doesn't scan emails or attachments for advertising information and personal conversations are ad-free entirely"

I find myself thinking two things - one, that's great I'm sold. And two, is this really how low my standards have become for my email? I think I'll give it a try and meanwhile keep looking into hosting my own. Problem is I've had my gmail account forever so it takes a lot to move away from it (updating resumes, cover-letter templates, letting people know it's changing....)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> fastmail.fm would also be an alternative, even though it isn't free.</comment>


Sleep myths 'damaging your health' - <AUTHOR> https://www.bbc.com/news/health-47937405 <comment><USER2> Staying in bed is a big issue with me. If I get less than 5 hours I take a major productivity hit. I've identified most drivers of my insomnia, but not all.

Low caffeine, go to be without a full stomach, get up at a consistent time, keep the room cool. Beyond that, if you have suggestions I'm all ears.

<comment><USER3> Get rid of screen time for 3 hours before bed.

Also, I highly recommend the book "Why we sleep"

Edit: you can also experiment woth wearing socks (by changing limb temperature you influence blood flow and heat dissappation

<comment><USER4> THREE hours? What the heck do you do for that nearly 20% of your waking life?

I guess you buy a lot of books, or visit the library a lot. I personally like reading but not so much that I want to do it for three hours every flipping night.

<comment><USER5> The concern is not the act of reading, but rather the additional exposure to light suppressing melatonin production.

Melatonin plays an important role in the sleep/wake cycle.

Avoiding unnecessary light for a period of 3 hours prior to sleep gives the body a chance to run it's shutdown scripts by producing enough melatonin, etc.

[https://www.foundmyfitness.com/episodes/melatonin-insulin- re...](https://www.foundmyfitness.com/episodes/melatonin-insulin-response)

<comment><USER6> Would putting all monitors in warm/night mode be sufficient?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I highly recommend the book "Why We Sleep" if you're interested in learning the actual mechanics of sleep.

<comment><USER8> Currently reading this one. It's already the most impactful book I've ever read.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Does anyone believe any of these so called myths?

<comment><USER10> The laziness of these articles is astonishing. Myth #5 is "Hitting the Snooze Button". That's not a myth. It's not a claim or belief of any kind.

<comment><USER11> Laziness perhaps, but consider incompetence as another possibility. Many journalists seem to have only the sketchiest command of English.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Who on earth thinks drinking helps you sleep better? I've missed out on the best factoids it seems.

<comment><USER13> Some people have problem falling asleep. Drinking until they pass out is a solution of sorts.

<comment><USER14> Amen

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Most of these aren't myths, they're unhealthy habits we struggle to escape from.

</comment><comment><USER16> > People with the condition are more likely to develop high blood pressure, an > irregular heartbeat and have a heart attack or a stroke.

I'm pretty sure that obsesity has been linked to snoring, so is it possible that this is just a side effect?

<comment><USER17> From what I understand poor sleep quality is one of the reasons obese people see these issues. But maybe my understanding is wrong and it's just all correlated without causation going in that particular direction.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> I realize this sounds hokey, but the Deep Sleep Pillow Spray is phenomenal.

<comment><USER19> Looked it up and it appears to contain lavendar - which iirc is a potential hormone disrupter

<comment><USER18> Chamomile too. Just spray it on your pillow before bed and it totally sets you up for the first phase of your sleep routine.

Apparently, it doesn't just work for me! [https://www.womenshealthmag.com/uk/health/sleep/a707967/this...](https://www.womenshealthmag.com/uk/health/sleep/a707967/this- works-deep-sleep-spray/)

<comment><USER19> But at what cost?</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Alexa: Guess My Number (#2 on YouTube Trending) - <AUTHOR> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cNgT8qEQJ3w <comment><USER2> So it seems like an invalid number just sets the number guessed to the actual number, but carry's on executing as if you need to pick a lower number.

Why would it work like that!?</comment>


Can We Have Prosperity Without Growth? Yes - <AUTHOR> http://greyenlightenment.com/can-we-have-prosperity-without-growth-yes/ <comment><USER2> I sure hope so, as growth cannot be maintained indefinitely.</comment>


Machine learning predicts World Cup winner - <AUTHOR> https://www.technologyreview.com/s/611397/machine-learning-predicts-world-cup-winner/ <comment><USER2> It looks like this article has been posted many times: See also: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17297264](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17297264)</comment>


Optimizing Gross National Happiness instead of Gross Domestic Product - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/07/world/asia/07bhutan.html

<comment><USER2> Bhutan: "We're happy having nothing."</comment>


The Fourth Type of Variance - <AUTHOR> https://www.benjamin.pizza/posts/2019-01-11-the-fourth-type-of-variance.html <comment><USER2> I read about this concept before, I think here: [https://typelevel.org/blog/2016/09/19/variance- phantom.html](https://typelevel.org/blog/2016/09/19/variance-phantom.html)

</comment><comment><USER3> Also known as bivariance.

</comment><comment><USER4> I too haven't seen invariance used much, however recently I had a case where my data type (in Haskell) encapsulated both serialization and deserialization from a base type, and in this case the only way to "convert" the data type's type parameter was with an invariant transformation. This turned out to be a very elegant way to define a type that could be converted to and from yaml (though both directions were optional), because then the data type also stored the _specification_ of the expected yaml input(s) (since converting to and from other types won't change the original yaml representation).

</comment><comment><USER5> OT: What's with the the .pizza domain? Any particular reason?

I clicked half-expecting some math behind people's choice of toppings

</comment><comment><USER6> Does Java's type erasure/wild cards count as bivariance/phantom variance?</comment>


The Mac App Store and the "MZFinance.NoGUIDTokenFailureKey_message " Error - <AUTHOR> http://brooksreview.net/2011/01/mac-app-error/ <comment><USER2> Here is the direct link to the discussion about the problem on Apple's support forum:

[http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?threadID=2709726...](http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?threadID=2709726&start=0&tstart=0)</comment>


what do VCs think?  - <AUTHOR>

When I started developing my site I never thought about needing any capital. Sure I needed private servers but I managed that. And yes if I had money I wouldn't have a day job but that actually may have helped. its weird but if you are under pressure you become really productive. so after the first year I managed to develop something decent and by next year have paying customers. Then few month ago I got an email from a vc saying that they are interested etc and setup a phone meeting. I had not much of an idea of what vc's do and what they want. Also I had never approached them before. So the only thing I though was to talk about my product and give a demo and explain some of the detail. instead the conversation became something else and very short. I guess they had though we were a large company or something and basically explained that they invest some millions of dollars and in companies with a revenue of about 100,000 per qt or more.
So what's the point? if I had 100,000/qt why would I need investment? All I need is more servers and do more marketing and bring few more people to join.
Also why is a vc interested in investing millions in say similar companies like ours that have a terrible product but perhaps have more users because they are marketing etc., when they can invest in a better product?
The only explanation I can think of is that people feel good about something when they pay more for it. And another explaination is that they just don't get it. I mean if google had gone to a vc before they became google would they be able to see? Another explaination is that they just want to wait until they are realy sure or something... <comment><USER2> No one can give you a definitive answer on VC's since everyone's experience is difference. The following is mine, hope it helps.

<http://www.lovemytool.com/blog/2007/10/vc-worst-enemy.html>

<comment><AUTHOR> enjoyed reading your article.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> ROTFLMAO Hey, some VCs actually do think and some do not. Many play follow the leader and make large profits by doing so. A good thinking VC could help you with capital and connections and advice, if you needed those things. VCs always want to get some measure of control over your business and that often leads to problems. if your business is a service provided to individuals or companies, there is less potential for large upside growth than if you are developing a stand alone business that generates it's own brand and revenue.</comment>


Big Ideas That Don't Work in Education - <AUTHOR> http://www.npr.org/sections/ed/2015/08/13/430050765/five-big-ideas-that-don-t-work-in-education/# <comment><USER2> One of my favorite books from the last few years is "The Smartest Kids in the World." The reporter visits three countries that do very well on the international PISA test, and talks about what can indeed work in the US and other countries.

She (and the locals) are very negative about South Korea, but very positive about Poland and Finland. And she points out that all three countries use a fraction of the budget that the US does on education, with much better results.

She also points to the fact that outside of the United States, extracurricular activities -- not to mention sports -- are not a part of the school curriculum. If you want to play basketball, then that's great, but don't expect your high school to care about it, because their job is to worry about your education, not sports.

I have a PhD in learning sciences (roughly "technology and education"), live in Israel, and have three children. And the way that the schools here run depresses me more each year. As the book points out, and as we probably already know, the forces in charge of schools (e.g., politicians, teacher unions, and taxpayers) are basically aligned against any real reform. Gimmicks such as technology look great, but are virtually useless -- a form of "education theater," as it were.

Israelis talk nonstop about class sizes, but I think that a much bigger problem is that we pay our teachers nothing, and give them no respect or power -- and are then surprised that the quality of teachers has declined precipitously.

From everything I can tell, we would do well to give teachers massive salary increases, then make it hard to become a teacher and easy to fire bad ones. Then give the teachers huge freedom to do what they want. And yes, this will cost money (which the taxpayers don't want to hear), but on balance it seems to work for most people, most of the time.

<comment><USER3> "From everything I can tell, we would do well to give teachers massive salary increases, then make it hard to become a teacher and easy to fire bad ones. Then give the teachers huge freedom to do what they want. And yes, this will cost money (which the taxpayers don't want to hear), but on balance it seems to work for most people, most of the time."

It may not be that expensive, if class sizes are not that important you can have fewer teachers. The problem (in the US) is that the teacher's unions are generally against performance based pay, teacher evaluations and firing bad teachers.

<comment><USER4> > The problem (in the US) is that the teacher's unions are generally against > performance based pay, teacher evaluations and firing bad teachers.

For good reason: who gets to make those decisions? Parents? Imagine being a biology or history teacher in the deep South. Children? We already have data that the most effective teachers are liked least. Administration? Are those older teachers really poor are they just expensive? Are those "merit" bonuses going to the best teacher or to the one who volunteered to coach the basketball team?

The last time a teacher evaluation got implemented in Pennsylvania, they dropped it in a hurry because too many teachers couldn't pass it and they were going to have to pay _WAY_ more to import teachers who could.

As has been pointed out previously, firing a genuinely bad teacher is generally straightforward and the procedure is well-documented. However, the _administration_ doesn't want to put in the time or paperwork to do it. And, maybe, just maybe, that administration that's whining about firing and the overbearing paperwork really doesn't have a case and simply wants rid of the teacher for political reasons.

<comment><USER2> This is a sticky problem, no doubt. But we need to find a way to get rid of bad teachers.

Right now, in both the US and Israel (and perhaps other countries), we're in an extreme and untenable situation, in which bad teachers cannot be fired. In the elementary school that my children attended (and that my son still attends), bad teachers were sent off to teach computers. Or science. And so forth. You can imagine what this tells the children, the parents, and the teachers about how much we value these subjects.

There was a New Yorker story a few years ago that described how bad teachers couldn't be fired... and thus were sent to a building every day, where they checked in and did literally nothing all day. Yes, they received their full salary and benefits in exchange for doing literally nothing.

I'm guessing that a reasonable alternative is to have some sort of weighted system, in which the principal's evaluation, parents' complaints, and student performance all count toward whether a teacher can be fired. The biggest thing should probably be the principal's evaluation, but perhaps if a teacher gets fired, they can get another job, in a different school -- but perhaps the parents' evaluations and the students' performance can be used to determine how many other schools they can go to before being kicked out of the system entirely.

> The last time a teacher evaluation got implemented in Pennsylvania, they > dropped it in a hurry because > too many teachers couldn't pass it and they > were going to have to pay WAY more to import teachers who > could.

This is perhaps the most important point: Good teachers need to be paid well. They need incentive to become teachers, and to remain teachers. Which means that people will have to pay a fair amount in order to get a good education. In the US, this will mean taxes have to go up, which is a recipe for political suicide. In Israel, this means taking money away from other things in the education ministry (since we already pay, per capita, more for schooling than most European countries).

<comment><USER3> I don't think the money issue is a tough sell, if you can demonstrate high returns on the investment. As it is, the US spends more per student than everyone else, but gets mediocre results, so people are not confident that even more spending is going to be worth it.

I think the easiest first step is to spend more on teachers within the current budgets.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I've long been fascinated by what does and doesn't work in classrooms. I'm a graduate student in mathematics and I end up teaching elementary calculus courses to undergrads. This also means that I tend to think about what does and doesn't work in _college_ classrooms.

Two things stuck out to me in this article.

Firstly, Hattie says "Holding students back a grade really does hold students back, with an effect of -0.16." What does this actually mean? Does this mean that at graduation, these students perform 1/6 of a standard deviation below their peers? I'd be more interested if we were also presented with the alternative: how do students who didn't meet whatever minimal standards for grade advancement but were advanced anyway (and thus _could_ have been held back a year, but were not) perform? As an early college math instructor, I'm very familiar with students who are incapable of performing mathematical operations from classes which they've previously passed.

The more I think about it, the more I wonder about what it means to perform at some number of standard deviations above or below others. Is this based on standardized test performance?

The second thing I wonder is related. As an alternative to the common policy of "Achievement Standards", he suggests "The alternative: a focus on growth and progress for each student, no matter where he or she starts." How might one implement this?

For instance, suppose Albert and Beth are entering basic 6th grade math. Beth performs really well and for whatever reason Albert is very distracted and learns almost nothing. The next year rolls around, and Albert and Beth are entering basic 7th grade math. The teacher cannot teach them the exact same, as Albert doesn't understand prerequisite ideas. Is the teacher to instruct normally and then devote additional time to Albert, trying to incrementally increase his understanding? Does Hattie actually advocate Montessori-style schools with self-paced work? Perhaps schools should have a lowest-tier math class which is entirely based on individual students instead of central instruction? Or in this case, should Albert have been kept back a year?

In many other ways, I like and/or understand Hattie's approach and ideas.

<comment><USER6> > The second thing I wonder is related. As an alternative to the common policy > of "Achievement Standards", he suggests "The alternative: a focus on growth > and progress for each student, no matter where he or she starts." How might > one implement this?

One alternative I heard of is called "flipped classrooms". Instead of a teacher delivering a lecture and then the students doing homework at home, the students learn the material at home (via video or textbook) and then do their homework in school, where they can have the teacher give personalized instruction and help.

At a college level it's kinda like Oxford and Cambridge's tutor system.

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> I can't remember which of my Facebook friends the other day recommended this article, but I'm glad I read it. I read John Hattie's book _Visible Learning_ a few years ago on the recommendation of a school board candidate (who succeeded in getting elected) in my local public school district.

As an observer of my children's learning in the local public high school (I have mostly been a homeschooler, but my second son and third son have recently been enrolled in the local high school), I see that "formative assessment" (testing learners on material they are only beginning to learn does indeed seem to be a very helpful way to prompt learners to learn more. I expect to do a lot of formative assessment for the new students I will have the week after next at a school where I am about to begin classroom teaching of middle school mathematics during the regular school day.

I have read another book by Hattie, co-authored with Richard Fletcher, called _Intelligence and Intelligence Testing_ , which is also quite good. Those of you who find this article intriguing and would like to learn more about ideas that work in education are likely to enjoy reading the longer linked paper by John Hattie, "What Doesn't Work in Education: The Politics of Distraction,"[1] which provides more details on the ideas he thinks work and what other ideas don't work and why.

[1] [https://www.pearson.com/hattie/distractions.html](https://www.pearson.com/hattie/distractions.html)

<comment><USER7> > but my second son and third son have recently been enrolled in the local > high school

Just curious, but why the change? (if not due to Life)

<comment><AUTHOR> They felt like trying out the local high school. That has had some distinct trade-offs. The local high school is on an improving trend line, so it has been a better experience for my third son than it was for my second, who is now done there and about to start his university studies.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> The world already has a proven educational model that works, the quarterly college system. Three 5-credit classes per day.

I wouldn't suggest it for grade school, but at least for high school, why not? No grade levels, you have 3 quarters (and use quarters, semesters are just a cost saving measure) per regular year, 4 years.

(FWIW, a quarter of math in a community college is roughly a year in high school.)

Tell students that they have 3 quarters of math to complete at minimum in 4 years. If they fail one quarter, there is lots of time to take it again. Why have the idea of grade levels at all?

Remove 80% of responsibility from teachers for passing or failing, remove all standardized tests, and let's go to a model that we know works.

Edit: To clarify, I am not suggesting we import the ivy league "Make half the students drop out through stress" system. I am proposing a quarterly system of learning where students are free to take the level of course work that is most appropriate to their needs.

<comment><USER9> 1/2 students quit after the first year. 1/2 those left over never complete. yeah it works. the reason we have the modern schooling system is because most apes of our species are not meant for school or jobs. it's a way of training them for both.

<comment><USER8> > 1/2 students quit after the first year. 1/2 those left over never complete.

For what reasons though?

I am advocating a more community college model, smaller introductory class sizes, with a faster paced, but shorter term curriculums, that don't hurt as much if any one particular course is failed. A more targeted model than "grade level".

Traditional universities have a high attrition rate not just due to course work, there is a huge cultural shift, a complete loss of one's traditional support network, a lack of structure that used to be imposed by parents, and many new opportunities for distraction.

I'm not proposing we add any of that to high school! :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> From the article: "In a new paper, "What Doesn't Work In Education: The Politics Of Distraction," published by Pearson Education"

So the NPR piece is based on a publication from Pearson, who has a huge financial stake in the US education market.

[http://www.politico.com/story/2015/02/pearson- education-1150...](http://www.politico.com/story/2015/02/pearson- education-115026.html)

How curious.

<comment><USER11> Akamai has a huge financial stake in the Internet, so do you ignore their "State of the Internet" reports? By virtue of Pearson's business they also have huge systematic insight into the education system. Not worth dismissing the results of the study simply based on that association.

<comment><USER12> Did anyone say that they should be ignored or dismissed?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> > Hattie argues that if parents had the right to select the best teacher in a > given school, that could truly be empowering. It would also be challenging > to implement.

Challenging is an understatement. I suggested that once, and my what blowback I got!

<comment><USER14> Because that many students can't all be assigned to the same teacher? Because it pushes people towards making choices based on internal details vs outcomes?

<comment><USER15> There's one professor I was a TA for who was loved by the students. He taught the course more like a high school physics course than a university course. But, when his students got to higher level physics courses, they were lacking in the basic skills taught in those courses so we'd have to spend extra time covering that material. Also, to break them of bad habits they had. He was the only professor to directly contradict me in front of the students. I had been marking like I had in other courses (he hadn't given any guidelines) and students complained so he made me re-grade everything, totally undercutting me in front of them. He should have let the assignment mark stand and change the marking going forward.

I have no doubt that students would have preferred that professor, but their skills and knowledge would suffer from that choice. Taking the easy road will catch up to you eventually.

<comment><USER16> My favorite EE professor, in hindsight, was the one that had quizzes every week, and only semi-scheduled. Friends who had gone through her course before warned me about how 'awful and strict' she was.

At the time, I hated it, until I realized come the final that I'd never been permitted to slack off and so needed to do much less to get myself ready for it.

<comment><USER15> One of my favourite professors in the department was a prof who had a review on RateMyProfessors.ca as "I'd say she worships Satan, but I think Satan worships her." She was a tough but fair prof and generally only got respect from her students in her upper year elective classes.

She's fairly short and she's had some terrible disrespect from students in the past. She had a student who preceded to lecture her on how to set a midterm because they had taught swimming lessons (after they had got their midterm back and done poorly). She's even had death threats from students who were upset with her. None of this would have happened with my PhD supervisor who was about 6'5" and intimidated almost every student.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> "We never have a debate of relativity — why are we spending billions on things that have small effects?"

Because there is hardly any topic more intricately entangled with politics and emotions.

<comment><USER17> The article mentions a comparison of spending and effect on outcome. Establishing that there seems to be a decided minimum effort required to educate a child to any degree; but that past that point there are examples of other countries having /more/ success with less funding spent (than the US).

I think more granularity of data in that statistic would be useful; is this money actually being spent on the child or is it instead being squandered within a bureaucratic structure? Or does some externality that is a cost in one model but not the other left out of view?

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> There is no problem in education. Our only problem is that we keep lying to ourselves about it. Not all children are equally gifted. Not all _groups_ of children are equally gifted. The only reason we have such a hard time tackling with contemporary social problems is that their real solutions are at odds with political correctness.

The challenging task isn't coming up with solutions that will help, but finding solutions that will both help and not violate certain taboos.

Never in all of history has society ever benefited from lying to itself.

<comment><USER19> Exactly what I would have said. Most of my friends and family are teachers and the stupidity of ideas like "no child left behind"..."teach to the lowest common denominator"...are the kind of complaints I have been hearing about for quite some time.

Stop with the Orwellian political correctness and teach kids the level they are capable of. End of story.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> Great article and food for thought as politicians and education reformers push school vouchers, Common Core, union-busting, etc., and other theories without really measuring, testing or optimizing the option's ROI. The idea has been "well let's just try something new" without rhyme or reason.

</comment><comment><USER21> I don't get why Americans have to reinvent the wheel here. There are countries in the world (Finland, Singapore...) who have public education figured out. Just put aside your pride and do what they do. It involves less testing, hiring and retaining better teachers, and making sure kids are not in poor broken homes.

<comment><USER22> > It involves less testing, hiring and retaining better teachers, and making > sure kids are not in poor broken homes.

ah, hide the hard one at the end :)

<comment><USER23> > ah, hide the hard one at the end :)

Income equality isn't "hard" if you look at it logically versus emotionally. Raise taxes, ensure a proper social safety net, widen the middle class.

Then again, this is America. We try everything else first before the right way (apologies to Churchill).

<comment><USER24> > Income equality isn't "hard" if you look at it logically versus emotionally. > Raise taxes, ensure a proper social safety net, widen the middle class.

Income equality is hard when you start tracing where the income actually comes from. Furthermore, the parent said "broken homes," not merely income inequality. A poor household can still be a stable and positive environment.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> If you're interested in education policy and research, the Festival of Education is a great event to hear many of the leading thinkers. This year, as well as this report being given out in hard copy, we had Dylan Wiliam (referenced in the NPR article), Carol Dweck, Ken Robinson and many others speak. A definite English flavour but plenty that's entirely transferable.

[http://www.festivalofeducation.com/](http://www.festivalofeducation.com/)

<comment><USER26> Can I watch videos of the talks online?

<comment><USER25> Unfortunately they aren't recorded. :(

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> Odd that the conclusion of such a meta-analysis would be a list of what _doesn 't_ work. Surely we should be as interested in what _does_ work.

<comment><USER28> One of the links goes to a chart from the study author that ranks interventions by estimated effect size: [http://visible-learning.org/hattie- ranking-influences-effect...](http://visible-learning.org/hattie-ranking- influences-effect-sizes-learning-achievement/)

There's a definition of some of the terms here: [http://visible- learning.org/glossary/](http://visible-learning.org/glossary/)</comment></comment>


Why Is the Human Brain So Efficient? (2018) - <AUTHOR> http://nautil.us/issue/86/energy/why-is-the-human-brain-so-efficient-rp <comment><USER2> They aren't the same thing. They are different classes of objects, different tasks. This comparison is kind of silly.

I'd hate my computer to have the memory accuracy or the computational accuracy of my brain. I'd hate to have the creativity and inspiration of a computer.

Delete being such a nontrivial operation is probably a good thing for humans. Copy being imperfect probably has something to do with the phenomenon we call imagination. We use computers because they are complementary, not substitutive.

They're just so fundamentally different.

<comment><USER3> When we say the brain has poor computational accuracy, we're usually talking about the conscious brain we're aware of. But our low-level motor actions and perceptions, coordinated by the brain, require a lot of precise computation. These low-level brain computations are the thing to compare to AI, not our conscious thinking. Our conscious mind is more like low-precision software running on top of an enormously powerful computer.

<comment><USER4> > _But our low-level motor actions and perceptions, coordinated by the brain, > require a lot of precise computation._

That accuracy is more likely achieved through fast, analog feedback loops than precise calculation.

<comment><USER5> We don't have analog hardware. Nerves are digital. The best we can do with them is pulse-frequency modulation.

<comment><USER4> I'm not convinced real neurons are just binary summators. But regardless of that, there's also chemical transmission involved, which is an analog thing.

<comment><USER5> Right, but the end state of all that is "neuron fires" or "neuron doesn't fire", or at best "neuron fires n times per second" \- a binary state.

<comment><USER6> We have some behavior that depends on very exact timing of neuron spikes (e.g. determining direction of sounds by connecting signals from both ears), so that's kind of analog - though it does get reduced into a binary state, in the end either the "detector for offset of x microseconds towards left" fires or not.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I imagine a group of dogs sitting around and asking "How are we _so_ good at thinking about fun ways to play with squeeky toys?".

The truth is, that our ability to reason about ourselves is limited by our ability to reason. Perhaps there are aliens out there who would laugh our cognitive abilities--their's being so much better than ours.

<comment><USER8> Less complicated systems successfully reason about more complicated systems all the time. Ditto for self-reasoning. See: bootloaders, update systems, and package managers.

In order to prove that some kind of meta-cognition is inherently beyond our grasp, you don't just have to prove that the system we are attempting to reason about is more complex than ourselves, you also have to prove that the problem isn't meaningfully reducible. Otherwise we can and will eventually figure out the mental tools we need to tackle the problem, and tackle it.

The same applies to brute physical strength. Humans have no problem building machines vastly stronger, tougher, larger, more precise etc than ourselves even though narrow-minded reasoning might lead you to believe that this was impossible ("a tool can only cut something less hard/strong than itself," "a ruler can only measure less precisely than itself" etc).

<comment><USER9> > "a ruler can only measure less precisely than itself"

That's actually super interesting. How do you bootstrap (as it were) a ruler?

Like, assume you don't have any machine that is itself created by using a ruler (so no screws or gears, except hand cut ones).

Obviously it's possible, since we did it. But how do you do it?

<comment><USER8> Symmetry.

To make a very flat surface plate, you can grind three less-flat surface plates against each other (three because if you only have two, the common surface guaranteed by symmetry can still have curvature). To make a very precise cylinder, you can grind a less-precise cylinder in a "V" formed by two flat surfaces. To make a very regular lead screw, you can grind a less regular lead screw with a less regular reversible nut. Now you can construct a micrometer, and from there your mill/lathe and you're off to the races :)

That's how you bootstrap precision, but taking precision from a basic form and putting it into a complex form is a whole other art. These days we use numerical techniques, but historically geometric construction would have been the ticket. For instance, take a string, use a "standard twig" or something to mark 3+4+5 sections of equal length, cut & tie it into a loop, tension it into a triangle with sides of length 3, 4, and 5 using the marks, and now you've got a right angle.

Modern metrology looks a bit different because time symmetry started beating spatial symmetry. Badly. Absurdly badly. Like "you get twice the digits for the same price" badly. You get 6 digits for pennies in a quarz oscillator and I know the metrologists have chased their clock stability out to at least 19 digits, probably more by now. Also, you can just transmit the reference over the air to globally coordinate accuracy for dirt cheap, you don't even have to ship blocks of platinum-iridium in inert atmosphere. Modern metrology is basically the art of "rebasing" other types of measurement onto measurements of time because time measurements are so ridiculously great.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> One kind of efficiency which hasn't been talked about is the energy loss of things like state switching and keeping the current state enabled. I think that brains build on much more efficient primitives than the silicon transistors computer chips use and thus can perform far more computations for far less energy than a desktop CPU.

Another difference between CPUs and brains is that brains are much less general purpose. CPUs do run-time interpreting of instructions while brains process data in a more straightforward way like GPUs do. Many problems can be implemented into GPUs and they will run much faster. I'd argue that brains excel at such tasks while being harder at tasks that require lots of state to be kept around as well as conditional jumps like computing a hash function or compiling a program. CPUs excel at those tasks.

<comment><USER11> Comparing Human Brain with a CPU is misconception. In the past when we didn't have digital computers we used to compare Brain with other machines. And now with a CPU. A Brain from a primitive neuron to higher level is not comparable to any machine at all including the CPU.

<comment><USER12> _Comparing Human Brain with a CPU is misconception._ no it is not. Yeah architecturally they are very different and CPU are arguably more programmable / general and less efficient.

What does matter is whether CPUs are theoretically able to achieve all the things that a brain can do (and even more) And indeed CPUs as turing complete, programmable machine are a strict superset of what brains can do. The gap between what task and at which accuracy a brain achieve vs a CPU is decreasing each year as you can contemplate on the paperswithcode.com leaderboards. The difficulty is in software, hardware through clusterisation has arguably order of magnitude more compute than a brain has.

There are four big missing pieces to match human brain performance:

1) Matching its pattern recognition abilities I believe that current statistical learning techniques of SOTA neural networks actually outperform humans on learning continuous data. But humans outperforms by far current software at zero/few shot learning on sparse/discrete data (where gradient descent is not applicable) I believe humans have this performance edge because of 2), 3) and 4):

2) humans can encode and decode meaning with great accuracy in a high level, descriptive complete declarative language called natural languages. They are in many ways far superior to current GQL/datalog/SQL DB languages at encoding and retrieving meaning (that is an isomorphic description of a denoted thing). The field of semantic parsing (+ question answering from the parsed knowledge) is the key to general language understanding and crucially lack funding. Once machines will be able to understand language and retrieve all the knowledge of say Wikipedia, they will be able to transcend human performance on many intelligence/erudition tasks.

3) humans seems to be able to do meaningful runtime code generation.

That is you can develop on demand new solutions to new problems: such as [https://www.kaggle.com/c/abstraction-and-reasoning- challenge](https://www.kaggle.com/c/abstraction-and-reasoning-challenge) The field of specification and implementation generation is too underfunded.

4) is the observation that 3) is probably a necessary key for unlocking 2) and that both 2) and 3) are needed to achieve this communication/feedback loop between high level semantic reasoning and statistical operations.

As we can see, humanity overfocus funding on 1) despite being the most solved of all others necessary foundation's to achieve AGI and hence, as a side effect, empirically prove that CPUs superset brains

<comment><USER13> "And indeed CPUs as turing complete, programmable machine are a strict superset of what brains can do."

This is a fundamental assertion that I do not believe you can make.

The brain cannot simulate a turing machine. It does not have infinite memory, which is a requirement for a turing machine. It can, however, stimulate a linearly bounded automata.

It is also not implicitly obvious that a turing machine can simulate a brain. The primary difficulty that I do not yet see a way around is the fact that a turing machine, which has as its control unit a finite State machine, is bound by the finiteness of those states (finiteness of representation, not of number). The brain has no such constraint. It is analog, and therefore infinite in State representation.

In my opinion, this is more akin to the P versus NP problem, and that we know what needs to be equivalent in order to say that P equals NP, but no one has proved it or disproved it yet. That's how I feel about the statement about Turing machines and the brain. I do not believe we can be dogmatic on that aspect yet either way. We may have opinions, just as we may have opinions about P vs NP, but we must also be careful about stating what is provable and what is opinion, and that is all I'm trying to do.

Of course, I am willing and very interested to gain more insight in this area, so discussion is welcome!

<comment><USER14> > The brain cannot simulate a turing machine. It does not have infinite > memory, which is a requirement for a turing machine.

In practice we call modern computers turing-complete even though they don't have infinite memory. The brain can simulate such a machine.

> The brain has no such constraint. It is analog, and therefore infinite in > State representation.

If this mattered, then it would mean analog computers are more powerful than digital computers and therefore the Church-Turing thesis is wrong

<comment><USER15> Isn't the recent Google quantum "supremacy" experiment evidence against the extended Church-Turing thesis?

<comment><USER16> No, quantum computers as we understand them can be simulated by a turing machine

<comment><USER15> The _extended_ Church-Turing thesis which I specifically referred to concerns efficient simulation, not just whether it can be simulated.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Why is the human brain so inefficient? It takes years just for it to compute the sha-256 of this media file.

</comment><comment><USER18> See discussion from 2018: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16895124](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16895124)

</comment><comment><USER19> I was wondering why this seemed so outdated and ignorant for something published in 2018 (only 10b transistors? 'computers are serial', really?), but I see that it's from a 2015 textbook, using citations for computing hardware published in 2008, and presumably referencing hardware from 2007 or earlier...

</comment><comment><USER20> "At a global level, the architectures of the brain and the computer resemble each other, consisting of largely separate circuits for input, output, central processing, and memory."

This is fundamentally wrong, even at the 10 mile high summary level.

In our brain processing and memory are not in the least bit separate, and memory distinct from processing doesn't really exist.

If you really had to make a computer analogy of how the brain works, it's more like self-modifying code where the only memory of the data flowing through it is the changes to the code that were made as the result of that prior flow.

</comment><comment><USER21> Leslie Valiant has done some interesting work on quantifying the efficiency of the brain from the viewpoint of computer science, see e.g. [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X9hRRh76QEA](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X9hRRh76QEA) and the book Circuits of the Mind.

</comment><comment><USER22> World record tennis serve is 144 miles an hour and a human can't really move across a court and return a ball moving at this speed. If they're lucky they can reach it and react in time to hit it. I'm a bit confused by an article that claims tennis players can react to and return serves up to 160 miles an hour. I think evidence suggests that returning balls anywhere near this fast is dependent on analysing factors before the ball starts moving, the other players body position, racket position etc. Players have an intuition about where the ball is going to go without having to look at and analyse the flight of the ball.

Just did some very basic checking. Tennis court 23m 260mph = 72m/s Ball takes approx. 0.3ms to travel length of court. human reaction time to visual simulous 0.25ms So the idea is they move and hit the ball in the remaining 0.05ms? Hmmmmm.

<comment><USER23> 'Players have an intuition about where the ball is going to go without having to look at and analyse the flight of the ball.'

This is pretty easily observable with baseball players as well. After playing thousands of games while standing in the same (relative) place on the field I/they can anticipate where the ball is going to go based on a variety of variables in real-time... instantly.

<comment><USER24> There was a festival of jugglers in my city and they taught me to juggle in like 15 minutes, I was amazed it's so easy (the basic 3-ball juggling, and just for a monute or two, the more difficult juggling is HARD and I had to train later to be able to keep juggling forever).

There is a very easy trick - you look forward in the distance keeping the balls in peripheral vision and there's 2 automatic reactions you have to develop:

1\. when the ball going up is at the top of the curve - throw another ball up

2\. when a falling ball goes out of your peripheral vision - do the "oh shit something's falling let's catch it" routine with the hand that has less balls in it.

Hands learn very quickly how to move to catch the balls that leave the peripheral vision "by itself" basing on the trajectory you've seen.

It's actually harder to juggle when you look at the balls directly, and it's impossible when you think about it and try to do the moves consciously because you're too slow.

It was mindblowing to me that it's easier to catch a ball when you don't look at it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> I wouldn't say that human brain is that efficient (per volume). Compare and contrast with the brain of rats or Corvidae: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZerUbHmuY04](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZerUbHmuY04).

<comment><USER26> It's not even a good example. Humans are about the least physically agile vertebrates on the planet.

Think of a fruit fly. It can walk, fly, forage for food, mate, etc. The entire critter has a mass of .2mg and their brains have ~135k neurons. Making the horrible assumption of linear power scaling, that's one microwatt.

<comment><USER27> but can it do math? can it paint? drink wine and muse on its own brain efficiency?

<comment><USER25> Fruit flies can drink wine.

Doing maths - well, it is a common trope that we extrapolate skills of a fraction of humans on the entire population. For an _average_ human 1/3 + 1/2 can be problematic.

Abstract counting up 5 or so - well, many birds can do that, including pigeons.

<comment><USER27> the wine part was a joke. especially because fruit flies definitely appear to be attracted to fruit, wine, etc

i believe you are underestimating how capable humans really are. all of us can learn to do math and i'm talking serious math not basic math.

<comment><USER26> My point from above is that 'humans playing tennis' isn't a great benchmark for the efficiency of our brains.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> The brain is weird. You can figure out how to split an atom, then forget your keys inside your car.

</comment><comment><USER29> Is it though?

I think having a good metric is really hard.

For example i can have a neural net running on my smartphone doing recognition tasks.

A task the brain is typically good at due to its neural net structure while the computer basically has to simulate the net.

But still my smartphone can mark all the faces in a crowd multiple times over in a time i can not recognize even a single person.

And that with a camera way beyond the capabilities of the human eye.

Modern smartphone processors draw around 1 or 2 watt max. So is my phone more efficient at doing this?

One could argue that my brain does other stuff at the same time like controlling heartbeat and what not but my phone has to keep the wifi, clock and so on too.

The truly impressive part is the ability of the brain to do completely generic problem solving for basically everything; while running on 10 watt. With the added ability to learn a few activities to a really high level.

Its is not efficient at doing a singular thing it is efficient doing everything at once.

<comment><USER30> Yes but for integrating information, your brain is marvelous. Somebody in the crown laughs or moves a certain way or you catch a sniff - and BAM you found your person.

Any automated single-skill system might be more efficient, but of course it becomes useless outside its parameters. Put a hat on those people in the crowd and your phone may be totally defeated.

</comment></comment><comment><USER31> I feel uncomfortable at the ubiquitous, silent assumption that what is marketed as AI is a computer implementation of a brain.

I see how the term neuronal network reinforces this believe, but we (especially the researchers among us) should allow for the possibility that we are missing something.

<comment><USER32> Neural networks also have no ability to create new information based on their own mistakes. What is a mistake? When does something look "off" but still very interesting?

For example, you can feed a neural net all the recipes of burgers to create a perfect burger. Great. But how does the same net _invent_ the burger?

The burger, like many foods or accidental art, was invented as a result of scarcity, circumstance, experimentation, or just fortunate error. That sort of imperfection is very hard to achieve with AI, because it is designed to be either perfect or fail.

<comment><USER33> >>For example, you can feed a neural net all the recipes of burgers to create a perfect burger. Great. But how does the same net invent the burger?

Wait....but it just....did? It took the information about all possible burger recipes and invented a new one out of these. Like, a human could only invent a new burger if they knew anything about burgers in the first place, at the very least that it's a bun with some filling in between, otherwise you'd have no context to invent anything.

<comment><USER34> Not OP, but I think they're not talking about inventing a _new_ burger, but inventing _the_ burger, as in the first one ever.

As in, the neural net in this example is able to improvise a new burger recipe solely because it was given existing recipes to burgers as input; it did not come up with the notion of a burger and then produce a recipe that outputs something fulfilling that notion when followed.

Personally, I would argue that this distinction is not as clear-cut as the tone of the original comment seems to suggest. Humans didn't invent the burger from nothing either. We've been grilling meat and making bread for millennia, and sandwiches have been a thing for over a century.

A 'burger' is just another iteration of our biological neural nets' attempts to make food from ingredients already present in our physical reality. Given that we flow in a single direction through time, any food we make is in turn added to our list of ingredients for making food "the next time". One could argue it is only a matter of time once meat can be ground into patties and grains turned into bread that burgers start being made - given the relative benefits humans gain from consuming both.

This comes back to what others have expressed elsewhere in this thread, that the probable [most] important distinctions aren't between software vs hardware, or organic life vs silicon processors, but the environment & capacity to interact with said environment. Some sense of "innate tendency to experiment" (i.e. curiosity) is probably either equal in importance or a direct runner-up.

<comment><USER32> The burger was invented because a hungry traveler walked into a restaurant in Connecticut that was closing, and the owner had nothing but some beef and bread left. So he improvised - cooked the beef patty and squeezed it between two bread slices.

To this day they serve their burgers between two bread slices - not buns.

If you want to look it up, it's called LOUIS' LUNCH.

AI my ass :D

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> I don't know.

</comment><comment><USER36> This article contains inaccuracies and says almost nothing novel for your average hacker new reader.

<comment><USER37> > Please don't post shallow dismissals, especially of other people's work. A > good critical comment teaches us something.

[https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html)

What are the inaccuracies?

<comment><USER36> The same accusation could be levied at the original artical.

<comment><USER37> Please make a specific and substantive point. Worthwhile discussions do not follow from vague and shallow dismissals.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


How to spot first stories on Twitter using Storm - <AUTHOR> http://micvog.com/2013/09/08/storm-first-story-detection

<comment><USER2> > Having such a volume of input tweets streamed in real-time, FSD seemed like > an ideal use case for Storm framework which can scale up the work by adding > more resources.

This is not coincidence - Twitter open-sourced Storm.

<comment><USER3> Well technically Backtype open sources storm as part of the twitter buyout of backtype.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> The method of Locality Sensitive Hashing using random projection is better described here: [http://www.slaney.org/malcolm/yahoo/Slaney2008-LSHTutorial.p...](http://www.slaney.org/malcolm/yahoo/Slaney2008-LSHTutorial.pdf)

</comment><comment><USER5> For the problem of filtering out false alarms, this paper seems to have made some significant advances over the fscore for baseline nearest neighbor approach: [http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/summary?doi=10.1.1.221....](http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/summary?doi=10.1.1.221.1974) They report an average f-score of 0.541 on a standard TDT corpus. For comparison, their implementation of the NN algorithm had an f-score of 0.450. There's still a long ways to go on this problem.

</comment><comment><USER6> I remember a similar talk by Miles Osborne @ CMU. Any chance you're from his lab?

<comment><USER7> Yes, I implemented Petrovic's paper ([http://www.aclweb.org/anthology/N/N10/N10-1021.pdf](http://www.aclweb.org/anthology/N/N10/N10-1021.pdf)) from scratch but scaled it with Storm in a distributed fashion.</comment></comment>