Scalability - <AUTHOR> http://gregor-wagner.com/?p=79 <comment><USER4> Performance is the side-effect, not the cause. The cause is the fact that chrome uses separate processes both for security, and so if one tab crashes, you don't lose them all.

The fact that it uses more memory is a design tradeoff (although with shared text pages it's not as bad as one might think). The real question is whether you would ever have that many tabs open, and how much memory do you have on your desktop?

<comment><USER5> > The real question is whether you would ever have that many tabs open, and > how much memory do you have on your desktop?

I have 60 tabs open now (in FF), and this is after closing most of them, on a 32-bit system with 4GB of RAM. I regularly hit over 200 tabs when browsing.

<comment><USER6> 200 tabs.. how is that possible? Do you ctrl+click on every possible links on every page?! I'm actually really surprised. I, too, can't stand more than 5-6..

<comment><USER7> I tend to have several windows with sevaral tabs open for different categories: things to send to people next time they are online, personal techie things I intend to read when I get a minute, work related similar, and so on. Yes I could use bookmarks and such for these, but I find this a more immediate reminder. Every now and then I scan round these windows and close off things that have slipped into irrelevance or bookmark ones that I might still read but maybe not any time soon.

On top of those there are "recent research" for any problems I am currently working on, which is usually at least one window each with a search results tab and a few tabs I opened from there (after pruning the ones that were not relevant in the end.

Plus there are the tabs I am "actively" using (which is pretty much always at least five at the moment: two mail clients, two social networking sites, and a page containing the results of various service monitors which updates every minute or so).

I often see FF taking a bit more than 1Gb RAM particularly if I have complex pages that auto-update a lot (Zimbra, facebook, so forth) open, though often closing it and restarting with the "reload last session" option brings that down by at least 60% (I assume the "extra" is stuff cached in RAM and/or memory allocated and not yet released due to fragmentation in FF's internal memory management - both situations being "resolved" by the restart)

<comment><USER8> I can't imagine triaging 200 tabs on any kind of regular basis. Just thinking about closing that many tabs feels really good. Do it man, get rid of them! Free yourself! Bookmark things or send to Instapaper/Read it later and archive things you haven't read in a week. Don't let it pile up. Don't feel obligated to read or otherwise handle each page.

Maybe you don't feel bogged down but I feel bogged down for you :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Anyone care to share how their usage patterns lead to having hundreds of tabs open at a single time? How is it even feasible to find a specific tab without doing a time consuming linear search?

I rarely have more than 4-5 tabs open at a time, so I'm honestly curious.

<comment><USER10> I must admit to currently having 280 tabs open. In my case, I open a bunch of things I intend to read (by browsing reddit or the like) and defer the reading of them indefinitely.

In practice, most of the tabs are `legacy' tabs that I don't use, but which I still retain some nominal interest in when I go clean out the tabs every couple months or so. These tabs range from youtube videos that I don't want to forget, to tips for Vim, Wikipedia articles, blog posts on machine learning, instructions for DIY haptic compasses...

About 1/3 can be traced to one or two websites with interesting articles that I intend to read in depth (at some point).

<comment><USER11> Your browsing style is very much same as mine. I suppose you are using firefox with vimperator + tree style tab. If you have a fear of restarting the browser again then install bartab[1] extension and forget the fear. It unloads the tabs from memory, so memory consumption is too low and restarting browser takes little time.

[1]<https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/bartab/>

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> It makes me a bit suspicious that a Canary build of Chrome is used. I understand that when a new feature is highlighted in a nightly build of Firefox, it's right to show it off - but why not do so against the latest version of Chrome - or even a Dev build? At least those two have been tested first ;)

<comment><USER13> Would you honestly prefer it if browser manufacturers compared pre-release versions to shipping versions? Seems to me that would be far worse.

<comment><USER14> Well, in this case it should be compared to whichever version of chrome performed best. That way you include any improvements they've made, but not any regressions.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> I know an anecdote isn't data, but here we go: I often have >100 tabs open. I also sometimes have to restart my mac, and reopen those tabs. While Chrome then struggles for a few minutes, it doesn't take half an hour, like this article suggests, to open 100+ tabs. And I did switch to Chrome from Firefox, as it seems to handle a lot of open tabs a lot better.

<comment><USER16> for me, the big difference between firefox and chrome is that it isn't a total usability disaster to handle that many tabs in firefox if you use the tree style tab ( [https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/tree-style- ta...](https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/tree-style-tab/) ) extension.

<comment><USER5> Personally, I find the Panorama feature helps with that, as does having a tab list. Does Chrome offer either of those?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Recently I've gone back to firefox (8, nightly) because of two issues with chrome: memory usage and constant crashes (as of lately, on a mac).

I must say that, although I'm a tab freak (I always have around 30 to 50 tabs and/or windows opened at the same time) it is _very_ fast and never uses more than 500mb of ram.

The only issue that I have is that it doesn't play well with rescuetime. Other than that, a delight.

</comment><comment><USER18> I figured that around 150 was an unlikely use case but see from the comments that some people are using approx 100 tabs. I can't imagine doing that. What kind of real world use cases do people have for such a huge number of tabs? And how do they navigate efficiently?

<comment><USER19> I've seen tab enthusiasts. They are incapable of tracking which tab they already have open and reopen the same one over and over again.

<comment><USER20> Not really, I have about 100 tabs open at the moment and each one points to a different page. Regarding the "real world usage" for this: Pages I read every day, pages I've opened and intend to read if there's time and pages I read at the moment. Works fine, thanks.

Maybe this is also a function of browser capability: If your browser crashes or becomes unusable with many tabs you won't open many.

<comment><USER18> Please excuse my curiosity. How do you navigate so many tabs? Is it in some way more efficient than reading them in blocks of say 10 or 20?

I am interested in your use case of pages you read every day. I have such pages and I would love to be able to open a specified list of such pages with one click. Is there a way of doing that? Or an add-on for it?

<comment><USER21> I use Session Manager. Open all the tabs you use daily, and then save the session and configure Session Manager to open that session on every startup. ([https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/session- manag...](https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/session-manager/))

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> Opera's doing just fine. As I am writing this, Opera has all 150 tabs open and still feels snappy. ~1.5GB memory and ~30% CPU (currently). I could not measure the time but it was well below 10min.

<comment><USER23> Opera has always been a performer when low specs and lots of tabs were involved, cruising with 50+ tabs when Firefox and Chrome choked my system at 10+ tabs.

<comment><AUTHOR> The major issue with opera is that you can't easily automate the tests, that's why it's often missing when people test IE and Chrome and FF. So it's hard to benchmark stuff and most don't take the time to do it.

That said opera is known to be rather fast.

<comment><USER24> It might be more difficult, but you can certainly automate opening a bunch of tabs using a script to send keypresses, no?

<comment><USER25> sort of, a lot of the actions by this script rely on the browser giving feedback (e.g. finished loading the page). You could write a script to gather feedback from the display (i.e. by taking screenshots) but it's too much effort to maintain with new releases.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> I recently switched from Firefox to Chrome after their appalling release of Firefox 4 & 5\. 5 Is better than 4, but only slightly. In most cases, Chrome out performs Firefox now and it's a shame that I had to switch from Firefox.

Although these are real world statistics you encountered, I still think that Firefox needs to buck their ideas up and start releasing more stable versions.

<comment><AUTHOR> The version in the story is Firefox nightly aka Firefox 8. There are many changes from Firefox 5 to 8. Since they adopted the rapid release, Firefox 8 won't take forever to be stable, but it will still take a few month.

<comment><USER26> I'm much aware of their recent release schedule changes, I just hope that they are not sacrificing stability for increased version release. Firefox used to be about testing and stability rather than who has the bigger version number.

4 was an insult to me, crashing all the time and so slow, pathetic in the terms of a browser, I would have rather used IE for a couple of months whilst that was released and that's saying something

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> Humm. My experience are completely opposite. In my experience firefox breaks down quite fast and chrome has always been many orders of magnitude better than any browser I've tested (firefox, (safari), opera, IE).

I have about 500 tabs in chrome now, never been close to that with any other browser, granted the computer is barely usable now as chrome takes pretty much all resources so I'm working on closing some down :) But 2-300 is no problem at all and chrome is the only browser that's capable of that (without serious performance issues) on my machine (64bit Win7 8 GB ram).

And the comments to the article resonates well with my experiences: "Another test, maybe closer to reality: open many tabs, close half of them, open many new tabs, close half of them, etc… And see how your memory gets lost, until you finally have to kill the Firefox process to get it back, so you can open other applications."

And many others that mention that firefox can't handle being left on for days without breaking. I have hundreds of tabs in chrome for weeks at a time, sometimes probably longer but every now and then I feel like letting it update... (although it is a pain to start it with hundreds of tabs and I often get blocked from HN after I start chrome (guess I trigger some dos-filter ;P).

Also, any browser that doesn't run flash in a separate process (that you can kill yourself) isn't usable at all (that is, if you have flash installed (flashblock only delays the inevitable)). Even with few tabs that is a total deal breaker (and really has been since the day chrome launched).

<comment><USER28> Firefox 7 and 8 (both in development) are _much_ better behaved over long sessions. You should give one of them a try.

<comment><USER29> By how much? When I switched to Chrome, Firefox 3 would crash on me at least once every 6 hours of use (10+ times a week), and take 15+ minutes to reopen with ~150 tabs.

Chrome on the other hand has always handled 300+ tabs without blinking. Closing and restarting it with that load takes about 20s to be usable and a couple minutes for all the content to be loaded — basically limited only by my internet connection. It crashes about one every three months, ironically only when I tell it to quit.

Firefox would have to now be three orders of magnitude better in these respects in order to have caught up with Chrome.

P.S. Mozilla's messaging with "try version 7 or 8" is _fucking abysmal_. Seriously shut the fuck up about version numbers if you're going to increment them so often. Don't copy Chrome's development cycle without also copying their release structure: normal, dev, canary.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> Just out curiosity, how do Chrome users deal with multiple tabs? I always felt like Chrome's tab bar became useless when I was going through my RSS feeds, because tabs shrunk to nothing. Side tabs is kind of a solution, but the lack of hierarchy (and IMO, ugliness) makes it an unattractive solution. In FF, I can have 52 tabs open (just checke) with TreeStyleTab and all them be visible. Chrome gets unwieldy after about 15 or so last I checked.

<comment><USER31> Categorizing tabs into separate windows and using virtual desktops.

</comment></comment><comment><USER32> My Chrome default startup settings open about 40 tabs. Sometimes in addition to this I might open 20 or more news articles in rapid succession in order to scan headlines and lead paragraphs. I've noticed this effect many times.

Still, I can't help but think this is a tweak. I mean, at the end of the day, we're talking about CPU time, memory allocation, and processing priority, right? So allocate a few extra processes and large chunks of memory, set the priority such that Chromium doesn't tank the system, then work a buffer allocation system.

Of course, that's rampant speculation on my part. Seems like I read somewhere that timing and process priority is still an unsettled issue in Linux, so I know it's a lot more complicated than I make it out to be. (But I also know that having 150 processes do things without hosing things up is by no means an unusual situation in any operating system.)

</comment><comment><USER33> Chrome also gets to a usable state much slower than FF for me (osx10.6 - <USER2> 13"). The window opens faster, but it just _hangs_ for a heck of a long time (10-15 seconds). FF is slower to paint its first window, but is usable much faster overall (meaning, I can type in to the web address bar).

</comment><comment><USER34> This has been the main reason why I have not totally committed to Chrome. While I do not usually have 100 tabs open there are times when I do have 30 - 40 open. In Firefox the browser slows down but not horribly so. In Chrome the browser is still usable but it is noticeably slower than Firefox.

I love everything else about Chrome and while I realize that the degraded tab performance is a trade off, it still bugs me enough to not do a full and complete switch. That is why when I am casually browsing the web I will use Firefox. But when I am using a web app or working, I will use Chrome.

</comment><comment><USER35> This is why I use both Chrome and Firefox. I am a big, tab user, and Chrome doesn't even provide decent tab management with large number of tabs, so I have not been able to even test it properly. So Chrome is my default system browser for quickly opening a link, that I get through chats, email, etc and for quick browsing and google sessions. It starts up fast and is well 'fast'. For serious research/reading/browsing sessions I prefer to use Firefox. Synchronize bookmarks and yay, you have the best of both worlds.

</comment><comment><USER11> My firefox browsing way is to open every link in new tab. Going back and forth in same tab caches every page browsed in the tab so it increases memory consumption. In this I usually end up opening 40+ tabs. But tab management is super easy with firefox thanks to tree style tab extension. Even 40+ tabs opened my firefox memory consumption is much less than chrome opened 40+ tab (which is unmanageble due to shrinked size of tab bar)

</comment><comment><USER36> Windows, Linux or OSX? I'm curious because on Linux, threads and processes are essentially the same thing - they're the same data structure in the kernel. But as far as I know, that is not true on Windows.

I also find his conclusion a bit disingenuous: I never have more than ~10 tabs open. I'm more interested in the performance around my actual usage, not an order of magnitude more.

<comment><USER37> How is it disingenuous at all? It clearly specifies the conditions and re- emphasizes in the conclusion that the analysis was done based on which browser handles having a large number of tabs open better. Also, the plural of anecdote is not data, but I routinely have more than 100 tabs open. So this analysis is clearly relevant and interesting to me. Edit: proof-reading.

<comment><USER36> I guess we all have different definitions of "many" in the statement of "many tabs." I didn't think 100 open tabs is realistic, but enough people here seem to do it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER38> Thanks for posting test results. I am using Tree Style Tabs extension for FireFox and have _lots_ of tabs open all the time.

Now I don't need to test myself if I should switch to Chrome :-)

</comment><comment><USER39> Interesting. This doesn't match my experience at all.

When I have lots of tabs open in Firefox, there are occasional pauses where everything, including the browser's chrome, freezes. I've never noticed these pauses in Chrome.

And yes, I do open hundreds of tabs. (As a side note, Chrome's far smaller minimum tab size is a major bonus for my usage, simply because I can see more tabs without scrolling the tab bar).

<comment><AUTHOR> you need Firefox 8 to feel the improvements

<comment><USER39> Perhaps, but if this test is accurate, Chrome has also gotten far, far worse in recent versions. I find that surprising.

<comment><USER14> This test isn't about having lots of tabs open, but having lots of tabs _opening_ , all loading at the same time.

<comment><USER39> Ok. So, apparently, it's testing a usecase that doesn't happen in normal use. So why should I care?

<comment><USER14> You don't have to? This was a blog post written by a guy whose _job_ is to care about Firefox's memory usage. Most of his work goes into improving every day memory usage, but he thought it would be interesting to see what happens in an extreme case. Chrome is the main competitor, so he ran the same tests against it, so there was something to compare to.

No doubt some portion of people upvoting this article are invested in a _Firefox v. Chrome_ narrative, but that really wasn't the point of the original article.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER40> Interesting to see this being done on a more "normal" amount of tabs. That depends from user to user but IMO a ~50 tab for a power user.

</comment><comment><USER41> Really interesting. I wonder how these would have fared on Windows (Windows having a different threading system to pthreads)?

</comment><comment><USER42> This has been what I've experienced for more than just the latest versions. In personal usage the crossover between Chrome and Firefox has always been in the neighborhood of 20-30 tabs. Past that. Chrome has always seemed more sluggish (and less usable, given how tiny the tabs get).

<comment><USER43> Likewise. I typically keep open a large number of tabs, opening a pile of links at once and then going through them during the working day. At any one time, I tend to have a hundred-odd tabs open.

Although to be fair, firefox isn't too happy with that workflow, either - <USER3> I blame that partially on flash and javascript.

</comment></comment><comment><USER44> Wow. So many people with an ungodly number of open tabs. Think you guys need to check out Instapaper and a bookmarking service such as Diigo. You'll be much happier and both you and your computer will be much more productive.

</comment><comment><USER45> I've had the contrary experience with FF4 and Chrome... Chrome is like lightning

<comment><USER46> Except - as multiple people already mentioned - this article is about the Firefox _Nightly_ , which currently means Firefox 8. There are _huge_ differences between FF 4 and FF 8 (or 4 and >5, for that matter).

</comment></comment><comment><USER47> But I bet chrome is smoother - firefox goes crazy if I have one tab doing something heavy duty, all the others are sluggish. Still sticking with firefox though because of some plugins.

</comment><comment><USER48> I find Firefox using up 25% cpu a lot with 40-50 tabs open whereas chrome (on win 7 64-bit) is nowhere near that; similar memory usage... so I use Chrome more...

</comment><comment><USER49> Chrome lately has been really slow for me and GIF performance is terrible (but I guess this is a webkit problem).

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> which kind of pro google mod changed the link title to something that meaningful? lol.

</comment><comment><USER50> Interesting test, but the real world usability significance of this are minimal.

Now, if Firefox auto updates in the background like Chrome, I might consider giving it another chance. When I want to go on the net, I don't want to wait for my browser to update.

<comment><USER51> Chrome doesn't update in the background. It downloads the update in the background, then applies it at startup the next time it starts. It just doesn't tell you it's doing that, so you get a slow startup with no explanation of why.

The "tell you" part is the only difference between the workflow for current Firefox updates and Chrome updates, in fact... And yes, Firefox might start doing them silently precisely because of the purely psychological issue you describe.

<comment><USER50> >Chrome doesn't update in the background.

How do you know that? I assumed Chrome did update in the background because it uses Google's Omaha project, which supports updating when the system is idle.

"attempt to update application when the user's machine is idle"

[http://omaha.googlecode.com/svn/wiki/OmahaOverview.html#Sche...](http://omaha.googlecode.com/svn/wiki/OmahaOverview.html#Scheduler_007823295652064743_5_09283186493616913)

<comment><USER51> Oh, it may be able to update "in the background" if the browser is not running. I assumed you meant updating while the browser is running so the update is ready to go the next time you start the browser.

For my use cases, the two situations are actually equivalent, since my browser starts at boot and only shuts down with the OS or when I decide I should really install the security update.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER52> Ah yes and then when one tab crashes you lose all 100 tabs. Brilliant!

<comment><USER24> plugin-container, which effectively runs in a different process, has solved that issue for me. I haven't had a FF tab crash in months.</comment></comment>


Real-World Rubber Ducky Attacks with Empire Stagers - <AUTHOR> https://www.sc0tfree.com/sc0tfree-blog/optimizing-rubber-ducky-attacks-with-empire-stagers <comment><USER2> If you're going to get close enough to the machine to interface with it I would rather use PoisonTap[1] which tricks the machine to route everything through the poisontap and add in semi-persistence with the use of cached backdoors.

Some will say 'Well what if the corporation uses a webproxy like bluecoat.' There is a simple work around you go buy a domain that is already categorized as something like 'Business/Economy' which most corporations allow.

[1][https://samy.pl/poisontap/](https://samy.pl/poisontap/)

<comment><USER3> This combined with cloud fronting is all the rage in pentest write-ups now.

[https://www.mdsec.co.uk/2017/07/categorisation-is-not-a- secu...](https://www.mdsec.co.uk/2017/07/categorisation-is-not-a-security- boundary/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> These all rely on a user being logged in, right? So the Watergate approach doesn't seem as useful, unless the machines are unlocked by default.

<comment><USER5> There's a delay command, so you can plug it in, ideally to a USB port that is out of sight, and have the attack execute itself the next day.

<comment><USER6> More precisely, it's using the Windows schtasks (1) tool. You can unplug the USB device, and it will still run not only the next day, but every day.

(1) [https://msdn.microsoft.com/en- us/library/windows/desktop/bb7...](https://msdn.microsoft.com/en- us/library/windows/desktop/bb736357\(v=vs.85\).aspx)

<comment><USER5> You can trigger that from the keyboard while the computer is locked?</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Google to France: We Won't Forget It for You Wholesale - <AUTHOR> https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2015/08/google-france-we-wont-forget-it-you-wholesale <comment><USER2> This is like China wanting to extend the great firewall to the rest of the world.

France, if you want to have whatever little censored version of the internet locked in bureaucratic stranglehold, fine. But worldwide? GTFO.

<comment><USER3> Unlike China, France has a democratically elected government. If the french do not like the censorship actions that their government requires of google, they are free to elect an alternative administration.

It is disingenuous to assume that all societies have the same ultra-liberal, privacy-be-damned, perspective, as appears to be prevalent in the anglo-saxon world, and it is healthy that some _democratically elected_ governments should question Google's hegemony. It certainly doesn't appear to be the case that America's federal administration has anything but sycophantic praise for everything that Silicon Valley does.

<comment><USER4> Labeling the opposing point to France's very strict defamation rules cannot be termed "ultra-liberal, privacy-be-damned" really. It has been pointed out that this state of affairs has led to many criminal/politically harmful events to be widely known. One of the best known in recent memory was the DSK affair ([http://www.newyorker.com/news/news-desk/d-s-k-french- lives-f...](http://www.newyorker.com/news/news-desk/d-s-k-french-lives-french- laws)). Although his rapist past was well-known is some circles through informal gossip, the victims were never able to declare so in public due to threat of these strict laws. More on this sordid affair here: [http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/02/26/dominique- strauss-k...](http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/02/26/dominique-strauss-kahn- book-ban-court-rules_n_2768578.html)

Many more examples can be provided.

<comment><USER3> Whatever one thinks of DSK, no court, in either the US or France, has found him guilty. Yes he has paid compensation but there is no criminal charge that stuck. I'll further remind you that DSK was arrested, in traditional style (complaint is phoned in, police arrive), well before the internet got involved. Thus the idea that free-speech on the internet helped justice in this case is untrue.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Only thing that bother me is that this article revolve solely around google point of view. The main spirit of the french RTBF law is to protect citizen privacy when published media can have negative effect on their life.

As for an example revenge porn, false public accusation or protection of witness are more in the spectrum of RTBF law than chinese-like censorship mentionned by Google. And correct me if I'm wrong but french RTBF apply only to individuals, so how could they even compare this with state censorsphip?

<comment><USER6> "The main spirit of the french RTBF law is to protect citizen privacy when published media can have negative effect on their life."

Yet the main method is to try to control secondary indexing instead of primary distribution?

If the published media has a negative effect on their life, why aren't they making the published media go away?

<comment><USER7> I'm ignorant of the actual law, so this is just a guess. Targeting the companies indexing the information is probably a more tractable problem then tracking down and eliminating all the sources. There's only a handful of really influential companies indexing this data compared to the numbers that produce and distribute it. If you remove the indexes and render the information difficult to find, its not that much different from removing the information altogether.

<comment><USER6> And my guess is: the local newspapers are a worse political target than evil large western company they can blame all their ills on :)

"Targeting the companies indexing the information is probably a more tractable problem then tracking down and eliminating all the sources."

I don't buy this. All of these sources need a way to print retractions/etc in these countries due to the way libel/etc laws work. So they already must have mechanisms to achieve this.

This is like targeting library card catalogs for indexing microfiche.

<comment><USER8> > And my guess is: the local newspapers are a worse political target than evil > large western company they can blame all their ills on :)

I don't think that's the reason:

> In 1995 the European Union adopted the European Data Protection Directive > (Directive 95/46EC) to regulate the processing of personal data.[9] This is > now considered a component of human rights law.[10] The new European > Proposal for General Data Protection Regulation provides protection and > exemption for companies listed as "media" companies, like newspapers and > other journalistic work. However, Google purposely opted out of being > classified as a "media" company and so is not protected. Judges in the > European Union ruled that because the international corporation, Google, is > a collector and processor of data it should be classified as a "data > controller" under the meaning of the EU data protection directive. These > "data controllers" are required under EU law to remove data that is > "inadequate, irrelevant, or no longer relevant, " - making this directive of > global importance

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

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> It seems the judicial system in France could learn something from Colombia:

 _" Seeking to balance the right to clarify the record and the right to freedom of expression, the [highest Constitutional Court in Colombia] held that the newspaper was not required to remove the article. The court did require the newspaper to update the published information and use "robots.txt" and "metatags" to prevent the indexing of the content by Google due to the particularly serious nature of the crime and the severe personal consequences for Gloria."_

<comment><USER10> Be careful with spelling here. You get it right once and wrong the other time.

Columbia - University in NYC Colombia - Country in South America

I make so many spelling mistakes I hate to correct, but when I ready your first sentence I thought you might have meant the university.

<comment><USER11> Never realised this spelling mistake was such a thing but now I notice it all the time!

I've been living in Bogotá for a few months and I only realised I was spelling Colombia wrong a couple of months in - pretty embarrassing.

I now notice many if not most of my English-speaking friends make the same mistake when emailing/facebooking/whatsapping me and I try to correct them as I go.

It appears Columbia is a reflex spelling of the sound of the word - I'm from the UK so haven't had that much exposure to the use of the word for the NY University, so I don't think that's the explanation in my case.

Someone should make a website for this along the lines of amispellingcolumbiacorrectly.com -> NO to spread the word ;-)

<comment><USER12> A lot of Americans probably are used to spelling it Columbia because there are tons of towns/cities/roads named Columbus or Columbia here. That would unfortunately render your website idea mostly incorrect - for most Americans "Columbia" is the correct spelling of what they are trying to spell. It's really only the country and some towns in Latin America that spell it with an O.

(The reflex spelling probably comes from the fact that most English speakers are primarily familiar with the English spelling of Christopher Columbus)

<comment><USER11> > That would unfortunately render your website idea mostly incorrect

I meant correct in the context of trying to spell Colombia, the country name, given that's what I was talking about - obviously the spelling Columbia is correct if you're referring to anything else which actually goes by that spelling..

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> From a legal perspective, hypotheticals about the Internet becoming the union of all restrictions worldwide isn't even the best argument. If we accept that Google can be compelled by France to be forced to hide some content from the entire world, then we must also accept that Google can be compelled by some _other_ jurisdiction to be _required_ to make that content available. It's the same power. The Republic of X may make its propaganda mandatory and the Breakaway Republic of X may ban it, and I'm only being generic to be polite, I could easily name specific examples of this sort of thing if the French precedent is to be accepted.

</comment><comment><USER14> Imagine this:

A website that fulfills a search query by searching google.com, then searching google.fr, then searching google.cn. It shows the results to the google.com query but gives badges to results based on which governments appear to be censoring them.

<comment><USER15> Long ago, there was a search engine named Dogpile that would search Google and Altavista and Yahoo and Ask Jeeves about a dozen others.

<comment><USER16> For some reason our computer teacher in elementary school had a strange obsession with this site and we were only allowed to use dogpile instead of any of those sites individually. There might have been another one that was used from time to time called "metacrawler" I think... its been a while.

<comment><USER17> Back in the day before Google, MetaCrawler _ruled_ :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Something i don't get. Why ask google to modify its content depending on the domain name rather than the ip of the client ?

Ip geolocating can work to identify if someone lives in france. Client living in France => serve content based on french laws.

<comment><USER19> People can use VPN, so it's not very easy to know whether someone lives in France. That's all the problem IMO: some people here are saying "France: do whatever you want in your country but don't censor elsewhere". France could just answser: "very well, I just want this content not to be accessible in France, so do whatever you have to do, but respect our laws in France". And Google would have no choice to censor everywhere if it wants to comply since otherwise the search results would be accessible from France (through VPN).

<comment><USER18> But vpn is another matter entirely. You're explicitey trying to avoid the limits of your current access point / physical location.

They could comply and say to he cnil "if vpn is bothering you, then you should regulate vpn use".

<comment><USER19> I agree, it's pretty hard to know in this case whether the one breaking the law is the VPN provider (since is "smuggling" illegal search result into France) or the illegal search result provider.

EDIT: I wonder how it works for drugs for example: if someone sells drugs from a country where it's legal to France, could he be found guilty in France? (I am pretty sure the smuggler/dealer will ^^)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Good. The concept of RTBF as is currently implemented is insane, and it's good to see Google finally reacting like in that scene from Avengers:

"I recognize that the Council has made a decision, but given that it's a stupid ass decision, I have elected to ignore it."

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mOEr7kiysrE](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mOEr7kiysrE)

</comment><comment><USER21> GEOip anyone ? Not sure if it's reliable or it's performance impact. In terms of bypassing it: it's either world-wide block outside of your juridiction or tough luck.

<comment><USER22> Google already uses GeoIP (and IP multicast). Doesn't matter if you type google.de or google.com in the URL-bar of the browser. You will always get the German version, which differs significantly and is practically worthless for programming or technology topics. I assume it's the same for google.fr (can't try it for obvious reasons).

What works is google.com/ncr or just use duckduckgo.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> So no mention of the Phillip K Dick short story that's being referenced either in the article itself or HN?

<comment><USER15> I'm not familiar with Phillip K Dick's short stories. Which one do you mean?

<comment><USER24> [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/We_Can_Remember_It_for_You_Who...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/We_Can_Remember_It_for_You_Wholesale) (adapted to film as "Total Recall" twice).

Quite a few of his stories have been made into movies with Blade Runner ("Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?") probably the best adaptation.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philip_K._Dick_bibliography#Fi...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philip_K._Dick_bibliography#Film_adaptations)

<comment><USER15> Perhaps you mean Piers Anthony?

And that was a full-length novel, later turned into a major motion picture, starring Arnold Schwarzenegger.

Edit: it was adapted into that movie, then novelized afterward?

Edit2: [http://www.amazon.com/Total-Recall-Piers- Anthony/dp/03807087...](http://www.amazon.com/Total-Recall-Piers- Anthony/dp/0380708744)

<comment><USER24> Nope, Total Recall was based on "We Can Remember It for You Wholesale." I wonder what story you are thinking of?

Edit: yes, apparently: "In 1966, the late Philip K. Dick published the novelette "We Can Remember It for You Wholesale." A movie based on the story will be released next year; this book is a novelization of the script and the original novel" \-- [http://www.amazon.com/Total-Recall-Piers- Anthony/dp/06880520...](http://www.amazon.com/Total-Recall-Piers- Anthony/dp/0688052096)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> Why is the solution of an ip address based block not proposed? To me that seems to be the most reasonable solution to this problem.

<comment><USER26> What happens when we move to ipv6 then and have privacy extensions?

Block a new ip address every 3-8 hours depending on what os is backing things?

<comment><USER27> Thankfully IP addresses are distributed in large blocks, not individually.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> Do Google have any presence in France like offices or property which to give the judicial system in France jurisdiction to make this decision over the site?

<comment><USER29> Yes.

[https://www.google.com/about/careers/locations/paris/](https://www.google.com/about/careers/locations/paris/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> "In the end, the Internet would only be as free as the world's least free place."

Well, duh! Governments WANT this.

</comment><comment><USER31> RTBF is unenforceable.

<comment><USER32> If you have offices in Europe it is. They can always fine you it is too expensive to comply, or until you close your offices and end your corporate entity there.

<comment><USER33> This is why I don't understand why people think these countries are overstepping. It's not like they're forcing total outsiders to do their bidding. Google set up offices all over the place, and, surprise! Now they're beholden to the local authorities.

If you only want to be subject to the authority of one jurisdiction, make sure your company doesn't have a presence anywhere else. That's not a guarantee, but it helps a lot.

<comment><USER34> Google doesn't have a problem being subject to multiple jurisdictions, just as an American company it reasonably doesn't want to apply French law outside France's jurisdiction.

<comment><USER33> And France reasonably wants French law to apply to a company with French presence.

One can debate the merits of the law all day long, but in the end all that matters is that a national government is sovereign within their own territory. If they want you to do something that you don't want to do, you can remove yourself from their jurisdiction, change their mind somehow, or do it anyway.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> Before mounting your US judicial high horse please remember that the US claims universal jurisdiction more than any other country in the world. As a US corporation please keep this in mind before you denigrate this judicial practices of foreign jurisdictions.

<comment><USER36> No. I will not think about how one specific country does bad things every time someone points out any other country doing bad things.

</comment></comment><comment><USER37> It's almost like the EU wants to become irrelevant...

<comment><USER38> To whom? You? Because Europe is a giant, they will never be irrelevant.

<comment><USER37> It was meant to be a bit of a joke in that they're trying to be forgotten :) But obviously the sarcasm didn't make it through...

<comment><USER38> Went right over my head... I'm blaming Monday, maybe I should get more coffee.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER39> I view this as a very cynical attempt by Googles' counsel to prevent it from being governed by the laws of France. Associating the "right to be forgotten" with Russias' homophobic laws is clearly an attempt to frame the idea in the negative - when the right to be forgotten is far from the same kind of heinous cultural act as homophobia.

Very, very cynical - and Google have lost yet another point in their race to dominate culture as a corporate, global power..

<comment><USER13> Google complies with French law within French borders. That's not the issue here, the question is whether France can compel Google _out_ of France's borders. I think you've completely misunderstood the issue here.

<comment><USER19> Within French IP addresses you mean. I am in France and can access the "American internet" with a VPN easily. According to France Google is breaking the law because it let me access illegal search results from France. So France is just trying to enforce the law within their borders after all (at least, so they could say)

<comment><USER13> It seems to me it would make a lot more sense to charge you for bypassing the restriction than to charge Google for activities that occurred outside of France. Clearly the solution is to outlaw VPN usage for French citizens so they don't stray off the French internet.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER40> I think it is crazy that we still cannot define individually how many bytes of data Google may store to profile us.

Note that it should not take many bits to profile us in a way that is useful, while still respecting our privacy. For example, with about 33 bits of information, one can identify any individual on this planet. With less than this amount, one can still put you in a class of individuals, such that you get relevant search results.</comment>


How To Be A Billionaire - <AUTHOR> http://www.forbes.com/2010/02/17/billionaire-wealth-how-leadership-careers-rein_print.html

<comment><AUTHOR> Of course, the three points of advice in this article apply to building ventures with less than 9 zeros too:

1\. Be able and willing to take calculated risks. 2\. Think creatively about new revenue sources. 3\. Have a supportive spouse.</comment>


Ask HN: Does anyone else, other than myself, need a secure note app? - <AUTHOR> Hi friends,
I'm working on a secure note taking/saving app. Think Evernote + Wunderlist + 1Password with a hardy layer of encryption combined with a unique(?) way of note discoverability/consumption.
I'm an engineer so I tend to just dive in, prototype and code.  I've been focusing on the core key management system, pretty far along (I think).  Then for some reason, today, I woke up and realized: "shoot! do people really want this stuff?" Because, not to offending anyone here, but good key management stuff is pretty hard core work and requires a little bit more time & attention than the usual engineering project (at least for me).
My wife and I need this for our own purpose and I promised my wife I'd build it for her (heh!).  So I guess, I'll ask an honest question, without any ulterior intention here: does anyone else need this? I would love and appreciate any thought one way or another about this.
Thanks,
-V. <comment><USER2> I also work on a note-taking application and my thoughts are: ability to have secure notes is somewhat important but it's not important enough to make it a primary benefit.

Your app would have to be great at non-secure notes AND have an option to add secure notes.

Evernote, btw, does support secure (encrypted) notes. They have a lousy UI for them but the option is there.

If you don't think that your app is better in at least some ways than existing note-taking apps, that having secure notes will not make a difference.

<comment><AUTHOR> EDIT: You did launch your note app. Congratulations! I would to hear more about QuickNotes if you have a chance.

You make a good point. Having worked in consumer & enterprise security space, I can definitely confirm that security is indeed a very VERY difficult thing to sell. It's a chronic pain killer often-time conceived as a vitamin. I wasn't planning on pushing the security aspect of it, but yeah, engineering habit--I get excited about tech and forget that most people don't find it as as fascinating hah.

I sincerely hope you launch your note app. I think there's a reason why there are so many of them out there. No one has gotten it right yet. I thought Evernote did a pretty good job as conquering the market, but I think there's enough individuality, because I think that's what it is, everyone captures and consumes notes differently. We can certainly carve out a niches :)

Good luck!

-V.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Yes. But I rolled my own out of pre-existing software:

* Emacs (desktop / laptop editor)

* Orgzly (Android editor)

* org-mode (the note mechanism itself)

* Unison (for file sync)

* Ubuntu LTS + OpenSSH (on the file server)

Happy to provide more detail if you're interested.

<comment><AUTHOR> Hi Duncan. Thanks for sharing your thoughts. Yeah, I currently use multiple tools to manage my stuff as well but it's starting to feel like playing lego with tools. As much as I love to play around with lego, I'm getting tired of jumping from app to app to just handle a couple of "seemingly related" tasks to me. Not to mention usability and collaboration isn't without much friction. If anything, I need a tool that I can tell my wife: "here, use this, write your note and secure your passwords here" instead of scattering them everywhere.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Slightly different, but however - I've been journaling daily for the past 4 years. It turned out it's a healthy habit. I'm writing to myself and I would be really happy knowing that my thoughts are secure. There's nothing to hide, but knowing that probably helps you being more direct and upfront with yourself. As far as I know, Day One are planning to roll out encryption this year.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for getting back to me. Wow, Day One looks like an amazing app. I would certainly use it if my needs were simply journaling AND I can read their key management system specs. For some reason, I'm stilling writing on a notebook when it comes to private thoughts--just a force of habit I suppose. I think I'm like you, I would probably be more honest if I know what I write is going to be for my eyes only.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> I've always just used encrypted pastebins, e.g. [https://defuse.ca/b/](https://defuse.ca/b/)</comment>


The pressure to achieve academically is a crime against learning - <AUTHOR> http://www.theatlantic.com/education/archive/2015/08/when-success-leads-to-failure/400925/?single_page=true <comment><USER3> I do not think the pressure comes directly from the need for higher grades. I think it come from how those grades are created.

I my academic history (highschool, undergrad, law school, now teaching) I only felt real stress where grades were incremental. Take my civpro class. We had an assignment after only three lectures, an assignment worth 5% of our grade. I had barely wrapped my head around law school and already my final grade, my scholarship, was on the line. I did poorly on that assignment, immediately chopping a few points off my final grade. On the other hand my crimlaw class had no assignments, just a big exam at the end. That class allowed me the time to figure things out and was much less stressful.

The highschool kids I talk to today are in a constant panic. ((That's how I see it. For them it's just normal.)) Grades are ridiculously high, with class averages well north of 90%. So every test, every graded assignment, requires the focus of a final exam. They cannot afford diversion or outside learning. Each week is prep for the next test and each of those tests directly impacts their grade. Have a bad week, or even a bad afternoon, and it might stick with you for years. They don't dare read anything that isn't assigned for fear of not aligning with the teacher's "learning plan". If it didn't come from teacher it isn't on next week's test and is therefore useless. Imho this constant "exam mode" is the real source of stress.

So drop the microtests. Give them the one big exam and let them relax and learn at their own pace the rest of the time.

<comment><USER4> Immediately, you've come up with a solution that wouldn't fit _my_ type of learning, and my comfort level. I absolutely _abhor_ "final" exams. It's like a grand-finale that is make or break, forcing you to study a ridiculous amount of content and make sure you know/understand all of it for a single event in the future. If you fail, you have to do it all over again. No course- corrections, no motivational reminders/nudges. Nothing.

The example you cite in the beginning, your fear of the impending results of a small test. Now multiply that by 20 (as you said yours was just 5% of the final mark), and that is how anxious I would be for the entire course leading up to the final exam.

So drop the ubertests. Test students understanding using application and insight, not giant knowledge dumps that can only be tested in one long-winded sitting. (I exaggerate a little, sorry about that).

<comment><USER5> I have to wonder, if the outcome we are interested in is whether students understand the material, can't we do both? Some optional mid point tests, where the student can chose to keep the grade or bet it all on that final assessment?

I mean tests only exist to convince us that they know the material. Why does it matter how it works, beyond the test being an accurate reflection of their understanding?

<comment><USER6> Why not both? Some of my favourite classes have said, "Highest of midterms + assignment marks or final exam mark."

<comment><USER7> Almost all of my computer science classes had two grading schemes - <USER2> "normal" one and another which was basically just taking your grade on the final exam and not counting anything else. That latter option actually saved me one time, but that's because I was astronomically lazy in that class and didn't do anything (didn't even show up to some quizzes, I think, when two quizzes added up to an exam). I definitely think that giving students the option is good, though, because if you asked me which I'd want I will always choose the small incremental tests over one huge test.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> And this is why we homeschool. Have a weird fascination with the human eye? Here's three medical textbooks, knock yourself out kid. Suck at math? No problem, we will take it as slow as we have to until you _feel comfortable_. There's no grades and pressure there's just things you've learned and things you're still learning.

<comment><USER9> I think probably a better solution is some sort of combination between home schooling and public school. Homeschooling alone makes it hard for children to learn peer social skills, and it makes it more difficult for them to relate later on to the majority of people who have had 13 years of primary/secondary education in a public school environment (in the US at least)

<comment><USER10> I don't understand this response. Whenever homeschooling comes up, someone always says that homeschoolers are unsocialized. I don't even know what that means. Do you think homeschoolers never have friends or enemies growing up? Where did this prevailing belief come from? I say this as someone who was homeschooled all the way through highschool and attended university and grad school. Even if homeschoolers are 'less socialized' than public/private schoolers, have you noticed that there are the oversocialized people as well? I'm talking about the ones who were popular in highschool, and end up deriving their self-worth from what everyone else thinks of them. Is that not also as big a problem?

I don't disagree that socialization is an important part of growing up, I just disagree with the notion that homeschoolers are savages that live in caves until they're 18.

<comment><USER11> I think the big difference is not that home schoolers do not have friends, it is that home schooling does not force you to deal with diverse groups of kids. In public school you have no choice of whether or not you have to interact with people that you don't want to/don't care to.

This is not really a bad thing, but learning to deal with people you would rather not can be a good skill to learn. This is not to say that you will not figure this out elsewhere.

<comment><USER9> This is exactly the point I was trying to make. It is technically possible to recreate this exposure outside of school, but very difficult.

<comment><USER12> Good cover, but one could argue that the pros of devoted tutorship and freestyle curriculum outweigh the cons of limited socialization. In my everyday life as an adult professional, I appreciate more the limited educational breadth I received in public school over whatever street smarts I gained from it. Need exposure to a lower socio-economic tiers? Get involved in volunteer charity organizations. Overall, I think educational breadth and depth will make one a far better citizen than simply being among other public school students at the hands of the awful US education system with NCLB.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Ah, yes, this. When I went back to university after taking a break a couple of years ago I promised myself it would be out of pure interest, because I cared about the subject, not to get good grades. Of course it didn't work out exactly that way, pretty soon there's an assignment to hand in tomorrow, and exam to get points on next week... and again I found myself preparing to answer the questions I knew I was going to get, rather than delving into that one subject that seemed interesting, or reading through the proof of a theorem being used. The grades were good, the learning... maybe not so much.

Right now I'm working on my final thesis research, and I found a good subject. Everyone keeps asking what my deadline is, when it is going to be done, how I'm progressing. I don't care. I'm learning, creating and having fun. I want to be able to spend the whole day exploring a topic I don't understand, or refactoring parts of my simulation code that I don't like. I know I'll get it done at some point, and when I do it'll be a valuable contribution at least to myself and hopefully the field I'll be publishing in. That's what learning's supposed to be like for me.

<comment><USER14> I read and discussed classics at St. John's College in Santa Fe, NM, for 8 weeks per summer for 4 summers, for a master's degree; and there were no grades. (Yes, the grades are on a transcript which I could request, but haven't.) It is my understanding that the undergraduate program has the same grading policy.

It was refreshing to be able to learn without grade pressure.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> I call this "Too smart to fail".

When I was a below average student, I used to have a lot less stress. The expectation was so much lower.

Once I started getting As across the board I started panicking.

The problem is we have essentially "privatized" learning.

What that means is once we started attaching money to learning via the university industrial complex and cheap credit. Your knowledge became a store of wealth like your house ( which itself is a terrible idea ).

Now their is a pervasive attitude - if you study engineering for example you pay 4X for tuition compared to humanities.

If you get As you get to go to Stanford and be 10X in debt as someone who went to a Community College.

It reminds me of the argument by Louise CK, where loans are much easier to get when you have liquidity already.

This has lead to a situation of "Too smart to fail" among students who get good grades, when in reality we should be allocating more education resources to weaker students in society and handing them the most credit, and not celebrate grades so heavily, but celebrate when that education leads to value in society.

<comment><USER16> > Now their is a pervasive attitude - if you study engineering for example you > pay 4X for tuition compared to humanities.

What? If you want to be an engineer you can go to a state school, work hard and pass the FE/EIT exam your senior year for 1/4 the price of a private school.

Half of the top ten engineering schools are public: [http://colleges.usnews.rankingsandreviews.com/best- colleges/...](http://colleges.usnews.rankingsandreviews.com/best- colleges/rankings/engineering-doctorate)

The top ten liberal arts schools are all private: [http://colleges.usnews.rankingsandreviews.com/best- colleges/...](http://colleges.usnews.rankingsandreviews.com/best- colleges/rankings/national-liberal-arts-colleges)

<comment><USER17> >> "...work hard and pass the FE/EIT exam your senior year..."

Mostly agreed, except that as someone who studied drastically, overwhelmingly too much for the FE exam (which turned out to be super easy) that if you have to "work hard" to pass the FE your education has been gravely deficient.

<comment><USER18> > if you have to "work hard" to pass the FE your education has been gravely > deficient.

Easier for Mechanical and Civil engineering students since more of the sections are a basic part of their curriculum.

As an electrical engineer, the EE sections were laughably easy while I had to study quite hard to get enough points in the dynamics, thermodynamics, and materials sections to pass. I did well, but I really had to work my ass off for sections that I never used again.

Whereas practically all of the other engineering disciplines simply blow off the EE section as you can pass without getting any points at all in it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Learning is a beautiful thing when it happens, but it mostly does not happen in education. Learning is a delicacy, a luxury, thing which not everyone will appreciate.

On the other hand, vocational training is necessary and most people appreciate the necessity. It is time to officially redirect universal education to vocational training. Expecting education to provide learning is expecting too much. By expecting too much we will only be disappointed.

<comment><USER20> I disagree that learning is a delicacy. Learning is an innate human behavior. It's what separates us from the animals. It's how we became apex predators across multiple biomes stretching across the globe. You can see this in children, they have unbridled curiosity and depthless enthusiasm for learning. But they have a limited tolerance for tedium and bureaucracy, and those are in extreme abundance in education today. It's a system that's practically designed to beat out any hint of desire for learning, intellectualism, and reading. In some ways it's a wonder that any vestige of those things survive at all through such experiences.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> I always thought it would be better to measure a student by how much they've learned not how good they are. For example one student would be on algebra 1 and another on calculus. I think it is easier emotionally to think of someone else as just farther along than better than you. Traditional in room lecture based learning required all students to be at the same point. This is a terrible assumption because many times it's not true. Assume a student was not able to focus during Algebra 1 because of a tragic event during that year, like the loss of a parent. Without herculean effort that student will be lost in geometry, trig, and calculus because they lack the Algebra 1 foundation. One year of missed learning turns into four.

I hope that MOOCs allow for this to be fixed. No longer would the assumption need to be made that all students need learn at the same pace. This means the 40% of gifted kids won't be bored, and 20% of kids who learn a little slower won't be hopelessly lost.

The other benefit to the learning being self paced and through computers is that you could test progress through small quizzes. If a student failed a quiz, she could simply relearn the material. This eliminates, the TEST, a huge unnecessary stresser in children's lives. You could also test material from several quizzes ago to make sure the important points are hammered home through spaced repetition.

Most teachers I know currently spend 80% of the year teaching to the test. Self paced materials means that you'll be able to measure performance of a kid and a teacher by how they do over a year, and not how they do on one day.

Anyway that's my dream of MOOCs and automated learning in the class room :).

</comment><comment><USER22> My radical view on education is that everyone should work at their own pace until they have an A understanding/test scores in each topic of each class before moving on.

This completely takes the focus off the grade (its always an A) and focuses it on learning well.

It also means that nobody falls behind which is a source of a lot of stress. Slow learners get extra time and teacher attention before trying to move on to more advanced topics.

Fast learners enjoy racing through subjects at their own top speed. It is extremely rewarding to be able to skip forward as soon as you are ready. This naturally develops self-managed education habits.

I got to learn this way for one year in elementary school and it was the best experience I have ever had in education.

To do this, teachers need organized lesson plans for each class that students can follow at their own pace, and act more as self-learning mentors and a learning resource, as apposed to controlling the pace with all-class lectures. The commonality between all classes is teachers are teaching kids how to learn by their own efforts, not just topics they will forget.

</comment><comment><USER23> There is a field of study around "mindset". The fairly famous book is called Mindset by Carol Dweck.

This infographic summarizes the ideas very well.

[http://i.imgur.com/HGBY1tW.png](http://i.imgur.com/HGBY1tW.png)

<comment><USER24> My attitude had always been "if it is grades people want, they will get it" i.e. to get good grades that will help me go up the ladder academically while at the same time keeping in mind that the grades are not going to help me in the real world.

This pushed me to learn continuously because at the end of the day, it is what you know and what you can do that counts rather than your grades.

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> I'm all for teaching kids curiosity and how to learn and how to prepare to be ready for a future years hence. Surely we need to question methodology and results thereof.

Yet for all of one child's failure there are many other successes. So it's more a matter of what methodology gets your educational system the greatest results for people entering adult society years hence.

Any system will be a disservice to some. Perhaps for some children tailored or perhaps less structured home schooling or other alternative forms of education would be more beneficial to them in the long run.

On the other hand, it's not as if east Asia and south Asia are doing poorly economically due to their focus on achievement. On the contrary they are very vital economic engines, china due to surpass the us in ppp GDP. So, its not clear that this model is that detrimental. Any model will incur casualties, it's up to us to seek better alternatives with fewer casualties but proof of the pudding is in the eating.

<comment><USER26> Total GDP is meaningless. China is nowhere near the US in PPP GDP per capita.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> > ....for our willingness to put their long-term developmental and emotional > needs before their short-term happiness. For our willingness to let their > lives be just a little bit harder today so they will know how to face > hardship tomorrow.

Isn't decreasing the pressure to be a perfect student the exact opposite of letting their life be a little bit harder today?

<comment><USER27> Not if the preferred way to become a "perfect student" is to go only after the easier/safer challenges. And to quit whenever the chance of getting any less than an "A-" grade seems uncertain.

The whole article builds the argument that since adults are only concerned with the kid's results but cannot be bothered on how those are achieved, all kids eventually learn to fake it and end up sacrificing their intellectual curiosity for the sake of self-worth validation from their parents/teachers.

Therefore, making the student's life a little bit harder today means to push them to tackle real challenges and making peace with the fact that they might spoil their perfect record in the process.

<comment><USER16> > Not if the preferred way to become a "perfect student" is to go only after > the easier/safer challenges.

That's nowhere near becoming a perfect student and it isn't even high on the scale of parental pressure.

<comment><USER27> That's what the article said, no how I think things should be.

With my own children, I've never make a fuss about bad grades (which thankfully have been few and far between). I do care about them giving their best effort, and let them know in no uncertain terms.

But I know plenty of parents that are minimally involved but nonetheless demand "good grades" from their kids. Fooling those into believing their kids are raising academic stars would be extremely easy.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> Although I think the whole "the fear of failure has destroyed learning" thing is rather dramatic, I realize there is a basis for that perspective that I think lies more in that academic achievement destroys exploratory, off-script types of learning that lead to fulfillment. America is rather innovative and we are arguably innovation leaders, but the quantitative success factor overlooks the qualitative measure of living life.

Innovation in the USA in particular seems to largely focus on chasing some sort of target and/or be driven by some paranoia based anxiety. A perfect example of this whole issue is something I heard the other day, that technology could be used to solve earth's environmental problems. It's so schizophrenic if you start even barely thinking about it ... we're going to invent solutions to problems that we are causing ourselves, at this very moment? It strikes me as a similar strategy as growing yourself out of net loss. It's really kind of mind boggling and quite similar to obsessive compulsive disorder; just clean those hands one more time to make sure they are clean, just clean those hands one more time to make sure they are clean .... innovate our way out of the problems that our last innovation caused, innovate our way out of the problems our last innovation caused ... and on and on.

</comment><comment><USER29> The issues raised here are side effects of the discontinuity between how humans evolved to learn, and how we are taught today.

Fundamentally, the problem is similar to the problems of mass production. The need is to produce greater volume, with standardized results and less variance in the end product. But this is exactly opposite of how humans evolved to learn. We're evolved to learn primarily from our parents, secondarily from extended family and then from the larger group. This is why children in general have a desire to please their parents, and parents have both anxiety about struggling children and and pride when they do well. There is another force for learning, curiosity, that is the underlying factor for children's increasing knowledge and innovation, and which drives persistence and resilience. In a prehistoric environment, teaching and learning were highly personalized. 2 parents may have to nurture 2 or 3 children at a time. Prehistoric children also learned quite a bit on their own, in their own way, at their own pace when no teacher was paying attention. [0]

In today's world, the amount and type of what has to be learned to function far exceeds what parents and family can teach. Even with homeschooling, advanced topics may be learned from texts that the student reads, rather than from tutoring by their parents. Most parents don't have homeschooling as an option, so we invented schools, which are by their nature, not personalized. Instead of ~1 teacher/parent per student, we have 30+. Teaching is not personalized, which goes strictly against human nature.

[0] [http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2012/07/02/spoiled- rotten](http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2012/07/02/spoiled-rotten)

</comment><comment><USER30> My gut feeling is that some of the top universities could change this with no effect on employment, but positive effect on actual learning and related exam stress.

You could give the kids internal assessments that don't count. "Here's some questions that should be easy if you understood the linear algebra course. It's up to your own conscience to decide how well you know it."

And then have a pass/fail line that is external. "This kid went to Harvard and did these courses and passed. All our kids are smart, and there's not much point in you, as an external employer, trying to figure out who is better based on a GPA."

I get the feeling a lot of the grade stress is unproductive. Kids divert their attention to exams, which employers have no idea how to assess. Some kid gets an A in math. How much of a predictor of business success is that really, for your average consultancy/bank/whatever? The result is the kids end up spending their energy on something that isn't all that important in the grand scheme of things.

<comment><USER31> I think it's pretty telling that most courses outside school aren't structured...

Course: Math, Grade: A-F.

...but...

Course: Math E, Grade: Pass/Fail. Course: Math D, Grade: Pass/Fail. Course: Math C, Grade: Pass/Fail.

...etc.

I think the former mindset unfortunately can be quite common in the tech industry. "We need an A grade programmer". When what you really are looking for is a "C grade programmer with A grade ruby, B grade security, B grade network knowledge".

</comment></comment><comment><USER32> Here's an idea. Drop exams entirely, and examine at the point of job application. If a person learning understand the material, encourage them to move to the next thing. If they're still addressing subject matter, let them continue.

</comment><comment><USER33> This is a sort of a hamster-ball problem. You have a school that is severely underperforming, an children are not learning at all. You have a big achievement gap in the classroom, where a good chunk os students are illiterate. Then we try to solve this with grades, as a way of holding teachers and students responsible and provide a feedback loop. Then the grades inform the learning process, changing everything.

It's an example of a wider problem that I think I've heard it called "legibility." It can exist police departments, for example. You know that half the cops are lazy, so you measure arrests and such. Then cops' job becomes arresting people rather than maintaining peace. All sorts of damaging dynamics play. Even if a measure (eg arrests) might be good at telling you who's a good cop, optimizing for the measure does not necessarily make cops better. It's demoralizing to the good cops, who are now judged by stupid measures.

Schools have this problem and lots of others too. Lets start with the fact that a 6+ hour schooldays for 8 year olds is nonsensical. More hours does not result in more learning. You could halve the hours (double the teacher/student ratio for the same price?), but schools need to be babysitters too. A big group of kids of equal age is an unnatural environment for juvenile humans to interact and learn in, causing (among other things) emotionally turbulent self judgement constantly. Everyone is your yardstick.

Overall, these are problems we hit as we create institutions. I think it's a problem all over the modern world. Our anemic & sanitized work culture isolated from our home life, and the split personality people develop living in these two worlds. The anonymity and isolation of the oversized and transient "communities" we live in. We develop "unnatural" institutions to deal with life in these inorganic world. Formal reviews and targets in a company instead of the normal peer pressures you would find in a more organic setting like a family farm with a dozen workers (or a hunting party if you want to take it that far). We replace school discipline, grading and such with children's innate desire to learn and discover.

I have a hint of a grand historical theory floating around in my mind that I don't understand well enough to articulate:

It's becoming very clear that technology is developing much faster than culture and psychology. Comment trolling and the even more common emotional overreactions and general emotional idiocy of our online selves are an obvious example. But, I suspect it might go much deeper and longer maybe to the paleolithic revolution.

Early civilizations were (we think) these slave societies with god kings and terrible oppression. They had seeds in our natural (even prehuman) instincts for dominance, status, subordination. But, they were really pathological worlds where people couldn't thrive. They built institutions like slavery and priesthood out of the existing "natural" dynamics (say tribal shamans and chieftains) but most of the brickwork was this clunky new stuff barely holding together this new way of doing society: slavery, cast hierarchy… When we think of the "Charles Dickens World" of street urchins, poorhouses, filth and urban poverty we're seeing people living in a newly constructed industrial world with cobbled together institutions and culture.

Organic cultural takes time, generations. The alternative is an engineered culture with its legible, formalizable logic and none of the nuance.

It's particularly sad though, when it comes to small children.</comment>


The Meta-Machine Code (MMC) Tool - <AUTHOR> http://verisimilitudes.net/2017-07-07?v2 <comment><AUTHOR> An improved version (with a video demo) already submitted 8 months ago ([https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15706120](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15706120)).</comment>


Y Combinator just graduated a record batch, but bigger plans are in works - <AUTHOR> http://www.bizjournals.com/sanjose/blog/techflash/2016/03/y-combinator-latest-batch-was-a-record-but-bigger.html <comment><AUTHOR> > "I'm more excited for GM than I am for Cruise," he said. "To me, that is > going to mean GM beats Toyota."

I wonder if that will play out</comment>


This guy thinks Hubble and Spitzer proves the bible is valid... - <AUTHOR> http://hubblerevealscreation.com/genesis.html

<comment><USER2> On a similar note, the LDS (Mormon) faith believes that things were not created out of nothing but rather were 'organized' since matter is eternal. This was taught by Joseph Smith around the 1840's.

 _According to Mormon scripture, "the elements are eternal".[41] This means, according to Smith, that the elements are co-existent with God, and "they may be organized and reorganized, but not destroyed. They had not beginning, and can have no end."[42] This was elaborated by Brigham Young, who said, "God never made something out of nothing; it is not in the economy or law of which the worlds were, are, or will exist."[43] Thus, Mormons deny ex nihilo creation and instead believe that God created or "organized" the universe out of pre-existing elements.[44]_

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mormon_cosmology></comment>


Ask HN: $13,000 bill from ATT mobile - What to do? - <AUTHOR>

Hey HN,
Would love some help here. We gave an iphone to my father last christmas and he was fine with it (but not using much).
He then went for a trip to UK last month and now he got a 13k bill from ATT. Way more than what he can afford...
In the bill it sais that he used 900,000 kb (or similar) at around 10am and it cost him almost 13k for just that internet usage.
Is that possible? He tried to call them, but they said that he HAS to pay because the charges came from the UK company....
He said he didn't use it much (but tried to check the email, but was so slow that he gave up).
Any suggestions? <comment><USER2> Firstly, I feel for you. Its a strange commentary on the human condition where little bits of institutionalized dishonesty like this are allowed to persist despite the fact that literally _everyone_ knows that its wrong. I'm not sure how the people answering the phones tell old men that they owe $13,000 overages are able to do this job.

The advice is that persistence is key. Everyone knows that this is a mistake, even the jerks at the phone company making this stuff up. You just have to keep calling, insisting that there's been a mistake and moving on up the chain. Try to find other routes into the system as well, call some PR guys, look up the names of company officers on the internet and email (or call if you can find numbers).

Even if your phone did DL 900meg, it probably did so outside of your fathers control, and the marginal cost of providing this data to an iphone in a big city is 0. Its just a stupid shell game intended to fleece a few hundred bucks from folks here and there that in your case went horribly wrong. Make enough noise and you'll probably be able to get them to agree to take the few hundred and let it go. It will take some work though.

You local TV news might be interested in it as a fluff piece as well.

<comment><USER3> local tv news sounds like an interesting option. you need a powerful advocate, and local news could be that.

<comment><USER3> also, maybe local newspaper, and try to set up a website sharing your story with the links to the news stories about your story. try to stir up publicity. even email the ceo of AT&T and senior VPs directly.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> My friend was faced with a similar problem (10K+ ATT bill) after traveling to the middle east. He hired an attorney, who was able to negotiate with ATT and after some back and forth they agreed to significantly adjust and settle the bill for only a few hundred dollars.

</comment><comment><USER5> I had a similar issue when I traveled to Japan and China. I'm a customer of T-mobile, and yes I did in fact use internet on my android phone (had no idea how much it was going to cost me). But even with almost full usage, my bill came out to $1,300 (Data and voice).

I called T-mobile and asked them what the charges is, and after they explained its mainly my data charge lied to them that I never used my data there. The whole time I was being nice and persistent, and the person on the other line agreed that since it's a smartphone it uses data connection automatically, and spoke to the higher ups to revoke the high charge (still had to pay for voice but I was happy with data fee out of the way).

So call AT&T, be nice but also be persistent, and tell them your story in good faith. That it is your father who had the phone and he has no idea how to use the internet yet. Also mention that you think all the data usage is the iPhone itself connecting to update itself (update time and what not). You can say that these charges were never explained to you. If all fails, go to the store. You being there in person is going to be harder than the line "dropping" if you were to call.

Good luck!

</comment><comment><USER6> The same thing happened to my company with AT&T back in 2006. We where sending our sales team to London and Paris to meet with our banking customers and they where running up data usage bills up to 25k per month per phone.

Unfortunately, there was no way out of it other than to pay, up and educate the staff on the costs associated with travel and data usage. The end result was that our teams would turn data features off when traveling abroad and use land lines to call as much as possible.

If your dad is retiring and owns his home then he may just decide to not pay it and let them report it to his credit.

If he is still going to rely on credit then he needs to setup a payment plan and ask them to forgive part of the bill. However, my experience with ATT is that there is no chance of that happening. You will be lucky if you can speak with a rep who even knows what a phone is.

</comment><comment><USER7> Same thing happened to me when I went to India for 3 weeks. before I went, I had ordered the "unlimited" international data plan from AT&T for $200 per month. After i came back, I got a $1,800 bill from AT&T. When I called, they said that the unlimited plan was not really unlimited....they just called it unlimited.

So I told them that they had 2 options. Either to cancel the entire $1,800 and accept the $200 unlimited plan as unlimited or I would pay nothing and they could take me to court.

They called 2 hours later and cancelled the entire $1,800 bill. Basically AT&T is nothing but a bunch of crooks trying to cheat as many people as they can.

Here's my gripe about the whole industry <http://bit.ly/f2WEq5>

</comment><comment><USER8> 900mb? in the UK? on data? only if you try for a few months. data here is so slow its painful. But fairly cheap ( i pay £5 ($10US) for 1gb a month.

All you can do is complain, and complain hard. Its bullsh*t and they know it.

<comment><USER9> Data in the UK isn't that slow for me. With a tethered iPhone (NetShare) and now a MiFi, I've often slurped 1GB+ a day.

<comment><USER8> yeah, might be time i upgraded :p

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> A few years ago I went to Belarus. I made probably 1 20-30 minute call. I got a bill from ATT for ~$1000. The call cost $5 an minute!! Anyway, we called ATT and cut that payment, however I did still have to pay around $500. Call them and fight it for a while, tell them that you are going to sue them on some grounds (such as <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unjust_enrichment>).

</comment><comment><USER11> Talk to a lawyer.</comment>


Home Cleaning Service Pathjoy Becomes Homejoy, Raises $1.7M From A16Z And Others - <AUTHOR> http://techcrunch.com/2013/03/05/homejoy-seed-funding/

<comment><USER2> Ah, how cool, we just recommended it to some friends last week. Would be great to see it grow.</comment>


FCC to investigate, 'take appropriate action' on Colbert's Trump rant - <AUTHOR> http://thehill.com/homenews/administration/332132-fcc-probing-colberts-trump-putin-joke <comment><USER2> To go on a slight tangent but one I think very relevant here, considering other comments here about the overt politics of late night talk shows, such as another commenter's remark about not recalling previous late night hosts resorting to so many partisan jokes, it seems most people are neither aware of the former FCC's Fairness Doctrine nor its repeal:

>The Fairness Doctrine was a policy of the United States Federal Communications Commission (FCC), introduced in 1949, that required the holders of broadcast licenses both to present controversial issues of public importance and to do so in a manner that was — in the Commission's view — honest, equitable, and balanced. The FCC, which was believed to have been under pressure from then President Ronald Reagan, eliminated the Doctrine in 1987. The FCC formally removed the language that implemented the Doctrine, in August of 2011.

Quote taken from: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fairness_Doctrine](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fairness_Doctrine)

There used to be a requirement for broadcasting companies to make a good faith effort to present all sides of a topic and to actually accomplish that goal to a reasonable degree. I am not sure of the historical origins of that policy, but I imagine it was put in place in recognition of the ability of media to sway public opinion and therefore to what degree it could be abused by powerful players with an agenda.

I am generally against any governmental regulation of how people communicate, but in this case the regulation was not about content, per se, but about the fairness and integrity of our national information delivery channels. I don't know why this was repealed - I keep meaning to research it - but in any case, the repeal of the Fairness Doctrine is a chief causal factor for the state of American media today.

As much as I appreciate Colbert now, as much as I watched and enjoyed the commentary by Stewart, Colbert, and others as political pundits, it is also very clear to me that part of their success in what they do is due to affirmation of political views they share with their viewers - and that that can be (and, in my opinion, has been) overall very detrimental because it has led people to silo their beliefs and become more close minded to hearing opposing viewpoints. Furthermore, the role of such pundits has become that of trading in-depth analysis for entertainment and laughs.

I generally agree with what seem to be Colbert's views and often think he is very sharp and insightful. However, in the context of what I said above and considering how much influence he has, I think that the complaints and investigation discussed in TFA are well-founded.

<comment><USER3> The conceptual problem I have with the Fairness Doctrine - never having known a world in which it existed - is that it could force broadcasters to give equal time to ideas that do not have equal merit. If we had anti-vaxxers in 1986, would they have to get equal time on every news channel? What about Obama birthers? Abstinence-only sex ed?

Or, what about the fact that the current administration has no interest in doing anything beneficial to non-wealthy Americans? I consider that a demonstrable fact; must my hypothetical network give time to seriously considering the possibility that the GOP has rural America's best interests at heart, just because someone in politics claims that that's the case?

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> It seems like every late night comedian doubles as a political commentator these days. Perhaps my memory is hazy but I didn't recall previous late night hosts having to resort to as many partisan jokes for laughs. IMO it's lazy humor that lacks originality and plays on people's hate. Its like making fun of the outcast at school because it's vogue. If we want harmony in this world, we can't go around calling everyone we disagree with a moron.

<comment><USER5> Edit: I made a comment inappropriate for HN.

<comment><USER6> I don't think there's any particular shortage of news outlets covering the bad side(s) of the Trump administration.

<comment><USER5> Not with the kiddy gloves off there isn't.

<comment><USER6> Maybe I don't understand what that means in this context. Why is making crude jokes more useful/effective/beneficial than reporting on issues and having mature discussions about those issues?

<comment><USER3> To have a mature discussion with an emotionally challenged child is to give him way more validation than he deserves.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> wow... his comments were pejorative but I think they are or should be protected under free speech. I don't think they were defamatory any more than the president considering mainstream news as 'fake'. And his show is comedic in nature... that should mean something in his defense.

Is saying this about the president really that bad given the alleged Russian ties to the election and the president's overall ... um polarizing policies?

"The only thing your mouth is good at is being [Russian President] Vladimir Putin's cock holster,"

<comment><USER8> I think the FCC will respect the first amendment but may object to the potty- mouth sentence you quoted. They went after Howard Stern in a similar situation.

More to the point, Mr. Colbert should be ashamed of himself. Have some decency, Mr. Colbert.

<comment><USER5> Decency with regards to what exacly?

<comment><USER9> Language.

<comment><USER5> He's a comedian, grow up.

<comment><USER9> Doesn't matter who he is. This is broadcast television.

<comment><USER10> In the land of the free you can't say cock on TV before 22:00. What's next? Decency police like in Iran?

<comment><USER9> It turns out people with children aren't very open to having their kids exposed to adult material on television. This is not a new thing, either - it's been that way since day 1.

Unlike mobile providers, broadcast companies didn't pay for the spectrum they use. It's a public resource that is licensed to them, and part of that license involves restrictions on language and also depictions of gore and sex.

<comment><USER10> Public service? Maybe your confusing it with some European models but in the US there is nothing public about it. Broadcasters pay big bucks to companies like Comcast to get their station transmitted.

And if your kid is not old enough to hear to word dick then he should be in bed long before 22:00.

<comment><USER9> Maybe you don't understand how things work in the US. This has nothing to do with cable. It's about over-the-air broadcast. If it had just been cable there wouldn't be a problem.

<comment><USER11> What does delivery medium have to do with anything? I guarantee no kid knows the difference. They press channel up and channel down. It makes no sense why one would be upset over that.

<comment><USER9> As I pointed out above. The medium is important because the spectrum is a public resource, and cable isn't.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Over-The-Air (OTA) TV to me is something left far, far behind, somewhere in the mid-aughts. A wasteland of advertising and inferior content compared with what is available online or even on cable.

Kids especially, the ones who are 'protected' by regulations covering OTA TV, aren't interested in OTA TV. That's why OTA TV is programmed for demographics that are approaching or past retirement, and it's why TV companies are talking deals with Snapchat.

Or am I in a bubble?

</comment><comment><USER13> It's amazing how strongly HN pushes for free speech for Nazis, and racists, and any other unpleasant people. But for a late night talk show host criticizing a terrible president? All I see is "won't anybody think of the children?!"

</comment><comment><USER14> My complaint is that Colbert's humor reflects wealthy New York values - and he never makes jokes about the actual problems which caused many to vote for Trump (yes, some Trump supporters are racist - but many have real issues with the wealth transfer to the 1% and the myriad consequences of that transfer.) Where are the jokes about hiding billions offshore and avoiding taxes and undermining community values? Colbert, sadly, is part of the problem. Like Trump and Clinton, Colbert thinks he illuminates while he is really only promoting a different set of class values.

<comment><USER15> > but many have real issues with the wealth transfer to the 1%

Then why'd they vote for the party of wealth transfer to the 1%?

Or do you mean "have a problem with" in the same sense that an addict is said to "have a problem with" a drug?

<comment><USER9> >Then why'd they vote for the party of wealth transfer to the 1%?

Oh? Which party is that? Who do you think unrestricted immigration benefits - blue collar types or wealthy industrialists?

<comment><USER16> > Oh? Which party is that?

Both of them, but the Democrats make a more convincing pretense of wanting policies to offset it :|

<comment><USER9> I don't think very many people are convinced any more.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Video review: Google's Nexus 6P sets low price for top-tier Android 6.0 phone - <AUTHOR> http://www.networkworld.com/article/2997746/mobile-wireless/video-review-google-nexus-6p-android-6-0-smartphones.html <comment><AUTHOR> Those looking for a powerful flagship smartphone with a great camera built with the top components and materials will want a Nexus 6P. Smartphones with high-quality cameras with near-SLR quality have been built before, but not at the Nexus 6P's $500 entry price. Nexus phones are a good choice because this category of Android phones get regular software updates directly from Google.

</comment><comment><USER2> The non-removable battery has been a dealbreaker for me, but with 80% charge in 20 min and doze mode, it might be a non-issue in the short term. It will still be an issue long-term when the battery starts to wear down, though.</comment>


Ask HN: Happy Dec. - How Many Startups Made It Big When Founder Had A Day Job? - <AUTHOR>

These engineering companies are paying well. Wont the paycheck from these companies be enough to have startups run on their own? <comment><USER2> It depends what you mean by "big".

If "big" means being on the track that leads to a super acquisition or an IPO you are probably also getting VC money and don't need to keep your day job.

If "big" means being able to make enough money to leave your day job and then some, that happens all the time.

<comment><AUTHOR> \- Okay PaulHoule. Thank you for letting me know.</comment></comment>


Linkedin's explanation for yesterdays viral lash out on their opt-out strategy - <AUTHOR> http://blog.linkedin.com/2011/08/11/social-ads-update/

<comment><AUTHOR> Frankly I think it reads more like a textbook non-apology apology but that didn't fit in the title. Condescending tone, responsibility deflected and zero remorse displayed.

<comment><USER2> What were you expecting?</comment></comment>


Founders Book - <AUTHOR> http://founders.cc

<comment><USER2> Any sample content? I'll probably buy it but I just wanted to know the format, the type of questions, or even if this is just an aggregation of content already out there. Thanks

<comment><AUTHOR> email me at foundersbook at gmail dot com and I'll send you a sample chapter! sorry for the inconvenience.

<comment><USER2> I'm honestly too lazy to email you so I'll just buy it, but the fact that you don't have samples ready to go or on the sales page concerns me.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> I apologize for not having a sample chapter up on the site. I have one ready right now and it will be on the site soon.

If you'd like to see if before then email me at - foundersbook at gmail dot com and I'll send it your way!

</comment><comment><USER3> Have you considered other formats like mobi? not a big fan of PDFs</comment>