Scientist: Cats think you are just a big, stupid cat - <AUTHOR> http://news.cnet.com/8301-17852_3-57617101-71/scientist-cats-think-you-are-just-a-big-stupid-cat/ <comment><USER2> Interesting topic and book although I highly recommended skipping this article in favor of the [NYT article cited]([http://mobile.nytimes.com/2014/01/07/science/cat-sense- expla...](http://mobile.nytimes.com/2014/01/07/science/cat-sense-explains- what-theyre-really-thinking.html?_r=2&referrer=)).

This title and article are misleading, no where in the NYT piece does it say cats think we're "big stupid cats", just that they use their social norms towards us, as that's all they know. The cnet article is juvenile speculation.

</comment><comment><USER3> Franz Kafka wrote a short story, "Investigations of a Dog," in which a dog tries to figure out where his food comes from, and why he goes through a barking and jumping ritual before receiving his food, and ends up creating a myth of a giant invisible soaring dog.

<comment><USER4> Wow, much metaphysic. /sorry, couldn't resist.

<comment><USER5> I believe the meme is "Wow. _Such_ ..."

<comment><USER6> very wrong

much incorrect

<comment><USER5> Such pedantry.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> That cats aren't really domesticated . . . I wholeheartedly agree. They have simply learned to cohabit with us.

That cats don't know we are different . . . I wholeheartedly disagree. In some respects, they treat us like cats, probably because that is the language they know. To be fair, however, many people treat their pets like little dumb humans while realizing that they aren't actually people.

What the hell is an anthrozoologist, anyway? That sounds like something he made up to call himself.

<comment><USER8> I don't know if you've heard of this website 'wikipedia', if not, you should visit it sometime. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anthrozoology](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anthrozoology)

<comment><USER9> To be fair 'Anthrozoology' was coined in late 2010 and it's quite likely the number of people who might call it their specialty is very small.

[http://www.google.com/trends/explore#q=Anthrozoology](http://www.google.com/trends/explore#q=Anthrozoology)

<comment><USER10> [http://www.google.com/trends/explore#q=Anthrozoology%2C%20de...](http://www.google.com/trends/explore#q=Anthrozoology%2C%20dentistry&cmpt=q)

<comment><USER9> It is not at all clear what point you are trying to make. Put in a little effort.

<comment><USER11> Anthrozoology has a much lower search interest than dentistry and is localised in the United States.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I've always said that I think dogs think that one day they too will become like us, which is why they insist on sitting in the drivers seat when you leave the car. However, I don't believe cats and dogs are so unaware as to think we are actually no different to them. I may agree if animals weren't able to recognize other species of animal, but clearly they can. Dogs and cats inherently know they don't like each other, cats like to chase birds and mice, so they can recognize other animals. Why would anybody make a statement assuming that a cat can't recognize that we are different from them.

<comment><USER13> Well, I can tell you that some cats will chase _anything_ (usually anything smaller than themselves) and some cats will play with dogs as if they were a big brother. So while they may know that other animals are _different_ from themselves, I'm not sure they recognize that they are a different species.

<comment><USER14> Don't know a lot about cat behavior. Would they hunt and kill a sparrow-sized kitten that wasn't theirs?

<comment><USER15> A male lion, when taking over a pride, will kill all the young lions that are not his offspring.

<comment><USER16> I have heard that lions' pack behaviour is more reminiscent of dogs than it is of domesticated cats, which have a more solitary nature similar to tigers or other big cats.

Do you know if this sort of behaviour has also been witnessed in wolf packs?

<comment><USER17> It's mentioned in Call of the Wild, but that's not a very reliable scientific source.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> This isn't my interpretation of _Cat Sense_. The author clearly compares how cats treat each other and how they treat humans and points out the parallels. But the author really seems to be of the opinion that cats are more affectionate towards us than they are towards each other. Cats have depended on us for centuries to provide them mice to eat, but they haven't quite developed the same social skills with their own kind (as compared to dogs).

</comment><comment><USER19> Ugh. Anyone who thinks cats having a "wild" streak is a good thing is an idiot, considering the sheer damage done to ecosystems by escaped and feral cats.

</comment><comment><USER20> This is inane. Why is a cat friendly towards human visitors, yet hostile towards feline ones? We show human signs affection towards cats, why wouldn't they use their own body language towards us?

<comment><USER21> I haven't read the book this is based on so maybe that makes it more clear, but reading just the article I agree this is inane. I grew up with cats and have a cat now and they clearly act differently not only when it comes to strange humans vs strange cats, but also humans of different types, eg. genders (my cat trusts human females inherently but it takes her a long time to trust males, I adopted her from a shelter when she was 2 and assume she used to be abused by a male or something).

All that aside, cats do use their own body language towards us quite a bit, like the head-bump, the "making biscuits" thing and the slow eye blink. But they also customize things for us as well, like I've read other researchers who say cats don't meow (in a non-growl way) with each other after they are kittens, that is reserved for talking to humans.

<comment><USER22> _my cat trusts human females inherently but it takes her a long time to trust males_

Huh. What's your best guess how she tells males and females (of another species: humans) apart?

<comment><USER23> Most likely by smell, that is how they identify each other and other animals, since their daytime vision kind of sucks. Sometimes they can tell when you're arriving way before you get to the door.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> Dogs have owners; cats have staff. I guess they think of us as big stupid minimum wage cat staff.

<comment><USER17> Hey, dogs have (alpha) companions.

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> I'm always fascinated by the implications of the very common approach of people to anthropomorphize cats when discussing them and to put down human intelligence in relation to the cat in the process. I don't see it done nearly as commonly when dogs are discussed. It seems nearly universal in the discussion of cats anywhere online.

"Given that he believes cats are semi-feral and that they think we are cats too, we must surely consider that cats aren't all that stupid -- because they must realize that we are, in fact, quite that stupid."

<comment><USER26> We can't avoid applying human paradigms to animal behaviour. Cats strike us as introverted and cynical so they serve well the purpose of criticizing humanity; by playing the role of a cat, people can disclose about the pointlessness of life without sounding too bitter or too philosophical (much like dogs facilitate talking about how humans can be loyal, friendly and honorable).

Nonetheless, opinions about dogs and cats really are homogeneous. Maybe this means our ideas about those animals have been constructed over time. We wouldn't be so eager to call an eagle "loyal" or "smart". Our relationship with dogs and cats is so long that we've had enough time to carefully craft their images.

<comment><USER27> _Cats strike us as introverted and cynical_

A lot of that has to do with a cat's expression, which we assign human significance to. If a human looks at you through half-closed eyes, it can be a sign of suspicion; whereas if a cat looks at you through half-closed eyes, it usually means the cat likes you and trusts you, and feels comfortable around you.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> Cats think of us as big, dumb, non-threatening cats? I assumed they thought less highly of us.

</comment><comment><USER29> Well, a cat would have at least properly escaped the entity encoding (caption on the photo)

</comment><comment><USER30> The last time I published a professional paper you had to give your affiliation with your university, government agency or at least what gives your opinion credibility. Who is this guy and where does he get his data to make this claim?

<comment><USER11> I think cats are awesome too.

</comment></comment><comment><USER31> I doubt animals has the slightest knowledge of the fact that there is multiple spices of animals.

More like that animal is interesting that lager ugly one over there is not.

<comment><USER11> Ugly changes without a sense of cruelty.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> There may be arrogance in saying that we can think in any other way that is not human.</comment>


Changes to accessing and using Geolite2 databases - <AUTHOR> https://blog.maxmind.com/2019/12/18/significant-changes-to-accessing-and-using-geolite2-databases/ <comment><USER2> From CC BY SA 4.0: "No additional restrictions — You may not apply legal terms or technological measures that legally restrict others from doing anything the license permits."

GeoLite2's new EULA "incorporate[s] into this Agreement by reference" specifically the CC BY SA 4.0 ("Creative Commons Corporation Attribution- ShareAlike 4.0 International License") with a statement that this EULA (as well as their data processing addendum DPA, privacy policy PP, and website terms of service WT) take precedent in case of conflict.

"This Agreement controls in the event of any conflict with the above- referenced documents. Thereafter, for any conflicts among the above 4 documents, the priority and precedence of interpretation is DPA, PP, WT and Creative Commons License."

The EULA then has a number of what are _literally_ called "additional restrictions" (omg), which restrict (to summarize) 1) how you distribute it (with some kind of weird statement saying "where not inconsistent with the other terms of this Agreement, as in the Creative Commons License", which seems to invert the prioritization?! I don't know what to do with this...), 2) how you secure your distribution (which I guess precludes any ability to distribute the database along with an application? this is now only for backend use?), 3) that you will destroy old copies of the database (which is pretty egregious per CC BY SA, but I can appreciate this is likely the goal of this new EULA for CCPA compliance), and 4) that you won't send personal data to MaxMind (was anyone doing that before? ;P).

So, I don't understand the goal then with respect to "incorporat[ing] into this Agreement by reference" the CC BY SA if it is no longer a license agreement even remotely compatible with CC BY SA. Like, I was expecting this EULA to be an unrelated license, not some attempt to provide an awkwardly incompatible set of provisions. I now need to send this EULA off to my lawyer, who is probably going to come back with something like "we recommend you don't use this for any purpose unless we can get legal clarification".

</comment><comment><USER3> Wait a minute, now that I've registered for Maxmind there is a _Do Not Sell My Personal Information Requests_ page with the text:

 _The following IP addresses are associated with valid 'Do Not Sell My Personal Information' requests as required by applicable privacy regulations, and have been removed from (or will be removed from the next releases of) the GeoIP2 and GeoLite2 databases. None of the IP addresses listed or contained within a listed network may be used for advertising or marketing purposes._

If I had sent Maxmind a request for data removal, the last thing I would expect is that my IP address would be shared with any internet user who bothered to create a Maxmind account. Even if this page were removed, it might not be difficult to obtain the opted-out addresses by doing a diff between GeoIP2 free releases. Perhaps a search for narrow slivers of addresses removed that were previously in California?

Law of unintended consequences for CCPA? Bad implementation for CCPA compliance? What interesting things could be done with a list of publicly available list of opted-out IP addresses?

<comment><USER4> There's no other way for it to work. It's like putting yourself on a "do not call" list -- it only works if the list is visible so callers can obey it.

Yes a list exists now of privacy-minded individuals' IP addresses, but I can't imagine what you would do with that, and trying to identify them from it would in itself be illegal probably?

<comment><USER3> There's a few huge differences here from the DNC list.

* Implementation: Access to the DNC list is provided by various carriers for paying customers, with lookups available on a per-number basis. A binary { true, false } response is sent. EDIT: Thank you PaybackTony for the correction. The entire DNC list is also available as a CSV for $$$$.

* Expectations of privacy: Does Maxmind send out a response to those fulfilled complaints stating that their IP address will be made available to anyone on the Internet who registers for an account?

* Hiding in the crowd: How many numbers are in the DNC registry? How many will request a Maxmind opt-out?

Regarding _trying to identify them from it would in itself be illegal probably?_ : maybe. But with all these IP addresses sitting available to anyone on the Internet who bothers to make an account, it doesn't really matter.

<comment><USER5> > * Expectations of privacy: Does Maxmind send out a response to those > fulfilled complaint stating that their IP address will be made available to > anyone on the Internet who registers for an account?

This can't be otherwise, someone interested by this data would just have to diff databases to check for missing ip adresses.

<comment><USER3> Sure, but do you expect all consumers filing CCPA complaints to understand this? Even the more astute consumers filing complaints probably don't understand that Maxmind provides both flat files and API as a service for IP lookups. They should set expectations here.

Maxmind could be completely transparent here to consumers, for those who don't understand the consequences of requesting a removal using the current implementation:

 _Thank you for your CCPA request which we have fulfilled. Your IP address has been removed from our databases._

 _Furthermore, your IP address has been placed on[https://www.maxmind.com/en/accounts/do-not-sell- requests](https://www.maxmind.com/en/accounts/do-not-sell-requests) for the next month. During this time period, your IP address will be displayed on this page. Of course, no other personal information you provided us will not be included. Please note that no specific privileges are required to access this page, other than an email address to create an account. We have no realistic countermeasures against this, or potentially hostile actors who may regularly archive this page content._

 _We value your privacy!_

 _Maxmind Ltd_

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I'm glad this was posted here because I never would have heard about it otherwise, until one of my sites' monthly downloads would have broken.

But I still can't quite figure out if anything's changing technically except a new file location that requires an account to access, and new license terms -- or is there something else?

If someone requests a "do not sell" for their IP address that is in the middle of a range... is the range being split in 2, and skipping that address? Or are the ranges staying the same, and is there a separate "blacklist" of some kind that says, if the IP is any of these individual addresses, it's against the law to geolocate? And is that blacklist in the same file, or something to do with "we will... communicate all valid "Do Not Sell" requests to you as we receive them"?

Wish this post were both clearer, and that it had been announced at least a couple of months in advance, rather than less than 2 weeks before taking effect today. (Still, I can't complain too much -- it's free so I'm just glad the public databases exists at all.)

<comment><USER6> We apologize for not providing more notice. The CCPA was finalized in October, and it contains a number of ambiguities, particularly as it relates to our products. To arrive at our current interpretation, it has taken many weeks of working with privacy lawyers, following discussions in the privacy community, and observing actions other companies have taken. We're sorry for the timing, appreciating the frustration it causes, and wish we could have provided more notice.

MaxMind will provide immediate notification of Do Not Sell requests via the [https://www.maxmind.com/en/accounts/current/do-not-sell- requ...](https://www.maxmind.com/en/accounts/current/do-not-sell-requests) page on our website (login required).

Future builds of the database will exclude those IP addresses by introducing the "split ranges" you describe.

Hope that helps.

Mark Fowler MaxMind

<comment><USER7> Given that for home users, IP address assignment is temporary, is there a plan to add them back after some time has elapsed?

<comment><USER8> Yes. We will add them back if we are confident they've been reallocated.

Jason Ketola MaxMind

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I'm not sure I understand how the logic of this works.

For those that don't know, GeoLite2 databases are for the most part prefix trees on IP address space, they _can_ contain concrete IP addresses, but more often they just map an IP address range to some metadata. This is particularly true about GeoLite2, which is a very coarse database.

To me, this is equivalent to a database saying in which state is a given zip- code. How can that imply any kind of personal data?

<comment><USER10> "but more often they just map an IP address range to some metadata"

How did they acquire that metadata? This isn't a rhetorical question -- I am online with a provider that covers the entire country and services like MaxMind know my specific province/city (actually my little town just outside the city). I am unaware of any mechanism that the providers publish that declares specific locations -- or why they would even want to do that (the privacy implications are large, and it seems likely to be regulated) -- so how do these companies know?

Some providers, especially in Europe, cover multiple countries.

Traditionally it was by users running tools that would use either GPS coordinates or user-input and these geolocation providers would reverse engineer up a provider's tree. It is not a fundamental property of IPv4 and was not an intended use -- it just came about because there is commercial value is locating users. And now there's a massive perpetual data trawl monitoring massive amounts of data to keep it up to date from that nascent beginning.

And really it has always been a remarkable privacy intrusion that crept up and we simply accepted.

edit: I edited this a bit to more clearly convey that while providers clearly know the geolocation of every single IP, it's unclear how that data makes its way out.

<comment><USER11> A lot of providers include some geographic info in their reverse dns. My IP is currently mapped to X-X-X-X.tukw.qwest.net (ip redacted) which means I'm near Tukwila, WA. You can use that to put me in the Seattle metropolitan area which is usually close enough. Getting better accuracy than that means using other sources -- either data from the ISP, or from services that have IP and Geo information together and provide it somehow.

<comment><USER10> Possibly, but I'd wager that it doesn't play any part in this. Not only is it completely non-standard, using arbitrary divisions that often vary at completely different geographical levels, providers are woefully slow and inaccurate at actually updating it -- the few that still have such vestiges often publish completely inaccurate mappings (e.g. Bell Canada and Rogers both have this with their intermediary nodes, with descriptions that have no correlation with their actual locations).

My provider -- a nationwide provider -- simply uses a no-additional- information IP quartet with a suffix as the DNS. Zero geographical information. Many others follow the same trend. And the nodes in between vary and change frequently as they update their infrastructure and pathways.

I do remember when this whole exercise began and it started as a bunch of users running a desktop tool that would provide self-geolocation and publish it back. But...why? Why did we ever need this on the desktop and is it worth the privacy intrusion.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Interestingly enough, some of the information maxmind is providing can be found in RIRs databases, such as RIPE for instance: ftp://ftp.ripe.net/ripe/dbase/split/, ARIN: [https://ftp.arin.net/pub/rr/](https://ftp.arin.net/pub/rr/)

This is the same information than can usually be accessed using the "whois ip_address" command.

I wonder how this is going to be handled as it's necessary that this information remains public for network operators.

Would ping / mtr / traceroute need to be banned on a per-ip basis too as these tools can be used to triangulate?

The whole thing feels like "please remove my address from maps, it's private data", well yes, ok...

<comment><USER12> I'm pretty sure maxmind does more than simply keeping a whois database; they likely aggregate this data from multiple sources, but of course we don't know since it's a trade secret.

<comment><USER13> They do more than aggregate public sources. I looked into it in 2013, and found data in maxmind that was available from no public sources.

[https://rant.gulbrandsen.priv.no/digital-envoy- maxmind](https://rant.gulbrandsen.priv.no/digital-envoy-maxmind) jfyi

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Well this sucks.

I depend on these to keep thousands of user's ips private. IPGeoBlock on many of Wordpress installs keep a lot of bad bots (and humans) out - and there are already options baked into that plugin to query several online DB's with the user IP to find country code... Most of my sites that allow other users to login, I keep their data private by telling ipGeoBlock to download the DB onto our server, check that, and NOT query the other online services.

Sure would be nice if you could still provide GeoLite2 Country GeoLite2 ASN

just remove all the USA ones :) - then I could have it query the downloaded DB if it finds a result block them - and if not result then let them try to login..

So they are going to offer the DB if registered and agree to whatever so called terms.. we should be able to get someone in a country without a jurisdiction that considers USA agreements legal - to get the DB and put it online right?

having to sign up with maxmind alone is reducing privacy for me - I guess unintended consequences - but sheesh!

<comment><USER15> Since the smallest globally routeable address is a /24 (256 address block), surely you can just use the block to resolve to country as there would be few situations where a block would be split across an international boundary (excluding point to point links).

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> The Wayback Machine has copies of the last CC BY-SA 4.0 version:

[https://web.archive.org/web/20191227182209/https://geolite.m...](https://web.archive.org/web/20191227182209/https://geolite.maxmind.com/download/geoip/database/GeoLite2-City.tar.gz)

[https://web.archive.org/web/20191227182412/https://geolite.m...](https://web.archive.org/web/20191227182412/https://geolite.maxmind.com/download/geoip/database/GeoLite2-Country.tar.gz)

[https://web.archive.org/web/20191227182527/https://geolite.m...](https://web.archive.org/web/20191227182527/https://geolite.maxmind.com/download/geoip/database/GeoLite2-ASN.tar.gz)

[https://web.archive.org/web/20191227182816/https://geolite.m...](https://web.archive.org/web/20191227182816/https://geolite.maxmind.com/download/geoip/database/GeoLite2-City- CSV.zip)

[https://web.archive.org/web/20191227183011/https://geolite.m...](https://web.archive.org/web/20191227183011/https://geolite.maxmind.com/download/geoip/database/GeoLite2-Country- CSV.zip)

[https://web.archive.org/web/20191227183143/https://geolite.m...](https://web.archive.org/web/20191227183143/https://geolite.maxmind.com/download/geoip/database/GeoLite2-ASN- CSV.zip)

And the last copy of the download page before the download links were removed, for reference: [https://web.archive.org/web/20191222130401/https://dev.maxmi...](https://web.archive.org/web/20191222130401/https://dev.maxmind.com/geoip/geoip2/geolite2/)

<comment><USER17> Thanks for linking, I intentionally saved all files to archive.org as I was sure a lot of people would only notice when it is too late.

You can see all links with their hash here:

[https://forum.matomo.org/t/maxmind-is-changing-access-to- fre...](https://forum.matomo.org/t/maxmind-is-changing-access-to-free- geolite2-databases/35439/3)

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> This is fascinating and I'm sure will have lots of far-reaching effects for the courts to chew on... For example, do I "own" the IP address that my ISP assigned me? Is it really my PII? If enough people ask to be removed, have I harmed the ISPs property? What about dynamic IPs? I like that I know have the power to opt-out... but will it last?

As a developer, thinking about this is a great mental exercise for switching my thinking from "use public datasets" to "use user opt-in data" - what would I have used IP->GEO info for before? Guessing a user's language? I can use Accept headers. Guessing a user's real location? Better to use the web/mobile GPS api and get explicit consent. I guess the internal maps we make from our server logs will get less accurate... fine?

<comment><USER19> In the truest sense of property law, only the pre-RIR allocations (aka legacy allocations) are actually owned by companies. RIR allocations are assigned for use by companies, but ranges are still owned by the regional registrars.

You're just using/renting something.

<comment><USER20> Does it matter if i'm renting something or not? I thought the issue was surrounding privacy of users data. Would disclosing that a user is renting an ip address from a specific location be something that is prohibited?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> OP here. My CI builds started breaking out of nowhere [1] because the public download URL of the Geolite2 database started giving 404s.

I reached upon the GitHub issue opened by MaxMind on the package I was using [2] who recommended that every user should create an account and download the package, so I used Git LFS to manually add the package to the repo for now, until I can come up with a better CI-driven solution, because one of the rules is that you need to update the database as soon as a new one comes out, and stop using the older version within 30 days of update, and you might need to provide this in writing as well.

[1] [https://travis-ci.org/staart/api/builds/630988787](https://travis- ci.org/staart/api/builds/630988787)

[2] [https://github.com/runk/node- geolite2/issues/17](https://github.com/runk/node-geolite2/issues/17)

[3] [https://www.maxmind.com/en/geolite2/eula](https://www.maxmind.com/en/geolite2/eula)

<comment><USER6> I'd like to apologize on behalf of MaxMind for breaking your CI build. Let me assure you as a fellow programmer, I know how frustrating that can be! As you saw we've tried to reach out to the larger open source projects using GeoLite2 in advance, but we've not had time to give as much notice as we would like.

The CCPA was finalized in October, and it contains a number of ambiguities, particularly as it relates to our products. To arrive at our current interpretation, it has taken many weeks of working with privacy lawyers, following discussions in the privacy community, and observing actions other companies have taken. We're sorry for the timing, appreciating the frustration it causes, and wish we could have provided more notice.

With regard to the regular updating of the database automatically, I recommend you take a look at our own tool for automatically downloading the latest database: GeoIP Update [https://dev.maxmind.com/geoip/geoipupdate/](https://dev.maxmind.com/geoip/geoipupdate/)

Hope that helps.

Mark Fowler MaxMind

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> That's pretty interesting that an IP address is enough to trigger CCPA. I thought it had to specifically tie to identity versus something broader like zip codes and city names to be covered under CCPA.

I wonder if you would be okay geolocating just the first three octets.

<comment><USER22> Any identifier that can be deemed to identify a person or household is covered. This means IP address, tokens, uuid's, etc.

* IANAL

<comment><USER23> Are there no zip codes in rural areas that are specific to a household?

<comment><USER24> Zip5 codes are allocated by geography and population. See very large rural tracts of land in AZ or NM that have a large zip5 code area. Zip-9 probably could be associated with one household. Zips are actually a pain in the ass for purposes other than mail delivery because they change from time to time, are not cleanly allocated to geography or logical features on a map. They can be discontinuous and overlapping. Many companies employee proprietary means of assigning geographic identifiers that are not dependent on zip, population size or anything other than geo.

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

<comment><USER25> To get a rough idea of how often a ZIP-9 narrows things down to a single street address, I took a look at the sales tax rate and boundary files made available for states that are in the Streamlined Sales Tax Agreement [1].

12 of those states, Arkansas, Georgia, Iowa, Kansas, Nebraska, North Carolina, Ohio, Oklahoma, South Dakota, Tennessee, Vermont, and Washington, use address- based tax rates. (The other 12 either just have one rate for the whole state, or just go by ZIP).

For each ZIP-9 in the address files for the 12 address-based states, I found the lowest and the highest street number for that ZIP-9. I then counted how many of the ZIP-9s had the lowest street number the same as the highest street number.

There were a total of 9,311,327 distinct ZIP-9 values.

2,415,305 of them had a low to high range that only included one number.

That's about 26% of the ZIP-9's having a unique street number. Note that this does not necessarily mean a single household, because I'm not looking at the full address. Apartment buildings, for instance, will in many cases show up in that 26%.

[1] [https://www.streamlinedsalestax.org/Shared-Pages/rate-and- bo...](https://www.streamlinedsalestax.org/Shared-Pages/rate-and-boundary- files)

<comment><USER24> Excellent analysis. That's like 2% or less of households in the US? So even at the Zip9 level not ideal for identifying specific households but problematic if you're one of those 2M Zip9s.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> This is deeply unfortunate. I know the folks at Maxmind fairly well, and they're good people. I'm quite sure this isn't what they wanted to do, and that they've pushed their lawyers to let them continue distributing this data as much as is possible, in a way that is as gentle as possible. I applaud them for their efforts; it is appreciated.

Unfortunately, it's also clear to me that this renders the Maxmind geoip databases non-free. I've filed bugs for the removal of the geoipupdate package from Debian main, and I believe the geoip-database maintainer has already terminated updates.

</comment><comment><USER27> This might not be a common experience nowadays (sigh), but I encountered this problem a few weeks ago in Perl. The long-used module at [https://metacpan.org/pod/Geo::IP](https://metacpan.org/pod/Geo::IP) now mentions "the GeoIP Legacy file based database" and has a link to [http://dev.maxmind.com/geoip/geolite](http://dev.maxmind.com/geoip/geolite) which actually redirects to [https://dev.maxmind.com/geoip/geoip2/geolite2/](https://dev.maxmind.com/geoip/geoip2/geolite2/) . Interestingly, now that I look there again, it no longer refers (at the top of the page) to the January 2019 deprecation of the version 1 database, but now to "making significant changes to how you access free GeoLite2 databases starting December 30, 2019". (I now have to also review that for my workplace...)

Anyway, the new CPAN modules are under [https://metacpan.org/pod/GeoIP2](https://metacpan.org/pod/GeoIP2) and can be confusing. One confusing thing: despite a prominent Perl developer such as Dave Rolsky working (still?) at MaxMind, it says that the "module is deprecated and will only receive fixes for major bugs and security vulnerabilities".

For porting purposes, please note that the module you want to use is [https://metacpan.org/pod/GeoIP2::Database::Reader](https://metacpan.org/pod/GeoIP2::Database::Reader) . (They also mention [https://metacpan.org/pod/MaxMind::DB::Reader](https://metacpan.org/pod/MaxMind::DB::Reader) which can makes things unclear...) I didn't see any other info on the github page about Perl support. Also the interface is definitely more tedious and object-oriented in the worst way. I'm sure there are good reasons... And in my experience it's much slower if you use the pure-Perl interface (this is something you should read the MaxMind::DB::Reader perldoc for: it mentions installing a C library in "PURE PERL VERSUS XS").

Good luck

</comment><comment><USER28> It's a shame this only made it into here after the restriction was already in place.

Or of interest, does anyone know how long a historic copy might be considered valid? How regularly do people update their "copy" generally?

<comment><USER29> Someone from Maxmind has responded a few times in other places about why they are giving such short notice.

I think it boils down to the law just recently being firmed up and it becoming effective at the new year.

I also believe that you have to download a new version every 30 days to stay compliant with the license.

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> This provision in the EULA might be troublesome when dealing with backups:

 _You shall cease use of and destroy (i) any old versions of the Services within thirty (30) days following the release of the updated GeoLite2 Databases_

I'm sure I can get customers to otherwise agree with the GeoLite2 terms when I install/get them to download the database, but how to get the GeoLite2 database out of their three-months-retained VM snapshots ? I can ensure we 'cease use' of a restored database, but ensuring destruction is a problem...

(The GDPR explicitly acknowledges this problem and allows you to keep data in your backups if it's too burdensome to remove it as long as you've taken measures to reapply data deletions on restore)

</comment><comment><USER31> The biggest problem with the new Maxmind data is that it requires many MB of dependencies: [https://github.com/maxmind/MaxMind-DB-Reader- java/issues/48](https://github.com/maxmind/MaxMind-DB-Reader-java/issues/48)

</comment><comment><USER32> I do not work for any company that uses GeoLite2 but I do have a gaming server that I want to display the country of a player to the staff team. I signed up 3 days ago but no email received as of now. Should I contact maxmind and will I be able to get a license for such an intend use?

</comment><comment><USER33> Seems to _only_ cope with fixed IP addresses, which only some places use.

For example, my IP address (not in the US) changes ~18 hours or so and can come up in at least 30 different IP ranges that I've so far seen. (Used to make writing out SSH rules for remote access a pita, until automating it)

</comment><comment><USER34> How is IP to broad location even PII?

<comment><USER35> Its not all that broad in many circumstances. You get a zip code, a latitude/longitude and a specific degree of error.

<comment><USER36> Last time I used Maxmind the coordinates generally just seemed to be the coordinates of the city. And apparently my current IP is in the center of another city in roughly the same part of the country. Beyond the country and possibly the ISP I wouldn't trust Maxmind's data much.</comment></comment></comment>


A simple telephony honeypot received 1.5M robocalls across 11 months - <AUTHOR> https://www.zdnet.com/article/a-simple-telephony-honeypot-received-1-5-million-robocalls-across-11-months/ <comment><USER2> Is there a solution here? People have been plagued with robocalls especially so for the last few years - I personally have never had it this bad since moving to Los Angeles two years ago, I get at least one if not three a day and this is way more tiring while job hunting. Any ways around this?

<comment><USER3> Make them illegal?

<comment><USER4> They are already illegal in the US, the problem is they are mostly originating from foreign countries. Maybe sanctions against the originating countries equivalent to what the fines would be in the US would make the originating countries take notice and put a stop to these robocall operations.</comment></comment></comment>


Why I Recommend Strength Training and NO Cardio If You're In A Startup - <AUTHOR> http://sett.com/dicktalens/why-i-recommend-strength-training-and-no-cardio <comment><USER2> Do startup "hackers" really need their own fitness regimen? Are they really that set apart from the rest of the population and that similar to one another? Is there a startup person diet as well? This one-size approach doesn't make sense to me; it seems there are probably variations among startup people & their needs similar if not identical to the general population, for whom one work out plan will not fit all.

"Folks in tech tend to think... differently. They will often think in discrete parts, rather than holistically. (This is call 'neckbearding,' and it's done by people called 'neckbeards.')"

Sorry, _male_ startup people. Maybe targeting startup people as a niche market for non-tech non-business related services is a good marketing move. Personally, I hope to never ride my Startup Bike™ to get a Startup Latte™ followed by a trip to the Startup Gym™. I expect to consume the same bikes, lattes, and gyms as the rest of the population. :)

<comment><AUTHOR> >Are they really that set apart from the rest of the population and that similar to one another?

Yes. :) Lifestyle is one of the biggest factors into fitness regimen fit. The lifestyle of folks who work in tech/startups, especially with regards to variability, tend to be far different than your average working Joe.

<comment><USER3> But is it REALLY that different to a lot of office workers? Developers and startup types like to think that they are unique in having work hard for long periods of time, but they really aren't. Junior Lawyers work long hours, apprenticeship labourers work long hours, anyone involved in the creative process for digital agencies work long hours, teachers that are starting out work long hours. It's really no different to those careers, and they all seem to manage to exercise and have some form of social life just fine.

My first job was a startup, and the hours weren't much different to working in an agency (where I work now). I still manage to go to the gym three days a week, and I manage to get a run in every week.

<comment><USER4> So I clearly don't know you or what you do, but ou're definitely not wrong in the general sense.

However, Dick and I spent the last year working 60-80+ hour weeks while our company was stationed out of a pretty big coworking space. I can tell you that in our time there, I only saw a single person out of the (what must be at least several hundreds of other people) peers sharing our space with us at the gym, where as Dick and I went at least 3x a week every week.

I also lost 60lb while working more than I've ever worked in my life (by following Dick's program) and here's the punchline: 20lb of that was the weight I gained from my last start-up job.

I think the issue is the exact mindset Dick wrote about, of having to "pay off your credit card" by going and running hours and hours after eating badly (a mindset that I still default to sometimes and have to try really hard to stop myself from doing) makes it so that people who are already insanely stressed eventually just give up and decide to go into a default instead of "paying off their card", so to speak.

P.S. There's already been some lawyers, creative agency folks, and people from big government funded organizations applying to take part in the course, I think the difference between what they saw on the page versus what you saw on the page is that they (correctly) assumed being "in tech" meant "work really long hours" to the people that wrote the page versus "do you work at a company that has an AngelList page".

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> This isn't applicable to people that are exercising just for health, rather than to also lose weight.

For naturally skinny "dicks" like me, I find I get the best workout and feel the healthiest when I do a mix of the tread mill with intermittent breaks of lifting and power push-ups when my legs can't take it anymore.

<comment><USER6> > exercising just for health

If you aren't making progress, than you aren't exercising "for health." This article is very enlightening: [http://startingstrength.com/articles/barbell_medicine_sulliv...](http://startingstrength.com/articles/barbell_medicine_sullivan.pdf)

<comment><AUTHOR> This is exactly my point. :) Progress and adherence are both prerequisites in order to exercise "for health." The mere act of engaging in healthy activities alone do not make them healthy.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> A year ago, everyone in my office got memberships to a gym down the street. All the other guys had long discussions about what was best and this article and that one, including a lot of stuff about only doing strength training. I did the stuff that I found made me feel most refreshed and cleared my head best.

Now there are only two us that _ever_ go anymore. I am fit. They are not. It must be remembered that the routine you design is not going to run on a cpu that will execute it exactly over and over without complaint. It runs on _you_ , which in my case is much more fickle, and needs to be indulged a bit to keep going.

</comment><comment><USER6> Completely agree, this is very good advice. I wish I had more time to respond but I'm at risk of being late to work. Here's how you put forth the minimum amount of time commitment while deriving the greatest amount of benefit:

-If you typically squat less than 270 pounds all the way down to parallel, do Starting Strength until you do [1].

-If you typically squat at least 270 pounds all the way down to parallel, do Madcow 5x5 [2]. I can't speak past this fitness level because this is where I am.

-Eat according to the Leangains nutrition guide to achieve massive strength gains while getting/staying lean and eating only a couple meals a day [3].

Make sure to read the Starting Strength book _or_ watch Mark Rippetoe videos on youtube to learn proper technique (vitally important!)

[1] [http://startingstrength.wikia.com/wiki/The_Starting_Strength...](http://startingstrength.wikia.com/wiki/The_Starting_Strength_Novice/Beginner_Programs)

[2] [http://stronglifts.com/madcow-5x5-training- programs/](http://stronglifts.com/madcow-5x5-training-programs/)

[3] [http://www.leangains.com/2010/04/leangains- guide.html](http://www.leangains.com/2010/04/leangains-guide.html)

Disclaimer: There are obviously other programs which offer the same amount of benefit, but I don't think you'll find anything that _surpasses_ the benefit you'll receive from these guidelines, and you certainly won't find many programs that surpass the simplicity; therefore, for the sake of not overwhelming anybody, I've only listed a small compilation of systems that really work.

<comment><USER8> What's the rationale for shifting programs right at 270 lbs? That seems somewhat arbitrary, at least more so than say 225 (2 45 lbs plates per side) or 315 (3 45s per side).

<comment><USER6> [http://www.exrx.net/Testing/WeightLifting/SquatStandards.htm...](http://www.exrx.net/Testing/WeightLifting/SquatStandards.html)

Really it's somewhere between 250 and 300, but I chose 270 because 1) it's in the middle near where average-weight men would be and 2) starting strength just keep being good right up to around 300 pound squats.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I'm not sure I understand the whole "The only exercise people should be doing is strength training" meme that seems to be going around at the moment. Can someone with more knowledge explain it to me?

It seems (to me at least) that some exercise is better than no exercise, and that more exercise (at least to an extent) is better than less exercise. It seems to me therefore, that people should find an exercise that they really enjoy (whether running, cycling, strength training, climbing, martial arts, etc) and do it. That way, they'll be doing something they enjoy and they'll do more of it.

It seems slightly disingenuous for "experts" to recommend that everyone drop everything else and just do one type of exercise as if everyone they're speaking to is exactly the same, has exactly the same goals and enjoys exactly the same stuff.

Are they targeting geeks/the HN crowd because geeks tend to favour the idea that there is one "right way" of doing something and are more likely to latch on to it?

<comment><USER6> Read this article for the answer [http://startingstrength.com/articles/barbell_medicine_sulliv...](http://startingstrength.com/articles/barbell_medicine_sullivan.pdf)

Fitness relativism is _not_ acceptable. It leads people to live unhealthy, and, in some cases, shorter lives.

<comment><USER9> Ok, well that makes sense, but I suppose what I'm really asking (I already kind of assumed that training with barbells was good for you) is what's wrong with every other form of exercise?

To take two examples (these two because I am intimately familiar with them): Why should someone stop climbing or doing martial arts and start lifting barbells (by stop I mean assume said person doesn't have enough time to do both and must choose one or the other)? Both of the former seem (to me at least) really good for developing strength and, AFAICT do so in a much more realistic and natural way than lifting barbells.

<comment><USER10> Lifting barbells allows you to control the weight much more than climbing or punching things.

If you read Starting Strength (Riptoe, mentioned many times on this thread) you'll learn about the recovery and response cycles to stress on the body. You should be regularly increasing the amount you're lifting regardless of your bodyweight (which is what you are always lifting in climbing,) in order to actually _increase_ your strength over time.

Barbells also allow you to start with smaller weights at the beginning of the workout, and then move on to heavier sets when you're warm. AFAIK there's no way to do this with climbing.

Re: barbells not "natural" \- firstly, more natural than most of the other equipment in the gym, and secondly it depends what you're doing with them. lifting them over and over, slowly is one way to use them (and builds strength), but speeding up your reps and/or performing power cleans will improve your _power_ (literally rate-of-work) which is what is important in sports like martial arts and ball games. You can train for almost any sport with a barbell, with the right lift, rate, set lengths and intra-workout rest period.

<comment><USER9> > Lifting barbells allows you to control the weight much more than climbing or > punching things.

Ok so that makes a lot more sense. Thanks for the explanation.

> Barbells also allow you to start with smaller weights at the beginning of > the workout, and then move on to heavier sets when you're warm. AFAIK > there's no way to do this with climbing.

So with climbing in general climbing harder problems (smaller holds, further apart, more overhang, etc etc) works muscles more, and the harder you climb, the fitter and stronger you will be.

<comment><USER6> Yes this will make you stronger, but not as much as barbell exercises

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> As someone on leangains following a Reverse Pyramid Training program after Starting Strength, I agree that this is good general advice.

However, it IS general advice. "Cardio" is loosely defined, and can be anything from steady state (takes a longish time) to intervals (can be VERY quick) and anything in between. I'd be more inclined to say if you like to do it, be it basketball or gardening or running or whatever, then do it because you'll be more likely to stick with it.

I don't really buy the lack of time argument as a reason to not do something you enjoy that has health benefits. I see the argument here though, IF you believe you lack time (which I don't think you should believe) then MVF is a good way to go, but not the only option.

</comment><comment><USER12> "What do you do for cardio? _Lift weights faster._ " ;-) [http://www.jensinkler.com/lift-weights- faster/](http://www.jensinkler.com/lift-weights-faster/)

If you're not particularly fit then rigorous strength training including ballistic and plyometric activities will get you out of breath, increase heart-rate, and give you a serious workout while being a lot more fun than running on the spot. (But as always, different strokes for different folks..)

</comment><comment><USER13> The 35 hours to lose 1 lb. of fat is VERY questionable to me. There are ~3500 calories in a lb. of fat. Walking or running 1 mile consumes at LEAST 100 calories but usually closer to 120 calories. So they are walking 1 hour miles?

Not all "cardio" is equal. I generally run 20 to 40 miles per week at 7:30/ mile pace. So my caloric burn is 120 calories per mile x 1 hour (8 miles) = 960 calories. So I could lose 1 pound of fat per 3.5 hours.

Someone walking 3mph (20 minute miles) on a treadmill would burn 300 to 360 calories in contrast. So that means they would lose 1 pound every ~10 hours. This is very doable for most people. This of course assumes they don't eat more.

Then the OP is very hand wavey about the idea that you have more muscle so your metabolic rate is so much higher. It's quite hard to build many pounds of lean muscle too!

An interesting section on individual metabolic rate differences: [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Basal_metabolic_rate#Causes_of_...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Basal_metabolic_rate#Causes_of_individual_differences_in_BMR)

<comment><USER14> Mentioned multiple time is the increase in hunger and consumption which often negates the burned calories.

I've never lost weight via cardio. I lost 30 lbs over 6 months without any exercise at all (too busy with school and would just forget to eat until the end of day.) 3 years later, I'm back up at the same weight. I worked out 5 days a week for 3 months (~1000 calories per day) and didn't lose any weight.

Completely anecdotal, but I think it's a good data point. I'm going to give the no cardio work out a shot.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> The person putting this on seems to know what they are doing. They have some exceptional references on the site.

Without seeing the actual program its very hard to make a determination if this is something that would be beneficial to do or not.

It's kind of like being asked to buy a car but you can't see it until you put down your money:)

For other programs like P90x you can atleast try it out and see if you like it.

> 40 minutes, 3 days/week.

This seems about right for a beginner program and for anyone looking to maintain their current form.

> The price is $125/month for founders and $175/month for folks with salaries.

This is just bizarre. I think the whole founder worship thing has gotten a bit out of control here. What about employee #1 :)

<comment><AUTHOR> hi @chollida1 – while I certainly don't mind the eventual traffic to MVF, my main intention was to share thoughts around cardio... discipline/exercise selection tends to be a make or break thing in fitness.

Regarding the discount for founders, it's more because I remember how much it sucked being broke when I started Fitocracy. :) I'd assumed it'd be easier for employee #1 just because at that point, some de-risking had probably occurred. Really wanted to do funded/non-funded, but that would've been unfairly glorifying raising money for raising's sake.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> This article is basically about body building. It promotes a focus on how you look rather than how strong or fit you actually are.

</comment><comment><USER10> I love weightlifting, but I also love cardio. My goal is different though - I'm not trying to lose weight, I'm trying to gain it (slowly).

lifting = only 3 days per week*

running = all the rest, not too far (except once a week).

* someone else has mentioned Riptoe - go read that. then _do_ that.

</comment><comment><USER17> I presume this is for fisticuffs with VCs, right?</comment>


The best of JavaScript Weekly in 2016 - <AUTHOR> http://javascriptweekly.com/issues/315 <comment><USER2> something about the UI of this page makes me instantly close it assuming I've ended up at some link farm.

<comment><USER3> Our archive pages are, yeah, _not great_ :) Being redesigned for the new year. We are "email first" and most of the page is the raw HTML straight from the email. However, we hand curate for many hours every week and have been doing so for six years now, so you can trust this isn't just some random bundle of links (essentially, they're the ones most clicked in issues this year).

<comment><USER4> The emails are fantastic, I recommend them to people all the time</comment></comment></comment>


Launched yesterday, 11,000 plays in 24 hours. - <AUTHOR> http://www.playspeedball.com

<comment><AUTHOR> if you like it please upvote!

blog post to come.</comment>


Show HN: Git Butler – IFTTT for GitHub pull request and issue workflows - <AUTHOR> https://www.gitbutler.com/ <comment><USER2> The Git project has a trademark policy. You need permission from them if you want to use it in your brand.

This is not likely to receive permission, since this kind of thing is specifically why the trademark began being enforced—this is a service built on top of the GitHub social network. GitHub login has nothing to do with Git. GitHub issues have nothing to do with Git. GitHub's pull request API has (next to) nothing to do with Git. Trying to brand this as "Git Butler" just serves to further conflate GitHub and Git.

<comment><AUTHOR> I was not aware. Thanks for letting me know - will look into it. I am wondering how GitHub got around that issue.

<comment><USER3> When GitHub started they didn't have that. Now they do and every time a programmer writes a nice tool and posts it here the first comment is from someone telling him to change the project name.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> Finally someone will kill Zapier.</comment>


No Big Bang? Quantum equation predicts universe has no beginning (2015) - <AUTHOR> http://phys.org/news/2015-02-big-quantum-equation-universe.html <comment><USER2> There have been significant inquiries into the validity of the Big Bang theory for some time. It appears there are a lot of things we cannot account for:

[http://www.spaceandmotion.com/Cosmology-Big-Bang- Theory.htm](http://www.spaceandmotion.com/Cosmology-Big-Bang-Theory.htm)</comment>


Computers As We Don't Know Them - <AUTHOR> http://vimeo.com/14375399 <comment><USER2> Great quotes and pictures in the presentation.

Go Vikings ;)</comment>


Ask HN: iPhone/iPad online app-development  - <AUTHOR>

I don't own a Mac, but would like to get started iPhone/iPad development using Objective-C.
Is there any online tools which lets me submit code in Obj-C and which compiles and displays the app on a simulator?
Please do share if you have any other suggestions on the easiest way to get started. <comment><USER2> Apple does not support any development environment other than XCode on an Intel Mac.

Thus, if you want to do Objective-C development, your best bet is to get your hands on a Mac. Barring that, you could rig up Hackintosh, or Hackintosh VM in VMWare/Virtualbox.

If you are willing to consider some zanier options, there's a open source project that's attempting to create a portable iPhone toolchain: <http://code.google.com/p/iphone-dev/>.

If you're willing to forgo Objective-C, and try cross-compiled development, there's stuff like PhoneGap, xmlvm, etc.

</comment><comment><USER3> Check out:

It might make more sense to buy your own Mac, after all. I initially assumed this service rented Mac Minis.

"We are a mac mini colocation service. In other words, we place your Mac mini in a high-end data center where you can use it as a server. We provide you with a menu of services including redundant very high speed internet connections, remote control electrical power, a highly secure location to house your Mac mini, and remote human hands."

<http://www.macminicolo.net/>

</comment><comment><USER4> You can get a Mac Mini for $599, hook it to your network, and access it using logmein.com or some other remote access method. That's what I did to get started, and it's worked very well.

</comment><comment><USER5> Obligatory Obj-C+iPhone Tutorial: <http://www.stanford.edu/class/cs193p/></comment>


Show HN: An Experimental 'LINQ to Objects' in Go - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/nukata/linq-in-go <comment><AUTHOR> This LINQ implementation is unique in that it is not related to any particular data structure.

The LINQ code in C# found at [https://docs.microsoft.com/dotnet/api/system.linq.enumerable...](https://docs.microsoft.com/dotnet/api/system.linq.enumerable.range) can be written in Go with this implementation as follows:

      // Generate a sequence of integers from 1 to 10 and then select their squares.
      squares := Range(1, 10).Select(func(x Any) Any { return x.(int) * x.(int) })
      squares(func(num Any) {
          fmt.Println(num)
      })

Here the function Range is defined as follows:

      // Range creates an Enumerator which counts from start
      // up to start + count - 1.
      func Range(start, count int) Enumerator {
          end := start + count
          return func(yield func(Any)) {
              for i := start; i < end; i++ {
                  yield(i)
              }
          }
      }

Note that Enumerator is just a function type defined as func(func(Any)). The space complexity is O(1) and you can yield values infinitely if you want.</comment>


The Slow Meditation of Large Format Photography (Moving Mountains with Perl) - <AUTHOR> https://leejo.github.io/2018/09/15/slow_meditation/ <comment><USER2> Sometimes a thing is worthwhile precisely because of the work involved.

For me, it's panoramas... Even if a mid range smartphone makes it very easy to get great looking panos, I still prefer going at it with a DSLR and doing my own stitching.

As mentioned in the article, it creates a certain connection with the subject that I don't have when doing it the "easy way".</comment>


North Carolina teacher's resignation letter - <AUTHOR> http://dianeravitch.net/2012/10/27/nc-teacher-i-quit/ <comment><USER2> It's fine to grumble about testing, but the debate is not about the tests.

Teachers performance in the US has been terrible for many years. Partly this is because of bad management, partly because of low pay, and partly because of teacher unions preventing any action against the worst teachers and insistance on tenure tracks.

The reason testing is good isn't because it is somehow super accurate. It is good because it keeps teachers honest. Without testing, how do you measure teacher performance at all? How can you tell if someone who is capable of teaching well isn't just being lazy or getting distracted?

So, if you aren't a fan of testing as a way to measure and improve teacher effectiveness, please find an alternative that works better. Just not having any metric at all is far worse than the imperfect tests we have.

It's easy to point out problems. It's useful and important that people find flaws and fault. In this case, however, just pointing out the deficiencies in standardized testing doesn't help anyone unless it either leads to a more effective alternative, or improvements in standardized testing. Standardized tests might be very imperfect at measuring teacher performance, but it's far better to use the tool we have than to just throw up our arms and assume that all teachers are equally competent.

<comment><USER3> "partly because of low pay"

Teachers are actually some of the highest paid people in society. When you don't include benefits teachers make about $40/hr while engineers make $42/hr. If you do include benefits, a teachers compensation far exceeds that of an engineer due to their pensions. Source, BLS via Forbes.

<comment><USER4> I looked that up on the BLS website, and while you're not using the same units as them, your numbers don't seem to match up.

According to BLS, the median pay is $53,230 per year, which would be closer to $26.50 an hour, assuming a 40-hour work week.

[http://www.bls.gov/ooh/education-training-and- library/high-s...](http://www.bls.gov/ooh/education-training-and-library/high- school-teachers.htm)

Maybe the Forbes article you're referring to about is only counting classroom hours, which is a pretty absurd notion. Teaching is a full-time job, and any figure based on an assumption to the contrary is going to be flawed. Not meaning to straw-man you, it's just that without a link to the article in question, I can only speculate where your figures come from.

<comment><USER5> The correct figure is 38.5 hours/week for 9 months/year.

<http://www.bls.gov/opub/mlr/2008/03/art4full.pdf>

That's about $33.5/hour for wages alone. It also ignores the value of gold plated health care + pensions, etc.

<comment><USER6> "Gold plated" (sic) health care?

Tuck in your pants. Your bias is peeking out.

(Edit after being downvoted, in an attempt to be more constructive): Seriously, you seem to have an animus against teachers having decent health care. What's your problem with that, and why do you feel it's appropriate to label their quite average health care plans as "gold plated", as if they were unfairly receiving more health care than they are entitled to?

<comment><USER7> It's always easier to hate people in your own class who have fought for rights than to fight for those rights yourself.

Sorry, I have to get back to believing whatever the 1% wants me to believe.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> My mother is a school board member in a rural school district in Northern California. What I can from conversations with her is that it is often not the district's fault when there are issues, but the state's.

The district is forced to come up with a budget months before the state approves their budget, so they don't even know if they are going to get the money they need.

When money is low, they have gone to the community several times trying to pass a property tax to raise funds to keep teachers and maintain their facilities. The community has refused to fund the school each time.

The district is constrained by their contract with the teachers which forces them to keep the most incompetent and highly paid teachers and get rid of the good but non-tenured new teachers (which are the ones that the students want to have).

The way schools are funded are a major source of the problem. For example, they are funded per student with no regard for facilities, transportation, or other fixed costs.

Lastly, there are too many crippling regulations that don't allow for flexibly to meet the various needs of students in varying districts. What works in the large LA County district is just not going to work in rural northern California.

Throwing more regulations, tests, money, etc. at the system is not going to fix it. I really wish that a large group of educators (K-12, post-secondary), administrators, parents, etc. could get together and work out something different, perhaps even radically different.

<comment><USER9> TL;DR send your kids to a private school.

<comment><USER10> right. why fix the system, when you can be part of an elite?

<comment><USER11> Because your responsibility is to your kids and not to some idealistic vision of what you could be doing to improve the school system as a whole.

<comment><USER12> False dichotomy. Your responsibility as a _parent_ is to your children. Your responsibility as a _citizen_ is to run your government effectively.

Captain TLDR above is basically saying "fuck other people's kids", which is abdicating his civic responsibility.

<comment><USER13> >which is abdicating his civic responsibility

He pays taxes that goes to schools, doesn't he? Otherwise, I am pretty sure he didn't sign a contract that said: "You are responsible for improving the well- being of kids you will never meet."

<comment><USER12> It's government of, by, and for the people. He is responsible for the health of the country, just as every other citizen is.

<comment><USER13> And he pays his taxes, outlined by said government. If there is a failure to deliver on the goods/services promised by the government, it's not his responsibility to make up for the shortfalls. It'd be nice if he did, but that's getting ahead of ourselves.

<comment><USER12> Government does not promise to magically take care of everything. And even if they did, the citizens run the government. Any shortfalls in government are ultimately the responsibility of the citizens.

<comment><USER13> You're going to have to point out the contract with my signature on it where I agreed to that. My attorney is gonna hear about it...

<comment><USER12> It's not a legal requirement. It's a moral requirement. It's your country, your state, your city. It's your government. You are legally allowed to shirk some of your duties, although not all of them, but that doesn't make you less of a shirker..

Parenting is similar: there are a lot of ways to be a shitty parent that don't rise to the legal level of neglect.

<comment><USER13> Whose morals? Kant's Duty Ethics?

You are making subjective judgments. This is fine. But don't confuse your opinions on "fairness" with an objective reality.

<comment><USER12> It's the nature of a community, of a democracy. The citizens, as sovereigns, are ultimately responsible.

Don't like it? You can shirk your responsibility and accept your helping of shame. Or you can move to someplace that isn't a democracy.

<comment><USER13> >You can shirk your responsibility and accept your helping of shame.

I will. I don't lose sleep at night based on your subjective opinions, fortunately.

<comment><USER12> "Of, by, and for the people" is not subjective. Neither is the people replacing the sovereign. Nor the nature of a community as a collaborative enterprise.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jerry_Pournelle#Iron_Law_of_Bur...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jerry_Pournelle#Iron_Law_of_Bureaucracy)

<comment><USER15> Whoops.. I think I accidentally downvoted you. Someone vote him back up, could you?

That's an interesting trend. I think it could be resolved by instead having the ones doing the teaching decide on what sorts of standards and tests should be used to appraise performance.

Some of my family members are teachers, and I hear more and more about how they are given less freedom to teach creatively and are instead forced to administer useless, rote-memorization tests that assess, well, nothing really. It's getting kind of ridiculous.

<comment><USER16> The problem right now is that the bureaucracy in place is a result of the CBAs of teachers unions preventing the firing of bad teachers or the introduction of regulations strictly for the sake of the student.

In almost every instance of a public service, the right-but-left or left-but- right mentality of Americans creates a bureaucratic Mexican standoff: "We'll stop regulating you when you stop being shits." "We'll stop being shits when you stop regulating us."

It's very easy to side with teachers as individuals, but teachers unions serve the good teachers and the bad teachers, and I would argue (without statistics, mind you) that teachers unions are just as much to blame for the current educational fiasco as incompetent bureaucracies, politics, ham-fisted regulations, and bad parenting.

<comment><USER17> _without statistics, mind you_

\-- You don't need statistics. There is no measurement.

This is the problem: Seniority rules. skill, virtue, talent are uncorrelated variables. This is by design, au fait.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> TL;DR: The writer, a math teacher, is quitting (edit: his) job because of increased bureaucracy and standardized tests. Mostly, it seems, standardized tests.

The problem is, math is the subject which is BEST served by standardized tests. There is really no fuzzy aspect to K-12 math: answers are right or wrong. And there are of course many benefits to standardized testing like teacher and school evaluation, providing structure to the curriculum, etc.

His rant reminds me of another front-page HN article today (<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4712230>), where the author claims that tough technical interview questions at Google bear no correlation with programming skill. Sure....

<comment><USER19> Consider the last few real-world problems I've solved (or attempted to solve) with math:

If you have a widget (roughly shaped like a cone with the tip chopped off) held at angle _a_ and the widget is tapered at angle _b_ and the tip of the widget has a diameter _d_ , how far is it in x and y from the center of the tip of the widget to the theoretical tip were the taper continued to a point?

If two 14" pizzas feed five people, how many 16" pizzas do you need to feed eleven?

If a gallon of paint covers 400 ft^2 once, how many gallons cover a 12'x36' room with a 9' ceiling twice?

And to counter your claim that it no K-12 math can be fuzzy, if you live in a family-friendly neighborhood of _x_ square miles, how many pieces of candy do you need to be prepared for trick-or-treating children? (This problem could easily be approached by a high school student, has real world application, but is a lot like the kind of interview problems that are often criticized as being irrelevant.)

But even if you feel these problems fit with standardized tests, the more important point is that none of these problems was presented to me the way I am presenting them to you. No one told me that angles _a_ and _b_ and diameter _d_ would be both easily available and sufficient to calculate the necessary x and y. No one told me that comparing square inches would be the best way to determine how much pizza to buy. I was certainly not given multiple choices like a normal standardized test.

The real world mistakes people make with math are often more about knowing how and when to apply math, than doing the math itself. Almost everyone knows that Google can multiply and divide numbers. The real math skill is knowing what numbers to multiply and divide to see how many gallons of paint, or pizzas, or pieces of candy, you need.

Being able to pass a trigonometry test is useless if you can't figure out what to do with your widgets. Likewise for the other examples.

I'm not saying standardized tests have no correlation to real-world math ability. They obviously have some. But it's not exact. And there are lots of real-world situations that are poorly reflected in standardized tests.

<comment><USER18> I agree with all this, but consider that the type of math being tested on a standardized test is a _subset_ of the skills you mention. You certainly can't perform complex word problems unless you can do the algebra or geometry calculations, whereas the converse is not true.

IOW, standardized testing of math is testing the bare minimum, and a successful teacher should be able to teach this bare minimum. If a teacher can do better, great!

<comment><USER19> But if "what gets measured gets done", then teachers will likely take time away from these more complex skills to spend more time going over what's on the test. This is especially true if you tie compensation and continued employment for teachers, and college admission and scholarships for students to test performance.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> There seem to be quite a few people who want to do away with tenure and seniority rules as a means of fixing a broken system. Is there any evidence that doing this would fix the system or make it better?

Academic freedom, tenure, and seniority (to a lesser extent) have a lot of positives. Getting rid of these should only be done if the reasons are compelling and valid. What is required is not a collection of anecdotes of how tenure protects bad teachers - there are equally many anecdotes showing that tenure protects students and educational integrity - but rather statistics, facts, and well reasoned arguments.

There are large portions of the United States where parents without any training or knowledge on teaching have very strong opinions on what should or should not be said in the classroom. Getting rid of tenure and academic freedom will, in some areas, lead to ignorant people making important educational decisions. Will the physics department stop talking about the Big Bang? Does the geology department stop talking about processes taking millions of years to work? Does the history department only talk about the good parts of Manifest Destiny?

Instead of tenure maybe 5 year, renewable contracts would work. I don't know. I do think it is in society's best interest if teachers treat society as the client and not the students as the client. Doing the latter leads to dilution of standards. Doing the former without fear of being fired, at least in me, leads to grading on knowledge and not fluff.

<comment><USER21> Tenure and Academic freedom are applicable to University professors, not to teachers.

<comment><USER22> In the United States, public school teachers do get tenure in most locations which protects them for being fired except for a limited set of reasons or teacher supply being greater than demand.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> My wife was a full time teacher (she's now working on her Ph.D in educational technologies), and she's said the same thing over, over, and over again.

Her first year out of her probationary year was a Kindergarden teacher. She had a girl in her class who had telltale signs of EBD (Emotional/Behavioral Disorders), and spent the year trying to convince the girl's mother to seek the appropriate (free) care from the educational system. The mother refused to attend any meeting; my wife eventually drove to her house to find the girl living in a "crack den" (her words). The girl's mother refused to allow her to be tested for EBD, and the girl barely finished the year with passing marks.

Over the summer, the district noticed that my wife wanted to help kids...so, instead of putting her back in Kindergarden the next year, she was reassigned to a juvenile detention center/lockdown facility, where the kids didn't want to be helped. There were instances where they'd pull the kids out of her class, one by one, until it was just her and another student, before they come in to arrest the student for a crime, or, have a disgruntled student show up on my doorstep at midnight with a handgun in his waistband.

Teachers get shit on by society, coworkers, and parents. The good ones are worth their weight in gold. The poor ones need to be replaced with better ones -- the problem is that there's no true way to rank teachers and how they teach that isn't subject to tampering or isn't completely subjective based on inter- school politics.

There's not a good solution to the teaching problem...which is why I'm excited to look at what the technology/startup community comes out with over the next few years. Open Source SIS'es/Course Management/Educational Networking is something that can make the teacher's life easier, and provide pointes and guidance for parents who _want_ to learn more, or students who want to self- learn/pace themselves faster or slower.

<comment><USER24> I m sorry to hear about the experiences of your wife - i feel that whoever reassigned her to juvie might've even done it with the best of intentions, but is incompetent and made the worst possible decision.

The open courses may lead to a more distributed education paradigm, and i think that ways lies the future. However, the process of ranking is such a subjective method, that i don't believe there will ever be a way to do so and not have it tampered with either via politics or personal gain.

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> _I will not spend another day wondering how I can have classes that are full inclusion, and where 50% of my students have IEPs, yet I'm given no support._

I had to fire our public school (in North Carolina; this was in the first district he moved to in the state) because it took them 3 years to do an IEP. In another example, a family member moved out of state, and it took the school two years to call up and ask if she would still be attending.

I'm know in some places the teachers are the problem, but the teachers we met were working their hardest. The administration just didn't seem to give a shit.

Teacher responsibility is a great thing, but we also need administrator responsibility.

<comment><USER26> > Teacher responsibility is a great thing, but we also need administrator > responsibility.

I cannot upvote this enough. All too often, the administrators get a free pass for blaming everything on the teachers and/or insufficient funding. If you have 30% annual turnover, at some point you have to ask who was the constant in the system.

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> The school bureaucracy is a symptom of something else, as is the monotonous testing and the union power. The American educational system changed its premise back in the 1960s.

Since that time, we have become addicted to assembly line, one-size-fits-all, bulk format education in which we put kids through a ton of information and measure them by how much they retain. Not the quality of what they retain, and not their actual skills, but what they've memorized.

By prioritizing memorized facts over learned application, we are losing a lot of our most talented kids. To compound the problem further, this one-size- fits-all approach isn't calibrated to the smart kids, but to the average. In public schools, it's also impossible to send home the disruptive kids.

The result is a system that is so hobbled by contradictions that it is dysfunctional. Dysfunction attracts lazy administrators who like to use test metrics to force teachers to teach to the test, thus making everyone look like a success, even when the graduates aren't good at doing anything.

The recent spate of test-cheating scandals should show us exactly why these tests are in favor among administrators. Instead of a broad open-ended task like "teach these kids to reason," all you have to do is make sure they make a pretty bell curve on the standardized test.

</comment><comment><USER28> I found the following paragraph to be very poignant.

"I'm tired of watching my students produce amazing things, which show their true understanding of 21st century skills, only to see their looks of disappointment when they don't meet the arbitrary expectations of low-level state and district tests that do not assess their skills."

I hope that this teacher finds happiness teaching in a more productive environment. Charter schools and some universities come to mind.

</comment><comment><USER29> > I refuse to watch my students being treated like prisoners. There are other > ways. It's a shame that we don't have the vision to seek out those > alternatives.

if i could fix just one thing about the educational system, this would be it. it's the laziest option, so it ends up being implemented pretty much everywhere (this is not a us-specific problem; i grew up in dubai, and every time i visit my old school the place looks more like a prison), and all it does is alienate and disinvest students at precisely the time they need to be engaged and nurtured.

</comment><comment><USER30> There is a defence.

An engaged, informed, active, body of parents who will take action to ensure their children receive best schooling and care available.

Take 100 irate parents to the next North Carolina State Board meeting and have them raise individually one after the other motions of no-confidence in each member. Then try to elect this woman to the Board.

Will that help.

Yes if you keep up the pressure for the 14 - 18 years it takes your child to go through the system.

There is a website / startup in there...

<comment><USER24> Perhaps part of the problem is that a lot of parents wash their hands free of the process, but complain when their kids don't get the high marks they think they ought to. And looking for someone to blame, instead of looking at making it work.

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> We have a brilliant system for determining the quality of teachers - and it is one used throughout the private sector with considerable effect.

Its called a competent boss

Every Head knows which ones to get rid of and which ones to keep. Every Head also knows if they get rid of the bad ones, they will need double the budget to hire in new, also good teachers. Especially if every other Head does this at the same time.

</comment><comment><USER31> "I lost my job only due to my lack of seniority. I was devastated."

He ("he" is correct; I was confused by the given name at first until looking the person up with a Google search) should blame the typical master contract with the teachers in the school district for that. That is a standard contract provision recommended by schoolteacher unions whether a state has a "union shop" or "right-to-work" rules. Usually, school districts cave in and adopt contract provisions like that, because in states where a union shop is not mandatory, and collective bargaining for public employees is not mandatory either, schoolteacher unions are still very influential political interest groups that can swing voter turnout in the typical low-turnout school board election. School boards have a lot more electoral incentive to align with the interests of schoolteacher unions than with the interests of learners. (The interests of learners align with favoring better teachers over worse teachers, rather than with favoring senior teachers over newly hired teachers.)

The crucial voter action influencing the daily lives of teachers at work happens not at the federal level

[http://educationnext.org/the-election-contests-that- really-m...](http://educationnext.org/the-election-contests-that-really- matter/)

but at the state level and local level, where most of the funding for schooling is set (and what proportion of funding goes to anything other than staff compensation, by far the largest line item in any school budget, is set) and where work rules, especially priority for promotions or layoffs, are set.

There is considerable evidence that seniority rules lead to higher numbers of teacher layoffs than would be necessary if administrators were allowed to make effectiveness the determining factor in issuing layoff notices, rather than length of service.

[http://educationnext.org/seniority-rules-lead-districts- to-i...](http://educationnext.org/seniority-rules-lead-districts-to-increase- teacher-layoffs-and-undermine-teaching-quality/)

A teacher who is doing a good job helping students learn is worth his or her weight in gold, but seniority doesn't match teacher quality sufficiently well to be the sole basis for determining promotions or layoffs in a particular school district. Actively identifying the most able teachers and encouraging the least effective teachers to find other employment, regardless of seniority, could do much to improve the efficiency of the public school system and free up resources to reward the best teachers better than they are rewarded now.

[http://hanushek.stanford.edu/publications/valuing- teachers-h...](http://hanushek.stanford.edu/publications/valuing-teachers-how- much-good-teacher-worth)

My Google search to verify the teacher's background turned up this post from the teacher's blog

<http://mgmfocus.com/2012/10/21/i-used-to-love-teaching/>

covering some of the same issues, with a different slant for the blog's different audience.

"I give up. They win. I have joined the ranks of parents who have come to realize that we are only empowered to do one thing: take care of our own. I hope that things change, but I don't have the energy, the money, or the time to continue beating my head into a wall. And if the choices have run out for my toddler when he's ready for school, I will do it myself. Maybe I'll do it for others, as well. Who knows."

AFTER EDIT: Thanks for the several interesting comments. Wisty asks how teachers might be identified as effective teachers in the interest of making more effective teachers available to students. The same scholar of education policy I linked to for the general point that effective teachers make a difference has written extensively about identifying those teachers. These links

[http://hanushek.stanford.edu/publications/effective- teacher-...](http://hanushek.stanford.edu/publications/effective-teacher- every-classroom-lofty-goal-how-do-it)

[http://hanushek.stanford.edu/publications/teacher- deselectio...](http://hanushek.stanford.edu/publications/teacher-deselection)

from his website (which link in turn to longer-form formal articles on the issues) are a sample of the research on the subject. Identifying teachers with good "value-added" is not at all easy, and there are immense incentives to cheat while attempting to identify such teachers, but there is also an enormous payoff from doing better than is done now in identifying effective teachers.

<comment><USER32> Reading this comment from this teacher's blog article

"And if the choices have run out for my toddler when he's ready for school, I will do it myself. Maybe I'll do it for others, as well. Who knows."

questions about a potential education system hack popped into my head. Maybe many others have already had this idea...

What about uniting the home-schooling and frustrated-teachers movements?

I'm sure there are onerous restrictions on setting up a "school" in the U.S. But what about an intensive tutoring system catering to home schooled children? If you had a tutor (who happens to be a formerly disgruntled public school teacher) in a home, how many other children could be in that home, receiving personal tutoring, before no longer being considered a "home school" environment? What if the formerly disgruntled public school teacher drove to various homes during the day or the week? Can "home school" instruction happen in a place other than the child's residence and still be considered home schooling?

Obviously, this could be supplemented with online curricula.

If anything like this is legally feasible, seems like an online service allowing parents to personally select educators sharing their vision for how they want their children to be educated could be hugely disruptive to the current K12 educational establishment.

Does anything like this already exist?

<comment><USER33> > Does anything like this already exist?

Google "homeschool co-ops"

<comment><USER34> I was part of one when I was a kid. Science was taught by a teacher who used to teach in public schools and we were very fortunate to have him because my mother didn't want potentially dangerous chemicals or dissection animals in the house. I was home-schooled from 1st to 8th grade, then went to public high school and college.

<comment><USER35> How did you find the transition? That's an interesting pathway to have followed.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> The author of the blog itself, Diane Ravitch, wrote a very interesting book called "The Death and Life of the Great American School System" on the topic of education reform. I'd encourage HNers to pick it up if this piqued their curiosity.

</comment><comment><USER37> Good for Dr. Atkinson! Anyone who doesn't think teachers work hard enough, care enough, or are skilled enough is full of it. When I go to my kids' after school activities and see teachers there night after night, on their own time and dime. When I see teachers buying supplies out of their own pockets. When I see teachers in school weeks before start to ready their classrooms. When I see these things I have little tolerance for the sentiment that teachers just slack off. All that happens with this approach is that the best teachers say, "I don't need this crap" and leave.

</comment><comment><USER38> There's a huge conversation to be had about the quality of public K-12 education in this country, but I'm not sure this letter contributes much of anything to that conversation. The whole thing is so personal and subjective that it could have come from any school district in the country. Maybe the author is just a really bad teacher, and we're better off if he quits. Maybe this rant actually represents a data point about how NC squeezes out bad teachers. There's no way to know from what is written.

</comment><comment><USER39> I was in public school in the Greenville, NC area from 1985-1998, and I felt I had mostly good teachers and was adequately prepared for college. I happen to be a good test taker, and so my experience is likely different from others with different skills. At the time we only had end-of-grade tests, and not for every subject.

My impression is that things have gotten a lot worse/more political since I went to school. I wonder if any long-time teachers care to comment on the changes over the last 30 years?

</comment><comment><USER40> One of the big tragedies here is the seniority based tenure system that caused a beloved energetic teacher such as this to have to leave the west coast. There was an interesting discussion about this in an interview on reddit with a teachers union president: [http://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/124dur/i_am_the_presid...](http://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/124dur/i_am_the_president_of_the_american_federation_of/)

</comment><comment><USER41> I wish I understood the arguments against testing more clearly.

It seems as if the claim is that testing doesn't correlate with knowledge, since some kids "test well," or "test poorly," so it's a waste of time.

I've known lots of folks who claim to know a subject well, but test poorly in it. I've never been able to verify it though, because the followup discussions about the concepts involved left me... uncertain at best. I'm not sure undemonstrable knowledge is really any kind of knowledge at all.

But say we granted that an individual student's tests have a wide margin of error. Wouldn't the aggregate of tests for a given classroom or school still provide some information on whether or not a school was well or poorly run? (Assuming you use moving averages or something to soften noise.)

Do standardized tests really have no value, no redeeming benefits?

</comment><comment><USER42> Finally a teacher with the guts to put their money where their mouth is. I'm not sure I agree with the ins and outs of all the teacher's reasons, but I applaud him for quitting instead of just complaining.

This is what people who have enough faith in themselves to find another job do when they are in a terrible situation. I'm tired of hearing teachers complain about life as a teacher, but never quit. That tells me that they don't have faith in the marketability of their skills to take the plunge and get a different job.

</comment><comment><USER43> Great letter exposing the toxic level of administratium in the air in NC public schools, but I think it would have been better to have left out the financial paragraph. The author presumably knew what the pay scale was before he accepted the opportunity and moved his family across the country to live there. Complaining about it afterward makes him look foolish, and this teacher is clearly no fool.

</comment><comment><USER44> Does anyone have any demographics for the HN community's age? I am curious how many people here have attended schools with standardized tests.

If you did attend a high school with standardized tests - do you feel it negatively affected your education? How? Do you have specific examples or courses?

For clarity - I am not claiming that standardized tests do/don't help. I just want to hear form recent HS grads.

</comment><comment><USER45> I hate to be "that guy" but what does this have to do with hacking? Maybe someone can explain it to me, I am asking legitimately.

</comment><comment><USER46> Waiting for Superman. Watch it.

</comment><comment><USER47> Peggy hill is angry!

</comment><comment><USER48> I...

I...

I...

I...

I...

I...

I...

Is that how he teaches his students to write as well?

edit: Hi downvoters, I understand parallelism. When it's used the way this teacher has used it, he risks coming across as whiny and juvenile. His point would come across more powerfully if he reframed his grievances in a way that shows their impact on the real victims, the children, as opposed to himself.

"I have a dream" came from a place of hope and opportunity. King was laying out a roadmap for what progress would look like. Similarly, the Declaration of Independence was not a list of self-referential, logorrheic splatter. It contained specific, directed complaints combined with a plan of action.

This man merely said I hate the world in a selfishly-worded cry for attention, threw up his hands and gave up. We do not say the same of King or the Founding Fathers.

<comment><USER49> If you look at the "I have a dream speech" you'll see a similar form of repetition. Not that this letter is comparable. But it _is_ a useful construct.</comment></comment>


TSA officials warn of credit card knives at airports (2014) - <AUTHOR> http://www.tampabay.com/news/publicsafety/tsa-officials-warn-of-credit-card-knives-at-airports/2187147 <comment><USER2> I have one of these knives. It's handy since it's always on me and it fits in my wallet. That said it would be easier to kill a man with a calligraphy pen than this knife. I need to remember to take it out of my wallet before my next flight though, I completely forgot it would raise an issue.

<comment><USER3> > _That said it would be easier to kill a man with a calligraphy pen than this > knife._

Obligatory xkcd: [http://xkcd.com/651/](http://xkcd.com/651/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Pocket knives with blades up to 6cm have been allowed for over 2 years:

[http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/tsa-to-allow-pocket-knives- on...](http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/tsa-to-allow-pocket-knives-on- planes/blogEntry?id=18658980)

Do these have longer blades? Or is this, like the above article's TSA director quote about razor-blades and box-cutters, a purely 'emotional' bit of security-themed passenger-harassment?

<comment><USER5> Sadly, this never got implemented:

[http://www.usatoday.com/story/travel/flights/2013/06/05/tsa-...](http://www.usatoday.com/story/travel/flights/2013/06/05/tsa- knives/2393139/)

It's a dumb rule, and I'd like to be able to carry a small swiss army knife when I travel.

<comment><USER6> That's terrible, and it also shows that the TSA isn't the sole source of ludicrous security theater. They made a move to take one small step towards a more sensible policy, and got rejected by other equally-wrongheaded stakeholders.

I have a, uh, "friend" who always carries a very small knife[1] through the airport. The trick is that it fits on a key ring, and is normally folded closed. Before going through the Perv-O-Tron™ 3000 machine at security, he just throws his keyring into his carry-on. It's been through over 100 flights in a row that way without getting confiscated.

[1]: [http://www.amazon.com/Spyderco-Slip-Joint-Plain- Knife/dp/B00...](http://www.amazon.com/Spyderco-Slip-Joint-Plain- Knife/dp/B003788U9U/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1425874309&sr=8-1&keywords=spyderco+tiny)

<comment><USER7> Could this Bug knife easily be swallowed and smuggled into prison?

A: Yes - Gage answered on February 20, 2015

<comment><USER6> Wow. That[1] does not sound comfortable.

(My own use case is opening Amazon packages.)

[1]: [http://www.amazon.com/knife-easily-swallowed-smuggled- prison...](http://www.amazon.com/knife-easily-swallowed-smuggled- prison/forum/FxPMTPXK2K7YSD/Tx2HD8OI1BQXV1F/1/ref=cm_cd_naredir?_encoding=UTF8&asin=B003788U9U&cdItems=25&store=generic)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I have a credit card made from some sort of metal. I've little doubt that _that_ will start getting flagged now, too.

As much flak as we give the TSA, I'm glad we have someone with a mission to secure airliners. I just wish they had a better user experience...

<comment><USER9> All that was ever needed to secure airliners was reinforcement of cockpit doors. Everything beyond that is just a bloated bureaucracy whose primary mission is its own growth.

<comment><USER10> Not only that, by making flying a painful and inconvenient experience, it has caused more people to drive and consequently get killed on the roads.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Yet another type of gadget that the thugs will happily steal for themselves.

What good was the NRA when we now need a National _Tools_ Association?

</comment><comment><USER12> Security theater.</comment>


NJ Rules JavaScript Crypto Mining Illegal (2015) - <AUTHOR> http://www.njconsumeraffairs.gov/News/Pages/05262015.aspx <comment><USER2> But all those ads and videos and photos and frameworks that peg my CPU and bandwidth are totally fine.

Thanks NJ for keeping me safe!

<comment><AUTHOR> Yeah this is just strange. If I send data back to my server from javascript, is that using the CPU without permission?</comment></comment>


Wrangling COVID19 Data with Easy Data Transform - <AUTHOR> https://www.screencast.com/t/B38HJdHq <comment><AUTHOR> See how you can use desktop tool Easy Data Transform to convert the latest COVID19 data into useful information such as deaths per 10k population per country.</comment>