The Worst Journalism of 2014 - <AUTHOR> http://www.cjr.org/darts_and_laurels/the_worst_journalism_of_2014.php?page=all

<comment><USER2> Fox should not be present in this list. In no way is what Fox & Friends doing journalism. It's not even worthy of being described as an impersonation of journalism a la Wolf Blitzer and co. on CNN or the cavalcade of idiots on CNBC. Giving fox & friends an award for bad journalism, even the worst journalism, is actually giving it credibility that it has earned the right not to have. It is literally beneath this sort of contempt. If it were written in a satirical novel the critics would call the reality of fox and friends an unrealistically drawn hyperbole.

<comment><USER3> _If it were written in a satirical novel the critics would call the reality of fox and friends an unrealistically drawn hyperbole_

I've yet to read a more apt description of the network than thus.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> My pick: The Face Behind Bitcoin by Leah McGrath Goodman [Newsweek: [http://www.newsweek.com/2014/03/14/face-behind- bitcoin-24795...](http://www.newsweek.com/2014/03/14/face-behind- bitcoin-247957.html)]

<comment><USER5> Mine too. Here was a case where they repeatedly looked the other way when the evidence didn't serve their narrative.

To me it's the first example of link-bait style reporting in print journalism.

<comment><USER6> _" To me it's the first example of link-bait style reporting in print journalism."_

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yellow_journalism](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yellow_journalism)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> The worst journalism are the stories that aren't printed.

In my city, the local rag is tightly affiliated with the city administration. So when stories appear that don't jive with the desired narrative (like two armed robberies in busy pedestrian neighborhoods in the span of a week), they just don't get reported.

The decline of old-school publications undermines the profession... One newspaper and a couple of lousy TV stations provide no incentive to be aggressive, especially with government officials. It's easier to print softballs and be friends.

</comment><comment><USER8> It's okay, because with decreasing attention spans, journalism will eventually be swallowed by click-bait BuzzFeeds of this world.

If you disagree, it's because on HN you're among peers that can actually read an entire NYT article or a think tank report. In one sitting. Without a Snapchat break. And HN is not representative of the general population.

<comment><USER9> I really don't understand why people bash on BuzzFeed, _especially_ when talking about an article like this. It's a place where real journalism gets done. One of the few that are left, really.

<comment><USER10> My only exposure to BuzzFeed was the flood of listicles that swamped my Facebook feed until I blocked the website. I didn't even know they tried to do journalism until the Uber scandal.

<comment><USER11> Until reading that article I'd have said the only thing that could be said in favour of Buzzfeed is that their listicles had fewer pretensions towards journalism (and better pictures) than most blogspam.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> This is an incredibly hard list to crack, and I don't think the author took their task seriously. I think, instead, they went with things that might be interesting to get angry about. Misphrasing or being rude during an interview is bad, for instance, but how did it leap above all the lies produced by laziness? For example:

[http://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?p=16641](http://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?p=16641)

It's not sexy -- which is precisely why journalists simply lie to you about it. You don't care, they don't care, no one really cares except experts and the PR company that gives them the story. And it happens in almost every field of expertise (I notice it a lot more in sciences, but that probably only reflects my relative expertise in that cluster of ideas).

<comment><USER13> > You don't care, they don't care, no one really cares

Well, why should they be in this list then? I _really_ don't care if some local rag told their city of 2000 the intricacies of cow speech, even if completely fabricated. I think most of us have learned to collectively skip the nonsense anyway. What I _do_ care about are large institutions that are manipulating the thinking of entire voting blocks, swaying the public discourse, and affecting the outcome of elections.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> I'm glad to see the Rolling Stone debacle at the top of this list...to me, it's one of the appalling examples of journalistic dysfunction that I can recall off-hand. Yes, I know that the media's overall screwup up of the Iraq War was "worse" in many regards...but on the other hand, it was a much more diffuse and broad situation...not only the scope of the topic, but the coverage (within the same publication, different articles had different levels of critique).

The RS article, in contrast, involved a pretty simple reporting obstacle: _did the main character accurately describe events?_ Even if she wouldn't allow herself to be identified, nor (inexplicably) identify her attackers, there were many ways to circumstantially confirm her story...and RS did none of them. It's come out that the RS reporter may have lied about even contacting "Jackie's" friends.

One reporter's lies and incompetence is bad enough...but the fact that her work just passed through RS's reportedly legendary fact-checking process, its editors, and its lawyers...is just devastating. The best thing that could come out of this is that Rolling Stone as a journalistic institution falls on its sword and cleans house. At any of the other news outlets I've worked for, even my college paper, I can't imagine being able to publish a story like this doing as little verification as the RS reporter did.

One of the worst collateral damages from this (aside from the obvious harm to rape victims who now have even more reason to fear publicity) is seeing how easy it is to co-opt the journalistic institution. Few people questioned the RS reporter's ethics because _Hey, she 's written several well-regarded stories about rape for Rolling Stone...there's no way she'd have the standards of an intern for this story, right?_ Even worse were the people (including the reporter herself) who said: _" Well, the gang rape victim wasn't the story, the story was how U.Va ignored it"_...Um yeah, how exactly does U.Va ignore an egregious incident that we don't know if the victim actually reported it to U.Va?

For my part, when I first read the story, I immediately tweeted/shared it as one of the most compelling stories I read all year. I didn't even think to notice the unsaid implication that the reporter never located the accused, nor talked to anyone besides the victim herself...that was my professional bias (i.e. _Of course the reporter talked to them and got no comment...that 's what every reporter is supposed to at least do_). But my bias about college fraternities and the problems of rape reporting, and my previous respect for Rolling Stone as a news source, made me accept with little hesitation a story that, in retrospect, was too awful (and perfect in its details) to be true.

So the RS U.Va story may not have been the worst journalistic fuckup when it comes to consequences...but it's definitely was the worst in terms of showing the flaws in the reporting process, and in how poorly we are able to evaluate the truth behind a story.

<comment><USER15> That story absolutely rattled the entire UVa community (I'm an alum). There were bricks thrown into the alleged fraternity forcing the members to move out. President Sullivan also shutdown all fraternity activities pending an internal investigation.

<comment><USER16> This in 2014, the same year the Duke Lacrosse team finally cleared their names after having them dragged trough the mud for nearly a decade.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> You can do your part to fix this by not watching TV news and not reacting to clickbait in any medium, on sheer principle. If you can't manage that, at least don't spread the disease to others by bringing up the latest hypes and scares.

<comment><USER3> _You can do your part to fix this by not watching TV news and not reacting to clickbait in any medium_

Funny, I don't do any of those things, yet this stuff seem to continue unabated. How many people need to (not) do it for a critical mass?

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> I'm surprised Forbes didn't make the list. It has to be the worst of the major business publications in terms of low quality content and high ratio of ads.

</comment><comment><USER19> None of the morning or prime time shows should be considered journalism. This article has no credibility in my eyes as the author cannot differentiate between 60 minutes and Fox & Friends.

Also, not sure how mentioning that he can smell marijuana is bad journalism. He is suppose to report what he sees, smells or hears. Is a journalist suppose to edit himself to push a particular view?

<comment><USER11> You honestly can't see how the remark " _obviously_ there's marijuana in the air" might be considered bad journalism?

Observing that there's the smell of marijuana in the air is journalism, though you'd have to balance that against the relative importance of other observations he could have made within the same time frame. It's a entirely different thing to express the view that "obviously" the protests involve a lot of marijuana and push - intentionally or otherwise - the particular view that one should expect protests against alleged police brutality to be under the influence of drugs [especially with all those poor black people around?]. As the original article strongly hinted, that was probably a slip rather than an attempt to push a particular agenda... maybe he even actually meant the smell was _readily detectable_ rather than _inevitable at that sort of protest_. He's far from likely to have wanted to imply anything about the inevitability of a certain demographic behaving a certain way. It's bad journalism to make those kind of insinuations for intentional effect, rank bad journalism to do it without an agenda to push or even awareness of what might be implied.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> The Uber controversy showed me what journalism is all about. It's ok for them to dig as much dirt on you as possible and present half-facts, but they go into a rage the moment you question their motives and try to find any info on them.

<comment><USER21> You're letting a single Buzzfeed article define what journalism is to you, and then complain about others presenting half-facts?

c'mon.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> Start suing them.

<comment><USER23> [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_York_Times_Co._v._Sullivan](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_York_Times_Co._v._Sullivan) makes it very, very hard

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> Last year's winner should have been NPR's

       U.S. Worries NSA Leaker's Files Could Be Hacked  (Tom Gjelten)

[0] [http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=2035315...](http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=203531584)

This story came out when Snowden was still at the Moscow airport. At issue is whether Snowden's files can fall into the hands of the Russians or Chinese. This is a fair question. But the piece focuses on physical access to the files on Snowden's laptops, which is simply comical. Of course they can take his files. A listener would get the impression that Snowden's protection of the data consists of holding tight to his computers while the Russians attempt to wrest them from his arms, or his ability to sleep with one eye open and his laptops at his bedside. My favorite gem was when security expert Lee explained that you can get at a laptop's hard drive using nothing more than an ordinary screwdriver. Will the Russians be able to locate a screwdriver? Only time will tell.

Gjelten tells us: "For Snowden to have kept his files secure, he would have had to keep his laptops powered off and disconnected from the Internet. Plus, he'd need physical control of the machines at all times." This statement is irresponsibly misleading. A trusting listener would have no choice but to conclude that Snowden's secrets are unprotectable after hearing this. But the truth, access to the files themselves are unimportant, because they are surely encrypted.

Eventually they did get around to talking about encryption. Their experts on the matter were the likes of Mark Weatherford, ex-DHS undersecretary who now works at the Chertoff Group (as in Michael Chertoff), who told us that "Encryption really only buys you time. You can eventually decrypt it. It just takes time to do that, and it's really dependent on the algorithm and the keys." Again, it's being emphasized that it's only a matter of time before the Russians have the goods. What is not mentioned is that a modest-sized encryption key buys billions of billions of billions of years [1]. It would be an earth-shattering breakthrough if the Russians or the Chinese or the Americans had an algorithm that could beat this.

At one point, Michael Sutton of Zscaler admits: "If Snowden were using the best possible encryption and he was using a strong key, it would be virtually impossible for NSA, China, Russia - anyone - to access that data." But Gjelten immediately smothers this thought: "At least in the short run. There are ways to break a code, if only by what cyber technologists call brute force - essentially having a computer try every possible key combination until the correct one is found. Mark Weatherford, now at the Chertoff Group, points out that no encryption lasts forever." Not forever, but much longer than the age of the universe. At no time in this story is it revealed the kinds of time frames we are talking about. By the way, "the best possible encryption" is available for free and runs on any computer, and a strong key takes an insignificant amount of effort to generate.

Finally, the piece ends with "In all, cyber security experts agree, the likelihood is good that the Chinese or the Russians or both, will sooner or later have whatever documents Snowden has taken with him, whether he intended to share them, or not." This is false. Not only is it untrue that the Russians are likely to get the data, it is also untrue that cyber experts agree that they will, which Tom Gjelten would have known had he asked any non-government- affiliated encryption expert.

In short, Gjelten spent the first half of the piece addressing physical access to the files, which is ludicrous, and the second half convincing us that encryption is futile, which is the opposite of the truth.

[0] [http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=2035315...](http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=203531584) [1] [http://www.eetimes.com/document.asp?doc_id=1279619](http://www.eetimes.com/document.asp?doc_id=1279619)</comment>


Skyhook: Google forced Motorola to delay the Droid X  - <AUTHOR> http://www.engadget.com/2010/09/17/skyhook-google-forced-motorola-to-drop-our-location-service-de/

<comment><USER2> Honestly, I'd like to see Google use this lever against carriers and manufacturers a bit more to ban any or all of the following:

* Locked bootloaders

* Disabled or substituted major features (e.g. wifi tethering)

* Apps that can't be uninstalled

* Skins that can't be disabled

* Proprietary drivers

* SIM locking

I'm aware that Google does not yet have the clout to pull off most of the above yet, but maybe someday.

<comment><USER3> Google isn't going to rock the carriers' boat, but any significant kernel contributor could step up to the plate and fix the locked bootloader problem at any time.

<comment><USER4> Unfortunately not, since the Kernel is GPL2.0, not GPL3. GPL2.0 doesn't have anti-tivorization features.

<comment><USER3> Explicit ones, no.

Tivoization certainly violates the spirit of GPL2, as well as the letter. From GPL2:

> _The source code for a work means the preferred form of the work for making > modifications to it. For an executable work, complete source code means all > the source code for all modules it contains, plus any associated interface > definition files, plus the scripts used to control compilation and > installation of the executable._

1\. the signature is a derivative work of the GPLed work.

2\. modification is the reason for distributing source code. source code without a signing key is not the "preferred form of the work for making modifications to it", as modifications cannot be made.

3\. the signing key is an integral part of the "scripts used to control compilation and installation".

4\. the signature is _part_ of the "executable"; without it, the resulting object code is not executable.

<comment><USER2> IANAL, but I think every argument here would fail in court:

1\. Probably not. While it's created from the original work, it does not contain the original work in any meaningful way. If it is, in any sense a derivative work, it probably qualifies as fair use.

2\. Modifications to the Linux source code can be made without the key; they just can't be run on the device in question. Nothing in GPL2 says modified code has to run on the device the original code shipped with.

3\. A Linux kernel compiled from the same sources can be installed on another device without the key.

4\. The fact that a specific machine refuses to execute it without the key does not make the key part of the executable; other machines will execute it without the key.

<comment><USER3> 1\. Fair use of the signature doesn't apply. The license to distribute the compiled kernel is contingent upon anything derived from it being GPL as well (section 2b/3). Might be able to hack around this with a different entity doing the signing, but hopefully a court would see through that sham.

2\. But modifications to the executable program itself (in flash) have to be facilitated. The preferred (HTC engineering) way of making these modifications is through the bootloader. There might be a loophole here in that the bootloader could be changed to allow flashing any kernel (but still not execute without a key), but being sold the device while it was on (with derivative works all over the place in RAM) would negate said loophole.

3\. The specific script that has to be included is the one which generated and installed the resulting executable which was distributed to me on my specific device.

4\. Good point, although the executable and signature are always distributed together and meant specifically for one particular machine, so it might not be as clearcut as you think

FWIW I've heard that Stallman has made similar arguments.

(I'm not a member of the lawyer guild either, so I'm not compelled to prefix my opinions with disclaimers)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> They weren't forced, it's open source. They could have shipped it without the Android trademark and Google applications. Apple also forced out Skyhook. Location based services are central to mobile computing, it's in Google's best interest to keep that built in to the Android platform and consistent.

<comment><USER6> When do these actions become anti-competitive?

<comment><USER7> What would make them so?

<comment><USER6> This doesn't seem to be the handset maker or even the carrier controlling the options. It's another software provider limiting potentially competing software...on an open platform. Seems they're using their competitive power in one domain to inhibit competition in another. What am I missing?

<comment><USER8> Anti-competitive doesn't just mean "not good for competitors." It's about things that are harmful for the marketplace. For example, it excludes the ordinary enjoyment of copyright exclusivity. You might think monopolies are harmful for marketplaces, but as a society we've decided that copyrights do more good than harm, so copyright exclusivity is not in itself anti- competitive. A more relevant example: trademarks are not generally anti- competitive.

Imagine Bob's Booze complaining that Bacardi has pressured Thirsty Time Beverage Co. to use Bacardi rum in the "Thirsty Thursday Party Punch with Bacardi(TM)" drink. Bob wants to make a deal with Thirsty to replace Bacardi rum with his company's rum as a key ingredient in the punch. Suppose Thirsty Time always uses Bacardi's filtered water as an ingredient; can Bacardi insist that Thirsty Time also ship its famous rum (and nobody else's) as a condition for TT's use of the Bacardi brand name on rum-containing drinks? Would that be "anti-competitive?"

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Well, on hand you have people complaining that Android is too open and allows carriers to load crapware and disable tethering. On the other hand, we have people complaining that Android is too closed because Motorola couldn't switch location providers. Which one is it?

<comment><USER10> Can you establish that these are the exact same people? It's only hypocrisy if you can establish that. Otherwise you've merely observed in a relatively hostile way that various people have various ideas about "freedom" and that's neither news nor terribly interesting on its own.

<comment><USER5> John Gruber is playing both sides. It's veiled in his usual snark, but he has been hitting on Skyhook quite a bit:

<http://daringfireball.net/2010/09/the_welcome_to_android>

<http://daringfireball.net/linked/2010/09/16/dont-be-evil>

<http://daringfireball.net/linked/2010/09/16/skyhook-google>

And has also snarked about the "open for carriers" situation quite a bit:

<http://daringfireball.net/linked/2010/09/02/skype-android>

<http://daringfireball.net/linked/2010/03/02/att-android>

<http://daringfireball.net/linked/2010/07/17/preinstalled>

<http://daringfireball.net/linked/2010/08/06/skype-verizon>

<comment><USER11> His blog has turned from an Apple love fest into a Google/android hate blog. Pretty ridiculous.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Android has always been sold as an open system + proprietary google apps. If you want access to the proprietary system (and presumably the Android trademark), you fall in line. Any company is free to make a phone without the proprietary google apps, but not selectively.

Yet for all this, Google still allows vendors to do things like lock the phone's search to Bing.

</comment><comment><USER13> Obviously it's one side of the story from Skyhook, as they're trying to spread their point of view. Would love to hear Google's viewpoint.

<comment><USER5> I'd guess it's something like, "Our testing has shown Skyhook performs worse than our internal service in real world use and we want Android customers to have the best."

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> I used to love Google, and will still love Google. But this action of theirs disappointed me. Google thinks that they are an "open" and esp android is very "open", i.e. it is free and open source. Manufacturers can modify the code and adapt to their hardware. Thats all well and good. But when Motorola modifies the code to add skyhook wireless for location, Google says take it off, or else.... This is really not good and does not match up with Google's ideals.

And note that skyhook wireless is a known firm for such a thing, in fact they had the first databases for wifi location search and iphones also used to use them

</comment><comment><USER15> Google Android is just begging to get forked, and splintered. Manufacturers like Motorola and Samsung might have to bend to Google's will, but I doubt carriers will sit tightly while Google's fangs sink deeper into their industry.

<comment><USER16> I'm not really sure what you mean by "their industry," but the fact that carriers feel that their industry is anything other than delivering data is an annoyance that we all have to suffer (at least in the US). So let's hope Google can prevent full-blown carrier-specific forks of Android and keep trying to reduce them to the commodity providers they should be.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: With oil prices falling how is it that gas prices have stayed up? - <AUTHOR>

I remember hearing something recently about federal laws preventing the export of crude in the US and so we stockpile it here which drives down the price. Apparently, the same rules don't govern refined products and so we can export lots of gasoline which is keeping the price of that up. Is any of that accurate?<p>Thanks. <comment><USER2> Refineries are making more money than ever despite the influx of oil supply, lower per barrel cost and slightly above average demand (although demand for oil is expected to be going down worldwide). [1]

California's 4 oil refiners control 78% of the state's gasoline-making capacity. When a refinery goes down for coincidental 'upgrades' or 'repairs', the cost to consumers skyrocket, keeping gas prices high while oil prices maybe rock bottom.

California refineries reaped an average of 49.3 cents on a gallon of gasoline from 1999 to 2014, according to the California Energy Commission. But this year, the average was around 88.8 cents (caused by refinery troubles) creating record breaking profits.

The U.S. hasn't built a major new refinery since 1977 and many of the refineries do not run at full capacity. Why would they when that would just cut into their profits?

Keep the supply down and keep the prices high and you will have record breaking profits every year. Line the pockets of politicians and you'll be in business for a very long time.

ENRON 2.0

Graph of pump prices across the nation: [http://si.wsj.net/public/resources/images/BT- AD814A_REFIN_9U...](http://si.wsj.net/public/resources/images/BT- AD814A_REFIN_9U_20150821162712.jpg)

[1] [http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-gas- profits-20150722-s...](http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-gas- profits-20150722-story.html)

</comment><comment><USER3> There have been ongoing refinery outages all across the country that are causing significant production delays. With people tending to drive more during the summer and taking advantage of relatively cheap gas prices, demand is hovering above average. Companies have been pushing refineries hard this past year taking advantage of the increased demand, which has led to lots of fires and mechanical/equipment failures. This has caused the price of gas around major urban centers like Chicago to shoot back up.

Edit: redundancy.

</comment><comment><USER4> There was some discussion[1] the other day

1: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10099945](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10099945)

</comment><comment><USER5> We're drilling more than we can refine, so costs of the refined product are staying high.

Also, gasoline prices always lag behind crude a bit. Refinement takes time.

</comment><comment><USER6> Who has any incentive to lower gas prices?

<comment><USER7> Anybody who has idle refinery capacity. As other commenters have pointed out, though, that's pretty scarce at the moment.</comment></comment>


What Termites Can Teach Us - <AUTHOR> https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2018/09/17/what-termites-can-teach-us <comment><USER2> With this headline, I immediately thought of Zero's termite speech in Virtue's Last Reward (spoiler if you want to play this visual novel/game):

> > [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yk3PpRVshtY](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yk3PpRVshtY)

(EDIT: Video with better audio quality, but unluckily annoying comments:

> > [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n0R_U3S1JUE&t=503](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n0R_U3S1JUE&t=503)

</comment><comment><USER3> >In the nineteen-nineties, computer scientists began programming virtual termites that built "walls" via the principles of stigmergy. These virtual termites could build two-dimensional shapes, but they could not produce anything like the complex three-dimensional architecture of real termites.

Someday soon, I hope we'll achieve termite AI.

<comment><USER4> Not sure it's possible. The more accurate the models get, the buggier they are.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> What termites have taught _me_ is to not keep firewood stacked right next to my house.</comment>


Murdoch Block - The Chrome Extension - <AUTHOR> https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/moepiacmhnmbiilhpojodnaopndhddpg

<comment><USER2> Great. I've been waiting for this.</comment>


The Vanishing Lunch Break - <AUTHOR> http://money.usnews.com/money/careers/articles/2010/09/17/the-vanishing-lunch-break.html <comment><USER2> I used to work through lunch. At the time, if I did, I could go home earlier. Since I got to eat (the only part of lunch I care about) and got to go home earlier, too, it was win-win.

They eventually changed their minds and forced me away from the desk for lunch. Now I take a short one (30 minutes) and actually get out of the office. I agree that it's better for my sanity (and probably digestion) but I really liked having that 30 minutes at home instead.

</comment><comment><USER3> I'm guilty of this. I have a theory of dual-forces that contribute to it: geographically dispersed work teams and understaffed organizations. If people insisted on taking a hour lunch every day it would be nearly impossible to find acceptable meeting times between 8-5 local time. If companies were willing to pay for collocated (and self-sufficient) project teams that would help, too.

</comment><comment><USER4> Like your lunch? Like ruby/rails? In NYC? Come work with us at StreetEasy.com - We make it a point to get out of the office for lunch. Oh and we build some cool stuff too. :)

Resume and cover letter to:

      ruby -r base64 -e 'puts Base64.decode64("emhAc3RyZWV0ZWFzeS5jb20=\n")'</comment>


Negative Impact of English on Math Learning - <AUTHOR> http://www.wsj.com/articles/the-best-language-for-math-1410304008 <comment><USER2> The same should then also apply to the German.

French is even worse with their sixty ten (70) and four twenty (80) and four twenty eleven (91).

This problem is actually obvious to any parent whose native language has natural naming for numbers after 10 but whose kid gets math education in any of the mentioned languages.

Some languages have separate but still unified names for the teens (compared to the other tens). I think that it would actually really make sense to also unify these names.

I also think that kids should be introduced to some other numerical system beside decimal in their early years.

<comment><USER3> On the other hand, for other purposes, German is a far more regular and logical language than English. Generally, complicated nouns and verbs are composed of simpler nouns and verbs. Quite often, the German word for a thing is a pretty bald description of what it is, whereas the English word often is some sort of one-off, where it is not a loan-word stolen from some other language:

Panzerkampfwagen = Armored battle wagon

Tank = (British code word that stuck for some reason)

or

Schreibtisch = writing table

Desk = ?

<comment><USER4> True that. Enjoy those genders and plurals!!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I haven't read the scientific article article in question, so I cannot challenge the statistics (if any) or the methodology (since I don't know it), but I'm curious if there's any guess about the underlying mechanism here. Because it sounds a little fishy to me.

My native language is one of those that would supposedly make it easier to count beyond 10 (i.e. if you go back long enough in the linguistic history, 11 would be translated as "one [unit] after/on top of ten"), but the generalization is awkward: 21 is roughly "two tens and one". You have to remember about as many rules as in English (eleven and twelve are awkward, the rest aren't. My whole touted advantage would be in only two numbers.).

Furthermore, the positional system often means that, when you're computing "11 + 13" as a kid, you don't even _say the words_ eleven and thirteen while performing the addition.

Besides, if complexity of the numerical system would be an indication, no one in France should know math. Quatre-vingt-dix-neuf is a frickin' lesson in arithmetic all by itself. I think 90% of the awkward conversations I've had in French were "please show me the numbers on the screen because I have no idea what you're mumbling there" at the supermarket.

<comment><USER6> I agree. It's less about numbering system in different language and the numbers from eleven to nineteen is really just one tenth of the numbers in 0-100. It is simply that Chinese children spend much more time practicing those maths, because of many historical and culture reasons. They actually never think about any words when calculating 11 + 13, they just know the result right after they see them.

However, in terms of multiplication, the problem of English is not ..teens, but the pronounciation of numbers. Chinese or Korean has one simple syllable for each number, so only two syllable (at most 3 if you count "ten") is needed when you shout out 32. Chinese children spend a whole year's morning reciting multiplication table, which I could never imagine how terrible it would be if recite it in English. Therefore, every grade 3 children would shout out simple multiplication results immediately.

However, on the other hand, I believe most of the advanced mathematical concepts have nothing to do with numbers in a language.

<comment><USER7> > the problem of English is not ..teens, but the pronounciation of numbers. > Chinese or Korean has one simple syllable for each number

I once found when mentally tallying points while grading papers, instead of saying "and a half" in my head, if I say the Chinese "ban" instead (e.g. "four-ban", "seventeen-ban") it becomes far easier to do.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Maybe it's just me but I never struggled with number names nor math. I imagine even when naming numbers isn't perfectly sensical (always in some strict base 10 naming), this disadvantage resolves itself as students age. The more you experience mathematics the more you disengage with strict number naming and the more you engage with strict number writing (which is extremely sensical). Saying 'seventeen minus twelve' could give pause while mentally translating but seeing '17 - 12' really won't.

</comment><comment><USER9> > Chinese has just nine number names, while English has more than two dozen > unique number words.

Wut. Chinese has zero through nine, then ten, hundred, thousand, ten thousand, one hundred million. That's fifteen. Certainly better than English, still.

</comment><comment><USER10> [http://www.paulgraham.com/submarine.html](http://www.paulgraham.com/submarine.html)

Submarine for game company featured in the story.

The story names the companies and games for sale, but doesn't name the research papers.

</comment><comment><USER11> I don't know, even if this effect exists, its weight on the overall math performance is really weak, there many other factors at play. Just compare the PISA results [1] of countries that use the same language:

FRENCH

France: 495

Switzerland: 531

Luxembourg[2]: 490

SPANISH

Spain: 484

Chile: 423

Mexico: 413

Peru: 368

PORTUGUESE

Portugal: 487

Brazil: 391

This is just a personal anecdote, but I have studied maths in 3 different languages: Basque (with a counting system similar to the French), Spanish and English. And I can't really say that I felt more comfortable using one or the other, but the three use pretty similar systems though.

[1] [http://www.oecd.org/pisa/keyfindings/pisa-2012-results- overv...](http://www.oecd.org/pisa/keyfindings/pisa-2012-results-overview.pdf) [2] At secondary school, in general, until the 9th class every subject is in German, except mathematics and sciences (in French) [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Multilingualism_in_Luxembourg](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Multilingualism_in_Luxembourg)

</comment><comment><USER12> PISA Maths exams results from 2012:

1\. Shanghai (China) 2\. Singapore 3\. Hong Kong (China) 4\. Taiwan 5\. South Korea 6\. Macao (China) 7\. Japan 8\. Liechtenstein 9\. Switzerland 10\. Netherlands 11\. Estonia 12\. Finland 13\. Canada 14\. Poland 15\. Belgium 16\. Germany 17\. Vietnam 18\. Austria 19\. Australia 20\. Ireland 21\. Slovenia 22\. Denmark 23\. New Zealand 24\. Czech Republic 25\. France 26\. United Kingdom 27\. Iceland 28 Latvia 29\. Luxembourg 30\. Norway 31\. Portugal 32\. Italy 33\. Spain 34\. Russian Federation 35\. Slovak Republic 36\. United States

Asian dominance shows, but you have to bear in mind that China "cheats" by posting separate cities, if other countries did the same ignoring less wealthy regions - they would have better results too.

Also there are many English-speaking countries much higher than USA, and countries with much more complicated numerals (like Baltic or Slavic countries) that are higher than USA. And German numerals are more complicated than English ones too (125 is 100 + 5 + 20).

I wouldn't attribute the US education problems to the language.

</comment><comment><USER13> This author draws conclusions like a BC astronomer; they are good given the area the article is restricting itself to, but this restriction is innately wrong. Numbers are weak because natural languages don't intrinsically use them and they are taught post-linguistic development to a fractured foundation, e.g. natural languages form like slang. Lets arbitrarily call 205-chi and 210-foe, how is one to find the name for 207; there is no interconnected phoneme structure that numbers and words can jointly draw upon. Yes, numbers are a naming system, but they become just another irrelevant layer when there is not a common core to draw upon. It's funny, with so many brilliant minds continuously rewriting coding languages no one has stopped to make human language less of a symantic ambiguity. Maybe Ithkuil is our only hope.

<comment><USER14> >It's funny, with so many brilliant minds continuously rewriting coding languages no one has stopped to make human language less of a symantic ambiguity.

People have tried. Check out "In The Land of Invented Languages" [0] if this interests you. Specific to your point, I would refer you to Lojban (a derivative of Loglan).

[0][http://www.amazon.com/Land-Invented-Languages-Adventures- Lin...](http://www.amazon.com/Land-Invented-Languages-Adventures- Linguistic/dp/0812980891)

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> The simplest thing English speakers could do is get rid of the spoken words for 10 - 19 entirely. But what would you replace them with?

Tenty-one, tenty-two, ect? No. It sounds two much like twenty-one, twenty-two, and so on.

Replacing the tens with "onty" words makes sense because "on" is closer "one". There's no translation step needed in thinking "Onty-eight minus Onty-two" and coming out with six.

It would be a simple solution to the tens problem but hard with respect to getting people to adopt it.

<comment><USER16> It also solves only half the "problem", since each decade still has its own name.

<comment><USER7> Most decades have the same name. The only ones different are "twen" for "two", "thir" for "three", and "fif" for "five", which all sound very similar anyway so there's not really a problem.

<comment><USER17> If we follow existing practice of thir-teen, four-teen, etc. why don't we just use teen as the base? Teeny-one, teeny-two, teeny-three...

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> No link to the original research, or any input from linguists? Puhleeeze.

</comment><comment><USER19> Japanese has different words for numbers based on what is counted. For each number 1-9 there's a Chinese-derived word and a native Japanese word. Numbers >10 always use Chinese pronounciations, except for numbers like 20 or 30 which might have a special word for them (if you're counting days or life years). Also number 4 is unlucky and has to be skipped when counting rooms or floors.

</comment><comment><USER16> I love a lot of this new reasearch on the relationship between language and cognition, but.

What I hate about this article is the way that it plays on American parents' educational anxiety, implying that these very mild linguistic effects on cognition may impair Anglophone children relative to Asian children unless American parents invest in all these educational board games. The article specifically frames it as a problem of English linguistic deficiencies, which is incredibly naive. With math, children are essentially learning a new and unfamiliar symbolic language.

All of these correlations between language and cognition are interesting, but if you're interested in Sapir-Whorf, you're still looking at overall effects that are weak and small, overall. This correlation between linguistic/mathematical behavior may be stronger in a language like Piraha, but Daniel Everett would argue that what's going on there is less linguistic determinism and more of a cultural bias against the abstract or non-concrete. [http://www.slate.com/blogs/lexicon_valley/2013/10/16/piraha_...](http://www.slate.com/blogs/lexicon_valley/2013/10/16/piraha_cognitive_anumeracy_in_a_language_without_numbers.html)

And look here at this paragraph in the OP: "The U.S.-Asian math-achievement gap—a sensitive and much-studied topic—has more complicated roots than language. Chinese teachers typically spend more time explaining math concepts and getting students involved in working on difficult problems. In the home, Chinese parents tend to spend more time teaching arithmetic facts and games and using numbers in daily life, says a 2010 study in the Review of Educational Research by researchers at the Hong Kong Institute of Education and the University of Hong Kong." Yet overall outcomes are taken as evidence of English's "linguistic disadvantages".

East Asian languages DO handle base-10 math in a simple, direct way that is easy to learn. This is especially true in Chinese, but begins to fall apart in Japanese. Japanese uses simpler words for higher numbers: ni-juu-hachi (two- ten-eight) for 28, for example. But Japanese also has two series of words for numbers under 10: 1 may be ichi or hitotsu, 2 may be ni or futatsu. These combine with a large series of counter words that makes counting in Japanese much more complex. Might this impact Japanese children's acquisition of numeracy? Plausibly, but it's easier to just elide over the differences in Asian languages handling of numbers.

There are just a plethora of linguistic differences between Asian languages and English, that necessarily impact education. Take the writing system, where Japanese has probably the most complex written system in the world, that takes over a decade to read proficiently even for native speakers. English has a terrible orthography, whose irregularities and inconsistencies make it difficult for children to learn and exacerbate economic inequality and linguistic privilege.

We really could spend a lot less classroom time on learning reading and writing the differences between plough, dough, and cough and more time on STEM if we improved the English orthography, but I don't exactly see the WSJ reporters calling for spelling reform =/ [http://www.theatlantic.com/education/archive/2015/02/how- the...](http://www.theatlantic.com/education/archive/2015/02/how-the-english- language-is-holding-kids-back/385291/)

<comment><USER20> Wen u sa u wont too improov thee Englush orthografee doo u meen speling foneticulee? Beecuz ay think that wood bee silee.

Instead, why not teach the English language properly to students? You know, where the words came from, what changes they suffered through the years... That's how I learned it as a non-native speaker and I can tell you I had a blast doing it, not to mention that now I literally can't forget how most words are spelled (I remember vaguely the derivation from Latin/Greek/Middle English/Anglo Saxon).

In other words, folks everywhere through the times were able to pick up this beautiful language, but all of a sudden we are having problems teaching it to kids these days? Is it the fault of the language, or the educators?

<comment><USER21> Do you really think preschoolers/kindergartners are going to get anything out of that? I certainly wouldn't've cared.

<comment><USER20> I don't believe that kids should be in school before 7 or 8 years of age.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Semi-relatedly, I've wondered why coders haven't adopted something like the tonal system for hexadecimal. [http://panglott.blogspot.com/2010/01/nystroms- hexadecimal-nu...](http://panglott.blogspot.com/2010/01/nystroms-hexadecimal- numeral-system-and.html)

<comment><USER16> Obligatory fleventy-five reference: [https://panglott.wordpress.com/2015/01/27/fleventy- five/](https://panglott.wordpress.com/2015/01/27/fleventy-five/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> My oldest son found math extremely hard to learn. Parts of this article mirror comments he has made to me about his lack of understanding in k-4 and how poorly things were explained. He was so desperate to learn math, he lied to me and his teacher both for an entire year in order to sneak his math work home and have me explain it to him.

<comment><USER23> > he lied to me and his teacher both for an entire year in order to sneak his > math work home and have me explain it to him

sounds pretty smart

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> Isn't this a form of the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis ? [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linguistic_relativity](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linguistic_relativity)

</comment><comment><USER25> Isn't that ironic (the title that is) as there is I am fairly sure more than one math :-)

</comment><comment><USER26> sounds more like an excuse.</comment>


Squeezed Books Summary Business Knowledge - Extracted, Compressed, Discussed - <AUTHOR> http://www.squeezedbooks.com/

<comment><USER2> Hey, thanks, but they've seen it before :-)

<comment><AUTHOR> I searched, but only found references within comments, not a submission. I thought it was worth a submission of its own.

<comment><USER2> Right now I'm maintaining the site, but I've had real troubles getting traction. I'm not quite sure how to attract people to do summaries of their own, or at the very least discuss the books.</comment></comment></comment>


Dementia Stopped Peter Max from Painting - <AUTHOR> https://www.nytimes.com/2019/05/28/business/peter-max-dementia-cruise-ship-auctions.html <comment><USER2> Peter Max was responsible for the designs from one of my favorite games, Parappa the Rapper. Hearing that he has dementia saddens me, hearing that he's the victim of Stan Lee style elder abuse pisses me off.

</comment><comment><USER3> As an artist it's sad that someone who made so many people happy now is a shell others take advantage of for money. While having assistant paint parts is a longtime tradition (even back in the Middle Ages) this is simply ripping off a man who doesn't know any better, and flooding the market with what are really knock-offs.</comment>


Why iTunes Isn't Bloated (2015) - <AUTHOR> https://www.kirkville.com/why-itunes-isnt-bloated/ <comment><USER2> I am not convinced the UI is not bloated and buggy. Who cares if the app is tiny if it regularly shows unrendered json to me, is confusing as hell to be subscribed to a monthly service but sometimes still be asked to pay for songs, and generally feels slapped together with all the tiny menus full of ad-hoc options.

I mean why even write this? To convince apple they shouldn't improve this mess? Clearly people perceive it as bloated, and customer perception is as good as it gets for feedback when you have a brand like apple.</comment>


Well, Actually - <AUTHOR> http://tirania.org/blog/archive/2011/Feb-17.html <comment><USER2> Well said, but the post title doesn't say anything that would give an idea of what it is about. A lot of people would do well to read this.

</comment><comment><USER3> The subsection title: "Why you are not getting laid". The author: Miguel de Icaza, the man behind Mono (among other things)

Worth reading.</comment>


Diamonds Suck - <AUTHOR> http://diamondssuck.com/

<comment><USER2> I like the attitude, but I think this is the wrong way to get people away from buying diamond engagement rings.

If people think it is a diamond, it continues to serve DeBeers in promoting the idea that when you get engaged, you buy an expensive diamond ring.

The real solution is to come up with something completely different which still identifies the occasion, but without the geopolitical overhead.

The clever way to do it is to find something that in some way has meaning to both of the couples.

When a friend of mine was proposing to his wife, he was fiddling with a stone he had picked-up by the river side. He didn't have a ring to give her as he couldn't afford a diamond, which she knew. She took the stone from him and suggested they make a necklace out of it.

Now, not every girl is as cool as Christine, but they have the most interesting engagement jewelry of anybody else, and a story that goes along with it which is better than "I looked for the right diamond for ages...".

<comment><AUTHOR> I agree with you. I'm not sure this is the optimal way to discourage diamond purchases.

I'm not sold on your idea either though.

What do you think of this: thediamondpledge.com, where you make a pledge to support humanity by not buying diamonds.

For every diamond you don't buy, you get discounts to alternatives.

not sure if it will work, what are your thoughts?

<comment><USER2> You're still promoting 'Diamonds', which is what you want to get away from. I think it is very difficult to get promote and get people to not buy vs. buy. Look at the fur industry as an example. I don't think the anti-fur people have been very successful.

How would you measure diamonds people don't buy? It's difficult as a negative input. What you really want to do, if you really want to do this at all, is figure out what is better than a diamond.

I can't say I really have much thoughts on it. I've never bought a diamond, likely never will (not a new one at least).</comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: Best Web Language to Learn - <AUTHOR>

Hi everyone, I'm trying to figure out the best web language to learn. My programming roots in Java, but I also know PHP, Objective C, and have dabbled in about everything else(.Net, Ruby, Python, etc.). I have about a month break coming up and have decided to learn a new language. I want something fast and quick to develop in. I've been looking at learning DJango framework or Cappuchino, but I'm not sure where to go. Any suggestions? Thanks! <comment><USER2> This has been discussed fairly exhaustively, but here is a quick summary:

You cannot really go wrong with python or ruby. Both have a number of solid frameworks for you to try (rails, django, pylons, sinatra, etc). Try a number of them and build some trivial app in a few of them.

I also recommend getting familiar with javascript and a library like jquery or mootools, if you plan do dive deeper in the web dev.

</comment><comment><USER3> Seeing as how you already know PHP, I would say Javascript is the next big thing, especially if you're into cool looking web apps. It's also something you'd need no matter what your server side is.

<comment><USER4> Seeing as how you already know Java, I would say Javascript is the next big thing, especially because it's also something that you can use server side.

<http://commonjs.org/> <http://nodejs.org/>

\-- MV

<comment><USER3> There's also jaxer.org

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Within your constraints, I would vote for Python too. It is an excellent general purpose programming/scripting language with libraries for every imaginable task, object-oriented programming patterns, and some basic functional programming features.

The separation of application code from web server is also a nice feature of Python based web applications. PHP is really easy to hit the road running but larger applications get clunkier and clunkier because there is little proper separation.

</comment><comment><USER6> It sounds more like you want to learn a web framework than a new language. Picking a framework depends on what your goals are - do you want to develop REST based services, write rich-internet-applications, or do more traditional web-apps?

Cappuccino looks interesting for developing RIAs (or whatever the current buzz-word for these things is) but I wouldn't use it if you're just looking to develop the next best blog engine. Same for Google Web Toolkit (GWT).

Django, Rails, and the like seem to be a good fit for a wide variety of things - blog engines to photo albums and on.

Now, if you really do want to learn a new language, try taking a look at Erlang. My background is similar to yours and I started looking at Erlang recently and have really enjoyed it. Combine that with the Nitrogen web- framework and you've got a really powerful and fun combo. Now, you won't be able to deploy it on your shared host, most likely, but it's not difficult to set it up on a cheap server in the Rackspace Cloud (or elsewhere).

<comment><USER7> I would also say that if you're doing something really simple looking at github pages (html with jekyll & liquid) <http://pages.github.com/>

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> I've you're not sure, IMO, install Django and follow their tutorial. Pythons a great language, Djangos a great framework, projects can be hosted for free on Google app engine and the Django documentation is excellent.

<comment><USER9> I agree. I think python is easier to master in a shorter period of time, and you can definitely do some damage with it. Rubyists love Ruby but I've never really seen the light.

<comment><USER10> Interesting. I had a much easier time picking up Ruby than python.

<comment><USER9> I think my issue with it is notation I'm not used to, especially concerning notation like :name and |obj|. I'm sure I could understand it if given time, but I chose one over the other. What I'm trying to say is this guy might find python easier, but it's interesting that you found Ruby easier. I guess everyone is different.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> since your background is with Java, I suggest you to look Grails which has similiar features with Ruby on Rails and Django.</comment>


This Century Is Broken - <AUTHOR> https://www.nytimes.com/2017/02/21/opinion/this-century-is-broken.html <comment><AUTHOR> It is actually pretty interesting to go and read mentioned article "Our Miserable 21st Century" by NICHOLAS N. EBERSTADT[1].

[1] [https://www.commentarymagazine.com/articles/our- miserable-21...](https://www.commentarymagazine.com/articles/our- miserable-21st-century/)

</comment><comment><USER2> What does that make last century? At this point it was embroiled in a world war.

</comment><comment><USER3> Who broke it? Hint: POLITICIANS SUPPORTED BY D-V-D BR--KS</comment>


GoDaddy's New App Helps You Evaluate Business Ideas - <AUTHOR> http://www.pcmag.com/news/344794/godaddys-new-app-helps-you-evaluate-business-ideas <comment><USER2> A company with a history of grabbing domains when people check for them and not buying them instantly offers a place to share your ideas. Awesome!</comment>


Are Navies Dying? - <AUTHOR> https://nationalinterest.org/blog/buzz/are-navies-dying-78686 <comment><USER2> How remarkable that the article doesn't go into cost at all.

"War is a continuation of politics by other means", wrote Clausewitz. That, if regarded as true, provides an alternative to a navy: The same money spent on other political acts to secure one's country against possible enemies. If the price of "warships, submarines and aircraft carriers" rises, then the alternatives grow better.

Germany's an example; it pays its EU partners a little over 30% of its defense budget. It is at least arguable that spending that money on subsidising french farmers and building roads in Italy has been better for German security than a 30% increase in military spending would have been.</comment>


The Higher States of Bromine - <AUTHOR> https://blogs.sciencemag.org/pipeline/archives/2019/11/21/the-higher-states-of-bromine <comment><USER2> Keep in mind the risk with just regular liquid elemental bromine.

Seems like a heavy red nasty fuming liquid because it is.

Concentrated nitric acid is heavy too, has aggressive red fumes of its own kind but it is a clear liquid.

And you can pipet nitric acid.

But you can't pipet bromine.

If you try it, you might think so at first since bromine can be drawn up in to the pipet like any other liquid, but once you remove the pipet from the source bottle, it expells itself from the pipet before any transfer can be made. With nature at work, it begins destroying anything it had come in contact with, while the majority of the carefully measured quantity rapidly evaporates and instantly triggers the evacuation instinct with great encouragement.

Even when handled under a fume hood, where most of it goes up the hood, people at the other end of the lab will be out the door in less than one second after the first whiff.

Don't ask me how I know but there was this graduate student who was a little bit of a loose cannon . . .

<comment><USER3> How do you move it around if you can't use a pipette?

Or if you say "well, you can't", do you know how the manufacturer gets it in the bottle?

<comment><USER4> Some precise pouring, maybe?

<comment><USER2> Things like this you try not to spill a drop.

Sometimes more is spilled, take a look at this, where a noticeable release in Shandong was being filmed from a _safe_ distance when it got worse fast and filming continued whilst fleeing. Footage was then stabilized by a reddit viewer:

[https://gfycat.com/aggravatingagileherring](https://gfycat.com/aggravatingagileherring)

>Xinhua News Agency, Jinan, May 9 (Reporter Zhang Zhilong) The reporter learned from relevant departments of Shouguang City, Shandong Province that at around 14:00 on May 9, the bromine tank of Shouguang Yumeng Chemical Co., Ltd. was tilted, and part of the bromine leaked. Short-term red smoke band. No casualties.

> After the accident, Shouguang City safety supervision, environmental > protection and other departments immediately rushed to the scene to assess > the disposal. At present, the site has been disposed of and the cause of the > accident is under investigation.

> It is understood that chemical bromine is a red-brown fuming liquid that has > strong irritating and corrosive effects on the skin and mucous membranes.

Google translation of source [http://www.xinhuanet.com/2018-05/09/c_1122808340.htm](http://www.xinhuanet.com/2018-05/09/c_1122808340.htm)

Glad only a small part of it overflowed, wouldn't want a significant incident.

What you see here is just the spill, not a result of chemical reaction or other runaway condition.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I started out a biochemist before I discovered computers. This article is rofl funny. "invigorate itself all over the ceiling..." yeah, got the t-shirt. That's why they took away my bunsen burner and gave me a mouse.

Seriously.... fellow programmers, designers, entrepreneurs. What are the things you won't work with?

For my part:

Web code written in any language without a well-integrated string data type. strcpy() is a target painted on my back if I did that.

Anybody who claims they've got amazing new data- or media= compression technology and wants funding for it.

Transferring peoples' data from a protected realm (like a HIPAA-covered pharmacy system) to an unprotected realm (like direct marketing).

<comment><USER6> The only thing worse than no good string data type is 5 different string data types in one application.

std::string, OString, QString, char*, QByteArray

OString was our wrapper around database library strings.

And there were automatic cast between SOME of these. I especially liked the helpful automatic cast to bool from OString (true if it wasn't empty if you're wondering). It meant that doing OString("password") == OString("wrong password") returned true because it converted both to bool.

<comment><USER7> Five different string datatypes are actually a good idea in many scenarios, but you have to be very careful with automatic conversions.

<comment><USER8> I think five different string datatypes are reasonable if they're types like String, HTMLFragment, JavaScriptFragment, etc.

If you're just dealing with interop with char*, std::string, Qt, LibICU, etc. it's a nightmare.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> There's a link in the comments to some nutter who does mildly horrifying syntheses on YouTube, like this one for chromyl chloride:

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=saANxD0cqy0](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=saANxD0cqy0)

<comment><USER10> Wow. I just watched that one and his toilet paper moonshine video. I can't believe he's doing all of this in a home lab!

<comment><USER11> These days he rents a commercial space. He's done videos on setting it up.

It's NurdRage that lost his lab and is doing stuff in his bathroom again.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> >> ...a willingness to do things like redistill anhydrous HF, and you will at all times want to be suited up like you're going to going to spay a velociraptor.

Best chemistry-related description since the one in Ignition about running shoes as vital lab equipment.

</comment><comment><USER13> I do think derek lowe is a bit too paranoid about HF. I've worked with HF before, and with a proper setup (negative pressure, calcium carbonate filter, teflon equiment) it is really quite reasonable to handle. I would entrust a conscientious first year grad student to it (as I was entrusted). I only screwed up once [1], and the consequence was we lost about 1/8 of our calcium carbonate filter column. You can tell because the section that has most recently been expended is warm on the outside of heavily shielded carbonate vessel).

[1] the screw up was I had left the HF open (but not pulling) for 20 minutes instead of 5.

<comment><USER14> I think you're not paranoid enough about HF. It doesn't wash off, and is small enough to pass through skin to form insoluble mineral precipitate with calcium in bone and blood, which can result in amputations from dead tissue. It's one of the few acids capable of eating through silicates in glass or rock.

Even at lower concentrations, you still need specialized gloves, apron, and ideally a face shield, in addition to standard PPE. Source: worked with HF for 3 years.

<comment><USER15> Agreed.

If I had to choose splashing my arm with a concentrated acid, I would choose sulfuric or nitric acid over HF.

Unlike the other acids that just burn the surface of the skin, HF rapidly penetrated the skin and can mess up your potassium levels. Plus tissue destruction is much deeper.

<comment><USER13> That's why you keep calcium carbonate salve around. Also you're more vigilant around hf. I've spilled conc sulfuric and nitric acid on my lab coats. HF will never get that close, as safe equipment is in a closed loop but not that complex or byrdensome (it's not like explosives research for example)

There are some idiots that use open air HF for etching. _That_ is a very bad idea.

I should clarify by open in the description I meant valve open. The system was still closed.

<comment><USER15> Fair enough. You're using it in a certain way that makes accidental exposure less likely.

I was speaking more generally. It's not uncommon for labs to handle concentrated HF in a similar manner as other acids - I.e. pouring it into a beaker in a fume hood

<comment><USER13> Yes this is a mistake but to categorically say that HF is scary and dangerous actually creates, in my opinion, a mindset that is detrimental to operator's of safe HF equipment and also encourages use of more wasteful (e.g. FMOC) techniques which also have tradeoffs (nonsynthesiazbility is more of a problem with FMOC than BOC).

And I was clear that setup matters in my gp.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> A long time ago I found this series and LOL'ed and then had to email him a link I found to an experiment in using fluorine instead of oxygen in a rocket as an oxidizer. It resulted in the highest specific impulse ever recorded for a chemical fuel and would be awesome were it not for the exhaust being pure hydrofluoric acid.

<comment><USER17> I believe the highest Isp with fluorine is Li/H2/F2 tripropellant, in which the exhaust is mostly hydrogen and lithium fluoride.

<comment><USER16> Well I guess if you need a flame thrower in hell...

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> I've wondered if I should be nervous about brominated vegetable oil in food. I mean, it's not new or unusual, but I feel like if it was just invented, we'd all be rather skeptical, no?

<comment><USER19> You know, philanthropists really need to invest in higher level free education for non-CS sciences. We have tons of free resources with tremendously beautiful animations on data structures and state-of-the-art machine learning, but the same can't be said for bio and chemistry. This is holding back the biotech industry. People can't make educated judgements about stuff like Mercury Thiomersal because that level of organic chemistry understanding isn't covered well by existing resources like Khan Academy. Hacker News and Silicon Valley loves disruption and "Move fast break things" Uber-style. How about democratising medical education? The cheapest, fastest way to improve healthcare in developing countries is to break the whole "apprenticeship" gatekeeping system that plague medicine and pharmacy. There is no FDA in Africa to bring down the hammer on you making videos on low-cost quality control for orphan drug analogues when people are dying due to corruption, incompetence, and poor medical practices. The level of biochemistry knowledge on HN is amazingly poor, every thread on CRISPR and gene drives reads like the infamous parable of the blind men and an elephant.

<comment><USER20> I would love that!

I'm researching materials for a project I'm working on so I've been reading a lot of chemistry articles on Wikipedia. I've noticed that there appears to be a set of known building blocks that chemists use to build solutions. Something like:

\- "Molecule bits" (rings, chains, functional groups, esters, etc.) that have known properties

\- Common processes for modifying/changing those bits (alkylation, calcination, ether cleavage, etc.)

\- A set of standard chemicals (alcohols, acids, solvents, emulsifiers, etc.)

For example I often read things like:

"In order to give a polymer higher temperature tolerance, chemists often add a benzine ring by calcinating the molecule using acetone."[1]

While I'm sure that a professional chemist needs to be able to handle lots of edge cases, it seems to me that a lay person could get a lot of milage out of learning these standard building blocks. I'm going to have to look and see if I can find a good resource that explains them.

[1] Note: All of this sentence is completely made up, I just intend it as an example.

<comment><USER21> That "good resource that explains them" would probably be an organic chemistry textbook.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> This entire series is a treasure.

I'll share my favorite, just for the phrase "Satan's kimchi" alone:

[https://blogs.sciencemag.org/pipeline/archives/2010/02/23/th...](https://blogs.sciencemag.org/pipeline/archives/2010/02/23/things_i_wont_work_with_dioxygen_difluoride)

<comment><USER23> "Sand won't save you this time" is another great read from the series:

[https://blogs.sciencemag.org/pipeline/archives/2008/02/26/sa...](https://blogs.sciencemag.org/pipeline/archives/2008/02/26/sand_wont_save_you_this_time)

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> My high school teacher in chemistry was a bit of an original. Dedicated and ambitious, and maybe a little bit crazy.

In our 2nd and 3rd year we did quite 'serious' organic synthesis labs, including bromination of benzene, which of course included elemental bromine. The teacher did ration it out in out small stoppered round bottom flasks, but then we all did the synthesis in teams of two/three.

He was still very serious on security, and I guess his main reason for including that lab was to make sure that all his students had understood the seriousness of chemical dangers.

If you had done anything even slightly out of line in any lab, but especially that one, you would absolutely have been sent home, and probably been advised that maybe experimental organic chemistry wasn't for you.

Right or wrong, but that's the story about how I got to work with elemental bromine in high school at the age of 16 or 17.

<comment><USER2> It can be an interesting head start at a young age.

I went to experimental school having more progressive and well equipped labs than supposedly others at the time. Everything was new and advanced, we were the guinea pigs. Not toxically by any intention, just behaviorally for the most part.

I got to the university early and had excellent professors, ended up interning when I was 20 at a leading research fluorochemical and silicochemical plant that had been a startup from one of them years earlier. By the time I got there they had a fluorine trailer on site, at times the only live one in North America back then, so "no insurance for you".

We stocked experimental silanes, silazanes, fluoromonomers, and things like fluorides of xenon in the main chemical room if they were under a few kilos. Osmium tetroxide too, but only a few grams.

But there was another building with the real nasty stuff on the shelves, where every single one of them was something most chemists would never want to see the bottle open. Especially if they were the poor soul that had to do it the previous time. Too bad a lot of the compounds would eat through the bottle cap within a faily predictable period of months or years according to the material, so somebody was going in there fairly regularly to accomplish cap replacement as needed anyway.

You could tell when something was coming out more agressively than normal when you walked by the building. It was easy to smell since it was built with the cinder blocks turned sideways for ventilation, just like the numerous systhesis labs scattered safe distances from each other, all far from the heavy concrete blast embankment which faced off into the woods. Only the labs didn't have actual doors in their four doorways. It didn't go without saying that 4 ways out still might not be enough for a single chemist, and you can't have any obstacles in your way. Firefighting training included extinguishment through the flow-through walls into the dummy lab from the outside, which was just a lab that had gone out of control but not been completely destroyed.

The agressive chemical storage had secure doors but it was still gagging you with its smell-through open walls. How much worse could it get to actually go inside? Well there was the thiophosgene. You think plain phosgene is bad, this is not your everyday phosgene. It was rough, once you got to know it, largely seemed like one of the main stench culprits. The bottle stayed in the room, measurement was done right there. You had to put on a disposable suit to protect you from the outer suit which was assumed to be contaminated from previous tasks. Full face respirator and shield, rubber boots and spats, multiple glove layers to open the crate, dig into the vermiculite for the can, open with sparkproof tools, dig into more vermiculite for the bottle of ugly red liquid its damn self. Any access to thiophosgene called for full replacement of the bottle cap, can, crate, and vermiculite, so it could hopefully be left alone as long as possible undisturbed afterward. Once opened and repacked, that room smelled about ten times worse than normal for a couple weeks even though the thiophosgene was sealed up like that.

Anyway, I have lived by my teenage decision but accept it as immature, I don't recommend such toxic or dangerous work to others and carry on partially because I want to use any unfair advantage for myself & others to handle risky things more responsibly or not at all.

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> Reminds me of "Ignition!", which is, if nothing else, a very entertaining read. Those dudes out of necessity had to work with every dangerous and explosive chemical known (and discovered a few in the process). At one point in order to boost the thrust of engine they _sprayed liquid mercury_ into the nozzle. Unsuccessful tests often meant that the building housing the rocket motor would be demolished by explosion, often simply because some chemical ran the wrong way in the tubing due to pressure differential or some newly discovered rocket fuel or oxidizer had a reaction with some minuscule contamination in the fuel or oxidizer line. There were also some proposed fuels (butyl mercaptan) that smelled so foul, they had to evacuate buildings, but that did not stop them from experimenting with them in a wooden shack 200 yards away from the main building.

<comment><USER17> They didn't spray mercury into the nozzle; it was injected into the thrust chamber itself with the fuel and oxidizer. The point was to maximize "density impulse" (specific impulse x density of propellants).

Using zinc would have been much less dangerous.

<comment><USER26> Somebody criminally contaminated a desert somewhere west of LA that way.

<comment><USER26> *east of

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> From the comments: At least in the States you can have potassium bromate added to the flour in your bread.

They say bromine stands in for iodine, which is critical for many things.

</comment><comment><USER28> They're all amazing. Here are past issues: [https://blogs.sciencemag.org/pipeline/?s=things+I+won%27t+wo...](https://blogs.sciencemag.org/pipeline/?s=things+I+won%27t+work+with)

<comment><USER29> Better link pointing to the category, includes more results [https://blogs.sciencemag.org/pipeline/archives/category/thin...](https://blogs.sciencemag.org/pipeline/archives/category/things- i-wont-work-with)

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> If you enjoy reading about crazy chemistry, I recommend the book "excuse me sir, would you like to buy a kilo of isopropyl bromide?" a 70's era autobiography by a chemist.

[https://archive.org/details/gergel_isopropyl_bromide](https://archive.org/details/gergel_isopropyl_bromide)

</comment><comment><USER31> Here's the full list of "Things I Won't Work With" articles: [https://blogs.sciencemag.org/pipeline/archives/category/thin...](https://blogs.sciencemag.org/pipeline/archives/category/things- i-wont-work-with)

</comment><comment><USER32> The related linked article at [https://blogs.sciencemag.org/pipeline/archives/2005/12/17/ho...](https://blogs.sciencemag.org/pipeline/archives/2005/12/17/how_not_to_do_it_bromine) is also well worth reading.

</comment><comment><USER33> I noticed that all of these reactions are performed at very low temperatures. Could there be enough chemistry for life at these very low temperatures?

</comment><comment><USER34> I still clearly remember using bromine in high school chemistry lab... horrible fumes. "Do not pipette by mouth".

</comment><comment><USER35> "Things I wont work with" is a great concept that tech should borrow from chemistry. Some things, while they carry possible returns on investment, are simply not worth the risk.

I wonder what "Things I wont work with" would be for tech. I can imagine particular technologies (e.g. predictive policing) or types of data (e.g. I refuse to put digitized therapist's notes on the internet).

<comment><USER36> No helping oppressive governments spy on dissidents.

No high frequency trading.

No financial targeting the vulnerable (subjective, use your own ethics and good judgement)

No dragnets

No devices to disrupt tor or P2P networks

No troll farming or mass media manipulation

No fake dating profiles

No metric stuffing

That's it off the top of my head. I know that sometimes secondary effects can happen (e.g. an oppressive government may use a database, and I might work on that database) but that's not me directly helping them.

Something like this, feel free to add others everyone!

<comment><USER37> No fully automated slaughterbots. There has to be a man in the loop that at least clicks a mouse every time the robot kills an enemy combatant. No one should ever say: "Oh yeah, we had a bug in the auto-kill algo and our killer robot shot a whole bunch of innocent civilians. Whoops! That's nobody's fault. Nobody's responsible. The algo did it all by itself!"

<comment><USER38> In the context of a military that accepts collateral damage as par for the course, I don't really see the distinction. Did anybody but Manning go to prison over that Collateral Murder video? We have humans approve airstrikes that we _know_ will kill unidentified civilians when they're close to an identified target. We have humans approve airstrikes that _target_ unidentified individuals which we probabilistically identify as combatants based on movement and cellphone metadata. What difference does it make if a human pulls the trigger --err, presses the button?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER39> @dang and co: The old title with "things I won't work with:" is both the name of a series HN is familiar with and presenting in TFA as the category the post was made under; perhaps it should be returned?

<comment><USER40> We tend to remove names of series, as well as names of sites and other repetitive markers from titles, in the interest of keeping things unpredictable. An unpredictable HN is a good HN.

The fact that this is a "Thing I Won't Work With" instalment shows up immediately in both the article and the comments, so the information is only one hop away. Also, the article being at #1 is a strong clue that the content is interesting to more than just chemistry specialists. It's generally good for HN if not everything reveals its secrets right away, and readers have to work a little ([https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&qu...](https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&query=by%3Adang%20%22work%20a%20little%22&sort=byDate&type=comment)). When you have to do a tiny bit of work before getting the dopamine hit of pattern-matching, it seems to put the brain in a slightly less predictable state.

Before we changed the title, the thread was mostly about the series, not the specific article. That's poorer for discussion quality, which gets more predictable and less varied as topics get more generic. (For lots of explanation of that phenomenon, see [https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&qu...](https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&query=by%3Adang%20generic%20discussion&sort=byDate&type=comment) and [https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...](https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&query=by%3Adang%20lists%20common&sort=byDate&type=comment))

If anyone wants to read (a lot) more about title changes on HN, some recent things are [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21617954](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21617954) and [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20429573](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20429573).

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you for the explanation. I was debating on whether or not I should have included the category when submitting this.. I leaned on including it because it was right there on top of the headline, and figured nobody would find it interesting enough to click without the pointer that it's a part of an established, interesting series of articles.</comment></comment></comment>


What the 2010 Mac has in common with the 1984 Apple II - <AUTHOR> http://technologizer.com/2010/06/08/mac-forever/

<comment><USER2> "it wasn't hard to envision a future Apple that (A) didn't sell Macs and (B) was at least as successful as Apple circa 2010."

I think that's exactly wrong. Macs are already the trucks in his earlier analogy. Apple only sells 5% of computers, but they're the highest-priced 5%, so they make an outsized portion of the market's revenues on them.

The iPad doesn't disrupt high-end notebooks and desktops one bit. It disrupts the low-end, the $600 Dell and HPs that make up the bulk of sales by volume (but which are really little more than loss leaders for the manufacturers).

Even if tablets get to, say, 75% of the market, it will mostly disrupt cheap PCs. If most of those tablets are iPads (debatable, but certainly not impossible) Apple will make a hell of a lot of money.

Apple would seem to think this way as well. Otherwise they wouldn't introduce a $500 product that disrupted their $2,000 products, especially when they think that nobody else will make a compelling tablet if they don't.

<comment><USER3> People seem to be associating the apparent neglect of Macs at the WWDC, the marketing focus on the iOS products and the delay in OSX 10.7 as the beginning of a phase out of the platform. It is most likely just a focus of scarce company resources on launching the new product line.

<comment><USER4> How can an unannounced product (10.7) be delayed? from what i recall, Apple has never even mentioned OS X 10.7 in any capacity.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> > PCs are going to be like trucks. They're still going to be around. They're > still going to have a lot of value. But they're going to be used by one out > of x people

Boy, you can tell Jobs lives in a bubble, or else he would know this truck metaphor is shaky. Lots of people buy trucks, they just don't live where Jobs lives.

<comment><USER6> Ok, help me out there. I don't know a single person who ever bought a truck. I live in a small town in Germany. Am I out living in a bubble?

(That quote is missing some context, maybe that's were the confusion stems from. He was talking about cars in the US being used in predominantly agricultural contexts in the beginning and the change away from those "trucks" to leaner cars. He did not say that nobody buys trucks anymore. In fact, just that was his point.)

<comment><USER5> The context is trucks and SUVs (which are technically trucks) are wildly popular in the US, but less so in some areas like on the West coast. This remains true in large cities, i.e. it's not just a rural thing.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> The relegation to a niche of desktop computers at the hand of tablets and cell phones is supposed to evoke the death of Apple II at the hands of Mac?

This comparison is false in at least two dimensions: complete death versus relegation to a niche, and a product family versus a form factor. The Apple II brand was being replaced by a new generation of fundamentally similar and fundamentally more advanced products; its death was foreordained by Apple. The devices that will kill desktop computers don't exist yet, nobody is sure how deeply the desktop market will be eroded by tablets, and Apple shows no desire to abandon the Mac's share of the desktop market. What similarity are we supposed to observe here?

</comment><comment><USER8> _The Apple II of 1984-1993 was based on archaic technology; thinking back, it's kind of amazing it lasted as long as it did._

This is the power of mindshare. Apple II had a vibrant ecosystem.

<comment><USER9> I think some of it might have been based on the somewhat less glamorous aspect of just having a large installed base, though. Schools in particular had huge numbers of Apple II machines and lots of sunk costs in software and training.

<comment><USER8> That's just the grimy underbelly of mindshare.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I would be pretty stoked if Apple commissioned another song like "Apple II Forever."

<comment><USER11> Good call!</comment></comment>