Amazon's Alexa now at Marriott hotels - <AUTHOR> https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-amazon-com-marriott-intnl/amazons-alexa-will-now-butler-at-marriott-hotels-idUKKBN1JF16V <comment><USER2> A few hotels already have tablets pointing cameras at the room (including a recent Marriott I stayed at). This just adds more crap I have to unplug or disable. Lovely.

I can't wait until we all find out these things have all been systematically rooted and collecting blackmail on folks.

It's one thing to trust Amazon or Google, but now you also have to trust the hotel and its staff, the physical security of the device, and all the previous guests of the room.

<comment><USER3> > It's one thing to trust Amazon or Google, but now you also have to trust the > hotel and its staff, the physical security of the device, and all the > previous guests of the room.

With miniature cameras being widely available for years now what exactly is new?

<comment><USER4> This pushes the acceptance much further.

"It's ok to do this. Look! Everybody does it. Why are you always so paranoid? If you have nothing to hide why are you fighting it?!"

<comment><USER3> Well it's not like this is a new platform designed for Marriott, it's an extremely popular product millions of people have in their homes and offices. It is already accepted.

<comment><USER5> Objection, appeal to popularity

"Millions" sounds overwhelming until expressed as a proportion of the population of the USA, Australasia, Canada and EU: just shy of a billion.

These devices have been accepted and adopted by a small minority of people to whom they are available.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> What could possibly ever go wrong putting a third party corporate spying machine in each room? It's unbelievable how much blind and naive trust there is.

<comment><USER7> Yea, I can't believe all these people walking around with these spying machines in their pockets. Subjecting the rest of us to their second hand spying. Oh wait, were we talking about Alexa or cellphones/smartphones?

<comment><USER8> Personally, I disable "Hey, Siri" and other watchword interfaces.

That said, I think that if someone complains about X, and you reply "But what about Y?!" you're not really addressing their concern.

<comment><USER9> If a person complains about X while actively doing/using Y, then they are not really addressing their concern either.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Is there any way to opt-out of having these in the room?

I'm not comfortable sleeping in a room with one of these devices.

<comment><USER10> Other's have said you could unplug it, but you may also find it to be the easiest way to do certain things, so you could also mute it so it's available in case you want it.

Of course you'd have to trust the mute function, but Amazon is actually pretty strict about honoring their explicit privacy guarantees (like when you push the mute button it's actually muted).

<comment><USER11> On the minus side, when muted the entire LED ring glows bright red, which is not ideal in a room you're trying to sleep in... so you need to cover it up too.

<comment><USER12> You could cover it with an anvil...

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> BTW the last few times I've checked in to a Marriott, the TV has been on, playing some kind of ad trying to sell me a temporary Netflix subscription or something. I find this incredibly annoying. I never use the TV in a hotel room, and I'd like to find a hotel chain that has no TVs in the rooms period.

</comment><comment><USER14> Friendly reminder about the time Marriott fired customer support employee to get back in China's good books

[https://work.qz.com/1220881/marriott-hotels-fired-an- hourly-...](https://work.qz.com/1220881/marriott-hotels-fired-an-hourly- employee-for-liking-a-tweet-by-a-tibetan-separatist-group/)

<comment><USER15> > ... Jones, who worked on social media accounts for the company, had "liked" > the tweet, on behalf of Marriott International... The problem? It had been > posted by a Tibetan separatist group...

This reads to me like the employee went rogue and took politically sensitive stance on behalf of the company. I'd label that brand damaging negligence and it seems like fair grounds for dismissal. Maybe there's more to it.

<comment><USER14> One like doesn't sound rogue. If the dude'd gone out of his way to like every claim of Tibet being its own country, sure.

In this case though I'd imagine he saw a "Thanks Marriott" and liked it because that's the thing companies do. I've had companies miss my oozing-in- sarcasm messages and like them in the past even.

The thing to think about is how much time does he really have per action? If it was you on personal twitter, minutes per action. As a customer support person answering hundreds of messages a day, probably closer to a second or two per action

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Is there a reason for why major tech companies are heavily pushing their smart speakers? Their seems to be a lot more marketing push going on than when they were pushing out new phones/tablets/hardware etc in the past (Amazon fire, Google Pixelbook, Google Chromecast, Amazon Roku etc.)

<comment><USER17> Passive data collection on a massive scale

<comment><USER18> This is the correct interpretation: Google and Amazon thrive on data.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Remember the old joke, "In Soviet Russia, TV watches you"?

Now, in the West, people actually pay for devices that surveil them.

</comment><comment><USER20> On the one hand, I could see this being incredibly useful. Program it to answer all sorts of typical guest questions including those specific to the property/location. On the other hand, I can't really argue with those who don't feel comfortable with the idea--which is probably why this has taken so long.

<comment><USER21> Also could mean Marriott being black listed by any company working with CNI and the civil service.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> I like Marriott hotels in general. This just means I'm going to unplug the device, remove its batteries, and wrap it in foil as soon as I check in.

[Note to self: Pack foil on next trip.]

<comment><USER22> > I like Marriott hotels in general.

IMO, you should stop supporting Marriott if at all possible. Google "marriott tibet tweet" and choose your outlet of choice (less about the specific firing and more about censorship cowering sans transparent statement). I also like Nestle candy in general, but try not to eat it.

<comment><USER23> If I'm understanding this correctly - an employee of Marriott liked a tweet praising Marriott for listing Tibet as a country in a survey, so China tells Marriott to apologize, hold the employee responsible, and suspends Marriott's website and app in China (their second largest market, with over 300 hotels).

Marriott then fires the employee and releases a statement on twitter saying "We don't support separatist groups that subvert the sovereignty and territorial integrity of China".

That hardly seems like a reason to stop supporting Marriott. What would you have wanted them to do differently?

<comment><USER22> > What would you have wanted them to do differently?

Not let a government set their principles on what they can and can't do on Twitter. This is really simple. If they principally believe that they were wrong to like that tweet, then I disagree with their principles. If they were being pressured to react to it by a government, then I disagree with them cowering to any government about a liked tweet. Either way, they did wrong and they weren't very clear about what was requested by a country's government and what wasn't.

No different than Apple being forced to put icloud servers in control of non- Apple company in China...all you have to do is be transparent so I can disagree with your principles, unless your principles are money only, at which point I can disagree with that too. (and no, don't pretend like all of us with companies only care about money)

So, to answer the question, they should have ignored the request and been clear about what was asked of them. Since they didn't, they probably saved a lot of money even if they lost mine.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> I stayed at a hotel which had Amazon echo in the room a few weeks ago. It was awesome to ask it to play various kinds of music while we lounged by the pool. Or to check the weather forecast for the next day.

I enjoyed it enough that we bought an echo dot the day after we arrived home.

Personally I think you all need to lighten up. It would be 100x easier for government, previous guests or the hotel to install hidden microphones or video than to hack into the Echo. Amazon have sufficient commercial interests that personally I'd be sure enough that they'll behave properly. I'm not planning a military coop or anything though.

</comment><comment><USER25> So basically all Marriott hotels will be bugged for whatever host country they are in. I can't see conducting sent I've business in them. Now they don't have to bother doing targeted spying becuase now it'll be everywhere.

</comment><comment><USER26> There's something a little sad about this. Unlike at home, hotels are a place where you _already_ have a voice assistant - the concierge, that'll give you restaurant recommendations, pick up your laundry and call a cab for you. And do a much better job than any automated voice assistant will do. But I don't doubt for a second that this will eventually be paired with a strong rollback of real humans manning phone lines.

Sigh.

<comment><USER27> There's already a very easy and commonly deployed way to save on a concierge: don't have one.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> "Alexa, get my car" to alert the valet would be awesome.

<comment><USER28> Or you could pick up the phone in the room and push the one button for that function.

I stayed in a hotel recently (Hilton, I think) where the valet function was done via text message.

<comment><USER3> Yes, voice assistants don't do anything that you can't accomplish by pressing buttons or using your phone. That's not the point.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> "Alexa, remind me next vacation never to stay at Marriott hotels ever again."

</comment><comment><USER30> Ah man, this is terrible. I go to hotels to get away from tech!

</comment><comment><USER31> Ok... That's one more thing I need to be sure I unplug or cover when I'm in the room. Although all of this compounds the reasons I don't stay in hotel rooms, and opt for Airbnb whenever possible. That, again, is another place for concern, but at least I can get to the circuit breaker and flip it off to disrupt things, and run a network sniffer to look for hidden cameras. Hell hath no fury as a paranoid woman traveling alone.

<comment><USER3> If you're that concerned about cameras you are much better staying in a corporate owned hotel than an Airbnb. If you do ever find anything you will actually be able to sue and cash in:

[https://www.nytimes.com/2016/03/08/business/media/erin- andre...](https://www.nytimes.com/2016/03/08/business/media/erin-andrews- awarded-55-million-in-lawsuit-over-nude-video-at-hotel.html)

<comment><USER31> But in an Airbnb, not only can I sue, but someone will go to jail. [https://nypost.com/2017/12/04/people-keep-finding-hidden- cam...](https://nypost.com/2017/12/04/people-keep-finding-hidden-cameras-in- their-airbnbs/)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Amazon now collecting your personal conversations at Marriott hotels

</comment><comment><USER32> Me and my wife both agreed (on separate occasions) that "Alexa, turn the living room/bedroom on" feel so missing at hotels.

disc: Amazon employee

</comment><comment><USER33> I know it's of little solace to many, but the truth is, I mostly feel safe in knowing that whoever is collecting data on me, I'm not really worth spying on.

<comment><USER34> The thing is you might be interesting just because of that. In case some bad actors (government, gangsters, etc.) would need some scape goat they have much more means to make you into one because by coincidence you might be close to some unwanted activity.

People get convicted for things they did not do all the time by mistakes. Now it can be a lot easier to get someone convicted by planting stuff on their devices. So bad guys point you and how are you going to convince judge that you are innocent, everyone is saying he is innocent.

</comment></comment><comment><USER35> Alexa, upgrade my room.</comment>


Naïve Parallelization: C++ vs Haskell - <AUTHOR> http://flyingfrogblog.blogspot.com/2010/01/naive-parallelization-c-vs-haskell.html

<comment><USER2> A followup from the same blog from the next day is here: [http://flyingfrogblog.blogspot.com/2010/01/naive- parallelism...](http://flyingfrogblog.blogspot.com/2010/01/naive-parallelism- rebuttal.html)

</comment><comment><USER3> To paraphrase Kissinger, "FP language pissing contests are so vicious precisely because the stakes are so small."

(Also, why is this guy's blog written in first person plural?)

</comment><comment><USER4> Why does everything jdh does involve so much hate and vitriol?</comment>


Resistor hack turns a Nvidia GTX690 into a Quadro K5000 or Tesla K10 - <AUTHOR> http://www.eevblog.com/forum/projects/hacking-nvidia-cards-into-their-professional-counterparts/ <comment><USER3> The corresponding reddit thread is quite insightful:

"It is far cheaper to make one very good chip for the highest market, and modify it slightly for lower end markets...

Now, this is the part you hate: this is the only viable alternative. There's no point demanding different designs for different market segments as that would significantly increase the cost you, the consumer, pays. You can demand chips be sold at lowest prices without being fused down, but then the company eats its own market, becomes unprofitable, and goes out of business at worst - or, at best, doesn't make enough money to fund further r&d as much as they want, which again hurts you, the consumer."

[http://www.reddit.com/r/linux_gaming/comments/1aj3n3/not_coo...](http://www.reddit.com/r/linux_gaming/comments/1aj3n3/not_cool_nvidia/)

<comment><USER4> It's just a situation where capitalism doesn't lead to the most economically efficient solution.

The company and the consumers are rational, yet for no additional cost, everyone could be benefiting from better hardware.

Unfortunately I don't have a better system to propose :)

<comment><USER5> Why is that? The major cost is the one-time cost of designing the chip, not producing it. Software is even more extreme: the distribution costs are essentially zero. That doesn't mean the most economically efficient solution is for the software to sell for nothing.

<comment><USER6> Say you have 2 audiences: Gamers and professionals.

For gamers, a low performance value yields a value of $10, and a high performance value yields a value of $12.

For professionals, a low performance value yields a value of $5, and a high performance value yields a value of $20.

If nVidia sold a single design to all of them, with a high performance value, then gamers would be willing to pay less than $12, and professionals would pay less than $20.

If they want to sell to the entire market, they have to price it less than $12, and lose around $8 from each professional buyer.

However, if they sell 2 designs (e.g: one a cripple of the other), they can derive around $10 of value from each gamer, and $20 from each professional.

The reason this is inefficient, is because for each gamer buying the crippled design, there is a loss of $2 of real value. This loss is a real value loss that could be avoided if there was some other way to extract the actual value for gamers and professionals without crippling the product.

In short, the inefficiency is not that the price is not near the production cost, but that the intentional crippling of the product (necessary to extract maximal value via market segmentation) is causing an actual value loss in the economy.

<comment><USER7> However in your latter scenario, the net loss is only 2$ versus your original scenario where the net loss is 8$. (lose 8$ per card to the perfessional, versus gamer losing 2$ of performance)

So its socially optimum to continue to do what Nvidia is doing ;).

<comment><USER8> If they sell at a >4:1 ratio in favor of the gamer version, it is still suboptimal.

If I had to guess, I would say their gamer card prices are by and large good approximations of the value they provide. No idea about professional card prices.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> _> The tight asses have decided that if you want this feature under Linux you have to get a Quadro which has Mosaic support :palm:. So naturally I decided to look at how mod the card..._

I just absolutely loved reading this line. I had been away from 'hacker culture' for nearly two decades (probably ever since I became serious about my studies back in middle school and I stopped 'having fun' with my studies and interests) and finally seem to be growing back into the mindset. This kind of tinkering, exploring attitude is so wonderful, even just as an observer to this story it makes me feel like I'm regaining my childhood innocence again.

<comment><USER10> This made me smile. Also reminded me of <http://prog21.dadgum.com/169.html>

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> It's possible Nvidia manufactures the higher-end cards and then, if they fail the high-end testing but pass low-end testing, are marked as the lower-end card. There is precedent for this in many areas of computer hardware (CPU, RAM, hard drives). I would be wary of undoing this and expecting any level of reliability.

<comment><USER12> That is a good point. Something I really wouldn't have even thought of before even though I knew about the hard drives part.

In the post he says: "the GTX 690 and the Quadro K5000 (same GPU) and, get this... the K5000 is only single GPU and clocked some 25-30% slower then the gaming card, what a joke"

so wouldn't it be downgrading the card to make it usable on linux? maybe not idk much about linux, drivers, hardware etc.

<comment><USER13> no, he's only altering how the drivers perceive the card.

Frankly, throwing in resistors to modify how it get's identified by the computer is really a hardware hack for a software problem.

The drivers are stupid, and they're deliberately choosing to not use card features.

<comment><USER14> When you buy a high end card, you're buying the development time required to enable advanced features, you are not buying hardware; the silicon simply doesn't cost that much to produce. Most people do not want or need these advanced features, nor do they want to pay for them. The alternative environment has everyone paying $2000 for the same card and much fewer sales vs. premium users paying for premium features, and everyone else getting what they need at a much lower cost.

<comment><USER15> They're not just spending the development time on advanced features. NVidia appear to have _intentionally crippled_ stuff like data transfer speeds to and from the GPU on their consumer models (but only for OpenGL/OpenCL and DirectCompute - you still get full speed when doing the exact same thing through DirectX) on the basis that it mostly only screws professional users.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> This was compared to software that ships with all the features but requires a serial number to unlock the good ones. However I think this is different, and I think modifying hardware in this way is considerably more moral than using keygens to unlock software. It's hard to exactly state why I feel that this hardware mod is entirely moral behavior while software piracy is not but it's hard to put my finger on the right words. I think it's possibly something to do with Locke's notion of property rights and how one has an ownership claim to that which he created by his own labor. Am I the only one that feels this way? Sorry to ramble.

<comment><USER17> This makes sense because "buying" software is different than "buying" hardware.

When you buy (a license to use) software, (at least nowadays), you're paying for the right to use the software, not the actual bits on the disc/file.

When you buy hardware, you're paying for the materials and manufacturing effort that produced a physical thing.

Given that mass reproducing hardware is non-trivial compared to software, there is often little/no/paper-thin DRM on hardware. Thus the OP could modify his graphics card.

On the other hand, look at cell phones. Given their legal connection to a service contract that is enforced with SIM cards, providers have a convenient form of DRM to enforce limitations on modifications.

<comment><USER18> While you might have a right to mod the hardware you bought you probably don't have a licence to use different drivers?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> I don't entirely know how I feel about this hack. I feel like this is really similar to unlocking the "Professional" version of a piece of software with a serial key generator.

Although, I understand hardware is dramatically different than software, it's using the same principal -- the same reusable bits to assemble many different products, and then just using tools to mask features unless a user pays for them.

Then again, why should software be any different? Why shouldn't we be able to unlock the hidden features of our software with hex editors, and serial key generators?

What do you guys think?

<comment><USER20> I think that if I own a piece of hardware, I am the sole owner of every single chip and screw on it, including every hardware hack that it may have.

On the other side, usually you don't own the software but only a license that grants you permission to use it.

<comment><USER21> This is a good point. When you buy hardware, you are now the owner of it so they shouldn't be able to stop you from doing it, just like once you buy a phone you should be able to unlock it or install whatever software you want on it.

<comment><USER22> > just like once you buy a phone you should be able to unlock it or install > whatever software you want on it.

unless, of course you signed an agreement to not do that, in exchange for a cheaper price on the phone and some period of contract with a particular carrier...

<comment><USER23> Which is handled by contract law; it isn't clear why companies that want to do that should get a subsidy via criminal law DMCA penalties. Just like it isn't clear why white-only diners should have received free services from government thugs to throw out African American "trespassers".

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> I see no problem with either side, Nvida or the hardware hacker.

As someone who spent nearly a decade in the semiconductor industry, testing wafers and packaged die, the economics of binning and market segment are understandable. As a electronics and RF geek, I've done plenty of mods and customization that voiding plenty of warranties.

The only issue would be if a third party did this mod in volume and repackaged the card as something it was not originally.

</comment><comment><USER25> Wouldn't it be easier (and less risky to your hardware) to make the kernel lie about the device ID? Or modify the nvidia kernel blob to compare against another ID?

<comment><USER26> I'm sure they tried that. It is likely that the driver uses another "proprietary" way to read the ID as well and uses that as definitive answer.

Having said that, distinguishing in software would mean that open source drivers such as Nouveau won't see any difference between the cards and can advertise all the features always.

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> So this is basically a change of the PCI device ID. The capabilities are essentially the same; he just changed the device signature. A cool hack nonetheless.

Edit: After looking at the screenshots closer, that seems to be the case.

The device ID 0x11BA becomes 0x118F. Vendor ID remains 0x10DE on both. Memory, CPU and other important stuff are basically the same.

Very cool!

<comment><USER28> Maybe the configuration is a little different too.

If the professional counterpart is actually worse for gaming, perhaps its because the resources are allocated to supporting multiple displays instead? In that case, is it reasonable to consider this crippling the device?

<comment><USER27> Professional vid cards are usually about multiple displays so saying that's crippling might be a bit harsh IMO; I'd say it's "differently allocating" resources.

Is it worse for gaming _only_ because of multiple displays (I.E. actual difference in architecture) or is it different in how the funcionality is offloaded by the software based on the device ID? Until there are benchmarks of an actual game played being played before and after, it would be pretty hard to tell.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> That's funny how we feel about things:

FastFood monopolist adding too much salt to its cheapest food products so it can sell less salty versions of same products at premium prices ... seems severely pathological.

Hardware monopolist crippling cheapest products so it can sell non-crippled ones at premium prices ... sort of ambiguous. Legit market strategy or conning customers?

Graphic design software make selling crippled versions of their software cheaper so it can sell fully featured version at premium price. Totally legit.

What's the difference?

<comment><USER30> You keep using that word "monopolist." I do not think it means what you think it means.

<comment><USER29> I know it's bit inappropriate here. I mean provider or clique of providers entrenched in the market and large enough to shape the market.

<comment><USER31> The term you may be looking for is oligopoly - <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oligopoly>

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> How do people find hacks like this? Looking at the board, that resistor is one among tons of components.

<comment><USER3> He actually describes it in the thread, a little farther down:

"No, no schematic, what I did was look for resistors that looked like they had an alternative position, have a look at the photos and you will see what I mean. Any that I suspected of being a strap I used a meter to check if the resistor was connected to ground of 3.3V directly, and looked where the general traces were going in the area. If they went towards the GPU and connected to one of the rails it was a pretty good bet that it was a hard strap."

[http://www.eevblog.com/forum/projects/hacking-nvidia- cards-i...](http://www.eevblog.com/forum/projects/hacking-nvidia-cards-into- their-professional- counterparts/msg203225/?PHPSESSID=f88387c520550af1e0508d8687b41928#msg203225)

<comment><USER33> I once saw a networking IC that had a key strap-in pin multiplexed with an indicator LED, so if you wanted to change the brightness of the LED by varying the resistor value, watch out because you'll change the device behaviour! Good times...

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> You'll find that adding the resistor changes the ID the card sends to the drivers, and that there is other differences in the hardware (so it doesn't change the 'model' of the card). It just so happens that it enables 3 monitors in Linux (this is already enabled in Windows).

</comment><comment><USER35> Entire post mirrored here: <http://imgur.com/ZJt0VmT> Save it as well.

<comment><USER36> Ow, my eyes. Between the microscopic font and jpeg artifacts.

HTML source of the print friendly version: <https://gist.github.com/anonymous/5193769>

Or less artifacty screenshot: <http://i4.minus.com/itHdo0GR7zXw1.png> (Sorry to steal any thunder!)

Not affiliated, but minus.com doesn't compress high-res PNGs into JPEGs like imgur does (it's only at a certain size that imgur does it, but it's annoying for screenshot threads, or in this case).

<comment><USER37> Here is an optimized version of that image: <http://i4.minus.com/ivpBgQ8dNf5Ge.png> (smaller filesize, loads quicker).

Why did you save the image with transparency?

<comment><USER36> Because that's what scrot did?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> This is simply amazing! And since it's an actual hardware mod, Nvidia can't fix this right? On the other hand, those cruel corporate brats and their money making schemes.

</comment><comment><USER38> I am astonished there is no law to put you away for 10 years for posting such disrupting stuff ;)

<comment><USER26> Please don't joke about this. Perception of ownership has changed so much over the last ~20 years, that I wouldn't be surprised if someone actually tried to jail people for improving hardware they bought, by claiming that you only 'license' the device instead of having bought it, or some other contorted reasoning (give it to the IP maximalists to come up with twisted lines of thought and sad analogy stories). Luckily NVidia isn't that sue-happy, but still...

Edit: see also this, currently on the frontpage: <https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5394928>

<comment><USER38> Laughing is a coping mechanism.

I am well aware of the seriousness of the assault on our freedoms on behalf of the corporate overlords.

And I would rather be chided for being ridiculous writing this comment than rewarded with an uneasy laugh of the people that recognize how close to home it hits.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER39> Some people are comparing what NVIDIA has done to its hardware to crippled software. It's a bit different though. They didn't just cripple their hardware, they segmented their markets and crippled hardware and software as needed to make it almost impossible to use the same card for more than one application.

Geforce cards are crippled in software so you wouldn't want to use them for CAD work. Quadro cards are crippled in hardware and software so you wouldn't want to use them for gaming or computation, respectively. Although Teslas are also stress tested for data reliability so perhaps it's unfair to say the Quadro cards are unsuitable for computation because they're crippled intentionally.

</comment><comment><USER40> Keep in mind that one of the finer points of making money in the semiconductor industry is yield management, especially when you're cutting larger dies.

These days you don't just toss a chip when it fails a test - you design the tests to exercise different physical regions of the chip to identify the location of a defect. You also design the chip in a way that allows you to power down different regions and behave like a lower priced part.

So a defective quad-core CPU might be sold as a dual-core part, or as a variant with a smaller cache. You have slightly finer grain control on a GPU, and very fine grain control on RAM or flash.

</comment><comment><USER41> It was possible to flash certain ATI 6950 cards "into" 6970s too: <http://www.techpowerup.com/articles/overclocking/vidcard/159>

</comment><comment><USER42> Not too surprising - classic example of price discrimination: <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Price_discrimination>.

Think of any product you see out in the world - and I guarantee you that there is some level of price discrimination going on. It really is very expensive to develop completely different lines of products - any rational company would just slap on a few restrictions and a different brand name and bam! whole new market being served, with the existing one remaining in play.

It's actually quite elegant.

</comment><comment><USER43> He's changing the resistors such that the bits which specify the identity of the board to the system now identify as something else? So if in fact there was some difference in the board design or chip design, then it could cause problems where unexpected faults occur. It's like saying you are capable of doing X, Y, Z, but really you can only handle X and Y situations. When someone asks you to do Z, you're screwed.

But I don't know enough about Nvidia GPU hardware design, and I'm sure he wouldn't be publishing this hack if it didn't work well.

</comment><comment><USER44> I thought the common knowledge on why the "workstation" cards were more expensive than the gaming cards was that you're paying for the driver development for the pro cards (extra stability testing, CAD software compatibility or whatever). What this guy is doing here is just changing what driver the card tells the computer to use.

So really, this _is_ equivalent to software piracy/unlocking software with a product key. He's not changing the actual capabilities of the hardware, just what driver software it unlocks.

</comment><comment><USER45> Kind of reminds me back in the day where you could flash your Ati X800 card (12 pipelines) to upgrade it to 16 pipelines of the X800 XT model. (<http://www.techpowerup.com/articles/overclocking/vidcard/100>). This decision corresponds with the quote in the top comment."It is far cheaper to make one very good chip for the highest market, and modify it slightly for lower end markets..."

</comment><comment><USER46> Why not patch the driver in software instead?

<comment><USER47> 1\. This is way easier.

2\. You are unlikely breaking any bizarre U.S. reverse engineering law by doing it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER48> I would not be surprised, if he runs into stability issues.

Silicon manufacturers have long used the approach, to just manufacture the top of the line chip and then after testing, deactivate certain parts of the chip, to sell as a lower product. It was famous with AMD processors, where you were able to unlock more cores. The thing is, often those cores were disabled for a reason. I would not be surprised if a similar sheme would apply here, too.

<comment><USER49> It works under windows, with NVIDIA provided drivers. Just not under Linux.

</comment></comment><comment><USER50> _"the K5000 is only single GPU and clocked some 25-30% slower then the gaming card"_

Makes sense. Quadro cards are used for life critical visualizations, e.g. finite element analysis of a bridge. That's what justifies their expense. Rendering speed only needs to be "fast enough." The premium is on accuracy and reliability.

<comment><USER51> I thought the premium in quadros these days is in double operations speed. Since I need floats, not doubles I opted for two GTX 680s. They are screaming compared to Q6000, but I could always use more.

<comment><USER50> If an application uses floats in lieu of doubles might that be evidence that accuracy is not at a premium?

<comment><USER51> Indeed, 53 significant bits (doubles) vs 24 significant bits (floats). In my case float performance was what I needed. There are always other options, depending on your (precision) needs and needs in general, such as binary coded decimals, fixed point arithmetic...

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER52> I wonder if this can be done for Intel CPUs? I am sure one has to open the metal cover and change the resistors, since the device id comes with the complete package.

 _Off topic_ Its sad that GPUs are very bulky and dissipates heat, discourages me to buy one to play games once in a while. And expensive too.

</comment><comment><USER53> I don't understand why he can't just modify the driver if he's going to go through all that trouble. Also, NVidia does support 3 monitors under Linux which was the point of this hack so this is confusing on many levels!

<comment><USER54> This probably explains why Nvidia doesn't release open source versions of their drivers.

</comment></comment><comment><USER55> Oh this is a classic move by Nvidia. I had a gaming PC with two GeForce 8800 GTX cards in it. I used a softmod to get them to be recognised as Quadro 4600's so I could work better in Solidworks.

NVidia makes decent video cards and such, but they're almost all based off a single reference design. It saves money on component costs and production time for third parties. Why make three different boards, using three different GPUs, when all you need to do is determine how much RAM you want to stick on it and choose the component layout for the specific product.

</comment><comment><USER56> When dies are produced from the fab they are broken into different lots based on results from testing. This is based on the error performance. While one lot may not work as the top of the line model, it may meet the requirements for a lower power unit. Buyer beware. While you can possibly overclock your video card, you certainly run the risk of a higher number of issues.

</comment><comment><USER57> Strange, i have seen another developer use 3 displays on Ubuntu with just a 660 GTX Ti. He said he plugged it in and it worked.

</comment><comment><USER58> This is why you don't piss off your userbase. Also this should be mirrored as this will be taken down fast.

</comment><comment><USER59> Wonderful! While I hesitate to break a $1,100 video card, a little hack generates so much value.

What other awesome hardware hacks radically improve the value of your equipment, be it electronic / analog? We're talking about the 100%+ value improvements here.

</comment><comment><USER60> I guess this is why GPU makers hates open source drivers so much - <USER2> prevent artificial segmentation and they would drive prices down if they were competitive with proprietary ones.

</comment><comment><USER28> For the past few months my GeForce 450 drivers have been acting up, and my computer was actually unusable until I disabled just about all hardware accelleration for the card.

Is it possible that the new drivers for this card are so unstable just because nVidia is trying to thwart this type of hack?

If that's the case, totally unacceptable to cripple my machine just because they want to prevent other people from altering their cards (which I will immediately begin to look into how to do myself now).

<comment><USER27> That's a very bold assertion. I don't think they would push a driver out that recklessly just to stop one hardware hack. Besides, this was posted within a few days of him posting on the nVidia forums and you said yourself, the issues you had with the card are a few months in.

Even if they knew about it before hand, it's not like a critical vulnerability or something; just an interesting modification to hardware (rarely how intrusions happen) that very few people know to implement correctly and fewer still who would want to do to their cards.

<comment><USER28> After reading a little more its clear that my original post was incorrect.

Even the original tone of "crippling" hardware seems a little far fetched to me now, it seems like these cards are just optimized differently for specific tasks (gaming, or workstation).

Still would be nice if they could get their drivers working better under windows 7.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER61> Does this improve gpgpu performance? I believe the GFX range were crippled in this regard, has anyone tried bitcoin mining?

</comment><comment><USER62> I can't wait for someone to work out how to make the single GPU version of this work in a MacPro.

</comment><comment><USER63> Is this caused by the fact there are only a few companies making graphics chips?

</comment><comment><USER64> _I repeat, this does NOT make your GTX 6XX card faster, nor does it make it slower._

So what is the difference then?

<comment><USER65> As the article clearly states the function of the hack is to allow the card to run with alternative drivers, providing lacking functionality under Linux.

</comment></comment><comment><USER66> off point comment ahead i am wondering is bing <strong>smarter </strong>than google i search for "how is 0x11BA equal to 20k resistor" and got nothing in google but bing return at least some useful pages!!!!!!!

</comment><comment><USER67> If they only need to fool the drivers, you could patch the drivers themselves in software.</comment>


Fundraiser for Bounties: Cassandra - <AUTHOR> https://www.bountysource.com/fundraisers/508

<comment><USER2> Surely something as complicated as Cassandra would not benefit from these features being added in randomly from a developer willing to accept such low amounts of money? If these bounties do get met, the contributor is not going to be maintaining the features moving forward either.

Sounds like a lose-lose. They should just hire someone properly.

<comment><USER3> Some clarifications:

BountySource asked the Apache Cassandra PMC (project management committee), which I chair, to help come up with the list of features. All of these are pre-existing features from the Cassandra roadmap and are reasonably self- contained. Just like other contributions, Apache committers will review and take responsibility for maintaining code accepted this way.

I frequently get emails from people curious about Cassandra asking "what would be a good place to contribute?" For people like this who are looking for a challenge, this could be a win/win of getting a little more visibility into possible areas to work on, as well as earning some extra money.

That said, this absolutely isn't seen as a primary way to drive Cassandra development. Wearing my other hat as DataStax founder, I run a team of engineers working on Cassandra full time. We are hiring: [https://www.smartrecruiters.com/DataStax/71254492-cassandra-...](https://www.smartrecruiters.com/DataStax/71254492-cassandra- engineer-java)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Does anyone else think the 10% fee from bountysource is a bit high?

<comment><USER5> Extortionate. Especially considering there are alternatives that take nothing.

<comment><USER4> What are the alternatives?

<comment><USER5> FossFactory has no fee, FreedomSponsors is 3%. There were some others but I can't recall them.

<comment><USER6> FreedomSponsors CEO here. Thanks for mentioning our site! I'd like to add that our funding model is different from BountySource: Sponsors are only required to pay after the issue is resolved. Also our entire codebase is Free and Open Source. More info in our FAQ --> [http://freedomsponsors.org/faq](http://freedomsponsors.org/faq)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> They're off to a pretty slow start. $300 from the sponsor, and one $25 addition. This is despite being front page on HN. Thoughts on why this is going so slow? Or is this par for the course for most projects? They have 2 more months to go.

I'm still willing to upvote for answers and support.</comment>


3 New Elements Named - Darmstadtium, Roentgenium and Copernicium - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/2011/11/05/science/3-new-elements-named-darmstadtium-roentgenium-and-copernicium.html?_r=1 <comment><USER2> I just watched an enjoyable BBC documentary "Chemistry: A Volatile History". The last episode concludes with a visit to the Centre for Heavy Ion Research in Darmstadt and talks a bit about these elements.</comment>


Wolfram Language code shorter than 14 languages including Python and Haskell - alok-g http://blog.wolfram.com/2014/06/04/how-the-wolfram-language-measures-up/

<comment><AUTHOR> It could be me, but it seems fishy that no language took less code than wolfram langauge for any task. Either the language really is that much more concise than everything else, or the sample set got a but of special care through the decision of what counted as one of the "most popular and relevant languages."

I would feel better even if I saw something notoriously complex to program in that ended up being shorter, such as APL. At least then it would seem less of a PR piece.

<comment> alok-g Having programmed in the language (inside Mathematica) for about ten years, I do not find it surprising that it is very concise. However, I was surprised to see it allegedly better than Haskell too in this regard. (Note: I do not know Haskell, just have read about it on HN a bit.)

I was hoping it would perform better on speed than what is shown here: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7855455](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7855455)

</comment></comment><comment><USER2> re: "You wouldn't even think of dashing off a program in C to do handwriting recognition, yet that's a one-liner in the Wolfram Language."

Not quite a fair comparison since the Wolfram Language version is probably just using higher level libraries.</comment>


Merck to Buy Sigma-Aldrich for $17B - <AUTHOR> http://online.wsj.com/articles/germanys-merck-to-buy-sigma-aldrich-for-17-billion-1411381734

<comment><USER2> So... will there be a new merged Merck/Sigma catalog?</comment>


Bank robber hires decoys on Craigslist, fools cops (2008) - <AUTHOR> https://www.cnet.com/news/bank-robber-hires-decoys-on-craigslist-fools-cops/ <comment><USER2> Wikipedia has a pretty complete story for anyone interested in what happened: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anthony_Curcio](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anthony_Curcio)</comment>


Chrome now supports SVG favicons - <AUTHOR> https://twitter.com/mathias/status/1196816651834068994 <comment><USER2> Kudos to Chrome, that's a nice step forward. We can't really use them professionally though until the other browsers get support, or we degrade for other browsers.

The SVG favicon feature on CanIUse.com:

[https://caniuse.com/#feat=link-icon-svg](https://caniuse.com/#feat=link-icon- svg)</comment>


Nact: an implementation of the actor model for Node.js inspired by Akka and Erlang - <AUTHOR> https://nact.io/ <comment><USER2> Wow, this couldn't have come at a better time for me! Thank you, thank you, thank you for this library.

I was beginning to feel that if I wanted to use the actor model I was gonna be forced into Akka or Erlang and not be able to salvage my JS knowledge. All other actor JS libraries are way out of support (either unmaintained or too small of a community).

I will begin using it as fast as possible and hope to learn enough so that I can contribute and give back.

Cheers again for this much-needed library.</comment>


Ask HN: Self-Hosted Photo Blog? - <AUTHOR> I'm looking for a modern, self-hosted photo blog app that would give me a Flickr or 500px-like experience where I can post albums and tag images etc. (it doesn't necessarily have to have any social features)<p>There was recently a great thread here on HN about self-hosted photo management apps, but I've found it very difficult over the years to find any good open source and self hosted blog apps for photography <comment><AUTHOR> I've found a few different options. The best was Koken but unfortunately it's abandonware

[http://koken.me/](http://koken.me/)

[http://piwigo.org/](http://piwigo.org/)

[https://lychee.electerious.com/](https://lychee.electerious.com/)

[https://www.thregr.org/~wavexx/software/fgallery/](https://www.thregr.org/~wavexx/software/fgallery/)

[https://coppermine-gallery.net/](https://coppermine-gallery.net/)

[http://sigal.saimon.org/en/latest/](http://sigal.saimon.org/en/latest/)

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

[http://bpatrik.github.io/pigallery2/](http://bpatrik.github.io/pigallery2/)

[https://photoprism.org/](https://photoprism.org/)

</comment><comment><USER2> I built a pretty simple photo blog on top of Hugo, though the layout is more Tumblr than Flickr.

Source code: [https://github.com/bndw/len.to](https://github.com/bndw/len.to)

Website: [https://len.to](https://len.to)

</comment><comment><USER3> If you're capable of some PHP and CSS development, the Kirby flat file CMS would suffice.

\- Easy to install on shared or dedicated hosting.

\- Easy to upload photos.

\- A post could be a photo or album of them.

\- If you know CSS you can easily make minimally designed pages for single images or whole albums.

\- it's been a while since I looked at the API, but you should be able to tag them and then display photos by tag. Barring that, it's very easy to do that for individual posts

</comment><comment><USER4> The closest to the ideal I've known so far is Koken [1]. Sadly I can't see any development or maintenance updates since 2017 and it's not open source [2].

[1] [http://koken.me/](http://koken.me/)

[2] [http://koken.me/eula.html](http://koken.me/eula.html)

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks. Unfortunately it's definitely abandoned. It looks like it was sold in 2015 to NetObjects and there's been basically no development on it since then and no support responses or updates. Very sad as it looks like a great app. I wish it was open-sourced

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> filiocorp.com

you can make your account on the website, create albums. And add photos from the mobile app to the respective albums.

<comment><AUTHOR> Not self-hosted and not a photo blog</comment></comment>


Little Free Library - <AUTHOR> http://littlefreelibrary.org/ <comment><USER2> One of my neighbors tried to get this going. She put out a fancy shelf that looked like a little English telephone booth, and someone stole it. Personally, I thought we'd be better off donating money to our local library, which is walking distance from where she'd installed the bookshelf anyway.

</comment><comment><USER3> > "There was something that kind of irked me about the title," says Jane > Schmidt, librarian at Ryerson University in Toronto. "As a librarian, my gut > reaction to that was, 'You know what else is a free library? A regular > library.'"

\-- [https://www.citylab.com/life/2017/05/the-case-against- little...](https://www.citylab.com/life/2017/05/the-case-against-little-free- libraries/523533/)</comment>


Ask HN: Building spreadsheets for the mobile era, is it worthwhile? - <AUTHOR> I have been thinking about a spreadsheets like app that gives you a minimal but required functionality with an ability to share built in. Consider a monthly spends you want to keep, or the say a list of things (along with their prices) you bought for a shared home and you want to share it with your room mates. I think having a excel spreadsheet might solve this for you, but its too cumbersome. Even though there are apps that track specific things like monthly spend (through sms) or split bills, I guess I need something a little more generic where I could keep track of everything. Do you feel it's an overkill, or building something actually might help someone. <comment><USER2> Well, I did in fact think about a "keep track of everything approach" quite often.

To me, this is basically what Evernote and the likes promise but fail to deliver because of missing semantics (and "calculations"). Airtable.com might come close to this, though.

However, I believe this is still an unsolved problem.

</comment><comment><USER3> I would love to have an app like this. My bank has online tools that do this but they're very shoddy and annoying to use. If there was an app that had integration into my bank so it could import & categorize all my purchases, I would definitely use it. Would I pay for it, not sure.</comment>


Faux-Privilege vs. Freedom - <AUTHOR> http://raganwald.posterous.com/faux-privilege-vs-freedom <comment><USER3> There is one other reason to keep the non-privileged from paying for better benefits:

Imagine for a minute that everyone had BASIC health insurance. Provided by the government. If they get cancer, it will be paid for. If they sneeze, they will pay out-of-pocket for a doctor. Doctors who are AMAZING will charge... 200 for a visit. Not so amazing ones... 30.

Woah there. If your doctor charges you 150 per visit, you will be sure as hell checking that the doctor is good. While at $30 whatever. If you pay for your drugs, you will be damn sure you need them at $150 a pop. But at $15 a pop, meh better be safe than sorry.

Now an insurance company comes along... Hold up, sure I'll pay for it but how easy is it to make claims? Are they actually paying out or are they just giving you red tape?

It goes on.

Look at the COMPETITION created:

Doctors compete on skill to get not only clients who pay next to nothing per visit but pay hundreds to the doctor, but also on how much they charge.

Treatments compete on effectiveness. Will I pay $10k for a treatment that may be equally as effective as a $1k treatment?

Insurance companies compete on coverage/serving customers. Because anyone can leave and switch, and if they don't they have the safety net. Insurance companies now stop having the per-person monopoly. Very rarely do people have any choice in insurance companies.

Employers have employees who have only the risk of lack of salary when leaving a job. Though that risk is bad, especially when owning a mortgage.

The competition created becomes crazy. Entire monopolistic business models get toppled. And all for a very very small price. The fun part is once the free market kicks in, prices will plumet too. Competition will ensure to that. We just have to make sure competition gets a chance.

<comment><USER4> Hey I love the free market too and I once thought as you did, until I looked at the data.

Back in 2006 I pulled the latest WHO data and looked at % of medical industry privatized vs overall health of the populace (an function of factors such as infant mortality and lives lost to communicable diseases) in OECD countries.

As best I could tell there was a negative correlation between privatization and quality of care. As I recall the USA was the worst (by far), Australia's hybrid system put them near the middle, and Japan was on top.

Sure the sample data is small and the USA is very very far from a pure market at this point, but it was enough of a wake-up call for me that I stopped blindly believing in economic models.

After all it is only a model, not reality.

Health care may in fact be a 'natural monopoly' such as water or power, or it may be better as a government controlled industry such as education or defence. Only a few radicals think the government should not run or regulate any industry.

Some things to consider:

> Is is better that people always visit the doctor when they have a minor > concern? (like 'if they sneeze . . .') because if people are paying out of > pocket even at $100 many will not go.

> Many rural areas have only one hospital. Their emergency room is a monopoly. > In a perfect market they could charge whatever they wanted and people would > still go.

> Can the average person 'make sure a doctor is good?' Do they know how to > make such a judgement?

> If doctors needed to compete, would it necessary be a sill-based > competition? Is there a correlation between customer satisfaction and early > detection for things like annual physicals?

> Do we want to have a society where you level of income determines your > quality of care (and probably life expectancy)

I agree that the current US system is close to the worst thing possible, virtually no competition due to insurance being tied to employers, and also virtually no safety net.

I was uninsured for two and a half years. When I went to the hospital and asked how much things cost no one knew. Twice I was misinformed by more than a hundred dollars.

So yeah I think the model you propose may well be better than what we currently have, but I sincerely doubt it is the best possible.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> This article irks me, not because I disagree with it (I do), but because it misrepresents the position it attacks. It claims to set up a balanced view of its opposition, but then hamstrings this view by only considering a tiny piece of it.

The author dismiss everyone who disagrees with him as "privileged" and wanting to "benefit from your fear". This is ridiculous and insulting. There are countless people who advocate the free market, not to entrench their position, but rather to give them a fighting chance against the existing economic hegemony in the first place. The "truly privileged" often _don't want_ a free market, because the truly privileged are benefiting from the inherent inequality in a restricted market. This is obviously not true for everyone - but look at our recent bailouts of banks and car manufacturers. Do you think they would rather have a free market that would force them to sink or swim based on their own efficiency? Hell no! They would be out of business by now, if it weren't for the government using the power to kill peculiar to the government to coerce citizens into giving their money to mismanaged banks and manufacturers, so they could reap the wealth that comes with taking risk and offload all that risk onto everyone. (This, of course, ignores the fact that much of the mismanagement, particularly of the banks, was forced upon them by government regulation in the first place. For more information, I recommend Thomas Sowell's _The Housing Boom and Bust_. [http://www.amazon.com/Housing- Boom-Bust-Revised/dp/B004I1JQ9...](http://www.amazon.com/Housing-Boom-Bust- Revised/dp/B004I1JQ98) \- not an affiliate link.)

I understand that he probably doesn't intend to defend the bailouts (though I consider them, or something like them, inevitable in a restricted market). But what he advocates is the same kind of thing - _forcing_ people to pay for other people's risk (I understand that it's a very different scenario, because this risk is unavoidable, but in this limited aspect it's quite similar). His arguments make sense on the surface, and, indeed, perhaps universal health care does work better in a model that is already fundamentally broken (I seriously doubt this, but it's an argument for another time. But dismissing a free market argument without considering how a free market might actually work, assuming that it would operate without changing the rules that the current healthcare system works under, is setting up a straw man and triumphantly knocking him down.

You have to look deeper than just private healthcare insurance. When I argue for free markets, I don't just argue for free market _insurance_. Why _is_ healthcare so expensive? Particularly when hospitals are usually built and funded by the government anyway? Why do we need health insurance to avoid going bankrupt?

A firm that began offering the same healthcare at lower prices would be overflowing with customers (the current hospitals, which have exorbitant prices, already are). So why doesn't anybody do that? First, because of the litigatory nightmare that is the modern healthcare system that, because of an absurdly low standard for malpractice suits (which are fine in principle, I admit) require doctors and hospitals to pay enormous amounts in malpractice insurance. Second, the restrictive and state-controlled medical licensing scheme, which drives the price of medical education through the roof. Third, the tremendous amount of regulation surrounding healthcare itself.

You may become indignant at this point, saying that total deregulation of the healthcare market is nonsense and poppycock, and that, while deregulation may drive many prices down so low as to be generally affordable without health insurance, there will still be some situations that would still be expensive enough to ruin most people. First, private licensing would still be available. The boards and organizations that already exist to license healthcare would still exist, they just wouldn't be controlled by the government, so you could work outside of them, allowing for more affordable healthcare in less restrictive licensing schemes. Clear malpractice and fraud would still be crimes, of course. To address the second objection, private insurance would still be available for those disastrous times, but it would be far cheaper because the frequency of bank-busting medical treatment would be vastly lowered. It would be affordable to pay for your own health insurance, rather than using an employer's, making it easier to start your own business. And that business would be started in an environment free of government-mandated monopolies (by far and away the most common form - look at the problems with Uber and Lyft), inconsistent and restrictive licensing schemes, and other harmful and difficult-to-avoid forms of regulation.

\---

My point in this long comment isn't really to convince anyone of my economic opinions. My point is simply that hand-waving my arguments away without considering their actual implications and what I actually advocate is not an argument at all. I'd love to engage in debate, but this is impossible if he's unwilling to listen to my arguments.

<comment><USER6> >A firm that began offering the same healthcare at lower prices would be overflowing with customers (the current hospitals

I have a lot of problems with what you wrote, but will just focus on one thing. You base your argument at least partially on the idea that hospitals overflowing 'with customers' is a desirable thing. First, hospitals are already overflowing with patients. Demand is not an issue.

Secondly, hospitals and other health care providers are in a different market - the better the service, the less their customers need them. If they are motivated by maximizing profit - they have two ways of doing it: keeping you sick, or getting more sick people. Neither of those strategies are good things.

You might argue that this isn't necessary, because there is always a supply of sick people. I would refer you to my first point - demand isn't the issue, and the point of the different healthcare providers are explicitly to reduce demand.

<comment><USER5> While it may have been accidentally implied, I never stated that hospitals overflowing with customers is a good thing. I merely stated that if you offered the same care for lower prices, you would have no shortage of customers. In addition, when there is competition between hospitals, a patient can choose one that has a lower incidence of return visits, for example.

Demand is _always_ an issue - in this case, high demand and a tightly limited supply have resulted in astronomical pricing. We can't really affect demand, other than to cure various diseases, but we can easily affect supply by easing the intense regulation and government-mandated licensing monopoly.

I also never said that hospitals ought to be for-profit (though I wouldn't suggest outlawing for-profit hospitals, either). There are many advantages to a non-profit approach, and non-profits do _not_ have to have the government's support to exist. I am only arguing that the government should get out of the issue, except when it comes to judicial matters of crime or civil suits. An organization can have a motivation other than profit - many do. Many organizations (the Red Cross, for instance) would be more than happy if they were unneeded and obsolete. I realize there are certainly some corrupt people who would try to use their position for unjust personal gain, but this is always the case, and would become harder to do than under the current model, not easier.

(As a very firm Christian, I tend towards the idea that the best model for hospitals is to be managed by the church (e.g., the numerous and beneficial Catholic hospitals around the country), which would be in line with what I previously said about non-profits, though I realize I am probably nearly alone in that opinion on this forum. I don't believe that secular hospitals should be outlawed and all hospitals should be required to be church hospitals, merely that church hospitals are the best model.)

Regardless, my point wasn't really to argue the free market position in this case. My comment was more to point out that the OP doesn't actually engage with the arguments he claims to refute, as he doesn't look at what a free- market advocate would actually say.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Exactly. When I moved to the Bay Area to work for Apple, it was all very nice but had a strange "taste" to it, sort of like Cowslip's warren in _Watership Down_.

It's not just the health insurance, it's also the college loans (and the prospect of having to pay for your children's college) and the mortgages. People with debt don't make much noise, and while people were likeable and smart, there was an undercurrent of deferring to authority that seemed bizarre.

</comment><comment><USER8> If you steal our words, how can we fight you? Maybe it's time to invent some new ones.

'Privilege' never used to mean 'wealthy' or 'rich'. It meant "a special advantage, immunity, permission, right, or benefit granted to or enjoyed by an individual, class, or caste."

The word 'freedom' has also been subjected to a subtle change in meaning. The word formerly meant freedom from coercion, from the arbitrary power of other people. People who share your opinion have changed it to mean freedom from necessity, release from the compulsion of the circumstances which inevitably limit the range of choice of all of us.

</comment><comment><USER9> "white american males working as computer programmers are not privileged" - <USER2> may be hard for you to see privilege as in general everyone you grew up with grew up with the same privileges as you, and now that you are a computer programmer your peers are also equally privileged. But I can rest assure you.. that you are privileged..

I am a hispanic male working as a computer programmer, and maybe because of that it's easier to see the privilege my occupation affords me as my grandmother lives in a country where the median income after tax is 500 american.. Where every so often the police, and army decide to shoot it out in the streets.. Where 51% of the population is beneath the poverty line..

Maybe it's easier for me to see privilege as I went to a highschool that was a minority majority school in the poor part of town. Where some kids weren't worried about there health care from the flu, but there health care from a flying bullets within there apartment complex. Where the kids in the cafeteria line that had white slips are getting there only meal of the day because it's paid for by the government.

Not only do I think it's important to understand we are privileged; I believe it is also our responsibility to act on that privilege to make sure all are granted the same basics our life affords as engineers (job security, food, health care, personal security[violence], time off to vote, etc). Only when the general public is granted those basics will I even partially not think of my self as not privileged.

<comment><USER10> Obviously they enjoy _relative privilege_. I am a brown person, I was one of three such in my high school, I assure you that I appreciate how privileged it is for me to be male and middle class and have educated parents.

But all the same, I'd prefer to say that they are "less under-pivileged" in an environment where they can be fired for what they do on Reddit in their spare time, leaving them unable to provide for a wife with medical issues.

In the case I am thinking of, many people said that the privileged person in question shouldn't have been doing unpopular things if he had a wife to support. Which really underscores my point.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Really enjoyed that one. It is interesting that you can use the same mechanism to frame the technological debate about open source and proprietary systems. That one might really pump up the rage views though :-) nobody wants to feel like they are being duped into carrying out someone else's agenda.

</comment><comment><USER12> No, it's not freedom if your only option is to get a job at some company and then slave away in a boring job until retirement. There may be a safety net against losing your job - but it ties you to said job. And all those safety nets need to be paid for, if companies are being burdened with that it makes it harder to start companies and become truly free.

I am actually very much for safety nets, but I don't see why companies should have a special obligation to pay up. If society wants safety nets, society should pay (and companies would pay their share via the taxes they pay, too).

</comment><comment><USER13> The removal of fear can also be considered a negative effect of a safety net though. Without the fear of failure, whats to stop one from making improperly weighed decisions? Isn't the fear of failure what drives the decision making process to the right conclusion? As a thought experiment: In a world with a marginally better safety net, would we really see cures for cancer or would we just see more Pinterest for X or Facebook for X start-ups?

<comment> mkr-hn It's easy to fall too deep into the abyss to recover when you fail. I would rather have a strong safety net and let a few people collect on it than risk it not being strong enough to do any good.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> These freedoms mentioned (with addition of free education) are called democracy in northern Europe. This is also why we have difficulty keeping straight face when someone claims that US has democracy.

</comment><comment><USER15> In the context of OP's argument, I fail to see how government safety nets aren't just another example of "chains."

</comment><comment> mkr-hn It might have been a good idea to spend a paragraph or three defining privilege as used in your post. Your use is valid, but it's going to annoy a lot of people who are accustomed to rich white men trashing them, and they might not be able to read it as intended.

</comment><comment><USER16> Actually, I agree. I live somewhere with some (albeit kinda crappy) safety nets, and it's true: people are more likely to strike out on their own, start a political party, start a business, or just do what they freaking want with their lives in Israel than in the United States, where employment power is so concentrated that offending corporate America is a death sentence.

It's not dramatic, it's just that normal for Israelis is far more open and assertive than for Americans. Partially a cultural difference, but largely an effect of not actually being _screwed for life_ by one bad decision.

</comment><comment><USER17> Oh look, a way to detect who's using an auto-submission script to try and get karma.

Just because raganwald writes it doesn't mean it belongs here.</comment>


The Truth About Digg's DiggBar - <AUTHOR> http://www.3dogmedia.com/truth-about-diggs-diggbar/ <comment><USER2> The Digg bar is not just unethical, it's plain annoying. What happens if I want to bookmark the page? What happens when I want to copy-paste the _actual_ URL into an email? What happens if I'm using a text-only browser? What about a mobile browser? What if I wish to scrape my Twitter stream for links and I can't get to the actual URL (this is actually something I'm playing with)?

Frankly, I don't see the point of this. This will just confuse and annoy users and steal valuable link-love from content producers.

</comment><comment><USER3> If I had a content site I would most certainly put frame busting code on it. To not do so seems foolish.

Screw digg.

<comment><USER4> doesn't frame busting code get invoked too late? i.e. digg already got the search engine love by the time you bust out of the frame?

<comment><USER5> Others copy and paste the url and send it around - or just use the bar to send it, which does the same.

<comment><USER6> Frame-breaking code redirects the user to the proper url. So traffic may still go to the digg.com/whatever page but it will redirect to the original site.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> The thing that really pisses me off is that Digg struck a deal with Twhirl/Seesmic - Digg.com is the DEFAULT url shortener in the latest version of Twhirl.

I'm adding some frame killing code to any of my content sites that have been on digg before. <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Framekiller>

</comment><comment><USER7> Just a random prediction. It'll be gone, or non-framing in 2 weeks. Digg is dependent on all those sites out there with "digg this" widgets for its page rank, all it will take is a significant proportion of those sites to say "bye digg" and digg will say "bye frames."

</comment><comment><USER8> The bar is definitely a shady, unneeded annoyance. However, I wouldn't worry too much about it hijacking the SEO for your site by not using a 301 redirect.

That might certainly be the case right now, but with Digg's size I doubt Google will let the lack of a 301 prevent them from recognizing what's going on.

</comment><comment><USER9> I find it funny that no one freaked out when facebook did this exact same thing: <http://blog.facebook.com/blog.php?post=43712967130>

Is it because posted items are used too infrequently for anyone to care? Is facebook's bar somehow useful? There is a curious distinction between reactions.

</comment><comment><USER10> Instead of a frame, why don't they stick the DiggBar at the top of the page but then have it scroll off? Seems like a good compromise to me.

<comment><USER11> Or just use 301 redirects...

<comment><USER12> Actually, Digg is probably big enough to avoid any penalties for doing a different redirect based on user-agent. I.e. 301 redirects for non-human useragents instead of forcing them to go through their framejacked page.

We're actually experimenting with this on tinyarrows, using a full 301 redirect for bots but we test for the preview cookie for other useragents and give them a javascript redirect in that case. We kind of have to do the latter since we support so many different incoming domains, we need a way to test the cookie through a central domain, but don't want to eat SEO juice.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> What's the difference between browser chrome and the digg bar? Firefox "brands" every page with its logo. (It doesn't use its own URL-space, but it _could_. What would you do about that.)

Anyway, I see why people are upset, but I don't see what they can do about it. It's like ad-blocking... you can't control peoples' experience when viewing your site, it's just not how the web works.

<comment><USER13> Could someone reply to this instead of downmodding me? This happened in the last article about the Digg bar too.

I really don't understand why everyone is upset.

<comment><USER14> Everyone is upset because Digg is stealing SEO juice by jacking the link to your site and making it point to them (and additionally running ads on your site through the diggbar). I think people are downvoting you because this was clearly explained in the article.

e.g. if people on Twitter start linking using digg instead of tinyurl (et. al) the person loses all the SEO juice because while tinyurl does a 301 redirect (search engines don't index the tinyurl but instead index and pass PageRank to the actual URL.) Digg does not.

<comment><USER13> I don't understand why they think they're entitled to that in the first place, though. It's how the web _has_ worked, sure, but times change. (This reminds me a lot about how VHS tapes killed the movie industry. Yeah.)

<comment><USER13> Wow, for a second I thought I was reading HN... but then I realized that Reddit just changed their CSS today.

(Downmod me some more. I can lose at most 8 karma points per post, and I have almost 5000 karma. You aren't hurting my feelings, but you are hurting the community by taking a Reddit-like approach to suppressing opinions you don't want to hear. I mean, seriously? I am having trouble making sense of this, as I've never seen it happen before here.)

<comment><USER15> You've singlehandedly made me reconsider the appropriateness of the -8 karma loss limit.

<comment><USER13> There's nothing more tragic than someone who disagrees with you.

Let's say I lost all my karma. What is the real loss for me anyway?

<comment><USER15> You're gloating about being too cool to care about karma?

I'd be perfectly fine with having no limit on negative karma on messages but with a limit on the impact it has on your global karma. So let's say you have 5000 karma and then make a message that gets downmodded to -34, you'd still have 4992 karma left. Best of both worlds. I'm more concerned about the loss of information than anything else.

edit: You know things about Reddit and I don't. Good for you, good for me. Please choose another "nemesis". You're really annoying. If you could at least contradict me in constructive ways that would be great.

<comment><USER13> _Best of both worlds._

You should really be reading Reddit, not HN.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


How to Fix Our Education System - <AUTHOR> http://online.wsj.com/article/SB20001424052748704754804574491180197671224.html#mod=todays_us_ <comment><USER2> Instead of focusing so much on standardized testing, we need to start valuing creativity, ingenuity and communication. Just because a school can increase test scores year-over-year, does not mean that the graduating students will make the country more competitive. In fact, so much emphasis on standardized testing is likely to produce less innovation as students and teachers are forced to teach within very strict models. Unfortunately, it is hard to measure creative output, but very easy to measure test scores.

I recall reading a while back about the Gates Foundation funding the creation of new schools that focus on team work and creative problem solving. This seemed to be the right approach.

<comment><USER3> > Instead of focusing so much on standardized testing, we need to start > valuing creativity, ingenuity and communication. Just because a school can > increase test scores year-over-year, does not mean that the graduating > students will make the country more competitive.

The idea that "valuing creativity, ingenuity and communication" more will make the country more competitive is appealing, but how about turning it into a scientific theory. You know, testable and falsifiable.

Failure to take those steps gets us useless twaddle like self-esteem programs.

BTW - If you do succeed, you get to compete with the twaddle for educational resources. Sorry about that.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I read this in the print edition this afternoon. The expert panel identify one problem with education reform: lack of incentives that will move the key actors who could make things better.

"MR. MURRAY: When NIH funding discovers some protein that will cure some disease, it gets snapped up in a heartbeat by big pharmaceutical companies who capitalize on it and make it widely available at a profit. When we have lots of successful experiments in education, the mechanisms for transmitting that success to the broader system don't seem to work very well. Why?

"MR. KLEIN: In part because there are not competitive influences that drive it. In a public-delivery system like ours, competition is not typically a driver."

<comment><USER5> It is very hard to have incentives and competitive influences in education. It is just the nature of education -- the result of a good or bad education is not immediately obvious.

If you buy a TV you will know soon after you use it whether it is a good or a bad TV. Not so much with your kids. Although, a very bad school may be immediately obvious a lot of mediocre ones will not be and they will not be distinguishable from very good ones.

So, unfortunately, one cannot use general competition to make schools better. One has to rely on teachers and administrators desire to do good.

<comment><USER6> It's also a well-known factoid that the best developers outperform the worst by a factor of 10, and yet despite huge incentives to develop a reliable scheme to rate developers, none exists. Just because we "need" to segment the good teachers (or developers, or doctors) from the bad doesn't mean we can.

<comment><USER7> One key thing is that students get advanced from grade to grade /no matter what/, unless they drop out. Students have little immediate incentive to work to succeed, and social pressure seems set up to disincentivize students towards learning.

One possibility I've thought of is that there should be early separation of students into high and low performers to 'scare' parents into pushing their kids towards the 'high' performance. If you can't succeed, you can't, but if you don't try, you'll never get anywhere. Nothing wrong (and a lot right) with vocational education, but so many kids waste money on a college education that they're not able to take advantage of.

<comment><USER4> _One key thing is that students get advanced from grade to grade /no matter what/, unless they drop out._

Once upon a time, schools weren't organized to segregate children into grades by age.

<http://learninfreedom.org/age_grading_bad.html>

A lot of scholars think it was crazy ever to start organizing schools that way.

<comment><USER6> So if you believe this, then why do you advocate for policies that will further regiment and ossify the school system we have? Shouldn't you want to give teachers more freedom with their curricula?

<comment><USER4> _Shouldn't you want to give teachers more freedom with their curricula?_

I don't recall that I have said that I wouldn't do that, although I suppose you are concerned about my posting the link in which a third-party organization advocated that student achievement should be one element of teacher evaluation. Yes, I think teachers ought to have great freedom in curriculum design (in particular, they ought to be free to choose their own preferred textbooks and supplemental materials within very broad limits). But I also think that if a teacher announces "I teach English writing" that there ought to be some independent way to show that the students in the class made some progress in English writing by the end of an academic year. Or, at the very least, that students ought to be able to shop for preferred teachers who make them feel honored as learners and who make all the students in the class stay on task in learning. Different teachers may be a different fit for different students--that seems quite likely--so teachers shouldn't be assigned to students by administrators who never enter the classrooms to see what is going on.

In general, I advocate policies that deregiment and unossify the school system we have, but perhaps that has not been apparent in the threads in which you and I have most recently interacted. I'm very much in favor of providing more choices to more learners and more teachers.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I don't buy the assumption that the biggest problem is teacher quality. Hasn't it been repeatedly shown that, statistically, the factors that most strongly predict a child's academic success are far and away related to their family, not their school?

Of course, getting up in public to say "these kids are failing school--and it's their parents' fault" doesn't really advance anyone's political agenda.

<comment><USER9> _I don't buy the assumption that the biggest problem is teacher quality._

It's half and half. My wife has a 2nd and 4th block, same material, same environment, except the latter has such a poor group dynamic that they significantly underperform the other class. Variables here are time, teacher fatigue, blood sugar, and the students. I feel that the last factor has the greatest effect.

And I totally agree with the fact that there's an abdication of responsibility from the parent/guardian(s) in that they feel the intrinsic motivation for the student ought to be provided by the state.

But then we have teachers who have tenure that play videos all day. Good times.

<comment><USER8> _Variables here are time, teacher fatigue, blood sugar, and the students._

I'd say that, at least up to some age, any problems attributable to "the students" are really the failing of the parents, though maybe that's what you were getting at.

I agree that some teachers aren't really _helping_ matters any, but without good parental influence I don't think improving teacher quality is going to accomplish all that much.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> <http://philip.greenspun.com/careers/>

The economic system is sending a strong signal.

When you can just get by in school, become a banker and still make the equivalent of an engineer, you'd be almost foolish to go with the match/science degree.

Can you do that in India/China/other third world country?

<comment><USER10> To clarify, I'm saying that students in a third world country have a much greater incentive to study the hard sciences. If you're brother in law can't get a job in his bank then the only way out of poverty is to study hard.

Even in relatively poor areas of the country (midwest, south) you can make a very good living as a banker (loan officer, etc).

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> I believe we need more schools of type <http://www.olin.edu/></comment>


Ask HN: How to teach spoken English to non-native speakers? - <AUTHOR> Please recommend courses, books, and videos. <comment><USER2> I've used pimsleur audio book courses to learn Portuguese. They have English courses too for speakers of some common languages. Three format suited me very well and with pimsleur+living in Brasil I was fluent (though with a heavy accent) within a year</comment>


Go 2 announced at Gophercon - <AUTHOR> https://twitter.com/srcgraph/status/885523790427324416 <comment><USER2> I posted this earlier: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14762299](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14762299)</comment>


Ask HN: What have you built with Rails lately? - <AUTHOR> I know RoR isn't as fashionable as it used to be.
But I also know that there are tons of Rails devs out there still making cool stuff.
What have you built lately? <comment><USER2> I'm building Rewardful, a way to setup affiliate programs with Stripe.

[https://www.getrewardful.com/](https://www.getrewardful.com/)

I debated what stack to use. I thought maybe I should use this as an opportunity to go deep into Node + React or Vue, or maybe Laravel.

Ultimately I decided to stick to what I know best — my end goal is to build a business, not experiment.

In the end this turned out to be a good decision because WOW are there a lot of moving parts to doing affiliate software correctly & robustly. It would've probably doubled development time if I had simultaneously been mastering a new stack.

The app is built in boring old Rails & Bootstrap. But not a single customer has mentioned the tech - they only care that Rewardful solves their problem. This experience has been a good reminder about what matters!

</comment><comment><USER3> I'm busy building [http://diyrss.info](http://diyrss.info).

I'm hoping to fill a personal need for a tool to help me keep up to date with blogs and other sites I follow. I hate notification spam, so I'm trying to centralize it on one app.

Also been learning some varied deploy practices. Explored my way through Docker and Gitlab integrations, checked out Google Cloud. After all of that I still preferred running a bare linux server while I'm pretty much the only one using it.

</comment><comment><USER4> I've been using Rails for quite some time and recently built a couple of different projects using it (still my favorite framework):

\- Communities List ([http://www.communitieslist.com/](http://www.communitieslist.com/)) & Closeknit ([http://www.closeknit.co/](http://www.closeknit.co/)) for finding and building communities;

\- 24agenda ([https://www.24agenda.com/en](https://www.24agenda.com/en)) an appointment management solution currently deployed in Portugal;

\- SciShare ([http://www.sci-share.com/](http://www.sci-share.com/)) a scientific reference management platform;

\- Octotrack ([https://www.octotrack.com/](https://www.octotrack.com/)) a dependency and security manager for rails projects;

</comment><comment><USER5> I've been building [https://payhere.co/](https://payhere.co/) a payments platform to help entrepreneurs and small businesses sell more products and memberships online.

My agency alternatelabs.co uses Rails for nearly all our projects as we think it's still the most productive framework for building most businesses in 2018.

</comment><comment><USER6> I've built a scheduling website for a community I run that watches anime in VR. Use Rails 5.1 with Vue and Webpacker. It's finally not hard to have modern front-end stack while retaining the power of RoR on the backend. [http://vranimesociety.com/](http://vranimesociety.com/)

</comment><comment><USER7> Still work in progress... makes some nice pocket money though [https://pawelurbanek.com/profitable-slack-bot- rails](https://pawelurbanek.com/profitable-slack-bot-rails)

</comment><comment><USER8> I've built LocaleData - a simple translation management platform for Ruby on Rails apps: [https://www.localedata.com/](https://www.localedata.com/)

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> My friend and I are building Transistor.fm, running Rails 5.2 in production. Here's an example of the app:

[https://saas.transistor.fm](https://saas.transistor.fm)</comment>


I Was an Amazon Chew Toy - <AUTHOR> http://www.theawl.com/2015/01/i-was-an-amazon-chew-toy <comment><USER2> Wouldn't the office inevitably start smelling like that familiar "dog smell"? Maybe that's okay with them... but personally I'm not sure I'd want that aroma wafting all around my workplace.

</comment><comment><USER3> A humorous and well written article, but I kind of wish she'd gone into a little more detail about the work-life balance issues rather than just shoehorning it in at the end. Still, it's interesting that the dog policy might have been instated as a way of throwing employees a bone.

<comment><USER4> I think that's probably a given for most of us. I work in the financial sector and it's the same here. The longer you stay put, the more is expected of you until finally you either move or quit. Work-life balance is a buzzword most places, especially the ones that say it's "your responsibility" (as if we can somehow choose the projects assigned to us, set the deadlines, and design the workload to our choosing).

And regarding the idea that dogs were a way to mask the lack of work-life balance, it makes perfect sense. The biggest thing that throws work and life out of balance is the conflict between family and work. If you can replace family with a dog, that's a huge win for them.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> I would not work somewhere that allows dogs, personally. Don't like them at all.

</comment><comment><USER6> Dogs are nice, outside. I find living with them in your work/home disgusting.

</comment><comment><USER7> This article could use a few more ads in between paragraphs....</comment>


LA Unveils Costliest School In The Nation - that's $137k per student - <AUTHOR> http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/08/22/robert-f-kennedy-communit_n_690497.html <comment><USER2> _that's $137k per student_

Only if they keep it open for just one year.

<comment><USER3> How many years do they need to keep it open to break even? How many years is the expected lifetime of the facilty?

Or the biggest question ... how many teachers could have been kept on payroll if they hadn't built it?

<comment><USER4> "Or the biggest question ... how many teachers could have been kept on payroll if they hadn't built it?"

I'm not sure this is the question to be asking. Obviously the laid off teachers will be upset to see lavish spending as they are let go, but I would argue student achievement is the better metric. It's possible that a new building helps students learn at a faster pace than a low student to teacher ratio.

<comment><AUTHOR> agreed. dollars spent per unit of educational progress. I doubt a valid "unit" exists, which is one reason the public sector consistently fails at this. otherwise, you'd think turning over your brain over to government would work like a charm.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> _"New buildings are nice, but when they're run by the same people who've given us a 50 percent dropout rate, they're a big waste of taxpayer money," said Ben Austin, executive director of Parent Revolution who sits on the California Board of Education. "Parents aren't fooled."_

I had trouble believing the 50% dropout rate statistic, so I did a little Googling and found [1] that it was 34.9% in Los Angeles. While not 50%, 35% is still incredible. No wonder why the LA poverty rate is so high.

[1] [http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/lanow/2009/05/high-school- dr...](http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/lanow/2009/05/high-school-dropout-rate- climbs-to-349.html)

<comment><USER6> "No wonder why the LA poverty rate is so high."

Cause and effect.

It is more likely that the high drop out rate is caused by poverty and an uneducated environment. We have the same thing here in the north of Norway. Poor region (relatively) with low education levels among citizens and parents and higher dropout rates. Probably around 30%.

Also: educational achievement is STRONGLY correlated with equality, and California is one of the most unequal American states.

<http://www.equalitytrust.org.uk/why/evidence/education>

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> a lovely shrine to our re-education facilities.

honestly if you have ever been outraged at the perceived inefficiency of public education read Underground History of American Education by John Taylor Gatto. Most of the "inefficiencies" make plenty of sense when you see that the stated goals of our education system do not align with their actual effects.

</comment><comment><USER6> So... Soviet Russia had it right? Big, ugly and cheap buildings are the way to go? American conservatives never cease to surprise me.

<comment><USER8> Don't bring that here. Invoking Communism, the Nazis, etc. is generally not a good debate tactic, and panning an entire party is especially unwelcome.

Given the fact that CA is nearly bankrupt, this seems to me to be a travesty. It may not be the absolute worst way to spend money (please don't invoke wars), but it shows a pretty flagrant disregard for the fiscal realities of things.

Do you see why people might reasonably be unhappy about this?

<comment><USER6> My point was that beautiful surroundings matter.

I assumed that comparing the US to the USSR was so ludicrous that my real point would be obvious. But the Internet is not a place for subtleties.

<comment><USER9> Beautiful surroundings are a fine thing. But I've seen some good schooling done in pretty ugly buildings. In general I suspect the American propensity for applying capital solutions to labor-intensive problems.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


The New Child-Testing Craze - <AUTHOR> http://www.thedailybeast.com/blogs-and-stories/2010-02-17/the-new-child-testing-craze/full/

<comment><USER2> FTA:

"The rush to judge kids on their good behavior has been accelerated by the notion of emotional intelligence. In the 1995 publication of his book, Emotional Intelligence, Daniel Goleman theorized that EI could be more determinative of a child's academic success than the child's IQ. That idea is so popular that few have noticed it's not supported by the data—the theory has proven to be a fallacy. In a recent meta-analysis of 57 studies, scholars at Florida International University determined that the correlation between emotional intelligence and school success tops out at 0.10. That was for teens; for 5 year olds, it's even more problematic."

I thought that part was particularly interesting, having been to a private elementary school where they talked about EI _all_ the time.

</comment><comment><USER3> If your private school is oversubscribed, and your entrance tests are basically random, why not just raise prices?

I could understand a proud parent enjoying the kudos of having a child in a school that selected on IQ (even if we all know it's a dodgy measure) but why be proud of a child being selected on entirely arbitrary standards of compliance and obedience?

</comment><comment><USER4> Isn't it better to focus on oneself -- trying to be a better parent or teacher -- than to focus on testing the child in your care and trying to predict his future? It's not possible to predict people's futures anyway and all this tyrannical nonsense is simply contributing to depression and to the bureaucratisation of childhood.</comment>


How to Save Newspapers (Or, Why the NYT Should Acquire Twitter) - <AUTHOR> http://blogs.harvardbusiness.org/haque/2009/04/twitter_1.html <comment><USER2> "Society can't exist without newspapers" - Really? It looks like we're happily heading down that path.

<comment><USER3> Indeed. Society will probably be better off without newspapers, as they currently mostly just reinforce what those with enough power to get something published want you to read.

And good riddance to that.</comment></comment>