Can You Call a 9-Year-Old a Psychopath? - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/2012/05/13/magazine/can-you-call-a-9-year-old-a-psychopath.html?_r=2&pagewanted=all <comment><USER5> I see a danger here. It isn't with this child and his problems, but with the continued progress of the media and other political groups in co-opting psychological diagnoses for their own ends. The terms "psychopath" and "sociopath" are already bywords for "doesn't share my politics or worldview". You can see this clearly in the article and the comments. The article mentions "financiers and business people", and the first comment covers explicitly naming the opposing political party. In fact, how many articles from the last few years manage to bring up the subject without casually slipping in a reference to businessmen? I am guessing not many.

The problem is made worse by the highly subjective nature of psychiatry. When practiced in good faith, it seems to be beneficial for some people. Of course, as a science, it is particularly soft. It has a long history of shifting its positions, and a long history of debunked and discredited bodies of theory. (Why do we continue to teach Freud and Jung in college English departments?) Psychology is the sort of thing that works only when you can trust the person employing it, and sometimes not even then.

I am not a psychologist, I am more of a computer scientist. Using leeway in statistics and figures, I can show you any result I want to. For instance, I could present a compelling argument that Facebook will expand extraordinarily over the next decade. I could also present an argument damning the possibility of Facebook expanding at all. Don't you think that, with a few weeks of study, I could apply any subset of mental disorders from the DSM-IV to any person I wished?

Would you trust a court-ordered psychologist to make an accurate appraisal of your psyche? I don't know that such an appraisal is even possible. And I am worried about the increasing confidence in these sorts of appraisals. It sounds like, very soon, anyone interested in furthering American business aims will be suspect for mental disorders. The pretext is already here in America's paper of record. How long before this movement grows to having real influence in our judicial system?

When Tom Cruise begins to sound more sane than the psychology he criticizes, you know something is wrong.

<comment><USER6> > The terms "psychopath" and "sociopath" are already bywords for "doesn't > share my politics or worldview". You can see this clearly in the article and > the comments. The article mentions "financiers and business people", and the > first comment covers explicitly naming the opposing political party. In > fact, how many articles from the last few years manage to bring up the > subject without casually slipping in a reference to businessmen? I am > guessing not many.

They've slipped in because that's where the research is pointing, after decades of anecdotes. One of the main instruments for diagnosing psychopathy is the HARE checklist, as in Robert D. Hare; guess what Hare's latest book is called? _Snakes in Suits: When Psychopaths Go to Work_. Yeah.

(I could finish by accusing you of baselessly accusing your opponents of twisting psychology to fit one's worldview, but I don't think most people would appreciate the irony.)

<comment><USER7> _that's where the research is pointing_

Are you defending the claim that businessmen and Republicans are psychopaths? I'm sorry, but that's generally untrue, and no amount of valid research will ever prove it.

<comment><USER8> If a group advocates more self-reliance and less organised help for the less fortunate then it's not unreasonable to accuse them of having less empathy.

<comment><USER7> I completely disagree. You can't enjoy life on the dole. The nanny state is a form of cruelty. I truly believe these things. I could go on at length, but what's the point.

Fiscal conservativism != less empathy.

<comment><USER9> You added the word "dole" and thereby changed the content of what you claimed to reply to.

<comment><USER7> I don't know what you're talking about. I didn't edit my post, if that's what you mean by "added."

I took the reference to Republican advocacy for "more self-reliance" as synonomous with Republican advocacy for less welfare. welfare == dole.

Although in actuality, almost all Republicans are RINOs (Republicans In Name Only), because almost all of them are altruists that advocate expanding the government/nanny state, just at a less rapid rate than Democrats. So "Republican" in this discussion may be a misnomer.

</rant>

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> When I was 5 years old and starting kindergarten, I met another boy the same age who I quickly decided would end up in jail as an adult. He certainly wasn't the only one who misbehaved frequently or did cruel things to other children, but I could tell he was _different_ somehow. He never seemed to need to feel justified in his cruelty.

In 1998, at age 19, he took part in a murder. He was sentenced to 20 years with 5 suspended. I think he's out on parole now.

<comment><USER11> i have had similar thoughts about kids i knew growing up, and a few have had a tough time in life. kids (peers) may be better at identifying warning signs than adults.

<comment><USER12> If this is true (and it might be), it would be only because most adults are completely oblivious when it comes to children. Adults in our society are notoriously good at seeing only what they want to see (I'm not talking about the HN type of person, I'm talking about your general population adult), and often this means overlooking certain characteristics in children. Or only seeing aspects of ADHD, or bipolar. Or not seeing that a parent is a really awful parent, etc.

Kids generally do not have as many biases as adults, and as a result they have less expectations. They don't see their peer as some angel, because they don't expect him to be an angel. They don't expect anything at all, so their perceptions aren't clouded.

But in general adults are much better at picking up on things like social cues and odd behavior.

<comment><USER9> Kids are also more likely to accept their environment as normal because they have never seen different, and so don't think to complain about abuse, neglect, religion (if you think that is vrainwashing), etc

<comment><USER12> Generally by brainwashing, I refer to things like media stereotypes. While religion can have a very brainwashing effect, it really depends on the institution.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> I don't believe in cures for anti-social personality disorder. I think the children who go on to display no symptoms in adulthood are the ones who have learned to successfully fake it. I say this as someone with many symptoms of ASPD who has learned to fake it.

<comment><USER14> That may be good enough. A psychopath doesn't necessarily have to understand the rules of society intuitively, it would suffice if he accepted and followed them.

<comment><USER15> We lose so much potential in these people to change social norm from conventions nobody else is willing to question. Especially when you drug them from a young age into a continuous waking stupor.

A lot of aged traditions that will not mesh with an instantaneously connected, constantly communicating and sharing global society will not work in the next several decades, and some of the textbook "unbalanced" will hopefully be the ones to push change to match changing realities.

<comment><USER9> I don't think kids who torture cats are the heroes of change you are looking for, though.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Reading into the article is good for finding an important point often lost in discussions of issues like this: "While the chance of inheriting a predisposition to psychopathy is high, Lynam noted, it is no higher than the heritability for anxiety and depression, which also have large genetic risk factors, but which have still proved responsive to treatment. Waschbusch agreed. 'In my view, these kids need intensive intervention to get them back to normal — to the place where other strategies can even have an effect. But to take the attitude that psychopathy is untreatable because it's genetic' — he shook his head — 'that's not accurate. There's a stigma that psychopaths are the hardest of the hardened criminals. My fear is that if we call these kids "prepsychopathic," people are going to draw that inference: that this is a quality that can't be changed, that it's immutable. I don't believe that. Physiology isn't destiny.'"

The key issue, of course, when a child's behavior is already as off-track at age nine as the child profiled in the article, is to figure out what to do about it. My own sense after reading the article is that grouping kids with these kinds of behavioral characteristics is a distinctly bad idea. But giving them very close adult supervision by prevention-minded adults like the psychologists profiled in the article is a first step to figuring out what can put the kids on the track to being empathetic and better able to control their own behavior for the good of others as well as for their own desires.

From further along in the article: "In the 1970s, the psychiatry researcher Lee Robins conducted a series of studies on children with behavioral problems, following them into adulthood. Those studies revealed two things. The first was that nearly every psychopathic adult was deeply antisocial as a child. The second was that almost 50 percent of children who scored high on measures of antisocial qualities did not go on to become psychopathic adults. Early test scores, in other words, were necessary but not sufficient in predicting who ultimately became a violent criminal."

</comment><comment><USER17> The Onion was on to this years ago: [http://www.theonion.com/articles/new- study-reveals-most-chil...](http://www.theonion.com/articles/new-study- reveals-most-children-unrepentant-sociop,2870/)

</comment><comment><USER18> This kid is a textbook psychopath. I can't even imagine being a parent in that situation. What can you do, even if you think he may someday hurt someone else? I mean, you can't just drive them out to the desert and push them out of the car and speed away.

<comment><USER19> What you can do is teach him rational thinking and explain social and moral rules in terms of how they create an environment that is safer and more pleasant for everyone to live in, and how breaking the rules for personal gain tends to be risky. Then try to make him risk-averse.

<comment><USER9> You are deeply missing the difficulty. If a kid would listen to reason or threat, this problems would never existing. Or worse, he could rationally know the profit in evil.

<comment><USER19> No, it's you who is completely missing it. Psychopaths listen to reason or threat just fine. What they don't care about is the feelings of others or social approval.

And rationally, the profit in evil is negative in most cases. Criminals get caught most of the time, especially repeat offenders.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> One day this kid will make a reddit account and a few months later he'll be the Hegemon.

<comment><USER7> Reddit is way too stupid for an intelligent person to make progress there. Much more likely, the kid will create a Hacker News account and become the Hegemon.

<comment><USER21> >the Hegemon.

Okay, after searching the web I give up. Can you please explain what that is? (I get a general gist from related words but it would be nice to know what you're specifically referring to.)

<comment><USER7> It's a reference to this:

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ender%27s_Game_(series)>

More specifically, a pair of kids (neither of which is the main character) create online pseudonyms ("Locke" and "Demosthenes") and eventually use them to convince the world of their great ideas (that they post in online forums). One of the kids eventually becomes "Hegemon," or the world leader.

By the way, I'd extremely highly recommend "Ender's Game" (the first book). Besides being an utterly awesome book, I even got a friend who "hated" reading to try it, and even _he_ liked it. I mean, it's _that_ good.

<comment><USER22> ...or listen to it - the audio book of Ender's Game is very good, and I believe Orson Scott Card may have said that he felt that this was the optimum form for the work.

<comment><USER23> He did, in fact, say that. The 20th Anniversary Edition[1] is a full-cast production with an afterward by the author. Highly recommended.

1\. [http://www.audible.com/pd/ref=sr_1_1?asin=B002V5A12Y&qid...](http://www.audible.com/pd/ref=sr_1_1?asin=B002V5A12Y&qid=1336884609&sr=1-1)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> Son of two Psychiatrists here. Psychopathy and Sociopathy are two fairly broad conditions. Socio/Psychopaths (henceforth, SPs) can actually function pretty normally (I have worked with one before)...Hollywood tends to portray them as ruthless killers (a select few are). To answer the title's question, you can determine if a kid is a psychopath at a relatively young age...and you should take whatever precautions necessary. In particular, you should be careful if your kid wets his bed at a later age and is cruel to animals -- two symptoms of more agressive SP archetypes.

</comment><comment><USER25> If there are 9-year-old prodigies then there are also 9-year-old psychopaths.

</comment><comment><USER26> If the mind/brain is relatively modular (as is widely believed), then it's entirely likely that compassion is subserved by a particular (perhaps widely distributed) subsystem.

One irony, then, is that sociopathy or psychopathy might arise not only from too little empathy, but as a way of coping with an empathy "subsystem" that is overactive -- one easy way to deal with this is thus to turn the gain on this signal "way down".

In other words, it would be ironic if psychopaths suffer not from too little empathy, but from so much that it's disabling, and needs to be shut off.

</comment><comment><USER27> I know it must be the most difficult job on earth being Michael's mother, but I can't help thinking how it would feel to have a mother say in public that you will grow up to be a serial killer... How ever their relationship got to this point, and I agree a personality disorder on Michael's part seams likely, it's sure not an easy situation to turn around, even for a healthy kid. :/

I hope it works out...

</comment><comment><USER28> Reading this article was oddly reminiscent, as he sounds like me when I was younger. In fact, I can seem to relate to a large portion of the article. Let me try and shed some light on several points:

 _His gaze settled on Allan. Grabbing a wooden chair, he hoisted it overhead as though to do violence but paused for several seconds, giving Miguel a chance to yank it away._

Right - first, psychopaths (let's just call it that for now) absolutely understand reward and punishment. The question, however, becomes more "can I avoid the punishment?" rather than "oh no, if I do that, will I be punished?" It's not entirely conscious - it's natural. Maybe this only happens with a certain degree of intelligence, but if his parents made it clear that he'd have no way of weaseling out of a punishment, and would be caught for sure, then it would deter his behavior. That is, of course, unlikely. His parents are emotional, and I'm sure he knows it. Either that, or the punishment just isn't affecting him. He just screams and pretends, so they won't try something new. All tactics I've used. He realizes that if he throws the chair, he will ACTUALLY get in trouble. He just wanted to get a point across. He overreacts, and his parents respond accordingly, and lectures his brother. Win-win.

 _Some, including Michael, were actually worse; one had begun biting the counselors._

This is probably misrepresented. When a kid throws a tantrum, often the counselors will try to restrain him. Yes, this happened to me (twice). If the kid cannot use his arms or legs, it should really be expected that he's going to bite. He believes he has a logical reason for throwing a fit - <USER2> him isn't going to change that.

 _Coldblooded, callous-unemotional children, by contrast, are capable of being impulsive, but their misbehavior more often seems calculated. "Instead of someone who can't sit still, you get a person who may be hostile when provoked but who also has this ability to be very cold. The attitude is, 'Let's see how I can use this situation to my advantage, no matter who gets hurt from that.' "_

I'd argue that psychopaths have both 'hotblooded' and 'coldblooded' elements. Which they display at any given time, is simply a question of which has the most reward. If the situation is hopeless, even the most hotblooded psychopath will return to being coldblooded. They'll probably never swallow their pride, but they'll win, one day. The trick is understanding their logic - <USER3> their logic is more cause-effect, than reflecting on societal norms we've grown up with.

 _So they don't develop the same aversion to punishment or to the experience of hurting someone."_

That's not true at all. My parents used to beat me (Chinese family, accepted norm) when I threw tantrums and did something wrong. I used to hate it, but I doubt I would've grown the same way without it. Rather than having to form my own mental punishment, I could relate "if I do this, I'll get beat". Then the question became, "is it worth the potential of a beating, and can I prevent them from finding out?" Psychopaths understand punishment just fine... at least intelligent ones do. When I entered high school, however, I found out that any suspensions go on my record for University. I also heard that good universities don't accept people with bad records. I was suspended over 50 times in elementary/junior high, but since high school, I've had excellent behavior. It's easy to trick your parents into thinking you're remorseful... it's harder to convince an organization that deals with thousands of applications.

 _In another study, the researcher Mark Dadds found that as C.U. children matured, they developed the ability to simulate interest in people's feelings._

It's not just simulating interest - it's simulating emotions altogether. It was difficult as a child, but over the years, I've learned what emotions are supposed to be, when people display them, and what degree they should be displayed. Hence, if a psychopath starts to live two different lives, they can easily switch between different levels of emotional display. It makes adaptation a lot easier, and people don't really consciously notice.

It's like programming. if(situation) { respond(situation.severity)} Eventually, you get to see enough situations, and can extrapolate responses for situations you haven't seen. Once in a blue moon, you're completely off. That isn't to say ALL emotions are restricted. Shame, guilt, fear, sadness, and love may be difficult, but happiness, boredom, and anger come easily.

All in all, I feel people really misunderstand psychopaths. If you're a parent, and have psychopathic children, find something they inherently cannot live without, and threaten it. Beatings may work, but it's not fool proof. You can't starve them, because they realize it'll hurt you more than it'll hurt them, and mutually assured destruction (up to a point) is acceptable. Remember - it's not how they inherently behave. It's how they behave, given the circumstances. Instead of trying to fix the root problem, go after a symptomatic treatment. Just because they misbehave, doesn't mean they won't be productive members of society later on.

<comment><USER29> "it's simulating emotions altogether."

Find a good therapist. You do have emotions, they are just buried. Or again, even if I was downvoted in another thread, at least read Alice Miller.

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> Psychopaths exist for an evolutionary reason. The fact that the military essentially screens for them in order to make the most of the mounted 50 calibers suggests why. But they are less important now, and given the demographics of the prison population, it's clear why.

It's actually best not to treat such a thing. Just evict them from the gene pool via the justice system and the problem will solve itself.

<comment><USER31> > The fact that the military essentially screens for them

No, no they don't. What makes you think that they do?

<comment><USER30> Because it's a huge field.

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Military_psychology>

It's actually pretty common sense. Pulling a trigger is not easy when it's aimed at another creature, and I've seen people refuse to shoot deer. When training infantry costs a million dollars, you have to economize by distinguishing who will be a state-sponsored killer, and who will shoot in the air out of compunction.

[http://www.amazon.com/Men-Against-Fire-Problem- Command/dp/08...](http://www.amazon.com/Men-Against-Fire-Problem- Command/dp/0806132809)

I maybe wouldn't believe it, but I've seen it.

<comment><USER31> Being willing to effectively fight in combat isn't equivalent to being a psychopath. It's something most men can be trained to do. Once you've in an actual combat situation it's either you or them--at that point it's just a rational manifestation of self-preservation. Even more to the point, people will kill in order to defend each other, which certainly favors empathy towards one's comrades over psychopathy.

I'm sure some psychopaths get through, but for anything important the military tries to screen _against_ them, and for good reason--the foundation of an effective military is teamwork, and military culture strongly honors heroism of the self-sacrificial sort, certainly not the stuff psychopaths are made of.

<comment><USER32> You would be surprised at how many soldiers deliberately miss the enemy, or don't fire at all.

Discussions on the matter: <http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?t=536561> [http://msgboard.snopes.com/cgi- bin/ultimatebb.cgi?ubb=get_to...](http://msgboard.snopes.com/cgi- bin/ultimatebb.cgi?ubb=get_topic;f=48;t=000511;p=0)

I can provide more solid material if needed.

<comment><USER31> I know about that; I'm not _contesting_ that, I'm contesting the notion that the military deliberately screens in favor of psychopaths. They don't, and it's absolute bullshit to say that they do.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> I just saw a film about this topic last night called "We Need to Talk About Kevin."

<http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1242460/> Trailer <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZLRgAe2jLaw>

<comment><USER34> Perhaps the article is lazy with elaborating on its normative perspectives onto a mass. The primary danger is when normative behavior is hegemonic and enforced with a uniform acceptance on what a person/child should behave like.

Stories of 'psychopathic' children reminds me of the following, but there are probably many more examples of stories about children being cruel and how people have responded to such cruelty (what are others you have seen?): Cidade de Deus (<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/City_of_God_%282002_film%29>) Akira (<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Akira_%28film%29>) Léon: The Professional (<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/L%C3%A9on_%28film%29>) Monster (<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monster_%28manga%29>) GTO (<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Teacher_Onizuka>) Dogtooth (<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dogtooth_%28film%29>) Heathers (<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heathers>)

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> Sure, there must be something wrong with their brains. Never blame the parents, after all, they did everything by the book.

There exist theories about why people suppress their emotions. I recommend reading some Alice Miller.

Funny, I suppose as long as the diagnosis is "Depression" or something, the reaction is probably "oh noes, what have we done, what can we do", but I suspect for psychopathy it might be "a heck, but at least he'll become a badass boss and make millions on Wall Street".

Didn't read the story to the end, but where there even acts of "liking" by the mum? Not just "don't bounce the ball", "stop it" or "share your toys, honeys"?

</comment><comment><USER29> So how come the supposed psychopaths allegedly can't feel, but they can hate?

To me the story (stories) doesn't really add up so far.

</comment><comment><USER35> We are missing the solution because we don't understand the problem.

If I break my leg the cure is obvious: don't do anything for a month. Conveniently, it will hurt when I move my leg, so I won't try to move. The cure is only obvious because what actually constitutes the ailment (a broken leg) is obvious.

Now transfer this to psychological disorders. We don't know what exactly is wrong. Imagine if that were the case with the person with the broken leg. Current practice would be that the person goes to a doctor complaining that he doesn't feel like moving (because his leg hurts). The patient doesn't understand why, the doctor prescribes pain killers and - lo and behold - <USER4> patient feels like moving again. It worked! Great. But as soon as the patient tries to get off the medication, he finds that the pain returns (because the root cause of his symptoms has not been solved at all, he's probably worse off than he was before). In this example the so-called disease (leg pain, lack of willingness to be active) is not a disease at all. It is actually a part of the _solution_ to the disease.

We are trying to 'cure' a disease without knowing what it is. When we try to solve problems without understanding their cause, we are bound to fail.

Human beings have accumulated enormous amounts of pent up emotion, that we began accumulating when thought activity started to appear in us hundreds of thousands of years ago. Before thought, emotion was solely the body's response to its physical environment, or more precisely: the body's response to its five senses. The body's natural response to emotion - fear, anger - is action which seeks to eliminate the threat: escape, fight (respectively). When thought activity starts creating emotions, this approach no longer works. The mind can neither be escaped from, nor can we fight it. Well, we can fight it with alcohol, which many people resort to, but this is obviously not a real solution.

We have been trying to escape all these emotions that have pent up over the many many generations that have passed since thought first appeared in us, but are still stumbling because we don't understand what is happening. In some people emotions simply break out because it needs to. The body can simply no longer hold back the massive amount of emotional energy that has amassed in us since the birth of thought. Many people become insane when this happens; they are simply not able to handle the power of the emotions being released. Some jump off a building, others turn to drugs and alcohol, and yet others discover what is actually happening. They find out that there is nothing wrong with them, what is happening is actually quite healthy. They discover that they don't need to do anything; they are not sick. The symptoms that might be perceived as a disease (the massive out-flux of emotion) is actually the cure.

Resisting this process is what causes insanity. Emotional energy held back energizes the mind instead (it can't be held back) and the hyperactive mind creates more emotion, thus creating a vicious cycle that ends in either death, self-medication or a realization of what is happening. There is nothing wrong with anger, sadness or fear. Treating emotions as a disease _is_ the actual disease.

<comment><USER36> The idea that emotions are a kind of gas that you build up and need to release has been debunked for quite a long time. In fact it has been shown to be actively harmful. If you think carefully about what emotions are, that is, a nervous response to stimulous- it is a thing that happens. Not a substance. Emotions aren't a physical thing you can collect in a canister. The idea is kind of silly and outdated.

<comment><USER35> My experience says otherwise :). But we can agree to disagree.

Regarding your bicycle metaphor: just as a balloon releases gas into its surroundings, a bicycle - when we stop adding to its kinetic energy - transfers energy from itself to its surroundings until it stops. I think it's largely irrelevant whether we use the release of a physical substance or energy as a metaphor, but whatever works for you.

I also realize that I missed an important point in my previous post, which is gaining the ability to stop thinking when thinking isn't needed. This is basically the development of an awareness of thought activity. Since, as you correctly say, thoughts create emotions and vice verse, releasing emotional energy will not work if you keep creating new emotional energy through unconscious thinking. But this is really an integrated part of the release of emotions; the two things happen simultaneously. Indeed, some emotions cannot even be released/experienced until you become conscious of the previously unconscious thought patterns that held them back.

> The correct analogy is not of a balloon releasing gas, but a bicycle slowing > down.

I guess part of my point was that just as the bicycle wheel doesn't stop immediately after we stop propelling it, emotions don't disappear immediately either even if thought activity subsides completely. There is an inertia left that can make us experience emotions related to an incident long after it has happened (even with no thought present). Very much like the remaining momentum of the bicycle wheel in the analogy.

<comment><USER36> What I mean is that, "venting" the traditional process of "releasing" emotions, rather than releasing the gas in a balloon, is actually just pedalling the bicycle, adding more energy to it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER37> Kill them with fire

</comment><comment><USER38> Children such as the one portrayed in the article are the reason I believe that the age at which abortion can be performed should be extended to 18 years.</comment>


How I Interpret Jeff Atwood's: How to stop at sucking and be awesome. - <AUTHOR>

I missed the original post on coding horror but came across a video of Jeff giving the presentation at the 2012 Atlassian summit.  After watching the video I wrote up a new blog post about my thoughts on Jeff's talk.  I am new at blogging so I would love any feedback you guys have.<p>Link To Blog Post:  http://oakcitylabs.com/2012/10/17/how-i-interpret-jeff-atwoods-how-to-stop-at-sucking-and-be-awesome <comment><USER2> You should probably resubmit the actual link directly, as many people prefer just to click on that. :)

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the advice. I didn't want people thinking I was just link baiting so that is why I included a description.

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Clickable link: [http://oakcitylabs.com/2012/10/17/how-i-interpret-jeff- atwoo...](http://oakcitylabs.com/2012/10/17/how-i-interpret-jeff-atwoods-how- to-stop-at-sucking-and-be-awesome)</comment>


CVE-2014-1824 – A New Windows Fuzzing Target - <AUTHOR> http://blog.beyondtrust.com/cve-2014-1824-searching-for-windows-attack-surface <comment><USER2> > many common <programs notoriously available in binary form only> are > becoming reasonably hard targets to fuzz and find interesting crashes. There > are two solutions to this: write a better fuzzer (<link to source-level > fuzzer>)

If you are writing a blog post and have no ideas for the introduction, please just skip it rather than crowbarring in an awkward reference to other items in the news.

<comment><USER3> AFL isn't a source-level fuzzer. It interposes between the compiler and the assembler to add instrumentation to assembly code emitted by the compiler. Shouldn't it be possible to do the same thing via binary rewriting or emulation in cases where source access isn't possible? The first one would be hard and the second one would be slow, but I don't think there's anything about AFL's approach that would stop this from working.

<comment><USER2> I agree that it would be completely possible in principle to make an AFL-style fuzzer for binary, and that then it would risk being either brittle or slow (depending on the instrumentation technique used to measure coverage), two properties that AFL explicitly set out to avoid. So a hypothetical AFL for binaries is not really AFL any longer until someone proves it's possible to make one with the same good behavior.

A modified hypervisor that would use the features initially intended for "replay debugging" for measuring coverage instead could be cool, though.</comment></comment></comment>


What training for the NYC marathon taught me about America - <AUTHOR> http://qz.com/818143/what-training-for-the-new-york-city-marathon-taught-me-about-america/ <comment><USER2> I'm not sure. Did she actually run the NY marathon?</comment>


Ask HN: promoting and positioning very early stage web apps? - <AUTHOR>

I'll put the "TL/DR" version up front: When following the "it's never too early to launch" philosophy, how do you position the application to visitors or potential customers?
I hear PG and others saying often that you can't really launch too soon; that you should launch as soon as your app is remotely useful; in fact that if you were not uncomfortable with the state of the product when you first launched you waited too long.
I've done that, launching the first iteration site of a site in the past week. While the feedback (quite limited so far) is helpful and interesting, frankly I am a bit uncomfortable with the state of the product. The site has some utility but it should be obvious to anyone who spends any time on there that this product is in what I'd consider a pre-beta state.  It's not that the site is buggy or that there are dead ends or "coming soon" links or anything like that.  The features that exist in the live version are relatively polished. It's just that the site is clearly "light" on features and content.
I want the feedback from having my application live, but I'm afraid my app isn't complete enough yet to justify promoting it very much. But without promotion I won't get much feedback.
(One answer is laboratory style user testing, paper prototyping and the like, but I could have (and to a limited extent, did) do that without launching.  I believe there's something valuable about the real world context, but I'm not entirely comfortable with the initial impression I'm giving to visitors.)
So, how do you position a very early phase site with customers/visitors/users?  I guess we could slap a "beta" sticker on the logo, but that feels like the modern equivalent the "under construction" digging guy from the 90s--it indicates "broken and likely to stay that way" as much as "early stage and dynamically improving".  Besides, is "beta" is just a term of art for our industry? Does the public at large relate to "beta" in a meaningful way? I'm not sure my target market does.
Is there a way to say "yes, we know it is lame right now but just you wait and see" without turning off potential users or looking unprofessional?  Is there a way to send a strong enough message to invite the public at large to check out the site without setting them up to say, "lame, call me back when it's ready?" <comment><USER2> I've been thinking about this as well for my application.

One idea that came to mind was creating a 'splash' page with summaries and stuff along with a button/link asking the user if they wanted a 'sneak peek' at what we are currently working on.

This way users know they are looking at something that is being worked on and hopefully encourages them to return and see if new parts are finished yet.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> The "private beta" approach seems like a great idea for sites that require or encourage a form of registration. I'm glad it's working out for you Travis. My problem is that my app is more casual than that--registration is maybe a phase 2 or 3 feature for me, the site is more of an information resource and I don't want to ask visitors to register for that up front.

I like the idea of a "sneak peek" splash page, as vyrotek suggests. It's a good alternative to "private beta" for registration-free sites. But I'm expecting visitors not to enter the site via the homepage but by one of the informational pages (discovered via Google, etc.), which means most visitors won't be coming through the front door. Still, I think this might be a good approach if I can figure out how to present it.

</comment><comment><USER3> Different account, but OP here. (I've lost my password for the original account, and evidently HN does not have a password reset function.)

For what it's worth, for the time being I've gone with a prominent ajaxy Feedback "drawer" in the lower right corner of every page: a bit of text and a form by which users can send us a message. Similar but not quite the same as the User Voice tabs.

When closed, the drawer simply says "Feedback?" in big, yellow on red letters. When open, the copy is describes the site as a "sneak preview release".

Hopefully this is prominent enough that users will see the message at one point or another, but without introducing a gateway, splash or interstitial page.

</comment><comment><USER4> We've had very good luck with making our system an invite only beta. The main site is setup to very clearly explain our product, and it has a form to fill out requesting an invite to the beta.

Then we go through the requests and slowly grant access to the early stage product. We can both filter users (to make sure they're our target group) as well as convey to them that this is super early stage of development.

Plus, there is definitely a psychological influence of people getting an invite to a beta; we've had a much higher percentage of invited users create beta accounts compared to just allowing anyone to create an account.</comment>


Yahoo will kill MyBlogLog next month - <AUTHOR> http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/yahoo_will_kill_mybloglog_next_month.php

<comment><USER2> This product could have had a lot of potential had Yahoo! realized what it was worth. For starters, an analytics package could have benefited a lot from this service.

It seems to me that Yahoo!, in it's rush to figure out how to compete and what to do with the traffic is not prioritizing the products that might position it favorably in the future.

</comment><comment><USER3> Why don't they sell it off? Its hard to believe there would be no takers.

</comment><comment><USER4> The great expansion of Web 2.0 is coming to and end, gradually the big ones will unite the rest and people will choose from few only.</comment>


Show HN: Mocksup, my mockup prototyping & review webapp - <AUTHOR> http://mocksup.com <comment><USER2> I signed up and was surprised to learn that all the mockups would need to be created in an outside program. I guess that serves a purpose too, to be able to create a clickable thing to show your colleagues, but it wasn't immediately clear to me that an actual mockupping tool isn't included.

<comment><USER3> lol wait, what? I thought there was a wireframing tool included and I still didn't get that far...

I think the home is a bit cluttered, I spent I'd say 5 minutes on the site without a clear idea of what it was doing exactly. A video would have helped...

It's really hard for me to see the benefit of spending $9/mo to upload HTML I already created vs just dumping it on a server and discussing via email.

<comment><AUTHOR> We used to have a video (<http://vimeo.com/9638301>) but the production quality was so bad that I opted to take it down until we could do better. I'll definitely keep your feedback in mind, thanks.

<comment><USER3> I dunno why you got a downmod, this site is downmod happy sometimes. Your video is private though, stupid default vimeo setting. I've been using ffmpeg on ubuntu with x264 encoding and I feel pretty good about the quality of the output : <http://www.vimeo.com/12740202>

that video is some crude thing showing how I did my portfolio in couchdb... maybe a crappy video like that does not deserve center placement, but if it's on there somewhere then screencast whores like me will be more likely to get involved :)

<comment><AUTHOR> Ah, thanks, fixed the privacy settings.

And yep, it makes perfect sense for me to keep the text + screenshot approach of the current tour (for those who hate watching videos, can't watch at work, etc.) but to also couple it with a video for those who aren't in the mood to read/click. Thanks again.

<comment><USER3> OK, after watching the video I think I grok the basic idea.

As an engineer, I didn't even think of designers providing images... I'm more on the other end of write the server, hack out a UI, work with decently competent front end folk to make it nice.

So, I would reduce some of the emphasis on the linking part. People understand linking and it's not an area that differentiates you - basic html/imagemap can be mastered by kids.

If it were my stuff... I'd make the mock video more about a few characters rather than the tech. Here's developer,designer,ceo,investor and here's how they use my tool to get something done, so you could focus on how it tightens the feedback loop which seems to be your goal.

I think production quality was fine, but I've got a pronounced substance over style attitude.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> This looks very slick.

I think you might be leaving some money on the table in terms of the pricing, though-- I imagine that heavy users would be willing to pay more than $19/month for the "Unlimited" plan.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yeah, we released a huge update yesterday and are just now getting to the point where we have enough features to make the unlimited plan compelling.

We undercut our competition by a good amount, so we've certainly been talking about it.

<comment><USER5> Please don't undercut your competition on price. I remember a quote by Tony Wright (of RescueTime) where he said that "Getting traffic on and off is okay but for a business to survive, it needs a predictable source of potential customers and leads". If you are selling your service for $19/month, you will be forced to keep your cost of acquiring new customers less than that. Which of course means less budget for marketing.

Note that mockups is not something that can go viral, so your marketing costs will linearly scale with every new customer. $19/month looks great if service is viral but for business apps like yours it can prove to be a growth bottleneck.

Rambling aside, suppose 6 months from now when the hype around the _cool_ new mockup tool has died, how do you plan to get new customers? (Hint: whichever method you choose, chances are than you are going to pay for it and that will come out of your revenues)

<comment><USER6> To be fair, $19/month only means that the cost of acquiring a new customer must on average be less than the current value of $19/month multiplied by the average time a customer remains a customer (at that price point). Obviously that can't be known on the front end, of course. Any thoughts on what a reasonable customer acquisition cost is for a service like this?

<comment><USER4> Well, you definitely want to make sure your LTV is at least 3x your CAC, according to this post:

<http://www.startuplifeblog.com/tag/ltv/>

But personally, I try to keep my CAC below 15% of my LTV.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> It looks great alot seems to be in place and it's obviously well thought out. The two things I would consider is maybe re-wording the header, I think the objective of that was to fill up the empty space with bigger words, and then have the smaller text as a description. It seems most of the big text is just fluff I think you so reword it to include a quick pitch of what it can do via iphone/website/logo mockup-wise.

Furthermore maybe the process to go signup could be one click faster if here was a signup button on the home page.. instead of a "login button/ see pricing plans button" I mean the pricing plan button works as a sign up it just doesn't say so.. maybe that is just me I clicked the login button at the top right since usually the login/signup is at the top right.

Good luck with this project!

</comment><comment><USER8> The website promises "smarter versioning" but each of the examples have only a single version, so there's no opportunity to review this feature.

<comment><AUTHOR> Haha, I knew somebody was going to notice! Time constraints, hope to get to it tonight.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Great website - very simple + nice interface which is huge for a website like this. I especially like the contributor's functionality where you can send out the mockups for feedback. In the past, where I've been on teams that had to send out jpgs of the designs plus maybe a surveymonkey survey, your website puts it all together for the necessary feedback people need.

Even better is the create a "clickable" website part. I didn't really see that until I made an account (though I just looked back and saw it on the homepage). I think it's really important to have this functionality. I used to copy jpgs into powerpoint to try to simulate this somewhat.

I agree with the comments about pricing above perhaps being a bit low. When I saw this "Compare" page: <http://mocksup.com/compare>, it's obvious that Mocksup has a lot more features, but is lot cheaper than the other services (none of which I had heard of). I guess on the one hand low pricing is good, but it's almost too low because it made me think, why would these others be able to price so much higher? That almost made me want to go to the other sites and compare, when I probably would have just signed up with yours right away (I didn't though as I was really impressed with Mocksup). Great stuff over all. I'm a new user.

</comment><comment><USER10> I like the concept. it's not clear that you have to use an offline editor though, I first thought you could do the mockup work in my browser. maybe I missed this, but can you add notes to the mockups you put online, for example to guide a user through the design? I noticed an "Add note" feature in the screenshot of the editor, but it's not clear if those get copied to the online shared version.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yes, notes show up on the version of the mockup you're sharing. I'll try to make that clearer, thanks.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Not only do you not support 1024 wide, you do it with backgrounds on your "how it works" page, so I can't even scroll sideways if I want to. Note: I'm a design/product guy currently on a netbook (i.e. I'm your target market).

RescueTime, the company I just stepped down from, has about 8% of its users visiting with 1024 screens. This percentage WAS trending down but has flattened (Netbooks? iPads?).

<comment><AUTHOR> Yes, there's one page that's too wide, thanks for pointing it out. Eventually those background images will be images and text, I just didn't have time to get it in before launch. I'll work on it.

<comment><USER12> The content is also quite tight on an iPad. (e.g. The mockup logo is touching the left side of the screen, or is maybe chopped by 1px.)

Also, the examples are blank for me. (not sure if that is an iPad or general problem.)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Nice site and interesting app. It seems like more of a mockup organization system than a tool for creating mockups (like Balsamiq or Mockingbird), which was my initial thought looking at the name. Perhaps you can interface with them somehow?

I'm not big on the product name though as my first thought was "oh cool mockups" which then turned to "oh wait it's a typo / misspelling of mockups". It's further confusing because you spell "mockups" correctly throughout your site. You also run the risk of a competitor buying mockups.com and building their own mockup software (logical development option).

You've put together a great tool and well designed site, don't sell it short with a typo'ed product name.

</comment><comment><USER14> Great site. I just use email to send mockups 99% of the time, and sometimes I have them printed in hi-res. Good luck though! I'm sure there are plenty of people looking for something like this.

</comment><comment><USER15> Nice. Another awesome RailsRumble project being fleshed out and productized.

Best of luck Adam! I'll definitely be using this tool to link together photoshop comps to demo clients.

</comment><comment><USER16> The site looks fantastic, great work. Have you looked into sketchflow? It's kinda/sorta a competitor, and kinda/sorta something you could incorporate into your site. I could see a demand for a nice, easy, secure place to host sketchflow mockups. All they require is an html page and a silverlight xap bundle. (sketchflow is bloody fantastic btw, I think it's going to make some serious inroads into how people make mock ups)

</comment><comment><USER17> Love the design and the idea seems solid but my first priority would be to put up a video explaining how it works..

The pictures, while well designed and thought out seem a little laborious to click through..

My attention span on the web is really short and I'm feeling lazy just now so about the only thing that I'd consider doing to learn about a new product/service like the one you're offering is to watch a video about it.

<comment><AUTHOR> Great point. We should provide both ways to learn about the product, through screenshots and text for people who hate videos or through video for people who don't feel like reading right then.

I mentioned it above, but our old video was outdated and low production quality so I decided to shelve it until we could get something better. I'll get on it, thanks.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> Funny how "Not written in Flash" has become a feature. <http://mocksup.com/compare>

<comment><AUTHOR> Haha, that was just me having a little fun. Two of the competitors in the list are, so it was just a slight jab ;)

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> One improvement you could consider;-

1\. there isn't a inbuilt mockup tool. you could provide some default templates for different browsers, iphone, android, etc. that will really help us developer get straight into mock up.

I like the simple, straightforward approach in the web app, just let me focus on the mockup with its versioning & sharing features. Nice!

</comment><comment><USER20> Tell you what I've always wanted.. You know the awesome Skype screen sharing function? Imagine everyone in on the call being able to draw and write on top of the live screenshare.

It'd be a great way to annotate/draw on top of designs live, while simultaneously talking about them with remote participants

<comment><USER21> You can do this today with Adobe ConnectNow.

<comment><USER20> thanks tried it - seems a bit buggy. The screensharing starts feeding back for instance.. the image quality could surely be better with h.264.. and I couldn't find an obvious way of drawing directly on top of my screen, almost like drawing on a transparency.

I have to say in terms of ease of use and speed, I prefer Skype's native code to Connectnow's Flash/Flex by a long stretch

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> In IE7 I get a 406 error when trying to view the examples: This error (HTTP 406 Not Acceptable) means that Internet Explorer was able to receive information from the website you visited, but the information was not in a format that Internet Explorer can display.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yes, sorry about that, we saw that last night and will hopefully fix it tonight. Had never seen that error before and I think it only happens on IE7.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> That whole select box background change thing is slick! Very cool design.

</comment><comment><USER24> An odd comment perhaps, but I initially thought the drop-down selection box was broken and it took me a few seconds to realise that (unlike every other drop-down) the top element stayed selected.

</comment><comment><USER25> Perhaps contributors should be able to submit their mockups, that way people can discuss the different ones from different people. Otherwise, I wouldn't call them contributors, perhaps observers.

<comment><AUTHOR> We're going to solve this problem instead with multiple admins. It's on our short list.

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> Really cool project and a great design! I would limit the free version a little more though (just 5 mockups, no iPhone support) to make the premium features more compelling!

<comment><AUTHOR> Good point. Our mobile support is brand new so once we see how users react to it we'll probably refactor our plans.

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> Allowing such easy changing of the homepage is a great idea - it helps contextualise what the app does into something that might be useful to a user really fast. Good luck!

<comment><USER28> I agree, though I'd do one change: once I go from "Band's website" to "new iPhone game", put the third option in the second position, rather than swapping the first two. That's just a gut feeling of course, but I feel that a visitor who wants to see a second option would be interested in seeing the three options as well. By just switching the first two options, you make the third one just a bit harder to reach than the other two. (especially considering the size of the control)

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> Something wrong with the font size/line height here. Browser is epiphany 2.30.2 using webkit 1.2.1.

<http://i.imgur.com/rK3gD.png>

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for taking the screenshot. I honestly didn't even know there was a browse called Epiphany. I'll see if I can tweak that.

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> Like it. Good concept, well executed. Aimed at designers. Hope it works out for you, good luck with the marketing!

</comment><comment><USER31> Beautiful site - I want to click through to a demo and start playing with it right away though.

</comment><comment><USER32> Good Job! The site looks great.

</comment><comment><USER33> HI THIS APP IS AMAZING

</comment><comment><USER34> Getting 500 error</comment>


Wall Street Journal: Even in Test Form, Windows 7 Leaves Vista in the Dust - <AUTHOR> http://online.wsj.com/article/SB123258632983004629.html?mod=googlenews_wsj

<comment><USER2> _Compatibility with hardware and software, which was a problem in Vista, seems far better in Windows 7 -- even in the beta. I tried a wide variety of hardware, including printers, Web cams, external hard disks and cameras, and nearly all worked fine._

I'm not sure I understand how this could be true. Unless he means "Compatibility with Windows 7 seems far better than Vista at its release." I mean, I doubt hardware manufacturers are providing better support for 7 in beta than they are for Vista, and honestly, I haven't run into any compatibility issues with Vista since I started using it.

<comment><USER3> 'which _was_ a problem in Vista'

And since most of those problems have been resolved and Windows 7 is using the Vista driver model, most people shouldn't have issues with drivers if they weren't having issues with Vista.

<comment><USER4> Nothing to see here, move along.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Does anyone else find it amusing that the screen shot provided is on Parallels for the Macintosh? It would be easy to use an image editor to crop out the fact that it was being tested in a virtual machine.

<comment><USER6> Does it matter whether they are testing it in a VM or a "real machine"?</comment></comment>


New info on Stuxnet - <AUTHOR> http://www.f-secure.com/weblog/archives/00002083.html

<comment><USER2> So on one hand the US has completely given up the moral high ground and basically said "cyber sabotage" is fair game. On the other hand, we thought it was ok to give access to every US embassy's cables to just about any private in all of the armed forces who felt like poking around. I can only think this will end badly.

Here's a mixed metaphor: its like the people in the glass house throwing the first stone.</comment>


Why Alexa graphs disagree with your logs. (Your logs are wrong!) - <AUTHOR> http://awis.blogspot.com/2007/04/alexa-data-vs-your-raw-logs.html <comment><USER2> The only dubious thing is how are people who install Alexa toolbar representative to the population as a whole. Do they collect some personal info, so they can correct the bias in the sample?

</comment><comment><USER3> Yes, if you do shoddy analysis of your logs, your logs are wrong. Spoken like an Alexa-zon employee. If you know what you're doing, and recognize the assumptions that go into proper log analysis, logs are a much more reliable tool than a panel.

The only useful thing a panel gives you is a supposedly fixed standard for doing competitive analysis... same methodology used across multiple sites. But even then you have no guarantee that the sample is representative. This is why companies like Comscore and Hitwise who buy under-the-table clickstream data from major ISPs (however sketchy and frightening that is) are probably more reliable than Alexa's panel.</comment>


Everyone dials in  - <AUTHOR> http://nat.org/blog/2010/04/everyone-dials-in/ <comment><USER5> I get pulled into a _lot_ of conference calls each week, some of them internal product calls, some of them customer calls. Even though the conference rooms are typically within a 90 second walk of my desk, I (and a good number of other people in the same building as me) dial in rather than going to the room.

Over time, people start to develop all sorts of etiquette for these type of meetings (it's roughly the same for people who go to the room and just work on a laptop) - if their attention is required, their name is called out, and the context for the request is spelled out - the assumption is that the person has been working on something else.

Microsoft Exchange (or iCal, or whatever mechanism that feeds the various calendar apps) helps a lot - everyone has the meeting in their calendar, and so various PDAs, Smart Phones, and Calendars of each individual light people up and most people come online within 60-90 seconds of each other.

This is actually a really good solution for the downside of multi-tasking - <USER2> can focus 100% on something else, and then, when I'm actually required for the 5-10 minutes of a 90 minute call, I can pay attention at that point.

In effect, you can get 20 people on a call, and instead of taking up 30 person hours (20 * 1.5 hours) - it may cost the organization a small fraction of that, with pretty much the same results.

Clearly for those meetings in which full participation is required, other tactics are required - and I really do try to close my laptop and pay 100% attention to what is going on.

I haven't noticed much difficulty, btw, in working by teleconference - I think people just learn to develop new techniques to optimize the medium - <USER3> to Mute, call from a good line, judge pauses appropriately to break in, etc..

</comment><comment><USER6> We've got a lot of people who call in remotely for our weekly team meetings, and in general I think conference calls are torture - but not because of the sound quality (putting everyone on mute except the person speaking seems to help). The thing that drives me crazy is waiting for people to call in so that the call can start. I've been hoping someone will build a Twilio app (I work for Twilio, but haven't hard time to make this one) that will call out to all the participants of the conference call, and drop them into the call when they answer so that they have to be on time.

Another cool solution is the recent feature 37Signals added to Campfire for conference calling, which posts the call transcript back into the chat - <USER4> for people who can't be on the call, or couldn't hear very well.

</comment><comment><USER7> There's a conference call scene in this (relevant, interesting, funny) video which I think applies to this topic:

[http://www.theonion.com/video/more-american-workers- outsourc...](http://www.theonion.com/video/more-american-workers-outsourcing- own-jobs-oversea,14329/)

I think that it could become a liability to do this at some point, though. When everybody is calling in and people have flaky quality, you are wasting at least some time. If a meeting is more effective in person, then have that meeting in person! You shouldn't be afraid to exclude one or two people if they're traveling; they're already excluded anyway. Why provide an illusion of close involvement?

<comment><USER8> _When everybody is calling in and people have flaky quality, you are wasting at least some time._

I've never noticed flaky microphones or audio quality from remote participants. Ever. But I've often found that local participants are completely inaudible. If every local participant just used a bluetooth microphone (or really anything dedicated but the shared conference call microphones), things would be so much better.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> I work on a team that has members distributed across two locations. We use the policy described above, but there is a flip side to this problem. Most of our developers are one location with a 1/6 minority in another. The larger group of developers loses the advantages of face-to-face communication for meetings in favor of equal footing for everyone. Is that a net improvement on quality of communication? I don't know, but I'd rather meet with my colleagues in adjacent cubes face-to-face rather than over the phone the way we do now.

<comment><USER10> As a developer "on the other side" I can tell you that you would be surprised how hard it is to follow along at these meetings.

For example: Most of the meetings I attend are largely ad-hoc with printed material being handed out at the time of the meeting - usually not available on the company intranet (or emailed) until after the meeting. It makes it immensely difficult to follow along and contribute in a meaningful manner.

Honestly, there are many benefits to having everyone "remote" for a group meeting. It focuses the meeting. After the meeting you still have the luxury of walking over to your co-workers's desk and chatting in detail about the problem.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Requiring the communication medium to be the same for everyone during a meeting is a great idea. However, I don't this conference call method is scalable for phone conversations. I can't imagine 15 person conference call would be very effective.

I think for larger meetings this "level playing field" solution would probably work much better for video conferencing or combined text/audio conversations such as on Skype. This way simple cues such as "I've got something to say when you are finished" can be used without interrupting.

<comment><USER12> Yeah, I've found past 5 or so people, text works a lot better for the major portion of the discussion. We even use IRC as a main meeting medium for one project.

However, this does require that everyone be "text-fluent", i.e. able to effectively produce and understand communications in a text-chat medium, in a way that feels like conversation rather than people sending short memos to each other. True of most people <30; intermittently true of people above that age, depending on the person.

<comment><USER13> I'm on a 12 person call twice a week for about an hour. It works remarkably well, with the caveat that it only does so when the manager running the meeting is present. It helps to have someone run the meeting with an 'iron fist' - keeps everybody on the same page and organized, without letting it spiral off into details that are irrelevant to the other 10 people on the call.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> I am in exactly that situation. It would probably help, but everyone "over there" is in an open plan office. It's great idea, though.

</comment><comment><USER15> even when everyone dials in, the people using a cellphone or joining conference calls while travelling are at a distinct disadvantage. Any number of calls I join have at least one guy having to drop out and come back in because the signal keeps fading.

The other thing I've noticed with a large number of dial-in participants is that there can be a lot of silent attendees and very few people talking. YMMV

<comment><USER13> Large numbers of silent attendees is normal in meetings with lots of people in person too - most people just don't have anything to say!

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> Skype is adding five way group conferencing. Maybe this could help to alleviate such issues.

<http://mashable.com/2010/05/05/skype-group-video-calling/>

</comment><comment><USER17> Strange to hear of people on this site, talking about dialing in. There are many better solutions available. Sococo.com for one.

</comment><comment><USER18> that's a great idea.

i'd also like to it possible for only one person to speak at the same time.

and keep track of who's talking the most. in some contexts that can be helpful. it might be useful too if each partipant only had the floor for so long.</comment>


Ask HN: More background on these Brave browser findings? - <AUTHOR> Interesting thread on the fediverse about Brave browser, but lacking more background and sources. This toot [0] and this msg:<p>"first, they sold exceptions to privacy tracking to Facebook and Twitter, now it comes out they've got a header override that allows them to set header exceptions on demand."<p>[0] https://glitch.social/@tessaracht/101572578668968885 <comment><USER2> More here:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19129086](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19129086)</comment>


The Hardest Logic Puzzle Ever - <AUTHOR> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Hardest_Logic_Puzzle_Ever

<comment><AUTHOR> One of the cited papers is a really nice read to solve an even harder version of the problem using only two questions. The reasoning behind the solution is explained in a pretty clear and detailed, but not overly verbose, way. For those who have basic knowledge about logic it is a nice application of the fact that a boolean expression has three possible values - true, false, and .

Unfortunately the file is behind a paywall (science's version of the age of information), so I'm afraid it's restricted to those with university access.

[http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1467-8284.2007....](http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1467-8284.2007.00723.x/abstract;jsessionid=44EA4FAA98F9548D894CE55BC56B4D29.f01t01)</comment>


If you ask for my permission, you won't have my permission - <AUTHOR> http://m.signalvnoise.com/if-you-ask-for-my-permission-you-wont-have-my-permission-9d8bb4f9c940 <comment><USER2> tl;dr Basecamp CEO recommends L Marquet's _Turn the Ship Around_ as an important management strategy. Namely, empower team members to approach leaders with an intent, rather than requesting permission.</comment>


Veterans want answers as new data shows rise in cancers over two decades of war - <AUTHOR> https://www.mcclatchydc.com/news/nation-world/national/national-security/article236413328.html <comment><USER2> I'm not sure about the increase since 2000 (could be better detection methods), but the military is known to use a bunch of toxic chemicals. On the motorcycle forums I frequent I have heard more than a few times about how "The stuff we had when I was in the Army/Navy/AF would have cleaned this up in seconds." And they were only talking about the degreasers and lubricants, not the munitions or other chemicals that were hanging around the base.

Read about Agent Orange if you want to be pissed off for the rest of the day: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agent_Orange#U.S._veterans](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agent_Orange#U.S._veterans)

<comment><USER3> I could write a novel about this. My father was exposed to and handled Agent Orange in Vietnam. An uncle, as well. My uncle passed in 2007, riddled with cancers, fighting the VA every step of the way. That man served nearly 35 years before retiring. Their generation coined the phrase "Delay, deny, and hope that we die." due to their experiences with the VA.

I decided not to be a helpless by-stander when it was my fathers time to contend with the VA. I took nearly 3 years off of my life and moved back home to help him. He was eventually able to successfully obtain a disability rating and was able to get prior/existing health issues linked to his exposure, which secured disability back pay to the 90s. All of this, his experience and the back pay, specifically, is something of an outlier, as we understand it. As we understand it, most folks don't have the resources to navigate the system successfully. It wasn't a massive financial windfall, but it meant that my parents future was financially secure (their finances were in ruins by the mid-00s) and once he was mobile again, with his health issues under control and with an effective management plan in place, I was able to get back on with my own life.

There are also inter-generational effects with Agent Orange, but they're not very well understood (to my knowledge). That frightens me today, especially now that I've had my own children. There's a whole other dynamic there, too, in that I also served, and that I've been exposed to burn pits and a lot of diesel fumes and high RF environments and some solvents and etc... I feel like it's an inevitability in my own life's story that I'll eventually have to contend with the VA, as well.

<comment><USER4> Imagine the effect on the poor Vietnamese :(

My Grandfather was killed by the stuff too. He had a condition that wasn't one of the conditions that the VA established as linked to it. I've found some other cases online of other service members that had what he had. The other game the VA plays is they'll dispute you were ever even exposed to it in the first place.

<comment><USER3> > Imagine the effect on the poor Vietnamese :(

I do, very frequently, in fact. I have many friends who are Vietnamese today (I live in Orange County, CA), and they have many stories about extended family in Vietnam and elsewhere about birth defects and such. My wife's mother is Vietnam-born Chinese. She came to the US as a refugee. They have family that was exposed as innocents caught in the middle of the conflict, just trying to escape with their lives. There are countless generations of people in Vietnam, and now abroad, that will never be properly acknowledged, let alone compensated, for what we did to them. And, in some cases, what is still happening to them today, as the byproducts of the herbicide can still be found in their food supply.

<comment><USER4> > let alone compensated, for what we did to them

Not 'we.' The war criminals running the government.

<comment><USER5> We don't get to wash our hands of this. Particularly when we have neither brought them to justice nor recognized any transnational authority's jurisdiction to do so.

<comment><USER4> Maybe you're culpable, but not me. I've never voted for any politician that voted for the Iraq war, and I wasn't around for Vietnam.

I advocate for the peaceful dissolution of the federal government because I believe it's unfixable and unaccountable.

I believe the de-facto two-party system is illegitimate.

<comment><USER6> Right, but culpability is like a spectrum. If I actually did it, I'm obviously the villain. But if I prosper from its effects while only opposing it in the abstract, then it's not obvious to me that I've actually reasonably washed my hands of it.

<comment><USER7> It happened whether you "prospered" from it or not. How does that alone make you any more culpable? You could argue a baby born today might have indirectly benefited from it. Is that baby culpable to any extent?

<comment><USER8> Today's kids have a big responsibility in front of them. It won't be easy to speak truth to the power that lies in the governments of the USA and China and elsewhere, but it's absolutely obvious that these entities don't intend to serve the interests of these children or their parents.

It is today's kids who must grow up ready to live in the absence of a powerful state. Even if they aren't culpable, they are responsible.

<comment><USER3> And we as adults have the responsibility of educating those future generations by speaking that truth to power. I try to do my part, FWIW.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Not really surprising tbh.

Military vehicles and generators run on diesel, the fumes of which has known links to cancer, especially without any emission controls.

Lead in ammunition probably contributes somewhat.

Tungsten in training ammo has links to cancer.

Stress and lack of proper nutrition probably doesn't help.

<comment><USER10> Tungsten is not used in training ammo because there is no need of high penetration; it is used in live ammo.

<comment><USER11> It's used in frangible bullets. If you are in a shoot house, safer to use frangible bullets, but probably not for the dust.

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

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I'm sure the thousands upon thousands of depleted uranium rounds they fired over those years had nothing to with it at all.

<comment><USER13> The radiological hazard of depleted U is generally considered to by far eclipsed by its chemical toxicity. I just want people to understand that any carcinogenic affects depleted U exposure may have are far more likely to be caused by its general chemical/heavy-metal toxicity. See [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Depleted_uranium#Radiological_...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Depleted_uranium#Radiological_hazards)

<comment><USER14> How do we know that both effects can't cause damage? Say you survive exposure to chemical poisoning, later in life you may experience cancer.

<comment><USER15> We've got a pretty good idea of what cancer rates are for various levels and types of radiation.

Toxic chemicals can cause cancer themselves - poisoning isn't the only option there. Coal tar, for example, has no (or minimal) radioactivity, but is still carcinogenic.

<comment><USER16> We actually have a rather poor understanding of long term effects of radiation. We have decent models for amounts of radiation that kill you over weeks, but long term low dose exposure is poorly understood.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Could this not be stress related?

<comment><USER17> Since this comment was down voted, this is a legitimate hypothesis..... [https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.livescience.com/amp/65342-c...](https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.livescience.com/amp/65342-chronic- stress-cancer.html)

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> Maybe if they hadn't been killing women and children with depleted uranium then maybe, just maybe, they wouldn't be getting cancer today.

<comment><USER19> It is more complex than that. I think that this simplification is hiding a lot of hatred, not really helpful.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> Address the root cause: don't start any more of these idiotic, unnecessary wars.</comment>


Applying Predictive Analytics to Flight Delays - <AUTHOR> https://engineering.upside.com/applying-predictive-analytics-to-flight-delays-85413ca4939f <comment><USER3> There used to be a terrific company called FlightCaster that did exactly this. They had a mobile app that would tell you much more reliably than airlines when your flight was likely to depart. It was fantastic for getting ahead of the queue for re-booking when there were flight delays. I hope someone makes a clone!

[https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/flightcaster](https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/flightcaster)

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Flight Delay Predictor from Upside Business Travel is a machine learning based product that attempts to predict the likelihood your flight is to be delayed. The algorithm is trained on historical flight delay information from the FAA and factors in both historical and forecasted weather and the current state of the National Airspace System. Happy to answer any questions here on how we built it! Check it out at labs.upside.com/delay

<comment><USER4> Predicting flight delays has been a favorite topic of research in the Air Traffic Management (ATM) community. There has been ongoing research on this topic even before Machine Learning gained traction. Accurate predictions of far out delays is of course impressive but refining these predictions to a point of making a product that someone will actually pay for is going to be steep challenge. The primary challenge is to account for airline operations through publicly available data e.g., airlines usually pad schedules to account for delays, flight arriving at the end of the day are more likely to get delayed, flights between hubs are less likely to be delayed - <USER2> features that can model these do not exist in public data. Instances that cause the most disruption (mechanical failure, staff shortage etc.) are impossible to predict with just schedule data and this is where people would be willing to pay of such an app.

<comment><USER5> Thanks for your feedback! We are planning on using our predictive model to help our customers make informed decisions about whether they should consider taking an earlier flight or an alternate route to get to their destination on time. If you book your travel on Upside, our customer support team will be notified if we believe a flight has a high likelihood of being delayed (or we get a notification that it has already been delayed) and will help you change your flight!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I'm not sure I understand why you felt that you need to remove seasonality if you already have weather information as features for your model. Isn't season usually just used as a proxy for weather? If you have all the weather data you need (temperature, precipitation rate, type of precipitation, etc.), it seems a little weird that you subsequently only train the model on short time series to "remove the effect of seasonality".

<comment><USER5> Yes, you make very good points here about seasonality and weather. We have looked at training the model on a small window of flight dates vs randomly sampling across all dates and the former performed better in testing. We wanted to limit our modeling complexity to random forest and gradient boosting as an initial proof of concept here. Our plan is to retrain the current weather model weekly while monitoring performance, store the data, and then maybe look to using a more complex model like a neural net to train a model using data across all dates.</comment></comment>


A family converts a decommissioned school into a home and bed-and-breakfast - <AUTHOR> http://www.theglobeandmail.com/life/home-and-garden/real-estate/toronto-family-ditches-the-city-for-home-schooling-in-prince-edwardcounty/article28428562/ <comment><USER2> I always like these kinds of stories, and then I wonder what the after-story is. A couple hundred thousand in repairs, renovation and remodeling, I'm guessing the occasional B&B guest doesn't provide a huge amount of income. What do people who do this (move out to extreme rural areas and buy enormous and expensive to maintain offbeat homes like schools, churches, power plants and missile silos) do for a living to afford this?

I'd love to go out to random-rural-county and buy 20 acres of land and a school and turn it into a huge home, but then I'd be hours away from where I need to go to make the money to do that.

There's always some other parts of the financial story that never seems to come through in these kinds of articles.

<comment><USER3> They sold their house in Toronto, one of the most expensive cities in North America, and probably made a couple of million or so. The school was only $190,000 plus whatever it took to fix it up.

As the article states, the area is a tourism hub so their B&B is probably quite busy. Otherwise, assuming they own the school free and clear and grow a lot of their own food, I imagine they don't have many expenses.

<comment><USER4> You seem to think that they owned their house in Toronto outright, which is rare for a young family, especially in such expensive area. Also, median detached house price in Toronto is just over a million, so if they got a couple of million, they had above average house as well, so it's still not clear how are they affording all of that. But, I don't think that's the point of the article, maybe they are trust fund babies, who cares.

<comment><USER5> > Also, median detached house price in Toronto is just over a million, so if > they got a couple of million

Be careful, the Canadian real estate industry always publishes _average_ _sales_ prices, not _median_ prices, and not median valuations.

Which is why the numbers are rubbish: Their numbers are biased toward by whatever turns over more, and by a small number of high value sales.

It's the same reason why average income is a farce. The average of 4 unemployed homeless individuals and a $250k/yr lawyer is $50k/year. The median is zero and more representative of reality.

Once the industry starts publishing the average valuation of a 3bd 1.5ba home (detached or not, there's not a lot of detached inventory left!), listen to them. Until then, ignore their self-serving statistical butchery.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I think this is a great example of a growing societal acceptance of people experimenting and choosing alternative styles of housing and also city organization, especially ones that involve reclaiming/re-purposing space. The article's particular example focuses on redefinition and reuse of an existing structure in a very sparsely populated area.

In dense areas, other ways of re-purposing space are happening. Everyone has seen former industrial facilities converted into multi-unit housing. But these ideas are even creeping into traditional neighborhoods. In my case, I would love to convert my second parking spot into additional living space.

The idea is, with urban neighborhood land values so high (at least in booming areas), it's hard to justify providing housing for a second car).

Of course, this isn't even a new idea. For decades people have been kicking their cars to the curb so they can use their garages for other purposes (gym, workshop, playroom,...). In the coming decades, as people move more towards uber/lyft style services for transportation, I can see a lot of prime space formerly occupied by cars being freed up for creative re-use.

<comment><USER7> Renovating is more expensive than rebuilding. Renovated nice old buildings are a luxury, not a savings measure (I live in one, which we renovated ourselves - would've been cheaper and better to knock down and rebuild)

<comment><USER8> Depends on the building. We bought a house from the 40's on the small side (1500sf) that needed plumbing, electric service, all flooring surfaces replaced, kitchen guttend/replaced, both baths guttened/replaced, all appliances, and significant mechanical (furnace, water softener+filter), addition of closets, replaced deck, and probably stuff that I'm forgetting. Had a good roof, which was critical, because water damage would have sunk it (har har har). We did a lot of the work ourselves, saves a bundle. Contracted for about $40k of it up front to get it livable quickly.

Somewhat related to the story - I bought a pellet boiler off craigslist for $2800 and did 100% of the installation myself (electrical, plumbing [heat + water heater], control) all-in was about $3900, and I'm already in the black on it after 3 years use (vs. propane). I decided to burn lpg this year because it was 'only' $1.70/gal, and it turns out that even at that low price (compared to the last three years) I'd probably have been better off on pellets, but probably not better off enough to make up for all of the labor that it takes.

I set it up to automatically switch between the propane furnace and the boiler (I have a water/air hx) based on the boiler's temperature to make it seamless for my wife to use :). It's a Central Boiler Maxim M175 ... cranked all the way up, it might be able to heat his school (just barely) -- I run it at its lowest setting. Burns very clean, no smoke, happy neighbors.

Renovation _can_ be done for a reasonable financial cost with an investment of time. Our house isn't super-luxury now, but it's perfectly serviceable and now we have a house on 11 acres that we couldn't have touched if it hadn't been a dump when we bought it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> In an old job I worked for an affordable housing developer who did this with properties down in New Bedford, MA. We'd turn old schools into affordable housing units. Same with a hospital in Connecticut. It's a great way to increase the number of affordable units while using old buildings.

EDIT: Here is an example: [http://www.wihed.org/wp- content/uploads/2012/09/Acushnet-Com...](http://www.wihed.org/wp- content/uploads/2012/09/Acushnet-Commons.pdf)

</comment><comment><USER10> McMenamins did this in east Portland [http://www.mcmenamins.com/427-kennedy- school-home](http://www.mcmenamins.com/427-kennedy-school-home)

<comment><USER11> They also recently did a similar project in Bothell, WA: [http://www.mcmenamins.com/AndersonSchool](http://www.mcmenamins.com/AndersonSchool)

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Similar story.

These Vegas transplants bought a small-town Nebraska schoolhouse and let their artistic flags fly.

[http://www.omaha.com/living/these-vegas-transplants- bought-a...](http://www.omaha.com/living/these-vegas-transplants-bought-a- small-town-nebraska-schoolhouse- and/article_c47a8a28-a2ad-5907-bbb5-fc5d878f0c9c.html)

</comment><comment><USER13> Note the firewood. Lots and lots of firewood. Those high ceilings and cavernous rooms are a nightmare to heat. That wood stove must run 24/7.

I'm all for re-purposing, but there is a point at which a building built for one purpose just isn't suitable for any other. Elementary school into residence/home might be that line.

<comment><USER14> It works for some (with means). The Human Genome Project's Eric Lander lives in a converted 10k ft^2 schoolhouse in Cambridge:

[http://connect.bostonmagazine.com/articles/?p=3392](http://connect.bostonmagazine.com/articles/?p=3392)

Architect's photos: [http://www.maryannthompson.com/projects/proj25.html](http://www.maryannthompson.com/projects/proj25.html)

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> This looks great, and their kids will look back and feel very lucky to have grown up here. As a US resident, I can't help but wonder whether:

\- Property taxes (it's _huge_ )

\- Building code

\- Zoning

Would prevent something like that happening here.

<comment><USER16> The headline says "Toronto family" but the school itself is pretty rural and not that near Toronto. I expect taxes are lower than their urban house and zoning is pretty relaxed.

[https://www.google.com/maps/place/Milford,+ON+K0K,+Canada/@4...](https://www.google.com/maps/place/Milford,+ON+K0K,+email@example.com,-77.6512341,9z/data=!4m2!3m1!1s0x89d7b86348a84699:0xb01b729c26d910b4)

They can nearly see Mexico from their house! (Mexico, NY that is)

<comment><USER17> That's a 1.5 hour drive from Toronto, not even considered the Greater Toronto Area. I am sure the Globe is putting them under the Toronto umbrella to get views; who the hell could afford to do this in Toronto... oh wait it's not Toronto, but you already gave them your traffic.

<comment><USER18> See my comment to your parent. I don't think it's about getting more views, when talking about a transition from city to country. In the second paragraph: "They had been ruminating for years, however, about leaving Toronto for a more free-spirited life in the country with their three young daughters."

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> "In the last year of its operation, the heating oil bill for the school was $38,000 and the electricity was another $10,000. They needed a better system."

</comment><comment><USER20> I would love to live in an unconventional house. There are schools closing in surrounding farming areas regularly but most are too much travelling time and poor Internet access.

When there are some good ones with decent services not far from population, the government seems to have problems getting the schools on the market. By the time anyone can buy them they would be ruins.

</comment><comment><USER21> [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Queen_Anne_High_School,_Seattl...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Queen_Anne_High_School,_Seattle)

</comment><comment><USER22> Bravo on the out-of-the-box thinking. Nice to see someone make such an opportunity happen, showing others that status quo need not be adhered to.

I once seriously considered buying a defunct health club for the same domestic purpose. Adapting the locker rooms seemed the most daunting aspect, but the 3-lane full-length indoor pool was awful tempting.

Notice how far out the family had to go to make it work: fully insulating walls, wood heat, and a large garden among other factors.

<comment><USER23> >> Notice how far out the family had to go to make it work: fully insulating walls, wood heat, and a large garden among other factors.

On the plus side, I'm guessing that the sale of their Toronto home left them with a lot of budget to do that work though.

IIRC, the average selling price of a home in Toronto is floating around $1M these days, and the school cost "only" $190K.

<comment><USER24> And not just any part of Toronto - High Park. They were pretty well off to start with going with that as the base.

Good for them on using their money to fund a great learning/growing experience for their kids.

<comment><USER25> I lived two streets down from there. High Park has both very posh houses and not-so-posh (as in: derelict) ones, it's very much a mixed bag there, especially on the North-East side.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> Church converted to condos: [https://www.coldwellbankerhomes.com/ky/bellevue/320-poplar-s...](https://www.coldwellbankerhomes.com/ky/bellevue/320-poplar- street/pid_9936293/#)

</comment><comment><USER27> Now that I think about it, every old schoolhouse I've come across was turned into a bar.

</comment><comment><USER5> Chances are the nearest school for the 3 daughters could not be further away...

<comment><USER28> No more than 16km to the nearest public elementary school, according to [https://www.google.com/maps/dir/Queen+Elizabeth+Public+Schoo...](https://www.google.com/maps/dir/Queen+Elizabeth+Public+School,+Picton,+Prince+Edward+County,+Ontario,+Canada/43.9350744,-email@example.com,-77.1452028,10691m/data=!3m1!1e3!4m10!4m9!1m5!1m1!1s0x89d7ca551fce466f:0xd089bcae4057a3ce!2m2!1d-77.145692!2d44.009946!1m0!3e0!5i2) .

The secondary school is further, at about 50km to Belleville.

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> I hope the wood splitting picture was staged. Those girls are a few feet from a man swinging an axe splitting wood. That's an accident waiting to happen.

<comment><USER30> I do not believe it was staged. While there is a risk of danger, I believe it is a small risk. Perhaps a the axe head flies off, or a block of wood shoots out and hits the kid. But those risks are small, and it doesn't make a lot of sense to spare a child the experience of physically working to heat your dwelling in order to insure they are safe from an unlikely accident.

Anecdotally, my dad and I drove into the woods and cut down trees for the fireplace in my family's house. After he cut down the tree, he would cut the tree into 1 foot rounds and then split them with a maul. The cut, triangular pieces had to be loaded and stacked into the back of a pickup, and it was back breaking work.

However, every time the work was done, I remember feeling a sense of accomplishment and contemplating how it was the drudgery that ultimately created that feeling.

I think that we should not spare our children these enormously valuable learning experiences in the name of safety.

<comment><USER31> Your dad could have stacked logs in the truck and cut them to length and split them near the permanent stack location. Otherwise, you're stacking once in the truck bed and then again at the woodpile. Perhaps he was building your character instead of seeking efficiency.

A little bit of gratuitous labor helps the lesson sink in. So maybe you set up a little contest with your victi-er, kid. You each take half the logs and whoever finishes first wins. You even let the kid get a head start. They're concentrating hard because they want to win. But behind their back, you're using a log splitter instead of a maul. When you yell out "done!" they look around, and see that you "cheated". Hopefully, they learn the value of appropriate technology over brow sweat.

That guy shouldn't be swinging that maul so close to his kids, not for safety reasons, because he should be using at least a lever-operated log splitter instead.</comment></comment></comment>